Starling

by Lesley Livingston

  “I like this kid,” he said. He leaned forward, swirling the drink in his hand, and pegged Cal with an intense, unblinking stare. “Look. Think of the Otherworld—the Faerie world—as the place that lies between here and there. Humans have always lived here. The gods, for the most part, lived there. If the gods wanted to get from there to here, they had to pass through the realm of the Fair Folk. Which meant they either had to ask very nicely—treaty with the Fae—or invade them. Both options were troublesome, but still there was coming and going.” He shrugged. “Not so much now. Not anymore.”

  “Why not?” Cal asked, intrigued in spite of himself.

  “A while back, around 1900 or so, the Faerie King decreed the worlds should be separate. The Ways should be shut. So he did just that, and as a result, the gods have been, for the most part, cut off from this world in recent times.”

  Cal looked back and forth from his mother to Roth and back to Rafe. “That’s … good, right?”

  Rafe shrugged. “Yes and no. Just my opinion, but I think this realm is poorer in some ways for the absence of gods and monsters walking around freely. Although it’s much, much richer in others. Mankind is freer now than it’s ever been to self-determine as a species. You can chart your own course without fear of prophecies or fate or destiny stepping in.”

  In the back of Cal’s mind, he was vaguely aware that Rafe had said “you,” not “we.”

  “That freedom of the mortal realm—in fact, the whole damn fate of the mortal realm—is in danger now,” Rafe continued. “My sources tell me that the Faerie kerfuffle that caused the crack in the walls also resulted in an interesting by-product: a mortal who can walk between the worlds. Not just into the Faerie Kingdom and out again. But into the Beyond Realms. Into the lands of the dead.” Rafe’s expression turned suddenly grim, and his dark, diamond bright eyes shifted toward Roth. “And out again.”

  “This has something to do with my family, doesn’t it?” Roth said quietly. “With my father’s thwarted prophecy.”

  “It’s not totally clear to me yet. But yeah. I think so.”

  “What prophecy?” Cal asked.

  Roth took a deep breath and sighed it out. “My sister, Mason, was supposed to be a boy,” he said.

  “Which would have been a hell of a waste.” Rafe snorted.

  Cal ignored the comment, even as he felt his heartbeat increase at the mere mention of Mason Starling’s name. “A boy,” he said. “So what? So she turned out a girl. What’s the big deal?”

  Roth glanced over at Rafe before he answered. “Our father was given a prophecy that he believed meant that when his third son was born, the way to Ragnarok would open and the world would start down the path to its end days,” he explained. “But Gunnar never had a third son. Mason was born a girl, and our mother died in childbirth. Gunnar Starling has had no more blood sons.”

  Cal blinked. “So … no apocalypse.”

  “There is always a way.” Rafe shook his head. “With prophecies and all that crap. I have no doubt that the Norns have been handing down cryptic proclamations to generation after generation, and there’s always a hitch. But there’s always a work-around too. The trick is in finding it. And making it happen.”

  There was a sudden distant shriek from outside the window, and they all turned to see a wide-winged figure float by on an updraft. Anyone on the ground looking up might have thought it was a directionally challenged turkey vulture. But it was close enough to the office windows for even Cal to recognize the hideous creature—with the face of an ugly old woman and the body of a tatter-feathered bird—from his mythology texts.

  A harpy.

  In the skies over New York City.

  “Great,” muttered Rafe. “Carrion eaters. Harbingers of doom …” He tossed back the rest of his drink suddenly and stood, hurling the empty tumbler at the window in a flash of white-hot rage.

  “Begone!” he roared.

  The tumbler hit the glass, and Cal recoiled in shock as it burst into a ball of flame and smoke as if it had been packed with explosives. The creature outside turned its repulsive face toward the commotion and squawked in surprise before flapping away.

  “We’d better figure out just exactly what the hell is going on out there.” Rafe cast a dark look at Roth. “Before your lunatic old man gets any ideas.” He turned to Daria. “And if you do hear anything that might be useful to yours truly, I’d suggest you think twice before keeping that information to yourself. You’ve got my number, Daria darling. Use it wisely.”

  Then he strode out of the office and down the hall.

  In the silence left in his wake, Cal took a deep breath. “Okay. Let me get this straight.” He pointed to Roth. “You’re, like, a Viking. And that guy was …” He glanced after Rafe. “I have no idea what that guy was.” He looked at his mother. “So our family is … what? Descended from the Greek gods or something?”

  “Don’t be arrogant.” Daria glared at him. “We’re servants. Not descendants. Charged with sacred duties that have been handed down from generation to generation.”

  Cal turned to Mason’s brother. “You’ve known all about this since you were a kid.”

  Roth nodded.

  Cal turned to his mother. “And Meredith?” Meredith was Cal’s older sister. She’d been living in Greece for the past five years, and he sometimes forgot he even had a sibling.

  “She knows. She will be my successor as the high priestess of the Elusinian mysteries.”

  Whatever the hell those are …

  “And why am I only hearing about all of this now?”

  “I wasn’t sure that I would ever tell you,” Daria said frankly. “I thought you might grow up to be too much like your father.”

  Cal winced. His father. He didn’t even know what the man looked like. He hadn’t been around when Cal had been born.

  Daria laid a hand on Cal’s arm. “I don’t have that fear anymore. And, with the attack on the academy, I knew the time had come for you to learn about your legacy.”

  Cal shrugged off his mother’s touch and turned back to Roth. “Does Mason know about any of this?” he asked.

  “She does not.” Roth crossed his arms over his chest, straining the leather of his jacket over his biceps. “Neither does Rory. And if you tell them, if you breathe a word of this to my sister … I’ll tear your head off with my bare hands.”

  “That some sort of ritual Viking way of dealing with your enemies?”

  “More of a personal preference. And you’re not my enemy, Cal.” Roth grinned slightly. “Yet.”

  “Enough,” Daria rolled her eyes and stalked past her son to stand toe to toe with Mason’s brother again. “I want you to go collect the haruspex. We need to keep her close.”

  Roth nodded.

  “What the hell’s a haruspex?” Cal asked.

  “A seer. A prophetess,” Daria explained. “She’s very powerful and very rare. And I don’t want anyone else finding her and using the information she provides us with. If we’re going to win the coming war, we need every possible advantage.”

  Cal shuddered. War. His mother was actually serious about this. He briefly contemplated telling her about the creatures he’d encountered at home, in the water, but something made him keep silent. At least until the time came that he fully understood just what the hell was going on. And could use it to his advantage.

  As soon as Roth left Daria Aristarchos’s office, he gunned his Harley and headed south, weaving through traffic at breakneck speed. Gwendolyn Littlefield’s penthouse unit was on the fifty-first floor of a Tribeca high-rise. It faced north and offered a view of almost the entire island of Manhattan, framed by the Hudson on one side and the East River on the other. Gwen’s particular talents had ensured that she’d be set for life, even if it wasn’t a life she wanted.

  “Gwen?” Rothgar entered the apartment and walked across the living room. He knocked gently on the sliding glass door of the penthouse’s balcony, where he could see the crumpled form of
a willow-slender girl, pale and dark eyed, with choppy purple hair, curled up outside on a chaise. He opened the door and stepped outside.

  “You okay?”

  She sat up and smiled at him wanly. Roth nodded and silently opened his arms. Gwen stood and walked into the embrace.

  After a moment, Roth led her back inside. In the kitchen, the counter surface of the island was covered with a sheet of painters’ plastic drop cloth, held down at the edges with four smoldering pillar candles. Off to one side lay a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills and a razor-sharp silver knife. In the center was a rewrapped bulky square of brown butcher’s paper. It never ceased to gall Roth that the Fates had chosen to make this frail, gentle girl a haruspex. That they had given her the ability to divine the future by way of staring at the insides of a sacrificed animal—and then, just for added irony, made her a devout vegetarian.

  “How bad?” he asked.

  “I might have to invent new words.” She looked up at him, her gaze still haunted by the visions she’d seen. “Things have changed, Roth.”

  He nodded and said, “Get some things together. Essentials. I’m taking you to Gosforth.”

  “You’re taking me to the place they kicked me out of?”

  “The place you kept trying to run away from. They’re going to be looking for you, Gwen—”

  “So you want to march me right into the heart of the enemy’s camp.”

  “It’s the last likely place anyone’ll search.” Roth smiled grimly. “And it’ll probably be the safest place in all of New York City in the coming days.”

  “How can you say that? The place was just overrun by—”

  “Get your things, Gwen. Now.”

  Roth watched as she turned and went into the bedroom. Then he fished a cell phone from the back pocket of his jeans and hit a speed-dial number. “The haruspex is gone,” he said in a flat voice when Daria picked up. He paced back and forth, listening, and Gwen came back out into the living room with a bag.

  “No, not taken,” Roth said. “Fled. I found a space in the closet where a suitcase should be, but she left behind her toothbrush in her haste. She’s on the run.”

  Gwen raised an eyebrow at Roth and fished in her bag for her toothbrush.

  “Fear is a powerful motivator,” Roth said, then listened again. “No, Daria. I don’t think she’s afraid of you. I think she’s afraid of the end of the world. And the plain fact that, if she’d stayed here in her apartment, she’d see it coming from her living-room window.” Without another word, he hit the hang-up button on his phone and held out a hand to Gwen. “Come on.” He glanced over at the kitchen island as they made their way to the door. “I’ll come back here later. And I’ll clean up this mess.”

  XVIII

  The hidden cabinet in Fennrys’s apartment was full of weaponry.

  Beautiful, gleaming, deadly weaponry.

  Mason stumbled back until her shoulder hit one of the loft’s support pillars, and she stepped around it, putting the stout brick column between herself and Fennrys, as if for a measure of protection. She’d come out of the kitchen to tell Fennrys that she’d come up empty of clues there too, only to find him standing in front of a wall full of shiny, pointy, extravagantly dangerous clues.

  “What … are you?” she said in a voice gone dry and whispery. “Really?”

  Fennrys’s head snapped around and he glared at her, his pale eyes gleaming icily, reflecting the light that emanated from the cabinet. “What am I? What are you? You’re the one who found this place.”

  He pointed to the medallion that still dangled on its leather cord from Mason’s fist. She’d forgotten all about it. When she brought it up in front of her face, the dark gray iron disk swung innocently back and forth, no longer seemingly possessed of a will of its own. Mason had made a silent wish that she could find Fennrys a home. And like a genie loosed from a bottle, the medallion had granted that wish. Fennrys belonged here. Mason had known it the second they’d stepped from the elevator, and Fenn’s discovery had just confirmed it. It was the home of a warrior and felt like him. And Mason knew that the part of her that wasn’t tense with fear liked it there. A lot.

  Pushing aside her apprehension, she crossed the bare hardwood floor until she stood only a few inches away from him. Every muscle in Fenn’s body was taut and ready for fight or flight.

  She reached up and fastened the medallion around his neck. Her fingertips brushed the skin on his collarbones, and he closed his eyes. His nostrils flared, as if he were breathing in her scent, and Mason watched the muscles of his throat working as he swallowed convulsively. She put her hand on the iron disk and felt its raised design, cool against the warmth of his skin.

  “I don’t know how,” she whispered. “I don’t know what’s happening here. But I know you’re home. You belong here.”

  “Yeah,” he murmured, and opened his eyes again, covering her hand with his. “But I wouldn’t have found it without you. Thank you.”

  Mason could feel his chest rising and falling with each breath. The subtle vibration of the beating of his heart. She felt the counterpoint of her own heart beating almost double-time to his, and she wondered—not for the first time—what in the world she was doing. She pulled her hand out from under his and took a deep, quavering breath. Behind Fennrys, the wall of blades gleamed … beckoning.

  There were long swords and short swords. A claymore that was almost as tall as she was, and another one with an ornate basket hilt padded with black leather. An exquisitely graceful, swept-hilt rapier hung in the middle of the collection, and the sight of it caused Mason to catch her breath. She would have pegged it as being from the early seventeenth century—if the slender, silvery blade hadn’t been in such pristine condition. It had to be a replica. But then she looked closer and saw marks on the blade that indicated it was an original.

  Beside her, Fenn ran a practiced eye over the array of deadly implements. Then he walked across the room to where he had set down the canvas bag he’d been carrying around all day. Mason hadn’t called him on the fact that she recognized it from the Gosforth gym storage. She knew what it contained—the sword he’d used to save her life.

  He took the long, broad blade out of the case and looked for an empty spot to hang it. There wasn’t one.

  “Looks like this is a new addition to the collection,” he mused.

  Mason held out her hand, and he passed it to her, hilt first, so she could take a good look at it. The blade tapered from a hand’s-breadth wide to a slightly rounded point, and the edges gleamed razor-sharp. The hilt was bone or maybe ivory, wrapped in wire, with a short, curved cross guard and a heavy pommel, decorated in swirling, knotted patterns for counterweight.

  “It’s heavy,” she said, extending her arm and holding it out parallel to the floor. “But it’s beautifully balanced.” She handed the sword back to him and waved a hand at the wall of weaponry. “That’s quite a collection. Y’know …” She hesitated for a second, thinking. “I heard what Toby said to you in the storage room—about your … abilities.”

  “I know you did.” His mouth twitched in his usual expression of dry amusement.

  “Right.” She ducked her head and turned back to the cabinet. “Well, I’m thinking … maybe you’re like some kind of government operative or something. D’you think?”

  “A government operative with a sword collection and no gun. Yeah—that sounds likely.” He laughed briefly, and the blade in his hand wavered and dropped to his side. He gazed down at Mason, and the loneliness and confusion were back in his eyes. “Thank you for helping me find this place, Mason,” he said. “But I still don’t make any sense.”

  He turned back to the weapons cabinet and replaced the blade in its carrier, setting it down on the shelf below the displayed weapons. Then he frowned a little and ran his hand over the wood face of what looked like a set of shallow drawers under the weaponry.

  Mason wondered if there was another trove of dangerous implements in there, but
when Fennrys opened the top drawer, they both stood gaping at the contents. The drawer was sectioned off into compartments containing cash. A lot of cash, both American and a large amount of different types of what must have been foreign currency: silver, bronze, and even what looked like gold coins with a wide variety of unfamiliar markings. He left those alone and counted out a couple of hundred dollars in various denominations of U.S. bills. He fanned through the stack with his thumb and then glanced up at Mason, who was staring at him openmouthed.

  “Are you hungry?” Fenn said, his mouth quirking up in that maddening half grin. He waved the wad of cash. “I’m buying.”

  The Boat Basin Café at Seventy-ninth Street was a favorite weekend hangout of some of the college crowd. Mason didn’t really feel like running into anyone she knew while she was with Fennrys, but she figured it would be safe enough on a weekday. Also, she was craving open-air space, and the café had a great patio that overlooked the Hudson River and the boat docks, where rich boaters would tie up their yachts while they sat eating burgers and drinking beer.

  To get to the café, you had to descend a hidden, sloping path that curved toward a round, colonnaded structure in a sunken circle with an open, coliseumlike space surrounded by arched stone breezeways. A hostess led them to a table with an umbrella and smiled brightly at Fennrys as she seated them. He nodded absently at her, and Mason suppressed a grin.

  Fennrys slipped the strap of the sword case off his shoulder and leaned it against the table. Mason had asked him, when they were leaving his loft, why he was bringing it along, and he just looked at her as if she’d suddenly started speaking in tongues. Secretly she supposed she was glad he had the thing with him.

  It’s like this, she told herself. If you take an umbrella with you, just in case—it won’t rain. Fennrys had brought his sword, just in case—and so, logically, they wouldn’t be attacked by zombies.

  So far it looked as though her theory was panning out. The day was beautiful and the weather perfect. Normal. No storm … no zombies. Draugr. Whatever. Still, Mason remembered what Fennrys had said earlier about needing to always have an exit strategy, and she found herself checking out the nearest exits.