Marvel, page 21
“I have my charms,” Loki insisted, unscathed. “Right, Stella?”
She pinched his cheek and carried the plastic pitcher inside. They were in the homestretch, within sight of the sign for Donna’s business, when the loud, rhythmic thump of helicopter blades sounded overhead. A black shape dropped out of the sky, skimming low, stirring up the grass and sending the dogs into a barking chorus as the helicopter circled once, twice, then set down on the empty lot diagonally across from Donna’s. Kids in the trailer park used it for pickup football games, and families sometimes gathered there for block parties or yard sales. Now the overgrown, weedy cement patch became a makeshift landing pad.
A figure leapt out of the vehicle, buttoning a suit, ducking his head against the forceful blast of the blades as the helicopter’s engine cut. The man was holding a briefcase, and everything from his sunglasses to his shoes read expensive.
“Get the dogs in the yard and take Quinn inside,” Loki murmured, his blood freezing in his veins. “Do it, Rūna. Tell Donna to hide with the girl.”
“What’s wrong?” Quinn asked, dragged away by Rūna. She frowned and tried to grind in her heels, but the Valkyrie was stronger. For now. “Who is that?”
Jane met Loki on the front lawn, just in time for Tony Stark to spread his arms wide toward them, briefcase dangling from his right hand.
“Mr. Stark,” said Jane, flustered. She looked like she was going to be sick, but she drummed up a smile and waved a tablet over her head. “I was just transmitting my first readings. Took a minute to get J.A.R.V.I.S. set up on this thing. It’s ancient, hardly boots up sometimes.”
It was hard to say where he was looking—his sunglasses were dark enough to conceal his eyes—but Loki felt the man sizing him up as he came to stand next to Jane.
Tony Stark paused halfway up the lawn, then nodded, slowly, lips pursed, jaw jutted. “Now, here’s the thing, liar, I finally got our friend Kevin to pick up. J.A.R.V.I.S. detected his GPS signal in Detroit, and when I got him on the line, the wildest thing happened! He informed me that he was free. Free! And that he was no longer going to live yoked and abused as a Stark wage slave. I take it you have something to do with this inexplicable change of heart?”
Loki swallowed around the spike of anxiety in his throat and weighed their options. This man was dangerous, but he was alone. Maybe he was willing to talk. Loki liked talking.
“That was me,” he said with a breezy chuckle. “Kevin and I had a stimulating conversation about the crushing inevitability of self-abandonment under capitalism. Before we knew it, he was driving off. You never can predict how these things will go.”
“And you are?” Tony Stark asked, directly and with rage.
“L…Luke,” Loki stammered. “Quinn’s uncle.”
“Heartwarming. Quinn’s Marxist uncle.” Tony lowered his glasses to survey them, shark eyes swerving to Jane. “Is that true, Jane? Is this Thor’s brother? Thor’s brother Luke? That would be weird. Because according to my extensive research, the God of Thunder’s brother is Loki. You know, like the guy Thor blames on the attack footage for their arrival in the first place?”
Jane’s smile vanished. She lowered the tablet, then nervously slid one hand into her back jeans pocket. “Slow down, Mr. Stark. Can we be adults about this? I really don’t want to get lawyers involved.”
“No, you don’t want to get lawyers involved,” he said in a quiet, dangerous voice. Tony’s expression hardened. “You really don’t want to get involved with my lawyers specifically. No offense, Dr. Foster, but whatever little village solicitor you could afford would get eaten alive by my legal department. We’re way beyond lawyers now.” He unclipped the briefcase locks, opening the top half to reveal rows and rows of neatly banded cash. “Hand over what’s inside the trailer and we all go our separate ways peacefully. I’ll even ignore that you’re palling around with that Loki guy. This is my final offer.”
A normal mortal might have considered it, might have let the temptation of all that money trigger at least a moment’s hesitation. But Jane took a subtle step to the left, blocking Tony’s advance to the door. “I can’t let you do this. I would never let you do this. That hammer belongs to my daughter. It isn’t yours to take. Loki…Loki isn’t who you think he is.”
Loki touched her shoulder gently.
“Last chance,” Tony sneered. “I’m a reasonable guy, Jane.”
“A reasonable man would take no for an answer,” said Loki, stepping in front of her.
“Reasonable didn’t turn five hundred tons of steel and aluminum into Stark Tower. Reasonable didn’t make me a billionaire…” Stark slammed the briefcase shut and tossed it on the lawn at his own feet. Then, with a trembling hand, he reached for the smart watch strapped to his wrist. He pressed a button there, releasing some kind of mechanism. Loki had never seen human technology like this before. It seemed to grow from his clothes, wrists and ankles sprouting silvered gauntlets, bands of metal wrapping around his fingers until the palms of his hands held glowing blue disks. Sputtering jets of flame and energy shot from the backs of his heels, and they watched him lift slowly into the air.
“Reasonable won’t avenge New York City, it didn’t assemble the Iron Destroyer. Reasonable didn’t build this prototype, my prototype: Iron Man. And reasonable won’t forgive you for the murder of my friend. They said your name. Your name. Loki.” Tony sucked down a breath. “I don’t know what I was thinking before, pretending I could be reasonable. That shouldn’t be an option, not after you made my city bleed.”
22
RŪNA EMERGED FROM DONNA’S home to find the Stark vexation hovering twenty feet in the air. He dared to endanger Thor’s wife and child. Loki had a tendency to draw out this reaction in people, but even so, she didn’t appreciate Stark attacking an Asgardian. Jarnbjorn vaulted to her right hand, eager for battle. The Valkyrie soared across the lawn, leaping over Jane and Loki, her axe angled and ready for Stark’s head.
He tore to the left, narrowly avoiding her swing. The thrusters on his boots brightened, sending him toward Loki’s trailer and the heavy tarp draped over the gash in the ceiling. Stark floated there briefly, then dipped down to tear the covering away.
“There you are,” she heard him mutter to himself before disappearing into the trailer. Rūna gave chase, the house rocking as she landed on the roof, sprinting after Stark. Through the hole in the ceiling, she found him aiming one of his weapons at Mjolnir. The light beaming from his palm seemed to act as some sort of sucking wind, a vortex that pulled anything and everything to it.
Anything and everything but Mjolnir.
“Gah!” Stark gave up on that method, taking Mjolnir’s handle with both hands and using the power of his thruster boots to yank against the axe’s immovable will. “Why. Won’t. You. Move?”
He spied Rūna on the roof the instant before she hurtled toward him, axe slashing. Stark surged up out of the gap in the floor, then burst upward, arms raised, drilling through the trailer’s ceiling, debris falling in his wake. This was to be her strife and hers alone. With his powers stripped and weakened, Loki would not be able to aid her. Her eyes fell on the hammer, her heart calling to it. Pleading. She extended her hand, but Mjolnir did not aid her.
Stark would need to be defeated the old-fashioned way. So be it. She knew what was on the line; war between realms must be avoided at all costs. The future princess of Asgard must not be harmed, and the hammer of the gods must be protected from the untrustworthy.
Rūna barreled through the front door. Loki had pulled Jane away from the front lawn, running with her toward Donna’s front door. For a moment, she thought Stark might be retreating as he flew toward the helicopter parked across the street. But then he paused, touching something in his ear.
“J.A.R.V.I.S., roll out the Party Pack,” he shouted.
The helicopter churned to life. The blades spun and a door on the side of the vehicle slid open, deploying four small silver craft that looked like the helicopter in miniature. They buzzed like angry insects, forming up around Stark. One detached, veering to Stark’s left, a small turret extending before firing on her. Dirt and grass exploded around her feet, deep welts in the earth and sidewalk proving how deadly the weaponry could be.
As she dodged and deflected, a cold whisper threaded through her mind. It burned, leaving a trail of ice. It was more than fear, more than just a shiver; it was a premonition. Her Death Sense.
Not me, she promised it. Not today.
It was the presaging of Stark’s downfall, she decided. They would defeat him here and now, and never allow him access to the power he unjustly sought. Another drone dipped down toward her, unleashing a flash of light bright enough to send her reeling. Her vision blurred, showing her nothing but sparks and spangles. Then a cold hand gripped her by the throat, throwing her down onto the obliterated ground. Rūna lashed out with her axe, but the pressure intensified, her lungs sucking desperately at nothing while her airway was crushed.
“How do I move it?” Stark asked in a deadly whisper. “Tell me. Tell me and you live.”
Bang.
“Ah! What the—” The gauntleted fist relented, freeing Rūna. Her sight was beginning to return, and she watched Stark stumble backward, a hole in his suit smoldering. He was wearing some sort of armor beneath it, and that had saved him from a bullet through the heart. Backing up toward Donna’s trailer, Rūna hazarded a glance over her shoulder. Loki and Donna had come, the woman kneeling behind her daycare sign, a rifle jammed against her shoulder.
“Get inside!” Rūna called to them. “The insect is mine to crush.”
“Of course,” Loki replied, disobeying her command to be at her side. “Right after we’re finished saving your life.”
“Look out!” Donna warned. They dispersed, barely avoiding another barrage from Stark’s artillery drone.
“Tell me what I want to know,” Stark shouted, extending his left hand. The circular aperture on his palm pulsed with light, a high whir accompanying the flashes. “You don’t want me to return with my real toys.”
Rūna cried out, lifted straight off the ground, pulled toward the vortex weapon on his palm as Tony jetted into the air. He caught her by the throat again, squeezing with fatal intent. She kicked him hard in the gut and he grunted, twisting to the side.
“The might of Asgard will fall on your head, insect,” she grunted.
He grinned down into her face. “Good. I welcome it. Attack my city again—you won’t survive it this time.”
Jarnbjorn hungered, and Rūna obliged the axe, using what strength was left in her arms to drop the weapon, catching the wide head of her axe between her boots, then kicking again. This time, she managed to slice deeply into Stark’s calf. He shrieked and recoiled but managed to keep his grip on her. They struggled and fought, turning disjointed circles in midair.
“I can’t get a clean shot!” she heard Donna shout. Bolts from the artillery drone peppered the daycare sign, aiming for Donna, each blast accompanied by a ka-thunk of wood and splinters.
“Tell me,” Stark hissed, squeezing Rūna’s throat. “Why won’t it move?”
“You will never possess the hammer,” she wheezed. “It cannot be yours, for you will never be worthy enough to wield it.”
There it was again. The cold whisper. The blaze of intuition across the brain. Death. Death was near.
It will not be mine, she vowed again. This cruel face will not be the last image before my living eyes.
* * *
“GOTCHA!”
The artillery drone shattered into a rain of metal parts as Donna’s shot connected, the main bulk of its body thudding into the lawn as Loki watched, helpless, the deadly dance playing out above his trailer. Once, he called out in his mind for Mjolnir. When the hammer did not come, he opened his hands and flung them to his sides.
By the sorceries of the jötnar as told by the skalds, and with monstrous fury, I call to the magic of my blood and to the mystical fires of Surtur; by the grace of Frigga and the lashing waves of Njörðr, I claim my power.
Weak puffs of green smoke gusted along his wrists, dying out before they even reached his fingertips. No daggers of emerald light appeared, nothing but the suggestion of what he could once achieve. How, then, had his powers returned in other ways? It was maddening. He fastened his eyes shut, snarled, and tried again.
By the sorceries of the jötnar as told by the skalds, and with monstrous fury, I call to the magic of my blood and to the mystical fires of Surtur; by the grace of Frigga and the lashing waves of Njörðr, I claim my power.
He did not imagine the sharp sting of his daggers. He simply asked, openhearted, prepared for whatever might turn the tide in their favor. A singular weight burdened his right hand, and when he opened his eyes, he beheld a mighty green hammer, spectral, glittering with the scale-like glimmer of the weapons of his past.
Loki extended the hammer outward, testing its heft, then spun, quickly, crying out as he released the handle and watched it spear toward Stark and Rūna. The streak of green light caught Stark in the left shoulder, surprising him long enough for the Valkyrie to wrestle herself free and drop, landing gracefully, Jarnbjorn snapping to her grasp.
The green spectral hammer returned, light and nimble as he retrieved it.
Without a word between them, Rūna rocketed back into action, letting loose a bloodcurdling shield maiden’s battle cry as she flung Jarnbjorn overhead, an eerie whistle accompanying the axe on its flight. It tore through Stark’s right foot, sparks, fire, and blood erupting from his shoe. He swore and dropped out of the air, landing with a pain-filled roar.
Loki raised his own hammer, ready to let it soar, but the flash-bang drone drove toward them, buzzing and humming, the sudden flash of the lens leaving Loki pawing at his eyes. Rūna had anticipated it, tumbling across the lawn toward the road to hit Stark from another vantage and avoid the glare of the drone.
“It’s pointless, Stark!” Loki thundered, feeling the weight of the hammer leave his hand as he struggled to see even a foot in front of him. “You cannot lift Mjolnir! None of us can!”
People and structures that had lost their shape gradually took form again. From the corner of his watery vision, Loki saw Rūna leap toward Stark, axe raised. Time seemed to slow. Stark jetted into the air between the road and the trailer, then whipped around, using his magnetized gauntlet to suck the guest trailer and all of Loki’s meager possessions toward him. The corrugated metal of the roof came first, but then the rest of the building lifted away from the earth, roots and soil clinging to it, the walls groaning as the trailer collapsed in on itself. The depression and outline of the house remained.
And, stubbornly untouched by the chaos, Mjolnir.
“Huh. I don’t get told no a lot. Doesn’t feel good,” Tony muttered, firing the trailer directly into Rūna. Still jumping toward him, she partially caught it, but the momentum was too great in the other direction, and it slammed into her, pinning her against the road. Books, cups, curtains, skittered across the pavement, an unmoving Rūna trapped beneath the wreckage.
“No!” Loki ran for her.
In the fog of panic, he became aware of other sounds. Other dangers. Donna and Jane were both beside themselves, and Loki, kneeling by his fallen Asgardian, peered over his shoulder. A tiny blond blur sprinted across both lawns. She ran with her father’s determination and speed, powerfully fast even in a child’s body. There was no question she was the descendant of a god, and that her bravery was real. Jane pelted after her but couldn’t catch the runaway girl, who had heard the crash and emerged to do what heroes do.
“Quinn! Stop! Get back inside!” Jane’s voice tore out of her.
Loki rose to help, to intercept the child before she could endanger herself further. He realized too late that she was going for the hammer. Still, he ran toward her, watching in mute horror as Quinn reached Mjolnir, took hold of her father’s weapon, and with marvelous ease hoisted it above her head. Just as swiftly, she changed course, charging toward Tony Stark with Mjolnir, matching Rūna’s warrior cry as she did.
“So simple it’s actually stupid,” he heard Stark say, chuckling to himself. Even with his half-broken rocket shoes, he beat them to Quinn. He swooped down, catching her around the middle and carrying her away. The helicopter lifted off in almost perfect synchronicity.
Loki followed, conjuring his spectral hammer, but it would be too easy to hit Quinn as well as Stark. And what if he struck true, and Stark dropped her? There was no telling if she could intuitively control the powers Mjolnir offered. He watched her little feet kicking at nothing as they flew away. Two drones followed, snapping into action, holographic projections creating multiples of Stark, tricking the eye. It was a trick Loki knew well, which made it all the more enraging. He cursed his half-formed powers, his deficiencies robbing him of the true sight that would aid them. Loki could not say which was the real man and which a conjuring, and soon the thief and his drones merged with the helicopter, black blades beating against a cloudless sky, taking Quinn and Mjolnir toward the horizon.
He went to Jane first, who was already on her knees in the hole left by Mjolnir. Donna joined them, rubbing Jane’s back as she screamed and screamed.
“Check on your friend,” Donna murmured, nodding toward the road. “Is she…?”
Loki’s heart sank. He had never expected to care about the Valkyrie’s fate, but she had fought hard to defend them all, leaping into battle alone without a moment’s hesitation. A hollow feeling settled in his chest as he dragged himself to the ruined trailer and the Asgardian lying beneath it. As he drew near, prepared for the worst, the wreckage shook once, twice, then shifted up and over in a massive heap. Heaving for breath, dirty, bruised, disheveled, Rūna crawled and then knelt, glaring into the distance.
