Chapter 36
Gunnar hadn’t sensed Rina’s approach with Kushiel’s power show, but he spun as she stepped from the trees, her father’s great sword resting on a broad shoulder. She stood tall, her expression nothing short of the Independent who didn’t take shit from anyone.
The dire wolf pack fanned out around them, intermingled with the berserker spirit forms—wolves, boars, and bears gleaming blue, save for one extremely large, solid golden boar with a flowing mane. Virtue emerged behind Rina’s left shoulder, winged and demonic, an inky shadow against the tree line.
Quite the contrast to E on her right side, the dvergar dressed in his everyday smithy garb. Zhadan joined them with a snarl, the chuchuna frothing at the mouth. From the sky, high above the canopy, the harpy cried out in maniacal rage. Aster hung back, pale and wane in the confines of the pines but saturated in the magic she drew from the Earth under her heels.
“I think you’re full of shit,” Rina added.
Kushiel chuckled, waving the burning sword, snowmelt hissing and steaming, pine needles curling and smoking. “This is truly the stand you make, Katerina Yaga? Do you think it will matter, these details, when an angel swears upon Heaven on high against the word of a human girl, a vileblood, and a backwater town of miscreants?”
“You keep going on and on about Accords, but they’re only binding under the major powers. Independents are outside Citadel Jurisdiction—which I believe your kind supported at the formation.” Rina shrugged, but Gunnar knew her well enough to read her unease. “You really think you’re going to get an Archival Tribunal called to the ass end of nowhere so you can settle some personal vendetta?”
“No,” Kushiel said. “What I’m going to get, with certainty, is a rally of fools challenging a power outside their depth and dying on some thread of nobility, or pride, or perhaps even a misguided idea about love.” He waved a hand, casual as the forest wept around him, the entire landscape curdling under the hellfire brought to bear. “And not a soul will question if I was within my rights to deliver justice.”
A dry chuckle, kind of dusty, broke the posturing, and Gunnar stared with everyone else as E climbed onto a rock and dusted off his meaty hands.
“Funny thing about a lot of big Aperiens really,” E said, then coughed, clearing his throat as if this whole talking thing was a bother to the man. He extended his arm, right hand out and open, and just sort of held it there as he spoke. “Mythos come in all shapes and sizes. Some gods were big, some not so much. Some creatures sounded plain terrifying on paper, didn’t really amount to much once they had to exist.
“Your kind, angels, you all manifested in loud, swinging and screaming and fighting amongst yourselves, different versions of the same damn thing all so focused on being right.” Another chuckle from E. Gunnar felt a prickle run across his skin, static rising in the air. “Y’all had muscle though, power in widespread awareness of your stories. Took little for angels and holy books and saints to take the front seat against all those dark demons and devils and evils people hadn’t thought about for a long, long time. Everyone knew your faces, had global branding, the Pope in Rome before the Vatican got destroyed with the rest of the European sky.”
Thunder rumbled, close enough to make the trees rustle, the sky above the canopy darkening. E smirked, lifting a bushy eyebrow while he smoothed his beard with the hand that wasn’t still extended. “Made y’all cocky, I’d wager. And made you forget that being part of a popular religion isn’t the only source of Aperien power.
“Some of us are just a lot fucking older.”
E cocked his head, the air swimming, cold against the hellfire’s heat. Electricity crackled between the smith’s eyes, the rock grounding him, bouncing between various trunks as a low whine poured through the air, right before an object flew through the clearing and connected with his open palm with a crack.
Everyone stumbled back a few paces with the force, even Kushiel lifting an arm to shield his face as the air pressure eased and the static continued to build, E’s eyes swimming pools if crackling light, his veins pulsing with blue energy, an unassuming hammer clenched in his extended fist.
“Is that . . .” Audrey asked, her expression wonder-struck despite their current situation.
“Yeah,” E said.
Rina shook out her hand when electricity wicked out and nipped at her sword. “But isn’t he . . .”
“Dead? Yeah.”
“Why does that weapon answer to you?” Kushiel’s was expression curious, reminding Gunnar of a cat who just saw something it wanted to eat, but after it got to play with its dinner first.
“Because I made it.” E swung the hammer once through the air, the sky rumbling in answer. “Now, are you done threatening my home, angel?”
Kushiel bowed, a mockery in spades. “I have only just begun.”
E nodded once, said, “Fair enough,” and swung the hammer—Thor’s hammer, Mj?lnir—toward the dirt.
A column of lightning tore the air, and Kushiel expected it, bringing his flaming sword up to deflect the electricity sideways into the trees, a dozen pines splintering and crackling, the thunder deafening enough everyone flinched away.
The angel wasn’t ready for the golden boar who tore after the strike, slamming into his chest full-body with a roar that sounded more man than beast. They went flying, tangled together, taking down a few more trees in their wake before full chaos broke out.
The dire wolves and the úlfheenar harried, in and out of the fray with biting strikes and retreats as Kushiel wrestled with the boar, deflecting most attacks with concise slices, his free hand firmly locked on the boar’s right tusk as it thrashed.
“Fools,” the angel grunted out, the air warming further, storm clouds fighting against gilded heavenly light, before the boar skittered away with a horrible shrieking squeal, smoking from head to hoof. “Burn these sinners from my path, and the righteous will prevail.”
He swung his sword, pained yelps sounding right before a blaze of hellfire wrapped around about fifteen trees and set them up in torches. Gunnar smelled burned fur, flesh, felt ripples in the air when a berserker lost hold and was forced back into their body, like bubbles popping. He gritted his teeth, eyes watering and nose aching from the pine sap smoke.
He needed to get to Audrey. Now.
The angel hovered, easily deflecting another shot of lightning from E, a second and third set of wings blooming from his back as he laughed.
“Demoness, you think you can wrestle the flames of Hell from my hands? I’ll burn everything back to the darkness from whence you crawled.”
He heard Virtue curse, another light beam searing through the canopy, and Gunnar couldn’t do shit as Rina threw herself in front of Virtue and both of them slammed into the slushy ground, barely avoiding the lash.
Flowers tangled up, growing fast and wild, the cornflower wraith’s scent bursting, but the vines were nothing but an inconvenience to the angel, swatting down Aster’s magic with ease—yet she was here, with the rest of them, fighting for Audrey, and for him.
Gunnar swung a little wide, still moving in Audrey’s direction, because Kushiel had turned to her again.
“All for one girl, all this trouble,” he murmured, beautiful rage and deadly purpose as he pointed his gleaming, flaming sword in her direction. “If only we could know for certain if we needed your kind anymore. If only we knew if imagination made real still required the source, if the dreams need the dreamers once the dreams are born? You are far, far too much trouble.”
Gunnar felt Rina shoulder up to him, and they exchanged a nod and launched forward.
Kushiel met them both, taking the hit from Gunnar’s smaller blade, even though the angel’s hiss told him he didn’t expect it to cut so deep into his side, as he countered Rina’s heavier swing blade to blade. Blue flashed around them as the Clan surged at his back, but then Kushiel’s fist met Gunnar’s face, and he flew about fifteen feet, hard into a burning trunk.
Winded, he rallied in time to see Kushiel kick Rina in the chest. Her ribs cracking echoed through the clearing as she let out a guttural shout, rolling head over ass through the mud, her blade spiraling away into the brush.
Virtue’s scream was feral, the succubus rushing forward in a fit of shadow, claws, and fury, and she got a hold of Kushiel, anchored in for about ten seconds. Her gaze flared, the light blinding as she fed on the angel’s soul. Kushiel roared in shock, then a burst of light so intense followed that Gunnar buried his face in his arms.
He lifted his head as soon as it faded, struggling to stand, Virtue at Rina’s side, trying to get her up on her feet. Howls sounded in all directions, the angel’s fury gone from purpose to anger and indignation so heated it was suddenly all Gunnar could scent.
His throat and face bore the worst of Virtue’s assault, but the wounds were already stitching closed, and Gunnar got the distinct impression Kushiel didn’t feel like playing anymore. His gaze searched now, hunting, and when it landed on Audrey, who kneeled next to a wounded wolf, desperately trying to help it run, Kushiel’s eyes narrowed.
Gunnar got about two steps toward her when the ground shook, the forest parting, and the leshy emerged, twice as tall as any of his trees. His arms were giant trunks, and both of them came pummeling down on the angel’s head.
The force set Gunnar back on his ass again, then struggling up to his feet again, but grinning to himself now despite the chaos; his smart girl brought the fight right where they needed it to be.
The dust and smoke and needles cleared, revealing Kushiel on his knees, both arms bracing the sword over his head, the leshy’s arms creaking with the force of ancient, deep-seated mythos. For the first time, Kushiel’s expression flickered with . . . surprise? Concern? A bead of sweat on his temple.
But then the angel hissed in what sounded like infernal.
All the hellfire sucked away from the surrounding trees. The leshy went up in a bonfire.
Its scream shook the fucking world. The leshy reared back, and Kushiel swung high, right through one of the enormous tree trunk legs, and the treeman took out a swatch of forest as he went down, branches cracking and snapping and breaking, the hellfire roaring like a starving horror.
“No! Aspen!” Audrey screamed. Gunnar was about fifteen feet from her, but he already knew.
Too far.
Kushiel’s attention snapped to her, his expression a sneer, blood matting down his gold curls, the halo too bright, and he strode toward her, slashing at anything that dared come within his reach with deadly accuracy. Spirits flagged and vanished, and wolves circled wide, whining and howling and bleeding.
And Gunnar ran as Kushiel reached Audrey, threw himself in front of her, because really, there was nowhere he’d rather be than between her and anything in the world that would ever, ever try to hurt her.
“Gunnar!”
Rina screamed, and he saw her just over the angel’s shoulder, throwing her father’s sword to him, Virtue barely holding her on her feet. Gunnar caught the hilt right as Kushiel’s blade buried into his chest instead of Audrey’s, barely missing his heart, so he didn’t flat out die on impact.
Felt like he was dying, though, holy steel making his blood burn—like the holy part tried to cleanse his cursed blood through white hot intention at the same time the wreathed hellfire turned his skin, flesh, and muscle around the blade to ash.
Instinct drove him through the pain, the disconnect of being unmade and alive within the same handful of heartbeats.
Gunnar’s brain managed a lazy observation; the great sword was magic, a gift from a giant.
It felt light as his dagger, and Gunnar swung upwards with everything he had left, staring into Kushiel endless blue eyes, wells of hatred so deep he almost felt sorry for the Aperien for being so consumed.
The blade went right through Kushiel’s neck, separating his head from his spine.
Then Gunnar was pretty sure he did die, but at least he got to hear Audrey one last time, one last “Jonathan!” before everything went black.