“Lied to?”
“Yes, my Champion. Lied to, used, discarded as so much garbage. The choice has simplified, now. Either we fight the rebels, tooth and nail, and carve out a place for ourselves without assistance from other quarters, or we withdraw from the game altogether.”
All motion in the throne room stopped, the queen was halfway out of her throne, the courtiers stood with mouths open—mid-gasp, mid-exclamation.
“I don’t want to remember this!” cried Luka.
Thirty-four
“I don’t want to remember about this either!” cried Luka. “Never again! Stop dragging these memories to the fore!”
I shook my head. “I didn’t. You did.”
Luka shook his head violently from side-to-side. “No! I hate to recall that day. I refuse to relive that day!”
“The people who betrayed her,” I murmured. “They were the Plauinn—the same two who hold her captive as we speak.”
“The Plauinn!” Luka’s face scrunched with scorn. “The Plauinn don’t exist, Hank. They are boogeymen out of legend, and that’s the whole of it.”
I shook my head. “I wish they were, but they are as real as you and me, and far, far more powerful than either of us.”
He turned a bleak stare on me, but his gaze reflected uncertainty. “How could the Plauinn have betrayed her? She knows nothing of them.”
“You are probably right,” I said with a weary sigh. “From what someone told me, the Plauinn appeared to Hel as voices in her head. They manipulated her by telling her about future events but lying about the motivations of the actors. Your brother, for instance.”
Luka scoffed. “No, Meuhlnir was—”
“Love motivated Meuhlnir. His love for Suel, his love for you… Sif and Yowrnsaxa always had Suel’s best interests at heart. Frikka, Freya, as well. Veethar—all of them—they mourn the day you were recalling there. They don’t celebrate it as a victory. It breaks their hearts every time they think of this day.”
“No! Don’t be so gullible, Hank! They—”
With a sigh, I took him to my memory of the day we’d reached Suelhaym while on our trip to the Herperty af Roostum and let it play out.
Thirty-five
The sun flirted with the mountains girdling the western horizon as we crested the last rise and glimpsed the city stretching out along the shore for what must have been miles and miles. Suelhaym. “Bigger than I thought,” I said.
“You should have seen it before the war,” said Sif in a wistful voice.
Muddy red tiles capped the buildings, and smoke from cook fires billowed skyward. An ivy-covered granite wall surrounded the city, and it must have stood forty feet high. Docks stretched far out into the natural bay that was the eastern border of the city. Ships teemed in the harbor, leaving with the evening tide, their lanterns and navigation markers bobbing about like fireflies in a breeze. There was no sign of the sea dragons that had escorted us down the coast. The muddy red tiles must have once been bright red and shiny, and the wall straight and kept clear of the creeping ivy that climbed it now. “It must have been beautiful from up here.”
“Oh, it was,” said Frikka. “In time, it will be again.”
“I’m hungry,” grumbled Althyof. “And thirsty. I wonder if anyone here has a proper ale?” He tapped his horse with his heels and cantered down toward Suelhaym’s massive North Gate at the foot of the hill.
The gates stood open and seemed to be unattended. As we approached, I understood why: they stood open because they no longer closed. The left gate leaned propped against the granite wall, its massive hinges twisted and broken, the gate on the right still hung by its bottom hinge, but the top hinge had melted after contact with something extremely hot, and the inner tip of the gate had buried itself in the ground.
“This is where she made her last stand,” said Veethar in a quiet, almost mournful tone.
“We had to attack our own city,” murmured Meuhlnir. “Break our own gates, fight our former neighbors street by street to the palace in which we used to serve.”
“Then the real battle began,” said Frikka, brushing at her cheeks.
“Yes,” said Veethar and walked his horse off the road and into the trees on the inland side.
“Come on,” said Mothi. “Let’s leave them to their reminiscences.”
“Lead on,” I said, and we followed Mothi through the gate.
Once we’d ridden a block or two, Mothi said, “I’m glad I was born after the war. So many places are nothing more than reminders of the worst times in their lives.”
Thirty-six
“Do you understand now?”
“What… What was that?” he whispered, voice shaking with intense emotion.
“That is my memory of reaching the northern gates for the first time. I traveled there in the company of your brother, his wives, Frikka, Veethar, your nephew Mothi, my family, and a few friends. That’s what happened when the gates came into view.”
“No,” he whispered.
“I have many more memories of your brother telling me tales about Suel, about you—even about the death of your other two brothers. I have memory after memory of Meuhlnir’s sadness at Queen Suel’s fall, at what you have become. Must you relive them all?”
“I don’t want to see them!” he gasped. “I was told he… They said Meuhlnir, Paltr, and Huthr were plotting…”
“You were lied to. Who told you these dark tales?”
He shook his head and turned away, hiding his face. “No! I saw what they did. I…I… They told me to watch for things, and… They said that when those things came to pass, I would know they told the truth about all of it.”
“They used the same tactic on Suel. The people who convinced you—they were either dreamslice reflections of the Plauinn themselves or agents of the Plauinn.”
He shook his head but didn’t turn. “The evidence…the proof…”
“Manufactured evidence. Manipulated proof. I’ve had my own run-ins with these Plauinn, and let me tell you, they consider us pawns to be manipulated, to be sacrificed for their goals. They don’t care what their goals do in this realm or any other. All they care about is their own wants.”
Luka shook his head and held his hands out to his sides as if to ward away my words.
“Luka…are you aware of what you’ve become? Don’t you understand what the Plauinn have led you to become?”
“I made my own choices,” he whispered.
“Choices, yes. But choices based on manipulation without the benefit of the facts. Can you say the choices you made at the beginning were one hundred percent your own?” Why I was trying to convince him was beyond me…whether it was out of respect for Meuhlnir or because of what Kuhntul said. “Do you have any idea how far you’ve drifted, even from the Luka in those memories we just saw?”
Luka shook his head for the third time, denying it all. I dug into his memories, looking for examples, looking for things with enough shock value to make him understand.
“Tell me, Luka Oolfhyethidn, is this who you wanted to be?”
“I don’t—”
Thirty-seven
“I don’t bite,” said Luka and trotted out his best smile. The woman was only slightly inebriated, not enough to spoil the flavor, but enough to make her pliable. He’d spent two hours and forty dollars treating her to mixed drinks, and he’d spent an additional twenty dollars making sure the bartender added shots of 190-proof Everclear to the drinks while he made them.
He leaned against the door of his black Continental and winked at her. “Not unless you want me to…”
That earned a saucy grin and a slight blush.
“Listen,” he said. “Say the word, and I’ll drop you off at your place. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
She nodded, blonde locks bouncing. “You’re nice for a guy I met in a bar.”
“Aren’t I just?” He trotted out that winning smile again. “Come on.” He held out his hand.
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She glanced around the dark parking lot, then back up at him. She smiled and took his hand. “Okay, Mr. Mystery. Let’s go for a ride and see where things go from there.”
This time, his smile was genuine. “Anything you say.” He handed her into the car and fastened her seat belt, knowing most people thought it was an eccentricity decades out of date, but the truth of it was, he didn’t want his passengers to realize he had modified the seat belts. They didn’t release in a conventional manner, but they also didn’t fasten in the normal way.
“Thanks, Mr. Mystery. Are you going to tell me your name?”
“You can call me Chris. Chris Hatton.”
“Okay, Chris. You know the whole seat belt thing would freak some people right out, right?”
He shrugged and closed the door. The top was down, so she could see his broad smile. “Is it so wrong to be courteous?”
She smiled a sunny smile. “No, not at all. It’s only that it’s a little…”
“A little personal, right?”
She nodded. “Yeah, that’s it.”
“Then you should really worry about this,” he said in a light tone. He grabbed her by the hair and punched her on the point of her jaw. She went out as if he’d flipped a switch, and he leaned in to get the hypodermic needle out of the glove box. He needed her to sleep for the ride home. Suel deserved fresh meat for once, and when the drug he’d stolen from the veterinary clinic metabolized out of her system, it wouldn’t leave much to spoil the flavor.
He nodded to himself as he injected the sedative into the woman’s vein. He’d let Suel make the kill. They could dump this foolish woman in the basement until the alcohol and the tranquilizer were out of her system, and Suel could go down and take her time. Savor it, for once.
“Suel will enjoy making your acquaintance,” he said and patted the woman on the cheek. He turned and walked around the rear of the car, sliding his fingertips along the glossy paint, humming to himself.
As he rounded the driver’s side rear corner, everything froze.
Thirty-eight
The three teenaged girls walked down the side of the road, two on the macadam, one on the shoulder. Each had their hair back in a braid, and each wore tight lace-covered shorts and one of those ridiculous backless crop tops that showed more than they hid. They had flip-flops on their feet, so catching all three wouldn’t be much of a challenge—unless they were smart enough to kick the things off and run barefoot.
He shrugged, swathed in shadow and silence. Even if they were, they couldn’t run faster than he could, and like as not, they’d run straight up the road instead of splitting up and running in different directions. It would be easy to run them down.
The one closest to the copse of trees in which he hid—the one walking on the shoulder—glanced at the dark trees and shivered. She said something to her friends—too soft for Luka to hear it—and the tall one on the other end laughed raucously.
“Don’t be a twit, Sandy,” said the tall girl. “It’s only an animal.”
The girl on the shoulder glanced at the woods, her gaze traveling across Luka’s face. “You don’t know everything, Kristy.”
Kristy made a show of rolling her eyes, and his smile stretched wider. Kristy was in for the shock of her life. He’d save her for last, let the terror build as he killed her friends, one by one.
Luka waited for them to be abreast of where he hid and stepped out of the woods with a casual air. He raised his hand and waved. The three girls stopped dead in their tracks, each girl staring at a different part of him, none of them making a sound.
Oh, he knew their society didn’t—couldn’t—accept the thing they saw: a fifteen-foot-tall werewolf, but he delighted in their responses, nonetheless.
The one called Sandy stared at his face as if looking for signs of human compassion—she was in for a disappointment. The one in the middle stared at his fur and sore-covered chest. Kristy…Kristy made him want to laugh out loud. She stared at what hung between his legs.
He lifted both hands to shoulder height, and with a flourish, showed his talons. The girls’ eyes widened like full moons, and when their breath caught in their throats, he howled.
The idiots just stood there, staring at him.
Suppressing a laugh, he snarled and charged at Sandy. She was the smartest of the three—the most significant threat of doing something unexpected, something sharp.
A sweeping slash from each talon-tipped hand ripped Sandy’s throat out, and as her blood sprayed into the air, Kristy threw her hands over her head and sprinted away—still wearing the flip-flops.
“Help!” she screeched. “Help us!”
Luka cocked his head at the one who’d been walking in the middle. She stared up at him as if seeing a real-life werewolf happened to her every day. He stepped closer to her and growled.
She met his gaze and smiled. “Cool! Can you bite me and make me a shifter? Like in the movies?”
With a snarl, he snapped his jaws around her throat and sucked her hot blood down his throat.
Kristy was still screaming, still running, but she’d moved to the center-line of the two-lane country road. He sprinted after her, catching her up with ease. He ran alongside her and howled every time she screamed, delighting in her fear.
In an almost casual manner, he reached across and pushed her to the ground. She skidded on her left elbow, knee and hip, her chin, and the left side of her forehead. Her screams of fear became shrieks of pain.
Howling, he circled back, where he squatted over her. With a lurid smile, he reached between his legs and cupped his sex in one hairy hand. He tipped her a wink, and she whimpered, shaking her head. She tried to slide away from him, pulling her body from beneath him on her elbows and heels.
With a snarl, he bit her right forearm and shook her hard. She shrieked in pain, and he smiled as her limb broke. When her shoulder popped out of its socket, he opened his jaws, mid-swing, and let her fly off to the shoulder of the road.
She landed in a heap, and he pranced over to her. Muttering, she begged him to stop hurting her.
With a lupine grin, he slashed her throat and the world ground to a halt.
Thirty-nine
Luka crouched in the rows of growing corn, watching the back of the house. He thought there were only three troopers inside: two in uniform and the partner. Melanie had seen too much, and that was too bad—he liked the old broad, she had spunk—but Suel had said she had to go, so she did. Plus, he really wanted to talk to Jensen again.
He sniffed the spring air, smelling the old trooper’s coffee from across the street. The sun was dipping toward the horizon as late afternoon bloomed in full color around him. He peered at the back windows of the old farmhouse.
Seeing no one, he made the dash to the back wall of the house, pressing his furred back against the clapboard wall of the house. He slid toward the corner, then around it, crouching behind the steps that led to the mud room door, his eyes glued on the house across the street.
The trooper on the porch over there took a sip from his insulated coffee cup and grimaced, tilting his head back farther, and then farther still. With a shake of his head, he abandoned his rocker and strode into the house.
Luka streaked up the steps and through the door into the mud room. He froze in the welcoming gloom, listening to the sounds from within. Two troopers chatted in low tones, and farther away, the partner—the one who’d been in the cave with Jensen—spoke with Melanie Layne.
A laundry room stood between the mud room and the rest of the house, and Luka pushed the door all the way open and slipped inside, padding as silently as a wolf on the prowl. The door to the rest of the house stood cracked open, and he could smell leather and gun oil from the two troopers in the kitchen. With a small click, he switched off the utility room lights.
“You hear that, Coop?” came a voice from the kitchen.
Luka froze behind the door.
“Hear what, man? House this old, you’re going t
o drive yourself crazy if you keep this up all shift. Not to mention me.”
“Yeah,” laughed the first trooper. “Guess you’re right. It’s not as if ninjas are about to attack us.”
“Nope. Werewolves neither.”
By their voices, Luka had their locations pegged. One stood by the far wall, one in the middle of the room. If he blitzed through the kitchen at full speed, he could barge into the one in the center of the room, knocking him for a sprawl, and kill the other one before the first regained his feet.
He took a breath and exploded into the small, square kitchen, pausing for only a fraction of a second to ascertain the position of both troopers, and sprang toward the one leaning against the far wall. On his way through the room, he bashed the other trooper with his shoulder, sending the man spinning into the sink. He grabbed the trooper leaning against the wall and flung him spinning at his partner, ripping his throat out as he did so.
“Ritter!” called the one he’d driven into the sink.
Two long strides brought Luka across the room, and he shoved the bleeding trooper to the ground—the man was already dead, but his brain didn’t know it yet. The bleeding trooper scrabbled at the holster on his side, and with a sneer, Luka stomped down on his hand, snapping his wrist like a dry twig.
The other trooper pushed himself away and jerked his Glock out of his holster. Luka lunged across the intervening space and snapped at the man’s face, his large canine fangs riving chunks of flesh from the man’s cheeks below each eye. The trooper screamed but held onto his pistol. He tried to bring it to bear, but Luka grabbed his wrist, sinking his talons into the man’s flesh.
Something clicked behind him.
As quick as a striking snake, Luka jerked the trooper around and looped an arm across his chest. He grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the Glock and forced it up, pointing it at the door to the room beyond the kitchen.
Blood of the Isir Omnibus Page 128