Hearts of Shadow (Deadglass #2) Page 11

  Thorsson neatly decapitated a second aptrgangr who had come up behind the woman. Red splattered the woman’s cheek and hair. She didn’t even blink. Grace braced herself and sprang forward. She heard a roar behind her. Stabbing the iron stake into the woman’s neck, she sidestepped the woman’s grasping arms, right into the path of two more walking dead.

  She wasn’t quick enough to dodge the next blow. Falling to the pavement, she twisted her ankle. Sloppy, Grace. Still more converged on her, and even Thorsson’s swinging broadsword couldn’t hold them back. What was going on?

  Asgard entered the fray and pushed through the crowd to reach her.

  She locked eyes with the nearest aptrgangr who rose above her. The short, potbellied man wore suspenders and the tarnished brass star of one of Jameson’s deputized vigilantes. “What do you want?” she screamed.

  The aptrgangr stared straight at her. “The Heart.”

  She hadn’t expected an answer. “What heart?”

  “Tiamat’s.”

  “Well, fuck.” Tiamat. The Babylonian goddess of chaos. Mother of all dragons and the demon horde. The vengeful goddess who’d given her lover, Kingu, the Tablets of Destiny and sent him to wage war on the gods. Kingu attacking Seattle was bad enough, but he was only a slain demigod. Tiamat was the real deal.

  And that was all the interrogating she had time for as he reached down to grab her shoulders and yank her to her feet. Her ankle protested beneath her weight. She stabbed him in the arm with her stake, and his hand dropped uselessly to his side.

  She grabbed his other hand and tried to pry it from the crushing grip on her shoulder. “Who is running you?” she ground out. It was a stupid question, because all signs pointed to Kingu. Couldn’t keep a girl from hoping that the answer this time would be different. Aptrgangr on the rise and Kingu sightings and coordinated attacks on the three races. Now aptrgangr looking for a goddess’s heart—aptrgangr who rarely teamed up or fought for more than their selfish pleasures. How many clues did a girl need? Even Asgard had to see it.

  One moment the potbellied man was crushing her shoulder, and the next his head was replaced with a swipe of razor-sharp claws the length of her arm. A red and green dragon curled around her, protecting her from the crush of undead. When had someone last protected her? Her parents, in that dark alley, the last time she’d seen them. Her father never hesitating to step between her and danger. Her proud mother’s last order: Run!

  She’d never let someone take the fall for her since, but she’d been in plenty of scrapes where she stood as some poor soul’s last hope. Her parents’ last sacrifice had been paid forward and then some.

  The dragon surrounded her with those gorgeous, glistening scales. For one bright moment she felt protected. Cherished. It scared the bejesus out of her. She didn’t want to lean on anyone, especially not him.

  “You’re in my way!” she shouted. But the monster only shook his terrible head and set the trees ablaze. Couldn’t he see that she needed to be free? “Gods damn you, get out of my way!”

  The dragon screeched and twisted. Something was turning the aptrgangr back, and the dragon spread his wings. She flattened against the ground, but he grabbed her with one of his giant claws, trapping her in a cage of his talons.

  “Don’t even think about—gah!” She screamed. The ground dropped out beneath her as the dragon picked her up and launched into the air. She hadn’t realized how much she disliked heights until this moment when the street lamps shrunk from view and the dilapidated buildings turned to Tinkertoys and sailed away.

  Kingu arrived just as the skirmish broke. He blew through the street and slipped in through the ear of a large, ruddy human. The man brandished one of those strange smoking guns the mortals favored. He broke in through the man’s consciousness between his aim and the fire, easy to do when his attention was focused elsewhere. He took a long breath and transitioned. His green and blue vision colored in as much as the night would let it. He stretched and flexed the new muscles he controlled.

  Inside the mind was a fog of smashing, sparkling images. No memories were recorded linearly or precisely. A human remembered a few, then his perception filled in the rest. But it was enough for Kingu to get an idea of who had called this Aether storm.

  He flipped through the hazy images until he found three men in a chamber. His host had been in the audience. The words didn’t carry, but the body language told Kingu what he needed to know. The clean-cut man in the green jacket held himself like a city leader. The blond man with the slit irises was Tiamat’s blood. But it was the dark man with madness in his eyes who called the Aether to him.

  Interesting.

  Chapter 9

  Soaring over Puget Sound, Leif’s stomach threatened to revolt. He’d exposed his true form in front of humans. Even now, when the bones of his mother’s father were so much dust beneath the thin English soil, he could hear the man’s chiding words: “Hide yourself.”

  But in that crowded street full of panicking, angry mortals and a force of walking dead he’d never hoped to see, only one concern burned crystal bright: Kingu was here.

  He’d smelled the demigod on the Aether wind, and his primitive reptilian brain had taken over. Not to save himself, but to save her. The young woman fighting and whirling around the aptrgangr was vulnerable in a way he, dragon kin, would never be. Kingu would crush her like a pebble beneath a steamroller.

  Leif had turned, time and blood slipping from his face, and picked her up in his talons. He didn’t look back to see if the demigod followed. He didn’t look to see what Kingu searched for, or if it was even there hidden among the humans. Flight was the only thing that saved him.

  He sailed above Puget Sound with the terror of Ragnarök nipping at his tail. Grace’s screams only drew his heart rate higher, until he realized her fear wasn’t directed at a jabberwocky-sized demonic dragon following. She was afraid of heights.

  He descended through the clouds over Shilshole Bay. Sven had built the Drekar Lair directly into the cliff face beneath his Scandinavian stronghold in Ballard. The tunnels drove deep into the earth. The face looking out toward Puget Sound and the cloud-ringed Olympic Mountains had been cased in giant glass windows, which were thrown open during the high landing periods of dawn and dusk. Inside, a great hall put Odin’s grand throne room to shame. Jewel-encrusted ceilings. Gold inlays. A stone fireplace big enough to roast three oxen. It was a gaudy vision of everything a dragon was rumored to want. Shiny gemstones and glittering diamonds covered every inch of space. A century of dragons flying through the windows and landing had gouged deep furrows in the river stones of the floor.

  Now silent. Half crumbled into the sea. The gems exposed to the grasping gale winds. They glittered when the sun touched them, some uncovered tomb of a once great king. Leif had been to Egypt as a young man when the pyramids were first excavated. The lair felt like that now: a secret of a bygone time that should be left hidden to the ages. A sparkling landing pad, stripped of its defenses and left to the ravages of time and wind.

  He felt like a trespasser, and he knew what he considered this great room to be: the resting place of his brother’s grandiose persona. Sven was in death as he’d been in life: over the top, concerned with shock and awe and manipulating those around him.

  Leif rarely used this entrance to his laboratory. The ghosts were too thick.

  He took pains to set Grace down gently, but she still fell on the uneven stone. With a scrape like a tile saw, his claws skidded over the floor, drawing further furrows in the rock. He should have flown in circles longer. He should have disguised his trail, done something to throw off Kingu, but he was worried about the girl hanging from his feet in the cold wind. And what could he do to throw off a demigod? He wasn’t Marduk with an army of Babylonian gods. Kingu was a force unto his own.

  His bulk slammed up against the caved-in portion of the ceiling, and his breath left him in a hiss of smoke. Stunned only momentarily, he let his worry roll into anger and used
that burst of energy to Turn.

  The sky outside the shelter of the enclave roiled. Rain began to fall. Waves crashed against the cliff face. His servants kept the fire burning to signal the landing strip in the dark, and the firelight flickered over Grace’s prone body. She stirred and pulled herself to her hands and knees. The rain splattered her back. Her dark hair hid her face as she moved into a crouch. Her black sweatshirt was ripped. A bit of blood smeared across her fragile wrist. How dare she put herself in danger? Had she no care for her person?

  “What do they want with you?” he demanded.

  She shook her head and looked up. He couldn’t make out her features in the dark.

  “Well?” He stalked forward. He knew his anger was unjustified, but he couldn’t stop it rolling off of him to snap and crackle like the logs in the fire behind. As he drew near, she quickly rose to her feet. Always on the defensive. Always ready to fight. Didn’t she know he would never hurt her?

  “Who?”

  “The aptrgangr. What are you to them?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “They seek you out.”

  Her head jerked back. “Maybe just a little part of them wants to move on, did you ever think of that? They need my help.”

  “You believe that.”

  She shrugged.

  “How convenient for you.” His deep voice reverberated in the rocks beneath their feet. He knew she felt it travel from the souls of her boots and into her bones, stroking her from the inside. “You just happen to go hunting, and the undead show up. You just happen to make quota again and again. Just happen to save innocent civilians in the nick of time wherever you go.”

  “Hey, I don’t like what you’re suggesting—”

  “Convenient for you that you—small, mean little thing that you are—manage to fend them off with a slip of a knife. I might not know all the old myths, but I know aptrgangr. Inhuman strength is their calling card. They crush their victims to death. How is it that you manage to fight them and win?”

  “Fuck you. I’m good, that’s all.” Her chin jutted out, and the firelight played over her delicate features. She wasn’t earth goddess beautiful—too boyish, with no hips to speak of and little chest—but her chin formed a delicately feminine point, and her grey eyes would lure in a drowning man. Her hair cascaded around her shoulders. He wanted to coil it about his fingers as he brought her stern mouth to aching surrender. She was all sparking fire and more prickles than a blowfish. He would strip her defenses one by one until she welcomed him.

  “Oh, sweet,” he said, soft and dangerous and full of promise, “I bet you are very, very good.”

  She gave ground. He followed. He could tell the moment she realized her mistake. The rain splattered her hair at the edge of the cliff.

  He had forgotten that damn drop-off, and now he was the aggressor. Like some gothic melodrama, he had driven the shivering maiden to the rocky drop. What had come over him?

  He spun on his heel, realizing belatedly that he wore no boots, and that, in fact, in his anger he had forgotten to clothe himself at all.

  Wonderful.

  Giving the girl his backside, he retreated into the hall. His feet left prints in the dirt from the collapsed roof and the salt from the open sea winds. He wondered idly if his nudity turned her on at all, or brought her only the unsettling memory of his brother’s patronage. She wasn’t some quivering virgin, not technically, but he had the impression that she’d never entertained on equal ground before.

  He wouldn’t have her any other way.

  He heard Grace shake herself and follow, her hesitant footsteps growing bolder as her lingering fear sloughed off. He forgot what a human felt at flight: the ground dropping away, the keen thrill of hurtling through the skies, the edge of death lurking far below in the impact of the hard ground, the light-headed buoyancy as higher and higher he climbed till his lungs screamed for oxygen.

  But not all humans were Dionysus, seeking divinity in the sun. Some were root bound as the great tree Yggdrasil. He suspected this was the case with Grace. She seemed the kind to form attachments deeply. The kind who had a few close friends and preferred each day settled and set, knowing who and what she’d encounter. Leif was the same way. Sven had mocked him for it, but Leif liked stability. His dragon side secretly craved the thrill of flight, but his human side wanted deep roots. He couldn’t have both.

  “The aptrgangr weren’t after me,” she said. “They came for Corbette. He called the Aether storm.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You were there. The dead are called to the Aether—”

  “But what about the four in the alley before that? Tell me, are you used to fighting four at once, or was that just an off day?” He bent to retrieve the pile of clothes he kept at the back of the aerie. She couldn’t hide her quick intake of breath, and he smiled to himself. Perhaps there was something to be said for the unsubtle attack on her senses. She couldn’t ignore him when he flexed his muscles pulling on his trousers. It was ungentlemanly of him. He used a cudgel when a feather might have been gentler. He found his patience wasn’t infinite as he thought. “Come now, Grace, you can’t believe there’s nothing more to it. Or do you accept everything at face value? You stumble across the walking dead wherever you go?”

  “They’re everywhere since the Unraveling. It’s not me.”

  He turned and caught her watching him. He didn’t let his pleasure show. Instead he raised his eyebrow and pulled on his shirt, knowing that firelight would show off the taut muscles in his chest and arms. Water beaded on his skin. The minuscule scales softly glowed. He hadn’t lived two hundred years without knowing exactly what his body did to a woman. He hadn’t appreciated it much as a weapon before, but in this he was clear: she thought him a liar and a scoundrel. Nothing he said could pierce through her thick, protective shield.

  But her body and her head weren’t in accord. He could make her want him until she burned with the same unfulfilled lust that ate at him. And then, when she could bear it no longer, she would come to him and let him ease that sweet torment. Perhaps that would be all it took to get this damned inconvenient feeling out of his system, but he doubted it. He was counting on rocking her world, to bind her to him with more than magic and desperation.

  As his head cleared, he watched her tongue flicker out to wet her lips. It shot a thunderbolt of lust straight to his groin, so that he had to turn away from her alluring form and think mundane thoughts. Damn it. He didn’t want to scare her. In his head he recited the periodic table of the elements. Hydrogen, H. Helium, He. Lithium, Li.

  She followed him through the cleared part of the cave-in to get to the tunnel. Once, the Drekar Lair had extended four stories beneath the surface. Tunnels deep into the earth provided housing for the warriors, harem, and visiting dignitaries. Storerooms and treasure rooms. An armory. And farthest from the cliff face, his laboratory. Much had been crushed in the earthquakes, but he’d set his servants to dig out and reinforce what could be saved. They’d found stockpiles of food, cloth, tools, weapons, and other war supplies.

  Sven was nothing if not prepared, and he’d planned to take over the world by freeing a demigod and his demon horde. He’d known the quality of Aether would change once the Gate fell, thanks to Leif’s own experiments. He was prepared for no electricity. But they’d both been around long before the advent of the electric light, or the gaggle of technology that had consumed the world just prior to the Unraveling.

  Leif pulled on his spare boots and led the way to his laboratory.

  “You were in that alley too,” she said, once the silence grew too heavy and her anger bubbled to the surface. “Kingu wrecked the House of Ishtar right after you’d left. And another thing, you keep getting in my way. I don’t need your help. I’ve been hunting aptrgangr for four years. I haven’t had anyone’s help before, and I don’t need it now. I’m fucking good at what I do—all innuendo aside—and I don’t need you mucking it up wi
th your giant tail and slash-grab routine. The wraiths just escape if you don’t bind them before you kill the host. They find another victim. Let me do my job. I don’t need anyone to rescue me. I don’t want you—”

  “Kingu was in the street just now.” He glanced back over his shoulder to watch her face pale with some satisfaction. She hadn’t known. She needed him, even if she wouldn’t admit it. He had to push down the rage that built over the thought of Sven sending her out unprotected. A woman should not have to fight. A woman should not have to face death alone.

  “And that’s why you picked me up like a sack of potatoes and ran away?”

  “I didn’t run away. You, Walker, should appreciate the phrase ‘live to fight another day.’”

  “You couldn’t take a demigod?”

  “Though it wounds my manly pride to admit, no. I couldn’t. And neither could you.”

  “Huh.”

  He climbed over a large boulder and turned to offer her his hand. She refused. Stubborn woman.

  She climbed awkwardly over the rock. “Well, that’s it then. The aptrgangr are following you and Corbette and Jameson—three leaders, three positions of power. You were in the alley; Kingu showed up. You were at the council hall; Kingu showed up. It makes sense. You’re his heir. What else are you holding for him, besides the throne?”

  “I am not Kingu’s heir. The throne is Tiamat’s.”

  “Potato, pot-ah-to. What could he be looking for that both the Kivati and Drekar have?” She paused. “What about that slice of the Tablet of Destiny used to open the Gate?”

  “You mean Tiamat’s Tablet of Destiny?”

  “That’s the one.” Her mouth thinned. “You knew Norgard had a god-object and did nothing to stop him.”

  Leif raked his hands through his hair. “That’s unfair. I didn’t know my brother had it until it was too late. He didn’t share his plots with me.”

  “Kingu used the Tablets the first time he waged war. They gave him power of some kind. Something about resetting the Destinies of the Gods, but I don’t know in practice what that means.”