Page 81 of Vow of the Undead
Hope waned.
I dropped back down in front of the grave, scanning the Valkyrie, the headstone, the grass beneath. My hand splayed out on the earth as if searching for the pulse beating beneath our living realm.
Panic wrapped around my throat like the hand of Loki to choke the answer out of me.This is your last chance.My pulse doubled, tripled. Bile pushed up into my mouth, bitter and burning on the back of my tongue. With black dots spotting my vision, I knew I’d lose consciousness if I didn’t calm down.
I closed my eyes and whispered, “I hear my voice. I smell the rain—” Before I could finish my routine, I lost control of the words, my mouth moving of its own accord until I gained command of my tongue again.
My mind flooded with what to say, like magic, like Loki speaking to me but without actually hearing his voice in my head. This compulsion was a pure kind of sorcery, wild and addictive in how easy it came to me. I simply knew what to say. Of course, the years of repeating sagas that spoke of Draugr and monster and Gods may have had something to do with it.
And I couldn’t deny that it’d taken preparation. I could compel when I tapped into the sensations rippling through my body. Attuning myself to my own body and the world where itexisted made me aware of everything. Aware enough to bend and control the will of the other person.
I knew this as if the Gods had simply placed this information in my brain. Perhaps this was what it meant to truly be connected to Odin and Freya, and by necessity, Loki too.
“Wake, Draugr,” I said. My will and my senses seemed the source of how strongly it worked. The more I wanted it, the lighter the tension in my head became.
The earth pushed up from beneath me. Cold, dead fingers wrapped around my wrist with a painfully tight grip. A scream ripped from my throat as the hand yanked me toward the ground, the creature’s strength overpowering the earth itself.
Kayn dropped beside me and reached for the hand, but I shouted for him to back off. I had to compel this vampire myself. I had to do this to pass the trial.
It was enough to know he was there if I needed him.
As if the soil was water and my arm weightless, the vampire pulled me into the soil all the way to my shoulder until I fought the voice in my head.
“Create chaos. Spite Odin. Destroy those who worship him.”
No! I’m listening to you only for this trial.
I was doing enough. I woke the vampire. This had to be enough. I opened my mouth, ready for Loki to speak through me. “By breath and blood your will is mine.”
All at once the monster’s hold on me loosened. I scrambled away from it as both hands jutted from the grave and dragged the figure from its dark slumber. The earth seemed to shift beneath me as the vampire clawed out of the ground. Rain lightened to scattered droplets, as if the night greeted its monster with a calm welcome.
Her fangs were exposed already and her eyes blood red. She crawled toward me, lifting and dragging herself from the grave. I swallowed another scream and tried to form words around my fumbling tongue. This time, it was me speaking. “Your will is mine.”
The vampire’s eyes shifted from red to gold, and my courage bolstered. I pushed to my feet, and backed away from her with the dregs of energy simmering in my veins. “I am your path now. Come with me.”
In a trance, she mirrored me by climbing to her feet. Soil tumbled off of her velvet dress, revealing the violet shade buried by moist dirt. The corset at her torso was covered with detailed embroidery. Not all royals were vampires, but perhaps all vampires had once been royals.
In my own kind of daze, I led her to the Hall of the Gods where I invited her across the threshold into the house of Freya and Odin.
Dizzy, I struggled to hold the compulsion, the invisible string pulled taut between me and my compelled victim. The vampire’s fangs sank into my mother’s neck. The last thing I remembered was compelling the vampire to drain only the toxins and then to stop drinking from her. And then, the clouds darkened.
The world faded at the edges of my vision first until I saw only one thing. A massive wolf towered over me, his eyes gleaming like two shimmering moons in the thick of his broad skull. His jaws split open and the echo of his howl resonated around me, all-consuming. But Fenrir, Loki’s son and the most feared creature in all the Nine Realms, didn’t attack me.
Because of this, I knew Loki's trial was complete, and I’d passed.
Odin’s Trial
After two days of fluctuating between consciousness and sleep, I prayed it wouldn’t take a trial of the Gods to fully wake me.
Divination felt closer now than ever before, as if I could call Loki to come down to this realm and ask him for help, face-to-face. Of course, Loki wasn’t who I wanted help from, he had his own goals, fully separate from the people of our world, and I still couldn’t grasp why he was part of these trials.
What did he want with me? Chaos, apparently.
I slipped away into another bout of restless sleep plagued by nightmares and it wasn’t until a child screamed for me, calling me Anna, Lux, Silver, that I woke again with cold sweat coating my forehead and my chest heaving ragged breaths.
Out of habit, I allowed a hundred thoughts to descend upon me and whisk my mind away from the nightmare. I’d done it many times as a scared little girl after long, dark nights.
I knocked down the barriers in my mind that held the dwelling at bay and let the everyday fears consume my everythought until I could no longer remember the nightmare. Simple worries like if my father would scream at me again if I failed to properly conceal my black eyes when out in the village. He insisted I conceal them, yet denied that I used the magic I’d learned from my mother’s enchantment to do it. Or if I’d accidentally wailed one of the Gods’ names in my sleep like I had when the nightmares first crept in.
