Endure (27 page)

“You never give up, Dad.”

“Neither do you,” he grunts, grappling with another pixie. “It’s in the blood.”

I know it’s the last time I’ll see either of them, but still I run forward, down the cement hallway that leads from beneath the stage. My footsteps echo. I grab the mace I’ve stashed even though I know it probably won’t do any good.

There’s a wooden door at the end of the hall.

There’s a huge six-six pixie guarding the door. His teeth are plated with gold and they glint when he smiles.

“Finally,” he says, bringing his hands together and bending the fingers backward like he’s some actor in a movie getting ready for a bar brawl, which is actually incredibly intimidating even if it is a cliché. “I’ve been waiting forever.”

“You know what they say,” I quip. “We girls like to take our time, get ready for the big important events in our lives—hot dates, National Honor Society induction, killing pixie kings and their thugs.”

My hand clenches the pepper spray. The problem is that I have to be close to use it, which means with those long arms of his, he’ll get a good hit in. And now that I’m human again I might not be able to withstand it.

He yawns like I’m too boring for any more words. He lumbers toward me.

“Gasp! Scary.”

“You are just a little girl.” His voice seems like it deepens with the insult.

As I try to think of some witty comeback, he makes some sort of primal noise and lunges. I lift my arm and spray right in his face. The chemicals make contact. His skin sizzles, really sizzles. The smell of burned flesh makes me gag. His huge knuckled hands lift to his face, shaking, as he screams. I take my knife and plunge it into his chest, right through his Black Sabbath T-shirt, right in between the ribs and up a little. The force of blade meeting body battles through my arm. Stabbing someone hurts. I yank the knife back out as he falls. It worked better than the spears.

“Sorry,” I whisper as he thuds to the floor. “You chose the wrong side. Plus, you made ‘little girl’ sound like a bad thing. There is nothing wrong with being little or a girl.”

Quickly, I wipe the knife on my jeans to get the blood off. The jeans are goners anyway, full of bloodstains and dirt. I can’t believe I’m thinking about jeans. I can’t believe I lectured him on his terminology when he’s already dead. I’m a wreck. I’m such a wreck that my hand trembles as I turn the doorknob. But there’s no point in nerves, no point in trembling. Paul is dead. Austin. Cassidy is injured, and possibly dying. People are fighting out there, struggling with everything they have, doing things they’d never thought they’d do. I have to save Nick and Astley and then I have to save them, save the world, whatever the cost.

So I push open the door.

Bedford Radio Traffic

14: Holy God. I’ve got . . . You’ve got . . . It’s a disaster down here. We have kids with weapons. Blue humanoid things. Explosions. I need backup. We need Fire to respond.

Dispatch: 10-4. Will page out Fire. All available units, please respond to the Grand Auditorium. Unit 14 is reporting armed civilians, full-scale rioting, and fire. Proceed with caution.

14: The Feds are here. At least one is down. Again. I have an officer down.

Dispatch: I need the exact location, 14. Paging County Ambulance now.

14: I have . . . Oh . . . Stand by.

The door opens to a chamber that is not a room but more like a cave, which makes no sense. Why would there be a cave under the Grand? There’s no point in wondering. Wondering wastes time I don’t have.

The walls are some sort of white limestone-type rock, totally not typical of Maine, which is more full of gray granite. Stalactites hanging from the ceiling form sharp, white points. Another chamber leads off of it. That one is emitting a weird pinkish orange glow.

In the center of this room is Nick, human. Nick’s teeth are gritted and he’s bleeding everywhere. Blood runs down the side of his face, down his arms. He is a gory, awful mess and it’s so obvious that he can barely lift his head up because the effort is just that much. Still, he does. He does lift it. He mouths my name and I know it’s a warning. I whirl around as the door whips shut behind me, guarded by four large pixies.

“So, you finally come to give us what we want,” Frank says. He has a wound on his arm, claw marks. Nick must have fought him well.

I don’t answer.

“Put down your sword,” Frank says, and I guess just to prove how tough and strong he is, he pushes Nick forward and away from him. He falls on his knees and forearms in the center of the cavern. Then he flops to his side.

He reaches toward me. “Zara. Don’t.”

The words are all he has. His lips stop moving. The pain makes him shudder. Anger rips through me. How can I let him suffer? How can I let any of them suffer? And where is Astley? “First, leave Nick alone.”

“Hardly. He is our insurance. To make sure you free the god.”

Frustration gets the best of me and I roar, “I will never free the stupid god.”

Frank unleashes a patronizing smile. “Oh, you will. And you will survive freeing Loki, but without your pixie blood you will never be able to survive what is required to stop the Ragnarok.”

“Don’t do it, Zara.” Nick’s words are broken and pleading. I don’t need pixie senses to tell that he might be dying, that his energy is running out quickly. I can’t lose him again, not because he was my boyfriend, but because he is Nick, and Nick is wonderful and imperfect and bossy and good. Maybe I can buy some time.

“What do I have to do?” My question comes out flat, almost robotic.

Frank bounces up and down with glee, stomping his heeled boot on Nick’s finger.

“Stop it! Hurt him any more and I’ll refuse,” I yell, taking a step forward.

Frank presses his boot into Nick’s finger again. A bone cracks. “I hardly think you’re in a state to bargain. I truly wish my sister hadn’t humanized you. I wanted you for my queen. But maybe I
could
turn you back; it might be worth the risk.”

And then Astley steps into the room from another chamber. He is uninjured. He meets my eyes. “She’s too puny and too easily manipulated by her heart. She is an unworthy queen, hardly worth anything, let alone a risk.”

“Astley?” I gasp out his name. Why isn’t he hurt? Why is he smiling like that? What is he doing?

He walks right up to Frank’s side and says, “She’d be so fun to torture, though.”

“You can torture her later.” Frank brushes a bloodied hand against his own cheek, stroking it. “Let’s take her to Loki.”

“But . . . But . . . Astley?” Pixies start grabbing and pushing me forward. I try to plant my feet, look to Nick for help, but he’s on the floor, trapped and injured.

“He lied to us,” Nick says.

“You think?” I snap. Astley shrugs as I say it. He motions for the pixies to let me go and they do, almost as if he’s their ruler now.

“But they poisoned you,” I say. “You were fighting with us. Your mother—”

“All that happened,” he says. “All that happened and then I saw the error of my ways. The Council convinced me. They were on his side all along. They sent me here because they wanted to keep up appearances, make it look as though they were on the side of continuity, but Frank and my mother had paid them off, convinced them that the end of humans would be the beginning of a true pixie realm, where we would not have to hide who we are anymore, where we could take our rightful places, where love and matters of the heart are unimportant, where our needs are always met, our energy always strong, untainted by humans and iron and technology.”

He comes closer to me, but not close enough for me to attack him, which is totally unfortunate because I’d really like to rip his gorgeous hair out.

“How could you do this?” I gasp and say the obvious, “I trusted you.”

Nick growls on the floor, which probably means that I’m an idiot or something. My heart breaks in half.

“We were going to lose,” Astley says. “The Council was on their side. It seemed— It seemed the only way. And Frank is so much more powerful with me.”

“And he is more powerful with me, especially since he’s lost his little queen,” Frank says. “So, we made a deal. He comes to my side. I do not kill his second, Amelie. His pixies survive in a world where they do not have to pretend to be things that are beneath them.”

“Humans,” Nick sputters.

“And what does he give you?” I ask Frank.

“You.” Frank points at me.

“Me?” Anger makes me want to tear off my own skin. “I am not a possession that someone can give.” I turn to Astley and spit out, “You don’t own me. You are
nothing
to me. Don’t you realize what you’re doing? You’re condemning all of us.”

Astley’s face twitches and for a second his eyes almost look like they’ll cry. But the moment passes and then his face hardens again, and when he speaks his voice is nasty, condescending. “No, you are the one who condemns us, Zara.”

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“He means,” Frank finishes for him, “that the fate of all pixies lies in your hands. You’re the key to Ragnarok, pure, innocent Zara of White.”

“Why me?”

Frank laughs. “It’s because of the prophecy. It is because you are the child of the willow and the White, the stars. You are human. You were pixie. You are the one who changes. You are the one who would sacrifice everything so that those she loves survive. The only thing you lack to complete the prophecy is your fae blood and the magic. You are sadly without magic now. It makes you far less interesting and less useful to the do-gooders of this pathetic world.”

“You tell her too much,” Astley barks out.

“It matters not. She will do what we ask. I can tell her it all.”

Glaring at him, I mutter, “Then do it. Tell me how to stop the end of the world.”

“You have to die.”

“Duh.”

“You have to jump into the mouth of Hel, Zara,” Astley says. “You have to sacrifice yourself.”

I look around.

Frank starts laughing. “She’s looking for it! How cute. It is not here yet. You have to free Loki first. Come on, idiotic Zara White. Let’s go free the god.”

I want to process the information Frank just gave up, figure out Astley’s traitor ways, but I will myself to focus on the moment. I try to remember everything Devyn has ever told me about Loki. Different sources say different things about Loki’s relationship to the other gods. He was helpful and problematic. He is the father of Fenrir, the wolf that ate my pixie dad, just swallowed him whole.

“She is thinking,” Frank says as we walk through a tunnel. The surface is uneven, the stalactites are glowing orange like there is fire buried deep beneath them.

“She is
always
thinking.” Astley says this scornfully, like thinking is a bad thing.

That’s obviously his spiteful way of trying to make me stop thinking, but I won’t. I focus. Loki. He was a shape shifter, some say the first of the shape shifters, and has been cited as being a fly, a seal, a salmon, a horse. But when we enter the second cavern, he is shaped as a man, a suffering man.

I must gasp out loud, because Frank says, “Horrible, is it not? And yet, this is what the good gods have done to him.”

“For punishment?” I squeak out as the pixies pull me forward across the wet stone floor.

Frank indicates for them to let me go. They do, but hover behind me, in case I decide to make a run for it. Frank moves to my side and whispers almost in my ear, “You remember what he did?”

I can’t.

“He is said to have engineered the death of the much-loved god Baldr. So, to punish him, the other gods bound him here. Do you know what he is bound with?”

I don’t say yes or no. “We should help him.”

“It’s with his son’s own entrails,” Astley says.

“That means intestines. Entrails mean intestines,” Frank pipes in. He claps his hand against his chest. “Oh! She’s shuddering, how delightful.”

A giant serpent hangs above Loki’s head. Venom drips out of its fangs but is caught in a bowl held aloft by a beautiful woman. Her really defined back muscles show via the drape of her flowy, old-fashioned dress. How long has she been protecting him?

“According to the prophecies, Loki is to fight with the jötnar against the gods. It’s hard to blame him,” Frank says. “He will kill Heimdallr.”

“Heimdall?” I croak out. The air is so hot it hisses and I remember how kind Heimdall was when I crossed the bridge to Valhalla.

“Heimdallr.” Frank flicks his finger against my cheek. “You children never get anything right. BiForst became BiFrost. Heimdallr became Heimdall. It’s like you don’t even hear it correctly. Honestly, it’s insulting to have you as foes.”

I can’t help myself. “Obviously, we are pretty good foes, because you haven’t actually defeated us yet.”

He spins around and the pixies lift me up so our faces are mere centimeters apart and in less than a blink he drops the glamour. He’s blue, and toothy, and feral looking. “You wouldn’t call this defeated? After days of us destroying this pathetic little town. This isn’t defeated? Your puny human ‘army’ is up there being slaughtered. Your good pixie king, the one you chose, the one you loved, is ‘evil’ now. Your wolf is dying on the floor behind us. You, no longer pixie, are about to release Loki into the world. You are alone and about to do what we want, after we tormented you for days, toying with you. I would call that defeated.”