Patrick swore and raced after the two valkyries. Jono went after him. Patrick didn’t care about manners or niceties, and neither did Jono. They shoved aside anyone who got in their way, intent on making it to where Thor had fallen.
Then the crowd parted, tables flipping over as Patrick used magic to clear them a path across the balcony space. Plates and drinks went flying, sending food and alcohol into the panicking crowd around them. Brynhildr and Eir were golden blurs to Jono’s eyes, but they still weren’t quick enough to stop the man impersonating Westberg from planting his foot on Thor’s back and yanking free Odin’s spear.
A spray of blood arched away from Thor, splattering the imposter’s face. Jono thought it was the smear of red that blurred his features—but then his face kept changing. The features shifted like so much clay, reforming into a sharply featured face that looked nothing like Westberg. Light brown hair framed eyes the color of rich earth, and the smile on his face was as cold as the snowstorm raging outside.
Brynhildr touched her throat, her hand coming away with a spear that grew in size. “Loki. You have given your last betrayal.”
“I think not,” the Norse trickster god said with a fierce grin.
He spun Gungnir in his hands before swinging it around to block Brynhildr’s blow from her spear. The clash of the weapons made the air vibrate, bits of lightning sparking at the tip of Gungnir.
“That can’t be good,” Wade said from behind them, sounding a little scared.
Eir launched herself at Loki while Patrick dove for Thor. Jono swore, sticking with Patrick. The flash of Gungnir as Loki spun it had Jono launching himself at Patrick, taking his lover and Thor down to the floor as Odin’s spear let out a crackling bolt of lightning. It cut through the air in a split second, making every light bulb in the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling explode. The restaurant was plunged into a twilight darkness, only the recessed lighting high in the ceiling surviving.
Loki swept the spear in an arc around him, forcing Brynhildr and Eir back onto the defensive. Jono rolled off Patrick, hands smearing in blood that had splattered onto the floor.
“Eir!” Patrick yelled, his voice high and frantic as he pressed his hands over the hole in Thor’s chest. “Eir!”
The god of thunder wasn’t moving.
Let me in.
Fenrir’s voice roared through Jono’s mind, and he didn’t fight it. For once, he let the wave of power drag him under without searching for the surface and fighting control. Fenrir sank into his body and soul, and Jono shifted from man to wolf so fast that he felt the pain of the shift this time—raw and furious, like he’d been skinned alive down to his bones.
When Fenrir finally settled on all fours and blinked, it was with Jono’s eyes, and Loki was looking right at them. The glittering point of Gungnir was aimed their way, Loki’s hard smile a sliver of white behind the spark of lightning.
“You are no son of mine, Fenrir,” Loki said.
“Your faith is a lie, Father,” Fenrir ground out around the wolf fangs in Jono’s mouth.
“Faith is all we have when our stories are not enough.”
The floor-to-ceiling windows behind Loki exploded inward, shredding the shades and turning glass shards into shrapnel. Pale blue light enveloped them in a shield—Patrick’s magic keeping them safe amidst the storm. The glass shards bounced off the barrier, but everyone else wasn’t so lucky.
Beyond Patrick’s magic, Jono watched alongside Fenrir as Loki pitched himself into the snow beyond Au Hall, his laughter swallowed by the reactionary storm. Brynhildr threw herself after him with a wild cry that made Jono want to lay his ears flat against his skull. Lightning flashed in the distance, followed by thunder so close it shook the building.
Shook the ground.
The air pressure dropped so suddenly Jono’s ears popped even in wolf form. The howling wind changed cadence in such a way that Jono wanted to run from it—because that wasn’t the wind anymore.
Nature didn’t sound like the dead were screaming.
“Eir!” Patrick yelled.
The other valkyrie rocked to a halt halfway to the windows, her hands white-knuckling her spear. Then she swore, spinning on her feet. She returned to them, and Patrick lowered his shields just enough to let her through.
Let me see, Jono demanded.
Fenrir obligingly turned his head, and Jono stared at where Patrick kneeled beside Thor, both hands slick with blood, while Wade hovered over them. Eir folded to her knees beside them, face a stone mask in the low light.
“The veil is tearing,” Eir said as she pushed Patrick’s hands aside. Jono watched as she dug her fingers into the ragged, gaping hole in Thor’s chest, her words ringing like a death knell between them all. “Niflheim is coming home to rest at the roots of the world tree.”
19
One of Patrick’s hands was covered in Thor’s blood. Patrick clutched his dagger in the other. He still almost shot Huginn and Muninn out of the air with a mageglobe when Odin’s ravens came flying through the shattered windows. The pair didn’t stop to aid them; instead they dived at the people on the stairs, their sharp beaks pecking at people’s skulls.
“What the hell are they doing?” Wade asked, hands curled over his head as if to protect himself. “Are they hungry?”
“For memories. They’ll take the thoughts and memories of what happened here tonight, and no one will be the wiser,” Eir said, white magic covering her fingers so bright Patrick couldn’t see them.
More blood gushed through Patrick’s fingers from the hole in Thor’s chest. “Forgetting isn’t going to fix this mess. You said that’s Niflheim coming to shore?”
The Norse realm of the dead was a threat no city or country could ever be prepared for. Patrick could fight the Dominion Sect with what power he had on hand until reinforcements arrived, but he sure as fuck couldn’t fight an entire hell without
