Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Bodies crashed into the turf all around me, spraying me with sod and splintered bone. They slowly reformed, shattered ribs jigsawing back together, wasted faces leering as their spines straightened, arms outstretched to drag me to hell. I ran through them, pile-driving my way forward with the shield while swinging my sword at any that got too close. Chesa was a whirling storm of tasseled strikes and high kicks. She severed a soldier’s skull from its body with one of her batons, then crescent-kicked it across the field.

“Matthew, keep up!” she shouted as she stomped down on a skeleton as it reformed. “They only form once. All you have to do is break them.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Matthew said. He was jogging slowly behind us, shovel loosely in both hands. A skeleton rose up right behind him. The saint drove the rusty blade of the shovel through the neck of the creature, then drew back and sliced clean through its thighs. “All this running nonsense has me tuckered out. Can’t we wait for him to come to us?”

“This is hero stuff, Matthew,” I said. “You don’t stand around and wait when you’re doing hero stuff.”

“Maybe you don’t. I do. I do that all the time.”

“Healers,” Chesa said with a roll of her eyes. She hurled one of her batons through the air, puncturing a skull and pinning a gray-uniformed soldier to the ground. The creature twitched as it struggled to stand. Chesa somersaulted over the fallen zombie, grabbing the baton as she passed, and smashed down on two more revenants that were harassing a group of soccer players near the middle of the pitch.

“Keep at it, you two!” I shouted, passing Chesa. “All we have to do is hold them off. Their magic will wear off eventually!”

“This is a full incursion, Rast!” Matthew swept his shovel into the foot of a soldier whose uniform was so tattered that it could have been from any country in any war. The creature lurched, grabbed Matthew’s shoulder, and tried to rip his arm off. The saint drove the haft of the shovel hard into the zombie’s rib cage. Bones broke like kindling. “A self-sustaining anomaly! We’re going to have to contain it before it spills into reality and does some real damage!”

“Glad I didn’t get rid of my armor,” I muttered. An old man in a gray-and-black dress uniform seized on my leg, gnawing toothlessly on my boot. I kicked him in the face, then tried to transform my shield into a tower, so I could smash his neck. Nothing happened. I stared at the heater for a long second before my mind wrapped around the problem. “Right, no more magic,” I said, then plunged my very ordinary sword into the old man’s chest. “Not a lot of glory in this, is there?”

“I will offer you glory!” Aelwulf shouted as he bounded closer. There was a mad glint in his eye. “These halls are rich with gold and mead! I could plunder them for a thousand years and not have my fill!”

“Mead?” I asked, glancing at the bottle in his hands. “That’s just orange soda. Have you never had sugar before?”

“I understand the source of your power, John Rast!” He took another swig of soda, then tossed the bottle aside. Sticky orange liquid leaked down his beard, mingling with the blood on his chest. “Now it is mine, and soon I will wash it away with the blood of my enemies!”

“At least you’re consistent,” I said, then braced myself for impact.

If this was what sugar did to the Viking’s system, I would hate to see him on caffeine. He stood three feet away from me, legs spread wide, hammering down at my shield with the Totenschreck. Each blow drove me back. My head rang like a bell, and my bones screamed in protest. He was vulnerable, but such was the fury of his attack that I couldn’t slip past to land a deciding blow. The mad Viking cut deep grooves in my shield, and sliced thick notches from the rim. Robbed of its magic, the shield could do nothing but splinter further apart with each hammering strike.

Chesa blurred past me, vaulting over Aelwulf’s barrage and landing behind him. The Viking’s face remained locked in its mad rictus, but he spun, swinging at Chesa before turning back to me. Sensing an opportunity, I pressed the attack. Aelwulf held his sword loosely in one hand, spinning back and forth to engage us both. But that sort of fighting is only for the mad and Hollywood, and we were able to land a couple blows on his arms, and Chesa got a firm shot on his knee, the same one I’d stabbed. Aelwulf swore, but didn’t relent.

“Give it up, man,” I said. “You’re in a hopeless situation.”

“There is always hope,” he answered without letting up.

I didn’t understand. Aelwulf had been a consummate fighter up to this point. Maybe the orange drink really had screwed him up. Or maybe—

I looked up just in time to see Chesa’s eyes go wide. She was looking over my shoulder in absolute terror.

Dropping to one knee, I spun around and raised my shield. All I saw was a shadow and teeth the size of the sky, then something heavy and fast rammed into me. I rolled over, wincing as sharp pain burned through my forearm. Strong paws clawed at my thighs, claws scraping loudly against the steel, and heavy, musky breath washed over my face. Fenrir’s jaws clapped shut inches from my face, once, twice, a third time. I was on my back, the fame wolf standing on my shield, straining to reach my throat. I put both hands against my shield and pushed, slamming the top rim into Fenrir’s throat, forcing his jaws shut and his muscular neck back. With a firm kick I unseated the wolf, rolling away as he scrambled back to his feet. By the time I was upright, Fenrir and Aelwulf stood side by side, glaring at us. Fenrir was no longer the size of the sky, or even a very large car, or a small horse. But he was still a big dog. His hackles rose, and he growled menacingly. My sword lay discarded between us.

“Dude, I freed you!” I shouted.

“I meant to thank you for that,” Aelwulf said. “I had not figured out how to release the fame wolf. And what’s Ragnarok without Fenrir, hmm?”

“But . . . but he helped us reach you.”

“Fame wolf don’t care,” Fenrir growled. “Fame wolf just here for the fight.”

“Yes, he can be . . . indiscriminately destructive,” Aelwulf said. He ran a loving hand down Fenrir’s hackles. The wolf pawed at the ground. “Just what the prophets ordered.”

“John, are you okay?” Chesa circled around to my side. I was bleeding from my shield arm, but the armor had saved me from anything more serious.

“Sure, I’m great. How are you?”

“Feeling a little outnumbered,” she said.

A meaty bell rang out over the soccer field. I turned around to see Matthew busily thumping skulls and shoveling throats. He wiped a spray of blood off his face, then shouldered the shovel and strolled over.

“I think we’re about to sort that out,” he said. “Notwithstanding the hundreds of zombies, of course.”

“It will take more than a gravedigging priest and an acrobatic girl to best us,” Aelwulf said confidently. He raised Totenschreck and yelled, “I command the armies of the dead!”

The surrounding zombies turned curiously toward Aelwulf. A British paratrooper, still dragging the severed harness of his chute, looked him up and down, then shrugged.

“Get buggered,” he said, then trundled off.

Aelwulf stared at the zombie with indignation.

“Fine! I didn’t need an army of the dead anyway! Whatever!” he shouted.

“Ah, but you see, you do need an army of the dead,” I said. “Because our reinforcements just arrived.”

Blue lights flickered across the parking lot. A series of black tactical vans, sirens roaring, tore across the lot and bumped onto the soccer field. Gabrielle Rodriguez jumped out of the lead van and started directing Mundane Actual agents to form a cordon. I gave her a friendly wave, which she probably didn’t see and certainly didn’t ignore because she had better things to do with her time. I cleared my throat and reached down to pick up my sword, then turned my attention back to Aelwulf and Fenrir.

“No running now, big guy,” I said. “So why not give yourself up peacefully and everything can go back to normal.”

“Do I look like the kind of coward that runs away?” Aelwulf asked. To underscore the point, Fenrir bared his teeth and crept closer.

“I suppose not,” I said. “Well. Let’s get this over with.”

Fenrir leapt across the distance between us in a single bound. I took the brunt of the charge on my shield, but then Aelwulf lunged into the gap and I had to swiftly pivot to meet his attack. Catching Totenschreck’s green blade with the hilt of my sword, I pushed his swing wide and stepped close. Aelwulf responded by hammering his pommel into my wrist, but the long skirt of my gauntlets protected me from the worst of the strike. I got my shield into his shoulder and pushed him back. As he stumbled away, I drew my sword along the underside of his left arm, cutting deeply into the meat of his triceps. He grunted in pain, then punched me hard in the jaw and fell back.

“You fight better than I expected,” he said as he limped back.

“Regional runner-up, three years running,” I said.

“Do you get to drink from the skulls of your defeated foes?”

“Uh, no. But there’s a ribbon.”

“Ribbons,” Aelwulf spat. “They are for girls.”

“And for binding the world’s largest wolf,” I said. “Speaking of which, where is—”

Fenrir’s jaws clamped around my ankle, and I felt steel wrinkle like tissue under his teeth. I banged down hard on the wolf’s back with my shield, trying to connect with his neck, all while parrying Aelwulf’s blade.

“Chesa!” I screamed. “Little help?”

“Doing what I can,” she answered. Her lithe form slipped past me to strike at Fenrir, beating a tattoo across his back with her batons. Fenrir released me just long enough to drive Chesa back with a series of quick, snapping bites, then he took her batons in his jaws and snapped them in half. Chesa fell back, hands curled into fists, a furious but helpless look on her face.

“You may find better use of this, sister.” Revna swooped down out of the sky, black wings fluttering as she pulled up short over our battle. She tossed a spear into the ground beside Chesa. She turned to the Viking and nodded. “Aelwulf. I never did like the way you smiled.”

“None of this would have happened if you’d just done your job, valkyrie,” Aelwulf said with a sneer. “You and Runa were always too content with the way things were, instead of the way they should have been.”

“And you’re a whiny man-child, upset that he doesn’t get to be the hero in every story ever written,” Revna said. “You have destroyed enough things. It’s time to go home.”

“We are making our own home!” Solveig appeared out of the mob of zombies, still wearing the remnants of her valkyrie disguise. She took two long steps, then hurled a spear into Revna’s wing.

The valkyrie screamed and pinwheeled to the ground. Fenrir leapt at her, but Chesa stood between them, spear at the ready. Matthew hurried to her side.

“Right, so . . . I think we have you outnumbered now. Unless you have—” I looked over my shoulder at Aelwulf. Or, at least, at where Aelwulf had been standing a moment ago. He was hobbling hell for high water through the mob of zombies, cloak fluttering behind him. “Huh. I guess he is the type to run.”

“He’s making for the woods,” Chesa said. “I don’t think MA has that closed off. Don’t let him get away!”

“But what about . . . ?” I motioned to Solveig and Fenrir.

“We have this. Go!”

“Sure,” I mumbled. “Send the tank into the woods alone. No problem.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing!” I called over my shoulder and I rumbled across the field. The zombies were ignoring me, and Aelwulf, and everything else. Mostly they just stood around chatting. A couple were continuing their soccer game. A bunch of the British soldiers had queued up in front of the concession stand, despite the fact that the attendant had long since fled. I shook my head. “Not the army of the dead I was expecting.”

Then I was in the woods, chasing Aelwulf’s fleeing shadow.


Back | Next
Framed