Crux (25 page)

No. No, no, no, no!

I wheel around, summoning fire from the burning bodies in the field behind us. My arm works as flamethrower, slinging a stream of blazing heat directly at Jeff’s assailant, remembering the story of Gunnarr Blot Jeff first shared in the coffee shop.

It’s Haddr, Thorolf’s traitorous son.

The flame turns blue as it hits Haddr. Fire covers him for a second, burning without affecting him, before it bounces off and dissipates. He nods toward me, his hateful smile pure evil.

Fenris whimpers and growls next to me. I wonder why he won’t attack, and I realize he probably can’t.
Bound by some law of the curse that prevents interference.

Jeff’s bloody fingers shake as he digs under the arm of his breastplate. His blue eyes find mine, piercing my soul with their sorrow.

Haddr is too busy pushing his sword deeper into his father to notice when Jeff turns and plunges the dagger in his son’s chest.

“No!” Haddr roars.

Father and son slump to the earth.

Grey? Where are you?

I rush forward and place Alarr in Jeff’s hand, bending his fingers around the amulet, and say, “Now! Dad, say the words.”

I blink back tears, but they spill free, sliding down my face. Only now do I realize that for King Thorolf Graylock to be at rest, I must lose Jeff as well. Maybe I knew all along but refused to believe.

“Birdie!”

I lift my head. Two enemy soldiers follow the sprinting form of Grey. He races toward me, closing the gap between us, but he’s still too far to help. Without Alarr’s power, he’s no faster than those pursuing him. I can’t take my eyes from him as he nears us, only to be overtaken not ten yards away. He whirls to his opponents. His sword punctures the chest of one man, but he can’t retrieve it before the Englishman’s comrade swings. The solider levels an axe at Grey’s belly with both hands.

My position makes it impossible to see if he avoids the blade.

I shift my weight. My neck twists so I can stare Haddr in the eye. His lips peel back in a sneer. The dying man’s hand stretches out, groping near the end of a broken spear in the mud. He grabs hold and glares at me.

I stand cemented in place.

Haddr’s spine straightens, despite the knife in his chest. He bends his arm, releases the spear, and sends it hurtling through the air toward me.

My hands fly out, but I’m weak without the amulet, too slow to avoid the barb.

The blow to my ribs bowls me over. Upended, my head plummets toward the earth, hitting the dirt with a dull thud. Air explodes from my lungs. Pushing up on the palms of both hands, I try to rise, but someone lies sprawled on top of me, pinning me under the weight.

I shift beneath the heavy body, sure I’ve been dealt a death blow, but there’s no pain. Wresting a hand free, I run a hand down my side but no spear pierces the flesh anywhere.

Did it miss?

I wriggle until I’m out from under the body holding me down. My legs drag the ground as I twist to gaze at the face of the man who saved my life.

“No, no, no!”

26

The end of Haddr’s spear protrudes from Grey’s stomach. Another red tide exits a ten-inch gash I assume came from the Englishman’s axe.

“Oh, Grey. What did you do?”

He struggles to lift his head. I ease his shoulders onto my lap, his head resting against my thigh. Blood dots his lips and teeth as he coughs.

I want to hold him but can’t see how without hurting him. Enfolding his hand within mine, I lower my lips to brush his forehead. “
Why?
”

He peers up at me with those incredible, ice-blue eyes, soft and serene. There is no regret in them. “I’m your Guardian,” he chokes out. “You belong to me.”

“I do,” I say. “I always will.”

Jeff crawls toward us, dragging his dying son alongside him. Death stalks my mentor, a drain in color shows in the deepening shadows around his eyes. He grabs at our hands, reaching for mine as it rests inside Grey’s.

“I repent of all evil, embrace what is Holy.”
Jeff’s voice is strained. He struggles to
repeat the words of release given by the monks.

I don’t begrudge him his freedom, but I can’t care anymore. My family, my world is dying before my eyes.

“Return to life’s natural order, find no dwelling place here.”
Jeff continues his prayer through gritted teeth.

Grey coughs again. Pink foams at the corner of his mouth, and I wipe it away, unable to bear the sight. A rattle starts in his chest. Pain saws at my heart, more real, more acute than any sword could ever be.

I curse the tears that pour from my eyes, blurring his perfect image. Jeff was right when he said emotion clouds judgment. We snubbed his warning. Now it’s too late. “I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

Haddr stops moaning and stills.

Jeff pushes Alarr into the axe wound in Grey’s abdomen. His eyes blink wide, he groans and rolls his head from side to side.

Jeff takes my hand together with Grey’s and forces our fingers against the amulet, driving it deep into Grey’s torn flesh.

“Don’t! We’re hurting him.”

Blood seeps over my fingers.

Grey’s lips move as if trying to speak, but I’m unable to hear him.

“Go to your eternal rest; be at peace,” Jeff says.

Grey’s eyes flutter closed. My throat constricts.
No. No, no, no. “
Don’t leave me. Oh, don’t leave me alone,” I wail. “I love you! Please … don’t leave me!”

Jeff’s last breath exits in a hush of air as he slumps and drops to his side.

My body is numb. I can’t remember how to think or even breathe, and my head sinks down on Grey’s chest. It’s still warm.

Something about his heat, coupled with the knowledge he’ll soon grow stiff and cold, snaps my ability to cope.

I sob and sob until everything goes black.

• • •

I might have passed out. Or slept. I don’t know, but I know I’m awake when my ears start to ring, and my eyes open.

Murky shapes blend together in the night. The idea of being the only one left alive on a field of corpses makes my body quake from head to toe.

The ringing in my brain grows louder. Images of the battle flood my mind.

Grey. Where are you?

Shifting in the dirt, I scramble to my hands and knees. My clothes resist movement, stiff with dried blood. As my arms stretch outward, I grope along the ground until I bump against something solid. My fingers curl back. I don’t want to touch anyone that isn’t Grey.

My heart beats faster with the realization I’m on my own again.

Help me, God.

Lost and freezing, surrounded by broken bodies of the dead, I’ve never been so alone.

Panic seizes my chest. I wrap my arms around my waist and squeeze.

“Fenris?” My voice is raw and hoarse. “Fenris! Are you here, boy?”

Every muscle aches when I move. Half an arrow is still stuck in my back, but nothing hurts like my heart.

Grey’s death leaves a crater sized hole I know will never heal.

Padding feet beat the ground in the distance, and a wolf howls.

Please, let that be Fenris
. If it isn’t, just let me die. The part of me that broke when Grey’s heart stopped doesn’t care if I do.

A white glow appears a few feet away—an odd light that reminds me of the color the fire turned when it hit Haddr. The black wolf trots through the luminous energy and comes to rest beside me.

Fenris.

I lean against him, stroke his soft fur and listen to the rhythmic thuds in his chest.

The light grows, spreading wider, illuminating the forest around me and turning tree trunks and snow covered leaves an eerie blue. The casualties of war glitter with frost until fog swirls across the field covering the still forms, including Grey.

Eyes closed, his face is serene, still mesmerizing, even in death, and it tears my soul in smaller pieces. I creep forward, reach out to touch him, knowing it’s not really him anymore.

Fenris whines.

“Oh, God.” I whisper as the void Grey left swallows me whole. Tears drip from my eyes, run down my cheeks and off my quivering lip. I swipe them with my arm but more flow.

Why?
My soul groans the question there’s no answer to.

“I … I don’t know what to do …” I sob and clutch a fist to my heart. The pain swells until I’m sure the organ will burst. “We’re all alone now, boy,”

“Not alone, Rebecca Starling Orin.” The voice comes from within my head, a deep, male bass.

The light grows brighter, exposing the entire field until I’m forced to lift a hand to shield my eyes from the glare. Bodies waver in the mist. Like a mirage, they shimmer and rise up from the ground before they disappear.

I’d swear I dreamed it if not for the bitter cold that bites at my hands and face.

Jeff’s body floats a few inches off the field, not five feet from me, along with Haddr and Grey’s. I scuttle backwards on my butt to get away. Their limp forms rise and hang vertically as if hoisted by invisible wires. Their heads loll to the side, ashen faces sleep, reminding me of sick marionettes in a child’s nightmare.

Thunder cracks in my ears, and the ringing stops. Increasing fog clouds the three figures before me. Blue light flashes, blinding me for a moment. When my eyes clear, Jeff is alive, standing before me.

His face and body change—morphing into someone I don’t know—yet he’s strangely familiar. He wears a glittering, white robe, trimmed with silver embroidery. His hair and beard hang straight, undisturbed by wind. There’s no blood, no wound that mars his handsome visage. He’s King Thorolf in his original form. I know him now—the Viking warrior I met at the runes on my first snowy vision with Alarr.

I push to my feet and bend in a little bow—it seems appropriate somehow. Thorolf bows in return, holding out a hand toward Fenris. “The time is nigh, my old friend.”

My heart jolts.
Time for what?

Fenris pushes up until he’s standing on his hind legs. The cracking of bones reverberates as his front paws straighten to arms. His shoulders arch back, widening; his fur becomes a black cloak. Snout and tail retract, and with one last snap of his spine, he’s transformed into a man.

“Fenris?” I whisper.

He steps toward me, touches my face with his fingertips. The heat radiating off him surprises me. Jet black hair frames his pale face, and his eyes bore into mine. Amber in color, his irises glow and swirl as if filled with molten rock. I’m caught into their depths. I fear him as a man in a way I never did as my wolf.

Rebecca … my fair Rebecca
, a voice inside my head calls.

My body sways forward.

“Fenris, enough.” Thorolf raises a hand. “Our agreement?”

Fenris hesitates before stepping away. The mist recedes, revealing hundreds of Viking warriors behind them. To Jeff’s left stands a woman not much older than me. She is blond, too, lithe, gorgeous, but whether she is daughter or wife, I have no clue. Haddr is conspicuously absent.

“You’re free now?” I ask Thorolf, though I know the answer.

He nods.

My heart lifts for his sake. “Can I come?” My voice hitches with my question. I have nothing to live for without them.

“No,” he says.

I figured as much, but my chest aches all over again.

“You’ve done well, my daughter. You were a better steward than I. You chose to serve something outside yourself and remembered the poor. I told you, if you were successful you would earn a prize much greater than wealth. Now Orn Strongwing, live your life. Accept your reward.”

His words echo the ones he spoke the first day we met, but I never understood.
What reward? Money? I don’t want it. A safe life all by myself? No thank you.

“I don’t care about anything now but you, Jeff. Grey’s …” I swallow. “I have no one if you leave me here.” The lump in my throat sticks and won’t move. Tears burn behind my lids, but I refuse to cry again.

Jeff turns his head aside and says, “All hail Orn Strongwing!”

The Viking army raises its weapons. “All hail Orn Strongwing!”

He’s saying goodbye. I feel it coming.
Don’t go.
My eyes dart from Fenris to Jeff.
Please? Please, please, please don’t go.

“Our bond goes beyond friendship,” Jeff says. “A piece of me, I leave with you. Farewell, Birdie Orin.”

“
No!
”

Another bolt of blue flame explodes, and they’re gone. It’s as if the paparazzi got hold of me, and a hundred camera flashes went off at once.

Pain erupts within both sockets. I blink, but my eyesight doesn’t work. I stumble around, scrub my lids trying to clear my vision. Giving up, I collapse in a heap. I have absolutely no idea what to do next and really don’t care.

“Bird?” The voice is Grey’s.

Oh, good. I’m crazy
and
blind.

“Bird, it’s me, Grey.” My eyes still refuse to focus. Maybe everything was a dream. From the day I met Jeff, everything I’ve been through was one, long fantasy, concocted to escape my loneliness.

The outer edges of my vision start to clear until I can just make out the brown, dead grass of winter beneath me. Something grabs my hands. I snatch them away and kick out with my foot only to be lifted up inside a pair of strong arms.

“Bird, it’s over. Gunnarr Blot is finished.” Imaginary Grey kisses my cheeks and forehead. He rubs his head against mine, nuzzling my neck. Warm breath falls on my face.

I accept I’m a complete nutcase now, but it feels good to be insane.

“Talk to me.” His voice is more intense, fingers biting into my flesh. “Are you okay? When Haddr took you, I thought I’d …” He shifts my weight, holding me tighter in his arms.

My circle of blindness shrinks again. The hand around me sports a silver ring—a Celtic braid just like Grey wears.

I’m pretty sure I’m delirious. “My friend has a ring just like that.”

“Your friend?” he says, as if insulted. “Okay, that’s it.”

Lips press to mine. They’re soft and strong. Maybe its shock, but I don’t care. I give in to my imagination.

I’ll stay crazy forever if it means I can touch him. My arms go around his neck, and I kiss him back, my breath fast through my nose. Our lips part. His hand slides up my back, and he presses me tighter. The arrow in my shoulder sends a throbbing message to my brain, and I cry out.

“Oh, baby, I’m sorry,” he says.

I lift my head, open my eyes, and try to see through the blinding haze.

“You’re dead.” I say it like an accusation.

“I’m not dead.”

“You are, too!”

My body sags.

He hefts me closer against his chest. “I’m alive, Bird. You can believe me. But we smell like a couple of yaks, the sun’s coming up, and we can’t be seen.”

No one but Grey talks like that, holds me like this.

“Come with me. I’ll explain everything.”

• • •

Grey takes me back to the hotel he shared with Jeff before Gunnarr Blot. It’s The White Hart Inn again. When Jeff and Grey got to town, they asked around about anyone fitting my description. A few pointed questions aimed at the kind and already worried Mrs. Appleton had apparently prompted her visit to our cottage on the eve of battle. If only she had told Grey of her concerns for me, he might have rescued me then.

Mrs. Appleton has no memory of meeting me before the war. She cocks her head sometimes as though she’s trying to remember, but gives up and pampers the “sister” of her most handsome guest.

Sister. Ha!

Mrs. Appleton is sympathetic to Grey’s tale of my supposed illness and consequent loss of luggage at the airport. She obliges us by loaning me a bathrobe until Grey buys me new clothes.

My sight is still not a hundred percent, but has returned enough that I can find my mouth with a spoon without dousing myself.

Grey sits on the edge of my bed where he and I share a plate of Shepherd’s Pie ordered from The Three Sisters Pub downstairs. I have no appetite. I just want Grey to explain how he’s breathing, but he insists that I eat. Thankful he’s alive, I humor him.

He leans over and kisses the top of my head, my nose and cheek. His shoulders lift as he sucks in a deep breath. “Jeff had a lot of time over the years to work out the details. Though he didn’t count on my taking a hit for you, turns out he had an answer for that, too.”

I roll the peas from my pie around in brown gravy and frown. “What happened to you?”

Grey reaches over; a finger raises my chin as if he didn’t have my full attention. “I remember lying in your arms. The pain wasn’t so bad … as long as I could look at you.”

I lift a brow.

He smiles. “It really wasn’t. Shock, adrenaline, I guess. I was happy or at least at peace with the choice I’d made. I wanted you to be the one who lived. Then Jeff put Alarr on me. Now
that
hurt. I felt it healing me from the inside out, fusing me back together. I believed I would live, but I couldn’t talk, couldn’t tell you not to worry.”

I glance at my wrist. Yesterday, an Englishman’s knife left a four-inch long gash there. Today the wound is gone. It must have been the same healing power that cured Grey.

“The next thing I knew,” he says, “I was on the battlefield, watching you say goodbye to Jeff, or the king. I’ve never seen anything like that.”