7. Davyn
Seven
Davyn
I was about to knock on Azzie’s hotel room door, when she opened it and walked into me.
She took a step back, looking up in the process, and relief flashed across her face. Exasperation replaced it so quickly, I might have imagined anything else.
“Did you follow me home and sit out here all night?” She brushed past me.
I fell into step beside her. “Not in the way you think.”
She glanced at me but kept walking toward the exit at the far end of the hotel. I followed. Her room was on the first floor. Smart . A room like this had multiple ways out if needed.
“Just because I’ve lived a life filled with cryptic replies doesn’t mean I care for them,” she said.
I liked her strength and refusal to back down. There was a pull to her that was impossible for me to ignore, though I couldn’t define it yet beyond knowing it was there. If she wanted a direct answer, I’d give her one. I leaned my head closer to hers, never pausing in my step, and drew my nose up the side of her neck. “You have a distinct scent. Vanilla and talcum powder.”
The shiver that raced over her was visible in the shake of her shoulders and her head. She scowled. “And magic and ash. Yeah. Berserkers smell things. I get it. I can do that too—You have the smell of someone who worked in the sun in his clothes all day yesterday.”
If she was trying to hurt my feelings, she needed to up her game.
“Because I did,” I said. “I also spent last night trying to leave town, but no one was going in my direction. There comes a point where you decide to give fate what it wants, to get it over with.”
She glanced at me again, and her expression softened. “Yeah.”
We reached the exit, and when I pushed the bar, a loud clang echoed through the hall, and the door swung open so hard, it bounced off the outside wall before hurtling back toward us. I stopped it with my foot, and we kept walking.
“What are you giving fate to shut it up?” I was guessing what her reaction meant. She’d probably snap back that I didn’t know what I was talking about.
“Ascension. If I make the power part of my destiny happen, maybe I can be usef—” She snapped her jaw shut and pointed to the small of her back instead. One of her holsters was tucked under her shirt, hidden unless one was paying attention. “You did your job. You kept me safe with that pretty little crystal. Doesn’t that make fate happy?”
Despite the question, she didn’t sound irritated. Instead, her tone was neutral with a hint of pleading underneath. As if she needed my answer to be yes for a reason other than the obvious one.
I hated to admit this next bit, and it wasn’t going to be the answer she wanted. “Loki is looking for you.”
“The way I understand it, for most of my life. Did you know he sent Sceadugengan to destroy me when I was thirteen? Then there was the small pack of Draugar that showed up three years later at the dojo I was training at, like some sort of twisted sweet-sixteen gift.”
Shadow beings and the undead. Both creatures that Loki had power over, where few did. Still, if she hadn’t met him personally… “Are you certain it was he who sent them?”
Another about her said that there was someone just like Azzie—her equal and opposite—and that one of them would have to kill the other. Given that was the only prophecy about him, while there were multiple about her, it seemed the other guy was destined to lose by default.
Sucked to be him.
“The way I understand it, the my equal and opposite is no more powerful than me, so no, I don’t think a thirteen-year-old him sicced shadow monsters on me. Besides, whenever I beat whatever monsters are hunting me, there’s always the same message. Burned in the ground as a corpse self-immolates, or screeched into the night— Loki sends his love . Wait.” She stopped and gave me a wide-eyed look. “Do you think someone is framing him?” Her question bled sarcasm.
“Perhaps.” I played along for all of a second. “No. That all sounds like Loki.” He was happy to let someone else do the fighting but always wanted credit for the plan.
Azzie resumed her walk. She seemed to have a specific destination in mind, and it was taking us away from the gas station and any of the other stations , and deeper into town. “You talk like you know him.”
“When he and I were younger, we were lovers.” I’d thought we were in love , but that was the whimsy of a foolish new Berserker.
Azzie barked a laugh and turned left down a side street, in the opposite direction of the casinos and other businesses. “Of course you were. Do you have a lot of experience with prophecies? Being old and all that? I’m going to assume so. Does it ever seem to you like the beings who wrote them were teenage girls, writing self-inserts on fanfiction-dot-net? Oh, the pretty boys were lovers, and one will protect her, and one will try to kill her .”
I had no idea what half of that meant, but I could infer her full meaning from the rest. I couldn’t hide my smirk at the apt description. “You think I’m pretty?”
Her huff didn’t hide her almost-smile.
We’d gotten off-topic. “My original point was, because he and I were close, he knows how to find me now. He’s… attuned to me.” I didn’t have a better word to describe it because for the most part I didn’t understand how the magic worked any better than most people understood how their computers worked. I knew some gods could do some things and other gods could do other things and I couldn’t do any of those things, but I could turn into a big mean bear. “When I gave you the charm last night, I exposed myself. He assumed that meant I was keeping you safe.”
“That’s a massive leap of logic on his part.”
We walked away from all of the buildings except for a giant warehouse on the outskirts. Was that our destination? Why?
“Massive leaps of logic come with living a life guided by prophecy.” I didn’t like it either, and it was another reason I wanted to be free of it.
If I did this with her, if I protected her, if I helped her get what she wanted, maybe I finally would be.
“So he comes to you, says, Hey, I know where my target is again, mostly. But I’m supposedly hidden now. In theory, he can’t see me. Unless he follows you, and you lead him to me.”
I was both pleased that she followed the same logic path I had, and annoyed that it made so much sense and I’d done it regardless. “You were hidden every other time he found you, and he’ll do it again. I’m here to back you up since I caused the problem.” I faltered in my footsteps and sniffed the air. Now that we were away from town, and its scents were gone, one stood out distinctly. Berserker. The one from last night. “Where are we going?”
She kept walking. “There’s someone here who has experience with potentials and unlocking their power.”
I caught up to her in a few short strides, as we approached a large box of a building. There were no vehicles outside and no windows. In fact, a single door at the top of three steps seemed the only way in.
That, and the stench of Berserker, sweat, and blood that rolled off every inch of the property, set my teeth on edge. The last two were weak, as if the scents were older. I paused again, several meters back. “We need to leave. Potentials realizing their power doesn’t work this way.”
“It might. I won’t know unless I try.”
“This isn’t safe.” For her or me. The scents called to my bear, and I was ready for a fight. Any fight, as long as it was better than the one last night.
“My associate wouldn’t have sent me without due diligence. No one asked you to join me.” She glanced back at me, then walked up the steps.
Before I could stop her, she pressed a button by the steel door.
“Yeah?” A voice came from nowhere.
Azzie looked up toward a black glass dome above her head. “I’m looking for strength.”
I was out of view of the camera, but close enough to reach her in a single leap if needed.
The door opened, and the Berserker from last night stepped onto the stoop next to her. His eyes grew wide when he saw her.
I was already lunging toward them, and she was reaching for her knives.
“No mortals in the cage?—”
I cut him off when I wrapped a hand around his throat and lifted him off the ground.
“What the fuck did you do with the person who owns this place?” Azzie demanded.
I was impressed she hadn’t flinched, and I knew the answer to her question. I could smell it. “He owns it,” I said.
“I do.” The wolf’s words were strained, and his face was elongating into a snout, as he partially shifted. “The woman said she was here for strength.”
“What cage?” Azzie asked.
I squeezed his throat tighter. “You’re not immortal either.”
“She asked for this, Davyn.” The multiple rings he wore glittered in the sunlight, as he dug wolfen claws into my arm, puncturing the flesh and drawing blood.
The pain was incidental. I bared my teeth and let my fangs grow out. “You know my name, but I don’t know yours. And she didn’t ask for this.” Azzie was here to unlock powers promised in the prophecy, while he was talking about a fighting cage. The same thing he mentioned last night.
“I’m Ulf.” His cough echoed through my palm. “My grandfather told stories about you—the bear with the scar from his ear to his shoulder. The woman said she was here for strength. That means she wants to fight.”
He was still a threat, but I loosened my grip to set him on his feet and kept my hand at his throat.
“That is what I told him.” Azzie’s posture was tense, but she radiated calm. As with last night, her adrenaline and fear were hidden. Impressive . “I was told I should come here and ask for strength.”
“Mortals don’t fight in the cage.” Ulf repeated. He looked ready to break free of my caging stance and attack. “The person I talked to didn’t say you were a potential. You smell like magic. Magic creatures come to town and say they’re looking for strength because they want a fight. That’s what I was setting you up for last night.”
His words didn’t make sense. Rather, he sounded like he was full of shit, and fumbling for a way to justify previous lies rather than spitting out the truth.
Azzie didn’t look convinced. “I didn’t ask for strength last night. I was at a club with my friends.”
“You reek of power and you’re looking for a fight even if you didn’t say so,” Ulf said. “If that’s not why you’re here— Can we take this inside? I’d rather not continue this conversation in the open.”
There was no one around to eavesdrop. “We’re staying out here.”
“As much as I’d love to defy the big bossy bear and say, Sure, let’s go inside , you did drug me last night,” Azzie said.
Ulf growled. “If you want my help, you need to hear me out. Otherwise, you can leave.”
Azzie pursed her lips. “Convince us it’s safe to stay.”
“I can’t—” He worked his jaw and looked at me. “I offer a blood oath.”
That wasn’t something to be thrown around lightly. “Why? What do you get out of this?”
Ulf smirked. “I won’t tell you out here.”
My curiosity wasn’t enough to make a promise that couldn’t be broken. A blood oath worked both ways, so I would be required to offer something in return.
“I’m not swearing a blood oath.” Azzie took a step back.
“You want answers, don’t you?” Ulf called, and she paused with her foot in mid-air above a step. “The oath is with him,” he said, “not you. On my grandfather’s name.”
Swearing on an ancestor’s name meant a great deal, and my curiosity won out. “What do you swear?”
“That I will not harm her.”
I’d known Loki far too long to ignore the loopholes in Ulf’s words. “Not good enough,” I said.
“She came to find her strength, and here, that involves fighting. She’s going to get hurt.”
“He’s got a point.” Azzie was fully on the landing again. “How am I supposed to learn from him if he can’t hurt me?”
His smirk was back. “I’ll explain that once we’re done with this.”
This required a more specific promise. “What do you swear?” I repeated.
Ulf met my stare. “My word and intent are that I will do her no harm. Any hurt that befalls her will be in the course of training and delivered to provide the strength and training she asked for.”
“All right.” I still didn’t like it, but Azzie also still had the choice to leave. “I offer the same promise of your safety in return.” Please don’t let this be a considerable mistake .