The Tower

by L. A. McGinnis

Two knives. One gun. Nine bullets.

  She bulldozed through the door, making every shot count. Every slice of those knives severed an artery until Gabriella stood in a pool of blood, where no amount of bleach was going to cover the smell, surrounded by the bodies of five guards. The four gods stared right back.

  “They’ve got us cuffed. Some kind of magic’s preventing us from breaking them… The Orobus’s magic must be infused into them.”

  “Keys?” she asked hopefully.

  “That one,” Balder said, a slice of his head toward the guard closest to the door. “In his shirt pocket, left side.” She found it, the material freezing cold and not resembling any key she’d ever seen, but it slid into the small hole and the cuffs unclicked, one by one, leaving terrible, dark red welts around their wrists. Balder’s side was stained with blood, his face a mask of pain.

  “We’ve got a minute to get out of here before this whole place goes to shit,” she warned.

  She was proud the words came out so calmly, when she wanted to scream. She felt a bead of sweat slide down her face. Or maybe it was blood. “Chop chop. I’m telling you, we’ve got to get out of here.”

  Her instincts, already on high alert, roared to life as something approached. It wasn’t footsteps, so much, nor voices, rather, it was a preternatural stillness, made up of shadows and cold and that feeling again, as the life was sucked right out of her.

  Gabriella swayed on her feet, the room spinning in circles while she collapsed, her knees hitting the floor hard, her hands splattering into the blood, slipping and sliding in a grisly, scrambling dance as she tried to keep herself out of that glossy, crimson puddle.

  And then the whole world smelled of brimstone and rot.

  “Somebody pick her up.” Odin’s voice sounded like it came from so far away. Gabriella shook, her very bones grinding as she was lifted, then pressed against something warm. Balder, she smelled Balder over the stench of rot. “He’s almost reached us. I’ve got a little left in me… I can hold him off, maybe long enough for the four of you to get away…”

  That was when she felt it. The same thing she’d felt at the Tower, weeks ago.

  From the way Odin’s voice had faded away, from the absolute stillness in the room, she knew they’d all felt it too. Whatever power Ava had inside of her, whatever this behemoth was she held inside of herself, she’d just released it, and it roared around them, through them, thundering inside of her bones, her veins, her heart, her head, until she thought she’d burst apart.

  And whoever held her was running, the roaring in her ears growing louder. And Gabriella swore, through the cataclysm that was being unleashed upon them, she heard Ava laughing.

  And with this final, last thought, the light glimmered and died.

  35

  “We’re getting out of here.”

  Balder pinned Gabriella tightly to himself, while fighting his way down the hall though the stench of violently retching mortals. Whatever power the Orobus and Ava had inside of them didn’t play well with humans. The air around them boiled with inky blackness, stealing his vision, but the four of them battled through it, fighting for a dim rectangle of light at the end of the hall. The courtyard where there was air. And vehicles. And a chance for escape.

  Wave upon wave of Ava’s power washed over him, and Gabriella arched and shuddered in his arms. “Hang on, only a few more feet, we’re almost there.” The sunlight was practically touching them, and finally he stumbled out into it, went to his knees, practically blind after all that darkness. Gabriella jerked in his arms, her face so white he could see the blue veins beneath her olive skin.

  Balder cradled her head in his hands, “Come on, wake up, Gabbie, wake up for me.” She moaned, and when he checked her eyes, they were dilated and unfocused. Empty.

  “Pick her up and bring her,” Odin snarled, limping past. “Where in the hell is the car? Lead me to the damn car, and then somebody drive us out of here.” Balder picked up Gabriella and followed behind him, while Loki and Thor found an SUV with keys, yelled for them to get in.

  Odin must have felt Ava, Balder realized.

  Sensed her and knew what this meant. Her power felt cataclysmic. As if she were melting the world down into nothing. Whatever she’d become, it was twin to the Orobus. And her magic? Ancient. Every bit as powerful as the Orobus. Equals. Balder’s stomach dropped at the sheer impossibility of what they were now up against. Gabbie stirred in his arms, moaned. He stroked her face and met her frightened gaze.

  “I’m sorry,” Was all she managed before arguing erupted up front.

  “We go back, right? We go back and get her?”

  “We go back and what? Nothing we’ve tried has worked so far. Nothing. This is for shit. The stones don’t work. This asshole can’t be killed, and now Ava’s gone over to his side. We are totally screwed.” Loki growled. He turned around and looked at Odin. “Tell us what we should do—since you can see the future and everything?”

  Gabbie answered for him, her voice weak, “She hasn’t gone over to him. Not yet. Not before what happened today, when she helped cover our escape.”

  Balder watched Odin go perfectly still. “You can’t know that for sure,” he said carefully.

  Her voice was so rough and gravelly, he could barely understand her. “Because Ava told me. She said to tell you she was still in control. She was still herself. And that she was going to see this thing through until the end.”

  Odin stilled when Gabbie’s words hit him. His face went even paler as Gabriella delivered the next, worst part of Ava’s message. “She’s going to stay, Odin. Stay until the end of this. And there was nothing I could have said to change her mind.”

  But it was Balder’s eyes she held as she offered, “I’m so sorry.”

  The rest of the ride was quiet. No more talk about who was at fault and what worked and what didn’t. Gabbie was curled up in his lap, bloody but quiet. They’d all gotten away, all except Ava. Who had chosen to stay. And that power of hers…

  “Did she say anything else, Gabbie?”

  “She’s been to some of the other realms. Domenic has resources there, she said. Those creatures we killed? That’s where he created them. Ava said he brought sixty of them here. Using the stones.” Gabriella paused, thinking. “We only counted fifty-six corpses that day. Plus, the one behind the house. That leaves three on the loose.”

  “Anything else?” Balder knew the Orobus had been preparing for this for eons, positioning himself, waiting, setting the trap until it was ready to spring, the jaws about to close around their necks. Watching fear bloom in her eyes, he urged, “Tell us the rest, Gabbie.”

  “There’s else something coming for us. Dark Elves. She said he opened one of the gates and let them come in. They should be outside the city limits by now. But they only come out at night.” Balder measured the sun in the sky. A couple of hours left of daylight.

  “What else?” He picked up a tear, tracing its way down the blood on her face. “Tell us the rest, Gabbie, you have to say it.”

  “There’s a place, here on earth, where the Orobus’s power comes from. She didn’t know where it was, only that it exists. And when he takes her there”—she squeezed her eyes shut—“she’s planning to go up against him. And she’ll try to kill him.”

  Balder risked a glance at Odin, his face set in stone, his body rigid. It was terror radiating off him. Terror for Ava, for all of them. Because if what they’d felt back there was a sample of her power—if she ever unleashed it completely—in anger or in vengeance? And the Orobus retaliated in kind? They’d split the world apart. Having no answers, he reached out and squeezed Odin’s shoulder in solidarity, every piece of him feeling the god’s helplessness.

  Balder took Gabriella to bed. He washed her and dressed her and tucked her in and now was curled around her, watching her sleep. Hoping whatever she saw in her dreams wasn’t as bad as today had been. Nor her wicked past.

  What she’d hoped to accomplish in facing the Or
obus, he didn’t know. Part of him didn’t want to know, because knowing would show him the very depths of her soul, and he wasn’t ready to find out how far down that went.

  He stroked her cheek, clean and smoothed out in sleep, and she sighed, turning into his touch.

  But whatever she had planned, it had been for them. Maybe to buy them another month or week, or minute, but it had been for them. And for that, he was grateful. His heart was raw, but he was grateful—and partly in awe—that anyone could go into such a viper’s den and come out alive.

  But Gabriella had. And he stroked her face again, reluctant to leave her, unable to stop touching her. Not wanting to stop.

  But the voices downstairs grew demandingly louder, and when she tossed and turned, he frowned, then covered her up, and went to see what in the name of the gods they were yelling about.

  Everything, as it turned out.

  “Ava claimed the Orobus has some secret haven here on Earth, yet you don’t know where it is?” Mir side-eyed Sydney, suspicion dripping from every single word.

  “Ava doesn’t know where it is,” Odin clarified. “Or she would have told Gabriella.”

  Mir chuckled. “So you say. My guess is, Ava’s playing us. All of us.” He looked straight at Odin, who stared back with those jarringly vacant eyes. “Doesn’t matter what you think, or know, she can’t be trusted right now, not with…”

  “Shut your mouth, you asshole.” Odin’s voice trembled slightly. “Like I said, if she knew, she would have said. And Ava didn’t—which means she doesn’t know.”

  Balder wedged himself between the two of them and answered with a steadiness that had seen him through the centuries. “I, for one, believe her. Ava gave Gabriella a rundown of everything else. The creatures, the elves…everything. She helped us get away. Why lie about this?” He met everyone’s eyes. “And besides, we’ve got real problems, here at home. Three of those creatures are still running around, still on the hunt, probably somewhere close. The Dark Elves are closing in on our position, what plan do we have in place for that?” He whirled on Mir. “Focus. We’ve got quantifiable threats. Let’s deal with them first.”

  Rubbing the back of his neck, Mir shot Odin an apologetic look and backed down. “Okay, you’re right. We focus on the intel Gabriella brought back. We work up a plan for dealing with these potential threats. Freyr, you and Fen had better scope out the perimeter.”

  “They’ll come from the southeast, most likely,” Balder pointed out. “Any word if the girls and Vali reached the house in Wisconsin? They should have been there by now if that storm missed them.”

  “Not yet.” Fen rose and grabbed a com unit. “But I’ll try again. My guess is, the storm’s interfering with the signal.” But his shoulders were tense as he depressed the button, speaking quietly as he walked away.

  Balder turned his attention to Odin, studying their old king, who sat motionless, as if lost in thought. Or just lost. He opened his mouth, intending to offer some kind of condolence, when Odin murmured, “I can’t leave Ava with him, Balder. This can’t be the way things end for her.”

  “She made her choice, Odin.” As soon as the words came out of his mouth, Odin’s body jerked, and he regretted the words, even though they were the truth. “Gabriella was pretty clear. This is what Ava wants to do.” Balder reminded Odin, “She’s close to Domenic and might be our best shot.”

  “She’s making another mistake, is what she’s doing,” Odin snarled back, arms braced on the table.

  Almost off-hand, Balder queried, “If you could stop her, would you?” Wondering out loud, he continued, “What if we located this place? Would you stop her?”

  “Of course, I would stop her. In a heartbeat.”

  Suddenly Balder realized that maybe Ava’s path hadn’t diverged from theirs at all.

  “At the moment, the Orobus is a huge blind spot for me. Maybe if I had my powers back…” Brushing back his white hair, Odin turned empty eyes to the ceiling, as if he could see into the heavens. “But I don’t. And this…nexus of power is hidden from me.”

  “Sydney has a theory,” Balder offered, nodding faintly, even though he figured Odin couldn’t see him. Or maybe he could, who knew? “You’ve been gone a while, but there have been developments. We’ve put together bits and pieces these past few months. And Syd and Mir have a couple possible locations. Of a secondary site.”

  “Where?” Odin’s voice was hoarse with hope.

  “To be clear,” Mir muttered, “we haven’t narrowed anything down. With the satellites disabled, we’ve been relying on outdated intel, and since we’ve had a hard time doing the necessary research…”

  “Not exactly true,” Sydney sounded excited as she elbowed Mir out of the way. “There’s only one likely place. I’m sure of it, even though I thought it was too remote. But I was wrong. I wasn’t thinking like the Orobus.”

  Sydney grinned. “If I had a well spring of power, a hidden nexus to draw all my energy from?” Her smile turned knowing. “I’d want an island in the middle of nowhere—hard to reach—easy to defend.”

  She pointed to the map. “To hide the source of your power? This place is absolutely perfect.”

  36

  David Domenic stalked the halls of his mansion with all the rage he could muster. Which was considerable, since he was the world’s most powerful entity.

  The problem was, the focus of all his rage couldn’t care less.

  And he didn’t know what to make of that. Ava’s indifference simply amped up the anger. The frustration.

  The…everything.

  The faint sound of pages turning in the room next to him had him pausing. She was in there. Sitting, probably. Reading, most likely. And the thought of facing her scared him more than anything else. Not her, not exactly. But her complete disinterest in him. Those cool, dark eyes, which dismissed him, the second they landed on his body.

  Not like Helena at all. Oh no, Helena made sure to fuss and simper, cater to his every need. Bat her eyes at him and smile. Laugh at his jokes, which, admittedly, were few and far between.

  But Ava? His gut crawled.

  She looked at him as if he didn’t even matter.

  So instead of heading into the small room, he headed outside.

  Where the lake and the shoreline met in an endless stretch of white, where sleet sliced into him with icy, angry needles, where he didn’t have to think about or dwell on Ava and how inconsequential he felt when he was around her. And yet, this was all he did.

  Pondering her, pondering the possibilities, he let himself expand, growing out and out and outwards, encompassing everything and nothing, sensing the utter fragility of the shell that contained him.

  He wanted to roam.

  Not on this world, nor on any of the others, but…somewhere.

  Something he’d once heard rang in his distant memory. The words rushed back to him. “What good is it to rule, if you have no one to rule over?”

  Which was the question he had been wrestling with, without even knowing he’d been doing it.

  Solitude catapulted him onto this path. What forced him to touch the stones, the souls, the worlds, to lay his finger to the physical? His solitude had been the nexus of everything. Now, though, he sensed the undeniable attraction he felt for Ava. The mirror of power she carried inside her. And he paused.

  Maybe it was good to have another. Maybe he did need to rule, after all.

  Even if you only ruled over one person.

  He pulled back into his shell, feeling the restless energy settle and sort, layering back onto itself until he felt some semblance of himself inside this fleshy cage.

  Walking inside, he threw open the door and strode down the hallway to find Ava. She was, as she usually was, curled up in a corner, reading. Oddly, it seemed to be something she actually enjoyed. For a moment, he observed. There was always a quiet intensity to her, as if every muscle was tensed against something, fighting something. When she raised her face to meet his, it was he
who blinked first.

  “David. You surprised me. I thought you’d be working all day. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  As always, it took him a second to run the vernacular through his synapsis, as if he were translating code or directions. And he was never precisely sure of meaning, nor of intent, only an approximation of each. The subtlety of true feelings, it seemed, were somehow out of his reach.

  For now.

  “I would like to take you somewhere else. A different tour, this time.”

  “We just got back.” She stretched, and his eyes followed every single nuance of that stretch carefully. “But sure, I’m game. Where do you want to go?”

  “I believe France is what you people call this place. An island, in the middle of the sea. You will enjoy it.”

  Those dark eyes of hers narrowed, and he felt something ripple off her. Anger? Resentment? Hatred? Whatever this was, he drank it in.

  “You want to be very careful telling me what I like and don’t like.” She purred, while the sensation increased and he felt a dizzying wave from inside of himself. “First, tell me what exactly this place is, and why you want to take me there.”

  David frowned. Hel never questioned him like this. Never. She shopped and chattered and fucked and did all the things she’d done, and he’d enjoyed most of it until she’d tried to manipulate him and impede his plans and then he’d had to stop her. But somehow, his dark power rose up inside, unfurled, the dripping maw of an ancient beast questing for a scent. And then he felt it—the tug. The barest whisper. A physical sensation that stretched from his head down between his legs. Something inside him cracked open, then plunged down and down, diving so fast and so deep, the ripples of it radiating to the outside of his very being, so that for a moment, all he could do was…feel.

  And the sensation was glorious.

  “David?” Ava unfurled herself from the couch, came and laid a hand on his cheek, then drew it around the back of his neck, the touch featherlight. As if in answer, something, a dark snake of feeling uncoiled inside him and answered right back. Tendrils of his darkness reached for her, wound around her, embraced her.