Transcendent

by Lesley Livingston

  Mason had used the medallion before—Fennrys had taught her how.

  Make it happen in your mind, and make it happen in the world . . .

  She poured all her will and all her heart into the iron disk and sent its magick out toward the Fennrys Wolf, pleading for Loki to help her help his son.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Help him find the man within the beast . . .”

  Because Rory’s silver hand was killing the Wolf.

  But Mason knew it couldn’t kill Fennrys.

  Time spiraled out and away from her. She saw her brother howl with cruel laughter and lift his arm high. Then the talisman in her fist blazed with eldritch light. She saw the Wolf’s eyes flash in answer to her plea.

  Rory unleashed another devastating blow, aimed at Fennrys’s head . . .

  And Fenn caught that fist in his hand.

  Fennrys heard Mason’s voice in his mind.

  “Come back to me,” she whispered.

  Sweetheart, I can’t. I’m so tired . . .

  “Please, Fennrys. Together. We can do this.”

  Mason . . .

  “I love you.”

  With those words, he reached deeper inside of himself than he ever had. He found his father’s magick—Loki’s magick—and he grasped it with his mind. And he felt it suddenly flood his heart and limbs, transforming them. Changing him.

  And chaining the beast within him . . .

  Forever.

  He gritted his teeth and thrust out his hand, catching Rory’s clenched silver fist in the iron cage of his fingers. In his human shape, the silver was nothing more to Fennrys than cold, hard metal. He lurched to his feet, the sensation of his broken ribs grinding against each other nothing more than background noise in his mind in that moment.

  He smiled in Rory’s astonished, furious face.

  And then shoved him to his knees in the crimson-stained mud.

  Mason’s breath caught in her throat.

  Fennrys was on his feet and Rory was on the ground. But she could feel, through the fading bond of Loki’s magick, how weak Fenn was. How hurt. If Rory fought back, she wasn’t at all certain Fenn would win. She glanced at Heather, and at the crossbow she still held in her hand.

  “There’s another bolt?” she asked.

  Heather nodded and fished the golden arrow out of her purse. She loaded it into the crossbow with swift, precise motions, and handed it over to Mason.

  “Just . . . speak a name.” Heather nodded at the weapon.

  Mason understood. All she had to do was tell the crossbow who to make her brother love. And her mad, vicious, damaged, humanity-loathing brother would finally know what it felt like to care. To feel. To love. It was the worst possible thing she could think of to do to him.

  She raised the bow to her lips.

  “The world, Rory,” she whispered in a voice like judgment, “love the whole damned world . . .”

  Then she aimed, and pulled the trigger.

  The bolt struck Rory in the middle of his back, and Mason thought she’d never heard such a cry of anguish in her life. He fell to the ground, thrashing and kicking, his eyes white-rimmed, as a sudden, overwhelming deluge of emotion crashed over him like a tidal wave. His mind hadn’t changed, she knew, only his heart, and he clawed at his rib cage as if he would tear that heart out rather than suffer a moment more of it beating. He screamed, rolling into a tight ball of agony, feeling every moment of every awful thing he’d ever done and knowing, for the first time, how truly rotten to the core he was.

  He wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone ever again.

  It was over.

  No . . . it isn’t.

  Mason looked down and saw that she still hadn’t changed back. She couldn’t. She had to choose. And so long as she didn’t, the world—the one she’d just compelled her brother to love with all his sick, twisted heart—remained in peril. But once she chose, that same world would end. She almost sobbed with frustration . . . and then it struck her.

  The most valiant combatant on that whole field had been the Fennrys Wolf.

  And the one he’d fought so valiantly with . . . had been himself. Fennrys had fought the Wolf within—for her. He was the one who’d fought for her. He’d already died for her. . . . He deserved to be chosen. To be the warrior. And he would keep the Wolf at bay.

  Which means . . .

  Mason felt a thrill of excitement run through her as she hefted the spear in her hand, felt its weight of destiny, and threw.

  “NO!” her father roared as the ancient weapon left her hand. “The Wolf must remain the Wolf!”

  Which means no Ragnarok.

  The Odin spear’s iron blade glowed white as it flew through the air. It struck Fennrys in the very center of his chest, igniting like a flare, and then passed through him to stick in the ground, leaving only the mark of a glowing brand in the middle of his chest. Fenn stood there, a look of mild surprise on his face, as he pressed his hand to the mark.

  “I guess I’ve died enough times already,” he said in a ragged voice, “that this kind of thing doesn’t even affect me anymore. . . .”

  Mason felt a wave of relief flood through her as the chain mail and armor she wore faded from her like mist in a breeze. She turned toward her father and saw the golden twist of light in his left eye flicker and dim. “There can be no fulfillment of the prophecy if the Wolf and the Warrior are one and the same,” she said quietly. “Sorry, Dad. No Ragnarok today.” She turned and looked back at the ranks of the Einherjar who stood waiting, and spotted Taggert Overlea where he stood, his letterman jacket exchanged for leather and iron. “Hope that’s not too much of a disappointment for you, Tag.”

  He shrugged and said. “No, I’m cool.”

  “I thought you might be.”

  “You don’t know what you’ve done,” her father rasped. “You don’t—”

  “I know exactly what I’ve done,” she said, her voice cracking like a whip. “You can hardly call me a chooser if the choice isn’t mine to make. I made it. You can live with it. Or not. That’s your choice.”

  Laughter drifted down from above them, rich and musical.

  Mason looked up to see Loki standing on one end of the Bronx Kill Bridge span, his face stretched wide in mirth, and Heimdall standing on the other, a thundercloud frown on his brow. In between the two of them, the Norns stood like statues, painted faces impassive.

  “Better luck next time, Guardian!” Loki called to Heimdall, his eternal nemesis. “Or probably not. Not if these mortal wonders stay so fierce. Ye gods, they’re more beautiful every time. And more entertaining!”

  Heimdall’s fist closed around the horn that hung from his belt, but Loki’s smile disappeared, replaced with a warning scowl that made even Mason take a step back.

  “Go back to Asgard, Watcher,” he said in a voice like thunder. “Go back to your brooding and your scheming and leave these children to their world. You and I will meet again on another Valgrind. And maybe then we will end each other. Or the next time, or the next.” He turned to address the Norns. “And go you with him, twisted fates. I’ll join you soon enough and then we can all sit and toast to our departed brothers and sisters and wait for the next ending of the world!”

  Heimdall shifted his gaze to Mason, and she returned his stare, unblinking.

  As he faded from sight, along with Loki and the Norns, she wondered if she would ever see the Guardian of Bifrost again. And she knew that he’d better hope that day never came to pass.

  XXV

  “I still owe you a debt,” Mason said as Rafe crossed the field to meet them.

  The ancient god nodded once. “I haven’t forgotten.”

  Mason bit her lip. She wished he had, but she knew that wasn’t how this kind of thing worked. “My life?”

  “That would do it,” he said with grim reluctance.

  “How about mine instead?” Toby said from right behind her.

  Mason turned to see her fencing master standing there, bent with
age, gray and weathered. “Toby?” She put a hand on his arm.

  He ignored her, speaking directly to the god of death. “A lot more folks in this city are going to be finding their way into the Nether Realms after this day.”

  Rafe’s dark gaze narrowed.

  “And you’re down one ferryman.”

  Mason shook her head in alarm. “Toby—”

  “I can handle a boat,” he said.

  Rafe’s mouth quirked in a half smile. “I know that.”

  “And I have more than a passing acquaintance with death.”

  “Your soul will belong to me,” Rafe said quietly.

  Toby shrugged. “You can have it. I’ve already gotten enough good use out of it.”

  “You will be at my beck and call.”

  “I’ve worked on a clock before.”

  “And you’ll pay your bar tab on time.” Rafe pulled a flask out of the breast pocket of his suit jacket and handed it to the fencing master.

  Toby took a long swig and Mason watched the color flood back into his seamed, sunken cheeks. His rheumy eyes grew brighter and he stood taller. The gray began to fade from his beard.

  “Are you sure about this?” She put a hand on his arm.

  He nodded. “Oh yeah. It’s the first thing I’ve been sure of in a long time. Other than you. Mason Starling, I pledge my life and soul to you to do with what you will.”

  She nodded, flooded with such overwhelming gratitude and affection for her coach that she could barely speak. But she managed to swallow the knot of tears gathering in her throat and said, “And I give that life and soul over into the keeping of Anubis, Lord of the Dead, as payment in full of a debt owed.” She watched as Rafe’s eyes flashed and he grinned. “He’d better take good care of you, if he knows what’s good for him.”

  “The best, Lady.” Rafe gracefully inclined his head. “You can take that to the bank.”

  “That’s it?” she asked looking around. Fennrys had dropped to one knee on the trampled ground and she needed to go to him. She needed to hold him in her arms and make sure everything was all right between them. “Are we done?”

  “Yeah. We’re done,” Toby said. “It’s over, Mason. We won.”

  They really had won. Mason only wished that she hadn’t had to lose so much. But the field of Valgrind began to slowly sink back into the sea. The draugr, back into the soil. And the Dragon Warriors, at a word from their summoner, Daria Aristarchos, marched back into the gap in the earth they’d crawled out of. It was over.

  Almost.

  From beneath the shadow of the Bronx Kill Bridge, Mason’s father staggered forward. He looked so unlike his usual elegant self, she barely recognized him.

  “Are you proud, both of you?” Gunnar turned a baleful, poisonous gaze on Mason and Roth. “Are you proud of your betrayal of me? Of our family?”

  Roth shook his head in weary disgust. “The only betrayal here is yours,” he said. “It always has been. You knew. You’ve always known what I did. What Daria made me do. You let her, didn’t you? How could you do that to Mason? To me?”

  “Because I thought it might be useful one day to have you in her power,” Gunnar said. “And it was. You were . . . oh, son. We almost won!”

  “You’re a sick son of a bitch, Dad,” Roth spat and turned his gaze away.

  Gunnar shook his head wildly, the mane of his silver hair hanging lank in front of his face. “No! I just know my place in the universe. My purpose. The Gosforth families all serve higher ends.” He grinned madly. “Just because ours didn’t win this time doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth the fight.”

  He stalked toward Roth, hands balled into fists, until Roth brought up the hunting knife he held to keep him at bay. Gunnar leaned into the point of the blade and nodded, his face going slack, serene.

  “Now,” he said. “Make an end of this. Of me . . .”

  Mason held her breath. Silence descended and time seemed to stand still. Then . . .

  “No.” Roth shook his head. “You can go to hell, old man. But find your own way there. I’ve killed enough family members already.”

  Mason felt her heart swell with pride for Roth, even as she watched her father’s impassive expression twist with sudden, incandescent fury.

  “Coward!” he screamed.

  His eyes went wild and dark, the glittering gold thread in his left eye turned scarlet and his mouth opened wide as he hurled invective at his eldest son. Mason bit her lip to keep from weeping in the face of her father’s insanity. And then, from the corner of her eye, she saw the dark, cloaked shape of her mother gliding silently across the field. For a moment, Gunnar didn’t notice, too consumed by his rage. But then, he saw her. And it was as if someone reached down and pulled the stopper from a drain. All of the rage flowed out of him. The mad light dimmed in his eyes and a hint of the man that Mason had known and loved all her life flickered back into existence.

  “Yelena . . . ?” Gunnar’s deep voice was a bare whisper of sound.

  He took a faltering step toward the vision of his beloved wife, as she pushed the hood back all the way from her face.

  “I am Hel,” she said. “I am what you made me.”

  “Take me.” Gunnar held out his hands. “Take me with you!”

  Yelena shook her head sadly. And in that moment, everything changed about Gunnar Starling. The savage sense of purpose evaporated and a frantic desperate need seemed to overtake him. The need to die and be reunited with the love of his soul.

  “What of you?” He lurched across the field toward where Fennrys still crouched on one knee, holding his side. “Isn’t it your destiny to make an end of me?”

  Mason saw Fenn’s fingers clench on the hilt of the long knife strapped to his leg. She held her breath as he drew the weapon from its sheath. And then the whiteness left Fenn’s knuckles and he threw the blade to the ground.

  “Like Roth said.” He grinned coldly. “You want an end so bad? Make it your own damned self.” Then he climbed to his feet and turned his back, walking away from her father, his steps halting, but his head high.

  “No. NO!” Gunnar cried, desperate. He even looked to Daria Aristarchos, his eyes pleading and desperate, and Mason thought how this was the tragic last act of the strangest love triangle ever playing out in front of her. Yelena, Daria, and Gunnar Starling. The two women exchanged a long glance, and smiles that were so full of sorrow. There was even forgiveness there—some, not all—for what Daria had done. She would spend the rest of her days making amends for those vile acts of vengeance. The rest of her life and beyond, Mason suspected, if the look in her mother’s eyes was any indication. But there would be no help for Gunnar Starling.

  No hand to speed him on his way to Helheim except his own . . .

  “I will be with you again, my love,” he murmured. And then picked up Fennrys’s blade and drove it up under his rib cage with barely a whispered gasp.

  As the light began to fade from his eyes, Hel whispered, “No. You won’t.”

  And in a final act of cold retribution, Mason saw what it was that her mother truly had become. What her father had made her. She nodded once to Daria, who raised her face skyward and closed her eyes. Mere moments later, three shadows appeared in the sunless sky and the Harpies fell from high above to claim their suicide.

  Mason turned away as the three goddesses descended on Gunnar Starling where he lay on the ground, Fennrys’s sword in his guts by his own hand and his twisting, gold-filled gaze slowly fading to black.

  When she turned back a moment later, he was gone.

  “I think you dropped this . . . ,” Fennrys said, as he walked haltingly toward Mason, holding out the Odin spear.

  “Yeah . . .” She was trying so hard to smile through the rivers of tears that poured from her eyes. “I’m kind of a butterfingers. Thanks . . .”

  Her fingertips brushed his as she wrapped her hand around the spear haft. Their eyes locked and Mason felt like she was falling into a cool spring hidden deep in a fo
rest somewhere far away from anywhere. Fennrys suddenly went rigid with pain. He was so pale. Mason put an arm around him and turned to Rafe, whose own wounds were already healing—no more than fresh, fading scars.

  “The Wolf in him is gone, Mase. But the Wolf’s strength left with it,” Rafe said. He put a hand on Fennrys’s chest. “He’s badly hurt. Broken bones, internal bleeding . . .”

  “Perhaps I can help,” Daria said, sharing a glance with her son. “One of the greatest of our gods was Apollo. The Healer. There are those in my family who still practice those magicks. I will do what I can. We will do what we can.”

  Rafe stepped back.

  “Get him on the boat,” he said.

  Cal stepped forward and, before Mason had a chance to protest, got a shoulder under Fennrys’s arm and half carried him in the direction of his father’s yacht. Heather stepped forward and offered Mason a steadying hand, but after a moment she shook her head and lurched away from the gathered group of her friends, the Odin spear clutched in her fist.

  She broke the spear in two over her knee.

  EPILOGUE

  The late winter cold bit at Mason’s cheeks and forehead and drew diamond-bright spangles of tears to her lashes as she walked the few blocks back to the Gosforth dorm from the Columbia University hall where the awards banquet had been held. The fencing trophy in her hand was heavy enough to be a weapon in itself and she smiled, proud of the achievement.

  Prouder still that she’d done it on her own.

  Her return to the world of competition fencing had been hard without Toby there to coach her—harder still without Fennrys there to . . . well, to just be there—but she’d been determined to do it. The gala that night had been mostly on the sweet end of bittersweet and she was getting used to the loneliness. She hitched the collar up on her long coat and let the sounds of the city wash over her as she walked. New York had mostly recovered from its brush with Ragnarok. Recovered, and replanted, and rebuilt. The city and its inhabitants had shaken off the weirdness and the horror and, even if no one could quite explain just exactly what had happened, they had soldiered on in the way that New Yorkers did.