Perfekt Control (The Ære Saga Book 2)

by S. T. Bende

  “Nobody does.” Tyr studied the darkness below us. “I’d assume there’s a guard down there. Garm used to protect the entrance, but Hel might not have replaced the dragon since we killed her.”

  I repressed a shudder at the thought of coming face-to-face with Hel. In school we’d learned that Hel herself was an abomination—half flesh, half bone, wholly evil. But for reasons only he’d ever know, Odin gave Hel dominion over Helheim and its constituents, from the ikkedød to the specters to the mortals who suffered an ignoble death—including the ignobility of dying of natural causes.

  “There’s something that’s never sat right with me about Helheim.” I turned to Tyr. “Why is it ignoble to die of natural causes? If a mortal lives a good life to old age, why banish him to Helheim?”

  “A noble mortal dies a warrior,” Henrik parroted Odin’s code.

  “Well, ja, but there aren’t that many wars in Midgard at the moment. At least, not in first-world Midgard,” I reminded him.

  Tyr smiled. “Odin never meant it literally. Not every noble soul can die in battle. A warrior is someone who fights for ære in any capacity. Mortals whose choices shine light on the glory of the Asgardian virtues—honor, valor, truth, righteousness, and most importantly, kindness—are afforded seats at Valhalla. Those whose choices contribute to the dimming of Asgard’s light are considered ignoble, and cast to Hel.”

  Well, skit. If Professor Meadows had covered that in her lecture, maybe I’d have gotten a better grade on my valkyrie entrance exam. Guess the assassins got a more thorough dose of history of the realms at the Academy.

  Henrik glanced down at the darkness below, his hand still wrapped around mine. “Odin’s inclusion of warriors of all kinds is at the very heart of ære. Every event, every choice, every action creates a ripple. And every one of us has the power to make those ripples beautiful… or choose to infect the realms with darkness.” He met my gaze and traced a soft circle inside my palm with one finger. The action sent a warm shiver up my arm, and his words gave my heart a jolt. “I will always fight for beauty. For glory. For love, sötnos. What will you fight for?”

  My breath caught at the endearment, and for the millionth time I wished I didn’t have to live by Freya’s stupid code. Because when Henrik talked about… well, all of that, it reminded me that he was one in a billion—that his heart was so kind, his mind so brilliant, his sense of honor so strong, I was lucky to be able to call him my friend. And if Freya didn’t have her stupid rules, I’d have clubbed him over the head and demanded he release me from the friend zone right that very minute.

  But Freya had her rules. And she needed our help. And right now, my hot-as-Helheim friend stared at me in earnest, awaiting some coherent reply. So I opened my mouth and blurted the first thing that came to mind.

  “I fight for us.” I squeezed Henrik’s hand, then Tyr’s, and looked at each of them in turn. “For all of us. For everything we’ve built, and everything we hope to accomplish.” I drew a breath. “And I fight for the love I know the realms will lose if we don’t bring back Freya. So let’s go get our girl.”

  “Let’s get our girl.” Tyr smiled.

  Henrik raised an eyebrow. “We jump on three?”

  “On three,” I confirmed. “One. Two.” I squeezed my eyes shut.

  “Three,” Tyr finished.

  We jumped as one, hands clasped as we once again plummeted through blackness.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  DESPITE MY FIRMLY CLOSED eyelids, I knew the exact moment we passed through Hel’s gate. The air cooled to near freezing, my bones felt brittle as a dried out chicken carcass, and my joints ached with an intensity that was supposed to elude even aging Asgardians. I clung tightly to Tyr with one hand and Henrik with the other, hoping Tyr’s flying ability would kick in and pull us up before we crashed. But we careened feet first toward the earth, landing with a painful crash that jarred my already throbbing joints and snapped my femur clean in two.

  I swore. “That really, really hurts!”

  Henrik reached over and placed his hands around my upper thigh. He guided it gently into place, speeding the healing process and distracting me from the pain at the same time. Now shards of agony alternated with warm pulses of an entirely more pleasant sensation. Henrik might not have had Tyr’s powers, but darned if his hands didn’t possess a magic all of their own.

  Not the time, Brynn.

  “Is that better?” Henrik asked after an unidentifiable length of time. I could have been staring at his strong hands for seconds or hours; I had no idea. But I shifted my weight so I rolled onto my injured leg, and winced.

  “It’s tender. But better, ja.” I shifted again, and this time the pain was less intense. “I think the break mended, at least.”

  “Sorry about that. The drop was shorter than I expected.” Tyr jumped to his feet and unsheathed his sword. “Let’s find Freya and get out of this Hel-hole.”

  I tore my eyes away from Henrik, and followed Tyr’s sightline. We’d landed in a darkened cavern, littered with heavy stones and blazing pits of fire. Our surroundings were nearly all black, from the soot beneath us to the rocky walls that rose indefinitely into the darkness above us. A group of bearded dragons rested in crevices along the walls, their yellow eyes reflecting the orange of the fires. In the distance stood a bridge, a narrow footpath spanning what appeared to be a bottomless ravine. And on the far end of the bridge stood a heavy iron door that I presumed to be our destination.

  Just another day at work.

  Henrik helped me stand before drawing his dagger. I opened my backpack and holstered an implosive gun, then checked my sheathed rapier. The fall hadn’t broken it. Good. The lightweight sword would allow maximum mobility in the event we encountered something that moved especially fast, and the gun would take care of anything I couldn’t debilitate in hand to hand combat.

  “Oh!” I kept one eye on the dragons and reached in my backpack again, pulling out the time freezer and handing it to Henrik. “Here. You take Barney. I got to activate the wormhole of doom, so it’s your turn.”

  “You sure?” Henrik tucked Barney into his back pocket. “I know you were excited to test him out.”

  I shrugged. “Fair’s fair. I’ll get the next one. Also, you still owe me a pie for winning the kill count in Muspelheim. I believe I requested your grandmother’s Dutch Apple Crumble.”

  “You two are such nörds.” Tyr cracked his neck. “Now can we please get moving? The love life, not to mention the good humor, of the entire cosmos is depending on us.”

  “Let’s roll.” Henrik marched forward, with Tyr on his heels.

  Apparently they forgot rule number one of combat—when dropping in on a foreign zone, always assess the region for threats.

  “Duck!” I yelled, as an enormous winged lizard dove from its perch.

  Henrik and Tyr dropped and rolled with half a second to spare. The dragon swooped down on the spot they’d been standing, its black claws digging into the ground on its pass. It flapped its wings, soaring five stories with each pulse, then boomeranged back. This time, it opened its mouth and shot a stream of fire on its descent.

  “Look out!” I yelled.

  “On it.” Henrik drew his sword and held it high. The fire struck the broad blade and ricocheted back at the dragon, singeing its talons. The animal let out a shriek and circled around, shaking its smoking toes as it flew. The whole thing would have been funny if we weren’t in danger of becoming Asgardian flambé.

  I ran to Henrik’s side and drew the particle accelerator. “Want me to make it go away?”

  “I do.” He shifted, sword at eye level, mirroring the dragon’s trajectory. “But unless we’re planning on taking out an entire colony, I’d hold off on shooting the messenger.”

  “Point, Andersson.” The rest of the bearded dragons shifted restlessly in their perches. I held my rapier at eye level and wedged myself between the boys. We watched as the dragon circled high above, then let out another stream of
fire. Henrik easily deflected it with his sword, and the dragon flew to an empty crevice, narrowly avoiding another burn.

  I took a count. Nine dragons sat as sentinels, standing between us and that big iron door.

  Why couldn’t Henrik have just broken Garm’s leg? One single princessy guard-dragon would have been a lot easier to handle.

  “Okay, what’s the plan?” I turned my head to Tyr, but kept my blade high. Dragons were fast, and I wasn’t taking any chances.

  “I’m assuming we have to get through the door.” Tyr paused. “And I’m assuming they’re going to try to stop us. If what the dwarf said is true, the dragon king Nidhogg is controlling them. We need to get him on our side so he tells all the dragons to back off, and so he helps us deactivate the Muspelheim super soldiers. We don’t want to do anything more to anger Nidhogg, meaning do not kill another of his offspring, Henrik.”

  “Hey, that offspring was trying to kill you, so you’re welcome,” Henrik countered.

  Tyr shrugged. “Either way, I’m guessing he’s got another legion of monsters on the other side of that door, and we don’t want to provoke him any more than absolutely necessary. What do we have by way of weapons?”

  Henrik recounted our inventory. “We’ve got two broadswords, some daggers, a rapier, a vacuum, the particle accelerator, Barney, the transporter—not too keen on using that one again, not gonna lie—and the breakdown powder.”

  “What’s the breakdown powder?” Tyr asked.

  “It’s epic.” I grinned. “We’re technically still testing it, but it’s designed to deactivate dark magic-induced physical protections. So, if I applied it directly to Hel, her body would be as susceptible to light magic-laced weapons as our bodies are to dark magic-laced ones. She might still be able to control external objects with dark magic, but she couldn’t protect herself with it like she can now. And we’d be able to take her out with our swords. Does that make sense?”

  “Not really. But I trust you two.” Tyr didn’t take his eyes off the dragons. “Anything else in that bag?”

  “The stunner,” Henrik concluded, passing me a small wooden box.

  “What’s the stunner?” Tyr asked.

  “You press a button and it sends out a sound wave that’s at such an intense frequency, it literally paralyzes anyone in the room,” I explained.

  Henrik nodded. “We based the technology loosely on a dog whistle. Only the frequency needed to be low enough any corporeal being could hear it and—”

  “As much as I love these little science lessons, we’re in a bit of a hurry.” Tyr jutted his chin at the wall of dragons. Several tails twitched.

  “Right. Oh, skit.” One of the dragons leapt from its perch. Henrik threw down his weapons and dropped to a fighting stance. He bent his knees and sprung from the ground, meeting the dragon in the air. He flung his body away from us, throwing the dragon off course. Instead of striking Tyr and me, it rammed into one of the bigger boulders near the edge of the ravine. The dragon roared, whipping its head from side to side as it tried to eject Henrik. But as good as he was with weapons, Henrik was even deadlier with his hands. He clung to the scaly skin, his fingers digging into the slippery surface as he climbed up the monster’s neck. I heard the rip as Henrik tore the dragon’s flesh. A thick, black liquid oozed from the wound, coating Henrik’s arms and chest. His hands slipped; whether from the lubricating liquid or the violent wrenching of the dragon’s neck I couldn’t tell. But as I extracted the stunner from my backpack, the dragon pushed off the rock, soaring high into the black sky with my friend dangling one-handed from its open wound.

  Förbaskat. Why did we leave Fang back at the compound? A flying warrior horse would have come in major handy.

  I watched in horror as Henrik wrestled the dragon back to the ground, kicking as the dragon spiraled downward. He swung his legs up, straddling the dragon’s neck and bending it into an unnatural angle while its brothers and sisters leapt from their rocky perches and descended on us with a cacophonous battle cry.

  “Now would be a really good time to activate that stunner, sötnos,” Henrik hollered.

  “Oh. Right! Tyr, muffle our hearing. Right now!” I yelled.

  Tyr held out his hand and muttered something under his breath. The shrieks of the dragons faded to silence as Tyr’s enchantment took hold. He gave me a nod, and I pulled the string on the tiny wooden box in my hand. Heavy vibrations pulsed through me, alerting me to the stunner’s activation. And even though I couldn’t hear its wail, I knew the device worked; the eight dragons descending on us halted mid-air, while the one trying to skewer Henrik froze in a terrifying pose, its mouth open and its teeth just inches from Henrik’s leg. Henrik shot me a glare that could have burned a hole in the sun. I was filled with too much tension to feel anything but relief at his safety.

  “Oh my gods that was close!” I set the stunner on the ground and raced to the dragon. I held up my arms to help Henrik slide down, but he was too high. “Tyr, get over here and help me!” I turned around but Tyr was already at my side. He held the discarded swords in one hand, and reached up to help Henrik off the dragon with the other. When my partner’s feet were safely on the ground, I flung my arms around his neck.

  “Gods, Henrik, that was horrifying. I’m so sorry I didn’t pull the trigger sooner. I guess I just—you’re filthy.” I pulled back, using one finger to touch the sticky black tar that covered his chest. And mine. “Oh, gross. Dragon blood.”

  Henrik tapped his ear and mouthed the words, I can’t hear you.

  Oh. Right. Tyr’s spell.

  Henrik motioned for us to follow him across the bridge. When we reached the other side, Tyr stepped around us and put his hand on the door.

  Weapon up, he mouthed. Or spoke. We couldn’t hear him either way.

  Tyr handed us our swords before drawing his. He pushed the iron door open and waved us through. We stepped across the threshold, then ducked to the side, pressing our backs to the wall while Tyr closed the door and moved to stand beside us. He waved one finger in the air, and our hearing was restored.

  “We safe from the sound waves?” he asked.

  “Yes.” I nodded. “I left the stunner in the cavern room, which means so long as the door stays closed, the waves can’t reach us. We programmed them not to be able to travel through walls; only living, organic matter.”

  “Like dragon skulls.” Henrik grinned.

  “Excellent. With the dragons debilitated but not dead, I’m hoping we’ll be able to reach a truce with Nidhogg. Assuming he’s on the warpath because we killed his daughter, I’m banking on him being willing to trade our safe passage for the lives of the dragons back there.” Tyr glanced at the door.

  “Nice bargaining chip,” I admired.

  “Dragons are innately loyal. They feel every loss of their species.” Tyr shrugged. “It’ll just depend on how mad he is about Henrik here killing Garm.”

  “Again, you’re welcome for me saving your life.” Henrik rolled his eyes.

  Tyr chuckled. “Onward and downward.”

  “You mean onward and upward, don’t you?” I asked.

  “Nope. Onward and downward.” Tyr pointed at the spiral staircase descending underground. Well, more underground than we already were. “If the stories are true, we’ve got a few more levels until we reach our destination.”

  Nine levels of Helheim. Two down, seven to go.

  “What are we waiting for?” I drew a breath and gripped Henrik and Tyr’s hands. “Let’s go to Hel.”

  * * * *

  The staircase to Hel’s lair was a spiral of black rock on one side and endless abyss on the other, with the occasional fire-filled wall sconce to light the path. My toes caught on the uneven steps of the descent more than once, and if Henrik’s enormous frame hadn’t been right in front of me I would have tumbled headfirst into Odin knew what. The steps leveled off at several places, each time presenting an outlet that led to a thick indigo door. We didn’t stop to linger on any of t
he landings; if the overwhelming feelings of negativity seeping through their cracks were any indication, each door marked the entry of another level of Helheim. At one door, my soul dropped with a heavy sense of fear; at the next I felt unaccountably hopeless, as if nothing would ever be right in the worlds again. Each feeling lifted as we continued our descent, so by the time we reached the sixth door I knew my emotions were being controlled by whatever corresponding level of Helheim we trudged by. Even so, the inexplicable rage building inside overwhelmed me to the point that I began to shake.

  “Whoa there, sassy,” Tyr said from behind. He placed his hand on my shoulder. “You doing okay?”

  My hand removed his trespassing fingers faster than Thor could strike down an infidel with Mjölnir.

  “Get your hands off me, you obsessive, controlling Neanderthal.” I whirled on him.

  Tyr glared at me. “What’s your problem?”

  “My problem is that I’m sick of you, of both of you”—I turned to yell at Henrik, since there were no favorites here—“thinking you know what’s best for me. You’re supposed to be my friends. Not my fathers. I don’t need you to protect me from myself. Henrik, if you didn’t want to kiss me you should have just said so, not pretended you were all noble and trying to protect my valkyrie virtue.” I poked Henrik’s chest. “That’s an enormous lie and we both know it. And you, Tyr.” I whipped around to glare at the war god. “I don’t need you to act like you know so much about how I’m feeling all the time. Your title’s just a job—it doesn’t make you better than the rest of us. So stop acting all high and mighty and just be a normal guy for once in your existence. Both of you need to let me live my life and stop acting like you own me!”

  I knew my fury was uncalled for, but I didn’t feel like apologizing. Anger had painted my world crimson, and I couldn’t see anything but rage. My soul felt the inexplicable need to get away—from this place, from my friends, from myself. I tried to storm past Henrik, but he placed large hands on my shoulders and held me in place. Though he stood two steps below me, he was still taller than me. Stupid gods and their stupid tallness. Height. Whatever.