It was a Mngwa, a violent predator imported from Tanzania centuries ago. It opened its mouth—revealing a mouthful of giant sharp teeth—to let out another short burst of a roar, and this time another Mngwa replied as it came up the stairs toward us.
FORTY
The three of us—two Valkyries and the son of a Valkyrie—should be enough to ward off two hungry giant jungle cats. Or at least that’s what I told myself as they circled toward us.
We stood with our backs together, each of us brandishing our own weapon. I had Kusanagi, while Quinn had brought her Valkyrie sword Eir, but it still didn’t glow its usual bright blue, despite the fact that we were surrounded. It wouldn’t be as powerful, since we weren’t assigned to kill these immortals, but it should be effective enough.
“Are we allowed to kill them?” Atlas asked as the Mngwas circled around us, talking to each other in their quick guttural bursts as their stubby tails swished behind them.
“Let’s make sure they don’t kill us, and we’ll take it from there,” Quinn said.
One of the Mngwas swatted at her, but Quinn swung her sword right back, and it stepped away. But a second later the other Mngwa swatted at me, and then the first cat moved closer. They were feeling us out, checking for weaknesses.
“Maybe you should use the spear,” Quinn said through gritted teeth.
“No, it’s not for that,” Atlas insisted before I could respond, but it was a moot point. The spear was safely inside my bag, and I wouldn’t be able to get to it—not before one of the Mngwas pounced on me.
Thunder rolled overhead, and the cats had apparently tired of testing us. They had made their decision.
The larger of the two leapt at Atlas, going right for his throat. He tried to stab it, but the creature knocked the sword from his hand and had him laid on the ground within seconds.
I dove at the Mngwa, driving my sword between its shoulder blades. It let out an angry yowl and swatted at me. I ducked, but one of its massive claws managed to connect with my forearm, slicing through my skin and muscle.
Quinn was busy taking on the other Mngwa, trying to chase it off the temple, but I barely had a chance to look at her. Atlas was bleeding and making an awful wet bubbling sound when he breathed, and the big cat wasn’t keen on letting him go.
I was hoping that after I stabbed it, it would come after me, but both of its back legs were firmly planted on Atlas’s torso as it swung at me and hissed. I stayed back just out of its reach and crouched down, waiting.
As soon as the beast turned its attention back on Atlas, I charged at it and dove onto its back. I stabbed it again, this time in the side, and when the cat tried to buck me off, I twisted the knife in deeper, lodging it between the ribs so I could use it as a handle.
The Mngwa ran in a circle, finally getting off of Atlas, and bit at me. To avoid getting a chunk taken out of me, I untwisted the knife, and fell free off the cat.
But now it was pissed and bleeding, and I was lying on the ground. When it stalked toward me, I kicked it in the face as hard as I could—twice in a row—before it let out an angry yowl and stepped back. It pawed its face, and I saw that I had managed to break one of its fangs, and the broken bit had gotten embedded in its lip.
Just then, lightning shot down—striking the top of the temple. A deafening crack of thunder reverberated through the air. Both of the Mngwas shrank back in fear, and then, bloodied and battered, they took off down the temple.
Quinn was still standing, and other than a quartet of claw marks that tore through her pants and into her thigh, she appeared okay. Atlas, on the other hand, was not doing well at all. His torso had been torn up by the Mngwa’s back claws, and his shoulder had a bite taken out of it. But his throat—pouring blood onto the ground around him, as he sputtered and tried futilely to hold it in—that was the scariest part.
“We’ve got to get him out of here,” Quinn said.
“Go get the ATV,” I told her as I crouched beside Atlas. “Bring it up here. We don’t have much time.”
But she was already running, racing down the steps. I ripped off part of Atlas’s shirt and held it against his neck, pressing it to the wound. With my other hand, I took his hand and held it. His hand was so much bigger, stronger, but his grip was weak, and his eyes were wide and terrified as he stared up at me.
“It’s gonna be okay, Atlas,” I promised him. “We’re gonna get help.”
By the time Quinn made it up with the ATV, his hand was barely even holding mine anymore. He’d closed his eyes, but he was struggling. Quinn and I managed to lift his hulking frame and get him in the passenger seat. There were only two seats, so I knelt behind him on the rear rack, leaning forward with one arm around him holding him in the chair and the other hanging on to the metal ATV frame.
“Hang on!” Quinn shouted before throwing the vehicle into gear and bouncing down the stairs.
It was a rough ride, but time was of the essence. Once we were down and out onto the game trail—which was relatively smooth sailing compared to the rest of the jungle—she asked, “What the hell happened up there?”
“I have no idea,” I said, narrowly dodging a branch as we drove through the dark forest.
“Do you think Odin sent them?” Quinn asked. “Or Ereshkigal?”
“I can’t think right now,” I said, which wasn’t a total lie. I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to worry. I wanted to be out of the woods and at the hospital, where a doctor would tell me that Atlas was going to be okay, that everything would be okay.
FORTY-ONE
Everything was not okay.
Quinn and I returned to the motel an hour later, our clothes covered in drying blood. The doctors had stitched us up—her thigh had been worse than I’d thought and took over forty stitches, while my arm only needed a few.
But there hadn’t been anything they could do for Atlas. He was gone before we even made it to the hospital.
I was too numb to cry, but Oona wept as we told them what had happened. Asher’s face hardened, and I could see his jaw clenching. He stood off to the side of the room, inhaling tensely through his nose and staring out the window at the lightning storm that had yet to produce any rain.
I sat with Oona, rubbing her back gently as she softly cried, since that seemed like the only thing I could do to make anything even a little bit better. Valeska sat on the arm of the couch beside her with downcast eyes.
Quinn, meanwhile, was pacing the room like a caged animal. Her silver hair had been pulled up in a messy bun to keep it out of the blood. Atlas had been bleeding so profusely that our moving him around had left us covered in it. Her left thigh was bandaged in layers of gauze, but that didn’t slow her down.
“Where in the hell was Odin?” Quinn asked, demanding an answer she knew I didn’t have.
“I don’t know,” I replied wearily.
“He should’ve been there,” she persisted. “This never should’ve happened!”
I licked my lips before saying, “No, it shouldn’t have.”
“Where was he? How could he have left us out there like that?” Quinn ranted, and as she went on, her tone kept getting shriller and more unstable. “Why didn’t he help us?”
“I don’t know!” I snapped in frustration. “I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing! I know as much as you do, okay?”
Quinn stopped pacing to look at me. “Well, I know that it really seems like we’re all totally fucked right about now.” Her eyes were daring me to disagree with her, but I couldn’t.
“Maybe we should all take a step back and catch our breath.” Oona sniffled and wiped at her eyes. “We’ve all been through a lot.”
“That’s true,” Valeska agreed wearily. “And we’ve still got a lot more left to go, I imagine.” She lifted her eyes and let her gaze bounce slowly between Quinn and me. “What are we going to do from here?”
I ran my hand through my long tangles of hair and exhaled. “I’ll have to contact Samael and let him know
about Atlas, so he can make arrangements for getting him back home.”
“Well, that’s a start,” Valeska said.
“Could they have been after the spear?” Asher asked quietly, speaking for the first time in quite a while. He’d been standing with his back to me, staring out the window, but now he turned around, facing me.
“I don’t think so. I mean, they’re immortal, but they’re animals,” I reasoned. “I don’t think they really follow orders, and they never went anywhere near my bag.”
“But this isn’t normal behavior,” Quinn insisted, as if anyone had been pretending that any of this was normal. “Not for Mngwas or any jungle cat to attack in the middle of a lightning storm on top of a temple.”
“The animals have been acting really strangely lately.” Oona leaned forward, resting her arms on her legs. “Remember the shunka warakins that went after us outside of the Gates of Kurnugia? And that olitau that flew over the walls?”
Everything about tonight had been bizarre. The storm, Odin’s absence, the fact that I sensed the Mngwas before they arrived even though I wasn’t assigned to kill them.
“What if they’re targeting us? Because we’re Valkyries?” Quinn asked, her voice still tilting toward shrill.
She wasn’t pacing, but she kept shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She couldn’t stand still. Her lips were pursed, her eyes wide, and I realized that for the first time I was seeing what she looked like when she was afraid.
“But the only reason we’re still alive is because we’re Valkyries,” I argued. “Atlas is a huge strong dude, and they knocked him down like he was nothing. We could only fight them so well because our blood weakens them.”
“Was,” Oona corrected me quietly. “Atlas was a strong dude.”
“It’s not logical or rational. You said it yourself—they’re animals,” Quinn countered, practically talking over Oona. “But a shark doesn’t make a conscious decision to chase a wounded animal. It’s something instinctual.”
“We’re not wounded animals,” I said. “I mean, we weren’t. Not before they attacked us.”
“But they can sense weakness,” Valeska said as she considered Quinn’s theory. “That’s probably why they went after Atlas first, and they must think you’re getting weaker, too, or they wouldn’t have braved attacking him while you were around.”
“Oh, hell,” Asher muttered and turned to look back out the window.
“That would make sense. The Jorogumo affected you so much worse than it should’ve,” Quinn said, referring to my first run-in with Amaryllis Mori when I sent her to the underworld.
Oona leaned back on the couch, taking it all in. “Whatever is happening in Kurnugia is affecting your Valkyrie powers.”
“We can’t stay here,” Asher said emphatically. “We’re too close to the entrance to Kurnugia. The underworld has a stronger hold here.”
“I’ll call Samael, and we can get things figured out.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “But you’re right. We should head out in the morning.”
There really wasn’t anything more for us to do in Caana City. I couldn’t keep going to the temple hoping that Odin would show up, especially not after what had happened tonight.
Besides that, he was a Vanir god. He could find me.
“I need some air and something to drink,” Quinn announced and started walking toward the door.
“You’re covered in blood!” Oona pointed out, sounding alarmed.
But Quinn was totally nonplussed and didn’t slow her steps. “That should scare off any riffraff on my way to the liquor store.”
“You shouldn’t go out alone,” Valeska said as she stood up. “I’ll go with you.”
They were out the door within seconds, leaving Asher, Oona, and me in a tense silence as we all thought about where we’d been and where we were going. After a few minutes of that, I excused myself to go get cleaned up.
It wasn’t until I went into the bathroom and I saw my reflection—the blood drying on my ashen cheeks, the leaves from the forest that the frantic ATV ride left tangled in my hair—that I really felt it hit me. I rushed over to the toilet and threw up what little I had eaten that day. Afterward, while washing off my face and hands, I heard a soft knock at the bathroom door.
“Are you okay?” Asher asked, opening the door a crack when I didn’t answer.
I turned around and faced him, leaning against the cold metal sink. “Sure. Why not?”
He came into the room and pulled me roughly into his arms. I pressed my face against his chest and leaned fully on him, letting him be my strength when I had none.
FORTY-TWO
Quinn was hungover when we boarded the NorAm Overland Express in the afternoon, but Valeska seemed no worse for wear, which was impressive given the fact that I heard them drinking and talking all night long. Somehow, Asher and Oona had managed to sleep through it in the bedroom with me, but I hadn’t been so lucky.
We sat on the second story of the double-decker carriage, the same way we had on the way here. But this time we did it for different reasons. The upper story had a big storage area in the back, which was reserved for large pieces of luggage or other oversized personal belongings.
In our case, that included the body of our friend and guard, Atlas Malosi.
Samael had arranged for him to come back with us, which did seem like the most fitting way for him to come home. The conversation I’d had with Samael had been brief, with him sounding rather shell-shocked as he repeatedly asked me if I was all right.
I lied and told him I was. I insisted that everything else was fine, and Samael told me to hop on the first Overland back to the city. I pretended that I could handle this, that I wasn’t drowning in my own inability to protect Atlas and Asher and everyone I cared about.
I tried not to think about it as I slouched down in my seat. I put on a pair of oversized sunglasses I’d bought at the terminal. The warm sun that shone through the skylights—the sun that seemed so refreshing and beautiful a day ago—was now just an irritating reminder.
Fortunately, my lack of sleep the last few days finally caught up with me, and I was able to sleep through the majority of the long ride on the express. We had a stop in Texas, but I spent the whole time in the terminal, flipping through a paperback that someone had left on a bench.
Some twenty-eight hours after we first boarded the NorAm in Belize, we finally arrived back in Chicago. The sun was beginning to set as the express pulled into the city, and soon the towering skyscrapers blocked out what little light was left.
We waited on the platform, which was glowing from the bright billboards and flat-screen televisions that played NorAm info on an endless loop. At the end of the concrete platform, a large black hearse was parked in the emergency zone, which was marked by neon orange lights zigzagging through the pavement.
Four members of the Evig Riksdag—all in matching dark gray jumpsuits with copper patches on their shoulders in the shape of the three horns of Odin—unloaded the white rectangular box that the hospital had sent Atlas home in. They wheeled it past us, without looking at us or saying a word, and then loaded it into the hearse.
“Where are they taking him?” Oona asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably wherever his family requested he go.”
We all stood together on the platform, our bags on shoulders or at our feet, and we watched as the hearse drove off.
“I should be getting home,” Asher said. He moved so he was standing in front of me. “You could come with me.”
“No, I can’t. I have stuff I need to do.”
“I understand.” He chewed his lip for a moment, debating something, before saying, “We’ll talk soon, okay?”
“Of course.” I smiled weakly at him. He kept looking at me, like he wanted to say something more, but he never did. He just nodded, picked up his bags, and walked down to the cab line.
“I should get down to the Riks to see Samael,” I said.
&
nbsp; “I’m going with you, you know,” Quinn said matter-of-factly.
“You don’t have to,” I said.
She scoffed. “Yeah, I do.”
“Can I hitch a ride with you guys?” Valeska asked. “I need to see Samael, too.”
“Gosh, now I feel left out because I’m the only one going home,” Oona said with a weak laugh.
“I’ll be home soon,” I said, then quickly amended it with, “I hope.”
“Do you want me to give you a ride?” Quinn offered Oona. She’d made the same offer to Asher earlier, but he insisted on taking a cab, since his place was the opposite direction of where we needed to be downtown.
“Nah, I can catch a cab.” She slung her backpack over shoulder, then turned to face me. To my surprise, she threw her arms around me, hugging me quickly but tightly.
“I love you, Mal,” she said, before she released me.
“What … why did you say that?” I asked, stumbling over my words in my surprise.
She shrugged. “You looked like you needed to hear it, and I do, so why not say it?”
FORTY-THREE
Being back in the city felt so strange. It had only been just over a week since I’d left, and the city hadn’t changed at all. But that week had been so intense and surreal, some part of me had believed that things couldn’t be “normal” here. Because I was different, the world would be, too.
But the city was exactly as I had left it. A thin layer of smog blanketed everything, and all the lights—from cars, streetlamps, shop windows, and glowing adverts—seemed to be in a competition about which could blind me the most.
Traffic was a nightmare, both on the streets and the sidewalks, with pedestrians squeezing through bumper-to-bumper hovercars without paying us any mind. Last I heard, the population for the metro area had ballooned to over thirty-one million (and climbing), and based on how slowly we were crawling through the city, it seemed like half of them were downtown.
The overcrowding only added to the claustrophobic feel of the buildings soaring hundreds of feet in the air around us, many of them covered with billboards and posters. They lined every narrow street, with a thick layer of pedestrians and pop-up shops and food carts sandwiched between the buildings and the streets.
From the Earth to the Shadows Page 17
