The Dragon's Hunt

by Jane Kindred

  “With the lance, naturally. I offered him Leo’s soul as tribute, an immortal warrior kept from Valhalla through a bargain with Destiny. The lance contained the hugr, so the dragon consumed it whole. I was a bit surprised, but it had served its purpose. And that’s when he broke free.”

  Consumed? Rhea’s heart lurched. Leo’s hugr was gone. She really was too late.

  Look to the ground. Rhea scanned the cavern floor, expecting to see more writhing snakes, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw the movement of something much larger: the Jörmungandr-Gunnar. Or Jörmungunnar. Whatever. It coiled around the larger dragon’s legs, striking at the underbelly while Malice Striker thrashed its tail and roared outrage at what amounted to a pest.

  She wondered if Gunnar knew the hugr was gone. Perhaps he’d been here in the shadows watching as Malice Striker swallowed it. How long would it be before he faded from the world? Leo might be lost, but she still owed Gunnar something.

  Step in to the right and aim for the breast.

  Without second-guessing the hamingja, Rhea followed its instructions and leaped, swinging, into the fight.

  “You’re wasting your time,” Dressler called out. “The creature is invulnerable.”

  Her axe sank into the flesh between the dragon’s front legs, and the dragon reared back with a roar of pain, contradicting Dressler’s claim. Unfortunately, the blade stuck, and the dragon’s movement yanked the handle from her hands.

  Jörmungunnar went for the creature’s flank, distracting it long enough for Rhea to dash in and grab hold of the handle again. She hung on tight while the dragon swung about and did the work of twisting out the blade for her. When it came loose, she dropped and rolled, her body instinctively moving at the hamingja’s direction. Rhea came up on her feet, the axe still gripped in front of her, to find the dragon charging her, hot smoke billowing out of its snout. Rhea screwed her eyes shut, feeling the heat of its breath, waiting for the teeth to close over her head, but instead the dragon made a yelp of pain.

  She opened one eye to see Jörmungunnar at the larger dragon’s throat. The serpentine body of the shifter coiled around the dragon’s torso, tightening against the rib cage as the jaws clamped down. Malice Striker’s wings extended with a jolt as the dragon twisted in the serpent’s grasp, and they both took to the air, though the cavern ceiling was less than twenty feet high.

  The smaller but more lithe creature spun the larger onto its back, and the dragon fell to the cavern floor with a ground-quaking thud. Malice Striker’s claws raked the air as it struggled to breathe, and Rhea realized it was preparing to blast its foe with dragon fire.

  Climb the shoulder. Between the eyes. Rhea obeyed the thought without hesitating, practically running up the side of the wheezing dragon, and swung the axe as hard as she could into the fleshy bump between its red, rage-filled eyes. Something cracked beneath the impact, and the blade sank deep. There was no way she was getting it out again. Rhea tumbled off, coming out of the roll standing once more, ready to run. But the dragon’s eyes had gone dull, and a gurgling sound came from its throat—the life leaving it.

  At some point during the combat, she realized, Dressler had slipped away.

  Jörmungunnar hadn’t moved, its jaws clamped tight to the dead dragon’s throat, the aquamarine eyes blazing and wild.

  “Gunnar. Let go.” Rhea stroked the scaly, serpentine body. “You won. It’s dead.”

  His eyes blinked as he tracked Rhea’s movement, and the horizontal slits flattened into circular pupils, the opposite of the serpent eyes in the man’s face. Beneath her hand, the scales rippled, and the serpent uncoiled while the jaws slowly loosened.

  Rising onto its hindquarters, like a cobra being charmed, the serpent shuddered and shifted. And then Gunnar was standing naked before her. He’d taken some vicious swipes of the dragon’s claws to his torso. He was lucky it hadn’t gutted him.

  Rhea stepped toward him. “You’re bleeding.”

  Gunnar shivered as Rhea’s hand touched the gashes. “It matters not. I am not real.”

  “Oh, bullshit.” Rising on tiptoe, she slid her arms around his neck and kissed him, and Gunnar kissed her back gently, surprised. “Did that feel real?”

  “But I am only the hamr—”

  “Hamr, schmamr. Every single one of your selves is infuriating with this ‘but I’m not a real boy’ crap. You’re Leo Ström. Whether you prefer to call yourself Gunnar or not. Whether you’re joined with the líkamr or not. Whether you’re solid flesh or ghostly spirit or an astral body projected in dragon form. You’re Leo. So quit whining.”

  The surprise on Gunnar’s features morphed into amusement.

  Rhea glanced at the dragon’s corpse. “I just wish we’d been able to save the hugr.”

  “Nidhöggr swallowed it.”

  “I know.”

  Gunnar turned toward the dragon, his gaze focused on the axe embedded in its skull. “Where did you come by that?”

  “Kára lent it to me. And your vördr lent me your hamingja, so I was able to wield it.”

  Gunnar continued to stare at it. “It is Valkyrie-forged?”

  “I guess so.”

  He took hold of the handle of the axe, bracing one foot against the dragon’s neck, and yanked back and forth on the weapon until he’d worked it free. Rhea watched as he approached the dragon’s massive torso with the axe raised above his head in both hands and swung it in an arc, slicing the belly open.

  Rhea covered her mouth and nose at the smell and backed up as Gunnar plunged his fist into the cavity. After wriggling his arm around, he drew it out, the Holy Lance clutched in his bile-covered fist.

  Rhea spoke behind her hand, trying not to throw up in her mouth. “Jesus, that’s gross.”

  “But precious.” Gunnar smiled. “It still holds the hugr within it.”

  Her hand slipped away from her mouth. “It’s still alive?”

  “It’s immortal,” said Dressler behind her.

  Rhea whirled. Where the hell had he been hiding?

  “And you’re not leaving here with it.” He stepped out of the smoky haze and murmured something in Old Norse, holding his hand out toward Gunnar. The hamr turned pale.

  “Gunnar?” Rhea took a step toward him. “What’s he saying? What’s the matter?”

  Gunnar tried to speak, but something was happening to him, fissures forming along his cheekbones and spreading across his face.

  Rhea jerked on Dressler’s arm. “What are you doing to him?”

  He smiled and said nothing, and Rhea watched in horror as the lance and the battle-axe fell from Gunnar’s grasp, and the hamr crackled into a thousand gossamer filaments that fell apart and blew away.

  Dressler scooped up the Holy Lance and headed for the passageway before Rhea could react.

  “You son of a bitch!” She grabbed the axe and ran after him, remembering to pull up her hood as she plunged blindly through the darkness, flinging away snakes on the edges of her blade. She broke into the outer cavern upon the Shore of Corpses to find Dressler hauling back his arm with the lance in his hand as if to pitch it into the lake with the dead.

  Throw it now. At the hamingja’s urging, she hurled the axe toward Dressler. It tumbled through the air and came down on his forearm as he brought it forward for the throw. The blade sliced clean through flesh and bone, and the Holy Lance, still in his hand, dropped with it to the ground among the snakes.

  Dressler wheeled to face her, his expression furious, as though he hadn’t yet felt the loss of his hand, and grabbed her with the other. “I told you, I’m immortal!”

  A thick glop of black poison dropped onto his cheek, and Dressler shrieked, stumbling backward toward the lake. His flesh was sizzling away, revealing muscle and bone.

  Rhea scrambled for the lance, taking it from the se
vered hand. “Guess not without this.” She held up the relic, and Dressler made one more lunge toward her, nearly catching her off guard, but she swung her fist with the instinct of the hamingja and popped him right in the kisser. As Dressler tumbled back onto the shore, the bodies rose up around him and drew him into the lake.

  The dead were not looking friendly. Rhea turned to flee and realized she had no way out without Faye or Gunnar.

  Climb. Her eyes went toward the rocks on the far end of the cavern wall. To the crevice. Rhea shoved the handle of the lance into the deep inside pocket of the fur coat and scrambled up the wall toward the narrow opening in the rocks like a pro, climbing through it into a cavern of frozen mud bounded by what appeared to be the roots of a massive tree. She remembered Rafe saying the underworld was less a physical place and more of a metaphysical one, its attributes perceived as the soul expected it. So she just had to “perceive” herself once more in the realm of the living. If only it were that simple to craft one’s perception.

  The Lilith bond. Call upon your blood. Of course. Theia had been the one to propose it, that the power of their blood was strengthened exponentially by combining their energy. And Theia was her fylgja, as she was Theia’s. She placed her palm over her Black Moon Lilith tattoo and pictured the one on Theia’s arm, concentrating on her twin’s location while sending out a psychic “broadcast” of her own. Theia, can you hear me? I need a hand.

  At first, nothing seemed to happen, but when she sent the thought again, the frozen mud in the roots above began to crumble, revealing a fissure of light. Rhea began to dig, trying to ignore the panic of claustrophobia setting in as the crumbling earth tumbled down on her. And then her fingers met someone else’s reaching into the earth from above. She clutched the hand and scrambled out into the winter air and sunlight—and tumbled into Theia.

  Rhea rolled onto her back, grinning as she caught her breath. “Thanks for the hand. You just had to go literal.”

  Eyes wide, Theia helped Rhea to her feet, brushing the snow and dirt from her clothes. “And just where the hell have you been?”

  Rhea laughed shakily. Where the hell, indeed? “Oh, just slaying dragons and punching Nazis.”

  They stood beneath the snow-brushed trees surrounding Rhea’s apartment complex. Leo had spoken of the World Tree, in whose roots Náströnd was buried. She’d crawled up through the symbolic representation of Leo’s conception of the underworld. Of Gunnar’s.

  Gunnar. He was gone, faded away as surely as he’d feared. She reached inside the coat and clutched the ancient piece of wood in her hand. But she had Leo’s soul.

  Chapter 27

  Leo looked like grim death.

  Rhea stood in the doorway of her bedroom, afraid she might be too late somehow, that Gunnar had been wrong and the hugr hadn’t survived Nidhöggr’s stomach. Faye, head bowed over Leo’s body, still wore the armor of the Valkyrie.

  Rhea closed the door and held up the lance when Faye turned at the sound. “I have it.” Faye reached for it, but Rhea held the relic away. “First, we talk about your price.”

  Faye’s eyes darkened. “You would prolong his suffering out of jealousy?”

  “No, but you obviously would. You say you’re banished from his side when the hugr isn’t dormant. How do you intend to keep him bound to you with his hugr returned to him?”

  “His hugr will be suppressed as it always has been, except during the hours of the Hunt. I can be with him as I was before—if you are not in his heart.”

  “And how do you plan to make that happen?”

  “The munr will remain suppressed as well. When he wakes, he will already have forgotten you.”

  Rhea’s chest felt like lead. “So you win by cheating. You can’t make him love you, but you can take his love for me away with magic. That’s pretty pathetic.”

  Faye rose, tall and menacing in her Valkyrie attire. “His ‘love’ for you is nothing but your own spell cast upon him, the result of your demon blood and the magical ink you used on him.”

  “Magical ink?”

  “The ink made from the ash of Eyjafjallajökull.” Faye traced the Mjölnir tattoo on Leo’s wrist. “That pathetic little rodent sold it to you so you could bewitch my Leo.”

  The ink. Bloodbath. Dressler had sold it to her?

  Rhea looked at Leo, wasting, unnaturally pale. It was when she’d tattooed him with the ink that they’d both felt that tingling sense of rightness. The bond that had made him come back to her when he’d meant to leave. And it had been a lie.

  “Can you remove it?” she asked quietly. “The ink... I don’t want it in me. Or him.”

  Faye narrowed her eyes. “You would break the spell that binds him to you?”

  Tears blurred her vision. “I don’t want him that way. I want him to have his own will, his own mind. His own heart.”

  Faye’s demeanor softened. “I can neutralize the ink, if that is your wish. But I will need your blood.”

  “Just a drop, I suppose?”

  “Slightly more than a drop, I’m afraid, but not enough to do you harm.”

  Rhea glanced down at the lance. “And not with this. It’s done nothing but harm.” She opened the door, nearly stumbling over Theia, who’d been standing with her ear pressed to the wood.

  Theia started guiltily, hanging back while Rhea went to the kitchen to get a sharp knife.

  She squeezed Rhea’s hand when Rhea returned with it. “I’m sorry, Rhe. But I think you’re doing the right thing.”

  Rhea nodded, unable to trust her voice, and closed the door again. She handed the knife to Faye. “Do what you need to do.”

  “I must take the blood from the tattoo.”

  Rhea set her foot on the end of the bed and pushed up her legging to reveal the Black Moon Lilith. Faye sliced across the tattoo without giving her any warning, which was just as well, because Rhea hadn’t expected it to go that deep, and now it was too late to object. She hissed in air through her gritted teeth in a belated reaction.

  “Let the blood drip.” Faye turned to Leo and made the same slash across Mjölnir. Placing one hand against his wrist and the other against Rhea’s calf, she intoned, “Let the blood of influence drain into the Well of Wyrd. Let the bond between these two be broken.” The red pigment of the ink began to fade as if the ink itself were bleeding out.

  Rhea could feel the magic leaving her. Leo wasn’t hers anymore.

  As she took the lance from inside the coat, she remembered the coat wasn’t hers either and took it off, handing both of them to the Valkyrie. “Give him back his soul.”

  Faye untaped Leo’s bandage, revealing an ugly wound that was already beginning to fester, and held the point of the relic above it.

  Rhea couldn’t watch. She opened the bedroom door and went out, closing it behind her, and headed for the front door.

  “Rhea?” Theia jumped up from the couch. “What happened? Is he okay? Rhea?”

  Rhea’s hand was on the doorknob when she felt a tremor inside her—the hamingja leaving her. She turned and sank to the carpet.

  Theia grabbed a towel from the kitchen and came to blot at the blood at Rhea’s calf, but Rhea shook her head.

  “It has to stop flowing on its own.”

  Theia stared at the tattoo. “When did you do that?”

  “A couple of weeks ago. I didn’t know about yours. I guess great minds think alike.”

  Theia pushed up her sleeve and looked at her forearm. “I got this one because I had a dream. That’s why I didn’t come to you to have it done. I didn’t want you to ask where I’d gotten the idea.”

  “What dream?”

  “The moon was swallowed up by a snake that ate its own tail, and then the snake became a bull that you were riding, and then a wolf...and the wolf devoured you. I saw the tattoo on
your skin, and the words Black Moon Lilith came to me, so I looked it up when I woke up. I knew it was you in the dream, but it was kind of the generic, mental you and we still looked the same. I thought if I had the tattoo, whatever it was—it would happen to me instead.”

  Despite her aching heart, Rhea couldn’t help a little smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. She looked down to try to hide it.

  Theia nudged her with her foot. “What is that look? Why are you smiling?”

  “That was really sweet of you, Thei, but...you’re not going to be devoured by the wolf.” She met Theia’s eyes. “That happened the other night, right here up against this door. And it was a-ma-zing.”

  Theia looked puzzled before understanding dawned on her. “Oh geez.” She smacked Rhea’s arm. “You minx.”

  “I had my one brief, shining moment with him, anyway. I guess that’ll have to be enough.”

  Theia’s grin faded, and she sat beside Rhea and put her arm around her. As it had always been between them, no words were necessary.

  * * *

  He couldn’t remember where he’d gone to sleep. Leo stretched his arms, feeling incredibly rested, and opened his eyes.

  Kára sat on the edge of the bed beside him. “Hello, beautiful one.”

  Leo sat up swiftly. There was no fog of missing memory, no sense of fragmentation. His entire long life stretched out behind him in a cohesive narrative.

  “What did you do? Where’s Rhea?”

  “I have returned what belongs to you. That which was yours is yours again.”

  Leo touched his bare chest as though he could feel the pieces of himself physically inside him. “My will...my soul?”

  “All there. I have bargained a final time. That Which Became is past. That Which is Happening shall not happen again. That Which Must Become...will become. Your life is yours once more, your destiny unwritten, your future finite as any mortal man’s. You are free to choose with whom you will spend it.” Kára’s smile was sad. “You will still be the Chieftain, but you will lead the Hunt on your own terms. There will be no curse separating you from yourself.”