Highway to Hel

  Highway to Hel

  A Vikings of Virginia Mystery

  S.E. Babin

  Copyright © 2020 by S.E. Babin

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover designed by Coverworks.

  For the readers who’ve supported the shenanigans of the gods for years now. I thank you.

  This is back to the basics for me: Gods, Goddesses, delightful misadventures, and reckonings that come much later…

  Contents

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  About the Author

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  One

  Gravelbeard stared at the bag of gluten-free flour like it had suddenly spoken and called his mother a smelly pirate hooker.

  “Nay, woman,” he said as he gave me a side-eyed glare. “I won’t be having any of this in my kitchen.”

  I sighed for what felt like the thousandth time because it probably was the thousandth time. For someone as small as Gravelbeard, he was a massive pain in my ass. “It’s trendy. We have customers asking for it.”

  His stare said it all. He didn’t care. “We’re Vikings. And Gods. Not a single one of us gets the shits when we eat gluten. Or anything else for that matter. We just get full. Which, if I’m not mistaken, is the entire point of eating.” He toed the giant bag of flour before giving it a disgusted scoff.

  Loki, standing beside me being uncharacteristically quiet, let out a snort of amusement. I elbowed him in the side and continued to face off with my errant dwarf.

  “It doesn’t matter if we get the -” I sighed. I wasn’t going to say shits. “Runs.” I waved my hands around. “The runs. What matters is that we serve what the people ask us to.”

  “Gluten-free flour is a human construct. Potatoes shouldn’t be pulverized into powder and mixed into flour. Potatoes should stand on their own, proud and free, dripping in gravy and sauces.” His drawl became a lot more pronounced as his enormous eyebrows drew together in annoyance. Gravelbeard was passionate about a lot of things. I didn’t realize that included potatoes.

  “We can still make potatoes the star of the show,” I pleaded. I fished around in the bag I had slung over my shoulder. “Look, I even brought you something to help start you out.” I pulled out a cookbook called “Living and Loving Gluten Free!” He was going to hate it.

  The dwarf plucked the cookbook out of my hands with two fingers and sneered at it. “I’m going to toss this in the fire pit as soon as you leave, Freya. It’s an insult to my culinary sensibilities.”

  The gods save me from a temperamental dwarf chef. I did my best to run a democratic show around here, but there were times when I wanted to scream like a harpy and force everyone to do my bidding. In the past, I might have done so. Today I was trying to be the kinder, gentler Freya. The last several weeks had been trying and I was doing my best to keep myself getting up in the morning and living a normal life. Recently, I’d freed myself of the marriage bond to Odin, which was super awesome. But then I screwed up and managed to get myself entangled with Loki, aka the trickster, aka a Frost Giant, aka now my new husband. I tried my best to keep it from him, but it proved a difficult secret to keep especially with the magical bond between us. I did have to admit, though, Loki wasn’t being as overbearing about it as I thought he would be. He did call me annoying little names all the time, but he never once tried to worm his way into my bedroom.

  I frowned as I thought about the implications of that. Why, exactly, had he not tried? I glanced at my husband from my peripheral. He was watching Gravelbeard grumble under his breath with vast amusement. He and the dwarf managed to form some weird kind of bromance while I wasn’t looking. I still wasn’t sure what to make of it.

  I shook my head and sighed. There was enough time later for me to figure out why Loki wasn’t panting over me like a lovesick fool. Especially after the pronouncements he’d made to me once he found out we were bound by more than just loyalty.

  “I’ll be back this evening and there better be one gluten-free item available!”

  “How ‘bout I just serve up sawdust on a plate and call it magic beans?” he sniped back.

  “How ‘bout I tell Eyra how difficult you’re being?”

  He swallowed so hard I could hear it. I might not be all that terrifying these days, but Eyra? My best totally buxom kick-ass Valkyrie BFF? Yeah. She was scary.

  I gave him my friendliest grin. “I’m sure one little tiny thing on the menu won’t kill you, will it?” I cajoled, now that I knew I had the upper hand. “Besides, I’d love to tell Eyra what a big help you were today.”

  Loki put his arm over my shoulders and squeezed gently. He was about to lose it, I could tell.

  “I’m sure she’d repay you,” I said.

  Gravelbeard’s face went red. “Get the hell out of my kitchen, you manipulative wench,” he said, but the heat was gone from his voice.

  I high-fived Loki on the way out.

  We were both in good spirits today, despite his daughter rolling in here a week ago in rather dramatic fashion. She wasn’t just his daughter, though. That wouldn’t have been a big issue. His daughter just so happened to be Hel. As in...yeah that Hel. The Goddess of All Things That Go Bump in the Night. That was the technical term I used for her. Seriously, though, she was the goddess of the Underworld, aptly named Hel. You could never believe she didn’t have an ego. She had named a world after herself.

  I didn’t like her the second I met her. She was beautiful, as most of us were, but there was a cruel twist to her lips and a calculating look in her eye she wore when she thought I wasn’t looking. When I was looking, she played nothing but the lost little goddess looking to reconnect with Daddy Dearest, Loki.

  Meanwhile, Daddy Dearest wasn’t quite sure what to make of his daughter’s sudden arrival in my new settlement and had yet to ask her any of the hard questions. I’d decided to remain Switzerland in this situation and not get involved unless Hel looked like she was trying to make trouble. So far, the only trouble she’d made was her incessant demands for room service and her penchant for drinking all of my good ale.

  Hel was a frost giant, and she had the appetite of a college fraternity to show for it. I’d had to up my supply deliveries from once a month to bi-weekly. Even though she was paying me handsomely, I found Hel to be irritating. Like a bedbug you can’t see but itches like crazy. What also irritated me was Hel’s secrecy. We were storytellers, the lot of us. Our heroics were written down and sung across the lands. Hel lived with the dead and stayed out of everyone’s way. Was she bad? Good? Somewhere in-between? No one knew.

  And that was what made me itchy with her under the roof of my bar.

  Loki walked beside me, his comforting presence a balm to the darkness of my thoughts. The Trickster and I had a complicated relationship. We always had. Since he moved into the settlement, though, things had changed, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.

  Yes, we were married, but right now it wa
s in bond only. I wasn’t ready to acknowledge another husband or be a wife to anyone right now. Loki knew and appeared to respect this about me. He only pushed when he thought he could get away with it. It wasn’t often.

  “Do you think he’s going to have something on the menu?” Loki asked, breaking my contemplative silence.

  I let out a soft snort of amusement. “All I had to do was threaten him with Eyra. I can’t overuse it, but today it was needed.”

  “Clever girl,” he murmured. He held his arm out and I settled my hand in the warm crook of his elbow and allowed him to lead me. We walked the streets of the settlement for a while before Loki spoke again. “Hel being here.” He paused and stopped walking. “I’m sorry, Freya.”

  “For what?”

  His face was inscrutable, but his eyes always gave him away. There were many things I loved about Loki, but his eyes were in my top five. They were the emerald color of undiscovered gems hidden deep in the earth. I believed you could see someone’s soul in their eyes. He might have been the Trickster to all who knew him, but I knew his soul. He was worried. For me.

  “She is dangerous,” he said and let out a long breath. “To everyone.”

  “My settlement is open to all those who don’t wish me harm, Loki. The wards surrounding this town allowed her in because her intentions are pure.”

  His jaw clenched. “She might not mean you physical harm, my darling, but it doesn’t mean she is without an agenda.”

  “We’re gods, Loki.” I hip bumped him. “We all have an agenda.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he said.

  I didn’t voice it, but I was afraid of it, too.

  We walked for a little while more, discussing some improvements we could make to the settlement. There was a need for more housing and more recreation, along with more shopping. I’d failed to think of too many things when I made this place.

  Loki kissed the top of my head. “Freya, I don’t have to be a mind reader to know what you’re thinking. No one builds a world in a day, my dear.” He pointed to a gaggle of children playing in an empty patch of land. “Do you see that?”

  I nodded. “They need a park.”

  Loki’s deep chuckle rumbled softly. “Nay, Freya. You fail to see what you’ve created.” He tilted my chin up to look at him. My gaze met his soft emerald one. “They’re happy. Remember when you were a child and all the worlds you could create in a simple patch of grass?” He released my chin. “Look again.”

  Five children brought from Asgard ran through the grass, all of them screeching with laughter. One of the boys fell and rolled, and three others followed him, pretending they were struck down.

  I grimaced.

  Loki laughed out loud. “We are a bloodthirsty lot, aren’t we?”

  I continued to watch them for a bit until I allowed myself to feel a small victory. “We created this,” I whispered.

  “No,” Loki said. “You did. I merely muscled my way in.”

  I squeezed his arm. “You’re an instrumental part of its success whether you think so or not.” Pulling him away, I led him back toward the bar. “How are you going to handle Hel?”

  Loki sighed. “Can one really handle Death Incarnate?” he asked.

  “You’re her father.”

  At that, he stiffened so quickly I almost missed it. “Aye, I am, but I was an errant father and never guided her in the ways of the world.” Loki frowned. “The right ones, at least. I’m afraid our personalities vary so differently that I don’t think we have any even footing to stand on.”

  We’d made our way back to the bar and stood outside of it. “At the crux of it, we are all people, Loki. Try to find something you have in common. There has to be something. Find it, then build upon it.” I smiled up at him. “It would be a start.” I stepped up and pulled on the wooden door. “Then you can figure out what she’s up to.” I waggled my eyebrows at him. “We both know she’s up to no good. Hel might have found a way around my wards, but it doesn’t mean she’s innocent.”

  Loki reached up to grab the door from me. “There’s the suspicious Freya I’ve been missing these last few weeks.”

  “She never went away. She just needed a nap.”

  Loki’s laughter followed me into the dimly lit interior.

  My bar, Freya’s place, was as traditional as I could make it. I modeled it after the halls of Valhalla, a place where few had been and even fewer would ever go. Gravelbeard was the grand exception to this rule. He had quite the merry adventure trying to beat the doors down during our hopefully one and only adventure. They sequestered him into a room to keep him from seeing anything he wasn’t supposed to see, then threatened to kill him if he moved. While I admired his moxie trying to break in, I honestly hadn’t thought they were going to let him out of there as easily as they did. He should be thanking his lucky stars for Eyra’s interference.

  The floors, walls and all of the furniture were all recycled, burnished wood. Everything in here was as sturdy as I could make it. When Vikings or gods were involved, you could expect a bar fight or two to break out. Although so far we’d been pretty lucky. I thought everyone was so grateful to be here and away from Odin, they were all on their best behavior. Doubtful it would last, though. Most good things in my life didn’t.

  The air smelled comforting to me. A mix of hops from the brewing in the basement, mulled cider, and baked goods always hit me in the solar plexus every time I walked in. In a happy way, of course.

  I heard the door click shut behind us and the light dimmed even further. We were closed until the late afternoon. Everything except for the lodging portion of it. Right now the only person I had staying was Hel. The others had all vacated. A small, evil part of me wondered if that was because of Hel’s presence. She was frightening even on a good day.

  “Can you feel her darkness?” Loki murmured from behind me. “It’s beginning to permeate the place.”

  “We can’t help our nature,” I said quietly as I walked behind the bar. I pulled out a stash of the Rhodomel mead I’d bargained Loki for and poured him a small tumbler full. I set the glass down on the slick, wooden bar and sent it sailing down. He caught it with a deft motion of his hand and slung his lean body onto one of the bar stools. Loki’s eyes lit up as he realized what I’d poured him.

  “What’s the special occasion?”

  I shrugged. “Monday.”

  His eyes lit with quiet amusement as he took the first sip of the special rose-brewed mead. “Perfection,” he said and sighed.

  I pulled myself a lager and leaned against the bar in front of him. “To friends and new beginnings,” I said.

  Loki clinked his glass to mine. “To love and all the wonderful complications that arise from it.”

  My cheeks colored but I raised my glass in acknowledgment. “To love,” I repeated and took a sip.

  Shadows began to crawl from every corner of the room, casting darkness on everything they touched. The inky darkness climbed the walls and threatened to overwhelm us. “How touching,” a voice from the top of the stairs said.

  Hel was awake. If her tone was anything to go by, she was in rare form today.

  I nodded at Loki’s daughter. “Would you like something to drink?” I asked her, politeness dripping from my voice. Being nice to her went against everything I stood for, especially since I knew her reasons for her being here weren’t altruistic. I trusted my intuition. Hel would be a problem. The only thing I could do until she showed her true colors was kill her with kindness.

  “I would love one,” she said as she slunk down the stairs like a goth supermodel. Hel never wore anything other than black and silver. Mostly black. The silver was just touches of color here and there. Maybe just to show us she had some personality. Or so she could find the zippers and seams when she got dressed. Who knew. Hel made no sound as she glided over to us. The hair at the back of my neck stood at attention as I assessed her without making it seem like I was assessing her. Know thy enemies had lo
ng been a motto of mine. While the woman wasn’t a direct enemy right now, something in my bones knew it was only a matter of time before she would be.

  I slid my gaze over to Loki only to realize he felt the exact same way. She was his daughter. If I had a child, would that child be my enemy? I sighed as I grabbed another glass and pulled Hel a stout, her favorite. Dark and mysterious, just like the woman slinking toward me. Such was the way of us. We loved, we hated, we became mortal enemies no matter how thick the blood between us ran.

  This was one of the many reasons I’d run out on my husband. Glancing over to my new in name only husband, I wasn’t sure how much running away I’d do from him. My stomach lurched as I shut off the tap and pushed the glass over to Hel.

  “Much obliged,” she said in her sometimes husky voice. The first time I’d heard her speak, she sounded like an angel - sweet and biddable. I found out right away most of it was an act. This was her. The dangerous woman sitting in front of me with long, inky hair and a blood-red smile. She wore black today. Again. Leather pants encased her slim thighs and ended at the top of her lean hips. A black and silver shirt wasn’t quite long enough to keep a pale expanse of stomach showing. I could never wear pants like that. I was a love and war goddess and whatever powers made me decided I need to come with a set of hips large enough to perch two babies on each side without moving. If I wore pants like hers, I’d be giving everyone a show. But Hel? She wore it like she was a rock star about to take the stage and make magic.

  Being beautiful didn’t hurt, either. I wondered if the darkness of her hair was natural or a result of the shadows lingering in it and around her. Her eyes were the frigid crystal clear blue of a foreign sea tucked away on a frozen tundra, but there was still something lovely in them anyway. Her skin was the pale cream of a coffee liqueur, the kind I always forgot to put in my morning brew. Hel’s beauty was sharp and pale and hard to look at, but terrible all the same.