Chapter 31 #2
His gaze suddenly flicked beyond me. Sharpening, his eyes shifted from their icy blue to a bright gold, and then the sharp crimson of hunger and fury and…was it fear?
I whirled to follow his line of sight, my lungs burning as the air ripped away. My throat ached, raw and desperate, while a shadow slid across us, dulling the sun’s fierce intensity.
I blinked, trying to make sense of what moved across the sky.
A faint silhouette formed against the swath of grey, and I made out the impossible expanse of wings covering the length of the sky, as if a crow had expanded to the size of Midgard itself.
My mind could not process the human-like face plastered over the crow’s head, but my pulse pounded faster and faster as the creature approached.
Free-flowing hair, longer than the longest river I’d ever laid my eyes on, billowed behind the creature. Blindingly bright silver armor covered the voluptuous shape of a woman. Her body seemed to stretch to the size of the universe, blocking all light and plunging us in the shadow of her being.
A scream split the sky, jagged and merciless, hammering at my ears. I pressed my hands to my head, imagining that if nothing else, my hands would stop the flow of blood that surely poured from my ears.
The woman raised a shield toward us, catching Sunna’s rays and reflecting them to strike with even greater intensity.
In her other hand, she raised a spear that looked as large as the trunk of Yggdrasil.
Though I’d never seen one before, I recognized this being from the descriptions in the sagas.
This was a Valkyrie, come to claim the dead for Odin’s halls.
Except neither of us was dead. I still had breath in my lungs, and Drak was undead.
Drak.
The Valkryie wasn’t looking at me.
She swooped down on us, slamming against the surface of Midgard with the heels of her golden boots. I followed her line of sight, my heart skipping with understanding as I watched the creature pierce Drak with her gaze.
On the ground, she still towered at least two feet above him, though she no longer seemed impossibly massive like the sky itself. My mind couldn’t track her motion. She flowed like water, faster and more fluid than anything I had seen, and she surged straight toward Drak.
“No,” I breathed.
Valkyrie slammed vampire, and Drak hit the ground on his back in an instant.
“Don’t touch him.” My tongue shaped the words, but I wasn’t sure they had left my lips.
A strange, floating haze washed over me, as if I’d been here before, watching a Valkyrie descend upon Drak.
Yes, I’d already experienced this. I’d seen this before.
Hel, this was just like Myrah’s saga, but I’d lived it.
I lunged forward, hand stretching toward her wing. The instant my fingers brushed the blazing feathers, I recoiled from the shock of the heat that scorched right through my gloves. Leather sloughed away, dripping to the ground between my feet, and blisters bubbled at my fingertips.
The Valkryie released another ear-splitting cry, and I snapped my attention to the weapon she raised above her head. Her hands wrapped around the thick pole as she struck him with the sharp, golden tip, bearing down full of divine weight.
I lunged forward, but it was too late. A cry tore from my throat as she drove the spear deeper into the ground beneath his back. His flesh around the wound singed just as vampire skin burned at the touch of my silver Y Tree.
“Stop!” I begged, because it was all I could do. Everything blurred around me, and I did not possess the Godlike power I commanded against vampires. The Valkyrie was unshakable, impervious. Neither Odin’s might nor Loki’s manipulations could touch her, because she wasn’t an undead.
Her gaze locked on me, irises alight with fire. The taut lines of her cheekbones deepened as she parted her lips, and her voice scraped against my ears like shards of glass. She spoke in a language I’d never heard, but I understood enough.
“I do what you will not.” Her voice was nothing like a human’s; instead, it rang like runes carved into glass that scraped against the tender flesh of my ears.
Her enormous wings unfurled, nearly grazing me as she arched her back and lifted her chin toward the sun.
Something in her grasp caught the sun’s light, flashing so brightly it nearly blinded me.
I barely had time to dodge her searing feathers before darkness swallowed the sky above.
She was no longer a woman but a force and a shadow in motion above me as I sank to my knees beside Drak.
He lay pinned against the earth, the golden spear piercing the center of his chest. How deep it went into the dirt, I couldn’t be sure.
Drak writhed under the weapon, a low and desperate moan slipping from him. I bent over him and swept his long hair from his face. His fangs gleamed, the white tips curving low, nearly grazing the beard beneath his lip. A gurgle shuddered through him as pain and fury erupted from his body.
And then around the blood, he managed three words.
“I love you.” He said it as if this were his last breath.
Wet spots dotted his beard and splashed against his pale, distorted face, and it wasn’t until I blinked and more droplets fell on him that I realized these were my tears.
A sob clutched at the center of my throat.
His eyes rolled back into his head and his body went limp.
“No,” I cried. “No, Drak.” I cupped his jaw and tilted his head toward me. “Drak, please.”
This couldn’t be the end.
Not now, not when I’d just—fuck, I’d just remembered. I was finally ready to listen to him and tell him how I felt.
A sob caught in my throat. Pressing my forehead against his, I barely managed to whisper my plea. “Rune, come back to me.”