Runes #03 - Grimnirs by Ednah Walters

paint. What did they mean?
    Echo had been here, fixing things with runes. Why hadn’t he awakened me?
    I left the farm, eager to get to school and talk to the blonde Valkyrie about her sister marking me. Maybe Echo would pull me inside the make-out closet again. He had a lot of answering to do. He was the one on the road last night. I just knew it.
    Flashing police lights ahead forced me to slow down. Cops scoured the grounds at the scene of last night’s incident. What were they searching for?
    Even as the question flashed through my head, I noticed the rows of flatted vines on both vineyards. They looked like weird crop patterns conspiracy theorists blamed on aliens. Deep fissure were also visible on the ground, and several trees were down as though ripped from their roots by giant hands. It would take superhuman strength to do this kind of damage. Or aliens called Grimnirs. I knew they were fast, but were they strong, too? I didn’t recall seeing the trees fall last night, which meant more fighting must have happened after we drove away.
    An officer indicated that I move along. Now I was worried about Echo. At every stop sign, I expected him to appear in my car.
    The first person I saw when I parked at the school’s parking lot was Kicker. She waved and hurried toward my car.
    “We missed you yesterday at the pool. Are you swimming today?”
    “Yeah. Got my stuff.” We started across the parking lot when I noticed her T-shirt. It had the silhouette of three guys and a girl.
    “What’s that?” I pointed at her shirt.
    She looked down at her chest and grinned. “Reapers? The hottest band ever.”
    I frowned. Reapers? “How come I’ve never heard of them?”
    She laughed. “You have to live in a major city across the globe and attend rave parties to know about them. They are ravers’ best-kept secret. They appear out of nowhere, perform, and leave. No one knows who they are or where they come from, but people love them. They symbolize what raves are about.”
    All I knew about ravers was that they did drugs. “What?”
    “Spirituality, intimacy, letting go of society’s shackles. They don’t care about money or fame.”
    Sounded like something a real reaper would do. “I never would have imagined you as a raver, Kicker.”
    “Me neither. My cousin who’s a serious raver invited me to a party a few months ago in Portland, and Reapers made a surprise appearance. That’s what they do. They come unannounced, which is totally cool. They gave out these T-shirts for free.”
    “Do you know the names of the band members? What they look like?”
    “No. They always wear masks, but you can tell they are young and hot. I mean, they are seriously buff and ripped. Since they’ve been around since the eighties, some ravers believe they get new members every ten years. Others believe they are more than one group. You know, like a hundred members of the band, because they’ve monitored and timed their performances down to seconds. They perform one night a month in a span of twenty-four hours across the globe. There’s no way they can move from city to city in minutes.”
    If they used portals they could. We entered the school and moved past people standing in groups catching up on gossip.
    “The fact that they can do that only makes them more mysterious. My cousin’s dream is to be a member of the Reapers.”
    I could easily see a bunch of reapers taking one night a month to release steam, performing to underground groups. Maybe Echo knew them. Drew was near my locker when we entered the hallway.
    “Are you two back together now?” Kicker asked.
    One kiss didn’t an item make us. On the other hand, the one from Echo had made an impression and left me hungry for more. I didn’t answer Kicker, choosing to focus on Drew.
    “Hey,” I said, slowing to a stop near him.
    He grinned and dangled several Sharpies, including a pink one. I chose a pink and a black one, squatted, and wrote my name, making O a heart and