The Other Side Page 14

My hands were seasoned from climbing mountains and fighting off Sleipnir, bears and the Nøkkendalig. Pesta was ruthless, but Tonya had no skill at such things. If I guessed correctly, she had probably failed weightlifting class. I grabbed the gun and wrestled her for it, knocking us over into the snowdrifts. We rolled and grunted as we fought for what the other threatened to take from us. I fought for life, and she fought for souls.

  “Lucy, don’t hurt me! I’m still in here!” she shrieked. “Save me!”

  I paled, but kept up my fight, punching her in the face with my free hand to show her I didn’t believe a word of it.

  Tonya cackled out a laugh and spat blood in my face. “Your little friend begged like a whore for me to take away her pain.”

  Foss’s voice was in my head, egging me on and pushing me to be bigger, to fight harder, and never to let the other side gain the upper hand. I rolled Tonya in the snow so I was on top as we struggled for the gun. I was relentless in my fight as my free hand clawed at her face, drawing fresh blood.

  We began to slip in the snow, so I angled us toward the ice, inching her tight, spindly curls toward the hard surface.

  It was a leap of faith (or insanity, depending on if it worked or not), and I took it. I exhaled, and then released my grip on the gun, using both of my hands to slide her forward onto the ice. As she gripped the gun, I punched her skull down hard, cracking the surface of the ice just enough to give her a good scare.

  Then I snatched the gun straight outta her freezing hands. Before a merciful thought could enter my brain, I turned it on her, aimed and pulled the trigger.

  The bullet exploded out from the gun and embedded itself into Tonya’s chest.

  We both froze as I sobbed, apologetic and completely devoid of triumph. There was no victory here. No matter who was alive now, Pesta had won this battle.

  Tonya gasped and gurgled, as shocked as I that I was capable of such cold-blooded murder.

  “You killed my family!” I raged, not even sure if she could hear me anymore. “You should’ve killed me first!”

  Impossibly, she reached for me again in a last ditch effort to drag me under with her. I screamed, aimed and blasted another bullet straight into her head, right through her open mouth.

  One red shoe, then one black shoe sank down into the water as the ice closed over top of Tonya’s bloody, rigid corpse.

  28

  Doctors with Dilated Pupils

  Jens.

  Britta crying, saying... something.

  Water hitting my skin like pinpricks.

  Warmth. Heat turning my skin red.

  Then pain. Oh, the pain. Agony ripped through me as sensation hit my body in crushing waves. My voice found lucidity first, and I shouted out, reaching for the source of the unnatural tear.

  My left leg was in agony. I was in a double-sized Jacuzzi tub with… Jamie?

  How the smack did I get here?

  I looked down, relieved that I had my clothes on. My jacket had been torn off, but my shirt and jeans were enough to give reason to the chaos.

  When Jens’s stricken face entered my narrow field of vision, I grabbed him like a drunkard. “My leg! It’s broken or something. It hurts so bad!”

  “On it,” Jamie assured me in a voice that was pinched with pain. He reached out and gripped my arm as we endured the agony together. He was chugging straight vinegar from a restaurant-sized jug as if our lives depended on it. He was shivering, as I was, but his wherewithal was better than mine. Perhaps he had been awake longer than I had been, and therefore, had more time to process the shock of it all. Perhaps Jamie was just tougher than me. Perhaps it was because he hadn’t just murdered his best friend in cold blood.

  Jens hugged me, getting his elbows and chest wet without pause. “Elsa’s whistling us a doctor right now. Hold on, babe.” He held me together as I gritted my teeth through the pain. Each shiver jolted thunder and heat through my leg, but they could not be helped. “Get lower,” Jens advised, shifting me further down so the water was up to my shoulders. He cupped the hot water and laved it over my face and hair.

  This was not how I pictured having a bath with my boyfriend. Nothing about my life was how I pictured it. The devastation of my reality was crushing. I sobbed in his arms as I wiped water from my lashes. “I killed her!” I confessed, clinging to Jens as if he was my only chance at sanity and absolution. “I killed my best Tonya!”

  Jens nodded, trying to meet my gaze and make me focus. I felt so guilty, my eyes only stayed trained on his face a few seconds before drifting off. “Tonya was dead long before she found us. It was just a shell you killed, and Pesta gave you no choice.”

  “Martin Luther King would’ve found a way! I’m nothing like who I wanted to be! I kill everyone I love!”

  Jens squeezed me, his stubble-covered cheek mushing to mine as he tried to keep me in one functioning piece. “That’s not true. It’s just not. Pesta killed Tonya.”

  I pushed at him, a wave of alcohol-like vinegar crushing my motor skills in one heavy-handed blow. “Run away,” I whispered. “I love you. I can’t be the one to kill you. Save y-yourslelf.” My slur didn’t deter him, and neither did my attempt at breaking up with him. I giggled out of nowhere. “Jamie’s got big jugs.” I motioned to the vinegar, giving us both a moment of ADD to detract from the horror that never seemed to leave us alone.

  Jens was a good man. He simply held me through my crazy haze, and said nothing as I sobbed through my self-loathing. Jens kissed my cheek and kept scooping more warm water onto my face until I passed out in his arms.

  There are many things to be said for having a good man watch your back when gunfire rains down on your life. Jens, despite his flaws and mine, managed to find a way to love me with his strength and grace. He held me while I floated in my painless oblivion, crying into my neck until help came for me.

  Stretchers.

  Doctors with dilated pupils.

  Jamie and I going into the hospital in tandem.

  Through it all, Jens.

  Britta and Jens stayed with us, waiting anxiously until we were brought to recovery rooms.

  When I awoke from my morphine vacation, Jens.

  “Hey, Mox,” he whispered. It was the sweetest sound, that man. He put his finger to his lips and motioned to the bed next to me, where Britta was passed out in her chair and bent over a zonked-out Jamie. “How’re you feeling?”

  My mouth was dry, like I’d been munching on a ball of yarn.

  Instinctually or through years of practice and study, Jens knew me. Before I could say a thing, he wrapped my fingers around a cup of water and was helping me sit up so I could drink. His hand was rubbing feeling into my back, and he leaned me against him to support my weight.

  No matter what we’d gone through, or the amazing amounts of unexpected and self-inflicted stupidity that would befall us, I knew more than ever that we would get through it together.

  “I love you,” I whispered, silent emotion choking me up. “I love you, Jens. I love you.”

  I can’t count the number of times I said it, or the number of times he kissed me, but numbering the stars in the sky always seemed a little pointless to me.

  Jens was my star. My constellation. No matter where I was, I knew he wouldn’t have to find me – he would already be there by my side. Not because he had to, but because he wanted to. He cherished me, and I loved him.

  29

  Foss with a Gun

  We were on our way the very next day. Once Jamie and I had rested and been given the bare minimum of all clear from the doctor who warned us to do as little activity as possible, we were packed into an SUV Elsa whistled for us.

  Leif and Elsa took turns driving. Jens would not leave my side for even a second. He held my hand and rubbed my back, kissing my hair every other minute to reassure either me or him, I wasn’t sure.

  “I’m alright,” I told him after half a day of his manic hovering. “I’m not going to have a breakdown, and I highly doubt you’ll be ab
le to stop another car accident.”

  “Aren’t I allowed to want to be near you just because?”

  “You’re worried.”

  “Well, you almost died. I think I have the right to worry. I’m your crappy guard and your boyfriend. Double whammy for worrying.”

  I fished for a change of topic. “We’re driving at normal speed, here. You’re really sure Pesta won’t be able to find a new body and attack us before we get to the portal?”

  Jens gripped my shoulder and then rubbed it. “Positive. She has to use a willing human subject that crosses over into Be. We’ve got Huldras watching the portal to make sure no humans cross over. And the transformation takes time. That kind of magic can’t be rushed. We’ll be at the portal in a couple hours. She hasn’t got a prayer.”

  “For how long?” I asked, finally voicing the hard questions we never discussed. “For how long will she leave me alone? I’ll destroy the portal, sure. But she’s still out there.”

  Jens kissed my temple. “She’ll leave you alone for a while.”

  “For how long?” I prodded, unwilling to wave off my hunches just so I would feel better for the moment.

  Jens swallowed. “That siren holds a grudge. Their kind always did, but she’s the worst. She’ll go away for a while. Regroup. When she starts trying to build portals again, she’ll go for your bones, for sure. The vendetta against your family runs deep.” He cleared his throat, and I could tell he was gearing up for something big. “But there won’t be enough with just you, so she’ll go for our kids.”

  “My kids’ll have my nomadic childhood, then,” I stated flatly, laying out the long and short of it. “Running and never being normal.”

  “Our kids, and yes.” He forced a smirk. “And like anything that comes from us would ever stand a chance at normal. I mean, come on. It’s us.”

  I couldn’t even smile at the fact that Jens wanted to have fictional kids with me. “That’s the size of it?” I stared lifelessly out the window at the haze of white blurring past me. A small part of my heart I didn’t know existed cracked off and floated in the black abyss where I kept the bad things buried.

  Jamie heard where I was going, and had something to say about it. No, syster. Don’t do that to Jens. Don’t say it. Not now. We’ll find a way.

  I ignored Jamie. “I won’t have kids, then. Cut her off at the source.”

  “Shh.” Jens kissed my temple for the fiftieth time, but this one he did with his eyes closed. The pain that should have been mine alone was his, too. “I can’t handle any more heartbreak today. Maybe not for a month. We’ll figure that part out later. Give me time to sort her out.”

  “It’s okay, Jens. Not a big deal. I won’t miss what I never had.”

  His hand went over my mouth, staving off whatever nonsense I had yet to spill out. “No more. Give me time. You just concentrate on how tall you want that white picket fence.”

  We were quiet the entire rest of the way.

  When Elsa motioned to the exit, my heartrate began to pick up. There had been so much talk of destroying the portal, but actually doing it was an entire other thing. Even though we were not expecting opposition, I was still nervous.

  The sight that greeted me nearly took my breath away.

  “Foss!” I called, pointing to a band of Huldras, their husbands and the beacon that was Foss.

  Twenty strong, they stood together in front of the portal in full snow gear with their game faces on. As they came into better view, I saw ugly black guns in their hands. Long ones and short ones, ones for hunting and others for defending. Despite my need to appear totally with it, I whimpered when I saw a handgun in Foss’s grip.

  I looked around as we drove into the fold, my mouth agape. In a wide ring around the portal lay obliterated bits of every kind of animal that was indigenous to that region. “Oh! What happened?” I exclaimed, my hands covering my mouth in shock.

  Elsa turned to me. “I bet it’s Weres, baby doll. Dozens and dozens of Weres waiting to jump on us. Did I tell you my sisters would take care of this, or what?”

  “No joke,” I commented, amazed at the devastation nature had suffered all because Pesta wanted what she wanted at any cost.

  When we pulled up, Foss was at our door, helping us out one by one, except for Jamie and I, who were not ready to move just yet. “Took you long enough,” he said by way of a greeting.

  I shouted past him, my intimidation factor lowered by the fact that I couldn’t really get out of the van without assistance. “I’d like to know which idiot whack job thought it was a good idea to give a Fossegrimen with a brain injury fresh off the farm from Undraland a loaded weapon?!” I found Liv’s guilty eyes and yelled. “You? Seriously? Are you asking for trouble? Do you have a death wish? Or do you just not give a smack about anyone but yourself?”

  “What right do you have to speak for Foss? He’s not your real husband!” Liv shot back, though I could tell I’d hit my mark. She trotted away from me and stood near her sisters, chagrinned at her lapse in judgment.

  “Oh, you’d better run!” I shouted, angry as all get-out.

  Jens grinned at me as he hopped out of the van and stretched. “I would tell you to calm down, but that was kinda sexy.”

  I continued to grumble, no doubt unsexily. I held out my hand expectantly to Foss. “Give it.”

  “I’ve been using it all morning,” Foss argued, gripping the gun like it was a treasured pet.

  My mother had a death glare she did not often invoke, but when she did, we knew not to cross her. Turns out, that little gem was genetic. “Give me that gun, or so help me, you don’t want to know what!”

  “I was getting the hang of it just fine.” Foss handed over the weapon, and I in turn passed it off to Jens as if I was handing him a poisonous lizard. Jens checked the safety and then pocketed it.

  I pointed in Liv’s direction. “That girl who’s got her hooks in you? No.”

  Foss glanced at Liv and turned back to me. “What about her?”

  “No. Just, no.”

  Foss chuckled under his breath. “I missed you, too.”

  I tried not to let my stern expression break, but it was no use. I took my crutches from Jens and moved awkwardly to the exit of the SUV, sitting on the edge of the seat. “Your head!” I blurted out. “I’m so sorry we left you. Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine. Let’s do this.” Foss held my elbow while I got situated and Jens fished around in his red pack for the rake that stirred up so much friggin’ controversy.

  Liv sidled up beside Foss, her swagger recovered and in full swing. “A little brain damage only improves a Fossegrimen.”

  I snapped at Liv. “‘Be gone before someone drops a house on you!’” When in doubt for your insults, consult the Wizard of Oz.

  “You’re a mess!” Foss exclaimed, taking in the scope of my injuries. He motioned to my leg that was already irritating him. “Did Jens do this to you?”

  “Pesta,” Jens groused, sifting through the bag like he was looking for lost keys at the bottom. “But thanks for that vote of confidence. Remind me to beat on you later.”

  “You look terrible,” Foss observed.

  I did my best to turn my body so I could hug him. “I missed you, too.” I pointed to the floor of the SUV. “Sit. Let me look at you.”

  Foss rolled his eyes, knowing we couldn’t do anything until Jens located the rake. He pulled off his ski cap and showed me the bandage over the right side of his shaved skull.

  I hissed. “Does it hurt very bad?”

  “It’s fine. Itches more than anything.”

  Liv jumped on the opportunity to sneer. “I thought you were supposed to be his wife, not his mommy.”

  My bark was a little overzealous. I blame the pain meds. “Don’t you talk about his mother!”

  Foss placed his hand on mine, a flicker of appreciation shining through. “You’re worried. I’m okay.” He let me check his wound with all the patience of a two-year-old. “Quit do
ing that annoying thing you do. That scared face. It’s unsettling.”

  It was my turn to roll my eyes. “Yes. The caring thing that’s so annoying. It’s my one joy to irritate you. Job well done on my part.” I looked into his eyes and saw that his pupils weren’t dilated. I exhaled. “You’re you, for better or worse. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you woke up.”

  Foss shrugged. “It’s fine. I understand.” A note of concern drifted through his harsh tone. “You… you’re okay, then?”

  “No,” I answered succinctly. I don’t know why I told the truth; I just didn’t have it in me to lie.

  Foss examined the resigned look on my face with a hard expression. “About time you admitted it.” He leaned over and pecked my lips. It was on the border of romantic and friendly, and like everything was with him, it left me confused. Heat rose in my cheeks, and Foss cracked half a smile at me.

  Lucy! This is not proper! Jamie scolded me.

  I heard Liv’s intake of breath, but Jens addressed it. “You’ll get used to that.” Then in warning to Foss, he clarified with, “Only that. Understood?”

  Foss ignored Jens and kept his voice between us. “Liv tells me you saved my life.”

  “Again,” I corrected him. “I saved your life again.”

  He looked from side to side, ensuring no one overheard him. “Thanks.”

  Despite my impending task, I lifted an eyebrow. “Did that hurt a little? Being the minimal amount of nice like that?”

  He didn’t fall for my shtick. Instead he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me between his open knees, engulfing me in a hug that had my chin resting on his shoulder. He was so much taller than me; I was used to my head leaning on his chest when he held me. This cheek-to-cheek hug was different, and the tenderness threatened to squeeze too much emotion from me. He turned his head and pressed his lips to my cheek, whispering into my skin, “Never doubt that I love you.”

  I heard that, Jamie groused.

  When I pulled back, I pecked Foss’s lips again. My husband held my gaze with a look that said more than he would ever admit to aloud, and I nodded to let him know I understood. “I’m glad you’re alright,” I told him, shivering when a gust of icy wind blew into the car.