The Banished Gods Box Set: Books 1-3

by L. A. McGinnis

  Morgane chewed her lip. “And then what?”

  “And then…?”

  “What am I supposed to do? Living here? Knit? Bake cookies?”

  He could think of a few things. “Sure, I like cookies. Chocolate chip, no nuts. But seriously, you can do whatever you want to do.”

  “How about I fight? With you?”

  That brought him up short.

  “You never know, maybe I can teach you guys a few things.” Her eyes turned mischievous. “Besides, we’ve got Mir to patch us up with his magic and anti-venom serum. What could go possibly wrong?”

  The mere thought of her out on the streets, fighting side by side with him and his brothers, face to face with the demons turned Loki’s stomach to lead. Forcing his heart to calm, a smile on his face, he agreed with an easy smile. “Sure. Sounds like a plan.”

  Besides, he had plenty of time.

  Weeks, he hoped, as he pulled the clip out of her hair and the damp curls fell around her expectant face, before he had to face that question. The demons were gone at the moment. Hel would behave for a while. Yeah, it would be weeks before this fighting thing became an issue. If not months, before they’d navigate that minefield.

  “Right now, though, fighting on the streets of Chicago is the very last thing I have on my mind. All I want is…” He spanned his hand across the nape of her neck and tipped back her head, running a thumb lazily along her jaw. “Is a few hours alone with you. Just you and me.” He walked her backward until the backs of her thighs hit the bed. “Say yes, Morgane. Say you’ll stay. Be with me. Marry me. Live with me.” He ran his lips up along her neck, grazing the skin until he reached the soft spot behind her ear.

  “Say I can fight,” she shot back, a stubborn set to her jaw. “Say that you won’t try to stop me.”

  So much for weeks.

  He didn’t let her go, kept her face turned toward his, searching her eyes before he answered. “We hunt in pairs, and since it wouldn’t be a good idea for the two of us to fight together—”

  “Damn it, Loki…”

  “…only because I would, most likely, do something incredibly stupid if we were out fighting together.” Kind of like he was about to do right now. “The problem is, it’s not up to me, it’s up to Tyr. When it comes to this war, what he says goes.” A moment’s pause. “But I’ll make sure he says yes. And Mir will partner with you.” His tone turned hard, unbendable. “But you will swear to me, right now, this very minute, to be careful. Vendetta time is over.

  “This is a war, and we are a team. No playing hero. No unnecessary risks. No defying orders. Those are my conditions. And that’s final.”

  “Agreed.” She rose to her toes and pressed a soft kiss to his lips. “This was so much easier than I anticipated.” And with a squeal, she pulled him backward onto the bed and kissed him again, wild and hard and fast.

  Epilogue

  The stench of burnt skin still lingering, Hel padded naked down the steps to the deepest bowels of the Underworld. Back in the good old days, when she’d had time on her hands and liked to experiment occasionally with DNA, magic, and chance, this place had become a depository of sorts for her more exotic creations.

  Just because she’d been banished from the Earth, didn’t mean she couldn’t have a bit of fun. And the terms of the deal only stipulated her demons couldn’t roam the Earth. Didn’t say a thing about anything else. Her charred claw of a hand resting on the handle of the chosen door, she paused.

  Something else was down here.

  Which was crazy because nothing would be stupid enough to come down here.

  The air shifted, the shadows seemed to expand, and she breathed out a sigh. “Oh, it’s you.”

  Her hand resumed turning the knob, a deep growling emanating from the widening crack.

  Their whole, shitty deal should have ended with her being the queen of the universe but instead had left her burned to a crisp, and right back to where she’d started in the first place. Her voice rang hollow against the dripping walls as she pushed the door inward with a grinding squeal. Breathed in the stench of thousands of years of captivity, along with another low, hungry growl. “You know, you suck. You can crawl right back to whatever hole you came out of because I ended up with nothing.”

  She spat out, “And it cost me everything.”

  The god’s primordial essence encased her in smothering blackness. But then, something ran a sharp, pointed talon along her, curious, sensual, and questing. She began to thrash, even as his hold tightened. In the chamber, deep and resonant, as if the ancient being were trying its voice out for the very first time, a word formed, hung in the air between them.

  “Queen?”

  Yes, yes, that was the bargain. I’m to be your queen. Remember?

  Hel thought this, screamed it, maybe, battering against the grip that was crushing the very life out of her. The door ground shut, and as the growling sound was cut off, Hel crumbled to the ground, the darkness vanishing as fast as it had appeared.

  She held her shaking hand out in front of her.

  Gleaming, fresh skin cloaked her arm. She looked down at her body, reached up and touched her face. All of her, restored to exactly what she had been. Hel poked at the tight, pink flesh. Maybe even a bit improved. A slow smile curved her lips. “I don’t generally partner up with just anyone. But you know the way to win a girl’s heart.”

  THE MOON

  THE BANISHED GODS: BOOK TWO

  L.A. MCGINNIS

  Copyright

  Copyright L.A. McGinnis 2019

  All rights reserved

  Editor: Chris Hall: The Editing Hall

  Cover Design: Brynna Curry

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or distributed in any printed or electronic form or by any means, without express permission from the author or publisher. Please do not participate or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  Please contact the author for any use in a review.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE:

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, either living or dead, including businesses, companies, events or locales is purely coincidental. This author acknowledges the trademarked status of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  ISBN: 978-1-970112-02-3

  ISBN: 978-1-970112-03-0

  Published in the United States of America by Fools Journey Press, 2019

  Epigraph

  “He is mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf.”

  -King Lear

  Chapter 1

  The Wolf

  Rain beat a steady cadence against the windows, the spring storm driven in by the wind off Lake Michigan. Flashes of lightening illuminated the room all around Fenrir in stark, ugly glory. It was sparse enough to be a monk’s room, but it belonged to Fen, and had for over two hundred years. And would for a hundred more, if his luck held out.

  Except luck was something he never counted on.

  He’d been laying here for hours, waiting for the clouds to thin, waiting for the moon to show her face so he could shift into his wolf form and get off this mortal plane. Find some peace. The next flash of lightening blinded him, but even the white glare couldn’t reach the full length of his lair. His rooms consisted of the south end of the seventh floor of the Phoenix Building, forty by one hundred feet of prime Chicago real estate. The arched, beamed ceiling soared a good thirty feet overhead. Thick oak doors barred any unwanted entry. But it wasn’t vanity or arrogance that secured him this choice spot, it was safety. All this space bought him sanity. And the runes carved into the stone doorway and every single window frame bought the other immortal gods around him a good night’s sleep.

  Stra
ightening up, Fen paced back and forth impatiently before sliding down the wall to stare out at the roiling sky. Just a flicker of moonlight was all he needed, was that too much to ask?

  When he woke the next morning with a hell of a headache and his back a mass of aching stiffness, the sky remained a sheet of Midwestern gray. Beneath it, the lake stretched out flat and unbroken, except for the thin jetty that cut across it like a knife. The inlet was completely empty this time of year, none of the pretty white sailboats that the humans liked so much in sight.

  Not that he’d ever been sailing.

  Given that he’d been barricaded up here for weeks, he shouldn’t have been surprised when the pounding started up again. What surprised him was who. “Open the fucking door, wolf.” Tyr was the absolute last person he expected to come looking for him. The very last. After that whole debacle when he’d bitten the guy’s hand off three thousand years ago, Tyr steered clear of him. Fen leaned his forehead against the wall, praying that the gods would give him strength. Not so much for his sake, but for Tyr’s.

  “Enter at your own risk.”

  When Tyr entered, Fenrir couldn’t really blame him for the caution, for the wicked looking blade in his hand, or the fact that he looked ready to use it. He almost lunged at the warrior-god just for a little fun, but he doubted his brother-in-arms would find the humor in it. Amusing though it would be.

  “You haven’t eaten in weeks. Odin says for you to get your ass downstairs and have dinner with us.” Tyr picked a spot four feet from the door, casually bracing his legs apart, his wide shoulders relaxed. “Said if you don’t, we’re supposed to drag you down and chain you to the table till you do.” Smart, Fenrir thought, close enough to escape and still be able shut the door behind him on the way out.

  “Not hungry.” Which was, of course, a lie and a half, but who the hell cared? Right now he was so far gone, lies and truth were all mixed up together, and there was only the now of the gnawing hunger in his belly and current wreckage of his mind. If he allowed either one to consume him, nothing would matter.

  Fenrir followed Tyr’s questing glance around the room. Fen had no doubt those ancient, cunning eyes would see everything. And Tyr would report every single detail back to Odin, including the fact that his thick neck chain lay on the floor next to his pallet, a jumbled tangle of silver. “Yeah, I took it off.” The words came out somewhat distorted, since his fangs were elongating. Given the way Tyr was backing cautiously toward the door, he’d bet his eyes were beginning to change too. Fenrir focused and pulled himself back together.

  Calling the beast to heel, he forced the rational part of himself to take control once again, at least long enough to have a semi-civil conversation and salvage his fucking dignity. Realizing Tyr only wanted to help, Fen angled his head at the dark-haired God of War, finding wariness etched into every deep, handsome line of his face.

  “Tell you what. Bring me a plate of food. Heavy on the protein if you know what I mean. Anything’ll do.”

  “You got it, brother mine.” The door shut behind him with a bang, but Fenrir knew Tyr would be back. With reinforcements, if he was smart. Probably bring dear old dad. Although a hell a lot of good that would do.

  Truth of it was, Fen had been a mess for months now, ever since they’d gotten back.

  From the Underworld, that was.

  When his sister, Hel, had started World War III and he’d gotten sucked into the middle of it, little did he know he’d return with a shitload of baggage. Why exactly, he didn’t know, it was just something was…amiss. Something in his usually simple, uncomplicated world seemed off-balance ever since. So he did what any animal did when it was threatened, he hunkered down and waited for it to pass.

  Except it wasn’t. Passing. It was getting steadily worse.

  Case in point, hunting. Simple. He went out and killed shit.

  His brothers did an okay job in the demon-hunting department. Half the time. But they almost got themselves killed the other half, and Fen spent more time saving their asses than butchering demons like he was supposed to. Him, on the other hand? Fenrir was created to be the apex predator. You might even say it was what he’d been born for.

  Killing took the edge off, gave him a bit of a release. A little easing of that place inside of him where man and monster met and didn’t get along too well.

  But now? There weren’t any demons to kill. Ever since Hel, his sister, had been banished to the Underworld, her demons along with her. Which meant they were all on standby. Twiddling their thumbs. Playing with their dicks. The problem with that was, Fen’s wolf needed to kill something. He needed to hunt. And he had to do it soon, before he started to rip this place apart brick by brick. Maybe he needed a freaking vacation. On one of those pretty little boats down there on the water in the sunshine with normal people.

  He should have kept his nose out of his father’s business, is what he should have done. But no. He had to go to the Underworld to save Morgane and retrieve an entourage of banished souls from Hel’s dark, cold graveyard and now, for some reason, everything in his world was skewed sideways.

  That wasn’t all that had changed.

  His father had started talking about feelings. And somewhere along the line, Fen had begun watching the two of them together. Loki and Morgane. His father’s mate. How they laughed. Touched each other. The way his father slowly, inextricably changed over these past two months. Watching them together had made him want, in a way he never had. And something inside him had just…snapped.

  “Open up, we got food.”

  Balder stepped in behind Tyr with a silver platter the size of a buffet. Tyr rolled his eyes. “Supposedly, Morgane’s worried, so she put together a little something for you. She sent up pig, cow, and chicken, no ocean, ’cause Balder here ate all the shrimp scampi last night. Sorry.” Tyr had brought reinforcements. Never was the stupid one, but that was why he was the god of something and Fen wasn’t the god of anything at all.

  “This’ll do, not a fan of day old shrimp, anyhow.” Fen noted the nerves and hunched his shoulders inwards, trying to make himself smaller. He totally respected their attempt to be cautious around monsters. That’s the sort of vigilance that kept you alive. “Seriously, I’m just hungry, thank you, my brothers.” Between bites, he murmured the pretty, polite banalities that were expected:

  What are you hunting these days? Any new developments in the big city? Has my sister returned to raze the Earth to dust yet?

  While they offered equally polite answers, he continued eating as quickly as he could, realizing the faster he got food into him, the more he contained the wolf.

  “Be sure to thank my father’s mate for this. I appreciate it.” That ache in his heart intensified ever so slightly.

  “Don’t see why we need a bloody house mother around here.” Tyr grumbled, ever irritated with these new living arrangements of theirs. “Especially a fucking mortal one.”

  “That mortal saved our asses a couple months ago,” Balder reminded him, his golden eyes flashing as Fenrir continued shoveling food in his mouth. “Without Morgane, we’d all be toast. Need I remind you of Hel’s little side deal with that dark god, poised to take over the world?”

  “My memory’s just as good as yours. I just don’t see why your father’s gone brain dead over a mortal. There are billions of them out there to choose from, for the gods sake.” Tyr rolled his eyes, an exasperated groan escaping.

  Balder tapped the table. “It’s called love, asshole.”

  “It’s called being pussy-whipped, is what it is.” Tyr grumbled. “Never see me in that position. Ever. Guaran-fucking-teed.”

  Balder rubbed his forehead so hard Fen could hear the rasping as Tyr turned to him and gave the order he already knew was coming. “Odin requested your appearance in the Great Hall. Before seven o’clock.”

  “Does he now?” Right now, he didn’t give a rat’s ass about Odin, but he knew what the bastard wanted. It probably killed him to grant an audience with
a lowly dog such as himself, as Fen was more the sort Odin sent out on dirty jobs he wanted swept under the table. The kind of thing that you hired a criminal for. “Seven o’clock, you say?”

  “Don’t dick around with him. He’ll just send me back up here to get you if you don’t show as soon as you’re finished eating. He’s expecting you.” Tyr nodded over at the neck chain on the floor. “And you’ll be putting that on before you go.” Fenrir stopped chewing. An appraising look crossed Balder’s face as he watched their staring contest for a moment.

  “Don’t be telling me what to do.” Fen shot Tyr a toothy grin. “Brother.” Then he stilled the growl in his throat, telling himself it wasn’t their fault he was both fucked in the head and had a dickhead for a boss. “Shit, I’m sorry, Tyr.” He muttered. “And thanks for bringing me dinner, Balder. Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to put the chain on before I meet with my jailer. ’Twould only be appropriate, wouldn’t it?”

  He didn’t notice them leaving, only that the plate in front of him was empty and he was out of excuses to go and see Odin. Between the silver chain and the protein, he might actually hold out long enough, provided the meeting was short.

  And if the moon ever made her appearance tonight, and he could escape this mortal world and shift into his wolf form and run free?

  Then all would be right with his world.

  Chapter 2

  The King

  Striding through the twenty-foot-high double doors that led to Odin’s throne room, Fen decided this place seriously gave him the creeps, every time he had to be here. All this white marble, so glossy you could see your reflection, echoed with hollow finality at every quiet, soundless step.