A/N: Hello, readers of "Damaged"! The sequel is finally up. This is a preview - the first half of the first chapter. Enjoy, and thanks again for sticking with this story!

In the year since Loki left her, Rachel had considered using the coin many times. Silly impulses, for the most part. They came when she was off her guard. Like when she woke in the middle of the night and stretched out a casual arm, expecting it to fall across Loki's cool, narrow ribcage, only to find herself alone in bed.

Or when practicing for work, watching her short fingers twinkle along the piano keys. She'd smile at the memory of Loki's long, rake-thin body perched beside her on the bench, boyish fascination glowing from his sculpted features, and consider calling him back for one more session.

Or when she walked alone at night and caught a glimpse of someone, any old most-likely-harmless person, closer than two blocks away. She'd remember the attack she'd suffered in her apartment, and her blood would scream in her ears: Use it! They can't hurt you if he's here!

But Loki was a god. A real one. And he'd promised the coin would only work once. So Rachel had treasured it, saved it for a true time of need, an emergency only magic could solve. It was a genie's lamp with two wishes used up, and its final use had to be a good one.

The time came.

Rachel's brother Rob lay on a hospital bed, surrounded by a nurses and a crash cart, quietly dying.

He'd been unconscious for a month, ever since Loki's attack on Manhattan, actually. One of the Leviathan monsters had tried to make a sharp turn near the apartment Rachel and her brother shared, and it had grazed the building. A piece of rebar, pulled down with immense force by the weight of a refrigerator-sized chunk of concrete, had sliced through Rob's waist from behind like a scythe, severing his spine, all his lower back muscles, and his intestines.

Still, Rachel had waited, because for a time, the surgeons had been hopeful. Her brother wouldn't walk again, but he would likely survive, since he'd gotten through the critical first forty-eight hours.

But infection set in.

Staring at the thin ring of scar tissue around her pinky finger, the digit that had regrown from a stump in two weeks, thanks to Loki's interference, Rachel decided it was time to use her wish. She'd get one more medical miracle.

One more glimpse of that ghostly skin, those ancient green eyes.

She pricked her thumb and rubbed the coin with her blood, front and back.

Turned it in her hand three times.

Said the magic word: "Loki."

And nothing happened.

Nothing at all.

The hallway grew cold as she waited, an hour, two, Rob was cresting, his heartbeat reappearing again and again, there was still time…

But Loki had told one more lie.

He never came.

And Rachel's brother died.

Should it have been a surprise that Loki had failed to keep his promise? There was no pretending, now, that Rachel didn't know exactly what he was. The Loki. God of Mischief, God of Lies, mass murderering psychopath.

Maybe he was dead. Executed for his crimes.

She'd seen the cell phone footage – everybody had – of Loki in chains and muzzle, heartbreaking gaze fixed on his enormous blonde brother, just before they'd burst into the sky in a snap of rainbow light.

Rachel doubted it, though. She'd gotten herself good and educated on Norse mythology, and knew that the Aesir court denizens forgave Loki's mischief as regularly as they passed the salt.

The rejection stung; the disappointment left her mouth dry and sour-tasting.

It was like two deaths instead of one.

Still, Rachel didn't miss work that night. Missing performances, no matter how good the excuse, was career suicide on Broadway. Especially in the orchestra pit, where a pianist was as easy to replace as a violin string. Plus, work was a welcome distraction.

The show was My Fair Lady, and it pushed three hours. Three hours in the pit, staring at the black-and-white notes, the black-and-white keys.

Rachel made it two and a half hours, then grief and exhaustion set in. There was a warping, swirling sensation, and all the white turned green. The black pooled into a set of small, bottomless pupils set in emerald eyes. There was a muffled scream. A ripping pain in her shoulders.

The fit passed, and Rachel found herself being pulled to her feet by the cellist. She'd fainted in the middle of "Get Me to the Church on Time," which was, thank god, a loud and busy enough song that it could handle a dropped piano part.

Her alternate made it to the bench before "Without You," and she was sent home, shaking and nauseated, crying quietly.

On the subway, it happened again.

Green everywhere. Eyes. That scream, a desperate, crunching, back-of-the-throat sound, the sound a movie chainsaw victim might make if her mouth were covered in duct tape. Again, there was the ripping sensation in Rachel's shoulders, and this time it spread to the back of her head.

Instinctively, Rachel wrenched forward, away from the pain, and she regained consciousness on her feet in the middle of the subway car. At least she'd waked in time for her stop.

At night, the sensation came three more times. Worse each time – the screams more gut-churning, the pain more acute, as if she were being flayed, and the eyes burning further into her.

Pleading, manic, tear-filled eyes.

Each time the wave of sensation came, she tensed and fought, yanked herself from the hallucination, and came back to reality panting and sweating.

It could have been a side effect of the accumulated trauma of the last month, the last year. A reaction to the awful minutes on the phone with her parents, telling them about Rob, the loss of hope.

But she knew it wasn't.

This was magic. She knew its scent now. Magic gone wrong. The useless coin still sat in her pajama pocket, warm to the touch, and she considered throwing it out the window.

Instead, she went to sleep with it clutched in her fist.

Asleep and dreaming, she was unprepared for the next wave of pain. It swamped her, confused her, and her swimming brain seemed to spin. Instead of staring into those desperate eyes, she seemed to be staring out of them; she saw herself, as if in a mirror.

Had she always looked like this? So thin and small and frightened, so lost?

The pain wracked her; she lurched forward, towards her own image, and her image reached towards her, as frantic for relief as she was.

She felt a rush like warm wind, and a pop, like she'd stepped through a barrier, thin as a soap bubble.

Then she was whole again.

The pain had passed; she was standing up, and staring out of her own eyes.

But the green eyes hadn't vanished. They stayed in front of her, wide, red-veined, swollen with insanity.

Loki's eyes.

She was with him.

Too late. Too late for Rob, for her wish, but here was Loki, pressed against her, face to face, belly to belly, toe to toe, and her hands were on his cheeks.

Their foreheads touched. Loki's skin, though cool, was soaked in sweat, and as Rachel pulled back, he slumped forward, exhausted.

Rachel took in her surroundings. Gasped.

The scale of the place nearly sent her to her knees.

She stood on the center of a polished obsidian dais which appeared to be a mile wide. Pillars the size of the Statue of Liberty towered on either side of her. Chains stretched from them – one to each of Loki's wrists, pulling his arms wide, exposing his bare chest. A third chain extended from the ceiling, hundreds of feet above them, attached to a metal collar around his neck.

They were underground, in a cavern large enough to hold Manhattan and all its skyscrapers. Indeed, it seemed to be filled with mountains. Rachel and Loki were at the top of the tallest one, in the middle of the cavern, and other mountains, slightly lower, surrounded them. Each had a flattened top and two pillars. Rachel couldn't see far enough to be sure, but she would have bet that between each set of pillars stood a prisoner like Loki.

The pillars were torches; wide red flames at the top of each one lit the enclosed space, and their smoke mostly hid the distant stone sky.

Rachel took all this in quickly, then her focus was back on the man in front of her. The god, the Aesir, the prisoner.

He was a ruin. A shadow of the man he'd been when she knew him; in far worse shape than he'd been in even on the day they met. Then, he'd been bruised, sore, hollowed out with sorrow, confused by his fall, but whole.

The man in front of her was in shreds. Was nearly dead. Would be better off dead.

End of preview. :-) ...For the rest of this chapter, and the rest of "Wrecked," go to my profile.