by Nazri Noor
“Get the hell out of there, Dust!”
Again I turned to look, catching the glint of light against Herald’s glasses as he stood on the shore. The others were clustered around him. Prudence looked between the normals and us weirdoes gathered in the water, considering her next step. Artemis was eating calamari out of a bowl she’d carried all the way from the jetty. Apollo wasn’t looking as relaxed, though. He was staring at the man in the water, this brazen, bronzed new distraction.
“Uh-oh,” Apollo said.
Uh-oh was right.
Chapter 3
I stared out at the water, specifically at the fact that both the silver-haired man and Scylla were now barking at each other in a language I couldn’t understand. Their fingers pointed threateningly at each other. That was a language I most certainly did recognize: someone was about to launch some very powerful magic. I was just going to haul ass when a pair of strong arms hoisted me off my feet and lifted me into the air. I yelped, kicking and thrashing.
“Will you settle down?” Gil growled, throwing me over his shoulder like I was a sack of potatoes. Really cute, dumb potatoes that never knew when to turn tail and run. Gil’s legs powered us through the water, and within seconds he had us back on dry land. He dropped me in the sand with what I thought was a little too much roughness, but hey, I’d be mad at me, too.
I recognized Herald’s sandals before he even started accosting me. I looked up sheepishly into his furious face, damp with sweat as he scolded me. “But do you ever listen?” was the only bit of his lecture that I caught. I pushed myself up to sit in the sand, dragging my legs closer and clutching my knees as I took my verbal beating and, more importantly, watched what was happening in the water.
It started with waves, massive, crashing ones that ran perpendicular to the natural flow of the ocean, alternately following the man’s command, then bending to Scylla’s will, like the push and pull of tides. Civilians screamed as they rushed for the shore. The spectacle wasn’t so exciting anymore, not when the very real risk of drowning was so near.
“Welp, I’m out,” Apollo said. He looped his fingers around Artemis’s wrist, tugging her away from the shore. Artemis waved at me, too focused on her calamari to be upset by whatever had Apollo so scared. Damn it. We could have used a god’s help in this – two of them, even.
The waves turned into bizarre shapes as they roared at each other – fists, at first, then huge, galloping horses, as the two tried to either drown their opponent or pulverize them in the terrible crush of so much water. Then Scylla went with a different approach, directing the flow of water into slender, pinpoint jets that sliced across the waves with so much force that they pierced the tanned man’s skin. He recoiled as the first streams of his blood poured into the water.
“Holy shit,” I muttered, leaping to my feet. “Should we be doing something? Holy shit.” Around us the normals were shouting, scattering, but enough of them were sticking around to record the battle with their devices. Fucking typical.
“Don’t move,” Herald growled. “Don’t get involved,” he said, even as he stepped forward, dangerously close to the water.
“Igarashi,” Prudence said. “Don’t.”
“Something has to happen before someone gets killed,” Herald said, as the enormous waves threatened the sands, greater and greater swells approaching the jetty as the bizarre duel continued. “This ends now.”
He fell to one knee, slamming his open palm into the wet sand. The purple glow wreathing his skin pulsed once, then vanished as Herald unleashed the full fury of his magic into the water. The effect was immediate, awe-inspiring, and terrifying. The waves stopped in place, as if halted in time, crystalline and frozen. The sea, or a very large area of it close to where Herald touched, was chilling at a tremendous rate, turning to ice under the weight of his power. Herald was freezing the ocean.
And it didn’t take very long for the only two people left in the water to feel the effects. Sheets of liquid emanating from the man’s hand froze and splintered in midair. Herald’s frost reached far enough to build a stifling, translucent cocoon around Scylla’s tentacles. She screamed, enraged, her eyes filled with venom as she stared at the bronzed man, then at Herald.
Herald glared back at her, lifting his chin in defiance. The battle was over, sure, but at what cost? Somewhere near us, a man with huge, excited eyes held his phone in Herald’s face. “Wow. Are you some kind of superhero?”
Prudence closed her fingers around the man’s phone, the strength of her grip augmented by her blue flames, crushing the device into a twisted mess of plastic and broken glass. “No superheroes here, buddy. Show’s over.”
The man stared at his empty hand, then at Prudence, a kind of awe taking over his features, more impressed than frightened.
“Great,” I said. “Now if you could just go around the entire beach and destroy every cellphone in sight, then that would be perfect.”
Prudence glowered. Just behind her, Mason shrugged, then sauntered up to the nearest normal, snatching away his phone and chucking it into the ocean. I mean – at least he was trying, right?
“We’ll deal with the fallout later,” Herald said. “What matters is that we put a stop to this stupid water fight.”
The sound of cracking ice surged across the frozen water. Scylla shouted as her tentacles broke free. “It has begun, mortals. Heed our warning. Don’t say that the Great Beasts only stood by.” She threw the silver-haired man one last baleful glare, then sank into the icy water.
The man was seething, too, that much was clear, but he seemed better able to contain his rage. The sun was setting above us, casting a fiery orange glow across the ice. The spires and points of frozen waves looked like flames stopped in time. The man’s eyes reflected the burning light. It only made him seem angrier, more menacing.
“Dustin Graves,” he boomed, his voice even more impressive over the ice. “We thought it rumor, hearsay, but now we have proof that you, in your hubris, have thought to consort with the Great Beasts, the harbingers of the apocalypse.” He pointed directly at me as his lips drew back. “The gods are watching. You will pay for your transgressions.”
With the same hand, the man smashed a fist into the ice, cracking the entire surface of the lake-sized area Herald had single-handedly frozen. The ground trembled with the force of the man’s blow. Herald staggered away, his mouth half-open at the sight of his handiwork smashed into so many little floes of nothing.
“The gods are watching, Dustin Graves,” the man boomed again. “Pray that you do not live long enough to see our justice.”
And with that, the man dived into the waves, disappearing into the depths of a burning ocean. The civilians around us chattered excitedly, checking their phones to see if they’d stored all the footage, muttering about being on-set for a movie, about seeing a publicity stunt meant to drum up attention through social media. A tiny part of me was relieved. Maybe the Lorica’s cleanup wouldn’t have to be so bad after all.
But a larger part of me was filling with dread. The gods were watching? And justice? I gritted my teeth. It was just like the entities to jump to conclusions. They could hardly be bothered by the Eldest returning, yet one little conversation with the Great Beasts and I was suddenly public enemy number one. Goddamn entities. Assholes, the lot of them.
Prudence held her phone to her ear, speaking rapidly, already calling for a cleanup. Asher shook his head as he looked out to the sea, its surface marked with rapidly melting chunks of ice. I smacked the back of my shorts, trying and failing to dislodge all the wet sand on my butt.
“So,” I said. “That was intense. What the hell was all that about?”
Asher folded his arms and stared at me skeptically, like he was waiting for me to admit I was joking before he spoke up. “Oh, you weren’t kidding. So you really had no idea who that dude was?”
I sighed. “I’m drawing blanks, okay? Some emissary of the gods shows up to threaten me for having one life-threatening
chitchat with Tiamat? I don’t get it.”
“Um, Dust? That wasn’t an emissary.” Asher’s brows furrowed with both frustration and concern. “Are you seriously telling me that you didn’t notice his trident?”
Chapter 4
Somewhere on the internet, there are pictures of an older gentleman, styled as what someone my age would refer to as a hipster: thick beard, impeccably cut and styled silver hair, and a body chiseled out of marble, like a Greek statue. Or a Greek god, really. Now, imagine a facsimile of this man, just freshly emerged from the ocean, his bronzed skin dewy with seawater.
Imagine him holding a trident.
“It really was him, then,” I hissed. “Now Poseidon’s on my ass, too?”
Carver shook his head, his fingers massaging his temples. I didn’t know if it was just a biological reflex on his part, or if liches were even capable of getting headaches. Sterling sat tight-lipped, the cigarette between his fingers burning to ash. Normally, he’d be teasing me about something like this, gloating mockingly about yet another threat of death hanging over my head. His silence said everything.
We were still on Lucero Beach, the sun now set, gathered around the same table where we were previously enjoying the afternoon with the others. The point of heading out to the pier, as I recalled, was to catch the sunset. We caught it, all right, along with quite a few other outrageous sights.
Carver had teleported to our location with Sterling in tow just as soon as I called him to report about Scylla’s appearance. The Lorica was on the scene, too. I wasn’t sure where he was, but Royce was somewhere on the beach barking orders at his people, especially the Mouths he’d brought to delete memories off of normals who had witnessed the aquatic throwdown between Poseidon and Scylla.
Bastion was easier to spot, though. He’d shown up as well in his capacity as a Scion, but in many ways his task was more difficult. He stood dead center of Lucero Beach proper, his hand held to the sky, faint glimmers of white energy emanating from his fingertips and cascading into a massive force field that extended far beyond the pier, off into the parking lot. It was a magical containment field, meant to lock in the normals until the Lorica could deal with what they heard and saw.
I know I give the Lorica a lot of shit, but damn if they weren’t dedicated to their work, especially Bastion. Prudence and Romira flanked him, their hands locked with his as they lent him what they could of their own magics, acting as arcane batteries. I could see Bastion’s forehead creasing from the effort as he exerted his will, his jacket shucked and forgotten on the ground, his body covered in a sheen of sweat.
“Dust,” Herald said.
“Yes, I agree,” I answered hurriedly, totally aware that I’d missed out on something.
“Okay,” Herald said, drawing out the word. “I was just saying, no wonder Apollo was so spooked. He was probably just as worried for Artemis as he was for himself.”
Gil nodded, staring disinterestedly at a bowl of calamari that had long gone cold. “It was bad enough that Artemis got thrown out of the Midnight Convocation just for helping us with Banjo. Imagine if they knew anything about her giving us the ritual to contact the Great Beasts.”
It was small evidence of the fact that the entities still had hearts beating beneath their inhumanly perfect bodies, a distant capacity for compassion. Apollo still cared enough to whisk Artemis away before Poseidon could spot them and plunge them into even more trouble. Then again, they were siblings, after all.
“This is what I don’t get, though,” I said. “Is Poseidon supposed to part of some kind of elite police force? Their own little god squad?”
Carver sighed and shook his head. “You really should know by now, Mr. Graves, that there’s no real way of explaining the actions of the entities. The best I can surmise is that Poseidon has been watching the waters, waiting for some sign of taint or corruption. A kind of scrying, if you will, because the oceans are his domain after all. His sphere of influence, his territory.”
Silence hung over the table as Carver stopped talking, as if to allow us to absorb the full meaning of what he hadn’t said.
Sterling rubbed at his forehead, flicking the burnt-out stub of his cigarette down between the gaps in the pier’s wooden floor. I didn’t know if vampires could get headaches, either, but there we were.
“You’re saying that Poseidon might not be the only one watching,” Sterling breathed. “You’re saying that everyone is on high alert.”
“And yet,” Asher said. “And yet they’re going to turn a blind eye to the Eldest, to Agatha Black.” I saw how his hand curled into a fist, how his eyes twitched. Mason reached for his wrist, gripping it tightly, reassuringly.
“Such is the way of things,” Carver said, nodding. “This is nothing new to us by now. The entities will follow their whims, even as the world crumbles around them.”
He steepled his fingers, studying the tips of his nails like they would offer some kind of answer. The enchanted amber jewelry he liked to wear flickered and glimmered in the light of little fires, candles that the restaurant kept burning to keep a romantic atmosphere.
For us, though, for all the flames and candles, it felt like just another ritual, part of our routine. When had life gotten so complicated for us? When could we stop to breathe, sit on the beach, and look at the sunset without having to worry about the threat of cosmic annihilation? Maybe never again.
“Scylla said that Agatha Black was on the move,” I said. “That she was planning a series of ritual sacrifices.”
“It’s not looking good,” Herald said, the bluish glow of his phone reflecting in his glasses. “How would we even find her? Asher was the closest anyone has come to accurately tracking her down, and we all know how that ended.”
“But we have to do something,” Mason said, his hands curled into fists. “We can’t just sit here and let this happen.”
“And we won’t,” Carver said, rising from the table. “I will speak to Royce and the others. We must pool our resources with the Lorica, with anyone in the magical community who wishes to live to see the end of the week. Agatha Black must be stopped.”
But how? I looked down at my hands, then at the faces of my friends, crestfallen and sallow in the flickering candlelight. I looked at Herald, his jaw set in a tight line, like he was trying to be strong for us both, doing his damnedest not to show any signs of weakness, of faltering.
There was one way, I thought, remembering my last encounter with Hecate, and remembering how little I knew of what her offer would actually cost me. An ascension, she said, something that would give me the power to stop Agatha and the Eldest once and for all.
I looked at Herald again, wondering if I could stand to lose him. I looked at the stars, wondering if I could bear to lose everything else.
Chapter 5
I sat cross-legged on the floor of the Boneyard, the stone cold against my thighs, my fingers trailing against the soft, fluffy belly of one Daddy’s Little Murderer. Banjo lolled around on his back, staring up at me with dewy, happy eyes, his tongue hanging half out of his mouth.
“You have it so easy, don’t you, you little mutt?”
“Arf.”
I chuckled and tickled the scruffy area around his chest, which prompted the exact response I hoped for, that kind of delighted rolling of the head a doggo does for you when it’s pleased and content. I dug around in my pockets, finding the one Snacky Yum-Yum I’d set aside just for this purpose. Carver had warned me against giving Banjo too many snacks – he was getting chonky, is what I’m saying – but you try to resist a corgi smiling up in your face, silently hoping for one of its favorite treats.
Banjo’s eyes lit up at the sight of the snack. He flipped over onto his belly, then sat on his haunches, his floof of a tail wagging. I didn’t make him wait, just popped the treat straight into his mouth. Banjo snapped at the air excitedly, then waddled off to gnaw on his tasty little gift.
I sat back against Carver’s desk, sighing. I wasn’t sure w
hat I’d hoped to accomplish, hanging out where the other guys wouldn’t think to look for me. I wanted time alone, away from the boys, from Vanitas, who was waiting in our room, and from Carver himself, who was still out in Valero wheeling and dealing with the Lorica. Who knew that we’d ever come to a time when Carver would willingly agree to speak to the Heart on equal terms, to approach the ruling council of Scions without plans of blowing up HQ himself?
I dusted my hands off of the little bits of residue from the Snacky Yum-Yum, which smelled strongly of dog food. Huh. Were we dipping into the last of Happy, Inc.’s stock? I thought it was strange, considering how Loki must have still been abroad, fleeing from the All-Father. Odin was as stubborn as Loki was slippery, and I liked to imagine that the Wild Hunt for the god of deception was still ongoing. Maybe Loki had contingency plans in place to help him deal with just such eventualities. There were no big announcements on the news about the company going under.
“There you are.”
I jumped at the sound of the voice, banging my head against Carver’s desk. I winced, rubbing the back of my skull, because a collision with furniture is way more painful when said furniture happens to be made out of solid stone. I looked up, frowning, into Mason’s face looking back down at me.
“What the hell, Mason?”
He shrugged. “I found Banjo wandering the corridors and chewing on a Snacky Yum-Yum. Carver keeps those somewhere Banjo could never reach them, so I put two and two together.” He shook his head, smirking. “You know what Carver said. Little dude’s getting chonky, we shouldn’t be overfeeding him with treats.”
I chuckled at the thought of Banjo ballooning into an oversized, furry little loaf, just waddling helplessly through the Boneyard’s halls, our stalwart, slightly overweight little guardian animal. I also chuckled at how language had shifted so much with the internet. Chonky wasn’t supposed to be a damn word, and neither was doggo, but here we are.