Page 5 of Coven Relics
Bjorn
Isaw so many snippets of this century over my many years in the pocket dimension. I was still trying to piece them together, but I enjoyed a good bit about it. There were so many comforts here we didn’t use to have. Sleipnir zoned out when I would try to cheer him up with the things I saw, so he needed a lot explained to him.
I’dseenthem before, so I just needed it explained to me we would be riding in Ravyn’s SUV to go shopping. Sleipnir wasn’t having it. Loki practically had to coax him inside with a side of beef. Loki and I both knew Sleipnir was faster than the wind when he was shifted. He could get to this market much quicker than we could. I rather thought the point of the whole thing was for us to all sit inside the contraption and bond on the way there.
Sleipnir just wanted to show off. He did that a lot.
We finally managed to get Sleipnir in the SUV. Typical. It was kind of like when you just traded for a new horse you intended to train for battle, and the damned thing was so stubborn it was trying to kick your head off rather than looking at how nice you made his new home. Now that he was actually inside, he commented on how comfortable it was.
Ravyn kept hitting things at the front, and music filled the car. Ravyn and Killian had an intense bond that I was a little jealous of. I’d had women warm my bed, but never any I was as close with as those two. She pressed a button, and music started filling the SUV. They were both singing and dancing along. It seemed freeing.
I didn’thaveto go back to that pocket dimension. This was my home now. Ravyn had opened her cottage to us, and I’d be forever grateful. I intended to earn my keep by helping stop her ex-boyfriend from raising the dead. I just really wished I’d get a vision soon.
We pulled into a crowded area, and finding a place to leave this thing was a lot more complicated than finding a place to tie your horse or land your boat. Moreover, it seemed to irritate everyone who had been here before.
“I promise, this market is so much better than the shitty parking,” Ravyn said. “There aren’t specific shops for eight-legged horse shifters or Viking seers, but there are shops for shifters and Fae. The Fae aren’t seers, but the Seelie and Unseelie have herbs they can use in teas if they have a question to the universe. Sometimes, they will get a vision with the answer. You probably don’t want to fuck with Unseelie tea.”
Oh, I was aware. And I’d already had tea with the Unseelie. Back in my day, seers were in high demand, and there just weren’t manygenuineseers. Plenty of people managed to fake it by giving out vague enough riddles that people would just fit it to their needs when something went right or wrong. The Fae knew the truth, and so did I.
Unlike the hybrids and the witches, the Fae were curious about me after I proved myself genuine. There weren’t many of them in my country. The Seelie and Unseelie Courts were far away. Provisions would have run out before the boat made it here. The only way those boats would have made it here with living souls on board was if you were blessed with rain and were decent at catching fish. Plenty of Unseelie and Seelie died escaping their courts to get here.
It sounded like there was still a distrust among the supernatural community of the Unseelie. They were a strong, ruthless race when it came to their enemies and didn’t trust easily because of how their leaders ran things. Unseelie were a little morally grey, even for everyone back then who was considered morally grey now, but they had been quite welcoming to me and let me try their different tools for honing visions.
“The Unseelie were quite lovely to me back in my day. Their teas made me feel funny, but I couldn’t say if they worked for me the same as they did for them.”
“Didn’t you have the vision about the eclipse and my family betraying me after you drank their tea?” Loki asked.
It was so long ago. They liked me and gave me their tea, but they didn’t exactly teach me to make it. The Unseelie offered, but there were conditions I couldn’t take them up on. They wanted me to stay and join their clan to learn all of their secrets. I could have asked Loki, and he would have given me his blessing, but it would have hurt him deeply. Plus, I didn’twantto leave. Loki was my creator, and I loved him.
“You know, you’re right. But the visions were strange. Mine are usually moving and long enough to give me an idea of what is going to happen. That time, it was a flash of still images. It was enough to let me know about the betrayal and see the darkening of the moon would eventually return. Isawenough to warn Loki that how we played things back then would affect how things happened when the time was right for his creations to return. I don’t know the Unseelie of this era, but they liked me back in my day and asked me to join them. It wouldn’t hurt to swing by their shop and see if they will sell it to me.”
“Okay, so you strike me as the kind of guy who would like and look totally banging in Unseelie designers,” Ravyn said. “The Unseelie area of this market is way toward the back because everyone is terrified of them. So, we’re going to have a hard time fitting Sleipnir because he’s massive unless we go to the shifter designers, which is on the other side of the market.”
“I’ll take Bjorn to the Unseelie side,” Killian said. “The three of you can hit up all the shifter shops, and then I think we are legally obligated to introduce our new guests to the Pakistani food truck.”
“You’re officially obsessed with that food truck since you got your body back, and I don’t blame you in the slightest. Sounds like a plan,” Ravyn said.
IsawRavyn in a vision shortly after we arrived in the pocket dimension. I knew she was important, but I didn’t know how. I saw Killian, too, but not like this. I saw Ravyn with a bat perched on her shoulder. My visions never showed me a god giving him his body back, but I was glad he was here.
I had a lot of time and not much to do in the pocket dimension. Sleipnir was my only friend there, but sometimes, he’d get in a mood and need to disappear to run for a few days. He was never really interested in talking about a future witch we’d meet, but he hadn’t seen her as I had. She was glorious, and I could tell just from what I saw that she would have made an amazing shieldmaiden.
I thought about her all the time and wondered what she’d be like when we finally met. She was even more beautiful in person. Ravyn could have conquered villages and toppled kings, but with magic, not a sword. I knew how powerful Loki’s hybrids were, but they had always been afraid of witches. This was one witch Thorunn should definitely fear.
I wanted to know everything about her, but I wasn’t needy. Sleipnir loved beautiful women. He got bored if he wasn’t challenged. I’d shared women with him before, so I knew he was open to the kind of arrangement Ravyn had with Killian and Loki and seemed to think we would eventually be a part of.
Sleipnir idolized his mother. Loki was fairly free sexually but utterly devoted to his family. Before they caught him, his wife asked him only to be faithful to her. He was, and it wasn’t difficult for him. Sleipnir knew Loki never slept with anyone other than his stepmother, but if anyone hit on Loki and he was kind back, Sleipnir considered them off limits.
I wasn’t quite sure how Loki and Ravyn intended to play this relationship. I wasn’t even sure how I fit into it yet. Loki wanted his son to be happy, and I’m sure he thought Ravyn could do that. I was reasonably confident she could, too.
Sleipnir was going to have to come to that conclusion on his own, and honestly, I really wanted to get to know Killian better, so I wasn’t upset about us splitting up.
Chapter5
Killian
Ididn’t just steal Bjorn because it made logical sense to split up. I just had this feeling in my gut that unleashing Loki on the Unseeliewas notthe way to get top secret tea. Plus, I found Bjorn utterly fascinating. History had always been something I was interested in. I lived through it once and then had a chance to come back and see how people taught it centuries later. Unfortunately, history hadn’t been kind to some of the people we viewed as heroes back then.
I was born in London, and I knew what my history tutors taught about the Northmen. I was with Ravyn in high school when she learned about Norse gods and the culture that worshipped them. I was dying to pick his brain. I knew history was fraught with people who claimed to be seers, but the modern interpretation was that they were frauds. If there really were people who could see the future, they weren’t using those gifts to help other people get more powerful. I believed the same thing until I went to Hell and found out plenty of them lived there. So, Bjorn’s gifts fascinated me.
