Paternus: Wrath of Gods (The Paternus Trilogy Book 2)

by Dyrk Ashton

  Everything is brighter and sharper. The sound of her feet pounding dirt and crunching gravel. The wind in her ears. The smell and taste of the air. And Mol keeps barking, more excited and encouraging.

  Peter shouts again from above, “That’s it! Believe in what you are, Fiona Megan Patterson—Finale Omega Paterna, last daughter of The Father. Firstborn!”

  Fi’s eyes scan the ground well ahead of her, automatically seeking the best route and foot placement, and her body reacts without thought. Faster and faster she goes. I can do this. I am doing this!

  Fi feels like she’s really breathing for the first time. Like she’s been barely sipping air her whole life, from underwater, through a straw. Wrapped in gauze, body, eyes, nostrils and ears, muffled and choked off—and she never knew. All her senses are piqued and raw. It’s almost overwhelming, and she feels a great swelling in her chest, her heart filling, her soul released, an incredible exhilaration and expanding of her mind—this has to be what “sublime” means. She sobs with joy.

  As swiftly as she runs, Mol sprints off ahead. He springs to the top of a pile of fallen rocks and down the other side. Fi would never have thought she could jump that high, but she does. Up, up she soars, and over—almost.

  Her toe catches on a rough spot of stone. With her heightened senses, she sees it coming. “Shit-shit-shit!” She crashes down the other side, which is deeper than she expected, tumbling head over heels, cracking her knees and elbows, bouncing over rough stone, which breaks upon impact with her body. Her head smacks against a rock. She rolls and skids at the bottom, kicking up dust.

  She lies there on her back, fully expecting to have broken every bone in her body, to be bleeding everywhere, to have a concussion, to find her palms and other extremities shredded with deep abrasions. But she feels no pain, and even now her breathing and heartbeat are stable. She looks at her hands, which should be raw, but there are no wounds. She feels out through her body, testing her arms and legs. Everything’s fine.

  Mol slaps her face with his wet tongue. “Ew, Mol!” She sit up and wipes her face, then presses her fingertips to her head where it hit the rock. No blood, no bump, no tenderness.

  The tone of Mol’s bark isn’t of concern, but even greater gusto, his tail wagging wildly. He barks again, and to Fi it sounds like, “Get up! Get up! Get up!”

  “Yoo-hoo!” Fi squints to see Peter, fifty yards away atop an outcropping of rock, waving. He spins and disappears down the other side, headed for the mountain. Fi leaps to her feet. Instead of injury or fatigue, she feels quite the opposite. Better, in fact, than she’s felt in her entire life.

  Mol nips her butt. “Hey!” she shouts, swatting him away. But it didn’t hurt, not in the slightest. He barks furiously. “Jesus, dog.” Then she sees how excited he is. “Okay, let’s do this.” She eyes the peak, sets her jaw, and runs like she’s never run in her life. Like no human being ever has.

  Fi abandons the ravine, taking the most direct route possible, regardless of obstacle or terrain. Higher and higher she goes, leaping crevices, hopping from boulder to boulder, sprinting over more level surfaces. The incline gets steeper, but she doesn’t feel it. She bears down and goes. Mol barks in the distance, falling further and further behind. A happy bark. She grins.

  She catches sight of Peter, climbing the rock face ahead. She grits her teeth and goes faster, faster. Every step, every handhold is exactly where it should be. She tells herself, I am a mountain goat! I am a monkey! I am the wind! Which makes her grin more, because it’s so silly. But that’s exactly how it feels.

  Peter looks down, shocked to see her gaining, then laughs and springs up even faster. He’s going to get there first, but Fi never expected to beat him, and she doesn’t care. It all feels so damned amazing.

  Almost to the top, Peter hops out to a jutting stone and leaps to a high handhold—and the rock he reaches comes loose. Even The Father isn’t entirely immune to earthly physics and loose stone. He drops to bounce down the mountainside.

  Fi’s immediate reaction is fear for him, then she remembers who he is. With renewed excitement she jumps, climbs and scrambles to the top.

  There, standing on the peak of the mountain, the world is hers. Her body buzzes with something more than adrenaline. She’s not exhausted, hot or shaky, but strong. She scans the landscape before her, and actually sees it, in all its vibrant reality, like she’s never seen anything before. So this is what it’s like to be Firstborn. H-o-l-y shit.

  There’s the scrape of stone below and Peter climbs to the top of a boulder. Mol bounds up beside him, tail wagging, barking up at her triumph. Then he howls, long and loud. Peter joins him, deep and resonating. Fi knows it’s crazy, but she howls as well, high, clear and powerful. They stop, listening to their cries echoing in the hills.

  “You let me win!” Fi shouts down to Peter.

  He shrugs, neither confirming nor denying. “I have nothing to prove,” he shouts back. Stroking Mol’s head, he says, “Now you don’t either!” He leaps back down the hill, heading back to the others. Mol barks one more time, flashes her a doggy grin, and follows him.

  Fi watches them go, then peers in the direction he’s headed. In the distance, much farther than she should be able to see through the wet air, she can make out the others. She focuses on her goofy Uncle Edgar, and Mrs. Mirskaya—Old Lady Muskrat, she used to call her. She knows they can see her too. Her heart sinks a little as she realizes Zeke’s not there. She really wishes he was.

  * * *

  Fi jogs up to the others, who are lounging on rocks, chatting. She picks up the rock Peter gave her earlier and squeezes. She kind of suspected it would, but she’s still surprised when it pops in her hand. She works her fingers, breaking it more, letting the pieces fall through her fingers.

  The looks of pride and approval on Edgar and Mrs. Mirskaya’s faces make the whole trial worth it. Pratha slinks to her and looks down into her eyes. Fi wants to back away, but holds her ground, as well as Pratha’s gaze.

  “How does it feel to be Firstborn?” Pratha asks. Her breath—Fi had forgotten. The scents of eucalyptus, lilacs, frankincense resin and musk. Fi wants to hate it, but it’s like a salve, soothing and seductive.

  “It’s amazing, I guess,” Fi replies. Pratha searches her eyes in a way that makes Fi think she can see things in there Fi doesn’t want her to—then Fi realizes she does want her to. She wants Pratha to know everything about her, and for it to be okay.

  “I’ll ask you again,” Pratha purrs, “in a thousand years.” She whisks past, toward the litter.

  Fi’s ripped from her reverie. The incredible lifespans of the Firstborn. That hadn’t occurred to her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  NORWAY

  NEW VANAHEIM

  Fi has taken Myrddin’s place at the litter. The load on her shoulder doesn’t bother her at all, and she only occasionally has to look at her feet as they run deeper into the interior of Norway, further from civilization of any sort, higher into the Scandinavian Mountains. Fi takes in the vales, mountains and trees, rugged and stunning.

  Mrs. Mirskaya speaks from beside her. “These mountains were once part of same range that is now in Scotland, as well as Appalachians in North America. Split when super-continent of Pangea broke apart, two hundred million years ago.”

  “I knew mountains were old, but that’s crazy old.”

  “I did not see it. I am much too young.”

  Fi grins at the thought of Mrs. Mirskaya being “young.”

  “Pratha was there,” Mrs. Mirskaya adds. “And Father, of course.”

  Even with the view and the exhilaration of the run with her newfound strength and endurance, Fi’s mind returns to how Pratha said she’d ask her how it feels to be Firstborn again in a thousand years, and how long Firstborn live. Every human being loses people they love. Parents to old age, friends and family to sickness and tragedy. She knows how it feels, having lost her mother when she was young, then Billy. But to know you’ll lose every
person you know. Watch them all wither away and die. If what they say is true, she could outlive Edgar, and, it occurs to her with a sinking heart, Zeke for sure.

  Will there be a day when she looks back and remembers Zeke as just a blip? A glimpse in her past, any feelings for him having drifted away in the ocean of time? She can’t imagine it. Of course, she’ll have to survive this war first. And so will Zeke.

  Before her thoughts have a chance to sink further into morbidity, Mol barks up ahead, and Myrddin shouts, “This is it!”

  They come to a halt and set the litter to the ground. They’ve been following a path of sorts, ill-used and barely there. Ahead it dead-ends in a T, the path going off to the left and the right, skirting the top of a ridge. Fi and Mrs. Mirskaya join the others at the ridge. Beyond is a deep barren vale, dreary with fog.

  “Freyja lives down there?” Fi asks. “Not quite what I expected.” The others shuffle and smile. “What?”

  “Can you see this?” says Myrddin, pointing at the ground.

  “I see a rock with moss on it.”

  “And over there? And there?” Two more stones on the ridge, one to the left, the other to the right, little different from others that scatter the ground.

  “More mossy rocks?”

  “Look again, Fiona,” says Mrs. Mirskaya, “with Firstborn eyes.”

  Fi doesn’t know what that means. “I...” Then she remembers how she can see the Truefaces of Firstborn even when cloaked if she focuses. She tries it, narrowing her eyes at the stone at her feet. A figure takes form on its surface, a Norse rune, glowing blue like organic matter under ultraviolet light. She checks the other stones. They have the runes as well, and there are more, lined up along the ridge, going as far as she can see in either direction through the woods and fog. “I see them.”

  Myrddin claps. “These boundary stones mark the edges of Freyja’s lair.”

  Edgar scoffs. “It is hardly a lair.”

  “I like to call it a lair.”

  “You would.”

  Mrs. Mirskaya ignores them. “Regular people do not see stones as they are. They also see what we see now, a barren vale. If they approach, and few do, fog is thick, and snow falls heavier in winter. There is nothing interesting, so they follow path around, or away. If they do enter, confusion overtakes them and they come back. From airplane, they see same thing.”

  “The vale is cloaked,” Fi says.

  “Is like cloaking, yes. Very difficult to do, and harder to sustain.”

  “Why do you talk in a Russian accent?”

  “What?”

  “I mean, it just occurred to me. You’re not Russian at all.”

  “Oh, that. Firstborn speak how we like. We can change it any time, but Russian is habit for me now. In modern age, is helpful for us to be foreign. Helps people ignore odd behavior.” She smiles slyly. “Like singing and playing bayan in store.”

  Fi returns the smile. Then Mrs. Mirskaya says, “Would you rather I look and talk like this?” Her visage shimmers and she’s in a blouse with a long skirt and floppy bonnet with a flower on it. Her voice is completely different too, a deep Southern accent, sweet as sweet tea. Fi goes pale. “Or perhaps it would be more suitable for me to appear like this, and converse in proper British English?” She sounds more formal than Edgar, and as she speaks, she takes on the appearance of a stern British schoolteacher.

  “Oh God, stop that,” Fi insists. “You’re freaking me out.”

  Mrs. Mirskaya shifts back to her usual form. “Better?”

  “Yes. Don’t do that anymore.” Fi shakes out the heebie-jeebies. “Jeesh. So weird.” Then she recalls, “Peter said I’ll be able to do that.”

  “Of course. A little. It will take time and practice.”

  To be able to change her appearance and her voice? Now that would be cool. Another Firstborn bonus to help balance out the whole “watching everybody die” thing. She’s not sure it’s worth it, though, now that she thinks about it.

  “If you two are through playing dress-up, and can possibly remain silent for a moment,” says Pratha. She holds her hand to the fog at the ridge and her lips move in a silent incantation. When nothing happens, she says, “The wards are surprisingly strong.”

  “What would you know about them?” Mrs. Mirskaya asks. “You have never been here.”

  After looking over the fog, as if examining a wall for cracks, Peter says, “No, the wards are compromised.” He walks forward and disappears in a swirl of mist.

  Mrs. Mirskaya pushes Fi through after him, and putting her nose up at Pratha, follows.

  Stumbling out of the fog, Fi sees Peter clasping forearms with a man, and conversing in an old Nordic tongue. The man appears to be in his early thirties, taller than Peter, with blond hair in a ponytail and eyes the blue of arctic ice. He’s dressed in casual outdoor clothing but with short sleeves, tight on his biceps.

  “That would be Brygun,” says Edgar, coming up beside Fi. “Or Trejgun. I cannot tell them apart.”

  “Neither can I,” says Myrddin. “Never could.”

  “Maybe Father can, but no one else,” Mrs. Mirskaya adds. “Freyja claims to, but I do not believe her.”

  Fi’s only partially listening, taken by the sudden change in the vale. The fog is gone and the sun gleams between white clouds in a perfect blue sky. It’s green as spring, with wildflowers of yellow, white, pink and blue. Birds flit and sing, enlivening the air. The vale is deep and long, shaped almost like a boat. Waterfalls froth white down the mountainsides, feeding a small aquamarine lake. In the basin are gravel paths and well-kept gardens, barns and livestock, wide open grassy areas, a stream, and what looks from here like kennels. But Fi’s eyes are drawn most to the building that sprawls at its center. Parts of it look like a castle, with spires and crenelated walls, the rest an expansive country manor. “Wow,” she says. “This is more like it.”

  Peter walks back to them. “It’s one of my favorite places on this earth,” he says, having heard Fi. He gazes wistfully at the valley. “I should have visited more often.”

  “How does she do it?” Fi asks.

  “Such is the power of Freyja,” says Edgar. “The White Witch, goddess of healing and fertility, as well as both love and war, etcetera. Freyja of the Black Swordhand, she is also called. Queen of the Valkyries.”

  “The shriveled wench,” says Pratha, looking down her nose at the castle.

  Myrddin says, “I think she’s—what would you say today, for ‘comely?’”

  Fi considers. “Gorgeous? Sexy? Smokin’ hot?”

  Myrddin’s eyes light up. “Yes, that.”

  Brygun, or Trejgun, whichever one he is, looks them over. His demeanor is stern, but his eyes narrow further at the sight of Baphomet. Then he sees Fi and there’s a nearly undetectable smile. To the group, he says in English, with a slight Norwegian accent, “Welcome to Ny Vanaheimr.” Due to her new skill with languages, Fi instinctively translates the words. From modern Norwegian, “Ny” means new, and “Vanaheimr” is an older Norse version of Vanaheim.

  As if reading her thoughts, Edgar says, “New Vanaheim.”

  Peter says, “Thank you Brygun.” Edgar glances at Fi. Now they know which one he is.

  “Come, let us retrieve your luggage,” says Brygun. “Freyja awaits.”

  * * *

  The group reaches the valley floor by way of a winding path they followed down the steep slope. A gravel driveway runs from over a rise on one side to continue toward the castle grounds, still some ways away.

  “Leave the litter. It will be fetched,” Brygun says. Even with her newly discovered strength, Fi’s still glad to be rid of it. She catches herself rubbing her shoulder, out of habit more than anything, because it isn’t sore. They were right. The mind is a powerful thing.

  They continue up the drive, Brygun leading the way. Two pairs of rabbits chase each other in circles in the grass alongside the road, stopping to wiggle their noses at them as they pass. There’s a deer as well, munchi
ng clover. A lean buck with perfect antlers. It doesn’t seem to care they’re near until Brygun smacks it on the rump. It jerks its head up, blinks its long-lashed eyes, then goes back to eating.

  The barking of dogs and meowing of cats comes from up ahead. They pass one end of a long stone building with a thatched roof. Beyond are more of them, with tall wire fencing between. Animal runs, spacious and clean. Some teem with dogs of all kinds, and others, cats. It’s a barking, yowling madhouse.

  A dozen men and women are trying to get all the animals into several large trucks, and aren’t having an easy time of it. They eye the newcomers suspiciously, even though Brygun is with them.

  Edgar says, “I cannot be certain, but I believe these are descendants of the immigrants of Asgard, brought back several thousand years after the Second Holocaust.”

  “Is true,” says Mrs. Mirskaya. “Their families have served Freyja for many generations. Most have gone to cities now, but some still live in nearby villages. Even those who have gone come back when Freyja needs them. They bring her the strays.”

  “Freyja was first and foremost The Mother of Cats and Dogs,” Edgar explains. “At least that’s the best translation we have in English today. It has a ring to it, I think. She has for many years taken in strays from the cities, animals injured, lost and neglected.”

  “That’s pretty awesome,” says Fi. “But why are they taking them away?”

  Edgar indicates one of the buildings ahead, crumbled and broken, the runs attached to it mangled and bent. “I imagine Freyja believes it is no longer safe.”

  The dogs grow quiet as they walk past, watching closely, sniffing the air.

  Fi asks Peter, “Is it you?”

  “Not this time.” He looks down to Mol at his side. “It’s him.”

  Peter stops, the others with him. Mol steps closer to the kennel and the dogs all take a step back. The ones on leashes that are giving the villagers trouble become still. The villagers look at each other in wonder.

  Mol ruffs at Edgar, who says, “You don’t need my permission, old boy.”