Odin's Murder (21 page)

The white heat explodes behind my eyes.

For one groan of a second I think I’ve come too quick, but no, the flash is the same as our first kiss, only this time there’s pleasure, not pain. Memory gasps. I open my eyes and images flicker through my mind, our mind, filtered through a hazy light.

I run my hand up over her stomach, and see runes on a cut stone, ancient and dark. She sits up, hands on my chest, and ebony feathers shade my sight. With every touch, every connection, images pass between us. “What is th—” I try to ask, but she bends back down for another kiss.

“Don’t stop,” she whispers against my mouth. “Don’t you feel it?”

I almost laugh because I’m feeling a lot of things, her body most of all, slippery and tight, though I know she’s talking about this pulsing energy that echoes in my chest. “I’m not stopping.” She’s too soft and hot, hot for me, the hard case with nothing to offer but a skewed focus and a temper.

Memory’s teeth scrape down my jaw and her hands rub across the short hair on the back of my neck. “Open your eyes,” she says.

So I blink twice as my vision is filled with a young man sprawled on a bed, naked, cheek split, a bandage holding my skin together, but in reverse, not mirrored, and I’m bronzed, like through a fancy amber filter. My eyes are bewildered as I stare, but I’m not stopping, hips thrusting up into her, on the brink of losing control.

“What do you see?” I ask. My own lips move with the words.

“Me.” She gasps when I reach forward, blind, fingertips questing to touch her face, making contact with her lips. “You see me like this?”

I blink and see Memory kneeling over me, dark eyes wide, breasts bouncing with each slide and pull, her hand reaching to my face, and I feel her fingertips on my skin. I shut my eyes again, and then open them, a camera’s shutter snap, and I see her hand, resting on my cheek. I watch my hand move down, from her lips to her stomach and lower, to where we are connected, and I search with my thumb for the exact spot that makes her arch for more, taking me even deeper, and,
fuck
, she is so damn gorgeous.

“Oh,” she moans, “I’m close.” With that I’m gone, back arched, spilling deep, and by some miracle she’s coming with me. The white light pulses back and forth with every spasm, on and on, until it fades as the blood rushes in my veins with the beat of heavy, black wings.

She collapses on my chest. After a moment, I remember to breathe. She does, too, but I grab her ass before she can wiggle away. “Where are you going, Cherry?” I roll over, still deep inside her, still hard. “Library doesn’t close for another 45 minutes.”

*

She curls close, head on the pillow, face pressed into my neck. Her eyelashes flutter across my skin like feathers, and she surrenders to sleep with a sigh, taking me with her. I widen my mental aperture to align with her dream, and the darkness comes into focus.

I hear a rustle in the darkness, the whisper of wings.

Soft.

A chill makes me reach for my blanket with one hand and the warmth of the body beside me but my fingers only find air. The blanket is gone and I stand; my room is gone, too. I’m barefoot and alone in a metal-floored room with striped walls. We’ve been here before, my twin and I.

The floor is moving, as if my room had a swing of its own to perch on. I scrabble for purchase, toes scraping, catch my reflection, turn my head for another look. I’m not such a bad looking guy, sleek, and dark. One shiny eye winks back.

The rocking stops in front of a door and a giant fleshy hand reaches into my little room. I drive my beak at the intrusion, but it bats me away, grabs, and rips at my back. It hurts. I shit on the floor in protest, bite at the huge fat fingers that snap the door back in place.

Ansuz,
the giant says, pressing my torn feather against a wooden door that sits high in the stones of a building. A single red drop of me runs from the quill onto the wood, and a scratch mark glows, up high, a long line, with two diagonals coming off it.

My symbol.

My name.

The door shimmers like a mirror, or melting ice, casting prisms behind it, pretty.

The world is dark now, but we’re moving toward a light, and I smell danger and see fire, a little bit of flame in a metal cage of its own.

Another giant is curled on the floor, smaller, a she, her head tucked into her skinny naked wing. I know her. She’s one of us, not my sister, one of the others, I ask her name, but she doesn’t know my language, either.

The man giant says something that I don’t understand. The big pink hand reaches in again. I go limp, but it doesn’t believe I’m dead. It hauls me out and stretches my wings with both hands. I scream.

Blackness slaps me across the face, and I wake.

I’m in a cave. I see flames and focus, sit up, hand on the cold stone wall for balance. The light is nothing more than a torch, ablaze on a sconce on the wall. I call out, “Hello?” but hear nothing but a trickle of water in return. My voice is deep, raspy.  My wrists are heavy, and clank when I move.

My glasses are skewed on my nose. I fix them, rub my chin with my hand. I’ve got two days of stubble on my chin. How long was I asleep? How long have I been here?

I stand, but my arms and feet are bound to the wall.

A girl sits nearby. I should know her name but all I see is a glowing rune on her forehead like the mark of Cain, a sharp letter C drawn with two red slashes. The glare of it masks her face. Words march through my head, a story I need to tell my sister, written in the same runes. It’s an ancient tale.

If Faye were here she would know what they meant, but I don’t want her here, not in this place. I close my eyes, see her, want to touch her, feel how soft she is, touch the dimple in her knee above the lace-up boots. She’s smiling up at me, elfin eyes wide and dark as night itself, skin as pale as clouds, wrapped in a green leaf jacket, open to her waist, a flash of forbidden curves, and the necklace between is a silver fairy, herself with wings in perfect miniature, sable hair and kissing mouth, hands cupped under naked breasts, offering. One fingertip teases a nipple, and it rises, taut. My hands move against my will to slide the leather coat from the girl’s shoulders, but she’s too young and I won’t look, I won’t look—

I open my eyes, ashamed of my arousal. I don’t even want to think of her here.

There are five sets of shackles in the room, each with their own rune, pulsing in the stones above them.

The girl on the floor whispers, “Huginn.”

She holds out a marble, silvery with a blue thread running through the glass. I get lost in the shiny, in the spiral, clouding into darkness as we slide away from Julian, released by his deeper darkness, and then Memory slips away, and I’m left cold and alone.

I wake up again.

This time I’m back in the girls’ room, and morning has pushed past the window. Memory is no longer beside me, but standing by the wall, a broken pencil at her feet. She’s wearing only my t-shirt and her eyes are wild, darting everywhere. Sonja’s package is mashed in her hands.

“Memory?” I rub the sleep off my face.  Half a dozen symbols have been sketched onto the wall.

“Julian isn’t in the hospital.” She blinks, eyelids still heavy. “He’s in the well.”

22.

Mission

“Are you okay?” Ethan is looking at me like he’s never seen me before. The bruises on his face have ripened dark under his skin. One cut is open, a trickle of blood drying at his temple.

“I had a dream.” I look around the room. Not too much damage, a few drawings on the wall. I inhale, sharp, clearing my head. “Faye didn’t come back.”

The boy on my bed sits up, then stands and steps close, catching my chin in his hands. He looks deep into my eyes, but his regard is clinical, and I look away when I realize he’s looking for drugs. He lets go, hand sliding down my shoulder and arm to catch my wrist. He takes the package from my hands as he nods to the wall. “What is all this?”

I turn to the scribbled mess, rubbing the heel of my hand on my t-shirt before I remember I’m wearing his. I brush at the graphite smear of the pencil lead. “I’m not sure. It’s from my dream. We were surrounded by these. They’re runes, like what Faye reads. This one is for Huginn. This one, Muninn. That one is
perth.
I can’t remember what Faye told me this one is.”

“You’re sure she didn’t come back?

Nothing on her side of the room has been touched. “Yeah.” I take a deep breath, but it doesn’t calm me. “And I don’t think Julian is in the hospital.”

“You said that.” He isn’t skeptical though. “You think he found the well?”

“I think he’s been there all along. I think Anders is lying.”

“The dream.” he asks. “It was Julian’s.”

“Did you see it?”

His face twists, but he nods, once. “I don’t remember much. I never saw him. But I saw those.” He points to the markings on the walls, then holds up Sonja’s present. “What’s up with this?”

“I must have picked it up in my sleep.” I run my hand over the address. “He’s not hurt, just pissed off.”

“You know this? And you know where he is?”

“It feels like a cave.” I press my hand to his face, fingertip pressing on his bottom lip. “Look.”

He closes his eyes, and I see the movement of his pupils behind his lids, like he’s dreaming. “It’s been built, though. Walls. And chains?” His face pales as he opens his eyes. “Fuck.”

I nod. “I bet he went looking in the chapel. Maybe he found a way in, and got stuck inside.”

“Or he was told to go there, and got locked in.” He pulls away from me, fishes out his socks and shoes from under the bed. “Pretty effective damage control for a plagiarism accusation.”

“I think it’s worse than that,” I whisper, as a memory clicks into context, a comparison, like Faye’s untouched stones on her desk. “Anders lied. About his hand.”

“The bookshelf accident?”

“Yeah. I was in his office. And all the books were in exactly the same place they were in the other day. You don’t have an injury accident with furniture and replace everything picture perfect, down to the dust.”

“I can’t see your brother going quietly, not with someone he suspected of academic misconduct or whatever plagiarism is called.”

“No, he wouldn’t. And now Faye’s gone too. We’ve got to go find them.” 

“Okay. But there’s something I’ve got to do first.” He ties his running shoes. “And I need my camera. We won’t have much time. Once the admins see Jeremy’s face they’ll come looking for me. No way is he going to keep his mouth shut.” He stands. I lean in, kissing his mouth, quick and light. An image of a silver blade pops in my mind, and is gone just as quick. He smirks at me. “I’ll need my shirt.” I pull it off over my head, and hand it to him. He stares, mouth half open. “Jesus, Cherry.”

A fist pounds twice on the dorm room door in warning as a key slides into the lock. We both freeze.

*

“Memory? Are you in there?” Zoe asks as she opens the door. “Oops. Excuse me.” She pulls the door back shut, and calls through it, “Please put something on. I’m coming in.”

She hasn’t seen Ethan. I push him toward the closet, and grab a towel. “Be quiet,” I whisper, shutting the door on his battered face as I open the one to the hall, wrapping the towel around me.

“I was about to shower. Is there a problem?” I ask Zoe.

“Why aren’t you at your group?” She shoves past me into the room, and turns in a slow circle, obviously searching.

“I’m waiting for my brother,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. “I’m beginning to think I’m being lied to about this whole situation. If he isn’t back here this morning, I’m calling every hospital within driving distance, and then I’m calling the police.”

Her head snaps in my direction, and her eyes examine my face. She opens her mouth, closes it, and then sneers. “Don’t be so melodramatic.”

“Why are you checking up on me?”

“It’s my job to check up on you,” she says. “Dr. Anders noticed you didn’t show up for your group meeting. He sent me here to look for you.”

“So Dr. Anders is checking up on me, now, too?”

“He checks up on all the groups. He was worried about you. We all know Julian being in the hospital has to be hard on you.”

I want to believe her. I study her face, looking for signs that she knows more than she’s telling, but her expression shows only earnest concern. I sigh. “I didn’t sleep well last night. I had a nightmare.” I glance at the wall behind me, to the marks I don’t remember drawing.

She stares, eyes wide, at the wall behind me. “What did you do?”

“It’s just pencil. It will wash off.”

“You better hope so. What is all that?”

“Just some notes. It’s for our project. I work better like this. If it doesn’t come off my room deposit will cover the damages.” I watch her as she examines the drawings. She appears to be in no hurry to leave so I say, “I really should get that shower.”

“Have you seen Ethan?” she asks, turning to face me.

“No,” I make a face. “I just woke up. Where would I have seen him?”

She walks around the room, near the closet, but doesn’t open the door. “Dean Burnett was looking for him earlier. I just wanted to pass along the message. If you see him will you tell him?”

“Sure.”

“Alright. Have a nice day!” She smiles bright and leaves the room.

Still suspicious, I wait until she’s all the way down the hall before I close the door behind her. The second the exterior door slams closed, I relock the door to my room and run to the closet. Ethan is still pushed into back, smashing my shirts and dresses. I help him over the shoes and accessories.

“What was that all about?” he asks.

“No idea, but I think we better hurry. Looks like people are starting to look for you.”

“She didn’t ask about Faye,” Ethan says, glancing at my roommate’s desk, and then back to me.

“No, she didn’t.”

“Get dressed. I’ll meet you out front in fifteen minutes. By the fountain.”

“Make it ten,” I say, kissing him hard on the lips.

“Watch for me. If you hear sirens, it means they found me,” he says. I pull back but his hands are strong. His lips move on the corner of my jaw.