The Banished Gods Box Set: Books 1-3

by L. A. McGinnis

  Chapter 12

  The mists parted like vapor in front of him as Fenrir beelined toward the water. He was sure Celine was somewhere up ahead of him, sensed the pulsing of her blood, felt her presence, and smelled her clean, fresh scent lingering amongst all the death that made up the Otherworld.

  Something else lurking there too, this Shadow of Death bullshit she said talked to her. Well, he’d just see about that. Maybe he’d rip its head off its shoulders and show it who Death really was around here.

  In this realm, Fen didn’t fear his beast, moving fast as a blur under the moon, racing across the rocky surface that was both cold and unforgiving beneath his paws, the moonlight shifting through the mists in white-blue shafts of icy perfection. Tonight he was the hunter.

  Celine appeared as if she stood on the prow of a ship emerging from a storm, the mists thinning as he approached, the roar of the river an explosion in his ears. He slid to a skidding stop beside her. Turning, she reached out a hand, ran it through his fur. “You shouldn’t have made me go to sleep, Fenrir. And you shouldn’t have come. Now he’s going to find you too.” Her eyes darted around wildly, behind him, behind her, to the water, pausing on the dark hole the water flowed toward.

  His sister’s realm.

  He wasn’t exactly sure how speech worked in here, but like before, she understood him even around the fangs that had grown into his mouth, his words strange and distorted, “I had to send you back, you were screaming, you were in pain.” He blocked her with his body, questing the surrounding air for anything that didn’t belong. “You need to tell me what was happening, who was hurting you?”

  “It’s a shadow, only a shadow. It comes when I sleep, and it tells me…things. And when I wake up, I write them down.” She began rubbing her head furiously while Fenrir nudged her against him, warm and small and soft. She wound her hands deep into his fur, ran her fingers through it, long and coarse and black. It was thickest near his skin, which was dark gray and warm, and she nestled deeper, closer into him. “After I have these dreams…I forget them. They go away. Until the next time.” He felt her shuddering and curled up around her. “The shadow told me if I wrote them down, he’d leave me alone but he lied. He always comes back. Always.” Her last word was a sob.

  Fenrir sniffed the air. It smelled different tonight. An extra layer of primordial sickness, of nightmares and rot. His fangs grew longer and his frame larger, completely encompassing the small woman inside the circle of his body. This air smelled immortal but not alive. Strange, his beast reasoned, two parts of the same but different. Not right but wrong. He sniffed again. Very, very wrong.

  “Fen, he’s coming. I can feel him, he’s getting closer.” Her voice, muffled by his fur and the immensity of his body surrounding her, sounded smothered. He didn’t care. He wasn’t going to let her out, not until he figured out what else was in here with them. He felt the sharp, pointed jab of a finger digging into his side. “Fenrir, you let me out of here right now, I need to see what’s going on.” He relaxed and Celine popped her head up and looked around. The mists undulated around them in twisting, amorphous forms, occasionally the face of someone long dead appearing. She shuddered a little. Her voice dropped down to the barest of whispers, a mere vibration against his side, “When he found me before, I don’t think this is where I was. But ever since the night we met, I keep returning to this bank of the river, almost as if I’m looking for you.”

  Fen caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eyes, a shadow or the slightest disturbance in the fog. Not a form, not a man. But something.

  Celine’s voice was thin and afraid. “He’s here, Fenrir. He’s right here, beside us.” And then she went completely still.

  Fenrir knew it. He just couldn’t see the damn thing. He sensed him, in a way, like smelling a storm coming. Or lightening about to strike. But this Shadow of Death smelled like neither of those things. This thing smelled rapacious. It smelled of grave dirt. And it smelled of dark power. So much that it shoved up Fenrir’s nose until it threatened to choke him. But then, not only couldn’t he see the damn thing, suddenly, he couldn’t smell him either. It was as if he had simply vanished. Fenrir twisted his head around and found Celine lying against him, completely supine, her eyes wide and staring. He would have thought her lifeless if not for the shallow, quick movements of her chest.

  And he knew where the shadow had gone.

  The thing was inside of her, inside Celine.

  Somehow the monster was in her head, he’d gotten around Fenrir’s defenses and was twisting her, hurting her, forcing his ideas and thoughts into that beautiful mind of hers and making it something that it wasn’t.

  Painfully, slowly, Fen did something he’d never done before in this place. He transformed back into his mortal shape.

  Unfurling his body from hers, cupping her face in his hands, his mouth an inch away from her lips, he murmured, “Celine, listen to me.” He felt a flicker from her, just the slightest response. “Celine, I need you to come back to me, come back to the river, love, right now. Listen for the water and follow it back, listen to my voice and follow it backwards, come back from wherever you are and find me. Celine, come back to me.”

  He braced a hand behind her head, his other arm around her shoulders. “Celine, open your eyes, look at me.” Her eyes were moving behind her lids, lashes shifting, face tightening as she tried to obey him. “Celine. Your eyes. Open them. Now.” He thought it to her even as he roared the words, his breath rushing over her, blowing back her white hair. Her eyes flew open and she stared up at him, her pupils so large her eyes were almost black.

  The words were thready as she warned, “We need to get out of here, Fenrir. Now. Before he follows us back to the real world.” He unleashed the beast and before the shadow could react, they tumbled out of the dream straight into her bedroom, her onto the bed, him onto the floor, the mists they dragged out behind them dissipating into the air like ghosts tasting freedom for the very first time.

  Celine’s chest was heaving, her eyes wild. “I need to explain this quickly, before he realizes I’m gone. Before he makes me forget. These things he tells me—I write them all down the second I wake up. As soon as I write them down, they vanish from my memories. And I can’t talk about them, I can’t tell anyone. It’s like I’m compelled to secrecy somehow.” Her hands were shaking uncontrollably. “The language is old, Fen. Very old markings, symbols, some kind of runes, I think. Pre-Sumerian or even earlier. But nothing about them seems familiar. It’s why my mind, my memories… I think—I think that’s why nothing of my old life fits in here anymore.” She rubbed her head.

  “Oh God, I have to write, Fen. I have to…write it all down.” Frantic, she rubbed her shaking hands on her thighs, over her shoulders, “It’s driving me crazy not to. I’ve got to get these images out of me before I go insane. And I’ve got to do it now. Help me! Please?”

  “Where do you write them down? On your computer? Or in a notebook?”

  Her eyes were flipping back and forth so fast he couldn’t tell what she needed.

  “Maybe, maybe…”

  She was beginning to shake all over, so violently her teeth chattered together. He set her computer in front of her. She reached for it, hesitating. “I don’t know, there are so many files Fen, I’m not sure…” She scrambled for the power button, booted it up, and typed in the password. “Yeah, here’s a file that sounds familiar, maybe this one called the Field Museum…”

  It took Fen a moment to recall Ellis’s conversation. But he remembered quite clearly the man’s denial to give him any information about the project she’d been working on. And it was probably too much to hope this was simply a coincidence.

  “All right, click on it and see what it is.” Fen laid a steady hand over hers, just so she could open the file without the mouse jumping all over the place. He hesitated before admitting softly, “I went to the university today, Celine. I talked to your professors. I talked to Hunter, Friedman, and Bo
wman. And finally, Dr. Ellis.” She shot him a look of disbelief.

  “Seriously? You went and poked around behind my back?” Then her voice hardened. “Wait. You put me to sleep and you poked around? How could you do that? That’s even worse, Fen.”

  “I had to. Well, I didn’t have to. I wanted to try to figure out what was going on. I didn’t want you out there, in case. Well, in case someone was looking for you.”

  “So instead, you sent me to the one place where there was someone waiting for me. Good job, Fen.” Desperately, she was punching in numbers. And just as suddenly, she froze, fingers poised over the keyboard.

  “Look, I was only trying to help. How was I supposed to know there’d be someone waiting to ambush you in your dreams? You never said anything about… Wait, what’s wrong? Why did you stop?”

  Breathing hard, Celine had curled her trembling hands into her lap, her eyes darting back and forth, from his face to the computer screen. “I can’t try to unlock the folder again. One more attempt and it says it will corrupt the file and the data. Shit. I have to…” She held up her shaking hands, such a look of sheer desperation on her face, Fen ran and found her a pad of paper and a pen.

  He set both in front of her. “Write it down. Do it now, get it out of your head as fast as you can. All of it, Celine.” He unwrapped a cold, hard sandwich and chewed, watching her write in neat, even script across the page. Filling one, then the next, then another. And another. “How much information did he give you?” She shot him such a look, beads of sweat forming on her top lip. He shut up. It was hours later when she finally stopped. Her knuckles were white, her eyes practically crossing before whatever compulsion she’d been inflicted with had run its course.

  Or she’d simply exhausted herself.

  Without a word, Fenrir heated up the rest of the food in the microwave and made her eat. Made her drink. And sent her to bed. Didn’t give her a chance to argue before tucking her in and turning out the light. “I’m staying the night, Celine.” He didn’t expect her to have the energy for an argument and didn’t get one. The second he was sure she was fast asleep, he shut the door and picked up the sheaf of papers, intending to skim through the pages, read over what she’d written.

  By the time he reached the end of the first page, he was outside dialing Mir’s number.

  Chapter 13

  Mir let it ring five times before answering. And was already talking when he clicked over. “…shouldn’t even be talking to you, asshole. Odin’s already marked you for the darklands the second you get back. Expect a long and bloody stay, my brother.”

  “I need your help.”

  “Oh no, I’m not getting your ass out of this sling. You ignored my warnings and headed off after that sweet young thing all by your own damn self. This is on you, not me. Not helping you, not getting myself involved in your shit show. You. Are. On. Your. Own.”

  “We have a problem.”

  “You have a problem.”

  “No asshole. We have a problem. A continuation of the problem that Morgane and Ava dragged back from the Underworld. And I’m holding another piece of it in my hand. At least, I think that’s what I’m looking at. I’m sending you a picture right now.”

  Fen snapped a photo of the front page. Hit send. Switched over to speaker. Waited.

  “Holy fuck.”

  Fen’s heart sank. “Yeah, that’s what I thought too. I just needed to be sure. It’s written in a language I’ve never even seen. And I’ve seen pretty much everything since the olden days.” The olden days was their quaint way of saying from the time before time. “How about you? You seen anything like it?”

  Mir’s answering silence told him everything he needed to know. They were so screwed. Because Mir knew everything. Like, literally everything that had ever happened. Ever.

  Fen didn’t feel the cold of the clear night air as Mir asked, “Tell me exactly what are you looking at?” On speaker phone, Mir sounded like he was a million miles away.

  “Thirty pages written in a language that I don’t recognize because they don’t exist in this universe. Unless they’re like a million years old. I’m telling you, we need your help.”

  Again with the stoic silence on the other end of the phone.

  But it wasn’t a no.

  “You’re sure you’ve got thirty pages of the same thing?” Fen rolled his eyes.

  “Yup, pretty damn sure that’s what I’m looking at in my hand right now. There’s more to the story, but I’d rather tell you in person, Mir. Files of information are locked in Celine’s computer. And the only way to access those files is if you get your ass over here and unscramble the passcode. The answer’s probably in there somewhere. This could be open and shut.”

  The sound on the other end of the phone was somewhere between a curse and snort, but Fenrir knew he was in when Mir sighed. “Fine. I’ll come to you. Odin’ll kill us both if you bring her here.”

  “How do you know I won’t just bring the computer?”

  “Give me a fucking break. You’re not going to let that girl out of your sight. And she’s not going to let that computer out of her sight. Tell me this. How the hell did that little girl get ahold of writing like this?” Fenrir opened his mouth to answer and Mir cut him off. “You know what? Never mind. I’m on my way. What do I need to bring?”

  “I don’t know. She tried to unlock the file, but it’s encrypted or something and there’s only one try left. Says it’ll corrupt the file if she gets it wrong again. So you get the last shot.”

  “Fucking great. No pressure.” Mir must have already been walking because Fenrir heard static and slamming and then the wind. “Right, just a walk in the park. All right, I’m here.” And when Fenrir looked down from the flimsy metal staircase, there he was.

  “Wait. She’s been what?” Holding the sheaf of papers loosely in his hand, Mir had been tracking Fenrir’s story, from the assault in the alley to the memory loss to the little trip back to the Otherworld. It was how the shadow guy had gotten into Celine’s head in the first place that Mir was having a problem with.

  Fen went on, before he lost his nerve. “Like I told you, Celine has some dark, shadowy presence visiting her in her dreams and implanting these words, or symbols, into her. I saw the damn thing myself, and it’s old, Mir. Ancient. It could be the same entity we encountered in the Underworld. Looks different, feels the same. Smells…different from anything from before.”

  “All I know is, I got back from my fact-finding mission, I woke her up, and she…freaked out. Started screaming, as if she was in pain, so I went into her dream after her. But I sure as hell couldn’t see him. It. Whatever. I smelled him, though. Then somehow, he got around me and into her head. In the Otherworld.”

  Fenrir was pacing. He knew he was pacing, his big feet practically wearing a track in the carpet in her living room, but he’d be damned if he could stop. “We escaped, dragging her back so fast, it was too fast, and she had this…compulsion to write everything down. But I watched her, Mir. She wasn’t just writing. She was being forced to write, couldn’t have stopped herself, not until the last word was down, even if it killed her. It was… frightening.”

  “What did he smell like?”

  Fenrir considered. “He smelled powerful. Dark. Like eternity.” Like Death. He shook off the memory. “Similar to what I smelled in the Underworld two months ago. Could be the same dark god.” Maybe. “Find out what he’s been sticking into her head, Mir. Find it and get it out of her.”

  Pulling the battered laptop over to where he sat, Mir glanced up from the small kitchen table. “It might not be that simple. You take all of this knowledge out of her?” He indicated the myriad of files, the sheer amount of information contained on the hard drive. “What if there’s nothing left behind?”

  Fenrir hadn’t thought of that. He had thought of the darkness as a poison inside of her that had to be excised, instead of something possibly keeping her alive. He shook his head vehemently. “No. Not possible.” />
  “Look. What if everything’s connected, somehow? What if this girl’s somehow part of the Tuatha De Danann legend? It mentions a girl who unlocks the door between the living realm and the dark god’s prison, right?”

  Fen’s voice was faint. “I don’t get it. That whole story was about Morgane…or Ava.”

  “We don’t know that for sure. We don’t know anything for sure. What if we were wrong? What if the legend refers to Celine, instead?” Mir’s question stopped Fen dead in his tracks.

  Mir went on, cautiously. “Everyone’s made up of light and dark. You, of all people, should know that. Can’t have one without the other. Like you said, the entity you sensed in her dreams? It could be the same creature we encountered two months ago, making that deal with Hel. This whole thing might be a trap. Don’t let this girl worm her way into your heart, Fenrir. Not when you don’t know the first thing about her.”

  The computer in front of Mir finally hummed to life, and the glow illuminated their faces as the final, last-chance login screen appeared. Closing his eyes and concentrating, Mir hesitated for just a second then typed in a long, complicated chain of letters and hit enter. The file opened with a happy, upbeat ding.

  “How did you do that?” Fen breathed.

  “Trade secret,” Mir answered. “You don’t actually think I took night classes at the local community college, do you?”

  Mir spread the freshly handwritten pages out in front of him. Clicking on a subfile, he pulled up a recently scanned document. Page after cascading page loaded onto the screen. Thirty, forty pages, Fen counted. Same writing. The same foreign, unintelligible writing. Mir grunted. “I don’t have the foggiest idea what this is. I can’t even guess, which leaves us with a big ass margin of error.”