Foretold (21 page)

Sarah laid out things around me, but I couldn’t see them. Thought I smelled lavender. “I can stop it but I have to work fast.” She touched Vanir’s arm. “Ari’s hurt. I can’t see enough out there to know how Hallur is. I’m really scared, Vanir. The grove isn’t going to hold those dogs out for long. And I think that woman killed the new cop, David.”

He stared into my eyes for the longest time. Shook his head. As I watched, fury filled his expression, tightened his lips, narrowed his blazing, golden eyes. He stood, his hands curling into fists.

I followed his gaze to find a bloody battle raging. The men were outnumbered. Dogs still poured from the trees and the bullets were going to run out. One shot after another was fired and every single time another dog took the dead one’s place.

My lungs still worked. A sob erupted from my throat. So many dead animals. And I still partially blamed my mother. Her fear had given the god a door inside. Her knowledge of magic, her kinship with animals, had brought all this together.

All those dogs were dying, and before they were all gone, the ones left would storm this grove and take us with them.

Vanir let out a yell so loud it rattled the leaves on the trees. Everyone and everything jolted to a stop. The grove, the woods, all went silent. A faint glow came from his skin. I could see it on his hands as he suddenly uncurled his fingers, pointed them to the ground. “Call off your dogs, Loki.”

My mother didn’t answer—either in her voice or the god’s. One of the dogs growled and it was like a catalyst. The battle went on.

This time when Vanir yelled the ground began to shake. Everyone but Sarah stopped to watch. She kept working on her counter spell. I could no longer wiggle my fingers.

Couldn’t take my eyes off him, either. The power around him grew visible—it was golden, like a kid had outlined him with the brightest yellow crayon in the pack.

A rumble came from his chest and the earth shook harder. Then he began to chant. Ancient words spilled from his lips, the sentences in a strange, staccato rhythm. Shock and awe filled me as I realized we were listening to Odin as he called forth one of the nine powerful songs he’d learned from Bolthorn, his great-grandfather, or father according to some stories. Secret, potent songs. This one grew louder and louder as wisps of something began rising from the ground. Hundreds of them—the wisps. They snaked into the air, sinuous and eerie, slithering around him and everyone else.

One pulled itself from the ground right beside me. My heart was beginning to slow, but my eyes flew open wide. It had hands. And arms. And long, long hair.

The chanting stopped. Still nothing moved. It was as if the people and the animals were all held in thrall. Snow swirled about them, and even my mother, who’d had her arm locked around a man’s neck, stood perfectly motionless.

“Do you know how gloaming groves are made, Loki?” The voice came from Vanir but it wasn’t his. It was deeper, thick and commanding.

My head grew heavy and I lowered it, then tried to lift it again, knowing I had to watch my mother. But I couldn’t. The fear that filled me then was too strong for the grove’s calming magic.

“No,” Sarah said, putting her hand gently on my forehead. “Save your strength. Your body has to fight this.”

“I don’t think my body’s winning this battle, Sarah. It’s too late. I can’t feel anything.” Except for the hot tears burning my eyes and sliding down my temples. “Can you see my mother?”

She shook her head. “Just dogs. And Vanir. Or what I hope is still our Vanir.” Her voice broke on the last word, but she continued readying her spell.

“Loki!” Odin roared through Vanir’s mouth. “This grove got its magic through blood and death. The death of warriors locked in a battle without a winner.”

The wisps of smoke tripled in number, took on shape. All kinds of shapes and sizes. Ancient warriors of two races who must have fought for this place. All ghostlike and white. All moving toward the dogs. I wondered if they floated toward my mother, but I still couldn’t see her.

“And Odin will bring the glorious dead back to battle,” I whispered. One moved over my head, drifted across my body. I would have shivered if I could.

“I don’t know about you,” Sarah whispered, “but I feel like screaming.” She ducked as one of the ghosts whipped past her head. She shut her eyes, then opened them. Resolve burned steady in those blue irises. They reminded me of Ari’s.

“Is Ari okay?” Wasn’t sure she’d understand me since I could barely speak.

“I don’t know.” She cursed under her breath. “You’ve got to hang on, Raven.”

But my attention had gone back to Vanir. A part of me marveled over the change so visible in him. So much power. Would he carry this always now? Would Odin take him over completely? That had always been my biggest fear—that Urd would take me over. I’d been wrong, I knew that now. But she didn’t come through me as Odin had with Vanir. Her possession or whatever it was...it was nothing like what I saw on him.

My barely beating heart wanted to stop with that thought. Couldn’t stand the thought of Vanir disappearing altogether. The tears that continued to escape the corners of my eyes were so, so cold as they ran down my temples into my hair.

I heard my mother cry out again and this time I could see her because she ran toward the grove but hit a wall of spirit warriors. One stabbed her shoulder with a ghostly spear and she screamed.

She fell to her knees, met my gaze. Tears burned my eyes because I knew that my mother, not Loki, was trying to get to me. That she was fighting as hard as she could to get to me. That was one question answered. She still lived.

The warriors stood around her in a wall of scary, misty figures. She choked, bent, and I could not believe my eyes then. Her coat began to grow until feathers enveloped her entire body. They covered her face, her legs...everything. In the next second, she shot into an opening in the sky. For an instant, I saw the blackness beyond, but it closed with the sound of shattering glass.

Like that, she was gone.

“That’s how,” I whispered, thinking of the phone calls with my sisters, how they thought she was there. She had been.

Vanir turned to me. Our eyes met and that connection I’d felt from the very beginning snapped taut between us. Sarah was muttering near my ear, placing things on my chest, but I didn’t look to see what. Didn’t care. I wanted to watch him if this was it. Wanted him to be the last thing I saw.

He knelt, bent over my face. His hair swept down to cocoon us in our own private world as the sounds of battle raged around us. “You will live,” he whispered before he kissed me.

It had been Vanir’s voice. The relief that swamped me stilled the fear that Odin had taken him over. And with that relief came prickly feelings in my right toe, my left hand. I sucked in a deep breath, taking in Vanir’s warm, masculine scent, tasting him on my tongue. My lungs filled, expanded, and with the return of life to my limbs, the pain swept back. One of those pathetic whimpers escaped my throat. He pulled back, but only enough to meet my eyes. They slowly, slowly turned back to that beautiful, dark brown. I only saw the color for a second before the loss of the glow made our private world dark.

Vanir kissed me again, his lips warm, soft. He slid his fingers behind my neck in that way he liked—the way I really,
really
liked. He cradled my head to him, kissing me with long, slow, drugging kisses. I didn’t care that his aunt watched—that the sounds of fighting went away. All I cared about was the feel of his mouth, the warmth of his hand—that bond we shared.

And from his hand and mouth came that healing warmth. It flowed down my throat and into my chest. Blossomed and spread like wildfire through my veins. It numbed the pain. I felt the ground, cold beneath me, but tolerable here in this grove. I felt the eyes of others on us.

He pulled back slightly, his breath brushing over my face. “Loki knew he couldn’t fight the song or the spirit warriors.” He touched my lip with the pad of his thumb. “That he couldn’t fight me with you here. But, Raven, I’m positive that in the end, he was also fighting your mother. She was battling him for you.”

“She was.” A sob caught in my throat. “Do you think he’ll come back?”

“If he does, I’ll be ready for him. When Odin began that chant, I saw the past he shared with Loki, the friendship Odin deliberately built with the trickster. He knew they would end up on opposite sides. He learned everything he could about the tricky god. He knows his weaknesses.”

I remembered the dream of Kat and the fire demon. The other two boys...realization slamming into my chest. I pushed him up, sat and nearly fell over from the head rush. Vanir grabbed my shoulders, held me steady.

“Careful,” Sarah said. “Give your body time to recover. That spell was strong.”

Heat crept up the back of my neck when I realized she’d been watching us, when I saw that everyone stood around the grove. All eyes were directed our way. Hallur stood in front, bleeding, shoulders slumped with exhaustion; a rifle dangled from his hand. I craned my neck, looked for Ari and found him on the ground about two yards from us, inside the grove. He was obviously fine, propped up on one elbow to watch us, his amusement strong enough to see from here in the little light still left.

Sheesh. How
long
had we kissed?

The corner of Vanir’s mouth turned up. He knew exactly what I was thinking. I bit my lip. “We have to help my sisters. He, or she...Mom will go after the others. I didn’t die.” My voice broke. “So the prophecy could be talking about one of them.”

“Let’s get home, get warm first.”

I shook my head. “No, I have to call Coral and Kat now.”

He handed me his phone. It had new scratches from when it had dropped in the warehouse. I dialed Coral first but she didn’t answer, so I called Kat.

“Gods, Vanir McConnell, your timing stinks. Again!” she yelled.

“It’s Raven, Kat. Have you talked to Coral? She’s not answering her phone and—” I broke off as she yelled at me again.

“Are you hurt?” Kat’s voice was loud and frantic. “Because I felt something really, really bad a few minutes ago.”

I was pretty sure everyone around us heard her. “I’m okay. Listen, it’s not Mom. It’s Loki and—”

This time I broke off because I heard a roaring and crackling sound. Like fire. “Yeah, Peaceboy and I have figured that out already. Sorry I haven’t had a chance to call.”

Heavy breathing interspersed her words. “Are you running?”

“Shit, Raven, I can’t talk! We’re dealing with a fire here.”

“One last thing! Loki is using a feather cloak to travel.”

“That ugly feather coat? Weird. I’m sorry. I promise I’ll call, but I gotta go right now.”The dial tone played in my ear. I pulled the phone away, stared at it. I wanted to tell her about what Urd had shared. Our birth, the hint that something dark had fathered us. There was so much I still didn’t know and I needed to be with my sisters so we could figure it out. Together. We were supposed to be together in this.

Urd fluttered in my chest. It wasn’t her usual creepy-crawly sort of shifting, either. This was friendlier, like a tap to my chest to tell me I was on the right track. I shouldn’t have been fighting her my entire life, but I couldn’t dwell on that now. Kat was in trouble and I knew with all my heart that Coral was, as well. I looked up at Vanir. “I need to get there. Or to Coral. I can’t lose either of them—I just can’t.”

Vanir pulled me close, wrapped his arms around me. “We have to get some sleep. Then we’ll find a way to go, okay?”

I pulled back so I could see his face. Exhaustion pulled at his mouth, but his gaze was a clear, wonderful brown again, and full of something that made warmth fill my stomach. “Together?”

“Oh, yeah.” He grinned and started to kiss me again.

Hallur made a loud grunting noise. “Don’t you two start
that
up again. We have to get help for the men who are hurt.”

“And the dogs,” I blurted.

“Of course,” Hallur continued. He limped into the grove, laid a hand on Vanir’s shoulder. “That was something else.”

“The chanting or the kissing?” Vanir tightened his arms around me.

Hallur rolled his eyes. “Both, but don’t bother to get all uppity with me, new glowing god powers or not. I’m still your older brother. Come on, let’s go. We have a lot to figure out because Raven is right. Her sisters are going to need help. But we all need to rest at home first. Plus, there’s birthday cake.”

Willy came into the grove and pulled Hallur back out. The two walked to one of the cops propped against a tree. He offered them a weary, pain-filled smile as they knelt to speak with him. Hallur stroked the neck of a dog sitting next to the man. No longer under Loki’s spell, most of the animals had run off, but some hung around, wounded, probably bewildered. I forced myself to look at some of the ones who hadn’t made it. Devastation filled me and I could tell from the others around me they all felt the same. Some of the men were barking out questions right and left, some were looking over the dogs and big cats, one watched Vanir with outright suspicion. Guess not everyone had been let in on the magic in the family.

I frowned. This was going to change Vanir’s life.

But then, all of this had changed all our lives. I’d spent mine on the run with my mother, fighting a goddess I thought would erase me, and all along, she’d needed me to work with her. How this would all change our lives was still open because it wasn’t over. I had to be with my sisters for it to be. I knew it with everything in me.

Hallur had said we’d go home. It wasn’t really my home and I had no idea where that would eventually be. Would the snow stop—even if we succeeded in stopping Loki entirely? I couldn’t think in terms of
if
, because if we failed with the trickster god, fire would wipe out most of the world.

Kat was in Yellowstone. The significance hadn’t escaped me.

I leaned against Vanir, my heart pounding, and he turned me to face him, wrapped his arms tight around me. “I don’t know that I can rest, not with my sisters still out there fighting.” Shivering, I burrowed closer. “But I’m so tired.”