Oh crappers. I was done for.
The woman’s arm shot out so fast, I didn’t even see it coming. One sharp crack to my throat left me doubled over, gagging. Her bony elbow came down hard on my back, and I cried out at the snap from my torso. Mother of pearl! Freak show broke my rib! My scream echoed through the trees, sending a fresh wave of pain through what felt like a severely bruised windpipe. When I heard the loud thud beside me, I braced myself for the next hit. There was nothing I could do at this point but curl into a fetal position and wait for the beating to be over. But instead of a blow, I got a gentle hand on my back, and a soft voice in my ear.
“We’re going to get you out of here,” the voice soothed. Then it turned hard. “Get her back to the house. Now!”
“On it, Tore.” I turned my head to find Bodie standing over me. He knelt down and scooped me carefully into his arms. My ribcage shrieked in protest. “I’ve got you. Hold on tight. Johann! Start her car.”
I tried to wrap my arms around Bodie’s neck as he ran, but the pain in my torso was too intense. I settled for gripping the fabric of his shirt in my white-knuckled fists. In the time it took Bodie to carry me to my car, Mack pinned the pointy-eared woman down while Tore raised some crazy glowing sword over her chest. Was he going to stab her with it? Was I about to witness a homicide? Oh my God. These guys upped the crazy factor by a million. I couldn’t look . . . but I couldn’t not look, either. The woman hissed, and Tore brought his blade down, piercing her in the heart. A shrill scream escaped her lips before she flopped onto the ground. Mack and Tore both scrambled backward as a black mist rose over the woman’s body. It was the darkest energy I had ever seen.
“She can’t heal yet, can she?” Mack asked Tore.
Tore looked back at me, then gripped his glowing blue blade and slashed at the black energy ball until it dissipated. I must be dreaming. I buried my face in Bodie’s chest and closed my eyes. This was just a horrible dream. I was having a night terror—that was it. None of this was real.
Except that, somehow, it was.
****
“What the mother of all things messed up was that?” I limped back and forth in front of the fireplace. The orange flames warmed my legs, but failed to improve the ice laced around my heart. And no amount of fire could stop my hands from shaking—those tremors had nothing to do with the cold.
Tore, Bodie, and Johann sat calmly around me, unfazed by the fact that my seemingly cracked rib appeared to have downgraded its injury to something on par with a nasty bruise. While I fought against a barely contained panic attack over what was either a miraculous healing or a delusion, the guys covered the sectional and loveseat with their not-nearly-freaked-out-enough bodies. Mack walked into the living room and offered me a cup of hot chocolate, but I waved him away. I couldn’t drink. I couldn’t do anything but focus on the fact that Tore had just murdered someone. The only things keeping me from calling the authorities were (a) the fact that Tore’s victim hadn’t appeared to be human, and (b) my phone was still somewhere in the guest room. Also, (c) I was still hoping I was in a dream.
“I am dreaming, right?” I asked. “I ate too much cheese before bed, and I’m having a lactose-induced nightmare?”
No one said a word. They just stared at each other, as if they were willing some information to magically appear in my brain.
“No dream? Fine. Start talking, or I go to the cops. Somebody just got killed, and I am not going to prison for accomplice-ing,” I ordered.
“That’s not a word,” Johann piped up.
“Shut up,” I snapped.
Tore was the one to lean forward. “Okay, there’s no easy way to say this. And as much as the guys wish I would just dance around the truth, I think you just need to be hit with it.”
“Then hit me with it, pal, because I’m ready to chug some lithium and move into my padded cell.” I stopped my pacing long enough to pin him with a glare.
Tore put his palms on his knees. “Okay, here’s the deal.” He frowned. “Maybe you should sit back down.”
I rolled my eyes. “Spit it out, Vidarsson.”
Tore shrugged. “You asked for it. Allie Rydell, you are not human. You’re an Asgardian demigod.”
“Excuse me?” My eyebrows shot to my hairline.
Tore continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “You are the direct descendant of the Goddess of Healing. It was her job to protect Midgard—what you call Earth—from environmental deprivation and climatic trauma. When you were a baby, the night goddess, Nott, declared war on Midgard. She wanted to take over this realm and rule it as her own. But to do that, she needed to bleed all of the light from the realm—convince its citizens to drain Midgard’s energy through war and resource depletion, thereby weakening the native species and races. She and her half-breed race of night elves planned to wipe Midgard of all of its light and beauty, convert it to a dark realm, and take it over as their own. Her battle cry was the beginning of the Night War.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Night War? Elves? Goddesses?” I backed closer to the fire so I could grab a poker. I picked it up and held it in front of me. “You’re insane, aren’t you? You’re all complete nut jobs.” Leave it to me to buddy up with members of the campus cult.
“I told you this was too much.” Mack spoke up from the couch.
“She needs to hear it.” Tore gritted his teeth and pushed forward. “Nott knew she couldn’t destroy Midgard so long as the Goddess of Healing was protecting the realm. So Nott broke into Asgard and put her into a deep sleep; one that can only be broken by an immortal weapon. A weapon that’s . . . that’s lost.” Tore grimaced. “Once Healing was out of commission, Nott began wreaking havoc on Midgard. The climate change, the deforestation, the uptick in endangered species, the rise in hate crimes, all of it comes back to Nott. And if we don’t wake your mother from her sleep, there’s no telling what will happen to this realm.”
“My mother . . . my mother’s dead. She died when I was a baby.”