10. Forest
Forest
She’ll be like cream on my lips, and I’ll lap up every drop. The brush of her tongue to mine carries the weight of fate.
I didn’t plan to hunt her down for this.
I wanted to ask her why I knew her, if I’ve been a part of her existence before—and how many of them—but this...
My thumb scrapes across the hardness of her nipple, massaging her breast. This works too.
Helene rocks along my thigh and arches her hips, the pace insistent, needy. Eager.
Oh, to taste her.
I’ll claim this woman with my mouth and my hands and thrust inside her, mark her. She claws at my wool sweater to keep me close.
I circle her waist with an arm and haul her closer to me while she rides my upper leg.
“That’s it, little shieldmaiden,” I mutter against her overheated skin, nipping her chin. “That’s right.”
Once she comes, I’ll pick her up, and I’ll feast on her. She’ll use the shelves for leverage and lock her legs around my face. I’ll suffocate in her, gladly.
I want her coming.
I want to watch the way her face blushes and bliss turns her body molten. Will she throw her head back and cry her pleasure to the gods? In honor and sacrifice to them?
I can practically feel her clenching around me.
She circles her hips on my thigh with a groan in her throat, rumbling through her and into me. “Yes, yes.”
She lifts her gaze to mine and our eyes lock. I’m distantly aware of her tongue darting out to lick her lips. The intent of the moment transforms her eyes to a tawny shade of gold and green and brown. There’s no hiding what she craves.
The ambush was my idea, but one word from her, a single no, would have stopped me in my tracks and damned me. But my memory of her from last night is clear in my head. Helene and I know each other.
When? Why? How?
“Come for me,” I grunt, gripping her waist again.
She increases the pace, the friction, moaning out her yes with every forward glide. I drop my face to the side of her neck and trail kisses to her chin before dragging my teeth to her skin.
It takes a long moment to realize the lights overhead have dimmed. The fluorescent, candle shaped bulbs nestled in the sockets of the tarnished chandelier fade and the rest of the room goes gloomy.
I steal another smooch. “Come, Helene.”
She’s close. Her scent changes. Her eyes go heavy lidded and she grips my shoulders for purchase.
Instead of heating up, frost crawls across the shelves, up the walls, ivy seeking anchorage. It steals the last bits of warmth from the room and when I break the kiss, white fog gusts from Helene’s mouth.
She searches my face as glass breaks at the front of the store. “Forest?”
I clutch at her, drawing her into the safety of my body. A cutting wind rips through the open main door. Energy shifts, changes, charging along well-worn paths inside, and I go still.
“What’s happening?”
The draft picks up, and I set her aside, pleasure forgotten. “Stay here.”
I stride toward the display windows and her sister’s terrified squeaks. They travel on the cruel breeze and slide like needles into my brain.
Audra has ducked behind the desk with her hands over her ears. Glass shards glint with diamond brightness on the floor.
The door’s blown in, and the sign dangles from its hook at the top, spinning between Open and Closed.
The temperature plummets, frigid and killing. Worse here.
I half expect snow drifts to push toward the books and swallow their spines whole. It’s the chill of death, the chill of a never-ending winter. I remember.
Thoughts clank together and disappear.
I grab for my belt and the ax I hadn’t put into its holster today. Uskitr. The dual swords across my back give a single pulse of remembrance, a siren call as I brandish them.
These will do.
“Go to your sister and shelter,” I yell to Audra, boots crunching on glass.
The bookstore, calm at first, has become a tornado. Icy gusts shred the building, paper and debris flying like projectiles.
The rest fades in time, buried beneath lust, a different type than earlier. My cock hardens further with the scrape of blade to blade, and I’m complete.
There is no roar to announce our visitor, no sudden movement designed to grab attention. This troll holds itself as still as stone, the wind stealing the thin wheat-colored strands of hair irregularly stuck out of its head. Beady black eyes land on me and lock.
Being pulled into battle is natural. Normal.
What isn’t normal is Helene, reaching around to pat my belt in search of the daggers I keep there. As though she already knows where every individual weapon rests.
Did she remember...
“Saw these when you were accosting me,” she says with such ease my mouth waters. “Figured since I’m unarmed, I can borrow a few. I hope you don’t mind.”
“You were supposed to run.”
This woman, with a blade in each hand, ready to protect her family, is the single most erotic thing I’ve ever seen.
And for the first time in centuries, I am well and truly alive.
She shrugs. “Yeah, well, it didn’t seem fair to have you hunt out danger all alone. All those self-defense classes have to pay off somehow. Besides, I've been conditioned for this.”
Asphalt shakes with the troll’s next step, a warning, a challenge. The stoplight at the intersection flashes erratically between three colors.
“You might not feel so confident when you see your opponent, little shieldmaiden.”
I jerk my head toward the creature.
Helene steps out from behind me, shivering in the cold, and stops in her tracks. “This one is bigger than the last one. Two-stories!”
“So you admit they’re real?”
Traffic, piled up at the light beyond, honks out a chores of frustration but this area has gone still. Ripe with magic. And troll.
“Real enough to make me second guess myself.” Helene adjusts her grip but stands firm.
“And pungent.”
The troll’s odor permeates the air like snowflakes.
She barks out a laugh, her face screwing tight with the stench.
And when the creature catches sight of her, it's electrified into movement. The storm ramps up, tree limbs tugged free from their sockets and the fallen leaves a frenzy.
Helene gasps but it's the only outward display of emotion she allows herself.
“Stay back.” She glances over her shoulder toward Audra once. Only once.
Then she moves, a part of the wind, as vicious and cold as the tempest, on the offensive.
I take a step, stop. Assess, fight the lust, search for detachment. Find nothing. This is not a clash I’m prepared to let her undertake alone. Not when the last was so much fun.
Let’s see if this argr is strong enough to take us both on at the same time.
I fall into pace with Helene’s charge, and blades sing in my grip as I slice them across the troll's abdomen and upper thighs. It isn’t sufficient to bring him down. I don’t need to cut him into pieces.
This is the opening gambit and part of this blood play.
His weakness will slow him down so Helene has ample time to move in for the kill, as she was born to do.
A laugh bubbles free, and green ichor drips from the tip of my blade. Grinning like a fool, I lift my forearm, parrying the troll’s furious punch and absorbing the energy from the strike.
The creature snorts and stomps forward, leaving a trail of blood splattered over the sidewalk.
“Tell me this isn’t a waste of time!” Helene shouts. “Tell me we have a shot at taking this beast down.”
The troll turns her way and charges, a rumbling growl cutting through the silence of the street. Somewhere in the distance, another car horn screeches, the sound drawing Helene’s attention before she swings.
Her hit goes wide.
Currents blow stronger with the bitter bite of an oncoming blizzard. Magic buzzes along my arms, sweat pooling at the small of my back from exertion.
“This isn’t a waste of time, love,” I assure her.
Whether she believes me or not is an entirely different story.
Wind kicks up, and the troll arcs for Helene. Since I’ve decided to keep her, to add her to my treasures, it’s not acceptable. The way her golden hair glows, the shine of her eyes and the tilt of her face when she lifts it to the sky—
Hunger without a name surges inside of me and tingles my fingertips. “Leave it to me.”
The troll is certainly one of Kari’s. Yes? I know the designation, the features, the clothing.
Its face has gone craggy with age, a hoary, bearded thing, made old by the winter. Any creature who chooses to work with Kari ages with the season, from slender youth in the spring to this wrinkled beast when the breeze changes.
Cold batters and blusters my skin rather than stroking like a lover.
Kari himself is reclusive, preferring to pull the strings from his cave in Niflheim. Who called for his aid?
I shake my head, resisting a spike of pain, the knowledge as hazy as my memories.
Helene swipes at the troll with a yell, her cheeks cherry red and her eyes burning.
I’m going to tangle the thing’s snow white beards and send this frost-coated grandfather into a justified grave. Until it grabs me and chokes down, stealing air from my lungs. Helene regains her balance, topples, kneels. Confused as magic pulses and cracks my bones.
I shift and the raven bursts free from my skin and flies upward. Riding the thermals, I circle the troll.
It brings its fist down toward Helene’s head, and I dive. Talons swipe its eyes and drag grooves through its wrinkles. Blood sprays from the wounds, steaming in the open, and the creature roars.
Helene trots out of the way when it turns, losing its equilibrium, the screech of voices on the storm reaching an apex.
Trolls are cruel, nothing but a body to be used, and unable to stop until they’ve fulfilled their purpose. It goes down hard on its knees and long shadows creep against its feet like water at a lake’s edge. I know those shadows.
I dive toward it again, calling out a warning, the shadows flutter, leaves of a wind, before they retreat.
He worries for her.
Does he not remember? I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe. It’s my soul’s design.
The realization hits with a slice through my head, and I meet Helene’s gaze and then swoop higher. Any memory I might have tapped returns to oblivion, confusion knitting me together and swallowing me whole.
Kari. Helene. A curse...
She swings again and strikes the troll on the side of the knee with my dagger. Brave, feckless. Fearless. The adrenaline rush of the battle eats away at her hesitation.
Jaw clacking, I push myself lower, diving at the troll again and sending magic out with the next sweep of my talons. A coppery stench fills the air, his stubbled face and pock-marked chin speckled with broken blood vessels.
Below, Helene lets out a sound like a shaky laugh and draws the blade again.
I peck at the troll’s eyes until one of them pops, a sure method to disorient the beast. It clutches its face with another belch of hot breath, a yell that bristles my feathers. I drop to the road and shift back to my human form, gritting my teeth and pulling another knife from my boot.
Helene is breathing hard, and the thud of her pounding heart matches my own. They hammer against our ribcages, frantic, terrible.
She attacks prior to my recovery from the mad realization: I’ve seen her like this before. I lift my head, fear slamming into me, the memory livid and wild.
The tip of the knife slices the sinew at the back of the troll’s ankle, and it screams.
I reach forward, jerking her out of the way with enough force to knock the air from her lungs when her spine collides with my chest. Blood spurts from the new wound and the creature reacts, falling and kicking out with its good leg.
Helene pulls tight to me. I release her, spitting my fear into the flakes of ice on the breeze, memorizing how she swipes blood from her face.
“You want to come for me? You want to scare my sister? Then fucking come and get it,” she yells to him, her voice strangled. Raging.
We fight alongside each other, cutting and clipping, tearing through muscle until the troll is a patchwork of wounds. Animal instinct powers both of us.
Whether she’s been taught to dread the world or not, she goes up against this brute with my weapon, and respect flows through my veins.
My blood pulses, cheeks so cold they’re hot. We move together in tandem, and I hardly remember we have an audience nearby.
My entire life is a blur of fighting and gore and scars. I part my lips on a breath, and we press forward to defeat this agent of Kari. Finally it roars but can’t rise again. Swallowing hard, I go for the killing blow.
It’s an act.
I realize too late the duplicity. I manage to step in front of Helene before the troll knocks into my chest and sends me flying, crashing into the side of the nearest building, nothing more than a stone kicked down the road. The gale picks up and howls when I make contact..
Brick cushions my impact, skull cracking, black and white spots dancing across my vision.
Helene is screaming. It cuts through the bite of the wind and terrorizes my heart. I shake my head, pushing onto my knees amid the pile of bricks. She’s fine. She’s ashen-faced and furious and sound because she’s not the one in trouble.
Her sister is.
Audra’s been hit with something, and I can’t help her until the troll has been dealt with. Caught in the middle, I glance between them, at my limit. The choice is simple.
I head for the beast, awareness deepening.
Magic surging.
Because we’re not alone, and the shadows are not the only things joining us in this fight. Another ancient presence has made itself known, something reeking of centuries, and a starvation more profound than mine.