by PJ Friel
After a few minutes, I peeked over the counter and surveyed my surroundings, hoping that I’d see that giant bouncer so I could question him. He hadn’t been outside.
And speak of the devil…in the darkest corner of the entry, was a door and there he was, standing a few feet in front of it. Kinda like he was guarding something. Gee. Wonder what that could be?
Should I take the risk of asking him or should I just pop down and have a look for myself?
Maybe waiting for Mordechai would be best.
What would give Trygg and my mother the best chance of survival?
My heart pounded against my ribs and in my head I could hear those words that still haunted me.
What are you most afraid of, little Brynja?
The night I’d flipped out in the darkness, in the parking lot with Trygg, he’d thought I was afraid of the darkness...which was true, but I realized now that wasn’t the whole truth. I wasn’t some little girl in want of a flashlight. The shadows were my heritage. I’d always known that and while I’d fought against it, the fear I carried wasn’t of what waited inside the shadows.
My true fear was of the shadows that waited inside me.
I was afraid of becoming the kind of monster who would kidnap a little girl and torture her secrets out of her. No matter how good I tried to be, my birth father’s blood still ran through my veins as equally as my birth mother’s.
Trygg’s light was the only thing keeping me anchored to this world. If DG took him from me forever, the shadows swallowing me would be a relief. I clenched my fists as the thought of my life without Trygg in it took root.
With no further need of my heart, I’d surround it with their icy darkness and then all Svartalf would find out firsthand what their king had created when he’d kidnapped and forced himself on my mother. There would be no place they could hide from me.
What are you most afraid of, little Brynja?
The answer was myself.
And I wasn’t the only person who should be afraid.
I crouched back down and pushed back against the darkness threatening to swallow me. My birth parents may be messed up individuals, but the people who raised me—my real parents—weren’t. Frank and Geni Ullman had taught me to rise above my circumstances. I may not have been able to save my dad tonight, but I was damn well going to save my mom and Trygg.
My breath rattling in my chest, heart in my throat, I stepped into shadow and sprinted across the room. I squeezed around the guard and darted through the door. It was so weird how they inhabited the same place, yet reacted completely differently.
On the physical plane, the door stayed closed. On the shadow plane, it opened with a turn of my wrist. As apprehensive as I was about embracing my heritage, I fully embraced the cover it gave me to hide in.
Directly in front of me, at the bottom of the steps and on the other side of a wall, a battle was taking place. Several small, slender men wove among three burly figures.
The berserkers.
I had no idea how they’d breached the club before me, but somehow they had. Grimm, Harry, and Jace were kicking the crap out of the Svartalf, who sliced and stabbed with their blades, but didn’t seem to be doing much damage. Grimm and his men were back to back, repelling all comers and when their claws made contact, the attackers didn’t get back up.
I took a single step and accidently lurched out of darkness, finding myself at the bottom of the steps. The switch from X-ray vision to normal vision was so disorienting, as was the hot and cold temperatures. With enough practice, I’d get used to this, and I planned on practicing. The time for denial of myself was over.
Down the hallway from me, two closed doors waited. I’d be willing to bet Trygg and Mom were behind one of them. I drew in a deep breath, clenched my jaw, and stepped into the shadow plane once more. The walls became transparent again and behind the last door, I saw a small bound figure in a chair while another larger person stood nearby.
Trygg and Mom. The scene didn’t make sense, though. Why wasn’t Trygg untying her? Even if the door was locked, he should at least be releasing her so they could fight their way out once the door opened.
I didn’t spend any more time thinking about it. If it was them, there was a reasonable explanation. I just had to get inside the room and find out what it was. One step and I was again propelled several feet. I grinned. I could get used to this speedy travel advantage.
Two sliding steps forward and I grabbed the door handle. It turned easily in my hand. Stunned, I pushed the door open and stepped inside, closing it behind me.
My gaze took in the scene and widened with every discovery. My mother was tied to a chair. Trygg stood beside her, his clothes ragged and underneath he was a bloody, whipped mess. I moved to a dark corner and stepped out of shadow, flipping my mask up onto my head.
“Oh, god. Trygg, what did they do to you, baby?” I whispered, reaching out to him.
“Bryn!” My mother’s head jerked towards me and she screamed. “Get out of here! Run!”
“No, I’m here to get you out. Trygg, can you—”
His fist connected with my jaw and knocked me back against the door. The impact rattled my brain and the mask flew off. When he lunged against me, I looked into Trygg’s eyes and the complete lack of feeling there stunned me more than the blow.
I danced away from him, blocking his attempts to grab me. “Baby, what are you doing?”
“He’s under DG’s control,” Mom said. “He’ll kill you if you don’t get away.”
“I’m not leaving you,” I said, glancing over at her.
Trygg rushed me and I pivoted to the side. I spun around as he passed and hooked both hands together over his face, wrenching his head back. Thrown off balance, he hit the floor with a boom.
I skipped backwards, out of reach, and tried to talk him down. “I need you to break free. Come back to me.”
He shook his head and slowly stood to his feet. His aura blazed around him and he trembled. Pain clouded his bright green eyes.
“That’s it. Fight.” I stepped forward and touched his face.
A growl ripped from his throat and he seized my neck. I tore at his hands, crying out. Getting close had been a mistake. His grip was like iron. Unbreakable. I kicked out. He stepped aside. I clawed at his eyes. He buried his face against my head. My every move was countered.
There was no air.
“Brynja, no!” Mom screamed.
I was dying.
My Trygg.
Still in there.
Why wasn’t he saving me?
DG’s control, Mom said.
Killing me would kill him.
Had to make sure he knew.
I gripped his wrists. Looked into his eyes. “Know you...love me…Forgive…you,” I gasped with my last breath.
CHAPTER 52
TRYGG
My fingers clenched around Bryn’s throat. Might as well have been choking myself. I had no breath. My heart shattered in my chest as the woman I loved fought against a body I couldn’t control.
Mentally, I screamed and pounded my fists against the glass cage in which DG had locked me and my berserker. I had to break free, had to get my hands on the wheel. Once I did, DG was a dead man.
Every moment I’d spent with Bryn flashed in front of me, like a movie montage playing at the end of a sad film. The only things missing were the soundtrack and the people gathered around sharing their favorite memory of a fallen friend.
My first thought was of Bryn opening the door of her apartment tonight. She wore that fantastic purple gown and her eyes widened at the sight of me before she bit her bottom lip. I should have realized in that moment that I was completely and hopelessly in love with her. I should have told her.
“No!” I shouted and punched the glass.
I closed my eyes against the pain and saw her splayed across her bed, her fingers entwined with mine as I leaned over her, kissing her lips as she moaned my name.
My knuckles crashed
into the glass again.
The memory of Bryn standing beside her parents, sword flashing, fighting for her life with beautiful lethality.
I opened my eyes and punched the glass harder. The impact of my knuckles rippled the barrier, but still it held.
Bryn stopped struggling against my body and gripped my wrists. The acceptance in her expression froze me in place, but it was her words that broke me, drove me to my knees. Even though I couldn’t hear her, I could read her lips.
“Know you love me. Forgive you.”
“Bryn!”
I hadn’t saved her all those years ago just to lose her now. Not even the Norns would weave a wyrd so cruel. And if they did, then to hell with them. Odin help me, I would rewrite our wyrd, claw it into the trunk of Yggdrasil myself.
Claw it…
I gasped and turned to the Monster that stood beside me. Wrapping my arms around it, I called upon the power I hadn’t embraced, without reserve, since the day I’d saved Bryn. The berserker had saved her once. It could save her again.
“Help me,” I whispered.
Slowly, it melted into me. My gums itched in my mouth and claws ripped through my fingertips. With a savage howl, I drew back my arms then thrust them forward, claws pointed at the cage separating my conscious mind from the body controlled by the Jotun entity enslaved to DG.
When I pulled my hands away, ten holes appeared, surrounded by spidering cracks. Elated, I stepped back and drove my booted foot into the barrier. A large hole opened up and I ripped into it. Pain sliced across my brain. I ignored it.
“I’m coming, baby. Hold on,” I yelled.
I finally stepped through the glass and took control of my body. Eugenia’s muffled screams of rage and sorrow exploded in my eardrums and threw me off balance for just a moment.
I released Bryn’s throat. Agony from every lash DG had sliced across my skin nearly doubled me over.
The berserker pushed adrenaline into my system and the pain vanished. I cradled Bryn in my arms, carrying her close to her mother and a pool of light created by an emergency lamp. I lowered Bryn to the floor there.
“Don’t you leave me.” I performed chest compressions then blew into her mouth.
Bryn remained silent and pale on the floor, but Eugenia’s sobs grated against my ears. I ignored her and resumed CPR.
“You killed her,” Eugenia wept.
“Shut up. She’s not leaving me,” I denied, working frantically on Bryn.
“She’s already gone. I can’t see her aura anymore.”
“Well, that’s a shame,” a voice interrupted. “I was looking forward to turning her over to the royal scientists for experimentation. At least they’ll have the body to examine.”
Eamon Duff stood in the now open door, smirking.
“Over my dead body,” I growled. Reluctantly, I moved away from Bryn. I needed to end this bastard fast so I could bring her back to me.
“My pleasure.” Duff disappeared.
The stench of rotten earth left a trail behind the Svartalf that I easily followed, but I pretended obliviousness, waited for him to step out of shadow and strike. I didn’t wait long.
A foul odor burst into the air by my shoulder. I spun and with my left hand blocked the knife arching toward my back, retaliating with a hammering right fist to Duff’s stomach. The Svartalf staggered backwards, shock on his face, then disappeared again.
“Show yourself, you fucking coward!”
His scent flared to my left and I swung, only to miss and be assaulted from the right. I barely dodged the knife and my fist hit nothing but air.
“You don’t stand a chance,” I challenged, senses on full alert. “I slaughtered a whole cell of your kind to rescue her nineteen years ago. Do you really think you can take me on your own?”
“Who the hell are you talking to, bro?” Jace shouted from the door.
Relief poured through my body. “Jace! Save Bryn!”
“Please help my daughter!” Eugenia’s cries joined mine.
“Holy shit.”
Jace’s eyes rounded and he darted across the room, sliding on his knees, his hands already glowing with golden light by the time he reached Bryn. Just as Jace touched her, I smelled Eamon at my back. Before I could turn around pain exploded in my side.
“You murdered scientists and foot soldiers. Killing the Bani is beyond your skillset,” Duff taunted, twisting the knife in my side.
I tasted mold and dirt and my legs felt like they were mired in quicksand, but somehow I gathered the strength to pull away from the knife and spin around. Eamon’s eyes widened as I drove my claws into his belly. Blood poured from his wounds and he staggered backwards, away from me.
“That should have killed you instantly. What are you?” Duff choked out.
“I’m Bryn’s protector and you’re a dead man.” I advanced on him.
“Not today,” he croaked, disappearing.
I waited a few moments, expecting him to reappear, but my nose told me he’d obviously decided to cut and run. I rushed to Jace’s side.
“Is she back?” I reached out and wrapped my trembling fingers around Bryn’s utterly still ones.
Tears streamed down Eugenia’s face. “You have to save my daughter.”
“I’m trying, but she’s fighting me,” Jace panted. Sweat poured down his face and his hands glowed so brightly now that they lit the whole room.
“What do you mean?”
“This normally only happens when a soul has already crossed the Bifrost bridge into Valhalla or across Gjallarbrú into Hel—”
I knotted my free hand in Jace’s shirt. “You bring her back to me, goddamnit!”
Jace’s expression flashed from shock to sorrow. His eyes got glassy and he shook his head. “I don’t think I can.”
CHAPTER 53
BRYN
“I need to go back to him,” I said.
“In due time.” The words came from the woman standing in front of me, though her lips never moved. Her red cloak billowed behind her, caught in a wind I couldn’t feel.
We stood in the center of a golden bridge, holding hands, though I felt more prisoner of, than participant in, the grip. Beneath my feet, the stones of the bridge shimmered and a rainbow of colors ran like a river between them.
If I wasn’t so anxious to answer the urgent pull—the overwhelming need to return to Trygg—I would have wanted to stay and soak in my surroundings. Around us, a sky painted with streaks of crimson, green, and purple formed a backdrop for nine twirling globes. Tiny pinpoints of light danced in a circle around each globe then streaked down, down, down to a blazing trunk of light.
Of those globes, the bridge I stood on was connecting two of them. One at my back and the other far in the distance. Running at an angle was yet another. That structure was covered, connecting the globe behind me to yet another, still. The two bridges formed kind of a V. The tug I kept feeling came from the globe behind me.
“Is this reality?” I asked.
“It’s my vision of it. Others see it differently.”
“How do you know I’m not seeing it differently from you?”
The woman’s lips curled. “Because you haven’t crossed yet.”
I tugged, attempting to pull away from the woman. “Let go of me.”
“In a moment.”
The urge to punt this woman right off the bridge was overwhelming. The tingle running down my spine said that would be a huge mistake. I sighed and decided to keep my boot to myself.
Instead, I reached inside and harnessed the power that coiled in my belly. Looking at the woman, I released it and asked, “Who are you?”
I waited for the answers to come flooding forth, but the movie screen inside my head remained blank.
The lady in red arched a brow. “That won’t work on me.”
My face flushed, but I jerked my chin up and faced off against my adversary, fully prepared to get violent, and to heck with the consequences, if the woman didn’t let go. “
What do you want from me?”
“Nothing…yet. You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Then. Send. Me. Back.” My clenched teeth made talking difficult.
“In order to do that, I need your word that you won’t tell anyone about this.”
I blinked “Is that all?”
Red shrugged. “With your pedigree, I could ask for more.”
Always with the princess crap.
“Please, take your time in deciding,” she said. “You have another few seconds before the tether between your body and your soul dissolves and you’ll be stuck here for eternity.”
“No pressure or anything.” I gave her a deadpan look. “And if I—”
“If you agree now and then open your mouth later, I will pluck you back out of the stream, gut you, and roast you over a flame.”
“Dramatic much?”
“With a slice of lemon.”
Not an ounce of humor in the woman’s gaze.
“Alrighty then.” I shrugged. “Mum’s the word.”
“I knew I could count on you, Pruedatter.”
“How do we do this?”
Red turned me around and shoved me. “See you soon.”
Like a rubber band snapping, I jerked into my body. Warm skin pressed against my forehead and water dripped on my cheek. Trygg’s scent enveloped me and I realized the warmth was his lips, the water his tears. I drew in a deep breath and opened my eyes.
“You’re getting me all wet,” I whispered against his neck.
“Bryn? Baby?” Trygg jerked up and looked into my eyes. “Thank Odin you’re alive!”
“That asshole...had nothing to do with it,” I croaked. “All me.”
“I helped.” Jace waved glowing hands at me. “When did you take up cussing?”
“New development. Fuckton more coming, too.” I put my hand on my throat and swallowed, expecting agony, but was surprised to find just a little tickle.
Jace gave me a nod and a cocky smirk. “You’re welcome.”
I shook my head at him then returned my gaze to Trygg. “You’re you, right? Not gonna go all psycho on me again?”
