Poison Fruit (55 page)

The power left as abruptly as it had filled me, snuffed out like a candle flame. A cry of anguish I couldn’t stifle escaped me. The doorway onto hell vanished, taking my father and its legions with it.

I gazed at my hands, weak and empty, before turning to face the angel. “It’s done.”

The angel’s voice chimed over the dunes as it spread its wings, rising aloft. “
Farewell
.”

It departed like a meteor in reverse, a shining figure arcing into the broken sky. One last burst of golden radiance emanated from the jagged crack in heaven’s vault as the angel passed through it, and then the crack sealed itself and vanished.

The Inviolate Wall was intact once more.

It was over.

Fifty-five

I
n the wake of the angel’s departure, Persephone fell to her knees in the sand, burying her face in her hands and uttering a heartrending cry. “Ah, no! What have I done?”

Even with the devastation she’d wrought, I couldn’t help but pity her. “You’ve made a terrible mistake, my lady,” I murmured.

“Yes.” Lifting her head, she gazed at me with sun-spangled eyes. “Forgive me, young Daisy. I will do what I may to rectify it. The title to the Norse Hel’s demesne shall be restored to you.”

Daniel Dufreyne cleared his throat. “You’re under no legal obligation—”

“Be silent!” Persephone drew herself upright, regal and shining. “Call a cease-fire. We shall withdraw from the battlefield. Bid your warriors to retrieve their wounded and dead,” she said to her mercenary commander. “I will make restitution to their families.”

The commander bowed his head to her. “My lady.”

“May I point out that the company we contracted signed a release indemnifying—” Dufreyne caught her glare and fell silent.

As long as they were leaving, that was good enough for me.

I retrieved
dauda-dagr
and found Stefan at Cody’s side, pressing a bandanna against his gunshot wound. “How is he?”

“Weak from loss of blood,” Stefan said. “But I think the bullet passed through cleanly and struck no vital organs.”

“How are
you
?” I asked.

Stefan paused. “The wolf has done some damage to my shoulder, but it will heal. Beyond that, I do not know how to answer you, Daisy,” he said simply. “Except to say that I am very, very grateful.”

“You took one hell of a risk today, Pixy Stix,” Cody whispered with the ghost of a smile. “Holy shit! I’m just glad the world’s still standing.”

Tears stung my eyes. “Oh, shut up and save your strength, will you?”

Cody closed his eyes. “Okay.”

If war was chaos, the aftermath wasn’t a lot better.

The mercenaries packed their gear and retrieved their fallen comrades with unnerving efficiency, or at least all of their comrades that they could find. The Wild Hunt was still out there giving chase to those who had fled the battlefield in the initial panic. Horns echoed faintly in the distance, a reminder that there were things in the world that, once unleashed, no one could take back. Field medics administered first aid to the wounded, and a few motionless figures were hustled quickly out of sight. There would be no final tally of the casualties until the next day dawned.

The gnarled figures of the elusive
duegar
scurried around the woods and dunes, gathering deadfalls and loose branches, heaping a cairn of dry wood over the massive corpse of the hellhound Garm in preparation for a funeral pyre.

There would be no pyre for Mikill.

All that was left of the frost giant I’d come to consider a friend was shards of ice melting into the sand.

There had been other losses.

The surviving troll sat slumped on the blood-soaked sand, mourning for his fallen mate. The indeterminate number of hobgoblins had lost two of their brethren.

Skrrzzzt’s baseball bat was in splinters and he’d lost an arm. “No
worries, mamacita,” he said to me in a weary voice after trudging up the slope of the basin to join us. “It’ll grow back in time.”

Mrs. Browne was miraculously unscathed. I’d known brownies were tough, but that broom of hers must have had some serious mojo in it. She examined Cody with a critical eye and summoned a number of spiders to spin a bandage to bind his wound. Which, yes, ew, but at least it stanched the bleeding. “Ach, this one will live, all right.” She
thumped his chest with one knotty fist, causing Cody to grimace. “Got a fine, strong constitution, he does.”

There were no further casualties in the Fairfax clan, who’d played a canny game of cat-and-mouse—or werewolf-and-mouse—with the mercenaries in the dunes. And of course there were no casualties among the Outcast save for their immortality, although a number of them had sustained nonfatal injuries that could no longer be eradicated by dying and reincorporating.

It made them cautious, something they hadn’t had to be for a very, very long time.

With the aid of Gus the ogre, we got Cody loaded into the back of his cousin Joe’s pickup truck and covered with a blanket, then made the trek back to our campsite on the Cavannaugh property.

What do you say to the people you love when you’ve just come within a hairsbreadth of unleashing Armageddon? Now that it was over, I was dazed and exhausted, and I didn’t have the faintest idea. No one did. We just gazed at one another in silence.

It was my mom who broke the silence. She opened her arms, tears in her eyes. “Oh, honey!”

That’s all she said, but it was enough.

I walked into her embrace, feeling her arms close around me. Mom hugged me hard, and we stayed that way for a long time.

After that we set about the business of breaking down the camp. The Fairfaxes hauled Cody off to Doc Howard to get patched up, and a number of the injured, now-mortal Outcast, including Stefan, followed suit.

Cooper wasn’t among them. He’d managed to avoid injury after his last reincorporation.

“So you did it, m’lady,” he said to me. “You used your leverage after all.”

I nodded. “How do you feel?”

“Strange to meself.” Cooper gazed into the distance. “My beast’s been with me for so long, I don’t quite know what to do without it.”

“Are you sorry I did it?” I asked him.

“Never!” His gaze returned to my face. “Don’t mistake me, Daisy. I’m grateful beyond words. But it’s going to take some getting used to.”

I held out my hand to him. “Well, if there’s anything I can do to help, I’m here for you.”

Cooper regarded my hand with habitual wariness, then clasped it firmly. “Been a long time since I’ve held a lass’s hand without thinking to feed on her,” he mused. “It feels good.”

I tightened my grip on his hand. “I’m glad.”

Before we departed the campsite, Persephone paid us a visit. She emerged from an SUV that halted some forty yards away, carrying my pillowcase in one delicate hand. It was an incongruous sight.

Accompanied—at her insistence—by Lurine, I went out to meet with the goddess on the rim of the basin. Persephone still looked pretty stricken, and Lurine’s presence didn’t help, but my pity only went so far. I raised my eyebrows at the pillowcase. “You really didn’t have to return this.”

Persephone summoned a faint smile, only a hint of its former dazzle in it. “I thought it best to approach under a flag of truce.” She glanced at Lurine. “Forgive me for my threat, sister.”

Lurine folded her arms. “I’m no sister to you, Olympian whore.”

“Do not be cruel.” Persephone twisted the pillowcase in her hands, a pleading look on her face. “You know I had no choice in that matter.”

Right, six pomegranate seeds had condemned her to her fate. “Does Hades even know what you tried to do here?” I asked.

“Yes.” Persephone tilted her head, sunlight shimmering on her hair. “My husband loves me, you know, even if I have chafed against the ties that bind me to him. I believe Hades hoped that if he gave my madness free rein, it would run its course. And in a way, it has come to pass.”

“At a hefty price,” I said.

The goddess looked down, then back up. “Yes. I wish to assure you that there will be no further repercussions. The men who were slain or wounded . . . all fatalities and injuries will be reported as the result of a covert military operation.” Another faint, rueful smile. “The lawyer Dufreyne spoke the truth. They signed away many rights.”

“I bet.”

“If others . . .” Persephone paused. “If others are found to have perished at the hands of the Wild Hunt, contact Mr. Dufreyne. He will arrange for their retrieval.”

Huh, so she was keeping Dufreyne in her service. Maybe it wasn’t her decision, since Dufreyne was on loan from Hades. I wondered if he’d find it trickier to transport dead mercenaries and military-grade weaponry without his powers of persuasion. I hoped so.

Then again, he did have a goddess in his corner. “Okay.”

Persephone gazed around the dunes. “It is a beautiful place. I am sorry I thought to despoil it.”

“Yeah, me, too,” I said.

“I will donate it back to the city of Pemkowet,” she said. “With a stipulation that it may never be sold without the Norse Hel’s approval. I hope that may help make amends.”

I didn’t say anything.

The goddess sighed, a sound like the summer wind rustling through leaves in an orchard. She handed me my pillowcase and turned to go. “Farewell.”

“Wait,” I said. Persephone glanced back at me. “Look . . . what you said about wanting your own demesne, about never having felt so alive . . . I understand it. You got a raw deal. You’ve
had
a raw deal for millennia. For six months out of every year, you’ve felt helpless and powerless. I’ve felt that way for months. I’m pretty sure an eternity of it would have driven me crazy, too.”

“And yet you relinquished the power you claimed today,” she murmured. “You relinquished it willingly.”

“It wasn’t easy,” I said honestly. “Even with the fate of the world at stake.”

“I am grateful for your understanding.” The goddess Persephone
gazed at me, her eyes filled with sunlight and green growing things. “The Norse Hel is fortunate to have you, pretty Daisy,” she said. “I will remember this. When I return to my husband’s demesne, I will spend my season of freedom seeking companions such as you, loyal and true of heart. Mayhap it will ease my path when the cold months of autumn and my return to the underworld come.”

My throat tightened a little. “Good luck with that, my lady.”

Persephone inclined her head. “Thank you.”

With that she left, taking the summer’s warmth and the scent of sun-warmed fruit with her.

Lurine and I watched her go, the armored SUV vanishing in the distance. In the basin below us, the
duegar
set fire to Garm’s pyre, and smoke billowed into the sky. Almost all the other eldritch had departed. Only the lone surviving troll sat motionless beneath Yggdrasil II’s shadow, gazing at the flames.

“You’re awfully quiet,” I said to Lurine.

“Oh, that silly little bitch Persephone got me feeling sorry for her.” Lurine put an arm around my shoulders and gave me an affectionate squeeze. “But she’s right, cupcake. Hel’s lucky to have you.”

“Barely,” I said. “It was a near thing. And what I said to Persephone . . . I meant it.” I shuddered. “It was hard.”

“I know, baby girl. I know it was. But you did it.” Lurine gave me another squeeze, then released me. “Let’s go home.”

Fifty-six

T
he next day, I reported to Chief Bryant.

In addition to the casualties on the battlefield, three mercenaries—and seven head of cattle—had been found dead, run ragged until their hearts stopped. At least there were no human civilian casualties. For once, people had heeded my advice and stayed indoors, avoiding the Wild Hunt.

“I don’t quite know what I’m supposed to do about this, Daisy,” the chief said when I’d finished, drumming his thick fingers on his desk. “How do I even begin to investigate?”

“With all due respect, sir, I don’t think you do,” I said quietly. “These weren’t homicides. They were casualties of war.”

Chief Bryant regarded me. “I’m not sure the law appreciates that distinction.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know what else to tell you, sir.”

In the end, he let it go.

I don’t think it was easy for him, and I’m pretty sure it involved a call from the private security company that Persephone had contracted. I felt guilty knowing that the families of the men who’d died would never know the truth; but then again, maybe it was better that they
didn’t. Especially the men who died in terror and exhaustion beneath the onslaught of the Wild Hunt.

It’s hard to say.

One thing was for sure—those deaths were on my head, and I knew it. I’d done my best to prevent this war from happening, but I’d given the Oak King the go-ahead to summon the Wild Hunt. And if I had it to do over again, I’d make the same decision. Those mercenaries had been ruthless and efficient. If the Wild Hunt hadn’t thrown them into chaos at the outset, the battle might have been over before it began.

And there was always that chance that the entirety of existence would have unraveled if they hadn’t. So yeah, I was willing to bear that burden.

The mood in town was one of cautious relief. After our debriefing, the chief released a statement announcing that all paranormal hostilities in Pemkowet had ceased and that Persephone had had a change of heart and decided to donate the property back to the city.

Of course there were rumors and gossip—and the issue of whether or not to appeal the settlement was renewed—but for the most part, everyone was glad to have things back to normal.

Well, as normal as they ever got in Pemkowet.

Although that wasn’t entirely true. Word got out about a convoy of Fairfaxes and Outcast converging on Doc Howard’s clinic after the battle. Between that, Cody’s challenge to Persephone at the town meeting, and generations’ worth of mysterious wolf howls in the wilderness, enough people finally put two and two together that the Fairfax clan was officially outed.

It went over surprisingly well. Despite their clannish ways, the Fairfaxes were well liked, considered to be solid citizens and good neighbors, so if they were werewolves, werewolves must be okay.