I can’t do this. . . .
Her hands reached up, clawing at her throat, and her fingers brushed the iron medallion she wore. Fennrys’s medallion.
Yes. She heard his voice in her head. Calm and steady and cool as water on a burn. You can.
X
The measure of a man’s worth is in the weight of his heart.
That was, according to Rafe, how the hieroglyphics on the lintel stone over the entrance to the Hall of Judgment translated. Fennrys had been hoping that the whole heart-weighing thing was a metaphor. Would that have been too much to ask for at this stage?
As he stepped into the torch-lit, vaulted stone chamber, his attention was entirely occupied by an elegant set of slender scales, standing on a raised stone platform in the middle of the space. Two small, shallow dishes—each just big enough to hold a human heart—hung suspended by slender golden chains. Fennrys felt his own heart thud painfully in his chest. His familiarity with Egyptian mythology was hazy, but even he had seen enough references to the Trial of the Soul to know what came next. If he wanted to pass through the Hall of Judgment and out the other side into the place that Rafe had told him was called Aaru—where the Egyptian underworld borders brushed against those of the Norse Helheim—then he would have to have his heart weighed.
The only catch, of course, was that Fennrys was—as Rafe had earlier told Sobek—only sort of dead. That might put a crimp in the proceedings, Fenn thought as he wondered just exactly how they would get the heart out of his chest, and how badly it would hurt. But it wasn’t the idea of pain that terrified him. It was the judgment itself.
It was the fact that he knew, deep in his bones, that he was not a pure soul. There were petty crimes and misdemeanors, certainly. But more than that, there were the things he’d done that had forever tainted him. Marked him as a bad person. Fennrys had killed. In his capacity as a guardian of the Samhain Gate, the portal between the mortal realm and the kingdoms of Faerie that stood hidden in New York’s Central Park, he had killed a lot. A lot of Fae that is, and in the service of protecting the mortal realm, certainly, but still. He’d done it, and with a kind of savage, red joy. He was good at it. In fact, he’d always been proud of his skills as a warrior. Always begrudged the Fae for having taken him away from a destiny that would have seen him kill men.
Fennrys was, in his heart of hearts, a killer. And a betrayer.
Rafe caught his eye in that moment and must have guessed what Fennrys was thinking. “Hey,” he said quietly. “I’ve seen souls pass through this hall that I never thought would make it. Thieves, liars . . . murderers, even. The judgment isn’t cut-and-dried. It’s complicated. Just . . . I’m not going to say ‘relax’—because that would be stupid—but . . . stay cool.”
“Sure,” Fenn said. “I’m a Viking. I’m damn near an icicle.”
Rafe shook his head and slapped Fennrys gently on the shoulder, pushing him forward a step into the hall. But in spite of Rafe’s reassurances, Fennrys felt himself nearing a panic state. Okay, maybe you didn’t have to be spotless to make it through. But if the consistent reactions of every semidivine being he encountered these days were anything to go by, Fennrys was more than flawed. Much more. Much worse.
He didn’t even know what that could be. But it suddenly occurred to him that maybe it would be for the best if he didn’t make it all the way through the hall. Maybe it should all just end here.
Then he saw her.
Ammit. The Soul Eater.
Hunched and coiled, ready to spring, the creature crouched in a deep pit dug into the earth beneath the dais where the scales stood. Her eye sockets were empty in a seamed and hideously reptilian face that bore a passing resemblance to Sobek when he’d been in his crocodile guise. But there the similarities ended. The Soul Eater was nothing that could be found in the mortal realm. She was a primeval being. A chimera. Neither one thing nor another, but a meshing of forms. A lion’s mane, thick and tangled and soaked in old, dried blood, swept back from her forehead and thickly furred the powerful leonine shoulders and torso that flowed down into front legs that more resembled arms, ending in paws that were almost hand-like, with scythe-like talons. The creature’s hindquarters were the powerful, muscle-heavy haunches of a Nile hippopotamus, with a thick-folded bluish-purple hide, coated with greenish slime.
Fennrys felt his heartbeat lurch and then slow as he approached the scales. The hall, empty and thick with shadow, echoed with his footsteps, and the air burned in his lungs as he sucked in deep breaths, trying to still the urge to flee while the screaming voice in his head told him that if he did this thing—if he let himself be judged—he would die. Not just die, but be destroyed. Utterly.
As a Viking, all he’d ever wanted was to die honorably. To seek the reward of his ancestors, live his unlife in Asgard, feasting and fighting eternally in the afterworld. The reality of it had been something else—a dungeon cell, chains, suffering, torture for crimes he didn’t even understand having committed. But then he’d been given a second chance, and returned from beyond the walls of death. What in hell did he think he was doing then, willfully walking back across that line? Why? For what?
For Mason.
The Soul Eater’s black eye sockets fixed upon his breast.
Fennrys’s heart was hammering in his ears. He could feel his pulse, thundering along the sides of his throat and in his wrists. A fire ignited in his chest, searing, terrible, glorious. The life in him fought back desperately against the will of the Soul Eater as she drew his very essence up toward the surface of his skin. His heart would burst from his chest any second and he would die spectacularly, messily, a pile of meat and bones left to decay and then crumble to dust. . . .
And he didn’t want that to happen.
Because of Mason Starling.
The monster beneath the scales heaved itself toward him with ungainly grace. He stared into those sightless eye sockets and couldn’t tear his gaze away from the un-gaze of the black, empty pits. There was ageless hunger there. Never to be sated. The demon goddess, old as death itself, reared back on her grotesque haunches in front of Fennrys and reached for him with her taloned hands. For a moment, it could have been for a gentle embrace. Then pain—worse than anything that had gone before—flared like a sun. Burned his lungs to cinders and ash.
Mase . . .
The Soul Eater’s claws slashed through the front of his jacket, tearing it to ribbon strips of leather, as she lunged forward, eager to rend the beating heart from his breast . . . and then her hand, furred and pawlike, stilled, hovering. Her sightless visage wavered with an expression of uncertainty. Questing. She reached out again and, with shocking delicacy, plucked from the breast pocket of Fenn’s jacket the feather that he’d tucked away there at the doors of the library.
He’d forgotten he’d put it there.
Pale, tinged with silver and blush, infinitely fragile, yet strong enough for flight . . .
A thing of purity.
The Soul Eater’s snout quivered, and holding the feather as if it was made of precious crystal, she backed away toward the scales. With her other hand, she plucked up the pristine, sun-white Feather of Truth—Ma’at—that had lain on a small obsidian table and placed it on the left scale dish. Then—and if Fennrys had thought that he’d still possessed functioning lungs, he would have held his breath—she placed Fennrys’s mourning dove feather in the right scale. The finely balanced dishes seesawed, the delicate arms wavering up and down. . . .
And the balancing of the scales . . .
Perfectly even.
A soft gasp escaped Rafe’s lips.
And the Fennrys Wolf’s knees gave out and he fell in a heap on the cool, alabaster floor. For a long moment he hunched there, palms pressed to the smooth stone, the breath heaving in and out of his lungs, his heart—still nestled deep inside his rib cage where it should be—hammering, sending the blood surging through his body. He was alive.
Oh, Mase, he thought, savoring the sound of her name
in his mind. That was a close one, I think. . . .
After a moment, Rafe dropped to one knee in front of Fennrys and put a hand on his shoulder. “I was right about you,” the ancient god said. “You do deserve a second chance. Maybe even a third.”
Fennrys mustered a smile. He’d been clenching his jaw so tightly, struggling to remain impassive, brave, in the face of what he’d been certain was his doom—finally—that it made the muscles of his cheeks ache.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he said, his voice a dry rasp. “I mean it.”
Rafe helped him back up to his feet, and Fennrys saw that the demon Ammit, the Soul Eater, was nowhere to be seen. The mourning dove feather still lay on the scale dish, opposite the feather of Ma’at.
“It’s not . . . it wasn’t a cheat, was it?” Fennrys asked quietly.
Rafe shook his head. “You can’t cheat Ammit.”
He walked toward the dais and plucked the dove feather out of the dish. The scales wavered only slightly. He handed the feather back to Fennrys, who tucked it into the scabbard of the short sword Maddox had given him. His jacket was ruined, shredded by the demon’s claws and he stripped it off, leaving it behind on the steps of the dais, like an offering.
“Not that I’ve ever seen something like that happen before. . . .” Rafe glanced back over his shoulder at the gaping hole in the floor beneath the scales. A deep, sonorous rumbling sounded forth—snoring. The demon slumbered once again. And Fennrys fervently hoped that it would be a long, long time before some other hapless soul awoke her to judgment.
Rafe led the way around to the back of the raised platform where a door Fenn hadn’t noticed before, set into the hieroglyphic-adorned wall, now stood open. Above the door lintel, there was a painted depiction of a goddess, kneeling in a classic Egyptian pose, one knee on the ground. She had pale hair and her arms, outstretched on either side, bore feathered wings. A gentle golden light poured forth from beyond the door, and Fennrys felt hot, dry air on his face. But he could also hear the sound of rushing water. When they stepped through over the stone threshold, the temple room behind them vanished and Fennrys found himself standing in the water at the edge of a wide, shallow river, surrounded by tall, feathery sedge grasses—stands of papyrus. In the far distance, sand dunes shimmered in the heat.
Fennrys turned to see Rafe standing beside him, the pant legs of his sleek suit wet to the knees.
“This isn’t the River Lethe, is it?” Fennrys asked, instantly fearing for his memories again.
“No. Just a nameless bit of water. I think the ancient Egyptians figured that when you’ve lived one life on the banks of the mighty Nile, you don’t need special rivers in the next. Now . . . follow me.” Without hesitation, he waded forward, deeper into the river, where Fennrys saw a roiling disturbance ruffling the surface of the water. “If Hel can call in favors,” Rafe murmured under his breath, “so can I.”
Suddenly, a geyser of water shot skyward from the middle of the river, and the blazing desert sun turned it to a curtain of shimmering, rainbow-hued light. Just beyond that, Fennrys saw a woman, hovering above the surface of the waves on iridescent wings. She had long silver hair and held a staff in her hand. And she was smiling at him, the expression touched with wry amusement.
“I’m beginning to feel a bit like your personal chauffeur service, Fennrys Wolf.”
“Lady.” He bowed his head, recognizing the same bright figure who had transported him out of the Asgardian Hel at the behest of its mistress. It hurt to look at the shining silver figure, she was so bright and so beautiful. “I thought Iris was a Greek goddess,” he whispered out of the side of his mouth to Rafe.
“Iris . . . Isis . . . it’s only one letter of difference. Remember how I told you some of the Beyond Realms blur and overlap? Well . . . some of the gods and goddesses who dwell in them do, too.”
“Lord Anubis,” Iris/Isis said, turning her smile on her fellow immortal. “A rainbow in a desert land is a rare and precious thing. You know that.”
“And beautiful, dear lady. Never more beautiful.” He bowed gallantly, and her eyes sparkled. “But rainbows everywhere else seem to be in some danger these days. Rainbow bridges shattered, rainbow windows broken . . . and if darkness descends to blot out the light, they will cease to be entirely. Don’t you agree?”
Fennrys glanced up to see her smile fade to seriousness.
“Whither goest?” she said, suddenly all business.
“Back into Asgard,” Fennrys said, taking a step forward. “To bring Mason Starling home.”
The rainbow goddess’s expression became distant, and her gaze drifted over their heads as if she saw things that they couldn’t. “You are too late,” she said. “The Valkyrie is almost made.”
“Almost?”
“The raven has shown her the spear,” the goddess continued. “She will take it up. How can she not? And all will be lost.”
“You said ‘almost.’” Fennrys surged forward through the drag of the river current. “There’s a lot of leeway in a word like that.” He locked eyes with the goddess. “Please,” he pleaded. “I need to go to her.”
“Much evil has been done in the service of love, Fennrys Wolf.” The shining goddess smiled down sadly at him. “Do not be one of those who sacrifice all else for its sake. Ammit has seen into the deepest corners of your soul and judged you worthy. Anubis deems you deserving of second chances. I . . . see you as poised on the edge of a knife blade. I would have you cut your own heart out when the time comes to choose between the girl and the world.”
“Would you? Make that same choice?”
“No. I did as you would.” She shook her head, and her silver-bright hair shimmered. “I went to the ends of the earth and beyond to save my one true love. I bridged the gap between life and death and, in my arrogance, changed my world forever because of it. Your world might just cease to exist should you do the same.”
“I’m willing to take that risk. Will you send me through?”
She gestured, and the rainbow spray plumed up out of the river again, shimmering like a curtain between them. “There is the way. Go in good fortune. May I not soon see you again.”
“Likewise, Lady,” Fenn murmured, and waded forward, through the middle of the diamond-bright veil, Rafe following close behind.
When the blinding brightness of the rainbow passage faded from Fennrys’s eyes, his ears filled with the horrid, glorious sounds of men making war, coming from directly behind him. But in that moment it didn’t matter, because right in front of him, less than thirty feet away, were the steps leading up to the soaring oak doors of the one place he’d always thought he belonged.
Valhalla.
He took a deep breath and—
“That’s Odin’s Hall. You can’t go in there.”
Fennrys raised both hands slowly, because he didn’t want to startle whoever had just slammed a hand down on his shoulder, and maybe provoke them into killing him. Not when he was so close to finding Mason.
“We can’t go in until the fighting’s done.”
“I’m not here to fight,” Fennrys said, turning around.
What in hell . . . ?
Fenn had expected to see an Einherjar. But the young man who’d accosted him was dressed—quite unlike all the other men on that field of death—in jeans and sneakers. And a letterman jacket from Columbia U with the designation of quarterback on the sleeve. Fennrys eyed him warily.
The guy had obviously had something of a rough go of it recently. And by “rough,” Fennrys supposed he meant “lethal.” The whites of his eyes were bloodred, and his skin was mottled. But his hair was still gelled and a hint of cheap after-sport body spray clung to him—mingled with the stench of a raging battlefield, it was more than a little disconcerting—making him seem just like any other college kid. From a horror movie.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to be here,” the guy said, frowning at Fennrys.
“Yeah?” Fenn raised an eyebrow and
gently plucked the hand from his shoulder. “And you are?”
A shadow of confusion flowed over the young man’s face, but it passed quickly, replaced with an expression of stubborn mindlessness. “You can’t go in there. Only the Einherjar feast in the halls of Odin. And not until the Valkyries call us to the feast.” The way he made the proclamation made it obvious to Fennrys that the quarterback had pretty much no idea what he was talking about. The words were unfamiliar on his tongue and sounded as if he’d learned them by rote.
He didn’t seem to know that there were no Valkyries left to call the men in from fighting. And there hadn’t been for a very long time. Fennrys meant to keep it that way, but he had to get inside Valhalla to do that. He glanced at Rafe, who stood beside him, keeping a wary eye on the rest of the warriors and occasionally ducking out of the way when one got too close. The ancient god shrugged one shoulder.
“Like I said,” Fennrys kept his hands up, palms out, “I don’t want a fight. But I need to go in there, and you aren’t going to stop me. You can try, but I’m going to go get Mason.”
“Mason . . .” The young man’s blocky features twitched with recognition. “Mason . . . Starling?”
“Yes!” Fennrys reached out a hand and grabbed a handful of the other boy’s football jacket. “You know her? Have you seen her? Is she in the hall? Is she all right—”
“Let the man answer you,” Rafe murmured, pulling on Fennrys’s arm. “One question at a time. This dude is clearly a linebacker short of a huddle.”
Fennrys backed off a step, and the kid nodded.
“Yeah. She was here. She was nice. . . .” He frowned again, swamped with uncertainty. “Rory shouldn’t have done that to her. Putting her on the train like that. She’s nice. Hot, too, y’know? I wonder if she’d go out with me. . . .”
So this guy had been with Rory when he’d taken Mason. He was probably the muscle that Rory had needed to accomplish the task. Fennrys wondered fleetingly just how the quarterback had then met his demise, and what had happened to Mason’s shithead brother. But those were questions that could wait. Rafe was right. Death—or the shock of dying—had not been kind to whatever cognitive faculties Mr. Muscle had possessed in life. And Fennrys got the distinct impression that those had been somewhat limited to begin with. He clamped down on his impatience and took a deep breath.