by Kira Brady
She was lucky the SOBs were too selfish to team up, because that would be a clusterfuck.
“Tell her to have my payment waiting in the kitchen when I get back,” Grace said. “And no skimping, not like last time. Otherwise, I won’t finish the fence or protect her patrons, and damned if she can find someone better to replace me.”
“But you always come back,” Elsie said. “You’d miss me.”
Whatever. She couldn’t do this for free. She needed the money, and her jobs since Norgard’s death had been more dangerous and less lucrative. If the Regent sent her on a mission, she got to keep the cash. If she found a job on the side, she owed him a seventy percent take. That meant the fifty dollars she would make warding this fence would net her a lousy fifteen bucks, and she still had to eat. She was too desperate, and Ishtar’s Priestesses could smell it a mile away.
Still, she was glad the new Regent had made himself scarce. No games to play, no tolls to pay. Even if it meant she had to live with her bruised ribs and collection of cuts. A little pain she could handle.
A year of training and four years of servitude might have been a lifetime. One step forward, two steps back, she would eventually win her freedom. It couldn’t come soon enough.
One job at a time. First up: slay the two aptrgangr that were preying on the House’s patrons.
Grace eyed the injured man. He was able to touch the rune-carved bone, so he was probably not possessed, but she didn’t leave things like that up to chance.
“Get out of here,” she told Elsie. Elsie turned, long skirt swishing out behind her, and walked back into the House as fast as her platform slippers allowed. The light from her lantern bobbed behind her, casting long, eerie shadows in the quiet street. Grace flipped up her hood and gave a low whistle. On the other side of the fence, the man whimpered.
A large cat materialized out of the shadows. Bear, furry and ferocious as his namesake. His long, black and white fur was clean of ash. A little brown mustache twitched on his upper lip. He regarded her steadily, blinking once.
Grace stepped through the gate, beneath the hanging bells that scared the ghosts huddled on the other side of the fence. Grace couldn’t see them without Hart’s Deadglass, but she knew they were there. The city was full of them. Spirits from all the ages man had walked this spit of earth still dressed in the clothes they had died in. They flocked to establishments where people congregated, hungrily searching for a whiff of passion. Sometimes they forgot they were dead. Ghosts were fairly harmless in this state, but after a while they all turned, twisting into something capricious and mean, hating the living for every breath they took.
Grace ignored them. She watched the cat and tipped her head in the injured man’s direction. Bear lifted his paw and gave a lick. Not possessed then. Didn’t mean the man was safe. She kept her knife at the ready. Beneath her palm, she felt the runes that ran up and down the bone handle. They tingled lightly as Aether settled in the deep grooves.
Bear stood and led the way down the brick-lined street. He cut a wide path around the injured man.
“Don’t go down there, kid.” The man’s voice was hoarse. “Don’t—”
Grace bared her teeth at him. She wasn’t a kid.
His eyes widened. “Hey, I know you.”
“No, you don’t.”
He pointed to her knife. “Norgard’s blade. They say you ain’t afraid of them—”
“Everyone’s afraid.”
“Thought you’d be bigger.”
Grace scowled. She gave his head wound a cursory appraisal. Scalp wounds bled like a bitch, and this one was no different. Still, he’d probably live. “If you can make it to the front door, the madam will stitch you up.” For a price.
“I can’t—”
“Choose quickly,” she said. “They’re coming.”
He shot a fearful glance down the block and started pulling himself into a standing position using a femur and pelvic bone in the fence. He left a trail of red fingerprints in his wake. She would help him, but she didn’t like being touched.
Bear indicated the mouth of an alley. The brick fronts on either side were boarded up. At one time there had been a lively art shop and bakery fronting the alley, with flower baskets beneath the windows and a sunny outdoor seating area in the sheltered nook between the two buildings. Most importantly, there used to be a wide back entrance to the alley. She didn’t know if it still existed. Well, fuck it. They’d find her sooner or later. Aptrgangr always did.
The man was wrong. She was afraid. Afraid of the wraiths. Afraid of becoming one of them, trapped within her own body. But she kept her fear like a lucky acorn in her pocket. It hung there with its reassuring weight. Fear kept her sharp. She’d curl herself around it every now and then, letting it cut her, letting it hone her senses. Enjoying the secret thrill of pain that told her she was still alive.
An alley opened onto the street, but the lamplight didn’t reach past the mouth, leaving the interior in inky blackness. Bear weaved his way through her legs, the fur on his spine raised in warning. They waited down the alley of brick and charred wood: two young men with torn jeans and the smear of the coal mine in the lines of their skin. One was shorter, stockier, with unkempt black hair that hung over his eyes. The other was tall and skinny, with a receding hairline and a long nose that covered most of his face. Reminded her of Ernie and Bert from that old children’s television show, back when there was still electricity, before the Unraveling.
The aptrgangr’s movements were uncoordinated, their limbs jerky like marionettes. Classic symptoms of the newly possessed. Given time, a wraith would integrate seamlessly into its host, until even family and friends couldn’t tell the soul within wasn’t the same. They welcomed the aptrgangr within their sanctuary and were slaughtered. Next to Bert and Ernie lay the pulpy remains of what must have been poor Sam.
“Look, Bear. Beef—it’s what’s for dinner.” Grace tossed her dagger in the air and caught it. The aptrgangr watched her with a hungry, desperate look, mouths hanging open like they could already taste her bloody flesh. Dream on.
The stockier aptrgangr—Ernie—seemed to be in charge. Lunging forward, he swiped out broadly with his muscled fist. It was almost too easy. Grace sidestepped and knocked him on the back of the head with the hilt of her dagger. He stumbled against the brick wall.
He was fresh enough that there was still a chance she could exorcise the wraith and save the human. No use getting more blood on her hands than she had to.
Bert paused a moment, head tilted to the sky to sniff the air. His eyes filmed white. Oh, shit. This one wasn’t worth saving. He came at her fast, but she turned his height and weight advantage back on him by slipping beneath his arms and slicing her dagger at the soft spot behind his knees. He screamed, and she knew she’d hit. Score one for her.
Ernie had shaken off the head blow and came back for another. Grace grabbed one of his lurching hands and swung him like a human shot put into the wall. He bounced off and fell on his ass.
She spun just in time to avoid another lunge by Bert. Dropping to the ground, she kicked out and took his legs out from under him. She palmed one of the sharpened iron railroad spikes sewn into her jacket. Like many magical creatures, aptrgangr avoided iron because it leeched their strength. Before Bert could rise again, she drove the iron spike into his shoulder. He roared. She stabbed him again. Debris from fallen trees had collected in the alley, and she grabbed a thick branch and clocked him upside the head. Blood splattered the concrete, but still he struggled to rise, the wraith within giving the damaged body unnatural strength. It could get a new body if this one gave out; it just had to jump before she banished it beyond the Gate.
Straddling the aptrgangr, she checked her belt for the tools of her trade: Thor’s hammer, a small copper-handled mallet about the size of her fist with Old Norse runes crisscrossing the iron head; hollow silver needles that held the blood ink; matches and a running iron for branding. She only needed the matches and brand for this job.
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After checking to make sure Ernie was still down—he was struggling to roll over, his leg bent at an odd angle, blood matting the long hair to his forehead—she lit a match and set fire to the end of the branch she had used on Bert. The damp wood smoked a bit before it caught. She heated the end of the short running iron in the fire until the dark grey metal warmed to the color of ashes.
Bert bucked beneath her.
“Down, boy,” she ordered, grabbing a fistful of shirt and slamming his head back against the concrete. She would be more careful with Ernie—still hopeful he could be saved—but Bert was a lost cause. Completing the ritual before the wraith fled was the hardest part of her job. It helped to knock the aptrgangr out first, as the loss of consciousness would confuse the dark spirit long enough to draw the brands.
Behind her, the cat hissed.
“Give me a minute,” she said. The first line of the brand drew red across Bert’s forehead. The smoke of burning meat sizzled off his pasty skin. Quickly she drew the other lines to finish three runes from Freya’s Aett: Uruz, to bind the wraith to the body; Raidho, journey, to send the wraith to the Land of the Dead; and Thurisaz, the Gateway, to lock it behind the Gate where it belonged. Bert screamed, vocal chords breaking, as Aether swept through the runes to purge his body of the evil within.
Before she could complete the ritual, something hard slammed into her ribs. She screamed and fell, catching herself in a roll away from the unseen danger. Four more aptrgangr had snuck up behind her. Four! Ianna had said two, and Grace had never seen more than three in one place. Just her luck.
The bodies were young males, but the wraiths inside were older, more powerful. Coordinated limbs and a cocky hitch in their step. It would be easy to mistake them for humans—just another biker gang out to shake her for lunch money—except Bear was hissing, fangs out. His thick fur stood straight up in all directions like a fluffy porcupine.
Four on one. Even if she were fully healed and rested, her chances were much better for flight than fighting. She wasn’t too proud to back down from a fight—death wasn’t worth it, especially death without paying off the blood debt, forcing her to be an enslaved ghost, stuck on this side of the Gate. They blocked the mouth of the alley. Debris clogged the other end. Looking around, she didn’t see any fire escapes she could flee up.
The ringleader slapped a large piece of broken rebar against his right palm. She’d bet her bone knife the imprint of that bar was right now decorating her ribs.
“Get out of here, Bear,” she ordered.
He scrambled. Smart feline.
For a moment her rough-and-tumble facade grated off like the thin veneer it was, leaving just Grace, a scared girl with no one but a cat for company. For a moment, the shadows of this flesh-and-blood alley beneath her palms flickered into that other alley, on a not-so-different night, in a not-so-different part of town, where the truth of her vulnerability hit home in the smash and blood-soaked feast of those first undead. Casting off her human blinders. Shattering her childhood innocence and leaving her horribly, dreadfully alone.
She wiped the dust out of her eyes. The gold slave bands heated, tempting her to use them. Their invisible tether worked both ways; the Regent to force her to his will, her to call him to her aid. Unlike him, she couldn’t use it to trace his whereabouts. Unlike her, he didn’t have to come when called.
She refused to go back to the way things were before the Unraveling. Asgard was a new master, but she wasn’t that girl anymore. She was so tired. Her injuries hurt. New ones. Old ones. Over six months of bruises and scrapes and torn muscles. The scars she’d earned in the earthquake of the Unraveling and the burns from the fires afterward still decorated her skin. She’d never gone this long without a healing.
But she was determined to go it alone. Norgard hadn’t been the golden savior she’d first thought him to be. She’d never make that mistake again.
The ringleader towered over her crouched position. He wore beige trousers and a white dress shirt, crisp and unmarked save for the constant fine ash that covered everything. His sandy brown hair was combed neatly to the side. The rebar smacked against his palm.
Muscling up her courage, she crooked her finger at him. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it wasn’t polite to sneak up on a lady? Why don’t you come over here and try that again.”
“You smell good,” the aptrgangr said. His even-toned voice echoed slightly, as if it came out of a cavern instead of a very human voice box. His eyes rolled in the back of his head.
She was in deep shit.
Leif tapped his cane along the bars of the barbaric bone fence of the House of Ishtar. Ianna, the High Priestess, had a flair for the dramatic. He needed to feed. It had been far too long, making him weak and dangerously unpredictable. He was a liability in this state. Every human with even half a soul looked good.
Tiamat help him before he killed someone.
The girl from the council trial, the blood slave with almond eyes and the scent of rose petals, had stuck in his head all day. All blood slaves were connected to the malachite ring, causing it to heat when one came near. But she had been different somehow. He felt the pull in more than the ring, and he wanted to know why.
Or maybe he was just avoiding what was really bothering him. Sven’s iron crown smothered him. Every day revealed more sick machinations of his brother’s design. Every day he realized a bit more how little he had known Sven at all. A twisted, power-mad individual. A man who in his depravity had engineered the collapse of civilization, all so he could free a demigod from hell. Leif wanted to hole up with his experiments and never emerge. But he couldn’t. He had to set things right.
Worst of all, he missed Sven. Was it wrong to miss someone so obviously deranged? Madness came for all Drekar eventually. Watching the world change while he didn’t. Watching everyone close to him die, again and again, a thousand lifetimes of pain and loss until he became immune to it all.
Leif wondered if Sven had known he had passed the point of sanity. Leif wondered if he would recognize it when it came for him.
The brick fronts of the buildings here in Pioneer Square were quiet, the street empty. The curfew bells had rung at six; the smart hid in their warded shelters and awaited the saving dawn. But there were few things that would mess with a man who turned into a twenty-foot-tall dragon.
The House of Ishtar inhabited an old Victorian mansion. A warm glow poured out the leaded glass windows into the murky dusk. The plucky sounds of a harp and the grate of laughter filled the quiet night. Inside, young women in corsets and lace served the Babylonian goddess of sex and fertility. They ministered to the men who came to worship. Flesh. Blood. Skin. Sweat. Benediction could be found in the slick slap of skin on skin. Salvation waited in the hot press of lips and the slow slide inside a woman.
But not for him. He needed a higher calling than base lust. The Houses of Ishtar provided a safe, steady source of food for the Drekar. Admiral Jameson was right to fear his kind: without the restraint of civilization they could succumb to the soul hunger and wipe out mankind.
Leif paused to inspect the magic work of the fence. Norse runes marked the ivory surface. He knew few Drekar who still dabbled in the ancient runic magic and fewer humans who could wield it. Birgitta would know. He would ask when she came back from checking on her family in Oregon.
The marks drew Aether through them, but the spell was unfinished. The House of Ishtar, with its merry glow and enticing music, stood unprotected.
Leif turned away from the beckoning warmth and followed the tainted pull toward the mouth of a dark alley. He heard a harsh smack and the sick thud of a body hitting the pavement. Instinctively he knew what he would find.
He hurried. His skin grew taut over his human form. He felt his eyes slit with his dragon sight, the world narrowing to shades of blue and green, and a trickle of smoke escaped his nose. His hands Turned to claws, shredding his black leather gloves. He turned the corner into the mouth of the alley and stopped. Aptr
gangr: those who walk after death.
They had the Walker surrounded, her back to the brick wall. Leif couldn’t take his eyes off her. The long, blue-black hair obscured her expression. Four undead moved in around her. A thin man with a rope. A well-muscled assailant wielding a broken piece of rebar. Two more with wide shoulders and beefy fists. He couldn’t stop the fear that gripped his chest at the sight of a woman under attack.
She held up a knife, but her arm jerked. The muscled man raised his rebar to strike.
Leif shook himself out of his stupor and roared. It didn’t matter that he wanted nothing to do with the blood slaves. They were his. No one touched what belonged to him. He didn’t know what this little human meant to him, but he intended to find out.
A roar shook the alley. The brick behind Grace trembled. Caught off guard, the aptrgangr loosened their hold on her limbs and she twisted free. A monstrous dragon tried to squeeze into the alley from the street outside. It was three times the size of a man and covered in rust-colored scales tipped in green that sparkled even in the dim light. It snapped its massive jaws at the aptrgangr, showing three rows of jagged white teeth. Smoke curled from the end of a long snout, filling the narrow passage with the scent of cinnamon and smoked meat. The green eyes—slit like a cat—glowed.
Grace’s stomach dropped out the bottom of her feet. She took advantage of the aptrgangr’s distraction and ran in the opposite direction. The wavy edges of her vision turned black. Her side burned—her rib good as broken—as if the dragon behind her had already set fire to her ailing body. All in a day’s work.
Fleeing screams and the crunch of bones, she jumped over Bert’s inert body and scrambled over a Dumpster at the end of the alley, only to be stopped by a crumble of bricks and trees. The street beneath her feet opened to expose the Underground. She couldn’t jump down there, not without canvassing an exit first.
No way out.
Grace squeezed herself between the Dumpster and the crumbled wall. Not hiding, resting, she told herself. But the blood beat in her ears, and the slow scrape of scales and claws on brick followed her down the alley. The knife in her hand trembled. She could barely raise her arm.
