Iduna's Apples (Valhalla Book 2)

by Jennifer Willis

  “And then you did the same to us,” Thiassen said. “Committing our entire race to an icy prison.”

  “Well, not right away,” Thor stammered. He wanted to point out that whole generations had passed between the defeat of the Køjer Devils and the final battle with the Frost Giants—and that it hadn’t even been Thor but his ancestors who had dealt with the devils—but he got the feeling it wouldn’t make a difference.

  “Yet here I stand, as do my kin, prepared to fight again at your side,” Thiassen stated coolly. “Make of that what you will.”

  The giant walked off to take up his position among the love seats and coffee tables.

  “Yeah, well, you still smell like a two-weeks-dead weasel,” Thor grumbled under his breath.

  Maggie shifted the Vanagon into park and looked up at the brilliant blue-and-yellow warehouse. From the parking lot, she couldn’t see any sign of Sally or anyone else on the roof. It didn’t look like there were any lights on inside the store, and no one standing by the windows.

  “You sure they’ll be all right in there?” Maggie asked her companions.

  “Of course not, dear,” Iduna responded dryly from the passenger seat. “That’s why they sent us away to the Federal Express office, to keep us out of harm’s way.”

  “Our errand was to send a shipment of sacred apples to the All Father and his bride,” Geirrod said, shifting uncomfortably on the floor behind them.

  Maggie frowned and leaned toward Iduna. “I know I’m missing a lot of the backstory with the Frost Giants. But still, why would one of them refer to Odin as the All Father?”

  “Sarcasm,” Iduna responded flatly.

  Maggie glanced in the rearview mirror at Geirrod. He grimaced back at her.

  “Apples dispatched to Odin and Frigga.” He patted a sack of fruit on the floor next to him. “And apples for the survivors of the battle against the Køjer Devils, to restore them after their fight.”

  “If there are any survivors,” Iduna added.

  Maggie closed her eyes and gripped the steering wheel. Heimdall’s face flashed into her mind. “We can’t just sit here.”

  “Well, of course not, dear,” Iduna replied. “But I don’t think he would let us set one foot outside this vehicle.” She cocked her head toward Geirrod.

  “The goddess Iduna is known to harbor a death wish, and so is believed to be a liability in battle,” the Frost Giant offered. Iduna nodded with only the hint of a frown on her brow.

  “The human,” Geirrod spat the word like so much spoiled meat, “must be protected at all costs.”

  Maggie pushed up her long sleeves and looked at the bindrunes Sally had drawn on her arms for protection—magick sigils that both Iduna and Geirrod had refused. She felt sick to her stomach.

  “What if I ate some more apples, right now?” She turned to Iduna. “Wouldn’t that turn me into one of you, and then I could go in there and help fight?”

  Geirrod groaned his disapproval—he still hadn’t gotten over waiting on a human back in the fortress. Iduna just shook her head.

  “It doesn’t take hold quite that quickly, not by the apples alone,” she said. “And Heimdall would be falling all over himself trying to protect you instead of focusing on defeating the enemy. It wouldn’t be pretty.”

  Maggie leaned back in the driver’s seat, willing herself not to cry.

  Heimdall kicked at the boxes of kitchen knives in the Cooking & Eating section of IKEA’s ground floor marketplace.

  “So many weapons,” he muttered to himself. “All of them completely useless.”

  Freya stepped away from the wall, where she’d been drawing some of Sally’s bindrunes on the newly painted plaster. She stepped into the center of the room and bent low to draw a wide circle on the floor in dark blue ink.

  “Trust the Moon Witch,” Freya offered. “She’s young, but she knows what she’s doing. More than she realizes.”

  “I’ll say.” Saga approached from the far side of the shower curtain display, where the Bath section met Home Organization. She stepped over the collapsible shoe racks and ceramic soap dishes that sat in unpacked boxes on the floor, then glanced at a map standing in the middle of the space to direct future consumer traffic.

  “I’ll go put up some more bindrunes in Lighting,” she offered. “Just in case they make it past, you know.”

  Freya handed her dark blue marker over to Saga, and she and Heimdall watched Saga make her way past the wicker laundry baskets and racks of bath towels to the wide doorway beyond which every manner of light fixture was displayed.

  “You put too much faith in the human child,” grumbled Thrym, stepping away from the Textiles section where he’d been ripping all of the display rugs from their hanging hooks. They’d spent the last two hours scouring the self-serve marketplace, trying to eliminate any spot a stray Køjer Devil or two might seek to hide.

  They’d narrowed the floorplan down to the IKEA Bath Shop as offering the best access to the oil reserves below. Sure, the devils would first have to dig through the concrete flooring and about 1,000 meters of dirt, rock, and clay—but then they’d hit an empty lava tube that led almost directly to the petroleum.

  It had taken Saga and Heimdall several hours to map out the underground route. It would take minutes for the Køjer Devils’ instinctive drive for oil to find it.

  Freya handed Thrym a handful of the markers Sally had transformed into weapons. The Frost Giant scoffed. “And so we are to simply doodle on the devils to overpower them? There is nothing in the archives about defeating them thus.”

  Heimdall rested his hands on his hips. “There’s nothing much in the archives about the Køjer Devils, period. That’s kind of the problem.” He nodded at the colored markers in Thrym’s hands. “This is what we’ve come up with. If you have a better plan, we’ve been all ears for a good while now.”

  Thrym held up a placating hand. “You misunderstand me. We are simply unaccustomed to relying on human magick.”

  “Are the nets ready?” Heimdall asked.

  Thrym nodded. “May the goddess Iduna’s mists be true.” He bowed graciously to Freya, then lingered a moment while trying to catch her eye. Unsuccessful, he stepped away.

  Heimdall leaned over to his cousin. “I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

  Freya shook her head and waited for Thrym to walk out of hearing distance. “He doesn’t like this alliance. He doesn’t like working with Sally, or Maggie for that matter.” She looked down at the bindrunes Sally had drawn on her arms, and nodded at the protective marks on Heimdall as well. “Doesn’t approve of such close association with humans.”

  “But he’s making nice, hoping he still has a shot with you.” Heimdall rolled his three markers in his hands, hoping they would be enough. Sally had assured them that the color of the ink wouldn’t make a difference, but Heimdall was glad he’d gotten two red markers and one black one—better to fight fire with fire.

  Freya turned away, and Heimdall reached out to place a hand on her shoulder. “Hang on, you don’t have feelings for him, do you?”

  “Oh, please.” Freya rolled her eyes as she faced him. “But I’ll have to let him down easy. Even after centuries, some crushes die hard.”

  “Speaking of crushes . . .” The muscles in Heimdall’s face tightened involuntarily. “When all this is over, someone’s really got to have a talk with your brother.”

  “I know,” Freya protested. “And by your expression, I’d say you think it should be me.”

  Heimdall lifted his eyebrows.

  “Freyr’s not entirely clueless, you know,” Freya said. “He’s dealt with this kind of thing before.”

  Heimdall sighed. There was always some guileless maiden somewhere falling under Freyr’s enchantment. The nature god swore up and down that he had no control over his own sex appeal, even when things got sticky—like the time the crown princess of the Vralnick dwarves had physically tethered herself to Freyr and pledged to never stray even a hair’s b
readth from his side.

  Thor was still grumbling over the resulting battle with the Vralnick army. He’d ruined his best pair of boots in the fighting.

  “But never when the Moon Witch was involved,” Heimdall replied. “Was it really such a good idea to put him on the roof with her? We need her focused.”

  “And we need her not worrying,” Freya said. “It’ll be fine. And I’ll make sure he handles it.”

  A succession of loud booms echoed down from the marketplace ceiling—Thor’s signal.

  “They’re here!” Heimdall called out to Thrym and Saga. “You know what to do.”

  18

  Sally’s jaw dropped.

  When she was hiding in the closet, she hadn’t actually gotten a look at the Køjer Devils attacking the rental house. But here, on the utility landing mounted high on the side of the IKEA warehouse, Sally peeked over the edge of the roof and saw . . . Dinosaurs.

  Freyr clamped his hand over her mouth before she could give away their position. She’d cast a spell of invisibility around herself, Freyr, and Loki, but that didn’t mean the devils wouldn’t be able to hear them.

  Sally squirmed out of Freyr’s grasp and turned wide-eyed to Loki. “They’re freaking tyrannosaurs!” she hissed as quietly as she could.

  Loki nodded. “Not quite, but similar. Look again. You’ll see the differences. They are considerably smaller, and have longer and more powerful arms, for instance. No tails.” He shrugged. “But essentially the same idea.”

  Sally peered back over the concrete block wall and watched as what she could only think of as tyrannosaurus men poured over the other side of the building and clawed at the roof. There were perhaps three dozen of them, or more—they kept scrambling around so quickly she couldn’t keep count.

  Sally got control of her excited breathing and reminded herself that the devils had some strange aversion to doors and staircases—the utility landing and the fire escape leading down from it were probably the safest places to be.

  Loki watched the devils carefully as they tore up the roofing material. “Just avoid the sigil, if you don’t mind,” he suggested softly. Bits of PVC, foam, and shreds of duct work flew through the air as the devils dug into the surface a few meters off center.

  Sally breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “Now, we just wait for them to all pile inside, right?”

  Freyr nodded. “It won’t take long.”

  Sally peeked again over the roof wall just as the last few Køjer Devils disappeared into the hole they’d clawed into the roof. She waited a few beats and scanned the area, but there were no more devils to be seen.

  “That’s it then?” she asked a bit louder than she’d intended. She ducked back down behind the wall. “I mean, there aren’t any more coming?”

  Loki held up his hand for silence. He stood up tall and surveyed the scarred roof. Finally, he nodded. “Yes, I believe that’s the last of them.”

  Loki climbed up the ladder and pulled himself over the wall and back onto the roof surface. Sally was right behind him, with Freyr bringing up the rear.

  “Your sigil is unharmed.” Loki nodded to the space where Sally had hidden her work. There was an extra sparkle to the reflected sunlight on that particular patch of white roof—the only hint that magick lay there.

  “So far, so good,” Freyr offered as he leapt easily from the top of the ladder to the roof. Sally looked over her shoulder and smiled, wishing she could think of something delightful and appropriately witty to say, but Freyr’s expression was grim as he nodded toward the hidden sigil. “Better get to it, then.”

  Sally approached the center of the roof and paused to look down into the hole the devils had torn. They were long gone, and were no doubt harassing Thor and the others by now.

  She was astonished by how narrow the jagged rift was. The damage to the rental house had been extreme, with large, gaping holes in the ceiling, smashed windows and furniture, and lots of foul-smelling piles left behind. This incursion was neat by comparison.

  “They were bent solely on destruction and harassment before,” Loki said. “They’re after something much bigger now. On a mission, I believe the expression is.”

  Sally pushed down the many questions that flooded into her mind. If she did her job now—and if she’d gotten the other spells right, too—there would be time for answers later.

  She stepped into the center of her sigil and dispelled its cloak with a wave of her hand. The intricate pattern in blue ink reappeared with a whispered sigh. She looked around the roof to confirm that the bindrune patterns at the four corners hadn’t been disturbed. Then she pulled a slender penknife from the back pocket of her blue jeans.

  Sally held up her Uruz-branded thumb and noticed the shadows of dirt on her fingers and wrist.

  I really could use a shower, Sally grimaced as she held the blade against her flesh. And some fresh clothes.

  She needed to concentrate if she was going to be able to do what she’d sworn she never would. Sally closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She’d seen Managarm consecrate the sacrilegious runes he’d crafted from the corpse of the old World Tree, and he’d used her blood to release Fenrir from his wolf prison. She understood the power of magickal blood.

  Sally hadn’t yet asked Frigga about blood magick. She feared it was some dark art that only the most nefarious and the most desperate would resort to. But she was feeling pretty desperate herself right about now, and so far neither Loki nor Freyr had made a move to stop her.

  With a slow exhale, Sally sliced into the fleshy part of her thumb and across the symbol scarred into her skin. The air crackled as her blood rose to the surface. Opening her eyes, Sally pressed her index finger hard at the base of the wound, encouraging the blood to flow. She knelt and pressed her bloody thumb against the exact center of the sigil.

  A shock of energy flew out and up from the symbol as blood met magick. The sheer force of it nearly knocked Sally backward out of the symbol, but she gritted her teeth and held her ground. She felt the blood sizzling into the bindrune as the criss-crossing lines of blue ink sparked red and orange, and then faded slowly to black.

  Sally lifted her hand and wiped blood and soot on her jeans. She’d probably have to burn these clothes later, rather than trying to launder them.

  Freyr stepped close to the perimeter of the bind rune. “All set?”

  Sally nodded and stood up. “No one gets out alive now. I mean, not for them,” she added quickly. “Not through the roof or walls, at least.”

  Loki slid his hands into his front pockets. “I have to say, I feel slightly conflicted about sealing a bunch of mad lizards in an IKEA warehouse.”

  Freyr crossed his arms over his chest. “Okay, I’ll bite.”

  “Well, we weren’t just in Norway, in the days of the Vikings. We had people in what’s now Sweden, too, and elsewhere.” Loki paused and scratched his chin. “It feels almost, shall I say, unpatriotic? To inflict Køjer Devil mayhem on a store which is something of a national ambassador for Sweden?” Loki mused. “I mean, the sides of the building are practically painted with the Swedish flag—”

  Loki’s voice trailed off as he stared over Frey’s shoulder. Sally and Freyr both turned in the direction of his gaze. Just coming over the wall, far behind its brethren, was a stray Køjer Devil.

  Sally shrieked, and immediately covered her mouth. The Køjer Devil paused, half on the wall and half off, and cocked its head.

  “Umm, hello?” Loki offered with a bemused smile.

  The devil hissed an ear-splitting screech, then clambered back over the wall and down the side of the building, its claws digging into the concrete.

  Freyr sighed darkly. “I’ll go.”

  He strode quickly across the roof toward the fire escape. Sally ran after him.

  “Freyr, wait!” She held up her dark blue marker and uncapped it. “Let me draw the bindrunes—”

  He waved her off. “No time, little witch. There’s a devil on the loose.” He disa
ppeared down the metal stairs.

  Stung, Sally snapped the cap back on the marker and slid it into her pocket. Loki stepped up beside her and rested a hand on her shoulder. “He’ll be all right. You’ll see.”

  Sniffing back embarrassed tears, Sally shrugged away from Loki. “Did you hear him? He called me little witch,” she spat. Just like Managarm, she added silently.

  Thor was up to his knees in mattress stuffing.

  The rampaging devils had rained down from the roof in a torrent of scales and slashing claws. Thor counted thirty-one of them as they hit the floor of the Bedrooms section and before they scattered in all directions around IKEA’s main showroom.

  “Incoming!” Thor shouted out to Thiassen and Valthrudnir as he tried to single-handedly herd the Køjer Devils toward the escalator.

  They sliced through the mattresses and bedside tables like a hot knife through goat butter. Thor cursed sharply as he climbed over shredded upholstery and dodged jagged pieces of pressboard and pine.

  “The wild skogkatts in Frigga’s garden were worse,” Thor grumbled as his boot got caught in a rope of shredded fabric. “They’d just as soon chomp off an appendage as steal your cabbages—”

  A Køjer Devil leapt out at him from behind a teetering wardrobe and slashed savagely at his face. Thor sidestepped the attack in time to escape having his cheek sliced open, but he tripped backward over an upturned sofa bed.

  The devil hissed as it leaned over Thor, lying on his back in a pile of mattress stuffing. Thor scrambled backward, trying to get his feet under him. He remembered the bindrunes the Moon Witch had drawn on his arms with her enchanted ink and said a silent prayer that she knew her magick.

  The creature moved in closer, screeching and flexing its razor-sharp claws in anticipated victory. Thor held his breath.

  “Hey!” Came a booming voice from behind the devil.

  The creature spun on its clawed toes and came face-to-face with Thiassen. The Frost Giant punched the devil squarely in its protruding jaw at the same moment that Thor left his boot print at the base of the devil’s spine.