Sally was floating. After long days of utter exhaustion, she finally had lightness and peace.
Free of bone-deep aches and pains, she felt pleasantly lithe as she drifted gently downward, until her bare feet came to rest on cool grass.
She wasn’t sure how she’d come to be standing in this green meadow. The soft breeze and sunlight were warm on her skin. She took a deep breath and sighed in relief. Managarm was nowhere in sight.
Sally lifted her arms overhead, and her limbs felt deliciously light. She laughed at the healthy glow of her young, supple skin, then ran her fingers through her soft, thick hair. She reached up to touch her tender cheeks and an unlined brow.
“I’m me again!” She twirled in a happy circle and laughed as the blades of grass slid between her toes.
Sally ran down the gentle slope of the meadow, then hiked up a small rise, giggling with every pain-free stride. A forested valley materialized below her, and she gasped when she saw the Yggdrasil standing tall and strong at its center. Towering over the younger saplings that surrounded it, the World Tree was decorated with garlands of fragrant spring flowers, and songbirds nested in its mighty branches.
Sally ran toward the Tree, moving almost instantaneously through the forest. Recognizing the large rune carved into the great Tree’s trunk, Sally slowed her steps as she approached the Yggdrasil. Breath quickening, she reached out a timid hand to touch the mark of Algiz in the Tree’s bark.
“The rune of divine communion,” a familiar voice said behind her. “Use it to call your guardian spirit, to establish sanctuary and protection.”
Sally turned and found a beautiful young woman standing with her. The girl’s dark hair fell loosely about her shoulders, and she looked very much at home in the simple white tunic and silver chain mail that glinted in the sunlight.
“Opal? Opal! What are you wearing? Where are your glasses?” Sally looked around the peaceful stand of saplings, empty save for her and the sudden presence of her friend.
“What is this place?” She heard a scratching noise overhead and glanced up to find Baron climbing down from one of the Tree’s upper branches. Looking unusually lean and healthy, he landed gracefully on the ground and began weaving figure-eights between Sally’s legs, purring loudly.
“Baron!” Sally laughed, then her voice caught in her throat. “Oh, no!” She looked back at Opal, still shimmering in the sunlight. “Oh, my gosh! We’re, we’re dead! We’re dead, aren’t we?”
“Sally.” Opal smiled and held out a reassuring hand.
Sally backed away and wrapped her arms around her body. “Managarm took you and Baron away to kill you. And then, then he hit me . . . I don’t remember anything after that.” The breeze picked up and dried the tears on Sally’s cheeks. “So, this is Valhalla?” She turned back to the Tree and rested her hand on the symbol carved into the trunk. “It’s not so bad. And my parents will be okay, right?”
“Sally,” Opal began again. “You’re not dead. Neither am I. Nor Baron, for that matter.”
Sally sank to the ground and pulled Baron into her lap. “But, but I helped the Moon Dog.” She leaned back against the base of the Yggdrasil. “He’ll destroy everything.”
An earth-rending roar tore across the forest. Sally cringed and held her hands against her ears until the terrible sound died away, and was surprised to find Baron still sitting calmly in her lap.
“Managarm?” Sally whispered in terror.
Opal shook her head and knelt beside her. “The Fenris Wolf.”
Black clouds gathered in the sky. The young trees surrounding the Yggdrasil went flying as a dark beast—half-human, half-wolf—ripped them from the ground. The creature was twenty feet tall and black as night, with a bloody crescent moon carved into his chest.
Sally cried out. “See?! I did this!” She clutched desperately at Opal’s arm. “Fenrir must kill Odin! That’s his fate.”
Opal pulled Sally up to her knees and forced her to watch as the great beast approached. Baron sat placidly by her side. Sally whimpered softly, her terror slowly giving way to fascination.
“See,” Opal commanded.
Looking more intently, Sally noticed a silver band around the black beast’s neck. As the creature swung his head from side to side, uprooting everything in his path and snarling with rage, she saw the silver chain attached to the collar. Several yards behind, holding the other end of the chain, stood Managarm.
“The Moon Dog,” Sally whispered.
Opal nodded. “You have not wrought this, Sally. You were unjustly used by a god with nefarious intent.” Opal looked her in the eye. “That’s not to say you don’t have free will. You are responsible for your actions, but you were dealing with one who had an unfair advantage over you. And he used it.”
Sally frowned. “You don’t sound like Opal at all.”
Opal gestured back toward Fenrir.
The great beast saw the Tree—and Sally and Opal huddled before it—and bellowed with blood-thirsty glee. Sally reached again for Opal, watching Fenrir narrow his eyes as he focused in on her and exhaled smoke through his huge nostrils. Behind the monstrous wolf, Managarm laughed and brandished a leather whip, lashing the beast and causing him to howl in pain.
“Some fates cannot be escaped,” Opal said.
Odin, Heimdall, Thor, Frigga, Saga, Bragi, Freya, and Freyr stepped out from behind the Tree. Sally gasped as they walked past her, headed straight toward the raging Fenrir. The gods stood shoulder to shoulder, forming a protective wall between the Fenris Wolf and the Yggdrasil. The dark skies filled with Fenrir’s roar as he pawed at the ground and bared razor-sharp teeth.
“But sometimes, not even fate decides what will happen next.” Opal nodded toward the scene unfolding before them.
Sally’s heart raced as she watched the ancient heroes staring down their own doom. “But fate is . . . well, fate. They’re all going to die out there!”
Opal smiled. “The Yggdrasil will survive, no matter what. Even if the Moon Dog destroys this one, another will spring up to take its place.”
“But, the destruction of the Tree means the destruction of the whole world!”
Opal nodded. “Not just this world, but all the worlds seen and unseen. The entire Cosmos.”
Sally started to cry again, but Opal patted her cheek. “A new one will rise up. Always.”
Opal rose to her feet, pulling Sally with her. Sally’s mouth slackened in surprise as Saga turned away from the Fenris Wolf and smiled at her.
“Do not mourn for our kind,” the goddess said gently. “And do not waste your time blaming yourself for what is about to transpire. But if you have the strength, and the courage, we welcome you to stand with us.”
“The mark of Uruz was no accident.” Opal pointed at Sally’s hand. “You have branded yourself with determination and spiritual initiation. You hold the power of creation in your hands, Moon Witch.”
Opal squeezed Sally’s arm, then walked away to stand with the gods. The Fenris Wolf lifted his dark head to the stormy sky and howled so fiercely that the ground shook beneath Sally’s feet.
Every part of Sally’s body trembled, and she suddenly felt very cold. The storm clouds fell down out of the sky to envelop her, sucking all the light out of her field of vision. She collapsed to the ground and found a hard, smooth surface where before there had been soft grass.
And then everything was quiet.
Sally wasn’t sure how much time had passed, only that she was still surrounded by darkness. Her entire body throbbed with the same dull ache as before. She sat up and rested back against a cement wall, and was instantly hit by a wave of nausea. She pressed her hands against her knees, dismayed to feel deep wrinkles and brittle bones once again.
Carefully, she touched the tender knot on the side of her head where Managarm had struck her. That’s when she smelled the blood.
Her hands and wrists were sticky and wet against her face. She tasted the side of her wrist, and a new surge of panic churn
ed her stomach. “I’m bleeding! Help . . .” Another wave of dizziness and nausea hit. Sally pushed forward onto her hands and knees and tried to breathe slowly through her mouth.
She saw a thin, horizontal line of light off to her right and started crawling toward it. As she drew closer, she could make out the outline of a wide door. Frantically, she felt across the door’s cool surface of sectioned metal for a handle or knob, but couldn’t find one.
Sally smacked the door with her open palm, and the metal rattled with every strike. “Help! Somebody! Let me out!” Short of breath, she dropped back to her knees. “Please!” she cried out weakly. “I’m hurt! Someone help me.”
Sally slumped against the wide door and tried to get her breathing under control. “Oh, Saga,” she sighed softly. “I know I probably deserve this. Just, if there’s anything I can do to stop him . . .”
A low moan came out of the darkness. The metal door shook as Sally bristled against it. “Who’s there?!”
She heard something shift on the floor not too far away, then another quiet moan. And then nothing.
Bracing herself against the door, Sally struggled to her feet and tried again to find some way to get out. She felt the door’s individual sections of metal and the small rollers they were attached to and guessed she was trapped in a garage, but there was no interior handle. She felt her way to the wall, searching for a release or another door leading out, and gasped in surprised relief when she found the pull-cord for a light switch instead.
She yanked down on the string, and a single bulb flared to life overhead. Blinded, Sally threw her hands over her face, then squinted painfully while her eyes adjusted to the light. Concrete floors, concrete walls, concrete ceiling. Not a garage but a rented storage unit, and it was empty—except for a dark lump on the floor in the far corner. Sally blinked and saw it was a young man, dressed entirely in black.
“Oh, no! No, no, no.” Sally sank to her knees and crawled toward the body, forcing herself not to guess which Berserker might be lying near death on the floor in front of her.
“It’s my fault he did this to you,” she called to her fallen warrior. “I should have tried harder to protect you.”
She watched the steady rise and fall of the young man’s breath, then cried out when he shifted slightly.
“Okay,” she whispered more to herself than to the warrior who lay face down on the floor. “Just hang on.”
She crawled closer, then stopped a few feet away. Something wasn’t right.
His black clothes were wet and clung to his body. He was covered in blood. Sally gulped. “What has he done to you?!”
She scrambled forward and reached for him—then recoiled when her fingers touched a thick coat of dark hair where fabric should have been. She hovered over him, trying to get a look at his face. “Adam? David? Peter?”
The youth on the floor turned over on his back and opened his ice blue eyes. “Fenrir,” he said in a husky voice.
A terrified shriek caught in her throat. Sally scrambled away from him but quickly came up against the concrete wall. Her eyes darted around the room looking for some means of escape, but the only way in or out was the locked metal door. Sally curled up in a tight ball, covered her face with her hands, and waited for the Fenris Wolf to attack.
Nothing happened.
After an awkward minute or two, Sally peeked out between her fingers and watched Fenrir push himself up to a sitting position. He was dark and sinewy—and covered head to foot with coarse, black and gray hair, though his face and hands were mostly bare. His narrow, pointed ears were positioned high and toward the rear of his head, and they twitched when she sucked her breath through her teeth at the sight of his long fingers and toes that ended in sharp, black claws.
He sniffed the air, then rested back against the wall opposite Sally, and stared at her.
She hid her face again behind her hands. “Please don’t kill me!”
Fenrir sighed. “But Managarm has left you as an offering to me. My first meal back in my true form.”
Sally squeaked and lurched to her feet to make a dash toward the metal door, but she immediately swooned from her own blood-loss and fell back to the concrete with a dull thud.
“You’re going to hurt yourself if you keep that up,” he offered.
Sally curled up on the floor and cried. “Just get it over with! There’s no other way out.” She heard him rise from the floor, and felt the predator approaching his wounded prey.
“I’ve failed everyone I care about,” she wailed as he drew closer. “He made me call the Berserkers. It’s my fault that Ragnarok is here. I deserve to die like this.”
Fenrir stopped barely a foot away. “You are the Moon Witch?”
Shaking uncontrollably, Sally peeked up at him. “W-what?”
“The Moon Witch, you?” He pointed at her.
“Yes. That’s what the Berserkers called me.”
Fenrir walked back across the concrete floor and sat down. “Then it was your blood that turned me.”
Sally propped her head on her elbow. “What are you talking about?” Forgetting for a moment that she was locked in a storage unit with an inhuman beast who wanted to eat her, Sally sat up and held her arms out in front of her. Her clothing was drenched in blood, and there were deep gashes in her forearms. “Oh, sweet sunshine! How did this happen?”
Fenrir wiped a hand across his own chest, then held up a bloody palm. “Yours.”
“How . . . ?”
“Managarm couldn’t work the ritual of release on his own. He used your blood as a source of magickal energy.” Fenrir held his clawed hands in the air. “So here I am, out of my prison at last. You must be a very potent witch.”
Sally frowned. “Prison? You mean, you think you’re free in here?”
Fenrir laughed. “This? This was just to keep you inside, in a place where Managarm didn’t mind leaving a bloody mess.”
Sally pressed her back against the wall and shivered.
“No, my prison was being trapped as a wolf, unable to transform.” Fenrir sighed darkly. “Odin’s orders.” He glanced at the gouges in Sally’s arms. “You should tend to those wounds.” He leaned toward her, and Sally immediately scrambled away.
He stopped and rested his hands on his knees. “I’m trying to help you.”
“I, I thought you were going to kill me!”
Fenrir smiled easily, revealing his white fangs. “Kill the Moon Witch? I don’t think so.” He moved toward her again. “Just keep still and let me have a look, will you?”
Fighting her instinctive flight response, Sally swallowed hard and let him approach. He took hold of her bloody arms, and then grabbed one of her pant-legs by the seam. Sally couldn’t help but flinch.
“You need bandages.” He ripped both legs of her trousers from ankle to knee, then tore the fabric into strips and started dressing her wounds. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, but I think you’ll survive. You just need some time to regain what you’ve lost.”
Sally felt the pounding of her heart taper off and realized she was breathing more evenly. “Why are you helping me?”
“Why did you help the Moon Dog?”
Sally thought about trying to lie—maybe Fenrir thought she and Managarm might still be allies?—but she was a lousy liar even when she wasn’t suffering from blood loss and a concussion.
“It’s so stupid,” she said. “I thought I could restore balance to the world—you know, repair the damage of industrial pollution and corporate greed, and all the other bad things I could think of. And maybe bring people back to the Old Ways.” She smiled even though tears were trickling down her cheeks. “I just wanted to make things better. When Managarm showed up . . . I guess he just told me what I wanted to hear.”
“So you found the Old Ways weren’t what you thought they were.”
Sally almost laughed. “Not really, no.” She felt calmer, though still wasn’t convinced the Fenris Wolf wasn’t going to have her for
dinner. She watched him closely, studying the strangely canine features of his face. “So . . . This is what you really look like?”
Fenrir nodded. He climbed to his feet and started to pace the length of the storage unit.
Sally was astonished by how short he was—five feet tall at most. Nothing like the monster in her dream. She also noticed the hint of a tail at the base of his spine—and that he was naked. When he reached the end of the unit and turned back toward her, she discreetly looked away.
“I had a lot of time to think while I was imprisoned.” He padded across the floor past her. “And no one to talk to.”
Sally was about to respond, but Fenrir held up a clawed finger to silence her. His ears pivoted slightly forward as he listened to the approaching footsteps. He sniffed the air, then looked at Sally.
“Start screaming.”
Sally’s lower lip trembled. “What?”
Fenrir stalked toward her, fangs bared, and raised his claws as if to attack. “Scream now, as if your life depended on it!”
With the Fenris Wolf so close she could taste his breath on her face, Sally didn’t have to pretend. She shrieked at the top of her lungs. “Please! I thought you weren’t going to do this!”
Fenrir grabbed one of her arms and pressed a thumb into her wounds, and Sally wailed in pain. “Why are you doing this?” He pressed harder into her damaged flesh, and she lost the ability for speech and instead screamed unintelligible syllables that echoed off the walls and hurt her own ears.
And then he let her go. Sally backed away, and could just barely make out the sound of retreating footsteps over her own crying.
“I’m sorry about that,” Fenrir said matter-of-factly. “It’s just that I’m supposed to be in here killing you, and Managarm was listening outside. He’s walked on now.”
Sally was shaking so badly that she had to wrap her arms tightly around herself to keep from falling over. “He’s not going to let you out of here until you do it, is he?”
“Not exactly.” Fenrir walked toward the door, dug his claws into the metal, and rolled the door upward. Night had fallen outside, and cool air rushed in.
Fenrir motioned Sally toward the door, but she just sat on the concrete, blinking at the glare from the street lamps.
“Escape,” he suggested.
Sally rose to her knees. “You’re letting me go?”
Fenrir groaned in frustration. “Get out of here, now. Get as far away as possible.” He crossed the floor and pulled her up to her feet, letting her lean on him as he helped her through the door and out onto the blacktop pavement.
Sally looked up and down at the many rows of identical storage units. From the sound of traffic, she guessed they were near a highway. Just beyond the facility’s tall chain link fence, she spotted a few familiar billboards and knew they had to be in NE Portland, just across the river. If the spell she’d done to locate the Yggdrasil was accurate, they were about forty miles northwest of Pierce Forest.
She looked down at Fenrir, still startled that a creature of such terror and power would be so much smaller than even she was. “You’re going to the Tree now, aren’t you?”
Fenrir bared his teeth, and Sally involuntarily stumbled backward, but then he smiled. “Ragnarok comes soon.” He turned his back on her and ran down the row of storage units.
Valhalla Page 47