by Jax Garren
He groaned. His fingers cupped her chin, tipping her face up so he could kiss her.
His kiss was solid and needy, and she kissed him back with all the night’s heartache in her touch. He released her mouth. She rubbed her face against his torso, still trying to convince herself he was real. Her heart felt so full she couldn’t speak meaningful words. Sniffing back tears against the unfamiliar smooth skin and soft hair of his chest, she managed, “You’re naked. And you’re pretty.”
He chuckled; the sound reverberated through his body, calming her. “I’ll thank them for that soon.”
She scrutinized his face, trying to understand. “Who? For what? How did this happen?”
He wiped a thumb across her cheek, softening the crusted blood with her tears. His smile was sad. “I’m still dead, sweetheart. I’m not here for good. But I died too soon. I have one more job to do.”
The words stabbed at her already beaten heart, and she clutched at him madly. “No! You can’t go back. I need you. Here. You can’t—”
“Shh, honey.” He took her hands gently in one of his and brushed the other through her hair in a soothing motion. “I’m sorry, but we have to move. The priests could be back any moment, and who knows what we’ll find in the Underlight when we get there. I know where the antidote is. We’re going to get it and bring it home. I have until sunset.”
She took a deep breath to quell her rioting emotions and focus. They had to save the Underlight. She could figure out a way to keep him when that was done. One problem at a time.
He chanted something in a foreign language. The cuff fell off her, clanking against the steps. Jolie kicked it, and the cuff clattered away, chipping marble as it spun.
He scowled at the cuts on her wrist. “Did they hurt you while I was gone?”
She stretched her sore fingers and shook her head. “You didn’t kick our buddy Ric’s ass half hard enough last week. Though we already knew that.”
His eyes darkened menacingly, making the handsome face surprisingly intimidating. “If we see him again...” He cracked his knuckles and turned toward the temple.
She grabbed his hand. “What happened, Hauk? Please. I need to know. You can tell me as we move.”
He stared at her hand in his then followed the line of her arm and shoulder to her face. His expression was pained for just a moment before he shook his head. “I’m not supposed to tell, but if they wanted obedience they sent back the wrong guy.”
* * *
The hall stretched like a stadium, cavernous and filled with laughter. Tables overflowed with roasted meat and cups of drink. Couples head-banged to a metal band blaring in one corner. Leather, metal, kilts and Kevlar attired the soldiers cramming the tables.
Two giant ravens flew about the ceiling, their screeching caws piercing the sounds of the party. One dove down between the tables to peck at a wolf eating scraps from the floor. The wolf turned and snapped, but the bird was already up, flying toward a dais, where a man and woman lounged in state.
She was glorious to behold, blond hair braided into hundreds of tiny locks, brown leather dress and bustier revealing a killer figure. A stained sword rested at her side.
He was grizzled and disheveled, with a steely beard and one eye covered in a patch. His combat uniform was clean but worn. His one blue eye surveyed the crowd with the world-weariness of one who had seen too much. And yet his skin was young and smooth as a child’s. A spear stood against his chair and a violin rested on a table beside him, as if he’d just set it down.
A chant overtook the noise of the crowd as cups pounded the table in rhythm.
Chanting for Hauk.
He was carried aloft on numerous shoulders, having proven himself by downing a warrior his first time on Valhalla’s ever-changing field of war. The men he’d seen slaughtered in the fight now surrounded him in a raging party, drinking, feasting and flirting with Valkyries.
Best of all, he was whole again. No scars, no pieces missing. Completely himself.
Freyja smiled indulgently as he was placed before the thrones. “If it isn’t our phoenix,” she purred.
Valkyries, muscular and shapely women whose strong-willed smiles reminded him of Jolie, strode through the crowd and up the steps, eyeing him like a new piece of candy.
It had been a long time since he’d felt the covetous stare of a stranger.
Freyja observed him thoughtfully. “I fear you’ll have a hard time laying claim to this one, ladies. His heart flies elsewhere.” She nodded at him. “Fear not, warrior. She has caught my eye. I will bring her here when her time is passed.”
Jolie would join him in time. The afterlife just kept getting better.
Odin huffed an angry breath. “Bah. She’ll be a shell by morning. A used-up husk before you can claim her. Wesley Haukon, you died too soon.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Again.”
“Jolie?” Hauk asked, the first shadow falling over his joy at finding himself home in the hall of warriors. “What’s happening to her?”
Freyja ignored him and poked Odin with the hilt of her sword. “Come now, my friend. You like your men foolhardy. And you were ejected by Ananke’s magic.”
“Bah.”
Hauk interrupted the gods’ banter. “What about Jolie? Is something going to happen to her?” Last he remembered, she was on the steps of the temple, a few yards from his bike. If she’d run for it, she could have gotten away. If she’d stayed to watch him burn...
“Chained to the steps of the temple,” Freyja answered.
Of course she was. His heart clutched with fear for what they’d do to her. Hauk straightened. “I have to get back.”
Odin frowned. “You’re dead. Welcome to Valhalla. And you’re not supposed to care about Earthly things anymore.” He turned to Freyja. “Why does he still care?”
Freyja shrugged. “Love will do that sometimes.”
“You said I died again,” Hauk pursued. “That means you can send me back.”
“I was possessing you the other time,” Odin answered. “Idunna and I got enough cider into you to bring you back before brain damage set in.” Idunna was the goddess who tended the apple orchard of Asgard, where Valhalla was located. “It was the first time I’d fought with you, and you were too fun to let go so quickly.”
“When you killed my squad?” There was nothing fun about that, even if they had been possessed by Ananke. Fucking crazy god who shared his body.
Odin didn’t acknowledge that he’d spoken. “But this time, the ashes of your charred corpse are at the bottom of a brazier dedicated to some other god. That’s a step up from curing a few moments’ asphyxiation. Well beyond our abilities.”
Freyja clucked her tongue as if affronted. “Come now, Grey-beard, between Idunna’s healing and my magic, I’m sure we could weave something, even if you couldn’t. At least for the few hours he needs to set this right.”
“Even your magic has its limits, Freyja.”
Determination flashed in her eyes. Hauk had no doubt he would get his potion.
Odin lazily pounded his spear, but there was something cunning in his eyes. “Wesley Haukon, if they manage it and you almost die again between now and sunset, call on me so we can fix it before your body’s been burned to cinders.”
“I was shot in the throat. I couldn’t call. You could’ve just shown up like you did all those other times.”
The god merely smiled.
The doors boomed open, and a chill wind blew through the hall. A tall woman with red-streaked locks and vine tattoos covering her bare arms glanced around, gave a slight shudder and marched forward. “You seek me?”
Freyja stood. “Idunna. Welcome. Meet Wesley Haukon. He died too soon.”
“Again,” Odin added.
“Grey-beard doesn’t think we can remedy it this time.”
Idunna looked Hauk up and down. “Oh he doesn’t, does he?”
Odin leaned on his hand, single eye glittering happily. He caught Hauk’s gaze and winked.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Underlight was eerily silent as Hauk and Jolie approached the main doors. He’d given Jolie the slender vial of liquid antidote to carry so he had both of his hands free. The too-small pants he’d scrounged off a downed guard barely gave him room to fight, much less pocket a precious few ounces of liquid.
Jolie had filled him in on everything from Travis’s departure to Ananke’s plan to infect the whole Underlight. There’d been no sign at Ananke’s headquarters that their location had been leaked, so this unnatural quiet wasn’t what he’d expected to find.
He motioned for Jolie to scoot back. “I’ll open it. Be ready to run.”
“From what? Empty space? It feels...” She didn’t finish the thought, but he knew what she meant. It didn’t feel like anyone was alive behind the doors.
He took a sharp breath and reached for the knob. He’d come back from the damn dead to save this place. Failure was not acceptable. “Ready?”
Jolie caught his eyes then looked him over again with that same awed stare that broke his heart. She wanted him back, and she wanted him like this. The whole package, legs and skin and everything. He didn’t blame her. Only a few hours into being whole, he couldn’t imagine going back, no matter what the incentive.
Finally she nodded. He opened the door.
The citizens of the Underlight lay in tangles on the floor, as if they’d fallen where they stood, struck down by an instantaneous killer. Brayden stretched into the doorway, one hand reaching toward them, eyes closed and mouth gaping.
“Oh my God,” Jolie murmured, voice hushed in shock.
Hauk kneeled by his best friend. “He’s breathing.” Relief poured through him.
“They’re asleep?” Jolie rushed past him and rested her hand on the back of another. The shallow but steady rise and fall showed that that woman, too, was asleep. “What the hell?”
She stood and caught his eye. Almost as one, they said, “Tally and LaRoche.”
Quickly they made their way to the lab. Now that the initial shock had worn off, he heard the sounds of sleeping breaths and noticed the minute movements of life in the friends and associates they passed. The Underlight was full of people, all of them unconscious.
Jolie gave an uneasy laugh. “I’m pretty sure this is the wrong fairy tale.”
“What?” Hauk asked.
She shook her head.
The lab door was not only shut but sealed tight. Mercy lay in front of it, empty gun in her hand. Several Citizens surrounded her, each with a dart stuck somewhere in them. Hauk knew that pose too well. She’d fallen making her last stand.
Glad that she’d merely fallen asleep, Hauk reached over her to bang on the door. No answer. He banged again, louder.
Mercy groaned. Jolie dropped down next to her and shook the girl’s shoulders, but she didn’t wake.
Finally Tally’s face appeared in the window. She opened her mouth in a scream and backed away.
“Tally!” Hauk yelled. “Open the damn door!”
LaRoche appeared with a gun aimed at the glass.
Hauk dropped to a crouch.
“What’s wrong?” Jolie asked.
“I don’t think they recognize me.”
Jolie popped up. “Of course they don’t.”
He reached for her. “They’ve got a gun. Get your ass...”
But instead of a gun rapport, the door opened a crack.
“It’s me and Hauk,” Jolie said. “We have the vial. What the hell happened?”
The door opened wider. “Hauk?” Tally asked. “Where is he?”
Jolie pointed down. Hauk waved up. Tally contemplated him for a moment, pixie-cut hair sticking up in random points and dark circles showing how little she’d slept. Her eyes widened in recognition, and she face-planted on his chest. “Ohmigod!”
“Your boyfriend got the gun on him still?” he teased.
She swatted him. “What happened?”
He motioned around at the sleeping bodies. “We have more pressing concerns than my face.” But the question made him uncomfortable. He’d be gone at sunset. The fewer people who saw him, the better. He’d have to get Tally and LaRoche to keep quiet about it and convince Jolie to tell everyone the truth—that he’d died at the temple—and leave it at that.
LaRoche poked his head out, exhaustion creasing his young skin. “What the...”
Jolie stuck the vial out at him. “Antidote.”
A new vigor filled his movements as he swiped it from her and spun back into the lab.
Tally stood up, staring at Hauk as she reached down to help him to his feet. “Mercy told us that the virus spreads by blood. They were cutting themselves and infecting others, and there was no way of knowing who’d been hit. So we dropped sedative into the air filtration system. It was the only way we could think of to stop anyone from leaving.” Tentatively, she reached up. “Can I...”
Hauk leaned down so she could run her fingers over his cheek.
The touch was feather-light. Fascination replaced the weariness on her face. “Wow.”
He scuffed the ground with a boot, feeling weirdly vulnerable without the scars to hide behind. “It’s not permanent.” Neither was his heartbeat, but he wasn’t ready to announce that.
She frowned, not understanding, but didn’t push. “Well, I’m glad I got to see. You’re like a teddy bear, all bashful smile and baby-cheeks.”
He lifted an eyebrow, and there was no tug of metal against his skin. “Baby-cheeks?”
She grinned. “Yup. I didn’t think you’d be so sweet-looking.” Reluctantly she nodded back at the lab. “I’d better go help.”
“Hey, Tally.”
She turned back.
“Don’t tell anyone you saw me. Just keep my presence between the four of us, okay?”
Again she nodded, all the questions she wanted to ask in her eyes.
He ducked his head without answering.
“Y’all got it from here?” Jolie asked.
“Yeah. He’ll need a couple hours to study and replicate the formula, but they’ll sleep plenty long enough. You’re on your own for a while.” She put a hand on Hauk’s arm. “I thought you two weren’t coming back. We didn’t know what we were going to do. I...” She faded out. “Well, I’m glad you came back, no matter how you managed it.” With a grateful smile she stepped back into the lab and shut the door.
Hauk escorted Jolie back to his room. Once inside, she wearily dropped to his bed and lay back, her red hair spilling against the coffee-colored sheets like blood staining the ground.
There was no blood in Valhalla. No death and no pain.
There was no Jolie, either—at least, not yet. But Freyja had said they’d be together again one day. He could wait for her. He was at peace with dying, always had been. Now that he knew what awaited him, he had nothing to fear and much to gain.
“What’s on your altar?” Jolie asked, the sadness in her voice jarring his thoughts.
He was worried about her. Her sorrow was the one thing he couldn’t make peace with, and he hated the thought of her mourning him.
“We didn’t leave it this way,” she continued as she stood and went to his altar.
On it was the pewter cup he’d made for rituals, the one he’d left inside its usual cabinet and not out here. Its bowl was filled with an amber liquid, reflecting a fire that wasn’t there.
Fear spiked through him.
Jolie reached below the chalice to a note threaded through the rose ring. She touched the ring reverently, as if she knew what it meant, and pulled out the paper. Her head tipped, her hair spilling over one shoulder as she frowned down at the note. “‘Your choice.’ That’s all it says. What does that mean? Who did this? What’s in the cup?” She sniffed it.
“Don’t.”
She turned to him, confused. “Do you know what this is?”
He hesitated. Before he’d come back, Idunna had pulled him aside, her apple green eyes gazing with fixed intensity. “After year
s of delivering your cider, I’ve decided I like you, Wesley Haukon. For you, I’ll work on something stronger. Likely as not I’ll fail—Death is a jealous mistress—and regardless, you’d return as you were before, with the scars and the missing leg. That kind of healing is not for my hands. But should I figure something out, your ancestors will bring it and then you can make your choice.”
He flinched at the memory. He’d pushed it aside, hoping it wasn’t a decision he’d have to make. He was at peace. He didn’t need this on his head.
Jolie’s spine straightened. Like always, she saw right through him and read his silence for what it was.
His heart pounded. He couldn’t go back to the scars, to living hidden from everyone and everything, not when he had an option. They’d be together again in time, and this way he didn’t force her to spend the rest of her life underground. She may want him, but nobody wanted that much of their life dictated to them, especially not a free soul like Jolie. She had to let him go. “Let’s head topside. I only have a few hours. I want to walk in the sunshine for a bit. See people and not have them stare. I want to eat at a restaurant. Go sit in a crowded place. And then I want to come home and make love to you like this. Please. Let it be. Let me have one day of peace.”
Her expression hardened. “Tell me what happens if you drink this.”
* * *
Jolie waited, her anger building. Hauk had been so calm the whole time he’d been back, as if death was a relief. She couldn’t abide it. Irrational though it may be, his flippancy felt like the ultimate rejection just after she’d decided she was all in.
But there was something about that cup and more about the way he reacted to it. He was afraid. There was only one thing Hauk was afraid of, and it had never been dying.
Without an answer he turned away and dug in a drawer for clothes. Blue eyes burning with none of the awkward hesitation she was used to, he peeled off the ill-fitting shirt he’d lifted from a Hand of Atropos. The skin of his muscled chest was perfectly smooth, from his broad pectorals down to the trail of brown curls between his narrow hip bones. His face was handsome, but damn. His muscular shape was the one vanity his scars had allowed him, and he’d worked to make sure he kept it. Without the mottling to distract the eye, his body was every bit as spectacular as she’d imagined it could be.