"You okay with that, Bryn?" Joshua asked pointedly over Karl's shoulder. I shrugged, as if it didn't bother me at all, but I guess Joshua knew me better than that. He stared at me a moment, scowling, then flitted off into the darkness. A grunt and a groan later he returned, crouching beside me. "I don't know, Bryn. This all seems too easy," he said, and from his voice I could just picture a frown drawing lines across his forehead.
"I think so too. Their security seems way too light if they're holding a Warrior hostage." We shared a worried glance. "It could just as easily be a trap."
Joshua nodded. "I agree, and—"
Karl cut him off. "So do I. You should tell your team to keep a close eye out, not to get complacent." Karl again pointedly addressed Joshua, and then, not even sparing me a backward glance, he scrambled away into the shadows behind us. I glared after him, the urge to shake him still running thick and fast in my veins. That was the second time he'd deliberately bypassed my authority.
"What the hell is his problem?" Joshua whispered, scowling in Karl's direction. "Do I look like I'm in charge?"
"You didn't jump up and deny his assumption, now did you?" I asked, a slight bite to my tone. I knew I was being unfair, but Karl's not-so-subtle insult still dug at me. Was good old Karl trying to tell me something? Maybe he didn't think I was worthy of being in charge. I clenched my jaw. Once Fen arrived, he'd be in charge anyway, so I didn't need to get overly miffed at the guy. If he was a bit dense, then he'd be the one to pay for his own stupidity. Fen didn't suffer fools easily.
"Hey." Joshua raised his hands, shaking his head. "I didn't want to cause any problems. You should know that. Besides, why didn't you put him in his place yourself? It's your right."
I glared at Joshua, but he was pretty much on target. Why hadn't I defended my authority? Because it wasn't rightly earned. Leader by default, that was me. How could I go throwing my weight around when I knew I'd gotten the job only because Sigrun, who was way more experienced in all things Valkyrie, had decided to stay with Fen?
Joshua scuttled in closer to pull me out of my avalanching self-pity. "No Aidan yet, I see," he said, craning his neck past me to get a better view into the dense tree line behind us.
"He'd better have a good reason for ditching us," I mumbled, only then realizing how annoyed I was with Aidan.
"He'd better get his ass here ASAP," Joshua grunted, shuffling beside me. "I don't fancy storming the castle there with so few of us."
"I don't see how having one more person's going to make much of a difference. And, to be honest, I'd feel much better with our Ulfr." I suddenly felt bereft without my partner. Then again, my Ulfr partner had betrayed me. Guess I was better off with no partner than with one who was waiting for the next opportunity to either kill me or to sabotage my mission.
The chilly night squeezed the warmth out of us, and Joshua shivered. "Why are we the ones doing the breaking and entering anyway?" Joshua whispered. He threw me a pointed nod. "You're about the most experienced member on our team right now. We're really just a bunch of rookies."
He'd asked a question that had been playing in my own mind for a while now. I wanted to deny it, but Joshua had a point. With no senior Valkyries or Ulfr with us, we were just what Joshua had said—a bunch of rookies. "We're so short on team members in Asgard that they had to use us," I answered. "Especially since all our Ulfr have suddenly up and disappeared. They kinda had no choice. We were all they had left, really." I shrugged. The thought wasn't very comforting at all.
The soft hoot of an owl emanated from the Valkyrie Pia at our far left, and Joshua responded with single hoot, acknowledging the all clear. Time for us to close in on the basement. Like a wave of darkness, our group of shadows flitted across the close-cropped lawn toward the side of the enormous mansion. We huddled against the walls to wait for the next signal.
Cold stone ate into my back, burrowing deep into my bones. My heart thumped a tattoo against my ribs. Aimee and the other Valkyrie, Enja, were colorless shades marking the wall alongside me.
Another low hoot cleared us to enter the basement, and our small group of dark grey shadows slipped inside the building, leaving Enja on watch outside, her tiny dark eyes and pixie haircut all business-like and efficient. The airlock door whispered shut behind us. I waited, tensing for the scream of whatever expensive alarm system the owners of this fabulous monstrosity had installed to protect their property.
Nothing.
Our pathetic little army crept along the basement wall, silent and aware of the slightest creak of the house above us, of the faintest faraway drip of water. A voice echoed in the distance, dulled and distorted by the concrete walls. A quick glance at the tablet allayed my fears—we were in no imminent danger of being caught.
Before us, the concrete corridor wended its way ahead, matching the vaguely mapped basement area on our heat sensor tablet. Soon we reached the corner. Aimee stayed behind on guard. Pia and Joshua turned left into the corridor, while I followed close on their heels.
When they paused again at the next corner, I stopped in my tracks, and someone walked right smack into my back, pressing my wings into me and dislodging a few feathers.
A quick glance confirmed it was Karl. What a surprise. Since he wasn't a threat, I didn't need to gut him with the dagger I'd instinctively pulled from my boot. "Watch it!" I hissed at him, throwing him a disgusted glare. Karl blinked at the knife, probably shocked at how close he'd just come to being disemboweled.
Where the hell had he come from anyway? I ground my teeth, not wanting him along for the ride. The dude rubbed me the wrong way. But so what? Maybe he didn't like me much either. Calm down, Bryn.
I tucked the knife away as I squatted to retrieve my fallen feathers. No sense in alerting a random guard that there were intruders around. I tucked the feathers into my coat pocket and snapped, "Watch where you're going, Karl. We can't afford for you to bungle this whole mission."
The skin at his eyes tightened at the reprimand, while his jaw clenched. His fury didn't bother me in the least.
He really should have stayed at HQ, and I wanted to tell him that. But despite my annoyance with his attitude and his clumsy bumbling, I couldn't bring myself to be nasty. So I refocused on the darkened passage, lit every few yards by a weak and sickly green fluorescent light. The flicker of light from the tablet reassured me we were heading the right way. Silence greeted our ears as we moved forward again, stopping at each corner. Karl bumped into me twice more, and I seriously considered sending him back outside. If it weren't for maintaining a good team relationship, I really would've told him to get the hell out. He was getting on my nerves!
The monitor still showed the four red blobs, three inside and the one outside the building who hadn't moved since Joshua clobbered him. The screen also now revealed six more splodges, which I assumed represented us. We were close—the first of the guards waited just around the corner, pacing back and forth.
"What are we going to do?" Karl whispered, a tad too loudly. I suppressed the urge to smack him.
"You just stay here and be quiet. We have this sorted." I leaned back and met Pia's eye, beckoning her forward. She tiptoed toward me and peered at the tablet screen. I tapped the red dot that was our target.
"We need to get to him and knock him out."
"You would like him unconscious and not dead?" Pia asked. I nodded and hid a smile at her matter-of-fact tone. Hard to imagine this dainty Valkyrie snuffing out the unknowing guard as if she did it all the time. We were seasoned warriors, not seasoned killers.
"Ready?"
In a blink, we were both glamored. Pia and I stepped into the passage. Backs to the wall, we edged closer to the guard as he paced back and forth in front of a steel door. Dressed head to toe in black, his head remained bare, revealing his gleaming bald pate, underlined by a series of troubled furrows on his forehead.
We bracketed him, and he remained blissfully unaware that we were both within breathing distance, invading his personal space big time. Pia drew a short sword from the leather scabbard at her waist; the steel left its leather glove so silently I stared in wonder. Then I tensed, not daring to breathe, as she brought the thick hilt down on the back of the poor guard's neck. His eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped. I caught him smoothly as he fell, laying him beside the wall, out of our way. I wished I could glamor him, but we had no time to waste.
Pia bent to scrabble in the guard's pockets and then threw me a bleak look. "No keys," she whispered.
Great. So the door had to be opened from the inside. I glared at the door. No keyhole. Not that Fen's training sessions had including lock-picking. Probably a remote locking and unlocking system, then. I gritted my teeth, making a mental note to ask Karl why we didn't know about this. Very sloppy, Karl. Very sloppy.
We faced the door, a metal and pretty much impenetrable barrier. I sighed a silent sigh and shared an exasperated glance with Pia. She backed against the wall beside the door, knife at the ready. I knocked heavily, belatedly hoping whoever waited on the other side didn't have some sort of secret code. The guard on the floor moaned and shifted, but remained out for the count.