Edge of Power

by Megan Crane

  “Is this what you had planned?” Athenian threw at Wulf, dismissing Indy as if he wasn’t there. “A few theatrics with some gutter bandit on tap? A little bit of darkness in a palace filled with servants to light it all over again?”

  “I can see how it didn’t bother you,” Wulf observed mildly enough. “Given how quickly you ran into the bowels of a mountain to hide.”

  Athenian shook himself as if he couldn’t believe anyone dared speak to him that way. Wulf wondered if anyone ever had.

  “Are you a king at all?” Athenian sneered at him. “Or is that what they call the dumbest and most dimwitted of the barbarian horde?”

  Wulf laughed while Eiryn and Riordan went stiff with outrage beside him.

  “It’s true,” Wulf agreed, in the same mild tone, still moving away from Indy and toward the other tunnel entrance that fed into this little, low-ceilinged room. “I’m not very bright. You saw through me from the start.”

  “You obviously can’t count, you piece of shit,” Athenian seethed. “Or you’d know you’re in no position to be waving that blade around. Much less dare to raise it against me. That’s a hanging offense, but for you, I have something far more painful planned.” He snapped his fingers at his men. “Take them. All of them. Kill them, take their heads, and put them on spikes at the gate. I want there to be no more tales of raiders in the western highlands. No more whispers of glorious raids. They can be known far and wide as the cowards they are.”

  That was bad enough. Wulf heard both of his brothers growl, and wondered if the guards knew how Athenian had doomed them. Nobody called a raider a coward without payment in blood. Nobody.

  But Athenian wasn’t done.

  “And cut off that bastard’s legs,” he said in that oily, vicious voice of his, his evil gaze all over Wulf like a particularly unpleasant touch. “And that peasant cock he shoved in my daughter. Then leave him on the plaza to die. I want him to suffer for days.”

  “That sounds fun,” Wulf replied. He raised his eyebrows at the nearest guard. “You’re not going to shoot that thing in here, are you, dumbass?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Because it will ricochet,” Wulf continued, “and kill you all, which, I have to tell you, would save me the trouble of having to do it myself.”

  And Wulf kept moving counterclockwise, so when the guards attacked, he could let them beat him back into the other tunnel that fed in behind them. And the guards might have been dumbasses, but they weren’t suicidal. They threw down their guns and pulled out standard-issue blades, a little too big and unwieldy for most of them.

  That was what you got if you didn’t train with a blade that suited you, Wulf thought as he took down the first fucker who came at him. That was the first thing he’d ever learned, from his own giant dick of a father.

  Don’t wave around a weapon you can’t control, Amos had growled at him as he’d slapped a much-too-big blade from Wulf’s grip, spraining his wrist with the blow.

  Wulf had been about three. He was a lot older now, and his blade was a part of him.

  Athenian’s guards kept coming.

  The three raiders fought, watching through the press of bodies and steel and shouts of pain and fury for Indy to make it around to the far side of the chamber, then nimbly pull himself up that ladder at the back.

  “I’m about ready for this to be a whole lot more fun,” Riordan muttered from Wulf’s right as Indy’s feet disappeared from view.

  “You and me both,” Wulf agreed as Eiryn blocked a hard cut from the side and then jabbed back, her wicked blade so fast she cut two other guards down before the initial guard finished staggering back.

  Wulf whistled again, long and hard, and this was the key moment. They’d all made a lot of plans and gone over a thousand scenarios and backup options, but this was the moment that mattered.

  For a moment, there was nothing.

  And Wulf was already shifting, thinking about how to draw N’kosi and his men in and approach this shit with maybe a little more grit than expected—

  But that was when he heard it.

  It was a roar, deep and wild, and the thunder of fifteen pairs of raider feet that were making zero attempt to keep themselves quiet.

  It was his brothers, charging up from behind. His brothers who had hurled themselves down one of the so-called impassable cliffs on a rope when the lights were cut, then hauled ass through the palace to get here. Just for this.

  And Wulf heard N’kosi bellow an order from the tunnel on the right, bringing his men into the mix.

  “It’s the equinox, motherfuckers!” Tyr roared as he came running, every inch of him the clan’s war chief hell bent on destruction, his blade raised high above his head and sheer, sweet mayhem stamped on his face. “Let’s party!”

  16.

  The thing about bullies was that they always fell easily.

  Athenian was no different.

  With the raider brothers charging from the right and N’kosi and his guards from the left, the real battle was over almost before it began. Not helped by the fact the remaining guards protecting the king took one look at N’kosi and folded a little too quickly.

  “I don’t think you’re trying,” Tyr boomed at one of the guards in front of Athenian, after the little pissant actually sat down rather than face the war chief head to head. He glared at the king. “I don’t think they like you, friend.”

  “This is disappointing,” Wulf said mildly when it was over. When N’kosi’s men had rounded up what guards remained and there was only King Athenian wedged in the corner between the ladder and the blue door. And his raider brothers standing around, complaining about the boredom of it all, the way they liked to do. “After all those truly creative threats, I have to say I was expecting a little more fight. No one even attempted to go for my dick. I’m devastated.”

  Athenian had snagged an Uzi from one of his guards and held it to his chest, his chin trembling with the force of his outrage. Something that might have been intimidating if he’d had the slightest idea how to handle it.

  “You dare to betray me,” he snarled at N’kosi, brandishing the weapon. “My own blood.”

  “You killed my mother and tortured my sister,” N’kosi threw right back at him, moving to stand next to Wulf, in case the fact he’d come in swinging from behind had failed to deliver his message. “The only thing I want from your blood is to spill it into the earth.”

  “Feel free to handle this as a family matter,” Wulf said idly, nodding at the king, who looked feral there, crouched against the wall. “I only ask that you make absolutely certain it’s handled. No ghost uprisings.”

  N’kosi shook his head. “I want no part of this. His death is nothing to me but an extermination.” He looked away from his father then, and met Wulf’s gaze. “If your goal in this was to take over this kingdom, I pledge myself to you.” If he heard his father’s bellow of rage, he ignored it. “Happily.”

  “I already have a kingdom,” Wulf replied after a moment. “I don’t need yours.” He shifted his attention back to Athenian. “I told you from the start, I came here to negotiate.”

  “Fuck you and your negotiation!” Athenian shouted, and pointed the Uzi like he meant to shoot it.

  Nothing happened, and Wulf sighed. Then he nodded at Tyr, who waded through the bodies on the ground until he reached the king. He kicked the Uzi out of Athenian’s hands and then simply picked the smaller man up, hauling him out of the corner by his neck and then dragging him across to where Wulf still stood with N’kosi.

  “I don’t want the highlands,” Wulf said quietly, as much to the father as the son. “I want this”—he jerked his chin to encompass the control room and the dam above it, the connected power plant and server farm—“accessible. And public.”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Athenian growled, despite Tyr’s hand on his throat. “You can’t light up the world. You’re mad.”

  “Is that what you want?” N’kosi ask
ed. “You want . . . light?”

  “How fucking altruistic!” Athenian sneered. “That isn’t what you really want. No man topples a king for charity.”

  “You’re right,” Wulf said, finally shifting his focus to the king. Such as he was, hanging there from Tyr’s fist. No longer lounging on his blinding, ugly throne, smiling that hideous smile and corroding the very air around him, the little prick. “It’s you. I want the end of you. No more sadistic fucks using their subjects like their own personal game preserve. No more conscienceless bullies who hoard resources and call it their right. I want you and everyone like you gone. No more rich assholes who think only of themselves. No more creepy fucking churches to tell scared people how to live when all they really care about is controlling how they fuck.” He held Athenian’s greasy black glare. “There’s a whole world out there, above water and out of your grasp. With you gone? It will only be better.”

  “Liar,” the other man hissed. “You want power. You want pussy.”

  “I have more than enough of both.”

  Athenian let out a harsh laugh. “There’s no such thing. You want my daughter.”

  “I don’t need your permission to take anything I want,” Wulf assured him. He’d sheathed his long blade when the fighting stopped. Now he reached down and pulled out the dagger that he’d given Kathlyn. And that she’d given back to him, changing something in him in the process. “And my only regret is that Kathlyn isn’t here to watch you die.”

  “That little whore—”

  And like that, Wulf was done. He shot Tyr a glance and the war chief released his grip on Athenian. And Wulf didn’t wait for the asshole to spew out any more crap. It took one cut, fast and deep. One deep slash across the older man’s neck.

  And the fucked-up, brutal reign of King Athenian came to a squalid little end tucked up beneath the mountains he’d claimed as his. He gurgled once, but collapsed before the blood started welling from the cut Wulf had laid out across his neck.

  A breath later, he was gone, in a puddle of his own blood right there on the floor.

  There was a kind of shocked silence.

  And then the sound of all the remaining guards hitting the ground with their knees.

  “The king is dead,” one called out hoarsely as he and all the rest of the mainlanders knelt before N’kosi. “Long live N’kosi, son of Athenian, King of the Great Basin.”

  Every guard took up the chant. Wulf watched N’kosi. He saw the way his brown jaw tightened. The way he stood a little taller. And he remembered when he’d stood over Donovan’s body down near the docks back in the raider city. When the battle had still raged in his blood, but the people called him their king.

  It was what he’d wanted. But the having of it was a different thing. A precarious weight that never entirely settled.

  “You can take a throne in blood,” he told N’kosi while the men still chanted, keeping his voice low. “Sometimes it’s necessary. But you cannot rule with it. Not for long. Blood always ends in blood.”

  N’kosi nodded once, a harsh jerk of his head, and then he silenced his men with raised hand.

  “I must go secure the palace,” he told Wulf. “And settle the stronghold.” He nodded toward the blue door. “You have free rein here. Do what you like with my blessing.”

  Wulf thought they both knew that he didn’t need the other man’s blessing. But he was happy to receive it all the same.

  N’kosi marched off with his guards at his heels. And then the raiders were the only ones left in the tunnels. At last.

  Wulf nodded at Tyr, who started barking out orders. Two men at each tunnel entrance. Two more a turn or two down into the tunnels, so there would be no surprises while N’kosi was above ground announcing a regime change.

  “Let’s get the bodies out of the middle of the floor,” Eiryn was saying, and she and a few other brothers started shifting the dead to one side and the only wounded to the other, for N’kosi to deal with later.

  Athenian they left where he’d fallen. Because fuck that guy.

  Then while Riordan took a handful of brothers to get that blue door open—which required a blade to a lock and some wrestling—Tyr went over to the ladder and whistled up it.

  “Let’s go, baby,” he boomed out up the shaft that Wulf assumed led out onto the dam. “You’re up.”

  “I’m not your fucking baby, asshole,” Gunnar replied, climbing down first and then jumping the last several feet to the floor. He landed lightly, ignored the middle finger Tyr was holding up in his face, then glanced around quickly. He took in the carnage and Wulf standing there in the middle of it.

  His dark brows lifted over the blue eyes they shared. “It’s always a nonstop party with you.”

  Wulf smiled slightly. “I’m a party animal, it’s true.”

  Which, for them, was as good as a long hug.

  Gunnar nodded a little stiffly, then headed toward the control room to start working the magic that made him the tech genius he was. And one of the clan’s secret weapons.

  Tyr plucked Helena off the ladder when she was barely halfway down, hauling her against him and then letting her slide down to the ground slowly. Indy seemed to float down behind her, and his gaze went straight to Athenian’s body.

  “Satisfied?” Wulf asked him.

  The bandit lifted his cold green gaze for a moment, then glared down at the dead king again.

  “More than you will ever know,” he muttered. And Wulf left him to it as he crouched down next to the king and started murmuring something that sounded a lot like a list of names. Or a prayer. Maybe both.

  Helena was standing with Tyr’s hands on her shoulders, her head tipped back to look up at him as he wordlessly moved his palms up and down. Soothing her. She saw Wulf approach and swallowed hard, then reached into the bag she wore slung across her chest and pulled out a tablet.

  The tablet computer that had started all of this. The tablet that had been passed down in her family since the Storms. The tablet she’d turned over to the clan when she’d decided to trust them, bringing them all here to this moment.

  Her gray eyes looked darker than usual, a little bright with sentiment, but Wulf didn’t blame her. He nodded toward the blue door.

  “This is all you,” he said.

  And then he stood back as Helena moved out of Tyr’s embrace and walked into the control room.

  “Is she handling this?” Wulf asked Tyr as they followed.

  “She’s fine,” Tyr replied. “She’s been ready to handle this for a long time.”

  The pride in his voice cut at Wulf, like a blade against his skin. Then deeper. Gunnar talked about his woman the same way. He’d made the decision to leave his nun back in the eastern islands, because she got so violently seasick in soft and easy summer swells that he’d thought the February crossing might kill her—even though they’d all agreed it could have been useful to have Maud along, with all her insider knowledge of the church. And whenever Gunnar brought up something Maud had told him about the church or life on the mainland, he sounded the same way Tyr did now.

  Wulf had always liked it, but he’d never understood it.

  Until now. He thought about Kathlyn’s determined dark gold stare, there on the steps where she’d thrown herself down and made his heart catapult halfway out of his chest. He thought about that dagger she’d offered him and it was as if she’d slid it between his ribs.

  And none of that mattered here, now, in the middle of raider business. The reason he’d come across the damned world and toppled a kingdom. And that was just for starters.

  Inside the control room, Eiryn and Riordan stood side by side, the way they did in public. Shoulders touching. At ease. That crackle between them that announced what they were to each other, but never something they paraded around in front of others, since Eiryn was one of only three female brothers and guarded her reputation fiercely. None of these perverted assholes she called brother needed to see her mushy. Or naked. Or anything else she didn�
��t want to show them. Maybe that was their own kind of pride, that they could both be in the brotherhood and mated to each other and not compromised one bit, either one of them.

  There was a vast control panel along one wall filled with knobs and levers and all kinds of shit that baffled Wulf. But Gunnar was all over it, looking as comfortable as if he’d built it. He was muttering to himself while he fiddled with stuff, then muttered to Helena when she walked up beside him and fired up her tablet.

  “Supposedly they can just throw a switch,” Tyr said in an undertone.

  “That would be anticlimactic, surely,” Wulf replied.

  There was a big screen on the wall in front of the control panel, and Wulf watched as Gunnar flipped a few switches. He and Tyr exchanged a look, since it was more than one. A map appeared on the screen after a few moments, and Wulf took it in. It was the same one that Helena had showed them all last summer. The world as it had been before the Storms. Or anyway, this continent when it had stretched wide and long and whole.

  “Power first,” Gunnar said. Beside him, Helena nodded. She did something on her tablet and Gunnar did something on the panel, and the screen on the wall blinked. Then little dots started to bloom to life. Everyone in the room moved closer.

  It was unmistakable. There were dots all over the parts of the much bigger landmass that they knew still stood above water. Where the Mississippi Sea was, for example, there were none. But Wulf could trace the eastern mainland, then up toward the Great Lakes Sea, and the dots that appeared there.

  “Does that mean the lights just went on everywhere?” Eiryn asked.

  “It means the lights can go on now,” Helena said, her head bent to her tablet as her fingers moved. She pulled a cord out of her bag and connected it to the tablet, then plugged it into the control panel itself. “In some places that might take some work, but we can help them. The difference is that it’s not impossible now.”

  “This is a map of the power plants that remain above water and can, theoretically, get the lights on in their areas,” Gunnar said in his short, abrupt way. “In what was once one large country.”