“Odin’s ravens found a Knightmare here in Niflheim,” he said.
“WHAT?” I shouted.
Gunnar nodded smugly. “They killed him, don’t worry. His armor sword is in the other room if you want to suit up.”
I stared at him, shaking my head in disbelief. Hugin and Munin had killed a Knightmare? I suddenly changed my mind about how dangerous the pair were. That had to be the mystery death we’d been concerned about—the third black stone. That was why he hadn’t been in St. Louis or Fae. He’d come here. But…why?
Regardless, he was dead now. No big change in the ultimate tally, but it was one less stress to carry on my shoulders, at least. We still had nine Knightmares left for us to deal with, and two of those were still unaccounted for. Were they in another realm, too? If so, why?
“They ate him,” Gunnar added, making my stomach curdle. And I suddenly realized why some of the skulls on the ravens’ ankles had looked so fresh. One of them had been the Knightmare.
I decided that I would skip the details when I brought Alex the armor. I would just tell him I found our mystery dead Knight. I swallowed audibly. “Where is the rest of this set?” I asked, indicating his gauntlets. “The set from Stonehenge.”
“I traded the whole suit to Grimm Tech for some Tiny Balls calibrated to take us to Fae. I told them to find a way to improve the armor, learn how to make something similar, or at least show us a way to break through it. To give us a fighting chance against the other Knightmares still working for Mordred.”
Instead of telling him about the one we had killed an hour ago, I leaned forward, suddenly curious. “And?”
He shrugged, lowering his hands. “No idea. They didn’t have the armor long before I had to go into hiding. It seems hyper-resilient to elemental attacks. The armor can withstand extreme voltage without transferring the shock to the person wearing it—which is why I stole some of the armor back. I took the gauntlets so that I could at least punch Thor if necessary, and I gave Ashley the breastplate and helmet to protect our babies. I left the rest with them, but that was six months ago, apparently. Maybe they’ve learned something new since then.”
Damn. I’d have to go check for myself, because we definitely needed some better weapons to take down the Knightmares. My magic had rolled right off him earlier, and the only reason Gunnar and Talon had succeeded in killing Sir Geraint was because they’d specifically focused on attacking the straps and buckles holding his armor in place. And they’d attacked two-on-one.
The only other weapons that had been successful in breaking the armor were Grimm’s horn, Excalibur, and…I blinked.
Alex had used Sir Geraint’s own sword to chop off his hands! How had I missed that? I hoped Talon had scooped up Sir Bedivere’s blade when he grabbed the armor earlier. If not, someone would need to go fetch it.
“Did they find a sword with the armor?” I asked.
Gunnar shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Damn.” That would have been incredibly helpful.
Something else Gunnar had said suddenly gripped my attention.
I leaned forward. “Tell me about your Tiny Balls.” Too late, I heard how it sounded when spoken out loud. Also, Ashley’s choking cough made Gunnar growl in a defensive tone.
“They work!” Ashley teased, patting her belly.
Chapter 16
Drake and Cowan were coughing, hands firmly covering their mouths in an effort to camouflage their laughter.
“Why did they backfire?” I asked, choosing my words more carefully this time. The adolescents quieted down.
Gunnar nodded, clearing his throat. “We were eating dinner around a campfire outside of town when Thor suddenly appeared out of nowhere—similar to when you Shadow Walk, but with a flash of multicolored light, like a rainbow. That’s the only reason we survived. The sudden light scared the bejeezus out of us, and we scattered on instinct.”
I grimaced, knowing exactly what he was talking about. I didn’t have any explanation on how Thor did it—since he wasn’t a wizard—but Gunnar’s description was exactly how I would have explained his method of travel.
“Drake and Cowan kept Thor distracted while I tried to get Ashley into her breastplate so we could flee.”
“Uzis,” Drake growled, sounding as if he was smiling nostalgically.
“Shotgun,” Cowan murmured, sounding like he felt obligated to come clean.
Gunnar nodded gratefully. “They saved our lives,” he admitted. I arched a brow at the unlikely pair and gave them my own nod of appreciation. That was hardcore. Cover fire on the God of Thunder? Ballsy.
Gunnar finally continued. “We tried to escape in the confusion, but the breastplate slipped loose. Thor pounced on the opening, knocking her down to the ground, right onto her belly…” he whispered, panting raggedly.
“With Ashley lying unconscious on the ground, we were ripe for the picking. I couldn’t fight Thor and keep her safe at the same time. So…I threw down one of the Tiny Balls, scooped up Ashley and jumped through. Right as he hurled a strangely-colored lightning bolt at us.”
I winced, reading between the lines. Gunnar had turned his back on Thor to be a shield for Ashley as they escaped.
“I don’t know if it was a design hiccup or if Thor’s lightning broke the Gateway, but we landed in a blindingly white world just before the opening winked shut behind us.”
I let out a shaking breath, wanting to destroy something with my bare hands. “Blindingly white…” I repeated, studying him nervously. “Literally blinding?” I whispered incredulously. “Is this permanent?”
Ashley interrupted tiredly. “We’re not blinded, just hyper-sensitive to light. Odin and Freya don’t think it’s permanent, but they admit they can’t be certain. Gunnar—ironically—seems less sensitive to light than I am, but maybe that’s because he already misplaced one eye so had less to lose.”
Gunnar growled at his wife’s jab. “I’m not three months past due.”
“Technicality,” Ashley murmured groggily.
“Factuality,” Gunnar growled. Then he turned to me. “The only way I can think to describe it is staring directly at the sun, but there was no heat. And we couldn’t really move. Almost like we were trying to walk underwater or through mud. It was all slow motion.” He looked frustrated, trying to find the right words. “I remember it taking sixty seconds to be able to move my head enough to look down at Ashley in my arms. We couldn’t have been there longer than five minutes before everything shattered.”
I stared at him, shaking my head. On an academic level, I was fascinated, but on a personal level, I was horrified. I’d never heard of anything like it.
“I tried opening my eye but I couldn’t see anything,” Gunnar whispered. “So…I called out to Odin—to his wolves, Geri and Freki, for help.”
I arched an eyebrow, entirely caught off guard. Gunnar had called Norse-One-One? My suspicion had led me to assume Odin had conveniently found Gunnar and Ashley. This changed things.
Kind of. We would just have to—
“No one expected us to show up,” Cowan rumbled, making me flinch.
Drake nodded. “We hadn’t seen Gunnar or Ashley since the night they disappeared. But to us, it had been six months of hiding and running from Thor, not five minutes of a rave.”
Cowan winced at his partner’s phrasing, but nodded at the facts.
“Everyone thought they had died, but we knew better. Unlike the rest of the pack, we were still bonded to them. So we encouraged the rumors, and kept our heads down, knowing they would return at some point.”
I nodded approvingly. “Clever.”
He shrugged. “Then, two hours ago, we were getting drinks in a bar, laying low in East St. Louis—”
I coughed, especially upon seeing Cowan’s sudden guilty flinch, which he tried to cover by shifting from foot-to-foot.
I managed to keep a straight face, knowing exactly which kinds of places that served drinks in East St. Louis. “Of cou
rse,” I agreed. “Libations are important.”
“I didn’t say lubrication!” Drake snapped very quickly.
“Libations are drinks,” I said, trying not to burst out laughing.
“Oh. Right. Well, we were just laying low.”
“Laying low,” Cowan agreed, stiffly.
“Anyway,” Drake snapped defensively, “I was buying a drink for a nice, young, Ukrainian, college student—”
“Anastasia,” Cowan interrupted. “At Hustler—”
“I can’t remember where we were,” Drake cut in hurriedly, shooting a murderous glare at Cowan’s attempted assistance, “but Anastasia was telling me her troubles when I suddenly felt my bond to Gunnar practically screaming at me. I dropped my drink, slapped some cash down, and we jumped in our truck.”
Cowan nodded somberly. “We didn’t even get Anastasia’s phone number,” he murmured.
Drake coughed, staring daggers at his partner. “We really need to work on your sidekick skills,” he muttered under his breath, before turning back to me. “Anyway, we sensed Gunnar had returned, and that he was close—just on the other side of the bridge—and that he was in pain.”
“We found them under the Arch, of all places,” Cowan added. “When we arrived, we saw Odin and Freya picking up our Alpha and his wife and…” he trailed off uneasily.
Drake spoke up. “We may have overreacted, not realizing they were allies. Until we saw Odin’s wolves. They were gloriously terrifying,” he said, sounding as if he was speaking of his childhood heroes.
I grunted. They hadn’t impressed me all that much.
“Once we realized we were all on the same side, Odin said he knew a place where Thor might not find us—at least until we figured out our next move.” And he shot a finger gun at me, clucking his tongue. “Hello, Mr. Next Move.”
I frowned, turning from one face to the next. “I feel like I just watched an impersonation of those guys in Half Baked.”
Drake and Cowan folded their arms unhappily, and in sync. I turned my back on them with a sigh, thinking over the story. “Odin sent for me?” I asked, frowning.
“I did,” Gunnar said. “Once we settled in here, I told Odin we weren’t going anywhere else until someone brought you here.”
“To be fair,” Ashley cut in dryly, “I believe it was your lady wife who refused Freya’s help until we had a chance to speak with Nate.”
Gunnar nodded. “That’s what I said.”
Everyone turned to stare at him.
Finally, he sighed, waving a gauntleted hand. “Fine,” he muttered before folding his arms stubbornly, mirroring Drake and Cowan.
Ashley was smirking at her husband, and I couldn’t help but wince. Because her smile stretched her already gaunt face so thin that it looked like her skin was on the verge of tearing.
She turned back to me. “I allowed her to do a cursory check to make sure I wasn’t in immediate danger before I commanded them to find you.”
I glanced down at her belly, unable to make the math work. “You don’t look six months pregnant, like when you went into the Gateway. And if six months passed you by, why aren’t you twelve months pregnant?” I asked rhetorically. “Because right now, you look like your somewhere in the middle, like you might be ready to go any minute,” I said as kindly as possible. “Shouldn’t you have already delivered?” I asked uneasily.
She nodded. “That’s what concerned Freya—the time discrepancy of my pregnancy. She believes that my body was in stasis in that other place, and that it is now attempting to catch up—that six months of development are going to happen in a rapid, painful, fast-forward. A special delivery, as it were,” she added in a lame attempt at humor.
My eyebrows threatened to jump right off my forehead. “How quickly are we talking?” I asked, feeling panicked.
Gunnar grunted. “No idea, but my hair has grown an inch since we arrived.” I blinked at him incredulously, unable to make my mouth work. “Which is why we wanted to talk to you. To get a second opinion, if you will.”
Part of me very seriously considered walking back outside to kill Odin. If he thought Gunnar and Ashley had died six months ago, why hadn’t anyone come to tell me? Unless…they had also known Gunnar and Ashley weren’t dead—just like Drake and Cowan.
I narrowed my eyes at Gunnar. “You are asking what I think of Odin? Do you mean the man who created this whole mess in the first place? Thor’s father? I don’t think you need to ask me how I feel about my dear butler,” I growled. “We already know he’s a talented liar.”
“So…you don’t trust him?” Gunnar asked, sounding troubled.
I cursed, waving a hand violently. “I don’t know, Gunnar! I’m just pointing out the facts.”
Gunnar nodded, his eye flicking towards Ashley. “She’s too weak for a natural birth, according to Freya. She’s barely hanging on as it is.”
I winced, really thinking about the biology of the whole situation. Mothers ate more food while they were growing, and that was stretched out over months. For Ashley to catch up so rapidly, she would need to eat significantly more than most mothers. To match the number of calories a pregnant mother would eat in three months, and to do so in a fraction of the time…
It was no wonder she looked so frail. The twins were literally killing her. And that wasn’t even taking into account whatever the broken Gateway might have done to her. Or Niflheim, for that matter. Or what complications that Thor’s initial blow to Ashley—and her falling down on her stomach—might have caused.
No wonder Freya had seemed so frantic.
I turned to Gunnar, trying to mask my concern. Because I had absolutely no idea what to do.
Chapter 17
Ashley coughed weakly, and I had to force myself to keep a straight face, hearing the rattling sound in her lungs. “My shifter blood gives me heightened healing, so that’s helping a lot. But Freya is still concerned about nutrition and calories—that I won’t be able to feed my babies…” she trailed off, letting out a heart-wrenching sob.
I grimaced, feeling sick to my stomach. “I understand,” I said softly. “That was my first thought, too.”
She nodded, struggling to regain her composure. “She’s amazed that I’m still alive, and with Thor obviously hunting us, it’s not safe for me out there. She isn’t just my doctor, Nate. She is also my bodyguard, as is Odin and his pets.”
I growled angrily, liking that even less. But it made sense why they’d been so super-charged. Odin had commanded them to cut loose in order to keep Ashley safe.
That was something, at least.
Drake and Cowan also growled, their feelings hurt.
She waved a hand, indicating the pair. “For all intents and purposes, Drake and Cowan were banished along with us. No one knows where we went—but you are not the only one lacking in the trust department, Nate,” she said dryly. “We have Drake and Cowan—and a fistful of Tiny Balls—”
I did laugh at that, but quickly muffled it. “Sorry.”
Ashley rolled her eyes. “What I’m trying to say is that we are not relying strictly on the Norse. There are too many suspicious coincidences—not even counting the fact that Thor has also been causing problems for Odin in Asgard. We brought our own guards, and told Odin and Freya that we would only accept their help if you approved it.”
I frowned, wondering what kinds of problems Thor had with Asgard. Then the rest of her words hit me. I froze, opening my mouth silently like a fish on dry land.
She was literally leaving the ultimate decision of her care up to me? I had assumed that she’d meant it figuratively—that they wanted to talk to me before they decided what to do. That was an incredible show of faith, and a level of responsibility that I didn’t think I could accept. Because if I guessed wrong…
I shuddered. I would never—ever—be able to forgive myself. I would never be able to look them in the eye. Guilt would crush me. Definitively.
I finally cleared my throat, staring at her. “You c
an’t ask me to do that, Ashley,” I said in a low tone, staring down at her belly—at the two pups inside. The ones I had high fived. “I’m not a parent. I’m not qualified to tell you what to do. I can give you my best guess—which will be backed by every piece of knowledge I have about the players involved, but—”
“Which we will then use as the basis of our decision,” she challenged, cutting me off. “Calling it what it really is—your decision—is a great burden, but I can’t lie to you, Nate. I don’t know what else to do, who else to trust. You’re always the one to weather us through the storms.” She flung out a hand, pointing at Gunnar. “You brought him back from death, Nate! Who else do we have to make decisions like this?”
I shook my head in denial. “That was just—”
“You know Odin—and Dean. The good and the bad. And you’re objective. You’re not related—”
I snarled, instantly furious. “Not related?” I roared, making the three male werewolves jump in surprise. I heard claws snap out, but I didn’t care. “Woman, those kids are as much mine as they are yours, regardless of blood. I will crush the world myself if it would keep them safe!” I shouted, making the very walls shake dust down upon us. Ashley was smiling at me, licking her lips satisfactorily. I was panting, and my skin felt like it was on fire. I knew that beneath the clothes, my skin was likely flaring with golden light. I didn’t care about that right now.
All I could think about was keeping those two little pups safe. My helpless, innocent, beautiful godchildren. I didn’t even care that Ashley had been poking at me on purpose.
“I think…” Drake said very softly, drawing every eye in the room, “that is exactly what she is trying to say.” I glared at him, grinding my teeth.
“Right now, I can barely stop myself from shifting,” he said. “I’m giving it everything I’ve got, and I’m humble enough to admit that you fucking terrify me.”
Cowan nodded rapidly, his jaw locked shut and his shoulders shaking from the urge to shift and protect Ashley—from me.
Knightmare: Nate Temple Series Book 12 Page 10