Remembering how she likely saw me—as a sort of home-wrecker—I gave her a polite smile and a nod of gratitude for the door.
Rather than returning my smile, she folded her arms behind her back and approached me. She paused a pace away, turning to study the door she had made with her mysterious magic.
“Odin frequently speaks of your friendship with Gunnar. How it is more of a brotherhood, despite your bloodlines,” Freya said in a soft tone, still staring at the door.
I nodded, turning to study the door as well. “Yes.”
“He said that you even made a deal with Anubis to save his soul…” I glanced over at her this time, frowning. She continued studying the door, speaking as if to herself. “Deals, by their very nature, have terms…”
My frown stretched deeper, wondering if she was implying that this situation was somehow my fault. “Your point?” I asked in a neutral tone.
She sighed, turning to face me. “Are you aware that you have been gone for more than a year?” she asked, not unkindly, but not overly sympathetic, either.
I blinked at her, stunned speechless, and my pulse began skipping erratically as my heart thundered in my chest. One look into her green eyes told me that she was speaking the truth, and that she wasn’t pleased about her role as the messenger. Just that she had decided it important enough for me to know—before I walked through the door.
In fact, she looked furious that I hadn’t already known, which led me to believe that Odin had willed it, and that his loving wife had chosen to disobey his request. Out of vindictive spite for her husband’s wanderings or as a moral duty, I couldn’t tell.
Regardless, this was, perhaps, Freya extending me an olive branch.
But I was too concerned for my current friends to consider nurturing a new friendship with Freya. Because the math just didn’t make any sense to me.
“I’ve never had a child or anything,” I finally managed, licking my lips as I tried to wrap my head around her statement, “let alone a werewolf pup, but doesn’t a pregnancy typically last nine months?”
She nodded ever so slowly. “Precisely the problem. One of them, anyway.”
I gritted my teeth in frustration. “So did she already have the twins?” I asked, my patience fraying alarmingly thin.
“The pups have yet to be born,” Freya said in a careful tone. She studied me thoughtfully, as if waiting for something. Finally, she sighed, looking mildly frustrated. “Go. See to your friends, and I will see to my husband. Maybe we will both learn the answers to our questions.”
And then she simply turned away from me to go check on Odin, who was still staring off into the distance at things only the one-eyed king could see.
Troubled, I strode towards the door, replaying Freya’s conversation in my head. Her comments had seemed so carefully chosen that I knew I was missing something, but I was so confused about how Ashley could still be pregnant that it was hard to focus. I knew time passed differently in Fae, but one year? That was alarming.
And I’d never heard of a pregnancy stretching three months past the due date. Hell, technically it was even longer than three months, since I was basing my math on when they’d had the gender reveal at our impromptu dinner party one year ago.
And what had Freya meant about Anubis and my deal to save Gunnar’s soul? Other than letting me know Odin was a gossip, I didn’t see how it was relevant for her to mention.
Gunnar and Talon had actually died fighting that Knightmare at Stonehenge—Sir Geraint, apparently—and I’d made a deal with Anubis to bring them back to life in return for—
My heart froze and I almost tripped.
Oh.
Shit.
I’d promised Anubis that I would take out Mordred in two years. If Freya was right, that meant I only had one year left to hold up my end of the bargain and kill Mordred.
Otherwise, Anubis had every right to call his loan of two souls due—payable immediately.
Gunnar and Talon would die. Permanently.
I shuddered, feeling like I wanted to vomit. Although one year was still a long time, it was still a deadline.
Even as important as it was to make sure Ashley and her pups were safe from immediate dangers related to her delayed delivery, it was equally important that I get to work on taking out Mordred.
Or else these kids would grow up without a father, and it would be their godfather’s fault.
I propped my staff against the rock wall, straightened my satchel, pushed open the door, and stepped inside a pitch-black space.
Chapter 13
A cold, gauntleted hand grabbed me by the throat and, to make sure I didn’t slip and hurt myself, began to squeeze. Then my unseen host—very courteously—lifted me off my feet, yanked me inside, and slammed me against a wall hard enough to make dust motes fall from the ceiling.
A genuine Niflheim how the fuck d’ya do, stranger? Happen to be an organ donor?
I’d definitely received warmer—and colder—receptions.
The door hammered shut behind me, leaving me in pitch darkness and kicking my bare feet in the air like a willful toddler as I struggled to breathe against the cold gauntlet of hospitality around my throat. The particles of dust cloying the air didn’t make my already restricted breathing any easier, but life was all about the challenge, and true gentlemen rose to challenges with unwavering aplomb and dignity, as my dad always used to say.
The stone wall was so cold through my jeans that I felt like I was sitting bare-assed on a glacier. The only aspects of my assailant that I could make out were a single, piercing blue eye glinting from a small beam of light that shone through a crack in the door, and the dull shine of a familiar, quartz-like eyepatch.
“Hey, Gunnar,” I croaked, unable to let out my breath of relief. “Remember when I lost track of time on that mountain?”
The cold, armored hand threatened to give my neck freezer-burn, and it didn’t move a millimeter upon hearing my greeting, making me wonder if my host was actually some other one-eyed dude who liked to choke out his guests.
He remained perfectly still for about five more seconds, and then he sniffed at the air, turning his head slightly. I knew this only due to the movement of the blue eye leaving the thin beam of light from the door, because I still couldn’t make out anything else in the darkness.
He suddenly gasped, dropping me back to my heels on the spongy wooden floor. I began rapidly rubbing at my rear with both hands in an effort to ease the biting cold that seemed to have sunk into my actual tailbone. I didn’t want to get a severe case of frost-butt and lose one—or possibly both—of my perfectly curved butt cheeks.
They belonged to St. Louis. I was merely their caretaker.
Before I could say anything, Gunnar wrapped me up in a two-armed bear hug, squeezing me hard enough to make my ribs ache.
And instead of clapping him on the back and laughing, I simply wrapped my arms around him, squeezing back just as tightly.
Because the big burly man was sobbing so softly that I couldn’t actually hear it—I could just feel him shaking against my neck, his beard quivering like a fistful of tuning forks.
It was a man thing. If the emotion couldn’t be heard, maybe it never really happened. It’s why men were so fond of high-fives, bumping knuckles, or slapping asses after a victorious athletic performance. Emotions could be secretly transferred via physical contact, so that the enemy—women—could never learn how deep and vulnerable we truly were.
This secret language was called the Man Code, and it had very strict rules. Each method of physical contact also had numerous unwritten—of course—meanings.
High five a little moist? He was sad.
Hug a little too long? He missed you.
The number of pats to the back in a hug were even significant—but they were different from one man to the next, so that they could never be deciphered by any woman.
“What happened, man?” I asked carefully, mentally counting down the seconds so as not to
break Rule 57 of the Man Code:
The only physical contact between two Men that can last longer than five seconds are two-armed embraces, and only in one of four specific circumstances: a wedding, a funeral, a hospital visit, or if the Cardinals won the World Series against the Royals. And even then, both Men must embrace a female within ten seconds or suffer a mark against their personal record. Sub-rule: Delayed pats to the back shall restart the five-second countdown, of course. We are not beasts of the field.
I decided that this counted as a hospital visit.
Instead of answering, Gunnar gave me three, slow, powerful pats to the back, and on the third, his hand stayed there, as if making sure I wasn’t about to leave again—or maybe to verify that he wasn’t imagining my presence.
I opened my mouth to let him know that—although having restarted the countdown by patting my back—he was still dangerously close to violating Rule 57 when his whisper—an additional, altogether different violation of the Man Code—stopped me cold.
“She’s dying, Nate. We tried to visit you in Fae and got stuck in the middle instead.”
I gripped his shoulders, jumping back in shock.
“Dying?” I hissed. Then I processed the rest of what he’d said. “Stuck? In the middle of what?”
He shrugged uncertainly. “The middle of the Gateway, I guess. I don’t know how else to explain it.”
My mind scrambled, but thankfully, my eyes were beginning to somewhat adjust to the darkness, allowing me to just make out his intimidatingly large silhouette, and that he was facing me with his ears rather than looking directly at me. Werewolves had excellent night vision, so it was a rather strange stance for him to take.
“How long were you stuck?” I asked, frowning. I’d never heard of getting stuck in a Gateway. Well, Anubis had once sent his guards after me via interrupting the destination of any and all Gateways, but that had taken me to a different place. I wouldn’t have ever described it as being stuck inside a Gateway.
“Six months, Nate. Six. Months.” He jabbed my chest with a thick finger, punctuating each word. And he did so while still facing sideways, making it even more bizarre.
I stared at him in silence, a million questions running through my mind. And I realized I was clenching my fists in unbidden anger, one of his comments striking dangerously close to my heart.
Fae. He’d tried to come to Fae—the place where he had actually died in a fight with one of Mordred’s Knightmares. Not only had he tried to return, but he’d tried to bring his pregnant wife along for the ride with him! I was panting, and I heard my knuckles cracking ominously.
I’d been freaking out about Ashley and her babies, only to realize that her own husband had caused her plight.
Gunnar cleared his throat warily. “What’s wrong—”
I cut him off by punching him in the jaw, sending him crashing into the wall. His strange sideways stance had been begging for it anyway. The beam of light through the door showed him leaning against the wall with one hand, wiping blood from his lip with the other. He spat out some blood, rubbing at his jaw as if surprised by the force behind my blow.
“What were you thinking?” I demanded hoarsely. “What made you think it was a good idea to come to Fae?” I shouted, taking another swing.
He spun and caught my punch in his open hand, his fingers instantly wrapping around my knuckles in an attempt to manhandle me with his superior strength.
“Not today, Lassie,” I snarled.
And I immediately lashed out with my other hand to grip his wrist. His eye widened in surprise as I dropped to my rear and forcefully planted my foot up into his stomach. My wrist lock, speed, and momentum allowed me to launch the much larger man over my head and across the room. He slammed into the opposite wall hard enough to knock another layer of dust motes down from the ceiling.
The sounds of him grunting as he hit the wall, and then gasping as he hit the floor, were deliciously rewarding. I scrambled to my feet, and then turned around. I heard him wheezing on the ground before I managed to actually spot him in the murky darkness. He didn’t try to get up as I stomped over to him. I stopped just out of his reach and glared down, planting my fists on my hips. I was livid. I’d been freaking the fuck out about keeping them safe, and the whole past-due baby mama drama was his fault!
If he hadn’t tried taking a Gateway to Fae, he wouldn’t have gotten stuck inside for six months.
“Your wife is pregnant!” I growled. “You should have been surrounded by your pack of werewolves at all times, minding your own business! What idiotic fallacy inspired you to take Ashley to Fae—the place where you died not too long ago?”
Gunnar looked up at me, spit out some more blood, and then spoke a single word without even an iota of guilt.
“Thor.”
I slowly lowered my hands, staring back at him in stunned disbelief. My anger puttered out like a car without gasoline as I tried to make sense of the simple answer. Thor?
Gunnar rolled over and climbed back to his feet. He slowly nodded, staring me down. “Thor came to St. Louis, Nate. He managed to escape whatever hellhole Odin banished him to. I don’t know—and I don’t care—how, but he came back a few weeks after Stonehenge, and he was determined to kill you and everyone associated with you. Especially Alex,” he added with a slight frown. “Something to do with Alex hurting his goats.”
My brain made a strange crackling sound and I thought I smelled burnt plastic as my limited, biological hardware showed me the fatal flaw in not agreeing to regular software updates. How had Thor returned so quickly?
A nearby voice cut through my thoughts, seeming to crawl across the floor rather than carry through the air. “Please…stop fighting each other,” Ashley asked.
We both wilted at the comment, but I was more concerned at the frailty in her voice. I turned, trying to locate her in the gloom, but all I could make out were a few empty, rickety, wooden chairs pressed up against the walls—a strange place to put them, especially since they faced the wrong way for use. Unfortunately, Gunnar had missed all of them in his fall. I noticed the faintest of glows from a cracked-open door leading to a side room.
Since there was nowhere else she could be, I carefully approached, thankful that everything in the room seemed to have been pressed against the wall like the chairs. Did they not have access to light here? It was obviously intentional since they had formed a clear path through the room. I realized I was focusing on the lack of light because I was terrified of what I was about to see when I opened that door.
“Stop crying over spilled milk,” Ashley chided from beyond the door. “You sound like a couple of fuzzy little man babies.”
“Big, hairy man babies,” Gunnar muttered under his breath, combing his fingers through his beard.
I ignored the Neanderthal, nervously pushing the door open with my fingers one inch at a time. They were shaking from all the imagined horrors flickering through my mind—because the woman belonging to that voice sounded like she was on the verge of death, or in unimaginable pain.
Of course, the door squealed as it opened. Why not make the situation creepier?
I peered into a relatively brighter room—meaning the space was illuminated by a candle that had been purposefully hidden behind a vase on the floor. The vase prevented me from seeing the actual flame on the wick, but I’d been to her house enough times to recognize the familiar, herbal aroma that she claimed was therapeutic.
I was pretty sure that she was the only living soul who held that opinion. The rest had died from inhalation.
I’d dubbed it Perfumania on Fire, and no one had argued with me. Well, Gunnar had, begrudgingly, and only after Ashley had given him a very pointed look.
I stared at that obstructed light—only bright enough to prevent me from tripping over my own two feet—wondering how big the room actually was since I couldn’t make out all the walls. I recalled how Gunnar hadn’t looked directly at me, how tightly he had embraced me, and how the other ro
om had also been devoid of light and furniture.
He’d been using every sense other than sight. Why?
My eyes locked onto a small cot backed up against the wall opposite the door, and all thoughts about the room or the darkness fled my mind. Seeing the vague silhouette of the woman occupying the cot, I sucked in a shallow breath and forced myself to approach.
Even in this darkness, I could see how terrible the once mesmerizing woman looked. Ashley was propped up on a pile of pillows, holding her bare—and extremely pregnant—belly with two fragile hands that looked more like bone wrapped in flesh—no muscle or fat to speak of.
If not for her pregnancy, I would have guessed she weighed little more than eighty pounds. At best.
Despite the chill, she was sweating, and everything other than her belly looked gaunt, thin, and drained, like she was sacrificing every part of her body to grow her babies. She seemed to have trouble seeing me, squinting her eyes—just like Gunnar.
Two forms suddenly emerged from the darkness on my side of the cot, one of them towering over me in a silent, menacing manner, and the other emitting a low, warning growl. I hadn’t sensed their presence at all, which was impressive. The two entered my personal space—a space that wasn’t conducive to a long life on the best of days.
And this wasn’t the best of days, so I wasn’t in a very personable mood.
Chapter 14
Guards.
I gritted my teeth, knowing they meant well, but after the day I’d had, I wasn’t feeling very understanding.
Gunnar let out a low, throaty grumble, and the two guards instantly took two steps away from me.
Still, I sensed they were a heartbeat away from violence if I made any move even resembling a threat to Ashley.
A few moments of brittle silence hung heavy in the air as I waited until I was certain they were in control of their actions. That I was in control of my actions. “And who do I have the pleasure of almost provoking?” I asked in a cold tone that I hardly recognized as my own.
Knightmare: Nate Temple Series Book 12 Page 8