And I realized that the fight was over, and Vivian was no longer a threat. I let out a breath. Somehow, I knew that the Reaper girl would never be a threat to me ever again.
“Gwen?” Logan asked, coming up to stand beside me. “Aren’t you going to . . .” He made a slashing gesture with his own sword.
“No,” I said. “Because we don’t execute people who are down and out. That’s the Reapers’ thing. Not ours. That’s what they do. Not us.”
I stepped away from Vivian, but I didn’t move away from the center of the library. Because I knew who my next target was going to be—Loki.
Agrona raced over, picked up Lucretia, and bent down next to her protégé. She started to touch Vivian, but the Reaper girl flinched and pulled away from her, mumbling more nonsense words to herself.
“What did you do to her?” Agrona whispered, watching Vivian rock back and forth on the cold marble.
“She wanted to play in my head,” I said in a harsh voice. “So I showed her exactly what was in there.”
Agrona gave me a sharp look. “You showed her your memories?”
I smiled. “Just the bad ones. Believe me, I have plenty of those, thanks to you guys.”
Fear flickered in her green eyes before she could hide it. “You must have overloaded her brain. You’ve . . . you’ve destroyed her mind.”
I looked down at Vivian and shrugged. “Probably. But it was the same thing she wanted to do to me, and no less than what she deserved after everything she’s done.”
Maybe it would have been kinder if I’d killed her after all, but I didn’t say that. I could tell that was what Agrona was thinking—and my friends too. But I wasn’t in a merciful mood, not now, when the real test was still to come.
“Enough of this nonsense!” Loki hissed. “Attack! Attack! Attack! And this time, don’t stop until you’ve killed every last one of them!”
I’d known that was what he was going to say, and I didn’t hesitate. Even as my friends leaped out from behind the stacks to engage the Reapers, I pushed past Agrona and ran straight at the god. I raised Vic high, brought the sword up, around, and down, and slammed the blade into Loki’s chest—right where his heart would be, if he even had one.
Triumph filled me. I’d done it. I’d beaten Vivian, and now, I’d killed Loki too.
The god looked down at the sword buried in his chest. Then, he raised his head and looked me in the eyes.
He laughed.
He just . . . laughed and laughed, right in my face. “Oh, you stupid, stupid girl,” he sneered, his foul
breath kissing my cheeks like a rotten gust of wind. “Did you really think you could kill me with a mere sword?”
“Hey!” Vic snapped. “I’m not just any mere sword, pal!”
I yanked the sword free and stepped back, but I wasn’t ready to give up. Not yet.
I stabbed Loki again and again, slicing Vic every which way I could across his chest, his neck, even his arms and legs. All the while, he kept right on laughing at me, amused by my frantic struggles. No blood poured out of his wounds, and it seemed like I was slicing my sword through air instead of into someone’s body.
All around me, I could hear the shouts and screams of the fight, but I didn’t dare turn to look at how the rest of my friends were faring against the Reapers. For a moment, Logan and Agrona stepped into my line of sight. Agrona slashed at him again and again with Lucretia, but Logan easily blocked all of her blows, then whipped his sword up and buried the point in her heart. Grim satisfaction filled Logan’s face as Agrona dropped to the floor—dead.Loki laughed again, and I pushed away all thoughts of Logan. I yanked Vic out of Loki’s chest and stood there, panting and trying to get my breath back after my last frenzied attack. The god tilted his head to the side, his neck crack-crack-cracking as he studied me, his two red eyes burning into my violet ones.
“You know, what you did to that girl was quite impressive,” Loki purred. “Perhaps Agrona made a mistake trying to get me a Spartan body. Perhaps what I’ve really needed all along was your body, Gypsy.”
He stretched out a hand toward me. The thought of him infecting my body, my mind, my soul, the same way he had Logan’s was so horrifying that I almost leaped back.
Almost.
Self-sacrifice is a very powerful thing, especially if you do it of your own free will. Once again, Nike’s voice whispered in my mind. And it didn’t stop there.
You have free will, Gwendolyn, just like every creature, mortal, and god does. Remember that because it’s the most important thing I’ll ever tell you.
Never forget that because it’s the very thing Loki and his Reapers are trying to take away from you—your right to choose your own fate.
One after another, I remembered bits and pieces of all my conversations with Nike, all the times she’d come to me, all the cryptic things and riddles she’d said. And suddenly, I knew what I had to do. Maybe I’d known it somewhere in the back of my mind all along and just hadn’t wanted to face it until now.
I couldn’t kill Loki. He was a god, simple as that. Immortal. Eternal. Forever.
But I wasn’t.
I wasn’t a god, and my body wasn’t immortal, eternal, forever, or anything even close to that.
No, it was—I was—decidedly mortal. And utterly killable.
So when Loki stretched out his hand toward me, I let his fingers close around my throat, even as I stared up into his burning red eyes. I saw so many things there. Hate, rage, disgust, but most of all, I saw triumph—triumph that he’d finally succeeded in finding a way to defeat Nike once and for all. Not by killing me, but by corrupting me with himself.
What he didn’t realize was that the same triumph was reflected back in my own eyes.
So I tightened my grip on Vic, closed my eyes, and let the evil god’s soul infect my own.
Chapter 29
It was—Loki was—horrible.
Absolutely, completely, utterly horrible.
His soul slammed into my body like a bolt of lightning, frying me from the inside out. I could hear him laughing in my head, and my vision immediately went Reaper red. The only thing that wasn’t that awful color was Vic’s lone, purplish eye. Everything else just looked . . . bloody.
All the while, I was dimly aware that I was screaming—screaming and screaming as Loki infected every single part of me. I thought I’d known what Logan had gone through when it had happened to him, but seeing his memories hadn’t prepared me for the intense, unending pain and the sheer, utter agony. But I concentrated on the cold, hard feel of Vic in my hand, and I let Loki do his worst to me.