A Sinister Game (36 page)

Okay
, Simon thought.
Run through it again
. He shoved his hand into the pocket of his downtime uniform jacket and pulled out two pills
:
one glass, the other a
biodegradable
capsule.

He
looked
at the glass container.
The anti-nausea sleep pil
l will take out half the guards i
f I do it right.
Then I need to get to Ty
and April and convince them
Max isn’t on our side any more. If they don’t believe me, Ty will clobber me.
He looked at the pill in his other hand.
That’s what the regenerator is for.

But if Ty
did
believe him, then the plan was for the three of them to work together to take out the remainder of the guards while Thor and Loki went after Maxwell Blood.

He took a deep breath and let it out with a whoosh.
Right
, he thought.
Got it
. He nodded to himself.
I can do this.

Out in the clearing, Blood
charged Vic
tor Black in an all-out attack.

Simon
stood.
T
here’s no time like the present.

* * * *

Victor stepped over Victoria’s unconscious form and strode forward to meet Max
halfway
. Lightni
ng struck somewhere near by;
thunder rolled over them. Two strong bodies collided in a sparking shower of blue-white light and frigid, rippling
airwaves
.

“Stay out of the way, April!” Ty yelled as April apparently rushed forward, most likely atte
mpting to get to Victoria
.

The
shockwave of chilled air moved
over both team members, leaving a frosting of ice on their skin and clouding their breath. They crouched low, trying to protect themselves as the temperature continued to drop at an exponential rate. Their bodies were rimed over, the
ir lips turned purple, and April’s
hair dangled with icicles. They cried out
in surprised, sharp discomfort
.

Victor caught their pain in his peripheral consciousness. The rest of his attention was focused on his opponent. Max’s grip went for Victor’s throat, and vice versa. Their bodies spun, the sky became dark, and winter arrived early in the clearing.

Thunder rolled again, this time closer. The air was thick with mounting electricity. Ominous
clouds gathered
. They were swirling, eddying inward, building with ferocious speed. A bitter wind picked up, gathered the leaves that had fallen in the clearing and then caked them with ice. They went spinning end over end as they spiraled upward, along with frozen pebbles and swirling dust, toward the mounting cyclone above them.

The building roar of the storm drowned out the sounds of his struggle with Max. Fat flakes of snow began to descend from the swirling darkness, coating their uniforms and preventing either Black or Blood from using invisibility to gain the upper hand.

“
Help!
” came a cry from the forest line surrounding the clearing. Victor could spare it only the briefest glance. Simon Roon was stumbling into the clearing, seven Game Control guards hot on his tail. His bow was still slung uselessly over his shoulder, his arrows still piled, untouched, in the quiver on his back. He ran mad-dash from the underbrush and headed straight toward a now very surprised Ty and April.

Ty jerked the crossbow off of his shoulder and April pulled her sword.
Victor could see the
whites of Simon’s eyes.
The plan he’d been left with must have failed.

The guards were nearly upon them.

* * * *

Wind and hail lashed at the windows, rattling them in their panes. The weathered thatch on the roof scratched and peeled and threatened to come away from its bindings as the storm continued to build in strength.

Odin
had transported them all back to Elizabeth’s cottage. He
turned away from the other gods and opened the cottage door. The wind whipped into the
small
home, extinguishing the lanterns
and violently rustling
the pages of a book that had been set out on the dining table.

Thor led the way, and o
ne by one, the gods
left the small house,
leaving an unconscious nanny
still resting peacefully on the bed in the dark and upset room behind them.

Once outside, Loki
bent beside
Victoria
and gently lifted her into his arms. Andromeda stood
beside him
.
Across the clearing, Ty Murrey, April Rose and Simon Roon were in hand-to-hand
combat with several GC guards. T
hey were losing.

The guards
wore Game bands
that amplified
their
abilities and gave
them a distinct advantage over their opponents.

When April suffered a sword wound that sliced her open from
shoulder to her hip bone
, she
dropped to the ground in
her own building pool of blood.
Thor bolted toward her as,
knocking several guards to the side with vicious, resounding
backhands
as he ran. B
ehind him,
Odin raised his hand
.

There was a brief flash of light, an answering peal of thunder
–
a
nd the Game
b
ands were gone.
Thor bent beside April.
He
pulled his hammer from his belt and raised it to the heavens. A bolt of lightning coursed through the sky, striking the hammer on its head and lighting it with the brilliance of a million torches.

The accompanying thunder
clash went off like a bomb. E
veryone in the clearing ducked under the weight of the giant sound, their hands or sword-arms over the
ir ears, their eyes shut tight against
the blast.

Maxwell Blood and Victor Black alone seemed to be
able to ignore t
he crash of sound of
Thor’s lightning bolt
induced thunder
. Their struggle was too grim.

Thor absorbed the energy of the bolt, funneled it from the hammer to his body, and directed it to the hand he held over April’s chest. Her wound began to close.

Behind him, another guard attacked. Thor rose, spun, and dispatched him with a single punch to the throat.

Across the clearing,
Andromeda was draping a necklace around her unconscious sister’s neck as Loki silently held her. Odin was stepping back, his one good eye calmly taking everything in as the storm began to make the worn down buildings creak and moan on their foundations.
Dirt and sand lifted from the ground, blinding the fighters.

Victor Black landed a solid punch that sent Maxwell Blood stumbling back
ward
just as another lightning bolt found a nearby tree and rent it in two.
Thunder
pounded the ea
rth with terrifying resonance. B
ut the fighters were adjusting
to the
cacophony
.
Either that or they were going deaf.

Blood recovered quickly
from Victor’s attack
, straightening to face Black once more.
Victor
wiped his bleeding lip on the back of his hand
. His green eyes burned. The two dark leaders assessed each other with furious, determined glares.
As they did, Ullr appeared behind Maxwell blood – and reached out and touched him, his palm to Blood’s back.

A heartbeat later, a
nother
stream of electricity
sliced
the sky
, blinding all in the clearing. T
his time
, it cracked open and divided to become
tributa
ri
es of white-hot energy that crackled
through the
field
like the searing
hot
tentacles of an electric monster.

Each tentacle struck a god.

Loki dropped to his knees, unable to keep his leg
s beneath him under the
onslaught.
Thor watched him lay down his champion before his body began to shimmer, flashing in and out of existence as if he were nothing more than a fading dream in the early hours of morning.

Thor’s body was doing the same. He was both sinking into strange pain and going numb
at the same time
.
Even his
mighty
hammer
Mjolnir
, famed in its
great
power, began to flicker
in impotence
. It felt as if
the air were tearing and shredding
around
him, and its jagged edges were slicing
at reality
.

Wi
thin
seconds, Thor
was also
on his knees.
His stormy
eyes mirrored the turmoil of the clearing around him as he
looked up to search
for
the source of the unnatural
lightning
.

The Game Lord stood alone at the center of the clearing.

It had been a long time since Thor had seen the man, but he was unmistakable.

A smal
l black box was held between the Game Lord’s
hands, and within this semi-transparent black box swirled a vortex
of ghostly gray and white
. The wind whipped through
the Game Lord’s thick gray hair and the world seemed to be falling into a vortex of chaos, yet h
e stood still and calm and erect, tall and strong,
utterly unaffected by the bedlam
surrounding him.

It was from the box in his hands that the wicked
tentacle lightning
poured forth and sapped the remaining strength of the very gods.

* * * *

Victoria’s throat cracked with a low moan. She
rolled to her side. The world seemed to be spinning around her, painfully loud and blindingly bright. She shut her eyes tight against its snarling invasiveness and tried to shield her face from a wind both bitter cold and electric
hot.

Someone called her name.

She recognized her sister’
s voice, but it sounded far off. She
pushed herself up to
one arm
,
blinking
her eyes open
to avoid the
swirling
dust a
nd ice
.

Through the haze of dancing debris, she saw Andromeda, draped in white and gold, her once braided hair now free and whipping aroun
d her face in a frenzy. Her form was flickering in and out
like
a dying light bulb
or a battery nearly drained of power. Beside her, Loki’s kneeling form did the same. The
y were only a
few feet away
from her
,
yet they seemed untouchable.

Andromeda’s eyes pleaded with her
in silence.

“What’s happening?” Victoria tried to scream, tried to call out, but she was still weakened by wh
atever had hit and
drained her.
Instead she only whispered, a
nd the sound was lost in the gale.

It’s up to you now, Rose.
You must finish this. Save us all. I will be with you always.

Victoria reached out, but
by that point,
her sister was already gone. After a final shimmer, her beautiful form faded entirely from sight,
as did Loki’s.
Victoria
was
left
alone on the front step of Elizabeth’s small cottage.

She swallowed a pain-wracked sob and tried to get her legs beneath her.

“Don’t bother, sweetheart.”

Victoria looked up
. The Game Lord was standing above her. She knew it was him
even
though
she couldn’t remember ever having met him
. His tall form loomed, a
n ominous
shadow emerging from a storm of snow and dust.
He held in one hand a strange black box that crackled and popped with remnant electricity.

Victoria
’s nerves steeled themselves.
This was it. Here and n
ow.