Rising (31 page)

“
Heimta
!”
he yelled
again.

She glanced
fleetingly in his direction, but it was the mistake they were waiting for.
 
Invisible arms and hands seized upon her from
the rim of the light shield, bursting into flame as they crossed the border and
grabbed her.
 
The invisible creatures,
shadow scouts, shrieked as the Guardian’s aura burned their flesh.

“
Neinn
!”
he yelled, his
bright eyes blazing.
 
“Freya!”

The Guardian’s shield vanished when he called
out to her.
 
I realized what he was
hiding under a layer of furious anguish—love.
 
In that blinking second that she was seized and his shield faltered, a
blindingly fast reaper leapt through the air.
 
In two swift bounds, the creature was face to face with the Guardian,
thrusting his killing arm directly into his chest above his heart.
 
The Guardian lifted one hand out toward
Freya, but the beast’s arm singed and petrified him within seconds into a
statue of blackened ash.
 
The echo of
Freya’s blood-curdling scream drowned out the ravenous sounds of ash-eaters
rustling forward.
 
That was the same
scream I heard the last time I was here.
 
Now I knew what had caused her so much pain.
 

With a vengeful slash through the air, the
triumphant reaper scattered the Guardian’s remains into a cloud of dust.
 
The rest of the scene was sadly
familiar.
 
Four of the largest reapers
stepped forward.
 
Freya maneuvered
herself near her companions in front of the monoliths.
 
Her arms went out in a sacrificial
stance.
 
I saw in her eyes something I
missed last time, a burning mixture of grief and fury that brought shining
tears to her bright, green eyes.
 
All at
once, the four beasts impaled her with their killing arms.
 
She grabbed the arms of the two fiercest in
front of her, while looking back to her companions and saying those strange
words I didn’t understand.

“
Setti
,
valr
,
s
vá
váru
þeir
allir
hraustir
at
engi
talaði
æðruorð
.”

When she turned her glowering gaze
on her killers, I felt the humming vibration begin to tremble in the air as she
spoke in a venomous tone.

“
Myrkr
jötnar
,
tekinn
minn
lífdagar
.
 
Vér
nálægr
þessi
dyrr
.
Vér
vili
neinn
andask
.
Minn
kyn
vili
nálgask
endr
.
Vér
ávalt
hafa
.”

As the power pooled inside of her,
waiting to be released, I saw her head dip once toward the ground.
 
I hadn’t noticed it so much before that she
had whispered something quietly.
 
I heard
the words this time.

“
Blyn
,
minn
astir.”

Her head popped up
and she unleashed her power in a fearsome yell.
 
The reapers shattered as before into a black cloud of bone and
dust.
 
She continued that horrifying
scream.
 
The portal between the monoliths
sputtered then snapped into nothingness.
 
Squeals of pain escaped from the surrounding ash-eaters as Freya killed them
all before finally sacrificing herself and exploding into glittering fragments
of light.

My eyes shot
open.
 
Clara had her hand on my
shoulder.
 
Homer was already up and at
the kitchen table, scribbling furiously on a sketch pad.
 
Jeremy and Ben stared at me with wide eyes.

“Are you okay?
 
Do you have a headache like last time?” asked
Clara.

“A little,” I
admitted, feeling a dull throb against my temples.

“What did you see?”
asked Jeremy.
 
“The same thing as
before?”

“I saw more.
 
I saw two of them.”

Homer rushed back
over to his bookshelf and pulled out a brown leather-bound book then flipped
anxiously through the pages.
 
His fingers
traced down one side then he scribbled something hastily onto the pad.
 
He finally returned to his chair, where
Newton had curled up into a tight ball.
 
Newton complained with a hoarse meow in being moved aside, but Homer was
eager to tell us what he knew.

“Do you know what
they said?” I asked.
 
“Do you know why I
have some link to them?”

He nodded.

“I’ve had visions of
them before, but never this one, never their end,” said Homer somberly.
 
“They are our ancestors.”

“What do
ya
mean?” asked Ben.
 
“We’re like, related?
 
To
Vikings?”

“Sweet,” said Jeremy
with that stupid grin.

“Our powers are
passed down directly by blood,” said Homer.
 
“Not every generation knows they have it.
 
It may lay dormant without being used or even
discovered,” he said, glancing at Ben.
 
“Another thing I’ve noticed is that there are never any siblings of the
one carrying the power.”

I thought about that
for a minute.
 
It was true.
 
Clara was an only child.
 
Ben and I had always thought it was cool the
way we were only children and also best friends, being completely spoiled by
our parents.
 
I guess that meant Jeremy
was, too.
 
I knew that Melanie was, because
her mother had died in a car accident when she was little, leaving her to be
raised by her grandmother.

“Do you have any
children?” Clara asked Homer quietly.

“I do.
 
A daughter, Penelope.
 
She lives in Arkansas.
 
It was on a visit to see her many years ago that
I met the Tracer,
Herrald
.”

“Does she have your
power?” asked Ben.

“I’m sure that she
holds it somewhere inside, but it is only awakened in one person at a
time.
 
I figured this out by comparing
notes with other Tracers who noticed it, too.”

“Can you tell me what
they said, in the vision?” I asked, thinking of Freya and her Guardian.

He nodded again, his
brow crinkling into a frown.
 
He glanced
down at the sketch pad in his hand.

“Can you share the
vision with us first?” asked Clara.
 
“We
don’t know what you saw.”

“It was a stand-off,”
I said.
 
“A Guardian and a Vanquisher
were blocking a portal of some kind.”

“Where was the rest
of the clan?” asked Jeremy curiously.

I glanced at Homer,
now realizing I was talking about our own kin.
 
It became difficult to relate what happened, even though I didn’t know
these people any more than a character in a book.

“They were already
dead,” said Homer, rescuing me.
 
“We
didn’t see how it happened, but they were overpowered by at least a dozen
reapers who circled the Guardian’s protective shield.
 
The Guardian was
Blyn
,
and he was your ancestor, Clara.”

I felt a jolt of
something from Clara, but it was not one emotion.
 
It was many, too indistinct to name.
 

“What was he saying
to her?” I asked.
 
“He kept saying ‘
heimta
.’
 
What does
that mean?”

“That was the one
word I wasn’t sure about that I had to look up,” he said, glancing back to his
pad.
 
“It basically translates as ‘get
back.’ He must’ve been able to see the shadow scouts, but she couldn’t.
 
She was carelessly close to the edge of his
shield.”

“What happened to
her?” asked Clara.

“Shadow scouts
grabbed her,” I said.

“But how?” protested
Clara.
 
“I thought you said they couldn’t
come inside the shield.”

“They can’t.
 
Not without being injured, that is.
 
They risked being burned to get to her,” said
Homer.

“And that’s when
Blyn
dropped his shield,” I said.

“Yes.
 
It was an emotional response.
 
He lost concentration.
 
That’s how the reaper was able to get to
him.”

I felt Clara shudder
next to me.

“What did she say to
the other clansmen after she was stabbed?” I asked.

Jeremy and Clara had
already heard this part of the vision that first time in Theresa’s hotel
room.
 
Ben wasn’t asking anymore
questions.
 
He was just listening.
 
Homer looked down at the pad where he had
quickly scribbled the words when he came out of the vision.

“She said to them, ‘
Setti
, slain warriors,
so brave were they all, that no one
spoke words of fear.’
 
It sounded like a
battle poem of some kind.
 
They were
words of farewell.”

“But, then she spoke to the reapers
in a really harsh voice.
 
What did she
tell them?” I asked impatiently.

“Oh, yes, that was quite
something.
 
What spirit that Freya had,”
said Homer, musing to himself with a smile.

“Freya?” asked Clara.
 
“That’s a pretty name.”

“She was a remarkable woman, and
Vanquisher.
 
I’ll share other visions
I’ve had of her some other time.
 
But, to
your question Gabriel, her last words were, ‘Dark giants, take my life.
 
We close this gate. We will not die. My kind
will come again. We always have.’ Then, using all of her power, she killed
every reaper, shadow scout, and ash-eater left.
 
Unfortunately, she killed herself as well.”

There was a solemn silence after
Homer repeated Freya’s dying words.
 
The
weight of it hung in the air, pressing down on us.
 
We were their legacy, a group of young
teenagers without any experience in battle against murderous demons.
 
Well, other than the occasional game of ‘Halo
3’ or ‘Gears of War.’
 
Those powerful
words were daunting beyond my imagining.
 
It seemed that Homer knew it, too.

“Don’t fret now.
 
Your powers are just awakening.
 
You will soon feel like the warriors that you
truly are.”

My mind wandered to last night, how
I couldn’t even defend myself against the shadow scouts for fear of hurting
someone else.
 
How would I ever defend my
whole clan against the reapers?

“How do I control it?” I asked, trying to keep
the shakiness out of my voice.

“You’ll have to practice,” he said.
 
“Shall we?”

Homer stood up and walked toward the door.
 

“Alright!
 
This is what I’m
talkin
’ ‘bout,” said Jeremy,
popping up and heading outside in a skipping run.

Ben and Clara followed a bit slower.
 
I stopped Homer before we were out the door.

“What did Freya say right before she died, when
she bowed her head?”

Homer’s eyes glazed a little.

“She said, ‘
Blyn
, my
love.’ ”

“That’s what I thought,” I said, ducking out
the door to join the others.

Clara was watching me with her arms
crossed.
 
I avoided her eyes.
 
Ben was staring off into the distance with
his hands stuffed into his jeans pockets, while Jeremy paced anxiously.

“Okay, who’s first?” asked Jeremy, practically
hopping in place.

Homer eyed each of us carefully after he
stepped off the porch.