Before, one side of the god’s face had still been beautiful, perfect, normal even.
Not anymore.
It was as though the smushed, burned, melted look of one half of his face had infected the other. Now, all of his features were red, raw, and waxy-looking. All of his blond hair had fallen out, leaving only a few black and crimson strands behind to cling to his scalp, which was as red, mottled, and melted as the rest of his features.
That was bad enough, but it was his eye that caught my attention. The once-blue orb was now as red as his other one, both of them burning, burning bright, as though hot coals were embedded in the sockets instead of eyes. My stomach dropped down and flipped over at the sight.
Loki managed to straighten up to his full height, but his body seemed much thinner and frailer than before, and he wavered slightly on his feet, as if his muscles were constantly being pulled in a dozen different directions at once, and he had a hard time maintaining his balance. A faint snap-snap-snap sounded with every move he made, every breath he took, as though his bones were constantly cracking, popping, and trying to settle back to where they were supposed to go.
It was an awful sound, but one that filled me with satisfaction all the same. Because I’d hurt him—badly. And that made me happy. Maybe it was wrong, but I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him to wound as much as he and the Reapers had hurt me and the rest of my friends.
But he was still Loki, still a god, still far more powerful than any of us could possibly imagine. And he seemed ready to prove that to everyone—especially me.
Loki took a few more steps toward the gate. He paused, then looked up at the stone sphinxes positioned on top of the wall on either side. Loki stepped forward and put a hand on one of the iron bars.
The sphinxes immediately sprang to life.
One second, the creatures were just statues, just solid stone, still and frozen in place. The next, they’d torn themselves free from the rest of the wall, jumped up onto their feet, and were glaring down at Loki, low growls rumbling out of their throats in a clear warning for him to step back or else.
A shocked gasp escaped my lips. Ever since I’d come to Mythos, I’d heard rumors that there was some sort of protective power attached to the sphinxes, some sort of magic mumbo jumbo that would make them actually come to life if there was ever a major Reaper attack. It looked like those weren’t just rumors after all.
But it didn’t matter.
Loki waved his hand, as though he were swatting away a bothersome fly. A surge of power rippled off him, so sharp and intense that I could almost see the waves cutting through the air. A second later, that power slammed into the sphinxes, crumbling them to dust.
A second shocked gasp escaped my lips. The statues were gone. Just like that. The first wave of defense had fallen and was now nothing more than stone chips flying off the walls.
Loki reached up and dusted a few bits of the sphinxes that had landed on him off his shoulders. Then, he stepped forward and wrapped both hands around the gate.
And I watched as the metal began to bubble, burn, and melt away.
I didn’t know exactly what sort of magic Loki had, but it caused the iron bars to disintegrate like they were made out of paper instead of solid metal. Once that was done, Loki slowly moved out of the way, and the first wave of Reapers surged through the opening, their swords up and ready to attack.
“Here we go,” Linus said, signaling the other members of the Protectorate.
They all gave him grim nods, then left their spots in the shadows and behind the trees and ran toward the Reapers. For their part, the Reapers picked up their pace and let out wild, loud cries.
The battle had finally begun.
Logan, Alexei, Oliver, and I held our positions behind the trees and watched the fight unfold in front of us.
Fueled by the ease with which they’d infiltrated campus, the Reapers crashed into the Protectorate guards, almost overwhelming them with that first brutal charge. But Linus managed to regroup the warriors, and they held the Reapers at bay, although the clash and clang of swords ripped through the air.
I watched while Sergei slammed his two swords into first one Reaper, then another, before whirling toward a third enemy, as though the Bogatyr were doing an elegant dance instead of fighting for his life.
“We should be out there helping them,” I muttered, my hand tightening around Vic’s hilt. “Not hiding here in the shadows.”
“You said it, sister,” Vic piped up, his mouth moving underneath my palm.
“Linus told us to stay back,” Alexei said. “We want to take out as many of them down here as we can. We can’t afford to let Reapers overrun us on the main quad. The more of them we kill down here, the safer everyone up there will be.”
I nodded. I knew that. Really, I did, but it was still hard to crouch down, wait, and not be in the middle of the fight.
So we watched while the Reapers and the Protectorate guards cut into each other. My eyes flicked from one of the warriors to the next, but I didn’t see Vivian or Agrona anywhere in the fray. They must be hanging back and protecting Loki. No doubt he wanted the warriors to clear a path before he expended any more of his energy trying to kill us.
And slowly, it started to happen.
One of the Protectorate guards fell under a Reaper’s slashing sword. Then another. Then another. Soon, it was all the guards could do to keep the Reapers from advancing. And then, one of the Reapers broke through the ranks of the Protectorate and started running up the cobblestone path toward the main quad.
Logan, Alexei, Oliver, and I all checked our weapons for the last time. It was up to us to stop the Reapers now. “Wait,” Logan murmured, his eyes locked onto the
Reaper racing toward us. “Wait.”
In the distance, another Reaper broke through the Protectorate line and started hurrying this way. Then another one. Then another one, until there were half a dozen Reapers headed in our direction.
“Hold your position,” Logan murmured again, his icy eyes almost glowing with anticipation of the battle to come. “A few more seconds . . . they’re almost here . . . now!”
The four of us leaped out from our hiding spot and attacked the Reapers. Alexei engaged the first two, the twin Swords of Ruslan whipping back and forth from one enemy to the next, just like his dad was doing with his own swords down at the gate. Logan punched one Reaper in the face, making the warrior stagger back, before whirling around and burying his sword in the chest of the next closest Reaper. Oliver engaged the one Logan had punched, ramming his sword into that man’s stomach. And that was all that I saw before one of the warriors rushed at me, and I stepped up to battle him.