Free Two Ravens and One Crow (Novella) by Kevin Hearne Page A

own kin—«
    »In Asgard!« Odin roared. She quieted, clenched her jaw, and squeezed her eyes shut, unwilling to look at me unless she could kill me. I got to my feet but held my tongue. There was no apology I could make that would balance my ledger with her.
    The Morrigan, bloodied and bruising, appeared in the background.
    »It was a pleasure to meet you, Freyja. It was a proper meeting indeed.« She gave a bloody grin. »I hope we get a chance to meet again.« Freyja did not respond.
    Odin turned his head to face me. »I cannot begin to express my dismay …«
    »No need,« I said. »Our agreement holds. Give me a few extra days to heal and arrange the delivery of Gungnir. I will tell your ravens where. And I will be there to help at the end of the world, if the world doesn’t kill me first.«
    He nodded curtly. »Leave us now, if you will.«
    I was only too glad to oblige. Morrigan, we need to take the cellphones of the witnesses. We can’t have a record of your fight or my existence hitting the Internet .
    Done. Go and heal, Siodhachan . She strode forward and planted a bloody kiss on my lips. Call me soon. I would like to catch a baseball game . She cast camouflage on herself and vanished from view. Shortly thereafter, cries of dismay could be heard in the street as people watched their phones leap out of their hands, pockets, and purses and smash to pieces on the sidewalk. No one could prove that gods fought in the streets of Oslo; it was all hearsay.
    I left Odin and Freyja in that dark alley and recovered my pants and tuxedo jacket from the street, ignoring the curious queries of bystanders. Getting dressed allowed me to hail a cab a couple of blocks away to drive me out to the woods, where I could shift away to safety.
    * * ** * * After some time to heal and some scouting in southwestern Colorado, I found a place in the woods that I could use as a sort of safe house. It was definitely a fixer-upper, an old miner’s cabin nestled in the mountains above the wee hamlet of Ouray, but the solitude was perfect. The only people who ever came up the road nearby were 4×4 Jeep tourists, and they never stopped at the cabin. They sometimes stopped at Camp Bird Mine a short distance below, but mostly they were on their way to enjoy the wildflowers of Yankee Boy Basin. Also, their traffic was limited to the summer; the road was impassable once the snows came, and those didn’t begin to melt until late spring. I could shift directly there, however, because the entire area was full of pine and spruce, and once I bound it to Tír na nÓg, I could appear within a kung fu leap of the front door.
    I made arrangements to buy it through my attorney, Hal Hauk, and decided to use it as a drop point for Gungnir. The paperwork took longer than I would have wished, but once I finally had the keys to the place and was assured no one but me would be poking around in there, I shifted to Canyon de Chelly and hitchhiked back home to our trailer in Many Farms. My apprentice and hound were quite happy to see me and full of questions about what had happened.
    I held up the back of my right hand. »The Morrigan fixed my tattoos, among other things,« I said. »Has everything been okay here?«
    »Fine until a few days ago,« Granuaile said. »I think something must have died nearby, because we’ve had ravens circling the place, but I can’t find it and the damn things won’t go away.« She pointed to the sky where two black-winged shapes soared above. As my eyes found them, the ravens banked and dove toward the trailer. They landed on top of my trailer, much as the Morrigan had, and peered at me from the roof.
    »Okay, that’s really weird. It’s too bad you don’t have a bust of Pallas,« Granuaile remarked.
    ›Or crackers. I hear birds are wild for crackers.‹
    »I know who these birds are,« I said.
    » Who they are? You mean these are shape-shifters?« Granuaile asked.
    »No, these are Hugin and Munin. Odin’s ravens.« I pulled out a