“Son of a bitch,” I mumbled.
Joachim nodded and sighed. “Might as well follow them though. What else can we do?”
And he was right. What else could we do?
The street branched into a fork, and we argued about which direction to choose for a while then argued about what method we should use to determine our direction, and I finally convinced them there was significant scientific validity to eeny-meeny-miny-moe. Or they just got tired of arguing and agreed to shut me up. But since we landed on the road I’d wanted to take, I insisted the method was foolproof. None of us realized the street was getting narrower until we found ourselves getting closer and closer, and there was absolutely nothing pleasant about being sandwiched between Tyr and Thor. But when we turned to head back and try a different street, just in case this one crushed us to death or something truly bizarre, everything looked different and we couldn’t even see the fork anymore.
It was like we were on a completely different street now.
“Um, does anyone remember taking a side street or…?” I asked.
“I hate magic,” Tyr sighed.
Agnes nodded and suggested we keep going, but it was like we were on a haunted street or at the very least, a voodoo street, and I really didn’t want to find out what they’d meant by “magic.” I grew up an hour away from New Orleans; I knew better than to mess around with voodoo. But I had a horrible suspicion if I’d tried to walk back in the opposite direction, I’d find myself even more lost and alone, so I stayed with them on the voodoo street, where even our footsteps were soundless. I was about to complain about how much I hated magic, too, when something else caught my attention and I stopped walking.
“Guys?” I whispered then glanced at Agnes and added, “And witch?”
“What Gavyn?” she snapped.
I pointed down an alley on my right. “You mentioned we needed to find a heavily guarded building, right?”
The others glanced down the alley, which looked fairly short, but this street hadn’t seemed endless when we took it either. And none of the guards seemed to notice us, which was kind of a big red flag, but if Ninurta had Frey in that building, we didn’t really have a choice: we had to figure out a way to get to it. “Let’s go single file,” Tyr suggested. “But stay close behind whomever is in front of you in case they seem to fall off a cliff.”
He nudged me forward, but how the hell did he expect me to go first after proclaiming falling through an alleyway was possible? “Send Thor first,” I said. “He’s large enough that he’ll get stuck and we can just pull him back out.” I looked him over quickly then decided, “If we can find a crane.”
“Fine,” Tyr said. “I’ll go last in case anyone follows us.”
I crept behind Thor through an alleyway that seemed a hell of a lot more confining than it had appeared from the street, but Tyr’s large frame was blocking most of my view from the rear and Thor was blocking my view of the street ahead. I could do nothing except walk and hope it was all an illusion. Time worked as well as spatial observation in this place. My watch had stopped working long ago, probably as soon as we stepped through the hole in the wall, so I couldn’t be sure how long we’d been searching for Frey or even walking down this alleyway. But at some point, I realized my legs were aching, not from walking or the sword fights, but it was almost like…
“A slope,” I whispered. We’d been heading downward the whole time. “Everybody stop!” I yelled. But it was too late. We all heard the water rushing toward us, but we were trapped. There was nothing we could do except hold our breath and swim.
Chapter Twenty-Five
As the water crashed into me, I thought, “This must be what it feels like to get body-slammed by an eighteen wheeler.” The impact was so painful, I couldn’t even struggle against the water to try to force my way to the surface. Of all the ways I’d imagined dying, almost all of which I’d deemed unacceptable, drowning had never even made it onto the list. The water carried me farther down the alley, bumping me into solid objects and walls, but I could neither hear nor see anything except the water. If my allies were still alive, I’d lost them.
A thick, strong arm wrapped around me, and instead of being propelled forward by the unceasing wave, I began to move at an angle. We broke the surface of the water and gasped for air, sputtering as the water I’d inhaled when the wave first crashed into me was forced from my lungs. Thor had to keep me from being dragged below the surface again, but he shouted at Tyr and I turned my head to see the war god pulling Joachim along with him. I looked around us, but I couldn’t see Agnes anywhere.
I sputtered for a few more moments before I could call her name, but even with all of us shouting—and I even called out “Badb” instead of “Agnes” in case she hit her head and forgot who she was or something—she didn’t answer. Ahead of me, I noticed a pipe running along the side of the building, so I gestured to it and told Thor, “There! Help me get to it, and I can hold on while you look for her.”
He swam over to the pipe, and I grabbed it then watched as this giant of a god dove beneath the tidal wave attempting to drown us all. On the other side of the alley, Tyr and Joachim grabbed onto a drainpipe, but their weight apparently didn’t agree with it. It creaked and bent, but I could tell by Tyr’s face that he was exhausted. He couldn’t fight this surge forever.
I couldn’t even tell where all of this water was going. The heavily guarded building we’d been trying to reach was still there at what appeared to be the end of the alley, but none of the water reached it. Thor broke the surface of the water again and shook his head. He hadn’t been able to find Agnes.
My arms ached and strained as I clung to the pipe, but I was also clinging to the naïve belief that it would have to end soon. But this wasn’t a world like mine. Magic and illusions and impossible mazes and the complete dismantling of time all reigned here, and if there were any chance Agnes was still alive, we’d never get the opportunity to find her because this wave didn’t have to end. Whatever, or more accurately, whoever controlled it could keep it flowing until we all drowned.
So I did the only thing I could think to do.
I let go.
Water crashed all around me and pulled me back under, but this time, I didn’t fight it. I let it carry me toward the end of the alleyway, searching for Agnes’s bright, unmistakable red hair. I slammed into what I assumed was the building I’d been clinging to, but as I tried to push myself away from it, the water suddenly fell through the stones that paved the alley. I gasped and coughed and crawled away from the wall of water where Tyr, Thor, and Joachim were still trapped, but a hand grabbed my arm and pulled me in a different direction.
If I’d had more air in my lungs, I may or may not have screamed like a little girl again, but who wants to barely survive a freakish encounter with possessed tidal waves only to get manhandled by some pervert of a god? And with my luck, I figured it would be Ninurta, the perviest of the perverted gods. But I found myself being hushed by a familiar voice, and I blinked a few times to clear the water from my eyes.
I noticed her hair first and threw my arms around her. I mean, sure, she was a witch and all, but she was my witch. “Holy shit,” I whispered. “I thought you were dead.”
“I’m not convinced I’m not,” she whispered back, so I nodded. I felt mostly dead, too.
“Any idea how to get the water to shut off?” I asked.
“Asalluhi. Their god of magic. He must be controlling all of this.”
“I can hardly move, and we have to track down a god and kill him?”
“He’s a god of magic, Gavyn. How the hell would we kill a god of magic?”
I threw my hands up and sighed. “How would I know? I didn’t even think magic existed until it tried to kill me fifteen minutes ago.”
Agnes grunted at me and pushed herself to her feet. “You’ve been fighting wolves and lions and demonic dogs and have an enchanted shield, but you didn’t think magic was real?”
So
I shrugged and pushed myself to my feet, too, although with a lot more complaining and groaning. “I figured it was just godly science.”
She blinked at me and said, “I’m really too tired to even point out how incredibly stupid that is.”
I glanced toward the alleyway filled with water and asked her how we could possibly save them, but we couldn’t. We’d have to hope they’d either be able to hang on long enough or they’d get as lucky as we did and reach the end without drowning. But as we crept through the shadows toward the building where we suspected Frey might be imprisoned, I had another idea, as brilliant—or dangerous and reckless—as all of my ideas. “So if a god is controlling that water,” I said quietly, “he’s probably having to concentrate or something, right?”
“Maybe. He could have just created it with an incantation and released it.”
“So would it do our friends any good to create a distraction or not?”
Agnes groaned and rubbed her eyes. “I really don’t know. And we’re both so weak right now, I don’t think we should count on our ability to fight our way out of tough situations.”
I glanced toward the alleyway again and told her, “Imagine how weak they must be.”
Instead of calling me names or pointing out the numerous flaws in my admittedly stupid idea, Agnes just stared at me with weary eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay, Gavyn. Let’s get their attention.”
My fingers tightened around the hilt of my sword as Agnes grabbed an arrow from the quiver on her back that hadn’t been there a second ago. I added, “Where the hell do you gods hide these weapons?” to my growing list of questions I wanted answered once we got back to Earth. As soon as she released the string, we’d have an entire army descending on us, so I kinda felt like we should share something really deep and meaningful. “Hey, Agnes?” I whispered.
“Yeah?” she whispered back.
“Don’t tell anyone I hugged you.”
“Ditto.”
Her arrow coursed toward its target, impaling the guy through his temple, and as I’d expected, every guard around the building charged us. Agnes slung her bow over a shoulder in favor of her sword, which she was actually even more of an epically amazing badass with, and I thought about telling her it had been nice knowing her, but it seemed wrong to lie to someone right before their death.
Arrows whizzed past us with blinding speed, taking out the entire front line of guards before they even reached us. Aside from Agnes and Ull, there was only one person I knew who could shoot like that. “Joachim,” I breathed. I wanted to search for him, but we still had a dozen guards about to attack us. I braced myself for the inevitable ass kicking I was about to receive and wondered why the hell Agnes had let me proceed with this ridiculous plan, but Mjollnir knocked one of the guards down, leaving a huge, disgusting hole in the guy’s chest, while more arrows rained down on the stubborn guards who refused to retreat.
I’d just begun fighting one particularly stubborn guard who refused to retreat or die when an alarm sounded, echoing through the otherwise quiet and empty streets. It couldn’t have been a secret that we’d entered their city, so why had they waited to sound an alarm? And what did it even mean?
Apparently, asking questions—even mentally to myself—had the magical ability to create nightmarish scenarios. I’d just thought, “What now?” when my question was answered by a loud screech that sounded suspiciously like… “A dragon,” I whispered aloud.
I got a good hit on the guy I was fighting and pushed him away from me then glanced over my shoulder, and sure enough, an honest-to-some-god dragon was flying toward us. “Get inside!” Agnes shouted.
But I was frozen as the dragon descended, bellowing one last time before fire shot toward me. The only reason I wasn’t turned into a human torch was that Tyr grabbed me and dragged me with him to the entrance of the building. “A dragon,” I exclaimed. “I was only joking when I claimed I wanted to be a dragon slayer. I never signed up to actually be a dragon slayer!” And really, I never signed up to fight anyone or anything, but I sure as hell hadn’t signed up to fight dragons.
Agnes shook her head and said, “None of us are fighting their dragons. We can’t kill them, because their bodies are filled with poison that only the Sumerian gods are immune to.”
A strange sound escaped from my throat, some cross between a croak and a scream, but a dragon filled with poison? I mean, who thought that was a good idea? Okay, obviously the Sumerians did, but still.
“Come on,” Thor urged. “Let’s see if Frey’s in this place.”
I was so glad to see our allies had survived the wave in the alley, but I didn’t have time to celebrate. The building seemed to be mercifully empty, which I didn’t realize was strange at first, considering how many guards had been stationed outside. Yet I still had a horrible feeling this building was just as messed up as the rest of the Sumerian goddom, but honestly, braving whatever horrors it might hold was a better option than fighting a fire-breathing dragon filled with poison.
We were on the second floor, or at least what we thought was the second floor, before we realized this building was laid out just like the city itself. Circular streets, circular hallways, both of which brought us back to the same starting point. Or maybe they weren’t circular at all, but the deception of their magic still got us turned around, unable to find a point B. I remembered going up stairs, but this floor was identical to the one we’d just searched. Even the mess we’d made in some of the rooms as we broke down locked doors and shattered mirrors, which I always thought was bad luck but it turned out that some gods knew spells to trap people inside a mirror, which was Alice Through the Looking Glass level bizarre.
“This isn’t working,” I complained. “Either Asshole is—”
“Asalluhi,” Agnes interrupted.
“That’s what I said. Either Asshole is messing with our heads, or we’re really in some magical labyrinth and we can’t possibly find Frey or get out.”
“Perhaps,” Joachim suggested, “we’re going about this the wrong way. I once read about an Egyptian building that Herodotus described as a labyrinth. The upstairs rooms were a confusing network of rooms and courtyards, but the tombs below ground may have been different.”
“The stairs only went up,” I pointed out. “I don’t think there are hidden rooms below us.”
But Agnes shook her head and said, “We only saw the stairs going to the second floor. Or more accurately, we only thought we saw stairs going up but maybe they go down, too.”
I blinked at her then turned to Tyr and waved irritably in Agnes’s direction. “Translate. I don’t speak witch.”
“I think,” Tyr said, even though he looked as confused as I felt, “we need to believe we’re going down the stairs instead of up, and that’ll change the direction we’re actually going.”
So I blinked at him before snapping, “That is literally the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, and thanks to all of you, I’ve heard some really insane shit.”
But Joachim shrugged and said, “It’s worth a shot.”
So we returned to the stairs and stared at them for a few seconds, and I even crossed my arms and demanded, “Okay, stairs. We’re going to go down you, got it?” Then I grinned mischievously at Agnes and said, “That sounds totally pervy.”
Agnes sighed but refused to allow me to be a pain in the ass. She approached the stairs carefully and began making movements like she was trying to walk downward, which meant she was staying on the first step, and I was about to glance at Tyr and ask him how long we were going to stand around watching Agnes walk in place when she disappeared.
We were silent for a second before we all muttered, “Holy shit.”
And then we couldn’t let Agnes descend into some-god-knows-what kind of terrors below, so we hurried to the first step and mimicked her walking downstairs movements even though the stairs only seemed to go up. And yeah, I felt a bit ridiculous, but only for a minute, because soon, we actually were going downstai
rs into a dark hallway where Agnes awaited our arrival.
Now, given that we’d just taken a secret, magical staircase into the dungeons of a Sumerian fortress, I expected an actual dungeon. But the hallways and rooms appeared just as modern as the upstairs rooms, so I pouted for a while as we resumed our search for our stolen god. Their dungeon, though, was just as quiet as the rest of the building, so I’d pretty much given up hope that we’d find Frey, and with a poisonous dragon waiting for us outside, I couldn’t imagine how we’d roam the city looking for other possible prisons.
I could tell by the expressions on my friends’ faces that they were giving up hope, too, and we began piecing together a possible escape plan. And that’s when I noticed a door that seemed to have an excessive number of locks on it. “You know,” I said, “if I were going to kidnap a god and keep him locked up, I’d literally keep him locked up.”
“Gavyn,” Agnes sighed, “what?”
I pointed to the door, which we’d overlooked, because we’d been so sure we’d already searched this hallway. Thor had knocked down several doors already, and when we first stepped into it, we saw the exact same wreckage as before. But I was sure we hadn’t missed a locked door on our last trip down this hallway considering we opened every single door we passed, which meant we’d somehow managed to escape the strange loop we’d been stuck in.
Thor took a deep breath and lifted Mjollnir. “Here goes nothing,” he said then brought his hammer down on the door, which exploded beneath the impact. We all stood ready to battle in case some monster or Sumerian god had been hiding in there, but as the debris cleared and we were able to see inside, we lowered our weapons and rushed in. And there, standing against the back wall, miraculously unharmed and wearing a sly grin, was the god we’d all risked our lives to save. “It’s about time,” Frey teased.
Agnes laughed and hugged him then pulled away just as quickly, as if embarrassed by her temporary display of affection. Thor and Tyr, who’d known Frey for so many millennia they’d lost count of how long they’d been friends, quickly embraced him as well, but I was already fixated on what would come next. I clapped his back and offered him my own sly smile. “You have no idea what we went through to get here.”
Sword of Light Page 21
