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My mother cackled, her eyes wild and expression crazed. “Surprised? My goddess is powerful, Astrid.”
Her goddess? What the hell was this crazy bitch going on about?
“You could have had this too, had we not been told of your greater importance to ascend to death for the sake of our purpose. She would have welcomed you with open arms. But now, you are too tainted to see her grace, her vision, her glory.” She spoke with all the reverence of a cultist—and the practice of a cult leader. An unpleasant shiver ran down my spine.
Garmr came for me again, and I wasn’t having it. This was getting to be too much, and he was less of a threat than her now.
With a wave of my hand, red ribbons shot out and wrapped themselves around the wolf shifter. He snarled and struggled against his bindings, but they didn’t give.“What is this?”
“What, you don’t remember this magic from that celebration? I’ll remind you.” I pulled the ribbons tighter, and he yelped. “You’ve been honorably chosen to be bound by Gleipnir, as you should have been, instead of the false stories you twisted about Fenrir.”
I’d created this spell for fun in my drunkenness. It was silly, and not meant to be anything more. But now, it had a stronger purpose. It held strong as long as my will and concentration did. I was risking much with my magic stretched so thin, but I had to try. Even if just enough to give me the reprieve I needed.
Why haven’t the others gotten here?Aya should have been back by now. She should have been able to get them here in a snap.
A large presence loomed over me. I whirled around and stared up at the hulking bi-pedal bear towering over me.
But something wasn’t right. There was no life in his snarling face. His eyes were dull and milky. His body twitched and black tendrils leaked out of him in unnatural ways.
The Berserker roared and swiped an enormous paw at me.
Chapter Thirty-One
Tyr
We all staredat the broken mug of tea on the floor for a moment. She hadn’t just… Astrid hadn’t just teleported.
I snapped my attention to Diego. “What did you hear?”
He’d have heard every moment from the way he reacted. That dragon hearing of his put him at an advantage, but not enough to have stopped Astrid.
“Garmr had Carrie’s phone,” Diego said, his breathing hitched as he tried not to panic. “And then a woman, who sounded too much like Astrid, spoke to her.”
“Ingrid,” Darius said, his voice dark. “They have hostages, then.”
Diego nodded. “Probably. They told Astrid to come alone.”
That explained it. Even in a split-second decision like that, she’d have thought about hostages and if she hadn’t listened, there’d be casualties.Of all the people they could have gotten…
“What do we do?” Diego asked. “I can’t yet do the teleporting thing.”
“If Astrid builds enough of a battle aura like Aya has taught her, I can get us there,” I said. “But I need that aura to do it.”
It was why I couldn’t get to Astrid sooner when Garmr attacked her the first time. She had been overcome with fear, not battle. But now, she wasn’t surprised. Now Astrid had experience. She wouldn’t fail this time.
Diego’s phone rang, and he only took a moment to look at the name before answering it on speakerphone. “Aya, we—”
“What’s going on over there?” she demanded. “I can’t teleport back.”
My spine went rigid. “What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly as I said. I can’t teleport to the house. It’s like it doesn’t exist.”
“Someone must have erected a barrier without us noticing,” Darius said. “And that’s some serious magic, if that’s the case.”
“What are you talking about? What’s going on?”
Diego quickly rattled off what he’d just told us.
