I looked down, unable to meet Val’s gaze as I processed his question. I understood his reasoning, and he presented a solid argument. I still wanted Val to be the man I thought he was before I came here, the guy who was there for me when my brother no longer could be. Did the past week – his reticence to tell me the truth, his deceitfulness – erase all of that? These waters between Val and me were unfamiliar and murky, and I didn’t know how to proceed.
“You would have pushed me away,” Val said. “You would think I was crazy. You would have gone back home where you would have been easy to pick off, and I couldn’t let that happen. Not again.” Val’s breath brushed over my face as he leaned in closer. His nearness was intoxicating. I wanted to believe him. So very badly, I wanted to believe him, and I wanted to stop feeling so damned lonely all the time. “I am here for you.” Val’s mouth laid a humid path along my jaw to my ear. “Nothing about my dedication to you and Mani has changed.”
My eyes slid shut, and I let my head loll. Val caught it, knotting his fingers into my hair. “Solina?” Val rubbed his lips over mine as he said my name.
“Hmm?”
“Let me stay.”
I was inhaling a breath to answer when the door burst open and Thorin blew into the room. His gaze fell on us, and the air pressure dropped, my ears popped, and thunder rumbled in the distance. But in the next instant, Thorin recovered and swallowed his emotions so fast I doubted having seen them in the first place. I brushed condensation from my skin and told myself I’d imagined the thunder.
“What do you want?” Val asked.
Thorin looked at me. “Baldur wants you, Solina.”
Val growled and tore himself away, stalking toward Thorin, hands clenched at his sides. “Tell him to go back to his cave. He can’t ignore us for eons and then show up here and start making demands. And since when have you been anyone’s errand boy?”
“My family has always been the Allfather’s right hand, his fist. His might and strength in battle and his support and counsel in peace.” Disdain and cool superiority radiated from Thorin as he spoke. “Nothing has changed. We all swore to serve him.”
Might and strength, indeed. But where does Val fit in this hierarchy? Somewhere lower, I supposed—in a position that had generated a lot of animosity over the years between these two.
“Not me,” Val said. “Not ever.”
“I was there, Val. You vowed, and none of us have forgotten.”
Val and Thorin stepped closer to each other, close enough to take a swing, should one of them decide to make his point with a fist instead of words. Maybe it was a stupid thing to do, but I slipped between the two men and pushed against their chests as if I expected to have any physical effect on them. I might as well have tried to push apart the pillars at Stonehenge. “Guys, let’s calm down for a second. This is my decision. I go where I want, when I want.” I looked at Thorin. “Unless you have some reason to convince me otherwise, I am not interested in going anywhere with you and Baldur tonight. Whatever we decide to do next, it can wait until the morning.”
Thorin dropped his gaze from Val to me, showing the blackness that lingered there. “Your love affair with Val has given you a narrow vision. What do you think your brother would say?”
Without a second’s hesitation, I balled my fist and smashed it into Thorin’s ribs. If he flinched, I didn’t see it, and in return I gained a set of bruised knuckles. I grimaced and shook my hand, attempting to shake away the pain. A glint of humor lit Thorin’s eye. I would have slapped him if I thought it would do any good, but my hand was already sore enough, and Thorin didn’t need another reason to laugh at me. Instead, I spun on my heel and marched toward the bedroom. “Go to hell,” I said. “That’s what Mani would say.”
I slammed the door behind me and turned the lock, though I doubted the flimsy wood could keep out the two demigods on the other side if they decided they wanted in. I pressed my ear against the door and listened for what might happen next, in case I needed to try to make an escape through the window.
“I think you won’t be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize this year,” Val said, his tone bitter and cold. “Your diplomacy skills suck.”
If Thorin replied, I didn’t hear him. After a few moments of silence, chairs scraped across the floor, heavy footsteps came and went, doors opened and closed, and the TV came on in the living room. Someone had decided to stay and keep me company. I wondered who, but I wasn’t going to open the door to find out.
If it was Val, he would try to seduce his way into my bed, and that man was a smooth talker. Cleared of my previous dose of lust, I remembered I didn’t trust Val, or any of them, and a little physical pleasure was no compensation for a broken heart. I am not a person to keep the two separate.
If Thorin waited on the other side of the door, however, then it was best to stay away for both our sakes and for the security of the apartment and the store beneath. If I had to see him again before the morning, I might send us all up in a ball of flame.
Chapter Twenty-three
I took a deep breath and tried to push down the gloat swelling in my chest when I peeked out of my door in the morning to find Val, Thorin, and Baldur had all spent the night in the apartment. I had put my foot down and bent three ancient heroes to my will. Thorin even condescended to make a pot of coffee. Suck on that, Wonder Woman.
From his seat on the couch in the living room, Val watched me ease out of my room and head into the kitchen, following the smell of fresh java. At the kitchen table, Baldur sat holding his head in his hands, his mood not much improved from the previous evening. Thorin sat beside him, silently watching me as I moved around the kitchen, getting a mug, finding the creamer. The physical separation between the three, Val by himself and Thorin and Baldur in here together, evidenced a division in the ranks.
Baldur looked up when I pulled out a seat across from his. “Good morning, Sol.”
“Solina,” I said. “I was born twenty-five years ago. My mother and father live in the foothills of North Carolina. It’s a nice place. You should visit sometime. I have pictures of me with them the day I was born, in a hospital, from mortal parents. No magic, no hocus-pocus. If that is true, then how can I be an ancient goddess?” It’s not that I didn’t accept the things Baldur said—there was too much supporting evidence to deny it. But I didn’t understand the fundamentals of it. The physiology. How could I be Sol and not know anything about her at the same time?
“Sol’s spirit lay dormant for a very long time until it manifested in you. You are her in many ways.”
“I bleed, I age, and I will die someday. Hopefully later rather than sooner. I am a baker by trade and a sister seeking justice for her brother. Up until this week, I have been, with some exceptions, an extremely normal girl.” Thorin snorted and rocked back in his chair. I tried not to care whether the snort meant something derogatory. “Am I not the same Solina I was a week ago?”
“You are mortal in a sense,” Baldur agreed. “You are right that you will age and pass away. But the god in you will continue on, waiting for the moment of rebirth.”
“How do you know this?”
Baldur shrugged. “I see it all around you. It’s in your essence. Besides, it has happened that way before.”
I gave him a hard stare, and he frowned. “I haven’t had nearly enough caffeine for this conversation,” I said, getting to my feet.
I stalked into the living room and plopped onto the sofa next to Val. Deep undertones of Thorin and Baldur’s voices carried into the living room, but I couldn’t make out their discussion, nor did I want to. Val was engrossed in a news show on TV, but he scooted over to put his arm around me and motioned to my coffee cup. Apparently none of what went down last night had fazed him. “Where’s mine?”
“In the kitchen.”
Val stuck out his bottom lip and made sad puppy eyes at me, pleading for me to fetch one for him.
“I’m not going back in there until people start making sense.
”
Val laughed. “So, I guess you’ll be taking your meals out here from now on.”
“It’s not that I don’t accept it. It’s just that I have twenty-some years of hardwiring to overcome. I have always taken for granted it’s man on his earth, God in his heaven, sun in the blue sky, moon in the black. Now I have to scrub all that and allow that gods walk the earth and immortality exists, here, on this plane.”
“You’re handling it exceptionally well,” Val said.
“The hardest thing of all to accept is that I have a place in it. I am part of this strangeness, and I never knew. I still feel like the old me.”
“Even though you can flick your own Bic?” Val smiled, and I leaned into him, letting his body heat envelop me. He smelled male and a little stale, but not so much as to turn me away.
“Sunshine,” Thorin barked. I jumped, and Val responded by tightening his arm around me.
“What?” I said in an equally harsh tone.
“Pack up. We’re going on another road trip.”
“You know how this works,” I called back to him. “Information first. Then I make a decision based on whether or not you make a good point. That’s generally how it works in my world. It’s called courtesy and respect, and it’s kind of nice. You should try it some time.”
Thorin walked into the room and made a theatrical display of arranging his features and posture into a pleasant, harmless expression. He batted his eyelashes and said, in a syrupy sweet tone that conflicted with his deep rumble, “Miss Mundy, may I request the pleasure of your company on a trip to Las Vegas where I expect to locate Helen Locke again? I have questions that didn’t get answered last time we met, and I’m not going to sit around, waiting for her to make the next move. I also am not willing to leave you here without my protection.”
“See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?” I said. “Can Skyla come with?”
I sensed more than heard Thorin’s groan. “Call her. If she can be here in fifteen minutes, she can go.”
“How do I pack? I don’t have clothes for Vegas.”
“You can use my credit card when we get there.”
I raised an eyebrow and glanced at Val. “Vegas, huh?”
Val smiled, but it lacked sincerity. “Sin city. My kind of place.”
Ten minutes later Skyla was at the apartment with her bags packed and ready to go.
“How did you do that?” I asked, watching her load her duffle into the back of Thorin’s Range Rover.
“Marine, remember? I’m always prepared.”
“I thought that was a Boy Scout thing.”
Skyla’s lips twitched. “I was one of those, too.”
“A Girl Scout, you mean?”
“No, a Boy Scout. My mother was pack leader for my brother, and I threw a hissy fit when they tried to keep me out and make me wear those stupid green uniforms like the other girls. Mom gave in and let me do pack stuff with the boys, but it was mostly unofficial.”
I shook my head. “Why does that not surprise me?”
I dreaded the thought of riding crammed together all the way from Alaska to Nevada, but Thorin assured us we were only going as far as Anchorage. From there he had chartered a private flight. Private planes were not for people like me. They were for celebrities, politicians, and millionaires. And immortal gods, apparently.
“Val?” I said as he slid in beside me on the bench seat in the back of Thorin’s SUV. Skyla sat on my other side; I got the “hump” seat like a little kid. “Why do you live like a college rat with Hugh and Joe? Couldn’t you have a place of your own?”
Something serious and unpleasant darkened Val’s mood. “I’ve lived in palaces. It wasn’t all that great.”
I turned to Skyla to get her reaction. Her eyes were huge and her mouth had fallen slightly open, but she wouldn’t deign to have a civilized conversation with Val if she could help it.
Val’s voice dropped so only I could hear him. “And I’ve spent more years alone than I ever care to count.”
I cursed myself for being a sucker for emotional vulnerability, but Val probably knew that and had used it to his benefit more than once. But if he could exploit my weaknesses, then it was only fair for me to do the same to him in return. In the time I had known him, Val demonstrated only a few weaknesses, susceptibilities—the biggest one being his libido. I had almost no experience with seduction, but even my limited knowledge suggested it didn’t take much: a little persuasion and the right set of body parts.
I shook my head, tossing off Val’s spell and my own cynicism, and met Thorin’s eyes in the rearview mirror. They were browner today. The rage that had filled them the night before had receded, and he kept his feelings carefully masked. Thorin held my gaze until he had to look away to check his steering. A moment later the radio came on, tuned to a rock station that drowned out the road noise.
“What do you know of this Baldur guy?” I whispered to Skyla. “He shows up and we go running off on Mission Impossible to recover his wife. Are we nuts?”
“He’s one of the good guys,” Skyla said. “If such a thing exists in their world.”
“Where has he been all this time? Val said last night he’s been gone for eons.”
“How should I know? He lived in some godly realm in the old days, but I’m not sure that place exists anymore. Baldur was supposed to be the new Odin, the Allfather, but I think the independence and individuality of humanity and the advent of Christianity left the old gods pretty much obsolete. They’ve sort of faded into the background.”
“Except someone is trying to change that,” I said as the logic of Skyla’s theories sank in. “Someone doesn’t want to be so obsolete anymore.”
“Someone who does not want to quietly fade into obscurity,” Baldur said as he peered around the edge of his seat, a sad smile upon his exquisite face. My breath seized for a moment as I was overwhelmed by his extreme etherealness. By comparison, the patina of godhood had diminished on Thorin—and Val especially—maybe because they spent so much time immersed in the human world. “The ladies’ theories are sound,” Baldur said. “The world is forgetting us, our powers are mere whispers, but we do not die—we cannot.”
Val grumbled under his breath. “Some of us accept that more willingly than others.”
Baldur heard him anyway. “You speak truth, brother. I am afraid I have been far too willing to surrender to the inertia of a long-lived life.”
“But maybe Helen isn’t?” I asked.
“Helen doesn’t go gentle into anything,” Val said, sounding appreciative.
I curled my fingers into a fist but resisted the urge to punch him. “But if she killed my brother, and then me, will that necessarily bring around another apocalypse?”
“Assuming Helen is behind this,” Thorin said, “she can only plan based on what happened last time. If it worked before, it might work again.”
“But why? What does it gain her?”
“Think about it,” Skyla said. “No one worships Norse gods anymore.” She shrugged in apology for her apathy. “They’re hiding out in obscurity in a small town in Alaska. Or they’re trying to make a way for themselves in the corporate world built by humans. How much resentment must she harbor for having to abide by men’s rules when she used to be one of the world’s original architects? In fact, I suspect you are all harboring a bit of repressed hostility.”
Val grunted. “Not so repressed.”
Skyla nodded as if Val’s response validated her hypothesis. “What would a second apocalypse do? Wipe the slate clean. Let her start over. This time she could make the world any way she wanted.”
“If she survived,” Thorin said. “That’s questionable. Most did not survive the last time.”
“Something tells me it’s a chance she’s willing to take,” I said.
“We still don’t know for sure it’s her,” Thorin said.
“You got any other likely candidates?”
Skyla answered first. “Helen, or Hela, wa
s the daughter of Loki. He didn’t make it to see the new world, but supposedly some of his other children did. If it was a case of black hats versus white hats in the last world-ending battle, then Loki definitely wore a black hat and so did his children.”
“I think Loki was misunderstood,” Val said.
“Loki was a murdering, conniving bastard,” Baldur said. “And his death was a cause for great rejoicing.”
“Hold a grudge much?” Skyla asked.
“Do you know how long I had to spend in the darkness and cold with Loki’s daughter, that hateful bitch?” Baldur said, his face going red. “I lost everything. I have a right to a grudge. I am justified for wanting revenge.”
I raised my hand like a kid in school. “Uh, what?”
“Loki was ultimately behind Baldur’s first death,” Skyla explained. “Baldur’s only weakness was mistletoe, like his kryptonite, but he didn’t know it until too late. Baldur’s mother had received a prophecy of Baldur’s death, so she went around extracting promises from everything ever made—mineral, plant, animal—that they would never kill Baldur.”
“She thought the mistletoe was so harmless that she didn’t demand a vow from it. Loki tricked this information out of Baldur’s mother, formed an arrow out of mistletoe, and fooled Baldur’s blind brother into aiming the arrow at Baldur. The moment the mistletoe struck him, Baldur died. It’s how Hela got her claws in Baldur in the first place.”
A tiny little nightlight of a light bulb flashed on over my head. “Skyla, you said that as a result of Ragnarok, Baldur was released from death, which was Hela’s domain, right?”
Skyla nodded. “Right.”
“So now Helen wants him back. She’s holding Nina hostage to lure Baldur.”
“I agree,” Thorin said. “It’s why we’re going to Vegas. It’s the headquarters of Helen’s Nastrond Corp. If she isn’t there, someone will know where to find her.”
Midnight Burning Page 18
