After plunging into the woodland running parallel with the house, we broke out into the front garden. My favourite ash tree had lost a limb, but the treehouse and ring-seat had survived. So had the waist-high maze I’d loved as a child. The tiddly fountain at the front of the house had sprung a leak, and the wild lawn was upturned in places.
Father could go on down the driveway to the tennis court and the vegetable garden, but I couldn’t be arsed. He might not have possessed the world’s magic anymore, but he was fit – not even puffing. He’d raced around the estate on a daily basis for the last twenty-one years, whilst I’d indulged my creative streak by drawing and painting like Mum had. Add that to a teenager’s panache at wasting time, I had broken into my twenties with a muscular physique that I owed mainly to my Viking ancestry.
‘I’m going in.’ I didn’t wait for permission.
Father grabbed my arm.
I’m not letting him dictate my schedule anymore. I wheeled around. ‘What? You’ve guilt-tripped me enough for one day.’
His fingers uncurled from my forearm. He held my gaze. ‘What?’ I asked again, this time worried. I didn’t like the firmness in his jaw or his scowl.
‘I know you have the key.’
I hesitated. A few cautious birds called out from their nests, as if testing the atmosphere for its response. ‘So?’
‘Nikolaj gave it to you.’
I saw no point in answering. It wasn’t a question. He didn’t expect me to deny it.
‘You don’t have the right to keep things that are mine.’ Father flinched at the possessive bite in my voice.
It shocked us both.
Was that me who answered, or you?
Father stepped back, running a hand through his blond hair. ‘You told me you didn’t want any of this.’
‘And you told me it was my destiny. I deserve the tools that come with the job. It’s not only my life that is at stake.’
‘You found the book too then.’
Ignoring him, I asked, ‘What’s the key even for?’
He stared in the direction of the front gates, his words tapering as if disappearing round the bend in the driveway. ‘When you are ready, Theodore…’
I wasn’t in the mood for evasion; breaking off branches was one thing, burying people was next if I didn’t get a grip on my new powers and fast. ‘Ready for what?’
‘When you are ready,’ Father reiterated, ‘it will call you.’ And with that pithy gem, he held up his hands as if to apologise and trudged away over the gravel, leaving me to ring on the door and wait for Uncle Nik to answer. I poked the keyhole but it was too big for the key, which anyway was still hidden in the my sock drawer in my room.
6
A Tale Of Alfheim
My legs hung over the lip of my roll top bath, which these days was a little snug. I’d popped a button on my jeans that morning and my T-shirts stretched tight on the chest, but I’d chalked that up to one too many tumble-dry cycles. I soon discovered the growing pains in my joints came with the note that said, ‘Happy Birthday! Surprise, you’re a Gatekeeper!’.
I stuck my arms out of the bubbles, causing a pleasing ripple over the water’s surface. Don’t mind thicker forearms. It’s not feeling yourself up when you’re attempting to ascertain your size, and you’re already naked, right? I admit I lingered on one part of my anatomy for longer than necessary, but the only increase started when I thought about Ava’s soulful brown eyes and her delicate chin, imagining the shivers her full lips would produce on my skin…
One mental reversal later, I hopped out of the bath and got dressed. I headed downstairs, across the entrance hall, and into the kitchen, where I found Nik stirring a pot of scrambled eggs on the range with one hand and plucking burning toast from the grill with the other. He didn’t trust toasters after one gave him an electric shock, but in fairness, he’d stuck a knife in the slot trying to fish out a crumbled hot-cross bun. For someone as old as Uncle Nik, he could be a right div.
He stopped whistling an inane tune long enough to say, ‘I set the drawing room table, go plant your butt down.’ Usually we ate on the picnic-style bench in the kitchen, underneath the bunches of dried herbs hanging down from hooks in the beams. This was my uncle’s realm. Elves love to grow food and to cook, and Nik oversaw the herb and vegetable gardens like a general leading his troops, tolerating our interference only when we were following his protocols. I guess we all need something to be neurotic about.
‘What’s the occasion?’ I asked, passing the cool larder as I pushed open the drawing room door, glancing at the cutlery and folded napkins, and the rose-garden tea set. ‘When did the invite arrive for the Teddy Bear’s Picnic?’
‘There’s nothing to ground a young lad like a quasi-English breakfast. I told you I would hold your strings, Nevø.’
‘As long as you don’t intend to manipulate them,’ I growled. There I went again, getting aggressive. Nikolaj watched me as he scooped the eggs out onto a plate.
‘Careful. All that extra firepower inside you will amp up your emotions. And your size by the looks of it. You need to deal with your control issues before they control you.’
Embarrassed, I nodded and slipped into the drawing room, absorbed in the comforting ritual of pouring tea. After serving up toast heaped with eggs, and herring for good measure, Nikolaj joined me at the hexagonal table. No Norwegian can escape fish, or a love for it. It’s as hereditary as the blue eyes.
We conversed in trivialities, the ordinary discussion a balm on my frayed nerves. Uncle Nik steered the topic back to normality whenever it threatened to veer off course with trifles such as destiny, magic, epic responsibility, and total bloody mystery. He distracted me with flowing tea and three rounds of buttery toast, and I gorged myself silly, listening to his stories. When he ran out of ideas, he picked up a vaguely recent newspaper from atop the piano in the corner and recited current affairs. I glazed over, hyper-aware of the various family members staring at me from oiled canvases, painted by my mother, including the weather-beaten face of my grandmother, Elsa, who seemed to wink at me knowingly. I refocused on Uncle Nik, the man/Elf who’d spared her from becoming a Gatekeeper.
Rosemary from the kitchen perfumed the drawing room, and for a while, I was just Theo again, with nothing better to do than sketch the view from the balcony or feed the ducks by the lake.
‘What are the Summer-Lands like?’ I asked out of nowhere.
He sat back in his chair and smiled his half-smile, gazing up at the beams, a faraway look in his green eyes, as if they reflected endless forest. He pursed his lips, mimicking birdsong in his whistle, the notes so sublime I half-saw their iridescent plumage. ‘Summer-Lands? It’s a prettier term for my father’s homeland than Alfheim. I don’t know why it hasn’t caught on with the natives.’ He shrugged, resigned to using the Nordic name. He passed me the butter dish as I plucked another slice of toast from the silver rack. ‘In Alfheim, the breeze is as sweet as honeysuckle, and the women have the faces of angels.’ So, Uncle Nik was definitely the sow-your-wild-oats type.
‘Tell me more,’ I probed.
He grinned. ‘Ah, about the women?’
‘Maybe later,’ I said, rolling my eyes. ‘I want to know what it’s like.’
‘We’re divided into clans, you know that much.’
‘But where do you all live?’
‘In or around the Luminous Forest. Take the Iepen; they live in networks of elaborate huts in the canopy.’ He touched the silver crest that hung around his neck, just for a moment, and the air seemed to quiver behind him. I blinked and rubbed my eyes.
‘The Iepen? Do they look like Sarrows?’
‘Elves are one race. As hunters, the Sarrow complexion is tarnished bronze so we can blend into the forest. The Iepen are willowy, lily-skinned fruit-eaters, but happy folk, and remind me of sunflowers striving for the light.’ He continued to describe his people, from the hunters to the royals, painting a picture of a natural landscape lost to Earth
since the dawn of modern humans.
My request was plastered over my face before I got the chance to ask it. Nikolaj cleared the empty plates, his lips pressed tight to suppress a chuckle. ‘I’ll grant you access. I’ll take you – when you can beat me in a sword fight.’
I groaned as I got up to help him. ‘Why make it so difficult? You’ve got a good century on me.’
‘You possess the world’s magic.’
‘Touché.’
‘Regardless, it will take both of us to get past Espen. I’d keep it between us.’ He didn’t have to say why. Father had an aneurism whenever I stepped foot outside the front door, let alone slipping through wormholes into parallel dimensions.
Uncle Nik wasn’t doing this out of the goodness of his heart. He wouldn’t risk Father’s wrath without an ulterior motive. Trouble was I needed an Elf if I wanted to get past the barrier from my realm into his.
After helping him load the dishwasher, I returned to my bedroom, and took the book entitled Physical and Psychic Defence into my reading room. I snuggled into a cosy armchair by the window where I ploughed through it, pausing to type up notes on my laptop. I eyed up my bookshelves, filled with children’s adventure novels, a few first editions of Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, and some sketchbooks. Time to adult my reading list. I wouldn’t take any books back to Father’s library.
I got side-tracked from studying and hunted for Ava’s album online, What Lies Beneath. I took one look at the album cover, her sultry features half cast in shadow, and downloaded the whole thing, playing it through my wireless speakers. She stilled my turmoil. I listened, letting her melodies wash over me. In my mind, I saw her wandering the corridors and fondling the volumes in the library, her voice filling Hellingstead Hall until it shook the foundations.
The floorboards in the reading room sported cracks from the morning’s almost-tornado. I tapped them nervously with my feet, and my chair wobbled in response. No way I’d let a storm like that start up again, so I abandoned my daydream and let the tears fall, silent. I can never have her. Who could handle this? Yet my very existence proved there was always a woman who could.
7
Kiss Of Death
After an evening of Lorenzo’s glooming, Malachi had left him under the half-crumbled bell-tower of St. Michael’s Church, staring out over the churchyard and the valley below, saying nothing. He’d been there since sundown, quiet and broody, and still angry over the lack of help his sire had offered when Theo Clemensen had pinned him to the ground. I don’t apologise, brat. There’s nothing warm in Malachi, Lorenzo decided, except the blood he steals from sapiens.
He’d refused to join the hunt tonight, but the hunger-pangs became unbearable, strangling him from the inside as if his veins had shrivelled. Penny had left too, disgusted at him for spurning her offer of blood once again. The two grated against each other like shredded glass, but Penny had other reasons for him to take her blood, and none of them had anything to do with friendship. He didn’t trust that witch.
No, she was up to something. He smelt the deceit on her. But mainly, Lorenzo refused because of fidelity, in a loose sense. He’d killed by accident, on that first night. Malachi hadn’t stopped him, only watched with cool detachment before teaching his apprentice how to conceal the true nature of his victim’s death. There were many ways to do that, and Lorenzo would learn them all, murder by murder.
But when he’d fed from Grace, his innards felt dirty. His thoughts turned to his girlfriend, Jean-Ashley, who’d skipped the Red Hawk in favour of studying in her bedroom so she could stay near her sick mother, Anna, who was battling cancer. Lorenzo hadn’t faced her yet, feeding her a stream of lies to excuse his absence. He could only avoid her for so long without undermining his status as her boyfriend.
I can’t hide forever. Two people in the world knew him so intimately that he feared they would see through his human mask and know he had changed on a fundamental level. The first was his mother, Rhianna, the second, his girlfriend – and his first everything. They’d met in school, shared their first kiss, their first date, their first time. University hadn’t changed anything. She still knew her way around his short temper, and still knew every inch of his skin like a map she had drawn herself.
He stood in the shadows and tethered in the net of sensory data that bombarded the neurones in his brain. His head fizzled like sherbet trying to control the miasma of information. His sight rivalled that of an eagle, the night sky opening up into a subtle world of texture, colour, and movement that betrayed the location of every living thing in his path. Listening: a harder game; picking out sound-threads amongst the din as they twisted into rope. Even the wind stroked his jaw with an ethereal finger, painting the delicate scents like gold leaf onto his skin.
If Lorenzo saw like an eagle, he moved like an owl – in absolute silence. But he couldn’t help leaving his calling card upon the wildlife. They matched his soundless motion as he passed, warned by a primal sense as he glided over the high, stone wall, skittering across rooftops. He arrived in the tiny, crescent-shaped garden, his focus set on the sash-window of his girlfriend’s bedroom.
Her blood sang to Lorenzo, a natural melody. He covered his mouth when his fangs snapped out, sending shockwaves through his jaw. His legs shook with longing. Oh, he yearned to taste the tingle of her on his lips, the salty sea beneath her flesh.
Inside her cosy little bedroom, Jean-Ashley’s heart beat strong. He heard it, that flapping of bird wings. Lorenzo tracked her movements as she vaulted from her bed and headed for her en suite bathroom. He climbed up the wall and slipped in through the unlocked window. Still so new, the pulsing strength in his muscles. He’d been strong for a sapien anyway, playing everything from tennis to rugby, and hitting the gym.
Lorenzo stood next to the double bed, the headboard decorated with fairy lights, but he didn’t sit, only stared into the mirror above the dressing table. He had a reflection, so that myth about vampires had proven untrue. Malachi taught him that vampires hid in plain sight, playing with light and shadow – camouflage for the hunter. Sapiens were good at taking a grain of truth and harvesting a myth with it.
But his face? His eyes were clearer, subtly inviting, his hair thick and feathery, as were his eyelashes. And his skin, it had taken on a pale radiance on the lighter side of peach, so delicate it became almost translucent in the grooves above his cheekbones. Everything about him was intriguing, beautiful on the edge of unnatural, and so close to frightening.
When Lorenzo had flirted with Grace, she’d glanced back at him many times, not in admiration as much as curiosity, as if trying to place him in a category she understood. Even though Lorenzo roamed the streets at night, the people he came across lingered on his features too long.
Jean-Ashley’s voice startled him. ‘God, babe, vain or what?’
He tongued his fangs, checking they had retracted, before turning from the mirror and grinning. Even in her nightie, Jean-Ashley exuded sexy, her bum-length, straight hair gathered up on her head, her pale green eyes enhancing the sprinkle of freckles on her cheeks and the little mole above her top lip. Her legs, long, smooth, and bare, threatened Lorenzo’s concentration. She blushed under his attention.
She noticed him. ‘You look weird, Hun, are you still sick?’ She sauntered towards him and wrapped her slender arms around his waist, pecking his cheek with a kiss. ‘Don’t give it to me, I’ve got so many exams this week.’
He leant forward and pressed his mouth to the crook of her neck, holding his breath so not to smell her. ‘I’m okay now. Thanks for the compliment.’ He hoped humour would throw her off course, but she lifted herself to his eye-level on her tippy toes and examined him closely.
‘No, I think you look sick. You’re so pale, where’s your tan gone?’ Changing the subject, she added, ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’
‘I didn’t ring the bell,’ he said, as she returned to her normal height, her hair brushing his chin. ‘Didn’t want to disturb your mum.�
�
‘How did you get in?’
‘Window.’
‘Right…’
‘I thought it was romantic. You look lush, Ash.’
‘You’re definitely still ill.’
‘Shush.’
He picked her up with ease and they fell onto the bed in a tangle, kissing between giggles, his hands twisting her fine hair. How helpless she was, pressed under him. Her mind had found a logical reason for his altered appearance and it worked for now. Lorenzo didn’t want to press it, didn’t want to break her joy at seeing him, feeling him, as he tugged at her knickers, and flung them onto the floor.
Within moments, he was topless and they crushed together with a fury, Jean-Ashley responding to Lorenzo’s sudden passion like a blossoming flower. They hadn’t spent this long apart for years, except when her mum had been diagnosed last winter and she’d wanted to be alone with her for a few days.
Lorenzo paused and gave her the look.
‘Don’t worry, Mum’s going out on a date with Dad. She’s probably already left,’ she said. His ears confirmed it as Anna scraped up her keys from the dining room table and clicked the front door shut. She must’ve said goodbye to her daughter before Lorenzo had arrived.
He whispered hot breath on her neck. ‘They’re back together?’
‘Maybe,’ she shrugged under him, her shoulders unable to move as he pinned her in place. He pushed up her nightdress and she shivered against him. ‘You’re so cold.’
‘Warm me up then.’
Her legs clung round his hips and a growl escaped as he eased into her. At least that part of his anatomy had remained unchanged, and Jean-Ashley sighed through her smile, arching her back and lifting her hips, urging him on, her sweet sweat glistening over her supple skin, her flat belly. It was too much, too much heat, the salt of her sweat coating the taste buds on Lorenzo’s tongue, promising fire. He hid his face in her hair, repressing a grimace as she squirmed under him, unaware of the danger.
The Descendants of Thor Trilogy Boxset: Forged in Blood and Lightning; Norns of Fate; Wrath of Aten Page 7
