Thor was smiling, his eyes locked onto his father, Odin, and Freya. Thor didn’t appear to realize his father was mentally checked out—or that anyone other than his parents were present—as he began to gloat. “Oh, how I’ve missed you, Allfather. I would never have thought to come here if I hadn’t suddenly sensed the strangest thing—”
He cut off, finally realizing they weren’t alone. First, he jerked his head towards Gunnar and blinked in surprise. That’s when it hit me—Thor probably hadn’t known that Gunnar and Ashley had survived. If i’d had any doubts, the sudden hungry smile confirmed it.
Damn it all.
Like Odin, Gunnar wasn’t paying any attention to our new guest, staring down at the wolves instead.
I waved my hand to get Thor’s attention before he did something stupid. “Hey, buddy. I’ve got a hankering for some goat milk. Help a brother out?”
Thor’s cheeks reddened as he turned to glare at me. “My, my, my…” he said, shooting a quick glance around to see who else was at the party. He smirked wolfishly at Ashley and her retinue by the vine door before turning back to address me with a malevolent grin. “And the bastard step-brother I never got to know! What a surprise to find you three together. I thought I already put down the dogs months ago. I do believe that this just became my favorite day, ever. I get to kill three birds with one stone.”
“Listen,” I said, waving a hand at him. “We’re in the middle of this super cool ritual, and you’re totally interrupting. So just stick your thumb up your ass for a minute, stand still, and look pretty. I’ll let you know when we’re finished, brother.”
Thor’s cheeks purpled, no longer amused. He locked his rage onto Gunnar like a heat-seeking missile. “Mangy cur,” he growled. “Looks like I’ll have to put the bitch’s bitch down, again. I’ve always fancied widows. Like a well-trained horse, they’ve already been broken in.”
And a bar of lightning erupted from his palm.
I lunged between them, slamming my rainbow staff into the ground, taking the full force of Thor’s attack into my staff. The golden light in my veins flared, making me look like a disco ball. Multi-colored lightning ricocheted in a dozen directions, and I made sure to direct one so that it struck Thor squarely in the groin in the patented Temple Testical Taser—currently still in the exploratory phase of R&D at Grimm Tech.
Okay. That was a lie. But I had spent a lot of time playing with lightning while in Fae, finding unique ways to modify it, adding my own spin to it so that it was no longer just lightning.
Spiked with a little bit of Fae strangeness, it became something altogether different than mere electricity. In fact, I knew how to give it a numbing effect, so that whatever it struck went entirely limp.
So, Thor was going to need a pinch hitter if he had any bedroom plans over the next few days. Which was why the God of Thunder yelped, jumping up and clutching his crotch in surprise that lightning had somehow harmed him in the most personal of ways.
Show me on the doll where Nate touched you.
The shock was also why he didn’t notice Grimm’s huge unicorn ass looming over his shoulder, directly behind him. Or the pair of hooves kicking out towards the back of Thor’s head at the apex of the god’s vertical leap.
Grimm’s hooves struck Thor in the back of the head hard enough to decapitate anyone other than a god. Paired with me simultaneously swinging my rainbow staff like a golf club at his shins, resulted in Thor—with his mouth wide open in a sudden scream of outraged pain—flying face-first into the rubble at mach-two speed.
Thor hit the stones teeth-first like a lawn dart.
I couldn’t believe that our first attempt at using one of our rehearsed battle tactics had worked—one designed for a scenario in which I had fallen off Grimm’s back and into a melee battle, about to be clobbered by a stronger opponent.
Donkey Punch was a success. It had worked better than any of our practice sessions, making me realize that we truly were a duo to be reckoned with.
That even without all my powers, I was still a Horseman.
Grimm was more professional about our success, already having galloped over to the vine door where Alice stood with Ashley, Drake, and Cowan.
I, on the other hand, had continued the momentum of my staff, swinging it high overhead, and then slamming it down on top of Thor’s skull just as he was trying to get back up.
He grunted, his face cracking back into the stones with a cringeworthy crunch.
“More cowbell, bitch!” I shouted, my golden veins casting a circle of warm light around me.
An imagined vision of Ashley lying on the ground after Thor had first attacked her materialized in my mind, and I instinctively kicked Thor in the side of the head with my heel, screaming at the top of my lungs. Remembering what Thor had just implied about Ashley and a broken-in horse, I decided to thrash him again with another heel kick.
“Hurry the fuck up, Gunnar!” I snapped, keeping my eyes on Thor as he swayed groggily on all fours.
“SUBMIT!” Gunnar snarled in a primal growl that didn’t even sound human, and I risked a quick glance to see that his forearms were beginning to sprout white fur, and his chest was doubling in size.
Odin’s wolves abruptly let out a combined whining sound, lowering their muzzles to the rocky ground, their eyes still a little wild around the edges from their wolf-cussion and the arrival of Thor.
Then they simply evaporated like smoke in the wind, and Gunnar gasped, rising up on the balls of his feet like he’d had a surprise prostate exam party.
Gunnar glanced over at me—and I jumped back a step at the storm of rippling chrome now quivering across his iris—just like I’d seen with Odin when he’d been communicating with his ravens. Gunnar hesitated at the look on my face.
Then he seemed to realize that he had his eye open and that he wasn’t cowering from the light blazing out from my veins. And a slow grin split his cheeks. He glanced down at his forearms, shaking the blood off methodically—they were already beginning to heal, but I knew such deep wounds might take a little while to completely recover.
He didn’t show any pain from broken or crunched bones, so maybe I had imagined that sound. Or Gunnar was insanely more badass than I had previously thought—and that was a high bar to meet, let alone surpass.
Odin stared at Gunnar, his face incredulous—as if he hadn’t believed it would actually work, or that something unexpected had happened. Then he simply collapsed, his legs giving out under his weight. Freya squawked, catching her husband at the last minute.
Gunnar seemed to finally notice Thor on the ground for the first time. His teeth elongated into massive fangs, and lethal, quartz claws ripped out of his fingertips.
No matter how badass Gunnar was, he couldn’t kill a god. At least, I wasn’t going to let him attempt it.
“Gunnar!” I snapped, frantically pointing over his shoulder—trying to shout over the sounds of crackling electricity that likely signified Thor was regaining his senses behind me. “Odin’s under attack!”
Gunnar spun, claws out, already half-shifted into his colossal, bipedal werewolf form. But Odin wasn’t in any danger other than perhaps bringing Freya down with him if he fell the rest of the way to the ground.
Before Gunnar had time to catch onto my deceit, I reared back and kicked him in the tailbone as hard as I could. I simultaneously ripped open a fiery Gateway on the other side of Odin and Freya—the portal leading to a space just outside the entrance to the Armory in Chateau Falco. I’d save their lives, but there was no way I was letting them inside the Armory proper before establishing ground rules.
Gunnar snarled at the force of my kick, but he hadn’t been expecting it. He slammed into Freya and Odin, sending the three of them through the Gateway in a tangled sprawl.
Two semi-transparent wolves—like ghosts—immediately leapt through after them. Geri and Freki. If I hadn’t been staring at the Gateway so intently, I might have missed them.
I closed the Gateway b
efore any of them got any bright ideas, and then I spun to face Thor. Luckily, he was still on all fours, shaking his head as he spit out gobs of blood and even a few teeth.
I tee’d up and swung my rainbow staff as hard as I could, clocking him in the jaw hard enough to hear his teeth crack together and see blood spray up into the air.
I quickly turned to check on Grimm’s evacuation to see Ashley already astride the unicorn with the breastplate and helmet covering her belly. Alice sat behind her, doing her best to support the pregnant werewolf. Drake and Cowan stared from me to Thor with wide, panicked eyes. I could tell that they weren’t necessarily afraid of fighting, but that they were afraid of not knowing what they were expected to do—protect Ashley by fleeing with her or martyring themselves to buy her enough time to escape with Grimm and Alice.
I gave them their marching orders by ripping open another Gateway just outside the entrance to the Armory—a few dozen paces from where I had deposited Gunnar, Odin, and Freya, so that Gunnar didn’t try to jump back through to help me fight Thor.
Drake and Cowan stared from Thor to the Gateway, still uncertain how to react—because fleeing with Ashley meant abandoning me. I flung out a hand, hurling a bar of air at them to knock them through the Gateway before they chose to do something nobly idiotic.
Grimm leapt through after them, and I yanked it closed, leaving me and Thor all alone.
I let out a sigh of relief, turning to face the God of Thunder. I tugged off my satchel, dropping it to the ground as I watched him climb to his feet. He wiped a beefy forearm across his bloody mouth and beard, keeping his head down as he spoke. “Oh, you’re going to pay for that, boy. I was really looking forward to killing them. You only delayed the inevitable. They—and you—are mine.” Finally, he lifted his head, locking eyes with me.
I smiled a dark smile, lifting my arms out to either side, inviting him to strike me in the chest. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously, not rising to the bait.
I lowered my arms, thumping my staff gently into the ground, as I used a little bit of magic for dramatic effect.
Thin, spidery arcs of electricity began to crackle out of my staff and onto my arm, in every color imaginable. They began to crawl upwards, and then across my torso until dozens of them coated my body like writhing, arthritic snakes.
And everywhere they touched, my shirt began to smolder and burn in an angry array of orange and red lines, breaking the fabric down into glowing embers that flaked away and were immediately whipped up into the stormy, windy air.
And as my shirt burned to nothing, leaving me only in my jeans, the golden veins covering my chest and arms brightened, practically pulsing with a violent hunger to rip a god to pieces.
Despite the darkness from the black cloud above us, the glow from my body cast plenty of light for me to see. As did fingers of Thor’s own lightning suddenly stabbing down all around us, surrounding us in an electric cage. I threw up a dome that encompassed the entire area from rock wall to rock wall, not wanting an errant bolt of lightning to strike me from behind.
I blew the God of Thunder a kiss. “I missed you in Fae.”
He smiled a humorless, bloody smile, opening his mouth to speak.
And I burst out laughing, pointing at him with my free hand. “Red Rover, Red Rover, send some dentures on over!” I hooted.
Because Thor was now missing his two front teeth.
Thor closed his mouth self-consciously, his face turning purple with rage.
Perfect.
Chapter 23
I whipped my head to the left and then the right, cracking my joints to loosen up. Thor watched me, his anger fading to what appeared to be wariness as he studied the golden veins covering my chest and arms. I knew that my eyes also glowed golden—at least they had when I’d killed Athena.
Thor’s thinking face more resembled a man in the throes of constipation than one who had a spark of intelligence blossom to life. Regardless, his raw strength more than made up for his intellectual shortcomings.
At least I’d gotten everyone far away from the blast radius, and I’d managed to keep Gunnar out of the fight—since his Tiny Balls were programmed to send him to Fae, not Niflheim.
Now, I just had to hope that my assorted powers were enough to put him down for good.
Just because I had the strength to kill a god didn’t mean I was able to kill this god. It just put us on relatively equal footing—where my attacks could actually cause real harm.
Like a fight between two run-of-the-mill humans. You could say that either human was equally able to kill the other, but that didn’t mean they would succeed. They just had the ability to do so. The actual victory came down to their prowess in the art of combat.
The first time I’d fought Thor, I hadn’t fared very well. Granted, I’d been suffering from all sorts of power hiccups back then as a result of my inexperience with my Fae magic.
I’d fixed all of that, now.
But would it be enough?
So far, I’d gotten in some very lucky—and cheap—shots on Thor. But now it was one-on-one, with no distractions.
Except…
I frowned. For a god who had come to Niflheim to kick ass, he seemed to be remarkably unprepared.
Firstly, he didn’t have a weapon at hand. Obviously, I knew he didn’t have Mjölnir, but he’d at least carried a knife the first time I met him.
Secondly, he wore a plain, rather ordinary, leather belt—definitely not what I had expected of his legendary power belt, megingjörð, which supposedly doubled his strength.
Thirdly, he wasn’t wearing his iron gauntlets, Járngreipr, but those were designed to help him handle Mjölnir, so that was understandable.
Thor was known for always having these three critical possessions with him. Yet he didn’t seem to have any of them. Had Odin stolen all of them?
Thor wore the same primitive furs and leathers as the last time I’d seen him—definitely nothing fancy enough to imply he was the up-and-coming King of Asgard. It didn’t take much of an imagination to mistake him for an angry homeless man.
“I will find them,” he growled, interrupting my train of thought. “I will hold them in the palms of my hands and laugh at how tiny, pathetic, and worthless—”
“I didn’t come here to listen to you sweet talk your testicles, Thor,” I cut in, having no idea what he was actually referring to, and not particularly caring enough to find out. He’d been a raging, incoherent son-of-a-bitch the first time I’d met him, and Gunnar’s explanation that he’d seemed blood drunk in St. Louis hadn’t raised my expectations that anything close to resembling an intelligent conversation was going to occur here in Niflheim.
His face darkened at my comment, and a thick, crooked vein suddenly bulged over his right temple. It was so hard to take someone seriously after you knocked out their two front teeth. Although I wanted nothing more than to immediately put him in the morgue, I needed to get his take on current events first. Otherwise I would lose the opportunity for good.
Because I wasn’t entirely sure I could trust Odin and Freya. Something about their actions was just…off.
So, to manipulate Thor into giving up something useful, I needed to keep the brute angry. My specialty. “I was hoping to see your goats again, man,” I began. “I still remember the last time I saw Tanngnjóstr and Tanngrisnir—when Alex picked them up by the legs and threw them at you. You accidentally stabbed one of them—”
“ENOUGH!” Thor roared. Spittle flew from his mouth and frothed around his lips like he had rabies. He glanced down at the satchel at my feet, his eyes hungry.
I sighed, using my foot to slide the satchel behind me. “I don’t have Mjölnir, Thor. Never did.” I knew reassuring him was pointless, but I didn’t want him making a grab for the whole satchel—I had important shit in there.
“Just curious, but if Mjölnir’s been missing for so long, why are you only now interested in recovering it?”
He snarled, clenching a fist at his
side. “I’ve been searching for decades, following Mjölnir’s trail throughout the Nine Realms. Odin passed it to someone, who passed it to someone else, who passed it to someone else…” he waved a hand, implying many more handoffs. Then he stared at me. “The last person I found to have had it in their possession was Calvin Temple, but he died before I could have a talk with him,” he growled.
I tried to keep the shock from my face. My dad had helped hide Mjölnir? But that meant…shit. Maybe I really did have Thor’s hammer lying around somewhere. Like in the Armory.
I shrugged, keeping my face neutral. “The first time I heard it was missing was when you showed up outside the bar,” I told him.
Thor stared at me for a few moments in complete silence, as if trying to catch me in a lie. “Then I hear that you, Calvin’s son, had acquired a new hammer, and that you were the new Master Temple of your Beastly fortress, Chateau Falco.”
His enunciation clearly told me he knew about Beasts.
I shrugged, sticking to my guns since he obviously thought I was lying about Mjölnir. “That hammer you saw actually ended up being Excalibur. And you were there when I first found out that my butler was really Odin. I was fooled just as much as you,” I admitted, not bothering to hide my own anger. “He lied to the both of us.”
“So you say,” he growled. “Yet he was just here, and you saved his life.”
I rolled my eyes. “I was demanding an explanation from him, you fucking moron! And I hadn’t gotten it yet, so I put him on a shelf for me to question once I clean up this mess,” I lied, hoping my staged anger would throw him off course.
It worked, because he scratched at his beard thoughtfully.
“Think about it for a second. If you have even a sliver of common sense stuck somewhere in that pungent face blanket of yours, you’ve done a little research on me…” He nodded almost imperceptibly. “You’ve heard—whether you believe it or not—of all the people I’ve killed and defeated. All the beings Odin might have helped me deal with over the years. But he didn’t. Which was fine until I learned that he could have helped me with them. I detest liars, Thor. Truly. Almost as much as I detest cowards, like you.”
Knightmare: Nate Temple Series Book 12 Page 14