Knightmare: Nate Temple Series Book 12

by Shayne Silvers

  I glanced around, making sure there were no immediate surprises or dangers—like whatever had first made Odin grip his spear so tightly—and then I gathered up a blast of power, drawing strictly from my Fae abilities in hopes that the gods wouldn’t sense it until it was too late.

  And then I flung that power towards my target, holding nothing back.

  The translucent blast ripped through a stream of falling water, exploding in instant clouds of scalding vapor—betraying the stealth I had intended.

  I ignored the startled sounds from my friends behind me, focused solely on the gods before me. Odin gasped, spinning at the last second to face my assault. Freya hissed, sidestepping in a crouch as her hands shot to her hips where she wore a thin belt with a few pouches on either side.

  Even though I only saw her out of my peripheral vision for a split second, it was long enough to see her hands hesitate as a baffled frown began to form on her face. But her eyes gripped me like a hunting falcon.

  I’d read a relationship book or two, making me quite adept at translating this majestic species’ unspoken languages.

  One of their strongest unspoken languages was the look.

  Men could threaten, bludgeon, and maim with a look.

  But a woman’s look was an invisible scalpel. On fire. Coated in sulfuric acid. And it had a default taser function.

  That was their starting point.

  And they leveled up fast, gentlemen.

  In fact, I was fairly confident that they’d killed the dinosaurs. All of them.

  With one look from a mildly perturbed cavewoman after a filthy reptile accidentally trampled her flower garden, a figurative meteor had struck the earth and then the majority of the planet had frozen over.

  Although her hands had hesitated over her pouches, Freya still had instincts, and those instincts had seen a man doing something incredibly stupid. She hit me with the look—an incredibly powerful one—and it was a testament to my epic manliness that I didn’t instantly implode into dust motes of eternal shame.

  But she’d realized—almost instantly—that I hadn’t actually been aiming for her husband, which was confirmed about a heartbeat after she hit me with the look.

  My blast of air snapped Odin’s legendary spear—Gungnir—in half. The yellow, smoking stone decorating the blade winked out as the two halves fell to the ground and instantly vaporized. Odin and Freya both stared down at where it had landed, and neither made a single sound. They looked…troubled.

  Because I’d picked up on something very alarming about Odin’s spear, and I’d done so entirely by accident while scanning our surroundings…

  The spear he had been holding had not been the real Gungnir.

  “Explain,” I said coldly. And if he didn’t have a damned good answer, I was prepared to introduce fire to Niflheim.

  A whole Hel-of-a lot of it.

  His spear had looked a great deal like the real Gungnir, but it had been an illusion—a replica.

  And all sorts of alarm bells had begun ringing in my mind, giving me a long list of terrifying theories. One in particular had reminded me that Odin had an adopted son, of sorts, and that this son was allegedly the best wielder of illusion magic the Nine Realms had ever seen.

  Loki, the God of Mischief.

  The problem was, I had no way to verify if Odin was actually Odin, so I would just have to keep a close eye on him.

  Odin finally let out a breath, kicking at the ground where his fake spear had landed. Then he was suddenly holding a new one, as shiny as the original, and just as fraudulent.

  “Good eyes, Nate.”

  “It’s because I have two of them. They work better in pairs.”

  He pursed his lips. “That’s why I have five eyes. Don’t forget Hugin and Munin,” he muttered, a bit of his fire rising to the surface.

  I nodded, having anticipated his retort. “Speaking of, where are Shake and Bake? I’ve got a hankering for some hot wings.”

  He took a deep breath, as if trying to center himself rather than allow me to continue baiting him. Having known me my entire life, he was very familiar with my antagonistic tendencies and had long since acquired coping mechanisms. Testing him like this was also a good way to appease my fear about Loki hiding behind an illusion.

  “I should have known better than to try deceiving you. I’m sorry,” he finally said.

  I slowly nodded. “Yes. You should have known better.” I paused, waiting a few moments for his tension to subside. “Apology not accepted.” The words rang out like a struck bell.

  Freya’s budding amusement evaporated, and her jaw dropped open in disbelief, but Odin merely stared back at me with one crazily intense eyeball.

  “Now, let’s skip the mystery and get right to the point, shall we? Why the fake spear, and where are my friends?” I demanded. Then, without looking, I ripped open a Gateway back to Fae behind Grimm, making him hop laterally in startled surprise. “Or are we finished here?” I growled.

  Freya’s eyes widened even further, and she quickly cast Odin a very nervous look. “Tell him,” she said hurriedly. “He would have found out soon either way.”

  Odin finally hung his head, lowering his eye defeatedly. “No need for that,” he said, motioning for me to get rid of my Gateway. I didn’t. He cleared his throat. “Gungnir was stolen. And, as you can see, I’m somewhat weaker in power as a result.”

  I scoffed, still not closing my Gateway. “Why would I believe any of that?” I asked scathingly, trying to assess his power level in order to authenticate his claim.

  There was something strange about his power compared to any other time I had seen him. It wasn’t necessarily that it was lesser, but that it was diluted somehow—like a pale reflection.

  Freya suddenly piped in, sounding fed up with our bickering. “He speaks the truth. Gungnir has been stolen! It is just one of the reasons we came to you. Now, drop the attitude and come with me. I refuse to let Ashley die, even if I have to drag you by the ear!”

  Even Odin arched an eyebrow at her harsh words, turning to look at her as if he’d never seen her before.

  Freya carried on, ignoring her husband’s look. “Odin spoke very highly of you, but it seems even he can be wrong sometimes. All I see is a willful, spoiled child.” She glanced at Alice, her features softening somewhat. “And a beautiful young girl.”

  “And me,” Grimm muttered, sounding mildly irritated. “Don’t forget the stunning, magical unicorn who fixed your stupid bridge. Just another under-appreciated government worker making sure your life runs smoothly.”

  Odin slowly fixed his glare over my shoulder, his eye seeming to crackle with lightning. “After breaking it, eating it, and then pissing on it,” he growled ominously.

  Grimm snorted. “The new one is better. Quit yer bitching.”

  Odin grew unnaturally still. Freya, for her part, arched an eyebrow so high that I feared it might slide right off her forehead.

  Alice was beaming proudly, apparently having only paid attention to Freya calling her beautiful.

  For some reason, I didn’t entirely like Freya. I had no rational justification for my feeling, but I’d learned to trust my gut.

  I bit my tongue from barking back an argument and took a calming breath instead. The faster I got Frantic Freya off her panic wagon, the sooner I would see my friends.

  “Fine,” I said in a tight voice. “Let’s pretend Odin was right, and that I’m slightly more than a willful, spoiled child. What do you expect me to do about Gungnir, and what are we doing in Niflheim?” I asked, careful to keep my tone civil.

  More civil, anyways. Because they had goaded me here with fear for my friends. Yet now I was learning they wanted a favor. Odin had lost his mojo and somehow needed my help getting it back.

  Ultimately, I didn’t give one flying fuck about his personal problems, let alone helping him recover his stolen goods. I only cared about my injured friends somewhere up ahead. But my mind still ran with the Gungnir problem, my cur
iosity getting the better of me.

  Was Thor playing tit-for-tat? Odin had stolen and hidden Mjölnir, so maybe Thor had stolen Gungnir in return. Briefly envisioning Thor with Gungnir made my stomach writhe with concern, but I kept my face blank.

  Freya locked eyes with me, her jaw clenched tightly as if about to say something that both infuriated and disgusted her. “We need a—”

  “Generally,” Odin interrupted her in a loud, commanding tone, “need will not sway a Temple, especially this one. Let Nate see for himself. Trust me, wife. It is easier. For everyone,” he said, shooting me a meaningful glance.

  Freya huffed unhappily, but she did nod.

  “Generally, that’s true,” I agreed in a careful tone. But it really wasn’t true. Not entirely. For example, my friends needed me right now, and that was trumping my desire to go help Alex and Talon castrate Mordred, cook up some testicle tartare, and feed the delicacy to some horrifying denizen of Fae. When it truly mattered, I could place others’ needs above my own.

  Odin nodded satisfactorily, his hat bobbing up and down. “We will speak of our own problems shortly, and you will do or not do as you see fit. Whatever you decide, Nate,” he said softly. Then he very stiffly turned away, leading us onward.

  Freya didn’t move, watching her husband with a sad, private frown. Sensing my attention, she jolted, shot me an accusing glare, and then hurried to catch up with him—although she kept a meaningful distance from her husband, walking parallel to him but not beside him.

  I arched a brow back at Grimm and Alice, but they shook their heads, not having any helpful advice to offer. Or they were smart enough to not get involved.

  Chapter 10

  I watched Freya as I walked, allowing myself to get a clearer understanding of her mindset. It shouldn’t have taken me this long to realize that I was the reason for all of her lonely nights over the last few decades. It wasn’t my fault, of course, but I could see how part of her might want to see it that way.

  Odin had left her high and dry in favor of working for my family. And here I was, meeting her face-to-face for the first time, and showing absolutely zero remorse.

  I felt no guilt or responsibility for that—Odin had married her, not me. He’d made his bed and now had to lie in it. But I could empathize with Freya.

  Because Odin had lied to me as well. We both felt betrayed, to some extent. Maybe that was why my gut had initially steered me away from her—not out of any distrust or dislike of her personally, but as a warning to stay away from her since I was essentially salt on a fresh wound.

  And yet she was here, helping her husband. No wonder she was short fused with me. This revelation didn’t completely change my perception of her, but it wasn’t something I could deny either.

  I shifted my gaze to Odin, assessing him clinically.

  As powerful of a god as he was, he wouldn’t have wasted his life working for my parents if he intended me harm. He wouldn’t have debased himself for decades, suffering my constant antics, washing my clothes, feeding me, and cleaning up after me. He wouldn’t have abandoned his family for my family.

  And if I was wrong…

  I still had access to all my power. Hell, he’d helped me regain my Fae powers. As I assessed my potential opponent, I grew more certain that he hadn’t been lying about being weaker. Was Gungnir the true source of his power? Had losing it really cost him so much? And if so, who now had the weapon of mass destruction?

  We continued on in silence, and I realized that Freya had taken the lead. She descended a mossy, sloping decline that led into a tiny, slightly misty, depression—like a miniature valley that was maybe thirty yards in diameter. It was littered with several boulders and stubby, rotted tree trunks, making me think of broken masts from sunken shipwrecks poking out above the oceanic body of mist. The swirling tendrils of fog reached my shins, but it was transparent enough to let me still see the ground beneath. Thankfully, my bare feet didn’t slip, but I found myself idly trying to remember if I had packed any spare shoes in my satchel.

  As I glanced down to check, Odin cleared his throat from only a pace ahead of me, making me jump. I hadn’t realized he’d slowed down. I looked up at him warily, using a suspicious scowl to distract from my flinch.

  He dipped his head, silently apologizing for startling me. Then he resumed his march, matching my pace so that we walked side-by-side. “Do you know why your first ancestor chose the prefix Master?”

  “I’ve never thought about it,” I lied.

  Odin hesitated, seeming to read the lie and understand my reasoning. “One should think long and hard on their predecessors. At least to be aware of them—their victories and losses, vices and virtues—lest the sins of the father pass on.” He glanced my way, not meeting my eyes but using his peripheral vision instead. “I’m speaking from personal experience, nothing more,” he admitted in a low tone.

  I nodded after a few moments. “Wisdom is learning from others’ mistakes,” I ventured.

  He grunted. “That it is.” We continued in silence for a few more steps before he spoke again. “And wisdom is a luxury many cannot afford. Often, this is because they refuse to carry the right currency, but mostly it’s because they are never given the option to buy.”

  I nodded, a faint smile touching my cheeks at his humility. “Thank you.”

  He shrugged absently, lifting his head to look for his wife. I realized that she had stopped about ten feet ahead and was watching the two of us with a sad smile. “It’s the least I could do,” Odin murmured before departing to join his wife.

  I watched him walk up to Freya as I silently considered the dozens of elusive questions now dancing through my thoughts. I replayed the seemingly casual conversation, wondering if I had missed something important. The pair spoke in low, inaudible tones—at least quietly enough for the constant rain hitting the canopy to drown out their discussion. They stood before a cozy tunnel of thick foliage at the edge of the misty valley.

  Grimm and Alice stepped up behind me, waiting in silence. After a moment, Alice gripped my free hand, refusing to let go. I squeezed back reassuringly, but didn’t speak. Odin finally turned to look back at us, pointing a thumb over his shoulder at the tunnel—our apparent destination.

  “Nobody move your feet or hands,” he warned in a stern, authoritative tone, entirely different than the man I had just spoken with. “Do nothing that could be seen as even remotely threatening.” Then he slowly turned to face the tunnel. Although I frowned as he began to look—not at the tunnel—but up high.

  I slowly followed his gaze to see two pairs of beady black eyes watching us from their perches atop opposite branches just below the canopy. They were eerily motionless; the only sense of life was that they occasionally blinked their eyes.

  Cold, unsympathetic murder stared down at us like four gun barrels loaded with armor-piercing rounds of Norse hate.

  Hugin and Munin.

  Thought and Memory.

  Odin’s Ravens.

  Except I barely recognized them. It only took me two seconds to decide that I no longer had any desire to bring up the Shake and Bake joke.

  Because Hugin and Munin were now the size of large dogs, looking as if they each weighed over one hundred pounds—definitely too heavy to perch on my shoulders like they had done once or twice in the past. The comparison of them now versus any other time I’d seen them was almost too shocking to believe—like coming back home from a long weekend to find your pet cat of nine years was now a Saber-toothed tiger. The creatures staring down at us right now were the prehistoric ancestor to the modern-day raven.

  Or maybe they had taken a cue from the Ninja Turtles and splashed around in a birdbath of neon-green goop.

  Their beaks looked thicker and sharper, and their feathers were longer, beaten, and aged. There was nothing perfect or majestic about these guys. I heard a strange rattling sound, so I peered closer into the shadows surrounding them. They each had a pitted metal band on one foot, and from each
anklet hung a collection of bloody human skulls. The skulls even had bits of wet, hairy gore attached in places, and one of them still had an eyeball.

  Judging by the faint gleam on their beaks, I was betting I was seeing the remains of a meal they had just finished. Maybe a meal we had just interrupted. I wondered who the unlucky bastards had been.

  I had to consciously force myself to lessen my grip on my staff, not wanting to risk provoking them.

  I felt the Temple family Crest that was now branded into my palm tingle slightly. Since Alice didn’t recoil, I dismissed it as my imagination. And Odin had warned us not to move, so it wasn’t like I could check.

  Still, I shivered at the possibility that it hadn’t been my imagination. Hugin and Munin had been there when I’d first gotten the brand—when I’d discovered the secret Sanctorum inside Chateau Falco. A vast, impossibly located library full of hidden books and other strange wonders.

  A library that only Masters Temple could access, I thought to myself, remembering Odin’s strange question about my ancestors’ choice of title.

  One of the ravens let out a bubbling croak, ruffling his huge feathers.

  I used to be able to differentiate them by Hugin having a slight chip in his beak, but these raw, mutated versions of Odin’s ravens…

  They’d been living the cage match fighting circuit for a few centuries, both of them scarred, worn, and beaten. But like a callus, their sustained beatings had somehow only served to make them stronger, harder, and more resilient.

  Their battle scars weren’t a testament to their inferior fighting skills—they were a declaration of just how many foes the tag-team had slaughtered. And just how powerful those foes must have been to successfully land a lucky shot here and there.

  The other raven took slightly longer to react, seeming to focus on me more intently than the others, cocking his head curiously. Then he turned to Grimm, and his feathers ruffled up, seeming to double his size like he was a puffer fish. He abruptly hopped sideways on his branch, belting out a bloodcurdling shriek of his own.