Amala stepped back and wiped her blade on her pant leg. Nate’s stare fell on me. He smiled, a horrible rictus, as blood drained from his neck and cascaded into his lap. My stomach churned, and bile rose in the throat, acidic and bitter.
I fell to my knees at Nate’s feet and peered up into the dying light in his eyes. “P-Please, Nate,” I choked. “What did you mean?”
He gargled a terrible wet laugh. He stopped and wheezed, and pink air bubbles burst from his neck wound. I gagged and turned away but remained kneeling until he bled out. My mortal enemy—and I kept him company until the end. What’s wrong with me?
While Amala and Naomi gathered plastic sheeting from the windows, Thorin eased me away from Nate’s corpse. Then he collected the limp, bloodstained body and laid it prostrate on the plastic. A numbing coldness washed over me. Stomach acid burned in my throat, and yet my gaze remained glued on Nate, so pale, so... dead.
“Wha—” I coughed and cleared my throat. “Was that thing you carved in his chest?”
“Ansuz?” Amala said. “It is a master rune, the main symbol denoting the Aesir. It stands for wisdom, truth, and knowledge. It forced Nate to speak truth. Didn’t mean he couldn’t evade and avoid, though. Everything he said was true, but he never gave us the answers we really wanted. What a waste.”
“What are you going to do with him?”
“Dispose of him,” Embla said. “The same way we always have.”
I stared up at Thorin, who stood back from the group, his expression dark, his gaze distant. “What was Nate talking about? Another enemy. Did he mean Val?”
He looked at me, but his expression did not change. His eyes remained unfocused.
I snapped my fingers at him. “Thorin?”
He blinked and shook himself. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything for certain anymore.”
Skyla stepped to my side and crouched beside Nate’s body. She patted his jacket and searched his pockets.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She drew a keychain from one of Nate’s pockets and found his wallet in another. “Searching for information. Maybe he has something useful in his pockets.” She rifled through his wallet, ignoring the cash, but she pulled out a card, similar in shape and size to a credit card. Stamped on its front was the logo for Nastrond Industries.
“They sometimes used magnetized key cards like this to get around in Helen’s warehouses,” Skyla said. “The ones out in Laughlin.”
I had hoped when we left those warehouses, we would never have to return to them. I should have known better. “You think there’s something there?”
“What about the golems she keeps there?” she asked. “Or did Val use them all up in his fight with Thorin?”
I shook my head. “No. If all the shipping containers in that warehouse were full, the golems Thorin destroyed during the fight were a small percentage, assuming those came from the warehouse in the first place. Maybe Helen made up a batch especially for Val.” I wrinkled my nose and resisted the urge to spit.
“Maybe it’s time we find out,” Skyla said. “And while we’re there, maybe we can find something to lead us to Helen or Skoll. We’ve exhausted all our leads in Vegas.”
Thorin stepped closer to us. The vacuous look had disappeared from his face. “Agreed. Embla, Skyla, let’s regroup at the Bellestrella and gather the rest of the Valkyries.”
I glanced at Skyla and back at Thorin. I shook my head. “This is never going to end, is it?”
Skyla patted my arm. “Don’t say that, girlfriend. All bad things must come to an end.”
“I thought it was all good things.”
Thorin grimaced and looked away. “Those, too.”
Chapter 3
Upon our return to the Bellestrella, a dozen or so Valkyries piled into our hotel suite, bringing a low thrum of electric energy with them. Thorin, Embla, Naomi, Amala, Skyla, and I took seats at the dining room table, an impromptu convocation—Knights of the Oblong Table. Embla sat at one end, and I sat at the other. Thorin took the seat at my right hand, Skyla my left. Naomi took Embla’s right hand, Amala her left. We formed a contiguous ring, yet the divide was obvious.
The Valkyries had come to Vegas to help us, but the ties binding the Valkyries to the Aesir were gossamer threads. Skyla’s relationship to Embla might have been the only thing holding us all together. Whatever the reason, I was grateful for the Valkyries’ presence, despite the uneasiness between us.
“You think these things at Helen’s warehouses are golems of some sort?” Embla asked. “Containers bearing souls of the dead?”
Thorin leaned forward, braced his forearms on the table, and looked at me. “Do you remember the night you met Helen and the vision you saw outside the Westmark Hotel in Juneau, when I took your hand to help you from the car?”
“Yes,” I said, “mostly.” I rehashed it for the Valkyries’ benefit. “Thorin stood in front of me in a misty field on the edge of some dark forest. Others stood around him, but a haze covered their faces, and I couldn’t make out details. Somehow, I knew they were angry and ready to fight. They were scared. Their attention was focused on some invisible enemy on the other side of the mist. I remember a dog baying and wolves howling.” I shivered. “There were voices, all hollow and empty sounding. Groaning and shrieking. It was such a horrible noise—it made me want to gag.”
“Among many other horrible things that have no name,” Thorin said, “that groaning and shrieking was Hela’s army of undead. In the final battle, before Surtalogi’s all-consuming flames were released, both sides fought—the army of Odin versus the army of Chaos. Hela raised the souls from her realm to fight on her side. She made constructs for them, bodies of a sort, from earth and rock and mud. The term ‘golem’ is a Hebrew one, but it is apropos for Hela’s creatures.”
“And everything that was done in Ragnarok,” Skyla said, “she’s doing again. We’ve already established that precedent. Helen is expecting another battle. But who is Odin’s army this time? There’s hardly anyone left.”
“Baldur, me, the Valkyries, I suppose.” Thorin leaned forward and braced his chin on his tented fingertips. “Point is, we’re not going to let it get that far. We’re going to kill that wolf, and we’re going to destroy that golem army.”
“Boss Man,” Skyla said. “You’ve been to her warehouses. You can blip over, take a look, and tell us if there are guards or not. Tell us if the lights are on or if no one is home.”
“I think it would be best to wait until after sundown,” Thorin said. “I can move quickly through space, but I can’t make myself invisible. Not without a lot of help.”
“Fine.” Skyla nodded. “That’s step one. Step two is getting inside.” She waved Nate’s key card. “This should help.”
If I insisted on coming along, I could count on an argument with Thorin about my safety. Normally, I didn’t worry too much about our arguments, but the encounter with Nate had shaken me. A renewed fear chilled my blood, but I steeled myself against it. The only way to overcome fear was to face it, choke it down, stomp it out. “What’s our goal?” I shifted my gaze to Embla. “Ultimately, we want to destroy these golems, right?”
Embla nodded. “Yes, but doing this takes our focus off the wolf.”
I raised a finger. “Not necessarily. We’ve been waiting a long time for Helen to make a move. Killing Nate might antagonize her, but destroying her army certainly will, don’t you think?”
