Badb’s pale gray eyes filled with relief as Selena slowly opened her eyes and sat up in a strange room. It didn’t look all that different than the Dagda’s hall in his palace except she didn’t recognize any of the banners or tapestries that decorated the walls here. Her eyes finally rested on a tapestry with an image that looked suspiciously like Mjölnir and she groaned. “Oh God, we’re in Asgard.”
“Technically,” Badb corrected, “a palace within Asgard. And watch it: don’t invoke any gods here.”
Selena groaned again and rubbed her forehead. “What the hell happened?”
“You passed out. You seem to do that a lot,” Badb answered.
“Badb,” Selena sighed. “Don’t be a smartass now. And for the record, up until I met all of you, I’d never passed out in my life. Maybe it was having to listen to all the…”
Selena chewed on her lip and looked around the room again. She could hear low, murmured conversations in another room, most likely the Greek gods and Jasper and Doug looking for the Unbreakable Sword. But she couldn’t sense Cameron anymore.
“Did he disappear again?” she asked quietly.
“No,” Badb answered just as quietly. “He’s outside guarding this palace. We’re pretty sure this is where Tyr lives, and oddly enough, it looks like Thor may live here with him, so we expect to find the Sword here somewhere.”
Selena arched an eyebrow at her and smirked, “They live together? That’s… telling. Especially since I haven’t seen Sif around anywhere.”
“First of all, I told you to knock that god-invoking shit off. Even if it is only… her. As far as I know she’s still alive and is probably with Thor in Russia, but let’s not take any chances. And look at the size of this place. Aonghus lives with his father, you know. And they could wander the halls for days and not run into each other.”
“You gods should consider downsizing. Feudalism and the age of castles is over, you know,” Selena joked.
Badb snorted and helped Selena to her feet. “We have castles in the sky, my Child. Even the cattle have enough pasture to graze. And one day, you and Cameron will have your own.”
Selena felt that odd stirring within her and wrapped an arm around her stomach. She stared at the open doorway, oddly nervous about confronting the man, or the god, she loved but who had abandoned her and had only returned in a literal blaze of glory that killed at least four Norse gods and an eight-legged horse.
“Odin escaped?” Selena asked.
“Names!” Badb hissed. “And yes.”
“But the others…”
Badb sighed and shook her head. “It’s war, Selena. Here or in the Otherworld, gods are going to die. The Norse will just as quickly kill each of us, you know.”
Selena let her hand fall from her stomach and demanded, “But why? People don’t even believe in any of you anymore. What’s the point?”
“The Otherworld is the point, Selena. It’s ours and we don’t want to lose it. There are few realms left outside of Earth, and we have to accept there will always be competition for what is rightfully ours.”
“And maybe destroying the original Asgard was a mistake. This isn’t Asgard. It’s not even a replacement. It’s a hideaway on Earth, and the Norse will never be satisfied as long as they’re forced to live here while you’re…”
The shattering of glass interrupted her and both goddess and demigoddess blinked at each other then ran toward the sound. Doug and Jasper stood in the middle of a room, but Selena immediately knew they hadn’t found the Unbreakable Sword by the expression on Jasper’s face. He glanced up at the women in the doorway and pointed to Doug. “He knocked it over.”
A blue and silver glass urn lay shattered on the floor. Doug just lifted a shoulder and pulled the drawers from a desk by the wall. Selena watched the contents, mostly papers and books and what appeared to be the kind of travel maps tourists would pick up at gas stations, spill to the floor. She bent down to pick up one of the maps and flipped it over in her hands.
“Why the hell would a bunch of gods need a map of Texas and Oklahoma?”
Badb snorted and nodded toward the upturned bed. “Must be Thor’s room. Maybe he kept getting lost on his way home.”
Only Doug and Jasper thought she was funny. Selena tossed the map onto the pile of papers by the desk and muttered, “I’m going outside.”
Badb grabbed her arm to stop her, but Selena brushed her off. “He’s still here, right? I’ll be fine.”
“Yes, but…” Badb pressed her lips together and shifted her weight nervously.
“But what?” Selena demanded.
Badb scratched the back of her neck and shifted her weight again, but wouldn’t meet her eyes. “He asked me to keep you inside.”
“He what?” Selena shouted.
“Sh!” Doug and Jasper hissed.
“We’re kind of breaking and entering here. I don’t recommend shouting,” Doug added.
“He’d better have a damn good reason for telling you that,” Selena said only somewhat quieter.
Badb glanced over her shoulder at Jasper, who pretended to concentrate on tearing apart the armoire on the opposite side of the room. “Let’s talk somewhere else,” she suggested.
Selena backed out of the room and glanced down the dimly lit hallway. It crossed with another dimly lit hallway to her left, but if she went to her right, she would end up in the same hall she and Badb had just left. She decided to take her chances that she could find her own way out of this labyrinth.
Selena ran down the hallway and Badb followed her. She knew she couldn’t outrun the war goddess. She was a war goddess, after all, but she wasn’t above playing her own manipulative games when it involved the one person her soul needed in order to continue in its existence, in this life or any other.
Badb grabbed her arm and pulled her to a stop at the intersection of the hallways and Selena spun around and screamed, a pained, tortured scream that echoed off of the tall, heavy walls of the palace. Badb let go, most likely out of surprise rather than fear, and began to ask her what was wrong, but Selena ran again. She only made it three steps before Cameron appeared in the hallway, his dark eyes vacillating between Selena and Badb, but Selena immediately recognized the inhuman anger behind them.
“Badb, get out of here!” Selena yelled. She latched onto his arm before he could follow Badb wherever she went.
“What did she do to you?” Cameron asked, his voice husky and rough and unrecognizable. Selena took a deep breath and watched him carefully. This wasn’t the man she had met in an alleyway in New Orleans who had risked his life to save hers, a woman he didn’t even know. This wasn’t the demigod whose constant smartass jokes had so quickly endeared her to him, even though she had never wanted to trust another demigod again. This wasn’t the soul that had spoken to hers so many times before and had promised her she’d come home at last.
“Nothing,” Selena whispered. “Cameron… what’s happened to you?”
Cameron looked down at his arm where she gripped it tightly and shook his head. “I’m supposed to protect you, Selena. From any threat. Just because she’s Irish doesn’t mean she gets a free pass…”
“Cameron, she’s never hurt me! Right now, the only person hurting me is you!”
“No,” he insisted, “that’s why I stayed outside. I won’t let anyone near…”
Selena wouldn’t let him finish that errant thought either. “I mean you’re hurting me here,” Selena said, slapping her chest. She let go of his arm and pushed him against the wall. “What is wrong with you? You left me in New Orleans! You just took off, and I spent a day and a half in the Dagda’s palace waiting for you to return but you never did.”
“Ow,” Cameron mumbled, rubbing the back of his head. He moved away from the wall and looked over his shoulder at the sconce Selena had knocked him into. “Ok, first, that hurt, but I guess I deserved it. And secondly…”
Cameron bit his lip in that nervous way of his, and Selena smiled at him and touched his hand. “There, you big baby. No more headache. You can finish speaking without the concussion.”
He stared at his boots and sighed but didn’t answer her.
“Cameron, we’re somewhere inside Thor and Tyr’s palace trashing the place looking for a stolen Sword. A stolen Sword we should be finding ourselves. We don’t have all day.”
Cameron shook his head but kept his eyes on the ground. “You shouldn’t be with me, Selena. Not anymore. You were right.”
“I was right,” she repeated quietly.
Cameron only nodded.
Selena slipped her hand inside his and waited for some punch line and that sexy, mischievous grin to emerge on his beautiful face, but he only pulled at the end of a tapestry hanging on the wall and refused to look at her or respond.
“So you were going to ditch me because you’ve changed?” Selena snapped. She could hear her voice rising again but couldn’t seem to control her anger or her volume. Only two days before, he’d sat across from her mother and assured her he was a better man than her father and would never abandon her, especially when she needed him, and how could she ever stop needing him? And how could Cameron not know that?
When he still didn’t answer her, Selena pushed him into the wall again, and for the second time, he hit his head on the sconce behind his head. He grimaced and rubbed his head again, but Selena had no intention of allowing him to distract her this time.
“Damn it, Cameron, answer me!” she yelled.
Cameron grabbed her hands and gently pushed her away from him. “It’s me, Selena!” he yelled back. “I don’t trust myself around you anymore!”
“You would never hurt me,” Selena said, as confident of that as she was that Badb would die to protect her.
“You don’t know that,” Cameron insisted. “Selena, I almost killed Badb. I was ready to kill her just now! And it’s so easy. No one should have this much power. No one.”
“I agree,” Selena said. “But we can’t change who you are. And if you think going off on your own is somehow going to protect more people…”
“I only care about protecting one,” Cameron interrupted.
“Then shut up and listen to me. You can’t do this on your own, Cameron. Before you showed up I grabbed the only god I could think of to help us, and I’ve never seen Ukko like that before. It was terrifying.”
“Yeah, speaking of Ukko, what the hell did he do with Anita?”
Selena sighed and rolled her eyes. Now he wanted to act like the Cameron she knew so well. “One problem at a time, and the Norse are a far bigger problem, so would you stop interrupting me and let me finish?”
Cameron glanced at his watch and the corners of his lips twitched as he tried not to smile at her. Selena’s heart skipped and she wished he wouldn’t hide that smile, not now, not when she needed to see it so desperately. “Sixty seconds,” he said in a pretend compromise.
“Two minutes,” Selena countered. “And I’m adding more minutes on every time you make me stop.”
Cameron held up his wrist to show her his watch. He’d even started the timer.
“You’re sleeping on the floor for this,” Selena pretend-warned.
The corners of Cameron’s lips finally pulled higher into that mischievous grin and Selena knew he wanted to tell her there was little chance of that happening, but he kept his word and didn’t speak.
“My point in bringing up Ukko,” Selena said, “is that he’s learned how to control it. Mostly. Think of everything we’ve been through with that asshole and how many times he’s ever lost his temper or seemed out of control. I seriously think he was contemplating grabbing Anita and running out on us when some water horse stabbed her first and that’s when he lost it. She said she’d only seen him like that once before, and she’d never been scared of him. When all the water horses were dead, she dragged me over there with her to prove a point to me.”
Cameron gave her a look that she translated as, “You’re really trying to convince me I’m not an asshole by comparing me to Ukko?” But his two minutes weren’t up. He checked the time on his watch then waited for her to finish.
Selena resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him again. She put her hands on his chest and wished she had more eloquent words, more powerful words that could convey how certain she was that as long as they walked this new world together, they could survive it without losing their sense of self. “When she reached for his hand, I stopped her because the guy had lightning shooting from his fingertips. But he looked at me like I was nuts and said he would never hurt Anita. And she agreed with him. You were on fire, Cameron. And maybe you would have burned down the whole damn world, but you wouldn’t have taken me with it. I saw Ukko’s eyes when he looked at Anita, the recognition in them, the way she grounded him and immediately brought him back to the present. You’re destined to be the world’s greatest warrior god and you need me.”
“Of course I need you,” Cameron replied softly then quickly added, “Goddamn it, my two minutes weren’t up.”
Selena crossed her arms and smiled at him. “Which god?”
“Uh… me?”
“I’ve seen what you do when you damn things. I don’t suggest you start up again unless you intend to burn this place down.”
“That’s not funny. How does someone ever apologize for almost killing someone? Why would Badb ever forgive me?”
Selena put her arms around him and hugged him closely. She leaned her head against his chest and listened to his heart as it accelerated in the same excited way as always when she put her arms around him. “She was born a goddess, but that doesn’t mean she can’t understand that you have to learn how to be a god.”
Cameron’s arms tightened around her as he sighed, “And what if I can’t learn? What if I never learn to control it and I end up killing someone you love?”
“Then I’ll bring them back. So don’t even think of trying to take off on me again because no one else can bring them back.”
Cameron smiled at her, not his mischievous and playful smile, but his rarer, heartfelt one, and kissed her. “I never wanted to. Sometimes, my head feels all messed up and I can’t think straight and I was convinced you’d be safer without me.”
Selena had a dozen more reasons Cameron should never lapse into thinking that way again, but Jasper’s voice reverberated down the hallway and prevented her from sharing any of them.
“Would you two stop making out down there and get to work? I’d like to find this damn Sword and get the hell out of here.”
Cameron squinted at him and asked, “Still no smiting?”
“Nope,” Selena answered. “We can’t be short a demigod right now. Apparently, this Sword is harder to find than we thought.”
“Seriously,” Jasper retorted, “what did you expect? That they’d just leave it lying on the coffee table?”
“That would have been considerate,” Selena responded.
“Go help Athena upstairs,” Jasper said. “If I have to go up there, I probably won’t make it out of here alive.”
Cameron nodded. “We don’t have anyone outside watching for the Norse anymore. There’s a good chance none of us are making it out of here alive.”
Jasper waved him off as he headed back toward the ruckus caused by Doug destroying another room in search of the Sword. “Just do what you did before. That seemed to work.”
Cameron glared at his back and reminded Selena, “Obnoxious asshole.”
Selena laughed and pulled on his hand. “Let’s go upstairs and help Athena. If Thor lied to us and that Sword isn’t anywhere in here, you should burn this palace to the ground.”
“Noted,” Cameron said.
As they climbed the stairs to the second floor, with Cameron wondering aloud why gods couldn’t install elevators, or at least escalators, considering this was the twenty-first century and they were gods and all, they heard Athena knocking over furniture at the far end of the hall. Selena let go of Cameron’s hand and pointed to the other end of the hallway. “Let’s start there. And these are the same deities who insist on fighting with spears and swords. Why would they use something as modern as an escalator?”
Cameron looked above them and gestured toward the ceiling. “They have electric lights.”
“Huh,” Selena responded. “Well… they’re Norse. They’re a bunch of dumbasses. What do you expect?”
Cameron snorted and followed her toward the end of the hallway but they never reached the room at the far end. He grabbed her arm and stopped her, his eyes fixed on a closed door that looked just like the other doors that lined the long, wide hall.
“Do you feel that?” he whispered.
Selena was about to tell him she didn’t feel anything unusual, but decided to concentrate on sensing whatever had caught his attention first; he hadn’t been wrong yet when his Spidey senses got triggered. She bit her lip and moved closer to his side in case some Norse god had been hiding up here, just waiting to ambush the first intruders to pass by this room.
But it wasn’t a god she sensed.
That didn’t stop her from invoking one.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
“Yeah, and I know exactly which god this time, too,” Cameron whispered back.
“Nuada…”
“It’s him. That’s what we’re feeling. His power is also part of that Sword just as it’s part of his heir. That’s why taking Lugh’s Spear changed me. That’s why I backed away from it when Macha first tried to give it to me. Some part of me knew Lugh’s power was somehow contained in that Spear.”
“I’m opening the door,” Selena said. She pulled Cameron away from it and blew it open, and perhaps it was only her imagination, but even her telekinesis seemed stronger, mightier, more godly. She turned her face away as splinters of wood and chips of stone flew past them and as the debris began to settle to the floor, they both stepped into the large, windowless room.
It was empty except for a table in the middle with what looked like a glass box lying on top, but Selena already knew how deceiving appearances could be. They approached the table carefully and peered inside at the Sword trapped within, at its gold and red hilt with a red jewel symbolizing its connection to the Otherworld, its importance to the gods themselves. Cameron placed his hands on the glass box and tried to lift it, but it didn’t budge.
“Enchantment,” Selena sighed.
“Can you break it open with your telekinesis?” Cameron asked.
Selena shrugged. “I can try.”
She focused on the Unbreakable Sword’s prison but the only thing that broke apart were more fragments from the thick, stone walls.
“Maybe we should get Badb,” Cameron suggested. “She may know what to do.”
Selena stared at the beautiful sword, trapped for centuries in their enemies’ cell, and shook her head. “No. I have an idea. It’s the Norse’s enchantment. They must have planned some way to get the Sword out if they ever needed to. And I’m willing to bet we already have the key.”
Cameron smiled at her and Selena blushed because she knew that sly smile. That was his, “Damn, you’re so hot when you show off how brilliant you are,” smile.
“Just get the hammer,” Selena laughed.
Cameron held up his hand. “This one?”
Selena eyed Mjölnir for a second then stepped back from the glass prison as her sun god lifted Thor’s weapon and brought it down on the encasement. Flaming glass shards flew throughout the room as the box disintegrated, and Selena hurried to the table and pulled the Sword from its resting place. It was heavier than she’d expected, but as soon as she held it in her hands, she knew they’d found the first piece toward the end of the Unbreakable Sword’s journey.
Cameron placed Mjölnir on the table where the Sword used to lay and grabbed Selena’s other hand. “Well, my Sweet Goddess, we’ve got the Sword. Let’s bring it home.”