Valknut: The Binding (34 page)

Gangbangers’ paint. A symbol of fear and hate
turned into a thing of innocent delight.

Junkyard gaped at it helplessly. Numbness
spread through him. He heard the truck’s doors slam, the engine
start. Had he really seen it? That shoe? Maybe he was
mistaken...some other shoe...some other person...

The branches above Junkyard rustled, knocking
loose a brief downpour. He looked up reflexively, not really
caring. The branches swayed, empty but for twigs and leaves
silhouetted against the moonlit sky. Then something thumped at his
shoulder blade. He jerked, startled out of his shock, and scrambled
out from the bushes. A huge, black raven fluttered into the puddle
where he had been sitting. A single BB eye glinted at him under the
flood lights. Junkyard waved an arm, trying to scare the bird away.
It hopped back a few inches and cocked its head for a better look
at him.

A truck’s headlights switched on, reminding
Junkyard that the bushes no longer hid him. Heedless of the bird,
he scooted into cover and watched the the vehicle pull out of the
driveway, taking Jungle Jim’s body with it. He felt nine years old
again, watching the ambulance drive off with his dying father. But
where his father had kept him safe from the outside world, Jungle
Jim had kept Junkyard safe from himself.

Who would hold back the shadows now?

The raven plucked at Junkyard’s jacket. Its
beak clamped onto one of Austin’s buttons and jerked as though
trying to pull it off. Junkyard yanked the button away and swatted
at the bird. It fluttered a short distance and cocked its head
again. The button hung loose, almost freed from the denim. It
said, 
A friend walks in when the rest of the world walks
out.

An image of Lennie popped into his head, so
real he wanted to brush the caramel curls back from her face. The
bird blared a crow-like, “Caw, caw.” To Junkyard, it sounded more
like a harsh, “Go, go,”

Lennie is in danger.

There was no reason to think so, but he knew
it, felt it in the petrifying cold that spread through his body. He
launched out of the mud and tore through the neighbor’s lawn.
Vaulting a low picket fence, he stumbled onto the road and took off
at a hard run toward the jungle.

Silent now, the bird scratched in the mud
beneath the bushes on Bill Sutter’s lawn and pretended to look for
worms. When Detective Harcourt Briggeman exited the house, the bird
uttered a soft croak and took off, its black wings slicing into the
darkness.

***

Bill Sutter’s house served as a focal point
for more than friendship, murder, or even an oversized raven’s
sense of timing. The house was a crux where all points, past and
future, came together. The unseen were drawn to watch the house,
spectators of events transpiring and choices made.

To Ramblin’ Red, sitting in a tree, Jungle
Jim’s defiance was a victory, though small and certainly not
final.

To Urdie, handbag jingling and snowmobile
boots shuffling a block away, Jungle Jim’s death was an omen.

To Fenrir, watching the house from the ink of
his own shadow, Jungle Jim’s death meant one less impediment in his
path. To Fenrir, Jungle Jim’s death was a signal.

***

“Oh, the times, they are a changin’,” Urdie
sang, getting the melody completely wrong. Her needles clacked as
she made her way down the sidewalk, incorporating indigo yarn into
the work tucked under her arm. Every few stitches, she paused her
knitting to run the yarn between her fingers. When she reached a
streetlight, she let the needles hang and fished scissors from her
pocket. As she stretched the yarn to cut it, a man broke through
the hedge of a nearby yard and dashed across the street in front of
her. The buttons on his jacket flashed in the light. She read
one—
Earth is Room Enough
—and then he was gone.

Snip. Indigo ceased, replaced by florescent
orange. The scissors were deposited in the pocket. The clacking
resumed, and so did the shuffling and jingling.

Shadows crowded the streetlight’s glow. A
piece of the dark parted from the rest and blocked Urdie’s
path.

“Hello, young pup,” Urdie said without
looking up. “Come to try again?”

The darkness curled away like steam,
unveiling the stolen human form of Fenrir. A cigarette hung from
one corner of his mouth. His lip curled.

“Try is such an uncertain word.”

“And still an appropriate one, my dear. After
all, you tried ten years ago.” Urdie stopped walking, but her hands
continued to work. She ran her fingers down the orange yarn and
wrapped a loop around a needle. “Try, try again, but you still
won’t be able to kill fate.”

Fenrir growled and his eyes flared yellow.
Once before, he had come upon Urdie on a similar dark street,
intending to tear her apart. One-Eye’s champion of the moment had
intervened, setting Fenrir’s plans back another ten years. That
interfering human now served Fenrir in torment, a hollow shell
filled with terror, subject to Fenrir’s smallest whims.

“There will be no 
try 
this
time, old woman.”

Fenrir’s voice rang with triumph. Urdie
looked up for the first time and saw the seven-foot spear in
Fenrir’s hands. She stopped knitting. Her oversized purse slipped
off her arm and hit the ground with a chink.

“So,” she whispered, a hint of a smile at the
corners of her mouth. “You brought Gungnir.”

Primitive and rough-hewn, the spear spoke of
raw power. Hand-carved runes tracked down its shaft. Black feathers
dangled from the leather straps behind the knife-sharp bronze head.
Fenrir hefted it in one hand.

“I thought that would get your attention. You
should never have given One-Eye that prophecy.”

He brought the spear to his shoulder, ready
to throw. Urdie tucked her needles into her knitting and folded her
hands. “You were in the ground too long, young pup,” she said, “or
you would know this will never work.”

“Oh, but I think it will.” He stretched his
empty hand toward her, a javelin thrower’s pose. One by one, he
curled his fingers into a fist, each knuckle popping like distant
gunshot. Then he threw.

The spear plunged into Urdie’s chest,
shredding layers of flower print like tissue. The force knocked her
out of her heavy boots and sent the flowered hat spinning from her
head. She hit the pavement with a dull thud and lay still.

Fenrir approached cautiously, frowning, for
she had made no sound. Bending close, he saw the blood, the vacant
eyes staring skyward, and knew that the prophecy was broken. All
things were now possible. His eyes flamed like small suns, venting
the triumph that burned in his heart.

The end had begun.

Calling Freyja’s stolen falcon form, he let
the visage of Angus Cook fall away, allowed himself to shrink and
the feathers to cling. There was one more hindrance in his path. A
small one, true, but one with which he must deal.

And then he would stir the waters of
chaos.

With a soft rustling of feathers and a fierce
screech, he was gone, leaving the remains of Urd on the pavement
like abandoned laundry. Then, one-by-one, her body, her boots, her
knitting, even the flowered hat, shimmered and disappeared. All
that remained of Urd was an oversized handbag, its clasp burst, her
savings scattered over the damp pavement.

Chapter 20

Monte cackled and pressed Lennie against the
cardboard box, his wet lips inches from her face. He stank of
defecation and sweat. Blood dripped from his oozing scalp onto her
neck. She tried to wrench herself free, but he gripped her forearms
hard enough to bruise.

He could kill her easily. He could do
anything he wanted. But what frightened her more was that he was no
one-eyed spook or undead shadow that only showed up when no one
else was looking. He was real...and he knew about Fenrir. Which
meant—

“Bones—behind you. The Ragman!”

Soo’s warning was followed by a grunt and the
sounds of scuffle, but Lennie could only see Monte’s face. She
jerked her knee up—hard. He twisted and blocked it easily with his
thigh. If only she could reach the switchblade, still in her back
pocket. She just needed to get one hand free.

But she couldn’t break Monte’s grip. His eyes
burned like candle glow over his sloppy grin, reflecting the fire
in Fenrir’s eyes. Responding, her tattooed skin prickled with an
urge like a building sneeze. She tried to focus on it, but the
yellow intensified, filling her vision, choking her will to fight.
She closed her eyes, but the yellow tainted even the darkness
behind her eyelids. Her struggles weakened until she could only
hang limply in Monte’s grip.

Something crashed to the pavement and Bones
yelped, spewing curses like machine gun fire. Soo’s voice rang
through the noise half an octave too high. “Y’all better leave him
alone, Ragman, or Ah’ll show you a whole new meaning fer ‘on the
rag’.”

I should help, Lennie thought dimly. Soo and
Bones were in trouble because of her. She heard the smack of fist
on flesh and tried to make herself fight, but her muscles barely
twitched. Desperately, she focused on the untapped power humming
through her finger bones. It was there, the buzz of angry bees. She
pictured it flowing from her fingertips and tried to aim it at
Monte. Nothing happened.

Useless tattoo. She was going to die with a
lightning bolt trapped in her fist. She hoped it would explode in
Monte’s face.

You are pathetic—like your father before
you.

Shocked, she opened her eyes and stared into
Monte’s lunatic face. The deep, growling voice couldn’t have come
from him. Was it only in her head? It hardly mattered. Its tone was
disdainful. Worse, it was dismissive.

And it was right. She hung powerless, a
weakling in this madman’s grip, blaming some random tattoo for not
rescuing her.

Well, there had been no tattoo when she had
won the State Championship in the 400 with a sprained ankle, or
when she had worked two jobs her senior year and still pulled a
4.0. No tattoo had given her the strength to strap her crazed
mother to the bed near the end, administering meds and cleaning up
bloody vomit when they couldn’t afford hospitals.

To hell with the idiotic tattoo.

“You bastard,” she snarled. “I’ll show you
pathetic!”

As though feeding on her defiance, her
tattooed hand flared with electric fire, burning away the yellow
haze. Screaming her rage, she yanked her arms down savagely and
broke Monte’s grip. Her clawed fingers found his ears and crumpled
them like wadded Kleenex. She anchored her nails deep into
cartilage and dug her thumbs into his eyes.

Snarling, Monte wrenched at her hands. She
felt one of his ears give way. Seeming oblivious to injury, he
rammed his head into her face. Pain exploded in her nose. Stunned,
she let go of his head and fell backward. The cardboard box slid
out from under her and she hit the pavement hard, with Monte on top
of her. She fought him blindly as tears streamed and blood flowed
into her mouth. He caught one arm, then the other, and clamped her
wrists together in a grip she couldn’t break. Blood rattled in her
throat and she coughed, spraying his face. He licked her blood from
his lips and laughed. His eyes blazed.

Had her father died this way?

He, too, thought to fight me, but he was a
coward. A nothing.

She was falling, falling through a yellow
fog, though she still felt Monte’s weight on her arms and the
pebbled blacktop beneath her. Within the fog, she saw her father,
Jarvis Cook—balding, thick at the waist, just as she had last seen
him. He stood a few feet away and smiled at her.

“Dad!” She wanted to run to him like a little
girl and hug him around the middle.

Then a huge shadow fell across them both. Her
father looked up and gaped at something behind her, an oppressive
presence that turned the air suffocatingly cold. His face turned
white under a summer tan and he backed away, arms lifted as though
to deflect a blow.

I crushed him, as I will crush you.

Her father’s mouth stretched open in a
voiceless scream. He seemed to shrink, shoulders hunching, chest
sinking inwards. His eyes grew unnaturally wide, open windows into
the fear that shriveled his soul.

“No,” Lennie whispered, horrified. Somehow,
she felt it all— everything her father felt as he lost his mind.
She felt his muscles go rigid—hot breath panting across his
tongue—shirt clinging to sweating back—needles of terror jabbing
his skin...no, her skin. And as her own will melted along with her
father’s, she had a sudden realization. Her mother wasn’t drowning
her sorrows in a bottle, as Lennie had always thought.

She was drowning her fear.

“You understand, now, don’t you.” Monte
laughed in a voice unnaturally shrill. “Monte knows.”

He dragged her to her feet. Her head lolled
helplessly and tangled hair hung in her eyes.

“Time to go visit El Lobo.”

An agonized scream ripped through the jungle.
The dwindling part of Lennie’s mind that was still coherent
recognized the voice and knew: the gangbanger’s knife had found
Bones O’Riley. Monte paused to watch the fight. The pall smothering
Lennie’s mind eased somewhat as those glowing eyes focused
elsewhere. Lennie raised her head and gazed blearily at the
battleground the jungle had become.

Too Long Soo lay on the ground a few yards
away. Bones remained on his feet in front of her, wielding his
firewood like Conan the Barbarian in grimy overalls. The Ragman
lunged at him, and Bones beat him back with a solid clout to the
head. Lennie felt a brief flare of hope, but Bones was a cook, not
a warrior, and blood soaked through the clothes on his back.
Limping, he dodged once, twice, but his reactions were too slow.
The gangbanger’s fist connected and he dropped.