Monster Born (Northern Creatures Book 1)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  The truth was I had no idea at all if Brother would attack the Carlsons. I had no idea if he would attack the elves or the wolves or me again. He had seemed different, when he ran away. Smaller. Less violent.

  The dagger may not have killed him, but it seemed to have diminished his power.

  Arne closed his eyes. “I’m tired, Frank.”

  The heat of the fire prickled my back and I, too, wanted to close my eyes. Maybe we’d all wake up tomorrow in a better, calmer place.

  “What are you?” Carlson asked yet again.

  Arne looked at me, then he looked out over the lake.

  He dropped his glamour. His ears manifested, followed closely by his lynx-like sideburns and his massive, swaying, silver-clasped ponytail. His leathers appeared next, and his elven shimmer.

  Carlson gasped yet again.

  “Elves, Mr. Carlson,” he said. He leaned closer. “I sailed to this land with your Norse ancestors.”

  Carlson looked at me.

  “I’m a jotunn,” I said. “A giant.”

  Arne laughed. “That you are, my son. That you are.” He re-glamoured just as the trucks pulled up on the road side of the house.

  “You’re elves? Like magic and fairies and trolls?”

  Arne pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “Do not annoy the Elf King of Alfheim, little man,” I said, doing my best to sound giant-like.

  Arne released the magic around Aaron Carlson’s head. “You have a choice. Accept what we say or I kill you. It’s that simple, Mr. Carlson.”

  Arne looked out over the lake again. “I will deal with Maura’s grandfather in the morning,” he said.

  Carlson pointed at me. “I’m a lawyer. My firm can handle just about anything. We can help you. All of you.” He shook his head. “Elves.” Then he looked at the trees. “Those wolves. Were they…”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Yells came from the front of the house. Arne looked Carlson up and down. He drew a pentagon of magic in the air, then slapped it onto Carlson’s forehead. “If you lie, I will know.”

  Carlson staggered back. “I’m a lawyer. Listening in on my cases is going to give you a migraine.”

  Arne did not laugh. He pushed Carlson toward the path to the other side of the house and the fire trucks. “If Sheriff Martinez tells me you are cooperating in a manner to his liking, I will let you and your family live.”

  Carlson stiffened. He nodded. And together, we made our way to the other side.

  Chapter 30

  Dag, Maura, and Akeyla were already in the ambulance when I escorted Arne and Aaron Carlson to the fire trucks. Turned out that once my brother disappeared, all the elves—Arne included—began to heal at their normal, accelerated pace. Maura’s face was back to smooth and lovely already, and Akeyla was sitting up, though she had a doozy of a headache.

  They would spend the night at the hospital with Alfheim’s elf healer, and would be home for dinner tomorrow.

  Dag needed a cast. She’d done herself extra damage when she’d opened the tunnel into the fire, but would heal in a couple of weeks.

  Arne sat in the back of the ambulance next to his wife. They did not touch. She barely looked at him.

  I didn’t ask. Arne had promised to take care of the Hawaii issue, and I suspected that Dag would hold him to his word.

  Ed and Aaron Carlson were still talking when I left. I figured they would hammer out how to deal with Mrs. Carlson and the two workers who’d been thralled by my brother.

  The house was a loss, but the crews managed to keep the fire from spreading into the woods. The wolves had dispersed into search teams to make sure my brother had indeed vanished.

  The damage he brought with him had dissipated. The shadows lightened. My rage crawled back into the pit where I kept it. The elves sensed the change, as well. The consensus among the magical was that my brother had gone off to a hole to die for good.

  The wolves would search anyway. Arne said several of the other town elves had come out and would help Gerard and Remy as needed.

  Plans needed to be made and set in place, in case Brother appeared again. No one had seen the Bitersons since the library incident. I had several questions, mostly for Ivan, but Tony needed to provide a few answers as well.

  Overall, we likely still had a vampire problem.

  But I would leave that to the elves. Tony and Ivan had an unusual level of respect for Arne, and likely would behave, if a deal was cut.

  I just wanted to go home and sleep.

  I stumbled toward my cold, dark house. Only about half the string lights came on as I walked up; the fight between Arne and Brother had made a mess of my yard. Part of the fence lay in the middle of the driveway, and my artsy gate hung askew. But the house itself stood unscathed, unlike my neighbors’.

  I flipped on the kitchen light before opening the French doors to my deck. The moon continued to throw a long, pale-silver slice onto the lake. At its tip, the embers and broken shards of the Carlson house glowed exactly its opposite: squat, red-gold, and above the water.

  I rubbed at my face. I had a few hours before sunup. A shower first, then sleep. In the morning, I’d go into town and get myself a new phone.

  Somewhere in the woods, one of the werewolves howled. I counted one, two, three… The rest of the pack joined in. They would run, search, and hunt deer. And they would come back tomorrow as the good citizens of Alfheim they had long been.

  Maybe they’d find my dog.

  I’d go look for him tomorrow morning, instead of sitting on the deck across from my brother’s pyre. Warm my stiff, cold body with a walk in the woods. But for now, sleep beckoned.

  I woke to a crisp, bright morning. The trees had shifted more toward the reds and golds of autumn, and rustled along the lakeshore. The Alfheim Apple Fest would be bringing more tourists to town this weekend, and likely more investors looking for cabin plots.

  I donned my jeans, t-shirt, and boots, and walked out onto the deck. In the morning light, the cracks in the decking stood out, as did the elven blood stains. I’d have a day of cleaning and repair when I got home.

  The trail around the lake took me into the trees and across the peninsula. No cabins on the other side yet, though a surveying crew had already marked a lot.

  Birds chirped overhead. Squirrels ran the branches as if they knew I walked alone. I plodded along, hoping to catch some indication of my dog.

  I whistled. “Marcus!” I yelled. “Here, boy!”

  Ahead and off the trail, a dog barked.

  “Marcus Aurelius!” I called.

  I stepped through the brambles to make my way down to the lake.

  The emperor stood on the shoreline, his head up and his tail wagging, next to a goddess.

  Not a real goddess—if she was an actual goddess I’d have seen her magic, and though this woman had magic clinging to her, it wasn’t as detailed or controlled as the elves’ or any other wielders I’d met.

  No, she was a human woman. A beautiful, red-haired woman in jeans and a hoodie that did not hide her perfect curves.

  “Oh,” I heard myself saying like an idiot. Why was I reacting this way to a random woman? Was it the soft, slight magic around her? Was it her keen eyes? She wasn’t afraid of me, though she did look sad.

  Marcus Aurelius obviously liked her.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hello,” she said, then patted Marcus’s head. “Your dog came to visit me this morning.”

  I smiled. I couldn’t help myself. She blinked and looked away, but smiled too.

  Getting my hopes up would only lead to pain. No woman liked dating a walking corpse. But maybe we could be friends. “I’m Frank,” I said. “Frank Victorsson.”

  She tucked the wallet-looking thing in her hand into the pocket of her hoodie and wiped her palms on her jeans, but then she slipped.

  “Here,” I said, and took her arm without thinking. Without considering how upsetting my cold fingers might be.

  B
ut she only looked up at my face with clear, thankful eyes.

  She took my hand. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m Ellie Jones.”

  She held onto my fingers. No flinching. No pulling away. Only her beautiful face saying, again, that she was not afraid of me.

  Maybe all that had transpired had also expired. Maybe I’d walked out of last night’s horrors and into a much better, new day.

  Marcus Aurelius barked his agreement.

  “Ellie Jones,” I said.

  The beautiful woman touching my hand went by the name Ellie Jones. She smiled again.

  Yes, today would be a much better day.

  And I would do everything in my power to keep it that way.

  Epilogue

  North of Alfheim, the night of the full moon….

  The vampire whom the elves thought to mock with the pathetic name of “Tony Biterson” stood in the shadows of a large elm, knee-deep in underbrush, and waited for his “brother” Ivan to get their bearings. Too many trees rustled here. Too many animals hissed. The natural world did not like vampires and made a raucous noise in protest of their presence.

  A coyote watched them from about twenty paces away. The animal chirped and stared, and would dash away immediately if it thought either vampire was about to make it dinner.

  “You are not fast enough,” Tony called. “None of you are fast enough.”

  The animals, like the elves, had no idea who they were dealing with.

  The coyote yip-howled and ran off into the trees.

  Ivan tapped a hooked finger on the page of the witch’s last remaining spell book. How he managed to get it out of the library before the Elf King went nuclear, Tony did not know, nor did he ask. The wielding of non-vampiric magicks was not his domain. He did, though, understand the need for outsourcing to experts, and Ivan was most definitely an expert.

  Tony had done some ancestral digging before bringing Ivan into his venture. He’d checked and rechecked the little troll-man’s credentials.

  Witch-breed who did not implode while mortal were rare indeed, and to be of the witches and turned, rarer still. Ivan was a special gift Tony would not squander.

  A cloth hung from Tony’s back pocket—another bit of the witch’s legacy Ivan had managed to save. The cloth did not like him, nor did he like it, but it did not have the power to compel him to abandon it.

  So he’d carried it into the woods when he and Ivan had run from Arne Odinsson. Running was not Tony’s best moment, but the running had a purpose, and was part of the greater plan.

  A plan that utilized Tony’s best traits.

  He was stealth and disguise. Spying and intrigue. Using an enemy’s most easily-manipulated traits against them. With the elves of Alfheim, that trait was their incessant need to be “modern.”

  Everyone could be rehabilitated, in the modern world. The mundanes had built entire economies around rehabilitating the different, the naughty, and the straight-up bad.

  Part of Arne Odinsson’s rehabilitation was to become a kinder, gentler ruler. A man who no longer slaughtered to take territory, but instead built the shining town on the hill and invited in the unloved. “Look! We have nice doggies and nice biters here in Alfheim! I’m the best Elf King on Earth. The best. So wonderful and incredible, I’ve been keeping a walking corpse as a pet for two full centuries.”

  Tony had known the moment he first met Frank Victorsson that he was looking at the mundane version of the rumors. “There is one of us,” the rumors whispered. “One Who is Many. Many Who are One.”

  No vampire attended to the rumors; they were whispers and not prophecy. But Tony listened. Tony had reasons. Tony wanted to know what “One Who is Many” meant, and who those “many” might be.

  Frank Victorsson’s walking patchwork corpse gave the rumors validity, and in Tony’s mind, a hint of prophecy. What else could Mr. Victorsson be other than a marker of something greater? He was a first draft and first drafts were often revised.

  So Tony and Ivan stopped among the elves and the sparkly white magic. Tony charmed. Ivan found a source of darkness to feed his needs. They dipped and they bowed and they waited.

  Their first attempt, in the sixties, put blood in the water. Their second attempt, in the eighties, almost exploded in their faces. For a while, they’d wondered if the vampire that drove Ed Martinez north was the vampire they sought, but no. He’d been the wrong kind of crazy and had gotten himself staked by the mundane.

  Then that pathetic, lovesick fire spirit poked holes in Alfheim’s defenses from the outside, and they knew they could send out the correct call for the correct vampire.

  The true ruler. The One. The Only.

  Tony rubbed his hands together. The birch blocked most of the moonlight, but he was one of the lovelies, the vampires who thralled through beauty, and he carried an unearthly shimmer that mundanes sensed but did not see. It made him stand out in a crowd, but under the moon, it became visible.

  He’d learned to control its brilliance a long time ago. Age did have its benefits, and for vampires, it usually meant increased control of their demon blood and its many side effects.

  Ivan had a similar sheen, but his had more to do with his manipulation of magicks than the moon.

  Ivan was not a lovely. Ivan was Ivan, and even Tony knew better than to ask about how he’d turned.

  “Well?” Tony asked. He could, though, ask about the meddling they did.

  Ivan held up his hand. He closed his squinty eyes and pointed with his crooked finger. “Ash?” he hissed.

  Tony sniffed in the direction of Ivan’s pointing. “Yes.” He clasped Ivan’s shoulder. “You are worthy of the coming New Order, my friend.”

  Ivan chittered in much the same way as the coyote had.

  Tony knocked through the underbrush. “Come,” he said.

  They pushed through the thickets and the leaves, both with their heads low and their vampire senses queued toward their goal: The One Who is Many.

  Tony pressed between the trunks of two large trees and stepped into a small hole in the forest. Dead birches and brambles framed the space. The limb of a dead oak formed a roof that shaded from both moon and sun. The ground, devoid of plant life, writhed with beetles and worms.

  This was a place of dying. Not a place of death—too much lived around it, and in its floor. Decay wafted from the soil and rotting leaves. It was a place of transition from The Land of the Living to The Land of the Dead.

  Most forests had such spots. They were few and far between, and protected by a primordial magic that made them undetectable to elves, fae, and wolves, though Tony had heard that the kami could find such locations if they set their minds to it.

  Tony gingerly set his foot down onto the mass of bugs and peered into the black shadows. “Many Who is One?” he called.

  Something skittered. Something else slithered. An inhale followed, then chewing noises.

  Tony had his phone. He could turn on the light. But light meant that he feared—and fear, now, would only get him killed.

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Ivan,” he said. “Hold up your book.”

  His small friend shuffled. Paper rustled. “See,” he hissed, and spread wide the pages.

  The shadows did not part. Light did not enter, yet borders formed between different blacknesses, and angles took on clarity. Centipedes left spotted trails and beetles dotted lines. Grain popped up out of old wood. And He Whom They Sought crouched in the center, half a rabbit in his hand and his face covered with blood.

  In his shoulder, the remains of Hel’s Dagger continued to smoke. Tony stepped closer and peered at the wound.

  The giant vampire growled.

  Tony raised his hand. “There, there,” he said, and pointed at the wound. “You have a piece of Odin’s gallows in your shoulder,” he said.

  The giant snorted and went back to gnawing on his rabbit.

  Slowly, carefully, Tony wrapped the witch’s linen around his hand. “Allow me to check your wound.”


  He reached for the bit of the Dagger still poking through the giant’s skin. And just as slowly and carefully, he twisted.

  The linen smoked. It did not like the Dagger and heat roared up Tony’s hand, but he continued to hold on.

  The giant dropped the rabbit. He gagged and rubbed at his eyes. “Where am I?” he said in a clear, unambiguous Scottish accent.

  “No, no,” Ivan hissed from the brambles. “Not The One?”

  Tony shot his hand toward the Dagger and twisted it once again. More heat, but he pulled back the cloth quickly enough that it did not catch fire.

  Under the weave of the linen, Tony’s skin blistered. He reveled in the pain, in the tactile sense of it, but he would need to be fast. If he lost the cloth, he would no longer be able to adjust the Dagger’s alignment with the universe. And without adjustment, one of the Many who was not The One might retain control.

  Or the combined personality might re-emerge. And Tony doubted he and Ivan could keep the combined Many under control.

  Better to find The One.

  The giant rambled something in an old East Asian language, one that Tony did not recognize. Behind him, Ivan chattered again.

  The next twist dialed up a Frenchman. The next a Caribbean slave who, when The One Who Is Many was constructed, must have been as feral as the part who had been eating the rabbit. The slave, though, rattled off a rant about hoodoo and Caribbean gods.

  The cloth smoked as much as the Dagger, and the burn climbed Tony’s arm. His skin puckered and his nerves screamed.

  He hadn’t felt this real since he was alive. He hooted and twisted the blade again.

  The cloth ignited. Tony yelled and dropped it to the scurrying beetles underfoot. Whoever of the Many he’d dialed up would be the One with whom they would walk forward.

  The giant inhaled. He pulled back from Tony’s touch. He roared at the dead oak roof over their heads. Then he stood tall and laughed.

  He wiped the remains of the rabbit from his person before holding up his hands and examining his new body. “Well, well,” he said. “Fascinating.”