Page 196 of Veil of Blood and Bone

Helene is no longer screaming or burning. The silence gets me and I turn to look, turn to see that she’s okay. That she isn’t too worried.

Isvargr reacts and knocks his knee into my torso, driving me backward and the air out of my lungs.

By the time I blink away the pain, by the time I come to, Isvargr stands over me with a claw pointed to my breastbone in challenge.

Odin wants the girl.

My blood sings. “Odin can suck my dick.”

Isvargr growls and lunges with a snap. He lands on all fours, ice glittering along the sharp points of his spinal column.

His limbs elongate and shift, the axe absorbed into his new form. When he lifts his head, the wolf glares at us. Eyes as bright as coals and glittering like chunks of permafrost land on me.

But no Nicholas?

Something hard punches my kidneys from behind. My center of gravity changes. I throw up a shield of shadows before Isvargr takes a big bite where my head should have been. Darkness eats away the snow at my back.

I sink into a pool of it, disappearing. Solidifying across the clearing.

“You’re being too cautious,” I yell at Nicholas. Nursing his third degree burns like a human.

“And you’re being rash,” he tosses back.

“At least I’m getting things done. At least I’m making a move.”

He waves my insistence aside. “Rash and hardheaded.”

“The clarification doesn’t help. You’re going to get us all killed unless you actually fucking help me.”

He’s holding back. I glimpsed the beast when Helene bled. Where’s the bloodthirsty vampire now?

“I can’t be the cause of her death again.” He leans in close. “I can’t do it.”

Even though he knows he will be. Even though he knows he is. Every. Single. Time. Without exception.

The weight of each failure threatens to crash down on my head, and I’m not here for it.

“Fine, then,” I whisper, breath gusting in the air near my face. “No one likes a sulking vampire.”

Judging by the way he stiffens, he’s heard me.

Helene’s lighter clicks but the poor babe is finished. The stale reek of spent fuel fills the air.

Odin wants the girl. Isvargr swipes through the two remaining shadow puppets. I will not fail.

Forest gives a yell of warning before the jötun strikes again.

Nicholas steps up to block me at the last moment, the entire front of his shirt and pants destroyed from the burns. Fabric tears free, his skin mottled underneath. Without thinking, I reach my shadows around him, driving them into a point and using Isvargr’s momentum against him.

Together, Nicholas and I punch through his chest, his runes flaring. Ice cracks when the creature goes tense.

“Nighty night,” I whisper.

Isvargr pulls himself from the restraint, but my shadows spread, crowned with frost, notching in place.

Icy flesh cracks further under the collision, and I cringe at the stench of burning flesh.

An attempt to pull free only sends our combined hit deeper.