Gwydion settled on the bed next to her. It was easy to shift to rest her head on his leg. She felt so weak. So pathetic. Her world was crumbling, and once again, she was doing a shitty job of dealing with it.
“Don’t.” Gwydion’s reprimand was quiet.
Kirby didn’t understand. She started to sit. He didn’t want her here?
He pulled her back down. “I don’t mean that. I always want you in my arms.”
“Don’t what?” She settled closer, needing the contact to ground herself. Would she drown in her own mind if he wasn’t here?
He trailed his fingers through her hair. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t. Whether it’s despair or self-loathing or anything negative, don’t fall down that pit. None of this is your fault. None of this makes you weak. Nothing good comes from losing yourself in a tirade of what ifs.”
“Speaking from experience?”
“So much of it.”
“I don’t know what to say or where to start or how to move forward.”
“You don’t have to figure it out right now,” Gwydion said. “You have time to process. I’m here, and so is whomever else you ask for.”
She couldn’t completely silence the voices of self-loathing. They were part of her. But his touch, his scent, his familiarity—it was all comforting. If she followed the line of his fingers, as he drew them along her scalp, she could almost sort some of the brain mess into the same rows.
The flashes of the past were already fading into something that didn’t pollute her senses so strongly. If she stopped trying to focus, a lot of the pieces tumbled into a semblance of order. She could identify some of the strays by their setting. The clothing worn.
And then there was Gwydion. “I remember the first time one of them met you.” Or was it her, in a past life? She didn’t know. Those women didn’t feel like her, though. She had their pasts, but not their personalities.
“In France?”
“In Wales,” Kirby said. Was he testing her? “I ...” She strained for the memory. “Lived on a pig farm? Really? A farmer’s daughter sleeping with the silver-tongued wanderer? Fucking cliché.”
“Electrical engineer wasn’t a career choice at the time.” He chuckled.
More images assaulted her. Of painted warriors, screaming through the forest, wielding spears. “It was the Battle of the Trees.”
“War was different then.”
“Yes and no. The magic was god-made instead of man-made.” That was an almost poetic statement. How lyrical of her. “After you won...”
“I was exhausted. Drunk in victory and power. And you were the most amazing creature I’d ever seen.”
“Not me.” Kirby wanted to both fall into and run away from the pit of longing in her heart at the memory. “Her. A different Kirby, who wore my face. I don’t love any of you.” Saying that was a new kind of hurt, because she was rejecting something amazing. “All of the others did. I feel what they felt. But I don’t know you. And I swear, if you tell me I am them...”
“I wasn’t going to.”
Tears pricked her eyelids. “Because I’m broken in this life.”
“You’re not broken. You’re different. Completely unique. Parts of you resemble the other women I’ve loved, but I don’t know you any better than you do me.”
“Why are you in town? Why this job? In this city?”
“I got tired of waiting to see you.”
Finally an answer that warmed her. “Are you disappointed?”
“No.” He leaned in to kiss her cheek.
“I gave up eternity for him.” It hurt too much to say Starkad’s name.
“And he’s done the same for you.”
Because he’d done what he thought was best. Watched her suffer. Let her bleed. Stood back while TOM rearranged her brain and tried to make her their pet. “I don’t know if I can forgive him.”
“There’s no rule out there saying you have to. You have a choice.”
“I’ve had so many choices taken from me. Including by him.”
Gwydion’s lack of response set her teeth on edge.
“No witty comeback?” Kirby asked. She knew what he wasn’t saying, though. Starkad was doing what he thought was best. She tried to press closer into Gwydion. Not easy, given her position, but she was going to try. She could stay like this forever. It didn’t matter that he was a stranger now; her memories said he was kind and good, especially to her. And that he had some of the same cracks in his psyche that she did, from so many centuries of wars.
It was a shame the world wouldn’t stop while she was in his arms. “What happened to Brit?” She hated to ask.
More silence.
“You’ve got a horrible poker face.” Kirby sat so she could look him in the eye. “You hesitate every time you don’t want to tell me the truth.”
“Because I can’t lie to you. She’s in the other room.”
Kirby’s body coiled like a too tightly wound spring. “Why?”
“You... When you thought she killed Starkad, you ascended. That’s where the memories came from. You also seem to have inflicted her with the memory and pain of every time you died. Leaving her behind would raise more questions than we’re equipped to deal with. We can send her back to TOM or give her what she asked for, or you can still kill her.”
So much for seven minutes in heaven. Kirby’s rage was at the forefront again. “I want to see her.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Not yet.”
“You said whatever I needed and whomever I wanted here.” Kirby had to look her in the eye. She had to ask why, before she ended Brit’s life.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Now - Kirby
Gwydion walked with Kirby down the hallway. “We could leave. You and I. They can go with us if they want, but we don’t have to wait for them, in order to walk away,” he said. “We could rediscover each other.
“I’m in the middle of a war.” She paused a few feet back from the doorway he’d indicated.
“A war that’s not yours.”
She studied him for a moment. The lines of worry etched in his face. His rugged features. The stress of centuries that weighed on his posture. And he was gorgeous, in spite of and because of all of it. “If I’m a Valkyrie, this war is literally mine. And it should be yours. Mine isn’t the only pantheon involved.”
“They abused you. They brainwashed you. They manipulated you.”
She winced with each truth. “There are things I’ll never forgive them for. But I can’t deny who I am. Even if I were still just plain, boring Kirby, I’d have a stake in this. With the exception of my first life, I’ve never made it to thirty. Fuck that bullshit. I’m going to live forever, and stopping TOM is a steppingstone toward my not dying again.”
“And I don’t want to discourage that,” Gwydion said.
Kirby was done with his pleas. Walking away was tempting, and that was the best reason she could think of, to brush him off.
She stepped into the room.
Brit lay in bed, her skin pale and her face twisted with pain. Her eyes grew wide when she saw Kirby. “You’re...” She sobbed. “Holy fuck, you’re alive.”
Kirby couldn’t ignore the emotion in Brit’s voice, but she sure as hell tried. “Surprise.” She focused on Gwydion. It was easier than looking at Brit’s grief and agony. “Is she hurt?” Kirby asked. Inflicted with more than a dozen deaths was painful. But Brit didn’t have any visible injuries.
“Physically, she’s fine, aside from the shoulder and eardrum. Those wounds aren’t fresh, though.”
“Can I make her stop hurting?” Kirby wasn’t sure why she cared, but she did.
“You can give and take life. I don’t know what you can do for pain. But you magically inflicted her wounds, so I assume you can remove them.”
“Are you two actually talking like crazy people, or is it the drugs?” Brit’s question was slurred.
Kirby should have anticipated that. “You drugged her.”
“I’m not big on torture.” Gwydion leaned against the doorframe. “She was suffering. I gave her morphine.”
Kirby crossed the room and knelt next to Brit, who watched her closely. Knowledge she didn’t realize she had said she didn’t need touch, to inflict the pain, but she was still figuring out the extent of her power. “I want you lucid for this.”
She brushed her fingers over Brit’s shoulder, and healed her eardrum. Then she visualized drawing the drugs out of Brit’s bloodstream. Each movement felt as natural as walking. As if Kirby had always known how to do this.
Brit’s gasp carried the weight of a rush of pain.
Kirby wasn’t taking away the whispers of the past yet. She was spiteful enough to not want to feel this alone. “I’m not just talking like a crazy person. It turns out I am one. I have a dozen other lives jammed into my brain.”
“I don’t understand.” Clarity was returning to Brit’s expression and words.
Kirby had one distinct memory that wasn’t from this life. One piece that felt like hers, even though she’d never lived it in this body. She summoned her wings and ethereal armor.
Brit gasped.
It was a shame Kirby had such a bad angle on herself. She probably looked kickass, with black feathers growing from her shoulder blades and polished leather padding her torso and legs. “I’m a Valkyrie. Turns out three guys have been stalking me for centuries, to keep me from dying each time I’m reborn.”
Brit pushed herself into a sitting position. She tentatively flexed the fingers of her right hand. “Reincarnation isn’t—”
“A thing. I know. This is a curse, courtesy of Odin. You won’t believe the things I’m remembering. I don’t believe them.”
Brit reached out to stroke her fingers along one of Kirby’s wings. Kirby resisted the desire to flinch away from her touch.
“Figures.” Brit laughed bitterly.
Not the response Kirby expected. “What does?”
“The best of the best. Kirby, the golden child. Of course you’re the last Valkyrie on the planet. Fuck, you’re a real-life Mary Sue.”
Kirby let the wings fade and didn’t try to suppress the rage that flowed through her. “My life hasn’t been any easier than yours. I’ve earned everything I have, and I’ve lost more than you’ll ever realize.” When she spoke, her voice reverberated off the walls.
“Oh boo-hoo.” Brit’s curtness didn’t match her startled look. “If you’re going to play the martyr card, just torture and kill me. That’ll be less painful than you insisting you’re nothing special.”
Kirby could retort. She could act out in anger or vengeance. She needed to remember she was done with this. With Brit. Kirby could love what they’d had, and still loathe the woman in front of her. She pressed her lips to Brit’s forehead and focused. In her mind, she saw the threads of her own memories running through Brit’s body. She tugged and drew them back into herself.
Brit gasped again, this time with relief. Pink tinged her skin.
“You can go now,” Kirby undid the restraints holding Brit to the bed and stepped away from her.
“What?”
“Buh-bye. Fuck you. Have a nice life.”
Brit stood. Fear crept into her expression. “I asked for help.”
“You got help. I didn’t kill you.”
“If you send me out there like this, it’s as good as killing me.”
That was an interesting point. Kind of like the if you kill a killer, there are no fewer killers in the world argument. But Kirby had confronted that demon years ago. “I survived.”
“You had Starkad. A support system. You’re a fucking Valkyrie. I had torture.”
Was this the bullshit about Kirby holding her back again? The crawling under Kirby’s skin said it was more, but she refused to get sucked into Brit’s stories. “I wasn’t a Valkyrie until a few hours ago, when you tried to take him from me. Just like you tried to steal my life. You don’t like freedom as an option? Go back to TOM and Mark. Or did you burn that bridge?”
“If you’re going to send me back to them, kill me now.” Bitterness flowed from Brit’s voice. “I’ve put up with the torture, the manipulation, and the assault for years. I’m done pretending it was anything else. I’m done hiding it from myself or caring what you think. I’m just done.”
The words stalled in Kirby’s mind as she tried to sort through their meaning. A series of retorts raced to the tip of her tongue, and she swallowed them all. Why didn’t you say anything before now? Kirby never had. Mark said I was the only one. Because she believed that? It seemed so naïve now.
“That was the point. You already thought I needed protecting from everything. I wasn’t going to give you one more reason to look down on me.”
And now they were back to this. “I never—”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. I killed him.” Brit said with a lot less enthusiasm than Kirby would have.
The news was a little disappointing. Kirby wanted that pleasure herself. It also set warning bells chiming in her head. If Mark was dead, something was wrong. She wanted to finish the conversation with Brit, but more important things were at stake. “When? Where did you kill him? How?”
“In our hotel room. Right before I called Starkad. Mark killed you—I thought—and then he forced himself on me. I shot him and left.”
This was all wrong. “Starkad. Min.” Kirby shouted. She kept her attention on Brit. “Are you certain he’s dead?”
“I shot him in the chest three times, at less than a foot. He wasn’t breathing. He didn’t have a pulse. I know what dead looks like.” Except Brit didn’t sound so certain anymore.
“What’s wrong?” Starkad asked. He and Min joined them, and stood next to Gwydion.
Kirby glanced over her shoulder. “Is the news talking about a body found in a hotel? Are the police? Is anyone?”
“There were shots fired downtown, but no one was hurt. They haven’t located the gunman,” Min said.
Because she was standing in front of Kirby, looking defeated and terrified.
“How much did he bleed?” Kirby demanded to know.
“What?”
Kirby was going to smack her if she asked that too many more times. “Answer the fucking question.”
“I don’t... I don’t remember. I was panicked. I was grief-stricken. I thought you were dead.”
Kirby hated that the sentiment pinged in her chest with longing. “Nice of you to finally care. I’ve killed sixteen of your counterparts. Face to face. You bleed the same as anyone. Was. There. Blood?”
Brit hesitated.
“Fucker’s not dead.” Kirby turned toward the men. “We need to go now.”
“Grab anything personal. Clothes. Laptops. Weapons.” Starkad barked orders, and no one argued. “Five minutes, and we’re ghosts.”
Kirby was impressed everyone moved quickly and without question. As the three men combed the house, she could see how much they’d come together in their time without her, looking for a woman she couldn’t imagine ever being.
“What about me?” Brit stood behind her.
Glass shattered in the living room. Kirby’s instinct kicked in, and her wings and armor were back. She threw herself over Brit.
Darkness engulfed the house.
THANK YOU FOR FOLLOWING Kirby through her stuttered past. Now that Kirby’s remembered who she is, someone will pay for this life and all those she’s lived before. But will it be the gods, or Kirby herself who suffers?
› Click here to find out what darkness awaits her and her harem, in VALKYRIE HUNTED.
IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR more twisty-turny urban fantasy, check out my Ubiquity series, starting with SOUL REAPER. Ronnie’s being pursued by a possessive incubus, a tortured archangel, and the devil himself. She might enjoy the attention more if the voice in her head wasn’t stealing her sanity.
› Click here to start SOUL REAPER today
Acknowledgements
Extra huge thank
you to Sotia. She’s a brilliant editor, brainstorming partner, and friend. None of this would happen without her. And to Shannon, Athena, and Julie for being sounding boards, helping me talk through story problems, and reading my early, messy work. A writer with a scrambled brain isn’t a pretty thing, and they take my messages regardless.
Special nod to Annette for helping me name my villains’ secret organization.
Thank you to everyone who’s accompanying me on this amazing journey of bleeding my imagination onto the page. My readers, friends, and especially my spouse.
About the Author
USA Today Bestselling Author Allyson Lindt is a full-time geek and a fuller-time contemporary romance author. She likes her stories with sweet geekiness and heavy spice, because cubicle dwellers need love too. She loves a sexy happily-ever-after and helping deserving cubicle dwellers find their futures together.
Read more at Allyson Lindt’s site.
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