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Two things happened simultaneously.
Anders opened the door to his flat and looked at the business end of a crossbow. Helen came into view and the bolt buried itself into her chest instead of Anders's. Before Anders could react something heavy hit him into the back of his neck, and moments later a wet cloth was pressed to his face. A short moment of feeling suffocated... then nothing at all.
Somewhere at the outskirts of Auckland, Gaia stepped out of the waters of a small lake. She passed Jerome and Axl by, not gracing either of them with a single look.
The gods and goddesses around her were stumped and worried. Gaia had neither become Frigg nor Papatuanuku.
There was only one explanation. There was only one goddess who was always incarnated. There always has to be an Idun.
“But if Gaia is Idun, what happened...” Ty broke off.
A heavy silence fell. There was only one reason why the spirit of Idun had taken residence in Gaia.
While the goddesses took care of a very scared and confused Gaia, the gods quickly headed for their cars to check on Helen and their brother.
Mitchell arrived at Anders's place at the same time as the gods. Glances of suspicious enmity were exchanged. The Johnsons had never come to fully trusting the vampire, and the vampire was holding every single bad thing that had happened to Anders against them.
The flat was empty. Silent. And spotlessly clean.
Despite that, Mitchell's eyes flashed black.
“I can smell blood,” he said.
“There's no blood here,” Axl replied. “Maybe the bathroom? Maybe Helen... is...uh...”
Several pairs of eyes came to rest on him. Mitchell shook his head like a wet dog and headed for the bathroom, but he quickly came back.
“It's coming from here,” he said and bent down. “Here... it was on the floor. Someone has cleaned it up. There was blood here on the floor.”
Mitchell straightened up again and narrowed his eyes. “What are you all doing here anyway?”
The atmosphere became tense.
“What are you doing here?” Mitchell asked in a snarl. “You're all here right when someone has cleaned blood off the floor. What is happening!”
“We have no idea,” Mike finally said. “All we know is that Idun needed a new vessel and chose Gaia. There always has to be an Idun so...”
“So Helen is dead,” Mitchell whispered and looked at the floor again.
Drawing on his vampire senses he could see the blood on the floor, a large puddle and some smears where the body had been dragged across the ground. But only one body. Only one kind of blood.
Helen was dead. Mitchell should have fist-pumped, shouted in glee, danced on her grave. She had taken Anders from him, her and Bragi, they had forced Anders to lie with Helen and driven them apart, effectively banning Mitchell from Anders's life by reducing him to an existence of a shadow somewhere in the periphery.
Allowing them occasional contact. But, Bragi had informed them, Anders's body belonged to Helen. They were allowed to talk and even to touch though never skin on skin. If Anders would ever do more than that, Bragi had said, Idun would let a tree grow through Mitchell's heart.
Mitchell felt his hate for Helen drain out of him, thinking of Anders. It became shallow and stale compared to the gnawing worry and fear.
Where was Anders?
“Who did this?” Ty asked slowly. “And what did they do to Anders?”
“You gotta find him, Mike,” Olaf said. “Ullr has to find him.”
Mike immediately closed his eyes, and opened them again after a moment. His eyes turned wide. “I can't find him.”
“What?” Mitchell was at his side in an instant, his fingers closing around the yokes of Mike's shirt. “WHAT!”
“I can't...” Mike's eyes widened even more, now in terror caused by looking into the black infinity of death in Mitchell's eyes. “Jesus, Mitchell... it's not my fault!”
Mitchell let go of him and staggered back. He fell into the sofa and stared at the floor, head spinning.
“What happened to him?”
Mike straightened his shirt and swallowed. “If I can't find him...”
“He is not dead!” Mitchell jumped to his feet again. “He is not dead! He can't be dead! I'd know!”
“How?” Axl asked.
Mitchell turned to him with a snarl.
“Okay!” Axl lifted his hands. “Okay, you’d know. But what are we gonna do now if Mike can't find him?”
“Look for him,” Mitchell said and headed for the door. “I whoever it is wants something from you gods they will contact you, not me. If not, then I will do this on my own. If there is a trace, I will find it.”
He left, leaving the Johnson brothers and Olaf stare at each other in deep, worried silence.
Mike continued to be unable to pick up a trace of Anders. Mitchell had vanished from the face of the earth and no one knew where he was.
They all knew, more or less, what had transpired between him and Bragi and Idun, but no one was privy to the details. They were in no doubt, however, that the vampire would try and re-claim what he regarded as his.
When Anders came to, he immediately realised that something was very, very wrong. He couldn't move and his arms hurt. His head still felt as if it was stuffed with cotton wool, but eventually he managed to open his eyes. His senses began to return, and he realised that he was in a dark room. Tied to a chair. And butt-ass naked.
Ice-cold fear crept from his stomach into his limbs and into the marrow of his bones.
He had lost all feeling of time, but at one point the door opened and the light was switched on. It burned in his eyes and he closed them with a hiss.
“Abomination.” It was a woman's voice. “Look at me.”
“Kinda hard what with my eyes being so used to the darkness,” Anders muttered and squinted up at her.
“Abomination,” the woman said again. She was dressed in black, and after a moment Anders recognised her as the one who had come to his apartment and shot Helen.
“There are more of your kind,” she said. “You have a family.”
The coldness turned into a heavy numbness.
“You will tell us where to find them.”
“Like fuck I do.”
His head was whipped around so hard upon the impact of her hand that he could hear his vertebrae pop. He saw stars for a moment, then his cheek began to burn like fire.
“You will tell us where to find them.”
This time Anders kept his mouth shut and glared up at her in defiance.
“Resistance is futile.”
“I thought you looked a bit like a Borg.”
This time the slap hit the other cheek, and it was even worse than the first one. It brought tears to Anders's eyes and he cursed himself and his big mouth.
“You will tell us where to find them.”
Anders pressed his lips together.
“You will tell us,” she said after a moment. “When we will be finished you will beg us to tell us where they are.”
With that, she left and switched off the light again.
Anders closed his eyes and tried to calm his breathing. He had never been so afraid in his life.
Following a trail of the scent of blood of a body driven away in a car was more than pointless. Mitchell was fully aware of that. That didn't stop him from walking up and down the streets around Anders's flat trying to pick up a scent, anything that he might recognise from the apartment, anything that could give him a lead.
He realised at one point that the same black car had driven past the door of the apartment building several times already.
If it was them, then they seemed pretty sure that Anders and Helen hadn't been the only ones. If it was them. But then, who else would it be? Mitchell flicked his cigarette end away and exhaled a cloud of smoke. Then he shoved his hands into his pockets and changed tactics. He headed for Mike's bar.
“You will tell us,” the woman said to Anders. “You are weak and a slave to your flesh. We will find out what we want to know. You can make this easy for you or hard.”
Anders swallowed hard and stared at her. They had started with humiliating him, refusing to untie him so he had eventually pissed himself. He still had no intention of telling her where they would find his brothers, but he also knew that he couldn't hold out like this much longer. He wasn't fucking Clint Eastwood, after all.
He had had so much worse than slaps by the age of ten, so that didn't scare him. The look in her eyes however told him that this was just the beginning.
And with a sinking feeling of dread he also realised that even if his brothers would look for him, they would probably come too late. If they would look for him. Jesus fucking Christ... if Mike picked up his trail and they came here, right into this nest of vipers...
“If you are waiting for rescue...” the woman said as if she had read his mind, “...then rest assured that it will not come. This place is protected by the shield of the righteous and no foul and evil magic can pierce it.”
Anders closed his eyes, the terror coagulating into an ice-cold rock in his abdomen. No magic could pierce it. Mike wouldn't be able to sense his presence.
They would assume he was dead.
No one would ever come looking for him.
He flinched away from her when she stepped closer, but instead of slapping him she had something in her hand that looked like a dog collar. There was no escape; she put the collar around his neck and tightened it to the point where she almost chocked him. He could just about breathe enough not to pass out.
“You will tell us,” she said and switched off the light.
Anders listened to the closing door. He would have screamed... if he had had any breath so spare.
“I tell you, they are looking for you!” Mitchell snarled at Mike.
“And that’s why we won’t do anything,” Mike gave back. “They got Anders and Helen. We won’t offer the rest of us to them on a silver platter!”
Frustration and fury and the fear for Anders’s life had Mitchell teeter on the brink of destruction. His eyes flashed black and stayed black this time.
“He is your brother,” he hissed.
The other Johnsons slowly retreated, apart from Mike who had the bar between him and Mitchell.
“And I know he is not dead.”
“What makes you so fucking sure of that?” Mike asked, his fingers clutching the towel he was holding so hard his knuckles were white.
“I know,” Mitchell gave back and his eyes went back to brown. “I just know.”
“That’s not a very good reason to me,” Mike gave back hesitantly. “I mean I get why you don’t want to believe he’s dead...”
“HE IS NOT DEAD!” Mitchell screamed, eyes black and fangs out. “You FUCKING COWARD!”
This time even Mike took a step back.
“Then tell me what we are supposed to do about it,” he said after a moment. “I can’t trail Anders. I have never seen one of them. How am I supposed to find them?”
Mitchell stepped back and ran both hands through his hair, making his curls spring everywhere.
“The car has been driving around the apartment all day,” he finally said. “Can you trail a car?”
“I can... if I can get a look at one of the people inside.”
“Is that possible?”
Mike pressed his lips together, let go of the towel and crossed his arms.
“Mike, he is your brother, for fuck’s sake! You could at least try! All of you!” Mitchell spun around to look at the rest of the Johnsons. “He is your brother! You can’t just give up on him! Not this time! Not when he really needs you!”
Axl crossed his arms. “If he is still alive.” The look in his eyes betrayed his brave words, however.
“I KNOW HE IS!”
“We’ve been there before,” Olaf said cautiously. “But look at it like this, Mike: even if Anders is dead, to follow them and try to get rid of them will make all of our lives easier in the long run. And if Anders is still alive then we have to try and get him out of there.”
Mike heaved a heavy sigh.
“Right,” he said after a moment. “Let’s go.”
There was no black car, and it didn’t show up again. They waited until long past midnight and in the end, had to give up for the day. They promised Mitchell to be back again at dawn.
Mitchell went down in a crouch in a side alley behind some wheelie bins and lit a cigarette. He closed his eyes, and a tear trickled down his cheek.
Anders was close to panic. He needed air. He needed to breathe. And he could breathe... just about enough to not pass out. His hands had gone almost numb but he could feel something warm and sticky trickling down his palms and dripping down his fingers. He had strained and fought the ropes that bound him until he had run out of strength, and the only thing he could do was focussing on not suffocating.
The door opened, the light was switched on. Footsteps.
A hand reached for him, and after a moment of sheer agony without any air at all the pressure around his neck was suddenly gone.
Anders choked out a high-pitched gasp and gulped down air with hoarse, painful sobs.
“You will tell us.”
Anders couldn’t even think about talking.
“You will talk.”
“Natalie.” That was a different voice. “The demon is too strong.”
“So we need to free him from the demonic spirit first?”
“I think we have to.”
The woman whom he assumed was Natalie took a hold of his chin. His brain was slowly beginning to work again.
“It is for the best,” she said.
Anders very much doubted it.
The Johnsons were indeed back at Anders’s apartment at the crack of dawn. They parked the car somewhere out of sight and joined Mitchell in the alley behind the wheelie bins.
Two hours later a black car drove past the mouth of the alley.
Mike squared his shoulders and left the small alley, walking down the main street as nonchalantly as he could. The car passed him by, and he looked up as if by chance. The driver was a nondescript, middle-aged man.
The car vanished around the corner and Mike turned on his heel to head back to the others.
They had put the collar back on and left him in the dark again. Pissing himself was the least of his problems right now.
Air. He needed air. He needed to breathe. The thought filled his whole consciousness, his whole being. He needed air.
They came back again and took the collar off. But before Anders even had a chance to get a decent lungful of air someone snapped his head back and held it in place with an iron grip he had no means to resist. He saw the bucket and he saw the water.
Moments later, he drowned.
They gave him little respite after that. With what little wits he had left he had picked up that it was holy water they were dousing him with, trying to exorcise the demonic presence. Two more people had joined the first two women, and Anders had one of those stand on each side of him reciting prayers into his ears.
Nonstop.
While the water crashed down on him and drowned him, they prayed. When he was allowed to get a single lungful of air again, they prayed.
Their words began to gnaw holes into his mind.
There was water, and there were the prayers.
He couldn’t scream anymore.
Since the Johnsons couldn’t just follow a car that drove around the same block for hours and hours on end they were forced to wait until nightfall when the car would head back to wherever it was they were hiding.
The goddesses had joined them after Mike had called Michele; they thought it prudent to have her magic stick around if things should get ugly.
At one point late in the evening, Mike felt the presence of his prey become fainter. They were leaving, and now the Johnsons hurried towards the car as fast as they could.
They didn’t need to follow the car as suck, so they could rely on Mike’s powers to keep them on track and could follow them in a safe distance.
They left the city and headed north. Eventually they left the main road and stopped at a small, narrow path winding down towards the shore. On foot they followed the trail down towards the beach and a cluster of small holiday homes.
And suddenly, the trail vanished.
“Shit.” Mike looked hastily around. “I lost them.”
“You what?” Mitchell hurried to his side.
“I fucking lost them! One moment they were there as clear as a picture, then bam! Gone.”
“A shield,” Mitchell whispered after a moment. “They’re shielding themselves.”
“That explains it, then.”
“And that means that you wouldn’t be able to sense Anders even if he was still alive,” Ty added.
“Fuck.” Mike rolled his shoulders. “It’s one of those houses, though.”
In the cover of darkness they crept closer, and eventually found one of the cottages that had two cars parked in front of the door. One of them was the black car they had followed here.
“Now what do we do?” Mike asked cautiously.
“Get Anders out of there,” Mitchell answered.
“And how?”
In the darkness, Mitchell’s black eyes turned into infinite pools of damnation.
“He is still too strong.”
Anders could hardly breathe even without the water crashing down on him.
“We need to drain more of his strength.”
He couldn’t even be bothered anymore. Whatever they wanted to do to him, they would do. He was powerless. How they could possibly believe that there was still any strength left in him was beyond him.
“We need to drive the demon out.”
The demon. Demonic possession. They were talking about Bragi. They didn’t know that Bragi would first leave him upon his death.
They were likely to find out very soon.
They came with a razorblade and carefully slit his wrists. Not deep, not large, but they drained him slowly of his blood. Not long afterwards, Anders began to feel faint.
The prayers had receded to a nerve-grating background noise
They snapped his head back. He saw the bucket, and he saw the water.
He drowned. And he was bleeding to death. He welcomed it with open arms.
The water was suddenly gone.
“What was that?”
A crash. Like someone kicking in a door.
“What is going on?”
The prayers stopped. At least he could pass out in silence now. Blessed silence. Blessed darkness.
He was going under, but far, far slower than he would have liked. He wanted this to be over with.
He felt cold. So cold. So cold that his breath fogged. His breath was fogging. He was freezing, and his breath fogged... So cold that the vapour of his breath turned into snowflakes.
Snowflakes
Snow...
“Ty...”
His lips moved, but no sound emerged. His vision wavered around the edges.
“Stop them! Stop them!”
The door was kicked in. Anders managed to lift his head and saw his baby brother kick aside the splinters of the door, his expression the very impersonation of godly wrath. The image wavered.
“ANDERS!”
They had never expected someone to find them, so when the Johnsons stormed the place after Axl had kicked the door to splinters they had no time to react.
Ty pressed his hands against the chest of the first man who tried to stand against them. Within moments, his lips turned blue and he crumpled into a heap.
The second man, the one Mike recognised as the driver of the car, turned and ran, screaming alarm.
It was then that Mitchell took the lead. The cottage was small but apparently it had a basement and he stormed down the stairs where he caught up with the man. His scream of terror was cut short.
Axl caught up with him and they quickly noticed that there was only one other door, a solid door that looked newly installed.
It couldn’t withstand the strength and fury of Odin.
Four women stared at them in panic. They surrounded a chair to which a naked figure was tied. The floor was wet. The man was wet. Blood pooled under the chair.
“ANDERS!” Axl’s scream made the four women cower back in terror.
Mitchell cast one look at the slumped naked form of Anders and slowly turned his head to look at the women.
“Begone, Demon!” One of the woman screamed, but she was screaming and waving her cross at Axl. “Abomination in the eyes of god!”
“You...” Mitchell’s voice was hoarse. “You have been looking for unholy abominations?” His laugh could have made a body’s blood run cold. “You have been looking in the wrong places.”
His eyes bled black and his fangs descended.
The prayers turned into screams. They didn’t scream for long. More blood trickled away through the grated drain in the floor.
“Anders...” Mitchell didn’t give the bodies a single glance and hurried towards the figure tied to the chair. “God almighty... Anders...”
Mitchell produced his switchblade and cautiously cut the ropes. Anders fell out of the chair without a trace of resistance.
“Anders, no!” Mitchell’s voice was raw with terror. “Anders! ANDERS!”
He cradled Anders in his arms, taking in the bruised neck and the pale and bloodless face. He could smell the blood, and he could hear the heartbeat grow fainter and weaker. It slowed and stuttered.
“Michele!” Mike yelled as he hurried over. “For god’s sake... MICHELE!”
Michele came running around the corner and through the shattered doorframe. She fell onto her knees beside Mitchell and the dying man in his arms.
“Oh for god’s sake,” she whispered. “Hang on, Anders...”
Her hands glowed where she touched Anders’s skin, healing the cuts on his wrists and the bruises on his neck. The glow made Mitchell’s eyes burn and his skin crawl, but he held on.
Eventually Ander’s eyelids fluttered.
“Anders,” Mitchell whispered and rested his hand on Anders’s cheek. It was so cold. “Anders...”
Anders managed to open his eyes a crack. His voice was gone, but Mitchell could read his name on Anders’s lips.
“I’m here,” Mitchell whispered. “I’m here... you’re safe. You’re safe, Anders. I found you. I got you.”
Anders closed his eyes again. Mitchell’s words made no sense, but his voice was soothing and pushed the terror away. His head was gently pressed against a chest without a heartbeat, but that was fine by him. It was as it should be.
Darkness claimed him, but it was not the final infinity of death.
The Johnsons quickly got out of Mitchell’s way as he gathered Anders up into his arms and got up. Blood was covering his chin, blood was staining his shirt and jacket, blood was splattered across his face and into his hair.
In his arms, Anders was limp and weak, his arms hanging lifelessly down, but his face was resting against Mitchell’s chest with the faintest trace of a smile on his lips.