Loki waited like an impatient lover while the human who called himself Gangleri took his ride on Sleipnir, far above the Eyjafjallajökull glacier in Iceland. Sharp black rocks, fresh from the eruption only a few years before, crested the snow. The northern lights danced across the sky, waves of deep green hiding the stars, reflecting off the white below. Only a sliver of a moon hung in the sky. It would disappear on the longest night in a few night’s time.
Loki had to be ready by then.
His first step was nearing completion. Loki couldn’t help his joy. He had a plan, and it was working.
He’d raised shield maidens to match Odin’s. An army that couldn’t be defeated. Paid his debt to the storyteller by giving him a ride on Sleipnir.
And now, he was about to get a fortune told and to make a new fate for the world.
Gangleri laughed heartily as he flew through the air. Loki let the human have his joy, not trying to curtail him. He fancied himself a true Norseman: he spoke the old language and tried to live the old ways, without electricity or running water.
He was crazier than most, but only Loki understood the true cause. Gangleri had a gift rare among humans: he didn’t see only the fate of the single world, but of many worlds, all up and down Yggdrasil, the world tree.
Not only were all fates for all worlds not the same, they weren’t all equal.
Some things didn’t change, no matter how many worlds and fates Loki had cast. For example, Baldur always died. This caused Frigg enough grief that the gods bound Loki to the rock—poison constantly dripping on his face, no hope of reprieve, not until the world ended.
Loki always died as well, during Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods.
However, in other fates, some of the gods survived.
Like Odin.
It would be easy enough for Loki to change bodies with Odin during the last battle. Loki changed shapes easily enough that it wasn’t too difficult to twist that ability into a body-swapping spell, to make another take his place.
This would ensure that if Odin’s body survived the twilight, Loki, inside Odin’s body, would live to tell the tale.
Swapping one world’s fate for another—that spell took Loki a lot longer to find.
Once Loki had found it, he dithered like an un-bloodied man before his first battle, seeking the courage to make the leap.
To grow tired enough of the poison dripping onto his face. To long for the end, the twilight.
Particularly now that he had a foolproof way to survive.
Loki wasn’t bringing about the end of the world. Not really. The twilight was more about rebirth than death. Humans would survive. Gods would survive.
Loki would survive.
***
The human Gangleri knelt before the rune board, his hand clenching the sides hard. He still sang the last few verses of the fate he foresaw, his poem punctuated with guttural cries. The runes rattled as he shook from the force of Loki’s thrusts from behind him. Above them, the green lights still danced. Sleipnir nosed the snow from a discreet distance away.
Loki had his prophecy, finally. Gangleri had pulled the story out of the threads from the worlds he saw.
How Odin was still swallowed by Fenrir, the wolf. However, in this fate, he’d survived in the belly of the wolf, where he wasn’t dead or alive, not fighting his way out until after the world had gone into darkness and been born anew. Odin then walked with his sons, Baldur the fair and Holdur the blind, along the brand-new waters, beside the green fields where the golden playing pieces lay.
In this new world, Odin was called the skinny one, a reminder of his great battle between the worlds and inside the wolf, his skin hanging down like great folds of cloth. His sons ruled while Odin returned to walking the earth as he always had, a storyteller to the end.
Loki could live with this fate. Would live with it.
He just had to plant it firmly in this world now.
As Gangleri finished the last verse, Loki snaked one hand around to tug on the storyteller’s cock, still hard despite the cold and snow.
A few brief strokes drew out the human’s orgasm, flinging his precious come on the rune board, the hot liquid spattering the stones.
As Gangleri finished, Loki reached up and twisted his neck, hard, killing him instantly and sealing the fate he’d told.
Loki pulled out, shoving the body to the side, then tasted the air.
The fate was there, dazzlingly close, attached to the edges of this world.
But those edges were fraying fast. The fate would slip away, soon. He hadn’t succeeded. He could tell. But he hadn’t completely failed yet, either.
Loki had always known that he might need a second sacrifice. That killing the storyteller might not be enough.
With a sigh, he realized he’d been right.
Loki pulled out his knife, marveling at the irony of it all.
Odin had given his eye in order to see how to prevent Ragnarok, for the gods to bypass the twilight approaching them.
Loki would give an eye to make sure it happened according to his plan.
With a deep breath, he reversed the dagger and plunged the blade deep into the socket, twisting it, then jerking it back out again, plucking his own eye out.
Pain washed over Loki’s face as his blood dripped onto the pure white snow. Loki swiped some of it from his cheek and smeared it over the runes, mixing it together with the now cool come, whispering his spell again, twisting the fate of the world, opening up the door to something new.
As the new fate settled around Loki, he stood, his legs shaking. Sleipnir approached him slowly, as if Loki was now the wild animal.
“Take me to the frost giants,” Loki managed to moan, pain wracking his bones. “Take me to my kin.”
Loki would never admit to blinding himself. He’d tell the frost giants that Odin had half-blinded him this way.
They’d follow him easily into war now.
***
Hunter woke with that tingling sense of dread.
Damn it. Something bad was happening. Right now.
Hunter pushed at his senses, but he could barely expand his area of knowing beyond his mattress.
He’d like to blame the cold for that, but he knew the truth: he needed more of the Ghost Tripper drugs. He had his money for the month. He’d have to find Csaba.
The dread pulsed at Hunter again, like a long strobe. Red and urgent. Fighting his blue.
Hunter took a moment to gather himself together. The cold was frightful tonight. But it wouldn’t break. Not for a long while. Not something his senses had told him. Just common sense, the way the sky continued to pale under the force of the winds. How the world was slowing, more and more, as if it were dying.
It didn’t take two minutes for Hunter to move, to flow off his mattress, into his clothes, tie up his boots. Then he paused again. Where was the dread? It wasn’t close. He was going to have to feel his way through the streets, hunt it down, an endless game of Marco Polo, until he stumbled across it.
Hunter grabbed another scarf and wrapped it firmly around his face. He knew better than to think that it would hide his identity; the cameras were too good at recognizing movement and height as well as faces. It was mostly for warmth.
And if it hid him a bit, well, that was also good.
Shadows strung out on knife edges along the block. The buildings gathered themselves together on either side, as if fending off the cold. Few cars drove along the four-lane stretch of street beside him. The stars blinked aloof above his head.
Hunter went downtown, his worry overtaking his knowing.
Was it Cassie? Was she in some sort of trouble? That didn’t feel right, but it was all he could focus on. He knew that was wrong. His training had specifically covered this: how to see despite personal involvement. How to push past the emotion, get to the truth.
Because seeing was knowing and was always truth. Even when it wasn’t.
Hunter arrived too late for Csaba. He was already dying. Fear touched Hunter’s core. Where would he get his supply of Ghost Tripper now? Dusty didn’t like him much. He’d probably cut the drugs in half and charge him more. However, other dealers only sometimes had it.
Hunter would have to hunt down a new supplier. And soon.
Standing over Csaba was a non-man. Tall and blond, with eyes that blended into the night. He wore long robes, plain black and red, the kind Hunter had seen in a movie once.
The man used a black creature hanging from his neck to take something from Csaba as Csaba died. It wasn’t his soul, though it could be mistaken for that. Hunter had never seen anything like it before, but if he had to guess, he’d imagine it was Csaba’s will to fight, that instinct to carry on, no matter what the odds.
This strange non-man needed Csaba’s will more than his soul.
When the non-man turned toward the end of the alley, Hunter quickly stepped beyond the building, hiding in the shadows, though he knew it was useless. The non-man had seen him. Could find Hunter no matter where Hunter hid.
Still, the non-man passed the end of the alley and didn’t turn to Hunter, didn’t grab him. Merely stated, “I’ll come back for you later.” Then he carried on, his next appointment with destiny already set.
Hunter shuddered. He’d thought, when he’d met Cassie, that he’d met his fate.
How stupid for him to realize that she was just the one who would lead him to it.
Still, where was Cassie? Why hadn’t she stopped the non-man, or at least died trying?
Hunter’s area of knowing expanded in a dizzying explosion. He suddenly knew what was happening, what was going to happen, for everyone in a four-block radius—more than half a mile.
It was a gift from the non-man, granting Hunter his fondest wish—that he could see more. Farther.
The baby was due just a block away. The guy in 2A would lose his job on Friday. Of the three homeless men down the street, one would freeze by the end of the week, too drunk to move.
On and on the images poured in, mundane things, large life events, small twists that would change everything. Hunter reveled in it, head thrown back in an orgasmic rush.
This was what his life could be like. Again. If he just found the right combination of drugs.
When Hunter came back just to himself, the sun had already poked her head above the horizon and the blue sky was set to freeze anyone who dared face it.
The body still lay in the alley. It wouldn’t be long before Cassie found it.
Another fight broke out between the couple just two doors down. A delivery was about to be made. The little boy from three blocks away would guess right and pass on his test and go on for great things, maybe even saving other people’s lives.
The seeing started to drain away. Hunter clawed at it, trying to hold onto it. He held himself riged as his area of knowing decreased. First a few feet disappeared. The buildings were still clear. The sidewalks and those who passed by, no. Then the area shrank again.
Hunter shivered, the cold finally finding him. He’d been far too much in his head, he knew. It was dangerous, particularly in winter.
His blood brother might have come across his body, if he’d gone on for too much longer.
Still, Hunter stayed where he was, willing his blood to pump harder in his chest, to drive away the frost and the cold.
Cassie came out, a blue shadow against the black-and-white world. The cops came soon after that, questioning her.
She was good, though. The cops couldn’t see it. She had an essence they’d never grasp, not even the other one with abilities. They wanted to use her.
Hunter just wanted Cassie to come into her abilities and use them for herself.
When Cassie came out of the end of the alley, he approached her. She should have seen what was coming. Should have joined him in the ecstasy of sight. Should have stopped the non-man from taking Csaba’s will, his fighting spirit.
Cassie denied her heritage again. She refused to see.
Hunter melted away, cycling back through the city, his area of knowing dropping down further. He still traveled in the center of that circle, flowing down the sidewalk with an ease and a grace that few possessed. Cheery music blared out from the stores, mechanical and without soul, nothing to dance to.
Come the new moon, he and his blood brother would dance to the beat of his heart, music that strengthened the soul.
But she had to see before then.
So Hunter turned and turned again, flowing farther south, going to a particular coffee shop.
Though the sign was pale green and blue and black, Hunter still saw it in shades of gray. It lacked life on its own. Inside was fake wood and false cheer, particularly from the music they played.
Hunter might not stop a bomb from going off in here. Maybe he’d warn the people away, but that would be it.
Josh worked behind the counter with three others, all in soul-stealing uniforms of beige and brown. He smoothly stepped in front of all of them, though, to talk with Hunter directly. “What can I get started for you today?” he asked with a smile that belonged on a banker.
“I need more,” Hunter said bluntly. “Aerosol form, if you can.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Josh said slowly, his eyes wide with fear of being found out.
“The drugs have worn off. So has the gift from the non-man. I need more. For me. And my blood brother.”
“Oh, okay,” Josh said, giving a weak laugh. “Yes, the drugs. We all know about that.” He turned and ordered two drinks, using fancy terms Hunter had never bothered to learn.
“Can you cover me?” Josh asked one of the other employees before he took the drinks and walked out from behind the bar, leading Hunter to a back table.
“You’re not supposed to contact me here,” Josh said, whispering urgently over the table at Hunter.
Hunter took a sip of his drink at the too-small table. The chairs were solid, but uncomfortable. They’d be good in a fight, though. The drink was good. Sweet. Full of energy. Hunter would have to burn it all off before he slept through the rest of the afternoon.
No one watched them, but Hunter knew that the corporations had eyes everywhere.
“I need more of the Ghost Tripper,” Hunter explained. “Csaba is dead. Like the hookers.” He didn’t bother to explain the non-man. None of the doctors had ever been able to figure out exactly what it was that Hunter saw, the worlds and all the fates.
“I can’t get you drugs,” Josh insisted.
Hunter just stared at him. “I know you’re not working for the government,” he replied. “But you aren’t who you say you are.”
“Now you’re talking crazy talk,” Josh said, trying to defuse the situation.
“You’re a company scout,” Hunter said. “You’re trying to find wilds. Or wilds who could be nudged with just the right amount of chemicals. To prove that your drugs work.”
Josh just shook his head. “Not me.”
“Cassie is the best chance you have of proving that your drugs work,” Hunter insisted. “She’s been tested. Came up negative. But the test was wrong. She’s got abilities. And the only way to unlock them is through your drugs.”
“You have me confused with someone else,” Josh said, still shaking his head.
“There will never be another,” Hunter promised Josh, well aware that he could be lying. “She’s the one true blood brother I have. She’ll see not just this world, but all the others. And because she’ll have me, she’ll be able to handle it.”
Josh gave Hunter a piercing look. “Because you’ll be able to explain it,” he said slowly.
“Yes. She won’t be alone.” Of course, once she started seeing, she’d never be alone because of the ghosts, but Josh didn’t need to know that. “So I need more Ghost Tripper. In aerosol form, if you can get it.”
“What do you mean, aerosol form?” Josh asked, looking confused.
He was good at that, that practiced look, hiding his too-sharp eyes.
“It will be easier for Cassie’s first time if she can just inhale the Ghost Tripper,” Hunter explained. He kept his hands wrapped around the warm drink, willing the blood to move through them, to warm the rest of him as well.
“Won’t that be Cassie’s choice?” Josh asked. “She needs to make a choice, here.”
Hunter wasn’t certain which laws Josh was willing to bend. He supposed that testing and training—which while strongly encouraged by the government had never been required in the US—was one of them.
“It will be her choice,” Hunter lied easily.
Josh hesitated, then finally nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Hunter kept the smile from his face. He’d been right. Josh was a corporate spy, sent out to recruit wilds to take the company-supplied drugs without their explicit approval. It was illegal to experiment on humans anymore.
And besides. It didn’t matter, really, if Cassie chose to take the drugs or not.
Fate had been set.
Soon she would see.
***
Odin strode through his dark hall. He would not light the fire in the center tonight. The torches along the edges sufficed, casting long shadows to match the grimness in the Val-Father’s heart.
The snakes carved into the wide pillars wound around each other, swallowing tail and head, restlessly shifting. The scent of the cooking fires carried in on the wind curled around Odin’s head, tugging at him, inviting him to join the feasting in the other hall.
For him, there would be no feasting tonight.
Odin strode to Hlidskjalf, his chair of judgment, carved out of a mighty piece of black walnut, then sank down into it carefully, gently, as if he didn’t want to wake the ravens sleeping on either edge.
Except there were no ravens.
Hugin and Munin were still on the battlefield. They had their feast before them, the flesh of the fallen. Odin wouldn’t deny it to them, despite the fact that many of those fallen—most, really—were his own troop.
Where had he gone so desperately wrong?
Odin shifted in his great seat, uncomfortable even in his own skin. He tugged at his gray tunic, tightened the belt around his wool trousers.
Nothing fit right. Nothing was right.
The fates were shifting. Every time Odin cast the runes, they came up with a different story, held a different song.
It was Loki’s fault. It had to be. But Odin couldn’t figure out what Loki had done. It was surprising, and Odin had long since gotten out of the habit of being surprised.
Why had Loki sacrificed his own eye? Of course he’d lied and told the frost giants Odin had done it. But why? It couldn’t have just been to get the giants enraged, to get them calling for Odin’s head and starting a war.
What had Loki seen? He was the trickster, the con artist. He had to have a plan. He wouldn’t bring about the end of the gods unless he had some way of surviving it.
Odin sighed. Besides Frigg, the only other one who knew all the fates was the witch Mim. The gods had killed her three times, but still she came back. Maybe he should go talk with her head, draw her up by her sticky locks out of an apple barrel and compel her to speak.
He didn’t really want to hear what she had to say.
However, he didn’t have a choice. His fate, whatever it was, however it had changed, was still locked in.
***
Of course, the first apple barrel Odin came upon in the root cellar was full of apples. It was only the start of winter and food was still plentiful. He tore the cover off the next, but all he found were apples. He looked around the dank underground room in despair.
There was food here. Cheese and cakes. Fine dried meat and aged mead. His larder was full. It should fill him with joy, not terror.
Odin needed to know. He needed to see what was coming, one eye and all.
He didn’t have time to travel to Niflheim to find the witch. He needed to see her. Now.
Odin strode out of the kitchen halls, ignoring the calls for him to come join in the good cheer and good food, instead stalking across the frozen ground, going to the northern corner of his own hall.
There, under the eaves, stood an apple barrel that had been converted into a rain barrel. Of course, it was now covered with snow. It took the simplest of spells for Odin to wrap his hands around the rough wood of the barrel and melt the ice that was trapped inside.
It didn’t want to dissolve. Again, Odin fought to impose his will on something that should have automatically followed his wishes.
Not all was well, not anywhere in the land of the gods.
The ice gave way and the snow melted, the water overflowing and sloshing, cold and freezing his hands. He shook them off, but didn’t bother drying them: better they should burn in the night air than something else defy him this evening.
From inside one of the countless bags on his belt, Odin pulled out a small, plain, silver bowl. From the pouches on his belt, he drew out long stems of dried seaweed, bark from a slippery elm tree, juniper berries gathered only on moonless summer nights, and salt that had been burned in oak, then ash.
All these ingredients Odin crushed together, using his thumb to break them apart in the bowl, humming a wordless tune under his breath, letting his thoughts take what paths they might but always coming back to the seeing and the knowing he needed.
Finally, when everything had been mixed together, Odin dumped the bowl over the still warm and churning waters of the apple barrel.
Green light wreathed the waters, stirring it like the northern lights. The scent of honeyed apple mead rose up, making Odin smile. Then the smell grew sharp and sweeter, like rotten apples.
Then Mim’s head rose up. Her long blonde hair floated like a crown around her. The whiteness of winter filled her eyes, but she still looked directly at Odin, and her voice was hale and strong.
“Odin Val-Father, slayer of my kin.
You have given me salt and sorrow,
voice and limb,
calling me to speak of changed fate
and twisted endings.
Would you know more?”
“Aye,” Odin said. He knew it. That fate was somehow different.
“The World Tree passes through
not just this sphere, but others.
The fate of one world has been traded
an eye for an eye
a life bound and extended
in the belly of the wolf.
Would you know more?”
Fates had been traded? What the hell had Loki done? Somehow found a fate where he didn’t die, and exchange that one for the one of this world?
“I would,” Odin said after another moment.
“There is not one trade
but two—
one fate for another
two lives exchanged.
The end of all things is just a rebirth
for the one who survives.
Would you know more?”
“Yes,” Odin said. What else was the trickster up to? Could Odin beat it out of Loki before it was too late?
“As was said
at the beginning of all things:
The only way to avoid the twilight
is to keep both eyes on the prize.
I will tell you no more.”
With that, Mim’s head sank back below the surface of the waters in the apple barrel, a small black cloud puffing up from the surface and smelling of the limestone of graves.
Odin knew better than to put his hand in the water and drag her back up. She’d had her say.
Loki had removed one of his eyes to exchange these fates, Odin knew it. Odin had removed one of his own in order to avoid the same thing.
They were both half blind, now.
And no matter what Loki might believe, he didn’t understand what he’d set in motion.
Neither of them had both eyes with which to see.