“Maybe you could help me,” I said.
Cooper’s pupils dilated, glittering in his angelic blue eyes. “What did you have in mind?”
Yep, that helped. I raised my shield—my mental shield—holding it blazing between us in my thoughts. “I guess you could say I’m looking for a sparring partner.”
There was an abrupt shift in the atmosphere in the bar. Since the rebellion earlier this summer, Stefan had solidified his position as the undisputed leader of the Outcast in Hel’s territory and those under his command had been careful not to treat me and my super-size emotions as a potential all-you-can-eat buffet. Well, that and the fact that I’d dispatched two of their number to a final and lasting death.
This was different. There was a new measure of respect in the eyes that gleamed out at me from the depths of the bar, and a measure of speculation, too. They recognized a challenge when they saw one. Or sensed one, I guess. Anyway, if I wanted a fight, there were half a dozen ghouls ready to give me one.
And . . . that was a bit much for my fledgling skills. My mental shield faltered and vanished.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Cooper angled himself to block me from view of the others. “You’re a piece of work.”
I hoisted the buckler and rekindled my mental shield in the same motion. “Are you going to help me out or not?”
He glanced around. “Yeah, all right. Let’s go out back.”
I followed Cooper outside and around to the rear of the building, where there was an area of hard-packed dirt adorned with cigarette butts.
“So that’s what himself’s been up to with you?” Cooper asked casually, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans and rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. He wore a pair of lace-up construction boots that looked too big for his scrawny frame. I still had a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that teenaged-looking Cooper was never going to grow into his feet. “Seems you’re a good student.”
I kept my shield in place. “It’s a lot like the visualization exercises I’ve done since I was a kid. Only harder.”
His expression was unreadable. “So you really want me to unleash the beast? I’ll warn you, I don’t have the kind of control the big man does.”
I was apprehensive, but I was curious, too. “Is that what you call it? The beast?”
Cooper’s pupils waxed. “It’s what I call it. The beast, the black beast that rides my soul.” He gave me a grim smile. “Do you know why we’re cursed with our beasts, pretty Daisy?”
“Honestly?” I said. “No, I don’t. I didn’t think anyone truly understood it.”
“Ah, well, if you’re being technical, no.” Cooper shrugged. “How we exist and why, whether there’s some purpose to it or it’s a mere accident of fate. But the beast . . . I understand the beast.”
I lowered my shield a fraction. “Tell me.”
“Because we were forged in death at the pinnacle of our existence.” Cooper looked past me into the distance. “Half saint, half sinner, facing death in a howling storm of rage or fury, despair or defiance, passion or hatred. We died filled with a blaze of terror and hope, not knowing if we were going to meet God or the Devil himself, and we woke to find ourselves cast back into the mortal world, lying in the stink of our own shit. But you know what? We want that moment back. We crave it. We ache to go back to that one terrible, horrible, glorious moment. And we can’t. We’re trapped. Outcast. And the eternal hunger rides us like a beast, claws gouging us like spurs.” His gaze returned to me, clear-eyed and steady. “So we fill the void with whatever we can.”
“Oh.” The word came out in a whisper. I had a feeling I wouldn’t have a problem with thinking of Cooper as a teenager after this.
“Now you know what you’re asking for,” he said to me. “Do you still want it?”
“I need to learn.” I held his gaze. “Are you still willing to help me?”
“I am.”
I flexed my left hand around the buckler’s grip, holding its image in my thoughts. “Let’s do this.”
Cooper turned his beast loose and came at me hard. A ghoul’s attack is a difficult thing to describe because it’s not like anything else you’ve experienced. That void, that hunger, exerts a profound tidal pull on everything inside you, everything you feel, trying to suck out your innermost emotions and devour them, leaving emptiness in their wake.
And I understood immediately what he meant about not having Stefan’s control. When I’d sparred with Stefan, he’d kept his beast on a short leash. His attack was tight and focused. Cooper’s was all over the place, swarming me.
It was like trying to fight some kind of tentacled, soul-sucking fog. I battered frantically at it with my mental shield, left and right, high and low. Cooper circled me, forcing me to turn with him.
“Draw your dagger, you eejit!” he shouted at me. “If this was a real fight, you’d need it!”
Duh. It hadn’t occurred to me. I wrapped my hand around dauda-dagr’s hilt and pulled it from its sheath.Cooper took a few wary steps backward. “Right,” he said. “Now put down the shield. You need to be able do this without it.”
Without breaking eye contact, I tossed the buckler aside. It clattered on the packed dirt. My mental shield continued to blaze steadily and with dauda-dagr in my right hand, I felt balanced in a way I hadn’t before.
“All right.” Cooper grinned, his dilated pupils shining. “Let’s dance.”
I don’t know how long we sparred, but it felt like a good long while and by the end of it, I was wrung out, even more exhausted than I had been after my bout with Stefan—in part because I didn’t have that initial I-can-do-this rush of elation to sustain me and in part because Cooper had pushed me harder.
He took a moment to collect himself when I called for a stop, then excused himself and ducked into the bar through the rear entrance. I sheathed dauda-dagr and waited uncertainly until he returned a few minutes later, his pupils normal and a pair of cold Budweisers in his hands.
“Sorry about that.” Cooper handed me a beer. “Needed a little something to take the edge off.”
Somehow, I didn’t think he meant the beer. I was pretty sure he meant one of the mortal barflies and hangers-on inside the Wheelhouse. “That’s . . . okay.”
He eyed me as he took a pull on his beer. “Makes you a mite squeamish, does it?”
“A mite,” I admitted. “My first experience with, um, an Outcast’s appetite wasn’t a good one.”
Cooper looked surprised. “Himself?”
I shook my head. “No, not Stefan. It was a guy named Al. He’s gone—Stefan banished him. But he . . . tasted me against my will, and it sent him ravening.” The memory of it still made me feel dirty.
“Ah, well. It’s different when you’re willing,” he said, taking another swig of beer. “But then, you know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” I’d given Stefan permission to drain my anger when I was on the verge of losing my considerable temper and causing an ungodly scene at a funeral. The fact that it had felt as good and shockingly intimate as it had was almost as unnerving as being coerced against my will. “I do.”
Cooper changed the subject. “You did well today. You’ve got the knack for this.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate your help.” I took a sip of beer. “Would you be willing to do it again?”
He considered me. “Yeah, I would. You know, I thought my little speech would scare you off. But I reckon you’re tougher than you look.”
“It was quite a speech,” I said.
“I hope so,” Cooper said in a flat, dispassionate voice. “Because I meant every sodding word of it.”
Twenty-two
After leaving the Wheelhouse, I swung by Sedgewick Estate to visit my mom. I’d call it a whim, but the truth was, after everything that had happened in the past few days, I was in need of some maternal sympathy.
As it turned out, I was totally in luck. Mom was just putting a pan of lasagna in the oven, and there was plenty of time to fill her in on my latest trials and tribulations—although I didn’t tell her the part about Emmy’s charm sending me to Doc Howard’s office—get some quality Mom-style commiseration regarding my breakup with Sinclair, eat a home-cooked meal, and still get back to my place well before sunset.
In the bedroom of my apartment, I went into my narrow closet to retrieve the iron casket I’d stashed on the top shelf, then fetched the key from its hiding place in the jewelry box on my dresser.
The casket wasn’t much bigger than a jewelry box, but it was heavy as hell, ancient and battered and inscribed with intricate Norse knotwork designs. Hel had given it to me the first time she’d summoned me into her presence and offered me the position of serving as her liaison to mundane authorities.
I took it into the living room to unlock it and examine its contents. Everything was in order: the little copper bowl, the packet of scaly pine bark from Yggdrasil II wrapped in soft wool, the box of wooden kitchen matches I’d added.
Whether or not it would work, I couldn’t say for sure. In the few years that I’d served Hel, I’d never had occasion to attempt to contact Little Niflheim. It had always been the other way around.
Truth be told, I was curious.
Lee Hastings appeared on my doorstep at exactly ten minutes after eight, looking like death warmed over and wrapped in a black leather duster. I bet he was one of those guys you could set your watch by.
“I’m here,” he announced, proclaiming the obvious in a magisterial tone. “Shall we go?”
“Hold on, cowboy.” I tucked the iron casket under my arm. “You don’t just waltz into Little Niflheim uninvited. Besides, I don’t have a dune buggy.”
Lee frowned. “A dune buggy?”