Hunted

  “The assassin is athletically gifted,” Odin informed us. “He’s leaping from roof to roof, which is quite an accomplishment when one considers that they are sometimes of differing heights. And my ravens have just witnessed him leaping across an entire street.”

  “So not human, then.”

  Odin shrugged. “He is not a dark elf. I have seen such feats from berserkers, however. Some of the Einherjar can perform like that. This one may have been granted some strength—but by whom? We need to catch up quickly before he goes someplace my ravens cannot follow.”

  “How are we going to do that?”

  “We’ll go to the roof of this building,” Odin replied, as if that made everything clear. The Morrigan and I followed him inside a four-story brick building, and we climbed until we reached the blessedly flat rooftop. “He went that way,” Odin said, pointing to Kirkegata. There were very few flat roofs ahead, and even if I could bridge the distance between them and leap over streets, the steep shingled surfaces on some of them didn’t look as if they’d offer a safe landing.

  “Unzip me, Siodhachan,” the Morrigan said. “I’ll go as a crow and join Odin’s ravens.” I want to see what’s going on for myself, she added telepathically as I moved to unzip the back of her dress. I dislike being dependent on others for my intelligence.

  When she shifted to her crow form and launched herself into the night, I was left alone with Odin, who took the opportunity, out of sight and hearing of Frigg and the Morrigan, to tell me how he really felt.

  “I like looking at you about as much as a jötunn’s yawning asshole,” he began.

  “Right,” I said.

  “I’d rather spit you like a hog, roast you with thyme, and feed you to my wolves than track down this assassin. But I can’t have the Morrigan thinking I don’t keep my word. I promised a peaceful meeting and now it’s been ruined.”

  “I understand that completely.”

  “I also don’t like the fact that someone used Frigg to track us. That question needs answering. So we’re going to pull a Johnny Cash. Have you heard of him? American singer?”

  “Yeah, I know him. The Man in Black.”

  “Good.” He turned to the north, put two fingers between his teeth, and whistled a rather haunting series of notes. The night sky answered with the neighing of horses.

  “Oh, no,” I said.

  “What’s the matter, Druid, afraid of horses?”

  “Well, these are fairly special ones, aren’t they? So special that they have no physical presence?”

  “That’s entirely in their favor. Smoother ride.” Odin’s tuxedo morphed before my eyes. The jacket lengthened to a long trench coat and turned skull gray. His shirt turned to a tunic, his pants became breeches, and his shoes grew up his calves and hugged them as leather boots—all of it gray. His face weathered and shrank in a bit, turning gaunt and tough. The architecture of his beard unraveled and became an untamed mane. His teeth flashed white in the darkness. “Haven’t done this in a long time. Should be fun, even with a pile of weasel shit like you.”

  “Kind of you to say.”

  Blue-green lights approached from the northern sky; in a matter of seconds they resolved into the outlines of spectral horses and hounds, and they came to a halt more or less on the roof.

  “Up you go, then,” Odin said, leaping onto the back of a horse. Even though only the outline was there and I could see through the damn thing—I saw Odin’s leg dangling down the other side—the Norse god appeared to be sitting on something very solid.

  I approached one of the horses and mounted it against all visual evidence that it would be possible. I was simultaneously relieved and skeeved that something extremely horsey supported my weight.

  “The Wild Hunt rides!” Odin said, his face alight with savage joy. He kicked at his phantom stallion and the whole pack of us leapt forward, floating just above the rooftops. His mouth rounded and he bellowed out the old Johnny Cash chorus about ghost riders as we sort of slid across the skyline of Oslo. A few of the extra horses neighed along, and some of the hounds bayed at the stars.

  Riding a spectral steed was much like hopping on one of those moving walkways in the airport; it was as smooth a ride as Odin promised. But I confess it freaked me out a little bit. I was quite used to flying as an owl, but it felt completely alien to be floating above the world in human form. Having additional horses and a pack of blue-green ghost hounds keeping pace with me only highlighted the fact that our party should be coursing on the ground rather than in the air.

  We quickly gained on the two ravens and one crow, who were following the shooter. The Morrigan’s voice slipped into my head. I see him. He is dressed like a modern mercenary. Black body armor and boots. He left the rifle back on the roof across from the restaurant.

  I didn’t answer. I looked at Odin’s face to see if he had any reaction to receiving the same news from his ravens. His expression, formerly excited, had turned into a sour frown.

  “What’s the matter, Odin?”

  He scowled at me. “I’m missing my spear, damn you to Hel,” he said.

  “That brings up an excellent point,” I replied. “What are we supposed to do when we catch up with this guy if we don’t have any weapons?”

  “The hounds will bring him down,” Odin assured me.

  Beware, the Morrigan said. The shooter hasn’t seen me or the ravens yet, but he heard the hunt and knows you’re behind him.

  I was unsure what she thought I should do with this information. There were no reins on my unreal horsie. I couldn’t turn or slow down or speed up. For all practical purposes, I was on an amusement park ride called the Wild Hunt and locked into my seat. Sort of.

  The assassin came into view, head and shoulders highlighted by moonlight but otherwise as difficult to see as the Wild Hunt. He landed on a flat roof ahead of us and turned, a handgun in his right supported by his left. He methodically squeezed off a few rounds in our direction, and the third one shot Odin out of his seat. With a whuff, he toppled backward and I followed his trajectory, seeing him land awkwardly on a rooftop below. The Wild Hunt continued on and I swiveled to see his arms scrabble for purchase, so I knew he wasn’t dead. And then I got punched backward too, understanding that I’d also been shot down only when I was already falling toward a street, not a nice comfy roof.

  It was in situations like this that I truly appreciated my charms, which I could activate with a mental command rather than speaking the bindings aloud. I triggered the charm that would allow me to shape-shift into an otter, then oriented myself legs down, falling inside my abruptly overlarge tuxedo. It acted as a bit of a parachute so that the impact, when it came, was merely painful rather than fatal. The squealing tires I heard approaching would have been fatal if they had run over me, but, thank goodness, modern Norwegians are reluctant to run over formal wear that rains down from the sky. While I gave out soft little otter moans and tried to assess how badly off I was, I heard a car door open and close and some hurried footsteps approaching to see if there was a dude inside the tuxedo. I struggled toward the collar and managed to poke my head through it, though I didn’t feel like moving at all. I’d been shot between my ninth and tenth ribs on the left side, which meant he’d pretty much destroyed my spleen. I triggered my healing charm and projected mentally to the Morrigan, hoping she would hear me. That fucker shot me. Odin too.

  I told you to beware, came the reply. Now you know why we had to fix your tattoo. Coming around. I heard a quick sequence of gunshots from above. The woman—for it was a woman—who had nearly run over me startled and made a wee squeaky noise and looked up. Then she looked behind her as cars began to honk. She had yet to see me.

  What about the assassin? I asked the Morrigan.

  The hounds of the Wild Hunt are tearing him apart. He just discovered through experiment that bullets do not affect the incorporeal.

  But now we won’t know who’s behind him, I said.

  I think the answer is coming.
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  The nice lady who didn’t run me over finally looked down and spotted me. She was wearing a large yellow name tag on her sweater, presumably from work, that read Linda. She squinted through a pair of large spectacles and bent forward a bit to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating.

  “Oh! It’s an otter! A cute little otter! What are you doing here? Wait. What am I doing here? Ahhh! Stop honking! Go on, little otter. Move. Out of the street now.” She made shooing motions, as if human hand signals were universally understood by animals. I rolled over onto my back and tried to look pathetic, which didn’t tax my thespian talents in the least. Linda shrewdly noticed I was not well. “Hey. Are you all right? You don’t look so good. Poor thing.”

  I gave a mournful little otter cry to push her sympathy button. Magic or no, getting shot takes something out of you; I wanted a ride out of there, and it worked.

  “Oh! You must be ill. I’ll take you to the vet if you promise not to bite me.”

  I didn’t know what kind of promise she expected me to make as an otter. I was beginning to suspect Linda might have some issues. Still, she was a kind soul and more likely to help me than the average person. I repeated the wee moan and closed my eyes. That did it. She picked me up, keeping me wrapped in the shirt, and took me to her car; it was one of those tiny European jobs that look like a doorstop with wheels. The coat and pants she left in the street. She nearly dropped me when she realized I was bleeding.

  “Oh! Oh, my goodness! Please don’t die!”

  She completely ignored the honking cars behind her now; they didn’t bother her anymore. She had a mission. She opened the passenger door and gently laid me down in the seat before running around to the driver’s side. Safely ensconced with my line of sight obstructed by the dashboard, I never saw the attack coming. Linda didn’t see it coming either, because she was looking at me when it hit.

  A figure in black dropped out of the sky and rammed its fist down onto the hood of Linda’s car just as she hit the accelerator. The front end stayed put and the rear leapt up, tumbling me painfully from the seat into the tiny area where people were supposed to stretch out their legs. This did nothing to improve the condition of my spleen.

  Linda screamed as she was thrown forward and the driver’s side air bag deployed. The honking behind us ceased, the drivers realizing that something serious was happening ahead and the stoppage of traffic wasn’t due to one person’s whimsy.

  “Out of the car!” an angry voice bellowed. It may have been a woman’s voice; it was speaking modern Norwegian. Linda was either too disoriented or too wise to comply.

  Under attack, I sent to the Morrigan.

  I saw. If I forget to tell you later, thank you for a lovely evening of mayhem.

  Um. You’re welcome?

  Wincing with the effort, I managed to extricate myself fully from the tuxedo shirt and crawl back into the passenger seat as the driver’s side door was yanked open and Linda was torn from the vehicle by unseen hands. She should have worn her seat belt.

  I shape-shifted back to human and gasped as my insides rearranged. It didn’t improve my situation except that I could better see what was going on. Steam rose from under the hood; the car was totaled and wouldn’t be running anytime soon. The figure in black, I saw, didn’t intend to rip me from the car too; he or she intended to pick up the car and throw it somewhere with me still inside—a godlike variation on vehicular homicide. I couldn’t tell much about the attacker, because he or she was outfitted not only with black mercenary body armor but with a black ski mask as well. Absolutely none of the clothing was made of natural materials, so I couldn’t bind anything. I fumbled for the door release as the figure lifted the car from the front corner, grabbing on to the well of the wheel with one hand and latching on to the front bumper, perhaps, with the right. It’s frightening to be in a car as it leaves the ground. There’s a fundamental sense of wrongness to being airborne in a car that isn’t performing a movie stunt.

  The Morrigan dove out of the sky, shifted midair, and kicked the person in the jaw. The car dropped back to earth, I banged my head somehow, and then I got to watch the Morrigan throw down with this strange assailant in the middle of the road. Naked. Weaponless. And with a growing crowd of witnesses.

  They both began to move faster than the eye could track, blurring in motion as they landed blows and kicks on each other. That made the assailant a god in disguise; nobody human was a match for the Morrigan. That made me think of vampires; I supposed a sufficiently old one could match her. The Morrigan acknowledged this by disengaging for a moment to wipe some blood away from her lips. She smiled, both her teeth and eyes now red, and said, “Oh, you’re delightful, whoever you are.”

  I wish somebody could have filmed it at high speed so I could later appreciate the martial arts involved; the few people trying to capture this fight at night with cellphone cameras were going to be disappointed. The Morrigan and the anonymous figure fell to’t again, trading audible blows yet unable to do significant damage to each other.

  I opened the car door and slid out into the street without camouflage, wishing to preserve what magic I had left. I clutched my open wound, which I hadn’t closed up yet because the bullet was still inside and needed to be extracted. My emergence caused some comment among the general public. Some variation of “That man is naked and bleeding!” could be heard rippling through them, but this spectacle was only momentarily diverting compared to the woman who was naked and fighting.

  Linda, however, who was thankfully okay if a bit rattled, found my exit both fascinating and horrifying. “Who is that? How did he get in my car? I don’t know who that is! I swear he’s not mine! I was not driving with a naked man! Which is kind of a shame, really, now that I think about it. Look at that, eh? Yum!”

  There was very little I could contribute to the fight. I was in no condition to match speed or strength with them, and I had parts that were extremely vulnerable right now. Despite my winning record against pagan gods and vampires so far, I didn’t relish facing off against one that could go toe-to-toe with the Morrigan. I was also supposed to be in hiding, so the increasing number of camera phones was making me nervous. I left the scene with an odd gait that tried to minimize impact and headed for a dark alley between buildings. No one tried to stop me until I entered the alley itself.

  A gray figure loomed out of the darkness, and moonlight glinted on his brow and the ridge of his nose. Blood covered his tunic and some of it had seeped through his coat as well, high up on the right side of his torso. “Where are you going?” Odin said.

  “Oh! Away, I guess? I hadn’t thought it through too much. Whoever that is out there, if he was able to track me he wouldn’t have needed to enchant Frigg’s necklace, and, besides, I’m not in any shape to fight.”

  Odin grunted. “Neither am I. I suppose our business is concluded and you’re free to go. But don’t you wish to find out who wants to kill you? I do.”

  “I figured someone would send me a memo. Where’s the Wild Hunt?”

  “I dismissed them. The hunt is wonderful above the rooftops but not so ideal among the civilians at street level.”

  “Good call. Speaking of which, if you’d like to get the fight moved into this alley for closer observation, I could probably manage it. There would be no civilians unless they followed.”

  “Do it.” Odin’s appearance began to shift from the Gray Wanderer to the impressive tuxedo-clad authority figure.

  I reached out to the Morrigan with my mind. Move into the alley behind you. I’m here with Odin. I didn’t get an answer, but the nature of the battle changed. Morrigan altered her tactics and managed to grab hold of her opponent and toss him or her across the street and into the alley where we waited. The assembled crowd gave a collective gasp. The figure landed with a whuff of breath at our feet. Odin bent down and tore off the ski mask with his left hand, revealing the assailant to be female after all.

  I didn’t recognize her at first, since her hair was musse
d, her nose and mouth bloodied by the Morrigan, and I was looking at her face upside down. She recognized me, however, and pushed and pivoted on the ground and tried to sweep my legs. I hopped over her kick like it was a jump rope, but I hadn’t sped up my movements yet and she was much faster than me. Up on her feet before I knew what she was about, she punched me in the solar plexus and sent me sprawling backward in the alley. She would have followed up had Odin not interposed himself and grabbed her by the throat with his left hand. She roared and flailed at him, but he did not let go, and his grip was unbreakable. For a guy who wasn’t in shape to fight, he seemed to be doing quite well for himself.

  “You will submit! Freyja! Cease this instant!”

  Freyja, the Norse goddess of war and beauty, had more than the average number of reasons to hate me. We didn’t need to interrogate her to figure out what she’d done and why. I’d killed her brother and made a truly terrible decision to offer her in exchange for the aid of the frost giants. She would loathe me forever and want me dead, Ragnarok be damned. Odin pinned her against the wall, her feet lifted off the ground, until she stopped struggling and went limp. Then he let her down and loosened his grip but did not let go.

  “We will discuss your betrayal at length back in Asgard,” he growled.

  “Who is betraying whom, Odin?” she spat, blood flying from her lips. “Making deals with a murderer of your own kin—”

  “In Asgard!” Odin roared. She quieted, clenched her jaw, and squeezed her eyes shut, unwilling to look at me unless she could kill me. I got to my feet but held my tongue. There was no apology I could make that would balance my ledger with her.

  The Morrigan, bloodied and bruising, appeared in the background.

  “It was a pleasure to meet you, Freyja. It was a proper meeting indeed.” She gave a bloody grin. “I hope we get a chance to meet again.” Freyja did not respond.

  Odin turned his head to face me. “I cannot begin to express my dismay …”

  “No need,” I said. “Our agreement holds. Give me a few extra days to heal and arrange the delivery of Gungnir. I will tell your ravens where. And I will be there to help at the end of the world, if the world doesn’t kill me first.”