That left me going on my own, with Samael handing me the keys to his souped-up luft. I would get Sloane, then retrieve Marlow’s swords from her safe and return.
While everyone was gearing up and going over possible scenarios and protocols with Samael, Valeska had wandered off to the far side of the room to dig through the candy bowl for something to snack on. I took the opportunity to talk to her for a moment in private—relatively speaking, thanks to Samael holding court with the others.
“Just carbo-loading before the big day,” Valeska told me, popping a few strawberry-red kola nuts into her mouth, and she grimaced at the bitter flavor. “Want some?”
“Nah, I’m good.” I glanced back over my shoulder to be sure Asher was far enough away that he wouldn’t be able to hear me. “Do you think you’ll be okay with Asher?”
“Yeah, of course. He doesn’t look that heavy,” Valeska replied with a noncommittal shrug.
“There’s something that you need to know.” I moved closer to her and lowered my voice to a whisper. “Asher’s not okay. I don’t have time to explain, and we don’t have time to fix it. But he’s been marked by Abaddon, and it’s affecting him.”
“Affecting him how?” She arched her eyebrows in an attempt to look skeptical, but I could see the concern in her wide eyes. “Is he going to try to kill me or something?”
“So far he’s only had seizures and said some strange things,” I said. “Don’t let him drive, and hang on to the weapons.”
“Do you really think he should be going, then?” Valeska asked.
“I don’t know, but we need his grandma and we need the sword,” I reminded her.
Valeska inhaled through her nose and nodded grimly. She carried herself with a tough resignation about her, like she knew she would always do what must be done, even if it was terrible. But she had survived in Kurnugia alone for weeks, and that had to have been harder than dealing with a possibly possessed Asher.
“I’ll take care of him for you,” she promised just before Quinn announced that we should all get going.
The five of us made a motley group as we walked down the long copper hallway together. The elevator would be where we parted, with Quinn, Oona, and me heading down to the parking garage while Valeska and Asher went up to the roof.
We walked fast, knowing there wasn’t any time to waste, but Asher and I lingered at the back. As we walked, I felt his hand sliding around mine—his skin warm and rough, safe and powerful. Neither of us said anything or looked at each other. We held hands as we marched on.
Oona pushed the call button and hummed along with the Chopin playing over the speakers, while we made our goodbyes. The roof was only a few flights up, so Valeska and Asher were going to take the stairs, leaving Quinn, Oona, and me with the faster elevator.
Asher started to step away from me, apparently meaning to leave with a simple “’Bye” and a sad longing in his eyes. But I didn’t let go of his hand, and instead pulled him back in close to me. I put my hand on his face, staring up into his eyes, and there were so many things I wanted to say, so much that I couldn’t find the words for.
“Come back to me,” I told him fiercely.
He smiled at me then, subtly and a little crookedly. “Don’t you know by now, Malin? Nothing in all of the heavens or underworld below can keep me from you.”
And then the elevator doors opened, so there was no more time to say goodbye. No more chances to kiss him, to tell him I loved him, to beg him to stay safe.
I stepped into the elevator, and I kept my eyes on Asher until the very last second.
SEVENTY-NINE
In the center of the parking garage, underneath a bright halogen bulb, sat the slick silver HBS 1300 XXX Cavalieri. Despite the fact that it was a hoverbike, it was a beast of a machine, at least twice as wide as my luft and longer, with a full quad set of hoverpads.
I didn’t even know if these were street legal, but if Samael got around on it, I sincerely doubted that anybody would bother stopping me on it today. I grabbed the helmet from the back of the luft, since this thing could top out at over four hundred miles per hour and it would really put a damper on the whole helping-to-stop-the-end-of-the-world thing if I cracked my skull open on the pavement.
Oona and Quinn had been walking on, toward the back corner where Quinn’s car was parked, but they both paused to watch me get on the luft.
“Wow,” Quinn said, looking far more impressed about a flashy bike than I expected her to be.
“Now’s not the time, I know, but have fun on that thing while you can,” Oona said.
“When this is all over, I’ll make Samael lend me this thing again, and I’ll take you out for a spin on the outskirts of the city,” I promised her.
Oona smiled sadly. “I’ll hold you to it.” Then she turned and walked away, following Quinn.
The luft started up the instant I pressed the ignition, and the engine had a nearly silent purr. Music started playing through the wireless speakers in the helmet, and I used the touchpad in the center to quickly skip through Samael’s choices in music (mostly classical and instrumental) until I finally settled on an electronic cover of “Immigrant Song.”
Then I sped out of the garage, with the luft gliding on air, and hit the streets of the city. Samael’s bike made it almost shockingly easy to get around. It nimbly swerved between deserted cars and a dumpster fire, and when a pesky battalion of skeletons decided to occupy an entire city block, the luft easily mowed them down. Of course, I unsheathed my sword so I could take out a few extra skeletons that lunged at me.
Ravenswood Academy had closed when the emergency sirens went off, so I had to look up Sloane’s address using the school directory. She lived at about the halfway mark between the Riks and Marlow’s apartment. Her street was thankfully deserted, though there were signs of vandalism and violence in the form of broken windows, smashed-in cars, and a few conspicuous splatters of blood on the sidewalk. Even the relatively quiet borough where the Kotharis lived wasn’t safe anymore.
I pulled the luft right up to the front stoop to park it—it was pretty much martial law now, and I was going to do whatever was safest and fastest from here on out. I had just gotten off it when the front door opened, and Sloane was standing there, looking decidedly badass.
She’d forgone her usual prep school look for utilitarian black, including steel-toed boots and industrial-grade pepper spray hanging from a paracord lanyard around her neck.
“I’m ready,” Sloane said matter-of-factly and walked down the steps to me.
“What?” I glanced around in confusion. “How did you know I was coming? I didn’t call you.”
“You came to me this morning for help deciphering a prophecy, and then everything went to shit,” Sloane said. “I figured either you’d need my help or I’d need yours. Either way, it was only a matter of time until you ended up at my doorstep.”
“Well, I can’t argue with that logic,” I said and got back on the luft.
“Do you have another helmet?” Sloane asked as she climbed on behind me.
“Nope. So hang on tight.”
EIGHTY
“But why does it matter if we’re motherless children?” Sloane asked as we passed the third-floor landing on the way up to my mother’s fourth-floor walk-up. The entire way up, she’d been asking about parts of the prophecy, as if I were more of an expert than her.
I glanced back over my shoulder at her, genuinely astonished that she wasn’t more out of breath from climbing all the stairs. Maybe she worked out a lot, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she was just so dogged in her questioning that she refused to let anything slow her down, not even her need for oxygen.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s supposedly from Frigg’s dream, so maybe it had something to do with the fact that she’s been sleeping for so long, and her children have been without a mother that whole time.”
“So you’re saying that she did it as a form of punishment?” Sloane asked.
“You think she wrote it,” Sloane realized, and she stopped short.
I turned to look at her. “No. I mean, I don’t know. Frigg can supposedly see until the end of time, so it makes sense that she would transcribe what she saw if she thought we needed the help.”
“But if you’re saying that she instilled herself and her ideals or punishments or whatever you want to call her need for ‘motherless children,’” Sloane argued, “that’s not something that she can do if she’s just reporting the facts or dictating her vision of the future. The prophecy is only personalized to her because she’s the one creating it.”
“I mean, maybe,” I allowed. “That would make sense.”
“But then…” Her expression slacked as something occurred to her, and she shook her head slowly, making her curls sway. “This whole time we thought she could see the future, but what if she was the one writing it?”
Sloane grew more excited as she spoke, her dark brown eyes widening and her words speeding up. “She knows what’s going to happen because she’s the one that preordained it all. I always thought it was like a whole team of Vanaheimr gods and maybe Eralim pulling the strings.
“But what if it was one woman who wrote out the entire history of earth from the moment Valkyries were created, and then she went to sleep?” Sloane said. “That would be an exhausting feat, to be sure, and I’d probably want to sleep for a thousand years after that.”
“Until what?” I asked.
Her conviction faltered, and she furrowed her brow. “What?”
“You’re suggesting that Frigg wrote the entire history from when Valkyries were created … until when?” I asked. “There has to be an end point.”
“Why?” Sloane objected. “The Vanir gods and goddesses are eternal.”
“Everything has an end, Sloane. You, me, the earth, even the sun will go out and gods will no longer exist. Someday Frigg will wake from her slumber. And then what?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But since I’d like to live long enough to find out, we should hurry up and get the swords and get on with this.”
We had spent more than enough time debating the possibilities, and while it would be worthwhile going over our theories with Samael in case they might be of help to us, Sloane was right: we needed to get going.
I ran the rest of the way up the stairs but I stopped the moment I saw the door. It looked the same as it had a few days ago when I’d been here last—with notices and mail piling up—except this time it was ajar. And not a crack, like maybe I’d forgotten to close it all the way, but like it had been intentionally left open.
EIGHTY-ONE
I held my finger up to my lips to silence Sloane before she could ask any questions. I unsheathed Sigrún and crept slowly into the darkened apartment. I heard him before I saw him, breaking down the door to my old bedroom to get the hoard that Marlow had stashed inside there.
His back was to me, so he didn’t notice me. Not until I grabbed his long hair and yanked his head back. Before he could do anything, I had the blade pressed against his throat.
“Hey, hey!” Azarias shouted in surprise. “I don’t mean nobody any harm! I wanted to get weapons and food to survive in the coming days, and I knew Marlow had a mega-stash.”
“So you thought you would break in and help yourself?” I sneered.
“Well, it’s not like she’s using it,” he quipped, and I pressed the blade harder against his throat. “But since you’re here, you’ll probably want the stuff for yourself, so I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Do you know this guy?” Sloane asked cautiously from behind me.
“Sorta,” I said. “He’s my mom’s ex.”
“And I’m unarmed!” Azarias raised his hands so Sloane could see them. “I don’t want to hurt either of you, so if you want to let me go—”
I moved the sword and pushed him away from me, since I didn’t want to kill anybody that I didn’t have to. Not when there would be so much bloodshed up ahead.
“Why hadn’t you been out gathering this crap yourself?” I asked him as he rubbed his throat. “You convinced Marlow to prep for this, but you didn’t think to?”
“Hey, I never knew this would happen.” He pointed to the window, and in the dim light of the apartment I could see the fear running wild in his eyes. “I was told that if I seduced your mother and got her to believe my schemes, that we could be free. And I was promised a nice payday at the end, too, but I mostly did this because I was sick of you and your kind telling me when my friends and family lived and when they died.”
“How could you not know this would happen?” I asked with a bitter laugh. “You were helping Ereshkigal overthrow the underworld, and you didn’t think that when the underworld was unleashed on earth there would be hell to pay?”
“First off, I didn’t know any of the bullshit I was spewing to Marlow about the twilight of the gods would actually happen,” Azarias clarified. “And second, I wasn’t helping Ereshkigal do shit.”
“Tamerlane Fayette said he was working for his one true queen, Ereshkigal,” I countered, keeping my voice even, but his conviction was beginning to unnerve me.
“Look, I don’t really know that guy, and I have no idea what his motivations were.” Azarias held his hands out palms up. “I only know that I sat in a meeting once with Velnias where I got my orders, and Ereshkigal wasn’t there.”
“She couldn’t come up from Kurnugia,” Sloane pointed out. “I always assumed she had a proxy doing her bidding here on earth.”
“If anything, she was the proxy,” Azarias said with a joyless chuckle. “I mean, it’s not like Vanir gods are gonna do the bidding of some long-forgotten underworld goddess.”
“Who…” My mouth had become so dry I nearly choked on the words. “Who did you take your orders from?”
“All my orders came from the big man himself,” he answered and pointed toward the ceiling. “Odin.”
EIGHTY-TWO
Once when I’d been a young child, I’d been lost in a forest outside of the city. Marlow had reluctantly let me tag along with her on a mission, but we’d gotten separated when a rainstorm rolled in.
I had been lost in the dark, cold, wet, hungry, and terrified, but there had been a strange magic in the moment. Running through the woods—not knowing where I was going or if I’d make it out alive, my feet slipping with every step—had been exhilarating and wonderful in the most terrifying way.
It was a memory that my mind went back to more often than most. Not only because of the fear and the wild elation, but because of what had happened after that.
I had tripped and fallen, and I smacked my head hard on a rock. There was a blinding white light. My ears were rung, and I couldn’t see or think or feel anything. The blood pounded in my ears, and my breath came out shaky, and the whole world felt as if it had tilted, like I wasn’t standing on even ground.
That was exactly how I felt now, when Azarias told me that Odin—the one I’d trusted and helped and risked my life for—was the one behind all of this. The one who had gotten my mother killed.
But like when I was a child, eventually the confusion began to clear, and when I had been able to finally look around in the forest, a man had reached out and offered me his hand—
“Think about it,” Azarias said, breaking the tense silence and pulling me from my memory. “How else could Ereshkigal have gotten her message out of the underworld? It’s not like she could just hop in and out anytime she pleased. She was locked in, and she needed someone more powerful than herself. It would have to be a Vanir god.”
“Does she know she was working for Odin?” Sloane asked in a matter-of-fact tone that led me to believe she had already accepted Azarias’s claims as truth. Which made sense, because it tied in to her burgeoning theory that Frigg had created this scenario. It wasn’t much of a leap to believe that sh
e was working in tandem with her husband.
Azarias shrugged. “Frankly, I don’t care. The time for worrying about who did what and who knew what when is over. The shit is happening now, and we all have to fight if we want to survive.”
As if to emphasize his point, the earth began to shake again. A much smaller tremor than last time, but still enough to rattle the empty vodka bottles in the sink. And then the emergency sirens began to wail again.
“Get out,” I told Azarias, but he stayed where he was—staring dumbly at me. “Get out! We don’t have time for this, so get out!”
Finally, he did as I commanded, and he scrambled out of the apartment. I slammed the door shut behind him.
“Are you okay?” Sloane asked as she followed me into my mother’s bedroom.
“I’m okay enough. But we have to get the swords and get back to the Riks.” I tried to ignore her concerned reflection in the mirrored screen that protected Marlow’s safe and hurriedly punched in the numbers.
“Can we still trust anyone at the Riks?” she asked carefully.
“I don’t know.” I frowned as I grabbed the Valkyrie swords and put them in my messenger bag. “But I trust Samael, anyway, and nearly everyone I care about will be there, so I want to be there with them. And I can’t see another option.” I paused, gritting my teeth. “Or if we even have a choice at all.”
EIGHTY-THREE
“Where’s Odin?” I demanded as soon as I stepped into Samael’s office.
The ride back to the Evig Riksdag proved more difficult than the ride out, the streets more overwhelmingly full of skeletons. Fortunately, I’d grabbed a USW gun from Marlow’s stash, and Sloane used that to shoot at any of them that grabbed at us.
We had made it back relatively unscathed—save for a few torn garments and a couple flesh wounds from where their fingers dug into my arms—but the building was quickly becoming overrun with skeletons. They were crowded around and trying to climb it or otherwise break in. The Vörðr had to shoot them off so we could get into the garage.
From the Earth to the Shadows Page 32