Odin tapped the shield, painted a dull blue with yellow runes around the edge, and hurriedly explained its enchantment before I could continue my ridiculous speech about emasculation and how difficult it was to achieve re-masculation. “The enchantment makes this shield far stronger than it appears. It looks like wood but is stronger than steel. No weapon will be able to penetrate it.”
“What about a bullet?” I asked.
“No, that’s a weapon,” he answered.
So just to be a smartass, I decided to test him. “Okay, but what about a grenade launcher?”
Odin sighed and said, “Still a weapon, Gavyn.”
“A missile?”
“Gavyn—” he started, but I was on a roll now.
“A nuclear missile. Surely, it can’t withstand a nuclear bomb. Or would the bomb just obliterate me and everything around me but the shield would just fall to the ground, completely unharmed? And what’s the point of having a shield that can’t be scratched or broken if I still get blown off the face of the planet?”
Odin glanced at Agnes and asked, “Has no one really figured out a spell to keep him quiet yet?”
“I tried. Apparently, his tongue is more powerful than our magic.”
“Hey,” I protested. “You tried to put a spell on me?” But I replayed her words then smiled slyly at Keira. “Did you hear that? My tongue is more powerful than your magic.”
Not surprisingly, she rolled her eyes at me and crossed the room to sit by her father. I would’ve been a little offended if I weren’t totally aware I’d deserved that.
“Just keep the shield with you when you engage in any battle from now on,” Odin instructed. “It could save your life.”
“Okay, two questions,” I said, and everyone in the room sighed loudly. I ignored them and asked anyway. “Why didn’t anyone give me a shield before now considering I’ve been out there fighting gods and giant wolves and flaming zombie monkeys?”
“Flaming… what?” Odin asked.
“And secondly,” I said, still ignoring him and everyone else. “No one ever trained me to fight with a shield. It seems like it’ll just get in my way. And I haven’t yet had a dream in which Havard had a shield.”
“Havard had an enchanted sword,” Yngvarr pointed out. “He didn’t need a shield.”
“And you?” I asked. “Where’s yours?”
Yngvarr smiled and said, “I’m a war god. I don’t need one.”
“Men,” Keira mumbled. “Your egos will get you all killed.”
I nodded in complete agreement.
“So…” John said. “Can I remind you all now that I’m still here and we’d kind of like to find your missing god and our missing agent?”
“Depends,” I replied. “Do you have a better solution then sending us to Chicago?”
“No. You’re going to Chicago.”
“You’re going to Chicago,” I muttered.
He blinked at me again then turned to Tyr. “How do you put up with him?”
“He’s an acquired taste,” Tyr joked, but I couldn’t not say something about that.
“Dude! You are not allowed to taste me. Ever.”
So Tyr blinked at me then turned to John. “Never mind. Let’s leave him here, and the rest of us will go to Chicago to find Frey.”
“All of you shut up!” Freyja cried. “Do I really need to remind you that my brother is in Ninurta’s hands, and he will die if we don’t rescue him soon?”
“We know,” I assured her. “And I’m sorry.”
John’s cellphone rang so he excused himself from the room to answer it. The rest of us waited quietly, staring at our shoes or the floor or anything that would allow us to avoid Freyja’s accusatory glare, which we obviously deserved. Or mostly me. After a few minutes, John stormed back into the room, cursing and looking very much like he wanted to either throw something or punch someone or maybe both.
“Chicago will have to wait,” he said.
“Great,” I sighed. “What now?”
“We’ve got company,” he explained. “And this lion goddess wants revenge.”
We’d entered a vicious cycle of battles, deaths, and a desire for vengeance, and the only way out seemed to be the complete annihilation of one side. Sure, the Sumerians had started it—and now, the Egyptians, Incans, and Russians had joined in—but that hardly seemed to matter to any of them. All they could apparently understand was that one of their own had been killed and they needed to avenge that death.
And Menhit had tracked me down to avenge Willy’s death.
“Some of you should still go to Chicago, try to narrow down where Ninurta is keeping Frey,” I suggested. “I’ll stay behind to deal with Menhit.”
“As will I,” Keira immediately said.
Yngvarr wasn’t far behind her. “And me.”
“A demigod, a Valkyrie, and one war god,” Odin muttered, and he made it sound like our particular grouping was a bad thing. “Ull should stay with you as well.”
But now, I felt like I just needed to prove something, so I shook my head and pretended to be polite about the whole thing. “Frey should remain our top priority. Send everyone else after him, and we’ll join you as soon as we’ve taken care of Menhit.”
“She won’t be alone,” Odin argued, but I had no intention of allowing him to insult us further.
“Considering we’ve been here dealing with these assholes the whole time while you’ve been safely tucked away in Asgard, I think we’re well aware of how they operate,” I snapped. “And we can handle it. Go to Chicago. We’ll see you in a few days.”
I marched past him, wanting to slam the door on my way out, but it had one of those hydraulic hinges on it and I only managed to tweak my elbow in my effort to storm out properly. Keira and Yngvarr were close behind me though and by Yngvarr’s expression, I could tell he was quite pleased with my overly dramatic outburst and exit.
Keira, though, was still the pragmatist, always carefully calculating our odds and strategies. “Maybe we should’ve taken him up on keeping Ull here. It couldn’t hurt, and he’s an expert archer.”
Damn it. I’d forgotten Menhit wasn’t only a lion goddess but shot flaming arrows at her enemies. Presumably not as a lion though. But at this point, accepting Ull’s help was just a matter of pride, so I offered a compromise. “Let’s get Joachim to stay. He’s almost as good as Ull.”
“Works for me,” Yngvarr agreed. “He’s certainly got talent.”
Joachim wasn’t even put off that we’d made this decision for him rather than letting him decide if he should go to Chicago or face Menhit’s wrath. He just grabbed his bow and quiver and nodded toward my shield. “That’ll come in handy.”
“I’m assuming it’ll repel flaming arrows, but I didn’t ask,” I said smartly. “Pretty sure it repels the regular kind though.”
Joachim grinned and lifted his bow. “Want to test it out?”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “Of course I want to test it out.”
I jogged to the end of the hall and spun around, holding the shield in front of me while Keira and Yngvarr grunted impatiently at the two demigods who thought playing with a new toy was far more important than hunting down a lion goddess who would probably start prowling the streets of Baton Rouge soon. But really, what was the point in having new toys if we couldn’t play with them?
Joachim unleashed a volley of arrows in my direction with that lightning speed of his, and the shield deflected each one. They didn’t embed in the wood like I’d expected, but bounced off its surface as if there were a force field around the wooden planks that had been fitted tightly together to form a solid barrier. When he’d emptied his quiver, we both stared at the arrows that had piled around my feet and mumbled, “Holy shit.”
“I want one of those,” Joachim decided.
“There’s only one,” Keira said. “And it belongs to Odin. He’s loaned it to Gavyn.”
Joachim pouted for a few moments then shrugged. “Okay, then G
avyn, you have to fight beside me from now on.”
“Deal,” I said. “Although I’m not gonna lie. If we get attacked by a flaming zombie monkey again, I’m not above ditching you and running.”
“Can you at least leave the shield before running?”
“That’ll just unnecessarily slow me down,” I pretended to argue.
“This conversation is unnecessarily slowing us down,” Yngvarr pointed out.
“Probably,” I agreed, but I didn’t bother elaborating or even moving from behind the wall of arrows that had amassed by my feet.
Joachim finally joined me at the end of the hall so he could refill his quiver but he kept eyeing my shield. “Want to hold it, don’t you?” I asked.
“So much,” he admitted.
I handed it to him and he admired it for a few moments then shot me a sly grin. “Want to see if it deflects swords, too?”
“Oh, hell yeah!” I exclaimed, motioning toward Yngvarr so he’d give me my sword. But the bastard shook his head and reminded us again it was time to act like the grown men we were supposed to be and find the pissed off lion goddess whose flaming arrows would give us plenty of opportunities to test out the new shield.
“Damn,” Joachim and I sighed in unison.
But we followed Keira and Yngvarr out of the hotel, and headed toward the Garden District where John had told us Menhit had been spotted. I’d never even thought to ask if she’d been spotted as a lion or goddess shooting arrows at random houses and people, but it probably didn’t matter. She was obviously luring us into a trap, and we had no choice but to walk into it.
We parked at a tennis court near the entrance to the Garden District and decided to venture into the old neighborhood on foot, assuming she’d soon learn of our arrival and try to ambush us.
And we’d been right. We’d only made it a block when a hail of flaming arrows rained down upon us, and the roars of what sounded like an entire pride of lions echoed through the streets. As we hid beneath the enchanted shield, waiting for the arrows to finish falling from the sky like a meteor shower, the lions leapt from the shadows of a nearby building, and we discovered Menhit hadn’t recruited an army of demigods to exact her revenge.
We’d walked right into a battle with an army of full-fledged gods.
Chapter Twenty-One
That’s a lot of lions,” I said smartly.
Joachim nodded and began counting in German. “Eins, zwei, drei…” but apparently, Egyptian lion gods didn’t like German because they roared and stalked toward us, the muscles in their flanks rippling beneath their golden fur.
“Try another language,” I suggested.
“Okay,” Joachim agreed. “Un, deux, trois…”
But they seemed to like French even less, because that only made them stalk faster. Joachim nocked an arrow and Keira held a knife in each hand, ready to throw them at whichever lion god provoked us first. Even Yngvarr held his sword ready to attack while I stood there silently deliberating what a bunch of Egyptian gods had against the French and if it was only their language or all things French. And if it was all things French, it was probably because they’d tried to convince us eating snails was a good idea.
For the record, it’s not.
“Gavyn,” Keira hissed. “Snap out of it!”
“You have to tell me that an awful lot,” I whispered back.
“I can’t imagine why,” Yngvarr also whispered.
“So we’re doing this whispering thing again?” I whisper-asked.
“Apparently,” he whisper-answered.
But lions must’ve hated whispering more than German and French combined. Several of them lunged toward us, and Joachim’s arrow and Keira’s knives flew toward them. The other lions that had surrounded us took that as their cue to attack, so Yngvarr and I spun around to protect our small group from all sides. I briefly wondered how this damn shield would deflect lions, and I had a terrible suspicion I’d soon find out.
One lion in particular had me in its crosshairs, and I assumed it was Menhit. And honestly, I felt kinda weird about fighting a female lion and wished I could trade places with Keira, whose lion had a mane so was presumably male. I mean, I’d spent my whole life being taught not to fight girls, but maybe the rules were different when she was a goddess and a lion and was trying to kill me.
Menhit leapt at me, long claws spread wide as if warning me she wouldn’t leave limbs still attached. My shoulder had just begun to heal, and I was going to be incredibly pissed if she ripped it off now. I held the shield in front of my face, and the impact of a four-hundred-pound lion, which I later learned was huge for a female, knocked me on my ass. Fortunately, I didn’t have the pistol tucked into my waistband this time. Landing on a handgun probably hurt like hell… especially if it discharged and shot the person in the ass, which I was actually still waiting to happen to me.
But the impact also knocked Menhit on her ass, and as I lowered the shield to get back on my feet, I saw a woman instead of a lion rising to hers. And this woman held a bow with arrows that flickered like white-hot stars. “Um…” I stammered. “Joachim, is there any way you can light your arrows on fire?”
“Even if I could, it’s not going to stop her from shooting us with—”
Menhit didn’t bother waiting for him to finish his sentence. She released the flaming arrow at us, and I raised my shield. But instead of falling to the ground like Joachim’s arrows had in the hotel, a wall of fire erupted as it hit the invisible barrier this shield created. We stared at the flames for a few moments before I yelled, “That’s cheating, asshole!”
Menhit didn’t seem to care. She unleashed another arrow, and a second wave of fire ignited on our left. Keira gasped and cried, “She’s going to surround us!”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “but what the hell are we supposed to do about it?”
None of us were weather gods that could control the rain, and I doubted this shield would miraculously protect us all from a fire collapsing in on us. But if we knew a weather god…
“Keira, please tell me there’s a Norse god in town who can make it rain,” I said.
“Thor,” she and Yngvarr answered at the same time.
As far as I knew, though, the famous god of thunder wasn’t in Baton Rouge. I’d last seen him in New Orleans, and even if he’d decided to hang out in the Big Easy for a while, we wouldn’t survive long enough for him to get here. But Keira had already pulled out her phone as Joachim kept the lions at bay since she was momentarily defenseless. She began typing a text, and I wanted to just stand there staring at her like this was literally the most insane battle in supernatural history—and really, it had to have been, considering we were being attacked by a pride of lions and surrounded by magical fire, yet she was taking a break to send a text—but Menhit launched another arrow at us, and I had to deflect it as well. The only good thing about having an angry Egyptian goddess shoot flaming arrows at us was that Egyptian lion gods apparently weren’t immune to fire. The more flames encircled us, the more they had to keep their distance. Of course, burning to a crisp was definitely not an epic way to die, and I didn’t want to be the loser asshole in Valhalla having to admit I was brought down by a burning arrow.
I was just about to tell Joachim that, too, when the sky opened up above us with a sharp crack. Seconds later, rain fell in heavy sheets, immediately dousing the flames that had spread uncomfortably close. But with the fire extinguished, the lions could pounce.
I’d be willing to bet most people have never battled a lion, whether it’s a regular lion or a god pretending to be a lion. I’d already decided I hated it. And Menhit must’ve decided her arrows would be useless against my shield, because she transformed once again, which would have been pretty cool to watch if she weren’t trying to kill me. But as soon as her paws touched the wet pavement, she sprang at me, even though the last time she tried that, we’d both ended up on the ground. And go figure: this time, it didn’t work out any differently.
But Yngvarr cried out in pain, and I quickly rose to my feet. Something inside me, that same force that sometimes took over my body and often confused me with its emotions, cried out for him. One of the largest lions had managed to get close enough to swipe his leg, and his shredded jeans were covered in blood. Even the puddle at his feet was turning crimson. My stomach turned and my head pounded as I ran toward the lion, dropping the shield in the process so I could hold the hilt in both hands. He roared at me, exposing unnaturally long fangs, and I held my sword above my head and jumped, driving the blade into the lion’s throat as he leapt at me, too.
Searing pain ripped through my chest as we collided, and Keira screamed my name. I was vaguely aware that I was falling then the impact of my back hitting the hard ground took my breath away. I pushed the beast of a lion off me, not even realizing it must have weighed half a ton and it shouldn’t have been possible, and tried to get to my feet again. Keira was beside me, hooking her hands beneath my arms to steady me, and I gently touched my chest then stared at my fingers, wondering if I were already dead, and if I were, why the hell did Asgard have to look like Baton Rouge now? And why was it still raining?
But there was no blood where I knew blood should be. I’d felt the lion’s claws sink into my body and rip it apart. The long gashes in my shirt were still there, the pain was still there, but I wasn’t bleeding. And I obviously wasn’t the only one who found that incredibly strange.
The remaining lions morphed into their human forms and backed away except for Menhit who narrowed her eyes at me and hissed, “What sorcery are you bringing into battle? And you dare call me a cheater?”
Now, granted, I hadn’t been in a lot of fights with either mortals or gods, but I was pretty sure taking a break to talk to the person you were just trying to kill wasn’t normal, so I decided to ignore her. It’s not like I had an answer for her, anyway. I grimaced from the pain as I leaned over to whisper in Keira’s ear. “Is this like a truce? Can I not kill her now?”
“You can still kill her,” she told me.
“Oh,” I said. “In that case…” I scooped my shield from the ground and swung the blade of my sword at the goddess’s head, separating it permanently from its body, but before I could turn on the next god, they retreated, backing into the obscurity of the heavy rain.
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