“Blink a few times and you will master it,” he told her. His voice was more resonant than ever before, deep and strong and achingly masculine. She did as he told her, and after a moment, the colors were still there but she was no longer dazzled.
“I…” She choked on the word, her own voice failing her. She tried again. “I feel so strange.”
“In an hour or two, you will be steady.” He sat down beside her. “Drink. It will help.”
She drained the mug in her hands. She was aware of him watching her, still smiling, relief and delight evident in his expression. She looked back at him when she had swallowed the last of the dreyri.
“It worked,” she said.
He nodded happily. “Yes.” He took her hand. “And you can still cast your runes.”
“Yes.” She put the mug aside. “Erik… I… I shouldn’t have pushed you. I shouldn’t have forced your hand, but I don’t regret it.”
He kissed her, his hand gentle on her cheek. “Neither do I.”
***
When morning came, they went to the Hotel Scandic Talk in Älvsjö, which was right next door to the Stockholmsmässen, where the G8 summit was to be held. Both buildings were in downtown Stockholm. The crowds grew thicker the closer they came, a mixture of protesters, media staff and the dozens of security and police officers attempting to keep the place from becoming a powder keg. Limousines flying the flags of the G8 member countries lined the street, taking turns disgorging their distinguished passengers according to the rigid diplomatic rules of engagement.
Erik took Nika by the hand. He had two large duffel bags, resplendent with Swedish flag patches and airline tags, hanging by straps over his broad shoulder. They were dressed casually, like young tourists visiting the sites in the capital, with sunglasses and baseball caps, blue jeans and hiking boots. They dodged around the milling people in the lobby, past photographers and a bored-looking television news correspondent, incongruously dressed in a suit only from the waist up.
They rode an elevator to the top floor, sharing the lift with several other people who all exited before them. One of their fellow lift passengers, a middle-aged man, was speaking in German on his cell phone. He glanced at them once to see if they were listening, and Erik gave him a pleasantly bland smile. The man went back to his conversation with a frown.
When the elevator stopped on their floor, Erik went to the doors on one side of the hallway, listening closely at each one. Nika watched him sniffing at each door, scenting for human occupation, but the smell of beating hearts was so strong to her that it was all she could smell. Finally he stopped at one door and nodded.
“This one’s empty.”
She stood beside him, keeping watch down the hallway, as he produced a tiny cylindrical object from one pocket. He inserted it into the bottom of the hotel room lock, and the red light above the card reader flipped to green. Erik grinned at her.
“SOG has the best toys.”
He opened the door and held it for her, and they went into the room, closing it behind themselves. She flipped the deadbolt, and he went to the window. Through the curtains, they could see the Stockholmsmässen and its swarm of humanity.
While he took stock of the situation, Nika pulled the Book of Odin from one of the bags he carried. The book’s boards began to shimmer with a cascade of golden runes, glowing and streaking from top to bottom and back again.
“That book gets excited when you touch it,” Erik said. “I know how it feels.”
Nika laughed and opened it, turning to the appropriate page. She looked out the window. “I think I can get the front door if I cast the faery ward from here, but not the rest of the building.”
“Where would you have to be to cast it and get everything?”
She shook her head and closed the book. “Probably on the roof.”
“I can arrange that.”
“In broad daylight?”
“Trust me on this,” he assured her. “Nobody ever looks up.”
He got into one of his bags. Gunnar had accumulated a lot of SOG equipment over the years, even more than Erik had realized, and he gave silent thanks to his brother’s kleptomaniacal spirit. He found what he was looking for and activated a hand-held laser.
“What’s that for?”
“Window won’t open any other way.”
He used the laser to inscribe a line all around the central pane in the three-paned panoramic window, careful to pull the glass back into the room instead of letting it drop out into the street. Cold wind rushed into the room when the pane was removed, and he put away the laser.
“Nice,” she commented. “Very handy.”
He shuffled through the bag and came up with his axe and shoulder harness, which he strapped on over his jacket, and a pair of pistols. He kept one and offered the other to Nika, who waved it off.
“I don’t like guns. They’re too dangerous.”
He looked at her in disbelief, and then roared with laughter. She raised an eyebrow at him, and when he could finally speak, he said, “My darling, you are the most powerful woman in the world today, and you say guns are too dangerous!”
“I’m not the most powerful,” she protested. “Stop teasing.”
He kissed her, and then pointed a spool gun out the window, firing it at the roof of the Stockholmsmässen. A cable extended, connecting them with the other building.
“Oh, hell, no,” Nika objected.
“Just hold on to me, then, and I’ll take us across.”
“They’re going to see!”
“Not if you use the right runes.”
She shook her head into his grin. “Are you kidding?”
“I’m serious as a train wreck.”
Nika opened the book and looked for a spell for invisibility, completely expecting to come up dry. Instead, she found three varieties of magical invisibility, and she shook her head.
“All right,” she said. “Here goes nothing.”
“No, no,” Erik hastily corrected. “Not that attitude. Do it, or don’t. We can’t have any doubt in this today.”
She considered his frank blue eyes, and then took a breath. She put the book back into its bag, and looped the bag around her body. He tied off and tested the cord, and when it was clear that it would hold, she wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready.”
She summoned a cloud of runes around them, surrounding them with spinning iterations of Thurisaz, Raidho and Eihwaz, calling on protection and success. Erik put gloves on his hands, then grasped the cord and began to slide. They flew over the heads of the people below, riding their zipline to the Stockholmsmässen roof.
She clung to his back, pressing her cheek against the cold metal of the double axe blade. She held her eyes squeezed shut, trying not to panic. She had never enjoyed heights.
Erik landed lightly and released his hold on the cable. He put her on her feet and swung his bag down onto the roof. He pulled out a few extra clips and a can of hairspray, which he tucked into a pocket of his tactical pants.
Nika knelt with the Book of Odin in front of her. She raised her hands to her sides, palms up and flat, channeling the power of the runes to flow out into the world. Erik kept his distance and a respectful silence as the spell went into motion.
Like a golden waterfall, the runes and their power poured out of Nika’s body, rising in her heart and exiting through her palms. A pool of gold began around her knees, slowly at first, but with gathering speed it expanded to cover the entire wide expanse of the Stockholmsmässen. The power raced outward until it reached the edges of the roof in all directions, and then it tumbled over, coating the sides of the building until a new puddle, much larger than before, was formed around the base of all the walls. It sank through the ground, continuing to follow the foundations, then turned under the massive building, finally meeting in the middle.
Nika felt the runes burning, felt them spinning and careening out of her soul. She pu
shed it out, this silent power, until the building was completely warded against any faery creatures who might try to pass. Even now, the wards pinged quietly, notifying her that there were faery beasts nearby.
She realized that she had stopped breathing, and further, that breathing wasn’t all that necessary for her anymore. It was a strange thing to have the in-out rhythm of air she had known since her birth suddenly go still. She was nearly distracted by the unwelcome novelty of it, but she forced herself to concentrate. Ingrid would have been pleased.
When it was done and the building was fully protected within her wards, she stopped pushing out the runes and instead set them into place. The energy sank into the stone and metal of the Stockholmsmässen, merging with it seamlessly, invisible to any without Valtaeigr sight. She looked up at Erik.
“You don’t see it anymore, do you?”
He smiled softly. “My love, I never saw it at all. I could feel it, though, and I knew that you could do it. I’ve seen Valtaeigr ward buildings in the past, but never one as big as this.”
She rose shakily and brushed off her knees. “I expected it to be harder.”
“What did I tell you?” he teased. “Powerful.”
She smiled at him, and he went to the edge of the roof on the side near the dignitaries’ entrance. She joined him, and they both lay on their stomachs, keeping as low of a profile as they could.
“Are there any inside?” he asked.
“No. Not yet.”
“Good. Then we beat him here.” He nodded. “The SOG and the Secret Service and all of the other security players have closed down all of the doors but that front one. It makes it easier to have a checkpoint if you only have one way in or out.” He inched back. “If Loki comes, it will be right through this door beneath us.”
She watched him as he retrieved a sniper rifle, the last of the toys in his bag of tricks. He set it up quickly, professionally. She could imagine him doing this a hundred times on a hundred different missions in the past.
“Will the SOG stop hunting you if the summit ends without a problem?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “And there is going to be a problem – a big one.”
“Why? Can’t we just prevent him from going in?”
“Loki is one of the most powerful gods we have in our pantheon. He’s also riding a shape shifter, and those are easier to kill than to dissuade. We’re going to have to burn him to end him. So…” He shrugged. “This won’t happen quietly.”
“What will you do if they don’t stop hunting you?”
Erik flashed her a smile. “Let’s get through this mission before we worry about the next one.”
She smiled back, sheepish. “Yes, Captain.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
They waited on the roof for nearly an hour, watching the press corps jostle for position with the arrival of each new limousine. They watched as nearly all the dignitaries arrived, including their staffs and assistants. The only delegations missing were the ones from Russia and the United States. None of the Nøkken had appeared.
“You don’t think we missed them, do you?” Nika asked. She was flushed from the heat due to the lack of shade over their position, and he could see that she was beginning to feel the naked edge of blood thirst again. It was making her restive.
“We’d know if they came around,” he assured her. “Your wards will ping if they come within fifty feet of this place.”
A large van with the insignia of the Swedish Army pulled in to the parking line, and Kommendör Holm from Special Forces Command stepped out into the light. Erik pointed him out and identified him to her.
“Is that the man who ordered them to shoot you?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think I like him.”
“I know I don’t.”
The remaining members of the Huntsman unit exited the vehicle behind him. Erik noted that Lars Bengstrom had the place of Ulf Magnusson for this afternoon’s activities. The sight of a good man in the company of such thieves made him sorry. He wondered if Bengstrom was also serving Loki now, or if he’d just been unlucky in his assignments.
He brought his sniper rifle forward, just in case.
The Huntsman unit and their commander arrayed themselves out along the sidewalk, about a hundred feet outside the cordon in front of the building. They were joined by members of the Russian FSB, all of them standing watchfully as the SOG van pulled away and a limousine flying the flags of the Russian Federation pulled up.
Erik tensed. If Loki was going to make his move, this would be the time. He had to go in through that front door, and his target had just arrived. He resisted the urge to double-check his clip; he knew that it was loaded with incendiary rounds, and indulging in his nerves would only make him miss his shot because he was busy fiddling with his equipment.
“Get ready,” he told Nika. “This is our guy.”
She began chanting softly, her fingertips glowing and the Book of Odin on her lap.
An FSB officer opened the limousine door, and the Russian president emerged. He turned to wave to the crowd and the reporters, and the protesters began to boo. He gave no response. Kommendör Holm strode up to him and offered a handshake, which the president accepted. They stepped together toward the building.
The wards screamed. Nika’s whispered chanting became a shout, and she rained rune fire down onto the assembly. The spell she had chosen was one that would sap her strength, but she had enough energy in her to power it. The light from the rune magic descended, and everybody froze.
It was as if time had stopped, but the spell had only paralyzed everyone in her target range. The circle of immobilized people extended out to fill the street and encompass the checkpoint. She shuddered as she fought to hold her targets.
“Go,” she gasped. “This is only going to hold humans and faery…”
He thought of Loki’s three Draugr companions, and he had no doubt that they were nearby. He stretched out his senses and found them, seated in a car across the street wearing ill-fitting uniforms stolen from some unfortunate security detail. He abandoned his rifle, which was poorly suited to close-quarters combat.
“Hold them,” Erik said, and jumped off the roof.
Unlike the last time he’d done this, he was not poisoned with silver slugs in his guts, and he was able to fly again. He made a controlled landing on the sidewalk beside the Russian president. Now that he was closer, and now that he was seeing with his Draugr eyes, he realized that Holm was no human being at all.
“Loki,” he said, seeing the hard, white kernel of energy in the center of the Nøkken host.
“Thorvald!”
Agnar, one of the three Draugr in the car, emerged with a pistol in his hand. A flash of rune fire from the roof struck him and knocked him backward, tumbling head over heels over the roofs of the parked vehicles. Erik smiled at Nika’s aim. Brevik lurched out of the car next, an automatic rifle in his hands. He was struck with another bolt of runic energy, and he, too, spun away.
Erik pulled the hairspray from his pants pocket and grabbed a lighter with the other hand. He was just preparing to hit the false Holm with his makeshift flame thrower when a bullet crashed into his shoulder, knocking him sideways. It burned like silver.
Dag stepped out of the car and into the street. In the distance, Erik could hear sirens, and he remembered that the rest of Stockholm was not paralyzed. They had to move quickly. He turned his back onto his former friend and ignited the hairspray, shooting Loki’s Nøkken vessel in the face.
The creature was paralyzed and could not shift or try to run. It could not even scream. Erik almost felt bad about the way it was unable to do anything but burn… almost.
Police cars entered the spell radius and swerved out of control as their drivers fell under the magic’s effects.
Dag leaped on Erik, his feral teeth long and flashing. He buried them in the back of Erik’s head, simultaneously stabbing him in both sides, a silver dagger in each hand.
Erik dropped the flame thrower and tried to grab Dag, but he was skewered too effectively to be able to twist or spin. Dag held on, pulling blood as fast as he could, intent on draining his former fellow. Erik reached his pistol, but with Dag holding on the way he was, there was no way he could shoot him without shooting himself, as well.
He went down, silver inside of him in three places, and landed with his face toward the burning shifter.
***
Nika saw the attack on Erik. She could practically feel it. She screamed, and her hold on the paralyzing spell wavered. The Draugr pets in the Huntsman unit broke free of its power and advanced on her fallen lover.
She flung rune power at them, hitting Stenmark and the twins with her only two remaining offensive spells. The rest of her energy had been taken up in the main spell, and now she had nothing left to throw. They staggered from the blows but continued to advance.
She bumped against Erik’s sniper rifle.
She had never fired a gun in her life, let alone a powerful weapon like this one, but she was running out of options. She propped the muzzle up on its tripod and flung herself down onto her stomach the way she’d seen Erik doing. Below her, on the street, the Nøkken burned and Dag continued to drain Erik’s life force away.
She shook with rage. She would not let him die.
Her first shots went wildly off target, and she nearly screamed with frustration. Grinding her teeth, she tried again. She found a switch on the side of the gun that changed the fire rate, and she held down the trigger, spraying bullets into the SOG van and the Huntsmen.
The bullets ripped into the Draugr pets, and spurts of blood erupted into the air. The bullets caught fire immediately, and one of the Jansen twins went down immediately, his forehead gone. The other twin abandoned his attack, wailing over his fallen brother. That left only Stenmark, who had pulled a silver-edged hatchet from somewhere and was advancing rapidly on Erik. She was just preparing to open fire again when Stenmark spun backward with a bullet in his brain that had come from behind him.
Bengstrom stepped into view, a pistol in his hand. He fired once more into Stenmark’s head, then double-tapped the surviving Jansen twin. He stepped to Erik and put another bullet directly into Dag.
Rune Master Page 18