Forecast (13 page)

“I don’t like it much, either.” I let him carry me, wrapping my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist.

He hurried inside. “At least whoever is in your house will be standing around like a statue.”

I immediately thought of the way that dark elf’s hand had slowly moved. “There are notepads right on the coffee table. Pens, too. Put me down. You can look through the house. Or not. It could be another elf—one better at fighting through the
rune tempus
.”

He set me on the blue cushions on my wicker couch, picked up a candle lighter and lit a set of fat pillars we kept on a long platter on the coffee table. The light helped dispel the darkness, but threw creepy shadows into the corners of the room. My norn didn’t seem to be moving as she usually did when it was time for a message. She always seemed restless, as if she hated the way we had to communicate—hated being locked inside someone else’s body. She was eerily quiet this time. I cried out when another cramp hit me, and between one blink and the next, I was no longer in my living room.

Chapter Eight

I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to stop the whimpers as the pain slashed through me. It felt like being pierced by icy swords. Rocking on the couch, I gripped the pen, scared I’d drop it and my norn would find a more painful way to get her message out.

When I opened my eyes, I still wasn’t in my living room. The pain let up and I stood, my legs shaky as I blinked into the glare of bright sun. Wherever I was, it had been snowing because a pristine field of untouched snow spread out in some kind of ravine. No—I squinted—not a ravine. Even though it was covered in layers of precipitation, it had a man-made feel to it...ancient man-made. Like an arena that should have had stone columns and stairs fanning out in a huge circle. This place was long past standing columns.

Magic permeated the ground here—like hundreds of witches had poured liquid spells into the earth. It saturated everything.

Wherever this was, it had once been a sacred place. Even the air had a taste that tingled on the tongue. Like the pure extract of lemon I’d unfortunately tasted once, which turned out to be 80 percent tongue-burning alcohol.

A rumble shook the earth, followed by a cracking noise so loud, I ducked and covered my ears, because it sounded like the world around me was splitting in two. Like a crash of thunder, only louder. Deeper. The ground quaked as a massive furrow crept jaggedly along the entire arena floor. Snow spilled into the hole as it grew wider.

Three pairs of hands appeared, holding on to the rocky edges.

I sucked in a breath and held it as bodies followed the hands. Bodies with long, white hair topping shoulders as wide as the wall of cabinets in my kitchen. Rugged, burlap clothes, like loincloths, covered the two men and one woman who pulled themselves out of the earth. The woman had a wide strip of the material across her breasts.

Giants.

They were
actual giants
and they were coming into our realm.

I looked for a place to hide, but when I took a step, my feet didn’t disturb the snow. I wasn’t really wherever this was—I was only an observer. An observer who could feel and taste the magic. Shivering, I watched as the giants didn’t bother to look around. They merely walked as if encumbered by their own weight, side by side, as they left the arena

Dizziness swamped me and I shut my eyes hard, held my breath. This time, when I peeked, I still wasn’t home. But I wasn’t in a ravine, either. Now, I stood on the slope of a mountain. A steep slope, because the urge to fall forward had me groping the crooked limb of a tree. My hand went through the wood. Why I felt gravity was a complete mystery. I ran my hand through the tree a couple more times before a huge rumbling shook the ground under my ghost feet. One of the tree limbs snapped in two and rolled down the slope, falling into a new crack appearing—right in the side of the mountain. Two pairs of hands came out to grip the sides this time.

More giants pulled themselves from the crevice and did the same as the others—began walking without checking out their surroundings. They never looked at each other, merely moved forward in huge, lumbering strides that took up a lot of ground. I watched them until they became specs in the distance.

When a black feather fluttered in front of my face, I reached out instinctively. My finger went through the plume. Someone gasped behind me. I spun, shock tightening every muscle in my body when my mother and I stared at each other. She wore a strange, black-feathered coat that covered most of her body and her face was...off. My mother wore makeup, brushed her hair. She never looked like a drug addict who’d just crawled out of a dirty gutter.

Her surprise, greater than mine, mangled her features for an instant before she narrowed her eyes and looked at me in a way my mother had never done before. Resentment burned in eyes the same gray color as mine before she suddenly spun into the air and disappeared, leaving with a loud crash of noise—like breaking glass.

Stunned, I stupidly tried to grab hold of the tree again and felt myself falling. I tucked my head in my arms but didn’t roll. I didn’t move at all. The cloying scent of lavender hit me, and I gagged and sat up to find myself on the floor of my kitchen. Below me, in huge sweeps of black Sharpie were the runes. I had never had visions and the runes together before. Never missed the writing of them.

“Jotnar on the march,” I read aloud. My stomach was sore from all the pain before. I winced and crossed my arms over it, forgetting I held the black marker. It got all over Taran’s coat.

The thought of Taran made me stagger to my feet. I went from room to room, panic growing as I didn’t find him. The scent of lavender was so strong!

My mind couldn’t seem to grasp the fact that I’d just watched frost giants crawling out of the earth, that my
rune tempus
had showed me, and told me, that they were marching. A double punch because there was only one reason they were on the move.

The snow, the waves tearing up the land...and now the creatures showing up. Not just the giants, but that thing Taran and I had seen in the restaurant. If this was Ragnarok, it was happening instantly—it wasn’t the drawn-out years of tribulation we had been taught to expect.

My heart pounded as I ran into the front yard. I’d seen my mother with me on the mountain, but I’d also seen her take off into the air. So she could have been here during the first part of my vision.

I was pretty sure she’d been wearing Freyja’s coat. Made of falcon feathers, it was supposed to have given the goddess the power of shape-shifting...and flight. How
my mother
got her hands on such a thing was beyond my comprehension.

Josh and Grim still stood frozen where they’d been before. One of the Jeep doors hung open. I noticed people’s faces—lots of people’s faces—staring out at Josh and Grim from neighbors’ houses. It looked like everyone was taking people in. That would explain all the vehicles.

I pushed suspended snowflakes from in front of my face as I ran out into the street. The scent of lavender came to me again, and because there was no breeze during my
rune tempus
, I didn’t know which direction it came from.

But the smell, as always, sent adrenaline-fueled worry into me. I ran around the side of the house.

And found Taran on the back porch.

Only his feet were visible at first, and I stopped at the edge of my backyard, momentarily too terrified to walk closer because he was lying on his back. I was so scared my mother had somehow reached him while I’d been locked in my vision.

Shaking, I approached the porch, then breathed a sigh of relief when I heard him groan. I knelt next to him, searching for signs of a wound.

“I’m okay,” he said on a long sigh as he kept his eyes closed. “Just completely weirded out. I came out here and a woman who looked like a dirty, crazy, older version of you in a black-feathered coat pointed a little crossbow at me.” He pointed toward the house. “She missed, got pissed, and I swear she cracked open the atmosphere or something and disappeared.” He touched the back of his head. “I’d claim pain from the fall scrambled my brain, but all that happened before I hit the deck.”

I stood and walked to where he’d pointed. “It’s an ice arrow,” I murmured. An ice arrow would melt, the water would hold onto spells well, so it made a good weapon. And she could have dipped it into something. Spelled it.

But I’d taken her poison.

Then I remembered the day I’d last seen her, when she’d locked herself in her room and Raven, Kat and I had found datura. That could work as a poison, too. It wasn’t as deadly as the snake venom, but if my mother had attached spells to it, it could be.

I wrapped my arms around my waist, shaking. This wasn’t like her at all. But then, I’d just looked into her eyes in a vision trip, and what I had seen was nothing like her. Plus, this time she’d been moving during my
rune tempus
. So had the giants. I frowned. The elf hadn’t, though.

Taran groaned again as he sat up.

I walked back to help him stand, then brushed snow off the back of his black coat.

“Coral, why didn’t your mother just hit me with my hammer?”

“I still don’t see why she’d be out there hitting kids with a hammer—I just don’t.” I paused. “Unless you think those kids had god souls.” That made sense. A lot of sense. Magnus had moved during my
rune tempus
. Then that would mean the kid who’d been hit on the pier must have had a soul, too, because he’d walked right by me. I opened my mouth to tell him about the visions but the world went into its return spin.

“You have the lousiest timing. Ever.” Taran didn’t hold on to me this time. Instead, he grabbed the railing on the porch and shut his eyes. “I wasn’t one of those kids who liked the spinning rides at amusement parks. Hated them so much. Going up high and dropping was my thing. Spinning is stupid.”

As soon as everything stopped, Josh and Grim started yelling in the front yard. The wind had died down after the storm, so it was easy to hear them.

“Where did they go?” Josh shouted.

“How should I know? They were right here and then poof.”

“She must have done that trance thing she told us about.”

“I don’t care, Josh. I’m freezing. Let’s go into the house.”

“You go first. The door is still open, and now our friends have disappeared.”

“
Huglausi skirja
,” Grim said, still sort of yelling. “Notice all the footsteps? They obviously went inside.” Grim was quiet a moment. “And came back out and went in again. What the hell were we doing while everyone else was apparently running around?”

“Let’s just go inside. My stomach is trying to eat the rest of my body and I can’t feel my toes.”

“Whining helps.”

The smacking noises and grunts after that told me they’d started fighting.

“I think we need some food.” I looked at Taran as he walked over to stare at the ice arrow.

“Coral, if I hadn’t moved, that thing would have hit me right in the chest.” He turned angry eyes my way. “Your mother was trying to kill me.”

I bit my lip as hot tears stung my eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“You said you came after me to protect me—that your mother wanted to hurt me.”

I nodded.

“This is a little more serious than hurt.” His hands closed into fists. “Did you know?”

“I didn’t want to believe that. But I found—” I broke off, finding it harder to say out loud. Knowing it myself was one thing, but it was as if letting the words come out of my mouth made it all too real. And it was real. Very, very real. I took a deep breath. “I found snake venom. The deadly kind. She’d ordered it.”

“So you think there’s venom on that ice arrow?”

I shook my head. “No, I took it before she knew it had arrived. It was from a sea snake.”

“Sea snake,” he muttered as he brushed his long bangs out of his eyes. “I remember enough of my mom’s stories to see the connection.” He stared so hard at me then, his anger felt like it physically reached out to smother me. “You should have told me everything.”

What could I say? I should have told him about the venom. I should have just accepted that my mother was no longer the kind of loopy but loving woman I’d grown up with. Yeah, she’d been overprotective and kept us on the move. Yeah, she’d raised three kids in tents in camps around some of the strangest people on earth. But she’d been trying to protect us and this...whatever she was doing here seemed different.

She’d been different in that vision. In fact, she hadn’t even seemed like the same person at all.

That thought gave me pause, but more scuffling sounds came from inside the house then a muffled, “What the hell is that?” from one of the twins—I couldn’t tell which.

Taran ran inside.

When I got to the small kitchen, all three boys were staring down at the huge, black runes on the kitchen floor. Josh handed a lit candle to Taran. He and Grim held two more.

“That wasn’t there before,” Taran murmured. He looked up at me and I flinched at the new suspicion in his expression. Suspicion aimed at me.

“I did it during the
rune tempus
.”

“Giants on the march,” Josh read. “Does it mean what it says? Are giants actually on the march? Why is that written on your floor? This was all during that trance thing again, wasn’t it?”

Right then, exhaustion threatened to send
me
to the floor. I didn’t feel like explaining. I just wanted to get away from the resentment roiling off Taran. I didn’t deserve his anger—not entirely. I’d been mostly honest with him. “You know what? I’m tired. I’m cold. I’m hungry. Today, a freaking wave chased us into a hotel, and I’m very scared that the part we saw was nothing like what’s happening in other places. It’s the end of the world. Do you guys understand? The. End. Of. The. World.” I was yelling by the time I got to the last two words.

They stared at me like I’d grown another head.

My shoulders slumped and I took the candle from Josh. “If anyone knows how to work the camp stove, please get it going. It’s on the back porch. I’ve got food in a deep freezer we should eat first.” I left them and walked into the garage. I quietly closed the door behind me and leaned against the wall. If he’d really seen my mother, then she’d been in both places nearly at the same time and she’d tried to kill Taran.