Transcendent (35 page)

They really had won. Mason only wished that she hadn't had to lose so much. But the field of Valgrind began to slowly sink back into the sea. The draugr, back into the soil. And the Dragon Warriors, at a word from their summoner, Daria Aristarchos, marched back into the gap in the earth they'd crawled out of. It was over.

Almost.

From beneath the shadow of the Bronx Kill Bridge, Mason's father staggered forward. He looked so unlike his usual elegant self, she barely recognized him.

“Are you proud, both of you?” Gunnar turned a baleful, poisonous gaze on Mason and Roth. “Are you proud of your betrayal of me? Of our family?”

Roth shook his head in weary disgust. “The only betrayal here is yours,” he said. “It always has been. You knew. You've always known what I did. What Daria made me do. You
let
her, didn't you? How could you do that to Mason? To me?”

“Because I thought it might be useful one day to have you in her power,” Gunnar said. “And it was. You were . . . oh, son. We
almost
won!”

“You're a sick son of a bitch, Dad,” Roth spat and turned his gaze away.

Gunnar shook his head wildly, the mane of his silver hair hanging lank in front of his face. “No! I just know my place in the universe. My purpose. The Gosforth families all serve higher ends.” He grinned madly. “Just because ours didn't win this time doesn't mean it wasn't worth the fight.”

He stalked toward Roth, hands balled into fists, until Roth brought up the hunting knife he held to keep him at bay. Gunnar leaned into the point of the blade and nodded, his face going slack, serene.

“Now,” he said. “Make an end of this. Of me . . .”

Mason held her breath. Silence descended and time seemed to stand still. Then . . .

“No.” Roth shook his head. “You can go to hell, old man. But find your own way there. I've killed enough family members already.”

Mason felt her heart swell with pride for Roth, even as she watched her father's impassive expression twist with sudden, incandescent fury.

“Coward!” he screamed.

His eyes went wild and dark, the glittering gold thread in his left eye turned scarlet and his mouth opened wide as he hurled invective at his eldest son. Mason bit her lip to keep from weeping in the face of her father's insanity. And then, from the corner of her eye, she saw the dark, cloaked shape of her mother gliding silently across the field. For a moment, Gunnar didn't notice, too consumed by his rage. But then, he saw her. And it was as if someone reached down and pulled the stopper from a drain. All of the rage flowed out of him. The mad light dimmed in his eyes and a hint of the man that Mason had known and loved all her life flickered back into existence.

“Yelena . . . ?” Gunnar's deep voice was a bare whisper of sound.

He took a faltering step toward the vision of his beloved wife, as she pushed the hood back all the way from her face.

“I am Hel,” she said. “I am what you made me.”

“Take me.” Gunnar held out his hands. “Take me with you!”

Yelena shook her head sadly. And in that moment, everything changed about Gunnar Starling. The savage sense of purpose evaporated and a frantic desperate need seemed to overtake him. The need to die and be reunited with the love of his soul.

“What of you?” He lurched across the field toward where Fennrys still crouched on one knee, holding his side. “Isn't it your destiny to make an end of me?”

Mason saw Fenn's fingers clench on the hilt of the long knife strapped to his leg. She held her breath as he drew the weapon from its sheath. And then the whiteness left Fenn's knuckles and he threw the blade to the ground.

“Like Roth said.” He grinned coldly. “You want an end so bad? Make it your own damned self.” Then he climbed to his feet and turned his back, walking away from her father, his steps halting, but his head high.

“No. NO!” Gunnar cried, desperate. He even looked to Daria Aristarchos, his eyes pleading and desperate, and Mason thought how this was the tragic last act of the strangest love triangle ever playing out in front of her. Yelena, Daria, and Gunnar Starling. The two women exchanged a long glance, and smiles that were so full of sorrow. There was even forgiveness there—some, not all—for what Daria had done. She would spend the rest of her days making amends for those vile acts of vengeance. The rest of her life and beyond, Mason suspected, if the look in her mother's eyes was any indication. But there would be no help for Gunnar Starling.

No hand to speed him on his way to Helheim except his own . . .

“I will be with you again, my love,” he murmured. And then picked up Fennrys's blade and drove it up under his rib cage with barely a whispered gasp.

As the light began to fade from his eyes, Hel whispered, “No. You won't.”

And in a final act of cold retribution, Mason saw what it was that her mother truly had become. What her father had made her. She nodded once to Daria, who raised her face skyward and closed her eyes. Mere moments later, three shadows appeared in the sunless sky and the Harpies fell from high above to claim their suicide.

Mason turned away as the three goddesses descended on Gunnar Starling where he lay on the ground, Fennrys's sword in his guts by his own hand and his twisting, gold-filled gaze slowly fading to black.

When she turned back a moment later, he was gone.

“I think you dropped this . . . ,” Fennrys said, as he walked haltingly toward Mason, holding out the Odin spear.

“Yeah . . .” She was trying so hard to smile through the rivers of tears that poured from her eyes. “I'm kind of a butterfingers. Thanks . . .”

Her fingertips brushed his as she wrapped her hand around the spear haft. Their eyes locked and Mason felt like she was falling into a cool spring hidden deep in a forest somewhere far away from anywhere. Fennrys suddenly went rigid with pain. He was so pale. Mason put an arm around him and turned to Rafe, whose own wounds were already healing—no more than fresh, fading scars.

“The Wolf in him is gone, Mase. But the Wolf's strength left with it,” Rafe said. He put a hand on Fennrys's chest. “He's badly hurt. Broken bones, internal bleeding . . .”

“Perhaps I can help,” Daria said, sharing a glance with her son. “One of the greatest of our gods was Apollo. The Healer. There are those in my family who still practice those magicks. I will do what I can.
We
will do what we can.”

Rafe stepped back.

“Get him on the boat,” he said.

Cal stepped forward and, before Mason had a chance to protest, got a shoulder under Fennrys's arm and half carried him in the direction of his father's yacht. Heather stepped forward and offered Mason a steadying hand, but after a moment she shook her head and lurched away from the gathered group of her friends, the Odin spear clutched in her fist.

She broke the spear in two over her knee.

T
he late winter cold bit at Mason's cheeks and forehead and drew diamond-bright spangles of tears to her lashes as she walked the few blocks back to the Gosforth dorm from the Columbia University hall where the awards banquet had been held. The fencing trophy in her hand was heavy enough to be a weapon in itself and she smiled, proud of the achievement.

Prouder still that she'd done it on her own.

Her return to the world of competition fencing had been hard without Toby there to coach her—harder still without Fennrys there to . . . well, to just
be
there—but she'd been determined to do it. The gala that night had been mostly on the sweet end of bittersweet and she was getting used to the loneliness. She hitched the collar up on her long coat and let the sounds of the city wash over her as she walked. New York had mostly recovered from its brush with Ragnarok. Recovered, and replanted, and rebuilt. The city and its inhabitants had shaken off the weirdness and the horror and, even if no one could quite explain just exactly what had happened, they had soldiered on in the way that New Yorkers did.

Gosforth Academy had seen a quiet, thorough administrative restructuring, with Daria Aristarchos taking up the position as headmistress—guided by a great deal of student council input—and with Roth Starling as acting chair of the school board. Classes had resumed only a few weeks after the city had been declared safe again by the authorities. In the intervening days, Mason had spent most of her time practicing in the university gym, along with Cal and Heather.

The three of them didn't talk much—they didn't seem to need to—but Mason knew that Heather had sent her parents a letter telling them she wasn't ever coming home again and they could send her stuff to storage. She'd collect it after she graduated, maybe. Cal had offered her a room in his mom's house for when summer came around again, and Mason was glad to see them growing closer. The fact that Heather hadn't used the golden bolt on him when she could have seemed to have opened Cal's eyes, Mason thought, and might just have the same end result, if only it took a little longer.

She was happy for her friends. Happy for herself that night.

The melancholy that she wore like a cloak those days had lifted a little.

Still. When she got back to her room and placed the trophy on her shelf, she felt a twist in her heart. It had been more than six months and nothing. Not a word. She knew it was because wherever they'd taken Fennrys, it wasn't anywhere with cell phone service. But it was hard. Mason sighed and shrugged out of her coat, catching sight of her reflection in the closed, darkened window of her room. She looked like an elegant phantom, with her hair pulled back from her face and the shimmer of the evening gown she wore lending her an ethereal quality. She went to pull the curtains shut . . .

And something hit her windowpane.

Something small . . . like a pebble.

The breath stopped in Mason's throat. She was imagining things—

Tink
.

In an eye blink she had the window thrown wide. She stuck her head outside, gasping at the rush of cold, but she could see nothing. Everything was dark and still . . . and then he stepped out of the shadows under the trees and smiled up at her. That weird, wonderful smile.

And Fennrys said, “Are you ready for our date?”

Mason's mouth opened, but no sound came out.

Fennrys . . .

“I know you don't graduate until next year so it's not exactly prom, but that dress would still go awfully nice with this orchid.” He held out a little box wrapped with a ribbon.

“Are . . . you wearing a tux?” Mason managed to ask.

“Not good?”

“No! Good!” Her heart was going to burst with joy. “
Fantastic!
Don't move . . .”

She ducked back inside and ran out of her room, not bothering with her coat or purse. She just needed to make sure he didn't disappear. And he didn't. He was still waiting there when she ran out the door and into his arms.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he whispered into her hair. “I've missed you.”

She reached up and pulled his head down and kissed him.

And the whole world and all the months that had passed just . . . fell away.

Behind them, Mason heard the throaty purr of a car engine and turned to see the dark shape of a Bentley pull to the curb. It looked like the one her dad used to own and she held her breath for a moment. But then the driver's window slid down and Toby Fortier's grinning face appeared.

“Where to, kids?” he asked as Fennrys opened the door and Mason climbed into the backseat.

“How about a Safe Harbor,” Fennrys said with a laugh.

Toby raised an eyebrow in the rearview mirror. “Got an address for that?”

Fennrys looked down at Mason, nestled against him. “Take us to the High Line,” he said. “And don't spare the horses.”

Ah, Ragnarok . . .

Well, I guess, first and foremost, as this series comes to an end, I should acknowledge the fine and fabulous city of New York—a place I've been cheerfully trying to destroy since the early days of the Wondrous Strange books. Er, sorry about that, NYC . . . I really
do
love and treasure your streets and parks and buildings and bridges and, without you, these stories would have been impossible to write. Thanks for every bit of sparkling inspiration you gave me.

Thank you, once again, to Jessica Regel, my agent, who gleefully encouraged me in my quest to unleash mayhem and monsters on her city. And to Tara Hart, likewise enabler of mystical ka-booming. You two, and the fantastic staffs of JVNLA and Foundry Literary + Media, have a lot to answer for. Thankfully!

Thanks, also, to my editor, Karen Chaplin, and all of the industrious, creative (wrecking) crew at HarperCollins: editorial director Rosemary Brosnan; Maggie Herold and Alexei Esikoff, my production editors; and Cara Petrus and Heather Daugherty, my designers. Thanks, also, to Hadley Dyer and everyone at HarperCollins Canada for cheering on the literary destruction.

My mom and my wonderful family, as always, deserve all of the love, gratitude, and epic battles I can give them—and then some. So does my awesome collection of friends.

And I hope he never gets tired of reading this kind of thing, but I really do owe the biggest mythologically apocalyptic ka-boom of all to my partner in (occasionally fictional) crime, John.

As always, endless thank-yous to my wreckage-craving readers! You guys simply are the best.

Ragnarok-n-roll!