Dragged Read online

  A lady wearing a bright blue dress hands each of us a pink paper to fill out. The document asks for my real name, stage name, birthday, address, contact information, and other stuff I don’t understand. Since I’m not entering, I don’t have to fill out a form, but I peek around my friends’ arms to gather information of my own.

  I never thought about things like birthdays, but I now know that Gunnar Magnusson and Freddie are twenty-six years old, Alex is twenty-nine, and Darryl Donovan is thirty-one. Which makes me wonder about myself.

  I tug Gunnar Magnusson’s sleeve. “How old am I?”

  He quirks his head and looks at me strangely. “When’s your birthday?”

  I shrug my good shoulder. “The day you found me in the snow in Iceland?”

  “You don’t remember your birthday?”

  I shake my head. I don’t recall having one in Asgard or Midgard. I’ve always just … been.

  “You have to be at least twenty-something.” Leaning close, he asks, “You really don’t know how old you are?”

  “My first memory in this body is waking up and seeing you driving Sleipnir the tour bus.”

  He frowns, looking rather perplexed. “You couldn’t have been born from ice. You must have parents somewhere. A family …”

  The prospect of family startles me. My frost giant parents and my brothers Helblindi and Byleistr weren’t permanent fixtures in my life. Days after my birth, my mother Laufey sliced me open and harvested chips of newborn bone from my hip, skull, hand, and sternum. From them, she fashioned the runes that lent me divine power. The other gods’ runes were stripped from animals, which Laufey believed were weak. She claimed giving up pieces of myself would bless me with greater strength. She embedded my runes in a bracelet, fused it around my wrist, and then, she abandoned me. I’ve been on my own ever since.

  This isn’t a Woe is me, poor Loki story. It’s merely a fact. My truth. My frost giant parents didn’t care enough about me to stick around, and I didn’t care enough about my own children to help rear them. I guess you could say neglect and a total disregard for responsibility are buried in my genetic code.

  Which explains a lot, doesn’t it?

  But what if Gunnar Magnusson is right, and I have another family, living somewhere in this modern world? What if—like Freddie and Gunnar Magnusson—I was reborn in a new body and accidentally woke up as Loki when Muninn buzzed past?

  Maybe my new mother left me on the side of an ice floe and abandoned me like Laufey did. Maybe being buried in the snow killed my brain cells and gave me amnesia. Maybe I’m such a confused mess because I have two sets of mommy issues ripping my psyche apart …

  Ah, well. Not much I can do about it with four days left to live.

  So much for psychology. We have a contest to win.

  When we reach the entry checkpoint, I gather the forms and approach the check-in table. Having watched the drag queens around us for hours, I have a plan for how to present the group. Opening a conduit between Kenaz and my mouth, I lean down and affect a New York accent. New Yorkers have the best ones.

  “Astrid Jones, talent agent. Lokebrook and Donovan. I represent these fine young men.” Without turning, I wave vaguely behind me. “I need to know where to send my boys. As you can see, they’re eager to show the judge what they’ve got, and after waiting outside for five hours, we’d all love a splash of sparkling if you’ve got it. The sun is dreadful. So harsh on their poor skin.” I spin around and pinch Gunnar Magnusson’s cheeks. “Look how red he is."

  I’ll give Gunnar Magnusson credit. He doesn’t even blink.

  The blue dress lady whirls toward us like an azure tornado. She looks at the man sitting behind the table gawking at me. He seems to be having trouble removing his jaw from the floor. “Heath?” she prompts.

  Heath stumbles to his feet. “I—I, uh …” The poor sod looks properly terrorized. Well done, Kenaz.

  “Is there a problem?” I ask.

  He shakes his head with an admiring grin, and his face brightens. “No problem, Miss Jones.” He stares some more.

  I click my fingers between us to snap the guy out of his apparent trance. I know I’m a knock-out, but really, Heath. Do your job.

  “Sparkling, yes? Dehydration can be deadly.” I fan myself with a floppy hand.

  Heath flits left and right, turning papers over. Does he expect to find a six-pack of Aquafina under there, or is he looking for his stolen testicles? Silly man. “Of course. I’ll find you some water. My apologies. Be right back.” He scuttles away like a beetle.

  Blue dress lady is a harder nut to crack. Unamused, she holds out a hand. “Forms?”

  I pass the pages to her. She studies them, scribbles something on each, and waves us through. “Next,” the ball-buster shouts.

  Swinging my hips (painfully), I strut past her into the auditorium beyond. The guys catch up and flank me.

  “What the shit, Loki?” Freddie hisses in my ear.

  I keep walking and don’t look at him. “What?”

  “How the hell did you do that?” Darryl Donovan demands.

  “I thought you couldn’t lie,” Alex says under his breath.

  I hide my grin under lashings of aggressive confidence. “I didn’t.”

  “You said you were a talent agent at a made-up company,” Freddie counters.

  “My exact words were: ‘Astrid Jones, talent agent. Lokebrook and Donovan.’ I didn’t say I was Astrid Jones or that I worked for Lokebrook and Donovan. Just mentioned names.” I shrug.

  Yes, Laguz purrs. You figured out how to get around the truth rune stave. Well done, kitten.

  “I’m so sorry you had to wait, Miss Jones.” Heath rushes up, breathless, his arms full of bottles. He distributes the water to my friends and me. “Please, allow me to escort you to the front of the queue. It’s the least I can do.”

  My lips spread into a cat’s smile. I tug his earlobe once and kiss the air in front of his face like I saw some queens do in line. “Just adorable. What’s your name, darling?” I know it’s Heath, but my question gives him a taste of the attention he craves.

  “Heath Saxon.”

  “Thank you, Heath Saxon. Give me your supervisor’s details, and I’ll drop them a line about your attentiveness.” If I keep his bread buttered, he’ll be more willing to do me favors when I need them.

  He whips out a small rectangular card, scribbles something on the back, and presents it to me with a goofy grin. I stuff it into my bra and pat his cheek as if I own the world. Thanks to Kenaz’s fire, I do.

  My stunned companions hide their surprise as we march past everyone else. Tooth sucking and blatant hisses from a gaggle of queens led by Helga Boomslang follow us like lobbed rotten fruit. Burning eyes track me. I thumb my nose at the jealous bitches. Find your own badass rune of fire and enlightenment, and you too can be this awesome.

  “Miss Jones, if you’ll come with me.” Heath Saxon spreads an arm out, directing me to sit in the front row. The auditorium has chairs for about a thousand people, but only the first five rows are occupied. People constantly move in and out as auditions start and finish.

  “Good luck, boys,” I say, blowing kisses to each of them in turn. “Áfram með smjörið.”

  Only Gunnar Magnusson seems to recognize the Icelandic saying, which means, “On with the butter.” In other words, Keep it up. He flips up his thumb behind his back. I beam with pride.

  As “my boys” disappear backstage, I scan my surroundings. Front and center, an intense spotlight illuminates the audition in progress. A skinny drag queen with frizzled hair, a “five o’clock shadow” (thanks, Freddie for the explanation), and garish makeup dances to a pop song I don’t know. Wearing the ill-fitting outfit of a Viking shield maiden, she sings in a shrill falsetto that makes my ears want to hack up and expel her vocals as fast as humanly possible.

  “That’s all,” someone with an exasperated voice says into a microphone. Then he mutters under his breath, “Have a seat over there with t
he other thirty-nine shield maidens.”

  Ha! Freddie was right about the shield maidens.

  I glance left and hopscotch my gaze down the seats to see who spoke. Several places down from me, a beautiful redhead whose dress barely reaches the tops of her thighs flips through a stack of pink registration papers piled in her lap. She pulls a page out and passes it to the red-haired man clasping a microphone beside her. The bored-looking “ginger” scans the page from behind a pair of dark sunglasses.

  In profile, the man is stunning. I lean over for a better look. The guy turns his head toward me. Kenaz does the Techno Viking (I saw him on the internets. He’s so funny!) on the underside of my dome, firing off a stream of lust sparks like shooting stars directly into my brain. I gasp, squeeze my legs together, and clutch my side.

  The man casually lowers the glasses. His intense green eyes meet mine, and I forget about Gunnar Magnusson and the rest of my friends. There is only this man with his angular lines, tight-fitting leather jacket, and sprawling charisma that flash-burns every bit of oxygen from the auditorium.

  Pitted against Kenaz’s white-hot lust, the cardioverter-defibrillator that regulates my heartbeats labors to slow the pulse pounding against my hot ears. The bravado I swung around like Mjolnir moments ago is gone. I’m melting into my seat.

  Then he flicks me a smile like a man tossing his pet wolf a fresh bone.

  I slump, drown, and ignite all at once.

  Somebody get Kenaz a fan. The rune is about to blow, and it’s taking me with it.

  The guy returns his attention to the stage. He covers a yawn with a balled fist, and a wide-banded ring with a cream-colored inlay winks at me.

  I do a double take.

  Triple take.

  Holy troll shite.

  Othala.

  Which must mean that’s …

  Damien Drakkar.

  I regain my wits and straighten. I’m seven seats away from Othala. Seven seats away from reclaiming my shapeshifting ability. Seven seats away from three-quarters of my godhood.

  But there are too many people present for me to leap over chairs and rip the ring off Drakkar’s finger. And if I turn invisible, someone will notice, especially after I made such a scene coming in here.

  My uterus hums with ecstatic, Kenaz-spawned desire as if to say, Well, then, you’ll have to get him alone. Up close and very personal.

  Damien Drakkar doesn’t look anything like Loki on Asgard Awakening. As much as I hate his portrayal of me on the show, I can’t deny he’s absolute perfection in real life. Like Gunnar Magnusson, beefed up on endorphins or hormones or some other kinds of moans I have yet to identify.

  He turns my way again. That’s when the phero-mones hit.

  Like a blast of undiluted Valhalla, Damien Drakkar’s scent creeps toward me, a predator prowling my lady garden on a secret mission only he and I know about. Tremors, like those I prompted while writhing in the cave under the snake’s venomous waterfall before Ragnarok, wrack me from head to foot. Between his searing gaze and Kenaz’s undeniable fire, I’m weaker than a newborn fawn trying to find her legs.

  Goosebumps zip across my skin. The hairs at my nape spring to attention. An explosion of pleasure detonates betwixt my legs and ripples outward. Knuckles white, I clutch the arm of my chair as I fall under his thrall. Damien Drakkar is a wolf’s bite at my throat, stealing my precarious breath, my senses, my reason.

  By the time I emerge from my drunken climax, he’s no longer looking at me. He’s focused on the next performer, which I dimly register is Gunnar Magnusson lip-syncing and dancing to a happy little tune about wanting “to be your lover.”

  Fighting with everything I have to keep my gaze on him, my attention slips. I swallow hard, wipe the dots of sweat from my brow with my jacket sleeve, and face Damien Drakkar against my will. As if raising a glass in salute, he quirks a brow and smiles crookedly. That’s all it takes for my naughty bits to lose their godsdamned minds. Again.

  Who needs vibrators when you can make eye contact with a TV sex god and achieve the same result?

  Kenaz twerks.

  Laguz trembles. We’re in big trouble, Loki.

  Chapter Twelve

  Damien Drakkar bolts for the exit after the auditions wrap. I can’t catch up, thanks to a few elbows to the broken rib from rabid Midgardians begging for pictures and autographs from “Loki.”

  Swoon!

  Barf.

  Having progressed to the next round, Helga Boomslang and her lap-dog cohorts claw their way to him and sweep him away like a longship on the sea. At least my boys made it to the next round too. I’ll see Damien Drakkar tomorrow.

  I can’t stop thinking about him. The wicked look in his eye. The amazing hair. And oh, gods of Asgard, that smell. It’s pure sex. Another whiff of him up close would’ve toppled me for good. Thank the Norns today isn’t Tuesday.

  Did you forget something? Laguz asks as we wind through the thinning crowd toward the minivan.

  Like?

  Uh, Othala? Duh.

  Okay, smart arse, I think. Maybe I did forget about it for a minute.

  More like forever. You saw the rune on his finger. It was within your grasp, and you seized up like a stubborn mule refusing to take another step. What the Hel is wrong with you? Get your mind on business, you fool. This is a matter of your life and death!

  Smitten and properly humiliated, I pout. Laguz has a point. I lost my resolve. I’ll do better next time. Ooh, I hope I get closer so I can experience the full effect of Damien Drakkar’s—

  Zap, zap, ZAP!

  “Ow!” I shout, pressing my hip.

  Gunnar Magnusson looks over at me as we wander through the parking lot. “You okay?”

  Yes. “No,” the Sannleikur rune stave forces me to say. I scramble to clear my thoughts of the man who’s stolen my wits with nothing more than a wink and a smile.

  Damien Drakkar is trouble. I need to keep my eyes on the goal.

  I slip my fingers between Gunnar Magnusson’s. He smiles down at me, and the violent fluttering in my stomach calms to a bearable level. I marvel at how fast his touch grounds me. Soon, the afternoon’s wild events fade to a distant memory like a whisper on the wind.

  Strange, but welcome.

  We pile into the minivan, and Darryl Donovan pilots us to our hotel. The atmosphere is light and tinged with excitement. My boys are happy for a very different reason than I am.

  Now that I’m free of Damien Drakkar’s enigmatic hold, I can focus on my runes. Why the Hel was I so enamored of him, anyway? I hate that guy!

  “Congratulations on making it through, boys,” I say. “Now we can start working on the first task. According to the rules, you have to do a lip sync performance using one of the songs on this list.” I hold up a sheet of paper Heath Saxon gave me on our way out. “The hitch is, the judge gets to decide which song you perform. That means we have to prepare routines that will work with all of them.”

  Darryl Donovan sighs loudly. “And the humiliation continues.”

  “Do you want to back out?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer right away. “Yes. But I won’t. I’m gonna see this through as far as I can take it.”

  “Why continue if you’re unhappy?” I wonder.

  “Because I’m pushing myself to step outside my comfort zone,” he answers. “I’m calling it a self-challenge.”

  Admirable. If you’re a goody-goody. Pfft.

  “Gunnar, you elfin’ killed it, man,” Freddie declares, turning from the front passenger seat and flicking his friend’s knee.

  “Yes,” Alex agrees. “You had just the right amount of comedy. I think the beard will work in your favor too.”

  I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t even see Gunnar Magnusson’s routine. I was too busy getting plowed, shredded, and buried by Damien Drakkar’s sexy-time pheromones, which was pretty shitty of me.

  Damn, that man oozes sex.

  I try to evict him from my head by staring at Gunnar Magnus
son’s pretty hair and handsome face and big muscles and—

  Maybe if you focused on his insides instead of his outsides, you’d remember what Gunnar has done for you and forget about that asshat Drakkar, Laguz says.

  Touchy, touchy.

  Fine. Whatever. I roll my eyes.

  ZAP!

  I press my lips together to block the pain. Gunnar Magnusson stares at me, admiration steeping in his bright eyes. “You were incredible when we got inside, Loki. You had the attitude down perfectly, and everyone around you—me included—practically dropped to their knees and bowed to you. How did you pull it off?”

  I shrug. “Kenaz is settling in.”

  Taking over, more like, Laguz complains.

  “I can’t wait to see what Othala does when you get it back,” Gunnar Magnusson says. “If it’s anything like Kenaz, the world better watch out.”

  I smile. Yeah. Just wait.

  When we return to our hotel suite, Huginn is holed up in the bathroom with the door shut. I open it and pick him up. “What’s the matter? Did the cats come after you again?”

  “They keep telling bad chicken jokes and taunting me,” he whines.

  Join the club. “Poor little rooster. Come on. We’re ordering pizza. I know how much you love that.”

  Huginn bobs his head happily, and I bring him to the living area where Freddie is laying out costumes on the couch and chairs. They’re elaborate. Ostentatious. Ridiculous. He points at a full-length black dress with a ragged hem and sleeves, matching leather accents, and jet stones woven into a weblike pattern across the bodice. “Morgan LeSlay, this one’s yours.”

  Alex swipes his tongue over his lips, snaps up the gown with an appreciative nod to Freddie, and heads to the bathroom.

  Freddie turns to Darryl Donovan. “And you, Miss Shay-Shay LeTigre, are going to stun in this sexy beast of a number.” He picks up a leopard-spotted black and tan catsuit that zips up the back.

  “Is that real fur?” Darryl Donovan asks warily.

  “Faux,” Freddie replies. He knows better than to upset the vegan.

  “I hate you all,” Darryl Donovan says as he takes his outfit to Gunnar Magnusson’s and my bathroom.