The Banished Gods Box Set: Books 1-3

by L. A. McGinnis

  She slowed when she reached the doorway to the War Room, pausing as much to take it all in as to measure up the three men already present. Mir offered up a slight smile, as if asking, How the hell did that go?

  As for the other two…one was big. Really, really big. The kind of guy that sucks everything out of a room, firstly because of his size, and secondly because of his attitude. He looked dangerous, in a way that made her instincts go taut. His dark brown hair was pulled back from a cruel, unforgiving face with deep-set eyes, so shadowed you couldn’t even see what color, atop shoulders so damn wide he couldn’t possibly be real. “Where the hell is your chain?” The god growled right at her before she realized he was staring over her head at Fen. His searching hand reached up to his neck.

  “It’s on the nightstand, you must have forgotten it when we left.” All eyes shot to her. Shit. TMI. Way, way too much TMI. Celine nervously cleared her throat.

  The other guy was beautiful. And sort of familiar-looking. With aquamarine eyes so bright they glittered and high cheekbones. His was a classical face, so handsome he looked like he’d been carved out of marble. The unearthly visage was framed by long, black hair. He stepped forward and smiled down at her, the strangest expression on his face before clasping hands with Fenrir. She couldn’t quite hear what he said, but when Fen finally stood next to her again, some of the tension had gone out of him. He wasn’t exactly relaxed, but he didn’t feel like he was going to explode, either. “Everyone, meet Celine.”

  Turned out Tyr was the growler, Loki had the blue, blue eyes, and Mir was the anchor in the room. She and Fen filled the other chairs, and Odin came in so quietly she didn’t notice him behind her until he finally spoke.

  “Mir, run us through everything you know so far.”

  Fen set her notebooks and laptop out on the table, Mir booted it up and projected several pages of her writings across the white wall. While Mir did a quick run through, Celine studied the faces while Mir spoke. Tyr asked a question here and there, mostly tactical, which Mir had covered. Loki was more concerned with status. Mir had that less covered, although he was plenty blunt in his assessment.

  “Even though I can’t read the actual language, my theory is once the words are inscribed onto paper, a step of a spell or incantation is completed. Following that theory, each time Celine is given a set of these markings, or runes to inscribe, it brings us closer to the end. The spell must be complicated, there’s over seven thousand pages so far, but I’ve not been able to break the code, find a sequence or pattern of—”

  Something inside Celine slipped into place, as if she could actually see Mir’s thoughts in front of her, fitting together to create a picture. “Pattern indicates a sequence of some sort, right? And a sequence indicates some sort of repeat, right? Like a…Fibonacci sequence, for example. Except a sequence could also mean a combination of some kind.” Her eyes narrowed. “Like a combination to a lock?” Celine mused.

  Mir’s face froze for an instant, his eyes darting over to Odin before he continued, slower this time. “How did you make that leap? You didn’t have enough information to pull all of that together.”

  She shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s just how my brain works. It takes random information and sorts it. Once that begins happening, I glimpse the larger picture. Like now.” She pictured a lock, the code to open it, the stream of unintelligible symbols stretching out before her. “And when Fen told me about this thing, he mentioned a portal. I put two and two together, is all. What we really need to find is that first element, Mir. If we can do that…”

  “Then at least we have a starting point,” Mir agreed. Looking around at the confusion on their faces, Mir explained. “The first element in any sequence gives us a starting point and allows us to decipher the subsequent symbols, which will, in turn…”

  “…tell us what all of this”—Celine indicated the jumble of markings displayed on the wall—“means. It will allow us to decode the message, either partially or in its entirety. Then we’ll know what we’re dealing with.”

  “Question is, if it’s finite or infinite,” Mir mused. “Every time you write one of these complex texts down, you might just be completing another section of a complicated, interwoven spell.”

  “It feels like that,” Celine concurred, feeling sure they were close to the answer. “As if I’m completing something, getting closer to the end.”

  Mir leaned in. “Except, I don’t know how near this spell is to complete or how much is left to go. When Celine dreams, the information is dumped into her memories, she wakes, she transcribes it. One can assume, once the text is complete, he will somehow use it to open a portal and gain entrance to Midgard. Or one of the other worlds.”

  “But there’s no real way of knowing. What I do know is this. If Orobus is what we think he is, chaos, he’s going to be vast, raw, unfocused energy. I’m not sure how we’ll be able contain it. Not in this world. Not physically, anyway.”

  “I wish I could read some of this writing, but I haven’t seen anything like it, either,” Celine offered. “Except…” She rubbed her forehead. “Except maybe once…But I can’t…” She winced. “I’m sorry, I’m trying, but I can’t…”

  At Loki’s concerned expression, Fen explained. “It’s a side effect of the visions, there’s some sort of compulsion on her, she can’t access any of the memories or the information without causing enormous amounts of pain.”

  “Then she shouldn’t try,” Loki said. “Not if it causes her pain. There’s other ways of figuring this out.” Turning to Mir, he asked, “You said you believe Celine’s dreams are connected to what happened with Morgane and Ava? How? There hasn’t been a whisper of Hel or her demons in months. Nor any sign of the dark god. Yet the legend mentions the door, and now, as Celine points out, this spell might be similar to the combination of a lock…?” Loki’s voice trailed off as he looked meaningfully at Mir.

  “The problem, Loki, is I don’t have a clue what these are. This batch is just over thirty pages…” Mir fanned the stack of papers out as evidence. “And she’s got hundreds of files just like this on her computer. That’s a lot of information to sort through. Without a starting point, it’s a crap shoot.”

  “The dreams have been picking up these past few weeks. Now it’s practically every night, and there’s so many words, pages…” She rubbed her temples again, her face pale. “It takes me hours to write them all down. I’d hoped you could decipher them. But I was thinking, maybe there’s a way I can help. When I sleep and this dark god takes me over, you’d know exactly where it is going to appear. Is there a way for you to be there too? Maybe stop it while he’s still in the Otherworld?”

  Fen began stroking her back in slow circles.

  Mir went on, “Maybe. Tyr and I can meet, see if it’s a viable plan. Another thing. Once the spell is complete, this thing will need a living body or a host to come through the portal, which it will most likely discard once it has arrived, assuming it even has any sort of natural form.”

  “I thought you said he was too vast to be contained?” Fen stopped rubbing her back. “If he’s too big to be contained, then how will he possess a physical body?”

  “He’ll have to assume physical form to come through on a physical plane. If he wants to exist on this plane, he needs to have mass. It’s the natural state of things.”

  “Maybe the question becomes, what is his natural form?” Celine had been wondering how the thing had survived all this time. “You’re all assuming he has form. What if he doesn’t have form? What if he’s thought? What if he’s memories? What if he’s made up of intangibles, and that’s why he can’t be contained? Not because he’s large, too huge in mass or matter to be encompassed by something else, which is what you are assuming, but because he’s simply something that cannot be contained at all? Something too ephemeral to be captured?” She was tapping her pencil on the edge of the table and driving Tyr batshit crazy but didn’t notice.

  “So what are you saying?
That he doesn’t need a body?” Mir snorted. “Trust me, he needs a body to get onto any physical plane. Everything else that comes through a portal into this world...” Odin snarled a warning at him, long and low, and he paused. “Anyway. He’s going to need a body, trust me. It’s just…how it’s done.”

  Celine was tapping even faster now until Fen took the pencil away from her with an apologetic smile and told her, “Keep going, you’re making sense.”

  “So what if I’m the portal? What if once I get the last symbol written down, he’s through? What if, once he gets the spell or whatever you want to call it completed, he’s here? Then what? How are you going to kill him if he’s nothing but space dust?” Eyes sparkling, she started running the problem, looking for possibilities, potential, failures, strengths. “He’d be practically unstoppable. He’d be impossible to track. But on the upside, he’d have almost no physical strength, very little ability to influence our world as we know it.

  “Unless…” She locked onto a new, horrifying possibility. “Unless he took over one of you? You’ve got admit, one of you would be the perfect host. You’re strong, immortal, which means you’re practically indestructible.” She glanced over to Fen. “Plus, you guys can already move between worlds, right? That would solve his little travel problem. The only solution would be… The only way out of this would be…” Running the myriad of possibilities, the probabilities out loud, she went silent when the final, irrefutable solution to the problem came to her.

  From behind her, Odin’s voice, cool and mocking, cut through the silence, even as Fen’s hand dropped to her lower back, as if he were ready to whisk her away.

  “Oh, don’t stop now, girl, tell them what we have to do to keep him off this planet?” From across the table, Mir met her eyes, sadness and pity mixed together, and she realized he’d reached the same, undeniable conclusion.

  “Kill me.” The words came out in a breathless whisper.

  “You have to kill me before this thing’s finished.”

  Chapter 17

  “Wow, and I thought I’d slummed it before.” Celine had been trying, for an hour now, to coax a smile out of Fen but no such luck. He was hard as a rock, unmoving, unyielding and definitely unsmiling.

  He dropped her book bag loudly on the floor of the room, which was really more like a vast, dark, cavern than anything else. Windows as tall as houses pierced each end of the room, letting in long, narrow strands of moonlight. She was exhausted and drained and tired of arguing. Tired of all of this, in fact.

  But looking around, she didn’t see a bed or anything that looked remotely comfortable enough to curl up on and sleep. She slid down the wall and contented herself with watching Fen pace. Stalk, actually, was more like it.

  “Oh Fen. Like Mir said, we’ll figure something else out. There’s bound to be another solution.” She wasn’t at all surprised when he turned and glared at her from the dark, his eyes glinting from the shadows, flashing a hint of the beast at her. She sighed loudly. “Fine. But don’t take this out on me. It’s not like I asked to be the guy’s Dictaphone, you know.”

  Pounding at the door brought the incessant pacing to a halt, and when it swung inward, there were hushed instructions, lots of big, grumbly men, and loads of furniture. Suddenly she and Fen were staring at each other over the biggest, fanciest bed she’d ever seen, piled with soft covers and pillows galore.

  She smoothed her hand over the comforter. “Well, at least we have somewhere to sleep tonight.” This time, when he stalked off into the dark hinterlands of the far end of the room, she went after him. “Damn it, Fen, stop it. Look, I’m serious. I was just expounding, that’s all. When I think, I talk, and when I talk, I’m just working through the problem the only way I know how, and that’s how.” Frustrated, she blew a strand of hair off her face. “Damn it, Fen…”

  When he pounced, it was blindingly fast, and he had both of her arms grasped in his hands, his face right up against hers, breaths coming in fast. “Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think I understand how your mind works? I was in your head, remember?” He could barely talk around the fangs that were growing at an alarming rate out of his mouth.

  She went quiet and still, watching this beast that desperately wanted to be a man.

  “Don’t you think I understand everything?” He dropped his head into her chest and shuddered for a moment before he nuzzled into the crook of her neck. “Don’t you think I know when you’re right? Except I don’t want you to be right, Celine, I only want you to be safe.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck, feeling the unsteadiness of his fear.

  “Odin’s an Occam’s Razor kind of guy. For him, the simplest solution is the best one. So when those words came out of your mouth… Damn it, Celine. Don’t ever fucking say those words out loud again, do you understand? They made my heart stop.”

  She wrapped her arms around his middle, tugged him close. “I know, I know.” She sighed against his cheek. “I saw his face. It didn’t even change, it just got real…intense, I guess. I could practically hear the guillotine in his brain sliding down when I said it. But he’d already come to the same conclusion, Fen. It’s not like it’s a big secret or anything. Now the matter is out there. And besides, I can absolutely guarantee you he’ll keep me alive.”

  “There’s no guarantees with that asshole, Celine.” Silence stretched out between them.

  “Well, there’s a small one, and it’s in my favor.” She was, most likely, almost out of time. Tonight could be the last night, or maybe tomorrow or the next, who knew? Nobody. That was who. This bastard god who invaded her dreams and turned her into his personal secretary had begun his quest right after summer started. But however you figured it, she’d been doing this for months now. He was close to being done, she could feel it.

  Her low, dark laugh vibrated against his chest. “I’m a guaran-fucking-teed portal for this Orobus. With me alive, Odin knows exactly where that thing’s going to come through. So until I either have the rest of the spell, or he uses me to come across, I’m in like Flynn.”

  Cupping his huge head in her hands, she stared up into his eyes. “So what do you say, wolf?” Her smile stretched wide and she nipped his bottom lip. “We have a nice, big bed in here. And this has been a truly shitty day.”

  Fen’s eyes widened, both at her tone and the demand, but the beast in him stretched.

  It had been a shitty day.

  “Celine.” He ran his fingers through her hair, as white as spider silk. It shimmered in the moonlight like gossamer. After searching her eyes and seeing the desire there, the aching need, he set her away, even as his heart stuttered at the devastated look on her face.

  “You are going to sleep in the bed. I’m staying with you, until you’re asleep, but until this thing’s…settled…” He ran a hand down the side of her face, against the velvet of her skin. “We take this slow, no rushing into anything.”

  She bit her lip, the exotic scent of her wrapping around his senses. “Fen…”

  He frowned down at her. “Too much has happened, too quickly. Your head, it needs to heal, and for that, you need sleep.” He pulled her back against him, thankful she came. “And besides, I’m planning on taking my time with you. From the beginning to the end, I’m planning to savor every single moment we have together, Celine.” He tipped her face up, bracing himself for the impact of her consuming, bottomless gaze meeting his. And then, he bent down and brushed a kiss across her lips. Just enough that he caught her breath in his mouth, the barest taste of her.

  And his beast pulsed inside of him, awoken at last.

  Chapter 18

  True to his word, Fen tucked Celine into bed while she watched his every move through veiled eyes. He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’ll be safe in here. This room’s warded, so nothing can get in.”

  “What, exactly, does that mean?”

  “Mir’s etched his magic, written in runes, all the way around every opening into this room. The s
pell guards against any entity getting in or out of here. Which means your dreams should be safe for tonight.” At least, he hoped so. If the magic kept him inside, it should keep that thing out of Celine’s head, at least long enough for her to sleep for a few hours.

  “And where are you going?”

  “See what I can do to help. See if we can figure out how this thing got into your head to begin with, Celine. Mir’s looking through his records, trying to figure out where we are with the incantation. Loki’s gone off to Nifheilm to see if he can discover where this thing originated from. Maybe he can learn something new.”

  “And Odin’s plotting.” When he jerked, she laid a cool hand on his arm. “Oh, come on, lighten up. Nobody’s going to do anything stupid right now.” She blew out a quiet breath. “But if you guys can figure this out? Well, I’d owe you. It’s weird, I don’t remember anything odd before the summer. My question is, besides how he got inside my head,”—her eyes drifted upwards, found Fen’s—“why me in the first place?” She laced her fingers into his and with a gentle tug, pulled him down next to her in the bed.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. And that fact was driving him crazy. But he’d bet his ass it had everything to do with Dr. Ellis’s little project at the Field Museum.

  Remembering how she’d reacted the last time he’d probed, he hesitated then decided it was important enough to ask. “What do you remember about this secret project you worked on for Dr. Ellis, Celine? He mentioned it when I was interviewing him. Said it had something to do with a big, private grant for the Field Museum.”

  She frowned, her forehead crinkling as she thought. “I…I can’t…I don’t…” As she rubbed at her brow, her voice trailed off helplessly, her eyes glazing. Fen thought this was what forgetting looked like. “I don’t know anything about the Field Museum. Why ever would I, Fen?”