by Jenn Stark
I gazed upward, and there was nothing new in the sky, nothing to indicate that the gods had gained any purchase on the veil. But when I shifted to third-eye view, it told a different story. The twin waves of lightning hadn’t just blown their share of London’s fuse boxes, they’d short-circuited the veil’s electrical currents as well, at least where the system had already been weak. There was now a growing hole, an insidious stain of decay, spreading across the network.
Diligently, I chanted the words Rangi had given us, but this rite wasn’t intended to fill up a dike that had burst. At least—not exclusively. For this binding spell to succeed, it required the energy of a god who was in the process of being stuffed back into his or her hole. And for that, we needed to actually have some gods to work with.
Fleetingly, I thought again of Hera. She definitely qualified as a viable candidate to be blasted back to oblivion, but she was nowhere near London, I suspected, not willing to be stuck quite yet in the Time Out chair. But she was to blame for this, somehow. She had to be. She, or more likely—
“Not the Council, Miss Wilde. Though you are right to harbor such doubts.”
A sickening roil of fear cramped my stomach, but Armaeus kept talking. “When it comes to protecting your people, you can trust no one but yourself. Despite what I feel for you, and the depth of that forbidden pool which has opened within me, I must preserve balance. Balance does not always favor the most vulnerable of Connected, however, which is your charge and your duty. You should question everything.”
I pushed my questions forward again. Did you create the storm in the north? I thought, even as I spoke the words of banishment, my gaze on the lowering sky. Did the Council summon these gods?
“Hera was summoned by mortals, not me,” Armaeus said simply, and his words carried an air of absolute finality. I believed him. The Council had its code of honor, but they were also a mercenary bunch. If they helped goose along a Hera ritual strong enough for the goddess herself to break through, and then were there to collect her for their own purposes, so much the better. That still fit within the parameters of allowed activity. But there’d been no storm of the century to herald the goddess’s return on the island of Samos, whereas this…
Of course, there was more than one god in play, here.
And if it wasn’t Armaeus calling down this storm, who was it? Was there another member of the Council strong enough to put this deal together? The Council had a long and well-traveled history of rogue members acting on their own, so it was possible. Somebody sure as hell had done the deed.
Across what seemed like ten thousand miles, an old, familiar feminine voice, rusty with disuse or the product of a three-day bourbon bender, whispered a mocking reproof I’d already heard far too many times in my life.
“You’re not asking the right questions, Sara. Again.”
I jerked around, as if the ghost from my past was standing right beside me, but of course there was no one there.
“We got activity,” Nikki crackled across the airwaves, and I forced my attention back to the present. Lightning bolts had begun touching down in ragged bursts across the park, and at the corner of the green space, I saw that the Weather Channel van was on fire. It wasn’t the only vehicle either. Now the people who’d begun edging closer to the park were surging back again, some of them running for their lives.
“Ma-Singh is on it. They won’t get close.” Nikki’s words didn’t compute for a section, then I tore my gaze away from the fleeing people and realized that wasn’t what she was talking about. A line of uniformed police officers and what looked like a military detail were on the ground and moving fast toward the park, and even at this distance I could almost imagine that I heard the static of their radios, their shouted demands.
“Miss Wilde.”
But Armaeus’s voice was blanked out by another dazzling blast of lightning, directly followed by a boom of thunder so loud, it made me jump. Rangi’s voice sounded louder and slightly more desperate over the headsets, and I raised mine as well. Mercault was practically screaming, and even Gamon’s tone grew more strident. All of us, I sensed, were now straining toward the sky, bracing for whatever was going to happen next. I was ready for anything from alien spaceships to the Transformers to flaming unicorns to burst out of the clouds—
I wasn’t ready for this.
An immense, eardrum-shattering explosion at the river blasted me back, bouncing me off the enormous tree and into three more, before dropping me to the ground. I scrambled up, choking in the smoke and stench of burnt electronics, and stumbled forward, stunned into momentary silence at the sight that greeted my eyes.
The Eye of London had gone up in flames.
I wasn’t the only one of our group rendered mute. Mercault’s chant had evaporated on a squeak, Gamon was cursing in a language I didn’t recognize. Even Rangi was silent, while I could only stare in horror at the carnage of the Eye. The large twenty-five-person pods were blackened, and some of them had been blown into the roiling Thames. The spokes of the wheel were consumed with a raging fire, though I couldn’t imagine what was on them that would be remotely flammable. It didn’t seem to matter. The spectral conflagration was raging in a technicolor wave of destruction, racing over and above and around and through the structure, far more of a distraction than the Eye itself could ever hope to be.
A distraction…
“Miss Wilde!”
I jerked my gaze upright as the clouds parted with such a searing blast of radiation that I instinctively flung both hands in front of my face, clutching the coins out of a desperate need to hang on to something—anything—that could save me. It was as if the sun itself had blasted into the earth, and I choked out the mantra with a voice gone feeble with fear, my face streaming with tears. While the other Houses remained stunned into silence, I was taking the brunt of this front, calling the fire to me first, before it spread to the other Houses. I was the only one who could.
The radios were reduced to static as two more explosions sounded around me, both of them near the Thames. But I couldn’t look away from what loomed above me anymore. Wouldn’t look away.
Smoke poured down from the sky in a torrent, bursting from the center of the sun or a star or whatever the hell it was shining its bright light down on earth. And in that smoke was a roiling, slithering form I knew so well. Llyr.
The dragon who’d been one of the most powerful gods of Atlantis—if not the most powerful god—still retained his awe-inspiring form. He was a brilliant red-gold, with a massive head set atop a thick, corded, and scaled neck, horns extending up from his temples and ridges racing down his neck. His wings spread wide and helped block the blinding light, but they were all the more terrible for it, their sheer immensity making me feel as small and insignificant and as doomed to death as an ant trapped under a magnifying glass. Fire dripped from Llyr’s mouth in streams of flame, and he was rushing—rushing forward, already seeming so close, but still he came on, as if the corridor through the veil was far, far longer than I’d ever expected it to be.
And he wasn’t alone. Beside Llyr rushed another being, almost completely consumed by fire, but a fire that I knew instinctively was of her own making. A fiery corona encircled my mother’s head, her hands were encased in blue and gold flames, her gown pressed against her body and flowed behind her, white as pain. I couldn’t see her face—it was covered with the mask of Tezcatlipoca, terrible to behold—and something pinged deep in my nervous system at the sight of her. Why was she effecting this god’s image when she was so much greater? Had Gamon summoned her after all, or was the original magic that drew her to earth still in play?
But the exodus to earth wasn’t finished yet. More beings flew into the space behind the leader gods, dark and rushing forms, some barely more than vapor, some thick and bulky, none of them clear. Only Llyr and my mother were fully formed because—I suddenly realized—because they’d been through before, and recently. They’d set foot on this ear
th, no matter how briefly. And each step had given them power. A power that humankind alone could grant at this point…grant, or take away.
“Go back!” I cried, following up with the words Rangi had given me. “Stripped and torn asunder, banished by your own hand!”
I didn’t recognize the voice as mine, couldn’t account for its rage, its horror, its revulsion as I watched the wasting creatures of another millennia surge toward earth. This planet, our people, we were broken and scattered, squandering our resources and razing our forests, poisoning our seas and melting our glaciers, but this world was ours to live with or die with, ours to cherish or abuse. We were a race at war with ourselves but that war was born of our own petty conflicts, conflicts that would eventually burn themselves out—and they were ours. Ours. We demanded, we controlled, we surged forward.
We, not the gods. Never, ever again the gods.
My voice increased in pitch and volume as I felt the energy surge within me. The gods were close—so close—and even now a strange and almost ethereal kind of smoke spilled forth from the sky, whispery thin and glittering, unutterably beautiful before it was caught and spun away by the gale-force winds of the competing storms. Trees were bent over in the Jubilee Gardens, limbs tearing free, and there were pinpoint flashes of light all around me as I staggered forward, my arms now lifted high, my voice ragged in my own throat. The mantra raged through me as if it was a living thing, bursting from my mouth and surging up, up.
Distantly, I felt the answering call from the other Houses of Magic. Slowly, shakily, Gamon and Mercault emerged from their positions and began lurching and stumbling toward me, chanting again, then finally Rangi strode into the clearing as well, one hand open to the skies, the other clutching his coins to his heart. He looked at me with wild, confused eyes, and I suspected this coming together wasn’t part of the ritual, wasn’t part of the four-cornered barrier we were supposed to fling up toward the heavens, but I couldn’t help that anymore. The four Houses of Magic needed to stand together, not apart, now of all times. We needed to join, we needed to meet…
We were only five feet apart from each other when the Council played its hand.
A bolt of lightning burst forth from Elizabeth Tower, Big Ben clanging furiously, and flashed toward us across the Thames so fast, I couldn’t cringe away. It blasted into our group, catching Mercault first, then Rangi, slicing through their bodies to burst free on the other side. Gamon was caught next, then me, and I stared in sick incomprehension as the light exploded out of my chest and raced into the sky.
The surge of Council magic unleashed a torrent of pain unlike anything I had ever experienced before. It was at once inside and outside of me, racing along my skin and burrowing deep into my bones. But beyond that, it burned with an outrage that carried a millennia-old vengeance against these ancient and twisted gods, this breed of beings that dominated all the others and posed the truest external threat to the world. The light blasted upward and met a surge of energy punching down, and then I heard again the chorused voices—not only of Mercault, Rangi, Gamon, and myself, but the Magician’s powerful and rich cadence, the eerie wail of Eshe’s High Priestess intonations, the Devil’s strangely intense fury. Even Simon’s voice ran loud and strident, and there were other voices as well, less distinct, pulsing with a combined energy that galvanized the current running through the four of us on the ground and sent it sprawling into the sky.
When it finally occurred to the oncoming gods that their entry was being contested, another bolt of sheer brilliant light burst across the heavens. I momentarily went blind. In the darkness I could smell, taste, hear, and feel with renewed clarity—our desperate chants of banishment, the agony of too much power frying my nerve endings, the acrid smell of smoke and taste of blood and sweat on my lips. And still we railed on, until nausea overpowered me and the only thing keeping me upright was the spear of fire punching through my core.
The tide turned at some point, but I was lost to the details, images now flashing in my mind more so than in front of my eyes. Fire everywhere, spreading from the Eye of London to the park to the Thames itself, engulfing the river in flames. A profound jolt of energy rocking the earth, knocking the rest of the electricity out of the city, but even more than that, ripping through the four of us standing at the epicenter of the conflagration. And laughter—rich, buoyant laughter, close enough and loud enough to fill the whole world.
Then—total, and absolute silence, as if someone had flipped the switch on the entire universe. There was no more rain, no more wind, no more storm.
We fell to our knees, gasping, coughing, and retching on the scorched dirt.
Then a distorted bullhorned voice sounded across my battered eardrums.
“Put your hands on your heads! None of you move!”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Never let it be said that the Council wasn’t quick to react.
Almost before the shouted commands of the police finished echoing through the gardens, the storm started again.
This time, at least to my sensibilities, there was no question that it was an artificial tempest raging down on us, expanding out from the Jubilee Gardens and blasting to the north and the east, winds bodily lifting the men and women in combat gear off their feet and tossing them like dolls back toward their cars.
In the eye of the squall, I scrambled to my feet, instinctively patting my belly, which should have been little more than a smoking hole. Gamon, wild-eyed, was turning around, then around again. “What’s happening?” she demanded.
“The Council,” I snapped, gesturing furiously around me. “You don’t really think we could leave London destroyed like this, did you?”
“I…” She stared as the Magician began the same cleanup work that he’d performed on a much smaller scale at Bellagio, months ago, when Llyr had first dared to breach the veil, summoned by the forces of SANCTUS. There, it had been only one dragon who’d burst into being and destroyed an iconic fountain.
This…was a much bigger challenge. Much of the wind damage could be attributed to the storm, even some of the fires, I knew, but…
I swung around toward the Eye of London, the mighty Ferris wheel once again consumed in flame despite the torrential rain. Only now the flames were whipping tightly around the structure, concealing it in a ferocious cocoon. The pods that had broken free of the Eye were no longer floating in the Thames, and the pier itself seemed to be superheated, the river sending up enormous gouts of steam whenever a new piece of debris was swept out of the water and back into its original position.
“Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu…” Mercault was flopping around on the ground like a fish tossed up on the pier, but we didn’t have time for a breakdown right now. I helped him to his feet and gripped his hands, the shock of awareness flooding me with sudden and horrifying clarity.
Oh…crap.
“It’s happening again, non?” he gasped, staring at me with wide eyes. “You’ve raised the level of my abilities just by…just by being near me.”
“Not now, Mercault,” I gritted out, even as Rangi pounded up to us.
“You did it.” The Head of the House of Wands practically bellowed, and both Gamon and I cringed away from his exuberance, Mercault bursting into a startled laugh that sounded dangerously on the verge of hysteria. I saw the Frenchman’s guards hovering in the distance and urged them forward, handing Mercault off to their ministrations before he completely unraveled. Not to be outdone, however, Rangi bounded forward, slapping the man on the shoulder hard enough to make Mercault crumple. “You did it, Monsieur Mercault. You. I thank you! We thank you.”
The praise had a galvanizing effect on Mercault, or maybe it was Rangi’s bro-swat. The Frenchman straightened and turned, his eyes going wide as he saw everything swirling around us in a torrent of rain and wind—yet we were untouched, hidden in the eye of the storm.
“We did it?” he asked, and his gaze traveled to the sky. The clouds boiled and rai
n fell in blinding sheets, but no more lightning or thunder raged. “We did it.”
“Who were those people shouting?” Gamon, ever practical, scowled into the black wall of the storm. “Police? Military?”
“Not your problem,” I said, and it wasn’t, though her question sounded strangely false to my ears. Still, I hadn’t brought the heads of the Houses here to close the veil, only to get them arrested for their troubles. I did need to know if Gamon had been the one to summon the goddess, however. I reached out as if to steady her.
Predictably, she slapped me away, but the moment I touched her hand, I blanched. I didn’t get the answer I was seeking, exactly, but I did get an answer.
Gamon’s powers were as enhanced as Mercault’s were.
“You dare!” she snarled, pulling her hand away as if she’d been burned, then blinking in sudden, stunned surprise, no doubt feeling the same energy coursing through her body that I did in mine.
“Go.” I said before she could say anything else. I pointed as her men struggled toward her. “Anyone close to you will remain out of sight until you get away from the area, but the Magician’s protection only extends so far. Make use of it.”
“The Magician.” Rangi’s tone was mocking as I finally turned to him, but even this derision couldn’t dent his clear pleasure. “We didn’t need his help to make this happen. The magic of the earth and sky and seas responded to us, as it did in the days of old.”
“The magic of the Council responded to us, as you damn well knew it needed to,” I retorted. He and I were alone now in the bubble of the Council’s protection, and his powerful body was a dark silhouette against the still furiously burning London Eye. But I could see the unit already had returned to much of its former stature, and every millisecond that passed, it was further reconstructed—metal fusing, wires reconnected and soldered together, glass and bolts and pins rushing back into place. Would it be enough? Had too much time passed? I couldn’t guess.