Sabotage, p.2
Sabotage, page 2
The panic that raced through me was tempered by a strange sense of Deja vu, and at the same time, the feeling of being removed from it all. Like I wasn’t part of this.
I screamed at Dahlia to get us out of here. She’d brought us in, her powers as a dragon allowed her to teleport where neither Fen nor I could. Her powers should allow a lot more than that, but she was frozen.
“To me.” Bragi shouldn’t be here. We didn’t trust him to fight by our sides, especially against Vidar. But he stood at the edge of my shield, reaching for us.
He was safe. The others didn’t believe that, but it was true, my gut said so. Of course, my gut had been wrong about Vidar, but this was different. I knew it.
Dahlia grabbed Fen’s hand, and I grabbed hers and dropped the shield to take Bragi’s. In a blink we were back in NEON.
Fighting Vidar—correction, Vidar kicking our asses—was chaos, but this was a clusterfuck. Everything blurred together as I tried to call the only god we’d seen cure what was happening to Fen.
Magic bullets. The kind meant to kill immortals who refused to embrace their tie to death.
Given how willing the gods were to kill, I wouldn’t think that would be a very effective weapon, but apparently it was.
Fen lay in bed, writhing in agony as death gnawed a path through his system. I left message after message, trying to reach Min or someone who could.
Frey, who had been Fen’s lover and mate for centuries, had Bragi pressed to the wall and was threatening him. Torturing him. Not with a physical onslaught, but with a wave of the potent emotions Frey felt having to watch Fen suffer this way.
This wasn’t right. Bragi had saved us, and he wasn’t to blame for what was happening now. It would hurt Dahlia to see me do this, she loved Fen and Frey so much, but I wasn’t acting against Frey, I was acting in favor of Bragi. I’d beg her forgiveness when this was over and Fen was healed.
I asked Frey to stop. To make him see reason and not hurt Bragi.
The way Dahlia looked at me sliced me to my core.
This entire thing felt choppy. As if things were happening too fast or too slowly. Nothing moved at the right speed.
Bragi vanished.
Fucker. I’d stuck up for him. He could’ve stayed and made the others see he wasn’t the bad guy.
I hated seeing Dahlia like this. Worrying about Fen.
I needed to make this right. How? Not a clue, but it started with confronting Vidar the smart way. Just me. One of my strengths, not the magical kind, the type I’d actually been born with, was watching people and learning. I knew a lot more about Vidar than he realized.
Like how to find him again. Even though we’d just left the TOM compound he was in, it was unlikely he’d stay at that base. He was a being of habit and patterns though, like most creatures.
The portal that would take me to him was easy to activate. While I’d left my friends behind, fighting with the fallout of confronting him, he was conducting business like it was any other day.
Fucking asshole.
I didn’t give him a chance to speak. Lies and taunting would spill from his mouth and I was going to slaughter him regardless of what he said.
And then the entire setting changed. We weren’t in an office, it looked more like a concrete cavern. Vidar was nowhere to be seen, but the attacks came from everywhere all at once. I lost track of anything but trying to find him, and keeping myself from getting hit. With every strike from a ball of flame or a crack of lightning, I felt it through my entire body.
The onslaught poured in so fast, I didn’t have time to heal. It came from inside my shield. It tore me down.
I wouldn’t let things end this way.
When Dahlia and Fen appeared in the room, Fen healed and full of rage, I’d never been so relieved. They joined the fight without hesitation. The three of us worked well together—a well-oiled team. Dahlia and I had always had the rhythm when we did anything.
It didn’t matter.
Vidar hit us again and again. From every angle. Slicing down Fen and Dahlia. Shredding them to pieces until Dahlia was on her knees and Fen was panting.
They were both down. Not moving. I needed to check on them, but I needed to keep Vidar at bay. I could heal most things, even if I was struggling, maybe I could help them.
If I pulled the shield tightly enough, Vidar shouldn’t be able to hit us. It would give me time to tend to my friends.
I swooped toward them at high speed.
A wall of flame erupted between us, and I flew through it. The heat tore at my flesh, doing more damage than it should, but I needed to get to Dahlia.
When I came out the other side, I pulled up short. It was too late. Her body vanished in an explosion of ash and flame.
She was gone.
But she couldn’t be.
But she was.
Fury and grief consumed me with as much agony as the fire raging around me, and I flew at Vidar, sword drawn. I made contact, a direct hit, and didn’t let up. I sliced and tore, summoning everything I could find inside me. My Valkyrie was pushed to depths I didn’t realize I was capable of, until Vidar was gone too. Dead. Obliterated.
My legs didn’t work right. Walking took a force of will I wasn’t sure I had. Dahlia was gone. My best friend. My sister. The one person in this world who had my back.
And I didn’t have enough strength to cry for her.
I need to go back to Frey. To tell him what happened. But if he destroyed me in his grief, the way he’d threatened to do to Bragi, I wouldn’t be able to seek vengeance for Dahlia’s death.
If I had a little time, then I could hunt down anyone else involved in this. When that was done, Frey could have at me.
Where was safe? Nowhere.
Bragi.
Long enough to heal. A few hours maybe. Magical Valkyrie recovering powers and all that.
The pit in my heart would live there for eternity though. That spot Dahlia held. She couldn’t be gone, but she was. I’d see it with my own eyes.
I missed her so much already that the grief ached more than my wounds. I’d let her die. She came after me, to help, and she was gone because of it.
Bragi opened his door.
I didn’t even remember making the trip. How did I get here?
“Magnus?” He radiated concern.
“I didn’t know where else to go.” I barely heard my own voice. “Everyone else is… gone.”
At the sound of a gunshot, my heart sank.
I could save them.
Save who?
I had extended the shield that was one of my powers as a Valkyrie, but that was too little, too late.
The panic that raced through me was tempered by a strange sense of Deja vu, and at the same time, the feeling of being removed from it all. Like I wasn’t part of this.
I screamed at Dahlia to get us out of here. She’d brought us in, her powers as a dragon allowed her to teleport where neither Fen nor I could. Her powers should allow a lot more than that, but she was frozen.
“To me.” Bragi shouldn’t be here. We didn’t trust him to fight by our sides, especially against Vidar. But he stood at the edge of my shield, reaching for us.
“Magnus.” His tone grew insistent, but his lips weren’t moving. “Magnus. I need you to come back to me.”
I didn’t… He was right there. I reached for him, but my hand slipped through his. “I’m trying.” My voice didn’t work. I tried to force the words out, but the harder I pushed, the less voice and air I had.
“Magnus. Please.”
I’d never heard Bragi beg before. I’d rarely heard any god beg, and I knew more than the standard number of gods who had been in desperate situations.
“I’m trying.” On the —ing my voice caught. I felt the sound. Heard it.
I grasped the sensation and reached for both words and Bragi. As my hand met his, a shout tore from my throat.
I sat straight up with a scream. This wasn’t Vidar’s office or Frey’s. I wasn’t in NEON. What was going on?
“Thank you.” The muttered sound of relief came from next to me.
Bragi. He was kneeling next to me, my hand clutched in both of his, and his forehead pressed to my knuckles.
I was in a bed I didn’t recognize, and a man I didn’t recognize watched us from a few feet away. He was pretty. Fiery red hair. Penetrating brown eyes. He bled life—I saw it rolling off him in flames.
“Where am I?” My brain was still caught in the nightmare, and I struggled to shake off the potent visions. The fear and grief.
Bragi let go of my hand and stepped back. “My house. How much do you remember?”
“I don’t…” As if my thoughts were knocked loose by his question, reality crashed in around me in an avalanche of grief.
That wasn’t a nightmare, it was reality.
Dahlia was gone. Fenrir.
I’d seen them die. I hadn’t been able to stop it from happening.
Sobs wracked my body, shaking me so hard it hurt. I didn’t know the last time I’d cried, but I couldn’t stop, even if the grief tore me apart.
“They’re all gone. All of them. Gone.” I muttered the words over and over, not wanting to believe them, but not having any choice.
Four
Bragi
There were a few key points in my life where I’d been conflicted to the point where it almost immobilized me. Was it a coincidence that the man sitting in a chair near my bed was part of more than one of those, and the woman in my arms was as well?
I held Magnus as her grief threatened to tear her apart. I felt every sob and cough and gasp, both in my body and heart, and I couldn’t make myself let her go or turn off my own reaction to her emotions.
The first time I met her, when she was a student, she was already seventeen. I met most of the soldiers at TOM far earlier in their lives, because I was the carrot and Vidar was the stick. A visit from me was meant to provide an emotional push for those students who were out of line.
Magnus was sarcastic, and she talked back, but she wasn’t the same kind of defiant. She was also loyal. Loving. Hiding how much she cared behind a wall meant to protect her classmates as much as herself.
As I held her now, letting her weep through her loss, that wall was gone. A piece of her was broken, and she just kept repeating, “She’s gone. Dahlia’s dead.”
I wanted to push back more than the assurance I was here for her, but I wouldn’t. I refused to send any false emotion into her, even to temporarily make her feel better. Not just because Nico—Nico—watched me.
The first day I met her, I’d been drawn to who she was at her core, and the first time she smiled at me, it didn’t matter that I was one of those bullshit TOM smiles meant to charm and disarm. I felt the genuine emotion underneath, and refused to corrupt that.
It was the same now, regardless of how much it hurt to feel what she did, and regardless of how wrong it was to enjoy holding her.
As her crying slowed, Nico and I coaxed the story out of her. How she’d gone after Vidar on her own, because he’d hurt Fen and Dahlia. Because he was an asshole who deserved to be put down.
I couldn’t argue her reasons, but I felt an intense guilt. Minutes before she made that decision, I’d been there. If I’d stuck around, could I have stopped her? Gone with her? Could I have prevented any of this?
When Fen and Dahlia followed her, Vidar had beaten them all. Magnus’s story was sparse on details beyond he killed her. Them. He slaughtered them, but something about it wasn’t right.
Vidar had tricks up his sleeve. Magic he rarely accessed and more skills than he should have, thanks to the way he’d bastardized fae and dragon magic, but for him to stomp Fenrir so completely…
But Magnus had witnessed the entire thing. There was no doubt or deception in her story. She was a pillar of grief.
Magnus shot to her feet, her eyes wide, startling me. “I need to tell Frey.” Panic spilled from her. Regret. Guilt. “I need to tell him Fen is gone and beg his forgiveness and—”
“And what?” I grabbed her wrist. “Are you going to throw yourself on his proverbial sword? Sacrifice yourself for their loss?” Odds were low that he’d treat her the way he had me, when he blamed me for Fen’s injuries, but odds weren’t non-existent. I was keeping her here until she was at least well enough to put away her Valkyrie wings.
She scrubbed her face with her free hand, fidgeting in tiny circles where she stood on my carpet. “He needs to know. He needs to hear it from someone who cares.”
“I’ll tell him.” From a distance. Via phone.
“No, no, no, no, no.” She shook her head vigorously, until I stepped in, cupped her cheeks between my palms, and stopped her.
I cracked a little at the sight of her stress, and used the contact to let a whisper of a suggestion slip through. Not a lot. A hint of calm. To keep her from worrying herself to death and to prevent her from going to Frey.
“Sit. Rest,” I whispered. “I’ll make you something to eat. Nico will keep you company.”
His raised eyebrow didn’t hide his accusing look. He knew what I’d done. “I’d be happy to sit with you.” He meant it. “I’m Nicodemus. Nico for short. Pleasure to meet you, though I’m sorry it’s under these circumstances.”
“Same.” Magnus’s voice was uncharacteristically meek. She sank back onto the edge of the bed, her wings wrapped around her like a tattered blanket, and he settled into the spot next to her.
I was fully aware of what Nico saw when he looked at her, and my taking advantage of that was a manipulation I didn’t feel bad about. She wasn’t healing, and I could see why not, but I couldn’t tell what was causing it. The encounter with Vidar had severed her from her magic, either psychologically or physically. If it was the latter, Nico’s healing may be needed again, and if it was the former, she’d need all the support and distraction possible.
In the kitchen, I assembled ingredients, and set to work making waffles with fruit and cream. The soldiers were raised on a steady diet of all the things a growing body under intense physical duress needed. They got their greens, their protein, appropriate doses of everything.
It had all been regulated, and it left a large number of them with a sweet tooth. For a TOM soldier, sex was part of the job, but chocolate and whipped cream were indulgences. A treat few of them associated with school or training.
While I was waiting for the waffle maker, my phone rang. I glanced at the screen, then did a double take. That was Vidar’s number, but according to Magnus, he should be dead.
I should’ve known better. Was this him calling to chide me for my betrayal? For playing both sides, in favor of keeping Magnus safe. I’d had to reveal my deception to save her, not even forty-eight hours ago. “Hello,” I answered coolly.
“Bragi the Betrayer.” Vidar didn’t sound like a dead man. “It’s certainly got a ring to it.”
“So does Vidar the Silent God, but it’s never held true.” I summoned the nickname given to him in myths and retellings. Several of which he’d been responsible for propagating.
His chuckle was dry and humorless. A bit like him. “Are you caring for a specific Valkyrie as we speak?”
My blood ran cold. My home and its inhabitants should be undetectable here, thanks to a combination of my magic and the corner of the fae realm I resided in. I was going to call his bluff and assume he didn’t actually know. “I’m talking to you. I’m making coffee. I’m not caring for anyone.”
“Hmm. Well, if she comes knocking, keep her away from Dahlia.”
I couldn’t reveal too much, or I’d give away how I knew. “It’s my understanding Dahlia is dead. Then again, you’re supposed to be as well.” Would I have heard that from anyone besides Magnus? I still had other contacts in TOM. How many of his soldiers thought he was gone?
“In that case, continue to believe that.”
I had so many questions, and didn’t trust that he’d give me any usable answers. “You know I betrayed you. What makes you think—”
“Because I know why you did it, and that she’s with you now. Keep her there long enough for me to destroy Fenrir, and I’ll consider us even.”
I doubted that. I also didn’t want to see Fenrir actually die—it was a relief to know that he and Dahlia were alive. However, while their safety was nice, it wasn’t an intense, driving motivator in my life. I had Magnus in my grasp. I could hold onto her…
Was that fucked-up and wrong? Of course. Knowing as much didn’t stop me from entertaining the possibility.
“Keep your prize,” Vidar said. “Or I can finish what I started with Magnus, as well. I’m doing you a favor.”
Uh-huh. “I doubt that.”
“I don’t want to watch the world burn any more than you do.”
I heard that a lot. I’d said it a few times myself. There were a surprisingly large number of ways to interpret a statement like his. “No,” I said. “You just want to lightly scorch it and remake it in your image.”
“It won’t impact you unless you get in the way. Why do you give a fuck? Besides, you have her now.”
I hung up and tossed the phone aside, not caring that it clattered loudly on the table and slid to a stop at the edge.
Magnus’s grief was barely muted, despite her being in the other room. A few words, and I could change that.
And if I did, she’d go after Vidar again. She may not come back this time.
The world would be a bleak place without Magnus in it. I loathed the thought enough that it made my gut churn.
I didn’t have to keep this secret forever, or even as long as Vidar had asked me to. Once Magnus was better, once she’d recovered, she could know the truth. She’d hate me when she found out. The kind of loathing I could dine on for centuries.
But I’d have her until then, and she’d be alive when all was said and done.
I finished preparing the food, wiped any trace of my reaction to the conversation with Vidar from my face or mind, and returned to Magnus and Nico in the bedroom.
Whether or not to comply with Vidar’s request was an easy decision, and the answer was the one that kept Magnus safe and close to me.
