The concrete walls seemed to shudder with the motion of a subway train rolling past in a neighboring tunnel, shaking some of the dust and grit from its resting place. Loki watched from his dark, dank corner of the room, whiskers twitching as his beady eyes followed the body of the demigod he had used to carry out his plans falling to the cold, hard ground. The movement stirred some of the bloody feathers littered around the room, small eddies sending them skittering across the concrete floor. All around Loki was his destruction of their perfect world—the bodies of the Valkyries he had killed still stacked up in one corner.
Loki’s timing had been perfect: he’d escaped the body at exactly the right moment. If he had left a microsecond later, his spirit would have been trapped, and he would have perished—just as the demigod had—fatally wounded by Bryn’s sword.
He had brought down a reign of terror fit for any Edda, and he would have continued and had his revenge on the god Odin, had it not been for the Mare, Korvain, who was staring down at an unconscious Bryn as she clutched her golden blade to her chest, her knuckles stark white.
Korvain had been the one to discover Loki’s hiding place, his place of torture. He had been the one to bring Loki’s plot for revenge to an end. But Loki would not stop here. He had not suffered in that cave for longer than he could remember simply to walk away from his prize … and now he had two targets.
The clang of the metal brought Loki’s attention back to where it should have always been. Loki watched as Korvain eyed the blade in Bryn’s hand warily before whispering gently in her ear, trying to wake her. Loki could practically taste the metallic hum of blood on the back of his tongue. Bryn had lost a lot of that vital fluid, but she was still immortal. She would recover.
The Valkyrie’s eyes peeled open sluggishly, and she sucked in a sharp breath. Blinking rapidly, she looked up into Korvain’s eyes for a moment before glancing down. Her fingers tightened around the hilt of her sword.
“Korvain,” she croaked. “I need you to get my Valkyries out of here.” She raised a shaking hand to her neck, brushing her fingers against her tattoo. Loki looked on as the sword in her hand seemed to shiver and disappear. “Take Eir out first,” Bryn added, cautiously sitting up.
The cuffs and collar Loki had placed on the Valkyrie to keep her from fading fell to the floor with a sharp clang that made him cringe, his hypersensitive rodent ears ringing with the sound.
“I won’t leave you here,” the Mare snarled in reply, his expression darkening, and if Loki weren’t mistaken, there was also something else there, hiding behind his dark, shadow-filled eyes.
Bryn shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere. But Eir doesn’t need to see her sister like that for any longer than she already has. Take her away from here.” When the Mare hesitated, Bryn added, “Please.”
Loki looked over at the only other surviving Valkyrie—Eir, the goddess of healing—and he would have smiled if his temporary rodent body had the lips to do it. Eir was still clutching the body of her dead sister to her chest, still rocking the corpse back and forth, back and forth, as if that would bring her back from Hel’s frozen doorstep.
Korvain’s growl drew Loki’s wandering eyes. He was bending down to pick Bryn up, cradling her close to his chest.
“Put me down, please. I need to get to Eir,” Bryn said, squirming weakly in the Mare’s arms. After a seemingly long internal debate, Korvain begrudgingly did as she asked and placed her gently on the floor. Bryn collapsed at Eir’s feet, crawling towards the woman. Loki scurried out of his hiding spot for a moment to get a better vantage point. Bryn looked up at Korvain, and without a word he gently took Eir’s sister from her hands. The Valkyrie didn’t even fight him.
“Eir, we need to get out of here,” Bryn murmured soothingly, rubbing the other woman’s arms. When Eir nodded, Bryn stiffly got to her feet with Korvain’s help. Hooking her hand under Eir’s arm, Bryn said, “I need you to stand up for me, okay … That’s it … Good, now lean on me for support.”
“What about Kristy?” the woman asked with a cracked voice, slouching against Bryn.
“We’ll come back for her. We’ll come back for all of them. But right now, we have to get out of here. Come on,” she urged, directing Eir towards the metal door. Korvain stalked behind them, his malice polluting the air.
When his rat senses couldn’t pick up any other hints of their presence, Loki reverted to his true form. At seven feet, his heritage as a Jotunn could be seen by anyone bothering to look, but it was his pale hair and green eyes that had helped him to assimilate into Aesirean society so easily.
Popping the vertebrae in his neck, Loki took one final look at the scene of the first battle in the war against Odin.
“Soon, blood brother. Soon,” he whispered into the cool air. Closing his eyes, Loki faded from the tunnel, his new plan already developing.