My teeth clenched, all my muscles cramped in rigid knots, and a field of electric white burned across my vision. Skyla screamed my name.
Then the world went dark.
I woke up to darkness. A nuclear bomb had exploded in my head, and my stomach contents were trying to make an emergency evacuation. This was not my life, was it? Was this really who I was born to be? A girl who raided private compounds littered with armed security guards, attempted to rescue Norse gods from their own foolishness, and wound up knocked out and bound in…. What have they done to me? I was upright, standing on my own two feet, but something unyielding and heavy spanned my chest, shoulder to hip, around my ribs, sparing no room for movement and barely enough space for me to suck in a few desperate breaths that smelled of motor oil and mildew.
What the hell was I thinking? A couple of krav maga classes had not turned me into Chuck Norris.
Chuck Norris put the “laughter” in “manslaughter.”
There is no theory of evolution, just a list of creatures Chuck Norris allows to live.
Chuck Norris has a grizzly-bear rug. It isn’t dead. It’s just afraid to move.
The guard’s assault had knocked me loopy. I shook my head, clearing my thoughts, but regretted it when my brain screamed and banged a hot, burning beat against my skull. Thus, I closed my eyes and practiced my being-very-still skills.
If I tried, maybe I could convert into that other state again, but that meant abandoning Skyla and my allies and losing myself for who knew how long. I had no guarantee that, this time, I would come back again.
What would a Valkyrie do?
As I contemplated the answer to that question, the overhead lights flickered on and revealed the nature of my captivity. The guards had stowed me in a massive storeroom housing an innumerable number of huge metal containers, the industrial kind that came off of cargo ships before a crane loaded them onto trains and long-haul trucks. A cul-de-sac of boxes surrounded me, one on my right, one on my left, and one at my back. The bands around my chest consisted of some strange stone material, and they strongly resembled a pair of… arms?
The clack of approaching footsteps echoed in the expansive space, and a cold queasiness burbled up from my gut. Is this it? Have Helen and her wolf come to devour me? But Helen wasn’t the one who rounded the corner of the nearest container. Nate McNary stopped several feet before me, and he smiled a wicked smile.
Nate appeared urbane as usual, dressed in an impeccably tailored suit. He looked nothing like a henchman but more like the sort who stood around at crossroads, waiting to give you anything you wanted in exchange for your soul. The only thing Nate had that I wanted to take was his life, and at that moment I might have sold my soul to get it.
I scowled at him and said, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
“I agree,” Nate said. “Under different circumstances, maybe we could have had a rapport.”
“Why do you help her? Is it family loyalty? You know what she wants to do. What guarantee do you have that you’ll survive?”
Nate ignored my questions. He went to a nearby container, pried open a door, and spoke a few words I didn’t understand. He waited several moments until something responded—something that sounded like stones rubbing together, like sandpaper and the gritty crunch of gravel underfoot.
Nate stepped away. More grinding noises echoed in the container, and heavy, clomping footsteps thundered on the warehouse floor. Initially, I couldn’t comprehend what I saw. My mind blanked at the improbability of it. I had converted into a star, seen men shapeshift into wolves, watched other men transport themselves through thin air, but that… That defied explanation.
“Solina”—Nate shook his head piteously—“you’ve never seen a golem before, have you?”
I opened my mouth, but my voice had fled. Before me stood a man, one slightly taller and thicker than Nate, but he was formed entirely of stone and clay and rock. If I had seen him raised on a pedestal in a museum or fastened to a plinth in a fancy garden, he might have made sense. The figure defied all that because he moved. Like flesh and bone and blood, he stepped from the container and walked toward me. Another followed after him, and another. Blank faced, emotionless, the color of sand and mud, they marched forward and circled around me.
I glanced down and studied the bindings crossing my chest again. Arms, indeed. Another of the bizarre creatures was holding me in its stony, inert embrace. A strange sound—part disbelief, part horror and disgust—escaped my throat. Comprehensible words were beyond me.
“The entire warehouse is filled with them,” Nate said. He did not try to hide the pride in his voice as he waved a hand at the boxes surrounding us. “Fifty in each container.”
Still speechless, I gaped at him.
Nate tapped his temple. “Blowing your mind a little, isn’t it? An ideal army. Faithful and loyal without fault, and they require no food, no pay, no rights.” Nate chuckled. “Amazing, no?”
I swallowed and said, “What’s Helen doing with them?”
“The details need not bother you. You won’t be around to see them put to use, anyway. What a pity.” Nate turned to the nearest stone man, golem, whatever. “Keep her here, and do not let go of her. Don’t let her out of your sight. And, whatever you do, do not kill her.”
A cell phone trilled, its tinny song reverberating through the empty space. Nate removed the phone from his pocket, thumbed the screen, and listened to the voice on the other end. “Yes, I have her, and she is secure.” He listened again for a moment, grunted something affirmative, and ended the call. He raised his green-eyed gaze to mine. “We have visitors.”
“Helen?” I asked.
A slight twitch of Nate’s eyebrow and a devious smile provided all the confirmation I needed. Well, damn. Where there was a Helen, there was also a Skoll. If I was going to do anything to save myself, the time had come.
I gritted my teeth and glared at the stone horrors. I knew what I looked like: about as menacing as a wet cat. The three guards maintained their chiseled, stoic expressions. Maybe they had no other option. I snarled, an ineffable sound encompassing all my emotions. Heat and light leaked from my pores, from my hair, maybe from my mouth and eyes too. Everything went bright and hot.
“We’ve done this before,” Nate said. “You forsook those who would die on your behalf. It seems that, if given the chance, you would do it again. Your friends will die, Solina. All of them. If you abandon them again, Helen will certainly kill them. Are you prepared to live with those consequences? I think a woman who gave up her life to find her brother’s killer would not be so callous.”
A cold laugh resounded through my thoughts. Stupid man. How has he lived for eons without learning the danger of premature conclusions? He thinks he knows me. He thinks he can predict my decisions.
“Oh,” Nate said, chuckling. “The look on your face—such obstinacy! You think you’ll fight your way out of this? You think there’s a way you can still win? I hate to tell you…” Nate paused and pointed at the ceiling.
I looked up and recognized star-shaped sprinkler nozzles overhead. “How can I keep my fire in check when you put my life in the hands of a bunch of creatures who have stones for brains and expect them to know how hard they can squeeze before they kill me?”
As if proving my point, my stone captor tightened his hold, restricting my air supply. I let out a pitiful yelp. Maybe, just maybe, with enough time and effort, I could burn away his stony body. But I would probably run out of air and energy long before that happened. Fight smarter, not harder. “How are you going to explain it to Helen when one of these things squeezes me to pulp?”
Nate gritted his teeth. A muscle flexed in his jaw as he considered the possibility. Finally, he exhaled an irritable grunt and said, “Give the girl some breathing room.”
The cage of my captor’s arms relaxed, but I struggled and wheezed and gave Nate a pleading look, silently begging for more of his pity. He ignored me, which was fine. I had gained some precious wiggle room. It would have to be enough.
All my training with the Valkyries and Tre was preparation for a moment like this. Against a more formidable opponent, I would have never stood a chance, but a mindless block of rock was all brute and no cunning. Those odds favored me.
To conserve my energy, I drew my heat and light inside and put it away. The golem probably felt no pain, so classic techniques like smashing insteps and ball busting served no purpose. Regardless of the golem’s magic, if the laws of physics governed his movements, then I stood a chance of defeating him. The creature held me from behind, his arms crossed over my chest like a seatbelt, one arm reaching from left hip to my right shoulder, the other wrapped under my arms and around my ribs. And oh, dear Lord, how his grip hurt, but adrenaline was pumping through my bloodstream and numbing the worst of it.
