Poison Fruit

by Jacqueline Carey

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a lean streak of tawny-gray fur launch itself at Stefan, taking him down with a silent snarl. Man and wolf tumbled and grappled in the sand.

  “Shoot the wolf!” Persephone ordered.

  “No!” Dufreyne countermanded his mistress, turning on the reverb. “Everyone hold your fire!”

  Someone got a shot off before his powers of persuasion took effect, a lone crack of gunfire.

  The wolf yelped in pain and shifted. Cody lay naked on the sand, pressing his hand to a wound on his side, blood spilling through his fingers. “Whatever you’ve got to do, just do it, Daise,” he said in a ragged voice.

  A few yards away, Stefan was climbing arduously to his feet, grimacing and clutching his shoulder.

  I wished I’d had more time—time to explain, time to seek advice, time to think this through. A month, a day, an hour . . . hell, even five minutes would be a gift. But time was something I didn’t have. In the space of a few heartbeats, Stefan would be on me again, and this time, he would drain me. Persephone wouldn’t allow Dufreyne to interfere again. She would make sure it happened. She’d let Stefan drain me until I was an empty husk, no longer a threat to her plans, and then she’d order her troops to launch the third drone; and if that one didn’t succeed, another and another, until Yggdrasil’s mighty roots were blasted and destroyed, and Hel and the Norns with them, and a tangled thread in the skein of time was broken, and the entirety of existence might or might not unravel.

  All I could do was trust my heart, no matter how much the prospect of what I was about to do horrified me.

  Closing my eyes, I held the image of the sigil in my mind and spoke the words I’d never thought I’d say. “Belphegor! Father! I invoke my birthright!”

  The ground beneath my feet trembled.

  My father’s face swam in the darkness behind my eyes, dipping toward me. His eyes were as black as my own, and long curved horns jutted from his temples. Daughter, you have done well.

  Power filled me.

  It didn’t happen slowly like it had in my dream. It came all at once in a rush, exploding outward from the center of my chest. Brightness ran through my veins, and I blazed like a noonday star.

  I opened my eyes.

  No one had moved. Stefan looked at me with a profound mixture of pity and regret, then turned away, averting his face. Almost everyone else, even Persephone, gazed at me with fear and awe. Dufreyne was grinning with unholy glee, and I understood that he’d spoken the truth. I could taste hellfire and brimstone on my tongue, and the taste of it was sweet. With the full power of an apex faith at my command, I could bend even a goddess to my will.

  I could bid the mercenaries to lay down their weapons; I could order the fighting to cease. I could banish Persephone. I could protect my community, everything I loved, and never, ever have to feel helpless again.

  It was a glorious feeling.

  But it came with a terrible price.

  As it had in my dream, a clap of earsplitting thunder sounded as a jagged crack tore open the sky above us. Men fell to their knees in the sand, crying out in terror and covering their ears. In the basin, all fighting came to a halt. Atop the rim, only Persephone, Dufreyne, Stefan, and I remained standing. I wondered if my mother was standing or kneeling on the other side of the basin. I wondered if she’d turned her face away from me, too.

  A clarion trumpet blast sounded a call to arms, and golden radiance a thousand times brighter than sunlight spilled through the crack in the sky.

  There was darkness, too—darkness shimmering like a doorway over the dunes, and I saw in it my father, Belphegor, and a legion of demons behind him. Apparently the gates of hell couldn’t be flung open wide until the gates of heaven were, which was a good thing, since I hadn’t considered the alternative.

  On the ground, Cody gazed at me with half-lidded eyes, his gaze steady. The sand beneath him was dark with blood and his breath was shallow, but at least he was still breathing.

  I clenched my fists, feeling the leashed lightning in them, and lifted my face to the sky. “Look, I’m willing to take it back!” I shouted to the heavens. “But I want to bargain!”

  “You can’t take it back!” Daniel Dufreyne said incredulously, rounding on Persephone. “Can she?”

  “How should I know, traitor?” Her tone was cool. “Mayhap she can. She has not yet used the power she invoked.”

  I waited.

  Nothing happened.

  “Come on!” I shouted. “You bargained with Abraham! You had big plans for him, remember?” I gestured all around me. “You can’t tell me this is your last, best plan for humanity! You can’t be finished with us yet, God. There’s got to be more.” I took a deep breath. “Tikkun olam, right? Give us a chance to repair the world! Give me the chance to mend my world!”

  Stefan turned back toward me, a look of realization dawning over his features.

  Overhead, the golden brilliance intensified, narrowing to a shaft, and then a single point blazing across the sky, falling toward us like a meteor.

  It was an angel.

  It was a motherfucking angel.

  It didn’t look like any painting of an angel I’d ever seen, at least from what I could see. Its face was almost too bright to look at and its hair streamed like fire. It was at least three times the size of a tall man, and it had six wings that shifted in constant motion, wings covered in a myriad of golden eyes that opened and closed ceaselessly. I don’t know if this makes any sense, but the angel looked like the word glory made incarnate, and if I hadn’t been filled with infernal power, I’m pretty sure I would have been gibbering on the ground.

  The angel bent its radiant face toward me and spoke in a voice that rang like giant chimes. “You presume much.”

  It was a simple statement of fact, no judgment or anger in it. Somehow that chilled me more than anger would have. “I know.”

  A dozen golden eyes on its nearest wing regarded me. “What is it you seek?”

  The mind does strange things under duress. I had a horrible urge to answer with a quote from a Monty Python movie, and fought the desire to burst into hysterical laughter.

  Or hysterical tears. I was close to either.

  “I want to save Little Niflheim,” I said. “I want Hel’s demesne to be protected in perpetuity. I want mortality and a chance for redemption granted to the Outcast, and whatever . . . whatever loophole or crack that they fell through in the first place closed forever.”

  Several golden eyes closed. “Once the Inviolate Wall is restored, heaven can grant no such protection on the mortal plane.”

  Holy crap, I was bargaining with God. “Okay.” My voice was shaking. “But you can save Little Niflheim if I give back my birthright? And free the Outcast?”

  Massive wings stirred the air and the chiming voice turned stern. “With God all things are possible. But know that if you renounce this power, it will be forever. Do not think to seek a second bargain.”

  A wave of exhilaration filled me. “I know,” I said breathlessly. “And trust me, I won’t. I promise. Does that, um, mean we have a bargain?”

  There was a long moment of silence in which the angel became motionless. Radiance continued to blaze from its face and stream from its hair, but its ever-shifting wings had gone still, the multitude of golden eyes adorning them closing as it considered my offer and conferred with God.

  All at once, every single golden eye opened. “Yes.”

  Although I didn’t dare do it, I was torn between cheering aloud and bursting into tears of relief.

  Turning to Persephone, the angel extended one hand. A shaft of illumination brighter than sunlight burst forth from its palm, bathing her in brilliance. “The world is not yours to destroy, little goddess.” There was a gentleness to the chimes. “Be healed of this madness. Renounce this demesne and return to your own.”

  Persephone gave a choked gasp of assent.

  The angel spread all six of its wings, and bright shafts of g
olden light arrowed from all of its eyes. “All who were cast out of the fold shall be returned to it.” It folded its wings and bent its face toward Stefan, who was now kneeling in the sand. “Spend your mortality wisely.”

  “I will,” Stefan whispered in awe, tears in his eyes.

  I thought we were done with heaven’s end of the bargain, but the angel wasn’t finished. It turned to Daniel Dufreyne, and the stern note returned to its chiming voice. “For your role in breaching the Inviolate Wall, the unholy birthright to which you laid claim is revoked.”

  Be careful what you wish for, right? Dufreyne cried aloud in denial and loss, and there was no reverb in it. “No!”

  The angel turned back to me. “Now.”

  I approached the shimmering doorway of darkness where Belphegor and the legions of hell awaited.

  Belphegor’s horns gleamed like obsidian. I could imagine the same weight on my brow. I could have manifested horns if I’d wanted, or a proper devil’s tail, or wings like a bat. They were all just visual manifestations of the infernal power that blazed inside me, the power to compel multitudes.

  The power that I was about to relinquish forever.

  It was surprisingly hard.

  It was also very, very unnerving to stand before my father, only a thin veil of darkness between us.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said with a facetiousness I didn’t feel. “Sorry, I guess I must be a disappointment to you. Then again, I guess that’s what you get for raping an innocent young woman. But you know what? There’s something Mom always wanted you to know. When you chose her, you messed with the wrong girl.”

  Belphegor smiled, and it was a smile filled with an impossible mixture of cruelty and amusement. His voice echoed in my thoughts. Daughter, you struck a bargain with heaven today. Whatever you are, it is not a disappointment.

  I really, really didn’t expect to find that my demon father’s approval warmed my heart a little bit.

  I would think about what the hell that meant later.

  “Okay.” I drew in one last breath with brightness singing in my veins, reveling in the sensation for a few more precious heartbeats. “Father! Belphegor! I renounce my birthright, now and forever!”

  The power left as abruptly as it had filled me, snuffed out like a candle flame. A cry of anguish I couldn’t stifle escaped me. The doorway onto hell vanished, taking my father and its legions with it.

  I gazed at my hands, weak and empty, before turning to face the angel. “It’s done.”

  The angel’s voice chimed over the dunes as it spread its wings, rising aloft. “Farewell.”

  It departed like a meteor in reverse, a shining figure arcing into the broken sky. One last burst of golden radiance emanated from the jagged crack in heaven’s vault as the angel passed through it, and then the crack sealed itself and vanished.

  The Inviolate Wall was intact once more.

  It was over.

  Fifty-five

  In the wake of the angel’s departure, Persephone fell to her knees in the sand, burying her face in her hands and uttering a heartrending cry. “Ah, no! What have I done?”

  Even with the devastation she’d wrought, I couldn’t help but pity her. “You’ve made a terrible mistake, my lady,” I murmured.

  “Yes.” Lifting her head, she gazed at me with sun-spangled eyes. “Forgive me, young Daisy. I will do what I may to rectify it. The title to the Norse Hel’s demesne shall be restored to you.”

  Daniel Dufreyne cleared his throat. “You’re under no legal obligation—”

  “Be silent!” Persephone drew herself upright, regal and shining. “Call a cease-fire. We shall withdraw from the battlefield. Bid your warriors to retrieve their wounded and dead,” she said to her mercenary commander. “I will make restitution to their families.”

  The commander bowed his head to her. “My lady.”

  “May I point out that the company we contracted signed a release indemnifying—” Dufreyne caught her glare and fell silent.

  As long as they were leaving, that was good enough for me.

  I retrieved dauda-dagr and found Stefan at Cody’s side, pressing a bandanna against his gunshot wound. “How is he?”

  “Weak from loss of blood,” Stefan said. “But I think the bullet passed through cleanly and struck no vital organs.”

  “How are you?” I asked.

  Stefan paused. “The wolf has done some damage to my shoulder, but it will heal. Beyond that, I do not know how to answer you, Daisy,” he said simply. “Except to say that I am very, very grateful.”

  “You took one hell of a risk today, Pixy Stix,” Cody whispered with the ghost of a smile. “Holy shit! I’m just glad the world’s still standing.”

  Tears stung my eyes. “Oh, shut up and save your strength, will you?”

  Cody closed his eyes. “Okay.”

  If war was chaos, the aftermath wasn’t a lot better.

  The mercenaries packed their gear and retrieved their fallen comrades with unnerving efficiency, or at least all of their comrades that they could find. The Wild Hunt was still out there giving chase to those who had fled the battlefield in the initial panic. Horns echoed faintly in the distance, a reminder that there were things in the world that, once unleashed, no one could take back. Field medics administered first aid to the wounded, and a few motionless figures were hustled quickly out of sight. There would be no final tally of the casualties until the next day dawned.

  The gnarled figures of the elusive duegar scurried around the woods and dunes, gathering deadfalls and loose branches, heaping a cairn of dry wood over the massive corpse of the hellhound Garm in preparation for a funeral pyre.

  There would be no pyre for Mikill.

  All that was left of the frost giant I’d come to consider a friend was shards of ice melting into the sand.

  There had been other losses.

  The surviving troll sat slumped on the blood-soaked sand, mourning for his fallen mate. The indeterminate number of hobgoblins had lost two of their brethren.

  Skrrzzzt’s baseball bat was in splinters and he’d lost an arm. “No worries, mamacita,” he said to me in a weary voice after trudging up the slope of the basin to join us. “It’ll grow back in time.”

  Mrs. Browne was miraculously unscathed. I’d known brownies were tough, but that broom of hers must have had some serious mojo in it. She examined Cody with a critical eye and summoned a number of spiders to spin a bandage to bind his wound. Which, yes, ew, but at least it stanched the bleeding. “Ach, this one will live, all right.” She thumped his chest with one knotty fist, causing Cody to grimace. “Got a fine, strong constitution, he does.”

  There were no further casualties in the Fairfax clan, who’d played a canny game of cat-and-mouse—or werewolf-and-mouse—with the mercenaries in the dunes. And of course there were no casualties among the Outcast save for their immortality, although a number of them had sustained nonfatal injuries that could no longer be eradicated by dying and reincorporating.

  It made them cautious, something they hadn’t had to be for a very, very long time.

  With the aid of Gus the ogre, we got Cody loaded into the back of his cousin Joe’s pickup truck and covered with a blanket, then made the trek back to our campsite on the Cavannaugh property.

  What do you say to the people you love when you’ve just come within a hairsbreadth of unleashing Armageddon? Now that it was over, I was dazed and exhausted, and I didn’t have the faintest idea. No one did. We just gazed at one another in silence.

  It was my mom who broke the silence. She opened her arms, tears in her eyes. “Oh, honey!”

  That’s all she said, but it was enough.

  I walked into her embrace, feeling her arms close around me. Mom hugged me hard, and we stayed that way for a long time.

  After that we set about the business of breaking down the camp. The Fairfaxes hauled Cody off to Doc Howard to get patched up, and a number of the injured, now-mortal Outcast, including Stefan, followed suit.<
br />
  Cooper wasn’t among them. He’d managed to avoid injury after his last reincorporation.

  “So you did it, m’lady,” he said to me. “You used your leverage after all.”

  I nodded. “How do you feel?”

  “Strange to meself.” Cooper gazed into the distance. “My beast’s been with me for so long, I don’t quite know what to do without it.”

  “Are you sorry I did it?” I asked him.

  “Never!” His gaze returned to my face. “Don’t mistake me, Daisy. I’m grateful beyond words. But it’s going to take some getting used to.”

  I held out my hand to him. “Well, if there’s anything I can do to help, I’m here for you.”

  Cooper regarded my hand with habitual wariness, then clasped it firmly. “Been a long time since I’ve held a lass’s hand without thinking to feed on her,” he mused. “It feels good.”

  I tightened my grip on his hand. “I’m glad.”

  Before we departed the campsite, Persephone paid us a visit. She emerged from an SUV that halted some forty yards away, carrying my pillowcase in one delicate hand. It was an incongruous sight.

  Accompanied—at her insistence—by Lurine, I went out to meet with the goddess on the rim of the basin. Persephone still looked pretty stricken, and Lurine’s presence didn’t help, but my pity only went so far. I raised my eyebrows at the pillowcase. “You really didn’t have to return this.”

  Persephone summoned a faint smile, only a hint of its former dazzle in it. “I thought it best to approach under a flag of truce.” She glanced at Lurine. “Forgive me for my threat, sister.”

  Lurine folded her arms. “I’m no sister to you, Olympian whore.”

  “Do not be cruel.” Persephone twisted the pillowcase in her hands, a pleading look on her face. “You know I had no choice in that matter.”

  Right, six pomegranate seeds had condemned her to her fate. “Does Hades even know what you tried to do here?” I asked.

  “Yes.” Persephone tilted her head, sunlight shimmering on her hair. “My husband loves me, you know, even if I have chafed against the ties that bind me to him. I believe Hades hoped that if he gave my madness free rein, it would run its course. And in a way, it has come to pass.”