“What makes you think it won’t work for us?” she asked, and by the sound of her voice, she’d had to repeat the question… maybe more than once.
“Because it’ll only work for the person it rightly belongs to,” I answered.
She folded her arms across her chest, and most likely scowled at me, but her features had begun to melt again, so I wasn’t quite sure where her nose and lips and chin actually were. “Who told you that?”
“Um… the dead god it used to belong to?”
This seemed to take her by surprise, and I wondered if I should’ve kept that a secret. “You’re dreaming about Havard?” she asked cautiously.
“You knew him?” I think I was just as surprised now.
“Of course,” she said, her voice just above a whisper. “I’m the one who gave him that sword.”
When I awoke again, the walls and floor remained stationary and the headache had mostly subsided. I stared at the ceiling for a long time, trying to decide if I should believe Inanna or not, but she had no reason to lie to me. Her announcement that she’d given Havard his sword as a present when he was born had been greeted by my stunned silence—a remarkable feat, even for a goddess. There was something in her brief explanation that seemed to suggest she’d known Havard’s father a little too well for my liking, but I’d just sat there, mute and shocked and wanting to throw up but I wasn’t sure if it was from the drugs or her story.
The one piece of good information I’d gleaned from her account of the Sword of Light ending up in a Norse god’s hands was that she didn’t seem to know Havard beyond his presentation as an infant. On the opposite end of the spectrum, my knowledge of this dead ancestor disturbed her, as if somehow, these memories could be dangerous for her and the Sumerians. I couldn’t imagine how. The only thing I could be fairly certain of was that she seemed even more motivated to end my life early, even if it meant no chance of ever recovering that sword.
I’d just counted the tiles on the ceiling for the thirteenth time when the door opened again, but this time, it wasn’t Inanna. Ninurta had come to see me, and he seemed to carry a storm cloud with him wherever he went. It was probably just my imagination, but the air in the room even seemed to drop twenty degrees, and I shivered and pulled the blanket higher around my throat.
“Can you see?” he asked, his voice silken and smooth, but something slithered beneath it like a current of deadly poison.
I nodded and kept my eyes on the ceiling. “Then get up and follow me,” he ordered.
I obeyed and he led me through a maze of hallways and stairwells until we finally emerged in a large room with table after table of desktop computers. Ninurta gestured toward the closest computer and commanded, “Sit.”
I gritted my teeth but pulled the chair away from the table and sat down. Straight ahead was a row of windows, and I could just make out the trunks of trees in the distance and a wide lawn with a birdbath in the center before Ninurta forced my attention away from the outdoors. He stood over me and nodded toward the monitor. “Which of these names is familiar?” he asked.
I read the list on the screen but didn’t recognize any of them.
“Impossible,” he insisted.
“Dude,” I sighed, “I can’t even pronounce any of these names.”
He slapped his hand against the table, causing me to jump, and leaned in close to my face. I wanted to back away, but he was obviously trying to intimidate me, and I refused to let him know it was working. “Do not,” he said in that icy, silky voice, “waste my time. Your death can be quick or prolonged.”
“You want me to lie then?” I shot back. “Because I really don’t recognize any of these names.”
Ninurta stood up straight, narrowing his eyes at me. “Then look again. Concentrate. When a god has children, it’s not only his physical features that get passed down in his genes but his memories.”
I scanned the list of names again, but I still didn’t recognize any of them. I’d suspected, of course, they had something to do with Havard, but now that Ninurta had confirmed it, I wouldn’t have told him the truth anyway. His threat of torturing me to death still hung in the air, but the only emotion that stirred within me was my own stubborn refusal to allow him to win. These assholes had kidnapped my father. Did they really think I’d help them now?
As if reading my mind, he added, “If you think your father’s life doesn’t depend on your cooperation, you truly are as stupid as you want others to believe.”
“As far as I know, he’s already dead.”
The corners of Ninurta’s lips turned up in the slightest, most sinister of smiles, and he called out, “Bring him in.”
Ninurta’s order was answered with shuffling in the hallway, the sounds of a struggle, and I leapt to my feet but he pushed me back down. My father was dragged into the room, his eyes wild and angry, but as they settled on me, they took on an intense and crazed mania. “Dad,” I croaked.
His face was splattered with dried blood, his shirt torn and stained a deep brownish-red. More blood, I realized.
“Gavyn,” he breathed.
“What did you do to him?” I screamed, rising to my feet again only to be forced back down.
My father strained against the two men, presumably more demigods, each gripping one arm. When they’d first dragged him in, they’d been holding him upright, but now, they were holding him back as he struggled to reach me.
“The names, Gavyn,” Ninurta said, calm and unaffected.
“I’m going to kill you,” I growled. “All of you.”
He only smiled again, his eyes flitting to the computer screen as a final warning. Cooperate or watch my father die. I tried to focus on the screen, the letters, strange accents, but they seemed to twitch and dance and refused to stay in place. At first, I thought it was only the adrenaline, the fear, the rage… I couldn’t focus because I’d never been so angry in my life. But as the letters shifted and jumped, I realized I could read them; they weren’t names at all. Not anymore. The letters spelled out a message, and it was directed to me.
Sharur is with Ninurta at all times. Take him hostage with it. He won’t resist if he thinks he can get it back.
Sharur, I repeated silently. An image formed in my mind. A spear. Ninurta must have it hidden somehow, in a way only gods could manage. I swallowed and took a deep breath, needing to be able to steal glances at him so I could find it without raising suspicions. I looked at his hands first, telling him, “I’m trying. How long do I have?”
Nothing. His hands appeared just as empty as before.
“Until I’m tired of standing here,” he responded as if that answer should satisfy me.
I focused on the screen again, hoping for more insight, or even to see if I’d just lost my grasp of reality, but the letters hadn’t changed and still spelled the same message. Even if I could get my hands on a weapon, taking Ninurta prisoner would be damn near impossible. I mean, he was a god. I’d have to hope this message was right, that his desire to get Sharur back would force his cooperation. And that Inanna wouldn’t burst in with the whole damn Sumerian-hero army. I didn’t think I’d get many chances to glance in his direction again. The next one had to count.
“Maybe it would help,” I suggested while trying to discreetly search the god who held my father’s life in his hands, “if you told me whether these names are people or places.”
Ninurta sighed, exasperated. “People, Gavyn.”
As I lowered my eyes, prepared to accept that either the drugs or my situation, or maybe the combination, were causing me to hallucinate and there wasn’t actually a message on the screen offering me a solution, a chance to escape with my life and my father’s, the overhead light reflected off something, glinted, catching my attention. It had been brief, this glimpse of silver in the incandescent lights, but something was hidden, animated in midair, constantly awaiting Ninurta’s grip.
When we’d first arrived in New Orleans, I’d asked Frey if he always traveled with swor
ds and he’d told me yes. I’d assumed he was just being a smartass—after all, he was learning from the best—but perhaps he was telling me the truth. I sat up straighter, pretending something on the screen had caught my attention and Ninurta leaned in closer, just slightly, just enough that when I shifted my attention from the screen to his vicinity, I could see the spear I needed to stand a shot of getting out of here with my dad.
I pointed to a random spot on the screen, and Ninurta leaned a bit closer and began to say something but I twisted in my seat and grabbed the spear. Part of me had expected my fingers to find nothing but air, so when they closed around the smooth shaft, I was almost as surprised as the god Sharur belonged to. Ninurta gasped, but I wrapped my free arm around him, forcing him in front of me like a shield, and pressed the tip of the spear against the base of his skull. “If you want your magic spear back, don’t move unless I tell you to,” I directed.
Truthfully, I didn’t know how to use a spear, but I figured as long as I had the sharp, pointy end directed toward the guy I wanted to kill, I was on the right track. The two men holding my father had frozen, immobilized by the sudden turn of events. “Let him go!” I shouted. When they still didn’t move, I pressed the tip of the spear into Ninurta’s skull until it drew blood, which caused him to cry out in pain. His chest heaved and he hissed, “Do it. Let him go.”
The captors released my father’s arms, and his knees buckled. He caught himself before his face slammed into the floor, his hands splayed in front of him. But I couldn’t help him up. If I let go of Ninurta, my only leverage to get us out of our prison, we’d both be dead before I could reach him. “Dad, you have to get up. You have to stay with me.”
My fifty-seven-year-old father was still far stronger than all of the gods and demigods combined. His eyes met mine and he slowly, carefully, painfully pulled himself back to his feet. Each stumbling step physically hurt me. None of these gods or heroes would escape my vengeance.
I forced myself to watch the men who’d held my father prisoner instead. If they made one move toward my dad, I’d spear Ninurta’s head. I was certain not even gods could survive a spear through the brain. We couldn’t retreat into the hallway. I had no idea how many gods and demigods waited inside this massive labyrinth of a building. Instead, I dragged Ninurta toward the windows and my father set his jaw and somehow, kept pace with me. Perhaps it was the temporary rush of a possible escape after giving up hope that salvation would ever come.
He fumbled with the latches for only a few seconds then managed to swing the windows open. The drop to the ground was only a few feet, but in my father’s condition, it would be brutal nonetheless. But he didn’t hesitate. He climbed onto the sill and landed with a muffled groan. “Now what?” Ninurta asked me. “Do you really think you can get me outside this way?”
To be honest, I had no idea. We had to get across the lawn, which was a lot of open space to cover without a hostage. I needed to get Ninurta out if we were going to survive. I glanced in the demigods’ direction one last time. “Get over here. You’ll wait by the windows, and if I hear you call for help or see you leave this room, I’ll kill your boss.”
Ninurta grunted in response but nodded, and the two demigods reluctantly made their way toward us. As so often seemed to happen now, my body began acting before my brain had a chance to catch up. I pushed the Sumerian war god toward the window, punched him, and knocked him over the sill. A gunshot, followed quickly by the splintering of wood as a bullet embedded into the wall right next to my ear, warned me I’d have one chance to get out of this building, so I took it. I jumped through the window just as a second gunshot joined the chorus of shouting behind me, and the most difficult part of our escape began.
Chapter Two
An injured middle-aged man. An irate war god. And two hundred yards of open space.
Somehow, I had to get us across the lawn to the trees, and those assholes inside had called my bluff. Ninurta groaned and his eyes rolled around for a few seconds as he squinted and blinked. I was tempted to punch him again, just for the hell of it. He placed a hand on the side of the building and forced himself to his knees, so I did the only thing I could think of: I stabbed the bastard.
He turned his dark eyes on me, so filled with surprise that I’d just injured him with his own spear, and his hands touched his side. He held his fingers up and stared at the blood on them as if completely unable to comprehend he was hurt. But if I killed him now, I’d no longer have any leverage at all. The demigods had moved away from the windows, most likely to get help, so I dragged Ninurta closer to me again and yanked him to his feet.
“Come on, Dad. We’ve got to run.”
My dad was still looking at me like I was some alternate-universe version of myself, and honestly, I couldn’t blame him. But I also couldn’t worry about how I was going to explain what was happening to us, and how Mom had obviously known something was different about me all along. “My supernatural allies need to put a tracking device on me,” I muttered.
Ninurta finally got his eyes to focus long enough to glare at the spear in my hand as if Sharur had betrayed him. But my dad nodded toward the trees, indicating he was ready to run. He’d gotten that determined look on his face, the same expression I’d see when he was trying to hook up a modem, or the Blu-Ray player I got him for his birthday and he refused to read instructions or ask for help.
But another gunshot and the shattering of glass prevented us from running. Inanna still hadn’t come outside, so I clung to the hope she’d left and had no idea my father and I were trying to escape. Instead of running, we began to inch along the wall. The corner of the building was only twenty feet away, and we’d attempt to find cover on the south side. Ninurta stumbled, forcing me to glance at him. His olive skin had paled to a sickly green. He clutched his side, and I noticed the bloodstain had spread. He was bleeding worse than I’d thought, but in my defense, I didn’t exactly have a lot of experience stabbing people so it’s not like I knew I was killing the bastard.
As we reached the corner, my father finally whispered, “Our hostage isn’t going to make it, and he’s just slowing us down.”
Ninurta lifted his head and recognition briefly lit his features as if he understood he wouldn’t survive much longer. I made the terrible mistake of hesitating when I should’ve killed him, because he placed a bloody palm on the yellow stucco to steady himself just as Inanna and a group of demigods turned the corner. There was nothing I could do now: my father and I had to run.
“Shed,” Dad whispered.
The garden shed was close enough for me to reach, but in my dad’s condition, I doubted he could run fast enough. Given at least four demigods and one goddess were outside with us now, I wasn’t even sure he would have been able to reach it if he’d been uninjured. But we had nowhere else to go, and we were out of time.
So we ran.
I heard the gunshot just as I reached the doors and broke open the padlock. I had only a second to think these assholes were extraordinarily bad shots before I realized they hadn’t missed this time… not entirely. Dad had fallen.
I think I screamed as my body acted without my ability to think, and I grabbed his arm and dragged him inside the shed. Bullets pelted the door but didn’t penetrate, and I fell to my knees at Dad’s side. His eyes met mine, and I noticed the sweat on his forehead, the pale, clammy skin. He wasn’t going to make it.
Suddenly, I was twelve years old, sitting by my mother’s hospital bed, watching her body struggle to take those last breaths. She hadn’t been conscious for two days. Dad held one of her hands, and I held the other, and we just watched her in silence until her chest stilled completely. And neither of us moved. I don’t know how long we sat like that.
The bullet had entered and exited his side, almost in the exact same place I’d stabbed Ninurta, and he was in immediate danger of bleeding out. I took off my shirt and held it to the exit wound, but I couldn’t save him even if there weren’t a handful of Sumerian
demigods outside. I knew nothing about first aid.
Dad’s eyebrows pulled together as his gaze shifted away from me to something over my shoulder. Her hand touched my back for a second before she knelt beside me, and I had to blink at her several times before my brain yelled at me, telling us to hurry and get the hell out of here.
“Keira,” I gasped. I hadn’t even noticed anyone entering the shed.
“Sh,” she responded. Outside, I heard the struggle ensuing between our captors and my allies. Finally, the cavalry had arrived. And we had far more gods here than the Sumerians, which meant those guns were useless.
The shed door opened again and Yngvarr hurried inside, nodding to my father. “We called an ambulance. We can’t move him like this.”
“An ambulance?” I repeated. How surreal it sounded to wait on something so ordinary after I’d been kidnapped by gods.
But Yngvarr just shot me a strange look and said, “Yeah, how else are we going to get him to the hospital?”
So I just blinked at him like I hadn’t understood the question.
Fortunately, we must not have been far from a city because I could already hear the sirens wailing as the ambulance approached. My father closed his eyes, so I focused on him again, urging him to stay awake. I wasn’t sure that was really necessary; I just saw them doing it all the time on TV. I talked to him about football, because I honestly didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t bring myself to talking about his condition or even mentioning the possibility that he might die. But he occasionally smiled as I ranted about LSU’s offense and poor clock management, and soon, paramedics were loading him onto a gurney and we were transported to a hospital.
As we entered the ER, a small group of people in blue scrubs bolted around desks and emerged from somewhere, maybe one of the nine realms where healers and wielders of magical potions hid, and they wheeled my father toward the operating room. Keira shook my shoulder and said, “Gavyn, they’re taking him into surgery. He’ll be okay.”
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