The wolf staggered to the side.
“Geri?” I whispered. “Oh, no, please be okay.”
She whimpered and limped to me, curling her body around me. Two seconds later, Freak ran around the tree I leaned against and added his body to the pile. Their heaving bodies were warm, but their fur was wet with snow and blood. They smelled awful. I didn’t even want to pick apart that choking odor, didn’t want to see the evidence of violent fights in their fur.
Vanir and his brothers broke into the clearing. I draped the sweatshirt over my chest.
“Damn it!” Vanir bit out as he slid to a stop and dropped to his knees in front of me. His brothers apparently didn’t slow enough for the wolves. They both growled.
“Now is not a good time.” Hallur pushed Freak to the side to focus on the other wolf. “Geri’s hurt. Look at her leg.”
Ari stepped forward. “I’ll carry her.”
Hallur snorted. “Do you have any idea what that creature weighs? They aren’t regular-size wolves, so we’re talking over one-fifty, easy. We’ll have to rig something.”
Vanir hadn’t said anything beyond that first curse. His brown eyes were locked on my shoulder, his lips taut and pale. Gently, he leaned forward and scooted Geri away from me before sliding his hands under me. I cried out when the movement sent pain screaming through my shoulder again.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, turning me gently so my good shoulder rested against him.
Ari came over. “Vanir told us what you did. Crazy girl.”
I opened my mouth to tell them—tell them everything—but more people came crashing through the trees. I blinked at the men, all carrying guns. Some were obviously more family members. Big family members. I saw a repeat of the dark hair and eyes as well as two more men with blond hair, though theirs was lighter than Vanir’s. They had blue eyes, as well, and resembled Sarah.
Everyone moved together as if used to one another. There was a sense of strong family unity there that tore into me, reminded me that my mother was ripping this family apart and that she had to be stopped.
Willy stepped from behind the others, his red hair bright against the mostly white backdrop. “Roger thought he saw a giant woman with long hair running through the woods earlier. But I saw a regular-size one. Wore a black, fuzzy coat. Did she have something to do with this?”
I nodded just as Vanir staggered with my weight.
A blond man came forward. “Let me carry her so you can see to your wolf.” He took off his outer coat. Vanir shifted me around so the man could gently pull my arms through the coat. Numbness made my limbs heavy.
When the man tried to take me, Vanir tightened his arms. “Geri will let Ari look at her. They like him nearly as much as me.”
The man grinned and winked at Vanir. “Not giving the girl up for any reason, anyway, are you?”
“No, I’m not.” He looked down at me. “That was the dumbest stunt ever.” He kissed me hard. In front of everyone. Short and sharp and full of a reprimand. I frowned. Yeah, he’d pay for that later. When I felt better. “And the bravest stunt ever,” he continued, shaking his head. He glanced back at the blond man still standing next to him. “Don, tell Sarah to meet us at the grove, will you?”
Don lifted an eyebrow. “Cell phone, remember? None of us are about to leave you with those dogs on the loose.”
“And a big, crazy woman and a smaller crazy woman. I swear, everyone’s gone insane.” This was from a uniformed cop. He turned suddenly as another cop came running from the trees.
“Dogs are swarming the Reynolds place!” he yelled.
“The Reynoldses have six kids,” Willy said. “We’ll have to split into two groups.”
I shivered and felt nausea rising in my throat again. I instinctively struggled to get free. I was so not going to throw up on Vanir. The wave of sickness grew until it overshadowed everything and I closed my eyes to stop the world from spinning. Vanir was calling my name when it finally stopped.
Unfortunately, so did everything else. After fighting it for so long, my world finally went black.
Chapter Eighteen
I woke to the kind of pain that made me want to crawl back into the black nothingness. Someone was cleaning my shoulder. Or digging at it with a dull knife.
I moaned.
Flattening my palm on the ground, I sucked in a breath when magic seeped into my hand and up my arm. That’s when I noticed it creeping into the rest of my body, as well. Tingling and curious, like when your foot falls asleep and you shake it awake. Only, all over.
And where was the freaking snow?
I felt actual, soft blades of cold grass between my fingers. And I was warm. So wonderfully warm.
“The grove is accepting her.”
The whisper was feminine. I was too tired to respond and in too much pain to care whether I did or not. I liked the magic. It gave me a sense of homecoming I’d never felt with anything other than my sisters. There was also a delicious heat plastered to my lower back.
I opened my eyes and saw Vanir’s face. I’d led those dogs away from him. I’d never been more scared in my life, and still, I’d done it.
He leaned over and softly kissed my lips.
“Hey, now, none of that.” A touch of humor threaded Sarah’s voice. She bent so I could see her, pushing Vanir a little out of the way. I couldn’t help following him with my gaze.
Sarah waved a hand in front of my eyes. “You’re going to start feeling better pretty soon. Sorry, but this will scar. I sewed it up the best I could out here.”
“It won’t be much of a scar,” Vanir said. He pulled my hand into his lap and threaded our fingers together.
“I don’t care about scars,” I whispered, surprised at how scratchy my throat was. My confusion must have shown on my face.
“Your voice?” he asked.
I nodded weakly.
He shrugged. “You got sick. A lot. I did that once right before passing out. The acid probably messed up your throat.”
Nice. Couldn’t believe he kissed me after that. I closed my eyes, could hear the other men talking softly a few yards away. Heard the howl of a dog in the distance. “Geri?”
“She’s okay. Wrapped around your backside and sleeping. Ari took care of her leg. She won’t be walking on it much, but it’s sprained, not broken, and her scratches and bite marks will heal. The grove will help.”
“She saved my life.”
“That makes two of us.” Vanir reached behind me, stroking Geri’s fur, I assumed. “I’ve never told you how I met them.”
“Tell me,” I whispered. Anything to get my mind off this pain.
“A car accident killed my parents on my ninth birthday. Geri and Freak were pups at the time, but their mother led me to this grove where they kept me warm until my brothers found me. Geri and Freak kept showing up after that and at some point they stayed.”
“They’re guardian spirits,” I whispered.
“I know that now.”
His eyes took on a faint, yellow glow and I realized I’d been out a while because night was slowly creeping in. Alarmed, I tried to sit up and nearly threw up again as nausea swarmed my stomach and sent acid slamming up my throat like a volcanic eruption. I clapped a hand over my mouth and swayed. Flashing dots decorated the backs of my eyelids.
“Why don’t you lie there a little longer?” Sarah had one of those good doctor voices, warm and soothing. The kind that said trust me before they stuck you with a needle the size of a fishing pole.
I cautiously opened my eyes. Dots disappeared. “She’s not gone. We have to be ready.”
Vanir and his aunt looked at each other before Vanir asked, “Who’s not gone?”
I wanted to close my eyes, but didn’t. “My mother.”
Muddy confu
sion darkened his face. “Your mother is here? Since when?”
The urgent need to explain chased away my nausea and my caution. Words spilled from my lips in a tangled mass. “I should’ve explained before but the giant threw me off and I really thought maybe I’d been wrong. But I need you to try and get why I did it, why I didn’t tell you. I just couldn’t believe she’d do it, not really—”
“Whoa, rein in the crazy a bit.” Vanir bent closer. “I’m not following you here.”
Sucking in a deep breath, I wrapped my fingers around his arms, squeezing the thick material of his coat. “My mother has serious problems. When my sisters and I were born, this shaman told her that one of us would be killed by our nineteenth birthday. That the giants of Niflheim had been passing this secret down through the generations. That’s why we moved so much, didn’t go to school.”
“I thought you said that was because of your rune tempus?”
“Her rune what?” Sarah asked.
I’d forgotten she was there and resented the hell out of her interruption, so I ignored her. I tightened my fingers on Vanir’s arms. Brought his attention back to me. A cold wind swooped through the grove, stinging my eyes. Blinking, I leaned closer. “Listen to me. Don’t trust my mother. She can be charming, so damned charming, but it’s all bullshit. Lately, anyway. I don’t know what’s happened to her. She was a little paranoid and overprotective, but in the past few weeks, she’s been...so bad.” Lame. But I couldn’t bring myself to call her a murderer. Just couldn’t.
I heard the thudding of paws running on snow right before Freak bounded into the clearing, turned his tail to us and growled at the dark forest beyond the grove. The hair on the back of my neck crept to a stand.
The murmuring outside the grove stopped as several men held up their rifles.
“Vanir.” I reached up and gripped his chin, pulling his face back to mine, ignoring the fierce frown he shot me. “You have to listen to me. Don’t trust her. Don’t—”
“Shh!” Sarah said. She jumped to her feet. “Do you hear them?”
The dogs were back.
Barks and growls grew steadily louder, along with my heartbeat. A roaring of panic flooded my head, made my ears throb, and I yelled in frustration and terror when the dogs burst from the trees and came to a standstill.
Surrounding us. I couldn’t see them all, but my guess was about thirty.
“How many bullets did you bring, Willy?” one of the deputies asked.
“Not enough,” he murmured. “Anyone carrying knives?”
I blocked out their voices, leaned close to Vanir and whispered in his ear. “The prophecy of our death made my mom go crazy—crazier than I thought. I didn’t know she would try to kill you. I swear.”
His head jerked around, his mouth going slack as he stared at me, shock widening his features until that shock leaked away to reveal a look of betrayal so deep I actually felt my heart crack in two. At the same time, shadows crept over his body, my legs.
Twilight had arrived.
“Your brother was right about the raven. The trickster. I’m the trickster. I should have told you the truth, but a part of me didn’t want to believe.”
His lips were tight. Eyes faintly glowing. But I could see the hurt there. “If you haven’t noticed, we’re surrounded by dogs under some sort of spell. We really don’t have time for this.” He stood and started to walk from the grove, to stand with his family against the dogs.
“No!” I yelled. The men glanced in my direction before whipping their heads back to face the dogs. One by one, Vanir’s brothers moved closer to him.
“Vanir, you have to stay in this grove!” I didn’t know why, didn’t know how I knew this, but it was true.
The soul inside me chose that moment to make her presence known. It was like a foghorn went off inside my head. I cried out, clasped hands over my ears and fell onto my side.
And the damn world began to spin.
“Your timing stinks,” Vanir yelled just as he dove down and held on to me. He grunted with pain when his leg slammed into the ground.
I tried to stop it but I don’t know if I was too weak from the loss of blood or what. I couldn’t. The trees, the men with guns, his aunt Sarah and his brothers—they all turned into dark blobs, then lines of color as the spinning grew faster and faster. That sucking sensation pulled at my shoulder wound.
Vanir’s arms tightened and I gripped his elbow. He buried his nose in my neck. He’d crashed behind me to hold on to me. To try to protect me. From my own freaking magic.
I closed my eyes. Always did by this point. I’d only tried to watch this once, when I was about ten. Nightmares had bled into my sleep for nearly a year because, for several seconds, while the world was in that full-out spin, it looked like I was standing on the only ground left. All around me was a vast, black nothing.
The jerk to a stop was worse this time. Like crashing into a wall. Vanir let go and rolled onto his back, groaning.
I pushed against the ground to bring myself to a sitting position, turning toward him. I felt the need to draw the runes more powerfully than ever before. My hands actually shook with the effort it took to hold it back. They started to warm. I stared at my fingers. It never happened this fast. Then it felt like someone set them on fire. I cried out, reached toward the snow at the edge of the grove.
Vanir frantically patted his back pocket, but we’d lost the notebook somewhere. He crawled along the ground, found a stick and handed it to me. “Use it in the snow.” He pointed. “There, where nobody has walked yet.”
I didn’t have the energy to walk, so I crawled to the untouched edge. Tears streamed down my cheeks from the pain and I barely noticed the people, dogs and wolves frozen around me.
Vanir scrambled toward the edge of the grove with me.
“No! Don’t you dare leave the grove.” I turned frantic eyes on him. “I know you’re pissed at me. I understand—I do. But please stay inside because I think you’re safer here!”
The heat intensified and I hurried to write the runes. There were so many this time. My shoulder ached like crazy and sobs escaped my throat. Vanir, who must have finally realized he couldn’t help, leaned over my back—still in the grove, thank the gods—and wrapped his arms around me. He held me tight. Then he pushed soothing and healing emotion into me. But it wasn’t the healing part of it that took my mind off the pain.
It was his hurt over my lack of honesty that hit me first, but riding that hurt was an emotion so strong I recognized it. I hurt him because he loved me. Utterly and completely. Trickster or not. He really did—had already fallen for me and he’d accepted it...even welcomed it. And I knew he’d forgive me eventually for lying to him.
Forgiving myself would be harder.
When my hands finally went still, I slumped, drew in deep breaths. And in that moment of stillness, I heard movement in the woods. When before it was only me in the rune tempus, now it was Vanir, the wolves and someone else. I knew who. And she’d never, ever come into this with me before. What sort of magic had she been doing to be capable of this?
“My mother is coming.” I managed to get the words past my blocked throat. Barely.
And she arrived. While the world around was still frozen, her black hair and coat dark against the snow that covered everything, outside of this gloaming grove. She trudged through the drifts, her clunky snow boots not hindering her in the least, her black hair tangled about her head. Madness glowed from her eyes.
My gaze landed on the runes. “Vanir.” I pointed.
He looked and all the color bleached from his skin.
Urd had decided to give us the entire message this time.
“‘In violence conceived, of dark blood born. The trickster is freed...at first breath of the norn.’” Vanir read the entire message aloud, then sat back on
his heels.
I could only stare at the runes, my mind trying to grasp this message. The corners of my vision turned dark as a huge, engulfing horror raged through my body. It couldn’t. Couldn’t mean what I thought it did.
“Like that, do you?” my mother drawled as she stopped yards away from the edge of the grove. “What’s it feel like, knowing that your mother’s decision to give birth to you is what started the end of the world?”
Chapter Nineteen
“What does that feel like?” my mother continued, shivering dramatically before sneering. The expression on her face was nothing I’d ever seen on her. She didn’t look like my mom at all. Comprehension flirted on the edge of my thoughts, but the horror of what I’d read, what she was saying, had filled my mouth with sand. I could only stare at her while I knelt, quaking on the ground.
“All that responsibility belonging to the norns. To three silly, naive young girls.”
That couldn’t be right. I closed my eyes as a wave of dizziness hit me. My dry mouth fell open as if the cold air would help. Nothing could help—not with this.
Her laugh this time was low. “Your mother knew this whole time. Bet she never shared that particular prophecy with you, did she? Crazy, overprotective bitch.”
I opened my eyes as I finally grasped on to the knowledge that had been flitting around my stunned mind. My mother was talking in third person like she’d completely disassociated herself from her actions or something.
“You know,” she continued. “If she’d been a little less crazy, she would have tracked down the warriors sooner. Then I could have...intervened sooner.”
“Raven,” Vanir said, pulling me to my feet and close to him so he could whisper under his breath. “You aren’t the trickster here. I hate to tell you this, but I don’t think that person is your mother anymore.”
“So, you’re a smart warrior.” She chuckled on the last word as she stopped next to one of the still men. She swept her black hair over one shoulder, peered up into his face, then flicked his nose. “This is such an interesting trick—this thing you do to stop the world, Raven. I don’t think that’s a norn ability.” She turned, locked hate-filled eyes on me. “That one must have come from your daddy.”
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