It was in situations like this that I truly appreciated my charms, which I could activate with a mental command rather than speaking the bindings aloud. I triggered the charm that would allow me to shape-shift into an otter, then oriented myself legs down, falling inside my abruptly overlarge tuxedo. It acted as a bit of a parachute so that the impact, when it came, was merely painful rather than fatal. The squealing tires I heard approaching would have been fatal if they had run over me, but, thank goodness, modern Norwegians are reluctant to run over formal wear that rains down from the sky. While I gave out soft little otter moans and tried to assess how badly off I was, I heard a car door open and close and some hurried footsteps approaching to see if there was a dude inside the tuxedo. I struggled toward the collar and managed to poke my head through it, though I didn’t feel like moving at all. I’d been shot between my ninth and tenth ribs on the left side, which meant he’d pretty much destroyed my spleen. I triggered my healing charm and projected mentally to the Morrigan, hoping she would hear me. That fucker shot me. Odin too.
I told you to beware, came the reply. Now you know why we had to fix your tattoo. Coming around. I heard a quick sequence of gunshots from above. The woman-for it was a woman-who had nearly run over me startled and made a wee squeaky noise and looked up. Then she looked behind her as cars began to honk. She had yet to see me.
What about the assassin? I asked the Morrigan.
The hounds of the Wild Hunt are tearing him apart. He just discovered through experiment that bullets do not affect the incorporeal.
But now we won’t know who’s behind him, I said.
I think the answer is coming.
The nice lady who didn’t run me over finally looked down and spotted me. She was wearing a large yellow name tag on her sweater, presumably from work, that read Linda. She squinted through a pair of large spectacles and bent forward a bit to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating.
“Oh! It’s an otter! A cute little otter! What are you doing here? Wait. What am I doing here? Ahhh! Stop honking! Go on, little otter. Move. Out of the street now.” She made shooing motions, as if human hand signals were universally understood by animals. I rolled over onto my back and tried to look pathetic, which didn’t tax my thespian talents in the least. Linda shrewdly noticed I was not well. “Hey. Are you all right? You don’t look so good. Poor thing.”
I gave a mournful little otter cry to push her sympathy button. Magic or no, getting shot takes something out of you; I wanted a ride out of there, and it worked.
“Oh! You must be ill. I’ll take you to the vet if you promise not to bite me.”
I didn’t know what kind of promise she expected me to make as an otter. I was beginning to suspect Linda might have some issues. Still, she was a kind soul and more likely to help me than the average person. I repeated the wee moan and closed my eyes. That did it. She picked me up, keeping me wrapped in the shirt, and took me to her car; it was one of those tiny European jobs that look like a doorstop with wheels. The coat and pants she left in the street. She nearly dropped me when she realized I was bleeding.
“Oh! Oh, my goodness! Please don’t die!”
She completely ignored the honking cars behind her now; they didn’t bother her anymore. She had a mission. She opened the passenger door and gently laid me down in the seat before running around to the driver’s side. Safely ensconced with my line of sight obstructed by the dashboard, I never saw the attack coming. Linda didn’t see it coming either, because she was looking at me when it hit.
A figure in black dropped out of the sky and rammed its fist down onto the hood of Linda’s car just as she hit the accelerator. The front end stayed put and the rear leapt up, tumbling me painfully from the seat into the tiny area where people were supposed to stretch out their legs. This did nothing to improve the condition of my spleen.
Linda screamed as she was thrown forward and the driver’s side air bag deployed. The honking behind us ceased, the drivers realizing that something serious was happening ahead and the stoppage of traffic wasn’t due to one person’s whimsy.
“Out of the car!” an angry voice bellowed. It may have been a woman’s voice; it was speaking modern Norwegian. Linda was either too disoriented or too wise to comply.
Under attack, I sent to the Morrigan.
I saw. If I forget to tell you later, thank you for a lovely evening of mayhem.
Um. You’re welcome?
Wincing with the effort, I managed to extricate myself fully from the tuxedo shirt and crawl back into the passenger seat as the driver’s side door was yanked open and Linda was torn from the vehicle by unseen hands. She should have worn her seat belt.
I shape-shifted back to human and gasped as my insides rearranged. It didn’t improve my situation except that I could better see what was going on. Steam rose from under the hood; the car was totaled and wouldn’t be running anytime soon. The figure in black, I saw, didn’t intend to rip me from the car too; he or she intended to pick up the car and throw it somewhere with me still inside-a godlike variation on vehicular homicide. I couldn’t tell much about the attacker, because he or she was outfitted not only with black mercenary body armor but with a black ski mask as well. Absolutely none of the clothing was made of natural materials, so I couldn’t bind anything. I fumbled for the door release as the figure lifted the car from the front corner, grabbing on to the well of the wheel with one hand and latching on to the front bumper, perhaps, with the right. It’s frightening to be in a car as it leaves the ground. There’s a fundamental sense of wrongness to be airborne in a car that isn’t performing a movie stunt.
The Morrigan dove out of the sky, shifted midair, and kicked the person in the jaw. The car dropped back to earth, I banged my head somehow, and then I got to watch the Morrigan throw down with this strange assailant in the middle of the road. Naked. Weaponless. And with a growing crowd of witnesses.
They both began to move faster than the eye could track, blurring in motion as they landed blows and kicks on each other. That made the assailant a god in disguise; nobody human was a match for the Morrigan. That made me think of vampires; I supposed a sufficiently old one could match her. The Morrigan acknowledged this by disengaging for a moment to wipe some blood away from her lips. She smiled, both her teeth and eyes now red, and said, “Oh, you’re delightful, whoever you are.”
I wish somebody could have filmed it at high speed so I could later appreciate the martial arts involved; the few people trying to capture this fight at night with cellphone cameras were going to be disappointed. The Morrigan and the anonymous figure fell to’t again, trading audible blows yet unable to do significant damage to each other.
I opened the car door and slid out into the street without camouflage, wishing to preserve what magic I had left. I clutched my open wound, which I hadn’t closed up yet because the bullet was still inside and needed to be extracted. My emergence caused some comment among the general public. Some variation of “That man is naked and bleeding!” could be heard rippling through them, but this spectacle was only momentarily diverting compared to the woman who was naked and fighting.
Linda, however, who was thankfully okay if a bit rattled, found my exit both fascinating and horrifying. “Who is that? How did he get in my car? I don’t know who that is! I swear he’s not mine! I was not driving with a naked man! Which is kind of a shame, really, now that I think about it. Look at that, eh? Yum!”
There was very little I could contribute to the fight. I was in no condition to match speed or strength with them, and I had parts that were extremely vulnerable right now. Despite my winning record against pagan gods and vampires so far, I didn’t relish facing off against one that could go toe-to-toe with the Morrigan. I was also supposed to be in hiding, so the increasing number of camera phones was making me nervous. I left the scene with an odd gait that tried to minimize impact and headed for a dark alley between buildings. No one tried to stop me until I entered the alley itself.
A gray figure loomed out of the darkness, and moonlight glinted on his brow and the ridge of his nose. Blood covered his tunic and some of it had seeped through his coat as well, high up on the right side of his torso. “Where are you going?” Odin said.
“Oh! Away, I guess? I hadn’t thought it through too much. Whoever that is out there, if he was able to track me he wouldn’t have needed to enchant Frigg’s necklace, and, besides, I’m not in any shape to fight.”
Odin grunted. “Neither am I. I suppose our business is concluded and you’re free to go. But don’t you wish to find out who wants to kill you? I do.”
