Transcendent (31 page)

“I mean, it's a weapon, right?” she said. “We might need every weapon we can get our hands on. Right?”

“Human weapons.” Douglas shrugged. “Maybe. Things like that? They're not for us.”

“What do you mean ‘us'?” Heather raised an eyebrow at him. “No offense, Mr. Muir but . . . you're not an ‘us.' Not exactly.”

He sighed. “I know that. I do. I remember when I first discovered that.”

“Must have been awesome,” Heather said.

“Worst day of my life.”

She frowned at him.

“Humanity is precious, Heather.” Douglas leaned forward, hands gripping the arms of his chair and his green eyes sparking fiercely. “What do you think we're fighting for here? Frail, flawed, ridiculous humanity. And all the crap and pain and sorrow that goes with it.” He sighed. “You might think you can solve your problems the way a god would with that little pop gun. And you might. But you have to think about what you might lose in the process. Because when you're playing games with gods? The toughest thing you'll ever have to do is hang on to your humanity.” He rolled his chair back a bit and gazed past her, to where Daria and the boys were the size of chess pieces in the distance. “Especially in the face of war and love. Even more than the gods, those things can wreak havoc on your soul. Love more than war. Ask your friend who gave you that.”

“I will,” she said quietly. “If I ever get the chance to meet him again.”

“I hope you do.” Douglas smiled. “I hope you get the chance to tell him you didn't need his help.”

His smile was so much like Cal's that it made her heart hurt. But something in his words felt like the taste of hope to Heather. She savored the sensation for a long moment. But then the sky split wide open above them, and gray-gold light poured down onto the island, bringing with it the sounds of battle cries on the wind.

And hope turned to ashes in Heather's mouth.

From where he stood beneath the Bronx Kill Bridge on the
north end of Randalls Island, just over a quarter of a mile from where the Ship of the Dead had beached, Rory Starling lowered a pair of night-vision binoculars and tried not to grin like a madman. Top Gunn disapproved of excessive displays of emotion. Rory kept his face turned away from where his father stood in the deeper shadows beneath the arches of the bridge, silent as a tombstone and just as still. The only thing about Gunnar that gave any indication of life was the twisting serpentine gleam of light in his left eye.

He hadn't spoken since the Norns had shown up.

It must be driving him crazy
, Rory thought,
to have to tolerate their presence here tonight. . . .

Not that there was anything Gunnar could do about it. Those three bizzaros weren't going anywhere. Directly above Rory's head, he could hear them, and see them—three shadowy shapes scurrying back and forth on the rail bridge like spiders, keening and gyrating with barely contained, powder-keg anticipation. Wild haired, wilder-eyed, and dressed head-to-toe in ragged black clothing, their excitement sizzled and sputtered like the sparks from a firecracker pinwheel.

Even after all the times he'd read the excerpts in Top Gunn's diary, Rory still hadn't been exactly sure what to expect from the trio. Sartorially, it didn't appear that they'd changed much in appearance since those days. Rather, it seemed as though the Copenhagen punk rock scene had appealed so much to the sisters' collective sense of style that they'd just decided to roll with that particular look right up until Ragnarok descended.

Maybe it's because they've come so close this time, they don't want to jinx anything
, Rory thought.
Whatever. I don't get their deal. Just so long as they stay out of
my
way . . .

Gunnar had told Rory that the current Starlings weren't the first generation of Aesir devotees to try to bring this thing to fruition. But Rory swore on his new silver hand, and on the life of his once-dead sister, that they would be the last. They would do this thing.

I
will
, he thought, as suddenly the sky overhead split open and a strange, sepulchral light flooded down onto the island.

Bringing with it the sounds of approaching war.

That's my cue!

But then, a moment later, he felt a familiar jolt in the back of his mind—a kind of warm, tingling spark. Someone had brought runegold to the island. Rory didn't even have to see it anymore to know when the golden talismans were nearby. Not after so many years of learning the secrets of the little golden acorns. His father had taken back the ones Rory had stolen from Gunnar's study and he'd felt their absence keenly ever since—like an addict forced to quit cold turkey—and a sheen of sweat sprang up on his brow now. He glanced back at his father, who was wholly focused on the ghostly ship in the distance.

So here's where I go off-script
, Rory thought, and suddenly took off running.

Ignoring his father's shouts in his ears, and using the elevated rail track to shadow his movement, Rory pounded south
and east, his eyes scanning the playing fields, and he stripped the leather glove from his silver hand as he ran.

Standing at the prow of the beached Ship of the Dead, Rafe scanned the island with his keen, dark gaze. Eventually, he pointed to a small, angular structure—an elevated rail bridge, part of the track structure leading to the Hell Gate at the south end of the island—and said, “There.”

Fennrys stepped up beside the ancient god, squinting in the direction he pointed, and saw three tiny figures dancing madly on top of the bridge girders. Carried on the barest hint of a breeze, he heard the three mad sisters begin to keen wildly, an eerie wailing ululating, voices tangling around one another like lengths of knotted skeins. Lightning flashed directly over the bridge, capturing their exaggerated poses like flares from a photographer's flash.

“Norns?” Fenn asked.

“Drama queens . . . ,” Rafe muttered through clenched teeth.

Mason joined them. “Are they alone?” she asked.

Fennrys noticed there was a bright, hectic flush of excitement in her cheeks.

He turned from her to scan the terrain. Aside from the bridge, there wasn't much in that area other than the odd chain-link fence behind the baseball diamonds. In the far distance to the south, he could see Roth and Daria and Cal walking slowly across the field. They didn't seem as if they were on
their way to meet anyone. No preplanned Gosforth family summits, then. Well, that was one good thing, he supposed.

Fenn pointed them out and then said, “I don't see anyone else . . .”

“Rafe,” Mason was saying, “you knew the Norns. Maybe you can talk to them.”

“I don't know what good that would do.”

She put a hand on his arm. “Before anyone else gets here—before my
father
gets here—maybe we could put a stop to this.”

“Mase—”

“Would it do any harm to try?”

“No. I guess not . . . ,” he said. He glanced at Yelena and Sigyn.

Fennrys followed his gaze. The two women, ghost and goddess, had retired to the back of the boat, hoods pulled far up around their faces. The ghost warriors of
Naglfar
had faded to almost nothing and Toby was huddled on a bench. It seemed as if it was an effort for him just to remain sitting upright. There wasn't going to be much help for them from any of those quarters if it got to the confrontation stage, Fennrys thought.

“We might as well give parlay a shot before we have to fight,” he said, and gave Rafe a reluctant nod.

The god shrugged and vaulted nimbly over the side of the ship. The effect was instantaneous, unforeseen, and horrifying. . . .

The moment the soles of the ancient god's modern, stylish leather shoes touched the ground, the darkness above Randalls Island tore open and the light of the sunless skies of Valhalla poured through, sullen and glaring all at once. Fennrys heard the thunder of charging feet—multitudes of them—coming from somewhere far behind the boat. He twisted and glanced over his shoulder to where North Brother Island was lit up like Times Square with coruscating, eldritch light. When he turned back, it was to the sight of a gray arm, ropey with desiccated muscle, suddenly punching up through the turf right in front of Rafe.

Mason screamed in warning, but it was too late.

Far too late
, Fennrys thought.
It always has been . . .

Another gray fist erupted from the ground. Draugr.

Rafe's expression was stricken as he slashed through the air with one hand, manifesting the slender coppery blade he used as a weapon. He spat a venomous curse and brought the sword down in a blurred circle, severing a draugr head from its neck. But Fennrys saw that the whole of the ground beneath Rafe's feet, from the scrubby shingle of beach to the mown green lawns of the baseball diamonds beyond, seemed to writhe and heave. It was as if the ground was alive.

No. Dead
, Fennrys thought.
Dead Ground . . .

“This here's Dead Ground.”

Suddenly, he could hear the voice of the troll he'd met under the Hell Gate on his very first night back in New York City. He hadn't known what “Dead Ground” had meant at the time, but he sure as hell did now. In that moment, Fennrys
recalled another conversation. The one he and Maddox had had with Rafe upon entering the New York Public Library, back when he'd gone on his quest into the Underworld realms in order to find Mason and bring her home. About how the ground where Bryant Park and the library now stood had once been the burial grounds for tens of thousands of bodies, mortal remains interred in a potter's field—unmarked graves for paupers and the unclaimed dead—and how those bodies had been dug up around the turn of the century and moved. Reburied.

Rafe hadn't known where.

Fennrys knew.

All those bodies, taken from a place where a path to the Beyond Realms existed—a path to Aaru, the lost Underworld kingdom of Anubis, Lord of the Dead—had been reinterred in the soil of Wards and Randalls Island. And by setting foot on that burial land, Rafe had just reopened that path.

And recalled to horrid un-life all of those many, many dead.

It struck Fennrys with the same kind of pristine, diabolical logic in the same moment as it hit the ancient god. Rafe whirled wildly around, the look on his face one of panic and terrible realization. His eyes burned with regret as he gazed into the distance. Fennrys followed that stricken gaze and saw that the three women who'd been gyrating madly in a war dance on the Bronx Kill Bridge had gone statue still.

“Mason . . . Fennrys . . . ,” Rafe called back to them. “I'm sorry! I didn't set you up, Mase—I swear it! They set
me
up!
Right from the start . . .”

“What's happening?” Mason cried, grabbing at Fennrys's arm and glancing around frantically.

The shaft of Asgardian light was spread out behind them and everywhere it touched the surface of the East River, the water turned to solid ground, racing back toward the shores of North Brother Island. When the land bridge reached those shores, Fennrys saw a flash of glimmering golden roofs, and he knew that the rift had torn wide open, all the way to the Beyond. All the way to Asgard. Far distant mountains ringed what seemed to be an endless plain, the leading edge of it creeping toward them as the rift grew, displacing the dark water of the East River with earth and grass that trembled with the sounds of feet.

They came like thunder, rolling across the Otherworldly plain.

The Einherjar.

The Hell Gate Strait was transformed into the foretold battle plain of Valgrind.

And Fennrys was faced with an impossible choice.

In front of the beached—now landlocked—ship, there were draugr everywhere, heaving themselves out of the ground in a widening circle all around the ancient Egyptian god. Fennrys knew that Rafe couldn't make it back to
Naglfar
. There were too many of the draugr between them.

“Go!” he shouted. “Get out of here, Rafe! There's nothing you can do now but run . . .”

The ancient god looked as if he might protest, then—when
he saw it was hopeless—he snarled in frustration and, in the blink of an eye, transformed into his wolf self. There was a gap of about two feet in the ring of lurching gray monsters and he took it, leaping with his powerful hindquarters and clearing the reach of the draugrs and their grasping talons by inches. He ran south, along the shore, and Fennrys hoped he could make it to Douglas Muir's yacht and cast off before the river disappeared entirely and the only avenue of escape closed for the ancient god. His friend . . . the one person other than Mason who had actually believed in Fennrys right from the beginning.

The one person who'd given him a second chance . . .

And a third . . .

Fennrys looked back to where Mason's mother, and his, stood like statues.

They wouldn't interfere. They couldn't. They had made their choices a long time ago and now it was up to those who came after. He looked at Toby and saw an old man. There were tear tracks on his weathered cheeks. The eternal warrior who could no longer fight, only bear witness to the battle at the end of the world. It hurt just to look at him.

“Oh god,” he heard Mason whisper. “Rafe's not going to make it . . .”

Fenn turned back to see the horde of gray-skinned monsters grasping at the black wolf's hind legs. Watched him falter and fall, and struggle gamely back up, only to be dragged again into the draugr melee. The cries and yelps from his throat were piteous and pain-soaked.

The Wolf in Fennrys whined in brotherhood.

He'd already left Maddox behind, now he was going to have to stand there and let Rafe go down under a horde of draugr. And it was killing him. But there was nothing he could do. He'd promised Mason. Fenn turned and looked at her and could see himself reflected in her eyes. He saw that his own were gleaming silver-blue.