Chapter 9 Inkletter
Inkletter
Nadje played me as a satyr plays a reed pipe.
Sweet notes, crooked tune.
Ink stood motionless outside the Berserker court, half traced, concealed to most. He’d dropped off Arctos and the prisoner, then lingered to eavesdrop, fearing he’d just signed the princess’s death warrant.
Usually Ink played a less active role in hostage procurement, but Arctos had asked as a friend—and paid like a patron.
Yet more distasteful developments from Ink’s time in Bloodreach.
Now he staggered, his muscles tight. Ravinelun’s morning winds carried enough court echoes to make it clear: the vampires had used Ink as a game piece. How much had the Badlander Nadje known, and how long had she been arranging the board?
Bad intel could bruise; this could end him. Centuries of reputation—bent on the rack.
Though Ink burned to trace to Nadje and demand answers, he hesitated. She repelled him, yet when he’d bedded her, something had happened that had never occurred before in all his years.
He’d nearly lost control.
Over the years, he’d watched kings and killers go stupid over lovers and filed it under other men’s weaknesses. Or else they hadn’t studied history to grasp the folly of surrendering oneself.
I almost surrendered.
He could surmise only one explanation. Perhaps Nadje’s tears had aroused him. She’d wept as she’d shattered, seasoning his meal. It’d been as if he’d eaten bland food all his life, then he’d tasted salt for the first time.
Delectable. Could he be a dacryphile?
How? He avoided tears like curses, outside bed and in it. So what in the gods’ names was it?
Time to dissect the anomaly named Nadje. He tensed to trace but froze at the sound of snickering from a nearby vantage. He slid closer, invisible as breath.
Two Valkyries crouched in the snow, a blonde and a brunette with their pointed ears tipped to the court. The blonde had sparing runes tattooed on her forehead and cheeks, and the brunette’s brown eyes were shrewd.
His fists clenched. He loathed Valkyries, blamed them most for the Exile three thousand years ago.
They were bizarre creatures who fed on electricity. Their origin tale was just as bizarre, one only a drunken chronicler could excuse:
A maiden warrior dying with courage on a battlefield…
Wóden and Freya hearing her scream of defiance…
striking her with their lightning, impregnating her with a Valkyrie, and rescuing her to Valhalla…
then striking other brave maidens from all species until an army of Valkyries prowled their aurora halls…
An immortal sisterhood.
Ink recognized the pair before him: Vendela the Lightning Rider, a swordswoman so fast and intense she made lightning seem slow and relaxed, and her sister Eyrun the Eyesore. They were alleged spies but confirmed troublemakers who seemed to dine on chaos as much as the electricity that fed them.
How much had they heard? Would the news of his failure spread even faster than he’d thought?
He bared his demon fangs and drifted nearer, a scholar tempted to make history.
***
Vendela
“Fuckity-ugh,” Eyrun muttered when her wager lost.
“Pay up, sucker,” Ven sneered to her sister as they used their supernatural hearing to listen to the drama in the Berserker court. “I told you that vampire princess wasn’t a ditz. Even if she fainted like one!”
Snort. “Went down like a bad joke. I could pity Arctos.” Eyrun’s smile faded, and her gaze flickered silvery with emotion. “Seems he’ll never be free of leeches.”
Most of the Skein despised them, but Arctos had reason that made the hatred a deeper, animal thing. Horde hunters had annihilated his family in a night.
Eyrun and Ven had stumbled upon him after it’d happened, two shadows among the trees.
They’d watched the boy emerge from hiding to find a scene no child should ever behold: murdered bodies half eaten by a bear.
He had lunged at the beast to protect those remains. One swipe of the bear’s claws had ruined his cheek and eye; another had nearly gored his torso. Ven remembered, with a flare of pride, the way he’d bitten the bear’s face with his first Berserkerage until the creature fled.
How much did Arctos remember of recovering body parts?
His brother’s head here. His father’s there. A piece of his mother.
As Arctos had collected his macabre pile, his eye had hung loose, swaying from the frayed nerve like a ball-and-cup toy.
The sisters had not taken him home. They’d left him a jug of water and a spear where he could find them. Coddling a future warrior—one among those who worshipped Wóden—was not the Valkyrie way.
Voice low, Eyrun said, “That Berserker is going to destroy his new vampire wife. Yrsa’s pushed him into a corner.”
“I won’t bet against that prediction,” Ven said, believing this would occur as well. “Yrsa wants him to disobey her. She loves neutralizing threats, is happy to pawn a vampire’s life to do it.”
“I mean, aren’t we all?”
They chuckled, their natural mirth recovering.
“Let’s go report back.” Ven hopped to her feet, her scabbard doing a wag. “The ramifications of Arctos’s fall could be massive—”
Inkletter Scribe materialized on a gust of morning-cold air, looking like a fuckable mirage. With his bald head and insane body, he approached seven feet of glory, looming over the much shorter sisters.
Eyrun rose, craning her head to meet his penetrating gaze. “So the spy spies on spies who are spying.”
He didn’t deny it. “Why does the Berserker queen want her most trusted shieldchief neutralized? A warrior who is also one of her gods-sons?”
Eyrun’s grin settled somewhere between flirt and scorn. “Maybe we should take a page out of your book and make you pay for information. For currency, we accept cock and cock. Off with your drawers, sir!”
He raised one brow.
Ven peered at her sister. “Is that not legal tender?”
“We’ve watched this one work. Tender is the last word I’d use.” They dissolved into laughter.
“Do you Valkyries take nothing seriously?”
“Yes.” Eyrun’s honey-brown eyes twinkled. “Nothing is a very serious subject.”
A crack appeared in Inkletter’s customary composure, and his notorious contempt for Valkyries shone through.
“Foolish females. I’m old enough to remember when immortals thrived in plentiful Gaia, but you weren’t satisfied.
The gods warned us not to interfere with humanity—such a simple dictate—but your kind toyed with their mortal favorites.
As promised, they punished us. You were architects of the Exile. ”
Ven was old enough to remember Gaia too. Unlike Eyrun, she was a first-generation Valkyrie, born of three parents. Eyrun was a second-gen, native to the Skein.
A memory of the Exile flashed like lightning—one heartbeat Ven and her sisters had been roaming all over Gaia, the next ripped into the Skein. This realm had become their cage, their home, their war front.
After the All-Battle, the Valkyries had claimed a misty territory of hills and fjords and called it Valhalland. They’d made the best of it, but they could never recreate what they’d had.
Humans in Gaia had created art for the Valkyries’ appreciation and built altars for them. They’d amused, helping to pass even an immortal’s endless time.
“We were the architects? What about the vampires who drained mortals?” Ven countered. “Or the incubi like you who long-dicked them into madness? Maybe deal some blame to the reptile shifters who ate them. The elders down in Umber still reminisce about sucking human marrow warm from the bone.”
“Undeniable hungers plague our species. But not yours. You suffer only vanity. Write eddas about us…pray to us…dream of our beauty.”
Ven grinned with sudden realization. “We always knew you hated us—just thought it was a typical demonic grudge—but we didn’t guess the feeling stemmed from jealousy.”
His eyes flashed. “Jealousy? One of your ilk—the most powerful soothsayer ever to live—foresaw the Exile and warned no one!”
Ven and Eyrun stilled. Because he was right. And now she lived eternally in a glass coffin.
Fangs grinding, he said, “Information about Arctos, lightning rider. What will it cost?”
Ven waved grandly. “Not for sale, incubus. Your quandary is too enjoyable. First a leech outwitted you, and now some Valkyries are denying your redemption arc.”
He tensed even more. “Your kind is a scourge on the Skein. A shimmering skin wrapped around chaos.”
Eyrun stamped her feet and groaned, “Enough with the seductive words, Inky! My gods, I’m yours!”
Ven guffawed as he disappeared with a killing look.
Eyrun pouted comically, then murmured, “He’ll be back, with that weighty club for a cock in hand. We might as well be fated.”
They laughed some more, lightning striking above from their emotions. “Come on, Eyesore. Let’s head back and bring word to Brigid.” The Valkyries’ unyielding leader.
From Ravinelun, the sisters ran at speeds that blurred the world until they’d crossed Craigdúr and then burst into the foggy Witchwood.
With effortless agility, they wended around black oaks and dodged giant spiders, pausing only to make mustaches out of thick webs.
Cat prides scattered, fur puffing into the air like thrown cotton. Yowl!
Laughing, Eyrun vaulted a boulder—
A mystical beam caught her square in the chest. The magic shot her body through the air, a comet that slammed her back-first into an ancient oak. The force split the trunk with a roar.
Half a dozen Red Riders on foot had struck.
To the pulses of lightning above, Ven freed her sword and helped her sister rise. Not that Eyrun needed help.
As she shoved ribs back inside her torso, she spat blood and a mouthful of acorns. “You’ve just fucked up, little witches. We love an excuse to fight.”
Sword twirling, Ven added, “You attack those who aren’t your enemies?”
Their formidable leader, Rosewyn the Banehand, held up glowing palms, threatening another helping of pain. “Not our allies either. You’re trespassing in the Witchwood. Our coven will accept it no longer.”
How had witches gotten the drop on them? Wiccan senses were some of the weakest among immortals.