Dead Wrath (28 page)

Joshua leaned over Aidan's still form and held on to my arm. "Bryn, stay with him. We'll make our way straight back to Asgard. We have the virus as well as the details of how they made the black poison."

I hesitated for a second. "Are you sure? I can come right back." I made the offer, but I wasn't sure I'd be able to leave Aidan knowing there was so little hope left.

"No. We won't be far behind you. We'll take the Bifrost straight back to Asgard. Derek just needs to locate the closest one. You go."

I longed to have his arms around me, all the while knowing that wouldn't happen for a while, so I remained kneeling and tightened my fingers around the spear. Holding on to Aidan, I stamped the staff onto the floor three times. I already had Eir's treatment room in my mind, and we arrived smoothly and landed with a thump. The impact reverberated through my knees, but I paid it little attention.

As soon I solidified, I called out for Eir. Thankfully, she was walking into the room and when she caught sight of me and Aidan, she almost flew toward me. Her pale face whitened at the sight of the black gloopy substance, and she met my eyes, her expression sad.

"You really need to stop bringing me patients this way, Bryn." Her attempt at cheering me fell flat. "Tell me what happened," she prompted, but I was almost certain she was just asking the question to keep me occupied. To her, it didn't matter how the black goo had gotten into him. All that mattered was we had no idea how to reverse the effects of the poison.

I sighed and gave her a quick rundown of how he was injured.

Eir dusted her hands, then said, "Help me get him to the bed. I think the first step will be to remove the bullet. Then we can go from there."

She bent to grab his shoulders and I waved her off, shaking my head. It was my blood that was killing him so I knew he was my burden to bear. I dropped Gungnir on the floor, the golden spear making a tinkling sound as it hit the white marble. I ignored it and slipped a hand beneath Aidan's knees, the other under his shoulders. I lifted him effortlessly, reminded again of the time I'd carried him back to Asgard, a frozen corpse to be brought back to life to serve the All-Father.

This time he was still alive, but barely. I laid him on the crisp white sheet of the thin mattress on Eir's treatment cot. He moaned as his weight settled. His eyes opened a narrow crack and he stared at me, slightly confused. "Enya?" His voice cracked and he coughed, the sound wet and ominous.

I gripped his hand within mine and said, "She's on her way. Just hang in there. I couldn't bring her with us, but Joshua will make sure they get here fast."

Aidan blinked slowly, his dark eyebrows and black hair looking blacker against the growing paleness of his skin. My heart tightened and fear took the breath from my lungs. I never thought I would lose him again, not in such a permanent way.

Our relationship, whatever love we'd had between us, had been short-lived, but it had been an honest emotion. But it hadn't been strong enough to survive everything Loki had thrown at us, and Aidan hadn't been strong enough to defeat his tumultuous emotions.

I straightened and felt Eir at my side. Stepping away, I gave her unhindered access. The goddess looked up at me. "Perhaps you should fetch Aidan's mother." The mere mention of his mother made me want to fall to my knees and sob. I knew what that meant.

Fetching family meant there was no hope.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I gripped my fingers into a fist and ran out of the room. I raced down the hall and past the Valkyries section within the palace. Aidan's mother and sister were in a small apartment, which would usually have been used for visiting gods or dignitaries. It said a lot that Aidan's family had been assigned to such important digs.

I paused in front of their door, my fist raised, knuckles about to hit the thick wood on the door, when I noticed the blood and black oily gloop staining my hands. I stared at it for a moment and struggled to swallow a sob. I took a shuddering breath and knocked.

Mrs. Lee opened the door and gave me such a welcoming smile that it broke my heart and shattered my resolve. Tears ran down my face, and she put a hand on my shoulder. She guided me inside and helped me to a seat on the couch near the door.

"What's wrong, dear? Has something happened?" Her face was filled with worry and fear, and I could see clearly that she was wondering which one of her children my tears were for.

"It's Aidan. I'm sorry." I wiped my eyes and got to my feet, looking away. Somehow I couldn't bear to look at her. I cleared my throat. "I came to fetch you. We need to get back to Eir's treatment room. Now." I took a shuddering breath while Mrs. Lee slipped her hand into mine and gave it a squeeze.

I admired her more than ever. The woman had been through so much, manipulated by her husband to bear the child of Loki, spending months away from a son who was being forced to do his father's bidding with the threat of the safety of his mother and sister hanging over his head.

We hurried back to Aidan, and as soon as we entered the room, she let go of my hand and hurried to her son's side.

"What happened to him?" she asked, her voice soft and pained as her eyes traveled across Aidan's body.

"He was shot with a specialized poisoned bullet. Loki fashioned the poison to target einherjar. As far we know, there is no antidote." As I spoke, something popped into my mind. I glanced at Eir, who was watching me as if already expecting me to say something. "What if we used my blood? Maybe a transfusion or something?"

Eir studied my face, then tilted her head, her mind turning the idea over and over. She looked like a little dove bobbing its head this way and that. Then she drew in a breath. "I don't know if that will work, but it's worth a try."

I nodded, eager to be doing something involving action. "Where will we set it up?"

"Here is fine, but we need to test your blood on him first. I have no idea what effect your blood will have on Aidan. We've never combined warrior and Valkyrie blood before. And given that the poison contains your blood, that's already a bit of a worry." I felt my stomach turn into a solid stone in my gut.

All paths always led to me.

"Come, Bryn, sit here beside him," Eir called me, pulling me out of my morbid thoughts. I took the seat she indicated and sat beside the bed, waiting for her ministrations. She had a blade in her hand, which startled me. I hadn't even seen her pick it up. Served me right for not paying attention.

The knife glinted and on some level, I registered it was standard hospital issue. Looked like Eir had upgraded her medical implements to more advanced Midgardian stainless steel.

I stuck my hand out and Eir cupped it gently, tilting my wrist toward her. She placed the blade against my vein and sliced into it. I barely felt the cut, my attention focused on Aidan's face. I was praying hard, desperate for this to work. Aidan didn't deserve to die this way.

Eir tilted my hand and allowed the blood to drip into a small white bowl. Then she placed a swab onto the cut and told me to press tightly. Before I moved, she had already turned to Aidan. Lifting his shirt, she revealed the wound, and I had to silence a cry of horror. The ragged flesh had festered, the edges yellowed with pus. The skin of his abdomen was now covered with a network of black poisonous veins. Eir moved with such gentleness it made my heart ache. She bent over Aidan, holding the small bowl above Aidan's abdomen. She tilted it, allowing a single drop to land on the open wound.

I held my breath as the red of the blood hit the red of the gaping injury. And I almost fainted when it sizzled, steam rising from ruined flesh. I gasped and leaned forward. "What happened? Is he okay?"

Eir waved me away. "He is fine. Look at the wound." Mrs. Lee and I bent closer to see the effect of the single drop of blood. Where my blood had hit Aidan's wound, the threads of black veins had disappeared, leaving a small patch of broken skin clean and smooth.

"I'm going to try some more and if it works like this, we will need more blood, Brynhildr." Eir spoke softly, her eyes gentle as they went from Aidan to me to his mother. Then she tapped Mrs. Lee's arm. "You don't need to be here for this," she said, clearly wanting to shield her from the worst of her son's treatment.

But Mrs. Lee shook her head vehemently. "I'll stay," was all she said, her voice firm and unrelenting.

Eir didn't press the issue. She moved away, then returned moments later with a chair for Aidan's mother, who shifted it to sit beside me instead of at her son's feet. She took my free hand in hers and patted it softly. I was so moved by her caring that when I looked at her, my eyes were filled with tears. She was Aidan's mother, yet she was still making sure I was okay, sitting beside me to support me.

Eir came closer to me. "For now, I will make the incision and you can hold your hand over the wound. Let the blood drip directly into the wound. I've already removed the bullet so there should be no residual poison left."

I held out my hand. She reopened the cut she'd made earlier. Blood welled to the incision and I hurriedly extended my hand over Aidan's wound. My blood dripped slowly onto his bare flesh and each time it sizzled as if his body were made of hot coals.

I sat there for a long while, dripping blood and watching to see it make a difference to Aidan. But I could see little change in his condition. Soon I began to feel faint and figured I was losing too much blood. When my head rocked forward, Aidan's mother caught me around the shoulder before I fell.

"I think she's losing too much blood," she said softly to Eir.

The goddess moved around me to check the cut. "She is getting weaker, but she still has sufficient blood to provide. We need to continue the process as long as possible. We will stop when the blood flow ceases."

I felt more than a bit dizzy so I remained where I was, head on Mrs. Lee's shoulder, hand stretched out over her son's body. I must have passed out after a while, because the next thing I heard was the urgent sound of footsteps rushing into the treatment room.

I blinked slowly and opened my eyes to see Joshua and Edrik bringing Enya into the room. She hurried to her brother, dropping to her knees beside the bed, her eyes filled with tears.

"How is he?" she asked.

I blinked and slowly became aware that she was talking to me. My head was aching and I lifted my hand to press my fingers to my temples. That was when I saw the bandage wrapped around my wrist.

Her mother answered for me. "Enya, dear, she is very weak. Give her a moment."

"What happened to her?" she asked, her voice shaky with worry.

"She's given Aidan her blood. She should be resting."

"Why did she give him blood?" Enya asked, and the tone of her voice now was no-nonsense.

Eir answered. "Bryn's blood was instrumental in the creation of this poison so we thought perhaps her blood would help to revive him."

"Has it worked?" she asked softly.

My eyes were closed so I couldn't see her face, but what I could hear was the anticipation in her voice.

"So far we have seen a little change for the better. It looks like her blood is healing him somewhat. I'm just not sure it's enough though."

"What do you mean?" asked Enya. She sounded like she was having a tough time keeping it together, and I understood what she was feeling.

I turned my head to look at Joshua and found him right beside me. "Did you get it?"

He cleared is throat, then glanced at Aidan before looking back at me. "We got the laptop. All the details were there except for how they put the poison together. It looks like they were getting small shipments of the stuff to test."

"And what about all the weapons they had there?"

"For testing. Someone was trying to adapt the bullets for different types of weapons."

"Including submachine guns," I said, despair washing over me. I'd seen the weapons strewn across the lab. It all made so much more sense now. The range of weapons, the lab equipment, the ammunition.

Loki was working on developing the poison to be used in battle against the einherjar. If he brought that to the final war, it would be a massacre.

I looked over at Eir. She was speaking softly to Enya and her mother, her expression gentle and comforting. "My lady?" She looked across at me, and I asked, "Is there a way we could set up a transfusion for him? Run my blood straight into his veins?"

Eir hesitated, and I knew why. She was reluctant to do anything that might harm me. But the way I saw it, I had to do everything in my power to save him. I cleared my throat. "A little trickle of my blood seemed to heal his body. So maybe a transfusion will make a real difference and flush out the toxins from his system."

The goddess then turned to Joshua. "Help me bring the other cot over to her. She needs to lie down and get comfortable. This process will make her extremely weak. More than she is right now."

He didn't waste any time, just followed Eir across the room. Then suddenly he was back carrying another cot with him. He waited while Mrs. Lee removed her chair and then helped me to my feet. Enya took my seat out of the way while Joshua placed the cot beside Aidan's with just the small table between them.