by Ben Zackheim
She raised her middle finger, and smiled, showing off her cracked finger dagger. “Even with a broken nail. Bet on it.”
We heard heavy steps in the forest nearby. The sound of cracking branches, and a vibrating forest floor meant the thing was on its way.
“Shit,” I muttered. I grabbed a Glock with my left hand.
Rebel’s fingers flattened out to the point of bending backwards. That meant she was preparing a heavy-duty spell.
“No light, Rebel. Don’t give away our location, or he’ll…”
Her hands glowed white. It wasn’t bright, but it was enough. The beast stepped into her light. Its black eyes rolled back and it roared.
“Troll!” I yelled.
The trees in front of us parted as he pushed through, shoving the trunks away like they were cardboard.
I got him in my sights and fired.
Bullseye. Right between the eyes.
He batted at his face and shook his head, sending drops of blood flying everywhere. My round had taken off a small piece of his forehead. A mosquito bite to a troll.
His fists came down hard at my feet, barely missing. At least I’d thrown off his aim.
Rebel and I scrambled to our feet. She quickly rose into the air and floated about twenty feet up. The troll reached for her but his hands just missed.
I wanted to take the fucker out myself. I didn’t want my partner draining herself too much. There could be more of these trolls where he came from. I fired again. I hit him in the neck this time. His skin must have been thick as leather because it barely registered in his troll brain.
“I got this!” Rebel and I yelled at the same time.
“Damn it, Kane, save your bullets!” Her hands glowed as bright as a car’s headlights. She was getting ready to let loose on a troll that was about three shots away from being Kane Arkwright’s newest notch.
“Don’t waste your magic on…”
Too late.
She let loose an arcing wave of light, like a massive white hand-fan opening mid-air. The light passed through the troll, and the whole forest went dark. I couldn’t see a thing. Her spell had temporarily blinded me.
“That’s just great, Rebel! Now I can’t see!”
“You should know better, Kane. A Light Spell means close your eyes! Don’t ride me because you messed…”
“What? What is it? Why did you stop talking?”
“Chill. I just… What the hell?”
“Damn it, woman!”
“Look at this, Kane.”
“I’d love to, but…” She put a hand over my eyes and my vision came back as good as new. Maybe even a little better. She was casting spells, even Healing Spells, so casually, I was getting a little uneasy. It’s one thing to have a strong Magicist partner. It’s another to have a strong deity partner.
She gently held my chin, and pointed my face down.
The troll was split in two, down the center. His left side draped over one side of fallen tree trunk. His right side hung over the other.
“Holy shit. What kind of spell was that?”
“Look, Kane. Look at the body!”
I did. Once I got over how revolting it was, I started to identify his innards.
The green thing perched over his right hip looked like a stomach.
The seventy miles of guts that were rolling down the hill slowly were his intestines.
I knew a lot about a lot of things. But troll anatomy? Nope, not an interest of mine. I’d heard that trolls had four lungs, but it’s another thing altogether to see them laid out in front of you. No wonder they could let out roars that shook people to death. The lungs were huge and oddly placed under both shoulders.
I looked for his heart.
When I found it, I realized why Rebel was standing beside me with excited, wide eyes, and a huge smile on her face.
The troll’s heart was where a human’s belly button is.
If the lungs were in the chest, and his heart was near his belly, then that meant one thing. The rebar from the Leviathan battle in Paris had likely struck one of Dino’s four lungs, but not the heart.
I smiled too.
“Dino could be alive.”
Chapter 26
Our troll friend had been punctured in the chest a few days before.
We’d assumed his heart was a bloody pulp. But if the rebar steel he’d been impaled on had missed all vital organs, then Dino could still be making trouble in Paris.
“Lucas!” I yelled into my comm. Ronin wasn’t around to listen in. Not that that would have stopped me. My heart pounded so hard I could feel its beat moving my eyeballs.
“Ay Caramba!” he yelled back. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Arkwright? You just curled my intestines!” My demon librarian was a grumpy son of a bitch, but I was used to his temper. “We have no updates from Rio or Moscow yet. I’ll let you know…”
“Listen to me, Lucas. Tell all scouts to keep an eye open for signs of a high value prisoner in Paris. Increased security. Unusual movement. Whatever they find, follow up on it. No exceptions.”
“What high value prisoner, sir?”
“Dino.”
Long pause. Long, annoying pause, filled with judgment and second-guessing and doubt.
“Dino’s dead, sir,” Lucas moaned.
“Maybe. Maybe not. Do what I say, damn it.”
“If he survived the Leviathan, then the vamps probably ate him.”
I knew that wasn’t true. First, because vampires hated the taste of troll. Second, Hakkar was playing both sides. He was leading the undead, but he was also helping me when he could.
If I could only find a way to contact him.
“Just do it, Lucas.”
“You’re the boss, though I’m still unsure how that happened.”
“It was a true miracle.”
“Indeed. I see from the tracker that you are in Colorado. May I ask why you’re not in Japan?”
“Things didn’t go as planned in Japan.”
“How unusual.”
“We’re here looking for the twins. If we find them, we’ll need four swappers back in Paris, so grab two more undead prisoners and get them ready in the swap room with the others.”
“Any other orders to give, sir?”
“That’s it.”
“Then perhaps you could ask me how I’m doing after four straight weeks of being on duty?”
“No thanks.”
I cut off the comm.
But he broke back in with, “So it’s too much to ask for some probing into what, exactly, that growth was on my…”
I cut him off again.
“How’s Lucas?” Rebel asked.
“Annoying.”
“The world can end, but it’s nice to know some things never change.”
A dim blue light emerged behind us. We turned, ready for the battle to start again. But it was just my Swap Portal.
“You look as surprised as I am, Kane. You didn’t summon it here?”
“No. It must have followed us.”
“Has it ever done that before?”
“I don’t like this.”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
Some nearby branches snapped. Rebel set off another Flame Spell before I could stop her. The flames grew brighter. They started to spin, which meant she was fueling them up. They’d be certified fireballs within seconds.
Stupid move.
Whoever was tracking us could obviously see us, but we couldn’t see them. They had all the time in the world to cut her battle prep short.
“Rebel, wait!”
But it was too late. Once again, the loud crack filled my ears. This time the blow sent her sailing over my head.
And right through my Swap Portal.
Someone swapped in her place. He was a human, best I could tell. His outfit was something out of medieval times. A farmer’s smock maybe. Where had Rebel swapped to?
I didn’t get a chance to investigate.
I turned to see a pair of stone legs. I lifted my chin, and looked up. The familiar glass mask peered down at me. It was the creature from San Francisco. The one that had stomped on Tim the Vampire.
Was it my turn?
“Who are you?” I asked. I didn’t expect an answer, and I didn’t get one. Not a verbal one, at least. But the creature did let out a low growl. It was an uneasy, impatient noise. It wasn’t kind. It wasn’t the sound of a friend. My gut told me I was in trouble. The thing may not have been an enemy, but I knew how the supernatural worked. It could have been a Neutral, as I called them. Neutrals were beings who never commited to anyone, anything, or any idea. They just monitored things, and did weird shit that we’re supposed to interpret.
I hated Neutrals.
It reached down, and wrapped its long, strong fingers around my hip, and torso. I tried to slip free, but it was like fighting off a bulldozer. I screamed in pain and felt the grip loosen. It didn’t want to kill me. It pulled me up to its face. I squinted to see through the glass, but it was too thick to make out any details. The only thing I could say for certain was that its face was flesh. The mask was protecting the only non-stone part of its body.
“What the hell do you want from me, asshole?”
It swung me down, and back, forward, and back again.
It tossed me through the portal like it was pitching a softball.
I wondered who would be on the other side to swing the fucking bat.
Chapter 27
I landed on a hill covered in wild grass.
The soft ground eased my fall. I came to a halt at Rebel’s feet. She helped me up, and I took a look around.
We weren’t in Colorado anymore.
The majestic mountains in the distance could have been the Rockies to the untrained eye. But the mountains were not from anywhere I knew about. They erupted from the ground like walls of stone. Sheer cliffs met more sheer cliffs until the peaks were covered in the ice of the lower atmosphere. The caps were covered in snow that never had a chance to hit the ground. It may have been the most impressive view I’d ever seen, but that was about to change.
Rebel saw the castle before I did.
“What the fuck…” is all she managed to say.
“What the fuck…” I repeated, as my gaze fell on the kingdom nestled between two mountains looming behind us.
Rebel stood with her mouth open, gawking at the majestic structure. “Where are we?”
“Idaho.”
“You die in 3, 2…”
“I have no idea where we are, partner.”
“So, can you do me a favor and save the snark for later?”
“I would, but it keeps just pouring out.” I smiled. I knew it could cost me some blood, but I needed to blow off steam.
“I suggest you start using that encyclopedic brain of useless mythological lore to figure out where we are, Arkwright.”
I threw my hands up. “Fine, fine.” I walked up a nearby hill and took a seat on a tree stump.
As I started to break down what I saw, my brain was blown away by a small detail. It was easy to miss, lost in the grandeur of what we were looking at. Among the keep, and the main bailey, and the dozens of spires, a small detail struck me.
“It’s made of wood,” I said.
“What is? The castle? No, it isn’t. It’s made of… those towers are… holy shit.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s made of wood.”
“That’s what I said. It looks like stone. But it’s crafted to confuse the eyes.”
“Good trick.”
My stomach clenched tight. A sure sign that something was wrong here. “What did you say?” I asked, trying to follow the string that my gut was telling me to follow. Something about what Rebel just said made me uneasy.
“I said good trick.”
“Shit.”
“Kane, so help me Thor…”
“We could use Thor’s help right about now. I think we’re in trouble. You’re right. It is a good trick. It’s a subtle, and expensive trick with no obvious meaning. Does that remind you of anyone?”
It didn’t take more than a couple of seconds for her eyes to go wide. “Loki.”
“We do think alike, don’t we?”
“Now’s not the time for insults. What do we do?”
I willed my Swap Portal into existence. We had to swap back before whatever trap we faced snapped shut.
But the Swap Portal was empty.
I could usually see the area I was swapping to. It was dim sometimes, but there was always a visual on my destination. This time, all I could see was whiteness. Eternal, not-at-all-welcoming whiteness.
“Someone has access to my Swap Portal.”
“Loki?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure how. He could be using a relic I don’t know about. If he got us here, then the god of mischief must want us for something.”
“So we get to be pawns in his game again. Fucking joy.”
“Maybe. Or maybe we don’t play chess. Maybe we play Spin the Bottle.”
“That sounds clever, but doesn’t really mean anything, right?”
“No, it means a lot.”
“Okay. How are you going to make it Spin the Bottle?”
I waited for it to dawn on her.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
I cleared my throat. I wasn’t going to say it. Saying it would just guarantee bloodshed.
“You are not suggesting what I think you’re suggesting.”
“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m planning.”
“You’re planning on being my pimp?”
“I’m not your pimp. He likes you. It was clear the moment he saw you that he likes you.”
“He’s scared of me, you mean.”
“Same thing in his case. You two would make a…”
“Stop! Right. There.”
“That’s my best idea to out-trick the trickster. If you can think of anything better, go for it. But he’ll show up sooner or later, and when he does, we’d better be able to adjust fast. His whims are powerful enough on our plane. Who knows what chaos he could cause here?”
She crossed her arms and fumed at me. “I don’t like it.”
“I don’t like it either.”
“It’s not even a plan. It’s a diversion. I flirt with him and he… what? He opens himself up to an attack? That’s stupid.”
“That’s what I got. If he wants us here for something that we aren’t willing to give, we need to find leverage.”
“How’s this for leverage?” she asked, giving me the middle finger.
“If I remember Iceland right, it’s pretty damn sharp. But good.”
She smirked, despite wanting to tear me a new one. “So we’re in Asgard now?”
“That would be my guess.”
“Then we might be a stone’s throw away from Thor right now. If he has the scroll piece, we could wrap this leg of the world tour up fast.”
I nodded. “Good point. I still don’t want to walk up to him and ask him if he has the relic. We destroyed Mjölnir, so he won’t be receptive to us sharing the same oxygen with him. We need an angle. We need to go to him with something he wants.”
“I bet he’d like his cock back.”
That’s when the whistling started.
Chapter 28
The man in a pink hat was having a lot of fun by himself.
Rebel and I crouched down, hoping to hide from view.
We were perched on a gently sloped hill overlooking tall grass that covered the ground all the way up to the castle itself. Mr. Pink, as I called him from that moment on, was just a bright speck on the horizon below us. His prancing jaunt bounced him up and down to the beat of his tune. The music echoed from the castle walls, and covered the field like a breeze. I didn’t recognize the song, but it had a distinctly Nordic sound.
Either he didn’t notice us, or he did a damn good job of pretending not to notice us. He stumbled and twirled, so I knew
he was drunk. He took a sharp left turn as if he just realized where he was, and made a straight line to the gates of the village below the castle.
“Let’s follow him,” I whispered.
“It could be a trap.”
“Yeah, so that’ll get this crap over with faster. You in?”
Rebel sighed. “Sure, why not? Nothing in the calendar except flirting with a teenage god of mischief.”
We wound our way down the hill until we ran into the imprint that the drunk stranger’s path left in the tall grass. By the time we emerged, we heard the noises of a busy village. The distant sounds of commerce crept across the bottom of the mountain. Horse’s hooves, hammer to metal, mutual laughter weaving together to create a din.
“That sounds like a lot of people,” Rebel said, not nearly as excited as I was. “We’ll stand out like nose herpes.”
“Okay. One, that’s gross and don’t say it again, or I’ll have to one-up you. Two, the more attention we have the better.”
“How do you figure that?”
“More attention means more witnesses. Maybe we can find some allies. It’s not like we could defeat Loki if he wanted to take us on. But maybe his people don’t like him.”
“Lot of maybes stuffed in there, Kane.”
“I live on maybes. You coming, or not?”
“You keep asking me that, as if I have a choice.”
“You’ve gone your own way before. I’m winging it here. If you don’t like it, I’d understand if you left.”
“Bullshit. I’m with you. But the moment things go bad, I’m blaming you.”
“Like old times.”
“Like all the times.”
We walked the road to the village, heads high, and shoulders back. We weren’t going to show any sense of being out of place. We’d act like we owned the place. It was easy for us. It came natural. Among the thousand ways we were nothing alike, arrogance was something we had in common. That arrogance got slapped upside the head when we walked through the town gate and turned a corner.
The village was more like a town. Maybe even a city.
The bundle of buildings were as sprawling as the castle above them. The main street, cobblestoned and worn, wound up the hill, zig-zagging up, and up, and up until it met the castle’s main gates. Each level of buildings was neatly kept with thatched roofs that angled down sharply.
