Stormbringer by Alis Franklin Read Free Book Online

there, long enough to feel the stillness settle back into his life.
    (shit happens, it happened…but I’m okay)
    His eyes only opened to the feel of pressure and weight against his leg. When Sigmund looked, he saw the dark coils of an enormous snake.
    “Hey, Boots.” Sigmund bent down, extending his hands and picking the snake up, draping her across his shoulders. Once upon a time, Boots had spent a thousand years dripping poison on a god. Now she lived in a huge, glass-free tank in said god’s mortal office.
    “I’m all right,” Sigmund told her. She was a good snake, and he wouldn’t want her worrying. “I’m just…things are a bit…” But that road didn’t go anywhere he could think to travel.
    Boots, being a snake, said nothing in reply.
    —
    Sigmund spent the rest of the morning in Travis’s office, playing video games on the couch. Travis’s TV was huge and, more important, it was connected to a prototype alpha of the next gen Inferno console. Sigmund convinced himself playing it was testing. For the good of the company.
    He was sure Travis wouldn’t mind.
    For her part, Boots stayed wrapped around his shoulders, half dozing, half hissing at the screen whenever Sigmund died or the console crashed. And if the former happened more than the latter? Well. The only witness was a snake. It wasn’t like she could tell anyone.
    Then, sometime just before lunch, Sigmund found himself saying:
    “I mean, they’re not bad people, y’know? Still the same gang they were before.” He fiddled with the Inferno’s controller, watching as, on-screen, his overarmored space marine ran in listless circles. “I mean, Divya’s still a pain, but that’s not really her fault. I guess.”
    Boots gave what Sigmund took to be a sympathetic hiss.
    “It’s just…They’re all so—so
normal.
How’m I supposed to, like, relate to them anymore? Over beers at the Temple or whatever. What’m I supposed to do? Swap stories about the funny time Lain got his horns tangled up in the washing line?” Sigmund grinned, though it faded quickly. “ ’Cause, like. That was pretty funny. But not exactly something I can share with the rest of the Basement, y’know?”
    On the TV, Sigmund’s marine scratched his ass in eighty-inch HD.
    “It’s not everyone else that’s changed,” he said. “It’s me. I have this thing now, this…this secret.” Even if it wasn’t really a secret, at least according to Lain.
Mortals don’t see the Wyrd,
he’d always say.
It’s not like on TV.
    Or in books, even. Because Harry Potter had never prepared Sigmund for this. Had never mentioned what he was supposed to do, when the letter came from Hogwarts, but his family wasn’t a bunch of dicks. How he was supposed to manage fitting back into the Muggle world between school terms, the place where cars didn’t fly and no one could throw fireballs with their thoughts?
    Then again, Sigmund had never read beyond the fourth book. Maybe they dealt with it later.
    Maybe not. Maybe that was the trick, as Lain would say. There was no going home.
    Sigmund gunned down a few more aliens, running between stacks of conveniently placed crates. An ill-timed sidestep landed him face-first on a frag grenade, and as the screen faded red, then black, Sigmund had to admit his heart just wasn’t in it.
    The aliens looked a bit like Lain. Tall and dark-skinned, with big claws and glowing eyes. Lain would hate the comparison, but once Sigmund had seen it, the mindless violence of their murder somehow lost its, well. Mindlessness.
    “Fuck.” Sigmund sighed, flopping his arms out and his head backward on the sofa, Boots a long, firm bolster beneath his neck.
    He stayed like that for a while, staring at the ceiling, listening to the death screen’s music loop on the TV. Eventually, Boots’s face appeared in his vision, her long, dark tongue flicking out across his nose and cheek. It tickled, and Sigmund laughed, rolling up and away to escape.
    “Okay,” he