Valknut: The Binding (42 page)

Fenrir panted, wet tongue lolling from his
mouth—a laughing dog with rabid eyes. 
I can have you both.
And I will.

And the wolf sprang. Lennie pointed the gun
and pulled the trigger. Click. Another useless weapon. She flung it
at Fenrir and watched helplessly as his front paws drove into her
father’s chest, knocking him to the ground. Jarvis beat at him with
stick-thin arms. Teeth tore at him and he screamed. Then a lean,
jean-jacketed figure flew through the air and knocked the wolf
aside. Junkyard, with new blood on his face.

He wrapped his legs around the great beast
and buried his arms in the fur around his neck. “Run, Lennie!”

Lennie didn’t move. Her father lay limp on
the floor, his face a bloody mess. She wanted to drag him away, to
somehow escape this horror, but Junkyard could never defeat Fenrir.
Only she had that power. Whether she wanted to believe it or not,
this was no longer about saving her father, or even herself.

This thing had caused so many
deaths, people she cared about—Bones O’Riley, Too Long Soo. Jungle
Jim.

Her mother.

Junkyard would be next, and her father, then
Lennie herself. What then? The world? She couldn’t let that
happen.

Her tattooed hand throbbed painfully. She
didn’t trust that weapon, but she had no other choice. She lifted
her arm, thrust her hand palm outward. If she could just release
it, this time.

Junkyard slid his legs off Fenrir’s back. He
braced himself and twisted the wolf’s head, trying to throw him
like a calf. A bull-sized calf. It didn’t work.

Use it. Use it now.

Concentrating, Lennie gathered the power into
her hand. Sparks swarmed the air around her, but she hesitated. She
didn’t want to encase Junkyard along with Fenrir.

The Wolf bucked his back legs and tossed
Junkyard against the wall. Junkyard slid to the floor, landing
awkwardly. Before Lennie could loose her power, the wolf whirled
and pounced. Junkyard rolled to his feet to meet him. It was like
watching a single sand bag stand against a tidal wave. Fenrir
crushed Junkyard to the ground. Junkyard strained to hold Fenrir’s
dripping maw away from his throat.

“No!” Lennie almost dove onto Fenrir’s back,
but what could she do against such a terrible beast? She looked
frantically for a weapon. Some sort of club or knife...a chainsaw
would be nice. Stacks of guns lined the shelves. Probably unloaded.
Nothing else looked deadly enough.

Then she spotted Fenrir’s staff, which had
rolled away from the fighting. Only it was not a staff at all. A
spear. Like a javelin, but heavy and coarse, with dangling black
feathers. The javelin was not her event, but she knew the
technique. She snatched it up and hefted it, finding its
balance.

Junkyard groaned, his arms giving way to
Fenrir’s weight. As Lennie lifted the spear to throw, the raven
flew at her face, croaking and beating at her with its wings.

You must not kill him! The prophecy...you
must bind him.

That voice! She saw the raven’s shriveled
eye. Its one good eye was blue. Furious, she knocked the bird
aside.

Fenrir lifted his head and his gaze riveted
on the spear. His eyes flamed. This time, Lennie stared into them,
and the power in her hand flared to match. He rose from Junkyard
and stalked Lennie, stiff-legged. His hackles raised and muzzle
wrinkled in a sharp-toothed snarl. She lifted the spear to her
shoulder. Fenrir’s voice spoke inside her head.

This is not my time to die. And you will not
be my killer.

The dark tendrils of his thoughts beat at her
and yellow haze swirled at the edges of her vision, but her palm
crackled with power and he couldn’t find a hold in her mind.

He stepped closer. 
You, however, are
not part of the prophecy.

She could capture him now. Junkyard was a
safe distance away.

You can die any time. For example—

She could bind him. She knew it would work,
this time. But what was bound could be unbound. Maybe not in her
lifetime, but Fenrir would live to kill again.

—
you could die now.

In one smooth motion, Fenrir crouched and
sprang. Fur and teeth and eyes filled Lennie’s vision. She held her
breath and threw with all the power of her legs and back. Honest,
human power. The spear drove deep into Fenrir’s chest.

An ordinary spear would have made Fenrir
laugh. He would have plucked the puny thing from his chest and used
it to pick her flesh from his teeth. But this was Gungnir, the
spear of the Allfather. Nothing could stand before it.

His graceful leap faltered. Yowling, he
hurtled out of control. Lennie dove out of the way as he crashed
into the stockpile of weapons and drugs. The metal walls rang like
a giant bell. Shelves collapsed, bringing down an avalanche of
boxes. He writhed in the chaos, biting at the spear. His legs beat
the air, running, running, then slowing and falling still. He
lifted his head weakly and strained toward Lennie. The light
flickered in his eyes. Then, with a long, pleading whine, he let
his head fall back and lay still.

Silence filled the warehouse. Lennie watched
Fenrir’s body warily, looking for signs of life. Her hand still
hummed with power, and she held it out, ready. But the pressure
she’d felt all day had lifted and the dark tendrils that had pried
at her mind were gone.

She pushed herself to her feet and approached
Fenrir. He lay awkwardly amid a jumble of boxes and weapons. The
odor had somehow changed, becoming less foul and more pathetic,
though it still reeked of road kill. She nudged the wolf with her
foot, sensing the emptiness in his body. He was dead.

The body began to shimmer and grow
transparent. Its features blurred, and then sprouted falcon
feathers and a sharp, curved beak. The feathers fell away and a
more human visage washed over it—one with dark, curly hair and
broad shoulders. Then the wolf returned, now clear as glass. Pure
animal, it was beautiful, with a coat like snow under a silver
moon.

And then it was gone.

Chapter 25

The spear rattled to the floor and rolled to
Lennie’s feet. She watched Fenrir’s blood evaporate from its bronze
tip. She had done it—she had killed the Wolf.

So why didn’t it feel like a victory?

The raven cawed above her head and flapped
down to the floor where Fenrir had died. It turned its single
bright eye to Lennie and croaked. Then it fluffed its feathers, and
began to swell, flowing upward into the familiar shape of Ramblin’
Red. He brushed the last black feathers from his arms and glared at
her.

“You fool—you’ve ruined everything!” There
was no trace of the comfortable drawl in his voice. “I should
slaughter you where you stand.”

Lennie stared at him, disbelieving. “You’ve
got a hell of a nerve. Fenrir’s dead, the world is saved—just what
did you expect from me?”

“I 
expected 
you to follow
directions,” he said coldly.

Oh, this was too much. She flushed and
stepped toward him, remembering her threat to gouge out his one
good eye. Her toe bumped the spear. Picking it up, she poked him in
the chest with it.

“
You 
did this to me. You did this
to my father...gave us this bizarre power without even an
instruction manual.”

She poked him again. “You sicced us on an
all-powerful monster that could eat a VW Bug in one bite, all for
some damn prophecy that no one except you gives a rat’s ass
about.”

His eye widened, fixed on the spear, and he
took a step back. “Now, that’s not true. He was going to destroy
the world—”

But Lennie wasn’t listening. She pressed on,
jabbing him in the chest for emphasis. “You destroyed our lives.
You took my father away and virtually murdered my mother. Just what
gives you the right?”

“I explained all that.” He eased the spear
aside and rubbed his chest. “You and your father had the best
chance of reaching Fenrir unharmed.”

“Oh, really. And why couldn’t you do it, Mr.
I’ve-Got-Mysterious-Powers?”

“Me?” he all but squeaked. “He could
have killed me.” His gaze never left the spear in
Lennie’s hand.

She snorted. “Well, I’m not going to kill
you.”

She tossed the spear to him, cross-wise. He
flinched, but caught it out of the air. Relief spread across his
face and he began to pump himself up with his usual arrogance.
Lennie glared into his one blue eye.

“Killing is too good for you.”

She raised her tattooed hand, still coated
with her own blood. The unspent power flashed around her fingers,
flowing easily this time. Light collected like a snowball in her
palm. Ramblin’ Red’s mouth fell open and he backed away.

“No—you can’t!”

But of course she could. Sparks flowed from
her hand and swarmed him. He swatted at them, his eye widening in
panic. An aura glowed around him like a second skin. It peeled away
from his body, taking on the translucent form of a robed, bearded
man with one blue eye, a broad-brimmed hat, and a spear in one
hand.

Ramblin’ Red’s true form, Lennie
supposed.

The robed figure shot upward, escaping the
doomed human body. But the sparks pursued him, spinning strings in
the air around him. Though he flailed and twisted and tried to
escape, they closed on him, winding ever tighter, encasing him
along with the spear. The light of his aura vanished and the cocoon
hit the floor with a satisfying thud. The human body collapsed next
to it.

Lennie strode over to the cocoon and gave it
a solid kick. She heard a faint grunt and it bucked a little.
Junkyard limped up behind her and looked over her shoulder.

“Hmm. Kind of like having a tiger by the
tail, eh?”

“It’s only a problem if I let him go.”

Jaw set, she turned from the cocoon. The
anger had drained away, leaving her exhausted and vaguely
dissatisfied. Heroes saved the world. Heroes got the glory. So how
come she felt more like a janitor?

Then she saw her father, who lay motionless
where Fenrir had left him. Blood pooled on the floor near his head.
“Oh my God—Dad!”

She ran to him. Tooth marks punctured his
skin in oozing points of red. Mostly superficial. But one deep,
ragged gouge tracked down one cheek and across his neck. The kind
of gouge that meant a person would never wake up.

Junkyard came up behind her and put a hand on
her shoulder. “Lennie...“

“All I wanted was to find my father.” Her
throat closed around the words. She drew a ragged breath and sagged
to the floor. She lifted her father’s hand to her lap. There was no
pulse.

How could he be dead? Numb, she could only
grasp the unfairness of it. He had saved her, become her father
again. And for those few moments, she’d had a family.

She pulled his silver watch from her pocket.
It was warm in her hands, as warm as it had been all those years
ago, when he’d taken it from his own pocket to let her wind it. She
popped it open. The inscription said, 
May there always be
enough time.

But he hadn’t had the time. Not with her
mother, and not with her.

Lennie had wanted to give it back to him, to
tell him that her mother...well, she didn’t know what she would
have told him. She closed it and laid it gently in his hand.

Junkyard squatted beside her and put an arm
around her shoulders. “Lennie, I’m so sorry—”

But she wasn’t listening. As she touched her
father’s hand, something tingled under her fingertips—a faint
vibration in the wasted bones of his fingers. Her tattoo prickled
in answer. Could it be...?

She turned his hand over. The Valknut was
there. Three interlocking triangles, just like hers. The thing was
a curse. She had hated its indelible presence. But it had also
saved her life.

Maybe...

Before the thought had fully formed, the
vibration faded, as though he was too weak to sustain it.
Desperately, she clamped her tattooed hand over his. There was no
time to think. No time to doubt. She focused inward, calling on her
remaining energy. She was so exhausted...

The power seemed to take forever to build.
Then the familiar charge grew in her hand and she let the energy
flow.

For a moment, it seemed to work. She felt her
father’s Valknut awaken under her palm. The air hummed around their
clasped hands. Junkyard flinched as sparks flowed in a warm, gentle
current over her father’s body. But her father remained still and
lifeless, and the current faltered.

No! She couldn’t let him die. Her heart still
beat. She still breathed, moved, thought. There had to be more to
give. She reached deeper, and the stream of sparks brightened. At
the same time, the room seemed to darken. She swayed, feeling as
though her own life were pouring out the end of her arm. Someone
moaned—her father? She slumped forward, and still the current
flowed into him.

“Lennie.” She felt Junkyard’s arm around her
shoulders, pulling her upright. “That’s enough. Stop.”

But she couldn’t. The power drained out of
her, siphoning her life away. Cold spread through her limbs and her
heart fluttered against her ribs. Then a boney hand grasped her
wrist and pulled her tattooed hand free, breaking the current. The
backlash hit her like a defibrillator. She gasped and tried to sit
up, but the room spun around her and she had to close her eyes.

“Easy now,” Junkyard murmured in her ear.
“Take a deep breath—that’s right. Now another.”

Slowly, the warmth returned to Lennie’s
limbs. She opened her eyes. The room held still and everything
stayed in place. “All right. I—I’m okay.”

She looked down at her father, hardly daring
to hope. He tried to smile at her, but winced when the movement
creased an angry red scar across his cheek—all that was left of his
wound. And his eyes—