He scampered backwards slowly, almost drunkenly, as I rose to my feet. The blows to that hard head of his must finally be doing some good.
The scent of a dozen wet wolves surrounded us. Eyes flashed in the dark, teeth gnashed, and growls rose up. But they didn’t approach. A pained yelp came from the mass. Suddenly a wolf flew through the air as if launched. It collided with the nearest container and slid down the metal. More yelps sounded. Another wolf flew, and another. Calder and I stopped circling one another to turn toward the condemned.
Among them strode a huge black wolf, hackles raised, claws swiping, and fangs tearing anything that came close enough. Just in the heartbeat I watched, three fell to his wraith. The seven remaining began to back away, tails tucked between their legs.
“V, no,” I whispered.
He shouldn’t be strong enough to fight like that yet. But the sight before me proved me wrong. Another wolf fell to him, and another. Seeing him fight against odds that should have been insurmountable, and winning, renewed my strength and gave me faith in his ability to stand at my side—a faith I should have had all along.
“What the Hel?” Calder yelled.
While he was distracted, I sprinted into the fray. I tore out the throat of one condemned as he cowered back from Vidar. I cut the hamstrings of another. The five left scurried back, a few disappearing around containers. Vidar ran to me, shifting into a man in mid-stride. He caught me in his arms and hugged me tight. The steady beat of his heart against my ear made me relieved beyond measure. The warmth of his power banished the darkness and nausea the condemneds’ energy had left me with. Before I could fully enjoy the feel of his arms around me, he pulled away and gave me a push in the direction of the tower.
“Go. I’ll take care of him,” he said.
I shook my head. He may have just taken out half a dozen werewolves, but I still wasn’t convinced he was at one-hundred percent.
“We’ll do it together,” I said. With Vidar’s help, I wouldn’t need lightning.
Then I heard the growls, and the claws scraping against the deck. Eyes shone in the darkness, several sets, then more, and more, another dozen at least. Damnit, they were still coming. How many of these monsters did my brother create? He must have knocked over an entire prison. With all the hate-filled news about wolves, I had been avoiding the reports, so he could have done that very thing and I wouldn’t have known. They were keeping their distance for the moment as they gathered their new force together.
“We can’t take them all. You have to go. Trust me to do this for you,” Vidar insisted.
At full power, I did trust he could do it. But now…
I looked at Calder, swaying as he struggled to push himself to his knees. No time remained to contemplate this.
Dashing in, I touched Vidar’s cheek. “I love you, V. Survive this, because I wouldn’t survive losing you.”
He swallowed hard and nodded. “I love you, too. And I will. Now go!”
Before I could lose my nerve, I did as he said. Rain pounding against my bare skin, I ran as fast as I could and leaped over the heads of the wolves gathering by the closest container. They snapped and snarled at me. Atop the container, I paused to growl back at them, ensuring I held their attention. So many eyes looked up at me. Only a few of them were the eyes of wolves. The newcomers were still in human form and they didn’t know to fear me yet. I could use that. They looked up at me, some with anger, hatred, others with hungry eyes that made me acutely aware of my nakedness. Uncomfortable as it was, it was worth it, because they followed me when I started running. The less Vidar had to worry about, the better. He would have his hands full with my brother.
The next container was a close leap away. As I ran across the top of the second one, the sky lit up with a strike of lightning. The hair on my arms stood up, feeling like a thousand crawling ants. A smile pulled at my lips as I dropped to the deck and pushed my legs faster. Paws and bare feet pounded after me, their rhythm music to my ears. Any attention I could take away from Vidar was welcome. I wanted to turn around and check on him so badly, but I didn’t dare. If I looked at him I wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to return to his side.
Two more leaps and I made it to the tower of metal at the fore of the ship. It was a cabin of sorts with windows that overlooked the cargo area. The thing thrusting out of it like a tall, metal phallic symbol looked like it might be a crane. I started climbing it. Now and then I had to jump from ledges to outcroppings, but my progress continued. Those in human form followed, scrambling up after me with a speed born of desperation. Thunder reverberated through the sky, encouraging me to climb faster. I reached the base of the crane.
Finally, I allowed myself to turn and look for Vidar. Werewolves in both wolf and human form surged over the deck toward me from every direction. Lightning lit up the night. My hair danced from the proximity. The light nature’s electricity gave off allowed me to count thirty werewolves, at least, all hungry for my blood. They were too spread out. Even if I could manage to get struck by lightning, I could never direct it to all of them. Not alone.
“Vidar!” I yelled, calling out to him with everything I had, willing him to me.
After a punch that sent Calder to a knee, Vidar’s head whipped in my direction.
“I need you!” I called out.
He abandoned the fight without looking back. He took the least obstructed route to the tower. Four werewolves fell to his claws on his way. Two of them he threw from the tower. Their bodies landed on the deck with a resounding metallic thud. While I watched, I grabbed hold of one of the steel cross supports of the crane, just in case lightning chose to strike earlier than I hoped. Though it felt like forever, Vidar reached me in only a few moments. Blood ran from two scratches on his chest, four across his left biceps, and another across his thigh.
He wrapped me in his arms, careful not to pull my hand free of the metal. His heart beat strong and steady against my ear. For a breath, I let myself relax against him.
Thunder clapped so loud it left my ears ringing. Vidar’s arms wrapped tighter around me. I looked first to him, then to the churning sky above. But the lightning didn’t come. The metallic taste of it hung in the pounding rain, and the tingling feel of it thickened the air. Power began to rush toward us from all directions, and it wasn’t lightning; it was the condemned. From the press of their energy, I knew they’d be on us in only seconds. I started to pray to Odin. Vidar’s voice soon joined mine. The condemned grew closer and closer.
As the first scrambled atop the platform we stood on, I dropped my walls and pulled at his power. With Vidar holding me, I didn’t see the terrible things the condemned had done, but its power still tasted like poison. He collapsed to the platform. The others faltered, slowed, some fell, but they kept coming. Even with Vidar blocking the visions, I wouldn’t be able to take much more. They would overwhelm us. A quick glance over my shoulder revealed that it wasn’t one of the condemned after all; it was Calder. He raised one hand high. In it glinted a huge blade.
Then I tasted metal. All concern over Calder melted away. I stood between him and Vidar and that was good enough for me. It had to be. Leaning back as far as Vidar’s arms would allow, I threw my hands out and looked up at the sky. A brilliant, jagged bolt of lightning streaked right toward us. Pure, raw electricity filled me to overflowing in an instant, and it kept coming. I felt Vidar’s power around me like the walls of a massive dam. Together we held it, but just barely.
I concentrated on the feel of the condemneds’ pin lights of power all around us. There were so many. Doubt tried to itch at me. The lightning became too much to hold in. Together Vidar and I made pathways to each of the condemned. The closest target stood only feet away. Pain pierced my back, but it was dull, distant.
“Now!” I yelled.
Vidar and I dropped our shields. Lightning poured down the tunnels, straight into the condemneds, and Calder. Screams filled the early morning, the loudest of which was my brother’s. Eve
n if I had wanted to stop, I couldn’t. Once released, the lightning couldn’t be called back or even cut off. His screams brought up the memory of every time he had made me scream in pain throughout my childhood, every cruel word he had said to me, and every person he had killed or caused the death of over the decades.
When his screams finally stopped, a mixture of sadness and relief filled the void left by the lightning. Then I felt the pain of the knife buried in my back.
Chapter Twenty
Vidar
My long strides ate up the porch outside of Evan’s great room. Back and forth, back and forth, past the hot tub, down to the fancy water feature, and back to make the rounds again. His people had offered me food, drink, a comfortable place to sit and wait, but I couldn’t accept any of it. I wanted to be in the room with Ayra. The doc wouldn’t allow it. Something about a sterile environment for surgery. His words were a blur of nonsense.
An hour had passed since they’d taken her into surgery. Each minute that ticked away pushed my restraint closer and closer to its limit until I felt like a mad villain full of riddled questions. I respected the doc’s procedures, I really did, but what if she needed me with her? What if she could draw on my power, use it to help heal herself? But the doc had said she wasn’t to the stage where she could do that yet. She’d been too badly wounded. How sterile could a room in Evan’s house really be anyways? Even if it was dedicated for this purpose, as Evan said it was, how could I be sure since I hadn’t seen it?
I sat down hard on the handcrafted juniper bench near the water feature. My leg bounced in time with my rapid heartbeat. Flakes of dried blood fell as I twisted my hands together. My claws extended. Wood splintered beneath my toes as my feet clenched the deck. Fangs pushed my jaws apart. I leaped up and renewed my pacing. How much of the blood on my hands belonged to the condemned, and how much was Ayra’s? She had been bleeding so much…
I wanted to kill Calder all over again. It took a particularly dark son of a bitch to stab their own sibling in the back. The memory of cutting the throat of his charred, still smoking body with my own claws both comforted and horrified me. That was one villain who would not be rising again on the last page. But, if he had managed to hurt her beyond repair, then he would win after all.
Gods, an hour was long enough, wasn’t it? When they cut off her anesthesia, she’d snap awake immediately. If I wasn’t there… At the same time I reached for the huge French doors, Evan approached them from within the room on the other side. He opened a door for me and stepped aside.
“If I’m not there when she wakes up, she might kill someone,” I said.
Evan smiled. “I figured as much, which is why I came to retrieve you.”
His smile looked genuinely happy, and relief shone in his eyes. My legs nearly gave out at the sight. “She’s all right?” I could tell by his expression that she was, but I needed to hear it.
He inclined his head. “The doctor expects she will make a full recovery.”
I enveloped Evan in such an abrupt hug that air expelled from him in a surprised grunt. When he could breathe again, he laughed and patted me on the back.
“Come along, I’ll take you to her,” he said.
Thankfully, we didn’t have to weave very far through the huge house before arriving at an oak door in the basement level. The room inside reminded me of a recovery room rather than an operating room, making me think they had moved her in here after surgery. She lay disturbingly still in a hospital bed. A thin blanket covered her but didn’t hide the tubes coming out of her arm. Beside the bed stood Emelia, clothed in scrubs, her long red hair pulled back beneath a cap. She worked at removing the IV in Ayra’s arm. The moment the needle left her skin, Ayra started to stir. I rushed to her side.
When her beautiful dark blue eyes opened and fixed on me, I remembered how to breathe again. Our hands found each other and intertwined tightly. I leaned down and placed a chaste kiss on her lips. Her other hand found its way to the back of my head and held me in place, deepening the kiss and awakening a ravenous desire. After a while I remembered where we were and drew back.
“Did we get them?” she asked.
“Every last one.”
A long, ragged breath pulled out of her, leaving her sunken into the bedding. With my free hand I stroked her hair, trailed my fingers along her cheek. “I guess these superheroes get their happy ending,” I said.
Her features lit up with a determined joy. “We didn’t get it, we earned it, and we took it, just as Odin would have it,” she said. I loved when she did my thinking in threes thing. It sounded so much cleverer coming from her.
“Yes, we did,” I said through a perma-smile that felt like it would never go away.
“What will you do now that you’ve saved supernatural kind from exposure and war?” Emelia’s voice came from the other side of the room. She sounded delighted, and a bit saucy, as if she were suggesting something carnal.
I liked her suggestion.
“These two superheroes are going back to their lair,” I said. At Ayra’s brow raise, I added, “I’m taking you home, at least for a little while. We’ve earned a bit of R&R.”
The smile that turned up her pale pink lips did all kinds of good and dirty things to me. She pulled me down for a kiss, one that I would have felt in my toes if it had made it past my groin. I crawled onto the bed beside her and took her in my arms. Everything faded away but her. Before our clothes started to come off, I thought I heard the door open and close, but I wasn’t sure. And I didn’t care.
…
Ayra
The July sun shone down on us with a fierce determination that almost had me sweating. Another mile up this forested mountainside and I might actually start to glisten. The healing scar in my back pinched a little, but it wasn’t anything that would slow me down. Evan’s doc had done a great job and the sex and sharing of energy with Vidar afterward had completed the healing. Of my body, at least. The rest was going to take a while.
My brother had been a horrible son of a bitch who earned his fate ten times over, but he had still been my brother. Being back in Hemlock Hollow stung less than I had expected. There were no good memories of my brother waiting around any corner of the town or the surrounding forests, only bad ones. Calder had hated me from the moment I’d been born. But the people of Hemlock Hollow had welcomed Vidar and I back like heroes, complete with a parade and an upcoming festival.
My family was another matter. When I had delivered Calder’s body to them they told me I was disowned and disinherited. It hurt, but it had also felt good, like cleaning a wound out so it could finally heal. I wouldn’t miss them, their land, or their millions.
Vidar’s hand reached down to me from where he stood atop a steep shelf of granite. While I could have easily jumped up beside him, I accepted his hand. The feel of his skin against mine not only drove away my demons, but it felt so good and so right that I took any opportunity I could to touch him. Some sort of blue ribbon in his other hand caught my eye. He unfurled it and gave me a mischievous grin. My brows rose.
“You’ll have to wear this the rest of the way,” he said.
“This is getting more promising by the second,” I teased.
Grinning like a dog with a bone, he lifted the ribbon toward my eyes. My gaze moved down along his body and discovered he was a dog with a bone, in a manner of speaking. The world went dark as he tied the ribbon around my head. The scents of pine, hemlock, and wildflowers gave me a rough idea of the layout of the land. Birds singing in the trees and lizards skittering over the rocks added another layer to everything. Something about the awakening of my other senses made everything more exciting, more sensual.
Vidar’s hand took hold of mine, his big fingers weaving into the spaces between my own. With gentle pushes and tugs of my hand, he guided me skillfully through the rocky, tree-covered landscape. If an obstacle arose, he warned me of it and helped me maneuver over or around it.
“You’re good at this. But
I was really hoping it would lead to a different kind of climb,” I said.
His laughter had a sexy bedroom sound to it that made things low in my abdomen tingle. “Maybe it will, after your surprise.”
“A surprise? What kind of surprise?”
“Well…”
We stopped and he moved behind me, placing his hands on my shoulders. Excitement rose from my abdomen to infect all of me. His fingers worked at the knot of the ribbon. As the blue material fell away from my eyes, Vidar said, “I present to you, the Wolf’s Den.”
Atop the rocky hillside a big, beautiful log cabin sat nestled in the hemlock and fir trees. Massive windows on both the first and second floor overlooked the stunning footbridge the people of Hemlock Hollow had built over a deep hollow that cut through the dense forest. It was meant to be a replica of the Bífrost, a way to honor our old ways and our Gods. Not far below the bridge, the first building of the town poked up through the trees. Across the hollow light bounced off the multitude of windows belonging to Raul’s house. His seemed to be the closest at over two thousand yards away.
I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t. This place was the safe home Vidar had helped me create in my mind during my rough childhood. Imaging it room by room had helped me sleep at night as a child. Neither my parents arguing in another room, nor my brother whispering threats, insults, and telling me to kill myself had bothered me while I imagined this cabin. It had helped me get through my childhood.
Though I didn’t remember giving them the command to move, my legs carried me toward the cabin. A three-tiered raised bed of flowers and bushes led up to the covered front porch. The solid oak door with a masterful carving of a roaring wolf’s head done in knotwork caught my eye. Below it sat a one-eared orange striped cat. Upon seeing me, the cat meowed and launched itself down the steps.
“Heimdallr!” I bent and petted him as he wove through my legs, meowing an endless stream of what was no doubt cat obscenities at me for being gone so long. “I missed you so much! But how did you get here?” I looked to Vidar at the last.
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