Twice Turned

by Heather McCorkle

  The boom of thunder shook the ground beneath me. The gray world turned white as lightning crackled in the clouds overhead. Blood began to ooze out around the arrow. It soon flowed steadily. Before I could think too much on it, I broke off the part of the shaft that had emerged from my chest. Pain exploded through me. Something tore inside.

  I looked at Ayra. “Get it out of me. I can’t fight like this,” I said.

  She took hold of the shaft jutting out of my back and yanked it free. It hurt so bad all I could see for a long moment was white. Deep inside, something near my heart didn’t feel right. I knew with a queasy certainty that it was bad. The feel of Ayra’s hand on my shoulder brought me back from the precipice of unconsciousness. Her touch was so hot it felt like a creature of Muspelheimr had a hold of me.

  “Stay down. It will draw them out,” she said, the words barely more than a furious growl. The heat of her touch wasn’t from my loss of blood, but from the force of her anger. Shit. We were in the middle of a city and this was about to go nuclear.

  “Okay, but I’m fine, don’t let them force you to lose control. That could be what Calder wants,” I whispered.

  For a moment I wasn’t sure if the pounding rain had covered my soft words, but then she nodded. Her shoulders relaxed slightly. Good. She needed her focus. I couldn’t let her know how badly I was hurt.

  From out of the gray mist a tall figure approached with bold steps, the rain a bright halo around his silhouette. The feel of his energy signature marked him as a varúlfur, but it wasn’t Calder. I would know him anyway. In this man’s hands was a crossbow that he was in the process of reloading. Out of my peripheral vision I saw two more approaching, one on each side of us. All varúlfur. At least they weren’t berserkrs. I definitely couldn’t fight a bear right now.

  “They’re flanking us,” I warned Ayra.

  “I know,” she said as she stood.

  The one approaching us head-on let his next arrow fly. It took every ounce of control I had not to leap up and put myself between the projectile and Ayra. She snatched the arrow right out of the air—a foot from my face. He had been shooting at me. Ayra snapped the arrow in half with one hand and thrust it to the ground. A growl tore from her as she launched herself at the man. So much for not letting her anger get the better of her. Double shit.

  The other two closed in on me. Thunder boomed overhead as if in protest, warning, I don’t know. But unless Thor himself stepped down from Asgard, I was afraid this wasn’t going to go well for me. The first to reach me—a bald guy with Norse tattoos all over his head—raised a knife high. I smelled the silver of the blade. They were here to kill me. The realization brought a sense of calm. If I was their target, Ayra might be safe even if I didn’t make it.

  At the last moment, I grabbed Baldy’s wrists, stopping the silver knife a foot from my chest. I thrust my legs up, wrapping them around his neck before he could react. With a pop of my hips, I threw him to the ground. The knife came loose in the struggle. Where it ended up, I couldn’t say. Pain erupted through my chest from my wound, but I shoved it aside.

  I ended up on top long enough to get in two good punches before Baldy sneaked in an uppercut and bucked me off. We rolled about on the ground, each trying our best to get a good wrestler’s hold on the other. Then a booted foot slammed into my side. Stunned by the pain it drove into my liver, and reignited in my chest, I froze, gasping for breath. Another knife glinted in the muted light shed by a nearby street lamp.

  Ayra roared, sounding every bit the supernatural queen of monsters that she was. Both of my attackers paused long enough to look her way. How could they not? She looked like the very fury of Odin; hair whipping about her in the wind, clenched fists held out at her sides, rain outlining her as if it couldn’t quite reach her. Her eyes burned sapphire with rage. Lips that I had been kissing only moments before moved in prayer. I knew what she wanted, standing out there like that in the open, praying to Odin, or Thor, or both.

  An arrow struck her in the arm. She didn’t even flinch or miss a word of her prayer.

  Thunder shook the ground.

  I launched to my feet and ran to her. The pain in my chest tried to make my muscles seize up. My vision went black. But I ignored both and kept moving toward her by the sheer feel of her immense power. I forced the pain down. My muscles moved me and my vision came back. Just as lightning tore open the sky, I wrapped both my arms and my power around her. White, crackling light enveloped us both. Electricity pumped through her body, brushing against mine, wearing me down like a conduit exposed to more than it could handle. My chest felt like it couldn’t decide if it wanted to implode or explode. But I held fast. The Gods had answered her prayers; I wasn’t about to let her down.

  The lightning coursing through her was so powerful, I didn’t know if we could do it. It pushed against my power as she started to direct it out to the three men. I reached out to them with my power, opening up tunnels that would allow the lightning to travel to them. Each rope of my power drained my energy, increased the pain in my chest, and threatened to make me collapse. I held Ayra now out of sheer necessity to stay on my feet.

  She let down her dams and channeled the lightning out the three tunnels. Our would-be-assassins screamed as lightning enveloped them at nearly the same time. The horrible stench of burning flesh filled the night. They collapsed to the ground in steaming heaps of flesh so charred DNA samples would have to identify them.

  As the last crackles of electricity left her eyes, I smiled down at Ayra. She looked like the greatest superheroes all wrapped up in one petite, blond package. Even knowing what she was, I still had the overwhelming urge to protect her. Because she was mine. I kissed her forehead. Little aftershocks of static electricity snapped along my lips.

  With the lightning and the threat, went the adrenaline that had been holding me upright. Pain slammed back into me with a vengeance. My vision went and I fell like a red-caped man hit by a kryptonite meteor.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rage against the darkness without, so it does not become the darkness within.

  ~Uppskera Journals

  Ayra

  Vidar lay bleeding out in my arms, and there was nothing I could do. I prayed and prayed for another bolt of lightning to hit me. Maybe I could use it to heal him like I had the seeker. By her very nature, she had helped. But Vidar was special too. He could insulate against it. I didn’t know if it would work for him, but I was willing to try.

  When Odin and Thor didn’t answer, I begged to Freya, Frigg, Tyr and even Heimdallr. Lightning lit up the clouds, unable—or unwilling—to break through. I couldn’t stay near the bodies of our enemies any longer. People were bound to come. I hauled Vidar to a sitting position. He moaned so quietly I almost didn’t hear it over the rain.

  “V?” I asked.

  His eyes opened slowly, as if a great weight held them shut.

  A sob of relief worked its way up my throat. “V! Oh thank Thor. Can you stand?”

  He nodded very slowly. I ducked under his arm and pulled him to his feet. He teetered but my arm around his back kept him upright. If it weren’t for my werewolf strength, he would already be back on the ground. He took a stumbling step forward, falling into it more than walking. Clinging tight to him, I all but carried him through the park at blinding speed. At the edge of the grass, near where we had first entered the park, he went limp against me. I eased him to the ground and propped him up against a cherry tree.

  “V? Wake up, talk to me,” I demanded.

  His eyelids fluttered, but they wouldn’t open. Panic tightened my chest until it felt like it was squeezing my heart. He needed medical help and we were states away from any varúlfur doctor I knew of. A normal hospital was out of the question. Our kind healed too fast. It raised suspicions. But there were things even we couldn’t heal from. The hitch in his breathing as he lay unconscious told me he may not heal on his own. That arrow had come close to his heart. If he hadn’t been in the process of goin
g down on me at the time, it would have probably hit him in the heart.

  Which meant these sons of bitches had been trying to kill him. Him, not me. I wanted to kill them all over again. Anger started coming in a determined tide but I shoved it down. I had to get Vidar somewhere safe. I could sling him over my shoulder and carry him, but anyone who saw would no doubt call the police thinking I was on PCP or something. Besides, even if I could get him to our bikes, he couldn’t hold on, let alone drive. There remained only one option. I dug around in his pockets and pulled out his cell phone.

  With a shaking hand, I searched through his contacts until I found Evan McDougall. I pushed the call button, fully expecting either voicemail or Egor to answer. When a sleepy voice with a thick, sexy, Scottish accent answered instead, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  “Hello, Vidar.”

  “Actually, it’s Ayra.”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, suddenly sounding alert and fully awake.

  “He’s hurt. We need help.” My voice shook.

  “I’ll send people right now. Where are you?”

  I told him and then clicked the end call button. Shoving the phone in my pocket, I scooted up against Vidar’s side. His bare, rain-slick arm felt almost cold. Our kind didn’t get cold. A very bad sign. The dark blood seeping from the wound in his chest was even more disturbing. We were hard to kill, but not impossible, especially if someone knew how to do it. Clearly these bastards had. Our own kind this time.

  Coming after me was one thing. But whoever sent them had come after the one person in the world I cared about most. It wouldn’t be Elí. When I broke things off with him, he had sounded relieved. Besides, he was too gentle for such a thing. His alphas, Isak and Iona would never do something so dishonorable. Only my brother could be that cruel. He would pay for this and everything else he had done, with his life.

  I snuggled up to Vidar’s side, trying to will my warmth into him by wrapping as much of my body around him as I could. It wasn’t very effective considering he was twice my size in every way. I pressed a hand against his wound. His heart beat faintly against my fingers. I felt useless. Without access to lightning, or electricity of some kind, I couldn’t do anything for him. If I could get his energy a significant enough jolt, I could possibly give his healing abilities the boost they needed to catch up to the damage his body had taken. But the sound of thunder had already become distant, the lightning nonexistent.

  We lay wrapped together in the drizzling rain for what felt like forever. A few people walked by, but they didn’t see us, ignoring us in the almost instinctual way people ignore the homeless. It was for the best. They couldn’t help us. So I lay there willing Vidar to hang on and praying no police would happen by.

  In minutes that seemed like hours I felt the approach of an interesting new power. It pulsed with a strength and vibrancy similar to that of shifters, but had very distinctive differences. Two men and one woman emerged from the misty rain. Each wore a long hooded trench coat that obscured anything beyond their basic shape. They came straight for us, as if they could feel our energy as easily as I could theirs. Hand still pressed against the wound in Vidar’s chest, I prepared for a fight in case these people weren’t who I thought they were.

  The shorter, smaller of the three stepped forward, hands help up, palms out toward me.

  “We’re here to help,” said a woman’s voice in a thick Scottish accent that took me a moment to process.

  “You’d better be or you’re dead,” I warned.

  Beneath the hood, bright green eyes and blood red hair flashed. “I’m Emilia McDougall.”

  “Evan’s wife?”

  The huge hood turned slightly as she shook her head. “His sister.”

  That didn’t exactly put me at ease. In my experience, siblings were just dangerous enemies forced to live under the same roof.

  “That smells like a nicked artery. We’d better hurry,” she pressed.

  At a look from her, the two men with her moved in to either side of Vidar. They knelt down, but hesitated, looking to me for permission.

  “I don’t want to release the pressure,” I said.

  One of them removed a few items from his trench coat and handed one over to me. It was a roll of gauze.

  “Press this against it. I’ll wrap it and hold it in place,” he said as started to unroll something that resembled athletic tape.

  I accepted the gauze and pressed it against the small hole in Vidar’s chest. It turned red in seconds. Both men worked fast to wrap the bandage around Vidar’s entire chest, pulling tight enough to press the roll of gauze hard against him. I had no choice but to step back when they lifted him to his feet. He hung limp between them as they each draped one of his big arms over their shoulders.

  The moment I lost physical contact with him, fury reared up within me strong enough to take my breath away. My vision went red around the edges. The misty night took on an ominous, bloody look. Or maybe that was just my imagination conjuring up its deepest desire. I wanted to see blood in that moment, rivers of it. No, not wanted to, needed to. That fury became an ocean, one with an undertow I couldn’t fight if I wanted to. And I didn’t want to.

  “Easy there, Uppskera. There will be time for vengeance later. Right now Vidar needs your help,” Emilia said in a soothing tone.

  Her power rolled over me, attempting to calm me. But the undertow was pulling me out faster by the moment.

  “Ayra…” came Vidar’s weak voice.

  Before the ocean could sweep me away completely, I grabbed his hand where it lay against one of the men’s shoulders. His power hit me like a jolt of lightning. The fury receded in an instant. I could think again. Though his eyelids fluttered, they didn’t open. I moved up alongside the men carrying him so I could keep hold of his hand.

  Before I knew it they had us loaded into the back of a gray Tesla X with windows tinted dark enough to hide the president in. Vidar lay unconscious across the seats, his head on my lap. Though I murmured useless words of comfort and stroked his tight black curls, he didn’t say another word. His eyes didn’t even flutter. I took the scent of coagulating blood as a good sign. Mostly because I desperately needed a good sign. The world narrowed down to the slow beat of his heart beneath my hand. Emilia drove. At the end of each beat of Vidar’s heart, I begged the Gods that the next would come. Time ceased to have meaning save for those heartbeats. Blood soaked my clothes and made me stick to the seat. The scent filled my nose, threatening to choke me with despair.

  The car came to a stop. “We’re here,” Emilia said.

  She leaped out and opened the back door nearly all in the same moment. A gurney rolled up to the side of the vehicle, making me wonder where we were. But it wasn’t a hospital like I feared. We were at the end of a long cobbled drive before a huge two-story house of windows and stone siding. A massive deck wrapped around the second story that no doubt overlooked the river I could smell not far behind us. Pine and fir trees to either side of the house gave the air a fresh, soothing scent. The scents of half a dozen different flowers in raised beds all around the house mixed with it.

  The guy pushing the gurney was one of the men who’d arrived at the park. He helped Emilia and me lift Vidar onto the hard surface. I walked alongside him, hand still pressed against the wound in his chest. Around the back of the house a servant’s door stood open. Awaiting our arrival in the doorway was a tall man with unruly curls of red hair thrusting up from his head like fire. Eyes such a dark green they looked black at first regarded me with concern. Ginger scruff peppered a handsome face. He grabbed the end of the gurney and lifted it to ease our entrance into the house.

  “Ah, Vidar, what kind of trouble have you gotten up to now?” the man said in a thick Scottish accent. He shook his head as he looked down at Vidar. It had to be Evan.

  “We were attacked by assassins,” I said.

  His gaze shot to mine as we wheeled Vidar into a huge kitchen. “Has it really come to all that, then?” h
e asked. “Fools,” he grumbled. “A doctor is on the way.”

  “No doctors.”

  “No worries. The doctor is a draugr. He treats those of our kind.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t need a doctor, just electricity.”

  Ginger brows rose. “Electricity?”

  Evan looked at the man pushing the end of the gurney. “Thank you, Bruce. Would you be so kind as to see to Miss Valdísdottir’s motorcycle?”

  Bruce dipped his head to Evan and backed out of the room. Once the door clicked shut, Evan gave me a gentle smile. “You can trust my sister. I do, explicitly.”

  A snorting sound of derision escaped me before I could stop it. “You sure about that? I wouldn’t trust my sibling as far as I could throw him.”

  “I’m sure.” He took hold of the gurney near Vidar’s head. Emilia moved toward his feet.

  I stared ahead at the granite countertops, keeping both people in my peripheral. With one hand pressed to Vidar’s chest, I wondered how well I’d be able to fight if I had to.

  “No worries, Uppskera. You’re among friends now. We can take Vidar to my workshop. I have what you need there,” Evan assured me.

  I gave him my full attention, putting a heavy dose of my power behind my gaze. “If you’re lying I’ll kill you all.”

  He nodded once, looking as if he believed me and accepted my terms. Gaze questioning, he waited until I nodded to start pulling the gurney along. The wheels clicked across the tiled floor, making it hard for me to hear Vidar’s heartbeat. Come to think of it, it was getting harder to feel too. We stopped at a stainless steel door with a keypad and screen on it. Evan moved in front of the keypad. Minute clicks sounded; buttons without any tone being pushed. Smart. I liked it. He bent down to the screen, putting his eye to it. A blue light flashed around him as it moved down the screen. Retinal scanner. Damn. But then, what did I expect from a guy who owned stock in so many renewable energy companies?