Embrace of the Damned (2 page)

Movement caught his eye. He turned, ready to launch into another attack, and caught sight of a decapitated body sliding slowly from an ornate gold and green chair to the floor, making a lifeless heap. He relaxed.

It was over. Soon, he, too, would be over.

Blinking barely focused eyes, he lowered his sword and lifted his head, stretching muscles of his body that had long gone unused. He limped to a nearby chair and sat. He needed to leave this place because he didn’t want to die here and he didn’t have much time, but now that the insane rage that had animated his half-dead body had ebbed, he could barely move. His nose twitched, stinging from the stench of unwashed bodies and death.

Slumping against a heap of silken pillows, his blood staining them dark brown, he closed his eyes. Just for a moment. His hands still gripped his weapons, as though secured there for eternity. One wound burned brighter and hotter than the rest. He looked down at his side and examined the crescent-shaped slash.

He wouldn’t survive it.

Every movement made the congealing blood covering him—his own and other men’s—crack like dried mud. The images of what he’d done crowded his mind, made him sick, but he didn’t want to take it back. He looked around, his lip curling with hatred. If anything, he wanted more.

“Broder Calderson!” His name echoed through the quiet chamber.

In spite of his wounds, Broder leapt to his feet, turned toward the voice, and reflexively threw the ax in his right hand. The man who stood at the entrance of the chamber didn’t move, didn’t even blink, as the weapon circled through the air, swooping end over end lazily, as if time had slowed it, the blade headed straight for his forehead.

The ax passed through the man as though he were made of mist.

The man—tall, slender, with black hair slicked back from his angular, handsome face—smiled. He swished his forefinger back and forth, grinning. “No, no, Broder. Bad boy.”

Broder frowned at the strange language and accent and backed up, the sword dropping from his hand and clattering to the marble floor. The man wore outlandish clothing.

He looked him up and down. He wore no tunic and his trousers were more than passing strange. There was an odd, sharp cut to his garments and his shoes were too shiny. Some sort of extra-long bit of material that served no purpose hung from his neck. He’d never seen the like of such attire—or fabric—in all his life. A black swath of some hard material Broder couldn’t identify balanced on the man’s nose and wrapped around the upper part of his face, concealing his eyes.

“What are you?” Broder asked in a voice that hadn’t been used in a very long time. It came out broken and rough.

“Not what,
who
. You don’t recognize me? I am Loki.” The man walked toward him, strange footwear crunching broken pottery, treading through pools of blood. His strange, shiny shoes never seemed to be affected. His voice held a strong note of derision. “Surely you must know who I am. I am known for the tricks that I play, and I have played many of them.” His voice went serious. “But I am not playing now.”

Of course he knew Loki. Broder felt the blood drain from his face. He’d just tried to kill a god. “Am I dead, then?”

Loki laughed. “Not hardly. Not yet, anyway.” He removed the odd black thing covering the upper part of his face and his cold blue eyes skirted Broder’s body, taking in the parts of him covered with Broder’s own blood. “You won’t be dead for a very, very long time. If ever.”

Broder struggled to make sense out of those words. It was clear to Loki and to himself that he’d be dead in a few hours. It had only been a need for revenge that had kept his body full of life up until now. He’d had his revenge; now it was time to join his loved ones. He welcomed it.

Loki took a step forward, his polished shoe crunching on the remains of an invaluable piece of pottery. “You’ve had more than a little fun here, I think. You must be thirsty.” He gestured to a half-broken pitcher on a nearby table, sitting in a pool of the blood he’d shed. “Need libation, perhaps?”

“It wasn’t … fun.” Broder frowned, trying to translate the odd manner of his speech. “I had reason for this violence.”

“You offend the gods, you ungrateful barbarian!”
Loki’s voice boomed from him, echoed into the reaches of Broder’s head, made the blood leak from his ears. Broder swiped at it and stared at the coating on his fingers.
“You’ll not avoid reprimand!”

Broder staggered backward, his head and side pounding out an intense rhythm of pain.

“You must be punished for this. You know that, don’t you, Broder?”

Punished? He’d just spent the last ten years of his life in torment. And before that … hadn’t he had enough torment?

“Wah, wah, wah,”
Loki sneered. “Don’t think I can’t read your thoughts. If you offend the gods, you suffer for it.” He pointed at Broder. “And you, sir, have offended most heartily.”

Broder winced, pain flaring through the wound in his side. He just wanted to die. He wanted to collapse to the floor, close his eyes, and never wake up. However, he had a very bad suspicion his wish would not be granted. There were punishments worse than death. Anyone who believed in the gods knew that much, and this was Loki, the most deceitful of all the gods.

Loki held up a hand. In his palm a small blue light sputtered to life and formed the shape of a sword, then narrowed to a sharp, pointed sliver that looked like a narrow spear.

Broder tensed. Surely that supernatural weapon was meant for him.

“I’m impressed you don’t run,” said Loki. “Most of them do.”

He threw the blue sliver at Broder. Even though he moved to avoid it, the sliver found his chest, burying deep like the thinnest dagger made of pure ice. It pierced his heart, spreading agony to every part of him. Freezing and burning in equal turns, it dropped Broder to his knees, snapping his head back, arching his spine. A bellow of torment ripped from his throat.

The sliver formed a cold hollow of nothing in the center of his chest, shearing away all the flickers of humanity he’d managed to hold on to during the last decade. Soon nothing remained.

Nothing. And nothing truly meant
nothing
—no warmth, no love … but no fear or anger, either. It was … peaceful. He breathed into it, relaxing completely for the first time in years. Yet at nearly the same moment the pain ebbed, something else rushed in to fill up the serene emptiness. Something foreign. Something that didn’t belong there.

Something from Loki.

In the center of his soul a mark of despair burned. He knew without being told that he was Loki’s—his possession—and that could not be a good thing. He’d traded one Hel for another.

Broder pried his gummy, blood-crusted eyes open and saw that he’d fallen on his hands and knees to the floor, shards of pottery cutting into his shins and palms. Grunting with effort, holding one arm to his chest as though he could compel the icy sliver and Loki’s mark out of him, he forced himself to look up into the grinning, gloating face of the god.

“You are hereby punished for your crimes, Broder Calderson. Eternally.”

Broder had no doubt of this, but he could barely rouse himself to care.

“Don’t be disheartened,” Loki continued. “I am not an evil god with no sense of the human heart. Exactly one thousand years from now, if you have been a worthy warrior you will have a woman. Not just any woman—the woman of your every desire.”

And then Broder truly knew he was damned.

ONE THOUSAND YEARS LATER … TO THE DAY

Jessamine’s boots clicked on the pavement of the parking ramp, echoing through the empty structure. It was late and she was alone. If she’d had any other choice, she would have been home and in bed right now with a good book, rather than walking through this creepy parking garage with every bad movie cliché about such places riffing through her already freaked-out mind.

Her tote bag, stuffed with all her paperwork, rested over one shoulder. Her hand was secured in her pocket, pepper spray unlocked and at the ready. She didn’t take any chances. Not these days. Life had suddenly grown too unpredictable for that.

Her hands still trembled from what she’d just done. She wasn’t certain she could ever do it again. How she’d managed to do it at all still eluded her. She hadn’t received any concrete answers from the risk she’d taken tonight, but sometimes lack of information was meaningful, too.

And, wow, she’d taken a huge risk.

Now all she wanted was to get home, sort through the confusing results of the evening, and figure out what to do next.

As she rounded one of the thick concrete walls, a man stepped out from near the elevators. Jessa hesitated,
watching him carefully, her hand ready on the pepper spray. He was a good-looking guy dressed in a black linen shirt, a pair of jeans, and black boots. His face had a
GQ
-handsome quality to it, light blue eyes and well-trimmed facial hair around his sensual mouth. His hair, black and slick, was styled to perfection. Her best friend, Lillie, would have swallowed her tongue. Just her type.

Normally she’d think
yum
. Tonight he set off every warning in her body. He was the type of polished man that usually put a woman at ease, but her mind never strayed from
Ted Bundy
. He’d been a handsome, polished guy, too.

He watched her with attention beyond that of some guy waiting for an elevator. His fascination with her every move did little to flatter her. She walked past him, doing her best to hide her impulse to break into a run.

“Be careful tonight,” said the man in a rich voice that reminded her of warm chocolate.

She missed a step, tried to smile but was too on edge. “Excuse me?”

“They know what you are.” He paused. “They’ve been watching you.”

What I am?
She pulled up short, stunned by his words. The comment sent a shiver through her, a jolt of fear followed by a sharp jab of anger. “Are you trying to scare me or are you just crazy?”

The edges of the man’s mouth quirked up and he slid his hands into his pockets. “My name is Dmitri. I’m a friend.”

“A friend, sure. The kind of friend who wants to rape and murder me, maybe.” Her hand clenched hard on the pepper spray. If he took one step in her direction, he’d get it full in the face.

For a moment it appeared as though his eyes went completely black. It rocked her back a step.
Impossible.
“I’m not the one who means you harm. I’m just trying to warn you, Jessa.”

Now she was really scared. How the hell did he know her name?

Jessa bolted, breaking into a run, checking over her shoulder constantly to make sure he wasn’t following her.

What that man had said made a kind of sense she didn’t want to examine. She had no idea who Dmitri was, but it was possible he was telling the truth. Maybe they
were
watching her. Maybe they did know what she was. Maybe they did mean her harm. It wasn’t paranoia if they were really after you, right? She just wished she knew who
they
were.

How much strangeness could a woman handle before she went insane? She was afraid she might be about to discover the answer.

When she determined Dmitri wasn’t following, she slowed her pace, rounding the corner that brought her to the lot where she’d parked her car. Her heart pounded fast enough to make her eardrums thrum and her hands were shaking. She needed to get home, to the safety of her well-locked apartment. She needed time to breathe, collect her thoughts.

Jessa approached her black sedan with a sigh of relief. No echo of a man’s measured footsteps had resounded behind her; no gloved hand had covered her mouth and drawn her into the shadows. There was her car; she was safe. Yay. She tried to muster some enthusiasm for that happy news and failed. She was exhausted and frightened.

Pulling her keys from her other pocket, she unlocked her doors remotely. Just as she touched the door handle, someone cursed loudly. Her head whipped up and she spotted a man with medium brown hair holding a briefcase on the opposite side of the row of parked cars. He looked harmless, like some accountant or businessman who’d been working late.

In one hand he held a briefcase and he was using the other hand to shade his eyes as he peered into the driver’s-side window. He swore again, his voice sounding squeaky and distressed.

She almost ignored the worried man, got into her car,
and drove away, but she hadn’t been raised that way. “Are you all right, sir?” she called loudly from her safe place beside her car’s driver’s-side door. Her voice held a nervous, distracted tremor. She didn’t want to deal with this right now.

The man glanced at her, seeming surprised to find her there. He adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “I locked my keys and my cell phone in the car. Stupid,” he muttered. He turned back to the automobile, staring into the window as though he could reach through the glass and grab his stuff. “It’s late, the building is closed, and—”

“No problem,” Jessa called to him. “I’ve locked my keys in my car before, too. I’ll call a locksmith for you. I’ll tell them it’s a green Impala on level three of the Handburg parking garage. They should be here soon, okay?”