At First Light(Dr. Evan Wilding #1)(106)

Helpless fury popped in Evan’s veins. “They’re children, Osborn. Children. Innocent of any possible charges you could bring against them.”

“Not so.” Her expression turned rueful. Even sad. A Valkyrie who hated her job but would do it nonetheless. “The gods take back their broken offspring. Demand that they be returned to them. Thus into the bogs went the lame and the deformed. Those who are twisted and malformed or blind. Also, Sparrow, you are wrong. These two have sinned and sinned terribly. They are not like those other innocent children.”

“They’re only—”

“This one,” she said, nudging Tommy’s unconscious form, “harvested the beasts of the field. Held them prisoner. And the other . . .” Now she touched Jo. “Her illness was cured by the drugs of companies that experimented on animals. They valued her life above the earth’s small creatures.”

Evan brushed melting snow from his face. The most dangerous kind of serial killer was a rational one. The killer who’d built an entire world based on false beliefs that could not be disproven.

How did one launch a cannon of logic against the impenetrable fortress of insanity?

Osborn came closer to the camera. Her expression was imperial; her skin glowed in the camera’s lights.

A bog goddess, Evan thought. Grendel’s mother, here to claim her due.

Gods were never required to be logical.

She sighed. “These children were not my first targets. I intended to take Helskin. But Raven surprised me, and I had to act too quickly. So I took Raven instead. He came willingly, thinking we were partners. He could not see how I mocked his pathetic attempts at sorcery. How I scorned his petty sacrifices and his unbridled cruelty. He never understood seithr magic.”

“But you do.”

“I have labored long to understand the ways of Odin and the Others.” She lowered her eyes for a moment, as if in respect, then lifted her gaze again. “Raven was to be thorn of riding. But the police rushed me, and I left him on a rooftop without making proper sacrifice. I also intended to sacrifice a man who works for Sten Elger at Ragnar?k—a bartender who hunts for sport and leaves the carcasses of his victims rotting in the field. I warned him as I warned the others.”

Understanding dawned. “By leaving a figurine guarding his front door.”

“As I did with you. But you didn’t understand, did you?”

“The reasoning of madness often leaves me bewildered.”

She reared back as if struck. “I thought you, of all people, would understand. How all of us are fated, and that sometimes our fate is wicked. I learned the truth of this when they led me to Desser after someone spray-painted his fence. And to Talfour when he was assaulted. That assault led me to Raven and thence to Tommy. Although I would have let the boy go if the police hadn’t forced my hand.”

“And Jo?”

Osborn rested her chin on her hand. “I found her through the papers. They loved her story, the beautiful girl saved from certain death by a miracle cure. I meant from the start to take her. But after she led me to you, and your lecture on sacrifice confirmed that you were the chosen one, I decided to leave her be. Until, again, my hand was forced.”

“You don’t seem to have a lot of say in what you do.”

She smiled. It was a terrible smile, cold and cruel. “The gods and the Others guide us along the paths we must go.”

Evan found himself grasping at straws. “I’ve heard that these Others are amenable to persuasion. A trade, perhaps. Some form of bribery. They aren’t unreasonable, these ancient ones.” Only greedy.

She laughed. “Maybe the gods are fickle. But the Others are not. They lay down their laws, and woe to those who cross them.” She glanced away from the camera, then turned back. “The night is wasting, as they say. Just before dawn, I will consign the bodies of Jo and Tommy to the pond. Then it will be your turn, Sparrow. Yours and Ginny’s. Your hawk will lead your soul and the souls of Jo and Tommy into the worlds beyond this world.”

“We’re all rather fond of this one,” he said. “I’m sure there’s some agreement we can reach.”

She turned her back on him and disappeared out of the range of the camera.

Evan turned his wrist in the manacle, testing it as pain flared up his arm. The metal held firm, the mechanism old-looking but solid. Had she dragged it out of some evidence locker, the remnant of a mafia bust from the thirties?

Osborn came back within view of the camera. She appeared to be dragging something heavy. She turned, and he saw that she held an immense sword, a Viking Age sword with a welded blade and lobed handle.

She stopped by the motionless figures of the children.

Evan’s mind raced furiously down a dark river, searching for answers. Mentally, he sped past Talfour’s body and the leaden pond where Desser had bled into the killer’s sacred ground. He went further back in time, back and back, past medieval scribes penning the tales of the Vikings, back and back again to blót sacrifices and the bowls of blood lifted to the invisible Others before their contents were poured into the dank waters of the bog.

His ears roared with the tumult of ideas until the river landed him at last on a quiet island where memory and imagination found a space where they could work together.

“Wait,” he whispered.

Osborn turned to face the camera again. The muscles in her arms bunched as she raised the sword.