Dead Embers (38 page)

Icy air grabbed the breath from my mouth, curling and
twisting the warmth until it melted away in ethereal tendrils.

The house sat in the palm of a small valley, hemmed in by
snow-laden trees on three sides. The property rose at the edge of the
mountainside, a sentinel of civilization within the lush greenery.

It looked empty.

Abandoned.

And yet Brody was imprisoned somewhere within this dark
sentinel that pretended abandonment. Not a light shone from any of the
multi-paned windows on the mansion's two floors.

Our heat sensors claimed otherwise, though. I studied the
panel. Four deep orange blobs floated around in small concentric patterns,
while a single smudge circled around the other side of the estate.

I frowned as one blob glowed, unmoving, in a corner of the
basement beneath the silent house.

Brody?

Joshua, Aimee and the two other Valkyries spread out,
strategically positioned in the shadows at one side of the property. Both
Warriors glowed, a pale golden gleam, so beautiful on this moonless night.

How come I’d never noticed this moonlit
einherjar
beauty?

We were in position only a few minutes when a rustling in
the shrubs beside me made me brandish my sword. The intruder shoved the bushes
aside, revealing the silhouette of his spiky hair, and I halted my swing just
in time.

Karl.

His eyes widened with consternation, and a touch of fear. He
set my teeth on edge with his very presence.

What was Karl doing here anyway?

Worse, he'd come alone. No Aidan.

Karl squatted beside me, only the outline of his face and
the whites of his eyes visible in the thick darkness. He didn't waste time with
pleasantries. "We have one guard outside, who should be coming this way
in—" he examined his watch. "—about ten seconds." We fell silent
until the guard trudged into view around the far corner of the grand house.
Karl strained his neck toward Joshua, a few feet to our left. "
Einherjar
Joshua, could you get to him fast, knock him out quietly?"

I gritted my teeth, because Karl had once again dissed my
authority.

"You okay with that, Bryn?" Joshua asked pointedly
over Karl's shoulder. I shrugged, as if it didn't bother me at all, but I guess
Joshua knew me better than that. He stared at me a moment, scowling, then
flitted off into the darkness. A grunt and a groan later he returned, crouching
beside me. "I don't know, Bryn. This all seems too easy," he said,
and from his voice I could just picture a frown drawing lines across his
forehead.

"I think so too. Their security seems way too light if
they're holding a Warrior hostage." We shared a worried glance. "It
could just as easily be a trap."

Joshua nodded. "I agree, and—"

Karl cut him off. "So do I. You should tell your team
to keep a close eye out, not to get complacent." Karl again pointedly
addressed Joshua, and then, not even sparing me a backward glance, he scrambled
away into the shadows behind us. I glared after him, the urge to shake him
still running thick and fast in my veins. That was the second time he'd
deliberately bypassed my authority.

"What the hell is his problem?" Joshua whispered,
scowling in Karl's direction. "Do I look like I'm in charge?"

"You didn't jump up and deny his assumption, now did
you?" I asked, a slight bite to my tone. I knew I was being unfair, but
Karl's not-so-subtle insult still dug at me. Was good old Karl trying to tell
me something? Maybe he didn't think I was worthy of being in charge. I clenched
my jaw. Once Fen arrived, he'd be in charge anyway, so I didn't need to get
overly miffed at the guy. If he was a bit dense, then he'd be the one to pay
for his own stupidity. Fen didn't suffer fools easily.

"Hey." Joshua raised his hands, shaking his head.
"I didn't want to cause any problems. You should know that. Besides, why
didn't
you
put him in his place yourself? It's your right."

I glared at Joshua, but he was pretty much on target. Why
hadn't I defended my authority? Because it wasn't rightly earned. Leader by
default, that was me. How could I go throwing my weight around when I knew I'd
gotten the job only because Sigrun, who was way more experienced in all things
Valkyrie, had decided to stay with Fen?

Joshua scuttled in closer to pull me out of my avalanching
self-pity. "No Aidan yet, I see," he said, craning his neck past me
to get a better view into the dense tree line behind us.

"He'd better have a good reason for ditching us,"
I mumbled, only then realizing how annoyed I was with Aidan.

"He'd better get his ass here ASAP," Joshua
grunted, shuffling beside me. "I don't fancy storming the castle there
with so few of us."

"I don't see how having one more person's going to make
much of a difference. And, to be honest, I'd feel much better with our
Ulfr." I suddenly felt bereft without my partner. Then again, my Ulfr
partner had betrayed me. Guess I was better off with no partner than with one
who was waiting for the next opportunity to either kill me or to sabotage my
mission.

The chilly night squeezed the warmth out of us, and Joshua
shivered. "Why are we the ones doing the breaking and entering
anyway?" Joshua whispered. He threw me a pointed nod. "You're about
the most experienced member on our team right now. We're really just a bunch of
rookies."

He'd asked a question that had been playing in my own mind
for a while now. I wanted to deny it, but Joshua had a point. With no senior
Valkyries or Ulfr with us, we were just what Joshua had said—a bunch of
rookies. "We're so short on team members in Asgard that they had to use
us," I answered. "Especially since all our Ulfr have suddenly up and
disappeared. They kinda had no choice. We were all they had left, really."
I shrugged. The thought wasn't very comforting at all.

The soft hoot of an owl emanated from the Valkyrie Pia at
our far left, and Joshua responded with single hoot, acknowledging the all
clear. Time for us to close in on the basement. Like a wave of darkness, our
group of shadows flitted across the close-cropped lawn toward the side of the
enormous mansion. We huddled against the walls to wait for the next signal.

Cold stone ate into my back, burrowing deep into my bones.
My heart thumped a tattoo against my ribs. Aimee and the other Valkyrie, Enja,
were colorless shades marking the wall alongside me.

Another low hoot cleared us to enter the basement, and our
small group of dark grey shadows slipped inside the building, leaving Enja on
watch outside, her tiny dark eyes and pixie haircut all business-like and
efficient. The airlock door whispered shut behind us. I waited, tensing for the
scream of whatever expensive alarm system the owners of this fabulous
monstrosity had installed to protect their property.

Nothing.

Our pathetic little army crept along the basement wall,
silent and aware of the slightest creak of the house above us, of the faintest
faraway drip of water. A voice echoed in the distance, dulled and distorted by
the concrete walls. A quick glance at the tablet allayed my fears—we were in no
imminent danger of being caught.

Before us, the concrete corridor wended its way ahead,
matching the vaguely mapped basement area on our heat sensor tablet. Soon we
reached the corner. Aimee stayed behind on guard. Pia and Joshua turned left
into the corridor, while I followed close on their heels.

When they paused again at the next corner, I stopped in my tracks,
and someone walked right smack into my back, pressing my wings into me and
dislodging a few feathers.

A quick glance confirmed it was Karl. What a surprise. Since
he wasn't a threat, I didn't need to gut him with the dagger I'd instinctively
pulled from my boot. "Watch it!" I hissed at him, throwing him a
disgusted glare. Karl blinked at the knife, probably shocked at how close he'd
just come to being disemboweled.

Where the hell had he come from anyway? I ground my teeth,
not wanting him along for the ride. The dude rubbed me the wrong way. But so
what? Maybe he didn't like me much either.
Calm down, Bryn.

I tucked the knife away as I squatted to retrieve my fallen
feathers. No sense in alerting a random guard that there were intruders around.
I tucked the feathers into my coat pocket and snapped, "Watch where you're
going, Karl. We can't afford for you to bungle this whole mission."

The skin at his eyes tightened at the reprimand, while his
jaw clenched. His fury didn't bother me in the least.

He really should have stayed at HQ, and I wanted to tell him
that. But despite my annoyance with his attitude and his clumsy bumbling, I
couldn't bring myself to be nasty. So I refocused on the darkened passage, lit
every few yards by a weak and sickly green fluorescent light. The flicker of
light from the tablet reassured me we were heading the right way. Silence
greeted our ears as we moved forward again, stopping at each corner. Karl
bumped into me twice more, and I seriously considered sending him back outside.
If it weren't for maintaining a good team relationship, I really would've told
him to get the hell out. He was getting on my nerves!

The monitor still showed the four red blobs, three inside
and the one outside the building who hadn't moved since Joshua clobbered him.
The screen also now revealed six more splodges, which I assumed represented us.
We were close—the first of the guards waited just around the corner, pacing
back and forth.

"What are we going to do?" Karl whispered, a tad
too loudly. I suppressed the urge to smack him.

"You just stay here and be quiet. We have this
sorted." I leaned back and met Pia's eye, beckoning her forward. She
tiptoed toward me and peered at the tablet screen. I tapped the red dot that
was our target.

"We need to get to him and knock him out."

"You would like him unconscious and not dead?" Pia
asked. I nodded and hid a smile at her matter-of-fact tone. Hard to imagine
this dainty Valkyrie snuffing out the unknowing guard as if she did it all the
time. We were seasoned warriors, not seasoned killers.

"Ready?"

In a blink, we were both glamored. Pia and I stepped into
the passage. Backs to the wall, we edged closer to the guard as he paced back
and forth in front of a steel door. Dressed head to toe in black, his head
remained bare, revealing his gleaming bald pate, underlined by a series of
troubled furrows on his forehead.

We bracketed him, and he remained blissfully unaware that we
were both within breathing distance, invading his personal space big time. Pia
drew a short sword from the leather scabbard at her waist; the steel left its
leather glove so silently I stared in wonder. Then I tensed, not daring to
breathe, as she brought the thick hilt down on the back of the poor guard's
neck. His eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped. I caught him smoothly as
he fell, laying him beside the wall, out of our way. I wished I could glamor
him, but we had no time to waste.

Pia bent to scrabble in the guard's pockets and then threw
me a bleak look. "No keys," she whispered.

Great. So the door had to be opened from the inside. I
glared at the door. No keyhole. Not that Fen's training sessions had including
lock-picking. Probably a remote locking and unlocking system, then. I gritted
my teeth, making a mental note to ask Karl why we didn't know about this.
Very
sloppy, Karl. Very sloppy.

We faced the door, a metal and pretty much impenetrable
barrier. I sighed a silent sigh and shared an exasperated glance with Pia. She
backed against the wall beside the door, knife at the ready. I knocked heavily,
belatedly hoping whoever waited on the other side didn't have some sort of
secret code. The guard on the floor moaned and shifted, but remained out for
the count.

The lock clicked and the door soughed open. Another guard in
similar dark garb, this time with a generous amount of bleach-blond spikes,
looked out expectantly. Pia and I waited, still glamored. When nothing
happened, the guard popped his head out of the doorway and glanced left and
right with a confused frown on his face. He stiffened as he spotted his
colleague, unconscious along the wall.

"Hey, Mick!" he yelled. He stepped across the
threshold, one hand remaining on the heavy metal door behind him. When he
didn't get a response he grasped his walkie-talkie, his fingers stiff, about to
call for help.

He got no further.

Pia snuck behind him and repeated her previous technique,
knocking him unconscious with the hilt of her short blade, a satisfied smirk on
her face. When I stared at her, she shrugged, her cheeks tinged a light pink.
My new Valkyrie friend was clearly enjoying this level of violence way too
much.

I hadn't had many opportunities to mix and mingle with the
other Valkyries since I’d received my wings; I'd forgotten that not all
Valkyries were Midgard-innocent like Sigrun, or murderous she-devils like
Astrid.

Pia grabbed the falling guard and began to drag him away
from the door.

The door that was slowly swinging shut.

My heart shuddered as I sprinted to the doorway, thrust my
hand forward and stopped it from closing. Just in time.

Pia stared at me, a comical blend of shock and relief on her
face. She left the pair of trussed-up guards piled against the wall. I stood on
the threshold and held the door open for her. We were just about to enter the
room beyond when the distinct sounds of a scuffle filtered down the passage. It
was brutal, from the sounds of it.

"What—?" Pia started to ask. But she was cut off
by what sounded suspiciously like someone hitting the ground really hard. The
thud was followed closely by a low groan and clinking of metal against
concrete. A sword hitting the floor?

"Joshua?" I whispered as loud as I dared.
"Karl?"