by Jane Kindred
“You will collect nothing but your just reward.” Gunnar raised his sword, powerful arm drawn back, but Dressler dodged as he swung, darting forward before Gunnar’s arm could change course.
“No!” The word burst out of her as the relic made contact with Gunnar’s side, the blade cutting deep. Rhea made an awkward, fumbling dismount from the horse, landing on her ass, and picked herself up to run to him.
But he’d caught Dressler by the ear and was lifting him off the ground with one hand, apparently unaffected. “Your crude talisman is useless against me.” Slapping Dressler on the side of his head with the flat of his sword, Gunnar dazed him and swung the smaller man like a shot put. Dressler landed with a startled grunt on Gunnar’s horse, scrambling for a hold on the mane. With a smooth, running leap, Gunnar swung back into his saddle behind him and raised his sword in the air. “For Odin and Freyja!”
A victory cry rang out from the spectral horde, an unearthly whooping and howling that made the hairs rise on the back of Rhea’s neck.
Gunnar tipped his hat to her with a wink of one glowing blue eye. “Many thanks for your help.” He raised his sword once more. “To Náströnd!”
“Wait! What about your munr? Your líkamr? You can’t just leave!” But the wraiths were galloping into the air, their ghostly edges gilded by the dawn as the thunderheads closed around them.
Chapter 24
The trance state had rendered Rhea’s sister highly suggestible. When Leo asked if she might want to lie down, she’d gotten up and gone into the bedroom, where he’d covered her with a blanket, leaving the door open a wedge so he could see in from the living room in case her condition changed.
A knock on the door woke him sometime later, and he realized he’d dozed on the couch. He jumped up to open it, thinking it was Rhea and not stopping to wonder why Rhea would be knocking on her own front door.
An unremarkable fellow with brown hair buzzed short at the sides smiled at him when he opened the door. “Leo Ström. Just the man I wanted to see.”
Leo tilted his head. Had he met this man while Leo the Dull held the reins?
The visitor held out his hand. “We met at the genetics in biotech conference. Brock Dressler.”
Leo took the hand automatically before the significance of the name struck him, and something passed from Dressler’s palm to his. Something invisible. And magical. Leo stumbled back, staring at his palm, his reflexes slowing along with his thought processes.
“What did you...?”
“It’s a simple spell, designed to give you temporary mild euphoria.” Dressler stepped inside. “There’s something I need from you.”
Leo’s tongue felt heavy. “You took...Rhea’s blood.”
“That’s right.”
“Now you want mine.”
“Not precisely. I already took your blood. Remember when we ran into each other the other day? I provoked you on the street.” Dressler smiled. “You don’t really think I’d have stood there and let you punch me in the face if it wasn’t my plan?”
Leo looked down at his knuckles. He remembered that punch. It was very satisfying. And he remembered something else.
“You put up those posters. With the...sharp blades.”
“A fail-safe measure in case the first plan didn’t pan out.” He was full of shit. The punch had been lucky happenstance.
Leo tried to stay focused. “What do you want?”
“Something you don’t even want.” Dressler took an object wrapped in red silk cloth from inside his coat. “Your soul.”
Leo laughed. “The hugr? You can have the damn thing. But it’s not here.”
Dressler slowly unwrapped the cloth. “As it turns out, it is here. It’s your hamr that currently rides in Odin’s Hunt, an astral projection of your physical form. The hugr has remained within the skin. The Norns’ curse suppresses the mind and the will by default. It’s only during the dark hours of Yuletide that they awaken.”
Leo shook his head. “How do you know any of... You know the curse?”
“I’ve been studying you for many years.” He unfolded the last corner of the cloth, revealing a jagged piece of ancient wood topped with a gold-plated spear tip. “The Holy Lance would have given me what I needed long ago, but your blood was insufficient. It needed a catalyst. And then a friend of mine turned me on to the Carlisle sisters’ stash of original demon blood. Theia’s, it turned out, was inert. I put her in your path to see if it would spark something, but you didn’t respond to her. There was something special, however, about her twin’s magic. Something intimately tied into her art. So I sold her the ink I’d blended, which already had some of your blood in it along with the ash of Eyjafjallajökull from the land where you were meant to die.”
“Iceland?” Leo shook his head. “I was wounded in the Battle of Sulcoit on the island of Éire.”
“That’s all the Valkyrie told you, no doubt. I suppose she failed to mention the second mortal wound you received in the Battle of Haugsnes that sealed your fate. She seems to have left out a great many things for her own convenience.” Dressler moved without warning, and Leo’s reflexes were too slow to respond. The artifact plunged into his gut, and he stumbled against Dressler with a grunt of surprise. “Such as the fact that the hugr remains within your skin.”
“You—son of a whore.” Leo gripped Dressler’s forearm, too late to stop the blade but determined not to let him yank it out. But there was something beyond pain here, some sense of wrongness spreading inside him—like the wrongness that made him turn back when he’d tried to leave Rhea, but far worse. “What are you doing?”
“Relieving you of your burden.” Dressler shoved him off the blade, and blood seeped from the open wound. Leo fell to his knees. “Your soul is mine now. And Odin’s Hunt will ride to do my bidding.”
The icy first light of dawn spilled in through the open doorway as Leo slumped to the floor, illuminating the blood soaking into the carpet. Rhea was going to lose her deposit. Dammit. He’d really wanted to stay with Rhea. Now he couldn’t even say goodbye.
“Leo?”
She was standing over him, soft gray eyes wide.
“You’re here.” He smiled, holding his hand up to her. “I thought you’d gone.”
“Oh God! Leo, what happened?” She knelt beside him, hands pressed against the hole in his gut, the pain making him abruptly alert. It wasn’t Rhea after all but her dark-haired twin.
* * *
She had to hike back out of the canyon on her own, leading the abandoned horse as far as she could, and ended up calling Phoebe again to have Rafe come take the animal to his stables. Rhea drove home, exhausted and resigned—and feeling guilty because a part of her was relieved. The thought of losing the munr, even though it meant having Leo whole, had begun to make her increasingly unhappy. It wasn’t just that she’d miss his unfettered desire, it was the way he said what he was thinking without trying to hide his feelings or his thoughts, the way he experienced things so deeply and purely—the way he laughed. Not having a soul somehow made him more human than anyone she’d ever known.
When she pulled into the parking lot to find Theia waiting on the landing looking fully alert, Rhea jumped out and hurried up the stairs. “Thei! I’m so glad you’re okay. And I’m so sorry I’ve been such a bitch...” Her voice trailed off at the look on Theia’s face as she drew closer. There were tearstains on her cheeks. “Theia?”
“Did you find his soul?”
“I talked to him, but he wouldn’t... Theia, what’s going on?”
Fresh tears streamed down Theia’s cheeks. “You’d better go in.”
A sick feeling settled over her as she opened the door. The carpet was stained with blood.
“Leo?” Rhea felt her own blood drain from her cheeks as she ran to the bedroom. “Leo, are you here?�
��
It took her a moment to understand. Faye sat on the side of the bed, lengths of blue silk draping the floor and flowing red locks draping the recumbent figure whom Rhea’s mind refused to recognize. He lay with a sheet covering the lower half of his body, his hair dark with sweat and his skin gray and clammy. Bloody bandages were taped over his abdomen, and his hands were at his sides, covered by the sheet. It was only the tattoo of the serpent around his upper arm that demanded she acknowledge his identity.
“Leo?”
Faye raised her head, her cheeks damp and her eyes sorrowful. “With his hugr gone, I can finally be with him. And yet still he does not know me.”
Rhea stood paralyzed in the doorway. “His hugr... I tried to convince him to come back, but—”
“You tried to convince the hamr. A projection of the physical self. Like a fylgja, but with more agency. I tried to keep him safe from the Norns by hiding the hugr within him, even from himself. Even though it meant I must be banished from him whenever he was himself. Rejoining his other selves would have returned him to the curse but would have protected him.”
“Protected him? From what? What happened?”
“There have been many who have sought his power of immortality over the centuries. Men like that vile little worm, Brock Dressler. But I have no dominion over living men. Only through the Hunt can we rid the world of them and only through the power of the Chieftain. And this man—this worm—has stolen his hugr. I felt it as soon as it happened. I knew immediately the one we were hunting was like the Chieftain, a projection acting as a decoy while his true self attacked my Leo. I left the Hunt to come to his side, but I was too late. Unless I take him to Valhalla, the wound will fester and corrupt, killing him without killing him. He will eventually become draugr.”
Rhea’s skin went cold. “No. No, we have to do something. What can we do? Can’t the Norns heal the wound?”
“And what price would they exact this time? They have taken his will and his mind. In punishing me, they have punished him for more than a thousand years. To save him from death yet again, in defiance of the laws I’ve broken, they would have nothing less than his heart.” Faye began to sob. “And I would give it to them. I would give them anything, but it is not mine to give.”
The words delivered a hollow victory: because it’s mine. Leo’s heart belonged to Rhea—and she was losing him. And yet it was obvious the Valkyrie’s love for him was genuine. Rhea put her hand on Faye’s shoulder, and Faye gripped it, lowering her head. As her weeping grew silent, Leo’s labored breathing seemed frighteningly loud.
A soft knock on the doorframe broke the silence. Rhea turned to see Theia beckoning to her.
“What is it?” She slipped her hand out of Faye’s and came to the door.
“There’s someone outside you need to see.”
Rhea followed her, puzzled by the odd phrasing, until she saw who was waiting for her in the parking lot. An extremely healthy version of Leo in traditional Viking attire leaned against her car, dwarfing it. Though she knew it wasn’t her Leo, the sight of him, whole and hale, made her heart skip a beat.
“I have made a grave error.” He pushed away from the car, and the little MINI rocked under the easing of his weight. “Though it is one I would make again if given the choice between your sanity and my existence.”
“I’m not sure what you...” She seemed to lose her train of thought when looking at this Leo.
“I left the soul unguarded to protect you. I walked right into the trap that had been set for me.”
“I think we all did.”
“There is a recourse, however. If you are willing.”
Rhea leaped upon the little ray of hope. “Of course I’m willing. What is it? What do I need to do?”
“You must convince the hamr of its true nature. The one known as the Chieftain who leads the Hunt. Once it recognizes itself for what it is, the hamr can seek his enemy to retrieve the soul and return with it to rejoin the líkamr.”
The fleeting ray of hope dimmed. “I couldn’t even convince the hamr to return when we both believed it was the hugr.”
“That is why you could not convince it. The hamr perceives itself as the essence of the being that is Leo Ström. It believes you have freed it to dwell in its purest form. But the longer it remains apart from the physical body, the weaker it will become, until it simply fades away.”
“Wouldn’t it be more likely to believe this coming from you?”
“The guardian can only be seen by someone other than the self. All I can do is watch out for the hugr. And I have failed at that.”
“What about Faye? Kára, I mean. She knows him best. She rides beside him in the Hunt.”
“The Valkyrie is the one who convinced the hamr of its own authenticity. Her magic prevents him from seeing otherwise.” Warden-Leo took her hand. His form, though it appeared physical, turned out to be not quite solid after all. His touch felt like an electrical field buzzing across her flesh. “What I ask of you, dear one, is great, but you are our only hope.”
Rhea nodded, not trusting her voice to ask the question she needed to ask, but the vördr seemed to know it already.
“You need not seek the hamr on your own. I can lend you the hamingja, the embodiment of the soul’s luck. It will reside within you. The hamingja will take you to the hamr. And it will tell you what to do when the time is right.”
Rhea swallowed. “Okay. So how do we...?”
Still holding her hand, he stepped in close and slid his other not-quite-corporeal palm against her nape and kissed her. As with the vision of the climax she’d had with Leo’s munr that time in the chair, the vördr’s kiss nearly knocked her off her feet. It was like kissing a live wire—not a painful sensation but unbearably wild with energy—her mouth felt as though it were having an orgasm all on its own.
When he let go of her, a sense of relief warred with a longing for it not to have ended. She opened her eyes to discover the vördr had disappeared.
Behind her, Theia coughed politely. “So...who was that, exactly?”
Rhea’s first attempt to answer resulted in nothing but a raspy, high-pitched squeak. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Leo’s warden spirit. He was at the chapel with us. I take it you don’t remember any of that.”
“Not a bit, no.”
“It’s probably better that you don’t.” Inside her head, she sensed a thought that wasn’t her own. Go back to the paddock. “I have to go.”
“Go? Go where? Don’t you want to...to be with Leo when...?”
“He’s not dying. Or he is, sort of, but his bodily functions won’t stop. It’s part of the curse. I have to get his soul back.”
Chapter 25
A light snow fell on mostly empty streets. The few other drivers, probably on their way to celebrate with family, smiled at Rhea as they passed. Instinctively—though it was the hamingja’s instinct and not her own—she knew Gunnar would be keeping close to the paddock. It was only his second day as an independent being, and with the vanishing of the rest of the Hunt at daybreak, he would be on his own without a plan or a place to sleep.
Sure enough, when she arrived at the paddock, he was there. Leaning against the fence in his Western attire, he had his arms crossed over the top rail as though watching invisible livestock. Which maybe he was.
Gunnar turned at the sound of her car door opening and gave her a pleased but quizzical smile as she approached. “Fair Rhea. How did you know I would be here?”
“Just had a feeling.”
“Your company is welcome, but you must understand there is nothing you can say to persuade me to return.”
“I’m not here to persuade you.”
Gunnar looked skeptical. “You are not?”
Rhea stepped up to the fence beside him and hooked h
er arms over it, gazing at the nonexistent herd. “I was hoping to engage your services.”
“My services?” Gunnar returned to his earlier pose, mimicking her stance, and watched her with amusement. “And how can I be of assistance?”
“I need to track down an immortal Nazi.”
“If you mean the one who sought my power, he is hardly immortal. He is presently a denizen of the underworld. He cannot escape it.”
“I hate to tell you this, but the guy you took this morning was a decoy. The real Dressler is still at large. And now he’s immortal.”
“Impossible.” Gunnar rested one booted foot on the bottom rail of the fence. “He needed my life force to achieve immortality, and he failed in trying to acquire it.”
“Did he really seem like he was trying all that hard?”
“He was a weak, ineffectual man.”
“That may be true, but he had a plan. He managed to finagle blood out of your líkamr, kidnap my sister to lure me to him so he could steal my blood, use a draugr to keep me there while he went off to steal your hugr...and then just let you corner him and box his ears and take him to hell?”
Gunnar’s frown said he was troubled by her logic, but he wasn’t persuaded yet. “He commanded a draugr?”
“A real nasty one. I mean, I suppose they’re all nasty...” She let her words trail off, trying not to think of Leo’s body rotting away.
“But I remain free. How can he have become immortal without my life force?”
Rhea turned to look him in the eye. “You don’t have any life force. You’re a decoy. Just like the man you defeated this morning.”
Gunnar shoved away from the railing, his eyes glowing with offense. “Nonsense. I am the Chieftain, leader of the Hunt. Every night during Yuletide for ten centuries I have left the skin of Leo Ström to lead it. I am the hugr. I am no decoy.”
“So you’re made of spirit, not of flesh.”
