“We’re in the Now, and you’re not dead. But that’s only because you’re in the Now.”

Luke could only stare at her. “Right. Well, I’m getting out, now.” But a wave of dizziness stopped him.

“It’s all right. I’ll take care of you,” Aurora told him as he rested his forehead against her waist and smelled that honey scent …

From the dream …

He jerked his head up. “Wait a minute. I dreamed …”

“It wasn’t a dream, Luke,” she said.

“How do you know my name?”

“I’ve known you forever,” Aurora said, and her eyes were luminous with feeling; Luke felt his breath catch at the longing in them.

ALEXANDRA SOKOLOFF is a California native and the daughter of scientist and educator parents, which drove her into musical theater at an early age. At UC Berkeley (a paranormal experience all on its own) she majored in theater. After college, Alex moved to Los Angeles, where she made an interesting living writing novel adaptations, and original suspense and horror scripts, for numerous Hollywood studios. She now lives in Scotland with her Scottish husband. Alex welcomes questions and comments at her website, alexandrasokoloff.com.

Goddess of Fate

Alexandra Sokoloff

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Leslie Wainger—a true heroine.

Contents

Cover

Excerpt

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

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

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

They stood around Luke Mars’s bed, looking down on him. Three women: one blond as the sun, one with hair blazing golden red as fire, and the last, whose hair and eyes were as dark as night. Luke was half-asleep and very confused. Three women in his bedroom was not unheard of, but not what he’d call an everyday occurrence, either. And it was strange—he couldn’t remember how they’d gotten there or why they were standing when he seemed to be...asleep, almost, and unable to move. They were speaking in low murmurs.

“Mine,” the dark one was saying. “I claim him for Odin.”

Odin? Now why is that familiar?

“No,” the redhead whispered. “Oh, no.”

“Too late,” the dark one said as she preened. “He’s mine.”

The blonde seemed sad, or maybe she was resigned. “A warrior, then. It is done.”

The voluptuous dark one began to chant in a sexy but also somehow eerie voice. “I’ll come for you by midnight steed, my weapon poised to do the deed...”

Luke wasn’t fully conscious, but stunning as the dark one might be, that didn’t sound all that good to him.

Who are these people? What the hell is going on?

And then the middle one, the redhead, bent down to him. He felt the brush of her hair on his cheek, breathed the incredible sweetness of her scent, the warmth of her breath. He felt a surge of pure desire in response to her touch, and through the sudden rush of blood in his head and other parts of his anatomy, he heard her murmur, “I’ll take care of you...”

Chapter 1

A harsh sound vibrated through Luke’s consciousness. It shook him out of whatever spell he was under. Suddenly he could feel the soft pillows and covers of his own bed. He opened his eyes and looked around. Pitch-black—it was the dead of night.

The three women were gone, though he could still feel his own arousal.

That honey smell...heavenly...

Beside him on the night table, his phone was buzzing and vibrating like an angry bee.

He grabbed for it. “Mars,” he growled into it.

“It’s going down,” he heard a familiar voice whisper on the other end. “They’re unloading a shipment. Pier 94, right now.”

“Wait...” Luke started, but the caller had hung up. His confidential informant, a longshoreman at the port. Luke felt adrenaline spike through his body, a thrill of excitement and anticipation. As a detective with the San Francisco Police Department, he was assigned to the special task force on piracy. He’d been working this case for six months and it was the first real break in the case; they’d been waiting for an actual shipment to arrive.

Luke threw back the bedclothes and stood, then grabbed the phone again and speed-dialed his partner while he scrounged for the clothes he’d discarded last night. Dark ones—they had to be dark.

The phone clicked over to a voice-mail message, and he waited impatiently for it to end so he could speak. “Pepper, it’s Mars. Meet me on Cesar Chavez, above Pier 94. Just got tipped off that there’s a shipment coming in.”

He made the same call to his lieutenant and again got voice mail, so he left the same message.

He pulled black jeans and a T-shirt on over his intricate tattoos: the stylized sun on his biceps, the coiled dragons on his back. Viking symbols, which he supposed would have made his grandmother happy if she’d known about them. She loved to see him embracing anything Old World—anything that referenced his Scandinavian blood.

As he dressed he could almost smell the honey-sweetness of the middle, red-haired woman again, and the dream flickered back into his consciousness.

He remembered it now: three women standing around his bed: blond, dark, and red.

He could feel a tingling that was more than just the lingering eroticism of the dream women, a tingling that always signaled a significant moment.

It was a dream, that’s all.

The trouble was, he’d been having it since he was a child. And he didn’t like the feeling in his gut.

Was it a good omen? Or a warning?

The dream of the three women had sometimes meant powerful good luck: like the day he learned he’d won a football scholarship to Stanford and the day he’d gotten his detective’s shield. But at other times the dream had meant the most powerful bad luck, like when he’d been sidelined junior year by a knee injury and had basically lost out on a pro career. Not to mention he’d had the dream the night before he’d lost his parents in a car accident when he was seven...

After a minute he stepped over to his closet and looked in at the bulletproof vest that hung on a hook just inside.

Although he hated driving in it, he snatched up the vest and shrugged it on over his T-shirt, grimacing at the bulk. But no use in ignoring signs. Call it instinct, call it premonition, call it the dream, but he didn’t feel like taking chances tonight.

He pulled a dark windbreaker on over the vest as he exited his second-floor flat and pounded down the narrow stairs of the Victorian across from Golden Gate Park. Outside the night was eerie with drifting fog.

He hit the sidewalk and sprinted across the narrow strip of park, under the shadows of eucalyptus trees toward the garage that housed his car, and decided to call the dream a good omen. After all, he’d met possibly the most gorgeous woman in San Francisco the night before: Valentina, she’d said in the bar. On a scale of ten, she was a solid twelve. Come to think of it, a little like the dark one in the dream. They’d hit it off, attraction sizzling in the air like lightning, and she’d said she’d be calling him. He knew she would. She was just what he needed: a woman who could match him in curiosity and adventurousness, and who had no expectation of anything like forever. Luke Mars didn’t do “forever.” He was on the fast track; he needed to be able to disappear anytime he needed to for a case, needed to be able to pack up and go to another city if the mission or his restless spirit called for it. He never lied to anyone that he was anything but what he was: independent, free and definitely unattached.

Suddenly, inexplicably, Luke remembered the middle woman from the dream, the redhead, with that fiery red-gold mane cascading down over her shoulders, those sky-blue eyes and the way she had looked at him...as if he were everything...everything he actually wanted to be in his life. She’d said something to him...

I’ll take care of you.

He felt an unexpected pang...quickly forgotten as he recalled the dark one’s assets.

Luke was, above all, a practical man.

* * *

Well, all right, practical didn’t exactly describe his ’99 Chevy Cavalier, souped up with a 350 horsepower engine, but there were limits to practicality.

Luke gunned the car out of the rented garage (no way would he trust this baby to the streets of San Francisco), and raced up Ashbury, enjoying the car’s effortless climb on the nearly vertical hill and the power of the machine, like a fine horse underneath him.

He’d bought the car just for nights like these, when the city was asleep and he could have the streets almost to himself, racing the wind. He sped up over the crest of the hill and started the steep descent down toward the bay.

The buildings around him were enveloped in fog, fog and more fog; Luke could barely see through the windshield. It rolled away from the car as the high beams cut through the murk. The tops of the tallest buildings looked like UFOs, floating disembodied above the streets.

The dream faded away as he focused on the murky road and the task at hand.

The word pirates always seemed like a throwback, strangely stirring Luke’s Viking blood. But in fact, piracy was a burgeoning modern crime. Shipping container theft was rampant on the high seas—a low-risk, high-reward business that criminal elements from every country in the world seemed to be determined to get in on. Anything that could be stolen—electronics, appliances, software—was fair game. And the Port of San Francisco was a natural target.

In the past six months four major shipping lines had had container ships boarded and pillaged en route to the port. Luke’s strongest lead was that the stolen containers were somehow being unloaded and processed at the port as legitimate cargo and immediately scattered to the four winds, shipped out via trucks all over the country. He just had to find out how.

He had a feeling that he was about to crack the case wide open and that it was his ticket to...a lot. His personal plan was to nail the piracy ring to the wall and write that ticket: lieutenant, task force chief. It was time for him to be moving upward and onward; his superiors knew it and he knew it. It was just this propensity he had for...

Not trouble, no, not that.

Recklessness—no, he wouldn’t say that, either.

He just never had seen the point in not charging ahead, when he had his facts straight and his suspects lined up. His grandmother had had a quaint saying to explain the trouble Luke got into: You have a bad Norn. The Scandinavian equivalent of saying he had a wayward guardian angel. How many times had he heard it growing up?

Luke frowned, surprised at his own train of thought. Now where on earth did that come from?

He had enough to concentrate on without getting distracted by a fairy tale.

He shifted gears to head down the next hill, then reached for the phone and autodialed his lieutenant again. Still just voice mail. Luke shook his head and called dispatch. “This is Detective Mars. I need to reach Lieutenant Duncan, it’s urgent.”

He disconnected as the dispatcher assured him he’d find Duncan, and tried Pepper. Nothing there, either.

Worrisome.

Luke punched the phone off and drove.

* * *

There were ninety-six piers along the western edge of the bay, circling the city from the anchorage of the Golden Gate Bridge, along the Marina district, around the north and east shores of the city and southward to the city line just beyond Candlestick Park. Eight miles of waterfront lands, commercial real estate and maritime piers, some of them world-famous landmarks like Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39. The active commercial piers, like Pier 94 on the southern waterfront, were leased out to companies throughout the world that needed to load or unload cargo.

Luke looked down from the top of the hill where he’d stopped the car a good distance from the pier’s entrance; this late at night the sound of the motor would tip off anyone just inside the gates. He’d have to work his way down on foot.

The fog was thick and enveloping, which was great camouflage; it not only gave him cover but it also muted his footsteps in that way fog had of swallowing all sound. The guard booth at the entrance to the pier was empty; that was the first bad sign.

The good news was, it meant Luke’s longshoreman was right; the empty booth was a clear sign something was going down. The bad news was, so far Luke was completely alone. There was no sign of any movement below at all, actually. No ship berthed, no cranes moving, no trucks, no workers. And yet everything in Luke said there was something going on down there.

He could feel the tingling again, a sense—no, a certainty—that something major was about to transpire.

He drew his Glock and felt its comforting weight. I’ll just have a look, he decided, and moved forward in the darkness.

Although the chain was on the gate, the gate wasn’t locked, another sign of something hinky. Luke carefully eased the chain out of the fence and slipped through the gate, repositioning the chain to look as if it was locked.

The pier was a labyrinth of towering shipping containers, stacked two and three and even five high on the dock, like a child giant’s building blocks in their bright colors—oranges and yellows and purples—now muted by the dimness of night. And the whole yard was dead quiet: no lights, no activity. If there was something going down, it would have to be in what the dockworkers called “the shed” but which was really a two-hundred-thousand-plus square-foot warehouse.

And as Luke thought it, he heard the muffled rumble of a truck starting up inside the warehouse.

“Shit,” he mumbled.

He ran into an aisle of containers, hugging the sides; it was like moving through a maze, and he had the unnerving feeling that he was being watched, like a mouse in a laboratory, a sense of being tracked from above.

He turned abruptly, and got a glimpse of a figure between stacks of crates, pale skin, red hair...

A woman? What the hell?

He ran forward to the gap in containers, stared down the aisle.

Empty. Nothing. No one. Just the fog...

Great. Seeing things now.

He turned back toward the warehouse.

As he started toward it in the dark, the woman stepped out of the shadows, watching him.

Approaching the warehouse, Luke could see light under the closed roll-up doors. Oh, yeah, there were people in there. And still no backup in sight.

Luke felt a surge of frustration—and recklessness. He wasn’t planning on bursting in and arresting the whole lot—the only thing that would get him was killed. But it was an incredible opportunity to find out about the operation.

He tensed as he heard another engine start up inside the warehouse, and he made a quick decision. He hopped up on a nearby steel drum and then scaled up one of the tall containers, where he dropped down flat on his stomach so he’d have a bird’s-eye view.

He eased his phone out of a pocket and turned on the camera. Anything he shot would be inadmissible as evidence, but this kind of thing could come in handy for identification.

There was a mechanical clunking behind him and he belly-crawled across the top of the container to watch as the metal warehouse door started rolling itself up.

His pulse began to race even harder at what he saw when he looked below.

There were a lot of guns down there. Four men on guard that he could see, each one with an automatic rifle, standing like soldiers as a tall, muscular man with white-blond hair signaled behind him and a container truck drove out of the warehouse, with no headlights on.

Not many legitimate shipments that need an armed guard, Luke thought to himself grimly.

But the next thing he saw was even more unnerving.

There were the sounds of some kind of struggle from the next aisle of containers, and another armed man came forward into the square light of the warehouse door, shoving a ragged man before him.

The tall blond man stepped forward tensely as the new man pushed his hostage down onto his knees. “What the hell is this?”

“He was sleeping back there.” The guard jerked his head back toward the container maze and shoved the barrel of his rifle into the man’s neck. The man whimpered.

“He stinks,” said another one.

“Didn’t see nothing, didn’t see nothing,” the ragged man stammered out, his voice shaky with fear. “Just trying to crash...” Luke could see his fingers were covered with torn gloves and his hands and feet were as filthy as his clothes. One of the city’s ubiquitous homeless, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Probably not just poor but mentally ill, as so many of them were.

“Waste him,” the blond man said. “Dump him in the bay.”

Above them, Luke was stiff with tension. He was badly outnumbered but he couldn’t allow what was clearly going to happen. He had to make a move.

He edged his way back to the other side of the container and lowered himself onto the steel drum he’d used as a stepladder, then dropped silently onto the ground.

He tucked his Glock in his belt and quietly lifted the drum—empty, thank God—and carried it carefully to the edge of the container.

Then he tipped the drum over and kicked it so that it rattled metallically down the concrete of the dark aisle, a startling, crashing noise. As the men spun toward the sound, he dodged back into the darkness, shouting out, “San Francisco PD. Drop your weapons. You’re under arrest.”

The homeless man bolted to life, leaping up and running, veering into an aisle of containers.

Good man, Luke thought. Survival instinct intact. He pressed himself against the container wall. “Drop your weapons,” he growled again. “You’re...”

Then he felt the cold touch of steel against his cheek, and in the same moment, caught a whiff of a strong acrid smell. Fresh paint?

“Don’t move,” a voice breathed behind him. “Drop it or you lose that hand.”

Luke opened his hand and released his weapon.

He turned slowly to face the blond man. Up close Luke could see he was hard-muscled, with a hardness to his face, too, a cruel coldness in his eyes.

Those ice-blue eyes narrowed. “You walked into the wrong operation, cop.”

Luke heard the shots a split second before he felt them tearing into his flesh.

The first would have killed him, if not for the vest. As it was, it felt like a wrecking ball had swung into him. The force spun his body around and the second shot hit his left shoulder. Another clipped his leg and he could feel hot blood instantly, a bad wound, possibly femoral...possibly fatal.

His leg collapsed and he hit the dock hard, with just enough time to think, I am in bad trouble here...

Darkness moved over his eyes...a shadow? Or something worse?

His life’s blood was pumping from him; his jeans were soaked with it. He could hear his heart pumping too, as if it were being broadcast all over the pier, echoing across the water, a deafening, frightening sound.

Then suddenly he felt a great calm. The world narrowed to a tunnel, black, with a blinding light at the end of it.

Just like they always say, he thought with detached wonder. Do they expect me to walk that way? ’Cause no way am I walking anywhere with my leg like this.

From far down in the tunnel he could hear a thundering...not his heart this time but...

Horses? Are you kidding me?

Thundering, galloping, coming from the tunnel, and then a silhouette came into view against the light: a magnificent black steed and a dark woman wearing a silver breastplate riding it, her black hair flowing behind her. She and the horse were galloping toward him, just like in a movie.

This is so weird, Luke was thinking as his mind drifted... His eyes were so heavy he had to close them. A phrase from the dream floated through his mind: I’ll come for you by midnight steed...

Then just before the black closed in, he smelled that honey scent, the sweet, feminine fragrance from his dream, and there was a sense of presence suddenly, something warm and live.

He looked up into eyes as blue as the sky, eyes that it seemed he had always known...and heard a woman’s voice in his ear: “I’ll take care of you.”

And weirdly, even if maybe he was dying, it suddenly felt that somehow everything was going to be all right. Maybe more all right than it had ever been in his life.

Behind the woman there was a figure of a wiry man leaning jauntily up against a container, shaking his head. Luke heard him say, “Oh, darling, you are in so much trouble...”

And then everything went black.

Chapter 2

Luke woke because there was motion—not just motion, but the sensation of speeding.

Speeding where?

I thought I was dead. Am I dead?

But the motion was familiar, not anything ethereal at all. He was...

In a car?

That makes no sense.

How did I get...?

He forced his eyes open, saw headlights racing over an open highway, nearly deserted—eerie lights floating in the fog, the night flying past outside a passenger window.

Maybe I am dead.

No, he was in a car, his own car, and it was being driven by...

He turned his head painfully toward the driver’s seat.

A woman?

He guessed she was in her late twenties, although as soon as he thought it something in him said he was wrong. In the dark he could see a perfect feminine profile, alabaster skin and luxurious hair shimmering even in the half-light...

Red hair?

She was in a simple pale dress, gold, he thought, that slipped silkily over a figure that could only be called spectacular. Those lush curves...

“Who are you?” he said thickly. His throat seemed to be closed up.

She careened around a turn. “I’ll explain when you’re safe,” she answered breathlessly.

“Safe? What the hell...?”

A wave of pain cut him off. Right. He’d been shot. Shot bad. In fact, it was a miracle he wasn’t dead.

“You need to rest,” the woman at the wheel said, reproving. “Try to sleep.”

Try to sleep? Is she joking?

“Not till you tell me...”

He stopped, because he didn’t know where to start. Who was she, how could she possibly have gotten him off the dock and into a car, where were they going, what was she doing there in the first place?

If he could just stop the car from spinning, he was going to get some answers.

“Who are you?” he said again, more faintly.

She said something that sounded like...

“Bodyguard?” he repeated in disbelief, and stared at her with all the skepticism of a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound male looking at a one-hundred-and-fifteen-pound woman. Bodyguard? Her body was—well, there was not a thing wrong with it. Those long, lithe legs, those curves... It was perfect, in fact, for a dancer maybe, but a bodyguard?

“Whose...bodyguard?”

“Yours,” she said softly, just before he passed out again.

* * *

Aurora breathed easier once Luke was out again. Talking would only cause him anxiety, when what he needed was absolute rest. Well, not absolute rest in the sense of “final rest.” Just rest.

She stared out at the dark road in front of her, and clenched her hands on the wheel.

She’d known Val was up to something.

Aurora could tell, could always tell. They were sisters, and Aurora knew every trick in Val’s encyclopedia-length book. Normally she wouldn’t worry about what her sister was planning; after all, the future was only ever that. It was the present where everything significant ever happened, and the present determined the future, and the present was Aurora’s business. But it was the way Val had looked at her this morning—as if whatever was in that beautiful dark scheming head had something intimately to do with Aurora—that had made the alarm bells go off.

Val had made noises about a hot date, but Aurora was sure that she’d seen her sister slip a pair of scissors into her belt. Not just scissors, but gold scissors, which meant that Val was planning to cut some mortal’s thread.

And the gnawing in the pit of Aurora’s stomach made her think it was not just any mortal, but the one mortal that she...

“Cared about” was not the right phrase. She cared about all mortals, the way a doting owner would care for beloved pets. Even the worst ones had been innocent children once; it was never anyone’s intention to go wrong.

But in the five thousand years since she’d been looking after them, she’d never felt this way about anyone but one.

She remembered the first time she’d seen him—as a baby, of course. It was her job to stand with her two sisters at the cribs of their assigned list of mortals, and determine the weave—past, present and future—of each mortal’s fate.

From the first second she’d seen the infant Luke Mars, she’d known the shape of his whole life and everything about him. At that moment she knew with absolute conviction that he was the only man she would ever love—love as she was never supposed to love a mortal.

And as all these confusing sensations and convictions swept over her, while Aurora stood dumbstruck, staring down into his baby-blue eyes...

Her sister Val had claimed him as her own.

Claimed him for herself and for Odin, Odin Allfather, Almighty Warrior King of the Gods.

Which might sound like an honor, but really what it meant was early, glorious death.

Aurora had never understood what about death could possibly be glorious.

It was a scam, was all, a bunch of PR hype. Odin needed warriors and the Valkyries, women warriors like her sister, went out making it happen...

A head popped up from the backseat, startling Aurora so that she swerved and nearly ran off the road.

“Never let a Norn drive,” the intruder tsked.

“Loki!” Aurora was both limp with relief and pissed beyond belief. The man—although not a man exactly—in the backseat was irritatingly handsome, young and dark-haired and dark-eyed. That is, when he wasn’t red-haired or golden-haired or Asian or African or Latin. Or female, for that matter. You never could tell with a shape-shifter. He was Loki: trickster, shifter and magician, the bane of the whole pantheon of the gods in Asgard.

“You’ve really torn it this time, lovely.” He smirked at her in the rearview mirror. “Crossing destiny, abducting a mortal. And for what?” He leaned forward in the seat, looked over Luke’s unconscious body.

“Oh, my. Not bad actually...”

“He’s mine,” she said with such fiery conviction that she surprised herself.

“That’s not what I hear,” he said, and she faltered again. She couldn’t argue the point.

Of all the gods, why was it Loki who was always there when she least wanted him there?

“Because we’re the same,” he said, as if he’d read her mind, which probably he had. “The other Aesir don’t care about mortals. They’re content to dwell godlike in their godly realm, doing their godly things. But you and I, and your oh-so-fetching sisters—we understand the fascination of these puzzling beings, don’t we?”

Truth wasn’t normally a word she associated with Loki—in any way—but Aurora was struck by the truth of this.

“Some more fascinating than others, eh, lovely?” He winked at her lewdly, spoiling the moment.

She summoned all the dignity she could muster. “I am bound by duty to protect this one.”

“Which is why he’s in a speeding car, bleeding to death.”

“He’s not bleeding to death. I’m going to take care of him.”

“Aurora, sweet,” Loki said in that silky voice that for eons had seduced goddesses and mortals alike. “You can’t play by the rules any more than I can. Ditch the mortal and come with me. Together we’d be unstoppable—we could crack the whole world open.”

“You’re married,” she reminded him. “Three wives. Or is it four?”

“And none of them hold a candle to you,” he said breezily. “My dear, these mixed relationships never work out well. Gods should be with gods, and men should be with men. Or women. Or women with women. Or...”

“You are so very helpful,” she said through her teeth, concentrating on the road. “Can you get the hell out of the car now?”

“You can’t talk that way to a god.”

“Demigod,” she corrected. Loki always exaggerated, especially when it came to himself.

“You need me. How many times have I saved that lovely...”

“Don’t,” she warned.

“Skin of yours?” he finished.

Aurora was about to point out that for every “favor” Loki granted, twelve times more trouble seemed to come of it. Instead, she just said, “Please. Leave.”

“As you wish. You’ll be calling for me soon enough. Just you wait and see,” he said maddeningly, and promptly disappeared.

Aurora bit her lip...then looked at Luke beside her in the seat, and her heart melted. She tightened her hands on the wheel, and drove.

* * *

When Luke came to again, everything had changed. He was in the car alone; it was stopped, with the windows down.

He reached instantly for his weapon and found it was there in his holster, heavy and real. He wasn’t sure how it had gotten there, but he relaxed slightly at the feel of it. He was way out of the city. It wasn’t just by the lack of light that he could tell. The whole air was different, live and breathing, with towering presences...

A forest?

The air was full of a spicy scent—not pine, more like cedar, but not quite. And he felt...better. He was still in enormous pain, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped... At least he hadn’t bled out. There was something comforting about the oxygen-rich air.

He stared out the window into the surrounding dark and saw that the car was parked in a lot surrounded by a split-rail fence and immense trees, bigger than he’d ever seen in his life—unreal, actually. It gave him an uneasy feeling...timeless, eternal...

Where the hell am I?

He stared into the towering shadows and saw there was some kind of building up ahead; the trees had shielded it from his view at first.

He didn’t know where he was, he didn’t know how he’d gotten there, and the woman—well, who the hell knew where or who the woman was?

If there ever had been a woman.

He felt again for the reassuring weight of his weapon. It was there...but the hulking blond man had disarmed him right before he’d shot him. Hadn’t he? Which meant that someone—that she—had put it back in its holster.

What the hell?

Wherever he was, whatever was happening, he had to get out.

He made a move for the door and found himself in blinding pain. A veil of gray passed over his eyes and he gasped. Not good.

Suddenly the car door was opening beside him, and the woman was there. A shock, because he hadn’t heard her approach at all. Normally his hearing was keen as a bat’s.

She looked startled, then pleased. “You’re awake.”

With a supreme effort, he pulled the Glock and lunged out of the car, supporting himself by leaning on the roof while he used the other hand to train the gun on her.

She stood still, looking down at the Glock and then back up at him expectantly, not seeming afraid or surprised at all.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

Not exactly the words of someone who was trying to kill him.

“Where are we?” he demanded.

“The Sequoias.”

He felt a rush of relief. It made perfect sense; he should have known right away by the immensity of the trees around him. A real place, not some ancient universe or other world or whatever he’d been thinking it was.

I must still be pretty out of it, he thought, and then realized he also must have been out for at least three hours—the distance from the city to the national forest.

“You’ve been driving for three hours?” he asked, unnerved.

She looked evasive. “Not exactly.”

“How many hours exactly?”

“Well, hours,” she said vaguely, “are not all that relevant actually. It’s about time, you see. Time can do strange things.”

Maybe it was because he was dizzy from bleeding so heavily, but he wasn’t following her at all. He shook his head to clear it. “Let’s start from the beginning. Who are you? What happened back there? What am I doing here?”

“Someone was trying to kill you,” she said.

“That part I remember,” he said coldly.

I was lying on the dock, bleeding... I was thinking I was dead...

He remembered the dark tunnel that had opened up to him...

And then what? What happened? The next thing I can remember is being with her. No memory of how, or when, or why...

“We’ll go to the room,” she said suddenly. “You need to lie down.”

“The room?”

“This is a hotel. A lodge, I think you call it.”

Luke raised his eyebrows. She’d gotten a room? That was an interesting development—if it was in any way true. They could be anywhere. She could be taking him anywhere. Anyone at all could be waiting in “the room.”

“You can rest, and I can...” She stopped, looking worried, almost as if she didn’t know how to complete the sentence. Not his problem. He had things to do, people to see.

“I need to call my team,” he told her.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said quickly.

He refrained, barely, from asking her just what the hell she had to do with it, and simply reached for his phone. But when he speed-dialed his partner he got nothing, no connection. And nothing when he tried Lieutenant Duncan. He lifted the phone and squinted down on the screen. There were no bars, his phone was completely dead.

“I’ll need to borrow your phone,” he said stiffly.

She looked distressed. “I’m sorry. I don’t have one.”

Right, lady, who doesn’t have a phone?

He was about to insist, search her if he had to—but then he stopped, thinking.

My CI phones about a shipment and I show up and none of the rest of the team is there and I’m shot, nearly killed.

She was looking at him as if she understood the direction his thoughts were heading.

“I got set up,” he said slowly. The realization was like a shot to the gut.

She lifted her hands slightly in...sympathy? Apology? Agreement?

“How do you know all this?” he demanded. “Who are you?”

“We’ll go to the room and I’ll tell you everything. I promise.”

Luke briefly debated getting back into the car and getting the hell away. There was no reason to trust her or think that she wasn’t involved in whatever craziness was going on. But he knew realistically that even if he wrestled her for the keys, he was too injured to get far. He didn’t know what he was getting into, but he was the one with the gun, which meant as long as he could stay conscious, he was in no particular danger.

“All right,” he said roughly, with a firm grip on the Glock. “Let’s go.”

Chapter 3

The hotel was a lodge, par for the course in a national forest, and the room was really a suite—rustic but elegant. Luke kept the Glock trained on the redhead as he looked around: a big bed, lots of polished wood, burl tables, a cozy conversation area of couch and armchairs in front of a fireplace that was already blazing, and big gleaming windows that afforded a breathtaking view of the moon on the cove.

Very nice. If he’d been kidnapped, at least he couldn’t complain about the accommodations. And only one bed...what a shame. They’d have to share.

Oh, no, you don’t, he ordered himself. Where did that even come from? Focus. You need to figure out what’s going on here.

He looked first to the phone on the bed table. As he limped toward it he got a look at the clock above the fireplace: it said 12:16. That couldn’t be right, though; he’d gotten the call at his flat just after eleven, and it was obviously many hours later.

He picked up the phone...but it didn’t seem to be working, either.

Maybe best not to talk to anyone until I figure more out.

He lowered himself to the bed and willed himself not to bleed out. The redhead was watching him anxiously.

“We’re going to start with you,” he said, “and what you have to do with all of this.” He was beginning to think there was something odd about her. For one thing, she must have been the one who had given him back his gun. Why?

“What’s your name?” he demanded.

“Aurora.”

Pretty. “Aurora what?”

She hesitated. “Aurora.”

Right. Well, they’d get back to that. “Okay, Aurora, what are we doing here? Why did you bring me here?”

“Those people were trying to kill you,” she said.

“So you put me in my car and drove me to the Sequoias? How did you even get me out of there?”

She wasn’t paying any attention to what he was saying at all, it seemed; instead, she was staring at his legs. Or his crotch. Which may have been flattering under different circumstances, but not at the moment.

“I need to take a look at those wounds,” she said.

And somehow she was at his side, gently helping him stand and leading him into the bathroom.

She pushed him gently back against the sink and put her hands on the bottom of his T-shirt to lift it over his head and her fingers touched the flat, hard plane of his stomach. Despite his condition, Luke felt a surge of desire that knocked his breath out of him. She froze and stood with her hands on his skin and he could feel her shaking. In the light she was stunningly beautiful—that creamy skin and sky-blue eyes and a mouth as full and kissable as any man could ever want. And she was completely...soft was the only word he could think of. There was nothing hard or cynical or worldly or guileful about her; she was as fresh and sweet as a rose.

She was looking into his face, and there were spots of color flaming in her cheeks; she was clearly and beautifully as turned on as he was.

Finally she said breathlessly, “I have to...make sure you’re all right.” And she pulled his shirt off.

His sudden nakedness made the heat between them even more intense.

Who is this woman? Luke thought...and then he caught sight of his biceps in the mirror.

There was a large and expert gauze bandage taped to his arm. Blood had oozed through the gauze, but nothing anywhere near lethal.

What the...?

She was suddenly focused on the wound, too, and gently loosened the gauze to look. He was stunned to see that the ripped flesh had been neatly sewn together, with tiny, precise stitches, as expertly as a combat medic would have done.

“You did that?” he said, unnerved.

“I’m good with thread,” she said modestly.

“That’s great, but the bullet’s going to have to come out,” he said, dreading the thought.

“Oh, it’s out,” she assured him, and proceeded to douse the wound with hydrogen peroxide. Which shut him up, but only for a minute.

When he’d stopped cursing, he stared at her through stinging eyes. “You took out the bullet.”

She dipped her head, concentrating on daubing the edges of the wound. “I stopped along the way and fixed you up a little.”

“A little,” he repeated. “You took a bullet out of me?”

“Well, I had to,” she said, as if she did it every day.

Now she glanced down at his thigh. The second bullet had ripped his jeans, and he could see there was more bandage work under the blood-soaked denim.

“Can you...?” she started, and blushed crimson.

He knew what she was asking, but wasn’t about to just go along. “Can I what?” he asked, his voice suddenly rough.

“You need to take off...” She couldn’t even finish.

“Why don’t you?” he said, holding her eyes.

She bit those full lips...and then put her hands on his waistband and unbuttoned the button. He could feel himself thick and hard just under her fingers as she unzipped his jeans, and she was holding her breath... He could smell her, that incredible honey scent.

Her hands skimmed his muscular thighs as she eased his pants down, and he was looking at the pale curve of her throat, just inches away. He was breathing raggedly... In two seconds he was going to be having her against the wall.

Get hold of yourself, he ordered himself. You don’t even know who she is.

With a supreme effort he quelled his raging hormones and felt his hard-on start to subside.

She swallowed and concentrated on the bandage, again gently loosening the gauze to inspect the wound and pouring more peroxide carefully into the trough between the perfectly stitched sutures.

She knows what she’s doing, that’s for sure.

But now that he was thinking with his brain again instead of...other parts of his anatomy, nothing was adding up.

“How did you get me into the car to begin with?” he demanded. Come to think of it, he didn’t think that was even possible without one or even two other people—surely she hadn’t lifted him herself. So someone must have helped her, and that meant there were forces at work he didn’t know about. Luke Mars didn’t like having people know things he didn’t.

“I...” She looked to the left—clear evidence she was about to make up a story. Luke had had all the training: she looked up and to the left, meaning she was accessing her right, creative brain when she spoke. Witnesses who were telling the truth looked to the right, using their left brain to access memory.

“You’re not going to tell me you carried me,” he said curtly.

“No...”

“Not all by yourself, anyway.”

“I didn’t carry you. You walked. Well, ran, really.”

Luke looked down at the gash in his leg. “I ran,” he said. “Like this.”

She faltered under his gaze.

He took her arms and felt her tense with either fear or...something else. “All right, who’s working with you?” he demanded.

“No one,” she protested.

“I know you didn’t get me into that car all by yourself.”

“I only helped you, that’s all.”

He was about to say that with his wounds he couldn’t have walked anywhere, but that brought up a whole slew of uncomfortable questions, like: What was he still doing alive?

He remembered the tunnel of light...and there was another woman in his memory, that vision of the dark woman on the horse.

“She’s not important,” the woman said, as if she’d read his mind.

He stared hard into her face. “Maybe you can tell me why I’m not dead.”

Her eyes locked on his, and she trembled, but lifted her chin. “Because I’m not going to let you die.”

He felt his chest tighten as she said it, as if...almost as if his heart hurt. He couldn’t understand the reaction he was having to this strange, lovely, possibly crazy woman.

Stay focused.

He had to look away from her to get a grip, and as he did he noticed again the stopped clock.

“All right, then, let’s try something simple, like, what time is it?”

“It’s Now.”

Now. He stared at her. Was that her idea of a joke?

“That’s why you’re still here,” she explained. “Alive, I mean. If it weren’t Now, you’d be dead.” He was struck by the earnest seriousness of her face, but he had no idea what she was talking about.

“None of this makes any sense,” he muttered.

“We’re in the Now, and you’re not dead. But only because you’re in the Now.”

He could only stare at her. “Right. Well, I’m getting out, now.”

He stood up from the sink and walked stiff-legged out the bathroom door...but was hit by a wave of dizziness. He stumbled and she caught him, barely. She held him up through a few stumbling steps and then lowered him to the couch, where he sat with his head spinning, nausea welling up. As if she knew, she took his head in her hands and held him gently, murmuring, “It’s all right. I’ll take care of you.” He rested his forehead against her waist and smelled that honey scent...

From the dream...

He jerked his head up.

“Wait a minute. I dreamed...”

“It wasn’t a dream, Luke,” she said.

“And that, there. How do you know my name?”

“I’ve known you forever,” she said, and her eyes were luminous with feeling; he felt his breath catch at the longing in them.

“Who are you?” he said again.

“I’m your Norn,” she said softly.

Of all the weirdness that had happened so far, this was by far the strangest. He was rejecting the thought even as the sense of unreality washed over him. She really is crazy.

It wasn’t that he didn’t know the word; it was that he did. A Norn wasn’t a real thing at all; it was a fairy tale, a story from the Old Country, something his grandmother used to talk about.

Three goddesses assigned to you from the cradle, they were—well, it was hard to say exactly—a combination of fairy godmother, guardian angel...

Bodyguard, she’d said.

And Norns were something harder to define, something to do with fate, the path of a person’s life.

You have a bad Norn, his grandmother used to say.

But whatever Norns were, they weren’t real.

She was watching him, and she looked distressed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. I’m one of them, anyway. Oh, it’s so hard to explain...”

“I’ve heard of them,” he cut her off. “I didn’t know Norns were in the kidnapping business now.”

She looked shocked. “I haven’t kidnapped you.”

“Then I’m free to go,” he said, and stood—or tried to. He would have collapsed on the floor if she hadn’t lunged forward and caught him.

“You can’t go,” she said into his neck, and he felt himself stir in response to the feel of her breath on his skin, her breasts pressed into his arm.

“I’m a captive, then,” he said, a bit breathlessly.

“No. Yes. I can’t...let you die,” she said, and he could feel her heart racing. He was fully hard now, and he suddenly pulled her against him. He felt her breath stop, feeling him pressing into her.

And then he tightened his hands on her arms and he held her away.

“That’s enough. I’m out of here.”

He started for the door and she flung herself at him with surprising strength. Suddenly they were wrestling, and she wasn’t kidding about it, either; in his wounded state it was all he could do to pick her up and swing her onto the bed. Then he was on top of her, pinning her wrists above her head as she struggled beneath him, and her honey scent was all around him and he was harder than he’d ever been, and fire was racing through his blood.

Despite everything, despite the absurd unreality of the circumstances, he was consumed with the desire to kiss her, more than kiss her, to have her, all of her...

Her eyes widened as she looked up at him and she went still beneath him. He leaned down to her...and she arched her back, lifting her head...

* * *

And Time stopped.

Aurora felt Luke go still on top of her and for a heart-pounding moment she didn’t know what was happening, didn’t know where she was, didn’t care what happened to her; she only wanted him...

And then the moment was broken by her sister’s voice—Val, and she was furious.

“I knew it. You little cheat. You have no right. Give him back this instant.”

Aurora managed to wriggle out from under Luke, who was frozen and unresponsive. She stood from the bed, disheveled, to face her sisters: Val, a dark and fiery siren, and Lena, lovely and calm and blonde. Val was in a blazing fury; Lena just looked sad.

It was no longer even the Now; Val had stopped the clocks entirely. They were in the Eternal. Everything was slightly luminous, the colors more clear and sharp. The Wyrd.

Aurora glanced toward the bed, and her heart twisted at Luke’s stillness, although she knew that he was fine, just suspended. It was only Time that had stopped.

They could do that, the Norns: stop Time. Time was their business. Lena, the Norn of the Past, Aurora, the Norn of the Present and Val, the Norn of the Future. Three Norns just like them were assigned to every mortal at birth, at the cradle, and they wove the past, present and future of each mortal’s destiny. Sometimes called the Fates, sometimes the Moerae, they were guardians capable of helping, or hurting, at the critical junctures of a mortal’s life—especially if the mortal had some awareness of them and a willingness to ask for help and listen for the answers. But there was always one of the three who became the personal Norn of their mortal charge. So when Aurora had said she was Luke’s Norn, it was the truth, but she was also bending the truth a little. Because Val had jumped in and claimed Luke for herself. Which explained why she was ballistic at the moment.

“Look at you. You’ve really done it this time,” Val raged.

“I’m afraid you have,” Lena echoed. “Aurora, you know this is wrong. You must release him.”

“No,” Aurora said.

Her younger sister paced in front of the doors, with the moon shining behind her. “You have no right...” she started.

“You can’t take him,” Aurora said fiercely. “I took him into the Now, you have no power here,” she shot back at her sister.

“Aurora, you can’t keep a mortal in the Now indefinitely,” Lena said reasonably. She glanced at the bed, at Luke’s still form. “They can’t exist like that. He might even go mad.”

Aurora faltered at that. Her older sister was always so right at just the wrong times. “I’m not going to keep him here indefinitely. I’m only trying to keep her from killing him.” She pointed at their younger sister.

“Who said anything about killing?” Val tossed back her hair. “His destiny is to ascend to Valhalla. It’s a glorious future. You have no right to prevent it.”

“You have no right to make him die,” Aurora said murderously, and the two sisters advanced on each other, as if they were children, ready to pull each other’s hair out.

Lena quickly stepped between them. “It’s not up to either of you. We’ve been Summoned.” True to form, Lena kept any hint of blame or reproach out of her voice, but Aurora’s heart plummeted.

“The Eternals?” she asked, her voice trembling. She meant the Goddess Norns who ruled all the rest of the Norns.

Lena nodded.

“You are in such trouble,” Val seethed.

“We’ll see,” Lena said, resigned.

She stepped with her usual grace to the glass doors and pushed lightly; they swept open like breath, with no weight or substance. Beyond the balcony, the moon was high and luminous as pearl; its light poured across the dark water of the bay like a shining arched bridge. Which was exactly what it was: the Bifrost, the bridge across realms.

Lena looked back at her sisters and stepped out onto the balcony, then out onto the moon path, which shimmered under her feet but for their purposes was as solid as stone.

Val stalked after her, and Aurora paused to look back at Luke, so still and peaceful on the bed. Her heart ached for him.

“I’ll take care of you,” she said again softly, and then shivered.

She walked after her sisters, onto the moon bridge.

Chapter 4

The dark bowl of the cosmos surrounded Aurora and her sisters, with bright lights of galaxies above them and reflected in the black water below them. The glowing white path stretched across the starry blackness.

By mortal day the Bifrost sometimes appeared as a rainbow, all the dazzling separate colors of the sun. But in the deep and constant darkness of the universe, it had the pearly luminosity of a moon path. The sisters’ skin was fantastical in the glowing light; they looked like what they were: ancient, immortal beings of the Aesir, the pantheon of the gods.

Below the bridge was the great ocean that surrounded Midgard, the world of men. The Bifrost was the only way to cross it. Aurora looked down, down, down toward the blackness of the water. She knew that beneath the ocean lay the gigantic sea serpent Jörmungandr, who was so huge he circled the world entirely and grasped his tail in his own mouth as he slept. Soon, it was prophesied, he would waken and arise from the ocean, poisoning land and sea with his venom, and causing the sea to rear up and lash against the land. These actions would send cataclysms through the mortal world, signaling the beginning of Ragnarok—the battle at the end of the world.

In fact, the first stirrings had begun, causing the unprecedented earthquakes, the hurricanes, the destructive tsunamis that crashed the water onto the land, leveling all in their paths. All the signs of the End of Days were there—floods and drought, war and famine and toxic spills and scorching lethal heat waves. But the humans carried on as they always had, seemingly oblivious to their incipient destruction and the multidimensional war to come.

Aurora’s heart tightened at the thought. That was what Val was trying to carry Luke off to: service in the army of the gods.

But even if it was prophesied, that didn’t mean it had to be that way. Why should the world end in war and cataclysm? Why should the world end at all? It had always seemed to Aurora that the prophecy could be reversed by a little refocusing: less war and more, well, love...

“You better snap out of it, we’re almost there.” Val’s voice broke her train of thought.

Aurora looked up and realized they were already across the bridge: at the horizon line, the darkness shimmered and the sisters stepped as through a curtain.

At the very end of the bridge was a marble gatehouse—the dwelling of the god Heimdallr, who guarded the bridge from the giants, the Jotunn. He stood in gleaming gold armor at the crossroads of the worlds, always ready to sound the alarm if the evil beings tried to leave their own realm to overrun the world of gods or the world of men. It was only a matter of time before the giants made an assault on the other worlds; it, too, had been prophesied.

Aurora shivered. It was all so close. So close, and so fatal, unless someone did something...

Although the three sisters were still so far from Heimdallr they could barely see him, he stood from the throne of the guardhouse as they approached, looking toward them. Aurora had always felt safe, guarded, having the god posted as eternal sentry.

“My ladies.” He bowed to them, which was chivalry only; he far outranked them in the hierarchy. But all of the gods had a certain respect for the Norns; it had always been that way. Aurora was proud of the duty it implied. A duty she’d now trampled on, she realized with a pang, and felt a wave of guilt.

But I’m not going to let Luke die, not even for Odin. I won’t, she told herself, and lifted her chin. Val glanced at her, a narrowed gaze, as if she could hear Aurora’s thoughts.

“Sentry,” Lena said demurely as she bowed back to the god, and Aurora dropped a curtsy of her own.

“Lovely as ever,” Heimdallr added. “How is the world tonight?” he asked with a certain wistfulness. Aurora thought the sentry must be lonely, always on watch all by himself.

“Lovely as ever.” Lena smiled at him, and for a moment Aurora saw longing in the look that he returned her sister.

He wants her, Aurora thought, startled. Does Lena know?

But there was no time to think of that now. Heimdallr ushered them into the portal of the guardhouse. The sisters stepped through the arch of the guardhouse door—and into brilliant sunlight, so dazzling after the dark night of the other side that they all had to pause to get their bearings.

And then they looked out into the Wyrd.

Aurora often watched the young humans who came to the fairs and festivals in the park across from where Luke lived. When she saw them dancing on the grass with their psychedelic clothes and beatific smiles, the Wyrd was always what she thought of. Everything was alive and lit from within with a fairy-tale radiance.

The sisters now stood in a field of springlike beauty, with a ribbon of river running through it, silver and singing. Ygddrasil, the world tree, towered above them, a gigantic ash, white trunk smooth and stately, its branches open to touch the entire universe, all nine realms.

Aurora gazed out in wonder. Everything existed here, there and nowhere—all present, all eternal. She felt exhilaration and peace all at once.

Someone spoke her name. Aurora came back to herself and looked at Lena. “They’re waiting,” her older sister said, and the three sisters moved across the shining field.

Slightly beyond it, glowing like a jewel, there was a round building made from the purest moonstone, as befitted its name: the Hall of the Moon. Ahead, the doors of the hall swung slowly open, commanding entry.

The sisters moved through the great shining doors. Inside, the hall was liquid with mirrors, which glimmered with ever-changing reflections. Aurora’s heart beat faster as the cool radiance of the hall surrounded them.

As she followed her sisters she glanced around, glimpsing all the days of her existence in the silvery windows around her. She saw Luke there, as a child, as a teenager, as a college student, as a man, every episode of his life... And she saw herself, as a child, as a teenager, as a woman, always there, always watching him longingly.

She became aware of Val staring daggers at her, and Lena took her arm, gently steering her forward.

The three Eternals were seated on silver thrones in the center of the hall, around a giant silver loom, where every day they wove the Web of Fate.

Aurora felt fear and calm equally in their presence; they were beautiful and terrifying, as old and as powerful, as the tree Ygddrasil itself. Urd, Verdandi and Skuld: That Which Was, That Which Is and That Which Will Be. Urd, with her spindle to spin the threads of life; Verdandi, who wove the cloth on the loom; and Skuld, hovering silently with her scissors to cut the threads at the end of mortal life. Urd was all in white, promising endless possibility, Verdandi in red, reflecting the heat of life, and Skuld was all in black, signifying the end of life, and always veiled, so none could know her secrets.

Now Urd looked up from her spindle and glanced toward the younger Norns, raised a hand, summoning them. “Come, daughters.”

Aurora swallowed and followed her sisters forward across the mosaic floor. They stopped before the semicircle of thrones and bowed to the Eternals; Urd nodded acceptance of the homage and then spread her hands, a question and a reproof.

“Come and see,” she said, and passed a hand over the tapestry on the loom. The sisters moved forward slowly, and looked down at the shimmering, multicolored weave.

The fabric seemed alive, constantly changing. Aurora could see forests, cities, families, lovers—a carousel of images of the world, past, present and future. She was captivated.

And then Skuld raised a black-gloved hand and silently pointed.

There, in the middle of the tapestry, a golden thread was broken and twisted, a glaring flaw in the perfection of the weave.

Aurora stared down in confusion and dismay. It looked like an ugly rip in the fabric of life itself.

She looked up—and saw that all three of the Eternals were regarding her silently. With a jolt, Aurora realized what she was seeing.

“I did that?” she whispered.

Verdandi sighed. “The web is closely woven. One man’s fate cannot simply stop without all others being affected.”

As they watched, another thread popped, creating another hole in the delicate tapestry.

Val shot Aurora a look of triumph, then stepped forward with a deference that Aurora knew to be absolutely false humility. “Your Highnesses, if I may speak...”

Urd motioned to her, and Val barreled forward. “At his birth, I claimed the mortal Luke Mars for Odin. He has been a warrior all his life, in every aspect of his life. He was to have died gloriously in battle—last night, by earth’s time. Now while Odin awaits his service in Valhalla, the mortal’s whole life has stopped, which is affecting the Weave of Life.”

The Eternals turned their eyes toward Aurora and she faltered under the power of that triple gaze. But she thought of Luke, of his passion and fire, and she lifted her head and said nothing.

Urd, the Norn of the Past, touched her fingers lightly to the tapestry in several places as she looked deeply into it.

“Child, you have overstepped your bounds with this mortal before,” she said.

Aurora dropped her eyes. “I only tried to help...when he was in trouble...”

“She has interfered over and over and over again,” Val argued indignantly.

Aurora felt she was dying inside. I won’t let her take him, she thought in anguish. He has so much to live for.

She had to make the Eternals see. But how?

In desperation she stepped forward. “Are not mortals allowed to choose their own fate?” she asked, and her voice seemed breathless, but steady.

The Eternals glanced at one another. It was Verdandi who spoke. “Not only allowed, it is always to be so. If a mortal dares, all of the universe must support that choice.”

Aurora lifted her head, straightened her shoulders. “Then I ask that Luke Mars be allowed to choose his fate.”

Val practically exploded beside her. “He’s a man. You don’t even know that he wants to choose his fate...” Lena nudged her and Val fell silent.

Urd frowned, and the Eternals looked around at one another again. The three elegant giantesses leaned forward on their thrones to confer.

Aurora waited in suspended agony. They must let him live, they must...

Finally Verdandi stood and moved forward. Waves of radiance and power flowed from her.

“Mortals must be able to choose their own destinies, if they so dare.” Her luminous eyes looked straight down into Aurora’s, and Aurora felt her breath suspend. “We give you one day, daughter.”

Aurora’s heart lifted, then Verdandi said sternly, “You must unstop Time for him.”

Aurora bowed her head. “I will, Highness.”

“And then you have a day. One earth day, from dawn till dawn. The mortal Luke Mars may choose his own destiny—if he desires. He will make his decision, and all of the cosmos, including you, will abide by it.”

“Yes, Verdandi,” Aurora managed.

“Yes, Verdandi,” Lena murmured, and elbowed Val so that she muttered, “Yes, Verdandi.”

“Go now,” Verdandi said. “Fortune be with you.” And she sat, taking up the spindle once more, and the three Eternal sisters wove their cloth.

Lena put gentle but inexorable hands on Aurora’s and Val’s backs, keeping them safely apart, one on each side of her, as they walked through the hall with their own constantly shifting reflections stretching to infinity around them.

The three sisters stepped out into the sunlight, into the cool and live air beneath the massive tree. The peace of its great presence surrounded them; a soft breeze played with their hair. For a moment none of them could speak.

“It could have been worse,” Lena said finally.

“It’s so unfair,” Val seethed. “Stopping Time. It’s cheating and you both know it. And you saw what she did to the Tapestry.”

“It’s not up to us to decide,” Lena started, trying as usual to unruffle her. But Val was having none of it.

“You always take her side,” she raged. Which was totally wrong, Aurora thought. Lena was more fair than anyone in the Nine Realms, and Val knew it. But before she could say anything, Val turned on her.

“It’s never going to work, anyway. What can you do in a day?” The thought seemed to relax her and she smiled, that smug, entitled smile that had always infuriated Aurora. “He’s mine and he always has been. He’s a warrior—he’ll choose to fight. I’ll see you at dawn.”

Val tossed back her gleaming black hair and flounced off, back toward the guardhouse and the bridge.

Lena watched her, her face troubled. Then she sighed and turned to Aurora, with her soft dress rippling in the wind. “I really do think...”

Aurora shook her head. “Oh, please, Lena, don’t lecture me. I couldn’t let Val take him. Why should he have to fight and die so young? I know it’s not right for him.”

“You mean, she’s not right for him?” Lena suggested gently. Aurora didn’t have to speak; her scarlet cheeks were all her sister needed for confirmation. “And you are? Aurora, he’s a mortal.”

“That never stopped half the gods,” Aurora retorted.

“Aurora,” Lena chided.

“You know it’s true,” Aurora muttered.

“It is true,” Lena admitted, fair as always. “But that kind of thing generally doesn’t end happily. For anyone,” she added with a slight emphasis. “Does he even know what you are?”

Aurora squirmed. “I tried to tell him,” she said, but her voice didn’t sound convincing even to herself.

“Well, what do you think is going to happen when...” Lena stopped herself. “No, never mind that now. Just tell me what I can do.”

That was Lena; no matter what, her sister was always supportive. Aurora felt a rush of love for her.

Her sister knew the intricacies of the past, and the past was where Aurora needed to go.

She looked out at two swans gliding on the pond, nuzzling each other with long necks. So happy, so peaceful...mated for eternity.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said hopefully. “There is something you can do. I think if I can take Luke back to where it all started to go wrong—I mean, where he started on this path—I think he’ll be able to choose with a clear head.”

“And when was that?” Lena looked suspicious.

“High school,” Aurora admitted.

“Oh, Aurora...” Now Lena’s face was troubled, and Aurora knew that Lena had not forgotten what had happened.

“I know,” Aurora said defensively. “But I’m older now.”

Not that she was much older; the difference between sixteen and twenty-eight didn’t mean much in terms of infinity, but she had been living as a high school girl at the time and it had always amazed Aurora how quickly you could get wrapped up in the emotions of the age you were portraying.

“But it nearly destroyed you,” Lena said gently.

“It will be different this time,” Aurora insisted. “And that’s when it happened, so that’s when it has to be.”

Lena looked across the emerald grass of the field toward the guardhouse, where Val had disappeared in a huff. “You know that...”

“She’ll be there, yes, I know. Lena, I have to.” She looked at her older sister with wide, appealing eyes. “I don’t want him to die.”

Lena sighed. “Remember, it’s his choice.”

“I’ll remember,” Aurora promised.

“Then come,” Lena said, and held out her hand, and they stepped into the wind.

Chapter 5

The clock alarm was blaring “Oops!...I Did It Again” on the bedside table. Luke rolled over in his bed, groaning. Maybe if he didn’t open his eyes it wouldn’t really be morning.

That happy illusion was shattered by pounding on the bedroom door and Nona’s voice calling crisply. “Out of that bed, Luke Mars. Breakfast is on the table.”

“Coming, Nona,” he called through a gravelly voice, and rolled over just enough to hit the snooze alarm, silencing the song.

He’d been having the dream again—three incredibly hot women, a blonde, a redhead and a dark one, standing around his bed fighting over him. Sometimes they were his age, sometimes they were older, somewhere in their twenties: but always the same women and they were always, always hot.

Very distracting. But he couldn’t think about it. He couldn’t be late today. Too much was riding on it.

He raced through showering, dressing and breakfast, Nona scolding him about playing chicken with Time. But driving his Jeep on the way to school he finally had a moment to think, and his thoughts went straight to the dream.

He’d been having it forever. The night before the day he made captain of the team, the night before he scored fourteen unexpected points for an upset over Poly High and won the CSF championship...

He smiled at the memory; that had been an especially good night. But the smile quickly faded as he remembered that he’d also had the dream the night before his parents died in the crash. That night the red-haired girl in the middle had been crying and he’d woken with a feeling of dread that lasted all day until he was pulled out of class and told the news.

It always meant something big, the dream, something really, really good or something really, really bad.

But there had been something different about it this time. He tried to put himself back in the sensation of it. For one thing, he had been older, a man; his body had been bigger, stronger. He’d even noticed he had a couple of kick-ass tattoos. It had seemed like he was...a cop? Some kind of cop. That felt good somehow; he liked the idea of being able to fight bad guys, do detective work. He hit the brake a little too hard at the stop sign, startled at his own thought.

What was he thinking? He was a football player; all the big schools were circling. Of course he was going to play ball, that was the way it was.

He shook his head. Weird.

Luke pulled the Jeep into the parking lot of Pacific High, a sprawling, Spanish-style fortress that had been a monastery in older San Francisco days. He caught the admiring looks from other guys in their barely functional beaters. Car envy. Sure, he had a great car; it was his because his parents had died.

Trade you the Jeep for my parents any day, he thought at the boys as he grabbed his backpack from the back and hustled for the gate.

* * *

Lena and Aurora watched Luke from the second-story balcony of the main building. Lena had her blond hair in a ponytail and was holding a neat stack of books, looking like a pretty, serious eighteen-year-old. She stared down as Luke locked his car and hustled toward the front gate.

“This is the day?” Lena asked.

“Yes,” Aurora said faintly. “Today.”

Lena shot a troubled look toward Aurora. “Are you sure...?”

Beside her, sixteen-year-old Aurora only had eyes for Luke. Dressed in a white sundress with her only ornament her dazzling, tumbled hair, her eyes followed his every move. Her heart was beating so fast she couldn’t speak. She pressed her lips together and nodded.

“Oh, Aurora,” Lena said.

“I have to go,” Aurora managed.

And despite her misgivings, true to form, Lena reached to brush Aurora’s hair away from her face and told her, “Good luck.”

* * *

Luke passed through the front gates and headed automatically toward the B wing for his World History class before he remembered: he was starting tutoring that morning, that’s why he was here so freaking early. He reversed direction toward the central quad and crossed the brick courtyard to greetings from passing students he wasn’t sure he knew.

“Hey, Luke.”

“What’s happening, Mars?”

It was weird how everyone knew him, or thought they did. It made it look on the surface like he had a whole slew of friends, when actually he didn’t have any one close friend at all. Besides dating, which admittedly he did a lot of, he usually hung out with groups of guys, mainly the team. So he was never alone. But that could get kind of lonely.

Some of the team were gathered in the center of the quad already, the ones who had zero period, the one before school started. Luke had never understood why anyone in their right mind would want to start school any earlier than they had to. But now he had to, all because of his crap history teacher.

History wasn’t his favorite subject, anyway, but this year the teacher was just out to get him. Jenks was notorious for hating the jocks and Luke was sure he lay awake nights looking for ways to penalize them. Not that some of Luke’s teammates didn’t deserve it. No doubt Jenks had been one of those kids that naturally got picked on in school, and grew up to be one of those teachers that kids liked to torture. But Luke had never participated in any of that; the pranks were almost always instigated by Tomas Tomasson, a swaggering, egotistical halfback on the team who Luke privately disliked at least as much as Jenks probably did.

As Luke came up on them, the guys looked surprised and then amused to see him as they razzed, “Hey, is that Mars?”

“Someone set your clock ahead?”

“Mars, up before eight? Is the world ending or something?”

Luke scowled and slowed to talk. “Damn Jenks,” he muttered.

It was a testament to the general hatred of Jenks that the guys actually made sympathetic noises. “Oh, Jenks,” Tanner said knowingly. “What’d he get you for?”

“Who the hell knows?” Luke grumbled. “I’ve turned in every paper, on time, and I’m barely pulling a C. He’s making me get tutoring to stay on the team.”

“Sucks, man.”

“Don’t sweat it. Not like they can kick you off.”

“Well, they’re not going to,” Luke swaggered, but inside he was not so sure. He was just going to have to make this tutoring thing work.

“So...Val? Homecoming?” Stu asked him in that verbless way he had.

Homecoming. Luke knew there had been something he was trying not to think about. And Val.

Val was his personal cheerleader; every guy on the team had his own. Luke’s was a dark-haired and fiery beauty. The personal cheerleaders brought cookies or gifts for their team member on Game Day, wrote encouraging little notes and cheered them by name on the field. Some of the more feminist girls and teachers in the school were rumbling about abolishing the tradition of personal cheerleaders, but with the team on a winning streak that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

And it’s not like Val was what anyone would call subservient; her Game Day gifts always had an edge to them that was both exciting and unnerving, a sexy game that she was playing that only she seemed to know the rules of. Luke and Val weren’t going steady but they were an item. He just wasn’t so thrilled with the idea that she expected him to ask her to Homecoming—that in fact everyone did. Where were these things written, anyway? It was like he had no choice about it.

He felt irritated and a little lost.

He knew he had a good life, but there were times that he felt strangely unfulfilled. He couldn’t have said what more he could want, and yet, something felt lacking, some purpose. And then he’d score the winning touchdown and hear the cheers of the crowd, and see Val cheering just for him...

“Would that be a yes or a no?” Tanner prodded.

Luke thought of Val, those legs that went on forever and the way a sweater clung just like skin to her perfect breasts, and that black hair and those black, sultry eyes...and that mouth...

Well, hell, who wouldn’t ask her?

“I guess,” he said nonchalantly. The guys gave one another knowing looks.

“Later,” he told them, and headed toward the library.

* * *

Aurora walked down the locker-lined hall, headed toward the library. She was still getting used to her teenage body and she was so nervous; she really felt sixteen, something she hadn’t felt since—well, since she had been playing sixteen, at this very high school.

The Norns didn’t have to live as mortals, of course; it was just more fun to interact that way. Gods and Norns alike had a long history of intermingling with humans. It had always been a kind of charming game.

But with Luke it had been different. It wasn’t a game at all. Aurora wanted to see the world through his eyes, feel what he felt, explore what he explored—taste, touch, hear, see, smell, sense everything that he did. And it all felt new because she was experiencing it with him.

She wasn’t sure when her feelings had changed, when she started losing her objectivity. Norns weren’t supposed to fall in love with their human charges; it was wrong, it was forbidden. But fallen she had.

She’d cried for him when his parents died, and watched hopefully as his grandmother had picked him up at the hospital to bring him back to what would become his home. That was the first day she’d appeared to him in real life, in the form of a little neighbor girl who could cry with him and laugh with him and hug him for real when he was sad. And more and more Aurora found herself not just watching over Luke but empathizing with him in a way that was different than it had been with her other mortal charges.

She was immortal, of course, but she felt like she was his age, that she had the same feelings he did. Was excited by the same things, was scared by the same things, saw the same colors, wanted the same things.

More and more it felt as if there were no boundaries between them, that she was feeling his feelings. It wasn’t supposed to happen, but what happened when it just did?

That’s when she’d started going to school with him.

But it wasn’t until they’d hit the teen years that Aurora really felt herself starting to go out of control. All those hormones! She was as giddy as any teenage girl around Luke.

And it was right here in the school that he’d broken her heart for the first time...the heart that she wasn’t supposed to have...

Aurora shook her head and tried to pull herself together. Stop it. You only have a day. You have to focus.

She opened the door of the library and walked in. At this hour she had the whole place to herself, except for Mr. Twitchell, the librarian, who didn’t even lower the newspaper he was hidden behind at the circulation desk. She walked into the cluster of round tables and sat down at one out of the librarian’s sight. Her hands were sweating just like a mortal’s as she watched the clock and the door simultaneously, holding her breath...on the verge of tears from sheer anticipation.

Then suddenly the chair across from hers was pulled out, and a red-haired, freckle-faced kid plopped down in the seat, startling her; she hadn’t heard anyone come in at all. His hair was spiky, gelled to within an inch of its life, and he carried a skateboard bristling with stickers, which he slid under his chair.

Loki, of course, ever the shape-shifter, decked out as an adolescent skatepunk.

As she stared at him, he grinned at her. “You like?”

“You look like a redheaded porcupine.”

He looked faintly injured. “I think it’s a good look for me.”

She tried not to glance toward the library door. “Please go away.”

Instead, he tipped back in his seat and put his Converse sneaker-shod feet up on the table. “I thought you should have a chaperone. You’re only sixteen. You have no idea what these jocks can be like.”

She rolled her eyes. “I think I’m safe enough in the library.”

“How little you know, child.”

“Please leave,” she said more urgently.

Loki hauled his legs down from the table and slid forward in the chair in one sinuous move. “Seriously, you’ve been exactly here and now before. And where did it get you? Nearly kicked out of the Aesir, that’s where. Not that the mortal isn’t just fabulous, but they’re all nothing but trouble in the end. Why start a war over this one?”

“No one’s starting a war,” she began.

Loki chortled. “Are you kidding? Val is just about nuclear. She takes this gathering-warriors-for-Odin thing very seriously.”

“Oh. Val,” Aurora said, feeling a tug of worry. She was actually surprised she hadn’t seen her sister yet; that wasn’t good. She knew she’d turn up just when Aurora least expected or wanted her. “I can handle Val,” she said bravely, and Loki gave her a knowing look.

“Have it your way.” He glanced at his watch. “I’d say you have about an hour, tops, before it all hits the fan.”

“Please go,” she hissed, and he shrugged and vanished.

Aurora looked around quickly to make sure no one had seen, and nervously flipped back her hair.

Then she saw the door opening, and her heart nearly stopped in her chest.

It was Luke.

* * *

Luke pushed through the library door and scanned the library—empty at this hour, and lit by those annoying fluorescents that made everything look like half-light.

At least it looked empty until he saw a girl sitting alone at a far table on the side. She looked up at him and then quickly looked down at her books. Luke was used to getting that kind of reaction from girls; the shyer ones didn’t seem to know what to do in his presence. And that was just fine with him; he knew how to handle the shy ones. This would be a breeze; he’d have her writing his papers for him in no time.

He took his time walking up, and looked her over as he approached.

She had creamy skin and shimmering red-gold hair, and for a second he was sure he had seen her before. She was pretty, for sure, someone he would have noticed, although truthfully, having his pick of cheerleaders meant that the less obvious girls sometimes slipped through the cracks.

This tutoring thing won’t be so bad at all, he thought to himself as he stopped at the table and looked down on her. “Aurora?” he asked.

She nodded quickly. “Hi.”

“That’s a pretty name,” he said, not actually lying. She flushed crimson. He pulled a chair out from the table and turned it around, straddling it. Girls always liked that.

“I really appreciate you tutoring me,” he added, looking into her eyes. Very blue and clear, like the sky.

“Oh, it—it’s no problem,” she stammered, and blushed again.

“It’s not that I don’t understand the class, you know.” Luke didn’t want anyone to think he was an idiot or anything. “Jenks just doesn’t seem to like me.”

“I could see that,” she said.

Luke stared at her, startled. “You can?”

She looked alarmed, as though she’d said the wrong thing, and quickly backtracked. “Well, a man like that, you know, always just talking about the great things that other people have done, never doing anything himself...it can’t be easy for him to see someone he knows is going to actually go out and do them.”

Luke was honestly shocked at her words. It was the way he’d always felt about Jenks; that there was a jealousy and resentment there under the surface of the man that was...festering was always the word he thought of, like something infected.

“I should’ve transferred out of the class at the start of the year,” he said glumly. “Now I’m stuck. If I don’t pass, I’m off the team. If I’m off the team, it’s no scholarship, no college...” His stomach churned at the thought. And then what?

“It’ll be okay,” she encouraged. “You’re going to do such great work he’ll have to give you an A.”

Her face was lit up, and he realized she wasn’t just pretty, she was beautiful. “Pretty sure of your skills, aren’t you?” He smiled down at her. At the same time, he wondered if someone who looked like her was enough of a nerd to get the actual job done. He needed to pass the class with a B or better.

“Me?” she almost squeaked. “Oh, no. I just know you can. I mean, I’m sure you can.”

“Oh, now you’re just practicing psychology on me, right?” Luke teased. “Psych me into thinking I can do it?” He was laying it on thick, but it never hurt to butter them up.

She looked at him with those clear blue eyes. “No, I know you’re destined for great things. Actually, everyone has the potential, but you...

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.