by Ben Zackheim
“Let’s get to the ending here,” I said. “We need to get you and the shield back together so you can get it under control. But how do we get to the shield if it’s in a place that doesn’t really exist on our plane of reality?”
He looked at me. “I was hoping you would know the answer to that.”
Chapter 36
“Oh, that’s just great,” Rebel said, throwing her hands up in the air.
“Open the portal again,” he said.
“I can’t.”
“You can’t open the portal anymore?” Baldr asked.
“Not since you waltzed into it, no.”
His shoulders dropped and his head cocked to the right. He started to look like a zombie again for a second there. He didn’t say anything.
“What’s wrong?” Fox asked.
“I’m trying to remember how I lost the shield in the first place.”
“That doesn’t sound like a good use of our time,” I said. “We have 30 minutes until our world loses it.”
But Baldr didn’t listen. “I was in Germany. It was, I think, 1888. Or so. Berlin was an easy place to hide. Many eccentrics running around. One of them even claimed to be you, Lancel… Fox. But I believe he was killed by a demon. I don’t know why I remember that, of all things. My memory is… disturbed.”
Fox and I locked eyes. Back during the Mjölnir mission, my demon librarian had told us about the man who claimed to be Lancelot many years ago. The librarian offered to go back in time and kill him if Fox wanted. Fox said no, but it looked like my little yellow friend may have done the hit job for shits and giggles anyway.
“So there was a burlesque,” Baldr said.
“Great,” Rebel said. “Let’s launch Armageddon with a burlesque story.”
“Nothing like that,” Baldr said. “Okay, something like that. But I was there for business reasons. I was an archaeologist at the time. I studied at Humboldt University. Scandinavian culture.”
“Not much of a stretch for a member of the Odin family,” I said.
“I wanted to find them again,” he said, his voice dropping to a near whisper. “I wanted to find a way back to my family.”
“You have a family in Asgard?” Rebel asked. “A wife?”
“No, no wife. My family,” he said as if he didn’t understand why she was confused. “My friends. They were always my family. I’d… left Asgard on a mission and I couldn’t find my way back for many years. I needed to find clues that would give me a path back to the life I’d had. One of my black market contacts was another Asgardian outcast. He told me he’d heard of a man who knew how to get Mjölnir. The Vampires had secured the hammer and hidden it by then. I’d heard they may have stored it in the door to Hel under the guard of the Great Cat.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We met it.”
“The man I met at the burlesque had a taste for the beautiful. He was a sad creature. I recall that about him. I knew he was the key to finding the hammer the moment I saw him. But I also knew he was dangerous. I knew that he had betrayal on his mind. But what could I do? I needed what he had and I had something he wanted. I assumed it was the shield, of course. Everyone knows how the Vampires lust after relics and treasures of power. I assumed he was undead. But I thought I could outwit him. And the shield was under my coat, strapped to my back as it had been for thousands of years. I looked for signs of poison in my drink, a gesture of spells, a sneak attack from the many shadows. I saw nothing and my guard went down. We exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes but his demeanor changed when I mentioned the hammer. He told me the hammer was safe from the hands of Asgard. At that point, a small man slipped into a chair at the end of the table. I didn’t recognize him, though he looked at me as if he expected me to. That smirk. Such arrogance. He closed his eyes and the air in front of him split open. And inside the crack I saw piles of objects. Some shiny, some covered in cloth.”
“A Vault Portal,” I said.
“Yes, just like the one I hear you have. He told me to put the shield onto the pile. He said that it was his to care for now. I refused, of course. But he just smiled and pulled the shield from under the table and put it in there himself. I don’t know how he got the shield off of me but he did. I felt its power fade away as the portal closed. I felt my strength wane until I could no longer sit up. It was then that I knew who he was. Well, I still don’t know for certain, but I believe I’m right.”
“Who?” Rebel asked before he could finish his thought.
“The little man was Odin,” Baldr said.
Chapter 37
“Odin, as in Odin,” I said and immediately felt like an idiot.
“No other Odin that I know of,” Baldr said.
“I knew a dog named Odin once,” Rebel said. We all looked at her. “What? I did!”
“Go on,” I said. We had 25 minutes until the Ley Lines blew.
“Odin didn’t approve of my adventure,” Baldr said. “He didn’t know the appeal of spending time being yourself instead of struggling to have others believe in me. Many of my Asgardian friends knew the draw of being among mortals, but they couldn’t side with me. Not when Odin was angry. He tolerates no dissent when the gods’ place is called into question.”
“So he took his revenge on you by taking the shield back,” Fox said.
Baldr nodded slightly. “The last thing I saw in the burlesque was my arm splayed across the wood bench beside me. The flesh fell from my bones. I heard the screams of the dancers and the patrons. And my own, I think. Then nothing. I awoke in a place neither of this world or separate from it. It was a purgatory of sorts. Gray, lifeless, slow to move, like eternity itself. I could only be here with you and other humans when the shield was near, or when the power of the shield flowed through the earth to me.”
“That sounds a lot like Ley Lines,” Rebel said.
“Yes, Ley Lines,” Baldr said. “I’ve heard humans call them that.”
“They’re a source of power for the supernatural,” I said.
“No, no,” Baldr said. “They aren’t a source of power at all. They’re more of a conduit for it. If you picture an ocean and its currents then you’ll get a better sense of how it works. Many humans look to the stars to see the movings of the heavens when the real signs are below your feet. It moves the essence of our reality across this plane. It receives, it gives, it ebbs and flows, and sometimes it erupts and floods.”
“That’s what we’re seeing now,” I said. “A flood.”
“More like an explosion,” Baldr said. “It will only get worse. The shield took on too much power when the hammer was destroyed. The rage of Thor was like a thousand storms hitting at once.”
“Okay, then,” I said, trying to sound confident. I looked at Rebel and then Fox. “Let’s do what we came here to do. Burning Old Man Gloom to the ground may give us a path to the shield.”
“It will just run from me,” Baldr said.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“I should have started with this,” he said, meekly. “But the shield is running from me. Every time I see it, something happens to take it from me.”
“A curse, maybe?” I asked.
“I… don’t know,” he said. But he was lying.
“Hey,” I said, turning to face him. “You think now is a good time to lie to us? You keep shit from us and we all die.” I waved my hand over the burning houses and the team. He looked up at Fox but couldn’t meet his eyes.
“I was banished from Asgard,” he said quietly. “I didn’t just want to be among men. I wanted to become one, a mortal.”
Ouch. If there’s one thing a god or immortal should never fess up to, it’s wanting to be mortal. You’re going to piss someone off. My guess was he’d set off the all-father.
“Odin,” I said.
He nodded. “I’d had enough of it. It was a good life. But it had no context without an end. I tired of bettering myself. It was an endless quest that didn’t allow me to celebrate the day. Asgard lives in a state
of drama because it must. If it doesn’t it will have a moment to look around and realize that there’s no reason for it to exist. I wanted meaning in my life. I wanted my decisions to have an impact for the world. Every day’s choices would mean so much more.”
“I get it,” I said. “But why did you get to keep the shield on your back as you played the college student?”
“I don’t know that either,” Baldr said. “To torment me, maybe. To remind me of what I’d had before I cast it all aside and fell in love with a mortal woman and went to university.”
“Wait a minute,” Rebel said. “You told us that you studied archeology because you were looking for a way back to Asgard. Why would you want to go back?”
“He changed his mind,” I guessed. “The woman? The one you fell in love with?”
“Yes,” he said. “I thought I knew what grief was. I’d seen brothers die on the battlefield. I’d lost tribes of good people to war, storms, disease. But it was nothing compared to the feeling of losing her. I couldn’t take it. We met at university.”
“You like them young,” Rebel said.
“Ten thousand years younger, apparently,” he said, smiling.
“That’s some sick shit.”
“She was one of the few women studying medicine. She had a special arrangement with the Dean, an uncle who saw her promise. But she was also ambitious. She wanted to do the dangerous work of studying disease to see how it works. The plague got her. It burnt her to death from the inside. Her beautiful mind went first and then her body. I did everything I could to keep her alive. I even called in a few favors from other immortals who would chance speaking with me. But it only prolonged her agony.
“When she died… I think I lost my mind. I don’t recall anything until well after she was buried. I woke up in the streets of Berlin, the shield on my back, as usual. I spent two years trying to find someone who could help me get back to Valhalla, Asgard, anywhere where I could plead with my people to let me go home.”
“But why?” Rebel asked. “Wouldn’t that mean you would just suffer forever?”
“No, my dear,” he said. “It would mean I could be with her again. Sarah was a believer in the Norse gods. I know she waits for me in Valhalla or Hel.”
Chapter 38
The red light started as a speck in the distant sky.
Like a star that found its way into the low clouds over Santa Fe.
But in one silent moment the red glow burst across the sky and covered everything in a dark crimson. Our shadows flickered as if they were trying to break free from our bodies.
“There’s the red sky,” I said.
“What does it mean?” Baldr asked.
“Nothing good,” Rebel said.
“Our scientist said that it happens when the power of the Ley Lines breaks the surface,” I said. “Looks like we chose the right place to make our final stand.
“Fox?” Rebel asked. “What’s wrong?”
“I sense something,” he said. “Vampires are near. A lot of Vampires.”
“The emperor,” Rebel said.
“No,” Fox broke in quickly. He scanned the skies and then pointed. “There.”
The blanket of red above us was broken by a small dot, black as space. It was getting closer.
I heard the familiar sound of a hissing growl.
“Shit,” Rebel and I said together.
We looked down below us. Emerging from the dim flames of burning houses was an army of Blues.
Even with all of that human meat surrounding them, the Vampires only had eyes for us.
“Fox, can you fly?” I asked.
“I think so.”
“Take Baldr. Get to the giant and burn it.”
He waited for more. “Then what?” he asked.
“Then find the fucking shield and save the world!”
“That’s the plan?” Fox said, his voice raised. “Fly to the giant with Baldr, burn the giant with Baldr, win?”
Rebel and I looked at each other and then looked at him and nodded.
“Fine,” he said, gathering his composure. “What about you two?”
“We know how to handle these toilet fresheners,” Rebel said.
“I’m not leaving you here to fight alone,” Fox said. The hissing spits were all around us now.
“Now’s not the time to argue, Vampire,” Rebel said. “Either help us out or join the blue team. Choose. Now.”
Fox lifted Baldr from under his armpits. The immortal’s feet dangled a few inches from the roof. Then the two of them swerved in the air back and forth. Fox was trying to find the strength to fly.
Rebel had a spell starting up. I assumed it was an attack.
The Blues were climbing the walls to get to us.
Fox and Baldr flew like a couple of drunk owls. They sailed up and then dropped over a nearby tree. Baldr’s feet hit the top branches and almost got snagged.
“One more push, Fox!” Rebel yelled. Her fists were suddenly embroiled in a blanket of white light. I didn’t recognize the spell.
But it looked powerful.
“Rebel, what are you…” Her eyes were on Fox, not the Blues who had reached the roof and were surrounding us.
I aimed my two Glocks at the closest targets, one to my right and one straight ahead of me. They saw Rebel’s spell and hesitated.
My partner was not someone they wanted to mess with.
But the spell wasn’t for them.
Fox surged up and right before he started to drop again she loosed the spell on him and Baldr.
It slammed into them like a hammer.
Their flailing bodies arched away from us and landed somewhere near Old Man Gloom.
“What the hell did you just do?” I asked.
“Delayed the inevitable,” a man’s voice said from above us.
I knew who it was before I looked.
“It was too much hope to hope you were dead, Cannon,” I said.
“I don’t believe in hope,” he said.
Our old enemy from Tibet hovered above us, arms crossed. His face was a mess. The scar tissue pulled his lip up in a snarl. One eyeball was almost completely exposed. I had no idea how it was even staying in the socket.
His bulging eyes had to drop to look at us but he wouldn’t bow his head.
Just like every other fascist prick in history.
Cannon had chased Excalibur with as much passion as we had. He came short because he wanted to destroy the world. We won because we wanted to save the world. It’s one of the few times when the story ends the way you want it to.
Fox had recruited the ghosts of the Knights of the Round Table to help us defeat Cannon’s ghost army. That’s what turned the tide. We thought we’d killed the fucker.
But he was proving hard to keep down.
“So you’re a wizard,” I said, hoping that the simplicity of my point would open him up to telling me how the fuck he was still skipping across this mortal coil.
It worked.
“I’ve always been a Magicist,” he said, lowering himself to the roof and putting his hands behind his back. He didn’t seem too concerned that both of my pistols were now aimed at his ugly mug. “I didn’t need to broadcast it, though. Not until you and your little Knights of the Round Table hit me like a big goddam bus.”
“Yeah,” Rebel broke in. “You look like shit.”
“An improvement over the stain of a man I was when my ghosts took me to safety. Just in time, too. One more minute and I would have been dead.”
“You seem to be having a good time now,” I said. “Not worried that you’ll lose your mind like the rest of us in a few minutes?”
He just smiled at me. “I’m not going to do the evil villain wrap-up speech, if that’s what you’re trying to get at, Arkwright.”
“That sucks,” Rebel said. “That’s my favorite part.”
“The two of you are too dangerous to keep alive,” he said. “End them.”
His Blues flew, ran, jumped, and
stumbled at us in a big mess of undead.
Rebel had a spell brewing, but her little trick for Fox had tapped her out.
So I tried the bullets-in-the-roof trick again. Second time could be the charm. You never know.
I emptied a magazine into the shingles at our feet and our weight broke through. We fell into a little girl’s bedroom, complete with pink wallpaper and dancing unicorn dolls and small dresses draped over the furniture.
Luckily there was no little girl to witness what happened next.
We rolled out of the way of the falling Blues. Their red mouths in their blue heads made it tough to see one from the other. I ended a few of them as I scrambled behind Rebel to the second floor hallway. I slammed the door behind me which bought us a whole half a second.
“Spell?”
“Working on it.”
The Vampires broke through the door and ran at us.
I leaped over the railing while Rebel slid down the banister to the ground floor. Blues jumped through the windows and busted down the front door so we did a u-turn and ran toward the back of the house.
We sprinted into a kitchen that was straight out of Rebel’s dream.
The marble counter was lined with wood blocks that housed dozens of blades.
The Blues were pounding on the back door. The windows were too small for them to get through.
But two of them sprinted into the room behind us.
And right into a Mac Knife Hollow Edge Chef's blade, 8-inch. And a 7-inch Santoku.
Ouch.
Chapter 39
By the time she’d left seven kitchen knives in blue flesh, the small kitchen was packed with Cannon’s fodder.
“Go for the eyes!” I said. They could still smell us out but we had a better chance if they couldn’t see.
Rebel dropped the knives and used her fingernails. She smacked her palms on their faces and slashed across or jammed her digits through their irises.
I jumped onto the kitchen’s island, also packed with knives, and used them the only way I know how.
