Chapter Five
Millie
Several things seemed to happen at once.
Chance, Lucy’s enormous bear of a husband, was on his feet before my brain could process exactly what I’d seen. Jay out of the booth almost as quickly, grabbing a steak knife from the tub full of dishes that the real waitress had abandoned a few tables down. Lucy grabbed ahold of my waist and pulled me out of the tiny enclosed space of the booth.
The whole restaurant shook, rattling the salt shakers and knickknacks on the shelves. The floor began to undulate beneath our feet and I suddenly remembered what Jay had said about the dwarves being able to manipulate metal with touch. If the foundation was concrete, there would be rebar in it somewhere.
“Lucy, get her out of here!” Chance shouted.
No! I wanted to shout back. Hadn’t I been useless enough last time? I wanted to fight! I needed to protect Jay. We may not have met on the best of terms, but he’d saved my life twice already. It was only fair I return the favor, and make the score even. Lucy hiked me even further up on her shoulder and did her best to run for the door. It wasn’t easy, with the ground moving the way it was.
Because she’d put me in a fireman’s carry, I was able to see the battle playing out behind me. Jay had abandoned his steak knife in favor of a frying pan he’d probably stolen from the kitchen. It wasn’t like there was anyone alive to protest. The manager’s body lay only a few feet away from the headless corpse of our waitress. Chance on the other hand had decided to go the more direct route, and had drawn a gun from its holster. I doubted the dwarf could pluck a bullet out of the air and send it back.
It was quicker than its squat little legs would have suggested, twirling around the place like a tornado of death, touching everything metal that it could lay its grubby fingers on. Silverware, at the right velocity, could be just as destructive as a bullet I found out. Knives whizzed across the diner toward Chance and Jay, tearing through the walls like tissue paper when they missed.
Everything seemed to miss Chance, who I saw was wearing what looked like a gold chain around his wrist. One of Lucy’s necklaces maybe? It was hard to tell from this distance and with everything flying through the air. Things that should have been hitting his massive frame squarely seemed to bounce off. Jay however, wasn’t so lucky.
He barely dodged lethal blows, and every volley seemed to cut him somewhere new. I was suddenly furious. How dare the dwarf touch him? He was mine.
“Put me down! I have to go back.”
“I can’t do that, Mills. The only thing you could do back there is die, and I’m not going to let that happen.”
Surely, there was something. I thought back to the curls of golden electricity that had shot from my fingers and into Jay. Surely, I could at least heal them both, so they could keep fighting? But then again, I didn’t know how that even worked. Maybe that was what always happened during shifter healing mumbo-jumbo. Maybe it was an entirely sexual power. I didn’t think Lucy would appreciate me making out with her husband, even if it was to save his life.
Lucy slid me down her body when we reached the front door. She paused to jump the counter, searching the space for something. I wasn’t sure what. Money? She seemed to be doing okay in that department. I hadn’t seen her this well-dressed since her parents had been alive.
Lucy finally produced a pair of keys from a dish.
“What are those for?” I asked, trying to resist the urge to dart back into the fray.
“It’s pretty safe to assume the dwarf slashed the tires on my truck, if it didn’t destroy it outright.” She muttered. “We’re going to need a ride.”
“So, you plan to Grand Theft Auto it out of here?” I asked, and I couldn’t help the note of incredulity that crept into my tone. Lucy had changed drastically from the sweet, wholesome girl she’d been when she’d left Fairchild a year and a half ago. “Won’t your husband disapprove, since he’s a cop and all?”
“We’re not going to take it far. We’ll meet up with a contact a few towns over and he’ll call it in.” She handed me the keys and I shoved them into my pocket.
“This is still nuts. What have you gotten yourself into, Luce?”
“A war,” she said grimly. “And sometimes you have to do things you don’t like to survive it.”
We made a beeline for the front door. Lucy made it there a fraction of a second before I did. She pulled at the handle frantically for several moments. The metal clanked and groaned under her newfound strength, but didn’t budge.
“It’s magicked shut,” she growled. Her eyes bled to a bear’s brown in her frustration. “Damn dwarf must have touched it before going around back to get in.”
“Course it came in the back. I can’t imagine he’d meet the no shirt, no shoes policy,” I tried making a brave stab at humor, but Lucy ignored me.
“Only one way,” she muttered, more to herself than me. Once more she threw her arms around me, but this time she began to change.
For the second time in twenty-four hours, someone shifted to their bear form right next to me. It was as disturbing as it had been when Jay had done it the first time, but fortunately, Lucy’s transition was substantially faster.
The arms around me sprouted fur and Lucy’s torso contorted, lengthening as her legs thickened and her sneakers split. I felt briefly sorry for her. Shredding your clothes couldn’t be comfortable, no matter the situation.
A minute later, I was being loosely held in the front paws of an enormous polar bear. I gaped up at my best friend. I’d expected a grizzly maybe, but a polar bear? How the hell had she become a polar bear? I’d thought she’d settled in Virginia, not the Arctic.
Then Lucy turned and thrust her massive haunches through the window. Glass rained down on us, but once again a bigger body was taking the brunt of the debris for me. Why was everyone trying to keep me safe? When would they all learn that I wasn’t worth it? That it would just be easier if they let me be killed?
We landed on the sidewalk and I rolled away from her. I could add scraped knees and elbows to my steadily growing list of injuries. Not to mention I was suddenly freezing in my still-damp shirt and the singed remainder of my jeans. The polar bear stood and shook itself like a dog, sending bits of glass raining down onto the concrete.
A few minutes later Jay and Chance came hurtling out of the broken window. Jay was covered in blood again. Chance looked unharmed, but distinctly ruffled.
“We need to go. Now, while it’s still down.”
I glanced around the parking lot and noted the crushed cab of Lucy’s truck with a wince. That wasn’t going to be fixable, even if I had time or tools to work on it. I withdrew the stolen keys from my pockets and tossed them to Chance.
“You’re driving.”
***
After Jay’s wounds had been tended to, we’d been fed, and given new clothing it was almost impossible to keep my eyes open. Chance had insisted on arming us after we stopped for food, and the weight of a knife was comforting at my hip. So much had happened in the last day and a half, and my brain just wanted a break from all the crazy. I’d laid my head in Jay’s lap, using Chance’s jacket as a pillow.
Jay had stared down at me in utter bemusement, like he couldn’t quite believe I was there. To be honest, I didn’t know how I’d managed to get to this point either. I was traveling cross-country to escape murderous dwarves who’d allied themselves with the enemy of my best friend, her husband, and my…fuckbuddy? What exactly was Jay to me now?
When I’d first caught sight of him, framed in the doorway of his garage I’d felt a sense of recognition. It hadn’t been insta-love, or anything. More of a eureka-moment. The lightbulb had clicked on and everything leading up to the moment of meeting had seemed so right.
Not like now. Everything was so jumbled in my head that I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be feeling. I was just glad he was alive, and holding me. I felt his hand in my hair, stroking it gently before I fell asleep.
I didn’t normally dream. None that I remembered, anyway. Apparently we all do, when we reach REM. Some people posit that we do so five or six times a night. In all the twenty plus years of my life, I couldn’t remember a single one. Until now.
The surface I walked across crunched beneath my feet. When I peered more closely at it I found the ground was covered in a thick layer of frost. The scrubby plant life cracked and broke beneath my sneakers. The silence was eerie and pressed against my ears. The only light I had to guide my path seemed to be coming from me. I emitted a faint golden glow. It helped me see just a few feet ahead, like the weak beam of a flashlight.
Figures moved through the mist that shrouded everything. I worried I’d bump into one of them, but they never strayed close enough for me to even see their faces. A premonition crept into my brain. I wasn’t sure where it had come from, or why I knew it was true as surely as I knew gravity pulled things to Earth.
They had no faces.
A tiny, morbid part of me wanted to make sure it was true. But what was the point? This was a dream. It shouldn’t concern me. So I kept trudging forward, without a destination or any way of knowing when I’d wake up and end this disturbing little misadventure.
I felt like a flame in the darkness, the red and gold flickers of my light bouncing back toward me, reflected by the mist. Would the light attract the faceless shades that floated in the darkness? Could they sense me without eyes? I really, really hoped not.
The ground began to slope gently upward and through the fog I could see a castle up ahead. This was all getting a little too Scooby-Doo for me. It was whatever lurked up ahead that would give me nightmares. But my legs kept carrying me forward, toward whatever waited above.
There were no lights in the windows, no soldiers waiting at the gate. There were no signs of life anywhere in the place. My footsteps echoed loudly in the empty flagstone hall. I glanced curiously around. The banners that hung from the ceiling were faded and moth eaten. Spiders were spinning cobwebs in the nearest corner. It had the feeling of a crypt, lonely and abandoned.
At the very end of the hall a woman sat, her head held high. She reclined on a gilded chair, the sort I saw at Renaissance Fairs where you could pay to get your picture taken with a crown. Only this was considerably dustier, and I doubted anyone at a Ren Fair had ever looked exactly like this woman had.
One half of her face was fair, her skin smooth and free of any blemish. The hair on this side was glossy black and looked like it would be soft to the touch. One eye was as green as spring grass. Had the motif carried to the other side of her face, she would have been breathtaking. Unfortunately, the other side of her face was what the eye was immediately drawn to.
The skin on this side was ashy grey, like a bloodless corpse. Parts of her skull were visible through the mottled flesh of her cheek. Her right eye was glassy and blind. The rest of her hair was grey, brittle and hung in clumps. The red-gold of my light cast eerie shadows on this side of her face, making it even harder to look at than it had been before.
There was a figure crouched next to her throne. I could tell from the shape of him that he’d once been a man, but time had stolen what muscle he must have had. His beard was long and I saw that he’d been bound to her throne by it. He lay prostrate before the horrifying queen, unable to look up. He too emitted a faint glow, though his was blue, not golden.
“Who are you?” Half of the mouth, the perfect half, moved as she spoke. The other half remained a fixed, sullen line.
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” I asked, glancing around again. “This is my dream, isn’t it?”
“Mortals,” she said with a brittle little laugh. “So cute.”
“I’m not dreaming?” I asked, raising a brow at her.
“You are, and you are not.”
“Geez, Obi-Wan, can we make it a little more cryptic? If I get another vague saying I’ll win fortune cookie bingo.”
Her good eye narrowed in disapproval. “You dare disrespect Hel in her own domain?”
“We’re in Hell?”
“Hel.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said,” I shot back, crossing my arms over my chest.
“You refer most likely to the Christian idea of hell. The home of sinners and a place of eternal torment.”
“So this isn’t hell?” I checked.
“It is Hel.”
“God, woman, can you talk straight? I’ve had about as much cryptic bullshit as I can take for one day.”
The perfect half of her face smiled. “I am half-born Hel, daughter of Loki. I rule the underworld.”
“Ah an underworld. Like Hades?”
For a moment both, halves of her face contorted in fury. Her good eye narrowed to a slit and the other quivered slightly in its socket. I had to fight the urge to vomit as I saw something squirm in the skin there.
“I am not Greek!” she hissed.
“Okay, okay, not Greek.” I said, taking a hasty step back. “Norse, like everyone else right? So this makes you um…one of the nine worlds I guess? Where the dead come to party?”
She relaxed back into her throne and gave me a magnanimous smile. “Party, no. But here is where they come, and here is where they stay.”
I nodded to the stooped figure of the man. “He doesn’t look dead. And he has a face, unlike everyone else. What’s he doing here?”
Hel’s foot, a whole and healthy one, emerged from beneath her skirts. She poked the man delicately with one toe. He let out a piteous sound, as if the mere touch of Hel’s skin caused him pain.
“He is mine. He stays.”
“It doesn’t seem like he wants to,” I said, frowning at the shuddering form of the man. She’d tied him to the throne by his beard, for heaven’s sake. How much crueler could she get? Staple him there by his nutsack, maybe.
“What he wants is none of my concern,” she snarled. “My father gave him to me a millennia ago. He is mine now. The world weeps for him no longer.”
I’d bet, if she’d kept him here for millennia. I doubted there was a person alive who even knew his name. But it felt so wrong to just leave him here. Assuming that Hel was going to let me go.
“How am I here, if I’m living?” Oh, God, had I actually died back at the diner and I just hadn’t realized? “Why here? I don’t believe in or worship the Norse gods.”
“Your mate does.”
“Mate?”
“The bear your life is tied to. I can see him reflected in your colors.”
Jay. I was tied to Jay? That wasn’t possible, right? I wasn’t a bear for one, and I’d always been told that shifters found their mates in members of their own species. It could take years, but there was a mate out there for everyone. And Jay had already found his.
The poignant sadness in his eyes when he’d spoken of his Valerie was proof enough he’d loved her deeply. He couldn’t be my mate. She had to be reading it wrong.
“That doesn’t explain anything,” I said impatiently. “Am I dead, or not? Am I dreaming, or not? I notice you didn’t answer that question, either.”
She shrugged. “Your physical body is asleep, so by your definition this is a dream. But this is actually happening, and you can interact with the world physically, so it is not a dream.”
“Crystal,” I muttered. “Thanks for clearing that up, Hel.”
I stared around the empty throne room again. Hel wasn’t much adored, it seemed. It had to be a thankless job, watching over the ghosts of the long forgotten dead. Her only company was a man who did not want to be anywhere near her, if my observations were correct.
“You could let him up, you know.” I motioned at the man at her feet. He stirred briefly at the suggestion. Hel prodded him more firmly with her toe and he stilled with another groan.
“He stays where he is.”
I reached slowly for my knife. I wasn’t sure if she was right, and that I would still have the things attached to my physical body here. But when I checked, it was still there. I grasped the handle tightly. I may have been helpless at the garage, and at the diner. But right now there was someone being held captive, someone who was hurting and there was only one enemy. And it looked like only half of her body worked.
Before she could stop me, I darted forward, knife in hand. She let out a shriek of outrage when I struck, severing half of the tightly knotted beard that held him to the throne.
“Stop this!” Hel cried. “You cannot free him! It is not time. He must stay here.”
I didn’t dignify that with a response and instead brought my knife down for a second strike, hacking off the last of the golden hair that kept him face down in front of Hel. He stood, and for the first time I got the hint of what he might have been, if fate had been kinder.
He was tall, and his shoulders were still broad, though time had wasted his figure away to nothing. His hair was unkempt and unwashed, but still shone brilliantly in the light that reflected off of me. His face, though gaunt, had the sort of classical beauty you saw in renaissance paintings. His dark eyes filled with tears as he found me.
“Thank you,” he whispered, and then in the blink of an eye he disappeared. Just evaporated. Fucking poof. So, maybe he had been a ghost after all. Well, shit.
Hel’s scream made the whole hall shake. It was the diner all over again, though this time, bits of the ceiling began to chip off and fall.
“Shit.” I had to dive to avoid a boulder the size of my head and then I rolled to escape another. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“You will pay for this!” she shrieked, as I got to my feet and ran. I didn’t know where I was going. I just hoped that she couldn’t make the shades outside of her gate attack me on my way out.
The scream followed me, became shriller and shriller until—
I woke to the shrill beeping of a phone. For a disoriented moment I thought it was mine, but then remembered I’d left mine at home. In the front seat, Lucy answered.
The details of my dreams were draining away faster than water through a sieve. I tried to clutch at details. I was sure it was important. The only thing that really stuck in my mind was the faces. The half rotted face of the queen of the Norse underworld. And the beautiful face of the man I’d freed. The peculiars of the conversation evaded me, but I had the sneaking suspicion whatever I’d just done would come back to haunt me.
“Hello?” Lucy said tersely. Apparently, the mood hadn’t improved while I’d slept. That was okay, I wasn’t exactly feeling like sunshine and roses myself. She waited, listening to the voice on the other end. It sounded vaguely familiar to me, though I couldn’t quite make out the words.
“Yes. She’s right here. No, I’m not letting you talk to her. You have a lot of explaining to do, Pullman. What the hell are you, and what do you want with my friend?”
“Luce,” I croaked, my voice rusty from disuse. I must have slept a long time. “Give me the phone. I want to talk to him.”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded, though, it was an effort to do even that much. I felt like a limp noodle, it was an effort just to raise my hand to take the phone.
“Sammy?”
“Kid.” He sounded uncharacteristically happy to hear from me. When had that started happening? Or had that always been a thing, and he and Dad had just kept that their little secret? “Where are you? I’m coming to pick you up.”
“I’m actually not sure,” I said. “I’d guess I’m at least a few hours away. I fell asleep for a little while.”
“You deserved it, after that shit-storm back there.” I could swear there was a note of approval in his voice. Sammy didn’t approve of anything or anyone. “Get me your location. I’ll meet up with you when I can.”
“Why?” I forced myself back into a sitting position carefully, so I wouldn’t wake a sleeping Jay. “Why did you lie to me all these years? What were you and my father really up to?”
A sigh rattled over the speakers. “This isn’t the time to get into that story, kid. Maybe when you’re safe—”
“I’m as safe as I can be right now, Sammy. I’m surrounded by three were-bears, one of whom is a cop, and is heavily armed. We’re on the freeway, and there are no dwarves in sight. Now you give me an explanation.”
“I can’t,” he said pointedly. Oh. There must be listening ears. I wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t ended up in the county jail after the chase he’d been involved in. The call could very well be monitored. I should probably watch what I said. I hadn’t said anything incriminating yet, but that didn’t mean much. The destruction at the diner hadn’t been discovered yet as far as I knew, but it would only be a matter of time.
So, why did he want my location? Did he think I’d be safer with a bunch of human cops? Their badges and guns hadn’t helped them much against the dwarves last night. Or maybe there was someone else on the force that had been drafted into the insane quest to protect me from…something. I wasn’t sure what.
“Then what can you tell me?”
“That your Great-Aunt Idun is very sick. You should pay her a visit. You know where to find her.”
“Aunt Idun?” I echoed, bemused. I had a Great-Aunt Irene, but dad had put her in a home a few years ago, when her mind had started to slip.
The car swerved suddenly and horns blared on every side of us. I jerked my head up in surprise and found both Lucy and Chance staring at me.
“Eyes on the road!” I hissed at Chance. “Do you want to kill us?”
“What did he say about Idun?” Chance demanded.
“I’m getting to that,” I muttered. “Sammy, you still there?”
“Still here, kid,” He confirmed. “Though I don’t have much longer. Your father and I are being discharged from the hospital and they’ll try to put us in jail.”
The wry note of humor in his voice told me he didn’t think of the mortal police as much of a threat. And maybe they weren’t. I still didn’t know who or what he was anymore. Did that mean I’d never known my father either? What was going on here? I wished someone would just give it to me straight.
At least my dad was all right. I’d feared the worst when the van had hit the concrete divider. I’d seen my friend get into one accident and barely walk away from it, I hadn’t held out hope that I could get lucky twice.
“All right, Sammy, remind me where I find Aunt Idun. I can’t remember off the top of my head.”
“You know. That cozy little place outside Jefferson City. The one in the valley? The sunsets are beautiful there. We took you once, remember?”
My sleep-deprived brain wasn’t up for riddles, but I tried to commit the clues to memory so the better rested members of the party could help me puzzle it out. “Yeah, I remember. I’ll make sure to tell her you said hi. How is Dad?”
“Resting right now. He broke his arm, but he’s been in worse scrapes than this, trust me.”
“I wish I could,” I muttered.
“Oh, come on, kid. Don’t hold any of this against him. He thought this was the best way to go about things after what happened to your mother.”
“What happened to my mother?” I snapped. “No one is telling me jack shit! Why can’t any of you tell me the truth? I’m not a stupid little girl.”
“No, you’re not,” he agreed grimly. “But you’re too important to lose, Millie. Remember that. Your aunt can explain things to you better than I can. Goodbye, kid.”
The line went dead. I stared at the phone in my hand blankly for a few minutes before my hand curled over it. The phone case creaked under the pressure, but I didn’t let go. I was just so angry. Why had everyone conspired to keep me in the dark? What were they trying to protect me from?
“Idun,” Chance pressed, keeping his eyes dutifully on the road. “What did he say about Idun?”
“I don’t know,” I grumbled. “He was talking in riddles. And I don’t even have an Aunt Idun, I have an Aunt Irene. My dad had to put her into an assisted living home when she developed Alzheimer’s.”
“And have you ever met your Aunt Idun?” Chance asked. I shook my head. Why was this vital information to him?
“No. She was my dad’s aunt, my great-aunt, I guess. She lived further upstate. He said she sided with mom when they split and they stopped talking. Of course, I don’t know how much of that is malarkey anymore. He and Sammy have apparently been going behind my back doing something nefarious for years.”
“What did he say, exactly?”
“He said that I’d been there, which is a load of crap. He said I’d know the place. That it was a cozy little house outside of Jefferson City. And something about a valley and sunsets. It made no sense.”
“Sunsets?”
I sighed. Apparently, we were going to dissect every sentence of the conversation. Funny, since Lucy hadn’t actually wanted to let Sammy talk to me.
“He said that she lived in a valley, and that the sunsets were beautiful there. But that’s not right either. She lives in a home.”
Lucy bolted upright in her seat and swiveled around to look at me. “Sunset Valley,” she blurted.
“What?”
“Sunset Valley Assisted Living,” she said, excitement creeping into her tone. “That’s where she’s hidden.”
“Address?” Chance demanded. Lucy snatched her phone out of my hands and began typing furiously.
“Got it,” Lucy said, showing him the map she’d pulled up. Her GPS began calmly directing us to turn off in a few miles.
“I don’t understand,” I groaned. “What are we doing? I thought we were going to Virginia.”
“We will,” Lucy promised. “Trust me, we’re going back. But we need to make a slight detour first.”
“For what?”
“To get your Aunt Irene out of the home.”
“Why?”
“Because if we’re right, your father hid away the goddess Idun, and we need her to win the war.”