The Unleashing

  Tessa took the hammer and shuddered. “So much power. Why would you need so much power?”

  “I have no idea. But Vig says he thinks he can track the coven down for us again through the Isa. I’m just waiting for him to text me the address.”

  They all stood there a long moment, staring at each other, until Erin finally asked, “I’m sorry . . . what’s happening?”

  With the bracelet and ring obtained and the threat of the man who’d taken the items gone, Kera stood before her sister-Crows and quickly told them about her time in Asgard.

  They all listened, silent. When Kera finished, Chloe studied her for a long time, until she finally said, “I can’t believe you actually met goddamn Katharine Hepburn.”

  “She was amazing.”

  “Who else did you meet?”

  “Chloe?” Tessa pushed. “Perhaps we could have that particular discussion at another time?”

  “What’s there to discuss? Our sister-Crow needs us and we’ll be there. We’re just waiting to see if her terrifying boyfriend gets the address in a timely manner.”

  “He’s not terrifying,” Kera said. “He’s sweet.”

  “Awwwww,” the Crows replied as one.

  “Someone’s in love!” Yardley tossed in.

  Before Kera could try out her new hammer on her fellow Crows, her phone vibrated. She looked at the screen.

  “We have an address. In Santa Monica.” Vig sent another text and this time Kera cringed. “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “Frieda’s already sent out a team to the same location.”

  “Frieda? Of the Giant Killers?” Chloe tensed. “Why?” she growled.

  “Vig doesn’t know. But the Ravens are already on the move.”

  “Fine. We’ll find out when we get there.” Chloe motioned to the Crows. “Let’s go, sisters.” She walked past Kera, patting her shoulder as she did.

  Erin stepped in front of Kera. “You all right?”

  “Yeah. I do wonder, though,” she said, pointing at Brodie, “why my dog has wings. And metal jaws.”

  “We’ll talk about that later.”

  “Probably for the best.”

  “I do have a question for you, though.”

  “What?”

  Erin slid her hand behind Kera’s neck and pulled her down until their foreheads pressed together.

  “You let Ludvig Rundstöm take you to Asgard?” she asked.

  “He didn’t tell me that was what he was going to do until we got there. But I did punch him in the face for it.”

  Erin closed her eyes and smiled. “I have taught you so well.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The Ravens landed near the Santa Monica tea shop. It was late, everything closed down for the night. But still, there was something . . .

  “Something’s wrong,” Stieg said low.

  And Vig knew he was right.

  Wings fluttered above them and the Crows arrived, landing near them in the parking lot.

  Something was definitely wrong, but none of them knew what it was.

  Josef moved over to Chloe, whispered in her ear. This time, she didn’t try to stab him or bite him or get another restraining order. Because now, they were thinking of battle rather than petty bullshit.

  Chloe motioned to Tessa and the second in command headed up to the tea shop’s roof to look through the skylight.

  After a few seconds, she ran to the edge of the roof, dropped to her knees, and leaned over so she could see the two leaders, her eyes wide with shock.

  They stood in the middle of the carnage. There were bodies everywhere. Pieces of bodies everywhere. And heads in piles.

  Someone had had quite a time.

  “They’re not all Killers,” Annalisa remarked, walking among the slain. “The witches are here, too.”

  “All of them?” Kera asked.

  “I don’t know yet.” She started counting.

  “I see claw marks,” Stieg noted. “Shifters, maybe?”

  “No way.” Rolf shook his head. “The Clans have had a truce with the shifters for half a millennium. And considering the war we had before that truce . . . I doubt anyone would start that shit again.”

  “A war started by Loki’s wolves. Maybe they’re trying again.”

  “We have a problem,” Tessa abruptly announced.

  Tessa crouched by several bodies and picked something up off the ground.

  “What is that?” Kera asked.

  “It’s straw.”

  Kera jumped, shocked by the others’ reactions. The Crows pulled their weapons from their sheaths and the Ravens reached down and grabbed the weapons from the dead Killers.

  But what Kera didn’t understand was why. What did straw have to do with any—

  It came out of the wall like a white shadow, easing along the floor until it turned into a naked, blood-covered female seconds before it rammed into Kera, knocking her on her back. It held her down by pressing against Kera’s shoulders, leaned in, and screeched out a wail that tormented Kera’s ears.

  Hands grabbed Kera by the shoulders and dragged her back, but the woman followed, galloping after her on all fours, limbs moving in the most unnatural way possible.

  Vig stepped between Kera and the thing after her and brought the Killer hammer up, knocking it across the floor.

  “Get her up!” Vig ordered and Erin pulled Kera to her feet as more shadows moved into the room, coming at the small group from all sides.

  “Fuuuuuck,” Erin growled.

  Kera reached for her blades but she was tackled from the side by another one of those things. They rolled into tables and chairs until they hit the wall. Kera gripped its hair and slammed the back of its head against the wood wall.

  When it was stunned, Kera got up, and that’s when she spotted one of the witches. She was badly hurt but still alive.

  Kera dodged around swinging weapons and slid on her knees to stop by the witch.

  “You . . . you must get it,” the witch panted out.

  “What?”

  The witch gripped Kera by her shirt. “We tried to stop it,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “We took what we could, but they found us. They found us.”

  “Where is it? Tell me.”

  “She can’t . . . she can’t get it. Do you understand?”

  “Don’t you dare die on me until you tell me where it is!”

  The witch pointed across the room to what appeared to be a small pagan altar with a pentagram hanging above it.

  Kera stood to charge over, but as she took her first step, something grabbed hold of her ankle.

  She looked down, expecting it to be the witch but it was one of those things. It smiled at her, revealing rows of small, black fangs. Just like the demon in that man’s house. The man she, at first, couldn’t kill.

  Kera raised her fist to smash its face, but it unleashed another deafening screech that had Kera trying to pull her foot away, for no other reason than just to get away from that goddamn sound.

  Yanked off her feet and onto her back, Kera reached out and grabbed on to a table leg. But she only managed to drag the table with her as the thing pulled her closer. So she used her free leg and smashed her foot into the thing’s face. She did damage. The thing’s nose caved in. That alone should have killed it, but the blow only seemed to make it more pissed off.

  As it drew her closer, Kera sat up and grabbed the blades still holstered to her free ankle. Once she had them in her hands, she rammed the first one into the thing’s eye. That got a different kind of screech from the bitch. A pain-filled one. Then Kera shoved her second blade right into her enemy’s mouth, fed up with that goddamn noise!

  At least that was effective. It went from screeching to making horrible choking sounds. But anything was better than that screeching. Kera could think once she’d stopped the screeching.

  Yanking her foot away from the thing’s grasp, Kera stood up, and pulled the first blade from the woman’s eye. But before
Kera could stab it in the other eye, it was abruptly dragged away from Kera. As if there was an invisible rope around it that yanked it across the room. It hit the wall, turned to white mist, and was gone, leaving only Kera’s second blade behind.

  Her mouth open, Kera could only stare at where it had disappeared . . . and wonder what the fuck had just happened.

  As if a silent call went out, the things either ran or were dragged away from the fight, their bodies turning to mist and disappearing into the walls.

  But Vig knew that Kera still needed answers. He tried to grab one of them before it reached the wall, but it was already shadow and his hands went through it. Stieg, seeing what Vig was doing, did the same. He tried to grab one, but he couldn’t.

  But just as another reached the wall, Brodie dove through the front glass of the tea shop and tackled the thing to the ground. Although the humans couldn’t touch it, the dog could. Snarling and growling, Brodie dragged the thing to the center of the room and away from the wall.

  It kicked and screeched but Brodie didn’t let it go. She held on, waiting for Kera.

  The Mara. Vig had never thought he’d ever see one of them in his lifetime. Much less a coven of them.

  Kera unsheathed the hammer that Freyja had given her and pressed the weapon against the Mara’s chest. As soon as it touched the flesh, the runes glowed a hot red and it burned the thing’s skin.

  “Erin,” Kera called out. “Check the altar in the corner. Anything there?”

  Erin ran over to the altar and tore it apart. After a minute she said, “It’s empty. Whatever was here is gone.”

  Kera leaned on the hammer, the Mara beneath her screeching in agony.

  “What did you take, thing?”

  The Mara grabbed the handle of the hammer but the runes burned its hands and it screeched out.

  “Tell me!”

  “No.” Chloe moved to Kera’s side and leaned down to look into the Mara’s face. “Tell me who you fight for, bitch.”

  The Mara struggled beneath Kera’s hammer so Chloe shoved her foot down against her shoulder. “Answer me!”

  Alessandra suddenly screamed out as one of the Mara yanked her back by the neck and dragged her away. Tessa went after her sister-Crow but Kera didn’t release the Mara she had trapped. Instead, she leaned on the hammer and the head melted the flesh away, falling deeper into the Mara’s chest.

  “Tell me who you fight for!” Chloe bellowed over the Mara’s screech of pain.

  “Gullveigggggggggg!”

  Vig froze, shocked by that answer.

  Gullveig? Of the Vanir?

  Gullveig was the first of the Vanir to cross from Vanaheim to Asgard. She was so detested by the Aesir gods, they killed and burned her three times, but they couldn’t destroy her. It was because of Gullveig’s treatment that the great war between the Aesir and the Vanir raged for eons until a truce was set.

  “It’s lying,” Rolf argued.

  Vig shook his head. “I don’t think it is.”

  “Kill it!” Siggy screamed at Kera. “Kill it now!”

  Kera yanked the hammer out of the Mara’s chest and lifted it high, about to bring the weapon down onto the bitch’s head.

  “No, Kera!” Rolf yelled, quickly cutting across the room. “Don’t kill it. We need to prove—”

  The front door to the tea shop slammed open, startling them all. And the Mara was yanked away again, dragged across the floor.

  Brodie went after it, but this time she wasn’t able to grab the thing and ended up running headfirst into the wall, nearly knocking herself out.

  Frieda and the remainder of the L.A. Killers moved into the room. Their gazes swept from one corner to another, from their dead comrades and friends . . . to the Crows and Ravens who stood before them. Covered in blood and panting. Appearing, for all intents and purposes, like they’d just finished murdering all these people.

  Rolf immediately tried to calm things down, as was his way. He stepped forward, his bloody hands raised, and began, “Wait. You don’t under—”

  But the Killers weren’t big on waiting. They weren’t big on listening. They weren’t big on being reasonable. Odin and Skuld were thinkers, which meant those they chose for their human clans were thinkers as well. But Thor . . . he’d never been much of a thinker. He was a violent rager who enjoyed killing. And his Clan was no different.

  Vig reached over and yanked Rolf to his side as a ridiculously oversized hammer cracked the floor where the Raven had just been standing.

  “Go!” Vig yelled. “Now!”

  There’d be no reasoning with the Killers right now, so why bother?

  Seeing the Crows and Ravens trying to make their escape, Frieda hysterically screamed, “Kill them all!”

  “Freida,” Rolf tried again as Frieda raised her hammer. “Frieda, no!”

  “Forget it,” Vig said, grabbing Rolf and trying for the exit. “We have to—” was all Vig got out before that hammer came down toward them. Yet it stopped in midswing because Kera had grabbed it by the handle and held it tight.

  She looked into Frieda’s eyes, which were mad with grief and pain.

  “You have to know we didn’t do this,” Kera said. “Think, woman. Would we still be here if we had?”

  “It wasn’t us, Frieda,” Rolf desperately tried to explain. “You know we’d never do something like this to you guys.” Frieda’s gaze cut to Rolf and he amended that statement to, “You know the Ravens would never do this. Nor would we ever let it happen.”

  “And if the Crows did do something like this,” Josef said, “they’d admit it.”

  “Happily,” Chloe added.

  “Then who?” Frieda asked and Vig was glad to hear her speak. When Giant Killers became silent with rage, they could wipe out entire cities. And, in fact, had in the past.

  “The Mardröm,” Vig said.

  “Bullshit.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It was the Mara, Frieda,” Rolf argued. “They did this.”

  “Why?”

  “They took something from here. For Gullveig.”

  “You’re lying,” Frieda sneered.

  “We’re not. The Mara have been trying to raise her. Working with other cults. Performing multiple human sacrifices. Giving up gold and jewels. All for Gullveig.”

  “That witch.” With her hammer, Kera pointed to a dead witch on the floor. “She told me her coven had stolen things from the Clans. I guess to prevent the Mara from raising this . . . gull-whatever. God knows why they needed your stuff, but they have it now.”

  Frieda yanked her hammer from Kera’s grip, but she lowered the head to the ground.

  “Where did they go?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Brodie,” a small voice said, and they all looked over at quiet Jace. She swallowed past her fear. “I bet Brodie can hunt them down.”

  “That dog can track,” Annalisa agreed. “Especially when she’s pissed off.”

  “You want to try it?” Chloe asked Frieda.

  Frieda looked down at the bodies of the Slain. “Go,” she told Chloe. “Shut it all down.” She took a shaky breath. “We have to take care of our friends.”

  Chloe placed her hand on Frieda’s shoulder and looked her right in the eyes. “We’ll kill the ones who did this. We’ll kill them all.”

  “I’m holding you to that.”

  The Crows and Ravens left the shop from the rear exit, stopping in the parking lot.

  Kera crouched down in front of Brodie. “Think you can track those—”

  Before Kera could even finish, Brodie unfurled her wings and took to the air.

  Stieg watched the dog and asked, “So your dog flies now?”

  “Apparently.”

  Stieg mulled that over for a few seconds before he shrugged and said, “Yeah, okay.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Sitting in the trees, the Crows stared down at the house that Brodie had led them all t
o. They stared . . . and stared.

  “This can’t be right,” Erin finally said.

  “But why would she bring us here otherwise?” Kera asked. “If this wasn’t the place?”

  “It would actually explain a lot,” Tessa pointed out. “The harassment, the lawsuit . . . the Mara being at our house.”

  “But do you really think some ridiculous rich people would spend their time trying to raise Gullveig?” Annalisa asked. “She’s mentioned, like, once in the Eddas.”

  The Crows looked at each other and said together, “Yeah, they would.”

  “Chloe,” a male voice whispered. “Chloe. Psst.”

  Chloe’s eyes crossed, she sighed, and finally demanded, “What?”

  “Don’t snarl at me, woman,” Josef snapped.

  “Don’t ‘woman’ me!”

  Brodie growled and Kera realized why. “Chloe, look.”

  It was the strangest thing Kera had ever seen. The Mara were crawling out of the dirt around the yard and onto the outside of the house.

  “They traveled underground.” Erin glanced at Kera. “That’s so weird. It’s like they’re moles.”

  “We’re definitely in the right place.”

  “Yeah, but . . . what the fuck are they doing?”

  “Whatever it is,” Vig said, “I’m guessing your annoying neighbors are definitely involved . . .”

  Simone slipped off her robe and stood naked in front of the crowd of her richest friends. She’d had a lot of plastic surgery done—especially on her ass and tits—before any of this got serious, so she knew she looked good.

  Smirking, she raised her arms in the air, about to repeat the words she’d forced herself to learn over the last few days. It was some Old Norse thing and she didn’t understand a word of it, but none of that mattered. What mattered was the power she’d have once she’d become one with Gullveig.

  But their victim or sacrifice or whatever Simone was supposed to call her kept yelling behind her gag. It was distracting!

  “Shut up!” Simone snarled at Brianna. “You’re being such a pain right now! Waaa, waaa, waaa! That’s all you do!”