“Is that what you are?” Mason asked, intrigued in spite of herself. She put a hand out, gingerly touching the rusted shackle that circled around the man’s wrist. The skin beneath it was raw and scored with the iron’s bite. He must have torn the skin every time the serpent dripped its poison. She wondered how often that happened. It reminded her of the scars that Fennrys carried. “Is that why you’re here?”
“Because I was invasive? Or because I survived? Both, I suppose.” He sighed, and it was a sound that carried bone-deep, age-old weariness in it. “Why are you here, Mason?”
She felt a frown creasing her forehead. “I keep telling people, I don’t even know where ‘here’ is.”
“Oh. I see.” The blue eye filled with understanding. Sympathy. “They really don’t like to play fair.”
“Who?”
“The Powers That Be.” The shoulder lifted again in a shrug. “All of which is to say that isn’t saying much of anything definite. The board shifts and the players come and go. All of which means, I don’t know why you’re here either, Mason. Not exactly. But I do know you should probably be careful while you are.”
“Careful of what?”
“Everything,” he said wearily. “And everyone.”
“Even you?”
“Especially me. For I am the God of Lies.”
III
“You’re a liar and a thief.”
Heather Palmerston had never heard a voice so cold sound so angry.
“Get up.”
She shrank back into the farthest corner of the leather banquette seat in the opulent confines of the train car. She’d been huddled there, numb, her head hidden in the crook of her arm ever since she’d seen Calum slam into the Hell Gate Bridge and plummet over the side.
“I said . . . get up.”
The command, issued in tones laden with heavy rage, wasn’t directed at her, and Heather had never been so glad to not be the center of attention in her entire life. Instead, the words were aimed at Rory Starling, who lay crumpled on the expensive Persian rug, his body folded protectively around his right arm, which was bloodied and bent at an awkward angle . . . in at least two places. Heather could see a jagged end of bone showing through his skin, and the sight made her stomach clench. Rory’s face was ashen where it wasn’t mottled with red splotches or bruising. He was wild-eyed, and there was a web of pinkish foam at the corners of his open, gasping mouth. He struggled to force himself up into a sitting position, in response to the man who’d spoken.
Heather knew, even without having seen his face when he’d entered the train car, that it was Rory’s father—Gunnar Starling—one of the most powerful men in New York City. Maybe even the world. With his lion’s mane of silver hair and the cloaklike overcoat hanging from his broad muscled shoulders, he was unmistakable.
Outside the windows, everything was dark. Much darker than it would be if they were still outside. They were in a tunnel. Somewhere beneath Queens, she figured, from the direction they’d been traveling. She still wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, beyond the fact that she had been kidnapped, along with Mason Starling—a fellow student at Gosforth who had recently become a friend—by Mason’s complete jerk-ass tool of a brother, Rory, and a meathead quarterback from the Columbia U football team named Taggert Overlea.
Heather still had no idea why she and Mason had been kidnapped. At the moment, all she cared about was getting out of the train car alive. Because she’d gotten the distinct impression over the last hour or so that whatever it was that was going on, it went way beyond college fraternity prank territory and had crossed into deadly serious. The danger had been obvious even before Cal had . . . before he . . .
Heather covered her mouth in silent agony.
Cal’s gone.
The thought made her feel like she’d been punched in the stomach. Mason, too, was gone, although whether she was alive or dead, Heather had no clue. She hoped like hell that she was okay at least. Far away from this madness and okay.
She tried to think logically through the series of events as they had happened. Heather hadn’t been competing that night in the Nationals fencing trials and hadn’t really felt like going. She knew Cal would be there to watch Mason compete, and every time she saw Cal those days, the experience invariably left her feeling drained and just plain weary. He seemed to actually get off on torturing himself over Mason, and now that Mason and Heather had become friends, Heather couldn’t stand the drama.
So she’d actually been studying that night in the dorm common lounge, curled up in an easy chair and reading through her biology notes. The academy had felt strangely deserted, but Heather had also felt a kind of electricity in the air—like another thunderstorm was on its way. It had made her restless.
And then Gwen had shown up.
A few years older than Heather, Gwendolyn Littlefield was slight and almost elfin, a girl with spiky purple hair and a startlingly pretty face. She’d stepped furtively into the common room, her eyes wide and her pupils so dilated that Heather had wondered aloud if she was stoned or something.
Gwen assured her she was not.
Then she’d told Heather her name.
Gwen Littlefield was a notorious figure around campus. The first student—the only one—to ever be kicked out of Gosforth. She’d been a few years ahead of Heather, who, even though she’d heard the stories at the time, hadn’t paid much attention and so would have been hard-pressed to pick Gwen out of a police lineup—even without the bright purple dye job.
The academy administration had tried to keep the matter quiet at the time, but it had been a little hard to—especially when the subject in question had run howling like a maniac through the halls of the school one day, frantically predicting the demise of the captain of the rowing team . . . who’d then drowned in an apparent tragic accident.
The very next day.
Last night, Gwen had told Heather that the rowing incident hadn’t been a coincidence. Gwen could actually glimpse into the future. And what she’d seen . . . had been terrible.
“Why are you telling me this?” Heather had asked her. “What does this have to do with me?”
“It has very little to do with you,” Gwen had answered. “It has everything to do with your friend Mason.”
She then proceeded to tell Heather that Mason was in a world of trouble. She had wanted to warn Mason directly, but apparently, Gwen’s precognitive abilities were occasionally a little hazy on details—she had no idea where to even begin to look for her. But Heather did. After a moment, the girls had decided that it would be far better, and require much less explanation as to why Gwen had suddenly reappeared, if Heather was the one to relay the warning to Mason.
And so that’s what she’d done.
Heather had gone to find Mason Starling and warn her that she was in grave, possibly mortal, danger. As a by-product of Gwen Littlefield’s grim prediction, Heather now found herself in that exact same situation. She wondered if Gwen hadn’t just managed to turn her into some kind of instrument of a self-fulfilling prophecy in an attempt to avoid the very same fate: if Heather hadn’t delayed Mason when she was leaving the Columbia U gym, maybe Rory and Tag wouldn’t have caught up with her.
Well, it’s pretty useless to speculate on that now, isn’t it?
Heather had found Mason. She’d delayed Mason’s departure by those precious few moments. And one of the end results was that the next thing Heather knew, she was waking up with a sore jaw in a cargo transport compartment, with Taggert Overlea half carrying her through to the passenger car of an opulent, obviously privately owned train. . . .
And she hadn’t seen Mason again.
She’d gathered, from ensuing events, that somehow Mason had ended up on the top of one of the train cars—presumably in an attempt to escape the cruel trap her horrible brother had snared her in—and then that the guy who called himself the Fennrys Wolf and Calum Aristarchos had appeared out of nowhere on Harleys, doing their damnedest to ride to
Mason’s rescue. With, it became apparent, limited success. From inside the train, Heather had watched Fennrys climb from the back of the bike Cal was driving onto the train. She’d been a helpless observer, trapped behind a pane of glass as Cal’s bike had wobbled treacherously and then pitched him off.
She closed her eyes at the memory of him cartwheeling into the air . . . falling down toward the unforgiving waters of the East River far below. Just like that, in a flash, Calum was gone. And with him, Heather’s broken heart.
In the wake of Cal’s plunge into darkness had come a sudden, blinding brightness. It had lit up the interior of the train car like a blazing sun, rainbow colors building to coruscating whiteness. The air in the cabin had crackled with lightning-storm energy, and time had seemed to slow and stretch. . . .
Then everything went dark.
Once Heather had been able to see again, the world had returned to normalcy. The train chugged across to Long Island and down the ramp that curved away to the south. Framed by the lounge car’s picture window, the elegant, sweeping bow curve of the Hell Gate Bridge grew smaller behind them.
And then, Heather recalled, the bridge exploded.
When the center section of the massive iron span blew apart, the train had been far enough away not to derail. The tracks had shuddered and bucked, and Heather had screamed and fallen to the floor, jarred by the shock-wave impact.
Moments later, Rory had come staggering back into the passenger compartment, beaten and bloodied, his arm a twisted wreck and his face pummeled. He’d collapsed on the floor across from Heather, whimpering in agony, as the train had shunted off a main track and entered the mouth of a tunnel, slowing to a stop in a dimly lit, rock-walled cavern somewhere beneath Queens. And only a few moments after that, the door had slid open once again, and Gunnar Starling had stepped inside.
Now Heather Palmerston—rich, privileged, beautiful, never one to back down from anything or anybody—cowered in a corner, afraid for her life. She watched, scarcely daring to breathe, as Rory climbed awkwardly to his feet and stood swaying, his arm hanging useless, bloodied, bent in places where arms don’t bend.
“What happened?” Gunnar asked, all his attention focused, for the moment, on his son. “Where is Rothgar?”
Heather wondered fleetingly what Mason’s hottie older brother Roth had to do with this whole situation. As far as she knew, he wasn’t on the train. She hadn’t seen him anywhere and hoped, just for the sake of her own opinion of him, that he wasn’t involved in this insanity.
“And where is the Fennrys Wolf?” Gunnar continued. “Not in Asgard, I take it.”
Asgard? Heather thought, her thoughts a tangle of disbelief. He’s not serious. That’s gotta be a code word or something. Or, like, the name of a nightclub. Or a high-tech business park. Or . . .
Or was it?
Maybe when Gunnar Starling said “Asgard,” he actually meant . . . Asgard.
Every year, one of the mandatory humanities courses for all students at Gosforth Academy was a comparative history of world mythologies. The faculty had always taken it seriously, which was why Heather had to repeat it in summer school when she’d blown it off in her junior year. But suddenly she was grateful that she knew her gods and goddesses—and the places they called home. Places like Asgard. The faint hope that Gunnar Starling was employing some kind of weird metaphor began to dissolve in her mind.
He’s not. You know he’s not.
But that was crazy. Wasn’t it?
Crazier than storm zombies? Fighting naked guys with swords? Or any of the other bizarro stuff Mason has told you about? Maybe not so much.
She shook her head and tried to concentrate on what was being said.
“What went wrong?” Gunnar continued to pepper his battered son with questions.
“I did what I was supposed to,” Rory sputtered in protest. “I got Mason and I brought her to the bridge. But . . . I dunno.”
He shook his head, sweat beading on his brow. In the opposite corner from where Heather crouched, Tag Overlea was shifting back and forth from one foot to the other. He looked like he was just barely resisting the urge to bolt for the door.
“Roth must have screwed up,” Rory mumbled. “He never showed. But that son of a bitch Fennrys turned up all on his own and”—his eyes shifted back and forth—“and he had a gun. He was going to shoot Mason, Dad.”
Heather almost protested out loud about what a load of BS that was. According to what Mason had told Heather, and according to what Heather herself knew of the mysterious Fennrys Wolf, that was a highly unlikely possibility. Only a few days earlier, Mason had confided in Heather that she and Fennrys had been seeing each other secretly. And to say that it was going well between the two of them would have been, from what Heather had gathered, a vast understatement. It was funny, because Mason was the only person Heather had never been able to read. She’d always been able to tell when people were in love, if they’d ever been in love, if they ever would be in love, and with whom, if they’d already met. She’d never gotten a read on Mason. Or, for that matter, Fennrys. And yet, her instincts screamed to her that they were, 100 percent, falling in love. Fenn would never have tried to hurt her. He was the kind of guy who would have died trying to save Mason rather than see her hurt.
Died like Calum did. A jolt of pain stabbed at Heather’s heart.
“The Wolf had a gun?” the elder Starling asked quietly.
Rory glanced at Tag, who was ash-gray in complexion and sweating profusely. His fists were jammed in the pockets of his letterman jacket, and he looked like he wanted to sink into the floor.
“Yeah.” Rory nodded. “He did. I mean . . . I wish I’d had one.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Of course not. Where would I get a gun, y’know?”
Over by the polished brass-and-mahogany bar, Tag suddenly went so shifty-eyed he looked like he might pop a vein in his forehead. What a jackass, Heather thought. He’d been more than happy to lob not-so-veiled threats at her—in between ogling her chest and pilfering cigars and chugging brandy straight from the bottle—less than an hour earlier. But now his bravado seemed to have evaporated into the ether. And judging from his reaction to what had just been said, Heather figured he was the one who’d supplied Rory with a firearm. She wondered what Rory had offered him in return.
“So, yeah. He had a gun, and he was threatening Mason. He would have killed her if I hadn’t fought him and”—here a note of real pain and horror crept into Rory’s voice—“look what he did to my arm, Dad. . . .”
Gunnar stared impassively down at the injury. Which even Heather had to admit was pretty horrific, the bones of his forearm piercing through the skin like that.
There was a feverish look in Rory’s eyes as he looked from his mangled limb to his father. “But I got the gun away from him. I saved Mason, Dad. I saved her. Only . . . I had to knock Fennrys off the train to do it. And by that time, it was too late and the bridge was all lit up. I know you wanted him to cross over. I know. But . . . I had to save my sister.” His voice broke plaintively on that last word.
Suddenly, the front door to the train car opened, and Heather was shocked to see Toby Fortier step through. At first she felt an initial surge of hope. Toby was one of the good guys. He was the fencing master at the academy, and even if he was kind of a drill sergeant when it came to practices, he was okay. But then she saw Toby’s eyes flick in her direction . . . and slide away without even acknowledging her.
His expression was cold. Hard. Mercenary.
He turned his attention entirely on Gunnar Starling, and his attitude was almost that of a foot soldier facing a four-star general. He stood, feet apart, hands clasped behind his back, head up and shoulders back.
“Tobias?” Gunnar asked without taking his eyes off Rory, where he had sunk back down on the carpet in pain. Heather almost felt sorry for him, but then she remembered how he had come staggering back into the car after the blinding flash outside, gloatin
g through the pain about how he’d just shot the guy who, only a few weeks earlier, had saved a handful of Gosforth students—Rory among them—from a bunch of monsters.
“Tell me, Tobias,” Gunnar said. “Is that what happened?”
“How the hell would he know?” Rory asked.
“Because he’s been on the train the entire time. In the locomotive cab.”
Rory started to make strange, strangled noises. “Toby—jeezus—you were driving the train?”
“Toby is a trusted member of my staff,” Gunnar said. “When I made arrangements for the train to be waiting for you tonight, I didn’t think I needed to provide an employee manifest for you as well.”
Rory lowered his eyes, only to have his gaze slide sideways. He glared in venomous trepidation at the man he’d obviously known only as the fencing master at Gosforth up until that very moment.
“Tobias,” Gunnar said again. “You heard what he said about the altercation on top of the train. Is my son telling the truth?”
Toby hesitated, but it was only for a fraction of a second. Almost imperceptible. “I don’t know. Sir. I was occupied with monitoring the engine as we crossed the bridge. There were . . . some strange spikes in pressure readings in some of the hydraulics systems.”
Gunnar inclined his head slightly toward the other man and regarded him silently.
“I can review the digital files from the surveillance cameras mounted on the train cars if you wish.”
“Do it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Gunnar’s shoulders shifted beneath the mantle of his overcoat, and he turned back to his son. “Where’s Mason now?”
“I—I don’t know,” Rory whimpered.
Gunnar’s knuckles popped as his hands knotted into fists, and he took a step forward.
“Dude!” Tag Overlea blurted suddenly, overcome by the tension of the situation.
The football jock lurched forward, stepping half in front of Rory as if he would protect him against his father’s wrath. It was, Heather thought, the single most asinine thing he could have done. But also sort of brave in the most tragically stupid kind of way. Toby’s facial expression confirmed Heather’s feelings about that.
Descendant: A Starling Novel (Starling Saga) Page 3