CHAPTER 47: THE SORCERESS AND THE BEAST

Björn actually felt rather guilty when the dog didn’t come back. Shannon had seemed attached to the damn beast, and he knew that by losing it, he wasn’t gaining himself any favors.

And he did want her favor. As frustrating as it was, his desire to please her wasn’t entirely the Nótt Danzleikr. He, Nökkvi, Champion of Odin, wanted to curry the favor of a soft, peaceful scholar because he wanted her to like him. Blech. All because that one time she had looked down at him in total disdain, after talking about Cave Men and blow-up dolls, still left him cringing inside. Like he had failed some huge test, like he had taken some divine exam and he had been found lacking.

Björn snorted. Who cared if she liked him? She was his servant, in body and soul, from now until the gods finally destroyed themselves in Ragnarök. He didn’t need her to like him. She was just a pleb. A simple sorceress. A bystander in the wars of the gods. Older than him, but having spent as many lifetimes tucked away in a secluded hermitage as she had fighting wars or otherwise putting that power to good use. Odin had told him that much. That she ‘avoided conflict when she could,’ and to ‘be gentle with her.’

Not a great soul at all. A nobody. A handmaiden that Odin had given him to serve him. She should be trying to please him. He was the hero.

None of that seemed to change the fact that he was hoping the dog came back before the vampire did.

Sighing, Björn leaned back in the limo and did his best to stretch his legs. He hated being cooped up in a place where he couldn’t stretch his legs. If he couldn’t fully extend his knees, his mind automatically strayed back to those times he had been unable to stretch his legs in the past, and, in this life, those times had left indelible stains on his psyche, stains that wouldn’t be removed until he passed from this mortal coil and returned to Ásgarðr to await his next task in Odin’s hall of Valhöll.

Damn, but the woman was taking a long time. He started fidgeting with buttons inside the passenger’s compartment to amuse himself. With exploration, he found various cubbies tucked around the limo, and inside one, he found a pile of papers. Pulling it out, he frowned at it.

Handwritten, they appeared to have been there for some time. Sniffing at them, he caught the ancient scent of his vampire queen, before the seductive bite of her adulthood metabolism had given her that spiciness he found so alluring. Along with that soft, gentler smell of his mated soul, he caught the scent of dozens of other pre-puberty children, along with an adult female.

Björn squinted at the paper. He’d taught himself a very crude understanding of the language of this place, but the top of the uppermost paper was crowned with a bright red A, followed by the sign of addition. Björn frowned. A plus what? In one corner, it had Shannon’s name, as well as a date. Twelve years ago. His eyes painstakingly scanned the rest of the sheet, written in sloppy pencil, but he quickly became bored when he realized it was just a stupid story about a pretty sorceress princess falling in love with a beast. What idiotic nonsense. He shoved it aside and yawned, trying to stretch his legs again.

Glancing at the café, he saw the blood-webs of dozens of people within the walls, though like all things with the First Lands, there were so many bodies clumped together that it muddied his senses and he couldn’t get a clear picture. The whole place was too soft. In the Third Lands, complete strangers would never mingle in such masses. They would eat each other, then follow their backtrail to hunt down their children.

Stupid. Creatures of the First Realm were weak and stupid. They spent their time indulging in such idiocies as poetry and stories. He glanced at the aged sheaf of papers that had long ago been abandoned in the limo. Obviously, his vampire queen was trying again to channel that sorcerous nature into scholarly pursuits, instead of what she should have been doing—preparing herself to go to war.

Yes, Björn would have to cure her of those weak and stupid habits. He guessed it would probably take a few lifetimes, but eventually he would turn her into a warrior. Then she could work her magics for him while he butchered their enemies in glorious hand-to-hand combat.

Yes, that was why Odin had given him such a soft and squeamish scholar. To act as his support in the coming fights, to heal his otherwise mortal wounds, and to protect him from the magics of the enemy.

Damn he was getting bored. How long did it take to make a few cheeseburgers? This was ridiculous. If she’d even waited to listen to him before slamming the door in his face, he would have told her he wasn’t going to eat them anyway. He hated the taste of bread. It felt like sticky paste in his mouth, and had the flavor of rot. And the cheeseburgers themselves… Not only did the smell of cheese make him so disgusted he wanted to throw up, but flesh seared by fire? What idiot thought that ridiculousness up? Fire was too precious to waste on flesh. It was to ward off seductors and to keep one’s children from dying of cold.

Grimacing, Björn glanced again at the sheaf of papers on the seat beside him. Sighing, because he had nothing better to do, he picked it up.

It started out with a beast capturing a girl on the field of battle. Björn made a grunt of approval. That, at least, was interesting, though the beast was definitely lacking in overall technique. The girl was a pale-skinned little sorceress, some weird little twit who had a phobia of sunlight. The beast, apparently some crossbreed of Bengal tiger—whatever that was—bested her in single combat and took her home with him as a prize. Perhaps the vampire had taste, after all.

Then Björn read on to discover that, no, the Bengal tiger didn’t get to ravish her appropriately for his new station as her lord, and in fact ended up capering to her every whim like an idiot before they both fell in love and pecked each other on the cheek. Then, thus bethrothed, they went and fought an evil lord that was killing peasants with his vast unstoppable army of undead knights. Better, Björn thought. But nobody died, and everyone quickly became friends. Björn narrowed his eyes. The story ended quite unsatisfactorily, with the girl taming the tiger and teaching him to bake bread.

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Disgusted, he threw the rubbish aside. He squirmed in the seat again and wedged his legs out as far as they could go, trying not to think about the last times he had been thusly hampered. He hated cars. Hated them. They were so unnecessary, just another way the First Landers had of making themselves soft. Instead of, say, walking a mile to the store, they would drive there. A mile! It was no wonder his kind did so well in the First Realm, when some fool made the mistake of summoning them with a blood-binding. They weren’t spoiled by technology and abundance.

Björn fidgeted some more, but after a thorough inspection, he found no other hidden compartments containing ancient, ridiculously cheap entertainment. He yawned, perused the various lights and switches, and started flipping them randomly.

Time continued to pass and neither the vampire nor her dog returned. Björn watched the other cars come and go, and, except for the dark SUV parked off to one side of the establishment, they tended to drive off within twenty to thirty minutes.

It was only after the fourth or fifth hour passed that Björn started to wonder if the vampire had tricked him. Flew the coop. Parked him in broad daylight, switched out cars, and purchased a ride to some other part of the country from a total stranger. What if the whole thing about Masaaki had been a ruse? Björn hadn’t heard it, after all. She’d been out at the car alone… What if she had been planning on how to get rid of him?

Furious, Björn slammed his fist into the top of the closest cooler, punching a hole through the plastic and foam. Of course she had. She wanted nothing to do with him. She was the scholar, who thought her way through every battle, ‘avoiding conflict.’ She’d locked him up in the back of a car with plenty of meat to keep him alive until nightfall, then bolted. He’d forgotten Odin’s warning. Damn it!

Glaring at the café, Björn calculated how much it would hurt to cross the parking-lot and get inside. Too much. If the sun didn’t actually just roast the flesh right off his bones, he wouldn’t be walking by the time he reached the front door. He’d be crawling, if he was really lucky. Damn!

Diners came and went, and Björn began to watch the sun’s slow arc across the sky, his fury building like a furnace within. Odin’s warning to be gentle or no, this was the last straw. He would teach the wench to respect him. Tricking him into getting into a car, then leaving it where there was no escape from the sun… How could he have not seen it coming?

The sorceress was good. She’d deceived him from the start. Planned, prepared, and executed, all right under his nose, while he was completely oblivious. He yanked the frilly blue hairband off the nape of his neck, snapped it in half, and hurled its pieces through the divider window, then pulled the obnoxiously bright shirt from his body and shredded it, then stuffed it, too, into the driver’s compartment. It made him feel better, but only temporarily.

The smell of dead meat and stale dog drool, heated by the ever-present nuclear oven that was the sun and mixed with the scent of preserved and oiled skin, began to nauseate him. Björn adjusted himself in the uncomfortable human clothing, then picked up one of the pathetic eating utensils she had left with him, ‘just in case,’ and began scratching designs into the glass. He stopped when he realized he was actually scratching away whatever dark, protective surface was shielding him from the sun.

Bored, Björn read her insipid story again. He still didn’t understand why the tiger-thing let her dictate terms of her surrender. That was just stupid. A real warrior would have told her how it was going to be, and she would have accepted it, or gotten her head ripped off.

He put the story down and once again glanced at the sky. Hours. He was stuck for hours as she escaped. She would have a head-start, and could do something horrible, like hop a flight to China, and Björn would have to spend the next hundred years finding her again. Freyja was taunting him, not allowing him to enjoy Odin’s gift, giving her opportunities to escape the inevitable.

Why did the days in this wretched place have to be so long? It was taking forever for the sun to cross overhead.

Because he had nothing better to do, he picked up the story a third time. The stupid, balless beast even let her sleep in his bed. Alone. While he slept on the floor.

Snorting, Björn wondered if all First Landers had such unrealistic fantasies. Of course the warrior was going to take what was his.

Be gentle with her, Odin had said. She will not be won easily. Björn had assumed he meant in bed, which was why he’d only bitten her a little, instead of taking out a few chunks of hide to consummate their union in barghest fashion. Besides, once a warrior took what he’d conquered, she’d been won. So no need to be gentle after that.

Björn read the story again. The sorceress must have cast a spell on him, for the beast to be that stupid. Girls didn’t respect kindness. They didn’t admire a kiss on the cheek. They revered strength and force. The beast had won her, dammit. In fair combat. He shouldn’t be putting up with her naïve and virginal bullshit.

The story frustrated him. Björn tossed it aside and opened the cooler he’d broken and began entertaining himself by sinking his fangs into tepid flesh, thinking of how, within just a few more hours, it would be her flesh. The fat, usually soft and juicy, was hard and coagulated. It was all Björn could do to choke it down. He emptied a cooler, then was halfway through another before he remembered the dog’s dilemma.

“Shit.” Björn muttered. He then spent the next three hours trying not to think about the movement of his bowels. He fidgeted in the seat, trying to entertain himself with thoughts of how good those humans out in the parking lot would taste, once he could get out of the car. Then he realized that more thoughts of food, at this point, was not going to help his situation. To distract himself, he started putting every ounce of his focus into analyzing the story, word-for-tasteless-word. There once was a great warrior who sought his true love…

What dimwitted female crap. Björn poured over it nonetheless, because the pressure in his colon was beginning to put him in a cold sweat. He found, when he read the mindless drivel, he was able to get angry enough at the stupid beast that it allowed him to focus on something other than the building strain within.

It seemed so simple to him. The great warrior had his true love. He didn’t have to woo her. But that’s exactly what the fool did…and the sorceress rewarded him with a kiss on the cheek and a loaf of bread. So much work and so little payoff—it just didn’t seem worthwhile to Björn. Especially since she was already his.

By the time the sun had finally slipped low enough to cast the limo into the shade, Björn had read the story enough times he could quote it by memory, and had gone through an entire range of emotions over its inane contents, the latest—and most startling—being the briefest flash of compassion for the sorceress. She’d been taken from everything she knew, by the hands of a beast who could destroy her, and had found the courage to stand up to him despite her fear…

So yeah, maybe she did deserve a little respect in his book. Hell, more than the freakin’ unmanly pussy of a beast, that was for damned sure.

Then the sun slipped beneath the horizon and Björn threw the useless story aside and shoved the limousine door open.