He stepped aside.
The Black Widow’s net ensnared my will. It forced me forward, while the Gatekeeper thrashed and wreathed in its home of tangled guts. Whatever was happening to Raphael threatened it, drained it. It roared in my ears:
You do not understand the danger! The danger! Save the Counter-Balance! The Anchor’s Friend! Save him! SAVE HIM.
Frigg’s mad ravings echoed the Gatekeepers: Save the Anchor’s Friend. He will save your life and be your end! Was this what she meant?
I hurled Ormdreper away as it appeared in my hand. It flew back. I hadn’t the strength to resist, to push aside the terror the Gatekeeper’s voice incited; adrenaline coursed through veins, seizing my heart in its grip. Each breath burned like molten iron.
Sweat stuck the armour to my torso, beads running down my legs.
This is it, I thought. I’m going to butcher them all.
One breath left, the bright flame before the fire died.
‘Father! Stop me!’
Spots formed. The shroud of surrender. I raised the sword, numbed by the Black Widow’s venom.
Strength gripped my waist, and I was flying. Not high or long enough. I caught a glimpse of the magnificent chandelier plunging from the frescoed ceiling, its heavy crystalline beads a hundred glinting daggers as they crashed into my skull.
46
Valkyrie
Espen tore through the Hordes.
What had he done? Everything, everything he’d endured and sacrificed had been for that boy. For this?
‘If he’s dead, you’re dead,’ Alastair said, shoving past. He ran, his clan falling in line, yelling their ancient battle song as they surrounded Malachi.
If he’s dead, we’re all dead. Espen pushed the scattered remains of the chandelier from Theo’s head, refusing to believe the mess underneath.
‘Theo!’
Ava. Her fingers cupped Theo’s chin, the shattered jaw. Menelaus had not taken her far, then. ‘Do something! Espen, heal him!’
He shook his head.
‘Lorenzo! Lorenzo, heal him!’
‘He’s not here.’
‘Take him to Alfheim! He told me about the Springs, the—’
She must’ve read the hopelessness in his eyes. He could see it reflected in hers. ‘It only works once,’ he said, flat, like he wasn’t really there. This was a dream. ‘Balance and all that.’
‘You did this.’
The floor rumbled, the floor cracking into shards. The men and women Espen had saved by hurting Theo became marooned from Malachi, the soldiers he had guarding them tumbling into the earth.
So, this was the beginning of The End. He crawled over and picked up Theo’s sword where it had fallen, wrapping his son’s bloodied fingers around the hilt, laying it on his chest. He sang the old song, the Ode to the Fallen. ‘Valhalla,’ he whispered.
The walls shook, the frescos splitting, raining plaster.
He looked up at Menelaus, who was hauling Ava into his arms. ‘Don’t just stand there! Get everyone out of here! The Gatekeeper is leaving!’
Yes, get them out of here. Fleeing from these walls wouldn’t save them, of course. But he needed to be alone with Theodore.
Theo.
‘What about the amulet?’ Ava cried, wrenching away from Menelaus. ‘He can’t die—’
‘The amulet can do nothing except keep his body frozen. That gives us time. Time for something else to heal him. But the Gatekeeper cannot repair his body completely. It cannot work without a Vessel. Vampire blood cannot revive the dead. As soon as it burns through his Vital Essence – his soul –, it will leave. No magic can solve this!’
‘There must be something! If the amulet is so powerless, why does Akhen want it so badly?’
‘It’s not powerless. It will preserve him for a while, a temporary barrier, but he’s weak.’
‘Then there’s hope. We can find some way…’
Espen placed his shaking hand over Theo’s. ‘Only the gods can intervene,’ he said. ‘That’s it. The gods.’ He sprang up, calling Alastair. ‘The building is coming down. Get Theo’s body outside.’
‘The Golden Knives…’
‘Do it. He must die on the battlefield. It’s the only way to save him. Guard his body with your lives. They mean nothing without him.’
Espen stood in the glow of the blood-orange sun, staring into the hissing waves. This was where his wife had fallen – an accident – and it was where he too would perish.
‘Brother and sister of wind and fire! Ægir and Rán! Hear me, descendant of Thor!’
He tore his knife across his wrist and let the blood flow in the cauldron below. The water churned and crashed against the rock. ‘Leave your watery domain or watch every drip evaporate into the endless night that is coming!’
A head emerged from the sea, a giant’s shoulders and arms following after, until the great watery figure met him eye-to-eye. Its breath stank of salt and fish. He gagged.
‘I returned your wife’s corpse. What more have you the right to demand of us?’
‘The Gatekeeper is dead.’
‘No,’ Ægir said, ‘I do not sense this to be true.’ He raised his blue nose and sniffed the wind. ‘But it is not a lie. What is it you ask?’
‘Send your nine daughters to that hill.’ He pointed to where the Praetoriani Headquarters sat proudly crumbling above the valley. He no longer cared if the sapiens of Hellingstead saw through the illusion like he did. ‘Take every corpse with a black mark across their face. They are Hel’s creatures. The Valkyries mustn’t become distracted by them.’
‘My daughters do not leave the sea.’
‘They must, or your daughters will die as surely as my son has.’
‘Still, we cannot break the ancient oaths until the day a god dies in our waters.’
Espen smiled. ‘I am Thor’s kin and an ex-Gatekeeper. That is blood enough for a small task.’
‘You will sacrifice yourself?’
‘Do I have your word, Ægir?’
The great sea-giant bowed his head.
Espen spread out his arms and tipped forward into the sea.
‘Julian!’
The guards at the cell’s entrance were squabbling with the intruder. Julian left Ella Strand and her superior minions safely trussed up behind the Plexiglas, an assortment of dangerous weapons littering the floor just out of their reach. He’d suspected his telekinesis would come in useful one day, and that was today. Playing the eccentric fool for the last quarter of a century had helped too.
‘Who is it, Dart?’
‘Sven, sir. Says Espen Clemensen sent him.’
Julian glowered over the guards’ brawny shoulders. Sven’s unit of mercenaries had been drafted in by Praetor Cullen. Then again, Praetor Cullen was dead. Perhaps the mercenary’s loyalty proved as easy to decapitate as the magistrate’s head.
‘I’m busy, Sven.’
Kate, the little reception mouse, bobbed into view. ‘It’s a slaughter out there, Julian. I have no idea what’s going on, but surely you don’t wish for everyone in the building to die?’
That was true. He’d hoped to keep it contained to the courtroom and escape through the tunnels, but the arrival of the Cultri Aurei had changed that. ‘Fine,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘I’ve arranged a back door through the Solem Umbra. Go to Level Seven and take the prisoner-escort route to the coast. There’s a ship waiting.’
‘Aren’t you coming?’
‘I have an alternate route, Kate. Thanks for your concern.’
He turned back to his work.
The unlikely couple hesitated, and Julian heard shouts from down the passage. ‘What is it?’
‘The soldiers fighting Akhen’s men…are dead. Where did they come from?’
‘Hel.’
Menelaus is with them.
He returned to the cell again and ignored the crowd of men and women – and several children – funnelling down the tunnel. He shook his head to clear their panick
ed cries. ‘Now, Ella, where were we?’ He waved his hand, the blade on the other side of the glass raising in the air, stopping at the barrister’s eyeball. ‘Why does Akhen want the amulet?’
Her face was already a latticework of wounds. It made him sick to do this to a woman, but the world was at stake, and still she wore that polluted necklace with pride. She didn’t deserve his compassion, but no simple vengeance expunged the grief of his mother’s death, or Laus’s. His dear boy. Elspeth’s son. His dear, dear boy.
She spat on the floor. ‘Do what you like to me,’ she said, ‘the loyal will rise again to reclaim the earth.’
‘That’s what that madman has told you?’ Julian asked, disturbed and yet unsurprised – after all, what religion was devoid of promises?
With a jerk of his hand he sent the knife sailing into the chest of one of her male cohorts. Ella’s composure cracked enough to reveal the dying man had been more than a colleague, but she controlled her tears, whispering under her breath. Aten preserve you.
When she looked up again, her eyes were bloodshot. ‘You’re the madman, Julian,’ she said. ‘The spider is patient. He ensnares his meal and watches it struggle while it wastes its strength. The thread will bind you soon enough, traitor. Even now you believe you’re in the web’s centre, but that’s only what you’re meant to think.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘The amulet,’ she smiled, ‘why are you so desperate to find it?’
Because Akhen wants it. Because Ma wanted it.
‘You fear it, don’t you? You suspect what it would do to the Syphon when it’s destroyed.’
The Syphon, he now knew one hundred percent for sure, was Theo Clemensen.
He glared at Ella.
‘Julian, what would be the point of trying to capture the Syphon when the amulet was still lost and intact?’
‘No,’ he snapped, ‘Akhen wouldn’t send his best men here only to—’
Ah, but of course he would. ‘This is a distraction,’ he said. ‘As long as the Syphon is weakened sufficiently…’
‘My master can pass through any magic protecting the amulet.’
‘So where is it, Miss Strand?’
She shrugged and rolled her bound shoulders. Smug, satisfied. A fundamentalist, Julian thought; she didn’t fear revealing the truth because she believed nothing could prevent her saviour’s triumph.
‘He knows, doesn’t he? Or he’s about to discover the location.’ The coldness in his heart spread to his bones. ‘It’s too late.’
A deep rumbling churned in the depths of the hill like an overflowing drain.
His guards. Julian ran to the door. ‘Dart, go and warn Espen and Theo; Akhen is after the amulet.’
He trusted these brutes; they refused money for their services, having grown up in the Solem Umbra. ‘Yes, sir.’ Dart took off down the tunnel.
A large chunk of rock dislodged from the tunnel and smashed his head open.
‘No!’ Reece bolted to his side, but Julian staggered after him – his hip was grinding without the cane – and pulled him back.
‘The cave is coming in, we’re too late. I have failed. It’s time to flee.’
Reece stared at Dart.
‘Now, Reece! Think of your family!’
The burly lad nodded and grabbed Julian’s arm, helping him hobble to the secret staircase. He caught a glimpse of Ella and the prisoners trapped behind the glass.
And shut the door.
Michele had unleashed his fury on the sweeping staircase of the Praetoriani headquarters, ploughing through the damned in a red haze. He’d lost his son near three decades ago, and after getting a slither of Elspeth back, his son was gone again. And Rosalia, hadn’t he done enough? Why did Hel keep his daughter? What more did he have to do?
He’d lost count of the bodies he left behind him as he hunted for the entrance to the archives – there he would find a scrap of evidence to lay his suspicions to rest. He refused to believe that Elspeth had pursued him to Toscana, only to vanish into the void by her own hand. Even at fang-point, no medium nor seer had been able to locate her soul in the Nine Realms.
She was either alive and hidden or…something far worse.
The door was coded.
He ripped the door clean off.
No one inside.
He typed her name into the computer on the reception counter. Elspeth Braec.
Condemned for fornicating with a Dökkálfar and producing offspring. Magic stripped and transferred to the Praefecti’s Holding Facility (PFHF) for internment, to be recycled upon Elspeth’s death.
Recycled? Why would they need to recycle stripped magic?
Did they know that she had died?
The building above him shuddered, manuscripts tumbling onto the floor.
Time to go.
He caught up with Julian deep in the hill’s bowels, the Overseer’s jaw set against the pain in his hip. Michele couldn’t help but smile at the memory. Julian had cracked like a twig when he had tossed him across the church; the only thing that had prevented him from murdering the traitor had been Elspeth, the danger she was already in. Her Guardian had betrayed their secret to the Praetoriani – for love of all things – and they’d all paid for it.
Michele took Julian’s free arm and pulled him faster towards the distant exit. ‘You have doomed Elspeth once,’ he hissed, ‘now you’re going to help me find her.’
I sat up, reaching for my grandfather, but my fingers sailed through his armoured chest. A leather-clad woman next to him, flaming hair like Mother’s, crouched over a body.
Yes, my body.
I’d seen it from this vantage point many times; the ability to leave it at will was something I’d perfected. Only, it had always had a head. Now barely half of it remained.
The Praetoriani’s mighty pillars were crumbling from its face like rotten teeth, and the debris scuppered some of the evacuees. Hadn’t I been in there? Fighting?
I’m dead.
It hit me like a flying chunk of rubble.
‘Child of light, enslaved to darkness…’ Singing. It echoed like a series of bells across the fields.
I floated up.
The battlefield hummed, a soprano thread in harmony with the bass song of the dying. Golden capes fluttered in the breeze blowing over the cliffs, but like me these multitudes exuded their own soft glow, lit by Vital Essence. ‘Warrior made by sacrifice…’
The voices entwined together, carnal and celestial. ‘Preserve Thor’s kin for Odin…or rip and thread his innards within!’
The divine faces faded into view; downhill from the driveway, towards the cliffs, a great loom floated above the ground. Women, with waist-length, wreathed hair, and bone corsets, plucked at the passing souls of the Golden Knives. Circling wolves tore their Essence into strips to weave, while their mistresses beat the loom with golden swords and arrows.
Valkyries.
The choosers of the fallen. One turned to me, her shrill song splitting the air. ‘Here he is! The dealer! The agent of Hel! The summoner of Loki from the Underworld!’
The hawk on her bare shoulder took flight. It chased me through the sky, while the wolves sniffed over my corpse. I still feel a link, I realised. It hasn’t severed yet.
The singing Valkyrie floated over to my body. Who had put my sword on my chest? Alastair and his clan were engaged sword to sword as the remaining Golden Knives attacked. The carriages they’d arrived in were smouldering ruins. People were running, screaming. Chaos.
In the far corner of the field, Menelaus was dragging Ava into the trees.
I need to get to her!
The Valkyrie hissed, flying up to catch my spirit in her talons.
‘The first Gatekeeper that’s failed! You have doomed us all! Ragnarök is upon us! You do not deserve Valhalla!’
Her warrior-maidens abandoned their loom, beating up a fearsome squall in the sky with their fury. Their cry split me from the inside. An exquisite agony shot through phanto
m limbs as I was squeezed through a spiritual vice. I sank, suffocating.
The hill shuddered.
The Valkyries halted their violent screaming.
Nine watery giants surged over the cliffs. Everyone still alive scurried away – except Grandfather. He held out his sword, alone, guarding my body.
Every single face marked with the Black Widow’s sign was sucked up into the churning limbs and dragged back into the sea.
‘No!’ the Valkyries roared. ‘We must finish our weaving! It is the only way we can win the Final War!’
‘Not if you take me to Odin!’ I called to the Valkyries. ‘The Gatekeeper hasn’t abandoned Yggdrasil yet!’
The sky-warriors slowed their flight, flocking together, singing in a primordial language of fire and wind. Their leader dived down toward me. ‘Odin’s teeth,’ she said, addressing the wolves, ‘stop gnashing!’ She faced me. ‘You wish to speak to the Lady?’
The pain eased and I floated to my feet. ‘Freyja?’
‘You must call.’
So that’s what I did. I pleaded for her to part the clouds and retrieve the last hope for saving Yggdrasil, and everyone in it I loved.
And after an eternity of small moments, she came.
The Lady arrived in a cloak of falcon feathers and a dress of mail, riding a golden chariot, pulled by two wild, horn-toothed panthers. Many hands gathered and bore me into the sky, where she was waiting, her graceful arm outstretched.
I grabbed her hand and took hold of her slender waist as she attuned the reins. The battlefield fell away, the vision of Midgard disappearing into mist.
The Halls of the Gods awaited.
Freyja’s chariot sailed into the open Hall, its glittering arched roof like the ribbed carcass of an infinite ship upturned, carried on the shoulders of statues the height of cathedrals. We landed upon a mosaicked floor, coated in resin. ‘Sap from Yggdrasil,’ Freyja said, the first words she had spoken to me. ‘Come, the All Father must speak with you, Gatekeeper.’
Thousands crowded the Hall, but they parted for the Lady of the Slain. The path to Odin’s towering throne – flanked by enormous ravens – sparked lightning underfoot. If ever I had doubted my religion, it wasn’t then.
The Descendants of Thor Trilogy Boxset: Forged in Blood and Lightning; Norns of Fate; Wrath of Aten Page 71