Ilona Andrews - Magic Strikes

“How do you make it stop?”

“I kill.”

The blue eyes regarded me with a strange look, half-terror, half-surprise. “That’s it? No noble purpose?”

“There isn’t always a noble purpose. There is usually a reason. The need to save someone or something. Your friend, your lover, an innocent who doesn’t deserve to be hurt. Sometimes it’s a purely selfish reason. One might fight for their body, their good name, or their sanity. Sometimes it’s just a job. But deciding to fight and doing it are two different things.”

“How can you live like that? It seems unbearable.”

I shrugged. “Like you, I harbor no illusions. I was conceived, born, raised, and trained with one purpose in mind: to become the best killer I could be. It’s what I do.” So eventually I can kill Roland, the most powerful man on Earth.

“It’s time,” Jim’s voice said from beyond the door.

A long, deep sigh issued from Saiman. He rose. His head nearly brushed the ceiling. Eight and a half feet tall. Wow.

“Do you prefer the Aesir?”

The word hit me like a bolt of lightning. Pieces fell into place in my head: Saiman, golden and high on magic, dancing on the roof and celebrating “the time of the gods,” his fluid changes of shape, his self-interest, his ego, and him now, an enormous monster, a giant of a man. I gaped at him. He wasn’t supposed to exist.

“My other shape, Kate. Do you like it?”

“Yes,” I said, managing to make my voice even. “So are you all god or did one of your divine relatives get fresh with a human?”

For the first time Saiman smiled, displaying white teeth that would’ve been at home in the mouth of a polar bear. “A quarter. It’s enough. The rest is frost and human.”

He scooped the canvas bundle off the floor. The fabric fluttered down, revealing a four-foot-long club studded with metal spikes thicker than my fingers. Saiman bent and stepped through the doorway. I heard a startled growl from Jim.

Saiman kept going, out of the room, into the hallway, each step like two of mine. Jim’s teeth were bared in a snarl.

“Come on.” I swiped Slayer and chased Saiman into the hallway. The Red Guards hugged the walls as he passed by.

Jim caught up with me. “What the fuck is he?”

“Vikings,” I managed, breaking into an outright run.

“What about Vikings?”

“Vikings called their gods Aesir.”

“That tells me nothing.”

The Gold Gate loomed before us, and through its lit rectangle I saw the Pit and the sea of spectators. Saiman paused in the gloom, his club resting on his shoulder.

“He said he is a quarter Aesir, which probably means his grandmother was a Viking god. But there is only one Norse deity who can change shape the way he does and he wasn’t Aesir. He was Loki, the trickster, a giant who became a god. Saiman is the grandson of two Norse deities, Jim.”

Saiman swung the club off his shoulder with the ease of a child with a toy baseball bat and stepped through the gate into the light. The crowd fell silent. The silence stretched as the audience tried to come to terms with an eight-and-a-half-foot-tall humanoid. Saiman didn’t wait for them. His club in hand, he strode to the Pit.

THE REAPER WAITED AT THE FAR END OF THE sand. Inhumanly tall and packed with thick muscle, he had the build of a champion weight lifter, his body so overdeveloped it resembled an action figure. If I went up against him, I’d have to strike at a joint—if he clenched up, the sword might not penetrate all that muscle.

The Reaper wore black boots, and nothing else. Swirls of henna designs covered every inch of his pale body. He carried two heavy bearded axes, sharpened to razor gleam, each three feet tall. They were meant to be used two-handed.

Saiman entered the ring, his long legs moving slowly. He towered over the Reaper by a foot or so, which made the axe fighter just over seven and a half feet. Despite the height difference, they probably weighed the same. You could see Saiman’s ribs, and the Reaper would have trouble picking up coins from the ground without crouching.

A Red Guard closed the fence door and scurried away to the protection of the wall.

As the gate clanged shut, the resolve drained from Saiman. A light trembling began in his arms. He hunched his shoulders. I could taste his terror from where I stood. The Reaper sensed it too and grinned, baring his teeth. They were filed to points, like the teeth of a shark.

The smell of blood and hot sand invaded my nostrils. I squinted against the bright glow of huge feylanterns and took a step to the Pit . . . and almost bumped into a guard barring my way.

“No further. If you exit the gate, your fighter forfeits the match.”

It wasn’t my fight.

I leaned against the golden arch. Jim halted next to me. It was up to Saiman now.

The Reaper tossed one of his axes in the air. It spun, the bluish blade shining as it captured the torch light, and he caught it with deft quickness. The crowd loved it.

A gong tolled through the chamber. As its deep ring died, Saiman glanced back at us.

“Come.” The Reaper’s voice was a raspy growl, touched with that same accent I couldn’t quite place. He motioned with his axe. “Come! I cut you down to size.”

Saiman hesitated.

“Come!”

Saiman turned halfway, facing me. His eyes brimmed with fear. We should’ve never put him into the damn Pit. He wasn’t a fighter. No matter how big he was, unless he had courage enough to kill for his survival, he would be simply cut down.

“Move,” I whispered. That first step was the hardest. Once he broke the dread chaining him and struck the first blow, he would be fine. But he had to move.

The Reaper raised his arms wide as if asking the audience for an explanation. Boos and jeers erupted, at first isolated, then gaining strength, until they swelled into a wall of sound.

The Reaper held up his axe. The noise died down. “I cut you now,” he announced.

He advanced, flexing, hefting his axes. Saiman took a step back. The Reaper smirked and kept coming. An ugly grimace skewed his face. He raised the axes and charged.

Saiman dodged, but the edge of the left axe caught his thigh. Blood drenched the frost-white skin. Shock slapped Saiman’s monstrous face. The axe fighter paused to soak in the applause.

Saiman stared at the blood. His lips trembled. His eyebrows came together. A wild light danced in his deep eyes.

Pain, I realized. Pain was his trigger. Saiman was afraid of pain, and once it lashed him, he would do anything to keep it from hurting him again.

With a terrible bellow, Saiman swung his club. The Reaper leapt aside and the club smashed the ground, sending a spray of sand into the air. Without a pause, Saiman swiped the club up and charged. The Reaper jumped back. The club’s steel spikes fanned his face. The Reaper ducked left, right, but Saiman whipped the club at him as if it weighed nothing. The axe fighter ran.

All thought vanished from Saiman’s glassy eyes. He roared and chased the Reaper back and forth through the Pit, his face terrible to behold, his mind lost to fury. I wasn’t sure he knew where he was or what he was doing here, but he knew he had to kill the fleeing Reaper.

“Ice him,” Jim murmured. “ Ice him.”

Our stares met and he shook his head. Like the Norse warriors of old odes, Saiman was lost to his berserker rage, too far gone to remember he had magic.

The Reaper stopped. As the club whistled past his chest, a hair short of ripping him open, he pivoted and struck at the club’s handle with his right axe, trying to knock Saiman off balance. It was a good move. Saiman’s momentum, aided by the Reaper’s strike, would drive the club forward, leaving the Reaper free to cleave at Saiman’s right arm and side.