Page 182 of Red Rooster

Then he supposed all the things he kept threatening just to get a rise out of the doctors were indeed unfolding.

If he was searching for a sign, it had just been dropped two cells over.

“Rooster,” he said again, and his blood sang in his veins. A dread so acute it felt like joy. “A nickname, hm?”

A beat. “Yeah,” his new companion – Rooster – said slowly.

No doubt Val sounded crazy, but that was out of his control, now. His pulse beat like bird wings inside the cage of his chest. “Tell me, Rooster, are you at all familiar with any of the old religions? Let’s just say, oh, hypothetically…the Norse gods, perhaps?”

Another pause. “Uh. No.”

“Okay, not so hypothetically, then. Do you know anything about the Norse gods?”

“No.” The light was dim, but Val could see him, sitting on the very edge of his cot, big-shouldered, and strong, his too-long straw-colored hair the stuff of longship captains.

Val could have choked on delight. Could have vomited from the fear. “Well, allow me to elucidate.”

He was vibrating, and it wasn’t just aftershocks, now. Poppy sat upright on his leg and meowed a little protest. He stroked the back of her neck with shaking fingertips. “I’m only half Norse, you see,” he said. “My mother was Norse. I have her hair. But, that’s not important. Anyway – she talked often, when I was a child, about the old legends. Humans call them myths nowadays, but to her it was religion. Like Jesus on the cross. Father tried to bring her over to Eastern Orthodoxy, as he had done, but she only did it as a token, to please him. Deep down, she still made offerings to her gods.

“She didn’t like to talk about Ragnarok. A gentle soul, my mother; she could rip a man’s head from his body with one movement.” He mimed doing so, as his chains would allow, and they rattled. Poppy hissed in displeasure and retreated to the shadows. “But talking about the end of the world – of the gods – depressed her. So she didn’t talk about Heimdall slaying Loki, or Balder being the only one to return, but she would talk about the beginning. About the way three cocks crowed to herald the start of it.”

Rooster stared at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“There was Fjalar in the wood, and there was the soot-red rooster at the gates of Hel. And there was Gullinkambi. Golden Comb. The glorious red rooster that lived in Valhalla, whose crow woke the gods and heroes so that they might ready for the coming battle.” His smile was starting to hurt his face. “Which one are you,Rooster?”

~*~

This guy was batshit crazy.

Maybe that was the point, he thought, briefly: lock him up with a psycho who drove him so nuts he eventually hanged himself with his own boot laces.

“Look, man, I have no idea what you’re going on about, but it’s got nothing to do with me.” He shifted back on the cot so he could rest his head against the cool stone wall, and pointedly didn’t glance back over at his fellow prisoner: Val, he’d said his name was.

“Hmm, maybe not,” Val said. “A coincidence perhaps. But I wonder.”

Rooster bit back a sigh and pushed up the sleeve of his hoodie. Started picking at the edges of the duct tape.

“Do you believe in coincidences? Because I don’t. They happen, to be sure, but in general, pessimist that I am, I don’t think chance comes much into play…What do you have there?” The chains clicked together as he pushed up onto his knees.

“A phone,” Rooster said with a grunt as he pulled the tape loose, and took a good chunk of his arm hair with it.

“Ooh.” Val gave another creaky chuckle. “How did you sneakthatin, I wonder?”

“Magic.” Which was apparently what was giving him three bars of coverage this deep underground. Huh.

There was more chain-rattling as Val perked up another notch. “Who are you going to call?”

“The Ghostbusters,” Rooster deadpanned. When he didn’t get a response, he turned to glance over at his fellow prisoner, thumb hovering over the Call icon. Val was frowning at him. “You know. TheGhostbusters?”

Val’s expression turned sad. “I’ve been locked up for five-hundred years. I’ve learned quite a lot about your world, considering, but not all of it.”

“Five hundred…”Jesus. “Are you. Um.” He wet his lips. “One of those…those wolf things?”

A fresh smile stole across Val’s face, knife-sharp, and there was just enough light for Rooster to make out the sharp points of his canines. “Oh no. I’m much worse.”

Rooster turned back to his phone.

“You didn’t answer me. Who will you call? The person who magicked your phone?”