My Lord? Rook thought. Shit on a stick. Religious nutjobs were always harder to handle because they were so unpredictable.
“I’ve heard it feels quite wonderful,” Fossen added. “And they’re happy to do whatever I, or my Lord, ask of them.
“I noticed that when half the town tried to kill me.”
He shrugged. “I asked you to leave more than once.”
“So why aren’t you all happy-tappy?”
“There are some of us here, those whose goals are aligned with the Lord’s, who remain unaffected. Sharp minds are required for an undertaking such as this. The pheromones only affect those who feel any degree of fear. We tested the compounds years ago, you see. But for Edmund Kiss, and your friend Peder-oh yes, he was a part of our group-we didn’t need to be controlled. We wanted to open the doorway. We wanted to see what was on the other side. And what we found? Glorious.
“As I said before, I didn’t lie to you. I just didn’t tell you everything. During World War II, the Deutsches Ahnenerbe was set up as a group with the sole purpose of investigating potential supernatural weapons. Hitler, as you probably know, was convinced that he would find some dark art or powered talisman that would help him win the war.”
“And the Ahnenerbe was willing to serve, right? Just doing their jobs like the jack-booted thugs at Auschwitz?” Rook looked dis-gusted.
Fossen surprised Rook by barking with laughter.
“No. Not at all. Hitler was a fool. He was good at getting people riled up, and he played that ‘master race’ card very well in public, but that wasn’t his true goal. He had a limited scope of vision. The man only wanted power and more power. Once removed from the main theater of war, the small group here abandoned the Third Reich and its bigoted agenda. They even abandoned the name Ahnenerbe. Now we simply call ourselves ‘The Group.’ Kiss and Peder and the others were interested in other worlds and supernatural creatures the likes of which Hitler could not have imagined. They remained here in Fenris Kystby, dedicated to one sole ideal. Over time, some, like Kiss, gained their own ideas about how things should be done and went their own way. Others, like Peder, dropped out shortly after the war. He never had the stomach for what we were doing, but he knew to keep his nose out of our business. I was born in the ’60s, when the project was well under way and the war was long over.”
Fossen stood and walked to the window, his back to where Rook sat tied to his chair. “You see, we kept people out of Fenris Kystby. No one knew what we were doing all these years. I did try to convince you to leave this town. We discovered the doorway and we figured out how the pheromones work. We even genetically tried to replicate the dire wolves, but all our attempts have been failures. We can’t get any subjects to survive infancy. Even tried crossing their DNA with our local wolves. I keep trying, but it’s more out of habit at this point, if I’m honest. Ultimately, we realized our true goal should be stabilizing and amplifying the doorway. It’s a naturally occurring phenomenon, like a small hangnail between dimensions. What you see out there is about twenty years’ worth of work to help that phenomenon become a permanent opening between worlds.”
Rook was sure one of the two zip ties was loosening as he flexed his thick wrists and pulled apart with his upper arms. It just wasn’t happening fast enough.
“So this is all about opening a portal for the dire wolves to come through? Why? Are they the mystery Lord you keep talking about?” He had to keep stalling the man, if he could.
Fossen leveled a serious glare at Rook.
Rook tried not to look away. He’d broken rule number one for dealing with religious kooks: don’t insult their God.
“No, Stanislav, I wanted to go there. To live in Asgard and sit at the right hand of Lord Fenrir’s throne.”
Fenrir, Rook thought. Fossen’s God had a name.
“I’m all that’s left of the true believers. The others out there are all dominated by the pheromones or by Fenrir’s will directly as She speaks to them. I see the look on your face, my friend. But I’ve already been though the doorway to the other side. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. It is a stark place, but it is filled with bliss beyond comprehension.”
Rook thought it sounded like Fossen got a dose of Fenrir’s happy gas, too. Maybe not enough to make him loopy, but enough to make him see God, and want more.
Rook pulled hard at his restraints, but then stretched his neck, as if he were merely uncomfortable in the chair. He didn’t want Fossen to stop talking and start realizing his captive was nearly free.
“Have you ever wondered if Fenrir just wants to come here?”
Fossen smiled a strange distant smile, like he was remembering something amazing in his mind’s eye. “Oh, she wants to come here very badly. That’s why she needs me. To loosen the leash that keeps her from fully entering our world. She has been here before, several times over the ages. We’ve just mistaken the evidence of her passage.”
Fossen had actually piqued Rook’s interest. “How?”
“Impact craters,” Fossen said. “Some really are impact craters, to be sure, but many are simply the footprints of my Lord entering our reality, taking what she pleases, and returning to her world until the season returns.”
“Season?”
“The opening between our worlds occurs naturally, but the duration and scope cannot be predicted. Until now. Historically, many of the seasons with larger openings and longer durations coincide with mass extinctions.”
“Hold on,” Rook said with a laugh he couldn’t hold back. “You’re telling me these assholes are what killed the dinosaurs?”
Fossen shook his head. “They merely contributed to it.”
“Then why in the name of Ronald Reagan’s undescended right testicle would you help with something like that?” Rook’s patience ran out. “Oh right, Lord Fruitloop.”
Fossen seemed to absorb the comment with just a moment’s discomfort. “Because, with my help, the portal will remain open indefinitely. Our worlds will become one, and everyone will serve the Lord Fenrir.”
“Right, with you at her right hand.” Rook hadn’t missed that Fossen’s God was feminine.
“As promised.”
Rook was almost free of the plastic cuffs. “Listen buttercup, if there is one thing I’ve learned about megalomaniacs-human or otherwise-it’s that they’ll say, do and promise just about anything to achieve their goals. You’re being duped.”
“If you would only open your eyes and see-”
“You know they make big comic book conventions for people like you, right?” Rook said. “You’d fit right in. Pop on a pair of rubber Vulcan ears and you’d be all set. Maybe hook up with a Ferengi. I think they’re ugly as shit, but you seem to have low standards.”
Fossen grinned and shook his head. “Oh, Stanislav. I will miss your sense of humor.” The door to the room opened and Asya walked in calmly, holding another Walther pistol in her hand, trained on Rook.
Rook’s momentum toward his escape was derailed the moment he saw Asya. At first, he thought she was in on it with Fossen, but then he saw the wooden way she walked and the glazed look in her eyes.
Fossen went back to his laptop. “Take him.”
Asya stepped behind Rook and cut the plastic zip tie with a small knife she produced with her free hand. She shoved him hard in the spine with the gun and said simply “Go.”
He left the room and entered the main chamber with the glowing sphere- a doorway, he thought-and Asya motioned him toward a tunnel on the left. He hoped for a second that this was all some ploy on her part to rescue him. Maybe she was just pretending to be under the spell of the pheromones. As they left the light from the main chamber and pressed on into the darkness of the tunnel, he tried whispering to her, but she made no response other than to poke him repeatedly in the spine with the Walther.