by Lauren Dawes
Chapter Thirty-four
Loki clipped shut the last of Bryn’s bonds and sat back on his heels to look the woman over. She had blood—congealed and tacky—on her forehead from the cut above her eye. The opposite eye was already beginning to discolor, her shattered cheek bone making a divot under her left eye.
He had beaten and tortured her until she had passed out, and even that hadn’t stopped him. He needed to have her cloak. He needed it so he could finally kill Odin. What he couldn’t understand was why she had turned up without it. She knew the stakes. She knew her other two Valkyries would have been killed for her disobedience.
And yet she had turned up all the same.
Ensuring the metal collar cutting up under her chin and rubbing against her collarbones was firmly in place, he stepped out of the small room he had chosen as her cell.
Bryn hadn’t caved under his torture, but he had lost one of the Valkyries in his quest to make her talk. He wanted to keep her alive for a little longer, but Bryn’s denial drove him into a frenzy where he ripped the feathers from her cloak and drove his dagger through the woman’s heart.
Even though she had witnessed the death of her fellow Valkyrie, Bryn had withstood his torture, denying knowledge of her cloak’s location until the very end. He had done more damage than he had ever done to a female body before, but she remained strong. He could understand why Odin had chosen her now.
He spat onto the floor, sneering over his blood brother’s name in his head. Loki was so close—so incredibly close to killing him. The only thing standing between him and reaching his goal was chained to a pipe just on the other side of a metal door.
Stalking through to the main room, the only breathing Valkyrie in the room whimpered, but didn’t move away from her sister’s corpse. If anything, she drew it closer, protecting the body with her own.
Loki snapped his teeth at her, pacing in a tight line. He needed to get that cloak. Of course he didn’t believe Bryn didn’t know its location. All Valkyries knew exactly where their cloaks were. It would have to be somewhere in the apartment she shared with the others, but how was he supposed to get in there to retrieve it?
The idea struck him. Loki laughed out loud, tipping his head back and rejoicing in how perfect it could be. The other woman simply stared at him as if he had suddenly lost his mind. Tears trembled on her bottom lashes, small squeaks coming from her throat as she clutched her dead sister closer.
It was all too perfect.
They all knew Bryn was gone, which meant he could simply wear Bryn’s face and go in there and retrieve the cloak without any questions being asked. Marching from the room, he opened up Bryn’s makeshift cell door and stepped inside. She was still slumped over just as he’d left her.
Touching one shoulder, he began changing his form to mimic the fallen Valkyrie. Making himself shorter was always harder—it required a lot more concentration—but he managed to shrink his seven foot frame into a semblance of her six-two body.
Her long braid fell over one of his shoulders, bouncing with a weight he didn’t expect to feel. Touching it, he found the hair soft and thick and smelling of coconut. He transferred the same jeans and tee from her body onto his and looked down at his new body.
He abhorred being a female.
He shrugged, let out a breath and faded to the club. Approaching the rear door, he knocked. A few moments passed before a human male opened the door.
‘Bryn?’ he asked, eying him suspiciously.
Loki nodded roughly, pushing past the male and stepping inside. Ahead of him was a door and to his right a long hallway.
The human male was still buzzing around like an annoying insect. ‘Where have you been?’ he asked, stopping Loki when he tried to pull open the door directly opposite him. Unable to speak in case his disguise slipped, Loki wheeled around, bared his teeth and shoved the human away.
Stalking down to the other end of the hallway, he began his search for a way to get upstairs. The human remained where he was, staring at him from the other end of the hallway, which was a smart move because Loki would have been forced to kill him if he had come any closer.
At the very end of the long hall, there was a blind corner revealing the steel doors of an elevator.
He depressed the top button and waited, feeling more and more uncomfortable in his guise. He had to be careful. These were the women who knew Bryn best. If anyone was to see through his disguise now, it would have been them. Stepping into the elevator, he waited for the doors to close and take him up.
The doors reopened with a soft snick and he stepped out in an equally long hallway as before. There were doors running the length of the hall—all closed. He had no idea which door he had to enter through.
He started walking down the hall, letting his nose lead him. At the end, he paused in front of one door, inhaling deeply. Bryn’s scent was all over it. He tried the handle and found it unlocked.
He slid inside and closed the door behind him. He followed Bryn’s scent until it became the strongest behind one door in particular. Opening it up, he started his search for her cloak, throwing things on the ground, tearing apart her bed and mattress, yanking all her clothes from the coat hangers and dumping them with everything else.
And still he didn’t find the box.
With a nasty curse leaving his lips, Loki turned around and stormed through the rest of the apartment. He tore it apart too; breaking glasses, plates, bowls. He pulled out all the drawers in the kitchen, dumping the contents on the ground and ripping the curtains from their windows. An unnatural roar left his lips before he remembered who he was supposed to be and where he was.
Clamping his lips shut, he stalked out of there before the other Valkyries had a chance to investigate. Coming back the way he had come, he pushed open the back door, shook off his disguise and faded back to the underground tunnel that had become his makeshift torture chamber.
Bryn was still unconscious, the swelling to her face looking worse than before. Seeing her again ignited his anger. Roughly, he undid the cuffs on her ankles, took her by one arm and dragged her from the room.
He needed that cloak.
And he needed it fucking ten minutes ago.
He picked her up and dumped her onto an old steel table he’d found in one of the other abandoned tunnels. He tied her arms and ankles with more links of chain holding the protective rune and removed her collar.
‘Please don’t hurt her,’ the remaining Valkyrie whimpered. Loki turned his pale green gaze to her and she shrank back. She was still clutching the hand of her long dead sister. He turned back to Bryn, his eyes roving all over her body.
His gaze got snagged on the tattoo that sat on her neck. It seemed to glow in the low light. It was gold and incredibly beautiful. His finger skimmed over the ink, but he pulled away when her skin felt cold and hard over the blade itself. Loki’s head suddenly turned around, scanning the rest of the room. He could have sworn he heard someone say motherfucker. He was losing his goddamn mind. He felt like he was in that cave again—hearing voices.
He glanced at the badly decomposing bodies of the other Valkyries, wondering whether they were the ones who had spoken to him.
Shaking himself of the thoughts, he retrieved a bucket of water and he threw it onto Bryn, stepping back to enjoy the show.
The female came to with a loud gasp. Her spine bowed, coming off the metal table and rattling the chains that held her there. She was sucking in deep, rasping gulps of air, her eyes scrunching shut to clear the water away. When she was finally in control of herself, Bryn’s head rolled in his direction.
Only one eye was functioning; the other swollen shut. When he’d thrown the water over her, some of the blood had melted away, leaving faint pink tracks down her cheeks. Blood plastered her hair to her head, matting it together. Her lips were cracked and bloody, weeping fresh tears as her mouth opened in surprise.
‘Tell me where it is,’ he demanded before she was fully recovered. He took a s
tep toward her supine form. She jerked against her bonds, moaning when the links cut into her already rubbed-raw skin. ‘Tell me where your cloak is Bryn, and I will set Eir free.’
‘Don’t tell him!’ Eir screamed, her eyes darting wildly between him and Bryn. Loki stalked toward the other woman, cuffing her. Bryn screamed out, but her voice was so quiet she could hardly be heard. Eir slumped forward, blood trickling from her newly split lip. Loki pulled the bottom of his jacket down, loosened his neck with a roll and turned back to Bryn.
He approached the table, finding one of the knife wounds he had earlier inflicted, and pressed his thumb into her flesh. She pressed her lips together and writhed in silence. Loki got in nice and close to her, wanting her to feel his feathered breath on her face, wanting her heart to pound with fear. ‘Tell. Me.’ He penetrated further into her flesh until he forced the scream from her lips. She shrieked and there was no sweeter sound.
Loki removed his fingers and wiped her own blood on her cheek. She tried to pull away from his touch, but he took her chin in his hand and forced her eyes back to his.
‘You have ten seconds to tell me where it is. Failure to do so will mean I kill Eir.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked around her split lip.
‘Why? Because you are Odin’s only weakness. I eliminate you, and I eliminate him. It’s simple.’ Loki tipped his head back and laughed out loud when Bryn’s frown deepened.
‘He hasn’t told you, has he? That arrogant bastard.’ Loki got in nice and close to her face, making sure he had her attention. ‘You are his first. When he gave you your immortality, he tipped too much of his soul into you. In doing this, he created an unbreakable bond between the two of you. Even being the All-Father didn’t save him from his own arrogance.
‘Your immortality and his is tangled together so tightly there was no way to undo it. You are bound together in life and in death. So, all I have to do is kill you then I can kill him.’
Loki watched her face, waiting for the anguish. Bryn’s lips quirked...into a smile. Loki’s anger flashed and he struck Bryn in the face. ‘What’s so damn funny?’ he demanded.
The Valkyrie laughed, coughing when blood got trapped in her throat. It stained her teeth now. ‘You can’t kill me.’
Loki’s rage boiled over. With a snarl on his lips, he drew his gun and pointed it at Eir’s head. ‘Eir will die in ten seconds if you don’t tell me where your cloak is.’
The laughter died in Bryn’s throat, her eyes going wide, as he flipped the safety off. ‘No!’ Bryn screamed, bucking against the chains, pulling and twisting her body around.
‘Ten.’
‘Fuck you!’
He smiled. ‘Nine.’
She actually spat in his face this time.
Wiping it away, he said on a growl, ‘Eight.’
‘You bastard! You fucking bastard!’
‘Seven...’
* * *
Korvain’s phone was ringing silently in his pocket. Retrieving it, he placed the thing to his ear.
‘Yeah?’
‘Bryn just showed up,’ Mason said in an unsteady voice. Korvain should have been relieved, but something wasn’t right.
‘Tell me,’ he barked into the phone.
‘It wasn’t her. It was a god disguised as her. I read his thoughts.’
He bit back the snarl. ‘Where is the god now?’
‘Upstairs.’
A nasty curse left Korvain’s lips. Loki must have been looking for Bryn’s cloak.
‘What should I do?’ Mason asked when Korvain was silent for too long.
‘Nothing. Let him look and leave. He won’t risk being discovered by the others.’
‘But if I let him leave, we won’t know where he’s keeping Bryn.’
‘I’ve got it covered. Don’t confront him if you see him again. Let him go and I’ll take care of it.’
Korvain hung up and started walking again. Only half an hour had passed since he’d dropped down into the abandoned tunnels, but it felt like a Hel of a lot longer. He was about to give up when his foot accidently kicked some of the debris on the ground, but instead of it being a solid sound, it was hollow—rattling. Bending down, his long fingers reached for the small tin he’d dislodged with his foot.
It was rusted with age, but there was no mistaking what it was. He clutched the tiny tin in his hand and stood up. He did a sweep of the immediate section of tunnel, looking for the door Bryn had described to him.
He’d almost missed it. But there it was. A door that didn’t look like a door. It was inside one of the alcoves cut out of niches every ten feet or so. He tried the handle and found it opened soundlessly. Before opening the door, he took one last look at the tunnel and stepped over the raised lip into a short corridor.
He walked straight into a wall of putrescent stench; rotted, fetid flesh. He knew he was inhaling the rot of decomposing corpses—the corpses of the slayed Valkyries. Loki must have kept them as trophies.
Holding a hand over his nose and mouth, he continued down a small hallway and entered another room. Despite the overwhelming reek of decomposing bodies, there was a metallic hum in the air, too. A lot of blood had been spilled in there.
In one corner, there was a metal table and a chair, and in the opposite corner were Eir and Kristy. His eyes grazed over the three bodies piled one on top of the other in the other corner. Korvain hugged the shadows closer to his body and walked further into the room.
Eir’s head rose slowly. Her eyes were red and puffy, her nose much the same. She was looking in his direction, but she wouldn’t have been able to see him. She lowered her head once more; her golden hair was matted with blood and hanging in limp clumps from her head. She had the same kind of collar Bryn had on in the dreams, her ankles shackled in the same way.
Korvain saw her hand was tangled up in her sister’s hair, petting it, stroking it. There were white feathers strewn all over the place; bloody and broken. As he moved closer, he could see Kristy wasn’t breathing.
To Eir’s right was another doorway. Korvain thought the thought and faded into it, already knowing that’s where he would find Bryn.
What he saw made his knees buckle. He hit the floor, the shadows that clung to his body melting away as his concentration dropped. The last time he had seen her, she was unharmed, but now her face was black and blue, bloody smears covered her face from the fresh cuts to her lips. The cheek bone under her left eye socket looked as if it had been smashed, a thousand pieces of bone floating around her face. Both eyes were black, hiding behind her blood-caked hair.
There were knife wounds to her body. They looked shallow; wounds intended to torture, but not kill. A trickle of blood flowed from beneath the collar around her neck; the nasty piece of hardware hitting under her jaw, tilting her head back at an awkward angle. It finished at the top of her shoulders, the metal pushing into her collarbones until they were bloody, too.
Korvain inched closer to Bryn, touching her face gently, trying to stroke her hair. She didn’t even whimper. Before he screamed his frustrations, he began looking at the links that bound her. The protection rune was carved into each one preventing her from fading from this place.
Korvain picked up the padlock, ready to break it with his bare hands when he heard the door slide open. He called his shadows to him in an instant, retreating and pressing himself against the wall of Bryn’s cell.
Loki was back and he looked as pissed as Hel. Anger rolled off his body in great waves; so great even Korvain had trouble breathing. The air had thickened that much. Loki undid the cuffs on Bryn’s ankles and dragged her still body from the room.
Korvain had to swallow his growl. He blinked and saw red. Nobody touched Bryn like that. He stalked out after Loki, his hands clenched into tight fists. The god had unceremoniously dropped Bryn onto a metal slab of a table, tying up her arms and ankles again so she was spread-eagled on top of the metal platform. At least he had removed her collar.
Loki�
��s eyes and fingers lingered over her neck, but when the god touched Bryn’s neck, Korvain couldn’t stop the word motherfucker from escaping his throat. Loki’s head jerked around, his eyes narrowing and after a few heart beats, he shook his head and bent down to pick up a bucket of water Korvain hadn’t noticed when he’d first come in.
He threw the water onto her face, bringing Bryn around instantaneously. She gasped loudly, her body trying to bring her into a sitting position, but the bonds on her wrists and ankles stopped her. Now that she was awake, Korvain could see her left eye wasn’t working; it was sealed shut with the swelling.
‘Tell me where it is,’ Loki demanded. His voice seemed to split into two or three different sounds; the effect amplifying them.
Bryn jerked away when the god took a step closer to her, fresh blood tainting the air and making Korvain’s fangs throb.
‘Tell me where your cloak is, Bryn, and I will set Eir free.’
‘Don’t tell him!’ Eir screamed. Korvain’s gaze flipped to hers. Her eyes were wild as they darted between Loki and Bryn. Her hand didn’t stop stroking her sister’s hair though. Loki growled and struck the other Valkyrie. Eir slumped forward at an awkward angle, the collar stopping her chin from rolling forward. Bryn had screamed out just as Loki’s hand had struck Eir, but it sounded as if she was screaming from the end of a long tunnel.
Loki turned back around, his jade green eyes looking over Bryn’s body. His fingers drove into one of the shallow cuts on her side. Bryn remained quiet though, pressing her lips together, breathing hard through her nostrils to beat back the pain.
‘Tell. Me,’ Loki repeated, thrusting his fingers in deeper until Bryn’s anguished scream filled the small room. Loki smiled and rubbed her own blood onto her cheeks.
When Bryn actually spoke, she sounded broken. ‘Why are you doing this?’
Korvain listened as Loki explained Odin and Bryn’s connection. They were soul-bound, the strongest bond a god could forge with a human. He watched as Bryn smiled a broken, lopsided smile at the god.
Loki growled and cuffed her. ‘What’s so damn funny?’ he demanded. Korvain’s hand felt for the handle of his karambit, letting his anger cloud his judgement for just a moment. Letting out a breath, he released his hold, bunching his hands into fists instead.
