Transcendent

by Lesley Livingston

  Mason screamed in warning, but it was too late.

  Far too late, Fennrys thought. It always has been . . .

  Another gray fist erupted from the ground. Draugr.

  Rafe’s expression was stricken as he slashed through the air with one hand, manifesting the slender coppery blade he used as a weapon. He spat a venomous curse and brought the sword down in a blurred circle, severing a draugr head from its neck. But Fennrys saw that the whole of the ground beneath Rafe’s feet, from the scrubby shingle of beach to the mown green lawns of the baseball diamonds beyond, seemed to writhe and heave. It was as if the ground was alive.

  No. Dead, Fennrys thought. Dead Ground . . .

  “This here’s Dead Ground.”

  Suddenly, he could hear the voice of the troll he’d met under the Hell Gate on his very first night back in New York City. He hadn’t known what “Dead Ground” had meant at the time, but he sure as hell did now. In that moment, Fennrys recalled another conversation. The one he and Maddox had had with Rafe upon entering the New York Public Library, back when he’d gone on his quest into the Underworld realms in order to find Mason and bring her home. About how the ground where Bryant Park and the library now stood had once been the burial grounds for tens of thousands of bodies, mortal remains interred in a potter’s field—unmarked graves for paupers and the unclaimed dead—and how those bodies had been dug up around the turn of the century and moved. Reburied.

  Rafe hadn’t known where.

  Fennrys knew.

  All those bodies, taken from a place where a path to the Beyond Realms existed—a path to Aaru, the lost Underworld kingdom of Anubis, Lord of the Dead—had been reinterred in the soil of Wards and Randalls Island. And by setting foot on that burial land, Rafe had just reopened that path.

  And recalled to horrid un-life all of those many, many dead.

  It struck Fennrys with the same kind of pristine, diabolical logic in the same moment as it hit the ancient god. Rafe whirled wildly around, the look on his face one of panic and terrible realization. His eyes burned with regret as he gazed into the distance. Fennrys followed that stricken gaze and saw that the three women who’d been gyrating madly in a war dance on the Bronx Kill Bridge had gone statue still.

  “Mason . . . Fennrys . . . ,” Rafe called back to them. “I’m sorry! I didn’t set you up, Mase—I swear it! They set me up! Right from the start . . .”

  “What’s happening?” Mason cried, grabbing at Fennrys’s arm and glancing around frantically.

  The shaft of Asgardian light was spread out behind them and everywhere it touched the surface of the East River, the water turned to solid ground, racing back toward the shores of North Brother Island. When the land bridge reached those shores, Fennrys saw a flash of glimmering golden roofs, and he knew that the rift had torn wide open, all the way to the Beyond. All the way to Asgard. Far distant mountains ringed what seemed to be an endless plain, the leading edge of it creeping toward them as the rift grew, displacing the dark water of the East River with earth and grass that trembled with the sounds of feet.

  They came like thunder, rolling across the Otherworldly plain.

  The Einherjar.

  The Hell Gate Strait was transformed into the foretold battle plain of Valgrind.

  And Fennrys was faced with an impossible choice.

  In front of the beached—now landlocked—ship, there were draugr everywhere, heaving themselves out of the ground in a widening circle all around the ancient Egyptian god. Fennrys knew that Rafe couldn’t make it back to Naglfar. There were too many of the draugr between them.

  “Go!” he shouted. “Get out of here, Rafe! There’s nothing you can do now but run . . .”

  The ancient god looked as if he might protest, then—when he saw it was hopeless—he snarled in frustration and, in the blink of an eye, transformed into his wolf self. There was a gap of about two feet in the ring of lurching gray monsters and he took it, leaping with his powerful hindquarters and clearing the reach of the draugrs and their grasping talons by inches. He ran south, along the shore, and Fennrys hoped he could make it to Douglas Muir’s yacht and cast off before the river disappeared entirely and the only avenue of escape closed for the ancient god. His friend . . . the one person other than Mason who had actually believed in Fennrys right from the beginning.

  The one person who’d given him a second chance . . .

  And a third . . .

  Fennrys looked back to where Mason’s mother, and his, stood like statues.

  They wouldn’t interfere. They couldn’t. They had made their choices a long time ago and now it was up to those who came after. He looked at Toby and saw an old man. There were tear tracks on his weathered cheeks. The eternal warrior who could no longer fight, only bear witness to the battle at the end of the world. It hurt just to look at him.

  “Oh god,” he heard Mason whisper. “Rafe’s not going to make it . . .”

  Fenn turned back to see the horde of gray-skinned monsters grasping at the black wolf’s hind legs. Watched him falter and fall, and struggle gamely back up, only to be dragged again into the draugr melee. The cries and yelps from his throat were piteous and pain-soaked.

  The Wolf in Fennrys whined in brotherhood.

  He’d already left Maddox behind, now he was going to have to stand there and let Rafe go down under a horde of draugr. And it was killing him. But there was nothing he could do. He’d promised Mason. Fenn turned and looked at her and could see himself reflected in her eyes. He saw that his own were gleaming silver-blue.

  But the magick Loki wove into his medallion held. He didn’t change.

  He wouldn’t . . .

  “It’s okay,” Mason said, and put a hand on his heart. “Remember you will always be Fennrys. Now it’s time to go be the Wolf.”

  He hesitated. Rafe screamed.

  “Go!”

  Fennrys tore the iron medallion from around his neck and tossed it at Mason as he leaped for the side of the ship, vaulting over it and transforming midleap. Instantly, he felt his mind transform with his body. Every instinct, every impulse, clarified and refined. Emotions dropped away.

  There was nothing for him but the fight. The kill.

  He ran.

  XXIII

  When the sky split open, Roth and Daria and Cal were standing in the infield of a placid-seeming baseball diamond. And then the ground started to heave. The three of them glanced around in confusion. Even with all of the tremors in Manhattan over the last few days, this felt different. Then they saw the distant golden-roofed halls of Valhalla, shining through the rift out over the river.

  “No . . . ,” Daria murmured. “We’re too late.”

  “We can’t be!” Cal protested. “Unless Mason’s already chosen—”

  “No.” Roth turned a fierce glare on him. “Mason wouldn’t do that.”

  Daria looked at him like he’d lost his mind.

  “She has no reason to!” he exclaimed, thrusting out an arm toward the empty play fields. “There’s no battle here. No one to choose from. And even if they’re called to this place, the Einherjar won’t fight without a third Odin son to lead them.”

  “Then clearly we have nothing to fear,” Daria said drily.

  “Yeah . . . nothing.” Cal pointed grimly in the direction of the ancient Viking ship with the shadow-black sail beached at the far end of the island. And at the multitude of gray shapes erupting like time-lapse-photography weeds out of the earth. “Except those guys.”

  “Draugr.” Roth’s gaze went stony.

  Daria reached for the pouch hanging at her belt.

  “Wait.” He reached out a hand and clamped it around her wrist. “What are you doing?”

  “Gunnar is very clever,” Daria said. “Or, at least, those who are pulling his strings are. We may be able to keep your sister from fulfilling her prophesied role, but it won’t matter. Because if we do not keep those things”—she pointed at the draugr—“contained on this island, then all is lost,
whether Mason chooses or no. It won’t be Ragnarok, but . . .”

  “What will it be?” Cal asked.

  “Worse.” Daria reached up a hand and touched the scars on Cal’s face—the one’s given to him by just such a creature that night in the Gosforth gym—and said, “If you had been mortal, this would have ended you.”

  Cal pushed her hand away. “They told me Fennrys did something to heal me that night.”

  Daria nodded. “Without his magick, and without your own . . . particular physiology, you would have died. And then you would have become like them. Those creatures.”

  Cal frowned. “A storm zombie?”

  “Call it what you want.”

  Cal looked at Roth, who shrugged, a look of confusion on his face.

  “I didn’t know,” he said. “I didn’t know that’s what happened.”

  “Your father didn’t tell you everything, it seems,” Daria said.

  “Hardly surprising,” Roth snapped. “I didn’t tell him I thought he was a lunatic. Or that I was really working for you.”

  “If I don’t bring forth the Dragon Warriors now,” Daria said, “then the draugr will just kill and multiply, and kill and multiply, until there’s no one and nothing left.” She glanced over her shoulder to the south, where they could just see the outlines of a cluster of large, institutional buildings, about a mile away. “And they’ll probably start there—with the Wards Island psychiatric treatment facility, home to a number of criminally insane, dangerously violent offenders. Perhaps, after that, they’ll move on to Rikers Island penitentiary.” She pegged Roth with a flat, unblinking stare. “No? You find that an unacceptable situation? Perhaps you agree then that we’d best draw our line in the sand here, as it were.”

  Without waiting for his reply, she stalked past him over to the pitcher’s mound, knelt, and gouged a furrow in the sandy earth with her fingers. Then she poured out the contents of the silken pouch into the furrow. Whispering words in a low urgent voice, Daria re-covered the gap and, gesturing for Cal and Roth to follow her, said, “I’d stand back if I were you.”

  Then the Dragon Warriors appeared.

  A chasm split the middle of the mound, gaping wide enough to let five men, shoulder to shoulder, fit through. The first of those five heaved themselves up through the opening, dressed in ancient bronze armor—horsehair-crested helmets, breastplates, studded leather skirts and sandals and greaves—each one bearing a sword, a spear, and a man-sized shield bearing the insignia of a coiled serpent. Their faces were identical. They were killing machines. And they were legion.

  Fifty, a hundred, two hundred . . . they kept climbing out of that pit. Even after the first ranks had already engaged with the ragged leading edge of the draugr horde. Cal looked at his mother, expecting her face to be set in an expression of triumph. But all he saw there, in that moment when she wasn’t aware that he was looking, was weariness and worry.

  She doesn’t think we can win. They won’t be enough.

  They need help . . .

  The sight of so many warriors, armed and ready to kill or be killed, stirred something in Cal’s blood. Something he never would have thought himself capable of feeling. Bloodlust. Battle fever. Maybe, he thought distantly, it was all part of the whole “god thing” but, whatever it was, Cal wasn’t about to deny it. After all of the pain and frustration of the last few days, all of the chaos and uncertainty and searing anger . . . after days of being afraid, he finally fully let loose.

  Maybe in doing so, he could prove something to himself.

  And Mason.

  Cal felt his eyes flash with lightning as he called the waters of the East River to do his bidding, and a funnel of whirling water suddenly climbed into the sky, arcing through the air toward him. It surrounded him in a spinning torrent, clothing his limbs in supple, hard-as-steel armor and stretching into the shape of a trident in his hand. And then he was running to join the ranks of his mother’s Dragon Warriors.

  Concealed, invisible behind the shimmery haze of her runegold glamour, Heather faltered to a stop as the ground in front of Cal’s mom suddenly cracked open and a marching band procession of guys in skirts and funny hats poured forth. Insanely dangerous-looking guys in skirts and funny hats. Flinty eyed, muscle-corded, single-minded and purposeful, they almost hummed like high-tension wires with the need to inflict maximum damage against a foe—any foe.

  And there just happens to be a blue-light special on foes, right here!

  Those guys could fight to their unbeating hearts’ content, she thought. They weren’t even alive—not in any real sense Heather could conceive of—and she didn’t care what happened to them. They were a video game army, everyone the same.

  Everyone except one.

  The one warrior fighting with familiar grace and elegance near the front of the ranks. The helmetless one with the golden-brown hair . . . and the trident.

  “Oh no. Cal . . . ,” Heather whispered and started running again.

  This wasn’t his fight. It couldn’t be!

  It was his mother’s. And Mason’s father’s.

  And Heather just knew that if Cal got involved it would end badly. It was intuition—a feeling of imaginary snakes writhing in her stomach—but that sensation quickly gave way to another one—a feeling of very real fingers wrapped around her throat. She staggered to a sudden stop and heard Rory Starling’s voice whisper, “Hey there, Palmerston. I think you have something of mine.”

  He’d come up right behind her.

  So fast—and then she remembered that Rory had always been athletic. He’d always just been too much of an arrogant jerk to participate in team sports. He must have been hiding beneath one of the only lonely trees in the park and she’d run right past him, so intent was she on getting to Cal.

  “Where the hell did you think you were going?” Rory asked. “Were you gonna go save Cally boy? He looks like he’s doing all right on his own for once. Probably won’t last, though. Guy’s got no spine. Or, y’know, he won’t after I rip it out of him. If the draugr don’t do it first.”

  His voice was an ugly, sneering thing. Heather could hear him, but she couldn’t see him, and she realized that, because he was touching her, Rory was invisible too. He must have known she had the runegold. He was behind her, pushing her to walk forward, and her first instinct was to haul off and mule kick as hard as she could, hoping she hit something vital. But it was if he read her mind and the fingers around her throat tightened with more-than-human strength. Heather froze.

  “Uh-uh,” Rory said. “Not unless you’ve grown tired of having a trachea.”

  She remembered how broken Rory had been the last time she’d seen him. How his arm had looked shattered beyond repair. Apparently, he’d gotten all better since then. Physically, at least. He was clearly still a psychopath. And he’d just threatened to tear her throat out.

  “Now, I’d rather not have us suddenly materialize in the middle of all those soldiers,” he said. “That could get messy. So I’ll keep my hands on you and you keep your hand on that runegold. Now move. Just keep walking—over there—toward that trestle bridge.” He nudged her sharply. “I’m not sure how in the mood my dad is for company, but I always think hostages are money in the bank. And if he doesn’t need you for that, he can always give you to the Norns to play with. They probably haven’t had a nice healthy mind to snack on for aeons.”

  “Certainly not if they’re hanging out with you,” Heather snarked.

  To her surprise, Rory laughed. “Y’know, Palmerston, I always thought you were more than just hot. I actually thought you were smart. When you wised up and dropped that loser Aristarchos, I thought there might even be a chance for us.”

  Heather found herself torn between the urge to guffaw or gag.

  But then she found herself stepping beneath the shadow of the Bronx Kill Bridge and—when Rory suddenly grabbed the runegold from her hand and shoved her forward—falling on her knees to the ground . . . right at the feet of Gunnar Starli
ng. One of the most terrifying men she’d ever known.

  “Sorry I went AWOL there, Pops,” Rory said. “Just thought she might come in handy.”

  Gunnar cast a baleful eye over his wayward son, who’d casually pocketed the runegold, and then he turned to look down at Heather. He stared at her in silence for a long time and all Heather could do was return the gaze, unable to look away, as memories flooded her mind of what the Starling patriarch had done the last time she’d seen him. Calmly murdering Tag Overlea with a golden acorn like the one Rory had just taken from her.

  “Handy?” Gunnar asked in a deceptively conversational tone. “I rather doubt that now.” He bent down in front of her and actually held out a hand to help her stand. Heather had no idea what to do or say, but when he spoke again, it felt as though she were turning to ice inside. “But that’s not to say Miss Palmerston hasn’t already helped us out immensely. And for that, my dear, I owe you a debt of thanks. Of course, I won’t ever be able to repay it. Not after today. Now come, stand by me and let us watch the fruits of our combined labors grow ripe on this branch of the World Tree.”

  “Do you even listen to yourself when you talk?” Heather said, the shakiness in her tone undercutting the brash words. “This raging supervillain complex you’re nurturing is a little over the top, don’t you think? And for the record? I would never help someone like you.”

  “Not willingly, I’m sure.” Gunnar ignored the supervillain jibe. “I was fortunate that your mother didn’t feel the same way. She’s an extraordinary woman. And really quite devoted to her patroness.”

  Heather felt an uncomfortable clenching in her stomach. “What patroness? What are you talking about?”

  “The Roman goddess Venus.” Gunnar’s eyes were filled with an ugly satisfaction at whatever expression Heather wore in that moment. “Didn’t you know?”