South of Surrender (Hearts of the Anemoi) (24 page)

The lights of the Anemoi spread out, some on the ground, some in the sky.

An immense weight of anticipation hung in the air, which took on an almost electrical quality, like a storm approaching.

“Laney,” a man’s voice said. She turned, and the white aura revealed it was Owen. “Come away from the door.”

“I can’t see Chrys.”

“He’ll be okay. The safer you are, the more he’ll be able to concentrate on keeping himself safe.”

With one final look out over the dark yard, Laney moved toward Owen. He took her hand. She gasped and halted as an image sucked her in completely. Owen, standing in the middle of an overwhelmingly grand hall, silver fur robes hanging on his tall body. It disappeared as soon as it came, leaving a headache hammering against the backs of her eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes.” What was that? And why did it keep happening?

“Come on. Let’s get you downstairs. Megan and Tabitha are already there.”

“Is this necessary?” she asked as they descended the steps. Just how much danger was she in?

“Just a precaution.”

Outside, thunder detonated. The house shook, and Laney hung on to the railing so hard her knuckles hurt. Somewhere, Teddy wailed.

“I’m going to pick you up.” Owen scooped her off her feet and ran the rest of the way down. He made his way along a hall and into a room, where he placed her back on her feet. “Sorry.”

She attempted a shaky smile. “I’ll forgive you, this time.” Truly, though, her knees were like jelly. Probably a good thing that Owen had carried her the rest of the way down. Seth would have a field day with an admission like that.

“What happened? Is she okay?” Megan asked over Teddy’s breathless cries. “What’s going on?”

“She’s fine. I don’t—”

Thunder exploded again. And again. Right overhead.

Laney shrank into herself and grabbed her head, like the sky might fall on it. Which didn’t sound like an exaggeration.

“Come sit down,” Tabitha said, taking her hand and leading her to a leather couch.

“Thank you,” she said as she settled next to the other woman. Laney scanned her vision over the room, an office, it looked like, until she found Owen crouching on the floor in front of Megan.

“Is Eurus here?” Megan asked.

“Come here, big man.” Owen took Teddy into his arms. The boy burrowed against his father’s body, still crying, but less enthusiastically now. “I don’t know if he’s here. But I think he’s coming. No matter what happens, I want you to stay here. All of you.”

Eurus is coming?
A shudder ripped through her.

An ominous rumbling sounded, as if from a distance. It got louder by the moment.

“What about you?” Megan asked. When he didn’t answer, she said, “You’re going to fight.”

“I have to.”

“Owen,” she said, her voice tight with tears. “I can’t lose you, too.”

He pulled Megan’s face in close to his, and whispered words Laney couldn’t hear over the odd rumbling, then he spoke to Teddy in that same language Chrys sometimes used. “I love all of you,” he said, passing the baby back to Megan.

He rose and left the room, pulling the door shut behind him.

Megan choked on a restrained cry. Laney eased down off the couch and made her way to Megan’s side. Given how scared she was for Chrys, Laney could imagine some of what she must’ve been feeling. And, oh, God, what if Seth got here in the middle of this? She pushed the question away. She couldn’t let herself go there, to a place where she might lose both Seth
and
Chrys.

“Owen loves you, Megan,” she said. “He’s not going to do anything stupid.”

“I know,” the other woman managed.

The rumble crescendoed to a roar and slammed into the side of the house. The whole building lurched. Upstairs, windows exploded. Laney screamed and flinched, her hands coming up to her ears. Crashes and thumps continued until she couldn’t tell if she was shaking or if it was the house.

Tabitha joined them on the floor, forming a tight circle. “They’re really gods?” she asked over the noise from above.

“Yes,” Megan said. “I’m sorry about all this, Tabitha.”

“Don’t be. It’s amazing, really. I’m just sorry—”

Thunder like an eruption shook the world. The lights went out.

Laney’s cry was drowned out by Teddy’s. God, she hated thunderstorms.
Hated
them. She gulped down a breath and forced herself to calm down. In the windowless room, it was pitch black—at least
that
she was more used to.

Megan groaned. “Oh, God, no.”

“What is it?” Tabitha asked.

“Contraction,” she gritted out.

“Give me Ted,” Tabitha said. “I want you to breathe slow and deep. Have you had any false labor yet?”

“No,” she said. “But that could be what this is, right?” The hope in her voice was plain.

“Yes, so just try to relax. Just breathe.”

Laney found Megan’s hand in the dark. She squeezed it through a series of percussive poundings. Thunder? Wind? Something else entirely?
Please don’t let the baby come in the middle of whatever else is out there
. “I’m going to work on breathing with you so I don’t hyperventilate.” Megan gave a strained chuckle, and Laney talked to distract herself from the fear. Though she felt like she was shouting over the racket coming from all around the house. “When I was nineteen, I got turned around outside one night in a storm. I’d already lost my night vision and was completely blind in the dark. I couldn’t find my way back to the house or the barn, or even find anything to try to take cover. I finally just sat down and waited it out. Felt like hours. I’ve been terrified of…storms ever…” She sniffed, once, twice. “Do you smell smoke?”

Neither did.

But with her diminished sight, Laney’s other senses had strengthened. “I do. I swear I do.”

“Hold Teddy. I’ll go check it out.”

“Be careful, Tabitha,” Megan said.

Laney accepted the baby. He fussed and wiggled at the handoff. She could hear Tabitha’s movements but not see. Even when the door opened, no light spilled in.

“She’s right. It’s stronger out here. Stay put for a minute.”

Mere moments later, footsteps ran down the hall.

“Oh, my God. I’m so sorry, Megan. The house is on fire. It’s coming down the steps. We have to get out of here.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chrys could hardly believe what he was seeing. Nor that Eurus was actually unleashing this horror upon the Earth.

The night sky was in chaos.

Bolts of multicolored lightning zinged through the air. Concussive blasts of thunder unleashed shock waves of turbulence that blew roaring winds this way and that. Rain slashed diagonally until it was almost impossible to see. Hail rained down in body-battering blasts. Trees had fallen—some brought down intentionally to close off the area. Homes had been damaged. Power lines were downed, wires twisting and sparking in the streets.

Aeolus wore the strain of attempting to rein in the elements in the tension on his face and in his muscles. Every time he was successful at drawing down the maelstrom of the storm, Eurus used the power of the ring to whip it up again.

Eurus had help in keeping Aeolus and the Anemoi distracted. A half-dozen Harpies swooped and screeched. And it appeared he’d lured a new ally into his malevolent cause—the Keres, female death daimons who lusted for the blood of dying and wounded men on the battlefield. The black-cloaked wraiths had gnashing teeth and vicious claws. Between the Harpies and the Keres, it was virtually impossible to get at Eurus.

Only Aeolus could get close. Father and son had engaged in nearly a half hour of grueling lightning-and-wind duels, neither making discernible headway.

Next to his father, Chrys was best equipped to take out the enemy. Between the season, the infernal dagger, and Laney’s amulet, he was about as well protected as you could be. He pulled on his rage for Eurus and his grief for Apheliotes and threw himself into the confusion of the battle.

He flew up behind a wraith hard in pursuit of Livos. Fortunately, the Keres tended to prefer the easy pickings of those unable to fight back. Battle wasn’t their specialty, and their situational awareness wasn’t well developed. Chrys zoomed in close enough to slash the blade down the Keres’s back, then veered hard left to avoid the imploding spray of blood into which it dissolved.

Chrys took out another and another, but there seemed an unending supply of the evil spirits.

Boreas and Zeph flew up. “We’re going after Eurus. All of us. At once.”

Chrys followed, determination flaring. They truly were strongest together. With the lesser Anemoi drawing away the Harpies and Keres, the three brothers launched themselves toward Eurus and all at once unleashed the combined power of their winds.

The blast knocked Eurus back, allowing Aeolus to get in an unblocked hit with a lash of lightning. Eurus screamed in thunderous rage, then unleashed a wild wall of wind that pounded into the Anemoi and scattered them uncontrollably.

Chrys slammed to the ground and rolled to the right just in time to avoid a swooping Harpy, talons out and ready to grab. Groaning from the impact, he saw the best news of the whole night. The flash of Eurus’s lightning was dimmer, less frequent.
Almighty Zeus, please let that mean Father’s strike hit something vital.

“Chrys! Chrys!” Owen yelled from somewhere in the melee.

He shot to his feet and turned. “Holy fuck,” he murmured. Owen’s house was on fire. Every time rain smothered a section of flames, the winds breathed new life into it.

Laney.
Oh, gods, no
.

Owen raced up to him. “I can’t get in. The fire’s too hot. Megan, the baby—” He broke off, too choked up to continue.

He nodded. Chrys might not be powerful enough to defeat Eurus, as three solid months had more than proven, but he’d damn well use every bit of his power to save these humans, for whom he cared so deeply. “I’ve got it. Where are they?”

“Basement office. There’s an exterior door around back.”

Chrys whipped around to the rear of the house in an instant. He crashed through the door, sending glass and wood flying. “Laney? Megan?”

“We’re here!”

Chrys rounded a corner and stopped. He could just make them out through the smoke, congregated outside of Owen’s office door. Fire was roaring down the staircase along the wall that separated him from them. It had burned through the wall and ceiling above, which was sagging badly. The heat it gave off was enormous.

Come to Papa
, he thought.

“I’m going to push back the fire and the heat,” he shouted. “When I do, you run to the back door and stay there.”

“Okay!”

Chrys shifted into his elemental form, moved to the center of the hall under the worst of the fire, called the heat into himself, and blew out the excess energy in a great gust that smothered the fire as long as he kept it going.
Run, run, run
, he thought. Because once he withdrew the current, the fire would come roaring back.

Relief flowed through him as the three women, Tabitha carrying Teddy, bolted beneath him and around the corner. Chrys retreated to the corner of the hall and watched as the fire tore back through the space. A section of ceiling collapsed, sending out a plume of heat and sparks. He stepped toward the conflagration and absorbed as much of the heat as he could. Deep satisfaction roared through him. As regretful as he was about the destruction of Owen’s house, the fire’s great heat replenished his energy and strengthened his body.

He materialized into corporeality as he rounded the corner, shaking with the force of the thrumming energy he now carried within. “Everyone okay?” he asked, looking to Laney. Thank the gods, she was unharmed. Rattled, but holding it together, and more beautiful than ever despite the smudge of soot on her brow.

“We’re okay,” Tabitha said. “But Megan’s having contractions.”

He nodded. “Okay if I take everyone to your house?”

“Of course.”

“Everyone wrap an arm around one of mine. You have to be touching me, including Teddy.”

Megan took his right. Tabitha took his left and wrapped the baby’s arm around, too.

Laney came up behind him. “I’m sorry, but I have to do this.” She pressed her front to his back and wrapped her arms around his stomach. She kissed his back, once, twice, and her love poured into him, warming and bolstering him, and making him realize he’d never given a second thought to the other women’s touches. He pressed his hand over one of hers, and shifted them into the elements.

Chrys eased out the door and drifted to the corner of the house. Carrying this many beings into the elements drew on his reserves, but the fire had given him energy to spare. He moved slowly, carefully. The Harpies and the Keres could perceive divine energy, so being elemental didn’t guarantee he wouldn’t capture anything’s notice. And if that happened with all these mortals, with Laney…

No. Focus, damnit.

He peered around the corner. Coast clear.

Pouring on the extra energy he’d imbibed from the fire, he shot across the long stretch of open space separating the houses. Half way across, a flash of light caught his attention.

Eurus had Owen pinned against the front of the house. With the fire at his back and Eurus and his lightning lance at his front, he was trapped.
Sonofabitch.
As a demigod, Owen had the least chance of any of them to weather an attack by Eurus.

Where the hell was Aeolus? Boreas? Zeph?

Chrys continued to the back corner of Tabitha’s house and manifested. “Go inside,” he said. He hated not seeing them in safely himself, but Eurus was raising the weapon for a death blow. Odd that Eurus was using his weaker hand to wield the lightning—Chrys didn’t have time to think on it. He took off across the space, materialized the infernal dagger, and threw it with all his might.

A blast of divine energy blew in front of Owen, shielding him and throwing him off balance. He fell to the ground.

The lance of lightning struck right through the center of the energy signature, which flashed and flickered between its corporeal and elemental forms, just as the dagger stuck deep into Eurus’s shoulder.

Two screams of agony rocked the nighttime world.

Eurus wrenched the dagger free and whipped it back toward Chrys who, with a massive guest of wind, blew it off course. Eurus staggered and weaved, and triumph roared through Chrys when he noted the gray mottled skin on the hand he’d slashed the previous day with the dagger.
Hell yes, it worked!
And now he’d struck him again.

Eurus shot off into the sky. The remaining Harpies and Keres retreated en masse.

Chrys reached the front corner of the house, and every bit of that triumph drained away. “No!” He skidded to his knees in the wet grass.

Boreas lay on his back in his human form, a great savage hole through his chest.

Owen crawled to him. “Gods, no. Boreas.” Calling on his powers as a snow god, Owen cupped his hands over the gaping wound. White light slipped through the cracks of his fingers. His hands turned white and icy with frost, the cold energy a soothing balm for a god of the North.

“Keep going, Owen. I’ll move us. We have to get him away from the heat of this fire.”

Sweat streamed down Owen’s face. He nodded.

Chrys grabbed Boreas’s hand and reached for Owen’s shoulder. He willed them into the elements and away a safe distance from the fire’s heat. He manifested them in the soft, cool grass in front of Tabitha’s house.

“B, you’re going to be okay, man. Eurus is gone. It’s over for tonight.”

Zephyros and Aeolus burst into corporeality behind Chrys and knelt beside him. Footsteps squished in the wet grass and Megan, leaning on Tabitha and Laney, joined the circle of Boreas’s family. She eased down next to Owen, tears streaking her face as she stroked her hand over Boreas’s short hair.

“Oh, gods,” Zeph said before he reined in his reaction. “We’re here, Boreas. We’ll fix this.” He cupped his hands around Owen’s. A golden, healing light spread over Boreas’s chest. Of all of them, Zephyros’s energy was the strongest and had the most powerful ability to heal.

Hope flared in Chrys’s chest as the visible strain left Boreas’s face. Chrys turned and sought out Livos, standing behind him on the street. He waved him over. Livos took a knee. “We need cover. All of you, draw in a fog. Thick as you can. And track down my dagger. We can’t lose it.” Livos nodded and left, and Chrys turned back to Boreas.

“We have to stop meeting this way,” Zeph quipped.

“Yes.” A great wracking cough seized Boreas. Blood spilled over his lips. “O-wen, son?” He scanned his gaze over the group, his normally silver eyes dulled to a flat gray.

“I’m here, Boreas. Right here,” Owen grunted, his arms shaking as he poured the cold energy into his father.

Fog began to roll in around their position, dense and obscuring.

Boreas’s head lolled toward Owen. “You…are great…father.” He coughed again. More blood trickled from the side of his mouth. “I’m so…proud…you.”

“Don’t,” Owen bit out. “Don’t you even think of saying good-bye.”

Boreas dragged his hand up, as if in slow motion, and placed it atop Owen’s. “Have to. My…time’s over,” he slurred.

Megan pressed a kiss to Boreas’s forehead. “Your time is just beginning. Do you hear? We love you,” she said in a tear-strained voice.

Boreas managed a small smile. “You’re best…thing ever…happened to him, Meg…”

Chrys saw what was happening. He’d seen the size of the hole, Boreas’s blood loss, and now his struggle to speak and breathe. The cold energy Owen poured into him, the healing energy Zephyros spread over him—they were mere Band-Aids. Analytically, intellectually, he knew this. But his heart…his heart could not begin to accept the tragedy unfurling before him.

His beloved brother was dying.

Chrys whirled on Aeolus, kneeling at Boreas’s feet, pale-faced and eyes filled with horror. “Do something!”

Aeolus dragged his gaze from Boreas and gave a nearly imperceptible shake of his head. He might as well have shouted, “There is nothing to be done.” Their father turned back to Boreas and rested a hand on his shin. “I grant my permission, and my blessings, to transfer your godhood.”

“Thank you,” Boreas rasped. At the same time, Chrys, Zeph, Megan, Owen—all of them—issued a collective protest. Owen turned to look at Megan, regret and devastation on his face. Boreas’s gasping coughs quieted the group. “Zeph, please keep your healing going long enough…”

To keep me alive
, Chrys finished in his mind. And the words cut deep into his soul, unleashing a physical pain that raced through his veins until he could hardly stand it. “B, fight it.”

But Boreas didn’t respond, and Chrys didn’t hold it against him, because it was an impossible request. Great waves of grief slamming his heart into his ribcage, Chrys found Laney’s sad, horrified gaze across the small circle. He wanted to go to her, hold her, shield her from everything painful and unjust and tragic in the world. He wanted her heat and her compassion and her touch to bolster him when he felt he could stand no longer.

“Owen.” Boreas patted his hands. “Release me.”

“No.”

“Owen.”

“No, Boreas, no.” Tears spilled from his mismatched eyes. “No.”

With an unseen reserve of power, Boreas pushed Owen’s hands away from the wound. “Closer,” he said. “Lean…over.”

Owen braced his arms on either side of Boreas’s head and looked down onto his father’s face. The younger god’s back trembled with restrained grief.

Arms shaking, Boreas pressed one palm to Owen’s heart, and one to his head. He spoke in low, rasping, stuttering words in the ancient language.

“
As m-master of the North…Wind, as guardian of Winter”—
he coughed for a long moment, more blood flowing forth
—“I command…the great, cl-cleansing winds of the…North t-to bow to the…n-new master now”—
he gasped, his breaths making a whistling sound
—“now before them
.
It is not the…vessel of the g-god, but…the wind that m-must be…honored and…protected.”
He sucked in a deep rasping breath. “
I command the North Wind, with…all of its powers, p-privileges, and…duties, into Owen, son of Boreas,…s-son of Aeolus, and c-commend him as…the next…Supreme God of the North Wind and Guardian of Winter.
I have looked into his…heart…and his mind, and he is worthy.
”