Sensing all three men staring at the back of my head, I stomp nearer the battle. “End it, Soren!” I yell.
That distracts Lydia, too, but she darts away, into a really cool move that flips the spear in a gorgeous arc so it’s like she’s coming at him with the butt. Except it’s a fake-out. She thrusts the point back around, twisting her entire body for leverage, and has the sharp end slashed through Soren’s T-shirt and side before he can change up his dodge.
I freeze. It was a great trick.
She slams the butt into the dust and glares at Soren in victory. Soren nods. “Good,” he says.
Her shoulders are heaving, and they stare at each other for a few moments, calming down. There’s cheering and grumbles from the crowd, and I hear the camp manager’s voice ring out, calling for some ragging help with the ragging food.
“I could take down a berserker with these,” Lydia says, calm and even despite the hitch of hard breathing.
It shouldn’t, but it makes me laugh.
The wolf guard swings to face me. “You’d like your chance?”
“You don’t want to fight me; I don’t have his control.”
“I felt his frenzy,” she says. “I felt it buzzing in the air and in his eyes.”
Soren stretches his neck in a slow circle.
I say, “You know if he had gone berserk, he’d let you stab that thing straight through his stomach and pull himself up the shaft to crush your throat in his bare hands, right?”
“Is that the plan?” she asks coolly. “The two of you go berserk and tear the dragon to pieces?”
A smile shows her my eagerness. “I hope so. You aim us, we explode.”
Soren nods. “That’s what we are, that is the point.”
“WMDs,” I say. It was a thing Bram Oakson said to me the night I joined the Devil Bears.
Lydia looks from me to him, and the two of them share a moment of something. She says, “I do not need your protection, Soren Bearstar.”
His eyes squint as he glances past us to the rest of the convoy. “But he does.” Soren’s looking right at Visby Larue.
Rag. I guess I’ll have to tell him not to worry about that.
“We’re here to hunt and kill a dragon,” Lydia says. “Not to keep each other alive.”
Soren refuses to answer, glancing up at the offensively blue sky, and his expression makes me wonder why he is here.
Over cold cuts and cheese and bread and olives, we discuss battle strategy. Or rather, everybody but Visby and me discusses battle strategy. We sit together on top of a second picnic table, listening, eyeing each other, mouthing asides, generally spitting off.
But as the tactic talk is winding down—and the plan is essentially what Soren and I said: find the dragon and keep its attention while the two of us go for the heart with our blades and fire—Visby clears his throat. He hops off the table and stands with his hands on his waist, hips thrust forward. “We’re going the wrong way,” he says.
“We’re following the grid,” Sean tells him.
Sune adds, “Marking our progress and map-checking.”
“But it’s the wrong way,” Visby insists. He pulls a smoke out of his back pocket and rolls it between finger and thumb. There’s a lighter in his front pocket, and he lights up while everybody stares at him; me, too. Me for slightly less academic reasons.
“Enlighten us?” Lydia says dryly. She dunked her head under some water, and now her heap of black hair is slicked wetly back into a tail.
Visby shrugs and takes a long, almost too long, drag. “She’s south of us,” he says, smoke spilling out alongside his words.
Sean clumps his elbows on the table, eyes pinched. “Excuse you?”
It’s endearingly polite.
I hop down and knock my boot into Visby’s butt, shaking his elegant pose. “Just tell us what the rag you’re talking about.”
Flicking cigarette ash at me, he says, “I can feel her. The dragon.”
“Feel the dragon.” Sune Rask doesn’t sound as skeptical as I think he should. “How?”
“Loki Changer was my great-great-great-great grandma.”
That’s a ragging gut punch. I throw up my hands and stalk away, torn between laughing and scrubbing my mouth with bleach.
Soren asks, “How does that give you dragon-sense?”
“Just does, I guess. It’s a pull when I think about the dragon, a gut feeling.”
Lydia says, “Are you sure your gut feeling isn’t anchored to Vider?”
I whirl back around. “Wait, Visby, you said she.”
Discomfort ripples across his mouth.
Lydia laughs. “Doubt Visby hunts anything male, no matter the species.”
“Truth,” he says, recovering his cool. “But in this case, it’s just a fact.”
“How do you know?” Sean asks.
“I just do. It’s part of the feeling. And size, yeah? Aren’t the lady dragons usually bigger?”
“No, that’s trolls, and a couple of the extinct dragon species.” The dragon slayer glances at Soren, and they share a look. They really are co-leading this hunt.
Soren says, “We should finish out the grid, and then if we don’t find anything, let Visby try to lead us.”
Sean nods, Sune nods, Lydia flips her hands carelessly. Visby sighs. “I’ll just go stretch for a while before another useless few hours in the truck then.” Lobbing an inviting glance my way. I tell him I’ll catch up.
The cowboy grabs his hat from the picnic table and saunters toward the stream. I ask Soren for a moment, and he goes with me, bringing a fresh can of honey soda. He’s hotter than I am, giving off little waves of frenzy like high-tide ripples—a natural thing, not a sign of danger. I touch his shoulder and smooth some of them. After a second of surprise, Soren leans in just slightly. I pull at the energy, a version of the give-and-take frenzy game we played before dawn this morning.
“I’m all right,” he says when we’re far enough from the camp and hidden in a grove of birches.
“I know. I wanted to tell you something about Visby.” I strip a dark piece of papery bark off the birch. Below is smoother, paler skin.
Soren pops the top of his soda and takes a long drink.
“How do the apples of immortality work?” I ask abruptly.
He coughs and lowers the can.
I wait.
“Ah, if you eat one and die within a year, you can resurrect.”
“Can?”
“Do?” He shakes his head. “I don’t understand the magic exactly, but it’s made for the gods. It’s part of what they are, which isn’t human. Why?”
“Does Idun just give them out?”
“One to every god every year.”
“Only one?” I frown.
“That’s the rule. There are…ways around it, depending on Idun, but it’s only supposed to be one. They only need one. It sustains them against death for the whole year.”
My lips peel apart as a cold realization lodges in my throat. Loki gave me an apple. Was it his apple? No, I think, and shake my head at Soren, though he can have no idea why. It is not possible. I couldn’t take the implication if it were. But it’s not.
“Why?” Soren says again.
“Oh!” I press my hands to my eyes. “Ah…well, I…you don’t have to worry about protecting Visby.”
There’s no answer, and I drop my hands to see Soren watching me charily. I try to smile, but it feels wavering even to me. So I go bigger: shoulders shrugged, eyebrows up, great big grin like it’s all a huge joke. “He ate the apple of immortality Loki gave me. So…!”
Heat snaps through the air, and I feel the pressure of Soren’s suddenly loose fever before he drops the honey soda, clenches his fists, closes his eyes, and reins it in.
I really ragging surprised him.
“Sorry,” I whisper.
“Loki…gave you an apple.” Soren opens his eyes, frowning under his drawn, heavy brow.
I nod.
He stud
ies me for a full minute. I don’t know how to act, what face to put on, so I just stand there, letting myself feel helplessly lost regarding my own opinion of the situation. Loki Changer gave me an apple—in fact, he’s tried to give me several over the years—and it might even be his own immortality at stake this year. I took it and flung it at Visby without thinking. I’m glad the cowboy’s guaranteed life, but I don’t want anybody else to find out, especially Sean Hardy, especially Loki himself.
“Odd-eye, Vider,” Soren says finally, shoulders falling. He puts his hand on my collarbone, just higher than my heart.
“Yeah,” I say, and cover his big hand with my little one.
SEVEN.
After an uneventful afternoon plotting the middle third of the grid, I know I can’t take another day of this. I spent it curled on my side of the back seat, mostly ignoring Sean and Visby, completely ignoring Camera Guy. Stared out the window at buzzards circling high and lazy overhead.
When we stop to make camp two hours before dark—it stays light out here hours past when it should, thanks to the summer sun and expansive sky—I help set up tents and the fire pit, then grab a stash of protein bars from the mess van and one of the camel-back water pouches. Secreting it all in my pack is easy, and then I put my axes on, a fresh set of berserker blacks and Henry’s hat, take my toothbrush and a change of underwear. I don’t expect to be gone long.
Leaving the water pouch empty for now, I pull the hat low and walk casually toward Visby’s tent. The flap’s tied open, and through the shadowy triangle I see him sitting cross-legged in the center, shirtless, rolling a bunch of cigarettes. Gross. It’s sexy to look at, but hot skit, what a dumb habit.
Maybe this is a mistake.
But he turns at the scrape of my boot on the grass and smiles. The little scar on his lip glints.
I duck inside and drop my little pack. It thuds to the dusty floor of his tent. “Do you want to kill her?”
His brows wing up. “The dragon?”
I put my hands on my hips.
Sliding to his feet, Visby says, “I’m here for the glory, I told ya, so I want whatever gets me that.”
“Not driving around in a grid pattern, for sure.”
“For sure.” The cowboy angles nearer to me, hips first, like always.
I pick the world-snake charm off his chest. Rub my thumb along the rough iron scales. It’s not a finely made piece, but most Lokiskin charms are forged in a caravan, hammered and stamped and cut and carved in wagons and behind makeshift booths. “I don’t want to kill her,” I say, lifting my eyes to his.
“Sure,” he says, all husky.
Makes me laugh a little, under my breath. It’s so obvious, and also, I like it. “So let’s go. Right now.”
“Go?” He dances his fingers down my bare arms. My frenzy stretches her wings so the tips graze the inside of my ribs, tickling and burning. Visby cups my elbows. “You sure you wanna go someplace?”
“Yeah.” I tilt my chin up to his mouth. “I do. Just you and me, though, so stop complaining. We’re going dragon hunting on our own.”
He laughs. “Just us?”
“You said you can find her.”
Visby’s dark, tapered eyes flick all over my face. There’s some fire in them, more visible now in the shadowy tent, and me so near him, and his eyes narrowed like that, like the fire burns brighter in less space. The familiar smile curves slowly across his mouth. “I’ll just grab a bag,” he says.
I back up to the flap and wait, and five minutes later the two of us are sneaking out of camp, down toward the little stream that cuts through here. Loki’s luck, the camp manager always picks a spot with good water. Probably—definitely—we should be careful about drinking it, but skit, I’m a berserker and the frenzy burns away most sickness, and Visby ate that apple, so we’ll be fine in the long run. We move fast at first, to put as much distance as possible between us and the camp. Once darkness falls, I bet we’ll have until morning before Soren realizes what I’ve done, then a few hours before they find us, assuming they bother to try. Tonight when we don’t show up at dinner, I hope they think we’re off someplace having sex.
We splash through the shallow, rocky creek, which is easier to maneuver than the crest of the hills would be, and we can climb around or over about half the obstacles: snarls of blackberries and clusters of sunflowers as tall as I am and ugly little trees and cattails and swarms of mosquitoes. As the sun drops low and lower, the world seems to grow louder. Birds make their twilight calls, high and sharp and sweet, grasshoppers and frogs buzz and zip, flies are everywhere.
Clouds slip in, covering the sky with thin, rippling, gray-tinged silver and peach in the west. No blazing, dramatic sunset tonight, but a quiet lullaby of color. I breathe more deeply for it, and wonder if the clouds will dampen the moonlight too much for us to see where to step.
Visby doesn’t ruin it with talking, though he watches me almost as much as he watches where he’s going. Once or twice, he says we’re on the right path, heading in the right direction, but it isn’t until the sun is totally vanished and purple darkness covers the prairie that he says, “How far do you want to go tonight?”
“As far as we can.”
“You really believe I can feel her?”
“You know it’s a her.”
“That convinced you?”
“The god of orphans said the same thing.”
Visby stops walking.
After a few steps, I turn, annoyed. “What?” I can barely make out his expression in the hazy shadows.
“You’re close to the Changer?”
“Does it matter?”
His shoulders shift. “Do you think he’ll…come here tonight, too?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. But no, not with you here.” It’s too bad, I think, heart squeezing. I want to ask him about the apple. I want to ask how much a sacrifice it was to hand it to me. “Come on, let’s keep moving.”
“Maybe we should wait for moonrise.”
I peer around. It is dark. Would do us no good if either of us broke a leg. But we’ve only come ten miles or less, if I’m estimating correctly.
“Want me to distract you?” Visby suggests, holding out his hand. He’s all dusk and shadows now, his hat casting darkness across his face but for his mouth again. His teeth flash white when he smiles.
I do want him to distract me.
I only touch my fingers to his palm before he snatches me close and kisses me, hands groping the straps of my axe harness. I hold onto his shoulders, kissing, trying to push thoughts of dragons and apples and the god of mischief out of my head.
The axes jerk off one side of my back, and I hurriedly divest myself of the other strap, setting them down as carefully as I can with Visby’s hands all over me.
My frenzy is hot, clawing to get out, and I groan through pressed lips; it sounds like a song. Visby’s mouth does great work, directing my skin’s attention exactly where he wants it, and I think I’ll spontaneously burst out of my clothes. Our knees bend and we sink against the hill. I clutch at him when he opens the vest over my stomach and sucks gently. He’s right over my dragon’s whipping tail and I gasp again and again, realizing I have to calm down, I have to breathe evenly.
In and out.
In
and
out
but my back arches when his teeth find my hip, and I shove him away.
Rolling over, I hug the dry, cool, scratchy hillside. My spine is on fire, my palms and the soles of my feet begging to run and hit, my whole body aching, because the frenzy, the passion, is burning me up. My eyes hurt, my teeth hurt; I bite my tongue so it hurts instead.
“Vider?” he whispers.
I shake my head, turning to my side and pulling my legs up to my chest, hugging myself as tight and small as I can. In and out. Mountain. The frenzy is a ball of fire, contained by your breath and bones. In and out, I tell myself.
It’s possible to do this, to channel it safely, to be alive a
nd passionate and full of desire. To have sex and last forever, to burn and rage and not hurt your partner. I know it because berserkers have been doing it for centuries. I know it because Henry awkwardly promised it was true.
A hand touches my temple, gentle as a mother’s kiss. He smoothes my hair, stroking to soothe, not to turn me on again.
I shudder and shake as my dragon scrapes and roars with frustration. I don’t want to tame her, I don’t want her channeled or leashed.
Not when I remember what it felt like to hit Loki Changer in the mouth, to fight him and let go, to dance with him and be free of danger and fear for those moments. I want Loki, curse it.
I’ve tasted flight; how can I breathe myself into the ground? That cursed god has ruined me for anything else.
“I’m sorry,” Visby says.
I just start to laugh. I roll over and shove him away. “Don’t be sorry,” I say, angry and laughing, “you didn’t do anything wrong.”
He lies down next to me and props his head on his hand. “I’d really like to get back to what we were doing then. Otherwise, this grass is too spiky to lie on, and it’s hot, and we’re in the prairie in the dark with nothing else to do.”
“Oh, that’s a real compliment there, cowboy.”
Shrugging, he rolls onto his back. “About another hour till moonrise, I think?”
I sit beside him and pull the ends of his hair against my thigh. It’s even darker than the black of my pants. And silky. I stroke it, teasing the ends on my fingers, even though he surely can’t feel anything. His chest rises and falls under the simple T-shirt he put on before we left our tents. He keeps his eyes on the sky. Gods-curse, he’s so sexy and languid. I’d kiss him again, but the outcome will be the same.
Tiny bugs dart around us; the wind moves low through the grass, creating a constant, rhythmic hiss like the sound of the sea.
My heart is so heavy, and I don’t know why.
“What do you want, Visby?” I whisper.
He takes a moment to react, as if he’d been lost in the quick-moving clouds overhead. “From you?”
“From…everything.”
Without taking his gaze off the sky, he shifts against the ground and says, “Do you really care what I want, or is this because you don’t know what you want?”