Heimdall steered his dented, government-issue pick-up truck along the dirt paths that passed for service roads through the forest. It was just past noon, and he was technically on his regular forestry shift, but his mind was hardly on his job.
His stomach still felt sour after a tense telephone conversation with Maggie while he’d forced a fast-food breakfast down his throat—it was phone it in or stand her up altogether. It was a miracle Maggie was still talking to him. The stress was also taking a toll on his appetite, and Frigga was starting to take it personally. The look on his mother’s face two days earlier when he’d passed up a third helping of roasted beets still sent a shiver down his spine.
And he still hadn’t found the Tree.
He was getting closer. His cousin, Freya, felt it, too—she was on her own hunt through the forest, approaching from the opposite direction on an intercept course. But every hour the Yggdrasil remained unprotected was another hour closer to possible disaster.
Laika snored loudly next to him on the imitation leather seat. He reached over and dug his fingers into her warm ruff, and she rested her head on his thigh.
Freya had called a few minutes earlier to give an update on her Tree hunt—neither of them had much to report—and to remind him that the New Moon would reach its peak at 1:32 a.m. Sunday. They had just over 60 hours to find and claim the Tree.
That would normally be a challenge, but not an impossible task. The last time they’d gone hunting for the Yggdrasil, they hadn’t been trying to keep office hours or do shift work. Sneaking off into the woods for months at a time hadn’t been much of an issue in the 1300s.
But with the astronomical convergence breathing down their necks, the stakes couldn’t be any higher.
First, he’d been mysteriously knocked flat while hunting for the Yggdrasil. Then, there was the call just now over the Forest Service radio about an illegal campsite in Forest Park. That in itself wasn’t all that unusual, but this one was apparently charred so badly that it looked like the site of a missile strike. Heimdall was on his way there now, to pick through the ashes and try to figure out what had happened. After that, his afternoon was likely to be full of paperwork, paperwork, and more paperwork.
All in all, not a good day.
Heimdall followed the winding road as it turned sharply to the left and narrowly missed a low-hanging branch that easily could have shattered his windshield. Then he hit a deep pothole. His cell phone skittered loose across the dashboard, and Laika startled awake as she bounced precariously in the passenger seat. She whined.
“Sorry about that, girl.”
The rain was starting up again. Heimdall turned on the windshield wipers and frowned. Wet earth could mute the Yggdrasil’s signal. A hard rain—not uncommon in the Pacific Northwest in autumn—would make the Tree more difficult to track.
His cell phone rang, and Heimdall swerved slightly to the right, catching the phone in his hand as it slid toward him.
“Yeah!” he yelled over the noise of the pick-up’s engine. Heimdall figured Oregon’s law against driving while talking or texting on cell phones didn’t apply to ancient gods on a mission.
It was his mother. On instinct, Heimdall eased off the gas pedal.
“Yes, Frigga. You got my message.” He gripped the steering wheel tightly and interjected before she started grilling him on what he’d had for breakfast. “Listen, we can discuss my daily intake of salted salmon later. I need to talk to you about what happened this morning. I don’t know what it was. It was like getting hit by an invisible tidal wave. But I wasn’t followed, so I don’t—”
“Oh, there’s a Berserker on the loose. Thought you should know,” Frigga interrupted.
Heimdall nearly dropped the phone. He slowed the truck as quickly as was safely possible, and shifted into park. Laika looked from him to the trees outside the truck, then curled up in a ball on the seat and closed her eyes.
Heimdall scratched Laika behind the ears. “I’m sorry,” he said into the phone. “You’ll have to say that again. It sounded like you said—”
“A Berserker. Just this morning.”
Heimdall felt the jolt of adrenaline in his system. “Are you sure?”
Frigga sighed on the other end of the phone. “Thor and Odin both saw the awakening. I’m pretty sure they’d know a Berserker when they saw one.”
“When exactly—”
“Shortly after your mystery pummeling, from the sound of it.”
“Can we please not call it that?”
“Whatever you want. Your invisible assailant, then.” Frigga cleared her throat, and Heimdall could tell she was trying to sound nonchalant. “At the high school. One of the students. Fifteen years old.”
“Of all the cursed . . .” Heimdall slammed his fist onto the steering wheel, accidentally hitting the horn and startling Laika awake. “Whose brilliant idea was it to initiate a Calling? Berserkers are absolutely no help where the Yggdrasil is concerned. Or do I have to remind everyone—yet again—about what happened back in Cimbria?”
“It wasn’t us.”
Heimdall shifted the phone to his other ear. “Say again?”
“I said, it wasn’t us. We didn’t call the Berserker.”
Heimdall almost laughed. “You know that’s impossible.”
There was a long pause before Frigga answered. “Apparently not.”
Heimdall dug his free hand into his thick hair. His mind raced through all the Calling rituals he could remember—quite a few in the early centuries of the Dark Ages, fewer in the Golden Era of the Vikings, and perhaps a half-dozen since the discovery of the Americas. Whenever the half-crazed warriors were needed, Odin gathered his clan for the powerful rite that called forth the Berserkers. They were a stubborn and willful lot, prone to violent pranks and ear-splitting cackling that Heimdall had never appreciated, not to mention their voracious appetites. But they were devoted to their gods, with special fealty to Thor and Odin, until the end.
Heimdall gripped the phone tighter until he heard the plastic casing begin to crack. “How many?”
“Just the one, as far as we know. Your father and brother were talking to the young man when the awakening hit him.”
“A single Berserker? That doesn’t make any sense—”
“And a dark chill immediately before that nearly knocked them off their feet.”
Heimdall was only half-listening. His midsection was still sore from the blow to the gut he’d taken, and his thoughts ran back to sitting in the dirt just a few hours earlier, and that cold tingling that had rushed through his body . . .
“It sounds rather similar to what you reported,” Frigga continued. “I didn’t notice anything. Neither did Freya. It’s the same with Freyr and Bragi. I’m not sure what that means. I’ve not heard from Saga yet, but that’s hardly surprising.”
Heimdall glanced out the truck’s window, now obscured by thick rain drops. He’d fully expected to see a rogue band of Berserkers marching along the dirt forest road, but he was surrounded by nothing but trees and mud. “I think it’s worth a consultation with the Nornir.”
“They’re my next call, if I can get through. You know how they can be.” Frigga’s voice tightened, and Heimdall couldn’t fault her. The Norse Fates weren’t as all-seeing as they used to be. The Nornir could be invaluable when it came to foreseeing the best harvest and hunting dates, giving job-hunting advice and locating lost keys, but their predictions on larger issues were usually impossibly cryptic.
“You’d think if they had any information to share, they would contact us first,” Frigga continued, exasperated. “But they’re still caught up in the old rituals, wanting all seekers—mortal and immortal alike—to petition the ancient oracles . . .”
Heimdall closed his eyes and tried to tune his mother out. Invisible shocks of cold. Campsite in ashes. Random Berserker . . .
“. . . And it’s not like they’re hurting for attention, with that ridiculous 900-number hotline they’re operating .
. .”
Heimdall gritted his teeth and pounded again on the car horn. “Cursed, bloody Muspellheim!”
Laika jumped up from her nap with a yelp.
“Heimdall? Is everything all right?”
“Call a family meeting! Now!” Heimdall shouted into the phone as he shifted the truck into drive. Laika sat up, tail wagging at the possibility of resuming their car ride through the woods. She pawed at the controls to roll down the passenger-side window and stuck her head out into the rain.
“We’re already gathering to discuss the Berserker at the Lodge this evening . . .”
“Not good enough. We’ve got an emergency!” Heimdall hit the gas. The truck lurched forward on the dirt road, and Heimdall struggled to steer with one hand while he held the phone to his ear. “It’s not just the Berserker. Someone besides us is after the young Yggdrasil.”