by Gwen Rivers
Angrboda roars and then cracks the van open like an egg, I reach for Astrid as we are falling, falling.
Then land safely in the giantess’s palm. She lowers us carefully down to the ground.
“What is that?” Astrid breathes, eyes wide.
“We’re like you,” I say, hands out. “Astrid, it’s okay. None of us are going to hurt you.”
“Nic?”
I know that voice. “Chloe?”
Then she is there, a hunting knife in hand. “Are you all right?”
I want to cry. My aunt has come back for me.
“We need to get out of here.” She scowls at the shackles. “Angrboda, can you…?”
The giantess appears, her mouth covered in blood. Had she been eating the guards? “No, I’m tapped out. Get her loose and Jedda can undo the rest.”
“Jedda?” I ask.
“Her ward. We’ll explain everything. Later.” Chloe lifts the chains. “Come on now, this whole thing is going to go up like a Roman candle.”
My steps are small, my gait bound by the chains, but I manage to let her guide me from the back of the turned over van and out into the snow. “What did you do?”
“Trust me when I say you don’t want to know. Just keep it in mind that you should never ever piss off a giant.”
“Noted,” I breathe. There is blood in my hair, though I don’t think it’s mine. “Astrid?”
Chloe turns and sucks in a sharp breath as she sees Astrid. But before she can say anything a shot rings out. A dot of red appears on Astrid’s forehead. The girl crumples to the ground.
“No!” I am on my feet and running. I barely realize that he is pointing his gun at me, don’t acknowledge Chloe’s scream.
Click. The chamber is empty.
I grab his lapels and press my lips to his, giving him my poison. My goodnight kiss. I don’t care about his family, the people who will miss him. He shot an innocent twelve-year-old in the forehead. I can not allow him to draw breath any longer.
He slumps and I drop him like the useless sack of meat he is. I start for Astrid, ignoring my chains, the stiffness, and sore muscles.
She’s gone. I recognize death’s claim anywhere, the fog over the gray-blue eyes.
“Nic, I’m sorry,” my aunt says.
“We need to get out of here.” Angrboda is shrinking down to human size.
“I can’t just leave her here, like this.”
“You stay and you’re putting us all at risk.” The giantess snaps.
Chloe studies my face. “There’s nothing more you can do for her.”
“I can bury her.” I look up and hold her gaze. “Please, I can’t leave her out alone like this.”
Angrboda holds out a hand. The ground beneath our feet shudders, and then parts. When it stops, there is a deep cavern, deep enough for a girl’s body.
“She was obsessed with being in love,” I say as Angrboda places her limp form down inside the hole. “There was a boy, Declan. She’d already given him her heart.”
“Then he was lucky.” Chloe puts an arm around me.
Angrboda climbs out and holds out her hand again. The earth swallows up my small friend.
“Get her to the car,” I hear the giantess say. “We don’t know how much of a head start we’ll have.”
I move to the car, let Chloe settle me in the backseat. My feet are numb. My heart is numb.
I’m sorry, Astrid.
“You know, I used to remember humans tasting better than this.” The giantess burps delicately.
“It’s the diet,” Chloe says. “Too much-processed shit makes the meat rancid.”
“Oh, look who’s talking, Miss, I’ve never met a candy bar I didn’t like.”
“Not true. They have the ones that don’t have chocolate in them. What the fuck is the point of that?”
I laugh. It’s a half-hysterical sound. Here I am, in the middle of the woods with my aunt the fate and chocoholic and a giantess who has just gorged herself on an entire special unit. A young girl is dead. And these two sound like the odd couple.
I am free.
But at what cost?
“We need to get out of here. That agent, Hanson, will be rabid in her hunt to reclaim you.” This from the giantess.
Chloe looks up at her and winces. “Um, Angie you’ve got a little special agent on your face.”
Angrboda grins, showing off bloody teeth and I feel like retching.
“Don’t look, sweets.” Chloe hands me a coat. “Giants are known as maneaters for a reason.”
“Yeah.” I study the back of Angrboda’s bloodred hair as she settles herself behind the wheel. “Where are we going? Back to the farm?”
Chloe shakes her head. “It isn’t safe. That’s the first place they’ll look for you.”
“Across the Veil?”
“Foolish child,” the giantess snaps. “Without a plan? That is Underhill’s realm and she will know the second you or I cross back over there.”
The sound of gunshots rings out and Chloe throws herself over me while the giantess screeches, “Get down!”
“They can’t have found us this fast,” I say as the sedan fishtails as Angrboda takes it off-road to avoid the hostiles. “There’s no way.”
“Unless they were tipped off,” Chloe’s tone is grim, her scent shifting to licorice.
“Tipped off? Gretchen, er…that is Fenrir didn’t know about our escape plan, did he?”
“Not now,” the giantess agrees. “Chloe, can you take over here? I might be able to work a little magic now.”
Chloe scrambles over the seat, but not before pressing a revolver into my clenched hands. “I promise I won’t let them take you, not again.”
I swallow. A handgun. I’ve never fired one, never needed to. But with no magic and the people trying to kill me too far away for my goodnight kiss, it’s the only option left.
Angrboda shifts so that Chloe can take over driving duties, even as the car careens down an embankment. Luckily the slope is treeless, though we jounce over the uneven terrain.
Ping. Something hits the metal by the left rear door. “They’re gaining on us,” I call when I dare to look back.
“Keep your head down,” Angrboda barks.
My eyes go wide when I see what looks like a ball of blue and purple cobwebs in her hands. That is if cobwebs pulsed with magic.
Giants wield magic better than any other species, including the gods. They are born from magic and can channel it more deeply, unless a god has a tool, like Thor’s great hammer or Aiden’s flaming sword. The raw talent is why the giants are so feared by the gods. From what Aiden had said, Angrboda’s more powerful than most. It was why Loki had sired children on her, so that his monstrous spawn would be the sort to make the Asgardians tremble.
The hand not holding the revolver slips over my abdomen, where my baby is growing. It’s too soon to feel movement, yet for the first time, I sense something different. An otherness, wholly apart from myself. Part me, part Aiden, all magic. Am I also destined to be the mother of a monster?
“Hang on,” Angrboda says and then tosses her magic out the passenger’s side window. Snow erupts like a giant volcano, freezing immediately into a glacier. The wall grows out, curving around the car.
“Ha,” Chloe says as she fights yet another skid. “That ought to hold them.”
“I can’t have them following us back to Jedda,” Angrboda says. She turns to look at me. “He is Wardon’s heir. Váli freed him before Underhill destroyed the ocean city.”
My breath hitches. “She killed them all?”
Chloe’s tone is grim. “More meat for her army.”
My mother commanded the dead. Every soldier that had ever been cut down beyond the Veil was another in her swelling ranks.
“And Aiden?” I ask.
The giantess shakes her head. “No word.”
“Where is he?”
Chloe catches my eye in the rearview mirror. “I don’t know, Nic. I really don’t.”
Curse social media and smartphones for their very existence.
He lands at the base of a tree and puts Harmony down beneath the shelter of some pine boughs. She looks pale, her vivid purple hue faded to lavender. He regrets having hurt her.
Had the dwarf been telling the truth? Could the seer really be his full-blood sister? He scrutinizes her every feature looking for something familiar. They both have dark hair, but that hardly proves anything. Maybe right around the eyes is the same. But her nose is more delicate than his own, her lips fuller.
Like his mother’s had been.
Like Nari’s had been.
Blood pounds in his ears. He knows it’s true. Deep in his bones, he can feel the connection.
“Why did you never say anything?” he asks her.
She doesn’t respond. Still out for the count.
Aiden scents the air, searching for any hint of Nic’s scent. He can track her across the globe if necessary. The people cursing at him from the vehicles had been doing so in German.
There. He catches the faintest hint of her unique perfume on the wind. Hers is tangled up with several humans. Only it’s...different somehow. More complicated than he remembers. Sex could alter a female’s scent for a short time.
Had she been with another? Gods, what if she had been raped…?
He’d kill them all. Slowly.
A growl rips from his wolf. The beast is finally shaking off the effects of Asgard.
“Calm yourself, wolf,” Harmony’s voice grounds him back in the here and now. “She hasn’t been violated.”
“How do you know what I’m thinking?” He stands and uses his height advantage to tower over her.
“Because you’re sniffing the air and clenching your fists as though you’re about to do murder.”
He makes a conscious effort to relax. “You know for certain no one has used her?”
She nods and then puts a hand to her head and glares at him. “I can’t believe you kidnapped me.”
“It only seems fair since you helped the goddess abduct me first,” he shoots back. “What I can’t believe is you didn’t tell me that you’re my sister.”
Her chin juts up and she doesn’t look away from him. “You couldn’t handle it.”
“And what makes you so certain I can now? You do know what my wolf did to my last full-blooded sibling?”
She struggles to her feet. “So now you know. If you think you’re such a danger to me, then why drag me along?”
“I couldn’t leave you there to tell Freya about the dwarf.”
She shakes her head. “Aiden, you never think of anything beyond your mate but do you even know her?”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s more than capable of taking care of herself.” Harmony rubs her temples. “She has friends and family and she knows this side of the Veil better than any of us.”
Her words are laced with bitterness. “Are you jealous of Nic?”
“No.”
He taps his nose. “I can smell the falsehood. You must believe it otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to say it. But your resentment is clear.” He drags a hand through his hair.
“I don’t like how she’s treated you in the past. Believe it or not though, I actually do like her. Though I know she doesn’t like me at all, through no fault of my own. You’d better release me before you jaunt off to her side. You might not kill me, but Nic is another matter.”
“So you can run back to Freya and tell her I tricked her? We don’t already have enough to deal with, what with defeating Underhill and halting Ragnarök.” Sister or no, she’d helped Freya abduct him.
“You can’t stop the end.” The seer glares at him as though he’s being intentionally oblivious. “The fact that we are standing here, together, should tell you that much. Freya wanted to keep you safe. Now that you are no longer in Asgard, Underhill will be after you.”
“Underhill has no power in the mortal realm.”
She casts him a pitying look. “If you believe that then you really are mad, just like the gods told me you were.”
Harmony moves to stride away but before she can, he grips her arm. Her gaze goes from it to him and back.
“Stay with me,” he all but begs. If she really wishes to leave, he’ll have no choice but to let her go.
Her dark gaze is guarded. “Why should I?”
“So we can get to know one another.” After releasing his hold, he lowers himself onto a fallen tree. “Tell me about how you came to be disguised as a fey?”
She glances away. “It was Freya who rescued me from the cave. She helped deliver me. If she hadn’t shown up, I probably would have died.”
Aiden closes his eyes and imagines the cave where his life had been forever altered. His father chained to the slab, the serpent with the dripping venom and his mother holding a bowl. Never able to sleep or eat…and pregnant. “Why would Mother stay there?”
A muscle jumps in her jaw. “She refused to leave him, not even long enough to give birth. The ground shook constantly while she was in labor, until Freya arrived and ordered one of her minions to hold the bowl until I was born. She couldn’t hold the bowl and me at the same time so she told Freya to take me with her.”
Aiden reaches out a hand and covers hers with his own. Squeezes once. He knows what it’s like to have his mother turn her back on him. To deem him unimportant. But he had killed his little brother, was possessed by the wild spirit of the wolf.
Harmony had been an innocent newborn babe.
Her purple hand turns over until she is clasping at his with desperate strength.
“So Freya took you in?”
She nods once. “At first, but there was always the worry that the other gods would find out who I was and where I’d come from.”
No wonder she was so loyal to the goddess. The curse of their line, to forever demonstrate loyalty to those who didn’t deserve it. Sigyn to Loki, Aiden to Nicneven, Harmony to Freya.
“How did you come to be in Wardon’s court?”
She sinks down onto the log beside him. “Freya hid me in the Seelie Court. She changed my appearance so I would look like the fey family who’d taken me in. Until my drowning accident, when I started to see the future. It wasn’t just from the accident. My goddess powers had started to manifest, making my ability to see clearer. Word of my gift spread. Then Wardon brought me into his household.” She looks away.
Wardon, the former Master of the Waves. He’d been power-hungry and arrogant, but also a visionary. “Did he hurt you?”
She doesn’t meet his gaze. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
He closes his eyes. All this time, he’s had a sister out in the world, unprotected and vulnerable.
Pack, his wolf whispers.
“You knew who I was? What I was to you? Why did you never come and find me?”
Her dark gaze holds his. “All I knew of you were the stories. The mad wolf who’d shredded his little brother. Freya told me it was safer to keep my true identity from you.”
He swallows. “Do you still fear me?”
She studies him intently. “I’ve never feared you, Aiden. But I can’t say I trust you, either.”
He stands and offers her a hand up. This time, she takes it. “I’ll gain your trust. And you can regain mine. If you stay with me.”
She searches his face, her expression yearning. “I can’t see your future anymore.”
He tilts his head. “Why?”
“Sometimes, when someone’s destiny is too close to my own, I can’t see them anymore. I’m
sorry, I’m not going to be much help.”
“You’re going to be my family.” He squeezes her shoulder. “You and Nic. That’s more than I’ve had in a lifetime. For the first time in forever, I am looking forward to the future. I don’t need to know what it holds.”
She smiles then, and it’s a real smile, genuine. “Come on then. Let’s go find your spoiled, selfish mate.”
Road Trip
“Are you ready to tell me where we’re going?” I kvetch from the backseat. We’ve been on the road for hours. I’m hungry, cold, tired. Heartbreak over Astrid burns like acid in my gut.
Plus, I’m awfully sick of looking at the back of their heads.
“Somewhere safe,” Chloe says.
“The farm was safe,” I grumble.
“Right up until the FBI found out about it,” Angrboda quips.
I let out a breath. “And couldn’t you just ensorcell all the humans into letting me go instead of chowing down on them?”
“Agent Hanson is too strong-willed. That’s why I had to wait until she was gone to approach you and plant the orders in the guards. I’ve never encountered such a focused human. Any spell I tried to put her under would shatter. Better she finds their remains and fear us.” She meets my gaze in the rearview mirror. “Besides, I was hungry.”
I shudder in revulsion.
The view out the window changes steadily. Instead of frost-covered trees and fields or icy patches of water, scrubby bushes and seagrass abound as we make our way to the coast.
Angrboda swings through a drive-thru. The speaker thingy has an out of order sign on it so she drives up to the window. The bored-looking girl with bad acne at the register slides the glass back and pokes her shaggy brown head out. “What’ll it be?”
“Fries and a chocolate shake for me,” Chloe wrinkles her nose. “Nic?”
Something coming from inside that place smells heavenly. “What is that amazing smell?”
“Um….bacon?” The girl guesses. “It just finished frying up.”
“Nic, no.” Chloe turns in her seat, her horror mimicking my own.
“Oh gods,” I breathe even as my mouth waters. Damn it, my baby is a freaking half-wolf carnivore.
“Ma’am?” The girl is staring at me through the car window, eyeballing my weird terrycloth dress and blanket ensemble. “You okay?”