She was inside, my dad, too, and nobody could get in. The caravan water tank malfunctioned, and the volunteer fire brigade from the nearest town was minutes away. I fell to my knees and called Loki’s name; I prayed to him, to the god of the caravan, of orphans and liars and thieves. Save my mother, I screamed, if ever you loved me, please please please.
Loki did not come.
My father stumbled through the blown-out window of the trailer, burning but alive. Crying and frightened, he tried to go back in for Mom but couldn’t.
He’d started the fire, setting it too well for escape, because in his dream, he’d been surrounded by enemies.
Though the Matria and all the caravan joined in my prayers, the trailer I’d grown up in served as my mother and my unborn sister’s funeral pyre.
Loki did not come the next day, either.
Or the next.
And then I stopped saying his name.
THREE.
I grab up the apple from my pillow, teeth clenched, heat seeping off my body.
This apple is no ordinary apple: It is an apple of immortality. The fruit of the gods that grants them resurrection.
And Loki Changer has been trying to gift me one ever since I became a berserker.
As if he can make up for abandoning me. As if he can make me say his name again.
With the apple in my fist, I march out of my tent, directly through the inner circle and the outer one, away from the public campground with its RVs and nylon tents and trucks and fires, away from the comforting sounds of people. I walk toward the neon-red fireball of the setting sun, out of the mowed field and into the knee-high grass and tangled prairie flowers. Down the steep incline I go, skidding against limestone dirt to a narrow creek that cuts through the hills, eroding the prairie away. Here is a flat, pale limestone boulder that fell off the sheer side of this hill. I stand on it, staring down at the thousands of tiny spiral fossils from when all this land was under an ancient ocean.
And I wait.
The sky darkens from pink to purple to midnight blue; stars appear in this slice of sky I can see from the gulley.
My initial reaction has faded, the anger replaced by a little bit of shame for feeling any fear, but rag him for sneaking into my ragging tent to leave this thing.
I lift the wrinkled, ugly apple. It smells like dust, like nothing you want to put in your mouth. The first time Loki brought one to me—when I joined the Devil Bears routing domestic terrorists from the Great Canyon two summers ago—I told him he was the god of lies, and I didn’t believe such a terrible little thing could grant immortality. I told him berserkers are supposed to die: We burn and fight until suddenly we stop.
He said I was not a berserker, no matter the frenzy-fire in my belly.
My dragon growls, she flexes around my heart, and I touch a hand to my chest, to the sticky warm skin between my breasts. I don’t know how good a berserker I am—insubordinate, uninterested in Odinist principles like the poetry of violence and animal sacrifice, still sneaky and slender and desperate to wander—but I know I am strong.
I wish being strong meant I wasn’t at all excited to see him again. I wish my dragon were restless because of only anger and irritation, not this thrill, this anticipation.
Loki is coming. He’s here, he was in my tent. He left me this gift.
I wish I were strong enough not to like it.
“Eat,” Loki says behind me, and I curse myself for startling, but do not whirl around.
I let my dragon grow to fill my cavities, to heat my muscles and tingle in my blood, so that when I step off the limestone and splash into the shallow creek, turning to face my old god, there is fire in my eyes, and I know he can feel it.
“I don’t want this any more than I have before,” I say, holding the apple out in the palm of my hand.
Loki Changer stands before me in my favorite guise of his from childhood: He’s my age and perfectly androgynous, his white face as lovely as a marble statue of Roman youth. A white T-shirt shows off fine shoulders, a slick black vest accents his narrow waist, and tight jeans ruin the androgyny without anyone having to stare. He’s so ragging good at knowing what I like.
It’s his secret superpower: shifting his shape to mirror our desires.
“Perhaps,” he purrs, “if you eat the apple, I won’t bother you for another year, at least?”
I laugh. “If I eat it, you’ll convince yourself it’s a sign I’m wearing down.”
“Or maybe your continued refusal is the only way you know how to keep me coming back.”
“Tell yourself whatever you like. I’m not eating it.”
“Why?” he demands. Freckles pop out across his cheeks, like somebody had just splashed reddish mud on him.
I shrug. “I don’t want to.”
“Why, you stubborn creature? You don’t get that from me or mine.”
“Maybe I was never meant to stay in the Lokiskin family.”
His eyes narrow. “Not true, Vider, you’re—”
“I am not yours.” I slice off the very suggestion.
“If Baldur gave it to you, or Soren Bearstar, you’d eat it.”
Fisting my hand around the tiny apple, I say, “Maybe,” just to be mean.
Loki crosses his arms and his shoulders widen; his skin darkens, hair shrinks down to a buzz cut, and he goes square all over. He’s not quite Soren but close. “I can arrange that.”
“Stop it,” I say.
The god slips into the shape of a woman in the same jeans and T-shirt, now with suspenders and a pink bow tie loose like a necklace. “Better?” she says in a smooth, succulent voice.
I drop the apple in the creek and turn to hike up the rough hill.
“Vider!” he says, voice deeper again.
There’s splashing behind me. I stomp up the incline, but not so quickly he thinks I’m fleeing. He grabs my elbow, jerks me around.
My frenzy blows out and I punch his mouth.
Loki’s head snaps sideways. His fingers tighten on my left arm and I lift a boot to donkey kick his knee out, but he twists and gets his arm around my neck. I use the momentum to get my heel against his ankle instead. He squeezes my throat, cutting off my breath, and I suddenly drop all my weight.
Unprepared, Loki loses balance and we crash to the side of the hill. Pain shocks my chin and my knees. I struggle, turning, but we’re tangled and scraping against the hard ground and Loki won’t let go. We tumble over and slam down into the creek, and it’s my luck that has him hitting bottom first.
Wet and furious, I roll off and out, but he grabs my foot, and I hit mud again with a scream.
Choking on water and smeared grass, I spit and hack, pushing up. My dragon whips and roars inside me, and even though I’ve faced other berserkers in practice bouts, I’ve never, never been able to let go, let completely go, without worrying about the consequences.
I face Loki Changer as he stands, wet and marked with grass burn on his forearm and face, his jeans torn. My breath heaves and I pump it faster, summoning the frenzy from my chest. I grin at him, tasting mud and blood in my teeth.
His black eyes widen. I charge.
I slam into his chest like a bull, and he skids back but holds his stance, wrapping his arms around me as I sidestep, grab around his waist, and fling him with all my might. We spin together.
I laugh. He laughs, too, his hands strong and hard, his power all around me, and my power welling up, pouring out.
I let go my frenzy.
And Loki catches it.
My world is nothing but
fire and
strength and
pain and
bliss
because I am burning
flying
soaring on the huge leathery wings of my dragon, her heart and wings under me, lifting me up and up
and up
Loki’s hands just as hot in mine.
We’re flying—raging—together!
Suddenly, all my thrill and fir
e suck away.
Empty.
I slam down.
I am hollow and aching, breath knocked out of my chest, wracked with pain, pinned to the hill.
He growls.
I gasp.
Distantly, I know him—Loki—and I know it’s a laughter-tinged growl. Playful. His hands pin my wrists over my head, his body presses down against me. I gasp, wincing at the raw pain inside.
Loki releases my wrists abruptly and touches my face. “Vider? Vider! Are you all right? Did I…break something?”
I groan, shaking my head, unable to make my eyes open. I don’t know what happened. It was like a tornado swallowed my frenzy, an airless black hole dragged my oxygen away. I shove my hands into my eyes and rub hard.
“You were completely deranged,” Soren Bearstar says from nearby, and past the ringing in my ears, I hear other voices of fear and wonder and curiosity.
“Rag me,” Loki says in a nasty young voice. “Curse you, Bearstar, we were fine.” The god slides his hands down to my neck, to my shoulders, lifting me into a sitting position. My head is cloudy, wispy thoughts stretched like cotton candy between my temples. It feels good to be so exhausted, so supported.
I manage to crack open my eyes, and though the sun is gone, enough light reflects through the dark purple clouds that I can see Loki, furious, and Soren studying the god of mischief narrowly. Craning my aching neck I see Sune Rask and Lydia Wolfdottir and a half-ten others, mostly in shadows at the top of the hill.
Soren’s familiar berserking energy pulses in the air. I wonder if anybody else can feel it.
“Oh,” I whisper.
Soren was the tornado. He was the airless black hole. He shut down my frenzy, the way Henry Halson could, as if I were a baby berserker out of control, needing a master to keep me in check. Rag me.
The way Loki’s glaring at him, the god must think Soren’s just a cock block.
It makes my throat tighten with giggles. I hold them back, like swallowing carbonation.
Higher up the hill, Sune Rask is shuffling the crowd away, firm and gentle, and I hiss as Loki’s fingers find the scrapes on my forearms, and there’s a pounding in my right hand where I hit him. I breathe deep, down to my guts, and feel the bruises on my back and neck, on my knees, my hip, my ribs. It’s a delicious kind of ache, forcing my body to feel and remember parts of myself I’ve ignored. I glance at the split in Loki’s lip, wondering why he hasn’t shape-shifted it gone, and what the crowd would do—what Soren would do—if I kissed the god now.
Shock at the idea has me thrusting away, up on my feet and into Soren, who catches me as I stumble. The prairie spins lazily under my feet. I sway, curse at Soren. Deep inside me, my frenzy folds her wings tight, twisting wearily around my spine. “Get…” I say breathlessly, “get away…both of you.”
Soren mumbles an apology. Loki looks twenty or twenty-five now, cuing more strongly masculine despite the slender shoulders and curling eyelashes, no doubt because he’s right next to the berserker. The god’s irises are a solid, unreal green, like recycling bins or costume jewelry. “Vider,” he says, “eat it.”
“I will not,” I slur, tugging free of Soren’s grip to stand on my own. “Good. Night.”
Carefully, I take a steady step at a time up the hill, ignoring Loki’s frustrated groan and Soren’s worried glance, ignoring Sune Rask ignoring me, and the stragglers from the crowd, the pain in my whole body.
As night falls, I’m a dizzy, woozy mess, but somehow, the more distance I gain, the more perfectly satisfied I feel.
I punched the god of liars in the mouth; his blood stains my hand. I let loose my dragon. I went full berserk and survived, and so did he.
When I reach my tent and my fingers fumble for the flap, I’m tempted for a moment to say his name.
But if he comes now, when I only want to tell him about the dragon inside me, about the real reasons I don’t want an apple of immortality and why I’m here, when I want to snuggle against him on that narrow metal cot and listen to the caravan sounds and the buzzing grasshopper sounds, the grass and the—if he comes now, when he did not come before, when I screamed and begged as a little girl, I’ll hate him.
I think it and my stomach drops, because I realize it means I don’t hate him now.
Maybe I haven’t in a long time.
FOUR.
In the morning, the wizened ragging apple is perched on the toe of my boot.
I pocket it, stretching out the bruises and aches covering me temple to toe. My body’s better than it rightly should be; berserking fever makes us heal faster, especially if we manage to sleep. I did—that hasn’t been an issue for me, though insomnia is sometimes called the berserker’s plague. The only downside of the fire healing me faster is that I’m a sweaty, ragging mess, and I’m starving.
After grabbing my toothbrush and toilet kit, I make quick work of washing in the temporary shower tent, open on one side to the prairie, with partitions for individuals and a line of Porta-Potties. I strip to bra and underpants before scrubbing down, taking care of body and teeth under the splash of cool water.
Nor do I waste energy drying off. I’ll only be sweating in ten minutes, and the water will keep me cool longer. I slick my wet hair back, dress and slap Henry’s black cowboy hat atop my head, tuck my toothbrush into my boot, and dash for the mess tent.
Visby Larue is there, a pile of eggs and skitty-looking bacon before him. I fill up my plate with more of the same plus a pancake to make a burrito with and join him. “Is that actually a shirt?” I mock before stuffing surprisingly fluffy eggs in my mouth.
He grins. In fact, it’s barely a shirt, but technically, it counts: white, ribbed, A-line, shows off his collarbone and shoulders and bronzy skin really well. The scars, too, are easy to read this close: thin, barely visible lines on his shoulder, vanishing into the shirt like a road to follow.
I’m staring. Visby’s grin has curled deeper on one side, his posture tilted into lazy arrogance. Rag me. I’m just jumping for some contact, apparently, after last night.
Huffing slightly, I turn my full attention to my food. Filling the belly will help with the other hunger, though I’m not convinced it would be a terrible thing to carve out some time to see if there are scars under Visby Larue’s pants, too.
It’s about time I ragged somebody all the way.
I recognize my own bravado speaking, and that I’m pounding food away a little too fast. There’s a huge link between berserkers and sex—and madness and death and poetry, of course. I’ve never done anything more than some amazing kissing, and once when I was fourteen, I let a visiting Matria’s daughter take off my bra. Plenty of the Devil Bears are willing, but a couple of them think that’s all a lady berserker is good for, so I just can’t. And there’s been nobody else. Berserker bands are like families, and I’ve been working harder than most to learn, to hold my own, to survive. Sometimes I’ve even wished Henry would break that boundary, for all he’s delicately implied the frenzy can overtake an unprepared berserker during sex, same as it can overtake an unprepared berserker during an argument or in a too-loud movie or caught in a swell of ecstasy when your team scores at Stoneball.
“Heard you were rolling around with a god last night,” Visby says when I’ve cleared half my plate, turning on his bench to plant one foot on either side.
I grunt an affirmative and avoiding looking, because he’s straddling the gods-cursed thing.
“Loki Changer, it was?”
“Yes.”
“He piss you off?”
I shrug, glad there’s food in my mouth and that others are coming in all around us. This early, it’s been cool enough in the mess tent, what with giant fans blowing lazily and barely any bodies.
Visby waits, hands on thighs. His hair is loose around his face, falling straight and black halfway down his chest.
“I’ve known him awhile,” I finally say. “Know Loki long enough, he’s bound to get hit in the face.”
The c
owboy laughs a sinuous, conspiratorial little chuckle that sinks straight to my rocks.
Rag me and daddy-ragging Loki.
“I’m here for a dragon,” I say sharply, as if Visby’s the one to blame for my state.
His rust-brown eyes pin mine, and he says, “Me, too, honey.”
I toss the eggs off my fork into his face.
He wipes them from his nose and cheek and eats them, which is completely disgusting. I laugh in disbelief.
“I’m still a bit hungered,” he says in some sort of quiet northerly drawl.
Standing up, I fish in my pocket and pull out the crinkled apple of immortality and set it on the table. “A gift, then.”
Visby stares at it as if he knows what it is, but he can’t possibly, so it must be well-disguised horror at the ugly ragging thing. He hesitates, then plucks it off the plastic tabletop. “Thanks,” he says.
Without a backward glance, I get out.
As I make my way through camp, I notice a rag-load of side glances and outright staring. It was too much to hope that my tussle with the god of mischief would go unnoticed or without gossip. I have about three seconds to decide what to do about it.
One:
Hard pride and arrogance; make them afraid.
Two:
Pretend nothing happened; ignore it.
Three:
I smile as brightly as I can at a cluster of about five people, reporters and two uniformed wranglers, staring at me with open uncertainty. I saunter over. One man ducks away, and another grabs the rope to keep himself in place. The others hold their ground. A woman in full makeup, suggesting she’s a journalist, asks, “Vider, can you confirm the rumors Loki Changer was in camp last night?”
“I can, ma’am. We had a nice spar, the two of us.”
“Is he still here? Will he help find the dragon?”
Leaning in, I say, “When has Loki Changer ever helped with anything when he could interfere instead?”
It works, and they laugh lightly with me. I excuse myself to get ready for the start of the hunt, turn, and nearly slam into Soren’s chest. “Can I have a moment?” he asks low, standing right where I ran into him, so I either have to step backwards or remain inside his personal space.