“Your mother.”
She felt the blood drain from her face. “Daddy?”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Penelope
Penelope felt her mouth fall open. Ever since they were little, three, four years old, Willow had been obsessed with finding her dad. As are all little girls whose daddies leave them. And Penelope’s dad was dead, so they’d been the two fatherless wretches of Hawk’s Hollow together. Best friends from the start.
Apparently, after all these years, he’d been the one to find her.
“But you’re not—” Willow waved at the gaping hole in his face.
“Human?” He didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink. “I once was. Ain’t no time to talk about that now. You best ride on.”
Willow didn’t budge. “Did you know it was me when you accepted the job?”
He shook his head. “Nah. Not until after…”
Her eyes smoldered. “After you yanked us out of the sky.”
“Listen, we’ve all got to get out of ‘ere,” he said in a tone both anxious and stern.
“I hardly think this is the time for you to start telling me what to do,” Willow snarled.
Penelope could hear the demons massing on the other side of the portcullis. “Well, I will, then.” She pointed over her shoulder. “Come on, Willow.”
“This is not over between us,” Willow called to the bounty hunter, stabbing her finger at him. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”
He nodded slowly. “I reckon I do.”
He pulled out a strange glass blade and cut their magical bonds, then turned and led them to where the horses were hobbled not far off. The Riders mounted up, and Penelope bent down and buried her face in Domino’s mane. A sob rose in her throat. She’d thought she would never see him again. And that was even worse than death.
“I don’t know how to get to Asgard now,” Felicity said. “The orb is gone.”
The guards had taken it from them the first day of their captivity, though they’d left Sekhmet’s book alone, the latter being useless in traveling to the location of the sixth seal.
“I know how,” Penelope said. “We all do. We have the knowledge of all the Riders who came before.”
“Yeah, trying to take over,” Dynah said.
“They won’t,” Penelope said. “Not this time. Not ever again.”
She centered her thoughts and reached for the other part of her, the part that had become a constant companion. They couldn’t rid themselves of it, so it seemed prudent to make the best use of what they had. And, as she suspected, when she focused inward, she did know how to get to Asgard.
It started by summoning the Bifrost.
Not everyone could do such a thing, but they were Riders after all. They could travel anywhere. It was their purpose. Their mission. And so, she called down the bridge of the Norse gods and goddesses, the bridge that would take them to the sixth seal. It came shooting out of the sky toward them, a huge rainbow that glittered as if dusted with silver and frost. It hit the ground in front of them, causing the horses to snort and rear.
“The Bifrost,” Felicity said in a gasp of wonderment.
Domino didn’t seem at all interested in touching the thing, but Penelope squeezed her legs and clucked, and he sprang onto the rainbow bridge with a mighty leap. His hooves clattered on it as if it were made of stone. Penelope could see through it to the ground below, which wasn’t very comforting, but it held solid. She laid low over the gelding’s neck and they galloped along it up into the sky.
The Bifrost wound up through the clouds, spiraling here and there, higher and higher. Time lost all meaning as they climbed. Penelope didn’t know if they’d been riding for five minutes or five hours. All she could see were silver puffs of cloud, the glitter of the bridge beneath them, and the occasional glimpse of darkening sky. She felt the shift in the atmosphere when they crossed into a new world: the air felt abruptly colder and lighter, and it tasted of ice and magic.
Then, quite abruptly, they rode out of the clouds and the bridge flattened. Penelope could see for miles. The bridge stretched almost to the horizon, and at that horizon, she saw a silver palace. Behind the palace, as big as a mountain, rose a tree. It looked green at first glance, like a normal tree, but as she watched it shifted in color to more of a blue, and then red, and then orange. Like the aurora borealis lived in its branches.
Penelope reined in Domino and waited for the others. When they pulled abreast of her, she spoke.
“This is it. No more double agents. They know now the path we have chosen.”
“We were kind of terrible at hiding our true intentions, weren’t we?” Willow said. She shrugged. “Sure didn’t last long.”
“I like it better this way,” Dynah said, a fierce look on her face. “No more hiding.”
“I spent my whole life avoiding fights. Staying quiet,” Felicity said. “But here, at the end, I’m going to go out swinging.”
Their words hung in the air. Penelope knew their chances were slim to none. They all did. But they had made their choice, and that was the only thing a person ever truly possessed.
“To choices,” she said softly, looking at the sparkling path before them.
Then they rode for the palace and the tree of the cosmos, and whatever fate lay ahead.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Felicity
As they rode down the Bifrost, Felicity felt the sixth seal, and saw a glowing line form as it had in Sekhmet’s pyramid. They were close now.
When they drew closer to the palace, Felicity could see that it was made entirely of ice, just like it was in her dreams. It spanned the Bifrost and hung in space, floating free. The tree also seemed to hang in midair, no earth beneath it. It was beautiful and exotic, like Sekhmet’s temple, but in an entirely different way. How could so many different beliefs and religions coexist on the same planet? Felicity felt small and insignificant beneath the crush of the night sky.
The tug of the seal led straight into the palace. Felicity had yet to glimpse a soul. It was as if the entire place were abandoned.
The feeling of dread in her gut came a moment too late.
A host of angels appeared before them on the bridge. Zane and Alinar stood at their head, alongside other figures who wore helmets with antlers and glistening silver armor. The gods and goddesses of Asgard, another two dozen at least. The Riders were outnumbered, to say the least.
“You cannot possibly win,” Alinar called to them. “Why did you escape prison only to ride straight back into our hands?”
“I guess you could say we’re stubborn,” Willow called.
“Stubbornness will not save you,” Alinar said.
“We each have our path in life,” Dynah called. “You made your choice. And we made ours.”
The Riders each knew what they had to do. Through their shared connection, they moved perfectly in sync. Penelope wrapped night around her and vanished. Willow reached out a hand and called to the metallic armor and weapons held by each angel and god. Dynah called to all the dead buried below Asgard, the legions of people who came to rest in this place, the home of their deities.
And Felicity felt the water within the ice within the palace. It sung to her, sweet and ancient music, music from a time when the world was young.
Then, with a twist of her hands, she tore the foundations of the palace and sent it tumbling into space.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Dynah
When Dynah first felt the call of the dead buried at Asgard, she wasn’t quite sure where they all were, since the palace and the great tree were suspended in space. There was no earth, no place for a graveyard.
Or so she thought.
As the Bifrost shuddered beneath her, the realization hit with a wave of both horror and exhilaration. Skeletons began to claw their way out of the rainbow bridge by the hundreds and the thousands. It did not break, as she thought for a moment it might. It was as if the bridge relinquished them, and then snapped b
ack into place, in the same way that it had been both solid and not when they galloped up it.
She took a moment to realize the incredible irony of sending the dead against those they had worshipped in life, and then she pointed both hands at the Norse deities and the angelic forces, and her army charged.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Willow
Willow kept her own weapon sheathed at her side. With a flick of her hand here, a twist of her wrist there, she crushed the warriors within their own armor one by one. Not enough to kill them, but enough to get them out of the way.
She yanked swords, daggers, and spears in midair as they charged her, hurling them off the side of the Bifrost. A couple determined warriors didn’t let go, and so they, too, went flying off into space. She tried to cast her war magic as well, but it seemed the angels and the gods had protected themselves against her known charms.
Dynah’s skeleton army began to pick off the enemy alongside her. The number of their opponents dropped to half in less than five minutes. She saw Alinar disappear in a flutter of wings. “Coward!” she screamed.
And then he was there before her. The one she’d been looking for. The one she had unfinished business with.
“Zane,” she said with a smile. “Just the liar I was looking for.”
“You shouldn’t have come,” he said. His expression was cold, unreadable.
She dismounted Bullet and eyed him, noticing to her sorrow that he wasn’t wearing or carrying anything metallic. “I don’t think you should be so boastful.”
He responded by spinning into her, his wings flaring out. She staggered backwards, nearly toppling off the side of the bridge. When she regained her balance, she lowered herself into a crouch and grinned. “Finally.”
She pulled her metal blade and launched into him.
They whirled back and forth, a deadly maelstrom. Willow struck at Zane with her blade. He blocked or jabbed with wings, fists, and even feet. Elegant and vicious, an art form of violence. All of her pent-up rage since the moment he betrayed her came surging out. She’d never felt anything so powerful.
Their dance continued up and down the Bifrost until she became aware that all the other angels were gone. Most of the gods and goddesses, too. Those that remained were occupied with either trying to save their palace, or fighting off skeletons. Which meant it was just the two of them, the reckoning she’d been yearning for.
But then she made a mistake.
She wasn’t quite sure how she did it. Hubris perhaps, or just a simple overextension. She thrust her blade past Zane’s hip, narrowly missing him, but she went too far and he caught her arm under his. He twisted, and in the blink of an eye she was on the ground. He knelt over her, pinning her against the rainbow bridge, right at the edge. She could feel the whoosh of open space behind her head. He had only to shove, and she would fall, down, down, down…
Their eyes met, and the knowing of it passed between them. The end of their tale.
And then Zane’s river blue eyes flickered, and he stepped off her, disappearing in a blur of wings.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Penelope
Penelope released the night from around her as she climbed up onto the roots of the massive tree. She could see the seal now, or rather, the glow of it, pulsing like a sun at the base of Yggdrasil. Right in the heart of the roots, gnarled at its center.
Carefully, so as not to fall into the endless void below, she made her way along the roots, closer and closer to the trunk. When she reached the thick of the roots, she had to climb through them, like a rabbit in a thicket. And there, at the very core of the tree, sat the seal.
It was not at all like the seal in Sekhmet’s temple. It was not round, or red, or fragile, but square and green and glowing. Like a box made of light. Penelope reached into the roots and slowly, so slowly, pulled it out.
That’s when the tree of life began to collapse.
Chapter Forty
Felicity
Felicity saw it, as she’d seen it in her dreams countless times.
The wolves thundering across the sky. The serpent rising from the depths. The ship of the dead soaring through the night.
They’d failed. The seal had been broken.
Ragnarök had begun.
Chapter Forty-One
Dynah
Dynah felt her sister’s anguish, and she felt the great tree convulsing like a snake that had been shot. And in her mind, she saw the seal in Penelope’s hand, and she knew what had happened. Too late, they saw the trap that had been set.
It was unwinnable, really. Removing the seal was the same as breaking the seal. Leave the seal, and someone else would remove it. An impossible choice.
Except Dynah wasn’t one to give up so easily.
If the tree wanted a heart, she would give it a heart. She called on the stars, pulled them toward her, formed them into a glowing ball of light and magic. Then she sent it right into the center of the tree, where the seal had been. A source of power even greater than the one before.
And Yggdrasil accepted its new heart.
Chapter Forty-Two
The horses landed atop one of the rust-colored buttes overlooking Hawk’s Hollow. Above, the sun burned mercilessly, sitting high in a shockingly turquoise sky. Not a cloud could be seen.
Each of the Riders looked down on their little town and saw it with different eyes. It was not the same place they had left a couple of weeks before. Neither was the world the same as it once was. And neither were they the same, for that matter.
“I never thought I would be happy to see that place,” Willow said with a snort.
“Strange, isn’t it?” Felicity agreed.
“We destroyed it and saved it both,” Penelope added.
“We saved the whole world.” Dynah looked at each of them in turn. “Well, we stopped the Apocalypse at least. There’s a lot of damage still to be undone.”
Willow crossed her arms over her chest. “And there’s still the matter of the seventh seal.”
“Yes, but they can’t break that one if they don’t have the sixth seal,” Dynah clarified.
Penelope patted the satchel at her side. As soon as they’d restored the tree of life, they’d fled from Asgard back to their own realm and found something safe within which to transport the seal. It was wrapped in layers of soft cotton inside a larger box inside the satchel.
“Heaven is bound to be on our heels soon,” Felicity said softly. “But we can take this day to celebrate our brief victory.”
“Yes. No doubt they will.” Willow felt a chill wash over her. She still didn’t know what to make of Zane letting her go back at Asgard. He had held her life in his hands, and he hadn’t taken it. It confused her, and it made her angry. “But I also have business with my father to attend to.”
“Before anything else, we must rescue Atsa,” Penelope said, her voice breaking slightly on his name. “Nothing else before that.”
The other Riders nodded. “Of course,” Felicity said.
“So, rescue Atsa, find the seventh seal, and find a way to use our powers as Riders for good so we can reverse the Apocalypse,” Dynah said. “All while avoiding capture by Heaven. Or Sekhmet. Did I miss anything?”
The four women fell silent. A hawk circled the skies above them, and a wind from the north fluttered their cloaks and teased at their hair. It carried the scent of the rocks and the river and the wild rosemary that grew along its banks.
“Yes, actually,” Willow said. “First, before anything else, we have to hide the sixth seal. Hide it somewhere that no one will ever find it again.”
“Ah,” Dynah said, shooting her a smile. “How could I forget?”
Chapter Forty-Three
Some said that the mines at Ruby Mountain were so deep they reached the center of the earth itself. One of the miners years back said he saw lava down in one of the tunnels. Another said he saw demons from Hell. And yet another claimed he could see the universe in the deepest, darkest, f
urthest tunnel from the surface of the earth.
The last rumor was considered by most the least likely to be true of all the stories, ironically enough.
Because there now was a stretch of blackness in the deepest, darkest tunnel, the one furthest from any whisper of sunlight. It was not just the absence of light, it was night itself. Within it glowed thousands of tiny stars, so close together that only a mouse might have snuck through between them. And beyond the stars was a cage of metal bars that would yield to nothing and no one, save one. And within the cage was a boulder formed of clay that had hardened into an impenetrable block. And within the boulder was…
Well. The tales were tall.
Epilogue
The flames in the pool burned so bright blue they hurt the eyes. Breathtaking in their beauty, but vivid enough to blind a mere mortal. Usually, the flames flickered low and steady. And usually, the trees surrounding the pool stood perfectly still, more like statues than trees.
Something shivered in the air around the pool, whispering through the white trunks. One perfect black leaf trembled and fell into the fire below. The pool flared, flames shooting a dozen feet into the air for nearly thirty seconds. Then it subsided, and the pool calmed.
Until a ripple formed on the surface. And a head broke through the flames. A head, and then a body. The body sat on a horse so pure white, it was more blinding than the flames. The Rider emerged from the pool. Then came another. And another.
Until there were four.
THE END
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