Sword of Secrets (Heroes of Asgard Book 1)

by S. M. Schmitz

  Frey stepped into my line of sight. “That was a hard bind. It’s what happens when you attempt to use your own strength to overpower your opponent’s attack.”

  My mouth felt pasty and sticky. “I caught him off guard because he scared the shit out of me.”

  Tyr shook his head though. “People don’t catch me off guard, Gavyn.”

  “Apparently, they do,” I shot back. I was getting a headache and really needed that open bar right about now.

  For the first time in what seemed like hours, even though I knew only minutes had passed, Keira reminded me she was with us, too. “He needs a break. This is overwhelming. It’s a lot to take in at once.” Frey and Tyr protested but Keira grabbed my arm—not in the manhandling, I’m-kidnapping-you-and-hauling-you-off-to-Iceland kind of way she had before, but in a come-with-me-I’m-actually-trying-to-help-you-here kind of way. I dropped the sword by Frey’s feet and followed her.

  She led me back to her car where she opened her own bag of sorcery tricks and produced a bottle of water. Or maybe it was just a regular bag filled with bottled water, but I wasn’t putting witchcraft past Keira either. She pulled another bottle out for herself and nodded toward the field where most of the heroes and their mentors were still engaged in lessons of combat with weapons no one even used anymore.

  “They’re good, but nothing like you’ll be.”

  I grunted and fell back against her car. I was so tired of their insistence I was some great hero in disguise. It was one hell of a disguise.

  Keira tore her eyes away from the mock fights in the field to study me but it just made me uncomfortable again, so I busied myself with putting those gloves back on. I’d earned those damn things. I wasn’t giving them back either. “You’ll tell me if you have any more dreams about Havard, won’t you?” she asked.

  I flinched at the name but pulled the other glove on. “Depends. You gonna tell me what this prophecy is that involves you?”

  Keira sucked in a quick, seething breath, and I glanced over at her but she didn’t avert her eyes like I expected her to. “No,” she said quietly. “It doesn’t matter. But Havard must be related to you and his story can help us all.”

  “If you’re right, if any of this is even true, then he wanted you all to forget him for a reason. I’m only guessing whatever bargain he had to make wasn’t an easy one. And you’re asking me to betray him to satisfy your curiosity.”

  Keira took a sip of her water and let her eyes wander back to the mock fights in the field. “I can’t imagine what he must have offered to accomplish something like that. But we haven’t talked to Freyja yet. Maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves.”

  I smiled at her and nudged her gently. “Hey, look at that. We finally agree on something.”

  Keira smiled back at me, and it was a genuine smile, not one of her patronizing-the-village-idiot smiles, and said, “And it won’t be the last time, Gavyn.”

  Chapter Nine

  We were back at the hotel before dinnertime thanks to basically being in the North Pole after all, and apparently, the sun doesn’t like to shine on Santa and his elves. For the first time that day, I got to see Hunter when Tyr and Keira led me to the same large room in which we’d been held captive on the first day here. Agnes and Cadros were sitting at the table with him, and they appeared to be playing poker.

  “Are you kidding me?” I asked. I’d spent the entire afternoon having some giant swing a sword at me and Hunter was hanging out in a hotel suite gambling? And drinking. The bottle of Brennivín was in the middle of the table, and both Agnes and Cadros had their own glasses of the green liquor in front of them.

  I scowled at Keira. “I want one of those.”

  She smiled back at me and shook her head. “No more drinking. The deadline passed a few hours ago, so we need to see what the Sumerians are going to do since you didn’t all fly to Iraq to serve them.”

  Oddly enough, I’d forgotten about the Sumerians and their deadline with all of the other weird shit going on in my life that day. A light rapping on the door made me jump, and I glanced quickly at Keira to see if she’d noticed, and of course she had. Because that’s just how my luck usually worked.

  Permanently. Emasculated.

  Tyr must have noticed, too, because he patted my shoulder and grinned at me. “It’s just Frey. We’re going to call his sister.”

  Hunter put his cards down and looked up at me, both curious and hopeful, because so far, the only woman he’d spent his days hanging out with had probably been King Arthur’s lover. “I’ll explain later,” I mumbled, and plopped myself onto the foot of one of the beds. Keira sat next to me, and I wanted to move to the other bed, because I most certainly did not want to be on a bed with Keira unless she were actually wearing that red lace lingerie and was willing to let me take it off. But I’d looked like a big enough loser over jumping because of a knock on the door—although in my defense, it had been poorly timed considering their announcement about retribution from these Sumerians—so I stayed where I was.

  Frey sat on the other bed and was already scrolling through the contact list on his cell phone, and my mouth started moving again before my brain could make it stop. “Dude, she’s your sister. Don’t you have her phone number memorized?”

  Frey didn’t even glance up at me. “How many numbers do you have memorized anymore?”

  Hunter decided to be helpful and told him, “He doesn’t even know his own number.”

  I would have flipped him off, but it was mostly true, although I knew parts of it. Like the area code. I didn’t give out my number that often though. If I was interested in a girl, I got her number rather than giving out mine and, really, what else would I even need my phone for? I guess it would have come in handy for when Hunter and I had been kidnapped by a couple of lunatics at my apartment.

  Frey must have found his sister’s number because he turned on the speakerphone and lay his cellphone on the bed beside him. Everyone in the room stared at the phone as it rang. Part of me grew hopeful she wouldn’t answer, but my luck never worked out that way. A clear, bright, mellifluous voice came through the speaker and she knew it was her brother calling her because she didn’t answer with a simple greeting but immediately launched into some sort of speech or questions or maybe her own prophecies. I don’t have a clue. I still didn’t speak Norse.

  Frey sighed and interrupted his sister. “Freyja, Gunnr and Tyr are here with me along with the hero they brought back from the U.S. The one with no story. But he’s having dreams now about a young god named Havard and in the second dream, you were there, too. He asked to borrow a couple of your maids for a human girl he’d brought back from Midgard and you wanted to negotiate for them with sex.”

  Freyja was silent for a few moments as we all held our breath waiting for her response. At least I was holding my breath, because I went and got myself dizzy again. “And he turned me down?” Freyja asked, incredulous.

  Frey laughed and repeated that part of the story, but I suspected it was just to rub it in his sister’s face that for once, she hadn’t gotten her way.

  “I would remember that,” Freyja insisted. “Nobody’s ever turned me down.”

  “Freyja,” Keira interjected, “is it possible he could have made everyone who knew him and this woman forget about both of them?”

  “How the hell would she know?” I asked.

  “Is that Gavyn?” Freyja asked.

  There were entirely too many different conversations going around now. Keira’s eyes narrowed at the phone and she inhaled another of those quick, seething breaths, but she answered my question. “Freyja knows more than any of us about how our magic works. If something like that would even be possible.”

  “When do I get to meet him?” Freyja asked, and the tone of her voice had changed just slightly, but I knew why she was asking, and Keira noticed, too. And Keira didn’t seem to like it.

  “We’re kind of busy preparing for a war, Freyja. Is it possible or not?”

/>   Freyja sighed and I could imagine the way her full red lips would pull into a smirk because she knew she was annoying Keira, and something told me that entertained Freyja. But the sound of her voice was exactly like I remembered it from my dream and I really just wanted this conversation to end already.

  “It’s possible. But it would be extremely difficult. I’m not sure one of our völvur would even have that kind of power.”

  I snickered again at the name and Keira hit me.

  “Who would then?” Keira pressed.

  Damn that woman could hit hard. I rubbed my arm and glowered at her. I was back to wondering why I’d found her so irresistible only moments before.

  “I’m not doing anything. I can come to Reykjavik and help you try to figure this out,” Freyja offered.

  “No.” Keira’s answer was automatic and she actually blushed when everyone stared her. “It could get dangerous here…” she stammered, trying to recover, but it was a lame attempt and even I knew it.

  Freyja laughed and reminded her she was a war goddess. She didn’t know why she wasn’t here to begin with, then Frey decided to be every bit as helpful as my best friend and reminded her she’d been told her services would probably be more of a distraction than an asset right now. Agnes thought that was hilarious.

  And I really just wanted Freyja off the phone. Her voice was unsettling me and I’d had enough humiliating moments for one day. “Look, we called. She doesn’t know Havard. Let’s just drop it, okay?”

  But what Tyr heard was an invitation to do the exact opposite. Again: no one ever seemed to care what I wanted. “Any chance you have an intricately braided gold band, but you don’t remember where it came from?”

  Freyja got quiet on the other end of the line again and my stomach rolled. I looked at Hunter and his green liqueur in front of him and held my hand out. They could kill me if they wanted. I was getting that drink.

  “Yes,” Freyja finally answered. “I’ve had it a really long time. Almost a thousand years.”

  I finished the drink in one swallow.

  Frey and Tyr stared at each other from across the room, and I really wanted Hunter to refill the cup I was holding. “Does it do anything?” Frey asked. “Is it enchanted?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Bring it to Brokkr. See what he says about it,” Frey suggested.

  Freyja groaned and complained about having to travel to see him. “Can’t you just tell me what it’s supposed to do? I’ll see if it works and call you back.”

  “We don’t have time. It’s a slow sort of charm. Just go see Brokkr. Besides, he probably has something else you could buy. Just don’t lose that ring. I think it belongs to Gavyn,” Frey warned her.

  “Technically,” I interrupted, which I seemed to do a lot and I also seemed to like interrupting people by starting out that way, “it’s Freyja’s now. It was traded. That makes it hers.”

  “I really can’t wait to meet you, Gavyn,” Freyja cooed, and Keira reached across the bed and disconnected the call.

  I would have told her that was kind of an assholey thing to do, but I was too glad the call was over with.

  Cadros had the television on and had been paying more attention to it than our phone conversation and Frey and Keira had only a few minutes to argue about her ending the call with his sister when Cadros told us all to shut up. He turned the volume up on the television and we watched the screen, my stomach turning again in a heavy, nauseated summersault.

  Perhaps part of the reason I’d forgotten about this supposed retribution by the Sumerians was that more than seventy-two hours had passed since their original warning and nothing had happened, which only reinforced what I’d known all along: they were the craziest of the bunch, but I had still been sucked into some world full of lunatics pretending to be gods and deities and insisting I was supposed to play some part in all of this. But the Sumerians hadn’t forgotten their threat, and as Tyr predicted, they had no intention of destroying their native homeland. They were in the United States.

  The same four gods that had blown up the ziggurat were standing outside the Staples Center in L.A. where the sun was still shining brightly and it even looked mild and pleasantly warm outside. It must have been around 10:00 in the morning there, so I couldn’t imagine what kind of event would have drawn a crowd out this early, but people were snaked in lines waiting to get inside. Most of them were dressed in business attire and I held my breath again when I realized there must be some sort of major conference being held there and it was about to begin. Those people waiting to get inside were probably getting through registration.

  The camera panned out to focus on the banner above the door, a welcome sign for a pharmaceutical company’s sales reps seminar, then it focused again on the same god who’d addressed the camera from the destroyed ziggurat. He shook his head slowly at the camera and the small smile that pulled at the corners of his lips foreshadowed it was a smile of ridicule. I was right.

  “So little regard for your fellow humans,” he told the camera, but I still felt like he was talking to me. My mouth tasted sour now and I wished I hadn’t drunk Hunter’s Brennivín after all. “Since most of you failed to comply with our demand, you can witness the effects of what your indifference has caused. But there is one of you who is prophesied to be greater than the rest. And if you want to end what you’re about to see, then we will accept your submission and leave the others alone.”

  The man who had been identified before as Ninurta nodded over his shoulder and the Staples Center crumbled, tumbling in on itself like it had been thrown into a whirlpool. Some of the people outside must have survived because we could hear screaming and saw masses of bodies running away from the building, but we had no way of knowing how many were already inside or who had been trapped in the collapsing rubble of what used to be the Staples Center. My eyes, wide with terror, were glued to the screen and I hardly noticed when Keira reached for my hand and held it. I didn’t even look at her. How could I?

  I only had vague memories of the terrorist attacks on September 11th because I’d been a young child. I know my father had watched it live and had witnessed those towers collapsing, the unbelievable knowledge that thousands of lives were trapped in those buildings, lost to us forever. Some naïve part of me had managed to go through adulthood so far believing I’d never have to witness something like that myself. And, yet, I just had.

  Ninurta watched the chaos he’d just created with something far too close to amusement and self-satisfaction then turned back to the camera. “Odin, surrender him or expect us to continue. We’ll give you forty-eight hours.” The camera cut off but was quickly replaced by an L.A. news station’s own cameras who had just arrived at the Staples Center, but I didn’t want to watch anymore.

  “I’m going back to my room,” I mumbled. I rose unsteadily to my feet and had to pull my hand free from Keira’s and headed toward the door. I didn’t have a room key. I had no idea how I was going to get into my room, but at the time, I didn’t care. I just wanted to get away from everyone, even Hunter.

  But Keira had followed me and as I paused by my door, wondering what to do now, she pulled the card key from her pocket. Any visions I’d had of Keira coming to my room with me alone in only racy lingerie were gone. For once, I wasn’t even interested in sex or fantasizing about it. I tossed my coat on the foot of the bed then collapsed onto it and covered my face with one of the pillows.

  “Gavyn,” Keira’s voice was quiet and gentle but there was no consolation after witnessing something like that.

  “You think they’re talking about me, don’t you?” I mumbled through the pillow.

  Keira took her time answering me, and honestly, I was fine with that. I didn’t really want to hear her answer anyway. She tugged on the pillow to get me to move it away from my face, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to hide from the world, including her.

  Keira sighed softly and gave up. “Yes, I know they are.”

  “
They didn’t name me though.” But the same part of me that had known I’d recognize Freyja—whether it was by sight or the sound of her voice—also knew Keira was right.

  “They probably don’t know your name. You’re not connected to them. Their own seers may have told them only about a powerful Norse hero who could potentially bring them down. They most likely don’t know much about you yet, and we’ll keep it that way until you’re ready to face them.”

  I threw the pillow away from me and sat up so I could glare at her, but as so often happened lately, I didn’t know if I was mad at her or these Sumerian assholes or the universe or all of it. “Me? Just me? Is that what this prophecy is you don’t want to talk about? I’m supposed to be able to bring down an entire pantheon of gods by myself?”

  “No.” Keira’s voice was still soft and gentle and I found it difficult to stay mad at her. “You’ll have help. Ours and the Celts. But we’ve already told you that our own Seer promised us you would be the greatest of the heroes. It’s in your bloodline somehow, Gavyn. That doesn’t just disappear because people stop believing in us.”

  I lay back down on the bed and closed my eyes. “Right. My magic DNA.”

  When Keira spoke again, I could tell she was smiling. “Not magic, just genetics. Although a god’s genes are more likely to get expressed over a human’s, so maybe it seems like magic.”

  “Keira, our genes determine stuff like hair color and height, not learned knowledge like being able to fight with a sword.”

  Keira moved a little closer to me but my eyes were still closed, so when she touched the side of my face, it surprised me. I probably jumped again.

  Epically. Pathetic.

  “And yet,” she said, still smiling down at me, “you should have seen yourself out in that field today. Once you stopped complaining and just let Frey and Tyr help you, it was like you’d been sword fighting your entire life. And you were magnificent.”

  Her smile faltered and she moved her hand and stood up. She wouldn’t look at me again. “You’re a good person, Gavyn, despite trying to pretend otherwise sometimes. And I know part of the reason you don’t want to be doing any of this is that you don’t want to be a part of anyone getting hurt. But you see now they won’t leave us any choice.”