Carnage: Nate Temple Series Book 14

by Shayne Silvers

  I dipped my chin at them. “Make your legend, Riders.” I lifted a hand to point behind them. Through the mist, Ares and Apollo were climbing to their feet, looking alarmed to be surrounded by their aversion to mist. Gunnar howled, and they both jumped in terror, jerking their attention left and right as they swatted at the fog frantically.

  “NIFLHEIM!” Apollo screamed. “Why is it so dark—”

  Ares shook him violently, pointing at the three Horsemen staring them down. “This ain’t Niflheim,” he growled. “Get your shit together.” He drew a flaming sword and doubled in size, and I saw at least two dozen other forms rising up from the mist.

  Apollo glared furiously, but his eyes told me he was biting back his fear—not that it had gone away entirely. He began to glow, powering up—

  Absolution tackled him in midair, looking like Green Lantern, and the two of them flew out into the sky, sinking into the black clouds. Blooms of golden and then green light within made the clouds sizzle before reforming and I blinked. “Wow.” A green and golden knot of light suddenly screamed overhead, the two of them zipping back across the pavilion just to scare the hell out of me, obviously.

  “They, uh, learn pretty quick,” Kára commented, sounding impressed but crouching slightly in fear of another flyby. “And now we’re surrounded,” she said, gripping her trident tightly.

  She was right. Ares’ army surrounded us. It began to rain, splattering down over us and our new enemies, making their heads glisten like fresh blood when illuminated by the crimson lightning.

  Great sheets of rain abruptly slammed down upon us as Zeus turned up the dial, making it hard to see clearly, and hammering away at the mist I’d created. It had served its purpose anyway. I shoved Kára to the side, urging her closer to Zeus. “Let’s give them room.”

  Despair stepped forward, wielding a spear of light in her hands. “They are just skeletons,” she said calmly, her voice cracking across the pavilion like thunder. “And bones break.”

  She aimed her spear forward and the skeletons simply exploded into dust.

  Ares snarled, slamming his fiery sword down into the ground.

  This time, hundreds of skeletons rose up from the mist, and these all wore armor and wielded gleaming weapons. Luckily, they focused on Gunnar and Callie—Justice and Despair.

  Justice reached down and grabbed one of the new skeletons, ripping it in half with a roar. His massive tail wagged, beating at the mist and almost clotheslining me before we escaped its radius of lethality.

  We raced towards Zeus as the sounds of battle rose to a fervor behind us.

  We were just in time to see Zeus practically rip the lid off Pandora’s Box with a manic grin.

  The look of victory and wonder slipped from his face as he realized he’d fallen for the old Trojan Horse shenanigan.

  Embers and sparks erupted from within like a volcano had belched in the god of lightning’s open mouth. His beard caught fire and he screamed, dropping the box.

  But not before a Titan jumped out and punched him in the face with a fist of magma. Not even the torrential rain was enough to put out the flames. Zeus fell to the ground with a roar of pain, surprise, and outrage to see his old foe, Prometheus, play jack-in-the-box rather than Pandora, like he’d…

  Heh. Like he’d hoped.

  Kára turned to me with a feral grin, the rain plastering her hair to her scalp and accentuating the sharp lines of her face. “Prometheus,” she shouted over the storm. “I thought—”

  “But wait…there’s more…” I shouted back, pointing.

  She turned to see Zeus flat on his back, flinging his hands forward and snarling, even as the flesh of his cheeks burned and sizzled from the splash of lava. Lightning bolts struck a dripping shield of hardened magma Prometheus now held, knocking him back enough to give Zeus time to stumble to his feet.

  And only just in time to miss the wicked stone scythe that slammed into the ground where he’d been lying prostrate. A small slip of a girl—half the size of the weapon—snarled like a panther. Pandora, and she had one of Yahn’s eyepatches hanging around her neck rather than the Helm of Darkness I’d told her to use.

  I narrowed my eyes at Kára and the Helm of Darkness she held under the crook of her arm.

  She smiled back innocently. “It was her idea, not mine. I was unconscious, if you recall. I found this sitting next to my armor when I woke up.”

  I grunted, shaking my head. Invisible was invisible. Despite the comical size difference between Pandora and her blade, she yanked it from the ground and spun it in a dizzying blur, like it was a martial arts tournament, screaming as she deflected about a hundred sporadic blasts of lightning from Zeus’s hands.

  Pandora abruptly sidestepped and swung Cronus’ Scythe like a baseball bat, goring Zeus across the stomach as his blasts tore into the space where she’d been standing a second before.

  Prometheus skidded beneath the blurring scythe feet first like he was going for a slide tackle, but he abruptly rose up with a molten lava uppercut to Zeus’ chin that sent him flying with an explosion of embers and sparks.

  Zeus hovered high overhead, clutching his stomach. Ichor and lava dripped down to splash onto the pavilion as he hurled more blasts of lightning down upon Pandora and Prometheus—who now couldn’t reach him and were forced to play defense. Prometheus lifted his hands above his head and a ceiling of molten rock suddenly formed to protect him and Pandora. Rain exploded into steam upon contact, but it didn’t faze either of them. Prometheus was glaring at Zeus. “Coward!” he spat. A glob of lava struck the ground rather than saliva, and his eyes swirled with molten stone rather than light. He was tapping heavily into his Beast, Ignus, risking everything for this fight.

  I began hurling balls of fire at Zeus as I ran, closing the distance.

  Zeus cursed, spun, and fled the mountain, aiming for open air.

  I slid to a halt beside Prometheus and Pandora, staring at Zeus as he flew a safe distance away, holding his arms out wide. The black clouds began to swirl around him, the crimson lightning screaming as it grew, piling on top of itself. Zeus’ eyes glowed like stars and I knew he was about to blow up the entire goddamned mountain.

  I snatched the scythe from Pandora and glared out at the god of lightning. Grimm trotted up behind me, following suit with his own death stare.

  Alucard and Apollo sporadically screamed across the skies like fiery comets, disrupting Zeus’ efforts, his lightning winking out or stabbing down into the empty sky rather than the mountain. Buying us time. I wondered if Alucard was doing it on purpose. Knowing him, probably.

  I glanced back at Pandora. “Aphrodite ran to get Hephaestus,” I said, pointing. “Your dad needs you. I’ve got this.”

  She smiled, wiping golden ichor from her cheeks. “I know you do, Hope.” She roped her arm around Kára, pulling her close. “Our knight in shining armor.”

  Kára’s smile slipped. “Wait—”

  Pandora grinned. “My platonic knight,” she assured her. Kára nodded, appeased. Then Pandora was running towards the prison cells. She must have slapped on her eyepatch halfway down the stairs, because she disappeared between one step and the next.

  “Go, Prometheus,” I said, turning back to the Titan as Zeus’ lightning winked out a few more times at a particularly blinding flurry of golden flashes from Alucard and Apollo. I continued wiping water from my eyes as the rain hammered down on us. “Keep her safe. I don’t really know which side Aphrodite might fall on. Or Hephaestus, for that matter. It’s family versus family, at this point.”

  “Looks like grandpa needs to step in,” he agreed, shooting Zeus a dark glare. He flung his rock shelter to the side. “You make him suffer, Nipple. He’s earned it.”

  I nodded. “I will.”

  He departed, leaving Kára and me to stare out at Zeus and his third attempt at the crimson lightning. “How about a second date?” I asked Kára, keeping my eyes on Zeus.

  “Oh, yes. I wore this just for you,” she
said with a grin.

  I turned to Grimm. “Room for two?” He eyed Kára thoughtfully. “As long as she doesn’t have a sensitive stomach.”

  Kára rolled her eyes. “I have my own ride, pony. Try to keep up.”

  She flared her wings out and Grimm grunted dismissively. “Show off. But you don’t have anyone to ride you—” He cut off abruptly and Kára burst out laughing. I grinned at my unicorn, arching an eyebrow.

  “Well, Grimm,” she said, chuckling, “when a Valkyrie really loves a Horseman—”

  “I get it,” he said grumpily. “And now you made this weird. Put up or shut up.”

  She slapped the Helm of Darkness on and abruptly disappeared. I couldn’t sense a thing. I instinctively reached out with my hand and managed to briefly touch the mountains of Heaven before she swatted my hand away. “Stop!” she snapped, laughing.

  I grumbled. “Fine. Let’s go wrangle up a god, pardners,” I growled in my best Clint Eastwood rasp, wishing I’d taken Carl’s cowboy hat, after all. I climbed atop Grimm and held on for dear life.

  “Yeehaw!” Grimm squealed, taking us to the skies with a sickening lurch.

  “We’ve got him on the run, now!” Kára screamed in an Old West drawl—probably pointing, but that was extremely unhelpful with her being invisible.

  Zeus took one look at Grimm racing towards him, and he promptly turned and bolted away. I relished the irony of Zeus being pursued by the last thing he’d put in Pandora’s Box. Hope.

  The god of lightning fled.

  And the Horseman followed.

  To hunt down a varmint or something.

  65

  I batted away my tenth bolt of inbound lightning, swearing angrily. “Your horn is a goddamned lightning rod,” I shouted through the wind. “You need to get out of here!”

  “Did you grow wings that I’m not seeing?” Grimm yelled back.

  I slapped the Mask of Hope onto my face, and bone spines erupted from my back as a wave of black diamond grit suddenly rolled over my flesh, encasing me in armor much like Grimm wore. I glanced down to see my satchel was now affixed to my waist as part of my armor. It looked like—

  I glared at my Horseman’s fanny pack, cursing the world in general. Whatever. I was still cool. Zeus’ lightning might not kill us with the protective armor, but it would still hurt like hell and slow us down, letting him get away. And two targets were better than one.

  “Keep your distance,” I shouted. “This thing isn’t at a full charge, but maybe I can juice it up with some of these lightning bolts,” I growled.

  Grimm cursed as I slapped him on the ass and leapt off his back in a perfect backflip.

  “Is that a fanny pack?” Grimm hooted, roaring with laughter. I ignored him, focusing on my majestic acrobatics—

  I was struck by a bolt of crimson lightning exactly one second later, and my perfect backflip morphed into a starfish suffering a seizure. My arms and legs shot wide and I gasped as…

  Raw power fused through me, thickening my diamond skin and heightening my senses even more than usual. I shuddered as the last of the tremors subsided, realizing that it hadn’t actually hurt. It had made me spasm involuntarily, but it had also jumpstarted my Mask.

  I saw Zeus frozen in mid-flight, staring at me in stark disbelief.

  I pointed a single claw at him and roared.

  Grimm neighed as lightning narrowly missed him, silhouetting him in the clouds above. He aimed his horn and shot a black painbow down on Zeus, his wings unfurling in a cape of black feathers. The red tips made his matching colors transform him into the apparent monster causing the storm around us.

  I drew my power and flung a whip of black lightning at a nearby crimson bolt from Zeus. It froze in place as my whip wrapped around it. I tucked my wings back and swung, using the frozen lightning like Tarzan used tree branches—to swing through the jungle of clouds.

  At the apex, I released my whip and unfurled my bone spine wings, catching air. Despite having minimal feathers and being designed for combat, they served perfectly well as real wings because a membrane of dark magic hung between each spine. Zeus hurled a dozen more bolts at me and Grimm, and I chose my favorite, flinging my black lightning whip at it.

  Again, the crimson bolt froze upon contact, and I repeated the process, swinging towards the god faster and faster, as I gained a rhythm of the undulating motions.

  “I’m Miles Morales!” I cackled, feeling like the newest Spiderman—the kid who sported black and red threads and wicked sneaks.

  Zeus began to panic, focusing more on his own escape than sucker punching me in the air, since that was now pointless. He was only giving me monkey bars to play on. Silly god.

  Rather than rely on my wings for speed—because I had no conscious idea of how to use them in a specific way since they had always kind of worked on a subconscious level—I hurled more whips at the same clouds Zeus used and found I was able to use them just as well as the crimson fingers of electricity.

  Maybe my Catalyst trick had let me tap into Zeus’ power and it had nothing to do with my Horseman skin at all. As a Catalyst, I’d learned that I seemed to suck up powers as I confronted them, able to tap into them as needed.

  So, even though Zeus stopped hurling as many bolts, I closed the distance quickly, thanks to Grimm’s blasts of painbows herding Zeus directly into my trajectory.

  The Horseman and his unicorn hounded the petty god.

  And I heard Kára laughing gleefully, the sound booming like thunder across the skies. An unseen force struck Zeus in a professional tackle, and the lightning bolt he’d been preparing went limp and flaccid.

  He cartwheeled through the air for a moment, struggling to make sense of things and find a purchase to latch onto with his own whips of lightning.

  Which was when I kicked him in the back of the head, and then latched onto him in a tight hug, wrapping my wings around him so he couldn’t throw out any more whips.

  We sunk into the black clouds below with Grimm and—hopefully—Kára in hot pursuit, plummeting like rocks. I laughed into Zeus’ ears like a maniac.

  “You never should have opened that box, godling,” I snarled, sinking my claws into his ribs.

  To hold him tighter, of course. He gasped and screamed, begging for us to renegotiate, promising me the sun and moon, demanding me to release him, crying that I would need him.

  The sounds rolled off me like water on a duck’s back.

  I did not need this…wretched creature—as he’d called Alice.

  The world did not need this vile varmint either and I was the new Sheriff in these here parts, so it was my job to be the long arm of the law.

  I couldn’t think of any other Western tropes, although I tried.

  We broke cloud cover and I winced in surprise at the perfectly blue sky with pristine white clouds above us. A gleaming city of glass and blindingly white marble raced towards us—surprisingly small, but no less elegant for it.

  Olympus was fucking beautiful.

  And I was aiming straight for the Acropolis.

  We tore through the roof—courtesy of Zeus’ face—and slammed into a statue of, well…

  One could say Zeus was taken down by his own ego.

  His face slammed into the seated statue of himself, head butting his own head and snapping the marble god’s dome clean off—like he’d attempted to tackle his reflection in the mirror, but with a less humorous or harmless outcome.

  For him.

  The marble head crashed to the ground out of sight, and I managed to ride the Olympian down his own chest and lap like a skateboard, leaving a golden smear of ichor from throat to groin before I kick flipped his battered body down to the ground and landed in a perfect superhero pose, my knee grinding into Zeus’ back. I hopped away guardedly, staring at my makeshift skateboard.

  Zeus lay nearly still—trembling and whimpering in a pool of his own golden ichor.

  Fun fact. Worship service was in, because we weren’t alone.


  I flared out my wings and reached into my fanny pack of doom, like a badass.

  66

  Odin and Freya stood on one side, blaspheming by merely existing in this place. They were terrified of my fanny pack, judging by the horrified looks on their faces.

  I saw Loki and Fenrir loitering out front, peering through the open concept entrance of the Acropolis. As big as the building was, it wasn’t quite large enough to house the wolf, so they remained outside. Loki waved at me jovially.

  Hera stood beside her brothers Poseidon and Hades. Hermes stood a few paces back, smirking at my fanny pack. Poseidon gripped his trident, Hades gripped a tall pitchfork, Hermes held his caduceus, and Hera gripped…

  A frozen daiquiri. She took a loud slurp, smirking at me from over her glass. “Sanctuary daiquiri,” she said in answer to my silent question. Her eyes shifted to her groaning husband and I could practically hear her purring louder. “I’m in mourning. Preemptively. And I drink when I’m stressed. And when I’m relaxed. And when I’m celebrating.”

  I nodded very slowly, wondering who I’d need to take out first and how willing Fenrir was to help with a little demolition rehab of the Acropolis.

  The Horseman of Death stood between the two factions, holding his scythe but he wasn’t wearing his Mask. Instead, he looked like a charming, handsome, older gent—a lawyer to settle a property line dispute between two neighboring families after a shared oil field had been discovered.

  Not knowing what else to do, I whipped out Cronus’ Scythe from my fanny pack.

  The gods took one look at the blade and stiffened, their eyes widening in fear. Well, Hera took another lil’ sip of her frozen adult beverage. Part of me really wanted to hang out with her more.

  Death maintained his calm. “So, that’s where it went,” he said slowly. “I assumed as much as soon as Hades told me of the theft.” He shot a glance at Hera, but she pretended not to notice. She obviously hadn’t ratted on me. “And Pandora?”

  No one had asked about Zeus, although his brothers were staring at him with stern frowns.