Valknut: The Binding (40 page)

That voice! It couldn’t be...

Then she saw the theater mask tattoo on the
arm that held her. Shocked, she stopped struggling. “But—but I—you
fell out of the train. You can’t be...”

The Ragman laughed, his breath hot on her
neck. “Yes, I should be dead. Is one of the perks for working for
El Lobo.”

“For selling your soul, you mean.”

Snarling, he wrenched her arm. Lennie gasped,
as much from revulsion at his touch as from pain. Whispered words
scorched her ear. “I hope he gives you to me when he has
finished.”

“Enough! Bring her closer. I would look at
the brave warrior who is the Allfather’s last hope.”

A rabbit’s panic struck Lennie. She
back-pedaled against the Ragman, fighting with all her strength.
Relentless, he wrestled her forward to face Fenrir on his throne. A
cloud of malevolence closed around her. She collapsed under its
weight, shaking, afraid to move, almost unable to breathe.

How could Ramblin’ Red ever think she could
handle this monster? His miserable gift couldn’t compensate for
what she was: an ordinary girl, weak of courage and weak of will.
Her father’s daughter to the end. She felt herself shrinking, going
away—running away—into the recesses of her mind, where Fenrir
couldn’t reach her.

“On your feet, 
jaina
.” The Ragman
twisted her arm until her back arched and she cried out. The pain
shocked her mind clear of Fenrir’s smothering will.

He had almost taken her. Worse, she had
rolled belly up in defeat without the slightest struggle.
Self-disgust gave her new courage. She nearly met Fenrir’s eyes,
focused on his broad nose instead. “Nice try, hamburger breath. But
it’ll take more than parlor tricks to get to me.”

Only bluster, and Fenrir knew it, too. He
signaled the gangbanger to let her go and leaned back on his
throne. “More than tricks, you say.”

He curled his fingers one at a time into a
fist, popping each knuckle with a crack like breaking bones. His
smile grew wider.

Had he looked at her father that way, too?
Like a predator toying with its prey?

In that moment, staring at his flaring nose
and animal teeth, she swore he wouldn’t have her. She would fight
him, defy him to the end. If Ramblin’ Red’s so-called gift was
useless, she would kick, hit, claw, and when that no longer worked,
she still had her mind. She would shut him out, cling to thought
and memory. He couldn’t touch her there.

She didn’t know him very well.

“I will enjoy your screams,” he said. “But
first, I would like you to meet someone.”

With a wave of his hand, he directed her
attention to his flank. Only then did she notice the others in the
room. To his left, an old man drooped, unmoving, a crumbling
monument to despair. To Fenrir’s right, next to Junkyard, another
man slumped in a kitchen chair with his arms tied behind him. His
head lolled so she couldn’t see his face, but she recognized the
blue windbreaker of the railroad detective from the poetry reading.
He moaned and lifted his head. There was blood on his temple and
his eyes were unfocused.

But they were brown.

“Briggs—don’t look into their eyes!” He
blinked at her stupidly, then his head flopped down and she thought
he might pass out again. “Briggs—no—no, you’ve got to listen to me!
Do not look into—”

Fingers tangled in her hair and yanked her
head to face Fenrir.

“I see you’ve met our fine detective. A
nuisance, of course, but he will prove useful once he’s been
properly…educated.” Fenrir’s hands tightened on the arms of the
throne and he leaned forward. A predatory smugness infused his
voice. “But I would think you’d be more interested in your father.
Don’t you wish to say hello?”

Somehow, she had known who stood to Fenrir’s
left. She closed her eyes, not wanting to look, and cursed herself
for ever pursuing this quest.

She had once had a father, years ago. A kind
man, with a paunch above his belt and the shine of skin through
thinning hair. He had doted on his only child, loved his wife, and
then he was gone. Lennie should have been content with that. It was
more than some people had. But she had gone looking...and now she
had found him.

Drawing a breath, she looked full on the
human wreckage at Fenrir’s side. Bent nearly double, he listed to
one side with shoulders hunched and arms dangling. He seemed
suspended only by the strings of Fenrir’s will.

“Dad?”

Her voice cracked and dried up. She could
only stare, trying to find some trace of her father in that ruined
face. Once-full cheeks drooped like deflated balloons. His mouth
gaped around broken teeth. His hair was gone but for the few
greasy, gray strings clinging to his face and neck. His clothing
hung in rags, colors faded and lost under layers of dirt. If she
had passed him on the street, she would have averted her eyes in
disgust, never seeing him as her father.

Fenrir’s voice knifed through her horror.
“Yes, indeed. He caused me some small inconvenience a few years
back, but we’ve worked out our differences. Haven’t we, Jarvis? Why
don’t you give your daughter a hug?”

Jarvis Cook only stared vacantly at a point
somewhere over Lennie’s shoulder. A line of drool dripped from his
chin. Lennie shuddered. Fenrir frowned at her in mock sympathy.
“Odd, I should think he would be more excited to see you than that.
But then, he doesn’t seem to be seeing much of anything, does
he?

“Still, he has served me well, these ten
years. A living testament to One-Eye’s weakness.” He laughed and
stroked his carved staff almost lovingly. “To think I once feared
the Allfather. Now, he dares not show himself to me.”

Lennie wasn’t listening. She had found her
father buried in the derelict’s eyes. Though jaundiced and puffy,
their shape was unmistakable. The same eyes, though young and
clear, stared from her face in the mirror each morning. But what
she saw in her father’s eyes terrified her more than anything ever
had. Worse than the hatred in Junkyard’s eyes, worse than the
yellow malevolence in Fenrir’s, her father’s eyes contained...

...nothing.

No sign of will or life, as blank as a
corpse’s eyes, set in a face distorted by unfathomable fear.

Her heart burned with the pain of his
suffering. What had that beast done to him?

Will he do it to me?

She thrust the thought aside, snarling at her
own cowardice. He was her father, and this beast had mangled him
beyond human endurance.

Jarvis Cook cringed suddenly and ducked his
head, lifting an arm as if to ward off a blow. Just as suddenly, he
slumped and resumed his empty stare. Lennie glanced at Fenrir, but
the monster showed no sign of noticing. Appalled, she watched her
father repeat the entire sequence, and knew it was only a reflex.
As his arm blocked empty air, Lennie’s gaze fell on his upraised
hand.

It bore the same interlocking triangles that
Ramblin’ Red had branded on her.

The moment seemed to freeze in time—the
upraised arm, the fear like a permanent scar on her father’s face.
The Valknut had doomed him to ten years of torment. Hatred
possessed her every bone, tendon, and muscle. Hatred not only
against Fenrir, but against Ramblin’ Red, who had tried to use such
a gentle, innocent man as a weapon.

Her body trembled with emotion. The heat of
it flowed to her hand, feeding the tattoo’s power. Her hair floated
about her head and she felt an exultation she had never known
before. She raised her arm and the air crackled around her. Fenrir
must never be allowed to do this again. Not to anyone.

Fenrir’s eyes widened as he sensed the change
in her. She felt his fear and knew she could destroy his plans,
maybe even destroy him. He knocked Jarvis Cook’s hand down and
stepped in front of him, towering over Lennie. Dark tendrils
flailed against her mind. She brushed them aside easily and thrust
her palm toward Fenrir. Sparks wove between her fingers, ready to
burst forth.

And then, because she wanted to see the
suffering of the monster that had tormented her father, wanted to
see his fear as he was bound, she looked into his eyes.

For a moment, their gazes held. She stared
into the feral eyes of the beast and her will held firm. But the
mind and the will were Fenrir’s domain. A yellow haze flooded
Lennie’s thoughts. The power hummed in her hand, but she couldn’t
tap it. She couldn’t move, even to lower her arm.

And the warehouse was gone. She was at
home—her real home. In the kitchen, with its warm hardwood floors
and gingham curtains. Her mother stood at the sink, alive and
amazingly young. And her father was there, striding toward her
mother. He, too, was young, with a soft build and thinning
hair—just the way she remembered him.

“Mom! Dad!”

Her father turned his face toward her. Only
it wasn’t his face. His eyes were small and mean, and a scowl
twisted his mouth. He reached for her mother and yanked her around.
She tried to cover her tear-stained face with an arm. One eye was
swollen and purpling.

“I’m not finished with you, bitch.”

He backhanded her, and her head whipped back.
She crumpled to the floor. He leaned over and grabbed her by the
hair, fist pulled back to strike. Lennie tried to run to her
mother, to stop him, but her feet wouldn’t move.

“No! Dad, no!”

“Shut up, kid. Once I’m finished with her,
you’re next.”

But that had never happened. Never. He was
kind and gentle. He couldn’t hurt anyone. He was too...

The yellow haze deepened and the thought came
before she could stop it.

He was too weak.

And the kitchen was gone. She was at a
faculty picnic. She remembered it well. There were no other kids
her age at the party and so her father had played catch with her.
Now she saw it again, from an adult perspective. Saw her father
retreat from his coworkers, red-faced and sweating. Saw him mumble
to the school principal with his gaze on his feet, and knew he
found it easier to play with a child than to speak with adults.

Had it happened that way?

The scene changed and he faced a classroom of
kids, out of their chairs and running wild. They screamed and
ripped pages from books and threw pencils until he fled the
room.

How could she know that?

But it was there, in her memory. He left the
picnic, left the classroom, left his job...and he left his
family.

Mother drank because he abandoned her.

Was that her own thought? Or Fenrir’s? She
could no longer tell the difference. But it didn’t matter, because
it was true. Her mother drank because her father had left, and she
died because she drank.

She saw her mother rise from her death bed,
skeletal, sallow-skinned, a fifth of bourbon in her bony
hand—
Drink, daughter—it’s the only way to go
...saw her
pathetic coward of a father slink away in the night, slithering
through the grassy lawn...saw her teenager self, skinny,
friendless, mocked by classmates, working, always working, her
childhood stolen.

The old rage rose up in Lennie. Hard, angry
hurt boiled in her gut. When her mother had died, Lennie’s first
thought before she had even called the ambulance was that it should
have been him.

And she saw him as he was now, all shriveled,
a hollow shell with nothing but fear echoing inside, and she felt
the injustice of it again.

Fenrir released her body and she let her arm
drop, forgotten power crackling in her hand. Her wrist brushed her
pocket, across the hard outline of the switchblade. She pulled it
out and opened it. The dim light flashed on the metal.

Sharp.

It was not right that Jarvis Cook should
live—not after the grief he had caused. She shifted her grip on the
knife, holding it as Junkyard had shown her, and walked toward her
father. The warehouse fell silent but for the slap of her shoes on
the concrete floor.

She stopped before him, hating the decay in
his face, despising the lines around his mouth, carved by helpless
fear.

Yes, she thought, looking into his vacant
eyes. You should die.

***

It was time.

The human heart pounded in Fenrir’s stolen
chest, ready to burst. The human skin stretched to hold him, to
keep him in this shape, for he had grown too large in all his glory
and power. Soon, he would let go and show the world his true
form.

Very soon.

But first, he would enjoy dismantling Angus
Cook’s family, putting an end to their pestiferous ways. The girl’s
mind was now open to him and her desires conflicted most
deliciously. Even now, as she readied the knife to plunge into her
father’s heart, her own heart cried out for paternal love.

Her act of patricide would be a most
satisfying beginning to her suffering.

Brought ’er right back into your lair, eh.
You got some kinda death wish, boy?

Fenrir only smiled. Soon that ever-present
gnat would be silenced forever.

Come to witness the end of your family line,
human? Watch now.

The girl pulled her arm back, her knuckles
white around the knife’s handle. Corrupted memories ruptured like
abscesses on the surface of her mind. Fenrir held her there, poised
on the edge of murder, steeping her in the agony of anticipation,
while her father stood before her in imbecilic oblivion.

Don’tcha slip, now. That hand of hers is
buzzin’ like a trunk full of wasps.

Silence, cow dung! You will not distract
me.

That Allfather fella ain’t no fool. He musta
had some reason fer choosin’ that girl.

An image of Fenrir’s nemesis burst in his
mind, with one eye of glowing ice and a smug curl to his
treacherous mouth. Fenrir’s eyes flamed. 
No fool? You grow
as desperate as he. First he sent a weakling, and then a girl. It
seems One-Eye needs another drink from the well—his wisdom has
grown weak.