by Ali Cross
I beamed back at her, feeling, knowing, that I would never, ever forget.
A sensation of need tugged at my heart—the draw to Midgard, the draw to fight for it, to protect it.
“Even now, Midgard calls to you,” Mahria said.
I looked at my mother, at Lucy and Freyja. “Yes.”
“Then you must go. You must never lose sight of your duty.”
“I won’t. I promise. But what about you? All of you?”
“We are where we belong,” Mahria said. “I am with my goddess, this is my eternal home.”
“And I will stay here also.” Lucy met Freyja’s gaze and I saw the hope shining within them. “Freyja’s been alone too long, but we will all be watching over you.” Lucy, glorious, perfect Lucy. It made me feel a million shades of wonderful to know she would be watching over me—she and my mother and grandmother.
“It seems we have much in common and I like sharing my home with a Valkyrie and an Ascended Gardian. Lucy is as fierce and loyal as any of my warrior handmaidens. She certainly knows how to keep me in line!” Freyja laughed, even Mahria tucked her head, mirth shining in her eyes, and I laughed out loud.
In a moment of abandon I threw my arms around Lucy’s neck. She rubbed my back and whispered, “I love you too, baby. I love you, too.”
Freyja moved to Lucy’s side. Reluctantly I stepped back, facing the three women before me; my mother, beautiful and proud; Freyja, shimmering with silver light, power radiating from her like a force field; and Lucy—the one who taught me what it was to love, what it was to have a friend.
“You know how to travel, now?” Freyja asked.
And I did.
I knew it all. Knew everything. I felt the universe spreading outward from my mind—as if it were an open book and all I had to do was focus on a single word to find it on the page. I felt Heimdall watching me. Knew Odin stood beside him, observing the progress of the battle which still raged on Midgard.
Knew Michael and the Gardians, and Fahria and the Valkyrie fought a new wave of Svarts and Giants. Knew the war was not going well and they were all so very tired.
I pulled my awareness back to myself and smiled at Freyja. She knew what I knew—I could feel it in her.
She stepped forward and took my hands in hers. “Be a faithful guardian, granddaughter. Celebrate all that you are. Perhaps you will be able to do what we were not.”
She pulled me into her embrace. I breathed in the scent of her—happiness and sunshine—and closed my eyes, letting myself be wholly there in that moment. To breathe with her.
She leaned back and squeezed my hands.
“Perhaps Midgard can finally have the peace it deserves with you as its caretaker.”
There was a time when I’d deny those words, deny that I could do anything close to taking care of anyone—let alone a whole world. But in my grandmother’s warm and confident voice, I found a new hope. I wanted to make her proud. To make all of them proud.
“I will try,” I said. And I knew that I would. For all my days, I would strive to bring peace to Earth.
Freyja let go of me and reached for Lucy. They stood, side by side, my mother with them, arms touching, a pillar of hope and strength created by three lives, three souls.
“Thank you,” I said. “I love you.” Love you all. Love you.
I pictured Earth, pictured the desert where my love fought for the world that was now my own.
“Wait,” Freyja said, reaching out and taking my hand, drawing me back to Vaneheim. “Don’t do it alone, Desolation. Don’t make the same mistakes I did, and Freyr. Embrace your love.”
My love.
I was already going. Already taking her advice. I didn’t want to be alone another moment. I smiled, bigger than I’d maybe smiled my whole life, and nodded. And then I sent myself across time and space and toward Michael. And once I found him, I would never, ever leave him again.
Sweat stung my eyes but there was no use in wiping it away as I’d already done a million times—there was no rest in this battle, no time to catch my breath. By turns I was frozen to the core by the passing of a Svart-blade, all ice and shivers, and toasted by the breath of a Giant that singed my eyebrows. Cold and heat beat against me, wearying me, weakening me as surely as any steely blow.
I feared we would not prevail. I felt it in my warriors, saw it even in the way the shi’lil now flew lower in the sky, no longer shooting like falling stars, but stumbling across the heavens. The mounted Valkyries’ arrows flew, first one . . . and then another. Slow enough that I could see their pathway to Earth. Not like before, when we first came to this fight, when their arrows flew like lightning, so swift and deadly.
More of us lay on the hard-packed desert floor than our enemy. And the enemy kept coming. Even now I felt like I swung my blade in slow motion as I watched Svarts pour from the sky like a river of blue ice.
It was then that I saw her from across the field—she appeared in a shower of rainbow light. Our eyes met across the death that lay between us, and then she was gone.
Huddled on the gravel, out of the way of the sprawling crowd that crawls up and down the skeleton stairs, I press my forehead to my knees and wonder how it will all end. Can I die if I’m already in Hell? Or am I already dead?
Something tells me I’m not dead—not yet. I’m not like those empty-eyed people going up and down the stairs. And now that I’m free of Helena, my thoughts are finally my own. I wish it had been like drugs—wish I couldn’t remember what had happened.
But I remember it all.
I feel deeply ashamed that I ever chose to go with the Ferryman—or woman. Helena had played me from the start and I didn’t know what she got from it except the cheap thrills of making a guy into a total tool.
What would Miri think of me now? Of how far I’ve fallen? I’m nothing. Less than nothing. A stupid guy, a tiny piece of cloth covering the essentials and gravel poking into my butt while I cry into a river of blood. The damned have never been able to find a way out of Hell—what made me think I could?
Desi will come for me.
Right?
I mean, she found me once—won’t she do it again?
Except I’d seen Helena’s handiwork first hand. I’d seen the way she could order someone’s death, or, with a thought, bring death all on her own. She is way more powerful than anything I’d seen Lucifer or Desi do. That chick was a world apart. Maybe Desi hadn’t even survived.
Maybe she’s dead and Michael’s dead and . . .
Maybe Miri’s dead.
As her name crosses my mind, as I picture her lying on that desert ground, her blood spilling out of her, my own blood freezes. Miri. I taste her death, test it for truth.
It doesn’t feel true.
Miri is alive. I know it. I can feel her—somewhere.
I force my foggy mind to think of her. To picture her face, her shining eyes. Feel her kiss on my lips, her body beneath my hands. I think of the way she crinkles her nose when I make her taste one of my culinary experiments and it isn’t any good. And the way she closes her eyes and moans with pleasure when she tastes something especially delicious. Man, the girl makes me feel alive. Even though it kills me—killed me—that we can’t be together in that way yet, I love her for it. Cherish the little glimpses of what making love to her will be like. I can wait for her.
I’d wait forever for her.
But I won’t live another moment without her.
Without knowing what to do, I jump up, refusing to acknowledge the bite of gravel in the soles of my feet. I stand tall at the edge of the river. The damned river that ruined my life. To my left, the river extends through a tunnel that runs under the shiny black granite mountain where Desi used to live. The glossy surface rises as high as I can see, occasional windows and balconies jutting out from the smooth surface. It freaks me out to think of Desi living in that place her whole life. A life that lasted an eternity.
To my right, the river disappears into a dark and shadowy tu
nnel cut into a very ugly, rocky cliff face. It was that direction that Hel had taken me in her little glass boat. I try to remember where we’d gone, but once crossing beneath the mountain, my memory . . . blinks out. The next thing I knew I was her little pet slave, cowering nearly-naked at her feet in the throne room.
Across the river from me, boulders lay strewn all across the beach. I remember taking tunnels and paths beyond that to find Desi. Not sure what else to do, I take a step forward. The water is freezing cold. Colder than the air, colder than Hell.
I bite back a cry and stand there like an idiot for a few seconds while I get up the guts to take another step.
The water feels . . . alive. For a second I think I see something shift out of it, like the fin of some blood red fish poking above the roiling surface. I swear I hear a voice in my mind shout Jump! I jump backward, stumbling onto the gravel beach.
I shut my eyes and try to think. How the hell can I get out of here? I crouch to the ground again, my head clutched in my hands. Desi, I think. Desi!
And then I start a constant chanting, screaming at the top of my mental lungs, my body quivering with the energy, with the work of it.
Desi! Desi! Desi!
I feel like I’m going to blow a capillary but I keep screaming. I stand up, scream to the sky.
“Desi!”
I grab at a passing crazy fat man, who reaches out to me, hold him by the shoulders and scream, “Desi!” at him so loud it should rupture his eardrums. Of course he keeps moving, keeps petting me in that weird and creepy way the people do here.
“Desi!” I cry again.
Desi! Desi! Desi!
I scream until my voice is raw and I can’t scream anymore. I scream with my mind until my brain feels like mush. I fall to the ground. Wrap my arms around my knees and rock like an idiot.
Desi!
Desi!
I fall sideways, stars popping behind my closed eyelids.
Desi!
A sudden, searing brightness of light flashes in my mind, followed by a crystal clear image of Miri laughing, the sunshine lighting her face, making her bright blue eyes sparkle like the fourth of July.
Desi.
I heard the whisper while I travelled. Desi.
Felt the pull even before I appeared on the packed sand of the battlefield.
Still wearing the smile I’d shared with Lucy and Freyja, my eyes sought Michael’s. I saw him—knew he saw me, too.
But the cry, my name, carrying the power of desperate need, could not go unanswered.
Desi!
And then I knew.
James.
James. It was James.
And so I had to leave before Michael, running now, could reach me. I’d promised to be with him forever, to never leave his side. But James cried for me again and I had no choice but to fly.
He feels so cold to my touch. As cold as the hard gravel he lies on. As cold as I had once been.
Colder.
I pull him into my arms. Feel the death that lies over him like a poorly made quilt.
I take him to the only person in all the worlds I know could heal him, if anyone ever can.
I take him to Miri.
I expected her to be in the desert, where I’d seen her last, but instead I found myself in the same one-room cottage where I’d discovered that demon Eleon and his vamp pet. It seemed like forever ago. Yet here I was, the cottage repaired, Miri propped up by a dozen pillows on top of a wide, white-draped bed.
Miri scrambled back against the headboard, a cry of alarm on her lips that quickly changed to a different cry altogether.
“James!” She rushed forward, jumping from the bed, hurrying to touch him, find him all right.
But he wasn’t all right.
I laid him on the bed and stepped back while Miri fussed over him. She looked at me then, her eyes pleading, so much need shining there I had to break eye contact. “Can you . . .?
“Please,” she added in a near-whisper.
My heart jumped into my throat, choking me. “I ca—” but Helena’s magic was at play here, things I still didn’t understand. The truth felt like a sucker punch and made me wonder what all this power, what the Genesis, was for if I had to stand by and watch my friends die. I shook my head in shame.
“What happened?” A girl stepped through the front door of the cottage and for a moment I didn’t recognize her. “I heard you screaming from the patio.
“Oh my gosh—Miri. Is he okay?”
Miri had thrown a blanket over James, but he still lay perfectly still. Perfectly pale. I reached out with my Halo and I knew he still lived—but barely.
“We’ve gotta get him to the hospital,” the girl said. She brushed past me as she made for the door, keeping her eyes down, avoiding touching me. I remembered her. Eleon’s pet. I searched my memory. Taige. “I’ll get the car.”
Images of her flashed before my eyes. In bed with Eleon, baring her sharpened canines at me, kneeling on the ground in worship before me.
Judgment tempted my senses, tried to disarm me, but with a gulp I pushed it down, pushed it away. Things were different now. People change. People can be better. I knew that better than anyone.
A car drove up to the front door and Taige jumped out, opened the back door and ran in. “Um,” she looked at James, then at me. “Can you, um . . . Excuse me, mistress?” She fell to her knees. “Forgive me, but can you—”
I grabbed her arm and pulled so she could stand. “I’m not your mistress. And I have much to apologize for. But right now, yes, I can move him.” I picked James up while Miri tucked the blanket all around him. She climbed into the very tight barely-there backseat of Taige’s silver sports car and I set James inside, his head in Miri’s lap. She cradled him against her chest and soothed him, whispered to him. Begged him to wake up.
Not knowing what else to do, I took the passenger seat and Taige backed down the driveway with speed and precision. It felt strange, surreal, to be sitting in a car next to her. Like either this wasn’t real or my time with Freyja hadn’t been real. How could so much have changed—everything have changed—in what felt like a heartbeat? In what felt like an eternity?
I realized I was still dressed like a Valkyrie, and giving no thought to what Taige might think, I willed my silly clothes to morph into the jeans and shirt that made me feel like me. Taige didn’t seem to notice. Not that it mattered, so many more important things had happened. I had died (again), met my mother, discovered I was the granddaughter of a god, learned to travel and see the universe all at once—everything had changed.
See the universe . . .
An idea struck me. I reached out with my Halo and felt Taige’s spirit—a generous soul who had seen and done so much evil in her short life, but who was doing everything in her power to set things right. She’d make it, too. I knew she would.
There was Miri—her spirit quivering with determination, hope, need, fear. I didn’t want to let her down.
And there was James. Except he wasn’t in his body; he stood on the rainbow Bridge, his hands in the pockets of his blue jeans, his hair mussed in that perfect style he loved, and a band shirt stretched across his chest. I stepped up beside him, appearing in my own jeans and black T; silver-penned Chucks on my feet.
“Hey,” I said as I stood so close to him our arms brushed. I faced the direction he was facing—and watched as Miri’s tears fell onto his lifeless face. “She’ll never forgive you, you know.”
A sad smile tugged at his lips. “No kidding. She seems all sweet and innocent, but the girl has balls. Once she decides she wants something, she pretty much doesn’t stop until she gets it.”
“She wants you to come back.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw James smile.
“I’ve never been able to say no to her.”
“Will you say no this time?”
He faced me then, and the smile slipped from his face to be replaced with a sad expression I recognized. The expression of gi
ving up. Of hopelessness. Of doubt.
“I don’t know,” he finally said. “I don’t know if I can give her what she wants. Or even if I should.” He dipped his chin and rocked back onto his heels.
“Cut it out, James,” I said. “Quit messing around and go back to her already.”
Questions filled his eyes along with his tears. “How?”
But he meant so much more than just, How do I go back?
He meant, How do I go back to normal after everything I’ve seen and done?
How can she love me when I threw myself at Helena?
How can I love her the way she deserves to be loved when I am who I am?
I thought of Taige then—of the sweet hope that radiated from her. I didn’t know where she’d gotten it from or how she’d managed it, but it was a beautiful thing. I shared my thoughts with James, let them sink into his awareness for a moment.
“Everything’s different, James,” I said. “But not everything has changed.”
He looked at me like I’d just spoken in a foreign language.
I took his hand, then pulled him into a hug. “I love you. I always have. Always will. But you and I? We’re not the same anymore.”
“I know,” he said. He choked and pressed his face against my shoulder.
“We’re not the same. We’re better.”
He stilled and I knew he was processing what I said, trying to make sense of it.
“Now, you’d better get back there and give that girl what she wants or she’s gonna kick your ass.”
He held on to me a minute longer before giving me a squeeze and pulling back. “Can I?”
“You can.”
“What about you?” And oh, James. He was as deep as an ocean. How had I ever missed how good he was?
“I’ve changed a little, too,” I said. And I let him see. Let him see all of me, my Halo, my hope, my love.