“The ones from the backyard?” Coral asked.
A few weeks ago, our mother had fallen off a ladder painting the outside of the house. She was unconscious for three days. I’d found her. Also found some snakeskins in a sort of circle at the base of the ladder. I’d trashed them before Coral could see them and think they were a sign. “Yeah, that exterminator sucks. The ‘berserker’ thing could have meant that. It would be nice if this dumb magic came with instructions.”
We had tons of books and countless Xeroxed copies of old writings—we’d collected everything we could find on our heritage, trying to figure out what was truth and what wasn’t. We had some kind of trance magic, a version of the Norse seidr magic inherited from our father’s side, but none of us had any control over it or even understood it.
Our mother’s abilities were different. She was an earth witch. Eyeing the iron skillet, I shuddered. If she was doing something with dark magic, this could be bad. Really bad.
I picked up the stack of papers and handed a section to each sister. “We have to figure out which boy she went after.” I stared from one to the other. If I’d been wrong all this time, the warrior was important—so, so much more important than we were. Gods, we’d spent our lives snickering over the idea of the young warrior killing one of us...but now, I didn’t know. Maybe it was real. Maybe one of us would change the prophecies and save one of the warriors carrying the gods’ souls. Maybe we could help stop the end of the world, crazy as that sounded.
All I knew was that I wasn’t willing for any of us to die. Mom running off to interfere probably altered all of it—even the prophecy we’d grown up fearing.
A tear slid down Coral’s cheek. I felt her pain in that strange way twins and triplets have of knowing when a sibling is hurting. She lifted her gaze to me, gray eyes shiny. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
Neither could I, but my tongue felt thick and the words stuck in my throat. I pulled my gaze from her and shuffled through the pages, finding story after story about boys with strange abilities or affinities with animals. Mom must have hardly slept recently, must have spent night after night searching the Net. Looking for the boy who would kill one of her daughters.
Going silently mad.
What did she plan to do to him?
I knew when I found the one I was supposed to because the norn inside me shifted again. She was getting more potent. This time she scraped and clawed.
Holding my breath, I worked hard to ignore her and stared at the grainy black-and-white photo of a boy, his longish, light hair in midswing, covering one eye. The photographer had obviously been more interested in the two wolves staring from the forest, half-hidden by the trees. The boy was pointing them back into the woods.
Light of hair. Wolves.
Odin, the Allfather God, had two wolves.
My hands started sweating and I rubbed them on my shorts, noticing that the temperature in the room had dropped enough to make my toes numb. I blew out air, watched it mist. Scrambling to my feet, I shot to the window.
The snow fell in sheets now. White smothered the still-blooming trees and flowers. Would be killing them fast at this rate.
I turned to find both sisters behind me, knew they’d found potential warriors, which could mean the norns wanted us to stop this.
Coral handed me her page and I stared at the picture of a tall guy with crazy-short hair so pale it looked gray in the black-and-white photo. Temper blazed in his eyes, but the hammer in the corner of the piece stilled my heart.
Kat’s boy looked a lot friendlier with an easy smile stretching his lips. This picture was in color. Sunlight sparkled on his light hair—the article was from one of those stupid tabloids and said something about a boy who called rain and made crops grow.
A shiver crawled up my spine when I looked back at the one I’d found. The story was several years old—about a boy and the wolf pups that had followed him home after the accident that killed his parents. I could see they were creatures of magic and that the boy held something powerful. It was there, in the eye not covered by his hair. Vanir McConnell, it said. Norse and Irish.
“Born of two magical clans,” I whispered, thinking of the swirled symbol shared by both.
“That share life’s spiral,” followed Kat.
Coral took her paper back, stared at it as her bottom lip quivered. “Light of head, dark of eyes.”
We didn’t say the rest aloud. We’d always thought it was so stupid.
The young warrior will herald the beginning of Ragnarok. His hand to the death of a norn.
The resulting silence was broken by the sudden violence of the snowstorm. It battered the windows and roof, causing me to clench my teeth.
“We don’t have much time,” I said. “It’ll be hard to travel soon.” I met Kat’s eyes. “We’ll have to use the college money.” They’d been saving, too. None of us wanted to believe our mother’s stories about one of us dying.
Kat crossed her arms, bit her lip. “Probably won’t need it, anyway.”
“We’ll need it,” I insisted. “I won’t accept that. We’ve worked too hard for it—a better life. We’ll just have to replace the money when we can. We’ll still go to college. If this really is Ragnarok and we’re in for three years of winter, it’ll just be cold. Life goes on.”
None of us said what we were probably all thinking. Yes, life would go on, but it was going to be different. Even if the prophecy was wrong and none of us died, the world would be very unlike what it had been. According to the writings on Ragnarok, there would only be one short summer break in those three years of winter. After that? I couldn’t form images in my mind. They all froze my blood. Tidal waves and earth-consuming fire. Even with the magic in my veins, I’d never, ever taken the stories of warring gods seriously. It was too big.
Too scary.
I looked down at the boy in the picture, at his one eye staring at me in an absurd parody of Odin and his one eye. “I’m pretty sure our mother went to find the guy who’s supposed to kill us. But which one?”
Kat voiced my biggest question. “You don’t think she’d actually hurt them, do you?”
Hot tears burned the corners of my eyes but I held them back. “You guys know we can’t let her. If they live to fight and we play our part, one of them could survive and there will be no end of the world.”
Coral sniffed. Tears streaked her cheeks. “We have to stop her. No matter what it could mean.”
We stared silently at one another, each of us knowing what the others were thinking.
I couldn’t worry about dying or losing one of my sisters. We’d never been apart. We fought, sure—all sisters do—but we shared a deeper bond, one forged through years of only having one another in the weirdest of living situations. Out of the three of us, only Coral had braved a date. It was hard to date when your mother thought every potential boyfriend could be a killer. Other than that, only our jobs separated us.
Pathetic? Maybe.
But our purpose had been drilled into us from birth. We carried the norns’ souls, making us the new sisters of fate. We carved the old words in seidr trances and revealed secrets, lies and hopes. And now, we had to find all three potential world-saving warriors because we didn’t know which one Mom had gone after first.
Or what she’d do once she found him.
I risked one hand off the wheel long enough to rub my temple. This anxiety was eating me alive. I’d been driving too long and my head had ached the past twenty-four hours. I missed my sisters. We’d never been apart this long before.
So when the flash of brown stepped in front of my car, I panicked and swerved. The car hit a patch of ice, glanced off a tree and sailed with a groaning, metallic cry right over a ravine and into fast-moving, icy water.
The jarring crash rattled every bone in my body.
Shock froze me for a second or two. Then the terror hit. I screamed as the car floated down the river, slamming into boulders and tree limbs like some tricked-out carnival water slide. My suitcase flew between the bucket seats and hit my shoulder, knocking me into the steering wheel.
Blinking, I wrapped my cold fingers around the wheel until they cramped. I couldn’t see crap! Ride it out or abandon ship? The decision was ripped from me when everything came to a jarring stop.
The car had lodged into...a fallen tree. I took a deep breath. But then the vehicle tilted and my head slammed into the driver’s side window. Metal groaned again. The weight of the car pushed into limbs, causing shrill, screeching noises as they scraped the door.
Freezing water soaked into my jeans and through my T-shirt, ribbed turtleneck and my favorite jean jacket.
Fear, pain and panic create a mess of stupid.
I chucked my ego into the river and started scrambling. Everything was slippery and cold. I shivered, slid and gasped as I tried to right myself in the tilted front seat without standing on the driver’s side window. With teeth chattering and water dripping into my eyes, I searched out a dry spot on my jacket sleeve to wipe them. Water dribbled into my mouth. I caught the metallic taste of blood.
I climbed over the side of the driver’s seat and into the back, trying to brace my feet on anything.
Wrapping my fingers around the metal casing of the broken rear side window, I held on, dangling. Dizziness swept over me and I closed my eyes, trying to wrestle my panic into submission.
I held my eyes tightly closed. Took several deep breaths. When it felt as if the world would stay still again, I opened one eye and pulled myself partly up through the window. The snow pounded, feeling more like ice pellets. They stung my cold cheeks. My breath caught on a sob as the car suddenly lurched, slid a foot or two, then settled into another tree.
That’s when I saw him. Crouch-crawling along that tree. A man. A really big man in a black parka with the hood pulled over his face.
Chapter Two
My heart slammed against my rib cage.
It could have been the cold, or the terror, screwing with my head...or my penchant for scary B movies, but all I could think about were stories about girls who disappear when they’re alone out on the road.
Honestly, facing my death by drowning scared me, but being raped and murdered and left to freeze in the growing piles of snow wasn’t the way I wanted to go, either. My adrenaline spiked. I kept one eye on him and yanked the upper half of my body through the window.
Hell with the tree! I’d jump in the river and swim for it.
“Hang on,” he yelled. “I’ll pull you out!”
“No, thanks,” I shouted back. “I’m good!” I opened my mouth to repeat but choked as a surge of icy river water swept over the car and into my mouth. I spat it out, along with a twig and—oh, gross—something slippery that moved against my tongue. Gagging, I spat again and held on as the flood tried to push me back into the car.
“You’re bleeding a lot, so be still.” The deep voice was right by my head.
Gasping, I turned, swallowing the acid in my throat, not sure where to go. What to do. I was losing it. Hadn’t even realized he’d crawled that close.
“Hey, kid, if I can see the blood in this dark, with all this water, you’ve got a problem. Just stop wiggling so I can get ahold of you.”
“Who’s got ahold of you?” My words slurred and that scared me to death, even as the “kid” thing relieved me a bit. With my black hair cropped close to my head and wet, I probably looked like a twelve-year-old boy who’d stolen his parents’ car. With nasty river water choking me, I probably sounded like one, too.
“I’ve got my boots braced, don’t worry.”
Strong hands wrapped around my upper arms and he tugged me through the window opening. He slid one arm behind my knees. The other went around my shoulders. I stared into the darkness under the hood. It was creepy, like gazing into a black hollow where a face should be.
I felt the effort he put into staying on that huge limb. Every step he took was carefully thought out, strategically placed. “I heard your car go in. Noise travels well out here at night. And with the crazy weather, that little creek isn’t a creek anymore. It’s running deeper and stronger than normal. Does anything feel broken?”
“No. I just hit my head.”
“You were lucky.”
By the time he’d carried me back to solid ground, I felt the cold full-force. Violent shivers racked my body. My head pounded like it had been split. I couldn’t tell if water, snow or blood dripped down my face and I hoped it was the former. It was hard to see, to even keep my eyes open with all the wet stuff gumming them up or slamming into my eyeballs when I left them open. He didn’t stop once we reached the trees. In fact, he picked up the pace.
“My car,” I croaked, my hands sliding on the slippery material of his coat as I tried to clutch it. His jostling made me want to hurl. “Gods! Can you slow down?”
“Sorry. It’s too cold, you’re too wet and your head looks ugly.”
“Thanks.” Sarcasm. I was still capable of sarcasm.
Laughter shook his chest. “I meant the wound. As for the car, we’ll send someone for it after the snow sto—” He broke off. “Someone will come get it later.”
I narrowed my eyes even more with that abrupt cutoff. Did he know it probably wouldn’t stop? I wanted to ask, but my words were taking on separate life, buzzing unsteadily about my brain like furious, drunken bees. I closed my eyes, swallowed and concentrated on staying awake and aware.
He stopped and went quiet.
I gasped and managed to finally grab the slick parka. “Hey—” I snapped my mouth shut as the very wrongness of the moment hit me.
His caution crept into and around me until I could nearly taste the thickness of it on the air. Then I realized it wasn’t caution. It was magic. And with that, my surreal sort of dreamy state crumbled away like burning paper. I fully felt the cold in my lungs. The ache from their effort to continue working. The throbbing in my head. And the panic at the slide of that magic into my pores. Reality returned, as did my adrenaline.
I began to struggle.
He let me slide to my feet, facing away from him, but when my legs wobbled, he pulled me back against him and put one hand gently over my mouth. “Shh,” he whispered into my ear. The thick canopy of leaves over our heads slowed the fall of snow. His breath brushed hot over my cheek, down my neck. I shivered. He tightened his arms. “Someone’s out here. I was looking for a friend of mine who didn’t show at my house. I thought I heard Steven yell right before I heard your crash, so I’m worried someone else is out here, too.”
With his hand over my mouth, I couldn’t ask questions, wasn’t sure I wanted to, anyway. I nodded to let him know I wasn’t panicked now. He removed his hand, but kept his mouth close. I shivered when his breath tickled my ear. “Listen,” he said, more breath than voice.
And I did.
The forest around us joined in the silence, the only noise the patter of snow hitting snow. The occasional moan of wind through the foliage. My gaze swung right and left, the view the same no matter where I looked. Trees, bushes and a vast white that reflected the moon and lit up the night around us.
Standing there, under the treetops, with the forest silent and funereal, was like being cocooned in a world void of wildlife. I knew animals instinctively burrowed in the cold, but to hear nothing moving? This hush combined with the thick stink of magic was anything but ordinary. The air carried the smell of dark things, of twisted fury and evil intent.
And...lavender.
Slumping against him, I closed my eyes and concentrated. A faint humming sounded, a kind of mechanical whine, and it was far enough away not to alarm me much. But the responding thumpi
ng of feet hitting ground did. And the fact I could hear this when the ground was padded in snow sent something screaming up my back.
Someone was running hard, and the more attention I paid, the more I could pick out other noises. The runner’s harsh panting, a soft whimper of terror. My eyes flew open. I didn’t understand. Was it really my mom out there? Trying to hurt someone?
I tried to push away from the guy holding me. He merely tightened his arms. “Stop it,” he whispered. “You’re going to pass out. I’ll let you go, but you gotta sit down. There’s a boulder here.” He used one gloved hand to brush snow off the top of the huge rock, then gently lowered me toward it. “I’m Vanir.”
My butt thunked the last foot to the rock. Hard.
What were the odds? Odds, hell! There was no way this was a coincidence. I went light-headed. Nearly lost control of my legs, so I grabbed on to the rock. My wet jeans were already chafing my icy skin, so adding more cold against my butt made me wince.
He squatted in front of me. I sucked in a startled breath when he peeled the wet hood from his head. Scant moonlight touched his features. He wasn’t really a man. I mean, yeah, he was male, but younger than a man yet too old to be a boy. His size and deep voice had fooled me. He had to be at least six feet tall, and even crouched like this he made me feel small.
Not that that was hard considering my five-foot-one height.
But the face that met mine was around my age. Eighteen, maybe. He’d matured since that grainy newspaper photo. Sharp featured in his cheekbones, nose and chin, his face revealed a mixed heritage—like me. His eyes looked dark, though the color was hard to pinpoint in this light. His hair, swept off his forehead, reflected the light of the moon, and what hadn’t been visible in that black-and-white newspaper was the dark gold color.
He stared just as hard at me and those eyes held a maturity his face didn’t.
Foretold Page 2