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Chapter Thirty
Erik
Torchlight flickers on the walls of the cave. As I sit on a small boulder in its center, I think back to that night, a little over a week ago, when Astrid took me to the cave near her house. The night I first saw her wings. This cave is not dissimilar to that one, but it’s a few hundred miles away. Far beneath the highest mountains in Norway, in a place as ancient as time itself.
A place built by the gods.
When the torches whoosh and burn out, all at once, I know I’m not alone.
It’s pitch black without the flames, and I can feel Darkness’s shadows crawling across the room, even though I can’t see them. They rush around me, tugging at my clothes, lifting my hair, hissing in my ears. I can feel the cold depths of the universe within them.
“Did you really think you could hide?” she asks in her voice that is somehow both a purr and a grinding of bones and ice.
The torches flare up again, and Darkness stands before me. Her copper eyes burn into mine, and she smiles.
“You’ve raided seven of my facilities in the last week,” she continues, stalking around me. “And that was after you took my brother from me and tried to kill me. There is nowhere in all of space and time that you can hide from me after what you’ve done.”
She completes her circle and stops in front of me, her long black dress spinning in an arc around her spiked-heel boots. I meet her burning gaze and smile.
“What on earth makes you think I’m hiding?”
Light flares up around us as a circle of runes carved into the floor begin to glow bright orange. A circle of runes that encircle me and Darkness both, about six feet across. She spins, her eyes narrowing. I get off the rock I was sitting on and step sideways out of the circle.
Darkness lunges for me, but the runes flare and she hits an invisible barrier.
“I wasn’t hiding,” I say, and now it’s my turn to walk in a circle around her. I make sure to stay on the outside of the runes. “I was waiting.”
“What is this?” she hisses, reaching out and raking her long nails down the barrier, along with a pulse of her power. Sparks fly out, ricocheting back onto her. “You cannot imprison me.”
“You’re right,” I say. “I wouldn’t have the magic to build a place like this. But the ancient Norse gods and goddesses? They certainly did.”
Darkness goes very still for a moment. But then she smiles. “Foolish boy. I have existed since long before your Norse myths and your Viking conquests. I am infinite. Where are they now, hmm? Gone. I outlived them, just as I outlast all the religions and civilizations of humankind. This is not the end for me.”
“The gods and goddesses are not gone, because their magic is not gone. You are experiencing proof of that.” I point to the ring of runes surrounding Darkness. “They created this place to hold their own. To capture beings of, as you say, infinite power. Beings who abused that power. Or probably just beings who pissed them off.” I shrug. “Maybe it won’t hold you forever. But I’m willing to bet it holds you for a very, very, very long time.”
I turn and point toward the entrance to the cave, about twenty paces away. Through the flickering torchlight, several figures step into view. Xander and several more of my fellow dragon shifters from the Order of Nobilis Draco stand there, arms folded across their chests.
I raise a hand and point to my dragons. “Our Order will guard this place, so that if that day comes, we will be ready for what comes next.”
“What comes next will be your death, Viking,” Darkness hisses.
“We will see.” I lock gazes with her. “I would certainly kill you if I could. But for now, eternal imprisonment will have to suffice.”
I turn then, and I walk away from Darkness for the last time.
“Come back here!” she shrieks. “I will end you! I will create such chaos as you could not imagine in your darkest dreams!”
Her screams ring out as I continue out of the cave. I nod to the dragon shifter taking the first watch, then I walk with the others until her voice fades in the distance.
I do not look back.
