“I saw one angry eyeball and decided that voluntarily plummeting to my own death was more preferable than his company. I’m guessing it was your old butler.”
I narrowed my eyes. Dean—or as I now knew him, Odin. “Let’s go kick his ass,” I growled.
“Cool.”
And Grimm took to the skies.
Chapter 7
Grimm landed in the center of the clearing between two adult figures and Alice. I hopped off his back and called my rainbow staff to my hand. It struck my palm with a meaty thwack, but I barely felt it.
Alex and Talon were nowhere to be seen, but Sir Bedivere’s body—wearing only white pants and a flowing white shirt—remained where I had left him. The pair must have stuck to our plan, taking the armor along with them. That was good, at least.
Grimm had gone to stand beside Alice—who was clutching my satchel as if willing to die over it. I bit back a grin, proud of her defiance. And I slowly turned to face my uninvited guests, my staff suddenly crackling with power and blinding light. The elements in the air practically purred, begging me to use them in combat.
I think I was smiling as I stared them down. But it definitely wasn’t friendly. I had strong feelings when it came to Odin and his betrayal of my trust, and I hadn’t exactly defined what those feelings were yet.
He’d helped me, and he’d lied to me. Where that placed him on my trust scale was yet to be determined.
And I definitely hadn’t expected his guest, who only served to increase my suspicion.
Odin wore thick gray robes and even had a wide-brimmed, pointed hat on his head, but it was old and bent at the middle so that it flopped backwards. He had a long white beard, and one piercing blue eye. His other socket was covered by a leather eyepatch with metal runes stamped across the surface.
And he was currently holding his own insanely dangerous spear—Gungnir—so I wisely decided not to let go of mine.
Grimm and Alice stepped up to flank me on either side, and they had their take no shit faces on, mirroring me.
“You shall not pass!” I growled, thumping my staff into the snow.
Alice let out a surprised giggle, but Odin and the woman just frowned at me, not catching the Gandalf reference. Which was disappointing, because he was wearing the perfect cosplay for it.
In myths, when he appeared in this fashionable ensemble, he was attempting to disguise himself, trying to pass as a wandering traveler. It was actually one of his known aliases—the Wanderer.
But he was failing epically, thanks to his companion. He must have had a family meeting planned, because the person beside him was—
“Freya, meet the bane of my existence, the source of my gray hairs, and…my pride and joy,” Odin finally admitted with a faint, begrudging smile, “Nate Temple.” Then he glanced at Grimm and Alice thoughtfully. “To clarify, he’s the one without shoes. Not the talking horse.”
“Alicorn, Cyclops. I will also accept Bifröst fixer or Rainbow killer,” Grimm growled, scraping a hoof through a muddy puddle, somewhat ruining the threatening impact. “Bitch.”
Odin narrowed his lone eye at Grimm, but he didn’t rise to the challenge.
The woman tsked gently but seemed to be masking an amused grin. There were contradicting stories about Odin’s wife—some said he had married Frigg, and others Freya. Some said they were the same woman. Others spoke of an affair. And those were just the top-level theories.
I decided I had more important things to think about—like the Knightmares in St. Louis—than my fraudulent butler’s love life.
Freya was stunning, majestic, and royal in every sense of the word. She wore a simple white toga with a bronze brooch over one shoulder to hold it in place. Her golden hair hung freely, trailing over her shoulders and down her back, and although pleasantly curved, she looked to have very little fat on her, maybe weighing in at one-twenty, tops.
And her eyes were sea-foam green. I could sense the raw power crackling within her and, although I couldn’t place what kind of power it was, I knew enough to decide that she was likely every bit as dangerous as her husband, the Allfather.
“It’s a pleasure,” she said, briefly meeting my eyes. She looked…exhausted, now that I looked closer.
“Lady,” Grimm warned, sounding amused. “People only say that to Nate one time before things go to hell. Get ready for disappointment. You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Odin nodded his agreement, not seeming aware that he had done so. “If you’re finished moping about, we have vital things to discuss.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I seem to recall a story about you hanging around a tree, moping about, as you call it.”
He scoffed. “Oh? If you’re wanting to walk a mile in my shoes, would you like me to help stab your eye out, or did you want to do it yourself?” he asked, extending Gungnir.
I wanted to argue, but he had a fair point. So I glared at him instead.
“I’ve arranged a schedule for you,” Odin muttered, withdrawing his spear. And then the two of them simply turned their backs on us, walking towards the Gateway—which was limned with angry green sparks.
I slammed my staff into the ground, allowing more light to illuminate it from within so that it looked like I was holding a kaleidoscope of carnage. “What makes you think I’m going anywhere with you? That you have any right to make me a schedule?” I demanded in a low, menacing tone. “I’ll give you exactly two hours to impress me, Allfather. After that, I have more important things to do,” I said, thinking about the Knightmares in St. Louis again.
“Mani-pedi time,” Grimm said, chuckling. “Gettin’ my hooves done.”
Odin glanced over his shoulder—with his one good eye shadowed by the brim of his ridiculous hat—but he didn’t stop walking. “More important than helping your best friend, Gunnar? He and Ashley are injured, and their pups might not survive their birth.” Then they stepped through the Gateway.
My sphincter tightened and the light winked out of my staff as I dropped it into the mud.
Gunnar and Ashley…
They were having twins. Oh my god. I was going to be a godfather! Depending on how long I’d spent here, that unqualified promotion could come to fruition in the next five minutes.
Or not ever, if Odin was telling the truth.
Grimm was already scooping my staff up in his teeth and shouldering me towards the Gateway. “Alice has your purse. Go, go, go!”
“Satchel, asshole,” I snapped instinctively. “What about the letters?” I asked, not seeing them anywhere.
Alice patted my purse—no. Satchel. “In here,” she reassured me. Then she promptly hung my satchel on Grimm’s horn when he wasn’t looking. He narrowed his eyes at her, but he must have seen the wisdom in not letting the smallest person in our trio carry the luggage.
I scanned the area for anything else I might need to take or hide, because I was pretty much abandoning the only home I had known for the last…well, however long I’d been living here.
My eyes settled on Sir Bedivere, and I let out a curse. I called up my wizard’s magic and buried him under several feet of snow and ice, smothering him like a blanket and concealing him from view. I used my magic to set a boulder on top of the mound so that I could find him later.
Then I grabbed Alice’s hand, and tugged her after Odin and Freya. Staring through the Gateway, it sure didn’t look like St. Louis. The only other place I could imagine Odin taking my injured friends was Asgard, the home of the Aesir gods—where the Allfather ruled as king.
I felt a momentary thrill at the thought of seeing Asgard for the first time, but it was short-lived as I envisioned my friends in danger.
Another part of me wondered how much time I had before I would be expected to babysit two infant werewolves. It wasn’t like I could go fight a war in Camelot with two babies strapped to my back.
That would be inconvenient.
No.
Irresponsible.
Chapter 8
I jogge
d through the Gateway with Alice in tow, ready to see wonders beyond wonders—gleaming palaces in a city of clouds, einherjar taunting each other over a table of mead-pong while Valkyries soared in the skies above. Maybe even a few buxom, lingerie-clad, female dwarves wrestling in an inflatable pool of slippery Jörmungandr drool. The Bifröst twinkling above the pristine city like a brand-new metro rail.
Except…we must have arrived in Asgard a couple of millennia too early because instead of a Norse frat party or an exponentially-advanced, utopian civilization, we stepped into a wildly overgrown, hilly forest that hadn’t seen an axe for thousands of years. The lowest sections of leafy canopy were at least fifty feet above our heads.
And it was raining so hard that I immediately thought of the Old Testament cruise line, the HTV We Noah Guy.
Torrents of frigid rain struck the leaf cover in a deafening roar, so heavy that dozens of thick streams—like miniature waterfalls—cascaded through it to splash onto the spongy, mossy ground all around us.
Our breath visibly fogged before our faces in dense, opaque clouds, making us look like we were a gang of little steam engines. Alice giggled, clapping delightedly as she began auditioning for the Cheech and Chong reboot, Puff Puff Don’t Pass, waving her arms through the thick vapor.
Then she began stomping in the puddles, soaking my clothes before I managed to jump clear. Like a startled turtle, my testicles instantly reacted, racing to see which one could retreat back up into my body the fastest.
I hopped up and down, ignoring my sudden shivering as I silently begged gravity to do me a solid and evict the selfish bastards, but it was no use. Like the Jefferson’s, they’d moved on up in the world—but to the North side, to that deluxe penthouse in my insides.
Why was this cold bothering me when I’d treated the peak of my mountain like a goddamned nude beach in France?
It took me a few moments to recall one of Alice’s first lessons—a way to ignore extreme temperatures, because my Fae magic hadn’t helped me by default, only when I was consciously wielding it. Since I wasn’t biologically Fae, my body wasn’t naturally immune like hers, but when my power was in full control, it had begun kicking on all by itself, allowing me to tan in the snow, if I so chose.
But the rapid change in my circumstances—from living full-time in the primitive, Fae mindset to suddenly remembering that I was actually Nate Temple—had jolted me out of my recent habits. It was going to take some time for me to master a healthy balance between the powers and instincts of Wylde and Nate. Not that we were two different people, but we saw and approached the world in two vastly different ways.
Like having two—sometimes opposing—sets of reflexes. Much like…I grunted…PTSD in veterans—going from a war zone where every loud bang could herald death to suddenly hearing a loud bang back home when someone’s car backfired.
So I took a deep breath, consciously willing myself to relax and lower my pulse, giving me back a modicum of self-control.
My pride and joy decided they rather preferred their new accommodations, but at least I wasn’t shivering anymore.
I glanced up at the canopy, shaking my head in awe. Up there in the unobstructed rain, visibility had to be less than ten feet, and I idly wondered how this frosty weather wasn’t actually hail or snow rather than rain.
It reminded me of the freakish rainstorms I had seen in Miami when I had visited several years ago—except remarkably colder. The weather could turn at the drop of a hat—from clear blue skies to ominous black clouds, instantly raining so hard that drivers on the highway would actually stop, put their cars in park, and then turn on their hazard lights.
Grimm shook his mane behind me, cursing under his breath. I turned to give him a glare for soaking me, but he was too busy staring up at the canopy to notice. He was still holding my rainbow staff in his teeth, and my satchel on his horn. I was simply grateful that his wet dog impersonation hadn’t launched the satchel into a puddle or clocked Alice in the head with my staff. Odin’s Gateway had also snapped shut, trapping us…wherever here was.
“Athgard hath gone to hell,” Grimm muttered in a heavy lisp thanks to my staff still clamped in his teeth. He must have assumed the same destination as me.
Freya frowned at Grimm. “Not Hel, Niflheim,” she said, in a voice as smooth and reassuring as a caring mother’s when her young child woke up in the middle of the night from a bad dream, crying that there was a monster in their closet.
In that example, my personal experiences had been quite different. When I’d woken up from a childhood nightmare or monster in the closet, my parents had both burst into the room with weapons drawn and balls of molten fire in their hands, ready to slaughter some bitch-ass monsters.
Upon seeing no immediate threats, my dad would toss me a wooden sword and, in a somber, deadly-serious tone, inform me that we needed to go on a hunt to make sure the monster didn’t return. He would even leave the lights off and let me lead our hunting party in hopes of lulling the monster into a false sense of security.
Illuminated only by the balls of molten fire in my parents’ hands, we would check every inch of my room, and then the halls outside, and then a dozen adjoining rooms.
Only now did I realize that by leaving the lights off and making me lead the hunt, they’d really been teaching me to conquer my own fears. To face them with loyal friends at my back.
And it had worked. In short time, I would be grinning like an idiot, because they had turned a startling nightmare into a fun family adventure as we stalked the darkened halls of Chateau Falco with weapons drawn like a trio of hardened heroes ready to make a name for ourselves.
Ten or twenty minutes later, I would crawl back into bed, feeling like a legend, my fear eradicated by my newfound confidence and courage. My parents would then tuck me back into bed, heaping praise on me about how brave I’d been when I’d ripped open that bathroom door, or how stealthily I had moved, and a dozen other silly lies.
Before they kissed my forehead and left, my father would always linger to whisper one thing—staring me straight in the eyes as he spoke. “Temples were born to murder nightmares and monsters. They are terrified—of you,” and then he would poke my ribs playfully, ignoring my mother’s protests. “It’s a silly waste of your time to be scared of them. Because when a Temple stands up, monsters fall down. So we always stand back up, Nate. Always. Temples never fall, we just stumble. Never forget that.”
And I would sleep through the rest of the night like a babe fresh off the nipple. With my wooden sword close at hand, of course.
My parents hadn’t tried to tell me everything was okay, that there was no monster, or to dismiss my fears in any other typical, loving, caring way.
No.
They had taken my claim at face value—that I really had woken up and seen a monster—and had then taught me that the only way to banish a monster or nightmare was to remind me that monsters were desperate cowards, only surfacing when their victims were vulnerable and weak. That monsters would flee even a little stick of a boy if he held a modicum of courage.
Because that boy was a Temple, and Temples never fell. They just stumbled.
I realized I was staring at Odin—remembering him as Dean, when he’d joined in on a few of our midnight haunts. He’d been the flashlight guy.
He lowered his gaze, looking guilty—most likely reading my mind and ashamed of the memory. Ashamed of his decades-long deceit.
I grunted, turning back to Freya—banishing both the nostalgic childhood memories and my anger at Odin. I’d somewhat forgiven him for what he’d done, but seeing him in person…
Apparently, I still had issues I needed to get off my chest. Or maybe my anger was a result of hearing my friends were in danger. Then again, I’d spent a long time in Fae, living a more savage life than a civilized one.
So it took me a moment to process what Freya had said about our current surroundings—and my shoulders instantly tensed with alarm.
Niflheim…
/> When Grimm had teased about Asgard going to hell, Freya had taken him literally, thinking Grimm had meant Hel—the final resting place for those who had died of illness or old age—one of the darker, less pleasant of the Nine Realms. But this wasn’t Hel. It was Niflheim.
And I wasn’t entirely sure which was worse.
Niflheim was not a spot known for family vacations or a casual stroll through an ancient forest. Other than being a dangerous realm of deadly mist, I knew little else.
And looking around us, I didn’t see any mist. None at all.
But in my casual scan of our surroundings, I’d noticed something that concerned the living hell out of me. I managed to keep my face calm so as not to give anything away, but inside, my mind was racing as I pondered what to do about it.
I casually grabbed my Elder-hide Darling and Dear satchel and slung it over a shoulder. Then I took the rainbow staff—yuck, alicorn slobber—from Grimm’s mouth and thumped it into the ground, feeling marginally better. I swept my gaze across the forested scene to by myself some more time, still masking my suspicions about Odin and Freya’s possible ulterior motives.
Because in addition to what had startled me, there were a few other things that were very wrong with our current situation.
No Gunnar.
No Ashley.
Chapter 9
I refocused back on the Norse deities, keeping my face blank as I squeezed my staff, deciding how I wanted to play out the situation.
Odin gripped his spear tightly, as if he was ready to use it, and I wondered just how safe Niflheim was to make someone like Odin feel on edge. Or maybe it was all for show.
“Well?” I asked impatiently. “Lead the way to my friends.”
Odin nodded, motioning Freya to join him as he turned around and began walking deeper into the woods. I waited for her to do so, and then motioned for Alice and Grimm to stay behind me.
Then I began to follow the gods.
I rotated my neck from side-to-side, loosening up my muscles as I prepared for the worst, ignoring the rational, prissy, guardian angel on my shoulder. The neighboring angel on my other shoulder wore black leather, smoked cigarettes, and had his own little flask and boombox. He was infinitely cooler.
Knightmare: Nate Temple Series Book 12 Page 5