But what Loki’s gates did remember was being given. They knew how one Gatefather could give the obedience of his gates to another.
And so Danny tapped into their kinetic memory, and with their consent, Loki’s gates obeyed him and showed him how to give them back to Loki.
The act of giving back the gates didn’t move them or make them. Those would have been physical acts, apparently, and the Dragon who possessed him could have felt such an action, could have blocked it. But in all likelihood, the Dragon had never possessed a gatemage who gave a gate to another. It had no idea what was happening.
He felt his control over Loki’s gates slip away.
But now he knew how to do it.
So, again without moving or making his gates, leaving them wherever they already were, Danny gave all of his own gates, every one of them, to Loki.
And just like that, they were not under his control. He was still aware of them. They were still where they were supposed to be. But they weren’t his. They didn’t belong to Danny North.
Nicki was dressed now. Danny could feel it when the Dragon gave the command to make a gate to take her back to her home. He could sense that the Dragon knew how to do it, knew where both the mouth and the tail of the gate should be.
But no gate came rising out of the hearthoard at his command. No gate formed.
Danny felt a kind of blindness come over him. No, it was rage. Fear? It wasn’t an emotion of the body, it was a transformation of some kind within the Dragon itself, and then Danny’s own body responded to it. Blood flowed hard and hot, his face flushed.
“What’s wrong?” asked Nicki, sounding frightened.
Danny’s body rose from the bed and stood on the floor, pants dropping around the ankles, but definitely not aroused, not as it had been. No, it was filled with rage and terror and it screamed.
Nicki screamed back and then ran from the room, ran out of the house. Danny heard the screen door slam behind her.
“What have you done?” demanded the Dragon in Danny’s own voice, with Danny’s mouth and throat and lungs, his tongue and teeth.
I’ve done nothing, Danny said silently. I gave a gift to a friend.
“The gates are still there, I can feel them,” said the Dragon. It used Danny’s body to dance around the room, jump up and down, as if somehow this would jar something loose. “You’re a Gatefather, I took a Gatefather, why can’t I touch your gates!”
He ran to the kitchen, and Danny understood that his body was in search of a knife. It was the animal mind that sought for one-for the first time Danny could feel the distinction between animal intention and his own will, his own ka. The animal’s desire did not reach inside him and kindle any answering wish. The body wasn’t his to control now. But he was still inside it, still absolutely tied to it, feeling all its sensations.
The knife was in the hand.
It stabbed down, into Danny’s thigh. Again. Again.
The pain was excruciating. The Dragon felt it too; he groaned in agony.
“Make it better,” said his own voice. “Make a gate.”
But there was no gate that belonged to him.
Another stab. “You’ll bleed to death unless you heal this. Do you understand that?”
I do understand it, thought Danny. I understand that I’ll die. But what happens if I die with you inside me?
Nothing happens, thought Danny, despairing. Because Set isn’t tied to my body the way my ka is. When my body dies, I’m done, my ka moves away from here. But he will remain.
“I can keep it going after you bleed to death,” said Danny’s mouth. “Not terribly long, but long enough to get to somebody else. Someone you know.”
He was trying to call up a clear memory. Danny immediately thought of Hermia.
Hermia was the one. Let him find Hermia and take possession of her.
“I don’t want your enemies, I want your damn friends! I want to make you watch me kill them, slowly! Rape them and kill them! I’ll do it to everyone you love if you don’t let me use your gates! And then they’ll come for you and take you and execute you, and you’ll be dead, not me!”
It wasn’t even making sense. Was it crazy? I’ll let you bleed to death, I’ll keep your body going, and then they’ll kill you again? No, Set was confused. His rage was clouding his mind.
Because it was a human mind he was controlling.
The human brain, rather. Because Danny’s mind was still there, thinking his own thoughts. Hermia, he was thinking. Imagining her body in a way he never had before-with desire, with lust. Never mind that it was someone else’s body that he had felt all those desires for. The face he put into his memory, the name he thought of, they were Hermia’s.
One more time he stabbed. One more thrill of agony. But it didn’t hurt as much. No, it did hurt, every bit as much, perhaps even more. But Danny didn’t care as much.
I’m detaching. My ka is fleeing from the pain. From the threat of death. I can’t let that happen. I can’t let him drive me from my own body. I gave away my ba, my outself, all my unmade gates, but I can’t let him take away my body or I’m dead. Literally dead.
For a moment he had the idle thought: Then I’ll know. What happens to the ka after the body dies. Do I return to Duat, as the desert hermit said? Or do I go somewhere else, or just haunt the place I died? Or do I dissolve like smoke?
But he stifled his curiosity and forced himself to connect with the pain, to feel it with the greatest possible intensity. You won’t drive me out of my own body this way.
As if the Dragon could feel him dig his ka more deeply into his own body, the Dragon again gave a cry of frustration and rage. “Bastard!” he cried. “You’re no match for me! Give it up! No one ever withholds from me the thing I want!”
Obviously the statement was false, or it wouldn’t have needed saying.
But the pain in his thigh was a high price to pay for that small satisfaction. And Danny could feel the blood pumping out. This last time, Set had used Danny’s own hand to drive the knife deep enough to find the femoral artery.
I really am going to die.
They’ll rule it a suicide. Died by his own hand. Literally true, and yet utterly false.
In that moment he remembered that there were other gates. The captive gates. Not Loki’s and not Danny’s own.
Danny reached to make a gate and this time the Dragon let him, for now he felt for the first time the existence of the captive gates. Using Danny’s mouth, Set cried out with triumph as Danny formed a captive into a living gate, passed it over himself so it could heal him, and then … gave the gate to itself.
Just like that, the gate was gone.
But not before Danny himself was healed. No pain. No injury. No bleeding.
The other captive gates sensed what had happened, and the clamor began afresh, now with a new goal, a different goal. Give me to myself and set me free! cried every captive in his hearthoard.
“You bastard,” muttered the Dragon with Danny’s mouth.
It swung Danny’s body around and smashed his head into the corner of the kitchen counter with such force that Danny instantly lost consciousness.
He woke up hours later on the kitchen floor. Alone in the dark. His head throbbed.
He reached for another captive gate.
“No,” whispered his mouth.
What was he doing while I was unconscious? Was he unconscious, too? No, he isn’t as deeply tied into my body as I am. He was conscious and had nothing he could do but lie there feeling the agony. Or was it eased while I was asleep?
You won’t drive me out of my own head with pain, thought Danny. So if you refuse to let me use a gate to heal the body whose agony we both feel, then so be it. I can bear it. Or I can die. Whatever you choose. What you will not do is make a gate that lasts.