Fall (The Ragnarok Prophesies) (2 page)

I couldn’t imagine a world without Katrín. In truth, I never knew a world without her. In every life, Katrín walked at my side. Odin might have been my master, but she was my life. My heart. She and her wolf were the reason Geri and I fought to preserve what Odin created. Without her, would we even wish it preserved?

“I would not,” Katrín murmured, glancing up at me again. “I think Odin knew that.”

“Did he?” I asked and then nodded once. “Perhaps he did.”

Odin sent us together, to stand together, to fight together, but we were always destined to fail at this duty eventually. I had the feeling the end would come when Katrín and Freki, or Geri and I, were reborn alone to face it. Odin had to have known Geri and I would be incapable of fighting without Katrín and her wolf, and she and Freki without us.

There was a lot I didn’t understand about the myths surrounding my life and Katrín’s, but I’d learned enough in the last months to understand one thing clearly: the end would come for us sooner or later. Already, death lay like a shroud on the edge of my vision.

Freki was weak, failing, leaving Katrín barely able to shift into wolf form. And the mind that Geri and I shared was fracturing apart like a sliver of wood beneath an axe. Soon, in this life or in the next, our mind would splinter apart as Freki and Katrín’s did lifetimes ago, and the connection that always bound us together would fail.

Death would come for us then, and for the world.

When it came, did we get to go home to Valhalla?

Our fates had never been written as had Odin’s and his brethren’s. Geri and Freki simply disappeared from myth and prophecy. I did not know what that meant, and neither did Geri. If Hugin and Munin, the ravens sent to stand guard with us, ever knew, they did no longer. As with Katrín and me, the ravens were weakening. Soon, too soon, we would fail altogether and Fenrir would be freed.

As if thinking the grim thought set the Norns to spinning their weave, a shrill scream rent the air outside the cottage. Another scream followed on its heels, and then came the human cries of the villagers.

“The devil comes. Oh lud, he comes! The hellhounds are loose!” one of the village women cried right outside the door.

Katrín jumped. Terror lanced through her thoughts.

Geri responded with a rage-filled roar.

I swore savagely as the wolf attempted to claw his way to the surface and force the change in response to our mate’s fear.

Nei, nei, hold off
, I commanded the wolf, already knowing my demand was useless.

Geri would not stop now.

My men’s shouts bounced around the village and through miniscule cracks in the walls until the entire room seemed full. The thoughts of the wolf pack arrayed beyond the village bounced back to me in a clamor.

They were under attack.

“Jon!” Katrín cried out.

Another shrill scream cut through the clash and clamor outside. Whether it was Hugin or Munin, I didn’t know. But I knew what it meant, and so did Katrín.

Sköll or Hati was out there somewhere, coming closer.

Death might not be so far off after all.

My vision blackened, fear for Katrín and Freki blinding me as Geri roared to the surface, melting bone and sinew before knitting it together again in a flash. When my vision cleared, I saw through the eyes of my wolf. The world was slanted, sharp, and tinged with an animal perception far beyond what my human eyes ever saw.

Katrín cried out my name again, the sound full of pain.

I felt Freki trying to force the change for her, but it came upon her slowly, creeping inch by inch. The wolf was too weak to make the change painless for Katrín.

Geri lashed his head back and forth, angry roars erupting from his throat.

The thoughts of the pack beyond the village dropped into our mind one after the other. Their alpha, Shidan, was being torn apart by a wolf twice his size. Despite the combined efforts of the pack, they could not stop the monster. Shidan would die where he stood, but like the alpha I knew him to be, the wolf had every intention of meeting death on his feet.

We have to help him!
Katrín screamed through our bond, the change finally taking her.

I watched from eyes that no longer belonged to me as she dropped to all fours, not a hazel-eyed, soot-streaked woman any longer, but a snowy-white, lethal wolf. She was as beautiful in wolf form as she was human.

Freki staggered before catching herself hard against the leg of the table holding the siege maps. Fear for her and Katrín raced through Geri and me. We couldn’t lose her. Not yet. Not if we could stop it.

Aye
, I vowed as our men tore open the door to the cottage in response to Geri’s furious roar.
We will stop it.

We must
, Katrín whispered.

Our wolves leaped as one through the door and into the chaos of the village beyond.

Men, women, and children ran this way and that, crying to the gods for protection, for shelter, for a miracle. My men, gifted shifters down to the last one, raced alongside them through the misty village on twos and fours. Great cats and wolves ran side by side with shifters still in human form to Shidan’s aid. Down to the last one, they knew they’d be too late, but they ran anyway.

Geri lifted his muzzle to the sky and howled, a thousand lifetimes of defiance echoing like a clap of thunder through the village. Freki’s furious response ripped through the air a split second later, blending with ours until the air seemed full of rage.

Hugin and Munin burst into sight at the edge of the village, giant wings flapping on great puffs of thick, sooty air. Neither Geri nor Freki slowed as the ravens circled above us, leading us through the chaos of the village and into the misty field beyond.

Geri and Freki overtook the ordinary shifters in seconds.

The scene waiting beyond the edge of the village was as familiar to me as Katrín and Freki. I’d seen it a thousand times, in a thousand different lives, playing out in a thousand different settings. Shidan’s pack fell upon a great, black wolf in silent, snapping waves. The monster shook them off as easily as rainwater, the alpha’s throat clamped between his massive jaws. Shouts bounced around the misty valley in a rush of sound, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

We raced into battle a full thirty seconds too late.

With a single shake of our enemy’s head, my wolf brother died, blood pouring from his throat and down the hellhound’s muzzle. I did not know if the massive wolf was Sköll or Hati, but it mattered little. Shidan died either way.

Odin save us
, Katrín prayed.

The beast dropped Shidan’s lifeless body and turned feral yellow eyes in our direction. He snarled, the alpha’s blood still dripping from his muzzle.

Aye, death was coming.

March, 2010

stood alone in a shadowy cavern, my legs trembling.

Ancient torches flickered around me, so brittle they looked as if a single touch would destroy them. Massive boulders shot upward in the eerie, inky light, standing like endless mountains barring my way. My gaze bounced across round and jagged alike, trying to pick out where one ended and the others began. I couldn’t tell the difference, though.

My attention drifted and skittered around the cavern, focusing everywhere except on what waited for me beyond the thick fingers of solid earth standing like the bars of a prison ahead. Soft, ominous rumbles sounded from that direction, so deep the cavern floor vibrated beneath my feet.

Run, Arionna. Run.

I fought to listen to the voice of reason urging me to flee for my life, but I couldn’t seem to keep my legs locked in place. The compulsion to move, to look, to
see
, was too strong.

I took a step forward, then another, slipping through narrow cracks between one rock and the next. The rough surface scraped against my arms and tugged at my hair, pulling small strands away from my scalp. I kept moving though, squeezing between narrow openings until the craggy ground gave way, ending suddenly at a frothy river.

I glanced across the foamy water.

My lungs stopped functioning.

The endless spread of boulders scattered all around were tiny pebbles compared to the solitary mass of earth on the far side of the underground channel. A chain wound around and through the mountainous rock, so thin it was almost invisible to the eye.

I ran my gaze across the shimmering links, checking to ensure the magic bond still held firm.

It did.

Air shuddered into my lungs.

Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid,
I chanted to myself, but when I turned my head, my heart pounded uncomfortably anyway.

I bit my lip to keep from crying out when my gaze landed on the monstrous black wolf lunging against the tiny chain. Foam ran in buckets down his chest and into the river around him, as if his hatred cut a canyon of desiccation through the rock like a knife through butter. He towered over me, taller and wider than any wolf I’d ever seen. He was a giant. A Titan.

Fenrir.

I shivered at the sound of his name echoing in my head.

He gnashed his razor-sharp teeth and roared, struggling against the chain binding him to earth. The sound echoed throughout the massive cavern, bouncing from rock to rock in the same deep, ominous rumble I heard earlier.

Pebbles showered down from overhead, falling to the dirt floor all around.

Fenrir shook them off, then tried to leap.

The chain stretched taut, groaning in protest, but it held firm.

Fenrir hit the ground―hard―and was up again in an instant.

He coiled, crouching as if preparing to spring again, then twitched.

He stilled, not even his chest moving when he drew breath. Sanity flickered in his gaze for a brief moment, burning away the obsessive rage pouring from him. What swept through those yellow eyes in its place was far worse: intelligence.

Fenrir knew his prison would not hold him forever. Eventually, he would break free.

Not today. Please, not today
, I pleaded, hoping someone in charge heard me.

Fenrir sniffed the air.

I stopped breathing, praying he didn’t see me standing amongst the rocks.

He turned his head slowly in my direction, one ear twitching.

His rage-filled gaze met mine and held. Recognition flared in his baleful eyes.

I trembled, trapped in his sights like a prisoner, unable to move. The wolf sharing my soul snarled, trying to shake herself free of the thrall freezing me in place. She was too weak to do more than flutter and twist inside me though.

Fenrir’s lip curled in a menacing snarl as he looked into me, looked through me, and saw everything I was and everything connecting me to him. For a moment, no more than a split second really, he looked pleased. As if he knew his wait was almost over.

And then rage blazed to life in his eyes again, wiping away recognition and replacing it with burning, poisonous hate.

He growled low in his throat, the sound that of a gathering storm.

The cavern floor vibrated beneath my feet again.

Pebbles showered down, striking my arms, my legs… my face. Each hit stung and burned.