Master of Miasma (The Valhalla Series) (22 page)

Mac swallows hard, leaning back on rigid arms locked at the elbow, “He was lighting the way home for his little girl. He couldn't find her or her mother and wanted to make sure she was never lost in the dark without knowing he loved her. He was trying in his own ineffectual way to relume your way back to him, but it was futile.”

The thrum of his voice is so grave my eyes are filling with puddles.

“
He loved you Em, so much. He was a broken man without you.” Flicking back the top layer of the package he exposes three small shining stones.

They are the size of my fingernails they're such little fragments, glowing brightly against the dark brown parchment, little scatterings of captured love blazing my unshed tears into distorting smears.

He scoops them up, takes hold of my hand, and deposits them on my palm, “Always keep these with you. They shine because your father still loves you.”

“
Where is he?” I gulp, sniffing, taking the tiny treasures and holding them tight to my heart. I'm about to lose it, badly. In a simple gesture he fractured my heart into fissures.

“
Asgard most likely.”

I am too choked to speak so tilt my head and frown the question.

Exhaling heavily Mac hunches close, grasping both my knees in a pep talk huddle, “The thundereggs, they're toxic if we consume too many. That's how he died. But a
jötunn cannot truly die, our soul hibernates, we're taken home in the harvest of the Wild Hunt. He's safe, and he's still holding you in his heart.”

My chest is an instant abyss, the pain and sorrow so immediate I'm sobbing. “D..ead?”

He hugs me, caressing tenderness up and down my back, waiting out my deluge.

But I never got to know dad!

I hardly remember my father and thought... I thought being Raven meant I'd be back with my family. This isn't fair!

Withered hope snuffs to despair and I pry my eyes open, lashes thick with tears, to gaze longingly into the pebbles of love, looking for him inside them.

The hollow cavity inside me has ruptured so wide I'm lost in the void. I can't feel anything but grief. Broken, I wrack against his chest, my nose clogging, my eyes immediately scratchy and swollen. Why?
Why?

Soothing me with baby kisses, wiping my eyes repeatedly with the cuff of his thick black henley, he rocks me with hushes until the pain ebbs to distraught. All my childhood sadness is exhumed, the emotion as real now as it was when I knew daddy wasn't coming back to rescue me. This feels exactly the same. Mourning without closure. Without getting to say goodbye.

Emotional pain is so vivid my chest aches with angina.

Pulling back he regards me with seriousness.

“He loves you, elskling. He missed you more than he could contain. It destroyed him. His heart was broken and no one could console him.” Gruff, he looks up at the thick mud ceiling, his throat working when he mutters, “I would be the same without you.”

Meeting my stare his eyes shine too bright, “He planted the seed of curiosity in me. I knew you had to be amazing for your father to love you so much. I made up my mind when I was about five, to find you. Initially I wanted to find you for him, but after he passed the only way we can outside of the Wild Hunt, I couldn't let the ambition go. And when I did locate you I could see why he adored you. You're such a magnificent angel.” He says it with such heartfelt tenderness, tracing drowsy love doodles on my jawbone, that I lean in and close my eyes, savoring the healing of his warm touch.

Hiccuping out a despairing laugh I squeeze his hand,  gripping three child sized love crystals in my left fist.

Looking back at the parcel to smother the bleak emotion from our interaction, he flicks the other flap open, lifting out a necklace of arrowheads, putting it on me, scooping my hair away from it when it sits on my shoulders and depresses my collarbones. It's heavy, very.

“This was his, and instead of fashioning a new one for you I thought you might like to keep his key to home close, warming your skin and reminding you that you're cherished.”

Fingering the little arrowheads dulled by age, I examine it. It's long, scooping the chain together to hide in my cleavage. They remind me of shark's teeth and it feels tribal to have my own.

It works because I suddenly don't feel so alone, like I have an invisible legion of kin lined up behind me ready to defend or snatch me out of harm's grasp.

Out of the folds he unearths two shot glasses and a beautiful vial of ornate crystal filled with resin hued fluid. It looks like honey. Uncorking the ampule he pours a measure for each of us, folding my numb fingers around the little glass that looks ridiculous in his hand. Clinking his to mine, he says, “To Lars, long may he light your way through the constellations.”

He downs the beverage and I copy him.

Alcohol tickles flavors across my tongue, blasting citrus and raspberry vapors up the back of my nose.

“It was your father's favorite. You can still get it in Quebec.”

“
What is it?” I ask.

“
Lakkalikööri. It's cloudberry liqueur that we colloquially call highland gold.
Viddas gull
. In legend it ranks as the first berry ever picked, in Sweden they call it
hjorttron
in honor of the accolade of it being the original berry.”

“
It's nice,” I nod, the smell on his breath casting me back through the cornucopia of time to a buried memory. He smelled of it. I recall this being a scent associated with dad. Melancholy embalms me.

Wrapping it up again he hands me the leather parcel, “Keep it, it's yours.”

Closing my hands over his while the liquid fire thaws my heart, I meet his stare across the dark pocket of intimacy, “Thank you, Mac. For everything.”

He puts a hand in his pocket, wriggling awkwardly to free something from its recesses, withdrawing his hand in a closed fist, holding it out to me in silent offer.

It's automatic to open my palm up to receive the next surprise. A small love crystal the same shade as the liqueur drops onto my hand, shining golden rays over the lines of my palm, “And one from me. It's a harii guidelight, and I love you and never want you to forget it. It's my duty to guide you when you're lost. It's the gift we call ljótr. It means
to give light
. It's the most authentic of Raven gifts, just as our forefather released the sun to give light to the whole world, we consider this a ceremony beyond duty, it's the ultimate expression of love. We may be shadows, but we shadows are nothing without the light within.”

The chemistry between our hands flares the crystal and I snatch my fascinated gaze to his, loving his eyes so vivid. He put the contacts back in when he went to the wardrobes and his eyes look like twin solar eclipses, lit from behind, helios rings encircling nightshade.

Glancing back at the crystal I note he's chosen one in a heart shape. Romantic sap.

“
I love you too,” I mumble through a strangled throat, wishing I had something to gift in return. This whole thing feels like a holy ceremony. A prelude to something profound.

Shifting, he pulls a long slender box out of his back pocket, “And I thought it prudent to get you your own. These are yours, we'll get more as and when we need them.”

Inquisitive I snap the lid up, surveying a box of dark gray contact lenses stacked like saucers. He's so thoughtful. Is there nothing he hasn't already anticipated? He's given me everything I've yearned for and more. He knew dad better than I ever did. He has memories, real ones.

Standing, disconcerted by the square dancing emotions in here, I turn to the table, placing my treasures down and leaning against the wall to resurrect composure.

*

Macala:

Watching her vulnerability taps directly into my soul, compelling me to complete the bond. She wasn't ready before, but she is now. Now she's grown into her gene pool, her body strong and invincible, and I
need
to melt the sorrow off her face.

Shadowing her to the table the power surges from the clan leader mark on my heart, on my hand.

Visually tracing the necklace nestled between the blossomed breasts my balls tighten, and I look into her eyes. Taking her left hand I softly trace the valhalla triangle, my own heart-rate increasing exponentially, totally screwing up my shallow measured breathing.

Chapter 24

Emma:

There's something voodoo in this semi dark, the atmosphere thick with history flirting with fate. The future is occluding my ability to think because he's standing so damn close, I can feel his heartbeat tapping against the tympanic membrane of my ear the way a soul knocks on purgatory's door.

Intent is forged in his features, in the expression in his eyes, it's enough to squeeze my heart like a stress ball.

“
Emma,” he purrs, using the voice which trepan's my ability to think and stirs my hormones into a hazy fog, obscuring everything but my primal response to the suggestion of the raven dance.

Pressure is wrapping plastic around my face and I fucking can't breathe, my ability to is amputated when he slides a long finger down my arm, running a furnace of languid heat all the way down, capturing my hand and lifting it above my head, leaning in to pin me against the wall when he licks the valhalla triangle on my palm.

It obliterates the grief, replacing it with a blizzard of conflicting desires. All worries flee as our chemistry ignites. Closing my eyes while my chest jiggles into his torso with every serrated gasp, shaky, broken, desperate, the scrape of stubble against my cheek pops a bullet into each kneecap, my legs give, the inferno spreading a plague of desire from my hips to my feet. It's clearly a flesh eating virus because I'm no longer able to make my body do a damn thing.

Dizzy and weak, I press in with the arch of my back to accommodate the tilt of my head to meet the invasive tongue, sucking it into my mouth and wrapping my lips around the moist heat licking across my taste-buds.

He keeps stroking his thumb in delicate sweeps across the sigil branded into my palm and it's rupturing my soul from my body, it's slicing me into ribbons, I'm coming apart, misting passion while my skin slicks with need.

Emma...

“Hmmm?” I moan into his mouth, sliding the tip of my tongue across warm lips, sweeter than dew on a feather.

My head is disjointed, heavy, the world is tilting, spiraling across the cosmos, sending me into the drunken swoon of vertigo when he sucks on my earlobe, his hips still impaling me to the wall, impeding me as surely as a tranquilizer dart, his free hand up under my shirt, kneading my breast with the finesse of a rune shaman, reading fingers over secrets and electrifying me into blasts of ecstasy which leak readiness into saturating the air with neon-loud pheromones.

It's fuck me and fuck me hard aching through my loins, the carnal captivity almost cruel now that he's sucked each of my five fingers and licked his own palm before suctioning it over mine.

Open your eyes...

It's an effort, like I'm heavily sedated on Asgard carnal-cocaine, but I unstick my eyelids to stare seduction into his.

Pressing his forehead against mine, aligning our left eyes, I'm ravaged, stolen, plundered...

All the shadows in the world cocoon around us, a bomb blanket to protect the planet from the annihilation happening in the dream of sensual ecstasy.

He's holding me, one arm sticking rifle fingers in the base of my back, his other hand cupping my head and jamming it rigidly against his, I can't tell what's up and what's down but manage to figure out he's on top when the hard floor replaces his hand and his palm seals over mine again in the soul tapping delirium it induces.

The hand in my back is gone, my cargo pants loosening while that bright eye sends shooting rapture into mine, the helix an endless warp of reality when I see his past, his hell, his heaven, his muse, his pain, his destiny, nothing is omitted. I feel like this is how the matrix started, plugging in, seeing the big picture in an instant download when a shadow became solid, became a raven, became a god, became a lover, became a friend, became my heartbeat, became ambrosia, became a high, became....

The nebulae becomes blinding, the colors of his mandala eye scrolling across the plateaus and pinnacles of his soul, purging his vulnerabilities into my spirit, burning his essence into mine, sticking them together wherever they touch, the explosion lava red, magma hot, orgasmically divine, my body shaking, the seizures a crescendo of worship, awe, euphoria, the pleasure obliterating until all we are is a long undulating wave of emotion.

He's licking my pain, fondling my pleasures, tilling my secrets, planting promises, kissing tears, hugging me inside where my soul hurts, caressing the bruises and heartaches, exchanging them for pockets of shining safety, security, vows, oaths, leaving himself in those places that are hollow and broken, filling the fissures with the mortar of luminescent synapses of a spirit which shines brighter in the glass lamp of love, until the glass grows so hot it fractures, blasts outward. The hurricane of the harii charging in to rescue, resurrect, returning the goddess to her rightful place with the tender attention to detail of a god, the master of miasma weaves, takes and gives, teasing laughter, tears, purging agony, raping my soul of the rubble, cleaning my house and filling me with himself.