Valkyrie Symptoms (7 page)

Back home, I wasn't the type of girl who fired back, unless it was against Tuck. Maybe it was because being Graham's sister meant I'd never really needed to, or maybe it was because I'd never done something daring enough to really garner this sort of reaction. Either way, a whole new Ellie simmered beneath the surface, rising to meet Margit's challenge.

“It's funny you bring that up,” I said. “In some countries, red hair was considered a sign of witchcraft. They actually burned people at the stake for it. Can you imagine? Just goes to show that a little ignorance can go a long way—if you let it go unchallenged, that is.”

The entire car went silent, and for a moment I wondered if I'd gone too far, and if every one of them could hear me struggling to swallow the nervous lump in my throat. Then Kjell threw his considerable weight behind me.

“You're way too sweet if you feel guilty.” He shot me a reassuring big-brother smile that made me think of Graham. “She deserved it.”

While I was grateful for the moral support, I would have preferred he keep his eyes on the road as the car started the steep ascent into the narrow mountain lane outside of town.

For the first time that night, but far from the last, I wished I'd just stayed home. Particularly when I peeked in the rearview mirror and saw the sulky, bitter scowl on Margit's face. The hate in her eyes when they met mine told me she had no intention of letting me off so easily.

We drove around a dark and narrow road that traced the fjord, past shallow rowboats bobbing at the ends of rickety docks and stilted boathouses clinging to the shore. An occasional fishing trawler, anchored close to shore, cast a dark shadow across the shimmering water. Not a single car passed us during the drive from Skavøpoll to the tiny town of Selje, its nearest neighbor.

What Kjell had called a pub was actually the bar of the only hotel in town. And it was surprisingly crowded for a Tuesday night. Kjell found a barstool for me, after Margit somehow managed to straddle two stools, making sure I couldn't sit near her. And I was uncomfortable when Kjell then ended up standing himself. Especially when Margit scowled at me, like I'd forced Kjell to do that.

Margit immediately launched into a hushed conversation with Sven, who cast a few apologetic looks at me and more than a dozen at Kjell. It made me feel even worse, since she was making a fool of herself over a boy and alienating him at the same time.

After one last questioning glance at his friends, Kjell seemed determined to make up for Margit's behavior. He kept me entertained—so entertained, I was surprised to glance at my watch and see it was already eleven. I'd promised Grandmother I wouldn't be out too late, since we had to leave for the airport first thing in the morning to pick up Graham.

When I looked up again, something in Kjell's face gave me pause. He was staring over my shoulder, his mouth slightly ajar. His expression was slack and distant, as if his brain had gotten up and walked away, leaving a vacant body behind. It was unsettling. Which is why it took me so long to notice that Kjell wasn't the only one staring at the door. Sven and Margit were similarly fascinated by something or someone directly behind me.

Naturally, I turned.

Two girls roughly Kjell's age were framed in the open doorway, scanning the interior of the bar with cold, appraising eyes.

The first thing I noticed was their appearance. They were impossibly beautiful. And tall. While Norwegians are known for both qualities, these girls decimated anyone I'd seen during all my time in Norway. Or anyone I'd seen in any magazine or movie screen—ever. They were breathtaking and heart-stopping all at once.

They walked slowly into the bar, letting the door close soundlessly behind them. Every movement was lithe and graceful, yet with an edge of casual confidence that seemed almost predatory. Like lions circling their prey.

Both girls were dressed strangely. That was the second thing I noticed. They were wearing all leather—from the plunging necklines of their skintight jackets to their knee-high, fur-trimmed boots. Not the slick black leather of a biker or even the shiny metallic leather of Eurotrash nightclub girls. This leather was beige and natural, a coarse, untanned suede. While I'm personally an Ugg boot addict, there was something off-putting about an entire Ugg catsuit.

There had to be a logical explanation for their clothes. Parts of Norway are still rustic in the most charming way. Herds of goats wander the mountain roads and constitute traffic jams. Entire families live in houses so remote, they can only be reached on snowshoes. Perhaps these girls didn't look as odd to the rest of the room as they looked to me. Maybe that was normal attire for hardy Norwegian mountain folk who happened to look like supermodels.

One quick glance around the bar told me I was hardly the only curious one. There was something extraordinary about those girls. Extraordinary and terrifying. I watched, transfixed, as, one by one, heads turned throughout the bar. Conversations faded into silence, punctuated by the occasional speculative whispers, until the bar was dominated by the obnoxious American country music pumping through the speakers and the loud guffaw of the man in the corner who was too drunk to notice anything except the pint of beer in his hand.

The girls stepped forward, scanning every face as if they'd need to re-create each one from memory when they got home. If they noticed the effect they were having, they didn't care.

As she stepped to the side to get a better view of the booth in the corner, the first girl's jacket slid open just enough to reveal a gun secured against her hip in a low-slung holster. There was a long serrated knife strapped to her calf by a thin leather cord that snaked all the way up her leg. Just when I thought things couldn't get any weirder, a strange voice sounded in my head, one that was me and wasn't me. Like it came from a new part of my consciousness I hadn't had the chance to meet yet. It told me she was an expert with both weapons. Lethal. Her companion was similarly dangerous, but not nearly as skilled as the blond one. It was the way the other girl stood, bearing too much weight on her left leg. And her holster was half an inch too low. The fraction of a second she'd waste drawing her gun could mean the difference between life and death.

And I had no idea where that knowledge came from. I'd never even held a gun. But the truth of it was undeniable. Seeing those girls was like pulling a muscle I didn't even know I had. It stirred something that terrified and electrified me. I felt as if I was fully awake for the first time in my life.

Then the rational Ellie weighed in, reminding me of where I was and how unbelievably strange this moment was. Especially when I glanced back at the lobotomized expression on Kjell's face.

“Is this some sort of local militia?” I whispered, watching the girls move toward the bar, their eyes scanning the room, ever vigilant. Kjell didn't reply. He didn't even acknowledge that I'd spoken.

Before I had a chance to nudge Kjell back into the present, the drunk, guffawing man took three wobbly steps right into one of the girls, the blond one, and stumbled backward, dropping to one knee to catch his balance. He must have been stupid as well as drunk, because somehow he missed the weapons strapped to that model-perfect body. As he rose to his feet, he gave her a very thorough once-over. When his eyes finally reached her face, a lewd smile spread across his lips as he reached out and let his fingertips trail along her thigh.

The blond girl's retaliation was fast as lighting and every bit as deadly. She grabbed him by the hair. Her knee came up as she slammed his head down. There was a sickening crunch as his face met bone. The move was as graceful and smooth as a ballerina's pirouette, but no one could mistake the brutal, incalculable force contained in those long limbs. Or the cold blood pumping through Blondie's veins.

The man crumpled at her feet when she released him, blood pouring from his shattered nose and pooling into a puddle on the floor.

“Kjell,” I whispered. “Your medical training … shouldn't you help him or something?”

Kjell's eyes never left those girls, even when I shook his arm hard, trying to snap him out of it. He was staring at them with an odd sort of determination. The set of his jaw told me that now he only had eyes for those two.

“Kjell?” I repeated, annoyed and a bit scared when he swatted me away with one arm. “If you're staying here to watch the ultimate fighting floor show, can you at least tell me how to get home? Can I call a cab or something?”

When Kjell finally looked down at me, his eyes were as cloudy as opals. The boy at Graham's party had looked the same way, right before he almost pushed me into the pool.

As Kjell stared at me, his eyes cleared, and he recovered enough to remember his manners. “I'm sorry,” he said, shaking his head the way you do when water is trapped in your ear. “I seem to have dozed for a sec.”

Right. Years of hanging out with Tucker and Graham had taught me more than enough about boys and their attention spans. Particularly when supermodels were wandering around. Kjell was hardly in danger of falling asleep anytime soon with those two sirens in the room. But for the moment, his eyes were back on me. And I needed to seize the opportunity to secure my ride home. I wanted out of there immediately.

I'd barely opened my mouth to speak when manicured, fire-red fingernails curled over his shoulder. One of the leather-clad bobsled girls was standing at his side, her lips framing a devastating smile.

“How old are you?” she asked in Norwegian. It was one of the few complete sentences I knew. Hopefully, next she'd ask for the time or directions to the airport. But I had a feeling this conversation was about to soar past my repertoire of memorized phrases.

“Nineteen,” he replied in a flat, monotone voice.

Really?
I thought. Graham would die. A nineteen-year-old boy had taken me out. To a bar. Even if the story was about to end with that boy ditching me for someone more in his age category, I almost regretted I'd never get to see the look on his face.

The beautiful girl shifted closer as she trailed her fingers from Kjell's shoulder down his chest, probing, as if she'd find buried treasure beneath his shirt.

I had to admire the speed with which she closed in on what she wanted. But the way her fingers continued to expertly weave across his torso reminded me more of a butcher inspecting a side of beef than an attempt at seduction.

I started to laugh. I couldn't help it. In light of the man still washing the hardwood floors with his blood, a groping session seemed ill timed. At home, the LAPD would be all over the place by then. As I glanced around the bar again, no one seemed particularly bothered by any of it.

The catatonic expression had settled back over Kjell's features, like he wasn't fully cognizant of what was happening.

The second girl joined her companion. She curled one hand over Kjell's cheek and started saying something in Norwegian. It was about time, I thought. In my book, a few words of small talk ought to precede a full body massage.

I caught the word doctor. Somehow they knew about medical school. Perhaps these were Kjell's friends from Oslo? Kjell tipped his head to the side, watching the blond girl in absolute rapture. Beautiful as she was, it was wrong. So wrong. She pulled him two steps forward, leading him toward the door like a puppy on a leash. I knew I had to do something about it. I had to stop them.

“Kjell, are you okay?” I asked, putting my hand on his wrist protectively.

Instead of replying, Kjell glared down at me. Like he had no idea who I was or what I was doing there. But I held his gaze, steady and trying not to be frightened by the furious intensity in his eyes. He blinked, three times, fast, as if waking out of a dream.

Frantically he dug for something in the pocket of his jacket—something small and silver. It looked like the tiny object my grandmother had dropped into his hand earlier that night. It was a small metal disk, with a series of raised lines and curves that resembled letters, only from no alphabet we'd ever learned in school. Kjell held it out in front of himself. Like a priest exorcising the devil. Except his eyes were firmly closed, clenched tight.

His other hand reached out and found mine, his fingers snaking in between all the digits, squeezing so tight I thought my knuckles would pop like balloons.

The blond girl took a step back, staring scornfully at the object resting on Kjell's palm. Her hand flew out as if she was planning to snatch it away from him. But the instant her fingers touched metal, she whipped them back like she'd been burned. Then her eyes shifted to me. She looked me up and down as the strangest feeling flooded me, a surge of power and knowledge nipping at the periphery of my consciousness, fighting to get in.

A slow, cruel smile spread across Blondie's face. I felt as if I was an amusing, albeit annoying, pet. One that she was about to back over with her car. On purpose.

She extended her index finger and pressed it hard against my forehead. My skin burned under her touch, but I was paralyzed by whatever current seemed to flow between us. And for a horrifying instant, it made me question whose side I should take in this encounter. After all, I barely even knew Kjell, and these girls were something truly remarkable. Longing filled my heart, a burning desire to go with them. To follow the blond girl anywhere she chose to take me.