by Kira Brady
“Screw you.” A glint in his eye took her expletive and sent it somewhere she didn’t want to go. Beneath the biodiesel light, his pale skin glowed, delicious and otherworldly. He wasn’t human. He didn’t understand. And she’d let him in. She’d trusted him. Pain was a vise around her chest. She’d just made the biggest mistake of her life. “I am not aptrgangr.”
“You have a very strong spirit.”
“There is nothing controlling me but you! You know what? I don’t need this.” She grabbed her clothes and bag and headed for the door. “I’m not controlling aptrgangr or anyone else. I don’t own anyone. I don’t force anyone to do anything!”
“Calm down,” Leif said. He rose slowly. She couldn’t see past the haze of red. “Not by choice. I’m not saying you mean to, but the evidence—”
“Fuck that! You wouldn’t know the nose in front of your face. Did you know when you demand I do something that I have to do it? You’re so caught up in your own importance that you don’t realize how high and mighty you act. Do this! Don’t do that!” Her hands fisted at her sides. She wanted to lash out. He was a liar! “You are just like Norgard!”
It was the meanest thing she could think of to say, and the barb hit home like a tomahawk missile. She saw it fling through the air and hit him squarely in the chest. His head snapped back. He blinked and dropped his gaze to the floor.
Slamming through the door, Grace ran into the dark hallway, pulling on her clothes as she went. Leif’s shirt was a dress on her and it reeked of cinnamon, but he’d ripped her clothes. She had nothing else. She didn’t care what he thought about her. He was wrong. She would prove it.
Her feet carried her through the tunnels to the caved-in aerie. Far below, waves crashed against the cliff base, wrathful hands of a Mother Nature that hadn’t quite finished the job. The clouds rolled across the sky, not raining yet, but getting ready to unleash their next attack.
She punched her fist at them. Damn the sky gods. Damn the Kivati’s dark Lady and the Drekar’s pantheon of dead deities. Who had come when the Gate crashed down? Who had woke in their hour of need to save the world from the final apocalypse? Who had shown mercy when her parents died or after? No one. She made her own luck. She was her own strength.
It was weak to depend on power mad spirits and immortal warriors alike. When your back was against the wall, there was no one to count on but your own two fists. She might be tied to that hated malachite ring, but she’d be damned if she was responsible for anyone else. She ruled her own mind. Her body, no. But her mind was her own. Her heart was definitely not some dead goddess’s.
What would it mean if she didn’t have her own emotions all this time? Would Tiamat, the mother of all dragons, feel love for her soulless children? Had her teenage crush on Norgard been just a reflection of Tiamat’s feelings?
Had her feelings for Leif been real or completely fabricated? A lie, like everything else.
And Leif’s strange attraction to her, was it her, or the slave bond, or the pull of like to like, dragon to dragon, his subconscious recognition of his goddess within her?
She stumbled up the stairs along the edge of the cliff and let her anger sweep her around the ruins of the factory. The brick gothic building perched there like a mausoleum. The spiderweb windows watched her. The screen door laughed. Grabbing her bike off the fence, she rode past the Drekar guard and headed south. White-tipped waves chopped up Lake Union. Trees full of crows cackled at her as she rode over the foot of Queen Anne. The Needle Market slowed her down.
Move it! she thought furiously, but if she had any god-powers inside her, they didn’t work on living creatures. The crowds did not magically part in a red sea of fury.
Of course they didn’t. She did not have the Heart of Tiamat inside her. She was not possessed!
Once amid the steel bones of downtown, the wreckage of civilization slapped her in the face again. There were no gods. No compassionate ones, at any rate. She could well believe in primordial chaos, for it looked like someone had tried to drag civilization back there. Forces of destruction, pain, vengeance. These were alive and well in the world. She passed the brothel and the secluded opium dens in the haunted alleys of Pioneer Square. People would try anything to pull the wool over their eyes. She had never run from the truth. Her mind was her own.
She turned the corner and ran into a pack of aptrgangr. How easy it was. Wherever she went, there they were. She wanted a fight, they came to dance. It never occurred to her that others might not find it the same. Did she call them to her? Did she somehow draw them near with this magic woo-woo, the zombie queen gathering her army?
If she wasn’t the Reaper, her whole identity was lost. Grace Mercer, pied piper of the dead.
She jumped off her bike. It fell against a nearby grate with a clang. The aptrgangr didn’t jump. They circled with their too-blue skin and their too-white eyes and their grave-dirt nails just waiting to claw her veins out of her skin. Too many. Where did they all come from? Had she really called them here with her need for a fight?
“I’m not your mommy,” she said. She raised her bone knife and slipped an iron needle free from her brace. “But you’ll do what I say, because I’m a badass motherfucker.”
The aptrgangr approached.
She waded in. The iron burned in her fist until she plowed it into a body. The bone knife cut through the crowd like a scythe. She didn’t think. Kick. Swipe. Stab. Rinse. Repeat. Moving until her muscles burned and her back pressed up against the cold brick wall and still they came. So many. More than she’d ever faced before. Stupid. Suicidal.
Unless she really did have Tiamat’s Heart inside her.
Maybe her subconscious was trying to tell her in the only way she would understand. Here, back against the wall, unbeatable odds, she was faced with a choice: find her inner goddess or die trying.
Her mother would be ashamed of her. Think, she would say. Use your head. What a waste. And she’d cluck her tongue.
You Kim women are too stubborn to give up, her father would say. Tiger women.
Grace let the bone knife fall from her fingers and clatter to the ground. She was dimly aware of bruising and bleeding and pain leeching through her poor body. She closed her eyes as the undead swayed toward her. She took a deep breath, calmed her mind, and listened. An aptrgangr wrapped its arms around her chest. Her breath whooshed out of her lungs as the monster squeezed. In that moment, she looked inward, beneath the skin and muscle and bone to the metaphysical plane, where she found the mechanical bulwark caging her heart. The iron plates were riveted shut against pain and sorrow. She was impenetrable. A fortress against the dark. Nothing went in.... Nothing got out.
Her head started to spin from lack of air as the aptrgangr tightened its hold around her ribs. Quickly, she threw her will into popping the rivets and throwing open the iron plates. A burst of divine blue fire shot out, searing along her nerve endings to the tips of her toes and fingers, and in its wake burned rage. The aptrgangr who crushed her chest burned immediately to ash.
Power, ye gods, the power. She could evaporate oceans with it. Crumble mountains. Seize empires. Slay gods.
Vengeance, the Heart screamed in her mind. The malevolent presence was something wholly foreign to Grace’s being, yet sickeningly familiar. She could feel its call for retribution like it was her own. That pulsing drive that had carried her through five years in Norgard’s service, that had given her a reason to live and fight, that had driven her on when all hope seemed lost, crystal clear as a pealing church bell, here it lay. A thousand times stronger. How long had Tiamat’s Heart been trapped inside her? How long had she relied on Tiamat’s hate to propel her forward? Were any of her emotions her own?
Pain poured through her as fire roared out. She couldn’t hold it. With Tiamat’s eyes, she saw the world in a different light. Narrowed blues and greens, like a dragon. The aptrgangr horde swayed back from the force. In her eyes, they sparkled with the Aether of their wraith souls.
&nbs
p; “Get back!” Grace screamed, and to her amazement, they did. And still the fire raged. Ye gods, it hurt every poor mortal cell in her poor mortal body. Tears leaked out of her eyes. She couldn’t contain it. Couldn’t stop it. Her body was a beacon for an otherworldly flame that threatened to turn her to charcoal.
She could feel the Heart trying to take over her mind. Slippery as an eel, it sent shadowy tentacles across her body. The images of a hundred aptrgangr she’d fought flashed through her head. All this time they were called not by her skill with the knife, but by her unholy possession. Tiamat inside her. The zombie queen.
Never. No wraith is going to take me over while I still live.
Her revulsion gave her an edge. With her last remaining strength, she reached out to the runes inked across her skin and pulled the Aether through them. Tiamat’s Heart shrieked in one last blast of blue flame, and the surrounding aptrgangr disintegrated in a cloud of black ash. The burst of power—bright light against Tiamat’s dark presence—gave Grace just enough juice to slam shut her iron defenses again.
And then it was gone, and she was done. And somehow, miraculously, she was still alive. She shook so hard her teeth rattled in her head. Her knees gave way, and she slumped down the wall to hit the dirty ground. Her bones chattered. Her vision was blurred, but it had returned to her normal, human color palate. Grey, charred brick. The grey of the cloud-strewn Seattle sky. Grey and grey and grey.
And suddenly green.
Vibrant green eyes peered into her own with an intensity that anchored her. Blond locks above and a crimson coat below, but those eyes were all she needed. Leif. His hands rubbed her arms. He crooned something. She couldn’t hear for the roaring in her ears. She couldn’t talk; her throat had been burned raw.
Slowly, so slowly, feeling came back, hearing came back. She clung to those green eyes as the world shifted around her—a new world she didn’t understand. Truths she didn’t want to know, but not knowing didn’t make them any less true.
“It’s okay. You’re okay,” he crooned. “Let’s get out of this rain.”
She hadn’t noticed the water falling from the sky. Her hair dripped into her eyes. She still wore his linen shirt, now torn and bloodstained, and it clung to her chest as he lifted her. The torchlight of the nearby shop cast his face in sharp relief. He seemed otherworldly and a little fierce. If there were still aptrgangr in the area after Tiamat’s blue fire, they wouldn’t stand a chance against him.
She hated him seeing her vulnerable, shocked to her core. It was easier to be weak when she was pouring blood out a head wound. But this injury was inside her. She would give anything to get it out. Leif said nothing as he carried her through the empty, waterlogged streets. Letting herself rest against his chest, she listened to his heart’s steady beat. One heart, one pulse. He hummed a deep, soothing melody that she didn’t recognize.
She’d survived the fire of the gods. The goddess of all wraiths curled around her heart like a shadowy leech, but it had failed to take over Grace’s mind. She’d won, but at what price? How long had she been ignorant to the monster inside her? She felt soul-stained. It was worse than any beating she’d ever encountered. Worse even than that terrible night when she’d fought Norgard’s strongest mercenary and pledged her soul to Norgard’s use.
Fuck Norgard. Had he known then what lived inside her? Had all these runes he’d inked across her skin been nothing more than an elaborate magic trap? Not to keep the wraiths out, as she’d thought, but to keep the chaotic force of Tiamat’s Heart in.
Why hadn’t she ever noticed her irregularity? Shouldn’t she have known if she was possessed?
Possessed.
And there was Thor’s Hammer right in front of her with its blue Dutch door and its wards carved in the frame that kept out the dead and damned.
“I can’t go in there!” Panic and bile rose in her throat. She was barred from her home. What if even the cat hissed at her now? She couldn’t bear it. “Let me go!” She struggled against Leif’s hold, and he set her down gently on the broken sidewalk. She stumbled to the gutter and dry-heaved. “Get it out! Get this thing out of me! I’m not possessed. I’m not—”
She reached for her knife, and Leif caught her up. “None of that.”
“Get it out.” The plea slipped out of her bloodless lips. More like a sob than a proper sentence. She rubbed her mouth with the back of her sleeve. She felt dirty. Bruised and bloody and ash-covered she could live with. But this was a thousand times worse than Norgard’s soul-sucking. She was possessed. There was a demonic entity inside her. Controlling her. She hadn’t thought her situation could get any worse, but she was wrong.
“You have survived this long with the Heart in you. A little longer won’t hurt. You are stronger than you know.” Leif helped her stand and hobble to the door of Thor’s Hammer. “You have not changed. Those wards are yours. They didn’t keep you out before, and they won’t now. They are keyed to you—”
“And the Heart.”
“Yes.” He unlocked the front door with a skeleton key and guided her through.
Bear met them. He sat and watched her with those big soulful eyes. Grace’s lower lip trembled. She reached for him, and he bolted out the front door. She burst into tears.
“Calm down,” Leif said. “It will be okay.”
She turned on him and drew her knife.
Chapter 20
Leif stared at Grace. Even angry and frightened, she was breathtaking. Eyes shooting sparks, passion in their depths. Strong and determined not to give an inch, but the knife in her hand shook the slightest bit. He wanted her soft and pliable, breathy and waiting under him. Wanted to dominate her, because a spirit so vibrant and strong couldn’t be chained. The challenge of it called to his ancient, hungry bones.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she spat. “Don’t patronize me. Don’t—”
“Shh,” he said.
“Don’t tell me to shush!” Her cheeks stained red. Her small chest drew shaky breath after shaky breath. “You have no idea what it’s like to have a soul inside you.”
His lips twisted in a wry smile. “No. But that is another issue entirely.”
The knife dropped from her hand. “There is no proof the Heart is inside me.” He could see the lie in her eyes. A battle for the truth warred inside her small, tough body. She fumbled with the pocket of her pants and pulled out the Deadglass on a long brass chain. Hands shaking, she pushed it toward him. “Take it. Just . . . look at me, damn it. Tell me what you see.”
“I’ve already looked at you through the glass once—”
“Look again,” she snapped. “Please.”
Accepting the Deadglass from her cold fingers, he put it to his eye and adjusted the gears. “I see a beautiful woman. Your soul sparkles with a thousand tiny stars. The runes on your skin glow white as the Aether flows through them, creating a web around your body that the Deadglass can’t penetrate.” He lowered the glass. “I’m sorry. There is no giant flag waving the Heart’s location in your chest. If there were, my brother would have noted it long before now. He never tried to tap into Tiamat’s powers. He risked your life sending you out to do battle with his adversaries. All signs indicate that he never realized the true nature of your curse.” Leif couldn’t take the distance between them anymore. Grace stood stiff as marble. He put his hands on her shoulders and rubbed the shocked, frozen muscles. She couldn’t withstand her inner battle and him at the same time. He circled around her—kneading, petting, gentling her like a hissing cat—and felt pleased when she let him. Her body trusted him, even if her mind fought him off.
It wasn’t him she raged at. Let her use him as an easy target. She needed someone to pin this on, and he didn’t mind if it was him, as long as he was useful. As long as he could be helpful to her. He had so much to make up for.
“Norgard wore the Deadglass monocle,” she whispered. “He should have seen it.”
“He saw something dark inside you, because you said he dre
w the first rune. But your natural shields must have trapped the Heart first. You beat her all on your own.”
He pressed her back to his front and held her hands in each of his, not enclosing like a jail, but pressed together like a wall she could lean against. He let her work her way around the matter. There was no other way. Sometimes he got like this when there was a particularly difficult problem that needed an elegant solution, too elegant, too terrifying to come at straight on. He needed to sidle around to it, let the answer slowly dawn on him like a warm sunrise. The truth was light. Even a fire, terrifying and dangerous, could be a weapon or a cure in the right hands.
“I’m not stronger than a goddess,” Grace whispered.
“You’re a survivor, Grace. Nothing has changed about you. Every bit of knowledge gives you power, not Tiamat.” Leif held her shaking and folded her into his embrace. Like a flower that bloomed in the ashen, cracked ground, she would adapt. She would grow. Still, he wished he could take this terrible burden from her. He hummed deep in this throat.
“You’re doing it again,” she said.
“Am I?”
“Hmmm. I wouldn’t feel like this without your dragon drugs.”
“Of course not.” He waited a beat. “How do you feel?”
“Like my knees are jelly.”
He held all her weight against him and pressed his nose into her silky hair. She smelled of smoke and herbal shampoo. “You are a rock.”
“Jelly all the way up to my fingertips,” Grace said. “Jelly and quivering and . . . what are you doing?”
He nibbled behind her delicate shell of an ear. “Hmm? This?”
“It tickles. I don’t need you to hold me up.”
“Nope, you don’t.” He still held her, and she let him. He worked around to her side and slid his arm down to swipe her legs out from under her. Gently, gently. Picked her up with a little “oof!” and kept her distracted the whole time. His lips brushed her cheeks and kissed the corners of her lovely wide eyes. He worked his lips over her eyebrows and around to the other ear, skipping down to her chin, feathering kisses along her swanlike neck. He could feel her succumbing. Could feel her leave the battle of her soul and slide into that heated place where touch and taste were the only truths.