by Jenn Stark
“There will be no negotiation. Find the nails, and you are free to go. Mr. Bjornsson will render whatever payment you prefer at a later time. Your quarrel with the finders is not Mr. Bjornsson’s quarrel.”
“Ah.” I blew out a long breath, wondering when the chief had had a change of heart. Was it the ball of fire? Or had he simply grown tired of Agnar being a weenie and used the opportunity to remove him from the equation?
It didn’t matter. Bottom line, I still needed the nails, and the chief wouldn’t try anything until I had them. I returned my attention to the throne.
It was flanked by two large pillars, both carved with ram’s horns, a clear nod to the Emperor card. But the Hermit still needed to be considered, and I narrowed my eyes, studying the throne.
In a reading where placement and pictography held more sway than esoteric meanings, there were two options. Either I’d see some sort of marking or structure that mimicked a bright light, or I needed to focus on where the Hermit was looking. While in several of the earliest decks, the Hermit looked to the right, the deck I’d grown up with had him looking left. And when the cards chose to speak to me regarding directions, I reverted to that Rider-Waite deck’s imagery.
Accordingly, I moved to my left as I ran my gaze along the throne’s rich velvet coverlet. A thick red-and-gold-trimmed cushion sat atop the deep seat, and a luxurious drape of more red velvet ran over each armrest and stretched down to drag the ground. Another swath of velvet, this one so heavily embroidered it could have been cloth of gold, ran up and over the chair’s high back, cascading to the floor behind the throne.
I gestured to it. “This come off?”
“Of course.” The security chief signaled, and a man hastened forward, slipping off the velvet covers until the throne sat in all its bare, austere glory. It looked as if it had been carved out of a solid piece of stone, but of course it couldn’t have been. Not if it held the nails inside it.
“How big are these things?” I murmured almost soundlessly, but the chief was close enough to hear me.
“We don’t know,” he said tightly. “We believe no longer than a man’s forearm, but that belief is born more from the medieval depictions of the nails of the Christian cross, not due to any Norse mythological basis.”
I nodded, then squatted down beside the throne. I drifted my hand along its carved surface, an intricate design of running wolves, each of them practically leaping over themselves to get ahead, surging and straining forward.
Or—not forward, exactly.
I frowned and traced the design up, squinting to see what it was the wolves searched for so arduously. A light in the sky, I realized. The sun.
I set back on my heels, scowling. “That can’t be right.” I glanced up to the security chief. “See if this same design is on the other side of the chair. Wolves leaping toward the sun. Then tell me how many wolves are there.”
Without questioning me, he moved to the side of the chair. When two tons of thick marble were between us to forestall the double cross I knew was coming, I punched my hand forward, my forefinger pressing hard against the circular carving of the sun.
The tiny disc sank soundlessly into the rock, and a foot-wide ledge popped out from the bottom of the throne, where two long white pointed sticks gleamed from its cold surface. As the security chief cried out, I grabbed them.
Then all hell broke loose.
As soon as I touched the artifacts, which I had to assume were the Gods’ Nails, the fireball in the hearth exploded with an enormous boom, a conflagration rushing out into the chamber. I caught up one of the nails in each hand and the fire licked toward them, setting their tips alight as if I were holding tapers of wood or cloth, not what felt alarmingly like bones.
Either way, it was a great trick.
“Get back!” I yelled as I swerved around, fire now shooting from the sticks like silly string. Nikki shoved the nearest guard away from her as the remainder of the guards brought up their weapons.
The first volley of those guns was abruptly cut short. Fire arced from the Gods’ Nails and surrounded the guard's pistol, binding both weapon and man together in a fiery tangle.
Binding them.
Under the hapless guard’s screams, I darted across the room, and the second blast of gunfire was fortunately going in the correct direction—away from us and into the line of men. Nikki had apparently done her job and armed up, and she swept the room once, twice behind me, then followed me out.
I whirled and pointed the sticks again toward the doors. The enormous panels swung shut with a clang, instantly splintering as a round of semiautomatic gunfire pounded into them.
“Run!” I screamed, and she turned in time with me, her gun tight up against her chest.
“Where?” she demanded. “There’re guards at the gate, at the—”
“Here!” We ran down one corridor, then another, and I could tell the moment Nikki realized where we were heading by the amount of cursing that trailed me as she gamely kept pace despite her towering boots.
We burst into the main living room, where the enormous windows were still open to the stone overlook beyond. A blast of explosives behind us spurred us on. They’d be stuck with one hell of a cleanup of Thor’s vacation home, but there was nothing I could do about that. We’d tried to play nice, but the security chief had made it clear they were going to screw me over, and there were way too many people in that club back in the center of Reykjavik looking for a piece of me. Negotiations weren’t going to cut it. We had to get off the island, and in a hurry.
“Nigel!” Nikki barked aloud, summoning the head Ace of the House of Swords and captain of our reinforcements through the microchip embedded in one of her molars. The device was strong enough to pick up the slightest whisper, but apparently screaming was more fun. Thor’s crack security team clearly hadn’t thought to check Nikki’s fillings.
The wind blew like mad as we bolted onto the overlook.
“Nigel, we’re coming like right now!” Nikki’s voice rose in panic, excitement…or maybe nihilistic glee.
I couldn’t hear all of Nigel’s response, but through Nikki’s jawline, the indignant, furious “No” was certainly easy to pick up.
“Too late!” Nikki chortled. She reached the barrier first and leapt onto the wide railing, scanning the water wildly.
“Aim left!” she screamed at me. Then she was over the edge, undoubtedly wanting to encounter the water first so that she could help me swim, if nothing else. Swimming wasn’t really a strong suit of mine, so I appreciated her foresight. I especially appreciated that she was still wearing her original clothes, which had certain technical modifications against half a dozen extremities of circumstance, one of which was: water landing.
I heard the splash below and the shouts of the men following us simultaneously. I pulled myself to the top of the barrier just as the guards burst out into the overlook, guns coming around. Williams wasn’t with them. I pointed the Gods’ Nails at them a final time—only there was no longer any fire to feed them. They might be tools of binding, but they apparently required source material. I scowled at the long spikes, unable to read the script carved into them. Why didn’t these damned things come with instruction manuals?
Not even a breath later, an awful sound pounded out above me. An enormous fissure suddenly appeared in the rock, and the railing buckled beneath my feet. Without thinking, I threw myself backward off the stone escarpment. A thunderous boom sounded, and the first rock fell.
Seconds later, I crashed into the icy cold water of the Bay of Faxa.
“Sara!” Nikki screamed, swimming furiously toward me. The wind whipped the waves into a maelstrom, and everything seemed far too loud.
I flapped gamely toward her, the Gods’ Nails like appendages now, my grip on them ironclad. Nikki grabbed me under the arms and hauled me high in the water, her other hand dipping into her bra and yanking something free.
The long, slender floatation device, black as the water around u
s, filled with air as soon as Nikki ripped its cord free. She kicked for the open water. With the benefit of the floatation device as a kickboard, I could help. Our escape would’ve been seriously hampered by gunfire raining down from up above, but that, at least, didn’t seem to be a problem for the moment.
I twisted back as soon as we had a rhythm going, glancing over my shoulder while Nikki bit out instructions to Nigel and the small craft he was navigating into the bay. Behind us, Thor’s mansion lit up like Christmas against the pitch-black sky. Enormous clouds of smoke billowed higher and higher from gaping windows and collapsing roofs. There didn’t look to be any true fire, though. It was as if the building had sustained an avalanche from its top floors to its bottom, effectively sealing everyone in, Williams included.
The rock itself had bound them.
I stared at the sticks in my hands, piercing the water like the tusks of a narwhal. They still looked more like bones than anything else, but bones of what? Or who?
Now that I had time to look at the foot-long spikes, they were far more beautiful than I’d realized. Slender white strips of…it simply had to be bone, they’d been whittled down to sharp points, and their bases, where I held on for dear life, were coated in hammered silver. I couldn’t peel my fingers away if I tried, at this point, and I wondered fleetingly if the nails were binding me as much as they allowed me to bind others.
For the moment, I was completely onboard with that.
“There!” Nikki shouted the word over the thundering whitecaps, and I became aware of a light racing toward us, gradually growing stronger. A new fire began to burn inside me, a racking, almost gnawing pain, but at least it served to clear my head.
“He see us?”
“He damn well better.” Nikki turned the float upside down, its bright, reflective tape glowing as Nigel’s light swept over the water. “Dammit, Nigel, why’re you going backward?”
The pain increased in my body until my bones throbbed. I couldn’t see Nigel any more. I couldn’t see anything. I could hear the boat’s engine cut abruptly, though, even over the wind. A moment later, there were several splashes.
“What the hell…”
Nikki’s tone turned questioning as wet-suited Swords guards swam toward us, two for her, two for me, then pulled us apart as if we were in danger of sinking to the bottom of the ocean in the next thirty seconds. I could see again, dimly, but didn’t argue as they hauled my limp body toward the back of the boat, nor as more hands reached down and plucked me out of the water. Nikki came next, protesting all the way as we were hustled up the stairs, until finally we both sprawled on the boat’s main deck.
Nigel dropped down in front of me…at a distance of five feet.
“Sara?” The blond ex-MI6 agent asked cautiously.
I blinked at him, squinting through eyes that seemed permanently scrunched shut. “Yeah?”
“Can you put down the big pointy sticks?” he asked levelly. “Or at least tell them we mean you no harm? It took us three tries to get close to you because their propulsive blasts kept pushing us back.”
“Oh.” I looked at the artifacts. My fingers were still wrapped tightly around their bases, and a fine spray of water still clung to their tips. But as I’d already seen, the nails could bend anything to their use.
Water was bad enough. We were on the boat now. With one wrong move, the nails might condense the entire craft like a squashed aluminum can. That…would be bad.
But I had no idea what I was doing here. I didn’t know how these nails worked. I didn’t know where they came from. I mean, yes, okay, the Norse gods seemed to be a good place to start, but did those gods still walk the earth? Better yet, did they have a customer service team?
I tried to open my hands, but a knife of pain slashed through me, shooting from my hands straight to the line of my spine, jerking me rigid.
“Dollface.” Nikki’s voice was high, strident.
“It’s okay. I…It’s okay,” I managed, drawing in a shaky breath. “Give me a minute.”
My mind was blank as I stared at the water, wide open and desperately seeking for any suggestion on how to manage this new and unexpected problem, any idea, any…
A low, sensual laugh raked across my senses.
“You never stop surprising me, Miss Wilde.”
Chapter Five
It took Armaeus Bertrand, the Magician, my personal healer and all-around meddler in all things arcane, exactly three point five seconds to figure out that I’d done something different with my manicure.
“The Gods’ Nails are fusing to your bone structure,” he said, not at all helpfully. “You need to release them.”
No kidding. I kept my thoughts in my own head, though, managing only to breathe slowly, in and out, in and out, as a new and unpleasant pain crept steadily through me. The sticks had seated themselves in the base of my palms, and Armaeus was right, I realized as I peered at them. During the long haul through the ocean, they’d managed to pierce through my skin deep enough that they’d need to be pulled out versus simply dropped. Whether they’d “fused” or not, I wasn’t sure, but fusing sounded distinctly uncomfortable.
Either way, the slender rods now stretched up between my third and fourth fingers, then extended another six inches beyond their outstretched tips, giving me a total minimalist Wolverine look. Only I didn’t think they’d be retracting into my skeleton of their own volition. Which would make playing Pokémon Go a little difficult.
Any ideas on how to release them, exactly?
Armaeus was silent for a long while, but that didn’t make him any less present. I could sense him rummaging through my thoughts, learning the details of how I’d come upon the nails, how I’d used them, how I’d carried them over the last hour and change. In my current state of desperation, I wasn’t quibbling about him roaming around my brainpan. No matter how distressed I was, I knew he couldn’t go down the rabbit holes where I’d stored the most important of my memories. If I’d learned nothing else on my sojourn with the Arcana Council, I’d learned to protect myself from that.
“The artifact is called the Gods’ Nails because it was a bony structure that grew without being attached to any human skeleton, yet was found in a druidic tomb along with other scattered bones,” Armaeus said at last into my mind. “Though the nails’ binding power is great, the ancient Norse peoples learned quickly they could not be handled safely, and that was ultimately the reason the artifacts were shut into the chieftain’s throne. The runes etched into their surface contain a warning, and the silver seal at the base of the bones makes reattachment more difficult for mortals. Your recent evolution into immortality has made you vulnerable to them.”
Hooray for the home team.
“That lack of attachment also rendered the nails inert, so it was a trade-off. They could be used at great cost and pain, and then retracted, but if left attached too long…” He went still again, then spoke sharply. “Answer me now. Who do you trust most aboard the boat?”
I blinked up blearily, and there was Nikki staring at me, her face white with concern. She stiffened as our gazes connected, and at Armaeus’s obvious mental touch, she fell off the low bench she’d been sitting on, scrambling to her feet in a rush, her arms going wide.
Nigel barked something, clearly surprised, but Nikki paid him no heed. Instead she advanced toward me, and I suddenly picked up Armaeus in my mind as well. “Release,” he was saying. “Repeat it, over and over in your mind. Nikki is your friend, your ally, your truth. You trust her, you believe her, she will not—cannot—harm you. Release, and she will protect you.”
“Release,” I managed, and my body spasmed with an electric surge of pain. My hands clenched involuntarily, and twin jets of water pounded out of the tips of the nails, catching one of Nigel’s guards off, well, guard. He screamed as he went overboard, and Nigel started yelling again.
My eyes were only for Nikki, though. She stared at me intently as she advanced across the narrow deck, never breaking e
ye contact.
“Release,” I tried again, stronger this time. She nodded, and I realized she’d covered her hands with something dark and heavy—scuba gloves? Some sort of towel?
She closed her hands around the nails and yanked.
Another round of agonized screaming erupted. Distantly, I realized it was my own.
The sensation of having the nails ripped out was not completely unfamiliar to me. In the past several months, I’d been riven, spiked, stabbed, and shot often enough that I had a loyalty card for Extractions-R-Us. But these sticks felt like they’d sunk all the way into my spine. With a mighty haul, Nikki pulled them free, throwing the priceless artifacts to the side almost as if they burned her through her gloves. Another of the guards fell on them, and I crumpled into a ball, pain and loss and shattering wrongness crashing over me in waves.
Speaking of waves—there was something wet on me. Wet…and sticky. Blood gushed forth from my palms. A strong set of arms wrapped around me, then I endured another round of Nigel barking in my ear, yelling at someone to get me to the cabin, to get the guy out of the water, to get the boat moving, and, above all, to get the hell out of there.
Worked for me.
I must have passed out for some length of time, because when I came to, it was…quieter. Definitely quieter. I was still wrapped in a blanket, however, sandwiched between Nikki and Nigel. Both of them looked sick to their stomachs, I noticed immediately. Nausea roiled through me as well, and I shook my head. “What—”
“Water,” Nigel said tersely, and a small bottle was suddenly at my lips. I had to lean against Nikki to drink it, one of her impressively toned arms around my shoulder. It was as if I hadn’t drunk for days.
“What happened?” I managed again, coming up for air.
“Just drink, dollface. You’re all right. We’re on the ship now, safe and sound.”
“The…ship.” I blinked owlishly, looking around, but it was obvious that Nikki was right. Instead of the cramped cabin of the speedboat, we were in a room that looked very much like a hospital room, only there weren’t any doctors present. No one was here, in fact, other than Nigel, Nikki, and myself, all crammed together on a set of chairs. Which seemed a little odd because there was a perfectly serviceable hospital gurney not three feet away that seemed like it would be comfortable for at least one of us.
