Darkness Rising

by Cate Farren

  "My name's Ziibi," said the boy.

  "Why are you pretending to be a First Nation teenager?" Wynn demanded. "Thirty years ago you were a white woman who worked in a department store."

  Ziibi shrugged his shoulders. "I felt like a change. Besides, I've been First Nation before. I like it." He gave Toren a wink. "And the Fey thinks I'm hot. She's already undressing me with her eyes."

  Toren felt like slapping this kid.

  Kid! He's as old as I am!

  "So are you here to kill us or to help us?" Toren asked.

  "I'm here to help you," said Ziibi. "I like this world. I like being someone different every thirty years or so, blending in, loving life, seeing the world from different perspectives. I don't want Loki destroying that. I'm still pissed at him for blowing up the Eiffel Tower. I never got around to seeing it."

  Ziibi went on to describe, in graphic detail, all the ways he wanted Loki to suffer. Toren couldn't help but be half impressed, half disturbed. He would be a great asset to their side, but she'd have to watch out for him. He might be more trouble than he was worth.

  "One more thing," said Toren. She studied his reaction as she said, "You're the last one."

  "You have heard Loki is raising a new army?" said Ziibi.

  She crossed her arms. "Sutton Crane was framed for brutally murdering a family a year ago. Did you do it?"

  The First Nation boy looked down at his plate before picking up a spear of asparagus. He popped it in his mouth. Toren wanted to vomit. She hated asparagus, though she had to admit it did have its uses. Vegetable gardens were potent sources of magic to help Fey perform complicated spells.

  "Well?" Wynn demanded.

  "Of course not," Ziibi admitted. He looked ashamed, even guilty, as he added, "But I do know who did it."

  "It has to be you,” said Toren angrily. “You're the only one left."

  Ziibi sighed. "Not really. I have a child." He looked Toren in the eye. "He's half Fey and he has full shapeshifter powers."

  Toren stood up, turning her back to him. She thought it was over. She thought there was only Loki left to find. Did it ever end?

  She felt Wynn touch her shoulder.

  "We'll find him," said Wynn.

  "No," she said darkly. "I'll find him."

  “It’s time for blood magic.”

  “Not really,” said Ziibi. “I know exactly where he is.”

  Chapter 5

  Clover didn't need time to think about Loki's offer. How could she pass up a glimpse into ancient history? It may even give her an idea of how to defeat him.

  "I'll do it," she declared, even though her stomach performed somersaults at the prospect.

  Loki smiled benignly. "Good."

  She only hoped it wasn't a trick to try and control her. She wasn't sure she was strong enough to fend off a mental assault from such a powerful being, though she’d try her best.

  "So how does this work?" she asked. She was getting nervous now. "Is it some kind of Vulcan mind meld type thing?"

  "Something like that."

  Loki's hands sprang towards her, gripping her head in a vice grip. She struggled at first, suspecting this was a trap, but when she saw the calm look on his face she let her body go slack. He knew what he was doing. Besides, if he wanted to kill her he could have killed her a number of ways already.

  She felt the tips of his fingers digging into her flesh. It was painful but she ignored it.

  "Is something supposed to happen?" she asked.

  "Give it time," he said. His voice seemed to come from far away. "The connection is weaker because you're only half shapeshifter. But it will work. The pain might be more intense, though."

  Clover was about to ask how intense when she learned her answer first-hand. The agony that swept through her brain felt like a billion razorblades hacking at her mind. She screamed and blacked out.

  "WHERE ARE MY WINGS?"

  The distraught voice woke Clover up from her slumber. She opened her eyes, feeling searing rays of bright sun piercing her retinas. She covered her eyes, pulling herself to her feet. It really was very hot all of a sudden. She felt like she was being baked alive.

  "Open your eyes," Loki demanded. He seemed distracted. "You're going to be the first person, human or supernatural, to witness this."

  She forced her eyes to open, squinting at the brightness of the day. The sun was high in the sky, colossal and imposing. She was in a desert, standing on top of a small series of dunes. The air smelled stale and rotten.

  Something collided into the ground, sending a plume of sand into the air. Clover jumped to the side as the debris passed through her like she wasn't even there.

  "Nothing can see or affect you," said Loki. He was amused. “Nothing can hurt you.”

  All around her, as far as the eye could see, were naked people. They were staring up into the sky, watching as more men and women seemed to plummet from the heavens like shooting stars.

  "Where are my wings?"

  Half of them were confused, crying. Others were screaming in pain. One of them was even hitting their head with their fists, over and over, as if trying to knock something loose.

  "What's going on?" Clover asked.

  A naked person staggered past her, clutching at thin air. He fell to the sand and started screaming. It was so loud it echoed across the sand dunes.

  "We've just been ejected from Heaven," Loki explained.

  It took her a second for her to fully comprehend his words.

  Did he say Heaven?

  "There's a Heaven?" Clover asked.

  He nodded. “There is.”

  Loki didn’t seem inclined to elaborate further so she asked, "Did God throw you out?"

  He ignored her and Clover continued to watch, her eyes focused on one naked man in particular. He was almost seven feet tall, with soft caramel skin and the rippling muscles of a Greek god. His face was perfect, square jawed and handsome, with blue eyes and full lips and a perfectly manicured brown beard. She couldn't look away. He was the epitome of male beauty and he mesmerized her.

  She started to walk towards him, watching his every movement. His hands kept feeling around his back, as if looking for something that wasn't there any more. He didn't weep or get angry like the others. He seemed more in control of his emotions, though she could tell he was on the edge.

  “Who’s that?” Clover asked.

  Loki nodded. “Watch further.”

  The bronzed god turned to the sky and sneered, as if cursing the universe. Clover knew without a doubt that this was Loki in his true form.

  A tall, statuesque woman with fiery red hair and a toned body walked up to him. She was wiping at her eyes, but trying to keep calm. Clover had never seen beauty like it. All the fallen angels were beautiful.

  The word beautiful is an insult. They're incandescent.

  "Where are our wings?" the woman asked. She sounded like a lost child. She considered her words and said, “Our wings...they’re gone.”

  Loki stared at her and said, "We've fallen. We have no wings."

  The red head stared up at the sky once again, furrowing her brows. "But it makes no sense. What did we do wrong, Loki? We did nothing to warrant such a cruel fate. We did everything that was expected of us and more. We obeyed orders without fail.” She was more angry than distressed. Clover imagined this woman could take on an entire army and win without breaking a sweat. She began to pace, tapping her hands against her curvy hips. “I’m thinking back to the last thing I remember.” She stopped pacing, lost in thought. “One minute I was deciding how to investigate the vanishing souls and the next I was falling to Earth, minus my wings. What happened?"

  The bronzed Loki shrugged. Clover asked her Loki what the problem with the vanishing souls was. He just shrugged.

  “Did we do something wrong?” the woman begged.

  “I don’t think we did anything wrong,” said Loki. “I think this is just a cruel joke.”

  Loki pulled the woman into a hug,
and Clover felt compassion for both of them. She knew what it was like to lose everything. These angels now had nothing; no home, no purpose, and no wings.

  "What really happened?" Clover asked. “I bet you know.”

  Her Loki looked grim as he said, "I've never found out, despite thousands of years of investigating and searching. Half the angels of Heaven were suddenly thrown out for no reason. We lost our wings that day, but we also lost our purpose."

  "Who could throw you out of Heaven? Was it God?"

  Clover suddenly considered herself the luckiest person alive. She knew angels were real. She knew Heaven was real. Was she about to get proof that God was real too?

  I should’ve gone to church more.

  "Perhaps,” Loki answered vaguely. “I never saw God or a god up in Heaven. Us angels had always been autonomous. Something did create us, though, so perhaps." Loki sighed. "Damn it. I've already been through this. I combed through every religion I could find, hoping to find clues as to what created us and what threw us out of Heaven. I could never find an answer. I couldn’t find a single thing!"

  After half an hour the angels stopped falling. They gathered themselves into a group, talking among themselves, consoling each other. There must've been over a thousand of them, each of them naked and perfect and glistening in the sun.

  "What about the regular angels?" asked Clover. "What happened to them?"

  "Those smug bastards refused to help us," said Loki. "And when I declared war on the world they fled to another dimension like the cowards they are. Heaven is currently empty – of angels, anyway."

  "So Heaven is...is Heaven like they say?" she asked.

  "More or less." He grinned wickedly. "Come. Follow me."

  Clover walked through the crowds, Loki following her. She heard snapshots of conversations, most of them about the tragic loss of their wings, others about who could've thrown them out of Heaven. The main consensus was that it was all down to one person – Lucifer.

  "Was it Lucifer's fault?" Clover asked.

  "Of course not," Loki snapped. "Lucifer never put a foot wrong. But they put the blame on her because she was the most vocal."

  Lucifer is a woman?

  "Vocal?" said Clover. "About what?"

  "She asked questions," said Loki. "She wanted to know why we were here, why we were angels, who created us, who created Heaven. Questioning the status quo is frowned upon."

  In the center of the mass of fallen angels was Loki and the woman he'd been talking to earlier. Clover assumed this was Lucifer, mainly due to the furious looks being thrown her way by the others. They seemed on the verge of attacking her.

  They really do hate her.

  "How can you blame this on me?" Lucifer demanded. "We don't know who did this or why!"

  One of the fallen angels pointed at her. "You asked too many questions. It wasn't our place to know such things!"

  "You're an idiot!" shouted Lucifer. She didn't seem to be concerned about the growing throng of angry people surrounding her like a mob. "As conscious beings it's our right to know such things. How could you not want to know? Don't you want to know who threw us out of Heaven?"

  The arguments and accusations were thrown back and forth for what felt like an eternity. It was interminable. Clover looked towards Loki, noting the look of sadness on his face.

  "Is watching these boring people argue really necessary?" she asked.

  "Not really," Loki admitted, grinning. "Imagine what it was like living with them in Heaven for all those millennia." He pointed to himself, who was staying out of the mob that surrounded and accused Lucifer. "Even now I'm realizing that what's just happened is the best thing to happen to me. I was stifled up there."

  "Then why the bitterness and anger? Why do you want to destroy everything? It can't all be to do with Queen Chorda."

  A physical fight broke out among the angels. Most of them were attacking a shocked Lucifer, who retaliated with swift brutality. She raised her hands, her palms emitting an almost blinding light. The angels surrounding her screamed in pain as their bodies burned away into nothing but ashes.

  "They left me no choice," Lucifer whispered before walking away. "You'd be wise to stay out of my way."

  The remaining angels watched her go, most likely too afraid to interfere. The old Loki grinned as he watched.

  "Why does Lucifer still have powers if she isn't an angel any more?" Clover asked. "Same goes for you."

  "Lucifer was born with those powers," Loki explained. "To take them away would kill her. Whoever made us fall didn't want us dead, just separated from Heaven. As for myself..."

  They continued to watch as the old Loki approached the remaining angels, still in shock over Lucifer's attack. He stopped when he was a few yards away from them and began chanting some type of spell.

  What the hell is he doing?

  "I had limited magical powers when I was an angel, but after I fell I found my whole body coursing with magic," Loki explained. "I had this overwhelming urge to use those new powers to their limit."

  The old Loki screamed in pain as magical energies sprouted from his skin, spearing the remaining fallen angels. They began to writhe as their bodies aged and decayed, turning to dust, joining the piles of ash already on the ground from those Lucifer had murdered.

  "You killed them," Clover accused him.

  "Not intentionally," Loki admitted. He smirked. "But I suppose it did feel good draining the life out of them all."

  The old Loki glowed with light. He stared at his hands as they pulsed with magic. He laughed and spun around, screaming gloriously, swirls of power circling around his body like snakes.

  "Is that how you gained so much power?" Clover asked.

  He nodded. "The life-force of a thousand fallen angels made me feel like I could take on the world."

  The glowing Lucifer kneeled down and took a handful of sand in his fist. He let it fall, but it fell upwards. He laughed delightedly as the sand twirled and danced in the air, making patterns, creating explosions of blending colors. He swept his hands out and the sand exploded into light.

  He’s just coming to terms with his powers. His strength will be phenomenal.

  "So there was just you and Lucifer left,” Clover stated. She tried not to think about what kind of power Loki had within him – he’d literally absorbed the life of a thousand angels! The thought of it was staggering. No wonder people felt threatened by him. “You were all on your own?”

  "She changed herself into a man soon after and got on with her life,” he said, brooding. “I didn't want to interfere. I kept myself on the sidelines, watching as the other supernatural races bloomed."

  Time seemed to fly by in seconds. The sun rose and set a billion times in the blink of an eye. The landscape changed from desert to lush forest to frozen, rocky landscapes eclipsed by blizzards. Just as the ice was starting to thaw the time lapse seemed to stop.

  The old Loki was holding in his arms the fallen body of a young girl. He was weeping openly, his tears turning into ice as they shattered onto the ground. Her pale face was covered in red, scabby blotches.

  “Don’t cry,” the girl whispered. Her breath came out as steam. “Please don’t cry.”

  “There has to be something I can do,” Loki begged.

  She smiled and coughed. “Nothing lasts forever.”

  The girl closed her eyes and died. The old Loki howled in grief.

  "Who was she?" Clover asked.

  "She was a witch," said Loki. His voice trembled slightly. "Her tribe died during the ice age and she managed to locate and use extremely dangerous necromancy to bring them back to life. You'd call it some sort of zombie apocalypse."

  Clover was stunned. "There was a zombie apocalypse?"

  "It didn't last long, and Thara and I managed to stop it before it could spread. I sort of became her carer after that. I taught her magic and I loved her and she died from some stupid disease that even I couldn't cure." He looked at Clover, wiping away a tear. "S
he called me father."

  They watched as old Loki buried Thara. Clover found the whole scene heart-breaking and disturbing to watch, but she didn't turn away. She had to see this. She had to understand her enemy.

  The old Loki stood over the grave and said, “The world may be cold, but it will be a much colder place without you in it.” He held up a small wooden prayer bead, which Clover thought had been around Thara’s neck. “I’ll carry this with me always. I’ll never forget you. Never.”

  Another figure walked onto the scene as more years passed. Loki was kneeling by Thara's grave, seemingly in a comatose state. The newcomer was covered in animal furs and a messy beard. He carried a large staff made from wood. He looked like a caveman.

  "We need to talk," said the newcomer.

  Loki ignored him. His eyes never left the grave of the girl he called daughter.

  "The Le'ans have discovered the Primordial Womb," the caveman explained. He stamped his feet to get Loki’s attention. "I tried to intervene but even I’m not that powerful. They almost killed me, and they killed my partner. I need your help. The Fey can't help as they've been cut off because of the glaciers, and the rest of my people are still on pilgrimage on the other side of the world. I need you."

  “What would the Le’ans need with the Primordial Womb?” the old Loki asked.

  The other man shrugged. His shoulders were massive.

  “Nothing good,” said the giant of a man. “I can guarantee you that. The Le’ans are always on the look out for magic they can use to further their own agenda. You know as well as I do that their ultimate goal is to rule this world.”

  The old Loki nodded.

  "What are Le'ans?" Clover asked.

  "An ancient, wicked race," said Loki. "They're gone now."

  Clover wondered what had happened to the Le’ans. Had they been wiped out in the shapeshifter war, or had something else happened to them? She'd ask later. She was too engrossed in the drama before her.