Poisoned Pearls

by Leah Cutter

  But that meant going out into the back alley. I just couldn’t make myself go out into an alley one more time that night. I’d found a second body. I couldn’t risk accidentally finding another one.

  Calling myself all kinds of fool, I grabbed a large, black plastic garbage bag and emptied the ashtrays into it, as well as the rest of the garbage. There was never that much, certainly never enough to fill the big black bag. However, they’d been on sale, cheaper than the smaller ones, and I’d figured what the hell.

  I set the bag next to the door, intending to take it out in the morning, on my way to the grocery store. I didn’t have to work until the later shift, and I might as well take care of everything before the weekend.

  The steaming hot shower helped me feel more human again. When I heard someone walking in the hallway as I was having my last cigarette, I tensed up—my stomach was still bruised from where Csaba and Dusty had left their farewell punches.

  When I noticed, I cursed even more. Fuck this shit. I was tired of being scared or anxious or anything. I looked at the large garbage bag next to the door. I wasn’t about to go get dressed again and take it out. But I vowed not to wait again.

  I was going to live as I always had, before Kyle’s death. It had only been a day or so ago. Nothing had really changed. Had it? Everything felt different. As if my skin was too tight, and I needed to shed it.

  But I liked things the way they were. Change, at least in my life, had rarely been for the better.

  While the store had been dead all night, I’d had the chance to answer all my email. I didn’t have time to organize a memorial for Kyle, but some of our other mutual friends were. They’d asked me to speak at it.

  I hadn’t agreed. I hadn’t said no yet, either.

  It wasn’t as if his parents were going to be doing anything, or inviting us to the funeral if there even was one.

  As I’d suspected, my sleep that night was interrupted with nightmares about Kyle, chasing after me with Angela’s dead tongue sticking out of his mouth. Fortunately, I didn’t remember the rest of it, though I woke with a cold sweat and my hands clenched.

  My stomach hurt even more in the morning, and the skin had turned a very pretty purple and green. If I were the cautious type, I would have told myself to be more careful.

  Instead, I told myself that I didn’t fucking care.

  I needed food and I needed to do laundry. Bunch of places would be closed for Christmas next week, including Chinaman Joe’s. I was pretty stocked up, but I wanted to make sure that I had enough food, booze, and smokes laid in that I didn’t have to leave my place for a week.

  The TV said that the weather wasn’t doing anything but staying clear and cold. No more snow predicted for Christmas, just the continued wisps that we already had.

  I remembered at least a couple of Christmases as a kid when the snowplows had turned up enough snow on the street that it had towered over my head. Building forts out of the packed ice. Horrifying my mother because she was afraid the ice would collapse on us.

  I didn’t understand why Mom’s leaving Minnesota also figured into my nightmares, but it had. I’d turned my back on her so long ago—or she’d turned her back on me. It still made the day feel a little bit colder, knowing that she was really gone.

  I kept the card for her lawyer, however. I wasn’t stupid.

  The light for the hallway going out to the back of the apartment building had been busted for a long while. Still made me skittish going down that dark hallway, checking every which way, making sure that it was just me. The bikes that had been parked there had been removed, at least, so I had room to walk.

  The lock seemed frozen stuck, and I had to turn it more than once to get it to open. At least the door swung in, not out.

  I felt like an idiot poking my head out first, making sure that nothing bad was waiting for me in the alley. All I saw was the concrete wall of the building across from mine, dumpsters, and a touch of snow. The cold bit into me right away. Looking up, I saw the TV had been right, and a patch of cold blue stared down.

  I turned to the left, where my building’s dumpsters were. The combination lock on the garbage was still locked. The building manager had threatened to start fining everyone in the building for leaving the cans open. Seemed that some of our cheaper neighbors liked dumping their shit with ours.

  I swung my black bag into the dumpster, closed and locked it. With a sigh of relief, I turned and started trudging out of the alley.

  Should have known better.

  Not three feet away I saw a pair of legs sticking out from between two of the other dumpsters.

  It had to just be a homeless guy sleeping, right? Though the boots looked way too nice for a bum.

  I didn’t want to see another dead body. I still had to go look, had to go make sure.

  There was Csaba, leaning against the wall, obviously dead, his fat tongue sticking out of his oddly grinning mouth, his normally dark skin looking greenish in the morning light.

  Shit.

  ***

  Ferguson was not happy to see me, not in the least. Neither was Sam.

  The only high point I could claim was that at least I’d found the body in the daylight, and not the night before. And that it was a known drug dealer. The cops would be happy he was off the street for good, right?

  “Someone really has it in for you, don’t they?” Ferguson asked, scowling.

  “I wouldn’t know,” I told him through chattering teeth. The cops who’d first arrived at the scene had recognized me from the previous night and hadn’t let me go inside to get warm.

  “Do you know the deceased?” Sam asked. She looked worn, her makeup not hiding the dark circles under her eyes.

  Were the cops hounding her, too? Trying to get her to tell them things she didn’t know, that she hadn’t seen?

  Not that I cared about her. She’d betrayed me, gone to my mother. Bitch.

  Somehow, that thought didn’t make her less beautiful.

  “He and a couple of his guys came to the store more than once,” I told them honestly. “Chased them out a couple of times for shoplifting.”

  That much I could tell them. That he’d died like all the others just made no sense.

  Unless this john had a thing for junkies as well as whores.

  “Folks are dropping like flies around you,” Ferguson told me as he put his recording pen away.

  “That’s not fair,” I told him. It just wasn’t. As I’d told Hunter, it wasn’t my fault that some sick fuck was killing people.

  “Please, Cassie,” Sam said. “You know you should come with us. Get tested. It’s the smart thing to do.”

  “You’re the one who’s talked with my mother,” I told her, stung. “You know the one thing she’s never accused me of was being smart.”

  She’d actually said more than once that I had more stubbornness than intelligence, a trait I’d inherited from my dad.

  “Then change your pattern for once,” Ferguson said. “Besides, you’ve been involved in all three deaths, so far. I think it’s time you took a trip to the station with us.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  Ferguson looked stymied at that. “No. But you’re a person of interest, officially, now.”

  Sam didn’t seem to like that. She pressed her lips together into a tight line and looked away.

  Not that it mattered.

  “It would look better if you came in voluntarily,” Ferguson added.

  He really didn’t think I’d fall for any kind of nice cop trick, did he?

  I sighed and thought about my options. It was Thursday and half the day was gone already. I really did have errands to run before my shift started.

  “How about this,” I proposed. “I’ll go to a center tomorrow. Early. Get tested. I’m sure you’ll be able to access my test results, correct?”

  “Not without a subpoena,” Ferguson complained.

  I didn’t believe that for a second. However, I was willing to go alo
ng with the illusion that I still had some sort of civil liberties.

  “I’m sure you’ll have some way of knowing if I’m lying or not.”

  Sam grinned at that. “That’s quite possibly true.”

  I didn’t want to think about whatever else she might know about me.

  The cops let me go soon after that. I was frozen, barely able to bend my fingers. I couldn’t feel my toes, my nose, or my cheeks.

  I still decided to just go straight to the grocery store. If I went inside my apartment to get warm, I wouldn’t leave again until it was time to go to work.

  As I passed the end of the alley, a movement caught my eye.

  Hunter was there, moving to the middle of the sidewalk to just stare at me, like some powerful statue.

  “Fuck you,” I told him distinctly as I moved off. I wished I could believe that he was killing these people, but that didn’t seem to be his style. He was far too efficient. He’d just make them…disappear.

  However, I knew what he was thinking. That if I’d been able to see, I might have prevented this latest death as well.

  I didn’t need him to remind me of my guilt. I felt it deeply enough as it was.

  Chapter Nine

  Loki waited like an impatient lover while the human who called himself Gangleri took his ride on Sleipnir, far above the Eyjafjallajökull glacier in Iceland. Sharp black rocks, fresh from the eruption only a few years before, crested the snow. The northern lights danced across the sky, waves of deep green hiding the stars, reflecting off the white below. Only a sliver of a moon hung in the sky. It would disappear on the longest night in a few night’s time.

  Loki had to be ready by then.

  His first step was nearing completion. Loki couldn’t help his joy. He had a plan, and it was working.

  He’d raised shield maidens to match Odin’s. An army that couldn’t be defeated. Paid his debt to the storyteller by giving him a ride on Sleipnir.

  And now, he was about to get a fortune told and to make a new fate for the world.

  Gangleri laughed heartily as he flew through the air. Loki let the human have his joy, not trying to curtail him. He fancied himself a true Norseman: he spoke the old language and tried to live the old ways, without electricity or running water.

  He was crazier than most, but only Loki understood the true cause. Gangleri had a gift rare among humans: he didn’t see only the fate of the single world, but of many worlds, all up and down Yggdrasil, the world tree.

  Not only were all fates for all worlds not the same, they weren’t all equal.

  Some things didn’t change, no matter how many worlds and fates Loki had cast. For example, Baldur always died. This caused Frigg enough grief that the gods bound Loki to the rock—poison constantly dripping on his face, no hope of reprieve, not until the world ended.

  Loki always died as well, during Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods.

  However, in other fates, some of the gods survived.

  Like Odin.

  It would be easy enough for Loki to change bodies with Odin during the last battle. Loki changed shapes easily enough that it wasn’t too difficult to twist that ability into a body-swapping spell, to make another take his place.

  This would ensure that if Odin’s body survived the twilight, Loki, inside Odin’s body, would live to tell the tale.

  Swapping one world’s fate for another—that spell took Loki a lot longer to find.

  Once Loki had found it, he dithered like an un-bloodied man before his first battle, seeking the courage to make the leap.

  To grow tired enough of the poison dripping onto his face. To long for the end, the twilight.

  Particularly now that he had a foolproof way to survive.

  Loki wasn’t bringing about the end of the world. Not really. The twilight was more about rebirth than death. Humans would survive. Gods would survive.

  Loki would survive.

  ***

  The human Gangleri knelt before the rune board, his hand clenching the sides hard. He still sang the last few verses of the fate he foresaw, his poem punctuated with guttural cries. The runes rattled as he shook from the force of Loki’s thrusts from behind him. Above them, the green lights still danced. Sleipnir nosed the snow from a discreet distance away.

  Loki had his prophecy, finally. Gangleri had pulled the story out of the threads from the worlds he saw.

  How Odin was still swallowed by Fenrir, the wolf. However, in this fate, he’d survived in the belly of the wolf, where he wasn’t dead or alive, not fighting his way out until after the world had gone into darkness and been born anew. Odin then walked with his sons, Baldur the fair and Holdur the blind, along the brand-new waters, beside the green fields where the golden playing pieces lay.

  In this new world, Odin was called the skinny one, a reminder of his great battle between the worlds and inside the wolf, his skin hanging down like great folds of cloth. His sons ruled while Odin returned to walking the earth as he always had, a storyteller to the end.

  Loki could live with this fate. Would live with it.

  He just had to plant it firmly in this world now.

  As Gangleri finished the last verse, Loki snaked one hand around to tug on the storyteller’s cock, still hard despite the cold and snow.

  A few brief strokes drew out the human’s orgasm, flinging his precious come on the rune board, the hot liquid spattering the stones.

  As Gangleri finished, Loki reached up and twisted his neck, hard, killing him instantly and sealing the fate he’d told.

  Loki pulled out, shoving the body to the side, then tasted the air.

  The fate was there, dazzlingly close, attached to the edges of this world.

  But those edges were fraying fast. The fate would slip away, soon. He hadn’t succeeded. He could tell. But he hadn’t completely failed yet, either.

  Loki had always known that he might need a second sacrifice. That killing the storyteller might not be enough.

  With a sigh, he realized he’d been right.

  Loki pulled out his knife, marveling at the irony of it all.

  Odin had given his eye in order to see how to prevent Ragnarok, for the gods to bypass the twilight approaching them.

  Loki would give an eye to make sure it happened according to his plan.

  With a deep breath, he reversed the dagger and plunged the blade deep into the socket, twisting it, then jerking it back out again, plucking his own eye out.

  Pain washed over Loki’s face as his blood dripped onto the pure white snow. Loki swiped some of it from his cheek and smeared it over the runes, mixing it together with the now cool come, whispering his spell again, twisting the fate of the world, opening up the door to something new.

  As the new fate settled around Loki, he stood, his legs shaking. Sleipnir approached him slowly, as if Loki was now the wild animal.

  “Take me to the frost giants,” Loki managed to moan, pain wracking his bones. “Take me to my kin.”

  Loki would never admit to blinding himself. He’d tell the frost giants that Odin had half-blinded him this way.

  They’d follow him easily into war now.

  ***

  Hunter woke with that tingling sense of dread.

  Damn it. Something bad was happening. Right now.

  Hunter pushed at his senses, but he could barely expand his area of knowing beyond his mattress.

  He’d like to blame the cold for that, but he knew the truth: he needed more of the Ghost Tripper drugs. He had his money for the month. He’d have to find Csaba.

  The dread pulsed at Hunter again, like a long strobe. Red and urgent. Fighting his blue.

  Hunter took a moment to gather himself together. The cold was frightful tonight. But it wouldn’t break. Not for a long while. Not something his senses had told him. Just common sense, the way the sky continued to pale under the force of the winds. How the world was slowing, more and more, as if it were dying.

  It didn’t take two minutes for Hunter to move
, to flow off his mattress, into his clothes, tie up his boots. Then he paused again. Where was the dread? It wasn’t close. He was going to have to feel his way through the streets, hunt it down, an endless game of Marco Polo, until he stumbled across it.

  Hunter grabbed another scarf and wrapped it firmly around his face. He knew better than to think that it would hide his identity; the cameras were too good at recognizing movement and height as well as faces. It was mostly for warmth.

  And if it hid him a bit, well, that was also good.

  Shadows strung out on knife edges along the block. The buildings gathered themselves together on either side, as if fending off the cold. Few cars drove along the four-lane stretch of street beside him. The stars blinked aloof above his head.

  Hunter went downtown, his worry overtaking his knowing.

  Was it Cassie? Was she in some sort of trouble? That didn’t feel right, but it was all he could focus on. He knew that was wrong. His training had specifically covered this: how to see despite personal involvement. How to push past the emotion, get to the truth.

  Because seeing was knowing and was always truth. Even when it wasn’t.

  Hunter arrived too late for Csaba. He was already dying. Fear touched Hunter’s core. Where would he get his supply of Ghost Tripper now? Dusty didn’t like him much. He’d probably cut the drugs in half and charge him more. However, other dealers only sometimes had it.

  Hunter would have to hunt down a new supplier. And soon.

  Standing over Csaba was a non-man. Tall and blond, with eyes that blended into the night. He wore long robes, plain black and red, the kind Hunter had seen in a movie once.

  The man used a black creature hanging from his neck to take something from Csaba as Csaba died. It wasn’t his soul, though it could be mistaken for that. Hunter had never seen anything like it before, but if he had to guess, he’d imagine it was Csaba’s will to fight, that instinct to carry on, no matter what the odds.