“She fell. She didn’t have rope to go down slowly. There is no way she’s still alive.” Brigg grimaced. “I’m so sorry.”
Arun shook his head. “We don’t know that for sure, and I can’t leave her there. Can you imagine being trapped in Niflheim?”
I tightened my arms, feeling as if my heart were breaking in two. Like Brigg, I thought she had to be dead because just looking as far as I could down into that hole had made me dizzy. I wanted to say that Sky was only the first. There was no way more of us wouldn’t die. And with all the fires lately...But I said nothing. I only held him and hoped that I offered some kind of comfort, no matter how miniscule.
Arun tugged me close. He buried his face in my neck and seemed to just breathe me in.
“I’m so sorry about your friend,” I whispered. “There was no way we could have known that would be there.” A shadow passed over our heads, and I quickly looked up.
Ravens gathered so thick, so fast, that it grew darker around us. Their harsh, shrill cries filled the air and it felt as if something crawled over the surface of my scalp. “I think we should go back,” I said, having to raise my voice over the bird cries.
Nanna dropped beside us. “I was wrong to bring us here. I wanted to see why the birds gathered, but it seems they’re drawn to the opening to another world.” She stared in the direction the giant footprints went. “We have to follow that path. Tomorrow.”
Brigg suddenly held up his hand. “Listen.”
All I heard were the raucous cries of thousands of ravens. Earsplitting, bone-rattling calls that drowned out nearly everything else. Wind swooped down into the clearing, its bite sharp enough to sting through clothes. I stared at Brigg, watching the color leach from his face as he slowly looked over his shoulder at the ravine.
Then, so faintly I barely felt it, the ground rumbled beneath my knees. Clumps of snow fell off tree limbs around us. Sudden silence from the birds raised every hair on my body. I let go of Arun and shot to my feet, my hands clenched into fists.
Brigg held out his hand and Nanna quickly slid their personal backpack off her shoulders and pulled out his knives and her nunchucks.
This time, when the ground shook, it was hard enough to loosen rocks on the edges of the rift. They pinged and clattered.
Arun stood and slid his sword from the holster. Fury, etched with grief, tightened his features. He looked tall and strong...and powerful. I was used to his peaceful nature, his good humor, and I watched in complete fascination as he morphed into a broad-shouldered, dominant man—one who looked ready to take on whatever was now crawling out of that hole. If I hadn’t been scared out of my mind by whatever was crawling up, I would have totally wanted to jump him in that moment.
The massive hand that appeared to grip the sides of the fault sent me a step back. White hair cleared the side, followed by a ragged, long-nosed face that could have taken up most of a billboard.
This giant wasn’t one of the pro-basketball-player-sized ones.
His shoulders spanned the rift just before his other hand appeared...with Sky in his grip. I gasped, then felt like all the air was sucked out of my body when he sort of flopped her on the ground in his hand as he pulled himself free of the ravine. I looked for movement from her, my heart in my throat. When he finally stood on the ground, he didn’t even pay us any attention. He stared down at the girl in his hand, then shook her like a toddler gripping a rattle. Grunting, he flung her into the trees.
Then his gaze narrowed onto us.
Arun released this sort of growling yell and ran at the thing.
I didn’t hesitate—I ran toward the trees. Toward Sky. It wasn’t hard to spot her blue parka high among the snow-covered branches. She was draped over a limb, her back bent in a way that made acid rise into my throat. Her eyes stared straight ahead, no sign of life in them.
We couldn’t help her now.
We also couldn’t just leave her there, but a roar reminded me that my friends were fighting something that could easily step on them and squish them into the ground like bugs. I ran back to find Arun, Brigg and Nanna working in sync like they’d been fighting together for years.
Then it occurred to me that, in a way, they had.
Arun, incredibly light on his feet despite the snow, did a sort of turn, bringing the sword down, then straight up into the giant’s hand. It screeched so loudly I winced, then looked up as the birds began to make noise again. They seemed agitated as they flew out of sync.
A loud thump and “oof” sounded, and I looked at the fight in time to see Arun go sailing into the air. He hit the ground hard, but it barely fazed him as he scrambled to his feet and ran fast back to the giant.
Brigg sliced at the creature’s bare legs, two quick swipes from each hand across massive, muscular, bare thighs. It wore some kind of brown loincloth that looked like it had been fashioned out of a potato sack. Blood, as sharp and red as a human’s, spilled over its knees. A lot of blood.
I wondered if they had arteries in the same places we did because one of the cuts began to pour blood like someone had upturned a bucket of the stuff onto him. The giant grunted and abruptly dropped to one knee.
Nanna took complete advantage of his obvious dizziness, going at him with her nunchucks over and over until he threw up his arms and waved them in front of his face. Blood had spilled into his eyes and it looked like he was doing that imaginary butterfly catch.
I snapped out of my daze and looked along the ground, hoping to get lucky with another huge antler, wishing I’d thought to bring the ones we had with us. But Alva had taken one look at them and ditched them—all too aware that in the old prophecies, Freyr didn’t fight successfully with that antler.
Wishing I had their strength or even some of Coral’s magic, I finally spotted a decent-sized rock. Now, there was something I’d always been good at. Dodgeball. I hefted the rock, ran as close as I dared with all the nunchucks and blades flying around and waited for my David and Goliath moment.
“Please move back,” Arun yelled as he moved to fight in front of me.
His sudden overprotective streak was going to piss me off. “I’m not just going to stand to the side while everyone else fights!” I yelled as I dodged the massive foot headed in my direction.
The giant had tried to stand and lost his balance and as he flailed, his body teetering over the edge of the ravine, I saw my chance. I hurled the rock as hard as I could, then held my breath as it hit his chin. There wasn’t a loud sound—I couldn’t throw that hard—but it startled the thing so much, it’s blood-filled eyes flew open wide as it lurched back the last wrong step.
Its wail lasted a long time as it fell.
When it finally trailed off, Nanna turned to me with a grin stretching her mouth wide. “That was wicked, Kat.” She laughed as Brigg tugged her into a hug and then her laughter abruptly broke off and she gasped and moved around Brigg to Arun. “Whoa. You guys, look at him.”
Arun’s hair was standing on end and something was off about his eyes. I squinted, thinking the sun that managed to break through the sky-wall of ravens was reflecting off the dark brown, but when he looked down and they continued to faintly glow, I walked up close. “Something’s going on with you.”
He nodded. “I’m starting to feel different. Kind of like I’m overly excited and terrified at the same time. Energy is running under my skin in waves that kind of hurt. And either that giant had some sort of electrical current running through him or a lot of gods and goddesses just showed up and—”
“Wait,” Nanna broke in. “When did you say your birthday is?”
“Tomorrow. I turn eighteen.”
Nanna sucked in a breath. “When Brigg turned eighteen, his powers went out of control and they got strong. What is it you do?”
“I’m strong, like the rest of you. Not much else other tha
n I have an affinity for plants and can heal them.”
She looked at her boyfriend, then looked at me. “Twenty bucks says he turns into Swamp Thing.”
I cracked up, but the laugh didn’t stick when I remembered Sky and told them where she was.
Chapter Twelve
Seeing Sky again, bent backward over limbs, her hair tangled in branches...her blank stare...tore me up as much as it had the first time.
A strangled noise escaped Arun’s throat, and I instinctively reached for his hand and managed not to wince when he held my fingers too tightly. He didn’t mean to and it only made me realize how much he must have to hold back with me.
It hit me then—that I really liked him and wanted to see if we could have something—and that I was completely wrong for him. He needed one of the girls who had that extra strength, who carried a warrior goddess soul. Staring down at our entwined hands, it was all I could do to hold back the rush of strong emotion that thought brought. This skewered mix of grief, regret and jealousy that lodged in my throat in this fat black lump.
And I had no business even thinking about this right now with Sky lying lifeless above us. Faintly ashamed, I pulled away from Arun.
Brigg dropped his still-bloody knives into the snow and climbed the tree like a monkey, but Arun stopped him before he could carry her down.
“Her snowmobile fell into that portal so there isn’t anywhere we can put her.”
“And if we leave her on the ground, the animals will get to her,” I added.
Nanna knelt to smear snow on her nunchucks and Brigg’s knives, washing off the giant blood. “I didn’t know her, but I can’t leave her like that. Nobody should just be left like that.”
“He plans to come back,” I said softly, knowing that was exactly what Arun was thinking.
He nodded. “We’ll come back with another snowmobile to bring her back,” Arun decided.
We drove fast back to the patrol cabin, without the daredevil stunts and laughter this time. The entire trip, all I could think about was Sky just lying in that tree.
Alva turned and walked into the cabin when we told her about Sky. Gillian burst into tears and Alva briefly poked her head back outside to wave the girl toward her. They shut the door behind them. Their desolation sliced into me, and I strode into the trees to take a few minutes to myself. I looked back toward the bonfire and watched every emotional reaction on those faces and for a second wanted to run away. Then I realized, I didn’t. Couldn’t. I might not have the physical strength of the other kids, but I was just as much a part of this, and I knew it was an important part.
Plus, I wanted to stop this. Wanted to keep any more kids from dying even though I knew it was going to happen. I looked at each and every face and understood that some of them wouldn’t be here a week from now.
I leaned against one of the dead trees, took a few deep breaths and decided it was time to just deal. To go out there and be with this group of wonderful people and wait for my sisters.
So I did.
But the melancholic mood and the strange rumbles that shook the ground every so often kept us all on edge.
It was around two in the morning when we finally heard the helicopter. We’d finished setting up the tents around the bonfire, but I hadn’t been able to sleep—too keyed up with the need to have my sisters near. The noise of the helicopter, intense and deafening, worried me. What other creatures heard it coming?
I’d never seen one of those big military helicopters in person before and certainly never heard one. Brigg lit up the clearing and the copter kicked up a thick cloud of snow as it landed—one that obliterated everything, including the helicopter. And Brigg’s light.
Kids around me groaned when the bonfire went out not only because of the warmth but because the darkness out here came with a terrifying edge.
When the noise stopped, the cloud was still there. I stood at the edge of it and squinted, so ready to see my sisters, my whole body vibrated.
And then, they were there.
They walked out of the lights coming from the helicopter, their hands waving snow out of their faces, both so infinitely precious, my heart ached. Yeah, it had only been days, but those days had been long and filled with too much excitement and I only truly felt like myself when they were close by.
Both my sisters wore coats that obviously belonged to people a lot bigger—Raven’s brown and Coral’s red. Coral’s fit a little better than Raven’s. I laughed as they spotted me and ran for a group hug. I put my face right between theirs, squeezed them as much as I could through the thick layers of coats and just breathed in the familiar scents of my sisters.
They did the same. Together, we stood and soaked each other in, letting everyone introduce themselves around us.
* * *
“I think everyone will be okay as long as they stay together.” Arun stared through the open door toward the bonfire, where most of the kids had gathered, along with Taran’s father, Vanir’s brother, Hallur, and Arun’s mom. She was handing out blankets.
Sky’s death had hit Alva hard. She sought out Arun for hugs often. And he watched her, worried but unable to alleviate her fear. He knew as well as the rest of us that anything could happen.
My sisters and the guys they’d found gathered inside the small cabin with Arun and me.
Vanir was big and had shoulder-length blond hair that fell around his face a lot. Whenever I saw his eyes, he seemed to be watching Raven. Taran wasn’t any different when it came to Coral, but he worried me a little because he had this sort of burning energy coming off him I could physically feel.
My sisters both looked tired. Coral shivered and huddled by the woodstove and Raven kept rubbing her thigh. She’d told us about being hit with an ice arrow and had played it down, but I’d seen that boy die fast beside the lake in Cody. I knew how close we’d come to losing her. And I started shaking every time I thought about it.
Arun leaned against the wall near me. “Most of the kids out there are extra strong and the two Valkyries seem to be able to sense when trouble is close.”
Coral nodded. “Mist can. Loki tried to take out Magnus and Mist got him out of the way before the arrow could reach him.” She shivered and Taran stepped close and put his arm around her waist. She smiled up at him in a way that had me raising my eyebrow.
Seemed both my sisters had grown attached to their...their warriors. I smirked, couldn’t help it. Then I looked at Arun, who watched me silently, and realized I had no room to be smirking about anything. Before I could remember I’d decided to break the habit, my eyes started to roll. I stopped mid-roll, sure that looked attractive.
As if he read my thoughts, his mouth curved up on one corner and his eyes narrowed. Welcome heat flooded my belly, and I finished the eye-roll. Screw it.
He just laughed and I warmed to the sound because he’d been so sad today. But his smile quickly faded.
Raven walked over to me and touched my arm. “Remember when you wrote ‘mother berserker’ during a rune tempus?”
I nodded.
“Your norn was trying to tell you that our mother was going to be possessed. She fell off that ladder and was out for days. It was the opening Loki needed to get inside her. He sent the snakes that startled her. But he told me something. He said she’d never planned to kill any of the warriors, that her plan had been to bind them. Loki told me other things, too. How he sped everything up. He has a plan, and the only thing I can think is he wants all the gods gathered in one place.”
“So we don’t show. Maybe that’s it. If we throw off his plan, nothing will happen.” Even as I said it, I knew it wouldn’t work.
Vanir spoke up. “We have no choice. If we aren’t there to stop the plan, he wins outright.”
I thought about one of the messages from my rune tempus. “Dark blood wi
thout rival.”
“What did you say?” This from Coral.
“Dark blood without rival,” I repeated louder. “It’s one of the messages I just got.”
“Dark blood means the giants and elves,” Raven said. “We saw a giant, Coral saw several and we’ve all seen elves now. One of the other things Loki said to me was that he wasn’t the one to set things in motion. He seemed pretty amused by us finding out who had. One of my messages said that Loki was freed at the first breath of a norn. Our birth set all this in motion. Vanir and I have worked out that the other gods had to work fast.” She smiled ruefully. “It’s why we’re around nine months older than everyone else.” She looked at Coral and frowned. “I know that look. What?”
I turned toward Coral and I saw it, too. She never could hold back her emotions when they were really strong, and the look on her face was a tight mix of something really, really bad. “What haven’t you told us?”
She looked at me, then Raven, glanced at Taran, and I had to smile when he kissed her forehead. They stood by the woodstove together. She took a deep breath. “Raven got the message ‘in violence conceived’ and one of mine said that the creatures were meeting to spill dark blood.”
I frowned. “But they are dark blood. That makes no sense.” Then I clued in to the first part and wondered if I was too young to have a heart attack because the thing started pounding in my chest like it was looking for an escape. I shook my head. “No. No way.” I looked at Raven, and she was clueing in just as fast. For some reason, I twisted around to look at Arun, like he could tell me I was thinking something completely and utterly wrong. But from his expression of sympathy, I knew he’d figured things out, too.
“You’re saying we’re related to them?” Raven tightened her fists in agitation. Vanir tugged her close, but she pulled away from him. Not far—stopping just in front of him. She looked at me and her eyes were shiny with tears. “It couldn’t be the giants, so that means an elf.” She gagged before turning those shiny eyes toward Vanir. “You said I looked pointy sometimes.”
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