I Bring the Fire Part III: Chaos

by C. Gockel

  “It’s got us!” screams Kane.

  The metal of the back hatch makes a horrible shearing sound and almost shuts, but the rest of the frame has been so warped it can’t quite close. The vehicle groans some more and the hatch edges shut. “Keep it open!” Steve shouts.

  “But digestive enzymes...” says Jarrett.

  “We have to keep firing!” says Steve. Without looking over his shoulder he says, “MacAuley? You there?”

  Johnston throws an empty box used to store grenades at Kane, who jams it in the hatch. Jarett throws in a spare tire.

  “Yeah, I’m here,” MacAuley says. “Not much room...but I can see light! I can see light. We’re not all the way in its mouth!”

  “Gun it,” says Steve.

  The engines rev, there is a sound like wheels slipping on wet pavement, but the Hummer doesn’t move forward. There is a rush of air from the open hatch that brings an acrid smell and a taste on Steve’s tongue like a dry heave. The world lurches.

  Steve throws himself onto the floor, between Kane and Jarrett and fires out the tiny space of the open hatch. Rolling hard into Jarrett, as the world lurches again, Steve shouts, “Everyone reload and keep firing!” Johnston falls flat on his stomach beside him and jams his RPG out the hatch. “Already there!” Johnston fires, the world heaves one more time, the engine revs, metal screams and suddenly they are moving forward, a loud wet snap coming from behind them.

  Wide-eyed on the floor, Steve, Johnston, Kane and Jarrett all look around the Hummer like they expect it to start lurching again at any moment.

  “We’re out!” shouts MacAuley.

  From beyond the vehicle come shouts and hoots.

  Steve lifts his head and lets out a breath, hoping no one can see how much he’s shaking. From what is left of the windshield he sees the checkpoint not ten feet in front of them.

  Steve and his guys look backwards through the jammed-open hatch. “It’s dead,” someone says. And everyone starts laughing with relief.

  “Front doors jammed shut,” mutters MacAuley.

  “Let’s get out of here,” says Steve. His earpiece starts beeping, sounding strangely muted. Reaching up, he realizes it’s fallen out of his ear.

  Kane and Jarrett stand up. Grunting, they push the warped Humvee hatch up together. Outside, soldiers from the checkpoint start swarming. Steve hears shouts of, “It’s dead, it’s dead!” and “Motherfucker.”

  As the guys start hopping out, Steve retrieves his earpiece, still beeping like mad, from the floor. He hops out of the Humvee on shaky legs. Covering his nose and breathing through his mouth, he tries to ignore the stench of stomach acid, blood, and snake. He turns his eyes away from brown scales the size of dinner plates and a gray eye the length and width of his torso, rapidly filming over. Exhaling carefully, he starts walking on unsteady feet toward the light, his boots splashing in a miasma of serpentine bodily fluids.

  A checkpoint soldier’s arm falls on his shoulders. “We thought you were goners for a moment there—and us, too!” Cameras click and flashes burst.

  Unable to tear his eyes away from the daylight up ahead, Steve only nods. He did it. He kept his city safe, and without a Norse-So-Called-God in sight. The beginning of a smile forming on his lips, he taps his earpiece to accept the incoming call.

  “Steve, Steve,” says Bryant. “We’ve got a problem. Something’s piggybacked on the wyrm gate...”

  “A unicorn?” asks Steve. Loki told them some could world walk, but that they all were opportunistic ‘piggy backers.’

  Bryant’s voice crackles on the other end. “No, this is....Get in the Hummer! Get in the Hummer!” Steve hears a thump on the other end of the line. Suddenly, Huginn and Muninn come careening through the ramp from upper Wacker, screeching and squawking in terror.

  Eyes widening, Steve shouts to the members of the Guard on top of the ramp herding the press corp. “Get everyone down here! Now!”

  The Guard members look up instead and raise their M-16s. Some of the press corp follow their gaze and lift cameras. Others come running down the ramp towards the checkpoint.

  The Guard start firing M-16 rounds and Steve hears what sounds like a lion’s roar...but it’s coming from the sky. “I got one! I got one!” someone says. “Cover!” screams someone else. The Guard start herding the remaining members of the press towards the ramp to Lower Wacker, but a few lone photographers stand outside. A shape falls from the sky between the cameramen and the ramp. Steve sees a giant spiked tail attached to enormous bat wings drop from the sky, and hears the snap of bones and wet sounds of pulverized flesh. A dark body of something very menacing is suddenly blocking the tunnel’s mouth.

  Shadows dart over the downed creature, and then there is the flash of another scorpion tail and more wings just beyond the downed thing. One of the camera men screams, and then he’s aloft and thrashing, carried by one of the creatures—Steve can only see that scorpion tail, attached to a tawny back, and vast, bat-like wings. As the cameraman flails, the tail of the flying beast twists and whips down. The sharp spike at the end of the tail plunges into the man’s back and the man in the creature’s grip goes slack.

  For a moment no one says anything. Then one of the Guard furthest up the ramp says, “They’re gone.”

  “What are they?” says Steve, walking towards the tunnel mouth. No one answers, but members of the Guard pick up their M-16s and fan out around Steve.

  A few moments later he’s stepping out into sunlight, and pacing around the beast they shot. It’s the size of a bull. If its bat-like wings were unfurled Steve’s sure they’d be as wide as a small house. Its head, body, and limbs are lion-like. “What the Hell?” Steve whispers to himself. And then Bryant’s voice crackles on the line. “Liddell has confirmed...they’re manticore.”

  “They?” says Steve, shivering in the chill, eyeing the deceptively cheerful blue sky. “How many?”

  “A dozen, sir.”

  Steve looks down. “Eleven are left,” says Steve, looking at the dead beast in front of him. “We need to form a party to hunt them down.”

  “Yes, sir,” says Bryant.

  Someone from the press shouts out, “Will you be using deadly force?”

  Someone else says, “What about their scientific value?”

  Steve turns around and hits the button to open up a line to headquarters. As soon as it picks up, Steve says, “General Bautista, we have a situation.”

  The voice of one of Bautista’s aides sounds at the other end of the line. “Captain Rogers, we do...”

  “You know about the manticore pack then?” says Steve.

  There is silence at the other end of the line. “No, sir. I was speaking about the Governor’s order to redeploy the Guard to the airports.”

  It’s Steve’s turn to fall silent. When he regains his voice, the only word that comes out of his mouth is, “What?”

  The aide’s voice is wobbly. “A humanitarian crisis is developing at the airports. Other airports have started turning away flights from Chicago—they’re afraid recent events are a result of contagion. Airplanes have been forced to return, camps are forming outside of O’Hare and Midway on the highways—”

  “Well, then call in the Wisconsin Guard to help out!” Steve says.

  The aide’s voice becomes crisp and annoyed. “That takes an order from the Governor!”

  Steve takes a deep breath. “What about Washington?”

  “Still not ready to step in and usurp state’s sovereignty,” says the aide. “Technically, the elf attack was an act of terrorism and not war, and the trolls are not an organized force; therefore Washington is not authorized to—”

  Steve takes his hand from his earpiece to keep from hurling it at the ground.

  “We’re trying to convince the Governor to call in more help. In the meantime we need you back at HQ. Jameson needs you to act as a liaison between ADUO and the city police and firefighters while he runs things here.”

  The hot wash of anger cha
nges rapidly to dread. Jameson is going to be in charge?

  Pulling out his phone, Steve checks his email. Still no word from Amy. He grinds his teeth. Hopping into a Humvee he taps out a short email, doing nothing to disguise the situation on the ground, the chaos, the implication that Amy has been kidnapped or that she’s not even alive. He does nothing to hide the desperation he feels. He hopes wherever Amy is Loki gets it.

  x x x x

  In the mortal vernacular, Loki doesn’t get it.

  The light of dawn is breaking through the edge of the hotel curtains and Loki is peeling off his coat, preparing to go to sleep, but his mind is filled with memories of Hindu prayers and Amy’s question. “Are you Shiva?”

  He isn’t Shiva, but trying to deny it made his skin crawl. He lays the coat on the chair and makes his way to the bed. Slipping off her shoes, Amy is right behind him.

  Flopping down on the bed, most of his clothes still on, he closes his eyes.

  He hears Amy’s footsteps falter. “Your book...it fell.”

  Raising his eyelids, he catches sight of her coming towards him, book in her hand.

  Lying beside him on her stomach, she flips through the pages and then lets the book fall open where it may. “I’ve seen this book in your dreams. What is it?”

  “Lothur’s journal,” says Loki, putting a hand to his eyes.

  She is silent for a moment. “Lothur is one of our names for you,” she says quietly.

  He really should have suspected that. Loki chuckles, but it comes out half a sob.

  “What language is this?” she asks. “It looks like Aesir, or maybe Jotunn, and yet...”

  “You know Aesir now?” says Loki, rolling to his side to stare at her.

  Not looking up from the page, she says, “Yes, I think you accidentally transmitted it to me in your dream.”

  Loki’s eyebrows rise, but she doesn’t notice. “Why is this woman on fire?” she says, staring at a hand-rendered sketch.

  Loki rolls onto his stomach, his side touching hers. The book always falls open to this page. He runs a finger beneath the caption, written in a fast tight hand, and reads aloud.

  "And I have dreams of my love, who was not my love, but was. Her father said words low against me, so low that it caused her heart to flame. And the flame of her heart spread to the utmost ends of her limbs. My love died in flames.”

  Loki swallows. The words physically hurt, the image they conjure too real.

  Amy turns the page. “Go on,” she whispers.

  Loki’s looks down and sighs. Not sure why, he complies. “And in my dream, my friend, my brother, he learned of this and declared that we would go to her father so that he will know, that to worship him is also to worship me...As though that would bring back my love.”

  Stroking the page reverently, Amy says, “It sounds like the story of Sati...”

  “Sati...” The name sounds familiar.

  “Wife of Shiva,” says Amy softly. “She killed herself when her father didn’t approve of Shiva—”

  Loki snaps the journal shut. His breathing suddenly heavy and ragged, he covers the book with his arms and drops his head.

  “Loki,” says Amy. “Are you alright?”

  Turning his head, he glares at her.

  She swallows. “Ah....”

  Her arm drapes over him. He is absurdly grateful for the warmth.

  “Reincarnation is a ridiculous concept,” he says, sounding petulant to his own ears.

  Amy is quiet a moment. “When you were drunk, in the bar, you said that we were all just figments of the imagination of a universe trying to understand itself.”

  “What’s your point?”

  He hears her lick her lips. “Maybe there are some things the universe has yet to understand...and can’t let die. Chaos would seem to be a pretty eternal concept.”

  Loki snorts. “You’re ridiculous.”

  She huffs a laugh. “I am very tired.”

  A shiver sweeps through Loki’s body, and he suddenly feels very cold. There is one reason, he must not, cannot believe this. “If it were true, why wouldn’t Hoenir tell me, Amy? Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Of course she doesn’t. And then Loki laughs. Hoenir never told him anything.

  Either Amy is mad, and he is mad, or Odin and Hoenir don’t—didn’t—know...He closes his eyes.

  But of course they knew. Hoenir knew he could read Lothur’s journal, and Odin knew nearly everything.

  Beside him, Amy sighs drowsily, and her body trembles as she slips into sleep.

  Loki feels that as though all the magic in his nervous system is crackling and on fire, yet perversely he’s chilled. Odin betrayed him outright, but Hoenir...Hoenir betrayed him by omission. Hoenir who never said a bad word towards anyone. A giggle escapes his lips and he pushes his face into a pillow. Hoenir never said anything at all.

  Face in the pillow, he bites his lip to keep from screaming in frustration. And then with a deep breath, he edges out from beneath Amy’s arm. Sitting up beside her, he brushes a stray tendril of hair from her eyes and notices he’s turned blue at some point. Of course, she wouldn’t have commented, or even minded.

  He flexes his hand, eyes moving between his blue fingers to the sleeping girl. He needs rest. He could solicit her help in achieving some relaxation. Scowling, he looks hard at her lips, mouthing some inaudible whispers in sleep.

  Sleeping with her has been more satisfying than he expected, but she is no Sigyn. She wouldn’t fight him and then tend him for two hundred years in a cave. He snorts softly. In less than a century Amy will be dead.

  He takes a ragged breath. A night ago, or a few fucks ago, they’d lain in afterglow, and Amy had said, “So the whole immortality thing...”

  Loki had tensed in her arms. When he used to travel openly on Earth with Thor, mortals were always trying to ply him with sexual favors in return for immortality...even though the myth of him kidnapping Idunn and stealing her apples was just a myth.

  He’d felt his lip curling into a sneer, but then Amy had said, “Doesn’t it get horribly boring? What do you do for all that time?”

  Loki had laughed aloud at her utter lack of guile. Even now, sitting beside her, the memory makes him feel a little weak, a bit sentimental. After being on Earth, Asgard does seem boring. How fun it would be to stay and see what humans will do next...

  Taking a breath, Loki shakes himself. He feels the chill again. Standing up he makes his way to the bathroom.

  A few minutes later he is sitting in the bathtub, spigot at a roaring blast. Loki is alternately freezing the water’s surface, and splitting the molecules of oxygen and hydrogen to set them aflame. In the corner of the room Cera is swirling.

  Staring at a flame in his hands, Loki says to her, “It is so easy to split molecules. But putting them back together—I know how and yet it takes so much energy...it’s as though it goes against my nature...” Like healing goes against his nature.

  Because he’s the embodiment of chaos and destruction?

  Cera hums. “When you have me you’ll be able to do, have, or make anything.”

  Loki lets the flame leap from one hand to another. “Yes.”

  At that moment Amy pokes her head into the bathroom, blinking and sleepy-eyed.

  “You can even keep her for genetic exchange,” Cera says with a resigned sigh. “I suppose you have to have someone.”

  Loki raises an eyebrow, bemused at the obvious disdain in Cera’s voice.

  “Loki, are you alright?” Amy says, oblivious to Cera’s magical commentary.

  Loki’s lips quirk. It is nice to have Cera not asking him to kill her. He tilts his head at Cera’s words. He can have anything. He hasn’t really thought about what happens after he burns Asgard to the ground.

  ...What would he want?

  “Just taking a bath,” he says with a smile.

  …What would he do with Cera’s power?

  Amy stares at the flames. “Looks a lit
tle hot for me.” She yawns.

  “Go to bed,” says Loki.

  She nods and says something, but the water from the spigot is loud and Loki doesn’t hear.

  When he finally turns off the water, he hears the door shut, Amy’s footsteps pacing the suite, and then the sound of the TV flicking on.

  Toweling himself off, he steps out of the bathroom a few minutes later, Cera following behind like a well-behaved dog. Amy is on the couch, knees up to her chin, arms wrapped tight around her legs. The television is set to a news channel. On the screen are white tents erected by a highway.

  “What’s this?” says Loki. He means why is she watching TV. He’s suddenly in the mood to exchange genetic material again.

  With a gasp, Amy turns her head. “The Red Cross is setting up tent cities by the airports. Flights from Chicago are being turned away.”

  Loki purses his lips.

  Amy’s shoulders tremble. “People can’t go back to the city. Trolls are everywhere...I checked my email in the lobby...”

  Loki feels his pulse quicken. “Did you call or email ADUO to check-in, Amy?” he says carefully, feeling the beginnings of anger and a headache start to flare.

  “Maybe you should kill her after all,” Cera whispers, unseen and unheard by the girl.

  “No, they could trace that,” says Amy, her brow furrowing.

  Loki relaxes.

  Cooing happily, Cera says, “Oh, you’re right about her! She is a suitable receptacle for genetic material. I really shouldn’t begrudge you that...I wouldn’t want to be your genetic material receptacle.”

  Amy’s gaze stays trained on Loki. “Loki, gates keep opening—trolls, a wyrm, and weird things called manticores are slipping through.”

  Loki tilts his head.

  Her voice drops to a whisper. “Jameson is saying you’re responsible.”

  Loki sneers. “I have nothing to do with it!”

  Amy waves a hand in the air. “Well, obviously!”