Descendant

Einherjar.

“Are there others? Other Valkyries, I mean?”

“As far as I know, the Valkyries are no more. Over the millennia they began, one by one, to abandon the All-Father of the Aesir. Some were sickened by the unending bloodlust, some probably just got bored. Some met their ends, and some rebelled against the gods and their pointless petty bickering and selfishness and rush toward a fated doom that the Valkyries began to see as less and less glorious and more and more a stupid, blind waste. Those that rebelled were banished to the mortal realm. I only ever met one who managed to tough it out and make something of a life for herself there.”

“Who was that?” Mason asked.

“Her name was Olrun,” Rafe said, and there was an uncommon hint of respect in his voice as he said the name. “She became a carriage driver in Central Park and vowed never to return to the halls of Asgard. But sometimes, one’s calling is simply overwhelming. And when a real hero was on the verge of death, his spirit called to Olrun. She appeared to take him into the Beyond Realms. Something got in her way.”

Fennrys lowered his gaze, and his shoulders sagged. “Me,” he said.

“Yeah. You,” Rafe said. “And in an act of selfless bravery—I usually like to call those kinds of things by their proper names: ‘act of monumental stupidity’—you offered to go in his place. That, and the fact that you returned again, made you a harbinger of a prophecy and opened up a whole new can of magickal worms for the mortal realm.”

Over Rafe’s shoulder, Mason saw that the dark, glittering rift—the tear in the fabric of reality—had grown large enough so that it dwarfed the doors of Valhalla, stretching from the ground to the vault of the sky. A strange and surreal portal. But it was crackling and flickering wildly now.

“We should probably go.” She nodded at the rift. “Looks like it’s getting temperamental. That thing I said about telling me everything now? I retract that. You can tell me all about why my father thinks it’s such a good idea to turn his only daughter into a chooser of the slain once we’re home.”

Her voice caught, hitching a bit on the word “father,” and she drove her nails into the palms of her hands to keep it from turning into a sob. Fennrys nodded and he, Rafe, and Mason stood and walked toward the dark, sparkling rift where it undulated and writhed, ominous and beckoning at the same time. Mason thought she could see things moving in whatever it was that lay on the other side of the tear.

“That’s what we call the Between. We’re going to have to travel through that to get back to the mortal realm.” Rafe rolled an eye at Fennrys. “And, yes, this time you are going to have to hold my hand. I’m not happy about it, either. But I strongly suggest you not let go. The things that exist in the Between aren’t things you want to tangle with.”

Before they stepped through, Mason stopped for a moment, turning back to Tag Overlea, who still stood there with a sword in his hand.

“Hey,” she called. “You coming with?”

“Naw,” Tag said. “Mr. Rafe kind of explained it to me. Far as I understand it, I’m here for good. I leave this place and I’m a ghost. But it’s cool.” He shrugged and blinked at her. Mason noticed that the redness was fading from the whites of his eyes and, with it, the dullness of his wits. He actually looked more like a normal person than he ever had. He grinned lopsidedly at her. “At least I can get these chowderheads doing something interesting for a change. And then maybe if we fight good enough, we can get some of that awesome grub and booze they’re all on about.” Tag started to turn away, back to where the other warriors seemed to be waiting for him. But then a shadow of a frown crossed his brow. He turned to Mason. “Hey . . . uh, seriously, Starling. I’m real sorry about, y’know, all that stuff. Tell Palmerston for me when you see her again, ’kay?”

“Sure.” Mason smiled at him.

“And honestly? I know I said he was okay . . . but your brother really is kinda a douche. Don’t turn your back on him, all right?”

“Trust me. I won’t.”

With that, Tag Overlea turned back to the Einherjar, who were waiting for him. Mason shook her head as she turned to follow Rafe, who’d shifted into his transitional man-jackal form, probably just in case anything in the Between decided to question his godly identity. A few yards from the rift, he stopped. Mason reached out to take the ancient deity’s offered hand. Paw. Whatever.

“This whole thing,” she muttered, “is incredibly weird.”

On Rafe’s other side, Fenn grimaced sourly and took the god’s other hand. “It really is,” he said. “Sadly, I don’t think it’s going to get any less weird.”

XIII

Rory lay in a dull fog of painkiller-induced numbness, listening to the voices outside his door. When he’d first regained consciousness, he’d been disoriented and confused. Now he knew at least he was in the guest bedroom of the posh penthouse condo his father kept in midtown Manhattan—and he knew that whatever they’d pumped him full of, it wasn’t anything even remotely over-the-counter. Only something magick- infused could make him feel that good. Especially considering the beating he’d taken . . .

Rory Starling had never had a very high pain threshold.

And so when Fennrys had attacked him and shattered his arm in an attempt to make Rory drop the gun he was pointing at Mason, the pain of that injury might have clouded his judgment. After all . . . shooting the one guy they needed, the only known, readily available soul who’d crossed the barrier into the Beyond Realms and walked back out again whole and re-alive . . . well, that might have been a little hasty. Because if the Fennrys Wolf was dead, then their one shot at retrieving the Odin spear from Valhalla was gone.

Or maybe not . . .

Rory couldn’t remember exactly how he’d gotten to the penthouse. The last clear memory he had was watching his father destroy the rune gold that Rory had been using to augment Taggert Overlea’s strength and speed. Of course, Rory had pumped so much rune magick into Tag—hoping to use him as a point man for building his own personal warrior band—that destroying the acorn had also destroyed Tag.

But Rory, more to the point, had destroyed the Fennrys Wolf first.

I put a bullet in that son of a bitch, Rory thought. If that didn’t kill him, the bridge exploding must have. I mean . . . there’s gotta be a limit as to how many times a guy can die before it sticks, right?

And even though a dead Fennrys would probably nullify any chance of setting Ragnarok in motion, Rory felt a small, grim sense of satisfaction at the thought of the Wolf’s demise. But as he struggled to concentrate on the voices in the hall, it became increasingly apparent that the situation was a lot more complicated than Rory had stopped to consider.

“I would dearly love to know who, exactly, is responsible for the destruction of the Hell Gate,” Gunnar said in a tight, angry voice. “And I want to know where your sister is!”

“Don’t you think I do, too?” Roth snapped. “Why don’t you ask Rory what really happened on top of that train? He was there—he should know, damn it!”

Whoa, Rory thought blearily. Roth’s pissed.

That didn’t happen. Ever.

“I already asked him,” Gunnar snapped back. “He said he couldn’t see for the brightness as the train passed over the Hell Gate. And then, once it reached the other side, she was simply . . . gone. He has no other explanation—”

“He’s useless,” Roth snarled.

“—and I can come up with no viable scenarios either. At least not ones that don’t involve the death of your sister, Roth.” Gunnar said those words carefully. Quietly. “It’s a possibility that we’re going to have to consider—”

“NO!”

Rory flinched at Roth’s roar of outraged denial and a sound like a fist punching through plaster. The wall of the room he was in shuddered, and he felt a sympathetic pain in his own hand. He tried to turn his head to look at