Relief flooding through her exhausted body, Sydney collapsed into her marble hiding place, just in time to watch Mir poof out of nowhere, right in front of her.
He took a cautious step toward her, his eyes shadowed. “Syd? Is that you?”
She hadn’t seen him in forever. Or however long it had been, but it felt like forever. Clambering to her feet, the first thing that struck her was how much she’d missed him. His gorgeous face was lined, a week’s worth of dark grizzle on his cheeks, but those eyes, those gorgeous eyes of his were every bit as bright and clever as she remembered.
But then she hesitated. “Is it you? Is it really you?”
“What are you talking about? Of course it’s me.” It sounded like him, and his eyes, they weren’t dead and empty like the Orobus’s had been, they were alive and bright. Before Syd knew she’d moved, she was in his arms, buried against him, not caring how she looked or smelled or anything except feeling him against her. Small sounds escaped, nothing even coherent, all she knew was she was safe. Mir would keep her safe.
“Hold on, baby.” A turbulent swirl of air and the cold darkness faded away, warmth was caressing her skin, there was light so bright it made her squint. A patterned floor beneath her feet. A roof spanning far overhead. She was inside the Tower.
“You brought me back here? Are you crazy?” She pushed away from Mir, her voice shaking.
“You’re starving. And you’re freezing.”
She staggered and immediately his arms wrapped around her again as the room spun.
“You have to get warmed up, and I wanted you somewhere safe, but to do that, I had to wait until you were…yourself again.”
“You’ve been tracking me?”
“I’ve been having Fen follow you for a couple of days, yes. Once you changed, he called and I came for you. How long does this usually last?”
There was an undercurrent of quiet desperation in her voice when she answered. “I’m not sure. I wake up and I’m always at the circle. I try to stay aware as long as I can, but… Then it’s a day later, maybe more, before I wake up back there again. I don’t even know…” She lifted her eyes to his. “What day is it?”
“It’s Wednesday, Syd. You’ve been gone for five days. It’s been six days since the solstice, since you went through the portal.” He wrapped his arms tightly around her, holding most of her weight as she wobbled on unsteady legs. “We need to get you warmed up. And fed. And you need sleep. I don’t care…”
“What in the holy fuck is she doing here?” Tyr’s rough growl preceded heavy bootsteps down the hallway, drumming straight into Sydney’s brittle bones.
Tyr didn’t stop talking as he barreled down upon them. “You get her out of here. You get her out right the fuck now, or I swear, I’ll…” Mir stepped up, intercepting the taller god’s trajectory.
“Or you’ll what, exactly?” Mir’s voice turned velvety. “Get your ass beat? Because if you take one more step toward her, that’s what’s going to happen.”
“Stop it, both of you.” Celine’s gentle order brought them both instantly to heel. “Tyr, you’re not going to throw her out. This is her home, damn it.” Reaching out, Celine took Sydney’s hand. “She’s part of this family, and she’s staying.”
Her voice was gentle, calming. “Come on, let’s get you fed first and then cleaned up. Then sleep.” Ignoring them both, Celine led Sydney slowly away. With a last growl to warn off Tyr, Mir followed.
In the end, they put Sydney on the ground floor.
Not the ideal solution, but one Syd insisted on.
“We both know what’s going to happen,” she told Mir quietly, their hands interlaced, her eyes avoiding his as she lay on her cot, bundled in blankets. “The Orobus is going to take me over again. Put me somewhere I’ll cause the least amount of damage.” She reached up and gently rubbed her thumb in circles on Mir’s cheek, where it rasped against the stubble. “I’m sorry.”
So here they were. In a storage room off the parking garage, on a couple of camping cots under a bare bones overhead lamp.
“It is a far sight better than my office at the museum,” she observed with a faint smile.
“Oh, so now you’re a mind reader, too?”
“No, I just… I know how yours works is all. And remember, this is my choice. You wanted me upstairs in your bedroom. So none of this is on you.” Her words began to slur. “It’s…on…me.”
“Sleep, Syd. You’re completely exhausted. Fuck knows how long it’s been since you’ve actually rested. I’ll watch over you, in case anything…happens.”
Her eyes glossed over then fluttered closed, her hand slid from his as he wished for just a day, shit, twelve hours to have her back. And all to himself.
Head in his hands, Mir went over everything from the last hour. She was severely malnourished. Several of her toes were frostbitten, but he’d been able to fix them, thank the gods. Covered in bruises and minor abrasions from fuck knows what, and he’d healed all of those as well, but…
The monster was keeping her alive for something, but at the same time, with no regard for her actual well-being. Which didn’t make sense. If she was so important, then why wouldn’t he keep Sydney safe?
The gentle rapping on the door stopped those thoughts cold as Ava popped her head through the opening. “Is she sleeping?”
Mir nodded, moving quickly to the door. Given that Ava looked white as a ghost, not much better than Sydney, Mir wondered how her day had gone. But before he could ask, she blurted out, “What did you find out? Anything?”
With a glance at his sleeping woman, he decided they’d best do this outside.
The parking garage was not the ideal place for a convo, but he flipped over a couple of five-gallon buckets. “Enough to know we have a serious problem.” He motioned for her to sit down. “What about you? Any ideas on how to stop Syd from being possessed by that bastard?”
“We didn’t exactly get that far today.” Ava’s eyes meandered all over the place, bouncing around from the vehicles, to the walls, to the floor before finally resting back on him. “We went to the circle. I wanted to get a feel for it since I’d never seen it before,” she explained.
“And?”
“And it was…interesting.”
“Interesting in a historical way or interesting in a way that’s going to help us?”
“Interesting in that…” Ava’s slim column of a throat bobbed nervously. “In the way that those stones have a power all their own. In that the circle is something other than what you all think it is.” Her voice narrowed down to a whisper. “It’s a lodestone circle.”
Mir’s head spun. “A magnetic field. I remember… The ancients used to erect them as a means of navigation.”
Ava cocked her head. “Navigate how, exactly?”
“By using them like a compass, as directional tools. Because of the way the magnetic fields work, if they are strong enough, normal physical rules don’t apply within the circles.” His eyes turned sharper as they wandered back to the door behind which Sydney slept. “In short, some of them are magical places.”
Ava scooted forward on her bucket. “When I was there today, I couldn’t have left even if I’d wanted to. Those stones had a hold of me in some way I couldn’t explain. And as soon as I touched them, something inside of me opened up.” Ava swayed slightly. “I’ve never felt anything quite like it.”
“Exactly what did you feel?”
Ava tilted her head back as if she were listening to something. “I heard music. I swear I heard music playing, some kind of humming coming from the stones, as if they were singing a melody. Odin didn’t hear it. But I could.
“And if I could hear it, I’ll bet Sydney could too,” Ava went on almost dreamily. “Odin believes the night of the solstice, everything came together. Her magic, the event itself, and whatever this magnetic phenomenon was, all worked together to create the circle. He said no mortal could have that sort of power, not like what he saw…”
“You weren’t there, Ava. You didn’t see what happened that night. She’s special.”
Ava reached over and put her hand over his. “Maybe you just want her to be, Mir. Maybe you need her to be special, so you can convince yourself she’s strong enough to stand a chance against the Orobus. Trust me, none of us do.”
“If you’ve got something to say, Ava, spit it out. Whatever you’re dancing around, just fucking say it.”
“If the stone circle is, at its heart, magical, and Sydney’s drawn back to it? It means she’s connected to it. She has been, since the very beginning when they were found in Ireland.
“Odin believes the Orobus will use her to open and close the circle, along with all of the doorways of the circle. With her, he doesn’t have to wait for solstices, eclipses, or lunar events. All he needs is Syd.”
It made a certain sense. Why she ended up there every night. How she’d been tangled in this mess from the beginning. Even her powers, to a degree. “Oh gods. If he harnesses all of her power… What I felt when I touched her magic was unlike anything I’ve ever sensed, mortal or immortal. Perhaps her power was amplified by the event. But I don’t think so. I think everything I felt was Sydney. She’d become his weapon. Tell me what else you and Odin figured out.”
“Odin showed me which doors were which, the ones that led to each world. All except for two.
“The biggest one, well, even what’s inside of me wouldn’t go through that one.” Her voice constricted down to a whisper. “But the next one, the second biggest one? I thought if you knew where it went, it might help.” She took a shaky breath. “So I did.”
“What did you do, Ava?”
“I went through.” A spasm rippled through her face, pain or something like it pinching her lips together. “I knew you had to find out where that door led to, so I stepped through, and it was the right one.” A long moment, and then, “Niflheim. The second largest dolmen, it leads to Niflheim. I don’t think I could do it again, but I caught a glimpse when I stepped through of utter darkness, of ice and desolation.”
Mir stared at her as she continued, her voice shaking, “Even with that, I didn’t want to leave. The only reason I did was because Odin carried me away. It’s why Sydney ends up there every night. And it’s where the Orobus will end up.”
Ava pursed her lips and stole another glance at the half-shut door.
“There’s something else, something I didn’t tell Odin. The biggest doorway, the one at the very end, the one facing the city. You’re sure you don’t know where that one leads?”
Mir shook his head, his thoughts spinning.
“Have you asked Sydney, by chance?”
“No, and I’m not going to. No guarantees she’ll know anything about it, and she’s weak enough already. I’m not going to jeopardize her small window of peace with questions she has no business facing right now.”
“You can’t protect her forever, Mir. Trust me, I know. She’s involved, like it or not, been changed by what he’s done to her. And now she’s got to figure her own way out.”
It chafed. The idea he couldn’t protect her. The fact she’d have to make a choice, sooner or later, and it might not be the right one. And he’d have to stand aside and watch her do it. Helpless.
“I’m not going to just stand by.” He growled.
“Of course not,” Ava snapped back. “Nobody’s asking you to do that. But you can’t lock her up and throw away the key. She’s been torn from her old life and forced into this new one. Help her, Mir. Don’t stand in front of her, stand beside her. Help her beat this monster, help get his claws out of her, and then she can get back to living.”
Exactly what he’d been wishing for an hour ago.
“There’s a chance this last door might not be a door at all.” Her voice turned vacant. “When I was locked in the Underworld for all those years, there were whispers of another realm. A deeper sort of purgatory, someplace no one had ever been, but everyone talked about. They called it The Void.” She shot him a look. “Ever heard of it?”
The Void was a euphemism for Chaos. It was also what existed before the first Three Gods created life. It was the abyss. The formless night. The emptiness between the stars.
Mir nodded as he saw the logic. “You think The Void is behind the last dolmen.”
“And what happens if the Orobus opens up that door?” she asked. “If the Void is what it sounds like, then wouldn’t that destroy everything?”
Except that didn’t make sense. Why amass all of this power, all these armies, only to blow them all out of the water in a single shot? Mir still felt this was shaping up to be a long, drawn out war. Power was a seductive elixir. Victory was meant to be savored. Wiping everything out in a massive blast of darkness wasn’t savoring a thing.
“There’s another possibility you may not have considered.” Sydney’s sleep lazed voice sounded faintly from the doorway. “That dolmen was the only one that was different. It had four sides and a ceiling. No doors. Not when I dug it up out of the muck. That one is a prison. The circle is a two-way street. It may be a weapon for him but could be a tool for us.” She scratched her head, causing red curls to spill over her shoulders. “Sorry, I overheard the last part and had to come out and see what you two were talking about.”
Her gaze settled onto Ava, intensity kindling in her eyes.
“Hmmmm. I don’t think I know you.”
Chapter 33
Something changed in Ava’s demeanor.
Mir noticed, even while his attention locked onto Syd.
Ava’s stance became rigid, more watchful. Her eyes sharper. Her breathing shallower. When he took a step toward Sydney, Ava’s hand curled around his wrist and held on tight, locking him in place.
“Except he won’t let you do it, you know,” Sydney continued conversationally, her darkening gaze riveted on Mir. “He’ll never allow himself to be locked up again. Not by anyone.” A sliver of hatred underscored her words. “Especially not by you.” Her gaze drifted down to where Ava’s hand gripped his wrist, something evil sparking deeply in the now-black depths of her eyes.
“Who are you?” Sydney’s words—or the Orobus’s—were a purr of sound, erotic even, as she glided closer, her feet silent on the oil-stained concrete floor. “You seem soooo…familiar.” Beside him, Ava began to pant, little, desperate puffs of breath that told him exactly how frightened she was. Her nails dug into his wrist painfully, but he didn’t pull away. No, he pulled Ava closer, watching Sydney’s eyes narrow down to slits.
“That,” Sydney said, her voice deepening, “is not yours.”
“You’re not going to hurt anyone, Syd. And I won’t let you do something you’ll regret.”
She lifted her eyebrows, never taking her eyes off the brunette. “I’m not going to hurt her.” Sydney purred again, “Why would I? When she is the perfect mirror of myself? What are you, mortal?”
Behind him, Ava pressed herself closer, a small whimper escaping.
“You aren’t going to win this war, you realize that, don’t you?”
“Who said anything about winning?” The Orobus told him in Sydney’s voice. “Winning and losing are mortal concepts. I am here to exist. I am here to take back what is mine.” Something in her voice changed, growing louder, stronger. “And if the rest of you burn in the process, then so be it. If you want to call that winning, then go right ahead.”
Something about those words reminded Mir of the High Priest, Lordes.
“What do you want?” Mir asked softly, “Why are you here?” He stepped toward Sydney, scanning her for any means to yank this hitchhiker out of her, pull that darkness from her eyes, and then stopped, yanked back by Ava’s iron grip around his wrist, a firm reminder.
Let her wage this battle herself.
“I already told you,” Sydney’s beautiful voice narrowed down to a hiss. “I just want to exist.”
“No,” Mir told him. “You want more than that.”
A corner of Sydney�
��s mouth ticked upwards.
“You need more. You want to watch everything burn. And you want us to suffer while you do it.”
Now those black eyes glittered like diamonds. “Creation is overrated. Beauty lies in destruction.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.” Mir’s gaze grew fiercer. Help her, Ava had said. Get his claws out of her. And what better way to do that than to remember?
“Fight him, Syd, fight him with everything you are. Remember what happened, the night you fought with your father. Remember the storm. Remember what you felt, what you said…”
Her high-pitched scream ringing off the ceiling, Sydney grabbed her head and vanished, right out of thin air, as if she’d never been there. Beside him, Ava’s breath exploded out of her. “What the fuck?”
“She told us everything she could, given he was controlling her most of the time.” He hadn’t even gotten two full hours with her. And while she might have food in her belly and warm clothes on her back, Sydney was still exhausted and weak. And again, she was alone.
“So the last doorway is The Void.” Mir quickly headed for the stairs and held the door open for Ava, who ducked under his arm. “Now we know where all the doors lead to.”
“The biggest formation is the Orobus’s prison,” corrected Ava.
“And will be again, once we figure out how to lock the bastard away.” His and Ava’s patter of footsteps were the only sounds in the dark, echoing up through the empty stairwell to the floors above.
“And we have some idea of what its goals are, I suppose.” Ava began to labor, her steps coming slower as they climbed. “If that monster was telling the truth about any of it.”
“And that’s a big if.” Mir lagged behind her, not liking the implications if they were wrong. “But I think he was actually pretty transparent, I think he liked having an audience. I think he enjoyed showing off.”
“Yeah, I got that feeling too.” Out of breath, Ava shoved through the door at the top of the stairs. “He’s got a weakness, then.”
“Yes, he does.”
The Banished Gods Box Set: Books 1-3 Page 70