Descendant: A Starling Novel (Starling Saga)

by Lesley Livingston

  Mason didn’t, but she didn’t say so out loud. She was admittedly running out of options. As her mother began their descent down the steeply sloping path that led down to the battlefield and Asgard beyond, Mason fell in beside her.

  “Why are they fighting?” she asked as they got closer and closer to the edge of the terrible melee.

  Her mother answered, “Because they are fighters. It is simply what they do. They are Odin’s personal war band, chosen in ages past by his Valkyries to die glorious deaths and join him here to await the ending of days. Ragnarok.”

  “Right. The thing we’re all trying to avoid have happen by maintaining the status quo. Get me out of here, keep Loki bound and snaked . . . And hey, I’m all for the world not ending. It just makes me wonder”—she waved a hand at the Einherjar—“what’s in it for these guys if it doesn’t?”

  “This is the honored Viking’s promised reward. A glorious death, followed by endless days filled with battle, endless nights replete with mead and meat. The possibility, one day, of something even greater.” Hel gazed at the spectacle, her expression hard to read. Mason wasn’t sure whether she was actually endorsing the idea of Ragnarok, or just offering the Norse perspective on it, but she sincerely hoped it was the latter.

  “Sounds like it’d be an excruciating bore after about three days,” Mason said.

  At least, she thought, it would be the way they were doing it. The closer they got to the warriors, the more it seemed to Mason that they were kind of just . . . going through the motions. But of course, she wasn’t blind to the irony of her offhand dismissal of their pastime. Especially where she herself was concerned. After all, she’d done very little else but fight and practice for the last several years—and with a similar kind of mindless determination. She had approached fencing with a kind of zealous tunnel vision. And yet, in all the time she had fought and practiced to be the best, honing her skills, her strength, her speed, she had never even approached the kind of finesse as she had over the last few weeks working with Fennrys. He’d instilled in her a kind of genius instinct with a blade. Made her one with her weapon.

  She was no longer just a product of technique and grim determination. When she fought with Fenn, she fought with joy. Mason felt a brief surge of panicked despair at the thought of never experiencing that sensation again.

  No. She slammed the door on that thought with all her mental might. I’m going home.

  And Fenn is fine. He had to be.

  Yes, she’d seen him hurt, terribly. A hole torn in his shoulder. But it wasn’t as if she hadn’t done the very same thing to him herself—accidentally stabbed him in the very same shoulder—only a few days earlier, and he’d recovered from that just fine. Fennrys was tougher than anyone she’d ever met. A bullet hole and a tumble off a train? That was like most people getting a hangnail.

  Mason took a few deep breaths to calm herself down and shake her panic.

  Her footsteps slowed as they approached the leading edge of the battle.

  “You must go first,” her mother said, nudging her forward.

  Right. Of course I must.

  Mason thought of Fennrys—of his fearlessness in the face of a fight—and clamped down on the urge to turn and fly as a wall of noise and the stench of blood and spilled viscera washed violently over her. The thunderous sounds of war were a physical assault on her ears and the surface of her skin. They beat on her like hammers on drums, and she knew that at any second, those hacking, slashing berserkers would turn and charge at her and she would be dead and in pieces before she’d even drawn her elegant little blade, which seemed like a toy sword in comparison. Her hand tightened on the hilt. . . .

  No. Don’t give them a reason to attack.

  Her mother promised her she’d be fine.

  Trust her. . . .

  Suddenly, the two warriors fighting closest to her abruptly disengaged. They lowered their weapons and stepped back, making a space in the chaos for Mason to step into. Then so did the men beyond them, and the ones beyond them. Mason held her breath and strode purposefully forward into the breach, her eyes fixed unblinking on the glittering eaves of Valhalla in the distance. As the path continued to open up in front of her, she could sense that, as soon as she and her mother had passed, the men behind them would close ranks and start fighting again, as if nothing had interrupted them.

  Once she was halfway across the battlefield, Mason relaxed enough to glance surreptitiously at the men fighting on either side of her. Some of them were great hulking beasts and some were lean and lithe, skirmishers and melee bruisers and all sorts in-between—there was no one distinct “type.” And yet, they all seemed the same. It was strange. Wrong. Mason had sensed it from a distance, but in close quarters it was even more apparent. They hacked and slashed away at each other, but it was without individual flourishes of technique. It reminded her of the draugr. They fought like zombies.

  Mason thought of her bouts with Fennrys—the kind of fighting where every blow, every block, attack and riposte and feint, felt like a move in an intricate, fiercely intimate dance—and felt sorry for the Einherjar. If this was their supposed reward for a life of service to the Aesir, the ultimate prize granted to the brave and the bold and the best . . . then they must not have read the fine print in the contract. They were all essentially robotic dummies, who were just going through the same motions they had been since the dawn of time—each face, each opponent, striped of its individuality . . . its humanity. Each death exactly the same. Because, beyond the different weapons and the different wounds, that’s what they were—the same.

  All except for one of them.

  As Mason and her mother passed, untouched, across the battlefield, winding their way between the combatants, Mason suddenly noticed a lone figure out of the corner of her eye that did not move the way all the other Einherjar did. She twisted her head to get a better glimpse between bodies . . .

  . . . and was shocked to see Tag Overlea stumble out of the sea of warriors.

  VII

  Gunnar Starling pretty much confirmed Heather’s fears that—just like Taggert Overlea—she wasn’t going to leave his train alive. She’d watched enough crime dramas to know what it meant when his glance flicked first over Tag, where he lay stretched out on the floor, then over to where Heather still cowered in the corner.

  “I’ll deal with my sons and find my daughter,” he said to Toby. “You clean this mess up.”

  Toby nodded and stepped aside as Gunnar swept out of the car, and Heather felt her heart sink into her stomach. She was part of the “mess.” And there was really only one way to “clean” it up.

  Rory trailed behind his father to the door, hesitating for a moment before stepping through. He cast a glance over his shoulder at Heather, his forehead knotted in a deep frown. He looked for a moment as if he wanted to say something to her. Apologize maybe? Try to explain? Stop what was about to happen to her? He did none of that, of course. Just stood there.

  Heather took the opportunity to give Rory the finger.

  He blinked at her, startled. Then his mouth twisted in a sneer and he shook his head, disappearing out the door in his father’s wake.

  Toby stood for a long few moments, staring at the door that had just closed behind Rory and his boss. Even in the depth of her near-panic despair, Heather was still trying to wrap her head around what, exactly, Toby Fortier did for Gunnar Starling other than drive his train. But then there was no more time for her to give the matter further thought.

  Toby’s head snapped around and he stared at Heather, every line of muscle in his fighter’s physique taut as steel cabling. Heather tried her best not to shrink away from his piercing stare, to little avail. She could feel the leather of the banquette creaking behind her as her shoulder blades pressed into it when Toby reached into a back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a switchblade. The blade was flat black, nonreflective, and looked military issue. It was also instantly apparent that Toby was an expert in its use. The way h
e spun it around in his hand as he approached Heather actually made her feel the tiniest bit better. Like whatever way he decided to dispatch her would be quick and—hopefully—relatively painless. She tried to keep her lip from quivering and stared defiantly up into his eyes.

  She almost burst into tears when Toby didn’t slit her throat ear to ear.

  Instead, the fencing master opened up his fist not holding the knife, revealing one of Gunnar’s acorns. With the point of the carbon-bladed knife, he hastily scratched a symbol into the gleaming golden surface and then held it up in front of Heather’s face.

  “Take this,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at the compartment door. “It’s marked with a protection rune. It should keep them from being able to find you while you’re in possession of it. At least, for a while. Don’t lose it.”

  Heather reached out a shaky hand. Outside the train, they heard a car start up, the engine loud and echoing in the tunnel. Then the sound moved off into the distance, and all was deathly silent again.

  “Keep your wits, Heather. I know you’ve got ’em,” Toby said, his eyes like burning coals in his head. “I can’t help you any further from here on—and I’m a dead man if he finds out about this.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Heather asked.

  He didn’t answer her. Just grabbed her shaking fingers and wrapped them tightly around the rune-inscribed gold acorn. “Listen to me: go back to Gosforth. The school is neutral ground, protected. They can’t touch you there. Be strong, be smart . . . and pray that someone finds a way to stop Gunnar Starling before it’s too late. Now go. Run like hell!”

  She nodded. He didn’t need to tell her twice.

  Blindly, instinctively, until the breath seared in her lungs and her pounding feet ached, Heather ran, heading west when she could, keeping her head down in the darkness and hoping she wasn’t being followed. When the stitch in her side made it impossible to keep running, Heather slowed to a stumbling jog and massaged the muscles over her ribs, glancing nervously over her shoulder every few seconds at the virtually empty street behind her. Eventually, blind panic ebbed and she stopped at an intersection to get her bearings. Twenty-Eighth Avenue and Thirty-First. Okay. She knew where she was now. If she turned south, in a few blocks she’d hit the aboveground station where the N train stopped. She’d taken it a couple of times with Cal when they’d come over to Queens for one reason or another when they’d been dating. The N train would get her back into Manhattan. In Manhattan she would be safe.

  Heather wasn’t used to taking the subway, but she’d done it often enough that she knew her way around. She rifled through the pockets of her jeans and found a crumpled five-dollar bill—enough to get her a ticket card that would get her on the train. She had no idea where her cell phone was, and she hadn’t been carrying her wallet when she’d run to find Mason at the academy.

  Up ahead in the darkness, she saw the elevated station platform floating above the street, and her heart started to flutter. She almost sprinted the last hundred yards and up the stairs. Her fingers shook as she stabbed at the touch-screen buttons on the ticket machine, and then she was through the turnstile, getting on a brightly lit, empty train car. She almost wept with relief when the train started to move. She slumped down onto a seat and slowly began to relax. For the first four stops, the train car remained unoccupied, and Heather closed her eyes and dropped her head wearily into her hands for a moment.

  “Hi.”

  Heather nearly jumped out of her skin. She lifted her head and turned a shaky attempt at her best withering glare on the stranger who sat opposite her, a slight grin curving his mouth.

  “Sorry?” she said coldly.

  It was just some teenage guy she didn’t know, but it still freaked her out. The last stop had been Queensboro Plaza, and Heather was positive that no one had gotten on the train. There wasn’t another stop until Lexington Avenue, once the train had crossed over the river into Manhattan.

  “It’s a typical North American greeting,” the stranger said. “Hi.”

  He wore a black leather jacket, faded jeans, and a pair of Ray-Bans, darker than the sky outside the train window, that completely hid his eyes.

  “Right,” Heather muttered. “Whatever.”

  Her fingers gripped the golden acorn tightly, and she found herself slightly reassured by the gentle, tingling warmth that seemed to emanate from it. Toby said the thing would protect her. She wondered if that applied to random strangers on trains. She turned away from the guy and stared determinedly at a poster on the wall of the train car. It advertised an upcoming heritage festival taking place in Queens.

  The boy twisted his head, following Heather’s eye line, and waved a hand at the poster. “Ah, yon Lady of War, Wisdom, and the Home Arts,” he said, referring to a picture of Athena on the poster. “Frankly, I could never imagine the ol ’ girl donning a frilly apron and churning out a batch of muffins in the kitchen. Could you?”

  “No,” Heather said flatly, wondering why the hell this guy wasn’t going away. “But then I never really bothered to speculate on the hobbies of some moldy old Roman goddess, thanks.”

  “Oh. Ouch.” His expression turned pained, and he waggled a finger at her. “That moldy old goddess there is Greek.”

  Heather shrugged. She knew that. She just didn’t care. “Same diff,” she muttered, silently willing the train to go faster.

  Above the rim of his sunglasses, one dark eyebrow arched sharply. “Okay,” he sighed. “You’ve obviously had a seriously shitty night so far, so I’m gonna let that one slide. But just for the record—even though I’m pretty sure you’re smart enough to know this—the Greek and Roman gods are so not the same thing.”

  Heather could only stare at the guy in dull astonishment. This was one of the weirder conversations she’d had recently—and that was saying something—but there wasn’t a whole lot she could do about it. She was trapped. There was no easy escape until the next station. And even then, what was to stop the guy from following her off the train? At least he hadn’t tried to shift over onto the seat next to her. And strangely, when she thought about it, she realized she also wasn’t getting go-for-the-mace warning vibes from him. Yet . . .

  So Heather just sat there, staring at her own reflection in his shades, as he went on about the differences between the two pantheons of gods like he was the class nerd in her Comp Myth class at Gosforth. Maybe he was an ex-student. Except that couldn’t be. He looked like he was around the same age as Heather, and that would have meant they’d have shared some classes. And she was sure she’d never seen him before in her life. Although . . . the more she looked at him, the more she was struck with a sense of familiarity.

  He didn’t seem to notice her scrutiny. Or if he did, he didn’t mind. “I mean, seriously,” he was saying, “I dare you to just try telling Cupid he’s the same guy as Eros.” He flashed a grin at Heather that was only half a tooth shy of maniacal. “You’d likely wake up the next morning strapped to the underside of an amorous goat while a handsome young man uses you for target practice at the local archery range.”

  Heather figured he probably wasn’t actually crazy. . . . Just some Queens rocker wannabe who saw a sad, pretty girl alone on the train in the middle of the night and thought maybe he could cheer her up. And maybe get some play if he was successful. Under other circumstances, she might have even indulged him a bit. Not tonight.

  “Look.” She sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m really not in the mood, okay?”

  “Why?”

  He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, expression earnest.

  “Why?” she asked warily. “What do you mean, ‘why’?”

  “I mean, why aren’t you in the mood? And what mood would that be, anyway?” He tilted his head and regarded her across the space between them. Heather got the impression that, behind the shades, he wasn’t blinking. “A good one? ’Cause if that’s what you meant, then you’re absolutely right. You’re not. But if you meant you’re
not in the mood to talk to me, then . . . I think you might be wrong. You sure look like you could use someone to talk to. Even if it is just some incredibly handsome random guy on a train at three in the morning.”

  Heather rolled her eyes. She also, on second thought, realized that he was right about two things. One: he was incredibly handsome. Almost unrealistically so. To the point that, when he smiled at her, she wanted to reach across the space between them, take off his shades, and gaze into what she was sure must be the most mesmerizing pair of eyes on the planet Earth. And two: she really did need to talk to someone.

  Calum . . .

  “What was his name?” he asked gently.

  Heather glared at him, startled by the question.

  “The guy you loved. The one you lost. He had a name, didn’t he?”

  She opened her mouth and closed it again, almost afraid to say it. “What makes you think I lost a guy?”

  Ray-Bans shrugged. “Okay. Girl then. Whatever. All I know is you definitely lost someone. Someone you loved more than anyone else in the whole world. There’s no other reason for you to be out here at this time of night, looking the way you do and feeling the way you feel.”

  “How do you know how I feel?”

  His grin returned, but it was less maniacal this time. “Let’s just say I’m pretty perceptive when it comes to matters of the heart. Years and years of practice.”

  “You’re kidding. You look like you’re—what—my age.”

  He shrugged again. “I try to stay out of the sun. Eat right. Moisturize . . .”

  Heather felt herself almost cracking a smile. She shook her head and gazed down at the floor between her feet.

  “But I’d also have had to be blind, deaf, dumb, and chained to a rock somewhere half a world away not to hear your heart breaking, Heather. It was louder than the bridge blowing.”

  Heather’s head whipped back up at the sound of her name coming from the stranger’s lips. She hadn’t told him her name. And the bridge . . . how did he know she’d been there when the Hell Gate had blown?