Storykiller (38 page)

Fenris never lost his cool, something was really really wrong.

Tessa turned in her seat as Robin, clearly as thrown as she was, pushed on the door locks while Fenris pulled on the handle, thus keeping the door firmly locked. It would have been hilarious if Tessa hadn’t been worried that Fenris was going to devour them in single bites if he didn’t get out of the car immediately. Fenris slammed himself against the door in mindless frustration while an inhuman and uncontrolled growl shot out of him. He narrowed his eyes at Robin, and though they were usually grey, they now glinted yellow in the catches of light. Tessa feared he was going to shift right in the back seat.

“Stop pulling on the damn handle!” Robin shouted, trying the locks again. Finally the door popped open, and Fenris sprang from the car, disappearing into the woods almost instantly.

Tessa stared wide-eyed at Robin, who looked more shocked than pissed for the first time ever when it came to Fenris. “Do we wait for him?” Tessa asked.

Robin shook his head, unsure and looked in the rearview mirror for traces of Fenris.

After ten minutes of anxious waiting, they were both fed up.

“Tessa, we’re close to Lore, he knows these woods better than anyone, there’s no harm in leaving him.”

“What if it’s harm to us, not him?” Tessa ask.

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning he tore out of here like I’ve never seen him—he never loses control—what if there’s some kind of danger?”

“But even if that’s the case, we’ve no idea where the danger is—we could just be sitting here waiting for it.”

Tessa sighed. “You’re right. Let’s go.”

But before they had a chance to go the car was literally covered, as if from out of nowhere, with zombies.

Except, these weren’t the same as what they had seen before.

These were different.

Some of them were wearing armor and helmets like Vikings would wear, like Norse soldiers except the undead variety. They gave the impression of being ghosts, although the force with which they slammed against the car proved them anything but. In fact, only moments after surging against the car, one smashed its hand clean through Robin’s window. Robin reacted with pure instinct, driving his knife through its face.

They moved about as fast as the others they’d encountered, but more importantly, they moved almost as if in coordination with one another. The others seemed mindless in comparison to these.

Even worse, the one that Robin had just killed stood back up, very much alive, or what counted for alive when it came to zombies.

“Yae Simane,” Robin said. “They’re Stories. I can’t kill them.”

All the color drained from both their faces.

“Oh, God.”

Fenris slowed his pace. The rain was confusing his senses
.
All of them.

He tasted sulfur on his tongue and came to a stop, looking for the source. A residue of static was in the air, pricking at his skin. But before he saw anything, he smelled it again. A smell that both haunted him and that he ached for. Things that should not have been the same but were.

Fresh cut grass. Baking bread. Wood nymphs. Lavender.

Red Riding Hood.

Robin and Tessa scrambled over the front seats and into the back. Tessa punched at every fleshy bit that came at them while Robin reached over the seat and into the back to draw out his bow and a sheath of arrows stored where the spare tire should have been.

“What happens if you get a flat?” Tessa asked.

“I’m screwed,” he said, and then smiled, trying to keep things light. “So, if this even works, we’re going to have to run,” he paused. “For a long time. Like, until we can find shelter or lose them, long time.”

“Yeah, I get it. I may not have the best endurance, but I’m the freaking Scion, Robin. I’ll get it done.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear,” he said, smiling and kissing her on the mouth briefly as another ghost-zombie hand went through the back window. Robin popped open the sunroof and they both climbed through, yanking their clothes free of grasping hands. Tessa called her axe and chopped away at arms and gaping jaws while Robin loaded a bow. He shot a tree far away, high and deep into the woods. He pulled the attached cable tight and grabbed Tessa around the waist.

“This is very Batman of you,” Tessa said, as she kicked a zombie in the face and linked one arm around Robin’s neck.

“I was thinking more Skywalker, but yours is better,” he said. They leapt and swung over and away from the zombie-covered car, landing roughly in the woods.

“Go,” he said, as they landed hard and immediately scrambled to their feet.

Tessa made the mistake of looking back.

They were already chasing them.

“Ryder,” Fenris said, unable to stop the smile that spread unbidden across his face. The words had long been absent from his tongue, and he had missed them.

“Wolf,” the beautiful redhead said from a stand of thick trees. She nodded her head at him to follow her, and he did, until they were standing under a canopy that shielded them from most of the rain. Once there, Ryder pushed back the scarlet-colored hood from her head, shaking her long red curls free. She smiled a layered smile, one perhaps understood by Fenris alone.

Fenris stepped toward her but she side-stepped him easily and wagged her finger at him playfully.
The sight of her brought back a powerful want he had long been trying to forget, had sometimes thought he might have.

“She’s young,” Ryder said, clucking her tongue disdainfully.

Fenris didn’t blink. “All Mortals are young, as are all Scions,” he said, circling her, an old dance that they were well-versed in.

“Your interest in her insults me,” Ryder said, moving away from him, dipping into a deep shadow.

“It’s a complicated matter, Ryder.”

“It seems decidedly simple from here.”

“Then you’re not looking hard enough,” he said.

Ryder caught his eyes for the first time since arriving. “I looked pretty hard.”

“The long game has never been your strong suit,” he said, and it had a bit of meanness he hadn’t intended. He changed gears. “Enough, Ryder. What brings you to Lore?”

“You, Devourer,” she said innocently, before breaking the stare. “It’s always you.”

He watched her, his eyes flicking around her face, trying to find truth. He was trying to remain composed, but he could feel his edges fraying. Ryder always caused his edges to fray, and he wished it didn’t make his skin feel alive.

She changed gears this time. “So why
did
you send Robin to her? You are right, I cannot see the play.”

“Because there isn’t one.”

“There’s always a play with you. Centuries of knowing you, there’s always a play, no matter how long the view.”

“There isn’t,” Fenris said, moving closer to her.

Ryder allowed him to close in, and then tightened the distance between them herself, laying her body against his carefully, touching him lightly. “You never change,” she purred. He didn’t resist her.

“You’re rather lush yourself, Ryder,” he breathed, trying to slow his heartbeat.

Ryder sighed into his neck, like an old lover, but when she spoke her words were anything but sweet. “You stink of her. Of Mortal.”

Fenris didn’t push her away but didn’t breathe her in as he wanted to either. “Hard not to. When you live here for centuries, it’s bound to rub off eventually.”

“So come back,” she said, her voice barely a whisper in his ear. Fenris tried to hide his surprise and failed, edging back to look her in the face.

“Really?”

“Maybe,” she said, her eyes light, dancing around his face.

“All you have to do is say the word, Red. You’re the one that decided Story wasn’t big enough for us both. I exiled myself to this place for you. I’ll undo it for you just the same.”

Ryder eyed him skeptically. “I think you’re lying.” She spun away from him, suddenly quite sad and no longer playful. “I pushed you away and now I’ve driven you into the arms of the enemy.”

“Is that it? You want me to come back, not for love, not because you’ve finally missed me, but because you believe I’m on a side you don’t approve of?” He turned away from her. “Talk about taking the long view,” he said, a snap of bitterness to his voice. He softened it and reached for her but she evaded him. “I have been in love with you since you took breath, and so long as you do, I’ll love you still. I’m a slave to my Fiction and I’ve never wanted to be free of it, not the part that touches you leastways.” He reached for her again, and once again she slid away.

‘You’re deluding yourself, Wolf. Your feelings about these things are clear.”

Fenris tried to change tactics. “Weren’t you the one that said I was incapable of love?”

“No, I never said you were incapable of love, I just said for you it’s the same as devouring. Someone always get devoured, and somehow it’s never you.”

“I’m happy to be devoured by you, Ryder,” he said, finally pulling her to him. She took his hand and placed something inside it, closing his fingers around it.

“I guess we’ll see.”

Fenris looked at what she had put in his hand.

It was a life preserver, and it spoke volumes. About how she felt for him, about how dangerous things had become, about the choices ahead of him.

An ancient ache shuddered through him, and he thought that part of him might rip out and go back to Story all by itself without his permission. He put away the life preserver because looking at it was making him feel torn in two. Instead, he looked at her, alarmed. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“The Monster has had Circe raise The Draugr,” she said flatly.

Fenris looked at her, wide-eyed. “He wouldn’t.”

“He has,” she said. “He has not only raised them, but he has sent them and as we speak, they hunt her down.”

Tessa thought she was going to die. She had never before run so hard, so fast, or so long. She might have been able to handle the first two, but the third was killing her. There were only three things keeping her going: the horrific sound of a horde of zombies crashing behind her, somehow moaning
“Sciooooonnnnn”
as they ran; the humiliation of being proven wrong—that she didn’t have the endurance to keep up with Robin; and the sight of Robin’s ass as he ran, which was more than enough reason to keep living and thus, running.