Waking the Gods: Their Dark Valkyrie #4 Read online

  Waking the Gods

  Their Dark Valkyrie #4

  Eva Chase

  Waking the Gods

  Book 4 in the Their Dark Valkyrie series

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  First Digital Edition, 2018

  Copyright © 2018 Eva Chase

  Cover design: Rebecca Frank

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-989096-26-0

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-989096-27-7

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Free Story!

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Dragon’s Guard excerpt

  About the Author

  Free Story!

  Get Rose’s Boys, the prequel story to Eva’s paranormal reverse harem series The Witch’s Consorts, FREE when you sign up for her newsletter.

  Click here to get your free ebook now!

  1

  Aria

  To some people, a bad day was when it was raining, and their heel broke, and then they were late for work. Those people had never had a bloodthirsty giant appear out of nowhere on a flaming bridge ready to slaughter them and everyone they cared about.

  Right now, as the giant Surt descended toward me and my gods, swinging his fire-laced sword with a vicious grin, I wished I were one of those people with their blissfully mundane lives.

  “Hello, Asgard,” he bellowed. “I’ve finally come to finish what I started.”

  The flames of his bridge arced down to singe the grass in the field where I’d just been having my first really peaceful day in Asgard. Heat wafted over my skin, and the thin smoke coated my nose and mouth. With a twitch of my shoulders, I urged out my valkyrie wings. They’d been a part of me for so long now that their weight as they sprouted from my back felt more like a comfort than a burden. I grabbed my old switchblade from my pocket, wishing I had a larger weapon on hand.

  Thor and Baldur, who’d been sprawled in the grass enjoying the peace with me, braced themselves at my sides. Thor hefted his magical hammer, his square jaw clenched and his normally warm brown eyes now blazing with fury. Baldur’s hands beamed with the supernatural glow he could turn into a weapon of his own. His normally bright boyish face had shadowed.

  Loki sped over on his shoes of flight to join us. “Lovely to see you,” he hollered to Surt. “You’ve saved us the trouble of tracking you down. We’ll finish this war, all right, but not with the outcome I think you’d prefer.”

  He’d grabbed a sword of his own. His other lithe hand held a crackling ball of fire, the same pale red as his hair.

  Surt chuckled, low and rolling, as he strode down the blazing bridge. The flames shuddered under his brawny form. He was nearly as big as Thor, and his magic made him a formidable foe—but there were a bunch of us and only one of him.

  At least, that’s what it looked like in that first moment. Then a rush of shambling bodies poured over the peak of the bridge’s arc after him.

  My heart seized at the sight of their deathly pale faces. The smell of damp rot reached my nose an instant later. They were draugr—the undead figures Surt had been collecting into an army.

  But we’d destroyed his army. Just yesterday, we’d smashed his hidden caverns to bury the creatures and then burned them to ash. Where had this mob of soldiers come from?

  Something gleamed on their skin and in their hair. Streaks of water, I realized—melted water. Here and there, flecks of ice and snow still clung to their clothes, disintegrating with the bridge’s heat as they marched down toward us.

  Somewhere behind me, Hod cursed. Even if he couldn’t see the threat we faced, the god of darkness must have caught enough from scents and sounds to understand the gist of it.

  “Not so confident all of a sudden?” Surt rumbled. “Did you really think I’d keep all my eggs in one basket? Underestimating your enemies has always been your downfall, Asgardians.”

  “So, you carted most of your army off to Niflheim,” Loki said, his tone acidic. “How very clever. You’re lucky they thawed.”

  Niflheim was a frozen realm that the gods had mentioned in passing. I’d never been there. It was the last place we’d have thought to check for the army of a giant who was so keen on fire, that was for sure. Especially when we’d had every reason to believe we’d already decimated that army.

  My heart thumped faster. Had our victory yesterday meant anything at all? We must have taken out at least part of his forces. But he might have gathered more draugr than we’d ever suspected.

  “We destroyed the army you left behind in Muspelheim, and we’ll destroy the one you’ve brought here,” Thor said. “No giant takes Asgard!”

  He raised his hammer, and the other three gods converged around me. After all the battles behind us, we moved instinctively, following the sense of connection that had bound us together ever since the four of them had combined their talents to bring me back from the dead as a valkyrie.

  As I sprang forward, I saw Freya arrive beside us, her golden hair streaming behind her. She swung her sword with a bolt of magic.

  “This will be your end, cur,” a sharp voice shouted. Tyr came charging up, swinging a dagger with his remaining hand. I guessed the war god could still put up a good fight even missing part of one limb.

  Just like every other time I’d fought beside the four gods I was bound to, my awareness expanded with a sense of their pulses thudding in time with mine, the energy surging through their bodies as they launched their attacks. And just like before, their powers merged as they threw them forward. Flares of light and darkness searing with a fiery intensity swirled around Thor’s hurled hammer, straight toward Surt.

  At the same moment, the giant jerked his hand, and the bridge lurched. It tossed him in an epic leap over our heads and sent the rest of his army spilling down toward us even faster. Thor’s hammer and the blaze of magic around it toppled a dozen draugr, but there were hundreds of them, maybe thousands.

  The thunder god spun around as Mjolnir flew back to his hand. Loki, Hod, and Baldur drew closer in a circle around me. We had the giant at one side of us and the draugr behind us now.

  Surt left us no time to regroup. He was already lunging at us, fire streaming from his sword. We flung ourselves out of the way of the lashes of fire. Loki toppled the first line of draugr with a wave of his own flames, but others raised shields that propelled the heat back toward us. His scorching magic wasn’t much use when these soldiers had been equipped by an enemy with his own affinity for fire.

  Odin appeared at the edge of the field, striding toward us with his silver spear. Tyr and Freya darted along the sides of the horde. They were trying to surround the giant in turn, I suspected, but Surt hurtled forward again—toward us and then around us as he whipped his sword through the air.
r />   Thor yanked me to the side, but one of those tongues of flame sliced across my calf, sizzling straight through my jeans and, it felt, down to the bone. A stabbing pain radiated up my leg.

  “Little valkyrie,” Surt said, not even stopping for breath before he charged again. “So small and frail among the gods. Yet somehow you broke my raven’s prison. I don’t think you can escape me.”

  Thor squeezed my shoulder, I gave a quick nod, and the five of us moved together to meet the giant’s attack. Somewhere to my left, a draug let out a groaning sound as one of the other gods must have crushed the life from it. Thor and Loki pushed ahead of me, Baldur’s light blazing over Thor’s hammer and Hod’s darkness twining around Loki’s sword.

  But Surt cut his charge short. He planted his feet with a thud that shook the ground and slashed out with his blade. Some of the flames that spilled from it shattered as Loki’s sword cut through them. Others smashed into nothingness with the impact of Thor’s hammer. One thick hissing current shot straight at me.

  I tried to dodge, but my wounded leg wobbled under me with a fresh spear of pain. With a flap of my wings and a hiss through my teeth, I threw myself to the side, but I wasn’t fast enough. The streak of fire slammed into my arm and torso, throwing me to the ground.

  I really cried out then. A thousand burning needles might as well have jabbed into my skin.

  An instant later, a cool blanket of shadow dropped over me, smothering the flames. “Ari!” Hod said hoarsely.

  Surt bellowed. I shoved myself upright, stumbled, gasped, and clenched my teeth against the pain. We had to keep fighting. The gods needed me. Even if half my body felt as if it were still on fire.

  A thicker smoky scent prickled my nose. Some of the draugr had barreled past us to reach the halls of Asgard. The enchanted weapons they carried had set fire to the thatched roofs and anything flammable inside. Sparks blew from the windows in a flurry like glowing snow.

  No. This was my home now, as much a home as I had. I hadn’t fought all the battles I’d been through already to lose this place to some asshole giant.

  “Keep at him,” I choked out. “We can take him.”

  But the draugr were swarming all around us too. Blazing knives and pikes stabbed at us from every angle, and Surt sprang at us with another roar.

  Thor moved to hurl his hammer, and a draug’s blade sliced into his forearm deep enough to spill blood. Surt aimed his blast straight at me.

  He’d called me out for a reason. That thought hit me with stark clarity in the instant as his fireball whipped toward me. I was his main target. Because I was weaker than the gods, and because I had strengths he didn’t understand.

  He wanted to destroy me more than anyone—or at least to destroy me first.

  This time I threw myself upward, into the air as fast as I could sweep my wings. The fireball crashed into my thighs and propelled me several agonizing feet through the air. My wings shuddered with the pain. I dropped to the ground and rolled, barely conscious of anything except the vicious throbbing crackle and the need to make it stop somehow.

  I ended up facedown in the grass, smoke penetrating the earthy smell of the field, every muscle in my body knotted. Just the movement of the air against my raw skin made me suck in a sob. I wanted to push myself up, to move, to do something, but my limbs refused.

  Shouts and the clang of weapons echoed around me. A groan that sounded more godly than zombie reverberated through the air. More thuds. More warbles of magical fire. I flinched at the sound.

  Someone crouched down beside me. “Keep going,” I said, my voice coming out a rasp. “Keep fighting. Don’t worry. I—”

  “That’s enough talking, pixie,” Loki said, wry but strained at the same time. “We’re getting you out of here.”

  Out of the field? But Surt—the draugr—

  He lifted me, even his gentlest embrace turning my body into a maelstrom of pain. Tears trickled down my face and stung my scraped cheeks. I wasn’t sure I could feel anything below my ribs anymore. Not anything except that vicious searing.

  “Let’s go!” Loki called out, and then he started to run, cradling me against him to shelter me from the wind that stirred when he sped across the landscape. I managed to focus on the world around me for long enough to realize that we weren’t just heading for shelter in the city. He was racing past Asgard’s buildings, past the stone-tiled streets, toward the edge of the realm, where Odin could call out a bridge of his own that shimmered like a rainbow.

  He was taking me out of Asgard.

  “No,” I murmured. If we left, then Surt would have won. We couldn’t lose the realm of the gods to him and his zombies.

  “It’ll be fine, Ari,” Loki said in his breezy way. “We’ll patch you right up and then put that charcoal-brained kin of mine back in his place. Where is the damned Allfather?”

  He wasn’t able to keep the urgency completely out of his voice with that last question. It occurred to me then, through the haze of pain, that maybe we weren’t letting Surt win by leaving. Maybe he’d already won.

  2

  Thor

  With every fall of my feet as I rushed after Loki past our city, I felt as if I were leaving part of myself behind. My teeth gritted against the rage surging inside me.

  We’d been complacent. We’d assumed our victory before it had been truly ours. And now Surt and his army had all but overpowered us. The halls of Asgard were burning. Our valkyrie had been burning.

  I could barely make out Ari’s slim form in the trickster’s arms, but a few strands of her blond hair flew out with the breeze. The ends were singed black. I hadn’t heard her say a word since Loki had picked her up.

  “As soon as we have somewhere to take shelter, I should be able to heal her,” Baldur said, racing along on a beam of light beside me. Despite my brother’s words, his face was grim. Healing Ari would depend on her still being alive when we made it to somewhere Surt couldn’t blast her again.

  “He went right at her,” Hod muttered from just behind us. “He wanted to take her down first.”

  “Because he knows how strong she is—how strong she makes us,” I said. A burst of pride penetrated the fury in my chest for a second as I remembered how Ari had leapt up to fight the giant and his army without the slightest hesitation.

  But her strength had revealed our own weaknesses when we’d lost her. We gods had battled Surt and an army alongside him before, during Ragnarok, but there’d been dozens more in Asgard then. The seven of us remaining hadn’t had much hope of pushing back both him and his mass of undead that he’d armed with blazing blades and shields.

  Our main hope had been the heightened power the four of us had discovered together—the power that linked us through Ari. Without her, our weapons and magic wouldn’t merge and amplify. From the first moment she’d stumbled, I’d felt that connection waver. When Surt’s last blast had left her slumped and charred, our attempts to halt him and his draugr had faltered completely.

  I’d managed to clip his shoulder with Mjolnir, but he’d barely seemed to feel it. And at the same time, one of his undead soldiers had stabbed a brutal wound just below my ribs. If I’d dodged any slower, I might have lost my liver. The cut made my hasty breaths burn. With the blood that was dripping down my side, I really was leaving part of myself behind here.

  We’d be back. We’d be back, and we’d reclaim it all.

  Freya whipped around us with her falcon cloak and hurled a bolt of her magic toward the attackers on our heels. Her lovely face was tight with pain. A burn streaked across her other forearm all the way to the hand she held her sword with.

  I couldn’t let her and the others behind me do all the fighting. As we reached the stone tiles of the courtyard that stretched almost all the way to the point where the rainbow bridge would form, I sprang around and landed with a thump of my feet that would have made the clouds thunder over Midgard beneath us.

  In a split-second, swift as lightning, I took in the scene we were f
leeing. Freya had dipped down to cover Odin as he slashed his spear through the line of draugr that had nearly caught up with him. Hod paused for just long enough to heave a wave of shadow that caught a few of the undead figures before the others sliced it apart with their fiery weapons. Tyr had lost his dagger somewhere in the fray, but he was making use of what he could. His warrior arm flung a stone hard enough to smash a draug’s skull.

  Hundreds of draugr were still charging toward us, Surt near the fore of their crowd. More were pouring through our city, setting fire to whatever they could reach. My hands clenched at my sides. Smoke coated my mouth and clouded the sky. How dare he degrade our home this way?

  If we could just topple Surt—if we could take him down, his whole assault would crumble. The draugr had no stake here beyond what he’d ordered them to do.

  I flipped my hammer in my hand and pitched it toward the giant with every ounce of strength and fury I had in me.

  Mjolnir’s shining surface shimmered through the air, but even with the speed I’d given it, Surt saw it coming. He snatched up the body of a hulking draug in front of him and threw it toward my hammer to shield himself while he dodged to the side.

  The draug exploded in a hail of undead flesh that its companions barely appeared to notice. Mjolnir whipped onward, fast enough to make Surt’s beard twitch—but it smashed through a line of draugr just beside him instead. His harsh laugh ripped through the air as my hammer flew back to my hand. A growl of frustration reverberated in my throat.