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We are being driven along the winding country lanes of Direview at speed. They’re trying to get us as far away from our protectors as quickly as possible.
“This is a bad idea,” Nina tells them. She’s so polite. Too elegant to scream curses the way I feel inclined to. “You should let us go.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
They’re really angry, which seems unfair, as we are the ones being abducted and surely, we’re the ones who should be testy.
Outside, we hear thunder clap and the drum of torrential rain bursts around us, hammering the roof of the van. What a meteorological inconvenience for our captors. It is almost as if this abduction is cursed by a power greater than those who have stolen us away from our homes.
A sudden impact makes the van skid suddenly. I have no way of protecting myself from the crash. It is pure luck, or perhaps fate, that I have been wedged against the front panel, which doesn’t make suddenly coming to a halt any better, but it does mean I don’t smash my skull into steel from a distance. Small mercies.
What happens next happens quite fast. The adrenaline makes the fiery blade sprout from my hands, cutting through my bindings. I reach up with the hand not burning with divine vengeance and push the hood up and out of my eyes. What I see is the interior of a van that is clearly in a ditch. Our captors were not wearing their seatbelts, and their skulls were not as fortunate as mine. I stand up, swing around, and run eternal fire through the neck of the nearest abductor. It cauterizes as it burns, but that doesn’t make the aftermath any less horrific. There’s now a head rolling around in the van. I swing around and in the very next motion I cut through another part of another person.
“Fuck! Fuck! Argh! Fuck!”
“Elise!” Nina calls me. “Let me out. Without killing me. Please.”
I’m half scared to go near her, but she needs me. It takes real effort to make the fiery blade retreat a little. I don’t need a machete of divine retribution. I need more like a pocketknife of divine convenience.
I breathe and try to calm myself down, but not too much. I don’t want it going out completely. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to maintain a reasonable level of stress while surrounded by dismembered and charred flesh.
Crouching down next to Nina, I grab her, and cut her bindings swiftly. I don’t know how long I’ll have this little dagger of divinity in my grip. The second I get her feet untied, she’s gone.
“Holy shit, how did she move that fucking fast?”
There’s nobody left alive to answer me. Turns out, Nina doesn’t just have the ability to see things in mist. She moves like a cartoon roadrunner. Zoom zoom and she’s fucking out of here. Angel speed is apparently a thing. I wonder why they didn’t mention that before. Did they forget?
That leaves me behind, wishing I had paid a little more attention to what one does with a flaming sword of vengeance. To be fair, it fairly quickly turns out that you can do practically anything you want with a flaming sword of vengeance. It’s very effective on everything and anything.
I stumble out of the back of the van to find that we didn’t hit a tree as I expected. A small, but apparently mythic hammer is embedded in the engine block. Anita’s dark little figure stands in the middle of the road. I’m not so alone after all.
“What is that? How did you…”
“Oh, that’s Thor’s hammer. He usually hates when the hammer follows my will, but I think on this occasion, he’ll make an exception,” she says. “I wish he’d been here to see this. Might be my most heroic moment yet.”
It might be mine too. The pelting rain does not dim the flame of my blade even a little, but it does make the falling drops sizzle and burst out of existence, popping brightly around me in a halo of fire.
I have many questions, but at the same time, I have no questions. I can feel the power around me, the hand of what once must have been known as the divine upon us. Anita opens her hand, and the hammer comes spiraling back to her. It is not as large as I would have expected, but it is obvious what it is. We are surrounded by ancient power flowing through us. We are blessed, and we are cursed. We are angelic and we are demonic. And we are going home.
Nina has a head start, but she meets us by the gates of Direview. It has not stopped raining. I suspect Anita is keeping the stormy weather up by merit of keeping the scene dramatic. I suppose it is also keeping visibility down, not to mention providing a cooling system for the fiery dagger I now hold. The blade does not have a particular size or shape it has to be. It is what I need it to be.
