by Eva Chase
“How many people—and monsters, or whatever—do you figure you’ve killed?”
What was she looking for from me? I wished I had Baldur’s skill at sensing emotion, figuring out the perfect reassurance. The best I could do was be straight-forward and honest, which was what I was best at anyway.
“No one in a good long while,” I said. “But before that? More than a few. Always to protect my people and yours. It’s what I do.” I paused. “The wargs last night—those were your first kills.”
She shrugged. “I mean, other than spiders or whatever. But I guess that’s what I do now too. As a valkyrie. Something got the ones you sent before. Something is holding Odin. If it’s me or them…”
“You’ll do what you have to do,” I supplied. “But that doesn’t mean you have to enjoy it all the way through. I’m not going to lie. When I’m caught up in the battle rage, knowing I’m defending those who need me, it can be pretty exhilarating. I like that feeling when I’m in the moment—that power. But after the battles are over, I can’t say I ever look back on those times fondly.”
Sometimes I even wished the rage wasn’t quite so all-consuming. But maybe I wouldn’t be the defender I was without it. I wasn’t going to try to sacrifice that power just to find out.
Ari glanced at me. Whatever she’d been looking for, I got the sense she’d found it.
“I saw someone die in front of me, a long time ago,” she said. “Someone who probably wouldn’t have, if I’d done what I should have done then. It was awful.”
She might have meant to say more, but her voice choked up. She smiled tightly and handed Mjolnir back to me. I took it from her slim fingers, and without thinking let myself wrap my other hand around hers. A long time ago. How old could she have been then? But I could see the guilt twisted through her as plainly as if it’d been a rope bound around her body. I didn’t know the exact right words to loosen it, but I could try.
“I’m sure you did everything you knew how to back then. Just like you fought with everything you had last night. No matter what happens, you’re not going to let us down, Ari. Just being here is more than we should have asked of you. And I can already tell you’re going to do so much more.”
Her fingers curled around my palm, soft but strong, and squeezed back. Then she pulled her hand away with her more usual smile, the pain I’d glimpsed disappearing back behind that fiercely unshakeable expression I was used to.
“And when I get back, I still have to make good on that promise to drink you under the table,” she said. “So let’s get on with this. No one can argue whether I’m ready to go for Odin now, right? Just point me in the right direction, and I’ll find your Allfather.”
15
Aria
We were supposed to gather in the living room, but I caught Hod in the upstairs hall after the others had already gone down. I took a breath to say his name, and he stopped just at that, his head turning toward me. His dark green eyes settled on my face, almost as if he really were meeting my gaze now. I wasn’t sure if I’d have been able to tell he couldn’t see me if I hadn’t known to look for the subtlest signs.
“I wanted to talk to you, just for a minute, before we do this,” I said.
“What’s on your mind, valkyrie?” he said in that flat voice of his. As if I really believed he was that dispassionate after the emotion I’d seen in him the other day in the study. “Having cold feet?”
I grimaced at him, even though he couldn’t see that either. “No. I just wanted to ask…” I paused. He might not be dispassionate, but that didn’t mean he’d be compassionate either. I couldn’t think of any better way to put this. “The last three valkyries didn’t come back. I plan on making this time different, but if I can’t—if something happens, and I don’t make it—would you check on my brother? At least once?”
He knew where Petey lived. As far as I could tell, he was the only one who even knew Petey existed. The dark god had been at least compassionate enough not to rat on me to the others about my sneaky late-night trip.
Surprise flickered across Hod’s chiseled face. “I’m not going to intervene,” he started.
“I know,” I said, cutting him off. “I get it. But the idea was that after all this is over, I’d get to watch over him a little. I’ll feel better knowing that someone will be there, whatever way you can be.”
I intended to do a lot more than just watch if I had the chance, but we didn’t need to get into that.
Hod turned his face away from me, his eyes going even more distant than they’d looked before. “What are you worried will happen to him?” he asked. “That man who was yelling at him—has he hurt your brother before?”
“No,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean— There are tons of things, okay? All kinds of awful things that already happen or could.” Memories flickered up from my own childhood: Mom’s hoarse ranting, insults that cut deep, the slam of a door, a hungry gnawing in my belly. And the worst of them, the one thing I hoped more than anything Petey never had to experience: the creak of a bedroom door in the middle of the night, the weight of a body that wouldn’t take no for an answer.
My skin crawled. I pushed those memories back down where I kept them bottled. “And I couldn’t fix most of those things even when I was alive, not properly. He just shouldn’t be alone. Okay?”
My throat had gotten tight. Hod slid his blind gaze toward me again. “All right,” he said gruffly. “He won’t be.”
Relief rushed through me. “Thank you,” I said. “Really. It means a lot to me.”
“I know,” Hod said. “That’s why I agreed. Now go on. Valhalla is waiting for you.”
I was pretty sure Valhalla had no interest in me at all. The gods had made it clear I wasn’t a typical upstandingly moral specimen who should have deserved all the powers I’d gotten. But oh well. The Hall of Heroes would just have to deal with me sullying up the place a little on my way through.
When we reached the huge living room where I’d first arrived in the house, the other gods were ready. They’d cleared a span of the hardwood floor. Loki motioned me into the middle of that space, and the five divine figures formed a circle around me.
“Unlike us, normally a valkyrie would be able to find her way straight back to Valhalla in Asgard from the human realm without any help at all,” the trickster god said. “Lucky for you, it’s tied to your nature, no bridges or paths required.”
“But I can’t take any of you with me?” I said. That would have made this quest a hell of a lot easier.
“Unfortunately not,” Loki said, his tone turning wry. “Unless, I suppose, you harvested our souls as chosen warriors, but that skill was only meant for human mortals, and it would require our dying to test it out. So we’re not especially keen to give it a shot, seeing as failure may be permanent.”
“Fair enough. So, how do I make this happen?”
“Since you’ve never been there before, the matter is a little muddied. So we’ll stick with what’s worked before. We’ll all picture the great hall in our minds. You use your special valkyrie sensitivities to absorb that sense of it. That should trigger a recognition inside you to open up the way. All you have to do then is follow it.”
“And then once I’m up there, I’ll see some sign of where Odin’s gotten to?”
Loki nodded. “Your valkyrie nature is bound to him just as it is to Valhalla. Once you’re there in his hall, you should feel a sort of call leading you to the right door to whatever realm he’s in. Go through, observe enough that you can give us a decent sense of where that is, but get out of there as soon as you’re in any danger. Which may be quite quickly, given the disappearance of the others, so be on guard from the start.”
“Bring a weapon,” Thor put in. “The hall is full of them. You’ll have your pick.”
“And then to get back here…?” I said.
“Picture this house and open one of the Midgard doors,” Baldur said in a bright tone that smoothed a few of the jitters out
of my nerves. “It will take you straight back to us.” He sounded as if he were sure I’d make it that far.
I dragged in a breath. It was one thing to find I’d been turned into some kind of mythical being with wings sprouting out of my back. Now I was about to leave Earth—or at least the human part of it—behind completely, to leap off into who-knew-what. My hand dropped to my pocket to trace the line of my switchblade.
I’d just have to be ready for anything.
“Good luck,” Freya said, her voice wry, but when I glanced at her she smiled with a lot more warmth. Of course she did. They all wanted me to succeed. This was the whole reason they’d summoned me in the first place.
Lucky for them, I was just as keen on getting this job done as they were. They had their home and someone they cared about on the line, and so did I. It didn’t really matter that mine were totally different, did it?
I squared my shoulders and drew my back up straight. “All right. Let’s do this.”
In their circle around me, the gods closed their eyes, remembering Odin’s hall behind those eyelids. I took another breath and closed mine too so I could focus completely on the impressions they gave off beyond sight, beyond sound.
A sense of warmth and a sharper flickering heat washed over me, and an image formed in my own mind of a great hearth. Joyous shouts, an atmosphere buzzing with mead and good humor. Brilliant light reflecting off gold on the walls. A huge expanse full of boisterous companionship and—
A thread of connection twanged deep inside me like a string on a guitar. I was meant to be there. That place was meant for me. My pulse stuttered, but I grasped hold of the thread without hesitation. Grasped and yanked myself forward along it.
My body shook, and the air warbled around me. The bottom of my stomach dropped out. Then I was stumbling onto my hands and knees on a polished oak floor.
Bright light shone all around me. The floor was smooth and dry, but a faintly alcoholic odor wafted off it. All that mead, absorbed from thousands of spills, I guessed.
I eased myself upright. The shakiness seeped out of my body, leaving only a weirdly comforting feeling as if I’d finally gotten home, even though I’d never been in this place before.
Valhalla had changed a lot since the memories the gods had used to guide me here. The huge hearth still lay at the far end, but no fire roared in it now. Rows of long oak tables filled the space beneath the high arched ceiling, but the benches all stood empty. The whole place was silent except for the whisper of my feet over the floor as I moved. The gold plating on the walls still gleamed brightly, but even it looked kind of melancholy.
No more honorable warriors. No more valkyries. No more anyone, from the looks of it. I rubbed my arms, chilled by the vast emptiness even though the air was warm.
The weapons Thor had mentioned were mounted on the lower walls—spears and swords and axes of all sizes, some tarnished, some glinting as if freshly polished. As I studied them, something balked inside me.
Those weren’t my kinds of weapons. I wouldn’t feel comfortable with any of them in my hands. Not like I would with my switchblade. It’d been enough when I’d taken on the wargs.
Loki had picked me for this job because he wanted someone different, someone who didn’t fit the usual valkyrie mode. So I should keep being that. I palmed my switchblade from my pocket and swiveled on my feet.
Light spilled not just through the many windows but also a wide door opposite the hearth. The rest of Asgard, the world of the gods, must wait out there. Curiosity tickled at me, but that wasn’t what I was here for. I was here to find Odin.
My gaze fell on an immense gold throne next to the hearth. I’d never met the ancient god who was lord of the valkyries, but I could almost picture him sitting there, leaning forward as he took in the crowd with a knowing smile on his weathered face, silver glinting amid the brown of his hair and beard.
The image sent another twang through me, softer but deeper than the call of Valhalla. Odin was out there, somewhere beyond these walls. I was meant to be his champion.
I followed that tug down the hall all the way to the throne and hearth. Standing at the edge of the huge fireplace, I could make out a doorway beyond the dead embers. I picked my way through the ashes and pushed it open.
My breath caught. On the other side, a branching path spilled out over a chasm so deep the bottom was swallowed in shadows. The silence in the dim light felt even more ominous than in the hall behind me.
I eased forward to the start of the path and realized it was branching in a more literal way. The surface of the path was roughly ridged like bark. The whole thing was an enormous tree laid on its side, its branches splitting off into the thicker darkness.
The trembling thread inside me urged me onward. One of those branches led to Odin.
I treaded carefully onto the trunk, not letting myself look into the chasm. The main path, at least, was several feet wide. I stayed in the middle and watched my balance. My wings might save me if I toppled over the edge, but who knew in this crazy place? I unfurled them over me.
One, two, three, four branches passed before the call to Odin tugged me to one on the left. The branch was only a few feet wide, the chasm even darker as I ventured across it. A door came into focus at the end. I would have been relieved if I hadn’t been so uncertain about what might be waiting beyond it. But I wasn’t exactly sad to leave behind this creepy place.
I flicked out my blade and braced myself with my other hand on the doorknob. Slowly, I turned it, all my heightened senses on alert.
Nothing showed itself on the other side of the door except a darkness so thick it was solid black. I didn’t have any choice. I had to go through.
Folding my wings close to my back, I stepped over the threshold.
The blackness hit my body like the cold smack of an ocean wave, and then I was through. My feet hit rough rocky ground. Cool damp air closed around me along with a thinner darkness broken by a faint gleam of light far ahead of me. A putrid smell like rotting meat reached my nose.
I registered that in the first split-second, and then a mass of figures jumped at me from all sides.
My street-honed instincts might have been all that saved me. I ducked and rolled in an instant, lashing out with my knife and my foot at the same time. Bodies collided over me with hoarse breaths and jabbing elbows and a blade slicing through my shoulder to the bone. The jolt of pain flared through all my senses.
There was no room for fair play in a brawl. It was me or them. I shoved myself up with my wings, my knee ramming into what felt like a groin, switchblade whipping through the air, fingers jabbing where I thought I caught a glimpse of eyes. Go for the soft bits. Hit wherever you can cause the most pain.
My knife struck its mark, hot blood spurting over my hand. I flung myself away as some kind of spiked club slammed into my gut. Fresh pain of my own sparked all through my abdomen. A grunt burst from my lips. Another attacker flung itself at me, and another.
I spun and kicked and jabbed, pulling on all the god-given strength I had in me. My elbow smashed into something round—a skull?—with a sickening crunch. A sharp edge scraped across my shin. My leg wobbled, and I heaved myself away again, toward the light. They were coming at me too fast for me to get a real hold on any of them, to wrench away one or another’s life with the darkness inside me as well as my blade. If I could at least see…
The putrid smell thickened. In the dim light, my frantic gaze caught on a row of symbols cut into the rock wall, twisted lines melded together into deformed shapes. Then it found two bodies slumped by the wall up ahead—not attackers I’d taken down. Human corpses that looked as if they’d just been tossed there haphazardly, the red ring around one’s neck suggesting she’d been strangled. My stomach lurched just as shrieks that sounded equally human echoed from around the bend where the light was.
I didn’t have time to decide whether continuing that way was the best idea. My attackers hurtled after me, shouting in a language
I didn’t recognize but could grasp the shape of: They were calling for help.
I dodged, but one had already smashed one of my wings with his club, clinging on for another blow. A second rammed his head at my already bleeding gut. I cried out as the first wrenched at my wing, but I managed to stumble far enough that the blow to my stomach only clipped my side. A ram of my knee cracked that figure’s collarbone.
Five more attackers came running from around the bend, all of them like the ones I was still struggling with: limp black hair plastered against sallow skin, eyes so pale the irises blended into the whites, bodies short and stout in stained tunics and short pants.
Pain was already radiating through every part of my body. Odin was somewhere here, but I couldn’t get to him. I didn’t even know if I could fend off the attackers already on me.
Valhalla. I had to get back to Valhalla.
I punched at the guy on my wing right through the flesh and feathers, sending more agony splintering through its surface but knocking him off into the wall at the same time. My switchblade slashed across another’s face. I hurled myself backward, away from them and the others rushing to join the skirmish, as fast as I could.
Valhalla. Valhalla. Through the haze in my head I focused on my memory of that lonely gold-drenched hall. The thread of it vibrated inside me. I clung on and hauled with all my might.
The caves and my attackers warbled away. I sprawled out of the darkness onto the polished floor. Blood streaked the floorboards as I shoved myself into a sitting position. Pain seared deeper into my gut. Cuts throbbed on every limb. I didn’t think I could count on my valkyrie skills to heal me from injuries quite this deep.
I stared at the arched ceiling. Valhalla wasn’t good enough. I didn’t just need to be here. I needed to be home.
Midgard. Baldur had said something about doors.
My ankle wobbled under me when I tried to push myself onto my feet. Sprained, at least. I dragged myself closer to the walls.
