The Banished Gods Box Set: Books 1-3

by L. A. McGinnis

  “How do you know that?”

  “Just know is all. Like I said, that’s what Njor told me, right before he took off. No reason for him to lie.” With a thunk, a stale bagel and bottle of water landed beside her on the dirty coverlet. “Here you go. Figure you earned it.”

  Celine curled herself into the smallest ball she could but ate the bagel. Drank the water. Never knew when she’d get fed again. Best to take advantage of nutrition when it came her way. A couple more days. There was no way, she realized, that anyone would ever find this place. Not without knowing exactly where she was. And not, she felt the pain cut through her like a knife, if Fen didn’t make it out of her dream alive.

  “I need to sleep.” She didn’t look at him when she spoke. But she needed to buy some time. “I always have to,” she lied. “It takes a lot out of me, and the drugs you force-fed me didn’t help. You want me to go back in there anytime soon? I’ve got to sleep for a few hours.”

  Barrows’s dark, hooded eyes watched her carefully, but finally, he nodded. She finished the bagel, pulled Fen’s coat tightly around herself, slid her hand beneath the pillow, and tucked the stone safely away into a pocket. Breathed deep and closed her eyes.

  With any luck, she’d bought herself a couple more hours.

  Chapter 25

  The place Fenrir landed stunk of brimstone and sulfur, which to a human’s nose would have been bad enough, but with a wolf’s senses, it was like trying to breathe in the plume of a volcano. The transition had not been smooth, nor had it been gentle. Flesh was torn from him in chunks, and his clothing was all but gone. He’d transformed in the seconds after the Orobus had hurled him out of that realm. A decision, he realized, that had most likely saved his life.

  The Orobus meant to kill him. He’d certainly landed badly on his side, with singed fur, cracked ribs, and a broken back leg on a rocky crag that had once, he believed, overlooked the enchanted Glen of Benufelm on the once-beautiful world of Svartheim.

  But it was a glen no longer, and he wondered how long this hideous transformation had been going on. Something dark had eaten away at this realm until nothing was left.

  He limped down the rocks, dragging his useless leg, hopping clumsily from one to another until he reached the bottom, a gray shadow amongst many others, indistinct, fusing seamlessly with his background until not a single eye could pick him out.

  He’d only been here once before, fighting a battle against the Dark Elves during which the blood lust had all but wiped his memory. And yet. He remembered blue skies and balmy winds and easy breezes full of the scent of woods and fields and streams. Not this. Not this barren, stripped down skeleton of a world. His mind, as the beast, was fuzzy. Thoughts distilled down, into instinct so basic they were easy to manage.

  But right now, there was an imperative directive that overrode even those most basic instincts.

  Find Celine.

  He quested on the winds for the scent of something living. Something he could bargain with to take him back to the Otherworld. He was nature’s most efficient predator, and he’d track his quarry with the single-mindedness of an efficient hunter.

  Find Celine.

  The blood licked hot inside of him as he loped across the shallow basin toward what had once been forest. Steadily, his bones knit back together. His pace quickened as his leg fused and straightened. He was nothing but a blur by the time he entered the twisted skeletons of trees, and when he passed through those he finally caught what he’d been searching for. The barest hint of something alive. Turning south, he ran straight for the smell, ripe and pungent, the scent of Dark Elves. The very smell that had underscored the human scent in Celine’s apartment. He opened his mouth to filter the various scents and fully interpret them. And so, when he burst through the entrance to the caves, he knew how many, how old, how weak, and how strong his adversaries.

  And when he began the slaughter, his roar was drowned out only by the screaming.

  When he had a small, bloody remainder of survivors backed up against the wall, he slew the remaining three and left only one. The one dressed in the shiniest armor, the one with the finest blade. And hoped he’d played the shell game right—left the one with the most information and the biggest bargaining chip. Transforming back was always a total bitch, and this time was no different, worse in fact, because he came back with singed hair and chunks of missing skin.

  The Dark Elves were mercenaries, mostly. Selling their services to dwarves, or trolls, or sometimes the giants for the highest price, and moving from world to world through a myriad of hidden back doors and passageways they’d set up over the millennia. He’d heard Odin had used them a time or two, before Ragarnok, for his own dirty work.

  “Guess we have something in common then, don’t we?” Fenrir growled as his claws shrunk back into his fingers. He’d already wasted too much time trying to find someone who could get him off this plane and onto Midgard. He wasn’t about to waste a second more.

  “Midgard. Now.”

  “sjsiofnntkrossomsmfefnsdknf.”

  “Let us try that again. Olde English or at least Old Norse. Something civilized to the ear. Please.” Fen picked up the sword and drove it through the elf’s shoulder. Twisted it.

  The creature gasped. “Canna take you out. No doors open.”

  “Are you certain about that?” Fenrir smiled. Death’s smile. “Let me give you a good reason to show me the way back. Or rather, take a good, long look at the bodies around you, and tell me no again.” He watched the reflection of blood and gore shimmer in the elves black eyes as frustration vibrated through him. Time passed differently in each plane. It had been less than an hour since he’d landed here, but it might have been hours for Celine. Possibly days. But his best chance was standing in front of him. Fen twisted the blade even more then stopped himself. Elves could not travel if they were dead.

  “One way. You won’t like it.” The thing finally grunted. Fenrir smiled. He had no doubt the bastard was right about that.

  Some of the clothing, blood-soaked that it was, fit Fenrir well enough. The boots were all too tight but he made do. The climb to the top of the cliffs would have been easy had he been the wolf, but as a man it would take time.

  “Fuck.” The curse bounced across the rocks and came back to him tenfold.

  The Dark Elf smiled a little until the claws began to extend from Fenrir’s fingers.

  “Careful asshole. You serve one purpose and one purpose only. But even my uses for you have their limits.” Fenrir didn’t have truth-sense the way some of the gods did. But he could smell well enough, and the bastard knew the way out. Besides, it was the only shot he had. His single, overwhelming directive, one that ruled his every thought, every movement, every breath was to find Celine. Nothing else mattered.

  Anything that stood in his way was nothing but an obstacle to be removed. “Which way?” Dragging the creature out of the cave, it pointed silently to a rocky incline, the summit too high to see clearly.

  “Tell me about the Orobus.” They were climbing now steady and fast, feet finding dubious purchase on shale and slickrock, following a winding, half marked trail to the jutting outcropping of granite that pushed from the surface like a great hand.

  “I know of no Orobus. It is a god?”

  “Maybe.” Fenrir kept his mouth shut. No use giving more away than he had to. “It’s a shadow looking for a way in. Since you know where the door is, thought you might have seen it.” The creature kept its mouth shut so Fen prodded. “What happened to this place? This used to be a beautiful world, like Vanaheim. Was there a war? Disease?”

  “These are the Dying Lands. It is all becoming the Dying Lands.” The elf gave the barest backward wave. “That is all that is left.”

  Fen glimpsed a small, isolated area of brown, not even green, the only sign of anything yet living on this entire planet. “What did you assholes do?”

  “We made it a paradise. The Elves, the Goddess of the Grave, and the one who whisp
ers, we pushed and pushed and now the light is almost gone.”

  “What is this…one who whispers?”

  “The voice that commands us. His darkness killed the trees and the light and now we have overtaken this world. We have run out of space. You will see when we get to the doorway. And when I show you the way out, you will leave and you will not come back?”

  So the Orobus is here too. And my damn sister from the looks of it. Fenrir thought. Once Odin finds out about this… Hell, he can’t even manage the problems on Earth, how’s he going to fight a battle on another realm?

  “No.” Fen said slowly, looking around. “No, I won’t be coming back here. But I have a feeling I know why he picked Earth. Lots of space. Lots of bodies. Exactly what he needs to expand.” This had been brewing for eons. Chances are, it wouldn’t be only the Orobus coming through that doorway. He was going to unleash veritable hordes of evil upon the humans. Worse, maybe, than Hel’s demons.

  Odin could kiss his newly won peace goodbye. Dark Elves answered to no one, not even each other. They had no allegiances, no code of any kind. Just aggression, hunger, and dark magic. They were chaos personified.

  Fen did turn to look, against his better judgement, once they reached the top. Wasted ruin stretched out as far as the eye could see, and his eyes could see pretty damn far. Teeming like cockroaches, the little bastards covered the land in a swarming mass of shiny blackness, millions, billions, maybe. Numbers untold. There could be a hundred doorways from this world to Midgard, and they were just waiting for one word.

  Go.

  But none of this mattered, not if he couldn’t save Celine. Not so long as that thing was using her to construct his spell, to make his doorway into Midgard and enter, so his army of bugs could follow. “Show me this door.”

  “This is it. Between the rocks, there is a dolmen. It will take you to one place.”

  “Where?”

  “The Underworld, of course, it is the only door open to us.”

  It figured. The only guaranteed place for any of them to go these days was to end up rotting away with his sister. So of course, he’d spent the last months trying to avoid her, only to wind up coming face-to-face with her anyway. But he needed to get to Chicago.

  Fen brightened a little. At least she could get him there.

  The elf was struggling now that they were so close, and Fenrir closed his fist around the thing’s bicep. Carrying another entity across to another plane was strictly forbidden, but where he was going, it wouldn’t much matter. Besides, this one wouldn’t be alive long enough to spread the word back to his boss that they’d had a visitor.

  Fenrir gave the hellhole a final backwards glance and walked through.

  Every doorway was different. The Dark Elves, evidently, didn’t care too much for comfort. Or accuracy. When he emerged, he was freezing. Like so fucking cold he thought his fucking nose was going to fall off. Seriously, those bastards must have high levels of pain tolerance.

  When he collapsed to his knees in the middle of the hewn rock dungeons, a couple of torches flickered half-heartedly to life, as if resenting the effort. He heard the shuffling of a billion souls behind the walls, and then the scratching, the demons’ sharp little feet as they skittered away from the flickering yellow light up into the darkness. “Sister,” he yelled. “I brought you a gift.” Fenrir bared his teeth at his prisoner. “I mayhap should have mentioned before, you have brought me to the one place that I might find assistance. You, however, will not fare quite so well.”

  “Do I smell a fucking wet dog?” The click clicking of heels on rock heralded his sister’s arrival, and he knew he was going to owe her big time, but whatever he had to trade was going to be worth it. He’d give her anything to get to Celine in time. He had to get to Celine in time.

  “Better than rotting corpses, I’d say. Besides, look at what I brought you. Nice and fresh and practically brimming with life.” He thrust the Dark Elf forward, fear rippling through the cells in the thing’s very being.

  Too bad. Wrong place, wrong time sort of thing.

  “Did Father tire of his little pet, yet?” Hel strode into view, gleaming like an iridescent fish, hair so black it shimmered blue, eyes glittering obsidian, skin and face bloodless white, and underneath it all, an undulating kind of malevolence that radiated corruption.

  He felt a stir of pity for her. Shit, maybe for the both of them. Both born into roles neither of them deserved, wanted, nor were suited for, yet had carried out for millennia.

  “Or perhaps he’s finally granted me a reprieve?”

  “No, and I’m not here to talk to you about Morgane or Loki.” Fen set his foot on the squirming elf to keep him still. “I need to get to Chicago. As fast as possible.” He kicked the thing forward, and it rolled until it hit Hel’s fancy shoes with a wet thump. “And you are going to help me do it.”

  She laughed, a silvery, glittery sound, playing over the unforgiving surroundings of her cage as they circled each other. “Let me guess. You’ve followed in Father’s footsteps and gotten tangled up in a mortal thread?”

  Fen simply nodded.

  That broken glass laughter trailed over him, mocking and faintly accusing. “I would have thought you might have learned your lesson, Fenrir. Mortals are far too breakable for us. Trust me, I speak from experience.” Those obsidian eyes glittered in her pale, expressionless face, black diamonds in the torchlight. “But no matter. What’s in it for me?”

  “Freedom.”

  “Liar.”

  “I do not lie.”

  Hel’s feet slowed to a stop. “No,” she said thoughtfully. “No, you don’t.” She studied him for a long moment. “What are you offering?”

  “I will secure your freedom for you within the week, or I will take your place.”

  “You swear it, brother?”

  Fenrir nodded solemnly. “We have a bargain?” The sweet rush of relief he felt was only mitigated by the fear that he was already too late.

  “We have a bargain, brother.” She smiled, slow and lethal. “What will the gods make of you when I am loosed on your world?”

  Fenrir did not care. Fenrir wouldn’t think about that because there were many hours between this moment and that one.

  “Not much less than they think of me now.” Readying himself for the transition, Fen hesitated. He had to ask, if only to see… “What’s become of the two of us, sister? If you could change, turn into something different? What would you wish to be?”

  “I like what I am. Who I am. The only thing I do not enjoy is being trapped in this hideous place.” Hel offered him Death’s cold smile. “Go home little brother and save your mortal. And when you are stuck down here for an eternity, know that I will spare her, out of my blood bond to you.” She nudged the form on the floor with the toe of her shoe.

  “And thank you for my new toy. I will see how long this one lasts. I’m afraid they don’t make them like they used to.”

  Fenrir fell forward from the total darkness against the side of a steel and glass building. Striding out, into the street to get his bearings, he almost got sideswiped by a bus, and then clipped by a cab. But at least he knew he was in the right place. A city. Judging from the swearing and the blaring horns, America. He stumbled over to the closest human and plucked his cellphone out of his hand. One good look had the male shutting his damn mouth, while Fenrir keyed Mir’s number in. One call was all he needed. When Mir picked up, Fen ground out a single word, and he was airborne again.

  Odin might be arrogant, but at least the guy was connected. And whatever brand of magic the god wielded was still pretty righteous, even if he did sit on a prissy gold throne. A few seconds after the call, Fen landed with the grace of a cat on the white marble floor.

  “They’ve got Celine. And I know where.”

  Odin, to his credit, didn’t even pause. Didn’t ask, hey, why are you dressed in Dark Elves bloody clothing? Or…why the hell is half of your hair gone? Nope, he just matched Fenrir, stride fo
r stride, gathering everyone up in their wake until they were a veritable army in Hummers, heading toward O’Hare armed to the teeth and ready to kick ass.

  Fenrir was cranked down so tightly into his mortal form, he’d given Mir the barest details. Celine. Hotel/motel. Abandoned. Everything he remembered from her dream. He didn’t distract them with the Orobus’s presence, or her being snatched away, or the cloying fear that permeated her every cell. Just locate the target. Get her away from who ever held her and, once he had assured himself that she was safe, killing every last one of the bastards.

  The hotel was truly a shitty affair, sprawling and ruined and ragged around the proverbial edges. But she was in there. He smelled Celine in there, and she was alive. Bloodrage coursed so wildly through him, all Fenrir heard was the thudding of it in his ears. When Tyr put a calm, restraining hand on him, he peeled back his lips and snarled.

  “You’re going to get her killed, mate.” Tyr offered calmly, “We go in together. It will take a minute to get set up. Then we all go in. Fucking together, Fenrir. You’ve gone through hell to get this far, don’t screw this up now.”

  Fen’s blood slowed enough that he could actually think.

  Mir lined them up, sent them out. He and Fenrir went in first. Side by side. Guns blazing, so to speak. Mir took out the two on the right, including the man with the long, deep scratches down his face. Fenrir the two on the left, leaving bloody crumbled piles of flesh and cloth in his wake. Celine shivered in the middle of the carnage. She was unharmed, at least, physically.

  But oh gods, she’d changed, there was a fragileness he hadn’t glimpsed before, not even that first night, not even when she was alone and didn’t remember who she was. Fenrir studied the human holding the knife to Celine’s throat. He smelled human but different. Fen pulled in a breath. Then another. Then a deeper, slower, unbelieving one. Loathing crept up inside of him as realization hit. What she’d told him in her dream. He’d thought it was fear speaking. He’d thought it was only an old memory come back to haunt her.