He lifted his head from the kill as he sensed something rising above the hillside. Horses and men, even a few women, the scent was of their flesh, of their skins—those they wore and those that were bound to them. Their weapons were wood and iron. The power seemed to waft off of them as they stayed there, looking down upon Lethe and him, no rush to battle, no sudden charge.
“Ho,” the one in the middle called. He spoke again, in a language that Wolfe had no knowledge of.
“We do not know what you are saying,” Lethe called back to him in their own.
The man paused for a moment. He was broad and carried a spear that was drenched with blood. Upon his shoulder sat a raven, and it cawed as if trying to answer for him. “It would appear we have the same foe,” the man said in their own tongue.
Lethe took this in stride. “I have no foes. I merely saw goats waiting to be slaughtered, and waded in to take my prize from their flesh.” One of the fallen groaned at her feet, writhing, trying to crawl, and she reached down, lifting him up by the back of his neck. All was quiet save for his quickened breathing, a heaving sound of squeals in the grim midday, until he finally went still and Lethe let her head pull back just slightly, savoring what she’d just done.
“Then you have done us a great service in your…craving,” the man said. “I take it by your language that you are from Athens? Children of Olympus?”
“We were from near Athens, though not of Olympus,” Lethe said. “But now we are of the world, and drink battle and carnage wherever we care to.”
The man smiled, nodding. “I know the call to war well. My people heed it at every turn. My name is Odin, and these are my own kin—my wife, Frigga.” He nodded to the woman to his left. “My sons—”
“I do not care about your family,” Lethe said coldly.
Odin took this without comment or apparent insult, shrewdly studying her. “You are focused on your purpose. Let me offer you this—my people make war the way others might farm a harvest. I see in you a kindred spirit, one who seeks to channel the chaos, who dances upon the edge of honor and pain. Come drink with us this night in my meadhall. You will be our honored guests, feted by my army, the Einherjaren.”
Lethe watched, inscrutable. Wolfe did not watch this Odin; he watched Lethe. She was having a reaction, a very subtle one, as most of hers tended to be. But she did not speak. The blood continued to drip down her body as she remained still as if she had joined the dead.
“If you desire war and blood and fire,” Odin went on, “I could tell you of places—nearby, even—where you could find enough of it to fill your bellies and your spirits for the lifetimes of many mortals.” He wore a broad grin, the others remaining silent in his party. “Of course, I’m sure you could find these places on your own, but…” He wore a canny look, and Wolfe could see a sort of devilish wisdom in his only remaining eye. “Is it not sweeter to fight with an army? To be able to savor the battle rather than being constantly buffeted from foe to foe?”
Wolfe’s hairs began to rise on his back. “Daughter of death—”
“Do not address me now, dog,” Lethe said in the most steely whisper. “You follow me, and I do not seek or need your counsel.” She took another breath, chest heaving, gore sliding down her supple flesh, as pristine now as when he had met her centuries earlier. “Very well, Odin,” she said. “We accept your invitation. A meal would be a…kindness. Battle would be…” Her eyes grew hungry. “…welcome.”
“I think you could find a happy place among our armies,” Odin said. “I have seldom seen your kind before, and never in so…glorious a state.” He looked her up and down, nostrils flaring. “Your courage is great, and you are a chooser of the dead; I see it now. Come. We feast,” he said, and turned his horse around with but an effort, disappearing back over the hill before his line of followers did the same.
“I do not trust them,” Wolfe said once the last of them had crossed over.
Lethe did not look at him, did not answer, and he saw the back of her hair where it was clumped and sticky with the gore of the battle. “You do not need to trust them,” she said, “and it is probably wiser that you do not. For if they do not deceive, we will go with them for a time, and see if they in fact do have a stomach for battle that this Odin has promised.” Now she turned, just slightly. “For if so…perhaps we might find a place among them.”
Wolfe’s nostrils flared, but he did not speak. The desire of her heart was plain, and she started up over the hill without turning back, not bothering to fetch the drapings she’d torn off when the battle had been joined.
There was nothing to be done for it, Wolfe realized. To dissuade her once her course had been set? Impossible. Her will was harder than iron, harder than stone, changing it as out of reach as the skies themselves. What else was there to do but follow? Wolfe reflected as he began to pick his way over the bodies of the slain, taking care to watch where he stepped only so that he could keep pace with his mistress, the one whose father had sworn him to her service…
…and the one who had stolen his heart.
29.
Sienna
Little pieces of Frankie’s apartment hideout were still raining down around me. Bits of the ceiling dislodged by his use of one of the most destructive superpowers I’d ever seen were finding their way to rest on my shoulders, in my hair, flaking down like a gentle December snowfall in Minnesota.
Of course it was July, in Scotland, but that was beside the point. The point was that I was staring down a soulless incubus who’d been absorbing the powers of other metahumans and who had just turned loose a really damned epic one on me, one I’d never even run across before.
How many more of those did he have in him?
He leered with amusement at how I was suddenly still. We’d lapsed into this momentary quiet, me waiting for him to do something else, him waiting to see what I did, and Rose staying silent as a mouse across the artificial chasm Frankie had just made in the living room, because she was smart enough to know that drawing the attention of a man who could hurl death in the way Frankie just had was exceedingly unwise.
“Well?” he said at last. “What now, d’ye reckon? Shall we dance some more?”
“I ‘reckon’ we’re gonna,” I said. “But first, I might as well ask…what do you want?”
“Oh, I must have impressed you,” he said with mirthful glee, eyes gleaming. “Because you’re the girl who always attacks, never retreats, and runs her mouth the entire bluidy time without ceasing.” He slapped his knee a couple times. “Seems I’ve got you on the ropes, do I? Bet you didn’t expect that.”
“There are a lot of things I don’t expect,” I said. “Bottle flipping to become a trend, for instance. People thinking the Kardashians are worthy of emulation as they sell access to their lives and fakey personal drama in exchange for massive amounts of cash. The Spanish Inquisition. But then, no one expects that.” He watched me warily. “You’re right. You’ve gone and turned yourself into a bonafide badass, Frankie, the kind that’s making me want to take a step back instead of leaping forward and trying to tear your head off. I’d salute you if I did that kind of thing. But you’ve got to realize what’s actually happening here.”
I tried to take in what was left of the room. There wasn’t a lot in here to begin with; the furnishings had been pretty spare. A couch that had been torn in half by Frankie’s blast, pieces of which were raining down even now, along with the damage to the ceiling and floor. Voices were making their way through the cracks beneath and above us, and that worried me, because I didn’t need any hostages getting in the way of what I was going to try to do to this guy.
He didn’t smile, didn’t leer. I could see the cold calculation all over his face. “What’s happening here, then?”
I took a breath and let it out slowly. “I’m not holding back because I’m afraid of you.”
He cocked an eyebrow and started to smile again. It was a chilling thing. “Is that so?”
“That’s s
o.”
“Why are you hesitating, then?” he asked. Clearly he didn’t believe me.
“Because,” I said, frantically pushing the same question I’d been asking in my head for five minutes—getting no useful responses from anyone and hoping—just hoping—that the wildest psychopath in my head would finally weigh in with a plan that would solve everything, “I’m trying to figure out how to kill you.”
Frankie’s eyes flashed with anger, and I lunged to the left as he shot something completely different at me. This was at least familiar, in that it was a bolt of lightning that looked thicker than a minikeg. It blasted past, a few little tendrils branching off and running harmlessly through me to the floor, grounding themselves against the concrete below the carpet, sparking little fires in the process. I didn’t even feel it, thankfully, as I came back down, and something blew past my face so quickly that all I saw was the light of the energy as it streaked past. I didn’t see it impact, but I knew it had struck behind me and wasn’t, thankfully, that shredding blast he had turned loose before.
I flung a handful of fire at him, knowing it wasn’t going to do shit but hopefully distract him for a second, and it did. He threw a hand up and caught it, dispersing it harmlessly into nothingness as I ran a few steps closer, reaching the back of the couch. I bent down and grabbed it by its soft corduroy and flung it at him.
It was heading right for his face when it was suddenly bisected by a red blade that sheered it in two. The couch flew into pieces and one of them shattered the window to my right, hitting the wall beneath and flopping back inside.
He’d pulled a damned lightsaber blade from out of his freaking sleeve. Or more accurately, projected one out of his hand.
I had a blowout sale on light nets, throwing them at him like EVERYTHING MUST GO, and out they went. He moved his hands again, the air seeming to distort in front of his face, and they shredded into splinters of illumination right in front of his face. I got a few steps closer, though, and that was what counted.
Frankie swept his lightsaber blade at me and I was forced to parry sideways. I wished for a weapon—a sword, an axe, an eskrima stick—hell, a teddy bear would be more than I had in hand at this point. I started to sweep low, hoping to take his feet from beneath him, but he leaped over my attempt and came back down with his lightsaber and carved a three-foot swath in the carpet where I’d been standing a second earlier.
WOLFE, I shouted in my mind. Come on, man, a little help here!
Wolfe stirred in the back of my mind. You will find a way, Sienna.
I threw my head back, catching myself on my hands and making myself into a backward arch to avoid Frankie’s horizontal slice with his lightsaber. It was a desperation move, and left me vulnerable for a second as I transferred my balance to my hands and kicked up. He didn’t present me with his chin, dodging neatly out of the way and following up with a laser beam that I was forced to do a freaking gymnastics move to avoid, going airborne for a few seconds, which was a hell of a lot longer than I wanted to commit to being off the ground and hanging in midair.
Frankie spun and came back around, hand already glowing red. He launched off another round of that ripper beam and it came surging across the floor at me. I landed poorly, off-balance, and stuck my right arm out to steady myself—
Just as the ripper beam tore past with a wall of force.
A spray of concrete from the floor pelted my eyes and face, forcing me to turn my head away. Blood started to dribble down my right cheek where the debris had opened up a dozen little wounds. Some more painful ones were now howling at me, lower, in my haunches and flank as I realized that some of the projectiles he’d blasted with that wave of force were now embedded like bullets all through my right thigh and buttock, one even as high as my kidney.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. Not by a long shot.
When the pelting stopped, I looked to my right, to where I’d thrown my arm out to help balance me. It had been there just a second earlier, before the wave of force rolled through…
Now it was gone, ended just above the elbow, bone exposed and blood squirting out, into the newly opened abyss to my right. I felt faint, blood loss coupled with fatigue and a sudden sense of hopelessness that came with being presented with a foe so devastating, so powerful, that I couldn’t see a way to stop him.
I started to tilt, to tumble, my right leg failing from the damage it had taken in the wave of pelting, and without a hand to catch me on that side I started to fall into the crack, slipping toward failure, toward a fall…and eventually, I knew, as I saw Frankie watching me, satisfied…into death.
30.
A tinkle of breaking glass caught my attention, along with the surprise that flashed across Frankie’s face. I landed on my side, about to topple over the edge and into the chasm, but not quite there yet, and my brain sprinted for ideas, for anything—
Flight, you idiot, Gavrikov said, and suddenly we were aloft, floating instead of falling, the abyss hanging there, immobile, instead of yawning closer to me by the millisecond.
Fight, you idiot, Eve said. There are no prizes for not sucker punching him now that he’s distracted. And my stump of a left arm lurched up, light nets spraying from it at the distracted Frankie. They peppered him about the head and neck, and caused him to stumble forward. He was bleeding out of his bare scalp, and shattered glass rested all around his feet, the pieces roughly cylindrical.
My eyes wandered for but a second and found Rose raiding the little kitchenette on the other side of the room, a couple of glasses in hand and one in the air. She’d thrown them at him, and her aim had been true.
Think, Harmon said. And you’re not an idiot. But you are going into shock, which is not really my department…
Wolfe, I moaned in my head.
I am working on it. Succinct, to the point. But also much less than he normally would have chimed in with.
This is a tactical nightmare, Bastian said. We’re against a superior force, and our usual force multipliers are nullified. May I suggest the better part of valor?
It took me a second to get that. Retreat?
Yes, ma’am, Bastian said, buttoned up as ever. Unless you want to keep pressing your luck and see how many limbs he can deprive you of.
This is not a wise battle, Bjorn agreed. Best to seek advantage elsewhere and try again once you have it in your favor.
Yes, let’s get the hell out of here once we’re sure he can’t follow, Eve said. Because if you try and fly off without losing him—
It’s gonna be a short flight with those ripper blasts coming at my back, I reluctantly agreed. What the hell is that power, anyway?
Something you’re wishing you’d had the fortune and dishonor to steal, Harmon said. I couldn’t really argue with that.
I came back to my feet, or at least back to vertical, my right arm still a shredded nub but the bleeding stopped. I took only one breath as I watched Frankie tearing at the light nets wrapped around the back of his head. Rose threw another glass at him, dead on—
But the second before it hit, it went sideways, smashing into the wall. Another followed at him a second later, and it, too, was pulled to shattering against a wall like it was drawn there by—
“Gravity,” I muttered under my breath. Another power this guy had ripped off from others. Damn. How deep was his toybox? Because it was looking endless.
“Rose!” I shouted, and she stopped grabbing glasses to chuck at him so she could look up at me. “We have to kill him!” I was lying through my teeth here, but I needed something that would distract Frankie long enough to enact my true plan, and I hoped this would be it.
That was it.
Frankie ripped the light nets from his head, sheer strength tearing them loose from where they’d attached to his head. Chunks of his scalp came off with them, blood running down the back of his head like a waterfall had been turned loose out of his skull. He was wearing a look of pure fury, and his hands started to glow with the red energy tha
t suggested he was cooking up a bigass bolt of that ripper power, and I had no doubts about where he was going to send it.
I shot into motion with my flight power, aiming for Rose. I didn’t slow down as I collided with her, her eyes wide as coffee mugs as I snugged her around the waist and blew to supersonic speed out the hole in the window I’d made behind Frankie with the couch. As soon as I was out, I zagged hard around the building—
And just in time, too.
Frankie’s blast of power rumbled by, ripping the toe of my right shoe off—and a piece of my actual toe, as well—as it flew past. I looked back, only briefly, as I cut the turn around the apartment building and booked it north, heading the hell out of Edinburgh proper and using the building itself as a shield against Frankie’s attack.
His bolt landed in the middle of another building, falling upon it like an axe and cleaving it a mighty blow up the middle. It continued onward, the blast, for a hundred yards—two hundred—
I lost sight of it as we got farther and farther north, but faintly, in the distance, I knew the glow of red had worked its way farther through the city of Edinburgh, carving a trail of destruction that would kill who knew how many people.
And it was entirely my fault.
31.
“Take us down over there,” Rose said, pointing past a bridge that extended over a wide river. I looked to my right and saw that it headed out to sea, and concluded this must be that Fourth of Fifth of Sixth or whatever the hell they called it. “In Dunfermline.”
I looked left and saw what looked like a naval base of some kind, just past the bridge. “Where are we going?”
She shrugged as best she could with my arm around her waist and hers around my shoulders. “Anywhere we can to catch a breath, I’d guess. I have an apartment in Edinburgh if you’d like—”
“No, let’s get the hell out of town for now,” I said, thinking back to that crackle of energy running through Edinburgh like a damned earthquake fault, splitting buildings and—heaven help me—people, probably. “No need to stick around when I don’t have a strategy to beat this guy—yet.”
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