Fade (28 page)

I wanted to tell him to stop, to not say any more. I remembered seeing Fenrir in my dreams, and he terrified me. An infuriated and rabid monster, chained by Norse gods in the bowels of Earth. And he was real. Knowing that defied description.

“According to the myth,” Dace continued, squeezing my fingers as if to soothe me, “when his sons, Sköll and Hati, eventually swallowed the sun and moon, Fenrir would be free and would devour Odin, ushering in the end of the world as we know it, or
Ragnarök
. Only two humans would survive the destruction, and the world would be reborn. In the myth, the Norse gods all accepted this as an inevitable truth: Sköll and Hati would free Fenrir, and the world would be destroyed in vengeance of their trickery.

“But that doesn’t mean the wolves literally have to swallow the sun and moon. The sun and moon were gods and goddesses in most mythology. We know that angels mated with humans thousands of years ago.” Dace nodded at Gage. “The myths are full of stories in which Pagan gods and goddesses did the same. Most of the Greek heroes, for instance, were demigods, mortals born of the union between man and god. In all likelihood, Sköll and Hati are fated to kill the descendants of the children the sun and moon gods bore to man. Whether that’s two humans or twenty though, I don’t know.”

“What happens if they do?” Chelle demanded, looking green.

I could sympathize.

“In Norse mythology, there’s never been any question of it happening,” Dace said. “It’s always simply been a matter of when. In the myth, Odin knew
Ragnarök
couldn’t be stopped, so he instead sought a way to hold it off. There are different variations of that myth, but they typically agree that he sacrificed his eye to Mimir, the Well of Knowing, in exchange for the knowledge he required.”

“What did he have to do to hold it off?” Gage asked.

“No one knows,” Dace said, playing with my fingers. “There are as many myths about what Mimir showed him as there are about why he sought Mimir in the first place.” Dace paused for a minute, looking at Chelle and Gage. When they didn’t speak, he continued, “Eventually Sutur killed Odin, but those who believe the myths think he and the other gods will be resurrected in time to stand against Fenrir and the giants at
Ragnarök
. With him dead, Sköll and Hati should have free reign to free their father and end the world, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

“And we’re why,” I whispered, shuddering.

“You don’t know that,” Dace said.

I didn’t argue with him, but we both knew I wasn’t wrong. All of this felt so damned familiar to us for a reason. We’d done it before. Over and over, if what I’d seen was any indication. We’d stood against Sköll and Hati and beat them back time and again over the millennia. The myths might not have agreed on what Mimir had shown Odin, but I knew.
We
were what Mimir showed Odin. Two powerful shapeshifters, reborn time and again to stand against Sköll and Hati, to stop them. Dace might not have believed that, but I did. I’d
felt
it. I’d been feeling it for weeks now, but I hadn’t put the pieces together like I should have.

“So if they do what they’re supposed to do … .”

”Fenrir will break free,” I whispered, “and the apocalypse will come.”

Dace eyed me oddly. He’d made it clear he didn’t think that part of the myth should be taken literally either, but I knew better. I’d seen that monster chained in the bowels of the earth. If ever Hell had a hound ready to set loose upon the world, it would be that giant.

“Who are Sköll and Hati?” Chelle asked.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Dace said.

“Me?” Her eyes widened. “You know more about all of this than I do.” She didn’t say
obviously
, but her tone implied it.

He waved her protest away with the flick of a wrist. “Have you ever seen
Silence of the Lambs
?”

Oh, good grief!

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember the …” He hesitated as though he was trying to remember something. “Hannibal?” He looked to me for confirmation.

I nodded reluctantly.

“Hannibal Lecter?” Dace asked, turning back to Chelle.

“He’s the villain. Or the psychopath. Why?”

“Does Ronan ever remind you of him?”

My cheeks warmed from his question.

“Ronan?” Chelle’s brows furrowed. “I haven’t thought about it. Why?”

Dace hesitated.

I groaned. “I told him the way Ronan looks at me reminds me of Hannibal’s expression when he asks to see Clarice’s badge when they first meet. You know how his eyes are devoid of anything resembling human emotion?” My cheeks warmed even more as both Chelle and Gage turned their eyes on me. Thank God I hadn’t told Dace that Ronan reminded me of a bird, too. If he’d heard that thought, he hadn’t brought it up. I wouldn’t be doing it for him.

Chelle pursed her lips and then nodded. “I guess I can see that.” She shivered slightly.

Gage slid an arm around her shoulder. He didn’t even look in her direction before responding, he was so in sync with her emotions. “But what does that have to do with anything?”

“I’m not sure,” Dace said again.

How many times had I heard him say the same thing? Irritating.

“But it reminded me”—he looked at me and away so quickly I wasn’t sure he’d looked at me at all—”of the dreams she’s having of Sköll and Hati.”

“How so?” I demanded, my heart trembling a little. I knew where this conversation was leading now. Nowhere good. Nowhere good at all.

“The way you dream them,” he said, clearly uncomfortable. “Their eyes are the same.”

I tried to digest that, but couldn’t. I didn’t remember their eyes. I only remembered how they made me feel. Dread. Terror. Apparently that’s what dreams of the apocalypse did to me.

“I don’t understand.” Gage frowned, first at Dace and then at me. “Are you saying Ronan is Sköll or Hati?”

As soon as he connected them together in the same sentence like that, something else dawned on me. This wasn’t something that had come from the wolves, but from somewhere else: the countless hours I’d spent pouring over volumes of poetry.

“The moving moon went up the sky, and nowhere did abide; softly she was going up, and a star or two beside,” I quoted, looking at Dace.

He quirked a brow, tilted his head, and then frowned as if he couldn’t quite find the thought in the jumble racing through my mind. “What are you thinking, love?”

“It’s a poem by Coleridge,” I said. “It reminded me of something. The faces of the moon.” I shifted, uncomfortable again. “I’m not sure.”

“The faces of the moon?” Gage glanced between Dace and me again.

“Maiden, Mother, and Crone,” I explained. “In Neo-Pagan faiths, the Triple Goddess is represented by the three phases, or faces, of the moon. Waxing, full and waning, or Maiden, Mother, and Crone.”

“The three sisters,” Dace murmured.

“The three sisters?” Gage repeated, his arm tightening around Chelle as he said the words. “Don’t Neo-Pagans view the Triple Goddess as aspects of the same being?”

“Depends on who you ask,” I said.

Gage arched a brow at my comment.

“Some view the Triple Goddess as the same person or deity. The Hecate Sisters, for instance,” I explained, my mind sifting through what I’d learned of Paganism in my World Religions class, “are often believed to be aspects of the same goddess. Others don’t view it quite the same way. They believe the Triple Goddess isn’t a representation of a single goddess, but of three completely separate entities. The Norns, the Fates.” I ticked them off on my fingers. “Both are sets of sisters who have been represented by the Triple Goddess, or Maiden, Mother, and Crone, over the years.” Having them focused on me so intently unnerved me.

Chelle frowned between the three of us, looking lost and apprehensive at once. “What are you getting at?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, beginning to understand why Dace always told me the same thing. When you didn’t have all the answers, saying as much was far easier than admitting to the frightening things you thought
might
be true. “That part of Coleridge’s poem always brings the Maiden, Mother, and Crone aspects to mind for me.”

“It makes sense,” Dace muttered, looking at Gage.

Gage scowled. The dark expression didn’t look natural on him, but it got the point across. He and Dace had already worked out what I thought, and Gage didn’t like it at all.

I didn’t blame him in the least. If I was right, Sköll and Hati were already fulfilling their destinies.

“What makes sense?” Chelle demanded, scowling in obvious frustration.

Dace hesitated then sighed. “If Sköll and Hati are meant to kill human descendants versus literally swallowing the sun and moon, it’s possible the descendants of the moon god would be three sisters. Triplets.”

Gage shook his head, his jaw clenched. “No.”

Chelle didn’t say anything. She simply stared, her mouth slightly parted, and her face paling to a sickly shade of white. Her hands shook.

I knew exactly how she felt. I’d been feeling pretty much exactly the same fear for weeks.

“No,” Gage said again.

“I’m not saying that’s the case,” Dace hurried to assure him. “I’m only saying it’s a possibility.”

“What are the other possibilities?” Chelle whispered.

“There could be a million of them,” Dace said, looking away from Gage. “The Norse people viewed Fenrir’s mate Angrboda as a representation of Maiden, Mother and Crone, too. So we could be completely wrong. Arionna has never been a Dreamer before.” He put enough emphasis on the word that I immediately understood he didn’t mean that I wasn’t the head in the clouds type. “Maybe we’re seeing connections where they don’t exist.” He didn’t sound much like he believed that to be true.

“How do we find out if there’s a connection or not?” Chelle asked after a minute, her voice strained.

My heart went out to her. Losing Dani might have been only the beginning for her. If we were right, Chelle and Beth were in as much danger as Dace and me. That sucked. Big time.

“We start with Ronan,” I answered when Dace said nothing. I don’t think he wanted to consider the possibility that this was honestly happening, that it had already started. I didn’t blame him for that, but we couldn’t pretend just because pretending made us feel better. There were too many coincidences to believe Ronan wasn’t involved in some way, particularly since he’d been dating Dani.

“If he was a wolf, I’d know,” Dace argued right on cue.

“Who says he has to be a wolf?” I demanded, frustrated he’d come here with this in mind and balked now that we were talking about the possibility. I didn’t understand him. I truly didn’t.

“The myth does,” he snapped, making it obvious he didn’t want to have this conversation. He would just have to suck it up though, because if we were right, we didn’t have time for him to stall.

I wanted to ask when this became my life. I wanted to demand to know why the hell this became my life. But bothering with questions felt pointless. Apparently this had always been my life, I just hadn’t known it.

“Angrboda was a witch, so Sköll and Hati were the offspring of a Titan and a witch,” Gage inserted, not sounding much like he wanted to be discussing this either. “The first wolves created were Odin’s pets.”

“Odin’s pets?” Chelle asked.

“According to legend, Odin grew lonely and created wolves. The wolves were his companions,” Dace said with a tired sigh.

Something about that tickled at the back of my conscious, trying to dislodge something important. I couldn’t seem to catch it through everything racing through my head though, and Gage spoke up, pulling my attention away before I sifted through everything.

“If Odin created wolves, and Sköll and Hati were the offspring of Fenrir and Angrboda, who’s to say that you can sense them at all?” he demanded. “You’d be different species entirely.”

Dace’s jaw firmed, making it clear he planned to argue his point further.

I rose from my chair and stepped toward him, forcing him to look at me. His eyes softened, but he didn’t relax his jaw or the stiff set of his shoulders. I reached out and stroked my fingers along his temple, wondering how I’d ever thought his eyes weren’t gentle.

“It’s possible, Dace,” I said as a muscle in his throat jerked in response to my touch. “You know it is, and that’s why you came here today. If they’re different species, it might even explain why you can’t figure out what Ronan is.”
And why he hates you
.

Dace searched my face intently, his green eyes boring into me. I don’t know what he saw there, but his expression fell.

“We’ll start with Ronan,” he said.

“How do you propose we do that?” Gage grumbled, reminding me he liked this even less than Dace.

I understood his reluctance, too. If we were right, and I wasn’t prepared to say we weren’t, then Chelle and Beth were in danger. I understood not wanting that to be true as much as I understood Dace’s hesitation. Dace had to accept the possibility that we were meant to kill wolves of legend, and now Gage had to face the possibility that if we failed, his girlfriend would be sacrificed in an attempt to end the world. It sucked all around, but we couldn’t pretend none of this was happening. We had to deal with the situation.

”Ask my father,” I blurted as Dace and Gage both glared at not much of anything. “Between the three of you, you should be able to come up with a way to narrow down the list.”

“And in the meantime?” Gage looked at Chelle, his expression screaming that he would move heaven and hell to keep her safe.

“In the meantime,” Dace said, his eyes hard, “the shifters will look after them. It shouldn’t be too difficult to coordinate.” He shot an apologetic look at Chelle before finishing, “Most of them will be around in the coming days anyway.”

Chelle paled at that reminder, but nodded bravely.