“You wanted me to teach you how to kill.”
“I thought we would just get some Ravens together and you’d put me through a gauntlet or something.”
“My Raven brothers taught me how to fight. But that’s not where I learned to kill. My mother knew I needed more than cold logic to teach me to kill. So . . . one day . . . she brought me here.”
“She brought you to Asgard? Why?”
He gestured to the mountains. “As the sun rises every day in Asgard . . . the battle begins. Training for when Ragnarok comes. All of Odin’s chosen warriors take the battlefield . . . and kill.”
Kera took a step back. “You . . . you brought me here to—”
A scream from behind Vig cut off Kera’s question and a man with an ax charged up behind him.
Vig stepped to the side, brought his arm out, hitting the man in the gut and sending him flipping over. The man landed on the ground and Vig yanked the ax from his hands and brought the weapon down on the man’s stomach, nearly cutting him in half. Then he raised it again, brought it down once more, and took the man’s head.
Blood splattered across Kera’s face, and she gasped in shock at the feel of it.
“They’re already dead, Kera,” Vig explained. “You kill them today . . . they come back tomorrow. They’ll rise with the sun and do the same thing over again.”
“Okay.”
“But you have to remember the most important thing about what I just said.”
“Which is?”
“They’re already dead, Kera. You can’t kill them for good. But,” he said, moving close to her, “if you die here . . . you stay here. Until Ragnarok comes.”
“Wait . . . what?”
“They have nothing left to lose, Kera. But you do.” He turned, the ax still in his hand, and walked away, toward the heat of battle.
“Vig? Where the fuck are you going?”
“Oh, the other thing you need to know,” he casually tossed over his shoulder, “they all know what you are. And they’ll be coming for you.”
That’s when a small group of men, dressed in furs and random pieces of armor, suddenly pointed at her. “Crow!” one of them yelled, and they all charged her.
Kera stumbled back, lifting her right leg to grab the blades out of the sheath tied to her ankle. But she ended up hopping on one leg as she struggled to get her weapons, tripping over something and landing flat on her back.
The men stopped and stared down at her. But when one of them grinned . . . she knew nothing good could come of that.
Especially when they began to circle her, the grinning one dropping his shield as he moved toward her.
Desperate now, Kera ripped her blades from the sheath, but before she could use them, an ax whizzed past her head and slammed into the grinning man’s shoulder. Screaming, he fell backward. Then they were all around her, protecting her, their wings appearing black and purple in the cold morning light.
One of them looked down at her and Kera recognized the woman immediately. She was the First Crow. The one who’d begun it all.
She studied Kera a moment before she grabbed a long-handled ax from the back of one Crow and tossed it to another. That Crow marched through the small crowd and over to the no-longer grinning man. Glaring down at him, she snarled in a thick Scottish accent, “Thought you knew, Odd-marr. The Crows never fight alone.”
Then she lifted the ax over her head and brought it down on the man again and again until he was chopped into pieces. Small pieces.
Laughing, several Crows grabbed those pieces of him, and took to the air.
Kera scrambled to her feet and watched as the Crows dropped pieces of the grinning man off in different places over the land.
“It’ll take him days to find all of himself,” one of the Crows joked, and the group laughed.
The First Crow faced Kera. “You’re not dead.”
Kera knew the woman wasn’t speaking English, but somehow, Kera understood her perfectly.
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because all I seem to know are assholes.”
“Any specific asshole?” the Scottish Crow asked.
Kera pointed at Vig, who fought against several Vikings in the middle of the battlefield.
“A Raven? You came here with a Raven?” the First Crow asked.
“His sister’s a Valkyrie. She brought us here.”
“I know him. Jarl Rundstöm’s descendant.” The Scottish Crow attempted to wipe blood off her cheek but she only managed to swirl it around a bit. After all that chopping, she was covered in the stuff. “He’s good stock. Good fighter. But most Ravens are.”
“Whatever he is . . . I’m not talking to him at the moment.”
The Crows laughed at her. “Do not be baby,” a Crow with a Russian accent said. “He brought you here for reason.”
“Then he left me. He could have fucking warned me! I came to him for help and he dropped me off in hell!”
“This is not hell, little girl. This is Asgard. And the Raven wants you to fight. To kill. That is what we do. For we are the harbingers of death. Never forget that.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Kera admitted. “I don’t know if I can kill.”
The Russian hissed at Kera between her teeth. “You would not last five minutes in my Red Army. When I fought Nazis, I flew in plane. I shot them down from skies and left their corpses decaying in the dirt. I felt no remorse. Nor should you. And when I died—that first time—I did not go into ground. I became Crow. For next fifty years, I fought. I killed. We all do. We are good at it. You are good at it. You should not be afraid.”
“But she is afraid,” the First Crow said. “She is afraid that once she starts, she won’t be able to stop. That she’ll kill, even when she doesn’t have to.”
“Oh honey,” another Crow said as she put her arms around Kera’s shoulders. She had a short bob haircut that had Kera guessing she’d lived during the 1920s. “That shouldn’t worry you none. Let me tell you, I’m no angel. I did things in my first life that I wasn’t proud of. I used to run rum from Florida straight up to New York City. And things on the road can get pretty nasty. I did what I had to do. Then I got killed. And Skuld made me this offer. But do you think I ran around just killing everybody during my Second Life? Of course not! Now it’s true, I did make a little extra money on the side, ya know . . . bootlegging, but that stopped once they repealed Prohibition. But my loyalty to Skuld and the Crows? That’s lasted long past my final breath. You do your job. That’s all ya gotta do. The rest of the time is your own. And back then? We had such a good time. The parties. The men. Whew! I get sweaty just thinking about those days.”
Kera laughed, completely charmed by this woman.
“Awww. Now look at that pretty smile.” She petted Kera’s cheek with the tips of her fingers. “I bet that big Raven of yours just brought you here because anyone you kill here is brought back the next day, so there’s no guilt for you.
“So this is the perfect place for you to do whatever you need to do. To get comfortable being you. The real you. The Crow you. This battle will rage for hours. Then—if you survive the day—you’ll enjoy the massive feast they have in Valhalla. Some of it is that weird Swedish shit, but the roast pig is to die for.”
“Here,” the Scottish Crow barked as she snatched the blades from Kera’s hands. “This is for easy human prey. Today you’re killing Vikings. Mostly. Take this.” She shoved the long-handled ax toward Kera’s chest while one of the other Crows returned the blades Vig had made Kera to the sheath around her ankle. “Do your worst. Enjoy the day.”
The handle was sticky with blood, but Kera wasn’t repulsed by it, even though she thought she should be.
The First Crow grabbed hold of Kera by the bicep and pulled her away from the others.
“There,” she said, pointing her talon. “Your first prey.”
Kera took in a sharp breath. “That’s the one who—”
“The one who too
k me from my people. Every day I kill him. Every day I make him pay for what he did to me. But today . . . it’s your day to make him feel pain.” She pressed her hand against Kera’s upper chest. “Feel the rage in here. Let this rage be your guide. For a Crow . . . the rage will never fail you.”
With that send-off, Kera walked toward the Viking who had once taken the First Crow from her home.
“What do you lot think?” Aggie asked her sisters as they watched the girl walk toward one of the nastiest Vikings in Valhalla.
“She will die painful death,” Raisa surmised. “But it will teach her valuable lesson.”
Aggie snorted at the Russian. “What lesson?”
“That not everyone should be Crow. Only the strong. Only the powerful.”
“You misjudge her rage,” the First Crow said. She still had no name. She refused to take one. “She has great power.”
“How can I misjudge what she does not have?” Raisa asked. “And what power? She is weak like wounded kitten. She would have never—”
“—survived in my Red,” the rest of the Crows finished for her in that singsong way Raisa hated.
She glared at them all before refocusing on the young Crow. Her prey had his back to her, and she could have killed him from behind. But, instead, she tapped him on the shoulder.
“What does she do?” Raisa asked, her voice confused and disgusted all at the same time.
Aggie shook her head. “She’s giving him a warning.”
“What the hell for?” Minnie asked.
Letting out a sigh, Aggie replied, “She is honorable.”
The rest of the Crows groaned.
“Honor?” Raisa snapped. “We are Crows. We have no honor. We kill. That is what we do.”
“I guess this lass is different.”
“She will die every day until Ragnarok comes.”
“She has time to learn,” Aggie said, just as the poor girl was backhanded, her body stumbling several feet before falling, her head landing on someone’s discarded war hammer. “Or not.”
“That Raven was cruel to bring her here,” Dao-Ming said, her dark brown eyes downcast, unable to watch the slaughter of a fellow Crow.
“Don’t worry,” Aggie reasoned. “Her death still brings her to us and we can still teach her. Before Ragnarok comes.”
The Viking reached down and grabbed the poor girl by her throat, lifting her out of the mud she’d landed in. Blood seeped from a wound on the side of her head where she’d landed on the hammer.
As she was pulled to her feet, the girl lifted the hammer with her, her hand holding on to it tightly. Once she stood again, she used her free hand to grab his arm and twist it until he released her throat. Then she swung the hammer underhand, catching the Viking in the gut—and sending him flying up and out of the battlefield.
The Crows watched as the Viking disappeared over a nearby ridge, then slowly looked back at the girl.
Panting, she lifted her arm and brought back her elbow into the face of the warrior sneaking up behind her. She broke his nose and, it seemed, part of his face. She lifted the hammer and turned, swinging it so that it rammed into the warrior’s head, crushing his skull with one blow.
That’s when things turned . . . brutal.
The hidden rage that the First Crow had spoken of seemed to burst from the girl, and she tore through a group of Vikings, caving in their chests with one blow. And then, when they were on the ground, trying to breathe, she’d bring the hammer down on their heads, crushing their skulls. She did it again and again until better warriors came along and got the hammer from her. That’s when she pulled the slender blades from the sheath tied to her ankle. She quickly moved through the men, cutting and slicing major arteries. It was like watching a fancy dance, the way the girl moved, going from one warrior to another . . . and killing them.
Raisa nodded. “Da. She would do well in my Red,” she finally admitted. “She just need shove.”
“Are we going to let her have all the fun?” Aggie asked, looking over the group. These weren’t all the Crows. There were other groups of sisters who fought in nearby battlefields all over Asgard. As well as some who did not feel like fighting and watched the different battles from the safety of the trees. But this group . . . this group had been drawn here by the new Crow. They just hadn’t realized it at first. “Come on then! Let’s get stuck in there!”
Their wings unfurled and they took to the air, moving over the battlefield before dropping into the middle of it and going to work.
Vig blocked the ax with his shield, turned, and thrust his stolen sword at the man behind him. He turned back and cut off the arm of the one charging him. Spun, and took the same man’s head.
He took a moment to catch his breath and that’s when he heard someone step up behind him again. He brought his sword back but a shield blocked him and a deep voice said in Old Norse, “Your technique is still sloppy.”
Vig relaxed and smiled at his ancestor. “But it’s better, Holfi. Even you have to admit that.”
“Barely. And I have to admit nothing, boy.”
Without even looking, Holfi lifted his shield to block the ax aimed at his head, turned just at the waist to impale the man behind him. Then he focused his attention back on Vig.
“Why are you here?” Holfi asked. “You might get killed before your time.”
“I brought a friend. She needed the training.”
Holfi frowned. “A Valkyrie? Shouldn’t your sister—”
“No. Not a Valkyrie.” Vig knew he couldn’t avoid this so he admitted, “A Crow.”
His ancestor took a step back. “You and a Crow?”
“Before you get upset—”
“Rundstöms to me!” Holfi yelled out and Rundstöm Ravens dropped from the skies to surround Vig. Nearly all his Raven ancestors going back to the early days of Viking society.
“Why’s the boy here?” one of them asked.
“He’s here with a Crow.”
“A Crow? That the best you can do, boy?” one of his giant ancestor uncles demanded. He was at least seven feet tall, about four hundred pounds of pure muscle . . . and not very friendly.
He jabbed at Vig with the head of the hammer he’d stolen from some poor Giant Killer earlier in the battle. “Why can’t you do better?”
“I like her.”
“I like bears,” a great-uncle said. “Don’t mean I should fuck one.”
“That’s not actually the same thing.”
“What about a nice Valkyrie?” a great-great-cousin asked. “Odin always picks the best meat for his Valkyries. Choose one of those.”
“We’re no longer having this discussion,” Vig announced, but when he tried to move past his ancestors, they shoved him back.
“Who do you think you’re speaking to?” Holfi demanded. “We’re your Elders. You’ll listen to what we say. And you’re not taking some former slave as your—”
Kera suddenly pushed into their group, probably unaware that the ancient Ravens were not like the Ravens of today. Without a word, she snatched the Killer’s hammer from his ancestor’s grip, stunning the big man; then she charged back out of the group.
Together, they all turned and watched her run up to an actual giant. There were a few of those who left Jotunheim, the land of giants, to enjoy a little battle time in Asgard.
Kera raised the hammer and brought it down on the giant’s foot. He screamed out, lifting his foot to nurse it in his hands. That’s when she swung the hammer at the ankle of his other leg. The sound of breaking bone filled the air and the giant went down, taking out another group of warriors battling behind him.
Using her wings, Kera flew over the giant until she was near his head. She dropped onto his forehead and ran over to his right eye. Holding the hammer in one hand, she unleashed the talons of the other and brought those down directly onto the giant’s eyeball. As he screamed and covered his eye with his hands, Kera ran to the other eye and did the same thing.
She
lifted herself up again and flew down his face. She stopped briefly to destroy his nose with the hammer, flew again until she was at his throat, then brought the hammer down several times until she’d crushed it. Now he couldn’t breathe.
Panting, she flew back to Vig’s side and tossed the hammer at his ancestor. “Thank you,” she said.
Kera looked past them and said, “I’ll be back.” Then she flew into a battle that involved other Crows.
In silence, Vig and his Raven ancestors watched as the giant struggled to breathe. After a few minutes, he no longer struggled. And no, Vig would never tell Kera that the giant wouldn’t be back since he actually hadn’t been dead. Until now. That would just upset her.
When the giant’s arms landed limply beside him, the ground shaking beneath, the Ravens turned back to Vig.
“Well,” Holfi said, patting his shoulder. “It was good seeing you again, boy. Best of luck.”
They all flew off and Vig allowed himself a small moment to smirk.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Kera landed on the back of a warrior whose uniform she didn’t recognize. One of the Crows told her that Odin called on all warriors. He offered them all a place at his table if they were worthy, because when Ragnarok came, Odin wanted the best fighters on his side. Apparently he was only picky when it came to those he chose for his human Clans.
“No one ever says it,” the cute Japanese Crow from Minnesota had confided in Kera a few minutes ago as they’d hacked their way through a field of fighters from the Napoleonic Wars, “but it seems like Odin might be a little racist.”
Kera rammed her blade into the shoulder of her opponent and he screamed. But then his scream changed to a roar and with a shrug, he threw her off his back and turned to face her. That’s when she realized it wasn’t only his scream that had changed.
“A bear?” she asked . . . anyone. “Seriously?”
Yeah. He’d changed into a bear. A ten-foot, really pissed-off grizzly bear with her suddenly puny blade sticking out of his incredibly thick shoulder.
Kera tried to move away, crab-walking a few feet back, but the bear took one step and it was right over her. It pulled its arm back, its big claws—like five big knifes aimed right for her head—glinting in the waning sunlight.