Rock, Paper, Shivers Read online

  Faas stood and approached them. “She doesn’t seem any different,” he commented as he glanced over Aila once again.

  “It felt like whatever hit me bounced off,” Aila replied, her deep voice seeming loud in the quiet night.

  “Then we have failed,” Faas replied somberly, his shoulders slouching in defeat.

  I squeezed my eyes shut as a moment of panic hit me, then was gone. We would simply have to try again. The key’s presence would not remain within me forever. I was still me.

  Mikael left Aila to approach me. At 6’ 5”, he was one of the few people around that could make me feel small. Well, him and Aila.

  “How do you feel?” he asked, concern clear in his voice. “Did the key react, or was that all you?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. It felt like it might have, but it was washed away as the tree formed. I think it was Yggdrasil’s remaining energy within me that created the golden tree, and maybe the key too.”

  “The key was originally part of Yggdrasil,” Mikael replied. “You might not be far off in your assumptions, but that doesn’t explain why the ritual didn’t work in the end.”

  “But why would the key even allow me to use it like that?” I asked, finally getting to my feet with Alaric’s help. “You would think it would want no part in summoning one of the old gods, since they are the only ones powerful enough to separate it from me. That wasn’t me controlling the key. That was me being taken over by something else. I was just along for the ride.”

  “Perhaps the key wants to be separated,” he mused with a small smile. “It did seem to have more power as a separate entity. As things are, it will likely die with you.”

  I frowned. I’d considered that little metaphysical aspect more than I’d like to admit. The Norn had told me I could end the key by ending my life, and my child’s. It was almost selfish to stay alive. Then again, I’d still be leaving everyone in the middle of a war. Estus would likely kill my companions once the key’s threat was eliminated, and he would continue being a tyrant over his portion of the Vaettir.

  Still, we were the ones who’d forced both Estus’ and Aislin’s hands. We’d taken the potential for bloodshed up a notch, throwing the two clans more fiercely into a competition they had begun on their own. I wondered how they would react to finding out the key was no longer a physical object. Would they go back into their hidey-holes, content that at least their enemies wouldn’t possess such raw power, or would they still try to use me somehow? Perhaps they’d just band together to completely eliminate the threat I might pose.

  I shook my head as Alaric gave me a tight squeeze. We’d sure muddled things up since our original plan. We’d gone from wanting to just give the key to Aislin, to starting wars and summoning old gods.

  “You seem tired,” Alaric commented.

  I nodded. I was tired, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Having Faas constantly draining a small measure of my energy took its toll. With the added inconveniences of the cold, and the botched ritual, I was ready to sleep for a week.

  “We’ll try again tomorrow,” Mikael assured, startling me because I’d been so deep in thought, I’d forgotten he was still beside us.

  Sophie and James waited in the shadows on the other side of the fire. Observing the whole situation silently.

  “Let’s go to bed,” I mumbled.

  Alaric nodded, moving just one arm around my waist so we could walk side by side away from the others. I couldn’t wait to climb into my insulated sleeping bag, shielded from the cold air by our ridiculously expensive winter tent. My hands ached enough that I was afraid to look at them, and I probably still had remnants of Aila’s blood on me. I was too tired to attempt washing it off with icy water, and I had no doubt the contact would increase the pain.

  We climbed into the tent, and Alaric zipped it up behind us. The space inside was small, leaving just enough room for our double sleeping bag. I sat on my butt while Alaric helped me out of my coat and boots, avoiding my hands.

  “Do you want to bandage them?” he asked, finally taking them tentatively in his grasp. “The burns don’t look bad, but it might ease the pain.

  I shook my head, barely able to keep my back erect. “Sleep now please.”

  With a small smile, Alaric helped me into our cushy cocoon, then climbed in beside me.

  He rested on his back so I could spoon against him with my head on his shoulder. I buried my face against his neck, trying not to think about the key’s presence, threatening to ruin the intimate moment.

  “Maddy?” Alaric questioned softly.

  “Yes?” I asked with my lips against his warm neck, breathing in the familiar scent of his skin and hair.

  He was silent for a moment, then sighed, “Nothing. Rest well.”

  Normally I would have pushed the matter, but I was too bone tired to try. Instead I shut my eyes and let my mind spiral off into oblivion, because it was a heck of a lot more comforting than reality.

  I awoke to the sound of the tent unzipping, but felt disoriented. With a start, I realized it was still dark, Alaric was still beside me, and someone else was unzipping our tent.

  Without thinking, I reached for the large, sheathed knife I kept near my pillow, just in case, as Alaric finally awakened. We both sat up quickly, ready to face the person now leaning into our open tent.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Alaric asked of the dark form.

  Tension leaked out of me at his tone. This was obviously someone from our camp. I couldn’t see a thing in the darkness, but with Alaric’s catlike night vision, he probably saw them clearly.

  “Sophie,” he demanded when there was no reply.

  “Sophie?” I questioned, leaning closer to the dark form.

  Alaric held me back. “Something’s wrong.”

  As my eyes adjusted, I could see Sophie staring at us, but she wasn’t speaking.

  She leaned a little closer to peer at me. “That was a very rude summoning, child,” she said in a tone of voice I’d never heard coming from Sophie.

  “Oh shit,” Alaric spat, “Do you think . . . ” he trailed off.

  My mind caught up to his way of thinking a moment later. “Oh shit,” I echoed.

  Sophie glared at us. “I would discontinue your disrespectful way of speaking immediately, if I were you. Now get out here.” She disappeared from the opening.

  We scrambled out of our blankets and out into the cold night air, quickly donning our coats and boots as we went. Sophie was obviously not Sophie anymore, something I might have found hard to believe if I hadn’t experienced a sort of possession myself previously.

  Once we were all out of the tent, we stood in a triangle with Alaric and I both staring at Sophie, and Sophie tapping her foot on the ice impatiently.

  “Freyja?” I questioned, my voice tinged with disbelief.

  Sophie rolled her eyes. “Freyja no longer answers the calls of her children, girl, and she’s not who you need regardless. Most call me the Morrigan, though I go by many other names, and I have come to your call.”

  “What?” I gasped.

  No one from the other tents had stirred yet, and I wasn’t sure if we should be keeping our voices down for privacy, or if we should be shouting from the rooftops to wake everyone and tell them Sophie had been possessed.

  Sophie/the Morrigan seemed confused. “You summoned Yggdrasil itself to light my path, child. Do not tell me you did so by accident.”

  Alaric was looking at his sister like she was some sort of monster. “This better not be permanent,” he interjected.

  Sophie glared at him, and it was so much like a normal Sophie glare it was unnerving. “Your sister will not be harmed,” she replied dispassionately. “I would not disrespect Bastet in such a way.” She turned back to me. “Now tell me why I’m here.”

  Her eyes sparkled in the moonlight. I had a feeling she knew a lot more than she was letting on, like she was testing me . . . or toying with me.

  My heart thundered
in my chest, making it difficult to breathe. I was facing down a goddess, and regardless of her actual intentions, she was obviously not happy. It did not bode well.

  “We were trying to summon Freyja,” I explained weakly. “We need her help.”

  Sophie smirked. “You expect the help of the gods, when you have clearly forgotten us?”

  I cringed. I’d heard legends of the Morrigan, and I wasn’t even sure that she was a god, yet here she was.

  “We had no other choice,” I explained.

  Sophie took a step closer to me, really looking at me. “There is a secondary energy within you,” she observed. “What have you done? I will not have any daughter of mine turning herself into an abomination.”

  “Daughter?” I questioned, feeling even more confused.

  I distantly heard the sound of another tent unzipping. Someone was coming to see what the commotion was.

  Sophie smiled. “You truly have strayed far from your roots, my child, and I’m here to bring you back to them.”

  Her comment didn’t quite make sense to me. Here she was acting like she had no idea what was going on, followed by an assumption that she knew quite a bit about me.

  The figures of Faas and Tabitha became clear as they approached us, followed by everyone else in our party.

  “Wha—” Faas began, then stopped as his eyes darted right to Sophie. “You’re not Sophie.”

  Sophie sneered. “How very observant of you.” She took in everyone as they came to join us, then shuddered in irritation, reminding me of a bird settling its feathers. “If you all don’t mind, I would appreciate a moment alone with my daughter.”

  Alaric stepped beside me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, obviously unwilling to leave me alone with the Morrigan. Mikael came into view as he stalked around Sophie, observing her like she was an animal up for auction.

  Sophie/the Morrigan frowned and met my eyes. We stared at each other, as she seemed to look into my very soul. I was still stuck on the fact that she’d called me daughter.

  “Consort with your man,” she said as a cold smile played across her face. She was ignoring everyone around us, her eyes remaining firmly on me. “I will take a moment to find my bearings in this much changed world.”

  I nodded a little too quickly. Alaric watched his possessed sister, looking worried as she turned and walked off into the darkness. I didn’t blame him, I was worried about Sophie too, despite the Morrigan’s reassurances.

  “I can’t believe it worked,” Faas breathed as soon as the Morrigan had taken Sophie’s body out of sight.

  Mikael seemed pensive, so I turned my full attention to him, with Alaric’s arm still wrapped around me.

  “What is it?” I asked, wondering if he knew more about the Morrigan than the rest of us.

  Mikael frowned. “I’m just not entirely sure why the Morrigan would be the one to answer our call. I wasn’t even under the impression that she was a goddess.”

  The cold was seeping into my bones, and I felt wary being out in the darkness. The Morrigan could have returned to watch us and we might never know. Of course, Alaric would probably smell her if that were the case.

  I gnawed on my lip. The Morrigan claimed I was her daughter, which as far as the Vaettir were concerned, simply meant descendant, and not even in the most literal sense of the word. There was no actual blood relation, but calling them our ancestors was the simplest way of voicing that information.

  “If she’s not a goddess,” I whispered, “then what is she? How did she travel through Yggdrasil?”

  Mikael took all of us into his gaze. “As far as the legends are concerned, the Morrigan is either a witch, some sort of fairy, or both. She was in this world more recently than the old gods, though she disappeared countless centuries ago. Regardless, as far as the stories are concerned, she’s not very nice.”

  “The stories seem accurate,” Alaric mumbled.

  I sensed fear from Tabitha, surprising me. She was incredibly timid for someone who grew up amongst our people. It was easy to forget that not all Vaettir were as ruthless as the ones I was used to. “What if she’s not here to help us? What if she wants the key?” she whispered.

  I let out an abrupt laugh, more of an expression of the tension I was feeling than anything else. “Well,” I replied, “she’ll have to cut me open and sever it from my very being if she wants it for herself.”

  Tabitha’s pale eyes met mine, letting her thoughts show through before she answered, “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  I caught my breath at the thought as Alaric squeezed me a little tighter. What if she really was there for the key, and I was just a mortal shell getting in her way? How do you stop an ancient witch or goddess from cutting you open?

  The only answer I could come up with was, you don’t.

  3

  The Morrigan wasn’t gone for long, returning within twenty minutes. I could sense the first light of morning not far off, and my bones ached with tiredness, but there was no way I was going back to bed until we figured all of this out. In reality, I probably wasn’t going back to bed period, but I’d soothe myself with comforting lies in the meantime.

  We all stood waiting by the rebuilt fire as she approached, the firelight illuminating her slender form. Our eyes met. It was just as unnerving seeing someone else looking out at me from Sophie’s eyes as it was the first time when she’d practically climbed into our tent.

  As she closed the distance between herself and our group, I noticed she walked differently too. Sophie’s gait was very direct. Graceful, but aggressive. The Morrigan walked with a slow sway, almost seductively. There was something reptilian about her. The way she moved sent a chill down my spine.

  “May we speak in private now?” she asked, her tone making it clear she hadn’t appreciated being kept waiting.

  “I go where Madeline goes,” Alaric answered for me.

  The Morrigan/Sophie arched a dark brow at me, her pale face seeming to glow in the firelight. “You let a man speak for you?”

  I grabbed Alaric’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Only when I agree with what he says.”

  The Morrigan sighed. “You brought me to this place, not anyone else here,” she snapped. “You summoned me with fire, and a sacrifice of blood, and now you cannot be troubled to allow me a private audience?”

  I let out a shaky breath. She had a point. I really didn’t want to be alone with her, but I wanted her out of Sophie’s body sooner rather than later. If Sophie had to deal with being possessed, I could deal with a few minutes alone with the scary witch goddess.

  “Fine,” I replied before I could think better of it.

  Alaric’s hand convulsed around mine at my answer. He glanced over at me. “Are you sure?”

  I met his eyes and nodded. “If Bastet requested a private audience with you, would you tell her no?”

  Alaric was clearly unhappy, but he let go of my hand and nodded for me to go, earning himself a big bag of bonus points.

  The Morrigan/Sophie nodded, then turned and walked back in the direction she had come, expecting me to follow. Everyone else looked as worried as I felt. Their emotions crept over me, making me even more anxious to walk out into our dark, snowy surroundings. I crossed my fingers that at the very least, I wouldn’t slip on the ice and embarrass myself in front of my alleged ancestor.

  Pushing my worries to the back of my mind, I turned from the group and hurried to catch up to the Morrigan’s side as she glided across the hard-packed snow. I felt clumsy next to her serpentine grace, but I felt that way around normal Sophie too, so it wasn’t much of a change.

  Her dark hair flitted about in the breeze as she asked, “Why have you chosen such an inhospitable environment?”

  I watched my feet as we continued to walk. Our surroundings were nothing but white, with scraggly vegetation here and there. Everything was snow as far as the eye could see, which wasn’t far in the darkness.

  “We’re hiding,” I explained.
r />   “From whom?”

  I took a deep breath as I pondered the best way to explain it. “Basically from all of the Vaettir of the largest two clans.”

  “Why?”

  I was getting tired of walking on the cold, hard ground, and I was getting hungry. The small life inside me demanded more nourishment than I would normally need, and I felt enormous guilt any time I denied it. Still, I did my best to remain patient.

  “There exists a charm that was part of Yggdrasil,” I explained, starting from the beginning. “When the Vaettir destroyed the tree, the Norns were formed. The leftover dark energy formed a tiny key. The ones after us want that key.”

  The Morrigan/Sophie laughed for some reason I didn’t understand, then nodded as she stopped walking and turned to face me. “I remember that day,” she explained. “Your brethren took away the gods’ mode of transportation between worlds. You’d think they would have been more grateful to those they were modeled after.”

  I shrugged. “I wasn’t there, so I can’t really defend why they did it.”

  She took a step closer to me. “And yet, you have touched the tree. There is a part of it within you, else you would not have been able to summon me here.”

  I gulped. I glanced over my shoulder for some form of reassurance, but we’d walked far enough that our camp was entirely out of view. I turned back to meet the Morrigan’s cold stare.

  “I have touched Yggdrasil,” I admitted. “One of the Norns pushed me back in time, not physically, but a part of me traveled there.”

  “There’s more,” she observed. “Tell me the rest.”

  I looked down at the ground. “The charm I mentioned, the dark energy left over when Yggdrasil was destroyed . . . ” I trailed off.

  The Morrigan gasped, showing the first real surprise I’d seen on her. “It’s within you, isn’t it? I knew I could feel it. This is wonderful. We can reopen the gates between the worlds!” She grinned. “Balance will be restored at last.”

  Her sudden shift to excitement left me reeling. I didn’t want to reopen the gates to the old gods. Heck, I could barely comprehend that such gates existed. I just wanted to get rid of the key, while living to tell the tale.