Iduna's Apples (Valhalla Book 2)

by Jennifer Willis

  “Son of a tik–!”

  Maggie turned to find Freyr running toward her. “Maggie! Are you all right?”

  Maggie gestured to Iduna’s body. “She saved my life.” She looked at Geirrod’s still form lying in a wide puddle of blood. “They both did.”

  Freyr helped Maggie to her feet and held her tightly. Maggie felt suddenly very tired. She couldn’t help sobbing into Freyr’s shoulder and was afraid she might fall asleep standing up.

  “It’s okay now,” he said.

  “Iduna said something before,” Maggie sniffed through exhausted tears. “Before she died.”

  Freyr abruptly jerked away from her and landed on the ground at her feet.

  “Freyr?” Maggie looked up and found herself face-to-face with another Køjer devil. With one clawed hand skewering Freyr’s shoulder, the creature opened its wide mouth and bared its sharply pointed teeth at Maggie with an ear-splitting cackle.

  Sally was halfway down the fire escape ladder when she spotted a second stray devil spear Freyr in the back.

  Her heart leapt to her throat, and she jumped the last few feet to the next suspended platform.

  “Sally!” Loki shouted from above. He’d started down the fire escape a few beats behind her and had accelerated his descent since spotting the second devil. “Sally! You can’t go down there! Just stay where you are!”

  Sally gripped the metal railing and watched. There was no way she could make it to Freyr in time.

  “Okay, then, little witch,” Sally muttered to herself. “Let’s see what you can do.”

  She let go of the railing and closed her eyes. She ignored the clanging sounds of Loki’s boots on the ladder’s rungs, and focused in on her own breathing. She wouldn’t be any use to anybody if she couldn’t quiet her shallow breath and her pounding heart.

  She saw the Køjer Devil in her mind’s eye, imagining every part of its form from its black-taloned toes to its dark, scaly head.

  “There you are,” Sally whispered. She felt Loki arrive on the metal landing behind her and hoped he’d have enough sense to leave her alone.

  Of course he’ll stay back, her busy brain interrupted. He’s an immortal, after all, and still knows more about magick than I ever will.

  With a low groan in her throat, Sally shut down thoughts of anything but the Køjer Devil. She envisioned the creature standing on the black asphalt. In keen lines of flame, Sally drew a stacked spiral of Algiz in a hastily modified Helm of Awe sigil over the image, and she threw in an extra Kenaz and Hagalaz for good measure. She held the symbol in her vision, letting the lines of flame lick at the Køjer Devil in its crosshairs. Then, on a sharp exhale, Sally let the symbol fly on a direct course to its target.

  Slowly opening her eyes, Sally hung onto the image of the burning sigil as it flew toward the Køjer Devil. The creature had Freyr in its grasp, having driven the nature god to his knees.

  Keeping her breath steady, Sally lifted her right arm and pointed her index finger at the devil like a gun. She’d never pulled the trigger of a real firearm before and had certainly never been behind the scope of a sniper’s weapon, but she’d have to rely on her own aim anyway. She cocked back her Uruz-branded thumb, lined up her pointing finger on the creature, and then she clicked her thumb forward.

  “Bang,” Sally said in a low voice.

  In the distance, she saw the Køjer Devil throw its clawed hands into the air in sudden pain. Then the creature disintegrated in a cloud of black smoke.

  Sally almost laughed as she leaned forward and grasped the railing again for support. She’d never consciously killed before. She had dealt a mortal blow to Managarm, but she’d shared that honor with Freya—and ultimately Odin had been the one to finish off the Moon Dog. But now she’d done it, all on her own. Sally had committed murder.

  Gold-colored spots swam before her eyes and she slumped forward, suddenly dizzy. Loki grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her away from the railing. He rested her against the soothing support of the building while she tried to catch her breath.

  “Nice shootin’, I believe the saying goes,” Loki offered with a smile.

  Maggie gaped at the dark stain on the pavement that moments before had been a Køjer Devil ready to bite her face open.

  “What, what happened?” she stammered.

  Freyr fell forward onto the asphalt and clutched his shoulder where the devil had stabbed him. Blood spurted out between his fingers. Groaning, he rolled over onto his back and looked up at Maggie.

  “Could be worse, I guess,” he grimaced.

  Maggie knelt beside him and pried his fingers away from the wound. “You could be dead.”

  “Exactly my point,” Freyr groaned as Maggie prodded his torn flesh. He sucked in his breath sharply when her finger slipped into the deep puncture. “I really wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  “Apples,” Maggie said. In a fit of inspiration, she jumped to her feet and started for the Vanagon. She slowed when she reached Geirrod’s body. Willing herself not to look at his mutilated face, she stepped over the body and into the van. Dodging the strips of jagged metal hanging down from the mangled ceiling, she grabbed a sack of apples and lugged it back to Freyr.

  “Here.” Maggie pulled out a piece of fruit and offered to him. “Can you take it, or do you need me to hold it for you?”

  Grunting in pain every inch of the way, Freyr pushed himself up to sitting. He tried to wave the apple away. “Those are for the survivors.”

  “Uh-huh. And that would be you, my friend.” Maggie pushed the fruit in his face.

  Freyr acquiesced and took the apple from her. He bit into it and sighed in relief as the magick of the grove began to do its work. “Okay. So not a bad idea.”

  Maggie moved around behind him to get a better look at his shoulder. She yanked his shirt partially off his back to expose the wound.

  “You know, I think your boyfriend may have something to say about this,” Freyr chuckled around bites of apple.

  “Quiet,” Maggie said with an air of authority that surprised her. She sighed. The lack of sleep was finally getting to her. Or maybe it was the apples she’d had earlier. Either way, she was done feeling like an unworthy outsider where Heimdall and his kin were concerned.

  “Besides, you’re one to talk.” Maggie pressed her hands against Freyr’s skin on either side of the wound and watched the bleeding trickle to a halt. “The way you’ve been leading Sally on.”

  “I’ve done no such thing.” He nibbled at the last bits of fruit around the core. “Besides, I think I took care of that.”

  He paused, and Maggie waited for him to continue.

  “I, uh, I deliberately insulted her.” Freyr pitched the apple core across the parking lot and wiped his hands on his blue jeans. “Probably the worst thing I could have said.”

  Maggie sighed. “Well, that’s one way to go about it.”

  Freyr shrugged away from Maggie and tested his shoulder, stretching his arms out wide and then reaching over his head.

  “Those apples are pretty amazing,” she commented, nodding toward the now closed puncture wounds. “I didn’t know it would heal up so fast.”

  Freyr massaged his shoulder and frowned. “It shouldn’t have.” He climbed to his feet and looked down at Iduna’s body. “Maggie? You said Iduna said something to you before she died?”

  A series of high-pitched shrieks came from inside the IKEA building. Every muscle in Maggie’s body tensed.

  “Listen,” she turned to Freyr. “I don’t know what the protocol is for handling the bodies of fallen warriors on the battlefield. And this parking lot is kind of a battlefield right now, I guess.”

  “Well, for human warriors we’d have the Valkyries, but for these two—”

  “I’ll leave you to it.” Maggie stepped toward Freyr and pulled the colored markers out of his pocket. Then she turned and ran toward the warehouse.

  “Maggie!” Freyr shouted after her. “Maggie, wait!”

 
; The Køjer Devils inched closer to Heimdall, Freya, and Thrym. Several of the creatures had tested the magick of the protective circle, and had lost claws and limbs as a result. But Heimdall could feel the invisible shield start to lose its strength, and he was pretty sure the Køjer Devils could feel it, too.

  Thrym took a deep breath. “And now the mists . . . ?”

  “That’s the idea,” Heimdall sighed. “Any time now!” Heimdall called out over the hissing thrum of the surrounding devils.

  “I’m working on it!” came Saga’s frustrated reply.

  “We are standing by, brother!” Thor shouted out from behind the nets.

  Heimdall felt his breathing loosen a bit, though he really hoped they wouldn’t have to depend on Plan B. Another Køjer Devil slashed a taloned hand at Heimdall’s midsection, and lost its arm in a smoking blur that left a dark stain on the floor.

  Thrym moved closer to Freya. “When this shield fails, move behind me, my lady. I will protect you as long as I can.”

  Freya gave him a wan smile and a gentle shove to move him back into position. “I think I’ll be all right.” She studied the downward tick of his mouth. “But thanks, anyway.”

  The air in the Bath section shifted. Beneath the humid, fetid breath of so many Køjer Devils huffing at them, a current of cooler air stirred along the floor and filled the protective circle.

  “Finally!” Heimdall sighed as a thick, sparkling mist started to snake its way from the outer walls of the room, tangling in the devils’ clawed toes and climbing up the creatures’ legs like a fast-growing vine.

  The devils farthest from the circle were the first to fall. Their sudden shrieking escalated to a paint-peeling volume and pitch. Within seconds, all the mirrors lining one of the display walls exploded outward, sending shards of glass slicing through the outer ring of devils.

  “I think it’s working!” Freya shouted over the creatures’ shrill cries and covered her ears with her hands.

  Heimdall just watched.

  The Køjer Devils were falling to the floor in twos and threes. They writhed on the ground and screamed in sickly pain as they sliced at their own skin with their sharp talons. Dark scales flew through the air and ricocheted off the protective shield encircling Heimdall, Freya, and Thrym.

  “Impressive,” the King of the Frost Giants commented with raised eyebrows. “Your work is most effective.”

  “I had help,” Freya replied.

  Fully half of the Køjer Devils had fallen, thrashing on the floor before disintegrating in thick clouds of black smoke which the silver-colored mist immediately absorbed.

  “That’s a neat trick.” Heimdall nodded toward one of the devils just as its body disappeared into the mist.

  “You like that, do you?” Freya replied. “Should make for easier clean up.”

  Heimdall was about to respond with some snide or witty remark when he got hit in the face by a Køjer Devil scale.

  “The shield is giving way!” he shouted and crouched low, ready to go hand-to-claw with the Køjer Devils.

  “And what is the likelihood that this mist is also poisonous to us?” Thrym nodded toward a clump of writhing lizards.

  “That’s the chance we take.” Freya clenched uncapped markers in each hand.

  One of the afflicted devils rose from the floor and staggered toward the circle. Its scaly skin hung in blood-dripping ribbons from its torso and legs where the creature had clawed frantically at itself in reaction to the toxic mist.

  Heimdall took a few steps back, and bumped into Thrym. The King of the Frost Giants laid a hand on Heimdall’s shoulder. “I am behind you, just as surely as you support me.”

  “Thanks,” Heimdall replied with an obvious lack of enthusiasm.

  In a flash of bluish light, the protective shield fell.

  Thrym immediately wrinkled his nose. “What in the Nine Realms is that horrendous stench?”

  Freya moved a few inches forward, to stand on the circle’s perimeter. “My guess? Incinerated devil.” She inhaled quickly and then paused, gauging the air. She coughed slightly on the exhale and cleared her throat. “We’re good,” she called back to Thrym and Heimdall.

  “Good to know,” Heimdall grunted as he lunged forward and drove the tip of one of his markers into the exposed wound of the half-dead Køjer Devil standing before him. The creature collapsed in on itself and puffed outward in a cloud of dark smoke. It left a sticky, black stain on the floor as the mists retreated back to the nets lining the walls.

  “A little help in here?” Heimdall called out as he advanced on the remaining seven devils.

  The netting separating the battlefield from Textiles & Rugs pulled aside, and Thor stormed into the Bath department followed closely by Saga and Valthrudnir. Thiassen brought up the rear, holding his injured arm close to his body and ready to fight with a bright orange marker in his fist.

  The Køjer Devils stumbled through the room in a daze, knocking over the few display racks that remained upright, and getting tangled in shower curtains and wire mesh trash cans. Calling for each other in shrill, unintelligible syllables, they formed a loose cluster just off-center in the room. The creatures shrieked in pain and surprise when they brushed up against one another.

  Thor stopped just short of the disorganized lizard scrum and surveyed the enemy. “They’re blind,” he announced with a mixture of pleasure and frustration. This wouldn’t be nearly as much fun as doing battle with an enemy in peak form.

  “It’s the mists,” Freya volunteered, even as the last of the sparkling fog retreated. “We wove in a spell to raise their body temperature, to ignite the sulfur in their blood. They’re literally burning up from the inside out.”

  Thor thought for a moment. “How’d you figure out about the sulfur?”

  “With their penchant for warm spaces and fossil fuels . . .” Freya shrugged. “Lucky guess.”

  “Lucky for us,” Saga commented at Thor’s elbow.

  Thor nodded grimly and looked over to Heimdall. “You okay?”

  “Minor damage.” Heimdall gestured toward their remaining enemies. “Now we just need to—”

  One of the devils lurched out of the writhing pack, slashing blindly. It slipped on a cylindrical toothbrush holder and went careening toward Freya, its outstretched arms flailing and slicing through everything in its path.

  Freya lifted her markers in both hands and prepared for impact, but Thrym stepped in front of her and pushed her back.

  “I will slay this beast for you, gentle one,” he called over his shoulder. The creature lurched forward again and Thrym stopped one taloned arm from slashing through his neck, but one of the creature’s feet lunged upward and caught the Frost Giant in the chest.

  “No!” Freya shouted behind him.

  “It is no matter,” Thrym called back in a strangled voice. He reached forward and almost casually drew the Moon Witch’s destructive bindrune on the devil’s midsection. The creature pulled back in agony and tore at its chest with its own claws, trying to scrape away the burning ink. Within seconds, the Køjer Devil was so much smoke and soot.

  Thrym collapsed to his knees and clutched at the puncture wound in his solar plexus. Freya sank to the floor in front of him and pushed his hands out of the way. “You’ve got to let me see it!”

  “It is but a scratch, my love,” he smiled into her face.

  Freya scowled at him. “Okay, you need to stop this nonsense right now. I am not your love or your darling or your lady. But for the moment I am your nurse. So just sit there and shut up.”

  “As you wish,” Thrym responded, gazing upward.

  Freya sighed. "You're really an idiot, you know that?"

  Thrym kept staring at the ceiling, the hint of a smile on his face.

  “Right then,” Thor announced to no one in particular. “Let’s clean up this mess.”

  Thor fought his instinct to toy with the devils first, to try to get them to put up some kind of a fight. They still hissed and screamed
and lashed out with their sharp talons, and Thor had to remind himself that even if they were blind and practically disintegrating before his eyes, the Køjer Devils still had poisoned claws—and he didn’t care to test the protection of Sally’s bindrunes for himself.

  He organized Heimdall, Saga, and Valthrudnir—the remaining able-bodied warriors—into a circle around the surviving lizards and went about cutting the creatures down while Freya ministered to both Thrym and Thiassen.

  The last devil collapsed into dust just as Maggie got tangled in the perimeter nets.

  “Hey!” she called out as she tried to extricate herself. “I’m here! I’m here to help!”

  The others stopped and watched as she struggled and eventually yanked the nets down around her. “I’ll be right there!” she cried out again, tearing a hole in the mesh fabric near her head and climbing out that way. Magick markers in hand, she strode confidently into the room and stood in front of Thor.

  “I’m ready to fight.” She lifted her chin and glanced to Heimdall. “I’m not afraid.”

  “Very good.” Thor smiled and clapped a strong hand on her slender shoulder, knocking her only partially off-balance. “We’ll keep that in mind for the next battle.”

  Maggie frowned up at him, then looked around the room. The floor was spotted with what looked like dark oil slicks. Not a single display shelf was left intact, and the entire room was littered with broken metal, strips of torn fabric, fractured ceramics, and various sweet-smelling guest soaps. Shattered glass covered everything.

  Maggie’s shoulders sank. “I missed it.”

  Thor chuckled. “But you tried. I respect that.”

  “Even though you were specifically instructed to stay out,” Heimdall grumbled. “Geirrod is one useless watch-giant.”

  “He’s dead.” Freyr entered the room with Sally and Loki on his heels. “So is Iduna.”

  Thrym sighed heavily and hung his head. “This battle has cost us.”

  Maggie walked across to Thrym and Thiassen on the floor and knelt down beside Freya. “Let me help.”

  Thrym’s eyes grew wide at the prospect of being doctored by a lowly human, but Freya gave him a hard look and he surrendered. Maggie pulled back the shredded fabric of his tunic to examine his wounds.