Arctic Dawn (The Norse Chronicles Book 2) (7 page)

Chapter Eight

A
fter an hour-and-a-half ride and a brief geography lesson from Baldur, I learned Helen’s warehouses were situated near the Mojave National Preserve, a federally owned wilderness composed of 1.6 million acres near the border of Nevada and Arizona.

“That’s neato and all,” I said, “but why would Helen take Nina to some warehouses out on the edge of nowhere?”

“It’s not an easy place to stumble on by accident or run away from on purpose,” Baldur said. “Desert for miles around. If you escaped, you might succumb to the elements before you lucked into an ATV or a hunter who was willing to help you out. It makes a good prison.”

“It makes a good place for us to die without anyone noticing, too. I learned that lesson at Oneida Lake.”

Speaking of the lake had the effect of naming an evil spirit. Everyone fell silent, and gooseflesh broke out on my arms. I wondered again about Skyla—where she was and if she was okay.

“Seriously,” I said. “All you’re going to achieve by this is to gratify Helen’s desires. The only things waiting for you at the end of this road are empty hopes or a trap. Probably both.”

Thorin slowed the SUV and turned it off the dirt path we had followed into the desert. The truck rolled to a stop behind a thatch of cacti and desert brush, and Thorin killed the engine and turned off the headlights.

“We’ve considered all that,” Baldur said. His flashlight bobbed in my direction as he bailed out of the truck. “But it’s a chance we have to take. This is the first solid lead I’ve had on Nina in decades.”

“You guys could be putting yourselves in danger—”

“Solina, don’t worry,” Val said, cutting into my objection. “We know the risks. We’ll be smart about it.”

Smart?
Hardy har har
. But I bit my tongue and took a fortifying breath. “Okay, what’s the plan?”

Thorin grimaced. “It’s one thing to keep you close, Sunshine, and quite another to lead you into the heart of the lion’s den. Stay here, be safe, and if we don’t come back—”

“Run for your life,” Val said.

No valid reason existed for me to insist they take me along. Immortal blood did not flow through my veins. Some goals and schemes might have been worth the risk of losing my life, but walking into semiobvious traps laid by Helen was not one of them. “All right. I’ll wait here. But this is the part in the movie I always fast-forward through. I hate the anticipation.”

Val squeezed my shoulder. “We’ll be back before you know it.”

Thorin hung back as Val and Baldur started down the pathway. Without a word, he dangled the SUV keys before my face. I snatched them and stuffed them in my pocket. He winked at me, turned on his heel, and caught up with the others.

The three men’s figures moved away from the truck and dissolved into the darkness. I climbed into the Yukon and pulled the door closed, making sure to lock it before stretching out across the bench seat. After a few minutes of staring up through the aptly named moon roof, my stomach growled, and I cursed myself for not having asked for a food stop on the way. I had eaten nothing since… I couldn’t remember, exactly. The ghost of a low-blood-sugar headache haunted my temples. When the scheme ended, if we all lived through it, I intended to insist on a burger stand or a taco truck or a freaking 7-Eleven hot dog, even if it meant we had to drive all the way back to Vegas to get it.

“Solina, wake up!” Val pounded on my window and jolted me from my daze.

I hadn’t slept—too much worry kept me from dozing off—but I had zoned out, staring into the sky, looking at the moon and thinking of Mani and tacos.

“Solina!”

I popped the lock, and Val flung open the door. “What happened?” I scrubbed my eyes and peered into the darkness behind him. “Where is everybody?”

“It’s gone to hell.” Val scrambled into the driver’s seat. He riffled through the glove box and flipped down the sun visor.

“What are you doing?” I crawled over the center console into the passenger seat. “What do you mean it’s gone to hell?”

“Helen’s guards were waiting for us when we got there.” Val leaned down between his legs and rolled up the floor mat. Then he reached over and rolled up mine.

Well, duh!
I didn’t say. “What happened to Thorin and Baldur?”

“They’ve been taken. I’m going to get you out of here
if
I can find the keys.”

I had the keys but wasn’t going to give them to Val without getting the full story from him first. I scrutinized the darkness again, looking for signs of pursuit. “Are they chasing you?”

“No, Thorin and Baldur got ahead of me. I stopped to take a piss. By the time I caught up, they were already out. Helen’s guards had used something on them. They were knocked out.”

I threw open my door and jumped out. “So, you think they used a tranquilizer? Like they were wild animals or something? Is that even possible? It’s so, so…
absurd
.” The Valkyries had done the same to me, but I was mostly human, and they had wanted to take me alive. Helen would most likely prefer to dispose of Thorin. Baldur, however, she would keep, so maybe drugs made sense, for the time being. I had to get to Thorin before Helen changed her mind and utilized something deadlier, such as Odin’s spear.

Val leaped from the truck and jogged around to my side, using his body to block my forward progress. “C’mon, Solina. We’ve got to get you out of here.”

“We can’t leave them.” I shoved past Val, went to the Yukon’s back end, and opened the rear hatch to dig through stacks of luggage and a toolbox. Eventually, I found a tiny LED flashlight in a roadside emergency kit.

“They’re big boys.” Val positioned himself in my way again. “They can handle themselves. They knew the risks. Thorin would want us to leave.”

“If the roles were reversed, he wouldn’t leave us behind.”

Val stiffened, and his voice took on a harsh edge. “He wouldn’t leave
you
because any time you’re at risk, he’s at risk. He protects you out of pure self-interest. If you think he’ll love you for this…” Val didn’t finish the thought, but I got his meaning.

Not for Val, but for my own sake, I paused and thought about my motives. If my softer feelings for Thorin, whatever they might have been, were inspiring my actions, then I had to stop. Val was right. I couldn’t risk my life on the expectation of receiving some future preference from Thorin. My motives had to be mine alone.

I wouldn’t go out of my way to help Baldur find Nina, but I wouldn’t feed him to Helen, either—same for Thorin. My reason for going into the desert was no longer about participating in a simple treasure hunt for a pot of gold I had no desire to find. My motives were now about the lives and deaths of people I cared about—circumstances that did not tolerate apathy. “That’s not what this is about. It’s about right and wrong. If they die because of my indifference, that would be wrong.”

Val shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s a compound full of armed men up there. Thorin and Baldur took out a handful of them barehanded before someone put them down with a dart gun, as if they were beasts. How do you expect to do any better than them?”

“I
cannot
stand by and let someone die simply to save my own hide,” I said. Losing Thorin meant losing my greatest ally against Helen. Val had demonstrated strength and fortitude when it suited him, but his chances of defeating Helen on his own inspired little confidence in me. He needed Thorin as much as I did.

Val gritted his teeth. “You are the stubbornest, most pig-headed—”

“I’m going, Val. Stay here or come with me and do your best to keep me safe.” I held up a flat palm in his direction. “So help me, if you stand in my way, I will char your ass.” As Val dithered, I went in for the kill. “I would do it for you, too. I wouldn’t leave you behind if they had taken you.”

In the glow of my LED flashlight, Val’s eyebrow arched. “I wouldn’t ask you to save me.”

“I’d do it anyway.”

Val’s lips thinned, and his nostrils flared. He folded his arms over his chest and glared at me. When I didn’t back down, he finally nodded. “Okay. But at the first sign of trouble, I’m grabbing you up and throwing you over my shoulder. You can burn me to ashes if you want, but your life comes first.”

Security lights illuminated several guards on patrol inside an industrial compound made up of seven or eight large corrugated-metal warehouses. The sentries—all toting mean black rifles—walked the inside perimeter of a huge chain-link fence topped by three strands of barbed wire. Crouched in the darkness behind a convenient patch of prickly desert vegetation, Val and I watched the guards stroll back and forth along the fence.

I pulled my hood up and balled my hands together in my hoodie’s kangaroo pocket. The desert was surprisingly cold at night, and it smelled of dust, horse manure, engine exhaust, and wood smoke.

“Did you learn anything useful about this place before you came back to get me?” I whispered to Val.

He motioned farther down the fence line. “I don’t know where they’re being kept. The place is full of guards, so whatever we’re going to do, we gotta do it fast.”

“How did Baldur and Thorin get past this fence
and
all those guards?”

Val peered at me from the corner of his eye. “They have their ways. Ways not available to you, unfortunately.”

“Can you get through the fence? Without being caught?”

Val put a hand over his heart and huffed. “You offend me.”

“We need a distraction,” I said, ignoring his theatrics. “You got a holocaust cloak on you?”

“A what?”

“Never mind. Something big-go-boom would be good. Something to draw the guards’ attention away from the fence long enough for me to get inside.”

“There’s a propane tank next to the rear building. See it?” Val gripped my shoulders and turned me in the direction he wanted me to look. Next to an outlying building, illuminated by the security light’s yellow glow, sat a familiar white tank.

“Yeah, I see it,” I said.

Val turned toward the warehouses and studied the patrol’s movements. “You can handle the flame part. Once that thing blows, I’ll slip around and try to help Thorin and Baldur.”

I heaved a groan. “I don’t know, Val. I’m pretty pooped. I haven’t eaten, and I’ve slept like crap.” Actually, I trusted my fire, but I wanted to save it for a dire situation, not use it up on a special effects show. Besides, Val had deserted Thorin and Baldur once already. I didn’t want to give him the chance to do it again.

Val huffed. “What other ideas do you have?”

“I don’t know. If we had a lighter at least.” An idea struck me. “Will a flare do it?”

Val shrugged. “Possibly.”

“There were roadside flares in the kit in the truck.”

Val squared his shoulders and looked off in the direction of the Yukon, parked almost a mile’s hike away. “Give me the keys and stay here. I’ll be back.”

I handed them over. “Even if you distract the guards, how am I going to get over the fence?”

Val rubbed his chin as he pondered the question. His brows rose, and he smiled. “Gotcha covered.”

“Val, what are you—”

He stepped forward into the darkness, and
poof
, he vanished. I shone my flashlight in his direction, but the beam illuminated nothing. A moment later, Val reappeared in my light. He jogged forward and presented his treasures: a roadside flare and a rolled-up floor mat that must have come from the Yukon’s rear cargo section.

“How do you
do
that?” I asked, aghast.

Val waggled his eyebrows. “I’m a god, Solina. You keep forgetting. There have to be some perks to this job.”

I pointed at the flare. “Do you think you can do something with that thing?”

“Your doubt is insulting.”

“Sorry.”

Val waved off my apology. “When that thing blows, I don’t know how long I can keep their attention. Be quick, Solina.” He passed the floor mat to me. “Can you get this mat over the top of that fence? It’s heavy.”

“Your doubt is insulting.”

Val rolled his eyes. “Don’t take any stupid risks.”

“Too late.”

Val muttered something and squeezed my shoulder. “Cross your fingers,” he said and disappeared again.

I edged closer to the fence, toting the rolled-up mat under my arm, and hunkered low in the shadows.

Two guards strolled past, both apparently oblivious to my presence. One of them was saying, “…taking a chopper, I heard.”

“She won’t believe us about the capture,” the other guard said. “That crazy bitch has to come rushing out in the middle of the night to confirm it.”

“Don’t let her hear you call her that. She’s brutal. No sense of humor.”

“I hear she’s…”

The two moved out of earshot before the second guard revealed what he had heard about Helen.
What other “she” could he be talking about?

“Come on, Val,” I muttered. “What’s the problem?”

As if in reply, the sky tore apart. Val had said, “Let there be light,” and there was. The explosion lit the night in a temporary, false day—a miniature sun that lasted an instant. Someone let out a whoop, and footfalls scurried, en masse, to the scene of the explosion. I edged closer to the fence and waited several moments to allow for stragglers and latecomers.

Like a heavy steam engine, my heart chugged in my chest. My lungs worked double overtime, a pair of concertinas playing the world’s fastest polka.
It’s now or never, girlfriend.

I scurried to the fence, shoved my foot in, laced my fingers around the links and climbed, one handed, trying not to drop the mat. Near the top, I said a little prayer and leaned back, unfurled the mat, and slung it over the barbed wire. It landed off-center and slid to the ground at my feet.

“Damn,” I whispered and jumped down to collect the fallen mat. How long would I have before the guards returned? Not long if they realized the explosion was something other than an equipment malfunction.

I climbed a second time and chucked the rug again. Val had been right: the rubber-backed carpeting weighed a lot, especially for attempting a one-armed toss. I heaved, and the mat sailed upward, reached the apex of its trajectory, and came down to straddle the barbed wire almost equally on both sides.
What are the chances of doing that again?

The carpeting must have knotted around the barbs because the mat stayed in place as I climbed higher. I readjusted my balance and swung a leg up and over the mat, careful to keep my skin away from the threatening barbs.
Thank you, Tre, for the cardio and strength training. I owe you the biggest banana pudding ever.