Valkyrie Read online




  *******

  (Yaoi, M/M, Brothercest, AU Norse Mythology)

  Cameron Blake loved his older brother Liam as he loved no one else. So when Liam died saving him from what to his ten-year-old mind looked like a monster, part of Cameron died, too.

  Fifteen years later, Cameron works as a bartender and takes home men that look like Liam and pretends they are his beloved older brother. One night, a man comes into the bar and Cameron thinks he may not have to pretend very hard. The man’s scent to his voice are so like Liam’s that Cameron believes he might be seeing a ghost.

  Liam Blake died at the hands of a monster called The Gash. His little brother Cameron was The Gash’s next prey, but Liam saved Cameron at the cost of his own life. Yet death is not the end …

  Liam is rewarded by becoming an immortal warrior facing off against The Gash again and again with a group of other warriors who fell in battles over the ages under the auspices of the Valkyrie. But then he gets word that The Gash is going after his now grown-up little brother again. Cameron is once more in danger. Liam must return to his hometown to save him.

  Liam still thinks of Cameron as the boy of ten he died to save. The twenty-five year old he meets inspires quite different emotions in his heart. Liam also thinks the magic that suffuses his immortal body will stop anyone from recognizing him, even his little brother. He is wrong about that, too.

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Blurb

  Table of Contents

  Valkyrie - Characters

  Liam Blake

  Cameron Blake

  Mary Blake

  Elda

  Nafari

  Lihua Chang

  Illustration - Under a Painted Sky

  CHAPTER ONE: COMING HOME

  CHAPTER TWO: MEN WITH NO NAMES

  CHAPTER THREE: HAUNTED

  CHAPTER FOUR: UNFINISHED

  CHAPTER FIVE: BLOODLINE

  CHAPTER SIX: THE DESERT KILLER KIND

  CHAPTER SEVEN: INTO THE VOID

  CHAPTER EIGHT: HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

  CHAPTER NINE: BLIND

  CHAPTER TEN: TOUCHING DISTANCE

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE NATURE OF BELIEF

  CHAPTER TWELVE: MAGIC IS POISON

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: FEAR AND SWEETNESS

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: TAKING CONTROL

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: CLOCKWORKS

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: FORWARD

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: COLD THOUGHTS

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: SHADOWS OF THE PAST

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: RECOGNITION

  CHAPTER TWENTY: NO CHOICE AT ALL

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: BRING THE LIGHTNING

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: BALANCING ACT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: HEAT AND LIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: FIRE AND WATER

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: BRING THE FIRE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: YOU

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: CORRUPTION

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: BAD BLOOD

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: MAGIC CONTROLS

  CHAPTER THIRTY: FAMILY TRAITS

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: THE MAN ONE'S MEANT TO BE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: SONS OF THE HEART

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: FIRE AND ICE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: RIDE THE LIGHTNING

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: INTO THE STORM

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: MAGIC IN THE BLOOD

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: THE STORM

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: TOGETHER

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: INTERESTING TIMES

  The End

  Valkyrie - Characters

  Liam Blake

  Liam Blake is a born protector and warrior. His little brother Cameron is the one person he would give his life for without a second thought. Unfortunately, he gets his chance to do just that.

  Now an immortal warrior in an eternal war with The Gash, Liam’s sole purpose is to keep The Gash from destroying the lives of any more innocents. He thinks to never see Cameron again. But when The Gash determines to go after Cameron once more, Liam is thrust back into the life of a brother he comes to have very different feelings for than when he was alive.

  Cameron Blake

  Cameron Blake worshipped his older brother Liam when he was a child. Now all grown-up, Cameron is haunted by a feeling that when Liam died he lost the other half of himself.

  Though a brilliant artist and musician, he abandoned all plans of leaving the small town where his mother is the sheriff and his father and brother died to pursue those dreams. Instead, he tends bar in a little hole in the wall on the highway and constantly searches for men that remind him even of a little bit of Liam to feel alive.

  Mary Blake

  Sheriff Mary Blake lost her husband and her oldest son to violent criminals. Her sole focus in life is to keep her small western town safe from the darkness in peoples’ hearts, most especially her youngest son Cameron, but the harder she holds onto him, the more fiercely Cameron pulls away.

  She worries that Cameron is drifting through life and has no attachments to anyone or anything. She wants to reconnect with him and help him find his way, but she fears that his heart and mind were too shattered by Liam’s death for him to ever move on.

  Elda

  Elda fell in battle with The Gash long ago. She was raised into immortality by Odin and named a Valkyrie. Odin’s orders to her were to seek out others to join the battle against The Gash.

  The moment she saw Liam Blake, she knew that he would be one of the greatest warriors her order has ever known. She believes that the blood of Odin himself runs through Liam’s veins, but she can tell that half his heart was left behind in the mortal world with his younger brother Cameron.

  When she realizes that Cameron is again under threat from The Gash, her first thought is to send Liam out to see if he can recapture the other half of him that is missing.

  Nafari

  Nafari was the first-born son of the leader of the Fang Tribe, an African tribe located in Southern Gabon, Cameroon. He was known in his tribe as the Shadow, for his ability to melt into the darkness and take an enemy down before they even knew he was there.

  The Gash came to his village and began slaughtering the children of the tribe. Nafari fell in battle to save his people. He was rewarded with immortality. He is second-in-command of the Valkyrie after Elda.

  This loyal, trustworthy and brave soul becomes close friends with Liam. Like Elda, he sees the hole in Liam’s soul and wants it filled.

  Lihua Chang

  Lihua Chang was the second daughter of a Chinese merchant who resided in China in a small mountain town 500 years ago. The Gash came to her village and slaughtered her sister. She took up the sword for the first time and stopped The Gash from killing the rest of her town. She perished in battle and was raised into immortality.

  Lihua is especially gifted at tracking The Gash and determining what its next move will be. Due to her close connection with her own sister, she understands Liam’s deep devotion to Cameron.

  Under a Painted Sky

  Mathia Arkoniel

  CHAPTER ONE: COMING HOME

  My name is Liam Blake and I come from a line of warriors. I did not know that until I died and lost my mortal life and earned my immortal one as a Valkyrie. But it should have been obvious to me all along.

  My father was the sheriff of a small western town in the United States called Holten in New Mexico until he was killed while off-duty trying to save a convenience store owner. My mother then took my father’s place as defender of the innocent and criminals have been known to cry in fear of her. My grandfather was a soldier. He met my grandmother on the front lines of a war where she was bandaging desperately wounded men while bombs fell all around them. “Gun fire and
explosions were our love songs,” my grandfather had said.

  We have artists in our family, too. Writers, painters, and sculptors. They create art of startling intensity that haunts people. My younger brother Cameron is of this line. He was drawing before he could talk. His sculptures made me believe there was something more to this life when I didn’t believe in anything. And he was only ten when I died. At twenty-one, I wonder how great his talent must be now.

  We also have madness in our family. Relatives who rave about darkness and danger and old gods. Great uncles, far removed aunts, and distant cousins that whisper about some terrible being called The Gash and then, when the thunder and lightning comes, they cry out for Thor and Odin. When the madness is fully upon them they scream for Loki to save them. I thought all of this was just insanity, not real, the ramblings of the mad and lost.

  But it wasn't.

  • • •

  Valkyrie Liam Blake’s wings transformed as he passed through the clouds and fell towards the two-lane highway that cut through the desert night. The wings that allowed him to soar between the mortal world and the immortal one became a Valkyrie motorcycle, sleek, silver and black with an immensely powerful engine, that settled between his muscular thighs. The tires touched silkily down on the black ribbon of asphalt that led to Holten, New Mexico. In the past the wings would have transformed into a horse, but times had changed and it had been Liam who had suggested the Valkyrie motorcycles instead. Fitting considering the name.

  He heard the soft hiss of Valkyrie Nafari’s motorcycle’s wheels landing beside him. He turned his head, his long blond hair, obscuring his vision of his best friend and brother in arms, Nafari, for a moment. Nafari wore all black leather and with his midnight black skin he looked like a figure made of onyx. Liam saw the flash of his white teeth as he sent Liam a grin, which had Liam grinning back even though his stomach was twisting with anxiety.

  I’m going home. Mom will be there. Cameron …Cameron will be there, too.

  He remembered his little brother’s tousled blond hair, the pale as milk skin and adoring smiles Cameron had always sent his way. Even before their father’s death, Cameron’s world had revolved around Liam. And Liam’s sole focus had been to keep his little brother safe and happy. He had accomplished the first part of that equation at least. He hoped Cameron was happy, but a part of him doubted it was so. After all, why would his brother still be in Holten and not at art school where they’d always planned he’d go?

  Liam focused on the highway before them. There were no other vehicles on the road that wove through the desert past mesquite trees and endless waves of sand. He turned the bike to avoid a tumbleweed that decided now was the moment to dash across the highway. Moonlight backlit many of the hills and the arches and buttes that were left behind after the wind had scoured away the soft stone and left the bones of the Earth exposed.

  “What does it feel like to be home?” Nafari called to him as he drew his bike even with Liam’s. His voice had a musical, smoky quality that made most women and men wish to hear it all night long.

  “Not home yet. Holten is still twenty-five miles ahead of us,” Liam responded.

  “This place — this crazy, beautiful desert — is your home. I can see it on your face. And though you are as tense as a bow, once we touched down there was a moment where there was joy in your expression,” Nafari said with a slight nod of his bald head.

  Liam flashed him a grin and shook his own head. “You see too much.”

  “And you will get to see Cameron.”

  This time his heart twisted as well as his stomach. “Yes, but it won’t be the same as before. He won’t recognize me.”

  That was part of the deal of the immortal life. No one who had known them as a mortal would recognize them as an immortal Valkyrie even though their looks had not changed. Liam Blake had died. Cameron and Mary, their mother, had buried him ten years before. There was a body in that coffin. His old body. Now he was something other. Valkyrie Lihua Chang had theorized that their mortal forms were like cocoons and death released them to become a further evolved form. Though Liam heard Odin’s words far more often and for more clearly than all but Elda — and some whispered he was spoken to even more than her — did not know if Lihua was right. He never thought to ask the old god these things when they spoke. His mind was too full of wonder and all his questions melted away as if they had never been.

  There was a sharp cry upon the wind and Liam glanced above them. Two ravens streaked across the night sky and disappeared behind a butte. Nafari tracked them, too. Ravens were some of Odin’s animal companions. Liam would not have been surprised if these two ravens were Huginn and Muninn who brought Odin information from all over Midgard. Neither he nor Nafari spoke Odin’s name. For to speak it was to call the old god and they would need his favor in their battle against The Gash later, better not to test his attention now.

  “Will you recognize Cameron when you see him?” Nafari asked and his voice startled Liam after the passing of the ravens. “It has been eleven years. He is not the little gap-toothed boy that you always tell me about after we have too much mead in the Hall of Heroes.” Nafari laughed.

  Liam shook his head and his golden hair flew back behind him like a silk banner. “I haven’t kept up with him at all. I don’t know that I would recognize him if he walked right up and spoke to me.”

  “And why do you not keep up with him? If any of my family were alive I would be standing over their shoulders and watching everything! I would give them unwanted advice. I would lecture them on whatever foolishness that they intended to get into. I would laugh at their weddings and cry at their funerals. I would be that friend — that favored uncle — that they all spoke of with a smile and a shake of their heads! For I would always be right in what I advised them and they likely would only listen to me a quarter of the time!” Nafari’s immortal life had begun nearly three-hundred years before and though his tribe, the Fang Tribe from Southern Gabon, Cameroon, still existed, his family had died out a hundred years ago. “So as you see, no one could keep me away from them yet you tell me that you do not even know what your beloved little brother looks like now as a man?”

  There were so many answers he could give his best friend. They would all be truthful, but they would not be the full truth or maybe the core of the truth. He tried not to lie to Nafari if he could help it.

  “It’s too painful to see him and not to be … not to be the big brother he adored,” Liam answered. “Besides, Elda is clear that once our immortal lives begin we can no longer try to hold onto our lost mortal ones. My brother is off limits to me as your family would be to you.”

  “I know the rules very well, but sometimes there must be … exceptions,” Nafari said.

  “You and Elda on the same page on that? I thought as the second-in-command of the Valkyrie you had to be in lockstep with our leader.” Liam grinned at him.

  Elda was the first Valkyrie to be raised to immortality. She was their leader and the most incredible warrior that Liam had ever seen. It was Elda who had explained to him the truth behind the world after he had died and been raised up as a Valkyrie. She told him of the eternal battle between the light and dark, between Odin and his people and The Gash. The Valkyrie were Odin’s foot soldiers in an eternal war.

  Nafari let out a brilliant laugh. “We are in agreement, Liam.”

  Liam frowned, his heart pounding a little, as he asked, “Elda thinks that I should be involved in my brother’s life?”

  He couldn’t quite believe that. Beautiful and distant like the frosty peaks of mountains, Elda had no truck with “useless emotions” as she called anything that got in a Valkyrie’s way of fulfilling his or her duty in battling The Gash.

  Nafari sighed. “She believes the world of you, Liam, but she thinks that you have not embraced your immortal life, because of who you left behind.”

  “I have embraced —”

  “This has nothing to do with your skills in battle agains
t The Gash,” Nafari smoothly interrupted. “There is joy in battle. There must be for us to do it forever. But for you there is no joy in anything.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Not true?” Nafari shook his head. “You are still so deep in your grief for your old life that you do not see it.”

  “And what is your and Elda’s suggestion for me to overcome that grief?” His heart twisted once more.

  “We do not know yet, but we …” Nafari cut a glance towards him and then away.

  “What?”

  “We do not think it is a coincidence that The Gash is back in Holten,” Nafari said carefully.

  “You think — you think it will go after Cameron again?” Liam tried to keep the rage and fear out of his voice. “You and Elda said that The Gash only came to Holten because of me! That it sensed I would be a Valkyrie, but my — my brother had nothing to do with it!”

  “That was before we saw the connection you have to — to him.” Nafari tipped his head up towards where the ravens had disappeared.

  Odin. Liam closed his eyes for a moment. Odin calls me like he would a favorite son. He has hinted that his blood runs through my family’s veins, but I — I did not think on what that could mean for Cameron.

  Nafari continued, saying what Liam was only thinking, “Now we believe that your family has connections that would — would draw The Gash.”

  Liam felt a fool. Holten was only a city of 25,000. While the war was eternal and everywhere, it would be rare for The Gash to appear twice in such a small location within a decade. It was unheard of actually. He had known that. But he had not wanted to look into it more closely.