Descendant

the limb he vaguely remembered having injured. . . . But it was just too hard to move, and his head rolled back on the pillow, his eyelids sinking shut. He thought he heard noises in his room—chittering and scrabbling sounds, like insects, and the clink and hiss of metal—but he couldn’t make himself seek them out.

Stupid Roth, he thought, drifting on a soporific tide, throwing a stupid tantrum . . . serve him right if something terrible had happened to his precious Mason . . .

Rory felt a distant twinge of envy, followed by an even more distant twinge of guilt. He seemed to be the only one who knew just how much of a screwup his sister was. She’d proved it in spades at the fencing competition when she’d gone down in flames. He also happened to know that Cal Aristarchos blamed her for the damage he took the night of the storm. She was a phobic mental case. And she’d spent the last couple of weeks sneaking around with that muscle-bound creeper with the ridiculous biker-gang name.

What the hell’s wrong with her?

When he’d first found out about it, Rory could barely believe that it was his sister’s destiny to become a Valkyrie. That was way too cool for Mason. As far as he could see, she didn’t have it in her, and it galled him intensely that she was the linchpin to his own damn destiny. Especially now that she’d gone and royally screwed up his and Top Gunn’s grand plans for Ragnarok by simply vanishing into thin air as they’d crossed the Bifrost. Maybe she’d fallen off the train into the river below. Maybe she really was dead.

“Roth . . . Rothgar!” Out in the hall, Gunnar was trying to shout down Roth’s stream of furious invective. “I know how you feel about your sister. Mason is more precious to me than gold. You know I never ever want to see her hurt—and we have no evidence to say that she is. All we have to do now . . . is find her.”

“What about the Odin spear?” Roth asked, seeming to have calmed down somewhat, but there was still a hard edge to his voice. “We can’t even begin to fulfill the prophecy without it. To get that, we still need him. And a way to get him into Valhalla—which would seem to me to be something of an impossibility now that the bridge has been destroyed.”

Surprisingly, Gunnar actually chuckled.

“Roth,” he said, “you disappoint me. Think for a moment. The Hell Gate hasn’t always been here . . . but there was always travel between the Beyond Realms and the world of men. It just hasn’t always been easy. And harder still for us ‘mere mortals.’ That’s why this so-called Fennrys character was such a godsend, as it were. Wherever he came from, whatever his story, whoever named that lad after the Great Devourer was courting Fate.”

“Like we’re doing now,” Roth said.

There was a pause. When Roth spoke again, he sounded calmer.

“What if we can’t find him?” he asked Gunnar. “Do we leave it at that?”

What? Rory thought. No! Shut up, Roth. . . .

“If the prophecy is meant to be, it’s meant to be,” Gunnar answered.

Rory could almost hear his father shrug, and the sheer passivity of that statement made him want to scream.

“I believe it will happen,” Gunnar continued. “If it does not . . . then we simply weren’t fit to accomplish so monumental a task.”

If Rory could have raised his voice in hollering protest, he would have. But whatever they’d given him was utterly paralyzing. The room noises were getting louder. . . .

“You’re giving up?” Roth asked.

“How likely do you think that is, son?”

Roth was silent in response.

“Now,” Gunnar continued, “our first priority is finding Mason and this Fennrys Wolf. And we’d best do it before the situation in the East River becomes untenable.”

What? What situation? Rory struggled desperately to concentrate.

“What have you heard?” Roth asked.

Gunnar sighed gustily. “The destruction of the bridge seems to have made an unstable situation even more dangerous. The rift between the realms is widening, and if we cannot harness the power that is flowing through that mystical spillway before our rivals do, then all could very well be lost for us.”

“Rivals. You mean Daria Aristarchos.”

“Yes.” Rory heard the bitterness in his father’s voice. “There are others, of course, but they are weak and scattered. I respect Daria’s strength and her determination. She’s the most dedicated high priestess the Eleusinians have ever had. And she is a worthy adversary. But if she gets in my way, I will crush her.”

There was a long silence, and Rory wondered why Roth wasn’t cheering on that sentiment. It sounded like a good idea to him. Then again, he knew perfectly well that Cal Aristarchos’s beautiful, bitchy mother was the head of a family dedicated to the Greek pantheon of gods in the same way his family was sworn in service to the gods of the ancient Norse. Kick her ass, Dad, Rory thought.

“Now . . .” Gunnar’s voice sounded as if he was moving farther away, down the hall.

That’s okay, Pops . . . don’t mind me. I’ll be fine here all by myself. . . .

“Find your sister, Rothgar,” Gunnar said. “Use whatever resources of mine you need.”

As the footsteps drifted away, Rory sank deeper into his pillow with a weak groan. The act of struggling against the medication to overhear that conversation had proved exhausting. But now he could sleep. Now that he knew Gunnar was still moving forward. And as soon as he’d rested up a bit, he’d prove to his father that he was still a vital part of the team. He went to close his eyes, but a surge of pain coursed through him.

“Holy sh—” He flailed spasmodically in the bed and swore, but a hand came down to cover his mouth, silencing him. Rory’s eyes flew wide. The soporific effect of the drugs had suddenly, shockingly vanished. When he managed to focus his gaze, he saw Roth standing over him, holding an IV tube in his hand— the hand not covering his brother’s mouth. He’d bent the tube in the middle, stopping the flow of a gently glowing, bluish liquid from entering Rory’s arm.

“That wasn’t anybody’s gun but yours, brother,” Roth said quietly.

Rory’s protests were muffled squeaks beneath Roth’s palm.

“Shut up. I’ve known you had a gun stashed in the glove box of your car for months now. I’m assuming it was part of the payment you got from your lunkhead buddies for the magickal performance enhancers you’ve been providing them with. Which, by the way, is right up there on the list of stupidest possible things to do ever.” Roth’s voice grew harsh with barely suppressed rage. “The family doesn’t deal, Rory. That’s a rule.” His gaze bored into his brother like a drill. “But don’t worry, I’m not gonna tell Dad that you fudged that little detail of your story.”

He glared coldly down at his brother and, after a moment, took away his hand from Rory’s mouth. But Rory knew better than to make any noise. If he cried out and brought Gunnar running—as if that would ever happen—Roth would just renege on his promise and tell their father Rory had lied to him.

“What do you want, Roth?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

Roth looked at him like he was beneath contempt. “What I want . . . is to know what else about your little story is a steaming pile of crap. I want to know what you did to Mason.”

“I didn’t do anything to her!”

“I don’t believe you.”

“All I did was get her on the train.”

Rory was sweating now with pain. And fear. Truthfully? Roth had always scared the living daylights out of him. He was always so damned quiet that if he did ever say anything, you knew you were in trouble. But for some stupid reason, Rory decided to try and tough it out.

“You were the one who screwed up, Roth—you were supposed to bring that Fennrys dude over the bridge. I did my part. I’m the one who—”

“How?” Roth ignored Rory’s counteraccusations. “How did you get her on the train?”

Rory swallowed nervously. If his brother found out that he’d essentially tortured Mason—that he’d ruthlessly wielded her claustrophobia against her like a devastating weapon—Roth would probably kill him. Or close enough,