“Go!” Managarm snarled, making a show of force. “I told you to go!” Keeping his eyes locked on the Berserker, he started to climb to his feet, but David leaned menacingly over him with that same wild grin frozen on his face. Managarm stumbled back to the ground.
“I don’t understand!” Sally squeaked. “What’s happening?”
Managarm glanced about desperately for something that could be used as a weapon. The iron poker still lay in the flames and was glowing bright red, but David stood between Managarm and the fire. Managarm scrambled backward toward the pile of firewood at the edge of camp. He grabbed a club-sized piece of wood and clambered to his feet.
“Sally!” Opal screamed from the tent, waving wildly as she tried to get her friend’s attention. “Sally! Get over here!”
Managarm stalked toward the Berserker and brandished the heavy stick. “Are you deaf?” He spoke slowly, looking for hints of fear in the boy’s face, or at least a cowering whimper.
The Berserker stood his ground. Sally stared up at him, dumbfounded.
“Sally!” Opal shrieked again, but it was as though Sally couldn’t hear her.
Finally toe-to-toe with the boy, Managarm breathed heavily in David’s face and bared his teeth. “Or maybe you’re just stupid.” He raised himself to his full height and stared smugly down at the boy who, despite being a new and particularly vicious brand of warrior, was still just a skinny high school kid and a full head shorter than Managarm.
David didn’t so much as blink an eye.
“I think I could have myself a bit of fun with you.” It had been years—centuries? Managarm couldn’t remember—since he’d last tortured a human for amusement. Keeping a wary eye on the Berserker, Managarm stepped past him and retrieved the iron from the fire. David turned to face him. Managarm raised his makeshift club in one hand and held up the red-hot iron in the other.
Sally lurched into the space between them. “Wait!”
She rested a hand on David’s shoulder. “David? David, what’s happened?”
Tears sprang to the boy’s eyes, and he sank to his knees on the damp ground before her. Still gripping the knife, he lifted his palms in supplication. “You are the Rune Witch.”
Sally smiled in embarrassment then glanced behind her at Managarm. “I don’t know how all this works.”
Managarm looked down at the blood-covered runes laid out by the fire. He stepped out from behind Sally. “Did you call her Rune Witch?”
Still on his knees, David tore open his shirt to expose his bare, bony chest. Sally gasped as he lifted the knife with both hands, the blade pointed toward his heart.
“Oh, no! David, DON’T!” Sally grabbed Managarm’s elbow. “DO SOMETHING!”
But Managarm remained still. He’d heard the legends of Berserkers who branded themselves, the truly elite among the divine warriors who pushed beyond mortal combat to answer an even deeper call to serve their gods on their sacred quests—as when Freya required protection while she retrieved the heart of Völuspá from the lair of the serpent Jormungand.
A slow smile spread across Managarm’s face. Dropping the stick but tightening his grip on the hot iron, he pushed Sally out of the way. “Wait!” he growled at David
David looked up at him, eyes narrowed in an expression that was a far cry from fealty. A chill ran down Managarm’s spine. Despite his trepidation, Managarm leaned down and whispered to the still-grinning Berserker. “I bind you to my will.”
He lunged toward the boy with the iron—and immediately found himself flat on his back, several yards away, looking up at the sky.
Managarm sat up and held a hand to his throbbing head. What the hell happened? He found the hot iron lying next to him on a bed of pine needles that were beginning to smoke. He grabbed the rod and stamped out the embers with the heel of his hand. The last thing he needed was another immolated campsite.
Managarm looked into the Berserker’s face. The boy’s pupils had dilated to the point that Managarm could no longer see the color of his eyes. “Right. Immune to fire,” Managarm muttered.
David continued to stare at him, and Managarm had the distinct impression that he was being mocked. He watched as the Berserker shifted his gaze to Sally, who hovered over him in trembling shock.
“I bind myself to the service of the Rune Witch.” David held the blade aloft.
Sally cried out as David turned the knife on himself. Blood ran down his pale skin and soaked into his torn shirt and pants. Without flinching, David sliced into his chest and slowly carved a crescent moon that ran the length of his sternum.
Hands covered in blood, David tossed the knife to the ground at Managarm’s feet, then tilted his face up to the sky. “I serve at the pleasure of the Rune Witch!” Frightened birds beat a hasty departure from surrounding branches as David lifted his arms over his head, closed his eyes, and howled.
It would have been a poetic moment, Managarm thought, except that it was early afternoon instead of the dead of night, and the moon was far from full. Managarm reached for the knife, wiped the blood off on his jeans, and slipped the blade into the sheath on his belt. He stood up and nodded at the Berserker. “I’m officially impressed.”
“David!” Sally grabbed hold of David’s torn shirt and tried to mop up the blood on his chest with the loose fabric. “Why would you do such a thing? We’ve got to get you to a doctor!”
Managarm grabbed Sally’s wrists and pulled her away from David. “He is a warrior. The Berserker has chosen the symbol of his new tribe.”
Seeing the devoted warrior on his knees before this half-wit human made Managarm’s blood boil. Witch or no witch, no mortal deserved such honor. It was sacrilege that Managarm sought to build a Berserker army of his own, even worse that he’d pit his forces against Odin. Managarm growled and spat on the ground. The Berserker might serve at the pleasure of the Rune Witch, but she served at the pleasure of the Moon Dog.
14
The sun had just dipped below the horizon when Bragi, Frigga, Thor, and Loki arrived at Wolf Haven. They sat in Bragi’s old Subaru in a pull-off across the road from the long drive to the sanctuary entrance, waiting for the last of the staff to leave.
“I don’t understand why I’m not allowed out of this tin can even to stretch my legs,” Thor complained.
The overnight drive to Loki’s place outside of Joseph had been bad enough, cramped in the back of his brother’s car. But his body had scarcely had time to recover from that trip before they were piling back into the car for another long haul west to Tenino, Washington. And this time he’d had to share the back seat with his mother.
“It’s like I’m dying back here,” Thor whined. He looked to his mother but got no sympathy.
Frigga patted his solid stomach. “Maybe lay off the candy bars a bit, then you’d be more comfortable.”
Behind the wheel, Bragi checked his watch as a tiny hatchback exited the sanctuary property. “That should be the last of them.” He turned the key in the ignition and shifted the car into gear.
“There will be someone on duty,” Loki said from the passenger seat. “Overnight watch.”
Thor snorted. “A guard to watch the wolves.” He shook his head and resisted the temptation to slam his fist against the inside of the rear passenger door. He’d already dented the interior of the car in seven different places, not including the indentation on the roof and the busted hubcap he’d tried unsuccessfully to hide from Bragi. Of course, his brother was keeping a log of Thor’s damage to his vehicle. At last tally, he was in for about $1500 in repairs.
Thor sat on his hands and tried to remember the breathing meditation Freya had taught him, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the road they followed into Wolf Haven. Fenrir is here.
Thor had fond memories of Fenrir as a pup, and it had crushed him to see the Randulfr doubly imprisoned—behind bars and stuck in wolf form. But it had been a blessing not to have to clean up after Fenrir anymore. Humans didn’t take kindly to raids on livestock
, domesticated pets, and occasionally young children.
He deliberately didn’t consider what must be going through Loki’s mind as they approached the sanctuary’s main gate. Fenrir was Loki’s last surviving child.
Frigga rested a hand on his shoulder, and Thor shook off as much impatience as possible. “You’re going to give yourself a heart attack one of these days,” she chided.
Thor glanced in the rearview mirror at the graying hair and tired eyes of his reflection. Bragi caught his eye and Thor looked away, choosing to scowl at the darkening sky instead. Generations passed for the mortals around them, but the gods hadn’t faced the elephant in the room. They were aging.
Turning away from the window, Thor stared at the back of Loki’s head and noted the gray streaks in his historically jet black hair. How long until one of them grew sick? How long until they made the journey, one by one, to the Halls of Valhalla?
Half-way up Wolf Haven’s long driveway, Bragi stopped the car by a gate that was chained shut. Thor bounded out of the car—after disentangling himself from the seat belt—and sliced through the chain with a pair of bolt cutters from the trunk. They drove along the wooded road and parked out of sight of the main parking area.
Thor was the first out of the car. Breathing in the clean air of the woods, he twirled the bolt cutters in his fingers like a baton and waited for the others.
Frigga reached into the trunk and started handing out cans of spray paint to deface the sanctuary buildings and even—though it pained her deeply—some of the trees. If they got the tags right, authorities surveying the scene come morning would assume the sanctuary had been hit by a notorious gang on the dog fighting circuit, rather than Norse gods breaking in to steal a wolf.
Who wasn’t a wolf at all.
“You ready to do this?” Thor shook a can of bright orange paint and looked across the hood of the car at Loki, who held cans of white and yellow paint carefully away from his body. Thor couldn’t blame him. With his unstable powers, there was an even chance the paint would explode in his face.
Loki popped the caps off the cans, then caught Thor’s eye and nodded.
“Do you know which enclosure he’s in?” Thor asked.
“They keep moving him around.” Loki sprayed a practice dot of white paint on a nearby tree. Next he tried a couple of short yellow hash marks on the trunk. “Apparently he has trouble getting along with the others.”
Thor choked on his laughter, but Loki smiled weakly.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” Loki said.
“We’ll just check each pen ‘til we find Fenrir,” Thor replied.
Thor saw Frigga shudder at the Randulfr’s name. If Loki noticed, he had the diplomacy not to let on.
Bragi started toward the wolf enclosures, and Loki and Thor fell into step behind him. Frigga took a quick detour toward the gift shop, where she streaked bright blue and hot pink paint across the front door and windows in the patterns of the sharp, jagged teeth associated with the Crooked Talon gang that had been stealing family pets out of Seattle to put in the ring to train fighting dogs.
Frigga stepped back from the building to consider her graffiti, then hurried to catch up with the others. “I’ve never tagged before. Do you think this will work?”
Bragi looked back at the colored streaks of paint on the gift shop, then continued forward. “I’m sure it’s fine. Tagging the place and letting all the wolves out is the best I could come up with on short notice. They’ll be too busy trying to track down the gang to focus on the loss of Fenrir.”
“I’m not wholly convinced of this plan.” Frigga tagged a tree in pink. “Dozens of wolves being released into the woods, let loose on unsuspecting citizens. Think of the damage they’ll do before anyone realizes they’ve not actually been stolen.”
“You sure the wolves are just going to run along, then?” Thor swung his bolt cutters as he walked, grateful that his legs finally had something useful to do. “It’s not going to look like a mass wolf-napping if they’re still hanging around in the morning, waiting to be fed.”
“They’ll run,” Loki commented without taking his eyes off the trail.
Thor had visited Wolf Haven only once before, when Loki delivered Fenrir to the sanctuary. Despite the staff’s cheerful assurances that Fenrir would be well cared for, the place had filled Thor with dread. He didn’t like the captive look in the wolves’ eyes, and he’d silently cursed the humans who had tried to keep them as pets, cultivating creatures who were suited to neither well-appointed living rooms nor the wild.
Loki stepped in front of Bragi as they approached the chain link fence of the first enclosure. Thor and the others backed up and gave Loki some space as he called softly to his son, a plaintive song somewhere between a wolf’s whimper and a human murmur. Two heads peeked up from a pile of fur beneath a pine tree several yards away, predator eyes glinting in the faint light from the parking area as they studied the unexpected visitors.
Loki stepped back from the fence and shook his head. They walked on to the next enclosure. Loki again called out for Fenrir, and again came away disappointed. It was the same at the third enclosure, and the fourth.
As they approached the fence holding a fifth pair of wolves, a mournful cry erupted in the air before Loki could try calling again for his son.
“Was that—?” Bragi whispered, but Loki cut him off by raising his hand for silence. He stepped away from the fence and listened, but the cry had died away. Loki called out again. The low, half-animal howl made the hair on the back of Thor’s neck stand up as he realized just how close he was again to the Randulfr.
After a brief pause came the answering cry, some distance away.
Thor felt Frigga shiver beside him. She had always been especially uncomfortable around Fenrir and the rest of the Wargs. The role Fenrir was fated to play in the ultimate demise of the gods was too much to overcome.
Thor placed a strong hand on his mother’s shoulder as they struck farther into the darkness, following Loki. Loki and the wolf played call and response as the group approached an enclosure on the far side of the sanctuary, and the captive animal leapt up to rest massive front paws on the fence as they approached.
The sound of a door opening nearby snapped the wolf’s head around, and the animal retreated a few paces from the fence. Catching sight and scent of the night guard, the wolf looked back in Loki’s direction with a questioning tilt of the head. Loki held up his hand to halt the others following him, and he ushered them silently into the surrounding woods.
Following the beam of his flashlight, a young man shuffled over to the enclosure and peered inside. The wolf pressed up against the fence and yipped at him.
“What’s going on there, pup?” The guard reached a few fingers through the chain link to scratch the wolf’s head. “Something got you upset?”
Holding the flashlight high, he shone the beam into the enclosure and scanned the perimeter. A few squirrels dashed through the beam, but nothing else moved. Satisfied, the night guard lowered the flashlight and crouched down by the fence. “You don’t usually like to come up so close, do you?”
The wolf’s eyes glowed in the light from the guard’s flashlight as the animal studied him. The animal’s pupils dilated and its mouth dropped open, exposing sharp white teeth. The guard shuddered.
“Whatever.” He stood up and scratched the back of his neck. “You just be quiet tonight, all right?”
The guard followed the beam of his flashlight leading the way along the gravel path to his watch station.
Thor listened to the crunch of the guard’s retreating footsteps. He peeked his head out between the tree branches, making sure the guard was far out of sight. At the sound of the watch station’s door opening and closing, Thor emerged cautiously from the trees and motioned the others to follow.
Loki brushed past him and stepped up to the fence again. The wolf came bounding toward him, tail wagging and tongue lolling. Stowing the paint ca
ns in his back pockets, Loki crouched down and reached his fingers through the fence to greet his child, then immediately pulled back as the animal came closer. Dark gray fur mixed with gold shimmered in the ambient light.
Thor frowned. “What’s wrong?”
Loki sat back in the dirt. “This is not Fenrir.”
Frigga chanced a few steps forward. “Are you sure?”
Loki smoothed his shirt with his hands and sighed. “Fenrir is black and gray. Look at the markings on this one.”
Thor stepped to the fence to inspect the wolf’s coloring as the animal danced back and forth on the other side of the fence. Both behavior and appearance gave the animal away as a wolf-dog hybrid. “If this isn’t Fenrir, then how did it know to answer your call? The others didn’t.”
Loki stood up and peered deeper into the dark pen. “This must be his enclosure mate. Alice, I think her name is.”
At the sound of her name, Alice leapt up and did a half-turn in the air, then landed on all four feet with an excited “Yip!” Panting eagerly, she looked from Loki to Thor and back again, then dropped down on her front paws in a play bow.
Loki turned his back on the pen and strode several paces away. “She must have learned Fenrir’s call from living with him.”
Thor stared past Alice—no easy feat, given that she was leaping and prancing back and forth to attract more attention to herself—and scanned the far corners of the enclosure. “He could still be here.”
Loki shook his head and started back toward the car. “He would have answered. He’s gone.”
Thor caught up with him, grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. “You planned this!”
Rushing forward, Frigga grabbed Thor’s elbow and tried to pull him off of Loki. “Keep your voice down!” she hissed. “There’s a guard on duty.”
“Maybe instead of calling him out, you told Fenrir to keep his head down when we came looking,” Thor dropped his voice to an angry whisper. “Or maybe you already broke him out of here yourself.”
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