Transcendent

by Lesley Livingston

  “I was thinking about something Rafe said to me back at the Plaza,” she said quietly, nodding back to where the Egyptian god sat, his coppery blade resting across his knees. “And about the whole valiant thing. He said in a battle, if I were to choose an Odin son, I would do it by choosing the most valiant.”

  “That’s the way it works, yeah.” Toby shrugged.

  “What if I were to choose wrong?”

  “Well,” he said. “Now I guess that would be a hell of a thing. Wouldn’t it?”

  XIII

  When Mason could sense that they had left the park and the draugr behind, she reached out with her mind and gently urged the carriage horse to tread its way back fully into the mortal realm. She guided it away from the shadowy path of the Between, out into the chaos of the city at the corner of Central Park West and Cathedral Parkway. In the distance behind them, some of the trees in the park were aflame, their ghastly orange glow painting the sky in an apocalyptic hue.

  Mason had to concentrate fiercely on guiding the carriage around zombielike Miasma victims, some of whom staggered and lurched toward them, thinking they had come to help. But they couldn’t afford to stop.

  Especially not if Rory—

  “We’ve got company, little sister,” Roth called out from the backseat, interrupting her grim thought with the even more grim reality. Mason glanced over her shoulder to see a motorcycle roaring up the road behind them, weaving in and out of all the stalled and smashed cars, narrowly avoiding the waking sleepers.

  “That little weasel stole my favorite bike,” Roth observed. “I really am going to kill him this time.”

  Roth owned several bikes. At least one of them—his favorite, apparently—he kept in the garage at their father’s penthouse. Mason knew that Rory used to bug him when they were kids to go dirt-bike riding on the paths around the estate. Roth indulged him for a while until Rory started doing stupid stunts and wrecked three motocross bikes over the course of a single weekend. Mason didn’t know that he’d kept up his riding skills. Or maybe—judging from the recklessness with which he was steering the thing—he hadn’t. But he was gaining on the carriage, and the horse was too played out to go much farther.

  When a fire hydrant suddenly blew, directly in the path of the racing bike—and then another, right after Rory had managed to swerve past that one—Mason knew Cal was giving her a chance to win the race. The white-water geysers that shot from the fireplugs should have caused Rory to slow down. It was so cold that the water was freezing into sheets on the road. But when Mason hazarded a glance back, she saw that he’d barely decreased his speed.

  They might have escaped the draugr all for nothing.

  “This can’t be happening!” Mason snarled in frustration. “This has to be some kind of nightmare! It’s not supposed to be like this. . . .”

  “It’s supposed to be exactly like this,” Roth said grimly. “Didn’t you ever listen to the stories growing up, Mase?”

  “No! I did not!” she said, snapping the reins. “I hated those damn stories. This night? This is how all those stories wound up sounding to me and I hated that. Come on! You can do it!” she urged the galloping carriage horse.

  The animal’s shiny, silvery coat was lathered and dark with sweat under the harness traces and its sides were heaving with exhaustion. But as Mason shouted encouragement, the horse’s muscles bunched and released and the carriage surged forward as it poured on a burst of speed, taking the corner of 110th and Broadway on two of the carriage’s tall wheels and almost spilling its occupants out into the street. Mason glanced over her shoulder to see Cal hanging on for dear life with one hand and reaching out—fingers stretched wide—with the other, as Rafe made a startled grab for Heather’s limp body tumbling loosely through the carriage.

  “Heather!” Mason shouted.

  “Don’t worry about her, Mase!” Rafe shouted over the roar of water from the burst hydrants. “I’ve got her—just get us the hell out of here!”

  She wrenched her head back around, just in time to see a handful of linebacker-sized forms running toward them from between two Columbia U buildings. It took Mason a moment to realize that they were linebackers. At least some of them were.

  “Rory,” Roth snarled. “Damn that little—”

  He ducked to the side as one of them threw what looked like an ancient Viking war ax with the accuracy of a champion quarterback throwing a winning long bomb. The tumbling ax missed Roth’s head but sliced through his biker jacket and bit deeply into the top of his shoulder, leaving a deep gouge. Roth screamed and fell to the floor of the carriage, blood gushing from the wound.

  “Roth!” Mason shrieked, almost dropping the reins.

  “Drive, Mase!” Roth snarled, clutching his shoulder and sucking air through his teeth, his face twisted with pain. “Just . . . get us to Gos.”

  “Holy shit!” Cal exclaimed, dropping to his knees on the carriage floor beside Roth to help him.

  “No!” Daria said. “Take care of what’s behind us. I’ll take care of him.”

  Mason hissed in frustration at not being able to stop the carriage and summon all of the Valkyrie power within her. But that was the very thing, she knew, that Rory and her father were trying to provoke. That was what would put Fennrys and Roth and all of her friends in vastly more jeopardy than they were already in.

  Silently, she reached out with as much of her Valkyrie self as she dared and poured out encouragement to the brave, beleaguered carriage horse. It charged forward, heading straight for the line of football players. Rory had obviously been selling runegold magick enhancements to them and they were mad with it. Berserkers. Grimacing and howling like ghouls, they closed ranks and started to run, facing the onrushing carriage as a solid advancing wall of muscle. Their eyes glowed gold and they moved like animals. A pack of hyenas . . .

  That would have to face a Wolf.

  Before Mason could stop him, Fennrys was leaping over the side of the carriage, his shape blurring like golden smoke as he shifted midair into the Wolf.

  “Fennrys!” Mason howled, frantic, as he raced down the street.

  “I’ll get him,” Rafe said, duplicating Fenn’s leap and transforming with an added measure of grace and elegance.

  The two wolves raced toward the wall of runebound muscle, their speed making them blurs as they took turns harrying the college football players like a well-coordinated attack team. Rafe was an old hand at being a wolf but Mason marveled at how Fenn’s animal instincts drove his attacks, syncing his darting feints and savage lunges with the jackal god’s as they drove the football boys back, splitting them down the middle so that Mason could drive the carriage past. The Fennrys Wolf was hanging on by his teeth to the bloodied sleeve of the quarterback who swung wildly with his other hand, which gripped another of the vicious Viking axes. He was unable to throw because Fennrys had him so off balance.

  “Idiot . . . ,” Roth panted, hauling himself up onto the bench seat behind Mason and holding his shoulder, blood seeping from between his fingers. “Should have aimed for the horse with his first throw . . .”

  “What?” Mason hauled on the reins, narrowly avoiding an overturned Audi.

  “He’s right,” Toby grunted. “That would have taken us all down and they could have finished us. Thank the gods they’re just not that bright.”

  “Hurry, Mase . . . ,” Roth urged, struggling for breath. “Rory. Gaining . . . on us . . .”

  “Roth, will you please lie down or something?” Mason snapped at him over her shoulder, trying to concentrate on driving and not on all the blood covering her brother.

  The carriage bucked and weaved, throwing Daria—who was struggling to tear a long strip from the hem of her white Elusinian priestess robe to use as a makeshift bandage—from one side to the other. She banged her head on the seat but shook it off and crawled back to Roth. Mason clenched her teeth, not quite willing to believe that Cal’s mother was actually being helpful. Not yet. Daria Aristarchos was still p
ersona non grata, a woman who’d been responsible for so much hurt and heartache.

  There will be a reckoning, Mason thought. A settling of debts.

  That would come later.

  When the familiar stone turrets and walls of Gosforth Academy finally came into view, Mason guided the carriage right up to the shallow front steps. She whispered a frantic thanks to the animal as they all piled out and ran, and the horse whickered a weary reply.

  They burst through the doors—Mason and Toby first, to secure the foyer and make sure the place was, indeed, still safe. Next came Daria with Roth, his arm draped heavily across her shoulder. Then Cal with Heather, cradled carefully in his arms. Rafe and Fennrys were last, shifting back to their human forms just before they entered.

  The doors swung shut behind them as Rafe called an all-clear and ordered them locked up tight. Toby hurried to the electronic control panel off to one side and activated the mag locks by entering a coded sequence on a number pad. Mason remembered another time when they’d been locked into a Gosforth building that way. It had done nothing to stop the nightmares from finding a way in. She hugged her elbows and watched as Daria helped Roth over to a leather couch and Fennrys paced back and forth, his fists clenched and his chest heaving.

  The sudden silence in the hall as the massive arched doors slammed shut was deafening. With the constant hiss of rain, the rolling thunder, and the snap of lightning strikes muffled to nothing, Mason could hear her heart pounding in her ears. She could hear everyone else’s, too, including Fennrys’s. It was like a drumbeat calling to her from somewhere far away, strong, insistent, hypnotizing . . .

  Mason took a step toward him before she realized what she was doing but was brought up short by another pulse beat that suddenly registered at the edge of her awareness. This one was rabbit-fast and freaked out, and Mason turned to alert the others when, suddenly, Carrie Morgan came bursting through the double doors leading to the classroom wing.

  The last time Mason had seen her, Carrie had made a concerted effort to publicly humiliate her. Thanks to Heather, the attempt had backfired gloriously and helped solidify a growing bond of friendship between Heather and Mason.

  Carrie’s head was down and she was clutching her cell phone in one fist, glowering at it fiercely and cursing its stupid crappy lack of signal. She clearly hadn’t been expecting to see anyone else in the Gosforth lobby—certainly not the storm bedraggled collection of Mason and her unlikely group of companions—but when her head snapped up and her gaze landed on Heather, lying limp and pale in Cal’s arms, she screamed.

  Cal barely spared her a glance as he stalked past. He just continued on through the hall and out again toward the dorm wing without stopping, carrying Heather with him.

  “Holy crap! Palmerston!” Carrie exclaimed. “Is she dead?”

  “She’s not dead, Carrie,” Toby said.

  “What did you weirdos do to her?” she demanded, ignoring the fencing coach and turning a glare that was probably meant to be withering on Mason, but that just came across as flustered and belligerent. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Carrie?” Mason said quietly. “For once in your life shut up and be helpful.”

  Carrie’s jaw opened and shut a couple of times as her expression wavered between mutinous and flooded with relief at the sight of other people walking around, seemingly unaffected by the chaos in the rest of the city.

  “Do you think you can do that?”

  “I . . . Yes.” She glared stonily at Mason. “Of course I can.”

  “Good.” Mason nodded. “How many students are left on the grounds?”

  Carrie crossed her arms over her chest and said, “I don’t know.”

  “That’s not helpful.” Mason turned to walk away.

  “I mean I don’t know exactly,” Carrie blurted. She seemed utterly terrified at the prospect that she might be left alone. “Like, I didn’t do a head count or anything. But it’s not that many. Like, five of us maybe. A bunch of parents started pulling their kids out when the earthquake tremors started. Of course, my idiot parents chose this week to go on vacation and they haven’t even so much as called to see if I’m alive.” She shook the phone in her hand. “Thanks, Mom and Dad . . .”

  “Are any of the faculty still on campus?”

  Carrie tilted her head, disdain heavy in her tone as she said, “Are you kidding? Like our teachers actually care if we all die or something.”

  Toby glanced heavenward, no doubt silently begging for patience, before explaining to Mason and the others in a low murmur: “The headmaster and most of the teaching staff were scheduled to be at a curriculum planning session off-campus when this went down yesterday. I think they’d already canceled all the classes for the day. When the Miasma hit, they were probably just as vulnerable as everyone else in the city.”

  “A couple of teaching assistants were hanging around, but I think they must have taken off when things started to get weird with the weather.” Carrie sniffed. “Losers. I’m going to tell my dad to get them all fired.”

  “Sure.” Mason sighed. “You do that, Carrie. That’s if any of them are still alive.”

  That was enough to shut her up for a moment.

  “The faculty might try to head back here once the Miasma fully lifts,” Daria suggested.

  “Would you?” Fennrys asked. He turned to the school’s fencing master—and current ranking administrator. “You guys get danger pay?”

  Toby grunted in grim amusement and shook his head. “They’re not coming back. I say we raise shields, load torpedoes, and hunker down. Daria? If you’d be so kind as to get the mag locks? The other mag locks?”

  Cal’s mother lifted a shoulder in an elegant shrug and strode over to a brass plaque set into the wall, engraved with various symbols. Mason had never given it much of a second glance. She always thought it was decorative—just part of the old building’s gothic adornment. Daria placed her palm flat on the square and her hand seemed to sink into the metallic surface of the panel, which turned opalescent, and a shiver of light danced across her knuckles.

  Cal raised an eyebrow at his mother. “Here all this time I always thought ‘mag locks’ just meant they were ‘magnetic.’ Not, you know, ‘magick,’” he said.

  “We’ve got both,” Toby said. “The security in this place—when it’s fully up and running—rivals the Pentagon.”

  “Does the Pentagon have magick?” Mason asked.

  Toby just raised an eyebrow at her and remained silent.

  “Oh . . .”

  Quiet descended again for a moment as Mason and the others were left to contemplate that. And what and how the Powers That Be would respond to the otherworldly threat of the Manhattan situation if it looked like it might spill beyond the borders of the city and out into the wider world. Mason suddenly understood why Daria had invoked the Miasma curse in order to isolate the city and try to deal with Gunnar Starling in a contained arena. Mason wondered for the first time if the Elusinian priestess might have had the right idea, after all. She looked over at the leather couch, where Roth sat, pale and bleeding, and saw that he might have been thinking the same thing. His gaze was fastened on Daria, and while the hurt in his eyes hadn’t lessened to any degree whatsoever, the hatred just might have.

  Nothing, it seemed, was ever simple.

  Not even hate, Mason thought.

  Suddenly, the phone hanging on the wall beside the security desk rang.

  Loudly. So loud it was like the tolling of a warning bell.

  It kept on ringing until Carrie finally huffed, “Isn’t anyone going to get that?” When no one moved, she huffed louder and stalked over to the desk, snatching up the handset. “Gosforth Academy; this better be Emergency Services telling us you’ll be here with hot food and internet—oh. Hang on . . .” She rolled her eyes epically. “It’s for you, Starling.” She handed over the phone.

  Mason stared apprehensively down at the handset Carrie had shoved into her palm and then slowly rai
sed it to her ear. “Hello?”

  “Hello, honey,” said the voice on the other end of the phone. “It’s your father.”

  Mason’s blood ran cold at the sound of Gunnar Starling’s voice.

  “What do you want?” she asked, trying not to choke on her own words.

  “I miss you, honey,” her father said.

  His voice was warm and soothing. Just like it always had been when she was little and had cried out in her sleep, racked by nightmares. She could almost feel her father’s strong arms wrapped around her, rocking her as he chased away the demons that lurked in the dark corners of her room . . . and her mind. The one person who had always been there for her. She wanted to throw the phone down and run outside and find him and throw herself into his embrace. She wanted to beg his forgiveness.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” her father continued. “To tell you how proud I am of you. And right now, I want you to do something for me, honey. I want you to put the phone down and I want you to go outside. Rory is waiting for you.”

  And that, thankfully, threw cold water in Mason’s face.

  “Rory can go suck a magick acorn, Dad,” she snapped. “And so can you.”

  The silence on the other end of the line wasn’t exactly what she would describe as “shocked” although Mason had never, in her entire existence, spoken to her father like that—but it was heavy and deep and . . . cold.

  “Here’s the deal, Dad,” she said. “I’m not going outside. I’m not going to end the world. I spent almost a month researching the paper I have due next week and I’m not going to let that go to waste. I have a ton of work to do on my saber technique if I’m going to get a chance for a do-over at the Nationals. And I am going to get that chance.” She glanced at Toby, who gave her a thumbs-up. “For the first time in my high school career I have friends—real ones—and I don’t want them to die in some stupid apocalypse. I have things to do, Dad. I have a date.” She glanced at Fennrys, who grinned a bit wickedly. “And as screwed up and selfish and out of whack as the world is, I happen to think it’s worth trying to save. Not obliterate.”