The kiss was achingly sweet, hot and good. She sank into the power of it, letting it steal conscious thought. She clung to him and her conscience did not issue a single warning or whisper of concern. All she could process was an incoherent sense of rightness. That this was good, natural.
It was very good, indeed.
When he finally let her go, she leaned back against the wall, propping herself up with her trembling knees. Her gown had come open. She tied it closed with shaking fingers.
Asher rested his head against the wall next to hers and closed his eyes. “I couldn’t get the thought of kissing you out of my mind.” His voice was rough and low. “Since I saw you yesterday. No matter how much I drank. I just wanted to kiss you and that was all.”
He had neatly pinned the thing that had been driving her, too. She slipped her hand into his and his fingers curled over it. He looked at her.
“Now what?” she asked softly.
He hesitated. “Now I go back to war. You go back to the hall.”
Something invisible grabbed her throat and tightened painfully. “Isn’t everything different now?” she asked. “Humans know; laun is gone.”
“Roar still has claim on you,” Asher said. There was a bitter light in his eyes. “He won’t do anything about it until the war is done, but that is a law I can’t break, not if I want to keep my place in the hall.” His mouth turned down in a sour smile. “I dare not even linger here in your room for too long, or the Irishman out there will become suspicious.”
She cast about for a solution, anything that would break this dreadful deadlock on their lives. But she had been over this ground so often and had never found even a chink of hope. “You said, once, that you would give up the Kine.”
“Not while the war goes on,” he said flatly, “and after that, where would I go once I left the hall? Humans know what I am, now. I would not be Einherjar, but I wouldn’t be human, either. I don’t even have the luxury of that escape, anymore.” He pushed himself away from the wall, breaking her hold on his hand. “I should go.” He sounded infinitely bitter and very tired.
“One more minute,” she begged, reaching for him.
He kissed her again and this time, it seared her heart with sadness and pain. Then he let her go. The door shut softly behind him.
* * * * *
Unnur touched her temple as the headache threatened to swamp her thoughts. She needed to keep a clear head so she could get through the next few minutes, although she really wanted to climb the stairs to her little-used apartment and drop onto the bed and sleep for twelve hours.
Angelina didn’t seem to be suffering, despite the ill feelings swirling about the room. She stood behind her desk, one hand at her throat, the long fingernails stroking the chain there. Her answers were all calm and reasoned, which was probably as it should be. Angelina had been managing Unnur’s day-to-day affairs for years now and was confident in her ability to keep things on the rails while Unnur took care of her commitments.
But this was different. This was a shift in priorities, which Angelina didn’t seem to be grasping.
Unnur said a silent mantra, reaching for calm. Then she tried again. “What I would like is for you to take over more of the creative side of the business. The classes, the training school for the Method, the running of the store—all of it, instead of just the administrative responsibilities. Media, too.” The media, in particular, Unnur wanted off her plate. Of late, the media interest in her method and classes and her abilities had taken a sharp turn upwards. She spent more time handling media inquiries than she could really afford.
“If you want to delegate some of your less important responsibilities, I can help sort that out,” Angelina replied. “But only you can talk to the media, if they want to see you. They would never be satisfied with press releases and statements. You are the brand, Unnur. It must be you.”
Unnur pressed her hands together. Hard. “You don’t seem to understand. I don’t want anything to do with it. None of it.”
Angelina’s smile didn’t quite fully form. There was a wrinkle between her brows. “Not talk to the media at all?” she said slowly. “Perhaps in a year’s time, when you’re more firmly established—”
“No! None of it. Not the store, not the media, not the classes, not the Method. All the Internet businesses and sites. The personal appearances, the public speaking…none of it.”
Angelina’s fingers gripped the chain. Her eyes widened. “But you can’t! The business is based on you and your…abilities. If you don’t perform, sales will slump. And these days, the Internet is everything. The Alfar can’t use it, so everyone is on it. If you shut them down—”
“I didn’t say shut them down. I said I didn’t want any part of them,” Unnur corrected.
“If you’re not involved, they’ll shut down anyway!” Angelina stepped out from behind the big desk. She was a trim, pretty blonde woman of forty-two, who looked like she should be attending a women’s league meeting before picking up the kids from soccer practice, but in moments like this Unnur knew she was seeing the reason why Angelina had never had children, and why her marriage had only lasted a year. The wrinkle between her brows had become an unattractive scowl and her lips had thinned.
“I don’t understand how you could turn your back on the business you have struggled to build for over twenty years,” Angelina said. “You’re just starting to break into the big time. Mainstream media want to do serious interviews with you. Five years ago, it was the National Enquirer’s local hack wanting to write a filler sidebar. Why now?”
Unnur still had her hands together. Now she twined the fingers and pressed her palms together hard. “My powers are growing. They have been for nearly a year.” She thought of the large Tarot layouts that she had been directed to read lately, and the excessively detailed predictions she had written down. They had come true. Not just in a vague way. Not just part of them. But all of them. In exact detail. Her abilities as a medium had expanded. What had once reached her as a trickle from a garden-hose had grown to a raging torrent.
Her dreams had become more and more vivid and specific. They hadn’t directed her to take this step with the business, but they had been guiding her away from it. This was a natural step.
“Your powers,” Angelina repeated woodenly.
“I need time to develop them properly and I can’t do that when I have three interviews a day, including The Tonight Show.”
Angelina rolled her eyes. “You want to walk away from a five million dollar a year business, because your ‘power’ is growing stronger.”
Unnur sighed. “I know that to you it sounds a little bit crazy. You don’t have any supernatural talent. That’s why I hired you. I wanted someone who wouldn’t be distracted—”
“Like Penelope?” Angelina asked dryly.
“What about Penelope?” Unnur asked, confused. Penelope worked in the store and was one of their most popular staff members. Customers liked her, because she was empathetic. She was happy to listen to their troubles and their experiences, her big green eyes full of sympathy and understanding.
“She started spouting Herleifr nonsense, months ago,” Angelina said. “How her ‘aura’ was building, that she could see the future. She spent hours with the cards, until I directed her to not touch them during business hours. Last week she tried to convince me that she could tell the history of an object and the person who owns it, just by touching it. That she’s getting ‘readings’ from the money and credit cards customers hand her.”
“Psychometry,” Unnur whispered. “And you didn’t think it was important to tell me about her?”
“Tell you what? That she is a confused young girl who has been over-influenced by your propaganda?”
Unnur stared at her, as understanding finally dawned. “You don’t believe paranormal talents are real.”
Angelina laughed. “Of course I don’t believe in the paranormal. I’m a mature adult. I left fairy tales behind long ago.” She wa
lked back behind her desk. “If you want to move away from the businesses you have already set up in order to concentrate on something else, then we can work around it. Somehow.” She picked up her pen and tucked her skirt under the back of her knees to sit down.
“Wait,” Unnur said softly.
Angelina looked at her, her professional smile back in place.
“Have you always felt this way about my abilities?”
Angelina’s smile broadened. “God did not give out special abilities to a chosen few. He made man in His image. We are the children of God and have no unnatural abilities, only those He chose to give us.” She sat down and pulled a file out of the wire tray on her desk and opened it.
“Then you believe I have been lying, all along?” Unnur asked. Her headache was coming closer now. The thudding reverberated against her skull, warning her she would have to lie down very soon, no matter what.
“I believe that you believe,” Angelina said with a gentle tone. “We each have our faith.” Her smile was beatific. Enraging.
“I think you should leave,” Unnur whispered.
“Excuse me?”
“I said, I think you need to leave. Now.” She spoke louder, even though it made her temples throb.
Angelina’s smile slipped. “Leave?”
“I’m firing you.”
She got to her feet, the movement making the crucifix at the end of the chain she was wearing slip out through the opening at the top of her silk designer shirt. Her smile had evaporated and the slash mark between her brows was heavy. Her cheekbones seemed very high and sharp. “You’re firing me because I refuse to believe in demonic practices?”
“Demonic!” Unnur’s mouth opened.
Angelina threw down her pen. “The only other supernatural power in this world besides God’s is the Devil’s.”
“And what about the Alfar? The Kine? What about their portals, and the swords that disappear, and the tower over London that all the architects say shouldn’t stand on its own?”
“The Devil’s creatures, one and all, and their houses of corruption, too,” Angelina spat.
Unnur shook her head. “How have you lived with the hypocrisy you have been practicing all these years?”
Angelina’s eyes widened almost comically. “How dare you! I am not a hypocrite!”
“You have run my business, planned media campaigns, advertising and marketing, talked to customers, built business strategies and only now I learn that you haven’t believed a word you were saying.”
“I believed, “Angelina said, with heavy emphasis, “that we thought alike, that it was all just business.”
Unnur laughed, but the strain of laughing ripped at her head, making it feel like flesh was being torn from the inside of her skull. “Anything for a buck, huh?”
Angelina’s face had turned a pasty color. There were slashes of high red across her cheeks. “God helps those who help themselves.”
“With a quote for every occasion.” Unnur sighed. “Please leave.”
“You’ll regret this,” Angelina told her. “No one can run your business better than I can.”
“I already regret it,” Unnur assured her. “I regret meeting you five years ago.”
Angelina flinched. She pressed her lips together, fastened the buttons on her jacket and walked toward the door.
“Send Penelope back to see me,” Unnur told her.
Angelina hesitated, her hand on the doorknob. “Of course,” she said evenly. “You two can keep each other company on the way to hell.” She opened the door.
“You wouldn’t have been keeping up with the war, as it’s between ungodly creatures,” Unnur told her, “so you wouldn’t know that the citizens of Hel are on Earth now. The day of judgment is here for all of us.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Asher had never particularly liked Øystein, but once the Einherjar had finished his litany of criticism of Stefan’s leadership, Asher nudged it up to active dislike. The man was almost glowing with enthusiasm, and was indeed slightly breathless by the time he finished his diatribe.
Silence fell over the assembled council. Was everyone staring at Øystein as if he were an obnoxious bug? Asher hoped so. This meeting, like nearly all the council meetings since the war had begun, was well attended. If there was a battle in progress, or an offensive that would call away earls and stallari, the meeting was postponed. Asher had seen Einherjar walk into the council chambers still dripping blood from their swords and wrapping cloth about wounds to staunch them, having come straight from the battlefield.
But they attended, if they could possibly make it, and most meetings barely contained the attendees now. Øystein’s critique had been heard by nearly everyone who had a vote in the matter.
Stefan and Eira sat looking at Øystein. Their faces were neutral. Neither of them could afford to say anything. But no one else was saying anything, either.
“This is bullshit,” Asher said loudly.
The men around the table stirred uneasily. Roar gripped his wrist and squeezed, a silent way of telling him to shut up.
Stefan glanced at him. “Anyone has the right to speak, here. Anyone can bring grievances to this table. That is why it is here. Øystein has a complaint. We must consider it fairly.”
“Fairly?” Asher almost choked on the word. “Because Øystein has tabled a most considered and fair analysis, after all.” Øystein’s criticism of Stefan’s leadership had been full of rhetoric and bloated negatives like “failed” and “weak”.
“Asher,” Roar whispered. “Be careful.”
Why be careful? Asher looked around the table at the expressions on the faces there. “You’re not taking this seriously, are you?”
Again, the uneasy stirring.
“Fuck.” Asher pushed back from the table, utterly disgusted. “This is a farce.”
“The process must be followed,” Eira said, her voice easily reaching the back of the room. “It has worked for us for centuries. We do not abandon it now.” It was a subtle way of reminding all of them there that Stefan had maintained peace for at least three of those centuries.
“Bring in the traitor,” Eira called.
The door swung open and heads turned to watch the two guards, with Sindri between them, as they stepped through. Sindri wore the black robe he always had, but it was splotched with dust and grime and the hem was dirty. His wrists were chained together. His ankles were similarly bound, for he walked with a strange shuffling motion and the clink of chains could be heard as he moved slowly down the long room, to the head of the table where Stefan and Eira sat.
Like every Einherjar in the room, Eira also wore battle gear. Eira’s sword had seen as much action as anyone else’s and for that reason, Eira had generated more goodwill in the last year than she had in all the previous years she had been Regin. But if she sided too strongly with Stefan, she would lose that edge. She had to appear to be even-handed and considerate.
The guards placed Sindri at the corner of the table, the supplicant’s position. Øystein had stepped away to make room. He stood closer to the wall, wearing a small smile.
Sindri bowed his head toward Stefan, then another, deeper bow to Eira. The difference was noted by everyone and there was another ripple of reaction.
Eira scowled and looked around the room. “Someone other than Stefan should question this man. I will not. Nor do I think Asher should.”
It was a fair assessment. Just looking at Sindri roused Asher’s anger. He had his hands held in tight fists, fighting the urge to leap over the table and strangle him for the grief he had delivered upon Midgard, and for his part in this sham taking place now. Øystein would never have thought to raise a vote of no confidence on his own. Sindri had either suggested it or outright directed it.
Roar stood up. “Stefan, may I?”
“Please,” Stefan said stiffly.
Roar pressed his fingertips into the tabletop, looking at Sindri. “Øystein has raised a concern that Stefan’s
rule has weakened us, left us exposed and vulnerable. He says it is connected with auras, but cannot explain it to us in a way that makes good sense. As you are acknowledged to be an expert in the use and nature of auras, we request that you explain this theory to us.”
“I would be most happy to explain the matter,” Sindri replied. “But may I request a cup of mead? The cellar where I now reside is dusty and dry.”
Eira motioned to one of the Amica standing in attendance against the wall behind her. The taller of the two moved to the corner where jugs of mead stood, freely available to anyone who wished to partake. She poured a cup and brought it to Eira.
Eira took the cup and pushed it across the table, past Stefan, toward where Sindri stood. The base of the metal cup shrieked across the stone tabletop, making Asher and others around him wince at the sound. Eira sat back, leaving the cup a foot away from the edge of the table. Stefan made no move to lift it closer.
Sindri reached for the cup awkwardly, the chains clinking and scraping across the tabletop as he picked it up. He lifted it toward Eira. “My thanks.”
She turned her head away.
Sindri took a sip from the cup and put it down. His thirst had been less urgent than he implied.
“Tell us about the magic,” Roar demanded. “Why has it weakened us?”
“Magic.” Sindri sneered. “A human word. Most of you understand the auras as well as any human.”
“Granted,” Stefan agreed with a reasonable tone. “We have deliberately withheld from using the auras since the Descent, to avoid drawing attention to ourselves among humans. It is an integral part of laun.”
“There are among the Kine many who believe that the laws of laun outgrew their usefulness several decades ago,” Sindri replied.
Asher kept his gaze steady upon Sindri, fighting the need to glance at Stefan or Roar. He knew that Sindri was referring to him in particular.
“The politics of laun are not a part of this discussion,” Roar replied. “We want to know why the auras are dangerous to the Kine.”
The Branded Rose Prophecy Page 54
