Starling (38 page)

Mason saw Rory’s arm break. His face was bloodied. Fenn kept punching even as Rory slumped away from him. Shaken out of her stupor, Mason staggered forward and grabbed Fenn’s arm before he could land another blow.

“Stop!” she cried. “Stop! You’re going to kill him!”

Fennrys struggled against her for an instant, and then his expression cleared and he pulled her close. “Mason …” He glanced over her shoulder. The train was almost at the midpoint of the bridge now. The light of the shimmering curtain had grown unbearably bright. “Come on …”

He pulled her to a crouching stand and helped her toward the back end of the train-car roof. There was a porter’s ladder there that led from the luggage rail down the outside of the train car.

“We have to get off the train, Mase,” Fenn said. “You can’t go across the bridge. Bad things will happen. Do you understand?”

She nodded numbly.
Bad things …

“Climb down as low as you can. I’ll be right there with you. We’ll jump together—off to the side where there are no tracks. Tuck yourself as close in to me as you can, and I’ll protect you when we hit the ground. Just keep your arms in tight, okay?”

He went to lift the strap of her sword hanger over her head. She couldn’t jump with that on. But before he could, there was a sound like a car backfiring—only louder. Mason heard it over the roaring of the train and the howling of the wind.

Another explosion of color, this one crimson and dark, burst from Fennrys’s shoulder. Fenn spun around, away from Mason, a look of dull surprise in his ice-blue eyes. Mason glanced back over her shoulder to see Rory hunched against the gale, a look of pure, mindless malice on his face. His right arm hung useless at his side, but he clutched the pistol in his left hand.

Mason turned back to Fennrys … but he was falling away from her, drifting in slow motion as she screamed and reached for him. As if taken by the wind, he tumbled off the back of the train. Mason stood there, statue still as the train kept thundering on, carrying her forward without him.

The brightness of the bridge all around her grew to blinding, the colors of the rainbow boiling together into a glacial-white froth that stole away the sight of the world and replaced it with sudden, shocking darkness.

The impact of the bullet punched through Fennrys’s body. He clutched at nothingness and fell through the air, slamming onto the bridge decking below and tumbling over railway ties. Half conscious—half
dead
almost—he lifted his head and saw the train blasting toward the wall of shimmering light that fell like a veil in the dead center of the rainbow bridge. He saw Mason’s form silhouetted on top of the train car, the sword hilt at her side gleaming, her hair lifted in the wind like a winged helmet and her sapphire eyes staring back at him in terror and anguish....

There was a thunderclap and a flare of lightning that split the night … and then darkness. The train rumbled through the shimmering curtain and on over the Hell Gate Bridge, chugging off into the distance on the other side of the river. Fennrys could see the hunched shape of Mason’s brother Rory still clinging to the top of the train car.

But Mason was gone.

Fennrys’s head dropped onto his forearms, and his bruised and battered ribs heaved in a desperate sob. A moment of silence in the wake of the chaos spun out all around him, and then Rafe was there, at his side. The werewolf god’s shape shifted from beast to man, and he knelt and got a shoulder under Fennrys’s right arm. He helped him gently to stand and led him, dazed and battered, toward the towering concrete gate, even as Fennrys tried to pull away, mumbling in protest that he had to cross the bridge. He had to follow Mason and try to get her back.

“I’m the only one who can …”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Rafe said firmly. “I don’t know what happens if you actually die when you’re
in
the nether realms, and I’m not so sure I want to find out. I don’t think you do either. And the way you’re leaking blood from that hole, you might just do that if you go charging off after her.”

“But Mason …”

“You’ll find her. Patience. The bridge isn’t going anywhere.”

They were almost to the concrete gate when they felt a rumbling beneath their feet. Fennrys turned, half expecting to see a train roaring down on them from the other direction. But as the vibration built, it became clear that the sound wasn’t from another locomotive. A series of concussive booms built in a crescendo until the whole of the Hell Gate structure heaved wildly, and the center of the bridge truss exploded outward in an ear-bursting screech and howl of ruptured metal and shattering concrete.

Rafe tackled Fennrys, shoving him behind one of the arch pillars, and they crouched there, covering their heads as smoke and sparks swept over them and debris rained down. When the chaos subsided, Fennrys lurched to his feet and thrust himself out away from the shelter of the gate arch. The Hell Gate Bridge still stood before him … some of it.

But there in the middle was a gaping, empty space. The steel girders from either side of the bridge still reached across, like the gnarled, twisted fingers of hands, desperate to clasp each other but no longer reaching. Fennrys could smell the acrid tang of explosives drifting on the breeze. Something—some
one
—had intentionally blown the hell, quite literally, out of the Hell Gate Bridge. There would be no crossing the bridge now. Not the Hell Gate … nor Bifrost. No crossing over into Asgard.

Smoke spiraled up into the night.

The wail of distant sirens floated on the air.

Fennrys stood gazing in despair at the ruined bridge, knowing that Mason Starling was somewhere on the other side … and there was now no way on earth for him to reach her.

He felt something inside him crumple and the last of his strength went out of his legs. He started to collapse, but Rafe gripped him by the arm and kept him standing.

“What did I tell you, Fennrys Wolf?”

Fennrys turned to him, numb.

“I told you ‘to hell with Destiny’ and I meant it,” Rafe said fiercely. “There is always a way. A loophole.
Always
. You just have to find it. And you’d better start looking, because your girl is going to need that now. And so are we, if we’re going to have any chance at all of getting her back.”

T
he blinding white brilliance faded slowly from behind Mason’s eyes.

The wind was gone. Fennrys was gone.

The rumble of the train, silenced …

Slowly she opened her eyes and gazed around. An endless twilight-tinted vista rolled to the horizon—unending, desolate plains … ringed around on all sides by thunderheads piled thick and ominous, blotting out the margins of the sky. Mason saw flashes of purple lightning licking the edges of the barren wasteland. Thunder, so distant it sounded like a tremor deep in the earth—something more felt than heard. She turned a complete circle and came face-to-face with a cloaked and hooded figure that hadn’t been there a moment before.

Mason put a hand on the hilt of the sword at her side.

The figure reached up and pushed back the deep cowl of the cloak. A spill of midnight hair framed a face, corpse pale and lovely. Dark blue eyes gazed at Mason, and a shadow of a smile curved the bloodless lips of the woman’s face as she took a step forward and said in a voice like a bell tolling:

“Hello, Mason. Welcome to Hel.”

She held out her arms.

“I’m your mother and I’ve been waiting for you....”

This book marks the beginning of a brand-new adventure, a new journey. Some of the people who’ve stepped onto this road with me are familiar traveling companions; some are new. I would fold you all into the biggest group hug
ever
if I could get you into the same room at the same time. Insofar as that’s looking unlikely, I’ll just thank you all here.

First, as always, my profound gratitude goes to Jessica Regel, my agent. I continue to not be able to say enough about the depths of my appreciation—just please continue to rock on. Next up is Karen Chaplin, my wise, patient, much-smarter-than-me editor—thank you for taking such good care of me and of this series; you’re a delight to work with. And a third thanks goes to Laura Arnold, who is also delightful and who acquired this series in the first place.

Thank you again to Jean Naggar and the staff of JVNLA for continuing to be outstanding. TimBits for you all again next time I’m in the office.

Thank you to the industrious, creative crew at HarperCollins: my editorial director, Barbara Lalicki; Maggie Herold, my production editor; and Cara Petrus, my designer. You’ve all made me, and this book—and Mason Starling—look so ferociously good! Thank you also to everyone at HarperCollins Canada for continuing to make me feel like one of the cool kids—especially my Canadian editor, Hadley Dyer, who indulges me in ebullient, mythology-laden, shop-talk lunches.

Now, as ever, I send massive love and gratitude out to my mom and my wonderful family. And to my friends. Because you all put up with me when I’m on deadline, and this just wouldn’t be any fun if you guys didn’t think it was kind of cool.

Of course, my most important acknowledgment/respect/declaration of undying love/debt of gratitude and/or frosty beverages goes, unsurprisingly, to John. Again. None of this happens without you. None of it. You are the Gene Hackman Character to my Panicky Idiot Number One in
The Poseidon Adventure
.

Finally, thank you to my readers. To those who’ve followed me here, and those who’ve just joined me on the road. I hope you enjoy the Ride—watch out for stray Valkyries!

LESLEY LIVINGSTON
is a writer and actress living in Toronto. She has a master’s degree in English from the University of Toronto, where she specialized in Arthurian literature and Shakespeare. She is the author of
WONDROUS STRANGE
, which won the Canadian Librarian Association Young Adult Book Award in addition to being a White Pine Honor Book, as well as
DARKLIGHT
and
TEMPESTUOUS
. You can visit her online at www.lesleylivingston.com.

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Also by

LESLEY LIVINGSTON

Darklight

Tempestuous

Wondrous Strange

Cover design by Cara E. Petrus

Cover photograph © 2012 by Michael Frost

Cover photograph of city skyline © 2012 by Getty Images

HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Starling
Copyright © 2012 by Lesley Livingston
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-0-06-206307-6

EPub Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN 9780062063090

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