Transcendent (13 page)

Rafe glared at him silently and Toby let the matter drop.

“Mason,” he said quietly. “Just . . . do us all a favor and try really hard
not
to think of Gunnar, okay? It'll make it harder for him to find us and maybe—”

He didn't get to finish his sentence.

The gray-skinned monster dropped from the tree above their heads and landed on the back of the carriage horse, digging into the animal's withers with sharp-taloned fingers and baring long yellow teeth. The horse screamed in pain and fear and the carriage careened wildly as it reared and took off at a bucking gallop.

“Draugr!” Mason shouted unnecessarily as the thing fixed its glowing, milky-white eyes upon her.

Fennrys was already leaping over the front rail of the carriage and onto the horse's rump. Before the storm zombie could react, Fenn ran his blade straight through the thing's rib cage and thrust the draugr off the horse onto the gravel path. The carriage wheels running over its desiccated frame made the sickening sound of bundled kindling snapping.

Maddox was shouting warnings that Mason couldn't make out over the chaos of trying to control the galloping horse. When she finally managed to haul the animal under control, she saw what he'd been yelling about. Through the mists that carpeted the park, illuminated by the sodium-orange glow of lamplight, Mason saw that the whole of Central Park was alive with lurching, snarling gray figures. They dropped from the trees and clawed through bushes and hauled themselves out of the lake . . .

And they were all converging on the carriage.

“Friends of yours?” Maddox yelled at Fennrys, who still crouched on the back of the horse, hanging onto the harness with one hand, his dagger clutched in the other, now stained black with monster blood.

“Oh, yeah . . .” Fenn grinned viciously. “I've missed these guys.”

“I haven't,” Toby grunted.

In all of the chaos, Mason hadn't noticed before, but she could swear that the fencing coach's beard had turned gray in just the last few hours. The hair at his temples, too. And there were lines at the corners of his eyes that she'd never seen before. But his aim was still dead-on as he stood up in the front seat and lunged over the side, driving his blade through the eye of a draugr trying to scrabble into the carriage.

They were surrounded.

In the backseat, Rafe manifested his coppery blade and hacked away at another snarling apparition, and Cal called up a wave out of the nearby park lake to sweep another pair of draugr back and drag them under the water. Maddox snared a draugr with his chain and hauled it close enough for Fennrys to punch it dead. But they just kept coming.

“We can't stay here,” Daria said calmly, if somewhat impatiently, back to her frosty old pre-blood-curse-invoking self and clearly without time to waste on such apocalyptic Norse nonsense. “There are too many of them.”

As if to emphasize that fact, another creature made a grab for her. Daria ducked, throwing herself protectively—surprisingly—over Heather's still-unconscious form. Roth leaned past her to deliver a blow to the draugr that looked like it shattered the thing's entire cranium—its face caved in and it fell to the ground, twitching.

“Fennrys!” Mason called, as he dispatched another draugr
leaping for the horse's head with his blade. “Get
back
in the coach, dammit!”

“You heard her!” Maddox called, stepping down off the running board. He swung the silver chain in a slow circle over his head and it made a wicked, whistling sound that forced the draugr to momentarily back off. “Time for you lot to make a hasty exit. I'll hold the fort—”

“Like hell you will.” Fennrys jumped down to stand beside him, shoulder to shoulder. “I'm not leaving you behind. Not again.”

“Why not?” Maddox snorted. “I managed just fine without you last time.”

“You got lucky.”

“And you got away. Do that again.” Maddox turned to him, his expression intense. “Listen. I told you that we've been strengthening the Gate here in the park since the last time, right?”

“Madd, I—”

“Shut up. I can access the magick the Fae used to do that. It's Green magick and you know that stuff is—”

“Incredibly volatile?” Fennrys sputtered in disbelief. “You're kidding me!”

“Nope . . .” Maddox shook his head. “Emergency use only and it'll probably pulverize a good chunk of the park. But it'll take most of
these
things with it in the process.”

“Let me help you,” Fenn pleaded, his expression anguished.

Mason's heart hurt for him. She'd never heard Fennrys plead for anything. Central Park was something he'd fought
and bled to protect—that, and the otherworldly portal within it—and now he had to leave it up to his comrade to do that for him.

Because of me
.

Fenn snarled in frustration. “Maddox—”

“You
can't
.” Maddox's tone turned sharp. “And you'd be a damned fool to try. Just like I'd be a damned fool to let you. The other Janus Guards have got the Gate covered on the other side. We're outmatched here, boyo, and they”—he pointed to the carriage occupants—“need you to get them out and clear of the park and away from these things. Let me do what I can to help, yeah?”

“Maddox . . .”

“It's what friends do.”

Fennrys went still, regarding the other young man. “I don't think I ever called you that to your face before,” he said.

Maddox went still too. “Yeah,” he said, “probably not. But you've clearly had a character growth spurt. I credit the love of a good woman. Go now. Keep her safe.” He turned and winked at Mason. “And
you
, lass? You keep
him
safe.”

“I will.”

“Good. Now
go
.”

Fennrys swore virulently and grabbed hold of the carriage, hauling himself up over the side. As he did so, Maddox flicked his wrist and the chain in his hand settled on the ground in a circle three feet wide with the Janus Guard standing at the center. He laid the end in his hand over the other end, completing the circle, and grinned over his shoulder at them.

“Show time,” he said and slapped both hands, palms down hard onto the ground with a sound like a thunderclap. The earth beneath him seemed to ripple away in waves. The trees nearest the carriage groaned and began to shudder, leaves shivering as the branches quivered and twisted unnaturally. A huge old oak tree—it reminded Mason of the one that used to grace the Gosforth quad—suddenly reached out, as if its branches were fingers, and wrapped around a couple of shambling draugr, squeezing shut like a fist and hurling them into the center of the lake. Not without cost to the tree itself, though. Bark peeled back in wide strips and sap flowed from cracks in the venerable old tree like lifeblood.

The whole of the park shuddered animatedly. Tree roots punched up out of the mossy ground and thorny vines whipsawed through the air, tearing the draugr to pieces. Maddox cried out with the effort of harnessing the dangerous forces flowing through the fabric of the park.

“Madd!” Fennrys shouted.

“Get him out of here, Mason!” Maddox yelled.

Tears of frustration hot on her cheeks, Mason cracked the reins and urged the horse to a gallop. The carriage lurched wildly forward, throwing Fennrys off balance, and in the few moments it took to right himself, they were too far away for him to be of any use to the other Janus Guard. Fenn pounded his fist on the brass rail and cursed until the woken trees echoed with the sounds of his fury.

Mason could feel the park's pain radiating all around her as she slapped the reins and shouted encouragement to the
carriage horse. But she could feel a kind of righteous anger, too. The very earth was fighting—for
them
. She wouldn't let that fight go to waste. Some of the draugr carried torches burning with eldritch fire and a tree next to the carriage burst into flame as they thundered past. Mason screamed in rage. . . .

And felt the Valkyrie within her respond.

In her mind she heard the beating of raven's wings and urged the horse to go faster. The creature responded to her commands with a burst of unnatural speed and suddenly it seemed as if they were flying over the ground. A swell of triumph bloomed in her chest as the ground mist shimmered with a fluorescence of rainbow hues and the contours of the park all around them turned hazy. Mason's Valkyrie power guided them into the spaces between the worlds as a thick, shimmering mist descended and the city faded away to pearly gray.

S
afe for the time being as they traveled the twilight ways,
Mason glanced over at Fennrys, who was staring at her, frost and ice crystals glittering in his gaze. She knew that he had traveled in a Valkyrie carriage once before and that what she was doing now must be feeling familiar to him in a way that probably wasn't particularly reassuring.

She understood that. She could feel the lure of Valhalla so strongly, urging her to bring heroes to the hall of the Aesir, and the carriage horse—sensing her conflict—became balky and unsure. Lacking a firm hand on the reins, the animal bucked in the harness traces and Mason tightened her grip.

We're
not
going to Valhalla
, she told herself—and the horse—adamantly.
I'm going to drive this carriage through this park and I'm going to take it all the way to the front doors of Gosforth Academy
. All she needed to do was resist the drumbeat in her ears urging her to go farther than that.

Much farther . . .

No. No Valhalla. Concentrate
.

Easier said than done, when she was staring into the eyes of the hero himself.

The gaze they shared stretched out between them and Fenn must have seen the Valkyrie hunger growing in her eyes. He broke the stare and turned his face away, lessening the temptation, and she was grateful. But she still felt shaky. Looking away from Fennrys, she saw that she wasn't the only one who was feeling worse for wear.

“Toby?” Mason said, a twist of concern suddenly knotting in her chest. “What happened to your coffee mug?”

The battered old aluminum travel mug was so much a part
of his demeanor that Toby looked odd without it. Even in one-on-one coaching sessions back at Gosforth, he'd rarely ever let the thing out of his sight, often fencing with sword in one hand and mug in the other. Toby stared down into his empty palms as if he was wondering the very same thing.

“I guess I lost it.” He shrugged, his shoulders slumping loosely.

“It wasn't coffee,” Mason said quietly.

Toby shook his head. “Nope.”

“You're not human,” she said. “Are you?”

To her surprise, he laughed. “Of course I am. I'm just a really freaking old one.”

She blinked at him, startled, and he shrugged again.

“How well do you pay attention in Professor Leggatt's Shakespeare class?” he asked.

Mason raised an eyebrow at the seeming randomness of the question, but Toby waited for her to answer. Ahead of them, the sleek black horse trod the Between path with sure feet now, pulling them along effortlessly through the murk.

“I actually liked that class,” she said eventually. “I have a paper due on
Cymbeline
next week. I think it's next week. You know, assuming the world doesn't end.”

“You guys study
Macbeth
yet?” Toby asked.

Mason nodded. “Yeah.”

“Do you remember the very first scene, in the aftermath of a battle, before you actually meet Macbeth?” he asked. “Do you remember how the other thanes refer to him as ‘Bellona's
bridegroom'?”

“Uh . . . vaguely. Sure.” Mason frowned, thinking back to the scene. She had liked that play. She'd liked Macbeth and secretly thought he'd actually gotten kind of a raw deal. “It was like a kind of honorary title, wasn't it? Like calling him ‘Super Badass.'”

“Something like that, yeah.” Toby laughed a little at the comparison. “They're equating him to the husband—or lover—of War. In this case, ‘War' being a goddess named Bellona. Well . . . that's what the Romans called her. Later on. She was, in fact, Carthaginian. Before Carthage existed, really . . .”

“And?”

Toby pointed to his chest. “Just call me Macbeth.”

“What?” Mason blinked. “You were . . .
what
? The husband of a war goddess?”

“
The
war goddess. The original. And we never formalized the union. But yeah.”

Mason silently soaked in that information and tried to reconcile it with the man she'd known for a year, who'd been her mentor and her coach. And her friend. In fact, it wasn't so hard. It actually made a strange kind of sense.

“What happened?” she asked.

Toby laced his fingers together and stared ahead of them into the mists. “Falling in love when you're a goddess is . . . complicated. At least, it was with Bell. She was immortal, for one thing, and I guess she didn't want to lose me because I wasn't. So . . . she made me immortal too. Sometimes I think I was a coward for letting her.”

“A coward? Are you
serious
?” Toby was one of the bravest men she knew.

“I didn't want to die, Mase. I was afraid to.” He shrugged, but there was a gravelly hitch in his voice as he said, “Now? I would give anything . . .
anything
to make an end of it.”

Mason flinched from the raw pain in that admission, but she appreciated Toby's honesty. His openness in the face of all the lies she'd been told by others. She could sense Fennrys silently listening to the exchange as he sat beside Toby, who clearly didn't mind him knowing.

“Professor Leggatt taught us that, in
Julius Caesar
, Shakespeare says: ‘Cowards die many times before their death; The valiant never taste of death but once,'” Mason said. “Does that mean that I'm . . .”