45. Azzie
Forty-Five
Azzie
“Why aren’t you out there?” I asked Davyn. “Fighting?”
His features were exaggerated—nose longer and fingernails looking more like claws. He was primed for a battle.
“The world can burn if you’re not safe.” His voice was rough; as much growl as words.
I’d be touched if I weren’t so furious with myself. I was stuck here, needing saving as if I hadn’t spent my entire life learning to fight. To protect others and defend myself.
Zeke appeared in front of us. One instant the street was empty, and the next he stood in the middle of it, less than a meter away from us.
He looked at me with wide eyes, his surprise mirroring mine, then looked around him, and back at me. “What are you—? How did I?—?”
“Where’s the brunette?” This wasn’t the time for me to be snide. We needed to get out of here. To do something about the destruction.
Zeke shrugged. “Not a clue. She was saying a lot of things I couldn’t hear or understand, and I willed myself back here. I think.”
“You… can teleport?” Not. The. Time. But I was struggling to wrap my brain around the fact that he was doing amazing things and I was no one here.
Davyn urged me toward a building. “Seems that way. We have Zeke. Final boss.”
Right. I let the here-memories float to the top of my mind. Or tried to. Finn said he couldn’t teleport in here.
Finn blinked across the room to kill Davyn when he first found me. That lying piece of shit. Wherever he was, I hoped he stayed there. “We need to get there.” I nodded to a warehouse across the street from the one we’d appeared in.
“Agreed,” Davyn said. “Zeke?”
Zeke took our hands.
We didn’t move.
“I don’t know how I did it.” Zeke sounded apologetic while he shrugged.
“Figure it out later.” Davyn pulled away to race toward our destination.
Zeke and I followed toward the building where the storm of fire was focused.
“Need to get to the roof.” Davyn’s voice was rougher. His animal features more pronounced.
He could taste the fight in the air. Then again, it would be impossible not to.
“Stairs.” It didn’t matter if I couldn’t do the things everyone else could—I knew how to handle myself. The Azzie Pity Party could happen later.
Zeke gestured as we stepped inside. “Main set is to the right.”
How did he know that?
“They’re blocked.” How did I know that?
“Emergency stairs behind the offices.” He pointed toward a room jutting out from the wall. That probably used to have windows instead of just gaping holes.
“Let’s go.” Davyn was already racing in that direction.
There was a tiny voice in the back of my mind pointing out everything I should be questioning and overthinking. I shut it off. Now was the time to act and the rest would wait.
As we rounded the corner of the office, the emergency stairs came into view, as did the I-beam blocking the doorway.
Davyn raced toward it, and grasped the obstacle. The strain on his muscle was clear through his shirt and along the back of his neck, but with a few heavy grunts, he hefted the steel and pushed it aside. He ripped the door open, the creak of hinges mingling with the chaos of war above and around us.
Rubble and debris covered the concrete stairs. It didn’t matter, we had to get to the top. The three of us sprinted up, climbing obstacles or pausing long enough for Davyn to toss them out of the way.
We reached the top floor, and a steel door barred our way.
Davyn made quick work of it with his shoulder, and we burst onto the rooftop.
Flame climbed toward the sky, while smoke and sparks choked the air.
Maybe we’d stepped into Hel instead.
Kirby, Starkad, and their allies were spread in a loose battle formation, fighting more metamouras and sceadugenga, pushing toward a lone figure in the center of the bedlam.
Were they fighting me?
“She looks a lot like you, Azzie,” Zeke said.
Their foe wasn’t another version of me, but he was right, her face, hair, and build were quite similar to mine.
Metamouras swarmed us, and Davyn charged.
The ax was in my hand without thought and Zeke had stepped back, out of my range. I attacked. Cutting through one then another, then half a dozen more. I lost count, but they were still coming.
Teeth tore into my flesh. Chunks of me were ripped away, and I wasn’t healing. I didn’t have time to stop and focus on the how of it. Why wasn’t it happening automatically, the way it had in the clearing?
Was it because the wounds were illusions?
The pain was real enough.
Davyn was a bear. Terrifying and beautiful. He was also engrossed in his own fight. I couldn’t call for help—he’d be hurt worse if he tried to break away.
Aches became agony as I swung and sliced and stumbled. I landed on my knees, and the concrete bit into my skin and rattled my joints.
Another wave of metamouras swarmed us, and my body protested as I used the ax to help me stand. I couldn’t counter in time. There were too many. They?—
A fireball flew past my head, engulfing the entire group in bright violet flame and incinerating them, without me feeling the heat.
I glanced over my shoulder. Zeke was the only person behind me. He was staring at his hands in disbelief.
“Did you…?” I already knew the answer.
He nodded. “No clue how.”
Zeke could throw balls of flame and I was struggling to stay on my feet?
“ Davyn. ” Kirby’s irritation drew my attention. She never paused in her fighting. “What the fuck are you doing, bringing her up here? Get her out?”
Bear-Davyn was lost in the battle.
Fury at her speaking to him, not me, joined my frustration. “You can address me directly.” I swung at more beasts.
“ Don’t answer to you.” Davyn’s response to Kirby was in my mind. Another fireball obliterated the cloud he was fighting, and he stepped beside me, letting us have each other’s back.
The woman in the center of the room, the not-me, turned in our direction. “Sister.” Her voice was sweet. Kind.
That was far worse than if she’d screamed. So was knowing she was talking to me.
How did I know that?
“They’re not supposed to harm you,” she said in a sing-song tone.
In an instant, the attacking hoards turned away from me, and focused on everyone else in the room.
“Get her out of here,” Kirby shouted over her shoulder in our direction.
How dare she?
We could leave. Davyn, Zeke, and I could walk out now, because the fight was no longer focused on us. Kirby obviously thought she had this under control, and hey, fuck that bitch.
But the women around her—Valkyries—were giving this fight their all. And they weren’t strangers, even if I didn’t know their names. They were… sisters?
That was what the woman in the middle of the room called me. This was happening because of me. I couldn’t walk away.
The entire string of thoughts took seconds. I rushed the closest pack of monsters, and Davyn stayed at my side without a word. Fireballs flew past us, courtesy of Zeke, in a similar dance to the one he and I had performed when we fought Draugr. No conversation was needed—they both knew their parts as well as I did mine.
The waves kept coming though. When we destroyed one group, there were more to take their place. My arms ached and my legs were heavy. With each swing, it got more difficult to dodge or lift my weapon. It didn’t matter how much training I had—there wasn’t enough endurance in the universe for this.
And my injuries weren’t healing. Blood slicked my palms and soaked my clothing.
Zeke and Davyn showed no signs of slowing down. The warriors around us were engrossed and glorious. They would all reach an exhaustion point soon enough, but I was at the end of my rope now.
A lifetime of training, and this was what I was reduced to when my strength was needed. I crouched on the floor, gasping for air. If I could just summon a little more strength. Enough to stand. Enough for one more attack.
The not-me in the middle of the room was open. Laughing at us. Why didn’t Kirby see that? Why didn’t she send someone in and end this? What kind of leader ignored such an obvious opening?
Why was I waiting for her to do the work?
Because I could barely move. Because I didn’t have an opening. Because rushing the villain could get me killed.
This was a being who could summon metamouras and sceadugenga in countless quantities. She could kill any of these fighters.
Oxygen burned in my lungs, carried on acrid smoke. My limbs didn’t want to move.
Zeke looked right fighting with everyone else. Cool. Focused. Capable of so much. Davyn was free. Fighting. Do what he was created for and what he craved.
If I were gone, their paths were clear. That was defeatist thinking, but someone had to stop this thing. If she lived, if her master lived, the world was fucked.
How did I know that?
The same way I knew anything else in here.
You could beat her . The voice in my head was the same I heard in the drawing room. Take her place. This test, this siren’s trap, is no match for you.
The encouragement made me stumble as I tried to climb to my feet. Doing what that voice wanted was a bad idea.
A new sensation tickled my senses. A way out? Only a few meters away. It wasn’t visible to the naked eye, but I felt it. I needed to get to it, and take the three of us out of here.
Aside from the curious glance Zeke shot in my direction, no one paid attention to me as I made my way toward the feeling. Insulting, but fair.
I pressed my hand to the empty air, and met a solid wall.
Starkad rushed through the spot, tackling a sceadugenga. The door didn’t stop him. Didn’t take him out of here.
But I felt it. I pushed to open it, the way I had with the earlier gates I found.
It didn’t give.
Half a metamoura flew past my shoulder, through empty air where the door was. No one could touch it but me. Why?
Not a question to answer now.
“Open, damn you,” I muttered, and tried again.
Could a magical gateway be jammed shut? This one felt like it.
“The stories are true,” the not-me taunted. “You’re so easy to divide from your Valkyries.”
“We know our strengths.” Kirby’s voice was tight.
Someone needed to take that woman down. The villain, not Kirby.
Maybe Kirby .
The thought left me ambivalent.
I needed a path to our foe. Thirty seconds, tops.
Before I could call out the request, Davyn was in front of me, biting and tearing through bests, and Zeke was by my side.
What made it possible for us to act in this way?
“I’ve got this part.” Zeke knelt next to the empty air where I felt the door and, using a claw-like nail, began carving lines in the concrete.
He was drawing an enchantment. I knew it as easily as I knew what I needed to do next. He would create what inspired him, as he always did.
“Get out of the fucking way, Azzie,” Kirby yelled.
I was going to, just not in the way she thought. I watched Davyn clear the way, and yanked as much strength into my body as I could.
As Davyn swung at the last obstacle to me, I sprinted, then broke into a full run, toward the woman in the middle of the chaos.
She turned toward me as I leapt into the air. The ax from Loki was the perfect weight in my hand, as if it was a part of me. I knew how to do what came next. My mortal body wouldn’t survive, but others would. So many others would live.
“Sist—”
I brought the ax down on the woman, cutting from her shoulder toward her heart. I poured everything I had into it. A burst of power flowed into me.
From what Zeke had done.
I let it all spill out, into the threat, as if the universe itself was bursting from me.
My world went black.