Goddess of Fate

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  Then he looked down at the clipboard Tomas had been holding. The cargo manifest. Jackpot. He pulled the papers off it and then turned to see Aurora clutching two guns.

  “We need to go—now,” she said, and Luke shoved Tomasson’s wallet and gun and the manifest into his own pockets and grabbed her hand. They ran together through the containers in an eerie silence—all sound had stopped. There was no mechanical grinding from the cranes, no sound of trucks or backup beeping, no voices.

  In fact, there was no wind, and no sound of their own footsteps. And when they rounded a corner to stare out over the bay, there was the weirdest thing of all.

  The waves were frozen in motion; the water was like carved glass, completely still.

  Luke stared, shocked beyond measure.

  “Luke,” Aurora pleaded, and she tugged at his hand.

  Aurora pulled him toward the periphery of the pier; they ran past men frozen in place, stopped midstride, one bending down to pick up a dropped wrench. Luke felt as if he were in a movie, or a dream. It was the silence that was most eerie, though; you never noticed how much sound was around you, all the time, until all that sound disappeared.

  Aurora dodged through a gap in the container wall, pulling him with her, and suddenly the bay was at their feet, that frozen water with the waves suspended midcurl.

  Luke saw a narrow sand spit below them, curving around the tip of the jut of land supporting the pier.

  “That way,” Luke said. “We can get around it, and we’ll come up on the other side of the rail yard. We can reach the street from there.”

  He crouched and dropped down to the sand—weirdly, there was no sound when he hit—then turned back and reached up to lift Aurora down. His hands on her waist, the smell of her hair as her body slid down his to hit the sand, was a shock of desire; even in this strangest of circumstances, he simply and powerfully wanted her. They stood with his hands on her, unable to move, and their breathing was jagged.

  “Let’s move,” he said roughly, more to himself than to her, and he took her by the hand and they ran on the sand.

  The pier was long and they ran in silence on the sand for what felt like an hour before they finally cleared the length of it and were on to noncommercial shoreline. A long rocky abutment separated the pier from the beach beyond and Luke dropped Aurora’s hand as they concentrated on climbing the rocks without slipping or plunging.

  As they scrambled down the other side of the rocky break, something changed. It took Luke a moment to understand what was happening, but then he realized he could feel wind moving on his face. Suddenly there was sound again. To the side of them, small waves were breaking on the shore.

  Time had started again.

  And it was the strangest thing, but the wind had come up hard and the sky was suddenly filled with banks of thick black clouds, with more clouds massing on the horizon. Lightning branched against the darkness, lighting up the water, and the waves were rolling, crashing hard onto the spit of sand where they stood.

  Luke stared out at the chaos. Maybe that time-stopping thing she had done had screwed something up in the atmosphere...or maybe the storm had been coming in, had been stopped and only seemed to have just appeared, like a jump-cut in film. Whatever had happened, it was shaping up to be a real storm.

  Aurora glanced backward toward the pier. “We can’t go back to the car, they’ll be waiting.”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” he said, and his voice was harsh. “We’re staying right here. And you’re going to tell me how the hell you did that.”

  That seemed to catch her off guard. “I can’t tell you how,” she said. “I can do it, but I can’t explain it.” He stared at her. She lifted her hands. “Time is an illusion, not a constant at all. So it’s easily manipulated. I have some power over the Present.”

  “Because you’re a Norn, right?”

  She looked at him, anxious.

  Luke was already shaking his head, but this time there was no getting around it. Whatever he had believed, or not believed, before, time had stopped right in front of him. “You’re some kind of...guardian angel.”

  “If it helps to think of it that way.”

  All of reality had just short-circuited for Luke. “I don’t understand what you’re doing with me.”

  She stood on the sand, with the wind rippling through her hair and the stormy bay behind her, and she looked at him in a way that would have melted him if he hadn’t been so completely unbalanced by everything that had just happened, was happening.

  “I can’t ever not be with you,” she said softly. “I was assigned to you for life. Whatever you do, I’m sworn to help. I want you to have what you want, to be who you are, to do and be and have the best of what you aspire to. You are the most important thing in the world to me.”

  He stared at her, overwhelmed. But there was something more to all of it, something she was leaving out.

  “You keep talking as if you’re some kind of guardian, as if this is all your duty. But there’s something else, isn’t there,” he said roughly.

  She dropped her head and nodded. The wind whipped her hair around her face.

  “Something more.”

  She nodded again, face flushed.

  “You’re not supposed to feel this way about me.”

  She looked up, startled.

  “And I’m not supposed to feel this way about you,” he finished, his eyes fixed on her.

  She shook her head. “No,” she said softly. “But I do. I do. I do...” she kept repeating, until he took her arm and pulled her toward him and his mouth crushed down on hers. Her head fell back, and she gasped and gave in to him.

  Nothing was ever sweeter than the feel of her body against his, so pliant, so willing, so right.

  He gathered her into him and felt the curves and swells of her body electrifying every inch of him. They sank down in the sand and the wind was around them and the sound of the waves kissing the shore matched their own hot and urgent kisses. She shivered at his touches; he could feel the heat they made through their clothes.

  But clothes were an encumbrance; he wanted to be naked against her, so he pulled at the cloth encasing her, hungry for skin, for everything about her. Her hair was like satin against his mouth, his cheek, and he moved over her. He needed to be in her, to feel her around him.

  The rain broke, warm and hard, but neither of them could feel anything but each other. Her breath came fast and her surrender was like heaven. When the hot length of his sex found her softness he groaned with the unbearable sweetness of it and then he plunged and was rewarded by her gasp. The friction between them came in waves of pleasure as the waves pounded the sand and they cried out as they shuddered together, again and again and again.

  Chapter 16

  They lay in the sand, skin against skin, their hearts beating in time—and totally drenched.

  Luke looked straight up into the stormy sky, trying to catch his breath. The rain had stopped, or at least paused; they were soaked but the wind was surprisingly warm.

  “Some storm,” he said finally...and didn’t mean just the weather.

  “The gods are angry with me,” she said.

  “The gods are angry with you,” he repeated, incredulous. “For what?”

  “For loving you,” she said simply.

  Luke felt as if he had been struck by the lightning that cracked above them in the sky. It was all so much...too much. And yet, he knew she meant it. He knew that no one else had ever felt this way about him; no one had ever been willing to risk everything to be with him; no one had ever wanted to. He felt his emotions roiling like the sea; the weather seemed just a reflection of his inner turmoil.

  “So this is wrong,” he said.

  “Well...it’s not approved,” Aurora hedged. “But the gods do it all the time,” she said defensively. “Just Freya, for example—you wouldn’t believe what a tramp. And don’t get me started on Loki—”

  “Shh,” he said, and kissed her hair.
“I don’t care if it’s wrong.”

  “Neither do I,” she said, melting into him.

  He leaned over her and kissed her so thoroughly that she moaned, her body moving under his in a way that made him want her all over again. But there was too much he needed to know.

  “Oh, no. Stop that. We need to get some things straight.” He sat up, setting her away from him, and he braced his back up against a boulder. She leaned against him as if she needed his touch, couldn’t bear to be even an inch away from him. He was surprised to find he felt the same way. He laced his fingers in hers, but spoke firmly.

  “You need to tell me everything. No matter how...weird it all is. Don’t hold back.”

  She looked conflicted. “Are you sure?”

  “Just tell me.”

  “Well...technically, you’re dead,” she admitted. He stared at her. “Tomasson killed you last night. I just... I stopped Time, so you would have another chance.”

  Even as he opened his mouth to deny it, Luke was flashing back to the moment when he’d been shot. He remembered the tunnel with its bright light, the darkness closing in and the sound of horses, and he knew it was true.

  “Another chance at what?” he asked, unnerved.

  “Everything,” she said with wide-open blue eyes. “Whatever in the world you want. The thing is, I think you’ve been unduly influenced by...a bad Norn. She’s not really bad. She’s just— impulsive, and... I love her, she’s my sister, but bottom line, she’s really kind of selfish. She’s not just a Norn but a Valkyrie, so her job is to collect warriors for Odin, and what I really think is that she’s been steering you toward the warrior thing all your life so that you’d take a risk and die gloriously in battle—”

  “Hey, slow down.” He scrambled up from the sand, feeling a need to balance on his feet. Then, realizing he was naked, he found his pants and put them on.

  Somewhat returned to sanity, he looked down at her. She was completely naked and flushed from their lovemaking and apparently not self-conscious in the least. He wondered how he could ever have thought she was human. There was something about her, more sweet, more perfect, than any mortal woman. Or maybe she was just simply more essentially a woman than anyone he had ever met.

  But that was crazy. What was he even thinking? He tried to focus.

  “So am I dead or not? What is all this supposed to be about?”

  “I think it’s about a choice you have to make,” she said.

  “What choice?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to know everything?”

  “Oh, no,” she said earnestly. “There would be no free will if I could tell you what to do. You still make the choices.”

  That actually made a crazy kind of sense. He looked out at the dark sea.

  “So I’m supposed to make some kind of choice, and that decides whether I live or die?”

  She looked troubled. “I think it might decide a lot more than that.”

  He stared at her. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

  “I think whatever choice you make is going to have a major impact on...” She hesitated. “On the world. We’re so close to Ragnarok, you see.”

  Ragnarok. Another word Luke recognized from Nona’s stories. It meant the battle at the end of the world, the Scandinavian Armageddon.

  “Isn’t that supposed to be between gods and giants?” he asked, grasping at a memory.

  She nodded vigorously. “Yes, exactly, but Odin has the Valkyries going all over the earth collecting warriors from the world of men to fight with the gods in his army in the End of Days. That’s what Val was taking you for—to serve Odin.”

  Luke could only look at her. She was saying everything as if it was all actually possible instead of completely insane. The rain had stopped but the clouds were still low and ominous and the fog was rolling in, a thick pea soup of it, darkening the sky and creating an eerie mist.

  “Serve Odin,” he finally repeated, and his voice sounded hollow.

  She nodded very seriously. “But I said...”

  “You said what?”

  “That maybe that wasn’t what you wanted.”

  Luke looked at her, and tried to process this, and found he was utterly unable to.

  “You’re damn right that’s not what I want. I don’t even believe it. Let the gods sort out their own problems. I want to finish my case.”

  “Oh, I’m sure that’s the right thing to do,” she said.

  “I’m glad you’re sure.”

  “It’s clear that somehow this case is tied up with your destiny. Tomasson, the case, everything. The case is the key. It all keeps repeating so it must be the key.”

  He looked at her. “And what about you?”

  She hesitated. “What about me?” she asked carefully.

  “You keep repeating, too.”

  She suddenly seemed breathless. “Yes...”

  “Does that mean you’re my destiny?”

  She couldn’t look away from him. “It’s your choice,” she said, so low he could barely hear her over the soft sound of the waves.

  Luke reached for her and pulled her to him.

  * * *

  Aurora looked up into his eyes for a delirious, suspended moment and was just wishing the moment would never end when she became aware that the wind had stopped again, and so had the sound of the waves crashing against the shore.

  And Luke wasn’t moving, either; he was just a sweet, sexy circle of arms around her.

  Who is it? Who did it?

  She wriggled out of Luke’s frozen grasp to look around her.

  Frozen clouds, frozen water, complete stillness...and there perched on top of a rock, Loki sat grinning down on her.

  “You must be exhausted. It looked pretty strenuous there for a while.”

  “Loki,” she said in a fury. “Start Time this instant.”

  “Oh, I didn’t do that. There must be someone else around.” He eyed her appreciatively. “And don’t worry about offending my delicate sensibilities, love, nothing I haven’t seen before.”

  Aurora realized she was still naked and scrambled for her dress, pulling it on, while Loki continued, unfazed.

  “Not to mention that you’ve got more pressing things to worry about. You managed to piss off everyone in the pantheon. I don’t know how you do it, actually—it’s a gift.”

  “I have permission from the Eternals,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster, given that she was still struggling with her buttons.

  “Really? They give you permission to...” He looked meaningfully at Luke, kneeling bare-chested on the sand, and made an unmistakable gesture. “I’m pretty sure that wasn’t one of the deal points.”

  Aurora’s heart skipped a beat. She knew he was right. But she wasn’t going to let Loki distract her. “I have the whole day. Without interference,” she added meaningfully.

  He feigned looking around him in shock. “Surely you don’t mean moi.”

  “Spare me the innocent act.”

  “I’m not here to interfere, love. I’m here to help. You and your mortal there seem to have unknowingly hit on something much bigger than you realize.”

  She felt a cold shock of certainty. “The weapons,” she said.

  “Right in one, love.”

  “What does it have to do with?”

  “It’s big,” Loki hinted in a maddening singsong.

  Aurora tried to think of what was big for mortals, something really devastating. “A terrorist attack,” she guessed.

  “Bigger,” Loki said.

  “Bigger than a terrorist attack?”

  “Much bigger.”

  She looked at him, mystified, and then her eyes widened. “Ragnarok?” she whispered.

  “It would make sense to start it here, wouldn’t it? In the world of men?”

  “You have to tell me...”

  He shook his head quickly. “We’ll talk later.”

  “We’ll talk no
w.”

  He glanced behind her. “No, actually, now you have to face the music. Good luck,” he called back over his shoulder jauntily as he turned toward the rocks—and disappeared.

  Aurora spun to see what he had been staring at, and saw two figures walking toward her over the fog on the water.

  Lena and Val.

  Actually, Lena was walking; Val was more striding toward her in a fury.

  Of course.

  She took a deep breath, and walked out onto the water herself, figuring it was best to meet them head-on. Besides, she didn’t want Val anywhere near Luke.

  The sisters met on a foggy bank and looked at one another silently. Then Val laughed.

  “My gods and goddesses, you are in such trouble now it’s not even funny.”

  Aurora sighed inwardly. Why did everyone keep insisting on telling her how much trouble she was in? Didn’t they know she knew she was in trouble?

  “Oh, Aurora,” Lena said.

  “All this grand talk of destiny,” Val continued self-righteously. “You just wanted him for yourself. You’re going to be thrown out of the pantheon, you know. And for what? They’re never going to let you keep him, anyway.”

  “I think that’s up to him,” Aurora retorted, although she knew that pissing Val off was no way to go. But too late; her sister was on a roll.

  “I think you better get back up there and plead your case before something even worse happens to you. Remember, the gods can get very creative about their punishments—hanging you from a tree, binding you under the fangs of a great snake so that burning poison drips down onto your—”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” Aurora said, but her heart wasn’t in it. Val was right, historically speaking. It could get ugly. Then she thought of Luke and drew herself up.

  “The Eternals gave me a whole day. It’s not over yet.”

  “Just a few hours...”

  “A lot can happen in a few hours,” Aurora said.

  Lena stepped in. “You’re already in this so deep.”

  Aurora turned on her older sister. “I was always in deep. This is how it is, Lena. This is my choice.”

  Instead of answering her, Lena gave her a startled look. “Aurora...”