Destined (Desolation #3) (29 page)

She took my hand again. “I know, dear. But you have only to wish it to be whole and it will be so.”

We’d stopped walking and now stood, both of us looking at my hand in hers. I thought about how ugly my hand was with only four fingers. Of what a relief it would be to be free of the reminder of how far I’d once fallen. 

And then, between one blink and the next, the ugly stump was gone and in its place was a healthy finger, my hand whole once more.

Freyja laughed and squeezed my hand. We resumed our walk; my grandmother on my left, and on my right, my first friend, Lucy while Mahria walked just behind. I breathed in their presence, the beauty of the place, the Genesis that had joined with the spark in my heart, and I knew what I needed to do, knew what my mission would be. Thor was meant to rule Midgard, but due to his transgression his weapon and his place in the nine worlds had been stripped from him. I would claim my grandfather’s place and rule Midgard in his stead.

I would be so much more than a weapon against the dark. So much more than Desolation. 

It’s time for you ta go, baby,” Lucy said. She ran her hands up and down my arms like she’d done so many times before. Before, when I was a lost and broken girl, a puppet in the hands of my father. 

But things were so very different now.

Now, I am a product of Lucy’s love and of Aaron’s. Of Miri’s and Michael’s and James’. Of my mother’s. 

We stopped in the garden and Mahria stepped forward, pulling me into her arms. For the first time in my life I felt absolutely complete. She knew me, from the beginning of life, she’d known me. She gave everything for me, knew exactly what I was, and yet she accepted me. 

“Daughter.” She stroked my hair, while I listened to her breath, felt her heart beat. She pushed me back and examined me at arm’s length, as I examined her. “You look so much like me.” I nodded. “You are a great warrior, daughter, and I am so proud of you.”

I fell into her arms again, mumbling my love for her, how much I had missed her, how I wished I could get to know her again. “I will always mourn what we could never have, daughter, the time together we have lost—but I will never regret giving you life. Your life will be extraordinary. Your life will be filled with power and goodness and with love.” She held my face in her hands. “Always remember love. Remember Michael.”

I beamed back at her, feeling,
knowing
, that I would never, ever forget.

A sensation of need tugged at my heart—the draw to Midgard, the draw to fight for it, to protect it. 

“Even now, Midgard calls to you,” Mahria said.

I looked at my mother, at Lucy and Freyja. “Yes.”

“Then you must go. You must never lose sight of your duty.” 

“I won’t. I promise. But what about you? All of you?”

“We are where we belong,” Mahria said. “I am with my goddess, this is my eternal home.”

“And I will stay here also.” Lucy met Freyja’s gaze and I saw the hope shining within them. “Freyja’s been alone too long, but we will all be watching over you.” Lucy, glorious, perfect Lucy. It made me feel a million shades of wonderful to know she would be watching over me—she and my mother and grandmother.

“It seems we have much in common and I like sharing my home with a Valkyrie and an Ascended Gardian. Lucy is as fierce and loyal as any of my warrior handmaidens. She certainly knows how to keep me in line!” Freyja laughed, even Mahria tucked her head, mirth shining in her eyes, and I laughed out loud.

In a moment of abandon I threw my arms around Lucy’s neck. She rubbed my back and whispered, “I love you too, baby. I love you, too.”

Freyja moved to Lucy’s side. Reluctantly I stepped back, facing the three women before me; my mother, beautiful and proud; Freyja, shimmering with silver light, power radiating from her like a force field; and Lucy—the one who taught me what it was to love, what it was to have a friend. 

“You know how to travel, now?” Freyja asked.

And I did.

I knew it all. Knew everything. I felt the universe spreading outward from my mind—as if it were an open book and all I had to do was focus on a single word to find it on the page. I felt Heimdall watching me. Knew Odin stood beside him, observing the progress of the battle which still raged on Midgard.

Knew Michael and the Gardians, and Fahria and the Valkyrie fought a new wave of Svarts and Giants. Knew the war was not going well and they were all so very tired.

I pulled my awareness back to myself and smiled at Freyja. She knew what I knew—I could feel it in her.

She stepped forward and took my hands in hers. “Be a faithful guardian, granddaughter. Celebrate all that you are. Perhaps you will be able to do what we were not.”

She pulled me into her embrace. I breathed in the scent of her—happiness and sunshine—and closed my eyes, letting myself be wholly there in that moment. To breathe with her. 

She leaned back and squeezed my hands.

“Perhaps Midgard can finally have the peace it deserves with you as its caretaker.”

There was a time when I’d deny those words, deny that I could do anything close to taking care of anyone—let alone a whole world. But in my grandmother’s warm and confident voice, I found a new hope. I wanted to make her proud. To make all of them proud.

 “I will try,” I said. And I knew that I would. For all my days, I would strive to bring peace to Earth.

Freyja let go of me and reached for Lucy. They stood, side by side, my mother with them, arms touching, a pillar of hope and strength created by three lives, three souls. 

“Thank you,” I said. “I love you.”
Love you all. Love you.

I pictured Earth, pictured the desert where my love fought for the world that was now my own. 

“Wait,” Freyja said, reaching out and taking my hand, drawing me back to Vaneheim. “Don’t do it alone, Desolation. Don’t make the same mistakes I did, and Freyr. Embrace your love.”

My love.

I was already going. Already taking her advice. I didn’t want to be alone another moment. I smiled, bigger than I’d maybe smiled my whole life, and nodded. And then I sent myself across time and space and toward Michael. And once I found him, I would never, ever leave him again.

Sweat stung my eyes but there was no use in wiping it away as I’d already done a million times—there was no rest in this battle, no time to catch my breath. By turns I was frozen to the core by the passing of a Svart-blade, all ice and shivers, and toasted by the breath of a Giant that singed my eyebrows. Cold and heat beat against me, wearying me, weakening me as surely as any steely blow. 

I feared we would not prevail. I felt it in my warriors, saw it even in the way the shi’lil now flew lower in the sky, no longer shooting like falling stars, but stumbling across the heavens. The mounted Valkyries’ arrows flew, first one . . . and then another. Slow enough that I could see their pathway to Earth. Not like before, when we first came to this fight, when their arrows flew like lightning, so swift and deadly. 

More of us lay on the hard-packed desert floor than our enemy. And the enemy kept coming. Even now I felt like I swung my blade in slow motion as I watched Svarts pour from the sky like a river of blue ice.

It was then that I saw her from across the field—she appeared in a shower of rainbow light. Our eyes met across the death that lay between us, and then she was gone.

Huddled on the gravel, out of the way of the sprawling crowd that crawls up and down the skeleton stairs, I press my forehead to my knees and wonder how it will all end.
Can I die if I’m already in Hell? Or am I already dead?

Something tells me I’m not dead—not yet. I’m not like those empty-eyed people going up and down the stairs. And now that I’m free of Helena, my thoughts are finally my own. I wish it had been like drugs—wish I couldn’t remember what had happened.

But I remember it all.

I feel deeply ashamed that I ever chose to go with the Ferryman—or woman. Helena had played me from the start and I didn’t know what she got from it except the cheap thrills of making a guy into a total tool. 

What would Miri think of me now? Of how far I’ve fallen? I’m nothing. Less than nothing. A stupid guy, a tiny piece of cloth covering the essentials and gravel poking into my butt while I cry into a river of blood. The damned have never been able to find a way out of Hell—what made me think I could?

Desi will come for me. 

Right?

I mean, she found me once—won’t she do it again?

Except I’d seen Helena’s handiwork first hand. I’d seen the way she could order someone’s death, or, with a thought, bring death all on her own. She is way more powerful than anything I’d seen Lucifer or Desi do. That chick was a world apart. Maybe Desi hadn’t even survived.

Maybe she’s dead and Michael’s dead and . . .

Maybe Miri’s dead.

As her name crosses my mind, as I picture her lying on that desert ground, her blood spilling out of her, my own blood freezes.
Miri
. I taste her death, test it for truth. 

It doesn’t feel true.

Miri is alive. I know it. I can feel her—somewhere. 

I force my foggy mind to think of her. To picture her face, her shining eyes. Feel her kiss on my lips, her body beneath my hands. I think of the way she crinkles her nose when I make her taste one of my culinary experiments and it isn’t any good. And the way she closes her eyes and moans with pleasure when she tastes something especially delicious. Man, the girl makes me feel alive. Even though it kills me—killed me—that we can’t be together in that way yet, I love her for it. Cherish the little glimpses of what making love to her will be like. I can wait for her.

I’d wait forever for her.

But I won’t live another moment without her.

Without knowing what to do, I jump up, refusing to acknowledge the bite of gravel in the soles of my feet. I stand tall at the edge of the river. The damned river that ruined my life. To my left, the river extends through a tunnel that runs under the shiny black granite mountain where Desi used to live. The glossy surface rises as high as I can see, occasional windows and balconies jutting out from the smooth surface. It freaks me out to think of Desi living in that place her whole life. A life that lasted an eternity. 

To my right, the river disappears into a dark and shadowy tunnel cut into a very ugly, rocky cliff face. It was that direction that Hel had taken me in her little glass boat. I try to remember where we’d gone, but once crossing beneath the mountain, my memory . . . blinks out. The next thing I knew I was her little pet slave, cowering nearly-naked at her feet in the throne room.

Across the river from me, boulders lay strewn all across the beach. I remember taking tunnels and paths beyond that to find Desi. Not sure what else to do, I take a step forward. The water is freezing cold. Colder than the air, colder than Hell.

I bite back a cry and stand there like an idiot for a few seconds while I get up the guts to take another step.

The water feels . . . alive. For a second I think I see something shift out of it, like the fin of some blood red fish poking above the roiling surface. I swear I hear a voice in my mind shout Jump! I jump backward, stumbling onto the gravel beach.