by Ann Gimpel
Fury hammered me until I was pure, white light. Every bat abomination I targeted burst into a stinking, smoking pyre. I had to kill them. Had to. The witches needed me. And Bjorn, too. He was a healer, and some of my family were still alive.
Chapter Twelve, Bjorn
Rowan was fierce and beautiful, like an avenging angel as she lobbed magic-laden death at the bats. Maybe her intuition was working overtime. I’d thought she was being overly conservative about stopping by Midgard, but she’d been right on target. A shrill keening preceded holes ripped in the either, admitting two more of the bat monsters. Apparently, not everything bad originated from the dirt under my feet.
Beyond their obvious relationship to bats, there was something familiar about the winged horrors. I’d never seen their like before, but my memories had expanded. Was I tapping into knowledge from Hel? Or Nidhogg? I hadn’t stopped long enough to consider what being directly related to him would mean.
I’d always assumed everyone in the Nine Worlds was loosely related to Odin, but my kinship ties had just grown a whole lot more intimate. What that signified remained to be seen as well. Power flowed through me as if I’d been born to wield it. It felt odd and beautiful and right in a way not much else has in my life. Rowan’s magic pulsed alongside mine, a glowing ribbon in shades of blue and violet.
I snatched a nanosecond to scan the familiar surroundings. Witches weren’t the only ones scattered on the ground. Why in the hell hadn’t they remained within the caves? They would have provided protection. A hairy foot looked as if it might have belonged to a dwarf. What was it doing out of Svartalfheim? Severed wings probably belonged to a sprite. Three pieces of what had been a grossly deformed snake with caterpillar markings were separated by unidentifiable debris.
“I’ll clear that side,” Rowan yelled and sprinted nearer the cave’s entrance. She didn’t wait for me to answer. No need. I turned toward the farthest bat. This one was pale, almost white. It was new to the party, and the acrid stench of toxins clung to it.
I could keep right on killing what was in front of me, but it was a shortsighted approach. What I needed to do was close off the entrances. Keeping a close eye on the latest bat to arrive, I reached deep, asked for more from Midgard, from Yggdrasil through its root that touched the world I stood upon. My spell was about halfway built when the foul reek of bat drew dangerously near.
I’d thought I had enough time. I’d been wrong. The light-colored bat was female from the looks of the lines of teats hanging from her belly. Crap. Did these abominations give birth? That wasn’t good news. I detached a bit of the power I’d been fashioning, redirected it into a ward, and waited. The high-pitched squeals bats use to locate prey suggested she was effectively blind in daylight.
Excellent.
She’d zeroed in on me, but she was still zigging and zagging. On one of her course corrections, I sent a lethal blow into her heart. I expected her to fall out of the sky, but it didn’t even slow her down. What in the unholy crap? The other bat-things had fallen before my magic, and not even as much as I’d just used.
Fuck. They must be mutating, developing ways to counteract what we raised against them. What kind of creature could do that? Not even magical beings were capable of transforming that quickly. At least none I’d ever run into.
Not that I’d faced off against many hordes before, but the goblins and gnomes and trolls Nidhogg had forced me to deal with hadn’t possessed that particular unsettling quality. I let my fledgling ward go and focused all my attention on my adversary. She was closer now. Uncomfortably close.
Close enough to use one of the blades I had yet to pick up. They weren’t even smelted yet. It felt as if years had passed since my visit to Hagar’s forge, not a mere handful of days.
I resurrected my ward in the nick of time. White exudate spattered it, leaving smoking trails in my shielding. My lungs tightened; my nostrils burned. I poured more magic into my shielding. Before the bat had been an inconvenience, but she’d turned into a personal challenge.
Nothing I couldn’t deal with. With parents like my real ones, I had to be immortal. The news should have been exhilarating, but I’d been too busy to absorb the full implications.
Hell, I was still too busy.
If a killing blow right into the bat’s heart didn’t do the trick, I’d have to try something different. I took the netting I’d manufactured to seal off this part of Midgard from further intrusion and tossed it over the bat. My aim was true. The mesh snared its wings, which should drive it from the air. But I didn’t stop there. I wound the weave of my snare tight and then tighter, pushing air and life out of the monster.
I’d expected it to be a quick death, but the only quick part was when it splatted to the ground uncomfortably near where I stood. I could have crawled out from under its belly, but I’d have been saturated with poison. By now, I’d figured out that the rows of what I’d assumed were teats were sacs filled with toxin.
It splattered in a ring around the fallen bat. The ground smoked and rippled, outraged by the crap touching its surface. Good. Midgard was still fighting back. I’d begun to wonder if the world had surrendered to a fate that felt inevitable.
I kept the pressure up, winding my net stiffer, tauter. Why in the fuck wasn’t the bat dead? I had things to do besides babysitting its demise. Hanging onto my netting with one stream of magic, I fashioned another into a gleaming spear and punctured both its lungs.
Air hissed from its grotesquely open mouth. I would have bet on toxic gas, but it wasn’t worth checking since nothing except me was close enough to sustain injury. I probed, not bothering for subtle, and fist-pumped the air. The goddess damned bat was dead. Finally.
If every adversary took this much thought and effort, Rowan and I would be finished before we even began. We’d never be able to stop fighting. And every time we looked up, more of the enemy would be ranged against us.
As I contemplated that sobering backdrop, I released my warding. Zelli and Quade were circling to land. “We shut this part of Midgard off from above and below,” Quade informed me in mind speech.
“Over here!” Rowan screamed before I could thank Quade for his and Zelli’s efforts.
I pelted around the bat that had sucked up half an hour of my time and ran to Rowan, dodging bodies and potholes as I went. Had there been an earthquake? Was that why the dirt was riddled with fissures? There were way more of them than there should be. Especially since some of the enemy had come through holes in the sky.
Rowan knelt, cradling a man’s head in her arms. His spirit hovered above his body, which was never a good sign. I switched up my magic. In general, healing requires water. Lots of water with a bit of fire and a touch of air. The power I’d been chucking at the bat didn’t have any water in it at all.
With my hands hovering over the prostrate witch, I hunted for what was wrong with him. Nothing was broken, but his liver was overflowing with venom and his lungs were barely moving air. When I dug further, his magical center had developed a dark perimeter, as if something had barricaded it off.
Absent magic, his ability to heal himself would be nil.
“Hurry,” Rowan urged. “He’s slipping away.”
I tethered his spirit with a thread of power. It wasn’t absolute, but it would buy us a bit of time. The man’s face twisted into a grimace. “Sorry, buddy,” I said firmly. “Hold on. We’re trying to bring you back.”
I have no idea if he heard me, but hearing is the last sense to go.
“What’s wrong with him?” Rowan switched to telepathy.
“Not sure. Something attacked his magic. If I can clear it, channels will open for him to become whole again.”
“Show me.” She sent a glimmering spar into the witch. I guided it to the place I was working.
A startled gasp told me she understood the problem. When she said, “Why the fuck couldn’t I see that on my own?” her gasp took on a whole new meaning. She’d scanned the man. Of course she had, and to
tally missed the seat of his problem.
The witch’s spirit strained at its tether. We didn’t have time to muck around experimenting. “Stay with me,” I told both Ro and the witch.
“What are we doing?” she asked. Tension sheeted from her. Clearly, she was still upset she hadn’t been able to locate his broken places.
“It runs counter to everything I’ve learned over the years because water is the primary healing element, but we’re going to send a very fine line of fire here.” I showed her the blackened edge where I planned to begin. It seemed weaker there, and was a logical staring point. I didn’t waste more time on explanations. We didn’t have any.
If this worked, the fire would glom onto the evil and burn the taint free, working its way around the perimeter of the witch’s magic. If it didn’t work, the fire would kill the witch, but he was as good as dead anyway.
I was holding my breath. I blew it out as I threaded fire to the spot I’d indicated. Fire has never been my favored element, but now it leapt to my command. So much so, I dialed back the intensity. If I wasn’t cautious about how I applied it, the flame would burn right through the witch, and he’d go up like a torch.
I felt Ro’s energy hovering. Beyond her, the dragons were doing something, moving around the field. My flickering spark danced around the edges of the blackened perimeter but didn’t destroy it. I added more heat, more destruction, but backed off after every alteration.
Sweat beaded my forehead and dripped into my eyes. It ran freely down my sides. Magic was a jealous mistress. She’d take everything I fed into her and beg for more. I’d discovered as a much younger mage that I had to be careful or I’d get so swept into spells it would take me days to find my way back.
“Look!” Rowan moved the end of her spar to a spot where the perimeter had finally begun to smolder. The touch of her magic was the linchpin. In less than the space between two breaths, the entire barrier around the witch’s magical center burned merrily.
The next part happened fast, even for my castings. Flames turned to cinders, and a glowing light pulsed outward from the witch’s captive magic. His spirit slammed back into his body. His eyes snapped open, and he thrashed in Rowan’s grip.
“Let go of me,” he sputtered. “I’m fine. We must help the others.”
I didn’t wait for him to repeat himself. Now that I understood what to do, it would go a whole lot faster. I could skip the diagnostic part and go straight for the cure.
Rowan joined me where I stood next to the witch. He was struggling to stand, but I wasn’t worried about him.
A brisk bugle drew my attention to Zelli and Quade. They’d carried prostrate witches to one of the few level areas left. Zelli laid one more down gently. I ran toward them.
“Why’d they leave the caves?” Rowan wailed.
“We’ll find out,” I told her. “I’m sure they had their reasons.” I was close enough to count eight witches. “Is that all of them?” I yelled to Quade. Even without communicating, the dragons had done the best possible thing. I could do a group casting with Rowan. It would save time and magic.
“One more,” Zelli called back and took to the skies again.
By the time she returned, Ro and I stood next to Quade, and I’d done a quick-and-dirty assessment. In case one of them had something different wrong with them and I wiped out their magical essence by mistake. Aye, I know I’d said I could skip the diagnostics, but caution trumped hubris.
A muted cry from Rowan dragged my gaze to the latest addition to the group of witches. It was Tansy. My heart hurt for the young witch. And for Rowan. I took a moment to run magic through her, and then I did it once more.
“She has a different problem,” I said.
Blue-white magic, courtesy of Rowan, flickered around the young witch. When she looked up, her forehead was a mass of lines. “Not magic,” she ground out.
“Her hurt places are physical,” I agreed and looked from her to the eight witches laid out in a rough circle. Many were in the same spot the witch we’d saved had been in. Their spirits hovered, on the verge of departing for the afterlife. If I took the time to cure them, Tansy would be gone. But the reverse held true as well.
“We can help,” Quade rumbled.
“Aye. Tell us what ye did,” Zelli said.
I sketched out the exact proportions of fire I’d used with warnings about not overdoing it, and then I turned to Rowan. “You have to help the dragons,” I told her. “Your magic is the fulcrum, the addition that made mine work.”
She nodded once, sharply. “Take good care of Tansy.”
“I’ll do the best I can.” I slipped a noose around Tansy’s spirit as I ran to her and lifted her into my arms. Nothing I could do once a spirit departed this world. I moved the girl well away from the others, so none of their magic would slop over and pervert mine.
As I walked with Tansy in my arms, I triaged her injuries. The worst was something had hit her in the back of her head. She was bleeding into her brain and into the layers of tissue covering it. I tried reaching her with telepathy, and then with magic, but she’d moved to the deepest levels of unconsciousness. Where the next stop is death.
I’d no sooner laid her down and wrapped my hands around her head, intent on ameliorating as much of the damage as I could when Hel shimmered into being right next to us.
Because this was a projection, I saw Hel as she really was, bones gleaming whitely where they were exposed. “She is mine.” My mother held out her arms.
“Nay. I will fight you for her.”
“The child was valiant.” Hel’s tone was riddled with compulsion. “Doona deny her eternal rest.”
I erected a shield before I replied. A barrier to keep my mother out. There’d been a time I’d never have bothered, figuring my power was no match for hers. No more underestimating my ability. I spared a glance at Hel, at my mother. “The child is just that. A child. She has everything to live for.” A thought slammed into me, and I voiced it before deciding if it was a good idea. “Help me. Help me heal her. If we fail, she will enter your realm willingly because I shall escort her myself.”
Hel leveled a speculative glance my way. “Done. I may not have raised you, but I’m proud of the man ye’ve become.”
I started to ask if she was only just now figuring that out, but my scrambled relationship with her would have to take a backseat. Tansy needed me—needed us. And her need was urgent.
“If I am going to assist, I canna reach through your ward,” Hel said.
I hesitated, but only briefly. Hel may have withheld critical information, but she’d never given me any other reason to distrust her. Finally leveraging water, I poured magic into Tansy’s wounded places and released the hold I had on the barrier around us. Healing magic was familiar ground. I’d done plenty of it, and I sank into my usual perspective where I held magic on one side and my sense of my patient on the other, adjusting my interventions accordingly.
Hel’s power slid in next to mine, so smoothly I almost didn’t notice her. It was as pointed a message as I was likely to get that her magic was my magic. Working in concert with her felt normal, natural. Very different from when I worked with Rowan and our power potentiated itself until we were a hundred times stronger together than apart.
Getting the bleeding to stop was easy. Urging the swollen tissues to retreat a little harder. Once they were more-or-less normal size, Hel and I went to work correcting the damaged places. Tansy’s breathing stabilized. Her heartbeat grew stronger. When her spirit crashed into her body with no urging from me, I knew we’d won.
Breath rattled from me, and I began a slow withdrawal from where I’d placed fail-safes through the child’s brain. Her eyes fluttered open, and she smiled. “You. I heard you calling me back. I didn’t want to come, but you were persistent.”
“That I am,” I agreed.
Rowan swooped in from one side and sank into a crouch. “Thank all the bloody gods and saints and everyone else, you’re all right.�
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Tansy twisted and wound her arms around Rowan’s knees. I pushed upright. No need to ask how things had gone with the dragons and the other witches. If they hadn’t pulled through, Rowan would still be over there.
To my surprise, Hel hadn’t left. I turned to face her. “Thank you for helping me.”
“Thank you for trusting me.” She inclined her head slightly. When she raised it and looked across at me, I realized I’d grown taller once she removed the glamour. “Ye’re a talented healer,” she said.
“I try. Some cases are harder than others. Tansy was pretty far gone.”
A soft smile curved Hel’s mouth. “Ye’re also mated. To Rowan. I saw it while our magic was joined. Congratulations. ’Tis a strong pairing. Odin will be pleased.”
I resisted an urge to snarl, but I did say, “I don’t care what he thinks or doesn’t think.”
She waved a bony finger in front of me. “Doona make that mistake…Son. He is our leader and worthy of respect. Dark times are on the horizon. Darker than we have ever faced afore. Odin will need all our support.”
Before I could respond, her image wavered, and she was gone.
“Mrroowwwww,” Mort announced and launched himself at Tansy and Rowan.
When she looked up at me, tears streaked her cheeks, and she cradled both the cat and Tansy in her arms.
“I’m okay. You can let go of me.” Tansy struggled to sit.
“Why did you leave the caves?” I asked.
After crossing her legs under her, she replied, “There were quakes. Big ones. Rocks and dirt were falling, even inside. And then, there was this horrible booming. Some of the older witches said it sounded like a big airplane. Loren just meant to go outside and check on things, but he’d barely left when he started screaming, and—”
“It’s all right.” She looked so distressed, I waved her to silence. I’d gotten enough of the picture to understand the witches had been lured into leaving the relative safety of the ancient Celtic stronghold.
