Free Desolate (Desolation) by Ali Cross Page A

Dread crept up my arms.
    “Shall I accompany you to retrieve it?” Longinus asked. His eyes hardened and narrowed. I knew he feared I hadn’t kept it safe.
    The dread I’d felt blossomed into full-blown panic. The night Michael had been swallowed up by Hell, I’d taken the spear to the only person in all the worlds I trusted to keep it safe—and who’d keep it as far away from me as possible. I never wanted to see or touch it again. I didn’t want to be tempted by its siren call. I had taken it . . .
    “Let us go,” Longinus prodded.
    . . . to Heimdall.
     
     

 
     
     
    chapter thirteen
     
    “Where is it exactly, child?” Cornelius asked, taking his glasses off and setting them on the desk in front of him. He leaned forward, expectant, and I could feel everyone else do the same. Like a magnet I drew them to me—when all I wanted was to break free. Their faith in me made it hard to breathe.
    Especially when I knew I didn’t deserve it.
    Especially now.
    “Desolation?” Knowles asked, his voice hard, ready to accuse me, to punish. Despite a lifetime of dedication to right and truth, the darkness still raged within him. He still mistrusted and expected the worst in others.
    I looked at them, all of them. I didn’t ask for forgiveness. I didn’t make excuses. They had all entrusted the spear to me, even Longinus, because the spear-head and staff had been joined. Longinus had relinquished his centuries-long stewardship over the Spear of Destiny to me.
    They had trusted me to keep it safe.
    And I thought I had.
    I’d chosen the one guardian I trusted above all others.
    And now he was gone—captured by Father. Captured, or worse.
    “Heimdall.” The word landed like a bomb in the small room—everyone started talking at once.
    Longinus lunged forward and pinned me against the wall. I allowed him to do it. The voices stopped.
    “You left the Spear of Destiny with the god of the Bifrost?” His voice quivered with barely contained fury and his eyes bore into mine, wild and laced with fear.
    “Yes.”
    “And now your father has taken him.”
    The shame bit into me like a bed of nails.
    “Yes.”
    He didn’t have to voice his fears. I could feel it. Could feel that same fear echoing from everyone in the room. From myself.
    “Then the task is the same,” Knowles said. He was the only one who still sat. “It all comes back to Heimdall, doesn’t it?”
    Longinus let me go and stumbled back, swiping his hands over his close-cut hair.
    “My sources tell me Heimdall was taken almost twenty-four hours ago,” Knowles continued. “Souls have two days before they are admitted to Valhalla, gain Ascension—or claim eternal damnation.” Miri had sat down, but the rest of us still stood, waiting to hear the punch line to Knowles’ proclamation of doom and gloom.
    “So I estimate we have another day before those who are unable to Travel are forced to reclaim their bodies. When that happens—” He looked at his hands, unable to continue.
    James sat in his chair with a thud. “All Hell breaks loose.”
    Knowles stared at James as if he’d suddenly sprouted horns. “You have no idea.”
     
     

 
     
     
    chapter fourteen
     
    No one tried to stop me when I said I had to go. My news had left them lost and speechless. Pretty much how I felt all the time.
    Without Heimdall the gates to Asgard would be vulnerable and I felt certain Odin would have the bridge highly guarded. And though I didn’t fear him, knew that Odin cared for me, the last time we spoke he made it clear my decision to stay on Earth ensured Asgard would be closed to me forever.
    I hoped that did not include the wheelhouse.
    “I have to least try,” I told the stone cherub. All these one-sided conversations were making me despise the thing. Sometimes I imagined scratching its eyes out, to stop it from staring at me forever and ever.
    But I closed my own eyes instead.
    In my mind I pictured the wheelhouse—Heimdall’s vantage point from