“Brynhildr!” Patrick yelled. “We need to get him out of here!”
The howling of hellhounds made Patrick swear loudly as Brynhildr urged Dynfari closer.
“The Allfather is not dead,” Brynhildr said.
She didn’t sound relieved, and Patrick didn’t know what to make of that. “That’s the whole point of this rescue mission, right? Save the god, save the world?”
Brynhildr didn’t blink when she said, “Is it?”
“Fuck you gods and your riddles.”
Snow swirled faster around them as Hinon and Eir descended, landing nearby. Hinon’s wings were like an electric storm that Patrick didn’t want to get close to.
Eir dismounted Töfrandi and hurried over to them. Her spear was coated in blood, but none of it seemed to be hers. “Let me aid you.”
Patrick looked over at Hinon. “Hades?”
“He retreated to Zachary’s side. I felt it prudent not to engage them further when you had need of me,” Hinon said.
“Ethan?”
Hinon shook his head. “I have not seen him.”
Patrick’s gaze cut away to the vast darkness of Lake Michigan and the corpses clawing at the shore. They weren’t zombies risen from their graves, but the damned who were granted no surcease from torment. The veil was still tangled between where they were in Niflheim and the mortal world where the fight was happening in.
The spell they all stood on wasn’t complete because Odin wasn’t dead yet.
They still had time to save Odin, but they needed more help than what they had because Patrick could see hellhounds in the distance, running toward them.
“Wade said he saw something in the Chicago River earlier,” Patrick shouted at Hinon to be heard over the wind. “There’s a monster in the lake. Can you lead it to us?”
Hinon spread his wings wide and nodded grimly. “If it is Oniare, I will bring him to you.”
He flapped his wings and threw himself back into the sky with a thunderous boom.
Between Eir’s strength and Patrick’s stubbornness, they got Odin slung over Töfrandi’s back. Then he and Eir climbed up as well, and the pegasus snorted at the extra weight. Eir patted his neck with a comforting hand.
“It will be over soon,” she said.
That sounded a little too final for Patrick’s taste. He looked over at Brynhildr, the valkyrie still astride Dynfari, but with her back to them as she faced the oncoming horde of hellhounds, spear resting across her shoulders. Wind tugged at her blonde braids, her biker clothes streaked with blood and snow.
“Ride,” Brynhildr said, her aura shining like a star around her. “I will hold them back.”
“You can’t do it alone,” Patrick protested.
Brynhildr turned her head just enough to smile at him, sharp and vicious against the light of Yggdrasil. “A valkyrie is never alone.”
Patrick blinked, glancing at the sky. “Right.”
“Make sure your aim is true, Patrick. There is only ever one way this story ends.”
Brynhildr faced forward again and let out a bloodcurdling war cry that echoed in the storm—a call to arms that would not be ignored. The oncoming horde of hellhounds led by Garmr met that challenge with vicious howls of their own even as more valkyries flew to answer Brynhildr’s call, their presence in the sky backlit by lightning.
Eir obeyed her commander and urged Töfrandi to turn around. The pegasus galloped away from the fight to pick up speed, wings beating hard to gain altitude. Brynhildr’s words echoed in Patrick’s ears as he wrapped his aching arms around Eir’s waist.
“What did she mean?” Patrick shouted.
Eir ignored him and grabbed his hands one at a time to heal them. Wood pushed its way out of his skin, the pressure making him bite the inside of his cheek to keep from swearing. The pulsing rawness of his hands faded, even if the cold didn’t. Patrick blinked snow out of his eyes, squinting through the stormy darkness lit by the light of a modern city to their left. To the right, lightning struck Lake Michigan in continuous bursts, a dance few knew the steps to.
From the air, Patrick could see the concentric circles of the spell that stretched away from Yggdrasil on the ground. They reached farther than they had in New York last June, the glow of the soul-driven magic broken up by nearby skyscrapers and swaths of icy water that covered them.
The spell was still active, but if they could get Odin out of the line of fire, maybe they had a chance to break it. Except when Patrick reached for the god’s throat, trying to find a pulse, he felt nothing but a cold stillness that made him choke back a panicked laugh.
“Fuck, we are so fucked,” Patrick gasped out. “Odin is still tied to the spell, and we need to break it.”
“Have faith,” Eir shouted.
Patrick’s faith in anything had died a brutal death in Salem years ago until Jono walked into his life. There wasn’t any left to toss to the gods and their machinations that had the power to wreck the world.
Faith, Patrick had learned over the years, was always misplaced in the end.
They were flying over the mouth of the Chicago River where it poured into Lake Michigan when multiple strike spells were blasted their way from a ground position. Töfrandi veered around the shining blasts of magic as best he could, but it was like flying through fireworks going off on the Fourth of July. The Dominion Sect was throwing so many spells at them that one had to hit.
And it did.
The strike spell slammed through Töfrandi’s left wing, and the pegasus threw back his head, screaming in agony as his wing exploded. Feathers
