Odin's Murder

The chains are attached to the stone, where massive rings have been bolted into the rock. I dig at the rust until my fingernails tear, but the iron doesn’t give. I bend down to Sonja, tug on her handcuffs, but she shakes her head at me, grabs my fingers in hers. I squeeze back.

“Anders brought me here,” Julian says. “Well, I guess he did. I don’t know how. One minute I was sitting in his office and then next I was down here, and the bastard’s cuffing me up in these chains.” His fury makes his body rigid, eyes narrow and predatory, dangerous, a wild raptor caged against its will. “Sonja was already here.” He looks me up and down. “How did you find us? Did Anders bring you?”

“I went through the chapel door. It opened up here.”

“What? The chapel on campus? That Ethan took pictures of?”

Sonja nods.

“Your dream,” I say. “I knew something was wrong. I came as soon as I puzzled it out.”

“That makes no sense.” He shakes his head, twists against the shackles. “You need to get out of here. Anders has lost it. Like, completely. He’s insane.”

“I’m not leaving you here like this!” I look around for something to pry at the chains. “He’s psychotic! He’s willing to do this to us because he’s afraid of getting his dissertation discredited?”

“He won’t hurt us. He wants us for something. Something beyond the book.” Jules nods to the floor where a plastic jug of water sits by a white and red cardboard bucket, chicken bones, picked clean, in the bottom. A blanket is wadded next to it and a metal bucket with a lid sits not far off. “Go. Get help, but find Ethan and Faye. Don’t let them come down here.”

“Ethan’s probably been arrested by now, and Faye is gone, too. Since yesterday.” At my words, Julian’s face flashes with something I’ve not seen before, a dark despair that tells me Ethan is right; my brother is love with her.

Sonja tugs my hand. “Aunt Connie,” she says, voice hoarse. “Go find Constance, in the kitchen. Tell her to find my mother. She’ll know what to do.”

“I’m not leaving you down here. Either of you.” I repeat. I don’t tell them why, that I don’t see any way to get back, the only exit in the cavern led here, and the opening at the other end of this cave slopes further down, widening into blackness. “We’ll all get out of here together.”

Sonja groans, lets go of my hand, and buries her face in her palms.

“Memory, get out of here,” Julian repeats. “If Ethan is in jail then we have more time. Find Faye, and don’t come back down here!”

“Why? I thought you said he wasn’t going to harm you!”

“Not until we’re all together. All of us. He’s crazy, Memory. This is all some kind of ritual he’s reenacting, a ceremony to Odin, and we represent the crows.”

“No one worships the Norse gods anymore! This is unbelievable. That died off long before this area was settled—” I close my mouth, stare down at Sonja. My voice catches in my throat. “The chapel. With the five doors. One for each of Odin’s crows. What is he trying to do?”

“Open the portal,” she says.

“What portal? To Asgard? This is ridiculous. We’re not birds.” I stare at her

face. There’s a scrape on her chin, half healed. She stares back at me, wipes away a tear with her wrist. The chain rattles. “You can’t believe that!” I yell. The echoes bounce off the stones, and out into the dark.

“It doesn’t matter. He believes it.” Julian says.

“It’s the truth.” More tears track down Sonja’s face. “Why do you think you remember everything? And Julian can’t satisfy his need for information? Faye and her runes. Ethan and his oppositional disorder.”

“What are you talking about?” I shout at her. “You’re delirious. And you don’t know anything about me, or us. You’ve never even met Ethan, or Faye!”

“Yvengvr has been waiting for his vengeance for eons. The day I was born, he started plotting how to bring us together. And now here we are.”

Julian is watching me, waiting for my reaction, which is total disbelief. “Seriously?” I ask him. “You believe this?! What the hell is wrong with you?”

He doesn’t back down, and I look over my shoulder, where he is staring, to a tangle of metal wires sitting in the shadow of a rock outcropping. I’ve seen something like it before, the color and weight, but not in that shape.

“I don’t know what to believe, Memory, and it doesn’t matter. But if you don’t get out of here, and quick, we’re going to end part of whatever sick fantasy he’s concocted in his mind. I think he really does believe he’s carrying out the will of Yvengvr. Odin’s son who was cast out of Asgard in the legends.” He nods his head to the other three sets of irons bolted to the tone wall. “Don’t let him test his theory.”

“Jules, I can’t!”

“Go. Now,” he pleads. “He needs to have all of us. Without everyone, he’s stalled, he can’t perform his rites or sacrament or whatever the hell he is planning to do.”

Sonja nods again.