The Unyielding

by Shelly Laurenston

  “Look at it, Crow. Open your eyes to what I’m giving you.”

  With a bored sigh, Erin leaned over and studied the page. After a few seconds, she leaned back, gulping. “Uh . . .”

  “I can’t get you in,” Tyr told her. “You’ll have to do that on your own. But once there . . . this will help you.”

  Erin nodded. “Yes. It will do that.”

  “Then we have a deal?”

  “A deal we have.”

  “Then take it.”

  “Tyr!” Ingjard shook his head. “I can’t allow—”

  The god looked at his minion, and his eyes turned from calm brown to actual fire, forcing Ingjard to back up, head bowed.

  Another Protector dropped down beside them, hands up to placate the angry god. Stieg knew, without even asking . . . it was Eriksen’s ancestor. Not just from the look of him, but the demeanor.

  “Now, now,” the new Protector soothed. “Everyone just calm down.” He placed his hand on his cowering brother’s shoulder. “You know how our Ingjard is about books, mighty Tyr. That’s why he’s a Protector. But he understands this is more important than a book.”

  Yep. Definitely an Eriksen. And as smooth as silk, just like the one Stieg was stuck with.

  “Ingjard, help the Crow to carefully remove that page.” Eriksen gently pushed.

  Ingjard nodded, but before he could make a move, Erin whipped out one of the blades she had secured to her calf, twirling the weapon with her fingers. “No need, gentlemen. I got it.” She stood and pressed the blade to the precious book.

  “You mad cow!” Ingjard cried out before Eriksen had a chance to put his hand over his brother’s mouth and push him back.

  With obvious glee, Erin dragged the tip of her blade down the line of the book from the top to the very end. She returned the blade to the holster and pulled the page out from the book. Then, to add insult to injury, she folded it into fours and slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans. “All right!” she said, clapping her hands together and smiling. “Are we done?”

  Ingjard Ingolfsson dropped to his knees with a wail that echoed throughout all of Asgard.

  Stieg quickly turned away. He wanted to laugh so badly but that would have every Protector in the room coming down on him like an avenging horde. They couldn’t touch Erin, but they could destroy Stieg without a worry. So he kept his mouth shut.

  And it was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do in his entire life.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Ski carefully returned the book he’d removed from the library. Sure it was exactly where it belonged, he turned—and faced Bear.

  “You took that book out of this room?” Bear demanded, his angry eyes narrowed to slits, lips pinched, jaw clenched.

  “Bear—”

  “You, of all people, know that our books should never leave this room. This sacred space couldn’t be more secure, and yet you risk our precious, precious books because you want to read in the bathtub!”

  “I did not take it anywhere near a bathtub. I had it in the kitchen—”

  “Kitchen? Around all those condiments and Haldor’s stew?” he bellowed.

  “Brother, brother, calm yourself.” Ski placed his hand on Bear’s shoulder. “I know protecting our books is your sacred destiny, but this entire house was built for the care and love of these precious books. Now”—he stepped in closer—“what’s really bothering you?”

  “I don’t know.” Bear put his hand over his heart. “I just feel that something horrible has happened to a book somewhere that has my ancestors crying out in horror and pure pain.”

  Ski lowered his hand and stepped back. “Seriously?”

  “Yes, seriously!”

  “My god, brother. We need to get you a dog.”

  “I have a dog.”

  “That’s not your dog. That’s Jace’s dog. Never forget that.”

  “She shares him with me!”

  “Only because you give her no choice!”

  Borgsten appeared in the library archway. “Ski?”

  “What?”

  “They’re back.”

  “Thank, Tyr.” He gestured at Bear. “Because I can’t talk to you anymore.”

  “Why not?” Bear asked, hurt. “I’m friendly!”

  * * *

  While Tyr headed into the kitchen to get at Haldor’s stew—it did smell good—Erin grabbed Stieg’s arm and pulled him toward the side of the house.

  “What are we doing?” he asked as he let her pull him. “What about Haldor’s stew?”

  “I can’t believe you’re still hungry, and we’re making a run for it.”

  “Why are we running?”

  “Because I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to—”

  “Ah-haaaaa!” Jace said, dropping in front of them from the second floor. She pointed at Erin. “You’re trying to make a run for it,” she accused.

  “No, we weren’t.”

  “You’re such a bad liar, Erin Amsel.”

  “I don’t understand. I’ve always thought I was an excellent liar.”

  “You went off with Tyr—”

  “It’s not like he asked us.”

  “—and I know you were at my grandmother’s earlier.”

  “That’s—”

  “Don’t lie to me!”

  Erin turned to Stieg, ready to accuse him of opening his big mouth, but he quickly reminded her, “I’ve been with you. I haven’t had time to say a word to her.”

  She knew he was right, so she pointed at the birds in the trees.

  “Rats! Rats with black wings!” One of the crows squawked at her and Erin unleashed her wings to fly up there, but Jace caught her arm to stop her.

  “Leave them alone”—she yanked her closer—“and tell me what’s going on.”

  Erin pulled her wings back in, gently placed her hands on Jace’s shoulders, leaned in so she could look in her eyes, and replied, “No.”

  Then she walked away from her friend, dragging a confused Stieg behind her.

  * * *

  Stieg looked back at his friend. Sputtering and shocked, Jace stood there watching them walk away.

  “She’s . . . uh . . . starting to yell at us in Russian . . . or something, I think.”

  “Just keep moving. We need to get to your truck.”

  “Why don’t we tell her—”

  “Trust me. Just keep moving.”

  “She’s getting really angry. She’s going to blow.”

  “Keep moving.” Erin pushed him forward. “Get the truck started. Now. I’ll deal with her.”

  * * *

  By the time Stieg got into his truck and started it, Erin was pulling the passenger-side door open and dropping into the seat.

  “Go.”

  Stieg leaned forward and looked past her out the window. “Did you put her in a sleeper hold?” he demanded, seeing poor Jace out cold on the grass.

  “It was the only way to calm her down.”

  “You didn’t calm her down, Erin. You knocked her out.”

  “Tomato, toma—”

  “Erin!”

  “Just go!”

  “You did the same thing to her grandmother. Was that to calm her down, too?”

  “No. That was to kill her, but you stopped me. Look.” Erin gestured at Jace. “The Protectors are already out there to take care of her. We need to go before she wakes up and charges your truck with her head like a bull coming after a matador.”

  Stieg put his truck in drive and pulled away from the house. After they’d been driving for a few minutes, he finally asked, “How do you live with yourself?”

  Rubbing her nose with the back of her hand, Erin admitted, “Really well, actually.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Kera was filling Chloe, Tessa, and Betty in on what was going on—that the last she had heard, their sister-Crow had disappeared with a Raven and a god—when Erin abruptly walked into Chloe’s office.

  “Hi,” she said, surprising them
all.

  “Are you okay?” Kera asked, watching Erin’s gaze quickly sweep the room. “Ski told me—”

  “Yeah, we need to talk.”

  “Okay.” Kera motioned her into the room. “Talk.”

  “Not here.” Erin walked out and Kera looked at the others.

  Chloe immediately got to her feet and came around her desk. “Now I’m fascinated.”

  Erin led them down the back kitchen stairs until they reached the lowest levels of the house, where the first LA Crows had erected a large statue of Skuld and on more than one occasion had held blood sacrifices. Thankfully those days were over. If they weren’t, Kera would have made it her goal in life to shut that shit down.

  But other than to torture her just before her welcome party a few weeks ago, the Crows had told Kera they never used this area. It was “weird” and “creepy” and many simply didn’t want to be “down there if there’s a goddamn earthquake.”

  Erin looked around the main room and nodded her head. “Okay, good. This will work.”

  “To talk?” Kera asked. She didn’t understand why they couldn’t just talk in Chloe’s office.

  “Well, that too.”

  “What is going on with you?” Tessa finally asked.

  Erin faced them. “Okay, this is the deal. We need to find the Carrion.”

  “Find them? How do we know they’re here?”

  “They’re here,” she insisted. “And I need to track down the one with Hel’s rune on his palm, cut it off—”

  “His palm?” Tessa demanded.

  “Most likely his whole hand. And this space . . . we need to set it up like a little den and allow Tyr to come here quietly so he can read our books.”

  When no one else asked, Kera did. “Why?”

  “Because that’s how I got him to give me the map.”

  “What map?”

  “The map of the Nine Worlds.”

  “Is it magical?” Betty asked.

  “It’s something. When I looked at it, there was movement on the page. I didn’t really have time to study it, though.”

  “But you made a deal with him for the map?”

  “Yes.”

  Chloe frowned. “To use our house to . . . read in?”

  “Privately read in. And access to our library.”

  “Our library? You mean our books?”

  “Well . . . yeah. You know, our Stephen Kings. Our Nora Roberts. Our Dean Koontz . . . ezzzzz.” Erin frowned. “Koontzeses? No. That doesn’t sound right. Let’s just stick with Dan Browns.”

  “Erin,” Kera tried, “I need you to focus, sweetie.”

  “I’m sorry.” A phrase Kera had heard Erin Amsel say only once before. To anyone. “I’ve got a lot on my mind right now and I sense things are speeding up exponentially.”

  “Look at you with the big words,” Betty teased.

  Erin smiled. “I have my moments.”

  Betty’s connection with Erin was one of the reasons Kera kept the woman close. She was considered an “elder” Crow, a term that pissed Betty off to no end. “I’m not that old,” she’d complain, but she’d been a Crow for many years. And a talented one, considering she’d lasted as long as she had.

  More important, she knew how to cut through Erin’s occasional bullshit like a samurai sword through a side of beef.

  “So what else did you agree to?” Betty asked, one eyebrow raised.

  “Nothing, surprisingly. The Four Horsemen just wanted to give me information.”

  Chloe’s back straightened. “You talked to the Four Horsemen alone?”

  “No. Stieg was there. And Jace’s grandmother, but don’t tell Jace that. Even though she seems to already know, pretend you don’t know anything when she asks.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’ll just get crazy and we can’t deal with that now. That’s why I knocked her out at Ski’s place.”

  Betty laughed. Loud.

  But Kera was desperately trying to understand the logic of the one woman she’d tried to kill with her bare hands. Because Erin was that frustrating! “You knocked her out?”

  “Sleeper hold. Do it just right and you can put her out for ten, maybe fifteen minutes.”

  “Or kill her!”

  “Doubtful. She comes from very strong blood. Jace’s grandmother didn’t even nod off before Stieg pulled me away—”

  “Her grandmother?” Kera bellowed.

  “She—”

  Kera pointed her finger at Erin. “Don’t you dare say she started it!”

  “Except that she did,” Erin said under her breath.

  “I don’t understand what’s wrong with you. Why were you even at her grandmother’s?”

  “She told me to come over and not to tell Jace. And until the Horsemen walked into her backyard, I had no idea the mean bitch had some weird, twisted relationship with them. That,” Erin suddenly added, “was probably sexual, because the woman looks as old as Methuselah. She probably knew the Four Horsemen when they were still teens.”

  “Why,” Tessa abruptly cut in, “is Stieg Engstrom involved in any of this?”

  “I can’t shake him,” Erin admitted with an annoyed sigh. “You sleep with a guy once . . .”

  Kera pressed her fingers to her temples. “Jace said that was made up.”

  “It was, to hide the fact there was a hit out on me—”

  “What?”

  “—but then I was almost burned alive by that religious cult—”

  “What religious cult?”

  “—and afterward, I was so worked up, and he was, you know, there, and kind of vulnerable so I just took advantage. Now I can’t get him to go away. It’s like my pussy is magic or something.” She shook her head. “Erin’s Magical Pussy Tour.”

  Betty and Chloe were laughing so hard, they had to lean against each other to keep upright. Tessa just seemed confused, and Kera could only say one thing. “You are clinically psychotic.”

  “There is that school of thought—oh my god!” Erin suddenly burst out, forcing Kera to step back from outright fear. “I left Engstrom upstairs!” Erin tore out of the room.

  Kera’s mouth opened as she watched her friend run. “I was a United States Marine,” she finally said to a quiet Tessa. “The pay was shit, but I had respect, an important job, and I helped save America from our enemies. Now I’m reduced to doing this—and oh, my God! Would you two stop laughing!”

  * * *

  Erin ran into the kitchen just as she heard Stieg tell a room full of her sister-Crows that, “Yeah, I never thought she’d pimp me out to a god.”

  Accusing eyes focused on her and Erin froze in the doorway. “Okay . . . before anyone judges me—”

  Pelted with donut holes left over from that morning’s breakfast, Erin turned and covered her head.

  “You pimped him out?” Leigh—her own teammate!—accused, her hand resting on Stieg’s oversized shoulder while the big bastard ate—again!—a large bowl of cereal.

  How much food did the man need? How had he survived on the streets if he needed that much food?

  “Do you know what he’s been through?” Maeve whispered, as if Stieg wasn’t sitting less than five feet away from her and listening to everything.

  “Well, since you guys keep telling me . . . yeah,” she whispered back.

  “Then how could you?”

  “Why do you keep whispering? He’s sitting right there!”

  The sound of running feet had Erin turning, but she only had a chance to glimpse Jace’s face before her friend tackled her to the ground.

  * * *

  Spooning more cereal into his mouth, Stieg looked around at the Crows, waiting for them to get in between Erin and Jace. But when no one moved . . .

  Sighing, Stieg dropped the spoon back into his bowl, and walked over to a screaming Jace and a laughing Erin.

  How the woman could laugh when all this was going on spoke to the very high level of insanity she must deal with on a daily basis. Most people w
ould have crumpled by now, but not Erin.

  Never Erin.

  He grabbed Jace around the waist and lifted her off Erin. He was debating what to do with her when Eriksen rushed in. Late as always.

  Damn Protectors. Stieg handed Jace off to the smaller man before helping Erin back to her feet.

  “I have to say,” Erin announced, “I am a little surprised and disappointed at the lack of loyalty in this room and I think—don’t you dare throw that donu—”

  The chocolate glazed donut hit Erin right in the forehead and when it fell away, it left a smear of dark chocolate behind.

  Deciding it was best to get out of there before Erin incinerated the entire room, Stieg grabbed her around the waist and walked out. He went out the first door he came to, which took them into the big backyard. He set her down, already thinking what he hoped were soothing words that would make her feel better about the whole thing. What came out was, “What is wrong with you?”

  He asked that question because, with that chocolate glaze still on her forehead, Erin was hysterically laughing. Arms around her waist, she bent over, tears dripping from her eyes.

  “You’re crazy,” he finally told her, when she was laughing so hard she couldn’t answer his first question. “You’re ridiculous and you’re crazy.”

  * * *

  Kera and the others made it upstairs to find Erin and Stieg gone and their fellow sister-Crows crowded around the kitchen windows.

  Kera stopped and watched, listening to the women whispering about whatever they were watching.

  “She’s oblivious, isn’t she?”

  “Oh, my God. He likes her so much.”

  “You think? It’s so hard to tell with him. He always looks like he’s working the customer service desk at the DMV.”

  “I always thought he looked like a postal worker who’s about one write-up away from losing it completely.”

  “Personally, I think the last donut throw was a bit much . . . Annalisa.”

  Kera’s fellow Strike Team member smirked before replying, “It slipped from my fingers.”

  “You wanted to see if you could make her snap,” Alessandra accused Annalisa, which was probably true.

  “And yet, I can never find anything that sets Erin off . . . except Kera.” Annalisa jerked her thumb back at Kera and everyone glanced at her before turning back to watch Erin and Stieg through the window.