Poisoned Pearls Read online

  Poisoned Pearls

  Leah Cutter

  Poisoned Pearls

  Leah Cutter

  Copyright © 2014 Leah Cutter

  All rights reserved

  Published by Book View Café

  by arrangement with Knotted Road Press

  www.BookViewCafe.com

  www.KnottedRoadPress.com

  ISBN: 978-1-61138-426-0

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Prologue

  Odin Val-Father (oak-strong, shield-strong) strode angrily down the length of his long hall, thumping his staff against the stone floor. Sparks flew, arcing up and away, silver and gold. Each solid strike gave him little comfort. He wouldn’t break the stone, though—Frigg would have his head, or maybe his other eye, if he did.

  And he was already in enough trouble with her.

  With a wave of his hand, Odin set the flames of the long fire in the center of the hall sparking and hissing, reaching toward the towering, pine-timbered ceiling. Proud banners in red and gold, counting Odin’s many victories in battle, lifted off the solid walls, waving as if in a sail-filling breeze. Even the snakes carved into the wide columns moved sluggishly, circling and looping continuously, making a hollow sound, like sand blown against an empty hull.

  Odin’s ravens, Hugin and Munin (clear-eyed, sharp-beaked) perched on the back of Odin’s great chair Hlidskjalf at the far end of the hall. Odin angrily waved at them, but they remained placidly undisturbed.

  “I will not be defied!” Odin shouted. He slammed the butt of his staff against the solid stone. An ear-splitting crack of thunder filled the long hall, followed by the familiar smell of ozone.

  Hugin and Munin flapped and squawked appropriately before settling down again quickly.

  Had they really been affected? Or were they just putting on a show for him?

  Odin threw himself into his great chair. His long gray robe folded gracefully around him, the white collar, placards, and cuffs still dazzling. His staff found its place standing beside him. He looked down the fire-brightened length of his hall, his domain, his rule.

  It was all dark, except for the one bright light. Just as the All Worlds were.

  With a sigh, Odin reached for the table sure to be to his right, on his good side, where a pitcher of the sweetest mead should be sitting, waiting for him, with a fine goblet to drink from.

  His hand reached out to nothing.

  By Mimur’s left ball, was everything set to defy him that day?

  Odin turned, ready to blast the table and mead to bits.

  Loki stood at his side, calm and cool, the table pushed behind him. He held the pitcher in one hand pouring a honeyed draught into the goblet.

  Today, Loki wore a black tabard edged in red, with a fine white shirt from the Renaissance period. Why he persisted in dressing from times other than his own age Odin had never been able to guess. Loki’s strong legs were covered in hose decorated with large black-and-red diamonds, and soft, ankle-high black boots.

  “I am in no mood for your conniving today,” Odin warned as he took the heavy gold goblet from Loki. The first sweet sip soothed his tongue, but his rage still pricked him.

  “And when are you ever?” Loki asked, amused as always.

  Odin didn’t know what would permanently remove that smirk from Loki’s face. He suspected that even after death, Loki would still be laughing, as if all the worlds held jokes and riddles that only he could see.

  At least Loki understood enough to let Odin drink for a while in peace, the fragrant mead calming Odin’s sparking rage. The heavy liquor coated Odin’s throat, making his limbs heavy and replete.

  Finally, Odin felt as though he could hold a hospitable tongue in his head, at least for a while—it was Loki, after all. “Why have you come to bother me today?” Odin asked.

  Mostly hospitable.

  “Why do you presume I am here to cause you grief?” Loki asked. He sipped his own mead from a goblet just as splendid as Odin’s, though a ring of rubies circled the full cup. “Perhaps I came to see what was upsetting you. To see if I could help.”

  “Though I have turned to you, in the past, for aid,” Odin said, “I’ve usually regretted it.” He knew that was an exaggeration. Loki had helped out the gods more than once. And sometimes the price hadn’t been too high. Like with the man building the wall around Asgard, and Loki distracting his horse.

  It still always paid to be on his guard against the trickster.

  “Then at least let me hear what ails you. Let me counsel you. You can decide whether I have a wise or foolish tongue in my head,” Loki said. He turned his face to Odin. Half of it was scarred that morning—the poison from the snake above his head showing through. The other half was fair and clear, with a sharp cheekbone, thin smiling lips, and searing blue eyes.

  They existed in the All Time that morning, when all the myths and battles had yet to happen; however, at the same time, they’d all already occurred as well.

  The only fixed point was Ragnarok, sometime at the twilight of things. It was yet to come, always looming, that ever-present Fate that Odin had given his eye to prevent, only to be told it was unstoppable.

  “So you show me your betrayal as well as your cunning?” Odin asked. For the first time that morning, he felt a smile threatening.

  Loki shrugged. “I show you what your hall demands.”

  Odin didn’t believe him. It wasn’t his hall that changed Loki. Loki was too conscious to let his environment dictate his appearance. He was the trickster, and would show the face most likely to get him what he wanted.

  Still, it was an interesting choice. Half beautiful god, half scarred demon.

  “Tell me, Val-Father, what disturbs you today?” Loki persisted. When Odin didn’t reply, Loki continued. “It’s Frigg again, isn’t it?”

  Odin looked at Loki sharply. Was it that obvious that he was having problems with his wife?

  Loki sighed and shook his head, gazing down into his cup of mead. “That’s the problem with women. You try to please them, do everything they ask, and yet it turns out what they want is something different.”

  Odin found himself nodding, then hastily took a swig of his own mead. By Hel’s black teat, he wasn’t going to say another word to Loki about his marital problems.

  But oh, how his loins ached at the thought of Frigg turning him away. Again.

  The crackling of the fire in the center of the hall filled the silence between the two gods. The soft slithering of the carved snakes slid into the gaps. Odin let the light in the hall fade as he morosely contemplated yet another night alone.

  “How long has it been since you’ve had a real battle, Val-Father, father of the slain?” Loki asked suddenly.

  Odin pressed his lips together. You mean besides the royal fight I just had with Frigg? Even in the All Time, it seemed as though it had been an age ago.

  “Women like their men to be leaders,” Loki confided. “How can they have confidence in us if we don’t show them our force now and again? Not in the bedroom, no, that is merely a man not in control of himself. But on the battleground. There isn’t anything more sexy than a victorious leader.”

  Odin stopped himself from nodding this time. Maybe that was what Frigg had meant that morning, insisting he be more forthcoming.

  The silence grew again, but this time, it pricked at Odin’s conscience instead of his ready rage. “So what would you have me do? Go declare war on the frost giants? Again?”

  Loki gave
a mirthless laugh. “No. Not that. You need a real challenge.” He looked at Odin over the edge of his goblet. “A serious contender.”

  “You mean yourself, I suppose,” Odin said. Of course Loki thought he was the only one fit to challenge him.

  Loki gave a one-shouldered shrug, the scarred side of his face tipping as well, as if all the skin was connected and strained. “You could do worse.” He walked from next to Odin and stood in front of him.

  “I can raise an army like no other. And I would battle you, too, to the last Valkyrie standing.”

  Odin stirred uneasily in his great chair. Hugin and Munin also shifted restlessly from foot to foot. “You’re talking about the end of days, Trickster. The Twilight Battle.”

  “Do you think you wouldn’t win?” Loki challenged.

  “It isn’t as simple as that,” Odin said. “No one wins. And all for what?”

  “The glory of battle,” Loki said, raising his goblet high, his tone pompous. “Or some such nonsense,” he added with a sly grin, taking another sip.

  Odin took a drink in response. He knew better than to start the last war with Loki. The trickster was just too damned slippery.

  Still, his proposal had some merit. “Tell you what,” Odin said. “I think maybe, maybe, we could start with a small skirmish. Just to keep our hands in. To make sure our troops are still trained to the highest capabilities.”

  Loki gave Odin a wolfish grin. “And the winner of this battle gets what?”

  Odin paused. This was where it always got tricky, didn’t it, when he dealt with Loki? “Winner gets the other’s horse for a day,” he proposed.

  Loki snorted. “Really? That’s so generous,” he said sarcastically.

  “Take it or leave my presence,” Odin said coldly. Giving up Sleipnir for a short while wouldn’t be too dangerous, would it?

  “A month,” Loki bargained.

  “A fortnight,” Odin replied.

  “Done,” Loki declared. “Look for me on Thor’s day, three days before the Jól winter festival.”

  Odin shivered abruptly. This year, the longest night of the year would be blessed with the tiniest moon. It would be a dark time, when it would be easy to lose hope.

  Still, he wasn’t likely to lose.

  “Done,” Odin declared, his word ringing true through all the worlds.

  After the trickster had left, Odin sat long in his hall, wondering if he’d just been played, if Frigg would join his bed now, if the world had just been made better or worse.

  It didn’t matter. Odin could always break the deal.

  He wasn’t known as an oath-breaker for nothing.

  ***

  Hunter lay on his back on his cot, the desert heat already flitting under the edges of the canvas tent and stealing away the coolness of the night. He wondered just how fucked he and his unit truly were. It was still early days in the War Against Terror, and no matter what the leaders might say, it wasn’t going to be over in month. Or even a year.

  Something had awoken him, setting all his senses tingling. His pre-cog abilities were all on high alert.

  Something bad was coming. But for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what.

  Hunter expanded his awareness, like how they’d taught him at P-Camp. He imagined himself just a small, blue blip (why blue was important, he had no fucking clue, just that there had to be a color and no other color worked) and then extended his awareness out from that dot in ever-increasing squares, hunting for whatever it was that had awoken him.

  First, his cot; easy enough, really. Sheets that always grated, desert sand never washed clean, a mattress not really comfortable but better than the hard ground.

  Just beyond his cot, expanding outward, the square taking up most of the tent, Hunter found everything normal. Inside the tent, Hyperman lay breathing shallowly on the other cot, too aware like all of them. Outside, the wooden walkway that had been set up for the times the desert turned into mud.

  He continued his hunt. Outward, taking in the full camp, the two hundred and eight souls among the warrens of tents, the sandbags piled against every wall, the plastic corrugated roofs.

  A dark cloud hung over the command center, but it wasn’t deadly. And it wasn’t what had awoken him.

  Hunter pushed outward again, taking in the sand on three sides, the muddy water on the fourth, the dried hills and scrub, the sky that was already starting to pale in the heat, the emptiness of the region with no fucking roads or people and yet they were fighting, still.

  Then his awareness stopped. He couldn’t push out anymore.

  Hunter walked the interior of his blue-lined square, testing the edges, pushing.

  Nothing.

  He couldn’t increase his awareness beyond a city block of space—about a tenth of a mile. And there wasn’t anything wrong in that space, nothing to wake him out of a dead sleep like that.

  So something was coming. And it was past his diminished area of knowing.

  This wasn’t good. As November Company’s pre-cog, he should have at the very least two city blocks’ worth of area that he’d keep his awareness in, where he’d be able to judge if something was going to happen.

  That the radius of his area of knowing had been effectively cut in half meant something had gone very wrong indeed.

  Had the enemy (and which one was it? The locals? The Taliban? Some new force?) managed to find a dampening agent for pre-cogs and hide it around the camp without alerting Hunter to what they were doing?

  Unlikely.

  Or the latest dose of PHS-370 (Psychic enHancement and Stimulant), the drugs that had increased his pre-cog abilities, had failed. He hadn’t detected anything wrong with the pills, each round and glowing with its own light, like a huge pearl.

  Either way, they were quite possibly truly fucked.

  Hunter was going to have to report to his CO—to tell him that something was coming and Hunter didn’t have a fucking clue what it was and oh, by the way, he was no longer as effective, either—a conversation Hunter didn’t want to have without some sort of fortification.

  Which meant hauling his ass off his cot, going into the command center where that crazy-assed black cloud of simmering something floated, and possibly dealing with that before getting the sludge they served instead of food—100% nutritious and 110% vile.

  Hunter pushed himself up, scratching at his back. He was never going near a beach ever again once he’d served his duty, paid back his debt to the government for all the pre-cog training. Private sector and cushy office job for him.

  Out of habit, Hunter knocked over his boots, watching to see if a critter scurried out of them. He stood, slid on his pants over his briefs, threw on a shirt, knocked his boots over the other way before he put them on.

  Hyperman didn’t move, but he wasn’t asleep. Did he know? How could he? He didn’t have paranormal abilities, hadn’t been trained like Hunter. He’d started as Hunter’s babysitter. They weren’t friends now. Comrades, maybe. He wasn’t a true companion. Not a blood brother.

  Hunter didn’t know when he’d started searching for a blood brother, the ones who would match his abilities. He just knew that they were out there, and that someday, he’d find them.

  “Stay out of the command center for a while,” Hunter called out as he walked out of the tent.

  Hyperman deserved at least that much warning.

  Outside, heat pounced on Hunter like a coiled cat. He squinted, wishing he’d thought to put on his shades as well. The far-off hills gleamed white and brown, while the distant horizon was hazy with dust, tinged red along the ends.

  There’d been at least two weeks that spring when the desert had turned green. Then everything had dried up again, the sand spinning on the winds, seeping into fucking everything.

  Hunter paused before he walked into the door of the command center. He had no idea what was going on there. As a pre-cog, he should at least have a clue. But all he got was a sense of a dark cloud, something ominous, but at the
same time, not about to blow up on him.

  More sandbags lay piled both inside and outside the center. Fluorescent lights were strung along the wall, the wires exposed. The command center was a warren, with long halls of cheap plastic or canvas, opening up randomly to smaller rooms where soldiers sat and relaxed or worked on computers or even slept.

  Hunter had hoped he’d been wrong, but his luck wasn’t that good. The dark cloud was centered over the damned mess hall.

  Before he went to talk with his CO, he was going to have to deal with this.

  As well as try to explain why the hell he hadn’t seen whatever it was coming. And why his area of knowing was no longer as large as it once had been.

  Hunter pushed open the doors and walked into…nothing. Two dozen men sat scattered at the long wooden tables, sharing breakfast, stories, and the morning. No one fought. They weren’t trying to kill each other.

  Yet, Hunter could still sense the brawl going on. The dull thud of a fist colliding with flesh. A sharp crack of ribs breaking. Howls of pain. Growling aggression.

  In addition to the men who sat there, who Hunter could see as clear as day, fighting men filled the room, dancing like wisps of clouds through the tables of the mess hall.

  When was the brawl going on? Was it in the future? Or was Hunter seeing something that had happened in the past, like a post-cog? This wasn’t happening like his usual pre-cog visions at all.

  Who was fighting? Hunter couldn’t see their faces well enough to distinguish good guy from bad. He tried concentrating on their uniforms, but they were all just a gray blur.

  Hunter jerked to the side when a man threw a punch too close to his head. A breeze blew by his cheek.

  From a great distance, Hunter heard someone calling his name, asking if he was okay.

  Hunter couldn’t reply, but he knew.

  It wasn’t the unit that was fucked. It was just him.

  Chapter One

  Kyle still smelled of baby oil and cigarette smoke, though I figured he’d been dead for at least two hours, based on the light dusting of snow that covered his artistically torn jeans and preppy red-and-white-striped button-down. The snow around his body was all smudged with footprints, probably from the cops. He sat propped up against the wall in the alley, dark red bricks supporting him, while some stupid tagger’s name spiked over his head, painted in black, like a post-modern halo. His eyes were still open, shining a weird blue in the stark light. He’d always been pale and blond, but now he looked perfectly preserved, like a snow-carnival princess carved out of ice.