Transcendent (23 page)

Mason stared at Heather and waited. These kinds of conversations were becoming disconcertingly commonplace between the two girls. Heather told her briefly of her encounter with the young man who'd called himself Valen on the train back into Manhattan on the night Mason had gone somewhere over the rainbow, as it were.

“Wow. I mean, I guess it makes sense in a weird way.” Mason shrugged when she was done with her tale. “I know most of them faded away, but some gods—like Rafe—never left this world.”

“Yeah?” Heather looked at her sideways. “Maybe I'm just
getting cynical, but it seems funny to think that Cupid was one of those.”

“Ha!” Mason laughed. “Yeah. How does that old song go? ‘What the world needs now is love, sweet love . . .'”

“And there he was, all the time. Wearing sunglasses and a leather jacket, riding the subway late at night.” She shook her head, remembering. “He was
so
hot.”

“Would've been a little disappointing if he wasn't,” Mason said. “What do you think he meant when he said he'd been trying to find you?”

“I don't know. I don't
want
to know.” Heather put up a hand, forestalling further discussion of the matter. “And anyway, it'll have to wait until after the world ends now, I guess. Or, y'know, doesn't.” She closed her purse back up and patted it, as if to make sure that the little weapon hadn't vanished.

“Cupid's arrows.” Mason shook her head in wonderment. “I think you'd better be really careful with that.”

“That's what Gwen said.”

Mason shivered at the sound of her name. “I can't believe she—”

“Yeah.” Heather held up her hand again. “Let's not talk about that either just right now. Okay?”

“Okay.” Suddenly, Mason folded her into a fierce hug. “Thank you for being my friend, Heather.”

“Yeah, yeah. Don't get all sentimental on me, Starling.” Heather rolled her eyes, but there was a distinct lack of snark to her tone. She paused awkwardly, as if searching for something un-mushy to say in return. But then her expression
altered and she said, “Hey, do you have a phone?”

“Uh . . .” Mason fished the one she'd taken off Rory's desk out of her back pocket and held it up. “Yeah. No idea where mine is, but I took Rory's from his room. I don't know why, though; it won't do me much good.” She hit the home button and the four-digit password screen popped up. “It's locked.”

“Huh,” Heather said, frowning, as she plucked the thing from Mason's hand. “Let's see . . . he's not smart enough to be subtle . . .” She stuck her tongue out of the side of her mouth and tried a couple of combinations that she figured someone like Mason's brother, with his delusions of godhood, might use.

“F.A.T.E. . . .” Nothing. “O.D.I.N. . . . T.H.O.R. . . .” Still nothing. “L.O.K.I.?”

“Try ‘N.O.R.N.,'” Mason suggested.

“Nada.” Heather shook her head. “How about R.U.N.E. . . . dammit!”

The phone screen politely informed them that this next attempt would be their last and then the phone would lock permanently.

Mason put a hand out and said, “Wait. We're going about this all wrong. It's
Rory
, for crying out loud. What's the most important thing in his world?”

Heather waited, peering over Mason's shoulder as she carefully tapped in the letters R . . . O . . . R . . . Y . . . and the home screen sprang to life.

“Wow.” Heather blinked. “It really
is
all about him, isn't it?”

“As far as he's concerned, yeah.” Mason snorted. “I should have known. That self-absorbed little weasel.”

“Here.” Heather took the phone back and programmed her number into it. “Now we can stay in touch. Just do me a favor: If it looks like we might lose and there's a chance he gets this back? Delete my digits. Late-night postapocalyptic drunk dialing from your creep-o brother, I do not need.”

Mason laughed.

“Go. I'll go down and stall Cal and the others for as long as I can so you guys can make a clean getaway. Keep me in the loop, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And try not to do anything insanely stupid.”

“I'll try,” Mason said. But she didn't bother promising, knowing that was one promise she was unlikely to keep.

L
oki was gone when Mason finally got back down to the
caverns. But Fennrys was sitting on the stone bench that Gwen had made into a bed, his eyes closed, and a smile curving the corners of his mouth. Mason silently crossed the floor and bent down to kiss him.

He kissed her back, slowly, deliciously, and said, “I can still smell sunshine and apple blossoms in your hair. Chalk up another win for the Safe Harbor technique.”

“Yup.” Mason grinned down at him. “Except the shirtless factor didn't translate.”

“And I'm not soaking wet.”

He opened his eyes and his gaze was placid. Tranquil. Maybe just a
little
on the smoldering-with-desire side. And Mason felt her heartbeat quicken in response. Suddenly it felt very warm in the cavern.

“Did you find Toby?” she asked.

“I did.” Fenn nodded. “Went topside after the dream-vision faded and found him wrangling a stray student down to the dining hall. Said he'll meet us here when he can get away unnoticed. So . . . what's this idea of yours?” He pulled her forward so that she had to put one knee up beside him on the bench to brace herself or risk falling on top of him.

“We're going for a little ride,” Mason said and then felt her cheeks grow even hotter at the expression that crossed Fennrys's face. “On a
train
.”

His smile was languid. “Because that worked out so well last time,” he said.

“
Inside
the train,
not
on the roof, and heading in the
other
direction.” She tilted her head. “Although, weirdly, our
destination is Valhalla.”

“Seriously?”

“The one in Westchester,” she explained. “Picturesque little hamlet of just over three thousand people, none of whom know that Ragnarok is about to barrel over the horizon, and who hopefully never will.”

“Ye olde family homestead, huh?”

“It has to be.”

It really does
, she thought a bit desperately.
It's the only clue we have
.

“Well . . . it's a long shot and more likely than not, wishful thinking.” Fenn lifted a shoulder. “But it's the only shot we've got. And before she pushed me down a hill, my mother said something about traveling in style; a private train fits that bill. Only thing is, didn't your daddy leave that particular toy of his on the other side of a busted-up Hell Gate?”

“Yup. He did.” Mason nodded. “But . . . riddle me this: When is a train not a train?”

Fennrys rolled an eye at her. “Is this one of those Victorian brain teaser puzzles? 'Cause I've always sucked at those. Even when I
was
a Victorian.”

Mason blinked at Fennrys for a moment. It was easy to forget sometimes that he was several centuries older than she was. Good thing he didn't act his age, she thought. She grinned at him and ran a fingertip down the length of his nose.

“The answer,” she said, “is when I'm a freaking Valkyrie with awesome superpowers, and the engine of the train is an
eight-legged horse.
That's
when.”

“That makes even less sense than Lewis Carroll.” Fennrys grunted. Still, he didn't seem to mind. He moved his head so that he could kiss her. Mason found herself having a hard time remembering what it was she was supposed to be doing down there in that cavern with him.

Right. Save the Wolf. Save the world. Let's do that. First
.

She pushed herself back off the bench and took a deep breath.

“Focus.”

“Right.” He nodded, his blue gaze glittering dangerously. “Horse. Train.”

“Yes,” she said sternly.

“How?” he asked.

“I just remembered something I saw when I was on the train the first time,” she explained, “when it was crossing over the Hell Gate. I thought I was having a delusional episode, but now I'm not so sure. Now I think that what I saw was part of the whole Valkyrie thing. Kind of like with the carriage in Central Park. I think I can do this.”

Mason walked slowly over to the mouth of the tunnel and ran her hands over the intricate, knotted carvings that ran in a broad band around the opening. The designs were similar to the patterns on Fennrys's medallion and the carvings on the Odin spear, and she recognized them now, with a kind of bone-deep familiarity, for what they were. Ancient Norse knot work carved with charms and subtle symbols, imbued with a kind of magick all their own. There were curses and warnings
and spells woven into the pictograms, and Mason, with her Valkyrie eyes, deciphered them at a glance. One of them—the image of a fabulous beast, its seeming overabundance of limbs tangled around one another—told her of the uses of this particular tunnel. She knew what it was, what it housed, and where it went.

It was a lair, and it was a train tunnel. And, once summoned, its occupant would carry her away from the chaos of the city. It would take her home. She stepped inside and her hand dropped to rest lightly on the hilt of the glamoured spear she wore like a sword.

“Are you sure that's such a good idea?” Fennrys's voice suddenly murmured in her ear, startling her.

She hadn't heard him come up behind her, but now she could feel the heat emanating from him like sunlight streaming through a window, falling on her shoulders and back. She wanted to melt into the sensation.

“I mean,” he continued, “I thought you were supposed to keep your Valkyrie tucked away.”

“In battle, yeah,” she said. “We're not fighting anyone, are we?”

“Just ourselves . . .”

She turned to look at him and saw that his eyes were fixed upon her, fierce and blazing with cold blue light.

“This . . . is . . .”

“Not a good time?” He grinned. Wolfishly.

Mason heard herself laugh, a low, throaty sound. “Probably not.”

“I'll behave. Promise.” He put both hands up and backed off another few steps. “Do your voodoo. Whatever that may be.”

“Okay. Okay . . .” Mason's fingers twitched spasmodically and her hand dropped to the sword again. “Here goes nothing . . .”

She drew the weapon. Crimson light bloomed like a sunset in the tunnel and Mason felt the brush of raven wings on her face. The heavy swish of her chain-mail raiment settled to hang once more from her shoulders and she felt the solid weight of the helmet settle on her brow.

She raised the spear, and called, “Sleipner.”

When she was a kid, Mason would listen to the stories her father would tell of Odin's fabulous steed—the coal-black, eight-legged warhorse named Sleipner—and she would try and wrap her head around the mental picture of a horse with twice the normal horsey complement of limbs. She never could quite picture it, though. In her mind, the creature always wound up looking awkward and ungainly. A bit goofy, really.

The reality of it—and Sleipner, she'd discovered, was very much real—defied her feeble imaginative attempts. When it appeared, the horse—which resembled a regular horse in roughly the same way that a wolf resembles a Chihuahua—was utterly magnificent. For one thing, the beast was massive. Much larger than even a Clydesdale. Mason could have stood on tiptoe and reached as high as she could and her fingertips still would have been miles away from touching the thing's shoulder. It was basically the size of a train
locomotive—which was exactly the guise Mason had first seen Sleipner wear, when she'd first encountered him. When Rory had abducted her in her father's private train. Like the spear she carried, or the Valkyrie guise she wore, like her father's transformation into the All-Father god Odin, or her mother's assumption of the mantle of Hel, or Fennrys in all of his Fenris-ness, the mythical creature standing proudly before Mason, filling up most of the cavernous tunnel, was a manifestation of power. And it didn't look the least bit silly standing on eight legs.

Behind her, Mason heard Fennrys murmur, “Holy . . .”

She also heard the measured tread of combat boots coming closer in the tunnel.

“Toby's coming,” she said quietly without taking her eyes from the magnificent creature. “You can tell him our ride is here.”

“I can see that for myself, Mase,” Toby said, in a tone that came as close to awe as anything she'd ever heard from him.

Sleipner turned his massive head and snorted—a cloud of smoke and embers issuing forth from his flared nostrils, like dragon breath—and Mason saw herself reflected in the black globe of the creature's huge eye.

“Easy, boy,” she said. If Mason had just been Mason, she would have been terrified. But she was a Valkyrie and she had summoned the fabulous Odin steed. He would obey her command. “Easy . . .”

The monstrous horse dipped his head and allowed Mason to run her hand between his eyes and down his nose. The fine
black velvet of his hide shone in the dim light.

“I need you to take me and my friends to Valhalla,” Mason said. “The one in Westchester, I mean. Would you do that?”

He snorted again and pawed the tunnel floor once with a hoof half the size of a compact car, raising a massive cloud of red dust that filled the tunnel. When the dust cleared, the eight-legged horse was gone and an eight-wheeled locomotive idled on a set of silvery tracks, hooked up to the elegant carriage cars of Gunnar Starling's private train. First the carriage in Central Park, now this, Mason thought. Valkyries, it seemed, traveled in style.

I might not even ask for a car for my eighteenth birthday
, she thought wryly. And then she thought,
If I actually manage to live that long. . . .