Between the Blade and the Heart

by Amanda Hocking

  “We already discussed the price,” Quinn told me as she dug through her bag and pulled out a fat stack of cash wrapped in rubber bands that she handed to Gable. “Here you go. It’s all there.”

  “Thank you.” Gable bowed slightly to her, then wrapped the dagger back up in the satin cloth before handing it to her. “It is always a pleasure to do business with you, Quinn, as I do love making your every wish come to fruition. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you are in search of something in the future.”

  She handed me the dagger, which I placed deep in the bottom of my messenger bag, hiding it as best I could. Quinn said her goodbyes to Gable, then took my hand to lead me through the crowded marketplace.

  “How much did you pay for that?” I asked as we climbed the stairs up away from the Avondmarkt toward the subway tunnel.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It seemed like a whole lot of cash,” I pressed, following her. “How could you afford it?”

  “You remember my Vegvisir amulet?” she asked, and I realized with dismay that for the first time since I’d known Quinn, she wasn’t wearing it around her neck.

  “The one that had been in your family for generations?” I asked.

  “I sold it.”

  “You sold it?” I stopped so I could yell at her incredulously. “Quinn! Why would you do that?”

  She stopped and took a step back down, so we’d be at eye level. “Look, Malin, Tamerlane Fayette is bad. He’s a draugr who might be able to bring about the end of the world. And this weapon might be the only thing that can kill him. An old amulet seems like an easy price to pay.”

  I shook my head. “Quinn. I have to pay you back. That’s too much.”

  “No, you don’t. I wanted to do this. I want to protect you. Why can’t you just let me?” She moved closer to me, so her breasts were nearly touching mine, and the light from the lamps danced in her emerald eyes.

  “I don’t need—”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t need it,” she cut me off. Her voice was low and husky as she brushed back my hair from my forehead. “I don’t know why you have to be so stubborn all the damned time.”

  “If I were perfect, it would be too much,” I replied, trying to make a joke, but the air suddenly felt thick and I couldn’t even muster a smile.

  With her eyes still on mine, she leaned down and kissed me. Her mouth felt soft and eager against mine, and her tongue parted my lips, hesitant, tentative at first. But then I was kissing her back, and her hand moved, her fingers knotting in my hair as she pulled me to her.

  It was strange, because I expected her to taste different, but she didn’t—her lips were cool and sweet, and she smelled of fresh lilacs, the way she always had. Everything felt the way it was before.

  My heart pounded erratically in my chest. There was an ache inside me, a familiar mixture of pain and longing, because I had missed her desperately. Since we’d been apart, hardly a day had gone by that I didn’t think about her.

  But being with her still petrified me, and my stomach didn’t know whether to twist into horrified knots or leap in elation, so it did both, until I couldn’t take it anymore. As amazing as it felt kissing Quinn, I was terrified that I might throw up, so I used what was left of my willpower to pull away from her.

  As I stepped back, both of us gasping for breath, we stood staring at each other in the poorly lit stairwell for a few seconds. I could see the conflict in her eyes—she wasn’t sure whether to kiss me again or not, and if she did kiss me, I wasn’t sure that I’d have the strength to say no again.

  Finally, she said, “We should go. This isn’t a safe place to loiter.”

  She turned her back and started running up the stairs without waiting for me as I struggled to catch my breath and slow the racing of my heart.

  FORTY-TWO

  “So this is what we’ve got,” I told Oona, setting the sólarsteinn and Kalfu’s dagger down on the table in front her.

  She sat at the kitchen table, with one knee pulled up to her chest and a bowl of cereal in front of her. She’d been awake for all of twenty minutes this morning, and I was already pestering her.

  After the Avondmarkt last night, Quinn and I had parted ways. She had been distant since the kiss, probably because she didn’t know how I’d react, which was just as well, because I didn’t know how I’d react, either.

  Then I had come home with the full intention of looking up everything I could on Kalfu and his dagger and how to stop draugrs like Tamerlane, and I did manage to, for a little bit. But then the exhaustion of the past week came crashing down on me, and I passed out before Oona had gotten home from work.

  Now Oona sat half awake at the kitchen table as I laid out my plan.

  “Where’d you get that knife?” she asked, eyeing it suspiciously.

  “Quinn gave it to me,” I said, deciding to abbreviate what had happened to avoid a lecture. I summarized everything I knew about the dagger and Kalfu, and assured her that Quinn had gotten it from a reliable source.

  “So this”—she tapped the stone—“will show you where Tamerlane is, assuming you know the general area he’s in and get close enough to him, and this”—she touched the dagger—“should kill him, assuming that you can find him and that he doesn’t overpower you the way he did Marlow.”

  Oona said that last part gently, since she wasn’t trying to be cruel about Marlow’s death. She was merely pointing out that a Valkyrie with much more experience than me hadn’t been able to stop Tamerlane.

  “You sound skeptical,” I said flatly.

  “No, that’s not it.” She set her spoon in the bowl and pushed it away from her. She pursed her lips as she thought, making the studs above her lips twist and sparkle. “I’m just worried we’re getting in over our heads.”

  I took a step back and folded my arms over my chest. “Quinn and I are both Valkyries, and Asher’s had tons of training as a Vörðr, not to mention he has Valkyrie blood from his mom. And you know all kinds of potions and tricks because of your familiarity with alchemy and thaumaturgy.”

  “All that may be true, but Tamerlane is a draugr. Don’t you think that’s beyond our skill set?” Oona stared up at me helplessly.

  “No one has experience with draugrs,” I reminded her. “And individually we wouldn’t be able to handle him, but together I think we can.”

  She sighed and ran her hand through her short black hair. “It’s just early in the morning, and I’m worried. We don’t even know where Tamerlane is. How are we going to find him?”

  “Well, we—”

  The ringing of my phone interrupted me. I was planning to let it go to voice mail, but the screen was face-up on the counter, with the name SAMAEL on it in big bold letters, so I rushed to answer it.

  “Malin, it’s Samael,” he said when I answered. “How have you been holding up?”

  “Okay, I guess.” I had my back to Oona, but I could feel her eyes watching me expectantly. “How are you?”

  There was a long pause before he finally said, “I’ve been better. But I was wondering if you could come in and talk?”

  I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, balancing on my noninjured leg. “Do you have another assignment?” I asked, hoping that he didn’t, because I had no idea how I would fit one in with everything else that was going on.

  “No, you won’t be getting any more assignments. Not until we find you someone new to apprentice under,” Samael told me, and my heart plummeted.

  I hadn’t wanted to deal with a new assignment right now, but I had been so busy mourning Marlow’s death and attempting to avenge her that I hadn’t really considered what her death meant for my career. She was my mentor, my teacher, and without her—and with her name now tarnished—I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to find someone else willing to apprentice me.

  So, on top of everything else, I was just coming to the bitter conclusion that my career as a Valkyrie might be over before it even started.

&nbs
p; “Okay,” I said once I managed to find my voice again. “What’s this about, then?”

  “It’s about Marlow,” he said. “When can you come in?”

  “I can be there in a half hour.”

  “Good. I’ll see you then,” he said, and hung up the phone.

  “Was that Samael?” Oona asked, right behind me. “What’d he want?”

  “I don’t know. He said it’s about Marlow.” I turned back to face her.

  She was standing with her hands on her hips, nodding as her eyes darted around. Whenever she was working something out, she’d play with her piercings, pushing the studs with her tongue so they bobbed as she thought. I could almost see the wheels turning inside her head.

  “Okay, so you wanna do this? You wanna track down Tamerlane?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Samael will help, right?” Oona asked, looking at me hopefully.

  I nodded. “He told me he wanted to catch Tamerlane as badly as I did.”

  “Great.” She exhaled, looking relieved. “He works for the Riks, so he has all kinds of access to information and weaponry. You need to get everything you can from him.”

  “I can do that,” I said.

  Oona started walking, pacing the kitchen as she spoke. “While you’re gone, I’ll do my best to gather what I need for protection spells, and I’ll see if I can do anything for tracking. But you have to get Samael to give you as much as possible.”

  “I will,” I assured her.

  I hurried to get dressed, and Oona was already flying around the apartment, digging through her thaumaturgy kit, and pulling out old grimoires that had belonged to her ancestors. I promised her I’d be back as soon as I could, but she barely mumbled a goodbye and kept her head buried in a book.

  FORTY-THREE

  Godfrey and Atlas were posted on either side of Samael’s door, as usual, but they’d added black armbands wrapped around their massive biceps. The same way they did whenever a comrade had fallen.

  It was a simple gesture, a common one, but it wasn’t something I expected to see done for Marlow, and I felt a pain in my chest as I tried to swallow back unwelcome tears.

  “He’s waiting for you,” Atlas told me, forgoing his usual small talk to offer me a sympathetic smile.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Godfrey reached for the bronze door to open it for me, but he paused, his solitary eye resting solemnly on me. “Your mother was a very intimidating woman,” Godfrey said, his voice a low rumbling bass. “I liked her.”

  I smiled gratefully up at him. “I think that’s the truest thing anyone’s ever said about her.”

  Inside Samael’s office, he was sitting behind his long black desk, but he stood when he saw me. “Malin. It’s good to see you.”

  Samael strode across his office with quick strides, and before I could say anything, he pulled me into a hug. Then he released me, looking directly into my eyes in a way that made me nervous that he could read my mind. “Are you sure you’re holding up all right?”

  “I’m all right.” I rubbed the back of my neck and avoided his gaze. “What did you want to see me about? Did you find out anything?”

  “I did, actually. But let’s start at the beginning.” He gestured toward his sofa. “Shall we sit and talk?”

  I sat down on the couch, and he sat beside me. His usual boyish face seemed to have aged even more since I last saw him, and I wondered if sadness affected him more greatly than time.

  “Did you know that Tamerlane Fayette is a draugr?” he asked me directly.

  I wavered a second before nodding. “I suspected as much, yes.”

  He leaned back on the couch, his aqua eyes appraising me. “How long have you known?”

  “Not long,” I admitted. “Marlow had told me a few days before she died that she hadn’t killed Tamerlane as she was instructed to, and it was only after that I really even learned what a draugr was.”

  “I’ve had feelers going out about any news on draugrs, and I’ve been getting word back that they’re heading to the Gates,” Samael said.

  “You mean the Gates of Kurnugia? The city in Central America?” I asked, and the knot in stomach only twisted harder.

  “Yes, and as you may know, it’s under impious control.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “Are they trying to enter Kurnugia?”

  “Possibly, but it’s not something they can just go in and out of. The doors exist the same way a door exists on a safe or even to this building.” He motioned vaguely toward his office doors. “But not just anyone can walk in. And in the case of the Kurnugia, the doors to it are very rarely allowed to open, and no one is ever allowed back out.”

  “Do you know why they’re all heading down there?” I asked. “They must be planning something.”

  “I agree, but I’m not sure what.” He shook his head sadly. “I talked to the higher-ups about sending help down to investigate, but they said this was not a matter for us to interfere. They believe that we need to let the mortals and immortals handle whatever conflict may be brewing themselves.”

  “But draugrs aren’t even supposed to exist,” I argued. “And by the Rikdag’s own decree, Tamerlane Fayette is supposed to be dead. Don’t they just want to take care of him themselves?”

  Samael frowned. “I tried to reason with them, but they are unfortunately rather orthodox, and they like to live to the very letter of the law, which means being as hands-off as possible in this case, even if it’s to the whole world’s detriment.”

  “So Tamerlane Fayette is headed down to the Gates?” I asked.

  “Yes, assuming he isn’t already there.”

  I chewed the inside of my cheek, mulling over everything I knew about Tamerlane that might give me some hint as to what he was up to. The only things I really had were Amaryllis Mori’s claims that the underworld was planning an uprising, and Eisheth Levanon’s certainty that they were following a queen.

  “Do you know of anyone that the draugrs might be serving?” I asked Samael. “I heard that Tamerlane says he’s working for the one true queen.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “A queen?”

  “Yeah. If they’re planning to get through the city and into Kurnugia, I’m guessing she’s connected to the underworld. Maybe a spurned goddess?” I suggested.

  “An underworld goddess?” He exhaled deeply before he began listing them off. “Mictecacihuatl, Laverna, Ereshkigal, Sedna, Nyx, Hine-nui-te-pō, Dewi Sri, Nephthys, Hel, Maman Brigitte, Marzanna … And those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.”

  I groaned. “So that doesn’t exactly narrow it down.”

  “Unfortunately, no,” he agreed pessimistically. “Not unless you have more information.”

  “None yet,” I said, slouching back on the couch.

  “Do you want me to go with you to the Gates?” Samael offered.

  I considered this a moment before asking, “Can you do it without attracting attention?”

  “No,” he admitted. “Eralim are very rarely granted any kind of leave of absence.”

  “Then it’ll probably be best if I go without you. I don’t want anyone stopping us from going after Tamerlane simply because you’re with us and they don’t want you interfering.”

  Samael leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees, his forehead pinched with worry. “You’re not going alone, are you?”

  “No, I have friends that are fighting with me.” I looked at him hopefully, remembering Oona’s request for more weapons. “Do you have any weapons that might be good for fighting a goddess or draugrs or whatever other demonic jerks we might go up against?”

  He smiled at that and stood up. “I do, actually, have just the thing.”

  Samael went over to the wall that was lined with shelves. On a lower shelf that came to his waist, he moved an antique totem to the side, revealing a small touch screen. He tapped in a few numbers, then put his hand down to scan his print.

  The screen let out a
happy bing of recognition, and a second later a thin concealed drawer slid open, revealing a hidden cache of ancient weapons, carefully cushioned on black velvet.

  “This is Tyrfing.” Samael pointed to the first sword, one with a long blade with a golden hilt. In the center of the pommel, a triquetra symbol had been engraved. “This sword has been endowed with a power so that it never misses a target, no matter who swings it.”

  He moved down the line, pointing to the next sword. It was shorter than the first, with a beveled blade, and both the blade and the hilt appeared to be made out of a singular piece of a black obsidian-like material.

  “This is Kusanagi,” he went on. “This is a very powerful sword, forged inside a dragon, and it’s believed to control the wind.”

  The next sword also had a black blade, but the hilt was a deep red, and the cross guards were shaped to look like flames coming out of the grip.

  “This is Dyrnwyn, and legend has it that if whoever wields this sword has a quest that is pure, the blade will burn,” Samael said. “The user will remain unburned, but the flames will destroy the enemy.”

  “But what if their quest isn’t pure?” I asked, since I really had no idea how this particular sword might feel about what I was planning to do to Tamerlane.

  “Then it’s just a regular sword, albeit with a very powerful blade,” Samael said, then moved on to the next weapon.

  Unlike the first three, this was not a sword. It was a mace with a long bronze staff with a rather gruesome-looking spiked head made of iron attached by a chain.

  “And this is Sharur,” he said. “It’s enchanted so that it will fly great distances to its owner, should its owner need it to, and it has a very precise aim.”

  “You think these will be able to kill whatever the hell is brewing down in Kurnugia?” I asked.

  “If any weapons on earth can help, these will be the ones to do it,” Samael said. “They’re all enchanted, and most were gifts from the Vanir gods, back in times when they still deigned to interfere with mortal matters.”

  “So it’s all right if take them?” I asked, glancing down at the cache of invaluable weaponry before looking back at Samael. “I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to return them, though I’ll try as hard as I can.”