Shyla’s teeth were clenched shut against making any sound. Rig admired that, he remembered the first time he had stood before Borr, the first time he’d heard the god’s voice explode over him and how he had cried out for mercy. Still, she was suffering, that much was easy to see.
Rig was all that was keeping Shyla standing. He held her weight suspended with his arms tight around her waist, keeping her safe against his side. He was sorry to have to witness her in this state. From the small exchanged they’d had, he intuited that she was the kind of person who would hate him for seeing her in any compromised position. Still, better he was here to stand with her, than have her face the god alone.
“Accept your armor, your weapons—you have earned them. Whatever happens, win or lose, you could be at the head of the greatest struggle your world has ever known. Or you could be swallowed in the chaos. Make no mistake a battle is coming. Will you fight? What will be your choice?”
The storm of rainbows flashed and pierced Rig’s eyes. He was ever aware of the vial of Water he had gathered from the manifested Urd Well in Budapest. He knew its purpose and why Hermod had sent him to gather it and this woman together. It was growing heavier in the ampule fastened to the chain around his neck. The hilt of his sword had grown hot against his hip, too.
Everything was a reminder of his purpose and what was at stake, should he fail in seeing it through.
Borr addressed Rig privately, his voice naught but thunder in his mind. “Watchman, I grant you and this woman the boon of a day.”
Rig clenched his jaw.
“She shall have a small taste of the gifts we have to offer, but she has a counting of hours to decide her fate.” Borr’s voice darkened and his next words came out as a warning. “Shyla will make her own choice, without interference. Do you understand, Watchman?”
Oh, he knew what Borr’s bottom line was. Rig wasn’t to reveal any details of the bargain Shyla would be making with the gods. “Yes Great Borr, I understand.”
“This is no light request we make of you. This is the beginning of the end, as you know. Much that comes after hinges on the outcome of this one choice. I ask again, do you understand?”
Rig gritted his teeth. He had never failed the gods. Not once. Why did they doubt him now?
Why do I doubt myself?
“Yes,” he hastened to say the word aloud, to squelch his uncharacteristically insecure thought before Borr heard it. “I won’t disappoint you.”
On the heels of his words, Rig’s eyesight returned, the bright colors of the Godstorm abating and with its departure, Midjungards—the realm that was Earth—manifested around them once again. Shyla was upright and conscious but dazed and gasping for air.
Rig took in their surroundings and was unsurprised to find that they were no longer outside on the bustling city sidewalk, inside a dwelling. From the look of the comfortable furnishings and décor, it was a sitting room or den. It would be in Borr’s interest to put them where they needed to be to start their quest the soonest, rather than plop them right back where he’d plucked them from.
Now they must wait for whatever was coming next—it would no doubt come upon them fast and hard.
Rig gauged Shyla’s condition. Her face was white as a sheet. He noticed with some surprise that she had some scarring on her face, pink and white jagged lines that marred the otherwise smooth skin of her left jawline and cheek. Earlier he had been so blinded by her fierce beauty and vicious temper that he hadn’t even seen them. Now they were contrasted against her pale, bloodless complexion.
Her pupils were wide, deep pools. Shyla’s hands were over her ears just as they had been during the meeting with Borr and every delicious curve of her body was eerily still. The alarming gasps had stopped but now Rig wasn’t certain She was breathing at all.
They didn’t have time for him to be gentle. He strode forward and though it pained Rig, he raised his hand to strike her, to bring Shyla back to herself with all haste.
Just as his palm was about to connect with her cheek, her hand shot out and gripped his wrist, halting his blow.
“I’m okay.” She said, her voice steady, belying the pallor of her skin. Her eyes blinked and seemed to struggle to focus. Her gaze found his. “I’m all right. Rig, is it?”
He nodded, experiencing some shock himself at her quickness. This vivid, incredible woman was full of surprises.
“Okay, Rig. I’m going to skip over the millions of obvious questions and just get to the immediate concern I have, if that’s cool with you.”
He nodded again. The situation was becoming more surreal by the second.
“Why are we in my apartment? Because I have this horrible feeling that its not because Borr wanted me to feel comfortable after that mind fuck he just gave me. Is it?”
Rig shook his head no, just as the overwhelming stench of sulfur and rotten meat began to fill his nostrils.
Chapter Six
Shyla had never been so afraid for her sanity.
She knew if she ever told anyone the details of what had just transpired they would think she had suffered a break with reality. And they might be justified in believing it. Shyla herself would have been more than ready to accept the explanation of a nervous breakdown, get herself a handful of prescription drugs and go about her life like if not for the simple fact that she couldn’t.
Shyla had never felt so alive.
Not since before Antarctica. When something spectacular and unexplainable was in front of her—an impossible and wondrous puzzle to be studied. Terrifying, yes, but perhaps it was all the more alluring because of that element of fear infusing its core of mystery. That threat of the unknown that could jump out and bite you. Yes, Antarctica had bitten her; it had sunk its teeth into her hard. But in the end, knowing the outcome, would her choices have been different?
It was hard to admit, but though the price had been high, she’d pay it again if she had to.
And so would Douglass.
So would Douglass. She knew that now. It made her complaints about her injuries feel petty now. Shameful even.
Borr—some weird Norse deity she’d never heard of before tonight—had given her just a moment with her old mentor, but a moment had been all she’d needed to hear everything important that Douglass needed to say.
She was part of something, something grand and terrible. And Douglass was, too.
In the raging storm of wind and light, the rainbows had cleared from her vision for a moment and she was granted a vision of her dead friend—the one she had tried so hard to save. Failed to save.
Douglass had burned to death in her arms as the earth opened up beneath them, belching an impossible breath of steam and fire through a rip in the polar ice. He had been on fire, melting into her own flesh, leaving her scarred with the reminder of her loss and failure for the rest of her life, and then he’d slipped from her hold, plummeting to the molten fires churning below.
The rainbows parted and a hale, hearty Douglass stepped forward.
His skin and hair were perfect. No signs of blood or bone, no traces of agony in the deep lines of his face. There was no pain clouding the dark pools of his loamy brown eyes.
“Hey, Roth.” His voice was soft, no longer the ragged screams she’d been hearing in her nightmares for so long. “You listening?”
Shyla choked back a sob.
“Antarctica was just the beginning. You and me got caught in the middle of something we couldn’t have understood if we wanted to. It’s cool though. We had a helluva trip right until the end, huh?”
“But you died.”
He nodded. The gray in his salt and pepper hair glinted and caught a stray prism of the colors still dancing about them, blinding her for a second. She winced.
“Yeah I died. But you still saved me. I was the first you saved. I won’t be the last, either, if you decide to do this.” He smiled. “Either way, I’m glad you were there. The world is in trouble and it needs someone like you. Listen, I know Borr talks
a big pitch, but he’s not all show and tell. He’s a good guy, Odin’s dad. But you should know there are a lot in this game who aren’t so good.”
Shyla scowled. “Odin? Really? This is ridiculous.”
“Roth, you’re talking to your dead friend.” He pointed out. “You heard a dead guy talk to you in the street yesterday—remember that? Try to keep some perspective here.”
Of course she remembered Blue Suit. I see you. Shyla’s stomach did a somersault.
“Remember when you were fresh out of college and you came to me asking what was the most startling thing I ever photographed? I told you it was the Rwandan Genocide.”
Shyla nodded, she was dazed at the abrupt change in subject but she remembered the moment as if it were happening now.
Douglass was a Pulitzer winning photojournalist and he had awed her. She had been in love with his photos for years. It had been her hope then that she might snag his eye, maybe even his passion, but instead she had snagged his imagination and that had been even better, for her and his wife.
His photos and articles covering the Rwandan Genocide had been one of Douglass’ career achievements.
“I lied. It wasn’t the Genocide that was the most startling. I told you that because it was what a young, fresh PJ needed to hear,” he admitted. “And because of something else. Something I couldn’t tell you then.”
Shyla frowned, waiting for an explanation that didn’t come for many seconds. “Go on, what was it?”
He took a deep breath as if to steady himself before a deep plunge into icy water. “Before I was out of high school I took this photo of an old man in my neighborhood. He died a few days later and I didn’t think about him again until I developed my film. When I was developing the old man’s picture, I saw it.”
Shyla’s mouth had gone dry. She didn’t know why, in the middle of all this weirdness, this story should grip her so hard, but it did.
“There was a woman standing behind him, a most remarkable woman, her hair long and wild, wearing leather and fur and buckles. Her hand was on the old man’s shoulder, just resting there, but it looked wrong. I can’t explain it, it was just a woman, but at the same time I knew it wasn’t.” Douglass ran a hand through his hair, so that it stood on end. It was a gesture she’d seen him do a thousand times before, but it was surreal now considering he’d been dead for three years.
“A woman?” Shyla didn’t understand any of this. She glanced around, questioning her sanity.
Douglass nodded, eyes feverish, caught up in his memory. “She wasn’t there when I took the photo, you understand. The old man was alone. And he didn’t know she was there—you could see it in his posture, his face, everything about the guy—he had no idea this gorgeous, strangely dressed woman was touching him. And she glowed. I tried to convince myself that maybe the settings on my camera were buggy, but I knew deep down they weren’t. The woman was pure sunlight but she was as real as you or me.”
A shiver traced down Shyla’s spine.
“When you asked what was the most startling thing I’d ever photographed, for a moment, I swear I saw that woman standing behind you. I swear it. It was just for a moment, but even after she was gone you were always covered in sunlight. It scared the living shit out of me. I told my wife, Tessa, about it and after she met you, she said it wasn’t just my imagination. She said she could see the sun on you too, that it was important, that you were special. And she was right. You saved my life in the field more times than I can count, Roth—”
“You saved mine too,” Shyla interjected, uncomfortable at the reminder. Theirs was not a safe profession, it was more a calling, and they’d looked after each other in dangerous places. In the end it hadn’t mattered—she’d failed him.
“You didn’t fail me,” he barked, interrupting her train of thought. “I was marked to die that day no matter what I did—you’ll learn that rule soon enough—but you grabbed me and held on. You intervened, you struggled, made it a fight to survive instead of some random accident. If you hadn’t done that, I’d have moved on to some bland afterlife. I’m glad you held on, Shyla. Glad you fought for me.”
Shyla noted that Douglass only used her first name when he was overwrought with emotion. He’d so rarely called her by her first name in all the years she’d known him, she reckoned she could count the occasions on her fingers.
“Because of your friendship and stubbornness,” he smiled now, “I get to see the most amazing thing we could ever get to witness. Ragnarok.”
“What?”
“It won’t be like in the fairy tales, Roth. It’s going to be more than anyone could have imagined. You’ll see it if you want to.” Douglass looked over his shoulder, at something she couldn’t see, before turning back to her with a bittersweet look on his face. “They’re giving you a day to decide, so don’t think too hard.” He winked at her. “We’ll talk again soon, I think.”
He was gone before Shyla could think of anything else to say. And then Borr was back. He told her to think of Douglass and others like him who were brave and good, who needed someone like her to stand shoulder to shoulder with them blah-blah-blah, his speech ran on in her mind until her brain began to melt. She could barely remember it.
What everything boiled down to, in the end, was that something exciting was happening. And if she was insane, at least she was no longer bored.
Now, standing in the unremarkable office-slash-sitting room of her tiny, one bedroom apartment, she was more doubtful of her grasp on reality. The gorgeous guy from the bar was still with her, though, and he looked sane enough.
There were countless questions pressing against the back of her lips, but something more insistent was tugging at the edge of her consciousness.
Pain. Lots of pain.
Suffering agony that was beyond her understanding, Shyla endured a sensation very close to what she imagined fiery palms sliding down the blades of her shoulders might feel like. If those imaginary palms sprouted knives for fingers and proceeded to slide into her skin, making a glove of her flesh, then it might feel something close to what she was experiencing. It went on for an eternity—or maybe a few seconds—and abruptly, the pain eased.
What was that?
She realized she was gasping like a fish out of water and stopped at once. Her hands were still over her ears. She hadn’t moved much since this whole episode had begun, Shyla realized. Rig no doubt thought she was like one of those simpering females he’d been hanging out with at the bar, all drama and no spine. That idea galled her.
Just as she was about to regain what was left of her spine, she realized Rig was moving to slap her—no doubt to bring her back to her senses in the fastest way the brute knew how.
Oh hell no.
With a speed and strength that stunned her, Shyla seized his hand before he could make contact.
Whoa. Okay. That was new.
If Rig thought she was a hysterical wimp now, he was a fool.
“I’m okay.” She forced her voice out as evenly as she could. “I’m all right. Rig, is it?”
He nodded, a frown riding his otherwise smooth brow. God, his eyes were the color of Blue Woad. He was breathtaking.
She swallowed and gathered the last shreds of her dignity. “Okay, Rig. I’m going to skip over the millions of obvious questions and just get to the immediate concern I have, if that’s cool with you.”
He nodded again, his frown disappearing. The guy was too calm considering all they’d just been through. She hated him for his easy composure.
The lancing pain in her shoulders flared hot and the weight of her camera grew heavier.
“Why are we in my apartment?” she asked, desperately ignoring the sensations assaulting her. “Because I have this horrible feeling that its not because Borr wanted me to feel comfortable after that mind fuck he just gave me. Is it?”
Rig’s ink-black hair glinted when he shook his head no. She wanted to run her fingers through it and find out for herself how silky it was.
The agony or the attraction, these feelings were entrenched in her flesh right now, both were painful to acknowledge, but she had to choose between them. They could not coexist together without making her crazy.
Oh, just stop it! Focus, for one second, you stupid cow!
She took a deep breath and a horrible stench assailed her nose. She immediately identified the odor and stiffened. It was a miasma of buried Antarctic volcanoes that shouldn’t exist and her friend’s burning flesh sinking into hers, before he slid away into fiery oblivion. It was sulfur and death and it was in the room with them.
Chapter Seven
Her camera was just too heavy. It had never been a burden before, but right now her neck felt as if it might snap. She cradled the camera and cried out when a shard of cold stabbed through her hand. It was a frost that burned. She opened her hand to let it go, but once her flesh was on the body of the camera, she couldn’t relinquish her hold on the thing. Her hand and the camera were one.
Biting off her instinctive cry of horror, she looked down and saw that her hand was indeed sealed to the casing by a thin layer of white frost. Her skin was so cold it was turning blue around the edges wherever the camera touched her.
She didn’t scream. She didn’t cry. Shyla was proud that she maintained that much control. Weirder things have happened today, she reassured herself.
She was glad—it would have been so humiliating to continue flipping out at every little thing in front of Mr. Perfectly Calm who was as yet oblivious to any issues, or so it seemed.
Why can’t I be that strong? Her hand was freezing and her heart was a thunderstorm in her chest. It was a wonder Rig didn’t hear it.
She was determined to remain as aloof as he appeared no matter what weird shit happened next.
Some daughter of the mountain she’d been so far, first throwing a tantrum in the bar and then almost fainting after seeing her ‘dead’ friend. Shyla’s competitive nature urged her to step up her game—to what end she wasn’t certain yet. She just didn’t want Rig to outman her, so to speak.
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