CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
They were all standing around in the middle of a Beverly Hills jewelry store, with mounds of gold, diamonds, and rubies placed in piles to create a powerful mystical circle.
They were all at the ready. The Maids that had created the circle, and the Protectors, the Crows, the Ravens, and the Killers.
They all silently waited until . . . they were there. In the center of the circle. Betty having the life strangled out of her by an enraged Brianna and Jace, Kera, and Erin holding on to Betty’s god-infused assistant with their talons.
Betty, unable to pull away, held up her hand, Brísingamen clutched in her fingers.
Freyja, who’d given Jace enough of her power to have the strength to use the spell that would bring Gullveig here, leaned over the circle and snatched her torc from Betty.
“No!” Gullveig as Brianna, screamed, throwing Betty aside and trying to go after her Vanir sister.
Freyja leaned back and the powerful circle stopped Brianna cold.
“Give it back to me!” Brianna screeched. “It’s mine!”
“Oh no, sister,” Freyja replied, her voice low. “This is mine. And it was your mistake forgetting that.”
Then Freyja was gone, leaving a livid god trapped within the circle.
Bear sighed at the loss of Freyja, and Ski had to ask, “Did you really think she was going to help us anymore than she already has?”
“We did get her that stupid necklace back.”
“Oh, my friend, gods just don’t work that way.”
Raging, Brianna began to pace, trapped by the mounds of gold and diamonds that she so favored.
The store was brightly lit inside for its jewelry-buying patrons so she could see all of them waiting.
“What?” she asked. “Do you really think you can kill me? Your gods couldn’t kill me! Thor and Odin couldn’t kill me!”
“No,” Inka calmly told her. “We don’t think we can kill you.”
The Maids spread out so that they surrounded the circle that Brianna was trapped in, bowed their heads, their white robes covering their faces, and held up their hands. They began the chant that would open a doorway into another world.
A world where they’d send Brianna and the god stuffed inside her.
She quickly realized that, too, eyes growing wide when she recognized what was happening.
“Get ready,” Ski told his brothers.
Brianna threw back her head and unleashed a primal scream that radiated out, breaking every glass window and object in the room except for the ceiling above them.
Everyone ducked but the Maids, attempting to protect their faces and vital organs from shattered glass.
Bear lifted his head, turning and tilting it one way, then another. “They’re coming!” he warned. “They’re coming!”
The Carrion crashed through the tempered glass skylight and flew in through the open windows. The Mara came through the walls as smoke, but quickly turned to their more humanlike forms. Having already faced the Crows, the Mara went after them first while the Carrion targeted the Protectors.
Ski leaned one way, then the other. A Carrion’s Hel blade slashed past him. It wasn’t just the steel of these blades that worried him, but what the blades were imbued with. Just a touch from that steel would destroy skin and bone on contact.
The Ravens came at the Carrion from behind, moving out of the shadows so quickly, it was like they’d suddenly just appeared behind them.
Rundstöm came up behind the Carrion fighting Ski and caught hold of his leather wings. While he held the wings, he lifted his leg and rammed his foot against the Carrion’s back.
He tore the wings off, ignoring the screams and flying blood as only a Rundstöm could, while Ski grabbed the two Hel blades from the Carrion. He used one blade to cut him across the gut, intestines pouring to the floor, and the other he used to slice the Carrion’s throat, nearly taking his head off.
The Carrion dropped forward, and Rundstöm tossed the wings aside.
“Here,” Ski said, handing him one of the Hel blades.
Rundstöm took the offered sword. “I thought Protectors didn’t fight with weapons.”
“We don’t,” Ski explained seconds before he turned and removed the head of a Carrion who’d landed behind him. When he turned back to Rundstöm, he added, “But that doesn’t mean we can’t.”
The Crows fought off the Mara, the disgusting purveyors of everyone’s nightmares. But Jace and Betty were still focused on Gullveig. They couldn’t risk the possibility that she’d be able to get herself out of the Maids’ protective circle before they opened that door.
So, using their blades, they slashed at Gullveig. Not to kill her. They couldn’t kill her. At least not yet. But they could harm her. Especially since the skin she wore was not hers.
It had once belonged to Brianna, and Betty had made it clear when Jace had told her the plan that if there was one thing that must be accomplished during all this, it was the release of Brianna’s soul from her captor.
Jace had been a little surprised. Betty seemed to have made it her business to torment Brianna when she’d been her assistant, but Betty clarified that with, “I can torture her, but no one else can.”
So here they were, tag teaming a god. Betty slashing at Gullveig with her blades while Jace used her talons to strip Brianna’s skin off in big swaths and chunks.
When all the skin was removed from Gullveig’s chest, Betty stopped long enough to slap her hand between the god’s breasts and chant something in Old Norse.
Screaming, Brianna’s soul exited her prison of god flesh and dissipated into the air.
Then Betty slashed the god’s throat and yanked and spun around Gullveig, reaching up and grabbing her hair. She tore Brianna’s face off the god like a Scooby-Doo villain mask.
That’s when Gullveig raised her hand and, with a flick of her fingers, sent both Betty and Jace flying across the room.
When Jace landed, she lifted her head in time to see a Hel’s blade fashioned as an axe coming down toward her chest. She rolled to one side, and the blade barely missed her, but the Carrions were fast, as well, and this one had pulled the weapon out of the floor and brought it down again before Jace had time to roll to the other side.
She crossed her blades in front of her face, and her rune-empowered weapons managed to prevent the axe from ramming into her head.
Using all her strength, she fought to keep the Carrion from bringing the blade all the way down, which would cleave her skull in two.
She turned her head to the side and saw that several of the Carrion were now inside the circle with Gullveig. They were going to try to get her out, but she didn’t think they were strong enough to bypass the Maids’ powers.
But then they did something she hadn’t seen coming. Inside the circle, they began to open their own doorway. And she knew immediately where they’d take Gullveig.
“Ski!” she screamed. “Stop them! Stop them now!”
Ski charged across the room toward the circle, which held the god trapped but could be entered by the rest of them. Vig and Bear started to follow, but the Mara grabbed hold of them, wrapping themselves around them, using their powers to make them live their nightmares.
That’s when the first twitch hit Jace.
Then she saw Ski make it into the circle and slash one Carrion with the Hel blade, then take the head of the other. He grabbed another Carrion. The one who’d picked Gullveig up to carry her into the doorway they’d opened.
The three struggled, but when the Carrion attempted to throw Gullveig into that doorway, Ski reached up, grabbed the goddess by the hair, and tossed her across the circle. She slammed into the other side like she was hitting a brick wall.
Screeching in rage, unwilling to believe anyone had treated her that way, Gullveig forgot about her own safety. She forgot about everything, and instead, she unleashed some spell that caused the doorway the Carrion had opened to start sucking them in.
One Carrion flipped backward, disappearing into it, and the one struggling with Ski tried to turn the Protector so that he’d go next.
That’s when the twitch Jace felt unleashed her rage, and everything in the room turned red. No one meant anything to her anymore. No one but Ski.
She shoved the Carrion’s weapon away, and rammed her blades into his eyes.
He fell backward, screaming in pain, and Jace got on her feet and went after the Carrion holding on to Ski’s throat, his fingers decaying Ski’s flesh underneath.
Without thought, only her rage, Jace rammed into the back of the Carrion and all three of them fell into the doorway headfirst.
Kera watched her friend and Danski Eriksen disappear into the pit with one of the Carrion. She charged after them, sliding under one of the Helheim blades that slashed out at her.
But by the time she reached the doorway, she hit a wall. Literally.
The portal was gone and all that remained was a wall. She slammed her fists against it, screaming, “Jace!” But she knew her friend was gone.
It took her a second before she realized Erin was right beside her. She’d tried to get to Jace, too. They’d both failed.
Panting, they stared hard at each other. Not in anger. No, they saved that anger for her.
Because she wouldn’t stop talking.
Brianna’s skin lay at Gullveig’s feet, ripped so badly it was doubtful the god could repair it. Blood covered her from head to toe but still, her gold skin showed through. Then again, everything on her was gold. Her hair, her eyes, her nails.
“Did you cunts think you could kill me?” Gullveig continued to rage at them all from the circle the Maids had trapped her in. “Did you think you could do what even your gods could not? They all tried and they all failed!”
The portal out of this world and into another stood open, but the Maids were weakening now. They could hold the portal open, but they couldn’t get the bitch inside it. They were too weak to push her in. And everyone else was busy fighting either the remaining Carrion or the Mara.
Yet Kera didn’t care. Her friend was gone, and Kera blamed herself. And she blamed Gullveig.
Getting to her feet, Kera walked toward the god. The Ravens and Protectors kept the Carrion away from her. She didn’t run. Instead, she let her anger guide her. Her anger at the loss of Jace.
Jace wasn’t the first battle buddy Kera had lost, but she was the one that tore at Kera’s soul worse than any of the others. And she let that anger move her through the fight going on around her, working only on instinct and hatred.
As she passed a blood-covered Freida, Kera held out her hand and, without question, the Giant Killer tossed her most sacred weapon to her.
Gullveig was still ranting. “I will bring Ragnarok down upon all of you! I will bathe in the blood of your kin and laugh in the ashes of your souls!”
Kera moved up beside her, but before Gullveig could focus on her, Erin moved to the god’s other side and lashed out at her with her flame.
Gullveig slapped that flame away easily. “Have you heard nothing I’ve said, you idiot twat? Have you heard nothing?”
Her attention on Erin—who didn’t back down in the face of all that hatred and misery—Kera lifted the hammer high and, from the heavens, without her saying one word or asking the gods for anything, lightning slashed down and slammed into the weapon.
Then Kera used all her strength and anger and sense of loss, and swung the hammer right at Gullveig’s big, gold head.
It hit the god in the face and the power of it sent her flying back and through the portal.
“Close it!” Vig yelled, because Kera couldn’t. Her power had left her as soon as the weapon made contact, and she dropped to her knees.
The Maids quickly finished their chant, commanding the doorway to close. As it slammed shut, the Carrion and the Mara left. The Mara turning to smoke and disappearing back through the walls they’d eased through; the Carrion unleashing their leather wings, and going through the destroyed skylight.
Freida took her weapon back, and Vig was there to lift Kera to her feet, his arms around her waist.
She buried her face against his chest, the tears coming. “I lost her, Vig. I lost her.”
Chloe’s hands were there, grasping Kera’s chin and pulling her around. Her leader looked deep into Kera’s eyes. “This isn’t done. We’ll get her back. I promise you that.”
“From Hel?” Erin asked. “The gods couldn’t even get Baldur back.”
“That was Odin,” Chloe was quick to remind her. “We’re not Odin. We don’t have his rules.” She looked at Kera again. “We will get her back.”