Grave Intentions (Darkling Mage 3)

The man grinned even wider, his teeth bright with the glimmering of tiny arcs of lightning. He rolled his shoulders, his muscles rippling, joints popping as he did. Uh-oh.

“I wouldn’t mind it,” he said. “I thought we were just going to binge-watch some shows but this is great, too. I haven’t gotten in enough cardio for the week yet.”

“This has all been a misunderstanding,” Herald said, his voice unnaturally still as he held his hands up in some vain attempt to appease the two gods.

“Aww, come on,” the man said. “Stay a while, spar with us. Besides.” His eyes flitted to me briefly, and he let off a string of words in Japanese.

“Seriously,” Herald said under his breath. “It’s the twenty-first century, knock it off.”

The man shrugged. “I suppose. Times do change, and I get that. But some of the old ways remain. For example: I haven’t changed my weapon of choice.”

He reached out his hand, clenching his fingers around a second lightning bolt that crashed from out of the clear sky. A sizzle, a flash, and the electricity cleared, and suddenly he was holding a sword, crackling with lightning.

Ah. Well. Fuck.

Chapter 23

That sealed it then. The lean, literally electrifying man before us was none other than Susanoo-no-Mikoto, the Japanese god of sea and storm, and brother to Amaterasu.

They’d had their differences in the past, and while mythological stories told that they’d reconciled, I never realized that it meant they were buddy-buddy enough to hang out on weekends to watch movies and eat microwave popcorn. And me, and Vanitas, and Herald? We were in the way of all that.

“This should be fun,” Susanoo said.

And no sooner than the last word had left his lips, the god disappeared in a flash of lightning. Amaterasu’s eyes gave him away as they darted to a point behind my head. I ducked, and the air occupying the space where my head was brief seconds ago whizzed with the singing of Susanoo’s lightning blade.

“Guys, seriously,” I yelled, tumbling away and giving myself room to breathe, and hopefully, maneuver. I unsheathed Vanitas, his metal singing as blade and scabbard came apart. “We’ll just leave and you can carry on doing whatever it is god-siblings do on weekends. No need to – whoa.”

I ducked again as a bolt of fire in the shape of a bird whistled directly at my face, loosed from a single sweep of Amaterasu’s sword. She grinned to herself smugly, winding her blade back, and that was all the warning I needed. She slashed, and a dozen fire-birds came screeching out of thin air. I scrambled and dove for the ground just as the flames exploded against the wall behind me.

“Wow, seriously,” I said. “We can talk this out.”

“Talking is nice,” Susanoo said, his voice calm, but his eyes gleaming with boyish delight. “But this? This is fun.”

Amaterasu’s form wavered, and she vanished from her dais, reappearing just in front of me. I brought Vanitas up to meet her sword, the clash of metal singing through the chamber. If Mammon hadn’t reforged him to be lighter, I might have been toast. You know, literally.

She bared her teeth at me, her breath so hot it may as well have been air from a furnace. “Defeat us and you leave with your lives, shadow beast.”

“Heads up,” Herald yelled.

The ground around us erupted in a field of icicles, stalagmites instantly manifesting and thrusting upwards like so many frozen spears. Amaterasu shouted as razor-sharp ice tore through the folds of her sleeves, but she struggled free.

I fell into my own shadow as an icicle narrowly missed spiking my entire face, and I tried to use what little time I had in the Dark Room to catch my breath, emerging in the crystal chamber at Herald’s side.

“Thanks for the warning,” I grumbled.

“Don’t get snippy. They’re right. The only way out of this is to win. You’ve done that before, but Amaterasu isn’t going to fall for the same tricks twice. You better hope you’ve got something else up your sleeve, Graves.”

I shook my head, as if shaking my own fears and doubts loose. “Hey, we’ll handle this. You just gotta trust me. You just gotta trust in – ”

I didn’t get to finish. The whistling of the air above us was our only warning as Susanoo came crashing out of the sky in a murderous swan dive. I shadowstepped away again, and Herald stumbled as the god’s crackling sword cratered the marble floor. Herald rolled to the ground, clutching at his ankle.

In a flash, Susanoo attacked again, bringing his sword in a sideward slash against Herald’s head. Herald raised his hands, a shield made out of solid ice sprouting between his fingers, only just blocking the blow. But Susanoo hacked again, each of his strikes taking great chunks of ice out of Herald’s makeshift barrier.

“Dust,” he yelled. “Little help.”

My heart thumped. This would be so much easier if I could just take a person with me into the Dark Room, but I couldn’t pull that off with a homunculus, and even then I’d meant to do it in an attempt to kill. Who knew what the living shadows of the Dark would do to a friend?

But what if that friend wasn’t human? What if –