Stormbringer (6 page)

Still. His friends believed in him. It was hard not to believe in them in turn. Meaning he was just as excited when he pushed open the staff door, head turned to Wayne and saying something about thematic color schemes when his foot stepped out and landed not on utilitarian tiles, but rather in a three-inch-deep pile of ash and rot.

For one terrible, awful second, Sigmund felt the gyre turn.

(no no no not again…)

Two months ago, during the end of the world, the land of the dead had invaded Pandemonium. Sigmund had been caught up in it, crawling through a crumbling nightmare of
draugar,
of fears and neuroses made into bruised and glistening flesh.

The Helbleed had swallowed the city, but Lain healed the Wound and had supposedly set things right.

Except not. Not when the lights in the comic store flickered and rivulets of black ink seeped from the covers of the trades. Sigmund's heart shuddered and his hands clenched and he couldn't. Not again. Not ever again, with the stink of meat in his nostrils and the grit of ash against his eyes and—

—and there was someone in the store. Some
thing.
A tall, dark shape, standing by the counter.

“Uh…” said Em. “Guys?”

“It's real,” Wayne said. “Sig, what—?”

The dark figure turned at the sound of their voices. Sigmund saw twisted horns and black feathers. A rich brocade robe with sleeves that trailed to the ground yet left shriveled black corpse-flesh exposed on the creature's belly and thighs and scaly, raven-clawed legs. A black silk veil—embroidered with a symbol that could've been an eye but might have been a barrow—covered the upper part of the creature's face, obscuring eyes and nose and revealing only the broad, skeleton grin of jag-edged teeth beneath.

Frozen beneath the regard of those hidden eyes, Sigmund startled when he felt Em's hand wrap around his elbow. “Dude!” she hissed, leaning close into his ear. “That's Hel. It is, right? It's her?”

Sigmund blinked, then exhaled. The crea—
Hel
was still there, looking at them from across the crumbling store. Because Em was right, it was her: the queen of the dishonored dead, in the black and twisted flesh.

Half beautiful woman, half corpse. That's how the stories went. Sigmund couldn't see any of the former, hidden as it was beneath black fabric.

Funny how everyone always assumed it would be the corpse-skin Hel would cover.

(“the living rejected her, and so she rejected them in turn”)

Sigmund swallowed down his fear and began to walk forward. As he did, Hel bowed, just slightly.

“Stepmother,” said a voice like the last light of midwinter. Hel turned slightly to Em and Wayne, repeating the incline of her head. “Honored
valkyrjur.
I am Hel Lokadóttir, keeper of the dishonored dead. You know me, I think.”

Sigmund had no idea how Hel was forming the words without lips. Yet there they were. It wasn't magic; she was speaking heavily accented English, and he could see her jaw and throat work when she spoke. Could see the flick of her black tongue and—

He should probably stop staring. It wasn't like he'd never seen a
jötunn
before, and up close, Hel didn't even look that different from her father. Thinner, female. Ravens and bone instead of flames and vultures. But obviously related.

Sigmund's heart slowed. “Um,” he said. “Yeah. Uh…hi.”

She'd called him “Stepmother,” and Sigmund felt the echo of Sigyn's love at the words. Hel might've been a seven-foot-tall grinning fanged skullmonster who spread rot and entropy with her very presence, but she was family. Alive family, at that.

“You, um. You look…well?” Sigmund tried. The last he'd heard, Baldr had dismembered Hel and scattered the chunks across the city.

It was hard to tell, but Sigmund thought he saw Hel's cheeks twitch beneath her veil. It might've been a smile. He hoped it was a smile. “And you,” she said. “Forgive me my intrusion, I would not normally come into your Realm, lest dire business drew me from my own.”

“Uh.” Sigmund pushed his glasses up his nose, wondering if he should offer Hel a cup of tea. “Lain's, uh. He's not here, sorry. He went back to Asgard last night.”

“Yes.” Hel nodded, a slight incline of her head that sent black feathers ruffling. “I know this. But it is not Father with whom I wish to deal.”

“Oh,” said Sigmund, and got halfway through wondering what Hel could possibly want with him when she added:

“It is your friends whose aid I seek.”

“Oh.”

There are three of them, all men, lined up in a row along the Bifröst, and I pull the car to a stop to avoid running them down. It's been a while and they're older than I recall, but I still recognize the faces. The two on the outside are Thor's brats, Magni and Móði. Magni looks like his father, huge and broad, with a glare that's both vicious and slightly vacant. Móði takes more after his mother, smaller and slighter than his meathead older sibling. Both boys have hair that gleams like burnished copper beneath the sun.

They're trouble enough on their own, yet nothing compared to the man standing between them.

Forseti, god of law and justice, as bright and blond and self-righteous as his useless asshole of a father, Baldr.

Shit. I am so, so fucked.

Forseti's sword is sheathed and Móði looks unarmed, but Magni's holding a hammer like it's his baby and all three of them are armored. It occurs to me, as my claws hit the glimmering surface of the Bifröst, that maybe this wasn't the right skin to be wearing when I made my entrance.

Behind me, the car's engine rumbles.

“Hey, kids,” I say, stepping forward. “Long time no see.”

Magni growls, hands clenching the grip of his hammer. He gets halfway through raising it when a gesture from Forseti has him stepping back.

“You should not have returned to this place, Usurper.” Forseti's shoulders are thrown back and tight with a rage and sorrow that pours from him like molten gold. “You will find no solace here, only death.”

And, okay. It's not exactly like I was expecting a happy reunion, but still. Death? Harsh.

I hold up my hands, trying not to notice the way Magni's looking more and more like he's sitting on coiled springs, waiting for his lid to pop.

“No need for that,” I say. “I'm here to tie up some loose ends, that's all. But I'm not gonna do it standing in the middle of the road.”

“You will not enter Ásgarðr,” Forseti says. “It is done with your vile ways.”

I take an experimental step forward just to see how Thor's brats itch to do the same. The only thing keeping them at bay is Forseti. “Look,” I say. “Whatever you think's happened, whoever you think I am, I can assure you it's not—”

“You are my father's murderer, twice over,” Forseti snarls. “You, who ate his heart and defiled his legacy. Who brought Ásgarðr to its knees with your dishonor, the
níð
of Hveðrungr and Ginnarr made flesh. I know what ruin you bring, waste of the old era. You who are the last of the filth not burned clean by the fires of Ragnarøkkr, the last of Odin's deceit. Ásgarðr renounces you, demands justice for your crimes. And justice will be had. I, Forseti, son of Baldr the Betrayed, will see it done.”

And then he draws his sword.

I have just enough time to think,
Oh shi—
before Magni's war hammer connects with the underside of my jaw and the world turns into a rainbow spin of pain.

The front fender of my car stops me, my spine cracking across the chrome as I hear the engine roar. I don't get time to right myself, instead feel thick fingers wind through my feathers as I'm hauled upright.

“Come quiet,
jötunn
curr,” Magni snarls.

“Unlikely,” I reply, and it isn't until my elbow is already connecting with the bastard's gut that I realize his answer was “Good!”

Escape leaves me with a throbbing skull and Magni with a fistful of orange-red feathers, and I scramble into a crouch before he can descend on me again. I get halfway up before the point of a blade presses against my throat.

“If you have any honor in you, you will submit yourself to justice,” Forseti says.

“Fuck you” is my response. Sharp and succinct and punctuated by the snap of unfurling wings. Forseti is knocked back by one, Magni startled by both, and I leap, great gusts of wind whipping across the Bifröst as I propel myself away.

“Ground him!” I hear. “He will not escape!”

And then a third voice, Móði, shouting words like gravity, syllables with weight and mass and pressure that pull the air from underneath my feathers.

Ah. That's why Móði wasn't armed; the kid's a sorcerer. Shit.

He might know the runes, but I was born from them. I'm better, I
should
be better, but for the fact that I'm slamming back down against the road, the shimmering rainbow cracking along with my bones. Before I can mutter a counter—before I can think of a counter—the car's engine roars again, this time sounding less like a machine and more like a monster.

“What is—” I hear, right before the heavy smack of flesh on steel, and my limbs break free of the force that held them.

I stumble, but it's too little, too late. My head is spinning and my bones are shattered, and when Magni's hammer slams against my flailing wing, my scream is enough to shake the bridge.

“Time for your cage, little bird,” Magni says, right before his knee descends into the small of my back.

There's another snap, deep inside, but my howl is interrupted when something thick and hard is wedged between my teeth. The haft of Magni's hammer, I think, and he holds it like a rider would a bridle, pulling my head back even as he bears his weight down against my spine.

Somewhere, behind the pain, Forseti is saying: “—leash! Capture the beast unharmed.”

Then Móði: “But Loki—”

My head is wrenched back farther, claws and tail thrashing against the ground. “Hah! Is going nowhere,” Magni says. “And is not half so fine a prize. Nor so useful without injury.”

There's a sound behind their words, something like the drum of hooves. But it's vague, far away and getting farther. Past the echo in my skull and the agony in my bones and the taste of blood and leather on my tongue.

Out of time and out of options, I grasp the fire, cinders curling between my claws. Too slow, and Magni sees it. “No tricks,” he snarls, wrenching backward on the hammer, folding me nearly in half, broken spine and all.

The fire dies. Somewhere, someone—not me, not Magni or Móði or Forseti—screams.

Then I hear:

“—t's this? It looks like—”

Then nothing.

The
níð
of Hveðrungr and Ginnarr made flesh,
Forseti said. Those are old names. Very old. One is mine—is Loki's—but the other belongs to Odin. It's not one of his nicer titles.

Things fade in slowly. A dull throb in my back and jaw and wing. The feel of stone beneath my skin. The weight of chains around my neck and wrists.

Darkness. The dank smell of forgotten places beneath the earth.

For a while, I scream, waiting for pain, begging for Sigyn. Seventy years, and suddenly it feels like nothing. A dream between breaths, the darkness behind the blink of milk-blind eyes. I need cool hands and a warm smile, skin and hair that flickers between dark and light. Flesh that feels firm and curved one moment, soft and hairy the next.

But here and now, in the darkness, I am alone.

Bones knit, wounds heal. It's dark, I'm chained. But this is a cell, not a cave, and no snake curls within the shadows.

Eventually, even the screaming stops.

I have no idea how much time's passed since I was brought here. Honestly, I don't even know where “here” is.

Shit.

Sitting upright, I inspect the damage. Nothing still broken, but my jaw is bruised and aching, my throat feels like sandpaper and shards of glass, and my claws are worn down to nubs from scratching jagged runes into the stone. The same three shapes, over and over again:
sól, íss, kaun.
Sun, ice, pain.
S, I, G.

Bones knit, wounds heal. But bruises and hangnails linger for weeks. So do cut feathers. Which is great, because not only am I missing a good chunk out of my “hair,” but some asshole's clipped my wings. Both sides, nearly down to the skin, and the little quills left over itch something fierce. If Forseti was gonna be a jerk about it, I wish he'd just pinioned me. At least a lost joint would've grown back by now.

Probably.

Oh, and, to add insult to noninjury? I can't put my wings away. They're huge and heavy and awkward, and I can't get rid of them any more than I can slip into Lain or something even more useful, like a fly.

It's the shackles. Some blooded rune work in the iron that traps my skin and damps my flame.

So. No magic, check. Collar, check. Manacles, check. Heavy iron chain threaded through both and bolted to the floor, check. Featureless stone room with one door and no windows, check.

“Hmm…”

I'm not totally out of options. I have one left, and I'm contemplating it—studying the chains, looking for locks and weak points—when I hear footsteps outside the cell.

I stand, or try to. There'd be enough slack to allow it, assuming the standee wasn't
jötunn
and thus a good foot taller than this cell was designed to hold. As it is, I end up sort of hunched over—feral and monstrous—which is a dramatic pose I can work with.

I hear a key turn in the door's lock. One ominous creak later, Forseti steps through the opening.

He's holding Gungnir. Shit.

For a moment, we eye each other in silence. In the end, I'm not the one who cracks.

“You have a blood-debt,
jötunn,
” Forseti says. “To me, to my mother, and to all of Ásagrðr. For the murder of my father and the usurpation of his throne.” He looks at me, expecting a reaction. Denials, excuses. I have enough to fill the great ship Naglfar, but I bite my tongue instead and Forseti continues, “After Ragnarøkkr, we knew it was not Baldr who returned from Hel's embrace. Whatever Odin had hoped to gain by this deception, my father is long dead. Mother mourns, but I am lord of justice, and I will see it done.”

Justice, right. As if a tenth-century barbarian even knows the meaning of the word. Forseti and his ilk can poison every field in Ásgarðr with my blood and it still won't change or fix a single thing.

“You are to be put to death,” Forseti says, confirming this. “I would say Höðr deserves the right, in repatriation of his own.” Technically, that first time, it hadn't been Loki's hand that slew Baldr. He'd tricked the guy's brother into it, and the poor rube had paid the price.

Blood for blood, over and over and over again.

Except Forseti is holding the spear, and sometimes blood is paid in gold, too.

Forseti knows that as well as I do, and he holds the weapon out. “You know what this is.” It's not a question. “After Ragnarøkkr, many of our greatest treasures vanished from the dead hands of those who once held them close. Long have we searched for the thief who took them. And now we have him, yes?”

When I grin, stitches pull against dark lips. “What Loki giveth, he can also taketh away.” I paid for those things, in blood and cunning. If Ásgarðr wants them back, they owe me.

Forseti doesn't see it the same way. “We want Mjölnir,” he says. “In exchange, instead of death, you will be declared
útlagi
and exiled.”

The word means
out-law,
and its interpretation is literal. When a killing is no longer murder, exclusion from the law may as well be its own death sentence.

So I scoff. “And the next time one of Thor's brats feels like hunting
jötnar,
I guess that leaves me first on the big game scorecard. Death now or death later. You've gotta bring more to the table than that.”

Forseti scowls. “You are in no position to bargain.”

“Right, right,” I say. “That's why you're not standing in my cell right now doing just that. Stress-induced hallucination. My therapist tells me to avoid situations that trigger the ol' cleithrophobia.” I raise my hands, indicating the shackles, since I'm deliberately speaking English, not Ancient Viking God, and I'm pretty sure Forseti's not down with the term.

Gods can understand human languages, more or less. But it's the less where idiom and jargon lies.

Forseti doesn't quite snarl, but his next words have a lot of teeth behind them all the same. “Do not leave Midgarðr and we will not chase you,” he says.

“Make it non-entry into this shitheap realm instead and you've got yourself a deal.” At Forseti's narrowed glare I add, “I've got family. Visiting would be nice.”

“Ásgarðr, Vanaheimr, and Álfheimr,” he counters. “If the
draugar
and the
þursar
will have you, we will not save them from their folly.”

I grin, teeth sharp and bright in the dark. Better zombies and monsters than puffed-up, self-righteous wankers. “Deal,” I say. “I take you to the hammer, you let me go, and we all pretend like none of this ever happened. Simple.” As if it was ever that easy. I see the way Forseti's fingers clench around Gungnir's haft, see the lust glinting in his eye. I know that look from the kid's grandfather. That look craves power, whatever form it takes. Odin's poison was secrets, and he doomed all of Ásgarðr chasing them.

Forseti nods, just once, the controlled gesture of someone who doesn't trust himself to react with something more honest. “Agreed,” he said. “I will return.” And he turns to go.

The room isn't very large. Forseti takes one step, then two. Then:

“Hey, mate.”

Forseti half turns, one hand on the doorframe, the other on Gungnir. “No tricks, beast,” he says.

“Too late for that,” I say, slumping against the wall and sliding my back down the stone until I'm sitting on the ground. “But not in the way you're thinking.”

“Speak. Quickly.”

“I can lead you to Mjölnir, no problem. 'Cause you're right. I took it, I hid it, and I can get it back.” I steeple my fingers, blind eyes peering over the top in the gloom. “But even if you can get to it, you've still gotta lift the damn thing. And even if you can lift it, you've still gotta wield it.”