False Gods (Sins of the Father 2)

They slid across the floor as if magnetized, and brick by careful brick the boxes sloughed off their wooden shells, revealing jelly-like cubic cores that stacked themselves into piles, growing taller, wider, higher. Their true bodies were clearly thick, membraneous gels coalesced into the shape of an enormous translucent humanoid, one built out of bizarre organic parts.

“What the fuck is that thing?” Sterling shouted, his katana brandished.

“Listen,” I snarled, sending my thoughts to the Vestments. “It’s your fault it got so pissed off to begin with.”

Loki walked past us, stepping too dangerously close, like he knew that even together, the three of us barely represented a threat against his deific power. “Now you’ve gone a

nd done it. Who knew that my babies could meld and transform themselves into a golem? They were supposed to ship out in the morning, you know. These are for California, just a test run for the moment. Then America, then the world.”

“This is fucked up,” I said. “Even for you, Loki.”

The god scoffed. “I gave birth to an eight-legged horse and fathered the wolf that will eat the sun. Creating these little ones wasn’t much of a challenge. All it took was time.”

Florian pointed at the translucent giant. “Exactly how the hell do you plan to break that thing down into its parts and pack them into boxes again?”

Loki scratched the bottom of his chin, gazing up at his abominable offspring. “Oh, they just need to let out some aggression, that’s all. All they have to do is feed, and they’ll calm right down.”

“They need to – did you say feed?”

I accepted the sword and shield that appeared out of the Vestments, pleased that I could still access two separate things to use in this fight. Or maybe Raziel was right and I’d made one of them out of my bare hands with my half angel magic bullshit. But I won’t deny that I was still heavily anxious about a fight to begin with. I mean, the thing was massive. How high do warehouse ceilings go? This monster’s head was up in the rafters.

“Best of luck, gentlemen.” Loki walked to a far corner of the warehouse, settling into an armchair. A frost giant rushed to his side, pouring him some tea in a dainty cup and saucer set. Loki sat there sipping with a smile on his face.

Behind him, past the slightly cracked opening of a door, more frost giants were watching, poking their heads in to ogle the Cube colossus. Then the colossus – golem, titan, whatever the hell it was – threw its gelatinous head back, unleashing an ululating, gurgling roar that shook the warehouse.

Florian kicked at the empty crates nearest us, freaking out, his forehead glazed with sweat. “How can there be no plants in a one-mile radius? What kind of concrete hell is this?”

“Welcome to the big city,” Sterling growled. “We need to stop this thing. If those little gremlins ship out to the entire state, there’s no telling the kind of bloodbath we’ll have on our hands. Mason? Let’s do this.”

I nodded, my stomach knotted with doubt and anticipation. But this was what I was built for, what I was born to do. The thrill of the fight, the thrum of battle. Samyaza’s blood flowed in my veins. I was a fallen soldier, wasn’t I? In blood and in name.

In a blur of silver and leather, Sterling sprinted forward. I followed. He zigged, and I zagged, each of us slashing and slicing wherever the opportunities presented themselves. Thick rivulets of black goo dripped from every cut, but the creature’s wounds closed up again, like it was made of some repulsive, self-repairing gelatin.

The monster shrieked each time Susanoo’s katana bit into its flesh, jolts of electricity coursing through its body and searing entire sections of its quivering gray skin. The smell was horrible, this unearthly combination of burning plastic and human hair. I dreaded to think what the Cubes were made out of, how Loki came to birth these tiny abominations. And he wanted one of these in every home? By God. In every home.

Sterling quietly offered himself as the decoy, being the faster of us two, and where he dashed, the golem’s furious fists followed. I shielded myself from the first spray of concrete as one of the golem’s titanic hands punched a hole in the ground. The second punch slammed way too close to my feet, enough to throw me off balance.

I skidded and stumbled across the floor, only just staying on two feet. But I lost my grip, and my shield went flying from my hands, clanging and clattering against the concrete, then disappearing into nothing. From the back of the warehouse, some of the frost giants cheered. Fucking assholes.

Fine. A shield wasn’t going to help me anyway. But what would? We could cut into this thing all night long and nothing would happen. If only Florian could do something explosive with his magic to turn the tide of battle. But what?

And just where the hell was he?

I found him as I scanned the warehouse, one foot planted firmly into the stand where the three legendary weapons were placed. He was struggling to tug the staff out of its base. Florian was probably twice as strong as I could ever hope to be, but Gambanteinn wasn’t budging, like the sword in the stone. Staff in the stone, as it were. It was a good idea, if he could somehow unplug it from the base, and then figure out how to use it to blast things to hell the way Skirnir did.

“Give that back,” a voice cried out. My attention snapped to another end of the warehouse, where, at a door that opened up into the Gridiron, stood Skirnir.

What. The. Fuck?

He made a mad dash for Gambanteinn, and therefore, Florian, who immediately put up his dukes, ready for a fist fight. Then another figure stepped in through the open door, followed by another. Wyatt Whateley, this time, followed by – oh, sweet mother.

Quilliam J. Abernathy.

I narrowly dodged the golem as it swung its fist just half a foot over my head. Somewhere between its legs Sterling was screaming for me to help out, but I was too distracted. Whateley was waddling over to retrieve Mistleteinn himself, heading directly for an increasingly panicked and increasingly sweaty Florian, who now had to fend off two assailants.

And I had zero doubts whatsoever that this intrusion had everything to do with Quilliam and his anarchic antics.

“Abernathy, you piece of shit.” I brandished my sword at him. “This isn’t your fight. Get the fuck out of here.”