Poison Fruit

by Jacqueline Carey

  I didn’t feel alone for long or chilled, for that matter. A gust of warm wind carrying all the lush green and rich golden promise of summer with it announced Persephone’s arrival. It soon mingled with the stink of diesel fumes as a long line of armored SUVs emerged from the crude access road that cut across Hel’s territory. The snowdrop fairy hadn’t been kidding. There were a lot of them.

  I turned my back on the basin and Yggdrasil, facing the vehicles and raising my pillowcase over my head, holding it taut with both hands.

  And yes, I felt pretty damn stupid doing it.

  The SUVs fanned out and halted, disgorging dozens and dozens of men in high-tech black body armor, helmets and face masks rendering them anonymous. As one of them opened the passenger door of the lead vehicle and assisted Persephone out of it, the clouds parted overhead, sunlight spilling over the dunes.

  Somewhere in the basin below, Garm let loose an uneasy howl.

  “My lady Persephone!” I shouted, my arms trembling. “I’m here under a flag of truce. Can we talk?”

  She looked mildly annoyed, but she nodded at the mercenary assisting her. “Bring her to me.”

  Two mercenaries escorted me to the goddess. The rest worked industriously at unloading arms and equipment I couldn’t even begin to identify from the vehicles and setting it all up along the edge of the basin.

  “What do you want, pretty Daisy?” Persephone looked me up and down. “As you can see, I’m quite busy. Also, you’re trespassing,” she added. “Though I’m willing to overlook it just the once.”

  “I’ve come to beg,” I said simply.

  She brightened. “Oh, well, then! Go right ahead.”

  “Please don’t—”

  With a faint scowl, Persephone flattened one hand, and I was driven to my knees in the sand as though struck by a pile driver. “You said you came to beg, pretty Daisy. Do so.”

  A rill of anger ran through me, but I quashed it mercilessly. I’d spoken bold words to Hel about offering up my pride, and I needed to make good on them. Gazing up at Persephone, I clasped my hands together. If it was begging she wanted, it was begging she would get. “Wise and beautiful goddess, I humbly implore—”

  Her scowl deepened. “Don’t make a mockery of it. Just speak from the heart, Daisy.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Daniel Dufreyne emerging from one of the vehicles, his long coat and business suit contrasting incongruously with the armor-clad mercenaries. Bowing my head, I squelched another surge of anger.

  In front of me, one delicate, sandal-shod foot tapped the sand impatiently beneath the hem of a diaphanous gown. “I’m waiting.”

  I looked up at Persephone’s beautiful face. “Please don’t do this,” I said. “If you claim Hel’s demesne, you’ll be destroying a place I and many others call home. The world is growing too small. For many of the eldritch, there’s nowhere left for them to go. And my lady . . . there’s a chance that you could break the skein of time if you kill the Norns. There’s a chance that you could unravel the entirety of existence. So I’m begging you, on behalf of everyone and everything that I hold dear, please, please don’t do this.”

  Persephone’s expression turned thoughtful. “How badly do you desire this boon, pretty Daisy? Would you be willing to renounce Hel’s service for mine?” She stooped before me, her face close to mine. Her warm breath smelled of honey and pomegranates, and motes of sunlight danced around us both. “Would you renounce your family and friends, all that you hold dear, everything you’ve ever loved, and pledge yourself to serve me, and me alone?”

  Somewhere in the background, Dufreyne coughed.

  Blinking away tears, I whispered, “Yes. If that’s what you require, my lady, yes.”

  “Let me consider it.” Persephone tilted her head, sunlight pouring down the shining curtain of her hair. “No.”

  “My lady—”

  “You haven’t been listening to me,” she interrupted me, holding up one finger. Hectic glints of gold shimmered in her eyes. “I want my own demesne!”

  Emphasizing her point, Persephone jabbed me in the chest with her finger, driving the breath from my lungs and sending me flying backward, over the rim of the basin. It felt like I’d been hit by a truck. I tumbled head over heels down the steep slope, scrabbling at the loose sand, my chest heaving in a futile effort to suck in air. Below me, Garm gave a full-throated howl and headed for the slope.

  Crap, no!

  I managed to break my momentum. Breath or no breath, I scrambled up the face of the dune. There was shouting at the top. Someone grabbed me by the collar of my jacket and hauled me over the crest.

  “You’re welcome, Daisy,” Dufreyne’s smooth voice said.

  I spat sand out of my mouth and drew in a wheezing breath redolent with his wrongness. “Fuck you!”

  “You might want to cover your ears,” he advised me.

  Someone shouted, “Fire!”

  I clapped my hands over my ears and whirled just in time to see one of the mercenaries launch a rocket-propelled grenade from a long tube over his shoulder at the charging figure of Garm, halfway up the slope and no longer looking anything less than massive.

  My throat closed, but the missile veered unexpectedly away from the hellhound, exploding on the east side of the basin in a geyser of sand. Garm paused with an uncertain whine to gaze in the direction of the explosion, slobber dripping from either side of his jowls.

  The mercenary examined the sight on his launcher. “What the fuck? Sorry, my lady,” he added.

  Persephone’s dainty nostrils flared with disdain. “Mortal magic.” She waved one careless hand like someone whisking away a fly, and there was a tinkling, splintering sound as the coven’s hastily performed protection spell shattered. “There.” She pointed across the basin toward our encampment, then rounded on me. “What manner of forces have you mustered?”

  “Go to hell,” I spat at her.

  “No matter.” Persephone tapped her lush lips in thought. “Send half your men to root them out,” she said to the commander of the mercenaries. “Give no quarter. Meanwhile, proceed here as discussed and prepare the drones.”

  He saluted her. “My lady.”

  “Reload and fire on the hellhound,” she said to the mercenary with the RPG. “Your missiles will fly true now.”

  After that, a lot of things happened, all of which I watched with helpless horror.

  Garm was the first casualty. He’d padded out of range to investigate the explosion, but a couple of Persephone’s men clambered down the dune to lure him back, shouting and waving. A convoy of ten SUVs was halfway around the rim of the basin, under ineffectual fire from the hunting rifles of members of the Fairfax clan attempting an ambush, when Garm came roaring back and charged the slope, yellow eyes blazing.

  The first missile took him square between his glowing eyes, but Garm’s skull must have been made of something denser than bone. It took a second missile to finish him. With a plaintive whine, the hellhound twice the size of a VW Beetle lay down in the sand and breathed his last.

  Tears streamed down my face.

  Across the basin, a lone figure stepped forth from a stand of cottonwood trees, a crown of antlers silhouetted against the sky. The convoy halted. The Oak King raised a horn to his lips and blew.

  It was a wild sound, high and eerie, flung up into the cloudless sky. The sky echoed it back.

  Clouds began to gather, dark and dense.

  The Wild Hunt had arrived.

  Spectral riders on spectral horses, they slanted down from the sky toward the convoy. Their leader had the face of a skull, its eye sockets filled with shadows and unholy glee, a gilded crown fused to his bony head.

  The convoy scattered in terror, SUVs jolting west across the sandy terrain, plunging east into the basin. Some vehicles froze, armor-clad men spilling out to run on foot in a blind panic. With a rolling thunder of ghostly hoofbeats and a cacophony of horns, the Wild Hunt gave chase to everything that fled
, wheeling and dividing in the sky above them.

  “Hold fast!” Persephone shouted, her voice ringing with fury. “They cannot harm you!”

  Maybe she was right, although I had my doubts—the Night Hag had killed poor old Irma Claussen with sheer terror—but there were other combatants on the field now. In the basin, a sinkhole opened up beneath an SUV, miring its rear half in the sand. Knotty figures of duegar emerged from hidden burrows, swarming the vehicle. Mikill and the other three frost giants strode forth from Yggdrasil II’s entrance, armed with shields and battle-axes.

  Across the basin, the eldritch entered the fray, Stefan and the Outcast leading the charge over the rim on dirt bikes, Gus the ogre and others following on foot. In the dunes to the west, I could hear sporadic gunfire and the yipping and howling of wolves on the hunt. Some of the Fairfaxes must have decided to give chase as wolves.

  “Never mind.” Persephone turned her back on the battle to address her mercenary commander. “The sooner we take down the tree, the fewer casualties. Are the drones ready?”

  He looked pale and unsure. “Yes, my lady. But—”

  Persephone laid one hand on his arm, gazing into his face. “But what?”

  The uncertainty in the mercenary commander’s face vanished, giving way to adoration. “Nothing, my lady.”

  Drones.

  It hadn’t registered when she’d said it before. The equipment the mercenaries had set up along the rim, tubes with tripod legs . . . those were drones. As in remotely controlled unmanned missiles, the kind of things the U.S. military used for terrorist strikes and God knows what else.

  “No,” I said in unthinking denial. “Oh, God! Please, no.”

  Everyone but Daniel Dufreyne, who arched an eyebrow in my direction, ignored me. The commander barked orders about securing the perimeter, and a contingent of mercenaries peeled off and spread out behind us.

  “Launch the bird!” the commander shouted.

  One of the tubes spat out a missile, its wings snapping open in midair. It looked more like a child’s toy than a deadly weapon as it soared over the basin toward Yggdrasil II. Even the viewfinder the mercenary used to guide it reminded me of something from a vintage toy store. It was the real deal, though.

  “Remember, it’s just like bull’s-eyeing womp rats in your T-16 back home,” the commander joked.

  “Roger that,” the mercenary with the viewfinder replied without looking up.

  The drone soared over the basin, over the combatants, who paused uncertainly to look up.

  It soared straight into Yggdrasil II’s entrance.

  “It’s pitch-black in there,” the mercenary operating the drone complained. “I can’t see—”

  There was an explosion somewhere in the sands deep beneath us, and Yggdrasil creaked and groaned in anguish.

  “No,” I whispered.

  The mercenary glanced up from his viewfinder. “Don’t think I got all the way down to the roots.”

  “Don’t worry,” the commander said. “You’ll get her on the next try.”

  “No!” I flung myself at the mercenary before he could fire a second drone, knocking over his launch tube. Hands dragged me away. “Look at this!” I shouted at Persephone, gesturing at the basin. The Wild Hunt had abandoned the battlefield and was receding toward the west in pursuit of their victims, the sounds of their horns fading as they ran their prey to ground, but battle was raging fiercely below us. The mercenaries who hadn’t fled before the Wild Hunt were scrambling to find solid ground, leaving their mired vehicles and regrouping in tight clusters. They shot at the eldritch with frantic abandon, assault rifles sounding in staccato bursts.

  I saw Stefan’s second lieutenant, Rafe, go down in a hail of bullets, his ATV rolling over as his blood spattered the sand; and I saw Rafe reincorporate in the blink of an eye, crawling behind his fallen vehicle and reaching for his weapon while Stefan covered him.

  The frost giants laid about them right and left with their battle-axes, bullets ringing against their shields. One of the mercenaries let out a terrible scream as a frost giant’s axe sheared through his armor to sever his left arm at the elbow, blood spurting.

  This was what war looked like.

  The duegar swarming from beneath the sands sought to drag Persephone’s troops back toward their root-laced burrows.

  The mercenaries fired on the duegar. They fired on the surprisingly ferocious hobgoblins who scuttled into the fray, fighting tooth and nail. Even as I watched, a mercenary with an assault rifle blew away a hobgoblin, only to be struck down from behind with one blow of Gus the ogre’s boulder-size fist. One of the trolls went down like an avalanche under a barrage of gunfire.

  I felt sick. “How can you do this?”

  “Do you jest?” Persephone’s face was alight with happiness, beautiful and dreadful. She laughed, opening her arms wide, and sunlight radiated all around her. “I’ve never felt so alive!”

  “You could destroy everything!” I said helplessly. “Are you willing to take that chance?”

  “Oh, I suspect the Norse Hel is merely trying to frighten me. But if I’m wrong . . .” She tilted her head and gazed up at the sun, eyes filled with bliss. “It will have been worth it for this moment.”

  “Launch the next bird!” the commander ordered.

  The second drone took out Mikill. The frost giants had realized the threat the little remote-controlled airplanes presented to Yggdrasil, but they were clever enough not to tip their hand. At the last instant before the second drone dove into the vast opening, Mikill lunged in front of it, his huge form exploding into a million shards of pale-blue ice. Another frost giantess stepped forward to take his place, raising her battle-axe to strike the next drone.

  I was shaking with fury, too sick for tears.

  “Let’s get another bird in the air,” the mercenary commander said, gazing through binoculars. “Take this big fucker out with an RPG, then send the bird through before another one blocks the egress.”

  Wave after wave of helpless rage washed over me. My hair rose, floating on the charged air. The military equipment began to tremble. I let the fury come, let it rise to a crescendo.

  If it exploded the ordnance atop the rim and blew us all to Kingdom Come, so be it. Hell, I hoped it would.

  “Oh, I don’t think so!” Persephone said in alarm. She blew softly in my direction, a breeze of nectar surrounding me.

  My fury remained unchanged, but the charge in the air dissipated, my hair settling.

  Dufreyne smiled, dusted his lapels, and mouthed something at me, echoing my father’s voice in my head.

  You have but to ask.

  I gazed at the chaotic skirmishes taking place in the basin, trying to see with the eyes of my heart. I saw Cooper take a bullet to the head, vanish for an instant, then reincorporate and return fire. I saw Skrrzzzt and Mrs. Browne fighting back to back, laying about them with a baseball bat and an enchanted broom. Somewhere deep below us, Hel sat on her throne, pouring the last of her immortal strength into Yggdrasil’s roots.

  “Third time’s the charm,” the commander said in a brisk tone. “Let’s do this! Launch the next bird.”

  The distant figures of my mother and my friends were clustered on the far side of the rim, bearing witness to the imminent death of a goddess and the end of Pemkowet as we knew it, maybe to the end of existence.

  My heart ached for them, ached for us all.

  My heart, that thing I was supposed to trust, was telling me one thing, and one thing only.

  I couldn’t let this happen.

  Dropping to one knee, I drew dauda-dagr and began etching a sigil in the sand.

  Fifty-four

  “Daisy, no!”

  I heard Stefan’s faint shout of alarm in the distance and ignored it. His dirt bike roared toward the slope, faltered at the sound of gunfire, then roared again. I concentrated on finishing the sigil to summon my father.

  Persephone grabbed me by the hair and yanked me to my feet, caus
ing me to drop dauda-dagr in the process. “What have you done?” she demanded.

  I didn’t answer.

  She scuffed out the sigil with one sandaled foot. “Well, it’s undone now, pretty Daisy.”

  I could still see the traces of lines I’d drawn glowing faintly in the sand, the sight filling me with a dizzying blend of horror and disbelief. “No, I don’t think so. You can’t erase what was etched in earth with iron that easily. What was done is done.”

  Behind us was more gunfire.

  “Shoot the ghoul’s legs out from under him!” Dufreyne shouted impatiently. “Stop killing him!”

  “Stay out of this!” Persephone whirled on him. “Stand down!” she ordered her men. “Let the Outcast approach!”

  And then Stefan was there, his hands gripping my shoulders. His motorcycle jacket was ragged with bullet holes, and I wondered how many times he’d died just to get to me. “Daisy, do not do this thing.” There was only a razor-thin line of blue around his pupils, but he wasn’t ravening. Not yet. “Let me help.”

  At the sight of his face, something clicked inside me, and I understood. I understood what my heart and my half-remembered dreams had been trying to tell me. There was a way through this . . . maybe. At least there was hope. That had been the last card in my mother’s reading. La Estrella, the Star—one last faint glimmer of hope. I tried to pull away. “Stefan, no. I have to do this.”

  Stefan shook his head, fingers digging into my shoulders. “No, you don’t.” He drew on the connection between us, draining my horror and fury and resolve. “It’s all right, Daisy. I promised you. I won’t let it happen.”

  “Stop!” I begged, shoving ineffectually at him with my empty hands. “I know what I’m doing!”

  Stefan kept draining me, and I realized I should have kindled a shield, realized I no longer had the strength to do so. It was happening all over again. The razor-thin line of blue was vanishing.

  In another few seconds, Stefan would be ravening. I caught my breath in a broken sob as terror blossomed and faded inside me. In another few seconds, I would forget what I’d intended to do in the first place.