Younger Gods 1: The Younger Gods (9 page)

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

I
complied with the Gardener’s request, not disgruntled enough to make an issue of it.

Upon crossing the threshold, I stepped into a warm hallway. The air was scented with wood smoke. Behind it was the smell of dampness upon stone. The ceiling was at least twelve feet high, the walls made of mortared stone or a fine facsimile thereof.

The hall opened up into a sitting room, appointed with lavish couches, chaise lounges, and desks, deep woods complementing the crushed velvets and adding up to an early-twentieth-century aristocratic look. Paintings of realist landscapes lined the walls, all seeming to come from the same hand.

Nate found a seat, seemingly at peace. Carter removed his coat and draped it over a chair, revealing his yellow-and-green armor, a dagger at his hip. Antoinette took up a seat on a couch and I took another single seat.

The Gardener joined us, handing his umbrella off to a servant I hadn’t even noticed. The servant, an older white man with a seemingly-polished bald head and dressed in a perfectly-kept tuxedo, took the umbrella and the Gardener’s jacket, unspeaking.

“Some tea, and some food. Light, plus digestives.”

The servant nodded, then backed out of the room.

“Are you all right?” the Gardener asked Nate.

“She didn’t touch me. But my teacher and two classmates can’t say the same thing. You were more than a little late on the reflexes, boss-man.”

The Gardener’s nostrils flared, but the rest of his face was a still mask. He stayed standing, looking down at all of us. “The joining is no simple task, my dear, and the Greene masked her tracks well. Her command of the supernal is substantial—she does not cause waves as others might.”

“Can you say that again in English?” Carter said.

Nate cut in. “She’s sneaky as hell. Most sorcerers of her power make waves like a steamship, and you can feel them coming. She’s like a shark swimming twenty feet underwater.”

“Mother was very diligent in teaching us to be subtle in our drawing upon the Deeps,” I said.

“Well, isn’t that nice for you,” Nate said, gripping his shoulder tightly, leaning back in the chair.

“Collateral damage will happen. The Greene woman was denied the Heart, as was intended.”

“What happened? Where did she strike?” I asked.

Carter leapt into his recounting.

“I was waiting outside of Nate’s studio for his dance class, just keeping an eye out.” The actor nodded.

“I felt a wave of worry ski down my back just as something picked me up out of my chair and slammed me into the wall of the narrow hallway.

“As I hit the ground, I caught a glimpse of, no surprise, a tall brunette with crazy eyes and Jake’s never-heard-of-the-sun complexion.”

Antoinette chuckled, and Carter continued. “She had a gnarled baobab wand with a big honking onyx mounted near the tip.”

Her favorite implement. It was the sorcerous equivalent of a sawed-off shotgun. Vicious up close, but not as useful for distant workings.

Carter continued. “I got my feet under me and rolled forward, pulling my backup knife out of its pocket in my jacket.” Carter pulled open one side of the unbuttoned jacket to show the sheath.

“But it’s not just a knife.” Carter drew the blade, which grew in an instant from a knife to a full-sized talwar, hilt encrusted with jewels.

“I took a swipe at her wand, but Esther jumped back to avoid the cut.

“Thankfully, there weren’t any doting boyfriends or tagalong kids, no civilians to keep safe, just me and Bad Sister. I still didn’t have much room to maneuver, thanks so very much, New York hallways.

“Esther let loose with another blast, but this time I was close enough to dodge under the jet-black beam of energy and press forward with a thrust. A knife whipped up out of nowhere and knocked my blade off target. She twisted the wand in her hand and shot another blast that caught me full in the chest. I went down like a sack of manure and curled up to maximize the coverage from my armor. My mom made this armor, and it can stand up to a lot.”

I shifted back and forth, unsettled that I hadn’t been there to help. “And it also put my sword into position to thrust up under her guard. But it was just a glancing blow. Another impact crushed my chest plate, introducing it to my ribs, and I felt something crack.

“And then I had the treat of a massive wave of pain before clocking out like a night-light.

“When I came to, my ribs felt like someone had stuck me in a giant-sized vise and gone to town for a while. I picked up my sword and got to my feet, keeping an eye out for Esther. I had no idea how long I’d been out. I kicked open the door to the dance studio and saw the aftereffects of a one-room tornado.

“Mangled chairs were scattered around the room, one embedded in the wall like a Salvador Dalí painting.

“Several prone figures dotted the floor, each with their own pool of blood. There were three people down—two women and a man, all in the jazz practice outfits.

“At the center of the room was Nate, hair waving around, energized by some kind of magic nimbus the same yellow-orange that lit up his eyes.”

Nate watched, leaning forward, arms closed in front of him. He looked interested, as if he hadn’t just lived the story. “When Nate spoke, the voice that came out wasn’t his. It was deeper, older. Crankier. It was the Gardener.

“ ‘Fat lot of good you ended up being, Nephilim,’ the Gardener said, putting down a teacup. ‘The witch is gone. I would not leave my agent without my watchful eye. Summon the others. The Greene woman is doubtless already on her way to another borough while she licks her wounds.’ ”

Carter opened up his hands. “And so, here we are.”

“You did well,” the Gardener said to Nate.

“Yeah, if you jumping into my body and using it like a diving suit to fight a shark is ‘doing well.’ Do you even know what it feels like when you do that?”

“I did what I had to in order to protect you, and the world. Your comfort is hardly a priority in those cases.”

Nate turned to Antoinette. “So is there a magical OSHA no one told me about? Maybe a magical lawyer who I can go to for a civil suit or a way out of this ass contract?”

The Gardener tutted. “The contract was written upon your heart and signed with the ink of your soul. It is binding in every possible way. I will not apologize. Instead, we should focus on the next step.”

“It’s my fault,” Carter said.

My head whipped to the side to stare at my roommate.

“I was distracted. I could have stopped her if I was ready.”

“Unlikely,” I said, realizing as I spoke that the Gardener was saying the exact same thing.

The Gardener coughed, then continued. “Your humility is admirable, but useless. Without room to evade workings, a martial assault will always lose out to a magical one. The disproportionate arms necessary to bring down a sorcerer of her caliber lies somewhere between a rocket launcher and a surface-to-surface missile, I’m afraid.”

“Do you have access to either of those?” I asked, trying to help.

“I could make some calls. But a magical response is by far the wiser choice,” the Gardener said.

I leaned forward. “But if you were not able to stop her, what are we expected to do?”

The Gardener did not bother turning to respond. “My powers are far more limited in the joining. A direct assault by coordinated forces could incapacitate her long enough for someone like the Nephilim here to finish her off. We merely need to create an encounter where we are the hunters, and she the hunted.”

I started to speak again, but the Gardener cut me off. He still focused on Nate, but also turned to look at Carter and Antoinette. By virtue of my peripheral position, I found myself easily excluded.

“Carter—given that you were the one most impacted by her magic, I’d like to make use of your armor in order to conduct an augury to find the Greene woman. Not only where she is, but where she will be, so that we can lay a proper trap.”

Antoinette made a T shape with her hands. “Time out. Can you tell us where we are first? We sure as hell aren’t still in the Theater District, and this place is kind of spooky with the one part
Downton Abbey
, one part Shadow Gallery.”

Again, Antoinette’s allusions went over my head.

“I took the liberty to bring you all to one of my safe houses. It is a pocket world tucked beside your world, a private extension of my garden. That is all you need to know for now,” the Gardener said. “Carter, the armor?” He held out an expectant hand.

Carter stood. “This won’t hurt the armor, right? My mom would kill me if I wrecked it.”

“Perhaps your mother should be more concerned that it saved your life and may yet save all of us. You mortals and your myopic, shortsighted priorities. Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t throw down my plowshare and take up a sword during the Schism. But you have so much amazing potential when you’re not being idiots.”

“But, the armor?” Carter asked again.

“It will be fine,” the Gardener said, his voice curt. He snapped at Carter, “Now, boy.”

“Geez,” Carter said, removing the vambraces and greaves before he could pull off the main coat. He stripped down to the sleeveless shirt and linen pants, handing the coat over to the Gardener. Despite the being’s apparent fragility, he took the weight of the armor without flinching, then walked it over to a table.

The Gardener spoke to us without turning, already at work. “I will require concentration for this augury. You can find refreshments in the room beyond.” He gestured to a door opposite the entrance hall.

I restrained a smart remark as we made our way to a dining room. It held a fifteen-foot-long wooden table, set with fine china, several pots of tea and coffee, as well as finger foods of a number of kinds.

The Gardener may have been an imperious, arrogant ass, but he was, at the least, a hospitable one. The finger foods were quite delicious: empanadas, sandwiches, and a selection of fine cheeses to combine with equally fine crackers—the kind that seemed to only exist in concert with fine cheeses, like upscale hors d’oeuvres symbiotes.

“How long do you expect the augury to take?” I asked Nate.

He shrugged. “Hell if I know. I’m just assuming my whole schedule is wrecked until this all blows over. You might want to follow suit so you can get your calm on and stop twitching.”

Carter cut in, “Not sure that’s possible. Jake here twitches in his sleep.”

How helpful.

“That right?” Nate asked.

“It’s hardly relevant. And I will not apologize for being invested in stopping a woman who is a menace to the fabric of reality,” I said, my push for dignity likely underwhelmed by the miniature pickle I was gesturing with.

Antoinette rolled her eyes at the other two then grabbed my attention. “They’re teasing you because you’re an easy mark, Jake. We all know this is serious. But nobody can be on twenty-four/seven. This is a chance to relax for a while. We should all take it.”

“Speaking of which . . .” Carter held up a finely-carved glass decanter half-filled with sparkling amber liquid. He poured four short glasses and distributed them around the table.

Antoinette spun the glass, the light filtering through its facets to cast amber beams across the room. “So what do we toast?”

“Let’s start with ‘to not blowing up the world,’” Carter said.

“Yup. If the world ends before I get the chance to win the Tony, I’m coming back from the apocalypse to kick each of your asses individually,” Nate said.

“To not blowing up the world,” Antoinette said.

I joined the chorus, and we clinked our glasses. The Greenes were well familiar with spirits of the liquid variety, so I downed my drink in a single go, savoring the smoky, peaty aroma that took up residence in my mouth and wafted up to my nose, seemingly all the way up into my skull.

Carter sputtered, losing part of his drink.

“You okay there, pretty boy?” Nate asked, a smile on his face.

“I’m fine,” Carter said, straightening himself and setting down the glass. “That’s good whiskey.”

“It’s brandy,” I said. “The color, taste profile—”

Antoinette cut me off. “You’re right. So when your boss figures this out,” she said to Nate, “we still have to take Esther out to finish this all so we can go back to our lives.” She turned to me. “Any suggestions?”

“In a straight fight, I am not a match for Esther.” I took several plates from the stack and started to pile them with food. Nate, Carter, and even Antoinette started looking more at the plates than at me.

Be patient,
I thought.
The crazy boy has a plan.
“She is relentless, and more studied than I in accessing the Deeps. The best way to defeat her is by surrounding her and attacking with a variety of methods at once.”

I placed the brandy decanter in the center of a place mat then put my empty glass opposite it.

“First, I challenge her might against might, to draw her attention. I cannot win in a protracted conflict, but my strongest attacks can demand her attention.” I took a plate of vegetables and placed it on the far side of the decanter from my glass. “At that same moment, Antoinette should unleash Igbe or one of the other spirits to attack her. She may have bound spirits to defend her. In fact, we should expect it.”

Then I took a sandwich speared by a finely-carved wooden sword and slid its plate directly up to the decanter. “And while her spirits are distracted and her magical force arrayed against me, Carter will have the freedom to bring the fight to her.”

“That didn’t exactly work so well before,” Carter said, cracking his neck, revealing bruising across his collarbone.

“But that time you were alone, her attention free to turn the power of the Deeps on you directly.” I looked Carter directly in the eyes, did my best to convey sincerity and earnestness, to push past the antipathy between us to make myself perfectly clear. “I promise that I will not abate, will not yield. I cannot resist her for long, but if we work together, you will have the opening to strike.”

Carter leaned back, his lips pursed, arms crossed. Antoinette looked between us, sipping on brandy. Nate grabbed another sandwich and ate it in a single bite. And no one talked. Not for a long, timeless moment, each of us thinking, doubtless reflecting on how little I’d managed to assuage their anxiety about the coming fight.