Descendant
( Starling - 2 )
Lesley Livingston
The last thing Mason Starling remembers is the train crossing a bridge. An explosion … a blinding light … then darkness. Now she is alone, stranded in Asgard—the realm of Norse legend—and the only way for her to get home is to find the Spear of Odin, a powerful relic left behind by vanished gods.
The Fennrys Wolf knows all about Asgard. He was once trapped there. And he’ll do whatever it takes to find the girl who’s stolen his heart and bring her back—even if it means a treacherous descent into the Underworld. But time is running out, and Fenn knows something Mason doesn’t: If she takes up the Spear, she’ll set in motion a terrible prophecy. And she won’t just return to her world … she’ll destroy it.
In this pulse-pounding sequel to Starling, Lesley Livingston delivers another electrifying blend of nonstop action and undeniable romance that will leave readers breathless.
Descendant
Starling - 2
by
Lesley Livingstone
For Janna and Dayln
I
M ason …
The Fennrys Wolf stared up into the night as smoke and flaming debris drifted down around him, burning embers falling through the dark sky above the shattered remains of the bridge that had been called Hell Gate.
That night, the bridge had lived up to its name, in more ways than one.
Gone. She’s gone… .
The breath heaved raggedly in and out of Fennrys’s lungs, and the front of his shirt was painted crimson from the bullet wound in his shoulder. His head was beginning to fill with white noise. But all he could do was stand there, looking up. Searching in vain for the raven-haired girl who had disappeared into the night … across the bridge and out of the mortal realm.
It felt like she’d torn his heart out and taken it with her.
Mason …
The Hell Gate’s entire middle section, which had once spanned New York’s East River from Manhattan to Queens, was missing—the result of the massive explosion. Acrid smoke still billowed into the sky, and chunks of burning bridge lay scattered all over Wards Island. Fennrys and Rafe had only just made it down one of the Hell Gate’s spindly maintenance ladders, and they could now hear the sirens screaming in the night.
In the sky overhead, lightning flashed from the dark underbellies of roiling thunderclouds. With any luck—and luck had been in drastically short supply for Fennrys so far that night—the lowering storm would at least keep the police helicopters out of the air. The last thing they needed was for a chopper searchlight to pick them out of the gloom and send NYPD SWAT teams to investigate.
As he slumped against a concrete buttress, Fennrys’s gaze drifted over to where Rafe now stood hunched, breathing heavily, his hands on his knees. The ancient Egyptian god of the dead had half carried, half dragged the wounded Fennrys down off the Hell Gate, south along the shore of Wards Island, and into concealing shadows beneath the Triborough Bridge. He was justifiably winded. But at least that was the extent of his physical distress. Rafe walked over and knelt beside Fenn to examine his shoulder.
“Man …” He shook his head as he pulled the blood-soaked material to the side. “Remember when I said you looked like nine miles of bad road? You’re into double digits now.”
Under the circumstances, Fennrys wasn’t about to argue with him. All things considered, this night had already gone from bad to catastrophic in just a few short minutes.
What comes after catastrophic? he wondered distantly.
Not that the sensation was necessarily unfamiliar to him. He ignored it and focused, instead, on the next task. If he stopped for even a second to think about what had just happened … about what he’d just lost …
“The bullet is lodged in your shoulder. You know we’re going to have to find a way to get that out, right?” Rafe’s voice sounded very far away. “And soon. Or you’ll be dead before dawn.”
Somehow, Fennrys managed to force the shadow of a grin onto his face. “You’re forgetting something,” he said in a voice that sounded like gravel and broken glass in his own ears. “I’m already dead.”
“You’ll be deader,” Rafe snapped, clearly unmoved by his companion’s grim bravado. “I should know.” Rafe left him there to walk the few steps to the waterline, where he peered out over the black expanse of the river. “Where is that damned boat?”
Boat? What boat?
Then suddenly, something shot out of the middle of the dark waters. Round and glossy black, it landed at their feet with a dull, hollow thud, scattering gravel. Rafe bent down to pick it up.
It was a motorcycle helmet.
The very same helmet Calum Aristarchos had been wearing when he and Fennrys had chased down a train on the Hell Gate Bridge. The clear plastic face shield was spiderwebbed with cracks, and the left side of the helmet was broken open and streaked with rust-colored paint that looked like blood. Rafe turned it over. The nylon chin strap had been torn away on one side. His dark eyes narrowed, and he swore under his breath.
Out in the river, the ink-black water rippled and frothed. Poison-green streaks of light shimmered and writhed beneath the surface, moving toward them—fast—and a creature of nightmare rose up out of the waves.
Fenn squinted into the darkness at the monstrosity heaving its way up the rocky strip of shoreline toward them. From the waist up, the impossible creature was a naked, beautiful woman. Beautiful until the moment she smiled. As she clawed her way up out of the river, her crimson lips peeled back to reveal a mouth full of teeth like knives. From the waist down, two serpent’s tails—sprouting from where her legs should have been—whipsawed across the rocks, scattering pebbles in their scaly wake. A trio of hideous creatures—Fennrys could only think of them as dog-sharks—were tethered on leashes, attached to an ornate, heavy belt that girdled her waist. They swam through the air as if it was the ocean depths, snapping their massive, malformed jaws.
Rafe stepped in front of Fennrys, putting out a hand to steady him. “Back off, Scylla,” he said, his voice lowering almost to a subsonic growl. The air shuddered with the thunder of it.
Scylla? Fennrys thought. Is that the Scylla? You’ve got to be kidding me… .
He knew that the jut of land where they now stood was part of a park called Scylla Point, named by some overly clever parks commissioner in the eighties to correspond with a children’s playground in Astoria Park, directly across on the other side of the East River, named Charybdis. Fenn had always thought naming a place where kids played after a pair of hideous, man-eating monsters out of Greek mythology was in poor taste. He never figured it might also be prophetic.
New York, New York … it’s a helluva town.
More and more lately, it seemed.
But it was his town. And Mason’s. And Fennrys didn’t have time for this. He needed to find her—wherever she’d gone—and get her back. That was what Rafe had promised him they would do.
“Look. We don’t want any trouble,” Rafe said, handing Fennrys the broken helmet and stepping between him and Scylla. “We just—”
“You’ve been naughty boys,” the monstrosity purred, nodding at Cal’s helmet. “The daughters of Nereus are very angry. You broke their favorite plaything. They sent me to punish you.”
“What in hell is she talking about?” Fennrys looked down at the cracked plastic face shield. “Does she mean Calum?”
“That wasn’t our fault,” Rafe said, ignoring Fenn for the moment. “And the Nereids shouldn’t have been messing around with that Aristarchos kid in the first place. You know that as well as I do.”
“Fair game, I say. Just like your friend there.” She nodded at Fennrys. “Your soon-to-be-dead friend.”
Fennrys couldn’t take his eyes off the battered helmet. Cal must have ditched the bike after Fenn had made his leap from the passenger seat onto the train where Mason was being held by her brother. Fenn hadn’t seen what had happened to Cal after he’d jumped. He’d assumed that the kid had been fine.
A fresh wave of pain washed over Fennrys that had nothing to do with his injuries. He hadn’t wanted this. Nothing even close. Sure the kid was annoying. Arrogant, hot-tempered, way too good-looking and clearly achingly in love with Mason Starling. A rival for her affections? Sure, maybe … But Fenn hadn’t wanted Cal hurt. Or worse.
“What happened?” he asked Rafe.
Rafe lifted a shoulder, not taking his eyes off Scylla as she circled around to block their path. “I don’t know. He lost control. Not sure why. Bike pitched him into one of the girders like he’d been shot from a catapult, and he dropped like a stone into the river. Then the bridge blew all to hell.”
Scylla tsk-tsked and shook a taloned finger at them.
“Naughty,” she said again, and licked her lips. “I’ve been sent to make you pay. Blood for blood.”
“I said back off, Scylla,” Rafe snarled. “Or this won’t end well.”
Scylla hissed. “You may be a god, Dead Dog, but this one is merely mortal. I see how he bleeds. I can smell it. And I will taste his flesh.”
“Only when I punch you in the mouth,” Fennrys said.
Scylla’s hideous grin stretched wide in anticipation.
The dog-sharks snapped viciously and strained at their spiked collars, teeth gnashing. Through a haze of pain and anger, Fennrys decided enough was enough. He stepped forward and bashed one of the slavering things over the head with Cal’s helmet. He seized another by the throat and, wrapping his good arm around its head, snapped its thick, ugly neck. Scylla howled in fury as the second dog-shark dropped to the ground.
“Really not one for diplomacy, are you?” Rafe muttered. “You’re gonna have to fight a sea monster now. You know that, right?”
“I was counting on it.”
Enraged, Scylla dug her taloned fingers into the rock-strewn ground and dragged herself farther up the shore. She was gnashing her teeth now so violently that she drew blood from her own lips, and foaming crimson spit flew in a circle as she furiously shook her head.
Fennrys felt a familiar, savage joy welling up inside of him.
This is what I was born for.
The fight, the kill … this was his destiny. He realized that now, beyond the shadows of unknowing that had clouded his mind for weeks. Ever since he’d returned to the mortal realm without his memories. But now that he had those back, and understood where—and from what—he had come, he felt no hesitation giving in to the red, ravaging surge of terrible, storm-bright battle madness that boiled deep within him. As he faced the monster, Fennrys’s rage rose to sweep every other sensation aside except the driving need to kill.
The pain of his wounds, the pain of losing Mason Starling—the girl who had become so very precious to him in such a short time—only served to feed his fury.
“The only thing that’s going to make this day any better is ridding the world of something as ugly as you,” he snarled at Scylla, and lunged for the last of her hideous pets.
He seized the thing’s jaws, top and bottom, and wrenched them apart with a sickening, tearing sound. But Fennrys wasn’t quite so lucky this time. The venomous spines of the thing’s dorsal fins whipped around as it writhed in its death throes and slashed him across the rib cage, tearing his shirt into bloody strips. He barely felt the toxin’s searing kiss. The acid-sweet seduction of his Viking rage lowered like a thick, crimson fog and he reached around to the small of his back, to where he kept a large, keenly honed dagger concealed in a sheath beneath his shirt.
He darted and feinted, but with the bullet lodged in his left shoulder, Fenn had only one fully functioning arm. His thrusts were slow and off target. Scylla’s long, ropy limbs scythed through the air, and her serpent’s tails carried her with ungainly swiftness. One misstep and Scylla could wrap him in her coils and pull him in tight.
Well, Fennrys thought, why not?
He ducked in low, darting past her grasping, claw-tipped hands … and stopped. Instantly, the monstrous tails whipped up and wrapped around him, drawing him close in a deadly embrace. The vise of her serpentine limbs constricted and she smiled her ghastly smile, jaws opened wide. As she did, Fennrys lunged, and—as he’d promised—punched Scylla right in the mouth, with the fist that held his dagger.
Fennrys drove the knife blade straight past her teeth, smashed through the roof of her mouth, and buried it to the hilt in the creature’s vile brain. In her final convulsions, Scylla’s teeth clamped down on Fenn’s arm. The monster went stiff and toppled over backward, taking Fennrys with her, and the two combatants collapsed on the ground in a tangle of blood and body parts. Fennrys lay there gasping, his fist still firmly wedged inside the sea monster’s mouth. After Scylla finally stopped twitching, Rafe walked over to stand by Fennrys’s head, looking down.
“You killed a sea monster,” Rafe said. “Now that … is fairly damn impressive.”
Fennrys turned his head so he could look up at the ancient Egyptian werewolf death god. “Something good had to come out of this night,” he said in a voice scraped thin by exhaustion.
“It was also disgusting,” Rafe continued. “And brave … and kinda stupid.”
“Uh-huh,” Fenn grunted, his chest heaving.
“And you’re stuck.” Rafe gestured at where Fenn’s limb was trapped. Scylla’s teeth were angled backward like barbs. If Fennrys tried to pull his arm free, he would shred every inch of flesh from his bones. “What, exactly, are you gonna do now?”
“Dunno. Little help, maybe?”
Fenn’s vision was beginning to tunnel. He hadn’t, he supposed, really thought this one through completely. Rafe smiled grimly and flicked his wrist, conjuring a long, coppery-colored blade out of thin air, and raised it over Fennrys’s arm.
“Right,” he said, a gleam in his eye. “I guess that’s gotta come off.”
The blade slashed down and Fennrys shouted a ragged protest, bracing himself for the searing explosion of pain that would come as Rafe hacked through his arm. But the blade hit its mark less than a quarter of an inch below Fenn’s trapped limb, slicing neatly through the dead Scylla’s neck. Her spinal column severed, Rafe reached around behind her head and jammed his fingers into a divot beneath the skull. The creature’s jaws popped open like the trunk of a car and Fennrys pulled his arm free, leaving his blade buried deep in Scylla’s brain.
He staggered to his feet, right arm stinging, left arm utterly useless from the bullet wound. Funny. He’d been so busy fighting an immortal sea monster of ancient legend, he’d almost forgotten about the mere mortal who’d tried to kill him earlier that evening. He glared at the horrifying creature who now lay dead at his feet, knowing that Rory Starling was still alive.
“Immortality isn’t what it used to be,” Fenn muttered as his legs threatened to give out.
“It really isn’t,” Rafe agreed, propping Fennrys up.
In the distance, Fennrys heard the quiet coughing of a small outboard motor. He looked up to see an old, aluminum-sided fishing boat gliding out of the darkness, piloted by a spare, hunched man with coffee-brown skin and a long silver goatee, dressed in a tattered gray rain slicker. The ember on his cigarette glowed like a tiny red beacon in the gloom. The boat bumped and grated to a halt on the rocky shingle of the beach, and with Rafe’s help, Fennrys dragged himself out knee-deep into the cold, oily water.
“He’s not quite dead yet,” said the sailor as Fenn half fell into the boat.
“No, he’s not dead—at least not this time—and he’s not going to die, either,” Rafe said irritably. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”
“Goin’ soft, boss?” the man asked, taking a drag on his smoke.
“Shut up, Aken.” Rafe grabbed onto t
he prow of the little craft and heaved it back toward deeper water before throwing a leg over the side and climbing in. “This is just a cab ride tonight. Not a final journey.”
“Highly irregular.” The boatman shook his head, regarding Fennrys skeptically. “Can he pay?”
“This one’s on me.” Rafe grinned coldly. “Get us to where we’re going before he dies and I’ll knock a week’s worth off your bar tab.”
Aken brightened considerably at the offer and revved the little engine.
His bar tab, Fenn thought distantly, must have been significant.
Wonder what I’ll wind up owing when all this is over… .
“Where to, boss?” Aken asked.
And then a dense, shimmering fog descended, and Fennrys’s last coherent thought was a memory—the image of Mason, standing on top of the train car, her black hair spread out like wings, her sword hanging at her side, both hands reaching out to him as the brightness of the Bifrost bridge portal swallowed her in light.
Gone …
She was gone.
Across the bridge …
II
“You can’t go across the bridge. Bad things will happen. Do you understand?” The words echoed in Mason’s head. Where had she heard that? When?
Bad things …
“Hello, Mason. Welcome to Hel.”
Nightmare. I have nightmares all the time. This is just another one of those.
Wake up, Mase. Wake the hell up!
“I’m your mother and I’ve been waiting for you.”
And in that moment, Mason knew it was no dream.
My mother … ?
The dark-haired woman reached toward Mason but stopped short of embracing her. Instead, she plucked up the iron medallion that hung on a braided leather cord around Mason’s neck. Fenn’s medallion. A talisman that he’d promised would keep her safe. Bring her luck.
Fennrys …
“So. He failed … and now you are here.”
“I don’t know where here is,” Mason said.
I don’t know who you are… .
“It doesn’t matter. You have to leave,” the woman said. “At once.”
Descendant s-2 Page 1
