Linn would never know what Linda’s fate was, but the look on her face as she ran to greet Ter’nian was ecstasy.
“Linda, wait!” Linn screamed, afraid to step through the portal. For a second, the adult woman stopped, looking back at the girl. Linn always wondered, after, if she thought they would try to force her to come back. Linn still had one arm in front of James’ chest, but that wouldn’t have stopped him, and he wasn’t trying to move.
Linn hurled the bone through the arch. Linda put out her hands in a reflex, and caught it. It was perhaps baseball sized, and she juggled it, almost dropping it, in surprise.
“Give that to Ter’nian. It’s very important.” Linn spoke. Linda shook her head, and Linn shouted it as loudly as she could. Now Linda nodded. Behind her, the blue dragon was swooping in to a landing, and he was vast. The ground shook on that side of the portal when he landed. Linda turned to greet him, holding Adel’s bone, with a kernel of his memories crystallized in it, cupped in her hands. The dragon circled his body around her, snaking his head around until he was peering through the arch, his vast eye all they could see.
He couldn’t possibly fit through that. A nictating membrane closed over his eye, then opened again, a tear the size of Linn’s head trickling from the corner of his eye.
Had they sent a child to guard the prisoners, because the adults were too big? Linn wondered. Or maybe Adel had been the equivalent of her age, when he was exiled. She knew it wasn’t a full understanding, more like the glimmer of one.
They stared into his eye for a long moment. Linda was vanished from their sight, but slowly, Linn felt a voice form in her head.
“You are... a child.”
“I am not only a child.” Linn knew there was still growing, but after this... she wasn’t a child.
“You know him.”
Linn didn’t have to ask what he meant. “I do. He can’t return to you, and we wanted to warn you, before we closed the portal.”
She felt James twitch, beside her, and looked up at him. His face was twisted in something like pain. He twitched again.
“I speak to him. He is protector.” The faint voice might have been deafening, were the portal not between her and Ter’nian.
“We fear for you.” She informed the fantastic beast. It seemed like a foolish concern, looking at him now. But the goblins had seemed so rabid.
“I know.” There was a sad flavor to the words. “We learned... and things are not as they were. We remain regretful, and it is not enough.”
She got a gust of sensations. Pain, shame, guilt, and a peace with the system that had been developed in the turns of the galaxy since Adel had been locked away from him, by a treachery.
“We cannot allow this gate to remain.” The voice was firm now, certain. Earth would have to make its own way, to create a harmony with the beings who all shared her surface and seas. “We will close it permanently. This... hooman, and I speaking to him.”
“That’s what we were trying to do.” Linn shouted out loud.
James turned to her. “Run.”
“What?” Linn blinked up at him. He looked funny, and not in a funny way.
The dragon’s voice sounded in her head, “You will want to depart now, as your companion has asked my help to do something rather rash..."
“Run!” James repeated hoarsely, and pushed her, following her around the arch to the device. He stopped at it and started pressing buttons. He moved like a puppet on strings.
Linn ran. She was suddenly terrified. Linda was gone, looked happy. James was not James any more, she knew without needing to stick around to ask more questions. She wasn’t possibly going to get out of Nyx before he set that thing off. It wasn’t a full-yield nuclear device, it emitted a huge electromagnetic pulse, which should, in theory, kill any immortals within range by disrupting their nanobots and condemning them to a life of a mortal. It wasn’t a fast death. She didn’t want to live forever, but she didn’t want to be close enough to find out what death by explosion or radiation felt like, either.
There was no one else in the room, just her own pounding feet. She wasn’t going to make it... and she had an idea. Linn focused on the High Path, on forming a nice, small, portal to the other plane. It was hard, inside. They had been told not to do it, over and over, to only open one where they had room for error.
The patch of shimmering grey formed. It wasn’t big enough. Linn didn’t have time: there was a noise behind her, a flash that put a hard-edged shadow of her form into the High Path... she leaped, tucked, and rolled.
The floor of the tunnel wasn’t soft, but she didn’t lose any skin as she skidded into it, and scrambled to her feet, running to her grandfather, and hoping he had the boys with him. She had closed the Path before the second flash of the explosion, so she would live. Linn could feel herself shaking. She hadn’t known the humans long, but they were both gone. Nyx was gone. Ter’nian had scared her on a level she didn’t know existed.
What Linn really wanted was a hug, and a reassuring chat, and some hot cocoa.
What she found was a confused battle of sorts, and her grandfather with a look of distracted surprise. “Where the Hades...” He hacked offhandedly at a goblin, who was crawling across the scree with only one good arm. Linn looked away from what happened when half its head was gone.
She didn’t get the hug. Instead, he produced a belt knife. “All I’ve got. Good you’re alive. Watch out!”
Linn spun around and fended off the clutching hands of a dark naiad. She’d never seen one that color before. Seaweed green, blotchy, long sharp teeth, lots of them. And green blood, oozing slowly from her fingers where Linn had slashed them open.
Lambent had been a short sword, all Linn could handle. The knife wasn’t much shorter than Lambent, but it was awkward. All she could do was be grateful the naiads didn’t seem to have weapons beyond her taloned fingers and teeth. The fingers were on long arms, though, and the naiad was angry at Linn now.
Linn wasn’t sure quite what to do. She hacked at the hands, and saw a finger come loose, flying off into the gravel beach.
“Grandpa!” She wailed. “How do you make these things stop?”
If she were properly armed, she wouldn’t be this worried. She’d kill for a gun. This made her laugh, which startled the naiad out of her attack. She stared Linn in the eye. Linn lunged, knife gripped firmly.
Killing that naiad felt awful, and she was only going to have to do it again with a different one. Heff was fighting three goblins, Linn could see, and beyond him, Blackie and Merrick. The two were lined up head to tail, covering one another’s backs. Other groups were scattered around within her sight – no one she recognized, but she decided that any naiads or goblins must be the enemy. The naiads had tridents, some of them. The long poles were intended for fishing and water use. On land they looked very awkward.
The goblins, on the other hand… some carried short swords, others knives. Her grandfather had left bodies in his wake, and Linn headed in that direction. She also wondered why the goblins didn’t have guns, but she wasn’t going to argue since she didn’t have a gun.
The leaf-bladed sword she picked up was covered in gunk she didn’t want to think about. Linn concentrated, hard, on it. “I’m naming you Nyx.”
She could feel the blade take the power she was putting into it, and the gunk burned off. Linn didn’t have time to contemplate that and why it didn’t hurt. She ran toward Heff, holding the sword ready.
Chapter 22
There was no cover. The doorway that opened to Nyx was a gaping hole, and everyone seemed to be avoiding it through some unspoken mutual agreement. The lip of the caldera wasn’t any help. Linn wasn’t sure just how live this volcano was, but she wasn’t going to risk falling in it. The sea was still coughing up deep green naiads and their cargo of goblins on the shore. The circling seabirds overhead were expressing their displeasure in the only way remaining to them, which just made the loose stones underfoot even more slippery.
“Grandpa.”
He turned a little, but didn’t look fully at her. Linn was facing in the other direction, anyway. She’d cover one direction, he’d see the other. There was a lull in attackers, but she didn’t know how long that would last.
“What, honey?” He sounded distracted, tired, and hoarse.
“Why don’t we just let them pass?” Linn felt like her arms were broken. She could hardly hold Nyx up. How long had they been fighting? Hours? Days?
“What happened down there?”
They hadn’t had a chance to talk yet. Since Linn had dropped out of the High Path practically at his feet, they’d been only yards apart, but no time or breath to talk.
“The device was detonated.” It wasn’t time to talk about how, or by whom.
Grandpa didn’t ask. “So there is nothing down there.”
“Only slow death.” Linn wanted to lie down and sleep for... a long time. But not in a glass coffin. She shivered in the cold air, but she was sweating from effort.
“We can channel them into it. Go up to the rim.” he ordered her.
Linn obeyed. Behind her, she could hear him roaring orders. Linn sat just below the rim, hugging her knees, still gripping Nyx in case a stray goblin popped up. Slowly, the people fighting broke free and retreated. At first, the goblins, angry and not too bright anyway, followed.
The naiads turned the tide. Screaming and hissing, they stormed toward the tunnel mouth. The goblins followed. By this time, Linn had Merrick on one side, Blackie on the other. They were both leaning on her, and she didn’t mind that they were covered in nasty gunk. They were warm, and she was shaking.
They sat as the last of the goblins on the island ran into the tunnel.
“They’ll come back out when they discover there is nothing left.” Linn discovered her throat hurt. She must have been yelling again. She’d felt that way the last time, too.
Blackie licked her cheek.
“Ewwww...” Linn swiped at it with her free hand. “You don’t know what’s on me. Disgusting boy.”
Merrick let his tongue loll out in a wolfish grin.
“We need to leave.” Linn went on. She wasn’t thinking fast, but she was thinking. If they simply walked away…
Grandpa Heff had the idea too, she saw. He opened and anchored a portal and was ushering people through as fast as they would move. Some couldn’t move... she saw one man carry another through, slung over his shoulder. The dangling, bloody hand of the other man dragged on the rocks and Linn didn’t think he was only unconscious.
She staggered to her feet and, weaving, headed for the portal. There would be another wave of attackers at any minute now, and she was just not moving fast enough. Linn was trying not to drag the tip of her sword in the rocks, but it was getting heavier with every step.
“Blackie, Merrick, in.” Her grandfather pointed and they trotted through, looking like she felt. Every step was agony. Heff scooped her up, stepped into the portal, and close it behind them.
“Can you walk?” He asked her, putting her down. “We aren’t going far.”
“What about the naiads and goblins?” Linn had finally thought through what would happen next. She was trying not to think about what had come before.
“Mac’Lir is coming.” He didn’t say how he knew.
“I can walk.” Linn put one foot in front of the other. “As long as it isn’t far.”
She was so glad to be off the island, to know she would never have to see that terrible place again, it gave her a second wind. She ached everywhere, but it was possible, she learned now, to keep going on for a surprisingly long time if one just put a foot down, and then another, a bit in front of the first one.
Linn knew Grandpa had said not far. She also knew Grandpa would have said anything to keep her moving. He was good at getting more out of people than they knew they had in them. She’d lost count of her steps, and the time, and even Blackie and Merrick, who were somewhere in front of her.
“Are we going to come out in Valhalla?” She asked blearily, addressing her grandfather’s back as he walked in front of her.
He looked over his shoulder, “No, where did you get that idea?”
“It’s where Loki was sending his people. And some of them are still with us.”
Grandpa shook his head. “No, these are others. I think all the Norse had gone when the first wave hit the beach.”
“Was that all of the goblins?” Linn remembered what Mac’Lir had said about an army.
“Probably not.” Grandpa Heff dropped back a pace, next to her. “I know you are curious, but perhaps when we have gotten rest?”
Linn followed his point, and saw the end of the tunnel. They had arrived. “Oh, good.”
She was the last person out of the portal, which faded into nothingness behind her. Linn stopped moving, which might have been a mistake, and looked around. She didn’t recognize their surroundings.
“Where are we?”
When he had said not Valhalla, her next thought had been Mac’Lir’s castle. It was close, geographically, to Iceland. Certainly closer than the Sanctuary. Now, she was conscious that she was swaying on her feet, and standing in the midst of a perfect garden. The air was warm, gentle, and scented with flowers.
“Quetzalcoatl’s Court.” Heff took her arm, and she leaned a little on him. He had to be tired, too, but he felt solid and sturdy as they moved again.
“I don’t want to be here.” Linn wasn’t thrilled with how slow her brain was. She didn’t want to be here, her heart was sinking, and it took her until the turn in the garden path to remember why she had this dreadful feeling about being here, now.
“I needed to bring the lost ones, from Nyx, to him.” Grandpa steered her toward a patio and a set of open French doors. Linn walked through the soft white curtains and balked.
“I’m muddy. And bloody.” She was looking down at the beautiful rug. It was getting closer, slowly.
Over her head she could hear her grandfather calling for someone. The rug was soft on her cheek, and Linn closed her eyes, savoring the warmth, and the safety. Careful hands were picking her up, and she tried to open her eyes again, but they were so heavy.
Everything hurt, but that was getting further away now, too.
“She was injured recently, and hasn’t given herself time to heal.” Grandpa’s voice, rough and exasperated. Linn tried to respond and point out that she had been doing important things.
“How bad?” Linn didn’t know that voice.
Whatever the answer was, she didn’t hear it. She was finally unconscious.
Linn woke up to the familiar smell of frangipani. She opened her eyes, looking for her grandmother, and then realized the scent was blowing in the open window. She sat up, and it was only then that she remembered she ought to hurt. She didn’t hurt, but her mind was whirring like the hummingbird’s wings.
The little bird darted into the room, and then back out again, looking for the flowers that were growing across the window and making the smell she had noticed. Linn stretched, swung her feet out of bed, and looked at her skin. She wasn’t quite as blotchy as she had been. The feather on her palm was beginning to fade into an ashy grey rather than the stark black it had been when fresh. Her hair... that felt as though it were the same awkward cut as it had been. She wondered when she would have time to go see a stylist.
Right now, she had no time. She needed clothing, more than the thin nightgown she was wearing, and food... Linn put one hand on her stomach. Food, then to talk to people. Rather a lot of people, in places all over the world, and she wasn’t looking forward to going anywhere. She wanted home, and to lie on the beach, and that was about it, for the fo
reseeable future.
The wardrobe yielded clothing in her size, if not her style. The long silk sundress was the closest to something she would consider wearing, everything else was lingerie, or evening wear. Linn contemplated the thought of jeans and a t-shirt wistfully. Hers had vanished, presumably for cleaning, if they weren’t beyond repair. She seemed to recall various tears in cloth and clothing from the battle on the island. Battles were rough on clothes, and her body.
Linn did find that she was sore, and very stiff, as she moved around. Before dressing, she did some stretches and loosened muscles. There would be no threat here, with Quetzalcoatl and his people around, but she would rather be prepared. Food, then Grandpa, Blackie, and Merrick.
The hall was empty, and she hadn’t been able to find shoes, besides high heels which were utterly out of the question, so she walked barefoot through the long hall and down the stairs, following her ears and smell to the big morning room. Small tables with chairs were scattered around this room, which was partly open to the outside, so you weren’t quite sure if you were in the garden or the house, still.
Linn paused in the doorway, and then saw her goals. Blackie and Merrick, in boy form... no, men. She corrected herself, looking at them. They were focused on food and didn’t see her until she was almost to them.
They had grown since this had all started. Merrick stood up when he spotted her.
“Linn.” His face looked thinner than she remembered, and his hair was different.
Blackie leapt up, almost knocking his chair over, and hugged her tight. Linn gasped for air. He was solid, warm, and seemed to be healthy as a horse. She could hear his heart pounding against her cheek.
“Oof!” Linn gave him a squeeze, and then pushed away. “Gerroff me. I’m starved, and you just saw me last night.”
The God's Wolfling (Children of Myth Book 2) Page 18