Dagr eventually allowed the sun to set and our revelry came to an end. The sun returned far too quickly though, and as its earliest rays peeked into our bedroom, I groaned and rolled over before remembering I needed to leave. I hadn’t even told Arnbjorg yet that I was going to Midgard. I kissed her forehead and she opened one sleepy eye at me. “I have to help Yngvarr with something important in Midgard. I’ll return as soon as I can.”
Arnbjorg sat up, gaping at me. “Now? What could possibly be so important, Havard? We’ve only been married a day!”
“I know, but we think a friend may be in trouble.” I didn’t think that should count as lying to my wife since Finn was certainly in trouble and needed our help.
Arnbjorg reluctantly allowed me to leave without too much argument, and I found Yngvarr in the stables, waiting for me with a surprise. Gunnr stood next to him, stroking her beloved winged horse. “Are you anticipating fallen heroes, Gunnr?” I asked.
“I’m anticipating you and Yngvarr needing my assistance,” she answered.
As a Valkyrie, Gunnr couldn’t travel to Midgard unless she had a purpose there, so her belief that Yngvarr and I may need her help was probably rooted in her desire to travel rather than any anticipation of trouble two war gods couldn’t handle. But knowing her boredom and resentment over her entrapment here, I pretended to agree with her and we set out to Midgard.
It was winter here, and snow blanketed the barren fields. With work there suspended for the season, Finn and the other male slaves were most likely herding sheep, and as we stopped to give our horses a break, we discussed taking a number of the herd back to Asgard with us as tribute. We had our own livestock, of course, but we all agreed men should never think they could challenge us gods by breaking our laws.
By the time we reached the land where Finn now lived, the sun had almost set. Gunnr pointed to the west and said, “There. You see the smoke rising from the lord’s chimney? That’s where you’ll find the mortal who bought freemen who’d committed no crimes, which we should never abide.”
I nodded in agreement. Men so often fashioned their behavior and laws to avoid incurring our wrath, but perhaps we’d neglected Midgard too much lately. They’d forgotten the kind of vengeance we could unleash. “We’ll remind them what happens when they ignore our rules.”
“By the time the sun rises again, this land will lie in ruins,” Yngvarr added. “And men will think twice before making enemies of us.”
“My wedding present to my bride,” I said, “is the vindication of her family’s fate. This lord will not survive.”
Yngvarr nudged his horse’s flanks, and we rode up to the lord’s home, his oil lamps illuminating the windows with a soft, flickering light. A wolf howled in the distance, and sheep bleated in response, which gave me an idea as to where I might find Finn. I dismounted and pulled my sword, and it immediately glowed in response to my touch. All around me, the air filled with the charge of an impending battle. It was wildly intoxicating in a way no ale could ever match.
Scuffling inside the home made us each pause in our approach, and Yngvarr waved Gunnr to the rear so no one could escape. We waited until she had reached her position then knocked the door from its hinges and entered the warm home that smelled of lamb stew and spiced apples. The lord of the house and his grown sons attacked, but Yngvarr and I easily repelled them, sending them retreating into the kitchen where they’d have no escape.
From the back, Gunnr emerged, pushing a woman and a child in front of her. “What do you want me to do with them, my lord?” she asked me.
I had no use for survivors. “Kill them.”
“Even the child?”
“What will become of him if we allow him to live? There will be no one left to care for him.”
“Please,” the man begged, “don’t hurt my children.”
“You,” I hissed, “had no qualms about hurting the children you purchased, including a fifteen-year-old boy. He was a freeman’s son. You violated our laws.”
“We were desperate for labor,” the man stuttered.
But Yngvarr grew impatient with the man’s excuses and beheaded one of the men we’d forced to retreat. The boy screamed and Gunnr grabbed his arm, dragging him from the house along with his mother. The blade of my sword was alight with the ferocity of the sun now, its power merging with my own so that I could no longer tell where the power originated. “You will watch,” I ordered the man, “as each of your sons fall. And when you die, you’ll leave Midgard in disgrace and everyone in Niflheim will know your shame.”
Yngvarr beheaded another young man and I a third before turning to the lord of the house and running my sword through his heart. Outside, screams joined the panicked bleating of the sheep as the herd became disrupted. “Help Gunnr find Finn,” I said to Yngvarr. “I’ll bring down the house.”
He urged me to hurry and slipped out, and I held my sword in both hands, willing its power into the most destructive force in any of the nine realms, which exploded from the sword and my body, leveling the walls and sending rubble and fire into the night sky. As the air cleared, I stepped over the rubble and used the tip of my sword to etch a warning to others in the charred remains of a table: This is the consequence of men believing themselves as the equals of gods.
Chapter Fourteen
Keira sat across from me and gently removed the bandage on my shoulder so she could put a clean one over my new stitches. I kept shooting her disturbed glances, and she kept returning them like I was the one who’d participated in the slaughter of an entire family. Of course, I hadn’t told her about my dream yet, so she had no idea why I was looking at her so funny, but details like that seemed totally unimportant.
She taped the new bandage down and gave up. “You’ve been looking at me like I’m the anti-Christ all morning.”
“I think maybe you are,” I shot back.
She blinked at me and asked, “You think I’m the anti-Christ now?”
I shrugged then yelped because, like the dumbass I was, I’d already forgotten I’d had my shoulder stitched up twice now and shrugging hurt like hell. “I think I’d completely misjudged you, because anyone who can murder a child has to be evil.”
Keira narrowed her eyes and threw the medical tape into the first aid kit. “I’ve never hurt a child, and I never would. How can you say that?”
“You did!” I argued. “You want me to believe every one of these dreams is a memory of Havard’s, right? So you don’t get to claim only some of them are accurate just because you don’t like what I’m dreaming about now.”
Keira gasped and stood up, backing away from me. “But I would never do something like that…” she whispered.
“And yet, you did,” I snapped. I recounted the entire dream for her, and as she listened, the color drained from her face. “And Havard’s message. That’s the way gods think, isn’t it? We’re gods and we’re more powerful than you humans so we can do whatever we want?”
She shook her head but her mind seemed trapped in a past she clearly couldn’t remember. “I’ve never been so cruel, Gavyn. I don’t understand why I’d do something like that.”
And she sounded so sincere, so sick over this forgotten memory that I actually felt sorry for her. “Maybe because Havard ordered you to. But at least you still have a mind of your own. Imagine having this asshole’s DNA in you and having to worry about it taking over.”
“It won’t,” she promised, but she no longer sounded so sure.
“And Yngvarr was so casual about the whole thing. I think that bothers me the most,” I admitted. I mean, this guy was my friend. And thanks to Havard constantly butting in with his feelings, I loved him like my own brother. How the hell was I supposed to reconcile his past actions with the man I knew?
“It won’t do any good to talk to him about it,” Keira said. “He won’t remember this either. But we know now what the Sword of Light can do, and we have to keep it out of the Sumerians’ hands, just in case they can figure out h
ow to make it work.”
“About that…” I took a deep breath. “I could see the sword Havard gave Arnbjorg so clearly. And it’s the same one that’s in your father’s sword room.”
“I’m not surprised,” she sighed, and while that may have been true, she did look sad and disappointed. I mean, the guy was a total asshole, but he was still her father.
Agnes, disguised again as an old witch, entered the room and waved a wrinkled, spotted hand at us. “Come. We have visitors.”
“Stay. I don’t care,” I retorted.
She put her hands on her hips, which made her robe billow around her like bat wings, and I nodded to myself in complete agreement that she would make a terrifying vampire. But then I wondered if there were a vampire dentist somewhere who’d make fang-dentures for the ancient bloodsuckers among them, or if vampires were like sharks and constantly regrew fangs.
Agnes squinted at me and snapped, “You’d better not be undressing me with your eyes.”
“Oh, my God,” I groaned. “Keira, kill me now. Here, you can use my sword.” I handed her the sword leaning against the wall, and she turned around and handed it to Agnes. “Traitor,” I muttered.
“Up,” she ordered. “This might actually be important.”
“Probably,” I agreed. “Which is exactly why I want to stay in here.”
I followed them back to Agnes’s room anyway where Tyr sat at the table with an unfamiliar man and woman. They each wore grave expressions, which I didn’t think boded well for my secret hope that our mysterious visitors had come to whisk me off to Vegas for an extended weekend as thanks for killing Willy. And then I snorted because “killing Willy” sounded like something I should snort at, and Keira just sighed and moved away from me, but really, it was too late to pretend like she didn’t know me.
“Gavyn,” Tyr said, “this is Mama Pacha, and—”
“Mama… Pacha…” I repeated slowly. She lifted an eyebrow at me, and the corners of her lips turned into the slightest of smiles. “Do I have to call you Mama or will you answer to Pacha? Never mind. Everyone else ignores me, you may as well, too.”
“I can’t imagine why,” she said.
“You finished?” Tyr asked me.
I gestured for him to continue, but he really should’ve known by now I was never finished.
“And this is Inti.” Tyr held up his hand before I could say anything. “They’re Incan, and no, you can’t give them nicknames.”
What happened next must have been preplanned and rehearsed, because Keira and Agnes took turns welcoming the Incan gods and asking them questions about their flight, and Agnes even seemed ready to break into song if that didn’t keep me quiet. I crossed my arms and pouted, deciding to make up for lost time at the earliest opportunity by breaking into my own rendition of “Sweet Child of Mine.” But when Agnes said, “There’s been an uprising among the Incans,” I lost interest in singing.
“An uprising? What exactly does that mean?” I asked.
“It means,” Pacha explained, “that some of the gods from our pantheon are following the example created by the Sumerians. They want to be worshipped again, and would rather rule through fear than not rule at all.”
“Supay and Paricia have already begun terrorizing the western coast of South America,” Inti added. “There was an earthquake off the coast of Chile yesterday, and today, a tidal wave slammed ashore. Almost a hundred people were killed.”
“But how do you know that’s your rogue gods? Earthquakes can cause tidal waves,” I argued.
“Because they’ve taken responsibility for it,” he replied. “And the Peruvian military has engaged with them as well, but modern militaries can’t fight gods, especially when one of them commands a legion of demons.”
“Whoa,” I interjected. “A legion of what?”
“Demons,” Keira supplied helpfully.
“And Paricia is the god of floods,” Agnes added.
“Why do you know that?” I demanded.
Agnes shrugged. “I know things.”
“So is South America just filled with demons now?” I asked. Did they really think I was going anywhere near that continent after telling me something like that?
“There might be a few,” Inti said carefully, but what I heard was, “The gates of Hell have been opened, and now is a good time to take up residence in Asgard.”
So I grabbed Keira’s hand and begged, “Take me to Valhalla now. You can even kill me first if you want.”
“We’re not actually going to South America to fight demons,” Keira said then she looked at Tyr hopefully and added, “Are we?”
“I don’t really know how to fight demons,” Tyr answered.
“What exactly are demons?” I asked. “And will guns work on them? Because I’m getting really tired of carrying around a weapon that doesn’t even work on anything.”
“It works on demigods,” Keira reminded me.
“Yeah, but the gods’ archaic rules of warfare prohibit us from using them,” I said smartly. Keira even arched an eyebrow at me as if waiting to see if I could define the fancy words I’d just used.
“I don’t think we can shoot demons,” Yngvarr announced from behind me, which startled me because he hadn’t been in the room with us before now.
I dropped Keira’s hand so I could spin around and point accusingly at him. “How many times do I have to tell you not to sneak up on people?”
“Technically,” he corrected, “you’ve warned me not to sneak up on you when you’re armed. You’re not armed.”
“I could be,” I argued, even though everyone could plainly see my hands were empty, and it’s not like I could hide a sword in my pocket. I did, however, think that sounded kinda dirty, so I leaned toward Keira and whispered, “Want to see if that’s really a sword in my pocket?”
Not surprisingly, she pushed me away from her and mumbled something about reconsidering taking me to Valhalla now.
“And,” Yngvarr said, “I think we have to go to South America. I mean, demons running around the streets of Lima? If we don’t go, it’ll set a bad precedent.”
“Dying will set a bad precedent,” I retorted.
“We’re not the Winchesters,” Keira added. “We don’t know how to fight demons.”
“We can’t really fight them,” Pacha said. “They’re malevolent spirits, so they’re not alive. We can only send them back to Supay’s realm.”
“Again,” I reiterated, “we’re not the Winchesters. I don’t do exorcisms.”
“That’s only if someone is possessed,” Yngvarr corrected.
I blinked at him then snapped, “I definitely didn’t sign up for possession. I’m out.”
“Actually,” Inti said, “exorcisms are performed if a demon is haunting a house or something, too. And Mama Pacha and I can cast them back to Ukhu Pacha—”
“Is that like Mama Pacha’s asshole ex-husband?” I interrupted.
“Can I bribe you not to speak again?” he asked.
Tyr laughed so I flipped him off before telling Inti I could totally be bribed, but I hoped he wasn’t a cheapskate like Frey.
“Ukhu Pacha is Supay’s realm,” Inti explained. “Mama Pacha and I can send the demons back if we have a bit of help in warding off attacks by their own demigod armies.”
“Please don’t make me go demon hunting,” I groaned.
I suddenly found myself missing Hunter, maybe because he’d made me sit through The Exorcist when we were in high school, and I’d never really recovered. To pay him back, I’d sometimes call him in the middle of the night, yell, “The power of Christ compels you!” and hang up. Remembering Keira had been able to receive phone calls in Asgard, I pulled my cellphone from my pocket, dialed Hunter’s number, yelled, “The power of Christ compels you!” as soon as he answered then hung up.
Everyone in the room stared at me for a few seconds before resuming their conversation as if I weren’t even there.
My phone chimed with the notificat
ion I had a new text message, and I smiled as I glanced at the screen. Hunter had texted, “What an excellent day for an exorcism.”
And suddenly, going to Peru to fight demons didn’t seem like such a terrible idea. Yeah, my dad and best friend were in some parallel universe where they’d be safe from whatever hell was unleashed on Earth, but billions of dads and best friends and moms and siblings and lovers weren’t, and maybe I could actually do something to change that. “Okay,” I said. “I’d like Joachim to come with me. He’s a total badass with that bow. Maybe if we dip the arrows in holy water, it’ll slow those demons down.”
“Doubt it,” Inti said. “These aren’t Catholic demons.”
“Are any demons Catholic?” I asked.
“We’ll send Joachim with your team,” Tyr hurriedly interjected before I could derail us on a ridiculous argument about the religion of demons.
Yngvarr and Keira also volunteered to stay with me, and to my surprise, Inti offered to go with us through the streets of Lima and cast Supay’s demons back to their underworld. I thought there was an exceptionally good chance he’d regret his offer before we even landed, but Tyr and Keira smartly kept me away from him on the plane. Instead, I once again sat sandwiched between them and Keira even tried to convince me to read some Incan mythology on her iPad. I thought it was kinda strange they had all these mythology books on their tablets, but Keira just said some people didn’t like everyone else thinking they were the village idiot, which honestly, I found hard to believe.
After landing in Lima and renting several cars for our demon-hunting party, we were greeted by tanks and armored vehicles rolling down the streets, so we figured they probably knew how to find Supay and Paricia and followed them. Loudspeakers blasted warnings to the civilians, but since they were in Spanish, I had no idea what they were saying. Probably something about not picking up demon hitchhikers and avoiding any gods that looked like the Devil.
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