by Eva Chase
Thor roared and swung his hammer. I fumbled for my switchblade. One of the dark elves slammed into me, knocking me to the floor. I jerked to the side as he stabbed at my chest. Wings. I needed my wings.
They erupted from my back with a force that shoved me, swaying, back onto my feet. Two more of the dark elves sprang at me. They were all around us, a wave of them, filling the air with the scent of damp mossy rock.
And blood. I leapt into the air, managing to kick off the elf that wrenched at one of my wings, and caught sight of Muninn ducking with a thin cry as an attacker sliced his knife across her arm. Thor pummeled several with his hammer, but another threw herself at his shoulders, sinking her knife into the muscles there. Streaks of red splattered the gym floor.
Baldur pushed back a few with a brilliant burst of light. Hod was whipping shadow around him, but not quickly enough to stop a dark elf that ducked under them and jabbed at his calf. Loki had shifted into his wolfish form. He snarled and lunged at the nearest attackers, but a gleam of blood already smeared his dark gray fur. A golden falcon soared down to claw at another elf that stabbed at him. Was that Freya?
The power and skill the gods were fighting with took my breath away. But there were too many of the dark elves, another darting in as soon as one fell back, swarming the bunch of us in a raging mass.
I swooped down, kneeing the one clinging to Thor’s back in the face, lashing out with my switchblade at the clump that had surrounded Muninn. In the instant they fell back, she sprang into the air with a burst of feathers, raven again. Behind me, someone let out a hiss of pain. The elves raised their voices in a battle cry as if they were already victorious.
No. I couldn’t let this happen. I was a fucking valkyrie. The one real purpose I had was turning the tide of a battle. And I needed a tide that was going to sweep these miscreants all the way back to the wretched caves where they belonged.
Another dark elf flung himself at me, and as I dodged him, a second flung himself off another’s back to ram his knife at my head. I elbowed him away only fast enough to stop the knife from outright entering my skull. It scraped across my scalp, his knuckles colliding with my forehead in a burst of pain.
I tried to summon the blast of lightning I’d flung at the warg a few days ago, but my body wouldn’t comply. Apparently I needed to be panicked completely out of my mind for that to activate. But I had other methods of destruction.
The flame of darkness inside me unwound through my body as I spun around. It yawned with an unsettling hunger that I was more than happy to give into. I swept out my arms, slicing one elf across the gut and digging my fingers into another’s lank hair.
The pulse of the creature’s life energy beat against my palm—and flowed up into it. The darkness loomed and swallowed, and the dark elf collapsed. I’d taken his life in the space of a second.
A painful exhilaration filled my chest. An attacker raked her dagger across my wing, but I battered her aside with a punch and wrenched myself back out of the fray. But only for an instant. I dove, smacking my palm against the scalp of an elf breaking through Baldur’s golden shield. Snatching at another who was ramming his blade at Hod’s side. The darkness inside me opened its maw wider, inhaling one life and another.
I couldn’t reach them all, but I reached enough to shift the tide. As one, two, three more bodies fell in my wake, Thor let out another roar and charged through the mass of attackers. His hammer toppled at least half a dozen more. Loki leapt into the space he’d opened up, tearing throats open with his wolfish claws and teeth.
Another cry went up among the elves, but this one sounded desperate. In a blink, those still standing bolted for the bleachers. Thor barreled after them, his face nearly as deep a red as his hair, his eyes wide with fury. His hammer slammed through several more. Loki pounced on another with a rake of his jaws. Muninn shot down from above and jabbed her beak into a fleeing elf’s neck.
“Baldur!” Freya called. She was standing with Hod, who’d fallen to his knees. Blood was soaking down the dark god’s slacks from a wound at his waist.
“No,” he gritted out. “I’m fine.”
She merely scoffed. His bright twin rushed to his side. I sank to the ground myself, the throbbing of my own injuries catching up with me. A sharp ache dug into my temple. My scored wing crackled with pain.
Fallen dark elves sprawled all around us, none of them moving. Thor came to a stop, his chest heaving, the flush starting to fade from his face. “I don’t know where the rest of them disappeared to,” he growled.
We hadn’t managed to catch any to question. We’d been too busy not dying. But Loki just grimaced, swiping a hand at his own wounds. “For now, I’ll say good riddance.”
We’d won the battle. And now we knew a little more. It wasn’t just Odin the dark elves had a beef with, clearly. They’d have happily killed all of us—and they’d come way too close for comfort.
19
Ari
When I woke up from the nap Baldur had induced while I healed, the sky outside my bedroom window was dim but not dark. Pale pink streaked across the clouds from the setting sun. I focused on that pretty color for a moment as echoes of the battle with the dark elves rose in the back of my head. The blood. The battering. The heady sensation of the life energy I’d wrenched from their bodies.
My stomach rolled. I shook the memories away. Like Thor had said when we’d talked about fighting, I’d been defending myself and people who needed it. One slip, and it’d have been my life destroyed all over again. It wasn’t as if I’d wanted all that violence.
Right now, there was only one person I wanted to be thinking about. One person I should be thinking about.
I crawled out of bed, testing my limbs to make sure they were all back in working order. If I’d felt like I was recovering from an intense workout after my first confrontation with the dark elves, now I was coming out of a rotten flu as well. I grimaced at the burn in my muscles and went out into the hall.
It was still early enough that I could make it home before Petey’s bedtime. I had to actually talk to him this time. Let him know I was here, that I was still looking out for him. I sure as hell couldn’t go into another battle without doing that.
No voices sounded from below. The house was still and silent, only one light on downstairs—in the kitchen. A thick savory smell greeted me when I walked in. A note was lying on the table.
Dear pixie,
Thor insists we let you keep sleeping, and I have a feeling I’ll end up with his hammer in my head if I argue any more. We’re checking a possible lead. There’s stew in the fridge if you’re hungry, and Hod is probably in the study being grim if you have any use for him. I promise we’ll save some dark elves for your blade.
He hadn’t signed it, but the spiky handwriting would have told me Loki had left it if the nickname and the jaunty tone hadn’t.
I might have been annoyed, but their leaving without me had made my life that much easier. I had only one god to worry about, and conveniently the one I had some hope of making a case with. I yanked open the fridge, bypassed the stew—as good as it smelled—for a more portable bun I stuffed a few slices of ham in, and headed for the study.
“Yes?” Hod said when I knocked on the door. I pushed it open to find him sitting at the desk where he’d been the last time I’d visited him in here, only this time he had a book open in front of him. His hand lay flat against it, but as far as I could tell it didn’t have any braille. He’d been using that magical way of reading he’d hinted at before, I guessed.
His unseeing gaze had lifted toward me. “What is it, valkyrie?” he asked.
Of course he knew it was me. No one else was here. For all I knew, he could tell from the sound of my breath or the rustle of my clothes. Not much seemed to get past him, regardless of his blindness.
“I thought I should give you a heads up,” I said, “so you don’t have to chase me down again. I’m going to see my brother. I won’t be gone too long.”
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Hod frowned. “I don’t think—”
“I’m going,” I said firmly. “I did everything you all have asked me to do—and more—and now I’m going to do something for me. Unless you want to fight about it.”
I wasn’t sure how much of a fight I could really make against a fully-fledged god. Hod didn’t look particularly worried. He sighed and rubbed his temple, scattering the fall of his short black hair along his forehead.
“All right,” he said. “But you’re not going alone.”
I bristled as he stood up. “You still don’t trust me?”
He managed to give me a glower. “Mostly I don’t trust the dark elves and whoever they might be allied with. But no, I don’t entirely trust you either. The whole reason Loki picked you is because you look out for yourself first. Or am I wrong and you’re actually selflessly devoted to making the world a better place?”
Now I was really bristling. “You don’t have to be an asshole about it,” I said. But there wasn’t a whole lot else I could say. The truth was I’d already planned on breaking at least one rule in the next couple hours. And it wasn’t like I had any intention of sticking around and doing my divine duty after we got this whole dark elf problem sorted out.
That wasn’t selfishness, though. I was thinking of Petey at least as much as myself.
“Are we going or not?” was all Hod said.
I muttered something highly insulting under my breath and marched to the front door, trying to pretend I didn’t feel him following behind me.
On the front lawn, I tugged forth my wings. They sprang from my back with hardly a prickle now, as easily as my knife from the switchblade handle. Like they were becoming even more a part of me instead of some alien appendages tacked on.
I didn’t totally like that idea, but there was no denying they were useful. With a few quick flaps, I was soaring toward Philly. Hod careened along behind me on his shadowy magic carpet.
I wanted to lose myself in the rush of the wind and the flow of the landscape beneath me, but anxiety had balled tight in my gut. I’d gotten too distracted by the dark elves and the horrors I’d witnessed in their realm. It didn’t matter how many people they might be preying on—Petey had to come first. He needed me more than anyone. I’d promised him I’d be there for him.
But for now, he was still dozens of miles distant. There wasn’t much to distract me except the god of darkness skimming along beside me.
“Why did they leave you behind anyway?” I called over to him.
Hod kept his face turned forward, as if he were navigating by sight. “I was the most injured in the skirmish this afternoon. They assumed I needed the most rest.”
The same reasoning they’d used with me. I guessed I couldn’t be too offended if they’d treated one of their fellow gods the same way.
“Are you sure you should be flying all this way, then?” I asked. “I’m telling you, I’ll be perfectly fine on my own.”
He shifted his eyes toward me then, the green even darker in the deepening evening. “That didn’t work back at the house,” he said. “It’s not going to work here.”
I shrugged with the sweep of my wings as if it didn’t make that much difference to me. “Well, you can’t blame a girl for trying.” Another, more unnerving question nibbled at me. “Do you really think we need to worry about the dark elves out here?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re the one who mentioned them, and they did hit us pretty hard today. If we hadn’t all been together…” I paused. “Loki said you all can still die. And that you don’t know if you’d come back again if you do.”
Hod made a dismissive sound. “Loki says a lot of things. I’ll admit those things are true, but we’re a lot more resilient than any mortal. The dirt-eaters had the upper hand, briefly, because they caught us by surprise and we weren’t expecting an assault. We won’t make that mistake again.”
That didn’t mean they couldn’t surprise us in some other way. But I shook off that uneasy itch, pushing my wings faster as Philly’s city lights came into view up ahead. The sense of home loosened the clenching in my gut a little. My valkyrie senses could even pick up the hum of all those human lives ahead of us, breathing and eating and laughing and all the things humans were supposed to do.
I could still do all those things as a valkyrie. Just not with other human beings, if the gods had their way.
I glided over the rooftops until I reached Mom’s street. Then I swooped down in a perfect arc to land on Petey’s windowsill.
He was crouched on the bedroom floor, making gruff voices for his action figures as they waged war across his thready rug. His head didn’t even twitch when I settled on the ledge by the half-open window.
I just sat there for a few minutes, watching my little brother at play. His gray-blue eyes were bright but distant as he focused on his imaginary world. Whatever story he’d cooked up, it involved half the contents of his toy bin—although he didn’t exactly have a huge number of playthings anyway. A lock of over-long blond hair fell into his face, and my fingers itched with the urge to brush it back.
This part was going to require some quick thinking—and acting. I didn’t glance over at Hod, but I could feel him hovering a few feet away, waiting. I wasn’t getting him to leave, even for a minute. That was obvious. So I’d just have to count on my speed and his sense of discretion.
Petey made one of his superheroes blast off into the air. I gripped the window ledge and focused all my attention on my body: the muggy but cooling evening air against my skin, the flaky paint beneath my palms. At the same time, I yanked my wings back into my body.
“Valkyrie!” Hod said, and I knew I’d done it. I shoved myself through the window’s opening an instant before his grasping hand whipped through the air behind me, just missing my arm.
My feet thumped on the floor, and I winced. But I was in, breathing the sour scent of the sheets Mom never bothered to wash in the warm room. Petey spun around. A grin leapt across his face, so joyful it made every painful moment of the last week completely worth it.
“Ari!” he whispered, knowing he had to stay quiet even in his excitement. He sprang off the floor and threw his arms around me, pressing his face into my shoulder as I crouched into the hug. The sweet smell of childish skin replaced the room’s less pleasant odors.
My pulse hitched. Petey’s embrace felt different from usual—more desperate.
“Hey,” I said softly, running my hand over his rumpled hair. “Is something the matter?”
“Mom said I wasn’t ever going to see you again,” he mumbled into my shirt. “I knew she couldn’t be right.”
Those two sentences told me all I needed to know. Mom had found out about my death—and she’d decided she could cut deeper by making Petey think I’d abandoned him than by telling him the truth.
I hugged my little brother tighter. Too bad for her I had ways of coming back and proving her wrong.
Knuckles rapped against the window. When Petey didn’t flinch, I realized only I could hear them. As I’d hoped, Hod was staying unperceivable. He couldn’t come in here and drag me away from Petey without causing a whole lot more distress.
The god of darkness could be cold, but he was also logical. And his sense of logic should be telling him letting me play normal with Petey for a few minutes would do less harm than trying to intervene.
“Valkyrie, get out of there,” Hod growled, but I ignored him. I squeezed Petey once more and kissed his cheek. As I eased back, the collar of his shoulder slipped to the side and revealed a mottled purple-and-brown mark just above his collarbone.
My pulse stuttered. “Petey, what happened to you?”
My brother’s eyes went wide. “It’s nothing,” he said quickly. “I tripped and fell.”
A twist of rage and guilt wound around my stomach. “Let me see,” I said, keeping my voice gentle.
Petey stiffened, but he held still while I shifted his shirt even more to the side. His
narrow shoulder—goddamnit, why didn’t Mom give him more to eat?—held not one but four splotchy bruises, like fat splayed fingers. Tripped and fell, my ass. My own fingers clenched around the fabric of his shirt, careful not to brush the tender skin.
“Ivan or Mom?” I said, already pretty sure of the answer. Mom dealt in neglect and willful obliviousness, with a side of emotional torture. She’d only raised her hand at me once, and that had been the day I’d left. But she had a taste for violent men that even seeing her first son dead hadn’t cured her of.
Petey’s his lower lip wobbled. I forced my hand to relax and patted his arm. “It’s okay, buddy. You can tell me. I won’t get you in any trouble.”
“I knocked his favorite mug off the counter, and it broke,” he mumbled. “It was an accident.”
“Of course it was. He’s just… He’s just a big bully.” I swallowed all the coarser names I’d like to have called him and tugged Petey to me again. The darkness that had stirred in the battle with the elves this morning was churning in my belly. Somehow it made me feel both queasy and invincible at the same time.
I didn’t want my little brother seeing those feelings in me. Didn’t want him catching even a glimpse of what his Ari was capable of now.
“I can’t stay,” I said. He was used to that. “I just had to see you. I’ll always be around, watching out for you, even if you don’t see me for a while. Okay? And next time I’ll bring a pack of those cards.”
I waggled my eyebrows at him, and his smile came back. He couldn’t feel it—the fury radiating through my veins. I ruffled his hair one last time and straightened up.
“I love you, Ari,” he said in his innocent six-year-old way.
“I love you too, kid,” I said, but my throat tightened. He hardly knew who I was anymore. I hardly knew that.
But I knew what I could do, and I knew exactly who I had to do it to.
By the time I pushed myself back out through the window, my body was shaking. Hod clamped his hand around my forearm, and the effort I’d been making to keep myself visible dissolved.
