Winner Takes All (Were Witch Book 9)
Page 17
The werewitch decided to drop the issue. “Okay, fine.” She briefly wondered who, or what, Jörmungandr’s mother might have been, then instantly blotted the thought from her mind.
Loki performed a couple of healing spells and Thor fell into a cozy slumber, though he still looked weak.
Bailey just breathed in and out, watching them. For the moment, she felt warmth, peace, and relief. She wanted it to last and had no desire to risk plunging herself into further chaos, and strife, or uncertainty.
But her desires were less important than her duties. “All right,” she inquired, “What do we do next?”
It occurred to her that she probably sounded tired and scared. It also occurred to her why: because she was tired and scared.
Ever since we learned about Fenris’ plans, she mused, we’ve had to rush around in a constant state of worry and anxiety, wondering what he’s going to try next and never knowing when or where the next domino will fall. I’m getting sick of it. I just want to face him down and put an end to this once and for all.
But it was impossible to say how she would deal, emotionally, with the final confrontation. She’d been trying not to think about it too hard.
Loki calmed her somewhat by giving her a straight answer.
“Next,” he began, “you should head to the realm of the draugar. The undead, as I believe you people rather crudely refer to them. They’ve marshaled their forces near the boundary between their realm and ours, and, well, you know the rest. It’s much the same as with the dark elves, frost trolls, and stone giants.”
Bailey tilted her head back and groaned. “Goddammit. How many armies does Fenris have? It’s like he’s turned the whole universe against you guys. Against us, I mean.”
Loki held up a finger. “Not all of it. Only a fraction, albeit a rather significant fraction. But you should make haste. Things have proceeded far enough that the draugar lords may provide the last distraction Fenris requires. If they make any progress, Asgard will have to divert its forces to confront them, potentially leaving my son open to perform the ritual that will bring about the end.”
“Noted,” Bailey responded, inhaling and steeling herself for the battle to come. She wondered when she’d get time to rest again.
The god of mischief went on. “There is one other thing to note. We are quite confident that Fenris considers the best-case scenario to be sacrificing you in his stead to bring about Ragnarök and then rule over the ensuing wreckage, but there is something that remains nebulous to us. He may, if he pushed to utmost desperation, decide to trigger the Beginning of the End according to the original prophecy. In other words, sacrifice himself after all, simply to destroy Asgard and the cosmic order that depends upon it. Thus, even in death, he would be victorious. After a fashion.”
The girl’s blood went cold. “Does he hate you guys that much? Why would he do that?”
Loki shook his head, and his eyes and the lines of his face were drawn and sad. “I do not have the answer to either of those questions. As I said, it’s uncertain. He might be willing to surrender if he fails to sacrifice you. There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?”
She sighed and nodded. “Yup. Okay, how do I get to the draugar’s world?”
Loki clapped his hands, and a doorway of shifting, glimmering amethyst light appeared before him. “That way,” he stated. “Call your Asgardian regiment and have them join you. I will locate your other friends and provide portals for them as well.”
The werewitch stepped toward the gate, then remarked, “What would I do without you, Loki?”
He shrugged. “Fail, most likely.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she grumbled. “Whatever. Thanks, though.”
Bailey stood at the head of her regiment. A few of the Asgardian troops, the Weres, and the witches had been rotated out due to injuries, exhaustion, or shellshock. Townsend also needed to recover, given his weakened constitution and bad leg, but the Agency had sent an extra four men to more than compensate, and Asgard had dispatched an additional platoon of soldiers to further swell her ranks.
The world in which they found themselves was perhaps the least pleasant place Bailey had ever seen, with the possible exception of the dark alfar’s homeworld. That realm could claim, if nothing else, to a sort of austere desert majesty.
The homeworld of the draugar, by contrast, was like a scene out of a nightmare. The landscape consisted of frozen swamps and tundra swept by a bitterly cold wind so vile that Bailey had had to draw upon the powers she’d gleaned from the frost trolls to protect her people and herself from it.
Low, jagged mountains the color of dark ash streaked across the bogs, resembling broken ribcages. Diseased-looking trees rose here and there. Bones were scattered throughout the icy morass. The worst thing, though, was the greenish sky through which black clouds raced. Bailey tried not to look at it.
The draugar themselves, thus far, had been no match for the combined forces of Earth and Asgard, let alone the goddess of witches and Weres. Hundreds of their corpses were strewn about, adding to the grotesque morbidity of the environment. The humans watched them warily as if half expecting the undead they’d slain to rise a second time.
They remained still, however. The only movement came from the occasional wafting of ice fog from the frozen marsh-pools.
Bailey addressed them all. “Okay, we’ve kicked the shit out of them so far, but next up is storming the castle over there. Once again, I want you all to let me do the heavy lifting out in front. I’ll clear the path, and you secure it while watching my back. From what Loki told me, no draugar will fight without being ordered to, so they ought to collapse back into neutrality once we take out their leaders.”
Dante quipped, “Oh, wonderful. We won’t have to fight an entire planet’s worth of assholes like we did with the rock giants.”
Velasquez checked his plasma cannon for the little light that indicated it was done recharging, then cocked it, putting it back into fire mode. “Exactly. I’m honestly starting to get sick of this crap.”
Park pouted. “I’m not.”
“Shut up, Park,” the senior agent snapped. “Maybe it should be you and Bailey alone who handle all of this.”
He nodded. “That would make sense since I have the second-highest kill count after her.”
Bailey waved a hand. “Yeah, true, though it’s a pretty distant second. Enough yakking. Sigfred, you ready? Forward!”
Once again, the Asgardian troops formed the core of the second line of defense, while the Agency’s men provided the main secondary offense. Bailey charged across the valley toward the shale-colored, gargoyle-decorated structure that rose from the nearby foothills.
Corpses in rags or armor or greenish robes rose from nowhere to attack them, and Bailey could see, hear, and smell legions of other draugar massing beyond the crags, slowly converging on the structure where their leaders waited.
The werewitch carved through them, and they went down easily under the heavy fire of plasma balls and enchanted light arrows, not to mention the plethora of spells summoned by the witches.
Lycanthropes were able to participate in the current fight as well. Though hordes of them made a distinctive rustling sound, an individual draugar was disturbingly quiet and could easily sneak up on the regiment, launching a sudden attack with its ability to expand its size and strength or distort its shape. At those moments, it helped to have wolves ready to pounce.
Bailey conjured a wall of flame and pushed it into the front of the undead castle, slowly doing a sweep of the structure’s face, melting or incinerating most of the draugar who might lay in ambush.
“Come on!” she urged her allies. She charged across the stone bridge to the front gates, her sword ready.
What followed was a tense and difficult alley-fight as the Earthling-Asgardian force struggled through the labyrinthine halls of the gloomy keep, barely evading traps or constant ambushes as the leering, hissing undead sprang from every shadowed cranny.
Before her were five stone chairs arranged in a semicircle, their occupants facing her. She beheld a quintet of draugar in green and black robes finer than those of any others they’d encountered.
Bailey turned to Roland and Sigfred. “Hold the door,” she instructed them. She could hear more rustling footsteps ascending the staircase. Then she advanced toward the ruling council of the draugar.
In the central chair sat a dead woman with taut blue skin and ragged, wispy hair. She raised a bony hand.
“Have you come, Bailey Nordin,” she asked in an eerie whispering tone, “to challenge us? Fenris warned us you might.”
The girl pointed her sword at the councilwoman’s face. “I have unless you agree to call off the invasion.”
The five exchanged stiff, glassy-eyed looks. The woman in the center rasped, “We do not. Die, Bailey Nordin. Die.”
The speed with which the council members sprang from their seats came as a surprise, considering the unnatural stiffness of their movements and the fact that two of them had been cobwebbed into their chairs.
Worse, Bailey felt her knees wobble and her arms drop. The sword’s blade trailed against the floor, she couldn’t move, and fear and nausea overwhelmed her.
The corpses were advancing, essentially floating toward her at top speed.
No, she decided, it’s psionic bullshit. Magical fear attacks, mind-over-matter propaganda trying to convince me I’m too weak to lift my damn sword and so forth. It’ll take more than that to beat me.
She scarcely shook it off in time. The lead councilwoman was upon her, the bony fingers inches from Bailey’s face.
The girl swung her sword straight upward, imbuing it with heat and light, and split open the dead woman’s chest. She fell back, letting out a hollow scream that seemed to originate from someplace other than her body, and fell to the floor, brittle and withered.
Then Bailey spun, shielding herself from the next psychic assault as well as blasts of ice and attempts to conjure poison within her bloodstream. Draugar magic was cruel and insidious, but she’d faced stronger.
While her friends fought off the drones who came up the stairs toward them, Bailey struck down the remaining four members of the ruling council, draining some of their power with each kill. The unnatural and vile aspects of draugar sorcery made her want to throw up, but her mind was adaptive, and she made herself appreciate its subtlety.
The sounds of combat ceased. Once she got herself under control, Bailey walked out of the main chamber and found her allies staring dumbfounded at a host of corpses that did nothing but stare back.
“Well,” Roland observed, “it worked. Without their leaders, they’ve reverted to being, uh, dead people, I guess.”
Charlene cringed. “They’re still standing, though.”
Bailey issued an order. “Sigfred, get your men’s shields up and advance. I’m guessing you can just push them aside.”
Her estimate proved correct, and their uncanny foray into the realm of the walking dead became an exercise in absurdity as slack-jawed corpses were bowled over, knocked against the walls, or trampled underfoot. Once they were safely out of the claustrophobic confines of the castle, the Earthlings all burst out laughing, though the Asgardians remained stoic.
“Man,” Velasquez commented, “that was, like, night and day.”
Bailey nodded. “We stopped the entire draugar rebellion in one fell swoop. Mission accomplished.”
She tapped into her reserves of magic to create a dome of protective heat and a mist of healing essence within it. Everyone sat or leaned on their weapons, resting after the fight.
Roland came over to Bailey to check on her. She suspected she didn’t look so good, and the wizard helpfully confirmed her suspicions.
“Yeah,” she muttered. “I’m getting tired, not gonna lie. And draugar magic is probably the worst I’ve had to absorb, in terms of how...palatable it is.”
He frowned and put his arm around her shoulders. “I see. What I’m curious about is, would you say they’re more like zombies or vampires?”
The girl shrugged. “Neither, really. Zombies with more intelligence or vampires with less sex appeal, maybe.”
“Fascinating,” Roland commented, and she could see his eyes going distant as his intellectual curiosity turned to the subject of undeath.
While he was preoccupied, Bailey reached out with her mind toward Loki. She needed to tell him that the job was done, and he needed to tell her what came next.
I imagine, she pondered, that it all comes down to how far along you-know-who is in his plans.
The throne room within the high palace of Asgard where Odin had once reigned was again occupied, though no one sat in the great chair.
Carl the scion was there, directing the students from the academy whom he and Fenris had turned to their cause, and who would act as their disciples, helping them with the final preparations.
“You there,” he announced, standing with hands on his hips at the base of the throne, “ensure the altar is perfectly centered in the chamber. It’s possible that the fundamental forces of the universe won’t care, but why risk it? Besides, Fenris likes a job well done. Oh, and the rest of you, work harder.”
Grumbles went around the chamber.
Then purple light spilled into it from the corner, and out strode Fenris. Everyone rose to their feet, facing him.
Carl greeted him first. “Welcome back, my lord. We’re nearly done with the second tier of all the divine red tape. I take it Thor is worm bait?”
“Yes,” Fenris stated. He continued his slow, heavy walk toward the base of the throne where Carl had been and turned to address the whole group when he reached it.
A moment went by, then the wolf-father’s eyes, hidden beneath his hood, passed across the faces of all his acolytes.
“My children, my devotees,” he began, his low, gravelly voice growing louder and more resonant, “we have entered the ultimate phase. Everything is now in place for the last act we must perform in order to reign over a new world.”
Heads nodded, and subtle currents of excitement went around the chamber.
Fenris raised a hand, moving it in a slow wave. “All the arrangements have been made. The monstrous peoples have absorbed most of the wrath of the gods and their new champion, and those of them who remain will act as our soldiers in the campaigns to come. That same champion of Asgard who shall be offered up in my stead will soon come to the sacrificial altar of her own free will.
“I shall reign over the next eon. Carl will sit at my right hand, and the rest of you will sit at my feet, learning what you’ll need to act as my ministers and heralds. The authority of the old gods will no longer impede our advancement.
“But there are some who might still oppose us. The rank and file of Asgard for one, though they are oblivious to what is truly happening. They won’t understand until it is too late, but their defeat is assured. There is also—”
The doors behind them were blasted inwards, and the illusions that Fenris had conjured to divert suspicion from the throne room melted away. A shining sword’s blade lashed out and carved through the barrier he’d raised, and in strode a single figure.
“—there is also him,” Fenris finished. He lowered his hand.
Tyr, the god of justice, leadership, and contracts, stood amidst the usurpers, his sky-blue eyes bright with righteous fury.
“How dare you!” he pronounced in a voice that reverberated like a gong. He was tall and dark-haired, chiseled and muscular. He resembled Balder somewhat, though darker and more careworn, with a greater air of harsh dignity about him. He wore silver armor and carried a shining longsword with a crossguard that resembled the wings of a white bird.
Fenris replied, “How? It matters not how, but I do dare.”
“Silence!” Tyr shot back, and the trumpet blast of his voice ma
de the acolytes flinch. “I know all. The depths of your treachery have been revealed to us, Fenris. Here you gloat as if in victory, when in fact, this is the moment when you reap not as you wish, but as you have sown. Such is the destiny of traitors.”
Fenris was silent and stared back at the angry god with a perfectly neutral and unflappable expression. “Oh,” he finally said. “I had no idea.”
The lord of justice drew his sword. “You lackeys, stand back. Fenris! Face me in single combat. You do not deserve a trial or tribunal, for your guilt is known to all. I am here to carry out the execution. You will die by my hand.”
The wolf-father reached up and slowly pulled the hood back from his face, exposing his craggy features and ragged, graying hair. “Executioners,” he pointed out, “only kill those who are incapable of fighting back.” He gestured at his students. “And we all are firm believers in standing up for ourselves.”
The man standing before the throne was no more. A huge dark shadow streaked across the chamber, piling into Tyr in a frenzy of fur, fangs, and claws.
Carl laughed. “He actually thought we were going to just stand here and accept his judgment? Amazing.”
Tyr bellowed in rage as he and Fenris struggled, the justice god’s sword prevented from slaying the wolf-beast by the heavy paw against his arm. Tyr rallied and tossed Fenris back.
Before he could strike, one of the acolytes stepped in and stabbed him in the side with a dagger a hand’s breadth above the hip.
Screaming in fury, Tyr pivoted and swung his sword at the man’s head, dropping him instantly. Then Fenris was upon him again, and so was Carl. And the others.
“Bastard!” the god of justice protested. “You would violate the sanctity of single combat? Cowards!” Claws raked him, knives slashed his limbs and torso, and Carl pummeled him in the face and groin with his fists.
Fenris, speaking with the terrible growl of his true form, replied, “The end of all things is upon us, Tyr. That includes foolish traditions of chivalry.”