She’d do it for her sisters, because she was loyal to the Crows. But she wouldn’t enjoy it.
Not like the rest of them did.
Grinning her more “predatory and terrifying” smile, Annalisa got into her Jag and headed home. She owed drinks to her helpful sister-Crows and she wasn’t about to hit some hot bars with overpriced drinks dressed like a college professor who hadn’t had sex since the Bush administration.
CHAPTER FOUR
“You know, I think that’s my goat.”
Stieg forced his eyes open and glared at the woman staring down at him. “What?”
Erin yawned, stretched, and then insisted, “I think that’s my goat.”
Stieg looked over. The goat was under the covers with him, her little head resting on his chest.
“No, it’s not.”
“I’m pretty sure it is. The one I got for Kera’s pre-welcome party.”
“What the fuck is a pre-welcome party?”
“The party she thought I was throwing her but wasn’t. Her real party was outside. You were there. For the real party anyway. Not the pre-welcome party.”
“And what was the goat for?”
“She thought I was going to sacrifice it. But I wasn’t. I was just doing it to torture her.” She sat down on the edge of his bed, very near him. “Personally, I don’t understand blood rituals. They are so goddamn messy.”
“Why are you still talking?”
“Don’t worry. I’m not asking for her back or anything. She kept eating Chloe’s expensive sheets anyway . . . so . . . yeah.”
“You’re still talking.”
“Wanna go get breakfast? I’m hungry.” And healed. Her wounds and bruises were almost completely gone. The woman healed faster than most of the Clan warriors. “If you want, I can give you a platonic kiss on the forehead like Karen does to get your day started.”
“No.”
“Bitchy to bed, bitchy to rise, I see,” she teased. “Come on.” She tapped his arm. “Let’s haul it out!”
Stieg watched Erin walk out of the room before looking at his goat and asking, “It’s going to be a long day with her, isn’t it?”
* * *
Tessa Kelly returned to the hospital where she’d once worked, in the heart of Korea Town.
It hadn’t been an easy job, but it had taught her everything she knew as a nurse. That had been her First Life, though, when she’d had simple plans and simple dreams. That was a long time ago. She was into her Second Life now but she hadn’t had to change who she was to enjoy her new existence. She’d managed to keep all her old contacts, which helped at times like this.
“Candy.”
Candy Yun came from around the intake desk and pulled Tessa into a big hug. “How have you been doing? How’s life with the rich and famous drug addicts?”
“Fabulous as always,” Tessa replied, laughing. “So what’s going on?”
“Did you happen to catch the news yesterday? Because I think this one’s right up your alley.”
“What are you talking about?”
Candy led her down the hallway. “Two females came in yesterday after they fell off an overpass.”
“What?”
“By all rights, they should be dead. Or at least new tenants of our long-term-care ward.”
“But they’re not?”
“Broken arms and that’s about it.”
As they reached the end of the hall, Tessa stopped and gazed at Candy, her mouth slightly open.
“Yeah,” Candy said when she saw Tessa’s expression. “That’s what we’re saying.”
“Why didn’t you—”
“Separate them? Yeah, we tried that. We’ve separated them . . . six times? They keep finding each other.”
They turned the corner and at the second room, the yelling became impossibly loud. Candy pushed the door open and Tessa stepped inside.
One female was trapped on her hospital bed, her right arm in a cast, and a pillow pressed down on her face. The other female was on top of her, holding that pillow in place with her good arm. Her other arm was in a cast.
“I think they’re yours,” Candy said.
It wasn’t something they’d ever discussed. That Tessa was a Crow and often the one who greeted the new girls. Hell, Candy probably didn’t even know about the Nine Clans or the Nordic gods or any of it. But when a nurse worked in a hospital long enough, she learned things. Picked up things.
Apparently Candy had picked up that Tessa seemed to be drawn to women who managed to survive the unsurvivable, which was true. But she was usually given a heads-up by Chloe that there was a new girl to get. But not this time. And two at once? That was super rare.
Tessa watched the women fighting on the bed. “What makes you think they’re mine?” she asked as the one being pinned down managed to get her foot under her assailant and shove her across the room. Both women scrambled to their feet and squared off, growling at each other like wild animals.
That’s when Tessa noticed something interesting . . . they were twins.
Identical twins.
Twins who apparently hated each other.
“Come on, bitch!” one screamed at the other. “Come on!”
They charged, meeting in the middle of the hospital room, ignoring their casts as they each dragged the other to the floor.
Tessa let out a breath before looking back at a smirking Candy. “Yeahhhhh,” she reluctantly admitted, “they’re probably mine.”
* * *
Erin was pouring two glasses of orange juice when she heard a woman scream. She spun around, ready for battle when she realized it wasn’t a woman screaming . . . it was the damn goat.
She stood in front of Erin, staring up at her with those odd eyes, and made that sound again.
“Why is she screeching at me?” Not a lot put Erin on edge, but that sound was doing a damn good job.
“She’s hungry,” Stieg said as he walked out of the bedroom wearing black sweatpants and no shoes. “And probably needs a walk.” He grabbed a leash and held it out to her. “Can you walk her while I get cleaned up?”
Erin looked at the leash and back up at the man. “Seriously?”
“I don’t want her shit in my house.”
“Ewww.” Erin took the leash just so they could stop this conversation. “You know you can’t keep her, right?”
“Why not?”
“She’s a herd animal. She needs other goats to keep her company. And when she goes into heat, she’s going to get really loud on you.”
Stieg stared at Erin a long moment before he asked, “How the hell do you know that?”
“My father’s cousins had a dairy farm in Wisconsin and we’d go to visit in the summer.” She put the collar and leash on the goat. “I can’t believe I’m about to walk a goat.” She gazed at him. “Is this my life now? Goat walking?”
“For once you’re doing a nice thing for someone other than yourself. You should roll with that.”
“I do nice things for people.” When the Viking gave a grunt that sounded dangerously close to a laugh, Erin turned away from him and headed toward the door. The goat followed behind, without Erin having to pull on her leash.
“And if one person complains to me about this goat, I’m sending them to you,” she yelled back at him before slamming the door closed.
Out into the hall, into the elevator, and down to the first floor. Erin was just walking out the door as Karen was about to step in. The pair smiled at each other, but Erin quickly noticed that the goat ducked behind Erin, like she was afraid of Karen.
“Hey,” Karen greeted, sifting through her mail, not even noticing. “Sleep all right?”
“Yeah. Stieg’s couch is surprisingly comfortable.”
Karen lowered her hands, the mail slapping against her thighs. “He made you sleep on the couch? I swear! That man!”
Erin had to laugh. She knew that Karen didn’t understand the relationship not only between Erin and Stieg, but between Cr
ows and Ravens.
There had been a time when Ravens and Crows went to war with each other constantly. After several failed truces and some necessary alliances through the centuries, though, they’d learned to tolerate each other. Sort of.
That still didn’t mean a Raven gave up his bed to a visiting Crow. Not unless there was fucking to be had.
Karen gazed at Erin’s face, blinking hard. “You heal fast.”
“Oh. Yeah. Genetics. The Amsels are a fast-healing people.”
Karen frowned. “Really? I figured someone as pale as you would be bruised for days.”
“Makeup helps.”
“Makeup? It doesn’t look like you’re wearing makeup.”
“It’s the natural look. Wearing makeup so that you look like you’re not.”
“You can do the natural look on bruises and a hole in your head?”
“Uh-huh. Well, I better get going,” Erin quickly said, floundering.
“I can’t believe he has you walking his goat.” Karen shook her head. “I can’t believe he has a goat. He picks up the weirdest strays. Why can’t he just get a dog or a cat like everyone else?” She shrugged. “I used to have a lizard that I found in the trash. But nope . . . he’s gotta be . . . Stieg.”
With a sigh, she moved toward the elevator and Erin continued down the building’s front steps, the goat now pulling her until they were outside.
Once they were on the street, the goat seemed to calm down and walked beside her with no problem. She was like a well-trained dog on the leash.
It was weird.
The walk took longer than Erin thought it would because the goat continued to make stops to graze on bushes and plants along the way. When she dove headfirst into someone’s rosebushes, Erin decided it was time to take her back to Stieg’s place.
A few hundred feet from the apartment building Erin stopped walking, her senses alive, in tune to everything around her. The goat stopped, too, gazing up at her.
Erin crouched down and petted the animal’s head. “You are such a good girl,” she told her, unclipping the leash from her collar. “So good that if you get scared, you’re going to run back to Stieg’s building, and not just run away. Because Stieg is very attached to you. I can tell these things.” She wrapped the leash around her hand. “But you don’t have anything to worry about, because I’ll protect you. Okay?”
Smiling, Erin stood, breathed in . . . then took two steps and swung her leash-covered fist through the passenger-side window of the black car parked on the street. Her hand went through the glass and she punched the man several times before grabbing his throat.
She hadn’t just attacked randomly. They’d been watching her.
As Erin choked the passenger with one hand, the man on the driver’s side reached under his leather jacket.
“Ah-ah!” she barked, making a grab for him with her free hand.
But before she could get hold of him, the goat rammed the car door, startling all of them. Erin, however, recovered first, slamming the driver’s head against the steering wheel.
The man she was choking tried to get his hands around her throat, but someone else grabbed her by the waist and yanked her away. With her grip still on the passenger’s neck, he was forced to go with her out of the car window. Stieg was beside her, yanking the man away from Erin and lifting him off his feet with one hand while holding her back with the other.
“What are you doing, Crow?” Stieg demanded, sounding awfully pissed.
How was this her fault? “He started it!”
“By existing?”
“By being from the Vatican.” She stepped back to get Stieg’s hand off her shoulder. “Aren’t you, mother—”
“Hey!” Stieg cut in. “A little respect.”
“What kind of Viking are you?”
“One that respects a long-standing truce.”
“The Crows don’t have a truce with these people.” She pointed at the passenger, his face bloody and swelling from the pummeling she had given him. “So keep that in mind when you think about lingering around me.”
Erin grabbed the goat’s collar and led her back toward the building with her blood-and-leather-covered hand.
Once inside Stieg’s apartment, the door closed firmly behind her, she looked down at the very helpful goat, gently stroking the horns that had left a deep depression in her stalkers’ door.
“You are such a good girl. Yes, you are.” She crouched down and used both hands to rub the animal’s neck and shoulders. “But you need to talk to your boy about wearing a shirt when he’s out of the house, because he’s really hot without a shirt.”
The goat leaned against Erin’s knee and Erin took that as a tacit agreement.
* * *
Stieg stared down at the man holding a handkerchief to his broken nose. “Have you decided that life’s not worth living?”
“She attacked us.”
“You were stalking her. You’re lucky that all that happened to you was bird shit on the roof of your car.”
“What?” He turned to see that a load of bird shit decorated their immaculately cleaned, four-door, late-model sedan. “Oh, come on!”
“Be grateful. They could have pecked your eyes out.”
“Stieg?” Mr. Matucka called out from his store front. “Everything okay?”
Matucka had been great to Stieg since he’d moved in. Probably because every time Stieg went into his general store—which was several times a week—he didn’t buy just one quart of milk, but four quarts of milk, a few pounds of fruit, an entire display box of candy, a case or two of beer . . . you know, staple supplies.
“Everything is fine, Mr. Matucka. Thanks.”
“Okay. Let me know if that changes.”
Stieg waited a few seconds until the old man went back into his store before he asked, “Want to explain to me why you are here?”
When neither man answered right away, Stieg pulled his phone from the back pocket of his jeans. “Fine. I’ll just call Chloe Wong and let her know the Vatican was coming after one of her sister-Crows.”
“If we were going after her,” the driver snapped through the broken passenger-side window, “we’d have sent the nuns.”
The driver was right. The Vatican never would have sent these honorable men if they wanted the Crows challenged. They would have sent the Sisters of St. Mary Magdalene Convent of All Saints. Or, as the Clans knew them, the Chosen Warriors of God.
It was because of the bloody and brutal War of the Sisters that the Nine Clans had agreed to a truce with the Vatican. But that truce had been signed centuries ago and the Crows had joined the Nine only recently. So as far as the Vatican was concerned, the Crows were still a dangerous enemy with a vicious past.
“Then what do you want?” Stieg asked.
“We were asked to check on her. Make sure she’s safe.”
Stieg started laughing, something even he admitted he rarely did.
“I’m not lying,” the man argued, defensive. “We were asked to ensure she was still breathing.”
“You want me to believe that someone’s not only coming after a Crow . . . but Erin Amsel? Seriously?” He laughed more. He couldn’t help it!
That was like someone saying they were purposely trying to enrage Jace. No one purposely enraged Jace, the Crow’s resident Berserker. No one who wanted to live anyway.
“Why would anyone tell you to check on Erin Amsel?”
“We don’t ask why. We just do.”
“How sad for you,” Stieg said sincerely.
“You can keep your pity, pagan. You people have brought us all to the brink of End Times with your dead religion and you have the nerve to—”
Stieg stepped into the man, towering over him, cutting off his next words. He briefly wondered if this was what it was like for the monks that met the first Vikings on the shores of English land. “We ain’t that dead. Not yet, priest. And we can take care of our own.”
“Your own? You still call the Crow
s slave.”
“Not to their faces.”
“You want us gone, we’re gone. But do yourself a favor, pagan. Keep an eye on your friend. For her sake as well as the sake of the world.”
* * *
Erin looked up from her phone when Stieg walked back into his apartment. “Hey, we got new Crows at the House. Twins. Weird, huh? We’ve never had twins before.” She glanced off. “Wonder how they died.”
Stieg stood in the doorway, staring at her.
“What?” She rolled her eyes. “What did those priests say? They started it,” she quickly accused . . . again. “I was just walking your goat. And your goat needs a name. Something cute . . . but regal.” She thought a moment. “Daphne.” Erin nodded. “We’ll call her Daphne.”
“I’m not calling her Daphne.”
“What’s wrong with Daphne? It’s a perfectly—”
“Hilda.”
“Hilda? What kind of name is Hilda?”
Stieg closed the door and moved toward her. “A good Norse name.”
“Is there such a thing?”
He stood in front of her . . . still bare chested. Only among the Nine had she seen men so cut. Not just their abs, either, but their shoulders, arms, and God, their necks. Thick like the base of ancient tree trunks. She could hang off that man’s neck like a monkey and be perfectly happy.
The damn thing was distracting. Stieg Engstrom was distracting.
Erin had never noticed that before. Yet as he stood so close, she couldn’t ignore it now. Heat came off him in soothing waves while his dark gray eyes glared at her.
“You need to tell me what you did,” Stieg ordered.
“And you’ll need to be way more specific than that.”
“Who were you following last night? And why?”
Not in the mood to answer—because she knew it would get right back to her sister-Crows—Erin tried to step around Stieg, but he blocked her with his big body and stopped her from moving by placing his arms on either side of her, hands gripping the kitchen bar behind her.
The Unyielding Page 6