Starling (32 page)

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve been here before. These people—things, whatever—they’re afraid of me. They won’t bother us.” He turned and looked north, and his gaze narrowed. Focused. “And there’s someone else here....”

“Who?” Mason asked in a dry whisper.

“I don’t know. But they won’t bother him either.”

Mason quickened her pace to keep up with Fennrys. For some reason, knowing that didn’t make her feel any better.

F
ennrys warily climbed the shallow stone steps that led up Greywacke Knoll, under an arching bower of crabapple branches, and into an octagonal clearing. The open space was paved with interlocking bricks and occupied at its center by an awe-inspiring granite monument so ancient Fennrys could almost feel the history emanating from it in waves. A tall, slender, four-sided finger of stone pointing skyward, it was mounted on the backs of enormous bronze sea crabs, and its surface was covered in hieroglyphics. It was called Cleopatra’s Needle, although that was a misnomer. The obelisk had actually been commissioned by the pharaoh Thutmosis III more than fifteen hundred years before that great queen had even been born.

It had taken a tremendous effort to get the thing from Egypt to New York, back in the day, but it had stood in that spot now since 1881. It drew the eye toward it and, even for someone who couldn’t feel the subtle waves of power emanating from it, it would have been almost impossible to stop staring at the thing—if it weren’t for the person who stood leaning on the brass rail that surrounded it.
He
drew the eye too.

The young man was fashion-model handsome, with skin that was smooth and deeply tanned to a burnished copper. His features were sharp and elegant, high cheekbones and a long nose, and the lashes rimming his eyes were so thick he looked like he might have been wearing eyeliner. His jet-black hair was dressed in uniform pencil-thin dreadlocks that swept back off his forehead and brushed his shoulders. When he smiled, it was to show off a gleaming white smile and sharply pointed canines, and his eyes were so dark brown they looked black.

They were fixed, unblinking, on Fennrys.

“You look like nine miles of bad road,” he said, and laughed. It was an easy, pleasant sound … and it chilled Fennrys to the bone. “Could be worse, I suppose. Could be ten.”

Fennrys glanced down at what he was wearing.

“No, no. The clothes are okay.” He waved a hand dismissively, dressed impeccably himself in a sleek charcoal suit with an open-collared silk dress shirt underneath, midnight blue. Tiny gold hoops shone in both his ears. “I mean, personally, I would have gone for a more body-conscious jacket, but then you probably need the room. Tough to swing a weapon if you’re too tailored.”

Fennrys restrained himself from actually going for the sword slung across his back—he had a feeling weapons wouldn’t necessarily be of much use against this one. Instead he stood in a relaxed stance, waiting to see what the stranger would do next.

“You’re a clever one. And
that
”—he glanced pointedly at the sword Fennrys
hadn’t
drawn—“was the right decision, Fennrys Wolf.”

Fennrys didn’t bother to question how the man had known what he’d been thinking. “Thought it might be,” he said.

“You’ve been in the city for a while now,” the stranger said, shifting so that he leaned one elbow on the railing in an indolent pose. His glance flicked over to Mason and then back to Fennrys. “Where’ve you been all this time?”

“Around,” Fennrys said flatly, avoiding the urge to step protectively in front of Mason. “Today I spent a lovely few hours down at the library, and then I rounded it out relaxing in Bryant Park. Thanks for asking.”

“Bryant Park. Figures.” The stranger rolled his eyes skyward. “And here I am waiting for you up here, in the first place I would have thought you’d come back to. What’s the matter? Too many bad memories?”

Fennrys reared back like a spooked animal.

“That’s not very funny,” Mason snapped.

The man’s gaze narrowed, focusing on her again, and every muscle in Fennrys’s body went taut with apprehension. He turned his head toward Mason without taking his eyes from the man’s face.

“You know that whole ‘never talk to strangers’ thing, Mase?” Fennrys said in a low voice. “They don’t get much stranger than this.”

Mason looked up at him, her blue gaze glittering fiercely. Then suddenly, before he could stop her, she stepped around Fennrys and stalked toward the obelisk, stopping when she was only a few feet away from the stranger.

“What are you?” she demanded.

The man raised an eyebrow at her, mildly astonished. “I beg your pardon?”

“What
are
you?” she repeated. “I mean … so far this week I’ve worked my way through storm zombies, lizard mermaids, river goddesses, nasty flying things that I don’t even want to know what they were, and stunt doubles for the hounds of the Baskervilles. So. What are you? Demon? Vampire?”

“Vampires don’t exist.” The man scoffed.

“Right. Silly me.”

“I’m a werewolf.”

Mason blinked and turned to Fennrys. “See? And I thought that was you!”

“Oh, please.” The man snorted. “He’d need a lot more style to run with my crew. And I’m not just
a
werewolf.”

Mason turned back to him.

“I’m
the
werewolf.”

“Well, aren’t we the lucky ones.”

“You have been so far, Mason Starling,” the man said sharply, and speared her with a glance that knocked the bravado right out of her. “If I were you, I’d try my very best to make sure that becomes a trend. Now I know you’re freaked, and that’s fine. But a little respect would go a long way. Especially considering the fact that you’re standing in a park in the middle of New York City talking to a god.”

“I … I thought you said you were a … a werewolf,” she stammered.

All of a sudden, the man’s handsome features began to blur and shift.

Fennrys lunged forward and pulled Mason away as a wash of crackling blue-black light danced over the surface of the stranger’s skin—which darkened to ebony and grew sleek and shiny—as his face elongated and reshaped into a long, fiercely pointed muzzle. His ears pulled back and extended upward from the sides of his head. The muscles of his neck thickened, and a fine black pelt covered them, blurring the outlines with thick, short fur. The expensive suit disappeared, replaced by a wide golden collar that draped over his torso, extending out over his muscled shoulders almost like wings. It sparkled with precious inlaid stones and served to emphasize that the rest of him was now essentially naked except for a long, pleated linen loincloth edged in gold embroidered designs and belted with yet more gold. His hands were still … hands. Fennrys had almost expected paws, but no, he still had fingers and toes, like a person, only the nails were long and sharp, like claws. And painted a brilliant lapis lazuli blue. His whole body was covered in sleek black fur that shone with indigo highlights and emphasized his exquisitely sculpted physique, which—from the neck down—still looked human. Except for the fur.

His lips drew back from a long snout full of gleaming white, dagger-sharp teeth. His glittering eyes sparked with grim mirth, and he said, in a voice like the growl of a wolf, “I
was
going to ease you into the whole god thing.”

Mason willed herself not to faint, even though she could practically hear the blood rushing from her head. There was absolutely no doubt in her mind that the being standing in front of her was what he said he was. Power virtually rolled off him in waves. She recognized him from books and images she’d seen online, researching a paper on ancient myths and legends. He was Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian god of the dead. He grinned at her again, and again his form shifted and a sleek black wolf paced a circle around where she and Fennrys stood.

And then suddenly, all around them, the shadows under the trees started to writhe and flow toward them as a half-dozen other wolves padded out into the obelisk clearing and formed a loose circle around Mason and Fennrys.

Okay
, Mason thought. Maybe she
should
just faint.

Fennrys tightened his grip on her as she started to sag in his arms. She clung to him, trying not to succumb to a whole new level of fear. Then, just as suddenly as he’d shifted form, the handsome young god stood before them, once again clothed in his stylish human shape. His lupine companions sat on the ground around them, watching with eyes that held far more awareness than wolves’ eyes should. Human eyes.

“I hate showing off, but I trust I’ve made my point?”

Mason nodded weakly.

“And I trust, also, that you understand now how I might have a bit of insight into the unusual things that have been going on in this town lately.”

She nodded again.

“Good. My name, in case you didn’t know, is Anubis.
You
kids can call me Rafe.” His dark eyes flicked over to Fennrys. “And
we
really need to talk.”

The conversation seemed, at first, like it was going to be a fairly short, utterly fruitless one. Mostly because it consisted of Rafe asking Fennrys a bunch of questions that he had absolutely no way of answering. Questions about his life before the moment when he had dragged himself out of the ruins of the Gosforth oak tree and started fighting monsters.

“You don’t remember
anything
?” Rafe said eventually, the frustration evident in his voice. He shook his head, and his dreadlocks swung back and forth against his high, chiseled cheekbones.

Fennrys shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Damn,” Rafe murmured to himself. “The River Lethe. So
that’s
how she did it....”

“Can you help him?” Mason asked.

“
Help
him?” Rafe said sharply, glancing at her. “I should tear his throat out right now and be done with it. It would probably save the mortal realm a whole lot of grief!”

Mason gasped and drew back, horrified and confused.

Fennrys just stared at him, unblinking.

Rafe sighed gustily.

“What am I?” Fennrys asked.

Mason held her breath.

The Egyptian god of the dead ran a hand over his dreads and looked up, an expression of something that might have been pity in his eyes. As if he was silently apologizing for the things he was about to say. “You were born a Viking prince in the year 1003, according to the current calendar. At seven months old, you were taken away by a faerie king to be raised in a place called the Otherworld, the Faerie Realm, as a warrior and a guardian of the gateway between the worlds. That gate just so happens to exist within the confines of Central Park, so that’s why I expected you’d eventually find your way back here on your return.”

Mason’s jaw drifted open. “F-F—”

“Faerie. Yeah.” Rafe shot her a look. “At least, I assume that’s what you were about to say.”

“Right. Yeah.” Mason swallowed nervously. “Hey, uh, I don’t mean to be rude, Mister … Rafe. But what’s an Egyptian god doing telling an ancient Viking his life story?” she asked, having a hard time reconciling the whole situation.

“Because I’m the only one kicking around these parts that knows anything about it.” He shrugged. “I have connections, you see. And as for the Egyptian thing, well, there’s a lot more crossover in the Beyond Realms—the realms of the gods—than you’d think. Over the millennia, the boundaries between the various regions have begun to blur. The edges between where one world ends and another begins now overlap, and it’s not so very unlikely for, say, an Olympian to come into contact with an Aesir—which, I have a sneaking suspicion, is how
you
got your ass back to this realm in the first place.” He glanced back at Fennrys. “I think a couple of goddesses I know are in cahoots, although I can’t say for sure.”

“And you?” Mason asked, wondering just how many questions she could get away with asking. “How did you get here if it’s so hard to cross back and forth?”

“Me?” Rafe grinned sourly. “I was turfed out of my own underworld long before any of this happened by a brother god of mine who had the ambition—and the ego—to make it happen. I’ve made my home here in the mortal realm ever since. But I still get regular news updates, you know?”

“What happened to me
here
?” Fennrys asked abruptly, a tremor in his voice. “In the park?”