Forged in Blood and Lightning: A New Adult Urban Fantasy Novel (Descendants of Thor Trilogy: Book One)

by S. A. Ashdown

  ‘It’s so different ’ere. The animals aren’t afraid of me.’ Lorenzo stopped to sink his hand into the water, the otters obliging him with a playful greeting.

  Nikolaj shot him a pitying look. ‘The Alfheim-born recognise your Elvish blood. These creatures know nothing of the curse.’

  As we passed a cobblestone bridge about nine feet wide, providing ample space for carts and cattle, I dallied behind, admiring the spring in Lorenzo’s stride. It seemed so long ago I was watching him at the Old Vicarage, guzzling wine in the corner. At the time, I doubted whether he liked being a vampire. The answer no longer seemed so straightforward, not so black or white. His transformation gave him power, strength, and it gave him a heritage. However he felt about drinking blood, he enjoyed exploring his inner-Elf. I couldn’t blame him.

  ‘So maybe vampires are evolving, gradually shedding the restrictions of the curse, generation by generation. That’s how I can tolerate the daylight and why my fangs are smaller too. Right?’

  ‘It’s a solid theory,’ said Nikolaj. ‘Kane and Cat’s blood dilutes each time it is mixed with human blood. The Elvish essence lingers on, but the curse’s side-effects degenerate as time passes.’

  This side of the river, in the lower regions of the forest, the Iepen claimed their territory. Nikolaj stilled, waiting for us to pay attention. ‘The Iepen are the master manipulators of trees,’ he said. ‘They render the toughest bark pliable with their magic.’

  At the river’s edge, great elms towered into the sky, each tree halved and peeled apart like a banana skin, to create a staircase that sank into the grassy bank. They connected to pulley-systems that could fasten the stairs and net them into the canopy like rollmops.

  Men and women – beanpoles decked out in shimmering feathers – climbed the steps, carrying wicker baskets full of vegetables and fish. I lost sight of them in the latticework of huts and catwalks. A village in the sky, with elms and fruit trees for pillars.

  We left the river behind, avoiding discarded fruit peelings; the forest floor made a convenient compost heap for the arboreal Iepen. ‘Perfect nutrition for the hanging gardens,’ said Uncle Nik. Far above our heads, an immense basket swung from a thick rope, dainty feet darting over it as sure-footed women tended the gardens.

  Interspersed between the elms, exotic fruit trees groaned under the weight of their produce, sap leaking through the outer-flesh, the sticky sweetness clinging to my nostrils. Nikolaj laughed at the gurgling noise escaping my stomach.

  ‘You’re hungry now, Nevø? Wait for the scent at nighttime…’ He drew his fingertip across the bark and licked the tree’s residue from it. I did the same, tasting clean honey, pure as light.

  ‘Your pupils have dilated,’ said Lorenzo, and I regarded him for a long moment, lost in the pulsing colours of the forest.

  ‘At dusk, the sap turns to steam, releasing a cocktail of sedatives and aphrodisiacs into the atmosphere. Even the fruit glows in the dark to encourage midnight feasting, the high, hollow branches sounding the dinner bell with their fluted chorus. Not surprisingly, the Iepen have the highest birth rate in the whole of Alfheim. Can you see the lanterns hanging from the branches? At sunset, they wash the canopy in flame. So the tree-folk can find their way around, you understand – to their mistresses’ houses. I’ll bet ten ounces of panned gold on that!’

  His eyes glittered with mischief.

  ‘Is that what goes for currency around here?’

  Nikolaj shrugged, still amused at his slurring of the Iepen’s reputation. ‘Gold. Jewels. Each tribe has their trinkets of value. Goldenstone Market still allows bartering.’

  ‘I want to see it.’ Lorenzo said, and he seemed to hum with excitement. Then again, the forest itself was subtly vibrating ever since I’d tasted the tree sap.

  Crossing over the bridge we had passed earlier, we followed the cobbled path back towards the mountains, so the river was on our left, and a plain of crops to our right. The land gradually curved uphill onto the fertile slopes of an ancient volcano Nikolaj called ‘the forge’. Still active, the architects used it to create indestructible building materials and weapons for the Royal Army.

  The path glittered with gold specks sieved by the river folk. I started whistling Follow the Yellow-Brick Road. Uncle Nik usurped my whistle with his superior pitch, before explaining that the royals demanded a certain amount of gold as a tithe, but usually reinvested it into the community as a goodwill gesture.

  ‘How do you find your way around without any signposts?’

  ‘Where do you want to go?’

  The road lit up with moving arrows, forming into symbols relating to a destination. ‘To Fork River,’ I said as an experiment, and a child’s drawing of a fish wriggled left. ‘To the Market,’ I tried next. The cobbles flamed like a Mexican wave into the distance. ‘GPS for the feet. Who said Alfheim couldn’t do technology?’

  ‘You’re the warlock ’ere,’ said Lorenzo, ‘but I reckon its magic, not signals bouncing around space.’

  ‘No shit, Sherlock.’

  Soon the playful shouts of children echoed in the trees. We spotted them not far from the modest school building, sitting outside around a teacher’s knee, reading books or learning to weave baskets, some older children constructing simple woodwind instruments. The little ones waved as we walked by, their tiny, pointed ears simply adorable.

  After passing another bridge that led back into the Sarrows’ territory, we curved right round the volcano and arrived at the Goldenstone Market, a sliver of blue sea visible straight ahead, snow-capped mountains beyond the forest to the left. A lurching horse-drawn cart forced me aside, and I joined Lorenzo, who had already started nosing around the stalls. After being handed a stipend, he blended into the throng of Elves bartering in musical tones.

  ‘Volcano-crops supply most of the grains to the market,’ Nikolaj said, steering me towards crates piled with bread, golden crusted and molten. He exchanged bone-coins for a loaf, tearing me a chunk. The flaky crust melted on my tongue, and I groaned, ready to steal the rest from his hands.

  ‘It’s better than your baking, Onkel.’

  He scoffed. ‘You can’t get the flour quality in Midgard.’

  While I was examining a snow globe – the hawker claimed it contained genuine Fae dust –, Lorenzo returned with a necklace made from near-translucent seashells, blue-pink sinews that pulsed when held to the sun, reminiscent of blood flowing under skin. It was entirely appropriate for him. ‘You’ve been had,’ Nikolaj complained when Lorenzo gave him his change, ‘how much did you pay for that?’

  ‘How the hell am I supposed to know? Elves don’t work on the decimal system!’

  ‘Fine,’ he huffed, ‘we better move along. I need to take Theo home.’

  ‘Do you really have to?’ After all I’d been through, Alfheim promised the rest I ached for. ‘Can’t we stay a while?’

  ‘And risk your father coming here?’

  ‘Fair point,’ I said. ‘Where did Lorenzo go?’

  ‘Damn it, I should’ve warned him,’ Nik said. He pointed in the woodland that sprouted up the side of the volcano. ‘The Forest of Dreams. He’s probably seen something. The trees release hallucinogenic chemicals. Only affects non-natives. I’ll go and get him.’

  But I was already running toward the slope, responding to a call I hadn’t heard in years.

  What I saw in that ashen woodland, following that voice and hunting for Lorenzo, left another claw mark in my soul.

  37

  A Mother’s Child

  My mother called me. I escaped Uncle Nikolaj, losing him as I passed the forest threshold, mouldy with gigantic mushrooms at the volcano’s edge. The vision scooped me up in its embrace, holding me apart from the forest until I was wandering through the innards of trees, lost in the guts of roots and the webs of mountain ash hanging like hair on the branches.

  I ran for her, pounding the slope in the sandals lent to me by Pipa’s father, and the dust sanded my toes. ‘Mum!’
I shouted. ‘Mum, I’m here! Where are you?’

  Her silhouette fluttered in the breeze, kicking up leaves, fire-scorched as her crimson hair. ‘Theo,’ she whispered, and it tickled my ear. I rested with one foot on a fallen branch, scanning.

  I found her. She wasn’t alone. This world I had been sucked into screamed déjà vu. Dreams. Dreams of Mother I’d lived before, running down passages divided between light and dark, as if arising from the twin chambers of my broken heart. Pleasant ivory visions, birthed from happy memories, slotted stark against ebony nightmares fraught with tension, haunted by a mysterious darkness that trailed behind her.

  Now this thing lazed at her feet, drawing pictures in the moss with a hunk of rock. This thing was a child – a boy. He didn’t seem to notice me, or my mother – his mother – stroking his wavy, dark hair. The layers wobbled, and I understood this scene came from a withered future, one that never grew past the present.

  I struggled for the last memory I possessed of my mother before she died, searching for anything out of place, anything different about her. Drowning in the River Lethe had provided a certain clarity but still I failed to find the evidence in my own mind. Was she pregnant when she died? Was the shadow that followed her in my dreams in fact my unborn brother?

  A new grief opened up like a chasm in my chest. I walked forward. ‘Mamma?’

  She blushed, ‘Oh, Theo. Your mother isn’t here.’

  ‘I know this isn’t real,’ I said, but really I hoped it was. ‘I know you aren’t really here. Is this my brother?’ I reached to caress the boy, whose eyes were a swirl of browny-blue. A jolt of familiarity – a sense of oneness, of relation – unnerved and hurt me all the greater.

  ‘You see but do not see.’ My mother was perfectly miserable. She slouched and tossed her hair over one bare shoulder. ‘This is my child,’ she confirmed, ‘I never got to meet him. Not really.’

  ‘Because you died.’

  ‘Yes.’ Her smile offered an essential truth. ‘That’s right, I died.’

  ‘Does Father know about him?’

  ‘Espen?’ She looked perplexed. Something didn’t feel right about this, about her.

  I nodded.

  ‘I don’t know; maybe he did. Maybe he should’ve helped me before it was too late. Your father was always so stubborn. Even with his family.’

  I asked her because I wouldn’t get another chance. I asked her about her death. ‘What happened out there that night?’

  ‘It wasn’t natural, Theo. It shouldn’t have been like that.’

  The boy reached up and tugged her dress, and she pulled him onto her lap, planting a series of kisses on his little fingers.

  ‘Was someone responsible for your death?’

  But my question came too late. Mother and child huddled on the rock, cooing to one another, gentle whispers melting into birdsong as I was dropped back into the real forest, flung from the clutch of illusion. I fought it, begging for the answer as the shroud separating the living and the dead swept between us. The last thing I saw, as the vision faded, was the boy’s drawing in the moss. A simple horse, a stickman holding a lance, riding – a knight. And next to that, a letter drawn with the uncertainty of a child’s hand. M.

  The clarity of the message filled me with rage, blistering as I shouted the name in the air. ‘Menelaus Knight! Menelaus, ugh!’ I swung round to plant my fist in a nearby tree only for it to be caught by Lorenzo.

  ‘You saw something, didn’t you?’ he demanded. ‘So did I. I could’ve sworn Raphael was ’ere. I’ve been chasing a phantom all over the fucking place. I don’t think we can trust these trees.’

  I stared at him as if he were some kind of alien. He snapped his fingers in front of my face. ‘Wake up, Theo. Whatever you saw, it was a load of shit. We should go back.’

  But the car had already crashed, the bomb had already detonated. The damage was eleven years old and for once, there was someone I really could blame. Lorenzo was right about one thing; the vision could only point an arrow at the truth, perhaps a truth I had intuited long ago. I needed solid evidence and once I got it, nothing, not even Jörð, Hecate, Julian, Thor, Odin, or Freyr – not even my father – could stop me from avenging my mother and my brother.

  ‘Yes, we need to find Nik. I need to go home.’

  38

  Never Ever

  Ava admired Grace as she skipped down the corridor, red-curls flying out behind her in the breeze created by her movement. Ava opened up for a celebratory embrace with her friend, who almost lifted her off her feet. ‘Last. Exam. Ever!’

  ‘Not ever,’ said Ava. Apart from producing and performing to gain some experience, they hadn’t confirmed their future plans yet. Grace holding a job at the Red Hawk came with certain perks, and her boss had agreed to test them onstage as a duet. Ava would abandon her guitar for the piano, which she was sufficient in, a concession to Grace who was nervous about her first onstage event in the real world, despite being a whizz-kid on the cello. ‘There’s always post-grad.’

  Grace rolled her quick eyes, the deliberate exaggeration worthy of her other passion: theatre. ‘Whatever. The end of the world might happen before then. I want to let loose and have some fun!’ She winked at Shy Stu, the violinist, as he slipped past, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively. He sped down the hall, his cheeks stained purple.

  ‘I take it you’re over that Lorenzo then,’ Ava said, noticing Grace jerk at the name. ‘Did he even call you back?’

  ‘I’ve seen him a couple of times. It’s not like “trwoo luv” or anything.’

  Her defensive bite warned Ava away from the subject, so she swung round, linking arms with Grace as she pulled her out of the hexagonal Performing Arts faculty where they’d sat through their final theory exam. As the doors opened, they squinted in the sun – a rare pleasure these days.

  ‘What about you? Still dating the sexy professor?’

  ‘One dinner date doesn’t constitute dating.’

  ‘Yes it does, dummy,’ Grace laughed, ‘and I bet he’ll be pestering you all summer.’

  Ava went quiet, content with letting Grace think she was lost in steamy thoughts about Menelaus when the truth was… complicated. Ava found herself leading them towards the piazza, so near that high window of Menelaus’ office, and she stopped mid-stride, causing a girl behind them to swerve left, her attention swallowed by her iPhone.

  ‘Yikes, are you trying to get us mown down by students?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Ava, ‘I’m thinking.’

  Grace rarely indulged in self-reflection, except when she hugged her cello with her knees, drawing her bow to slice the strings with a yearning beauty that lacquered a sombre face, so discordant with her usual chirpiness. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Mark’s over there. He was so nervous this morning. Catch up later?’

  ‘Sure.’ Ava nodded, not really listening. Less than a week had passed since that evening in the restaurant with Menelaus. She’d felt unsettled every day since, an ominous rattle in her marrow that stirred every time she moved, making her think about animals sensing the onset of an earthquake.

  The meal came back to her in snapshots: a brush of shadow on the professor’s strong jaw, with that faint scar silvery against his chin, the downy hairs curling over his forearm, shirt wound up at the elbows to accentuate his powerful build.

  He’d made an effort. Showing up at her house all dapper with half-a-dozen red roses, his beard clipped short, kissing her on both cheeks. It was like something out of a movie, and Mum had glowed, taking her daughter aside before they left, to warn her not to toss this one aside as she had all the others, but to let him woo her properly. ‘That is a man,’ she had squealed, ‘not a stupid boy.’

  He’s a man alright, Mother, but I sense there’s more to him than meets the eye. And there was a lot of him to gawp at. She remembered with perfect clarity the glint in his hazel eyes – so set back and deep under his brow, giving weight to his appraisal as he caressed her little finger. He looked at her
as if he already knew what she was, already understood her gift, whereas he remained a mystery. She couldn’t help but wonder at the private discussions in his head, trying to discern his thoughts in that wry smile. When had she last been so intrigued by a man, and felt the interest was genuinely returned? I can’t remember.

  He had listened. He’d actually drawn breath to pause, leaning back in his chair, though keeping his fingers a hop from her hand to hold it again at a moment’s notice, tossing questions at her about the necklace she was researching, and her song writing. He had listened to her album and loved it. She imagined him in his flat sitting by the window and sipping a glass of expensive red wine, his stereo emitting music she had crafted and imbued with her secrets. Secrets threaded in lyrics, half-believed by her fans, and mostly misunderstood.

  She had played for him.

  They had driven back to her cottage, and she’d invited him in, keen to extend the enjoyable conversation and not seem ungrateful for dinner, a little more expensive than she’d expected, and anyway he’d paid without hesitation or ceremony. He came to her room, promising Lolita he was on his best behaviour, which was mortifying but reassuring at the same time. Ava never just jumped into bed, even for someone as physically commanding as Menelaus.

  She had laughed at him stooping under the low beams, and he’d seen the humour, sitting himself upon a large cushion she tossed from the bed, his long, lean legs seeming to cover half the floorboards. From her stage – her bed – she had taken requests, rendering her songs into something wrenching and natural, like the crack of bone in a fight, or the deep moan of a woman in childbirth. Tears prickled and wetted her skin, her waterproof eyeliner her last defence, and Menelaus had supported his head in his large hands, locked onto her, his open expression betraying a well of pain inside him.