The Woken Gods (34 page)

I don’t have any illusions about what I’ve done. The relic might like taking life, but it didn’t make the decision. I did.

Bronson drops the knife and it clatters onto the marble. He clutches at the metal buried deep within him. I aimed for the heart. It’s what made him like this. His broken heart brought us here.

He lifts his head and looks at me. He drops his hands, stops fighting.

“I hope she forgives you,” I say. “Now you can be together.”

“Gabrielle,” he says, the word soft, a whisper. I can’t read his expression. Pain, fear, hope… Maybe all of them pass over his features, and then he falls. In that instant, the glow around Dad disappears.

Legba claps. “Well done. But oops.” He takes flight and lands halfway up the stairs.

“Kyra!” Bree shouts, and Oz echoes it.

But my attention is stuck on the reason. Set has someone to blame for not getting what
he
wanted, and that someone is me. He rips the second arrow from the round bulge of his shoulder, and comes at me, snarling. The scepter might be enough to save me, a weapon wielded against its creator. But it’s in Bronson.

Oz pushes in front of me, but Set bats him out of the way and Oz hits the marble hard. Set’s sharp teeth snap in my face and his clawed hand grabs the back of my neck and pulls me to him. I wonder how he will kill me. Are those teeth going to close on my throat? The claws sink through my skin? Am I really destined to die here, tonight?

In that moment, I am aware how much I want to
live
. My blood sings with the need to survive.

A layer of ice sprays over Set, freezing him in place. But not for long – cracks appear almost immediately as he thrashes against the coating. But, in the flurry of motion, he releases me and I scramble away from him. Set’s attention is no longer on me, but on Enki, striding forward. He sends another wave of ice through the air, and Set counters with a wave of sand.

The operatives are calling out to each other, not sure whether they should get in the middle of this or not. Enki bellows displeasure, and Set lashes out. Shadows like snapping jackals emerge from his hand, and latch onto Enki’s scaled arm.

“Bravo!” Legba calls and jumps back into the thick of things.

He lands next to Enki and Set. He brings the bottom of his walking stick down on the marble, hard. The floor shakes with its force. His voice booms out, echoing through the Great Hall. “So, you’re probably wondering why I brought you all here this evening.”

Maybe it wasn’t the floor trembling. It might just be me.

Oz gets back up, sword in one hand, and reaches for me with the other. I make it to his side, and we lean into each other. He holds the sword in front of us. Any protection is better than none.

“Chin up, girl, you made it,” Legba says. “I didn’t know if you would.”

Hermes called out from the column where he still lounges. “This is quite a mess you’ve made, so if you
would
care to explain…”

Legba swings his cane in a circle. He makes a circuit, not quite wandering to where the Society operatives wait, unmoving, and the TV camera films on. Nalini has her hand on Bree’s shoulder, holding her in place. Ben has a similar posture by Tam. Justin lingers beside Rose, bow lowered.

“I like to walk through time,” Legba continues. “Some while back, it occurred to me that it was an awfully big coincidence that all we gods went to sleep at the same time… and then woke up that way. I don’t know about my brothers and sisters here, but I wasn’t even feeling tired when it happened. I didn’t recall that right away. When we first woke up, the world was new, and there was so much to see. I barely remembered lying down for a nap.”

“The point, please, before you put us back to sleep,” Hermes says, with a stagey yawn.

Enki’s massive body swivels to face Legba.

“No hard feelings,” Legba says to Enki. The next he directs to the other gods. “But it seems our Sumerian friend here had a crush – love, really, though never consummated, alas – on a human woman, who just happened to be an early member of this Society that wanted humanity to be on top. She convinced him that humans deserved a time of their own, that it cost the gods nothing to take a little sleep. He helped her do it, achieve her dream of us all dreaming.”

Tezcatlipoca extends one blocky hand and knocks the statue of the woman with the globe raised above her head across the hall. The light from the TV camera zigzags as Nalini and Bree dodge it. The statue skids to a stop on its side with a crash.

“I’m not done yet,” Legba says. “I followed the lines of this action forward, into the future, and what did I see? I saw William Bronson – R.I.P. – waking us up, but not because he had any great love of the gods. No, he wanted his wife back, but it didn’t work. All he got was us. And his action created still more lines, one to his own granddaughter, who it seemed was
also
a descendent – on her father’s side – of the very same woman who charmed Enki into putting us into a sweet slumber for thousands of years. But, you know, it wasn’t
her
fault. So I thought I’d give the girl a fighting chance. And I was right, she didn’t disappoint. It is your life, girl, but this is a big world. And here’s the thing.”

“Yes?” I ask. Because it’s clear that he’s talking to me now.

“There’s part of me that admires your ancestor. She was human, and she wanted to protect her people. You humans now, you’ve only made us upset. The way I figure, the only way to push you humans to be better is to give you no choice but to try harder. Hannah, can you tell us what you saw, all those years ago? What you’ve seen so many times since?”

Dad strains against the ropes, but Legba stares at Mom. She wafts to her feet, swaying like a flower in a breeze. She says, “I saw the great gods warring, the start of the end of everything, and it began here. I saw blood and doom, riot and ruin. The end of our days, but not of yours. I saw my daughter bleeding on the marble, the ritual complete, the door open…” She hesitates, lost. “But that has not come to pass, so maybe none of it will?”

“Shhh,” Legba says. “No, some conflict is just the thing to get the blood flowing.” He sweeps his arms out. “After all, I’m the only one who got what I wanted: the truth out in the open. I can’t imagine there won’t be hard feelings among my old friends here. It’ll be interesting to see who stands with you, Enki, or if those loyalties evaporate like dreams in harsh morning light. To you, girl, and humanity, I say good luck.” He whirls, the tails of his suit jacket flying, and he’s gone.

The gods who are left stare at Enki, who twists his horns as he bellows. The floor trembles. The walls shake. He’s not apologizing or making nice. He’s offering a challenge. Operatives skitter out of the way as he turns and leaves.

STAY HERE
. His words are bell-clear in my head.

Set is the first to go after Enki, shadows pouring from his claws. But he isn’t alone. The battle is beginning, and as Legba predicted, sides being chosen. Operatives move aside to let them out, because what else
can
they do?

Bree and Tam rush over as soon as the gods make their exit. The screams of the revelers get louder. The operatives peer after the gods, as if they aren’t sure what to do. Rose calls out, “We’ll have to go out there. Try to get as many civilians off the Mall as possible.” She’s already heading out the door, uniformed men and women behind her.

Bree asks, “Kyra, are you OK? That was…”

“I will be. I think,” I say, which is a better answer than
I don’t know
.

None of us look at Bronson’s body, only a few steps away. Mom is rocking beside Dad saying, “This is where it ends, this is where it ends…”

“What do we do now?” Tam asks.

“Good question,” I say.

A sound reaches us that might be the Capitol building collapsing in one loud crash. We stopped the ritual, but it might have been for nothing.

“Once they’re done fighting each other, they’ll remember this is where the door is,” Oz says.

Justin is nodding. “You’re right. They’ll come back and find some other way to open it. They won’t have to fear death anymore then.”

I ask, “Can’t we… I don’t know, move it?”

“Not that quickly,” Dad adds.

Bronson claimed to have a way to get rid of the gods after his precious ceremony was complete. Apparently he
had
known they were put to sleep, and how to wake them. He must have been telling the truth. What was it he said? That he’d raise the walls,
then
put them to sleep.

I drop beside Dad. “The walls, Dad – are they real? Can I put them up? Bronson told me he was going to after the ritual. Would that help?”

“Yes,” Dad says, blinking up at me. “Yes, do it. The walls will protect us until we can regroup, strategize. It will keep them out of here.”

“How do I do it?” I prod.

Oz taps my shoulder. “I know how. Every operative does, in case of something like this. They’re our last defense. You sure, Mr Locke?”

“Yes,” Dad says again. “If there are negative consequences, I’ll accept them.”

I don’t want him in danger again, not anytime soon. “Should we find Rose and ask her?”

Oz shakes his head. “Only the board can order the walls up, because the rest of the world doesn’t know about them. The gods don’t know about them. If we’re doing this, we have to do it alone. We can’t wait to see if everyone agrees.”

Another loud crash sounds outside. “Go,” Dad says. “Be quick.”

The few operatives who stayed behind are closing the doors, barricading the Jefferson against the fighting.

“We’ll need a horse to have any chance of making it down there in the crush,” Oz says.

“Book’s tethered outside. Take her,” Justin says.

“Down where?” Bree asks.

“The Washington Monument,” Oz says, and I don’t have to ask if he’s kidding. He isn’t. “There are pieces from the walls of Asgard embedded at the top. The city was designed with this feature in mind. Their original purpose was to safeguard the Norse gods when they were in residence at Asgard. But once we activate them, they should do the opposite. They should force the gods out, and protect the city.”

Tam cues in on the same word I do. “Should?”

“It’s never been tested. Because how could we?”

Mom lies down beside Dad, tucks her head in below his chin. He can’t put his arm around her and she’s careful not to touch the ropes. Dad closes his eyes, and they look almost cozy.

“The ropes burned me,” I say to Justin.

“We’ll get him free while you’re gone,” he says.

Oz claps a hand on Justin’s shoulder. “Nice shooting. Guess you won’t be able to complain about all the hours of practice anymore.”

Justin can’t seem to manage a quip back, and Oz lets him off the hook. He says to me, “Ready?”

“Be careful, Kyra,” Dad adds. “We don’t want to lose you now.”

“We’ll do our best,” I say, hardly able to believe we’re all alive. We might make it through this night. “Oz, let’s go raise some walls.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

We speed down the stairs and through the ground floor exit. Once we make it outside, I have to press down the impulse to run back in and hide. Steady streams of people are flooding toward us, attempting to flee the madness behind them. Some stumble, drunk, and a few of the women are half-dressed at best. Two men have skulls painted over their features, the greasepaint bones blurred from tears.

The crash we heard wasn’t the full collapse of the Capitol, but the perfect white dome is partially missing. A black hole with jagged edges gapes on one side. The solstice revels turned gods’ battle is an all-too-close roar on the other side of it.

I have never thought of myself as a hero, as the type of person who rushes
into
something like this. I’d never have believed I could be the kind of person able to do anything about it. Sometimes a hero is whoever is available, doing whatever is possible.

Having outlived my supposed fate makes me bolder. I
really
don’t want to die. Neither do any of these people, or others having quiet evenings at home in the city. We may not be able to protect the entire world, not tonight, but we can try to protect this place, and keep the door safe.

Oz guides us to a hitching post at the edge of the street. There’s one lone horse tethered there, a large, brownish-black mare.

A Society operative gapes at the Capitol, though there’s nothing to be seen except flashes of light above it. He looks at us. “Is it true the director’s dead?”

I nod. “Is that as bad as it sounds?”

“Worse,” he says.

“They could use your help inside,” Oz says to the operative, who rushes away, all too glad for an excuse to leave the fray.

Oz strokes his hand along the mare’s side. The horse’s shoulders move like liquid as he unwinds the reins from the post and leads her to me. “Unlike that guy, Book doesn’t spook at anything,” Oz says.

He gracefully mounts, then holds out his hand to help me up. I grab his hand, manage to put my foot in the stirrup, and awkwardly swing on behind him.

“That was… you’ll need riding lessons,” he says.

“Shut up,” I say. “We’re in a hurry, remember.”

He holds the reins in one hand, and a jounce of his foot to Book’s side sets us moving. I put my arms around him and hold on.

The night is warm, and though a few pinpoint stars are visible, an eerily large pale moon dominates the sky, poised on the horizon as if it might fall the rest of the way to earth and take out a national landmark or two.

Or a warring god or two.

Oz spurs the horse forward through the press of people. The solstice revels are always well attended, and this year is no exception. Book’s hooves land hard on the pavement, giving no sign of alarm at the roars and shouts and booms ahead. When we round the damaged dome, the reflecting pool in front of the Capitol is on fire.

The effect turns out to be a trick of distance and darkness. Gods are lobbing the fire – reflecting in the pool – at each other. Other members of the pantheons have been summoned by the fighting. Gods swarm the air, some touch down on the ground for a moment, others race along it. Everywhere there are brilliant, burning colors, broken up by dark, shadowy blacks.