CHAPTER 76: CARNAGE
Björn woke face-down on a gravel riverbank, icy water lapping at his legs and abdomen, the noon sun blazing down on his unprotected skin, his head still pounding from hitting the underwater boulder. He gagged, and water rushed from his lungs where there should have been air. He coughed until he could breathe again, then lay, panting, stunned that he yet again alive when he should be dead.
Cursed, he thought. Cursed to undeath.
Could he, somewhere along his twisted path, have become a draugr without knowing it? The spirits of such creatures were often unaware of their transitions, their minds filled with only greed and hate.
…and he had just broken his runestone and attacked the Valkyrie.
But he had never thought himself to hate with such vehemence that it would bring him back from the dead.
If I were a draugr, I wouldn’t hurt this much. Groaning, Björn lifted his head and looked around.
The river was completely unfamiliar to him, a cluster of sinuous gray waterways that snaked together over a massive delta of sand and dirt, dotted with patches of trees and twisted piles of driftwood, much bigger than the river rushing past the Deshka Landing. He blinked, wiping sand from his face. The last thing he remembered was being trapped on the bottom of the mighty Susitna River, struggling against the powerful current as it dragged him, rolling along the bottom, for miles…
Because the sun hurt and he could smell his own charred flesh from unknown hours of being exposed to it, Björn groaned and crawled up the riverbank and into the woods beyond. There, as the shadows cooled him, he tried to recall what had happened to him. He vaguely remembered a fight, then some sort of explosion…
Jessie. But, remembering that strange skinny body, the slightly taller build, the black knotwork tattoos…
Was that really Jessie? He had seemed…different. More confident. More masculine. More sensual. Less…mundane. Even, perhaps, more evil. Remembering the couch-man’s timid, jiggling countenance, and how wildly it contrasted the man’s brief seconds of smug knowing right before he’d punched him, Björn had to wonder if Jessie was draugr. He certainly had experienced an unfortunate end, but Björn hadn’t seen the material obsessions in life that were associated with draugr in death. In fact, Jessie of Nowhere had insisted on paying for everything, despite the fact that Björn could have just taken it.
Björn shook himself, allowing the shadows of his hiding place to refresh him. Jessie could wait—the first thing he needed to do was figure out where he was. Shannon, his mate gifted to him by the gods, was alone and untended. And he had no idea how much time had passed since Jessie’s funeral. He could have been rolling along that river bottom for days and not known it until his body finally surfaced and his lungs could spit out the water they’d been carrying.
Standing to get a better view over the forest shrubbery, Björn surveyed his surroundings. He grimaced when he realized he was he had woken on one of the many islands of the river delta, not actually at the river’s edge. He squinted out at the vast gray expanse of cold, swiftly-moving glacial runoff. The idea of getting back in the water to reach the other side didn’t particularly appeal to him, since his Third-Lander body was too heavy to stay above the surface, and the river was much broader here than it was at the Deshka Landing. Perhaps he could wait for one of those flat-bottomed Firstlander ‘boats’ to come ripping up the river on its iron horses.
Then another, much more important thing occurred to him.
Jessie had beat him in a fight. A couch-man. A solver of problems. A scholar.
True, it had been an ambush, but Jessie had merely punched him, once, and Björn had lost consciousness like one of those beardless, fruit-drinking weaklings that Shannon had showed him at the ‘Mall’.
Björn felt his eyes widen in horror as he considered that. First losing to a Fury, then to a group of Valkyrie, then to a couch-man? His manliness was now fully in question.
True, he was trapped in the body of a beast, which limited his capabilities, but somehow Jessie—pale, jiggly Jessie—had transformed into a creature capable of delivering a single blow with the power to unman him.
Which meant it wasn’t Jessie. It couldn’t have been Jessie. Jessie was the weakling. Björn couldn’t have lost.
Which meant it had to be Pestilence. Or that Fury, using another guise. Or maybe even Gunvor, sneaking up on him when his back was turned. Yes, that was more likely. One of Freyja’s wing-footed hórur. He’d just been in such grief and shock that it looked like Jessie. Somehow.
He scrunched his brow as he tried to remember the face of his opponent. It hadn’t been right—the tattoos alone were unlike Jessie, more like the symbols of a magus of the Night Court, but full-body like a barghest’s stripes instead of the magus’s deliberate power points of the temples, chest, or hands. Jessie’s book-licking intelligence had still been vivid in the doppelganger’s eyes—now a vivid green instead of the dull gray-green of before—but he’d been leaner, almost like the stinking, greasy, meatless monks one wouldn’t even waste jaw strength on eating up in the Himalayas. And the confidence… That had been wrong. The doppelganger had oozed a strong, vibrant masculinity, completely unlike the timid cuckolded burger-flipper that Björn had grown to view as a brother. And considering how often Jessie ranted against violence, the punch itself had been strange, almost as if it had come from a Fury.
So it had to be Pestilence. Pestilence could take any shape, any form…
It was the only explanation for why Björn lost that fight.
No, he reminded himself, it hadn’t been a fight, it had been an ambush, and Pestilence had taken that moment to introduce false memories, punching through his chest, flooding him with power, making him think it was Jessie. That was why his memories of the face were wrong. It had been a mask. And now Pestilence could do as he wished with Shannon and her delightful stud hound. Damn the Valkyrie’s winged feet! They’d distracted him, and even now Shannon’s mind might be twisted, warped… Or perhaps she wouldn’t remember him at all! Pestilence was adept at manipulating or removing memories altogether.
Which meant all the ‘concessions’ and ‘compromises’ he had made would be for naught because one could not trust the mind or memories of one corrupted by the patron of disease.
And yet he could do nothing, trapped here as he was on this deserted river island, hemmed in by deep, too-swift water. He did a circuit around it, but the island had no driftwood from which to make a raft, no way to aid in a crossing, so he had no choice but to wait for a passing boat as the sun continued its slow journey overhead. The longer he waited, the more his anger for his helplessness in the situation boiled out of his body and flooded the ground around him, freezing the trees, mosses, and shrubbery nearby to crystalline rigidity that shattered as he paced back and forth under the birch trees.
Björn was working himself up into a rage when he heard the telltale engine buzz of a ‘riverboat’ headed down the Susitna towards him. He immediately parted the foliage to meet the boat on the shore, snapping the frozen undergrowth away into thousands of tiny crystal shards as he hurried down to the sandy beach with a roar.
He was so angry, in fact, that the sun’s pain was a mere irritation, his skin only smoking a little bit when he waved down the two older men in blocky red duckbilled hats riding up the river in their little green ‘boat.’ They pulled out of the main river reluctantly, turning to talk to each other, and their eyes went wide as they saw him up close.
“Well hey there sir,” one of them said, in almost a stutter, “did you get caught in a forest fire or something?” They were looking at the island’s paltry tufts of trees for evidence of wildfire.
“I’m fine,” Björn said, wading out to the boat and grabbing it by the prow. “Take me to the Deshka Landing.”
“Yeah, uh, we’re actually headed the opposite—”
Björn climbed into the boat, his body so heavy it almost upset the flimy metal bathtub. “You will take me to the Deshka Landing or I will eat you,” Björn said, smiling to show the humans his predator’s smile. The two men immediately stopped talking. The man driving the metal horses swallowed hard, put the engine in reverse, and got them headed back up the river in silence.
Twenty minutes into the trip, one of the men cleared his throat and said, “That looks painful.”
“What does?” Björn barked, tearing his attention from the swirling gray route ahead of them and snapping it to the small, fat-bellied man.
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The man swallowed and pointed at Björn. Frowning, Björn looked down, and it took him a moment to realize the man was pointing at his smoking skin.
“I’ve learned to ignore it,” Björn said, returning his attention to the river ahead. “How long until we reach the Deshka Landing?”
The two men glanced at each other. “Uhhh,” the one driving the metal horses said. His eyes slid up and down Björn’s great body and swallowed again. “With the added…weight…about two hours.”
“This is only a forty horse,” the man seated on the bench closest to Björn said hastily. “We’re honestly lucky we’re moving at all.”
Björn grunted. “Give me your jacket.” His skin was starting to itch, now that he thought about it, and the smell of burnt flesh was starting to annoy him.
“Oh we got a spare, here.” Entranced by the smoke coming off Björn’s body, the closest man pulled a big, padded orange vest from under the bench and handed it to Björn. The orange vest was much too bulky for comfort, but at least it blocked some of the sun.
“Is this what passes for armor nowadays?” Björn demanded, rolling his shoulders where the jacket’s tiny puffed-up arm-holes pinched him. “It’s tight.” He wasn’t about to show his ignorance and say that it wouldn’t stop an arrow, however, because Shannon had made it clear to him that the world—and its technologies—had changed dramatically since his time with the Víkingar.
The two plaid-clad men in the boat glanced at each other. “Uh…just needs to be adjusted…” the closest man said. He swallowed hard and gingerly—almost as if he expected Björn to break his arms for the attempt—reached out to start adjusting straps on the garishly colored orange vest until it fit less snugly around Björn’s shoulders.
“Now it’s loose,” Björn complained. “And it doesn’t cover the chest.”
“You’re supposed to snap it shut in front,” the guy said, reaching to do so.
“Leave it,” Björn said, batting his hand away. “Too restrictive. If I must fight Pestilence, I want my arms free.”
The man opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but a quick head-jerk from the hairy human driving the ‘boat’ made him cut off his words with a cough. “You got it, buddy.” He leaned back to give his copious stomach extra room, looking vaguely uncomfortable.
Time passed. Björn tried not to think about how hungry he was now that he had—yet again—risen from the dead.
Eventually, the bearded man closest to him leaned forward over his copious stomach again and, almost timidly, lowered his voice and said, “Uh…so uh…what are you?” Instantly, he winced and backtracked. “I mean, not really my business, you don’t wanna tell me that’s fine.”
Björn turned and squinted down at the human who was wasting his time. “I am a former warrior of Odin trapped in the body of a barghest of the Third Lands, apparently doomed to the life of a draugr if my current state of unlife is any indication.”
The man leaned back, looking him over appreciatively. “I was gonna say necromancer.”
Björn made a full-body jerk of disgust. “Those ballless skull-faced sadists with their cold, undead harems? Do I look like I fuck frigid corpses to you?”
The man’s bushy white eyebrows went up. “Uh, no sir.”
“Let Loki fuck corpses. Like any good son of Odin, I like my women warm.” Björn made a disgusted snort and let a little bit of the Thirdlander chest-rattle escape in his displeasure at being compared to a magi with a death-fetish.
Then Björn remembered he was no longer one of Odin’s Chosen and he felt himself deflate. Not Odinson, cursed to undeath, doomed to chase a woman who wanted nothing to do with him, trapped in the body of a beast…
It just didn’t make sense. Why had the gods cursed him this way? What had he done to deserve such injustice?
Then, as it always did, it struck him with the impact of Thor’s mighty hammer—he’d abandoned Valhöll. He’d dropped Skofnung and walked away. Of course Odin hated him. He was serving as an unlucky example to those fools who might do the same.
Then he remembered Gunfor’s scream into his face as he sizzled on he blade. “A truce was called—you remember?!” She had made it sound as if Odin and Freyja had come to terms…and the union between himself and his mate would seal the fate of the realms.
Not exactly what he remembered, but then again, the Valkyrie were dishonorable mind-fucking wenches who needed to die screaming on a man’s blade a thousand times in a thousand different ways to make up for the depraved things they had done to him and his brothers.
Unbidden, he heard her desperate cry, “Your fight with Pestilence!”
Björn hadn’t exactly considered ripping off the bug’s head as a ‘fight,’ but more foreplay.
Foreplay. Despite himself, Björn jerked as the word sparked a strange memory of himself in his Odinson form, standing in an ancient chapel, looking down at the blood spattered across the dirt floor, surrounding the meager pile of ashes within the pentagram. He remembered he was supposed to have a partner, supposed to have someone at his side, but he had left Freyja’s weakling behind, not about to be weighed down by a woman. “No, Nökkvi, don’t go alone…!” He remembered closing the portal without her, hunting down the scene of the ritual on foot. Björn remembered squatting, reaching down to touch the blood…
…and behind him, a voice, cool and confident. “They send a lone warrior to fight a magus? They must want you to get fucked. Consider this foreplay, my pet.” Björn had drawn Skofnung and swiveled, confident, ready to end the rogue magus, but the speaker had already closed the distance with an inhuman speed of no mortal magus, and surge of gold energy overwhelmed his mind, instead.
Björn twitched, the odd flash catching him off guard. Unwittingly, he remembered what Gunfor had told him. “…you were sent to stop him eight centuries ago after he killed one of Freyja’s chosen…”
But that was impossible. He’d spent the last eight centuries banished to the darkness of the Third Realm as a beast for dropping Skofnung at Odin’s feet.
Almost immediately upon having that thought, he had another strange image flash across the front of his mind. Skofnung…falling at the booted feet of a stranger. A strange hand, picking it up with a rune-embroidered rag. Björn, helpless, dropping to his knees, the golden timepiece falling from his hand.
“Ah, you found it for me.” The pale-skinned man had retrieved the timepiece, twirling it around his finger by its chain as he smiled. “It has sentimental value, you understand.”
Björn remembered the man’s back as he walked away, Skofnung’s blade peeking from under his arm as he carried it.
But that was impossible. Björn remembered relinquishing his sword to Odin, he remembered leaving Valhöll and the never-ending battle of Hjaðningavíg because eventually they would want him to kill Eirik. He remembered…
Perhaps he simply had the order of the memories wrong. Perhaps he had lost Skofnung in a battle in the First Realm, then had retrieved it and returned it to Odin before abandoning Valhöll in shame.
Then the eerily cold, cruel words came to him like a whisper from the past, “What do you fancy, Odinson? Vampire? No, too fancy. And a Jötnar would be an improvement. But a seductor is just cruel… How about a barghest?”
But he remembered Odin making him a barghest. He remembered Odin reaching forth with a gloved hand…
Odin, Björn realized with a start, didn’t wear gloves.
But he clearly remembered Odin’s black leather riding gloves as they touched his temples, remembered the gold energy flowing through him as Odin chanted his incantation…
But Odin didn’t need incantations to make his magic. Odin was magic.
The contradictions threatened to unspool his mind into a tangled knot of insanity. Grimacing, Björn turned his thoughts back to that of his mate in order to keep from going mad. If Pestilence had been the one to punch him in the boat, Björn didn’t have much time. Every second he waited was a chance he gave the demigod to destroy her like he had destroyed so many others…
By the time the riverboat rounded the final corner of the Susitna and Björn could see the tranquil greenish waters of the Deshka Landing cradled by towering gravel embankments ahead, Björn’s mind had worked itself into a frenzy. When they grew closer to the ramp and he smelled blood, however, he lost what little control he had. He jumped out of the boat and charged up the gravel strip to the boat launch area where he had left Mardöll.
Immediately, the smell of sun-tainted blood and rotting viscera assailed his senses in an unmistakable blast. The tables of alcohol were still where he had left them, but the cloth tents overhead were shredded, the bottles broken and scattered, the reek of mead and whiskey almost drowning out the stink of fear and bullets and blood.
His woman’s blood.
Sure, he could smell the blood of others—many others—but it was Shannon’s blood that stopped him cold. He found her chair, torn to pieces by bullets and strewn across the gravel in pieces, the once-colorful canvas colored in brown stains. Björn squatted and picked up a piece. There was no mistake the heady smell of her blood. Old blood.
He stood, glancing around. More bloodstains covered the torn and twisted tents and chairs. Bullets had torn up the tables, the booze, the rocks…
Another waft of putrefying dead flesh caught Björn like a Valkyrie’s boot to his gut. Tense, he looked up the gravel hill, where bloodspatter and bullet holes marked the road back up to the open-air boat-storage lot of the Deshka Landing. With dread in his soul, now, Björn followed the smell of his mate’s blood to the plateau above. He found spatters of it here and there, weaving back and forth up the hill, a rich and carnal warmth surrounded by splashes of weak and terror-permeated human blood. The ground was riddled with the smell of bullets and old gunfire. And fear. Lots of fear.
At the top of the hill, Björn found the rows of boats torn and toppled, the spatters of blood stark against the sides of fiberglass river vessels and aluminum barges. And the bullets… So many bullets. They had torn the metal into unrecognizable shreds.
His mate’s blood followed a path through the storage area and back to the gated entrance. The gates had been torn asunder, the small store beside the broken barriers now a smoldering ruin.
Out on the road, blocking entrance to the Deshka Landing, was a familiar black SUV, upside down on the asphalt—now a burned-out husk. Beyond that, yellow caution tape kept out passerby.
Getting another hint of his mate’s blood on the wind, Björn twisted and followed her path as it wove into the forest to the right of the gate, abandoning the road to plunge into the trees. He found her blood more readily, here, covering the plants she had struggled through.
The stink of bodies hit him again from straight ahead, much stronger now, and Björn hurried his pace, slapping the bloodstained alders and willows out of his face as he stumbled through the thick forest undergrowth.
And then, in a sudden thinning of the forest, the alders gave way to birch, the forest floor opened up, and Björn stumbled to a halt, stunned by what he saw.
Corpses littered the forest floor in haphazard heaps. Dozens of them, the countless bodies stacked atop each other in piles, dressed in both black and civilian colors, many with their bodies torn apart, their organs exposed and covered in flies.
And there, amidst the carnage, he found her.
Or, rather, what was left of her.
Björn stumbled to a halt in the middle of the destruction, unable to see past the single pool of blood at his feet. Her blood. So much blood it soaked the mosses underneath a solid crimson that still hadn’t dried, the silver of her magic still clear to his Thirdlander sight.
Too much blood. A death’s worth of blood.
And, despite the depression still compressing the mosses where it had lain for untold hours or even days, Shannon’s body was gone.