Valknut: The Binding, page 32
“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—
His eyes looked normal.
“Thank you,” he said, and though she was no longer a child and her father had wasted down to skin and bone, his hands remained large enough to cover hers in a warm, reassuring grip. Lennie trembled all over, unable to say anything.
“Uh, hello? A little help, do you think?”
Lennie and Junkyard turned, startled by the sound of Briggs’s voice. He blinked at them blearily and strained against his bindings. Junkyard’s arm tightened around Lennie’s shoulders. “Stay with your father. I’ll take care of Briggs.”
He hesitated, touching her bloodied cheek. His eyes were full of concern. “Will you be all right?”
She nodded and watched him stride over to Briggs’s chair. Her shoulders felt cold where the warmth of his arm had been.
After a moment’s search, Junkyard scooped up a blood-crusted knife that had been dropped during the fight. He used it to saw through the ropes holding Briggs to the chair.
“Shit,” Briggs said, eyeing the stained knife. “What did I miss?”
Junkyard glanced back at Lennie. “It’s complicated. But right now, we need an ambulance.”
The ropes fell away. Briggs rubbed his arms and flexed his hands, then pulled out his cell phone. As he made the call, his gaze traveled around the warehouse, first resting on the bleeding body that had once held Fenrir, then lingering on the one-eyed, redheaded man and the cocooned form beside him. Behind them lay the Ragman, who moaned but didn’t move. Briggs looked almost relieved to see him.
“Well, I know what I can arrest him for, at least. He’s the one who put me in that chair. As for the rest—” He shook his head. “I hate to sound cliché, but how the hell am I going to write this one up? You’re gonna have to tell me what happened. Somehow, I don’t think I’m going to like it.”
Junkyard shrugged. “Not sure what happened, myself, and I was awake through it all.”
The man who had been Ramblin’ Red sat up and rubbed his neck. “Did I git hit by a train or somethin’?”
Lennie sucked in a breath and checked to make sure the cocoon was still intact. She gave the redheaded man a hard look. “What are you? I mean, who...”
Her voice dwindled. He grinned sheepishly. “Nah, dontcha worry.” He tapped his forehead. “Ain’t nobody in here but me. Name’s Walter Galloway, but you can call me Red.”
He stood up, shook out his legs, and patted himself down. “No harm done, neither. If you call bein’ locked inside yer own head for a hunnerd years no harm. But my friend Angus, over there, he ain’t doin’ so good. Might be he could use some help.”
He gestured at the body vacated by Fenrir. Blood soaked his back. Lennie had assumed he was dead. Briggs approached the body carefully and felt for a pulse.
“He’s right. This guy’s still alive. But, to be honest,” he fingered his bruised temple where Fenrir had struck him, “I’m not sure how much I want to help him. Know what I mean?”
Jarvis Cook squeezed Lennie’s hand. “It’s okay, the monster is gone. All that’s left is another victim. Go help him.” He grinned. “After all, he is your—”
“I know. He’s my great-great-whatever-grandfather.”
But Junkyard stopped her before she could kneel beside the injured man. He frowned at her, doubt clear in his face. “Are you sure about him? I mean...”
“I’m sure,” she said firmly. “That’s not Fenrir.”
He gave her a long, hard look, then his expression relaxed. “Okay. I’ll trust you. I should have trusted you all along. I just wanted so badly to find Austin’s killer—”
“Sshhh.” She laid a finger over his lips. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He caught her hand and held it tight. Horror haunted his fatigue-stained eyes. “All this time, a year on the rails...all those murders. And it was Bill Sutter all along.” He grimaced and shook his head. “How can you be the bait when the fish knows you’re there?”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“But I should have.”
He let go of her hand and stuffed his fists in his pockets. His face twisted in self-torture. Lennie knew that expression. She had worn it for years as her mother committed suicide by inches. “Hey, you didn’t kill those people. I don’t think Bill Sutter was really responsible, either.”
She looked down at Angus Cook, who had begun to stir. “The evil that killed your brother—probably hurt more people than we’ll ever know—that evil is gone. It’s over. It’s time to live your life again.”
His shoulders hunched inside his brother’s jean jacket. So many of the buttons were now missing. Lines of pain having nothing to do with his bruises etched deeply into his face. He was silent for a long time, unable to meet her eyes.
“I don’t think I know how.”
Lennie looked around the warehouse at the odd mix of strangers who stared anxiously back. The lost, the homeless...the lonely. “Then we’ll figure out how together.”
She knelt beside Angus Cook, laid her tattooed hand over his wound, and the sparks began to fly.
###
For more about Marie Loughin, please visit marieloughin.com.
Acknowledgements
Several people have provided consistent support throughout the journey this book has become. First and foremost of these, I’d like to thank Juliana, Hannah, my parents, and especially my husband, Tom, who got me started by saying, “Good ideas. You should write that novel.” (Granted, he was referring to an idea I had involving Nostradamus and time travel, but I took it as a blanket endorsement.)
I would also like to thank Cathy Hedge, Mark Rogers, Glenn Sixbury, and Dave Phalen for sharing their writing expertise with me throughout the process. You guys are the best on several levels. Thanks also go to beta readers Merry Simmons, Lee Killough, Char Simser, Juliana Loughin, and Tammy Mack, who provided valuable comments on the “final” draft, and to Hannah Loughin, whose unbridled enthusiasm for the story kept me going when I wondered if it was all worth it.
I’ve been working on this book intermittently for many years. During this time, I participated in two writers groups. Thanks for feedback go to Pat, Kim, Stacy and Jean of the unofficially named Mighty Mighty Duct Tape Writers Group of Manhattan. There’s no way I can remember and thank every individual who has seen some portion of my novel through Leonard Bishop’s Manhattan group, so I will say a collective “Thank You” to them all.
Finally, I’d like to thank Ryan Runyan for his help with the police procedural and military details. I’d also like to thank a railroad detective named “Chip” and Professor Clifford (Oats) Williams, both of whom gave me invaluable details about life on the iron road. And I'd like to thank Jaye Manus for her careful proofreading of the "final" draft and enlightening discussions about grammar. Any errors of fact or prose are due to my own “poetic license.”
Marie Loughin, Valknut: The Binding
