I had texted my parents earlier that afternoon and told them I needed to meet with them at their place tonight to talk about some stuff.  I was purposefully vague in the text because, honestly, trying to explain any of this via text message was likely going to kill my data plan.  Cat had generously volunteered to come as emotional support and to back me up, since my parents knew her and she could confirm everything I said was true and that I wasn’t just some stranger pulling an especially twisted prank.

 

We stood outside my parents house.  The house I grew up in. And I was about to shatter all my parents hopes for me.  There was that crushing anxiety again.

 

Cat must have seen me tense up, because she put a comforting hand on my shoulder.  “Hey. It’s gonna be alright. Just relax.”

 

I gave her a weak smile.  “I’m trying to tell myself that.  I’m having trouble believing it.”

 

The sinking sun cast our long shadows across my parents’ lawn.  I mused that my shadow actually looked like a giant for once, recalling Arey’s language lesson regarding the jötnar.

 

It was time to face the music.  I marched up to the door and knocked.  I had a key to the house and, normally, I would just open the door and walk in, but, with how different I looked, I couldn’t rely on my parents recognizing me to make the conclusion that I wasn’t an intruder.

 

I waited a moment, glancing at Cat nervously.  After a long pause, I was starting to think my parents might not be home yet.  Mom usually worked from home writing for a home and garden magazine, but she had a lively social life, and dad was an architect, so he had a rigid work schedule he kept to.

 

Just as I was about to shrug my shoulders and leave, the door opened with an excited pull.

 

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” said my mom, Liz, opening the door.  “I was just putting the finishing touches on dinner. Oh, Cat? Where’s Chris?  He said he’d be here.”

 

“Um, hey, Mrs. Wilcox.  This IS Chris,” replied Cat, gesturing to me.

 

Mom looked from Cat to me, then back to Cat.  “Oh, Catherine. Always the joker,” she laughed.

 

“No, Mom,” I finally said.  “She’s not joking. I AM Chris.  Something happened and it… changed me.”

 

Mom’s face was a contradictory mix of confusion, amusement and horror that I desperately wished I could read.  When she finally regained her voice, she sounded almost angry. “This isn’t funny. Did Chris put you up to this?”

 

“No, Mom.  We’re not joking.  Can we please come in and explain?” I pleaded.

 

Mom just looked horrified now.  Looking back and forth between me and Cat, she finally relented.  “Fine, I suppose you can come inside, but this had better be good.”

 

Mom had always been hard on me growing up, but this was a whole new side of her I was seeing.  For the first time in my life, she seemed to hate me. It must just be because she doesn’t believe it’s me, right?

 

She led us into the living room and Cat and I sat on the couch.

 

“Howard, you probably better come in here,” Mom called to Dad.  “Apparently ‘Chris’ has something important to say to us.” I didn’t think until that moment you could hear the quotes around a word.

 

“Wassat?” Dad’s bespectacled head poked out of the kitchen.  When his eyes landed on me, he added, “Who’s this?”

 

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but my parents not even recognizing me hurt more than I had been prepared for.  There was a tight feeling in my chest, and I could feel tears welling up in my eyes again.

 

“This is ‘Chris,’” Mom said.  I’d never heard her say my name with such contempt before.

 

“Huh?” Dad’s confusion was plain on his face as he looked from Mom to Cat, who nodded in confirmation.

 

“It’s true,” I added.  “I got transformed after accidentally stumbling into some sort of magic ritual in the park.”

 

Mom was indignant.  “Really? Magic? Is that the story you’re going with?”  She was practically yelling this at Cat. She still seemed to be under the impression Cat was pulling a prank on them.

 

“It’s the honest truth,” Cat said, coming to my defense.  “And there’s more to it, too.” Cat placed a comforting hand on my shoulder.

 

“I don’t even know how to begin to explain this,” I continued.  “The ritual was meant to prepare someone to be married to the god Loki to become the Mother of Monsters for some sort of Norse apocalypse.”

 

Mom seemed to have had enough of this.  “Now this is just ludicrous. You can’t expect us to believe that this girl is supposed to be my son, and that he’s now taking part in some dead religion’s prophecy?”

 

Dad just sat there looking like he didn’t comprehend any of it.

 

“Mom, I-”

 

“Enough of that!” my mother snapped.  “You don’t get to call me ‘Mom.’ You are NOT my son.”

 

“B-but,” I stuttered, “I-I AM your… your child.”  For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to say the word “son.”

 

“I’ve had enough of this,” Mom shouted.  “Get out of my house!”

 

“B-but…”

 

“OUT!” she reiterated.  In that moment, I felt a sheer panic like I hadn’t felt since I was living in this house with her.  I leapt to my feet and started to run to the door, but before I could make it, half a dozen kobolds burst into the room and started scrambling every which way, toppling lamps and knocking items off of shelves.  One of them cast the stack of magazines my mother kept on the coffee table all over the room.

 

Cat rushed after me.  “Chris! You need to calm down.  Just breathe.” She pulled me into a comforting hug as I tried to get a grip on my panicked emotions.

 

“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!” my mother screeched.  “WHAT ARE THESE THINGS?! This is your fault, you bitch!”  More kobolds popped into being and scrambled around and out of the room.  I heard a crash in the kitchen, followed by what sounded like the “woosh” of a grease fire.

 

“Oh shit!” was all Dad said before he rushed into the kitchen to try to deal with the fire.

 

Cat turned on my mother, and I almost thought she was going to give Mom a smack on the face, but she restrained herself.  “YOU are not helping.” There was a fire in Cat’s voice that made the one she used on her roommates seem mild in comparison.  As Cat turned back to me, her face softened in a sort of determined concern. “Come on, Chris. We should probably get out of here.”

 

As Cat was leading me to the door, I heard Mom’s footsteps behind me.  I was staring at the ground, so I didn’t see her or Cat, but I felt Cat turn, and Mom’s rushing footsteps stopped dead.  I could almost feel the daggers Cat was staring over my shoulder. Once we were outside, Cat immediately stomped on my mom’s prize winning flower bed.

 

“W-was that really necessary?” I asked.

 

“No,” she answered.  “But it was cathartic and well deserved.”  She wrapped one arm around my shoulders and walked with me down the pathway leading to my parents’ house.  I could still hear crashing and shouting from inside the house. I was just trying to think of something else.  Anything to calm myself down. Coming here to talk to them was clearly a mistake.

 

“Hey,” Cat said as we walked slowly back towards our place.  “It’s okay. It’s not your fault your mom’s just a raging bitch.”

 

I chuckled a little through the tears.  I don’t know where I’d be right now if not for Cat.  She’s been a rock for me to lean on in a time I need it most.  The jötnar were protective of me, but they only knew how to protect my body.  My mind is something altogether different, and they were never prepared to deal with a human forced to take Arey’s place.  They seem to know as much about Earth as I do about Jötunheim.

 

It took a few minutes of us walking for me to finally stabilize my mind.  I hope my parents’ place wasn’t too wrecked after all that. Grease fires are notoriously hard to put out.  My dad always kept a fire extinguisher in the kitchen, though, so he probably had it under control. I guess I kinda messed up the house, let alone dinner.

 

My thoughts were suddenly interrupted by howling.  A lot of people around here have dogs, and when one howls, often a bunch of others will start howling, so it’s not that odd to hear the occasional evening howling session.  Coyotes are also frequent around here, so sometimes they can join in on the noisemaking. They like to roam in along the Santa Ana river and its various tributaries. This, however, was a particularly loud howl, and I was starting to hear some of the humans join in on the noise as they tell their neighbors to shut up their dogs.

 

I didn’t have a lot of time to consider the oddity of the ruckus before I was struck from behind and knocked to the ground.  My head was ringing with from the blow and as I looked up from where I came to rest on the concrete, I could see stars. I searched around for Cat and my unseen assailant, and caught sight of a massive wolf.  Perhaps I had a concussion and wasn’t seeing clearly, but it looked to be the size of a horse. Something like that couldn’t possibly be here in OC, could it? And in proper dog fashion, it had cornered a Cat in the alley between two of the houses, up against the wooden gate into the backyard.

 

I had to help Cat.  As I struggled to regain my senses, the wolf was slowly approaching, seemingly cautious that she might be stronger than she appears.  I can’t let it realize that she isn’t. I stumbled to my feet, then ran at the creature at a speed that probably would have seemed pretty darn fast if I had still been human.  I tackled the wolf, and we tumbled head over fluffy tail into the stucco wall of the house beside it. That’s… that wall’s gonna need some fixing. I shrugged that thought off, as I obviously had more serious issues right now.

 

“Run!” was all I could shout to Cat, and she didn’t wait around for me to give any further direction.  She bolted off down the street as I continued to wrestle with the monster wolf.

 

I now had the wolf’s full attention, and I was immediately regretting it as the enormous beast clamped its jaws down on my right arm, filling the wolf’s mouth with my blood.  I screamed in pain and immediately punched it in the eye with my left. Its jaw loosened as it was stunned, and I seized the opportunity to get some distance, fleeing towards the street.  I ducked behind a parked car just in time for the wolf to come crashing into it, denting the rear of the car, shattered glass flying everywhere. That wolf must have a thick hide, because it should have been torn to shreds, but there wasn’t a drop of blood.  More collateral damage that I probably shouldn’t have been thinking much about at that moment.

 

“Surrender,” growled a voice in my head.  Great, not only was it a wolf the size of a horse that seemed to have come out of nowhere, it was a PSYCHIC wolf the size of a horse that seemed to have come out of nowhere.

 

Cat was nowhere to be seen, which was good.  That meant she was out of harm’s way for the moment.  The problem was that I was now very much still IN harm’s way.  Clutching my arm, I made my way around a bend in the road as quickly as I could with this giant wolf right on my heels.  I mean that literally; it seemed to be trying to bite at my heels. I guess it was trying to cripple me. It was after me, and unless I could do something to change the way things were, it was going to catch me sooner or later.  I had to change to change the status quo if I was going to escape.

 

As I saw it, I had two options for an overall tactic here: I either had to fight it directly or I had to try to wear it out somehow.  Given the state of my still bleeding and mangled right arm, fighting it did not seem like the best of those options. I resolved to try to evade it while conserving my own energy for an escape.  Seeing as the car seemed to work pretty well against it before, I prayed to the gods of auto insurance to forgive me and ducked behind a large, white van parked in someone’s driveway. The wolf was smarter this time, however, and leapt over the van, turning to snarl at me.

 

“YIELD!” the voice bellowed in my mind.  Trust me, you don’t want to know what a psychic yell like that feels like.  It’s less an overwhelming sound and more a splitting headache.

 

“Maybe if you ask nice,” I spat at it, dropping to the ground and rolling under the van, narrowly dodging the wolf’s fangs.  The wolf wasn’t tricked by this for long, though; with one mighty thrust of its shoulder into the side of the van, the van toppled over.  Oh. That was not nearly as effective as I’d hoped it would be. I’m just glad I wasn’t that far under it or else it would have crushed me as well.  The wolf made an effort to pounce on my prone body, but I kicked its mandible and somersaulted backwards to my feet. Thank you jötnar strength and agility.  I dashed off to get some more distance. The wolf was quick to follow. Thinking on my feet, I dodged a lunge right over a fire hydrant. The wolf took the bait and slammed right into it, not only getting a taste of concrete reinforced steel but also a steady stream of water right in the face.

 

After giving my pursuer an impromptu bath, I looked around for more ways I might be able to use the environment to my advantage in wearing this beast out.  My eyes fell on a magnolia tree, now in full bloom. If I could reach its branches… I leapt up to grab a low branch and I thought I had it, but I fell short by just a few inches.  Uh-oh. This is going to hurt.

 

My hope was that I could grab the branch and pull just out of the way of the wolf as it leapt for me.  Having missed the branch, that was no longer a possibility, and the wolf instead plowed right into my back mid flight.  I prepared myself for impact with the asphalt of the street… but the impact never came. Instead, someone or something else came from my right and knocked the wolf off of me, catching me just in time before I could slide across the street like it was a cheese grater.  I looked up to see my rescuer, and recognized the flowing braid and pale blue eyes.

 

“Arey!” I cried in relief.

 

“We need to get you out of here,” she said, pointing to the wolf that was already recovering from the shock of Arey’s assault.

 

“Interloper!” came that same mental voice.  “The Bride I must bring back alive, but you will receive no such mercy!”  Well, I guess that confirms whether the thing wanted to kill me or not.

 

Before either of us could act, though, a familiar looking rift in space opened up, and an arm reached out and pulled Arey and me through.  I expected to find myself once again in the Library of Sigurgeir, but when I examined my surroundings, I found it was somewhere very different.  An alleyway? It looked like something from a big city. Not LA, that much I could be certain. I knew LA well enough to recognize the architecture, and it was not likely that it would be raining in LA when it wasn’t in Orange County.  Scratch that; it’s LA. It wasn’t likely to be raining PERIOD.

 

“Welcome to the big apple!” bellowed an unfamiliar voice.  “It’s about time I finally met the Bride face to face.”