Iduna's Apples (Valhalla Book 2)

by Jennifer Willis

  Freyr elbowed Thor and nodded toward the side garden. What had been a manicured plot of flowering herbs was now little more than a hole-ridden dirt pile. The garden hose snaked haphazardly through the herbal wasteland and was pouring a steady stream of water into the fjord.

  “Like we don’t have trouble enough with rising sea levels,” Freyr said.

  Thor chuffed and headed for the door. “There’s no way we’re getting our security deposit back,” he grumbled.

  Freya stood dumbstruck in the living room. Furniture had been overturned. Wall paper hung in shreds. Lamps and ceramics had been smashed to powder. The floor was littered with fabric and foam—all that was left of the slashed sofa and chair cushions.

  Heimdall righted the one dining room chair that hadn’t been smashed to kindling. “Why would they do this? What were they looking for?”

  Freya swallowed hard. “I’m not sure they were actually looking for anything.”

  Destruction for destruction’s sake, Heimdall thought bitterly. On the mad dash down the mountain back to the rental house, he’d tried to piece together the bits of legend he could recall about the Køjer Devils, but there was little he could found a counter-attack on. He knew the lizard-like creatures were covered in regenerative scales, and that they were chaos personified.

  At least Loki brought reason to the entropy equation. With the Køjer Devils, all bets were off.

  If only memory of the devils hadn’t been stricken from the Vikings’ heroic tales, Heimdall lamented.

  “Bragi,” Heimdall muttered his lost brother’s name for the first time in months. “He would have known.”

  Freya stepped into the center of the debris. “Sally?” she called out. “Sally, are you here somewhere?”

  Heimdall placed himself in front of his cousin and looked around the room warily. He spread his arms wide, ready for anything that might rush at them from the debris field.

  “Are you serious?” she hissed at Heimdall’s back.

  “They could still be in here,” he whispered.

  “You may have been the great warrior in your day, but right now you’re still lightheaded and have sluggish reflexes,” Freya growled as she pushed past him. “Plus, they’re gone.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because no one’s hurling furniture at our heads,” she answered.

  Freya moved slowly toward the hallway leading off the main room of the house. Heimdall fell into step behind her.

  “But that’s just a guess,” she whispered.

  Deep scores of devil claws raked the walls. In some places, whole chunks of plaster had been ripped away, exposing studs and wiring.

  Heimdall wrinkled his nose at the sewer stench wafting up from a blood-colored, gelatinous puddling on the floor. “I’m really hoping that’s not what I think it is.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s exactly what you think it is.” Freya wiped at her watering eyes. “Just breathe through your mouth and try not to step in the devil poop.”

  They stopped first at the bathroom—a war zone of sharp-edged ceramic chunks and long streamers of toilet paper soaked through with water shooting up out of what used to be the sink, or maybe the toilet. It was difficult to tell. What had been the shower was now just a hole leading into the master bedroom.

  “Sally?” Freya called out again.

  “You think she’s really still in here?” Heimdall asked.

  “I certainly hope so.” Freya climbed over what was left of the shower tiles to enter the bedroom. “Wasn’t there something in the legends about the Køjer Devils not taking prisoners?”

  Heimdall didn’t respond. He followed Freya through a hole the size of a Smart Car and stepped into what looked like the aftermath of a white sale gone bad. The mattress lay unstuffed on the bed frame. Curtains, sheets, blankets, and other unidentifiable linens were torn to bits, raked through with devil claws.

  “Sally!” Heimdall called out boldly as he narrowly avoided stepping in another pile of devil goo-poo. “Sally, where are you?”

  Heimdall started rummaging through the mounds of ripped fabric, concentrating on the fact that he hadn’t yet seen any blood. That had to be a good sign.

  “Maybe she’s unconscious,” he muttered hopefully and continued rooting through the linen debris.

  Freya rested a hand on Heimdall’s elbow. “Listen.”

  It was faint, but Heimdall could hear movement from deeper in the house. “Where?” he whispered.

  Freya listened a moment longer. “The small bedroom, at the end of the hall.”

  “Sally’s room.” Heimdall tossed aside the master bedroom’s broken door and ran the short distance to the end of the hall. Sally’s door lay in three pieces on the floor, and the ceiling had caved in onto the bed.

  “Look at this!” Freya ducked under her cousin’s elbow and grabbed at dark flakes embedded in the walls.

  Heimdall stepped up behind her. “What in Niffelheim is that?”

  With a grunt, Freya managed to pull one of the flakes out of the wall—and sliced open her finger in the process. Her blood sizzled on the russet shell flake as she turned it over in her hand.

  “Fehu,” she identified the rune marked on the flake. “This is one of Sally’s runes.”

  “Sally!” Heimdall called out again.

  There was some shuffling beneath the debris on the far side of the room, accompanied by what sounded like a human voice.

  “Sally?!” Freya nearly screeched as she hustled across the floor, dodging shredded books, a broken lamp, and chunks of roof. Wooden shutters lay crisscrossed over the wall. Freya and Heimdall each grabbed one and pulled them aside, revealing the closed closet door. The door was badly scratched, and one sharp-hooked claw was stuck in the wood, dripping more foul-smelling liquid. But the door was otherwise intact.

  “Sally!” Heimdall shouted as he tried the doorknob. “Are you in there?”

  “Heimdall?” came Sally’s muffled reply. “I think I’m stuck in here.”

  Heimdall yanked hard on the knob, and it came away in his hands.

  “Sally, I need you to stand back, okay?”

  “Well, it’s a closet,” she answered. “I can’t really back up.”

  “Shield your eyes and face, then,” Freya called out to her two seconds before Heimdall started beating the door into pieces with his fists.

  Iduna wandered into the rental house. She stepped over one half of a side table that lay inelegantly splintered on the floor and skirted a massive hunk of sofa stuffing to come to a stop in the center of the room.

  “I can’t say that your taste in decorating has improved,” she said flatly.

  Thor glanced at Saga, who was stuffing the smaller pieces of debris into a large plastic trash bag. He gestured to her for help, but she simply rolled her eyes before stooping to ball up some shredded upholstery fabric and shove it in the bag.

  Thor looked back through the shattered windows on either side of the pulverized front doorway and saw Freyr jogging toward the roadway just as the Frost Giants and Loki approached carrying sacks of apples. Maggie lagged at the back of the group. There was a great deal of gesticulation and raised voices, but it looked like Freyr was doing a good job of keeping Thrym and his mountainous goons from entering.

  Ignoring the commotion outside, Iduna crossed her arms loosely over her chest. Still clad in her traditional robes of the grove, she looked especially out of place in the war zone that used to be the living room. A wayward chunk of ceiling plaster gave up its fight against gravity and landed with a dusty thump at her feet.

  Thor rested his hands on his hips and made an effort to soften his voice. “Iduna . . .”

  “Of course, if you’re going to be entertaining Køjer Devils—” her voice caught in her throat, and the smug smile on her face cracked. Swallowing hard, her face twisted into a grimace as she turned to look around at what was left of the living room.

  Thor stepped up beside her. “Iduna, don’t.”


  “After all,” she cleared her throat, “everyone knows that when you open up that barrel of tatzelwurms—”

  A stream of tears spilled down her cheeks, and she choked. “I’m sorry.” She wiped her eyes. “I just didn’t think it would end like this.”

  Saga looked up from her detritus-filled trash bag, and Thor frowned at Iduna. “Who said anything about an ending?” He pulled the single dining chair closer to her and motioned for her to sit.

  Iduna sank into the chair and pressed her palm flat against her chest to calm herself. “The final stage of Ragnarok,” she said, finally.

  Thor stepped around in front of her. “Iduna, this is not Ragnarok. You’re just going to have to trust me on that.”

  Iduna scowled up at him. “How blind are you? Why do you fight what simply must be?”

  Saga dropped her trash bag and stomped across the floor toward her. “You’re kidding me, right? Have you forgotten what we went through last fall? Managarm nearly took the Yggdrasil, but we stopped him. Odin faced Fenrir and survived. Some of us thought that was Ragnarok, but we got through it. Why should now be any different?”

  Iduna nodded sadly. “And at what cost?”

  Saga fell silent. Thor knelt down in front of Iduna.

  “You lost your husband,” Thor offered. “I lost my brother.”

  Iduna leaned forward in her chair and sobbed.

  Saga rested a hand on Iduna’s shoulder. “Bragi’s death was a tragic loss. But he died defending the Yggdrasil, so that the entire Cosmos might be saved. His was a hero’s death, and now he rests in the Halls of Valhalla with valiant warriors from throughout the ages.”

  “There’s no grove. Not now.” Iduna wiped her nose on one of the folds of her gown. “And I’m guessing no one believes in funeral pyres anymore.”

  Thor took a step back and looked up at the ceiling. Now that the first few moments of actual concern and compassion had passed, he could feel his more tempestuous nature taking hold again. He looked hard at Iduna and was sorely tempted to point out that funeral pyres had gone out of style at pretty much the same time as the grieving goddess’s fashion choices, but he didn’t want Saga kicking him in the shins.

  “So?” he said instead.

  “Always so freaking melodramatic,” Saga sighed. “You’re either prickly or a puddle, aren’t you?”

  Iduna and Thor both looked at her in bewilderment. Saga nodded toward Iduna and spoke to Thor, “She’s upset about not getting to throw herself on her husband’s pyre.”

  “That sounds extreme,” Thor answered.

  “Tell me about it.” Saga crossed her arms and looked down at Iduna. “If you want to give up, that’s fine with me.”

  Iduna started crying again. “I figured this would be the last harvest,” she sobbed. “And then, all of this happened . . .”

  Thor crouched down in front of her. “If you’re set on joining Bragi in Valhalla, well, I can’t fault you for that.” He leaned back onto his heels. “And I won’t stop you, either. But I do ask one favor, first.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you not take us with you.”

  Sally sat on the bed, where Freya had cleared away some of the collapsed ceiling. She tried not to cry.

  Heimdall stood over her. “How many of them?”

  Sally shook her head. “I don’t know. They came out of nowhere. I tried to hide . . .”

  Freya placed a supportive hand on Sally’s back. “Did you get a look at them?”

  “I, I peeked under the door, after I’d finished the shielding spell.” Sally looked to Freya, who nodded for her to continue. Sally closed her eyes and felt her heart hammering against her ribs. “I saw clawed feet. Dark red and black,” she said, “with kind of lizard skin. That’s all.”

  Sally shuddered, and Freya wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

  “That’s probably about as much confirmation as we’re going to get,” Freya said.

  Heimdall kicked at the debris by his feet, sending a handful of shell flakes ricocheting off the wall and onto the floor.

  “My runes!” Sally exclaimed. She leapt up from the bed and started collecting the flakes. “I left them on the bed when I ran into the closet. They were flying all over the place before I took cover.” She sorted through the flakes in her hands, turning over each one. Sally frowned and held up one of the flakes. “But none of these are marked.”

  Heimdall and Freya looked over Sally’s shoulder.

  “Scales,” Freya spat.

  The three turned at the sound of throat-clearing and found Loki standing outside on the back deck and looking in through the bedroom’s broken window.

  “Excuse me,” he began, eyebrows raised at the level of destruction in the room. “Looks like we missed quite the party.”

  “Not all of us missed it.” Freya cocked her head toward Sally.

  Loki caught Sally’s eye. “I’m very glad to see you in one piece.”

  Sally tried to think of something noble or witty to say, but gave up and instead sank back down onto what was left of the bed.

  “Did you need something right now?” Heimdall didn’t try to keep the edge out of his voice. “We’re kind of in the middle of, you know, figuring out what in the Nine Realms to do next.”

  “Yes, about that.” Loki brushed the shards of glass away from the window, then rested his hands on the frame and leaned inside. “I was thinking about our not-so-polite adversaries on the way down from the mountain, and I suspect I might know what they’re after.”

  He looked Heimdall directly in the eye. “And where they might be headed next.”

  16

  Beneath the glow of the Vanagon’s overhead light, Sally lowered the knife blade toward the Køjer Devil scale that Loki was holding in place on the camper’s fold-out table. The ferry rocked on its crossing from the Lofoten Islands back to Bodø, and Sally nearly lost her footing.

  “This is insane,” she sighed and took a step back from the table in the cramped quarters. “I’m going to end up carving into your hand instead of the scale.”

  Loki looked up from his seat at the table. “We do have to keep moving. It’s this or try to do it when we’re on the road.” He glanced out the Vanagon’s window at the water beyond the car ferry’s railing. “I think our odds are better here.”

  He was right. Sally had already experimented with branding the scales while the gods and giants—plus Maggie and Sally—wound their way around twists and turns in their fleet of rented campers. She’d felt nothing short of genius when she thought of using the cigarette lighter to heat up a screwdriver from the glove compartment, but then when she tried to burn any number of rune symbols into the scales, they skittered off the table and set fire to the carpeting.

  “The devils like heat,” Loki had explained in his casual, matter-of-fact tone that couldn’t be cracked by any crisis. “Using fire on the scales will merely make them misbehave.”

  “You could have mentioned that before,” Sally had replied while trying to stamp out the embers on the floor of the Vanagon. Then she’d examined the burn holes in her top from where the screwdriver had missed the scale and punctured her clothing instead. Another sweatshirt ruined. She’d made a mental note to wear only her most-hated hand-me-downs when she was due to hang out with the Norse clan in the future.

  Loki held the scale in place on the table, and motioned Sally back to try again. She lifted Freyr’s blade and exhaled.

  “Algiz,” she said. “Heimdall’s rune. Protection.”

  “You’ve got this,” Loki offered.

  Leaning forward, Sally brought the blade down at the top of the scale to draw the long vertical line at the center of the symbol. She scratched hard on the scale’s surface, but the blade left no trace of a mark.

  “Bear down harder,” Loki suggested.

  “I’m trying!” Sally gritted her teeth and leaned her body weight into the blade. With a loud CREAK, the metal gave way and Sally fell forward onto the table. Picking
herself up, she frowned at the knife—the blade now bent at a ridiculous angle. The scale remained untouched.

  “Freyr’s going to kill me.”

  “He’ll get another knife.” Loki twirled the scale in his fingers. “Although, this doesn’t bode well for going hand-to-hand with the devils.”

  Sally sat down across from him and started digging through her bag. “I guess we’re back to ink, then.”

  She pulled out a box of markers and spilled them onto the table. She’d picked them up at the convenience store next to the rental place when Heimdall was negotiating for the Vanagons.

  Thor and the Frost Giants had not surprisingly made the sales rep kind of nervous, so Freya had taken them all next-door for some Arctic Icees. With sticky syrup congealing on his cheeks, Thiassen had even commented that perhaps humans weren’t such offensive abominations of nature if they could invent such brightly colored confections. And Skittles. The Frost Giants had approached something near rapture when they tasted the rainbow.

  Sally picked up the empty marker box and tried reading the text. It was all in Norwegian. “I don’t suppose you know anything about making non-permanent ink into permanent ink?”

  “Sadly, I do not.” Loki picked up Freyr’s bent knife and pocketed it.

  Sally reached for the scale and started drawing on it with one of the colored markers. At least it didn’t spring away and set the car on fire. “How many of these do you need?”

  “As many as we have,” Loki replied. “It’s been a long time since any Æsir, Vanir, or Frost Giant went hand-to-claw with a Køjer Devil, and we’re not exactly at full strength right now.”

  “I don’t understand. If these devil guys are so big and scary, why isn’t there any record of them?” Sally kept tracing rune symbols—mostly Algiz, Thurisaz, Kenaz, and Isa, with less frequent instances of Othila and Sowilu. “I mean, I’ve read just about everything I could get my hands on about Norse legend and history, and I’ve never heard of them before.”

  “Some stories get buried for a reason,” Loki replied.

  Sally gave him a hard look. With an unmarked scale in her hand, she gestured for him to continue.