Spellcrash (30 page)

“Skills that she seems to have hung on to when she went into the machine.” Haemun got up and started to pace. “Is that because she’s still got all of us square in her sights? Or what?”

“That’s part of it,” I agreed. “But it also has to do with her opposition to Necessity. My power, the Raven’s power, comes from Necessity. She gave it to me with the name. In fact, Necessity defines and delimits all the gods and powers and—”

“Are you trying to tell me that Nemesis has all the skills and strength of your entire pantheon?” demanded Fenris. “Because if you are, I think I might have been better off staying behind in my home MythOS and fighting it out at Ragnarok.”

“No.” I rubbed my forehead. “At least, I don’t think so. The only reason Necessity is capable of wielding as much power as she does is her nature as the Fate of the Gods and her processing power as a world-spanning computer. Under normal circumstances, Nemesis doesn’t have anything like that much capacity. Even now, inhabiting Necessity, she’s got to work under pretty severe constraints imposed by all the damage that’s been done to Necessity. Nemesis is currently limited by the very problems that allowed her to invade the system.”

“Well,” said Melchior, “that’s different.”

“What?” I raised an eyebrow.

“This may be the first time that all the destruction we’ve helped heap on poor old Necessity’s head has had any hint of an upside.”

“Call it the Trickster effect,” I replied with a bitter smile. “My biggest successes and my biggest defeats seem to go hand in hand.”

“My father, Loki, is the same way,” said Fenris. “For every victory lap he starts to run, there’s always a banana peel waiting for him somewhere on the track. Does your Eris have the same problem?”

“She does this week,” said Melchior, “and this week the banana peel has Ravirn’s names on it.”

“What, just because I led a Fury into her living room?” Melchior shook his head. “Nah. From what I hear, Cerice didn’t even make her sweat. I was thinking more of when you completely nuked her server cluster.”

“What?” I was missing something.

“Your brain must still be scrambled,” said Melchior. “Riddle me this: What happens when you open a door from the very heart of Discord’s command and control system directly into the Primal Chaos?”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way.” I kicked back the rest of my drink—it was going to be a while before she forgave me for that, and Discord’s shit list is not a place I wanted to be. “How bad was it?”

“For starters,” said Melchior, “the apple exploded.”

“Discord’s prize from the Trojan War is gone?”

Fenris nodded. “Golden applesauce everywhere. And then the stars in that artificial nebula started going out one by one. For a second I thought I was fresh out of this-MythOS friends.

Then Melchior coughed up that spinnerette thing and started puking his guts out.”

“What’s up with that, Mel?” I asked.

He signaled Haemun for a refill. “I didn’t know what to do with her. You’d brought her in physically via the gate you cut, and I was leaving in spirit. So, I ate her. I figured that if I completely encapsulated her, she’d stand a better chance of coming through in more or less one piece, and I didn’t really have much time for coming up with alternate solutions after you dropped the magical equivalent of an atomic bomb.”

“And?” I raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Either it worked, or she had some other resources that she deployed. In either case, we arrived together, and she made her exit by kicking me straight in the gag reflex.”

“Where is she now?” I asked, realizing for the first time that I hadn’t seen the spinnerette at all in the hour or so since I’d been recorporealized.

“Sulking somewhere, maybe,” said Melchior. “She wouldn’t get near me again after we came out of what was left of Discord’s network—rode back on Fenris’s shoulders with Laginn. Then she scampered off and hid as soon as we got home. I haven’t seen her since.” I looked around but didn’t see any signs of the spinnerette. That made me nervous.

“What’s wrong?” asked Melchior. “You look a whole lot less happy about that than I’d have expected. Should I have kept a better eye on her?”

“It’s probably fine, Mel. We just never established who she was working for, and the whole idea of Nemesis makes me a little twitchy.”

“I can’t imagine why,” he said, with deliberate nonchalance.

The effect was damaged somewhat when he jumped half out of his seat and knocked over his drink a moment later. But only somewhat, as the rest of us had similar reactions to the enormous flash and boom that came from the permanent faerie ring on the lanai.

I spun in my seat, making a mental note never to sit with my back to a ring again as I did so.

“What the—Tisiphone! No, Cerice?”

My confusion came from the fact that Cerice was on fire when she arrived, with bright yellow and orange flames chewing on every surface of her body. But only for an instant. As she stepped across the line of the faerie ring, the fires went out.

She took one staggering step toward me, her arms outstretched. “Ravirn, I was wrong.” Another step. “I’m sorry.” Then she pitched forward in a faint.

Her skin crackled when I caught her, and I froze for fear of causing further harm. “Melchior!” He’d already started whistling “Better Living Through Chemistry” as I leaped to catch Cerice.

Now he sank a claw turned syringe into the side of Cerice’s neck and pushed the plunger, sending a huge dose of morphine into her system.

Furies are heavy—four or five hundred pounds of heavy—and I hadn’t had time to plan my catch, just leaped forward and looped one hand under each of her armpits. I ended up in a lousy position, with my legs in something resembling a full-on fencing extension. Add to that, that I was none too steady myself after my recent return to the flesh, and it was a wonder I didn’t drop her or collapse in the first couple of seconds.

But when Haemun offered to take some of the load or help me lower her to the ground, I actually growled at him. The less of her skin that came in contact with anything nonsterile, the better. At least that was what I told myself. I was just trying to figure out how best to get her to a burn unit when she moved in my arms.

“Be still,” I said. “We’re working on it.”

She lifted her head and met my eyes. “No, it’s all right.” It hurt me to look at the blackened skin and deep red cracks on her face, and I felt a terrible anger welling up in my heart, but I forced myself to smile and nod and keep making eye contact for her sake. Later, however, I would make someone pay for this.

“I’ll be fine in a few minutes now that I’m out of the direct blast,” she continued.

“Sure you will,” I said just to agree.

But there was no need to humor her. Though I might have forgotten it in the moment, Cerice was no longer the demihuman child of Fate I’d once loved. She was a Fury, and virtually indestructible. Even as I watched, the harsh red gashes began to close, and her skin softened and lightened, sloughing off the charcoal. Within minutes, she looked as though she’d never been injured.

An amused smile grew on her lips. “Ravirn?”

“Yes?”

“You can let go of me now.”

I thought about it for a moment, then shook my head. “No, actually. I can’t. Not from this position, not without dropping you.”

She laughed quietly. With a snap of her wings she flicked herself back and up, out of my hands and onto her feet. I couldn’t compensate for the sudden change in my balance and lurched forward, stumbling. I’d have landed on my face if Cerice hadn’t put a hand under my chest, catching me as easily as if I were a cardboard cutout of myself, and setting me on my feet.

Before I knew what to think about that, she stepped in close and gave me a kiss that tasted of first love lost and summer hillsides long ago.

“Thank you,” she breathed against my lips, then was gone, stepping back and away—

unmistakably and unbridgeably separating herself from me.

When she spoke again, it was with the hard voice of the Fury. “Shara sent me. She said to tell you it’s the end of the world as we know it.”

I was just trying to figure out some response to that that didn’t include my telling Cerice that I currently trusted Shara’s word about half as far as I’d trust a promise of sobriety from Dionysus, when I got my second delivery of Fury flambé for the day.

Alecto had clearly listened to those stop, drop, and roll ads back in the day, because Goddess, Gracious, Great Ball of Fire. She came out of the ring like a fiery bowling ball, and only varying degrees of fancy footwork saved the lot of us from playing the role of the pins. She did take out the table and several deck chairs before flipping into the air and sailing over the edge of the lanai to land in a smoldering heap on the jungle floor below.

“Mel,” I said.

“On it.” He started whistling “Better Living” again as he vaulted the railing.

But Alecto was already on her way back, burns or no. She landed hard because of badly crisped wings and stomped over to face me. She looked scarier than ever. She’d clearly been burned much worse than Cerice, but where the fires had left Cerice barely functional, Alecto hardly seemed inconvenienced—just really really pissed. I couldn’t blame her there; I felt much the same way.

“Nemesis is back!” Alecto snarled through fire-blackened lips. “She revealed herself a few minutes ago.”

Cerice nodded. “That’s part of what Shara sent me to tell you.”

“Actually, we’re on top of that one,” I said. “Though I don’t like that ‘part of’ clause you threw in there. I’m guessing that part two has to do with Nemesis advancing her schedule for world domination after I survived our encounter in Discord’s network, but I’m sure there’s more. No matter how much I’d love to believe that’s all you’ve got, I know there’s always another shoe waiting to drop with these things. Sometimes I think the deity in charge of dropping shoes on Ravirn is a centipede. So, what’s part three?”

A look of pure pain rippled across Cerice’s features, but she quickly got it under control and opened her mouth to speak. Before she said so much as a word, though, she stopped herself and glanced awkwardly at Alecto.

Great, more inter-Fury conflict with Ravirn playing man in the middle.

While I could see the potential entertainment value of playing the role of the frosting in the middle of a Cerice/ Alecto layer cake under the right circumstances, I was pretty sure these weren’t them.

“I don’t suppose this is something the two of you want to settle between yourselves while I go out for dinner and a movie with my buddies?” I asked, hopefully.

Cerice growled at me, and Alecto . . .

“Ouch,” said Melchior, “and here I thought
Medusa
was the queen of killer looks.” He shut up abruptly when Alecto turned her raging eyes his way.

I stepped between them. “Look, Alecto, I know that you’re a Goddess of Wrath and all that, but just this once could you chill the hell out? It doesn’t sound like we have a ton of time for ripping each other apart at the moment.”

For a second, I thought I had gotten myself off the hook for this whole mess by the unpleasant expedient of having a Fury turn me inside out. Then Alecto shook her head and stepped back.

The anger in her eyes stayed every bit as intense, but it moved back into the depths, becoming colder and more remote.

“Later, perhaps, I will break both of your arms. But it will have to wait until after we find out whether we all survive the coming pass.” She turned then to Cerice and extended her hand.

“Little sister, I have not welcomed you properly before this; let me now amend my ways and greet you as both an ally and the sibling you are.”

For about eight-tenths of a second, Cerice looked like someone had kicked her square in the stomach. Then her mouth shaped itself into a shy smile, and she stepped forward to embrace Alecto. It was actually rather sweet.
Not
that I was going to say anything about that. When Cerice finally moved away from the older Fury, she looked more settled somehow, less lost.

Though I hadn’t realized she’d been looking lost beforehand, it seemed crystal clear in retrospect.

Cerice turned toward me, opened her mouth, then froze again.

“It’s all right,” said Alecto. “I don’t know what your Shara has told you, but in accepting you as a sister, I must needs also accept her as something of a foster mother in this hour of Necessity’s incapacity.”

Cerice closed her eyes for a moment, then straightened her shoulders and opened them again, obviously working herself up to talk about things that she’d rather not. “Shara also sent me to ask you for a favor.”

“There’s always something.” I braced myself. “I know I’m going to hate this, but go ahead and hit me.”

“Nemesis has used her access through Necessity to seize effective control of all the pole-power networks. The first thing Shara wants you to do is force Nemesis out of the Fate Core,

[http://Olympus.net] Olympus.net, and the systems of Hades, then to close the doors behind her.” I blinked. “That’s a heck of a
first thing
, but sure, why not? Then for the second round, I suppose I can do Discord, and clean up with a complete purge of the mweb before afternoon tea.”

“No,” said Cerice. “Discord you’ve already covered. The effective destruction of her network means no more Nemesis-infection within. Your experiences there are what gave Shara warning to look at the other systems and the idea of a shutdown, though she didn’t at first understand that the entity she was battling within Necessity was Nemesis.” Cerice smiled a wan sort of smile.

“Sorry to say, however, that you
will
probably need to take down the mweb to keep Nemesis from reinfecting the powers while we’re fixing Necessity. Nemesis has to be completely isolated until that’s done, so that she can’t escape again.”

“You’re kidding, right? No, I can see by your expression that you’re not kidding. Insane, maybe, but not kidding.” I shook my head. “Is that all? Or does Shara expect me to rearrange the sun and moon and all the starlit skies to suit her fancy as well?”

“That’s all she asks. But she also sent you a message.”