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Skeeter made it very easy. He pulled something out of his pajama pockets, a long, slender object I could best describe as a really elegant, shiny chopstick. The way it gleamed from between his fingers was even more impressive because of how grimy said fingers and the rest of his body were. He raised it to me, and for a second I thought he was going to offer me the wand. But then he stopped short of placin
g it in my hand, instead pointing it dead center of my chest.
“If you want it,” he said, grinning through perfect white teeth that looked like they didn’t belong in his mouth. “If you want it? Come and get it.”
16
Skeeter leapt to his feet with alarming alacrity, grabbing my throat with one shockingly powerful hand, then twisting me around. I gasped and I croaked as I spun helplessly on my heels.
“This doesn’t belong to you, and it never will,” he said. The unexpected strength of his forearm pressed down on my throat, the wand stabbing into my temple, its tip as sharp as a knife. “Over my dead body.”
“Ack,” I choked out. “Gack. Florian. Fucking. Help me.”
Florian’s head whipped left and right as he searched the apartment. “But all the plants here are dead!”
I would have leapt right for his throat if Skeeter hadn’t been holding me back. “Just fucking punch him. Kick him in the nuts. Ack. Anything.” Warm blood dripped down the side of my head. The fucker had cut me with the wand.
“You know the best thing about this?” Skeeter said, his breath sour with stale beer. “Gambanteinn isn’t really a wand. It’s a staff. One command from me – just one – and this thing will grow to its full size and shove through your skull and your brain like a railroad spike.”
“Fucking – Florian, help me!”
The side of my head stung as Skeeter removed the wand and pointed it at Florian. A crackling bolt of energy leapt from its tip. Florian threw himself at the ground, using the kitchen counter as a barrier just in the nick of time. Formica and cheap, fake marble flew in jagged chunks as the magical bolt struck the counter with a dull crash.
“Don’t move a muscle, alraune. That’s right. I know who you are. I know who you both are.” His breath came hotter on my ear, and I grimaced, knowing that he’d bent closer to speak into it. “Jason, my ass. You’re Mason Albrecht, the nephilim. You don’t just roll into town and expect no one to hear about it.”
“Nice to actually meet you,” I grunted, still struggling in his arms. Where the hell was all his strength coming from? He had the body of a man who worked way too much time at a desk and ate way too many salty pretzels.
He jostled me again, his forearm pressing even harder against my throat. “Nice to meet you, too,” he said mockingly. “It isn’t actually Skeeter. I am Skirnir, servant and messenger of the Norse god Freyr, he who was once as glorious and as powerful as the All-Father himself.”
Florian’s eyes peeked out over the edge of the counter. “Interesting choice of alias you picked there, Skeeter.”
“It was convenient,” he snarled.
“No, it isn’t,” I said. “It doesn’t even work. And anyway, if you’re supposed to be Freyr’s messenger, what are you doing cooped up in this garbage heap subsisting on takeout and pizzas?”
No offense meant to either takeout or pizzas. I loved them both. Just not when they’d been living unrefrigerated in a rundown apartment next to the shell of a man-god who refused to clean up – or bathe, for that matter.
“Because he’s forsaken me,” he hissed. “I seek him out and he eludes me. I sought solace in working for the other gods of our pantheon, but none of them would take me. Not even the trickster, Loki.”
“Yeah,” I said. “About that.”
Skirnir froze. “Don’t tell me he sent you.”
“He did. And guess what. I learned a couple of tricks from him.”
I swung my left hand upwards just as he let his guard down, the force of my punch augmented by the gauntlet I’d summoned from the Vestments. Just the gauntlet. That was all I needed. Good thing he was a mouth-breather, because it meant I knew exactly how to find his teeth without even looking. When my fist connected with the meat of his face, I felt and heard a deeply satisfying crack. His limbs flew off me as he grabbed his mouth, wailing. I caught a glimpse of blood spurting past my shoulder, along with a couple of broken shards of teeth. I danced away from him, finding him crumpled to the ground, his hands cupped around his mouth and under his chin.
“I was kidding. Loki didn’t teach me shit. That was all me.” And okay, I thought. Maybe a little bit of Raziel, too. “Now. Hand over the wand.”
Skirnir snarled. “Then take it.”
I got too cocky. Skirnir tossed the wand upwards, grabbing it in midair when it grew into its full length, then firing a second bolt from the tip of what was now a magical staff. This blast was bigger, brighter, and more violent. I didn’t twist my body away in time, didn’t anticipate the exact trajectory of the arcane bolt he fired straight at the center of my chest.
My mind and my muscles had prepared quickly enough to summon the full suit of armor from the Vestments this time, and my heart pounded with an exhilarating mix of excitement and fear as the warmth of divine steel encased me. Within a split-second I was a golden knight myself, just like Raziel.
Then the magical bolt struck my chest.
The sound that the impact made was like the clanging of an enormous bell. The force took me off my feet, sending me flying across the room. I slammed into a far wall as my chest began to beat dully with pain. It felt as if my breastplate had caved inward, pressing into my muscles and my bones. I looked down at myself only to find that it was even worse. The breastplate was shattered, almost as if it was made out of glass instead of golden steel.
