The Undoing

  “Not that. Stop flirting with him.”

  “I’m not. He’s flirting with me. I’m just appreciating it.”

  “Every girl likes to know she’s still got it going on,” Erin noted, her mini-fight with Kera already forgotten. The girl was not big on holding grudges once the initial heat wore off.

  “You don’t want to flirt with those men,” Jace informed her friends.

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’re the Four Horsemen.”

  Kera blinked. “The Four Horsemen of what?”

  Jace and Erin gazed at her for a moment before Jace said, “The Apocalypse.”

  Kera snorted and gave a little laugh. “Now you’re fucking with me, Jace? Did Erin tell you to do this? Like when she told me I’d have to sleep with all the Valkyries so Odin would allow me to shack up with one of his Ravens.”

  “Erin!”

  “I didn’t say she had to,” Erin corrected. “I said I’m sure Odin would appreciate it.”

  “You’re an asshole,” Kera barked.

  “You act like you’re telling me something I don’t already know,” Erin shot back.

  “Both of you stop before I get terse,” Jace warned, and the women immediately settled back in their chairs.

  But Erin Amsel was a born shit starter. It was like she couldn’t help herself.

  Still, Jace initially had no idea what Erin was doing when she grabbed Jace’s hand and gently placed it against Kera’s forearm.

  She said something in Old Norse, and when Kera looked across the room toward the Horsemen, her entire body jerked out of the chair, her back slamming against the wall, her arms up to protect herself.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” she bellowed. “Where’s his face!”

  Erin, laughing, leaned forward and gave the man a little wave. “So you must be Pestilence. Nice to meet you.”

  Jace used her thumb and forefinger to briefly rub her eyes. “Is there something psychologically wrong with you?” she asked her friend.

  Erin stared at her. “Yes.”

  The Mother Superior’s office door opened and one of her assistants stepped out. “Ladies,” she said, her hand gesturing.

  Kera was still in the corner of the room, her eyes closed tight, her body turned away. Jace was reaching for her, but Chloe got there first. She yanked Kera over and shoved her through the door. “Get over yourself. Trust me when I say, they won’t be the worst things you’ll see in this life.”

  “How did you do that?” Jace asked Erin.

  “It’s something Betty taught me. Want me to show you?” Erin grabbed Jace’s arm, but Jace slapped her hand off and pushed her. Erin pushed her back.

  “Would you two bitches get in here?” Chloe yelled. “Now!”

  “Awww, come on, Chloe,” one of the Horsemen lightly complained. “I was enjoying that.”

  “Let me guess who you are—” Erin began, but Jace grabbed her by the back of the neck and pushed her into the office.

  Jace forced a smile. “Gentlemen,” she said to the Horsemen before quickly walking into the Mother Superior’s office and closing the door.

  Sister Theresa Marie Rutkowski, the Mother Superior’s second in command, sat at the large wood desk, dark eyes calmly gazing at them.

  Smiling, Sister Theresa asked, “And how are you ladies doing today?”

  Chloe put on her best fake smile and replied, “Wonderful, Sister, and you?”

  That was when Jace knew this might not go too well . . .

  Ski was sitting in the backyard, his feet up on another chair, while he read a book about the Jonestown cult from the perspective of a survivor.

  He wanted to know more about the life Jace had lived. So many questions he wanted to ask, but after what she’d been through, he wasn’t going to do that. If she wanted to tell him, he’d be there to listen. But he wouldn’t push her for details she was not ready to give.

  So, instead, he’d found about twenty books on different cults in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and had read nineteen of them in the last two hours. He’d found them interesting, but Jace was so different from the survivors he’d read about. He’d believed her when she’d told him she’d never bought into the cult’s belief system. She wasn’t in denial. She really hadn’t been part of that life—at least not emotionally— otherwise her Second Life would have been much harder. Yet she’d happily joined the Crows, never looking back except when she had to.

  That even as a ten-year-old she’d avoided being brainwashed said so much about her. Manipulating the situation so that she could expand her mind with languages and books . . . simply amazing.

  “Hey,” Gundo said, dropping into a chair at the patio table, a Diet Coke in his hand. The man was drinking from a curly straw.

  A grown man.

  “Did you know her grandmother isn’t dead?”

  “Whose grandmother?”

  “Jacinda’s.”

  Ski shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

  “She constantly speaks of her grandmother. The one who raised her before her mother took her. The way she spoke of her, though, made me think she had passed. She hasn’t. She’s still quite alive. And with an extensive criminal record.”

  Now Ski laughed. “What?”

  “I know. Shocking! I mean Jace is so . . . non-criminal. Even though she’s a Crow. But her grandmother and other members of her father’s side of the family cannot say the same. Several have actually done hard time.”

  “It sounds like her grandmother was the only one who—”

  “—kept her from being psychologically trapped in that life.” Gundo nodded. “Exactly. I’m just wondering why she hasn’t contacted her since she became a Crow.”

  “Some of the Crows never lose contact with their families. Some never want to see them again. It’s a personal choice.”

  “But the ones who don’t want anything to do with their families are usually the ones who were killed by their families. That’s clearly not the case here, and the way Jacinda speaks of her—”

  “You’ve already called her grandmother, haven’t you?”

  Gundo gave a small shrug. “I left a message.”

  “By Tyr’s missing hand, Gundo!”

  “I know, I know. I didn’t think I’d find a number. But I did. And I kind of ran with it.”

  Ski closed his book, ready to give his “You can’t just do things you want to because you think it’s the right thing to do” speech, when something hit the metal patio table, startling both men.

  It was Ratatosk. He’d landed on his back, little arms and legs spread out wide from his small body, panting heavily. He looked like he’d been through hell.

  Gundo leaned in to take a closer look. “He’s bleeding. And I see teeth marks.”

  Ski sighed and asked in Icelandic, “Who did you piss off now, little rat?”

  Having dealt with Ratatosk personally since the day Ormi had drop-kicked the little bastard across the library floor, Ski was sure he’d pissed someone off. It was Ratatosk’s way. Running between the eagle at the top of Yggdrasil and Nidhogg—the dragon who would one day bring about Ragnarok—at the bottom, for no other reason than to carry bitchy words back and forth between the two was a job created for an asshole. But no matter what Ratatosk might say, he enjoyed his role among the gods and the Vikings.

  Ratatosk placed the back of one claw against his forehead and moaned. Dramatically.

  Ski rolled his eyes and Gundo dropped back into his chair, already ignoring the long-tailed rodent.

  “Do you have something to tell me or not?” Ski pushed.

  “He’s here to tell you about an All-Clan meeting on Monday.”

  Ski stood, looking around for the voice that boomed at him from all sides, and desperately covering his ears. His poor neighbors for about ten miles would think they’d just experienced a small earthquake.

  “Could you not do that?” Ski asked.

  “Sorry!” Tyr, the god of war, battl
e, and justice, cleared his throat since his voice was still booming and said in a more human tone, “Sorry. I forget.”

  Tyr stood by the glass doors leading to the patio. He didn’t actually look the way one would expect a god to look. Not in that black Led Zeppelin T-shirt that had probably been purchased at an early seventies concert—the Nordic gods did love Zeppelin so—and thick black work boots that appeared just as old as the T-shirt. His brown and gray hair reached to his waist in a long, loose braid. A thick dark beard hit just above the collar of his T-shirt and covered the lower half of his face, several braids woven in. His arms were covered in tattooed runes except for his right forearm, which had the face of an angry wolf branded onto it. Where his right hand should have been was a metal glove covered in powerful runes and created by ancient dwarves. It allowed Tyr to use it as if his hand was still there.

  A string of tattooed runes also circled his very thick neck, and a brutal scar went from under his chin, across his mouth, abruptly ending in the middle of his cheek.

  It made Tyr appear terrifying, but he was one of the most cheerful and pleasant gods Ski had known. He only became angry when he felt a true injustice had been done.

  And no one wanted to deal with an angry Tyr.

  “An All-Clan meeting? Why?”

  “I think you already know why.”

  Ski sat back down, shrugged. “Gullveig.”

  “Gullveig. The Crows and Ravens didn’t stop her. Although they made quite the effort. So I don’t hold it against them.”

  “I don’t see the other gods being quite so forgiving. At least not of the Crows.”

  “We remember Gullveig. She’s a deceitful female. That she fooled the Crows, the most distrusting of the Clans, was no easy task. Sadly,” he said on a sigh, “it’s not really us the Crows need to worry about.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “So let us discuss the big, huge, ridiculously bad mistake you Sladies have made.”

  Jace winced, watching Chloe’s jaw tense. That was never a good sign.

  “You’re blaming this on us?” Chloe growled.

  “Who else should we blame it on? You had a chance to stop her and you didn’t.”

  “We thought we had.”

  “Well, you were painfully wrong. Sacrifices are up—”

  “There are always sacrifices.”

  “Natural disasters have grown substantially since the day you thought you’d stopped her. Earthquakes in Iowa. That pesky little flood in the Gobi Desert. And the five hundred miles of rain forest that turned into ice. You don’t think that’s because of her?”

  “Perhaps. Or maybe that Fallen bastard you people can’t seem to keep control of has gotten out of hand again. Or maybe he’s bred another Antichrist. Or maybe these are just signs.”

  “The sacrifices aren’t signs. They’re offerings and you know it. And the longer she’s here, the more her power grows.”

  “I know!” Chloe bellowed, her patience snapping. “Oh, I know,” she said, calmer. “And we’ll deal with it.”

  “Then fucking deal with it, pagan. Because once we step in—”

  “Don’t threaten us, Christian. As we both know, the Clans don’t take kindly to it. Let us not forget what was started in 1618.”

  “And I’d hate for there to be another episode like the Salem witch trials. Remind me again, Crow, how many of you were left by the time it was all done?”

  Chloe stood, her chair thrown back, her hands landing hard against the table. And Sister Theresa Marie was there to meet her, their noses and fingers nearly touching as they leaned in close to each other, eyes locked in a centuries-old battle begun long before either woman’s great-great-grandparents had even been born.

  Jace took in the rest of the room. She saw hands move toward hidden weapons. Bodies tense. Gazes dart.

  This was seconds from getting out of hand, so she readied herself to step in, hoping to prevent that from happening.

  But then Kera was there, slapping her own hands on the desk, leaning in, and screaming, “Am I really the only one completely freaked out by the Four Horsemen sitting around a waiting room?”

  “New girl?” Sister Theresa Marie asked Chloe, neither angry gaze wavering from the other.

  “New girl.”

  “You know I’m right here!”

  Theresa Marie laughed. “Your ex-Catholics are the best, pagan.”

  “Best. Worst. Whatever.”

  “Gullveig returning to this world is a bad thing,” Tyr told Ski and Gundo. “A bad thing for everyone.” Tyr’s shoulders hunched, his two hands—the metal and flesh—twisting together. “I’m not saying what the family did to her was right. It wasn’t. But there’s something about that female. Wherever she goes, she brings despair. As she walked around Valhalla that day, in and out of all the rooms, coveting all the gold . . . every time she smiled, my bones literally filled with dread.

  “If she can, she will unbalance this world just to get even with us.” He sat back in the chair, the poor metal squealing in protest. “She needs to be stopped. Now.”

  “Excuse my directness,” Gundo said. “But I’m not sure why none of you are doing this. She’s a god, all of you are gods . . . you can all do god things together.”

  “She’s not in Asgard. She’s here. And here is protected by you. All of you. Because Gullveig will bring Ragnarok if she can. I believe that’s her goal.”

  “We’ll do whatever we have to,” Ski told his god.

  “Good. But this also means that you, Ski, will have to work with the other Clans.”

  “Of course.”

  “You have more skill with that than Ormi, and he’ll be prepping with the other Clan leaders for battle.”

  “I understand. Anything you need.”

  “Of course this also means you’ll need to work with the Ravens.”

  “Why do you hate me?”

  Gundo laughed and Tyr shook his head. “Still with this?” the god asked.

  “There’s just so much stupid.”

  “You manage with the Giant Killers well enough. And they’re stupid.”

  “The Killers are what the Killers are.”

  “Right. Stupid.”

  “But the Ravens don’t have to be stupid. They choose to be. Am I the only one here who really finds that offensive?”

  Tyr and Gundo shared a look before both shook their heads and replied, “No.”

  “Maybe we could all calm down,” Jace suggested.

  Erin pulled Kera over to a corner, attempting to keep her from spinning out.

  Sister Theresa Marie slowly turned her head to look at Jace. Her eyes deadly cold underneath that prim habit, a smattering of brown and gray bangs peeking out.

  Finally, the nun said, “You are such a lovely young lady, Jacinda Berisha. I truly don’t understand what you’re doing with these evil, godless bitches.”

  Skin met skin as Chloe’s hand cracked across Theresa Marie’s face.

  The nun stood there for a moment, eyes focused on a spot behind Jace’s head, a small trickle of blood forming in the corner of her mouth until it slowly rolled down her chin.

  When she finally turned her head back toward Chloe, it was so Theresa Marie could crack her neck.

  Jace stepped closer to the desk. “Perhaps I was not clear on the meaning of the word ‘calm’?”

  “I expect you to do the right thing, Danski Eriksen,” Tyr told him.

  “Even if it’s incredibly painful?” And Ski knew he was whining. Most of the Nordic gods didn’t stand for whining, but Tyr was extremely patient.

  Plus, Ski was sure that Tyr knew he was kind of kidding. Kind of.

  “Yes. Even if it’s painful. Do you think it’s easy dealing with Odin? Or, by all that is in my name,” he said on a sigh, “Thor?” He shook his head. “Thor. It is so tragic when your hammer is smarter than you are.”

  Gundo quickly covered his mouth and looked off, working hard to keep his laugh in. Ski just used what he called his “blank
expression.” It was a true skill he’d honed over the years working with the other Clans.

  “But,” Tyr said, his voice filled with conviction, “we must overlook the weakness of those beneath us and fight to keep the world right. Understand?”

  “Is this where we chant your name?” Ski asked.

  “Are we Ravens now?” Tyr demanded. “If you’re performing some kind of magical rite or sacrifice, feel free to chant away. Otherwise . . . don’t. You know too much noise annoys me unless I’m in battle or celebrating a victory.”

  “We’ll deal with this, Tyr,” Ski promised. “We’ll start at the All-Clan meeting Ratatosk is going to tell me about.”

  The god finally looked down at the immortal squirrel. “What’s he doing?”

  Ratatosk was still lying flat on the table, eyes closed—groaning dramatically.

  “We’ve been ignoring him. He hates that.”

  Tyr rolled his eyes and asked the squirrel, “Why are you still here, little rodent? I’m sure you have messages to get to the other Clans and I can fill my loyal sons in on the pertinent information.”

  Ratatosk chittered and Tyr’s usually placid expression filled with rage, his fist slamming down on the metal table, crumpling it.

  The squirrel scrambled off before he was trapped among the twisted wreckage.

  Tyr shot to his feet. “Odin said that?” he roared. “Then let that one-eyed bastard say it to my face!”

  Ski held up his hand, halting his god. “Source, Tyr,” he reminded him quietly; yelling was never effective when dealing with any god of any pantheon. “Note the source of this information.”

  Tyr let out a breath, nodded. “Of course, dearest Ski, you are right as always.” He flicked his middle finger and Ratatosk flew. “Away with you, vile rodent. Tell your lies to someone else!”

  Ratatosk hit a bush and disappeared.

  “I don’t think anyone has ever accused Ratatosk of being a liar,” Gundo remarked for some unfathomable reason.

  “Shut up,” Ski warned his friend.

  Thankfully, Tyr seemed oblivious as he sat back down, the metal chair squealing again at all that weight forced into it.