Sigmund spends most of the afternoon asleep in my office, his dreams dark and restless.

He wakes up a little after five, tousled and confused, and blinks at his surroundings for a few moments before his brain catches up to where he is. Stuttering and apologetic, he’s more interesting than emails and spreadsheets, and so I join him on the couch, pressing him back against the leather and devouring his awkwardness with all the want of a nerd at Comic-Con.

Much better than spreadsheets, particularly when my hands slip underneath Sigmund’s too-worn, once-black T-shirt, caressing soft, dark skin. Despite the pounding of his blood he feels cool beneath my hands and mouth. Mortals always do.

Outside, the city Bleeds.

----------------------------------------

We get back to Sigmund’s place a fraction after six.

“Hey, Dad, we’re here!” Sigmund calls from the entryway. He kicks his shoes off and throws his keys into a tray next to the front door. I do the same. With the shoes, not the keys.

“Hey, boys.” David appears at the other end of the hall. He’s wearing a humorous novelty apron that looks like someone’s well-intentioned Father’s Day gift, and is vaguely familiar in the way of all of LB’s middle-management. He doesn’t look much like Sigmund, who bears greater resemblance to the smiling woman in the photo near the door.

We meet David halfway down the hall, and he holds out his hand. “You must be Lain,” he says. “We weren’t properly introduced the other day”—the teeniest, tiniest glance at Sigmund as he says this—“I’m David Sussman, Sigmund’s father.”

I give David my best CEO handshake. “Nice to meet you,” I say, remembering that I’m supposed to be in my early twenties and not, in fact, the man’s employer. “Thanks for inviting me over.”

David nods and looks serious. “It’s the least I can do. Sigmund tells me you saved his life.” He means during the camping trip. I decide not to mention the other occasions.

“So Sig tells it,” I say. “But I saw him slip, and . . .” I shrug, letting David fill in the gaps with whatever he needs to believe the tale. “I couldn’t let him fall.”

“Well, thank you for it,” David says. Then he smiles, and turns to Sigmund. “Dinner will be about twenty minutes. Why don’t you take Lain upstairs for a while? I’ll call you when it’s done.”

“Okay, Dad.”

David disappears back into the kitchen, and Sigmund tilts his head toward the stairs. “Best to keep out of Dad’s way when he’s cooking.” Sigmund is nervous, but now it’s just totally normal, meet-the-parents nerves rather than oh-shit-we’re-going-to-die visceral horror nerves.

“He likes me,” I assure him as we walk up the stairs. “He’s not sure about the nose ring, though.”

“But the one in your eyebrow is fine?”

“I don’t think he noticed that one.”

Sigmund takes the last few steps in a bound, then stops as soon as he gets to the landing. “Man,” he says, turning around to look at me. “I just remembered I have, like, the most embarrassing room in the entire universe.” He pushes his glasses up his nose forcing himself to laugh.

“I’m pretty sure I’m not going to think less of you because you have posters of dragons on your walls,” I say.

Sigmund’s eyes go round. “How did you . . . Never mind, I don’t care.” Apparently he’s forgotten the somewhat awkward night after our DnD date. I decide not to remind him, and he looks down to where he’s been picking at the hem of his jumper. “It’s just, I’m twenty-two, you know? It’s not like I left home at sixteen and Dad kept my room preserved as it was.”

“Sigmund,” I say, stepping closer. Into his personal space, fingers twining in his belt loops. “This is me conveying to you how much I really, really don’t care. I know you’re a huge dork. It’s cool, really.”

“Gee, thanks.” He gives me half a grin, then a whole kiss, hands threading through my hair as we press against the unfashionably ’90s maroon wall. “How does it work?” he says when he pulls back.

“Huh?”

He’s staring at my hair, running one hand through loose curls and the other over the bridge of my nose.

“Your hair. It’s different from”—he whispers the next two words, eyes flicking downstairs—“from Travis’s. And he doesn’t have freckles. How does it work?”

The shape-shifting, right. “Magic,” I say, because it is. More or less.

“Can you be anyone?”

“Who do you want me to be?”

“You,” he says, voice fast. “I didn’t mean— I’m just curious, is all.”

“Mm.” I’m curious too, for different things. I satisfy myself by running nipped kisses up Sigmund’s neck as I say, “I suppose so. If I have to be.” Sigmund has a sensitive spot just beneath his jawline. I rub at it with my tongue, gaining a sigh and a shudder for my efforts.

When he closes his eyes, it’s claws and horns and feathers that dance behind his lids.

“God . . .” he breathes. Most appropriately in my opinion, so:

“Yes?”

He gasps laughter and tells me I’m awful, then he’s pushing me away. Not far, just enough to grab my hand and drag me down the short hallway to a door. It has a poster tacked to the outside. It’s a picture of a dragon.

He turns to make a joke about the poster, but I’m not hungry for self-depreciation anymore. I want lust, and heat, and desire. A roaring inferno looking for new wood to burn and burn I will, until all that’s left is coal and ash.

Sigmund fumbles for the door handle as we kiss, his mind swirling with every filthy thing we could be doing and all the time we don’t have in which to do them.

The door opens.

I freeze.

Ultimately, it’s not the video game posters or the Star Wars curtains or the entire wall of fantasy paperbacks that get me. It’s the bed.

It has ribs protruding through the mattress.

“Um . . .” Sigmund has turned as well, spurred on by my sudden change in mood. When he catches sight of his bedroom, he becomes a slicing whirl of ice and fear in my arms.

In the middle of the bones is a box. Just a brown, slightly battered cardboard box, except the bottom of it is stained a horrid reddish purple.

I know what’s in that box. I haven’t opened it, and I still know.

He’s still here, in the house. I can feel the edge of him, moving downstairs, and I don’t know whether he meant me to feel it or if he’s just careless, thinking that the box will keep me distracted. Except I’m not distracted, far from it. I’m furious.

I’m also out the door and down the stairs before Sigmund can call my name. My tattoos burn but I tear through them, not thinking of David or of dinner or of being good and making nice. Right now I’m thinking of blood and fire and that fucker killed my fucking daughter and I am going to rip his fucking head off, too.

Baldr is in the kitchen. Remember that thing about the níð and assuming Baldr wouldn’t go after David? Well, turns out I was wrong. Fortunately, I’m just-in-time wrong, and the tip of Baldr’s (new) spear only grazes David’s throat as I throw myself against the homicidal bastard.

We crash through the sliding doors and into the dining room table, which cracks a bit but doesn’t break.

I’m saying something like, “Fucking die you fucking motherfucker!” while I try and slam Baldr’s head through the wood. I can hear two voices scream behind me, but I’m not interested in that.

I’m interested in pain.

In between beatings, Baldr lets out a broken gurgle and starts laughing. The sound is wet and wheezing—his nose is currently smashed across his face—but the incongruity of it throws me. Just a bit.

This pause, as it turns out, is enough for Baldr to throw me in turn, and he does. Back through the smashed doors and skidding along the kitchen floor on my tail, Sigmund and David lunging sideways out of my path.

When the momentum goes, I roll up into a crouch. Baldr is stalking toward me, not in any hurry, the point of his spear digging a long groove in the Sussmans’ hardwood floors.

“How does it feel, boy?” he says in Godstongue. “To watch your family suffer? To die?”

My stitches pull as my teeth show, my next words a rough and tangled snarl. “Fuck you. I didn’t kill your father. He killed us. He doomed us all, chasing power, chasing prophecies.” Only the proud and foolish mess with the Wyrd. The Wyrd messes back.

And, the thing is, Baldr surprises me by saying: “I know.” He sneers, coming to a stop a few feet away. “I speak of others. My children.”

His what? I have no idea what the hell he’s talking about: Baldr has one son but the guy’s fine, far as I know.

I don’t get to say as much, instead having to roll sideways to avoid another downward thrust of his spear. It looks like talking time is over. So we fight.

It’s easier this time. Much easier. My claws and my skin and my strength feel like my own, so I use them, throwing myself at Baldr with bloodlust and with violence. I can tell he feels it. His eyes go wide and he stumbles, retreating into the shattered dining room, trying to retake the offensive, looking for an opening.

I don’t give him one, all teeth and fire and fury, and the world burns in my rage. Rage at this child, this boy, who would dare come into the realm I’ve built, this sanctuary I’ve made, and defile my home and murder my family.

I leap, and Baldr calls down the sun, an inferno of light that blinds even the Wyrdsight. I howl but, midair, there’s little I can do and, when I land, it’s not Baldr’s flesh beneath my claws but the leather and stuffing of the Sussmans’ couch. A moment later, pain lances my gut as Baldr’s spear pierces through, pinning me to the furniture. Something in my spine snaps as a knee drives into the small of my back, Baldr’s weight pressing down as he leans over me and says, “You spoiled, coal-biting brat! I will relish your destruction, taking you apart piece by piece for every life you’ve ruined.”

His breath ruffles my feathers, his face very close, and the crunch is satisfying when I whip my skull backward and my occipital bone makes friends with his broken nose. He grunts, stumbling back, and I feel the metal of the spear slide out of my flesh. I fall to the carpet, which is about as much as I can manage, and am busy trying to get my legs to work when a heavy boot makes itself acquainted with my injured stomach.

When I cough, I cough up blood, the purple-green globs hissing as they burn holes into the carpet.

“Tssch,” I hear. “Even your insides are filth.”

Then fingers are winding through the feathers on my head, wrenching me upright, Baldr’s free hand hovering near the wound in my gut with a heat even I can feel.

Baldr’s not a sun god. Not exactly. But the associations—death and rebirth, the cycle of days and seasons—is close enough from him to draw it down, and I bite back a howl as agony lances through my skin.

I lash out the only way I can think of, by setting my entire self ablaze. I feel Baldr’s hand free itself from my hair, and I roll forward, across the carpet, desperate for distance. I end up behind the recliner, and a quick glance down at my abdomen reveals not a charred and bleeding mess but clean unblemished skin.

Baldr healed me.

The blood. It has to be the blood. He can’t get it on him, and the wound was dangerous. I can use that. I have to use it.

First, I have to get in close. This doesn’t prove difficult when, in the next instant, Baldr is upon me once again. I’m ready for it, sort of, standing on unsteady legs, claws catching the haft of the spear he’s using more like a quarterstaff, now the point has corroded away.

I push back with the staff-come-spear even as Baldr tries to crush the length of it against my throat. I’m strong, but he’s stronger—feral, somehow, and desperate in a way he wasn’t, last we fought—and step by agonizing step he drives me backward. Until my shoulders are up against the wall, the impact knocking free a picture of Sigmund dressed up for some childhood play.

Baldr’s loathing is a living thing, a roiling supernova of pain and loss. I don’t understand it, I don’t understand him, this twisted black hole so unlike the shining star he used to be.

The haft of the spear presses against my throat, the muscles in my own arms screaming as I try to hold it back. If I let go, I wonder if the force will take my head.

Voice rough and rasping, I manage to bite out, “If you cut me, my blood will melt the flesh right off your bones.” Behind me, flames begin to lick the walls. I’m not sure if they’re mine or Baldr’s.

“Not if I burn you first,” Baldr snarls.

“Burn fire? I don’t think so.” It’s hard to speak around the spear.

“You may have the flame, boy,” Baldr says. “But I am the sun. Now burn!” Around me, the heat begins to rise. This time, I don’t think it’s going to heal.

And so, Baldr’s breath wet against my cheek, I let go of the spear.

The next part isn’t fun; the wood crushes down against my neck, and I feel it. Feel as my throat collapses, esophagus and larynx. Feel cartilage crumble, feel flesh rupture.

Feel the blood, filling up my mouth, over my tongue and held behind my teeth.

Then I lunge forward. And bite.

Bite down hard against Baldr’s eye, the same I once shot through a thousand lifetimes ago. A death scar, a mark, regrown now but it’s still mine and I take it back. Poison-coated teeth sinking into soft flesh and scraping bone, then the barest of resistance before a sound like the dawn and my mouth is filled with the taste of—

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

(watch him, strange and alien, across the fields of Ásgarðr and wonder, wonder what father saw in something so different, one who plays at being one of you he does and he is oh so very good but still you know you feel he is so different he can only be—)

(the others laugh they play their games throwing rocks and stones and other things and you laugh too though not so hard, not so carefree as once before because mother made them promise made them all but the dreams still come though you tell no one, dreams and nightmares and behind every end and every death you see—)

(oh, oh brother, oh poor blind brother you were so alone wanting something getting nothing, nothing from your brother beloved by all and so you make a deal, just a game, just an afternoon, but his deal is death the price too high and as you see the arrow you see your brother and behind him the twisted smile of—)

(it’s cold, cold and dark for so long oh so long and you can’t do this you need the sun you are the sun but down here there’s nothing nothing but mist and misery and her and even she belongs to—)

(it is done the end of all things has come and gone and you are free, free but something’s wrong, reborn yet still so dead inside, something you can’t see can’t find so you send out your eye only one now but it is sharp and oh it takes an age but finally you find—)

(father oh father you brought the viper to our breast this monster and even now we pay the price and that price has the name—)

“Lain?”

Pain. Pain and memories, so many memories. Flashes of color, of light. Of hate. They fade, and there’s a sound outside so I open my eyes and see—

“Hórkona!”

My fingers close around her neck before she can open her traitorous mouth. Her eyes go wide and she tries to plead, tries to call a name but it is not my name, it is his and she has betrayed me to him and so she will pay.

“L-Lain? Lain! Loki!”

Ah. That does it.

My hand jerks open and Sigmund crumples to the floor, clutching his neck and breathing hard. Loki. Right. Fuck. That’s me, that’s my name, I bit out Baldr’s eye and, fuck, that’s old magic, deep magic and I nearly lost myself but I’m back, I think, almost back and all it took was nearly killing my wife to get him to finally, finally, say my name.

About now—just a fraction of a moment of a second, really—the world explodes in pain, and everything goes black.

I can hear Sigmund screaming out, No, Dad, stop, it’s okay please don’t! I can smell blood and ash and fear. And I can feel, even though I wish I couldn’t. Bone-deep pain ringing through my skull and behind my eyeballs and down into my teeth. But I can’t see, not with my eyes, and not with the Wyrd.

It’s the horns. I’ve been hit over the back of the head and it’s clipped my horns. Jötunn horns. They’re not for fighting. They are, as they say, for Display Purposes Only. Display and sensing, the heart of a jötunn’s Wyrdsight, and without them? Without them I really am blind.

I feel cool hands against my shoulders and, unseeing, I jerk back. But the hands are gentle and familiar and so is the voice that says, “Ohmigod, are you okay?”

I blink, the ringing in my horns is fading and I can start to make out the blurry outlines of Sigmund’s narrative, of David’s.

David is clutching an iron poker he took from the fireplace, having just hit me over the head with it. He’s been dissuaded from further actions along this line by his son, though he’s currently reserving judgment on the issue. I did, after all, nearly just strangle his only child.

Sigmund is still trying to get some kind of response, so I groan and half uncurl from where I’ve rolled into a ball on the floor.

“ ’M okay,” I manage to slur, throat already healing but still raw and shattered. Cool, soft hands help me sit up and the world comes back into focus. Or whatever passes for focus with the Wyrdsight. Mostly. I run a hand across my horns, checking for damage and wincing when my fingers encounter a rough edge.

“The left one’s missing a chunk off the end,” Sigmund says, meaning his left. “Dad whacked you one good.”

“Fuck. You’re not wrong.” Hence the fuzziness in the Sight. Damn. “Where’s Baldr?” I look around, directing sightless eyes mostly out of habit. I know he’s not here, and all moving my head does is exacerbate the pain.

Sigmund looks, too, as if expecting Baldr to leap out from behind the sofa. Well, what’s left of it beneath the ash. “After you, uh”—he makes an awkward sort of hand gesture indicating bit out his eye like a fucking monster, and I duck my head and wipe my lips and try not to taste vitreous humor in my throat—“he kinda just vanished and actually why was he here in the first place you said he wouldn’t attack my dad and now my dining room is trashed and my house is on fire and my dad nearly died and fucking what the fuck man!” His voice has had some serious turning up of the volume controls by the end of this, not to mention that he starts getting a bit punchy. He’s not hitting hard, but he is angry and scared and I do deserve it.

“Sigmund!” I’ve almost forgotten David is there. He takes a half step forward, still clutching the fire poker, eyeing me in horror.

Me, I just hold up my arms and fall onto my back, making sure to take the fires still burning in the living and dining rooms down with me. The house is a mess. Fuck. What a fucking lousy way to meet your in-laws. “Sorry. Man, I just . . . Sorry. Fuck.” I don’t know what else to say, but Sigmund stops hitting me so I can’t be doing too badly. He’s still angry, though, and it’s a sharp and jagged taste. Scared and pissed off, wild eyed and breath racing. He’s beautiful.

I say, “I’ll pay for the damage to the house.”

“It’s not about the fucking house, Lain.” Sigmund gives me one more whack on the arm for good measure. I thwack my tail against the floor in response. I know it’s not about the house.

We just sit there for a while. Me staring sightlessly up at the roof, drumming my tail against the carpet, Sigmund kneeling next to me and rubbing his eyes underneath his glasses. I’m halfway through thinking about what the fuck I’m going to do next, when a voice from the corner says, “Would one of you boys mind explaining to your old man what the bloody hell is going on here?”

Ah. Right.

----------------------------------------

An exchange of meaningful looks later, I retreat upstairs to let Sigmund deal with his father. I try not to listen to their harsh murmuring or the burnt-edged emotions that swirl around them, instead feeling out into the house itself. It’s the center of a Bleed that takes up at least an entire block, but it’s not deep in the house itself. For all their problems, the Sussmans are a pretty normal family, and their house is a place of sanctuary and calm for both of them. That makes it hard for the Bleed to get a foothold, which is why about the worst it’s managed to do so far is spread a bit of rising damp up the walls.

There are some exceptions. There’s something under the stairs I don’t want to think about, as well as in David’s study, and the portrait of Mum on the wall in the corridor has started to get a bit difficult to look at. The portrait and the study are linked—Lynne Sussman’s death being one of the turning points in the lives of her son and husband—but the thing under the stairs is just an accident. I don’t think either of them are dangerous, exactly, but they’re both traumas I assume Sigmund and David would rather avoid.

The stairs creak a little when I walk up them, but there’s nothing too horrific waiting for me on the landing. The door to Sigmund’s room is open, and I peer inside. The bed still has its ossified accoutrements, and now the ceiling has started to grow what look like fleshy stalactites. This kind of sucks. What with my teensy little fear of caves and all, and the fact that the box is still sitting in the middle of the bed.

I manage to grab it via a sequence of artful barrel rolls, and make it back into the hallway just in time to watch the door slam shut with enough force to shake a photo of David and a very young Sigmund off the wall. There’s a pause in the conversation downstairs, and Sigmund’s voice calls, “Lain? You okay?”

If my hearts still worked, they’d be racing. As it is, I just peel myself off the plaster and hope my voice doesn’t shake when I say, “Yeah. All good.”

The downstairs murmuring resumes, and I walk to sit on the edge of the landing, huge hind claws scratching up the stairs, box sitting on my knees.

I open it.

Two minutes later, I close the lid and set fire to the entire thing, then watch the severed head of my daughter burn purple and green in my lap. It takes concentration to keep the fireball contained. That’s good. I need concentration right now. Need focus.

Baldr murdered my daughter to turn my city against me. Without Hel to keep them in check, the mists of Niflhel will creep into the world with the inevitability of the heat death of the universe. Hel’s head is a catalyst for the Bleed, the shrapnel keeping the Wound open. I can burn it to ash but I doubt it’s the only piece, and even if I track down every last one, the damage is already done. Pandemonium is dying, and its convalescence will be long and agonizing.

Baldr can’t beat me in a one-on-one fight in my own city so he’s torn my sanctuary down around me. It’s a move worthy of his father. Of me. Not like the kid at all.

A thousand years in Hel. I wonder what happened to him. I wonder if I care. I wonder if my daughter greeted him with open arms and a skeleton smile before he took her life. Mostly, I wonder how I’m going to end this. My current best plan is still kill Baldr, but, honestly, aside from the sense of vicious satisfaction, I’m not exactly sure how that’s going to help me. Help my city, help my lover and his father and his friends.

I’ve seen cities die. Seen their industry move offshore, seen their people drift away and their houses empty and their stores close. Seen the rotting husks they leave behind.

Killing Hel was one thing. She’s the goddess of death, and I doubt it’ll slow her down for long. But killing Pandemonium? You’re talking about destroying the lives of over a quarter of million humans. And LB won’t recover—after all this time, it is the city—which is going to totally throw out the entire technology sector for a good decade or so.

This, incidentally, is why gods aren’t supposed to meddle around in the mortal world. It’s considered déclassé when it goes wrong. And it always, always goes wrong. Badly.

Shit.

I hate this. I have no fucking clue what the fuck I’m supposed to do, and there are two people downstairs—and a whole crap-ton more outside—waiting for me to be the Big Damn Hero and save the fucking day.

If my brother were here, he’d know what to do.

Fuck, who am I kidding? His plan would probably involve beating me into fixing it for him.

Fuck my brother. Fuck him in his dead-rotting eye socket.

The last of Hel’s ashes slip between my claws and I stand up, put on my game face, and head back into the den.

Sigmund and David are still whisper fighting, but they shut up when I storm into the room.

“Pack your shit up, kids,” I say before either can speak. “I’ve gotta take you somewhere safe.”

“Now wait just one second—”

“Shut it, Sussman.” I point at David as I say it, but the thing that makes him take a step back is when I put Travis into the words. He sees it, just for an eye blink, and he knows. “You don’t get a say. This isn’t a democracy, this is the fucking end of the fucking world we’re talking about, and you are going to shut the fuck up and do what I fucking say, understood?”

David’s response is Pavlovian. “Yes, sir!” he says, straightening up and trying to look professional, even if he’s still barefoot and wearing a slightly singed novelty apron.

“Dad—”

“No. We should listen. This . . . this is beyond us. The only thing I want now is to keep you safe.” David turns to his son, lays a fatherly hand on his shoulder. The gesture shouldn’t make me wince, but it does. Fuck you, brother. Fuck you right in your fucking hat.

Sigmund glances at me, then back at his father. He’s not happy, and I am so sleeping on the couch tonight. Or would be. If I slept. And assuming we don’t all die horribly in the next few hours.

After a moment, Sigmund nods. “Okay, Dad.”

“That’s my boy.” David slaps his son on the back, then turns to me. He manages to meet my eyes. Just. “Keep my son safe and I’ll do whatever you say.” His fingers tighten around the fire poker, though, and there’s a threat there.

I nod. “Get whatever you need from upstairs. We leave in five.”

“Where?” Sigmund asks, though he already knows the answer.

“LB. If you’re going to be safe anywhere, it’s there.”

He nods, and David lays a hand on his back. “Come on, Sig.”

They file past me, David first—making sure not to get too close—then Sigmund. As he passes, I say, “I’m sorry it turned out like this.”

He stops, but doesn’t look up. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, me too.” Then he vanishes up the stairs after his father.

The thump that follows is me slamming my fist into the too-damp hallway wall. The impact leaves a hole in the plaster, revealing a fleshy, pulsing mass beneath. The Bleed is getting deeper. We need to get out of here.

When I walk up the stairs, I can hear something shuffling underneath. I still don’t think it’s dangerous, but I don’t want to stick around here any longer than I have to on the off chance that I end up finding out.

David is the first to emerge from his room. He’s got shoes and a jacket, and is clutching a photo of his wife and son. Before I can compliment him on his minimalist choice of travel attire he says, “I have a gun. In the study. I’ll just . . .” He makes an abortive gesture, and when I don’t complain he half jogs the few feet over to the study door. The closed study door.

The closed study door with the thing behind it.

“No!” I move fast. One second I’m leaning against the wall in the landing, the next I’ve grabbed David’s hand, a hairbreadth from the door handle. He jerks back, startled, and when he rips his hand out of mine, my claws catch on his flesh, not quite hard enough to draw blood. It surprises him, though, and he cries out and stumbles backward into the wall, clutching his hand, heart hammering, radiating enough fear to send the paint peeling.

That’s not good. So I take a step back, hands up, trying to look as nonthreatening as a seven-foot feathered guy with horns ever can. “Sorry,” I say, just as Sigmund pokes his head out of his room.

“Dad?” he asks, giving me his best Glare of Death. I shrink farther back against the wall and try and look innocent. I’m pretty sure I fail.

“I-it’s okay, son.” David almost manages to keep his voice steady as he straightens up, still rubbing his injured hand, even as he tries not to. “I was just about to get the gun out of the study.”

Sigmund looks at his dad, then me, then the closed study door. Then he says, “What’s behind the door?” He’s very pointedly looking at me when he says it.

“I don’t know,” I admit.

“But there is something?”

“Yeah.”

“Can it hurt you?”

I have to think a second before answering. Hurt is such a subjective word. “Probably not,” I say.

Sigmund nods, expression hard and tight. “Dad keeps the gun in a safe in the bottom drawer—”

“Sigmund!” David is horrified that his son knows this, but Sigmund ignores him.

“—and a box of ammo in the filing cabinet. They’re both locked, but I’m sure that won’t stop you.” His expression dares me to refuse, to challenge him. And I want to, oh how I do, but I don’t. Because he’s Sigmund, and I owe him.

“Yeah,” I say instead. “Yeah, okay. Give me a minute.”

I gesture for David to stand back and he does so, retreating down the hallway to be near his son. When they’re safe—for whatever arbitrary value of “safe” we’re working on—I open the door.

Inside, the room is black. And by that I don’t mean dark; it’s like there’s a wall of solid nothing just beyond the jamb. I exhale slowly, mostly out of habit, and step forward.

As I do, I hear Sigmund’s voice, stripped of the confidence it held just moments ago, say, “Lain, wait!” But I’m already gone, plunged into the silent void inside the study. And after that, there’s nothing, no sound, no light. Just a cloying, damp warmth, and the air feels thick somehow. Thick and close and before I can scream, before I can turn and run because tooclosetoodarkohfuckimtrappedcantmovei—

Before any of that, the door slams shut behind me and I’m alone.

Well, almost alone.

It takes me a while before I can make myself move again, swallowing down the panic and remembering that it’s okay. I’m not trapped, not held down, not helpless. It’s just dark. Dark and gross, but that’s par for the Helbleed, and Sigmund and David are outside waiting, my brother and his ilk are long dead, I’m still alive, and there’s nothing in here that can hurt me. Much.

I still can’t see a fucking thing. And honestly, I’m not sure if this is because it’s actually dark, or because of some failure in the Wyrdsight. It’s good at compensating, but it needs a narrative in the first place and this room is coming up blank. Except for that thing, of course, but its input isn’t helpful. So I’m blind. More or less.

Great.

I take a step forward, then another. The floor feels wet and tacky under my claws and I’m glad I can’t tell what it actually is. I’m just going to pretend carpet. Wet, squelchy carpet.

I find the desk mostly by running into it. It’s in the center of the room, facing the door. A real old-fashioned oak Hemingway contraption. Lynne bought it for David shortly before Sigmund was born, back when David had dreams of reaching the LB executive. It has some good memories—and one really good memory, about nine months before Sigmund was born, that I could absolutely have died without ever knowing, fuck you very much Wyrdsight, you useless fucking piece of meta—but they’re very far away, buried deep under twenty years of loneliness and doubt and misery and failure.

There’s a lot of pain in this desk. No wonder it’s a magnet for the Bleed.

I inch my way around it, keeping my hands on the edge and trying not to brush up against the room’s other occupant. I don’t think it moves toward me, but it does writhe occasionally, and the sound it makes when it does is wet and breathy and really, really not something I want to think about. I’m not sure where it is, exactly. Sometimes the noise comes from the back of the room, sometimes from the ceiling. But it’s not at the desk, so I stick close.

The desk has one shallow central drawer and three larger drawers down each side. Sigmund neglected to mention which side I should be investigating, so I try the left. It’s always the left. It’s also always locked, but barely, and I wrench the aluminum latch out of its socket without difficulty.

Damnit. It’s not the left, and by the time I’ve realized that, my hand is gooey and the room stinks like rotting dreams.

The lock on the right-hand side is no more secure, though the safe inside is. It’s an electronic lock, and I punch numbers on the keypad at random, then try the handle.

Here’s the thing about being a god: There’s no middle ground. When you open the cupboard, either everything falls (humorously) onto your head, or the thing you’re looking for is right there in front of you. Either the door is open and the room is empty, or there’s a dozen guys with guns standing behind, waiting for you to pick the lock. There’s no such thing as mild inconvenience. Either the narrative flows or it doesn’t.

The safe opens.

Inside, my fingers close around the handle of a small-caliber pistol, as promised. Guns are something that happened in that time I wasn’t paying attention and are honestly kind of petty when you have the ability to throw fireballs with your mind, so I have to admit to a kind of broad-spectrum ignorance as to their function. Sigmund mentioned bullets being in the filing cabinet, but I’ve got no idea where that might be, and fumbling around in the dark trying not to run into the Thing I Can’t See isn’t exactly my idea of fun.

Besides, now that I’m thinking about it, I’m not really sure I want the humans carrying firearms in the first place. David’s excuse for the weapon was taking up target shooting as a kind of therapy after Lynne’s death.

The real reason? Well. It didn’t happen. Because Sigmund.

And why am I in here again? Oh, right. Because I’m a sucker, that’s why.

Well, fuck that shit. I’ve done Sigmund’s dare and it’s not my fault I can’t get to the filing cabinet. He’ll just have to deal. This is good enough.

Getting out of the room is much easier than getting in. I vault over the desk—the tips of my horns brush up against something soft on the ceiling but I try to ignore it—and take the two strides back to the door. The handle turns easily, and the Wyrdsight explodes back into something useful as I step out into the corridor saying, “Got the gun, but no-go on the amm—”

Then cut myself off. Because there’s no one here.

No one at all.

Fuck.