Poison Fruit (54 page)

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

“D
aisy,
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.”

Stefan shook his head, fingers digging into my shoulders. “No, you don’t.” He drew on the connection between us, draining my horror and fury and resolve. “It’s all right, Daisy. I promised you. I won’t let it happen.”

“Stop!” I begged, shoving ineffectually at him with my empty hands. “I know what I’m doing!”

Stefan kept draining me, and I realized I should have kindled a shield, realized I no longer had the strength to do so. It was happening all over again. The razor-thin line of blue was vanishing.

In another few seconds, Stefan would be ravening. I caught my breath in a broken sob as terror blossomed and faded inside me. In another few seconds, I would forget what I’d intended to do in the first place.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a lean streak of tawny-gray fur launch itself at Stefan, taking him down with a silent snarl. Man and wolf tumbled and grappled in the sand.

“Shoot the wolf!” Persephone ordered.

“No!” Dufreyne countermanded his mistress, turning on the reverb. “Everyone hold your fire!”

Someone got a shot off before his powers of persuasion took effect, a lone crack of gunfire.

The wolf yelped in pain and shifted. Cody lay naked on the sand,
pressing his hand to a wound on his side, blood spilling through his fingers. “Whatever you’ve got to do, just do it, Daise,” he said in a ragged voice.

A few yards away, Stefan was climbing arduously to his feet, grimacing and clutching his shoulder.

I wished I’d had more time—time to explain, time to seek advice, time to think this through. A month, a day, an hour . . . hell, even five minutes would be a gift. But time was something I didn’t have. In the space of a few heartbeats, Stefan would be on me again, and this time, he
would
drain me. Persephone wouldn’t allow Dufreyne to interfere again. She would make sure it happened. She’d let Stefan drain me until I was an empty husk, no longer a threat to her plans, and then she’d order her troops to launch the third drone; and if that one didn’t succeed, another and another, until Yggdrasil’s mighty roots were blasted and destroyed, and Hel and the Norns with them, and a tangled thread in the skein of time was broken, and the entirety of existence might or might not unravel.

All I could do was trust my heart, no matter how much the prospect of what I was about to do horrified me.

Closing my eyes, I held the image of the sigil in my mind and spoke the words I’d never thought I’d say. “Belphegor! Father! I invoke my birthright!”

The ground beneath my feet trembled.

My father’s face swam in the darkness behind my eyes, dipping toward me. His eyes were as black as my own, and long curved horns jutted from his temples.
Daughter, you have done well
.

Power filled me.

It didn’t happen slowly like it had in my dream. It came all at once in a rush, exploding outward from the center of my chest. Brightness ran through my veins, and I blazed like a noonday star.

I opened my eyes.

No one had moved. Stefan looked at me with a profound mixture of pity and regret, then turned away, averting his face. Almost everyone else, even Persephone, gazed at me with fear and awe. Dufreyne was grinning with unholy glee, and I understood that he’d spoken the
truth. I could taste hellfire and brimstone on my tongue, and the taste of it was sweet. With the full power of an apex faith at my command, I could bend even a goddess to my will.

I could bid the mercenaries to lay down their weapons; I could order the fighting to cease. I could banish Persephone. I could protect my community, everything I loved, and never, ever have to feel helpless again.

It was a glorious feeling.

But it came with a terrible price.

As it had in my dream, a clap of earsplitting thunder sounded as a jagged crack tore open the sky above us. Men fell to their knees in the sand, crying out in terror and covering their ears. In the basin, all fighting came to a halt. Atop the rim, only Persephone, Dufreyne, Stefan, and I remained standing. I wondered if my mother was standing or kneeling on the other side of the basin. I wondered if she’d turned her face away from me, too.

A clarion trumpet blast sounded a call to arms, and golden radiance a thousand times brighter than sunlight spilled through the crack in the sky.

There was darkness, too—darkness shimmering like a doorway over the dunes, and I saw in it my father, Belphegor, and a legion of demons behind him. Apparently the gates of hell couldn’t be flung open wide until the gates of heaven were, which was a good thing, since I hadn’t considered the alternative.

On the ground, Cody gazed at me with half-lidded eyes, his gaze steady. The sand beneath him was dark with blood and his breath was shallow, but at least he was still breathing.

I clenched my fists, feeling the leashed lightning in them, and lifted my face to the sky. “Look, I’m willing to take it back!” I shouted to the heavens. “But I want to bargain!”

“You can’t
take it back
!” Daniel Dufreyne said incredulously, rounding on Persephone. “Can she?”

“How should I know, traitor?” Her tone was cool. “Mayhap she can. She has not yet used the power she invoked.”

I waited.

Nothing happened.

“Come on!” I shouted. “You bargained with Abraham! You had big plans for him, remember?” I gestured all around me. “You can’t tell me
this
is your last, best plan for humanity! You can’t be finished with us yet, God. There’s got to be more.” I took a deep breath. “
Tikkun olam
, right? Give us a chance to repair the world! Give me the chance to mend
my
world!”

Stefan turned back toward me, a look of realization dawning over his features.

Overhead, the golden brilliance intensified, narrowing to a shaft, and then a single point blazing across the sky, falling toward us like a meteor.

It was an angel.

It was a motherfucking
angel
.

It didn’t look like any painting of an angel I’d ever seen, at least from what I
could
see. Its face was almost too bright to look at and its hair streamed like fire. It was at least three times the size of a tall man, and it had six wings that shifted in constant motion, wings covered in a myriad of golden eyes that opened and closed ceaselessly. I don’t know if this makes any sense, but the angel looked like the word
glory
made incarnate, and if I hadn’t been filled with infernal power, I’m pretty sure I would have been gibbering on the ground.

The angel bent its radiant face toward me and spoke in a voice that rang like giant chimes. “
You presume much
.”

It was a simple statement of fact, no judgment or anger in it. Somehow that chilled me more than anger would have. “I know.”

A dozen golden eyes on its nearest wing regarded me. “
What is it you seek
?”

The mind does strange things under duress. I had a horrible urge to answer with a quote from a Monty Python movie, and fought the desire to burst into hysterical laughter.

Or hysterical tears. I was close to either.

“I want to save Little Niflheim,” I said. “I want Hel’s demesne to be
protected in perpetuity. I want mortality and a chance for redemption
granted to the Outcast, and whatever . . . whatever loophole or crack that they fell through in the first place closed forever.”

Several golden eyes closed. “
Once
the Inviolate Wall is restored
,
heaven can grant no such protection on the mortal plane.
”

Holy crap, I was bargaining with God. “Okay.” My voice was shaking. “But you can save Little Niflheim if I give back my birthright? And free the Outcast?”

Massive wings stirred the air and the chiming voice turned stern.
“With God all things are possible. But know that if you renounce this power, it will be forever. Do not think to seek a second bargain
.
”

A wave of exhilaration filled me. “I know,” I said breathlessly. “And trust me, I won’t. I promise. Does that, um, mean we have a bargain?”

There was a long moment of silence in which the angel became motionless. Radiance continued to blaze from its face and stream from its hair, but its ever-shifting wings had gone still, the multitude of golden eyes adorning them closing as it considered my offer and conferred with God.

All at once, every single golden eye opened.
“Yes
.
”

Although I didn’t dare do it, I was torn between cheering aloud and bursting into tears of relief.

Turning to Persephone, the angel extended one hand. A shaft of illumination brighter than sunlight burst forth from its palm, bathing her in brilliance.
“The world is not yours to destroy, little goddess.”
There was a gentleness to the chimes.
“Be healed of this madness. Renounce this demesne and return to your own.”

Persephone gave a choked gasp of assent.

The angel spread all six of its wings, and bright shafts of golden light arrowed from all of its eyes.
“All who were cast out of the fold shall be returned to it.”
It folded its wings and bent its face toward Stefan, who was now kneeling in the sand.
“Spend your mortality wisely.”

“I will,” Stefan whispered in awe, tears in his eyes.

I thought we were done with heaven’s end of the bargain, but the angel wasn’t finished. It turned to Daniel Dufreyne, and the stern note
returned to its chiming voice.
“For your role in breaching the Inviolate Wall, the unholy birthright to which you laid claim is revoked.”

Be careful what you wish for, right? Dufreyne cried aloud in denial and loss, and there was no reverb in it. “No!”

The angel turned back to me.
“Now.”

I approached the shimmering doorway of darkness where Belphegor and the legions of hell awaited.

Belphegor’s horns gleamed like obsidian. I could imagine the same weight on my brow. I could have manifested horns if I’d wanted, or a proper devil’s tail, or wings like a bat. They were all just visual manifestations of the infernal power that blazed inside me, the power to compel multitudes.

The power that I was about to relinquish forever.

It was surprisingly hard.

It was also very, very unnerving to stand before my father, only a thin veil of darkness between us.

“Hi, Dad,” I said with a facetiousness I didn’t feel. “Sorry, I guess I must be a disappointment to you. Then again, I guess that’s what you get for raping an innocent young woman. But you know what? There’s something Mom always wanted you to know. When you chose her, you messed with the wrong girl.”

Belphegor smiled, and it was a smile filled with an impossible mixture of cruelty and amusement. His voice echoed in my thoughts.
Daughter, you struck a bargain with heaven today. Whatever you are, it is not a disappointment.

I really, really didn’t expect to find that my demon father’s approval warmed my heart a little bit.

I would think about what the hell that meant later.

“Okay.” I drew in one last breath with brightness singing in my veins, reveling in the sensation for a few more precious heartbeats. “Father! Belphegor! I renounce my birthright, now and forever!”