Fate Undone (The Mythean Arcana Series Book 5) (3 page)

It was an excellent plan. Evil, but excellent.

The cobblestone courtyard and parking lot spread out in front of him, surrounded on all sides by enormous stone buildings. Old fashioned street lamps shone yellow lights on their ornately carved facades and ivy crawled up their sides. The courtyard was empty save for an individual sliding into a car.

Sigyn?

No.
He wanted to see her so he was imagining her. He forced his mind away. He would come back for her once this was all over, as he’d planned. She was his end goal. He just had to clear the way to get to her, which meant escaping so he could find a way to destroy the prison to save both their lives.
 

To do that, he needed to find privacy to transform. Ever since his aetherwalking had been bound by the other Norse gods, he’d relied upon his ability to shapeshift into the form of a falcon for transportation. He sorely missed the ability to travel instantly through the aether—that ephemeral substance connecting the earth and the afterworlds. It was far easier to envision a place and appear than it was to fly there, but he had no choice.

The courtyard was too well lit, so he trotted down the stairs and jogged around the side of the building. By his calculation, he only had a few minutes to spare until the other prison guards noticed their dimwitted colleague was missing.

He slid into the shadows at the edge of the stone wall of the building. It was dark enough to hide the green light of magic that swirled around him when he transformed and no other buildings looked directly out at him. It was perfect.
 

He glanced right to confirm the coast was clear and caught sight of a scene in the window next to him. A woman danced within a large, well-lit wooden room. A wall of mirrors reflected her form.

His heart pounded, beating itself senseless against his ribs.

Sigyn.
 

She spun about the room, a blue cloak waving behind her as her lithe form leapt and lunged and dodged. Golden hair trailed behind her and it was only once she spun toward him that he noticed the long wooden staff in her hands. Pale wood and elegant, she spun it about her form almost faster than the eye could see. Her cloak flickered. It wasn’t real, just an illusion.

She wasn’t dancing. She was training. Her motions weren’t those of a ballerina, but those of a warrior. He’d never seen her like this, but he’d heard of her. The woman he’d cared for eight hundred years ago had been far quieter than the shining warrior goddess within the room. She’d been strong—capable of protecting herself—but nothing like the woman on the other side of the glass.

This woman was all power and grace, strength and motion. She took his breath away. Fire flashed in her green eyes as if she saw her foe while she practiced her motions. She moved so fast, a mortal would never be able to see her. It was magic. Quite literally. Her talents had grown over the years.

His head buzzed as he watched her and he was helpless to draw away. After so many years, here he stood, actually near her. He’d only seen her a few times for a few breathless moments after he’d driven her away all those years ago. He hadn’t been able to help himself, as he couldn’t now.

He’d made sure she never saw him, though it had torn at something in his chest to maintain his distance. It was the only way to stay away from her, though. If he spoke to her, he’d be unable to leave her. The last time he’d seen her had been over five hundred years ago.

He’d forgotten so many things over his life, so many faces and names and places, but he’d never forgotten her. Not the curve of her slender arms, the length of her legs, or the shine of her hair. She was beautiful—tall and strong and everything the Norse gods were supposed to be, though she’d been a demigod when they’d both left Asgard, home of the Norse pantheon.

He was supposed to wait until he’d destroyed the labyrinth to come for her because she was a distraction. Yet he couldn’t take his eyes off of her as she continued to leap around the room, the apparition of the blue cloak swirling around her marking her as a Vala, a student of the magical teachings of the goddess Freya.
 

A cry sounded in the night. Shouts followed.

Shit. He’d fucking forgotten he was on the run. He dragged his eyes from Sigyn, his heart clutching as she left his vision, and focused all his energy on envisioning the falcon form he would take. If he could just make it to the air, he could get—

A shot rang out, a harsh blast echoing through the quiet night. Pain tore through his gut.

What the fuck?
They’d used fucking guns? Fucking mortals used fucking guns.

Agony streaked from his stomach through his extremities. Another shot rang out, and this time pain bloomed in his shoulder. Guards charged toward him through the shadows, only a few dozen feet away.

He cursed internally at the idea he’d have to transform in front of them, and thereby possibly give away his true identity, but there was nothing for it. If they caught him when he was this injured, he wouldn’t even be able to hold the false form he normally went by. They’d know he was a god and imprison him accordingly. In the labyrinth.

Logan gritted his teeth. He tried to ignore the pain bombarding him long enough to force the magic through his veins, transforming his muscle and bone to feather and flight.

It was sluggish, but the transformation worked amidst the swirls of green magic he’d never learned how to diminish. Soon he felt the wind under his wings as he climbed into the air, a fraction less graceful and effortless than normal. Pain ripped through him with every stroke of his wings and he faltered on the breeze.
 

The ground was only a hundred feet below him, not nearly far enough to get out of the range of bullets. He pushed himself higher, nearly blind from the agony. He’d never make it off the campus like this. There was no way he had more than a couple hundred yards left in him, and the guards were right behind him.

CHAPTER TWO

In the dance studio, Sylvi jerked to a halt when a gunshot tore through the quiet. The swirling blue cloak that appeared whenever she turned her magic toward fighting disappeared, but she clutched her staff. Sending it into the aether would be unwise.
 

Her staff allowed her to draw power from the aether, which thrummed with magical energy from earth and all the afterworlds, and getting rid of it when there were gunshots would be damned stupid.

She raced to the door of the studio and yanked it open, but the hall was empty. What the hell was going on? Nothing ever went wrong at the Praesidium. They were too good at their jobs for that.

But something had been off tonight—particularly these last ten minutes. She’d had that itchy feeling at the back of her neck, as if she were being watched. There had been a tightness in her chest. She hadn’t felt that combination of weird symptoms since she’d left Norway nearly five hundred years ago.

Shaking away the impossible thought, she ran out into the hall toward the atrium. Whatever was happening was going down outside, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to miss the fun. That, and she didn’t like the idea of anything bad happening to the university. It was her home. She loved this place like nowhere else.

The great double doors at the end of the atrium were swung open to the black night. Someone had left them open. She charged across the shining parquet floor, through the great wooden doors, and down the massive stone stairs, following the shouts echoing from the side of the building. Half a dozen guards and members of the Praesidium pointed to the sky. Some fired shots.

“What’s going on?” she shouted as she stopped beside them. She squinted into the dark, moonless night. There was nothing.

“Prison break,” one of the guards said.

Her heart dropped to her feet. “What? That’s never happened before.”

“Turns out Ian MacKenzie was no normal prisoner.”

“What was his crime?”

“Thievery.”

At least he wasn’t a murderer. But she didn’t recognize the name. She didn’t know any of the names of the prisoners. Though she worked for the Praesidium, the protection division of the Immortal University, and her department shared a building with the prison, they were two entirely separate departments.

But whoever was locked up down below wasn’t someone who should be out in the world.

“Why are we all standing around then?” she asked.

“The bastard turned into a bird and flew off,” her boss, Warren, said. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with messy blond hair and handsome features. His Scottish brogue rumbled in his words. “I arrived just as there was a swirl of green magic, then the bastard turned into a big black bird. By the time he got a hundred feet off the ground, he was impossible to see.”

A chill raced over Sylvi’s skin. A flash of green magic and a great black bird? There was no way. They’d said the prisoner’s name was Ian MacKenzie. She forced the thought away. It was wishful—and terrible—thinking. Of course she didn’t want
him
to be here.

“But we shot him,” a prison guard said. His bushy brows drew low over his eyes. “He looked hurt. No way he’ll make it far.”

“Aye, perhaps not.” Warren turned to a man who stood a dozen feet away and shouted, “Magee! Are you going to send your men to search the grounds?”

“Aye! We’ll find him before he heals enough to get off campus.” Magee, the head prison warden, turned to his men and began shouting orders.

Sylvi was sure they would. The university was excellent at what they did. An escaped prisoner wouldn’t remain free for long.

“Isn’t it about time you got home, Sylvi? You’ve been here nearly fourteen hours,” Warren said.

She glanced at her boss. “How do you know that? You weren’t in ’til nine. Speaking of which, you don’t come into the office nearly as early as you used to, now that you’re with Esha.” Warren was fun to tease since he was so good natured about it.

The corner of Warren’s mouth kicked up at the mention of his wife. “Aye. Lea mentioned she saw you.”

“Ah, ratted out,” Sylvi said at the mention of Lea, whose office she walked by on the way to her own. “But you have a point. It’s about time I got out of here.”
 

She nodded her goodbyes to the guards and went to collect her things from the studio where she’d been training for the last several hours. Though she still got to fight occasionally as part of her job as an Immortal Guardian, she hadn’t been in a good battle in over a century. Her moves were getting rusty.

She grabbed her bag and banished her staff to the aether. She used it to focus and manifest her power, a bit like a big wand, and if she needed it, she could call it back out again in a flash. It was also handy for bashing people over the head, which she was inordinately fond of doing.

On her way down the great stone stairs at the front of the building, she barely managed to avoid bowling someone over. She sidestepped and looked up.

“Hi!” Sylvi smiled at Esha, ignoring the feeling of her power being temporarily drained away by her new friend. Esha couldn’t help it, so Sylvi didn’t mind. It wasn’t permanent.

Esha grinned, all white teeth and red lips in an even more beautiful face. “Hey.” Her American accent was always pleasant to Sylvi’s ears.

The scruffy black cat at her feet gave a deep meow, more of a
hey, acknowledge my divine presence
than a
hello.

“Hello, Chairman Meow,” Sylvi said to Esha’s familiar. The big tom just stared back at her, his citrine eyes unblinking in the night. His scruffy black fur matched Esha’s straight black hair perfectly and she’d always wanted to ask if it was a familiar thing or just coincidence.

“How’s it going?” Esha asked.

“Fine. You here to see Warren?”

Esha nodded and Sylvi grinned. “That’s great. Hot plans?”

“Oh, the usual. Telly with the Chairman, then we boot him out and do it like monkeys while he yowls his indignation outside the door.”

Sylvi laughed. “No way. The Chairman is too dignified for that.”

“True, he just ignores us. Hey, how’d the date with what’s-his-face go?”

“‘What’s-his-face’ doesn’t deserve a name. The date was shit.” The evening’s failure had been a surprise because the guy had the most potential of anyone she’d ever been with.

Except Loki. The man she’d cared so much for when she’d gone by another name. A therapist would probably say she was holding everyone else up to his image and finding them wanting, but it totally wasn’t true. She shook the image of his face out of her mind.

“Sorry about that,” Esha said.

“Eh, that’s how it goes. Don’t worry about it. You’ve got to go see Warren and I’ve got to go drink a beer in my shower. We both have hot dates. Except mine is with a beer and my shower.”

“Still hot,” Esha said, then grinned before she set off up the stairs, her familiar leading the way toward the big double doors.

Sylvi smiled and continued down the stairs and across the cobblestone courtyard. She loved it here. New friends like Esha just reminded her of how perfect it was.
 

She’d only recently become friends with Esha, which made her feel like a total bitch, since Esha had lived at the university for over a decade and had been a bit of an outcast during that time.