It’s a different hallway.

“Sig? Sigmund?”

He’s not here. Even with blurred Wyrdsight I can tell that much, the door to the study having opened back out into a much deeper part of the Bleed than it opened in from. Very deep, in fact, down past the mist and isolation, into the blood and bile.

“David?” I try, just on the off chance. He’s not here either, but that doesn’t mean I’m alone. The hallway carpet squelches under my feet, and my outstretched claws leave wet, glistening grooves in the walls as I walk toward the staircase. The house doesn’t like that much; I can hear the wheeze in its breath at the wounds but fuck it. I’m well past the mood of being nice.

There’s light coming from the staircase, red and flickering, accompanied by the greasy smell of rancid flesh, slowly roasting. Peering over the landing, I can see huge swathes of downstairs are on fire, and they don’t look like they plan on being in any other state any time soon. I try to calm it, but it doesn’t listen. Fire at all in Niflhel is unusual, but when it does take root it’s Múspell all the way down. And the fires of Múspell burn eternal.

They’re also hot, one of the few fires that can burn me, and the memory of the one other—of Baldr’s hands searing on my skin—sends me back a step.

The last thing I told Sigmund was to head to the LB building. It’s both the literal and figurative heart of town and the bastion of my temporal power. The Great Church of Me. Even deep in the Bleed it should still provide sanctuary for my allies, at least while I’m still alive. I hope. I also hope Sigmund has remembered this was the plan and has decided to execute it with or without my involvement. Traversing the Bleed will be tough for him alone, but he’s a smart boy and Sigyn always was a warrior, back when she thought no one was watching. No one’s watching now, so the most I can do is pray to whatever it is gods pray to that they make it, and hope like Hel I can meet them there. This part of Niflhel is dangerous, even for me, doubly so with Baldr on the loose. He was stuck in this place for a thousand years. Somehow, I get the sneaking suspicion he didn’t spend all that time pining in his room.

I still need to think of a way to kill him. I can rip out his heart with my claws if I have to, but I doubt Baldr is just going to open his shirt and present me with the opportunity.

I’ve got another problem. It’s more of a niggling suspicion, really. A half-formed notion I’m forgetting something, or maybe never knew it in the first place. And it’s not like I was all friendly like with Baldr Back in the Day or anything like that—I was Dad’s Bad Brother from Before He Settled Down and, ergo, not considered Healthy for the Children—but something about the version I’ve seen recently has just felt . . . wrong. Off. Baldr was a good kid. I remember, because it used to make me retch how sweet the coddled little shit used to be. I didn’t think he had a mean bone in his entire body. This new Baldr, though . . .

Or maybe not. Maybe a thousand years in Hel really does change a man.

Maybe I have a way of finding out. Maybe I need to get down this fucking flight of stairs first.

The noise starts up when I’m about halfway down: a wet, fleshy smacking coming from underneath the boards. The door rattles with each impact, as if something on the other side is throwing itself against the wood, over and over again. Before, higher up in the Bleed, it’d felt pitiful, abandoned, alone. Here, it feels like rage. Like hate. It’s not coherent enough to use the door handle, and not strong enough to break the door by force. Yet. I’m fairly certain I don’t want to be around when it is.

Keeping close to the far side of the hallway and away from the roaring fire in the living room, it soon becomes obvious that I won’t be getting out the front door. That picture of Mum? Yeah, well, apparently she’s not keen on things leaving her roost. The door blinks at me with one huge, pus-filled eye, and wet, ropey tongues flail in my direction, but thankfully it doesn’t have much reach. Gun still in hand, I shoot at it. The first shot—not bullets, just will that burns like magma—goes wide and buries itself in pale flesh the approximate color of the house’s walls. Something black and oily squirts from the hole, and I have to jump back to avoid the splash. The motion, ironically, corrects my second shot. I really have pretty piss-poor aim, meaning doormum gets hit right in its hideous giant pupil. The eye pops with a wet sound, more black gunk spraying out in all directions, and for a moment the entire house shakes as it screams. I scream, too, mostly because I’m now covered in horrible goo. Horrible, flammable goo, if the reaction of the fire in the lounge room is anything to go by.

Well, that was unsuccessful. Doormum is pissed and I need a shower, and I’m still not any closer to leaving the house.

I’m going to have to go out via the back door. This is not a fantastic option on the narrative metaphor scale, but it’s either that or jump out a window. And I hate picking shards of glass from my skin. They’re so itchy.

The Sussmans’ back door is located in the kitchen. Since the dining room is also on fire, I’ll need to route past the staircase door to get there, which means braving the thump-thump-whine monster beneath.

I do this, jumping between patches of light like a child afraid of shadows, eventually making it into the kitchen in a gore-slicked three-point glide across the floor.

Awesome. Go me.

The back door to the house is a wall of sliding glass just behind the breakfast bar. It’s maybe three meters away. The light is weak and sickly but, contrasted against the midnight outside, it’s turned the entire rear of the kitchen into one huge, dingy mirror, broken only by the prison-bar slats of the Sussmans’ hideous vertical blinds. I skirt my way toward the exit, a sense of unease shivering across my horns, causing the feathers on my head and arms to stand on end.

There’s something I’m missing.

I have one claw on the door handle when I realize what it is: The Noise from Under the Stairs has stopped. Has been stopped, in fact, since I passed it in the hallway. Only a few seconds, but . . .

I look up, into the dim mirror of the sliding glass door. My own ruined face is there, my faintly glowing eyes wide in animal terror, and behind that, inches above my feathers, inches behind my head, so quiet but so close now that I can feel it, hangs a single, glowing eye.

(draugadróttinn)

I drop, rolling to the side and around one-eighty degrees as I do so. When I come back up in a crouch, the lights flicker twice, then snap off with the sound of blowing bulbs. Silhouetted in front of me, between the dark of the kitchen and the fire in the dining room is . . . a shape. Or shapes, maybe. That red eye and what might be the outline of a broad-brimmed hat and a ragged cloak. The rest is filler. Shifting. And I have half a second to leap sideways again before something long and sharp and rusted streaks out of the shadow with the sound of screaming metal. It hits into the back door like an ice pick—the glass crazes, but doesn’t smash—before pulling back just as fast. It doesn’t occur to me that the shadow might have two of the things until I see a second one headed toward my chest. I dodge again, diving and rolling forward, this time, back into the kitchen. But I’m too slow, and when the spike slashes across my biceps, it burns.

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The pain makes me stumble, and I fall to the tiles, clutching my bleeding arm. I don’t have time to recover. The kitchen island is between me and the shadow-thing, and I can hear it chittering and whirring as it moves across the floor. I slide myself backward on my ass, kicking out with my feet to propel myself along, and, as my back hits the far wall, one long, metallic spike drives right through the feathers of my trailing tail.

The thing rounds the island, rearing above me for one horrible moment. It’s a draugr, I guess. At least, I hope it is. Because what it really looks like,

(brother)

is something I’m trying desperately not to think about.

I don’t know why it’s here. I don’t know how it’s here. It’s not something from the Sussmans. It’s not even from Miðgarðr.

It’s getting closer. Me cowering on the floor, wedged in the corner of wall between the hall and the dining room, isn’t helping.

The thing takes a few jerking steps forward, then rears back for another strike. I can’t let it wound me a second time. I’m tough and I heal, but draugar are diseased and my arm feels . . . wrong somehow. Numb. So I do the only thing I can think of on short notice: I slap at the thing’s legs with my tail.

It’s not a small tail, more dinosaur than cat, and the draugr’s legs are just more of those thin, rusted spikes. They’re great weapons, but they don’t give it great balance, and the tail swipe is enough to send it teetering like a drunk teen in stilettos. Its shriek is awful—the tortured sound of collapsing buildings—but I manage to scramble upright, bracing myself against the wall, and a well-placed kick sends the thing into the counter in a crash of pots and dinner plates.

It smells like lasagna. Rotten by the Bleed, but David’s not a bad cook, and there’s still something homey and appealing beneath the stench. I remember to lament the dinner that never was as I dash around the edge of the island and to the back door. I don’t bother wasting time with the handle, instead taking a flying leap into the already-weakened glass.

It probably shouldn’t work, even with momentum and weight and the cracked pane. It does, and I crash through and skid across the deck in a shower of razor-bright shards.

I lurch upright, and for a moment everything is the chime of falling glass, the hiss of bubbling blood, and the endless click-click-click as the draugr emerges from the kitchen.

It isn’t going to stop. Facing down its single eye and suddenly I’m more certain of this than I am of any other thing. Because this is no lost and whimpering draugr. This is the Dead God itself, free of living flesh, cheated of a soul, and come to collect, to finish what Ragnarøkkr started.

No one can outrun death. Not even gods.

That doesn’t mean I’m not going to try, leaping over the patio table and down onto grass that crumples like aluminum beneath my claws.

Behind me, I hear a guillotine scream, then the rattle as rusted crab legs make their way across the deck. Meanwhile, I’m already over the back fence, pain burning down my arm and itching in my skin.

In the next yard, I trip over a tricycle, landing hard enough on the ground that my teeth drive up like knives through my tongue. I howl in agony, claws scrabbling at my bloodied mouth, and the moment is enough for death to catch up once again, its shadow looming over me as, all around, a flock of raven-feathered valkyrjur begin to caw.

Hel is dead, and now her throne sits empty, ready for any with the will to take it. Perhaps, if Ásgarðr’s gates are closed to Odin, he has another Realm in mind to rule. And, if so, what then of Loki? Blood-bound red right hand of the Allfather, and it was good, once. Back when we were young, back before crowns and titles, queens and heirs. It could be like that again, in blood and dark and cunning, the two of us against the Realms.

No breath, no heartbeat. I’m already half dead. Why not let the bastard finish the job? At least then we’d be together.

Above me, the Dead God rears. Behind it, through the endless darkness of the Bleed, a set of Star Wars curtains slowly rots.

“Fuck!”

My arm aches, the slow misery of a grave. A malaise of the soul made flesh.

And then David’s gun is in my hand again, the stillness of the Bleed torn open as I pull the trigger. Once, twice, three times.

The first two shots miss, the second hits the Dead God in the “shoulder.” It screams, and I finish up by throwing the whole fucking gun at the rotting thing’s shadowed face.

That misses, too, but meanwhile I’ve scrambled onto all fours, over the rusting tricycle and past a decaying chicken coop. The Dead God’s limbs skewer the ground again and again, trying to pin me like a huge and tattooed moth, but I’m fast in this form, and all they manage is to clip a few more feathers.

Once upon a time, Odin made his choice. Tonight, I make mine.

I jump over one fence, then another, then a third, Dead God and his corpse eaters screaming in my wake, my very own Wild Hunt.

No one can outrun death. But some of us can cheat it, if only for a little while.

It takes me five backyards to find what I’m looking for: a huge, gaping pit of a swimming pool, oily black water lapping at the sides. I stop at the edge, hind claws curling around pavers, anchoring in the gaps between.

“Come at me, you rusted motherfucker!”

The Dead God does, lunging forward with a draugr’s mindless certainty. Odin’s dead memory, it seems, lacks the cunning of his living self, and, as it hurtles toward me, I leap. Up and over the back of it, kicking as I go.

When my foot connects, I feel gears, grinding under leather. Then I’m on the ground again, rolling across another brittle lawn as, behind me, I hear the sound of something heavy falling into water.

Spikes and metal. Not very good for swimming, as it turns out.

Not very good, but not impossible, and by the time I turn, the Dead God has already found purchase on the pavers around the pool’s edge. Snarling, I snap my fingers, and the entire roiling pit erupts in flames.

Fire is difficult to call in Niflhel. Difficult, but not impossible, and, when it comes, it’s Múspell all the way.

The Dead God gives another girder-tearing shriek as flames lick along the wide brim of its “hat.” In the next instant, it’s vanished beneath the water.

I don’t stay around to watch it drown. The flames won’t keep it contained for long, particularly not when it finds the pool’s shallow end. The valkyrjur still circle overhead, watching, and I don’t have a lot of time. Just enough for a head start.

A head start means running, back through the yards and out into the street. No skittering click-click follows, and after a while even the sound of ragged wings is swallowed by the void.

When I finally get there, I see my car is gone from the Sussmans’ driveway. I decide this is a good sign, and that it means that Sigmund and David are driving to LB right this moment. Unfortunately, it also means I’m going to have to walk there in order to meet up with them. Or fly, except my wings have vanished and I’m not sure how to get them back (jumping up and down while flapping my arms is not effective). I’m almost confident the Sussmans will be safe by themselves—or with Nic, perhaps—in the LB building, but not quite confident enough to leave them there for longer than I have to. Besides, it’s the center of the city, the center of my power. When the final showdown comes, it’s going to be there. That’s the way these things work, that’s the way I’ll make them work, whatever the cost.

It’s while I’m staring at the Sussmans’ empty driveway that I hear the car.

I have just enough time to turn, feathers flattened and eyes wide, when a blinding flash of green bumper smashes into my calves, and everything explodes in pain.

Again.