Transcendent (3 page)

Rory felt his brow knit in a frown as he attempted—not for the first time—to wrap his head around that. Around all of it. From everything he'd been told, his understanding of the Norse gods was this: Over the long years, when the beliefs of men drifted from them, the Aesir began to fade from existence. Balder had been the first to go, and that started the whole long, slow decline. The other gods and goddesses had followed. Not all of them, and not completely. More like, the
person
of Odin had fallen away, but the
power
remained, to be assumed in time by one who was deemed worthy, or strong enough.
Or maybe stupid enough
, Rory thought. He understood that was not the case for all the gods. Loki, stubborn and contrary to the end, had endured, willfully remaining chained in torment. Heimdall, too, had clung to his grim post as
harbinger of the End of Days. More than harbinger, lately, according to the Norns. Instigator. And they should know—it was what
they
had done throughout history, after all: instigate. Only this time, with Gunnar Starling and his family, it seemed as though they might actually be successful.

“Something bothering you, son?” Gunnar asked.

Rory clenched and unclenched his silver fingers. The feel of his hand closing into that hammer of a fist comforted him. Calmed him. “I just . . . I guess I'm still trying to understand how all this is happening. And why.”

“The ‘why' is that we have—thus far—been found worthy by the fates to carry out the sacred duties of our forefathers to their ultimate end. The ‘how' is . . . well, magick.”

“Yeah. I get that. I think. But—”

He broke off when his father suddenly gasped and grabbed for the left side of his face with both hands. Gunnar's head snapped back and he staggered a few steps, teeth clenched in what looked like excruciating pain.

“Dad?” Rory took a hesitant step toward him, reaching out with his still-human hand. “You okay . . . ?”

Gunnar leaned heavily on the back of one of the room's leather wingback chairs, heaving in ragged gasps. He dropped his hand and Rory saw that a red gleam had replaced the twist of gold in his eye. All the blood had drained from his face and he was deathly pale. “Did you feel that?” he asked.

Rory frowned.
Feel what?
Truthfully, all he felt was a sudden hollowness in his stomach, like a deep hunger pang.

“The void,” Gunnar murmured. “There is an emptiness.”

Maybe he
did
feel something.

“Something has happened. . . .”

As Rory watched, Gunnar's red-tinged gaze turned inward and a slow, terrifying grin spread over his face. He nodded in satisfaction.

“The little witch,” he said. “The haruspex . . . She's ended herself. I guess she finally had enough of being a thrall. Daria must be terribly disappointed, but now we have our opportunity. We will have to move with some haste, though. They won't stay at her temple much longer, and the Miasma will lift soon. Are you strong enough to go out into the city?”

“Of course I am,” Rory snapped. Who the hell did his father think he was? Sure, he'd had the crap massively kicked out of him and his arm destroyed only a few days earlier. But like the Bionic Man, he was better now. Better, stronger, faster . . . At his side, his silver fingers closed in on themselves.

“Hmm,” his father grunted. “We shall see.”

He turned back to the mirror on the wall and lifted his hand, placing his palm on the smooth surface, which wavered like a mirage and resolved to show Mason again. She no longer wore her Valkyrie garb, and she seemed to be arguing with Cal. There was something very different about
him
, too, Rory thought.

“I want you to go to them. Find them and provoke them into a fight. I have resources you can use to such an end. Mason must be goaded into fulfilling her role as the chooser of
the slain. It is against her nature, but she
must
take on that mantle—it is vital. Without a third Odin son—without someone to take up the mantle of Thor—there will be no Ragnarok. As I have been made the vessel of the Allfather's power, so you and your brother carry the essences of Vali and Vidar, the children of Odin destined to rebuild the world. Mason was to be the third son. The sacrifice. She was to fulfill the role of Thor and lay down her life on the field alongside mine.” Gunnar's brow creased in a dark frown, and lightning from the storm cast his features in a sudden, ugly grimace. “Her mother thwarted me in that. But now I have the chance to right her wrong. Mason as a Valkyrie will choose the third Odin son, and it is my wish that she choose . . . him.”

Gunnar nodded to the mirror and Rory began to sputter in outrage.

“Cal?” he squawked. “Him? You have got to be kidding! That guy's a total tool! Jeezus, Dad—anyone but him!”

Gunnar cast a grimly amused glance at his son. “Are you going to let petty high school jealousy get in the way of a glorious apocalypse?”

“Yes!” Rory exclaimed. “He's not Thor—he's a . . . a pompous jerkass!”

“Here's hoping he's a pompous jerkass who can hold his own in a fight,” Gunnar said. “I seem to remember from attending your sister's fencing competitions that he can. Well then. As I say—you must draw them into conflict. And you must see to it that Cal's striving is the most valiant. Mason must see him as the best candidate to choose.”

“That's not going to happen.” Rory shook his head. “Not with that Fennrys dude around.”

“Do not engage the Wolf,” Gunnar said sternly. “Do not give him anything to fight. Frustrate his attempts and concentrate your efforts on the Aristarchos boy. See to it she chooses him and then, when the final wheel is set in motion, get out of the way and let destiny take its course. The Wolf
must
remain as he is, so that in the end, he and I may meet on the field. He will take my life, and then Roth will take his. The Aristarchos boy, wearing the mantle of the thunder god, will die alongside us both. Now, how sweet an irony is that? And how convenient that he's half god already.”

“He's
what
?”

Now, how in hell did
that
happen?
Rory wondered.

Gunnar ignored his outburst. “He is also the son of my greatest rival, and he's already marked by the draugr.”

“And he's a total horn-dog,” Rory said, ignoring the shudder that ran through him at the memory of that night in the Gosforth gym, when the draugr—Norse zombie warriors—had first attacked. “He's got the drooling hots for your daughter, you know!”

“Good!” Gunnar enthused and clapped Rory on the shoulder. “Then he might even appreciate it when Mason bestows on him the power of the Thunderer. For the brief time he'll have left to live, that is.”

Great
, Rory fumed silently.
So that pansy-ass pretty boy gets ramped up to Thor status, Roth gets to kill Mason's wolf-boy, and I'm like . . . what? The overlooked middle god?
What
exactly was Vali's claim to fame in the legends anyway, besides outliving most everyone?
Oh, right . . . something about being born to be a brother killer in the old tales
.

At that thought, Rory shrugged inwardly and sighed.

“Fine. I can live with that,” he muttered to himself. “And then Roth better watch his ass in our brave new world.”

T
he gale-force winds howling around the top of the skyscraper snatched Gwen Littlefield's body and spun her out into darkness. She arced in a trajectory that took her far away from the Rockefeller tower's terraced sides and then plummeted like a stone toward the plaza sixty-seven stories below, where Mason could just glimpse the golden statue of Prometheus, Titan hero of Greek myth and champion of
humanity, carrying his stolen fire down from the heavens.

Somewhere in the dark skies above, the raven shrieked.

Heather screamed.

Mason turned away before she saw Gwen's body hit the ground.

But even still, she couldn't stop from
feeling
the girl's death in her Valkyrie's heart. It felt like someone punching her in the sternum—hard enough to crack her ribs—and Mason doubled over for an instant, awash in agony. She thought she would fall to the ground, but suddenly there were strong arms wrapped around her, someone holding her tightly in a fierce embrace. Mason sagged against the wall of chest muscles, behind which she could hear the thunderous beating of a heart. She could feel breath flowing in and out of lungs and it almost sounded to her like the ebb and flow of the ocean—a tidal rush of pounding surf.

Waves . . .

Water.

She pushed away and looked up into Calum's sea-green eyes.

“Get away from me, you son of a bitch!” Mason struggled to free herself from the vise of his embrace. When had Cal ever been that strong? Then again, when had she? With a convulsive shove, she straight-armed him away from her—hard enough to wind him as he staggered back and his shoulders slammed into stone parapet.

They were so high up that, in the far-off distance, Mason
could see the wreckage of the Hell Gate Bridge, starkly illuminated by the work lights of the demolition crews that worked night and day to remove the shattered fragments of the bridge that had taken her to Asgard not three short days earlier. A lifetime.

An eternity
.

Cal reached out a hand toward her. “Mase—”

She batted his arm away with a savagery that surprised him. She could see it in his eyes, but she didn't care. The echoes of Gwen Littlefield's death clawed at the insides of her skull, and inside the Weather Room she heard the heartbreaking cry of wolf-song. Mason spared Cal a venomous glare and, tearing the helmet from her head, hurled it at one of the tall windows. The impact left a spiderweb of cracks, radiating outward like Arachne's fabled tapestry—the one that had so angered the goddess Athena that she'd turned the weaver into a spider.

It's a bad idea to piss off goddesses
, Mason thought.

Is that what you think you are?

She didn't know. She didn't know anything with any certainty anymore. She only knew she hurt. And she wasn't the only one. The sound of ragged screaming made her look back to see Roth rising up from the altar. The narcotic
kykeon
and the curse magicks still coursing through him made his movements wildly clumsy and dangerous as he careened toward the stone ledge from which the girl he loved had just launched herself into nothingness.

He cried out her name, the sound on his lips like a raw wound torn in the air, and lurched for the parapet. Toby and
Maddox rushed forward and grabbed him by his bloodied arms to keep him from following in Gwen's wake. Roth was too messed up to fight them for long. The sudden severing of his psychic connection with Gwen—shocking in its permanency—hit him devastatingly hard. His knees buckled and he sagged against the other two men. But as the fencing instructor and the Janus Guard tried to lead him away from the edge of the abyss, Roth's glassy stare locked on to Daria and his face twisted into a mask of horror and hate, carved with the blade of a breaking heart. He lunged, and Mason thrust herself in front of Daria an instant before Roth could rip her throat out with his bare hands.

“No!” she shouted at him, forcing him back.

“Get off me, Mase!” he snarled.

“No . . . Roth,” Mason pleaded. “No more blood!”

Her Valkyrie strength barely kept him from reaching Daria as he thrashed and lunged. Mason dug her fingers into his flesh and shook him by the shoulders until his teeth rattled to make him look at her. When Roth's mad-eyed stare finally seemed to focus on her face, Mason's throat closed tight with sorrow at what she saw there. Her next words rasped from her mouth in a whisper.

“No more blood,” she said, turning him away from Daria. “Not even hers.”

“Mase . . .”

“Please.”

Roth reached up to grasp the sides of his sister's face and he leaned his forehead against hers. His skin was slick with sweat.
And blood and tears.

“This has to end,” he whispered.

“I know.” She nodded her forehead against his. “But not like this. We are not killers, Roth. You're not a killer. No matter what she made you do . . . no matter what happened in the past. We are not our parents and we are
not
pawns in this sick stupid game of theirs. Don't you see? Gwen just proved that beyond every shadow of a doubt. She made a choice, and you have to honor that.” She pulled her head back and looked into his bloodshot eyes. “You have to trust it. And her. And me.”

Roth blinked at her dully for a moment. Then he laughed. His laughter was the harsh call of a carrion crow and it chilled her to the marrow.

“
Trust
you, little sister?” he asked.

He let go of her and backed off a few lurching steps.

“I
ended
you.”

“Roth—”

“You're not supposed to exist!” he howled savagely, waving one arm wildly in her direction. “And yet, here you are. You're a freaking
Valkyrie
. That
happened
. In spite of everything we did.” He stalked back and grabbed her by the back of her head, pulling her face so close to his she could feel his breath hot on her cheeks. “You think you have a say in this?” he hissed. “You don't. And you want me to
trust
you? You scare the shit out of me, Mason. How'm I supposed to trust that?”

He let go of her and Mason took a stumbling step back, away from the rage and pain and hollow-eyed horror in her brother's face. Roth had always been a rock for Mason. The
opposite of her self-absorbed jackass of a brother, Rory.

Roth protected her. He looked out for her.

He murdered you
. . .

Maybe he was right. Maybe she shouldn't exist.

No
.

She shook her head. That wasn't Roth talking. And it hadn't been Roth acting, all those years ago. It had been the will of the woman that Mason had just stopped Roth from attacking. Part of her whispered that she should step aside.
Let him do it
.