He looked up from his laptop, giving her his full attention. “How did you sleep?”
The question caught her off guard. It shouldn’t. That was a nice, polite thing, that normal people talked about. She spent a lot of time trying not to think about how she slept, though. “All right, I suppose.” The last few days must have caught up to her, because she remembered her head hitting the pillow, and then nothing else. That was nice, and something she never achieved without drugs.
A surge of fear rose in her throat. She’d been unconscious and completely unaware, with a near-stranger. She swallowed the reaction. Starkad wouldn’t have sent her off with Min if the god couldn’t be trusted.
Starkad has made a lot of bad decisions when it comes to me. “I don’t love you, you know.” Kirby cringed. Where the fuck did that come from?
“I understand.” Min gestured to the seat across from him. “Join me. I can have food brought up.” He was taking this all in stride.
Kirby wished she could. She crossed the room and settled on the couch perpendicular to Min’s. The leather was soft, embracing her. “Food sounds good. Are you going to tell me what my favorite dish is?”
“Not unless you’d like me to. I don’t how accurate I’ll be.”
She relaxed a little. She wasn’t the only one feeling her way through this. “I don’t want anything elaborate. Fruit, maybe?” On second thought... “Or maybe not. Hotel fruit isn’t always great.”
He smiled. “I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.” He called down a room-service order and turned back to her.
She was too drained still, to flirt or make get-to-know you conversation. “How are things looking?” This part of their plan had been vague. Min said they might be able to find answers here, but that he couldn’t arrange the rest until they landed. She left her question open ended, to give her an idea of how in-depth his information-sharing skills were.
“I have a friend who owns a bookstore a few blocks from here. He’s got a copy of the same book of prophecy that TOM draws their information from.” Min clicked a few times on his laptop, then turned the screen toward her.
The building he showed her was gorgeous. Stone facing, with books filling the front windows. “May I?”
He nodded.
She pulled the computer closer and used the address as a jumping off point, to search for more information about the area. Photos of surrounding businesses and alleys. Floor plans. “There are a lot of copies of the prophecies.” Starkad had three different volumes that were always on the shelves of whatever house they ended up in long-term. Not that she ever touched them. She got enough of that in school. TOM, drilling the important notes into her head. Telling her how the world would end in ice and snow if they didn’t destroy potential gods.
“This is a copy of the original wood engraving, passed down over the centuries. It’s not the original prophecies, of course, because those came to be before written language. This was the first time someone wrote it all down. It contains his notes. Thoughts. Interpretations. All of it. It’s not something he lets out of his hands.”
She didn’t look up from her research. “The original? Do you speak Old Norse?” Wouldn’t it make more sense for Starkad to be here?
“No. But you do.”
The simple statement chilled her. She paused, fingers hovering over the keyboard. “I don’t.” Those other Kirbys did.
“There’s a photo of one of the pages,” he said. “In the task bar. Feel fortunate—I believe this is the ever time he’s photographed the book.”
Kirby hesitated. This was ridiculous. She had these memories. They had to come from somewhere. Why was there a tremor of fear, at the idea of confirming they belonged to her? And why didn’t she like the way this fear tasted? In the past, fear had always been delicious and tempting. She opened the image. None of the writing looked familiar. It might as well be scribbles.
“As you are, for all of time...” She trailed off as the words rolled from her tongue. “I can read it.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“No. I’m...” She didn’t want to admit she was afraid. This wasn’t a rational feeling. Then again, nothing about this experience was reasonable or something she could have anticipated.
A knock interrupted, saving her from having to finish the sentence, and Min left to answer. He returned a moment later with the waiter, and Kirby’s tension cranked in a new direction. What was Min doing, letting a random stranger into their room, without vetting him first? She swallowed the desire to shout the question but didn’t take her eyes off the man with the food.
Did he look familiar? Ridiculous question. He was blond, with a medium build and height. He looked like half the country. He pushed the cart to the spot Min indicated, near a table a few meters away.
No, he definitely looked familiar.
You’re being paranoid.
Her instinct was never wrong, and paranoia kept her alive.
He gestured to the various dishes on the tray. Fresh melon, berries, and plums. Min was right; it did look good. The waiter’s movements were fluid and practiced.
Which made sense if he did this dozens or hundreds of times a day. But the glide of his hand was too smooth. Too deliberate.
Kirby did recognize him. He’d been a student when she was promoted. As she got older, she didn’t spend much time in student teaching—that was for cadets, and privates who didn’t make the field cut. But this guy...
He’d be a lot older than the last time she saw him. That would explain her not recognizing him right off.
Still paranoid.
She was right about him. She had to be. Her pulse hammered in her ears, as she tracked his every movement. Words were exchanged, but she didn’t register them.
The waiter glanced at her and winked. He grabbed the steak knife near one of the plates, gripping the handle tight, and drew his arm back. He was going to attack.
Chapter Four
Gwydion had never really been off the radar. He didn’t go out of his way, to hide his presence from the other gods. TOM didn’t care for him, but that was based more on a thousand-year-old grudge, from a time when his believers destroyed theirs other on battlefields, to solve their differences. A time when the Vikings discovered the isles for the first time, and the Celts didn’t care for the way they introduced themselves.
But Gwydion hadn’t gone out of his way to piss off any of the Norse pantheon in a while. Setting foot in their territory after helping to rip away a piece of their organization felt like taunting them.
He strolled down the sidewalk with Starkad. The buildings here were mostly older—stone structures he remembered from a century ago, when he was last here—but a handful of modern buildings dotted the landscape. It was surreal. Anyone who said fictional worlds were more magical than real ones didn’t appreciate what a still-populated ancient city held.
“Are you going to say it?” Starkad asked.
Since they met up at their hotel a few hours ago, the conversation had been mostly about planning. Dry but necessary.
Gwydion didn’t understand the new direction. “Say what?”
“I told you so.”
Gwydion had been tempted a few times. This incarnation of Kirby was disconcerting. But in a lot of ways he didn’t like to look at too closely, he connected with her more than ever. “Nope.”
“Because you’re the bigger man?”
Too easy. “Thicker, not longer.”
Starkad pinched the bridge of his nose. “Wonderful. Thank you for reminding me there are less mature things than a room full of thirteen-year-olds.”
“Which you never enjoyed a single second of.” Bitterness slid into Gwydion’s retort without his permission.
“And there it is.” Starkad steered them down a side street. The decision had been made to split the teams up this way because Starkad and Gwydion knew the contact here, and Min needed someone with him who could read the book his friend had.
Gwydion suspect
ed Starkad was happy to separate him from Kirby. It had to sting, that she asked for Gwydion’s company first, after her memories came back. Not that he was smug about it. Only a lot. “She knows how to survive. She’s the ultimate TOM specimen, and she’s not theirs.” Gwydion was falling short with the reassurances. Probably because they were bullshit.
“Perfectly honed, down to the obsession, depression, and PTSD.” Starkad easily navigated the back streets.
“She’s alive.” Gwydion had zero complaints there. “We can’t change the past, as we all know too well, and she came out the other side intact.” They just had to keep her that way.
“I never had any contact with her, outside of instruction, when we were with TOM. I never introduced myself when she was younger, and I kept my distance until I pulled her out.”
Pulled her out. Starkad never explained the circumstances that led him to make the decision when he did, but Gwydion had seen the scars on the inside of Kirby’s wrists and the fainter ones along her chest. He recognized the same haunted look that stared back at him in the mirror almost daily, even before her past had rushed back to torment her. “You don’t have to justify yourself to me.”
“I have to justify myself to me.”
Gwydion wasn’t his priest. He didn’t want to hear a confession that was about a circumstance of Starkad’s own making. “Take it up with your own gods, then. Oh wait. They’ve forsaken you.”
“Fuck you.”
Was this fun—pushing Starkad’s buttons? “Pretty sure that’s more of a threat to you than me. You’re the one beating yourself up over this.”
“Kirby’s not too happy about it either.”
It wasn’t fun. Turned out taking jabs at Starkad was kind of like kicking a puppy. A big, adorable, rip-his-throat-out-without-hesitation puppy. “She’s alive. She’s out now. She has the chance to make her own decisions, and none of her lives has been easy. This one has been the most scarring”—Gwydion couldn’t help the dig—“but she was in the foster-care system before TOM found her. You can’t say the alternative would have been better or worse.”
They stepped through a door that looked like all the rest of the generic steel entrances in the alley, and the noise of the world vanished behind them. There was a unique energy in here, faint but lined with ages of wisdom. Threatening to those it didn’t care for. But Gwydion liked the way it flowed over and around him.
The stone ground had seen millions of feet in its lifetime, but it was firm under theirs. They strolled a short distance to another door, this one wooden, and Starkad pushed inside.
It was like stepping into another universe. Leather and wood and iron decorated the walls and shelves. The cautious energy was stronger in here. Gwydion smiled at the familiarity of it all. He didn’t care for most gods of war, but this one was an exception.
Two cats wound their way around his legs but hissed at Starkad.
“Girls, leave the wolf alone.” A woman stepped from behind a fur curtain that cut the back room off from the main shop. Her age was impossible to determine—somewhere between twenty and sixty based on appearance alone. Her pale hair hung in dreadlocks around her shoulders, and her loose dress hinted at the strong body beneath. She clapped, and the cats scattered back to the shadows. “Gentlemen.” Freya approached and pulled Starkad into a brief hug. She offered Gwydion the same. “It’s been too long.”
Gwydion shrugged. “You need to come visit me sometime. My door’s always open.”
“And where are you this year?” Freya asked.
Fair question. Gwydion tended to be a nomad.
She leaned against a nearby counter and gave her attention to Starkad. “I’m surprised it took you so long to seek me out.”
“Why?” Surprise splashed across his face.
“Your Valkyrie. You have her again.”
Gwydion swallowed his thoughts. It was tempting to pull out a funny quip, but with his current mood, it might come out more as bitter.
“I wouldn’t say I have her,” Starkad said. “Rather, I do know where she is. How did you...?”
“She’s never told you.”
Starkad raised an eyebrow. “Obviously.”
Gwydion would enjoy Starkad’s being left in the dark, if he wasn’t as well.
The corner of Freya’s mouth tugged up. “She prays to me. Has for years.”
The notion of Kirby praying to anyone was foreign to Gwydion. In most of her lives she’d been drawn to religion, but in this one, she didn’t seem big on putting her faith in anything she couldn’t see.
Prayer didn’t work the way most people thought. The god heard the sentiment if prayers were sent in faith, but it was more of a feeling or a whisper, than a distinct set of words. Unless the plea flowed on a massive force of will, a god didn’t respond beyond sending a nudge of comfort. For most of them, it was more of a subconscious response.
“I didn’t know. I’m glad she has that.” Starkad almost sounded relieved.
“IS SHE THE REASON YOU’RE here?” Freya asked.
Starkad was grateful to cut through the small talk, to get to the point. He enjoyed spending time with the goddess, but he was wound too tightly to appreciate idle chatter. “Indirectly. She remembers who she is, and that prompted the visit, but we’re here for a different reason.”
“Join me.” Freya gestured toward another room.
They followed her. Starkad was almost certain Freya had stepped in when Kirby tried to kill herself. He was also glad she hadn’t said anything about his prayers.
Gwydion was wrong—not all of Starkad’s gods had forsaken him. Starkad was on friendly terms with several members of his own pantheon. However, he wasn’t big on worship these days. It was hard to put his faith in a higher power, once he’d realized they were as flawed as anyone.
Freya’s back room was a stark contrast to the main shop. Stainless-steel racks for computer servers were built into the walls. An ajar door behind her hinted at an array of wires and blinking lights. It was her server farm. She’d kept up with technology and understood that most modern wars were fought digitally.
Starkad and Gwydion took seats in leather and metal chairs that surrounded a glass-topped table.
“Mead?” Freya offered.
“No, thank you.” Starkad’s refusal overlapped Gwydion’s. No reason to unintentionally get caught up in some oath he wasn’t prepared to fulfill, and sharing mead with a god frequently led to unfavorable contracts.
She smirked. “Fair enough.” She reached into a cabinet and brought out a bottle of whiskey and three shot glasses. She set a glass in front of each of them, poured drinks, and settled into her chair. The fur cloak draping the high back gave it a throne-like appearance.
They knocked back the liquor, and Starkad let himself appreciate the burn of the smooth liquid sliding down his throat.
“What can I do for you?” Freya asked.
Starkad hoped this conversation went in the exact opposite direction of the one he expected. “There’s a war you’ve been avoiding.”
“I’m not the only one.” She glanced at Gwydion.
Gwydion slid his empty shot glass across the table, from one hand to the other. “I can’t ignore it anymore. Not now that she’s involved.”
Freya sank back into her throne, and her expression sagged. “I won’t help my family kill each other.”
“You can’t sit this out forever.” Starkad had had this argument with her countless times across the centuries. Today, it needed to go differently.
“Urd is a spinner of bullshit. Those prophecies were the musings of an intoxicated Fate. They’re not a fucking roadmap. How many times do I have to tell you this? How long until you forget and ask again?” Freya’s frustration was tangible, choking the air.
Starkad never forgot Freya’s position. He simply didn’t understand her sitting back and doing nothing, while the others gods killed to maintain their power.
“People are dying,” Gwydion said. “Innocent people. Human
beings, who have nothing to do with this.”
“They’re not dying in my name.” Freya’s icy retort was softened by exhaustion. Faith and sacrifice gave the gods their power. And blood sacrifices were the most potent for any god of war.
Starkad reached for a new perspective to this argument. Anything he hadn’t said in the past. “You refuse to read the prophecies, because you believe all of us set our own paths. That life isn’t predestined. TOM is using those texts to take that choice from others. I’m not asking you to enforce the prophecies. I’m only asking that you not stand by idly, while innocent people are destroyed.”
“Don’t do that,” Freya said. “Interfering is interfering. If I stop them, I’ve taken a side.”
Starkad clenched his fist and resisted the urge to slam it into the table. “I’m not asking you to pick up a sword. I want information. Nothing more.”
“About?”
“Destroying Hel.”
Freya rose and gathered the shot glasses and whiskey. She set the liquor in its cabinet, lingering with her back to them. She returned to the table, but didn’t sit. “Is there anything else?” Fire filled her voice.
“By refusing to do this, you take their side by default.” Starkad was grasping for any angle.
“Don’t pull that bullshit with me, Berserker. You’re always welcome here, but not for that reason.” She cast a sweet look at Gwydion. “See you in another century?”
“I do hope we all survive that long,” Gwydion said.
Starkad couldn’t leave things this way. “Freya—”
“Out. You’ve worn out your welcome. I command you to leave my domain.” Her voice shook the foundation.
There were no hugs or pleasantries exchanged, as Gwydion and Starkad headed for the exit. As they stepped into the hallway, Starkad’s blood ran cold.
Loki was strolling toward them. He grinned and paused in front of Starkad. “It’s been a long time. What, six years?” Loki’s voice was too loud. Too friendly. “You left us without saying goodbye.”
Death in the Night (Legacy, #2) Page 4