by E. A. Copen
Chapter Twenty-Six
“He wasn’t going to help us,” Beth said, clutching the soul she stole. “This was the only option.”
Fire sparked in my chest and lit the dry tinder of emotion I’d kept in check. She’d murdered him, the one good person I had left. Moses had stood by me through everything. He’d survived an attack by a goddess, survived a Titan, and in the end, it was a Horseman who did him in.
Emma let out a small gasp behind me. “Is he…?” Her hand shook as it touched the side of his face.
“Dead,” I said and grunted as I hauled Moses up. I laid him over the tarp he’d put on the sofa.
“Bring him back.” Emma gripped my shoulders and spun me around to search my eyes with desperation. “You brought me back. Do it for him.”
Maybe I could’ve, but I needed to get the soul away from Beth first.
Beth smirked and squeezed her fist. The soul shrank and disappeared. “I knew you were too weak to do this.”
I charged at her with a shout, swinging my staff like a club in a blind rage. Beth ducked the first swing with ease and jammed the knobby end of her staff into my stomach. I tumbled backward and into the folding table. Before she could take another swing, I grabbed the kettle and flung it at her. Boiling water sloshed out and coated her face and arms. She screamed and retreated, desperately trying in vain to wipe away the burning water. While she was distracted, I picked up the kerosene stove and threw it at her face.
She somehow had enough time to bat it away before it hit her. “You won’t kill me. You didn’t before. You don’t have the balls for it.”
A spear suddenly flew through the air, embedding itself in the wall right beside Beth’s head. “Maybe he doesn’t,” said Emma, coming to stand beside me. “But I do.” She cocked a gun and pointed it at Beth. Must’ve been Moses’.
The gun barked three times so loud that it drowned out all other sound and left my ears ringing. Crimson blossomed on Beth’s abdomen, and bits of wood exploded near her head. The third bullet ricocheted off a magic shield Beth got up at the last second.
I charged in and pushed aside the hand holding up her shield, but Beth somehow sidestepped, leaving a bloody smear on the wall behind her. She lifted her staff defensively, face pale, her free hand over the spreading bloodstain on her shirt. I batted it aside and stepped forward.
“After everything that’s happened,” I said, closing, “all the lies, the manipulation, the betrayal… I still wanted to think there was a good person somewhere in there.”
She spat a spell at me in a black cloud. I held my hands up and with a blast of power, sent it right back at her. Beth tried to duck so her own spell wouldn’t hit her but wound up stumbling and falling to the floor in the hallway. Her spell careened down the hall and slammed into some chipboard that’d been used to reinforce a window, the magic fizzling to nothing.
Beth lifted her staff in front of her defensively. I struck it with the end of my metal staff and sent it rolling to the side and out of reach. Beth flipped over and crawled away, still holding a hand over the wound in her chest. It didn’t seem to do much good to slow the flow of blood, though. She left a smear of dark red everywhere she went.
I stopped, blocking the exit from the hallway. “There’s no escape, Beth. Give me Moses’ soul back and I won’t kill you.”
She stopped crawling away, her shoulders trembling. A second later, she erupted into mad laughter. “I’m already dead, you idiot. Why the fuck would I help you with anything? You want his soul back? Come and get it.”
Beth sprang up before I could move and sprinted to the end of the hall, throwing her magic out in front of her. It hit the chipboard and split it just a second before she slammed into it, then through it, shattering the glass on the other side.
I raced to the window to peer out into the rain and howling wind just in time to see her running into the next yard. Injured as she was, I could chase after her. I might even catch her, but out in the open like that, the risk was too big that she’d get innocents hurt. Still, if I waited, I might not be able to save Moses. I gripped the top of the busted window and readied to spring out of it.
“Don’t.” Emma’s hand came down on my shoulder. I turned around to find tears streaming down her face. “It’s too late.”
I leaned to the side to see what she was talking about, but it took me walking back to the living room and checking on Moses to see. The ricocheted bullet had hit him in the side of the head and gone all the way through, leaving blood and brain matter splattered all over the tarp. Emma was right. There was no fixing Moses’ body, and I couldn’t put a soul back in a broken body. He was gone.
“It’s my fault.” Emma put a shaky hand over her mouth and choked back a sob.
“Hey, no.” I pulled her into a tight embrace to let her cry against my shoulder. “This was Beth. She did this, Emma. Not you. And she’s going to pay for it.”
“How? She’s gone.”
I smoothed a hand over her hair and kissed the top of her head. “I might not know where she is, but we both know where she’s going.”
She sniffled and leaned back. “Loki.”
I nodded. “Are you…you?”
“I…” She trailed off and shook her head. “I can feel it, this thing tightening around my heart, trying to strangle me.” She suddenly gripped me tighter and met my eyes. “I don’t know how long I have. I need to tell you something. I didn’t want this, Laz. He made me.”
“I know. There’s a spell attached to your soul. I’m going to fix it. I just need a little more time.”
She stepped back, gripping her hair. “I can feel him in my head. I can’t… I can’t stop it. You need to stop me, Laz, before he gets control back. I don’t know what he’ll make me do.”
If she was asking me to hurt her, I couldn’t. I couldn’t restrain her and leave her either, not with this storm coming. That could be a death sentence. But there was one thing I could do to stop her.
“Emma, look at me.” I cupped her cheek in my hand and raised her eyes to mine. They were brimming with tears, threatening to overflow again. I leaned down and kissed her.
She blinked as I leaned back. “What was that for?”
“Don’t hate me when you wake up, okay?” I ran my thumb over her temple, pushing aside a strand of hair and sending a small pulse of magic out. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she went limp. I caught her in my arms and grunted as I hauled her up into a fireman’s carry. She was heavy for a short lady, but I’d never tell her that. She’d kick my ass.
I carried her out into the rain and put her in the car, pausing once she was secured. Moses was still inside. As much as I wanted to go back for him, that meant leaving Emma unattended. Beth might circle back around for her, or she might wake up and escape. I couldn’t risk it. I’d have to arrange for someone else to come for him before I sailed out.
I walked around to the other side of the car and slid into the driver’s seat, sliding my staff into the back next to Odin’s horn. He’d asked me to bring it before Loki. Guess that was going to happen sooner rather than later.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The weather was getting worse. Driving across town, I had to turn the car around to avoid low-lying streets where rain had accumulated and hadn’t drained away just yet. Parts of the city were already fighting to stay above water, and the storm hadn’t even hit yet. That didn’t bode well for what would happen to New Orleans if I failed.
My phone rang as I cruised through an empty intersection. It was raining so hard, I decided it would be best to pull over to answer rather than drive distracted. I could barely see out the windshield in the deluge as it was. The number wasn’t one I immediately recognized, but I answered anyway. “Hello?”
Static answered for a second before a distant voice cut in. “—had to drive down…one piece…meet at?”
I didn’t recognize the voice until near the end of the broken conversation. “Haru? Haru Nakamata, is that you? Hold on, th
e connection’s bad.” The towers were probably overloaded with people trying to get in contact with their relatives or others calling around trying to get out. Add to that the wind and rain and you had a situation where cell phones were suddenly the least reliable form of communication. I shifted right and left, leaning halfway over Emma’s prone body to get a decent connection. “Can you hear me?”
“Barely,” Haru answered. At least he was coming through clearly. That could change at any second, though. “We had to drive down from another airport. This city is a ghost town. Where are you?”
“Meet me at the Charity Hospital. And Haru? You’ve got your swords, right? Both of them?”
He gave a derisive snort. “Of course. Wouldn’t be very good at my job if I didn’t.”
“Good. See you there.” I hung up and pulled back onto the road.
It was another fifteen minutes before I stopped the car in front of the towering Charity Hospital complex. Against the wet, gray sky, it looked more like a prison complex than a hospital. I pushed that thought away and tried to remember where I’d met with Loki inside before. An old operating theater. Beth had pushed me toward the third floor if I remembered right, but I wasn’t going inside, not until Haru got there. I decided to try and see if I could get enough signal on my phone to check the weather online.
A loud screech made me look up just a few seconds after I pulled out my phone, the sound of claws on metal. A harpy dove into view, perching on the fence ahead. Six more joined the first in quick succession, each one staring at me and flashing sharp teeth and claws.
Great. Guess it wouldn’t be as simple as walking into Mordor, would it?
I grabbed my staff from the back, pausing when I noticed the umbrella Beth had left. It’d work too. I slid the horn over my head and tucked it under my arm before opening the door and stepping out armed with a staff in one hand and a black umbrella in the other. “Come on, ladies. Let’s dance.”
Three of them took to the sky. I opened the umbrella and held it over my head. It wouldn’t hold up for long, but at least it’d make it difficult for the harpies to claw me from above while I took care of the sitting ducks. I pointed my staff at the spot on the fence where they were sitting and unleashed a focused blast of energy strong enough to rip a hole in the steel wiring. It smacked one of them off her perch and forced the others to move or get hit. The one that didn’t splatted against the building behind her and slid down, leaving a dark stain behind.
Familiar screeching filled the air, and claws shredded the fabric of the umbrella. Another set of talons closed around the metal wires that held the umbrella together and jerked it out of my hands. I whirled around and hit the offending harpy with my staff. It made a resounding gong sound as it struck her leg, and she screamed, letting go to fly away, her leg hanging uselessly. Hurt, but not dead.
Another shriek echoed down the street from behind me, this one too deep to belong to a harpy. The harpies freaked out, squawking and clamoring back toward the fence. I turned my back to them, ready to face whatever new threat was about to come charging at me down the street. It roared again, and the ground shook.
No amount of preparation could’ve made me ready for what came around the corner. Imagine the biggest, fattest snake you’ve ever seen, the kind they’d have to make using CGI in the movies. Now double it in size and give it the upper body of an angry obese woman with tentacles for hair. She came slithering down the street, pulling herself along using scaly arms, serpentine tongue slashing through raindrops.
I stepped back, squashing the urge to run. My eyes snapped to the car where Emma lay unconscious. It was right in this new monster’s path.
Not if I can help it. I tossed aside the wrecked umbrella, gripped my staff, and took off running toward the snake lady.
Before I could reach her, a bright red Lamborghini tore through an intersection and slammed into the monster’s side. The car crunched as it hit, the front of it mimicking an empty beer can at a frat party. Snake lady fell over, tail flailing, arms waving. Black blood flowed into the street. She wasn’t dead either, but whoever’d run the car into her had dealt a hefty blow.
The driver’s side car door opened and a stunned Haru tumbled out, shaking his head. He blinked at me. Haru had a cut on his forehead but seemed no worse for wear. The car, however, was a complete loss.
“Dude!” I shouted, running up to him. “You wrecked a Lambo! The hell’s wrong with you?”
Snake lady screamed and finally got herself upright. At the same time, the harpies shrieked and took to the air, circling overhead.
Haru drew his sword. “We’ve got bigger problems. I’ll take the snake. You handle the harpies.”
I shook out my hand and sent a pulse of power down into the iron staff, which made it glow a dim, electric blue. “I just remembered something about you, Haru. Your taste in women sucks.”
The first harpy swooped out of the sky. I tried for another blast, but I’d used up most of the power stored in the staff with the last one. This one barely bumped the harpy off its course. At the last minute, I ducked to the side and spun, swinging a home run. The staff hit the back of the harpy’s head and sent her to the ground. I capitalized on the moment and struck the ground with the end of my staff. The road shook and a fissure opened, swallowing up the monster and closing before she could get back to her feet.
“You’re getting better at that!” Haru shouted, narrowly avoiding being crushed by the snake lady. She’d coiled her body around him and was busy squeezing the life out of him.
“Thanks, man,” I said, batting aside another diving harpy. “You too.”
He stabbed into her meaty thigh, prompting another scream. Or, at least, it might’ve been a thigh. Did snakes even have thighs? While she was screaming about the first injury, Haru drew his other sword and sliced open her throat. Black blood sprayed everywhere, coating Haru in it. While the snake lady gripped her throat to stop the flow of blood, Haru climbed up onto her arm and deepened the cut. She reared back, eyes rolling, and the head split from her body, rolling aside in the street. Haru gracefully jumped down, landing on his feet like a cat.
He flashed a wide grin. “I’ve always been good at it.”
The harpies renewed their attack. No matter how often I hit them, or how many I seemed to take out, there were always more. Haru sliced several in half or took their limbs, yet for every one we killed, two more seemed to appear.
“How many of these things are there?” Haru shouted above their screeching.
“I don’t know, but we can’t keep fighting them out in the open like this. Someone’s going to happen by and see.”
Two particularly ambitious harpies dive-bombed Haru. He held up his swords over his head to protect himself, which was apparently exactly what they were counting on. One harpy clawed at his hand, prying one sword free and carrying it off. Haru hurled a curse at the monster in Japanese.
I lifted my staff, holding it like a javelin and tried to track the harpy in flight. Maybe I could hit it, but chances were good I couldn’t. I’d never been much of an athlete.
A sound pricked at the edges of my hearing, a low chorus of caws. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a black cloud swoop out of the sky. No, not a black cloud, but hundreds of black birds in a wedge formation, with the largest bird I’d ever seen leading the charge.
“Are those…crows?” I pointed.
Haru turned as the birds dove into the harpies, pecking at them with their beaks and scratching with their clawed feet. The harpies were quickly outnumbered and overpowered. Haru smiled. “That’d be the cavalry, as you Americans say.”
“I don’t say that,” I mumbled.
The largest crow swooped out of the sky, detaching from the battle. As soon as his crow feet touched the ground, a transformation rippled through his body, changing him into one of the familiar Tengu, Haru’s sword clutched in his beak. He bowed and offered it to Haru.
Haru did the bowing thing. “Thank you, Karasu-Sama.”
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“Yes, yes.” The Tengu waved a wing dismissively. “You should go. We’ll finish this out here.”
“What about the bodies?” I gestured to the giant headless snake lady stinking up the street.
I’d never been able to read Tengu expressions that well since their mouths were beaks and their faces covered in feathers, but I got the impression he was giving me an offended look. “I said we would take care of it. You should be elsewhere doing other things, yes?”
“There’s a woman in that car.” I pointed to the car I’d parked. “I need her to go back to Algiers. I don’t think she’ll wake up, but if she does, she might be combative. Don’t hurt her. She’s under Loki’s spell.”
The crow nodded. “We’ll keep her safe. Go.”
I nodded and turned around, sprinting toward the hospital with War at my side.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The air inside the hospital was even more humid than the first time. Didn’t stop it from burning as I pulled it into my lungs on the climb up the stairs. I needed to get into better shape. Haru, on the other hand, took the stairs two at a time and had to wait on the landing for me to catch up.
“Which floor?” he asked, hopping impatiently up and down.
“Third.” I stopped at the landing to catch my breath. “But we’re not going in to start a fight.”
Haru sighed. “And why not? Loki deserves to die.”
“If we go in on the offensive, we won’t stand a chance. Best to play this smart, Haru.”
He squinted at me as if he were trying to figure out if I were telling the truth, then shrugged. “As long as he’s dead, what do I care? But this has to end here, Laz. You promised.”
“It will.” I pulled myself up the stairs, and we took the last flight shoulder to shoulder.
The door to the operating theater was marked by an old decaying sign over a set of double doors. Haru and I pushed through them and stopped at the top of the circular theater.