The Sentinel (16 page)

“Muninn?” I ask. “Didn’t you say that was one of Odin’s ravens? Means mind, or memory, or something.”

“Both,” Willem says. “Perhaps they discovered the plague was being spread by the birds? I don’t know.”

“Or Muninn was a person,” I say. “It only took a black cloak, and black hair, to make you all give me the Raven nickname.”

Willem twists his lips around, pondering the ancient mystery. He looks ready to offer up another idea, but Chase beats him to the punch.

“Um,” he says, sounding nervous. “Why did they pick a Raven? I mean, there are lots of black things they could have picked.”

The question is directed at me. “The Raven is their family crest,” I say.

Chase looks like he’s just been diagnosed with terminal cancer and a few months to live.

“And…just let me get this straight,” Chase says, raising a finger in the air. His hand shakes. “The Raven is the family crest of the, ahh, Olavson family. Yes? And Torstein, Son of Olav, was their ancestor? An Olavson?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Willem says. “Why are you—”

“So the crest carved onto the stone where this Muninn is entombed would be—”

He leaves the statement unfinished.

Willem takes the bait. “A raven.”

Chase looks like the doctor has just revealed his terminal cancer is actually going to kill him in a few hours. “What is it?” I ask him.

“The cave,” he says. “The cave where I hid with McAfee. And Mr. Jackson. And Eagon. It was sealed. Covered by a thick stone wall. We uhh, we tore it down to get inside.”

Willem starts rubbing his forehead. We all know how this is going to end, but let Chase get it out.

“The largest stone in the wall,” Chase says. “It was, ahh, it was marked. With a raven.”

No one says a word. Four sets of eyes watch Chase.

“I think…I think it was Muninn’s cave,” he says. “I think the Muninn killed Eagon. We set the Raven free.”

“It killed her.” The soft, feminine voice makes everyone jump back and scream.

As I catch my breath, I see that Peach is awake. She’s still flat on her back, but her eyes are open. The blank stare from before has dulled, but there are still traces of it hidden in her pupils.

“Killed who?” Chase asks after composing himself.

“Jenny,” Peach says. “The raven killed her. I saw it.”

23

If circumstances had been ideal, I would had have time to interview Peach, ask her to describe what she saw, how Jenny died, how she survived. Okay, ideal would actually be me on a beach, with none of these people around, sunning myself and reading a trashy novel that has nothing to do with whales, Vikings, ravens or any other avian species. But right now, in this moment, I could have really done without the howl that rips through the tent and erases the effects of the firewater.

My body shakes with a shiver.

“What was that?” Chase says, fear creeping back into his voice.

“Wind?” Willem asks.

We all sit silently, waiting for the howl to repeat so we can identify it as wind. But the sound doesn’t come. In fact, the tent has stopped shaking. Sometime in the last ten minutes while we listened to the tale of Torstein, the wind died down.

I unzip the hatch and poke my head outside. The sky is still full of gray clouds and snowflakes flutter through the sky, but the swirling black monster of a storm has moved north, out to sea. “It wasn’t the wind,” I say.

“It was the raven,” Peach says. She hasn’t sat up. Hasn’t moved. She’s an Egyptian mummy laying in a sarcophagus and communicating from the afterlife. According to the long deceased Olavson, that might actually be possible. A second shiver grips my body as a totally irrational fear tickles my mind. I look at Peach more closely. It’s cold—really cold—but her forehead is slick with sweat.

“Feeling okay, Peach?” I ask.

She glances at me with a squinty-eyed glare that most women perfect in middle-school.

“Never mind Peach,” Chase says, sliding to the open hatch. “We’re in a big yellow target.” He looks through the hatch and cranes his head around, looking at the stone walls around us. “The walls are taller than the tent, so we should be okay unless it walks past the front door.”

“It?” I say. “Think about what you’re saying. There is no recently thawed giant raven wandering around the island killing people and playing hacky-sack with their heads. There are no zombies. No vampires. No Draugar.” I set my eyes on Peach. “And we’re going to find out who killed Jenny, with or without your help.”

“Hey!” Chase shouts, yanking my shoulder so I’m facing him again.

I nearly punch him in the gut, but manage to restrain myself.

“There might not be any of those things, but there
is
a polar bear.”

Willem sidles up next to us. He speaks more gently. “And your missing captain.”

Damnit
. I hate being wrong. “And Mr. Jackson,” I admit. “You’re right. But we can’t go anywhere yet. The sea will be too rough still. Even with the engine, we’ll never make it across the channel.”

“This girl is ill,” Jakob says. He has his hand on Peach’s forehead. Her eyes are closed again and her body shivers.

What comes around goes around
, I think, but I keep it to myself. Instead, I take charge. “I’m going out to look for Jenny—Jenny’s body. I want to know how she died.” I glance at Peach. “How she really died. Come with me or stay here, the choice is yours.”

I slide from the exit and climb to my feet, careful that I don’t stand taller than the wall. I don’t want to expose myself until I’m certain that howl didn’t come from something nearby. As I check my handgun, Chase, Willem, Jakob and Alvin all exit the tent.

“Alvin and I will remain here,” Jakob says. He points to a pile of stones that must have fallen from the upper portion of the walls long ago. We’ll fill in the doorway with those. You’ll have to climb over the wall to get back in.”

“Good idea,” I say.

“I’m Captain for a reason,” Jakob says and gives me a wink.

I head for the door. Willem and Chase follow me. Neither has said so, but it’s clear they’re both coming.
My heroes
, I think with more than a little bit of sarcasm. It occurs to me that it’s a good thing I have a filter between the things I think and the things I say or everyone would know I’m an asshole.

“We’ll be back in a few hours,” I say. “If we don’t come back, take the raft and the engine and head for the mainland.”

Jakob laughs. “If you don’t come back, I will die avenging your deaths.”

I laugh for a moment, too, but then realize the old Viking isn’t joking. “He’s serious?” I say to Willem as we strike out.

“He is,” Willem says.

I like the old man even more because I can picture the Colonel saying, and meaning, the same thing, though I don’t think Dad would have been level-headed enough to let his little girl head out on her own.

A fresh half foot of snow crunches beneath my boots. My cloaks slides across the surface and I occasionally have to shake off little ice balls that cling to it. The fresh coat of white has erased the bloody trail Peach left behind, but I remember where she came from. Where I sent her. Where I sent Jenny. I know there’s no good reason to feel guilty for Jenny’s death—she’d have been dead several times sooner without me—but she could have also survived.

We head up the steep, stone covered hill in silence. It’s funny how introspective people get when they think they might die. Willem is probably thinking about his father, about how it’s much more likely that the old man won’t make it back. Chase is probably thinking about being betrayed and picturing himself exacting his revenge dressed as a ninja, or some level-70 wizard. But neither is more pitiful than me because here I am, facing death, and I’m thinking about what they’re thinking!

Willem interrupts my thoughts about his thoughts. “If we can cross the straight in the morning, I think we stand a chance of surviving. If we hug the coast, we should come across seal, or walrus. So we won’t starve.”

“And if we can keep the tent, and keep dry, we won’t freeze,” Chase adds. “We might also come across a fishing ship along the way.”

“Hadn’t thought of that,” Willem says.

And now I know just how pitiful I am. While I’m thinking about ridiculous things, these two are busy plotting our escape and survival. They haven’t given up. Which makes me wonder about myself. Have I given up? Is my lack of planning a sign that I’m resigned to death?

“Raven,” Willem says, but the sound of his voice is dulled by the hood over my head, never mind the fact that I’m tuned into my self-loathing and don’t yet recognize the Raven nickname as belonging to me.

“Jane!” Willem hisses. Hearing my own name gets my attention. Willem and Chase have stopped a few feet behind me. Willem points to the ground at my feet. I look down and then jump away. The fresh white snow is dark red. There must have been so much blood here when the storm began that the liquid leached up through the fresh powder and stained the area red. A gust of warmer wind flows over the hill from the southern coast and carries the scent of blood and rot.

But none of it holds my attention like the fresh boot prints surrounding the bloody snow and heading off over the rise. I draw my weapon, all thoughts of Chase and Willem extinguished. I move silently, each step planned ahead and gently placed. Even crunching snow could give me away. I’m happy to see that Willem and Chase understand the need for silence as they follow, placing their feet inside my prints. We reach the crest a moment later. I lie on my stomach and poke my head over the ledge.

Three bodies occupy an outcrop of stone twenty feet below. Only one of them is dead. I can tell by the size and the remnants of a red jacket that the body is Jenny’s. The other two are dressed in similar red snow gear, but have their hoods up. I can’t see their faces from above, but I know who they are: Captain McAfee and Mr. Jackson.

My eyes linger on Jenny’s ruined body. The sight is sickening and I fight the twisting discomfort in my gut. If I hadn’t expected to find something like this, I might have lost control of my body. As it is, I’m only just hanging on. It’s one thing to be killed, but then to be torn apart like this… I remember Jenny’s laugh. Our shared sense of humor. I think, if we both had survived this mess, we could have been friends. My eyes grow wet, blurring my vision.
Snap out of it
, I think, blinking hard to force away the tears.

“What are we going to do?” Willem whispers to me. I’m so focused on the two men below, and what I feel about them, that his voice is like a gunshot in my ear. I flinch in surprise, and manage to smack the gun against a stone. The metallic clink isn’t very loud, but Jackson cocks his head to the side.

Busted.

Before I’ve thought about what I’m doing, I throw myself over the crest and slide down the snow covered incline. They definitely hear me now. Both men jump away. McAfee even lets out a scream. They spin around to face me as I reach the bottom. I land on my feet just a few steps from what remains of Jenny’s blood-soaked corpse. Like Eagon, she looks partially eaten, and she’s missing her head.

I can’t stand the sight of her, so I keep my attention where it belongs—on Jackson. “Don’t fucking move!” I shout, aiming the weapon from one man to the other.

McAfee raises his hands in the air. Jackson glares at me. He’s clutching a backpack in front of his chest.

Chase slides down behind me and steps up next to me.

McAfee must not have recognized me with the hood shadowing my face because his eyes go wide when he sees Chase. He drops his hands and takes a step forward. “Chase!” He says with relief.

“Captain,” Chase says, sounding like the good first mate again, but when McAfee steps closer, Chase lands an impressive right hook that sends McAfee to the ground.

McAfee shakes his head, stunned. He looks up at Chase with wounded eyes. “Chase, what—”

“You killed them,” Chase said. “Your crew. My friends. People we were
both
responsible for. It was all you.”

“Chase,” Jackson says, the tone of his voice a warning, which pisses me off.

I go from thinking of ways to diffuse this situation to jumping right into the mix. I pull the gun’s hammer back and step toward Jackson. “Shut-up, Tito,” I say. When I was introduced to Mr. Jackson I said, “Mr. Jackson, if you’re nasty,” and did my best Janet Jackson impersonation. His face turned bright red and Chase asked me to apologize, which I did for the sake of my mission. But now the gloves are off and I’m free to mock his name to my heart’s content. “Or is it actually Mrs. Jackson. I always wondered about you.”

I can tell my jabs are having the desired effect. Jackson looks ready to explode.

For several seconds, nothing happens. We’ve reached a stalemate. The two men responsible for killing the crews of the
Sentinel
and the
Bliksem
are at our mercy. They deserve to die. They deserve worse. The only problem is that Chase and I aren’t killers—at least not the kind that can kill defenseless men in cold blood.

Mr. Jackson realizes this around the same time I do. He throws his pack at me and I lose sight of him for a moment. When I see him again, he’s beneath me. He must have dived and rolled because he’s moving fast. Too fast for me to stop. The punch to my gut knocks the wind out of me and sends me to my knees. Before I can suck in my first wheezy breath, he snatches the handgun from my hand and turns it on me, saying, “Stupid bitch.”

24

Damn, damn, damn
! The Colonel would not be proud if he saw me like this, on my knees at the feet of a mass murderer, gasping for breath.
Shut-up
, a part of me thinks,
he’d be terrified
.
He was tough, and mean, but you were his girl, and he loved you
. But I also know what he’d say to me in this situation. “Go down fighting,” and possibly, “Aim for his boys.” And I might just do that, as soon as I catch my breath.

“Is it just you two?” Jackson asks.