by Kira Brady
The Aether rushed through the runes in her bone knife until she felt it bond to her hand and the great river roared through them both, from her body out through her knife and into the waiting penitent. One slice severed soul from body, returning balance to the world.
Aether pounded through her like a psychedelic drug. It was damn addictive. The rush of power. The urge for more. She let pieces of herself go in the raging river, let it sweep her forward until she caught sight of the shadowed fog. It stopped her in midswing.
Run! her mind screamed. Run! Her body tensed for speed.
But in that fog lay a glimmer of Aether and the wild, addicted part of her said, Mine.
Leif’s body rebelled at the thought of returning to that fog. But Grace stood mere feet from it. He turned in the air and came at it from above. Dropping his jaw, he exhaled a long string of fire. The flame illuminated the fog from within, and he saw a shape that sent fear seizing through his wings.
Three times the size of a Dreki, Kingu had three heads, each snapping three rows of jagged shark teeth. His necks fused at a powerful trunk. He had long legs, too long to hold up such a powerful body, but muscled and deadly in their own right. He radiated a promise of pain and a grim, violent ending. Death coated the edges of his claws and razored scales.
Kingu hadn’t solidified yet. The white fog offered only a shadow of things to come.
Leif glanced down to the battlefield and saw two of the wagons burning. Most of the humans had fled. Aptrgangr flooded the field. Like the beaches at Normandy; their numbers would wipe out any who stood in their path.
Oscar and a Kivati flanked the Thunderbird general as he began to Change. In that brief moment Lord Kai was vulnerable. Grace moved in front of him to shield. She had a small but growing pile of bodies in front of her. Blood matted her hair. She moved like a dragonfly. If he didn’t have preternatural senses, he might not have seen her arms whirring about as she fought. Faster even than the Kivati.
Zetian still hid. If he survived this, he would give her a piece of his mind. But if he didn’t, she needed to stay alive to take the reins.
Leif took one last look at Grace and dropped into the burning fog. The pain began in his temples and radiated out to pierce his eardrums. His hearing dissolved into static. The fog squeezed his lungs like blown glass forced between the tongs. His scales turned to granules of sand, only to melt again in the furnace of the demigod’s shadow.
This time he couldn’t shake the white-hot ash that clouded his vision. His eyes watered. Soaring straight up was the only option. He rose, shaking his long snout like a wet dog. The world shifted, devoid of sight or sound. His balance faltered as the ground and sky traded places. He crashed into a building and tried to right himself, scraping his wing against the ground. He’d been on a Tilt-A-Whirl once at a county fair. This was far worse. He was a danger to himself and others. He could take out Grace with one wrong turn.
His grandfather had always told him he was, by his very nature, a danger. A danger to society. To his family. A blasphemy to the god his minister grandfather feared.
Leif had proven the old man wrong time and again. He fought his nature and never let the selfish, greedy part of him take root. He’d done his best to make the family proud, to invent tools that would improve society, to make his mark not one long black smear but an illuminated letter in the pages of history. After all these years, he had convinced himself that his nature was quite civilized.
But one tussle with Kingu and the old man’s voice came blazing to his mind with all the fire and brimstone of a doomsday sermon. Worse, it rung with truth: Kingu was Drekar to the very core, no trappings of civilization, no manners or ethics. These were like gossamer webs and moonshine to the mountain. Irrelevant. Inexplicable.
Every Dreki eventually succumbed to the darkness. Cold, cruel, and heartless. Every last strip of humanity crumbling away. Unable to imagine, create, or feel anything but the rapacious shadows.
Kingu was that darkness. It was as if the part Leif feared in himself had come snaking out of his subconscious in those long tendrils of fog. He knew he could face it, but he wouldn’t win. Every pass would rip away another layer of his hard-won civility like a nail torn from its bed, until nothing remained of his honor and empathy. There would be nothing left of Leif the Man, only Leif the Monster.
Even now the rage boiled in his engines. It smoldered his reason and ate through his compassion. It made him want to lash out, damn the casualties. He could do it. It would be so easy. And the worst part was the seductive voice hissing in his ear, You know you want to.
And he did.
He clamped his teeth against the urge to set the city blazing.
Tiamat be damned.
Asgard the dragon careened out of the fog and made a beeline toward Grace. He flew as if a drunken monkey were in charge of the tiller, and she had to dive to the ground to avoid being taken out by his tail. Spinning, he shot into the air. His jaws fell open. He bellowed. Pain laced his thundering voice.
That damned fog had hurt him.
“Hey, dragon!” she called, but he didn’t make any sign that he heard her. He flew in a tight loop-the-loop, sometimes diving sharply, sometimes climbing, like he had no sense of direction.
A second dragon shot out from the ruined house: Zetian. About half the size of Asgard, with silver scales and red wings, it had three small horns and golden featherlike whiskers. The small dragon flew to the larger one, but Asgard still flailed in the air. He couldn’t see or smell her. Zetian couldn’t fix him.
Asgard needed to get back online and fast. The shape building from the fog twisted up like a demonic bonsai tree, and it didn’t look good.
“Oscar, cover me.” Grace stepped between Oscar and a coal wagon to give her a moment’s break. She’d never used the slave bond, but knew the gist of how to do it. She dropped to her knees and tore off her jacket to expose the golden bands. Crossing her arms, she grasped the bands over her biceps.
She closed her eyes. The slave bond glowed blue across her eyelids. Once she’d recognized Norgard for the lying sack of dung he was, she’d done her best to rip the bond apart, but all she’d earned was a slow, mocking smile. No budge from the bond. She’d learned to ignore it, and kept it tightly hidden away in that black box with the other poison-barbed creepy-crawlies that skittered across her subconscious in the night.
She’d never met a fight that scared her more than the things locked behind her iron walls, but the white fog came close. She couldn’t fight shadows.
Taking a deep breath, she grabbed the blue wire with her conscious mind. A bolt of energy sizzled through her skin, shooting her hair out in a long, sparking mass. Could Asgard hear her through the bond? Or was it enough to know her general direction?
Here, she thought. Find me. Find the ground.
The dragon spasmed in midair and dropped like an oil tanker straight into the lake. The splash hit the wagons on the water side.
Oscar swore. “Nice job, Xena.”
Grace didn’t have time to panic. Jumping from her crouch, she spun into the two aptrgangr barreling down on Oscar. For a few seconds there was nothing but the whir of the fight. Her attention danced to Asgard and back. She’d dropped her boss into the bottom of the lake. The aptrgangr knocked her across the ribs. She stumbled.
Oscar put the creature out of its misery.
“We need to retreat,” she yelled. “Asgard is in the lake.”
“So?” Rafe said. “General, sir?” The Thunderbird was dive-bombing the dead from the air. He let out an ear-piercing shriek. Rafe and his fellow warriors began to shimmer.
“You can’t leave him!” Grace held her knife to Rafe’s throat, but her arm shook. This was supposed to be her ally.
He smirked. Didn’t bother to knock it away. She’d never killed a human who wasn’t possessed, and he knew it. She choked. Light spilled over his face and down his arms like a blanket unrolling. When he reemerged he was Crow, and he shot into the air with the
other jerks she’d been fighting with. The sting of betrayal hit low like a blade across the backs of her knees. Even Norgard’s mercenaries—the selfish, untrustworthy lot of them—held to the barest code of honor among thieves. At least while they worked together on a job. You didn’t abandon your teammates, because the Regent would come down on you like a rockslide.
At that moment there was a cry behind her. She turned to see Oscar’s body stiffen. A wet stain spread across his stomach. He faced an aptrgangr. They hadn’t stopped coming just because her back was turned.
Her feet carried her forward. She slammed an iron spike into the aptrgangr’s throat. The wraith fled, and the body collapsed. Her ears buzzed.
“Get up, Oscar.” She shot her torch at the aptrgangr. They cringed back from the fire. “Oscar, I need your help. Get up.”
He coughed. A wet, hacking sound.
She blinked furiously to keep her vision clear. “Damn it, Oscar, I said get up!” Slipping in the mud of the field, she turned and knelt beside her friend. A mass of dark liquid spilled down the front of his shirt. A sharpened stick protruded from his belly.
“You know what to do, sweet.” Oscar’s eyes wouldn’t focus on her.
“No.”
His smile flickered over his face. Ye gods, what would she do without that smile? He grasped her hand and tucked something sharp into her palm. It was a crescent-shaped piece of jade about the length of her hand with a knife-sharp inner curve. Both points were bound with a thin chord of leather. A rusty smear covered the writing etched across its surface. The Tablet of Destiny shard. She could hear whispering from it, like the spirits knocking at the Gate. Oscar had risked his life to steal it during the fight.
“No.” She dropped it. “Tell me where you keep your Drekar blood.” Frantically, she searched his coat pockets.
His hand moved to stop her. “Don’t have any.”
“You have to. You always have blood. Tell me where it is. Tell me—”
“Do it, Grace.” Oscar took her hand and brought her fingers to his wound. His blood stained her fingers hot red. He tried to lift her hand to his forehead to draw the mark. He didn’t make it. His arm dropped and he slumped against her. “Please—”
“No, Oscar. No! Don’t give up on me. You’re so close to freedom. . . .” But the breath left him, and there was nothing else to do but set his soul free. Asgard better count this as a job finished. She wouldn’t let Oscar’s spirit stay locked in the blood bond. Her vision blurred. Shock made her movements almost automatic. With her bloody fingers, she drew the four lines of Raidho across his forehead to bless him on his journey. The red smear in the shape of an R shimmered briefly as Aether poured through it, and then Oscar was gone.
“Freya have mercy on you,” she whispered. “And let the Stone Giants welcome you through the Gate.” The shining water carried him home. A rock of ice sunk in her belly. She’d been preparing herself for this since the day she met him. Inevitable, irrevocable. Just like her parents. Just like Molly and the others. But it didn’t make it any easier. All her posturing hadn’t prevented a lick of hurt.
Why did everyone keep dying on her? Why couldn’t they live for her instead?
She carefully laid Oscar’s body on the ground and closed his eyes. The pain was a live wire snaking through her chest. This was not a safe place to let herself go. The fire blurred across her watery vision. She wiped the blood off her fingers and riffled through Oscar’s pockets again. She found his weapons and flask. He didn’t need them anymore, so she tucked them in her own pockets.
She didn’t find any vials of Drekar blood.
The Tablet lay on the blood-soaked grass, a jagged edge of rock with the taint of death. It was a black spot. Gods and men had killed for it, seeking the power to write their own destinies. As far as Grace could tell, all it brought was the power to speed up that single destiny that all shared, man, monster and gods: death.
She tucked the sharp shard into her pocket next to her golden acorn. Hopefully Thor’s talisman for longevity would deflect some of the Tablet’s malice. Marduk had used the Tablets of Destiny to kill Kingu. Now she wielded it; she had a date with Kingu and the sharp blade of the Tablet’s edge. She might even enjoy ripping it into the demigod who’d caused this destruction. He had it coming.
To her right the aptrgangr fought. Fire spread across the wagons at her back. The terrified horses screamed. Shrieks and feathers rained from the sky. She looked up to find Zetian and Kai in their animal forms grappling hundreds of feet above the earth. It seemed like Zetian didn’t agree with Kai’s abandonment of the coal shipment, but what was she doing here in the first place? Had she suspected the Kivati would run at the first sign of trouble? It was absurd for the Kivati only to send four men, but maybe they never planned to deliver the coal. Maybe their only plan was to lure Kingu away from the city with the Tablet of Destiny as bait.
It would have been a good idea if it didn’t mean leaving Grace to the aptrgangr.
Asgard lay injured at the bottom of the lake. She didn’t know if he could drown, but she was pretty sure he wouldn’t stay dead. She imagined him drowning repeatedly, only to have his magic blood restore him so he could drown again.
Johnny appeared in front of her. Sweat dripped from his forehead. Blood matted his shirt. He thrust the reins of a horse into her hand. “This is for helping me with the Mark of Cain and Lucia, but now we’re even. Get out of here. The horse will bolt once I let go of its mind. You better hold on. You’re on your own.”
Grace’s numb fingers didn’t want to grip the saddle, but somehow she mounted the horse. The torch came in handy one last time to send Oscar’s body beyond the reach of the wraiths. The horse screamed. The landscape jolted past. She wrapped her fingers in the horse’s mane and let it carry her from the wreckage.
Chapter 15
The terrified horse bolted north along the lake. Grace lost track of the silver dragon and the Thunderbird, and only vaguely wondered who had won. The Thunderbird was larger, but the silver dragon was vicious. The night slowed down the horse, and eventually she lost her panicked edge. Time slipped past in the ghosts of houses and snatches of urban forest along the lakefront. Wisps of stars peeked out from a cloud-strewn sky.
A few miles up, she found Asgard draped across the road fast asleep. A large puddle of water had pooled around him. Figured. And she’d actually been worried for his sorry ass.
Dawn split the horizon. Dismounting, she tied the horse to the bumper of an abandoned car, putting a bit of distance between it and the dragon. The flamethrower on low provided enough light to see by. She approached the sleeping dragon. In the dark, he appeared like a mountain of crimson shells with the kiss of moss along their edge. The scales ran from the elegant curled tail and up along his serpentine neck. The deadly, ancient eyes were shut. In his sleep he looked almost peaceful.
Why couldn’t they have met somewhere else? In a parallel universe where she’d never met Norgard and her family still lived. In some strange land where it was normal to take a dragon home to meet your parents.
Choose how to play the hand you’re dealt, her dad had always said.
Stuff some aces up your sleeve, her mom would retort while she slipped Grace some cards under the table.
Grace reached up and drew her fingers along the side of the dragon’s neck. Her hand smoothed over the textured scales. Such gorgeous armor. The dragon stirred.
“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” she whispered.
Those feral eyes slid open. Emerald green and so vibrant they appeared to glow in the dim light. His focus speared her like a harpoon. She could see why the legends would say that dragons could hypnotize with their eyes. There was something in that gaze that made her want to obey. It promised treasure at the end of its long claws. It promised pleasure that bordered on pain.
Use me. The traitorous thought whispered through her brain. Tear me down and make me like it.
The dragon smiled.
He had teeth like a b
arracuda. A few weeks ago she would have taken a hasty step back from those teeth. Now she held her ground.
Bite me. She wanted to beg. She shouldn’t have twisted thoughts like this. But hate shared an apartment wall with lust, and she’d been banging on it for a while now. Might as well throw open the door and meet the neighbors.
Leif woke to the greens and blues of the dragon. Darkness was his kingdom, and a beautiful maiden had been deposited on his doorstep like the sacrifices of old. In his dreams the maidens never cowered. No shrinking violets in gothic nightgowns for him. He dreamed of Valkyries, heads high, spears sharp. Like this one. Her lips parted just enough to slip his finger between. Her hair was a river of blue-black. Tears in those silver eyes, and beneath that, embers, a mirror of the lust that burned through him. He saw raw need there and the bitter longing of a want too long denied.
His head slowly cleared. Grace. His Grace.
Grief creased her features. Passion burned in her eyes—emotion so intense it drew tears. One part lust, one part pain. By now he could recognize her old scars, the white feathers of the albatross that hung around her neck. These emotional scars were new, this pain borne of some recent trauma. The old scars ripped when the new ones formed, so that they bled together, raw and throbbing and bitter.
Aether flowed through him, and he Turned. She didn’t retreat. He needed to hold her. He needed to comfort her. He took her in his arms, and she welcomed him. Her lips rose up to meet his. The touch ignited, flint sparking that long chord of lust. Fire met fire in the rush of lips and tongues and teeth. He squeezed her shoulders and ran his palms down the tattered edge of her sleeves. Her hands fisted by her sides. He coaxed her fingers open, just as he slipped his tongue between her lips. She opened for him like a night-blooming flower. Her scent, rose petals and sweat, drowned out the stronger smells, the horse, the mud of the battlefield, and the blood.
