Page 38 of Valkyrie Unknown

“Are you going to do it, or stand there and look pretty?” If we were taunting, I was going to take advantage of that.

Her smirk was back. “I can do both.” She bounced on the balls of her feet and dragged in a few deep breaths. The way the light reflected off her in the darkness, it looked like she wore a faint glow that grew brighter with each passing second.

I ignored my desire and grasped the thrill of the battle. “Today?”

“You volunteered as a punching bag, and that means I get a moment to prepare too.” She lunged, and I braced myself.

As her first flew at me at high speed, I swore the ethereal glow focused on her hand.

She landed a hit directly in my gut, and it knocked the wind from me.

I stumbled back a step, startled, and caught myself on my back foot. She shouldn’t be able to do that, regardless of her training. She didn’t have that kind of muscle mass.

“See? I can hit hard too.” Was that surprise mixed with her taunt?

“I do see.” This was going to be so much fun. “No pulling your punches going forward.” A new flavor of excitement joined what already roared inside me. This was the closest thing I’d had to a healthy, friendly fight in a long time.

For the next hour or so, we traded blows, spending as much time poking each other’s limits as anything.

We headed back to the hotel, cleaned up, and ordered food. It turned out she liked eating as much as I did.

After days of pushing hard, I needed to relax my brain and body. I settled onto my bed, grabbed the remote, and flipped through channels. I stopped when a familiar scene fromThe Ice Piratescaught my attention.

“What is this?” Azzie’s question was a combination of curiosity and disgust.

“Classic cinema.” Apparently, I had things to teach her besides fighting. “Watch and learn.”

She wasn’t sold on the movie when it was over, but she didn’t hate it, either. I assured her if we had seen the beginning, she would have wanted more.

Watching her, seeing the world through her eyes, had me wanting more as well. A dangerous thought to indulge given the nature of our arrangement, but that didn’t stop me from feeling the pull to her.

Over the next few days and weeks, the two of us decided what would be involved in traveling together aside fromrandom fights. We used my contacts and Azzie’s prophecy journal to move from town to town, looking for more information to fill in blanks and answer questions she had about what fate waited for her.

After a lot of cursing on both of our parts, and her grinding the gears of my truck until they were smoking, we made a stop in Detroit, where Anubis rebuilt the clutch. Azzie was wary about meeting the god—what if he was a danger—but after talking to him for less than five minutes she realized he was one of the few who didn’t take sides. A god who had as little interest in playing the other gods’ games as Azzie or I did.

Anubis spent a few days with Azzie, teaching her to drive the car. I still wasn’t happy with the way she tortured the poor thing, but once we hit the freeway, the drive was smoother.

About a month after finding each other, Azzie and I found ourselves in a small town in Western Kentucky. The motel looked like any other we stayed in when we didn’t simply pull over and sleep at a rest stop. The lingering scent of dinner hung in the air, and we sat across from each other on Azzie’s bed, with her prophecy journal open between us.

I was grateful for the divider, despite the fact that it was nothing more than a book. The weeks traveling together, the way she licked her lips when she was fighting, and the wicked gleam in her eye when she teased me, were only the tip of the iceberg when it came to what drew me to her. I took advantage of every moment I could to watch her. At the same time, I made sure to use any barrier between us to remind myself we were together to learn and find answers.

Nothing more.

The book was turned toward me, so I could read it, because she had it memorized. An older version of the prophecy on the current page was at the top, written in neat, blocky letters. Underneath it was a translation, in a friendlier handwriting that flowed and curved in its English.

In a land that races toward the sky

And cradles the church surrounded by churches

The flaming shield of the meek will break the seal

When the stone of the land rains down like the storms

Most of the prophecy translations I’d seen over the centuries were poetic. Whoever broke them down into a new language tended to make the stanzas pretty and eloquent.

I appreciated that most of those in Azzie’s books were more direct. As much as was possible, in a translation of an ancient tongue that didn’t have equivalent parallels in another language.

According to visions Azzie’s mother had,the flaming shieldwas a reference to Azzie. Each time the phrase appeared, she would be involved. This page was one of the sparser ones in the book, with notes and guesses about what each sentence meant, but no real conclusions.

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