Valkyrie Rising

by Ingrid Paulson

  The moment she shifted closer, the atmosphere around the field changed. It felt sluggish, like we were moving through water, even though what was about to happen would be fast as a lightning strike. The players noticed first. I watched, fascinated, as the captain of the army team, a tall, muscular boy, stopped midfield and turned toward Astrid’s spot along the railing. He was the star of the game, having scored three goals and made it look all too easy. Like the other team’s goalie wasn’t even there. His skill was infectious. Everywhere he went on the field, the rest of the team played better, rising to his high standards.

  He was the heart of his team, but the boy abandoned the game without a backward glance. He walked toward Astrid, coming to a stop at the base of the wall. Astrid’s long blond hair teased the tops of his shoulders as he reached up, wrapped his fingers over the edge of the wall, and pulled himself up to her level. He kicked one leg over the railing and in the blink of an eye was in the stands, at her side.

  It was so daring, so bold compared to anything she’d done before, that I was frozen in place. Long gone were the days of making off with her victims in the night. Astrid had taken the stakes to a whole new level. I thought about the television crews I’d noted earlier, cameras trained on the field and stands. Sure, it was just a local broadcast, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long. This was live-action footage. Irrefutable proof to validate the rumors and whispers flowing across the region.

  Murmurs rippled through the stands—but just in the sections that were out of Astrid’s range. Those closer had the vague, apathetic stare of a Valkyrie victim.

  The grumbling in the stands turned to angry jeers as tense seconds ticked past. But it was too late. The captain of the team was already well beyond their reach. Astrid took the boy’s hand. There was something tender about that small gesture that shocked me to the core.

  The crowd parted, making way for them to pass. Heads turned, tracking their every move as they walked toward the stairs. Tuck and I slipped out of our seats. I breathed deeply, reining in the violent voice rattling the door of its cage, begging me to challenge her on the spot. Last time had taught me the dangers of getting a crowd involved—there was no way I could take on a stadium full of people. Someone would definitely get hurt.

  “C’mon,” I said, pulling Tuck behind me as we followed at a distance. I heaved a sigh of relief that Tuck had yet again avoided getting caught up in Astrid’s spell, even without Graham’s necklace. “Before people start to panic and get in our way.”

  No sooner had the words left my lips than a commotion erupted in the stands. Someone was jostling and pushing their way through the aisles in the back, up where the spectators were far enough away to be unaffected by Astrid and were still confused and shouting for the game to carry on.

  A man leaped up on the brick wall framing the stairs and started jogging along the top, balancing precariously. Falling the wrong way meant a fifty-foot drop. But he reached the base of the stands nearest me in moments and jumped to the ground—just as two more men heaved themselves up onto the wall, following him and shouting for Astrid to stop.

  Tuck’s hand curled around my elbow, pulling me along as he slipped through the crowd, following Astrid from a distance. The second two men jumped down from the wall and pushed their way through the crowd, their eyes glued to Astrid’s retreating back as she parted the crowd like the Red Sea. As the first man drew level with us, he pulled a transponder out of his pocket. While trying to activate it, he bumped into a girl about my age who stood frozen in the middle of the aisle. I assumed the girl was caught in Astrid’s spell … until she spun and shoved him with a strength that made no sense coming from her spindly arms. Then she turned to face me. Forest-green eyes met mine, and pink glossed lips curled into Loki’s smile.

  But I didn’t have time to pause and wonder what Loki was doing here—the first vigilante man was falling backward. The railing at his back wouldn’t be enough to counteract his momentum. I could already picture how he’d flip over it and plummet down onto the concrete at the bottom of the stairwell. I caught his shoulder just in time, saving him from cracking his head open.

  As I set him back onto his feet, his face contorted in terror. The moment he caught his balance, he lashed out at the side of my head with his fist in a frantic, poorly aimed blow that I blocked with one hand. He didn’t even care that I’d just saved him. He was too busy scrambling away from me. I picked up the transponder.

  And I turned it on.

  It blinked away happily, but the man still refused to take it from my hand. He shook his head again and again, like he could shake the memory of what had just happened right out his ear.

  “Leave him,” Tuck said. “Ungrateful asshole.”

  He didn’t need to tell me twice. I dropped the transponder on the ground at the man’s feet and slipped after Tuck, moving slowly to make sure Astrid didn’t see us following.

  As soon as Astrid hit the pavement outside the stadium, the Range Rover appeared. It careened carelessly through the rows of haphazardly parked cars and slid to a stop just inches shy of Astrid and the soccer star. Astrid approached the driver’s side, which—amazingly—was empty.

  I pulled Tuck behind a narrow pillar inside the stadium door as Astrid turned. I’d known it was about to happen. I could sense the current radiating from her, the connection to her thoughts. It was snapping at the edges of my mind, trying to pull me in. She had to know where I was too. Presumably that meant I didn’t pose enough of a threat for her to care.

  The men who’d also been chasing her raced past us and exploded out the door, weapons drawn. Astrid shoved the soccer star behind her. I had the oddest impression that she was more concerned about the boy’s safety than about keeping her quarry. If I could tell these men were unskilled with firearms, Astrid could too.

  She crossed her arms and stood there for a long moment. It was a silent exchange, consisting only of Astrid tipping her head to the side. The men crouched to set their guns on the ground in front of them and kicked them away across the sidewalk. When they straightened, their eyes were vacant and glassy.

  Astrid gave a sad smile, as if disappointed it had been so easy. Her eyes searched the walls and doors of the stadium, looking for anyone else lurking to attack her.

  “Don’t even think about moving,” Tuck whispered, pulling me tight against him. “No fighting. You promised. Plus if she sees us, no way she’ll let us follow her.”

  I nodded, refusing to be distracted by how Tuck’s arms curled around me, fitting into place as if carved from scratch just for me, or by every inch of his chest pressed against mine.

  “Let’s go,” he mouthed, just as I couldn’t help but wonder what he’d do if I let my arms wrap around him too.

  The screech of the Range Rover’s tires filled me with shame. How could I think of anything but Graham at a time like this? Tucker Halloway was a walking, talking broken heart, and I was a selfish monster.

  Fortunately, Tuck’s arm fell away, removing the temptation.

  “Get in.” Tuck was already buckled into the driver’s seat by the time I scrambled around to the passenger door. The Range Rover had disappeared around a corner, but Tuck’s face was tense with steely determination.

  My head knocked the ceiling as he slammed the gas and the car lurched over a curb.

  “Seatbelt,” he said without even glancing at me.

  The Range Rover was already out of sight, but when I concentrated hard, I could hear its heavily treaded tires on the pavement and smell the exhaust snaking from its tailpipe.

  My new Valkyrie talents made me half bloodhound.

  Tuck was driving race-car fast, weaving in between cars without really looking at them. He narrowly missed a telephone pole as he cut a corner, and the car skidded three feet to the left. It was incredible that Tuck could pick up Astrid’s trail when I was still freaked out that I could. At least I had an explanation.

  “How do you know where you’re going?” I finally asked, gr
ipping the seat with my fingers. Like that would make any difference if we crashed at that speed.

  He was silent for a long moment, and I thought his concentration was so complete that he hadn’t heard me. But finally he said, “I don’t know. I just do.”

  Normally I wouldn’t let that answer slide, but my head smacked against the window again as he accelerated onto the freeway. It was best to let him focus on the road.

  As we sped past a red delivery truck, I caught my first glimpse of the Range Rover in the distance. It popped into view for a second; the massive roll bars welded to the roof made it easy to spot. We kept it in our sights, driving with a grim determination.

  Both of us knew we could be headed anywhere—including right into the open arms of a trap. I, for one, was ready for anything. And I recognized Tuck’s game face in his narrowed eyes and the muscle that twitched in the corner of his jaw. It was a look of lethal concentration.

  Time passed in silence, punctuated by whispers whenever Astrid changed lanes or sped up, as if she would hear our voices if they drifted above the roar of the engine.

  It didn’t take very long to figure out we were heading back toward Skavøpoll. After everything that had happened in that town over the last few days, I was hardly eager to get within ten miles of it. And I wasn’t just worried about Astrid and the gang. Kjell’s friends would probably kill me on sight.

  But sure enough, the Range Rover took the exit for Skavøpoll. My skin tingled with anticipation, because it couldn’t be a coincidence when there were so many other exits to choose from. Astrid knew we were following her.

  The massive SUV slowed to a crawl as it entered the outskirts of town.

  I rolled down my window and could taste the bitter, metallic edge of fear in the air, mingled with the scent of pine needles in the forest. The streets were deserted except for one solitary mountain goat that had seized this opportunity to raid the recycling bin in front of the hardware store.

  Every shop and restaurant was closed, and corrugated metal gates shielded the doors, as if Skavøpoll was bracing for a siege. Regular closing hours weren’t for two hours; the lockdown had everything to do with the recent rash of disappearances.

  In the center of town, the Range Rover accelerated. The trawlers and fishing sheds were a frenzy of muted colors outside my window. It was a good thing the streets were deserted, because there’d be no stopping for pedestrians at that speed.

  The mountain road on the far side of town was lined with manicured grass and a low wooden fence along one side that kept livestock out of the street. But as we passed the last storefront, something strange started to happen—the world as it should have been disappeared and was replaced with a glimpse of an older forest. Dirt and shrubs materialized underneath our tires, replacing the pavement. But only for an instant before we were back on the road as I knew it.

  The car window was like a television switching back and forth between two channels, these two different vistas. Another world and another road slipped into view, parallel to the path we were traveling. And Astrid’s tires were planted squarely on the hidden one. We glimpsed her Range Rover in flashes as it disappeared. There was a tangible distance between the two worlds; wherever Astrid was going, I knew we couldn’t follow. I could feel her slipping away

  “She’s still in view,” Tuck said, sliding his hand over mine. “We can still catch her.”

  I’d assumed I was alone in this hallucination, so Tuck’s words surprised me. And gave me courage—like he always did.

  The pavement narrowed into what could barely be considered one full lane. I wanted to close my eyes and crawl under the seat—one wrong move would send us hurtling down into a ravine. We were hemmed in by a solid wall of rock on one side and a hundred-foot drop down the mountain on the other. The road twisted uphill so tightly, we couldn’t see more than five feet of road in front of us, but we could see the free fall down the cliff to the left that awaited us if Tuck made even the smallest mistake.

  Up ahead, just beyond a sharp curve, I could sense something moving toward us at a breakneck pace. The warning was still forming on my lips when a wall of water tumbled down from the side of the mountain and slammed into the side of the car. We stopped moving, wrapped in the arms of a waterfall. The onslaught was relentless, battering the car and knocking it sideways, inch by inch. Closer and closer to the edge of the road.

  “Go,” I shouted. “Get us out of here.”

  But Tuck was already doing everything he could, pumping the gas pedal, trying to rouse the car back to life. The engine stalled, flooded with water. Metal groaned as the car shifted toward the edge. It was another inch we couldn’t afford to lose.

  “We’re trapped,” I said, pushing as hard as I could against my door. It was our only exit. Even if Tuck managed to open his door, there was nothing but empty space below. We were teetering over the drop-off.

  The force of the water pushed against my door, pinning it shut, but I kicked and shoved and slowly made enough room to squeeze myself through the opening. Once I had half my body outside, I pressed off from the side of the car with all of my strength, bending the door backward until the hinges snapped and it was stuck that way. I stood for a moment, stunned by my own strength.

  Jaws of life, eat your heart out.

  Water poured through the open door, flooding the inside. The added weight made the car tip precariously on its side, rocking toward the ravine.

  Tuck was struggling to pull himself out, so I anchored myself against the side of the car with one hand and grabbed his shoulder with the other, towing him against the current. Then we dragged ourselves along, using the side of the car like a rope. We’d barely cleared the spray when the car flipped onto its side and slid slowly over the edge. It fell so silently, cushioned and carried away on the envelope of water, that I almost didn’t believe my eyes. I ran to the edge and watched as my grandmother’s fuel-efficient European sedan fell through the air, so graceful it was almost floating. Until it toppled three pine trees at the bottom of the ravine and sent a shattering crash echoing against the surrounding cliffs.

  Tuck was standing in the middle of the road, wringing out his sweatshirt. Like that would make any difference when the rest of his clothes were every bit as sopped. “You don’t give a guy much of a shot at dignity,” he said as he stretched the neck of his T-shirt to reveal a row of hand-shaped bruises.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I guess I didn’t realize my own strength. You know—adrenaline.”

  “Adrenaline? Don’t sell yourself short. Believe me, Ells, my ego is not at all threatened.” He shot me one of his private smiles. “Remember what I said about danger, all those years ago—back on the fishing boat?”

  Even though my clothes were soaked through and freezing, I felt warm at that particular memory.

  “What you did back there? Hot.” He shook his hair like a wet dog. “And since you’ve got such superhuman strength, how about a piggyback to Skavøpoll? It’s gotta be ten miles. And something tells me there won’t be a car along here for a while.”

  He was right. We were stranded on a rickety old road that looked like even the mountain goats had forsaken it.

  “Can you do that?” Tuck pointed at the waterfall, since once he got started he simply couldn’t stop. “Because a waterfall could do wonders for our neighborhood. Maybe when we get home you can make landscaping history.”

  “That wasn’t Astrid. That was older magic,” I said, amazed that Tuck truly could make light of anything—including a near-death experience.

  My thoughts were still stuck on the way the second road seemed to hover just out of reach. It was leading someplace else, and I would wager the rush of water was one of many surprises that lay in wait if we tried to follow Astrid again. “She led us into a trap. I think this is the way to Valhalla.”

  Tuck’s whole posture changed at that, all traces of playfulness evaporating on contact. “Let’s go, then.” There was urgency in his voice as he turned back in the di
rection we’d been heading. “This is what we’ve been hoping for.” He glanced back at me, eyebrows furrowing in frustration when I shook my head and didn’t budge.

  “It’s not that simple,” I said. “I know the pathway is here, I just don’t know how to find it. We could spend forever searching for it. Astrid’s not going to appear again on this roadside with an engraved invitation—we need to go back to town to have any chance of finding her. Plus I don’t think it’s safe to loiter around here. I doubt the waterfall was the end of it.” My limbs were still jittery; while adrenaline would readily explain it, I couldn’t dismiss the possibility that there were other dangers in store for trespassers.

  “You want to just leave?” Tuck demanded. “When we’re so close to finding Graham?”

  “We’re not,” I said softly. “Finding the road is one more thing I can’t do unless I’m a full Valkyrie. Which means …”

  I have to fight one of them. I finished the thought silently.

  I looked up, and Tuck was watching me. Waiting for the words that had frozen on my lips. “Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “It just means we’re back to square one.”

  Tuck’s eyes hardened. He knew the second half of what I’d been about to say. Because there was only one way to follow Astrid up this road to wherever they were keeping Graham. Everything was steering me toward the same ultimate conclusion. I had to fight a Valkyrie and win. Victory lights the road to Valhalla, my grandmother had written. You must beat one of us before you can join us.

  And I had every intention of doing just that.

  “We should start walking,” I said, forcing my tone to stay light. “And by that I mean both of us. No piggybacks for all-state athletes.”

  “I don’t like it,” he said. “There’s got to be another way.”

  “Sorry, Tuck,” I said. “I’m afraid you’ll just have to walk.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he told me, shooting a not-so-friendly look from the corner of his eye.

  We lapsed into silence as we trudged down the winding road, back toward town. Oddly enough, even though we didn’t say a word out loud, it felt as if the argument raged on between us. Each of us had to decide on our own how much we were and were not willing to sacrifice to save Graham and the others. And as I realized that, all I could think about was how this time, when it was clear I was planning to fight Astrid, Tuck hadn’t said he’d stand in my way.