1
BURNING BRIGHT
FREYA
The lava hasn’t even cooled yet.
Fat drops of rain hiss on the glowing pit of molten slag that used to be the home of my enemies. I inhale deeply, savoring the smell of steam mixed with a hint of sulfur, then let out a contented sigh. Long ropes of bright yellow caution tape flutter in the wind, while rows of police barricades present a more permanent deterrence to the hordes of onlookers at Florida’s first volcanic crater. I’m just another face in the crowd, one more tourist huddled under an umbrella, gawking at the scene. The only difference is that this is all my doing, the remnants of my first battle with a conspiracy arrogant enough to exploit the gods themselves.
Did I mention I was a goddess? I’m not sure if you knew that already.
My name is Sara Vanadi, but that wasn’t always the case. I used to be Freya, goddess of love, beauty, battle, and a host of other glorious things. I abandoned that title when my worshippers abandoned me. I tried to retire, to hide and live in peace. Then a man visited me and changed everything. His name was Garen, and he tore my life apart. I fled him and the people he worked for, a company named Finemdi. They wished to contain the gods, to shackle us all, and I’m certain you know how I felt about that. So I sought to destroy them in turn, and, well, I’m still at it. I’ve been joined in this quest by a new high priest—a mortal named Nathan—and new divine allies.
“Look! There’s where I flew the convertible in!” an exuberant voice yells from beside me. I turn to its source, a young Hawaiian girl in a flowery dress, and give a look that pleads for silence. “Sorry,” Hi‘iaka squeaks, her voice a whisper on the air. A windswept spirit of nature, she doesn’t exactly define restraint. I glance around, anxious, but luckily the other tourists either didn’t hear or have decided to ignore us. So far so good. Finemdi might have written off this place as a total loss, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t watching its remains.
Nathan shifts nervously beside me, and I can tell he’s thinking the same thing. The two of us nearly died in that pit a month ago; it was only thanks to Hi‘iaka and her sisters we didn’t. About as literal a deus ex machina as you can get, come to think. I can tell Nathan’s not very keen on getting captured and starting the whole thing over again, but I had to come.
I got a letter, you see.
It was addressed to me—to Freya, actually—and its contents were short and to the point: Meet me where my father died. Saturday, 2:00 p.m. I’ll find you there. I knew exactly who’d written it, and despite the danger, I couldn’t help myself; I had to know what she wanted. So here I am, standing in the rain under a cheerful polka-dot umbrella, waiting for her to make an appearance.
“Now there’s a thing of beauty,” Pele, goddess of fire and most famous of the three sisters, says with a nod at the sizzling lake of rock. “Fine work for such a tectonically dull land, eh?”
Namaka, the third sister, pulls an exaggerated smile. “Did you create a volcano, Pele?” she says, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Why, I’m surprised you’ve never mentioned it. Especially not every day for the last four weeks.”
Pele pauses to look at her sister, then smirks. “Well, where do I begin? First, I sunk my mind beneath the Caribbean plate, searching for the sweet music of magma.…”
“Ugh,” Namaka says, giving her hair an irritated flick that shakes droplets at her sibling. A water spirit, she’s the only one of us without an umbrella. Pele glares in response and sticks out her tongue before turning back to the crater to admire her handiwork.
I hope my contact shows up soon. Even with a few choice illusions (courtesy of yours truly) concealing their elemental natures, the sisters aren’t exactly the most inconspicuous creatures. At least Sekhmet, my fourth divine companion, understands the occasional need for self-control—and she’s the Egyptian goddess of righteous wrath. Her leonine features are also hidden under a disguise, an enchantment she was granted long ago, and she’s been quiet since we arrived.
That said, I can tell she shares my discomfort; her illusory cheeks are contracting oddly, trembling as she twitches hidden whiskers. This place just doesn’t feel safe, even behind the anonymity of the crowd. I feel like I’ve returned to the scene of the crime, an amateur thief displaying a rather classic lapse in judgment. Maybe this was a bad idea. I’m considering a retreat when Nathan stumbles against me with a grunt of surprise.
“What the—” he starts to say. Then his words are stifled by a gasp as he realizes there’s a teenage girl standing next to him who definitely wasn’t there a split second before. She’s no enemy of ours, though, and I relax the moment I identify her. Unassuming and awkward, she’s precisely who I’d hoped to see.
“Hello, Samantha,” I say with genuine warmth.
This scientific prodigy is the only employee of Finemdi’s I can trust. Her father was Gideon Drass, an all-around vile individual and, up until I murdered him in a waterfall of lava last month, Finemdi’s CEO. Samantha has had a rather tragic past, what with her dad sacrificing her mom to a god of darkness and being a colossal ass. There was an upside to all that misfortune, though: It made her only too happy to help us destroy her employer and father. Of course, as tends to happen in these stories, things got complicated. During my recent adventure, I discovered her mother had actually become a vessel to contain that god of darkness … and I may have inadvertently released it to wreak havoc upon the world.
I’d prefer to keep that little tidbit a secret as far as Samantha’s concerned. You understand.
“Hi, everyone!” she says cheerfully, turning to take in my new pantheon and adjusting her glasses.
They all mumble their greetings in hushed tones, looking around to see if anyone noticed a lady appearing out of thin air. Samantha picks up on it and shakes her head. “Got it covered. There’s an illusion of random tourists here right now.”
“Nice!” Hi‘iaka exclaims. “Just how many tricks do you have up your sleeve?”
“In charge of divine admissions, remember?” Samantha says, pointing at herself. “You wouldn’t believe how many artifacts I managed to sneak out before Impulse Station went up in flames.”
“We made off with a pretty good haul ourselves,” I say, thinking of the truckload of mystic widgets the Hawaiian sisters managed to steal.
She chuckles at that. “Wasn’t like anyone else was going to use it.” She holds out a hand to Nathan. “Oh, and we haven’t been properly introduced.”
My friend shakes it and smiles. “Nathan Kence,” he says. “High priest and Web designer.”
“Samantha Drass,” she replies with a laugh. “Scientist of the divine.”
A tiny frown creases my forehead at her cheer. The Samantha I knew was a wallflower, sweet but interpersonally inept. She might have had a calculating streak, but you could never mistake it for social confidence. This girl is bubbly and forthright, so unless that reserve was just another emotional wall she’d built, I’d say there’s been a seismic shift in her personality in just a handful of weeks. Then again, she’s always been a little hard to read. Maybe her tyrant of a father was keeping her down? I toss the idea back and forth, then mentally shrug away my doubts—I’ve always been a trusting goddess, and right now I’m just happy to see that Samantha is alive and well.
Sekhmet, on the other hand, is about as far as you can get from “trusting,” but since she was locked up at Finemdi until I showed, she never really got to know Samantha. All she says is, “It is good to see you again. I am pleased you chose the path of virtuous strength. The craven submission you displayed when I first awoke in Impulse Station was most disagreeable.”
Samantha’s good cheer fades a little as she recalls the memory. “Er, yes, thank you. I believe you promised to, um—”
“Flay you alive in the burning winds of the Sahara,” Sekhmet says with a too-wide smile.
“Ah. Yes, that was it,” Samantha says.
“Fortunate indeed you chose another path, yes?”
Samantha pauses for a moment, seeming unable to find the right words. Finally, she just nods at the Egyptian goddess before turning to me. “Well, I’m sure you’re wondering why I wanted to see you.”
I give her arm a friendly tap. “I’m just glad you’re alive, really.”
“And kicking,” she says. Again, so confident. “So listen, before I get to the real reason I asked to meet you, I wanted to talk about Finemdi.”
“Oh?” This should be good.
“They’re transferring me. Meridian One, in New York—it’s their headquarters. Makes Impulse Station look like a strip mall. More security, more researchers, more everything. It’s where the board meets and where they keep their most-trusted gods. When you think you’re ready—or want to catch up—look for me there. I’m not about to start planting bombs, but I’m willing to do what I can for you as long as I can keep working on my, um, project.” She gives my friends an apprehensive glance as she finishes.
I know what she means, and why she’s reluctant to say more. Samantha’s been trying to resurrect her mother as a god for the past few years, using Finemdi’s stable of shackled believers to worship the woman into existence. It hasn’t been going well.
“I hope you find success up there,” I say, and mean it. What she’s doing may be an abomination, but then, what’s been done to her is worse. Besides, after dealing with Finemdi’s industrial approach to magic, my bar for divine outrage has been set pretty high. “Do you know what they’re going to have you do?”
She shrugs. “After they debrief me about this place”—she jerks her head at the lava pool—“they’ll probably just put me back on artifact identification and divine intake. Anyway, the main reason I brought you here is … hang on…” She reaches into the satchel at her side and begins rummaging around. “This!” she exclaims as she retrieves a thick manila envelope. She holds it out to me. “Here you go.”
“What’s in it?” I ask, moving to open it.
“Wait until you’re home,” she says, holding up a hand. “You’re going to want a quiet place to think about what’s in there. Besides my contact info, I’ve included something you’ll find very interesting—a bit of research I’ve been doing on the side. Finemdi doesn’t have a clue, but I knew you’d want to see it.”
“Um, okay. Thanks, Samantha,” I say, stuffing the envelope into my bag. It’s not a great fit—I went with “cute” today, not spacious.
“Oh!” Samantha says, snapping her fingers. “Something else I need to do: Make sure you understand just how dangerous Finemdi can be.”
Nathan chuckles at that. “Yeah, they seemed all sunshine and snuggles before.”
Samantha pushes her glasses up on her nose and gives him a pitying look. “How much do you really know about them? You have no frame of reference for the level of power they can bring to bear. They get enraged when somebody so much as pokes their hive with a stick, and you’ve taken a baseball bat to it.”
I have to laugh. “I’m liking that image.”
“So Finemdi’s all crazied-up,” Nathan says. “What does that actually mean?”
“It means they’re more suspicious of their gods than ever before, they’re investigating every lead they can find, and they’re dead set on hunting down whoever’s responsible. Actually, it’s just about…” She checks her watch. “Yes, in another minute, they’re going to be here.”
That gets my attention. “What?!” I hiss, eyes darting around.
“Shh, keep your voice down!” Samantha snaps. “Look, you need to see what a real Finemdi operation is like—not some lone specialist going after a girl in a mental hospital. They barely considered you a god, Sara. You need to understand who you’re dealing with, because I need you out there and fighting, not captured or killed because you underestimated these people.”
“Why do you—”
“Just listen—when they get here, everyone is going to drop, including me. All of you need to pretend to fall asleep with the rest of them, but land so you can still see what’s going on.”
She looks up, frowning, then nods. “Okay, they’re a little early. Get ready, and whatever you do, don’t—”
Her eyes roll up in her head and she crumples to the pavement along with Nathan and every other tourist around us. I spin around, bewildered, before practically throwing myself onto the asphalt. My still-conscious friends follow suit, each pantomiming their own personal fainting spell.
There’s a massive bass rumble in the air, a shuddering that jars reality and thrums in my bones. The gray skies ripple and flex, waves and eddies distorting the air like the surface of a storm-tossed sea. An enormous … flipper descends from the sky, a mottled green arc of wizened leather that has to be at least a hundred feet long. I’m so focused on it I almost miss that there are four of them in all, spaced in an ellipse above the pit. Then the clouds part farther, revealing the plated underside of a colossal beast. An enormous pitted head lowers from above, jutting in front of the shell, and as it opens its beak to yawn, I realize it’s a turtle—a gigantic, floating turtle.
I stifle the urge to laugh, but just barely. Keep it together, Sara. This is serious. Sure, your mortal enemies fly around on a freaking turtle, but—no, I need to stop thinking about this. The more I consider it, the closer I get to hysterics.
The creature continues its descent from the roiling heavens. I can just make out a woman perched atop its head, still as a statue. She’s jet-black, as if carved from flawless obsidian. A bunker-like structure rises from above the turtle’s back and I can see guards patrolling its perimeter, on the lookout for any threats. Then there’s movement on the side closest to the lava pool, and as I watch, a thickset, well-built man with a great bushy beard walks to the edge of the shell. He’s clad in nothing but a heavy blacksmith’s apron and limps as he moves; one of his legs is twisted and lame.
With that last clue, I’m able to put a name to him: Hephaestus, Greek god of the forge.
He halts for a moment, leaning over to peer into the pool, then throws himself in with a graceless swan dive. His body smashes through the thin crust on the surface of the molten lake, vanishing in a spray of liquid rock.
“What’s he doing?” Hi‘iaka’s voice whispers to me. A spirit of the wind, she’s controlling the air to carry her voice to our ears alone.
Ordinarily, it would be a brilliant idea. Ordinarily, the little spark of divinity she’s using to do it would be about as noticeable as a mouse’s sneeze for anyone with the sense to look for such things. But there’s a flying turtle above us with a Finemdi-run outpost lashed to its back. Ordinary has gone out the window, booked a ticket to the moon, and left our world behind.
With a deep, mournful whine, the turtle shifts to stare down at us, its body spinning in the air. It begins drifting closer, zeroing in on the errant whiff of magic it somehow senses. The Finemdi guards on its back are yelling, calling to their companions and rushing to get a better look at what their ride has found. The flippers lift up, moving out to the side so the turtle can drift lower without touching the pool of lava below. It’s getting even closer now, enough for me to make out hundreds of years of wear and tear, a reptilian face of impossible character and age. Its eyes are great black ovals, their darkness made all the more striking by irises that shine like the stars of a distant galaxy.
Those captivating eyes can’t be more than fifty feet away now, and getting closer by the second. The ebon woman perched atop the turtle’s head is peering around as well, trying to find the source of her pet’s interest. She’s hauntingly beautiful, her midnight features refined yet brushed with a touch of warmth. Any moment now, I fear they’ll spot us—that the turtle will somehow realize what we truly are, and all my beautiful dreams of vengeance will come crashing down.
Then the smoldering lake beneath the creature churns, the darker rock on the surface heaving and cracking. An enormous geyser of lava erupts from deep within the pool, spouting up to splash against the turtle’s belly. Its roar of pain is titanic—a bellow that drowns out every other sound and makes me shudder in sympathy. With stunning speed, the beast rears back and launches itself away from the pool, soaring up hundreds of feet in an eyeblink. The guards on its back cry out in surprise and panic as they lose their footing. Several of them topple from their perches and fall, screaming, before they crash into the lava below with thick, satisfying plops.
“Now!” Pele shrieks, picking herself off the ground and running. “C’mon, move!”
I lie there dumbly for a moment as my friends scramble from the pavement, trying to understand what could have possibly made the lava do that. Then I snap out of it, berating myself with the realization that Pele’s the reason there’s even a lake to begin with. Idiot! I spring to my feet, grab Nathan’s arm, and haul him over my shoulder. I look for Samantha, but she’s nowhere to be found. Assuming she’s been saved by one of her many contingencies, I hightail it after my friends. As I run, Nathan’s body jiggling on my shoulder with every footfall, the part of my brain that’s not concerned with sidestepping a field of torpid tourists amuses itself with the fact that I’ve been getting a lot of experience carrying my poor priest’s unconscious body lately.
I spare a glance behind us as we reach the parking lot; the turtle is still spiraling high into the skies, flecks of lava dripping from its stomach, enraged howls escaping from its maw.
“An excellent distraction!” Sekhmet yells at Pele as she jogs alongside us.
“Yeah, brilliant!” Hi‘iaka adds.
Pele grins at that and puts on an extra burst of speed, aiming for our Honda at the back of the lot. Namaka just shakes her head, though whether she’s frustrated at our nearly getting caught or Pele getting something new to brag about, I’m not sure. We all reach the car at roughly the same time (I suspect Sekhmet was holding herself back for us). I fumble in my bag for the keys, spending a few heart-stopping seconds fishing around in the mess of makeup, receipts, trinkets, and mini Toblerone bars for the little tangle of metal before I wrench it out with a cry and click the button to unlock the doors. I practically toss Nathan into the backseat, and we all pile into the car. I slam the door closed, turn the key in the ignition, and peel out of the lot as quickly as I dare. Driving is still new to me, but I refuse to err on the side of safety.
A few minutes later, as we merge onto more populated roads, I feel some of the tension in the car begin to fade. There’s no sign of the turtle, or any other form of pursuit. “Hey, girls?” Hi‘iaka says, chuckling nervously. “I think I can guess what Ms. Drass was about to say before she fell asleep.”
I laugh a little too much at that—we all do, really—but I can’t help myself. I didn’t get up today expecting to narrowly escape the attentions of a Finemdi assault squad … to say nothing of the turtle. That thought just makes me laugh even harder, and it’s to the sound of our relieved mirth that Nathan finally awakes with a groan.
“What the hell just happened?” he moans from the car’s floor. “And why are you all laughing?”
“Sky turtle,” I manage to squeak out before a new wave of amusement consumes us. When it finally dies down enough for us to concentrate, we fill Nathan in on what he missed.
“Wish I could’ve seen that,” he murmurs, sounding a little jealous.
“Yeah, wasn’t something I’ve encountered before,” I say. “Sekhmet? Any ideas?” My friend has been rather quiet the entire ride.
She nods, seeming unsettled. “I believe that was the personal conveyance of the ebon goddess we saw. She is Yami—a Hindu deity. The Tibetans revere her as ruler of all the female spirits in Naraka, their purgatory.”
She pauses, displaying a rare moment of apprehension. It occurs to me that she doesn’t want to voice her next thought. When she does at last, I can see why. “It bodes ill for us that Finemdi controls such gods. How many can they truly call their own? How many are left beyond their walls?”
The remaining humor flees the car in the face of those sobering questions. We ride in silence for an awkward minute. Finally, Hi‘iaka breaks it, trying to focus us on something a little less depressing. “So what’s in the package?” she asks.
“Oh yeah,” I mutter, patting my overstuffed bag. “Must’ve been important. Let’s check it out when we get inside the apartment.”
I pull into our usual space, and we hurry out of the car, dashing across the parking lot as if any time spent in the open will call Finemdi down onto our heads. Then, safe in our cramped little condo, I haul out the envelope and tear it open. Two things spill out: a note card with Samantha’s e-mail address, and the political section of the Washington Post newspaper, dated from over two weeks ago.
I begin leafing through it. “Why would she…?”
My confusion ends the moment I spot a particular article. The image above it has been circled in red. It’s captioned with the innocuous phrase Gen. Theo Ariston seeks a new life in the private sector and shows a stern man standing in front of a government building, looking official. Beside it, Samantha’s neat handwriting reads, Who do you think he just joined?
I gasp, and the paper falls from my hands. He may be wearing a military dress uniform, but I would recognize that chiseled face anywhere.
Sekhmet touches my shoulder and leans in to examine the image, eyes narrowing. “Can it be?” she whispers.
I nod, an odd mix of excitement and anger coursing through me.
“Who is he, Sara?” Nathan asks, picking up the paper and frowning at the picture.
I glance at my friend, a wicked smile tugging my features. At last. At last. “A dead man,” I say, laughing at the absurdity of it all.
I take a moment to gather my thoughts, and then I begin the story of how I lost everything.
Copyright © 2018 by Rovio Entertainment, Ltd
