“Aurora, sweet,” Loki said in that silky voice that for eons had seduced goddesses and mortals alike. “You can’t play by the rules any more than I can. Ditch the mortal and come with me. Together we’d be unstoppable—we could crack the whole world open.”
“You’re married,” she reminded him. “Three wives. Or is it four?”
“And none of them hold a candle to you,” he said breezily. “My dear, these mixed relationships never work out well. Gods should be with gods, and men should be with men. Or women. Or women with women. Or...”
“You are so very helpful,” she said through her teeth, concentrating on the road. “Can you get the hell out of the car now?”
“You can’t talk that way to a god.”
“Demigod,” she corrected. Loki always exaggerated, especially when it came to himself.
“You need me. How many times have I saved that lovely...”
“Don’t,” she warned.
“Skin of yours?” he finished.
Aurora was about to point out that for every “favor” Loki granted, twelve times more trouble seemed to come of it. Instead, she just said, “Please. Leave.”
“As you wish. You’ll be calling for me soon enough. Just you wait and see,” he said maddeningly, and promptly disappeared.
Aurora bit her lip...then looked at Luke beside her in the seat, and her heart melted. She tightened her hands on the wheel, and drove.
* * *
When Luke came to again, everything had changed. He was in the car alone; it was stopped, with the windows down.
He reached instantly for his weapon and found it was there in his holster, heavy and real. He wasn’t sure how it had gotten there, but he relaxed slightly at the feel of it. He was way out of the city. It wasn’t just by the lack of light that he could tell. The whole air was different, live and breathing, with towering presences...
A forest?
The air was full of a spicy scent—not pine, more like cedar, but not quite. And he felt...better. He was still in enormous pain, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped... At least he hadn’t bled out. There was something comforting about the oxygen-rich air.
He stared out the window into the surrounding dark and saw that the car was parked in a lot surrounded by a split-rail fence and immense trees, bigger than he’d ever seen in his life—unreal, actually. It gave him an uneasy feeling...timeless, eternal...
Where the hell am I?
He stared into the towering shadows and saw there was some kind of building up ahead; the trees had shielded it from his view at first.
He didn’t know where he was, he didn’t know how he’d gotten there, and the woman—well, who the hell knew where or who the woman was?
If there ever had been a woman.
He felt again for the reassuring weight of his weapon. It was there...but the hulking blond man had disarmed him right before he’d shot him. Hadn’t he? Which meant that someone—that she—had put it back in its holster.
What the hell?
Wherever he was, whatever was happening, he had to get out.
He made a move for the door and found himself in blinding pain. A veil of gray passed over his eyes and he gasped. Not good.
Suddenly the car door was opening beside him, and the woman was there. A shock, because he hadn’t heard her approach at all. Normally his hearing was keen as a bat’s.
She looked startled, then pleased. “You’re awake.”
With a supreme effort, he pulled the Glock and lunged out of the car, supporting himself by leaning on the roof while he used the other hand to train the gun on her.
She stood still, looking down at the Glock and then back up at him expectantly, not seeming afraid or surprised at all.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
Not exactly the words of someone who was trying to kill him.
“Where are we?” he demanded.
“The Sequoias.”
He felt a rush of relief. It made perfect sense; he should have known right away by the immensity of the trees around him. A real place, not some ancient universe or other world or whatever he’d been thinking it was.
I must still be pretty out of it, he thought, and then realized he also must have been out for at least three hours—the distance from the city to the national forest.
“You’ve been driving for three hours?” he asked, unnerved.
She looked evasive. “Not exactly.”
“How many hours exactly?”
“Well, hours,” she said vaguely, “are not all that relevant actually. It’s about time, you see. Time can do strange things.”
Maybe it was because he was dizzy from bleeding so heavily, but he wasn’t following her at all. He shook his head to clear it. “Let’s start from the beginning. Who are you? What happened back there? What am I doing here?”
“Someone was trying to kill you,” she said.
“That part I remember,” he said coldly.
I was lying on the dock, bleeding... I was thinking I was dead...
He remembered the dark tunnel that had opened up to him...
And then what? What happened? The next thing I can remember is being with her. No memory of how, or when, or why...
“We’ll go to the room,” she said suddenly. “You need to lie down.”
“The room?”
“This is a hotel. A lodge, I think you call it.”
Luke raised his eyebrows. She’d gotten a room? That was an interesting development—if it was in any way true. They could be anywhere. She could be taking him anywhere. Anyone at all could be waiting in “the room.”
“You can rest, and I can...” She stopped, looking worried, almost as if she didn’t know how to complete the sentence. Not his problem. He had things to do, people to see.
“I need to call my team,” he told her.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said quickly.
He refrained, barely, from asking her just what the hell she had to do with it, and simply reached for his phone. But when he speed-dialed his partner he got nothing, no connection. And nothing when he tried Lieutenant Duncan. He lifted the phone and squinted down on the screen. There were no bars, his phone was completely dead.
“I’ll need to borrow your phone,” he said stiffly.
She looked distressed. “I’m sorry. I don’t have one.”
Right, lady, who doesn’t have a phone?
He was about to insist, search her if he had to—but then he stopped, thinking.
My CI phones about a shipment and I show up and none of the rest of the team is there and I’m shot, nearly killed.
She was looking at him as if she understood the direction his thoughts were heading.
“I got set up,” he said slowly. The realization was like a shot to the gut.
She lifted her hands slightly in...sympathy? Apology? Agreement?
“How do you know all this?” he