She stared at him, speechless, wary.
He stared back and took off his sunglasses.
Heather’s breath caught in her chest. She’d been wrong about his eyes. They weren’t beautiful. They were bloodshot and smudged with shadows. A shade of brown so deep they were almost black—like his pupils were overlarge. Eyes that had seen way too much. There were the beginnings of creases fanning out at their corners. In fact, his eyes made it look as if he’d been weeping bitterly for a thousand days straight. Eyes like that, set into a face with bone structure and pure perfect symmetry like that . . . Heather blinked when she realized that those eyes, world-weary, sorrow-laden, wrung dry of tears by unimaginable heartache, just made him even more incredible.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
“Call me Valen,” he said, the grin sliding back into place. It put a hint of sparkle back into the darkness of his gaze.
“How do you know me?” she asked, fear creeping up her spine. “Did Gunnar Starling send you to find me?”
Valen’s expression clouded, and he put his Ray-Bans back on. “No. But I’m pretty sure he’s one of the reasons I found you. Not that I haven’t been looking, Heather, but . . . well, it’s not as easy as it was in the old days. And they’ve kept you all pretty safe from us. I’d like to keep you even safer.”
She wondered who he meant by “they” and “us,” but she didn’t have a chance to ask before he reached inside his jacket and pulled out what looked like a compact crossbow.
A . . . crossbow. Okay then.
It was tiny, shiny, and sleek. It was also preloaded with two miniature bolts—a golden one and a dull, gray leaden-looking one. The golden arrow was needle sharp. The gray one was blunt and looked as though it would bounce off the hide of any intended target.
“Yeah . . .” Valen chuckled, seeing the way Heather was looking at the drab projectile. “Appearances. Deceiving. That one? Hurts like every hell there is.” He handed over the strange little weapon.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Use it.” Valen stood, looking pleased with himself.
Heather rolled her eyes. “For what?”
He laughed. “You’re smart enough to know that things are happening, Heather. Strange things.”
That was a colossal understatement, Heather thought. Yeah. “Things” are definitely happening.
“And this is supposed to help me somehow?” She brandished the delicate weapon.
“Maybe. You’ll figure it out eventually. And when you do, use it however you see fit. I don’t need it anymore. Not since I upgraded.” He reached into another pocket of his jacket and withdrew what looked like some kind of souped-up remote control for a high-tech video gaming system, with two short, spiky metallic nodes on the front end of it. He pulled a trigger, and bright golden sparks arced between the nodes. Then he adjusted a control and pulled the trigger again, and sullen purple sparks arced. “I have you to thank for this, Heather. I just wanted to return the favor.” He glanced over and smiled his dazzling smile at her.
Heather felt herself grow almost dizzy in response.
He wasn’t handsome. He was beautiful.
“Take care of yourself,” he said. “For me.”
And then the doors of the train opened. They’d reached the station at Lexington and Fifty-Ninth Street, and before she could stop him—before she could even open her mouth to ask him the thousand questions that were tumbling through her brain—he stood and stepped off onto the platform, and the doors slid shut behind him.
As the train pulled away, Heather saw that on the back of the leather jacket he wore, there was a cracked and faded image of a bleeding heart, shot through with an arrow and sporting a pair of fluffy, white-feathered wings. She wasn’t sure whether it was meant to represent agony or ecstasy. Or maybe both.
She glanced back down at the little weapon in her hand and, after a moment, tucked it into the pocket of her jacket with a sigh.
As the train rumbled on, Heather recognized that she was probably in a state of shock. Inside, she was still numb with horror—with fear and exhaustion and hollowed out from the sudden loss of Cal—but somehow, with her hands shoved in her pockets, one curled around the compact crossbow stock, finger resting lightly on the trigger . . . the other wrapped around the little golden acorn, she felt stronger than she ever had before.
All her life, Heather had always been acutely aware that her family wasn’t one of the power-broker families in their circle. They were rich, certainly. But not influential. Her father had sat on the board at Gosforth, but he’d never had any real say in how the affairs of the academy were run. He’d just sort of been a yes-man to Calum Aristarchos’s mother (who’d hated Heather with an almost pathological fervor the entire time she and Cal had dated). So even when Heather had hit the top of the popularity charts at the academy, she’d always known it had been mostly due to Cal. And the fact that she’d been blessed with pretty phenomenal good looks. Looks that, if she was honest with herself, had never kept her from feeling massively insecure. Especially when she’d realized—a gut-deep feeling—that Cal was never going to be in love with her. It had made her feel weak. Exposed. Vulnerable.
But in that moment, sitting on an empty subway train winding its way through the middle of late-night Manhattan, she felt strong. And if Gunnar Starling, or Daria Aristarchos, or Toby, or even that psycho little rat bastard Rory came looking for her . . . well, let them come. She was going back to Gosforth, just like the fencing master had told her to. And if they came looking for her, they’d be the ones who’d wish they hadn’t.
VIII
“Don’t get me wrong,” Maddox was saying, as he grabbed a bit desperately for his seat belt and yanked it across his body. “It’s a nice car! I just thought you would have gone for something a little flashier, what with being a god an’ all. . . .”
“I try to fly under the radar and remain stylish all at the same time.” Rafe cranked the wheel of the vintage Jaguar, narrowly avoiding a police car that drifted across two lanes of Columbus Avenue traffic so it could slow to a stop curbside just above West Sixtieth Street. The tires screamed, and Rafe flung an obscene gesture out the window at the cops.
“And I’d rather not get arrested on the way to hell,” Fennrys muttered grimly, trying not to clutch too obviously at the door handle as the car’s momentum slung him from one side of the backseat to the other.
“Relax. There’s not a cop car in existence that could catch me, and those flatfoots didn’t even see us go past.” He grinned rakishly.
Fennrys stifled his impatience as best he could and followed Maddox’s lead, reaching for his own seatbelt. He needed Rafe. And he needed Madd, although he was reluctant to drag the other Janus Guard into a situation that had nothing to do with his gate-guarding duties. Not that it would have made much difference. Back in the Obelisk, once the tremors had stopped and power had flickered back on and everything had returned to normal—with the help of a free round of drinks on the house, courtesy of Rafe—Fennrys had reiterated his intention to find Mason. And Maddox had offered to ride shotgun on the venture and then preempted any objection Fenn might have made by saying that if Manhattan sank into the Atlantic as a result of whatever the hell was going on with Mason Starling, then guarding a gate in the middle of it became something of a moot point. So wherever Fennrys had in mind to go rescue his girl, Maddox was going to help him get there.
End of discussion.
Fennrys had wisely shut up, and just accepted the backup he knew he’d probably need anyway once they got to where they were going. Wherever that was. He hadn’t had a clue. For that, he’d needed Rafe.
“Relax,” the ancient god said, glancing over to look at his two passengers as he cornered so sharply the Jag was almost riding on two wheels. “You’re gonna need to be nice and loose once we get to the library.”
“The what?”
“New York Public Library. Main branch on Forty-Second Street.”
Fennry
s huffed in frustration and ran a hand through his hair. “I thought you said you knew where we were going.”
“I do.”
“They why do you need a bunch of books?”
“I don’t.” Rafe leaned on the horn as they passed a city bus. “We don’t have a Bifrost anymore, so the direct approach is out of the question. The rift on North Brother Island is unstable on the other end—no telling where it’ll come out—so that’s not an option. We’re going to need to take the scenic route into Valhalla.”
“And how do we do that?”
“The borders between the Beyond Realms are blurring—have been for ages now—and in places they overlap. That’s how you were able to get out of Asgard in the first place. Through a back door from Helheim into Hades, and out across the River Lethe.”
Fennrys shuddered, remembering the dark woman who’d led him to the banks of that river. The river that had then stolen his memories—up until the moment when the ghost of a dead Janus Guard nicknamed, appropriately enough, “Ghost” had helped restore them. Painfully.
“Personally,” Rafe continued, “I’m not willing to risk catastrophic amnesia—and I sincerely doubt you want to go through that again. We need another way, another underworld. My underworld.”
“Which is?” Maddox asked.
“At the library,” Rafe grunted. When Fennrys and Maddox exchanged a confused glance, the ancient god sighed. “Oh, come on. You’re Janus Guards, aren’t you? And you’ve both been kicking around this town long enough to know that it’s nothing but layers built on top of other layers.”
Rafe’s black eyes glittered, reflecting back at Fennrys from the car’s rearview mirror. Okay, Fennrys thought. So they needed to go not just to the library but to . . . whatever was underneath it.
What’s the library built on top of?
He cast back through his memories, sifting through all the years he’d made an annual pilgrimage to the great gray mortal city at the behest of the Faerie King in order to guard a gate that opened once a year in fall.
“The reservoir,” he murmured.
Rafe just raised an eyebrow at him in the mirror as he turned left on West Fortieth Street.
“The old Croton Distributing Reservoir,” Fennrys said to Maddox, who was still frowning with some puzzlement. “It used to stand on the same ground as the library, didn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Maddox nodded. “Yeah . . . I remember now. Took up that whole block and most of the one that’s now Bryant Park.”
Fennrys thought about that for a moment. The library and the park occupied two city blocks, right in the middle of Manhattan. He’d been to the library himself only a few days earlier, before he’d regained his memory, to use one of the public computer terminals there to search for clues to his identity. He’d found virtually nothing. Then he’d chatted with an old homeless guy and his teddy bear in Bryant Park, and found out almost everything . . . except he hadn’t known it at the time.
But that wasn’t what Rafe was getting at.
The structures that occupied that space now—the library and the park—were latecomers on the Manhattan landscape. A massive, man-made reservoir, part of the water delivery system for the island, had been there first. It had stood aboveground, with soaring fifty-foot walls, twenty-five feet thick, and topped with a wide promenade where the likes of Edgar Allan Poe used to take nightly strolls around the dark, star-reflecting pools. Fennrys had gone there once in the late 1800s, and he remembered how the place had seemed to have a strange, eerie quality to it. He remembered it had been built with a very distinctive style. It had, in fact, been designed to resemble . . .
“An Egyptian temple!” Maddox blurted out suddenly. “I remember now! The thing looked like a bloody great hulking Karnak.” He turned and looked at Rafe, his eyes narrowing.
“What?” The man-god shrugged with extreme nonchalance. “You think that was my idea? Egyptian Revival style was very big back then.” Rafe pulled the Jag over and parked illegally in the shadow of the library’s South Court. “Here we are.”
The three of them piled out of the car, and Fennrys and Maddox followed Rafe as he headed for the wide sweep of stone steps where normally, on any given night, New Yorkers and tourists would still be hanging about, sitting on the steps or strolling or taking pictures. But on that night, the place was deserted. Almost. A handful of individuals stood scattered about the perimeter of the terrace. At a glance, they looked as if they had absolutely nothing to do with one another . . . but every one of them watched Rafe and the two Janus Guards approach with the same focused intensity.
Rafe glanced over his shoulder to see that Fennrys and Maddox had slowed and were eyeing the group warily. In the deep shadows behind one of the library’s massive pillars, Fennrys saw one woman with dark hair, wearing a tailored suit, suddenly blur like smoke, and a sleek black wolf appeared in her place. Maddox saw it too and stopped in his tracks, one hand going to the leather pouch he wore on his belt.
“Relax,” Rafe said. “They’re my pack. I thought we could use some backup. They’ll stay here and make sure nothing unexpected follows us.”
Fennrys remembered the wolves from his first encounter with Rafe in Central Park and figured that they must have some kind of psychic bond with the Egyptian god. He looked over at Maddox, who still stood, frowning with uncertainty.
“What?” Fennrys said. “He’s the god of werewolves. You didn’t know that?”
Maddox blinked in surprise. “Well, of course I—”
Fennrys just grinned and followed Rafe up the shallow stairs. The wide stone terrace at the top was flanked majestically by twin marble lions, which led up toward the grand edifice of the main branch of the New York Public Library. For a moment, it seemed as though a shadow passed over the terrace—a cloud scudding over the moon maybe—and for that moment, the stone lions had resembled something else entirely.
Sphinxes . . .
From the way Maddox glanced between the statues, Fennrys knew he’d seen it, too. But Rafe just stalked on past them toward the main entrance. Fenn followed, noting warily that the massive lion statues on either side of him turned their regal stone heads to watch as the Egyptian god passed, the carved contours of their manes rippling and flowing in the exact way that chiseled rock . . . didn’t. The one on the left was growling.
Maybe it’s just purring.
The woman who’d transformed into a wolf whined uneasily.
Maybe not.
Fennrys turned and put a hand on Maddox’s shoulder. “Look,” he said. “Madd . . . I have to do this. You don’t. I think maybe it would be best if you turned back. I don’t want Chloe coming after me if something bad happens to you.”
Maddox laughed. “No, you really don’t!” He reached up and plucked Fennrys’s hand from his shoulder. “On the other hand, I’m not about to go back and tell her that I abandoned my noble friend on his epic quest to rescue his one true love from the clutches of darkness. She’d never forgive me.”
Fennrys snorted. “Don’t tell me Chloe’s turned into some kind of romantic. Jeezus, Madd. What have you done to the girl?”
“I know, right?” Maddox rolled his eyes, but Fennrys could see he was nothing short of blissfully happy in his relationship with the previously occasionally homicidal Siren. “She’s gone all hearts ’n’ flowers these days. And so she’d just tear the hide right off me and send me limping back here to help you anyway if I turned back now. True love an’ all, yeah?”
True love.
Was that what this was? Did he really feel that way about Mason? He remembered what Rafe had said about the bind she was in; that if Mase somehow got her hands on the Odin spear, she would transform and become an agent of destruction, a harbinger of the End of Days, Ragnarok-style. That was the thing they were on their way to try and prevent. Rescuing Mason was, as far as Rafe was concerned, a fringe benefit. The unspoken agreement between Fennrys and the Egyptian god—Fennrys knew—was that their first priority was to make sure that
Gunnar Starling’s daughter never got the opportunity to get close enough to the spear to take it up. No matter how they had to go about it.
But . . .
Well, for one thing, what if that had already happened? What if they got to Asgard only to discover that she’d already turned Valkyrie? What if Fennrys had to leave her there . . . or worse? Would he do that? Could he?
Not even if the fate of the world depended on it.
Valkyrie or no—Fennrys wasn’t going to leave Mase behind in the place where he himself had suffered so terribly. He was going to get her out of there.
And if bringing Mason Starling back into the mortal realm meant that the mortal realm burned, then the Fennrys Wolf would happily go down in flames with it. With her. So maybe it was true love. Or maybe it was just the fatalistic Viking in him. He was okay with that, either way.
The night was silent—eerily so, especially for midtown Manhattan—but Fennrys suddenly heard the gentle cooing of a bird. He looked around and saw a lone mourning dove, sitting at the base of one of the massive stone urns that stood between the lions and the library’s arched portico. The bird stared at him with its obsidian-bead eye and cocked its head. Fennrys stepped past Maddox and approached the creature. He’d always had an affinity for birds, ever since he used to care for the Faerie King Auberon’s hunting hawks in the Otherworld.
Maybe that’s why you’re so hung up on a girl with the last name of Starling, he thought with grim amusement.
Without thinking, Fennrys reached out toward the resting bird. It nuzzled his wrist with its beak as he ran his hand along its back, smoothing its sleek wings. One of the creature’s tail feathers came loose in his fingers, and he expected the bird to flap away. But it just cooed at him again and tucked its head down between its shoulders, closing its eyes for sleep.
Fennrys smiled and gazed at the feather for a moment. It was a pale, pearly white, shading to silver at the end, tinted to blush near the base. It was beautiful. A marvel of simplicity and elegance; a thing of nature. The mourning dove was a pure creature. There was nothing strange or tainted or unnatural about it . . . and it had let him touch it. It had sensed nothing wrong about him either. Seeing as how he was now about to enter a place that would at some point only allow him admittance because he was already a dead man once over, he found that enormously comforting in that moment. Maddox, being mortal and wholly alive, would have to turn back eventually, before they reached the point of no return in this quest. They both knew that. But Fenn could walk between the worlds of the living and the dead with ease. Relative ease. That made him a serious freak. But the bird hadn’t thought so. He tucked the loose feather in the inside breast pocket of his jacket. It wasn’t a starling feather, but perhaps it was a lucky talisman for him nevertheless.