“You stopped Sköll from eating the sun as well. That’s twice now you have prevented Ragnarok.”
Apparently the land of the dead was not cut off from news about the rest of the world. “Yeah, and I’d do it again.” My stomach fluttered a little with nervousness. Had she wanted the world to end?
“You are bold indeed, and you carry the sword of a king.”
“I’m just borrowing it for a while.” Once I was back on Earth, I would bring it back to Avalon.
Hel leaned all the way back in her throne, sternness leaking out of her expression. “Truthfully, I am not eager for Ragnarok either, son of Lucifer.”
“Alex,” I told her. “My name is Alex.” I was tired of the constant reminders that Satan was my father.
“Alex, then,” Hel said. “Come, I will take you to Baldur so you may deliver his letter.”
I followed her through a hallway that opened into a beautiful suite of rooms. It was so much in contrast to the rest of Hel’s realm that for a minute I just stood there, staring around at the decorations. It was like someone had taken a piece of spring and placed it down here in the gloomy land of the dead. The suite was bright and warm, with pleasant colors on the walls and floors and furniture. Pastels with bright splashes of color: green, blue, gold, soft pink, purple, and hints of red. Even the browns of the wood furniture seemed bright. I thought I was imagining the chirping, but then I realized there was a cage in the corner with several brightly colored birds flitting around.
“Even dead, Baldur cannot help but make things beautiful.” There was a hush to Hel’s voice, maybe awe or sadness. A well-dressed, alive-looking servant (though I could tell he was one of the dead) hurried off to go find his master. Baldur appeared and the room seemed even brighter. I always thought it was funny that a male god was considered the most beautiful of the Norse pantheon, but seeing him for myself, I got it. It wasn’t the kind of attraction I felt for a hot chick—there was nothing romantic or sexual about it—but looking at him made me feel good. Like a beautiful sunrise or a great work of art, something that made the world more beautiful just by existing. Then I remembered that after Ragnarok he was one of the gods that got reborn and he would be the new leader of the Norse pantheon. I felt a little guilty for stopping that from happening. Twice.
“My servant says you have a letter from my father.”
“Yes.” I dug in my pocket and pulled out the letter. It was wrinkled but the seal was still unbroken. I handed it to Baldur and he took it like it was a gift. I guess in a way it was.
“If you would leave us please, Hel, I wish to talk to the young man for a while,” Baldur said.
I thought she would argue, but she didn’t. She said good-bye and left. Baldur led me over to a seating area and offered me a comfy blue chair. I glanced around the room again. “Man, this is really nice.”
“Thank you. I’ve tried to make it as pleasant as possible.” He offered me something to drink but I said no. Persephone had warned me about eating anything from the land of the dead. When I was staying with her she used to get deliveries of fresh food from her mom and made meals for me from that.
Baldur set the letter on the table and looked at it longingly.
“Go ahead and open it. If you want some privacy, I can leave you alone.” Look at me and my people skills.
“No, I can open it later. Odin didn’t send you all the way down here just for a letter.”
“Uh, actually he did. He swore that it was only a letter.” But then I remembered he told me to tell Baldur about what had happened with Fenrir. “Oh, he did say I should tell you about what happened.” I started with Sköll and told him how my friends and I saved the sun, then I told him about Fenrir and how we’d gotten the wolf tied up again. By the end of the story he was staring at me with wide eyes.
“You and your friends prevented Ragnarok twice.”
I wasn’t sure if it was a question. Didn’t he believe me? I guess I didn’t blame him. “Yeah. I know it’s fated to happen, blah, blah, but that doesn’t mean it has to happen now. I want the world to last for a long, long time. Sorry about you having to stay down here, though. I know you’re supposed to be reborn in the new world.”
He waved a hand. “That day will come, but for now my father still lives, and all the other gods, and all those who dwell in Midgard. I want them to live more than I want to live myself. I can wait.”
I relaxed, letting out tension I didn’t know I’d had. “So you get why I did it?”
“Certainly, and I’m impressed with your bravery.”
I shrugged. I didn’t feel very brave. I was still running from my father, using this errand as an excuse to hide from him for a little longer. “Brave, sure.”
“You don’t believe what you did is brave?”
“I can face other people’s monsters, but I can’t face my father.”
“Why can’t you face him?”
Would he even get it? He loved his dad and treated a letter from him like fucking gold. “Because he’ll beat the shit out of me, and I’m not strong enough to stop him.”
“You are young yet in your world. You should not feel ashamed that you haven’t yet come into your full strength.”
“My powers keep getting a little stronger, but it seems like it’s taking so fucking long.” I told him about my difficulty teleporting and my fire powers, and the way I’d made it snow in the dining room, and how I’d burned my mom which was why I was so afraid of being dragged back home this time.
Baldur listened, nodding here and there. Just talking to him made me feel better. My fear and guilt faded, but I was sure they would come back full force as soon as I left this place. Being with Baldur was like existing in a little bubble of comfort and beauty. “Your father is hurting you enough. You don’t need to hurt yourself more by feeling such guilt,” Baldur said.
“Easier said than done,” I muttered.
Baldur got up. “I have something for you, a gift to thank you for going to all the trouble of delivering my father’s letter to me. Wait here.”
He went deeper into his suite, into one of the rooms in the back, a bedroom or a study or something else. He wasn’t gone long. When he came back at first I didn’t see anything, then he bent and offered me a tiny white box, closed with a latch. “Don’t open this until you’re back in Midgard,” he warned me.
I was familiar with the Orpheus story, so I wasn’t going to fuck this up. “Thank you.” I stuck the box into my pocket, the same pocket I’d carried the letter in. “What is it?”
“You’ll see when you open it. It’s something to help you, and it will give you what you already have.”
Great, a fucking riddle. “Yeah, that’s clear,” I muttered.
Baldur chuckled. “It will all make sense. Now, I’ll escort you back to Midgard. I cannot leave Hel’s realm, but I can take you to the border.”
I was hoping for more ghost horses to ride, but it was even better. Baldur had wolf spirits. They were almost as big as the horses, with gray-white, glowing fur. When I first saw them I was a little nervous. After all, I’d just fought two giant wolves and I wondered if these guys were cousins or something. But no, these were good wolves. To the Norse, wolves could be both good and bad, just like people. Sköll, Hati, and Fenrir were bad, but Odin had wolves as companions, and these two wolves of Baldur’s were friendly. On the downside there were no saddles, but I was able to hang on by gripping their fur tight while they raced through the land of the dead. Baldur took me in the opposite direction that I’d arrived in, to a different gate. The ride was way too short, but maybe I’d find a reason to come down here again and go for another ride.
“Where does this go?” I asked as I slid off the wolf.
“To a very old burial ground in Midgard. I’m sorry I can’t take you any closer to your home than that,” Baldur said.
“That’s all right. Burial grounds are cemeteries, and cemeteries are connected to each other. I can get to wherever I want to go from th
ere.” Which sure the fuck wasn’t home.
Baldur pushed open the gate and looked at the space beyond it with longing.
“Maybe I’ll come by again sometime,” I offered. “I mean, if it doesn’t piss Hel off.”
“I don’t think it would anger her. We very rarely get visitors, and when the other gods do come they always ask her for something she is unwilling to give. I think she might like having a visitor who wants nothing from her.”
“Huh,” I said as I thought it over. “I guess I can see that.” I turned to leave and remembered to thank him for the gift. I patted my pocket where the small box was but didn’t pull it out. I didn’t want to tempt myself with opening it, not until I was out of this realm and back on Earth.
Chapter 11
On the other side of the gate it was dark with a hazy glow, like fog in the moonlight. More horror-movie shit. As I walked through the haze it got thicker until I couldn’t see anything except the ground about a foot in front of me. The rocky ground changed, getting softer, and then I started to see grass. The hazy fog thinned out and I saw that I was in a field filled with mounds. Some of the mounds were small bumps in the dirt but there were a few big enough that they looked like hills. Under those mounds were the bodies of the dead, and wandering around above them were their ghosts. There weren’t many. This was an old burial ground, and as time passes, most ghosts stop visiting Earth. The trapped ghosts eventually get free and once they are, they usually stay in whatever afterlife is waiting for them.
Half the ghosts floated over to me, curious. “You have been touched by Baldur.” They reached their hands out, some pulling back at the last second, a few brushing their cold fingers over me.
“You carry a sword of power.”
“You have Baldur’s blessing.” They whispered and sighed.
“I went to give him a letter from his dad,” I told the ghosts. “Can you tell me where your gateway is? I need to get to America.”
“We’ll show you,” one of them said. He was dressed like a warrior with gold and jewels on top of his armor. Some kind of important chieftain, maybe even a king. He’d probably been flitting between here and the afterlife for over a thousand years. He wasn’t one of the dead chosen for Valhalla. Those spirits very rarely visit Earth, and this one looked like he’d been hanging around the burial mounds for most of the time he’d been dead. I didn’t blame him. Hel was pretty gloomy, and aside from the ghost horses, ghost wolves, and Baldur’s suite of rooms, it looked like a boring place. It might be okay to visit once in a while, but I sure the fuck wouldn’t want to live there.
I followed the chieftain as he led me to the gateway. A few other ghosts went with us. I had myself a little ghost escort. The gateway was at the top of one of the biggest mounds. I thought it would be tough to climb and I might have needed to ask the ghosts to help me, but my powers decided to kick in, so it was a breeze. Agility and nice big demon claws make climbing a steep hill easy. From the gateway I went to Saint Louis Number One. I knew I needed to return Excalibur, but I couldn’t get to Avalon on my own, so I had to meet up with Colin and tell him to ask his mom or maybe the Morrigan to let me back into Avalon to put the sword back where it belonged. I touched the end of the handle. Damn, I didn’t want to give it up.
It was bright daylight here, and humid as fuck. It was a shock after the cool dark underworld. There weren’t many ghosts around but I found a crow nearby and asked her if she would get a message to Stefan for me. He’d be the easiest to contact, through his raven. The crow agreed and flew off to pass the message along.
I seriously considered leaving the cemetery to find a place with some fucking air conditioning so I could get out of this heat and humidity. I found a bench partially shaded by the tomb next to it and sat down in the slightly cooler spot. Then I remembered what had gotten me into this shit in the first place. I closed my eyes and focused on making myself cooler. You’d think someone who’s part demon and has visited Hell wouldn’t have a problem with a ninety-something-degree day, but it’s different on Earth. Heat and cold don’t bother me as much as other people, but it does still bother me if the temperature is extreme enough. Plus, like they say, it’s not the heat but the humidity.
The cold answered me, at first feeling like a gentle breeze on my skin, then getting cooler and cooler. I wondered if I could make it snow in New Orleans in the middle of summer. That would be pretty fucking awesome. I focused harder, pulling on whatever was inside me that let me do this. Colder and colder, enough to make me shiver.
“What you think you doin’?”
My eyes popped open and Marie Laveau stood there, glaring at me. “Practicing,” I told her. She’d appointed herself as a guardian of this cemetery and she was wary of me.
“Do your practicing somewhere else, not in my cemetery.”
“It’s not hurting anyone.”
“I’m not arguing with you.” She kept glaring.
I sighed. “Fine, I’ll stop.” I let the cold go and it started to warm up.
“You start causing problems, I throw you out.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not causing problems. I’m just waiting for some friends. When they get here, we’ll talk for a little while and then we’ll leave, okay?” She kept glaring at me so I added, “Baron Samedi is fine with me coming here, as long as I don’t stay long. You can go ask him if you don’t believe me.” She damn well knew he didn’t mind me visiting.
“I got my eyes on you, little demon.” She pointed a finger at me, then vanished.
It kept warming up and I tried to get more of myself into the shade. Excalibur’s pommel poked at me so I took her off and laid her across my lap. Shit, I hoped no tour groups wandered by. I’d have to hope they’d think it was a fake sword. Freaking out a bunch of tourists sounded fun, but I really didn’t need the hassle. Shifting around again, I felt the tiny box in my pocket. Oh yeah, Baldur’s gift. Even though I was in a cemetery, I was outside of Hel and this counted as Midgard.
I pulled the box out and studied it. Just a simple wooden box painted white, about the size of a ring box but not as tall. It had a little latch keeping it closed but thankfully no lock, so I didn’t have to worry about a key. What had Baldur given me? Only one way to find out. I flipped up the little latch and opened the lid. For a second I saw a bright light, then it felt like the same light flashed inside my head.
I saw what I was capable of. Not a prophecy, not what I was going to do, the way I was supposed to take over the world and lead my father’s army at Armageddon and shit. I saw what my powers would be and what I could do with them. It was… staggering. Fucking awesome. I wouldn’t always be inadequate; my powers wouldn’t always be so fucking sporadic.
When the flash was over, all I could do was sit there with my mouth open. It hadn’t shown me how to tap into my powers, but I knew what to aim for. I wanted to try them all out now, but I knew Marie Laveau would come back and give me shit if I tried. I thought about going to Gettysburg, which has about the same amount of energy and would shield me, but I had to wait for Stefan. Not being able to try out all this shit I’d seen drove me nuts. To distract myself, I checked in on Mew-Mew.
He wasn’t on one of the Paths, so the view came in clear. He was standing on something, looking over at a huge stag. He felt me in his head and paused midsentence. I’m gathering some stuff for you. Did you give Excalibur back yet?
Not yet. Gathering what?
I’m making you a sword.
What?
I almost have all the stuff I need. I’ll explain when I get back. But you might want to hang on to Excalibur for a while, just in case someone else tries to end the world. He turned his attention back to the stag and closed our connection.
The talk about making a sword distracted me enough that I’d forgotten to tell him about Baldur’s gift. Just as I was about to reopen the link, a crow started calling, telling me Stefan was on his way. I put the empty box in my pocket and put the belt holding Excalibur back on and we
nt to meet Stefan at the gateway. He brought the others with him and I asked Colin if he would get someone to take me back to Avalon so I could return the sword. Despite what Mew-Mew said, the sword wasn’t mine and I wanted to prove I wasn’t greedy and wasn’t going to try to keep it. I’d borrowed it to fight Fenrir, and that was all.
He came back only a few minutes later with the Morrigan. “I can return the sword for you,” she said. “If you truly want to return it.”
“I’ll be honest, I want to keep it. I keep thinking it might be able to hurt my father, might be able to stop him from beating me. But keeping the sword is something he would do. I was only supposed to use this to fight Fenrir. I shouldn’t keep it anymore.”
She gave me a crooked smile. “There were some that feared you would try to keep the sword.”
“Nope. Take it back.” I pulled off the belt with the scabbard. Of course some of them thought I would try to keep it. I was supposed to be evil and selfish and shit. Proving them wrong gave me a dark satisfaction. I held the sword out to her.
“Are you certain?”
“Just fucking take it and put it back where it belongs.” And Mew-Mew said he was making me a sword. How a cat was going to make me a sword, I didn’t know, but I believed him. Mew-Mew never lied to me.
The Morrigan held out her hands and I laid Excalibur in them. Yeah, I did want to keep it. As soon as I let go, I missed the gentle hum of power it gave off. She smiled at me, a real smile with no teasing or secrets in it. “You are capable of honesty, as I thought. I cannot interfere in the battles of other pantheons and thus cannot give you help in them, would that I could. But I can give you my blessing.” She reached into her hair with one hand and offered me a crow feather with a little leather string tied on the end. “Use this wisely, outside of battles I cannot fight.”
“What does it do?” I asked as I took the feather.
“It calls me to your aid.”
The aid of a battle goddess would be pretty fucking handy, even if she couldn’t help me in battle. Well, not any battles involving gods. So she couldn’t protect me from Satan, not directly. “Thanks,” I told her. Maybe I could figure out a crafty way to use it, just like she’d found a crafty way to get me Excalibur. I put it into my pocket next to the empty box.
Not My Apocalypse Page 10