Snow crunched in front of me. The sound was so close that it made me flinch. I raised my head, to find myself looking into the eyes of a wolf.
I say wolf, but I mean wolf in the loosest sense of the word. This primeval beast was approximately the size of a Greyhound bus. It sported a pelt of white fur with raspy gray hairs upon a muscular chest. He had eyes filled with an emotion I knew the look of well.
Contempt.
More snow crunched all around me. Other wolves. These were only about half the size of the largest.
They circled around before finally, one of them spoke. “Human insolent. You dare call Him like pet? We--”
“Kuld, behave,” echoed the voice of the largest one. The words reverberated with the spark of divinity and was enough to flatten the ear of every wolf present in a gesture of humility and deference.
That’s the one.
“I, Grafmir, son of Fenrir, have answered your call mortal man.”
“Grafmir, lord of the forest, I have come seeking answers. And if these answers are what I think they may be, then I would ask for your aid as well.”
The pack of giant wolves laughed. Grafmir did not.
“Why should I offer aid to you, little morsel? I have no mind to meet your kind til Ragnarok come.”
I grinned wide. “I thought it’d be a cold day in Hell too before I’d see you lose your Vettir allies, but it’s obvious even to a little morsel like myself, that there’s been a spot of trouble in the natural state of things.”
Snarls erupted all around me, but Grafmir stood stoic once more. To think a son of the infamously short fused Fenris wolf would have more patience than a Valkyrie.
“Are you the one who fooled them?” the wolf-lord asked casually.
I shook my head. “Not at all, but I am at odds with one of the men that did. The Aesir won’t act and the Jotun are likely to be overwhelmed by the ones that corrupted your woodland friends. If I were you, I’d be a little insulted that my friends were taken advantage of and made the playthings of mortal lieutenants. Do you plan on sitting back and doing nothing like the Aesir?”
“Clever little morsel to have figured out so much,” Grafmir began, lying down comfortably by the stone slab before saying, “Give me one good reason why I should not pick my teeth with your bones right this instant.”
A cold sweat stained my back as the words registered. The difference between Mist and Grafmir’s tempers was that the wolf had a poker face. While Mist’s displeasure at an indignant mage was immediate and explosive, the great wolf’s anger was slow burning. Fortunately, I had just the answer for him, thanks to Mist.
I replied with a shrug. “Wolves don’t hunt badgers.”
Grafmir tilted his head to one side, the universal gesture of confusion for canine kind, then barked a chuckle.
“I like your answer,” he said in a deep voice, before giving me the wolf equivalent of a shrug. “It is true. My lord and father, even chained as he is, does not lightly take the insult dealt to him. To use our allies of old for the machinations of others aside from Nature is folly.”
I knew mages with smaller vocabularies than this mutt.
“That is the friendliest thing I’ve heard anyone say in the last twenty four hours. Then you will help?”
“I’ll digest your words, and ponder my response,” Grafmir replied vaguely, before promptly rising up and lazily disappearing into the woods with his retinue of wolves in tow.
It was only after he left that I realized just how fast my heart was beating. Terrifying doesn’t begin to describe it when there were that many large sharp fangs dangerously close to ones throat. The response is involuntary. Instinctive.
Luck seemed to be on my side for once though.
I hiked back to the little gravel parking lot where I’d left Dunkirk’s car. It was nearing dusk by the time I reached it and the night was going to prove to be a busy one. Rurik was going to strike, and unbeknownst to him, Nine Towers and NORN were ready for blood thanks to Brigitte.
Things were going well, but to get comfortable now would be a rookie mistake. “The fun has only just begun,” I said, leaping over a chasm, barely ten meters from the parking lot.
That’s when I was reminded that no plan survived first contact with the enemy. Things fall apart. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They fell apart for me at the same velocity at which shrapnel is produced from a grenade.
Boom went Dunkirk’s car, exploding spectacularly just as I got in sight of it. An immense freighter truck just on the road side erupted with Vettir soldiers. Before I could react, I’d been left without a car, without a gun, and without half a chance, as the troopers advanced on me guns raised.
Chapter 17
From a young age, Lis had taught me a lot of very practical skills and words of wisdom. So I was dashing back into the thick tree line before a single Vetti gunner could draw a bead on me.
Discretion is the better part of valor, Lis’ voice echoed in my mind.
“Spread out. Pairs. Find the Human,” I heard a raspy voiced Vettir chief bellow.
“Vettiheim awaits!” came the zealous response.
I sucked in a breath as I caught sight of what I’d been looking for. The crevasse from before. Large enough for me to hide out of sight and catch my breath. I ducked inside and positioned myself beneath a log forming a bridge across it.
I didn’t need a hiding spot though. I needed a plan. Things had gone from great to horrendous in a split second. I had no way to escape, I posed little long range threat to the Vetti, and I was grievously outnumbered. Twenty to one? Thirty?
That wasn’t even the worst of it. I was good at hiding. If I were up against vanilla flavored Mundane thugs I could likely slip away without a second thought. But the Vetti were nature spirits. This was their home turf. They had sharp noses, keen eyes, and a hunting tradition as profound and prestigious as that of the great wolves I spoke to.
They might be terrible shots, but they were terrific hunters.
“It’s not fun unless there’s a challenge to it,” I murmured wryly, and drew my wand.
I peeked over the top of the crevice to gauge their numbers. I could see about fifteen, but that didn’t mean there weren’t others hiding. There was a silver lining to all this though. Rurik had never seen me do any more sneaking than was required to break into an penthouse suite.
And great hunters tend to get overconfident. I’d be happy to remind them how muddy the line between predator and prey could be, even on their home turf.
I slipped out from beneath the trunk and dashed out of the crevice, crouching behind an upturned tree that had fallen some ways off with it’s roots still largely intact. They’d expect me to try and double back, or force their hands in a straight fight. If I slipped past the sparse search party though, I could circle back onto the highway and hitch a ride, or hell, call a limo.
Two sets of footsteps crunched to my left. A pair of Vetti crept past the underbrush, brown leather armor blending in with the fallen foliage. There was only one thing to do. I raised my hand and concentrated my will.
The sort of mages that get the most attention these days are always the type that lack any kind of class. Anybody can burn their way through an army with enough talent and a couple of well placed fireballs. A real tour de force for a wizard would be to simply walk through a hostile army without anyone sensing anything amiss.
And the best part was that the spells that offered the most day to day utility were often the easiest to cast. They just required a little bit of imagination.
I brought my fingers together in a spherical shape, and conjured a bubble of magic. Focusing my will, I brought it down to my leg and shoved my foot into it. Raising my foot high, I found a nice dry branch and brought it down as hard as I could.
“Perfect.”
Twigs shattered, bark flew, but if you hadn’t seen it you wouldn’t have sensed anything amiss. Most mages thought spheres of unsound were uselessly small, however, you didn’t
have to cloak your whole body in one to make the most of them.
As the two Vetti kept watch, I dashed a stone’s throw behind them without a single Goblin ear twitching. Past them I ran, until I made it to their outer ring of hunters. Standard encirclement tactic.
Time to sow some confusion. I pooled my magic into my palm, took careful aim, and then released a tiny ball of magic towards the hunters. Even to the magically talented it was almost invisible, though it wouldn’t stay that way for long. This thing was what I liked to call a party starter.
With a timed swing of my hand, I willed the ball’s trajectory to turn north and back the way I came. When it reached the Vetti’s flank, I snapped my fingers. And all hell broke loose. The morose, barely visible ball of magic exploded into a shower of light and ear piercing squealing.
Like a tiny star being born, the now incandescent ball’s appearance was so sudden that it toppled one of the hunters right onto his rear, wailing. Cries of surprise followed swiftly by Kalashnikovs firing full auto in the direction opposite to the way I wanted to go. It was all the distraction I needed.
I slipped past the clamor of shouts and gunfire and kept on at a jog until fatigue finally set in. That should be the last of them, I thought, until I felt something collide with my shoulder and I found myself brought to a knee.
I think you’ve been shot, Charles, trickled through my mind as I whirled around in time to stop the next bullet with the rune shield.
A Goblin with half a tree worth of foliage strapped to him rose up from his hiding spot a stone’s throw away from me. No more tricks. Before the Vettir could set his gun to auto fire, I’d closed the distance and cut the Kalashnikov in two.
The Goblin leaped back just in time to avoid the same fate as his gun, swiftly drawing a modern combat knife and slashing it in a wide arc. The quick response caught me off guard and the knife drew an angry red line of blood in my forearm’s flesh. Another strike wasn’t so lucky.
His sickly green hands overreaching, I slipped beneath the Vettir’s guard and separated his knife hand from the rest of his body then in a swift flick of the wrist, cut his throat wide open.
I braced myself against a tree as the Vettir crumpled to the ground. Watching the blood pool out of the dead Goblin, the enormity of the situation hit me all at once. I should have been happy, having given them the slip at last, but all I could focus on was the pain in my shoulder and the knots in my stomach.
Again, Rurik had been one step ahead of me. He probably had his thugs pick up my trail in the city and tail me all the way here, no doubt. And instead of attacking me, they sabotaged my car, nearly hunted me down like a prize buck, and now I was stranded in the woods. I needed to to join the NT defense, and I needed to make sure that--
My heart fell as Lis’ words echoed mockingly in my ear: Trick? Nah. She’s not trying to trick you.
Brigitte wasn’t tricking me, but someone was tricking Brigitte.Which meant that her life was in danger. Damn it, how could I have been so blind?
As I staggered out of the woods and onto a road just off the E6, I scrambled for my cell and punched in Brigitte’s number as fast as I could.
It rang three times, and then, “Hey this is Heidi, you know what to do when you hear the...”
Beep.
“Br- Heidi. You’re compromised. Drop everything the second you get this message and get the hell out of there. He knows.”
I cut the call, and released an anxious sigh. Not one second later the phone rang. It was sudden enough to make me flinch.
I crammed the phone up to my ear and said, “Brigitte. Thank--”
“Ah,” replied a voice that chilled me to the bone. “‘Daniel Hunter’, I presume. Or would you prefer Charles Locke, agent of Nine Towers? I hope you weren’t expecting a call from someone else...”
Rurik.
Chapter 18
“I must confess, Mr. Locke, that you’ve certainly put up much, much more of a fight than I had thought you would. Surviving the penthouse was one thing, even with a fool proof dead man switch like the ritual.”
My voice came out deadly soft when I spoke. “If you lay one hand on her, Rurik, there won’t be anywhere to hide and no help that you could get to keep me away.”
“No need for melodrama, now. I was just getting to that little traitor,” Rurik shot back, unperturbed. “You’ve been a terrible thorn in my side. Both of you. You’ve actually put a dent in my loyal revolutionaries, forced me to change my scheduling, twice, and even managed to take that bunker. Shame about the computers though.”
Revolutionaries? The Vetti?
“Get to the point,” I muttered.
“Please forgive an old man. I just thought I’d enjoy wallowing in your wasted efforts before I tell you that Brigitte is going to be brought to a secluded little chateau of mine and tortured,” he paused, “until death will seem a mercy. Give my regards to yours, Mr. Locke. As a young man might say, ‘gotta fly’.”
Click. It was over.
Rurik had played us like a fiddle. But how much of it was trickery? Were the coordinates for the Jotun Locuses phony? Were the NT and NORN forces on a wild goose chase?
I shook my head. Impossible. The plan remained intact, even if it did stink, there was no way to tell how that old bastard had altered his attack, if an attack was even coming at all. NT would be able to look after themselves just fine, but Brigitte?
Brigitte was dead meat unless I rescued her. But how? I had no idea where she was, and even if I did, I had no way to get to her.
As I buried my head in my hands, my ears picked up the faint wail of heavy metal in the distance. Followed on it’s heels by a car engine that could easily be mistaken for a jet engine.
I turned my head the way the noise had come from just in time to see a blood red Pagani Zonda sports car squeal off the highway’s turnpike and come to a screeching halt in front of me. The brutal scream of heavy metal music hit me like a wall made up of the screams of the damned as the roof collapsed to reveal a familiar face.
Lisistrathiel. Clad in lava yellow racing queen duds, sharp gaudy sunglasses, and with an ornate cross dangling from her neck.
Hot damn!
I jumped into the passenger seat as Lis slammed the car into first gear and burned rubber back up and onto the E6.
“Lis. Rurik has Brigitte. He’s going to kill her,” I roared over the heavy metal.
The she-devil reluctantly turned down the music before asking, “Do you know where they are?”
I furrowed my brows in concentration, the angry hum of the muscle engine reverberating through me.
I nodded. “I do. He’s going to get her on a plane and fly her off.”
“You sure?”
I grinned. “He told me ‘gotta fly’ after he was done gloating.”
“Proverbs, sixteen eighteen,” replied Lis without missing a beat. “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before the fall.”
“You’re damn right.”
“Big Oslo airfield is a bit north of--”
“No. He’d have a private air field. I’m sure he would have made preparations.”
“Only one of those down here,” Lis replied. “Ten clicks south on the E6.”
“Do it.”
Lis switched gears and sent the sports car practically flying, weaving precariously through traffic with only one hand on the steering wheel.
My heart beat like a drum and my breathing picked up. We’re not out of the fight. Not yet. At this rate, I wasn't just going to save Brigitte, but catch Rurik too before he could do more harm for his shadowy ‘master’.
And it seemed luck was on my side for once. Up ahead I could make out a convoy of trucks with an out of place limousine in the middle.
“That’s our man.”
“I can tell. Trouble from behind,” Lis said, adjusting the rear view mirror.
In it, I saw a truck we’d just passed speed up, the revving of motorcycles catching my ear as they sped up to interce
pt us at the same time the truck in front of us slowed down.
“Guns?” I asked Lis.
She nodded, opening the glove compartment to reveal a minor war worth of small arms and ordnance crammed inside.
I licked parched lips as I holstered my faithful pistol, double checked my wand, and locked and loaded an Apache submachine gun. It looked like a distant relative of the UZI.
“Play nice,” Lis said, turning the heavy metal back up and flooring it.
Before I could rise up, the first shots came whistling by my head. I thought it had been a near miss bullet until the asphalt ahead of us erupted, sending a scrap and shrapnel halfway through my side of the windshield.
“Grenade launcher Goblins. Son of a bitch,” I yelled over the music and emptied my clip into the nearest motorcycle mounted Vettir.
A barrage of hot lead perforated the unlucky Goblin before he could reload his hand held grenade launcher. Before his buddy on the other Harley could react, I gave him the same treatment.
Both spun out of control, knocked into each other, and were smashed to bits as they collided with the truck behind them.
Lis took a hard left, bringing us up an over pass in hot pursuit of Rurik’s contingent. We were practically breathing down that geezer's neck, but the on-ramp slowed us down enough for the truck to catch up as it recklessly sped on.
I ducked down as a salvo of bullets riddled the sports car. I turned back to Lis, shouting, “Speed up. We’ll out run them and--”
That’s when something the size of a small bird careened over top the car and hit the pavement just to the left of us, exploding spectacularly.
Pavement, slag, and scraps of iron rained into my lap. I turned around in time to see a huge Vettir riding atop the truck with his thirty closest Facebook friends. He was cramming another missile into a goddamn bazooka.
“Rocket launcher Goblins? Really?!” I roared. “Fine. Be that way.”
Rising out of my seat, I fired the rest of my Apache SMG’s clip as quick as I could manage. Vettir scattered and fell, but more remained, and more scurried out of the back of the truck like cockroaches.
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