Immortals (Runes book 2)

by Walters, Ednah

“About Nikos, sir—”

  “Let it go, Andris,” I said, getting exasperated by his persistence. Dad put his hand on my shoulder and started to lead me into his office.

  “If someone is bothering Raine, Mr. Cooper, we can deal with him a lot faster than you.”

  “Really?” Dad turned, and I groaned. “Where were you when the Norns tried to take her? She ended up in the hospital and almost died because of you people. I will not have you use magic to fool people around my town. I will protect my daughter.”

  I swallowed, my heart pounding with dread. I wanted to tell them to stop, but Andris didn’t know the meaning of the word and Dad’s protective instinct often went into overdrive where I was concerned. He looked like he might attempt to rip Andris apart if he said another word, which would be a big mistake. No human could take out a Valkyrie.

  “Dad, please.”

  “With all due respect, Mr. Cooper,” Andris said at the same time. “You have no idea what we’re dealing with. Norns could level this town without losing sleep, and Mortals would just call it a phenomenon and spend decades trying to understand it. We don’t have time to pacify a few disgruntled people—”

  Dad cut him off by raising his hand. The doorbell dinged, and Jared walked into the store, carrying two cups of coffee in a holder and a box of pastries.

  “Leave,” I mouthed to Andris.

  He shook his head. I was so going to kill him after this.

  Dad took the coffee and pastries from Jared, thanked him, and glanced over at Andris. “Feel free to look around, Andris. If you see anything that interests you, I’ll be in the office. Jared, he’s a special customer.”

  “What does special customer mean?” I asked, following Dad into his office.

  He waited until I closed the door before he said, “Valkyries, but Jared only knows them as the people who order floor-to-ceiling mirrors with special designs on the frames.”

  I sat, rested my elbows on his desk, and warmed my hands on the paper cup as Dad studied me with a thoughtful expression. He sipped his drink. “Is he your boyfriend?”

  “Nooo. He’s just, uh, a friend.” Calling Andris a friend felt weird, but I guessed he was. Everything he’d done since my talk with the counselor said he couldn’t be the one vandalizing my locker. Or maybe I was being too trustful. “So Mom told you everything?”

  Dad nodded.

  “And you’re angry.”

  He leaned back and shook his head. “Not with you.”

  “With Mom?”

  “Of course not. I knew you were special before you were born. That one day you would follow in her footsteps. I thought we had more time to prepare, time for you to lead a normal life as a...”

  “Mortal?”

  He shook his head. “No, as a typical teenager. Boys, prom, graduation without runic magic, portals, and dead souls.”

  My heart squeezed, hating to see him in the dumps. “If you don’t want me to train until I graduate from high school, I can wait.”

  “You could be twenty or thirty, pumpkin, I’d still have a problem with this immortality thing, but your mother said it was better this way. Both Valkyries and Norns want you, and from the sound of things, being a Valkyrie is a better option.” He made a face like he’d swallowed a bitter pill.

  I sighed. “You don’t like them?”

  “Other than your mother, the ones I’ve met are pompous, condescending, and have little regard for humans.”

  He just described Andris. Torin wasn’t like that. “You always tell me not to discriminate against a group of people because of a few rotten apples.”

  Dad chuckled. “That’s true. I guess when it comes to you the rules go out the window.” He put his coffee aside, leaned forward, and gripped my hands, his expression becoming sober. “Is this what you want, pumpkin? Immortality? Reaping souls for eternity?”

  When I thought I had Torin, I hadn’t cared. But I didn’t have him, and I might never have him. This was about preparing myself to deal with the Norns. As a Mortal, I was too vulnerable. They might snap my little neck like a twig and send me straight to Hel’s Mist, and there was nothing I could do about it. As an Immortal I had a fighting chance.

  “Raine?”

  “Yes, Daddy. I want to do this.”

  His eyes bored into mine. “Will you promise me one thing?”

  I nodded.

  He leaned forward. “If you have any doubts at all, promise to come talk to me. Okay?”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  “Good.” He got up, walked around the desk, and gave me a hug. “Now get out of here and take him with you.” He inclined his head to indicate the main floor of the store.

  He grows on you, I wanted to tell him, but I was sure he wasn’t in the mood to hear anything nice about Valkyries. “I love you, Dad.”

  “Love you too, kiddo.”

  Andris was signing a piece of paper when we left the office. “I’ll make arrangements to have it picked up tomorrow,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” Jared said with a grin.

  “What did you buy?” I asked.

  Grinning, he pointed at the largest mirror in the room. “A couple of those. We have one, but could use a few more.”

  Dad didn’t make a comment about Andris’ purchase and waved as we hurried outside. The drizzle had stopped.

  “Has anyone ever told you that your father is one scary dude?” Andris said.

  “Nope. He’s just worried about me.”

  “How can he hate Valkyries when he’s married to one?”

  “He doesn’t hate anyone.” I opened my car door and got behind the wheel. This dinner thing hadn’t seemed like a good idea when I first heard about it, and it was even less appealing now.

  “I wonder if I can skip dinner tomorrow,” Andris said and made a face. “I mean, he might decide to poisons us.”

  I glared at him. “That’s ludicrous and insulting. My father is not that diabolical. Besides, aren’t you immune to things that make people sick?”

  “Yes, but cramps are a bitch, even if they last seconds.”

  I couldn’t think up a response, so I just closed the door and started the engine. Andris knocked on the window of my car, and I rolled it down.

  “What is it now?” I asked with as much exasperation as I could muster.

  “Watch it with the ’tude, missy.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t have an attitude.”

  “What time is your lesson with Lavania?”

  “Five.”

  “Okay, let’s agree on one thing. Once you get home, you stay put. You don’t go anywhere without swinging by my place first. Got it?”

  Was he kidding? “Yeah, sure.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Remember, I’m not Torin.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I’ll have no problem runing your door and windows, confining you to your room.”

  I laughed. “You and whose army?”

  “Try me.” Smirking, he turned and swaggered back to the Harley.

  Grinding my teeth, I took off. Torin was so dead. Andris stayed behind me all the way home. After parking the bike, he stood in the driveway and waited until I entered my house.

  Upstairs, my eyes fell on the brown manila envelope on my side table. Torin’s rune book. I picked up the envelope and sighed. Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to part with it. Soon. Turning, I walked to my closet, opened a drawer, and hid it in the back.

  ***

  “Come in. We have the house to ourselves today.” Lavania waved me inside before closing the door. She was always courteous. Today she wore a sleeveless light-blue gown with dark-blue jewels along the hem and neckline, and a broad bedazzled belt with runes circled her waist. A matching headband held her hair back, and armlets adorned her upper arms.

  “You look pretty,” I said.

  “Thank you. I have a date tonight. A celebration.”

  With who? Torin? “Andris is gone?”

  “With Ingrid. They left when you were cross
ing the lawn. He almost came to get you.” She chuckled. “He’s always been impatient.”

  “They used a portal?”

  Lavania chuckled. “What other way is there to travel? Come on, we’re going to use the kitchen.”

  I hadn’t been in their kitchen since I was last there with Andris and Ingrid. At the time, there were huge moving boxes filled with Torin’s things. I looked around with interest and smiled. Someone in their house loved to cook. There were a lot of modern cooking gadgets on the counters. Across from the kitchen was the family room with a sectional couch and a high-def flat screen TV on the wall. The party Torin had held here, before everything went to Hel and back, flashed through my head.

  “Over here,” Lavania called and waved toward a stool. “Sit.”

  She sat on the other side of the kitchen island counter. In front of her was a neatly folded brown leather cloth. She waited until I sat before she carefully unfolded it.

  It wasn’t exactly a cloth. It was some kind of leather knife belt with six pouches. One by one, she pulled out the instruments from their sheaths. All were the size of a pencil, but varied in color, the shape of the blade, handle, and the guard. Half of them had black, shiny blades, while the others were white. Runes ran from handle to blade. One blade was shaped like a sickle, another like a stag knife, and the rest were of various thicknesses.

  “These are called artavo, meaning ritual knives. One is called artavus. Some high priestesses called them artanus, artany, or arthame. A more corrupted version used by the present magical world is athame.” She picked up a black artavus with a pointed blade and a guard. I had seen Maliina (or was it Ingrid?) use one just like it. “This is called a stillo. Try it for size.”

  I closed my hand around the ridged handle. My fingers fitted the ridges as though it were made for me. The blade extended about three inches from my fist.

  “It’s light.” I touched the blade and gasped when pain radiated up my arm and blood pooled at the tip of my finger. Wooziness swept over me. I hated the sight of blood, especially mine. I stuck my finger into my mouth and carefully put the artavus down like it was a poisonous snake.

  Lavania chuckled. “You’re as white as a ghost.” She reached down and came up with her own rune blade. “Give me your hand. I’ll take care of the cut with healing runes.”

  I shook my head. I so wasn’t ready to be runed yet.

  “The sting doesn’t last and that cut is deep, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  The pain radiating from my finger told me it was. Slowly, I removed my finger from my mouth and moaned when blood rushed to the wound. This was bad.

  “Come on,” Lavania urged impatiently.

  Cringing, I offered her my hand and closed my eyes. When she chuckled again, I opened one eye and fought the urge to snatch my hand away. My finger was bleeding profusely, the blood dripping onto the counter.

  “Try to relax, Raine.”

  “This is me relaxed,” I retorted through clenched teeth. “I hate blood, and it hurts.”

  Moving so fast her hands were blurry, she etched runes on the back of my hand. She was right. The sting was brief, and the cuts weren’t really cuts. They were more like burns.

  I forgot about my churning stomach when pink burn marks criss-crossed my skin. They darkened to beautiful sketches like the ones I’d seen on Lavania’s hand, the ends forming whorls and tendrils. I stared at my hand with morbid fascination, but the beautiful runes ebbed away. A tingle started at the tip of my finger, and I turned my hand. The dip cut closed, too, and the temporary pink skin lost its color until my finger was normal again.

  When Torin healed me the first time, I had been flat out unconscious. The second time the remnants of his runes sealed my knife wound, so I hadn’t actually seen it happen. Watching my skin close like someone was zipping it up was surreal.

  “That wasn’t bad,” Lavania said, wiping the blood from the counter. I snapped back to reality.

  “No, it wasn’t. Thank you.” I got up to wash the blood off my finger.

  “You’ll have to overcome your aversion to pain, you know,” Lavania said. “I can start you off by etching the healing runes with my artavus, but eventually you’ll have to etch your own and create a bond between you and yours. Since your movements are not as fast, the sting will last longer.”

  “Gee, thanks.” I felt woozy just thinking about it.

  She waited until I sat before saying, “You’ll be fine. Maybe Torin will help.”

  “No.” I didn’t want him to see me acting like a baby. “I can do it on my own. You know, once you etch the first ones.”

  She grinned. “That’s the attitude. Now, where were we?”

  “You asked me to hold the stillo,” I reminded her.

  “Oh yes. After you’ve bonded with them, no one else can ever use them, but you. That’s the mistake young Valkyries make when they try to turn Mortals on their own. They don’t realize they cannot use their stash of artavo. Eventually, the person you turn must have their own rune daggers to bond with and complete their transformation.”

  No wonder Torin always warned Andris to stop turning Mortals. Had Maliina gone a little crazy because Andris had screwed up? I hoped not. It might mean Ingrid was in trouble, too, because Andris had turned both of them.

  I touched one of the white blades. “What are the blades made of?”

  “The black ones are made of special onyx found in Asgard. The white stone is made from selenite found from Goddess Freya’s realm. Do you remember where that is?”

  “Vanaheim,” I said.

  “Good. The runes etched on their surface help channel the magical energy. That one,” she indicated the black one I’d nipped myself on, “is used to sketch the first runes. It is powerful and, when not used properly, can make a transformation go wrong. But you don’t have to worry about that. I’m here to guide you. See the runes on the handle and the blade?”

  I recognized the prominent one. “That is Goddess Freya’s symbol.”

  “That’s right. She is your protector, so all your artavo will have her symbol. This one is called bolino.” She picked up one that looked like a cylindrical block with a nail at the tip. She gripped the handle and pressed it on the counter. When she opened her palm, the bladeless handle looked like a wooden block a kid could play with. “It has retractable blade and is used on surfaces to create portals. You can carry it anywhere and no one would consider it a weapon. As soon as you engage the runes on your arm, the blade slides out.”

  “Can you show me?”

  “This is yours, so it won’t respond to me.” She gave me the harmless-looking wood, then reached under her belt and pulled out hers. Her handle was darker and ridged for better grip. Runes appeared on her hand, their tendrils coiling between her fingers and up her wrist as though an invisible artist was painting a masterpiece on her skin. They looked like henna decorations. The blade shot out from the base with a sharp whoosh, and I gasped. She chuckled.

  “It’s a bit rusty from lack of use. Don’t worry. Yours will come out smooth and easy, hardly making a sound.” The runes disappeared from her hand, and the blade retracted.

  “The blade self-retracts?” I asked.

  “Once you can control your runes, you can control anything. The artavo, the portals, the ability to move fast, become invisible.” She put her blade away and reached for another that looked like the one that had nipped me, except the blade was white. “This is a portal stillo. When you first learn to create portals, you want to use this one. It is a bit forgiving when you make mistakes with your sketches.”

  “How do the runes know where you want to go when there are so many portals around the world?”

  Lavania chuckled. “The runes respond to your thoughts. We’ll cover all that in the coming weeks. Today, let’s just focus on the artavo.”

  ***

  It seemed like forever before she stopped, stood, and stretched. “Oh, I’m starving. Will you stay and join me for dinner? With the guys and In
grid gone, I have to eat alone, and I hate that. We can discuss anything you want. Schoolwork, boys, girlfriends…”

  Her expression was expectant, and I hated the idea of going home to work on more homework packets. I guessed we could discuss school. Boys were out of the question because I was only interested in one and I refused to discuss Torin with her.

  “Raine?”

  I looked at my watch. It was almost seven. My parents would be home soon. “I’ll call Mom first.”

  “Good. I’ll start on dinner.”

  “You cook?”

  She chuckled. “Yes. Cooking relaxes me.”

  A model look-a-like who cooks? Could she be any more perfect?

  I pulled out my cell phone from my back pocket, turned it on, and speed-dialed Mom’s number, leaving the kitchen for the privacy of the living room. Dad picked up after several rings. “Hey, Dad.”

  “How is it going?”

  I heard the worry in his voice. “Good. Is Mom there?”

  “She went to pick up dinner. We should be home soon.”

  “I’m going to have dinner with Lavania, my trainer. The others are in Portland for the game, and she’s alone. Is that okay?”

  There was silence, then, “Okay. I’ll tell your mother.”

  He didn’t sound too thrilled about it, but there was nothing I could do about that. I had several text messages from both Cora and Eirik. We were winning. I quickly responded then followed the sounds to the kitchen.

  Lavania already had two fresh salads on the kitchen counter. She moved around the kitchen at an accelerated speed. I could see right through her hands to the dough she was kneading and rolling. Lined before her were several containers of cheese, meats, and vegetables.

  I sat on a stool and watched her. Did her brain work as fast as her hands? If I moved like that, I could be done with all my homework in one day. She put the tray in the oven, rinsed her hands, and faced me.

  “Do you like calzones?” she asked.

  I grinned. “Oh yeah.”

  “Then you’re in for a treat. Wine or juice?”

  Wine? “Juice.”

  We started with the salad. The calzones, when she removed them from the oven, were golden and tasty. Inside they had cheese, different meats, vegetables, including mushrooms, and fresh herbs. She placed sauces on the side for dipping. I hated mushrooms.