Death's Daughter
Page 1
DEATH’S DAUGHTER
THE BANISHED GODS: BOOK FOUR
L.A. MCGINNIS
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Epilogue
The Lovers
The Lovers
Copyright L.A. McGinnis 2019
All rights reserved
Editor: Chris Hall: The Editing Hall
Cover Design: Brynna Curry
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or distributed in any printed or electronic form or by any means, without express permission from the author or publisher. Please do not participate or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.
Please contact the author for any use in a review.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, either living or dead, including businesses, companies, events or locales is purely coincidental. This author acknowledges the trademarked status of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
ISBN-13: 978-1-970112-06-1
ISBN-13: 978-1-970112-07-8
Published in the United States of America by
Fools Journey Press, 2019
Please visit my website at www.lamcginnis.com
“I’ve spent months searching for a way to fill up
the space that hopelessness left behind.
Only to discover there isn’t
enough scotch left in the world.”
-Odin
1
The Outcast
Somehow, Hunter always knew she’d end up here.
Even though it was the last place she wanted to be.
She hated Chicago. More so, now that it was burning to the ground. But she didn’t have a choice. So here she was, on the doorstep of the last person she ever wanted to see. Leaping down from her vantage point, she landed on broken asphalt before making her way toward the tall, silent Tower on the edge of Lake Michigan.
Twenty minutes later, she arrived in front of the golden sandstone building, working out possible entry points. Barely a month ago, the immortals inside had allowed the dark God of Chaos
to escape their grasp and begin his reign of terror, straight across the northeast. After which, he’d ended up right at her front door.
And she’d watched him decimate her city.
She’d slaughtered her way out of New York. Stolen cars and scavenged ammo and weapons to fight through the hordes of demons and Dark Elves spread across the rust belt, and now she was sporting more injuries than she cared to note. It had taken her a week and every ounce of energy to get here.
But she’d made it.
Frowning, she gazed at The Tower’s gothic arches, looking at the stone owl crowning the buildings highest gable. “Wisdom is it?” She allowed herself a wry smile. “What’s wisdom gotten us so far in this war?”
No, she thought, when the world was on fire, and the end drew near, only steel and blood would buy it back. And for that, she had an immortal god to see. It had been a thousand years and ten lifetimes, but she still remembered every line of his face, the faint scar marking his cheek, his whiskey-flecked eyes, and the set of his stubborn jaw.
After all these years, she doubted he even remembered her name.
Tyr, God of War, rolled his shoulders and felt the dull ache of fatigue. Months had passed since the God of Chaos had blown through a cosmic portal onto earth and begun waging his deadly war.
And they were losing. People. Ground. Blood.
“I fucking hate losing.”
The map before him displayed proof of their failures. Their enemy’s path of destruction cut a stark, black swath from Chicago all the way to the east coast, a wide slash of evil straight across the northern United States. Fingers of death crept out from that blackness like a cancer, stretching toward Fort Wayne, Lansing, Columbus, Philadelphia. Cities wiped from the map forever.
Proof the dark god’s reach grew longer every day.
Modern tech was useless against the Orobus’s powers, against the sheer numbers of his otherworldly army. Fuel was growing scarce. Ammo, too. Food would be rationed, starting today. Punching a fist though the concrete wall, Tyr barely felt the impact. The blood dripping from his knuckles, however, was an unwelcome surprise. A testament to the fact he was exhausted and his magic nearly depleted. “Fucking perfect.” Distracted, he rubbed it off on his pants.
His eyes darted over the map again, surveying the carnage portrayed by daily updates, where every message sent seemed to tell of one catastrophic failure after another.
He’d best recall Thor, Balder and the rest of the gods from the eastern edge of Pennsylvania, where they’d been maintaining some semblance of a front line. Sending them to attack the Orobus’s rear guard had, perchance, slowed him down but hadn’t stopped him. Word had come in yesterday—New York city was under siege. Who knew what was next?
Certainly not Odin. Their king had given up. Hiding in the Throne Room, chugging Lagavulin, like the expensive scotch was water, Odin had effectively removed himself from day-to-day operations. Ever since Odin lost his gift of foresight, he’d decided to drink his troubles away. And sure, Tyr would love nothing more than to march in there, yank the bottle out of the pompous bastard’s hands, and demand the king get his head back in the game.
Except he’d already tried that. Odin had laughed in his face. Told Tyr he’d seen what was coming. And with a cold, dead look in his eyes—lifted the bottle to his lips again.
Even if things were hopeless, they needed Odin. Even blind, their king was clever and ruthless; two talents Tyr could use right now. But apparently his blindness, and the tailspin this vulnerability precipitated, wasn’t going to be solved overnight. Still…
“Great timing, asshole.”
“Tell me about it.” Behind him, Mir leaned into the doorway, his face grave, dust covering his Kevlar jacket, something looking suspiciously like dried blood crusting his side.
“Ah, you’re back.” Tyr measured up the red-haired god, recognized the approaching burnout in those blue eyes. “You look beat to hell. But damn, I’m glad you’re here. How are we doing out there?”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t expect to be living in one.” Tyr rubbed the knot on the back of his neck, despising the faint tremor of exhaustion lacing his voice. “Sydney’ll be thrilled you’re back. I couldn’t have run things without her.”
Mir’s blue eyes flashed. “Of course you couldn’t. She’s smarter than you. Gods, I’ve missed her. And once I head upstairs, you probably won’t see either of us for a couple of days.” Mir rubbed his face, leaving long smears of dirt. “Any sign Odin’s decided to sober up and join the ranks of those who give two shits about the world?”
Tyr sliced his head back and forth. “Won’t even leave his Throne Room. I’m thinking drastic measures are called for. I’ve tried once. Maybe you’ll have better luck, now that…”
It was hard to say what tipped Tyr off first, that inward tightening in his gut, or the prickling on the back of his neck as if a predator were watching. Whatever the feeling was, when he turned, it did nothing to brace him against the chill in Hunter Wallace’s gleaming eyes when they found his own. His breath exploded out of him in disbelief as he gazed, for the first time in centuries, at the woman who had both captured and broken his heart.
Standing right in front of him, head raised defiantly, black hair flowing down her back, her pale skin dusted with the barest hint of freckles, Hunter looked every bit as proud and reckless as the first day he’d seen her. Tyr didn’t know how long he’d been staring, but when Mir cleared his throat, he was sure it had been too long.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Tyr managed, the mere sight of her causing him to flounder for words. Her clothing was bloodied, as were her knives. And the layers of dirt and grime covering her told him the journey here hadn’t been easy.
“Trying to figure out how you idiots could be so careless to let that monster get away from you and destroy my city.” Her voice was still husky, low, and her shrewd gaze didn’t miss a thing, taking in the maps, the War Room’s general clutter, the disarray of failure.
Mir gave Hunter his own disapproving once-over before spinning away on his heel without a single word, slamming the door behind him just to make his point. Tyr waited until the sound faded away before asking, “Your city?”
Her eyes turned into glittering lakes of amber, as she snarled, “That’s right. New York City. My city.”
Hunter might have been born a thousand years ago, but clearly, she’d lost none of her sharp edges. “Eight hundred miles away from you, which as it turns out wasn’t nearly far enough.”
And so it had always been between them. Endless standoffs. Endless silences. Endless, pointless stretches of time. Hundreds of years, in fact, where time slipped by without either of them taking a step forward or a step back.
Tyr leaned his hip against the table in what he hoped was a casual pose and pasted the same look over his face. “Back to my original question. What are you doing here, when the Orobus is in New York? Shouldn’t you be defending your city with your team?” And because Hunter’s team was the New York equivalent of their band of elite, immortal warriors, Tyr didn’t understand why she’d come all this way.
“You truly are a bastard.”
“Nope, my bloodline’s as blue as the ocean’s deep. Can’t say the same about you, though.”
He had to give her credit. She kept her weapons holstered and her talons sheathed. But those eyes grew darker, and her mouth took on a rigid, intractable set that made him realize his troubles were only beginning.
When she spoke, her voice was soft, and a lesser man might have shuddered. “Once the monster you allowed to roam free in our world is shackled and contained, we can debate our dubious, respective ancestries all you want, Tyr. Until then…” She leaned in until she stared deeply into his eyes. “I suggest you work really, really hard and use what little brain power you possess to come up with a means to kill him. And do it fast because you’re running out of time.”
Here in the flesh, there was a subtlety to the woman that his memories failed to capture, a delicacy to her scent, a burnished gold in the texture of her skin which he’d forgotten, and the sight of her cracked him open like an egg. Memories, he thought, were such deceitful things.
“I’m here because New York City is gone, Tyr. Completely gone.” Her lips trembled. So much so that he stopped the smart-ass retort on his tongue and kept quiet while she laid everything out for him.
The Orobus’s brutal attack.
The loss of her team.
Her messy, bloody scramble toward Chicago.
When Hunter finished, she blew out a shaky breath before marshalling herself. “Nothing left of the major cities—those are gone. Some smaller towns survived, and I ran across a few rural areas that are relatively unscathed, but it looks as if the creature’s armies followed the main highways, picking off the bigger cities one by one.”
Tyr offered a shallow nod while his head spun at the revelation NYC was destroyed. “We call him the Orobus. And that’s what I gleaned from my reports too. A blueprint to conquest. And we handed it to them.”
She didn’t disabuse him of his theory.
“The creature’s power…” She turned away, and her voice faltered. “Killed everything in his path. Forests turned skeletal, cattle bloated and rotting in the fields, birds fallen from the sky. Wiped out whatever he touched. Hel, the Grim, the Dark Elves…they’re just clean up.”
“Hunter.” He knew exactly where she’d gone to in her head. Hadn’t seen her in a thousand years.
But still knew, in a heartbeat, exactly what she was thinking.
Before he figured out what to say next, she’d marshalled herself. And that was Hunter Wallace. Job first, personal shit second. Always.
“The city’s gone, Tyr.” This time, her mouth didn’t tremble. “I stayed long enough to get the rest of my team out, every survivor. Most of them headed north, following the contingency plan.” Her eyes turned distant. “You know, the one we never thought we’d have to use?”
“How many made it out?”
“Including me? Thirty-one.” She didn’t have to say anything else. There’d been over a hundred of their kind posted in the New York organization. Immortals. Halflings. And a few like Hunter. Mortals touched by the otherworldly. All of them warriors fighting the Grim. Tasked with keeping Hel’s minions under control.
“He’s right behind me. Which is the only reason I’m here. To warn you.”
For a second, Tyr wasn’t sure he heard her right. “You’re here to warn us?”
She paused a moment before replying. “To warn you. He’s already destroyed New York. Now he’s coming back, probably to finish off Chicago. I’d say you have two, possibly three days before he arrives. Hel’s a day behind him with her horde of Grim.”
Her eyes narrowed down to slivers as she measured him up, before shaking her head. “You know, for a long time I’ve wondered what it’d be like to see you again. But I never expected you to look like this.”
His spine popping, Tyr threw his shoulders back. “Like what, exactly?”
“Defeated.”
2
The Warrior
When the door slammed open, Tyr raised bleary eyes from the rotations schedule.
“Wanna talk about it?” Freyr leaned his lean, muscular frame against the doorjamb, looking completely otherworldly with his long blonde hair, glowing skin, and halcyon eyes. Middle of a war zone and he still looked supermodel perfect. It was seriously disturbing. “No problem if you don’t. Just thought I’d ask.”
Tyr turned back to the grid of names in front of him, praying Freyr would just go away. Even with Mir back, they were shorthanded, and he had a war to run.
“’Cause it seems like there’s some deep shit going on between you and the raven-haired beauty.” Freyr continued, as if Tyr had
time to chitchat right now. “So you can keep being a stoic dickhead until the world ends. Or you can tell me what the fuck is going on.”
Rubbing his forehead, Tyr ground out, “She’s my problem, okay? And between injuries, front line skirmishes, and preparing for an invasion, not one I need right now.” If he could just concentrate on one disaster at a time, his life would be so much better.
Freyr’s eyes danced. “Fine.” His body unfurled from the doorframe. As he straightened, his long hair tumbled over his shoulders. “Maybe I’ll go ask her myself.” White teeth flashed as he added, “I’ll bet I can persuade the beauty to give up all her secrets.” He winked. “If you know what I mean.”
In an instant, Tyr was across the room, forearm rammed into Freyr’s throat. Barely breathing, he stared into Freyr’s laughing blue eyes, whose smile never slipped off his handsome face.
“Still intend to keep all your secrets, my friend? Because I’m not above prying the information out of her.” Freyr’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Not a lot of time left. Heard she saw the Orobus in action. Intel like that might help us prepare. Besides, you know me. Self-preservation is a priority, and I’ll do whatever I can to keep myself alive another day.”