CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Ski woke up in a dank cave, with the sound of someone butchering meat turning his stomach. At least that’s what it sounded like. But when he looked all he saw was Jace on top of a dead Carrion, stabbing him over and over with his Hel blade.
“Jace?”
Her head snapped around, bloodred eyes locking on him.
Ski slowly propped himself up on his elbows, but then Jace blinked and her eyes were a bright blue again.
“Ski!” She left her Carrion victim and ran to his side, crouching beside him, her hand resting on his cheek. “Are you all right?”
Ski didn’t understand. Usually, when Jace’s eyes were like that, when she was in a rage, the only thing that got her back to normal was killing and then sobbing or sleeping.
But here she was, back to normal after he knew for a fact she’d snapped.
“I’m fine,” he said, taking her hand, kissing her bloody knuckles. “Are you?”
“Yeah. But I’m sorry I got us down here.”
“You did what you had to do. I know our brothers and sisters will take care of Gullveig and that’s all that matters. I knew the risks.”
She pressed her forehead against his, and they stayed like that for several minutes until a voice said, “Hel wants to see you, Crow and Protector.”
A small troop of Carrion stood in the entrance of the cavern, staring down at them.
Jace stood and held her hand out to Ski. He took it and got to his feet. Still holding hands, they walked past the Carrion and went to face Hel, daughter of Loki and ruler of the underworld.
Kera sat at the table, her legs pulled onto the chair, her hand constantly wiping tears she hadn’t been able to stop for hours.
It wasn’t that no one was doing anything.
In fact, everyone was doing something.
Even the Giant Killers and the Silent, two groups who cared for no one outside their Clans, were trying to contact their gods, as were the Ravens and the Isa. They were all doing what they could to get Jace and Ski back from Helheim.
Of course, Kera had no doubt that self-concern was part of what motivated all the groups. If Jace and Ski could get trapped alive in Helheim until Ragnarok, what would stop that from happening to any of them?
It was too terrifying for the Clans to think about. Unlike the Crows, they’d spent almost their entire lives becoming the warriors their gods wanted them to be so that one day they would feast in the Halls of Valhalla and join the battle during Ragnarok.
So all the groups rushed back to their bases of operation and began to search for some way, any way, they could get a Crow and a Protector back from the underworld.
That had been hours ago, though. It was nearly one in the morning and still nothing.
Yardley put a cup of coffee in front of Kera and sat down at the table near Chloe and Betty.
Brodie rested beside Kera’s feet and little Lev was asleep on Brodie’s back.
And as soon as Kera thought about Lev, the tears started again.
“Oh sweetie,” Betty said, as gently as the hard-ass agent could manage, “you have got to stop crying.”
“I know. I know.”
Yardley threw up her hands. “Maybe Erin’s right! We should all go down there and get her.”
“So we can all be trapped alive in Helheim?” Betty asked.
“Well, it’s better than sitting here, waiting for something to happen.”
Brodie’s head suddenly went up, ears on alert. Her head turned one way, then another. But when her hackles rose the length of her back, Kera knew something was wrong.
“Brodie, what is it?”
The dog sat up and Lev fell on the ground. Before he could complain too much about the treatment, Brodie grasped the puppy by the back of the neck and trotted off with him in her mouth.
They all sat there watching Kera’s dog disappear into the trees surrounding the Bird House. It wasn’t that Brodie had suddenly gone off; it was that she took Lev with her.
“What’s Brodie doing?” Yardley asked.
“I think she’s protecting Lev.”
“Why?”
Tears suddenly dried up, Kera admitted, “You know . . . that’s kind of what has me worried.”
They were led over the Bridge of the Dead and to Hel’s hall.
Jace had to admit, this wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it would be. She’d honestly expected Helheim to be the worst place ever, but she seemed to be confusing Hel’s domain with Satan’s.
Instead of pits with fire, it looked like some parts of Iceland. There were mountains and waterfalls and thick forests.
There were also a lot of dead people and, except for the Carrion, none of them seemed to be warriors.
That’s why the Vikings didn’t want to come here. Not because they thought it would be filled with lakes of fire, but because there’d be no battles. No wild feasts with Odin and Thor. No joking around with Freyja. Or meeting past Clan sisters and brothers who would help prepare them for Ragnarok.
Jace didn’t realize until this moment how much going to Asgard had meant to her. She didn’t need to go right now, of course. But she’d thought once she’d become a Crow that was where she’d end up on her second death. In Asgard, in battles every day, feasting every night. Maybe sneaking in some reading time here and there.
Hel’s hall, which reached high into the dark sky above, was made of white marble and bright silver.
The Carrion brought Jace and Ski into a large room with a big table; Hel was sitting at one end. And on her right sat a remarkably handsome warrior with a warm smile and gold armor.
“Baldur,” Ski whispered, shocked at the sight of the famed god who had been killed due to Loki’s machinations and was the reason Loki was bound somewhere with poison dripping on him until Ragnarok came.
Hel smiled at them. “Welcome! I have to say I’ve never had a Crow and a Protector here in my hall before. It’s a nice change of pace, isn’t it, Baldur?”
“You can’t seriously be planning to keep them here, Hel.”
“Why not? They came here of their own free will. Who am I to debate that point?”
“Just send them back before Tyr comes here looking for one of his boys. You know how he gets.”
“Yes. The lectures. He does like to lecture. But . . . and this is the important part, they’ve kind of ruined my fun.”
“You call Gullveig fun?” Jace had to ask.
“You didn’t have fun?”
Jace pressed her head against Ski’s arm and muttered, “I’m getting angry.”
“I thought,” Hel went on, oblivious, “that she was hilarious. Such fun, that one. But you naughty Crows . . . sending her into some random universe. That seems wrong.”
Jace had to ask, “Are you planning on bringing her back?”
“It would be cruel to just leave her out there in that netherworld, victim to whatever might be lurking in the darkness. You know, kind of like what you’ve done to your friends?”
Jace felt a chill spread across the back of her neck, as if Death himself had placed his hand there. “What are you talking about?”
“You. You left your friends to the whim of that man.”
“What man?”
“Your ex-husband, I think.” She leaned in and loudly whispered, “You should have killed him when you had the chance.”
Laughing, she relaxed in her throne-like chair. “Now come. Join me for—”
“Wait,” Ski cut in. “What are you saying?”
“He’s coming to kill them. Your false prophet and his pathetic followers. I thought he would play a much more important role down the line, but it looks as if he has other plans. To kill your little Crow friends.”
Baldur shook his beautiful head. “Oh Hel.”
Jace heard the sadness in the god’s voice. The chastising. But he wasn’t going to do anything, either. No one was going to do anything.
So her rage, it tore up her back and spread out through her body like a vicious sickness, and when she finally screamed—a scream so loud even the two gods in the room jumped—there was nothing, absolutely nothing Ski or anyone else could do to stop her.
Erin had managed to cry alone in a bathroom and then put eyedrops in to clear up the redness so that no one had any idea how much Jace’s disappearance was gutting her. There had to be at least one of them who wasn’t having an open nervous breakdown about this.
Even Rachel had been in her room crying for the last hour. Strange, since Jace had almost killed her when she’d punched her in the throat.
But if there was one thing Erin was sure about, it was that there was no way they were leaving their favorite antisocial girl to live the remainder of her existence in goddamn Helheim.
Erin came down the stairs, intent on heading back outside to again suggest to Chloe and Kera that they shouldn’t be waiting around for the other Clans to come up with something and should just move on this now. All of them. Maybe even Crows in nearby states like Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, and Washington could join them. The whole fucking West Coast Crows if need be!
Erin was stepping into the foyer when she heard the light knock on the front door.
Frowning, she walked over and opened it.
A man she didn’t recognize stood there dressed all in black.
“May I—” was the last thing Erin said before the bullet collided with her head.
Knowing they might recognize him—everyone knew who he was these days, and he was sure these vile women were no different—Braddock had sent one of his younger parishioners in first. Once the gun went off, he stepped out of the shadows and into the house.
The red-haired whore who had been shot lay crumpled on the floor. He stepped into the foyer and motioned to his people to get to work.
Armed with freshly purchased automatic weapons and the buried ammo the agents never found, his parishioners charged silently into the house and began the mass cleansing of so much evil.
Ski tried to grab Jace, but she’d already jumped on the table and, still screaming, she charged across it, right at a wide-eyed Hel.
Hel stood and demanded, “What do you think you’re—”
Jace tackled the god like she was a linebacker for the NFL, both dropping out of sight on the other side of the table.
Ski ran over and saw that Jace was on top of Hel, punching her again and again. There was no blood, though. No sign that the blows were harming the god in any way.
Hel simply seemed too stunned to actually fight back.
The Carrion reached for Jace, but Ski pushed them back and then held out the Hel blade Jace had dropped when she’d tackled the god. A blade they hadn’t bothered to take from her because they’d never thought either of them would dare use it.
He kept the Carrion at bay but mostly because they knew Jace wasn’t hurting their god.
She wasn’t hurting her . . . until she was.
Jace, in her rage, had grabbed hold of Hel’s dwarven-made breastplate and begun pulling at it.
Shocked, Ski and Baldur watched Jace tear the thick metal from Hel’s body. And, as it came away, it pulled part of Hel with it.
The goddess screeched in pain, and once Jace had the breastplate off, the stink of decay, disease, and pestilence rose up from the monster Loki had bred all those eons ago.
Ski dry-heaved, Baldur turned his head and put the side of his fist against his nose, and Jace just kept screaming.
Hel crossed her arms over her decaying chest and rolled to her side. That’s when Ski realized she was . . . embarrassed.
Embarrassed about what she really was. How she really looked under that beautiful armor. Her true self.
But Jace didn’t care. Actual blood began to pour from her red eyes, and her entire body vibrated, she was so lost in her rage.
Baldur grabbed Ski’s forearm and yanked him close. “Get her out.”
“Where?”
Baldur pressed his thumb against Ski’s forehead, and Ski immediately saw the hidden way out of Helheim.
Ski stared up at the god. “If you knew . . . why didn’t you . . . ?”
“I made an oath. As a god, I had to keep it. But you’re human. What honor do you have?”
Ski opened his mouth to argue, but then said, “Good point. See ya!”
Ski grabbed Jace’s hand and yanked her around the table. The Carrion were still there, ready to stop them, but with a wave of his hand, Baldur sent them flying.
“Go!” Baldur called after them. “Never stop running! They’ll be coming for you!”
Once outside, Ski looked back, and he saw that Baldur was right—a legion of Carrion poured from Hel’s hall to pursue them.
So he ran, with Jace right beside him, and he didn’t look back again.
“Those are gunshots,” Kera informed Chloe, Betty, and Yardley.
“Here? Are you sure?” Chloe asked.
“I was a Marine. I know gunshots when I hear them.”
“I’ve been shot at,” Betty tossed in. “A lot. Those are definitely gunshots.”
“With me Yardley.” Chloe motioned to Betty and Kera before unleashing her wings and heading to the roof entrance of the house.
Kera indicated for Betty to go around the side, and Kera went in through one of the sliding glass doors at the back.
The entire house was dark now. Someone had shut the electricity off.
Reaching down, Kera pulled her blades out of the holster attached to her ankle and eased her way through the furniture of the TV room and out into the hallway.
From the darkness, she watched two strangers meet in the middle of the hallway. One snarled, “I can’t find anyone.”
“That’s impossible,” the other said. “They were all—”
Annalisa dropped from above, landing behind one of the strangers. A woman. Annalisa took her blade and yanked it across the woman’s neck.
The man raised his weapon and began firing, but Annalisa was already gone, disappearing into the darkness, waiting in the shadows.
A blade flew by Kera’s head and slammed into the back of the man’s neck. He dropped instantly, and a sister grabbed her blade and vanished.
Without turning around, Kera knew someone was standing behind her. And she knew it wasn’t one of her sisters. Or even one of the Clan. She spun and caught the barrel of the machine gun aimed at her. She jerked it to the side, the palm of her hand burning when the bastard fired the weapon, heating up the metal.
Kera buried her blade in the man’s neck and quickly yanked it out. She pulled the weapon from his dead hands and threw it at the man who’d just run into the room. It hit him in the face and he went down, bullets tearing across the ceiling.
She ran past him—slashing his throat as she passed—and out into the hallway.
More bullets came at her then, and all Kera had time to do was hit the deck.
Jace didn’t realize she still had Hel’s breastplate until one of the Carrion got close enough to grab it.
She yanked it from his hand, pulled back, and slapped it into him, knocking him down.
“Jace!” Ski yelled. “Come on!”
She’d followed him deep into some cavern, and she only assumed he knew where he was going.
Even stranger . . . her very rational thoughts. Because she knew she was still in a rage. She would be until she got back to the Bird House and checked in on her girls. Until she knew they were safe, no one else was.
And yet . . . she knew who Ski was. Understood she was trying to escape from Helheim. Knew that Baldur had helped them.
And there was only one explanation for her clear logic while in a rage—her grandmother.
When Nëna had slapped her that last time, she’d done something to her. To protect her, she’d said.
To protect her granddaughter.
Ski pointed to an opening in a crevice high up in the cavern. Extremely high. The pair began to work their way up using their hands and feet—Jace still determined to hold on to Hel’s chest plate because, dammit, she’d earned it!—when Ski stopped and stared at her. It took her a moment, then they both rolled their eyes, unleashed their wings, and flew up to the crevice.
Ski looked over Jace’s shoulder and suddenly grabbed her. “Think of where you want to be,” he barked at her before shoving her inside the opening. She expected it to be a typical mystical doorway that would send her flipping through an unknowable ether into another realm.
That did not happen. Jace had to keep running. And this time she couldn’t unleash her wings to fly anywhere, the space was too small.
As she kept going up, she could see loose dirt. That seemed strange because the loose dirt was in the ceiling of a cave, but she had a feeling it was her and Ski’s exit.
But just as her fingers grazed the opening, a hand grabbed her ankle and yanked her back.
A hand grabbed hold of the back of Kera’s neck and yanked her to her feet. She started to fight, but the pressure of a gun against her forehead kept her a little calmer.
It was a man, and he pushed her toward the double glass doors that led to the backyard.
“Where’s Jacinda?” he asked.
“Believe it or not . . . in Hel.”
The arm around her throat tightened. “You think that’s funny?”
“You asked.”
Once outside, he turned in a circle and yelled out, “Jacinda!”
“She’s not here,” Kera said again.
“Then where is she?”
Kera sighed. “I’m not saying it again.”
He leaned in close and swore, “I am going to kill all of you.”
“Do you realize that you’re only alive because of Jace? Otherwise, the rest of us would have killed you a long time ago.”
“Shut up!”
A low growl came from the trees, and Kera chuckled. “Oh man. You’ve done it now.”
He turned, still holding on to her.
Brodie stood at the edge of the woods, her head down, teeth bared. He pointed the gun at her.
“I wouldn’t draw down on her if I were you,” Kera warned.
Before he could even pull the trigger, Brodie charged them.
The bullets hit the ground where she’d been running, but she was flying at them now, her wings unleashed, the metal slamming closed over her muzzle, protecting it.
He raised the weapon, aiming, but Kera grabbed his arm and twisted. Blood splattered across her face, and bone stuck out of his skin.
She took the gun from his limp fingers and stepped away. Brodie had leaped over them and tackled another man coming up from behind. She tore into that man’s throat and started to drag him off into the woods.
“Do not drag him anywhere, Brodie Hawaii!” Kera ordered.
Stumbling back from her, the man she assumed was Jace’s ex-husband held his destroyed arm against his body. He was now consumed by panic . . . and she knew for a fact that it wouldn’t be going away any time soon . . .
The first body dropped from the sky and landed a few feet from Braddock. A few seconds later there was another. And then another.
Horrified, watching the bodies of his followers land on the ground all around him, Braddock started screaming.
“Shut up,” Kera snapped; then she growled at Brodie who stood near one of the corpses, “Stop gnawing on that thing!”
The sliding door opened and Erin stomped out, blood pouring from her head and dripping down her nose.
She stormed up to Kera and said between clenched teeth, “If I get shot in the head one more time!”
“I’m surprised you’re not shot in the head, like, every day.” Kera frowned. “If you were shot in the head, shouldn’t you be . . . you know . . . dead?”
“How many times do I have to explain this to you? You can’t die the same way twice. You won’t die if you get another knife to the heart and I can’t die from a bullet to the head. Is that really so hard for you to grasp?” she barked, throwing the bullet she held at Braddock.
After the bodies of the cult members stopped hitting the ground, Kera’s sister-Crows landed. They left their wings out, moving to surround the man who’d come here to kill them all because his ex-wife didn’t want back into their shitty marriage.
He was on his knees and sobbing now. It wasn’t pretty. He kept calling on God to help him, but Kera was pretty sure God had better things to do than deal with some needy douche bag.
“So?” Chloe asked as she petted Braddock on the head like a pet. “What do you want to do with him, War General?”
Kera cringed at the title, but she decided to deal with that later.
“Kill him,” she finally said, and Chloe grabbed Braddock by the hair, snatching his head back and pressing her blade against his throat.
But before she could make the final stroke, the grass about fifty feet away exploded and Kera pushed past her sisters, Erin and the rest of their Strike Team right by her side. Blades out, they were ready for what might be coming at them next.
And what came first was a piece of metal. It took Kera a few seconds to realize that metal was actually armor. Really, really nice armor that smelled so bad, her eyes watered. Hands shoved the armor out of the hole and Jace quickly followed.
She’d just gotten onto firm ground when she abruptly stopped and kicked her leg back, hitting a Carrion in the face and sending him falling out of sight.
Still on her knees, Jace turned around and reached into the hole. A few seconds later, she was helping Ski out of the same pit, but he was struggling against the hands of several Carrion, the exposed flesh they were grabbing beginning to decay.
Chloe pointed at Rachel and several of her Strike Team. They ran over and helped Jace pull Ski out of the pit. Once he was out, he pushed the other Crows back.
The Carrion attempting to drag the pair back in rushed out of the pit, and Jace and Ski, using Hel blades, tore into them. Lopping off heads, releasing intestines, splitting spines.
Jace cut one Carrion right in half.
Her eyes were that berserker red, but she didn’t focus on one victim until she was distracted by another, which was her usual berserker battle style. Instead she logically decimated anything that came near her or Ski until it stopped. And it did eventually stop. For now.
“We need this closed,” Jace announced.
Chloe turned to Tessa. “Get the Maids on the phone, tell them about this pit, tell them we need it closed. Now.”
“Got it.”
Ski pulled Jace to him and kissed her forehead. They looked exhausted but surprisingly healthy. Holding hands, they walked toward the Crows, stopping to hand off their weapons to Rachel and her team, who took over watching the open pit until the Maids could close it down.
As Jace came closer, she blinked a few times, her gaze focusing on her ex-husband. But her rage didn’t return, her eyes going back to their normal blue.
Kera didn’t know what was going on with her friend, but she was loving it.
Once the pair reached them, Jace shook her head at Chloe. “He lives,” she said, still panting.
“Are you nuts?” Erin snapped. “He came here to slaughter us.”
“He’s a false prophet. That’s what Hel called him. A false prophet. She said he’d be of use. I think we’re gonna have a use for someone like that. So he lives. For now.”
“What are we supposed to do with him until then?”
“I’ll take him,” Annalisa offered, smiling a little. “He clearly needs proper treatment for his mental illness.”
Jace pointed at the bodies of Braddock’s followers. “You’ll have to get rid of them, though.”
“All right.”
“And there’s something else.”
“What?”
“Hel. I think she’s going to bring Gullveig back sooner than we were planning.”
“And,” Ski added, “Hel has legions of Carrion. Not just a few.”
“That’s . . . unfortunate,” Chloe sighed.
Jace rested her head against Ski’s arm. “We’ve got to find out how to kill her. But tomorrow.”
“Even if Hel brings her back tonight,” Ski said, “she’ll be too weak to fight anyone for a little while. Once that pit is closed by the Maids, I think we can all get some sleep.”
“Go on,” Kera told her friend. “We can take care of everything down here.”
“You sure?”
“I’m positive.”
“Kera’s been crying over you,” Erin felt the need to add. “And crying. We were embarrassed for her.”
“Again,” Kera asked Erin, “how do you not get shot in the head every day?”
Jace and Ski headed toward the house. Lev bounded out of the trees and followed them, tripping over his own feet a few times before he made it inside.
“All right,” Chloe said, clapping her hands together. “Let’s get rid of these bodies first; then we’ll call nine-one-one.”
“I thought we were just going to bury him in some mental hospital somewhere?” Erin asked.
“The federal prosecutors will notice if he’s gone even if they don’t care about the cult members so much. Besides, having this idiot under Annalisa’s government-sanctioned care means we can get immediate access to him when the time comes. Right, Annalisa?” Annalisa gave a horrifingly cheery thumbs-up.
Chloe lowered her hands and twitched her fingers forward. “So let’s get moving. We’ve got a lot to do in a little time. And how long do you think before the Maids can close that . . .”
Chloe’s voice faded away and she looked at Kera, who turned to Betty, who smiled at Erin, who gave a really cruel laugh.
The Crows immediately got to work bringing bodies over to the Helheim pit so they could toss them in.
Even Brodie helped by dragging over a few.
As Kera bent down to roll one body on top of another so she could carry two at once, she saw Annalisa slowly approach Jace’s sobbing ex-husband.
Kera had felt no pity for the man until she watched Annalisa crouch in front of Braddock, gently place two fingers under his chin to lift his head, and purr, “You and I are going to have such fun together.”