Dead Chaos (7 page)

The Bifrost deposited us in the middle of a very sunny, very hot and humid Miami City. Aidan looked around.

"Where are we?" We’d arrived in a small grove of trees with a gorgeous view over the water—all greeny-blue lapping waves and stunning clear skies.

"Bicentennial Park. We need to head up to Biscayne Boulevard and catch a bus to the estate," Aidan said. He walked a little ahead of me and I followed in silence. What small talk would ease the discomfort between us anyway? He led me to the nearest bus stop.

"How far?"
I was tempted to go invisible, but the prospect of being accidentally bumped into or sat on in the confined space of the bus wasn’t welcome.

"About a twenty-minute ride."

It didn't take too long before the next bus arrived and we were soon on our way to Aidan's father’s estate. The bus dropped us off about two streets over from the house and I followed Aidan in silence as we walked through beautiful shady, tree-lined streets.

At last, we stopped before a set of large wrought iron gates and stared through the bars at a large, imposing mansion surrounded by expansive green lawns. I glanced at Aidan's face, sourly impressed by the grandiose building. His father must be very wealthy.

But Aidan's expression remained dark and stormy, as if just nearing the building destroyed his mood. He sighed and walked to the pillar at our left. A little silver keypad, set into the stonework, gleamed in the sunlight. Aidan tapped in a code and my breathing stilled. The gate swung open in eerie silence and I relaxed—until they swung shut behind us, and I realized I was stuck inside and only Aidan knew the code. I was struck by a horrible thought. He was as fascinated with my biological makeup as his father. What if the son followed in the father’s footsteps? I snapped myself out of it. But I did understand where it was coming from. I no longer trusted him as implicitly as I had in the past.

I put those thoughts out of my head. Right now, fear and second-guessing him was too dangerous to my concentration.

We walked up the curving drive and around a large white fountain spraying clear, bubbling water into the air. A cool mist blew at us as we passed and I reveled in it, knowing it wouldn’t last long.

We approached the front door where a burly hulk of a man guarded the front door. His beefy arms folded over an equally bulky chest, and hard, grey eyes stared straight through us. I blinked hard and had to force myself not to gasp. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The guard seemed superimposed on the body of someone or something else.

The burly man’s image almost shimmered, revealing another creature beneath. One with icy blue eyes, sparkling, sharp-white hair, and pale, pale skin marked with deep blue veins. Aidan's father had a friggin' frost giant guarding his front door? I instinctively glamored myself, keeping the same physical traits, but safeguarding against the Jotunn recognizing me as a Valkyrie.

But Aidan seemed unperturbed by the Jotunn. "Hey, Gus," he said as he reached for the door handle.

"Good day, Mr. Lee." Gus the frost giant inclined his head in a respectful greeting, flicked a glance at me, and settled back into his guard position, staring straight ahead at nothing and standing as still as a statue.

I remained speechless as I passed within inches of the Jotunn and followed Aidan into the house. Did he not recognize them? Or did he know and was just pretending? I breathed deep, trying to settle my nerves. I was getting a bit too suspicious for my own good.

Aidan opened the door and ushered me into the entrance hall before shutting the it firmly. Inside, air-conditioning buzzed and we both breathed in the cool air. Gus hadn’t come racing for me, so I figured he hadn’t recognized what I was, although I didn’t relax for a single second.

"Where are they?" My gaze roamed the house, taking in the opulence around me — mahogany banisters, expensive painting, crystal chandeliers. This is what Aidan had come from. I shook my head, finding it hard to take in.

"Upstairs," he said, climbing the large curving stairway. "I don't think they leave their wing much."

"Wing?" I asked.

"Yeah, they occupy the west wing. It’s how my father’s managed to keep them out of the way. Out of sight."

Again, I felt the pull of sympathy for Aidan. He'd had to go through so much in his life, not the least being shot point-blank on the instruction of his own father. Could he see how much his own father had used him? I hoped he could.

Aidan strode across meticulously polished, dark wood floors to a set of doors. He knocked briefly, then opened the right-hand door and popped his head inside. "Anyone home?" he called in a little singsong way.

"Aidan, oh, Aidan, my boy. How are you?" I followed him inside and shut the door behind me, watching as a tiny woman threw her arms around Aidan and laughed. The sound of her joy bordered on sadness as she held him by the shoulders and inspected his face as if the structure and condition of his features would tell his mother if he were well or not. What would she say if she could have seen the bullet wound to the center of his forehead the way I'd seen it when I’d retrieved his corpse from the stream back in Craven?

"Hey, Mom." Aidan laughed too, and for the first time, I heard the sound of the little boy inside him. He was genuinely overjoyed to see his mother, the love for the woman so clear in his voice that I didn't need to see his face to know the depth of his feelings. "How are you guys doing?"

"As always, we are fine, my dear boy. You’ve been gone a long while," she said, and even I heard the hint of accusation and the hurt.

"He didn't allow me to come, Mom. He sent me on a mission." Aidan looked at me over his shoulder, his eyes searching my face and yet still distant and unfocused, as if a hundred thoughts clouded his brain.

"A mission? I thought you were working at the museum with that nice professor." His mother frowned.

"I was working there when father sent me to a town called Craven to look for someone." Another glance over his shoulder at me. "I hadn’t realized at the time what he meant to do with her, but I do now."

"Aidan, you’re not making any sense at all," his mother admonished.

"I'm sorry, Mom. Okay, Bryn, come here." Aidan beckoned me and I stepped the few paces to stand beside him. "Mom, this is Brynhildr, the girl that father sent me to find. This is Bryn Halbrook."

"Halbrook?" Aidan’s mother stared at me and then back at Aidan, confusion creasing her brow. "Halbook? Geoffrey's daughter?" Aidan nodded, and so did I, although I didn't think she'd seen me as her gaze remained focused on her son. "What does Stephen want with Geoffrey's daughter? Hasn't he done enough damage to her family?"

"Mom, maybe you need to sit down. I think you need to know the truth." Aidan held his mother by the shoulders and encouraged her to move to the nearest armchair.

She arched an eyebrow and sat. "Tell me what that wretched man has been up to." I wondered how she would react to Aidan's story and I hoped she'd take it well.

"Father sent me to find Bryn, but what I didn’t know was that he wanted to experiment on her."

"Why would he . . . ?" Aidan's mother asked, but her question trailed off and she had a faraway look in her eyes.

"Father believed that Dr. Halbrook used the DNA of a skeleton discovered years ago to create Bryn."

"Ah yes, that's what caused all the trouble with Irene." She nodded, a sad twist to her lips.

"What trouble was that, Mrs. Lee?" I asked as a spike of suspicion and fear ran through me. Had Dr. Lee influenced my mother’s opinion about me? Had he been the reason she'd shunned and then abandoned me?

"That was when Stephen told your mother this crazy story, hoping she would help get him access to you. You were quite little at the time. Maybe about two years old." Aidan's mom nodded, almost to herself. All the while my heart sank further and further. More blame to be laid at the feet of Aidan's father. "Yes, I didn't like what Stephen did, and I even said as much. That got me an interesting reaction for sure." She smiled sadly. What had been the repercussions for expressing herself with her husband? I imagined Dr. Lee didn't take kindly to his wife's disapproval.

I looked at Aidan, hoping he would be the one to tell her it wasn’t as crazy a story as she'd thought. And thankfully, he seemed to take the hint.

"Well, Mom, the thing is . . . father was right." Aidan paused and let that sink in, throwing me another look that I took to mean "Are you okay?" I just shrugged.

"He was right? About Geoffrey and the DNA thing? How do you know this, Aidan?" His mother frowned and rose to her feet.

"Mrs. Lee, we know he was right because we now know that my father had experimented with the DNA. We also know his experiments did have an effect on me."

"Oh, my dear, I am so sorry. It's not easy to live with health problems. Aidan and I know about that very well." Mrs. Lee wrung her hands and I didn't have the heart to tell her that my father’s machinations resulted in a Valkyrie and not in health problems. I wasn’t sure she could handle such a revelation.

I glanced at Aidan, sending him a questioning frown.

"Mom means my sister, Enya. She’s been ill since she was born. We still have no idea what's been making her so sick. She can't even stand the sunlight sometimes. And she can be very volatile too." Aidan was speaking for his mother’s benefit, but I knew exactly what he meant.

"Are you going to see her, Aidan? She'd like that." Mrs. Lee was already moving toward a second set of doors leading farther into the west wing. I paid scant attention to the large paintings on the wall, the mahogany dining set, or the marble fireplace. I followed Aidan, curious now to see what his sister was like. So far, I quite liked his mother. She seemed kind enough. She'd survived within the shadow of Dr. Lee and that was saying something.

She led us down a short passage, then stopped at the open door. I peeked over Aidan’s shoulder. Walls and bedding and carpet were all powder-blue and white, all the furniture was an antique French style with those little elegant-looking legs. At first, the room seemed empty, but Aidan stepped inside and walked toward the window, and I saw her.

A young girl, most of her face hidden by a fall of white-blond hair, sat in a white velvet armchair facing the window. She sat only a few inches from a swathe of sunlight that shone through the open drapes and onto the carpet before her.

"Enya, look who came to visit you," Aidan's mother called out and the girl’s gaze spun to her brother as her drew closer.

"Aidan," she squealed, joy evident in her eyes. Aidan leaned forward and squeezed her in a tight embrace. She laughed loudly, the sound echoing around the room. "How lovely to see you. You've been very naughty not visiting for so long." She admonished her brother and soon they were deep in conversation.

Words failed me.

I could barely think straight.

First the Jotunn downstairs that Aidan hadn't even reacted to, and now Aidan's sister. I should have been prepared with what Aidan had already confessed about his sister's condition, but I stared. Harder than I should have. Her skin shimmered like porcelain, a pale, almost-blinding white, but slashes of dark-blue veins marred the beauty of her pristine flesh. Her entire body seemed covered in the very same blue-veined, white skin. She seemed unreal, otherworldly, and yet I knew in that moment what she was. Aidan's sister was a frost giant. Or maybe part frost giant. I couldn't be entirely sure. She seemed to have woven glamor about her. Nothing strong, but enough to hide the worst of her affliction.

"Bryn? Bryn?" Aidan's voice punctured my thoughts and I became aware he was beckoning me to go to them. I went despite the hairs on my skin lifting in rebellion. "Come and meet my sister."

Aidan's face was a picture of happiness and I smiled back at him automatically, forgetting how he'd hurt me, forgetting his recent distance. He took my hand and drew me to him, and I allowed myself that brief moment of his closeness. I knew it wasn’t real, but I enjoyed it while it lasted. A fleeting end to a fleeting love.

"Enya, this is Bryn. Bryn, my sister, Enya." She smiled so brightly I tried to put what she was out of my head for the moment. She didn’t appear to be a threat to any one of us in the room, so I took her hand in mine and squeezed it.

I tried not to flinch.

Her fingers lay within my palm, icy cold and almost lifeless. I got an even brighter smile once she saw I wasn’t disgusted with skin-to-skin contact with her.

"How lovely to meet a friend of Aidan's," she said, her voice now soft and breathy. "You must tell me all about how you met."

Aidan broke in. "I'm sorry, Ens, but we have to go. We can't stay here. Maybe you and Bryn can talk after we have gotten away?"

"What do you mean?" Aidan’s mother stepped closer to her children.

"Mom, we have to leave. You need to pack a few things for you and Ens and we need to leave ASAP. I'm taking you two away from here and away from his control. I won’t allow him to manipulate us anymore."

I wanted to point out that with Dr. Lee was safely in the dungeons of Asgard, he wasn’t going to be doing any sort of manipulation in the foreseeable future.

"Where are we going, honey?" Aidan's mom asked as she hurried to the door. She paused in the doorway, waiting for an answer.