Boreal and John Grey Season 2 (11 page)

The physiotherapy center was quiet. Darla finished rolling up Finn’s pant leg, revealing the scar on his shin. The main one was thick and dark, but thinner ones radiated from the knee.  

“No migraine today?” she asked. “Did you bring your medicine?”

“Here.” Ella patted her rucksack, pasted on a fake grin. “Brought it just in case, don’t you worry.”

Darla nodded, not looking reassured. Finn’s fit had probably scarred her for life. She shot Finn a brief smile. “Lie down and relax.”

Yeah, fat chance. Finn leaned back, propping himself on his elbows, watching Darla’s every movement, his body trembling with tension, as she fiddled with the ultrasound machine.

“So, how’s the pain these days? Better or worse?” She turned back toward Finn with a metal rod in her hand and a plastic bottle filled with clear liquid.

Finn glared at the rod as if it were a snake waiting to strike and ignored the question.

Typical.

“It’s getting worse,” Ella said. “He can barely walk.”

Darla nodded at the window where rain pelted the glass. “It’s this time of the year. Change in temperature and the wet make old injuries ache. There’s a storm warning, too.”

“Yeah.” Ella hesitated. “Yes, that must be the reason.” Although Finn’s tolerance to pain had always been off the charts, even during the freak storms caused by the Gates.

She watched as Darla squirted gel on Finn’s leg and pressed the metal rod to it, as Finn flinched, his fingers curling on the bed. The rod glided in the clear gel, sliding over bone and muscle.

“This will help reduce the pain,” Darla was explaining, her movements slow and circular. “Then we’ll do some massage. And you should come every day for a week or two, and then we can do this every two days until you feel better.”

Finn’s eyes fluttered, half-closing, the tension leaching out of his frame. It made Ella’s chest tighten by contrast, sent a suspicious burn behind her eyes.

She smiled at him and walked out, into the lobby. She sank in a chair, trying to gather her wits.
Don’t fall apart over the small things, Ella.
Darla would help him with the fracture, and she’d find a way to help him with the dreams, and he’d be fine.

Not being able to discuss things with Finn was a royal pain in the ass. Was there a transmitter? Or could Dave use magic? Nowhere had she read that Duergar could. They were robots — well, granted, quite unlike any robots humans had made so far, but still. Machines. Not sorcerers.

She wanted to find the damn transmitter and get rid of it — and then what? Would Dave simply plant another? Would he come visit and shoot Finn in the face?

She sighed. Maybe she should confront Dave, tell him to take it the hell out of Finn.

Yeah, right.
A bug she hadn’t been able to find, an accusation based on vague suspicions. Why should he? He was the one in the position of power.

If only she could find her own power... What had her mother said? Things spiraling. The paper she’d found in Simon’s apartment right after his death, had this drawing — a spiral, and in its center a person with her name inked right next to it.

She lifted her hand, stared at her pale fingers. Tried to imagine a spiral made of golden threads, the furniture lifting and spinning around her.

She failed.

***

“A witness reported something unusual,” Dave said over the phone, sounding tired. Then again, he usually did. “An animal, or a Shade, the description wasn’t clear. Go have a look.” 

“Aye aye, Captain,” Ella said, letting her towel fall on the floor and grabbing a shirt and pants from her closet. “We’ll boldly go where no-one has gone before.” 

“Are you high?” Dave inquired, his voice clipped. “How much coffee did you have?” 

“Didn’t have any.” She’d had to lie to him about the previous night, about the Veil tearing. Dave had felt it, he said, but that was bullshit. He’d heard everything over Finn’s transmitter, for sure. “We’ll talk later.”

“You sound distracted.”

“No, I don’t.” She dragged on her clothes, walked out of the bedroom and stopped. She pushed the living room door open and leaned on the doorjamb. “Talk to you later, Dave. Ella out.”

She disconnected the call to have the last word, because she was mature that way, and besides, there was a valid reason she was so distracted. She bit on her lip.

Finn lay on his belly on the couch, dressed only in grey draw-string pants. He was fast asleep, a newspaper lying in a heap on the carpet. His fingers trailed over it as if he’d been reading.

He was beautiful, relaxed like that, laid out, the strong, lean lines of his body on display. He’d filled out some, so that his ribs no longer showed, and he was all smooth skin stretched over sleek muscle. With the curtains drawn shut, the only light came from a lamp overhead and it gilded his hair and lashes, the long curve of his back, the powerful shoulders.

She crept closer and knelt on the carpet, reaching up to touch the ends of his hair that hung over the sofa. A grey-tipped ear poked out of the silver strands. It twitched as Ella watched. With his narrow face and hooded eyes, he looked like an arctic fox.

Well, hello, eye-candy.

He smelled of strong male, musky and sharp. The scars on his broad back caught the light. She’d never had the time to study them like this before. They were shiny and flat like shards of a mirror, most of them concentrated on his lower back, dipping below his waistband. Thinner, longer ones ran parallel to his spine. What could have caused them?

Finn grimaced in his sleep and his eyes opened, dazed. He blinked slowly, and she smiled, leaning even closer, until their noses almost touched.

“Hey. Did I wake you?” She was surprised he’d slept through her conversation with Dave and her opening of the door. “I was looking at the scars on your back. What made those?”

Finn lifted a hand to touch her chin, then her mouth. His eyes were half-lidded. “Asmodr,” he whispered.

Ella froze. “Who’s Asmodr, Finn?”

“Commander.” Finn’s hand dipped and his eyes closed, his breathing evening out once more in sleep. “
Aesir
commander.”

Her breath caught. “What did he do to you?”

“Mmm.” Finn shifted on the sofa, turning on his back. Then his eyes snapped open, finally clear. “What?”

Would it matter if Dave listened in, if he found out about Finn’s past along with her? “How did this
Aesir
commander get his hands on you?” she asked.

The blood drained from Finn’s face. “I don’t... don’t remember.” He sat up, swung his legs off the couch and scrubbed a hand over his face. The long scar on his chest looked dark and angry, fresh somehow, although she knew it to be old.

“Try. Did the
Aesir
form an alliance with the Dark Elves?” The book had implied that, but not said it outright.

“Yes.” Finn put his hand down. “In the past. In the war against the Vanir.”

“And now?”

Finn shook his head, frowning.

“What’s the deal with the
Aesir
anyway? They look like a cross between a dog and a human, but they glow like fire. What can they do? Why do they call them ‘gods’?”

“Gods?” Finn scowled.

“Do they have magic?”

“They sprang from the race of the
Vanir
,” Finn whispered. Not an answer to her question, but information anyway. “The
Vanir
have magic, and they allied themselves to the
Joettnar
, the Sorcerer Giants, and the
Ettin
, the Fire Demons. Which is why the
Aesir
came looking for us. They needed our magic. But we were defeated and controlled by the
Dokkaelfar
, who accepted the challenge.”

Whoa. Ella resisted the urge to touch Finn’s brow, check if he ran a temperature. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked so much in one go.

“The
Aesir
are said to have the gift of madness,” Finn said. “
Odr
. The Divine Madness.”

“Crazy gods.” Ella chewed on the inside of her cheek. She thought of something he’d said after one of his nightmares. “And the spider?”

“
Lokke
. The Weaver.” Finn shivered.

Weaver.
He’d asked Sarah to look up this person. “Why’s the Weaver important?”

He shook his head, his mouth tight. “The Veil is a textile.”

“Yeah, Dave said so. Those golden threads I keep seeing. And you can control them, right?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” She reached up and stroked his chin. “Try me.”

Finn flashed her a crooked smile. “Legend says the world is a frame. Where you create textiles.”

“A loom?”

“A loom. A person from each of the nine worlds has a power to affect the threads. John Grey is important because he controls the threads that can be moved.”

“The weft?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know who else controls what. But the Weaver, he controls the frame.”

Why did that sound like bad news? “Controls the loom, huh?” She wondered what that might mean. “And the Weaver comes from...?”

Finn shook his head.

Right. Okay.
An
Aesir
commander, a who-knows-what weaver, an
Aelfr
John Grey, and she was... What? The warp? The shuttle? The pedal, or whatever it was looms had?

Or was that pianos?

God she wished Sarah had found out something. She hadn’t called or reported anything since their meeting at the gym.

“All right, so, recap.” Ella waved her hand back and forth. “The Dark Elves fought on the
Aesir
side and won the battle against the
Vanir
, the
Ettin
and the
Joettnar
.”
And you have memories of an Aesir commander torturing you in a dark cave.
“The Weaver is a VIP and nobody knows who he or she is. The
Aesir
are some crazy bastards, their madness being their gift from heaven.”

Wait, that sounded odd.

A ghost of a smile touched Finn’s lips.

“Anyhow.” She couldn’t help smiling back. Dammit, all these bits and pieces of information with no real answers were driving her up the wall. With a sigh she got up. “I’m afraid we have to go. Dave called. Oh and dress warmly. It might snow.”

Chapter Four

Wings

Not a rooftop. Well, that was something, at least, Ella thought, getting out of the car and checking her gun. Which meant this probably wasn’t the dragon.

Was this good or bad news? No idea, but she glanced over at Finn who limped across the half-empty supermarket parking lot, checking he had his Kevlar jacket on.

Check.

If it was another trap by whoever wanted to take them out, they were as prepared as they could be.

Still, the idea turned her blood to ice. No tall buildings around, but there was a construction site. A sniper could just as easily hide there. 

She reached up, placed her hand over the fading bruise right below her collarbone where the bullet had hit her, and opened her mouth to shout at Finn not to stand out in the open, to take cover.

Finn vanished behind a wooden fence with a sign that said ‘underground parking garage’.

Shit.
She hurried between the parked cars and ducked behind the fence, catching sight of him crouched beside an empty kiosk that apparently sold snacks in summer time.

“Found something?”

A fluorescent tube was nailed over the door of the kiosk and the harsh light turned Finn’s hair into tinsel. He turned to face her, brows drawn together, his mouth a flat line.

Uh-oh. Bad news.

A few more steps and she saw white feathers. A huge wing and she didn’t think an angel had dropped from the sky. Hell, it wasn’t even Christmas yet.

Dragon.
She holstered her gun and crouched next to Finn, gazing at the point where the wing had been cut, bone glimmering white in the crimson flesh, the pool of blood, a little paler than what she was used to seeing. She leaned against him to whisper in his ear.

“Not your dragon, right?”

Finn shook his head.

A Gate, then
. Looked like it had opened very briefly, clipping this dragon’s wing, but it was the first they had found in weeks.
Dammit.
No wonder Finn looked like he’d swallowed something foul.

What to do?
They couldn’t just leave it there like that. Burn it, perhaps?

A stray dog approached lazily, sniffing at the air. Scenting the blood. It was a mongrel, a cross between a Doberman and a Sheepdog. Another dog followed in its tracks, smaller, a patchwork of black and white.

Without a word, Ella drew a knife and started cutting up the wing. She couldn’t cut through the bone, but she opened up new wounds, letting the blood flow.

Finn lifted a brow.

The dogs, though, got the message. Warily they approached and started gnawing at the wing. Soon more dogs gathered.

Finn shook his head, a corner of his mouth twitching up. The dogs would make noise, but it was late and hopefully the animals would have enough time before morning to make it unrecognizable.

Finn braced himself against the kiosk wall and rose to give her a hand up. She let him haul her to her feet and casually threw an arm around his waist to help him walk back to the car.

He was doing much better. She’d buy Darla extra chocolate chip cookies if he continued improving, and that would be something as Ella tended to finish off chocolate chip cookies before she even left the bakery.

She called Dave as they came in sight of their car. “Hey, boss. False alarm. Couldn’t find anything suspicious. Many stray dogs, though.”

“Are you sure?” Dave sounded skeptical. “Nothing out of place?”

“Nope, nothing. We’re heading home to crash. It’s late.”

“Roger that. Be careful.”

An odd note in his voice made her pause and glance around the empty street. “We are. Any progress on our sniper?”

“No, but I have suspicion on who’s behind this. We need to talk in private.”

She frowned. “Want us to come in now?”

“Might be a good idea.”

“Okay then.” She disconnected the call, gave Finn the car keys and slowed down.

He gave her a questioning look but set off toward the car.

Ella turned in a circle, checking for any suspicious glints off metal from the buildings in the distance. They were in the suburbs and the area around the supermarket had an empty, abandoned look. A half-built store loomed to her left. 

Finn was limping toward the car, a shadow against the overcast sky. Their car was the only one stationed outside the parking lot. The street lamps cast yellow pools on the asphalt. He walked out of the gate and onto the street, then paused and turned toward her, waiting.

Everything was quiet.
Relax.
She took a step forward and stopped, because the air behind Finn shifted; something was forming.

Ella’s breath caught. She drew one of her knives. She’d fought Shades for so long she had no doubt it was a rip in the Veil — and something was about to emerge like a moth from its cocoon. 

A hulking shadow flickered behind Finn, something huge, easily twice his size, its body shimmering like a flame. Wings of fire branched over its elongated head, and was that a tail swishing behind? 

“Finn!” She broke into a run, weighing the knife for a throw. 

Long golden claws extended, reaching for Finn’s head. What the fuck? There had been no threads, no clicking, and damn, she’d never seen anything that big spring from the Veil before.

Finn drew his knives and turned, but the creature swept him easily aside, throwing him against the car. He slid down, looking dazed.

Fuck.
She pulled back her hand and threw her knife. The blade struck the giant creature square in its bright chest and Ella stumbled to a stop, readying her second knife, waiting for the Shade to vanish.

It didn’t.

Finn came back at it, but before he scored a hit, long claws swiped at him, forcing him to fall flat on his belly.

He rolled and twisted into a crouch, his long blades glinting. The creature raised a hand and a long blade of burning fire sprang from its palm. It brought it down and Finn raised his knives over his head, crossing them. Fire and steel met with a jarring screek, like chalk scratched across a board. Sparks jumped.

The fiend from hell bent over, pressing down, leering over Finn’s head, a long tongue of flame lolling out of its mouth. As Finn’s arms started to tremble, Ella prepared to launch her knife, hoping a second hit might sent the hulk where it came from.

She froze.
Oh shit.
Another giant was forming behind, just as big and ugly.
The cloning sequence from hell.

“Dammit.” Ella took off toward the new arrival, trusting Finn to keep it up for a moment longer. Its outline was still blurry, its flesh shimmering as it solidified. She didn’t give it time to get its bearings: her blade struck it in the leg. Ducking under a swinging fist, she grabbed the handle and pulled, freeing her knife. She swept it in an arc, slicing off the Shade’s leg, and it hissed, going down on the asphalt with a thump.

Turning with the momentum, she cut through the other Shade’s arm, then swept her blade down, striking a massive leg.

A roar and a wave of heat and blinding light washed over her.

Ella dropped to her knees, covering her face with her arm as the air ignited and the creatures exploded into flame.

***

The ringing in Ella’s ears went on and on as Finn helped her up.
What a sucky night.
Her hands hurt. Burns. At last the stars cleared from her eyes and she managed to retrieve her knives — blackened and their blades twisted from the heat.

“Ugh.” She let Finn drag her to the car, stumbling as she went. “What the hell were those things?”

“
Ettin
,” Finn muttered, his head bowed, his grip on her arm bruising as he hauled her along. “Fire
Jotunn
.” And then a string of sibilant words she couldn’t make out.

Or were her ears still ringing?

“Hey, Finn. Can you slow down?”

He apparently couldn’t — slow down, or hear her. He opened the passenger door and pushed her inside. She landed in her seat with a startled yelp.

He dropped to a crouch at her feet and caught her chin in his rough fingertips, checking her face. “Where’s the medic-kit?”

She blinked. One-handed she fished under the seat and pulled out the green box. Was Finn hurt? He had a black streak on one cheek but didn’t seem to be bleeding.

Finn grabbed the kit and glanced inside. Then he grabbed the neckline of Ella’s blouse and ripped it open.

“The hell, Finn?”

Scowling, he grabbed a pad from the kit, tore the package open with his teeth and slapped it on Ella’s shoulder.

“Ow!” Spikes of pain went through her collarbone. She was the one hurt? How had she missed that important detail? “What happened?”

“Your knife,” Finn said through gritted teeth, unrolling gauze and winding it around her arm and torso to keep the pad in place. “You stuck it in the
Ettin
. When it exploded, the knife flew out and cut you.”

Nearly beheading her.
Damn.
Ella swallowed hard. “And an
Ettin
is...?” She felt she knew the word but her brain felt fuzzier than a cotton ball. 

Finn lifted her arm, running his hands over it, then down her side. God, the cut hurt. “Fire giants. Living in
Musspelheim
. Dangerous.” He tucked her feet inside the car, as if she were an invalid, and she was too distracted by the information he was reluctantly offering to care.

She put a hand over the bandage, pressing, and winced. He’d mentioned these
Ettin
before, she remembered now.
Fire demons.
“I’ve never seen one come through the Veil before.”

Finn shook his head, his eyes distant. “That’s because they never have.”

Ella frowned. “What do you mean?”

Finn stood, braced on the car frame. He wiped the back of his hand over his eyes. “When the
Aesir
won the war over the
Vanir
and the giants, they isolated their worlds:
Vanaheim
,
Jotunnheim
and
Musspelheim
. Cut them off from all other worlds, shut them out of the Veil.” 

“An embargo.” Ella snorted. “Wait a sec.
The
Aesir
cast such a spell, imprisoning whole worlds? I thought the
Aesir
had no magic and that only the Weaver could do such a thing?”

“It was the
Dokkaelfar
,” Finn whispered. “They found a way.” Then he shut his mouth with a snap and glared, as if pissed at himself for saying that much.

The Dark Elves seemed to be behind every major recent change in the Nine Worlds. They had magic and strong allies and were on the victors’ side. It was almost as if they were controlling the whole universe. Which was ridiculous. 

Okay, scratch that. It was damn frightening.

Ella stared at him. “So the
Ettin
, these fucking giant things that have flaming horns and tongues of fire — not to mention that they explode when cut — never crossed the Veil because they were prisoners in their world. With spells so strong they can’t even get caught in the Veil like everyone else. But now they’re here, taking the job over from the little kobolds and goblins we’ve grown to know and love. Which means?”

Finn was still for several heartbeats, the only movement the rise and fall of his chest. Then he stepped back and closed the door. He slid into the driver’s seat and revved the engine. “We need to go.”

Right, but...
“Finn.” Ella licked her lips. “Do you even have a driver’s license?” 

“I can drive,” Finn said. “You’re hurt.” And he floored it.

***

“That was a red traffic light,” Ella said, not for the first time. “Slow down. Have you got fire ants up your pants?”

“I’m taking you to the hospital by the HQ.” 

“What? Why?”

“You’re bleeding.”

Oh.
She squinted at the crimson stain on her bandaged shoulder, and now she paid it attention, the pain flared. “It’s not bad. You did a good job patching me up.”

Finn grunted but slowed down — finally. It had been a mad race from the suburbs to the town center and Ella wasn’t sure anymore if she was dizzy from the explosion of the hellish fiends, blood loss or the ungodly speed.

He did know how to drive, though. “Who taught you driving?” she muttered, leaning her head back, fighting the overwhelming urge to close her eyes and stop thinking.

“Norma.”

“Really?” They were approaching headquarters and Ella reluctantly sat up and tried to remember where she’d put her knives. Ah, they lay by her feet. Finn must have put them there. She fought with her safety belt, finally managing to unlatch the damn thing.