by Leah Cutter
This strange non-man needed Csaba’s will more than his soul.
When the non-man turned toward the end of the alley, Hunter quickly stepped beyond the building, hiding in the shadows, though he knew it was useless. The non-man had seen him. Could find Hunter no matter where Hunter hid.
Still, the non-man passed the end of the alley and didn’t turn to Hunter, didn’t grab him. Merely stated, “I’ll come back for you later.” Then he carried on, his next appointment with destiny already set.
Hunter shuddered. He’d thought, when he’d met Cassie, that he’d met his fate.
How stupid for him to realize that she was just the one who would lead him to it.
Still, where was Cassie? Why hadn’t she stopped the non-man, or at least died trying?
Hunter’s area of knowing expanded in a dizzying explosion. He suddenly knew what was happening, what was going to happen, for everyone in a four-block radius—more than half a mile.
It was a gift from the non-man, granting Hunter his fondest wish—that he could see more. Farther.
The baby was due just a block away. The guy in 2A would lose his job on Friday. Of the three homeless men down the street, one would freeze by the end of the week, too drunk to move.
On and on the images poured in, mundane things, large life events, small twists that would change everything. Hunter reveled in it, head thrown back in an orgasmic rush.
This was what his life could be like. Again. If he just found the right combination of drugs.
When Hunter came back just to himself, the sun had already poked her head above the horizon and the blue sky was set to freeze anyone who dared face it.
The body still lay in the alley. It wouldn’t be long before Cassie found it.
Another fight broke out between the couple just two doors down. A delivery was about to be made. The little boy from three blocks away would guess right and pass on his test and go on for great things, maybe even saving other people’s lives.
The seeing started to drain away. Hunter clawed at it, trying to hold onto it. He held himself riged as his area of knowing decreased. First a few feet disappeared. The buildings were still clear. The sidewalks and those who passed by, no. Then the area shrank again.
Hunter shivered, the cold finally finding him. He’d been far too much in his head, he knew. It was dangerous, particularly in winter.
His blood brother might have come across his body, if he’d gone on for too much longer.
Still, Hunter stayed where he was, willing his blood to pump harder in his chest, to drive away the frost and the cold.
Cassie came out, a blue shadow against the black-and-white world. The cops came soon after that, questioning her.
She was good, though. The cops couldn’t see it. She had an essence they’d never grasp, not even the other one with abilities. They wanted to use her.
Hunter just wanted Cassie to come into her abilities and use them for herself.
When Cassie came out of the end of the alley, he approached her. She should have seen what was coming. Should have joined him in the ecstasy of sight. Should have stopped the non-man from taking Csaba’s will, his fighting spirit.
Cassie denied her heritage again. She refused to see.
Hunter melted away, cycling back through the city, his area of knowing dropping down further. He still traveled in the center of that circle, flowing down the sidewalk with an ease and a grace that few possessed. Cheery music blared out from the stores, mechanical and without soul, nothing to dance to.
Come the new moon, he and his blood brother would dance to the beat of his heart, music that strengthened the soul.
But she had to see before then.
So Hunter turned and turned again, flowing farther south, going to a particular coffee shop.
Though the sign was pale green and blue and black, Hunter still saw it in shades of gray. It lacked life on its own. Inside was fake wood and false cheer, particularly from the music they played.
Hunter might not stop a bomb from going off in here. Maybe he’d warn the people away, but that would be it.
Josh worked behind the counter with three others, all in soul-stealing uniforms of beige and brown. He smoothly stepped in front of all of them, though, to talk with Hunter directly. “What can I get started for you today?” he asked with a smile that belonged on a banker.
“I need more,” Hunter said bluntly. “Aerosol form, if you can.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Josh said slowly, his eyes wide with fear of being found out.
“The drugs have worn off. So has the gift from the non-man. I need more. For me. And my blood brother.”
“Oh, okay,” Josh said, giving a weak laugh. “Yes, the drugs. We all know about that.” He turned and ordered two drinks, using fancy terms Hunter had never bothered to learn.
“Can you cover me?” Josh asked one of the other employees before he took the drinks and walked out from behind the bar, leading Hunter to a back table.
“You’re not supposed to contact me here,” Josh said, whispering urgently over the table at Hunter.
Hunter took a sip of his drink at the too-small table. The chairs were solid, but uncomfortable. They’d be good in a fight, though. The drink was good. Sweet. Full of energy. Hunter would have to burn it all off before he slept through the rest of the afternoon.
No one watched them, but Hunter knew that the corporations had eyes everywhere.
“I need more of the Ghost Tripper,” Hunter explained. “Csaba is dead. Like the hookers.” He didn’t bother to explain the non-man. None of the doctors had ever been able to figure out exactly what it was that Hunter saw, the worlds and all the fates.
“I can’t get you drugs,” Josh insisted.
Hunter just stared at him. “I know you’re not working for the government,” he replied. “But you aren’t who you say you are.”
“Now you’re talking crazy talk,” Josh said, trying to defuse the situation.
“You’re a company scout,” Hunter said. “You’re trying to find wilds. Or wilds who could be nudged with just the right amount of chemicals. To prove that your drugs work.”
Josh just shook his head. “Not me.”
“Cassie is the best chance you have of proving that your drugs work,” Hunter insisted. “She’s been tested. Came up negative. But the test was wrong. She’s got abilities. And the only way to unlock them is through your drugs.”
“You have me confused with someone else,” Josh said, still shaking his head.
“There will never be another,” Hunter promised Josh, well aware that he could be lying. “She’s the one true blood brother I have. She’ll see not just this world, but all the others. And because she’ll have me, she’ll be able to handle it.”
Josh gave Hunter a piercing look. “Because you’ll be able to explain it,” he said slowly.
“Yes. She won’t be alone.” Of course, once she started seeing, she’d never be alone because of the ghosts, but Josh didn’t need to know that. “So I need more Ghost Tripper. In aerosol form, if you can get it.”
“What do you mean, aerosol form?” Josh asked, looking confused.
He was good at that, that practiced look, hiding his too-sharp eyes.
“It will be easier for Cassie’s first time if she can just inhale the Ghost Tripper,” Hunter explained. He kept his hands wrapped around the warm drink, willing the blood to move through them, to warm the rest of him as well.
“Won’t that be Cassie’s choice?” Josh asked. “She needs to make a choice, here.”
Hunter wasn’t certain which laws Josh was willing to bend. He supposed that testing and training—which while strongly encouraged by the government had never been required in the US—was one of them.
“It will be her choice,” Hunter lied easily.
Josh hesitated, then finally nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Hunter kept the smile from his face. He’d been right. Josh was a corporate spy, sent
out to recruit wilds to take the company-supplied drugs without their explicit approval. It was illegal to experiment on humans anymore.
And besides. It didn’t matter, really, if Cassie chose to take the drugs or not.
Fate had been set.
Soon she would see.
***
Odin strode through his dark hall. He would not light the fire in the center tonight. The torches along the edges sufficed, casting long shadows to match the grimness in the Val-Father’s heart.
The snakes carved into the wide pillars wound around each other, swallowing tail and head, restlessly shifting. The scent of the cooking fires carried in on the wind curled around Odin’s head, tugging at him, inviting him to join the feasting in the other hall.
For him, there would be no feasting tonight.
Odin strode to Hlidskjalf, his chair of judgment, carved out of a mighty piece of black walnut, then sank down into it carefully, gently, as if he didn’t want to wake the ravens sleeping on either edge.
Except there were no ravens.
Hugin and Munin were still on the battlefield. They had their feast before them, the flesh of the fallen. Odin wouldn’t deny it to them, despite the fact that many of those fallen—most, really—were his own troop.
Where had he gone so desperately wrong?
Odin shifted in his great seat, uncomfortable even in his own skin. He tugged at his gray tunic, tightened the belt around his wool trousers.
Nothing fit right. Nothing was right.
The fates were shifting. Every time Odin cast the runes, they came up with a different story, held a different song.
It was Loki’s fault. It had to be. But Odin couldn’t figure out what Loki had done. It was surprising, and Odin had long since gotten out of the habit of being surprised.
Why had Loki sacrificed his own eye? Of course he’d lied and told the frost giants Odin had done it. But why? It couldn’t have just been to get the giants enraged, to get them calling for Odin’s head and starting a war.
What had Loki seen? He was the trickster, the con artist. He had to have a plan. He wouldn’t bring about the end of the gods unless he had some way of surviving it.
Odin sighed. Besides Frigg, the only other one who knew all the fates was the witch Mim. The gods had killed her three times, but still she came back. Maybe he should go talk with her head, draw her up by her sticky locks out of an apple barrel and compel her to speak.
He didn’t really want to hear what she had to say.
However, he didn’t have a choice. His fate, whatever it was, however it had changed, was still locked in.
***
Of course, the first apple barrel Odin came upon in the root cellar was full of apples. It was only the start of winter and food was still plentiful. He tore the cover off the next, but all he found were apples. He looked around the dank underground room in despair.
There was food here. Cheese and cakes. Fine dried meat and aged mead. His larder was full. It should fill him with joy, not terror.
Odin needed to know. He needed to see what was coming, one eye and all.
He didn’t have time to travel to Niflheim to find the witch. He needed to see her. Now.
Odin strode out of the kitchen halls, ignoring the calls for him to come join in the good cheer and good food, instead stalking across the frozen ground, going to the northern corner of his own hall.
There, under the eaves, stood an apple barrel that had been converted into a rain barrel. Of course, it was now covered with snow. It took the simplest of spells for Odin to wrap his hands around the rough wood of the barrel and melt the ice that was trapped inside.
It didn’t want to dissolve. Again, Odin fought to impose his will on something that should have automatically followed his wishes.
Not all was well, not anywhere in the land of the gods.
The ice gave way and the snow melted, the water overflowing and sloshing, cold and freezing his hands. He shook them off, but didn’t bother drying them: better they should burn in the night air than something else defy him this evening.
From inside one of the countless bags on his belt, Odin pulled out a small, plain, silver bowl. From the pouches on his belt, he drew out long stems of dried seaweed, bark from a slippery elm tree, juniper berries gathered only on moonless summer nights, and salt that had been burned in oak, then ash.
All these ingredients Odin crushed together, using his thumb to break them apart in the bowl, humming a wordless tune under his breath, letting his thoughts take what paths they might but always coming back to the seeing and the knowing he needed.
Finally, when everything had been mixed together, Odin dumped the bowl over the still warm and churning waters of the apple barrel.
Green light wreathed the waters, stirring it like the northern lights. The scent of honeyed apple mead rose up, making Odin smile. Then the smell grew sharp and sweeter, like rotten apples.
Then Mim’s head rose up. Her long blonde hair floated like a crown around her. The whiteness of winter filled her eyes, but she still looked directly at Odin, and her voice was hale and strong.
“Odin Val-Father, slayer of my kin.
You have given me salt and sorrow,
voice and limb,
calling me to speak of changed fate
and twisted endings.
Would you know more?”
“Aye,” Odin said. He knew it. That fate was somehow different.
“The World Tree passes through
not just this sphere, but others.
The fate of one world has been traded
an eye for an eye
a life bound and extended
in the belly of the wolf.
Would you know more?”
Fates had been traded? What the hell had Loki done? Somehow found a fate where he didn’t die, and exchange that one for the one of this world?
“I would,” Odin said after another moment.
“There is not one trade
but two—
one fate for another
two lives exchanged.
The end of all things is just a rebirth
for the one who survives.
Would you know more?”
“Yes,” Odin said. What else was the trickster up to? Could Odin beat it out of Loki before it was too late?
“As was said
at the beginning of all things:
The only way to avoid the twilight
is to keep both eyes on the prize.
I will tell you no more.”
With that, Mim’s head sank back below the surface of the waters in the apple barrel, a small black cloud puffing up from the surface and smelling of the limestone of graves.
Odin knew better than to put his hand in the water and drag her back up. She’d had her say.
Loki had removed one of his eyes to exchange these fates, Odin knew it. Odin had removed one of his own in order to avoid the same thing.
They were both half blind, now.
And no matter what Loki might believe, he didn’t understand what he’d set in motion.
Neither of them had both eyes with which to see.
Chapter Ten
I went through the rest of my day on autopilot. I’d thought that working in a sex & toy shop had made me immune to shock.
I was so wrong.
Three dead bodies had left me shaken and unsure. But damned if I was going to be stopped from doing anything that I normally did, so I went to work, took garbage and boxes out to the back alley, let people into the peep show, and had smoke breaks outside, daring Hunter to come by.
But the night ended quietly. More friends contacted me via email about holding a memorial service for Kyle on Saturday. Told them I’d speak, though I didn’t have a fucking clue what I’d say.
Sam didn’t call. Neither did Natasha.
I scoured the news, looking for reports on deaths of hookers or even Csaba, but the police seemed to have everything nailed down tightly. Nobody re
ported anything much.
Record holiday sales drove out any other types of news.
No shadows followed me home from the store; at least, none that I could see. I defiantly took my garbage to the back alley, but no bodies were there, not even any drunks or bums diving through the dumpsters.
With a bone-deep sigh of relief I went to bed. I thought I’d dream of more bodies, but even my dreams were sweet.
None of that helped the dread of waking up Friday, trying to determine if I was going to live up to my promise.
If I was going to go get my PADT done.
I’d heard the stories, like everyone had, how kids with true abilities always denied them. The ones who bragged or talked about how cool it was were the ones who generally turned out to be powerless.
I would have thought kids would be more canny, since the information was out there. But maybe kids had more difficulty living a lie than adults did.
I hadn’t always denied having abilities, had I? Wouldn’t that have been a sign?
I had one last smoke—my breakfast cigarette—before bundling myself up in my leather jacket, black leggings that were lined, two pairs of socks, and my warmest boots, then trudging out the door.
The cold hadn’t let up. It dove straight into my lungs, replacing the warm air I kept inside with a freezing burn. The sky was still that pale blue that sucked out any warmth that might have built up with the sun shining down, the wind playing tricks and making the freeze personal, seeking out any cracks in my armor, like a world-ending plague.
Not many people walked along the sidewalk bleached white by the salt. I was glad I had my shades—it was too fucking bright. I figured as I got closer to Nicolette Mall that more people would fill the sidewalks, those busy, last-minute shoppers trying to find that perfect, last-minute gift.
Chinaman Joe’s would probably be slammed tonight, as it was the Friday before Christmas. Maybe I should have scheduled four people instead of three.
Too late now.
At least I wasn’t late for my damned bus.
The testing center was on the University of Minnesota campus, on the west side, near the health and sciences center. It was a new building, with that made-for-TV SciFi retro-future look, all white brick that was even colder than usual. The long, low stairs were free of snow and ice. I didn’t see many people—holidays and everyone was at home.
