Starling

by Lesley Livingston

  And then he glanced up and realized what was wrong.

  A thick, heavy fog had lowered over the open circle of the café’s central courtyard like an impenetrable ceiling, a smoky-black shroud that blotted out the sky. It hung like heavy velvet curtains everywhere, and the effect was disorienting, suffocating. It was suddenly impossible to tell which archway led up out of the courtyard. If they chose the wrong one, they’d be trapped and they’d never battle their way back out.

  It was a neat trick—and specifically designed to target Mason’s “spatial boundary” issues. It was pretty damned clear to Fennrys in that moment that someone knew a whole lot more about Mason Starling than was healthy for her. Or, at the moment, for him. Whoever was behind the attack was using Mason’s fear against them.

  “Aw … crap …,” Fenn muttered.

  The draugr had them completely encircled.

  “C’mon,” Fennrys said, grabbing Mason by the hand and pulling her into the center of the rotunda. He pointed to the now-identical arches. “Which way do we go, Mase?”

  “No way,” she gasped.

  He glanced over and saw that Mason had gone incredibly pale. The palm of her hand was clammy with cold sweat against his as he tightened his grip on her fingers.

  “There’s no way out! No escape! I—I don’t know how to get out. Fenn … oh, god … we’re trapped....”

  “No such thing,” he snarled, and kicked a charging draugr in the chest with his heavy-soled boot, grinning savagely at the satisfying snap of the thing’s sternum as he felt its ribcage cave in toward its dead, unbeating heart. “Find a way or make one, Mase,” he urged her. “Use the medallion. I mean really use it.”

  It had worked for Mason before—whatever kind of power the iron disk possessed. Fennrys had to make her use it again, to find a way out of the deathtrap that had been specifically designed to prey upon her greatest fear.

  “I can’t. I can’t …”

  “Yes. You can.” Fennrys turned and gripped her by the shoulders, forcing her to look into his eyes. “Make a hole in your mind, Mason. Find the escape inside of you and then make it real. Make it happen.” He turned her back around to face the archways that were swirling with darkly sparkling sinister fog. “That’s how magick works.”

  “I’m not—I don’t …”

  “Which one?” he said gently. “Don’t worry about the path topside. Just get us to the river, sweetheart. Find a hole. Open the door and I’ll follow you through, alive and kicking.”

  He half turned and beheaded a draugr with almost casual contempt. But that was largely show, for Mason’s sake. He wasn’t going to be able to keep it up much longer—his arm muscles seared with fatigue, and there were more of the gray-skinned demons pouring through the arches on all sides, lurching and shambling their way toward them. But there were friendlies in the water—at least, that’s what he hoped they were—who might help them escape. It was worth a shot. Mostly because it was the only bullet they had left.

  “Get us out of here, Mase,” he whispered urgently.

  The temperature was dropping precipitously, and icicles were forming on all of the arches, like sharp teeth bared in open, hungry mouths. Fennrys let go of Mason’s hand, and her shoulders stiffened. But she inhaled sharply through her nostrils and turned outward, looking at each archway with an expression of fierce, arrow-sharp concentration tightening her features. Fennrys saw tiny white sparks shimmer over the surface of the iron disk at her throat. Her sapphire gaze flicked back and forth between the passageways, and suddenly, a blast of warm wind poured out of one, blowing her ebony hair back away from her face like wings on either side of her head.

  “This way!”

  She pointed with her sword and reached back, grabbing for Fenn’s hand. Together they raced forward, plunging through the thick obscuring mist. It danced like swarms of lightning bugs along their arms and faces and they ran and suddenly they burst onto the terrace, where a fierce electrical storm raged and churned the Hudson River into a frothing white cauldron.

  XX

  Mason ran for the docks, where the yachts burned and the dragon-prowed ghost ships bobbed silently, emptied of their warrior crews. Her feet pounded along the weathered wooden boards, and without stopping to think about what she was doing, she threw herself off the end of the dock in a long, shallow dive that carried her into the water and under the skim of blazing yacht fuel. The world shrank to fire above and deep, icy water below. Just like one of her dreams.

  She started to sink, the weight of the sword she absolutely refused to let go of dragging her down into the murky depths of the river. Her other hand clenched Fennrys’s in a white-knuckle death grip, even as he thrashed and kicked, fighting against the river’s swift, unyielding current. Mason was a strong swimmer, and she’d faced some heavy currents swimming in Hawaii on family vacations. But this was nothing like she’d ever felt. It was no use. It was almost as if the Hudson River had a mind of its own—and a malicious, evil-tempered mind at that. They might have escaped the draugr, but they were now in very real danger of drowning.

  Mason kicked upward with all her might, squeezing her eyes shut against the sting of the spilled fuel that mixed with the water. When she opened them again, she saw several dark shapes in the water, scaly, sinewy things with seaweed-black hair drifting on the current, hovering in a circle around her and Fenn. Mason screamed, a fan of silvery bubbles escaping her mouth and shimmying upward past her face, and a rush of white suddenly overtook the dark, nightmarish things. When Mason could see again, she found herself surrounded by nine blindingly beautiful women with pearly white hair and shimmering indigo-blue skin and emerald eyes. They were all smiling at her.

  And that, Mason thought as she began to lose consciousness, the simple fact that they were smiling—that, on top of everything else—was just unbelievably weird.

  Mason didn’t know how much time had passed when she woke up to find herself on the west bank of the Hudson River, on the New Jersey side, lying on a gravelly stretch of waste ground below some kind of industrial shipping facility that looked as though it was pretty much deserted. She groaned and rolled over, retching out a gulletful of evil-tasting river water, and opened her eyes to see Fennrys crouched on his haunches a few feet away from her, regarding her with a mix of curiosity, concern, and—this hurt her a little—wariness.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she muttered acidly. “At least I’m not a monster slayer who fell out of the middle of a thunderstorm and averted a mini zombie apocalypse.”

  “No,” Fennrys agreed readily, “no … you just chat comfortably underwater with … uh … what exactly d’you figure those blue ladies were, anyway?”

  “Goddesses, I think.”

  “Yeah. That’s kinda what I thought too.”

  She sat up stiffly, wringing the foul-smelling water out of her hair, and stared out over the river. The water flowed placidly by, reflecting the light from the late afternoon sun in shades of copper and gold. She turned back to Fenn.

  “How did you know?”

  “Know what?”

  “All that stuff you said about ‘make it real in your mind and it’ll become real.’ You know—‘that’s how magic works’?” She stared at him, arms wrapped protectively around her knees. Because that was exactly what had happened back in the boat basin rotunda. She’d made a hole in her mind, just like he’d told her to, that had led out to the river. And it had. Sure, maybe it was sheer blind-luck coincidence. But she really, really doubted it. “Just how much do you remember, Fennrys?”

  “Somehow I know that what you did—what I told you to do—is magick.” He frowned as he said the word. “And I also know that magick, in this particular case, is spelled with a K, and it’s not necessarily something you want to mess with on a regular basis.”

  Mason blinked at him. “With a K. Right. So … not magic, but magick.” In her ears, it sounded exactly the same, but in her mind, it actually felt a little different. Weird. “Whichever. I
don’t think I could do that again.”

  “I hope you don’t have to.” Fenn pointed to the medallion at Mason’s throat. “But I think maybe you should hang on to that. Just for a bit.”

  “What?” Mason looked at him. “No! You need this. You told me you do.”

  “I did need it.”

  He smiled at her, and she realized that, as unused to the gesture as he might have been, the Fennrys Wolf had a gorgeous smile.

  “I needed it to bring you back to me.”

  Oh … wow …

  “You’re the only girl I know in the whole world, Mase.” He laughed a little at the expression on her face. “Be a shame if I had to go to all the trouble of finding another one.”

  Just before things could tip over from suddenly awesome to suddenly awkward, Fennrys looked away. He peeled a long strip of river weed off the leg of his jeans and held it up in front of his face for a moment, as if looking for clues to what had just happened to them. But it was just a piece of weed.

  He tossed it aside and, gesturing at the river, said, “So … what wisdom of the ages did the synchro-swim team have to impart to you?”

  “You couldn’t hear them?” Mason asked.

  “Nope. Girl talk, I guess.”

  “Oh. Uh. Should I really be telling you, then?”

  “Up to you.”

  Mason thought about the things the river goddesses had told her. The sound of their voices, distorted and echoing, still reverberated weirdly through her mind. She didn’t see any reason not to tell him. The words pretty obviously didn’t have anything to do with Fennrys.

  “They said something along the lines of ‘We are the daughters of the Guardian, enemy of the Devourer,’” she said. “‘We bring a message. Help you we will, for a promise and price.’” Mason shrugged. “Come to think of it, they kinda sounded like Yoda.”

  Fennrys frowned. “That was it?”

  “No. I mean, they did help us. They got us the hell out of that swarm of … what were those scary black reptile things, anyway?”

  “Nixxie,” Fennrys said absently.

  Mason blinked at him. “Which are?”

  He glanced back at her and his frown deepened. “Aw, hell. I don’t know. I just know what they’re called. Go on. You were saying they helped us because—” He turned to her suddenly, visibly alarmed. “Wait. You didn’t promise them anything did you?”

  “What?” Mason was startled by his sudden intensity. “Uh … no. I mean. Nothing specific. Why?”

  Fennrys exhaled sharply through his nose, his gaze turned inward. “I’m not sure. It’s just another thing I don’t know, but … I have a bad feeling about making promises to things like those ladies. I got the impression that they’re the kind who come back to collect.”

  “Well, it wasn’t like I said I’d do anything bad,” Mason muttered, feeling a bit stupid. She’d read enough folk and fairy tales growing up to know that Fennrys was probably right. Promises were dangerous things and not to be given lightly. On the other hand, she’d been pretty sure in the moment that, if she’d refused the sea maidens, they would have swum aside and let the scaly, toothy river-lizard people—what had Fennrys called them? Nixxie?—eat her and her brave blond companion. Or, easier still, just let them drown. So, yeah. She’d made a promise. “I just promised that, if the chance ever came to me, I would … how did they put it? … ‘make an end of the Devourer.’”

  Fenn stared at her.

  “That doesn’t sound like such a bad thing, right?” she asked, suddenly seriously questioning her own judgment in the moment she’d made that promise. “I mean … anyone nicknamed the Devourer sounds pretty exceptionally killworthy. And it doesn’t even matter. I’m a high school junior, for crying out loud, not some kind of avenging angel of death. I’m sure that the Devourer, whoever he is, is pretty safe if I’m his only threat. Don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know, Mase. I don’t think I’m going to take very much for granted in the next little while. But … you’re probably right. And you did the right thing. If you hadn’t, we’d both be dead.” Fennrys plucked up a smooth, flat pebble from the rock- and rubbish-strewn shingle and tossed it up in the air a few times. “Any idea just who this Devourer might be?”

  “Nope.” Mason sighed. “And the goddess ladies seemed to think it wasn’t all that important to fill in the blanks. Like I’d just know if I came across the guy waiting in line for a latte and a bagel at Starbucks.”

  Fennrys shook his head and laughed. Then, with a sideways flick of his wrist, he tossed the rock, skipping it on the surface of the now-placid river. “You really are one very special girl, Mason Starling.”

  “Wow.” Mason swallowed, trying to ease the knot of fear that seemed to have stuck in her throat at the thought. She tried to keep her tone light, but even she could hear the tremor in her voice. “That is exactly what every girl wants to hear.” She pushed the wet black hair back from her face, shivering, and her teeth started to chatter even though she clenched them together hard. “In exactly any other circumstances than these.”

  Fennrys stood and crossed the three feet of distance between them, sinking down beside where Mason sat. He put his arm around her and rubbed her shoulder gently, warming her.

  “I’m scared, Fenn.”

  “I know, Mase,” he said quietly. “Would it help at all if I told you I was scared too?”

  She twisted around and looked up at him. “No,” she said seriously. “Not even a little bit.”

  “Good. ’Cause I’m not.” He grinned. “Not even a little bit.”

  She found herself answering him back with a small smile. He hugged her tighter. She buried her face in his shoulder and wondered … was it just her imagination, or did his lips really brush the top of her head? No … there it was again. She felt every inch of her skin tingle from that point of contact on her scalp, right down to the soles of her feet.

  Mason melted a little into Fenn’s embrace, turning to rest her head against his broad chest so she could gaze out across the water, over the cityscape of midtown Manhattan. The boat basin docks and several yachts were on fire, but there was no longer any sign of the ghost ships or the fog bank they had ridden to shore on—only a pall of sullen smoke hanging over the oily dark flames. She wondered if the bodies of the draugr she and Fennrys had left strewn all over the café had vanished along with the boats. Just like they’d disappeared from the Gosforth gym.

  Mason could hear sirens wailing, coming closer, and saw a pair of police boats blasting upriver. She hoped no one had gotten seriously hurt in the mad panic to escape the café, and she wondered how this would play out on the evening news. Had anyone managed to capture images of her swinging a sword at corpse warriors on a camera phone? She wasn’t quite sure how she would explain something like that to her dad.

  In the far distance, past the spiraling smoke, Mason could see a couple of birds hovering on updrafts above the city. They were huge, eagles or maybe even condors, although it was hard to tell from that distance. But then she remembered the winged shapes, blurred by speed, that she thought she’d seen attacking the draugr, and she shuddered.

  The hovering birds drew her eye toward where the westering sun was reflected in the glass of New York office towers, and Mason realized with a panicked start that she had fencing practice in probably less than an hour. And, insofar as she was on the western shore of the Hudson River—in Jersey, for crying out loud—she’d have to sprout wings and fly, herself, if she didn’t leave right that minute and try to find a cab that would take her back to the Upper West Side. She stood up so fast that she bashed the back of her skull square into Fennrys’s face.

  “Ow!” He clutched his nose and squeezed his eyes shut.

  “Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” She reached out a hand, but then snatched it back before she did any more damage. “I truly am a danger to myself and others....”

  Fenn opened one eye and squinted at her. “Not that, Mason,” he said, grinning his slightly mad
grin. “Never that.”

  Mason shook her head and returned his smile, but in her mind a slender, serpentine whisper of doubt snaked through Fennrys’s reassurance. She thought of Calum and his scars and wondered if she’d been the one to put him in that danger in the first place. If she was the one who’d been the target of the monstrous attack on the gym that night—something that, in light of the attack on the café, no matter how inexplicable it might be, seemed more and more likely—then she was dangerous. And the people she cared about could get hurt because of her. In spite of what Fennrys said.

  XXI

  Rory reached over and switched off the TV. The news that day was all about some kind of attack on the yacht docks down on the Hudson River, and the talking heads at the news desks had all, inevitably, turned to speculating about the T word. Rory snorted. What kind of crap-assed terrorist sets fire to a bunch of tricked-out daddy’s-boy sloops with stupid names like Into the Mystic painted on their sterns? At any rate, the excitement was over, and nobody had even shot any decent pics of the carnage with a camera phone. Manhattanites were so lame.

  Maybe, he thought, Mason was fine with living there, in a boring old dorm at the academy, but Mason was a loser and never did anything all that interesting anyway. As far as Rory was concerned, it was like trading a private spa for a public pool. To say Rory Starling was jaded on the subject of the human condition was something of an understatement.

  So when the opportunity came to go home, he’d jumped at the chance. And then decided, once there, that he would extend the opportunity by pleading a wicked head cold, brought on, no doubt, by exposure to the elements during the storm. When Mason headed back to Gosforth on Monday morning, Rory bid his baby sister a faux-congested, snuffly adieu and crawled back under the crisp Egyptian cotton sheets of his king-size bed. With any luck, he could draw this out long enough to get a full week off school.