Three years later
The dead guy was hot.
Not that he was actually dead yet. But he would be in a few hours.
I kept my head down as I pulled a draft beer. Angling the frosted mug to reduce the foam, I suppressed the urge to meet his gaze. That would only freak him out and I didn’t need a bar full of panicked people.
“Come on, gorgeous.” He leaned over the counter. “My friends are drunken losers tonight and I could use some intelligent conversation. What time are you off?”
“It’s been a long shift already.” I slid the frosted mug to one of the many customers vying for my attention. “Can I get you a drink?” I tried to steer the conversation back to bartending.
“I’m DD for the night.” He nodded toward his group of idiot friends, currently raising a ruckus at the pool tables.
“Poor you.” I smiled, pouring a row of tequila shots for a table of giggling sorority types.
Next place can’t be a college town. I moved to the end of the bar to wait on a few new arrivals. College kids wouldn’t know what a decent tip was if it hit them in the face.
It had only been a few weeks since I arrived in the sleepy little Carolina beach town, but I was already scouting my next move farther up the coast, away from Wilmington. I was always on the move, never settling down in one place for long. It was the way it had to be. I liked the smaller coastal towns, especially in the off-season. A person could easily disappear in the outer banks of the Carolinas.
“How about a drink after work?” The hot-dead-guy was back again and I wanted nothing more than to lose myself in his friendly banter. But his death called to me, begging me to meet his gaze.
I closed my eyes, absently pinching the bridge of my nose to quell the tension brought on by his arrival. “Like I said, it’s been a long night. I’m diving into bed face first for some serious sleep as soon as I leave here.” I tried to give him a friendly but distant smile while keeping my eyes cast down at the sink full of dishes I should be washing before Kelly arrived for her shift.
“How about tomorrow? Or your next day off?” he persisted, attempting to capture my gaze. It was only natural he was drawn to me in his last hours.
I winced. He wouldn’t have a tomorrow, and the last thing he needed to be doing right now was wasting what little time he had left on a total stranger. A stranger who didn’t have the power to save him. No one could—when your number was up, you were out of time.
I cast a wary glance around as the strain from resisting my natural impulses threatened to me. My throat tightened and my palms itched, while sweat pooled at my back. I wouldn’t be able to hold off much longer. “Why don’t you go back to your friends and try to enjoy the rest of your evening?” My mesmerizing voice came out in a low, grating rasp.
He nodded slowly, blinking. “Good idea.”
The boy gave me one last glassy-eyed stare before turning toward his friends. The tension in my shoulders immediately subsided. He would obey the one who had seen his death. The one who would guide his soul to the afterlife in Andlang, a place I could never enter. There was a time when my ancestors could come and go from the beyond as they pleased, but that was before the last age. The afterlife was different now.
“What’s up, Thea?” Kelly ducked behind the counter, tying on an apron. “You don’t look so good, girl. You’ve got some wicked dark circles under your eyes. When’s the last time you slept?”
I swiped a palm across my face, schooling my features. I couldn’t let my co-worker see too much. “Thank God you’re here. Would you mind if I head out early? I have a raging headache.”
A headache I wouldn’t be able to shake until the dead guy met his end. I had a job to do and now that I’d seen his violent death looming on the horizon, I wouldn’t be able to rest easily until my work was done.
“Sure, get some sleep, girl,” Kelly said. “I’ve got this.”
“Thanks.” I cast a last glance over my shoulder at the nice guy who didn’t deserve what was coming for him tonight. He was laughing with his frat-boy friends. He still had time, but I was already running out of it. I rushed to the back of the bar and out the alley exit.
The rows of historic southern downtown buildings were punctuated with creepy dark alleys lined with shady back doors and leaky dumpsters. I darted toward the alley entrance, hoping I could make it down the block to the public parking lot, but the familiar cramping of my shoulders and tightening of my eyes told me I would have to risk doing this here.
I glanced behind me, spotting a rusted old fire escape, and sprinted straight for it. With a carefully aimed jump, I latched onto the ladder to pull it down, but it didn’t budge. Even better. No one could follow me now. I pulled myself up and quickly scaled the ladder to the rooftop. I scouted this rooftop when I first took the job at Harkers Tavern. It was the tallest structure around and it would do in a pinch.
I headed for the shadows at the back of the building, kicking off my shoes and shedding my black t-shirt along the way, grateful for the human invention of racerback sports bras. They were perfect for nights like this. I flung my hair clip to the ground, letting my long dark hair cascade down my back. As the white-hot pain of transformation cleaved my skull in two, I suppressed a shriek and collapsed, hunching over as my body buckled and my skin split from shoulder to waist.
I groaned as bones cracked and reformed and my hands and feet bent in an unnatural way. Blunt fingernails curved into sharp talons. My legs ached as the bones lengthened and hollowed, leaving me taller, lighter, and more agile. Feathers sprouted from the gashes in my back, unfurling and stretching like limbs seldom used. As my wings expanded, so did my shoulders and ribcage, lighting my body on fire. My entire being raged with the heat of my natural form. Every inch of me hurt as blood rushed through my veins and my heart threatened to burst. My breath came in great ragged gasps. It had been far too long this time.
I lay on the blacktop roof, spent, but I felt more alive than I had in months. Climbing to my feet, I trembled with the suddenness of my change. Valkyries took on their natural forms only when they had a duty to perform, a battle to fight, or for training purposes. Since coming to the human realm I’d had little need for my Valkyrie.
I rotated my head from side to side until my vision began to clear. Avian vision. It was always an adjustment. Rubbing the palm of a taloned hand over my face, I could feel the sharp angles of my cheekbones in my otherwise human face. I took a step forward on bare feet, my curved toenails clicking on the surface of the roof. The enormous weight of my wings tugged at my shoulders as I walked, raven black and silver feathers dragging behind me like a cloak.
The momentary fatigue passed as Valkyrie strength flooded my system. I flexed my wings, all six of them. My primary wings arched high over my head, unfurling with black and pewter feathers. Secondary wings moved in perfect sync with my primaries. Silver and pewter feathers stretched wide to a span of double my height. My tertiary wings pointed to the ground, falling behind me with feathers of silver and white. Retracting my massive wings, I stepped up to the edge of the building, away from the lights of the nearby boardwalk.
My dark hair fell nearly to my waist, threaded with fine black and silver feathers that blended with my wings. Among the shadows, one might think I was a human girl with incredibly long hair, so fine were my feathers. But I was not human. I was Valkyrie. And death walked in my shadow.
His soul called to me as I ran from rooftop to rooftop, barely pausing to leap the gaps between buildings. I could fly, of course, but I couldn’t risk being seen in this world. Humans no longer believed in the old gods or the creatures they created to outlive them.
I was close. I could hear the steady thump of his heart and the bass beat of the music from his car down on the street. He waited at a deserted intersection for the light to turn green, his drunken buddies in the backseat still acting like fools.
After a lifetime of this, I still felt the urge to intervene, an intense desire to save him from the violent death awaiting him once he crossed into the intersection. But I also knew from experience that death would have his due. Even now I could feel him breathing down my neck from the shadows.
“Patience,” I murmured into the void. If I intervened, death would get more creative and the next time it would be far worse than a quick end by car accident.
I stood at the edge of an old building, the talons of my bare feet gripping the red brick facade. I could see the large truck speeding toward the intersection, oblivious to the light changing from green to yellow. This driver was drunk, having neglected to elect a designated driver the way my charge and his friends had. Yet the sober driver would pay the ultimate price for the other driver’s hubris.
My breath caught in my throat as one light turned red and another green. The gods had been cruel when they created the first Valkyries to collect the fallen from battle, sentencing me and my kind to a lifetime of service to death. Like carrion birds on a battlefield, my ancestors once had the honor of selecting the bravest of the fallen to send to the afterlife where only the greatest warriors were taken. But that was before the gods nearly destroyed my world. More than a thousand years later, the Valkyries ruled in place of the gods, yet we were still chained to death. Only now our charges weren’t limited to war heroes, but included victims of violence and cruel ends as well.
The blare of horns and the crunch of metal and shattered glass brought me back to the present. I wouldn’t leave the boy to die alone. His friends would live, but only I could help him now.
As I crouched to swoop down, I heard the unmistakable sound of massive wings spreading in the darkness. My blood ran cold and my spine went rigid. I didn’t pause long enough to see the other Valkyrie. I turned and fled the way I’d come, leaving the boy’s soul for the other to claim.
My heart raced as I flew over Harkers Sound toward Gloucester and the mainland. There was only one way off of Harkers Island by car and I couldn’t risk it. I flew high enough so anyone who spotted me would think I was a bird of prey out for a late-night hunt. I couldn’t go home. There was only one course of action now that Mother’s bounty hunters had caught up to me … again.
I had to leave. Tonight.
I couldn’t fathom how they’d found me so fast this time. I should have had a few more weeks before there was any danger of discovery. But they were getting more daring and vicious in their pursuit.
I flew until the cool ocean breeze calmed me and cleared my mind. Mother’s bounty hunters will never drag me home before I’m ready. My life belonged to me. Not to my mother or my people. I would return to Valsgard one day—on my own terms.