"But ... are you ready for it?"
She stared at him blankly for a moment before looking at her hands. "I'm ready to do whatever I can to avoid Náströnd. This outcome was always a possibility, however small that possibility felt. Even if it's not what I had hoped for."
Marius searched her face for a minute, and Satara couldn't help but feel a little irritated at his examination. She was barely dealing with this on a mental level. If she wasn't handling it with the reverence and grace and deference to the gods he preferred, he would have to excuse her.
But his next words surprised her. "There were times when I felt the same way, growing up, before Tyr's Rite."
"You?" she asked skeptically. "I was under the impression you were something of an overachiever."
"I was a child, once. And a teenager," he added with a snort. "I don't think any teenager likes to be told what to do. Not that I was particularly rebellious. My father was all I had, I wanted to please him. Still ... every expectation people had for me—my entire life—was laid out from the beginning. Of course there were times I dreaded it all."
Satara frowned. "Then what exactly changed your mind? Not to put too fine a point on it, Marius, but you've historically been a bit of a zealot."
To his credit, he took the comment in stride, only huffing. "The Rite was what changed my mind."
"The Rite itself?"
"Yes. As the ritual changed me, it changed everything else, too." He closed his eyes as if trying to recall the feeling. "My hand was gone, and for a few seconds afterward, I thought I might die of the pain. And then ... something filled me. I can't even begin to describe the power, the light. It was like a second soul entered me—a piece I had been missing all along but didn't know I needed. Any apprehension or doubt I had was gone at once." He opened his eyes, irises rings of bright gold. "Everything suddenly felt ... right."
Satara watched the ghost of a smile appear on his face, but it was gone soon after, his gaze falling to the carpet and darkening. Her heart ached for him. To believe so deeply, to have such strong convictions, and to see the other Aurora failing so miserably ... it couldn't be easy.
A moment later, he sighed and stood. "I did not expect it, but after the Rite, I felt ... more like myself. In a way I hadn't known was possible. I hope you can have that."
Satara swallowed, her throat burning almost as badly as her wings. She hoped so, too.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Edie finished drawing the last rune in her first translocation circle and stepped back, assessing her work.
It could have been more even. Basile's were always perfect circles with just the right amount of space between runes. But he'd assured her that looks didn't matter, so thank the gods for that. He'd also assured her that the ink would disappear from Yuval's carpet once they teleported. Thank the gods for that, too.
She looked over her shoulder at Cal and Satara, who were ready to go, standing at the edge of the circle, then at those gathered to send them off. An ever-exhausted-looking Adam watched with interest from the doorway, while Basile stood in front of Edie, having coached her through drawing the circle.
Elle sat curled up in the comfy chair nearby, flipping through one of the books Satara had brought. Though Cal had taught her how to use a glamour, her focus wasn't practiced, and it would fade away from time to time. At the moment, she was gray, her pupils glowing, but she was lively as ever, chewing some bubblegum.
She glanced around the room and tucked the gum into her cheek. "Is Mr. Sunshine not coming with you?"
"He wasn't going to," Edie replied, assuming she meant Marius. "I haven't seen him this morning..." With a frown, she looked to Basile for an explanation.
The priest seemed unconcerned; it was Adam who answered, leaning against the door frame: "He said he was going to check on Yuval and her girlfriend. And Klein, who I still haven't met," he added with a tired smile.
Edie attempted to smile back. "Maybe when we get a free second where people aren't trying to murder us."
"I'll be waiting forever, then." He sighed and rested his head against the door frame like he might fall asleep right there.
Cal peered at him, then at Elle. "Make sure your pop takes a nap, okay?"
"I'll try," she replied dubiously, going back to chewing her gum.
"Now..." Basile gestured to their translocation circle. "Whenever you're ready, step into the center, all three of you. Once you're all in, Edie, you need to empower the circle with your magic, and then the runes will do the legwork. You know how to do that?"
She sighed. "Is it going to be one of those 'you'll just know how to do it' things?"
"Kinda."
"Great. My favorite." But how hard could it be? She hated the concept of magic you just felt, but as long as it worked...
Without further complaint, she stepped into the center of the circle, and Satara and Cal crowded in tightly after her.
Lo and behold, Basile was right. Standing in the center, she felt like she was standing on top of many intersecting lines, all buzzing with energy. Their power pushed against her in greeting, like a house pet, and she found that pushing back with her own magic was almost an instinct. As she did, the runes glowed a soft silver, brightening until they were blazing fire.
Edie hugged her messenger bag tighter to her stomach and looked at the people they were leaving behind. "We'll be back ASAP!" she said quickly, before the room wobbled and blurred around her. Her stomach sank, pulse racing as her consciousness tilted.
The next thing she knew, they were in Harbinger Trinket & Tome.
She could smell dust and the shop's cedar beams, the lingering, familiar incense of the place. Her vision steadied after a moment, granting her a view of the back hall. It was closed up, the shudders and curtains drawn. Only a few feet in front of her, the ancient wooden door to the shop proper stood latched closed. An orange glow seeping through the crack under the door helped her see in the darkness.
Everything looked just as it had the last time she'd been here.
But there was something wrong.
It wasn't immediately apparent, but the longer they stood in the hall, the more the familiar scent of the shop was overpowered by something ... else. The unpleasant smell of something burning.
As Satara turned to open the door behind them, the door to Astrid's apartment, it became clear that the roar Edie heard distantly wasn't just the sound of blood in her ears. In the back of her mind, she wondered if they had landed in the wrong place somehow, but following Satara into Astrid's old hearth room, she saw that everything was exactly as it should be.
A flicker of movement—something bright orange—in one of the small windows caught her eye, and she snapped her attention to it. The glass was much cloudier and dingier than she remembered it being. And there was...
All at once, she realized what was happening. The distant roar was joined with crackling, shouts, the crash of something collapsing. The smell was overpowering.
Fire, somewhere outside.
Almost at the same second, she and Satara made eye contact and rushed for the windows. But there was little to see besides fire in the distance—the window faced an alley, not the main street.
"Come on." Satara's tone was sharp as she pulled away from the window and hurried toward the shop door.
"What in the Sam Hill is going on out there?" Cal whispered as Edie passed him, his sawed-off already drawn by his thigh.
Her answer was cut off by a thud as Satara threw the latch and burst into the shop.
Frenzied orange glared through the large front windows of the shop, washing over them. Smoke hung in the air and crept in through the cracks of the old wood, filling Edie's nostrils and making her cough. Whooping and hollering sounded outside, punctuated by gunshots and the squeal of tires.
Shipshaven was burning.
Almost immediately, a clattering at the front of the shop, near the register, drew Edie's attention. Her heart whaled against her ribs as she realized they were
n't alone.
"What was that?" A man's voice; an American accent. A New Yorker, in fact, if she had to guess.
"What?" Another man.
"That slamming."
"Did that come from inside the shop?"
There was a moment of silence, shuffling. Satara backed up, trying to retreat into the hallway and nearly bumping into Edie in the process, but the intruders were upon them in mere moments. There was no time to hide.
The men, though they had sounded about as average as you could get, looked anything but. They were dressed in red robes—brilliant scarlet, finely made although they didn’t fit quite right—the hem of which came just below the knee, touching shiny boots. Along with the robes, they wore red hoods, which draped along the shoulders. And in the pit of the hood, where Edie would have expected to see a face…
Skulls. Masks the color of bone, with skeletal cheekbones and bared teeth, silver filigree crawling up the sides. But the eye sockets weren’t empty hollows; human eyes, their whites stark against the black greasepaint ringing them, glared out.
They already had guns drawn—handguns, but one of them had a semi-automatic rifle slung across his back—and in an instant, the man in front raised and fired. The shot went wide and ricocheted, but even as Edie and the others were ducking behind tables and bookcases for cover, he was firing another one. And another.
Edie’s ears rang, the smell of gunpowder filling her nostrils. With a shout—“Hlíf!”—Satara summoned a strong, faintly blue barrier around them, but Edie wasn’t sure how it would hold up against bullets.
Cal didn’t seem to care if he was protected or not. He leaned out from this hiding place behind a shelf and fired his shotgun, opening the chest of the man with the semi-automatic.
The other one had still not ceased firing, and in fact squeezed the trigger more in the panicked wake of the shotgun blast. His shots swung toward Cal, punching holes in the shelf and nearby bookcases. Dust, fragments of knickknacks, and scraps of books exploded through the air. Edie heard a few wet thuds and a harsh grunt and knew Cal had been hit.
Then, suddenly, the shots stopped coming. Edie peered past the table under which she and Satara hid. The man’s hands shook as he abandoned his pistol rather than reload it and turned to his dying friend, wrestling the strap of the rifle from across his gaping chest.
Almost at the same time, she and Satara unfurled from their crouched position, surging toward the man. Edie straightened a half second too quickly, and the table above them tipped, hitting the floor with a loud crash as books and writing implements sprawled across the wood.
Satara’s silver spear was through the man’s lower back before he had time to turn around, and with a weak wail, he and his pilfered rifle dropped to the ground.
A second later, the shop’s front door slammed open, and two more red-robed figures entered, already aiming their own weapons.
Edie gasped and threw her hand out on instinct, flinging a bolt of death magic past Satara and hitting one of the men in the center of his chest. The red robes dimmed and decayed there, and the rot spread from the epicenter in the blink of an eye, swallowing his form until he was only a gray, lifeless husk.
As his eyes glassed over and he dropped to the floor, Satara threw her shield, knocking the tactical shotgun out of his partner’s hands. With a shout, he ducked to pick it back up, and Satara followed through with a lunge, spearing him through the head.
By the time the last man slumped to the floor, Cal had already appeared beside Edie. “Grab something,” he mumbled. “One of the rifles. Just in case.”
She looked at him assessingly. Getting shot didn’t seem to have fazed him in the least, though his jacket and jeans were now bloodied. “Like hell I know how to use a freaking assault weapon, Cal.”
“Just point and press. You might wanna grab any magazines you see, too.” He nudged her shoulder, pushing her forward slightly. “Come on, we don’t know when more of ’em will show up.”
Edie sighed and crossed to the first two men. The one Cal had shot wasn’t breathing, and the one Satara had impaled lay shaking in a puddle of his own blood. The stink of it invaded Edie’s nose, the smell of the battlefield once again making her extremities numb, her breath shallower. Gently, she separated the man from the semi-auto and slung it around her own shoulder.
“Looks like a SIG 556. That’ll do ya.” Cal whistled through his teeth, half taking it from her to examine it. With a flick, he turned the safety on. “Look at the scope on this thing. Jesus.” He looked down at the dying man. “You bastards really think you’re something else, huh?”
“I’m not sure he can hear you,” Satara murmured.
“Sorry son of a bitch.” Cal drew his revolver and shot the man in the head, stilling his movements. Though Edie knew it was to put him out of his misery, her stomach revolted, and she fought to keep her breakfast down.
Satara came closer, crouching to look at the men. She plucked the skull mask from the first one Cal had shot, revealing a man in his thirties, white, unremarkable in every way save for his braided beard and the greasepaint around his eyes.
“Blood Eagles,” she said, turning the mask over in her hands.
“What the fuck are they doing here?” Cal approached the windows and looked out at the world of blazing orange.
The shieldmaiden pursed her lips, swallowing hard. “The horn … I couldn’t put it together before I knew what it was for.”
“All this because of that horn?” Edie adjusted her hold on the rifle, brows drawing inward.
“Because of me. They’re here because of me.” Tears pricked Satara’s eyes, gilded in the orange light. Her face twisted. “They were trying to prevent me from becoming a valkyrie—first by thievery and now by force. Killing Astrid and letting my wings rot were planned from the start. They planned to let me die.” Suddenly, she stood, discarding the mask in the pool of blood at her feet.
“But … why?” Edie murmured. “Indriði already killed Astrid. Wasn’t that her goal?”
“Cattle die, kinsmen die, you yourself will also die. I know one thing that never dies: the reputation of each one dead.” The shieldmaiden looked around the shop, gesturing vaguely. “We are never truly gone as long as those who held us in regard keep on living. Obliterating Astrid from this universe wasn’t enough. Indriði wanted to destroy her legacy beyond repair, so that she could never be remembered again. That includes me.”
“Why not destroy her reputation in some other way? Spread rumors about her or frame her for a crime or something? Why hurt you in the process?”
“Kolya. It was always about Kolya.” Satara ran her hands down her face. “Indriði wanted—”
A boom from outside the shop drowned out her next few words. Edie watched as the building across from them—unrecognizable as anything beyond the skeleton of a storefront—erupted in renewed flame. Gouts of fire spat from the windows, and the resulting breeze blew the shop door open again. The heat was blistering even from where they stood.
Cal backed up from the windows and looked over. “It’s only a matter of time before sparks float over here. Let’s grab the horn and blow this burning popsicle stand.”
“Where in the shop is it?” Edie asked, turning back to Satara.
“It’s not in the shop,” she replied softly. “Even when I had no idea what it was for, I knew it was important. I couldn’t just leave it with the rest of Astrid’s things, but … it felt wrong to bring it with me, too. I knew if they sent another thief after it, the shop would be the first place they would look. They would tear this building apart looking for it. So I hid it somewhere else.” She rubbed her hands together anxiously. “It’s in one of the chest tombs in the old burying ground.”
Cal huffed. “Let’s do some grave-robbing, then.”
They left the men behind, slipping through the front door and onto the burning street. Anything resembling a town had been devoured by flame; the sky was filled with thick, dark gray smoke that choked the air fr
om Edie’s lungs and made her eyes water fiercely. With renewed horror, she wondered where the residents of Shipshaven were—if they had made it somewhere safe before the Blood Eagles had arrived.
Satara looked up and down the street, eyes wide and horrified, before going left. They passed the husk of a car overturned in the road. The smell of it was unlike anything Edie had ever experienced, the bitter stench of burning fuel and melting rubber. She pulled the collar of her shirt up over her nose and prayed to whatever gods were listening that the thing had already blown up and wasn’t in danger of doing so again.
The town was a maze of smoke and flame, but Edie could still hear whooping and chanting nearby. She squinted through the flickering wall of fire before her and could just barely make out the figures of men down the street, destroying what was left of a burning home. They had dragged something out into the middle of the road and were beating on it with batons. Her stomach dipped. Please let that be an inanimate object.
Besides the Blood Eagles, though, Edie couldn’t see any people. She felt a little glimmer of hope that any civilians had made it to safety.
“Hey, boys! Over here!” The shout came from behind them, and Edie’s breath caught in her throat as she turned to look—but another wall of flame greeted her. There was only the faint outline, rendered blurry by the heat, of a Blood Eagle coming down the street toward them.
Hoping he hadn’t noticed them, Edie followed Satara as she ducked into the shadow of a brick building.
The bricks were cold compared to the sweltering air around her, and she rested a sweating palm to them, trying to catch her breath. The man was already passing, and the crackling fire hid her voice as she breathed, “Where’s the cemetery?”
Satara nodded wordlessly and slipped down a side street, leading them away from the main thoroughfare. The smoke loomed heavy over the whole of the town, but as they left the small downtown area behind, the fires diminished until they were a distant roar.
As they hopped over someone’s backyard fence and started up a small hill, the predawn twilight around them looked blue against the encroaching orange. Light slanted across the grass even from here, but they kept to the shadows.
Unholy Spirit (The Necromancer's Daughter Book 3) Page 26
