Descendant (6 page)

“What does it tell you?”

“That you know something.” Mason shrugged. “That it’s not always going to be like this for you. That you have some kind of an endgame in mind.”

“Perhaps I’m just resigned to my fate.”

“I don’t buy that.”

“Do you know that I used to have a wife—one of them, at least—who would sit and catch the viper’s poison in a bowl rather than let it drip onto my face?”

Mason let the subject change slide and went with it. She was pretty sure she wasn’t going to get anything out of Loki that he didn’t want to tell her. “What happened to her?”

Again the shrug. “She left. They all left. I haven’t seen a single one of the Aesir in . . . oh, a while. Not really sure how long. I know that there are some who still hold on, still hang about waiting for destiny to get off its arse and get Ragnarok moving. Heimdall, for one. He’s such a self-righteous . . . oh, what’s the word?”

“Prick?”

“Ha!” Loki’s laughter rang off the cavern walls. “I like that. I like
you
, Mason Starling.”

Mason ducked her head. She didn’t know how to react to a compliment from a god. It was a little awkward. Especially considering the fact that Loki was, ostensibly, evil.

“I like you too,” she said, surprising herself a little with the admission. “You seem like someone who hasn’t . . . uh . . .”

“Hasn’t what?”

Mason’s throat constricted with emotion. “Someone who hasn’t given up.”

He reached out with his shackled hand, and his fingers lightly circled hers. “I haven’t,” he said, and gently squeezed her hand.

“Then why would you count on one day breaking free of one nightmare, just so you could then go and whip up an
even bigger one? What’s the sense in that?”

Loki sighed and shifted. The cold stone beneath his back must have been torturously uncomfortable. She didn’t know how he could stand it. But she also stood by her observation. He didn’t seem like someone who wanted to see a whole world go up in flames, just because it was supposed to happen according to some stupid prophecy.

“Mason,” he said, “I bore me. Let’s talk about something else.”

“Okay.” It was pretty clear he either couldn’t or wouldn’t talk about the grand mythic prophecy of Ragnarok. So she decided to change tack. She drew back her hand and hopped off the stone slab. “Can we talk about how I can get out of here?”

“Sadly, I’m of little help in that department,” Loki said ruefully. “For one thing, I don’t know the way. No one ever saw fit to point out the exit signs. I suppose they figured that I’m never going to get around to using them, or if I did, they didn’t want to make it any easier for me.”

“I guess I can kind of understand that.” Mason nodded. “From their perspective, I mean.”

Loki shifted his head so he was looking at her again—this time with two piercing sky-blue eyes, glittering and gemlike. Beautiful. And there was a fierce, surprising honesty in them when he said, “I didn’t write the stories, Mason. I’ve never even
read
them. Can you believe that? I don’t know what people say about me. About what I’ve done. What I
will
do. So I really can’t say that I believe a word of it.”

“What . . .” Mason was a bit speechless at his admission. She gathered her thoughts and tried again. “You don’t believe that you’re the reason the whole world’s going to one day end in a cataclysm of ice and fire? That armies of undead and frost giants and fire demons and all kinds of other monsters—especially your ‘pup,’ as you call him—will wreak havoc and destruction on mankind? And that you’ll do it just . . . just because it’s in your nature? Because
that’s
pretty much what they say about you.”

Loki didn’t say anything to refute that.

“Really?” Mason sighed and looked at him sideways when he remained silent. “Ya got nothin’?”

“If you already think I’m a liar and you ask me if it’s the truth, are you going to believe me when I say no?” He smiled sadly. “Better to say nothing than to speak a truth that will never be believed.”

There was a sudden sound, like loose pebbles rattling in the moments before a rock slide. It came from somewhere above Mason’s head, and she glanced up just in time to see the cold, gleaming eyes of the snake glaring like twin spotlights down on her. And on the helpless figure of Loki, whose expression wavered between resignation and fear.

Suddenly, a surge of rage washed over Mason. The same kind of red fog that had taken hold of her when she and Fennrys had fought the draugr in a riverside café in Manhattan. Without stopping to think, she drew her rapier from its sheath and vaulted up onto the stone slab beside Loki. She shouted angrily, incoherently, at the vile creature and—attacking in the way that Fennrys had taught her to—lunged for the serpent, burying the tip of her sword in one of its hideous eyes. The snake made a furious squealing shriek—a sound like claws dragging down a chalkboard—and snapped its head back, thrashed madly as it retreated into its crevasse.

When Mason stopped screaming at the top of her lungs, she realized that Loki was laughing, the rich, delighted rolling sound that made her smile through her own blind panic and rage. She jumped back down and leaned shakily on the edge of the stone bed. Her rapier blade was sticky with greenish blood, and she used the tattered edge of Loki’s cloak to carefully wipe it clean. As his laughter subsided, she shook her head, pushing the black hair from her face with one arm, and gazed down at the bound god.

“Sorry,” she said, ruefully. “You’ll probably have to pay for that.”

“Don’t apologize. That?” He nodded in the direction of the snake’s hasty retreat. “That was worth the extra drop of venom she will bestow upon me next time around.”

“You know . . . you’re wrong about being the only one here.”

“Really? Have you been making the social rounds since you arrived?”

“I met a woman.”

“That sounds promising. I like women,” Loki said with a lazy grin.

“She said she was my mother. Yelena Starling.”

“Ah.” The grin faded. “Did you believe her?”

“She also said . . . she was a queen here.”

“Well. Yelena Starling is both those things. She is your
mother by nature . . . and she is Hel, dark and terrible goddess, queen of Helheim, also called Hel, by
my
hand. She is very dear to me.” His voice was soft and his gaze gentle as he looked at Mason. Then he looked away and said, “You have her eyes and her beauty.”

“I don’t understand. The myth says that Hel is your daughter.”

“I told you. I haven’t read the stories. Mostly because they tend to get everything wrong.” He sighed, and it was a frustrated sound. “I transformed Yelena, granting her the power of Hel not long after she first came to this place. So in a way, I suppose, she is my creation. A daughter in
spirit
, if you will.” He turned his grin on her. “Don’t worry, Mason. I’m not your grandfather.”

Mason didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. She wondered what it would be like to have the blood of a god running through her veins and was suddenly filled with questions. And with a longing to know just what Loki was talking about when he spoke of her mother. The woman he’d described . . .
that
sounded like the mother she would’ve wanted to meet. She craved to know what had transpired between them.

But suddenly, the ground began to shudder again, like it had in the moments before the crevasse had opened up and swallowed her. Loki turned his full gaze on her again, crystalline and bright blue and full of urgency. “You’ll have to go now, pretty Starling. Remember everything that I have said to you.”

Mason gripped the edges of the rock ledge as it heaved. “You know you haven’t really said all that much, right?”

“Then it shouldn’t be that hard to remember, should it?” he snapped, suddenly brusque.

Mason blinked at him, but then a lightning-like fissure appeared in the rock face opposite them—a jagged, branching crack that split the stone open and sent sharp, flinty shards flying. The stone blew apart and a gaping hole appeared. And the tall, dark-haired woman stepped through.

“Mason!” She thrust out her hand, a frantic look of panic turning the planes of her face sharp. “Daughter—come to me! You are in terrible danger!”

“Are you referring to me?” Loki drawled. “You wound me—”

“Be
silent
, deceiver!”

Mason glanced wildly back and forth between the two of them. She couldn’t wrap her head around the
situation—not after what Loki had just said about how much he cared for Yelena. Clearly, if the feeling had ever been mutual, it certainly wasn’t now.

“Mason,” her mother said again. “He is a liar. Whatever he has told you, do not believe him. He cannot help you. I can take you home. Together we can make everything right again.”

“Well, if you put it that way . . .” Loki’s voice was rich with casual disdain. “
Looks
like you might want to do what
she
says, pretty Starling.”

Mason frowned down at the so-called trickster god and took a step back. She couldn’t be at all certain, but she thought that Loki had added a strange, pointed inflection to the words “looks” and “she” that made her think he was trying to say something to her. Something else. Of course . . . did it really matter what he said to her? After all was said and done, Loki was a liar. Wasn’t he?

And he wanted to destroy the world. Didn’t he?

The woman lifted her hand, beckoning urgently to Mason.

No. Not “the woman,”
Mason chastised herself.
She’s your mother. . . .

She is Hel.

Mason glanced over her shoulder at the bound god one last time as she made her way toward where her mother stood at the foot of a path that led up into a narrow, dark-shadowed canyon. Mason hadn’t even noticed the path when she’d been sitting talking to Loki—even though she’d probably been staring right at it. She got the distinct impression that nothing in this place revealed itself willingly or without reason.

The trickster god’s gaze was unblinking, placid, and laser-beam focused on Mason’s mother. Like a blazing blue searchlight, it raked over her from head to toe. Loki opened his mouth and looked as if he was on the verge of saying something. Mason hesitated, wondering if she should stay and hear what it was.

Yelena—Hel—saw her hesitate, and in a low voice murmured, “He lies. I’m your mother, and he lies.”

Loki’s gaze sharpened, and Mason knew he’d heard. But his mouth drifted closed and he lay his head back down on the stone slab, turning his face away.

Better to say nothing than to speak a truth that will
never be believed.

Mason felt a sympathetic twinge, but she still turned away, back to where her mother stood, waiting. The dark stuff of Hel’s cloak draped from her outstretched arm like a raven’s wing, and Mason saw that beneath it she wore a long gown of sapphire blue, the color of her eyes. Hers—and her daughter’s. A pouch hung from the broad, ornate belt that girdled her slender waist, and it looked as though it was made of silvery-furred sealskin. She also wore a heavy golden rope crossways over her torso, and from it a curved horn, bone-pale and chased with more gold—ornately wrought, gleaming golden filigree—hung at her hip. She looked like a queen.

And she was waiting for her only daughter to step forward into an embrace that Mason had dreamed about, but known all her life she would never experience. Her mother Yelena, beloved wife of Gunnar Starling, had died giving birth to Mason, and she’d always carried that small, secret guilt deep in her heart. She’d yearned to know the woman that her father had spoken of with such tenderness and devotion. And now, here she was, waiting for Mason to step into the circle of her arms. And so Mason left Loki behind and walked forward, determined not to look back as her mother stepped toward her and wrapped her cloak around Mason’s shoulders.

She turned her back on the chained god and, following in her mother’s footsteps, left him lying there alone.

“H
ow long do you think he’s gonna lie there feeling sorry for himself?” a voice in the darkness asked. The familiar voice was male, full of candor and a wry amusement that held hints of both concern and exasperation.

Fennrys tried to ignore it, except he couldn’t. Music, coming from another room, kept him awake. Singing—a throaty, smoke-and-whiskey kind of voice—curled around Fennrys’s mind and beckoned him back from the edge of the abyss. He struggled against the lure of that sound, wanting nothing more than to sink back into nothingness, where every molecule of his body didn’t pulse with the kind of dull, fiery ache that seemed to eat away at his very core. More than that, he wanted to escape the pain in his head—and in his heart—that was born from the knowledge that he had failed, again. Failed to protect Mason. Failed to save her.

His facial muscles must have twitched, because the voice spoke again.

“Right, then,” it said. “C’mon, Sleeping Ugly. Wakey wakey . . .”

Fennrys could feel someone nudging his foot. And he suddenly placed both of the voices he’d heard. The singer was a girl—a Siren, actually—named Chloe. The other voice, the one irritating Fennrys out from his blissful insensibility, belonged to an ex-coworker, for lack of a better term. Fennrys cracked open one eye and gazed blearily up at the young man, whose name was Maddox Whytehall, and who used to be one of Fenn’s fellow Janus Guards. There had been thirteen of them once, guardians of the gateway between the mortal realm and the Kingdoms of Faerie. Fennrys saw that Maddox still wore the iron medallion—the Janus Guard badge of office, similar to Fenn’s own but with symbols unique to him—around his neck.

Fennrys’s medallion had disappeared along with Mason Starling when he’d lost her on the Bifrost. He heard himself groan in pain at the thought.

“There he is!” Maddox said cheerfully. “Just in time for the finale . . .”

He waved a hand, and Fennrys opened his other eye to see someone else standing beside him where he lay, shirtless, on what seemed to be a banquet table in a low-lit room—apparently the unused back room of a club or a restaurant or something, judging from the stacked chairs and table linens and shelves lined with red glass candleholders and columns of dinner plates. The person standing there, tall and rather homely featured, was one of the Fair Folk. Fennrys recognized him instantly.