Transcendent (14 page)

She trailed off and Toby raised an eyebrow at her.

“Does that mean you're what?”

Fennrys shook his head, smiling grimly. “She means are we cowards?”

Mason ducked her head. “Are we? Think about it. We keep dying, right?”

But Toby just laughed. “I don't think that's exactly what ol' Bill meant, Mason. I think he meant that if you're
afraid
to die, you feel like you are dying every time things get hairy. There's death and then there's
death
. And when you finally get to the latter—when we all do—I think you'll definitely taste the difference.” He exchanged a glance with Fennrys then turned back to her. “You're the bravest girl I've ever met, Mason Starling. Not least of all because sometimes you have the
courage to be terrified.”

“Thanks, Coach.”

He snorted. “Especially of me.”

“You got that right.”

“So you really can't die?” Fennrys asked Toby.

“Nope.”

“That's . . . huh.”

For a Viking whose greatest desire was to die gloriously and live on in Valhalla, that must have been a difficult circumstance to contemplate, Mason thought. Then again, Fenn had experienced something of a perspective shift on that whole thing lately. She tightened her grip on the reins again when the carriage horse tossed his head.

“It's not exactly all it's cracked up to be.” Toby's expression soured. “You know those cautionary tales about scatterbrained goddesses granting eternal
life
but not eternal
youth
?”

Fennrys nodded.

“Those myths had to have their roots somewhere.”

“But . . . you don't look any older than my dad,” Mason said.

“Good genes. And an elixir.” Toby mimed his missing mug.

“So what happened to your lady?” Fennrys asked.

Toby shrugged. “The art of war marched on without her. War, for a being like Bellona, was an honorable, intimate interaction. Time was, if you were going to kill, you used to have to be close enough to feel your foe's dying breath on your cheek. Or see the whites of his eyes, at least.”

Mason thought of Rory and his gun and guessed where
Toby was going.

“The moment the very first gunshot rang out in the world,” he said, “Bell
felt
it. And she started to die inside.” He shook his head sadly, his expression full of memories of his long-ago lost love. “I had to hand it to her. She hung on until the Napoleonic wars. Saw me through a lot of battles, tended my wounds, cheered me from the trenches. But it was just so . . . ugly. So impersonal. War had lost its joy for the Lady of Battles.”

“Joy, huh?” Mason murmured. And yet, the Valkyrie in her understood.

Fierce, savage joy . . .

Toby looked at her and his gaze sharpened. He saw that she knew
exactly
what he was talking about and there was both pride and sadness in that realization. For all the time she had known him, Toby had urged Mason on to greater lengths of martial prowess with saber and épée and foil. Exhorted her to reach deep for that drive to fight hard. Prodded Mason with every new bout to find her killer instinct. He'd clearly never expected to her succeed to the degree that she had. His brow furrowed deeply and he put a hand on her knee, squeezing gently.

“Where's Bellona now?” Mason asked, turning her face away from him.

“Gone.” Toby sighed deeply. “One day, she just couldn't take it anymore,” he said. “The ugliness. She walked out into the middle of a firefight and shed the mantle of her divinity. Never saw her so beautiful as in the moment when she gave up
her immortality.” He blinked rapidly for a few seconds before continuing. “
I've
never figured out the trick of doing that, but then I'm not a god. Just a really old, really tired grunt.”

Mason bit her lip to keep from crying for Toby. Never in a million years would she have imagined that had been his life.

“She caught a bullet,” he continued, the hurt in his voice a dull, ancient ache. “Just one. But it was enough. I never even saw who it was that shot her and
that
was when I realized that she was right. War up close and personal is bad. At a distance, it's monstrous. Humans in battle have become nothing more than killing machines. Things like honor, glory . . . they just don't mean anything anymore.”

“You sound like my father,” Mason said.

“Oh.” Toby grunted. “Yeah. I suppose sometimes I do.”

“Did you still fight?” Fennrys asked. “After that? I mean . . . I'm pretty sure what you told me about having ‘buddies who were Navy SEALS' was a load of crap.
You
were a SEAL, weren't you?”

Toby laughed. “Yeah. I was. In a specialist capacity. A man gets bored and there's really only one thing I'm any good at. War. But I haven't fired a gun since I lost Bell.”

“Pretty handy with a blade, I noticed,” Fennrys said drily.

“Yeah.” Toby shrugged modestly. “After she died, I went back to basics. And I won't kill a man unless I can look him in the eyes.”

They rode in silence for a while as Mason threaded her way through the twisting mists of the Beyond. When she
sensed that they were nearing the place where she could safely guide the carriage back into the mortal realm, she turned to Toby and asked him one more question.

“I was thinking about something Rafe said to me back at the Plaza,” she said quietly, nodding back to where the Egyptian god sat, his coppery blade resting across his knees. “And about the whole valiant thing. He said in a battle, if I were to choose an Odin son, I would do it by choosing the most valiant.”

“That's the way it works, yeah.” Toby shrugged.

“What if I were to choose wrong?”

“Well,” he said. “Now I guess that would be a hell of a thing. Wouldn't it?”

W
hen Mason could sense that they had left the park and the
draugr behind, she reached out with her mind and gently urged the carriage horse to tread its way back fully into the mortal realm. She guided it away from the shadowy path of the Between, out into the chaos of the city at the corner of Central Park West and Cathedral Parkway. In the distance behind them, some of the trees in the park were aflame, their ghastly orange glow painting the sky in an apocalyptic hue.

Mason had to concentrate fiercely on guiding the carriage around zombielike Miasma victims, some of whom staggered and lurched toward them, thinking they had come to help. But they couldn't afford to stop.

Especially not if Rory—

“We've got company, little sister,” Roth called out from the backseat, interrupting her grim thought with the even more grim reality. Mason glanced over her shoulder to see a motorcycle roaring up the road behind them, weaving in and out of all the stalled and smashed cars, narrowly avoiding the waking sleepers.

“That little weasel stole my favorite bike,” Roth observed. “I really am going to kill him this time.”

Roth owned several bikes. At least one of them—his favorite, apparently—he kept in the garage at their father's penthouse. Mason knew that Rory used to bug him when they were kids to go dirt-bike riding on the paths around the estate. Roth indulged him for a while until Rory started doing stupid stunts and wrecked three motocross bikes over the course of a single weekend. Mason didn't know that he'd kept up his
riding skills. Or maybe—judging from the recklessness with which he was steering the thing—he hadn't. But he was gaining on the carriage, and the horse was too played out to go much farther.

When a fire hydrant suddenly blew, directly in the path of the racing bike—and then another, right after Rory had managed to swerve past that one—Mason knew Cal was giving her a chance to win the race. The white-water geysers that shot from the fireplugs should have caused Rory to slow down. It was so cold that the water was freezing into sheets on the road. But when Mason hazarded a glance back, she saw that he'd barely decreased his speed.

They might have escaped the draugr all for nothing.

“This can't be happening!” Mason snarled in frustration. “This has to be some kind of nightmare! It's not supposed to be like this. . . .”

“It's supposed to be exactly like this,” Roth said grimly. “Didn't you ever listen to the stories growing up, Mase?”

“No! I did not!” she said, snapping the reins. “I
hated
those damn stories.
This
night? This is how all those stories wound up sounding to me and I hated that.
Come on!
You can do it!” she urged the galloping carriage horse.

The animal's shiny, silvery coat was lathered and dark with sweat under the harness traces and its sides were heaving with exhaustion. But as Mason shouted encouragement, the horse's muscles bunched and released and the carriage surged forward as it poured on a burst of speed, taking the corner of 110th and Broadway on two of the carriage's tall wheels and almost
spilling its occupants out into the street. Mason glanced over her shoulder to see Cal hanging on for dear life with one hand and reaching out—fingers stretched wide—with the other, as Rafe made a startled grab for Heather's limp body tumbling loosely through the carriage.

“Heather!” Mason shouted.

“Don't worry about her, Mase!” Rafe shouted over the roar of water from the burst hydrants. “I've got her—just get us the hell out of here!”

She wrenched her head back around, just in time to see a handful of linebacker-sized forms running toward them from between two Columbia U buildings. It took Mason a moment to realize that they
were
linebackers. At least some of them were.

“Rory,” Roth snarled. “Damn that little—”

He ducked to the side as one of them threw what looked like an ancient Viking war ax with the accuracy of a champion quarterback throwing a winning long bomb. The tumbling ax missed Roth's head but sliced through his biker jacket and bit deeply into the top of his shoulder, leaving a deep gouge. Roth screamed and fell to the floor of the carriage, blood gushing from the wound.

“Roth!” Mason shrieked, almost dropping the reins.

“
Drive
, Mase!” Roth snarled, clutching his shoulder and sucking air through his teeth, his face twisted with pain. “Just . . . get us to Gos.”

“Holy shit!” Cal exclaimed, dropping to his knees on the
carriage floor beside Roth to help him.

“No!” Daria said. “Take care of what's behind us. I'll take care of him.”

Mason hissed in frustration at not being able to stop the carriage and summon all of the Valkyrie power within her. But
that
was the very thing, she knew, that Rory and her father were trying to provoke. That was what would put Fennrys and Roth and all of her friends in vastly more jeopardy than they were already in.

Silently, she reached out with as much of her Valkyrie self as she dared and poured out encouragement to the brave, beleaguered carriage horse. It charged forward, heading straight for the line of football players. Rory had obviously been selling runegold magick enhancements to them and they were mad with it. Berserkers. Grimacing and howling like ghouls, they closed ranks and started to run, facing the onrushing carriage as a solid advancing wall of muscle. Their eyes glowed gold and they moved like animals. A pack of hyenas . . .

That would have to face a Wolf.

Before Mason could stop him, Fennrys was leaping over the side of the carriage, his shape blurring like golden smoke as he shifted midair into the Wolf.

“Fennrys!”
Mason howled, frantic, as he raced down the street.

“I'll get him,” Rafe said, duplicating Fenn's leap and transforming with an added measure of grace and elegance.

The two wolves raced toward the wall of runebound muscle, their speed making them blurs as they took turns harrying
the college football players like a well-coordinated attack team. Rafe was an old hand at being a wolf but Mason marveled at how Fenn's animal instincts drove his attacks, syncing his darting feints and savage lunges with the jackal god's as they drove the football boys back, splitting them down the middle so that Mason could drive the carriage past. The Fennrys Wolf was hanging on by his teeth to the bloodied sleeve of the quarterback who swung wildly with his other hand, which gripped another of the vicious Viking axes. He was unable to throw because Fennrys had him so off balance.

“Idiot . . . ,” Roth panted, hauling himself up onto the bench seat behind Mason and holding his shoulder, blood seeping from between his fingers. “Should have aimed for the horse with his first throw . . .”

“What?”
Mason hauled on the reins, narrowly avoiding an overturned Audi.

“He's right,” Toby grunted. “That would have taken us all down and they could have finished us. Thank the gods they're just not that bright.”

“Hurry, Mase . . . ,” Roth urged, struggling for breath. “Rory. Gaining . . . on us . . .”

“Roth, will you
please
lie down or something?” Mason snapped at him over her shoulder, trying to concentrate on driving and not on all the blood covering her brother.

The carriage bucked and weaved, throwing Daria—who was struggling to tear a long strip from the hem of her white Elusinian priestess robe to use as a makeshift bandage—from
one side to the other. She banged her head on the seat but shook it off and crawled back to Roth. Mason clenched her teeth, not quite willing to believe that Cal's mother was actually being helpful. Not yet. Daria Aristarchos was still persona non grata, a woman who'd been responsible for so much hurt and heartache.

There will be a reckoning
, Mason thought.
A settling of debts
.

That would come later.

When the familiar stone turrets and walls of Gosforth Academy finally came into view, Mason guided the carriage right up to the shallow front steps. She whispered a frantic thanks to the animal as they all piled out and ran, and the horse whickered a weary reply.