Valknut: The Binding, page 30
The pressure on the blade increased. Lennie’s lips parted. She wanted to scream, but the breath caught in her throat. Then a shadow fell over them both.
“Restrain yourself, Douglas. I am not finished with her, yet.”
Shadow oozed over Lennie as if it had physical substance. Shudders wracked her body. She had felt that darkness before—in the parking lot—at the carnival—but not so powerful, so invasive as this. The tendrils of Fenrir’s will prodded her mind for weakness, seeking passage like great, poisonous worms. She fought them, gasping with effort, and kept her gaze locked on Junkyard’s chin, on the short whiskers that had sprouted since morning—on the cleft that she hadn’t noticed until now. Junkyard could play with his knife all he wanted, as long as he stayed between her and Fenrir. But Junkyard released her and stepped back into the shadow.
And Fenrir was there.
Her great-great-whatever grandfather, cigarette and all. Only he wasn’t her grandfather. The body was an inadequate mask, too puny to disguise the monstrous evil it contained. Broad-shouldered and enormous, he sat on a battered, over-stuffed chair, holding a staff like a scepter in his hand. The throne of the hobo king. She would have laughed if he weren’t so terrifying.
The weight of Fenrir’s power fell full upon her with crushing force. Her hand responded, a hornets’ nest against an avalanche, barely enough to keep her mind free.
“Do you know,” Fenrir said, his voice a low growl, “how long I have waited for this moment?”
Don’t look at his eyes. She forced her gaze to Fenrir’s shoes, making herself note their high-polished blackness. Against her will, her gaze trailed up his legs, pausing at the rough-carved staff in his hands—the one from Verdandi’s vision?
She wasn’t allowed to study it. Irresistibly, her eyes traveled upward, along the starched whiteness of his shirt, to his hard, cruel mouth. He plucked the cigarette from thick lips and exhaled. Smoke swirled around him, twining into the shadow. He smiled, unveiling pointed animal teeth. Lennie shuddered. I will not meet his eyes.
“For millennia, I waited underground, listening and planning. For a century, I gathered my legions. And now, this night, they will fall like an ax upon the neck of the world. There is only you—” contempt hung from his words, “—to stand in my way.”
He snapped his fingers and signaled. “Bring her to me.”
There was a note of finality in his voice.
Junkyard stayed beside Fenrir’s throne like a guard. When he didn’t move, Lennie felt a brief hope that maybe he was fighting Fenrir. Maybe she wasn’t alone against the monster. Then strong hands grabbed her from behind and bent her arm back until her tattooed hand touched her shoulder blades. She cried out, tried to twist away, and managed to stomp hard on her captor’s foot. He swore and his grip loosened, but before she could escape, a wiry arm snaked around her neck. A voice grunted in her ear. “Hold still, güerita, or I will break your arm like a twig.”
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.
I’m just sayin’ there must be somethin’ to her, is all.
The thousand thousand souls tethered to Fenrir’s will stirred restlessly, straining against his control. Sweat beaded on his brow. Enough! Your pathetic attempts to interfere will work no more!
It was time to end this impasse. It was time to begin his true destiny.
Carefully, carefully, he focused his will on the girl. He must release her to allow her to destroy Jarvis Cook, but her hand still radiated the Allfather’s power. He must reach into her mind and instill one last compulsion—
Hey! Look! Ain’t that the Allfather sittin’ on that there rafter?
Startled, Fenrir lifted his gaze.
***
The color of anger is yellow.
The knife rested heavy in Lennie’s hand, deadly, cold, ready to drink warm blood. There was no warehouse, no Junkyard brooding in the shadows, no Briggs, no gangbangers...not even Fenrir, evil incarnated sitting on a hobo throne. There was only her father, the object of longing and hatred so balanced that she couldn’t move.
Kill him.
Yes...
Kill him, kill him, kill him kill him kill himkillhimkillhimKILL—
Abruptly, the voice stopped, leaving her alone in her own darkness. She was free to move. Free to kill.
And why not?
She gazed at the slack, tortured face of her father, the question cycling over and over in her mind. Why not? Sweat dripped from the handle of the knife and she still didn’t strike.
Because—because—
Something flickered in the emptiness of her father’s eyes. Not the terror evident in the lines of his face. Nor the yellow reflection of Fenrir’s will. For a moment—just a moment—Lennie saw compassion.
