Valkyrie Rising (34 page)

Soldiers appeared in the middle of the road, armed and standing rigidly at attention. The other Valkyries shifted closer, preparing our defense. Somehow I knew my place in the coordinated motion. My role. It was the oddest sort of exhilaration, to be part of something so much larger and more powerful than myself.

My grandmother turned, meeting my wide-eyed look of wonder with a slow, ferocious smile.

The ragged force Odin had assembled was no match for us. We would crush their bones. They were young and unprepared; there was an obvious lack of combat experience in how they stood and how they gripped their weapons too tightly. But the very same moment I tasted our victory on the wind, their features emerged from the mist that seemed to emanate from Odin.

Forming faces I recognized.

This wasn’t a bloodthirsty undead army. It looked more like a high school track team.

These were living boys. Our living boys.

There was a redhead in the third row who looked just like Margit. That had to be her brother, Eric. And the blond-haired boy who I’d seen working at the gas station was standing right next to a milky-eyed and scowling Kjell.

Anguished voices behind me called out to long-lost brothers and sons. Kjell’s father had to be held back when he tried to rush forward. A tall blond woman with Kjell’s pale blue eyes wrapped her arms around him, urging him to stay calm.

With mounting panic, I scanned face after face, desperate for a glimpse of Graham or Tuck.

“What’s wrong, Elsa?” Odin asked. “Can’t find what you’re looking for?” He lifted one hand and curled an index finger, beckoning someone closer.

Just as motion in the crowd of frozen boys caught my eye.

Tuck stumbled forward, pushing his way through the frozen soldiers toward me. Relief was a physical force, practically knocking me off my feet. I couldn’t believe our luck, that the soldiers were still as statues, letting Tuck slip around them like a stunt driver dodging orange traffic cones.

His eyes found me, latching on in surprise and relief. He too looked confused that they had let him pass.

But Tuck was no more than a few steps clear of the ranks of boys when a massive soldier stepped forward, materializing out of the mist. Unlike the untrained boys gathered in front of us, this was a real warrior. In his size and agility, I saw the powerful, dangerous adversary I’d feared all along. Odin was finally unleashing his finest on us.

With lightning-fast reflexes and deadly strength, the giant soldier reached out and caught Tuck’s arm. Tuck jerked back, landing flat on the pavement. The giant stepped forward, the threat of pain echoing in each footfall. Tuck rolled over, pushing up onto his elbows with exaggerated care, as if he was still stunned from the impact.

Horror grabbed hold of my soul when the giant’s face came into view. It was Graham, only now I was seeing him in a whole new light. As an enemy. Stripped of his easygoing smile, Graham was terrifying.

“My new favorite has something to teach Elsa and the rest of you.” Odin locked eyes with me. “Loyalty. He’ll follow my orders. At any price.”

Then Odin’s gaze shifted to Graham. His fingers moved lazily through the mist as it coalesced into a long serrated knife. “Kill him.” He tossed the knife, and Graham snatched the blade from the air with one hand.

“No!” I shrieked, sounding far more helpless than a Valkyrie ever should.

Graham looked up. His milky-white eyes carried only indifferent curiosity at who had just screamed.

Then Graham’s entire focus snapped back to Tuck and the task he’d just been given. He would perform it with the swift and effortless perfection that had always made him Graham.

There was a flash of silver as Graham flipped the blade in his hand in a full rotation, like a juggler. If there was any doubt Graham wasn’t in his right mind, that sealed the deal. Graham had never used a knife unless eating was involved.

Odin’s voice rang out again, slicing my torn heart into two equal halves. “Kill them all.” The mist returned, wrapping around Odin like a winter coat as his words settled over us.

In the world as it should have been, the colorful, churning mass of people in the street would have been a parade or a festival to be celebrated. Instead, a fight for survival had pulled together this mottled mess of grandparents and parents, brothers and sisters.

My path to Tuck and Graham disintegrated in a crush of charging boy soldiers colliding with the townspeople. Through gaps in the colliding crowds, I glimpsed Graham thrusting the knife toward Tuck’s chest. Tuck managed to roll to the side, catching only the edge of Graham’s boot as it lashed after him with rib-crushing force.

My stomach felt like I’d been the one who took that blow as the first wave of boys crashed into us. A woman’s tortured voice called out to her son, only to end in a howl of horror as he must have clashed with our group of Valkyries, in a blur of broken arms and dislocated shoulders. One-sided struggles erupted in the streets behind us as the first few kidnapped boys broke through our ranks. Tortured shouts and pleas to stop reverberated off the buildings. A middle-aged man to my right was trying to restrain a boy who had to be his son. The boy slammed his fist into his father’s nose with a sickening crunch of cartilage. I pried him off just long enough for his father to secure his arms with a length of rope.

My heart was beating so hard and fast, it felt like a cage match in my chest. I was doing my best to hold my position, but my attention was torn between the fights raging around me and the flashes of Graham and Tuck I caught through the crowd. Tuck was putting bodies and space between him and Graham, using people as buffers to avoid fighting him directly.

There was resignation in Tuck’s strategy, in the way he ducked and dodged, twisting out of Graham’s reach without lifting a hand to defend himself. Fast as Tuck was, he had to know it was only a matter of time before Graham caught him. Tuck would never hurt Graham—or me. Loki was wrong. I’d seen it the moment Tuck’s eyes had met mine, just minutes ago. But I knew it now in a whole new way. Tuck would give his life for us, Morrigan or not. And there was no way I would let that happen.

I had to stop them from fighting. Whatever it took. But if Graham was bent on killing Tuck, there was no easy way to restrain him; he was strong and fast, I could see that from here. If it came down to it, was I prepared to let one of them be hurt—or worse still, to sacrifice one to save the other? I was frozen in place at the thought, paralyzed by the mere idea of a choice I could never make.

“Go!” Astrid shouted, shoving me from behind. “Stop stalling. I know you don’t want to choose, but you have to.” I turned and caught her eye, surprised. She pointed toward Graham’s golden head. A surge of ferocious power flowed from the other Valkyries straight into my heart. Reminding me that I wasn’t alone in trying to save the town and everyone else. Astrid, my grandmother, and the others could hold their own while I stopped Graham and Tuck.

I catapulted through the crowd toward Tucker, knocking over a tall, lanky boy in a soccer uniform who tried to block my path.

“Get out of here, Ells.” Tuck pushed me back, and not gently. “He could hurt you. Go away!”

“He could hurt you, too,” I hissed back. “Graham, stop, it’s me.” I tried to knock the knife out of his hand, but Graham shoved me out of his way with the same minimal effort he’d use to brush the hair out of his eyes. It seemed Valkyrie blood did some pretty interesting things to boys, too. “You don’t want to hurt us. I’m your sister.” My voice broke over the words.

But Graham didn’t hear me. At least not the part of him that I knew—the part that was my brother. His eyes were on the prize. Tucker.

Graham lunged with the knife, and it bit into Tuck’s arm, slicing a line of red from his elbow to his wrist. Tuck winced and dodged away, right as Graham pulled back, preparing to strike again. But Tuck recovered in time and caught Graham’s wrist, dropping to the ground and using his downward momentum to slam Graham forward into a brick wall. Graham hit the corner of the building hard enough that it took him an instant to catch his balance.

Tuck fumbled in his pocket, looking for something. Then he pulled out a metal necklace like the ones Grandmother had given to Graham and Kjell.

“Hold him!” Tuck shouted. Without hesitating, I dived onto Graham’s back in a massive bear hug. It took every ounce of strength I had to keep Graham in place, and even then he was thrashing like a fish on a line, shaking me off.

Fortunately, those few precious seconds were enough time for Tuck to slide Grandmother’s necklace over Graham’s head.

The instant the metal disk settled on his skin, Graham’s brow furrowed, and he massaged his forehead like he had the mother of all migraines. Even though his eyes were still milky white, I could see his consciousness stirring to life behind them. He was fighting to clear the haze in his brain, and as he did, he gave up his struggle against my restraining arms. Graham sagged backward, against me, as if all his energy was focused on regaining control over his mind and not a single ounce could be spared—not even to keep himself upright.

“Where’d you get that?” I demanded, reaching toward the necklace but remembering at the last moment that I shouldn’t touch it.

“Astrid kept one—she wanted to figure out what it was. Your grandmother managed to pass it to me on the inside. It seemed her mutiny was well under way by the time I arrived.”

“What were you thinking, getting yourself taken?” I demanded as we lowered Graham to the ground, propping him up against the side of the building.

“Not sure I was thinking anything.” He shrugged, trying to fake his usual casual confidence, but the eyes that met mine were full of apology. “I had nothing to lose except you. And it seemed like the best way to keep you safe.”

I reached up and touched his face, still surprised I was allowed to do that now. “Use your sweatshirt to put pressure on that,” I said, my eyes dropping to his injured arm.

Graham groaned, rubbing his forehead.

“Something tells me he’s gonna wake up with a headache worse than my homecoming hangover.” Tuck flashed a shy half smile. “You don’t hate me?”

“Remains to be seen.” But I let my smile give him the real answer as I straightened back up, knowing it was way past time to return to Astrid and the others. “You owe me a couple dozen explanations.”

Tuck ducked his head in assent, his hands still resting on Graham’s shoulders, just in case. The silver disk hanging from Graham’s neck sparkled in the sunlight—a reminder of how very complicated our friendship, or whatever it was, had become.

“And a proper first date,” I added, angling for one of his smiles. And it worked. I turned, feeling the pull of my Valkyrie sisters, needing me, needing two more hands to help hold back the onslaught that threatened to engulf us all.

“I have to go,” I said to Tuck. “Keep an eye on Graham.”

Tuck started to object, but his voice was drowned in the shouting coming from the street behind us. Twenty feet away, Astrid and my grandmother were standing back to back, surrounded by a wall of soldiers they were fending off with their bare hands. Astrid swept her leg behind the one in the middle. He fell and landed on his wrist with a crunch of broken bone. Astrid was visibly fed up with holding herself back when victory could be ours so easily. I was disturbed to discover that part of me could relate. But that wasn’t our only point in common; judging by her actions, Astrid also shared my aversion to harming innocent people, a realization that made me like her a little bit more.

The pull to join Astrid and Grandmother was undeniable. My feet carried me forward, drawn by an impulse as basic as breathing.

But even as I raced forward, I realized that holding Odin back indefinitely was hardly a solution. We needed to break Odin’s hold over those boys. And over us.

According to Loki, the symbol on Graham’s necklace was the name of the Morrigan, the Valkyrie who had left us and withdrawn from our collective consciousness forever. The symbol blocked our Valkyrie magic from reaching her, just like it protected Graham from our influence.

If the runes on the necklace worked like that—if they could break the circuit of energy that bound us all together—then maybe we could use it to block Odin and his constant pull on our energy. And without our Valkyrie power to augment his own, he’d never be able to control so many soldiers. I could sense it, the way he drained the energy that flowed between the Valkyries in order to enforce his own will.

I turned and pressed back through the churning crowd toward Tucker, sidestepping a car door that one of the Valkyries must have ripped off and hurled into the middle of the road. I dropped to the ground at Tuck’s side.

“Give me that necklace,” I said.

Tuck’s forehead creased. “Graham needs it.”

“There are a lot of other people here who need it too. Trust me.” When Tuck didn’t move, I added, “Just do what you did to yourself—draw the symbols on Graham’s skin. After all, that’s what’s important, not the necklace.”

Tuck hesitated before sliding it back over Graham’s head and handing it to me. Graham’s eyes opened, focusing uncertainly on each of us before closing again. They were still confused, but at least they weren’t milky white.

The chain reflected the sun’s thin morning rays as it pooled on my palm, followed by the metal disk carved with three runes. But the instant the metal touched my skin, white-hot pain shot down my arm. On reflex, I jerked my hand away and sent the necklace tumbling to the ground. It felt like I’d just plunged my fingers into boiling water.