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“The beach we are going to is not the kind of beach you’d find on a map,” Mort clarified. “It’s a place outside space.”
Tristan grinned. Mort rather wished he wouldn’t. This was serious business.
“You will be walking in the realms of gods,” he explained. “I need your total obedience. Do you understand?”
“Sure,” Tristan said. “Should I bring a towel?”
“No,” Mort intoned. “Actually, yes. Never forget your towel.”
They drove to the beach together, which was more of a formality than a necessity, but Mort figured it would be easier for Tristan if he at least pretended they were moving through physical space to arrive at their destination. In turn, Tristan obliged Mort by not asking how it was that the patch of desert they ended up at, the same patch he had escaped into as a child, had suddenly become oceanside.
Where rough red hillocks had once stood with rocklike resilience, now bright blue and white waves crashed and dashed themselves against one another before spreading out into pretty foam patterns morphing across ethereal sands. Tristan took this supernatural geographic shift very much in stride, impressing Mort immensely.
Tristan was chaotic, but that meant he had a very high tolerance for chaos, too. Mort found himself falling deeper in love with his boy every passing moment they spent together.
“I’ve never seen the ocean before,” Tris said, blithely ignoring the fact that he wasn’t technically seeing it now either. No mortal had seen this place before, as far as Mort was aware. This was not a beach. This was the beach, the archetype of all beaches. The sun shone bright in a clear sky decorated with just a few fine wisps of cloud. The air tingled with that saline and iron edge so familiar to many, crisp and refreshing with every breath. The sand was not the organic grit of the desert, but rather it was a fine golden hue.
“Is this where they get the sand that goes through the hourglass?” Tristan asked, crouching down to scoop a handful, then letting it drift between his fingers in a fine golden haze.
“Yes, actually,” Mort said, gesturing around them. “These are the days of our lives.”
“Is that a cabana?”
Tris pointed to a shanty-style piece of construction topped with palm fronds. It looked carelessly and casually thrown together, but it, like everything else here, was impeccably perfect.
“Yes,” Mort says. “And that is why every good beach has one.”
He was scanning the area, looking for… ah. There he was. Mort would have known Loki anywhere, even at a great distance with the god himself little more than a speck.
“I want you to keep your distance,” Mort instructed Tristan. “Stay here until I call you over.”
“Got it,” Tristan said. He was shoeless, and in his usual jeans and nothing else attire. He fit into the beach vibe perfectly. Mort, on the other hand, was a dark, overdressed figure walking out past the populated areas of sand toward a figure who had positioned himself at a distance.
“Loki,” Mort greeted the man he found lying on a towel on the sand. Loki was wearing shorts, a garish red and green Hawaiian shirt, and big black sunglasses. He had the form of a middle-aged man with dark hair and wickedly handsome features, rakish, and angular, and incredibly untrustworthy.
Loki lifted a half coconut full of some kind of beverage at Mort.
“Refill, per favor!”
“I have not come to refill your beverage, Loki. I have come to request you take your mark off my mortal lover.”
Loki pushed his sunglasses up into his hair and regarded Mort with a darkly amused gaze.
“If you want something from me, perhaps you will do something for me.” Loki shook the coconut back and forth. “Refill, please.”
Mort had been instantly turned into a servant, but he would do far more than bring drinks in order to claim Tristan.
Mort trudged through the sand back to the eternal cabana where the drink had originated, and ordered another. He took it back to Loki, who took a long sip while providing Mort with no more acknowledgement than a wink.
This was going precisely as Mort had imagined it would. Loki was fucking with him, as Tristan would put it, simply for the sake of fucking with him.
He waited, patiently.
And then he waited a little longer.
And then he started to lose his patience, as well as his temper. The moment he had seen an immortal mark on Tristan, he had been ready to take life. Loki was not taking him seriously. That was a mistake.
He reached into the interior of his hooded sweater and pulled out a scythe, spinning the long handle and making the blade glint and sparkle with sunlight. His impatience made him even blunter than usual.
“Remove your mark. Forsake your claim. Or die.”
Loki smiled languidly in that eternally amused way. It had the effect of making Mort yearn to wipe the smile off his smug face.
