Valkyrie Rising (25 page)

I hoped he couldn’t tell how very appealing that option sounded just then, especially when they were draped so close along the back of my chair. Instead I picked a sugar packet and spun it on the table. “It’s a great idea,” I said, feeling a tingle of curiosity about these soccer stars that I hoped came from the Valkyrie part of me. My common link to Astrid. It was still hard for me to sort out which of my thoughts still belonged to me and which part was Valkyrie.

“See, it’s not so bad admitting you’re wrong.” He reached across the table and put his hand over mine, bringing my fidgeting to an abrupt end. “And you don’t even have to thank me—I’m happy do all that tricky thinking for both of us.” Judging by his smirk, the words were intended to annoy me every bit as much as they did. But for some reason they also gave me the same thrill as when he touched my hand. It was as if the sweet side he’d been showing me in flashes and glimpses wasn’t a game but rather Tucker unearthing one more layer to what we already had. A layer that in no way meant there wasn’t room for me to smile and tease him right back

“Since most of your ideas end in potential felonies, I think I’ll do my own thinking, thank you.”

Tuck’s answering smile was excruciatingly adorable. “There’s my Ells. Feel better now that you’ve knocked me around?” He shoved my plate closer. “Now eat. If we run into Astrid again, we both need to be ready.”

T
HE PARKING LOT
outside the soccer stadium was packed. Families and groups of kids were arriving in cars and buses, on foot, and piled onto the handlebars or luggage racks of bicycles. I watched as a father lifted a young girl up onto his shoulders, just like my dad used to do with me. Two boys ran past our car, shrieking.

After circling the lot, Tuck found a spot just outside the main doors. It blocked a service entrance, making me question its legitimacy, but I decided to overlook this typically Tuckish approach to parking. I just crossed my fingers that we wouldn’t get towed.

Inside, the arena was smaller than I’d expected, with only one tier of seats and a narrow ribbon of field along the outside for the benches. It was a far cry from Dodger Stadium back home. I went to the railing and looked down at the players scattered around the goal, warming up. Fans pushed past, making their way between the loiterers in the aisles toward their seats. Tuck and I scanned each and every face, hypervigilant for any sign of Valkyrie activity.

Thirty minutes into the first half, I started to worry we were wasting our precious time. It was almost two in the afternoon, and who knew what Loki was planning at dawn the next morning if we didn’t find a way to rescue Graham and the others. Still, I hung in there, praying our risk would pay off. I couldn’t be the only one who felt the allure of those players, how very right they would be for Astrid’s purposes. Still, my watch was burning on my wrist as minutes fused into an hour—an hour we’d lost forever. An hour that took me that much farther away from Graham.

A strange heat crept up the back of my neck, the way it does when you know you’re being watched. Only this time I recognized the feeling at once. It was the approach of one of us, the bond we shared tugging us closer. Astrid was drawing near.

Before I could warn him, Tuck inhaled sharply at my side and his hand curled around my wrist. “Don’t forget your promise,” he said. “No fighting. We follow her.”

I caught a flash of brilliant blond, shining like a beacon. A tall, graceful someone was cutting a determined path toward the field. My eyes chased that bombshell head, trying to catch a glimpse of the face half concealed by artfully tousled locks. I didn’t get my chance until Astrid had reached the edge of the field right by the army team’s bench. She leaned over the railing, gazing down on the players below. Her hair dropped around her face like a curtain falling at the end of a play.

The moment she shifted closer, the atmosphere around the field changed. It felt sluggish, like we were moving through water, even though what was about to happen would be fast as a lightning strike. The players noticed first. I watched, fascinated, as the captain of the army team, a tall, muscular boy, stopped midfield and turned toward Astrid’s spot along the railing. He was the star of the game, having scored three goals and made it look all too easy. Like the other team’s goalie wasn’t even there. His skill was infectious. Everywhere he went on the field, the rest of the team played better, rising to his high standards.

He was the heart of his team, but the boy abandoned the game without a backward glance. He walked toward Astrid, coming to a stop at the base of the wall. Astrid’s long blond hair teased the tops of his shoulders as he reached up, wrapped his fingers over the edge of the wall, and pulled himself up to her level. He kicked one leg over the railing and in the blink of an eye was in the stands, at her side.

It was so daring, so bold compared to anything she’d done before, that I was frozen in place. Long gone were the days of making off with her victims in the night. Astrid had taken the stakes to a whole new level. I thought about the television crews I’d noted earlier, cameras trained on the field and stands. Sure, it was just a local broadcast, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long. This was live-action footage. Irrefutable proof to validate the rumors and whispers flowing across the region.

Murmurs rippled through the stands—but just in the sections that were out of Astrid’s range. Those closer had the vague, apathetic stare of a Valkyrie victim.

The grumbling in the stands turned to angry jeers as tense seconds ticked past. But it was too late. The captain of the team was already well beyond their reach. Astrid took the boy’s hand. There was something tender about that small gesture that shocked me to the core.

The crowd parted, making way for them to pass. Heads turned, tracking their every move as they walked toward the stairs. Tuck and I slipped out of our seats. I breathed deeply, reining in the violent voice rattling the door of its cage, begging me to challenge her on the spot. Last time had taught me the dangers of getting a crowd involved—there was no way I could take on a stadium full of people. Someone would definitely get hurt.

“C’mon,” I said, pulling Tuck behind me as we followed at a distance. I heaved a sigh of relief that Tuck had yet again avoided getting caught up in Astrid’s spell, even without Graham’s necklace. “Before people start to panic and get in our way.”

No sooner had the words left my lips than a commotion erupted in the stands. Someone was jostling and pushing their way through the aisles in the back, up where the spectators were far enough away to be unaffected by Astrid and were still confused and shouting for the game to carry on.

A man leaped up on the brick wall framing the stairs and started jogging along the top, balancing precariously. Falling the wrong way meant a fifty-foot drop. But he reached the base of the stands nearest me in moments and jumped to the ground—just as two more men heaved themselves up onto the wall, following him and shouting for Astrid to stop.

Tuck’s hand curled around my elbow, pulling me along as he slipped through the crowd, following Astrid from a distance. The second two men jumped down from the wall and pushed their way through the crowd, their eyes glued to Astrid’s retreating back as she parted the crowd like the Red Sea. As the first man drew level with us, he pulled a transponder out of his pocket. While trying to activate it, he bumped into a girl about my age who stood frozen in the middle of the aisle. I assumed the girl was caught in Astrid’s spell … until she spun and shoved him with a strength that made no sense coming from her spindly arms. Then she turned to face me. Forest-green eyes met mine, and pink glossed lips curled into Loki’s smile.

But I didn’t have time to pause and wonder what Loki was doing here—the first vigilante man was falling backward. The railing at his back wouldn’t be enough to counteract his momentum. I could already picture how he’d flip over it and plummet down onto the concrete at the bottom of the stairwell. I caught his shoulder just in time, saving him from cracking his head open.

As I set him back onto his feet, his face contorted in terror. The moment he caught his balance, he lashed out at the side of my head with his fist in a frantic, poorly aimed blow that I blocked with one hand. He didn’t even care that I’d just saved him. He was too busy scrambling away from me. I picked up the transponder.

And I turned it on.

It blinked away happily, but the man still refused to take it from my hand. He shook his head again and again, like he could shake the memory of what had just happened right out his ear.

“Leave him,” Tuck said. “Ungrateful asshole.”

He didn’t need to tell me twice. I dropped the transponder on the ground at the man’s feet and slipped after Tuck, moving slowly to make sure Astrid didn’t see us following.

As soon as Astrid hit the pavement outside the stadium, the Range Rover appeared. It careened carelessly through the rows of haphazardly parked cars and slid to a stop just inches shy of Astrid and the soccer star. Astrid approached the driver’s side, which—amazingly—was empty.

I pulled Tuck behind a narrow pillar inside the stadium door as Astrid turned. I’d known it was about to happen. I could sense the current radiating from her, the connection to her thoughts. It was snapping at the edges of my mind, trying to pull me in. She had to know where I was too. Presumably that meant I didn’t pose enough of a threat for her to care.

The men who’d also been chasing her raced past us and exploded out the door, weapons drawn. Astrid shoved the soccer star behind her. I had the oddest impression that she was more concerned about the boy’s safety than about keeping her quarry. If I could tell these men were unskilled with firearms, Astrid could too.

She crossed her arms and stood there for a long moment. It was a silent exchange, consisting only of Astrid tipping her head to the side. The men crouched to set their guns on the ground in front of them and kicked them away across the sidewalk. When they straightened, their eyes were vacant and glassy.

Astrid gave a sad smile, as if disappointed it had been so easy. Her eyes searched the walls and doors of the stadium, looking for anyone else lurking to attack her.

“Don’t even think about moving,” Tuck whispered, pulling me tight against him. “No fighting. You promised. Plus if she sees us, no way she’ll let us follow her.”

I nodded, refusing to be distracted by how Tuck’s arms curled around me, fitting into place as if carved from scratch just for me, or by every inch of his chest pressed against mine.

“Let’s go,” he mouthed, just as I couldn’t help but wonder what he’d do if I let my arms wrap around him too.

The screech of the Range Rover’s tires filled me with shame. How could I think of anything but Graham at a time like this? Tucker Halloway was a walking, talking broken heart, and I was a selfish monster.

Fortunately, Tuck’s arm fell away, removing the temptation.

“Get in.” Tuck was already buckled into the driver’s seat by the time I scrambled around to the passenger door. The Range Rover had disappeared around a corner, but Tuck’s face was tense with steely determination.

My head knocked the ceiling as he slammed the gas and the car lurched over a curb.

“Seatbelt,” he said without even glancing at me.

The Range Rover was already out of sight, but when I concentrated hard, I could hear its heavily treaded tires on the pavement and smell the exhaust snaking from its tailpipe.

My new Valkyrie talents made me half bloodhound.

Tuck was driving race-car fast, weaving in between cars without really looking at them. He narrowly missed a telephone pole as he cut a corner, and the car skidded three feet to the left. It was incredible that Tuck could pick up Astrid’s trail when I was still freaked out that I could. At least I had an explanation.

“How do you know where you’re going?” I finally asked, gripping the seat with my fingers. Like that would make any difference if we crashed at that speed.

He was silent for a long moment, and I thought his concentration was so complete that he hadn’t heard me. But finally he said, “I don’t know. I just do.”

Normally I wouldn’t let that answer slide, but my head smacked against the window again as he accelerated onto the freeway. It was best to let him focus on the road.

As we sped past a red delivery truck, I caught my first glimpse of the Range Rover in the distance. It popped into view for a second; the massive roll bars welded to the roof made it easy to spot. We kept it in our sights, driving with a grim determination.

Both of us knew we could be headed anywhere—including right into the open arms of a trap. I, for one, was ready for anything. And I recognized Tuck’s game face in his narrowed eyes and the muscle that twitched in the corner of his jaw. It was a look of lethal concentration.

Time passed in silence, punctuated by whispers whenever Astrid changed lanes or sped up, as if she would hear our voices if they drifted above the roar of the engine.

It didn’t take very long to figure out we were heading back toward Skavøpoll. After everything that had happened in that town over the last few days, I was hardly eager to get within ten miles of it. And I wasn’t just worried about Astrid and the gang. Kjell’s friends would probably kill me on sight.

But sure enough, the Range Rover took the exit for Skavøpoll. My skin tingled with anticipation, because it couldn’t be a coincidence when there were so many other exits to choose from. Astrid knew we were following her.