EIGHTY-FOUR
"So do you want to see what we found, then?" Oona asked, not bothering to hide the impatience in her voice, or even waiting for my answer.
She immediately went back to the grimoire. This was Minerva's book, and, as she explained on a visit once, it had been her mother's before that. It was larger than Oona's, both in height and width, and by the looks of it, it had to weigh over ten pounds. The pages were old and yellowed but with an iridescent sheen.
I came around the desk and stood beside Oona so I could get a better look at it. She tapped the page with a nine-pointed star in the center.
Directly below that was a list of names:
Thruor
Hildr
Gondul
Skogul
Ailrun
Mistr
Eir
Rothi
Sigrun
Though there were discrepancies in spelling--probably either accidental or due to translations and language barriers--these were clearly the names of the nine original Valkyries.
"The translation is a little rough, but we think this is called 'Encharment of Frigg,'" she explained. "It tells us the order we should stand in and what to say and how to hold the swords."
"And this is just in your grimoire?" I asked, glancing over at Minerva. "Why would it be in a spell book?"
"This is more than a spell book," Minerva answered with a hint of indignation. "This is well over a thousand pages long and filled with ceremonies, incantations, potion recipes, and, yes, spells from immortals and mortals. My great-great-great-great-great-grandmother brought together all the magic that she thought to be most vital for this earth, and she bound them together here. Is it really that surprising that a ceremony to save the world would be included?"
"No, I didn't mean it like that." I lowered my eyes. "I was surprised. Sorry. Go on."
Oona went back to elaborating on what they'd uncovered and how she thought the ceremony would go down, and I listened dutifully.
While she talked, Bowie decided to venture out from where he had been hiding and sat on my feet, which was something he did when he was scared and wanted to be picked up. I happily complied, scooping him up into my arms and burying my fingers in his soft fur.
I focused on Oona and what she and Minerva were explaining because I knew how important it was, but I relished cuddling with my wolpertinger as much as I could because I didn't know when--or even if--I would be able to do it again.
With our plan outlined and time running out, everyone set about gathering what we needed before heading up to the roof. Oona started allocating swords and positions--Quinn and I planned to use our own Valkyrie swords Eir and Sigrun, while Asher and Samael were going to use the swords of their mothers, Hildr and Rota, respectively, but everyone else had to be assigned.
While Oona was divvying out the other five swords, I pulled Samael aside.
"Do you have someplace safe?" I asked him, with Bowie nuzzling up against me as I held him.
Samael looked at me quizzically. "How so?"
"Someplace where I can put Bowie so that he doesn't get hurt. Someplace where he can be okay for a while, in case ... in case we don't come back, someplace where someone could find him later."
"Yeah." Samael smiled and gently stroked Bowie's useless wings. "I have the perfect place."
I followed him across the room, over to where his display shelves lined the wall. He moved aside a totem to reveal a hidden touchscreen. With a few a quick taps and a palm scan, he was done, and the wall beside him slid open.
There was no evidence of a door. Just a two-by-six-foot section that slowly receded and slid inside the rest of the wall. Beyond it was a short narrow hallway and a hermetic-looking bright white room.
"It's my panic room," Samael said as I peered inside. "It's the safest place that I can offer you right now. Every one of the offices has one, and the Seraphim have a master code so they can get in when this is all over."
"Thank you." I smiled gratefully at him, then carried Bowie into the room.
It was a sterile, futuristic room, with plain walls, aside from several computer screens--all of which were currently flashing news about the current situation. Other than the clear plastic table and chairs in the center, there was no furniture, which meant there was nowhere comfortable for Bowie to hide.
I set him down so I could pull off my hooded sweatshirt. That meant I would be performing the ceremony in a black tank top, but I figured I could handle the cold. I knelt down on the floor beside Bowie and made him a little bed out of my shirt, then I bent down and kissed him between his little antlers.
"You are the best pet I ever had, Bunny Bo," I told him. "I love you, and if I make it back, I promise you're going to get unlimited cuddles and carrots from here on out."
When I stood up, Samael was standing behind me in the panic room, and I nearly screamed in surprise.
"You should take this, too." He held out Gungnir--Odin's beautiful spear that Samael had been storing for safekeeping. "You may need it for what comes next."
"It's needed in the ceremony?" I asked.
He shook his head once. "No. I'm talking about what comes after if the ceremony doesn't work. This can kill any immortal, and it might be the only chance we have at surviving this."
"Why me?" I asked.
"Why not you?" he countered. "You retrieved it. You should wield it."
"Okay," I said, because I didn't know how to argue with that. I took it from him and then carefully tucked it into the waistband of my pants.
EIGHTY-FIVE
The Evig Riksdag building was significantly shorter than my apartment complex, but the wind seemed much stronger and colder on the roof. Above us, dark clouds of black and red swirled and rumbled with angry thunder.
Oona, Minerva, Sloane, and Samael were carefully drawing the nonagram on the roof's surface. They had a sacred ash-and-herb concoction that Samael had whipped up while I'd been gone getting Sloane and the swords, and when they used it to mark the lines, it left a silvery-white line that left smoke rising a few inches above.
That left the rest of us standing off to the side so we didn't get in the way, and waiting for them to tell us when to take our marks. There was bickering between Minerva and Sloane--both of whom had very strong opinions about which direction the center point should be pointed--and I left Oona and Samael to mediate, since they knew more about it than I did.
I went over to the edge of the building, standing as close as I dared with the wind blowing as strong as it was, and I looked down. The skeleton swarm around the building had grown even more, and it would've been impossible for any of us to make it through on the ground level now. They were covering every inch of the ground, shoulder to shoulder, with others behind them climbing over them, and they stretched out as far as I could see, coming down every road and climbing up all the buildings that surrounded us.
The odd mushroom-like shape of the Riks building made it difficult for the skeletons to scale, but a few of them had started making it up the overhang. They still had about another twenty floors of sheer concrete and glass to scale before they made it to the roof, but at the rate they were going, it wouldn't take them that long. The skyscraper next to us was easier for them to ascend, so many of the skeletons were racing up that and attempting to leap over to us, but so far none had been successful.
As I watched their relentless struggle to reach us, I rubbed my hands over my bare arms, trying to stifle a chill that I knew wouldn't go away.
"Do you want my jacket?" Asher asked, his voice soft but clear over the roar of the wind because he was standing right behind me.
I turned around to face him. "Thank you, but no. I'm okay."
He put his hands on my arms, and they felt like fire compared to my icy skin, so he scowled at me. "You're freezing. This is ridiculous. You have to take it."
"Ash--" I tried to argue, but he took his jacket off anyway.
"I know that you're strong and that you don
't need me, but I do wish you'd let me take care of you sometimes," he said with a weary smile. "I make a mean vegetable soup, give killer massages, and my shoulder is world-renowned for being the absolute best one to cry on."
I smiled up at him. "If that's your idea of taking care of me, I would happily let you do that anytime you want."
"It's a date, then." He held out his coat to me. "And put on the damn jacket."
"Thank you, but this really wasn't necessary," I insisted, but I slipped it on anyway. "We shouldn't--"
My arguments died on my lips, because a dark shadow had passed over Asher's face. But it wasn't coming from the sky--it was coming from within him, rippling underneath his skin.
"Asher?" I asked, but his eyes had already gone glassy, and then he fell back onto the roof, his body shaking violently.
EIGHTY-SIX
"Asher!" Teodora wailed. "What's wrong with my grandson? What's happening to him?"
Valeska grabbed her, gently but firmly holding her back so she wouldn't get in the way of Minerva and Oona, who knelt beside him. He wasn't shaking anymore, but his body had completely tensed. I could see his veins and muscles bulging in his arms, and his back arched sharply, so his spine was a foot off the roof while his head and feet remained firmly planted.
When he opened his mouth, it was the same distorted voice that had come out before, speaking in that Enochian language that I didn't understand.
"He's possessed?" Minerva asked.
"I think so," Oona replied. She had her hands on his abdomen, trying futilely to push him back down.
"By who?" Minerva asked.
"I AM ABADDON, THE GOD OF DARKNESS AND DESTRUCTION." Those were the words that came out of Asher's mouth, but it definitely wasn't him saying them.
"Move," Samael commanded, and Minerva quickly complied so he could kneel beside Asher. "How was he possessed?"
"He was marked in Kurnugia," I said, clinging to his jacket, which was still warm from his body heat. "On his chest."
Samael grabbed Asher's T-shirt and tore it in half, as his body strained against the demon inside him. The wounds on his chest were black and festering, the edges curling back as if they were paper being burned.
Samael held his hand above Asher's chest, and he began chanting something in the same Enochian language. As he did, his fingers slowly began to glow a warm yellow, and then he plunged his fingers inside of the open wounds on Asher's chest.
Asher screamed in pain, while the demon howled in anger, and he tried to twist away, but Samael held strong. His right arm was wrapped around Asher's waist, holding him close, while his left hand remained clamped inside the wound.
"Bolape voresa oresa noco! Elasa biab ge de oi goaanu!" Samael chanted as Asher/Abaddon screamed and writhed.
Then it began to happen. Asher arched his back, and his mouth pulled back as he screamed. A torrent of dark locusts began flying out of his mouth, swarming around all of us in a disgusting, wriggling cloud. They buzzed around angrily, biting at us and spewing a sulphuric stench, but finally they were all out, and Asher collapsed back on the roof.
"Thank you," I told Samael as he stood back up, giving Asher space to wake up.
"I'm glad it worked," Samael said as he exhaled. "I've never cast out a demon that powerful before."
"You think you cast me out?" a distorted voice came from behind us, followed by a wicked laugh. "You merely set me free!"
The locusts had come together, coelescing into a dark shadow that soon took the form of a man. Dark gray mist shifted into a relatively human form, and within moments Abaddon stood before us. A tall broad-shouldered man with dark red skin--burnt, like he'd been cooking in the sun for too long--and wild tangles of black hair.
"Thank you for giving me a front-row seat to the end of days," Abaddon continued with a perverse grin that revealed his pointed teeth. "I was truly afraid that I would miss it."
"Well, I hate to break it to you, but you still will," I said and started walking toward him. I heard Oona and Quinn calling for me, telling me not to do anything stupid. But I wasn't.
A familiar metallic taste filled my mouth, reminding me of the electric energy crackling through my veins. The buzzing around my heart had started, sending a welcome heat through me, and I could feel the pressure building inside me.
"Really?" Abaddon asked. "I am the lord of the most vile city in the entire underworld, as I have been for centuries, and you think that you, one angry little girl, can stop me?"
"You might be powerful in the underworld, but we're not down there anymore," I shot back.
He threw back his head and laughed, and that's when I pulled the spear out from my waistband. He only saw it the split second before I drove it into his chest, but by the way his eyes widened, I think he knew exactly what it was.
The instant the tip pierced his skin, I felt it. A fiery heat shot through me, and a blinding light flashed out from inside of Abaddon. The force of the explosion of light and heat was so powerful that I went flying backward.
I held my arm over my face, shielding it from the explosion, and then I waited to land. But when I opened my eyes, I was still falling--plummeting down over the edge of the building toward the skeletons waiting below.
EIGHTY-SEVEN
The good news was that the skeletons caught me. The bad news was that it was like landing on a trampoline made of broken bones.
I expected them to tear me apart, but they were instantly moving me, passing me backward like I was body-surfing over the dead. I tried to fight them off, but they gripped me from every angle. I managed to get my right hand free long enough to safely tuck the spear into the lining of Asher's jacket, and then I let them carry me away, since I couldn't fight them.
It was like floating on wild river rapids, with them hurriedly pulling me along. The skeletons must've been a hive mind, like ants, because they worked together so quickly and efficiently that they had dragged me all the way to Skarpaker Park in record time.
From what I could see as they carried me, the camera crew was all gone, as were most humans. The crowd in the center of the park appeared to be entirely skeletons and immortals, though I couldn't discern if the immortals had followed Ereshkigal from Kurnugia or if they were residents of the city.
The skeletons lifted me up, pushing me onto the rocky outcroppings, and they tossed me onto them, like ocean waves tossing garbage onto the beach. I scrambled to get up, but then I saw her--the self-appointed queen of the underworld resistance--so I decided to stay back on my knees.
Ereshkigal walked over to me, and I was taken aback by how imposing she was in real life. This was my first time meeting her, and she had an ethereal beauty that was almost painful to look at. Her dress was like a black mist forming around her, perfectly coiling to the parts worth accentuating, and her hands were clasped in front of her.
With a knowing smile, she looked at me and said, "You are the one that has given me so much trouble."
"Right back at you," I said, which actually made her smile deepen. "What do you want with me?"
"Are you not the leader of the Valkyries?" she asked.
"Leader?" I said with a laugh. "I'm not even technically a Valkyrie yet."
"Then why have you been leading the fight against me?" she asked, seeming surprisingly unruffled about having my position so wrong.
"It's a long story, but the short version is: because I saw what you were doing, and I couldn't stand by and let you destroy the world."
"I don't want to destroy the world," she insisted. "I merely want to set it free!"
"But the way you are going about it, you are destroying the world!" I shouted at her. "The underworld cannot be unleashed without dramatic disastrous consequences. Even if you weren't plotting to kill us all or overturning millennia's worth of doctrine and binding ecclesiastic law, where do you think you will live? There are nearly twenty-five billion beings living here right now. There are barely enough resources to go around, and you want to add the billions of bein
gs from the underworld?"
Her expression was impassive as she said, "Then so be it. Only the strong will survive."
"But you already had your turn!" I argued. "Let the rest of us get a chance at being alive."
"It is still my turn!" she snarled, and her face contorted with rage. "Do you not understand that? It never stopped being my turn. I am still alive, and I refuse to be locked away any longer."
"I'm not saying that your life was fair or that Kurnugia is the most ethical way to handle immortality," I said carefully. "What I am saying is that the earth cannot hold us all, and if you insist on opening Kurnugia for everyone to escape, you will doom us all. The world will be destroyed, and you and Gugalanna and everyone and everything will be doomed along with it."
Still she stood unmoved by my pleas. "If that is the only way to be free, then so be it. I will not give up until all the Valkyries are dead and the seals to Kurnugia have been completely removed so that everyone can be free."
"There is no other way, then," I said simply. "You and the earth cannot coexist." The whole time we had been talking, I had been palming the spear inside my jacket, so it would be ready at a moment's notice.
She tilted her head then, and I struck. She tried to stop me, but it didn't matter where I stuck the weapon as long as the tip pierced her skin. She howled and her eyes flashed black, and that was the last thing that I remembered.
EIGHTY-EIGHT
The air smelled of pine needles and earth, and the rain felt cold as it landed on my face. My back ached terribly, but it was the dull throbbing in my head that made it hard for me to open my eyes.
When I finally managed to open them, I was staring up at a forest. Trees towering over me, their branches covered in thick needles, with only the smallest gaps through the canopy where I could see the overcast sky.
Then someone stepped in front of me, blocking the dim light, and the rain falling on my face blurred my vision, so I couldn't see who it was--only a shadow standing over me.
I knew I should be afraid, but I felt strangely at peace and resigned to whatever happened next. Like a part deep inside me had always known that it would come to this, that this would be how it ended.