Valkyrie Read online

  Liam’s voice.

  His brother had a very particular smoky, gravelly tone that was unmistakeable.

  So I must be misremembering it. Or mishearing him. Liam is dead.

  A slight shudder went through Cameron. There was a momentary yawning feeling beneath his feet like the earth was opening up to swallow him. Right after Liam’s death he’d been convinced, utterly and completely, that though Liam had died he had somehow also come back. A woman with blonde hair and wings the color of crystal had appeared and lifted his brother up. She had locked eyes with him for one moment and then those wings had given a gigantic flap before she with his brother in her arms were soaring upwards into a blue sky. But when he’d looked down at the spot where his brother’s body lay, the body was still there, covered in blood, bruised and broken beyond repair. Yet there had been a sense of emptiness to Liam’s body then as if it were just a husk that had been left behind after a butterfly had taken flight.

  The whole thing had been ridiculous of course. Cameron had hit his head badly during the fight with Reginald Fox, the man who had abducted him and struck the mortal blow that had killed his brother and there was no coming back from death. Their father’s death the year before had taught him that, because if there was any way for a person to come back from the dead then Kurt Blake would have accomplished it. And there was simply no such things as women with wings for that matter.

  A Valkyrie coming down to the battlefield to take the worthy fallen to Valhalla, Cameron thought suddenly. It was a favorite myth his grandfather used to tell him and Liam. He had claimed to have seen one during the war once. But what Valkyrie wears modern-day leather pants and jacket? Not any. It was the head wound, the shock of — of what had happened and wishful thinking that I hadn’t really lost Liam.

  He’d worked long and hard with a therapist to conquer this little boy’s fantasy. He hadn’t thought of the woman with the wings in over seven years. Yet this seeming twin of his brother was sitting before him with the same eyes and voice.

  If Liam was alive he’d be eleven years older. He wouldn’t look the same …Maybe I’ve forgotten what he looked like more than I think. Maybe I’m just filling in the details of what I’ve forgotten with this guy’s face and voice. And if he were dead, he wouldn’t be able to drink a Corona.

  The last part nearly had him laughing hysterically. He bit his inner cheek until he tasted copper on his tongue. Only then when he knew he had a hold of himself did he turn back to the Liam-clone. He had to get the guy talking. Once he did, he would be sure to notice the differences more, which was both a good and bad thing. Good in the sense that he would stop feeling crazy again. Bad in that it would lessen the thrill if he managed to take the guy upstairs after his shift.

  “Your friend’s name, Nafari, that sounds unusual. I take it that neither of you is from here,” Cameron as the Liam-clone.

  “Nafari is from Africa. Cameroon.”

  Cameron realized that the Liam-clone had only said where Nafari was from, but not himself. Further, there was actually a momentary guilty look in the man’s true blue eyes, which had Cameron pausing in putting the Coronas into the cooler.

  “Are you from here?” Cameron asked pointedly.

  “Holten is a small place. Wouldn’t you recognize me if I was?” the Liam-clone asked, which strangely had a flutter going through Cameron’s stomach at the man’s rather flirty, if guarded, tone.

  “So what’s your name?” Cameron asked the clone.

  Watch it will be Fred or George or something else innocuous. Not Liam.

  With a quirked smile so like Liam’s that Cameron’s breath caught, the man said in his dusky voice, “What’s yours?”

  “I asked first.” Cameron found that he didn’t want to tell the Liam-clone his name, because if the stranger said it back to him and not in that way that Liam always had … He shook himself internally. This wasn’t his brother. He had to stop mixing fantasy with reality. It was one thing to pretend the men he picked up were Liam. It was a whole other thing to believe they were his brother come back to life.

  But just at that moment when the man was going to answer he was called over by Darla at the other end of the bar for refills. A scotch and soda for her latest conquest, a bleary-eyed man in his fifties, but considering that Darla was north of sixty-five — though it was hard to tell in the dimly lit bar — this was a conquest indeed, and another dirty martini for her, extra olives.

  “Coming right up,” Cameron said to her. While he was making the drinks, he asked softly, “Darla, does the guy I was just talking to remind you of — of anyone?”

  “Like who, hon?” Darla asked.

  Liam used to fix her and her sixth husband’s cars. She never forgot a face either. So surely she would see a resemblance between the Liam-clone and his brother.

  “Ah, L-Liam,” Cameron said. He didn’t like asking that, because if Darla heard about him going to bed with a guy that he thought looked like his brother, she’d be scandalized and tell everybody. That was the one thing about Darla. She could not keep a secret to save her life.

  She squinted her eyes as she stared at the Liam-clone. The clone actually turned his head and looked over at them, smiling at Darla’s inspection of him. He even gave a little wave at them.

  “I’m sorry, hon, but he doesn’t look like Liam at all to me. Does he to you?” she asked.

  “I … maybe a little,” Cameron said.

  At first, Cameron’s heart sank into his feet, but then he looked into her tired gaze and suddenly he felt better. Darla was three-sheets to the wind. Even her famous memory would be touched by the amount of martinis she’d had that night. So it didn’t mean anything that she thought the clone looked nothing like Liam even when he was staring right at her, smiling just like Liam used to when she would come to him with a problem with one of her ancient Caddies.

  After he had brought a half dozen more beers over to a few tables, wiped up a few others and refilled the peanuts and pretzels, he was finally able to make it back over to the Liam-clone. He grabbed a bar towel and began to clean nearly right in front of him.

  “Is that a sign that you want to wipe me away, too?” The Liam-clone quirked him a grin.

  “Actually, I was just thinking what could cause you to want to be a man of mystery and if I was all right with that,” Cameron said.

  The Liam-clone shrugged one shoulder. “Perhaps I just don’t like to lie.”

  “So you definitely are hiding things from me and the biggest one is your name!” Cameron chuckled. He actually didn’t mind the secrecy. “Since you won’t tell me your name, why don’t you let me give you one.”

  Those surprisingly dark eyebrows rose. “All right. Give me a name.”

  He felt rather insane doing this. It was making the fantasy a little more real. Stealing across that line where women with wings were a possibility.. But what was the harm? Cameron knew there could be some to himself, but only if he allowed this to get out of control and he wouldn’t.

  “Liam,” Cameron said with a shaky smile. “I’m going to call you Liam.”

  The Liam-clone’s expression went utterly blank for a moment and Cameron tensed. Had he made a mistake somehow? Did the clone not like the name Liam? Was he going to admit his name was really Hank or Josh? He didn’t look like a Hank or Josh.

  He looks like a Liam. The Liam.

  “Don’t like my choice?” Cameron asked lightly. “You can always tell me your real name or make one up.”

  “Liam is fine,” Liam said with a strange smile on his face, but then he looked genuinely pleased. “So what is your name?”

  But Cameron shook his head. He had already determined that he didn’t want Liam saying his name wrong and breaking the illusion. “I am going to be a man of mystery, too.”

  “I could ask some of these fine people around us. I’m sure they know your name.” Liam grinned teasingly.

  “Haven’t you noticed that they all just shout ‘barkeep’ or ‘you there�
� or ‘dude’?” Cameron laughed.

  “So they don’t know it?”

  “A lot of them don’t care to. They keep to themselves. They just want to drink their sorrows away or at least drink enough so that they can sleep and forget everything for a few hours a night,” Cameron explained as his gaze swung over to the three at the other end of the bar from Darla. Walter would have been sitting in the midst of them, but after his spewing incident Cameron had sent him home in a cab that he had paid for. Walter lived in a flophouse and didn’t have the money to cover it himself. But he couldn’t let the poor guy wander home on his own. It wouldn’t be safe.

  “That is a sad thing. Drink should be used to celebrate life’s moments, not bury them,” Liam said.

  “Some people don’t have anything to celebrate. See those three at the end of the bar?” He leaned against the bar and gestured vaguely with the bar rag at the three middle-aged men who spoke to no one and drank deeply of scotch, bourbon or vodka. When Liam gave him a half nod, which was enough to tell him he saw, but not to tip the three off, Cameron continued in a low voice, “The first one’s Harry Grand. Used to have a car dealership between Holten and Santa Fe, but he lost it all because his brother-in-law embezzled all his money. The second, one with the beard and unfortunate sideburns, is David Halsey. He used to teach high school. Had an affair with one of his students.”

  “Who was the girl?”

  “Boy. What is that phrase? Never be caught with a dead girl or a live boy? Well, David got caught on video with one very lively boy,” Cameron said. “The kid was 18, but still it straddles the line between kinky and creepy since he was his teacher and all.”

  “Indeed,” Liam breathed and while his breath had a touch of beer, it also smelled cold like snow and mint. “And the third …” His voice broke off a little and his forehead furrowed as if he recognized the third man.

  “The third.” Cameron licked his suddenly dry lips. “His name is Peter Stanley. If you did come from here you might have recognized his face from the papers. His son, Barry, was killed by a serial killer named —”

  “Reginald Fox,” Liam interrupted.

  Cameron’s head jerked towards Liam’s face. The expression of the man was shuttered and distant.

  “So you did come from here,” Cameron said and his stomach flip-flopped.

  “The deaths were reported in many places. It was a terrible crime. Half a dozen boys killed in sixth months. Raped and then used for strange rituals in the desert. Hard to forget whether you lived here or not,” Liam said tonelessly.

  Cameron swallowed and started cleaning the bar again. Would Liam recognize him as one of the boys that Reginald Fox had taken? Would he know about the real Liam and how his brother had given up his life to kill Fox? Again, that sense of the ground shifting beneath his feet happened.

  “Yeah, well, Peter’s here just about every night. His marriage broke up. He lost his job. Sigmund pretty much lets him drink on the house,” Cameron said finally.

  Suddenly, Liam’s true blue eyes were on him, fixed, unblinking. “You know all their name and their stories, but they do not even know your name?”

  “They know my name,” Cameron said with a mirthless smile.

  “Do they know your story?” Again, those piercing blue eyes were on his face and Cameron felt a blush heating his cheeks.

  “Yes, as to surface. No, as to substance.” Cameron found himself resting his elbows on the bar and Liam did the same until they were only inches from one another. “But then again I don’t really want them to know me.”

  “Do you want to be known by anyone?” Liam breathed.

  “Asks the man I had to make up a name for?” Cameron’s lips curled into a smile.

  “Says the man who doesn’t want to lie to you,” Liam said.

  Cameron slid another inch closer to Liam. “So, mystery man, how long are you staying in town?”

  Liam’s smile grew. “I have some business. I’ll be here until that’s finished. Not sure when that will be, but a week, at least.”

  A trickle of heat ran through Cameron. “Would your business allow you to hang out with me after my shift? So that we have time to not lie to one another in a more … intimate way?”

  Liam’s true blue eyes hooded. “I think I would like that. Very much.”

  CHAPTER THREE: HAUNTED

  “So … I shouldn’t wait up for you?” Nafari’s smile was as bright as the sun’s when Liam told him he was going to hang out with the bartender after Fenrir closed, which was in less than five minutes.

  A blush heating his cheeks, which hurt from grinning so much, he clapped a hand on Nafari’s broad shoulder. “Let the others know I’ll join them at camp tomorrow. Sometime tomorrow. Maybe late morning.” He caught sight of the bartender putting the final load of glasses in the dishwasher. That beautiful face was bathed by steam, causing the halo of blond hair to curl more, and he felt a tightening in his groin. “Or perhaps afternoon.” The bartender ran a hand through those locks and his pink lips parted. “Definitely afternoon.”

  “Camp” was the term they used for their base of operations in any given town or city. In a city it could be an empty lot or abandoned building. In a town like Holten they were going to use a local campsite. They wouldn’t actually be staying there. It was a place where they would establish a door between the mortal and immortal world. By having one main camp they minimized the amount of doors that were being created between the planes. The more doors, the greater the chance The Gash would bring minions in. So one door between here and Valhalla would be enough.

  Nafari just shook his head and laughed. “Enjoy yourself, my friend. I believe this is the first step towards embracing that immortal life we talked about.”

  Seeing the bartender’s warm, inviting smile had Liam almost believing that. Maybe being in Holten again wouldn’t be that bad. Maybe seeing his brother Cameron wouldn’t slice him open and have him bleeding out. He sobered suddenly as he wondered if the bartender was one of Cameron’s friends.

  He mentally went through the rolodex of Cameron’s old buddies. There had been Carmody Shyler, but he had glasses, red hair and buck teeth. No amount of growing would have turned Carmody into the beauty behind the bar. Then there was Jason Childs, but while he had the same pale skin as the bartender, his hair had been black as pitch. The bartender looked like a natural blond. But despite it being unlikely that the bartender was Carmody or Jason this game he and the bartender were playing about names suddenly seemed both foolish and a really good idea at the same time. He didn’t want to find out that this was some kid he’d entertained when they were ten in the backyard. It would definitely get in the way of enjoying himself. Other than envisioning the bartender as a child while he tried to seduce him — yuck — he would be constantly tempted to ask him about Cameron.

  “Your smile is fading.” Nafari leaned forward and wagged a finger in front of his face. “Whatever you are thinking, forget it. Go have fun.”

  Nafari pushed him further into the bar while he headed out the door. Liam nearly stumbled but caught himself with Valkyrie grace.

  “Could you lock the door?” the bartender asked.

  It was then that Liam realized that he and the bartender were alone. He went back to the door and turned the three deadbolts. He tested the door and the locks appeared solid and all engaged. He then walked over to the bar where the bartender had pushed “run” on the dishwasher cycle. The young man took one last look around the bar and nodded as if mentally calculating that everything was as it should be.

  “Everything looks good to go for tomorrow,” he said.

  “You run a tight ship. I admit I’m impressed that you took care of everything yourself tonight,” Liam said as he surveyed the spotless bar and tables.

  “You helped.” A bright flash of teeth as the bartender sent him another one of those smiles that had a shivery feeling running down Liam’s spine.

  “Wiped a few tables? Put the chairs up? That’s hardly
anything.” Liam shrugged. He had been happy to help out as he saw how pulled in a million different directions the bartender had been as the night wore on.

  “Every little bit helps.” The bartender threw a towel over his right shoulder and he was smiling in a slow, suggestive way as he let his gaze crawl up and down Liam’s form. “Now … work’s over. Let the fun begin.”

  Heat burned between Liam’s legs. He rested his hip against the front of the bar, leaning towards the bartender. “Where are we going to have fun?”

  “I have an apartment upstairs,” he said and his blue eyes flashed with desire. He grabbed a six-pack of Corona and gestured with his head for Liam to follow him towards a door in the south wall that Liam hadn’t noticed before.

  “An apartment above where you work? That’s handy.”

  Liam watched the sway of the bartender’s hips as he moved with unconscious grace to the door. He fished out a key ring and unlocked the door. “Sigurd is really awesome.”

  “Sigurd?”

  “Owner of Fenrir. He lets me have the apartment cheap.” The bartender then gave a laugh. “But that also means he has on site help. I can’t exactly lie to him that I’m sick when I’m really out partying.”

  “True,” Liam chuckled.

  He followed the bartender up a set of narrow twisting stairs. The stairs opened up into a room as large as the bar below. The room was almost completely open with the living areas unseparated by walls. There was a large bed, two dressers. There was a television hung from one wall with a game system attached and a large, though rather ratty sofa in front of it with chipped coffee table between. There was a laptop on one of the couch cushions, which the bartender moved to the coffee table so that both of them could sit down.

  “Make yourself at home,” the bartender said.

  Then he took out two of the icy cold Coronas and placed them on the coffee table before heading into the kitchen where there was a humming refrigerator and a vile yellow colored stove with an industrial sink beside it similar to the one in the bar. Liam sank down on the couch as the bartender put the rest of the beer into the refrigerator then walked over to the north-east corner of the room, which was walled off with corrugated metal walls on struts.