16. Nicholas
Nicholas
Mold blooms underneath the sink. A slow leak in the walls dampens the insulation, which is nothing more than sawdust and rags and anything the builders of the house had handy to stuff into the creases.
This apartment is a tomb, and for too long, Helene and Audra have let themselves be sealed inside. By choice
Living, breathing, seeking the sun in a place where nothing shines. Any growth comes from sheer stubbornness.
I know stubborn things. Rot recognizes rot, and still she survives it.
I want to drink her in, devour my girl in a single bite and memorize the soft lines of her cheeks, the obstinate tilt of her chin.
Bloodlust pulses whenever our gazes clash. I’m the first to look away.
The vein beneath her throat jumps once. My fangs answer with a sharp ache. Christ.
I smell the heat of her blood from across the room.
Some lives are smoother than others, although they all end with pain and hardship. Still, Odin was never able to stifle her fight or her heart. Her strength shows itself in different ways no matter the incarnation.
In Paris she used to warm her hands over candle flames before touching my face. Said cold skin made her sad.
In London, she’d sold elixirs on the street for a man who beat her, her skin stained with herbs. Some lives weren’t kind to her.
She used to hide bruises beneath blue powder and lavender oil and thought no one noticed.
I noticed.
In the last one she’d battled prejudice while raising a child on her own. She sang under her breath while washing dishes in that life. Same melody every night. I still catch myself listening for the thread of her humming.
Through it all, she lived. She may have not always thrived, but she did her best to carve out a place for herself, and with each new face, I fall deeper.
Stay the fuck away from her.
I need to put as much space between us as possible, and watching the fight had been a step too close. What would have happened if I’d been drawn in?
It might have ended with my fangs buried in her windpipe.
I wedge my hands into my coat pockets to keep from reaching for her. To keep from reaching for her throat. Her pulse flutters beneath the hinge of her jaw, and my mouth aches hard enough to split skin over pointed teeth.
I’ve lived more lives than most people dream of in one. And entombed her in each one.
The dirt changes. The prayers change.
The grief never does.
The time before last, I’d been the one to find her in the slums of New York City, with a mother who often took off for weeks at a time and a stay at home father who did his best. Helene in that life had gotten along best with her grandmother.
I could stand beside her for a century and never once feel as human as she did sitting in sunlight alongside her nana.
“What am I?” Wren leans back in his seat, lazy, insouciant. “We call ourselves Dokkálfar. Originally from Rokkrheim, labeled Unseelie by some. But for you I’ll be a very good boy.”
Helene blows out a frustrated breath. “Christ. Focus.”
“Is that our safe word?” Wren crosses one leg over the other, his ankle resting on his knee.
He’s the king of cool. Interrogators could take a page out of his notebook in terms of maintaining their composure. He is nothing but playful optimism.
Helene doesn't know him, remember him, well enough to see the resignation. Or to note the frequent glances the two of us share.
Truth at all cost. We agreed to it.
“If I believe you, and Odin sent two targeted attacks at me, then why? Why me?” Her attention snags on the table, her tone distant. “Like I said before. I’m nothing.”
“Nothing.” I laugh. “I’ve watched kingdoms burn for less than what lives inside you.”
I’ve crossed oceans carrying her bones.
The box shrinks. The floorboards rattle. The dead are more alive than the plants in this old Victorian, and I brush the curling edge of the navy and gold wallpaper. Sunlight hasn’t faded the pattern underneath.
It’s a hint of history, isolated and preserved. Like me.
The resentful chuckle stalls somewhere at the rear of my tongue. Nothing special, sure. Nowhere in the nine worlds is this woman considered ordinary.
Gods watch her.
Fate flows around her.
Helene's knee bobs under the table. My legs carry me from one end of the room to the other.
Wren’s shadows creep, black ivy, along the walls. Searching for weak spots.
“I don’t understand it. And where do you fit into the picture? Why do you guys act like you know me? No one comes with a preset of nicknames. Unless this is all some kind of game? Is this more Cosplay?”
Those shadows darken, and the wind hurls frozen drops of water at the windows like tiny battering rams. “We can show you how real it is, monster. If you’re ready.”
She isn’t.
But at his words, her scent deepens, sweat pushing free from her pores. I’m at her side, the ache desperate and the longing cutting.
There is no brutish Forest to push his way near and cling to her side. No Forest to make her laugh now.
He always makes her laugh.
Her brows narrow, her eyes becoming slits. Anger is much easier to handle than fear. “I’m happier with a table between us.”
Her guffaw lacks emotion. In every life, she reaches for anger first. Fear takes too much energy.
“An honest to fucking god vampire. With healing blood,” Helene murmurs.
“Yes.” My chest squeezes. “With many stories to tell. Your sister will be fine.”
Because she has to be.
Wren sits up sharply, glancing into the living room. I track his gaze seconds before Audra bows off the couch, seizing. Her heart rate spikes from normal to a dead sprint.
She arches off the cushions with skin stretched tight over her face. Fingers curl into fists.
Helene stands, her mug still gripped in her hands, the motion sending droplets bolting over the sides. It sloshes to the floor.
She takes off, but I make it to her sister first.
No. This shouldn’t be happening.
My senses sharpen as I reach for the girl’s legs to hold them down. It’s not the blood.
She shouldn't have had any reaction to it.
The wound on her head has disappeared. This is something else.
“Hey, kid, I’m here. You keep breathing.” Helene’s voice steadies. “It’s a seizure. You’re going to be fine.”
She’s not panicking. She’s terrified, yes, like she was when she fought. But there’s a competence to her movements.
Resting her hands on either side of Audra’s head, Helene keeps the girl steady.
There's no way for her to stop the jerky motion, the horrible sounds torn from the girl's stomach.
“My blood is still in her. So it’s not a healing problem,” I mutter.
Audra manages a kick to my sternum. The pain is inconsequential.
“I know. It’s her disease. But she hasn’t seized like this in a long time. Her new medication was working.”
Was.
Together, Helene and I hold Audra to the couch. Emotions flash across the former’s face faster than I name them. She can’t allow herself the space to feel. Any of it.
She knows better.
She folds herself into usefulness instead, waiting for the event finishes, turning her brain off in the process.
I’ve always admired her for it. Her resilience is astounding.
“That’s it, kiddo, you’re fine.” Her voice is even, the glide of her hands soft on Audra’s face. “You’ve got this. It’s nothing you haven’t handled before.”
This is the healer, the professional. This is the woman who puts her knees down the list of priorities until they might as well not exist.
“Does this happen to her often?” I grind out.
“It hasn’t in a few months. They used to be terrible. Anything might set off an attack like this. The stress...” Her throat tightens and threatens to cut off the explanation. “But it’s all okay, isn’t it, kid? We’ve been through tougher.”
Audra bows off the couch again and her eyes roll beneath closed lids.
Working my jaw, I send out a compulsion. Rest. Be still. Easy.
Her body, her mind, disobeys. The compulsion bounces off her, and I’m rattled. For one ugly second, panic replaces bloodlust.
Shadows undulate through the room, and for a full ten seconds, I realize with annoyance, the seizure has gotten worse instead of better. It’s a ticking clock.
Wren stands there with his arms across his chest. Against all odds, he’s calm.
Motherfucker.
“Wren, grab a blanket,” Helene orders. “Under her head. We need to make sure to keep her airways clear—”
His shadows throw the cover to her before she finishes her sentence. It takes Helene another few beats to get her hands to work, to seize the folds, to angle them underneath Audra’s head.
“Stop.”
The word drags up from the cold depths of me, and outside, a roll of thunder rocks the house. It echoes in my ears.
I clamp my fists on Audra’s ankles, working my thumbs into tense muscles, pushing the compulsion into her heart, her mind, her essence.
“It’s fine. This happens,” Helene replies.
She refuses to blink, as though even half a heartbeat is too long to drag her attention away from her sister.
The heavy sensation roots in the base of my spine. Something shifts against my stomach, a different type of pressure.
I close my eyes, thumb trailing to Audra’s bare skin, sweeping away the cobwebs of my senses.
The shaking seems to have slowed down a bit.
“This isn’t a seizure,” I whisper bluntly.
The last time prophecy touched this family, Helene died screaming in my arms.
“It’s a vision,” Wren finishes for me.
He stands feet away, on the other side of the room. Knowledge connects us. The kind only history provides.
“No.” Helene is firm. “No, she’s never...Audra isn’t like—” She cuts off, clamping down on the words.
But it’s enough to sap whatever remaining strength she has left in her.
Audra claws into the couch cushions. Then, forced out between her clenched teeth, she speaks.
The first few statements are gibberish. It's the sort of drivel you say to yourself when you’re alone at home and pissed off because you can’t find the right word. Instead of devolving into sound, moans and groans of pain, one phrase is startlingly clear above the rest.
“All-Father.”
The sleet and rain slant, a strange combination of weather and unnatural chill.
Tension builds in the room, goosebumps breaking out over my skin. My fingers press harder on Audra's ankle and my eyes bolt open.
“Kid, it’s okay. It’s all going to be—”
Wren’s shadows cut her off, pinning her in place when Helene rocks forward. “Sorry, pretty monster. This is something we need to hear.”
“She’s having a seizure,” Helene bites out.
“It’s not a seizure," I repeat.
“Odin’s curse in three it spans. The bloodletter, the memory minder, and the secret keeper.”
Oh, fuck.
Volva, advisors to the Gods, are never wrong. Holders of deep knowledge, destiny. The universe.
Even the AllFather sought their guidance.
Their practice of seier magic originated with the goddess Freyja, the first, the most formidable volva.
Whatever prophecy Audra speaks into being might as well be divine law.
My fangs lengthen, instincts screeching. Every one of them demands I grab Helene and run. The room falls into darkness, the fluorescent bulbs guttering out, a pall none of us are able to shake.
Audra quiets before divination spouts form her lips.
“All seeing eye to AllFather, the trio unite to find their center. The beginning marks the end. The snake has let go of its tail, and the circle is broken.”
“Fucking hell,” Wren mutters.
He’s said a mouthful.
One thing is painfully clear—Odin knows where we are. This time he won’t let us go. He’s already sent his first wave of attacks, not as a punishing strike, but as a warning.
“The start is the end, the end is the start, and the trio of monsters protect their heart. Try and die. Try and die. Odin comes.”
“Kid, wake up.” Helene tugs free of Wren’s shadows and grabs the girl by the shoulders to shake her. “Wake up!”
Audra spoke of all three of us, but the part about the snake letting go of its tail is new. Jormungandr, or the Midgard Serpent, the Worlds Serpent, circles the world biting its tail. If he’s released it then the end of days has begun.
The beginning of the end indeed.
My insides hollow out, and I glance at Wren, at a loss.
Helene doesn’t cry, and she doesn’t scream. She keeps her composure, her freckles standing out against the paleness of her skin.
I wish, just once, she’d let herself fall apart before life forces her to.
This prophecy isn’t new, by any means. But usually the girl’s visions start slow and build. She’s always been drawn to tarot readings, runes, even sketches. The Norns have taken a particular interest in Audra’s soul. She’s one of the best Seers out there no matter who she is.
Something has changed, and we were right.
My claws dig into her frail ankles. Don’t break her bones.
Equally frail is my hope. This is not a good thing. Gods, all of them, are petty and vindictive.
They hold grudges like life lines.
Thousands of years, and they’re still not content to free us. They want us ground down to dust and scattered on the wind to Ginungagap.
By the time I lift my head, Wren is staring a hole through me.
“We were expected,” he says in an undertone, too inaudible for Helene to pick up.
“I know.”
And that’s what worries me more than anything. Because every time fate finds us first, she dies younger.