by Reine, SM
“You’re right, he did it,” Anthony muttered.
Dana pocketed the money. “Fucking thank you.”
“What do you guys want?” Seth asked.
“Same thing you do,” Dana said. “You want to go where the balefire’s leading. Come with us?”
It wasn’t as if he could tell them no.
* * *
Dana and Anthony led the way out of town. Brianna hung back with Seth, like she was chewing over her thoughts, trying to decide what to say. She’d always been the most cautious employee of the Hunting Club. The least likely to start a fight, since she was also the least likely to win.
There were more pinpricks of balefire in the forest past Ransom Falls. Dana followed those pinpricks when they veered away from civilization entirely, leading them past the hospital where Seth used to work.
“It’s been a long time, dude,” Anthony said. “Long time.”
Seth realized that Anthony was speaking to him. “Yeah, it has. A few…years?”
“What is it now? Thirteen?” The hunter rubbed his chin. His stubble was growing in gray. “Look at us. I’ve been ridden hard and put away wet, and you…”
Seth currently looked like eternally twenty-two-year-old Lucas Flynn, just as he had while he’d worked with the Hunting Club in Las Vegas. “I have help,” Seth said.
“Thanks to Elise, right?” Anthony grinned.
“Thanks isn’t the word I’d use for it.”
“Me neither. I’m glad Elise doesn’t think as highly of me as she does of you. I’ve missed that asshole, though.” Anthony chucked Seth in the shoulder. “And you too.”
“Same.” He jerked his chin at Dana. “She running the show now?” It used to be that the Hunting Club had been nobody but Seth, Anthony, and Brianna, with occasional visits from Abram Wilder.
“Dana wanted to take charge, and she’s not easy to argue with,” Anthony said.
“Especially if you don’t have anything in your nutsack,” Dana said.
Anthony laughed with genuine warmth, so he must have been fond of the girl. It was more surprising that Dana seemed fond of Anthony too. As fond as Dana could be of anyone. She shot him a look that wasn’t pure loathing, and there was even a degree of affection there.
Brianna didn’t share the mood. She trudged just behind Seth, panting from the effort of hiking through the forest.
“Let’s take a break,” Seth suggested. “You two go on ahead.”
Dana stopped. Opened her mouth to argue.
Anthony nudged her onward. “We’ll expect to see you guys catching up in ten minutes.” That was mostly aimed at Brianna, but Seth was the one who nodded.
Without constraints on their speed, Dana and Anthony disappeared uphill within moments.
Brianna spat it out. “You need to leave, Seth.”
“Why?” he asked, gazing up the path the others had taken. They weren’t far from where the balefire would emerge.
“This is a trap,” Brianna whispered under her breath. “For you.”
Seth supposed that news should have alarmed him, but it wasn’t like Dana could do anything to a god. She was a mortal woman.
Still, Brianna wouldn’t try to scare Seth for no reason.
He extended his consciousness tentatively toward Anthony. He tried to see what had happened on the other side of the hill. Seth couldn’t see anything. Just as he couldn’t see Benjamin’s death, or the enormous incident that loomed in his near future.
“Let’s catch up,” Seth said. He took Brianna’s hand and snapped his fingers.
They reappeared just behind Dana.
The balefire emerged in the forest a couple miles out of town. Seth knew the spot. It was where Charity had been forced to kill their coworker, Oliver Machado. And it was where Marion had been found alone, confused, without her memories intact.
For the most part, it looked like any other place in the forest. It was a little too rocky for trees to grow well. Wildfires in the years shortly after Genesis had left the soil depleted, and there hadn’t been enough rain or time for everything to grow back.
The ground was dotted with blazing-white starlight. Every thread of balefire came out here, forming a rough circle among the dead grass.
“This is the Genesis warp, isn’t it?” Seth asked.
“Yup,” Dana said. She stopped on the edge of the grass without entering the clearing. “Will be in a couple of days, anyhow. Time hasn’t aligned for it yet.”
“Anyone else getting kinda sweaty with nerves?” Anthony rubbed his palms on his cargo pants.
“No,” Dana said.
“That’s because you’re always sweaty,” he said.
She fanned her armpits at him. He gave an exaggerated cringe, reeling backwards as though the smell had knocked him down. But Seth noticed that Anthony was still careful not to step into the clearing.
Like Anthony said, this trio of mortals was getting anxious with anticipation. Hearts racing. Adrenaline rising.
“How did you find this place?” Seth asked.
“We were told where it was,” Anthony said. “We’ve just been asking questions around town to find out how much competition we might have getting to it.”
“We’ve been asking anyone if they’d seen you, Seth,” Brianna said. “I was relieved they kept saying no.”
Because this was, somehow, a trap.
It was a trap that Seth couldn’t walk away from. He’d need to be back at that exact spot on November fifth with Benjamin to save the world.
“I think you guys should leave. I’ll take care of the Genesis warp,” Seth said.
“You mean Marion will,” Dana said.
He folded his arms. “I’ve got this. We’ve got this.”
Anthony cringed. “Oh man. You were right. She’s got him whipped.” He handed another twenty dollars to Dana. She stuffed it into her bustier.
“How many bets have you taken over me?” Seth asked.
“Those were the two big ones,” Anthony said.
“We’re going nowhere,” Dana said. “This is ours.”
Seth couldn’t believe they’d have any interest in the Genesis warp. Despite their collective pedigrees, the Hunting Club was a small-scale operation, focused on the minutiae of keeping Las Vegas safe from vampires. They were only one node in a network of grassroots protectors. They woke up around sunset, spent the night cleaning out Las Vegas’s gutters, and went to sleep with the dawn to start over the next night.
This was so far outside their purview that Seth couldn’t wrap his head around it.
Anthony checked his watch. “Back up, everyone. Even you, Seth.”
The illusion of Seth’s booted toes seemed to cross some invisible line that the Hunting Club wouldn’t pass. Seth stepped forward instead of backward.
When he entered the clearing, he felt…empty.
“What the hell?” he asked.
Dana’s mouth moved as she said something obviously sarcastic, but he couldn’t hear her voice. Or the wind through the trees. Or the birds singing. He could only hear the rustling grass within the clearing, as well as a faint humming.
Everything was blank in this space.
Seth stepped outside again. His hearing resumed its normal behavior.
“Twelve seconds,” Anthony said.
“Run, Seth.” Brianna’s brown puppy eyes filled with pleading. “You don’t want to be here when she comes.”
The balefire threads exploded.
They thrust upward from the ground, thickening into cables as wide as the trees. They burned the remnants of the grass away and penetrated the clouds. Rain hissed as it evaporated instantly.
Seth leaped back, dragging Brianna with him. But the balefire didn’t burn outside of the clearing.
It kept building within the circle of trees.
“What have you done?” Seth asked.
“Us? Nothing,” Anthony said. “This is about Marion.”
The pillars of balefire formed a drill that pun
ched deep into the ground, carving out a borehole wide enough that cars could have vanished inside. Nothing remained of the serene clearing that they’d just approached.
Seth leaned forward to see down the borehole—but not too far.
There was a casket at the bottom. The balefire didn’t touch it.
Anthony kneeled, opened his duffel bag, and removed women’s clothes and a pack of cigarettes.
A human-like figure rose from the casket.
Human-like, Seth thought, because no humans had four fully developed arms that appeared functional. And almost every single human life he’d experienced involved having a face—eyes, nose, mouth.
This entity had other human attributes. Her well-muscled figure was arguably feminine due to the presence of wide hips. There were no breasts, but the head had prominent cheekbones and a jaw like a squared-off drawing of a heart.
Her hair was tawny auburn, brown in the shadows but red in the highlights, and chopped so short that it curled over her ears and barely brushed her neck.
The body was not scarred. It was as untouched as a baby born fresh from the womb. He suspected from the smoothness of the way that she moved that she would never receive a wound that could scar.
She was a killing machine.
Seth knew who this was.
“Holy fuck,” he said.
The avatar of Elise Kavanagh—James’s wife, Marion’s sister, and the gaean god—turned to pick up weapons from the casket. She carried two swords in the lower two hands. She picked up guns with the upper hands.
And then she faced Seth.
She couldn’t speak to him without a mouth. She didn’t need to speak.
Unlike Lucas Flynn, this avatar hadn’t been constructed to live a human life among humans. She wasn’t meant to blend in. She wasn’t meant to talk and laugh with friends, or hold down a job, or visit the grocery store.
She was meant to kill.
“The Godslayer’s even creepier than I thought she’d be,” Anthony remarked, breaking the silence. “Guess she won’t be needing the cigs.”
The Godslayer.
That was what she was. Not Elise, equal parts fair and merciless.
Just the Godslayer.
Nothing else had been included in this form.
Dana turned on Seth. All of her dry mirth had vanished. “Now that you know the stakes,” Dana said, “you’re allowed to run. Consider this your head start.”
8
A head start when the Godslayer walked on Earth didn’t seem like much of a head start at all. Seth phased instantly to Vancouver Island and it still didn’t seem fast enough.
He arrived at the balcony outside her bedroom, where she was currently sitting in front of a vanity. She was momentarily unaware of him. Marion was clothed as though heading into battle with the Raven Knights—all leather and boots—weaving magic with her flicking fingertips.
She was so beautiful, so human, and so fucking fragile.
The Godslayer was coming for her.
Seth shoved the balcony doors open, and Marion was on her feet instantly, angelfire clenched in her fists. She froze when she saw him.
“I found it.” He didn’t walk toward her. He was simply there, unable to do anything except take her frail mortal body into his arms. It wouldn’t help. It wasn’t as though he could give her eternal life when he was Death formed into the shape of a man.
“What’s wrong?” Marion asked, curling her fingers around the lapels of his jacket.
“Elise has come to Earth in the form of an avatar. They’re calling this thing the Godslayer.” His power quivered through the house, his ash heart cramped. “She’s here for you.”
Marion’s expression didn’t change. She had been turned to a statue. “The Godslayer is coming for me?”
“Yes,” he said.
It came over her slowly. Seth felt it in the air that surrounded her before it showed on Marion’s face.
The fear.
“We should have seen this coming,” Seth said. “You can’t tell me you don’t have any ideas for handling your sister if she got pissed off like this.”
“Ideas? Yes. Plans? No!” She dug her fingernails into his chest. “Gods, she’s going to kill me. I’m going to die.”
But it wasn’t cold on Vancouver Island.
She broke away to pace the room and Seth tried to focus on Marion’s mortality again. It was a scary, unpleasant thing to consider. His entire being balked at deliberately trying to look at the end of her life.
He saw the cold, and he saw ice.
Seth also saw Konig.
For the moment, Marion was not nearer to death.
“I won’t let the Godslayer hurt you,” Seth said. “That’s a promise.”
When she blinked, the tears broke free and streaked down her cheeks. “If she’s unleashed a Godslayer, she may not stop at slaying a mage.”
She’d be able to go after Seth. He was operating in the mortal worlds with James’s approval now, but that was a recent development. He’d broken a lot of Elise’s rules in the last couple years.
No wonder Brianna had told him to start running.
“It just doesn’t make sense, Marion,” he said. “Why would she want to kill you? You’re fighting to keep the Meta on track. If she kills you over a sisterly grudge, then she’s got a huge problem.”
“I don’t know. Gods, I have no clue.”
“You must have a guess. Your last fight with her…”
“I don’t know!” Marion snapped. She smothered her face with both hands. “Seth, I don’t…” She trailed off, lost for words. Her eloquence had abandoned her.
He pulled her into his arms again. “I won’t let her hurt you,” he repeated, more firmly than before. He held her harder than before. He clutched her so that he could feel the warmth of her form—not bleeding to death on the ice—and so he could feel the delicate bird-bones that formed her mortal body.
Marion looked up at him. He looked down at her. And he wouldn’t have been breathing even if he needed to.
How was Seth supposed to let her go? Not in the moments to come, when they’d need to start running, but when his aching ash heart reached its end. When he could no longer guarantee Marion’s safety from all enemies, whether they be the Godslayer or Konig.
He’d thought the worst heartbreak he could suffer would be kissing Marion and knowing he would never get to kiss her again.
Yet a thought nagged.
Why does Elise want to kill Marion?
Her forehead pressed against Seth’s. Their noses butted together. “We have to run. Together.”
His ears heard the words. But they were meaningless.
Seth hadn’t realized that his immortal form could feel desire. But those words stirred it in him, riding on the back of his compassion. He was strangled by it.
“Marion…”
Her wards exploded with alarms.
She focused on the open doors leading to the stormy night beyond, hands tightening on his shoulders. “Intruder.”
Seth pushed her behind him, went to the balcony. White light was inching through the trees in Marion’s orchard. He’d barely been in Victoria for five minutes, but the balefire had appeared.
Where the balefire went, so too would the Godslayer.
“You’re right. We have to run,” Seth said.
Marion grabbed a bow that was propped beside her vanity. “The Middle Worlds—”
“No.” He took Marion’s arm, looping his hand through the strap on her quiver so she’d have her arrows too.
Balefire leaped to her balcony. Marion gave a strangled cry at the sight of her wall consumed by white flame. “Hold your breath,” Seth said.
And he yanked Marion into Sheol.
* * *
Seth knew that the atmosphere in Sheol would disable Marion. He’d seen it happen multiple times before. Watching a healthy woman keel over the instant she materialized was still an unpleasant shock.
A flower called a Persep
hone blossom grew in the moldiest parts of the Nether Worlds. Its pollen could be distilled into a bright-red potion that demons used to keep human visitors strong for the duration of their visit.
Production of the Persephone Philter had been accelerated since Arawn had planned to turn Sheol over to Adàn’s people, but it still wasn’t ready on the scale required to keep an entire population alive.
There wasn’t enough to protect Marion for long.
But there was enough to spare her this initial pain.
Seth summoned what little was prepared in Duat. He located a storeroom and then he willed a dozen of the potions to ring Marion where she had collapsed.
She hacked blood onto the stone. “Seth…”
He dropped to her side. Seth clutched his wooden sternum—it was cracking. He’d pushed too far against his boundaries. But it stopped throbbing soon enough, and he opened a bottle for Marion. “Drink.”
Marion’s head rested on his arm as she downed the first bottle, and the second. She grabbed a third on her own. She grimaced the entire time that she guzzled it down.
“My gods,” she gasped, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.
“Sorry,” Seth said. “Believe it or not, this is the safest place we’ve got right now.”
“The Nether Worlds? Which reject the very existence of ethereal beings?”
“Well,” he said, and he shrugged. Even with a hostile atmosphere, the Nether Worlds were less deadly than a four-armed murder machine backed by the likes of Dana and Anthony.
Seth pulled Marion to her feet while she sipped a fourth Persephone Philter. She was steadier—capable of standing alone. He kept a hand on her anyway.
Marion’s attention turned to the Pit of Souls. He could easily distinguish individual lives from the black mass pouring into it, but Charity had said she couldn’t see anything in the Pit. Marion seemed to feel differently.
“This isn’t a long-term solution,” she said, tearing her gaze away. “I’ve business to attend to. Plans I must execute. Leliel still needs to be locked inside my angel trap, and I’ve got to get Benjamin to the warp.”