Dark Devotion: Dark Series 3 (17 page)

“What can you see?” he asked.

Mav stepped back. “Take a look for yourself. I’m going to see if there’s another way in.”

Rhys stepped up to the gate and looked. On the other side was an empty cobblestone courtyard. The air shivered then and Mav reappeared.

“Anything?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t see any wards either.”

“You want to just fade inside?”

“At least into the courtyard.”

*

Standing in Bryn’s office, Taer’s hands were still trembling. Only minutes earlier, she’d opened the box and discovered something unspeakable. Behind her, the door shutting made her jump. Korvain took a step toward her.

“Tay, what’s in the box?” he asked, his dark gaze dropping to her hands. She felt the tears run down her cheeks. She bit her lip and looked back at him.

“It’s … It’s …” She couldn’t say the words.

He took the package from her – his eyes still fixed on hers – and placed it on the desk. He pulled her into his chest, holding her close while she gave in to her emotions. His strong hand rubbed circles over her back just like Adrian used to do.

“What’s in the box, Taer?” Bryn asked this time.

Swiping her hands under her eyes, she said, “Open it.”

Bryn moved to do just that, but Korvain said, “I’ll do it.” Her mouth pressed into a tight line like she didn’t like being told what to do, but she nodded and sat back in her chair. Korvain pulled away from Taer and cautiously flipped open the flaps with one end of his karambit. He peered inside before turning back to Taer.

“Whose is this?”

She sucked in a deep breath. “Aubrey’s.”

“You’re sure?”

Taer met his eyes. “Yes. That’s his ring.”

Bryn stood up to look in the box. Her eyes darted to Taer. “How did you get it?”

“Kara said UPS delivered it.”

“There aren’t any tracking stickers on it,” Korvain said, getting a better look at the top of the box.

“I know,” Taer said. “I thought that maybe Aubrey had dropped it off thinking I was pissed off with him.”

“Why would he think that?” Korvain asked suspiciously.

Fuck.
She shrugged. It was better to stay quiet than incriminate herself any further. Korvain growled, but turned his attention back to the box.

“I have to help him,” Taer announced.

“No.” Korvain’s emphatic response wasn’t unexpected, but it still angered her.

“I have to.”

“No,” he snarled, whirling on her and gripping her by the upper arms. “You still don’t understand who he is, do you?”

She squared up to him. “You obviously think you do,” she spat back.

Impossibly, his eyes darkened. “He’s involved with Venezuelan drug lords. We have no idea who has him – human or god – or what they want.”

“A human wouldn’t have him,” she replied evenly. “If it was a human, he would have faded away. It has to be a god.”

His brow furrowed suddenly. “Fuck,” he said, releasing her to start pacing in a tight line.

Taer watched him, growing more and more anxious. Korvain never lost his cool. “What is it? What have you just thought of?”

He looked at her then at Bryn. The Valkyrie’s expression was pinched as she had obviously come to the same conclusion as Korvain had.

“What?” Taer demanded. If they knew something, she had to know what it was. She had to save Aubrey.

“Thor was murdered tonight,” Korvain said, finally coming to a stop in front of her.

“So? What has that got to do with Aubrey?” Her voice rose, the edges of her tone threaded with building panic.

In a calm voice, Bryn said, “Loki killed him, and then left a message for Odin.”

“I thought Loki was still imprisoned under the earth.”

“He was,” Korvain murmured. He scrubbed the back of his head. “Do you remember how I told you about some other Valkyries being attacked and killed about a month ago?”

She nodded. Taer had been heavily focused on her training at the time, but she did recall hearing something about it.

Korvain perched his large body on the corner of Bryn’s desk and took out one of his karambits from the holster criss-crossing his chest. He pressed its curved edge against his thumb, and if Taer didn’t know any better, she would have said he was beating himself up over something.

“Well, Loki was behind those attacks too. We killed him.” He frowned and looked at her. “At least we thought we killed him. It turned out we were wrong. Somehow he survived, although how that was possible we have no idea. In any case, he’s back now and it looks like he’s going after Odin again.”

Taer could see Korvain was trying to paint the whole picture for her, but there were still some spots missing. “Why does any of this involve Aubrey?”

Bryn pulled open her desk drawer and took out a small bottle of liquor. As she unscrewed the cap she said, “Loki is trying to kill Odin, which means he’ll be coming after me first since I’m the All-Father’s only weakness.” She took a quick drink.

“So, you think Loki has Aubrey?” she asked, looking to Korvain for the answer. None of this was making any sense to her.

He nodded. “It’s a possibility.”

Taer thought back to the ambush she’d found herself in earlier. Could that have just been a coincidence as she’d passed it off to be, or was there something more to it?

“But why would he take Aubrey?” Bryn asked. “He has no direct connection to me.”

Taer thought it through and her head began to swim. The answer forced her to put her hand on the back of the chair to steady herself. Aubrey
didn’t
have any connection to Bryn … but Taer did. It wasn’t a random attack. It was planned. “Gods.”

“Tay, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“Me,” she whispered.

“What?” asked Korvain.

“Loki wants me.”

His expression hardened. “That’s a pretty fucking thin theory, Tay.”

“No, it’s not.” The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. “Think about it: Loki is back. He needs to get to Bryn, but you’re standing in the way. So, how could Loki get rid of you?”

Korvain didn’t have to think for very long before snarling, “By distracting you with Aubrey. That bastard must have been watching us – all of us – this whole time, just looking for a weakness he could exploit.”

Taer shook her head. She’d been very careful about going to see Aubrey for training. Not once had she sensed she’d been followed or was being watched. It didn’t matter though. The outcome didn’t change. Aubrey was being tortured and mutilated, all because of her. She thought her serving of guilt in getting her brother killed was enough to last her a lifetime, but she was wrong. Knowing she was also responsible for Aubrey’s suffering confirmed her need to save him. He’d been the one to save her, and now the situation had been reversed. Without him, she never would have defeated Darrion and – even though she’d sustained some permanent damage along the way – she had still avenged her brother.

“I need to get him back.”

“How are you going to do that?” Korvain shot back. “You don’t have the first clue where he is.”

She squeezed her hands into tight fists at her sides. There was a way to find out, but it meant doing the one thing she feared. But for Aubrey she would do it. “I’ll find him.”

*

In her room, Taer took out her cell phone and brought up Aubrey’s contact info. Dialing, she put the speaker to her ear. She didn’t expect him to pick up, but was hoping Loki would so she could find out if her suspicions were correct.

It rang once, twice, three times …

She couldn’t stop her hands from shaking.

It continued to ring until it went to voicemail, and she left a message. She didn’t know where he was being held, but she knew she had to at least try to get him back. It was clear to her now that as soon as he’d arrived back in Boston, something had happened to him. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she put her cell phone on the nightstand and then lay down.

Although it had only been a matter of days since her dream-walk into Darrion’s mind, her stomach twisted with the thought of doing it again. A familiar fear started to creep up on her, poisoning her mind. She tried to beat it back by telling herself this wasn’t the same as with Darrion. But no matter how many times she repeated the words, it did nothing to stop her stomach churning and bile twisting up her throat.

She blew out a breath and closed her eyes, focusing her mind on Aubrey. He was hurt. He was in danger, and she was the only one who could locate him. She tried to relax. She had done this before. It was familiar. It was prescriptive. She knew that once she tapped into Aubrey’s mind, she would find a hall where she would walk through a door. If the person was trained in protecting their mind, there would be a shield here, but for him, she would walk straight into his psyche.

Feeling the shift between realities, Taer opened her eyes and blinked at the empty hallway she’d found herself in. Her heart thumped impatiently under her ribs. She started to sweat. Her eyes darted around the hallway, feeling as if the walls were closing in on her. She sucked in a breath, and it felt like sucking air through a straw; she simply couldn’t get enough oxygen into her lungs.

Fear.

Fear was debilitating.

It was unjustified though. Taer held all the power in this realm, or at least she thought she had until she’d stepped into Darrion’s mind. He had hurt her, had caught her unaware and shattered her fragile confidence.

“But Darrion is dead,” she said to herself, letting the words join the many others she’d said before. “He’s dead and you’re not.”

The walls seemed to retreat even though they hadn’t really moved at all, and she found she could breathe again. She looked to her right. There was a door there now. She turned the handle then stepped over the threshold and into Aubrey’s mind. Her foot hit the black-and-white checkered tile he had in his kitchen. From where she was standing, she could see the light was on in the basement. She opened the door, her nose filling with the scent of leather and lemon cleaner. It was just like the first time she’d gone down there. She knew there would be racks filled with weapons and sparring mats on the floor. Walking down the stairs, her heart was racing, her mind screaming at her to go back, to get out. It was Aubrey she was going to see, but she still couldn’t shake the fear Darrion had instilled in her. Even in death, he was a cancer in her life.

But she would cut him out.

She focused her thoughts once more, recalling the way Aubrey’s scent of cinnamon was so strong while they were in the storage closet together. She looked deeply into his pale gray eyes, she kissed him, sucking his bottom lip into her mouth and biting down. She heard him groan her name, lighting a fire within her body. She burned for him, and when he touched her, she combusted.

On the very last step of the stairs, she stopped. Aubrey was standing a few feet away, a sword in his hand and a savage expression on his face. His eyes were wild. Taer stopped breathing, hesitant for a moment.

“Aubrey, it’s me,” she said.

He said nothing.

“Aubrey?” Taer took another step closer, causing his eyes to narrow. Her eyes flickered to the sword in his hand; his fingers had tightened slightly. That was when she realized he was whole and seemingly unhurt. Of course that would be the case. She didn’t know what he looked like now. Although this was Aubrey’s dream, she was controlling it, so she would naturally conjure up the image of Aubrey as she had last seen him. He lowered the weapon, his body no longer held taut, although she could tell he was not relaxed. He looked away, toward the back of the room. His name escaped her lips on a bare whisper.

Aubrey’s gray eyes penetrated her as his gaze swung back, but …

He wasn’t really seeing her, was he?

Taer licked her lips. Aubrey couldn’t see her. He couldn’t even hear her. Her mind raced. What did this mean? Had Darrion somehow broken her, negating her ability to dream-walk? Her gaze swept the floor before meeting Aubrey’s eyes once more.

Then, with a cry, she was violently ripped from his mind.

Sacrifice.

Odin had had animals and people sacrificed to him many, many times over the centuries. The humans begged him for victories in battle, for a longer life, for good crops, and greedily he’d accepted the blood that was spilled in his name. He gloried in it. He reveled in the light fading from the eyes of his offering, whether it was the pure blue of a slave girl, or the rectangular pupil of a goat.

But he never understood it – not truly …

Not until this night.

As he stroked the inky feathers on Muninn’s back, he mourned the loss of Huginn. Muninn cawed softly, the sound somber. Odin had known either one of the birds could have been killed, but had hoped that one would survive the attack on Loki. He understood what he’d had to do – in order to finally be rid of Loki, he would have to stop running and hiding. He would have to risk himself, and whether or not that risk would be worth it would not be revealed until the end.

“For Bryn,” he said under his breath. He’d been saying those two words ever since feeling the death of his raven, but he was struggling to believe them. Yes, he knew what he was doing, but it didn’t mean doubt hadn’t crept into his mind. After all, he’d been alone for nearly a century. Isolation had hardened him even further than before, and all of that could be blamed squarely on his blood-brother. Odin had started traveling the road of solitude after Baldr’s death – killed by Loki’s trickery and treachery. His world had spiraled after that – the Fall had come, and although he had his Valkyries for a time, they too inevitably left him. Perhaps he hadn’t been the easiest person to serve, but he only had good intentions wherever Bryn was concerned.

Muninn’s haunting, low caw sounded again. At least Huginn’s sacrifice had not been for nothing. Muninn had tasted of Loki’s flesh, finally giving Odin the ability to track the Trickster even when he was shielding his location from him. As soon as he’d found out where his blood-brother was hiding, he’d spoken to Rhys, giving him the information he needed. The elf was the only one who could end Loki’s life – to end his grandfather’s life. Did Odin feel bad for keeping that information from Rhys? No. It was a means to an end. And he would do anything to keep himself and Bryn safe.

He wondered whether the elf had already arrived at the house where Loki was. Was Loki already dead, or was the fight still raging? He looked at the raven.

“Go, now. Return at the conclusion.”

Muninn took flight, leaving through the open living room window. The All-Father watched his remaining raven disappear into the night, fearing it would be the last time he would see the bird.