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Bullets slammed into our shields. Enemies appeared on rooftops and emerged from alleys and from behind parked cars. Most wore fatigues that hid their identities, though they seemed human. They would be the easiest to deal with. The shocking enemies were the Berserkers and other less-human creatures barring our paths.
Why would Berserkers—
One of the wolf Berserkers twitched, and a black tendril lashed out of its body. He gazed at us with dead eyes. He snarled, a black ichor substance spitting from his toothy maw. A dark aura surrounded the man—no, no longer man, but creature.
No, it can’t be.
It’d been so long since I’d seen this possession. Centuries, maybe. I’d thought with the world changing, whatever had caused this affliction in desperate and dying men had finally been eradicated. But no, it seemed they were still around. And there were a lot of them.
Every creature here seemed to have been a living being once, but now was this husk of darkness.What are they?
There wasn’t time to think. Only fight.
“Don’t let the cursed ones touch you,” I ordered. “They’ll infect you.”
At least, I thought they would. I couldn’t be sure how these things worked anymore.
“Push through to Astrid, I’ll deal with these,” Darius said, shooting some of the enemies on the roofs.
“We’ll deal with them,” Diego corrected, aiming for one of the corrupted creatures. “Just get to Astrid.”
I nodded and charged the closest enemy, summoning my axe and slamming it into him. I didn’t take the time to kill, only slow them down to become prey for the other two men.
Angel ran with me, avoiding the corrupted creatures, either because she understood me, or she sensed the wrongness about them. Non-corrupted beings, though, were another story. She went after them like any battle-trained dog. I didn’t know where this behavior came from, as I’d never gotten around to asking about it after the first encounter with Garmr. The war god in me approved. The man, however, was concerned, given her primary profession as an emotion guide for the lost.I suppose it’s no different from Astrid.
The parallels were unnerving when I thought about it. But maybe that was what a familiar bond did.
We pushed through enemy lines. The longer it took, the more my fear for Astrid grew. If this was what we faced, what was she fighting against all alone?
Rounding the corner, we came to Main Street, and the destruction was nothing like the other road. Cars were on fire, buildings had holes in them. I noticed the people huddling in the ones without damage, but enemies crawled around them, trying to get in.
Magic was so thick in the air I could taste it.Astrid.I scowled. There was other magic here, too. Something dark and chaotic.
A flash caught my attention. At the center of the square, Astrid fought. Both wolf and…A witch?
Her orange locks were all I could make out from this distance. But the dark magic she threw at Astrid made my stomach drop. It was too similar to my memories of Randi—and too similar to the conversations I’d recently had with Aya when I noticed that same color mixed into Astrid’s magic.
Aya hadn’t been concerned, thinking it was something unique to Astrid because of the reincarnation. Now I worried, if this woman Astrid fought was her mother, had she inherited magic from both parents?
I could think about that later. Astrid was holding her own, but for only so long with the way she sloppily dodged Garmr’s attack. Red ribbons sprung from Astrid’s hands, binding the wolf shifter. I grinned.Poetic that she’d use Gleipnir on him.
Garmr snarled and said something. Astrid seemed to taunt him back, which was a mistake. She focused too much on him. My heart stalled when she missed the Berserker charging her from behind.
Before I could call out a warning, she noticed the new enemy, but it was too late. He swiped his claws and sent her flying into a police cruiser.No!
The car’s alarm blared, and there was no movement from Astrid for far too long.
The Berserker roared in victory, but was cut off. I blinked, watching his head fly from his shoulders, black ichor spraying everywhere. Astrid, my Valkyrie, hovered in the air behind the Berserker, her hair a mess, and wounds healing quickly.
Pride swelled in my chest. She’d come so far in these weeks of training. Not even I had predicted that maneuver.
Unfortunately, the attack from the Berserker had weakened her hold on Garmr, and he broke free of his bindings. What no one expected was the bullet that Angel was. She came out of nowhere and attacked Garmr as a bundle of black snarling and snapping teeth. This made everything in the vicinity aware of my presence as well.No more stalling.
I rushed in, using the gun I’d borrowed to push Garmr and Ingrid back from a distance. These bullets wouldn’t do much to an immortal—they weren’t the immortal killing rounds Aya and Fen told me about from TOM’s arsenal, but they’d do something—if they made contact.
The witch managed to keep herself safe, though did nothing for her wolf ally. When I emptied the magazine, I used the gun as a blunt weapon for anything that tried to keep me from my Valkyrie.
Astrid split her focus between Garmr and Ingrid and the enemies going after me, as well as bolstering me. She used her magic in ways I’d never seen from her before. It allowed me to close the distance and focus on Garmr. I wouldn’t be able to fight a witch, so I’d have to leave Ingrid to Astrid.
