Valkyrie's Call

by Michelle Manus

  Valkyrie clenched her fingers around the ring. The band snapped. She slammed the box closed as a tidal wave of howling power crashed onto her—and hit the same odd shield she’d used against Danvers in the parking lot outside Savado’s. Any ordinary shield would have fractured under the onslaught of power that raged against her. But he’d felt how this shield worked, knew it didn’t try to absorb the impact but redirect it.

  Hope flared in his chest. This shield didn’t need to be strong enough to withstand the adnexus’ rebound, only strong enough to send it at a new target—at Elijah.

  But Valkyrie didn’t have that much strength left. Her Aspect flickered and guttered like a dying candle. He slid behind her and wrapped his arms around her, wrapped his Aspect around her, and offered her everything he had.

  He just needed her to take it.

  Valkyrie had known she didn’t have enough left in her to hold the shield. She’d tried anyway. From the moment Elijah had told her that breaking the adnexus wasn’t an instant death sentence, that death instead came by way of magical backlash, the idea of using the shield had formed in her mind. She’d known she would have a split-second, between the breaking and the repercussions, to deflect her death.

  She hadn’t expected to be this drained by the end of the fight—wouldn’t have been, if she hadn’t been so taken off guard by Elijah’s words about Jace, if she hadn’t needed to know. But even if she had broken the adnexus immediately after impaling Elijah, she didn’t think it would have mattered.

  The force that battered her was immense. Unfathomable. Her tattered reserves had barely managed to form the shield at all. Only the look on Random’s face when she’d told him she was sorry, the utter desolation in his eyes, made her grit her teeth and hold the shield. Only his voice, echoing in her head, made her cling grimly to consciousness.

  Don’t ask me to wake up one morning without you, wondering if I could have changed everything if I’d had all the information.

  For those words, for the pain her death would cause him, she tried. If she kept going, she’d spend her Aspect down to the last dregs and join the ranks of the Broken. Of course, she would be dead a second later, so her inclusion would be short-lived.

  Random’s arms wrapped around her. She hadn’t seen him move across the room. He pulled her close, the warmth of his body a hot brand against the ice she had become.

  He needed to let her go. To leave. She had only seconds before her Aspect failed, before she passed out and the backlash consumed her. If he was touching her when that happened…

  She opened her mouth to order him to leave, but the words wouldn’t come. She didn’t think her mouth even actually opened. Her body was a numb, unresponsive husk she could no longer feel.

  Then Random’s Aspect enveloped her. It brushed against the fading spark of her own, seeking permission, as she had done with him at StellaMia’s. She understood, then, that he wouldn’t leave. Even if she could somehow get her mouth to work, to warn him, he wouldn’t leave her.

  If she wanted him to survive, she had to survive, had to hold the shield. To hold it, she needed power.

  Valkyrie opened herself to him completely. His Aspect inundated her, twined against her own, melded with it, until she no longer knew where hers ended and his began. They were simply one force, one being.

  Her shield blazed into brilliantly renewed life as Aspect patched the weak edges and gaps. The harshness of the scepter’s assault faded, like stepping from brutal desert sun into cool, inviting shade.

  Valkyrie leaned back against Random, let his body bolster hers, let his strength sustain her, and she held the shield. Held it, until the last of the adnexus’s backlash dissipated, until the haze cleared from the air and she saw the charred remains of Elijah’s body still pinned to the wall.

  “Kyrie?” Those two syllables, spoken with raw need and desperation, were the last things she heard before the darkness dragged her under.

  19

  “Kyrie.” Random didn’t know how long he held her, repeating her name over and over again, willing it to wake her. His Aspect, still entwined with hers, and the pulse beating faintly in her throat were the only things that kept him clinging to sanity.

  But the pulse beneath his fingertips grew fainter each time it beat, and no matter how he much he willed his Aspect to do something, it didn’t. It couldn’t. For all the myriad uses it could adapt itself to, Life Aspect had always been outside his reach.

  He wasn’t Siren.

  He thought he was hallucinating when a moment later, as if his thoughts had conjured her, footsteps sounded in the room. His gaze jerked to the doorway and there she stood, like a five-foot-five, red-haired desert mirage.

  “Siren?” He didn’t know how she was here, and he didn’t care. All he cared about was that she took one look at them and ran to Valkyrie’s side, Aspect limning the hands she put to Valkyrie’s face and abdomen.

  All color blanched from Siren’s already pale skin. “Your Aspect,” she said, “whatever you do, don’t let go of her.”

  “I won’t.” He couldn’t if he tried. Wasn’t sure he would ever be able to let go of her again. He cradled her body in his arms, held the fragile, lingering spark of her Aspect within the well of his own power, and prayed to a goddess he didn’t believe in.

  A second set of footsteps—Jace’s—came from the doorway. Random had been too concerned about Valkyrie, too relieved Siren was here, to wonder where Jace had been. He stood in the doorway and took in the scene—Valkyrie in Random’s arms, Siren’s power flooding into her—and fear lit his eyes.

  “Is she—” Jace didn’t finish the question, couldn’t seen to make himself finish it. Random didn’t answer.

  It was Siren, a full two minutes later, who opened her eyes and said, “She’ll live.”

  Random and Jace exhaled twin breaths of relief.

  “But she isn’t going to wake up any time soon. Possibly not for a few days. You can pull your Aspect back,” Siren said to Random. “She’ll be all right without it.”

  But he didn’t. He couldn’t. He needed the feel of hers, however shallow, twined with his own.

  Jace looked from his unconscious sister to the charred body on the wall, and finally to Random. “What the hell happened?”

  Random couldn’t bring himself to meet his friend’s gaze. He’d promised Jace he would keep Valkyrie safe and instead she’d almost died, would have died, if Siren hadn’t walked in at precisely the right moment. How were they here when they were supposed to be in Ireland? And how could he hope to explain any of this?

  More importantly, they needed to leave the Winters’ estate. Now, before—

  A dry, choking noise came from the doorway. “Oh, dear goddess.” Martin DuPont stared at the body on the wall, turned around, and vomited. Kara, Julian, Aunt Ella, and Theo entered after him.

  Instead of falling apart like their figurehead, Kara and Julian unleashed twin torrents of power. They were Immobilizers, their Aspect inducing paralysis in those it touched. But instead of touching anyone, their Aspect fetched up against a wall of brilliant white power, so bright it stung the eyes.

  Siren stood, her eyes glowing with the same white flame as the barrier she held in front of them. Turning Aspect use visible was a conscious choice, and Siren was making a statement with hers. “I am getting very tired of doing this with you people,” she said, her voice deceptively soft and melodic. “We had an agreement. Don’t come after me and mine, and I will leave you alone.”

  The Council feared her, and with good reason. She’d spent the first twenty-two years of her life with her Aspect largely inaccessible to her, trapped behind an internal cage of Danvers’ making. When the dam had finally burst, she’d held so much Aspect it had nearly killed her. But she had survived, and the Council’s response to the trauma she’d suffered had been to be so afraid of what she might do with the unprecedented amount of Aspect at her disposal that they’d tried to lock her away.

  She’d manipulated the
m into publicly admitting that she had done nothing wrong, and they had come to a tense cease-fire, in which they agreed to leave her and everyone she loved alone, and she agreed not to annihilate them.

  “The scope of that agreement does not include immunity from the repercussions of theft and murder,” Kara said icily. “No amount of power makes you or anyone else above the laws of this society.”

  It was the most hypocritical thing Random had heard in a long, long time. He didn’t know if it was the statement alone, or it combined with the constant stress of the last few days and the fact he’d just held the woman he loved in his arms while she lay dying, but he laughed. Once he started, he couldn’t seem to stop.

  “You find that amusing, Tremayne?” Kara asked.

  “I find it hilarious.” He eased himself out from under Valkyrie and rested her gently against the side of the sectional. He picked up the box that held the Council’s adnexus, and walked to stand next to Siren. “Hilarious,” he repeated, “but delightful. I’m so pleased the Council understands that no amount of power is above the law. Do you know what the Aspect Charter says in relation to the use of blood magic?”

  No one answered. “Allow me to enlighten you. ‘Reasonable suspicion of blood magic use shall be punishable by the offender’s immediate removal from any positions of influence within Aspect Society pending trial. Proof of blood magic use may be punishable by death’.”

  He looked to Siren and lifted the box. “You told Valkyrie you could destroy the adnexus ties without killing anyone. How confident are you about that?”

  “Extremely.”

  “Good.” He turned back to the Council. “Let me explain what is going to happen. As of this moment, you are all relieved of the burden of your office. You will undergo a very lengthy, very public, trial. You will spend the time leading up to that trial in your own holding cells. If you are very, very lucky, you may not die.”

  “You don’t have the authority,” Kara spat. “Do you honestly believe you can convince our own security to arrest us?”

  “He won’t have to.” Aunt Ella, who had watched everything up to now with an air he recognized as detached resignation, now drew the gaze of every other member of the Council, including DuPont, who had finally decided to stop retching and pay attention. “I’ll do it for him.”

  “And you will have my full support,” Theo said, stepping forward to stand next to her.

  Julian looked at the two of them, anger and incredulity written in every line of his face. “What the hell are you two playing at?”

  Random couldn’t help but wonder the same thing. Clearly, his aunt had expected some version of what was happening now. She was an intelligent woman—once she’d agreed to help Valkyrie, she would have made preparations. He’d just thought those preparations would have involved leaving town, not putting her own Council under lock and key. Whatever she’d decided, it appeared she’d involved Theo in those plans, as the man didn’t look any more surprised by what was happening than she did.

  “You understand,” Random told them, “that your cooperation in this matter will not earn you preferential treatment. That you will be subject to the same restrictions, holdings, and trial as the rest of the Council?”

  It hurt him. Aunt Ella had been more of a mother to him than his own ever had. She had raised him, she had loved him, and right now he wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until she explained why she had involved herself in this madness. What could have possessed her to agree to being bound via the adnexus when she didn’t even like being a part of the Council?

  He couldn’t understand why Theo had, either. Aside from Aunt Ella, Theodore was the only other member of the Council Random could stomach, the only other one who’d ever seemed like a decent human being.

  “We understand,” Theo said.

  “If you think we’re just going to stand here,” Kara began, “and let you—” Kara dropped to the ground. DuPont and Julian followed suit a second later.

  A pleased smile stretched across Siren’s face. She turned to Aunt Ella and Theo. “I trust neither of you need an extended nap?”

  “No, dear,” Aunt Ella replied. Then she turned to him. “Random—”

  He shook his head. “I don’t want to hear it right now.” He couldn’t hear it right now. It was all he could do to keep it together while they waited for Council security to arrive. Siren woke Meredith, a liberal application of Life Aspect healing what had apparently been a spectacular concussion and some internal bleeding.

  Random hovered by Valkyrie’s side. Despite Siren’s assurances that Kyrie was fine and just needed to sleep for a day or ten, he didn’t think he would be capable of calming down until she opened her eyes. She would hate lying here, unconscious, vulnerable, in a room full of people.

  Through it all, he avoided looking at his best friend. So far, Jace had been remarkably patient. The kind of patient he was when he understood that now wasn’t the right time for an argument, but he had every intention of jumping at the right time the moment it appeared.

  When the Council’s security finally arrived, Random put on his bureaucratic face and went through the tedious necessity of explaining the letter of the law, calmly and efficiently, to people whose job had always consisted of serving the Council, never arresting them. For all his talking, it only took one smile from Aunt Ella to snap their mouths shut. They handcuffed everyone and left.

  Random turned back to Valkyrie and found Jace in his path.

  “What the hell is going on? Why is my sister almost dead, what’s in that damn box, why and how did we just arrest the entire Council, and who the hell did Valkyrie crucify on the wall and burn to a crisp?”

  Random looked past Jace to where Valkyrie slumped against the couch, unconscious. She wouldn’t want him to tell Jace. Not about Elijah. But there was no explaining any of this without telling him. And whatever Kyrie might want, she hadn’t left him much choice. She certainly hadn’t respected what he had wanted.

  It was Siren who gave him the out. “Does Elijah have something to do with the fact her left hand was broken in fifteen places when she was twelve? Or that her nose has been broken six times? Or the litany of other things I could list off?” She was practically incandescent with fury, with the knowledge of Valkyrie’s history that healing the woman had given Siren.

  Random forced himself to meet Jace’s stunned eyes and said, “Yes.” Then he summarized the massive absurdity that had been the last two days. The look on Jace’s face when Random explained, as tactfully as he could, what Elijah had done to Valkyrie was...he’d only seen his friend look like that once before, when Siren had been abducted and they hadn’t known if she was still alive.

  But Jace didn’t interrupt. When Random got to the point in the story of waking up and realizing Kyrie was gone, he handed the explanations off to Meredith.

  She filled them in on what had happened between his house and them coming to the estate. “Once we arrived here, well…” Her gaze landed on the coffee table where her phone sat, miraculously unharmed amidst the wreckage of the rest of the room. She retrieved it and said, “I guess you can listen for yourselves.” She hit play on a recording and turned up the volume.

  They listened, and then they sat without speaking for a few minutes while the recorded sounds of steel hitting steel drifted from the phone. Meredith finally reached out to shut the recording off, but paused when Elijah’s voice filtered out.

  They listened and listened as the darker truths emerged from Elijah’s lips. Siren wrapped her arms around Jace, who stared at the phone with a vacant expression. When Random’s own voice came on, begging Kyrie to tell him what to do, how to help, Random reached over and turned the recording off. He didn’t ever want to sound like that again. He didn’t ever want to feel like that again. He stood, walked to Valkyrie, and lifted her into his arms.

  Jace broke from his trance. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting her the fuck out of this house. I don’t ever wan
t to see her in here again.”

  Random braced himself for an argument. Jace might have given Random his blessing to date Valkyrie at his and Siren’s wedding, but that had been before. Before this mess. Before she’d almost died on his watch. He wouldn’t blame Jace for never wanting to see Random around her again.

  But when his friend opened his mouth he just said, “Take her to our place. There’s plenty of room for you to stay, and I want her where Siren can make sure she’s okay.”

  Random gave a short, sharp nod. He hugged Valkyrie to him, savored the soft, steady thump of her heartbeat against him, and carried her out.

  20

  The first thing Valkyrie realized upon waking was that nothing hurt. The second was that she only wore her underwear and a tank top. She realized the latter because she’d flown out of the bed she was in the second her eyes opened, and the air conditioning from the floor vent beneath her bare feet was kissing cold air up her thighs.

  Siren and Meredith stood on the opposite side of the room. Siren dramatically slow-clapped. Meredith said, “Top points on speed and form considering you’ve been unconscious for a week, but I’m going to have to ding you for your choice of weapon. It lacks originality.”

  Valkyrie looked down. Her right hand clutched a lamp. A familiar, ocean blue lamp. She was in Siren’s house, in the guest bedroom she always used whenever Siren convinced her to stay over.

  “How did you know she’d dive right instead of left?” Meredith asked Siren in a faux-conspiratorial whisper.

  “It’s the most strategically defensible side of the room.”

  “But she was unconscious. She didn’t even know where she was.”

  Siren shrugged. Valkyrie deliberately replaced the lamp on the bedside table. She stared at her fingers as they uncurled from the base, hardly able to believe they were functioning. That she was functioning. She was pretty certain she should be dead, and she couldn’t for the life of her remember why.