“It’s because of Loki,” Odin sighed heavily, then raised his voice to be heard over the clanging din that started up again. “Bragi. Have Loki stand at a distance. Tell him to wander down the road a bit. That’s should take care of it.”
“Yeah,” Bragi replied distractedly, then erupted into laughter. “Oh, hey, I’m sorry, but—” He started laughing again. “It’s just that Thor is chasing Loki around the lot with the bolt cutters and a can of spray paint.”
There was a huge bang followed by an ominous ripping sound. Bragi’s voice lost its mirthful tone. “Yeah. There goes my back bumper. The next time Thor goes on a road trip, with or without Loki, I’d prefer that someone else does the driving.”
“How soon can you get back here?” Heimdall asked.
“About three hours.”
“Do it.” Heimdall reached for the phone and was about to shut it off, when Bragi’s voice came through again.
“Oh, crap!” There was a mechanical creak followed by some shuffling of paper. “Have you seen the early edition of tomorrow’s newspaper?”
“Assume we haven’t.” Odin sniffed.
“There are some news reports here.” They listened to Bragi paging through the newspaper. “Just skimming here, but they’re talking about a series of what looks like wolf attacks in the area. Speculation that it could be mountain lions or a pack of coyotes. Residents are being advised to keep their children and pets indoors. Wildlife remains found a mile away from Wolf Haven. Cattle killed to the immediate southeast. A couple of family dogs in Kopiah, cats in Ethel, and . . . Oh.” Bragi’s voice tightened. “A small child outside of Castle Rock.”
Heimdall felt like his breath had been knocked out of him. He glanced at Odin and knew his father had come to the same conclusion.
“Fenrir.”
“Looks like.” Bragi’s voice was muffled by the sound of more pages turning. “Seems to be following a progressively southerly route.”
“Toward the Lodge?” Rod asked.
“Toward the Tree.” Saga raked sticky fingers through her hair. “He’s coming.”
Heimdall clicked off the speaker and held the phone to his ear. “You get back here now. I don’t care if you have to knock over a fuel truck or steal someone else’s car.”
He turned off the phone and slipped it into his pocket.
Rod slurped down the last of his drink. “I guess we don’t have to worry about whether or not the basement can contain Fenrir.”
Both Heimdall and Odin turned to glare at him. Rod seemed to shrink a few inches in size as he hunched down. “I was just trying to look on the bright side.”
Heimdall turned to stare into the fire. “With both a Berserker and the Randulfr on the loose—“
“Two Berserkers,” Saga corrected. “One here, one in Joseph.”
Heimdall sighed. “Fenrir and two Berserkers on the loose, plus Managarm out there trying to orchestrate Ragnarok. I’m afraid there isn’t much of a bright side to anything.”
The front door opened and slammed shut. Saga got up and peeked down the hallway. “Freyr’s here.”
“About bloody time,” Odin grumbled into his beer stein.
Freyr stumbled from the hallway into the den. He hunched over and braced himself against his knees as he tried to catch his breath. He held up a hand to command the attention of the room, but he was panting too hard to get a single word out.
“Shoes!” Saga pointed at his muddy moccasins.
Still out of breath, Freyr started to slip off his sneakers but he lost his balance. He shot out a hand to the wall to steady himself. Saga guided him to the settee and pulled off his shoes for him.
“Sit down before you hurt yourself.” She reached under the coffee table for a spare pair of slippers and tried to slide them onto his feet, but Freyr pushed her aside.
Freyr looked up at Heimdall and tucked his long hair behind his ears, revealing deep red scratches on his face.
“What happened?” Heimdall asked.
“Berserker,” Freyr said, at last regaining his breath. He slipped his feet into the sheepskin booties and surveyed the fast food apocalypse on the coffee table.
“Great.” Saga plopped back down onto the sofa next to Odin. “Exactly what we need. Another freaking Berserker.”
Freyr picked up a few unopened soda bottles and tried to choose between cola, grape, and lemon-lime, but Odin passed him his stein instead. Freyr took a sip and lifted his eyebrows in appreciation. “Nice. Tasty.”
Heimdall cleared his throat. “The Berserker?”
Freyr drank down the rest of the beer in a single swig. “Bloody heathen stole my phone. And my car. I had to hitchhike out here as far as the main road, and then hike the rest of the way in.”
Rod sputtered, trying not to laugh, and ended up moaning in pain instead. He pressed a hand against the bandages beneath his shirt. Odin shot him a stern look. “Sorry. Just from what you’ve told me, the idea of a Berserker with a cell phone sounded funny.”
Heimdall gestured toward Freyr. “A Berserker did this to you?”
Freyr nodded solemnly, then tore into a lukewarm burrito. Cheese and salsa dripped down the front of his shirt and onto the floor.
Saga rose from the sofa and headed into the kitchen. “Frigga’s going to kill you.”
Heimdall frowned at Freyr in disbelief. “You’re saying the warrior attacked you? Are you certain it was a Berserker?”
“I think I know a Berserker when I see one, Heimdall,” Freyr mumbled between mouthfuls of burrito. “Just because I’m the god of the harvest and rain and little tweeting birds, as Thor likes to remind me almost daily, doesn’t mean I know nothing about war.”
Saga reappeared with a collection of damp paper towels. She knelt to clean up Freyr’s mess on the floor, then reached up to dab at the inflamed scratches on his face with a wet dishcloth.
Heimdall sat on the hearth ledge. He couldn’t remember feeling so depleted in his long life. He cast his eyes over the fried, cheesy food on the coffee table and reached for the last egg roll. “I didn’t mean to suggest—”
“I didn’t have much of a choice but to fight him.” Freyr picked up one of the sodas and guzzled it down. “We were in the middle of the junior karate class. One of the students, an eighteen-year-old kid named Adam, just started screaming and going after another student. I had to step in to protect the other kids. And when I saw his eyes . . .” Freyr rubbed the back of his neck and shivered. “Like those blood-curdling shrieks weren’t enough of a giveaway. Yeah, it was a Berserker, all right.”
Freyr grabbed the dishcloth out of Saga’s hands so he could tend to his own wounds. “But I couldn’t hurt him. Didn’t want to,” he corrected himself. “Adam was a good kid. Before.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Saga replied. “Berserkers can be anybody before they’re called. You remember that Christian priest in one of the villages the Vikings raided in Ireland? He stood alone against the Vikings to protect his people, armed with nothing more than a soggy Bible. But then when the call went out for new Berserkers, who he was before didn’t make a bit of difference. He was a single-minded warrior from that point forward.”
Rod raised his hand. “But when has a Berserker ever attacked a god? They’re supposed to serve you, right? Not try to scratch your eyes out.”
Freyr looked to Odin and Heimdall. “You still think Managarm has help calling the Berserkers?”
Heimdall glanced at Frigga’s laptop on the end table by Rod’s head. He dug his hands into his hair and frowned. “Forgive me for suggesting this, but . . . The Norns.”
Odin and Freyr let out a simultaneous groan. Saga stared at Heimdall. “Are you kidding? Don’t you know what a waste of time—”
“Yes,” Heimdall answered. “But they might have access to a piece of the puzzle that we don’t. Frigga did try contacting them earlier.” He looked at his father and shrugged. “Desperate times call for desperate measures?”
Heimdall picked up the laptop
and settled it onto the coffee table in front of Odin. Saga bounced up from the settee and settled in next to her father. She opened the computer and waited for it to boot up.
On the other side of the room, Rod slowly raised himself into a sitting position, then struggled up to his feet. “Those ladies give me the creeps.”
Freyr helped Rod hobble across the floor, and Saga scooted over to give him space on the sofa.
“You’re not the only one.” Saga opened Skype. “Okay. Here we go.” She clicked on the “Mystic Sisters” icon and waited for the call to connect.
“At least this should be entertaining,” Freyr whispered as he joined Heimdall standing behind the sofa where Odin, Saga, and Rod huddled around the computer.
A video window opened with the image of a middle-aged beauty draped in rose-colored silks and long strings of beads. Her languid, heavily painted eyes rested closed as an enigmatic smile played on her lips.
“Mystic Sisters Psychic Hotline,” the woman purred. “We make Fate work for you. I am Trudy, serving you from Seattle. May I have your credit card number?”
Eyes still closed, the woman on the screen inclined her head like a TV-show genie.
Saga rolled her eyes. “Urd, it’s Saga. I have the clan assembled here. Some of us, anyway.”
There was a nervous pause on the other end. Urd’s eyes opened wide, and the squeak of an office chair was audible over the connection.
“Yes, yes, of course!” she stammered, then affected a knowing smile. “The Norns, oracles of the gods, have been expecting your call.”
“I’m beginning to regret this already,” Freyr grumbled.
Heimdall glanced at his cousin and shrugged. Despite their success as the Mystic Sisters, the Norns had traditionally lacked any understanding of how to interpret the mundane details of what they saw in the mists. The wisdom the Norns offered had for centuries confused and upset the Vikings, and even the gods.
One particular prophecy had resulted in mass panic. “The distant light of life is extinguished! Darkness falls. Creatures tremble and wail in vain, as the night mistress reigns,” the Norse Fates had exclaimed. Interpretations ranged from a looming extinction of animals and honeybees to the imminent arrival of the Ragnarok apocalypse—when what the Norns had foreseen was a routine solar eclipse.
But they remained reliable when it came to the bigger picture.
Urd blinked heavy eyelids at the camera. “Allow me to call in my sisters.” She got up from her chair and stepped out of frame. Moments later, the three Nornir in similar robes of different colors assembled around the table.
“What are they all doing up at this hour?” Heimdall whispered to Saga.
Saga shrugged. “Friday night on a twenty-four-hour psychic hotline.”
“Urd, in the East,” the first sister proclaimed.
“Verdande, in the South,” the green-clad Norn intoned.
“Skuld, in the West,” called the third sister, dressed in blue. She nodded toward the webcam. “And the Lady Saga, in the North.”
Heimdall pinched the bridge of his nose and hung his head. “We’re in the South,” he grumbled to no one in particular. “Portland is south of Seattle.”
Saga looked into the webcam and forced a smile. “Yes. We need your guidance on our Berserker problem.”
“Lady Seeker, you come with many questions.” Skuld leveled a blank stare at the webcam, adopting the same aloof bearing that had served the oracles for centuries. “Your mind is dark with concern, your heart heavy with regret. Your approach to revealed wisdom demands its own price, mired in transitional mythology and—”
“Oh, will you knock it off?” Saga cut her off with a curt wave of her hand. “Why is it that I can have a perfectly normal conversation with any one of you individually, but as a trio you’re enough to drive even the most even-tempered deity batty?”
Heimdall leaned into the range of the webcam. “We do seek your counsel. But we can do without the histrionics.”
Unfazed by the rebuke, the sisters straightened in their chairs and took a collective breath. Glancing around the table at each other, the Norns shared a conspiratorial smile and giggled quietly, then cleared their throats in turn and relaxed their shoulders.
“This is a waste of time,” Odin growled at Heimdall behind him.
“Just give it a minute.” Heimdall gestured toward the screen where the sisters sat communing with the ethers or whatever it was they did.
The sisters had, mostly, let go of their tedious habit of speaking in riddles—after Odin had blasted them for a particularly long-winded rhyme four hundred years earlier about hunting conditions in the Willamette Valley. Recounting the experience to Heimdall, Odin swore phases of the moon had changed while the Norns chanted their prophecy, which in the end amounted to little more than, “Lots of rabbits and deer.”
“Can we move this along?” Heimdall pleaded, jolting the sisters out of their reverie.
“Of course,” Verdande replied. “We apologize for the formality. Old habits, you know. Naturally we defer to your authority.” She gestured toward the camera.
Saga offered a weak smile. “What can you tell us about—”
“We know nothing concerning Berserkers,” Skuld interrupted.
“Well, they’re here,” said Saga. “At least three of them.”
“Three?” Freyr asked in astonishment.
“Yeah,” Heimdall whispered to him. “Loki saw one in Joseph.”
Freyr looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “Of course he did.” He kicked the back of the sofa. “Bloody fantastic.”
“And with the Tree being so new again, and Fenrir’s escape,” Saga continued. “We have an idea of what Managarm is up to. But we need information on how to stop him.”
Three pairs of wide, smoky eyes stared back from the computer screen.
“Managarm?” Skuld choked.
“They have no idea what we’re talking about.” Freyr walked away from the sofa in disgust. “We’d be better off consulting scented salts from the local voodoo shop.”
Heimdall looked down at the screen and saw Verdande’s incensed expression. They’d caught Freyr’s off-camera remark. “We mean no offense.”
“We may not have known about the Berserkers, but we can tell you about the Witch,” Verdande said.
Heimdall leaned closer. “I’m sorry. Did you say there’s a witch to worry about?”
Verdande lifted her chin, her dark-gold tresses shifting on her shoulders. “Not just any witch. The Rune Witch.”
Heimdall crossed his arms. “Never heard of any such thing.”
Skuld placed her palms flat on the table. “How short your memory! She is not of the Norse pantheon,” she said, as though speaking to a small child. “We’re dealing with ancient power, wielded by someone much . . . Younger.” Skuld looked to each of her sisters, who nodded in agreement. “It is her magick at work.”
Heimdall wasn’t well-versed in world religions—that was more Freya’s department—but he had a hard time imagining what other deity would risk tangling with Odin or even Managarm.
“Mortal,” Urd ventured, her voice just barely above a whisper.
Heimdall laughed. “A mortal? You’re saying we’ve got a mortal witch running around, calling up Berserkers?”
“Bloody batwings.” Saga turned to Odin. “I think I might know who it is.”
Heimdall came around the end of the sofa to face her, blocking the camera and ignoring the Norns who closed their eyes and were swaying rhythmically in their seats as they sank into a divinatory trance.
“Tell me,” Heimdall demanded.
“So that lady who was so frantic about her rune book? She was in the store yesterday, too, talking about some kind of astronomical event.”
Heimdall cursed under his breath. “The Black Moon? And the planetary alignment with the constellations of the Old Ones? You mean that astronomical event?”
Saga shrugged. “Maybe.”
“And you did
n’t think to mention this earlier.”
She shrugged again. “I forgot. So many people these days like to light candles, but they don’t know a runic sigil from their elbow. And Portland is like Pagan-central. But this lady . . . She just wanted to use the convergence to encourage a little peace in the world. That’s what she said.”
“A witch! I see the Rune Witch!” Skuld exclaimed from the computer screen. Heimdall reached down and hit the “mute” key.
“So you’ve met someone who’s working magick, specifically on the Black Moon.” Heimdall raised his eyebrows. “Sounds like a Rune Witch to me.”
Saga shook her head. “I don’t know. This woman was seriously troubled. But maybe being upset hid her power? Made it less obvious?”
On Skype, the sisters silently moved together with outstretched arms reaching for the ceiling.
“Do you remember her name?” Heimdall asked.
“Yeah,” Saga replied. “Sally Dahl.”
Heimdall reached down to unmute the computer. An escalating crescendo of shrieks blasted through the speakers, and Heimdall yelped. These spectacles of divination had always set him on edge. The murmuring, screaming, and eyes rolling back into heads seemed more like the symptoms of a mental disorder than a mystical trance.
The sisters fell silent. Heimdall checked to make sure he hadn’t accidentally muted them again. He blinked at the image of the Norns sitting placidly around the table. Skuld cleared her throat softly. She looked first at Verdande, then at Urd. Both nodded back at her.
Skuld turned to face the webcam. “It’s definitely a mortal. A human witch, one with real power. She has it in her blood.”
“Fantastic.” Freyr stomped his foot on the floor. “So Managarm has some kind of super-witch who can call up Berserkers left and right, and he’s probably got the Fenris Wolf, too. What do we have?”
“We have the Tree,” Heimdall responded.
Freyr shook his head and looked at the floor. “And no means of defending it. Where are our warriors?”
Odin shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. He wasn’t as large as his son, Thor, but he was a sizable and meaty immortal who was aging even faster than the rest of them. “That doesn’t mean we give up.”
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