“Enough!” Jerry shouted.
Everyone went quiet and focused on him.
“You should have brought more gods with you, Lucifer,” Jerry said as he sauntered toward the Devil. “Did you really think I'd announce myself like that with only humans to back me?”
“You've gone too far, Dad,” Jesus said before Luke could answer. “You'll soon have the entire Faerie Realm coming after you.”
“It won't matter. By then, I'll be safe in my new territory.” Jerry grinned viciously as he looked at me. “The Intare Lands.”
“What the . . .?” I gaped at him.
“You weren't strong enough to hold Heaven,” Lucifer said. “What makes you think you can take my daughter's territory?”
“It will be ripe for the taking after I kill her.” Jerry launched himself at me, his whole body going supernova with his enhanced Light.
I wasn't expecting an attack just yet, and it was so fast that I didn't have time to dodge. Jerry got me right in the jaw with his glowing fist and sent me arching up and backward, right into a wall. I went into a fetal position instinctively, and I think that was what saved my skull from getting pulverized. That and the Wild Magic coursing through me. Because I didn't just hit the wall; I went through it, then sailed across the White Drawing Room and throughanotherwall.
Without the Wild Magic, I'm certain my back would have broken along with most of the bones in my arms and legs. As it was, the only bone that broke was my jaw, but I'd gone through two walls, one of them an exterior wall, and it still fucking hurt. Pain punched through me, so searing that it blinded and winded me. I landed in the gardens amid the rubble, hitting the grass, then skidding a few feet.
I couldn't move; all I could do was gasp for breath. Everything hurt. Even though most of my bones felt intact, I suspected that I had internal injuries. With so much pain clouding my mind, I couldn't concentrate enough to reach for the Great Magics. I just lay there and listened to the battle, the sounds wonky in my ears.
After a few minutes—or maybe seconds, I'm not sure—my mind started to work again. I realized that taking me out had been a strategic move. Lucifer and I had been the strongest gods in that room, and Jerry knew what I could do when high on apple. So he'd eliminated me from the equation as soon as he could. And damn had he packed a punch. He may have been cut off from Heaven, but he wasn't cut off from his power and whatever power he had was magnified by Wild Magic.
I couldn't even twitch for a few minutes more. I had to stay there, immobile, while I listened to the roars, howls, and shouts of battle, my immortality working its hardest to fix me. Great booms vibrated through the ground, and I caught glimpses of magical flares out of the corner of my eye. Above me, the sky boiled and frothed, clouds collecting into a mass of gray that quickly turned black. It wasn't just Thor, Hanuman was also a sky god. Although, if I remembered correctly, he mainly controlled the wind. Yeah, there were a lot of jokes there, but I was in too much pain to come up with any.
Finally, with my focus returned, I bypassed the will of my Trinity Star and reached for the Nine Great Magics. In particular, the magic of Healing. Brilliant energy washed through me, so powerful that it felt as if I could see it light up my insides. My jaw and organs mended in a moment, and, pain-free, I gasped as I sat up. It felt like coming back from the dead.
The problem was, every second that I was connected to the Great Nine meant pushing against the will of my star. And that tooka lotof Wild Magic. And the healing I needed tooka lotof the Great Magic of Healing. The apple's power burnt out seconds after my gasp.
It was a good thing Azrael had insisted on everyone taking extra slices of apple with them.
“Oh, you evil motherfucker,” I muttered as I stood up, so angry that I was beyond cute cursing. “You're after my territory, eh?”
Jerry would have to kill me before he could step foot in my territory, but even then, he'd have to fight Kirill and the Intare before he could claim it. Them and all of our allies. Jerry must have known that, so he was either overly confident because of his new friends or it was a diversion of some kind. I was betting on the former.
I reached into my pocket for my backup apple slice. “What the hell?” I shoved my hand into another pocket. I patted my battle vest. “Fuck!” I spun, searching the lawn, but the apple wasn't there. I must have lost it on my way through Buckingham Palace's walls. And I had just used up my Wild Magic. “Fuck!”
Despite my lack of apple, I headed for the palace, but before I could make it two feet, the fight came to me. An entire wall blew outward—stone, wood, and metal flying like shrapnel—and I dove for the ground. As debris pelted the grass around me, I peered up, past the shield of my arm, and saw Angels bursting out of the building like doves from a magician's box. Below them tumbled my husbands and friends, followed by our enemies.
Holy fuck, we were losing!
The Devil himself was being driven back by the sheer numbers of Jerry's army. And they weren't giving anyone time to trace away. My people were firing magic at the Hindu gods even as they stumbled to their feet. Re, Horus, Teharon, Huitzilopochtli, and Viper used the heat of the Sun, or star in Viper's case. Stars are really just suns after all. They sent streams of heat blasting at the tide of monkeys, bears, and winged people. That heat was strong enough to vaporize, and after the damage Brahma had dealt Hanuman, it should have been enough. But their attacks hit invisible barriers, possibly wind, but I wasn't sure. With Wild Magic pumping through them, the Hindu shifters were capable of anything.
There were no rules when Wild Magic was involved. I assumed that it only enhanced what a god had, but the magic hadn't been used enough for that to be a certainty. Gods could potentially gain elemental power or even blend it with their magic. Whatever the case, launching heat at the Hindus didn't seem to work. Even the Angels were having a problem landing a hit.
And we had three of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse with us.
Ira was faring better than the others, but famine didn't do much to a god. The apple made him strong enough to weaken them briefly, emaciating monkeys to mere bones and bears to floppy sacks of fur, but then they'd fill out and recover seconds later. Samuel's power was centered around making men fight, and that was kinda done already, so he was down to using his sword. Then there was Thad, who technically had the power to conquer any enemy, but that wasn't working out so well for him.
Eztli, Blue's wife, was the Goddess of the Blood Moon. Where I had power over water, she had power over blood—the perfect magic for a vampire. Using it, she fared a bit better than her husband and was able to summon blood forth from the eyes, ears, and noses of our enemies, but that only slowed them a little. And as far as Pan, his magic didn't seem to have any effect at all.
We had a lot of fire users in our group, myself included, but Hades controlled a fire that came from the deepest part of the Greek Underworld. And that seemed to make a small difference. He actually managed to burn his targets, bringing the dark flames up from beneath their feet to bypass their shields. Plumes of smoke rose from the shrieking bodies of his targets in a very satisfying way. But again, they didn't stay down for long. Their blackened skin would go red, then pink, before healing entirely. Meanwhile, Thor reached for the sky and brought down bolt after bolt of lightning. Unfortunately, he was having the same problem as the sun gods—the lightning glanced off of whatever that barrier was.
Morpheus, who fought in the sky beside his girlfriend, Saraqael, was weaving dreams, sending them out to confuse and distract, but Jerry's army was quickly growing wise to his tricks. Then there was Persephone, who used the outdoors to her advantage. She summoned vines from the soil that were large enough for giants to climb and wound them around her opponents. She managed to hold a few of them still long enough for others to behead them.
Those in our group who used physical weapons did the most damage. Gods like Artemis with her bow, Torrent with my Wolverine gloves, and Finn with his sword. Torr especially did well. He had trained with the Intare but his greatest advantage was his absorption of videos he found online. Torrent had become an expert in every style of hand-to-hand combat and used them all seamlessly so that he flowed over the battlefield, twirling, jumping, and striking like a character out of a video game. The shapeshifters like Trevor, Odin, and Kirill did all right too. They were able to push past the barriers and land some blows. But that meant getting up close and personal with the enemy and giving them a chance to strike back.
The only upside was that our group was just as hard to hurt as theirs. That would have evened things out if our numbers matched. But the Hindu shapeshifters had that advantage, and I knew that they'd press it into a win. We had to retreat.
