I extended a hand to Justin. He linked his fingers with mine and looked to Nym. He spoke to the Stians. “We can trust her.”
The men dithered with obvious reluctance.
Liam moved into their clear view. “I’m Liam Hale. My brothers and I met many of you when you transformed. We guided you in your new life and directed you to clans where you were welcomed and appreciated. The Stians undermined our work, and we let it get out of hand. For that, I’m truly sorry, but know this: I will never lead you away from what is right. She is right. Under her command—” He faltered, glancing at my hand in Justin’s. “Under their command, we cannot be beaten. The world will be as it was meant to be for us. A place of honorable challenges and worthy adversaries.”
The ground rocked us off our feet, toppling everyone in the room like a box of dominoes. Boards tore free from the barn, leaving holes in the walls near the ceiling.
I pulled myself up and freed my sword. Whatever was out there wouldn’t stay that way for long. “We can’t wait any longer. We have to fight or be killed. Sitting in here, all in one place, waiting for them to pounce, is sure to get us all killed. We’ve got to go.”
I shoved the door open and gaped at the sections of missing wall in the stables. Throwing gobs of hair away from my mouth, I called back to the Stians, “You don’t have to join us to live, but it’s time to leave. At least get out of here alive.”
“Callie,” Justin called and I spun.
The men each balanced on one knee, swords positioned on the floor before them. They spoke the words in near unison. A group decision to follow us.
Tears burned my eyes. I’d never been so thankful for wind-whipped hair to cover the emotion wrecking my face. They pledged fealty and rose to join me at the door. A beam of light fell from the sky in a blast wide enough to swallow the town. The entirety of our surrounding lit in that moment, revealing every hidden Viking in the trees and on the ground, the spooked horses, and six angry giants.
Oliver skidded to a stop at my side. “I’m here. Sorry I’m late. Should I ask what that light was? Not aliens, I hope.”
Justin yelled against the wind, “You spend too much time with Allison.”
The darkness returned with a double dose of wind and some sheeting rain for extra fun. I slid in the mud with each step. “I think that was the prophecy being fulfilled.”
The giants kicked trees down and shook Vikings off branches. Falling men bounced against the earth, breath knocked from their lungs. Every Jotunn was as tall as the barn. I scooted by the denser tree trunks, heading for the nearest giant’s legs.
“Wait.” Nym caught up to me, a strange look in her eyes. “I’m sorry about your dad and his friend.”
“Ginger?” I balked. “Not now.” Seriously, what was her angle? Distract me until a giant could squash me into compost?
“I didn’t set the bed-and-breakfast on fire, but I didn’t try to stop him either. I watched.”
Him. I kept moving before we were seen. So, she knew who killed my friends. She’d watched and done nothing to help them. Anger gripped my chest. “Can we talk about this later?” My hair whipped frantically against my cheeks, stinging my eyes and blurring my sight. If I survived this fight, I’d make him and Nym pay for their part in all those deaths.
She jog-slid behind me, cursing and groaning with every step. “Okay, but I want you to know you have my blessing in this battle. You deserve the advantage.”
I eyeballed her.
“Is it true you don’t love Justin?” Her vulnerable expression was too much to process.
I blinked burning eyes. “Yes. Now, shut up.”
The agony of my men was a knife in my throat and ash in my lungs. My senses screamed with their every broken bone and inch of pierced flesh. They were hurting. Dying. It was on me to stop it.
A giant strode between the trees. His legs came into view and a memory overcame me. I put a finger to my lips, warning Nym to be still. With a prayer for strength, I hauled back on my fire sword, and blasted it into the closest giant’s Achilles tendon with every ounce of energy pouring through me. The wind seemed to change course as I swung, aiding my cause. His eerie blue skin parted like water under my blade’s power, and the giant moaned out a sound that vibrated my organs. Purple blood sprayed the ground.
He fell forward, dropping his sword in favor of clutching his gushing wound. I brought my sword across his thick, tree trunk of a neck and repeated the prayer Adam recited after killing Calder. “May the Valkyries find honor in your soul.” I had no idea if giants cared about Valhalla, but I couldn’t walk away without acknowledging his life.
Liam ran into me, shoving me with one arm and raising a sword at a second giant. “How did you know that’d work?”
“The books all said they were hurt the same ways humans are hurt. They’re just bigger and stronger. I needed to get his neck down here, so I went for the injury that hobbles everyone.”
He beamed and pressed a kiss to my cheek. “Call Justin. Tell him to spread the word. The men are barely making a dent the way they’re approaching this.”
I screamed internally. Instantly, he called my name in return.
I relayed the message while running through the woods, slipping on wet leaves and tiny mudslides with each step. Liam kept the next giant at bay as we moved.
Justin arrived with a group of battered men and surrounded the angry, roaring giant who chased us. We stopped running and the men went to work aiming for his tendon the way I had. The giant was fast and his every step covered too much ground.
Liam pulled me next to Justin. “You two lead.”
Tom arrived with another legion of bleeding, mud-soaked men. “We’ll follow.” Behind them lay four giants, scattered through fallen trees, twisted in unnatural ways. All with severed Achilles and missing heads.
The giant before us bent forward and scooped a man in his hands. He belted him against a tree and dropped him. A sickening crunch coiled my stomach. The giant reached for more. He was twice the size of the other giants and at least that angry. His pointed white teeth and gleaming red eyes reminded me more of a devil than a giant. Coal-black hair cascaded over his shoulder from a ponytail ringed in bones. He was more terrifying than anything I’d encountered in the books. My heart hammered dangerously, and my ears rang with fear.
His mammoth blade lay at his feet. Our men stood on it. We had his weapon. We had hope.
“Ready?” I asked, pulling strength from the rising hope in my troops.
“Yep.” Justin and I ran through clusters of men. As the giant swept out his hand to crush someone else, we took off his arm. He wobbled, clutching the bleeding stump in his free hand. Purple blood oozed down his iridescent skin. The giant kicked his massive feet and roared until my teeth chattered.
Thunder boomed overhead, echoing the cries of pain. The sound of a runaway freight train wailed in the distance.
Justin, Tom, and I closed in on the giant.
“Give up, giant,” I called.
He stopped fighting and scanned my men, then the bodies of his brothers around him. “Impossible.”
I moved forward, sword raised. “Not impossible. Destiny.”
He roared with the fury of a thousand men, shaking the ground and driving the storm to madness. Rain and wind pelted my face, stinging my eyes and blurring my vision.
I slid over the muddy earth as it rumbled beneath me, grasping for something to hold onto before I was swallowed alive by a sink hole or crater.
My men screamed in anguish throughout the forest, hands pressed to ears, knees buckling from the roar.
Justin and Liam were swept several feet away, unable to regain footing in the beating storm. Tom clung desperately to a tree within arm’s reach.
I forced my body upright, powered by sheer adrenaline and rage. “Surrender!” I screamed.
The giant’s eyes burned with venomous anger. His men had fallen with mine. Something he hadn’t th
ought possible. Giants taken by Vikings? Impossible.
“Surrender and you can live.”
He captured me with his lightning-fast reach and lifted me to his eyes. My sword was knocked from my grip, another victim to his wrath. Heinous breath blew into my face on the words of a language I didn’t know or understand.
I flopped like a child’s doll in his paralyzing grip, praying he wouldn’t break my back and desperate to save my town. Images of my family, neighbors, and friends rocked through me. If the Vikings were casualties of his vengeance, the humans I loved didn’t have a chance.
My body went rigid with instinct. I couldn’t die today. I wouldn’t.
For the first time since the transformation, I opened myself to the gift. Inhaling the emotions around me, ingesting them. The giant’s fiery rage scraped and clawed through my system, incinerating everything in its path, inundating me with his unconscionable hatred.
White-hot energy surged in my bones. I pressed both feet to his chest and shoved with the focused power of a lifetime of flip turns perfected in the pool.
His knees bent. His rancid breath stopped stealing mine and his grip faltered.
In that moment, my arms were freed.
The blessed fire blade flew to my hand, glowing red and gold, dripping with mud and waiting for my word.
I curled steady fingers over the hilt. “May the Valkyries find honor with your soul.” In one perfect blow, the giant’s head rolled down the hill.
A murmur grew from the pouring rain. Voices of Vikings drawing near, reassembling at our sides. They vibrated with exhilaration. “Hale. Hale. Hale,” they chanted. “Hale. Hale. Hale.” Justin caught my hand in his and raised it overhead. A wild cheer rose through the storm.
Liam pulled me from Justin’s grip and clutched me to his chest. He pulled Justin in behind me. “You’ve done it. You united the clans.” He motioned to the army of men dismembering the fallen giants and chanting the Hale name. He released Justin first. “They’ll clean this up and collect your horses. Why don’t you meet us at Hale Manor? It’s over. Let’s go home.”
Justin raised his arms wide. “We did it?”
My heart soared. “I guess so.”
He turned, scanning the area. “Where’s Nym?” Panic shot through him strong enough to knock me over. “Nym!” He cupped massive hands around his mouth and called her name.
“Hey.” I touched his arm. “I saw her right before the big one came after us. She took off. She probably went for cover.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve got to go. Do you have this?”
I blinked. The question was meant for me. Pride welled in my throat. “Yeah. I’ve got this.”
Justin disappeared into the storm.
Tom sauntered by with a giant leg across the back of his shoulders. “I think he likes her. The reports I’ve gotten on him and Nym…” He whistled long and low. “If you know what I mean.”
Justin and Nym. I sighed, overcome with an image I understood better now. “You should’ve seen her face when I asked if she remembered what it was like to care about someone.” I turned in the direction Justin had gone. “It was him?”
Tom tipped his head. “Seems so.”
Gross.
Liam took my hand. “Let’s get out of the rain before we get swept away in a mudslide and end up in the river. These guys are professionals. Let’s let them handle this.”
I followed him to the car, breathing in the scent of earth and evergreens and fresh country rain. “I’ve always loved the rain. This is a bit much, but usually, yeah.”
He opened the passenger door for me, and I dropped inside.
Wind rocked the car as we headed back through town, careful to avoid limbs and debris in the water-soaked roads. Sheets of rain fell over the windshield faster than the wipers could manage. Thank goodness it was over and the weather would return to normal, at least for Ohio.
My mind circled that thought, and a creepy feeling settled in my bones. “Why do you think the storm hasn’t stopped? If the giants are dead, when does this end?” I twisted in my seat, looking for more giants, or some reason my town was still being ravaged by gale-force winds. Panic seized my heart. Midwesterners associated one thing with winds like these, and it wasn’t giants. “Does this damage seem extensive to you?” The center of town was ransacked. Broken storefront windows and overturned benches lined the sidewalks. The flagpole from the garden at the center of town lay across the road beside a streetlamp.
“Yeah.” Liam covered my hand with his. “The drastic temperature change could’ve caused something worse than a torrential thunderstorm.”
“A tornado.” The words slid off my tongue. I grabbed my phone. “I’m going to check on Mom and Chester.”
I dialed the phone and waited with bated breath. “My phone’s not working. Give me yours.”
His phone failed too.
“There’s no cell service.” My chest rose and fell at a runner’s pace. A scream welled in my throat. “Something’s really wrong. Where are the people?”
We turned down the next residential road and my heart leaped into my mouth. Tears clogged my eyes. Trees were everywhere. An overturned car lay in a swimming pool.
The F word ran on replay in my mind, but it wasn’t my voice saying it. “Justin?”
Liam looked my way as he took a right onto our street. The car stopped immediately.
Justin stood on the sidewalk in front of the cornfield separating my home from Hale Manor. He crumbled into a heap on the cement and rolled back onto his bottom, rubbing his face in both hands. Before him a pile of wood and twisted metal was strewn through the corn. Broken pieces of furniture and what was once a chimney made a perimeter around a large hole. My basement.
My home was gone.
Chapter 25
“Mom!” I swung the passenger door open and jumped into the street. My voice barely carried over the raging winds and trembling lips. Leaves and lawn ornaments blew against my legs as I ran up the stairs to the remains of my home. I climbed through the rubble, desperate to find my mother and also pleading I wouldn’t.
“Callie, no.” Justin stopped me. “Don’t.”
Guttural sobs broke through my lips. “We have to find her.” Adrenaline fueled my limbs, too weighted with grief to budge.
The hair on my neck rose and tingled with fear. “Someone’s here. Do you hear that?” I turned slowly, pinpointing the voice. “In the corn.”
Justin jumped over the busted brick and wood. He leaped into the grass and headed for the cornfield.
Liam met me in the yard and ran beside me. “Is that Zoe?”
Zoe appeared through the broken stalks, muddy and battered. “Come on. She’s there.” She pointed to Hale Manor. “We got her and your dog right before the tornado hit. The giant has her now.”
My heart fell like an anchor through the sea. She was alive, but for how long and what had he done to her?
Zoe stopped at the back door to Hale Manor. “He ambushed us on our way back here. He thinks he killed me. He hit me against the wall and threw me into the mud right before the tornado took out your house. When I woke up, everyone was gone. I started yelling for you and hid in the corn. I knew you’d hear me.” Her voice edged on hysteria.
Liam grabbed Zoe’s shoulders and leveled his eyes to hers. “Where are they now?”
She shook her head. Tears fell over bright red cheeks. “I don’t know. Inside, I guess. For a while I heard him screaming at her to call Callie, but I guess there’s no cell service, or she lied to avoid calling. I heard Lisle offer to go look, but then she screamed and I haven’t heard her again.”
Liam rubbed his thumbs over her shoulders. “Zoe. Look at me, okay?”
She whimpered and nodded.
“You said him. Is there only one?”
She slumped to the ground. “I think so. I don’t know.” Sobs overtook her and my heart split in half. Comforting her was i
mportant, but my mom was in there with a killer.
Justin peeped through the back door and the window beside it. “Can that one guy be keeping this storm going?”
“Probably.” Liam joined him at the door.
I crouched near Zoe. “I have to go get my mom. Will you be okay here until I get back?”
“Mm-hmm.” She pressed fingertips to her swollen eyes.
“We’ve taken out the rest of them. You’ll be safe. Liam can stay, if you don’t want to be alone. He can protect you.”
“Callie,” Liam protested.
Zoe sniffled. “No. Liam should go. You need all the help you can get. That giant is a monster. He’s big and vicious. He’s horrible.” Her words broke off into an ugly cry.
I opened the door before either guy could pull the Y-chromosome card and push me behind them. Fear prickled my senses. I strained to hear anything other than the howling wind and pelting rain.
Justin’s voice boomed through my head. “I’ll take the upstairs.”
I nodded and he passed me, moving swiftly through the foyer and onto the sweeping staircase. Liam moved into view and pointed to the kitchen. I pointed to the parlor on the other side of the floor. We could meet in the middle and move upstairs if the first floor was clear.
I balanced on the balls of my feet and clung to the walls, checking the shadows of each room for signs of my mother or Lisle. The ten-foot behemoth, I assumed would make himself known. Wind rattled the large stained-glass windows and whistled around their ancient wooden frames. I concentrated on breathing and followed the flavor of terror in the air.
My side of the house was eerily silent despite the storm raging outside.
“Justin?” I asked internally.
“Here,” he answered. “Nothing on the east side. I’m going across to the other rooms now, then I’ll head up to the attic.”
“Okay.” I opened the basement door and startled when it creaked under my hand. My heart took off at a frightening speed. Come on, Callie. Calm down and concentrate.
“I’m checking the basement,” I told Justin. “After this, we’ll meet you upstairs and help with the attic.”
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