Grimm—also entirely covered with gore from every color of the rainbow—abruptly tagged himself into the wrestling ring, turning the fight into the Tag Team to end all Tag Teams.
Alex’s Knight-Breaker Suplex became a Unicorn Pinwheel as Alex adjusted course, as if he had intended it all along, and slammed the Black Knight onto Grimm’s impaler-bone, hanging him out to cry—which the Knight definitely did. The barbed horn ripped straight through the knight’s armor like a knife through butter, unlike how Gunnar’s claws and Talon’s spear had failed to leave a mark.
Grimm snarled at the Knight dangling from his forehead. “Feel the colors of pain, meatsack!”
Alex released him, and then glanced back at me to make sure I was alright. I gave him a weak thumbs up. Then his eyes settled on Talon and he gasped. Then upon Gunnar and he froze.
His hands fell loosely to his sides as he jerkily shook his head back and forth in denial.
Despite the glistening tears in his eyes, I watched as a deep, inner fury was born, and a flicker of fear rushed over me at the potential ramifications…
“No, no, NO!” Alex abruptly roared, his knuckles cracking as he clenched his fists. “He was going to be a father! A boy needs his father!”
My ears actually popped at the volume of his sudden shout. He rounded on the Knight—who was still struggling upside down on Grimm’s horn, somehow not yet dead. Mordred had warned me about the Knights, and I had known they were deadly, but everyone had undersold these tin cans. This was just ridiculous. How was he still alive?
Alex apparently wanted to develop a hypothesis to answer that question.
He walked up and kicked the Knight’s helmet off his head, but since he was still facing the wrong way, I couldn’t see his face. Alex then began pummeling the upside-down Knight’s back with the meat of his fists, hammering him further and further down Grimm’s barbed horn. The Knight gasped and wheezed and cried out for every inch Alex gave him.
Heh.
But Grimm didn’t let Alex have all the fun. Every time Alex slammed his fists down, the Knight slid a little bit closer to Grimm’s snapping teeth. Alex then began kicking the Knight in the back of the head again and again, as if to help Grimm get that bite he was craving. Alex was screaming and panting incoherently—a mindless blood rage—the entire time.
I couldn’t yet stand, but I don’t think I would have even if I could. This prick had killed Talon and Gunnar for no other reason than that they were in the way.
Grimm finally flung his head and sent the Knight flying into a tree trunk and that stopped him cold. You know, since he hit the tree teeth-first.
“It’s not working,” Grimm snarled to Alex. “Let me have a go at him.” And he pawed at the ground with a hoof, emitting embers and sparks, even though we were on dirt and dead grass.
Indeed, the Knight was sitting back up, spitting out a bloody tooth. What the fuck? He had close-cropped, iron-gray hair to match his eyes, and a hard, cinder-block face. And he didn’t even seem to have a headache. But he didn’t immediately get up, either.
“I will kill him,” Alex swore in a low tone. “I will destroy him,” he added, his shoulders rising and falling rapidly as he clenched his knuckles at his sides.
I briefly wondered why Alex hadn’t already experienced a change—the Land of the Fae bringing out his Wild Side like it did for everyone else who came here. Because with his current storm of rage, it was going to happen any second. And he was already scary as hell. What would his Wild Side be like? And I was in no position to contain him. We needed to get out of here. As far away from this Knight as possible.
“You don’t have the power, Alex,” I whispered, tears spilling down my cheeks. “You’re not really even hurting him.”
Alex had turned to stare at me, a helpless look on his face, when something beside Grimm caught his eye. He stiffened, staring down at my Darling and Dear satchel that had fallen to the ground at some point in their fight with the Knight. I almost let out a sob of relief to see they hadn’t lost it, but that sob died away when I saw that something had fallen out of my bag.
Which…was impossible. Things literally couldn’t fall out of my bag. At least no important things. Random mundane things, sure, but never anything that I wanted to be kept safe.
Like…the Hand of God, for example.
Yet there it was.
The glass pyramid sat atop a few blue leaves, looking like an unwrapped Yulemas present. And Alex claimed the present for himself before I could do anything to stop him.
He flicked the tip of the pyramid up, revealing a cap that I hadn’t known could be flipped up like that anymore, and promptly dumped the contents—powdered stone of great significance—over his head. The dust swirled around him, clinging to every square inch of his body in a very unnatural way. Then I watched it slowly sink into his skin, and my heart rate spiked in alarm.
I lost my ever-loving shit. “What that hell are you doing?!” I shouted at him, both furious and terrified of the repercussions.
He gently set down the now-empty glass pyramid and met my eyes. “I will not let this go unavenged, no matter what it costs me. Gunnar’s children need to know their father’s murderer paid for his crimes. I will pay this price. Calvin and Makayla Randulf will have their justice.”
Those words stopped me cold. And I felt another clicking sensation in my mind, this one significantly louder. But it wasn’t as important as what Alex had just said. Nothing was as important as what Alex had just said.
“Calvin and Makayla…” I whispered, spotting a golden ribbon that had fallen loose and was now sitting at my side.
Alex glanced at me, frowning. “Gunnar didn’t tell you?” he asked. “They want to name the twins after your parents.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. I picked up the ribbon, wrapping it around my finger absently. Something to distract my thoughts. “Oh…” I finally said. I turned to stare at Gunnar, sniffling. “I am godfather to…Calvin and Makayla,” I said woodenly, testing it out on my tongue. “Gunnar…didn’t have time to tell me that.” I said, thinking back on his last words. The sentence he never completed. Name the pups…Calvin and Makayla.
“I thought you knew,” Alex murmured, sounding embarrassed.
I shook my head numbly. Then I heard the Knight standing up, spitting out more blood.
I shook my head harder, snapping myself out of it. I turned to Alex with my best dad glare. “You can’t just become a Maker, Alex!” I said, indicating the now-empty Hand of God. And probably not by dumping the freaking dust on his skin, either. There were rituals and shit to observe. None of this reckless, experimental—
Then my words hit me. One actually could just become a Maker. My parents had done exactly that by experimenting on me right before they died. And another very strange thought crawled up into my noggin. Had…my parents made me a Maker as…a test run. For this moment? They had told me that Alex was vital to me somehow.
Except they had also told me Talon was vital, and he was now dead at my feet.
And that Carl was vital, but he had gone back home for an indeterminate length of time.
But…Alex was best friends with Ruin—an untethered Beast. Technically, it could work.
The three of us had entirely forgotten about the Black Knight, but we sure noticed him suddenly swinging his sword at Alex in a powerful, overhead swing, like he was wielding an executioner’s axe. His mouth was wide open as the blade began to fall from over his head, and his numerous missing teeth made his mouth resemble a can-opener.
Not again, I thought to myself, and I flung my hand out at the Knight to protect my son, begging for any scrap of power my body could draw out.
I felt power suddenly rip out of me, and I gasped. My Fae magic! But it didn’t go towards the Knight, blasting him back to Camelot like I would have preferred.
It connected with the dust coating Alex—the Hand of God—and I saw his skin suddenly change, turning into rough iron. A
lex had flung up his hand to catch the blade in his open palm, and the sword struck it with a piercing clang, bending at a ninety-degree angle.
I grunted, not having intended anything of the sort, and knowing I couldn’t have done so if I had tried.
“Sweet,” Grimm commented, seeming to smile. “Think this is his Wild Side or was it that magic cocaine?” he asked, lowering his horn for me to grab and hoist myself back to my feet.
“I have no idea, man,” I whispered, grunting as I pulled myself to my feet and leaned on my unicorn like a badass fairy godfather. Too bad I didn’t have a cigar.
Alex head-butted the Knight in a whip-quick blur and yanked the bent sword out of his grip. The Knight snarled, swinging a fist at Alex’s unprotected face. Alex calmly leaned to the side and sliced off the offending hand.
“For Calvin,” Alex growled.
The Knight gasped in disbelief, reaching out to grasp his stump with the other hand.
But Alex was faster, and cut that hand off, too.
“For Makayla,” he added, sounding calmer.
The Knight stumbled backwards, staring down at his missing hands in horror, likely wondering how he could cauterize them before he bled out.
Alex inspected the bent sword in his fist, likely considering how it had so easily cut through the Knight’s armor when nothing else—except Grimm’s horn—had been as successful. Instead of tossing it, he kept it.
I placed a hand on his shoulder before he decided to punish the Knight further. “That will do. A handless Knight is hardly a threat. And I think sending him back to Mordred looking like this will buy us some time.”
Alex nodded obediently and stepped aside.
The Knight was staring at us, looking stunned to have suffered such an epic defeat from a boy with no armor and no weapon, when he had defeated two massive furred warriors with single blows.
I stared down at my two best friends, grimacing at one of those golden ribbons, now covered in Gunnar’s blood. I still had one wrapped around my finger. I looked back up at the Knight and spoke in a low growl. “Give Mordred a message. Tell him we will meet him at Stonehenge soon after the Rainbow King takes over the skies. But not to give him anything. To destroy him.”
The Knight gave a jerking nod and touched his bloody stump to the inverted rune on his breastplate with a sickening squelch. Then he simply winked out of view.
I narrowed my eyes at that. It was probably something I was going to have to look out for if we ran into any more Knights. They could Travel, somehow.
Chapter 32
I turned to see Alex shaking his hand. The iron-like skin flaked off like dried mud and he flexed his fingers experimentally. “Thanks.”
I grunted. “It was all I could manage. If you two hadn’t gotten here when you did…” I was silent for a few moments. Then I caught them up to speed with my day—all the dirty details. Alex had been especially horrified to hear about Alice. Judging by the look on his face, I wondered what else he might have decided to cut off the Knight if he had known about that a few minutes ago.
Once he had calmed down, we all stared down at Gunnar and Talon, thinking sad, dark thoughts.
My eyes kept latching onto the golden ribbons, and it made my soul want to just burn away to ashes. Alice was out there in Mordred’s clutches—probably terrified out of her mind after witnessing her mother’s death only moments before. Whether she had the apparently invisible book Alvara had tried to give me or not, I was going to go save her.
In fact, I realized I wasn’t even concerned about the book. It could burn for all I cared. As long as I saved Alice—the last remaining member of the party I had taken to Fae—it was worth it. Otherwise, this had all been a complete failure. I needed to save the little detective.
Because the world was a brighter place with her in it.
To save Alice, I had a job to do. Repair the Bifröst. And Alex probably wasn’t going to like my plan for that.
Mordred had somehow brainwashed the Knight with a Blood Debt, forcing him to hunt me down and bring me to Stonehenge with Excalibur and the Round Table neatly gift-wrapped for the new King of Camelot. Which meant Mordred had learned some things about me—to know I had been heading to the Seer’s house meant the Knight had been spying on me, probably with that Traveling ability we had seen.
Mordred obviously wanted me alive, though, or the Knight would have killed me like he had my friends. He wanted me at Stonehenge—the same place the Knight had been doodling on the paper now folded up in my pocket.
I thought about it for a few moments, grew aggravated, and decided I no longer cared why.
They wanted me at Stonehenge? I’d go to Stonehenge, nab the girl, and kill everyone who looked at me sideways.
“We…have the rainbows,” Alex said, staring down at Gunnar and Talon’s lifeless bodies.
I nodded, absently wondering how exactly that worked. Would I get rainbow guts on my hand every time I reached inside or was it like the other things I stored in there?
But Alex had a point. To save Alice, I needed to first fix the Bifröst—because the Aesir could kick off Ragnarok any moment. Or Thor could pay me another visit. He now had two reasons to hate me. For humiliating him, and then winning the #1 Son Award from Odin.
To repair the Bifröst, I needed to get rid of this stupid block. Despite somehow casting my Fae magic at Alex to give him the strength to fight the Knight, I hadn’t been able to tap into it a second time. I felt stronger, my senses sharper, but the block was still there.
I studied Alex thoughtfully. Something about him and the Hand of God had let me inadvertently tap into my Fae magic. If that was the only tool I had, it would have to be enough. There was no other option on the table.
“What does Mordred even want with you at Stonehenge?” Alex asked. “Excalibur is in the Armory, and the Round Table is too big to just carry around on your back.”
My eyes widened, and I shoved my hand into my satchel desperately. I finally found the small glass vial and let out a breath of relief. What if it had broken? I held it up to Alex. “Ichor from the Round Table,” I told him.
He nodded knowingly. “Just like what you lured Mordred with at the Dueling Grounds.” I nodded. “He probably wants a bit more than a vial. And you already baited him with that once.”
I grunted. “It’s all I brought,” I told him, not wanting to explain that the rest was inside the War Hammer. Not after I had seen him dump the Hand of God all over himself. He might go find a rubber hose to siphon the ichor from the Hammer if I turned around to take a leak.
“Alex?” I asked, shoving the vial into my Fendi satchel.
“Yes?” he answered, sounding as if he knew what was coming just by my tone.
“We need to talk about that stupid thing you did. With my magic pyramid,” I clarified, brandishing it at him.
“Yeah, I got caught up in the—”
“I think I can do you one better,” I interrupted, with a faint smile.
He frowned, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. “Oh?”
I told him my idea. Grimm let out a long whistle.
Alex ran a hand through his hair. “You sure? What if it, I don’t know, burns me alive or something?”
I shrugged. “Life’s about new experiences. And you brought this on yourself,” I reminded him. “When you played with my toys without asking permission.”
He let out a breath. “Okay. That’s fair.”
Grimm shook his head at the two of us. “You’re both insane.”
We ignored the unicorn.
With that matter settled, I glanced over at my Darling and Dear satchel on the ground. It was high-time I consolidated my bags and took back the magic one. Something about wearing it just made me feel better, and Alex had proven he wasn’t responsible enough to hold it.
The only reason I hadn’t berated him about it was because…maybe he had been right. Things didn’t just fall out of my satchel. And the Hand of God had worked on him—at the very least
, it had worked as some kind of focal point for my Fae magic—when not much else had helped so far, despite all those pleasant clicking sensations getting my hopes up.
Alex stepped in front of me, his palm resting against my chest. “Let me put this stuff in your satchel, Nate. That’s not important right now, and I can easily do it. You should…probably say goodbye to Gunnar and Talon,” he said, his voice cracking at the end. He lowered his eyes, and I saw that they were bloodshot.
I wanted to argue…
Except he was right. I’d been avoiding looking at them. I felt too raw. It didn’t actually even feel real. How could it? Their deaths had been so swift, when I was used to them being the swift executioners. If they had died during some long, drawn-out battle, I would have been able to process it easier, but this…
It was going to take me a while. I handed Alex my Fendi satchel, feeling like I had just handed him a barbell that had been hanging on my shoulders. He scooped up the Knight’s bent sword—for obvious reasons, the Knight had been unable to pick it up to take with him when he fled—and shoved it into the Darling and Dear satchel.
He noticed my attention. “Could come in handy,” he said with a shrug. Then he stopped. “Heh. Handy…” then he shook his head clear of the macabre thought, resuming his work.
I shared a long look with Grimm. “You’re a bad influence on him.”
“Whatever you say, Fairy Godfather.”
I took three deep breaths, and then finally looked at my two childhood friends. I stared at them, letting memories roll over me until I felt raw. I don’t know how long I sat there, but Alex stepped up beside me at one point and carefully set the Darling and Dear satchel down by my side. I wiped at my face and glanced at the logo on my satchel. What were the odds that I would meet the crazy bastards at that bar when drinking with Anubis—
I froze, my breath catching. Anubis.
Thanks to Charon, he owed me two get out of Hell free cards…Two come back to life, cards.
Could…I use them to bring Gunnar and Talon back to life? I’d intended them for my parents, but the more I thought about it, I wasn’t sure I wanted them back. Not because I hated them or anything, but…
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