A prism drenched in blood red light. An alabaster nearly obscured by drifting smoke.
A rising wind pressed against my back, whipping my hair around my head and into my face. The sky was midnight, but without stars. Without the magnetic aurora that typically filled the night sky.
Because it’s not night.
A firestorm billowed out from the city, eating its way up the hillside. Devouring the glass and marble pavers with a sound like a million hungry teeth gnashing, it drove a wall of smoke before it.
Now that I’d stopped running down the hill, I instinctively scrambled backwards.
The fire kept coming. Heat sizzled against my skin. The stink of overheating fabric filled my nostrils.
My robes.
Light flared around me, silvery cool. Lines of brilliant blue slashed through the light, forming runes that flared and then faded.
Fingers closed around my arms and hauled me away from the advancing fire. I backpedaled, trying to keep my balance. I failed, but before I could hit the ground, arms surrounded me and held me up.
The flare of pale light faded to a dim glow.
Heimdal, I realized. He certainly picked a good day to show up at the bridge stone.
Wholly inappropriate laughter welled up inside me. Before it got out, it turned into a wordless wail.
The arms holding me tightened. Heimdal’s voice rumbled beside my ear, raspy from the smoke.
“My ward won’t hold forever. We have to go. Now.”
Beyond Heimdal’s protective magic, black smoke shoved against the silver light. The black glowed darkly, with crimson light.
“Papa.” I mouthed the word. I couldn’t tell if it came out, because the thunderous sound of fire filled my ears.
“There’s no one left.” Heimdal choked out the words. I twisted toward him.
His features contorted into an ugly mask. Soot streaked his face.
He would be able to hear them, I realized. Screaming, heartbeats… anything.
“Please,” I whispered.
“I’m sorry.” Heimdal’s arms remained locked around me. He leaned toward me, filling my face with his, locking his gaze to mine. “I hear no one. They were dead before we got here.”
I moaned and tried to turn my head aside.
Heimdal’s embrace tightened. He didn’t shake me, not exactly, but he held me firmly.
“You are the bridge. You will need to open the way for us.” Heimdal’s gaze never wavered from my face. “You’re the only one who can.”
His life was in danger as well, I abruptly realized. Strong as the Asgardians were, only the Alfar could bend light and create the bridges between worlds. If I refused to go, he would die here with me.
Fire shrieked and cackled, shoving against Heimdal’s ward.
There’s no one left.
Sobbing, I managed to focus long enough to open a way to Asgard. Light and colors swept in, claiming us just before Heimdal’s icy ward could crack and fail.
Behind us, my world burned.
Winter sunlight. Heimdal’s arms. Then darkness.
After that, a muzzy, blurred existence of half light and half consciousness and half heard conversations. Beneath me, a bed. Above me, a blanket. Around me, nothing that I couldn’t block by keeping my eyes shut.
“…should burn itself out, with their dome to contain it.” A man’s voice. Strong but aged.
“Yes. But what started it to begin with?” Heimdal, but with no soft edges. With a fire as hot as the one we fled. “That was no simple fire. It was an explosion.”
“Frigg has spent the last several hours attempting to answer that question. Her scrying shows that a failure in their dome mechanisms may have caused it. Even a small dose of their sun’s radiation leaking through…” The other, older man paused. “Without returning to investigate, there’s no way of knowing, I suppose. As it stands, there’s little to be done about it now.”
Now that we are all dead. Now that Alfheim is gone.
“Their dome mechanisms are outside the city, separately shielded. Frigg’s scrying shows they remain undamaged, and the dome itself hasn’t failed. In time, the land will heal itself.”
The land, perhaps. The people were gone—all gone.
My world was dead.
I kept my eyes squeezed shut, as much because I lacked the ability to open them as because I wished to avoid the words the two Asgardians were exchanging. Despite the bone deep weariness that weighed me against the bed, I moaned and turned my head, wishing for the energy to cover my ears.
A hand fell on my shoulder. The backs of Heimdal’s fingers brushed my cheek.
“We shouldn’t be discussing this here.” Heimdal’s voice, with the fire gone from it, replaced by a tender pity. He said no more, but his touch lingered on my shoulder, as if there were more he would say if he had no audience.
Whisper my name. I’ll hear you.
Maybe that wasn’t what he’d have said, at all. But at the time, I felt better for believing it.
2
* * *
Present day
Six years. Over six years, actually, since I’d first met Heimdal. I couldn’t have told you the exact span of time—I never learned how to convert Alfheim’s or Asgard’s dates to those of Midgard, where I now lived. But on days like this one, in the season peculiar to Midgard that lay between Alfheim’s summer and Asgard’s winter, I thought about him.
Far more than I liked, I thought about him.
I was the only employee working Cox Lake Resort’s rental office—which was not unusual. Like many of the resorts surrounding the plethora of lakes that filled central North Dakota, this one was a small mom-and-pop operation. Most of the fishermen and occasional families who stayed here registered over the weekend and settled in for a week-long stay. Today was a Wednesday, so at least the office wouldn’t be busy.
Delicate sunlight streamed through the east-facing windows of the log-constructed building which housed the rental office. I stood with my back to the light, letting it stream through the strands of blonde hair hanging in my face. With my mug of morning coffee clutched in both hands, I propped my butt against the registration counter behind me.
There were no customers at the moment. In a few minutes, I’d wander through the open doorway between the office and the tiny general store that took up the other half of the building, to see if Claire needed help restocking anything. Coffee and chewing gum, most likely. The folks who frequented the Cox Lake Resort tended to be self-reliant sorts, for the most part. No touristy-types on the books this week.
In a minute, I’d do that. For now, homesickness powerful enough to be real pain twanged behind my eyes. Longing as thick as nausea gripped my throat.
Breathe, Iris. Just breathe.
Which I was more homesick for, Heimdal or my home world, was up for grabs. I had nightmares sometimes still, filled with pillars of blood red flame and choking black smoke. And I shouldn’t, quite honestly, miss Heimdal at all. I should be furious, glad he was gone, cursing his very existence.
But some days, holding onto that anger was just too much effort. Some days, I just wanted everything to go back to the way it had been.
I could at least be grateful for the comfy jeans and simple blue t-shirt I wore. Not every place I’d worked over the last six years had such a relaxed dress code. Moments like this, relaxed was a good thing.
Mid-September, the air outside was cool but not cold. I’d already cracked open a window, so fresh air wafted into the office. I focused on following my every inhalation, clear air flowing into my lungs and then back out again. Breathe. Feel the rise and fall of my stomach.
Curse the gods who did this to me.
What I really wanted was to be home. Home would make all the pain go away. Even just the ability to go home would cure everything.
The pain in my head twanged, and I backed away from that line of thinking. I’d wasted enough years on self-pity and futile wishing. Going home? That wasn’t happeni
ng.
The next best thing for distracting myself from homesickness was painting, but I couldn’t do that here and now. Third best thing, then.
An over-sized frame window filled the office’s west wall—scenic views were a thing you couldn’t get away from out here. Sunlight glittered on the furthest reaches of the lake, visible between the trees that flanked the lake—a motley crowd of elms and aspen, with a sprinkling of poplars and birches closer to the water’s edge. I imagined a brush in my hands—I’d load it with burnt sienna.
I could smell the trees, an earthy sharp scent that filled my senses and distracted from other thoughts.
A glaze to create the deep shadows. A heavier-bodied mix with yellow ochre, then, and denser brush strokes. I leaned forward, as if into the scene I was painting in my head. Next would come crimson. Vermillion. A bittersweet autumn breeze tickled my nose, the scent of summer life bowing before winter’s impending death.
A warmth blossomed behind my eyes and seeped through my forehead and along my scalp. As often happened, the comfort I took in painting felt nearly like a tangible thing.
A bell chimed. For a moment, forgetting myself, I ignored it.
“Hey?”
The bell repeated itself. A split second later, I recognized it.
I shoved away from the rental counter and spun around.
A fisherman stood on the other side of the counter, beside the “ring for service” sign. He held one big hand poised over the call bell sitting beneath the sign. He was an older guy, salt and pepper peeking from beneath a crumpled and stained cap.
“Either of you gals working today?” His equally crumpled and stained flannel shirt shifted as he lowered the bell-ringing hand. His mouth crooked into a lazy grin.
“Mr. Davis. I’m so sorry.” I took a step back from the counter and pasted a polite smile onto my face.
Rick Davis waved away the apology. With his other hand, he hefted a familiar red can. It wafted the warm-rich scent of coffee.
“It happens. Not a worry. You ring this up for me, sweetheart? Ain’t nobody next door.”
Nobody next door?
I frowned. Irresponsibility wasn’t a new thing for Claire, the girl who was supposed to watch the general store. Two days ago, Claire flat out hadn’t shown up for work at all. I had juggled both the rental office and the store, not so much to cover for Claire but because our boss, Maureen, had enough on her hands without worrying about her employees.
Before that day, Claire hadn’t ever done anything quite that extreme. She’d been getting progressively worse. But I was positive she’d come in this morning. I’d seen her battered green van.
Mr. Davis lifted the coffee can a little higher and raised his eyebrows.
I pasted on my practiced smile-for-customers again. “Of course I can. Step back into the store. I’ll be right over.”
My hiking boots beat a lighter patter between the man’s heavier footsteps as I followed him across the plank floor and through the open doorway.
The store’s lights were on. I glanced into the surveillance mirror in the back corner of the ceiling, but no one stood between the half dozen aisles of shelving that comprised the Cox Lake Resort General Store.
“Claire?” I called out as I rounded the short counter. I reached for Mr. Davis’s coffee with one hand and toward the register with my other.
No answer.
I didn’t call out again. I rang up Mr. Davis’s coffee, made change for him, and saw him off with the “have a nice day now” version of my practiced polite smile.
Polite was fine. Genuinely friendly, I rarely had the heart for. Genuine emotions led to genuine relationships, and those only ever led to pain.
Through the store’s front window, I could see the gravel parking lot. Claire’s van sat at the far end, beside my Jeep. Claire was definitely here, then. Somewhere.
The register drawer jingled as I shut it. I headed for the storeroom beyond the store’s main aisles, cutting between shelves of packaged snacks and the beer cooler.
The storeroom door was closed, but a sound came from the other side.
I hesitated. I didn’t know Claire well, but I knew enough about her lifestyle to extrapolate a lot of potential scenarios.
If I catch her back there smoking or snorting something, I’ll have to report her to Maureen.
If the Alfar had laid any claim to fame—beyond that of our ability to open bridges between worlds—it was for a compassion that went above and beyond that of most other races. My people had long been the negotiators, the peace-makers, the creators of truces between worlds. As I had been frequently reminded, my penchant for landing waist deep in the troubles of other people was likely a genetic thing.
On Asgard, that had led to nothing good. And Claire’s insistence on walking at the fringe of legality was not something I wanted to get in the middle of.
But I was here now. I had to do something. If nothing, else, I needed to be sure Claire was on duty so I could scamper back to the relatively safe haven of the rental office.
With a resigned sigh, I knocked, one light rap on the scarred surface of the door. “Claire?”
“Iris? I’m OK.” Claire’s voice wavered. She didn’t sound high.
She sounded like she was crying.
I wasn’t sure which would be worse. I glanced longingly toward the doorway leading back to my little realm of rental counter and paperwork. And then toward the unmanned store register.
Here now. Do something.
Damn it anyhow.
I pushed open the storeroom door.
3
* * *
The darkness inside hit me like a physical entity. I stopped in the doorway, my feet refusing at first to cross the threshold. Which was stupid, because even without any electric lights turned on, light through the door I’d just opened flooded the linoleum floor and peeked between boxes stacked on the inventory shelves.
My reaction was reflexive more than anything. The shadows seemed too thick. A strange smell lurked.
You are imagining it. If he had a clue where you were, he wouldn’t be shy about letting you know.
Or maybe he would. But it was a moot question, because the shadow weirdness was a lingering light sensitivity from staring out the window earlier. That was all. And the scent?
One of the shadows inside the storeroom sniffled and half-turned toward me. Claire’s dark hair hung in strategically-razored layers, hiding her face. When she moved, a patchouli fragrance and the mellow scent of weed smoke trapped in Claire’s blood-red blouse eddied through the close air inside the room.
Old smoke. And Claire held nothing in her hands.
“Sorry.” Claire took a deep, trembling breath. “I’ll have my shit together in a second and be right out. Promise.”
Again, I hesitated. Despite Claire’s failings—and the fact that she was barely twenty—there was something about the girl I could relate to. Maybe it was the lost look Claire got in her eyes, sometimes. Like now. I’d spent a few years sobbing in corners and trying to get my shit together, too. That had been a while back, but still—it wasn’t something I’d forgotten.
Gods, Iris. You have got to start caring less.
Despite my hands-off policy—one that apparently I still needed to work on—I took another step into the storeroom instead of out of it.
“Is it something you want to talk about?” I aimed for a tone of voice that sounded kind, but not too kind. Encouraging-you-to-cope kind as opposed to cry-all-over-my-shoulder kind.
Claire lifted her head. Mascara smeared raccoon-worthy circles around dark, too-big eyes. With her high, sharp cheekbones, she resembled a wraith more than a human being.
“I don’t know. I mean…” Claire shrugged with one shoulder. “I don’t know.”
I pasted on one of my polite smiles and tipped my head a little to one side. And waited.
Claire shrugged again. “There’s this guy. He’s awesome, you know. He gets me.”
Which
meant, I assumed, that he was also into or at least OK with Claire’s interest in things like Ouija boards and séances. And, of course, experimenting with illegal substances. During some of Claire’s one-sided attempts at conversation, she’d shared a few stories. I’d been frequently relieved that Claire showed no signs of any real magical ability.
The girl gets into enough trouble without it.
Claire was, at the moment, peering at me from behind the veil of hair half covering her face. Waiting, I realized, for me to indicate I wanted to know more. I put a little more gentleness into my smile and lifted my eyebrows the tiniest bit.
“But…” I prompted.
“But—oh, I don’t know. Shit.” Claire stood up a little straighter and ran a thumb under her eyes, simultaneously digging in the pocket of her tattered jeans for a tissue. “You know, it’s not a big deal. Really. I’m just being stupid.”
Claire didn’t meet my eyes, though, and the hand that carried the tissue to blot under her eyes trembled.
I hesitated again. Obviously something about this “awesome” guy was not good news. Equally obviously, Claire had it bad for the guy.
Been there, done that.
And that had ended about as badly as it could. Which should serve as a reminder about why I didn’t get involved with people anymore.
I hesitated for another breath.
Not involved. Not involved is good.
Feeling vaguely guilty anyhow, I shuffled a step backward, out of the storeroom’s shadows and into the light. “Well. If you’re all right, then…”
Claire tilted her face toward me. This time, those big dark eyes actually met mine. The running mascara had gone from raccoon circles to mottled smudges.
Behind me, the chimes on the rental office door sang out a warning.
I took another step backward, wondering if I should be ashamed of how relieved I felt for an excuse to get away from Claire and her troubled eyes.
“Iris?” The voice that called out from the next room was familiar, and not a customer after all. “Claire?”
Maureen Cox’s daily uniform was much the same as Claire’s and mine—jeans and boots, with a shirt of choice. In Maureen’s case, today’s shirt was green flannel that brought out the spark in her hazel eyes and set off the red still lingering in her graying hair. She moved stiffly, as if much older than she really was.
Bridge Burned: A Norse Myths & Legends Fantasy Romance (Bridge of the Gods Book 1) Page 2