Fall (The Ragnarok Prophesies) (36 page)

Awe danced through me, spinning like lovers in an intricate circle… and as quickly as Freki’s anger let them in, my shock thrust them out again. The link between us severed with an audible pop.

My ears rang and black spots swam before my eyes.

My heart pounded, each frenetic beat seeming to whisper Dace’s name.

Freki vanished back behind her wall in a blink, leaving me swaying in my seat.

The room spun around me in sickening blurs.

The door slammed hard against the wall. Ronan came barreling in, his cell phone still clutched to his ear. He looked harried as he scanned the room from one side to the other twice, looking for danger.

Dace’s doing, no doubt.

Satisfied we weren’t under attack, Ronan whipped his head in my direction, those black eyes burning into me. He opened his mouth.

“I’m fine,” I said, holding up a hand to forestall him. I gripped the table with the other, trying to hold myself steady when the room continued to spin.

“She’s fine,” Ronan repeated into the phone. He listened for a second, his eyes narrowing, and then held it out to me. “He wants to talk to you.”

I steeled myself and held my hand out for the phone.

“Arionna?” Panic licked at the edges of Dace’s tone, his split second reprieve from fear and guilt and all the things weighing him down long gone.

“I’m fine,” I said quietly. I wanted to cry at the sound of his voice and the piercing ache in my chest. Eight days since I saw him last… it seemed like a lifetime.

He heaved a sigh, his breath crackling through the phone.

“What the hell was that?” he demanded. “What happened?”

“That―” I cleared my throat and tried again, still stunned. “That was Freki.”

Dace’s silence was deafening.

“She….” I shook my head, not sure how to explain what happened. “Sköll and Hati are trying to manipulate you into getting yourself killed. They wanted you to think they were coming after me, but they aren’t. You’re their real target.”

Well, that about summed it up.

“O-kay?”

I huffed.

“That’s all you have to say?”

“Of course not,” he said. “I’m trying….”

Silence stretched between us. Awkward. Painful.

Dace blew out a breath. “What happened with Freki?” he asked.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to fight off the overwhelming sense of disappointment rolling through me. Eight days, and he still had nothing to say to me.

I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t.

“Arionna?”

I sighed. “Remember the night Sköll and Hati burned your house down, and Freki went crazy?”

“I remember,” he said softly.

“It was like that. Chelle and I were talking, and we realized why Sköll and Hati are sending those arrangements. They’re sending them for you, Dace. To make you put yourself in danger, I think.”

“
Are
sending?”

Ah, crap. I closed my eyes, cursing myself for that slip up. I couldn’t take it back now though. “I got a delivery at my mom’s, too,” I confessed.

He didn’t say a word.

Chelle and Ronan looked everywhere but at me.

The clock on the wall ticked loudly, each second seeming to go on forever.

I held my breath.

“I want you to come home,” he said then, a lethal edge in his voice that hardened his statement into a frustrated demand.

“Dace, no. I can’t.”

Ronan delved into the take-out bag for his soup and began eating while he listened.

Chelle tore off pieces of bread and fed them to Fuki.

“Arionna….”

“Dace,” I said, mimicking his no nonsense tone. “I’m not coming home.”

Ronan’s lips tilted up around his spoon. I think he was proud of me.

“Then let me come to you.”

“No,” I said, frustrated. “I don’t need you to protect me. You need to accept that, Dace.”

The seconds dragged by and then his voice whispered through the phone so softly I almost missed it, “Why do you think I let you go, love?”

I told him the truth about Idun.

He listened quietly, and then he sighed. “I suppose you’re going to look for her?”

“I think I have to,” I said to him.

“I think you’re right.” His reluctance was obvious, but he didn’t try to talk me out of going or demand I come home again. “We need to know if Idun’s out there, even if she can’t help us.” He hesitated. “You need to know something, too. Aki is missing.”

My stomach churned. “When?” I whispered, swallowing hard.

“Last night. They were running from a hunter, and he got separated from the rest of the pack.”

The last time I saw Aki―as he stood beneath the streetlights, supporting Buka as she said a final goodbye to me and Fuki―flashed through my mind. He was so wise, so patient. He’d lived a long time.

Tears burned in my eyes.

“That’s not all,” Dace warned.

“Tell me,” I demanded, my voice hoarse.

“The pack can’t sense him anymore, but no one in town is claiming the kill.”

“Is he―” I had to swallow down bile before I could force the question out. “Is he dead?”

“Yeah,” Dace answered roughly. “I think he is, and I think Sköll and Hati killed him.”

I slid from my seat to sit beside Fuki on the floor. He looked up at me and thumped his tail against the carpet. His chatter filtered through my mind, senseless and content.

A tear rolled down my cheek.

How was I going to tell him about Aki? He was still just a baby.

“Dace?” I whispered, clutching the phone tightly.

“Yeah?”

“Promise me we’ll find a way to kill Sköll and Hati.”

“We will,” he said. “I promise you, we will kill them.”

He made me promise to be careful before we said our goodbyes.

I think he knew I needed to see this through on my own as much as I did. I think, maybe, he knew he needed to see some things through on his own, too. Somewhere over the course of the last few days, we’d both been forced to face reality. We’d both been forced to grow up.

That gave me hope. Hope that Dace would find a way to survive the coming war. And hope that we’d find a way to be together when it was all said and done. We’d come too far and lost too much to destroy ourselves now.

When Gage arrived at nearly one in the morning, Chelle and I were both sitting on the floor, trying to comfort Fuki. He was devastated over Aki, and just like a small child, he wanted his mom. I hated that we couldn’t take him to Buka. All we could do was stroke his fur while he stared forlornly across the room, mourning his fallen brother.

Ronan lay sprawled across one of the beds, sleeping peacefully. I took mercy on him after his eyes nearly swelled shut, and offered him one of the mild pain killers Dr. Guerin gave me. Ronan refused it at first, but eventually Chelle and I badgered him into taking it. He needed to sleep, and neither of us saw him doing that unless forced into it.

Every time I looked over at him, the bruises beneath his eyes seemed a little lighter. The swelling was going down quickly, too. Still, the damage was obvious enough for Gage to notice.

He took one look at Ronan passed out on the bed and arched a brow. “Which one of you hit him?” he asked, easing himself down to the floor beside Chelle.

“Ari did,” she whispered, cuddling up to his side.

He didn’t ask why I hit Ronan, and I didn’t tell him.

He brushed a kiss across Chelle’s temple, and then closed his eyes. His lips moved as if he was praying. Calling him to get her home was the best thing we could have done. He would do everything in his power to keep her safe. We couldn’t ask for anything more than that.

“What time will you leave in the morning?” I asked when Gage opened his eyes again.

“As soon as possible.” He gave me a grim smile. His blue eyes were shadowed underneath, making it clear he hadn’t slept much since we left either. “I want to get her back before anyone notices I’m gone.”

I nodded my understanding. We were pretty sure Sköll and Hati were still in Beebe, but who knew how long they’d stay there? Better to get Chelle back to Dace and his shifters for protection before anyone notice Gage was missing

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Chelle asked, biting her lip. Her eyes were clouded with worry.

“Not really,” I confessed, drawing circles on Fuki’s back with my finger.

“Ronan can track her down, and you can go back with us.”

As tempting as that sounded, we both knew I couldn’t let Ronan go alone. Not because I didn’t trust him, but because this was something I needed to do. Freki told
me
to find Idun.

Chelle sighed, but didn’t argue with me. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

“As careful as I can be,” I promised her before turning to Gage. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Are there any angels left?”

He lifted a brow, obviously surprised by the question. “You mean are there any full-fledged angels still walking the Earth?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Not for two thousand years,” he said.

“What about others like you? Descendants, I mean. How many of you are there?”

“Not many, now. Why do you ask?”

The same question reflected in Chelle’s eyes.

“I just wondered where they fit into all of this.” And, truthfully, if Idun was still here on Earth, why not angels? I wouldn’t mind having a few full-fledged avenging angels fighting on our side.

“You’re wondering if they’ll take a side in the battle?”

“Yeah. I mean, I know it’s not supposed to be their fight or whatever, but surely the angels know about the Ragnarök prophecy. Won’t their Armageddon prophecy be seriously screwed up if Fenrir wins?”

“What makes you so sure Ragnarök isn’t a facet of the same prophecy?” he asked.

“I―” I broke off and shrugged.

“I’m not saying it is, but most religions operate on the assumption that their way is the only right way, correct?” he asked.

“Yeah, most do.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re right. In nearly every major religion, you find variations of the same themes. One supreme god or goddess who rules over all the others. It was Odin for the Norse people, and Zeus for the Greeks. Hinduism names Lord Vishnu as the Supreme Para-bahma. Even Native American religion teaches of one Supreme Being. Each of these groups has their lesser gods, too. Don’t you find it a little bit interesting that so many different cultures established the same sort of religious hierarchy, often well before they knew about one another?”

“I guess so,” I said, leaning back against the edge of the bed, “but it makes sense, too.”

“How so?” he asked.

“During the Neolithic revolution, when people began shifting away from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, they constructed their religions around the social and political hierarchy of their group. If a particular group of people had one leader, followed by a grouping of advisors or whatever you want to call them, chances were their religion did, too.”

“What if things were the other way around though?” Gage asked. “Religion wasn’t patterned after the construct of society, but social and political standings were constructed around the religious ideology of the people? Anthropologists have found evidence of religious life well before the Neolithic revolution.”

“It’s possible,” I conceded. Time had a way of eroding more than memories. We’d learned a lot about our earliest ancestors over the centuries, but there was still so much we didn’t know, and maybe never would. What little evidence remained to us lay buried beneath thousands of years of civilization. No matter how hard people tried, we’d never dig it all up.

“I’m not saying it happened that way,” Gage said, leaning back against the wall beside Chelle. She snuggled a little deeper into his side with a contented hum. “But there’s some pretty strong evidence to support the theory. When you take into consideration the similarities in themes for people oceans away from one another, the evidence is a little more compelling.”

Fuki stirred as his new best friend shifted again.

I reached down and stroked his muzzle, wishing I could do more to comfort him.

“People have a tendency to interpret things in a way that makes sense to them,” Gage continued. “It’s easy to see how different people would interpret the same theme in different ways, giving us Odin and the Ζsir in the North, Lord Vishnu and the Sura in India, and Zeus and the Olympians in Greece.”