Twilight Magic (Rune Witch Book 6)

by Jennifer Willis

  “NO!” The cry tore from Sally’s throat even before she saw what had happened. Maggie and Freya grabbed her arms and held her back and Freyr was shouting something at her. Hot tears spilled down Sally’s face when she saw Fenrir’s motionless wolf body in the snow. Smoke curled upward from a cauterized gash at his furry black throat.

  Sally choked on his name as she sobbed. Frogs and hail landed on her shoulders and she batted them away, ignoring the burns and welts forming on her exposed hands. The Fenris Wolf had saved her life, first against Managarm and then from Jonathan the volcano spirit, and probably countless other times Sally wasn’t even aware of. He’d been her protector and her friend, and now he was dead.

  In a gesture of grace and power, Utra lifted her hands and smiled at the blue and gold light that arced between her fingers. A flaming boulder landed with a dull thud inches from her side, sending a spray of dirty snow into her face and over her head and shoulders. The goddess shook her face clear and locked eyes with Sally.

  Another blast of wind muffled Utra’s words until a lull between gusts, as though the entire field paused to inhale. Even the two Norns had mercifully ceased their wailing.

  “. . . finish this now, don’t you agree?” Utra waved her fingers and played with the sparks that raced over her skin. Her sorcerers lifted their arms as their chanting filled the field in the absence of the wind. “How much more blood do you wish to see spilled?”

  “You’re just going to kill everyone anyway!” Saga shouted back as she emerged from behind Sally to come at Utra from the side. The sorcerers startled at her approach, but Utra looked unfazed. Saga pushed forward. “You’re severely deluded if you think you’re getting off this field alive. If any of us will survive this day. Ragnarok—”

  “Ragnarok is a matter of perspective,” Utra bit back. She opened her mouth to say something more but the wind picked up again and Sally couldn’t hear anything else. Whatever Utra was saying couldn’t be good, and Saga was edging closer to danger. Sally tried to surge forward again, but Freya and Maggie grabbed her and held her in place.

  “Why won’t you let me fight?!” Sally shouted as Utra opened her palms toward her. A dark smile spread over Utra’s features and Sally was pretty sure she wasn’t getting ready to offer a benediction. “I have to face her!”

  Energy swirled in Utra’s hands and built into an almost blinding light. When Freya and Maggie let go of Sally to shield their eyes, Sally stumbled forward. She smelled the static of Utra’s power, but the light was too bright and she couldn’t look up. She tried to direct her steps toward the goddess to put herself in Utra’s path.

  There was another searing sizzle as Utra’s magick ripped through the air, and then her light went dark. Had Sally been hit? Behind her, Freya wailed in dismay and Freyr shouted old Norse and Gaelic expletives, but Sally didn’t feel any different. Her feet were still on the snowy ground and her scalp burned from another acid hailstone glancing off her head.

  Sally was afraid to look up, but she forced herself to lift her chin and face Utra. Her gaze fell on another lifeless body at Utra’s feet. Saga. The Norse goddess of history lay with her chest to the ground, her neck twisted at an unnatural angle. Her face was mottled crimson and white and her blond hair had been burnt to a crisp.

  Sally turned away and tried not to retch into the snow. She couldn’t help her gasping scream. Her friends were dying all around her, and the ones who remained kept holding her back and preventing her from taking action. The grounds around the Lodge were a mess of literal chaos. Sally tried to get her own breathing under control. She had to think. She had to find a way to clear her mind and take action. She had to stop Utra and contain the chaos and keep even more terrible things from happening.

  Her hands were shaking and the air crackled uselessly around her as she tried to call up her own power. Salty tears and snot ran over her lips as she flexed her fingers and tried to summon her magick. Static sparked painfully in her hands. But her breath was steadier with every inhalation, and the chaos popping in her hands smoothed out into a steady, calming thrum of energy.

  Sally couldn’t worry anymore about saving Opal or anyone else in the Lodge. This was Ragnarok, and she had to act under the assumption that there would be no survivors, not even herself. But maybe she could stop the next world from being born into dark madness instead of reason and love. She would grieve later. Was this why Loki always seemed to be so detached? Even though she knew he felt very deeply.

  The god of chaos was gone, and his mantle rested heavily on Sally’s shoulders. But right or wrong, she had always been her own compass. It would be the same here, in this last act of the Rune Witch. She pressed her glowing hands against her chest and turned to face Utra again. Utra wanted more power, and she wanted to fight for it. Sally was ready.

  She felt hands on her shoulders and was surprised when Maggie stepped in front of her. Determined tears glistened in Maggie’s eyes, but she didn’t say anything to Sally. Instead, Maggie lifted one hand to touch Sally’s face, and then she bent forward to kiss her forehead. Sally nodded. Maggie was sending her into battle with her blessing.

  Sally made a move to step around her to face Utra, but Maggie blocked her path. She turned her back on Sally and spread her arms wide to Utra.

  “Come into me!” Maggie shouted. “You want an immortal body? Take mine. Leave the innocent you have commandeered. Spare the Rune Witch. Spare the Lodge. And I will give you my body willingly.”

  “Maggie, no!” Sally’s voice was rough in her throat. “She’s not going to spare anyone. What are you doing?”

  Sally lifted her hands and tried to adjust her aim around Maggie. Maybe she could get off a shot at Utra without hurting Maggie?

  “Sally, don’t.” Freya’s voice was stern in her ear. “Let her do this.”

  “What?! You’re nuts!”

  Why wasn’t Freya doing anything to intercede? Maggie was flat-out offering to commit suicide in a pact that Utra would never honor.

  “It’s her choice, Sally.” Freyr hovered beside her, looking more ghost-like than he had earlier. But Sally didn’t have time to puzzle over his vacillating state of transparency. She gritted her teeth.

  “But then she’ll be immortal.” Sally kept her voice just loud enough for Freya and Freyr to hear over the howl of the wind as it lifted and tugged at her hair. If Maggie succeeded, then maybe Opal would be safe—but only temporarily, because everything else would be so much worse. “She’ll be even more impossible! Why am I the only one who’s concerned about this?”

  Maggie stepped closer to Utra, all the while murmuring about offering her immortal body as a vessel for Utra’s ambitions. The voices of the sorcerers rose and fell in excited spasms, and it looked like Utra was eager for Maggie’s proposal. Freya still wasn’t doing anything to stop Maggie. The Vanir twins stood on either side of Sally, their arms loose at their sides and their voices silent. Had everyone suddenly gone freaking batty?

  Sally’s breath was shallow and high in her chest again, and she balled her hands into fists as though she could will herself into not having a panic attack on the field of Ragnarok. Maggie and Utra were reaching toward each other, like old friends about to embrace. Sally screamed with all the air in her lungs. “DON’T DO THIS!”

  Before the words were out of her mouth, Opal’s body lay limp on the ground and Maggie stood suddenly tall as a flare of light enveloped her. Apparently unconscious, Opal was at least breathing. But Sally’s relief was short-lived as Utra stretched the arms of her new body out wide and slowly turned around to face Sally.

  “Now, Rune Witch.” Utra’s smile was downright ghastly on Maggie’s face. She was pale and had dark circles under her blood-shot eyes. She looked more like a walking cadaver than a newly energized goddess. Sally repeated a silent mantra that this was not Maggie standing before her, and that Utra was just as crazy as ever.

  “If you won’t give me your power, I will be very happy to take it from you.” Utra walked stea
dily toward Sally across the snow. Hailstones and dragon fire bounced off of Utra as she stepped over the bodies of Saga and Fenrir. Behind her, the cluster of chanting sorcerers surged forward. Sally willed herself not to be sick.

  14

  Now the chaos raged inside the Lodge walls. Five Valkyries rode their motorcycles inside the main homestead, making narrow passes past each other as they tore through the front hallway to chase rampaging members of Suleiman’s Spiral out of the house and to corner the ones who kept running back inside.

  Thor had no idea where all of the robed men were coming from. He thought they were all men, but most of them kept their hoods low over their faces even as they pulled knives and cudgels from their belts and swiped lamps and heavy knickknacks off of side tables to hurl at the Valkyries and at the Einherjar warriors who’d rushed inside to defend the Lodge.

  Thor stood in the kitchen doorway. Thumping footsteps sounded over his head, which meant that at least some of the fighting had spread to the upstairs. A massive hole gaped in the wall where the kitchen windows, sink, and many of the cabinets used to be, and water poured across the floor from broken pipes. Tire tracks and burn marks marred every floorboard and scrap of carpet in sight.

  Rod and Zach pushed a couple of invading sorcerers back through the mudroom and out into the snow and then worked together to barricade the battered door with an assortment of mops, brooms, and a heavy trashcan.

  Zach glanced over his shoulder at Thor. “Think that’ll hold?”

  Rod made a sour face. “Not even close. But it might slow them down.” He turned to Thor. “Where are they all coming from? Does Utra have some kind of sorcerer replicator machine in her pocket?”

  Thor grunted, because he didn’t have any good answers. There were so many more of these guys in robes than anyone had expected. According to Freyr, the Spiralists thought they were using Utra to claim real magick for themselves, but from what Thor could see through the holes in the walls looking out onto the noisy mayhem on the field, Utra had no intention of sharing. Still, her followers—or did they think they were her masters?—threw themselves against the defenders of the Lodge without regard for their bodies or lives. Had Utra ensnared them with false promises of resurrection or even immortality when this was all over? Thor had tried shouting at them about Utra’s betrayal and literally tried knocking some sense into them, but they wouldn’t be deterred.

  He’d thought sorcerers were supposed to be wise or at least crafty. But these guys were nearly drone-like loons.

  A trio of Spiralists careened around the corner into the Lodge’s great room. They dragged Miguel, the new Valkyrie, behind them, their fingers digging into the young man’s hair and leather jacket. Miguel was kicking and cursing the whole way, and he managed to trip one of the sorcerers. But the other two tightened their grip on Miguel and even punched him in the face a couple of times. Then they laughed and hauled him forward.

  Thor saw where they were headed—the hearth. With all of the flammable detritus falling from the ceiling, the flames burned high and hot. If the sorcerers managed to toss Miguel into the hearth, Miguel would be lucky to escape with his life.

  Thor stormed toward them and nearly got run over by Ted as he rode his heavy bike around the corner and into the great room. Ted snagged the hem of one of the sorcerer’s robes in the spokes of his bike’s front wheel, and that was enough to pull the sorcerer off of Miguel. Thor swung out with his hammer and caught the one that lagged behind under the chin. Thor grimaced at the crunching bone and the blood that poured out of the new hole in the man’s face. These self-fashioned sorcerers were still mortal, even if they had taken up arms against Thor and his kin.

  Ted leapt off his bike and let the machine fall onto the Spiralist whose robe was still caught. The man cried out as he collapsed under the weight of the motorcycle. The last sorcerer had Miguel in a choke-hold and was trying to force the young Valkyrie over the edge of the hearth and into the flames. Ted reached Miguel quickly and punched the sorcerer square in the nose. The sorcerer released Miguel and reached for his belt. The young Valkyrie slumped to the floor in a half-conscious heap. Ted cocked his fist to strike again but before Thor could call out a warning, the sorcerer drove a six-inch blade through Ted’s leather jacket and deep into his ribcage. Blood spurted from Ted’s lips as he staggered back, collided with Thor and then slid to the ground, dead.

  The beams in the ceiling rattled with Thor’s thundering bellow. He raised his hammer over his head and huffed through his teeth as he bore down on the sorcerer standing at the hearth. The man’s robe was stained with Ted’s blood, and he didn’t have time to react to Thor’s attack. A single swipe of Thor’s hammer erased the sorcerer’s jaw from his face. Thor’s battle cry shattered the glass in the great room’s sliding door as he lifted the Spiralist over his head, let the man’s blood drip down his own forearms, and then hurled him into the flames.

  Black smoke filled the room, along with the man’s screams, and Thor staggered back as the flames leapt higher. He coughed on the stench of burning hair and polyester. He hadn’t meant to turn the Lodge’s hearth into a sacrificial pyre, even though that’s what the sorcerers had been about to do with Miguel.

  Miguel reached for an overturned leather couch to steady himself as he climbed to his feet. He nearly crumpled again when he saw Ted’s blood spreading across the floor.

  “He died well.” Thor offered what comfort he could over the roar of more motorcycles in the hallway and the chaotic melee outside. He deliberately did not look back at the hearth. “He was a warrior and a Valkyrie. And he has been avenged. Tonight, he feasts in Valhalla.”

  Thor earnestly hoped there would still be a Valhalla left to receive Ted and the others who would fall at Ragnarok. Miguel nodded and pushed himself upright. He picked up the sorcerer’s dropped knife, wiped Ted’s blood off on his jeans, and charged into the hallway.

  The small victory was short-lived. Rod screamed for Thor in the kitchen, and Thor stomped over Ted’s fallen motorcycle and the sorcerer still trapped beneath it to respond. In the kitchen, he found Rod and Zach on the floor. Both were blackened with soot and blood, but Thor couldn’t tell which of them was bleeding. Splintered wood lay scattered around them on the floor.

  Frantic, Thor looked to the pantry door. It was still intact, still closed against the attack. But there was a smoking, jagged hole where the mudroom had been.

  “What’s happening?” Bonnie burst out of the pantry, her broadsword at the ready.

  Thor wanted to yell at her to get back inside where she and Maksim would be safe, but a chunk of steaming rock smashed in through the hole in the kitchen wall, taking big hunks of plaster with it. Bonnie dropped her sword and knelt beside Rod and Zach.

  “He’s hit.” Rod struggled to lift Zach into a sitting position, and Zach moaned with every movement. “Shrapnel from the walls of the mudroom. I don’t know what hit us.”

  Zach’s clothes were quickly soaking through with blood. Rod stripped off his shirt and tried to use it as a compress, but there were too many wounds to cover. Bonnie nodded at Thor and they worked together to lift Zach from the floor. They carried him into the pantry, where little Maksim huddled in the back corner with Laika and Baron standing guard.

  “Is he okay? Is it over?” Maksim’s fingers dug into the fur of Laika’s neck, and the dog bent down to sniff at Zach and lick his wounds as Thor and Bonnie laid him on the pantry floor.

  Zach managed to sit up and prop himself against the wall and a few sacks of brown rice. He still held his short sword, and he lifted it for Thor and Bonnie to see. He nodded toward the boy. “I can still keep him safe.”

  Thor nodded and backed out of the pantry as Bonnie helped to make Zach comfortable. He would be Maksim’s last line of defense, but it was Thor’s job to make sure it didn’t come to that. Bonnie whispered a few words of encouragement to Maksim, then stepped out of the pantry and closed the door behind her.

  Bonnie lifted her sword and nodde
d at her husband. “I fight when you fight.”

  A massive thud sounded too close by, and the floor started to buckle under Thor’s feet. Plaster cracked and wood screamed as the outer kitchen wall began to cave in. There was nothing to stop the walls and ceiling from crumbling, but they could try to protect the pantry. Massive chunks of plaster fell around Thor as another smoking rock and a stream of flame blasted into the kitchen from the outside. Bonnie flung herself against the pantry door to shield it from the flame. Thor and Rod threw down their weapons and hurled their bodies into the tumbling debris to protect the pantry and Maksim and Zach within.

  Heimdall watched Opal’s body collapse to the snow in front of Maggie, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Was it over? Was at least this particular part of the threat contained? He said a silent blessing for Opal’s well-being and started to lower his sword as he walked toward Maggie, but he stopped in his tracks as she met his gaze. There was something off about how she stood in the snow, the way she held her body, the strange diagonal tilt of her lips. She looked disoriented and not entirely conscious. Then she blinked and the intelligence behind her eyes came into focus. She locked her gaze on Heimdall, and her mouth curved into a familiar smile.

  A smile that wasn’t Maggie’s.

  Acid hail pelted down on Heimdall’s shoulders and left burn holes and scorch marks in his clothing. The three dragons squalled and sang to each other over his head and set aflame random patches of exposed grass. Somewhere nearby he heard Trevor Chase call out in alarm when a slithering mass of snake-like creatures erupted upward from the snowy ground and wound around his limbs and neck and started to strangle him.

  But Utra, the Morning Star and his crazy ex-girlfriend, had stolen Maggie’s body.

  A quick glance to Opal on the ground confirmed that she was unconscious but breathing. Still alive. He had no idea if Opal had truly come back to herself, but he chose to believe that she had. He hoped that boded well for Maggie, but he knew in his gut that Utra would not give up her immortal prize.