A shiver crawled up my spine when I looked back at the one I’d found. The story was several years old—about a boy and the wolf pups that had followed him home after the accident that killed his parents. I could see they were creatures of magic and that the boy held something powerful. It was there, in the eye not covered by his hair. Vanir McConnell, it said. Norse and Irish.
“Born of two magical clans,” I whispered, thinking of the swirled symbol shared by both.
“That share life’s spiral,” followed Kat.
Coral took her paper back, stared at it as her bottom lip quivered. “Light of head, dark of eyes.”
We didn’t say the rest aloud. We’d always thought it was so stupid.
The young warrior will herald the beginning of Ragnarok. His hand to the death of a norn.
The resulting silence was broken by the sudden violence of the snowstorm. It battered the windows and roof, causing me to clench my teeth.
“We don’t have much time,” I said. “It’ll be hard to travel soon.” I met Kat’s eyes. “We’ll have to use the college money.” They’d been saving, too. None of us wanted to believe our mother’s stories about one of us dying.
Kat crossed her arms, bit her lip. “Probably won’t need it, anyway.”
“We’ll need it,” I insisted. “I won’t accept that. We’ve worked too hard for it—a better life. We’ll just have to replace the money when we can. We’ll still go to college. If this really is Ragnarok and we’re in for three years of winter, it’ll just be cold. Life goes on.”
None of us said what we were probably all thinking. Yes, life would go on, but it was going to be different. Even if the prophecy was wrong and none of us died, the world would be very unlike what it had been. According to the writings on Ragnarok, there would only be one short summer break in those three years of winter. After that? I couldn’t form images in my mind. They all froze my blood. Tidal waves and earth-consuming fire. Even with the magic in my veins, I’d never, ever taken the stories of warring gods seriously. It was too big.
Too scary.
I looked down at the boy in the picture, at his one eye staring at me in an absurd parody of Odin and his one eye. “I’m pretty sure our mother went to find the guy who’s supposed to kill us. But which one?”
Kat voiced my biggest question. “You don’t think she’d actually hurt them, do you?”
Hot tears burned the corners of my eyes but I held them back. “You guys know we can’t let her. If they live to fight and we play our part, one of them could survive and there will be no end of the world.”
Coral sniffed. Tears streaked her cheeks. “We have to stop her. No matter what it could mean.”
We stared silently at one another, each of us knowing what the others were thinking.
I couldn’t worry about dying or losing one of my sisters. We’d never been apart. We fought, sure—all sisters do—but we shared a deeper bond, one forged through years of only having one another in the weirdest of living situations. Out of the three of us, only Coral had braved a date. It was hard to date when your mother thought every potential boyfriend could be a killer. Other than that, only our jobs separated us.
Pathetic? Maybe.
But our purpose had been drilled into us from birth. We carried the norns’ souls, making us the new sisters of fate. We carved the old words in seidr trances and revealed secrets, lies and hopes. And now, we had to find all three potential world-saving warriors because we didn’t know which one Mom had gone after first.
Or what she’d do once she found him.
I risked one hand off the wheel long enough to rub my temple. This anxiety was eating me alive. I’d been driving too long and my head had ached the past twenty-four hours. I missed my sisters. We’d never been apart this long before.
So when the flash of brown stepped in front of my car, I panicked and swerved. The car hit a patch of ice, glanced off a tree and sailed with a groaning, metallic cry right over a ravine and into fast-moving, icy water.
The jarring crash rattled every bone in my body.
Shock froze me for a second or two. Then the terror hit. I screamed as the car floated down the river, slamming into boulders and tree limbs like some tricked-out carnival water slide. My suitcase flew between the bucket seats and hit my shoulder, knocking me into the steering wheel.
Blinking, I wrapped my cold fingers around the wheel until they cramped. I couldn’t see crap! Ride it out or abandon ship? The decision was ripped from me when everything came to a jarring stop.
The car had lodged into...a fallen tree. I took a deep breath. But then the vehicle tilted and my head slammed into the driver’s side window. Metal groaned again. The weight of the car pushed into limbs, causing shrill, screeching noises as they scraped the door.
Freezing water soaked into my jeans and through my T-shirt, ribbed turtleneck and my favorite jean jacket.
Fear, pain and panic create a mess of stupid.
I chucked my ego into the river and started scrambling. Everything was slippery and cold. I shivered, slid and gasped as I tried to right myself in the tilted front seat without standing on the driver’s side window. With teeth chattering and water dripping into my eyes, I searched out a dry spot on my jacket sleeve to wipe them. Water dribbled into my mouth. I caught the metallic taste of blood.
I climbed over the side of the driver’s seat and into the back, trying to brace my feet on anything.
Wrapping my fingers around the metal casing of the broken rear side window, I held on, dangling. Dizziness swept over me and I closed my eyes, trying to wrestle my panic into submission.
I held my eyes tightly closed. Took several deep breaths. When it felt as if the world would stay still again, I opened one eye and pulled myself partly up through the window. The snow pounded, feeling more like ice pellets. They stung my cold cheeks. My breath caught on a sob as the car suddenly lurched, slid a foot or two, then settled into another tree.
That’s when I saw him. Crouch-crawling along that tree. A man. A really big man in a black parka with the hood pulled over his face.
Chapter Two
My heart slammed against my rib cage.
It could have been the cold, or the terror, screwing with my head...or my penchant for scary B movies, but all I could think about were stories about girls who disappear when they’re alone out on the road.
Honestly, facing my death by drowning scared me, but being raped and murdered and left to freeze in the growing piles of snow wasn’t the way I wanted to go, either. My adrenaline spiked. I kept one eye on him and yanked the upper half of my body through the window.
Hell with the tree! I’d jump in the river and swim for it.
“Hang on,” he yelled. “I’ll pull you out!”
“No, thanks,” I shouted back. “I’m good!” I opened my mouth to repeat but choked as a surge of icy river water swept over the car and into my mouth. I spat it out, along with a twig and—oh, gross—something slippery that moved against my tongue. Gagging, I spat again and held on as the flood tried to push me back into the car.
“You’re bleeding a lot, so be still.” The deep voice was right by my head.
Gasping, I turned, swallowing the acid in my throat, not sure where to go. What to do. I was losing it. Hadn’t even realized he’d crawled that close.
“Hey,