“Helreggin,” he hissed, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking and it made him angry.
“Brynn,” I corrected.
“You really don’t know me?” He inspected my face, obviously for some evidence of a lie.
“I said as much, didn’t I?”
He laughed then, the bitter sound reminding me of the edge of that shiny sword Astrid had. “The gods are conspiring against me. I really wanted you to know why I’m punishing you.”
I flashed back to my negotiation training and knew I had to keep him talking until I could figure a way out of the situation. “So why don’t you tell me? What is it that you think I need to be punished for?”
He leaned in nearer to me, our faces only inches apart. I could feel his breath on my lips. “Look hard, Darkyrie.”
“What am I supposed to see?”
“My goddamn face.”
His scars. “And you believe that’s my fault?”
He grabbed my hair and jerked my head back hard. “Believe?” he snarled. “You invaded my village with your war wolves and executed my mother. You set our hut on fire all in defense of your god.”
Feeling crept slowly back into my feet, my fingers. His rage had started to crack whatever control he’d held over me.
“Look at my credentials. My badge. I’m a cop. Detective Brynn Hill. I came here to follow up a lead on Astrid Johanson and the homeless vets she’s been killing. I have never seen you before.” I spoke in a soft, soothing tone and reiterated my previous points gently, but firmly.
“Your father’s mortal name was Erik Hill—”
Oh, fucking fantastic. Another whack job obsessed with my father’s macabre fame. Then he said something that shocked me from my inner diatribe, but I was sure I couldn’t have heard him correctly.
“What?” I demanded.
“Pay attention, Darkyrie,” he commanded and the way his voice wrapped around me again, I couldn’t have disobeyed if I’d wanted to. “He’s in the lightning.”
In the lightning.
I’d believed it for so long, taken comfort in the storm, felt close to my father when the skies opened up with all the fury of hell. The storms in this part of the country were like nowhere else and that’s why I’d stayed in Kansas City. Especially on an April afternoon when the sky would turn curious shades of greens and yellows and tornadoes would spew forth tearing at the ground, the horizon, and anything that stood in their paths. They were especially lovely cloaked in rain and thunder—and the lightning I knew carried my father.
He couldn’t know. He just couldn’t. Lightning was an easy comparison to make after my father had been electrocuted. Yet even as I had these thoughts, I knew the time for disbelief had passed. I’d experienced things this morning that were outside the realm of human reality, but I’m not human. I never have been. Whoever this man was, he wanted me dead.
“The light of understanding blooms bright in your eyes, Darkyrie. Do you know who you are?”
I considered shooting him, but my bullets had been worth exactly shit with Astrid. I had to make him angry to get him out of my head and escape.
“What I am,” I wet my lips as I spoke, “I hunt the things that go bump in the night, pretty boy. If I did kill your mother and burn your home, what did you do to deserve it?”
My words had the desired effect and the strange paralysis that gripped me shattered with his rage. I used that opportunity to bring my knee up hard into his groin. Whatever creature he was and whatever his power, he was still male.
He doubled over briefly, but it was long enough for me to launch myself forward and send him crashing to the hard cement. I straddled him, my knee in the small of his back and pushed my fist into his neck to keep him immobile while I cuffed him.
I had a shield guard in my pocket used to protect us from direct contact with bodily fluids when rendering CPR and when he opened his mouth presumably to threaten me, I shoved it inside. His power was obviously in his voice and I wasn’t taking any chances. I ripped a strip off his t-shirt and tied it around his mouth.
If Grimes ever bothered to make an appearance, I’d say the perp had been spitting. Of course, I’d have to find a way to pry that shield guard out of his mouth before we got to booking. Maybe I’d just shove the spit hood over his head, but I had to keep him from… What the fuck was I thinking? I couldn’t take him to booking; I couldn’t—or rather didn’t know how to—kill him. What the fuck was I going to do with him?
Damn it, where was Grimes?
I shook that thought off. What could Grimes possibly do to help me? I a shield maiden of the underworld, Queen of Hel. Grimes was just a human. If I’d been human too, I might have wished for my father. For his voice, his guidance, his knowledge. He’d know how to kill this motherfucker. He knew how to kill everything.
Maybe killing this guy seemed a little extreme, but he’d already said he was going to torture me, take my life. He obviously had the tools to do it and I had no knowledge of how to defend myself because I hadn’t come in to any of my power yet.
Containment was going to be a challenge, maybe even impossible. I could try to knock him out and run like hell until I had a chance to regroup, figure out what the fuck was going on and exactly who he was—and more importantly, how to kill him.
“Damn it, Hill. What are you doing?” Grimes’ voice startled me and I looked up to see him in the entryway with his gun drawn.
“What’s it look like? I’m subduing a perp and he’s resisting.” But he wasn’t. He hadn’t struggled at all. Now, other cops would have seen this as a stroke of luck, but not me. In the five minutes I’d talked to this guy, I knew he’d never give up.
“Is that a gag?”
“He was spitting.” I hopped off him and dragged him to his feet, taking care not to meet his eyes when I spun him around.
Shit was about to pop off. My captive had some reason to comply and whatever it was, I was sure I wouldn’t like it.
“Why didn’t you call for back up?” Jason never lowered his gun.
“Because you were already supposed to be here.” I scowled.
Jason closed his eyes for a moment. “Did you see Astrid?”
“I did.” She’d fucked my world up but good, hadn’t she?
“And?” His tone was expectant and the way he said her name… it set off warning bells.
“And what?” I narrowed my eyes at him, studying him more closely. What sort of answer was he looking for? Had he been part of this?
He fired his weapon without warning and the strange, scarred man with the beautiful voice crumpled, surprise scrawled on his twisted face and dark green blood pooling around him.
“Run!” Jason snarled.
CHAPTER THREE
“What the hell was that?” I demanded as Jason shoved me into his car.
“A clusterfuck, that’s what.” His familiar face was set into cold stone, even his blond hair not daring to move out of place.
“Not really an answer, Grimes.”
He shoved the key into the ignition and as soon as the engine roared to life, he tore ass out of there. Jason didn’t look at me and didn’t speak further.
“Where the fuck were you? I could have died.” When all else fails, play the guilt card. I didn’t use it often, but with Grimes, it was my ace in the hole.
“No, Hill. You’re a goddamn Darkyrie. They don’t die, they just get angry.” He swung the car around a corner and bumped my head on the window.
The one man I thought had been a constant had lied to me. About everything. He knew what I was. Who I was. He’d obviously set me up to be alone with Astrid. I still didn’t know if what she’d done to me would help me or hurt me in my ascension. She was a Valkyrie, and as a Darkyrie, I was her polar opposite. I had no reason to trust her and she had no reason to help me. And Grimes… damn Grimes. He’d betrayed me. Something in my chest twisted, but it couldn’t have been my heart because it was gone and after Thora, my father had promised I’d never have to fee
l anything I didn’t want to again. He always kept his promises.
If I’d been a different sort of female, I might have cried. But there would be no tears. No demonstrations of feeling. I’d do what I had to do until I could get somewhere safe.
“Slow down. Jesus.” I had so many questions, but I wasn’t going to ask him. I was going to take it all in stride and excise him like a cancer. Betrayal burned like a branding iron even after I’d decided to cut off any emotion.
I’d let him inside, I’d even told him about my father. Granted, he would have found out eventually, he was a cop, but I’d confided in him. I hid my rage in the cloak of my usual unfazed demeanor.
Stupid me, I’d thought having a partner was my one chance to have a semi-normal social connection with another person. I thought I could trust him. My fucking mistake. He had lied to me. Of course, what else could I expect?
“If Dakyries don’t die, then why are we running from tall, scarred and really pissed off?”
“An exception to every rule and that ash bullet won’t keep him down long. They call him The Cross. He’s an assassin. And a siren.”
“A siren? Are you fucking kidding me? I thought they were women?”
“He’s the son of Parthenope and Alexander the Great. His song is powerful enough to make you wish you were dead.”
“Let me guess, a siren’s song is one of the only things that can kill a Darkyrie?” I rolled my eyes. This just kept getting better and better.
“Or a Valkyrie like Astrid, if you were curious. But he didn’t kill her. He just sent her back to Valhalla.”
“Great. We know what kills me, what kills him? How do I stop him?” I hadn’t meant to ask him anything, but it would be stupid not to arm myself in any way I could.
“You don’t.”
“Fuck that. Come on.” Really? Everything had to die.
“I don’t know, Brynn.” He shrugged as he turned the wheel sharply and this time I crashed into him. “Will you put on your goddamn seat belt?”
“I don’t understand why you’re so angry. You’re the one who lied to me.” I buckled the belt.
“And you don’t need to. Not yet.”
Thanks for that, Mr. Cryptic. Like I needed more cloak and dagger bullshit on my mind. But I knew I wouldn’t get any more out of him than what he wanted to tell me, so I changed tactics. “Where are we going?”
“I haven’t gotten that far yet. We have to assume he already knows where you live and everything about you. If he knows about you, then he must know about me. I have a house in—”
“Wait, you’re talking like I’m going into witness protection and I’m running from this guy indefinitely.”
“You are,” Jason said, his jaw set like it had been carved from marble.
“Bullshit.”
“What part of he’s going to kill you was unclear?” Jason grabbed my shoulder and shook me as he spoke to punctuate his point like I was some vapid, air-headed damsel in distress who was too stupid to tie her own shoes.
“What part of Queen of Hel was unclear?” I shoved his clenched fist from my already torn shirt. I sincerely fucking doubted a queen of anything as cool as Hel would run from some immortal pissed off choirboy. Even as I made the comparison in my head, I knew instinctively the Cross was more than that, but I refused to be afraid.
“But you’re not, Brynn. You’re nothing like the Helreggin I knew. She would have already crushed him under her boot. And you…this incarnation.” He scowled, his lip curled with disdain. “You just stood there, under his spell.”
Jason spit this last part at me with such venom. His voice echoed with the disgust I’d heard in my father’s when he talked about the prey. He’d known me in my last incarnation, obviously. And he found this one lacking.
“I suppose I did. But you’re nothing like what I thought you were either, Grimes.” I almost choked on the words, but I was too much of a hardass to let something petty like emotion keep me from saying what I wanted him to hear.
“Yeah?” He didn’t even look at me. He didn’t give a damn what I had to say, but I was going to say it anyway.
“Yeah,” I tossed back at him quietly. “You were what kept me in my cage.” I didn’t give a fuck what he knew about me now, the real me. The me I was under my skin. He thought he knew it all already. “I thought you were a good man. Every time I wondered why I had to protect them—humans—I looked at you. But that wasn’t real, was it? So fuck them.”
He turned to look at me now, a pained look on his face.
“And fuck you.”
“Brynn—” Jason started.
Suddenly, I couldn’t stand it. The closeness of him. The claustrophobia of betrayal. I didn’t want to hear the sound of his voice, smell his cologne or look at his face. I had to get away from him. When he slowed to a stop at a red light, I flung the door open and ran. I didn’t know where I was going, I didn’t much care.
I wanted to go home. Not my loft across from the Folger’s Plant, but home. For one horrible instant, I wanted my father. Daddy. He’d know how to fix everything. How to kill everything. How to make my world bright and pure again. There was much to be said for drawing in only black and white.
I knew I couldn’t do that. Childhood was dead and I was no dewy-eyed girl. I was a monster full-grown. For a moment, I hated everyone who made me feel anything, especially Jason. My father for leaving me alone. For a moment, I was drunk on misery moonshine, and just like any rotten bathtub brew, I was ready to spew it over the next thing that crossed my path. I swallowed it down like bile and turned the faucet of emotion off. It dribbled like a rusty spigot, but it was enough relief that I could function.
Instead of going home, I decided to go to Kami’s—a privately funded safehouse/boarding school for abused kids. It was a favorite cause for my department and while I was putting in my mandatory time, I discovered not only were kids easier to deal with than adults, but it was prime hunting ground. Whenever I needed reassurance about the way the world worked and my place in it, I went to Kami’s.
I avoided the little ones. Babies always reminded me of Thora. Of what I’d lost. That was too much like taking a wrecking ball to the wall I’d built and I couldn’t have that. I liked the older kids the best, anyway. They could tell me about who’d hurt them—set those who’d trespassed against them in my sights. The little ones had enough people who cared for them, wanted them. It was the others that slipped through the cracks; that sometimes ended up with blank switchplates where their humanity should be—just like my father.
I walked back to my car first to change my shirt—sure the Cross was long gone. He’d want to stay mobile. He’d be sure that Jason wouldn’t have let me return to the scene.
It wasn’t that far a drive to Kami’s and as I pulled into the parking space in front of the main gate, I saw I was just in time. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was going on.
Fifteen year old Angela Crane stood on the steps to the dormitory, sobbing, her blond hair whipping around her tear-stained cheeks. Her thin sweater buttoned over the small bulge of a pregnant belly that could still pass for adolescent chubbiness. There was a man at the gate, tall, also blond, clean cut and professional in a designer suit and GQ haircut. A BMW sedan was the only other car in the lot and the personalized license plate read “Dr L.”
He’d never do any time. He was a doctor and Angela was his stepdaughter. He’d been slipping into her room at night and raping her since she was twelve. He’d plead down, get probation. Even though the girl was pregnant with his child, although that was something she hadn’t told him yet.
Angela had confessed this to me as well as the fact he’d been sneaking onto the grounds and trying to talk her into recanting, saying she’d lied about everything. Angela said he’d killed her older sister, that she’d watched him do it when she’d threatened to tell. I’d checked her story out and her older sister Kelly was listed as missing.
I approached with my hand on my gun and my
credentials out.
He looked up at me, tears glistening in his eyes. He’d managed to cry as pretty as any stage actress. But I knew him for what he was.
“I just want to see my daughter,” he pleaded.
“I understand that,” I replied. “But that’s for the court to decide. Until then, there’s a restraining order against you. You can’t be here.”
Something shifted on his face, almost like something slithering beneath his skin—something only I could see. Recognition bloomed, he belonged to me, but I didn’t need that otherworldly click in my psyche to know that. I’d already decided.
“Angela,” he pleaded, turning his attention back to his victim.
She sobbed harder.
“Go back inside, Angela. Everything’s okay.”
“It’s not okay. It won’t be okay until you come home. Until you tell everyone that you lied. After your sister… Your mother is so sick, she—” he said.
I didn’t let him finish. I grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the gates. I’d heard pederasts use that same argument at least a hundred times. “Dr. Larkin, do you want to have this conversation with handcuffs or without them?”
He backed away from the gates and then turned his charm on me. “I apologize. This has just been so hard for us. You have to understand, I’m not upset with her. I know I’m a safe place for her to project everything that’s happened to her. Someone at school hurt her. I work with kids like this all the time. I know she’s suffering and I just want to help her.”
James Larkin was good, I’d give him that. He said all the right things that would fool any expert. But not me. Because I didn’t judge him based on of what had come out of his mouth—I judged the subtler things. Like his body language, his micro expressions, and that extra sense that told me what he was. I knew I’d been sent here for a reason. Exactly the sort of vindication I’d been looking for.
“I know you do, Dr. Larkin. Why don’t you come with me to the Liberty Memorial Park and we’ll talk about how you can best help Angela?”
Waking the Queen Page 3