Poison Fruit

The frost giants laid about them right and left with their battle-axes, bullets ringing against their shields. One of the mercenaries let out a terrible scream as a frost giant’s axe sheared through his armor to sever his left arm at the elbow, blood spurting.

This was what war looked like.

The duegar swarming from beneath the sands sought to drag Persephone’s troops back toward their root-laced burrows.

The mercenaries fired on the duegar. They fired on the surprisingly ferocious hobgoblins who scuttled into the fray, fighting tooth and nail. Even as I watched, a mercenary with an assault rifle blew away a hobgoblin, only to be struck down from behind with one blow of Gus the ogre’s boulder-size fist. One of the trolls went down like an avalanche under a barrage of gunfire.

I felt sick. “How can you do this?”

“Do you jest?” Persephone’s face was alight with happiness, beautiful and dreadful. She laughed, opening her arms wide, and sunlight radiated all around her. “I’ve never felt so alive!”

“You could destroy everything!” I said helplessly. “Are you willing to take that chance?”

“Oh, I suspect the Norse Hel is merely trying to frighten me. But if I’m wrong . . .” She tilted her head and gazed up at the sun, eyes filled with bliss. “It will have been worth it for this moment.”

“Launch the next bird!” the commander ordered.

The second drone took out Mikill. The frost giants had realized the threat the little remote-controlled airplanes presented to Yggdrasil, but they were clever enough not to tip their hand. At the last instant before the second drone dove into the vast opening, Mikill lunged in front of it, his huge form exploding into a million shards of pale-blue ice. Another frost giantess stepped forward to take his place, raising her battle-axe to strike the next drone.

I was shaking with fury, too sick for tears.

“Let’s get another bird in the air,” the mercenary commander said, gazing through binoculars. “Take this big fucker out with an RPG, then send the bird through before another one blocks the egress.”

Wave after wave of helpless rage washed over me. My hair rose, floating on the charged air. The military equipment began to tremble. I let the fury come, let it rise to a crescendo.

If it exploded the ordnance atop the rim and blew us all to Kingdom Come, so be it. Hell, I hoped it would.

“Oh, I don’t think so!” Persephone said in alarm. She blew softly in my direction, a breeze of nectar surrounding me.

My fury remained unchanged, but the charge in the air dissipated, my hair settling.

Dufreyne smiled, dusted his lapels, and mouthed something at me, echoing my father’s voice in my head.

You have but to ask.

I gazed at the chaotic skirmishes taking place in the basin, trying to see with the eyes of my heart. I saw Cooper take a bullet to the head, vanish for an instant, then reincorporate and return fire. I saw Skrrzzzt and Mrs. Browne fighting back to back, laying about them with a baseball bat and an enchanted broom. Somewhere deep below us, Hel sat on her throne, pouring the last of her immortal strength into Yggdrasil’s roots.

“Third time’s the charm,” the commander said in a brisk tone. “Let’s do this! Launch the next bird.”

The distant figures of my mother and my friends were clustered on the far side of the rim, bearing witness to the imminent death of a goddess and the end of Pemkowet as we knew it, maybe to the end of existence.

My heart ached for them, ached for us all.

My heart, that thing I was supposed to trust, was telling me one thing, and one thing only.

I couldn’t let this happen.

Dropping to one knee, I drew dauda-dagr and began etching a sigil in the sand.

      Fifty-four

“Daisy, no!”

I heard Stefan’s faint shout of alarm in the distance and ignored it. His dirt bike roared toward the slope, faltered at the sound of gunfire, then roared again. I concentrated on finishing the sigil to summon my father.

Persephone grabbed me by the hair and yanked me to my feet, causing me to drop dauda-dagr in the process. “What have you done?” she demanded.

I didn’t answer.

She scuffed out the sigil with one sandaled foot. “Well, it’s undone now, pretty Daisy.”

I could still see the traces of lines I’d drawn glowing faintly in the sand, the sight filling me with a dizzying blend of horror and disbelief. “No, I don’t think so. You can’t erase what was etched in earth with iron that easily. What was done is done.”

Behind us was more gunfire.

“Shoot the ghoul’s legs out from under him!” Dufreyne shouted impatiently. “Stop killing him!”

“Stay out of this!” Persephone whirled on him. “Stand down!” she ordered her men. “Let the Outcast approach!”

And then Stefan was there, his hands gripping my shoulders. His motorcycle jacket was ragged with bullet holes, and I wondered how many times he’d died just to get to me. “Daisy, do not do this thing.” There was only a razor-thin line of blue around his pupils, but he wasn’t ravening. Not yet. “Let me help.”

At the sight of his face, something clicked inside me, and I understood. I understood what my heart and my half-remembered dreams had been trying to tell me. There was a way through this . . . maybe. At least there was hope. That had been the last card in my mother’s reading. La Estrella, the Star—one last faint glimmer of hope. I tried to pull away. “Stefan, no. I have to do this.”