Then Coral was on one side of me and Raven on the other. They put their arms around me and I put mine around them.
“That’s it,” the elf whispered. “Together, you can stop this.”
“Why would you want to stop it?” Coral asked, her cheeks shiny and wet, her voice strong and surprisingly fierce. “It was your job to make us to get this started, then your job to take us out. Why help now?”
“You’re splendid. Deserve to live.” His voice faded out and his body jerked once. He gave this long, stuttering, gurgling breath. “Curse backfired and there’s a backlash of power. Take it. Take...my strength.”
I don’t know how we knew what to do, but Coral and Raven put one hand on his leg, then took each of my hands in their free ones. We stared at each other as power like nothing I’d ever imagined coursed from the elf into us. It vibrated and pulsed and forced us to our feet. Raven and Coral clasped their hands and we stood over the elf who became a dried-up husk of a corpse as his strength and our magic built and built inside us and took everything he’d had left.
Wind whipped up around us, and the sounds of battle around us faded. One wolf howled, then another joined, until all the wolves together created this chorus of sound that locked out the world.
My norn twisted and writhed, her pain so very real as this power coursed through us. But she wasn’t fighting it. She was trying to absorb it, just as my body started to tremble as it tried to take it all in. My hands tightened on my sisters’ as theirs did on mine and we stepped closer together, touched our foreheads in a circle. Suddenly the ability to handle this power soared through me like lightning.
All three of us gasped and held on as the world went into a spin around us. I couldn’t help but look as the circle of wolves smeared into the giants, the dwarves and even the kids who all carried gods’ souls. Everything but Raven, Coral and me went into the whirl.
When it all jerked to a halt, I looked at my sisters and my heart stopped.
Their hair had turned white. The same silvery white as our dead father’s. Raven’s stood in a short cap of spikes while Coral’s streamed over her shoulders. I looked down at the white hair falling onto my coat, so stark against the dark blue.
“Your eyes, Kat,” Raven whispered.
I looked at hers and held my breath. “Yours, too.”
The gray hadn’t changed, but her pupils were huge and black, and for an instant, terror froze me as I thought maybe we were turning into elves. That our father had tricked us into doing the very thing he was supposed to have done.
“Are we even human?” I whispered, my voice breaking.
“Yes,” Coral answered. “We are. I think so. We just absorbed something from him that made us stronger.”
“I feel it,” Raven breathed. “It’s powerful. And I’ve got control of it.” She actually grinned.
I felt an answering smile because that was one thing Raven and I had always shared. Our need for control. And she was right. My norn was still there, but she wasn’t in my chest, she’d flowed out of just that one spot. My body had sort of absorbed her.
“I don’t think the wyrd sisters will have to struggle anymore.” I let go of their hands and picked up a strand of my hair. It felt soft like a spiderweb, yet thick and heavy. “Do you think it’ll stay like this?”
“I hope not,” Coral said. “We thought fitting in was hard before.”
Raven snorted.
“It’s like I understand things now. The way Skuld had fought so hard inside me, the way she caused me pain even when she didn’t want to. She was fighting her own prison this whole time. And now she’s free.”
“Yours is gone?” Raven touched her chest. “Mine isn’t. She’s just—”
“Different,” Coral broke in. “She’s fully with me. I’d thought she was before when I’d accepted her, but this is different. And look.” She pointed.
Apparently, Vanir, Taran and Arun had left the battle. Each boy was frozen mid-run as they came toward us. “Holy shit,” I said. “Look right above Taran.”
“Oh,” Coral breathed.
Taran’s hand was raised over his head and it looked like he’d lassoed a bolt of lightning. His hard gaze was locked on the elf at our feet.
Raven gasped, grabbed my arm. “Look down.”
A vine had grown from the ground and circled the elf’s neck.
I immediately sought out Raven’s Vanir. He had stopped, closed his hands into fists and his eyes glittered as he stared our direction. I couldn’t tell what he had done—just that he’d been concentrating pretty hard when we stopped time. Squinting, I made out some strange, wispy forms around him...like ghosts.
“They were coming to save us. The elf is on the ground helpless and I had a freaking rock in my hand and they were still running to our rescue.” I shook my head.
“Come on.” Raven chuckled. “It’s kind of sweet. Unnecessary but sweet, and I think they started this direction when you dropped to the ground. It looked bad, Kat. Like you were choking to death or something.”
“I don’t know what happened. I’m sorry.”
She suddenly gasped, grabbed my arm again. “Look over the water.”
I was afraid to look, but I did. And as I swung my head that direction, I realized the music had restarted. It grew louder and louder. Voices chimed together, rising in sound and pitch. Whatever my sisters and I had just done to stop time had done something—opened something.
“A crescendo of souls.” I stared, all my muscles tightened when I looked into the sky. An aurora borealis had sort of exploded over the top of the entire lake. A stream of lights that smeared into a long, snakelike ribbon with white fanning down and overlapping until it looked like a billowy skirt from a little girl’s best princess dress fantasy.
Colors, so many colors, lit up the sky and the clearing where everyone was frozen into place. And then something moved. Valkyries on actual flying horses seemed to be coming through some kind of portal, and behind them, on the back of each horse, was a ghostlike warrior.
“Vanir was calling the glorious dead, Kat,” Raven said softly. “He did it before in Oklahoma. Holy crap, you guys. This is...this is...” She choked, waved her hand at the aurora borealis.
“This is Bifrost,” I whispered. And we’d done something, stopped the world, so it could open. “The voices people have always heard here? The music? It’s because this is the opening to the other worlds.” My heart started to race and my hands started to sweat. “The fire, getting us all here. Loki set it all up. We’re all here, don’t you get it?”
Raven nodded as her expression grew darker. “That’s his plan. Take us all out, set off Yellowstone and burn the bridge to the other worlds.”
Snow crunched and all three of us turned toward the noise as our mother stepped from the trees.
Chapter Fifteen
Our mother, or rather Loki, took a slow, cautious step. He was fighting our power. When he spoke, it was our mother’s voice, though, and something made me hold back from going through with my first impulse. Hurling the rock.
“The Thor boy ruined this feathered coat that last night with his lightning and I went down miles from here. I had to steal a snowmobile—then it ran out of gas.”
I looked at my sisters because that sounded just like our mother when she was annoyed. There wasn’t anything really scary about her in that instant. Well, except for the slow way she was walking as she fought our rune tempus.
“How come she can move when nobody else can?” I whispered.
“It probably has something to do with her being related to us,” Raven answered, keeping her voice just as low. “I can’t believe she never told us about her family.”
“I told you guys. That’s not our mother anymore.” Coral frowned.
Every muscle in my body tensed up when
Coral held up her hands and that white light glittered around her fingers. “Wait,” I whispered. “Something’s different.”
Dru came closer, hesitated when she got to the elves. The fear on her face made my heart ache. That surprised me. She took a deep breath and walked around the dead brothers, then stopped at Vrunlin. “The elves knew I was a descendent of powerful families—both Norse and Arapaho—knew that my ancestors had survived the dark magic that had slaughtered so many in Minnesota. The elves also knew I was a triplet and that I could have triplets.”
I looked at Raven, whose face showed shock. That’s right. They hadn’t been here when Branton shared that information earlier.
Coral asked. “You were a triplet, Mom? Why didn’t you tell us that?”
Our mother lifted her leg, pushed and took another step. She stopped, breathing hard. “You guys are so strong now, so strong. You’ve managed to paralyze him—he knew you could do this. But he’s fighting and he’s strong, too. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“A lot of time before what, Dru?”
Her smile was one of those that came during the good times, and I tried really hard not to let it seep into my heart. I hardened it instead. She wasn’t getting to me. “This could be a trick,” I murmured so only my sisters could hear.
“I don’t think it is.” Raven took a step toward our mother and I clasped her hand, my fingers tight as I kept her by my side.
“The second you three were born, Loki was freed from that cave and all the gods knew it. They scrambled to get inside kids—to be reincarnated so they could stop this. Ragnarok wasn’t supposed to happen like this, and Loki has had a blast turning it into a game.”
“I wondered why he kept killing kids with Taran’s hammer. This end of the world stuff is more important.” Coral knocked the rock out of my other hand and held my fingers, hers surprisingly warm.
“This thing.” Dru kicked the dead elf. “This thing slaughtered my family. My sisters.” Her voice broke and I tightened my fingers on my sister’s. I couldn’t imagine dealing with that sort of hell. I couldn’t. Raven glanced at me and the pain in her eyes reminded me. Both of them just had.
Dru crouched next to him, staring. “I spent my entire adult life having nightmares about him. But he did give me you guys. He did one good thing.”
“Actually,” I said. “He did two. He just died fighting his brothers, who were trying to kill us.”
She stood and stepped over him. “Loki knew that if the three of you arrived here together, alive, you’d have the power to paralyze him and to open Bifrost.”
I held up my arms and pushed my sisters back.
“Really, Kat?” Raven muttered. “And you say I channel the protective vibe.”
“She’s right not to trust right now. Though it’s been a long, long time since you trusted me, right, Katriel?” She smiled. “My youngest and fiercest daughter. You never let me forget that I made your life hell. I’m so very sorry about that.” She looked at her hands and winced.
I gasped when I saw they were crazy red and cracking—the tips of her fingers turning black. “Mom, you have frostbite. Bad.”
She choked and tears glittered on her cheeks. “You called me Mom. I am sorry, Kat. I’m sorry for the life I gave you. For the life I gave all three of you. I’m sorry that I wasn’t strong enough to deal with—”
“Stop,” I said. “Just stop apologizing. It’s amazing that you managed anything. Do you understand what we’ve learned the last few days? You went through the worst anyone could imagine. So just stop saying you’re sorry. You have nothing to be sorry for.”
Coral squeezed my fingers.
Raven started to cry softly.
“He’s winning and he’s angry.” Dru blanched when she took another step.
I knew her feet were frostbitten, too. This was bad.
“What can Loki do, Mom?” Raven asked. “Surt is dead.”
“No, he’s not.” Her smile was sad, and it looked so strange in her ravaged face. Now that she was closer, I saw cuts on her cheeks, cracked dry lips. Her hair was a nest of snarls.
“I don’t know the scope of the power you three just inherited together. I don’t know what it will mean, but once the world goes back to normal and Loki takes me over again, you have to kill me.”
“No!” Coral cried. “We can find a spell to get him out of you.”
Dru smiled at her while shaking her head slowly. “You can’t get him out of me and everything he’s done so far has worked. He couldn’t kill you because I fought him hard enough to keep that from happening, but he got everyone here to this place. He killed so many of the kids while they were vulnerable—before they turned eighteen and could possibly be on magical ground to gain their full powers.”
“He wanted everyone here for the volcano,” I muttered.
“Yes. Right here at the mouth of Bifrost. He can wipe out all the gods, the humans and a great many elves and giants. He can then go home and rule. He’s completely insane.” Her smile was rueful this time. “Even more so than me. But he has a lot of power and access to things that do, as well. Like the coat.”
My fingers started to tingle and I let go of Raven and Coral and stared at them. “I have to write. We did all this somehow and I still have to write?” That kind of pissed me off.
Coral started back—probably for her bag.
“There’s no time,” I shook my head and cried out when the tips of my fingers started to burn. “Please no, Skuld.” Some of her She Leech nature was still there, but my eyes flew open wide when my hand lifted into the air in front of my face and started to move.
I drew silvery, glowing runes right into the air.
Coral gasped.
“Key to humanity’s survival,” Raven read as I wrote. “But what’s the key?”
All three of us stood and stared at the glittering suspended runes, and I knew they were feeling the same shock and probably wondering the same thing.
“We don’t have to have things to write with anymore?” Coral asked exactly what I’d been thinking. She grabbed my hand, looked at it. “Does it hurt?”
“It tingled and stung a bit, then stopped.”
A horse neighed behind us, then another, and all the hair on my body stood at attention. All three of us turned to face an army. An army of Valkyries and spirit warriors had been silently coming into this world the whole time we’d been talking to our mother. They waited as if we were supposed to give some sort of signal.
“What do you think we’re supposed to do?” whispered Raven.
“Beats me.” I shrugged and that made my hair sort of slither around and I remembered that it was white. Remembered that we had just absorbed power from our...our father. “Coral? What could Vrunlin do?”
“He’s strong and he could move fast. Oh, and he could change his looks temporarily with some sort of glamour magic. I don’t know what else.” She stared at the Valkyries and warriors. “Why won’t they go kill the giants? What are they waiting for?”
But I knew. And I understood, too. “They have honor. The einherjar are the bravest and the most honorable of warriors. They won’t go in there and just slaughter.”
Raven nodded. “They want a fair fight.”
“Of course they do.” Coral took a deep breath, looked over her shoulder and groaned. “Mom is gone.”
But as Raven and I started to turn with her, the world went into its spin. This time, I stared out at it in amazement. I didn’t feel like it would suck me into the dark chasm that built around us, didn’t feel in the least bit vulnerable. In fact, I felt strong and in control and I knew in that moment, this would never happen again without me willing it myself.
The days of no control were over.
Raven, Coral and I looked at each other, and I saw their acceptance of this chan
ge, as well. They looked strangely beautiful with their shimmering hair and big dark eyes.
When the world was back to normal, a cry went out over the water as all the Valkyries led the spirit warriors into the battle. The music of their voices, along with the warriors—both male and female—built and built until the crescendo of song blocked everything. And they were powerful and fought along with the warriors. One after another of the dark-blooded creatures fell.
I spun to find Arun only to watch his eyes widen as he caught sight of me. He blinked, started to give me that highly amused grin of his as he pointed to his hair, but it faded as his gaze moved beyond me to the new arrivals. His mouth dropped open.
Taran, who’d been running behind him, slammed into his back.
Arun managed to keep his feet—he only stumbled—before he reached back and kept Taran from going down, too. Taran sort of goggled at us before he turned and aimed the lightning he’d grabbed at the giants.
Vanir had stopped the chanting he’d been doing before our rune tempus and now he watched the warriors he’d called before he, too, ran back into the fray.
“We have to find Loki. Now.” Raven marched ahead of us, her short hair—which was still silvery white—sticking up in a few areas like she’d just crunched it with her fingers. She probably had.
“She’s right—” I broke off as a rumble shook the ground, nearly causing me to fall. Then came a whooshing sound, and before I could blink, fire raced over the entire surface of the lake. It just poured out almost like I imagined the lava would should Loki succeed. Another rumble shook the earth and a rift cracked into the top of the water. I no longer had to imagine the lava because I could see the reflection of it shimmering in the aurora borealis in the sky. It writhed and twisted, fiery red and still deep in that crevice.
But not for long.
Fear like I’d never experienced in my life flooded me as a sort of groaning roar rose like it was coming out of the ground.
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