Transcendent

  “Draugr!” Mason shouted unnecessarily as the thing fixed its glowing, milky-white eyes upon her.

  Fennrys was already leaping over the front rail of the carriage and onto the horse’s rump. Before the storm zombie could react, Fenn ran his blade straight through the thing’s rib cage and thrust the draugr off the horse onto the gravel path. The carriage wheels running over its desiccated frame made the sickening sound of bundled kindling snapping.

  Maddox was shouting warnings that Mason couldn’t make out over the chaos of trying to control the galloping horse. When she finally managed to haul the animal under control, she saw what he’d been yelling about. Through the mists that carpeted the park, illuminated by the sodium-orange glow of lamplight, Mason saw that the whole of Central Park was alive with lurching, snarling gray figures. They dropped from the trees and clawed through bushes and hauled themselves out of the lake . . .

  And they were all converging on the carriage.

  “Friends of yours?” Maddox yelled at Fennrys, who still crouched on the back of the horse, hanging onto the harness with one hand, his dagger clutched in the other, now stained black with monster blood.

  “Oh, yeah . . .” Fenn grinned viciously. “I’ve missed these guys.”

  “I haven’t,” Toby grunted.

  In all of the chaos, Mason hadn’t noticed before, but she could swear that the fencing coach’s beard had turned gray in just the last few hours. The hair at his temples, too. And there were lines at the corners of his eyes that she’d never seen before. But his aim was still dead-on as he stood up in the front seat and lunged over the side, driving his blade through the eye of a draugr trying to scrabble into the carriage.

  They were surrounded.

  In the backseat, Rafe manifested his coppery blade and hacked away at another snarling apparition, and Cal called up a wave out of the nearby park lake to sweep another pair of draugr back and drag them under the water. Maddox snared a draugr with his chain and hauled it close enough for Fennrys to punch it dead. But they just kept coming.

  “We can’t stay here,” Daria said calmly, if somewhat impatiently, back to her frosty old pre-blood-curse-invoking self and clearly without time to waste on such apocalyptic Norse nonsense. “There are too many of them.”

  As if to emphasize that fact, another creature made a grab for her. Daria ducked, throwing herself protectively—surprisingly—over Heather’s still-unconscious form. Roth leaned past her to deliver a blow to the draugr that looked like it shattered the thing’s entire cranium—its face caved in and it fell to the ground, twitching.

  “Fennrys!” Mason called, as he dispatched another draugr leaping for the horse’s head with his blade. “Get back in the coach, dammit!”

  “You heard her!” Maddox called, stepping down off the running board. He swung the silver chain in a slow circle over his head and it made a wicked, whistling sound that forced the draugr to momentarily back off. “Time for you lot to make a hasty exit. I’ll hold the fort—”

  “Like hell you will.” Fennrys jumped down to stand beside him, shoulder to shoulder. “I’m not leaving you behind. Not again.”

  “Why not?” Maddox snorted. “I managed just fine without you last time.”

  “You got lucky.”

  “And you got away. Do that again.” Maddox turned to him, his expression intense. “Listen. I told you that we’ve been strengthening the Gate here in the park since the last time, right?”

  “Madd, I—”

  “Shut up. I can access the magick the Fae used to do that. It’s Green magick and you know that stuff is—”

  “Incredibly volatile?” Fennrys sputtered in disbelief. “You’re kidding me!”

  “Nope . . .” Maddox shook his head. “Emergency use only and it’ll probably pulverize a good chunk of the park. But it’ll take most of these things with it in the process.”

  “Let me help you,” Fenn pleaded, his expression anguished.

  Mason’s heart hurt for him. She’d never heard Fennrys plead for anything. Central Park was something he’d fought and bled to protect—that, and the otherworldly portal within it—and now he had to leave it up to his comrade to do that for him.

  Because of me.

  Fenn snarled in frustration. “Maddox—”

  “You can’t.” Maddox’s tone turned sharp. “And you’d be a damned fool to try. Just like I’d be a damned fool to let you. The other Janus Guards have got the Gate covered on the other side. We’re outmatched here, boyo, and they”—he pointed to the carriage occupants—“need you to get them out and clear of the park and away from these things. Let me do what I can to help, yeah?”

  “Maddox . . .”

  “It’s what friends do.”

  Fennrys went still, regarding the other young man. “I don’t think I ever called you that to your face before,” he said.

  Maddox went still too. “Yeah,” he said, “probably not. But you’ve clearly had a character growth spurt. I credit the love of a good woman. Go now. Keep her safe.” He turned and winked at Mason. “And you, lass? You keep him safe.”

  “I will.”

  “Good. Now go.”

  Fennrys swore virulently and grabbed hold of the carriage, hauling himself up over the side. As he did so, Maddox flicked his wrist and the chain in his hand settled on the ground in a circle three feet wide with the Janus Guard standing at the center. He laid the end in his hand over the other end, completing the circle, and grinned over his shoulder at them.

  “Show time,” he said and slapped both hands, palms down hard onto the ground with a sound like a thunderclap. The earth beneath him seemed to ripple away in waves. The trees nearest the carriage groaned and began to shudder, leaves shivering as the branches quivered and twisted unnaturally. A huge old oak tree—it reminded Mason of the one that used to grace the Gosforth quad—suddenly reached out, as if its branches were fingers, and wrapped around a couple of shambling draugr, squeezing shut like a fist and hurling them into the center of the lake. Not without cost to the tree itself, though. Bark peeled back in wide strips and sap flowed from cracks in the venerable old tree like lifeblood.

  The whole of the park shuddered animatedly. Tree roots punched up out of the mossy ground and thorny vines whipsawed through the air, tearing the draugr to pieces. Maddox cried out with the effort of harnessing the dangerous forces flowing through the fabric of the park.

  “Madd!” Fennrys shouted.

  “Get him out of here, Mason!” Maddox yelled.

  Tears of frustration hot on her cheeks, Mason cracked the reins and urged the horse to a gallop. The carriage lurched wildly forward, throwing Fennrys off balance, and in the few moments it took to right himself, they were too far away for him to be of any use to the other Janus Guard. Fenn pounded his fist on the brass rail and cursed until the woken trees echoed with the sounds of his fury.

  Mason could feel the park’s pain radiating all around her as she slapped the reins and shouted encouragement to the carriage horse. But she could feel a kind of righteous anger, too. The very earth was fighting—for them. She wouldn’t let that fight go to waste. Some of the draugr carried torches burning with eldritch fire and a tree next to the carriage burst into flame as they thundered past. Mason screamed in rage. . . .

  And felt the Valkyrie within her respond.

  In her mind she heard the beating of raven’s wings and urged the horse to go faster. The creature responded to her commands with a burst of unnatural speed and suddenly it seemed as if they were flying over the ground. A swell of triumph bloomed in her chest as the ground mist shimmered with a fluorescence of rainbow hues and the contours of the park all around them turned hazy. Mason’s Valkyrie power guided them into the spaces between the worlds as a thick, shimmering mist descended and the city faded away to pearly gray.

  XII

  Safe for the time being as they traveled the twilight ways, Mason glanced over at Fennrys, who was staring at her, frost and ice crystals glittering in his
gaze. She knew that he had traveled in a Valkyrie carriage once before and that what she was doing now must be feeling familiar to him in a way that probably wasn’t particularly reassuring.

  She understood that. She could feel the lure of Valhalla so strongly, urging her to bring heroes to the hall of the Aesir, and the carriage horse—sensing her conflict—became balky and unsure. Lacking a firm hand on the reins, the animal bucked in the harness traces and Mason tightened her grip.

  We’re not going to Valhalla, she told herself—and the horse—adamantly. I’m going to drive this carriage through this park and I’m going to take it all the way to the front doors of Gosforth Academy. All she needed to do was resist the drumbeat in her ears urging her to go farther than that.

  Much farther . . .

  No. No Valhalla. Concentrate.

  Easier said than done, when she was staring into the eyes of the hero himself.

  The gaze they shared stretched out between them and Fenn must have seen the Valkyrie hunger growing in her eyes. He broke the stare and turned his face away, lessening the temptation, and she was grateful. But she still felt shaky. Looking away from Fennrys, she saw that she wasn’t the only one who was feeling worse for wear.

  “Toby?” Mason said, a twist of concern suddenly knotting in her chest. “What happened to your coffee mug?”

  The battered old aluminum travel mug was so much a part of his demeanor that Toby looked odd without it. Even in one-on-one coaching sessions back at Gosforth, he’d rarely ever let the thing out of his sight, often fencing with sword in one hand and mug in the other. Toby stared down into his empty palms as if he was wondering the very same thing.

  “I guess I lost it.” He shrugged, his shoulders slumping loosely.

  “It wasn’t coffee,” Mason said quietly.

  Toby shook his head. “Nope.”

  “You’re not human,” she said. “Are you?”

  To her surprise, he laughed. “Of course I am. I’m just a really freaking old one.”

  She blinked at him, startled, and he shrugged again.

  “How well do you pay attention in Professor Leggatt’s Shakespeare class?” he asked.

  Mason raised an eyebrow at the seeming randomness of the question, but Toby waited for her to answer. Ahead of them, the sleek black horse trod the Between path with sure feet now, pulling them along effortlessly through the murk.

  “I actually liked that class,” she said eventually. “I have a paper due on Cymbeline next week. I think it’s next week. You know, assuming the world doesn’t end.”

  “You guys study Macbeth yet?” Toby asked.

  Mason nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Do you remember the very first scene, in the aftermath of a battle, before you actually meet Macbeth?” he asked. “Do you remember how the other thanes refer to him as ‘Bellona’s bridegroom’?”

  “Uh . . . vaguely. Sure.” Mason frowned, thinking back to the scene. She had liked that play. She’d liked Macbeth and secretly thought he’d actually gotten kind of a raw deal. “It was like a kind of honorary title, wasn’t it? Like calling him ‘Super Badass.’”

  “Something like that, yeah.” Toby laughed a little at the comparison. “They’re equating him to the husband—or lover—of War. In this case, ‘War’ being a goddess named Bellona. Well . . . that’s what the Romans called her. Later on. She was, in fact, Carthaginian. Before Carthage existed, really . . .”

  “And?”

  Toby pointed to his chest. “Just call me Macbeth.”

  “What?” Mason blinked. “You were . . . what? The husband of a war goddess?”

  “The war goddess. The original. And we never formalized the union. But yeah.”

  Mason silently soaked in that information and tried to reconcile it with the man she’d known for a year, who’d been her mentor and her coach. And her friend. In fact, it wasn’t so hard. It actually made a strange kind of sense.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  Toby laced his fingers together and stared ahead of them into the mists. “Falling in love when you’re a goddess is . . . complicated. At least, it was with Bell. She was immortal, for one thing, and I guess she didn’t want to lose me because I wasn’t. So . . . she made me immortal too. Sometimes I think I was a coward for letting her.”

  “A coward? Are you serious?” Toby was one of the bravest men she knew.

  “I didn’t want to die, Mase. I was afraid to.” He shrugged, but there was a gravelly hitch in his voice as he said, “Now? I would give anything . . . anything to make an end of it.”

  Mason flinched from the raw pain in that admission, but she appreciated Toby’s honesty. His openness in the face of all the lies she’d been told by others. She could sense Fennrys silently listening to the exchange as he sat beside Toby, who clearly didn’t mind him knowing.

  “Professor Leggatt taught us that, in Julius Caesar, Shakespeare says: ‘Cowards die many times before their death; The valiant never taste of death but once,’” Mason said. “Does that mean that I’m . . .”

  She trailed off and Toby raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Does that mean you’re what?”

  Fennrys shook his head, smiling grimly. “She means are we cowards?”

  Mason ducked her head. “Are we? Think about it. We keep dying, right?”

  But Toby just laughed. “I don’t think that’s exactly what ol’ Bill meant, Mason. I think he meant that if you’re afraid to die, you feel like you are dying every time things get hairy. There’s death and then there’s death. And when you finally get to the latter—when we all do—I think you’ll definitely taste the difference.” He exchanged a glance with Fennrys then turned back to her. “You’re the bravest girl I’ve ever met, Mason Starling. Not least of all because sometimes you have the courage to be terrified.”

  “Thanks, Coach.”

  He snorted. “Especially of me.”

  “You got that right.”

  “So you really can’t die?” Fennrys asked Toby.

  “Nope.”

  “That’s . . . huh.”

  For a Viking whose greatest desire was to die gloriously and live on in Valhalla, that must have been a difficult circumstance to contemplate, Mason thought. Then again, Fenn had experienced something of a perspective shift on that whole thing lately. She tightened her grip on the reins again when the carriage horse tossed his head.

  “It’s not exactly all it’s cracked up to be.” Toby’s expression soured. “You know those cautionary tales about scatterbrained goddesses granting eternal life but not eternal youth?”

  Fennrys nodded.

  “Those myths had to have their roots somewhere.”

  “But . . . you don’t look any older than my dad,” Mason said.

  “Good genes. And an elixir.” Toby mimed his missing mug.

  “So what happened to your lady?” Fennrys asked.

  Toby shrugged. “The art of war marched on without her. War, for a being like Bellona, was an honorable, intimate interaction. Time was, if you were going to kill, you used to have to be close enough to feel your foe’s dying breath on your cheek. Or see the whites of his eyes, at least.”

  Mason thought of Rory and his gun and guessed where Toby was going.

  “The moment the very first gunshot rang out in the world,” he said, “Bell felt it. And she started to die inside.” He shook his head sadly, his expression full of memories of his long-ago lost love. “I had to hand it to her. She hung on until the Napoleonic wars. Saw me through a lot of battles, tended my wounds, cheered me from the trenches. But it was just so . . . ugly. So impersonal. War had lost its joy for the Lady of Battles.”

  “Joy, huh?” Mason murmured. And yet, the Valkyrie in her understood.

  Fierce, savage joy . . .

  Toby looked at her and his gaze sharpened. He saw that she knew exactly what he was talking about and there was both pride and sadness in that realization. For all the time she had known him, Toby had urged Mason on to grea
ter lengths of martial prowess with saber and épée and foil. Exhorted her to reach deep for that drive to fight hard. Prodded Mason with every new bout to find her killer instinct. He’d clearly never expected to her succeed to the degree that she had. His brow furrowed deeply and he put a hand on her knee, squeezing gently.

  “Where’s Bellona now?” Mason asked, turning her face away from him.

  “Gone.” Toby sighed deeply. “One day, she just couldn’t take it anymore,” he said. “The ugliness. She walked out into the middle of a firefight and shed the mantle of her divinity. Never saw her so beautiful as in the moment when she gave up her immortality.” He blinked rapidly for a few seconds before continuing. “I’ve never figured out the trick of doing that, but then I’m not a god. Just a really old, really tired grunt.”

  Mason bit her lip to keep from crying for Toby. Never in a million years would she have imagined that had been his life.

  “She caught a bullet,” he continued, the hurt in his voice a dull, ancient ache. “Just one. But it was enough. I never even saw who it was that shot her and that was when I realized that she was right. War up close and personal is bad. At a distance, it’s monstrous. Humans in battle have become nothing more than killing machines. Things like honor, glory . . . they just don’t mean anything anymore.”

  “You sound like my father,” Mason said.

  “Oh.” Toby grunted. “Yeah. I suppose sometimes I do.”

  “Did you still fight?” Fennrys asked. “After that? I mean . . . I’m pretty sure what you told me about having ‘buddies who were Navy SEALS’ was a load of crap. You were a SEAL, weren’t you?”

  Toby laughed. “Yeah. I was. In a specialist capacity. A man gets bored and there’s really only one thing I’m any good at. War. But I haven’t fired a gun since I lost Bell.”

  “Pretty handy with a blade, I noticed,” Fennrys said drily.

  “Yeah.” Toby shrugged modestly. “After she died, I went back to basics. And I won’t kill a man unless I can look him in the eyes.”

  They rode in silence for a while as Mason threaded her way through the twisting mists of the Beyond. When she sensed that they were nearing the place where she could safely guide the carriage back into the mortal realm, she turned to Toby and asked him one more question.