by Gwenda Bond
“Chin up, girl, you made it,” Legba says. “I didn’t know if you would.”
Hermes called out from the column where he still lounges. “This is quite a mess you’ve made, so if you would care to explain…”
Legba swings his cane in a circle. He makes a circuit, not quite wandering to where the Society operatives wait, unmoving, and the TV camera films on. Nalini has her hand on Bree’s shoulder, holding her in place. Ben has a similar posture by Tam. Justin lingers beside Rose, bow lowered.
“I like to walk through time,” Legba continues. “Some while back, it occurred to me that it was an awfully big coincidence that all we gods went to sleep at the same time… and then woke up that way. I don’t know about my brothers and sisters here, but I wasn’t even feeling tired when it happened. I didn’t recall that right away. When we first woke up, the world was new, and there was so much to see. I barely remembered lying down for a nap.”
“The point, please, before you put us back to sleep,” Hermes says, with a stagey yawn.
Enki’s massive body swivels to face Legba.
“No hard feelings,” Legba says to Enki. The next he directs to the other gods. “But it seems our Sumerian friend here had a crush – love, really, though never consummated, alas – on a human woman, who just happened to be an early member of this Society that wanted humanity to be on top. She convinced him that humans deserved a time of their own, that it cost the gods nothing to take a little sleep. He helped her do it, achieve her dream of us all dreaming.”
Tezcatlipoca extends one blocky hand and knocks the statue of the woman with the globe raised above her head across the hall. The light from the TV camera zigzags as Nalini and Bree dodge it. The statue skids to a stop on its side with a crash.
“I’m not done yet,” Legba says. “I followed the lines of this action forward, into the future, and what did I see? I saw William Bronson – R.I.P. – waking us up, but not because he had any great love of the gods. No, he wanted his wife back, but it didn’t work. All he got was us. And his action created still more lines, one to his own granddaughter, who it seemed was also a descendent – on her father’s side – of the very same woman who charmed Enki into putting us into a sweet slumber for thousands of years. But, you know, it wasn’t her fault. So I thought I’d give the girl a fighting chance. And I was right, she didn’t disappoint. It is your life, girl, but this is a big world. And here’s the thing.”
“Yes?” I ask. Because it’s clear that he’s talking to me now.
“There’s part of me that admires your ancestor. She was human, and she wanted to protect her people. You humans now, you’ve only made us upset. The way I figure, the only way to push you humans to be better is to give you no choice but to try harder. Hannah, can you tell us what you saw, all those years ago? What you’ve seen so many times since?”
Dad strains against the ropes, but Legba stares at Mom. She wafts to her feet, swaying like a flower in a breeze. She says, “I saw the great gods warring, the start of the end of everything, and it began here. I saw blood and doom, riot and ruin. The end of our days, but not of yours. I saw my daughter bleeding on the marble, the ritual complete, the door open…” She hesitates, lost. “But that has not come to pass, so maybe none of it will?”
“Shhh,” Legba says. “No, some conflict is just the thing to get the blood flowing.” He sweeps his arms out. “After all, I’m the only one who got what I wanted: the truth out in the open. I can’t imagine there won’t be hard feelings among my old friends here. It’ll be interesting to see who stands with you, Enki, or if those loyalties evaporate like dreams in harsh morning light. To you, girl, and humanity, I say good luck.” He whirls, the tails of his suit jacket flying, and he’s gone.
The gods who are left stare at Enki, who twists his horns as he bellows. The floor trembles. The walls shake. He’s not apologizing or making nice. He’s offering a challenge. Operatives skitter out of the way as he turns and leaves.
STAY HERE. His words are bell-clear in my head.
Set is the first to go after Enki, shadows pouring from his claws. But he isn’t alone. The battle is beginning, and as Legba predicted, sides being chosen. Operatives move aside to let them out, because what else can they do?
Bree and Tam rush over as soon as the gods make their exit. The screams of the revelers get louder. The operatives peer after the gods, as if they aren’t sure what to do. Rose calls out, “We’ll have to go out there. Try to get as many civilians off the Mall as possible.” She’s already heading out the door, uniformed men and women behind her.
Bree asks, “Kyra, are you OK? That was…”
“I will be. I think,” I say, which is a better answer than I don’t know.
None of us look at Bronson’s body, only a few steps away. Mom is rocking beside Dad saying, “This is where it ends, this is where it ends…”
“What do we do now?” Tam asks.
“Good question,” I say.
A sound reaches us that might be the Capitol building collapsing in one loud crash. We stopped the ritual, but it might have been for nothing.
“Once they’re done fighting each other, they’ll remember this is where the door is,” Oz says.
Justin is nodding. “You’re right. They’ll come back and find some other way to open it. They won’t have to fear death anymore then.”
I ask, “Can’t we… I don’t know, move it?”
“Not that quickly,” Dad adds.
Bronson claimed to have a way to get rid of the gods after his precious ceremony was complete. Apparently he had known they were put to sleep, and how to wake them. He must have been telling the truth. What was it he said? That he’d raise the walls, then put them to sleep.
I drop beside Dad. “The walls, Dad – are they real? Can I put them up? Bronson told me he was going to after the ritual. Would that help?”
“Yes,” Dad says, blinking up at me. “Yes, do it. The walls will protect us until we can regroup, strategize. It will keep them out of here.”
“How do I do it?” I prod.
Oz taps my shoulder. “I know how. Every operative does, in case of something like this. They’re our last defense. You sure, Mr Locke?”
“Yes,” Dad says again. “If there are negative consequences, I’ll accept them.”
I don’t want him in danger again, not anytime soon. “Should we find Rose and ask her?”
Oz shakes his head. “Only the board can order the walls up, because the rest of the world doesn’t know about them. The gods don’t know about them. If we’re doing this, we have to do it alone. We can’t wait to see if everyone agrees.”
Another loud crash sounds outside. “Go,” Dad says. “Be quick.”
The few operatives who stayed behind are closing the doors, barricading the Jefferson against the fighting.
“We’ll need a horse to have any chance of making it down there in the crush,” Oz says.
“Book’s tethered outside. Take her,” Justin says.
“Down where?” Bree asks.
“The Washington Monument,” Oz says, and I don’t have to ask if he’s kidding. He isn’t. “There are pieces from the walls of Asgard embedded at the top. The city was designed with this feature in mind. Their original purpose was to safeguard the Norse gods when they were in residence at Asgard. But once we activate them, they should do the opposite. They should force the gods out, and protect the city.”
Tam cues in on the same word I do. “Should?”
“It’s never been tested. Because how could we?”
Mom lies down beside Dad, tucks her head in below his chin. He can’t put his arm around her and she’s careful not to touch the ropes. Dad closes his eyes, and they look almost cozy.
“The ropes burned me,” I say to Justin.
“We’ll get him free while you’re gone,” he says.
Oz claps a hand on Justin’s shoulder. “Nice shooting. Guess you won’t be able to complain about all the hours of practice anym
ore.”
Justin can’t seem to manage a quip back, and Oz lets him off the hook. He says to me, “Ready?”
“Be careful, Kyra,” Dad adds. “We don’t want to lose you now.”
“We’ll do our best,” I say, hardly able to believe we’re all alive. We might make it through this night. “Oz, let’s go raise some walls.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
We speed down the stairs and through the ground floor exit. Once we make it outside, I have to press down the impulse to run back in and hide. Steady streams of people are flooding toward us, attempting to flee the madness behind them. Some stumble, drunk, and a few of the women are half-dressed at best. Two men have skulls painted over their features, the greasepaint bones blurred from tears.
The crash we heard wasn’t the full collapse of the Capitol, but the perfect white dome is partially missing. A black hole with jagged edges gapes on one side. The solstice revels turned gods’ battle is an all-too-close roar on the other side of it.
I have never thought of myself as a hero, as the type of person who rushes into something like this. I’d never have believed I could be the kind of person able to do anything about it. Sometimes a hero is whoever is available, doing whatever is possible.
Having outlived my supposed fate makes me bolder. I really don’t want to die. Neither do any of these people, or others having quiet evenings at home in the city. We may not be able to protect the entire world, not tonight, but we can try to protect this place, and keep the door safe.
Oz guides us to a hitching post at the edge of the street. There’s one lone horse tethered there, a large, brownish-black mare.
A Society operative gapes at the Capitol, though there’s nothing to be seen except flashes of light above it. He looks at us. “Is it true the director’s dead?”
I nod. “Is that as bad as it sounds?”
“Worse,” he says.
“They could use your help inside,” Oz says to the operative, who rushes away, all too glad for an excuse to leave the fray.
Oz strokes his hand along the mare’s side. The horse’s shoulders move like liquid as he unwinds the reins from the post and leads her to me. “Unlike that guy, Book doesn’t spook at anything,” Oz says.
He gracefully mounts, then holds out his hand to help me up. I grab his hand, manage to put my foot in the stirrup, and awkwardly swing on behind him.
“That was… you’ll need riding lessons,” he says.
“Shut up,” I say. “We’re in a hurry, remember.”
He holds the reins in one hand, and a jounce of his foot to Book’s side sets us moving. I put my arms around him and hold on.
The night is warm, and though a few pinpoint stars are visible, an eerily large pale moon dominates the sky, poised on the horizon as if it might fall the rest of the way to earth and take out a national landmark or two.
Or a warring god or two.
Oz spurs the horse forward through the press of people. The solstice revels are always well attended, and this year is no exception. Book’s hooves land hard on the pavement, giving no sign of alarm at the roars and shouts and booms ahead. When we round the damaged dome, the reflecting pool in front of the Capitol is on fire.
The effect turns out to be a trick of distance and darkness. Gods are lobbing the fire – reflecting in the pool – at each other. Other members of the pantheons have been summoned by the fighting. Gods swarm the air, some touch down on the ground for a moment, others race along it. Everywhere there are brilliant, burning colors, broken up by dark, shadowy blacks.
We pass our first few casualties, and I’m grateful they are facedown – except for a brown-haired girl who might be in college, staring sightless, revealed by an angry red flare.
“Keep your head down,” Oz says.
He navigates Book over to the sidewalk in front of the museums along the left-hand side of the Mall. Smart. He’s keeping us out of the grassy area in the middle where the worst of the conflict is taking place.
The old-fashioned carousel usually in front of the Smithsonian soars in a high arc, smacking into a large god with bat wings. I make out Enki’s horns high above the middle of the green. The area beside him is a great absence of light with rippling edges. It has to be Set, growing more shadows.
The obelisk of the Washington Monument is visible in the distance, but it feels so far away. Oz urges Book forward at a faster pace. “We’ll make it,” Oz says. Maybe he’s reassuring himself.
I’ll never forget the things we pass. It feels wrong, riding on instead of stopping to help people. I remind myself: You are going to help them. I close my eyes, but Bronson’s face waits for me there. I open them immediately.
There are a few operatives riding along the middle, attempting to get the crush of people out of harm’s way. One of their horses stumbles, screaming as a god’s elongated hand wraps around its front legs and tugs it down.
The fake sacrificial bonfire smolders, deserted, across from the Smithsonian castle, wreathed in wilting flowers. Where the carousel used to be is nothing but churned earth, spilling over the ground. Ahead of us, a blaze of flame licks through the sky. The ground shakes. There is another flare of light. And another. The screaming only gets louder.
Oz and Book stay calm, focused. We trot along at a fair clip, as far as we can be from the Mall while still riding along it, and Book’s dark coat and our uniforms help to hide us. Except for flashes of fire, the power outage has taken out the streetlights that normally make this a well-lit area. Sticking to the shadows, we make decent progress. Not that I could say how long has passed. Seconds, minutes, hours. Decades.
To get to the Washington Monument itself, we have to leave our relative safety. Book trots onto the grassy slope around it, and my arms tighten around Oz as a large shape lowers into our way.
The god straightens to his full height. It’s Mehen.
Oz trains Book to the left to go around him, but Mehen’s head coils back, his hood flaring on either side of it.
A familiar lion’s snarl accompanies Anzu’s dive from above. He rams into Mehen, cutting off his path to us.
“I have never been so happy to see a monster in my life,” I say.
“Thank him for me later,” Oz agrees.
He spurs Book into a gallop across the open ground. There are no people up here – the Monument itself has been off limits to the public since the Awakening – but spears of light flicker above.
There is a Society guard posted at the base of the monument, the stone shooting high above us. It is surprisingly enormous this close up. In the distance, it seems slender, the sky around it so much larger. Oz greets the guard with, “The board has ordered us to raise the walls.”
Oz urges me down first, and the guard helps catch me. After Oz dismounts, the guard accepts Book’s reins. Apparently watching the mayhem unfold in front of him is enough to sell the story. “Godspeed,” he says to us, without a shred of irony.
We make it into the lobby, where we’re greeted by a bronze statue of George Washington. Oz doesn’t pause on the way to the elevator.
“The power’s out,” I remind him. I point to a crumbly set of roped off steps that will take much longer.
“Not here.” Oz nods at an electric light fixture I hadn’t noticed. But, sure enough, it’s on. “The building was hardened with its own supply, for that reason.” He pushes the call button, and the door pings open. I follow him inside.
The doors close, and we are quiet as we begin to speed upward.
“I killed my grandfather,” I say.
Oz makes sure I meet his eyes. “It was the right thing to do.”
“Do they tell you that?” I ask, jealous that maybe I wouldn’t feel this way if I’d grown up training for nights like this. “Do they prepare you for what it feels like after you have to…?”
Oz says, “Yes, but I haven’t had to put it in practice yet. I don’t think what they tell us would make it much different at all. It should be hard to make a decision lik
e that. But you did the right thing.”
“I feel sick when I think about it. It was over so fast.”
“It was the right thing to do,” he repeats.
“I know.” And I do. Oz’s lack of judgment reinforces it.
I want to believe that Bronson has gotten what he wanted, that he and his Gabrielle are together, that she met him at the threshold of death and told him the drowning was an accident, and that they can make a happy death together. It’s not much of a fairy tale ending, but I want it for him, despite what he did.
The elevator lumbers to a stop and we exit onto the observation deck. It has a dark floor, and stone walls covered by glass. Two rectangular windows with thick glass are positioned in the center of the wall in front of us.
“What do we do now?” I ask.
Oz says, “It’ll be here somewhere.” He examines the walls. On his second circuit, he stops in front of a stone with a crack at the side, or maybe just a thicker join. There’s a small hollow circle above it. “Stand back.” He bashes the glass in front of it once with his elbow, then again, and it breaks. The larger fragments drop at our feet, and he brushes the shards clinging to the frame aside.
“Where are you…?” he says, reaching into the hollow spot with two fingers. I watch as he presses down with his weight, and worry he’ll break a bone in his hand. But stone scrapes stone, and he removes a large rectangular piece from the wall.
“We have to strike inside this area with a weapon, so that the wall repels the attack. That’s all – in theory.” He removes a short blade hidden inside his boot.
I recognize the knife. It’s the one that Bronson used to threaten my father, his backup weapon. Oz offers the grip to me, and I accept it. How fitting.
Through the broad window nearby, more flames are visible. There is a boom like the loudest thunder I’ve ever heard.
Oz says, “Do the honors.”
I lift the knife and insert my arm into the hollow stone opening. I scratch the knife along the stone as I withdraw it. My skin buzzes at the contact of knife and stone. But…