Arctic Dawn (The Norse Chronicles Book 2)

by Karissa Laurel

“But you’re going through with this anyway?”

  “Going through with what? I have no idea what’s going to happen. I still might chicken out. Or Grim might feel diplomatic and sign a treaty or something.”

  “You won’t chicken out. Not when you know you’ve got three kickass Valkyries at your back.”

  “And Val.” I turned my gaze to my companion. He squeezed my hand but rolled his eyes.

  “Yes,” said Skyla, her tone flat as a Nevada highway. “We got Wotan, too. Hooray.” She cleared her throat and regained some of her previous spark. “We’re probably less than two hours behind you. We’ll put some pep in our step and try to catch up to you. Keep us in the loop with Tori’s twenty. And don’t do anything until we catch up to you.”

  “Tori’s twenty?”

  Skyla huffed. “Her location. Twenty is radio code for location.”

  “But we’re on the phone,” I said, purposely obtuse.

  “Girlfriend.”

  “Okay, okay.” I read her our nearest mile marker and promised to call her the moment Tori changed her route.

  We drove and drove, and the afternoon wore on, and the sun fell lower in the sky. I had dropped back until Tori’s car appeared as a light-blue dot in the distance. Val reassured me that his supernatural—and therefore superior—vision had not lost sight of her, but the distance virtually guaranteed Tori wouldn’t notice us following. Highway signs indicated points of interest along the way, and I made an educated guess about her destination.

  “Portland?” I asked. “You think she’s going to Portland?”

  Val bit his lip and shook his head. “No. She said she’d be there, wherever there is, around sundown. We’ve got another two hours before then.”

  “What’s after Portland?”

  “If she stays on this highway, then it’s possible she’s heading to Seattle. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  Tori didn’t drive to Seattle, though. After nearly three hours on the road and crossing the border into Washington, she exited onto Highway 12, heading east. The nearby billboards advertised local tourist attractions and a ski resort called Crystal Mountain.

  “Crystal Mountain?” I said as Val texted Skyla the exit number. “They’re going skiing, and Grim had her stop by the house to pick up their skis?”

  “It’s near Mount Rainier,” Val said. “Back country. It’s starting to make some sense.”

  “It is? How?”

  “I told you we collect places. I have the place in Siqiniq with my roommates, right?”

  “Hugh and Joe, yes?”

  “Right. But that isn’t the place I call home. Not really. It’s a façade, just like Grim’s house in Corvallis is a pretense. It’s an accessory for whatever persona we’re currently wearing. Asgard was our true home, but we’ve made replacements, here, in Midgard. When we’re not playing a role, when we can shed our masks and be who we really are, we all have that one place we like to go, the place where are hearts live. It’s a sacred place.”

  Val’s confession—for in a way, that’s what it was—sank to the bottom of my heart, like a heavy secret. He had confided in me, sharing something I sensed was deeply personal for him and maybe for all the Aesir. I wanted to ask him what landmark he had chosen for his sacred place but thought better of it. Thorin had used the term “need-to-know,” and the location of Val’s true home likely fell under that category. If Val wanted me to know, he would tell me.

  “Do you think that’s where Tori is going? To Grim’s sacred place.”

  “It would mean he holds her in very high esteem.”

  “I got the impression from talking to her that they have that kind of relationship.”

  “Or he wants her to think they do.” Val’s voice lacked any emotion.

  “Why do you say it like that?”

  “Grim is a manipulative bastard.”

  “Aren’t you all? When it suits you.”

  Val turned and gave me a harsh look but didn’t try to defend himself. “Mount Rainier, Alaska, Baldur’s home at New Breidablik, they all resemble one another, geographically speaking. It’s not a coincidence. The mountains, the snow—they were integral features of Asgard. We prefer these places because they remind us of a home we can only visit in our memories.”

  “Thorin has one of these places, too?”

  Val pursed his lips. “He does.”

  “And Grim’s might be near Rainier somewhere.”

  “It’s my working theory. Whether it proves true or not depends on where Tori leads us and what we find when we get there.”

  “Why don’t you know where Grim lives? Don’t you all send each other Christmas cards or anything?”

  Val snorted. “After Ragnarok, after all those years of being stuck together in Gimle, we were more than happy to allow each other some well-deserved privacy.”

  The roads wound and curved as we drove deeper into the mountains. Dusk’s dark hues settled around us, heightening our tension and foreboding. Val, still watching with preternatural vision, warned me that Tori had slowed as we approached an area that the road signs called Mineral Valley. I eased back on the accelerator as she veered right onto a smaller road. I asked Val to text Skyla again and hoped the message went through despite the patchy reception.

  “Fall back a little further,” Val said.

  “Are you sure? It’s hard to believe you won’t lose sight of her.”

  “Trust me,” Val said. “Hawks can see from about a mile away, right? Hawks have nothing on me. It works sort of the same way that we move through space like we do.”

  I gaped at him. “You can blip your eyesight through space?”

  “Not exactly, but that’s the best way I can explain it.”

  “It’s magic,” I said. “Or whatever it is that makes you guys tick.”

  “It’s what makes you tick, too, Solina. It’s the same force that gives you fire.”

  “Sol gives me my fire.”

  “You are Sol,” Val said. “The more you embrace your powers, the more indistinguishable you become.”

  I had nothing to say to that because I had formed a similar conclusion for myself.

  At places where the tree line opened, glimpses of a silvery lake shone through, reflecting the purples of the twilight sky. And in the distance, a massive snow-capped peak, glorious and imposing, loomed over the landscape. I sucked in a breath of awe.

  “Rainier?” I asked in a whisper as if speaking of a holy thing.

  Maybe it was holy. All the grand cathedrals mankind had built over the centuries attempted to mimic that kind of wonder, that sacred place Nature created to pay homage to God. Sorry, mankind, but Nature’s craftsmanship was clearly superior.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Val said.

  “Unbelievable. There’s nothing like that in the mountains where I come from.”

  “There’s nothing quite like it anywhere. I told you, we choose sacred places.”

  Tori turned again and disappeared from sight. I swerved the Yukon onto the shoulder and let the truck roll to a stop. “That’s a private drive she turned onto,” Val said “The lake is just on the other side of these trees. There’s nowhere else for her to go unless she plans to get in a boat. Wherever she was going, that’s where it is.” Val pointed toward the place where Tori’s taillights had vanished. “And that’s where you and I have to go, too.”

  I shivered and rubbed my hands over my arms. All the bravado I’d gathered in Grim’s office earlier in the day drained away, and a cold lump had formed in my gut. “What if she knows we followed her? What if Grim sent her up here, suspecting we would watch them and follow their path?”

  “What if he did?” Val asked. “What if this is all a great big trap?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first tim
e for us, would it?”

  “The last time we were in this situation, you called Baldur and Thorin idiots for falling into it. Say the word, Solina, and we’ll turn around and go back.”

  “Go back to what?”

  Val shrugged. “You tell me. This is your adventure.”

  I leaned away from him and furrowed my brow. “Like you don’t want that sword as badly as I do.”

  A single eyebrow arched, and he shrugged. Maybe I do, maybe I don’t, his expression said.

  I turned my gaze out onto the darkening road again. “You think there are apples anywhere down at the end of the drive?”

  “Apples?” Val asked.

  “They were in my dream. I encountered Tori and the sword in an apple orchard in my dream.”

  “This is Washington. And the Cascades are apple-growing territory, so I guess it’s possible.”

  “So, there’s a pretty good chance that by following Tori, I’m going to fulfill the events of my dream. Question is whether we survive it or not.”

  “Did we drive all the way out here for nothing? When have you shied from a fight?”

  I sucked in a big breath, blew it out through my nose, and threw open my car door. “It’s like cold water. We can stand here and look at it forever, and it won’t get any warmer, or we can just grit our teeth and dive in.”

  In the fading light, Val and I found the driveway onto which Tori had turned.

  “I should have brought a flashlight.” I closed my eyes to better focus on my internal power source. Over the past few months, I had learned my biggest conflagrations required the opposite of restraint—I had to abandon self-control. A subtle glow required focus, more application of self-discipline. I was good at subtle glows.

  Val gasped. I opened my eyes to see what had startled him and realized I could see him because my candle-glow trick had worked.

  “Holy shit,” he whispered.

  I shrugged. “What? This? This is nothing.”

  “But I’ve never seen it, not like this.” Val’s eyes narrowed, and a hurt look crossed his face. “I’ve heard you and Thorin describe it, but I’ve only seen your flames, a small presentation of them anyway, when you were mad.” Val was talking about the time I had slapped him at the Aerie.

  I stiffened my shoulders. “You earned it.”

  Val stepped closer and put a hand to my face. “You’re right. I needed that lesson. You deserved better from me.”

  I swallowed back a sudden welling of emotion and clenched my jaw. How was he so damned good at getting under my skin?

  Val framed my face in both hands and leaned closer, our breaths intermingling. He still smelled vaguely of chocolate-chip cookies. “I don’t know what’s going to happen next,” he said. “If it’s like your dream, it could be bad.”

  I swallowed again and nodded.

  Val pressed his lips to my temple—a sweet touch, not possessive and demanding but indicative of affection.

  Maybe an old dog can learn new tricks.

  Instead of desire or serenity, Val’s touch elicited a thundering rumble inside my head. The sounds of a distant, snarling beast filled my ears. And the cries of a man in horrible pain rose above it all. The accompanying images appeared smudged and blurry as if trapped behind a dirty windowpane. The vision showed me a man, bare chested and bound to a stone plinth. A wolf crouched over him, teeth buried in the pale, soft flesh of the man’s stomach. And blood. Everywhere blood.

  As the vision faded, the man screamed again—a horrifying torrent of begging and pleading. I pulled away from Val and put my hands over my ears. Always, with Val, those intimate moments triggered dreadful sensations.

  “What is it?” Val asked, struggling to keep me in his arms although I fought to get away, to escape the angry beast and a dying man screaming in my ears.

  “These visions.” I fell to my knees, closed my eyes, and shook my head. “I never wanted to be an oracle. Never wanted to know other people’s horrors.”

  “What did you see?” Val asked.

  “A beast, snarling, snapping his teeth. And there was a man, screaming, dying. H-he…” I stopped, took a breath, and tried it again. “He was being eaten alive.”

  Val choked and sank to his knees before me. His voice came out dry and raspy when he asked, “Was it… Was it Mani?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I know what Mani’s screams sound like. This wasn’t him. I’ve never seen this before. He said something, but he spoke in a language I didn’t understand.”

  “What did he say?” Val put his hands to my shoulders and squeezed. “What did he say?”

  “I-I don’t know. It sounded like, like, ‘Nine brrotheer. Nine.’ Over and over.”

  Val dropped his hands from my shoulders. He rolled back on his feet, stood, and moved away, turning toward the trees at the roadside.

  “Val?” I rose to my feet and reached for him, but he answered in a ragged and broken voice. “He was saying, ‘No, brother… No, brother, no.’”

  “Brother? What was that? What did I see?”

  Val inhaled, and the breath expanded his ribs and shoulders. He stiffened his spine and stood taller. Then he turned to face me, his expression inscrutable. “Something that happened a long, long time ago. It’s not essential to the here and now. I’ll tell you some other time, when there isn’t something more important to focus on.”

  I nodded, accepting his explanation. In my research, I had focused on Idun’s apples and what they could mean about my dreams and premonitions. I hadn’t delved deeply into the more obscure legends, and my knowledge of Val’s purpose as Odin’s instrument of revenge against Hodr was rudimentary at best. Did the memory I just witnessed have anything to do with Hodr’s death? When I had thought, just a little while before, about what pains Val had suffered that would stay with him for an eternity, I had decided I didn’t want to know. Whatever I had just heard from the past, it was horrible, anguished, terrifying. If Val wanted to keep the details to himself, I might consider that a blessing.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Val and I skulked down a long pathway that ended before a large log cabin. Log manor? Log estate? Warm yellow lights shone from several first-floor windows, putting off enough glow to illuminate a deep wraparound porch. Beyond the rear of the house, the lake mirrored the cloudless night sky. A dark disruption in the reflective surface suggested the shape of a long, jutting dock. The darkness covered the details of the house and grounds, but its sheer dimensions suggested something grand and impressive.

  “Jackpot?” I whispered.

  “Turn off your glow,” Val said, his voice low. “I don’t want them to know we’re here yet. Let’s wait and watch for a while.” He took my arm and led me to the treeline bordering the yard, where we eased behind its cover. “How long before Skyla and the others get here?”

  “The last text said they figured they were about half an hour out.”

  “We’ll reconnoiter until they get here.”

  “You think Tori and Grim will come outside and do some sword practice if we wait long enough? We’re going to have to be more proactive.”

  “I just want to know if there are any surprises waiting for us.”

  “I think Grim’s trap will be subtler than that.”

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  While we waited for Skyla and the others to arrive, Val and I crept around the property, hanging close to the treeline. No other cars accompanied Tori’s in the driveway, but we couldn’t check the garage without making a lot of noise—not that Grim needed a car to travel if he was anything like his kin. The exterior of the house and grounds remained quiet and dark, and blinds were drawn over the windows in the house, preventing us from looking inside. As the night deepened, so did the cold. My teeth chattered, and shivers trilled over me. We couldn’
t risk my fire, or even my softest glow, but unless something happened soon, I thought I might march up to the house and start the hottest open-house party to ever descend on Mineral Lake.

  “Last time I tromped around a lake in the dark, it didn’t go so well for me,” I said. “But I can’t wait much longer. The tension is killing me, and I really, really have to pee.”

  Val snorted. “You want to go and ask Tori if you can use her bathroom?”

  “If Skyla doesn’t get here soon, I might.”

  I did end up squatting in a thicket of brush, and while I tugged my leggings back in place, Skyla finally texted, We’re here. I tiptoed back to Val and showed him my phone screen. He nodded, and we retreated down the driveway, heading to our Yukon. At the road, I lighted my internal candle again, and three gloomy figures emerged from the shadows to meet us.

  “I take it nothing’s happened yet,” Embla said.

  “Quiet as a graveyard,” I said. “We’ve watched the house. The lights are on, but no sign of activity. Haven’t seen Tori, Grim, or the sword.”

  “Well.” Embla jutted her chin. “Let’s go knock on some doors. That bitch burned my Aerie. It’s time for a little payback. Solina, are you with us?”

  “With you?” I asked. “I’ve been here, freezing my ass off in the woods, waiting for you to get here. Question is, are you with me? If we get that sword, what guarantee do I have that you won’t turn around and use it on me?”

  Embla knitted her brows. “Skyla told us about your concerns. They aren’t unwarranted, and you’re smart to be wary, but we don’t intend to kill you. We want to protect you. You’ll just have to believe us, or you’re free to leave and go about your business on your own.”

  Val stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder. “She’s not on her own, and we’ve already made up our minds. We’ll stay, and we’ll fight.”

  Embla processed for a moment. She bobbed her chin. “Good. Lead the way.”

  We walked, without preamble or hesitation, down the driveway, through the yard, and onto the porch. Embla and Naomi peeled off from our group and scurried to the rear of the house. What now?