The Banished Gods Box Set: Books 1-3

by L. A. McGinnis

  “No,” Mir snarled, “that is not going to fucking happen. Not tonight, not ever.”

  “You are going to let this world burn to the ground because of a woman?”

  “Yes, I fucking am.”

  A line drawn in the sand. Or the rock, as it were. Gods. Impossible, fucking impossible choices.

  “There are thousands of them through, Mir, thousands. If she opens another door, what else is she going to unleash on this world? Giants? Monsters? Creatures we cannot stop? We were tasked with protecting this world. All of it, not just one woman.” Tyr checked his gun and met Mir’s eyes steadily. “I’m going to wing her. I swear to the gods, I will not miss. Then I’ll distract Hel, and you get in there and get the girl out. I don’t give a rats ass how you do it, get her out of here in one piece.”

  All of Mir’s concentration, every single bit of him was completely focused on Syd as Tyr lifted the gun and pulled the trigger. Against the stamp of feet, the roar of battle, the clash of immortals and elves, all he heard was the gunshot. All he saw was the trajectory of that bullet as it sped through the air, and Mir vanished into a smattering of a trillion atoms, arcing across the gap, the marching elves, the stones, and even the Orobus’s creeping energy to land on his feet beside Sydney the second the bullet harmlessly struck the stones. Sydney sprawled on the ground at his feet, her eyes wide and staring.

  Hel shot Mir a little smile. “Do you seriously think I haven’t been watching you two morons for the last ten minutes? Give me some credit, will you? I know Tyr’s tactics as well as I know my own.” Her hand shot out, and she grasped his neck, her nails digging in deep. “You’re not going to stop this, Mir. Nothing’s going to stop this.”

  She yanked him closer. “And soon enough, this is all going to be mine. Tell my father, should you see him, I’m coming for him first. Loki and that pretty little mortal of his.” She shoved him away but he stayed on his feet, pulling a knife from his belt. A single glance to Sydney assured him she was unhurt.

  Unhurt and…her eyes brilliantly green.

  She climbed to her feet to stand quietly behind Hel, her hair still floating on that phantom breeze. Watching. And completely aware.

  She was back. Somehow, impossibly, she’d clawed her way out from beneath the Orobus’s dominion and she’d returned. Waiting. Waiting for what?

  “Once Svartlheim empties out, he’ll open up the next gate, and then the next one.” There was pure joy in Hel’s voice at the idea. “This is just the first wave, this army of Dark Elves stretches on for days. Days. And her magic”—she threw the barest nod at Syd—“will hold these doors open long enough for them all to come through. And you can watch as he tears your world apart.”

  “We’re not going to stand by. We’re going to stop you.” Somewhere out there he hoped Fen was positioned to attack, that Tyr’s gun was aimed straight at Hel’s heart. A distraction, but maybe it would be enough for him to get Sydney out safely.

  “As if any of you have enough power to face him.” The shadows around them snapped like a whip, and a searing pain shot up Mir’s leg. “He’s going to eat you immortals for breakfast.” Hel threw back her head and laughed. Another quick glance, another quick search of Sydney’s beautiful face confirmed it.

  The Orobus ruined everything it touched. Rotted it from the inside out. But not Syd.

  She was back, tracking Hel in a preternatural way as she watched the two of them circle each other, snapping like a couple of dogs. Mir fleetingly thought Hel was a fool to turn her back on Sydney. And when Sydney’s nose flared wide, measuring the back of the Goddess of Death with a hunter’s smile, he knew he was right.

  His fingers numb on the hilt of his knife, he heard Sydney purr, in a voice more sinisterly pleasant than anything he’d ever heard, “Well, you seem to have it all figured out, don’t you?”

  They had no real edge here. Hel was stronger than any of them. And even though the Orobus appeared to be weakening from tonight’s efforts, he still was too powerful. And the horde of elves surrounding them showed no sign of stopping. Mir watched numbly as Hel’s eyes narrowed on Syd, and when she snapped her fingers, Grim came skittering in from the shadows.

  But Sydney merely smiled down at them, as if they were lapdogs. Tilting her head, they halted, unsure. The shadows surged around her, an embrace of darkness. She shrugged them off, and they slid reluctantly from her shoulders, grasping at her as she took a step toward Mir and the Goddess of Death, green eyes flashing, as she warned Hel, “You should know better than to count your chickens before they’ve hatched.”

  “Such a human saying,” Hel scoffed. Something invisible, a leash of magic reached out and wrapped itself tightly around Hel as she dropped to her knees, clawing at her throat.

  “Hmmm. It is, isn’t it?” Mir noticed Sydney was humming, humming a melody, just under her breath, as if the Orobus’s armies were not marching around them. Set on devouring their world. Carelessly, Syd moved toward the gasping form of Hel, the Grim edging away, the shadows snapping at her. Snapping but not making contact, Mir noted, as if she repelled the Orobus as well.

  Now that she was only a few feet away, he sensed it.

  Her magic unleashed. The undiluted, wild power of it. Whether it had devoured the Orobus’s or combined with it or dominated it, Mir didn’t know. But the result was the same.

  “What do you think he’ll do when you lose? He promised you this world, didn’t he?” Sydney mused, her green eyes darkening. “You just told Mir you were going to rule this world. Well, what’s the consolation prize, should you fail?” Again, she hummed as if to herself. “Something tells me you’re not going to like it one bit.”

  “You can’t stop this,” Hel managed to gasp.

  “Hmmm. Well. Stopping what’s already happened and preventing what’s to come are two different things.” Her eyes were almost incandescent with light. “At least, that’s what my father taught me.”

  “At least you had a father,” Hel spat. “Mine condemned me to rot in the Underworld.”

  “I killed mine,” Sydney said dispassionately. “An accident, but one never truly knows, do they? I suppose we all have regrets.” Some terrible dread shuddered through Mir as she spoke, nothing of the woman he loved in that voice, in her face. Only pure, icy calculation as she sized up her prey.

  “I could kill you.” Even the wind died away at her words, the air stagnant and still. “I have enough power to do that.”

  Mir felt pure aggression radiating from Syd, the predatory angle to her head, the gleam in her eyes. And he knew, without a doubt, that she spoke true.

  Hel seemed to know it too.

  “If you managed it,” Hel managed to gasp out, “it would kill you as well.”

  “Indeed it would.” Sydney’s voice told them both she didn’t much care, one way or the other. It echoed with an emptiness borne of the power consuming her.

  Mir began to pray. To whatever gods might be listening, he asked them for a chance. Just one chance for Sydney to remember who she was, who she’d been, and what was at stake. To remember where she came from. And what she had waiting for her at the end of all of this.

  “Sydney?” He waited for a glance, just a fucking glance his way, but she was wholly focused on Hel, writhing on the gravel in front of her, the black form of the Orobus beginning to crest up and over her shoulders as she knelt to look the goddess in the eye. To deal her final blow. “Sydney, forget her, we have to close the gates. You have to close them before any more of his armies are released.”

  He swore he saw a shudder go through her, but her eyes remained on Hel.

  “Sydney, please. It’s up to you, baby. You’re the only one who can stop this.”

  He moved in, brandishing his gun at an encroaching Grim, and reached a hand out to Syd, his heart a deadening beat against his chest.

  Sydney threw back her shoulders, the shadows falling from them like a coat, as she whispered, “I would kill you today, but yesterday I made a promise,” she tol
d Hel, eyeing the stones, the darkness swirling in to encompass them, the gleam of the Grim as they scuttled about. Her mouth thinned at the sight of the army still pouring from the far opening.

  Her voice softened ever so slightly as she looked up at Mir and took his offered hand, her fingers interlacing with his as if by habit. “I made a promise to a friend, and I mean to keep it.”

  He pulled her to her feet as Hel glared up at the both of them, hatred glittering in her eyes. “You’ll never stop this. It’s too far gone and the other doors are almost open. Your world is as good as dead. As are the both of you.”

  A flick of Syd’s fingers sent Hel’s head whipping back, hard enough to kill a human, but for a goddess, only enough to momentarily incapacitate, and her limp figure slumped to the ground.

  His general out of the picture, the Orobus rose up around them, intangible yet powerful. His shadows became whips of darkness, thin slashes of icy cold, a lash of pain going through Mir’s leg as a gash opened up, Sydney raising a hand to her cheek, as a sliver of crimson appeared, followed by a dribble of blood. Tracing her fingers through it, she drew crimson marks across her palm, then rubbed her hands together, determination setting her face into hard lines.

  “Get down,” Sydney warned Mir.

  “Fuck that. I’m going to…”

  “Get down, Mir. Or this is going to kill even you.” Her eyes grew brighter as around them the wind seemed to pick up. “Don’t make me regret this, and I don’t have time to argue.” She shoved him, to make her point, her eyes demanding. “Just get down.”

  Mir dropped to the ground, his chest landing hard enough to knock the air out of him as the Orobus spiraled up and up and up, forming a barrier, a spinning, twisting wall of black between Sydney and the gateways, between her and his emerging army. And even that was not enough.

  Raising her hands, screaming, she sent a blast of magic into that seemingly impenetrable darkness and it rippled. The billowing shadow curled inward before a hole tore through the middle of it, a hole through which Mir glimpsed the panicking armies. Watched them scatter and break. Watched them fall like saplings as her wave of magic hit them. And then saw the Orobus as it crested upwards and crashed down upon them, crushing them both to the ground.

  Over and over again the darkness slammed into them, breaking bones, and Mir tasted blood, smelled it, a dull pounding in his ears as the God of Chaos brought the full weight of his power down upon them, intent on crushing them both out of existence.

  Over and over again, until all Mir knew was the dust in his mouth might just be the last thing he ever tasted.

  Dazed, barely able to see, Sydney touched the blood running down her face.

  Her body felt…broken. Her lungs wouldn’t work properly, all of this terrible, horrible weight crushing down upon her. He was squeezing the life from her, and she hadn’t closed the doorway. Not yet.

  But the blood streaming down her face wasn’t from the cut on her cheek but from her nose. From the blast of power she’d sent through the monster and across his armies. It had pushed him back, scattered his armies.

  But it hadn’t been enough.

  Not enough to break him. Not enough to close the door. Not enough. Not yet.

  Climbing painfully to her feet, she pushed against the Orobus’s smothering darkness, against this pulverizing weight he exerted, the force he was using to hold her down. To keep her down. Reaching out, her hand found something to brace against, to pull herself up. Rough. It was uneven. One of the stones. Beneath her palm, it began to vibrate, thrumming with what sounded like…

  The melody. Her father’s song of a lifetime ago.

  It rippled through her veins, twining with the iron in her blood, lifting the magic, throwing off the Orobus as if he were nothing. Nothing at all but smoke on the wind.

  Rising, her blood-smeared palm flattened against the stone, Sydney hurled her magic toward the door, even as another one opened, one huge, dark form tumbling out, followed by another. Something she’d never imagined in the worst of her dreams—two scaled, clawed creatures, too horrible to behold. And in the doorway, more waited. Her magic hit the door and it faded away, then grew wider again, as the Orobus fed its own magic into it, holding it open, widening the entrance, and more creatures emerged.

  “No, no, no,” Sydney groaned, blood dripping off her chin. Another surge of her power and the doorway shuddered closed, snapping into nothingness, the stones now singing so loudly she couldn’t hear, couldn’t focus, couldn’t do anything except hang on, one hand outstretched, her magic pouring out in a steady stream, holding the door closed, the other flat against the dolmen, the song rippling through her as if she were a part of them.

  A whip of the Orobus’s power hit her, slamming her backwards, her hand breaking away from the stone, and just as quickly her power, the magic, all failed at once as darkness swallowed her up. Hitting the unforgiving ground, Sydney blinked away the spots swimming in her vision and pushed up.

  Crawling, she reached out a hand for the stones, but a boot flipped her over and away, and she was left staring up into Hel’s cold, deadly face, at the sneer twisting her red lips.

  “Give it up, you’re beaten.” Her delighted laugh infuriated Sydney to no end, but the foot pressed into her chest held her firm while she struggled to breathe. “You don’t have the power to shut the gate, not with him keeping it open.”

  Beside her, Mir crawled closer, his hand finding hers.

  “No, I don’t,” she admitted, staring up at Hel, her back flattened to the ground. As her sticky, bloodied hand tightened against Mir’s, and she felt the boiling power of his magic meeting hers, she grinned. “But together, the two of us do.”

  She’d read of such a thing.

  Heard of witches harvesting another’s power. Never heard of it being given up or shared or channeled. But the way Mir’s magic felt as it twined with hers? It was a dance. Something older than time, something meant to be. It felt right. This wasn’t thievery at all. Through the roar of the Orobus’s power, the crushing pressure of Hel’s boot on her chest, the impossible stupid odds, a hint of the music echoed. Faint as a single piano note, it started out small and simple. But it resonated. Coupled with Mir’s magic, the two combined, grew. And rose.

  A font of magic spiraled to the clouds. A beam of white light. Because her magic had never been black. It had been white, and it had been hers all along.

  Hel flew back, such a look of surprise on her face, Sydney might have laughed had she been able to. But as the magic tore from her, slashing the Orobus’s darkness to shreds, slamming the doors in the stone circle shut, the deafening impact of them closing, proof her magic and the stones’ song were made for each other, Sydney could only hold on to Mir. Her bones groaned as she forced the magic through the stones, sealing the doors to the worlds with a boom, all the worlds, so tightly shut no one would ever get them open again.

  Chapter 43

  The roar made him pause.

  Dragging his knife across the neck of an elf, Tyr looked up just in time to watch a bolt of lightning illuminate the circle. Along with the roiling cloud of blackness encompassing it. Squinting, he watched it flash again, then like a steady beam, flare up and into the clouds.

  Not lightening then. Magic.

  “Get your ass in gear, we’ve got to get to the circle,” Tyr screamed over the din to Balder, who pulled Loki up by the back of his coat, half-towing him over, through the broken and now-fleeing ranks of elves. “Did you see that? That’s Mir’s magic. He’s in trouble.”

  “It’s more than that.” Loki gasped, pointing as the beam unfurled, cutting the black cloud apart, shooting straight up into the heavens.

  “Shit.” Balder slid in beside him, the three of them pinned down now, the elves a mass of pounding feet and knives, ready to cut down whatever was in their path as they fled from the roaring darkness and light. “What’re they running from?”

  Tyr risked a glance over the half-collapsed wall they were squatti
ng behind. “That.”

  Intermittent shafts of light pierced the darkness, along with a pounding roar that echoed across the lake, its booming reverberating off the water, echoing back tenfold, drumming against their ears. Whatever was happening inside that cloud, whatever immense displays of energy, it was hard to imagine anyone or anything ever walking out.

  Tyr caught Loki’s eyes and saw he was thinking the same.

  Especially not anything human.

  “We’ve got to fucking get in there, whatever it is…”

  A pounding that wasn’t coming from the circle or the lake, one Tyr felt through his knees where they rested on the ground, made him look. Loki did a quick look-see too. “What in the holy fuck are those?” Tyr raised his head slowly.

  They were nothing he’d ever seen before, not on any planet, not in any war. Huge, scaled, clawed, and fanged, they lumbered out of the dark, swiping elves out of their way, decapitating and shredding them, as if they were blades of grass. He ducked down, pressed his back tightly against the brick and calculated the odds. Not good.

  Six. He counted six of them. Two apiece and he, for one, was out of ammo.

  Another quick, furtive scan and three had broken from the pack and were headed straight to their position, heads high, noses questing the air. “Ammo?” he asked Loki hopefully.

  “Nada. Still have both of my knives, though.” A quick glance backwards and his eyes hardened. “Shit ton of good that’s going to do me. Seriously, what the fuck are those?”

  “Something the Orobus made. Let’s hope there aren’t as many of these as there are elves, or we’re screwed,” Tyr noted calmly, double-checking his weaponry, Balder doing the same. The golden god seemed unruffled, but spending an eternity as a ghost tended to make one pretty indifferent to things like impending death.