by M. D. Massey
“I take it that’s Loki.” A statement, not a question. “Holy shit, except for the hair and poor hygiene, he does resemble Tom Hiddleston.”
“Aye, an’ he’ll be tampin’ when we rouse him.” Click let out a long sigh. “Well, I s’pose there’s nothin’ fer’ it.”
The magician snapped his fingers, and instantly a bucket of water appeared in midair above the table. As we watched from the other side of the glass, the bucket tipped and spilled its contents on the trio, but mostly in Loki’s face. No sooner had he been doused than the Norse trickster god startled and sat up, sputtering water and wiping his face with his thin, almost delicate hands. The god’s violet eyes began to glow with a dull lavender gleam, and that’s when I knew things were about to get interesting.
We may have been separated by an inch of glass and a good fifty feet of distance, but the stream of curse words that spewed from Loki’s mouth came through loud and clear. He cursed in English, modern Icelandic, German, and what I suspected was old Norse. Not only did he say some very naughty words—including some inventive phrases that I tucked away for future use—but his curses were actual curses and strong enough to cause physical harm.
Click snapped again, enclosing us in another magic bubble that deflected Loki’s magic. Unfortunately, much of it bled over into the neighborhood around us, causing all kinds of mayhem. The sounds of blown tires, crunching metal, and smashed glass echoed over the concrete retaining wall from the street below. A water pipe burst in front of the next-door neighbor’s house, blowing a foot-wide hole in the street and spewing water thirty feet high. Birds fell from the sky, and despite Click’s magical shield, my heart began to flutter and skip in my chest.
My mentor laid a hand on my arm, but I’d already activated my own wards, casting spells to deflect curses and repel dark magic. I had no doubt that without Click’s protection I’d have been toast, but the combination of his magic and mine was enough to keep me from serious harm. After roughly thirty seconds, Loki’s stream of invectives trailed off, leaving him wiping and blinking his eyes as he disentangled himself from his companions.
Strangely, both women continued to slumber, even though one of their heads had bounced off the table’s surface when Loki sat up. Eventually the god noticed us standing outside his front door, which soon swung open of its own accord. We walked in, and by the time we reached the dining area, the trickster sat on the edge of the table with his head in his hands, massaging his temples while yellow flecks of vomit flaked off his face onto the floor.
I tried to ignore the stench as we stood by in silence, waiting for the trickster god to acknowledge us. Strong odors of sex and magic mingled with the pungent aroma of puke and stale alcohol, causing my stomach to churn. Underneath that smell, another, subtler scent lingered—the sickly-sweet redolence of illness and death.
Immediately I was reminded of Clarence, a pedophilic werewolf Samson had sentenced to a long, slow, painful demise. The alpha had done it by magically inhibiting Clarence’s lycan healing factor just enough for him to die from lung cancer over the course of a few decades. I wondered, had the Norse gods done something similar to Loki, perhaps as punishment for his role in Baldur’s death?
“Did you bring anything to drink?” the pale-skinned god croaked in a dry, raspy voice.
Click nudged me, so I poked around in my Bag until I found a six-pack of Thirsty Goat. I’d been saving it for a day when I might be feeling particularly homesick, but since that hadn’t happened yet, I reluctantly sacrificed it for the cause.
Loki snatched the cardboard carrier from my hand with a growl, pulling three bottles out by the neck with one long-fingered hand. The tops flew off the beers with a pop-hiss, then the deity poured all three down his throat without so much as a single swallow. How he managed that feat was beyond me, and I wasn’t foolhardy enough to ask. After he disposed of the next three bottles in like manner, the pale, sickly god released a gloriously loud belch that seemed to go on forever. Once done, he wiped vomit and beer from his mouth with the back of his hand, turning to us with a leering grin.
“Alright, boys—let’s party.”
8
Loki hopped off the table wearing nothing more than a tattered pair of silk boxers and the vomit that remained on his face. He made a beeline for the kitchen, moving surprisingly well for a terminally-ill alcoholic. I gave Click a quizzical look. The magician gave me a palms-up shrug then followed after his deific friend, leaving me no other option than to follow suit.
I could’ve split, but that would’ve been rude, and one thing I’d learned over the last few years was that there were consequences to pissing off gods. Surly, fickle, pretentious pricks they might be, but they wielded prodigious power, and I needed as many of them on my side as possible if I was going to survive my third decade. And, based on the off-the-cuff display of Loki’s magic that I’d witnessed moments earlier, I definitely wanted him on my team—drunkard or no.
Loki led us through a side door into the bowels of his home, chattering all the while. “I tell ya’, Gwydmeister, the night I had with those two. Couple of hellcats, absolute animals, although the Moroccan chick couldn’t hold her liquor for shit. This is her puke on me, not mine, mind you. She tossed her cookies in my mouth, can ya’ believe it? Never had that happen before, but it kinda turned me on, ya’ know?”
“Er, ’bout our reason fer’ comin’ here—” Click began.
“And then, that black babe—Odin’s missing eye, but does she know how to move those hips. I’d wake ’em up for you, but after a night of passion with the Lokinizer, those girls need their beauty sleep.”
The more he talked, the more I realized that Loki’s entire reputation and persona could be summed up in three words: frat boy, personified. He might’ve looked like Hiddleston—or rather, Hiddleston might’ve resembled him—but his personality was one-hundred percent Steve Stifler. Hell, he even sounded like Seann William Scott a little, what with the sort of nasally way he spoke.
All the while, Click couldn’t get a word in edgewise, which was a hell of a thing to witness. “Loki, ol’ pal, ya’ see, we weren’t comin’ over ta’ get drunk—”
“I get it—you guys want me to introduce you to some first-class Nordic poon,” Loki said, not missing a beat as we walked through his concert-hall-sized bedroom and into a bath that was bigger than most New York apartments. “No worries, fellas, consider me to be your guide to the wonderful world of sexually liberated Scandinavian women. Just make sure you tell the kid to cap that Jimmy—these Icelanders share STDs like sixth-graders trade Pokémon cards.”
Loki dropped trou right in front of us without warning, stepping into an open steam shower that turned on instantly as soon as he entered. I escaped around the corner into the bedroom, partially because I didn’t need to see the trickster wash his junk, but mostly because I wanted to get another look at his bedroom furniture.
“Holy shit—is this a Ruijssenaars floating magnetic bed?” I yelled in the direction of the bathroom door.
“Yep,” Loki yelled back over the sounds of running water.
“I saw this in Robb Report. What do they run, like $1.5 mil?”
“Two, now,” he yelled back. “I call it my Magnetic Panty Removal System. Chicks see it, and next thing you know they’re hopping into my bed. Totally worth it.”
“This thing is insane! Mind if I sit on it?”
“Um, you might wanna wait until the maid changes the sheets,” Loki replied as he stepped through the bathroom door with a towel wrapped around his waist. “I had a naiad in here night before last, and let’s just say—”
“Let’s stop right there, shall we?” Click interrupted. “No need ta’ be corruptin’ the lad, eh?”
“Pfft, please,” Loki replied. “This kid’s been around—I’ve heard the stories.” He waggled an eyebrow at me. “So, tell me, Colinator—is Maman Brigitte as wild as they say?”
While I fumbled for an answer, Loki dropped his towel and turned to f
ace the far wall. There he stood, hands on his hips in a shoulder-width power stance, naked as the day he was born. Meanwhile, a pair of hidden automatic doors slid away in front of him, revealing a massive wardrobe of the kind you might see on one of those “million-dollar listing” real estate shows on TV. Before the doors had fully opened, the frat-tastic deity began picking through the closet for fresh clothes, tossing them over his shoulder onto the bed as he continued.
“That’s alright, Colemite—no need to brag. Way I heard it, you did Brigid and Niamh both. Man, that Niamh—hubba, hubba. She has ex-cheerleading squad MILF written all over her, amirite? We should do a threesome with her sometime—that is, if you’re into that sort of thing.”
“Er, she’s kind of like my grandma?” I proffered, instantly regretting it.
“Ooh, kinky!” He turned and raised a hand in the air—still completely naked, of course. “High five, bro.”
Click saved me by grabbing a pair of silk boxers from the bed and tossing them in Loki’s face. “The lad don’t swing that way. So, fer’ the sake o’ all that’s fae, put some clothes on!”
“My bad, my bad,” the Norse trickster replied with a shit-eating grin. “Sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable, Colinstigator. But shagging your grandma—straight gangster, bro!”
“I never—” I began before Loki cut me off.
“Heh, sure you didn’t. Hell, there’s no shame in it. She has to be, what, sixty generations removed? You’re barely even related, which makes her completely baggable. Fucking-ay, if Niamh was a lesbian I might even swap genders again to get in those—”
“Loki, enough!” Click roared. “We didn’t come here ta’ drink, or ta’ shag some bird, or ta’ talk about our sexual exploits. Our whole reason fer’ comin’ over was ta’ ask fer’ yer’ help.”
The pale trickster slipped on his boxers, then he spread his hands wide. “Well shit, Gwydmaster—why didn’t ya’ say so?”
Minutes later, we sat around a poker table in Loki’s game room, which was like a Vegas casino and arcade rolled into one. He had pool tables—plural—the aforementioned card table, slot and pinball machines, several classic arcade games, foosball, hoops, skeeball, and a full-sized mechanical bull. The bull looked well-used, and I did not want to know how it had been broken in.
The place smelled like cigars, beer, hard liquor, ass, and money. Come to think of it, it smelled a lot like Samson’s office—go figure. Soon after we sat down, Loki had gotten distracted by a professional MMA fight that was playing behind me on the largest widescreen television I’d ever seen. Meanwhile, Click and I waited for our host to turn his attention back to the conversation.
“Oh no, bro. He’s gonna’ get a leg lock if you—ah, you idiot!” Loki slammed his beer down on the table, splashing it all over the green felt surface. “I had sixty-flippin’-grand riding on that fight. Hermes is never going to let me live this down.”
“Er, gettin’ back to our situation,” Click said.
Loki leaned in, elbows on the table. “Alright, Kembrosabe, let’s hear it—I’m all ears.”
“Ya’ already know we didn’t come ta’ Iceland fer’ the scenery,” Click began almost apologetically. It was amusing, seeing him alter his speech and mannerisms to manipulate Loki’s huge ego. Usually, Click was the one who had to have his ego stroked. “As it so happens, the lad’s druid master requires the attentions of a healing god—”
“Done,” Loki said, clapping his hands and spreading them wide. “Panacea owes me a favor from way back. That bitch can cure anything, including a severe case of blue balls. And that ass—” Loki gestured with both hands as if fondling a rather large posterior “—absolutely divine. I’ll get her on it, and boom! Problem solved.”
“Actually, another healing god or goddess jest won’t do fer’ this particular illness. Ya’ see, it was caused in part by a curse from a Celtic deity.”
“What?” I said, standing up from my seat. “You never told me that.”
“Now, lad, calm yerself down. I didnae’ tell ya’ on account o’ yer’ temper—or rather, that an’ yer’ great bloody beast of an alter-ego. Last thing I needed was fer’ ya’ ta’ go chasin’ after Badb—”
“Hold up,” I said, waving my hands back and forth. “Badb cursed Finnegas?”
Loki kicked back in his chair, sipping his beer and grinning like the Cheshire cat. “Oh, man, this is getting good.”
Click scratched his ear as he avoided my gaze. “Did I nae mention she were at that park in the Big Easy?”
Loki made gun noises as he shot the air with his index fingers in my direction. “Bet you were there ta’ tap that voodoo ass, amirite? Shit, Gwydster, you shoulda’ brought this kid around a long time ago.”
Click turned to his friend. “Actually, the lad turned her down. Twice.”
“And lived?” Loki’s eyes were wide as saucers. “That’s even more badass.”
I leaned forward, hands on the table. “Click, stop changing the subject. You’re telling me that Badb caused the old man’s stroke? And you never bothered to mention this to me, this whole fucking time?”
“Nay, lad, I did not. And I already explained ta’ ya’ why. An’ ya’ shoulda’ figured this out fer’ yerself already. Did’ja really believe that half-arsed excuse I gave ya’ ‘bout other pantheons givin’ us the run around? Ya’ know I can outwit any o’ ’em with me eyes closed.”
“Still, you should’ve told me,” I said as I glared at him.
“Ooh, the Gwyd Kid’s in trouble…” Loki said softly.
Fed up, I turned and looked Loki dead in the eye. “If you don’t shut the fuck up, I’m going to slap that shit-eating grin right off your silly fucking face.”
Click gasped, his face turning pale.
Undeterred, Loki leaned toward Click, whispering behind his hand. “We need to get this kid in a room with Thor and a couple of barrels of ale. I’d pay good money to watch that throwdown, lemme tell ya’.” When he turned back to me, the fun-loving frat boy was gone, replaced by the grim gaze of a stone killer. “Kid, I can tell this is a touchy subject—my apologies for upsetting you. I know what it’s like to have the gods turn on you, so I’m going to cut you some slack. But if you ever threaten me again, you’d best be ready to back it up. Feel me?”
I nodded because he was serious. And seriously scary. “Yeah, I feel you. Sorry for threatening you in your own house.” I slumped back into my chair. “You’re both right. I do get emotional where Finnegas is concerned.”
“Shit, I wish I’d had a father figure like that,” Loki replied. “Me and my dad, we don’t get along too well, to say the least. He was always playing favorites and pitting us against each other. I feel for you, kid.”
“I appreciate it,” I said, meaning it. Loki might’ve been a turd, but he was a sensitive turd, at least. I looked at Click, who was staring a hole through the table. “We have to find Dian Cécht. And then I’m going after Badb.”
“That’s the spirit!” Loki exclaimed as he smacked his hand on the table. His devil-may-care grin had returned, as if the last ten seconds of conversation had never happened. “Now, who the hell is Diane Keck?”
“Dian Cécht,” Click said, emphasizing each syllable. “He’s the fooker who made that silver arm fer’ Nuada.”
“That’s handy,” Loki said. “Anyone ever try to steal that arm?”
“Huh?” I asked.
“Never mind,” the Norse trickster said. “Just a random thought. Anywho, why do you need me to find this Diane dude?”
Click cleared his throat. “That’s jest it, ya see. Seems yer’ brother’s abducted him and snuck off ta’ Jotunheim.”
Loki rubbed his baby-smooth chin for a moment as he pondered the situation. “Man, you guys really are fucked.”
The Norse god of mischief held his hands up in a placating gesture as he looked back and forth between us. “And before you get all freaked out, yes, I know that the Coal-Train here was the one who fucked up my nephew. H
onestly, I always hated that prick, and I’m glad you did it. He was a spoiled smart-ass who was always causing trouble. ’Sides, I warned him not to go fucking around in Niamh’s backyard.”
“What the hell was he doing in Austin, anyway?” I asked.
Loki frowned and rolled his eyes. “Said he wanted to visit Austin for the live music and barbecue.”
“Barbecued red cap, more like it,” I replied.
“Colin has a rather—er—unique relationship with the local dwarves,” Click offered.
“Seriously? That in and of itself is a feat worthy of praise. Nobody ever really gets along with the dvergr—foul-tempered, double-dealing bastards, every last one.” Loki gave me an appraising look. “You’d stick up for those sneaky little fuckers?”
“They helped me a time or two when I needed it, so yeah. I wouldn’t trust them with my checkbook or anything, but I wasn’t about to let some jötunn eat them and not answer for it.”
“Fair enough,” Loki said, nodding to himself. “Look, I don’t mind helping you get to Jötunheimr, but once we’re there, you’re on your own. Deal?”
“Click?” I asked.
He hesitated, then he frowned and gave a single nod. “Those are acceptable terms. Question is, whadya want in return?”
Loki grinned from ear to ear. “After this is all done, you guys have to sneak me out for a night on the Strip. Vegas, baby! With you two as my wingmen, we’ll tear that town a new one.”
“An’ Honos?” Click asked. “Whadya’ mean ta’ do about him?”
“That’s what your boy is for, Gwyd-o-rama. You’ll see.”
