Selena rolled over and pulled her pillow over her face but it wouldn’t block out the incessant knocking on her door. She nudged Cameron with her foot and he mumbled, “I hear it. Let’s go to Hawaii. They probably let people sleep in Hawaii.”
“It might be important,” Selena mumbled back.
“It’s probably Badb,” he sighed. “Definitely not important.”
The knocking stopped long enough for Bridget to call through the door, “Cameron! Wake up!”
“Goddamn it,” he muttered.
“The god outside?” Selena asked.
“Any god,” he sighed again. “Would you unlock the door for her?”
Selena moved the pillow away from her face and unlocked the door while pulling the blankets higher around her. After all, Bridget hadn’t told her to wake up, only Cameron.
Bridget rushed into their room and switched on a light, and Selena squinted and grabbed her pillow again. She was about to bury her face and shield her eyes from the unrelenting, merciless light, but Bridget exclaimed, “They’re here! They’ve invaded earlier than Semias predicted. Badb has summoned our Greek and Egyptian allies, but we must lead them!”
Cameron pushed the blankets off of him and sat up, glancing nervously over his shoulder at Selena who sat up with him. “Stay here,” he begged. “We never found the Cauldron…”
“What difference does that make?” Selena yelled. “Goddesses die, too!”
“But they’re harder to kill,” Bridget said. “I’ll make sure you’re well guarded.”
“No,” Selena insisted. “I am tired of people thinking I need to be guarded all the time. I am going with you, Cameron.”
“If you die now, you might not be able to go back to Findias!” Cameron shouted, his voice panicked and edgy. “We can’t risk it. We have to find the Cauldron first.”
“We’re out of time!” Selena cried. She pulled her jeans from the top of the dresser and took off her pajamas, not caring that Bridget was still in the room. But the goddess queen didn’t seem ruffled by her temporary disrobing; she was only ruffled by Selena’s insistence that she enter the battlefield with them.
“I’ve always been a powerful psychic, Selena, and since taking the Sword, it has gotten so much stronger. No one needed to tell me how important you are to all of us, to our collective fate and future. We can’t risk losing you. I’m asking you to stay here as your queen.”
Selena shook her head again, even though defying Bridget seemed to betray her own self. For a brief moment, she marveled again at how powerful Fúamnach must have been to deceive her entire pantheon into believing Morgan was their new queen when everything within her wanted to obey Bridget and offer her allegiance wholeheartedly. But she couldn’t turn her back on her family, and she was destined to be on the battlefield, even if it cost her the one thing she could never get back: her soul.
“I can’t,” Selena whispered. “I’m sorry. You might need me, and there’s only so much time before it’s too late for me to heal someone.”
“Then we’ll die,” Bridget answered. “I’d rather risk my life than yours.”
Selena shook her head again and glanced at Cameron. She’d never noticed him dressing, but he stood by the bed, fully dressed, his Spear in his hand and his eyes blazing with that deadly anger. “I’m not staying, Cameron,” she insisted.
Cameron closed his eyes and inhaled slowly and deeply. “Then stay behind me. Promise me.”
“I promise,” Selena agreed.
Bridget grunted at them both but when Selena faced her again, she held her Sword in her hand and pointed toward the door. “Our gods who cannot fight will be in the Dagda’s palace. We have to protect them because they are defenseless. We’ll attempt to drive the Norse and Slavs away from the palace. No fires, Cameron, until we’re away from here. If it gets out of control…”
“I can control it,” Cameron argued.
“And if you’re wrong,” Bridget retorted, “we’ll kill our own family. It’s not worth the risk.”
Ukko’s voice shouted down the hallway, “Hurry! They’re at the top of the hill!”
Bridget and Cameron’s argument ended and they rushed from the bedroom and joined Ukko in the hallway. Selena stayed behind Cameron, running after the gods who hurried outside, but despite her insistence that she not be left out of the Battle of the Gods, she’d never been so scared in her life. In any of her lives. And, of course, Cameron could sense her fear. He tried to slow down, but she wouldn’t let him. Outside, with dawn breaking in the Otherworld in that unusual way of switching from night to day, casting Murias from moonlit darkness to the bright, sunlit daytime, she could make out the shapes of the Norse and Slavic army on top of the nearest hill to the Dagda’s palace.
And unlike the Aztec army that hadn’t really been an army, or even a street gang, an army had shown up in the Otherworld to take it from the Tuatha Dé.
Since the Irish had made a deal with the Norse and Slavs at the end of the last war that permitted them entry, the Tuatha Dé couldn’t ban them now; as Selena had been told all along, agreements between gods were binding, and until their enemies broke one of the terms they’d agreed upon centuries ago, they could continue to enter the Otherworld. Inciting a new war broke the last agreement, but once they were here as part of an invasion, there was only one way to get rid of them.
The gods Selena followed stopped at the base of the hill, and Selena tried to catch her breath as she listened to Badb hissing, “You let her come?”
Bridget shook her head but kept her eyes on the army atop the hill. “No, she refused to stay. And we didn’t have time to argue any longer.”
Badb grabbed Selena’s arm and pleaded with her, too. “Child, please. Go back to the palace. Macha will go with you and stay by your side.”
Selena’s mouth felt so dry she couldn’t swallow or speak. She couldn’t look away from the army that had come to kill them all and steal her home. “I’m staying,” she finally answered. “The druid said the Tuatha Dé’s fate could depend on my presence here. I can’t save everyone, but I won’t risk losing all of you.”
“And you’re asking us to risk losing you!” Badb persisted.
Selena looked away from the hill at her friend, this legendary war goddess whose myths often portrayed her as so pitiless and cruel, perhaps because she was a woman who had dared to show the world just how strong and powerful she could be. But Badb’s panic now wasn’t over the fate of the Tuatha Dé but the fate of one woman she’d once known and loved then had come to know and love again.
Selena wanted to offer her some kind of comfort, some reassurance that her life, both of their lives, could be spared since they’d fulfilled almost all of the requirements of the prophecy, except for finding the Cauldron. But movement on top of the hill told her the Battle of the Gods had begun.
As the moonlight gave way to the warm sunshine of the Otherworld, hundreds of gods and goddesses descended the hill toward the Irish, Greeks, and Egyptians waiting at the bottom. Selena’s eyes immediately searched for the one-eyed god of the Norse and found him leading his pantheon, his son by his side. Her heart squeezed painfully at the memory of the last conversation she’d had with Thor, and now, she would either watch him die or watch him kill her friends.
The bright blue flames of Cameron’s Spear lit up her peripheral vision and she glanced toward her boyfriend’s back. She blinked stupidly at Ukko’s hand, surprised to see a sword in his as well. Even though she’d once been told the gods didn’t use their powers in wars because the result would be catastrophic, it had never occurred to her that Ukko could wield any weapon aside from lightning. Sunlight reflected off the blade of the Unbreakable Sword as Bridget lifted it and prepared to meet the first wave of invaders.
Macha and Nemain joined Badb, pressing around Selena to protect her. But Selena didn’t want to be treated as if she were so much more important than anyone else on this battlefield, even though she alone could save her fallen family and friends. Badb’s hand wrapped around her arm and pulled her farther away from the frontlines, and Selena watched helplessly as she stepped back from Cameron, the Dagda, Ukko, and Bridget.
The part of her that was human struggled with the incomprehensible speed of the gods, and she only noticed Cameron had thrown his Spear because of the blue flames penetrating the air, creating a cerulean comet tail in the morning sky. The god he’d thrown it toward fell as the Spear pierced his chest. She didn’t recognize this god, and noticed Odin and Thor and most of the Norse gods had chosen a weaker spot in the frontlines to attack: they’d targeted the Egyptians.
Cameron held out his hand and the Spear appeared in it again. The gods who’d been chosen as sacrifices to the strongest of the Tuatha Dé and the unexpected addition of a pissed off Finnish thunder god fell one by one under the onslaught of swords and spears and the Dagda’s club. Athena and Ares had left their Irish friends’ sides to help the Egyptians against the Norse, and Selena gasped when she realized her attention had been fixed on the wrong battle.
“Badb!” she screamed. “We have to get over there!”
Three Egyptians lay on the ground, and from this distance, she couldn’t tell who had fallen or if they were still alive. Badb nodded toward her sisters and grabbed Selena’s hand. She’d expected to run to their aid, but instead, found herself looking down at a familiar face. “Osiris,” she whispered.
The god opened his eyes and looked up at her. “Thoth is thirty feet to my east. He’s almost crossed over. Help him, Selena.”
Selena glanced at Osiris’s chest, the large round circle of crimson blood that stained his ivory tunic, and knew that the god of death had almost crossed over to their permanent resting place as well. She’d once stupidly feared this god who was willing to die to save his friend’s life. Already, Selena recognized that the Battle of the Gods would teach her the dangers of judging too quickly, of believing in legends rather than learning the truth.
She ran to Thoth’s side and dropped to her knees, placing her hands on his arm. A faint trickle of life stirred within him and as she concentrated on pulling him back toward this world, the sounds of the battle behind her quieted. Like a faint echoing in a distant canyon, Thoth’s spirit responded to her, growing gradually stronger and louder as it returned from that journey it had begun to take. Selena lifted a hand and pushed the cloth of his torn tunic aside so she could watch the gaping hole in his chest close. His eyes fluttered open and she caught his gaze.
“Osiris,” he whispered.
Selena shook her head slowly.
Thoth sighed and closed his eyes again.
“Selena!” Macha called. “Poseidon needs you!”
Selena let go of Thoth’s arm and stood up as Macha dragged Poseidon’s body away from Odin, whose single eye glared at the demigoddess, but a wall of Greek gods and goddesses stepped in front of her and their fallen leader, obscuring her sight of the Norse god. Poseidon was wounded but conscious, and held his hand over his bleeding side. Selena put her hand over his and flinched as a thundering crack split a tree next to her.
A flash of metal tore her attention away from the sea god’s injury, and she watched Mjölnir as it returned to Thor’s hand. A god she assumed was Greek but couldn’t identify stood by the thunder god, his sword far behind him at the base of the tree.
“No,” Selena groaned.
“Look away,” Badb urged.
But Selena couldn’t look away.
Thor lifted Mjölnir and grabbed the Greek god’s shirt, pulling him closer, then something inexplicable happened. At first, Selena thought she’d only missed the death of the god or that her eyes were playing tricks on her because Thor lifted the god and threw him toward the tree then spun around and swung his hammer at the horse of one of the Egyptian gods who had come to his friend’s aid. As the horse fell under Mjölnir’s blow, the Egyptian god scrambled to his feet, prepared to attempt to defend himself, but Thor had already moved on.
“I’m all right now, Selena,” Poseidon said quietly.
Selena looked down at their hands then blinked at the sea god. She’d been so busy watching Thor not kill the gods he fought, she hadn’t been paying attention to the god she was supposed to be healing… and yet, he’d healed anyway.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, holding up her hands as if they would explain everything that was so unexplainable on this battlefield.
“Which god?” Badb asked, her own eyes still following Thor’s puzzling behavior.
Selena shook her head. “I don’t know,” she answered.
“What is he doing?” Nemain asked softly.
“Some ploy?” Macha guessed. “To get people to let their guards down? But why? There are few gods out here he couldn’t kill if it came down to fighting them.”
Nemain shrugged. “Maybe that’s exactly why. Pretend like he’s not going to kill everyone he gets his hands on so Cameron will trust him. Lucky for us, Cameron’s not stupid.”
Selena looked over her shoulder toward the other side of the battlefield where Cameron, Bridget, Ukko, and the Dagda still clustered together, thinning the Slavic lines. She couldn’t shake the suspicion that Thor had something else planned, something far less sinister than the Mórrígna believed.
Another body fell in front of her and Macha immediately rushed to her side and dragged her to Selena. The early morning wore on that way, and she quickly lost count of the bodies she healed and those she couldn’t because so many injuries and deaths were taking place at once, and she simply couldn’t replicate herself to save everyone. She would occasionally check on Cameron whose group had moved closer to her as they closed in on the Norse. And that seemed to make Odin nervous. Not one of the Irish gods he feared most had been taken out of the battle, and they would soon be after his head.
Badb occasionally left her side to join the battle, particularly if Athena were nearby, but would quickly return to her side. But as the battle dragged on, Selena kept watching Thor as he calculated each throw of his hammer to hit a god’s shoulder or ankle and wound him enough to take him out of the fight but not kill him. Thor’s attention never once turned to the Irish gods on the other side of the battlefield, and as a body stirred beneath her – another healing she hadn’t even noticed – she thought, He’s doing it on purpose. He doesn’t want to be here but couldn’t stand up to his father.
Who? Cameron’s voice asked her in her mind.
Selena turned toward him to make sure she hadn’t distracted him, but he threw his Spear with as much precision and deadly accuracy as always. It sank into the skull of a Norse god who collapsed on the ground closer than Odin obviously liked because he growled at the young sun god and retreated toward his son.
Thor, Selena told him. I’ve been watching him, and Cameron… he hasn’t killed anyone. He’s hurting them to take them out of the battle then immediately moving on. But he’s not even leaving them with serious injuries.
Cameron grabbed his Spear and approached her, leaving the other gods he’d been fighting beside for the first time. He motioned toward Badb to go help the others and stood by Selena’s side, his dark brown eyes studying Mjölnir as it sailed through the air, hitting a goddess’s ankle before returning to his hand. Thor was already walking away and held his hand out as his hammer returned to him.
Weird… since when does Thor care about killing people?
According to legends, he defended the Aesir against the giants who wanted to kill the gods and destroy Asgard. But he was hardly a detestable god. Rather stupid for trusting Loki for so long, but maybe it was just his sense of loyalty.
Pretty sure he’s just stupid.
Selena rolled her eyes and knelt on the ground beside another injured god. Cameron stepped over the god’s body and threw his Spear, but Selena didn’t bother watching the blue flames as they pierced the sky of Murias. The god groaned and rolled over and Selena glanced up at her boyfriend as he retrieved his Spear. She was about to ask the god his name when she looked at the body that now lay by Cameron’s feet.
“Freyja,” she whispered.
Odin shouted something incomprehensible in Cameron’s direction, and she scrambled to her feet. The Mórrígna immediately surrounded her to prevent her from getting too close, and she tried to push Badb away, but moving the goddess was impossible.
“Ukko!” she screamed.
The Finnish thunder god appeared at Cameron’s side with the Dagda close beside him. Odin gripped his spear in one hand, his eye fixed on the young sun god who had killed the goddess he had long coveted. Tyr ran his sword through the god he fought and hurried to Odin’s side, prepared to help him in the final showdown between the world’s most powerful gods.
Odin never looked away from Cameron, and Selena’s heart threatened to burst open. She heard Badb whisper, “Bridget is coming, Child. Look at who is standing beside Cameron. Don’t fear for him.”
Oh, Badb. You and the Dagda together couldn’t kill Odin… and now he wants Cameron dead. How am I not supposed to fear for him?
“Because you forget: Cameron is the descendant of our greatest warrior Cú Chulainn, the inheritor of Lugh’s power, the master of all things. And he has the spirit of Midir, one of our most clever and passionate gods. Cameron is invincible.”
“Oh, Badb…” Selena whispered.
“Thor!” Odin’s voice roared above the chaos of the battle around them, and Selena caught her breath as she watched Thor slowly back away from the fight in which he’d been engaged. The goddess looked confused but allowed him to walk away as Dagr and an unfamiliar god Selena assumed was a young god much like Cameron left their own fights to take on the Irish and settle who would control the Otherworld once and for all.
Thor slowly approached his father and the group of gods who had assembled believing they could kill the future of the Tuatha Dé. Odin tilted his head at Cameron but addressed his son. “The sun god is mine. I’ll have my revenge for the murder of Sleipnir.”
“Sleipnir?” Ukko hissed, small sparks of lightning shooting from his fingertips. “What about Anita? Cameron defended himself and his family when your horse was killed, but what cause did you have to kidnap and murder an innocent woman?”
“You all invaded my home!” Odin shouted. “And you,” he added, allowing himself to look away from Cameron long enough to glare at the Dagda, “destroyed my real home and left us wandering the Earth like mortals.”
Odin didn’t give the Dagda a chance to respond, not that any response would have mattered. They were long past the point of negotiating, and Odin had come for vengeance and control. “Thor, kill their… father.”
Bridget and Cameron immediately raised their weapons to defend the Dagda, but Selena’s suspicions about the Norse thunder god came to fruition as he put his hammer back on his belt and folded his arms over his chest. “No.”
Odin scoffed, apparently thinking his son was only joking, but as Thor continued to stand defiantly at the edge of the Norse lines, Odin seemed to realize he had no intention of killing the Tuatha Dé. For the first time that morning, he looked down his own lines toward where Thor had spent the morning fighting and noticed the injured gods and goddesses, most of whom had been helped toward the back of the lines until they could be brought to Selena and healed, and Odin’s eye narrowed as his face contorted with rage.
“You’ve betrayed me!” he yelled.
“You’ve betrayed us all,” Thor countered. “You insisted even the new gods couldn’t be trusted, but they want to do things differently and this war was never necessary. Even so, I wasn’t prepared to turn my back on my family but you murdered an innocent woman for no other reason than revenge. And I won’t serve a god whose heart is filled with so much hatred he can no longer see what’s right, even if he is my father.”
Holy shit, Cameron murmured to Selena.
Selena just nodded, even though she was behind him and he couldn’t see her.
Tyr shuffled his feet uncomfortably, as if he weren’t sure what to do now, but Odin growled and spun around, throwing his spear at the Dagda. Bridget and Cameron had been so preoccupied by Thor’s admission that he wanted no part in Odin’s war that they’d lowered their weapons. They’d let their guard down after all.
Selena screamed as Odin’s spear pierced the Dagda’s chest and he stumbled backward, his eyes both pained and confused. He reached for the long metal handle protruding from his sternum, but Odin held out his hand and Gungnir returned to him, leaving a gaping hole through the Dagda’s heart.
Somewhere, perhaps on Earth or the moon or another galaxy or world of gods, she thought she heard Badb yelling and crying as the father of the Irish fell to his knees. In that same Otherworld where the gods now fought, such a different world than the one she found herself in now, she saw Ukko defy the rules of warfare and strike the Norse All-Father with lightning. The skies quickly darkened and thunder rumbled above her as she collapsed by the Dagda’s side and slipped her arms around him, cradling him like a child in her arms.
“Selena,” he whispered, his voice broken but still so affectionate. “It’s too dangerous for you here now.”
Selena shook her head as lightning crackled above her. Macha put an arm around her and through her sobs, tried to get her to loosen her grip on the Dagda’s body. “He’s right,” she cried. “They’re summoning their powers now. We have to get inside the palace!”
Selena refused to let go of him and she refused to look away. “This was your prophecy,” she whispered. “Without me, the Tuatha Dé were destined to lose everything because they were destined to lose you.”
“Selena, we can’t lose you, too!” Nemain screamed. “I can transport us all to the palace and you can heal him there!”
Selena opened her mouth to agree, but the sharp crackling of lightning was the last thing she heard before her world fell into complete darkness.
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Cameron twisted on his heels and blinked at the crumpled body lying next to the Dagda’s. He blinked again, disbelieving and numb, as Badb threw herself on Selena’s body, rolling her over and running her hands along her beautiful face. He thought he heard someone screaming his name.
The Dagda clutched his chest, partially healed, with one hand and reached for Selena’s arm with his other. He left bloody fingerprints along her skin as he wept with the Mórrígna for a demigoddess who had refused to abandon her friends.
But in the end, she had abandoned him.
Cameron was only vaguely aware of Ukko yelling at Odin. His words made sense yet they didn’t. What made Odin powerful, what had always made him so powerful, was his ability to summon powers that seemed magical to others, even the gods. Odin wasn’t a weather god, and yet, he’d stolen Ukko’s lightning and redirected it, killing Selena with the bolt that had been meant for him.
Killing her… they’ve taken her from me again.
Cameron turned around slowly and faced the one-eyed god. The other gods near him stepped away, their eyes widening as they sheathed their swords and held up their hands.
“She wasn’t here fighting,” Tyr said. “Thor is right, Odin. We fight with honor, and this isn’t honorable.”
“You’re cowards!” Odin yelled. “You’re running just because he’s on fire?”
“Cameron,” Bridget said quietly, “be careful.”
“Careful?” he spit out. “What for? This is the third time she’s been taken from me, and I’ll never get her back. Not in this world or any other. You can all go to Hell.”
A wall of fire erupted in front of Odin, but Cameron didn’t give him time to retreat. He walked through it and as he stepped onto the other side, Odin raised his spear and threw it at the sun god who would destroy the world that had murdered the only goddess he’d ever loved, that would allow her to return but force her to bargain her own soul. A second wall of fire erupted behind Odin, completely encircling them as Cameron knocked Gungnir down.
Just as they’d witnessed at Lake Waco, the spear never touched the ground but returned to Odin’s hand so he could immediately throw it again. The flames leapt higher as Cameron continued to walk toward the merciless, one-eyed god. Odin threw Gungnir again, and again, Cameron deflected it. Each time Odin threw his spear, the wall of fire climbed higher toward the mid-morning sky of Murias until all around them, they seemed to be surrounded by the fires of Hell.
Finally, Odin could back away no more. His back was against a wall of fire, and unlike Cameron, he couldn’t walk through flames. He lifted his spear but Cameron had grown tired of playing games with the Norse god. He threw his own Spear and pierced the god’s arm, and for the first time, Gungnir fell from his hand and onto the ground.
Cameron picked it up and tossed it into his fire then twisted his Spear free from Odin’s arm. “Why?” he hissed. “Why did you kill her?”
“You think you have me beat, Sun God?” Odin sneered. He held up his arm to show him he’d already healed. “You’re no stronger than the rest of your family. You just have better parlor tricks.”
Cameron grabbed the god’s shirt and lifted him from the ground and demanded one more time, “Why did you kill her?”
“Because I will kill you all!” Odin insisted.
An airy laugh escaped as his fire closed in on them. “Wrong, asshole. You only figured out how to kill me.”
Cameron held onto the Norse god as he allowed the walls of his fire to cave in on them and watched Odin burn in his final act of revenge, the final Battle of the Gods.