by Eva Chase
“It’s come to my attention that a warg has been roaming around this bit of Midgard,” Loki said. He brushed a rotting cardboard box aside with his foot, his lips curling in distaste. “You’ll track it down, corner it, and overpower it. If you can manage that, I think you’re ready for whatever might wait you when you go looking for Odin.”
“Great,” I said. “Wonderful. What the hell is a warg?”
“And why didn’t you mention to the rest of us that one was causing trouble?” Hod demanded from where he was stalking along at the edge of our group.
“A warg is a monster that looks a lot like one of your wolves,” Thor said to me. He’d kept close beside me since we’d entered the city, his bulky body like a shield. “But bigger, faster, fiercer, and smarter.”
“Oh. Well, that sounds like fun.” I bet I didn’t get to keep him as my shield when I went after this one.
“And I didn’t mention it because it only recently started causing enough trouble for us to bother interfering,” Loki said. “Mortal eyes see only a stray dog. It’s broken into a few stores and apartments scrounging for food. Nothing too horrifying. But it seems to be developing an interest in fresh meat. It savaged a little girl last night. And I’d hate to think what may have been happening to the pet population in the area.”
My back had gone rigid. A little girl. I guessed one life didn’t mean much to the gods who’d watched billions come and go, but that was all I needed to hear to consider this more than just a test.
“All right. Let me at it.”
“Patience, pixie,” Loki said. “I don’t want us spending all night on a tracking mission. I’ll get you close enough that you should be able to follow the trail fairly quickly.”
“One can’t help wondering when it was you found the time to be keeping an eye on this creature,” Freya said from where she was strolling along behind us. Even though she hadn’t been part of my training directly, she’d scoffed at the idea that we leave her behind. It’s my husband she’ll be looking for. I’d like to have some say in whether she’s ready.
“Oh, I’m capable of keeping track of all sorts of things with very little effort,” Loki said loftily.
“And you have an affinity for wolves, after all,” Baldur remarked in his airy way.
The trickster god cut his gaze toward Baldur, his shoulders tensing, but the god of light barely seemed to notice his apprehension, so I doubted he’d meant to cause it. “Yes,” Loki said. “There is that.”
Was that one of the shapes Loki could shift into? It would suit him. I was going to ask, but then he stopped by a wide alley that stretched between two brick factory buildings and raised his chin toward it. “That way,” he said. “You take the lead now. Let’s see how much you’ve learned, pixie.”
Oh, I’d show them, all right. Honestly, I was a little curious to find out myself. This was my first chance to try out these skills on an actual menace.
I wanted to get on with the whole finding Odin thing, but I wasn’t going to be any good to Petey if I died all over again in the process. So I couldn’t exactly argue with the gods’ wariness to throw me straight into whatever had swallowed up the other valkyries they’d sent looking.
I edged down the alley, tucking my hand into my pocket and drawing out my switchblade. I didn’t know how much good that four-inch blade would do against a warg, but it was more likely to do damage than my bare hands were. And the warmed plastic against my palm steadied me.
Maybe I hadn’t been able to use this weapon to protect myself as much as I should have, back when it had really mattered, but I could make it count now.
As I scanned the alley, my heightened senses directed my attention. My gaze caught on a tuft of coarse fur clinging to the corner of a brick. At shoulder height, where some massive furred body must have brushed against these walls. A murky, musky smell crept into my nose.
I swallowed hard and kept going. My five spectators trailed along behind me, giving me a ten-foot lead and total silence.
The alley split like the head of a T, left and right. I glanced in each direction, watching, listening, tasting the air. Only a hint of a breeze stirred the muggy atmosphere, but I caught a hint of that murky scent from the right—where my perked ears also picked up a panted breath from somewhere far down that dirty concrete path through this industrial maze.
I skirted a dumpster that looked like it hadn’t been used in years but still gave off a stale stink and picked my way between the buildings. Disintegrating shreds of wood and warped bits of metal scattered the cracked cement. The factories and warehouses loomed on either side, cutting off the sun completely. Only a narrow line of gray-blue sky showed above me.
Another rough breath led me around a second turn. The smell got thicker in my oversensitive nose.
Up ahead, a few hulking metal machines had been put out to pasture in a concrete yard surrounded by a chain-link fence. Something had torn a gash in that fence near the alley—a gash as tall as I was and twice as wide.
The shadow beneath one of the machines shifted. It wasn’t all shadow. A huge dark shape was slumped there. Taking its rest before its nighttime prowl?
My mouth went dry. My fingers tightened around the handle of my switchblade. I eased through the gash in the fence, not even daring to look back and confirm the gods were still following me. My gaze never left the beast cloaked in the shadow.
I couldn’t tell what the machine casting the shadow might have been meant for. It was a jumbled structure of rusted metal panels, looping tubes, and cylinders that might have spun once but now were locked in place with grit and their own share of rust. The contraption farther beyond it looked like a massive sewing machine, taller than me, with a steel “needle” as thick as my wrist.
The form in the shadow had to be at least twice as large as I was. My sharpened eyes could only just make out the tips of its thick pelt along the edge of its body. How the hell was I supposed to “overpower” that thing?
What did I have that it didn’t? My wings. I extended them with a swift unfurling, ignoring the biting burn that came with pushing them out so quickly. I could always fly out of reach if I needed to. Herd it from above. Corner it, Loki said. And then… trap it somehow?
Or kill it, using the power Hod showed me this morning?
It’d been attacking kids. A monster like that needed to be put down—if I could pull that skill off when it was a huge, fast creature and not just a plant sitting still in a pot.
I was only halfway to the shadow when the monster lifted its head: an immense, wolfish head with pointed ears and a glint of teeth along its muzzle. It growled low in its throat.
And then it charged.
I leapt out of the way with a heave of my legs and a flap of my wings, only my enhanced valkyrie strength pushing me far enough to dodge the swipe of the warg’s claws. It spun on me and lunged again. I fluttered higher into the air with a lurch of my heart. Its jaws snapped shut just below my heel.
Fuck. If I’d had any doubts about whether this thing needed to be destroyed, they’d vanished now. The question wasn’t so much whether I was going to kill it as how I was going to while making sure it didn’t devour me.
The beast circled the yard beneath me as I swept higher still, pulling myself well out of range to gather my thoughts. I had strength and speed, flight and heightened senses. And the ability to sense emotions, intentions—Baldur’s gift.
Dragging in a breath, I focused on the monster. On the pulse of vicious energy inside its head.
It had sensed what I was here to do. It planned to end me before I ended it. Even now, it was gathering itself for a jump at me.
I could read that: what move it would make next. If I could feel that out, I could stay one step ahead of it and dive for its weak spots the first chance I got.
Which meant I had to get closer again.
I flitted out of the way of its leap and then dropped back to the ground. The warg whirled, bounding left and then right, a feint and
a jab. But I’d seen that coming. I rolled out of the way, stabbing out with my switchblade. The blade sank into the flesh just behind the creature’s foreleg before I yanked my weapon back.
The warg snarled and whipped toward me. Blood dappled the pavement. My pulse beat fast and hard through my veins. I just had to keep this up, had to keep weakening it, until I got a bigger opening. I could do this. For myself. For Petey. For the little girl this monster had hurt.
It sprang at me with a gnash of its teeth, just at the moment I’d felt to expect it. I dodged and slashed out at its other side. The beast swung around so quickly my knuckles brushed its side before I could pull myself away. My eyes connected with the warg’s for a single instant. For long enough to take in their flat yellow sheen—and a cold gleam of intelligence shining behind them.
As if there were a human being behind that monstrous face, staring back at me.
My stomach flipped. My wings flapped instinctively, propelling me up and away. At the same moment, another darkly furred body hurtled at me from the top of one of the abandoned machines.
A gasp jolted out of me, and then clawed feet were slamming me into the concrete. I thrashed and rolled, squirming away just as teeth grazed my cheek, digging my heels into a furry gut and heaving back against it with all the strength Thor had passed on to me. Pain lanced down my face with a wet chill, but the warg on me stumbled back just far enough for me to scramble out from under it. Right into the lunge of a third.
Three of them. There were three of them.
I spun around, swaying as I caught my balance, my palm gone clammy against the handle of my switchblade. My fist smacked my latest attacker’s muzzle to the side, but only by a few inches. And the other two were closing around me again.
I couldn’t do this. Couldn’t take on all of them. I’d needed all my strength and concentration just to fight the first. I threw myself up toward the sky, spreading my wings—and a monstrous jaw clamped hard around one wing tip.
Teeth raked through feathers and flesh, dragging me back to earth. Pain splintered through those unfamiliar nerves and into my back. I cried out, panicked adrenaline shooting through my body, and slashed out with my hand with all the desperate force I could summon.
A crackle of lightning seared down my arm and along the blade, blasting into the monster’s side and sending it flying across the yard. Its body smashed into one of the machines and crumpled to the ground, motionless.
What the fuck had that been? I didn’t have time to ask, to experiment. Another warg was barreling into me. I stumbled to the side, hissing at the slice of its claws through my calf. My hand waved the switchblade wildly, but wherever I’d summoned that lightning from, I didn’t know how to call it up again.
I was not going to die here. Not again. I was not. It just wasn’t an option.
I swept my leg around, slamming it heel first into an incoming warg’s snout. My valkyrie strength sang through my muscles, seeming to blaze hotter with the blood pulsing from my wounds and my enemies’.
The warg snapped at me again, and I dove right under its jaws with a speed I wouldn’t have believed anyone could be capable of a couple days ago. My blade cut across the beast’s throat.
Not deeply enough. More blood pattered down on me, but the creature staggered to the side, still growling. Where the hell was the other one?
Before I could whirl to check, the one I’d wounded was charging at me. A haze of pain emanated from its head. I’d weakened it. I had to take the advantage while I had it.
I leapt aside and heaved at the beast’s shoulder with all my might. It staggered and sprawled on its side. I sprang onto it, willing all the strength in my body to weigh it down as I jammed the tip of my blade against the softest part of the creature’s throat.
The flickering life energy of the monster washed over me, heavier and brighter than both Hod’s ferns and the people in the city around us but with the same heady tingling. It flailed its limbs, and I slammed my elbow into the joint of its foreleg with a force that made the bone snap. Then, with a ragged breath, I dug my fingers into the coarse fur and hauled at that energy with the darkness already unfurling in my chest.
The warg’s eyes rolled back, but the light didn’t entirely fade from them. The one I could see slid to meet my eyes. Suddenly I was sure, down to my bones, this was the same one I’d locked eyes with before. The first one I’d tangled with. That sense of cold but clear intelligence washed over me again—thoughts as sharp and certain as the ones in my own head. A consciousness on par with mine, that I was about to extinguish forever.
A shiver ran down my spine. My grip on the creature’s ruff and its life wavered, just for an instant.
The monster sensed that split-second of hesitation and bucked with a gnash of its jaws.
My body jolted. I slid and almost tumbled from my hold. My hand whipped back just a hair from disappearing into that maw. My other hand clenched its fur with renewed determination. With one last, frantic yank, I wrenched the life from the warg’s body.
The dark space inside me swallowed that energy whole. The creature beneath me slumped. My body slumped too, a sob hitching from my throat.
The third warg had wheeled and fled. I saw a flash of its tail as it raced down an alley on the opposite side of the yard, and then I was alone there with the bodies of the two I’d killed.
Two monsters. But the ache spreading from beneath my ribs wasn’t victorious at all.
13
Aria
The gods were still arguing around me when we reached the house in the middle of the night.
“The point is you told her there was one,” Thor said with a sweeping gesture of his broad arm, his voice not much more than a growl. “You purposely left her underprepared. We were supposed to be testing her, not throwing her to the wolves—literally.”
“And we did test her,” Loki said evenly. “She proved she could handle herself even if the odds shifted even more against her. Even if her enemies multiplied or came on her unexpectedly. From what I saw, it was the wolves that got thrown.”
“Just like always,” Hod muttered. “You set up some precarious scheme and then act as if it wasn’t just dumb luck it worked out in your favor.”
Loki shook his head. “If our valkyrie should be offended by anything, it’s your apparent lack of faith in her.”
“What’s done is done,” Baldur said. He gave me a warm if slightly distant smile. I thought it had gotten a little thinner as the arguing had continued. “Let’s not dwell on it. Why don’t we focus on the good that’s come of this? Aria succeeded—very well. We should celebrate that victory.”
I didn’t feel much like celebrating. All but the worst of the wounds the wargs had left me with had closed up of their own accord, another surprise valkyrie ability, and Baldur’s gentle touch had washed away the rest along with any lingering pain, but I was still wiped out. My body was ready to collapse into bed… and my head was still cluttered with too many jostling thoughts for me to think I’d actually fall asleep.
Freya slipped in beside me and tucked her hand around my elbow. “I think what our valkyrie needs is a little time away from the lot of you,” she said, sweetly but firmly. “It’s been a long, tense night, Ari. A walk will help you wind down.”
I was too distracted by the jumble in my head to protest when she guided me away from the others, across the lawn toward the same path we’d strolled along earlier. When my mind caught up, apprehension prickled over my skin. Was she going to pump me for more information? Make sure my motives had been pure or who knew what else?
I was trying to figure out the smoothest way to extricate myself when she glided to a stop just beyond the first cluster of trees and turned to face me. Her deep blue eyes peered into mine, but her gaze was soft rather than sharp.
“That was hard for you,” she said. “And not just physically.”
Emotion swelled inside me: relief that someone at least partly understood, panic that she’d decide it m
ade me unworthy somehow. What would they do with me if they didn’t think I could complete this quest for them after all?
I grappled for words. “I’ve never killed something like that before. Something… The wargs aren’t just animals, are they? Not regular ones. It felt almost like I was killing a person.”
Freya’s mouth twisted. My sense of her mental state was faint and vague, but the concerned vibe I did pick up felt nothing but genuine. Was she actually worried about me? And if she was, was it for my sake, or for how it would affect their plans?
“They’re beasts,” she said. “Vicious, driven by animal-like instincts to dominate and devour. But yes, they can think more than the beasts you’re used to. That doesn’t mean they should get to live doing whatever they please.”
“No.” But it also didn’t mean I was going to feel ecstatic about having to be the one to cut those thoughts off permanently.
“You’ll need to be prepared,” she said. “If enemies of Asgard have captured Odin, they’ll be monsters of a similar sort. Even closer to human, most likely. But they’ve already cut down three before you. They won’t show you any mercy.”
“Oh, I’m not going to be merciful when someone’s coming for my throat. No guilt over that, believe me.” Just a vaguely unsettled feeling I hadn’t been able to shake yet.
A feeling that had dislodged a whole bunch of other uncomfortable thoughts. Freya started walking again, at a more leisurely pace, and a question that had been nagging at me for a while now tumbled out.
“Can you—can the gods die? You call us ‘mortals,’ but… I don’t remember my mythology all that well, but I know there were prophecies about deaths and all that.”
