Foretold (17 page)

Chapter Sixteen

A shelf of snow-covered branches from leafless trees filled the view from the parking lot of the Heavener Runestone area.

We’d all gone back to bed that morning, but I doubted anyone had slept much. After a late breakfast, Vanir had placed his finger over his lips and pulled me silently from the house. Hallur came limp-running through the front door as we peeled out of their driveway.

They didn’t want Vanir away from them.

But he and I both knew he wasn’t safe anywhere. Not with magic in play.

My eyes burned from exhaustion. Unease rested heavy in my gut, eating my stomach raw. Though he didn’t say, I knew Vanir had brought me here to see the stone because he believed he wouldn’t last the night. Lifting my face, I closed my eyes and let the snow melt on my cheeks. I wanted to scream.

“I always get the urge to yell, ‘I can see my house from here!’ when I stand here.” Vanir stood tall on an outcropping of rock, his blond hair whipping about his head because he hadn’t bothered to grab two hats. He’d pulled his own over my head. “Of course, I can’t really see my house.”

The view stole my breath, the valley below deep and sparkling white in every direction.

Odin had loved to sit high in his chair and look down at the world. Vanir liked trees, wanted to fly.... I looked past him to the drop-off, the land that stretched out for miles.

Vanir was already changing. Power radiated off him in tingly, electric waves.

He turned, smiled at me, and the warmth in his eyes twisted me all up. I was completely attached. Didn’t matter, though. He wouldn’t return my feelings long. Even if we managed to survive the night, he’d hate me once he learned I might have known who murdered his friends.

The little bit of sleep I’d gotten had cleared my head enough to make me realize the giant couldn’t be responsible for two of those deaths. Vanir was right about the night Steven died. The woods had been as quiet as death. And I hadn’t imagined the lavender scent. But it made no sense because Coral had said Mom was there. She couldn’t be in two places at once.

Shame burned steady inside my chest. I should tell him. But I was selfish—wanted this last day with him. I held up the cell phone he’d let me borrow. “I’m going to call my sister now. Give her your number so she can reach me.”

He nodded and turned back to the view. I dialed Kat.

“It’s freaking weird seeing the word
Vanir
in my caller ID,” Kat said without even a hello. “Didn’t his Norse mama know that Odin was actually a part of the Aesir?”

“Kat, what if I’d let Vanir call you?” His name did carry a certain irony. The Aesir were the main gods who lived in Asgard—the highest level of the Norse nine worlds. The Vanir were the other gods—the ones always at war with the Aesir.

She snorted. “Then he’d answer my question.”

I frowned. Her voice sounded a little shaky. “Are you okay?”

“Honestly?” She sighed. “No. Been a bad, bad couple of days. Dru here, by the way.”

I’d started to pace, but stopped. Shivered when the wind picked up. I turned to cradle the phone out of it. “That’s impossible. I thought she was here and Coral swears she’s there.”

“I can’t explain it yet, but she is. I heard her voice. And if we thought she’d been acting crazy before, it’s nothing compared to now. She’s set up a wicked little alliance with a real, certifiable pyromaniac. His name...wait for it...is Sutter.”

I closed my eyes, thought of the stories from
The Poetic Edda
, how the fire giant Surt would battle—”You found your warrior.”

“I did. Peaceboy here is carrying the soul of Freyr.”

“Peaceboy?”

“Gentle as the summer snow, he is.” She laughed, then started coughing.

“Kat?” I yelled into the phone. “Are you sick? Hurt? What’s going on?”

“It’s been a cold night. Well, the part of it I spent alone under the blanket, anyway. Peaceboy is awfully warm.”

“Um.”

She burst out laughing again. “Don’t worry, it’s all good. Well, except for the pyro, the cold, the insane progenitor and, oh, an all-consuming fire even I didn’t expect.”

My heart stuttered. The resignation in her voice scared the crap out of me. I flashed back to my nightmare of her hanging from that tree. “That’s it. We have to figure out where Mom really is and we have to get together somehow. I can’t stand this. Between you and fire and Coral and tidal waves...” I let my sentence just drift away. Didn’t need to elaborate because her answering silence told me she knew exactly what I was feeling.

“I love you, Raven.”

I clutched the phone, squeezed my eyes shut tight to keep in tears. Kat had said it before but she never, ever prompted it. Why now? “I love you, too.”

“Hey, I gotta go. We’ve got a problem here.”

“Call me later. At this number. Let me know you’re okay.”

“I will.” She was silent for a long moment, but didn’t hang up. “Hey, Raven? Be safe, okay?”

“You, too, Kat.”

I hung up, feeling as if my heart might shrivel up and plunk out into the snow. Everything was happening too fast and I couldn’t help but feel something or someone was doing their best to change fate. Mom was the biggest suspect and I understood why she’d want to take out the warriors who were possibly her daughter’s murderers, but all the other stuff? The winter was supposed to be the first sign of Ragnarok. Was supposed to last three years before the next part started. It was all happening at once and something told me that’s what we needed to be figuring out.

“You ready to see the coolest piece of history in the United States?” Vanir jumped off the rocks, came toward me with his long-legged stride. I held my breath when he stopped so close I could feel the heat coming off his body. His nose was red from the cold.

I stared at him, at this boy I shouldn’t be so crazy about, and thought about how little time we could have together. Stretching on my toes, I kissed his red nose. “I’ve always wanted to see this.”

“Kisses. I like.” He took my hand and we walked toward the park entrance. “With your background, I’m kind of shocked you haven’t come through here.” He pointed down the path. “That rock wall and those steps took years to build.”

The walkway and steps were slippery from the snow. They wound down and around with rock walls of different heights. A few places had handrails, like the beginning area that held an empty outdoor-theater-type place. Vanir kept one of my hands warm as he held tight—which turned out to be a good thing because the trail down was crazy dangerous in this weather. There were things buried beneath the slush, like cracks in the rock and fallen branches. The snow grew steadily stronger. I tucked in my chin. “I hear running water.”

“Two creeks run through here. Normally, it’s more fun to go off trail—there are cool places where the rocks jut out. But some are cracked and they’re too slippery right now, anyway.

I looked up at the jutting cliff sides, saw strands of silvery icicles. “Bet this place is gorgeous when it’s all green.”

“It is. It’s even better in the fall when all the leaves are changing colors.” Vanir grabbed me when I slipped again. “There’s supposed to be a chamber under the ground, too. A lot of people think it’s a burial ground and the runestone is actually a marker for it. The stone is in that building.”

Squinting into the snow, I made out a building that reminded me of beach houses I’d seen in North Carolina. The wood had weathered above the half stone walls. There was a row of tall windows over the snow-covered roof, like a second story.

Wasn’t any warmer inside the place.

My mouth dropped open when I saw the stone. Pictures didn’t do it justice. The thing stretched twelve feet into the air and about ten feet across. I wanted so much to touch the ancient symbols pecked into the surface, feel something that someone—one of my ancestors, maybe—had created. But glass panels surrounded it.

“I feel no power here,” I murmured.

“Because there isn’t any.” He stared at the rock. “This is only a marker—and not for a burial chamber, either. I’m glad there isn’t any power. If there was, I wonder if it would trigger your
rune tempus
. There are security cameras in here to keep people from scratching things into the glass, so explaining that would be fun.”

There were other, much smaller stones behind glass as well as writings about the lady who first believed the stone was a Viking artifact. I looked at the rune alphabets, but my gaze kept returning to the big one. “It’s cool.”

Lame, I know. But if I couldn’t touch the thing, I’d rather see the place of real power, the gloaming grove.

Guess Vanir figured that out because he chuckled, took my hand again. We went back up the path. I was so ready for another mug of hot chocolate. And maybe a hot bath.

I caught a glimpse of wild turkeys poking around in the snow and felt bad for them. Wondered where they’d go, what they’d do with such a long stretch of cold. Once away from the buildings, we moved off the path and into the trees. I felt more energy in the forest than I had near that rock.

“Is it safe to talk now?” I teased.

“Yeah. I know it seems stupid, but generations of my family have kept this secret. It’s an old habit.”

“But you do realize your family could set a lot of speculation to rest, right? You could let these people know that it is a runestone, that it isn’t a date carved on there, or a grave marker—or a prank.”

He slipped his hands in his coat pockets. “It was carved to throw people off on purpose. I’m not about to be the one to spill the beans.”

“When Hallur mentioned keeping it safe, I remembered reading about how people from other religions used to destroy sacred groves. How they’d cut the ancient, powerful trees to the ground, burn the earth to destroy the magic. I always wondered if the gloaming groves were a little like ley lines under the earth—the ones true witches tap into for power.”

He shook his head. “It’s nothing like those.”

“I thought you said you’d been forbidden to step in it.”

He grinned. “You haven’t known a lot of preteen boys, have you?”

“So what was it like?”

“I think you should feel it for yourself.”

“But you and your brothers said it’s a secret, that your family protects it. You’ve only known me a little while.”

“I trust you.”

Shame burned inside me, made my forehead break out in a sweat despite the cold. “Why?”

He stepped close, so close I could feel his warmth through my borrowed clothes. “You breathed life into my body this morning and you have to ask?”

Blushing, I whispered, “What do you really think is going to happen in that grove? What do you think the ‘turning’ is?”

He put his hands on my waist, pulled me against him, leaned down and kissed me. I stood on my toes and closed my eyes to better concentrate on the softness of his mouth. The deep and crazy tingling I felt in my belly.

“I wish I knew,” he whispered against my lips. “But in case it’s something bad, I think we should spend the afternoon doing something good.”

Oh, I agreed. Completely.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and was just sinking into another soul-stealing kiss when a humming sound filtered through the trees. The metallic humming I’d heard that first night with him. When Steven died.

Vanir heard it, too.

He went stiff, his eyes wide and so close to mine I could see flecks of lighter brown and gold in them. My skin prickled as the stink of bad magic came on the wind. Terror kicked in—rigid and slicing and suffocating. I bunched handfuls of his coat in my hands. “We need to get back to your truck. Now.”

He nodded, his mouth tightening. “Let’s go through the woods—the path is too open. Risky.” He tugged on my hand before turning farther into the trees. I followed, sure he knew this area pretty well.

A streak of gray ran past, stark against all the white.

“Vanir,” I said suddenly. Pulled him to a stop.

“What?” He turned to see what I did. Geri and Freak creeping silently toward us, their black lips curled in snarls as they faced something behind me.

I turned to look but saw only a thick forest with faint glimpses of the rock wall beyond. We seemed to be moving away from the park, not toward the parking lot at all. “Vanir, where are we going?”

“Not in the direction the wolves are facing.”

I didn’t want to be in these woods in the snow. Not again. I’d had enough of that on the first night.

Vanir picked up the pace until we were jogging. The wolves spread out to run about five feet out on either side of us. My skin crawled with magic. Panic—alive and clawing—threatened to break free of my chest. I felt her, Urd, stirring and the magic tickled my throat. The fall of snow picked up and I tightened my fingers on his right before lightning rent the sky and a roll of thunder shook the earth.

And on the tail of that thunder came the sound of dogs.

A lot of dogs. And wolves.

“We have to hurry!” Vanir picked up the pace.

I struggled to follow, my breath misting in the air in front of me as I ran. A tree branch slapped my cheek, the sting bringing tears to my eyes. I had to blink hard and keep my hands in front of my face in places. When we got to the parking lot, Vanir ran to his truck and opened the tailgate for Geri and Freak. We scrambled into the cab and had just reached the road leading down when the first dogs burst from the forest. Two Dobermans, followed by small terriers and then a husky. Behind the dogs came coyotes...and my mouth dropped open when I saw three huge spotted cats.

“Vanir, look!” I pointed.

“Bobcats.” He frowned, then squinted as even more dogs came from the trees. They ran at the truck as Vanir sped up, their barks loud, some kind of yippy, but some sounding ferocious.

I closed my eyes, scared we’d hit one of them, but Vanir managed to avoid the dogs and get us back to the park entrance. Twisting in my seat so I could look out the back, I watched as more dogs joined the others. Their determined strides ate up the ground fast—but not as fast as the truck.

“They aren’t going to stop following us.” I turned back to look out of the side window and saw flashes of brown and black among the trees.