But Fenrir dipped his head at me, blinking slowly. I mirrored the motion, not knowing the appropriate way to acknowledge his gesture, or what it actually meant. Maybe it meant I will eat you last, tiny man-thing, but only if I’m particularly hungry.
Then his attention shifted back to Gunnar—who hadn’t moved a muscle. They locked gazes for about ten seconds before Fenrir seemed to nod and then lift his muzzle, exposing his throat ever so slightly.
I stared, almost unable to breathe. That…was almost a submissive gesture, or at least a respectful one. Gunnar repeated the gesture, and then began wagging his tail.
Loki licked his lips, shaking his head in awe.
Gunnar then calmly trotted up, hopped over Fenrir’s paws, and began nuzzling Calvin and Makayla, barking proudly at the impossible feat they’d just pulled off.
Their responding whines sounded like Daaaaad, you’re so embarrassing! Let us sleep!
“This is incredible,” I breathed, shaking my head.
“Nate!” War hissed in a loud whisper from outside the building, trying to get my attention without pissing off Fenrir. I glanced back to see a grim look on his face. “We’re about to have company. I can hear snowmobiles. A lot of them.”
Chapter 44
I spun back to Loki, and then Fenrir. The pups were in no condition to move on their own. Alucard was likely still unconscious, and we had a mobile army bearing down on us.
“Fenrir,” I said loudly, looking up at him and hoping he could understand me. Loki had spoken with him and he’d seemed to understand. He still had the collar on his throat, but it was no longer glowing with runes. It didn’t seem to be attached to any chains, either. He turned to look at me, watching in silence. But I did notice one of his ears twitching as it swiveled, possibly hearing the snowmobiles outside. “More enemies are on their way. And you need to get out of here or this was all for nothing.”
Loki pointed at Fenrir’s throat. “He is no longer restrained, but that collar still has runes on it. We need to get it off.”
I squinted, leaning forward. He was right. At least, I saw numerous indentations in the collar that looked like runes, but his fur was bunched over it and the building was still dark. At least they weren’t glowing.
Then I realized what Loki was getting at. “All of my…rune-breakers are down for the count. This is as good as it’s going to get until we can heal them. And sticking around here for the reinforcements to arrive is a great way to get us all killed.”
I thought about making a Gateway, and my knees almost gave out as a wave of dizziness rolled over me. Nope. Magic was a bad idea. Then I remembered that I had given Alucard some Tiny Balls so he could get the pups out of here in the event that things went sideways.
I spun to War. “Grab Alucard’s Tiny Balls. They’re in his pants somewhere.”
War gave me a flat look. “I fail to see how groping the vampire will help anyone. Pass.”
I growled. “Magic marbles that make Gateways,” I snapped, remembering that he didn’t regularly work with me, so he might not be familiar with the professional lingo.
“Oh. Well, that’s entirely different. I’ll go grope the vampire.”
I rolled my eyes, turning back around to see Gunnar carrying a sleeping Makayla in his teeth, holding her by the ruff of her neck. Loki carried Calvin in his arms. The dad-squad trotted past me with anxious looks on their faces as they heard the distant whine of snowmobiles. I was guessing we had a few minutes, tops.
I glanced at Fenrir. “Alright, big boy. You probably need to shake out those muscles—”
Fenrir stood up…and obliterated the roof in the process.
I spun and ran from the building as pieces crashed down all around me. I felt Fenrir’s hot breath on my back and I instinctively clenched my butt to get it at least another inch away from him in hopes that one inch could make a difference.
Contrary to rumor, it did not make a difference.
Fenrir grabbed me in his mouth, and I fell to my back on his wet, hot tongue. I stared out through a prison of teeth that wasn’t entirely closed, and saw metal beams, sheets of aluminum and steel, and other sections of the building crashing down outside of Fenrir’s mouth.
I panted, suddenly feeling like I was in a steamy sauna, and ripped my coat off. I looped it around one of his teeth and held onto both ends in case he decided to tilt his head back too far and taste some magical, St. Louis long pig.
Me.
But I was pretty sure he was trying to save me.
“You know, if you had waited another ten seconds, you wouldn’t have almost killed me!” I muttered. “Bad dog!”
I felt a blast of hot air wash over me as he let out a grunt that sounded like amusement.
I felt his tongue suddenly drop out from under me and I slammed into the roof of his mouth. A heartbeat later, two explosions rocked the ground outside and I landed back onto his tongue in a wizardly splat. I climbed to my feet, cursing and swearing as I wiped slobber from my face and arms, turning to see that he held his mouth open and his tongue out. It rolled out like a red carpet and Loki stood at the end, staring at me with wide, panicked eyes, having forgotten all about the puppy in his arms.
Gunnar calmly trotted over and picked up the puppy by the back of his neck with his teeth, snorting at Loki before carrying the pup away.
I walked down Fenrir’s tongue with as much dignity as I could manage, wiping saliva from my satchel and carrying my dripping coat. As much as I wanted to throw it down Fenrir’s throat until he choked…the frigid air was having a decidedly unpleasant effect on my soaked body.
So I turned around and glared at him, placing my hands on my hips. He had closed his mouth but still had his chin on the ground. His rear was straight up in the air, and I realized his paws were stretched out to either side of me. His massive tail was wagging back and forth, destroying the remnants of the building.
He…was play-bowing. To me.
It was a thing dogs often did with each other while wrestling and playing. They would suddenly drop down and stretch out their front paws, keeping their asses high to signal they wanted to play.
I stepped to the side in order to see past his nose and glared. “No fucking way,” I told him, taking a step back and holding up my finger. “I am not wrestling with you.”
“We are blood brothers,” he whispered, his breath rolling over me in a heatwave. I flinched to hear him suddenly speak, since all he’d done up until now was growl. His voice sounded like a body being dragged through a forest of dead leaves, but it was muted and pained, as if restricted by his collar.
“Um, no. We are definitely not brothers,” I said, shooting Loki a quick frown.
He licked his lips. “Yes we are, little godkiller.”
And I saw golden light suddenly glowing from beneath his fur, just like…the veins in my arms. In fact, mine suddenly began to glow as well, responding to his.
I stared up at him with wide eyes. “Oh. I guess we are…big red dog,” I said, trying to come up with a nickname, since I hadn’t appreciated his little reference.
He chuffed, making my hair fly back. Then he spoke again, but this time it sounded entirely different. Like it was inside my head.
Anyone else stupid enough to bring Gungnir that close to me would have experienced a thousand deaths in the span of an instant. But I like your bravery, brother. You risked your life to save mine, and for that, I am forever in your debt.
I felt a momentary flutter of panic that Loki might have somehow heard him. I discreetly shook my head as I tried to think words back at him. I had to keep Gungnir away from…your grandfather. No one here knows I have it.
He studied me very intently, his eyes seeming to shine. I see, he thought at me. You are quite interesting, little brother. I’m interested to learn why you disguise yourself as the Father of Lightning, but we can discuss that, and many other topics later, when this cursed collar is removed.
Father of Lightning? Was he talking about Thor
? Was that what Loki had made me look like?
Fenrir’s eyes flicked over to the pups. The mistwolves are in grave danger. People fear what they do not understand. I know this well. I would ask you to do everything in your power to keep them safe, he said, and I knew it wasn’t a question.
Already working on it, I reassured him. Then I heard the sound of snowmobiles—much louder, now—and I flinched. They were right over the ridgeline. We need to go. Now.
“Hop on,” he said, out loud this time.
I blinked at him, wondering if I had heard correctly. But he was already lowering his rear down to the ground so that we could climb onto his back.
“Um,” I said, turning back to Loki. “Did you hear any of that?” I asked uneasily.
Loki shook his head very slowly, but he looked incredibly interested, and he was still cupping his arms like he was holding the puppy—obviously unaware that he had been robbed. “Just that you are both godkillers. Then you called him a big red dog and stared at each other for a second,” he added, not sounding impressed.
I let out a breath of relief. “Yeah. I had hoped you didn’t hear that part,” I mumbled, feigning embarrassment. “Reflex snark. It’s real.”
He nodded very slowly before turning to Fenrir. “What is he—”
“I checked everywhere,” War snapped, skidding to a halt in front of me. “Sparkles doesn’t have any balls.” His face instantly reddened. “Magic marbles,” he said, coughing loudly. “I meant magic marbles. He must have dropped them or burned them up in his supernova impersonation.”
I pointed a thumb at Fenrir. “He’s offering a ride, but we should hurry,” I said, my eyes again settling on the ridgeline and the sound of snowmobiles. A lot of snowmobiles.
“It’s a good idea,” War replied, grinning like an idiot. “I’ll help Gunnar with the pups.”
Alucard was lying on the ground, and I watched as Carl stepped up between his outstretched legs and grabbed the vampire’s right pant leg with his left hand. Then he squatted down too scoop his right arm under the same leg and did a shoulder roll aimed towards Alucard’s left armpit.
I blinked incredulously as Carl landed in a crouch with Alucard slung over his shoulder. Wow. Okay. Then Carl was jogging towards Fenrir. The wolf watched the Elder with wary respect as Carl climbed up his fur, still carrying Alucard.
Loki had already mounted, and Gunnar had shifted back to his human form. War took off his trench coat and shoved it at him, averting his eyes from Gunnar’s nudity.
Great. Now we had a flasher in a trench coat. Gunnar grabbed a pup in each hand and made his way over to Fenrir, handing the puppies up to Loki.
“We’re cutting it close,” War said. “How are you doing on magic?”
I tapped my necklace, indicating my Mask. “I’m down to last resorts. I have enough Fae juice left to put out these fires, because I doubt these snowmobiles are carrying Forest Rangers.”
He turned to me with a surprised look on his face. “Did you just think about that?” he asked.
I shook my head. “The moment they lit up,” I admitted. “Someone has to do it.”
“You have a surprisingly good soul, Temple.”
I scoffed. “Hell no. I just don’t want to get a bad rep next time I need a snowman army. Those guys gossip, and if I let their home burn down, they won’t help me again.”
He grinned, shaking his head. “Liar. You better hurry.”
I nodded, bending low to scoop up a snowball as War walked away. I focused my mind, reaching back out to the snow to ask for one last favor. I watched as a dozen snowmen rose up in front of me, looking tired. I let out a sigh of relief and exhaustion, barely fighting back the dizzy spell that threatened to knock me down.
I pointed at War, and smiled as a dozen snowballs pelted him from behind. He cursed, spinning around with a fiery sword suddenly in his fist. I burst out laughing. Then I gave each of my snowmen a high five. “Alright. Now, this last job is for you guys, because I’m almost out of juice. We need to put that fire out, and the guys coming our way on snowmobiles want to make it a bigger fire. I want you to stop them or give them hell.”
They turned to each other and nodded.
“Thank you,” I said. Then I began stumbling my way back towards Fenrir, that last bit of magic making my legs shaky and unreliable. I heard a piercing screech and glanced up sharply, instinctively assuming it was Hugin and Munin as I stared up at the cloudless sky.
I suddenly saw a pair of huge talons flying at my face. I wobbled clear, already dizzy, and the talons whistled past my cheek, but a brown feathered wing hit me like a down-pillow swung by an overzealous pre-teen in a championship pillow fight, knocking me on my ass.
The brown eagle hit the ground and rebounded up into the air as headlights suddenly sailed over the rise, heralding a battalion of snowmobiles. These men wore all white and they had laser sights on their guns, because red beams suddenly appeared everywhere, locking onto the snowmen and opening fire.
Fenrir suddenly leapt over me, snapping his jaws at the frantic bird. He missed, his jaws cracking shut on empty air, but he wasted no time in tearing into the horde of snowmobiles, stomping his paws and biting down to crush them like beer cans.
Men screamed, blood sprayed, and the gunfire sounded like a drum solo at a rock concert.
But they didn’t stand a chance against Fenrir. I watched his fur ripple as bullets hammered into him, but he paid them no mind. My friends hunched low on his back, holding on for dear life.
Then I saw Carl in his stupid sleeveless pink puffy jacket.
He was sprinting down Fenrir’s back—away from the snowmobiles. He leapt up into the air, aiming in my general direction.
Except he was at least forty feet in the air.
His arms windmilled wildly, and I wondered what the hell he was trying to do. That’s when I saw the brown eagle swooping back down towards me, the two of them racing to get to me first.
And I realized that this thing was way too fucking big to be a goddamned eagle. I tried standing, but my legs did little more than slide me back a foot. The eagle’s wings flared wide as its talons stretched out to snatch me—and they were big enough to succeed.
Carl hit it from behind, swiping his claws at the eagle’s face and using his other hand to grab onto a wing in an effort to either steer it away from me or rip the wing off.
The eagle screeched as Power Puff Carl’s claws raked a cheek.
I screamed as the eagle’s talons hit me in the chest like a taser—producing an explosion of lightning.
Fenrir howled as everything flashed, crackled, and boomed before darkness swallowed all sound and light and sensation.
Chapter 45
I woke up with a gasp, squinting against a bright sky. I was hanging by my wrists, my feet swinging lazily in the air. Wind whistled in my face and ears, and all I saw in the distance was a never-ending blanket of clouds.
Sky plus big fucking eagle equals Tropical Temple flavored, baby bird food, I thought to myself, suddenly panicking. The thing is taking me to his or her eaglets for breakfast!
I began frantically swinging my body to try and shake myself free from the eagle’s grip so it would let my wrists go and drop me. I could then touch my Horseman’s Mask to use my wings or try shouting for Grimm as I fell through the sky.
Except something cut deeply into my wrists, and all I heard were clinking chains. That’s when I realized that I wasn’t flying in the air by the eagle’s talons, but that I was on a windy mountain peak above the clouds. My feet hung about five feet from the ground, since I was hanging by chained shackles around my wrists. I kicked my feet violently, trying to use my magic to break the chains, since I was no longer feeling so drained.
But it almost felt like I didn’t have any magic—at all. I couldn’t even sense it. I kicked my feet harder, my panic upgrading to full on freak-out mode.
“Calm the fuck down over there, newbie!” a deep voice growled, before spiraling into a wet
, hacking cough.
I swiveled to see a hairy human body with a bird’s nest for a head also hanging by chained shackles around his wrists. The blood on his massive forearms looked old and crusted, and his skin was tough and leathery and browned by the sun.
He was also a fucking giant—his toes almost brushing the ground.
Like, nine-feet-and-it-doesn’t-fucking-matter-how-many-inches-at-that-point tall.
He had to be five-hundred pounds of solid muscle.
I kicked my feet to get a better look at his chains and saw that a pillar of rock actually rose up behind him, arcing out over his head where the chain was looped about a dozen times around the tip. Seeing his browned, beaten, lumpy form hanging like that, it made him look like the last banana dangling on the banana hanger of an apocalyptic kitchen counter.
It took me a moment of spinning to realize that I was hanging from a similar banana hanger, and that…
The mountain ended about two inches behind our pillars.
We were on the edge of a fucking cliff!
I sucked in a breath, kicking my feet wildly to turn back around before I lost my tentative grip on my sanity.
The giant swiveled his hairy dome my way to reveal a lumpy, misshapen face of leathery, sunburned skin. His face had calluses for crying out loud. That pretty much summed it up. He’d been here for a while.
He wore only a filthy bundle of cloth around his groin, and torso was a canvas of scars, as if a toddler with a razor had used his body to practice the alphabet. Whatever had caused them, it had happened a long time before his current predicament. His lips were cracked and bleeding, and the ear closest to me was crusted with dried blood as if someone had torn it off within the last few days.
He appraised me up and down. “At least you can talk,” he muttered. “Who are you?” he asked in a tired, rasping voice, before spiraling into another hacking, wet cough—obviously not used to speaking.
Ascension: Nate Temple Series Book 13 Page 27
