Max lay stunned on the ground. Victor looked down at the woman in his arms. She was staring at her prone team captain with wide eyes.
“Max?”
He read her thoughts. She didn’t want to believe what she was seeing. It was damning proof of something she’d started suspecting since Max and Victor’d fought with cold magic on the streets of Ocanus.
She was confused and hurt. Max had deceived her. Now she wondered how deep that deception went.
“Do you believe me now, love?” Victor asked softly.
She remained unmoving, her gaze locked on Max.
Suddenly and very unexpectedly, Ty Murrey pressed the activation button on a small device in his hand. Victor recognized the device too late.
He felt the surge of power that shot from it like a stiff, electrically charged wind. It hit Victoria full force, stunning her so that she stumbled back in to him. But did nothing to Victor; it had clearly been meant for her.
Her legs gave out from under her, and Victor caught her up in his strong arms, lifting her completely as her eyelids slid shut.
He scanned her mind. Her thoughts were blank. There was only silence and darkness. It was like a sleep of death.
Victor’s fingers curled tightly around her and he pulled her in close. Fear coursed through him – fear and rage and a need for vengeance. His burning gaze found Ty Murrey, looking somewhat unsure, but desperate.
“What did you do to her?” Victor demanded, his voice barely louder than a whisper, but his words laced with a kind of deadly, dangerous magic.
“I- I don’t know,” Ty stammered. “It’s not supposed to hurt her!”
Blood was up on his knees by that time, tossing away what ice still remained on his body. “The saps, Ty! Get them on her!” he instructed with a gritty voice.
Ty jumped glanced warily from his captain to his Victor.
Black read his thoughts. Ty wasn’t so sure about his orders any more. And Black had Victoria. Getting to her would mean going through Black, which Ty was fairly positive would have been impossible for anyone just then.
Victor drove the thought home. “Attempt to come near us Murrey, and I will open up every pore in your body until it’s leaking blood,” Victor promised. He didn’t even need to raise his voice. Ty understood perfectly.
“Give the saps to me!” Blood demanded, and Victor felt another surge of power make its way across the clearing, this time from Blood to Ty.
Ty immediately pulled the leather bracelets from his belt and tossed them to his captain.
Max caught them and faced Victor. His white teeth were bared in a snarl of hatred.
There’s not much time….
Victor blinked. He’d caught a stray thought from Max’s mind!
The words were just barely discernible, floating free on the suddenly unprotected surface of his consciousness. Max was becoming desperate; his emotions were on overload. Victor realized in that moment of resolution that Maxwell Blood would stop at nothing to get Victoria back. It was something they had in common.
Very gently, Victor lowered her to the ground, never taking his eyes off Blood’s furious form. He straightened again. “Come and get her, Blood.”
It was all the challenge Max needed.
Chapter Twenty
Loki turned to Odin and gave him a look. “Haven’t we let this go on long enough?”
Odin had pulled Loki, Andromeda, and Thor out of their locations and back to his throne room the moment Rose Tyrnan had decided to go outside to meet with her teammates.
He claimed he’d retrieved them in order to allow things to play out as they “needed to” with the humans. At least Loki’d managed to give Black the boon of being able to see through Maxwell Blood’s invisibility before he’d been yanked away.
But now his champion was unconscious and Black and Blood were about to go head to head over her.
“I knew you wouldn’t be able to keep your chaotic nature from interfering in this, Loki, and that’s why I came. But for fuck’s sake, those aren’t children out there. They don’t need to be nursed.”
Loki blinked at the All Father. When he was in a mood, he was really in a mood.
“My champion is asleep,” Loki insisted, trying to keep the fire out of his tone. “Don’t tell me that’s all part of the plan.”
“Svarte, din teiting, Loki.” Odin swore softly. He closed his eyes and shook his head, using his large fingers to pinch the bridge of his nose. Since the wall had been erected, Odin had headaches. He’d had them for centuries now. “You must let them do as much as they can on their own. Save what strength you have for when it is truly needed.”
“But this is our fight, and the humans are fighting it!” Thor interjected, his storm-gray eyes shooting lightning sparks.
Odin shot him a weary glance and sighed. “Because a fight concerns you does not make it yours, Thor. Likewise, many battles that may not concern you are yours to fight.”
“Oh fuck,” Ullr sighed loudly, “he’s speaking in riddles again.” The powerful god of winter and the hunt ran a hand through his pitch-black hair and shook his head. He was a handsome god, dark and swarthy, tall and strong, with eyes that shifted from the coldest blue to the clearest glacial green at a moment’s notice.
Loki glanced in Andromeda’s direction. Just as he’d feared, she was watching Ullr. Not that he could technically blame her. The ice god was beautiful in that dangerous way women seemed to love so damned much.
Plus, she’d been Ullr’s champion in life. She still carried ice magic in her veins, could control the cold, create winter, read minds, and vanish like the final snow on a spring morning. Ullr had given her the power she possessed and he was the one who had ultimately made her a goddess.
In truth, Loki was grateful to Ullr. Andromeda was Loki’s mate, and she never would have been had Ullr not brought her here to live among them.
“How much longer?” Loki asked impatiently.
“Not much,” Odin replied, simply. Then he straightened, his long white hair and beard shimmering in the shafts of late afternoon sunlight that shot through the windows. His one good eye glittered intelligently. “In fact, now will do.”
* * * *
Simon was fairly sure that if Thor hadn’t given him a smidgeon of his godly strength before he’d suddenly and inexplicably disappeared, he would be having a panic attack right now. He was used to fighting well enough. But those were just Games. This had become something entirely different.
This involved gods. It involved guards and innocent people and an utter lack of rules. Whereas on the Field, even the smallest wound would be healed at once by a light leader no matter which side of the Game you were on, here and now, he could very well die.
They all could.
And he didn’t like the sound of that, because though he now remembered that he would die a hero in battle, Valhalla was not exactly a giant library. It was a giant hall made for eating and fighting and copulating and then dying and doing it all again the next morning.
Simon wanted books. He wanted knowledge.
Simon straightened his glasses. He closed his eyes and tried to get his fears under control. It was time to pull his mind back into the present and concentrate. Focus.
He opened his eyes and slowly looked around. Game Control’s guards surrounded him. Of course, they didn’t know he was there. They were watching Max and Victor out in the clearing. They didn’t see Simon where he crouched quietly beneath the underbrush.
Thor had turned him invisible and unceremoniously dumped him in the midst of his enemy so that he would get a better shot at them with the anti-nausea-sleep gas. He’d warned him that the invisibility wouldn’t last long. The gods were trying to conserve their strength for a possible upcoming battle with the Game Lord.
Okay, Simon thought. Run through it again. He shoved his hand into the pocket of his downtime uniform jacket and pulled out two pills: one glass, the other a biodegradable capsule.
He looked at th
e glass container. The anti-nausea sleep pill will take out half the guards if I do it right. Then I need to get to Ty and April and convince them Max isn’t on our side any more. If they don’t believe me, Ty will clobber me. He looked at the pill in his other hand. That’s what the regenerator is for.
But if Ty did believe him, then the plan was for the three of them to work together to take out the remainder of the guards while Thor and Loki went after Maxwell Blood.
He took a deep breath and let it out with a whoosh. Right, he thought. Got it. He nodded to himself. I can do this.
Out in the clearing, Blood charged Victor Black in an all-out attack.
Simon stood. There’s no time like the present.
* * * *
Victor stepped over Victoria’s unconscious form and strode forward to meet Max halfway. Lightning struck somewhere near by; thunder rolled over them. Two strong bodies collided in a sparking shower of blue-white light and frigid, rippling airwaves.
“Stay out of the way, April!” Ty yelled as April apparently rushed forward, most likely attempting to get to Victoria.
The shockwave of chilled air moved over both team members, leaving a frosting of ice on their skin and clouding their breath. They crouched low, trying to protect themselves as the temperature continued to drop at an exponential rate. Their bodies were rimed over, their lips turned purple, and April’s hair dangled with icicles. They cried out in surprised, sharp discomfort.
Victor caught their pain in his peripheral consciousness. The rest of his attention was focused on his opponent. Max’s grip went for Victor’s throat, and vice versa. Their bodies spun, the sky became dark, and winter arrived early in the clearing.
Thunder rolled again, this time closer. The air was thick with mounting electricity. Ominous clouds gathered. They were swirling, eddying inward, building with ferocious speed. A bitter wind picked up, gathered the leaves that had fallen in the clearing and then caked them with ice. They went spinning end over end as they spiraled upward, along with frozen pebbles and swirling dust, toward the mounting cyclone above them.
The building roar of the storm drowned out the sounds of his struggle with Max. Fat flakes of snow began to descend from the swirling darkness, coating their uniforms and preventing either Black or Blood from using invisibility to gain the upper hand.
“Help!” came a cry from the forest line surrounding the clearing. Victor could spare it only the briefest glance. Simon Roon was stumbling into the clearing, seven Game Control guards hot on his tail. His bow was still slung uselessly over his shoulder, his arrows still piled, untouched, in the quiver on his back. He ran mad-dash from the underbrush and headed straight toward a now very surprised Ty and April.
Ty jerked the crossbow off of his shoulder and April pulled her sword. Victor could see the whites of Simon’s eyes. The plan he’d been left with must have failed.
The guards were nearly upon them.
* * * *
Wind and hail lashed at the windows, rattling them in their panes. The weathered thatch on the roof scratched and peeled and threatened to come away from its bindings as the storm continued to build in strength.
Odin had transported them all back to Elizabeth’s cottage. He turned away from the other gods and opened the cottage door. The wind whipped into the small home, extinguishing the lanterns and violently rustling the pages of a book that had been set out on the dining table.
Thor led the way, and one by one, the gods left the small house, leaving an unconscious nanny still resting peacefully on the bed in the dark and upset room behind them.
Once outside, Loki bent beside Victoria and gently lifted her into his arms. Andromeda stood beside him. Across the clearing, Ty Murrey, April Rose and Simon Roon were in hand-to-hand combat with several GC guards. They were losing.
The guards wore Game bands that amplified their abilities and gave them a distinct advantage over their opponents.
When April suffered a sword wound that sliced her open from shoulder to her hip bone, she dropped to the ground in her own building pool of blood. Thor bolted toward her as, knocking several guards to the side with vicious, resounding backhands as he ran. Behind him, Odin raised his hand.
There was a brief flash of light, an answering peal of thunder – and the Game bands were gone. Thor bent beside April. He pulled his hammer from his belt and raised it to the heavens. A bolt of lightning coursed through the sky, striking the hammer on its head and lighting it with the brilliance of a million torches.
The accompanying thunder clash went off like a bomb. Everyone in the clearing ducked under the weight of the giant sound, their hands or sword-arms over their ears, their eyes shut tight against the blast.
Maxwell Blood and Victor Black alone seemed to be able to ignore the crash of sound of Thor’s lightning bolt induced thunder. Their struggle was too grim.
Thor absorbed the energy of the bolt, funneled it from the hammer to his body, and directed it to the hand he held over April’s chest. Her wound began to close.
Behind him, another guard attacked. Thor rose, spun, and dispatched him with a single punch to the throat.
Across the clearing, Andromeda was draping a necklace around her unconscious sister’s neck as Loki silently held her. Odin was stepping back, his one good eye calmly taking everything in as the storm began to make the worn down buildings creak and moan on their foundations. Dirt and sand lifted from the ground, blinding the fighters.
Victor Black landed a solid punch that sent Maxwell Blood stumbling backward just as another lightning bolt found a nearby tree and rent it in two. Thunder pounded the earth with terrifying resonance. But the fighters were adjusting to the cacophony. Either that or they were going deaf.
Blood recovered quickly from Victor’s attack, straightening to face Black once more. Victor wiped his bleeding lip on the back of his hand. His green eyes burned. The two dark leaders assessed each other with furious, determined glares. As they did, Ullr appeared behind Maxwell blood – and reached out and touched him, his palm to Blood’s back.
A heartbeat later, another stream of electricity sliced the sky, blinding all in the clearing. This time, it cracked open and divided to become tributaries of white-hot energy that crackled through the field like the searing hot tentacles of an electric monster.
Each tentacle struck a god.
Loki dropped to his knees, unable to keep his legs beneath him under the onslaught. Thor watched him lay down his champion before his body began to shimmer, flashing in and out of existence as if he were nothing more than a fading dream in the early hours of morning.
Thor’s body was doing the same. He was both sinking into strange pain and going numb at the same time. Even his mighty hammer Mjolnir, famed in its great power, began to flicker in impotence. It felt as if the air were tearing and shredding around him, and its jagged edges were slicing at reality.
Within seconds, Thor was also on his knees. His stormy eyes mirrored the turmoil of the clearing around him as he looked up to search for the source of the unnatural lightning.
The Game Lord stood alone at the center of the clearing.
It had been a long time since Thor had seen the man, but he was unmistakable.
A small black box was held between the Game Lord’s hands, and within this semi-transparent black box swirled a vortex of ghostly gray and white. The wind whipped through the Game Lord’s thick gray hair and the world seemed to be falling into a vortex of chaos, yet he stood still and calm and erect, tall and strong, utterly unaffected by the bedlam surrounding him.
It was from the box in his hands that the wicked tentacle lightning poured forth and sapped the remaining strength of the very gods.
* * * *
Victoria’s throat cracked with a low moan. She rolled to her side. The world seemed to be spinning around her, painfully loud and blindingly bright. She shut her eyes tight against its snarling invasiveness and tried to shield her face from a wind both bitter cold and electric hot.
Someone called her name.
She recognized her sister’s voice, but it sounded far off. She pushed herself up to one arm, blinking her eyes open to avoid the swirling dust and ice.
Through the haze of dancing debris, she saw Andromeda, draped in white and gold, her once braided hair now free and whipping around her face in a frenzy. Her form was flickering in and out like a dying light bulb or a battery nearly drained of power. Beside her, Loki’s kneeling form did the same. They were only a few feet away from her, yet they seemed untouchable.
Andromeda’s eyes pleaded with her in silence.
“What’s happening?” Victoria tried to scream, tried to call out, but she was still weakened by whatever had hit and drained her. Instead she only whispered, and the sound was lost in the gale.
It’s up to you now, Rose. You must finish this. Save us all. I will be with you always.
Victoria reached out, but by that point, her sister was already gone. After a final shimmer, her beautiful form faded entirely from sight, as did Loki’s. Victoria was left alone on the front step of Elizabeth’s small cottage.
She swallowed a pain-wracked sob and tried to get her legs beneath her.
“Don’t bother, sweetheart.”
Victoria looked up. The Game Lord was standing above her. She knew it was him even though she couldn’t remember ever having met him. His tall form loomed, an ominous shadow emerging from a storm of snow and dust. He held in one hand a strange black box that crackled and popped with remnant electricity.
Victoria’s nerves steeled themselves. This was it. Here and now.
Take my strength, Rose.
Victoria lowered her head, hardened her gaze, and dug down deep, scooping out everything she had inside of her and yanking it out of her core with merciless determination.
The attack would have been a fast and furious display of light leader power, the kind that had initially earned her a team on the Field and her place at its head. It was meant to be the kind that had drawn Game Control to her and her sister to begin with.
A Sinister Game Page 20
