Cara MIA - By Book One of the Immortyl Revolution - By Denise Verrico Page 0,56
landing strip. The pilot unloaded our bags into the waiting car and opened the doors for us. The driver raced against the sun, even if it would only rise for a brief time. I pulled my black mink tighter around me, chilled by Ethan’s silence, relieved to be on the ground again, but dreading the coming encounter.
Soon, we pulled up to a dock, where a small ferry was anchored. The driver opened the doors for us and carried our bags to the boat, then hurriedly got back into the car and sped away. The blond, bearded giant of a mortal at the boat’s helm tipped his cap and spoke cordially in Norwegian. Ethan answered tersely in the same. The boatman smiled as he helped me aboard.
The ferry plowed slowly through chunks of floating ice and fog, to an island that appeared as suddenly as Avalon before my astonished eyes. A house was set high on a hill, bathed in floodlights, a sparkling modernist structure of concrete and glass. This was the home of a vampire of great antiquity? What had I expected, some drafty old castle? Not in Norway in any case. I’d done some exploratory reading when I learned of the patriarch’s origins. Viking houses were mostly made of wood and long gone.
Nice guys these Old Norse. They enjoyed drinking from the skulls of their dead enemies and smothering people in peat bogs as an offering to the gods. Female slaves were usually the ones who gave the gods their due. Supposedly their own women held fairly high status in their society, but their pantheon of deities was as much a boys club as the one I was now a non-voting member of. Philip said he liked women. Skewered and roasted, I supposed.
We docked at the Island, and upon disembarking, walked along a stone drive to what appeared to be a tunnel with a large steel door. A hum started up as the door lifted. We entered an underground passage, sort of a large garage with a couple of very nifty cars parked inside. The boatman carried our bags to a small elevator. I glanced up at naked rock above our heads. We were underneath the goddamned hill. Didn’t trolls live in caves under mountains? Not the quaint fairy tale trolls like in the Billy Goats Gruff, but the giant man-devouring monsters of Norse mythology?
The mortal set down the bags and left, strolling from the cavern and out the heavy steel door. He didn’t make signs against the evil eye, or any other such superstitious nonsense. Apparently it was business as usual, and he suspected nothing out of the ordinary about his employer— besides— Ethan gave him a large tip.
Ethan cautioned me to behave myself as we ascended, “Not a word until he addresses you, got it?”
“I know the dance.”
“Not this one.”
Sure, I was terrified. My heart beat frantically, pumping adrenaline through my blood, believe me it was everything I could do not to run away in terror. The moment I’d anticipated and dreaded for so long was upon me. In a moment I’d look on his face, the big cheese, the head demon.
The elevator glided to a stop and the door opened. The elder stood there before us. He wasn’t as tall as Ethan but would have been considered a giant in his time, made somewhat on the same muscular lines as Ethan however. I couldn’t bring myself to meet his eyes but he took my chin firmly in hand and raised my face. I sensed great power, but that was all. He wasn’t letting on anything else.
Trembling, I met his gaze, and was taken aback by what I saw, intensely blue eyes, the impossible blue of a Scandinavian summer sky, curious not cruel, and a smile as benign as Saint Francis feeding the little birds. His lean face was somewhat austere in contrast to the sensuality of Ethan’s, and his pale hair neatly clipped in the current fashion.
Still, the non-threatening appearance didn’t make me feel any better. In fact his very sunniness scared the tar out of me. There is something horrifying about a creature of the night embodying the diurnal in his form, like your destruction just constantly staring you in the face.
A soft, low voice with a hint of a lilt caressed me, “Mia, Ethan’s child. How lovely. I’m Brovik.”
Taking me by the arm, he led me into a large open room with stark white walls and highly vaulted ceilings supported by bleached birch beams.