The Banished Gods Box Set: Books 1-3

by L. A. McGinnis

  The woman was like the creatures, Sydney noted with horror. All black and shiny, practically iridescent, glittery in a way that bespoke beetle wings, or multifaceted eyes, smoothly evil in a way that called to something deep inside of her.

  Because call to her it did.

  Sydney circled her warily, unwilling to give up so much as an inch between them. Somehow, even the horde of little black monsters didn’t make her tremble nearly as much as this silky, shimmery woman did.

  “Come back to check your handiwork? See if everything is in its place?”

  Syd nodded mutely, despite herself.

  “I would have done the same. Even if it killed me.” Big smile, even bigger teeth. “What do you think? Everything just the way you like it?”

  Sydney scanned the room. Yes, everything was exactly the way she wanted it. But there was a little, niggling detail… She risked a glance over at number five, the dolmen with the longest, heaviest capstone. It was…not quite right. Not the way she felt it should be, anyways. Still…

  “Yes, they are correct.”

  “Very good, very good. One must be sure of these things, you know.”

  “Who are you?” Although Sydney was pretty sure she didn’t want to know. She wanted to shut the door, barricade herself back in the office with her candy bar wrappers and half a bottle of water and wait this whole thing out. Somehow she doubted the trashcan barricade would hold for long.

  “I’m Hel, daughter of Loki, sister of Fenrir.”

  “Goddess of the Grave.”

  “Oh, how I love the names they used to give.” Her laughter rang against the walls, false and far too loud. “Let me guess, history major?” To Sydney’s silence, she offered another guess. “Mythology?”

  “Something like that.” If Hel was here waiting, then the Orobus couldn’t be far behind. Still, by Sydney’s calculations, she had the entire day to figure this thing out. At least, until darkness fell.

  “I do love a good mystery. So there’s no reason you and I can’t be friends, since we’re on the same side and all. Allies, for all intents and purposes.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “You’re the conduit for the Orobus, I’m his second-in-command. Like his general. So we’re practically sisters.”

  “Still not following.”

  “Look, I’ve been stuck in the Underworld foooor-ev-er. Courtesy of Odin and the rest of those immortal assholes. My father was supposed to release me but reneged on his promise. No big surprise there, I can tell you. Still, I’m a bit salty over that one. So close, no cigar and all of that.”

  Sydney followed the sound of tap tapping heels as Hel crossed the floor, and she circled cautiously away, keeping a good fifteen feet between them.

  Hel noticed and shot her another toothy smile. “Forced me to make a deal, find another way out of that shithole ever since. The Orobus offered me a deal I couldn’t refuse, if you know what I mean. Which means you and me, we’re partners. If we stick together, we come out on top.”

  Sydney looked her over again. The shoes, the dress, the attitude. People like that? The only person they wanted to see on top were themselves. “So what’s in it for me?” she asked carefully, her eyes on the sea of creatures surrounding her feet, hearing the faint rustle of claws.

  “Power, riches, anything you want. After the Orobus destroys the gods, he’s going after the Vanir, the giants, the elves, the dwarves, and anything else that stands in his way.”

  “Hmmm.” Sydney didn’t know much about people, true, but she’d worked around them long enough to pick up a few things. People, for the most part, couldn’t stand silence. It made them crazy. More importantly, it made them talk. Fill all of that silence up with anything they could. Word vomit. Nonsense. And every so often, important shit that they didn’t mean to disclose.

  “So you let this thing use you to get what he needs, and then you’re home free. The way I see it, it’s a fair trade.”

  “Then give it your body,” Sydney proposed drily. “Since it’s such a good trade and all.” Sheesh. Like somehow this was going to totally work out for her. When, in fact, things were going from bad to worse.

  Hel’s obsidian eyes narrowed dangerously. “I already paid my dues, trust me. I’m just here to lend a hand in the invasion. Offer a bit of backup in the form of muscle and mayhem.”

  Surely the goddess couldn’t be that desperate to escape her prison? “You do realize it’s going to destroy this world?” Sydney asked her incredulously.

  “Of course I do. I get to keep all the souls. Win-win and all of that. Might have to build a new prison addition, we’ll just have to see how it goes. After this world’s gone, as well as those interfering gods, including my father and brother, all I have to worry about is my little corner of the realms…”

  Sydney felt it would be useless to point out she’d be back down in the Underworld forever, something she had just, literally, been complaining about a minute ago. But hey, who was she to bring up the obvious? “What does he want with me?” It was a question, to her very core, she didn’t want the answer to.

  “He’s chosen a few, special mortals for very specific purposes. You are one of them.” So not helpful.

  “Why am I special, then?”

  Now a clever and evil smile curved those red, plump lips. “You, my darling, bring something truly magical to the table.”

  Sydney’s heart sank. Of course. As if she thought she’d ever leave the past behind. Magic spells and the coven and her father’s teachings, all coming back to haunt her.

  “So what are you doing here, then?”

  “Waiting for you. To confirm these stupid stones are where they should be. And they are.” Hel waved a dismissive hand at the stones. “I can only imagine what’s going to happen tomorrow. Hopefully it will be more exciting than last time. Of course, then I was stuck in the Underworld and didn’t even get seats in the nosebleed section.”

  She licked her lips. “This time? It’s the Super Bowl and I have a fifty-yard line loge. Cannot fucking wait.”

  Her mind whirling, Sydney offered a few options for why having a fifty yard line seat might be a bad idea. “But you don’t even know for sure what’s going to happen, do you? It could be anything. I could be vaporized. This world could be vaporized. Even you could be vaporized.”

  Hel was here, the Orobus on its way. Predictable, little Sydney too. The stones all in position. All the pieces lined up and ready to rumble.

  If she hadn’t been holding the flashlight, Sydney would have slapped herself in the head. She’d played right into their hands. All because she’d gotten bent out of shape because of what? Mir lied to me. She knew why he’d done it. Completely understood why. And now look at her. Screwed.

  Hel threw her head back and laughed again before sizing Sydney up, taking in her gypsy-like appearance. “We’re not getting vaporized, not you and me. Not this world either, at least, not right away. The Orobus has plans for this world, for the old gods, and for us.” She leaned in real close. “That’s you and me, baby. Not sure what his plans are for you afterwards, but hey, if you’re still around, come and find me. We’ll hang out. But for now, you don’t have to worry about me or them.”

  She snapped her fingers and the creatures at Sydney’s feet skittered away. “You and me, we’re like this.” She held her crossed finger up to show solidarity. With a wave of her hand, Hel parted the black, oily creatures like the proverbial Red Sea and vanished, leaving Sydney alone with her stones and her worries.

  “Awesome. Just freaking awesome.” There was a helpless sense of awful wonder about this whole thing, as if when things couldn’t possibly get any worse, they did, exponentially. “I’d better quit worrying about what’s going to go wrong next and start figuring out how to stop whatever’s going to happen next.” She rounded the misplaced structure, noting what Mir had done.

  “You clever bastard. You moved up the schedule and threw a wrench into it. Set this formation off just enough, so
it won’t align with the rest of the circle, and then reset the capstone so it’s angled in the opposite direction. Smart.” What this actually meant was anyone’s guess, but she had a sneaking suspicion if anyone knew, Mir would.

  “Bet you’re hoping to slow them down, or at least force them to waste time fixing it.” Her smile turned faintly evil. “Valuable time they’d need to bring forces through, energy they’ll expend on this instead of opening the gates. Either way, this will mess them up.” She knelt at the base of the trio of stones, estimating the time it would take to reset them. A half an hour, maybe, depending on the force, the power this thing had at its disposal. But it also required a certain degree of finesse.

  She felt a faint prickling on the back of her neck, that strange, nondescript, primitive sensation, a throw back to when bigger, badder things hunted in the darkness. But a long, search with the flashlight turned up nothing out of sorts, and Sydney left, muttering about beds and the boogie men that hid beneath them.

  Fen dropped down from where he’d perched, a shadow within a shadow, so dark even his sister hadn’t sensed him. Freyr was waiting and together, they silently took up positions outside of Sydney’s office.

  Muttering confirmation of both her safety and Mir’s worst fears into the two-way, Freyr gave Mir a run-down of the morning’s events, culminating in a final, “Yeah, boss, she’s locked up tight.” A minute of intense listening and then, “Nope, not going anywhere. Got it.”

  Freyr clicked off the two-way and nodded as Fen loped off into the dark, eyes glowing, scouting for anything that so much as moved within these walls. He, for his part, slid down the wall, eyes on both possible exits. Mir said keep her safe, and they’d keep her safe. Although this was the trouble with love. Too much riding on it. Too much to be lost. Too much could go wrong, and when it did, people got hurt because their heads weren’t in the game. Better to cruise through life, letting feelings and such skim off the surface of him, not letting anything stick.

  But it was going to be a fucking long day, Freyr thought, letting his corporeal body blend into the shadows and literally disappearing into thin air.

  Chapter 19

  “Since when did June become such a shitty month?” Sydney groused, wrapping her layers of coats tighter around her. “Oh yeah, since the world went to hell.” The snow had finally stopped, but the wind coming off the lake was bitter and biting, as bad as the depths of winter.

  She was so thirsty, water was all she thought of. Her last candy bar was stashed in her pocket, but she needed fluids. She had no choice. It was go out and forage or beg at the Tower, which she totally refused to do. So here she was, freezing her ass off and pushing deeper into downtown.

  The burning had stopped. For the most part. There were some dark, billowing clouds farther north, just beyond her sightline. But the streets had an eerie kind of silence to them, as if the city had been stripped of life. She heard the faint skittering of claws on stone and spun but found nothing behind her.

  Maybe Hel had gotten a head start on her soul collecting, she thought with a start. Death was a greedy bitch, always had been, always would be. Sydney picked up the pace, her feet skirting rubble and debris that littered the once pristine streets. She already missed this city, its gilded nostalgia, the sophisticated veneer of the old and the new. The chaos balanced against the calm water’s edge, the pulse of life.

  Stepping over the broken front window of what had once been her favorite coffee shop, she rummaged around for anything drinkable. Hoped for something edible. Wedged underneath the back counter was a half-full bottle of water. She almost wept. Had she been a betting woman, she’d have wagered to find nothing. And died trying. Facing the street, surrounded by the smell of decay, she drank slowly, deliberately, as if it were the finest wine in the world.

  “What the hell am I going to do?”

  Mythology come to life. Old gods living in Chicago. Chaos on the verge of consuming the earth. And she was caught in the middle. For about the thousandth time, she wondered,

  Why?

  Throwing out that question for the moment, she instead studied the facts. From an archeologist’s point of view, she was in the right place at the right time. At this point in history, it was all about location, location, location, and she was smack dab in the middle of the action. Plus, she had an inside line on the who, the how, and the why. Former assistant to the still missing, presumed dead Professor McRoy, finder of the dolmens, the gateways to the worlds. Portals of destruction. Add to that fact that somehow, through bad luck, she’d become the familiar of the Orobus.

  Although how and when that little development occurred was a mystery. She drank slower, watching a group of tattered teens pass by on the streets, skittering by on fleet feet as if chased by the devil himself.

  Two months ago, all had been right in her world of craft beer and dub step. When exactly had everything changed?

  “Old Doc McRoy. Perhaps I didn’t give you quite enough credit.” When he had come to her, resplendent in his Einstein hair and Mr. Rodger’s sweaters, she’d gleefully followed. “To Dublin, he’d cried!” She’d flown in a red eye and been digging in the bog the very next day. “To the Field Museum!” he’d decreed. She’d put in her two weeks’ notice at Harvard and been holed up in that shitty little office in the basement of the Field Museum ever since. And somewhere along the line, everything had changed.

  She vaguely remembered fuzzy, strange conversations. The dark, blurry memories of things not quite right. Shaking them off, Sydney didn’t allow herself to go back further than any of that. Back to the things she’d left so far behind her, that old life barely seemed to exist any longer.

  Anyhow, everything led to her holding up a freaking cardboard sign at the foot of the Phoenix Club.

  “And then you came out, didn’t you?”

  Resentfully, she rummaged around for something, anything to eat, but the place had been stripped bare long ago. Not so much as a crumb. Mir had been the last thing she’d expected. The last thing an almost thirty-year-old woman ever hoped to find.

  A soulmate.

  “Sure, pick now to show me the one thing I’ve always wanted,” she bitched. “Right when the world is ending and I’m trapped in the middle.” She shrunk back into the shadows as several of Grim skittered by, seemingly tracking the teens. She fervently hoped the kids were faster, even though they had far fewer legs. It was a new, dangerous world out there.

  Muttering about bad ideas and making a vow not to ever let her pride get in the way of survival again, Sydney pushed herself off the counter, but her plan to head straight back to the museum hit a snag when the most unlikely figure shuffled past. She hardly even recognized him, having given him up for dead, but there he was, clear as the day was long. Brimming with both curiosity and more than a little resentment, she stepped out over the broken window and fell into step several yards behind him.

  The professor looked no worse for the wear, his crumpled trench coat and wild white hair a dead giveaway as she followed him north on Columbus. “Straight toward the Tower,” Syd muttered. Of course. Right back to the one place she really, really didn’t want to go. Still, she was hungry so maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to dodge in there for an hour or so and get warm. Maybe Celine or Morgane would let her come up. She got all twisted up for a minute in thoughts of hot showers and soft beds and somehow that led to fantasies of Mir’s bedroom and before she knew it, she was warm and flushed and standing on South Michigan staring at the wreckage of what had once been the Bean. McRoy was out ahead of her, poking through the debris, as if it still had secrets to tell.

  “Sorry to say, buddy, but anything those scraps of metal could give up are long gone.” Still, she was insanely curious. Fading back into the shadows of what had once been a fine restaurant, she watched him, circling, poking, and ferreting around. “What the hell are you looking for, professor?” she whispered, almost to herself.

  She’d been over it herself. Twice. Compar
ed the markings left by the Orobus to the stones at Gavrinis, France. To what was on the dolmens. What the man thought he’d find was beyond her. But when he stooped and slipped something in his pocket, it was just enough incentive that she followed.

  The Chicago Theater had once, perhaps, been a place of beauty.

  The professor turned and ducked beneath the theater’s twisted and vandalized sign, leaving Sydney standing on the sidewalk waffling. The wide open front of the theater beckoned, even beneath the smashed, ruined façade. She supposed it was simply just human nature to destroy everything at the end of things. As if the impending end of the world wasn’t enough, humans had to hasten the process along by their own hand.

  Pulling the small penlight out of her pocket, hoping that the batteries would hold out for just a little longer, she followed him into the darkness. The last time she’d been face to face with the man, things had spiraled badly out of control. Of course, she’d satisfied herself with the explanation that he was delusional.

  No such luck this time.

  Far worse had been the reality, when everything had come true.

  “What the hell are you up to, professor?” And why was he at the theater? The museum she would understand. Even the Bean, since she’d run tests down there herself. But who went to the theater when the end of the world was looming? The dense carpet masked her footsteps, her flashlight a thin beam cutting through the total darkness.

  “Miss Allen.” Professor McRoy stepped out from behind a column, his voice echoing hollowly through the space. “It’s been awhile.”

  “Yes, sir. It certainly has.” Weird. Even though her heart was skittering along at a million miles a minute, her manners seemed perfectly intact. Good upbringing and all.

  “I thought you were dead,” she tacked on.

  “I thought I was dead too. Quite a few times, actually.” He chuckled, that old, familiar laugh, the sort that brought to mind kindly old grandmas and picnics under the maple trees and warm summer days. Syd didn’t trust him for a second.