Sword of Secrets

by S. M. Schmitz

  I snorted. “Didn’t they tell you? I’m good at that.”

  I pulled Hunter farther away from the stairwell door.

  “How are you going to get home?” he asked me.

  I offered a sardonic half-smile. “By going to the police and telling them the truth.”

  But the Thor impersonator shook his head at me. “They won’t find any of us and then what? You’ll be a couple of Americans on foreign soil without passports or any identification. None of us are going to hurt you or your friend, Gavyn. If you’d just give us a chance to explain—”

  But they’d had plenty of time; Hunter and I were going home. I glanced over the guy’s shoulder and grinned, shaking my head. “Not even Odin himself will get me to stay.” And the guy actually fell for it and looked behind him.

  I grabbed Hunter and ran out of the building, and the security guard followed me but I didn’t slow down for him. Let him call the cops, I thought. I needed more help than one bank security guard anyway. Hunter was struggling to keep up with me, and I couldn’t help thinking he must be a little drunk still because Hunter wasn’t in bad shape. I mean, neither of us typically ran willingly, but we played racquetball at the gym. And that required some running.

  After a few blocks, Hunter was struggling to keep up and he finally stopped and sank back against a building. He waved at me like he expected me to keep going without him. He could be such a dumbass.

  Sirens wailed closer and as I looked down the street, I saw the tall auburn head of the guy I was still assuming was pretending to be Thor and Keira’s gorgeous blond figure right behind him. Several police vehicles pulled up next to us on the sidewalk and Thor and Keira’s eyes widened and he shook his head at me, but I just grinned back at him and held up my hands.

  And that’s how Hunter and I ended up getting arrested in Reykjavik, Iceland.

  As we sat in the police station after almost two hours of being questioned, Hunter finally looked at me suspiciously and whispered, “How the hell did you do that?”

  I looked at him just as suspiciously. “What? Flirting with the cute cop? Wasn’t that hard, really. She’s kinda hot and has that whole badass-in-a-uniform thing going for her.”

  Hunter rolled his eyes at me, although he’d been flirting with her, too. I just hoped hitting on the police officer that was supposed to be interrogating us wasn’t a crime in Iceland, because they’d checked the missing persons’ reports from Baton Rouge and turned out, we weren’t actually missing yet. I was really starting to regret some of the wild weekends Hunter and I had spent—our families had most likely assumed we’d just taken off again for a few days. We’d done that once or twice. Or sixteen times. But both of our cars were at my apartment complex, and I couldn’t understand how no one had thought that was strange. Hunter felt obligated to remind me it wouldn’t have been the first time we took off with someone else, and I felt obligated to flip him off.

  “You know what I meant, Gavyn. How the hell did you actually knock that guy out and, dude, I’ve known you for fifteen years. I’ve never seen you run like that.”

  “Knock what guy out?” I asked stupidly. Because for the first time, I actually felt stupid and wasn’t just pretending.

  Hunter looked like he wanted to knock me out right about now. “Tyr. Who else would I be talking about?”

  I vaguely remembered hitting Tyr, but I definitely hadn’t knocked him out. So I reminded Hunter that now was not a good time to exaggerate my fighting prowess, although when the hot cop came back, he could throw that part in.

  Hunter mumbled something about them being right: I was a huge pain in the ass. “Gavyn, he was out cold. How do you think we got out of that room?”

  I blinked at him and most definitely felt like I’d become the village idiot. “I don’t really remember,” I admitted.

  Hunter took a deep breath and kept eyeing me suspiciously. “You don’t think—” but he was interrupted when the door opened and the pretty brunette came back into the room. She pressed her lips together to keep herself from smiling at us.

  “As entertaining as your story is, your friends have shown up with your passports and identification. We aren’t going to press charges but it is a crime to run from law enforcement. This was not a joke,” she warned us.

  I groaned and put my head in my hands. “They’re not our friends,” I reiterated. “They abducted us and we don’t even want to be here! Can’t you get those passports and escort us to the airport?”

  I’m not exactly sure how she responded, but I think the words “Americans” and “pain in the ass” were in there.

  We were led into the lobby of the police station where Keira and Thor were waiting. I pulled stubbornly at the belt on my coat and refused to move any farther. There was a third person with them, another man, but I couldn’t even guess who he was supposed to be. I tightened the belt on my coat again and looked among them, but unless they carried me out of here, I wasn’t going with them. “Who are you supposed to be?” I finally asked the newcomer. I remembered seeing him in the conference room and the lobby.

  “Ull,” the man told me, but the name didn’t sound familiar. I shrugged and told him he must not be terribly important. I’d just read their whole book and I didn’t even remember him in it. He just shrugged back at me.

  “And the story of your ancestors is lost forever, like so many others. But that hardly means they didn’t exist,” he said.

  “I’ve never been interested in genealogy. Give me our fake passports. Hunter and I are going home.” I held my hand out toward Keira because she was the one holding onto a packet that I assumed our fake documents were in.

  “Gavyn,” she pleaded, “we need to talk to you. In private. I mean, Hunter can be there, but not here. What you saw on the news is only a small part of what’s coming, and people are going to die. If you can help stop that, don’t you want to?”

  Honestly? I really wanted a drink. I said nothing instead.

  Thor stepped closer to me and kept his voice low so the clerks working at the desks near us wouldn’t overhear. “I’ve never seen anyone knock Tyr out before. I mean, I probably could, but I’ve never wanted to hit my friend. When we went to the Seer to find the descendants of our heroes, we were told you would be the greatest of them, but the most difficult to bring home. She wasn’t kidding.”

  I exhaled irritably because I was so tired of listening to their bullshit, but Hunter—the guy who’d been my best friend since I was a loner thirteen-year-old kid who’d just lost his mother to a long and vicious battle with cancer—had apparently decided to drink the Kool-Aid. “If you have prophets, then why can’t they tell you how Gavyn’s connected to all of you?”

  “Hunter, don’t encourage them,” I groaned.

  But Hunter shook his head at me. “You just laid out a guy twice your size and you flew down those stairs so quickly, I lost sight of you after one story. Maybe you should stop being such a stubborn asshole and listen to what they have to say.”

  “Maybe you should keep your mouth shut because it doesn’t concern you,” I snapped.

  But Thor answered Hunter anyway, which didn’t surprise me, because really, no one had paid any attention to what I wanted since two strange women showed up at my apartment and made me miss the entire LSU game against Ole Miss. “We don’t know. Gavyn is the only one the Seer was unable to trace to anyone specific, but she was certain he’s one of us. And she was certain he is connected to someone powerful. But it’s possible there’s some sort of curse—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I muttered. “I will get in your damn car and go with you if you just shut up.”

  Thor studied me for a few seconds but nodded and offered Hunter an apologetic smile. “Guess the rest will have to wait until he’s decided to be less of a pain in the ass.”

  “That’s going to be a long wait,” I mumbled as I headed toward the doors. As I passed Thor, I looked him over and asked him how long I could expect him to hang around.

&nb
sp; He held the door open for me and grinned. “Only reason you still have to deal with me is because you knocked Tyr out.”

  I shivered as I stepped into the cold autumn air and pulled my coat around me. “Great,” I complained, “guess I can look forward to him kicking my ass now?”

  “Are you kidding?” Thor asked. “Nobody’s ever knocked him out before. He’s awfully impressed.”

  Hunter was giving me that suspicious look again like he was totally buying into all of this so I pushed him away from me and told him he’d better hope our newest captor was willing to protect him. Maybe Ull was one of the Celtic god-wannabes and that’s why I’d never heard of him. After all, they’d only forced me to read about Norse myths.

  Ultimately, my brilliant and courageous escape had lasted all of two hours.

  Keira drove us back to the same building Hunter and I had just fled from and right back into the same conference room where everyone was still sitting around, only this time, they’d swapped out the coffee for sodas and bottles of water and the basket of rolls had been replaced by trays of sandwiches. I noticed Tyr sitting at the table inhaling one of those sandwiches and tried not to meet his eyes, but that bastard didn’t even give me a chance to ignore him. He immediately stood up and called for me to come sit next to him. Because after knocking a guy out, that’s exactly what I wanted to do. Sit by him and share a few laughs over a roast beef sandwich.

  Keira pushed me toward him anyway and I reluctantly pulled the chair away from the table, watching Tyr the entire time to see if this was some sort of trick and I was really about to get my skull crushed after all. Tyr smiled at me and pulled the sandwich tray over so I could find one I wanted. “That was a hell of a punch,” he said, like we were talking about a boxing match, not me hitting him.

  I grabbed the sandwich with the most identifiable components. Hunter wasn’t as picky. It probably had lutefisk on it.

  “Um, thanks?” I responded.

  “I can’t wait until we start training. See what you can really do.”

  I dropped my sandwich on the table. “Wait, what?”

  Hunter leaned over and helpfully repeated, “Training. He wants to see what you’re capable of.”

  I flipped him off.

  Keira pulled a chair between Hunter and me so we couldn’t break into yet another fight and disrupt the weirdest cosplay conference I’d ever heard of. “You’ll have to train, Gavyn. Have you ever even used any weapons before?” she asked me.

  “I once stabbed Greg Hebert in the leg with a pencil when he wouldn’t stop kicking my desk in high school. Does that count?” I leaned back in my chair to get Hunter’s attention. “Remember that? Got suspended for that shit, too. Totally unfair.”

  Hunter nodded in commiseration. “He was a punk. He’d had it coming for a long time.”

  “Probably wasn’t your best idea to skip school while I was suspended though.”

  Hunter shrugged. “Getting grounded for a week was worth it. I finally got to third base with Lindsey Talbot.”

  Keira groaned and buried her face in her arms on the table. Apparently, we were still exceptionally good at playing village idiots.

  Tyr leaned forward so he could see both Hunter and me and said, “I’ve never really understood this bases thing.”

  Keira’s head popped back up. “Tyr, I will knock you out if you keep encouraging them.”

  He raised an eyebrow at her with a look on his face that suggested he’d kinda like to see her try, but he didn’t ask again and we didn’t get a chance to explain because some other guy who I’m pretty sure was pretending to be some god no one had ever heard of stood up and got everyone’s attention. Except not everyone here spoke English apparently, because he had to give the same introduction several times before he got to the one language I could speak and understand.

  “My name is Frey and we are honored that our heroes have returned to help us—”

  I snorted and Keira kicked me under the table.

  “Ow! What the hell, woman? You should know upfront I’m not into masochism, and I’m really starting to think this isn’t going to work out between us.” I leaned down and rubbed my ankle and Frey watched me, his mouth hanging open then his eyes darted between Keira and Tyr.

  “I don’t suppose either of you know a spell for keeping someone silent for a while?” he asked.

  This time, Keira snorted. “If we did, don’t you think we would’ve used it by now?”

  And I was a total gentleman and didn’t kick her back, although I thought about it. Of course, Hunter just couldn’t keep his mouth shut, and offered, “You should get Agnes over here. I’ll bet she knows a spell for keeping people quiet.”

  “Regretting coming back for us yet?” I asked Keira.

  “Who’s Agnes and how can we get her to cast that spell?” Frey asked.

  “They’ve renamed us rather than even trying to learn our names,” Keira explained. “Agnes is Badb.”

  “Oh, we should definitely get Badb over here then,” Frey said.

  “Agnes,” I corrected.

  “Please shut up,” Keira begged.

  “Do I really need to point out you had all the silence you could want when Hunter and I were gone?”

  “Just ignore him,” Keira suggested to Frey.

  “How?” he asked. “He never stops.”

  “That sounds like an excellent motto for the bedroom,” I said.

  Keira sighed and glared at Frey until he reluctantly resumed his speech. But I think I’d managed to throw him off his game. Maybe my mother had been right all along. I had tremendous capacity for annoying the hell out of people. I wondered if there were a Nobel prize for that.

  Frey picked up a small remote and turned on the television behind him. “The Sumerians sent us this message,” he began, but I just couldn’t seem to stop myself.

  “Whoa, so a bunch of gods sent another bunch of gods a super-secret message through the television? Is it a live stream or do you have it on DVR or something?”

  Tyr used his good hand to cover his mouth so no one could see him smiling. Keira covered her face again and Thor just looked relieved I was no longer his problem.

  “Gavyn,” Frey responded, “I will give you a thousand dollars if you keep your mouth shut for the rest of this meeting.”

  And, really, I should have kept my mouth shut and taken the money, considering I was using my incredibly useful mass comm degree to wait tables at Copeland’s, but my mouth kept going anyway. “I’m in a room full of gods and the most you can offer me is a thousand bucks?”

  Hunter raised his hand like he was back in that high school classroom with Greg Hebert begging to be stabbed in the leg with a pencil. “If I keep my mouth shut, will I get a thousand dollars?”

  I leaned around Keira again to look at my best friend. “He didn’t call on you.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” Hunter raised his hand again and left it in the air with the rest of the room staring at us like we were the dumbest men on the entire planet. Except for Keira. She still had her face hidden and was probably wishing she’d left us both in Baton Rouge. And I felt more than a little vindicated that I’d finally made her feel that way.

  Hunter’s arm must’ve gotten tired because he propped his elbow in his other hand to keep it in the air since Frey still hadn’t called on him. Frey’s green-blue eyes kept swimming between us, and the other people in the room shifted in their seats as they waited for something to happen. Frey gave up. “What am I supposed to do?” he asked Hunter.

  “Give him permission to speak,” I answered.

  “You… may speak?”

  Hunter let his hand fall and exhaled heavily. “Dude,” he said to me, “he’s worse than Mr. Higginbottham.”

  I nodded in agreement. That old bastard never called on us. Granted, it may have had something to do with the fact that our science questions were never really science questions but were more attempts to get him to name some animal’s genitalia, but still.

&n
bsp; To Frey, Hunter repeated his question and Frey assured him if he never had to hear him speak again, he would gladly hand over a thousand dollars. “You never answered my question though,” I protested. “I think my silence is worth way more than a thousand bucks.”

  The entire room suddenly agreed with me, and I wasn’t sure if I should be grateful or not. Frey glanced at Tyr and told him, “Go get Agnes.”

  I cringed at the thought of Agnes trying to conduct any kind of spell on me. “Never mind. I’m good with a thousand.”

  Frey watched me for a few moments, perhaps trying to decide if I was serious or just going to interrupt him again, but it really depended on how much material he gave me. I mean, if he just laid it all out there, how was I supposed to stay quiet? That just seemed like cruel and unusual punishment.

  Frey pushed the play button on the remote again and the screen unfroze. “As I was saying…” He looked over his shoulder at me to see if I had something to add, but part of me wanted that thousand dollars, and I’d already made my feelings about gods communicating via recorded messages clear. Besides, Tyr’s face was still bright red and it had nothing to do with me hitting him or sharing Keira’s humiliation. I had to admire that guy’s ability to keep a straight face.

  When Frey seemed satisfied I had nothing else to contribute at the moment, he continued his speech. I guess Frey had decided to forego translating everything himself because he stuck to English now. I noticed several of the supposed gods or Valkyries or whatever the hell these other people were pretending to be leaning over to whisper in their captives’ ears—except Hunter and I seemed to be the only ones here who weren’t happy about it. “The Sumerians have been locating their own heroes for some time, and it’s clear they’re targeting us.”

  My hand rose in the air before I could even articulate the question in my mind. Keira reached over to me and tried to pull it back down to the table, but for once, she wasn’t stronger than me. I felt more than a little vindicated about that, too. I wondered if I’d magically been given my balls back.