Everything happened in an instant. Hela and Loki stood like flimsy barriers between us. I gathered Lexi in my arms, an image in my head of where to teleport. Then Thor burst from the building he’d landed in, hammer crackling with lightning.
“No!”
But Loki’s cry fell on deaf ears as Thor flew straight into Leviathan’s open mouth. Lightning filled the entire channel, turning the world shock white. I slammed my eyes shut and bent over Lexi’s prone form. When it finally died down, so did Leviathan’s limp body. It crashed down on the yachts of the marina close by and didn’t move again. And no one emerged from the abyss of his gaping maw.
Loki collapsed to his knees, looking more shattered than I’d ever seen him in the long time I’d known him. Hela wept openly, hands gripping her father’s shoulders. I held Lexi, wiping blood from her face as the rain finally stopped.
Chapter 17
Lexi
Almost.
I almost had him.
I didn’t know what this cold power was or where it came from, but it knew what I needed. Leviathan’s mind had been a swirling maelstrom beneath several tornadic waterspouts inside a violent hurricane. Utter chaos. But chaos was me, and this new ability led me straight through the mess to the core buried within.
And he was beautiful.
Our eyes met, and in the space around us, a ripple of understanding. Of familiarity. Of recognition. Embedded in his forehead was an amulet I was coming to loathe, but his ocean blue eyes were clear. He reached for me, straining against invisible bindings, desperate to break free.
Then I was ripped away, flailing, falling, tumbling through the air. Weightless. The pouring rain didn’t touch my skin, but cold still enveloped me. Whatever power had so abruptly evicted me was unfamiliar, and yet I knew it all the same.
I opened my mouth to warn Lucifer, but no sound escaped. Light flashed too brightly, noises too loud. The world spun in bright bursts of color, and my father’s heartbreaking cry pierced through it all, bringing everything into crystal sharp clarity.
The rain stopped.
Panic bubbled up in my throat when I looked down to see… me. On the ground, half flung across Lucifer’s lap. Blood pouring from my face.
Oh God, oh God. Am I dead? Am I a ghost? Whatisthis?
A sob reached my ears again and I pushed away from the panic, the terror, to find my dad. Loki knelt on the ground, eyes red-rimmed as he looked across the water at—my throat closed up. Or something did, since I wasn’t exactly in my body. Amongst the crumbling brick and shattered wood and fiberglass, an enormous blue-grey head lay smoking, its jaw wide, eyes unseeing.
I… I failed him.
“Why isn’t she waking up?” Lucifer asked.
That got my dad’s attention. Air rushed from his lungs as he scrambled gracelessly to where Lucifer held my body, muttering under his breath, “No no no no no.”
I’d never seen my dad do anything gracelessly in my life.
“She lives,” Hela said, wiping at her face.
“But she’s not here.” Loki shook his head, running his hands over my face. “I need to get her home.”
He started to pull my body away from Lucifer—a tug I felt in whatever weird-ass spirit form I was currently in—but Lucifer resisted. “I can take her there.”
They both tensed, grips tightening, and I wanted to yell at them to stop being stupid. Luckily, my sister stepped in. “Father, take them both. I’ll stay with him and coordinate with the others for now.”
Loki’s jaw tightened, but he grabbed Lucifer. Moving in this form—an astral form, maybe?—was weird, but I connected with Lucifer’s shoulder in time to get pulled through with them. He glanced at his shoulder, and for a moment I thought he could see me, but then he frowned at our surroundings.
“Why here?”
My dad slid my body out of Lucifer’s grip without a fight and settled me into the small bed tucked into the corner. Lucifer sat on the end and pulled my shoes off while Loki peeled me out of my wet jacket and tugged my shattered amulet over my head. There was a large bruise about the same size on my collar bone, which might explain some of the pain earlier. Now, I felt nothing except the ghost of their touches, a faint prickling sensation across my incorporeal form.
It was… disconcerting, to say the least, to be watching this from the outside, but also warmed my heart to see how much the two most important men in my life cared for me.
“She needs time to heal,” Loki finally answered, tugging the blanket up to my chin. He brushed his thumb across my forehead, and the blood on my face disappeared.
