by Heather Knox
He turns his head to smile at me, his gray-blue eyes matching the pre-storm sky in a way usually only accurate in poorly-written poetry but somehow he transcends this impossibility. Without the forecast to ruin the surprise, the storm would surely have blindsided us, stranded us, soaked us; instead, he takes these curves confidently, too fast, rattling loose tent stakes in the bed of the truck.
“We could have stayed,” past-me offers. “I don’t want to be the reason we cancel our trip. You’ve been talking about this for six months.”
“We’re not canceling—we’re re-routing. You wouldn’t have been comfortable—storms out here can be pretty intense. Besides, my family has a ranch out here and it’s off-season, we’ll have the place to ourselves. A fireplace and the love of my life while the storm rolls in.”
“You sure are full of surprises, Victor,” past-me coos, wrapping a curl around my finger and gazing out over the horizon. Pastures dotted with boulders, mountains. The sky the same blue-gray, but tinged with pink, hinting at sunset.
“You have no idea,” he grins.
“Delilah? Delilah, are you okay? What do you see?” I hear Quinn’s voice as if through water. She splits her attention between the highway and me, glancing between the two, frowning. “Did you have a vision?”
I shake my head no, groggy, disoriented. Out the window I think I see the pink tinge of sunset but no, just night. Did I fall asleep? “How do you know about that, anyway?”
She offers no reply but a shrug.
“Did I fall asleep? How long was I out?”
“You didn’t—you were kind of trancey though, murmuring something, like you were having a conversation with someone.”
“Quinn, I know where you’re taking me. In a few miles we’ll pass the sign for a vineyard—but it’s been operating only intermittently for years. Shortly after, on the right, there’ll be a trailer with dozens of rusted-out classic cars dotting the lawn. The owner has no idea that they’re worth money and doesn’t care. Then, for a long time we’ll see nothing but sky—until we see the ranch.”
“And then it’s nothing until after the mountains. How do you know all this?”
“I’ve been here before.”
“Okay,” she responds, the significance lost on her. For all she knows about me, I’m comforted that there are still things she doesn’t: like how I can’t remember anything from my mortal life. Well, almost anything.
“I mean when I was alive. A long, long time ago,” I clarify, unsure that it’s even true.
“Be that as it may, the ranch you speak of is now operated by the Praedari. It’s not going to be easy to get you inside.”
I want to tuck this memory away in a locked space deep within myself, afraid that it will slip away as so many already have. Still reeling from regaining a piece of myself, I nod. “What exactly am I doing inside?”
“I’m your ride. I’ll help you inside, but why and what happens after are on you.”
“Because Valkyries don’t meddle,” I mutter, remembering how she plunged a stake through Johnny’s heart before disappearing with him. Was he one of her honored dead?
“Exactly!”
“For not meddling you sure meddle a lot.”
The rest of the ride is uneventful. I stop her a couple miles short of the ranch, afraid that we’re too conspicuous driving so far away from civilization unannounced. We climb out of the Jeep, stashed in a clump of bushes alongside the road, doors slamming shut in unison.
“I can help get you in,” she offers.
“With some Valkyrie voodoo?”
“With this,” she says, handing me a piece of plastic the size of a credit card. “A key card.”
“Why—you know what, never mind.”
“Reconnaissance isn’t meddling. Besides, just because we don’t meddle doesn’t mean we don’t want to meddle. Our vows preclude it, but we still fight the same urges you do. I know who I am rooting for.”
Somehow, while I don’t doubt her sincerity, I find myself doubting her perception of what urges she must swallow as compared to what urges most of us Everlasting struggle with. Not once has this woman threatened me. Not once has she met my blows—literal or verbal—with her own. Not once has her Beast within raised hackles to meet those of my own.
Saint Quinn, the Valkyrie—my unlikely ally.
I take the keycard.
“Keep the Jeep,” I say. “It’s a rental and on the Council’s tab.”
“No need,” she says with a wave. “I’ll travel through Asgard.” She puts her hand out. “Well met, Oracle. May everything unfold as it must.”
I clasp her hand. “Until next time, Valkyrie,” I promise, alluding to the vow of vengeance I made in what feels like lifetimes ago.
We give a mutual nod of understanding, then part ways. I resist the urge to glance over my shoulder, knowing that I will not see her walking down the winding country road, her dark form diffusing into night. It is a place encompassing our world, an aspect of here . . .
THE PROBLEM WITH BEING GIVEN THE KEY IS NOT knowing which door it goes to—or, in this case, what I’m walking into besides the trenches. From the frying pan and into the fire, except I’m trying to coax the fire into reminding me how it was kindled. The Crusader, Ismae—why would the Praedari wish to awaken Ismae the Bloody? How do they intend to? What does Zeke have to do with all of this? I’m not sure what I’m looking for or what I might find, but I know that if I use the key card someone somewhere might be alerted to my entry, so I stash it in my pocket as a last resort. Going black-ops seems the best bet for now. Besides, I came without the cavalry, so to speak.
The property seems almost surrounded by the rolling peaks, as though they stand sentinel—guarding what is within, perhaps, or protecting the world from what is within. The air smells of freshly-dug earth and sweet spices, like clove and cinnamon.
Come on, remember! A basement window that’s easy to pry open or a forgotten cellar door, something . . . I slink around the ranch house, illuminated from within in a welcoming way and somehow familiar, in the way that a dark shape at night reminds you of a person hulking in your doorway until you remember the robe hanging on the back of the door—that sense of immediacy gone, replaced with frustration. Every owl’s hoo, every rustling leaf, every twig cracking under my own foot giving me pause.
My movement triggers a flood light. I hold my breath, but nothing happens. No one comes. I count: one, two, three, four . . . thirty. Click and the lights snuff themselves out.
I press myself flatter against the building, crouching as I make my way inefficiently around its perimeter. It’s not long before that familiarity gives way to the unfamiliar—surely the house wasn’t this massive, this industrial all those years ago? Patches of soil betray where the grass has yet to come in. At the rear, oversized silos and sheds seem to be dropped haphazardly, flanking the large complex. New construction, but not so new that debris clutters the property—no, this has been meticulously cared for, its purpose hidden away from prying eyes while the estate itself remains nearly pristine, out in the open to be discovered or overlooked. Perhaps the previous owner—this Victor person?—sold it to one of those commercial agritourism companies that offers visitors a taste of local rural life for a hefty price tag.
Or maybe this hints at what the Praedari have been up to, what’s kept them off our radar until recently: hiding something awful out in the open. I shudder, wondering what I might find inside—missiles? Nuclear weapons? Biological weapons? What could be so monstrous within that it warrants such sanctity in presentation?
I don’t know how long I’ve been staring when my gaze drops to a boot planted near my left hand, then up to scan the muscular, husky form to whom it’s attached: a living embodiment of the Beast within, were the Beast as beautiful as it is monstrous. Red, wavy hair worn loose, short beard of the same hue, amber eyes reflecting the moonlight in that way all nocturnal creatures’ eyes reflect the ambient light, and fangs. Shirtless, I notice elaborat
e scarification, as if from ritual, adorning his chest and upper arms. Some symbols I recognize as Futhark, the Runic alphabet, though I know not what they mean.
He is not alone. They could be brother and sister, this man and the tall woman beside him who boasts leaner muscle than her companion and no visible, intentional scarification. Still, my eyes trace a jagged scar from her right ear down across her throat to her clavicle—possibly lower, were it not obscured from my vision by a bloodstained tank top. Whatever could leave a scar like that in immortality she could have just as easily not walked away from. She wears the same red hair as the man, done up in a series of braids and knots away from her face, loose and messy. On each a bicep strains against a similarly etched, thick, silver-colored band. They wear the same expression, though she does not show fang. She doesn’t need to—her predator within snarls so close to the surface I wonder if she isn’t mostly Beast. And yet, somehow I missed both of them; my predator within, until now vigilant, has somehow been subdued by the grace and ferocity exuded by these two.
“What have we here?” the woman asks rhetorically, nudging me with her boot. “A pretty little Keeper to play with?”
“Why, I believe so, Sister,” the man says, stepping closer and grabbing a handful of my hair and yanking me upward. I growl. “What might she be good for?”
“She is pretty,” the woman confirms, cupping my jaw in her hand and examining my now-emerged fangs as one might examine a horse at competition. “Good mortal breeding, too. Strong bone structure. Whatever vampire stock she’s from is purer than most. What are you?”
I snarl and try to turn my head. When I find I cannot, I spit, the foam landing just below her right eye. She cups my jaw more tightly. “I oughtta pry these fangs right from your pretty little mouth, you—” she hisses.
“Mina, we should probably bring her to the boss. That’s protocol with intruders,” the man interrupts.
The woman snarls at her brother, shoving me back into him. He doesn’t let go of my hair, catching me as if I weigh nothing.
“Throw her to the wolves.”
“Mina—you can’t be serious . . . ”
“I said throw her to the wolves,” the woman called Mina says again, slowly, deliberately.
I struggle against the man as he drags me towards one of the silos, Mina not more than a pace behind. As a generator whirs to life, I swear, for just a moment, I hear howling in the distance.