The Banished Gods Series
continues with The Lovers
Keep reading to find out what happens next….
The Lovers
Chapter One/The Thief
Once in a while, Lilly Domenic admitted, it might be nice to catch a break.
Take today for instance. Sure, she might have it made, living up on the tenth floor of the Hyatt Regency, in a luxury suite that she could barely have afforded, before the end of the world.
But now she had a whole place to herself. A commanding view, such that it was, of the entire, burning city, a stash food, enough to last her for a week, and heaps of designer clothes from the very best shops along Michigan Ave.
She glanced around the spacious, if cluttered room. In a lot of ways, the end of the world had been the best damn thing to ever happen to her.
For one thing, it wiped her slate clean. Gambling debts. Markers. Police records. FBI files. Every little checkmark she had in the red column was wiped away when the city fell. But she would have traded all those debts, her entire criminal history, in fact, for what she was facing right now.
Pulling the note out, she read it again, as if the words might have changed in the last five minutes. As if she might have a choice.
There were things you could choose in life. Like good and evil.
Then, there were the things you couldn’t.
Like family.
“Damn it, David. Why do you have to be my brother?”
Lilly read through the note again one more time before carefully tucking it into the Burberry backpack. Taking one last, regretful look around she locked the door behind her.
She might be back.
You just never know.
The Lovers
Chapter Two/The Playboy
“You’re almost home free.”
Freyr moved quickly through the steel girders of the bridge. The others were already across the river, clearing the far shore of enemies. A necessary job. But rounding up Grim, these oily little demons infesting the city, was like trying to hit a moving target. Or herd cats. Or one of those meaningless human euphemisms.
“All clear on this side.” Loki’s voice pinged in Freyr’s earpiece as a huge, lupine shape loped around the huge building looming on the far shore of the river. Fenrir was impatient to get this night over with, and rightly so. Celine was getting rounder by the day and showing no signs of slowing down. Eager not to be left behind, she insisted on helping. Tonight, she was staged as a lookout, up on the Renaissance Hotel balcony, with Loki as her baby sitter.
But she should be home. Hell, they should all be home.
Freyr watched while Fen transformed into a long, low shadow slipping around the Merchandise Mart for one final recon. The river was clogged with ice, and freezing water lapped at Freyr’s boots. Lifting the binocs and scanning the façade of the enormous building, Freyr thanked the gods for Hunter’s little scouting trip a month ago. It revealed the Mart as a massive staging area for Hel’s minions, the building holding thousands of her Grim.
Tonight, they were burning it all to the ground.
Figuratively as well as literally.
Static cut through the incoming reports. “All clear on the north end, charges in place.” “West looks good to go.” “All of mine are set.” “Ten charges along the east wall.” “Four charges on the northeast corner, boss.” Freyr would be glad when tonight was over and done. Four short months ago, their plan was to preserve mankind and everything they’d built on this world. Now if they could save Earth before the Orobus eradicated the whole godsdamned planet, he’d look at it as a win-win.
“Let me know when everybody’s clear.” Freyr muttered into the con, watching a trio of dark forms jog away from the immense building, bursts of light indicating small arms fire as the gods took out pursuing Grim. Hel’s sharp-taloned minions didn’t go down without one hell of a fight, no pun intended, and he watched everyone make their way across the bridge.
All except for one.
“Where is the damn wolf?”
When he got only static, Frey cursed. “I said. Where the fuck is the wolf?” Two of the shadows paused, then started back across the bridge. “No, no, hold up. He’ll be here. Loki, tell me what you see from up there.” He felt the pause as a heavy, suffocating pressure in his chest. The responsibility strangling the life right out of him.
“No sign of Fenrir.” Celine’s voice came through flat and even, as if the electronics sucked out all emotion. “But he’ll get clear. Just give him another minute.”
Freyr gave him two. And then three. Thor’s voice, even though a whisper, might as well have screamed in his ear. “You’ve got to call it, boss. What do you want to do?”
“One more minute, damn it.”
“Here he comes.” Celine’s voice, even with the metallic tinge through the con, held a distinct note of relief. “But damn it…he’s got…oh my God, Freyr, you’ve got to help him…”
The wolf was galloping, dragging a full contingent of Hel’s demons behind him, a hundred or more of the little bastards, and as they scrambled behind him like the little oily spiders they were, they were gaining.
Freyr outted his knives.
Yelling into the con, he hoped Loki could hear him above the claws scratching on the metal bridge. “Hit it, Loki, burn the motherfucker down. Now. Right now.” None of them knew how powerful those charges were, but the military installation they’d taken them from had had enough posted warnings that even Loki must have hesitated before depressing that trigger.
As the whole of the northern bank of the Chicago River erupted into a wall of white flame, and Freyr was thrown on his back into the mud, he wondered for a moment if they needed quite so much firepower detonations.
Then, as the first wave of Grim hit him, he forgot everything except how to stay alive.
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Death's Daughter Page 27
