Prophet: Bridge & Sword

by JC Andrijeski

  THE NEXT TIME Loki woke, he had a better sense of who he was.

  The thudding of the blades had stopped.

  He still felt as though he were moving, as if the ground shifted somewhere distantly beneath his back, head and legs, but the feeling lulled him now, rather than disturbed him. He stared up at a ceiling decorated in rust stains moving out from metal brackets over white-painted panels.

  After a few moments of fighting to focus his eyes, feeling his nausea return in increasing waves, he could smell brine, hear the distant cry of gulls.

  Of course, his mind might have invented the latter part.

  He’d been dreaming of that golden ocean, so it made sense his mind might put him back there. The image came close enough to the conscious areas of his mind that the transition felt seamless, despite the dullness of the light here, and the ordinariness of the white-painted ceiling in comparison to what he’d witnessed on those golden shores.

  He remembered black birds. Green and black, with iridescent wings.

  Cormorants, they were called.

  “What, no pelicans?” a familiar voice said.

  Loki turned his head, squinting into an instantly brighter light. It struck him that maybe he’d spoken aloud, that he’d been caught by the human soldiers who’d shot him… then the light’s brightness began to roll backwards to a more manageable glow.

  “Your prince is awake,” the same voice said ruefully. “Damned lucky, too. We would’ve tried adrenaline next. He wouldn’t have thanked us for that.”

  The voice wasn’t speaking to him that time, but to someone else.

  Loki fought to clear his throat. He even moved, he imagined, somewhere in the less aware part of his mind, but a strong, cool hand found his forehead, pressing him back to the bed.

  “Don’t get any ideas, brother,” the voice said.

  Loki did know the voice. Further, he could feel the relief in the other seer’s light, the affection she aimed at him when she spoke to him next.

  “She’s been waiting for you,” Mika said, switching to Prexci. Her voice grew teasing, even as she eased his head back to the pillow. “The crazy worm won’t leave, brother.”

  That time, Loki’s eyes met Mika’s dark blue ones. He found himself staring at the white-gold rim of those nearly black irises, noticing them clearly for the first time.

  Somewhere in midst of his lingering stare, he felt anger.

  The anger didn’t come from him.

  It took him a second more to realize it didn’t come from Mika, either. It came from somewhere else in the room.

  Following the scent of that light, he altered course slightly to align with Mika’s stare, which shifted back in the same direction. He focused past Mika’s strong, Asian features until he found the far end of the rectangular cabin.

  A low bench stood there, made of well-worn wood missing most of its paint. Loki tried to raise his head a second time when he saw the face that stood in his new line of sight.

  His eyes met another pair of eyes, also dark.

  Brown with flecks of green and gold, so perhaps hazel, technically. Lost in the subtleties of light and dark, he couldn’t decide on a precise color, not well enough to name it.

  The face that wore those eyes took the breath from his lungs, in part because he could feel her light now, too––or, more accurately, he could connect the familiarity of that light to her face, to who she was, to the body she wore. A more visceral reaction hit him in the same set of seconds, even as that nausea he’d been feeling abruptly worsened.

  For the first time, he also connected that nausea to something outside of himself.

  Above him, Mika laughed.

  Loki barely heard it.

  He remembered dreams featuring this woman’s face, those same green and gold flecked eyes that were human but not. He wondered now if those dreams had been real, as well.

  Why was she here? Why did she sit there, looking at him? Why did she frown at the hands Mika rested on his shoulder and forehead?

  Trying to sit up again, Loki let out a low groan.

  That time, the human woman regained her feet, pausing almost in a fighter’s crouch on the other side of Mika. Loki could feel her wanting to speak. He could also feel her confusion. She wondered why she was there, too.

  She wondered, but a larger part of her refused to leave. It felt as if she’d been having this same argument with herself for some time now.

  “She won’t leave,” Mika repeated in Prexci, lowering her mouth to his ear.

  The female seer massaged his shoulder sensually with one hand, and Loki felt another stab of pain from the human woman, enough to make him writhe under Mika’s fingers. He missed some of what the seer said to him, picking up only the tail end of her words.

  “…her to leave?” she finished.

  “What?” Loki said, still staring at the human woman past Mika’s arm.

  Mika clicked at him, but the sound was light, gently teasing.

  “I said, you need to stay awake,” Mika said in Prexci, her voice holding more amusement than patience. “If she can keep you awake… if you can make her understand this… I’ll leave the two of you alone.”

  When Loki glanced up, frowning faintly at her, Mika grinned back, once more exuding relief. She massaged his chest, and Loki closed his eyes, fighting back a stronger response when he felt another flush of irritation from the watching human.

  When he opened his eyes, Mika winked at him, glancing at the human.

  She’d obviously felt the woman’s irritation, too.

  “I admit, it’s a bit of a turn-on, being around the two of you,” Mika mused, still watching his eyes. “But as I don’t have a boyfriend at the moment, it’s kind of annoying, too, brother.”

  “Stop it,” Loki said, also speaking Prexci. “You’re angering her.”

  “Oh, I know I am, brother. You should have seen her earlier, when I was washing off your leg. I really thought she might attack me.”

  Loki jerked his eyes off the human a second time, looking up at Mika. More than anything, he still felt confused. His body and light had scattered in those few seconds, and his nausea grew almost unbearable as he stared up at the Asian seer’s face.

  Clicking at him bemusedly, Mika switched to English.

  “Okay,” the seer said, sighing. “I’m probably verging on mean now.”

  She glanced at the woman who stood next to the bench, then back at Loki.

  “Listen up, brother.” She looked again at the woman, still speaking in her accented and precise English, only louder now. “You too, cousin.”

  Her eyes swiveled back to Loki’s.

  “Your shoulder wound, brother––it is mostly superficial. A clean shot, not even any shrapnel. It might hurt some, but do not worry so much about this one. It’s been cleaned thoroughly, stitched and bandaged.”

  Mika gave the woman a warning look, before aiming the same at Loki.

  “…Your leg is more serious, brother. Illeg says it’s not broken to feel, but our hand-holds got hit in the field, so we can’t confirm that for certain. There may be a fracture there, something Illeg and Holo didn’t catch. So whatever you do, do not put any pressure on this thing until we can look at it on the carrier, with proper machines. All right?”

  Reaching out with a hand, Mika pressed on his forehead again, pushing him back to the pillow. She’d done it to stop him raising his head, which Loki barely noticed himself doing.

  When he obeyed her, she rubbed his chest again, feeding him light through her fingers, and again, Loki felt the human woman’s irritation.

  “You got hit pretty hard in the head, brother,” Mika said, still in English for the human’s benefit. Her voice grew a little sharper, and a little louder. “Definitely a concussion. We don’t know how serious. Jax’s pack got shot while you and Rex were bringing him in. Those stinking armor-piercing bullets managed to raze off part of his rifle, and it hit you in the back of the head, my brother. Pretty damned hard, we think.
It knocked you out, and the others tell me that’s no small feat with your thick skull.”

  Loki grunted.

  He didn’t know if something showed on his face, but Mika sighed, giving him a few reassuring clicks and purrs as her fingers fed him more light.

  “Still. It is likely nothing serious, brother,” she assured him. “We do not think so. No head injury can be treated as safe until we get it checked out, however… and like I told you, no hand-helds survived our last run across the White House lawn. We’ve got your leg splinted, cleaned and stitched up. Your head is bandaged in back, and we gave you a few shots, which is probably the only reason you’re not whining like a baby right now…”

  Loki frowned at that, and Mika laughed.

  “A reaction! Finally.”

  She rose smoothly to her feet, then indicated towards something next to her, a little lower than where Loki’s head rested on the pillow.

  Loki guessed it was a table.

  “See if you can get him to eat something,” Mika said, addressing the woman next. “At least make him drink some of this water. All of it, if you can.”

  The human looked nervous, maybe at the idea of being left alone with him. She only nodded though, her dark, sharp eyes glancing at whatever Mika waved a hand towards.

  “Okay.” Mika gave a single nod of her head, seer-fashion, then gestured a sign of respect and affection to Loki. “I’ll be back in an hour, brother. Longer if I hear anything obscene going on in here.”

  She gave him another wink and a grin. As she walked away from the bed, Mika shook a finger teasingly at the woman, too.

  “Don’t hurt him, cousin!” she scolded. “Not too much funny business, okay?”

  “Okay,” the woman said.

  Loki felt a faint tremor in his light from hearing her voice.

  It sounded husky and low in the dead air of the room, and he realized she’d remained on her feet, hovering over the bench but looking like she’d rather be hovering over him. He watched as she shoved her ring-clad hands into the front pockets of her form-fitting jeans, shifting her weight between slim hips.

  She didn’t look at him, despite blushing from his stare. Instead, she continued to watch Mika as the smaller, shorter female fussed over the table for a moment, then walked out the room.

  The human avoided looking at him, Loki noticed, until a few seconds after he heard the door click shut behind Mika’s retreating footsteps.

  When she did finally turn, Loki could only stare. Her dark eyes looked liquid to him now. The pain in his gut and chest grew unbearable.

  He wanted her to come nearer.

  Gods, he wanted it so badly.

  He could feel a faint throbbing in his shoulder, distant still, but moving closer to the requisite nerve endings. He felt other things, too––a sharper pain in his leg, a duller, throbbing, more debilitating pain from the back of his head. He tried to focus on these things, to distract himself, but he could tell they’d pumped drugs into his system, like Mika said, enough that his inhibitions were lowered past where they should be.

  Or maybe that was just another excuse.

  “Come here,” he said in English. “Please, cousin.”

  She jerked as if she’d been stung.

  He didn’t know if her reaction came from him breaking the silence, or from what he’d said. He felt her surprise at the sound of his voice, too.

  She liked his accent. She thought it was sexy.

  His pain worsened. He closed his eyes, shifting his head so that his gaze aimed at the ceiling instead of at her. He thought maybe it would help if he stopped looking at her. He could still feel her light, but maybe it would help if he didn’t keep looking at her body, watching the way she moved her hands and arms, the micro-expressions on her face. Maybe he would fall back asleep. Maybe he would go back to dreaming of her by that golden ocean.

  But didn’t Mika just tell both of them he couldn’t sleep?

  The next time, it was the woman who spoke.

  “What is your name?” she said.

  He flinched, opening his eyes, then regretted it when his head started to throb harder in the background. Despite what he’d just been telling himself, he turned his head.

  She’d moved closer to him, and now stood almost directly over where he lay.

  He looked more or less up now to see her, instead of to the side.

  He could feel her thinking that he couldn’t fall asleep, either.

  She felt nervous, conscious that she had to keep him awake. He felt the bare edge of panic in her light at the thought, a worry that touched him when he realized it was for him. She was afraid she would fuck up and he would die on her watch. She was terrified of that happening, actually. He wanted to reach a hand out to reassure her, but he didn’t.

  “It’s Loki, isn’t it?” she said, her voice slightly louder.

  He felt her thinking that maybe she needed to call one of the seers back in here after all, to help keep him awake. He felt her thinking that his eyes looked unfocused, that his color looked better, but that he really looked pretty out of it.

  He heard her thinking that she really wanted to touch him.

  What the hell is wrong with me? she thought. Why am I acting like this?

  “I’m sorry,” he said. His voice came out thick, almost gruff.

  He fought to clear his throat, then reached for her, for her fingers, in spite of himself. He clasped them nervously, still watching her face. She didn’t move away from him though, and he felt her fingers squeeze his back as she took another step closer to his bed.

  “Sorry?” She quirked an eyebrow at him. “What for?”

  He didn’t know how to answer that.

  When her cheeks turned pinkish, his tongue thickened in his mouth. He slid his fingers deeper into hers, reaching his hand out farther, not letting himself think about whether that was a good idea, or what might happen next. She moved closer a second time when he did it, clasping his hand with both of hers.

  Once she had, she seemed at a loss, as if unsure what to do.

  Is he doing this to me? he felt her wonder.

  “No, cousin,” he told her, unthinking.

  She started, blinking in surprise as she stared down at him. He watched her eyes widen as she thought over the ramifications of what he’d just said.

  He just read my mind. He just read my fucking mind! He must have. What the hell am I doing? He’s obviously one of them. Isn’t this what they do? Bewitch people?

  He felt her struggle to make her thoughts harder, more cynical, and felt his pain worsen when she didn’t quite succeed. She didn’t want to believe she couldn’t trust him. She didn’t want to believe he would harm her. More than anything, she didn’t want to believe that how she felt was just some form of seer manipulation. He felt her try to force herself to believe it, that this was an illusion, but she couldn’t quite do it.

  His pain worsened as he felt the conflict on her, as her fingers tightened around his.

  Her mind grew almost panicked.

  What does he want from me? A shiver of fear coursed through her light. Is this because he saw me as a whore? Because he saw me in that place?

  He shook his head, adamant.

  “No,” he said. “No, cousin. Do not think such a thing. Please.”

  When she looked down, her cheeks and neck darkening with blush, he closed his eyes, fighting to control his light. She seemed to have accepted that he could read her mind, which turned him on, too, maybe because she still didn’t feel overly afraid of him.

  When he continued to watch her, her jaw hardened, her dark eyes growing defiant.

  “Because I’m not like that,” she told him. She gripped his fingers more tightly in hers. “I’m not like that. You know that, right? I was just trying to survive. For Dani. And for me.”

  “I know,” he assured her, gripping both of her hands with the one of his. “Cousin, do not concern yourself with this.”

  “I know how it looked––” she beg
an, but Loki shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “You do not. Not to me.” Making a seer’s shrug with one hand, he added, “You will find there is little judgment on such things from seers. I am not unusual in this. We never assume one would do this thing, given a better choice. It is not a matter of morality for us. It is survival, nothing more.”

  His words seemed to stump her. He saw intelligence spark in her eyes, though. He could feel she’d understood him the way he intended.

  While she thought about his words, Loki’s eyes took in the rough cut of her black hair, realizing he recognized the basic style.

  “What?” she said. “What are you looking at?”

  “Your hair,” he told her truthfully. He continued to look at it, noting how different it looked on her face, how it framed her cheekbones. “I think your daughter must have cut hers to resemble yours because she missed you greatly.”

  At the pain that came to her eyes, he cleared his throat. When the silence stretched, he looked at the table by the bed. He didn’t release her fingers, but nodded towards the container of water he could see there.

  “I’m thirsty, cousin,” he said. “Would you mind––”

  “No.”

  He felt her startle as she spoke, as if pulled from a deeper set of thoughts.

  He fought to keep his light away from hers, to give her some privacy, but wasn’t succeeding very well. Even so, he only really saw images of her daughter’s face. He felt the love that burned there, for her human daughter, and that touched him, too.

  “…No, of course not,” she added, a little belatedly. Her cheeks warmed, and that time, he felt himself getting hard. “Sorry.”

  She released his hand.

  Finding his fingers clutching cold air, he regretted having spoken, at least until he’d had longer to touch her.

  He only lay there though, watching as she leaned over to the table, grabbing the container of water and arranging the straw with her small fingers before she brought it closer to him. She sat on the mattress, setting the container on the pillow near his chest, angling the straw so it would meet his lips. He found himself trying to sit up once more, but her hand found his shoulder firmly, as Mika’s had done earlier.

  “No,” she said, her voice as firm as her fingers. “Stay where you are.”