Midnight Burning

by Karissa Laurel

  I went further into the memory, but my mind protested. My chest cramped. A sob escaped my throat.

  “Don’t resist. If it hurts, then it means you’re doing it right. Take it in you, and let it rip you up. Let the anger, fear, and grief stab you and cut you.”

  “You’re crazy,” I said, opening my eyes.

  “Close your eyes!” she ordered.

  I snapped them shut; her voice held that much command.

  A set of hands emerged from the dark and clamped around me, pinning my arms to my sides. I opened my eyes again in time to see Tori rearing back. She let loose and sank her fist into my gut. My knees went out, and I would have fallen if not for whoever held me. I struggled for breath, and stars danced around my vision. My lungs came back on line and heaved in the breath driven out by Tori’s strike.

  “What the hell—” I began but didn’t get to finish before Tori’s fist rammed into my jaw, popping my head back with an audible crack. I struggled against whoever held me, screaming and whipping wildly. I panicked for a second, but then my training clicked in. I switched into action and jammed my heel into the instep of the Valkyrie holding me in place. Her grip relaxed, and I shoved my elbow into her solar plexus. She grunted and bowed over. “Good job, princess,” Inyoni said, panting. She looked up at me and smiled. “I see your training is starting to sink in.”

  “What are you doing?” I wheezed.

  “Helping you find your fire,” Tori said as she struck a kick toward my ribs. I turned and her foot ricocheted off my hip, but the pain of her hit went all the way to the pit of my stomach.

  “You going to stand there and take it?” she asked. “Or are you going to fight back?”

  I growled and aimed a punch for Tori’s face. She blocked and jabbed her other fist. Her strike landed, a perfect black-eye blow, and my left lid immediately began to swell. “I can’t fight you,” I said. “You’re too good.”

  “Am I?” Tori bounced on her feet. Inyoni waited from a safe distance, watching for Tori’s directions should she call her to the fight again.

  “Yes. You’re fast and strong.”

  “Those are my weapons. You have weapons of your own. Use them.”

  “I don’t know how,” I shrieked.

  “I am the wolf, Solina. Do you think I will give you mercy? Fight me like you would fight the wolf.” Tori spun in a blur of movement and kicked my legs out from under me. I hit the concrete, and stars sparkled before my eyes again.

  “Uh-uh-uhhh,” Inyoni said, sing-song. She waggled her finger at me like a condescending grandmother. “You know how to take a fall better than that. Guess what we’ll be working on again tomorrow.”

  As I lay there, waiting for the daze to clear, Tori launched herself on me and bit me.

  “Ow, you bitch!” I clawed for her eyes and managed to smack her away. Tori laughed and gnashed her teeth at me. I might have laughed, too, if her bite had not drawn blood. She crouched low to the floor and growled. Tori had her wolf impression down pat. The hairs rose on the back of my neck in anticipation of her next move.

  Tori licked her lips. “I’m going to eat you, little piggy. Just like I ate your brother.”

  The decision to leap flashed in Tori’s eyes. I threw up a hand and caught her jaw in my grasp. She shrieked and pulled back, revealing an angry red mark on her face shaped like a hand. We both stared in awe as my fingers glowed, red-white like charcoal in a grill. Flames crawled from my palm and up the length of my arm, turning whiter and brighter as they moved.

  “Catch it,” Tori said. “Don’t let it burn you out. Take control.”

  Now that the fire had come, I sensed the origins inside myself, same as I had in Helen’s hotel room in Juneau. I focused on turning the flames into something useable, rather than something all consuming. Still, the use of my abilities sucked away my strength, and even at this reduced rate, I wouldn’t hold out long. “It’s taking all my energy,” I said. “It always does this. It burns until I black out.”

  “You don’t always have to be a flamethrower,” Tori said. “Sometimes one hot coal is enough. See if you can turn it down a notch.”

  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and pictured a temperature knob on an old oven. I imagined turning it to a low broil.

  “That’s it,” Inyoni said, her voice full of excitement. “You’re doing it.” She smiled at me, her enthusiasm genuine.

  I grinned, and the fire diminished even more. “Don’t distract me, or I’ll lose it.”

  “It’s okay,” Tori said. “Now let’s take it back up. Try bringing it out on both hands, but just your hands and not your whole body.”

  We worked like that for a while, but as exhaustion took over, my control diminished. We ended the night with me going up in a blaze of glory and the sprinklers dousing everything until an inch of water filled the basement. My black eye was gone, thanks to the self-healing aspect of my powers, but I would seriously have to invest in a flame-retardant wardrobe if I kept this up.

  Tori sent Inyoni running for a T-shirt and another pair of sweats and a towel. When she returned, I dried off, tugged on the clothes, and sloshed my way over to the basement stairway. As I chugged up the steps, an immense sense of accomplishment swelled through me. No wedding cake or muffin basket had given me that feeling, and they never would.

  The main-level workout room was full of women. They took in our sodden figures, and the whole room burst in a chorus of raucous cheers and whistles.

  Kalani scampered over and hugged me, disregarding my wet hair. “You did it,” she said. “We knew you could.”

  “She’s still got a long way to go,” Tori said.

  The Valkyries lined up to slap me on the back or give me hugs of congratulations, but before I had passed more than the first few, a piercing whistle broke through the celebration.

  “Hey, Solina!” someone shouted from the doors. It was Aoi, an older woman whose long black dreadlocks showed streaks of silver. “You’ve got visitors.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Val and Skyla rushed to throw their arms around me the moment I stepped through the door into the foyer of the Aerie’s main house. Over Skyla’s shoulder, Thorin watched in cool scrutiny. Baldur was absent, and I wondered if he was off somewhere looking for Nina.

  “What happened to you?” Skyla asked, studying my damp clothes and sodden hair.

  Val growled and glared over my shoulder at Tori and Inyoni, who came into the foyer behind me. “What the hell have you been doing to her?” he asked.

  “They’re training me,” I said and turned to Skyla. “They’re Valkyries. I told them about you.”

  Skyla recoiled. “You did?”

  “Yes.” I turned to Tori and motioned toward Skyla. “This is Skyla Ramirez. I mentioned her earlier.”

  Tori came forward and held out her hand. She and Skyla shook. “I’m sorry, Miss Ramirez, but maybe we can talk about this later. Tonight, I think you came for other reasons.”

  “We came for Solina,” Val said, still bristling at the Valkyries before him. “We have her, and now we’ll be leaving.”

  “That’s funny, Val,” I said, but my tone was anything but humorous. “You show up here after two weeks and think you can make demands like that? We’re not on your territory now. Show a little respect.”

  “The Valkyries were always allies of the Aesir,” Thorin said.

  “Hello, Alek,” Tori said. She lit up like a candle.

  Thorin returned her smile in a way I wanted to call tender, except that meant sweetness and gentility, qualities Thorin didn’t possess—at least not in my experience. “Hello, Tori,” he said.

  “It’s been a while.”

  Thorin nodded. “It has.”

  A shiver of something ugly passed through my chest, but I stomped it down and didn’t dare look at it. Thorin turned to Val. “Solina is not harmed. The Valkyries have kept her safe, and that is more than can be said for you or me.”

  “Safe?” Val said in an outrage
. “She looks like she’s been put through waterboarding.”

  I narrowed my eyes, daring Val to push my buttons. “I’m learning how to fight.”

  Val studied me, taking in my appearance. His lip curled. “Fight for what?”

  “For my life. I’m learning to defend myself. Learning to control this… ability. It’s not like you guys were any help.” Skyla winced, and I instantly regretted my words. “I didn’t mean you,” I said, but she waved me off. I turned back to Val. “I won’t last very long if I always have to depend on others for protection.”

  Val glowered but didn’t argue any more.

  “It’s late,” Tori said. “You all are no doubt tired from your journey. We’ll make room for you. I hope you’ll stay.”

  I turned to Skyla. “You have to stay. Wait until you see their gym and weapons room. You’re going to love it here.”

  Skyla raised an eyebrow. “You think?”

  “This place has got your name written all over it.”

  Tori called several of her sisters to show the new arrivals to their rooms. “Skyla, I hope you don’t mind sharing a room with Solina?”

  Skyla nodded. “She and I have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “Please make yourselves comfortable,” Tori said to Thorin and Val. “If there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to ask. Our home is honored by the presence of the Aesir.”

  With that, we were dismissed. Inyoni and several others led us up the wide staircase to the sleeping quarters. In my two weeks in the Aerie, I had learned my way around enough to give a short tour but not enough to know which rooms were intended for guests. At Inyoni’s direction, Val and Thorin vanished into a pair of rooms across the hall from the one I used. Skyla followed me into my room and dumped her rucksack on my huge canopy bed.

  “Grab a jacket,” I said as I grabbed a sweater from my borrowed collection of clothing. Then I went to the nightstand behind the bed and pulled out a small flashlight.

  “Why?” Skyla asked as she opened her bag.

  “I want to talk, but not here.”

  I led Skyla to a slim spiral staircase at the end of the second floor hallway. The stairway accessed the old house’s attic. “What does Aesir mean?” I asked as I guided Skyla through the dark and dusty space. “Tori has used that word a few times.”

  “It’s the race of gods from which our boys descended,” Skyla said. She eyed stacks of boxes and ghostly figures of draped furniture. “There are lots of different types of gods in the Norse pantheon. Aesir considered themselves the greatest. There were also the Vanir, the Jotunn – who were giants – and some others I can’t remember, elves and dwarves and stuff. Loki was Jotunn, so I guess, in a way, Helen is, too.”

  “Helen doesn’t seem like a giant.” We stopped before an iron ladder that extended to the ceiling of the attic. I shined the flashlight on a hatch at the top of the ladder and motioned for Skyla to climb.

  She arched an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

  I nodded. “Trust me.”

  Skyla inhaled a breath, blew it out, then shoved her foot onto the bottom rung and pulled herself up on the ladder. I climbed up behind her, trying to shine the flashlight on the access door’s latch. Skyla reached up, flipped the latch, and threw open the door. Going through it felt like crossing a magic portal. Inyoni had brought me up here a few days ago to show me where she liked to meditate and recommended I find a spiritual place of my own.

  “Helen doesn’t seem like a supernatural power, either,” Skyla said when I joined her on the roof’s flat surface. The wind whipped her hair about. She tugged her jacket hood up and huddled her arms around her. “But she is. They all are. So are you.”

  “You might be, too,” I said and tugged Skyla to the roof’s edge so she could see the ocean below us, reflecting the dim moonlight. “I really think you might be right about being a Valkyrie. These women are like you—fierce, passionate.”

  Skyla snickered. “You have a crush on me, don’t you?”

  “Maybe.” I pinched my fingers together. “A little teeny weeny one.” I leaned against the edge of the roof and stared off into the distance. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Skyla, but what took y’all so long to find me?”

  Skyla crossed her arms over her chest. “You could have called and given us a hint.”

  “I lost my phone. And if this place has a landline anywhere, I’ve never seen it.”

  “It’s pretty remote.”

  “And maybe I was pouting a little bit, too. I think I put too much faith in Val’s and Thorin’s abilities to protect me. They’re obviously as fallible as regular men.”

  “Oh yeah?” Humor sparkled in Skyla’s brown eyes. “You’re just now figuring that out?”

  “Thorin seemed awfully familiar with Tori. Didn’t he know right away where to go?”

  “He didn’t know who took you at first. None of us did.”

  “Tori said she left a hint.”

  Skyla frowned. “We didn’t figure it out until after Thorin went to Helen’s people and threatened to grind their bones into bread. He was totally fee-fi-fo-fum about it. Helen refused to show her face, and she denied knowing anything about what happened to you. Thorin stormed through all of Las Vegas for close to a week, roughing up Helen’s employees, searching her properties—she has a lot of properties, by the way.”

  “We were afraid to leave, afraid you’d call or show up on your own. We watched the sky like hawks, looking for signs that the sun was gone, even though that was stupid because Mani is gone and the moon still comes up.”

  “Girlfriend”—I put an arm around Skyla and gave her a squeeze—“you’re babbling.”

  Skyla ducked her head and laughed. “I’m sorry. But we were really freaked out for a while.”

  “So, how’d you figure out that the Valkyries had me?”

  “We found some of your stuff lying on the sidewalk. Your room key, your lipstick. Your phone and everything else was gone, of course. Thorin is a pretty savvy guy with a computer, especially for an ancient dude. He figured out how to track the GPS on your phone. I wasn’t there when he found the guy who had taken your stuff. Thorin didn’t give me the specifics and I’m sure it wasn’t pretty, but he came back with your phone, your purse, and a white swan feather that the thief had sworn was lying on top of the pile when he took it from the sidewalk.”

  “We didn’t know what to think about it at first, but then Thorin went to messing with it, rolling the tip of it between his fingers like he thought he could make it talk or something. I was there in the living room with him when he figured it out. He jumped up, looked at the ceiling, and said, ‘Son of a bitch. The Valkyries took her.’”

  “What’s a feather got to do with it?” I asked. “I know they call this place their Aerie, but it’s not like any of them actually fly.”

  “A lot of times they are pictured as having wings. In an old story, one of the Valkyries posed as a swan when she came to earth.”

  “So Thorin figured it out and you, what, jumped on a plane and hightailed it to California?”

  “Well, it took Thorin another week to find someone who could tell him the Aerie’s location. Apparently they don’t stay in one place for very long.” Skyla snickered again. “They migrate.”

  “And, now, here you are,” I said.

  Skyla shrugged. “Here we are.”

  “Where’s Baldur?”

  “He stayed behind in Vegas. He got kind of funny after you went missing. I think he hoped that in searching for you we might find something about Nina, but we had no luck. The trouble with Nina is we don’t even know she really exists. Maybe she was never reincarnated in the first place. When we told him about going to the Valkyries, Baldur stopped talking and just hid out in his room.”

  I clucked in sympathy. “Poor guy. I can guess how he feels.”

  Skyla smiled sadly. “Yeah. He’s not taking it so well.”

  “So, what do we do now?”

  “I don’t know.” Skyla
shrugged. “Guess it depends on Thorin and Val—and on you. You seem happy here.”

  “I am,” I said in all honesty. “These women are wonderful, and they have all taught me so much.”

  “Do you want to stay here?”

  “I think I do,” I said. “I feel safe here, and I still have a lot of work to do.”

  Skyla talked me into showing off some of my new moves, but the chill night air and the stiff winds eventually chased us back to the warmth of our room. I pulled off my sweater, meaning to put on my pajamas and go to bed, but a knock sounded at the bedroom door. “Solina?”

  It was Val. I grimaced and looked at Skyla to see if she had a guess about what he wanted, but she only shrugged. “It’s time to pay the piper,” she said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Thorin wasn’t by himself in his quest for you. We were by his side, ready to pillage, plunder, and raze the entire city of Las Vegas if that’s what it took.”

  “Skyla, I can’t ever thank you enough. Mani was lucky to have someone like you in his life, and I am lucky to have you too, but Thorin and Val were more worried for themselves than for me.”

  Skyla motioned to the door and the man waiting on the other side. “Why don’t you tell that to him?”

  I sighed and let my shoulders droop. “Don’t wait up.”

  Skyla snorted and climbed into bed. “As if.”

  I opened the door. Val tugged me into the hallway, leading me toward his room and away from Skyla’s ears. “Did Skyla tell you everything?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  “I was out of my mind about you, Solina.”

  “I wish I could have told you not to worry when I was safe all along.”

  “Were you?” he said, stroking the lightest of touches over my cheek. “Every time you leave me, you come back beat up and broken, either by grief, or wolves, or the damned Valkyries.”

  “I’m not beat up,” I said. “Not this time anyway.”

  “You haven’t exactly been sitting around eating peeled grapes, though, have you?”