Foresworn (8 page)

I winced and shielded my own eyes just as my hand grasped something under the snow. I felt two somethings—right next to each other. I’d been looking for a rock or a heavy stick or anything I could fight with. What I pulled out of the snow made my skin crawl with electricity because there was no way this was coincidence.

“No freaking way,” I muttered, pulling the item’s twin from the snow.

Arun, mouth open in shock, held out his hand for one of them.

I gulped and passed it over.

He gripped the elk antler and held it up to the one I held. It had been a whole set at one time but had been broken in half. Long, gleaming and white, the antlers branched into deadly sharp sections. And they were thick. Frighteningly thick.

Arun swung his in an arc and I followed the movement, surprised at the ease I felt in the swing. My eyes met Arun’s, and something seemed to snap between us, something strong, unbreakable. “Ready for this?” he asked me.

And I was. I held nothing more than an antler, but suddenly it felt like I could fight anything. I turned to face the elves. Now that the light had filled the section of woods we were in, I could see six of the dark creatures.

“If I hadn’t just seen that, I never would have believed it,” Nanna said. “Freyr battles Surt with the antlers of an elk. Just like in the myth.”

“I don’t think Surt is here yet.” This came from Brigg, and I couldn’t imagine how his mind could even form words with the intensity of the power coming off him.

“He’s here,” I said over the wind. “Somewhere! Someone set fire to the place you were going. Arun’s home.”

One of the elves stepped closer, his hand still over his eyes. He spoke, but I didn’t understand the language. All I got out of that deep, gravelly voice was that he sounded like an arrogant jerk. He actually seemed to be smirking at us. All he saw was a bunch of kids.

“He has no idea we’re about to kick his ass,” muttered Nanna. She wasn’t moving her nunchucks, wasn’t showing off like the people I’d seen use the weapon in movies. She held herself still next to Brigg, staring hard at the elves, though every now and then, her glance slid to the elk antlers.

I was stunned over finding them, too. Stunned and completely, completely creeped the hell out.

But then, I no longer had time to feel anything but fear as the elves suddenly flew into motion. They ran fast—almost too fast to see—but it was the way they moved that made me want to run and hide. It was the most fluidly graceful, creepy thing I’d ever witnessed.

One with shoulder-length fire-engine-red hair appeared in front of Nanna, and she didn’t hesitate with the nunchucks. She started spinning them in one hand so fast, they looked like one long stick. Her speed—I’d never seen anything like it. He threw up his arms to block, but at the last minute, she changed her swing and brought them up between his legs. The thing howled and stumbled back.

I winced. Guess they were humanoid in all ways.

Brigg let out a yell that seemed to echo through the forest, and he jumped at two others. In midair, he switched one of the knives into a reverse grip and slashed out. I couldn’t tell the color of the blood that spewed from the elf’s neck. The other managed to do something to him with its long clawlike fingers, and this time Brigg’s yell was full of pain. But he lashed out with his knives, slashing back and forth, and the elf that hurt him stepped back, then fell over the one who’d fallen.

Arun’s hand gripped my arm and he pointed. A couple more elves spilled from the forest. Before I could blink, they were in front of him. He let go of me and, using both hands, swung the antler in a wide arc. The sharp branches faced away from the creature, but the crunch of the antler against his cheekbone made me grimace. Arun grunted and swung the antler again. Blood spilled from the elf’s neck.

I didn’t see what happened next because another came at me. Before he reached me, he stopped and crouched, then tilted his head to the side. His hair was in a silvery-white braid that nearly touched the ground. He took a crouching, crawling step toward me and the fascination that crossed his pointed features as he looked at me had my gut tightening.

Gripping the elk antler, I raised it, ready to skewer him on one of the pointy ends, but he yelled something and all movement stopped. Again, faster than I could see, the elves moved. This time when they stopped, they were all in front of me. The one crouching tilted his head again and the bottom of his braid disappeared into the snow. He said something over his shoulder, and some of the others nodded.

They all stared at me as if I had suddenly sprouted horns.

Arun stepped next to me, his tall body kind of reassuring. But the way the elves stared at me sent a new sort of alarm burning through my system.

An argument broke out among them. The language wasn’t at all familiar except for a few recognizable words.
Vigridr
—the place of the last battle. My blood ran cold.

“I get
Vigridr
and
Surt
, but the rest is gibberish. We need to know what they’re saying.” Arun leaned down. “They seem to know you.”

“I’ve never seen one of those things in my life.” But a memory sparked. Not something I’d seen. Coral. “Oh gods, I think my sister was telling the truth all along.”

“Explain,” Brigg said as he stood on my other side. His light had dimmed slightly and he held one hand over his side.

“When we were kids, one of my sisters had this stream of nightmares, and she kept telling us about this monster who crouched over us at night. He looked very much like the things in front of us.” My heart lurched. “I never believed her. Not really.”

“They do seem to recognize you.” Nanna held the nunchucks still, her body taut and ready to move any second.

The argument between the elves escalated and the one crouching suddenly straightened to his full height. Arun wrapped his fingers around my arm. Brigg moved closer. Like the others, the elf in front wore some sort of uniform that had a long skirt, only his was a shiny white like his hair and had a golden symbol on the right over his chest. I had the feeling he was in charge. The rest of them wore black.

He took a step closer to me, and I hefted the antler up with both hands as his white eyebrows lifted in what looked very much like regret. He let out a piercingly loud cry and tensed.

Something in me knew he was about to rush me, and I had a split second to realize they had all tensed, then became blurs. Before I even saw him, I felt something sharp pierce my neck.

I did something I’d never done before. I called out for help.

“Skuld!”

She sent a wave of approval through me that would have sent me to my knees, but I was afraid whatever the elf had put in my neck would tear me. I dropped the antler, pulled back from him, turned and grasped the front of Arun’s coat. “Hold on,” I yelled as I concentrated as hard as I could and tried, for once, to
make
my
rune tempus
happen.

It worked. Though it hit and it hit
hard
. The trees didn’t do the smearing, blending spin—they took off. The world around us became nothing more than a blur of gray and the sound was like nothing I’d heard before. A whirring, like a giant motor swirling all around us.

Nanna gasped and fell to her knees. Brigg followed.

Arun, breathing hard and wincing, leaned down until his forehead was on mine. We stared at each other as Nanna screamed.

The world stopped before her scream did. Arun wavered and I was pretty sure his knees were buckling, so I gripped him tight and smashed a hard, fast kiss on his mouth, hoping to distract him. When I let go, he wasn’t falling. He was just standing there, blinking at me. One corner of his mouth started to lift in a smile that disappeared as he looked at my neck. He pushed my scarf aside and cringed, then shoved past me.

“Holy crap,” Brigg breathed as he came to his feet.

I turned to find that Arun had stepped in front of me like he’d planned to get between me and the silver-haired elf who was frozen in place a mere foot of so from where I’d been standing. His clawed fingers were out in what looked like a death swipe. A drop of blood hung suspended below one of those bloody fingers.

“He was going to rip my throat out.” Nausea slammed into my stomach, and I bent over to catch my breath, gulping air, holding the scarf to my neck, and looking at the swarm of elves all frozen in varying poses as they’d been stopped mid-run or mid-dash or whatever the hell it was they were doing to move that fast.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Brigg said. He had crouched next to me, pushed my hair aside to look up at me. “You okay?”

I winced. “Can you dial back the brightness?”

“I’ll try. It’s been bad since my birthday yesterday.” He moved back and straightened up. “How are you doing this?”

“It’s not me. It’s my norn. She does this.” But inside, she writhed about and I felt the hot sting of her disappointment. “You’re not doing it?” I whispered to her.

“I think it’s you,” Arun said. “You need to keep pressure on that wound until we can get away from them, okay? I’ve got first aid. You’ll have to write something, though, right? We should move as far away from these creatures as we can. Now.”

Before I moved, I caught the utter shock on Nanna’s face as she stared at me.

“It’s just this thing I can do,” I tried to explain. “Time will go back to normal. You carry Nanna inside you—I have a norn and she gives me runes about the future.”

She shook her head. “You have dual gifts. Your norn didn’t stop the world. My grandmother told me about you. You have two sisters, don’t you?” She came toward me, and the biggest smile stretched across her face. “You’re from here.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “My mother was from Minnesota.”

“Some of your mother’s people were from there and some here. My grandmother moved me to Washington. We’re all spread out.” She hugged me, whispered in my ear, “But your people are also mine. Arapaho.”

Stunned, I pulled back to stare at her. “My mother’s family was. You’re right. I don’t understand, though. What do you mean your grandmother told you about me and my sisters?”

Arun touched my shoulder. “We really should get away before time goes back to normal.”

“He’s right.” I nodded, my gaze catching again on the elf who’d been frozen closest to me. He still had that look of regret on his face, like he didn’t want to kill me. But his hand out told me the opposite of that expression. “But I want to hear more. As soon as we’re out of here, okay?”

She nodded.

We all gathered our backpacks and Arun picked up both antlers, handing one to me.

The thing would be a pain to run with, but I liked having it. The other three jogged a few feet ahead, then stopped to see why I was hesitating. I stepped close to the silver-haired elf, reached out and shoved him hard enough to knock him to the ground.

My hand started to tingle, and I rolled my eyes. “You couldn’t wait a few more minutes, Skuld?”

Her approval over my use of her name again flowed through me and I smiled. That smile grew into a grin I knew would look pretty rotten if the others could have seen my face just then. So I aimed it at the elf statue at my feet. I knelt on the ground next to him, pulled my scarf down and dipped my finger in the warm blood on my neck.

Then I drew the runes on his nice white uniform. I had to go back for blood several times. When Arun stood over me, I ignored him.

“I asked them to wait there.” He squatted down, watched as I traced the lines so they were nice and dark. “I was right. You do have a morbid streak. Not sure why I like that about you.” He grinned. “This guy is going to be pissed when he comes out of this.”

“Good.” I finished and stared at the runes.

“Crescendo of souls.” And as I read the words aloud, a faint music came to me on the wind. “I hear it—the music.” I looked at Arun. “Close your eyes. See if you can.”

He did, turning his head. When he opened his eyes, they glittered wide in the light of the moon. “I hear it, too. It’s beautiful.”

And it was. Only I wasn’t sure it was music. To me, it sounded like thousands of voices harmonizing in sound. It was a crescendo of souls. Of voices. I had no idea what it meant, but a part of me couldn’t wait to find out.

“We should hurry,” Arun said.

I nodded, stared down at the elf, then thought of something Coral had once told me about spells and curses that were done using blood. I stared into his eyes as I lowered my scarf one more time to scoop more blood on my finger. This time, I wrote one rune on his forehead. It was hard to see in the dark, but I knew it was there. “That one is from me,” I whispered. “It’s called Kauno or Kaun. It’s the rune of fire.” I leaned closer. “It’s also the rune of mental anguish. Mixed with my blood, it’s going to tear you to pieces.”

As I turned and ran with the others, I told myself over and over that I hadn’t seen his mouth curve into a grin during my last words.

But I had.

Chapter Seven

We ran into a group of people on snowmobiles less than a mile away. Right after my
rune tempus
started the world going again, thank gods. Alva, her brother and a few of the kids made room on the vehicles for us.

I sat behind a snow-covered Sky. She told me that she and the two other with gods’ souls had crashed when the world had gone into the spin. They were okay, just cold and wet now. I couldn’t help but feel responsible, though there was nothing I could do to stop this. It still weirded me out that others were experiencing it now.

The entire ride back I wasn’t the only one trying to watch over my shoulder for fast-moving elves. I caught Nanna, Brigg and Arun looking often, too. Every time my skin prickled, I imagined I saw their scary black eyes watching from the forests. But they never showed.

The scent of grilled meats came through my helmet when we reached the edge of the forest. I had never been so glad I hadn’t gone vegetarian like Coral in my life. I climbed off the back of the snowmobile when Sky pulled it to a stop, and I looked for Nanna. Arun was busy introducing her around and while everyone was oohing and aahing over Brigg’s light, I finally met Axel, Arun’s uncle. He brought a first aid kit and bandaged my neck. He looked exactly like Arun and his sister—had the same light blond hair and dark eyes. He barely spoke, but his smile was kind when he didn’t look sad. My heart ached for him because he’d spent his life building up these greenhouses, too.

He was finishing when Nanna found me. “Let’s get some food and find a quiet place to talk. I can’t wait to learn if what I’ve been told is the same as what you have been.”

I walked with her to where it looked like people from town had set up grills. Away from the surviving greenhouses, I was happy to see. I chose grilled chicken and a steaming aluminum foil packet filled with potatoes and onions, grabbed a bottle of water and found us a corner in a still-standing greenhouse to talk. First, I sought out Arun and found him watching me with a smile as he partially listened to something Tyrone was telling him.

My heartbeat picked up again. I didn’t know why I looked for him or why he watched me, but the two of us seemed to share something, a kind of connection. I wasn’t entirely sure it was romantic—despite the kiss in the tent—but it was there. It was like I could relax once I knew where he was and that he was okay, and I was getting the same thing from him. After one last quick look at him, I followed Nanna.

We chose a quiet spot in a corner of one of the greenhouses that had been partially cleared and settled between a stack of sleeping bags and a cooler filled with more water and soda. I sat my plate down and rolled out a sleeping bag so we could pull it over our legs and share.

Before I started eating, I chewed on my lip and stared at her. “I guess I should warn you that I don’t have anything to compare with your stories. My mother told us nothing other than her family was Arapaho and lived in Minnesota. She spent more time telling us Norse stories.”

Nanna cut into her chicken, took a bite and sighed. “I was so sick of sandwiches.” She opened her foil packet and sniffed the steam coming from it. Then she frowned. “So you don’t even know your whole heritage, just part of it.”

I nodded, my stomach in too many knots to start eating yet. “We don’t know if we have grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins. Nothing. Raven, she’s the oldest of us, and I tried to research on the internet, but we couldn’t find any Lockwoods in that area who seemed like they could be family. For all we know, Dru made up the name.”

“Dru?”

“Our mother.” I looked down at my plate. “She’s kind of crazy, though I think she skated past
kind of
sometime in the last few months.”

She looked stunned, her dark eyes wide. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine growing up without family. I had so many, I sometimes felt I’d never get any privacy. I kind of resented it, even. But there was someone always there who could help if I needed it. You guys were alone?”

“Completely. But we did have each other. Raven, Coral and me.” I smiled to show that it was okay, even though there’d been many times we could have used an interfering aunt or uncle.

“I don’t know where to start. It goes back far. To when a group of Vikings came a long way into this country. They met our people, became friends. Then some of them went hunting and came home to find the rest of their men and a lot of our people dead. We don’t know how. Some say it was a massacre and some say an illness.”

I nodded. “I know this story. It’s about the Kensington Runestone from Minnesota.”

“The Vikings who survived, stayed and mixed with our people. You and me—” she pointed her fork at herself, then me “—we’re from the same ancestors. It was how my grandmother knew I carried a goddess soul. There have been prophecies passed down over the years.”

“The one about the warrior from two magical clans?”

She frowned, tilted her head. “No, that one I don’t know.”

“I’ll share later.” I wondered about Arun as I opened my foil packet and speared a potato with bits of onion clinging to it along with something else. I sniffed it.
Yum.
Parmesan.
Arun’s last name was Dahl, which I knew was Germanic. In fact, it was an old name that I thought could be traced back to Vikings—though they didn’t really use surnames. Most of the time, they were identified as the son of someone. But Dahl was most definitely a part of one magical clan and because we usually took the father’s last name, that meant his mother was something else. That didn’t sit right, so more than likely she’d given Arun his last name.

I’d have to remember to ask him later. I chewed slowly as I watched Nanna eat half her chicken.

When she laid down her fork and knife and let out a deep sigh, I grinned. “It’s pretty good, isn’t it?” It had been. Whoever grilled the chicken knew exactly what they were doing. My sisters and I could all work a grill—we’d grown up cooking on outdoor stoves. And Coral baked like a dream.

“Food of the gods,” Nanna said, then snorted.

I cracked up and nearly dropped my plate.

“Have you ever heard of the Whirlwind Woman?”

Her blurted question stopped my laughter, and I shook my head.

She rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe your mother didn’t tell you about this. She had to have been told. And when it became apparent that triplets carried Norse souls, our people would have gathered. Why did she leave?” Her black eyebrows met. “Because otherwise you would know about all this. And I would have known about you, for that matter.”

“My mother ran from her family and then spent the last eighteen years keeping us on the move. She was hiding us from the warrior who would supposedly kill us. It’s from an old prophecy about a warrior bringing death to a norn, and whoever shared the story also told her that one of us wouldn’t live to nineteen. So she ran and hid us. We lived all over the country with the exception of here.” I waved my fork around. “Any place she thought might have magic was a big no-no. Oklahoma especially. She thought the Heavener Runestone there meant it was a place of magic and that Norse people would be there. Funny thing is, if what my sister said on the phone last time is true, it turns out Dru was right about that.” I took another bite of potato. “Tell me about Whirlwind Woman. What a name.” I grinned because it sounded like a superhero name or even a villain in a scary movie.

“That thing you did—that spinning of the world like we were in the center of a tornado—that is from Whirlwind Woman. She’s an old legend. Well, she’s actually real, but most think of her as a myth that’s shared by more than one tribe. She’s a powerful force of nature who brings the gift of sight.” She smiled. “My grandmother studied both sides of our shared heritage. She made sure I did, as well. That gift of sight is actually a form of Norse magic, we believe, called seidr.”

“I’m very familiar with that one. So you’re saying it’s not the Norse goddesses my sisters and I carry who do this?”

“Oh no, that’s not it. Your magic of prophecy, at least that part must come from your norn. But the way you turned the world into a spin? Like a tornado? That is from the Arapaho. And like I said, sometimes Whirlwind Woman gives the gift of visions, as well, but I think because you write in runes, that wasn’t a part of her offering to you. My guess is she does this to protect you. Otherwise, you’d stop and write those messages while people watched.”

The piece of chicken I’d eaten lodged in my throat. I coughed, swallowed. “One of my sisters gets visions.” And...if the fire nightmares weren’t really nightmares...

“My grandmother told me that there would be triplets with gifts from Whirlwind Woman and that they would come to Henihco’oo’. That’s our name for Yellowstone.” She looked down at her plate and frowned before setting it on the ground next to her. “Our people once kept Yellowstone a secret. They believed that men would come and form a league with the devils there, and those devils would come to destroy people entirely. Wipe us off the face of the earth.”

I couldn’t eat anymore, either. I stared at the food on my plate, at my hand as it opened and shut next to my plate. Everything narrowed around me until all I could see was the plate and my hand and even then, those things didn’t seem real. It was as if part of my mind just shut down over the enormity of what I was trying to process. “It was always meant to be here. The final battle.” I whispered the last part.

She nodded, and her eyes grew shiny with tears.

“How did you meet Brigg?” I blinked back my own tears.

“Need a subject change?” She gave me a wobbly smile and picked up a napkin to wipe her eyes.

I nodded. “Don’t you? Gods, this whole thing is blowing my mind. All these years, my sisters and I thought the norns were the only things shaking us up, and it turns out we should have done more research on this side of the family. Or maybe we should have run away years ago and tried to find more family.” I tightened my hand into a fist. “We wouldn’t have been so alone and so, so...ignorant.”

She was quiet. I didn’t blame her.

Loosening my fingers, I took a deep breath and changed the subject before my anger and resentment turned the food in my stomach into a hard lump. “So tell me about your boyfriend. He is your boyfriend, right?”

“Oh yes. That gorgeous boy walked right up to me at school almost a year ago and told me we were destined. How is a girl supposed to resist that?”

“So you’ve been together since?”

“Nah,” she scoffed, then laughed. “I resisted for a couple of months. He needed to be brought down a notch or two.” She leaned close. “Actually, I needed that. He was nothing but sweet. I’d just always gone for a different type.”

“What type was that?”

She grimaced. “A lot taller. And not so sweet.”

This time I snorted and she cracked up.

A shadow fell over me, and I looked up to see that Brigg and Arun had joined us. Brigg plopped down next to Nanna, and she leaned over to kiss him. He grinned at her before he tackled his food. It looked like he’d piled one of everything offered onto his plate.

Arun sat close to me. I slid part of the sleeping bag over his legs before he lowered his plate on top of it. He stared at me, reached out to cup my cheek and swipe his thumb over a tear that must have escaped. “Okay?” he whispered.

I nodded, too choked up to speak. In one day, I’d learned so much about my life and my fate; I was completely overwhelmed. Suddenly, this boy, this
future warrior
who could end up being responsible for my death, seemed like the safest, most steady thing in the world.

He started to eat, and I leaned my head on his shoulder and just soaked in that safe feeling as long as I could.

* * *

Voices woke me, and I blinked into surprisingly bright light. I’d actually slept.
Surprise.
Surprise.
When I’d crawled into the sleeping bag on the greenhouse floor, I’d expected to be up all night. I had lain there a long time, shivering, trying to ignore the weird mix of smells—potting soil, lavender—which I loathed beyond all reason because of Dru—and some sort of rubbery scent coming off at least one of the sleeping bags. I think that one was making my nose itchy. Also, someone badly needed a shower. Everyone else had fallen asleep, so I had to assume my Florida bones weren’t adapting, as well. It was too damned cold to sleep. Plus, I was starting to cough a little. My lungs felt sort of fluttery and a little heavy, so I was probably allergic to something in here. I looked at my hands, glad to see the faint rash from the cucumbers yesterday was gone.

But then, I’d stayed awake mostly out of fear, though the word didn’t come close to describing the tangled mix of emotions tearing me up. My neck ached and the things I’d learned from Nanna had my mind spinning.
Spinning.
After what I’d learned about the Whirlwind Woman, that word fit. Snorting, I rolled onto my side and flinched when my ribs met hard cement.

We’d all carried plants from one greenhouse into the others and turned this one into what Alva called the sleep zone. It was a step up from the front of my Jeep, but I still didn’t fall asleep easily.

Arun had set up watches and had actually taken the first one because we’d napped in the tent earlier, so I had no idea where he was.

But it wasn’t just the fear of the creatures attacking us while we slept that had kept me awake; it was the way that elf had looked at me. I’d been afraid I’d see his face the moment I closed my eyes. Arun had been right. The thing had acted like he recognized me and it hadn’t been my imagination. He’d planned to kill me, but there had been regret in those weird features of his. But as usual, I hadn’t dreamed of anything other than fire. This time, I could see more of my surroundings. Tied to the tree—well, tangled in rope among trees this time—and in a tank top as usual. It was as though I’d been outside myself, like I was someone else watching the events happening.

One massive gnarly-branched tree in the center of a snowy clearing. I could see me, passed out, tied under a long limb that stretched out over the ground.

The scariest part had been the fire.