Poisoned Pearls (10 page)

I set the bag next to the door, intending to take it out in
the morning, on my way to the grocery store. I didn’t have to work until the
later shift, and I might as well take care of everything before the weekend.

The steaming hot shower helped me feel more human again.
When I heard someone walking in the hallway as I was having my last cigarette,
I tensed up—my stomach was still bruised from where
Csaba
and Dusty had left their farewell punches.

When I noticed, I cursed even more.
Fuck
this shit. I was tired of being scared or anxious or anything.
I looked at the large garbage bag next to the door. I wasn’t about to go get
dressed again and take it out. But I vowed not to wait again.

I was going to live as I always had, before Kyle’s death. It
had only been a day or so ago. Nothing had really changed. Had it? Everything
felt different. As if my skin was too tight, and I needed to shed it.

But I liked things the way they were. Change, at least in my
life, had rarely been for the better.

While the store had been dead all night, I’d had the chance
to answer all my email. I didn’t have time to organize a memorial for Kyle, but
some of our other mutual friends were. They’d asked me to speak at it.

I hadn’t agreed. I hadn’t said no yet, either.

It wasn’t as if his parents were going to be doing anything,
or inviting us to the funeral if there even was one.

As I’d suspected, my sleep that night was interrupted with
nightmares about Kyle, chasing after me with Angela’s dead tongue sticking out
of his mouth. Fortunately, I didn’t remember the rest of it, though I woke with
a cold sweat and my hands clenched.

My stomach hurt even more in the morning, and the skin had
turned a very pretty purple and green. If I were the cautious type, I would
have told myself to be more careful.

Instead, I told myself that I didn’t fucking care.

I needed food and I needed to do laundry. Bunch of places
would be closed for Christmas next week, including Chinaman Joe’s. I was pretty
stocked up, but I wanted to make sure that I had enough food, booze, and smokes
laid in that I didn’t have to leave my place for a week.

The TV said that the weather wasn’t doing anything but
staying clear and cold. No more snow predicted for Christmas, just the
continued wisps that we already had.

I remembered at least a couple of Christmases as a kid when
the snowplows had turned up enough snow on the street that it had towered over
my head. Building forts out of the packed ice. Horrifying my mother because she
was afraid the ice would collapse on us.

I didn’t understand why Mom’s leaving Minnesota also figured
into my nightmares, but it had. I’d turned my back on her so long ago—or
she’d turned her back on me. It still made the day feel a little bit colder,
knowing that she was really gone.

I kept the card for her lawyer, however. I wasn’t stupid.

The light for the hallway going out to the back of the
apartment building had been busted for a long while. Still made me skittish
going down that dark hallway, checking every which way, making sure that it was
just me. The bikes that had been parked there had been removed, at least, so I
had room to walk.

The lock seemed frozen stuck, and I had to turn it more than
once to get it to open. At least the door swung in, not out.

I felt like an idiot poking my head out first, making sure
that nothing bad was waiting for me in the alley. All I saw was the concrete
wall of the building across from mine, dumpsters, and a touch of snow. The cold
bit into me right away. Looking up, I saw the TV had been right, and a patch of
cold blue stared down.

I turned to the left, where my building’s dumpsters were.
The combination lock on the garbage was still locked. The building manager had
threatened to start fining everyone in the building for leaving the cans open.
Seemed that some of our cheaper neighbors liked dumping their shit with ours.

I swung my black bag into the dumpster, closed and locked
it. With a sigh of relief, I turned and started trudging out of the alley.

Should have known better.

Not three feet away I saw a pair of legs sticking out from
between two of the other dumpsters.

It had to just be a homeless guy sleeping, right? Though the
boots looked way too nice for a bum.

I didn’t want to see another dead body. I still had to go
look, had to go make sure.

There was
Csaba
, leaning against
the wall, obviously dead, his fat tongue sticking out of his oddly grinning
mouth, his normally dark skin looking greenish in the morning light.

Shit.

***

Ferguson was
not
happy to see me, not in the least. Neither was Sam.

The only high point I could claim was that at least I’d
found the body in the daylight, and not the night before. And that it was a known
drug dealer. The cops would be happy he was off the street for good, right?

“Someone really has it in for you, don’t they?” Ferguson
asked, scowling.

“I wouldn’t know,” I told him through chattering teeth. The
cops who’d first arrived at the scene had recognized me from the previous night
and hadn’t let me go inside to get warm.

“Do you know the deceased?” Sam asked. She looked worn, her
makeup not hiding the dark circles under her eyes.

Were the cops hounding her, too? Trying to get her to tell
them things she didn’t know, that she hadn’t seen?

Not that I cared about her. She’d betrayed me, gone to my
mother. Bitch.

Somehow, that thought didn’t make her less beautiful.

“He and a couple of his guys came to the store more than
once,” I told them honestly. “Chased them out a couple of times for
shoplifting.”

That much I could tell them. That he’d died like all the
others just made no sense.

Unless this john had a thing for junkies as well as whores.

“Folks are dropping like flies around you,” Ferguson told me
as he put his recording pen away.

“That’s not fair,” I told him. It just wasn’t. As I’d told
Hunter, it wasn’t my fault that some sick fuck was killing people.

“Please, Cassie,” Sam said. “You know you should come with
us. Get tested. It’s the smart thing to do.”

“You’re the one who’s talked with my mother,” I told her,
stung. “You know the one thing she’s never accused me of was being smart.”

She’d actually said more than once that I had more
stubbornness than intelligence, a trait I’d inherited from my dad.

“Then change your pattern for once,” Ferguson said.
“Besides, you’ve been involved in all three deaths, so far. I think it’s time
you took a trip to the station with us.”

“Am I under arrest?”

Ferguson looked stymied at that. “No. But you’re a person of
interest, officially, now.”

Sam didn’t seem to like that. She pressed her lips together
into a tight line and looked away.

Not that it mattered.

“It would look better if you came in voluntarily,” Ferguson
added.

He really didn’t think I’d fall for any kind of nice cop
trick, did he?

I sighed and thought about my options. It was Thursday and
half the day was gone already. I really did have errands to run before my shift
started.

“How about this,” I proposed. “I’ll go to a center tomorrow.
Early. Get tested. I’m sure you’ll be able to access my test results, correct?”

“Not without a subpoena,” Ferguson complained.

I didn’t believe that for a second. However, I was willing
to go along with the illusion that I still had some sort of civil liberties.

“I’m sure you’ll have some way of knowing if I’m lying or
not.”

Sam grinned at that. “That’s quite possibly true.”

I didn’t want to think about whatever else she might know
about me.

The cops let me go soon after that. I was frozen, barely
able to bend my fingers. I couldn’t feel my toes, my nose, or my cheeks.

I still decided to just go straight to the grocery store. If
I went inside my apartment to get warm, I wouldn’t leave again until it was
time to go to work.

As I passed the end of the alley, a movement caught my eye.

Hunter was there, moving to the middle of the sidewalk to
just stare at me, like some powerful statue.

“Fuck you,” I told him distinctly as I moved off. I wished I
could believe that he was killing these people, but that didn’t seem to be his
style. He was far too efficient. He’d just make them…disappear.

However, I knew what he was thinking. That if I’d been able
to
see,
I might have prevented this
latest death as well.

I didn’t need him to remind me of my guilt. I felt it deeply
enough as it was.

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.”