Mythos by Kelly McCullough Page B

said.
    “Oh?”
    “Yeah, when we first got here, and I flew away, I really wanted to be mad at you, to blame you for the mess we’d landed in, because rage gives me strength. But I just couldn’t do it. I was angry, but not nearly as angry as I was worried and depressed. I especially didn’t want to be mad at you.” She reached out with her good hand and squeezed my wrist. “Don’t take this wrong, but that’s just not normal.”
    “Not for a Fury,” I agreed, “no.”
    “What’s not normal for a Fury?” Melchior asked, as he and Ahllan came through the door, followed by the hand.
    “Tell you in a minute,” I said. “First, you.” I pointed a finger at the hand. “What’s your name? I’m getting tired of thinking of you as the really big disembodied hand. It’s pretty clear you’re an individual—the strangest I’ve yet to meet—but an individual nonetheless, and that means a name.”
    The hand looked nonplussed, as if to say, “Who, me?”
    I nodded. “What should we call you? Do you have a preference?”
    It snapped its index and middle fingers against its thumb in a sharp “no.”
    “Well, think about it. If you come up with something, we’ll use that; otherwise, we’ll make something up. Does that work for you?”
    It bobbed yes, then wandered off into the corner, looking as thoughtful as it is possible for a disembodied hand to look.
    “What is that?” asked Tisiphone. “Or, I guess, who is that?”
    I quickly brought her up to date. As I mentioned where the hand had come from, Tisiphone’s fires started to burn higher, a sure sign of returning anger.
    “What’s up?” I asked, but she shook her head.
    “Finish the story.” When I was done, she started talking again. “How in Necessity’s name did we get here?”
    I really didn’t like the idea that Tisiphone didn’t know what had happened either. The Furies are Necessity’s admins. Nothing the goddess does should surprise them.
    She continued before I could ask her about it. “A whole different set of gods . . . that’s going to cause some problems. I wonder if I met his cousin or something?”
    “Whose?” asked Ahllan. It was the first time she’d spoken directly to Tisiphone, and though it wasn’t much, it was a start.
    “This Fenris and the wolf who bit me.” She raised her injured arm. “When I flew out of here earlier, I went looking for some way to connect with Necessity. I didn’t find that, but I did see the silver chariot of the moon, so I went to talk to Artemis. That’s when I ran into two problems.”
    “No Artemis,” supplied Ahllan, getting up and going to her healing kit.
    “Uh-huh. Instead, there was a big guy wearing furs at the reins with a black wolf nearly as big as Cerberus chasing behind. I was just trying to decide what to do when the wolf turned and gave me these. That’s the last thing I remember before waking up here.” She touched the scrape on the side of her head and the bite.
    “Let me look at them.” Ahllan approached from the other side of the couch and took over the cleaning job from me at Tisiphone’s nod. “Mm, nasty.”
    Tisiphone winced. “Yes, they are, and I don’t understand why. Was there some kind of poison involved, or something?”
    Ahllan’s eyes went far away for a moment as she accessed data. “No, not according to the accounts I can reach on the local internet. It’s not nearly as good a resource as the mweb’s data streams, but they’ve got a fair bit on the Norse gods—assuming I can trust it. The wolf who attacked you isn’t supposed to be poisonous. His name is Hati, and his purpose in life is to hunt down and eat Mani—the charioteer of the moon. Oh, and he and Fenris are not cousins, but son and father.”
    “And this Loki is the father of Fenris?” asked Tisiphone.
    The hand had crept closer at some point in the conversation, and now it gave a quick bob “yes.”
    “He and I are going to have some words,” she said, the threat plain in