Between the Blade and the Heart

by Amanda Hocking

  Her skin was so soft, and I remembered the way it felt when she ran her hands over my body. My mind flashed to when she had kissed me for the first time. Her mouth had been so hungry and eager, and she tasted like plums. We had been drinking, but the only thing I was drunk on was her.

  I had never felt that way before I met her—so light-headed and excited and nervous and wonderfully sick.

  “What were you doing anyway?” I asked, trying to distract myself from my own thoughts. “Before Oona called you to come rescue me.”

  “A Feast of the Dead pre-party,” she replied, and that explained her outfit.

  It was a skintight sweater dress with thigh-high boots. The dress was low-cut, so when I happened to look down, I could see the edges of her black lace bra barely covering her chest, and her Vegvisir amulet lay between her breasts.

  I pulled my gaze away, forcing myself to look at the sidewalk in front of us. “Were you with anyone?”

  “So what if I was?” she asked, not unkindly.

  “I was just making conversation,” I contended.

  She waited a beat before asking, “Are you still seeing that guy you were with the other night?”

  “I’m not seeing him.”

  “That’s not what it looked like to me.”

  “He’s just my mechanic,” I insisted.

  Quinn scoffed. “Uh-huh. My mechanic has never looked at me the way he was looking at you.”

  “Well, maybe you should wear this outfit, then.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” she demanded.

  I sighed. “I was just trying to say you look amazing tonight.”

  “Oh.” She paused. “Thank you. I’d say that you look good, but honestly, you look like crap.”

  I laughed. “I wouldn’t expect any less from you.”

  “Why were you out on your own, anyway? You could’ve gotten yourself killed, and are you even licensed yet?” Quinn asked, and I involuntarily tensed.

  Telling Oona about Marlow had been one thing. She’d been my best friend forever, and I pretty much had to tell her everything. But the more people who knew about Marlow’s flagrancies, the more likely it would be that a higher-up would find out, and then she would be done for.

  “My mother had stuff to do,” I answered cagily. “She couldn’t be here, and I had a job, so I did it.”

  “That’s not protocol.”

  “Please, Quinn,” I begged. “I’ve had a long night. Can you not lecture me, for once?”

  “Oh, sorry,” she said with exaggerated remorse, her words dripping with sarcasm. “I didn’t realize that having a conversation was lecturing you.”

  And then I remembered exactly why I had ended things with her. Quinn was always pushing and pushing, demanding more from me than I was ready to give. Probably even more than I was capable of. I would never be enough for Quinn, no matter how hard she tried to mold me into being who she needed me to be.

  When we’d first met, she’d taken my breath away with her beauty and her quick wit. But by the end I was suffocating under her unmet expectations.

  I stopped. “You know what? I’ll just get a taxi.” I pulled away from her, even though putting the full weight on my leg hurt like hell, but I kept my expression stoic, so she wouldn’t know how much it hurt to walk away from her.

  Her face instantly fell, and she reached out for me, but I just hobbled back from her. “Malin, no. I didn’t mean it like that. I can get you home.”

  “No, a taxi will be fine.” I walked to the edge of the sidewalk, raising my hand to flag down the first thing that came by.

  “Malin,” Quinn repeated, just as a bright yellow hovercar pulled up beside me.

  “It’s fine, Quinn,” I assured her. “Thanks for all your help. I’ll see you around.”

  TWENTY

  “Oh, bloody hell!” I cried out, causing Bowie to thump his back foot on the floor in a show of anger.

  He’d already taken to hiding under the kitchen table, since I’d been cursing and yelling for the past twenty minutes as Oona attempted to take care of my battle wounds. She had cut off my pants just above the knee so it would be easier to get to my injury.

  “Isn’t there something you have to make this more painless?” I asked through gritted teeth.

  Oona knelt on the floor in front of me, wearing thick vinyl gloves to protect her from the Jorogumo venom inside the setae, and her tackle box of thaumaturgy healing and apothecary tools was open beside her. She’d placed a towel on the floor underneath me to help maintain the mess, since my leg was soaked with blood—red from me and black from the Jorogumo.

  “Okay, Mal, you have a giant spider leg jabbed straight through the muscle of your calf,” Oona explained as calmly as she could. “There’s only so much I can do to make this painless. You really should go see a doctor.”

  “No doctors.” I shook my head.

  While a doctor, with expertise, sterile equipment, and syringes filled with beautiful, beautiful morphine would be ideal, I couldn’t risk it. Doctors would ask questions, which could lead to them figuring out that I was working on my own as an unlicensed Valkyrie, and they were legally required to report that to the Evig Riksdag.

  So that left Oona as my only option for medical care. And she really wasn’t that bad at it. She’d already stitched up the puncture wound in my shoulder that Amaryllis had given me, but pulling a spider leg covered in needlelike hairs out of my leg was a little beyond her usual area of expertise.

  “Here.” Oona held a thick piece of leather toward me. “I’m gonna pull the leg out now. Bite down on that.”

  “All right, screw it, let’s do this.” I took it from her and did as I was told. I bit down as hard as I could and squeezed my eyes shut.

  “Here goes nothing,” Oona said, more to herself than to me, and pain exploded in my leg.

  It already hurt like hell before she even touched it, but now the setae were burrowing deeper into my muscle as she yanked on the spider leg. It felt as if she were trying to pull my leg inside out.

  When the pain began to reach the point where I felt I couldn’t take it anymore—I screamed against the leather in my mouth as nausea rolled over me, and darkness edged around my thoughts like I was on the verge of blacking out—I heard the wet thwak as the spider leg finally came free.

  “There!” Oona declared proudly, but I already felt it.

  My leg still hurt something fierce, but nowhere near as bad as before. I spit out the leather and relaxed back against the couch, gasping for breath.

  “It should be much easier from here on out,” Oona assured me. “I’m going to start cleaning it now.”

  I winced as she started digging around in my leg, getting out any setae that had decided to stay embedded in my muscle, and I stared up at the ceiling.

  “This is why you shouldn’t have gone alone,” Oona said after I cursed under my breath again. “I bet this wouldn’t have happened if Marlow was there.”

  “Maybe not,” I allowed. “But it shouldn’t have been this bad anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Valkyries have immunities to this kind of stuff. From everything I know about Jorogumos, their poison should only have a minimal effect on me.” I shook my head. “Even Quinn commented on it.”

  Oona spritzed a pale purple liquid on my leg wound. It stung for a moment, then the pain quickly faded to a dull nothingness. “That should help numb it a bit, and now I’m gonna start stitching you up.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up.” I made sure to keep my eyes on the ceiling so I wouldn’t see the needle go in. Oona was right—the spray did numb the pain. I still felt it, the pressure of the needle and thread going through skin, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

  “Do you think it could be because you’re not licensed yet?” Oona asked.

  “That’s not how it works,” I explained. “A piece of paper doesn’t give me the antibodies or super-strength. I’m born with it. It’s in my blood.”
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  “Could your father have diluted it or something?” she asked.

  “No. All Valkyries have mortal fathers, and I’ve never heard of them having fewer abilities for that reason.”

  Oona lifted her head and looked up at me. “Who was your father?”

  “I don’t know. Just some human,” I said, then quickly added, “No offense.”

  She snorted. “None taken.”

  Valkyries were in an odd place where we weren’t immortal, but we weren’t exactly human, either. We were a breed all our own, with many of the same weaknesses as humans, like death, aging, and the need for oxygen and sunlight. We were just stronger, more resilient, and had an innate ability to hunt immortals, and while our blood weakened the immortals around us, it had no effect on humans.

  “But this is different anyway,” I said. “Amaryllis was saying all this weird stuff.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I closed my eyes, trying to remember exactly what Amaryllis had been saying to me through her fangs. “That she was going to kill me, and the underworld is more powerful than I’ll know, and the tables are turning.”

  “That’s not normal posturing and threats?”

  “Kind of. But it just…” I sighed. “I don’t know. It didn’t feel like an empty threat. It was almost like … like she knew something.”

  Oona stopped stitching me for a moment. “I’m doing the best I can with this, but you’re still going to need to go to the doctor at some point to make sure this is taken care of for real.”

  Then I felt the needle going back in, and Oona said very little as she concentrated on finishing the sutures. When she was done, she started washing off my leg and then covered the wound with some kind of anti-infection salve.

  “Did Marlow ever get beat up like this?” Oona asked as she wrapped my leg in a bandage.

  Marlow had returned with a black eye or a fat lip a dozen or so times. I remember waking up once when she came in late. Her lip was bloody, and her knuckles were all scraped up from punching. She sat in the darkened living room, drinking vodka straight from the bottle, and when I tried to ask her what had happened, she just snapped at me to go back to bed.

  But that was probably the worst I’d ever seen her. No broken bones. No puncture wounds. No parts of spiders trapped inside her.

  “She came home with a few scrapes and bruises from time to time, but it was never this bad,” I admitted.

  “So it could be because of your inexperience.” Oona had finished bandaging my leg, so she sat back and looked up at me. “Or it could be because something is up.” She waited a beat before asking, “Is there any way this could be related to that guy that Marlow didn’t kill?”

  I groaned, realizing belatedly that it could be. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re gonna have to talk to someone, Mal. That’s the only way you’ll find out what’s really going on.”

  “Who am I gonna talk to?” I asked, sitting up straighter on the couch. “Marlow is stonewalling me, and anyone else I could talk to, like Samael or my teachers, they would just turn me in.”

  “You could talk to Quinn,” Oona proposed.

  My heart skipped a beat, as if Oona saying her name would somehow invoke her presence, and I shook my head adamantly. “No, I’m not talking to Quinn.”

  “She wouldn’t turn you in.”

  “You don’t know that, and even if it’s true, I can’t,” I maintained. “It’s too complicated.”

  “First off, I do know that,” Oona argued. “She cares about you. When I told her what you were doing, she freaked out because she was so worried about you.”

  I groaned loudly in exasperation.

  “And second, I don’t even know why you broke up with her,” Oona went on, undeterred by my reaction. “You two were crazy about each other, and then you suddenly pulled the Valkyries-can’t-fall-in-love card.”

  I rubbed my hand over my face and regretted ever introducing Oona to Quinn. “I already told you it’s complicated.”

  “Okay, it’s not, but let’s say that it is,” she conceded. “That there’s all sorts of complex, unrequited feelings going on between you and Quinn. You know what I say to that? Suck it up, buttercup. If she can help you deal with whatever crap is going on right now, then you need to ask for help. That’s the bottom line.”

  “I know you’re right.…” My voice trailed off.

  “But?” she supplied.

  “But the fewer people that know what’s going on, the safer it is for both me and Marlow. So let me just try talking to her, and if I can’t find out anything, I’ll go to Quinn.”

  “That’s all I’m saying,” Oona relented finally.

  I stood up slowly, careful to not put too much weight on my injured left leg. “Right now I should get some sleep.”

  Oona scrambled through her thaumaturgy kit, before finding a miniature mason jar. It was filled with tiny ocher crystals, and she dumped out two into the palm of her hand. “Here.” She held them out to me. “Take this.”

  “What is it?” I asked, already taking it from her.

  “It’s called solamentum, and it’s made with ginger and angelic toadstool with just the smallest touch of codeine,” she explained. “It should help with the inflammation, pain, and risk of infection.”

  I threw back my head and tossed them in my mouth, and instantly regretted it. They were tart and acidic, like grapefruit juice mixed with battery acid. “That tastes terrible. Why does everything that’s good for me taste so awful?”

  “That’s just how the world works, Mal.”

  I smiled down at her. “Thanks again for taking care of me.”

  “That’s what friends are for, right?” Oona smiled back.

  “Come on, Bowie.” I whistled for him as I hobbled toward my bedroom, and he hopped after me. “Let’s hit the sack.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  It wasn’t even noon yet as I made my way to Marlow’s place, and the city was already bursting with Feast of the Dead celebrations. A parade had traffic blocked up all over, and it took my taxi driver an extra thirty minutes just to get me to where I’d left my luft parked in the Gold Coast.

  The streets were dripping with decorations, from black streamers to strings of purple lights. Each light post I went past on my way to Marlow’s had a different poster of a figure from the underworld, all of them labeled with:

  PATRON SAINT OF KURNUGIA

  Normally the Feast of the Dead seemed like a fun—albeit obnoxiously traffic-jam-inducing—holiday, but today everything felt strangely unsettling. The patron saints posters—the sage Hades with a thick beard and blue flames rising behind him, the terrifying horned Supay with red eyes and bloody flesh peeling from his body, and the arresting Ereshkigal with lush black skin and an impish grin sitting atop her throne of bones—were particularly unnerving.

  Even though they were just pictures on paper—an artist’s rendering in exquisite detail—they carried such an imposing presence that I could swear their eyes were following me as I hurried past, making the hair rise on the back of my neck and an icy chill run down my spine.

  To get to Marlow’s stoop, I had to push my way through a throng of teenage girls and ghouls, all dressed up in couture mourning gowns, several replete with gauzy black veils flowing around them. They all talked and laughed loudly, and if the smell was to be believed, they were already drunk on cheap booze and liliplum.

  Marlow hadn’t answered her phone when I tried calling this morning, and given the severity of everything that had happened with Amaryllis Mori, I decided I couldn’t wait to talk to her, and I was coming over uninvited.

  After walking up the four flights of stairs to her apartment, I was really hoping she was home, because I doubted that my leg could handle the trek again. Oona had even given me a couple more of those solamentum crystals to help with the pain, but my wound was still throbbing. I’d smartly worn a flowy skirt with slits down the side, so it wouldn’t rub against my leg too much.

&nb
sp; I knocked, and though it took a bit for her to answer, I heard Marlow talking inside. The slot for the peephole clanged and she muttered, “Dammit,” on the other side of the door. Just what every daughter wants to hear when she visits her mother.

  Finally she opened the door a crack. She was wide awake, with hair and makeup properly styled, which was usually a good indicator that she would be less cranky, but based on the irritation in her eyes, I realized that wasn’t the case.

  “What are you doing here?” Marlow demanded through the gap in the door.

  “I just—”

  Before I could finish, she shouted back over her shoulder, “Did you tell her you were here?”

  “No,” Asher said from inside Marlow’s apartment. “I didn’t talk to her.”

  “Asher is here?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

  “Fine, come in.” Marlow opened the door all the way and gestured wildly around her. “Let’s all just have a big old chat.”

  The first thing I noticed was that her apartment was significantly less cluttered than it had been when I came over the day before yesterday. All the garbage had been removed from the kitchen, and most of her random military surplus objects seemed to be stowed away somewhere.

  The boxes were still stacked up, blocking the only window, and there were still the tubs of rice and lentils, but in general everything felt more orderly and neatly piled up. The only light came from what little spilled around the boxes, several fat candles on the coffee table, and a solitary bulb shining over the sink in the kitchen.

  Asher sat on the couch, smiling sheepishly and offering me a small wave as I stepped inside. Marlow had stomped off to the kitchen, pouring herself a cup of coffee with a hefty dash of vodka, so I closed the door behind me.

  “Your mother invited me over to discuss things,” Asher explained awkwardly, since it seemed like Marlow didn’t plan to. “I got here about ten minutes ago.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked Marlow.

  “Why would I?” She sat down in a slipper chair across from Asher and crossed her long legs, one over the other. She stared up at me with her steel-gray eyes. “This doesn’t involve you. This was part of my agreement with Teodora, not you.”