Struck: (Phoebe Meadows Book 1) (9 page)

“Y
es, I said wolf. My father is the god Loki, and my mother the giantess Angrboda. I am considered a demigod to some, a monster to others, but my true form is a wolf.” He carried me easily, shifting me in his arms as the path became narrower. “My siblings are very different than I, even though we share the same sires. We’ve each arrived in these worlds for different purposes and must accept what has been bestowed upon us. None can fight their destiny.” I heard a hint of a growl. “But I can fight my circumstance, which is what I am forced to do here daily.”

“How can you understand me so easily?” I asked. “English can’t possibly be your first language.” Why that was the most important thing to lead with was beyond me, but I had to start somewhere. “You’re from an entirely different realm of reality than me. We shouldn’t be able to communicate at all.”

“Gods—even demigods—are born knowing all Midgard languages. Without that knowledge, we would be severely weakened.”

“Midgard?”

“The human realm, Valkyrie.” He glanced at me like I was an idiot. “It was apparent where you hailed from when I heard you speak the first time. If you had spoken another language, I would have responded in kind.”

“Why do you keep calling me ‘Valkyrie’?” I asked as we emerged into a smaller cave. He came to a stop in front of a dark pool of water. The light in this cave was equally as dim as the other, fueled, as far as I could see, by a small fire pit situated on a higher plateau than where we stood. The ceiling here was taller than the bigger cavern we’d been in, but this room was skinnier, with rock closing in steeply on both sides. “I’m not a Valkyrie.” I glanced down at the water, waiting for Fenrir to answer me.

It looked deathly black in the low light, steam rising in wispy tendrils. For steam to be rising in this heat zone, it had to be burning hot in there.

He set me down on a small boulder beside the pool. My leg banged the rock, and I cried out, gritting my teeth. I shifted my weight, and I could feel the blood begin to flow in earnest from the cut Fen had made on my thigh. My skirt was pulled down, so I couldn’t see the damage. I pressed my hand through the cloth to try to staunch the bleeding.

There wasn’t much else I could do.

Fen backed up a few paces and peered down at me strangely. “I call you Valkyrie because that’s what you are.”

“I’m
human
,” I responded firmly. “I was born in Midgard, as you refer to it. I’m not a Valkyrie. I don’t even know what that is. I promise you, there’s nothing special about me. If I was something else, I would know it.”

Fen took a seat opposite me. “That may be very true, since you are innocent on many levels, but I’ve never seen a human being
glow
before. My contact with your kind is lacking, as it’s been many centuries since I’ve ventured to Midgard, but to my knowledge, mankind’s ability to kindle magic is all but gone. It died out thousands of years ago, when our kind stepped back. We were ordered to never interfere with humans again. For the most part, we’ve upheld our end of the bargain, but only someone fueled by Asgard blood could have burned as brightly as you did when I first saw you.”

“I was glowing because of the tree,” I grumbled defensively, rubbing my arms. “When I stood next to it, it infused its stuff into me. I’m not glowing now, see?” I held up a hand.

He nodded. “Indeed, you are not. But trust me, I’ve come across many shieldmaidens in my lifetime, most of them hunting me, but none has ever shone as brilliantly as you did when you emerged from that portal. Your essence was blinding. Yet you seem to know nothing of your kind.” He shook his head. “It’s a mystery.”

“It’s no mystery. It was just the tree.” I winced as I tried to reposition myself on the unforgiving hard surface. “It’s obviously magical, or I wouldn’t have been able to ride around in it like a magical dryer. It gave me its juice, and now it’s gone, so no more glow.”

Fen tipped his head back and laughed. The sound was a nice break from his hard edge. “Its juice, as you refer to it, is your
sustenance
now. You light up because your body drinks its energy for fuel. Valkyries cannot live far from Yggdrasil. They can find energy in other places, of course, but long bouts without drinking from the tree will lessen them, threatening their very existence. Your glow, as well as your smell, marks you unmistakably as a Valkyrie.”

Could that be right?

My brain wasn’t comprehending this conversation right now. Too much had happened, and I needed time to recover before I could figure everything out. Things were changing too quickly. “Once I take a shower, I’m sure I’ll smell human again.”

Fen chuckled as he stood up. “It seems you have a lot to learn. Why they sent an innocent into my den is still unclear, but you will do well to consider yourself lucky to be alive. It was within my rights to leave you to suffer in agony with ettin poison running through your veins. I do not take kindly to violations of my lair.”

“I didn’t violate anything,” I huffed, hugging myself. “Honestly, I just want to go home.” My eyes landed below. My blood had fully coated the rock and was dripping slowly onto the dirt floor. My head spun, my brain feeling light and funny. “Fen, I’m going to—”

I slid off the rock, and everything went black.

* * *

I coughed, spitting putrid water out of my mouth. “
Gah
!” I gagged. “Why…
why
am I in the water?” I shook my head to clear the liquid out of my eyes, only to have more flow over my head.

Calling this water was a stretch. It was more like sewage.

“I have no bandages, and these waters are healing. It’s all this wretched place has to offer, so that’s why I took them over for myself.” Fen stood chest-deep in the small pool we’d been sitting next to, his arms supporting me, holding me afloat.

My jacket, blouse, tights, and one lone boot were gone, and I was pressed up against his chest in only my skirt, panties, bra, and the white camisole I’d worn under my work shirt. At least he’d left some of my clothes on.

“What do you mean ‘taken them over for yourself’?” I brought my hand up and wiped the smelly liquid off my face. “This water is gross.” I spit out more. “It’s burning my throat.” But as I moved my toes, testing my ankle and my leg, they actually felt good. It must be working. It wasn’t nearly as warm as I’d thought it would be either.

It was hot, but not melt-your-skin-off hot.

“These caverns are the most valued in all of Muspelheim, as they contain ninety-five percent of the water found in this realm. But these pools, in this particular cave, are the only waters that contain
solay
, a sacred healing element, so they are revered.”

“
Solay
smells like fishy-mud mixed with rotten eggs topped with stinky garbage.” Vapors from the steam burned my eyes. The water was like a seltzer bath giving off a putrid effervescence.

“Yes, the smell is very potent. The healing elements are a combination of crystal salt and other compounds found only in these caves. One long soak can heal serious injuries. The salt finds its way into the body and fuses to your internal cells, mending you. Your neck wound is already healed.”

I brought my hand up to where Verdandi had slashed me with her nails. He was right. The skin was perfectly smooth. “And they—the people here—just allow you to live here in their sacred place?”

“No, they don’t allow me anything.” He chuckled, causing my body to shake and the pool to ripple. I lifted my head up a bit so the water didn’t splash in my face. “When I was banished here, it didn’t take me long to find these caves. I needed water to survive.” He shrugged. “So I commandeered them.”

“Huh,” I replied. “So I take it they’re not too happy about that.”

“No.” He laughed. It was a rich, dark sound. It was the first time he sounded completely relaxed. “They are not. They attack quite often, in fact.”

“How many?”

“Fifty to sixty.”

I’d just lowered my head, and I jerked it up. “Did you say fifty? As in five-oh?” I immediately envisioned a legion of ettinlike creatures swarming into the tunnels. My arms snaked around Fen’s shoulders without my permission. “Can they get in here right now? And by the way, what are
they
exactly?”

“They are called fire demons, and they aren’t very big or strong, but they are tenacious.” He walked me over to a set of crude steps and set me down. The rocks were smooth and slippery. As my legs took my weight for the first time, I realized the pain was nearly all gone.

“There is only one way in, Valkyrie,” he answered. “If they trigger the alarms, I will know.”

“Then what?” I stood, making my way along the edge of the pool, testing my leg while trying to get a feel for the small cave. It was too dark to see anything very well.

“Then I fight.”

I turned to this man—no, not a man, a
demigod
—and watched as he dipped beneath the surface and came up again, his hair slicked back, water rushing in torrents off his broad shoulders, trailing down his massive chest, his tattoos barely visible in the murky water.

He was a predator, there was no doubt.

A very powerful one.

But I didn’t feel scared of him. If I was smart, I should’ve been. But so far everything else I’d encountered in this strange place had been horrid and hateful. Fen didn’t give off that vibe. He wasn’t a direct threat.

I wasn’t so sure how he’d be when I stole my dagger back. Maybe I’d change my tune. But for now, I had to play nice with the big, bad wolf. That was the totality of my genius plan. “Do you always win when you fight?” I asked curiously.

“Yes.”

“Well…that’s good, I guess.” It was a big, fat relief, is what that was.

He eased over to where I rested with my back against the edge of the pool. I’d found a large rock underneath the surface, and sat half perched in the water.

“Valkyrie”—he brought his huge biceps out of the water and crossed his arms—“you still confuse me. You came here unarmed, you wear no armor, you ask me if I fight well, you are unaware that an ettin bite will not kill you, and you know nothing of this realm. I know not what to think. Your kind fear me, they hunt me. Yet you do not provoke me. Please explain.”

“It’s easy,” I replied. “It’s because I don’t have a kind or an agenda. I’m not here to kill you or to hunt you. I landed here by mistake, pure and simple. I’d never even heard of you, an ettin, a Norn, or any of this, before a few hours ago.” Geez, it felt like a lifetime already. Had it really been only a few hours? “This is not where I want to be. I just want to go home.”

“I cannot help you get back to Midgard.” His voice held a note of sadness.

“Yes, you can. You have my dagger,” I helpfully pointed out. “Just give it to me, and I can stick it into the rock and go home.”

“You misunderstand.” He shook his head. “The dagger works in Yggdrasil, yes, but you crossed a boundary when you came here. This cavern is not directly tied to the sacred tree. The portal you emerged through is what we call a cillar. It’s an offshoot portal, not a true link to Yggdrasil.”

“I didn’t come out of the tree? It’s not behind the wall?”

“No, it’s not near here. The tree has many facets. Everything in our world is intrinsically connected to it. It’s our most sacred thing. It keeps us rooted together across all worlds. But, not everything touches it directly. That would be impossible to manage, even for gods. The tree itself has capabilities to reach out to things not directly in its path when it decrees it so, but it doesn’t work the other way around. You cannot create energy and space, even with the dagger.”

“So you mean I came through a tree-made wormhole?”

He frowned. “I’m not familiar with that reference.”

“Like a secret tunnel or a trapdoor.”

He nodded. “In a sense, yes. But what is still unexplained is how you arrived
here
, in this exact cave. You are not supposed to be able to access this place. No one is. It’s an impossible ‘wormhole’. The gods destroyed the path of energy through that portal to the tree years ago. Even the tree should have found a different route.”

“Why did they destroy it?”

He shrugged. “Because I escaped by it once already.”

I got excited, sitting up straighter. “Maybe my landing here opened it back up again!” I rose out of the water. “Let’s go check. If you know how to access the portal already, maybe I can open it with the dagger, and we can both escape!”

Fen’s face took on a strange look, like he was thinking I’d lost my mind, and something else I couldn’t decipher. Finally, he shook his head. “I’ve already tried, Valkyrie. It was the first thing I did once you landed. I held my hand to it, and the path was cold before you even stopped rolling. No energy, no life. It seems a great impossibility that you were able to come through at all.” He looked at me quizzically. “If I hadn’t witnessed it myself, I would think such a thing unfeasible.”

Of course he would’ve checked it first. He didn’t owe me anything! I sat back down with a thump, the stinky water splashing all over. I swiped it off my face with my hand, more than a little disheartened.

If Fen could’ve, he would’ve popped out through the portal and left me there to suffer in ettin-poison agony with no means to defend myself, to eventually be eaten by whatever creatures lived here. Especially since they wanted their prized caverns back yesterday. “Are the fire demons people like us?” I asked hopefully.