Transcendent (7 page)

Busted
, she thought, blushing.

Fenn's expression softened into one of wonderment as he took a step toward the wall, forcing Mason to back up so that her spine was up against the operator panel. He reached a hand over her shoulder, toward the glass and, with the side of his fist, wiped the dust away. Obliterating the cartoon heart.

Mason felt her own heart clench.

Then Fenn punched the glass, hard enough to make it shatter.

The chime of broken glass falling was like the sound of silver bells. . . .

The elevator, and the loft all around them, shimmered into darkness and disappeared. The cold pale walls of the Weather Room resolved back into focus as Mason opened her eyes. She was kneeling on the marble floor, Fennrys's head pillowed in her lap. The Wolf was gone—for the moment—and he wore his human shape once more. The iron medallion hung from the long leather cord around his neck, a faint glow dancing over its surface markings that faded as she watched. She put a hand on Fenn's tousled blond hair and felt the warmth radiating from his forehead. He stirred and sat up, running a hand over his face. His blue gaze was clear again, he was in control. But she could see that the Wolf was still there, buried deep,
but quiet. She felt the same thing about her Valkyrie—the bloodred urge was like the glowing embers beneath the ashes of a banked fire or the fluttering of raven's wings in a distant tree. It was manageable.

“Are you okay?” she asked quietly.

Fennrys nodded. He glanced down at the medallion where it lay on his chest, and then back up at her. “How?”

“I just . . . wished for you to find your—um—Safe Harbor. . . .” She felt herself blushing.
Stupid touchy-feely therapist jargon
.

“Safe Harbor, huh?” He grinned wanly. “You, my loft, a nice cozy fire . . . sounds about right.”

“I didn't actually know that I'd go there
with
you,” she said.

“Maybe it wouldn't have felt as safe without you.”

He didn't quite sound convinced, Mase thought. “It was something one of my shrinks told me to do when I was a kid. It never worked for me before now, but . . . I didn't know what else to do. I guess the medallion made the difference this time. Or something.”

Or maybe you just never had a safe place to go to before you had Fennrys
.

“It's okay. You did great, Mase.”

He forced the grin into a smile, but it was a tight smile. Not the strange, awkward smile he usually bestowed on her that made the soles of her feet tingle with warmth.

“Thank you.”

A noise from behind them made them both look up and Mason turned around to see Maddox standing there, coiling
up the silver chain now that the danger seemed to have passed.

Mason turned back to Fennrys. “In the elevator . . . why did you punch the glass?”

“I don't know.” Fenn frowned, his gaze focusing inward. “There was . . . something. Something I was supposed to remember.” He shook his head. “It's gone now.”

“Oh,” Mason said. “I just thought it might have been the heart. I thought you might have been mad or something. . . .”

“What heart?”

Mason blinked at him. He hadn't seen her doodle on the dusty glass? Even by the dim light of the elevator cab's single bulb, it had been there, plain as day. She wondered if they'd had the same experience after all. Maybe the details were different. Or maybe his safe, happy place didn't include a heart with his initials and hers written inside.

“It's nothing.” Mason shook her head and forced herself to smile. “It's not important.”

“If you two are feeling up to it,” Maddox interrupted with delicate urgency, “we should probably get a move on it, yeah? Storm's getting worse. So are the tremors. And I, for one, don't want to be stuck in that elevator shaft if the power goes out or the nasties come knocking.” As Fennrys stalked past him, Maddox grabbed his arm and Mason heard him murmur, “Are you . . . ?”

“Good as I'm going to be for the foreseeable future,” Fenn said tersely. “Yeah.”

“Right. . . .” Maddox didn't sound so sure. “I'll go muster
the troops, then.”

“H
eather?” Toby called as he came around the corner, obviously looking for her. She put a finger to the corner of her eye, just to make sure there were no tears showing, and turned around.

“Hey, Coach,” she said.

“You okay?”

“You mean, am I still human? I guess so. Seems like I might be the only one.” She shrugged one shoulder, meaning for it to be a casual gesture, but it turned into a shudder and Heather hugged her elbows tight, realizing suddenly that she might very well be in shock.

Toby led her to one of the white leather chaises and sat her down. He kicked away a low table, spilling the contents of the
silver dish full of rotted fruit that sat on it, and knelt in front of her. She raised an eyebrow at him as he turned over the palm of her right hand as if he was about to tell her fortune. Instead, he put two fingers on the pulse point of her wrist and went very still for a few moments. Heather could feel her heartbeat rattling, quick and light, against Toby's blunt fingertips.

After a moment, he looked up at her. “Yup. Still human. And probably less shocky than you should be. But I want you to sit here quietly for a few minutes, okay? I know that none of this can have been very easy for you.”

“For
me
?” Heather snorted. “You're kidding, right?”

“Yeah. Well. It's been a bit of a day for all of us, I guess,” he muttered. “Some more than others.”

“It's bad. Isn't it? The whole Mason thing.” Heather nodded her chin in that direction. “I mean . . . she's . . . wow. Scary. I mean, smokin' outfit and all but, she looked so . . . different. Even more different than Cal and, y'know,
that
? I can't even.”

“I can't even, either,” Toby said, half a grin tugging at his mouth.

“It wasn't supposed to happen, was it?” Heather asked. “Mason, I mean.”

“No. No, it wasn't.”

“What are you going to do?”

Toby was silent for a moment. “Whatever I have to.”

“Good luck with that.”

“Yeah. If it comes to that . . . I'll need more than luck. We all will.”

Heather sat there, not knowing what else to say, until the guy she'd heard the others refer to as Maddox came around the corner.

“Hey.” He nodded briefly at Heather and addressed Toby in a low voice. “Looks like she's managed to get him under control. For the time being, at least. So we should all get clear of this place ASAP. While we still can.”

“Agreed,” Toby said. “I don't want to be caught hanging around anywhere Gunnar Starling might be headed right now.”

Heather shivered.
Neither do I
, she thought, remembering what had happened on the train. She glanced over at Toby and did a double take. All of a sudden, he looked as if he'd been up for three days straight. There were deep shadows under his eyes and the beard scruff along the line of his jaw blurred the edges of what was normally a precision-trimmed goatee. His omnipresent travel mug full of coffee was missing in action and she wondered if the fencing coach wasn't maybe going through major caffeine withdrawal. It was, she realized, a weird thing to think just then. But she wondered if anything in her life would ever be un-weird again.

Especially when someone like Toby kept saying things to her like: “Do you still have the protection rune I gave you?”

Heather sighed, accepted the weirdness, and nodded.

“Good,” Toby said. “That'll repel the Miasma curse when we're on the ground, and it should help keep you safe from whatever's coming. Saf
er
, at least.”

“What about the rest of you?” she asked.

“The rest of us are . . . immune, through various means.” Toby shrugged.

“Right. What's
your
deal?” she asked Maddox, who was both disarmingly cute and distractingly competent in the way he handled himself. “Demigod? Demon?”

“Human, thanks.” He grinned at her. “But I have an impressive constitution. Eat right, don't smoke, wear a talisman chock-f of really useful Faerie magick . . . you know. All that virtuous stuff. Makes me hard to curse.”

“Handy,” Heather muttered.

“Plus I have over a hundred years' worth of martial arts training under my belt and that, in itself, tends to give one a bit of a leg up. I'm a firm believer in using every possible advantage to cover one's arse.”

Suddenly Heather remembered her own possible advantage—the little crossbow, with the gold and leaden bolts that a mysterious . . .
someone
had given her on a subway train—and she ran and found her purse where it still lay on the floor near the elevators. She slung it across her body and turned to see Mason walking toward her.

“Yo, Starling.” Heather waved casually. “How's it hangin'?”

Mason laughed wearily. “Oh, y'know. Typical Friday night. Werewolves, Valkyries, earthquakes, blood curses, and the End of Days . . . I expect a plague of locusts any minute now. You?”

“Weirdly the same.” Heather grinned. “So. Where've you
really
been these last couple of days?”

“Would you believe me if I said Asgard?”

“I kinda think I wouldn't believe you if you
didn't
,” Heather said. She glanced in the direction Mason had come from. “How's super-bad hot blond doing?”

“Okay, for now. Under control. Rafe says it's never happened like that to one of his . . . uh . . .”

“Victims?”

“Pack.” Mason shivered and hugged herself.

“Right.” Heather nodded. “So—this Rafe guy—is like . . .
what
again?”

“Anubis.”

“Lord of the Egyptian underworld.”

“Ex, yeah.” Mason nodded. “And—added bonus feature—god of werewolves.”

“The textbooks never mentioned that.” Heather noted dryly.

“I know.” Mason laughed briefly and without much mirth. “Weird, huh?”

“Makes sense.” Heather shrugged. “Look at all those tomb paintings of the guy.”

“Yup. Pretty werewolf-y.”

“And so . . .” Heather hesitated. “After, y'know . . . Fenn is . . . ?”

“Not dead.”

“Right. And that's good. Right?”

Mason just looked at her.

“I mean, of
course
that's good.”

Suddenly, there was another tremendous shuddering beneath their feet.

“It's been doing that for days,” Heather said. “The whole city. Ever since the train bridge thing. It's like the world is cracking open.”

“Maybe it is,” Mason murmured.

“Come on,” Heather said. “Let's get out of here.”

Together, they went back to join the rest of the crew.

“Toby thinks we should head back to Gos because it's the only safe house in Manhattan,” Roth was saying when Heather and Mason joined the others. Most of the shallow cuts on his arms seemed to be healing, fading with the breaking of the blood curse. “And I agree. It's protected ground.”

“If that's the case, then why were we attacked in the gym?” Cal asked. “How could that happen if the Academy is protected like you say?”

“My guess is because the facility was brand-new.” Toby shrugged. “So the draugr were able to climb the walls, cross over the roof to get access to the oak in the courtyard and bring that down—a kind of battering ram to breach the gym walls.”

Daria nodded tightly in agreement, pushing her hands compulsively through the mess of her hair, over and over again, as if trying to physically regain control of herself. “It was the only section of the quadrangle that was vulnerable that way,” she said. “The founding families hadn't had time yet to come together to install their integrated protection spells on it.”

“I guess they didn't see this coming,” Mason said, trying to control the urge to walk up to the Elusinian priestess and
punch her in the face.

“Oh, they did.” Toby snorted. “For the last thousand years they've seen this coming. Just, you know . . . maybe not
this
week.”

“Then it's still not safe—”

“Yes. It is,” Daria interrupted her. “The board reinstated the defensive spell work later that night. It's secure. And probably the only square city block in all of Manhattan that would have remained immune to the Sleeper's Fog.”

“All right, then,” Mason nodded. “Gosforth it is.”

G
wen Littlefield's body was gone.

Shards of glass from the shattered Observation Deck barriers littered the plaza pavement, glinting like slivers of ice in the pooling rainwater. Over near the great golden statue of Prometheus, a section of the concrete was cracked and buckled inward, like a small impact crater. The cracks that spiderwebbed out were stained a dark crimson. Mason's steps faltered and she turned and looked back up at the Rockefeller tower. High above them was the terrace where the black marble altar still stood. And this was the place, she knew, where Gwen had fallen.

But her body was nowhere to be seen.

It was strange. Worrying. But seeing Roth standing there, staring down at nothing but a blood stain, Mason was grateful beyond words. She couldn't imagine what it would have done to her brother to have seen his love, broken to pieces. Mason reached out a hand and touched his shoulder.

“There's nothing we can do here,” she said quietly. “Come on. We have to—”

“Mason!” Cal shouted suddenly. “Look out!”

He hurtled toward her, crashing his shoulder into her and sending her flying. She tumbled painfully to the ground and heard herself cursing as the palms of her hands scraped along the sidewalk. When she lurched back up to her feet, Mason rounded on Cal, fists raised, in the instant before she realized that he'd probably just saved her life.