Valkyrie Rising

by Ingrid Paulson

  11

  It took two hours for us to walk all the way back to my grandmother’s house. Hours we couldn’t afford. The afternoon had turned into evening when we finally made it to the base of her long, sloped driveway. The kitchen door was slightly ajar—as if someone were home, waiting for us. But that was just wishful thinking. We must have left it that way when we’d raced out the door less than twenty-four hours ago. We’d had bigger things on our mind last night than burglary.

  Inside, it was unnaturally quiet, particularly with the lights blazing overhead and the mug of now-cold tea my grandmother had abandoned on the coffee table. I walked over to her chair and sat down, wishing there was some way the walls that had housed her for so many years could impart her wisdom, because we were running out of ideas—and out of time. Now that I knew what I had to do, I craved her advice more than ever. I couldn’t believe just two days ago I’d been avoiding her and had refused to listen when she’d tried to give me advice I’d now kill to hear.

  And I had no idea what was happening to Graham or to Grandmother—where they were and whether they were safe. Or even alive. I couldn’t think of any reason they would hurt Graham, but Grandmother was another story. It was pretty clear she and Astrid weren’t exactly on good terms.

  While Tuck was in the kitchen, foraging for food, I seized my chance to slip upstairs and into Grandmother’s room. I already knew what Tuck thought of my plan, so I moved stealthily across the floor, wincing each time a floorboard creaked. My stomach churned as I sidestepped the pool of half-dried blood that had probably permanently stained the light pine floors. Grandmother would have to sand it out when … if … she came home.

  The sword was still where we’d left it, resting in its hiding place. I slid it out and turned it over in my hands, wondering if I’d know how to use it to challenge Astrid. Or if I was about to do something completely stupid.

  There was a not-so-polite cough from the door.

  I turned, keeping the sword behind my back.

  “What are you doing?” Tucker asked, his eyes drifting toward the pried-up floorboard.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just looking around. Seeing if there’s anything I missed. You know. Clues.”

  “You don’t really think you’re fooling me, do you?” Tuck leaned sideways to peek behind my back, where the sword was not so hidden.

  “No,” I murmured. “I just wanted to test it out.” I set it down on Grandmother’s feather duvet.

  “Did you know you always bite your lower lip when you’re lying?”

  Sometimes I really did hate Tucker Halloway.

  “Listen.” He sighed. “About this whole full Valkyrie thing. I’ve thought about it, and I can’t let you do this.”

  I looked away, trying to keep my face neutral, so he couldn’t read it.

  “Why?” I demanded, for the first time actually letting my temper sneak around my guard. “You don’t think I can win.”

  “Course I do,” he said. “I’m just not willing to take the risk.”

  “Well, I am.”

  “If Graham were here, he’d agree with me. Two against one.”

  “I’m assuming you know I like being bullied by you even less than I like being bullied by Graham.”

  “And I’m assuming you know losing you scares me more than anything.” The words seemed to surprise him as they tripped out of his mouth. “Just promise me you won’t try to fight Astrid.”

  “Then why did you spend this morning trying to teach me how to fight?”

  “I taught you long-range weapons,” he said, his voice sharper than I’d ever heard it. “Which that is not.” He waved a hand in the direction of the sword. “It’s not worth it. Not even for Graham.”

  The words settled uncomfortably between us.

  “I’ll find another way. Promise you won’t try to fight Astrid,” Tuck said softly. “You can’t distract me away from this.”

  He stared at me, so serious and unsmiling it made me squirm. It was like he’d suddenly turned into an entirely different boy. One who didn’t smirk or tease. One who was honest and earnest and put all his emotions out there for the world to see.

  I had no idea how to deal with this new Tuck. Or how to avoid making a promise I was pretty sure I wouldn’t keep.

  Fortunately, I never had the chance.

  Tuck’s eyes narrowed, focusing on something behind me. “What the hell?” Then he dived forward, throwing aside the curtains and sliding the window open. His head and shoulders craned over the sill, looking at something below. “Oh, no, you don’t!” he shouted. He straightened and took off running down the hallway and thundering down the stairs. I followed.

  Tucker flung the front door aside and jumped all five porch steps at once. Someone in a black hooded sweatshirt was scrambling down the side of the house, but when he saw Tuck closing in, he let go of the rain gutter and fell the remaining six feet, landing heavily on his side. In an instant, he was up and shifting into a run, but Tuck took him out with a sliding tackle.

  “Nicely done,” I said, approaching the pile of tangled limbs. I pulled the sweatshirt hood back from the trespasser’s face, and a mess of red curls popped out.

  “Margit?” I gasped. “Were you spying on us?”

  She looked at me, absolute terror in her pale blue eyes, but just as fast, she constructed a stony wall of loathing, balling her fists and narrowing her eyes in revulsion.

  “Why did you come back?” Margit demanded, pushing herself up off the ground.

  “Believe me, I don’t want to be within a hundred miles of this town,” I said. “But we didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  “Because your friends ditched you earlier?” she snarled. “That was pretty crazy driving. You know, kids live on those streets. But I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that you’d disregard human life.”

  “What did she say?” Tuck asked. It took half a beat for me to realize Margit hadn’t been speaking in English. Comprehension had come so naturally. Just like fighting had. Every time I thought I had a handle on the changes I was undergoing, one more detail unveiled itself.

  “Of course we didn’t want to hurt anyone,” I said, switching to English. “We didn’t have a choice. We had to catch that Range Rover.”

  Margit’s jaw clenched even tighter. I was wasting my time.

  “Never mind,” I said. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I understand perfectly,” Margit hissed in Norwegian. “You’re a filthy Valkyrie—evil. Just like your grandmother.”

  “You’d better watch your mouth.” Tuck crossed his arms and leaned back against the house. “I caught enough of that part to know. We’ve spent the last twenty-four hours chasing a bunch of psychopaths who kidnapped Graham—and Kjell, I might add. No more bullshit from you. One more bad thing about Ellie or her grandmother, I let her break your neck. We clear?”

  Margit glared at me. Her eyebrows twitched like angry caterpillars, daring me to even try. Even though she had done nothing but harass and annoy me, I had to respect Margit’s courage, especially since she seemed to truly understand how dangerous I could be.

  “Threats of extreme violence on my behalf,” I said, annoyed that Tuck had enflamed the situation even more. “Not the way to warm a girl’s heart.”

  “Maybe not.” Tuck smirked back. “But I figure it’s probably the only way to catch a Valkyrie’s eye.”

  Just as I was about to point out that this wasn’t the time for his inappropriate jokes, Margit pushed her way between us.

  “Wait. Did you say Graham?” she interrupted, wide-eyed. “Your brother?” The burning skepticism in her eyes dimmed a few watts. “He was taken too?”

  I nodded, backpedaling our conversation. Margit had no way of knowing everything Tucker and I had been through since last night.

  “Didn’t your grandmother protect him? She gave Kjell that necklace, the one with runes. Not that it worked. Still, you’d think she’d do better for her own grandson.” The curiosity
in her voice switched back to bitterness, as if she’d just remembered she was supposed to be angry. “But I guess witches’ blood runs cold. Even when it comes to their own family.”

  “You do realize you’re insulting a Valkyrie,” Tuck said. “To her face. Not something I’d care to do. Personal preference. Like keeping my nose in this particular location.”

  “Stop,” I hissed, nudging his shoulder.

  He held up one hand. “Well, I think she should be warned that I’ve seen you rip a car door off its hinges and flip a dude bigger than Graham over your shoulder.”

  “I was right, then!” Margit jumped to her feet. The minor headway of moments ago was gone. “Filthy Val. Your kidnapping days are over.”

  “Before they even started.” Tuck shook his head slowly, with false regret. He was having way too much fun, given the circumstances. “Don’t be so narrow-minded,” he added. “Not every Valkyrie wants to abduct people. Some of them just want to hang out and read paperbacks all summer. Go to prom. That sort of thing.”

  “Look, Margit,” I said, trying to glare Tuck into silence. “I know you and your friends have been spying on me. I also know some of you are tracking the Valkyries. Trying to stop them. I’ve seen people with your transponders three times now, at the sites of abductions. There’s no reason we can’t work together.”

  “Oh, really?” Margit said. “Because I can think of a few.” But she didn’t mean it. I’d caught her off guard. Her eyebrow arched. She was curious.

  “We need to know where Astrid, er, the Valkyries are likely to strike next,” I said. “Can you help us?” The hostile set of Margit’s jaw relaxed, settling into a sulky, stubborn scowl, so I softened my tone. “I haven’t hurt you now—and I saved Kjell in that bar. I’ve given you more reason to trust me than not to. What have you got to lose? We just need to know how to find the Valkyries.”

  Margit tried to maintain her anger, but she was visibly wrestling with my words in her mind. “They’ve been talking about you. Over the radio. That’s how we communicate—the groups in different towns. I heard you fought a Val in Bergen last night. And at the soccer game, we heard you tried to help. I’m just not sure if it’s a trick or if you’re really not one of them.” She spoke as if it were a physical effort to force the words out, each syllable inflicting a different breed of pain. “Why should I trust you?”

  I motioned to Tuck to handle this part. Not only was Margit predisposed to hate me, Tuck could teach most politicians a thing or two about persuasion.

  “You already told us why. All the reasons you just listed,” he said softly. “Trust those sharp instincts. Help us.” He cast his most irresistible smile. It was a lure no one could resist, including me. For once, I was relieved instead of resentful as I watched another girl bat her eyelashes a few extra times when she looked up at Tuck.

  “Help you what?” she asked. Apparently the half-life on her hostility was a mere two seconds in Tuck time.

  “Find them. The Valkyries. They’ll lead us to Graham and the others. And then, well, we’ll cram for that exam the night before, right, Ells?” He winked at me. I wished he’d give some sort of warning before he decided to make my heart skip a beat.

  “Last night was the night before,” I pointed out. “We only have until dawn.”

  “Why?” Margit asked, looking from me back to Tuck. “What happens at dawn?”

  “We don’t know,” I replied. “We just know it won’t be good.”

  “Promise you’ll get my brother back,” Margit said. Her voice cracked at the end.

  Tuck looked at her, really looked at her, and I knew he had this one in the bag. “What’s your brother’s name?” His voice was deep, soothing. The way he talked to nervous freshmen before their first big game.

  “Eric.”

  “And they took him too?”

  Margit relaxed. Millimeter by millimeter, her shoulders lowered. “Yes,” she said. “He’s been missing for almost a month.”

  “We’ll get him back. We’ll get all of them back.” Tuck’s face was so earnest, so open. No one could deny him anything when he was at his best. Even I had to believe what he was suggesting was possible. “I promise.”

  Margit smiled back at Tuck. Actually smiled. With teeth. “Can I use your phone?” she asked.

  Within ten minutes, Margit had made a flurry of brief phone calls, and we sat in the kitchen while her phone tree of contacts grew and thrived, branch by branch. As we waited, Margit explained that there was a network of people from the surrounding towns working together to stop what Margit glibly referred to as the Val attacks, with satellite groups as far away as Denmark.

  The groups had been monitoring bars and big public events, and they evacuated potential targets when Valkyries were sighted nearby. So far, it had worked only once—when they’d pulled the fire alarm to empty a restaurant in time. Every night for the past week they’d had at least one Valkyrie sighting, even if they arrived too late to rescue the victims. But advance evacuation was the only strategy that had worked. Once the Valkyries had their prey in their sights, no one had ever been saved—except Kjell, when I’d rescued him. Margit carefully avoided looking at me the entire time she was talking, but she glanced at me, just for a moment, when she delivered that last fact.

  She still didn’t like me, but at least she was beginning to realize that I might not be evil incarnate.

  Tuck perked right up when Margit explained the emergency locator beacons. They used them instead of cell phones because they conveyed the location even when the person holding one was rendered unconscious. Margit’s ultimate plan was that someone holding a live beacon would be taken. The range was hundreds of miles, and the signal could transmit through water, earth, and stone. I had to admit that it wasn’t an altogether stupid plan, given that they had no way of knowing it would be impossible to follow Astrid down the invisible road without a Valkyrie to guide them.

  I started to remind Tuck of that, but he cut me off and volunteered. “I’ll do it,” he said. “I know I can plant a beacon on one of the Valkyries. We just need your help finding them.”

  There was no way Tuck would think their plan could work, given what we’d just discovered on the road outside of town, when Astrid had given us the slip. As if sensing the objection on the tip of my tongue, Tuck looked me straight in the eye. “We’re running out of time.”

  “We are running out of time,” I whispered as soon as Margit picked up the phone again. “Which is why we can’t afford to make a mistake. You know this won’t work.”

  Tuck shrugged. “We’ll figure it out,” he whispered back as soon as Margit’s attention returned to the phone. “We don’t have anything to lose at this point. And no matter what we do, we need their help finding Astrid. So we go along with their plan.” There was something unsettling about how he refused to look me in the eye when he said it.

  “You’re up to something,” I said warily, recognizing that intentionally expressionless look on his face too well. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “That you look incredible in that shade of blue.” The flirty smile was back. “It brings out your eyes.”

  The eyes he was still so carefully avoiding.

  “Tell me what you’re really thinking,” I said. “You can’t flirt your way out of answering.”

  “Bet I could if I really tried.” He dropped his voice and leaned in closer. I had to admit, under any other circumstances, he would have knocked my eye right off the ball.

  “Nope.” I crossed my arms.

  He sighed. “If I tell you, your fake reaction won’t fool them,” he said, all traces of playfulness gone.

  “Fool them?” I hissed. “This isn’t a game you’re playing with one of your cheerleaders, Tuck. These are violent people.”

  “You need to give me more credit. I have a serious side too,” he paused, visibly composing his response in his mind. “You know, sometimes it’s like you think I’m hiding a harem,” he added, actually sounding hurt.
“At this point, if I haven’t earned your trust, you need to adjust your standards.” The way he said it, out loud when we’d just been whispering, sent a shiver down my spine.

  I suddenly wasn’t sure what we were talking about. The comment about a harem clearly had nothing to with Astrid unless Tuck was delusional to the point of insanity.

  But Margit caught the important part.

  “If you don’t trust him, I’m not sure why you expect me to,” Margit snapped, bringing an end to the argument. “We’re putting people at risk to help you.” When neither of us said anything, she seemed satisfied. “We’ll find the Vals for you tonight,” she said, looking me dead in the eye. “I’ll keep my promise, and you keep yours.”

  “Fine.” I forced myself to nod. Letting Tuck believe, at least for the time being, that I would let him do whatever he wanted. It didn’t matter, since I already knew what I had to do—even if Tucker Halloway wouldn’t approve.

  “One condition,” I said, turning to Tuck. “I’ll be the one to plant the beacon.”

  “Whatever you say, Ells.” His smug smile hit a chord I thought had faded between us. The secrecy. The games. And made me realize that maybe he had been able to flirt his way out of answering my question after all. All it took was the cryptic line about a harem and earning trust, and my traitorous imagination had absconded with the rest of my brain.

  In a situation like we’d be facing, there was no room for error. I now not only had to defeat a Valkyrie and rescue Graham, I also had a sneaking feeling I’d be protecting Tuck from his own overconfidence. I’d do anything to keep him safe. Whether he liked it or not.

  12

  Margit drove, and within a half hour, we were climbing the fire escape to Sven’s apartment, which was the de facto headquarters for the Skavøpoll branch of the Valkyrie hunters. My stomach was in a nervous knot that pulled tighter with each rattle of the metal stairs under my feet. We were walking into a nest of kids who insulted and threatened me every chance they got. And who were probably in cahoots with the mob that had tried to drag my grandmother into town for questioning.