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"I understand anger,” Iida told me with a smile. “I'm going to make you that angry again."

"What are you talking about?” Keno demanded.

"She—no, he speaks,” Iida mocked. For one wild second I thought that he knew who Keno was, but what he said next put that fear to rest. “You were the perfect woman for me, silent and meek."

"My lord,” Mawatari chided.

"I know,” he replied, without bothering to turn around. “But let me enjoy this."

"Enjoy what?” I asked, beginning to feel the prickle of fear on the back of my neck.

"The look on your face when I tell you that you are trapped here,” he said.

"Trapped?” I asked, offering him a smile. I then tried to shift to the real world and found that I could not. “What?"

While Keno glanced at me, alarmed, Iida laughed. “I'd stay, but as my faithful retainer just reminded me, there isn't much time. The ship is going to break up soon. If that doesn't kill you, well... there are my other faithful retainers."

With that, he and Mawatari shimmered out of existence with a clap of thunder. I suddenly heard the rain pouring outside the ship, I raced outside with Keno on my heels, and we discovered that we were in the middle of a raging typhoon. Keno looked at me in horror, grabbing me, and I heard the ship breaking up, torn apart by the weather and something else. My last thought before everything went black was that I shouldn't have gotten him involved in this.

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Mason

There was a bad storm the next night. I wasn't used to them, really. Whenever there was a Nor'easter brewing, I was usually safe in a nice, warm building, not stuck in the middle of nowhere in a damn sod hut. Okay, a turf hut, according to Logan, but I couldn't tell the difference, so I really didn't give a flying fuck what I was in. It was warm, though, smoky from the open fire, and just one room about eighty feet long and roughly twenty feet wide, with some half walls for privacy. It was better than being out in that mess, that was for fucking sure.

I was keeping a close eye on McGann, even if the men hadn't started giving her shit yet. Wolf's claim that they were married made them hold off a bit, even if she was dressed like a man. Hell, we were all dressed alike in black T-shirts and cargo pants with steel-toed boots, so they might have thought it was just our way. Wolf didn't treat McGann with anything other than respect, even if they were sharing a bed. Hell, I'd thought he'd been half in love with her for years, so this might have been a dream come true for him. Anyway, unlike me, he didn't have a reputation of thinking with his dick, so that probably was why McGann wasn't freaking out about the sleeping arrangements.

Most of the guys here were crazy, it seemed to me. They drank hard and played harder, from what little I'd seen, and I wondered what the fuck anyone was doing here in this crazy world more than once. We had managed to land on the far side of nowhere, in a place that seemed to be filled with backwoods biker types. This might be worse than dealing with the shit that went down at Tamazusa's place. Hell, I was even thinking longingly of her hot tub. These people didn't seem to have any sort of running water, and bathing was a challenge. I didn't look forward to trying to clean up tomorrow. At least it wasn't tropical. A bit cool more than anything, like early spring in Boston.

But even I picked up on the fact that they were short of women here, and McGann was a hottie. It didn't help that the women here weren't that good-looking, being mostly
big
women. Not fat, but muscular, and they didn't have the advantages of hitting the salon or a spa to make them look nice and pampered. The women here didn't stop working for a minute, and McGann had been dragged into doing some of their work, too, guest or not.

Wolf and McGann retired to their bunk the second night we were here, and I hung around with the rest of the single men, drinking and trying to get some info from them. The Vikings all had a few words of English, and I was getting the impression from them it was a trade language—barely—for them. They dealt with the guys who were on the islands east and north of them, and that was all. I liked these guys, for the most part, but I also knew they weren't the allies the Trustees were looking for. Finding those was going to be a bitch if the whole place was like this.

Shit. I just wondered how we ended up here. Like, how did the hoodoo send us places in the Dreamlands, considering we ended up a couple hundred or so miles north of Nippon?. Did the place move around, or was it something else? We weren't in the same spot we used last time to make a gate, since that was buried under a shit ton of cement and other things, so did that matter? Why did I care? It wasn't like this was a bad place. From what McGann had told me, we were about four hundred miles or so north of Nippon. That mattered in a world that had piss-poor roads and even worse ships. Then there was the fact that we were supposed to be in Mayan territory. I didn't remember where that was and frankly didn't care. I had thought this was a stupid idea to begin with.

Logan was just watching all this, and I thought that guy was a bit shell-shocked. Keeping his nose clean, though, even if he was taking all sorts of mental notes about this place. The guy was an egghead before he was a fighter, and I didn't know if that was a good thing or not. I didn't have the heart to tell him again that he wasn't going to be able to tell anyone about this. Maybe the other eggheads, but not all of them wanted to hear about stuff like this.

"There will be a lot of drift on the beach in the morning,” Tholf said.

I shrugged. “Sounds like a bitch out there."

Egil laughed. “The serpent is out tonight."

The others looked uneasy after that, but they kept on drinking. Egil was a mean motherfucker most of the time, but also a poet, from what the others told me. He looked a little off to me, but shit, that didn't mean anything here. Tholf was just big and dumb. Hell, that was probably just an act, and I wasn't going to fall for it.

"I take it that's a bad thing?” I asked.

They all looked at me strange, and I shrugged. “Not something that I know a lot about."

"The serpent is the Midgard Serpent, which circles the world. That he's acting the way he is now shows there is much magic in the air tonight,” Tholf said.

"Is magic bad?” I asked. I was thinking of whether or not Tamazusa's trick to getting into Boylston Street was magic. I knew the Jell-O trick probably was. I really didn't think it was a bad thing that she had done it to Heiseg, that bastard who had raped Keno and opened the Gate to the Dreamlands that had let the monsters—and maybe Tamazusa—into Boylston, starting this whole fuckin’ mess. I wondered briefly how Keno was doing tonight and what Samojirou was doing with him. Taking him out or having a quiet night at home? I knew Keno was happier here; I just had to convince Wolf of that before it ate him up.

"Depends on the magic,” Egil told me, looking at me like I was a really dumb fuck, from the sneer on his face. I was pissed, but I was also under orders not to start trouble, and that meant not trying to wipe that sneer off the man's face the old-fashioned way. My luck, he'd beat the shit out of me easily.

"There's a couple of different kinds of Norse magic,” Logan told me quietly. “And that's all I can really say. You want to know about Mayan hieroglyphs and social organization, I'm your man. Norse customs, that course was a long time ago. Wolf's probably the expert here, not me."

"You know more than I do,” I grunted, taking a swig of beer. The stuff wasn't bad, closer to the designer brews than the thin crap that was American beer. That was about all they drank, too, nothing hard like vodka or whiskey. They just all drank a lot of it. They should have been drunk off their asses most of the time, but they seemed to have better tolerance for the stuff than a Southie guy on St. Pattie's Day.

"The serpent is Loki's son, and he's a trickster like his father,” Egil continued. “I wonder what the storm will bring to us."

I really didn't know what to say about that. I didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. Logan looked like he wanted to give me a lecture about who's who in Viking mythology, not that I cared about it. I shook my head, and he got the message, but that probably just delayed me getting the lecture. We spent the rest of the night swilling beer and listening to the storm and the guys’ gossip. I just couldn't shake the feeling that something really bad was happening out there.

The next morning, I went to help gather driftwood. I noticed there was a shitload of it, and most of it seemed to be some sort of finished wood. I figured I was looking at the remains of a ship that had gotten wrecked in last night's storm. It was wood, though, and that wasn't something that was too plentiful here. I didn't want to know what they were burning in some of the cooking fires, but it didn't smell like wood.

Wolf was helping down at the other end of the beach, and McGann was stuck inside with the women, learning to cook over an open fire and other fun stuff like that. We spent the morning hauling shit up to the longhouse. I was working on a mess of sail and wood when Wolf came running down the beach, frantic.

"Mas... Mas!” he shouted. “I need help!"

I dropped what I was working on and ran to meet him. “What's wrong?"

"Follow me,” he shouted. I did and was shocked at what he had found.

Wolf had been working on another pile of wood when he was surprised to find a couple of injured people in the wreckage. He
really
hadn't expected them to be Keno and Tamazusa.

They were cold and barely breathing, and Wolf had run to get me for help. Logan came over and just took charge, not that Wolf was being an idiot, but because this was something Logan knew about. I thought he was happy to be useful.

"Hypothermia,” Logan said. “The open water around here is like ice. No injuries, surprising, considering the boat's in pieces. We got to get them out of those clothes, into bed with someone to warm them up. They're both lucky that they're alive."

I grunted and lifted up Tamazusa, while Wolf picked up Keno and ran to the longhouse. I was surprised by how small Tamazusa seemed as I jogged after him. I figured she would be pissed if she woke up naked with someone, and then she would turn my insides into Jell-O. I wasn't going to let that happen to anyone. Besides, in my line of work, there were worse ways to die than being killed by a hot chick.

Tamazusa

I woke up naked and aching, in the arms of a man. Not something I had ever wanted to do again. I stiffened and was confused when a soft voice murmured assurances of safety to me, while my back was stroked. I didn't recognize the voice, even if I recognized the language. It was English, but with an accent I didn't know. I lay still, plotting what I was going to do and waiting for whatever outrage he was going to inflict upon me. The place smelled of smoke, bad food, and too many people. There were coarse blankets around me, heavy and warm. Where had I ended up?

I was powerless, and as far as I knew, alone. I tensed up, thinking of the half dozen Reaver guards I'd had with me, along with Keno. They had not survived the storm, I knew that. I wasn't sure Keno had.

My unwelcome companion murmured something soothing again and patted my back, and I forced myself to relax. I wanted to appear as harmless as possible until I knew what had happened to Keno and where I was. Was I this man's prisoner? A guest? The voice sounded familiar, but I wasn't going to show him I was awake by opening my eyes to find out who it was. I would pretend to be asleep and see what I could gather for information.

"How is she?” another man asked.

"Warm, finally,” my bedmate replied. “She's been drifting in and out of it."

"McGann says that she's dangerous,” the other man continued. “That she's a powerful Nipponese lord that you met before, Mason."

"Kickass,” Mason replied. “Tough as nails and has a bigger set of balls than McGann, Logan. Be nice to her."

I shifted, shocked when I heard the name, and he winced, then moved me again. “Ball buster, too, which she just demonstrated by squishing mine. She's in charge of some place in Nippon. Have McGann tell you about it."

"The other one's okay too,” Logan said. “He's going to be asleep for a while, though."

"Good,” Mason said, “I was worried about Keno. He's a good kid. Don't give him any shit."

I heard Logan move off, and Mason stroked my back, gently telling me, “I know that you're awake."

I looked up at him, knowing that fooling him wasn't an option. “And what are you going to do?” I hated the fact that I sounded weak, almost frightened.

"Well, you're warmer now but still shivering a bit. All I was planning to do was keep you warm. You're a sexy mama, but I also know you can turn me into Jell-O. I remember that trick you pulled with Heiseg. And thank you for doing that to the fucker, for what he did to Keno."

I stared up at him, confused. Mason had been a buffoon when he had stayed with me when the Trust had blundered into the Dreamlands for the first time. From what I had been told by Fuse, that was a mask for a man who cared deeply. He had been the one who had made sure that Fuse had not suffered at the hands of her captors when the one called Murphy had spirited her into the real world. I was just surprised to see he was willing to do the same for me. Fuse was still an innocent woman. I hadn't thought that of myself since I was nine.

"Quickest way to get you warmed up was to pop you naked into bed with someone. I didn't think that these folks would like to see two women together, no matter how hot that is, so McGann was out. I figured that you wouldn't mind me too much, since Wolf grabbed Keno and you don't know Logan."

"And it kept the rest of your party safe,” I whispered.

Mason didn't say anything but shifted so that he could give me something to drink. I grimaced at the taste of the water but still drank it down eagerly. I rested against him, since the cold still filled me. I was surprised that he continued to stroke my back gently, petting me like he might a cat. Mason seemed to be a very gentle man, for all that he had hunted me and mine in the real world. Honest, too, now that I remembered the conversations we had had when we met before. He had acted a buffoon, but not foolish like the others. He had been willing to admit to his prejudices and worries. While he was not someone I could tolerate for long, he was oddly comforting right now.