A Sinister Game (33 page)

He was right.

Once they’d zipped to the same location that M
ax had exited to, they began to run.
One thing
about the Gray and Red teams was that e
veryone was in excellent shape. They could run
a great distance at great speeds
.

Game Control’s guards, on the other hand, would be confined to walking at a quick pace. This gave Victor and his men a distinct advantage
over Bloody Max since Max had decided to rely upon GC
manpower
.

As he and the others
moved in
on the unsuspecting Blood
, Victor
erected a wall around his
consciousness
to keep Blood from detecting
him.
Max was clearly a dark leader, but how powerful a leader was he? He was too strong to be
as young
as he appeared. And the name “Bloody Max” was one that had to have been earned
. Did a mere fifteen years on the Field merit such a designation?

Victor crept back toward his waiting companions and pinched the bridge of his nose. Thinking about Maxwell Blood was giving him a headache. There was too much fuzziness around the figure for Black’s liking. There was too much that Victor didn’t know and couldn’t figure out and wasn’t remembering.

Remembering….

Bloody hel
l!
Victor stopp
ed in his tracks and ran a shaking
hand through his thick, raven hair. A realization had just struck him
,
and it w
as beyond cruel
.

I’ve been rehabilitated.

He almost swayed there, in the hollow shadows of the trees that loomed so high ove
rhead. His heart raced
. He broke out in a sweat.

How many times?
When
? What had happened during his tenure on the Field that he was not recalling? Not
allowed
to recall?

Bloody sons of
bitche
s!
They’
d altered
his mind, invaded his thoughts, and destroyed a part of who he was. In fact, t
he gods only
knew
what and who he
really
was
!

He swore internally.
His thoughts seethed now
. T
he insight
was
more certain, and more
painful for that certainty. They would pay for what they’d done to him. They would pay for what they had done to
all
of the Gamers on the Field. They had taken
away identities and forced people into slave labor
. And for what?

For a Game that he knew in his heart
did not need to exist.

It’s fake. It’s a sham. It was created by the Game Lord to
…. Victor blinked. His head was spinning. It was really beginning to hurt no
w. He was
slightly dizzy.

Gods, not now!
h
e thought, even as
sickness rose in his gut
and his hand found support against a tree.

“Black!” Victor looked up to find S
torm and Roon running in his direction
, their expressions concerned. “What ails
you
, man?” Storm asked, his gravelly voice booming through the darkness of the shade trees.

“I don’t know,” Victor whispered. He could put no more force behind
his words. He felt too dizzy, t
oo ill.
“But keep it down.”

The memories rammed him, one after another, sounds and colors and voices.

A sham
….
He has to k
eep the Gamers inside the wall. He’s s
tealing their
strength.
Another voice said
,
You’re one of the strongest, Black
.
It echoed through the recesses of his mind, and bile rose in his throat. He swallowed hard
.
So you’ll understand why we need to do this. We c
an’t have you causing a fuss. Don’t worry, Victor,
the voice now whispered. The Game Lord was lowering his lips to speak into Victor’s ear. He couldn’t move. He was strapped down.
It’ll all be over before you know it.

Laughter. And then
there was
pain.

“Black!” Storm’s voice boomed again, this time closer. Black felt himself falling. He felt strong hands on him, strong arms tr
ying to lift him. “Help me get him on his back
, lad!”

He had no control over the memories now. They
whipped at him, hard,
fast and pa
inful
. Each left a mark that bled and stung and would most likely scar.

Victor
gazed
up into the stormy gr
ay orbs of his team captain. S
uddenly, he knew that John Storm was no ordinary Player.
He knew it like he knew everything else
. It was a memory – it was a
revelation.

“Thor,” he said.

“Aye, lad. Rest easy. I’ll make it right.” Thor took the hammer out of his b
elt and set it to the side.

Simon Roon watched him with an expression of
sheer and exultant wonder. “I knew it!” he
whispered, ecstatic excitement lacing his tone.

“Hush, boy. I need to
concentrate.” Thor put his left hand over Victor’s forehead and his right hand over his heart. “You’re Ullr’s champion,
” he told Victor, “A
nd tha
t one’s got issues, he does.” H
e closed his eyes. “But I
can help with the pain of the memories
, at least.”

His
hands began to glow.

Victor closed his eyes and let the warmth pour over him. It felt similar to being touched by Victoria Red. Warm and healing.

My captain is a god
, his thoughts solidified, no longer flitting, no longer s
pinning. His heartbeat slowed, and h
is breathing deepened. He found his consciousness coming into focus.

When Thor removed his hands, Victor opened his eyes and pinned him with a glowing but
somewhat reproachful
gaze. “When were you planning on telling me…
again
?” Victor asked. His voice was back, his accent deep, his memories and mind fully intact.

“Hell, boy, I’ve
told you twice already. These damn r
ehabilitation things get old, you know? I thought I’d sit this round out for a bit.” Thor shrugged. “
Besides, I was starting to feel sorry for you, and telling you who I was again would only get you to the next rehab that much faster.
But no matter.
”
He
stood and offered his hand to Victor.
Victor
took it, coming to his booted feet.
“You know now.”

Victor looked at his old friend – an old
god
–
and shook his he
ad. “Enough is enough
.
No more rehabilitations, not for me, not for anyone.
”
Game Control had gone too far t
oo many times.
It was time to put a stop to it once and for all.
“This ends tonight.”

It had always bewildered Loki that
humans
were
so positive
in their convictions. They had
little platitudes
f
or the unexplainable nuances in life
, and they took these for granted
. There was “Life isn’t fair,” and
“
It is what it is,” and “Death is a part of life
.”

Loki shook his head. Each one was exponentially more ridiculous than the last. Life was neither
fair nor unfair;
it was simply life. It could be grand if you tried hard enough to make it so, and it could be miserable if you didn’t try at all.

It is what it is? What the hell was that supposed to mean? Was it some kind of reassurance that you’d passed back
through a wormhole and
into a world where physics worked and up was up and down was down? Was the human mind so fickle as to get those confused on a regular basis?

And death. Loki rolled his eyes. He knew death personally. It had nothing whatsoever to do with life, and was in fact the very opposite of it. Only the daf
test human being could possibly not see
that.

Perhaps the most foolish
and shortsighted
act humans took part in was to attempt to foretell the future. “You’ll thank me one day,” “We’
ll get together
soon,” “Maybe next year,” and “
See you tomorrow” were a never-ending
verbal
diarrhea of proof that humans were under the impression life was certain.

Old mothers and fathers turn
ed
to their children over holiday meals and pints of mead and laugh
ed
, “You’ll look back on this years from now, son. This
here
is one of those things you’ll always remember.”

Even the most precious moments can be wiped out with no more than a touch of evil. One trip inside the wall would kill a decade of Winter Solstice gatherings. It was powerful enough
, even,
to quell the love a mother had for her child.

Or a sister for her twin.

Humans didn’t
know everything. It didn’t take a god to realize that. But
apparently
it took a god to admit it.

To this day
Odin
,
being the wise All Father
he was,
forbade the gods from creating the kinds
of “snippets of wisdom” that
humans
gleefully
quipped day in and
day
out
.
“What goes around comes around.”
Decidedly untrue
, Loki thought,
though a nice enough sentiment.
“The early bird gets the worm.”
Ridiculous. Stay up late and eat in the dark and you’ll be fat by midyear.
“Nobody’s perfect.”

As he gazed
at the gorgeous and
powerful twin sisters before him, Loki would attest wholeheartedly to
that
statement’s blatant falsehood.

He remained invisible,
watching his champion and his lover embrace in the memory of love that had been taken from
them
.
He wanted to allow them to embrace forever.

But he could feel the others
coming
.
Their gaining ne
arness was an unconscious sound
m
ade by the mental signature of
d
ark leader
s
and their
followers.

Loki considered their options.
Rose Tyrnan was dealing with her sister’s death and rebirth, the
re
attainment of her
lost
memories, and with seeing her nanny again, all in the course of a few short minutes.

Maxwell Blood and his men would be upon them shortly.

Loki
was fairly certain that Victor Black and his crew were hot on Blood’s tail. If he was reading the signature correctly, the
highly agitated
and
barely contained
, storm-like energy traveling alongside the second
d
ark leader was none other than Thor
. That would mean the second dark
lea
der was undeniably Victor Black,
Thor’s best friend.

Within minutes, nearly twenty very angry and inhumanly powerful people would be gathe
ring outside this small cottage
with one mutual goal and a deadly willingness to do
anything in order to attain her.

Offhand, Loki wondered whether he could do anything to stop it.
He wondered whether he should even try.
Surely Odin
had seen the upcoming confrontation. He must know the outcome. Maybe Loki was supposed to let it happen. Or maybe it wouldn’t happen the way it was supposed to unless he intervened.

Inwardly, he sighed. That was the thing he hated about the All Father. Becoming a literal know-it-all had turned a once genial god who loved nothing more than bashing other gods’ heads in and drinking boatloads of mead into one hell of a recluse.
But Loki supposed he could understand Odin’s reluctance to share his knowledge; h
e’d had to pluck out his own eye and hang by the neck from a tree for a short eternity to win his knowledge.