CHAPTER ONE
Erik looked no different than Brenna had remembered him, except for the fact that maybe he looked happier and a bit more robust. They were all so completely stunned to see him, that they stood motionless with their mouths open for a minute or two. Of course, there were more than a few afterlives, and they knew Erik must have gone somewhere when he had died. But when they hadn’t seen him in Hel, they didn’t know where that somewhere might have been. After Brandt got over the initial stun, he walked up to Erik and threw an arm around his shoulder to give him a solid hug and pat on the back. They may have had their differences in the past, but Erik proved to have been much more of an ally than they had given him credit for. Which explained where he had gone in the afterlife.
“It’s good to see you, my friend,” Erik said as he returned Brandt’s hearty hug.
“Where have you been?” Brandt asked him.
“Dead,” Erik laughed.
“Yeah, I know that much.” Brandt chuckled. It was good to see that Erik still had his edgy sarcasm.
“Valhalla.”
Lopt looked at Erik rather surprised. “You went to Valhalla in the afterlife?”
“Yeah, I was a bit surprised myself to be honest. I guess someone thought I counted as a fallen warrior.”
“You did,” Brenna said as she walked toward him. “At least as far as I’m concerned. What you did was nothing short of heroic.”
Erik smiled and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “It’s good to see you again, Brenna. I’ve heard about all sorts of things that have happened since I left Earth. You guys have been really damn busy.”
Brenna rolled her eyes. “I wish we were a whole lot less busy.”
He laughed. “Yes, I’m sure you do.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I was sent to bring word of a prophecy for you.”
“Another one?” Brenna wasn’t sure she could handle anything else right now. She really just wanted to get to the part where she and Brandt could hide away in the loft in Chinatown for as long as they could, stockpiling noodle bowls and wontons, and watching the rainfall.
Erik started to tell Brenna what he had come to convey, but a scratching noise diverted his attention. “Do you hear that?”
Everyone held quiet and looked around.
“There, that scratching. It almost sounds like someone is coughing too.”
“I hear it,” Brandt said as he picked up on the sound of a muffled cough coming from behind a wall or someplace nearby but not right there.
Lopt knelt down and put his palm on the ground. Then he quickly tilted his head toward the side of the room where the crack was on the surface of the floor.
“Someone is under there,” he said as he stood and went over to the spot in question.
The red dirt was still loose enough that he could wedge his fingers into the ground and start digging it out. The others came over to help him. It wasn’t long before they amassed a pile of loose dirt on the ground beside them.
When Brandt reached his hand into the widening hole again, something grabbed him. Pale white fingers with mud-filled nails wrapped around his wrist.
“Oh my God,” Brenna gasped as she saw the buried wrist reach out from the dirt. The tattoos were unmistakable; it was Matt.
They all dug as fast as they could until Matt’s face surfaced above the breaking dirt. Brenna brushed the debris from his face as he coughed and tried to inhale a deep gulp of air. The other men unearthed his arms and then grabbed him by the shoulders to pull out of the ground. They set him on his feet, but he immediately collapsed under his own weight. Lopt was fast enough to grab him under his armpit and hoist Matt’s weight up onto his shoulder to help him stand.
“What happened to you?” Brandt asked as he saw Matt’s bruised body even from beneath the caked layer of dirt.
“I…dunno,” his words were cut short by fits of coughing as his body tried to refill itself with much-needed oxygen. “It came for Helia. I couldn’t see what it was. I just felt myself being dragged into the ground as if something—” he coughed again. “Something grabbed my ankles and pulled me down. Then everything was dark, and I couldn’t breathe. I heard Helia screaming, and I tried to claw my way back out to her, but the more I tried to climb upward, the deeper it pushed me down. Where’s Helia?”
“She’s all right,” Lopt said as he pulled more of Matt’s weight toward him so that they could start to walk. “She’s back at the apartment now. Leif is taking care of her.”
Matt managed to raise an eyebrow. “I thought they were fighting.”
“They were, but that’s over now. Let’s get back to the apartment, and she can explain it to you herself.”
“Wait,” Brenna interrupted and looked at Erik. “What about the prophecy?”
Why can it never just be one thing at a time? Lopt sighed to himself. He was especially on edge because he still needed to tell Brenna that her daughter had been killed, and even though he was pretty sure they could get Kemma back, the initial shock of hearing that was sure to send her into distress. He just wanted to get everyone back to Manhattan and inside the apartment so that he could mitigate the damage control before dealing with adding more things to the pile.
“The dark sorcery has been released onto the nine worlds,” Erik said. “It’s infiltrating rampantly everywhere and causing a wild plague that will wipe out entire populations. You must find the cure.”
“The cure? Like it’s a disease?” Brenna asked.
“It may as well be.”
“How am I supposed to know where to find the cure for it? Leif is the one who controlled that magic. Maybe he is the one who knows how to stop it.”
“No,” Erik said firmly. “It has to be you.”
“Why does it matter who finds the cure for it? Shouldn’t it only matter that it is stopped from spreading?”
“Prophesies don’t work that way,” Erik said. “You will be the one to find it, and you’ll have to be the one to use it.”
Brenna puckered her lips to the side as if she were a blowfish having an attitude. “The last time someone told me how prophecies were supposed to work, I think I pretty much tossed the rule book aside on that.”
“She’s not wrong,” Brandt snickered.
“She is this time,” Eric said.
“How do you know this?” Lopt said as he balanced Matt’s weary body. “Who told you of this prophecy?”
It looked like there was something Erik wanted to tell him, something powerful that could change the course of things.
“It’s not important who told me. It is widely known throughout all of Valhalla. Brenna is still the chosen one, as she always has been, and she is the only one who can stop the dark sorcery from spreading its magically induced plague throughout the universe.”
“No pressure,” Brandt whispered to her as a tease to try to lighten the worry he saw sweeping across her brow.
“Let’s go.” Lopt pulled Matt along with him, and Erik went to his other side and put Matt’s other arm over his shoulder in order to help.
On their way back through New York City, they passed the alchemist’s house. It looked like nearly every other small space on the lower east side, and no one paid it any attention as they walked by, except for Erik. He motioned for Brandt to take his place beneath Matt’s arm and then separated from the group to walk toward the building.