Descendant (11 page)

“Relax,” Rafe said. “They’re my pack. I thought we could use some backup. They’ll stay here and make sure nothing unexpected follows us.”

Fennrys remembered the wolves from his first encounter with Rafe in Central Park and figured that they must have some kind of psychic bond with the Egyptian god. He looked over at Maddox, who still stood, frowning with uncertainty.

“What?” Fennrys said. “He’s the god of werewolves. You didn’t know that?”

Maddox blinked in surprise. “Well, of course I—”

Fennrys just grinned and followed Rafe up the shallow stairs. The wide stone terrace at the top was flanked majestically by twin marble lions, which led up toward the grand edifice of the main branch of the New York Public Library. For a moment, it seemed as though a shadow passed over the terrace—a cloud scudding over the moon maybe—and for that moment, the stone lions had resembled something else entirely.

Sphinxes . . .

From the way Maddox glanced between the statues, Fennrys knew he’d seen it, too. But Rafe just stalked on past them toward the main entrance. Fenn followed, noting warily that the massive lion statues on either side of him turned their regal stone heads to watch as the Egyptian god passed, the carved contours of their manes rippling and flowing in the exact way that chiseled rock . . . didn’t. The one on the left was growling.

Maybe it’s just purring.

The woman who’d transformed into a wolf whined uneasily.

Maybe not.

Fennrys turned and put a hand on Maddox’s shoulder. “Look,” he said. “Madd . . . I have to do this. You don’t. I think maybe it would be best if you turned back. I don’t want Chloe coming after me if something bad happens to you.”

Maddox laughed. “No, you really don’t!” He reached up and plucked Fennrys’s hand from his shoulder. “On the other hand,
I’m
not about to go back and tell her that I abandoned my noble friend on his epic quest to rescue his one true love from the clutches of darkness. She’d never forgive me.”

Fennrys snorted. “Don’t tell me Chloe’s turned into some kind of romantic. Jeezus, Madd. What have you done to the girl?”

“I know, right?” Maddox rolled his eyes, but Fennrys could see he was nothing short of blissfully happy in his relationship with the previously occasionally homicidal Siren. “She’s gone all hearts ’n’ flowers these days. And so she’d just tear the hide right off me and send me limping back here to help you anyway if I turned back now. True love an’ all, yeah?”

True love.

Was
that
what this was? Did he really feel that way about Mason? He remembered what Rafe had said about the bind she was in; that if Mase somehow got her hands on the Odin spear, she would transform and become an agent of destruction, a harbinger of the End of Days, Ragnarok-style. That was the thing they were on their way to try and prevent. Rescuing Mason was, as far as Rafe was concerned, a fringe benefit. The unspoken agreement between Fennrys and the Egyptian
god—Fennrys knew—was that their first priority was to make sure that Gunnar Starling’s daughter never got the opportunity to get close enough to the spear to take it up. No matter how they had to go about it.

But . . .

Well, for one thing, what if that had already happened? What if they got to Asgard only to discover that she’d already turned Valkyrie? What if Fennrys had to leave her there . . . or worse? Would he do that? Could he?

Not even if the fate of the world depended on it.

Valkyrie or no—Fennrys wasn’t going to leave Mase behind in the place where he himself had suffered so terribly. He was going to get her out of there.

And if bringing Mason Starling back into the mortal realm meant that the mortal realm burned, then the Fennrys Wolf would happily go down in flames with it. With
her
. So maybe it was true love. Or maybe it was just the fatalistic Viking in him. He was okay with that, either way.

The night was silent—eerily so, especially for midtown Manhattan—but Fennrys suddenly heard the gentle cooing of a bird. He looked around and saw a lone mourning dove, sitting at the base of one of the massive stone urns that stood between the lions and the library’s arched portico. The bird stared at him with its obsidian-bead eye and cocked its head. Fennrys stepped past Maddox and approached the creature. He’d always had an affinity for birds, ever since he used to care for the Faerie King Auberon’s hunting hawks in the Otherworld.

Maybe that’s why you’re so hung up on a girl with the last name of Starling,
he thought with grim amusement.

Without thinking, Fennrys reached out toward the resting bird. It nuzzled his wrist with its beak as he ran his hand along its back, smoothing its sleek wings. One of the creature’s tail feathers came loose in his fingers, and he expected the bird to flap away. But it just cooed at him again and tucked its head down between its shoulders, closing its eyes for sleep.

Fennrys smiled and gazed at the feather for a moment. It was a pale, pearly white, shading to silver at the end, tinted to blush near the base. It was beautiful. A marvel of simplicity and elegance; a thing of nature. The mourning dove was a pure creature. There was nothing strange or tainted or unnatural about it . . . and it had let him touch it. It had sensed nothing wrong about
him
either. Seeing as
how he was now about to enter a place that would at some point only allow him admittance because he was already a dead man once over, he found that enormously comforting in that moment. Maddox, being mortal and wholly alive, would have to turn back eventually, before they reached the point of no return in this quest. They both knew that. But Fenn could walk between the worlds of the living and the dead with ease.
Relative
ease. That made him a serious freak. But the bird hadn’t thought so. He tucked the loose feather in the inside breast pocket of his jacket. It wasn’t a starling feather, but perhaps it was a lucky talisman for him nevertheless.

Overhead, there was a rumble of thunder, and Fennrys wondered if the storm was returning. He cast an eye skyward and realized that he had lost all track of the time in the hours since Mason’s disastrous fencing competition when he’d made a grave mistake and let her walk away from him, distraught. She hadn’t been thinking straight. Off her guard. An easy target for those who might seek to harm her . . . even if they were her own flesh and blood.

“Will you two please stop screwing around and come
on
?”

Rafe poked his dreadlocked head back out of the solid wood-and-iron door through which he’d apparently walked, quite unimpeded, when Fennrys wasn’t paying attention.

“I don’t have to hold your hand or anything, do I?” Fennrys asked, eyeing the very solid-looking door skeptically.

“The door is ‘open’ because
they
opened it,” Rafe said, gesturing to the stone lions. “They are the guardians of this place. You keep wasting time out here and they’ll just shut it in your face. And then probably
eat
your face.”

Fennrys and Maddox exchanged a glance.

“And
please
,” Rafe continued. “I know that at this very moment you’re eager to get your girl back, and probably tempted to say something like, ‘They can try’ . . .” He pegged

Fennrys with a stone-cold serious stare. “Don’t.”

Fenn nodded and uncurled his fingers—which had knotted into fists of their own accord.

Rafe stepped all the way back through the door. “Where we are now, the places we’re going to . . . the things we’re about to do,” he said quietly, “they go beyond what you boys have fought against in the past. No disrespect to the Fair Folk—ever, and I
mean
that sincerely—but this is a whole different playing field, Fennrys Wolf. I hope you’re ready, because this is going to be a very different kind of fight. There are things where we’re going—powers—that can not only kill you . . . they can obliterate you. Wipe you from the universe, body
and
soul, as if you’d never been. Do you understand?”

Fenn glanced back at the stone guardians. One of the lions was sitting up now, head attentively cocked in their direction, as if waiting to hear what he said. The other one had relaxed into a recumbent pose, head resting on its massive stone paws. But Fennrys noticed it still kept one ear flicked in their direction, and the stone muscles sliding beneath the marble skin were coiled and ready to spring.

“I understand. And I’m not going anywhere but forward, Lord Anubis,” he said quietly. “But I thank you for your concern. And for the gracious welcome of your guardians in letting me pass even so far as this.”

Rafe raised a slow eyebrow at Fennrys, and one corner of his elegant mouth lifted in a half smile of approval. The subsonic thunder-rumble growl of the guardian turned into a definite purr—Fennrys could feel it through the soles of his boots—and so it seemed as if he had, somehow, passed some kind of a test. Probably the first of many. Rafe stepped aside and gestured to the solid-seeming door in front of them.

“After you, then,” he said.

Behind him, Fennrys heard Maddox’s whispered sigh of relief.

Inside the library, everything was dark. Quiet.

“Before the reservoir was built,” Fenn mused quietly as they walked through the halls, footsteps echoing, “I seem to recall the land here was used for something else.”

Rafe nodded. “It was a potter’s field. A mass, unmarked grave for soldiers and the poor. Kind of set a precedent as an ideal place for an entrance into the underworld, wouldn’t you say?”

Maddox glanced around, suddenly on edge, as if the ghosts of the dead were about to descend upon them.

Rafe grinned and said, “Don’t look so nervous. There’s nothing to fear here anymore. Well . . . not from those poor souls, anyway.”

“They dug up the bodies before they built the reservoir foundation,” Fennrys explained. “I remember it was a fairly massive undertaking, but they moved them all.”

“They did,” Rafe said. “Tens of thousands of them.”

“Where did they move them
to
?” Fennrys asked.

Rafe shrugged. “Dunno. It was a long time ago.”

Maddox frowned. “For a god?”

“For a god who has better things to remember, yes,” Rafe said tartly.

“But you’re a god of the dead,” Fennrys pointed out. “That seems like rather a lot of dead to lose track of—”

“Listen. When I lost my kingdom, I made myself a part of the land of the living. I’m much more interested in that now, if it’s all right with you two,” Rafe rebuked them both with a sharp glare.

Maddox muttered an apology, and Fennrys gestured for Rafe to lead on.

The red eyes of closed-circuit cameras gazed unblinking at them from ceiling corners, and they passed through security checkpoints, but Rafe didn’t pause or so much as bat an eyelash, and Fennrys knew that they were protected from such mundane, human precautions while in the presence of the man-god. The gloom of the after-hours Astor Hall was sepulchral. Veering left, Rafe walked swiftly toward a staircase that, according to signage, led down to some kind of lecture hall. It was roped off, and another standing sign declared it politely off-limits to the general public. Rafe unhooked the rope and stood aside to let Fennrys and Maddox pass.

Bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet, ready for a fight, Fennrys led the way down the staircase. The steps were made of frosted glass, suspended in a stairwell that seemed to have been built not of the same polished marble as the rest of the library building, but of rough-hewn blocks of grim, gray granite. As Fenn and Maddox reached the landing at the midpoint turning of the stairs, Rafe called for them to stop where they were and not go any farther. They did as they were told, waiting for the Jackal God to catch up.

Faint golden illumination seemed to be filtering upward from beneath them, making it appear as if they stood poised on a gently glowing square made of solid light.
Rafe reached them and leaned out over the railing. He placed the palm of his hand on the rough contours of the granite and sighed.

“Home sweet home,” he murmured. “It’s been far too long. . . .”

Fennrys and Maddox stepped back as Rafe’s appearance suddenly began to blur and the outlines of his face and body altered drastically, shifting into his intermediary form, between man and wolf. Fennrys was familiar with the transformation, but Maddox backpedaled almost off the edge of the landing in surprise.

“Whoa!” he exclaimed.

Fennrys thrust out a hand to keep him from tumbling all the way down to the museum’s lower level.

“That’s . . . wow.” Maddox whistled low. “That’s pretty cool, actually.”

Rafe—Anubis—turned and raised one black-furred eyebrow at the Janus Guard. It was a bit disconcerting to see such a human expression on the canine visage. His nose and ears had lengthened and tapered into the finely pointed features of the figure universally recognized as the Egyptian god of the dead. His body was covered head to toe in a sleek black pelt, and a wide gold collar circled his neck, resting like wings on his broadly muscled shoulders. Gold beads shone throughout the helmet of dreadlocks he still wore in his transitional form, and gold rings pierced his ears. Aside from the winged collar and jeweled bands circling his wrists and ankles, the Jackal God was naked except for the crisply pleated, embroidered white linen loincloth that draped around his hips.

He was easily one of the most regal figures Fennrys and Maddox had ever encountered. And for a couple of boys who were used to hanging out with Fae royalty on a regular basis, that was saying something. Rafe stalked past them, stepping to the edge of the platform, and placed a lapis-taloned hand on either railing. He began to speak in a language so old, it hadn’t been properly heard by human ears for thousands and thousands of years. The words thrummed through the air, the railings glowed, shimmered, and then vanished. The glass stairs hung in space, now truly suspended but by what means, Fennrys couldn’t perceive.

Like a king returning to his realm after a long absence, the Jackal God strode majestically down the stairs, head
high, chest out. Challenger and conqueror, both. As Rafe’s bare foot landed on the ground below the stairs, the darkness shimmered like a mirage. Suddenly, they found themselves standing in a vast, torch-lit hall. Massive columns, fluted to look like lotus flowers, soared into the vaulting, star-spattered darkness over their heads that was reflected in the gleaming, polished marble floor. Black granite statues of gods, alternating with massive translucent alabaster urns, appeared as if they were marching in rows off into the invisible distance. The whole place had an air of austere opulence.