Liesmith: Book 1 of the Wyrd

Twenty-One

Wayne tried not to stare. She really, really did. Not in the rearview mirror and not directly, either. And it totally wasn't her fault if she had to take a lot of left turns, and that meant a head check via the passenger side. Just because they were stuck in some grotesque, depopulated hellscape didn't mean she was free to forego all the rules of the road. And if, during said head checks, she just happened to linger over the . . . being in the passenger seat, just a little. Well. Who could blame her?

Holy crap, she was driving in a car with a god.

Like, an actualfax, (dis)honest-to-himself, blood and fire god.

As a little girl, Wayne's father had told her the stories of the land, of the Dreaming and the spirits and the ancestors. Of mighty Wollumbin and wise Dirawong. Her mother, meanwhile, taught her yoga and meditation, chakras and karma, yin and yang and the Horned God and Triple Goddess.

Growing up in Nimbin, New Age neopagan religious syncretism was in Wayne's blood, and she believed it. All of it. But there was a difference, she was learning, between believing in the abstract and having a seven-foot-tall personified force of nature sitting within arm's reach.

Wayne wasn't too down with the Norse mythology—that was more Em's area of expertise—but she did know enough to know that Loki was kind of an asshole. And dangerous. Flame and earthquakes all the way down, and he felt it, in some indescribable way. The faint scent of smoke and earth, and the way his feathers (feathers!) seemed to flicker in the gloom.

Also, he was dating Sigmund. What was up with that? Not that Wayne was ragging on Sig or anything. He was a nice guy, and cuter than he gave himself credit for in a chubby, adorkable sort of way. But still. A god? Really?

The next time Wayne didn't quite look at Loki, he was grinning, leather stitches pulled tight against dark lips, sharp white canines peeking through the gaps.

"Next left," he said, his voice somewhere between the rumble of a cave-in and the roar of a bushfire.

Wayne obliged, watching the car's headlights slice through darkness that seemed almost like a living thing. The streets were hard to recognize, some mad artist's dream of bleeding signs and dead trees carved from obsidian, hung with bones and feathers. When Wayne caught sight of houses, they were squat and ugly things, too close and too identical, a copy-paste nightmare of windows like black sockets and doorways shattered open in silent screaming.

Wayne had given up asking where Loki was taking them. There were only so many times she could deal with his smug grin and cryptic bullshit answers.

The thought that this may have been a terrible idea had occurred to her, multiple times.

Following Loki's directions, Wayne took two more left turns, then a right. Out onto a two-way four-lane highway that she almost recognized, bar the garlands of rotting viscera hanging from the streetlights.

From the backseat, Wayne heard, "Why Sigmund?"

Em, who did not believe in gods or monsters or spirits or magic, and had been looking sick and pale and hollow for a while. This was the first thing she'd said since getting in the car.

Loki replied: "He's my wife."

"Bullshit. Sigyn's your wife."

Which earned Em something that wasn't quite a laugh. "She died. Sigmund has her soul."

(wait, what)

"No," Em replied. Her voice was still thready, but Wayne could hear the strength creeping back into it. "No, that's not how this works. Sigmund is Sigmund. Don't try to tell me this is all some predestined star-crossed-lovers crap. What's the real reason?"