Twilight Magic (Rune Witch Book 6)

by Jennifer Willis

She watched vast swaths of human history play out as she lost all physical sensation. She was floating free, hearing and somehow understanding dozens of dead languages all at once. Ancient sigils drew themselves over her arms and then disappeared into her flesh. She laughed and screamed and sang as more knowledge than any one brain could possibly contain crammed itself into the timeless vessel she was becoming.

  And then she was on her knees, coughing blood into the snow. She blinked open her eyes and squinted at the sun shining down out of a clear winter sky. Her ears rang with the sudden absence of shrieking and clanging of battle. Everything was still.

  Her protective circle was a mess of smoking blobs of melted plastic with blackened rounds of runes scattered between them. The grass that peeked through the snow around her was charred and brittle. Her voice caught in her throat when she turned on her knees and spotted Heimdall lying unconscious behind her. She wasn’t surprised that Freyr was nowhere in sight. This time, she knew, he was gone for good.

  She heard sobbing and looked toward the Yggdrasil where Maksim sat in Freya’s lap. He had one hand pressed against the trunk of the Tree and the other digging deep into Laika’s fur as the wolf-dog panted on the ground beside him. Maksim was crying but he didn’t look to be hurt, which was probably a miracle in itself. Freya leaned back against the Tree and opened her eyes long enough to give Sally a small nod and the flicker of a smile before her lids closed and she heaved out a heavy sigh.

  Sally looked up into the remaining branches of the Tree and barked out a laugh. Splintered wood stuck out from the thick trunk at sharp angles and there were deep gouges in the bark stretching from the trunk base up to as high as she could see. But the Yggdrasil was still standing. She startled at an echoing laugh from the Tree itself, but it was something she felt more than heard.

  She reached for the ground to steady herself as she prepared to stand, and her fingers pressed into something solid and furry. Baron. His orange and black fur stood out against the patch of snow on which he lay.

  “Barry?” Sally stroked his velvet ears and ran her fingers down the length of his back. He was still warm, but he was limp and didn’t respond to her touch. Sally sat back in the snow and pulled his body into her lap.

  “Baron Jaspurr Von Pussington, III,” Sally sniffed as fat tears fell onto his fur. “Of Frisky Mews, Whiskershire.”

  He was an older cat, adopted as an adult from the local shelter years before. She honestly didn’t know his age and given her activities, maybe it was a wonder that he had lasted this long. But this cat had sat by her side for her first rune spells and even tried to correct her and prevent her mistakes, though she hadn’t known it at the time. Together they’d survived Managarm and the Battle of the White Oak Yggdrasil, and so much else. It hadn’t occurred to Sally that Baron wouldn’t accompany her through this transformation into whatever she was now.

  She leaned down to inhale the vague mulchy scent of him, but there was a burnt note to his smell and the fur along his belly was crispy and black. He’d died for her. There had been so much death on this field, in such a short space of time. Ragnarok had stolen actual deities and too many mortals from this world, and Baron had done his part, too.

  “Thank you, Baron, for being such a good and loyal friend. For trusting and helping me.” Sally smiled through her tears and fought the hitch in her voice. She kept stroking his ears and smoothing the fur away from his face. His body slowly cooled under her fingers.

  “Stories will be told about you. Good ones, I promise.” She sniffed hard and felt her tears starting to freeze on her face. She hoped there was a place in Valhalla for noble animals like her cantankerous cat. “You’re a hero, Barry. And you went out like a total badass.”

  16

  Heimdall was floating. He was neither warm nor cool, and everything around him was gray mist as far as he could see.

  There was no pain. All of his limbs were present and accounted for and seemed to function as expected, and that surprised him. There were no wounds on his head or to his body that he could discern, and he didn’t seem to be bleeding.

  There was also no ground beneath his feet. No sky above him, either. He tried to swim through the mist, but he couldn’t feel any motion and there were no points of reference by which to measure his progress. And with nothing on any horizon, he didn’t know what he might be swimming toward.

  Was this death? Where was his passage to the underworld? Where were the Valkyries to escort him to the throne chamber of Helheim and then to the gates of Valhalla? Where were Odin and Frigga and his siblings? Where was Maggie?

  Oh, yes, he remembered. Ragnarok. Maybe there was no longer any Valhalla, or any Midgard. Perhaps everything in the Nine Realms had been reduced to this endless gray mist. This might be limbo, and he was alone within it.

  Heimdall stopped struggling and let his body still. He didn’t feel anxious or alarmed, and that was curious to him. He knew without wondering that his loved ones were safe. Challenged, perhaps, but secure. This knowing deepened within him as he rested. Some of his kin had gone on ahead of him, while others remained behind to recover and rebuild.

  For the time being, none of it was his concern. Heimdall breathed in the mist and relaxed into its comfortable nothingness. He closed his eyes and let himself drift into a long and hard-won sleep.

  Thor’s boots crunched on the thin layer of new snow that had fallen and frozen over during the night. It covered all the bloodstains and black streaks of soot and oil that had marred the field that stretched between the Lodge and the Yggdrasil. It was a small mercy that the grass had this fresh layer of insulation to rest awhile longer. But the Lodge looked like it had been fire-bombed by the Axis powers, and the World Tree was missing more than a few limbs.

  Just as his family was missing more than a few members.

  It had been a full day and night since the world-rending battle. And this time, Thor had no doubt that what had played out on the Lodge property really was Ragnarok, because he couldn’t bring himself to imagine anything more devastating than what had happened here.

  Saga was gone. So, too, Loki and two of the Norns. Even Fenrir and too many mortals on both sides of the conflict. And Maggie. Heimdall lay in a coma and Freya was near death’s door. Freyr hadn’t been seen since just before the battle ended. By the Nine Realms, Thor knew it could have been so much worse—for himself and his kin, and for the world at large—but he wasn’t sure how or when he’d be able to pick up the pieces of his life and his family and get back to the business of living. He didn’t yet know what kind of a world existed beyond these trees of Pierce Forest.

  He was alive, when he didn’t expect to be. More of them should have fallen. The world hadn’t entirely ripped itself to pieces, and there were plenty of survivors—though they were seriously wounded and still in danger of perishing. There had been many stories in the world’s mythologies about the end of this realm and all life within it, and there was more than just the Norse pantheon to consider. Maybe this battle, this Ragnarok, was but one part of a larger destruction and remaking. But he couldn’t think about that now. Those were deeper thoughts and philosophies for Freya or Heimdall or Bonnie to ponder and debate. For the shaky god of thunder, barely certain of his own two feet beneath his hulking frame, such possibilities only made his head hurt.

  Thor stood at the top of the gentle slope that led down from the Lodge to the Tree. He put his back to the building. It pained him to look at it. The Lodge was uninhabitable, with gaping holes in the roof, one entire outer wall gone and jagged gaps in the walls that were still standing. There was a thunk from somewhere deep inside. Probably another chunk of plaster giving in to gravity. It had been a dodgy business dashing in and out of the crumbling rooms and sorting through the debris looking for survivors. There hadn’t been many. But he thought he and the remaining Einherjar and Berserker warriors had dragged out all of the dead, too.

  In a semi-circle around the base of the Yggdrasil, the taut canvas of a half-dozen t
ents and temporary yurts vibrated in a crisp breeze. The Tree had already started to heal. Rounded wounds where branches had been hacked off were scabbing over with fresh bark, and there was a thrumming, subtle glow about the Yggdrasil that stretched from its roots up into the new leaf buds that seemed to multiply before Thor’s eyes. So. Life would go on.

  Tariq trundled past him on his way down from Rod’s workshop and Loki’s cabin; one was being used as an administrative headquarters and the other had been turned into a kitchen to supply the modest tent city around the Tree. Tariq’s wheelbarrow was loaded with stacks of freshly laundered bandages and vats of herbed tea. There was even a large pot of something that smelled spicy and wonderful. The aroma of a savory curry reached Thor’s nostrils, and his stomach grumbled loudly.

  Tariq stopped and turned toward him. He glanced at Thor’s midsection and lifted his eyebrows in question. Thor shook his head. He was hungry, but he had no appetite.

  “You have to eat, big guy.” Tariq’s tone brooked no argument. The little man was frustrated and angry and channeling his discontent into taking charge of the recovery. As soon as Tariq had arrived in the school bus with the other warriors, Thor had sent him out on an extensive round of errands—for batteries, bottled water, and all the weapons he could buy and scrounge—but the truck had gotten stuck in the snow on the way back and he missed the entire battle. It was just as well. Through inspired prescience, Tariq had also loaded up on extra food and linens for bandages, and all of these sturdy tents. For the time being, they had shelter and sustenance. Thor wasn’t sure that another warrior on the field—even one as skilled and brave as Tariq—would have made much of a difference.

  “I will eat.” Thor waved him toward the tents. “After the others have had their fill.”

  “Suit yourself.” Tariq continued down the hill, and Thor followed.

  He poked his head inside the main medical tent, where Kyle Mackey worked with Verdande to tend to the wounded warriors. Kyle stood over a cot where his patient, Zach, lay conscious, but barely. Kyle peeled a blood-soaked bandage away from Zach’s shoulder and chest and dropped it into a bucket close to overflowing with other red-stained rags. Kyle dabbed a yellowish ointment over Zach’s wounds. Zach’s breath eased and he let out a relieved moan.

  “How is he?” Thor asked.

  Kyle shrugged. He wasn’t a doctor, but he was doing a decent job as an untrained medic. “He’s probably okay.”

  Thor nodded. Zach would live, and that had to be worth something.

  But there was another tent, set apart from the others. There lay the fallen, immortal and mortal alike, their bodies chilled by the late winter air as they awaited the communal pyre that would send the warriors on their last journey. Kyle’s best friend, Trevor Chase, was among them.

  Kyle unwrapped a new bandage—those adult diapers Laika had ordered were coming in handy—and pressed it over Zach’s wounds. Verdande grabbed the bucket of used bandages and carried it out of the tent.

  Thor touched her shoulder as she passed, and her steps barely slowed as she flicked her gaze his way. Her green clothes were stained brown with dried blood, and the hem of her tunic and her delicate shoes were caked with mud and streaked with soot. She looked weary and unnerved. Thor understood the feeling.

  He felt a hand on his arm and turned to find Opal standing beside him. She didn’t look any the worse for her temporary possession, and after a half-day of lying in a near coma followed by a few hours of mindless screaming, she seemed mostly okay. She’d put a few of the surviving Valkyries to work in the forest foraging for plants and herbs and had taken charge of setting up an apothecary kitchen in Loki’s cottage. Whatever medicine the survivors needed—like Zach’s ointment, plus a burgeoning inventory of ad-hoc salves, poultices, and brews—she was making sure they got it.

  “It’s Bonnie,” she said.

  Thor felt an immediate stab to his gut, and he turned toward the tent where his wife and some of his injured kin were being treated. But Opal tightened her grip on his elbow before he could storm off in a panic.

  “No, she’s . . .” Opal shifted her grip on the small cooler she carried by her side. Her shoulder slumped with the weight of it. “She’s not okay, and she’s being difficult about it.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Thor led the way to the farthest tent in the shadow of the Yggdrasil as the morning sun crept higher in the sky.

  “I made a tea infusion of pollen from the apple tree flowers,” Opal explained as she hurried behind him. The plastic cooler banged against her thigh as she jogged to keep up. Thor took the cooler from her and heard something rattling around inside.

  “I know it’s not enough to . . . I mean, it’s not like what the apples would do, if we had any,” she said. “But it should help. And she won’t take any of it.”

  Thor pushed through the flaps of the tent and marched directly toward Bonnie’s cot. He sucked his breath through his teeth when he saw her. She’d looked bad when he’d pulled her out of the collapsed kitchen and carried her down from the Lodge. He hadn’t wanted to leave her side then, but she’d pushed him to go help the others. She convinced him she would be fine with some rest and minor medical attention.

  But now she was deathly pale. The hazel brown was fading from her eyes.

  Thor rested the cooler on the ground and nearly ripped the top off of it to get to the jars of tea inside. Opal shouldered in to grab one of the jars. She unscrewed the lid while Thor propped up Bonnie’s head, and Bonnie fought him every inch of the way.

  “Come on now, honey.” He tried to soften his voice, but his innate gruffness remained. “You need this.”

  Opal pressed the rim of the jar against Bonnie’s lips, but she turned her head away. “I won’t take anything from those blasted apple trees. I won’t let you make me immortal. Not like this.”

  Thor sank down on his knees beside her cot and sighed. They’d had this argument too many times before. It had been more of an intellectual debate, because the trees weren’t in season. But he’d always hoped the trees in the orchard would bear their magickal fruit within Bonnie’s natural lifetime. Now their branches were flowering with the promise of apples, even though there was no guarantee the orchard retained its magick after the bloody battle of Ragnarok. Only Freya would be able to gauge if any potency remained. For the time being, Thor placed his faith in the apple grove and its gifts of immortality, and in the wisdom of the well, and in the enduring strength of the Yggdrasil as the anchor of the Cosmos. In this moment, he needed to believe they could rebuild, and that Bonnie could at last be his goddess-wife. But she didn’t want it.

  “It won’t do that. It’s not strong enough,” Opal said, but Thor could see from the look on the girl’s face that she had no idea if she was telling the truth. “But it will help you get better.”

  “Bonnie, please.” Thor rested his hand on his wife’s cheek. He felt the truth of what his eyes were telling him. She was dying, and quickly. And she was refusing the one medicine that would save her. There might be enough time to bring in the boys to say their goodbyes, but Thor had another idea.

  He nudged Opal out of the way. Bonnie seemed relieved at first that he wasn’t trying to force her to drink any tea. But her eyes grew wide as he rested one hand on her brow and the other on her solar plexus. Thor took a deep breath and sent out a silent call to every cell in his body.

  Thor had never had magick—not the way Freya or Freyr or his mother had it. His talents lay elsewhere, in the forest and on the battlefield. But the strength of the apples was in his blood and had served him well for so many centuries. He pulled every ounce of that energy into his chest, and he ignored the tears pricking the corners of his eyes as he started to push the tingling warmth out through his hands.

  When he told her to lie still and relax, she borrowed strength from some other realm to sit straight up in her cot and kick him. She got in one good shot in the middle of his chest, and Thor stumbled backward onto his rear.

&nbs
p; “Don’t be a damned idiot!” Bonnie rasped. Some color came back into her cheeks, but it was short-lived. She took a few, heaving breaths and fell back onto the bed. Thor scrambled to her side again.

  “I can’t believe you’d be so stupid.” She lifted a weak hand to brush the tears from her eyes. “Our boys need you, Thor. And you were about to . . .” She blew out a long huff of a breath, and Thor didn’t know if that was from exasperation or exhaustion. She coughed and looked past him to Opal. “Give me the damn tea.”

  Opal knelt down again and held the jar to Bonnie’s lips. Thor supported her head as she drank. Her sips were tentative at first, and then she drank down half the tea in three big gulps before she turned her head away again. “That should be enough to get me on the mend. Nothing more.”

  “But if you would just drink some more? To be sure?” Opal replied.

  Bonnie was done. She promised to drink more if her health didn’t improve in the coming hours. Then she leveled a steely gaze at Thor. “You’re my husband and I love you, but sometimes I wish your brain was as big as your heart.”

  He laughed. The fire was back in her eyes, and he felt a knot loosen in his chest. He sat on the floor of the tent and watched his wife drift into a healing sleep. He matched the rise and fall of his breath to hers and for a moment his hands itched again to press against her body and make a transfer of his life-force to her, just as Iduna had done with Maggie. It hadn’t mattered that it would mean his death, if she could live. And she was right; he hadn’t been thinking.

  If he or Heimdall or even Freya had gotten to Odin in time, they probably would have tried a similar stunt, trading their lives for his. Same too with Frigga. But that’s not what either of his parents had wanted. They’d been smart to keep their children away. They’d been wise, even if a little unfair, to rely on Sally.

  Thor reached for Bonnie’s hand and squeezed her fingers while she slept. She was just as stubborn as he was, but she was smarter. He didn’t know if he’d be able to convince her to take a share of the apples when they came into harvest. He wouldn’t trick her into immortality, the way Maggie had been. That had been a disaster all the way around. But there were so few left in the House of Odin, and he couldn’t imagine a better addition to the modern pantheon than the woman who’d agreed to bind her life to his.