Chapter 37
Drak
Odin? Had Lux just called Kayn by a god's name? Wide-eyed, she stared up at him, almost as if in a trance. All color drained from her face, and the skin of her cheeks, formerly pink from Sunna’s rays, turned to bone ash.
Rage flared in the center of my chest at the way she looked at him.
Horror pulled her lips apart, and shock left her chin quivering.
I fixed my eyes on the bastard who was tormenting her, my fangs sliding down as I prepared to fight.
The hardest fight of my life, likely, but a fight it would be after he taunted her with that disturbing laughter.
I found myself staring too.
Though he bore the same cropped hair, dark eyes, and smug mouth, the man standing before me was no longer the same.
I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what the difference was, but Lux clearly saw it.
Maybe because she was a witch, or maybe because I never had it in me to care about the gods.
Not in this lifetime, so even if the Allfather were standing before me, I wouldn’t recognize him.
“Odin?” I echoed.
Kayn’s lips pursed as if he held the secret close to him.
“Drak.” Shivers rippled through Lux’s strained voice. “He’s—he’s here.” That confirmed it; I stood before a god wrapped in the body of a vampire.
It was both deliciously and sickeningly ironic that Odin inhabited one of the undead creatures he hated. Of course, I didn’t see any humans or witches lining up to sacrifice themselves just so a god could step into Midgard.
Curling my hands into fists, my knuckles ached and my fingernails pricked the soft skin of my palms. “Perfect,” I said, responding to Lux while keeping my eye on Odin. “He’s here just in time to kill Silver’s army.”
That taunting laugh rolled out of him again and it took everything within me not to choke him, especially when a little gasp escaped Lux. I didn’t care that he was making my blood boil, but tormenting her, as he had since he took over her mind, was too fucking much.
“And why,” he began, licking his lips, “would I not start this cleansing with the creator of vampires and the reason for which she created them?” His eye flickered from Lux and then back to me. She was the creator and I the reason.
She was the blood. I was the rune.
The skald who recorded the most recent version of Myrah’s story must have mistakenly interpreted it. Or maybe there was yet more that we did not understand. Myrah’s story—our story—wasn’t over after all.
Odin’s eyelids feathered as he faced her. “You refused to listen. You forced me to come here and save Yggdrasil, and for that you will suffer.”
Lux didn’t move, didn’t blink. How shocking it must have been: the god she had worshiped and then been ensnared by now stood before her, vowing her death.
I understood the reason for it, but her paralysis definitely wasn’t ideal. She froze when I needed her help the most.
The creepy ravens perched on Odin’s shoulders cocked their heads in unison, like horrifying puppets.
Their sleek black feathers gleamed in the scattered moonlight breaking through Yggdrasil’s canopy.
Slowly, Odin angled his head and fixed his attention on me.
Hatred welled at the center of one of his deep black eyes.
King to king, we glared at one another in the calm before the storm. If I moved, I had no doubt he’d take it as a threat. If he moved, I damn well was taking it as a threat. So we froze for another second, caught in the interim and simmering with the all-consuming desire to slaughter one another.
I always knew I fucking hated the Exile.
But giving his body for Odin to inhabit was a recklessly stupid act even I couldn’t have predicted for him.
Anything for his soul back, I guess. One man’s obsession was with himself; mine was with my wife.
Maybe I couldn’t blame him because I knew I’d do something as stupid if she needed it.
I already was.
Odin was going to die tonight. And though I wasn’t sure how, I was willing to take a wild guess and a wild risk.
With night shrouding the gods’ domain, I stood taller and strength flowed through my muscles again.
No longer did the sun beat me down, and though drinking from Lux hurt like a bitch, I’d fed on my wife’s fresh blood, thrust upon me with her fierce determination. A smile almost ghosted across my face.
Kayn must not have fed recently, and though we were in the gods’ domain, Odin was in the body of a vampire. Who would have thought it would be Odin who finally lost his mind?
Fuck this standoff.
I grinned, having made the first move. There was no turning back now, so I ripped a thick branch from the ash tree and readied for the fight of my life. It wasn’t sharp, but with enough force, it would make that bastard implode from the inside out.
As a vampire and a god, Odin reacted just as quickly. He grabbed Lux by the throat and picked her up with one arm outstretched. The muscles in his forearm flexed, but he lifted her with ease, leaving the tips of her boots to brush the mossy floor beneath Yggdrasil.
I snapped off the small branches at the end of my makeshift stake, preparing to plunge it into Odin’s chest. Choking gasps tore from her throat, and where her skin had once been pale, it was now mottled pink and red from the desperate effort to breathe.
She kicked and writhed, fighting as bravely and fiercely as she could, but her effort wasn’t enough.
Color drained quickly from her rosy neck and face.
I shot forward, gripping the branch so tightly that my joints ached and the rough wood dug into my palms. The damn moss was slippery beneath my feet, but in a single heartbeat, I was nearly upon Odin.
But my rescue didn’t matter because Lux had already freed herself in the half-second that it took for me to close the distance between them and the tree.
Odin cried out with a painful grunt that echoed against the trunk, seeming to pulse around us like his power.
Clutching his arm, he quickly recovered, but his skin bubbled in the shape of Yggdrasil.
Lux had managed to thrust her silver pendant against his arm, forcing him to drop her.
I almost smiled again. How long had it been since a god felt pain?
But he was still a god. Killable as a vampire…
maybe, hopefully, but as powerful as a god.
And with foresight, damn it. He knew what I was going to do before I even moved.
The moment I was within reach, he whipped around, a blur with the speed of the undead, and wrapped his fingers around the branch.
From the tension of our struggle over it, the branch splintered and then snapped into two blunt, useless halves. Without it, I had to use my fists.
I tried to plant a blow to his chin, but he easily blocked it with a wiry forearm.
The meaty thwack of my knuckles against his muscle only stoked my rising frustration.
I tried again, to no avail. Odin knew exactly what to do and when.
Every swing of my fist was perfectly countered, and he knew where I would step or hit before I did.
I was fast, but I couldn’t see the future. Damnit.
Fighting him was an impossible feat. If only I’d had the chance to hang from Yggdrasil and gain such knowledge. But I didn’t. This was what we had to work with, and I damn well wasn’t going to let Lux die.
Head down, I barreled into him, finally knocking him off his feet and slamming him against the slick floor. His skull bounced off the thick hump of a root that’d broken the surface of the ground. I pinned him against the root with my hands around his throat.
And then it became obvious he’d allowed me to take him down. Of course he fucking had. With the blunt piece of Yggdrasil still in his grasp, he smashed it against my ribcage, breaking through the fabric of my tunic and crushing my ribs.
A grunt escaped me as I reeled back. Freed from my weight, he shot to his feet, stalking toward me with venom swirling in his single, focused eye.
The other looked as if it had turned to glass.
Kayn, Odin, whoever the fuck this bastard was, had his singular gaze fixed on me, and good thing too. He was focused on killing me.
I tilted my chin as if to say, go ahead. Kill me, not her.
But Lux appeared behind him, the pendant in one fist while she held her trusty stake in the other. Dull agony still throbbed across the lower half of my ribcage, but my body was already knitting itself back together.
Lux angled the stake and drove it into Odin’s back. The fire in her eyes made my breath catch. She was terrible and beautiful all at once, just like the shield-maiden who once fought at my side. Ruthless and full of rage as she had been when she protected Vylheim, our farm, and our home.
Now, she protected herself, and I was damn proud of her for it.
Odin bent forward, wincing from the same pain I had suffered moments before.
Lux hadn’t gone as deep, but with her stake’s sharpened tip, I prayed it hurt just as much.
If she’d killed him, she’d become a god herself: powerful, divine, endless.
This thought tormented me, racing through my mind as I bolted for a branch that I could reach.
Endless. Eternal. We’d never get another lifetime together if she became a god but if I became one, I imagined returning to Vylheim with the power to see the future and finally shape our kingdom, securing it under my control.
How perfect would it be to bend people to my will the way the gods had done with witches and those who worshiped them?
But if Lux became a god, where would she go?
We weren’t married, and though she remembered, she had never said she loved me.
She hadn’t let me die to Silver on the path, but there were no promises, nothing to keep her by my side.
The thought of losing her again made my chest tighten and my breath catch.