Dead Embers (9 page)

The soft gurgle of the water, the rumble of a distant car,
and the rustle of leaves shivering in an invisible breeze were the only sounds.
I waited, unsure what Fen expected me to do besides remain where I'd landed. I
was a sitting duck, so he'd better get his ass to me quickly or he was in for
it.

A hand touched my shoulder and ripped a scream from my
throat; I twisted and fell flat on my butt.

"Would you like to scream a little louder? I do not
think the residents of the state of Hawaii heard you well enough," said
Fen, his voice neutral, clear of any emotion, and yet the little twinge to his
lips made me suspect he found it amusing to see me fall on my butt.

"Perhaps you should shock me again. You didn't manage
to kill me the first time," I snapped, glaring at Fen.

He moved closer, his craggy features hidden by shadows, the
bright moon making curves deeper and darker. When he stuck his hand out, I just
stared at it. I hated to show weakness by allowing
him
to help me rise.
My anger boiled to the surface, but I tamped it down. No sense becoming a nasty
person just because he'd hurt me with his stupid idea that throwing a person
off a cliff is simply an awesome way to train them to fly.

If you think I'll fall for that again, you are so wrong,
General. I have my eye on you.

After a few moments of staring up at him, I finally gave in
and took his hand, allowing him to draw me up, aware he had sufficient strength
within his body to carry me, wings and all. Fenrir, the wolf child of Loki: a family
history he'd so love to forget. I felt a flash of sympathy somewhere inside me,
mostly swallowed up by my anger, though.

After dusting off my coat, I stood, back straight, looking
at the thin, oily stream, the dried leaves and dirt floating on its dark
surface. This stream reminded me so much of the one back in Craven, the one
beside which I'd found Aidan's body, dead for days from a bullet wound in the
middle of his forehead.

Shaking off the sad memory, I asked, "I thought you
paired yourself with Joshua for this mission?"

"He is a Warrior. You are a Valkyrie."

I raised an eyebrow.
Tell me something I don't know?

Fen added, "I have discovered something a Valkyrie
should see. And I will show you, if you are done falling down and screaming
like a little girl." He turned on his heel and started walking up the
hill.

I gritted my teeth, wanting to growl my frustration but
unable to react. Fen was my superior after all. Instead I asked, "So where
are we going?"

"Orange County. Webster's Cemetery."

Well, that sure was specific.

I bit my tongue. It made no difference to me where we went,
just as long as we got this job done and went home to Asgard as soon as
possible.

When we reached the ridge, it became clear we'd been
standing in a little ditch right beside a highway, thankfully out of sight of
the passing motorists. Great. Let's hope we didn't have to come back here
during rush hour to return home.

Fen strode toward a dented grey sedan with whitewall tires,
parked in the breakdown lane on the side of the road, its hazard lights on and
gleaming like a pair of sinister amber eyes. And then the most surprising,
incongruous sight since I'd entered the world of gods, giants and dragons
appeared before my eyes: Fen pulled a set of car keys from the leather pouch at
his waist and opened the door.

"You have a car?" I blinked.

He reached inside and unlocked the passenger-side door.
"I have acquired a vehicle, yes. The Bifrost opened far from where we need
to go, and time is of the essence. Get in."

I shook my head, amazed. "You have a license?"

He scowled at me over the roof of the dilapidated car.
"What is a license? I have a car. We will need no other Midgard
devices."

I snorted. "Do you even know how to drive this thing,
Fen?" I wasn't sure I wanted to hear the answer. Fen taking driving
lessons was just not something I could picture.

"Yes, Valkyrie, I am able to
drive
this vehicle.
Now could we please hurry? Time is of the essence."

Whatever you say, Fen.

I jumped in, buckled up and choked on a gasp as he released
the hand brake and veered out onto the road. Without. Checking. His. Mirror.

Flaming heck. The wolf man so wanted to kill me.

"Pull over," I said with the utmost calm, trying
not to grip my nails into the dashboard.

"What?" he asked, looking at me.

"Keep your eyes on the road!" I yelled. He whipped
his attention back onto the road and braked hard to avoid rear-ending the car
in front of us. I let out a strangled scream and shouted, "Fen, for the
love of Odin, pull the car over."

"What is it you wish me to do, Bryn? Pull over or keep
my eyes on the road?" He scowled, flicked a nervous glance at me and threw
his attention straight back onto the road.

"Pull the frickin' car over. You are not driving. No
way." I glared at him through narrowed eyes, then winced as he stared
back, taking his eyes off the road. Again. The car swerved across the median. A
horrendous honking yanked his attention back to the oncoming truck, and he
wrenched the steering wheel to the right just in time. Tires screeched; the
battered sedan fishtailed before straightening.

I'd survived a battle with a fire giant. Death by fire giant
would have been a worthy end to my life. I could handle that.

I just couldn't handle knowing I was going to be road kill.

Fen didn't say anything more. He just pulled over, without
even signaling.

I jumped out of the car and ran around to open Fen's door
before he had time to release his seatbelt. I folded my arms and grunted,
pretty annoyed at almost meeting death head on because of him. Again. If
anything, this was worse than being thrown off a cliff with only a wish and a
prayer.

He got out, and strangely he seemed taller. I had to crane
my head to look up at him.

No way, dude. You better not pull the whole wolf-man
thing now.

His lip curled into a grin as he walked around the car to
the passenger side. So he found this amusing. Well, good for him.

I jumped in, flicked my directional signal on and checked
the road before slipping into the traffic. The way a normal person would drive.
It hit me then. Fen had actually driven a vehicle all by himself to come get
me. Good grief. It was a miracle I hadn't emerged from the Bifrost to find half
the state troopers in California chasing him across the country, helicopters in
pursuit.

And when did he learn to drive, anyway? If you could call
what he'd just done driving. What more was there to learn about him? Apart from
his penchant for shoving people off cliffs, that is.

"Now that you're not busy driving into oncoming
traffic, maybe you can answer some questions. How come you called for me and
not Joshua?" I asked, keeping my eyes on the road ahead.

"Because this is a Retrieval and not reconnaissance
mission."

Okay, that made sense. "The scout team just informed us
of the location of our newest Warrior," Fen said, his voice a soft growl.

"Where to?" I asked, all business now.

He directed me and then withdrew into a brooding silence,
except for when he needed to tell me to turn left or right. His answer to my
question seemed to have soured his mood.

Half an hour and a few side roads later, we reached a set of
tall iron gates. A broken black chain lay on the ground beside the road. Fen's
doing, no doubt. He jumped out to open the gate for me, and I drove into the
grounds, following him as he jogged up the road, draped in dark shadows. Tall
spruces lined the road all the way into the depths of the cemetery.

I braked in front of a marble mausoleum, which reminded me
of a little Greek temple, all columns and carved lintels. I gaped, surprised
that people still buried their families in extravagant places like this. I
switched off the car, and opened the door, wincing as it squeaked far too
loudly. Then I followed Fen, pocketing the keys. No way was I going to let him
have them back.

I stood and waited beneath a pillared porch while Fen
fiddled with the lock. The door creaked open and we stepped inside, swallowed
by a musty darkness.

Fen moved around the room smoothly, effortlessly, or so I
assumed from the confident tread of his feet. I couldn't see a thing in the
almost solid darkness.

How the hell did he know where he was going in the pitch
dark? Wolf sight?

A flame flickered in a nearby sconce, and then another, as
Fen lit them. Soon the room glimmered, well lit and no longer scary. The small
space hemmed us in, and directly ahead of us loomed a large wall, gold plaques
fixed to the faded white surface.

"So where's the body?" I asked, confused. I didn't
see any coffins or headstones. I'd never been inside of one of these buildings
in my life. Not even as a dare on Halloween.

Fen pointed at the wall of bronze plates, shimmering in the
candlelight. "Behind the plaques."

"Oh, wow. What, so they slot the coffins into the
wall?" Amazing. All those coffins sat right on top of each other like
little high-rise blocks of dead people. Just gave me the creeps to think about
it.

I didn't have to wait long for Fen to remove one of the
plaques and reach inside the dark mouth. He groped about for a coffin handle,
then tugged, dragging the box out. I stepped forward, grabbed the other end of
the coffin and helped him lower it to the ground.

Fen stood up and gazed at me with a strange expression that
looked a lot like pride. "It is good to see you develop so quickly,"
he said.

Now what the hell did
that
mean? Develop?
"What?"

"What did you just do, Bryn?"

I frowned, confused. These guessing games were getting old.
Why couldn't he just be straight with me?

"What did you just do that usually takes three to four
men to do?"

With a shock I realized I had just carried one end of the
casket with supreme ease, totally unaware of the kind of strength required for
the task. I came to the only logical, yet incredible, conclusion possible.

I was super-strong.

***

I leaned against the cold marble-tiled wall, my knees
wobbling with shock. It took me more than a mere moment to digest the late
breaking news that Bryn was a regular Hercules. Figured. One more weird thing
to add to my growing repertoire of weird: super strength. Why the bloody hell
not?

What the hell was happening to me? First, my inexplicable
rage, and now incredible strength. A bitter laugh almost escaped my lips, but I
shoved those thoughts from my head. Better to concentrate on the Retrieval, so
I stared pointedly at the coffin until Fen took the hint and knelt to remove
the nearest screw. I did the same on my end. Before long, the lid of the coffin
shifted. Fen slipped it off with extra care and laid it onto the marbled floor.

"Be very careful, Bryn. It is important we leave no
trace of our presence behind. The families must never know the bodies of their
loved ones are gone."

I nodded and dusted off my hands. We stepped toward the
coffin, ready to heave the body out of the casket and leave. But I froze,
unable to talk or breathe. Horror squeezed the breath out of my lungs. Beside
me, Fen drew in a shocked breath and went silent.

"What the hell is that?" I asked, staring at the
body of a young man whose regal features and expensive suit spoke of class and
privilege. A gleaming, gooey black substance now marred his beauty, coating the
surface of his skin, soaking through the fabric of his clothing, giving his
black tux a wet, glossy sheen.

"I do not know what this substance is." Worry
deepened Fen's voice. "We will need to return to Asgard immediately.
Something is not quite right here."

No kidding, Fen.

As we deposited the coffin back into its slot and fixed the
plaque back on to the wall, I stiffened. The mysterious black goo had
distracted us from one very important detail.

A Warrior, meant to rise again and come to Asgard, always
glowed. The bright shine of the golden aura would grow ever brighter until the
day of the Warrior's death. Even when the Valkyries arrived to retrieve the
Warrior and take him or her back to Valhalla to be revitalized, the glow burned
bright. And later on, in Asgard, the Warriors retained the tiniest aura,
marking them as belonging to Odin's special army.

This body, ready to be taken to Valhalla, should have been
so bright that we wouldn't have needed the light of the candles to see it.

So why had the body not been glowing at all?

In grim silence we drove all the way back to our filthy
little stream and rode the Bifrost to Asgard. It took a long while, almost the
whole trip, before the full, dire implications of what we had seen in that
mausoleum dawned on me.

The gloop sucked. The disappearance of the glow sucked more.
But the god-awful fact that the poor guy was dead was what hit me harder than
anything.

Dead.

For real.

No glow. No resurrection. No second chance.

Fen and I materialized in the transfer room and rushed off
toward Odin's Hall. Just as we left the room, I caught a glimpse of Mika
arriving with another Valkyrie. From their dark, hooded expressions I gathered
they'd encountered their own share of gloop.

My ears rang as I trotted into the hall behind Fen. The rest
of the scout teams crowded in behind us, and soon five teams gathered before
Odin, waiting on Fen to break the news.

"Back so soon, Fenrir?" Odin asked, turning to
face the assembled teams. Frigga stood behind him, dusting away a haze of what
looked like clouds from around her before turning her attention to Fen.