Marvel, page 11
What she found on the desk reminded her of the mess of connecting lines and paper scraps on Loki’s wall. This was neater, perhaps, but no less manic. Rūna stood over the work surface and carefully plucked the topmost parchment from an orderly pile. The handwriting was cramped but legible, and to her eye done in a masculine style. Sketches and diagrams of several stones and a magnificent gauntlet decorated the lower half of the page.
“What do ye have there, lass?” asked Eitri, joining her.
“Plans, I believe,” said Rūna. “Research. Here,” she added, reading aloud. Her voice came out in a whisper, respectful of the secret stash they found themselves plundering. “ ‘An obvious solution but perhaps too time consuming. Location of three stones pending. They evade even my unmatched deduction skills. Last, worst-case scenario.’ ” She picked up another page. This one was more of a list. “ ‘The Black Vortex? Worst-worst-case scenario. The requisite submission holds no appeal. The Darkhold? The Staff of One? The Wand of Watoomb? What will bring her back to me?’ And there are more plans here.” The next page contained a sketch of a crystal, a finer one than what she had used to discover the hidden back room.
“What is it?” Eitri asked, frowning.
“Some sort of focusing crystal,” she replied, showing him. Loki had been clear that Kvisa’s sole interest lately was a new form of control for the Destroyer, one held in a smoky purple crystal. This appeared to be the original idea for the focus. “ ‘I found it. Multiversal travel will be instrumental in obtaining the preferred outcome. The theory is there, but so is the math,’ ” she read. “ ‘Even shards of the M’kraan Crystal contain the blueprint of reality; it is not, therefore, a leap to consider they can unmake. She’s closer to me than ever before.’ ”
“Oh, but these are dark omens. Dark omens, indeed.” Eitri passed a shuddering hand over his eyes.
Loki, what vile forces have you conspired with?
The third page was a compilation of names and numbers, nonsensical to Rūna but no less troubling.
Boltagon 1610
Rogers 267
Rogers 522 (No more Rogers. Useless.)
Strange 685
Strange 1089
Carol 669
Danvers 669
Namor 917 (Failed, but satisfying)
“Thor,” she breathed, finding the prince’s name listed last of all. “Here is his name. By all the ruin of Ragnarok, he was right. Loki did not concoct this scheme on his own, and this partner of his was interested only in Thor’s demise. But why?”
Behind her, Eitri cried out. “Valkyrie! We are not alone!”
They were ambushed.
Electric reflexes leapt to the fore. The combined experience of eras surged through her, honed limbs acting without her input or thought. And there it was, the prickle along the skin before lightning struck—the foretelling, the omen, the Death Sense. As a Valkyrie, she could sense the snipping of a life’s string before the blades of the shears met. Now she had only to prevent that death. Her death. She unsheathed the axe Jarnbjorn in a fluid stroke, spinning, watching as a cloaked figure appeared in the corridor, one hand outstretched, a bright beam of purple magic surging from the palm and paralyzing Eitri where he stood. The hammer he had been reaching for clattered uselessly to the ground.
Then she must meet this foe alone. That she could do. Jarnbjorn glistened in her hand, joyous to be wielded, its blood-bathed Asgardian steel having cleaved troll, dragon, and giant in the capable grasp of Thor. Now she flipped it into her left hand, letting the wide flat of the head deflect another barrage of purple magic aimed at her head.
The cloaked figure was just a smudge of black against the shadows of the hall. It darted forward, the shape and size of a normal man, but visibly possessed of superhuman abilities. This was not the short, average dwarf woman Loki had described.
More magic, she thought. The wicked illusions of a powerful adversary.
“Reveal yourself!” she thundered, lunging toward the figure with a two-handed upward swing. It clipped the hood and sent the villain reeling. He recovered swiftly, pushing away from the wall near the corridor archway. “Let there be no secrets in battle, let our mettle be tested in the open, as warriors are meant to do!” She grunted as he ducked another vicious swing that might have unmade him at the neck had he been slower or less keen.
A low, mechanical chuckle came from the hood and the unsettling shadows within. Eyes flashed there, quick, seemingly intelligent, and focused on Rūna’s face as he lashed out with his right hand, a mercurial arc of magic slinging around the head of Jarnbjorn and blasting her in the eyes. Rūna cried out but kept hold of her axe. Her eyes stung. She could see nothing as she fell to the ground in searing pain, clapping one hand over her eyes as they burned and burned and felt as if they would melt clean out of the sockets.
Another blast ricocheted over her head, exploding the desk behind her. She could feel splinters and cinders falling all around her. She crawled swiftly to poor, frozen Eitri’s side and reached out toward his belt. As she fast-blinked, her sight began gradually to return. She spied the spiral horn fixed to Eitri’s belt and slashed the leather strap with her axe, then caught the horn as it fell. With the cold metal of the horn’s mouthpiece to her lips, she inhaled deeply, desperately, and sounded the deep mountain clarion of the dwarves. The reverberation shook the room, shook her bones, making the Asgardian steel in her hand hum in gallant agreement.
It seemed, too, to wake Eitri from his magical slumber, and he coughed, snarled, took up his hammer, and charged forward. Rūna’s sight returned in full in time for her to watch the king of dwarves shoot like a cannonball across the small room, catching the intruder in the waist. They flew into the tunnel a few feet before the cloaked figure regained his balance and senses and vaulted over Eitri’s shoulders.
The villain regarded her for but an instant before the horn sounded again, signaling his doom.
“Pah!” he cried, exasperated. It was indeed the voice of a man, roughened with exertion and rage, distorted by some mechanism. A swirl of purple magic zinged toward her, but Rūna was ready and ducked, though it meant yet more of his possessions were caught in the blast. “You know nothing, child. You have accomplished nothing. Struggle and strive, you cannot stop what I have set in motion.”
He seemed to melt into the ragged silhouette of his cloak and vanish, first a puddle on the floor, then nothing at all.
Rūna straightened up, gazing at the destruction all around. Flecks of green fire and ash drifted down to the stone floor. The desk and the stranger’s work were no more. She let out a guttural sigh of frustration, shoulders sagging. She went to check Eitri for wounds but felt something slide stickily along the ground with her boot. Torn paper. Rūna inspected it, finding that the cloaked figure had managed to incinerate everything but the list of names.
“Slippery as a newborn seal,” Eitri grumbled.
“I must away at once, King Eitri,” she murmured, staring at the names. Her eyes remained fixed on Thor’s. Protector of Earth, remove one piece, then what? Rūna’s heart quaked, for she feared that they would shortly discover just what removing that piece meant. Already it had caused chaos and havoc, but that was all intended. Thor was more than just the protector of Midgard, for Asgard was his primary realm, but this must mean the villain was focused on earthbound events. Her jaw jutted forward with ill-confined anger. “Secure anything that yet remains here. I will return to confer with you when I can. Something else demands my attention most urgently.”
“Aye, lass, ’tis worthy of our time, and I will see that no being treads this ground without our knowing it,” said the dwarf, sheepishly watching as a dozen or so of his most armored and loyal forge masters trooped dutifully into the cave-like home. “Shall I inform King Odin of what we discovered here?”
Rūna shifted. “Not yet, for I would not worry him until there is more to tell.”
At that, Eitri frowned. “Should he not know of this trespass?”
“He will,” Rūna assured him. “But there is someone else who can illuminate this most hazy of mysteries.”
The prickle along her arms eased, her Death Sense retreating. An ember of green magic landed on her shoulder, sizzling. Yes, her Death Sense faded, but it had been a close-run thing, and Loki Laufeyson, Lord of Mischief, had much to answer for.
* * *
THE BUS HAD STOPPED at Elmira, a city of flat nothing, a bridge, and a placid lake. It was late evening, the frogs and crickets at their full-throated croakingest. According to the pamphlets available in the store, Elmira was known for being the chosen summer destination for American author Mark Twain, which was charming, and famous for a sprawling reformatory, which was considerably less so. He had already dipped inside the convenience store near the stop for more gummy rings and a leak. Now he breathed in the soupy summer air, baiting insects in the tall grass for Brian. Their bus driver scrolled her phone near the petrol kiosks, humming to herself. The chugging idle of the bus, the frogs, the rhythmic whoosh of cars flying down the I-86, and the bright blanket of stars overhead made being human briefly bearable.
Loki cherished these rare moments when he did not yearn for the blade in his hand and the simmer of a taunt on his lips. He couldn’t help but feel the weight of the sky bearing down on him, and the yearning for home became momentarily sickening.
No, there was no going back.
He would not humiliate himself by indulging in base fantasy.
His little terrarium alight with glow bugs, Loki lifted Brian up toward the stars and pressed one finger gently against the plastic barrier.
“Tell me what you ponder, my cold-blooded friend.” Loki’s eyes flicked upward. “Can your tiny, insufficient mind grasp that your master was once an immortal hatching plots among the stars? I have ridden the Bifrost between realms, gliding along a road of pure cosmic energy, myself a comet streaking beautifully across the heavens.”
Brian blinked and wandered around under a bower of twigs.
Then a blazing flash of light erupted a few yards away, and immediately after, a metal-gauntleted fist snapped closed around his neck like a claw. He was hoisted into the air, Brian’s terrarium falling into the grass as Loki’s hands went limp. This blighted mortal body was as flimsy as a jellied eel.
He stared down into the blazing eyes of a Valkyrie.
“You are an even lower weasel than I thought,” she hissed, shaking him. Choking him. “How could you ally yourself with this villain who sought to tamper with the threads of fate itself?”
“E-ease your grip and I might be able to explain myself—”
“No explanation will satisfy, worm, but very well, I relent.”
Loki’s feet touched the ground and his first concerns, surprisingly enough, were for Brian. He reclaimed the terrarium, finding that the gecko was only jostled, and no worse for wear. Loki hugged the plastic case protectively to his chest, hoping that she at least might think twice before destroying an innocent life. Probably not, though.
He pointed over her shoulder. “My bus is leaving.”
“I will take you the rest of the way,” said Rūna, the words redolent with threat. “Beg that I do not drag your pointy demon’s face along the road as I do.” She held up a piece of torn, singed paper. “This was in Kvisa Röksdóttir’s hidden study. What does it mean?”
The bus hydraulics hissed, the brakes squealed, and Loki’s quiet, cozy ride to New York City eased on down the interstate without him. He was stuck with the Valkryie unless he could find another bus, but that would be hours and hours from now. Sighing, he plucked the page from her hand, still holding Brian.
“I’ve never seen this,” Loki insisted. It was alarming, though, for he had known Kvisa to be a gullible sort, ever fixated on her one project for the Destroyer. “I somewhat doubt she met this many Steves in Asgard or Nidavellir.”
“Keenly observed,” Rūna grunted. “Just who was this partner of yours? How long has she been planning to murder our prince? And more than that, how can she command illusion magic? I did not fight and nearly lose my life to a dwarf woman; it was a person far taller, and with a man’s voice.”
The blood drained from Loki’s face. He chewed the inside of his cheek, furious.
“What?” she demanded after a length of agonizing silence. “Speak.”
NCIS did not prepare me for this, the devils.
The sky felt heavier upon his shoulders. Even Brian’s light little case threatened to tumble out of his grasp. It was a feeling so foreign it stole the breath right from his lungs. He shook his head, dizzy.
“I think—no, I know—that the impossible has happened,” said Loki. His gaze flickered to the stars. “I have been outsmarted at my own diabolically devised plot. I was not the player but the played.”
11
THEY ARRIVED AT THE city after midnight, Rūna depositing them on the top of a square brick building amid a blur of lights and flashing screens. As soon as they stopped, Rūna stalked to the edge of the building and sniffed. Hands on hips, she surveyed the grid of streets that spread out for miles around, darkened only where the water cut into the land. He had seen plenty of this place on his television, as humans seemed obsessed with setting their stories in New York City.
“What are you doing?” she barked, turning at the waist, watching him dig into his pocket for his cellphone. He was on Donna’s family plan until he could make enough money of his own.
“Looking for somewhere for us to stay,” he said, tapping with his thumb.
“We have come seeking this doctor…”
Loki managed a dry laugh. “She’ll be asleep by now. We will have to wait until morning.”
“I have no need for rest,” said Rūna.
“Well, I do. And anyway, Dr. Foster will be far more likely to speak with us if we locate her at a decent hour. Ah. Here we are. Take us to street level, if you please, I will do the rest. And try not to look so…so…”
Rūna lifted a brow at him.
“Never mind. We’ll find you different clothes in the morning.”
“What is wrong with these?” she demanded, hoisting him up under one arm.
“Earthlings don’t wander hither and yon ready for battle.”
“Then they are fools.”
Loki directed her to a shadowy alley with nothing in it besides garbage bins, stacks of wooden pallets, and a seething mass of rats that seemed to undulate as one entity. The smell was tremendous. He gagged softly, hugging Brian to his chest.
“I haven’t experienced an odor like this since Volstagg’s midwinter feast,” he muttered.
“You were invited?” She sounded understandably incredulous.
“No, of course not, but I chanced to walk by the golden hall the next morning and find the aftermath.”
Rūna grinned as they walked side by side out of the alley. “That was a feast to remember.”
Even this late, civilians filled the streets. They were in a dense, Technicolor plaza, screens the size of Titans displaying women pouting with cherry-ripe lips and little squads of animated soldiers chasing one another and blowing one another up. Yellow checkered vehicles choked the sidewalk. Steam of perplexing origin gushed from circular designs in the roads. Vendors had lined up their carts before the storefronts, peddling sandwiches, bread, and all manner of drool-inducing delights.
“How will we find the doctor?” Rūna asked, gazing around in alternating surprise and disgust. Her shifting emotions mirrored his own. Loki had never seen a place so quixotic, so paradoxically bursting with life while being trapped on all sides by the cold, dirty, and unnatural. It far exceeded the glimpses he had seen of it on television. His gaze was drawn upward as they started down the pedestrian sidewalk, his gaze flicking between the brilliant screens above and the far smaller one in his hand.
“With this,” said Loki, gesturing to his phone.
“It is a rudimentary compass?”
“Far better,” he said, grinning. “It’s like having Heimdall in your pocket.”
“Hmph.” Rūna waved the little device away. “I would much rather have Heimdall himself. I would rather be home.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure, Valkyrie? Do you not tire of the same vistas? The same pastures and planes and palaces of old?”
“My sense of adventure will return when the riddles are at an end.” Her face hardened. There was something she wasn’t saying. Loki swiftly found the magic of the city fading, and he resented her for it. Thor was dead. What could they do to change that? Nothing. The list Rūna had found in Not Kvisa’s strange hideaway listed no more names beyond his. Whatever scheme he had been a party to, no more deaths were apparently required.
His stomach soured at the thought of Kvisa. At the thought of her outplaying him. He should have thrown her to the wolves when he had the chance. He regretted keeping her name out of his own mouth while being sentenced before Odin. Certainly, he had participated in the prank that got his brother killed, but now it was clear that Kvisa was the true engineer and motivator of his downfall. He was beginning to doubt it was Kvisa herself, for Rūna was sure she had encountered a man. It seemed, then, that Thor’s death was part of some larger scheme. For a moment, he almost felt relieved; maybe this guilt he felt was not his to bear. Maybe there was a future where he could throw off this crushing mantle, or else turn his mind to more familiar feelings, the deep desire for retribution.
If he could summon his blades to his hands and take his apt revenge, he would.
Alas, he instead brought them to a palatial, brownish place with revolving doors. The illusion of luxury ended the moment they stepped out of those doors, dumped out onto a peeling floor under a peeling ceiling, a bored-looking youth slumped over a greeting desk, an ancient radio playing the highlights of a sporting contest from earlier in the day.
“What do ye have there, lass?” asked Eitri, joining her.
“Plans, I believe,” said Rūna. “Research. Here,” she added, reading aloud. Her voice came out in a whisper, respectful of the secret stash they found themselves plundering. “ ‘An obvious solution but perhaps too time consuming. Location of three stones pending. They evade even my unmatched deduction skills. Last, worst-case scenario.’ ” She picked up another page. This one was more of a list. “ ‘The Black Vortex? Worst-worst-case scenario. The requisite submission holds no appeal. The Darkhold? The Staff of One? The Wand of Watoomb? What will bring her back to me?’ And there are more plans here.” The next page contained a sketch of a crystal, a finer one than what she had used to discover the hidden back room.
“What is it?” Eitri asked, frowning.
“Some sort of focusing crystal,” she replied, showing him. Loki had been clear that Kvisa’s sole interest lately was a new form of control for the Destroyer, one held in a smoky purple crystal. This appeared to be the original idea for the focus. “ ‘I found it. Multiversal travel will be instrumental in obtaining the preferred outcome. The theory is there, but so is the math,’ ” she read. “ ‘Even shards of the M’kraan Crystal contain the blueprint of reality; it is not, therefore, a leap to consider they can unmake. She’s closer to me than ever before.’ ”
“Oh, but these are dark omens. Dark omens, indeed.” Eitri passed a shuddering hand over his eyes.
Loki, what vile forces have you conspired with?
The third page was a compilation of names and numbers, nonsensical to Rūna but no less troubling.
Boltagon 1610
Rogers 267
Rogers 522 (No more Rogers. Useless.)
Strange 685
Strange 1089
Carol 669
Danvers 669
Namor 917 (Failed, but satisfying)
“Thor,” she breathed, finding the prince’s name listed last of all. “Here is his name. By all the ruin of Ragnarok, he was right. Loki did not concoct this scheme on his own, and this partner of his was interested only in Thor’s demise. But why?”
Behind her, Eitri cried out. “Valkyrie! We are not alone!”
They were ambushed.
Electric reflexes leapt to the fore. The combined experience of eras surged through her, honed limbs acting without her input or thought. And there it was, the prickle along the skin before lightning struck—the foretelling, the omen, the Death Sense. As a Valkyrie, she could sense the snipping of a life’s string before the blades of the shears met. Now she had only to prevent that death. Her death. She unsheathed the axe Jarnbjorn in a fluid stroke, spinning, watching as a cloaked figure appeared in the corridor, one hand outstretched, a bright beam of purple magic surging from the palm and paralyzing Eitri where he stood. The hammer he had been reaching for clattered uselessly to the ground.
Then she must meet this foe alone. That she could do. Jarnbjorn glistened in her hand, joyous to be wielded, its blood-bathed Asgardian steel having cleaved troll, dragon, and giant in the capable grasp of Thor. Now she flipped it into her left hand, letting the wide flat of the head deflect another barrage of purple magic aimed at her head.
The cloaked figure was just a smudge of black against the shadows of the hall. It darted forward, the shape and size of a normal man, but visibly possessed of superhuman abilities. This was not the short, average dwarf woman Loki had described.
More magic, she thought. The wicked illusions of a powerful adversary.
“Reveal yourself!” she thundered, lunging toward the figure with a two-handed upward swing. It clipped the hood and sent the villain reeling. He recovered swiftly, pushing away from the wall near the corridor archway. “Let there be no secrets in battle, let our mettle be tested in the open, as warriors are meant to do!” She grunted as he ducked another vicious swing that might have unmade him at the neck had he been slower or less keen.
A low, mechanical chuckle came from the hood and the unsettling shadows within. Eyes flashed there, quick, seemingly intelligent, and focused on Rūna’s face as he lashed out with his right hand, a mercurial arc of magic slinging around the head of Jarnbjorn and blasting her in the eyes. Rūna cried out but kept hold of her axe. Her eyes stung. She could see nothing as she fell to the ground in searing pain, clapping one hand over her eyes as they burned and burned and felt as if they would melt clean out of the sockets.
Another blast ricocheted over her head, exploding the desk behind her. She could feel splinters and cinders falling all around her. She crawled swiftly to poor, frozen Eitri’s side and reached out toward his belt. As she fast-blinked, her sight began gradually to return. She spied the spiral horn fixed to Eitri’s belt and slashed the leather strap with her axe, then caught the horn as it fell. With the cold metal of the horn’s mouthpiece to her lips, she inhaled deeply, desperately, and sounded the deep mountain clarion of the dwarves. The reverberation shook the room, shook her bones, making the Asgardian steel in her hand hum in gallant agreement.
It seemed, too, to wake Eitri from his magical slumber, and he coughed, snarled, took up his hammer, and charged forward. Rūna’s sight returned in full in time for her to watch the king of dwarves shoot like a cannonball across the small room, catching the intruder in the waist. They flew into the tunnel a few feet before the cloaked figure regained his balance and senses and vaulted over Eitri’s shoulders.
The villain regarded her for but an instant before the horn sounded again, signaling his doom.
“Pah!” he cried, exasperated. It was indeed the voice of a man, roughened with exertion and rage, distorted by some mechanism. A swirl of purple magic zinged toward her, but Rūna was ready and ducked, though it meant yet more of his possessions were caught in the blast. “You know nothing, child. You have accomplished nothing. Struggle and strive, you cannot stop what I have set in motion.”
He seemed to melt into the ragged silhouette of his cloak and vanish, first a puddle on the floor, then nothing at all.
Rūna straightened up, gazing at the destruction all around. Flecks of green fire and ash drifted down to the stone floor. The desk and the stranger’s work were no more. She let out a guttural sigh of frustration, shoulders sagging. She went to check Eitri for wounds but felt something slide stickily along the ground with her boot. Torn paper. Rūna inspected it, finding that the cloaked figure had managed to incinerate everything but the list of names.
“Slippery as a newborn seal,” Eitri grumbled.
“I must away at once, King Eitri,” she murmured, staring at the names. Her eyes remained fixed on Thor’s. Protector of Earth, remove one piece, then what? Rūna’s heart quaked, for she feared that they would shortly discover just what removing that piece meant. Already it had caused chaos and havoc, but that was all intended. Thor was more than just the protector of Midgard, for Asgard was his primary realm, but this must mean the villain was focused on earthbound events. Her jaw jutted forward with ill-confined anger. “Secure anything that yet remains here. I will return to confer with you when I can. Something else demands my attention most urgently.”
“Aye, lass, ’tis worthy of our time, and I will see that no being treads this ground without our knowing it,” said the dwarf, sheepishly watching as a dozen or so of his most armored and loyal forge masters trooped dutifully into the cave-like home. “Shall I inform King Odin of what we discovered here?”
Rūna shifted. “Not yet, for I would not worry him until there is more to tell.”
At that, Eitri frowned. “Should he not know of this trespass?”
“He will,” Rūna assured him. “But there is someone else who can illuminate this most hazy of mysteries.”
The prickle along her arms eased, her Death Sense retreating. An ember of green magic landed on her shoulder, sizzling. Yes, her Death Sense faded, but it had been a close-run thing, and Loki Laufeyson, Lord of Mischief, had much to answer for.
* * *
THE BUS HAD STOPPED at Elmira, a city of flat nothing, a bridge, and a placid lake. It was late evening, the frogs and crickets at their full-throated croakingest. According to the pamphlets available in the store, Elmira was known for being the chosen summer destination for American author Mark Twain, which was charming, and famous for a sprawling reformatory, which was considerably less so. He had already dipped inside the convenience store near the stop for more gummy rings and a leak. Now he breathed in the soupy summer air, baiting insects in the tall grass for Brian. Their bus driver scrolled her phone near the petrol kiosks, humming to herself. The chugging idle of the bus, the frogs, the rhythmic whoosh of cars flying down the I-86, and the bright blanket of stars overhead made being human briefly bearable.
Loki cherished these rare moments when he did not yearn for the blade in his hand and the simmer of a taunt on his lips. He couldn’t help but feel the weight of the sky bearing down on him, and the yearning for home became momentarily sickening.
No, there was no going back.
He would not humiliate himself by indulging in base fantasy.
His little terrarium alight with glow bugs, Loki lifted Brian up toward the stars and pressed one finger gently against the plastic barrier.
“Tell me what you ponder, my cold-blooded friend.” Loki’s eyes flicked upward. “Can your tiny, insufficient mind grasp that your master was once an immortal hatching plots among the stars? I have ridden the Bifrost between realms, gliding along a road of pure cosmic energy, myself a comet streaking beautifully across the heavens.”
Brian blinked and wandered around under a bower of twigs.
Then a blazing flash of light erupted a few yards away, and immediately after, a metal-gauntleted fist snapped closed around his neck like a claw. He was hoisted into the air, Brian’s terrarium falling into the grass as Loki’s hands went limp. This blighted mortal body was as flimsy as a jellied eel.
He stared down into the blazing eyes of a Valkyrie.
“You are an even lower weasel than I thought,” she hissed, shaking him. Choking him. “How could you ally yourself with this villain who sought to tamper with the threads of fate itself?”
“E-ease your grip and I might be able to explain myself—”
“No explanation will satisfy, worm, but very well, I relent.”
Loki’s feet touched the ground and his first concerns, surprisingly enough, were for Brian. He reclaimed the terrarium, finding that the gecko was only jostled, and no worse for wear. Loki hugged the plastic case protectively to his chest, hoping that she at least might think twice before destroying an innocent life. Probably not, though.
He pointed over her shoulder. “My bus is leaving.”
“I will take you the rest of the way,” said Rūna, the words redolent with threat. “Beg that I do not drag your pointy demon’s face along the road as I do.” She held up a piece of torn, singed paper. “This was in Kvisa Röksdóttir’s hidden study. What does it mean?”
The bus hydraulics hissed, the brakes squealed, and Loki’s quiet, cozy ride to New York City eased on down the interstate without him. He was stuck with the Valkryie unless he could find another bus, but that would be hours and hours from now. Sighing, he plucked the page from her hand, still holding Brian.
“I’ve never seen this,” Loki insisted. It was alarming, though, for he had known Kvisa to be a gullible sort, ever fixated on her one project for the Destroyer. “I somewhat doubt she met this many Steves in Asgard or Nidavellir.”
“Keenly observed,” Rūna grunted. “Just who was this partner of yours? How long has she been planning to murder our prince? And more than that, how can she command illusion magic? I did not fight and nearly lose my life to a dwarf woman; it was a person far taller, and with a man’s voice.”
The blood drained from Loki’s face. He chewed the inside of his cheek, furious.
“What?” she demanded after a length of agonizing silence. “Speak.”
NCIS did not prepare me for this, the devils.
The sky felt heavier upon his shoulders. Even Brian’s light little case threatened to tumble out of his grasp. It was a feeling so foreign it stole the breath right from his lungs. He shook his head, dizzy.
“I think—no, I know—that the impossible has happened,” said Loki. His gaze flickered to the stars. “I have been outsmarted at my own diabolically devised plot. I was not the player but the played.”
11
THEY ARRIVED AT THE city after midnight, Rūna depositing them on the top of a square brick building amid a blur of lights and flashing screens. As soon as they stopped, Rūna stalked to the edge of the building and sniffed. Hands on hips, she surveyed the grid of streets that spread out for miles around, darkened only where the water cut into the land. He had seen plenty of this place on his television, as humans seemed obsessed with setting their stories in New York City.
“What are you doing?” she barked, turning at the waist, watching him dig into his pocket for his cellphone. He was on Donna’s family plan until he could make enough money of his own.
“Looking for somewhere for us to stay,” he said, tapping with his thumb.
“We have come seeking this doctor…”
Loki managed a dry laugh. “She’ll be asleep by now. We will have to wait until morning.”
“I have no need for rest,” said Rūna.
“Well, I do. And anyway, Dr. Foster will be far more likely to speak with us if we locate her at a decent hour. Ah. Here we are. Take us to street level, if you please, I will do the rest. And try not to look so…so…”
Rūna lifted a brow at him.
“Never mind. We’ll find you different clothes in the morning.”
“What is wrong with these?” she demanded, hoisting him up under one arm.
“Earthlings don’t wander hither and yon ready for battle.”
“Then they are fools.”
Loki directed her to a shadowy alley with nothing in it besides garbage bins, stacks of wooden pallets, and a seething mass of rats that seemed to undulate as one entity. The smell was tremendous. He gagged softly, hugging Brian to his chest.
“I haven’t experienced an odor like this since Volstagg’s midwinter feast,” he muttered.
“You were invited?” She sounded understandably incredulous.
“No, of course not, but I chanced to walk by the golden hall the next morning and find the aftermath.”
Rūna grinned as they walked side by side out of the alley. “That was a feast to remember.”
Even this late, civilians filled the streets. They were in a dense, Technicolor plaza, screens the size of Titans displaying women pouting with cherry-ripe lips and little squads of animated soldiers chasing one another and blowing one another up. Yellow checkered vehicles choked the sidewalk. Steam of perplexing origin gushed from circular designs in the roads. Vendors had lined up their carts before the storefronts, peddling sandwiches, bread, and all manner of drool-inducing delights.
“How will we find the doctor?” Rūna asked, gazing around in alternating surprise and disgust. Her shifting emotions mirrored his own. Loki had never seen a place so quixotic, so paradoxically bursting with life while being trapped on all sides by the cold, dirty, and unnatural. It far exceeded the glimpses he had seen of it on television. His gaze was drawn upward as they started down the pedestrian sidewalk, his gaze flicking between the brilliant screens above and the far smaller one in his hand.
“With this,” said Loki, gesturing to his phone.
“It is a rudimentary compass?”
“Far better,” he said, grinning. “It’s like having Heimdall in your pocket.”
“Hmph.” Rūna waved the little device away. “I would much rather have Heimdall himself. I would rather be home.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure, Valkyrie? Do you not tire of the same vistas? The same pastures and planes and palaces of old?”
“My sense of adventure will return when the riddles are at an end.” Her face hardened. There was something she wasn’t saying. Loki swiftly found the magic of the city fading, and he resented her for it. Thor was dead. What could they do to change that? Nothing. The list Rūna had found in Not Kvisa’s strange hideaway listed no more names beyond his. Whatever scheme he had been a party to, no more deaths were apparently required.
His stomach soured at the thought of Kvisa. At the thought of her outplaying him. He should have thrown her to the wolves when he had the chance. He regretted keeping her name out of his own mouth while being sentenced before Odin. Certainly, he had participated in the prank that got his brother killed, but now it was clear that Kvisa was the true engineer and motivator of his downfall. He was beginning to doubt it was Kvisa herself, for Rūna was sure she had encountered a man. It seemed, then, that Thor’s death was part of some larger scheme. For a moment, he almost felt relieved; maybe this guilt he felt was not his to bear. Maybe there was a future where he could throw off this crushing mantle, or else turn his mind to more familiar feelings, the deep desire for retribution.
If he could summon his blades to his hands and take his apt revenge, he would.
Alas, he instead brought them to a palatial, brownish place with revolving doors. The illusion of luxury ended the moment they stepped out of those doors, dumped out onto a peeling floor under a peeling ceiling, a bored-looking youth slumped over a greeting desk, an ancient radio playing the highlights of a sporting contest from earlier in the day.
