Descendant

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.