29. Chapter Twenty-Nine
“ We meet again, Mr. Kelly.”
“So we do.” I couldn’t make myself smile back at ólafur. I just didn’t have it in me. “I guess you got pretty much everything you wanted last time, though, huh?”
“Well, you were being recalcitrant, Mr. Kelly,” he replied. ólafur looked at ease, but just like before, I saw the whip-fast capacity for violence inside of him. The last time I’d looked into Papa Egilsson’s eyes, I’d seen him kill, both under the effect of the geas and of his own volition. “I had to make do some way.”
“Bullshit. You used me to set this up exactly how you wanted.” I shook my head. “You had this planned from the start. The sacrifice had to be meaningful in order to appeal to the landv?ttir, and how much more meaningful could it get than your own son?” Now for the part I was really interested in, though. “How did you know to use me, though? Why bother, when you didn’t really need my talent for anything?”
“That’s a fair question,” ólafur allowed. “And you might as well know. It will serve as a lesson to my sons in how to properly deal with issues of magic. Sit.” He pointed at a chair to my left, and I sat before Art?r could punch me into it. ólafur sat across from me, folding his hands in his lap.
“The magic of my country is complex, Mr. Kelly. There are grimoires dating back many centuries that detail spells you can use to get what you want. Spells for faithfulness, spells for causing harm, spells for might in battle. I experimented with those spells for years, trying to find something that would work for my particular situation. Little spells, though, won’t counter a geas this strong. I finally consulted a v?lva, who told me the trick to working great magic was to make it irresistible. An offering to the v?ttir had to be perfect, based on genuine willingness and deep emotion in order to be accepted.
“I knew one of my sons would have the most important part to play, but which one? The v?lva couldn’t tell me, but she did know who you were. A soothsayer with almost unparalleled accuracy who also had no sense of self-preservation? You were a gift, and so I took you.
“And when you refused to cooperate…” ólafur leaned forward a little in his chair, pinning me in place like a beetle on a board. “My advisor counseled patience. And she was right. You revealed the perfect candidate for my sacrifice, and the preservation of my line. I had thought Soren too weak to be of much use for anything, but I was wrong.” He nodded toward the landv?ttir, who listened with a completely blank expression. “He’s the perfect vessel for my family’s greatest ally. He saved you and all of us with his decision, and I don’t think he would take it back even if he could.
“Honestly, I didn’t think it was possible to even offer another deal until you stole Soren out from under my nose. I see how very wrong I was about that.” He looked again to the landv?ttir. “I’ve made arrangements to have your land instilled beside a wilderness area in the Canadian Rockies. It’s beautiful there, absolutely pristine, and you’ll be able to settle there without dispute.”
“What did you do to appease the spirit who resided there before making arrangements for me?” Soren asked.
ólafur smiled. “I paid someone a great deal of money to dispose of it. There won’t be any competition for you to worry about.”
Soren’s eyes narrowed. “You destroyed it? A native land spirit?”
“Survival of the fittest, my son. I said I would give you a suitable resting place, and I would never go back on my word.”
“Hmm.” I couldn’t tell if Soren was happy about this or not. “And my bodily autonomy?”
“The wilderness area is less than twenty-five miles from a moderate-sized town. I’ll provide you with money, a house, cars, servants, whatever you want to make your transition and exploration more comfortable. Anything you desire will be yours for the asking, as long as you continue to abide by the deal I made in good faith.” ólafur gestured at me. “Can anything this man offers really compare?”
“My turn to talk, then?” I asked dryly. I looked at Soren. “You know what I’ve done for you―you’ve been there for most of it. I’ve got a line on the space you need, without having to kill off or drive away the spirit already living there. Wouldn’t it be better not to enter into a new place surrounded by animosity?
“As for bodily autonomy, I’m not going to tell you what you can and can’t do. I promise,” and I made sure I caught his eyes for this next part, because this was important, “that no matter what you want to do, I’m going to be there to do it with you. I won’t leave you alone, not as long as you want me. I might try to talk you out of something really crazy, but I’m not your owner, and I’m not your boss. I’d rather be your partner, honestly.”
“I know,” Soren said, and he smiled for a moment. “But Cillian…the sacrifice...”
“Yes, the quality of your sacrifice,” ólafur drawled. “I was wondering about that too. Rolf.” He snapped his fingers at his son. “Go and get him.” Rolf left in a rush, and ólafur crossed his legs. “I confess I didn’t know what to think when I finally discerned what you had in mind. I knew better than to think you might offer up your mother or the woman you’ve been staying with. You care for them too much. Then I looked over my security footage, traced it all the way back to you and him in a restaurant, and I saw you developing the relationship. But honestly, Mr. Kelly, you can’t possibly think the acquaintance of a few days’ time will be forceful enough to trump the willingness of a vessel like Soren? And no second to fall back on? I’m afraid this is where your plans fly apart.”
Rolf came back a moment later, dragging Andre with him. Andre looked…oh boy, he looked the worse for wear, with two black eyes and what was probably a broken nose, but he was still standing. He glared at me like this was all my fault, and—okay, fair, he was pretty much right. But I was going to fix it.
“Hey, man.”
“ Fuck you , Kelly.”
“Cillian…” Soren looked confused. “I don’t think this will work.” Soren was primed to take the best offer, and ólafur was right, his son was a way better sacrifice than my unwilling kind-of-friend.
“You have to let me try,” I said. “Let me make the sacrifice before you decide, okay?”
ólafur smiled broadly. “Oh, by all means. Kill your friend for nothing, and then we can finally dispense with the formalities and get into the matter of punishing you for your presumption.”
That would probably involve slow dismemberment, knowing ólafur. I took a deep breath and stood up, firming my resolution. This was it. No going back after this.
I walked over to Andre. “Look, I’m really sorry about this. I never meant for you to get involved this way.”
Andre wearily shook his head. “Best of intentions don’t count for shit now.”
“Your family is all right, I made sure of it.” I took off my Buddha necklace and hung it around his neck. Very faintly, I heard the slightest click . Andre seemed to as well, because his eyes widened. “Sometimes you’ve just gotta take the cards Fate deals you and run with them, you know?”
“Get on with it,” ólafur snapped. “If you need to borrow a gun—”
I shook my head. “I don’t need a gun for this. I do need a smoke, though.” I reached into my pocket and took out the lighter. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Jakob start to back away. Smart guy. I primed the microgrenade, looked at Andre, mouthed Run , and then tossed the grenade at the chair I’d just been sitting in. Two seconds later, it exploded.
The thing about a microgrenade was it had more bang than boom. Some decent concussive force, lots of smoke, but it wasn’t going to do any serious damage. It probably blew the chair to pieces and likely did some damage to everyone in its immediate vicinity, but I didn’t stick around to watch. I was already running, booking it through the door that Rolf had left open and out into the warehouse itself.
In front of me, stretching for half the length of a football field, was an enormous plastic tub reinforced with wooden beams that held still, black water, its shore edged with jagged gray boulders. At the far end of the lake was a small grove of white-barked birch trees, with one huge specimen in the center, twisted and branching, its long arms hovering over the edge of the water. That was the one I needed.
Behind me I heard a roar, an actual, honest-to-god roar , and the sound of ripping cloth. ólafur was changing, going berserk. Well, better that than him keeping his head and shooting me in the back, but that meant I needed to be faster. I sprinted toward the tree, unbuckling my belt as I went and whipping it off my waist. I worked the buckle free and stuffed it in my pocket and then kept racing toward my goal.
Twenty yards…ten…
I’d almost reached the grove by the time the heavy footsteps caught up to me, so fucking close to where I needed to be but still too far away to act. I threw myself to the right at the last second while ólafur continued forward, out of control in his rage and unable to keep his bulk from running him straight into the little grove. The smallest tree shuddered and split under the force of his impact, and Soren screamed.
Fuck, that wasn’t supposed to happen! I glanced back and wished I hadn’t, because Soren was running toward us now, and he looked wrathful. Purple mist spilled from his eyes, and the water of the lake began to froth. ólafur would have some groveling to do if he lived through this. Speaking of that―the man’s rage still drove him, and he was already stumbling out of the wreckage of the broken tree. I needed to go, fast.
I hoisted myself up into the biggest tree, high enough that even stretched out my feet didn’t touch the ground. I sat on a branch, fastened my belt around my bent knees to hold me up when my muscles gave out, and then leaned back and let my body hang against the trunk. It was traditional when making a sacrifice of yourself to offer it like this, if Odin’s legend was anything to go by. Plus, I’d bleed out faster. I fumbled in my pocket for the buckle, my hands already gory from handling its supremely sharp edges.
ólafur and Soren grappled not two feet away from me, driven to combat out of pain and hurt and rage. If I was going to do this, I had to do it now, before either of them came to their senses.
“ Soren! ” Purple eyes glanced over at me and then did a double take. I smiled at him, trembling but for once completely sure of what I was doing. “Remember what we talked about last night, okay?”
“Cillian, what—”
I didn’t hear the rest; I was too busy jamming the edge of the belt buckle into my jugular. The angle was weird, and I didn’t trust myself to have the strength to cut my entire throat, but one straight shot into the vein—I could do that.
I did it. It hurt, but not as badly as I thought it might when I’d been considering it last night. Strange, that the end of my life should almost feel comfortable, like a muscle slowly unknotting, instead of the stark pain that so much of my life had been. Hot blood flowed over my chin and down my face, and the world went fuzzy and started to gray out. I let it go with a sigh of relief.
The last thing I heard before I died was Soren calling my name.