Well, I might have gone down either path, but just then I caught sight of our boys in the alleyway, sniffing and snarling like wolves in suits, and I was down to no choice at all. I drew my mindsword, he drew his. Glamours and runes distressed the night air. Not that they would help us, I thought; they hadn’t helped my brother Bren, or the mad old moongod. And Shadow—or Chaos, if you prefer—had plenty of glamours of its own with which to strike down three renegade gods, fugitives left over from the End of the World—
“Hey! Up here!” yelled Our Thor.
Two pairs of eyes turned up towards us. A hiss like static as the ephemera tuned into our whereabouts. A glint of teeth as they grinned—and then they were crawling up the fire escape, all pretence of humanity gone, slick beneath those boxy black coats, nothing much in there but tooth and claw, like poetry with an appetite.
Oh, great, I thought. Way to keep a low profile, Our Thor. Was it an act of self-sacrifice, a ploy to attract their attention, or could he possibly have a plan? If he did, then it would be a first. Mindless self-sacrifice was about his level. I wouldn’t have minded that much, but it was clear that in his boundless generosity he also meant to sacrifice me.
“Lucky!” It was raining again. Great ropes and coils of thunderous rain that thrashed down onto our bowed heads, all gleaming in the neon lights in shades of black and orange—from the static-ridden sky, great flakes of snow lumbered down. Well, that’s what happens around a raingod under stress; but that didn’t stop me getting soaked, and wishing I’d brought my umbrella. It didn’t stop the ephemera though. Even the bolts of lightning that crashed like stray missiles into the alleyway (I have skills too, and I was using them like the blazes by then) had no effect on the wolves of Chaos, whose immensely slick and somehow snakelike forms were now poised on the fire escape beneath us, ten feet away and ready to pounce.
One did—a mindbolt flew. I recognized the rune Hagall. One of my colleague’s most powerful, and yet it passed right through the ephemera with a squeal of awesome feedback, then the creature was on us again, unbuttoning its overcoat, and now I was sure there were stars in there, stars and the mindless static of space—
“Look,” I said. “What do you want? Girls, money, power, fame—I can get all those things for you, no problem. I’ve got influence in this world. Two handsome, single guys like yourselves—hey, you could make a killing in showbiz.”
Perhaps not the wisest choice of words.
The first wolf leered. “Killing,” it said. By then I could smell it again, and I knew that words couldn’t save me. First, the thing was ravenous. Second, nothing with that level of halitosis could possibly hope to make it in the music business. Some guys, I knew, had come pretty close. My daughter Hel, for instance, has, in spite of her—shall we say alternative—looks, a serious fan base in certain circles. But not these guys. I mean, Ew.
I flung a handful of mindrunes then: Týr; Kaen; Hagall; Ýr—but none of them even slowed it down. The other wolf was onto us now, and Arthur was wrestling with it, caught in the flaps of its black coat. The balcony was pulling away from the wall; sparks and shards of runelight hissed into the torrential rain.
Damn it, I thought. I’m going to die wet. And I flung up a shield using the rune Sól, and with the last, desperate surge of my glam I cast all the firerunes of the First Aettir at the two creatures that once had been wolves but were now grim incarnations of revenge, because nothing escapes from Chaos, not Thunder, not Wildfire, not even the Sun—
“Are you guys okay out there?” It was Sunny, peering through a gap in the curtains. “Do you want some more ginseng tea?”
“Ah—no thanks,” said Arthur, now with a demon wolf in each hand and that stupid grin on his face again. “Look, ah, Sunny, go inside. I’m kinda busy right now—”
The thing that Our Thor had been holding at bay finally escaped his grasp. It didn’t go far, though; it sprang at me and knocked me backwards against the rail. The balcony gave way with a screech, and we all fell together, three floors down. I hit the deck—damned hard—with the ephemera on top of me, and all the fight knocked out of me and I knew that I was finished.
Sunny peered down from her window. “Do you need help?” she called to me.
I could see right into the creature now, and it was grim—like those fairy tales where the sisters get their toes chopped off and the bad guys get pecked to death by crows and even the little mermaid has to walk on razor blades for the rest of her life for daring to fall in love…Except that I knew Sunny had got the Disney version instead, with all the happy endings in it, and the chipmunks and rabbits and the goddamned squirrels (I hate squirrels!) singing in harmony, where even the wolves are good guys and no one ever really gets hurt—
I gave her a sarcastic smile. “Yeah, wouldya?” I said.
“Okay,” said Sunny, and pulled the drapes and stepped out onto the balcony.
And then something very weird happened.
I WAS WATCHING HER from the alleyway, my arms pinned to my sides now and the ephemera straddling me with its overcoat spread like a vulture about to spear an eyeball. The cold was so intense that I couldn’t feel my hands at all, and the stench of the thing made my head swim, and the rain was pounding into my face and my glam was bleeding out so fast that I knew I had seconds, no more—
So the first thing she did was put her umbrella up.
Ignored Arthur’s desperate commands—besides, he was still wrestling with the second ephemera. His colours were flaring garishly; runelight whirled around them both, warring with the driving rain.
And then she smiled.
It was as if the sun had come out. Except that it was night, and the light was, like, sixty times more powerful than the brightest light you’ve ever known, and the alley lit up a luminous white, and I screwed my eyes shut to prevent them from being burnt there and then out of their sockets, and all these things happened at once.
First of all, the rain stopped. The pressure on my chest disappeared, and I could move my arms again. The light, which had been too intense even to see when it first shone out, diffused itself to a greenish-pink glow. Birds on the rooftops began to sing. A scent of something floral filled the air—strangest of all in that alleyway, where the smell of piss was predominant—and someone put a hand on my face and said:
“It’s okay, sweetie. They’ve gone now.”
Well, that was it. I opened my eyes. I figured that either I’d taken more concussion than I’d thought, or there was something Our Thor hadn’t told me. He was standing over me, looking self-conscious and bashful. Sunny was kneeling at my side, heedless of the alleyway dirt, and her blue dress was shining like the summer sky, and her bare feet were like little white birds, and her sugar blond hair fell over my face and I was glad she really wasn’t my type, because that lady was nothing but trouble. And she gave me a smile like a summer’s day, and Arthur’s face went dangerously red, and Sunny said: