Prince of Blood and Thunder_An Urban Fantasy Novel

by J. A. Cipriano

  “Yeah.” I grinned at him like a dumbass despite myself. Just seeing him made me feel better, and that was very, very sad. I mean, okay I had feelings for the big lug, but I shouldn’t have felt this much relief just by being in his presence. I was a strong independent woman, dammit. “You?”

  “I’m grrrrreat,” he replied, growling the R like he was Tony the Tiger, which seemed a little dorky, but I let him have it, anyway. “Your brother figured out a way to beat Alabaster.”

  “He did?” I asked, looking past Justin to find my brother still bowed.

  “Well, this is where I take my leave,” Merlin said, moving his gaze from me to my brother before letting it settle onto Justin. “Whatever you all have planned seems suspiciously like work, and I’ll have no part of it.” He smiled at me, revealing a mouthful of teeth I’d rather not have seen. “And don’t forget you’re to be punished for your failure as a mage. It’s like Lancelot and Guinevere. It will happen.”

  Before I could rightly respond, he vanished so suddenly and completely it was like he’d never been there to begin with.

  “Well, fuck him!” Justin growled, moving past me to look at the spot where the high and mighty Merlin had stood. “That prick.”

  “Merlin is a weird cat,” my brother said, shaking his head. “Him and Morgan don’t do well with normal people.” He made the sign for “crazy” with his finger. “Trust me when I say this. Don’t follow either of their twitters.”

  “Are you for real right now?” I asked, looking at him and trying to discern if he was lying. He didn’t seem to be, but he had to be because this was way too fucked up to possibly be real.

  “Yeah,” Gordon said with a shrug. “And yeah, I think we can beat Alabaster if Justin goes in front of the wolf’s council and challenges him for supremacy.”

  “He needs Hands of Power to do that though,” I glanced at Justin. “Or has something changed in the last twenty minutes I’m aware of.”

  “Nothing has changed,” Justin replied giving me a knowing look. Great, so he still didn’t have power and his dad was still breathing. Joy of joys.

  “What do you mean? Everything’s changed,” Gordon said, getting that giddy over-excited tone to his voice like he’d had when we were kids right before he let loose with a diatribe about Doctor Who or Back to the Future. And here’s where I let you in on a little secret. I haven’t actually seen Back to the Future.

  Justin opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, Gordon bowled right over him with his words. “See, Justin doesn’t actually need Hands of Power. While you two were communing with the wolf god, I went to the oracle. She told me Justin will not gain the same Hands as his father. Instead of controlling the Hands of Cold and Dark he will gain the Hands of Blood and Thunder. So I had a blood mage whip up some blood charms that should do the trick to fake that one. Now he just needs lightning power, and you can give it to him, Annie.”

  “Firstly, I don’t think that will work and secondly, how the hell do you expect me to give him lightning?” I asked. The look on my face must have perfectly explained how insane I thought my brother was because he smiled broadly and pulled something from behind his back.

  Then I decked him. Hard.

  As his head snapped backward, Mjolnir fell from his hand and struck the ground between us.

  “How dare you bring that here!?” I snapped, my eyes fixed upon the ancient weapon. It wasn’t the real hammer. No, it was just a Toys R Us knock off from the Avengers’ movie, but still. It’d work if I picked it up.

  Only, I couldn’t do it, and he knew that. I’d tried for months to get it to work when we were kids, but every single time I empowered the weapon, it fell to the ground and refused to budge because I wasn’t worthy. And yeah. It wasn’t months. It was years. There was nothing quite like knowing without a shadow of a doubt that you were not worthy to wield Thor’s power. Fuck that hammer and the Norse God who rode in on it. Thor was so the worst Avenger.

  “I cannot believe you would even suggest I try that again!” I growled still glaring at him as he rubbed his cheek and stood up so he loomed over me even though he wasn’t being particularly loomy. Justin stood off to the side, openmouthed with eyes darting between us like a kid watching his parents fight.

  “If you succeeded, you could give it to Justin and transfer Thor’s power to him.” Gordon smirked. “With the power of Thor at his disposal, he could mop the floor with old pink eyes.”

  “I can’t do it.” I shook my head and turned away from them because I knew this wouldn’t work. I couldn’t make Thor’s hammer give up its secret. Oh, sure, I could turn it real, but once I did, it’d become the world’s most useless paperweight. The only way that’d be useful was if I held it off the edge of a skyscraper and turned it on. Then it might fall and hurt someone, but then again, so would a penny, and they were a hundred for a buck.

  “I feel like you may have neglected to tell me something,” Justin said, and the wariness in his voice was obvious as he glanced from Gordon to me. “What’s the big deal, exactly?”

  “You’ve read the comics, right?” I asked, glaring at the hammer. “That whole worthiness thing is a real thing. Watch.” I walked over and grabbed the familiar hammer. As I held my nemesis out to Justin, I sent a small spark of power into the weapon. As green light filled Mjolnir, it came to life in my hands, and as that happened, it fell from my grip despite my best efforts to hold it.

  The weapon hit the ground with a resounding clang that rang through the hall and dented the floor.

  “Go on, pick it up.” I put my hands on my hips and looked at him. “Seriously. Go ahead and try.”

  “I feel like if I pick it up you’re going to hurt me,” Justin said, probably somewhat wisely because it was one hundred percent possible I would flip my lid if he succeeded in doing something I’d tried to do for years. I knew why I couldn’t do it. I was far too broken to manage it, and at the end of the day, I wasn’t noble. I was selfish and horrible. Mjolnir sort of frowned upon those things. I’d even spent time looking for a loophole, and by spent time, I mean I’d read all the comics, and let’s just say, most of them suck.

  “If you do it, I will strip down and do you right here in the hallway,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest and glaring at Thor’s hammer.

  “Well, with an offer like that…” Justin said, moving over to the gleaming hammer and staring down at its leather-wrapped handle. Then he reached down and gripped it with one hand and pulled.

  The muscles in his arm corded as he strained to lift it, and as he did, the fucking thing moved. It actually moved. Sparks began to zip off its surface as Justin pulled on the hammer. It didn’t come off the floor, but it definitely moved way more than it had for Captain America in The Age of Ultron, that’s for damned sure.

  My mouth fell open, and as it did, my brother turned his back on us. “I’m gonna go find a coffee. Seems you two might need some alone time.” I glared at his retreating back as Justin struggled to lift the hammer. Sparks of electricity leapt across his fingers and all I could think was that it wasn’t fair. I was the one who had tried to lift the hammer. I was the orphan. The one who had fought through trial and tribulation.

  He was just a billionaire playboy. He was the first and only son of a powerful king. A prince destined to inherit…

  Oh my god.

  He was like the werewolf version of Thor.

  I shut my eyes and swallowed.

  “You can do it,” I whispered, and as I said the words, lightning cracked in the distance and thunder roared.

  “What the fuck?” Justin said, and my eyes snapped open to see him standing there covered in a sheen of sweat. Only he wasn’t holding the hammer. Instead he was staring out the window, and as I turned to look, I saw an entire army of werewolves appear just outside the dome clad in Navy Seal esque scuba gear. I wasn’t sure how they got there, but they were there all the same.

  Alabaster was in the lead, dressed like a white knight crossed with a
Navy Seal, and as he reached out toward the dome, I couldn’t help but think the cape was overkill.

  The dome parted around his touch, opening to allow him passage. Only that shouldn’t have been possible unless someone let him in.

  But why the fuck would someone let Alabaster into Atlantis?

  21

  “The tornado!” I cried, turning toward Justin as I pulled my power back from Mjolnir, reducing it to a plastic toy any kid could lift.

  “What about it?” Justin asked as I grabbed the hammer and slung it over my shoulder.

  “It had to come from inside the city. That’s the only way someone could summon it inside.” I pointed at the dome. “That would have kept it out otherwise.”

  “Okay. You find the traitor, I’ll take care of numb nuts.” Justin was too busy watching an army of werewolves pour through the hole in the dome to give me much of his attention. I wasn’t sure what the mages were going to do, but I instantly knew what he was going to do. He was going to charge Alabaster like a goddamned fool. It was clear as night, and the moment he looked at me, I knew he was going to die trying. Only that wouldn’t help anyone.

  “You can’t stop him,” I said, grabbing his arm with the intention of never letting him go. If I did, he’d do some fool thing like try to save us all and get himself killed along the way. I wasn’t letting that happen.

  “And you probably can’t find the traitor,” he said, glancing at me. “But we both need to try. At the very least I can buy you time.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he silenced me with a kiss that took my breath away.

  I pulled him into me as I kissed hungrily at his lips, and as I did, something inside me clicked. I couldn’t have told you what it was, but I felt Justin’s power all around me. I smelled it in the air like oranges and pine trees. I felt it brush against my skin like soft fur. It was completely unlike anything I’d ever experienced, it quite literally took my breath away.

  My knees started to shake as we broke apart and he stared down at me with hooded eyes. A smirk crossed his lips. “When I get back, we’ll do more, okay?”

  He turned to go as I nodded dumbly at his back. I knew it was my line, but man oh man did I want him. Not because of who he was on the surface. Not because he was a billionaire or an actor I adored. Not even because he had a body that could rock my casbah.

  No. I wanted him because he knew he was going to die. Knew with absolute certainty that he couldn’t win, and he was going to try, anyway. He was going to face down the wolves, all of them, by himself, to save my people. To save me. No one had ever done anything like that for me.

  Unconsciously, I reached out toward him, and as my fingers brushed along his back, sparks of power danced across my fingers.

  Justin must have felt it because he turned and looked at me, and as he did, I held Mjolnir out to him, and as I did, I tied the heart of the weapon to him, so it’d draw off of him and not me.

  “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this,” I said, pushing the hammer of the gods into his hand. As his fingers closed around it, I pushed my magic into the weapon while praying he could hold it. Then I turned it on.

  The weapon drew on the power within Justin and flared to life in his hands causing electricity to arc in his golden hair. His blue eyes lit up like a storm, and he smiled at me like the goddamned Norse god he was. Mother fucker.

  “Thanks,” he said, smiling at me as he hefted the mighty Mjolnir and touched it to his forehead. “Fare thee well, maiden!” Then he spun on his heel and flew out the window in a way that made me jealous of him in a very real way.

  Now, this is where you’re wondering why Mjolnir didn’t suck my power dry, and that was simple. At least in theory. I’d turned it on, but I had tied it to him, so it wouldn’t draw any power from me. It was something I’d learned to do as a child. Sheev would often let us tie our objects to him so we could learn to use our powers without draining ourselves.

  To be fair, I’d never tried it on a non-animator before, let alone a werewolf as strong as Justin, but there was no reason it couldn’t work. Loophole, party of Justin.

  As I watched him sail toward the coming horde of werewolves, I wasn’t sure if he could beat Alabaster, even with the power of Thor, but I knew he was the only one that could buy time for the mages to try for a last hurrah. Granted, it wouldn’t do much if we still had that traitor running around fucking shit up from behind. I wasn’t sure who could call up a tornado, but I was willing to bet that wasn’t their only trick.

  My best play was to find the traitor before they capitalized on Alabaster being here. I gritted my teeth and shut my eyes and pretended I was a reader, just like back in Blair’s shop. I reached back into the recesses of my brain for when I’d used Madisyn’s card to negate the tornado.

  As the memory surfaced, I pushed through the webs of magic that spiraled out before me in my mind and found the interlinking webs of the tapestry of magic. I brought it to the forefront of my mind’s eye and began thumbing through them, searching for the tendrils of magic that connected the card’s spell to the tornado.

  After a few minutes I found a tenuous strand of power that ran to the tornado and followed it backward, unraveling it as it twisted through the myriad interconnected bits in my mind. It was like trying to pull a single thread from the world’s biggest ball of twine, but I managed despite a few snags.

  As I held it in my mental grasp, I confirmed the tornado had been summoned from within Atlantis, and by within Atlantis, I meant the command center behind it. The tornado had come from command, which was probably why it had been heading there. The caster had cast it outward and had been reeling it in.

  I took a deep breath and as I exhaled, I bound the strand of magic to me. It was a broken, trailing thing, whipping in the wind now that I’d negated the tornado, but I gripped it in my metaphysical hands and fed power into it.

  “Take me to your leader.” The line snapped taut at my whispered command, and I had half a second to think about how stupid I was before I was jerked violently off my feet and sent flying toward the window at the end of the hallway.

  I crashed through an open window a second and let me know I was double stupid because now I was plummeting to the earth. I fell the four feet to the ground, hit hard in the flowerbed, and was dragged shamelessly through the mud onto the concrete.

  As I tried to get my feet beneath me, my heels skidded along the concrete beneath me, and I nearly face-planted once again. Somehow I managed to relax my hold on the magic ribbon, and in doing so, slowed to a manageable speed. Overhead lightning cracked and storm clouds gathered which was ten kinds of crazy because we were underwater, but I was just going to go with it. What else was there to do? Deny what was right before my eyes because it didn’t fit my own narrative?

  Those clouds meant Justin must be doing his thing. Hopefully it would be enough. From what I’d felt of his innate strength, he had a nuclear reactor inside himself. I’d have been able to keep that hammer going for a minute on a good day following a twelve hour power nap and three pounds of nachos, but Justin could keep it up for a while. I just hoped it would be long enough. It didn’t seem fair, but then again, he was a werewolf, and they were basically made of magic.

  I reached the steps of the capitol building a moment later, and as my feet slid over the polished marble step, I saw someone standing upon the roof. The tendril of magic I’d gathered from the tornado arced upward toward the person. Shadow was wrapped around them, and power thrummed in the air. I wasn’t sure where the other mages were or what they were doing, but they obviously weren’t here. No, they’d either gone into hiding or moved to take on the wolves.

  The only thing we had going for us was that most of the wolves were still outside the barrier. It had to take a lot of magic to hold that thing open, and as it was, they were only coming in two or three at a time.

  A grin spread across my face as I released my hold on the tendril and reached for my lightsaber. It wasn’t there, and I had a hurried moment
where I realized I had virtually nothing I could use for a significant length of time. My phaser was gone. My lightsaber was broken, and I didn’t have near the juice to power up my Green Lantern ring.

  I fingered the ring anyway. It wouldn’t be much, but if I put it on, I’d be able to get up there at least. I could play it by ear then. Granted, it wasn’t the best plan, especially since I had no idea who I was dealing with, but well, it was something.

  “Annie!” my brother called as my grip tightened around the ring.

  “Gordon?” I asked, releasing the magic I’d called as I turned to see my brother rushing toward me.

  “I saw you take a long dive out the window.” He smirked. “I’m guessing by the light show that Justin just got a quickie.”

  “You are ten kinds of gross just for thinking about it,” I said, shaking my head at him as he stopped in front of me.

  “Whatever. I’d have tapped that ass the moment I saw it, and I’m not even gay.” Gordon jerked a thumb in the direction of the thunder and lightning. “So, why are you back here and not over there.”

  “That’s why,” I said, pointing at the figure above. “I traced the tornado back and found someone. That’s got to be who is holding the door open for the wolves.”

  As Gordon’s eyes followed my finger toward the figure above, he sucked in a breath. “I think you might be onto something,” he said, one hand sliding toward his Kylo Ren lightsaber as he shifted his eyes back to me.

  “Can you get us up there?” I asked as green animator power flowed out of him. His Iron Man boots came to life, turning from realistic plastic to space age metal in a heartbeat.

  “Why can’t you get up there yourself?” he asked, pulling his lightsaber free. He was already getting ready to blast off.

  “I’ve lost all my stuff and unlike you, I haven’t had a time to go home and get re-equipped.” As I said it, a blush crept across my face. “All I’ve got is the Green Lantern ring.”