Odin's Murder

*

Lightning tears through my skull.

My thoughts ricochet around the voices of the others. One is as familiar as my own dreams, the twin of mine, but linear, with the drive to know, to understand, to absorb. Another, a cannonball of force, kinetic conflict and potential damage held in barely in check, exciting, dangerous. A pretty consciousness, lighter than my mine and feisty, dances with hidden meanings, oddly calm in this chaos. The last is the least known, waiting, tense with fear and sadness.

You are, I am, he is, she is—

Throughout all our thoughts is the image of black wings.

Us. We are. We. Us.

We are a cacophony, a chorus, a collective.

*

Ethan jerks his hands away, and the voices quiet. The flash of feathers burns behind my eyelids when I look up. He is gasping, looking at me like I’ve burned him.

Behind him, Dr. Anders still stands with arms outstretched, and his eyes closed. “Mimir,” he shouts up to the non-existent ceiling, “Now!”

“I have not been paid, godling,” Miriam says. “There is a cost to my magic.”

“Ah.” He drops his arms. “The sacrifice for your services. Of course.”

“The fee for my knowledge is an eye, Yvengvr. Greater gods than you have paid that tribute.”

Anders smiles. “Tyr, my warrior, I believe you have a blade on your person?”

Ethan reaches into his pocket with as much reluctance as I had when he forced me to produce the bracelet. I hear a clink of metal against metal, and he pulls out a small dagger. He hands it to the professor, handle out.

“This is crazy,” I tell Anders. “You can’t do this. You’re not going to cut out your own—”

He turns, faster than I can draw a breath, and wrenches Sonja’s head back by her braids. With a flash of silver and a spray of blood, he rips her eye from her face.

“Your fee, witch.” He holds the eye up by the viscera clinging to the base.

Sonja’s wail is drowned by her hands clutching at her head, and her mother’s shriek, echoing down the well and back. My vision blurs and I stagger, seeing spots of light, and Julian, still holding my thumb, retches, chains rattling as his body jerks with each dry heave.

The chains won’t let me reach the screaming girl who still stands upright. Blood drips from between her fingers, running down her arm and over Faye’s bound wrist.

“My revenge for your first betrayal, Mimir!” Anders shouts. “And your price. By your own words, I’ve paid the tribute. You are bound to honor the bargain!”

Miriam screams again, so loud the water sprays with her fury, and then the shriek is formed into a single word, carried forward with her hand, pointing to her daughter, and with a snarl of smoke and feathers, a crow takes Sonja’s place on the ground.

Its claws scrape for purchase on the rock, wings beating at the air, the only sound in the cavern besides the water, the flames and a high-pitched keening that stops when I cover my mouth with my hand. The empty handcuff swings, catching in my hair, bruising my ear.

“See, children?” Anders says, “You were never meant to be human, and never truly have been. You are all merely pawns in a greater, older war.” He flings the eye onto the altar and rinses his fingers in the stream of water, and then the blade, which he holds out.

Ethan looks as revolted as Julian, who is still gagging, but he takes the little dagger.

“What are you doing?” Julian gasps.

“He’s helping me.” Anders says. “Just as you are. But Tyr, with his unavoidable chaos, is more useful to me human. His so-called weakness will be my strength. Unlike the rest of you, where I must take what I need.”

And then fast, faster than I would have thought possible, he’s behind Faye, gripping her by the hair, jerking her to her toes. “Mimir! I’m tired of waiting. How much will you make me hurt them?”

My roommate’s chant breaks off with a squeal, then is nothing more than a crow’s caw, as she vanishes into black down and wings, rising up in a dizzy circle around the waterfall.

“Faye!” I scream, too late.