Skyla pushed forward. “Helen must give some really good head to get you doing all her dirty work.”
Nate’s good humor vanished. “You shouldn’t speak of things you don’t understand. It exposes you as ignorant and vulgar.”
“Well, we can’t all be as well versed as you and Helen in the language of megalomania.”
I grabbed Skyla’s elbow and tugged her toward the truck. “It’s been fun getting reacquainted and everything,” I said, “but I have other plans for the remainder of my life. You wouldn’t mind moving your car out of the way, would you?”
Nate chuckled, and it was a cold and menacing sound. “I think not. But you’re welcome to make a run for it. It’s more sporting that way.”
I took another step toward the truck but stopped when someone came crashing through the woods behind us. Skyla and I turned, and the beam of her flashlight revealed an unfamiliar man clutching Inyoni in front of him and pressing a long-bladed knife to her throat. He stopped short when he caught sight of us, and his gaze fell heavy on me. “Why do I always have to eat the boy?” he said. “I’d much rather have had a taste of her.”
My throat closed, and I swayed on my feet as all my blood drained from my head. I knew that voice, had heard it in so many nightmares. “H-Hati,” I sputtered. My brother’s killer, here… now.
Hati was as pale skinned as death, his eyes were as hollow as a grave, and his hair was the salt-and-pepper color of a gray wolf’s pelt. He grinned, and something unmistakably lupine showed in his expression. “I heard you’ve been dreaming of me,” Hati said, his voice rough like a dog’s growl. “It’s about time we met in the flesh.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but loathing stole my words; nothing existed in my vocabulary to express the depth of my hatred. Hati saw my animosity in my face, though, and chuckled. He kept laughing until I took a step toward him. Skyla followed.
“Whoa there, ladies.” Hati slid the knife higher up Inyoni’s neck and pressed the tip into her flesh. A red tear of blood welled from the cut and slid down Inyoni’s throat. Inyoni whimpered, but her face was oddly passive. “You’re about to bite off more than you can chew,” Hati said.
“Where’s Kalani?” I asked.
Skoll yipped and then coughed a doggie noise that sounded vaguely like laughter.
“Ripped to shreds,” Inyoni said. She struggled halfheartedly against Hati despite the knife he held at her jugular. Where was her training? Where was her fight? The Inyoni I knew would have thrown her attacker on his back and had him disemboweled in a manner of seconds. I took another step forward. Hati moved his knife. Another thick drop of blood rolled down Inyoni’s neck, and the glistening rivulets caught the light of Skyla’s flashlight.
“I told you not to move,” Hati said.
“You can’t hurt me,” I said. “It will interfere with Helen’s plans.”
Hati sucked his teeth and then bared them at me like a wary dog. “But I can hurt this girl, and if you don’t stop right there, that’s exactly what I’ll do.”
A foot scuffed over the gravel behind me, and I spun to find Nate creeping closer. “These women are all so noble. No doubt they intend to sacrifice their lives for you if necessary. Tell me, Solina, are you prepared to have their blood on your hands?”
Skyla put a hand to my shoulder, stopping my reply. “I was willing to die for my country. You think I won’t sacrifice myself for my best friend?”
Nate tilted his head and smiled pityingly. “You might just get your wish.” He looked to Hati and pointed at Inyoni. “Kill the bitch,” Nate said. Then he jerked his thumb toward Skyla. “And kill this one next.”
“But she said I wouldn’t get hurt if…” Inyoni’s voice gave out in a croak as Hati slashed his knife across her neck.
Skyla and I screamed and lunged forward, but so did Skoll. He let loose a threatening snarl, and Skyla and I froze in place. Inyoni fell to her knees, clutching her throat. Blood wept between her fingers and dribbled into the dirt. She tried to speak again, but her voice was gone. Inyoni sank to the ground, slumping onto one shoulder. Her dark eyes stared into mine, full of surprise and pleading for help, but Skoll had moved another step closer and I dared not lose track of him.
“Who said?” Skyla demanded. She glared at Inyoni, her face full of fury. “Who did you talk to? Was it Helen?”
Inyoni shook her head. Her mouth formed the shape of something, a name perhaps, but she didn’t have time to utter it before her last breath departed her chest in a pitiful gurgle. The answers she might have known faded along with the light in her eyes.
“You asshole,” I snarled at Hati. “She was just a kid.”
“You’re all just children,” Nate said. “Infants, trying to engage gods on a chessboard made for immortals.”
I closed my eyes and focused on the heat building in my chest. I let it out, and fire spilled over my body, enrobing me in a gown and cowl of flames. Skoll and Hati tensed. “How’s this for engaging?” I asked.
Skyla stepped back, repulsed by my flames. She swung her head around between Hati, Nate, and Skoll, uncertain who she should fight first.
“She burns out fast once she gets to this point,” Nate yelled to his associates, who had stepped away from my fire. “It must use a great deal of energy. She can’t maintain it.”
He was right. I would pass out from exhaustion in a matter of minutes unless I pulled it back or did something more proactive. I waved a hand in Skoll’s direction and imagined flinging fireballs from my palm, but nothing like that happened. Tori and I had developed my fire into a useful shield, but as an offensive weapon, it still sucked. I had to do something or risk complete vulnerability when my power bankrupted. I pictured my oven knob and imagined turning it down, but maybe I was too far gone, or too mad, or too afraid, or all of those things, because my power did not respond, and the fire only grew.
Running out of time and lacking another option, I hurled myself at the wolf. Skyla cursed, and someone, possibly Hati, yelled a warning. Skoll did not retreat from me as I had expected in executing my plan of attack—plan of attack of course being a euphemism for idiotic impulse. The wolf met me, teeth bared, and he swiped his paw in an excruciating swath across my chest, knocking me back. I fell to my rear, gritting my teeth and wheezing.
Skoll yelped and rolled away, limping and favoring his burnt foot. He shook it off, came around to face me again, and crouched, ready to attack the moment my inferno inevitably went out. Skoll’s eyes mirrored my raging flames, reminding me of some sort of hound of hell. Not some sort. That’s exactly what he is. This wolf was an agent of Hela, the Nordic deity whose name was synonymous with the legendary place where damned souls suffered eternal punishment.
No way was Skoll going to drag me somewhere like that. Not if I could help it. I swallowed my pain, rose to my feet, and took an unsteady step toward him again.
“Solina,” Skyla called out. I turned in the direction of her voice to find her backing away from Nate and Hati, who both advanced on her. She wielded her knife before her, but there were two of them and she had only the one weapon. She was the toughest woman I knew, but two against one were unfavorable odds, even for her. “Get out of here,” she said. “You have to save yourself. Nothing matters more than that.”
“Yes,” Hati said, turning to look at me over his shoulder. He chuckled in a wolfish way. “Leave this one with me. I’ll devour her the same way I devoured your brother. It will be kind of poetic, don’t you think?”
Like a spark set to a fuse, Hati’s words set off a chain reaction within me, a self-amplifying series of events, triggering a release. My fire erupted as if it had breached my skin and found a core of hydrogen beneath. A corona of light and flame exploded from me, and the three figures before me fell back, scrambling to escape my conflagration.
“Solina!” Skyla screamed, but I was incensed and beyond reasoning, beyond restraint. My field of vision narrowed until lake and forest vanished. Skyla, Nate, Skoll, Inyoni… they all fell away. There was me, there was Hati, and that was all.
I threw myself at my brother’s killer, surging forward in a burst of light and molten energy, and Hati fell beneath me.
He screamed.
He howled.
He burned on the bonfire of my wrath.
