“I don’t like this. We should have heard from them by now.” Heimdall paced back and forth in front of the hearth at the Lodge. With Thor and the others on assignment picking up Loki and Fenrir, and Freya in the forest with Laika to guard the Tree, the family meeting was sparse. Odin and Saga sat together on one of the black leather sofas, while the injured Rod reclined on the other with his feet up.
Heimdall stopped and sighed loudly. “And where in blasted Svartálfaheim is Freyr? I haven’t been able to reach him, either.”
“Maybe he got hung up at the dojo.” Saga munched on a french fry. With Frigga gone, the usual rib-sticking dinner spread had been reduced to a fast food bonanza, and the coffee table was littered with boxes and bags from Burgerville, KFC, Qdoba, Burger King, Taco Time, and Panda Express. Saga picked up a fried chicken tender and sniffed at it. “I don’t see why I had to go to work today. Everyone else had important missions.”
Odin reached for his beer stein, one of the few items on the table that hadn’t come from a drive-thru window. “You work in the biggest bookstore in the city. We needed you there, pulling books from the shelves that Managarm might find useful. I doubt the Moon Dog is using computers, and he’s always jumped into things without due consideration. There will be gaps in his plan, and he’ll be looking for help.”
“But Managarm hasn’t been into any Powells location, near as I can tell.” She took a tentative nibble of the chicken, then plunged it into a plastic thimble of barbecue sauce. “And we don’t exactly run a background check on everyone who buys a book. The only people I’ve seen after those kinds of books were this one kooky lady with a rune obsession and a couple of kids after a bunch of titles on Gardnerian Witchcraft. You think they’re working with Managarm?” she asked sarcastically.
“Can’t rule it out just yet.” Odin took a swig from his stein, and grimaced. He barely swallowed the beer without spitting it out. “What are you trying to do to me?” he bellowed at his daughter beside him. “This cursed light beer is a sacrilegious assault on the senses!”
Saga took a large bite of processed chicken and looked at him. “We’ve had this conversation before,” she mumbled with her mouth full. “That’s what Frigga wants you to drink.”
“Blast you and your mother and this chemical monstrosity of a beverage!” Odin slammed the stein down on the table, sending suds sloshing over the rim. “The fallen heroes of Valhalla are served better fare than this. I should call the Valkyries themselves to fill my stein from the bottomless kegs in the Hall of the Slain!”
Rod sipped on his Orange Julius. “Is that an option?”
Odin fixed the handyman with his one-eyed stare, then shifted his frowning gaze back to Saga. “If you must torture me this way, at least bring me one of the local microbrews.”
Saga wiped barbecue sauce from her mouth with the back of her hand and reached for another piece of chicken. “That’s from the Spotted Hound. You picked it out yourself last week.”
Odin grumbled under his breath and rested back against the sofa cushions in sullen resignation.
Moving carefully, Rod propped himself up on a pillow. “So when they bring Fenrir back here, do you really think the basement is going to hold him? I made what modifications I could, but in my present state . . . I know some guys I could call in.”
Heimdall stopped to consider Rod’s proposal, then waved him off. “If anything needs to be reinforced, we’ll handle it.”
Heimdall’s cell phone rang, and he frowned at the display.
“Is it Freyr?” Saga piped up. “Frigga?”
“Unknown,” he read off the display. He accepted the call and lifted the phone to his ear. “Hello?” Relief washed over his face. “It’s Bragi.” He set the phone down on the coffee table.
“Go ahead, Bragi. You’re on speakerphone.”
“Okay,” Bragi’s exasperated voice crackled through the tiny speaker. “Fenrir’s gone.”
“What?!” Saga spit a tiny piece of french fry across the room as she shrieked. Rod casually brushed the bit of fried potato off his shirt onto the floor.
“Yeah, listen, we sneaked into the sanctuary just after it closed, but he was already gone.” There was a loud banging noise behind Bragi’s voice, so he increased his own volume to be heard. “Don’t know if he escaped on his own or had help. Either way, we don’t have him.”
Heimdall checked the time on the phone’s display. “But the sanctuary closed hours ago. Why didn’t you call sooner?”
“None of our phones work!” Bragi exclaimed crossly. “Loki, umm, kind of melted them all.”
Rod frowned. “He melted the phones?”
“Yeah, you know. Uncontrolled ambient death ray of chaos . . .” Bragi responded. “And Loki reports encountering a Berserker in Joseph.”
“Perfect,” Heimdall hissed angrily through his teeth.
More loud banging came through the speaker.
Odin leaned toward the phone on the table. “Where are you? And what’s all that racket?”
“I’m at a pay phone, at a gas station just outside of Centralia in Washington,” Bragi shouted to be heard over the mechanical tumult. “It took a while to find a public telephone, not to mention one that works.” More loud clanging. “You’re not going to accomplish anything that way,” Bragi called to his companions in Washington. “Stop breaking everything and just go to the next one.”
“Sorry,” Bragi said more clearly into the phone as the scene quieted down around him. “We’re having trouble getting the gas pumps to work.”
Rod winced in pain as he peeled the paper wrapping off of a skinny taco. “They don’t know how to use the pumps? Because nobody pumps their own gas in Oregon?” He bit into the taco and frowned as he chewed. “You know, some of the drive-thrus do have salads.”
“No,” Odin sighed heavily. “It’s because of Loki. Listen, Bragi,” Odin raised his voice, to be heard over the clanging din that had started again. “Have Loki stand at a distance. Tell him to wander down the road a bit. That’s should take care of it.”
“Yeah,” Bragi replied distractedly, then erupted into laughter. “Oh, hey, I’m sorry, but—” He started laughing again, then cleared his throat. “It’s just that Thor is chasing Loki around the lot with the bolt cutters and a can of spray paint.”
There was a huge bang followed by an ominous ripping sound. Bragi’s voice lost its mirthful tone. “Yeah. There goes my back bumper. The next time Thor goes on a road trip, with or without Loki, I’d prefer that someone else does the driving.”
“How soon can you get back here?” Heimdall towered over the phone with his arms crossed tightly.
“About three hours.”
“Do it.” Heimdall reached for the phone and was about to shut it off, when Bragi’s voice came through again.
“Oh, crap!” There was a mechanical creak followed by some shuffling of paper before Bragi came back on. “You haven’t happened to see the early edition of tomorrow’s newspaper, have you?”
“Assume we haven’t.” Odin sniffed.
“There are some news reports here . . .” They could hear Bragi paging through the newspaper. “Just skimming here, but they’re talking about a series of what looks like wolf attacks in the area. Speculation that it could also be mountain lions or a pack of rabid coyotes. Residents are being advised to keep their children and their pets indoors . . . Wildlife remains found a mile away from Wolf Haven. Cattle killed to the immediate southeast. A couple of family dogs in Kopiah, Washington, cats in Ethel, and . . . Oh.” Bragi’s voice tightened. “And a small child outside of Castle Rock.”
Heimdall felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. He glanced over at Odin and knew his father had come immediately to the same conclusion.
“Fenrir.”
“Looks like.” Bragi’s voice was muffled by the sound of more pages turning. “Seems to be following a progressively southerly route.”
“Toward the Lodge?” Rod nearly squeaked.
“Toward the Tree.” Saga raked barbecue-sauced fingers through her hair. “He’s coming.”
Heimdall clicked off the speaker and held the phone to his ear. “Listen, you get back here now. I don’t care if you have to knock over a fuel truck or steal someone else’s car.”
He turned off the phone and slipped it back into his pocket.
Rod slurped down the last bit of his Orange Julius. “I guess we don’t have to worry about whether or not the basement can contain Fenrir.”
Both Heimdall and Odin turned to glare at him. Rod seemed to shrink a few inches in size as he hunched down. “I was just trying to look on the bright side.”
Heimdall turned his back on the room and stared into the fire. “With both a Berserker and the Randulfr on the loose—“
“Two Berserkers,” Saga corrected. “One here, one in Joseph.”
Heimdall sighed heavily. “Fenrir and two Berserkers on the loose, plus Managarm out there trying to orchestrate Ragnarok, I’m afraid there isn’t much of a bright side to anything.”
The front door opened and slammed shut. Saga got up and peeked down the hallway. “Freyr’s here.”
“It’s about bloody time,” Odin grumbled into his stein of light beer.
Freyr barely caught himself as he stumbled from the hallway into the den. Hunched over and bracing himself against his knees as he tried to catch his breath, he held up one hand to command the attention of the room, but he was panting too hard to get a single word out.
“Shoes!” Saga chided, pointing at his muddy moccasins.
Still out of breath, Freyr nodded and started to slip off his sneakers, but he lost his balance and shot out a hand to the wall to steady himself. Saga jumped up to guide him to the settee and pulled his shoes off his feet for him.
“Here. Sit down before you hurt yourself.” She reached under the coffee table for a spare pair of slippers and tried to slide them onto his feet, but Freyr pushed her aside.
Freyr looked up at Heimdall and tucked his long, light-brown hair behind his ears, revealing deep red scratches on his face.
“What happened?” Heimdall asked darkly.
“Berserker,” Freyr said, at last regaining his breath. He slipped on the sheepskin booties and surveyed the fast food bonanza on the coffee table.
“Great.” Saga plopped back down onto the sofa next to Odin. “Exactly what we need. Another freaking Berserker.”
Freyr picked up a few unopened soda bottles, trying to decide between them, but Odin passed him his own stein instead. Freyr took a sip and lifted his eyebrows in appreciation. “Hmm. Tasty.”
Heimdall cleared his throat. “The Berserker . . . ?”
Freyr drank down the rest of the beer in a single swig. “Bloody heathen stole my phone. And my car. I had to hitchhike back here.”
Rod sputtered, trying not to laugh, and ended up moaning in pain instead as he pressed his hand against the bandages beneath his shirt. Odin shot him a stern look, and Rod cleared his throat, trying to quiet down. “Sorry. Just from what you’ve told me, the idea of a Berserker with a cell phone sounded funny, is all.”
Heimdall gestured toward Freyr. “A Berserker did this to you?”
Freyr nodded solemnly, then tore into a lukewarm burrito that dripped cheese and salsa down the front of his shirt and onto the floor.
Saga sighed and got up from the sofa, headed into the kitchen. “Frigga’s going to kill you.”
Heimdall frowned at Freyr in disbelief. “You’re saying the warrior attacked you? Are you certain it was a Berserker?”
“I think I know a Berserker when I see one, Heimdall,” he sputtered between mouthfuls of black bean burrito. “Just because I’m the god of the harvest and rain and little tweeting birds, as Thor likes to remind me almost daily, doesn’t mean I know nothing about war.”
Saga reappeared with a collection of damp paper towels. She knelt beside Freyr to clean up the mess on the floor, then reached up and dabbed at the inflamed scratches on his face with a wet dishcloth.
Heimdall sat down on the hearth ledge, partly to appease his agitated cousin, but mostly because he couldn’t remember ever feeling so depleted in his long life. He cast his eyes over the fried, cheesy food on the coffee table and reached for the last egg roll. “I didn’t mean to suggest—”
“I didn’t have much of a choice but to fight him,” Freyr cut him off. He picked up one of the sodas and started guzzling it down, then coughed. “We were in the middle of the junior karate class. One of the students, an eighteen-year-old kid named Adam, just suddenly started screaming and going after another student. I had to step in to protect the other kids. And when I saw his eyes . . .” Freyr rubbed the back of his neck and shivered. “Like those blood-curdling shrieks weren’t enough of a giveaway. Yeah, it was a Berserker, all right.”
Freyr finished his soda and grabbed the dishcloth out of Saga’s hands so he could tend to his own wounds. “But I couldn’t hurt him—didn’t want to,” he corrected himself. “Adam was a good kid. Before.”
Saga rested a hand on his shoulder. “Doesn’t matter. Berserkers can be anybody before they’re called. You remember that Christian priest in one of the villages the Vikings raided in Ireland? He stood alone against the Vikings to protect his people, armed with nothing more than a soggy Bible. But then when the call went out for new Berserkers… Who he was before didn’t make a bit of difference. He was a single-minded warrior from that point forward.”
Rod raised his hand, trying to insert himself into the conversation. “But when has a Berserker ever attacked a god? They’re supposed to serve you, right? Not try to scratch your eyes out.”
Freyr nodded at Rod, then looked to Odin and Heimdall. “You still think Managarm has help calling the Berserkers?”
Heimdall glanced at Frigga’s laptop computer on the end table by Rod’s head. Sighing darkly, he dug his hands into his hair and frowned. “Forgive me for suggesting this, but . . . the Norns.”
Odin and Freyr let out a simultaneous groan. Saga simply stared at him. “Are you kidding? Don’t you know what a waste of time—”
Heimdall nodded. “Yes. But they might have access to another piece of the puzzle that we don’t. Frigga did try contacting them earlier.” He looked at his father and shrugged. “Desperate times call for desperate measures?” He picked up the laptop and settled it onto the coffee table in front of Odin.
“You know how to use the web camera?” he asked Saga.
“Sure.” She bounced up from the settee and settled in next to her father, opened the computer, and waited for it to boot up.
On the other side of the room, Rod slowly raised himself into a sitting position. “What’s going on?”
“We’re calling the Norns,” Heimdall replied.
Rod rolled his eyes before struggling up to his feet. “Those ladies give me the creeps.”
Freyr helped Rod hobble across the floor, and Saga scooted over to give him space on the sofa.
“You’re not the only one.” Saga launched the Skype application. “Okay, here we go.” She clicked on the “Mystic Sisters” icon and waited for the call to connect.
“At least this should be entertaining,” Freyr whispered as he joined Heimdall standing behind the sofa where Odin, Saga, and Rod huddled around the computer.
A video window opened with the image of a middle-aged beauty draped in rose-colored silks and strings of beads. Her languid, heavily painted eyes rested closed as an enigmatic smile played on her lips. “Mystic Sisters Psychic Hotline. We make Fate work for you. I am Trudy, serving you from Seattle. May I have your credit card number?” Eyes still closed, the woman on the screen inclined her head like a TV-show genie.
Saga rolled her eyes. “Urd, it’s Saga. I have the clan assembled here. Some of us, anyway.”
There was a nervous pause on the other end. The Norn’s eyes opened wide, and the squeak of an office chair was audible over the computer connection.
“Yes, yes, of course!” s
he stammered, then affected a knowing smile. “The Norns, oracles of the gods, have been expecting your call.”
“I’m beginning to regret this already,” Freyr grumbled.
Heimdall glanced at his cousin and shrugged. Despite their success as the Mystic Sisters, the Norns had traditionally lacked any understanding of mundane details, or the ability to properly interpret what they saw in the mists. The wisdom the Norns offered had for centuries confused and upset the Vikings, and even the gods.
Heimdall remembered one particular prophecy that had resulted in mass panic. “The distant light of life is extinguished! Darkness falls. Creatures tremble and wail in vain, as the night mistress reigns,” they had exclaimed. Interpretations ranged from a looming extinction of animals and honeybees, to the imminent arrival of the Ragnarok apocalypse—when what the Norns had foreseen was a simple solar eclipse.
Urd blinked heavy eyelids at the camera. “Allow me to call in my sisters.” She got up from her chair and stepped out of frame. Moments later, the three sisters in similar robes of different colors assembled around the table.
“What are they all doing up at this hour?” Heimdall leaned over to whisper to Saga.
She looked up at him and shrugged. “Friday night on a 24-hour psychic hotline.”
“Urd, in the East,” the first sister proclaimed.
“Verdande, in the South,” the green-clad Norn intoned.
“Skuld, in the West,” called the third sister, dressed in blue. She then nodded toward the webcam. “And the Lady Saga, in the North.”
Heimdall pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and hung his head. “We’re in the South,” he grumbled to no one in particular. “Portland is south of Seattle.”
Saga looked into the webcam and forced a smile. “Yes. We need your guidance on our Berserker problem.”
“Lady Seeker, you come with many questions.” Skuld leveled a blank stare at the webcam, adopting the same aloof bearing that had served the oracles for centuries. “Your mind is dark with concern, your heart heavy with regret. Your approach to revealed wisdom demands its own price, mired in transitional mythology and—”
“Oh, will you knock it off?” Saga cut her off with a curt wave of her hand. “Why is it that I can have a perfectly normal conversation with any one of you individually, but as a trio you’re enough to drive even the most even-tempered deity batty?”
Heimdall leaned into the range of the webcam. “Please. We do seek your counsel. But we can do without the histrionics, if you don’t mind.”
Unfazed by the rebuke, the sisters straightened up in their chairs and took a collective breath. Glancing around the table at each other, the Norns shared a conspiratorial smile and giggled quietly, then cleared their throats in turn and relaxed their shoulders.
“This is a complete waste of time,” Odin growled at Heimdall behind him.
“Just give it a minute . . .” Heimdall gestured toward the screen, where the sisters sat communing with the ethers or whatever it was they did.
The sisters had, mostly, let go their tedious habit of speaking in riddles—after Odin had blasted them for a particularly long-winded rhyme four hundred years earlier about hunting conditions in the Willamette Valley. Heimdall didn’t imagine his father was exaggerating when he swore phases of the moon had changed while the Norns chanted their prophecy, which in the end amounted to little more than, “Lots of rabbits and deer.”
“Can we move this along, please?” Heimdall pleaded, jolting the sisters out of their reverie.
“Of course,” Verdande said at last. “We apologize for the formality. Old habits, you know. Naturally we defer to your authority.” She gestured toward the camera.
Saga offered a weak smile. “Thank you. What can you tell us about—”
“We know nothing concerning Berserkers,” Skuld interrupted.
“Well, they’re here,” said Saga. “At least three of them.”
“Three?” Freyr asked in astonishment.
“Yeah,” Heimdall whispered to him. “Loki saw one in Joseph.”
Freyr looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “Of course he did.” He kicked the back of the sofa and scowled. “Bloody fantastic.”
“And with the Tree being so new again, and Fenrir’s escape . . .” Saga continued. “We have an idea of what Managarm is up to. We need information on how to stop him.”
Three pairs of wide, smoky eyes stared back from the computer screen.
“Managarm?” Skuld choked.
“They have no idea what we’re talking about.” Freyr walked away from the sofa in disgust. “We’d be better off with scented salts from the local voodoo shop.”
Heimdall looked down at the screen and saw Verdande’s incensed expression. They’d obviously heard Freyr’s off-camera remark. “Look, we mean no offense—”
“We may not have known about the Berserkers, but we can tell you about the Witch.”
Heimdall leaned closer to the camera. “I’m sorry. Did you say there’s a witch to worry about?”
Verdande lifted her chin, her dark-gold tresses shifting on her shoulders. “Not just any witch. The Moon Witch.”
Heimdall crossed his arms. “Never heard of any such thing.”
Skuld placed her palms flat on the table and sighed heavily. “She is not of the Norse pantheon,” she began, as though speaking to a small child. “We’re dealing with ancient power, wielded by someone much . . . Younger.” Skuld looked to each of her sisters, who nodded in agreement. “It is her magick at work.”
Heimdall frowned. He wasn’t well-versed in world religions—that was more Freya’s department—but he had a hard time imagining what other deity would risk tangling with Odin or even Managarm.
“Mortal,” Urd ventured, her voice just barely above a whisper.
Heimdall laughed out loud. “A mortal? You’re saying we’ve got a mortal witch running around, calling up Berserkers?”
Saga turned to her father. “Umm, I think I might know who it is.”
Heimdall came around the end of the sofa to face her, blocking the camera and ignoring the three Norns who had closed their eyes and were swaying rhythmically in their seats as they sank into a divinatory trance.
“Tell me,” he demanded.
“So that lady who was so frantic about her rune book? She was in the store yesterday, too, talking about some kind of astronomical event . . .”
Heimdall cursed under his breath. “The Black Moon? And the planetary alignment with the constellations of the Old Ones? You mean that astronomical event?”
Saga shrugged. “Maybe.”
“And you didn’t think to mention this earlier.”
She shrugged again and looked apologetically at Odin. “I, I forgot. You know, so many people these days like to light candles, but they don’t know a runic sigil from their elbow. And Portland is like Pagan-central. But this lady . . . She just wanted to use the convergence to encourage a little peace in the world.”
“A witch! I see the Moon Witch!” Skuld exclaimed suddenly from the computer. Heimdall reached down and hit the “mute” key.
“So you’ve met someone who’s working magick, specifically on the Black Moon.” Heimdall raised his eyebrows. “Sounds like a Moon Witch to me.”
Saga shook her head. “I don’t think so. This woman was seriously troubled. But maybe being upset hid her power? Made it less obvious?”
On the computer screen, the sisters silently swayed together with outstretched arms reaching for the ceiling.
“Do you remember her name?”
“Yeah. Sally Dahl.”
Heimdall nodded and reached down to unmute the computer. An escalating crescendo of shrieks blasted through the speakers, and Heimdall involuntarily yelped. These spectacles of divination had always set him on edge. The murmuring, screaming, and eyes rolling back into heads all seemed more like the symptoms of some kind of mental disorder than a mystical trance.
The sisters fell su
ddenly silent. Heimdall checked to make sure he hadn’t accidentally muted them again. He blinked at the image of the Norns sitting placidly around the table. Skuld cleared her throat softly. She looked first at Verdande, then at Urd. Both nodded back at her.
Skuld turned to face the webcam. “It’s definitely a mortal. A human witch, one with real power. She has it in her blood.”
“Fantastic.” Freyr stomped his foot on the floor. “So Managarm has some kind of super-witch who can call up Berserkers left and right, and he’s probably got the Fenris Wolf, too. What do we have?”
“We have the Tree,” Heimdall responded steadily.
Freyr shook his head and looked down at the floor. “And no means of defending it. Where are our warriors?”
Odin shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. He wasn’t as large as his son, Thor, but he was still a sizable and meaty immortal—who was aging even faster than the rest of them. “That doesn’t mean we give up, now does it?”
Heimdall turned his back on the others and stared out the den’s picture window at the black night outside. The Yggdrasil had come to this land for a reason. After millennia of Scandinavian incarnations, the World Tree had jumped continents to land here in the Pacific Northwest, calling Heimdall and his kin to follow. Was it possible that centuries later, a new breed of Viking might arise in this land of rain and volcanoes?
Heimdall turned back around and interrupted the speculative arguing that had continued without him. “We need the Einherjar.”
Freyr looked at him and practically snorted. “That’s ambitious.”
“Okay, you’ll have to bring me up to speed . . . The what?” Rod asked. “Enrico . . . ? Harjory?”
Odin glanced quickly at the computer screen, where the Norns were waiting for a response, then looked directly at Rod. “The Einherjar are the fallen Vikings. He’s talking about calling the dead warriors up from the Halls of Valhalla.” He raised his eyebrows at Heimdall. “And it is indeed ambitious.”
Heimdall leaned forward, bringing his face within range of the webcam. “All right, ladies. We thank you for your time this evening . . .” He dug his fingers into the back of the leather sofa and looked down at Odin. “I’ll go relieve Freya at the Yggdrasil. You’ll need her for this more than me.”
Saga was about to disconnect the call when Urd held up a hand. “One more thing, if you please . . . ? There may be dark tidings of Thor’s employment.” Urd cleared her throat. “And we still need your credit card num—”
“As if.” Saga scowled at the screen and ended the call, then looked at Odin and sighed. “If Thor loses another job, Frigga’s going to kill him.”
Heimdall started toward the hallway when his phone rang again. He pulled it from his pocket and frowned at the display. “Freyr, someone’s calling me from your phone . . .”
“The Berserker’s calling?” Rod asked.
All the blood seemed to drain out of Freyr’s face.
Heimdall clenched his jaw tight. “Son of a bitch.” Heimdall raised the phone to his ear and growled, “Managarm.”
~ seventeen ~
Valhalla Page 33