All roads led to Rome.

Clear skies, no doubt ensured by Marketing, rewarded the Piazza dell’Esquilino with a waxing moon and excellent visibility for people and drones alike. Not that it suffered a shortage of light sources. The world had descended on Italy for the second time in a week, and you could be mistaken for thinking every available space was covered in cameras.

My vantage point apprised me of the situation. Legba had paced over to the edge of the stage, peering down to follow the increasingly obvious commotion caused by the pope’s arrival. The popemobile driver, bless his earnest heart, had freed Grace from his mobile display cabinet and exposed him to the clutches of a rabidly polite mob clamouring for a touch of the holy vestments or dropping to kneel inconveniently in the spots the pair were trying to get past. Grace, in a display of what could have been either slightly above-human strength or adrenalin-fuelled geriatric grumpiness, had started levering people aside with his crosier to make room.

From the jovial expression on Legba’s face, he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to shortcut the process.

I’m up, I told Grace, directing his attention to the CMO in line of sight. I could use a distraction as backup. Can you see what he wants yet?

I saw Grace raise his head and squint at the executive, who returned a small amused wave. Still nothing, came the frustrated response. It’s not normal, I tell you. But the entourage, well. They’re another matter.

The angels? I’d imagined all their brainpower came from Great Leader™.

I didn’t say it was sophisticated, Grace said irritably. Or enlightening. But it’s there. ‘Wake up God’, ‘repair God’, ‘undo the nasty boo-boos’, etcetera. I take it at least one part of the mission was successful.

Alarm bells rang in my head in a distinct orchestral arrangement. They’d better not do it, I said. Keep an eye on them.

If it comes to that, Grace replied, I’ll do it first. I told you what happens when I try and summon living things. That will certainly comprise a distraction.

First, that’s the worst idea since everything. Second, if you’re capable of resurrections, that would have been extremely useful to know earlier.

‘Resurrection’ is not the word I would use, said the pope, mildly. Flashes of partial images bounced around in my head, and I decided to change the subject.

Do you have anything else?

Well, there’s the crowd. But there’s a lot going on there.

Legba was starting to look impatient as the effects of the task manager started to clear from his eyes. My window was closing. Think of something, I said, and crossed the last few dozen metres onto the basilica roof as Odin, only to find Legba gone.

I did find a consolation prize.

The heart of the place of power swelled with focused intensity, surging around and through me like harsh wind on raw skin. Even knowing it was coming, the sheer exponential spike in magnitude snatched away my breath.

It was more energy than I actually knew what to do with given my lack of experience, but new instincts wasted no time in making themselves known. I could feel things I couldn’t normally sense; eddies and energy and most of all, matter. Sitting at the very edge of my control, daring me to bring it the rest of the way in. It didn’t feel like much of a stretch to extend what I normally thought of as myself to territory nearby, whether or not that happened to include buildings, atmosphere or people. How easy it would be to exert my will to invade or infect; to remake everything and everyone near into whatever I wanted them to be, at the expense of small details like individual agency. All of it reduced to cells, bones and ligaments in an expandable field of influence.

Places of power didn’t grant new abilities. They amplified what was already there.

Shivers ran up my arms, and the ground of the piazza trembled.

One of those potential cells gave a discreet cough behind me, and I turned to find Legba waiting, palm outstretched in shrewd greeting. “Leaving it a little close, there. I almost thought you weren’t coming.”

Awareness of the remaining godkiller formed a discomforting lump in my insides. Whether it was that, the bruises still stinging in various places, or ingrained psychological aversion to their origin, I didn’t like the things. Part of me regretted not using the Spear of Destiny to grind them into little pieces when I’d had the chance.

I forced a convincing smile, which for Odin meant picturing himself five steps ahead of his conversation partners while trying to sell the idea he didn’t think they were idiots. “I had a few situations to take care of.”

“And are they taken care of?”

Every phrase leaving Legba’s mouth managed to hit the exact halfway mark between coded conspiracy and innocent curiosity, which annoyed me to no end. He was doing it deliberately to keep me off-balance, and succeeding. Without context, I had little choice but to respond in kind, resulting in conversations with more hedging than a team of high-risk investment managers.

I let my gaze rove over the panorama in appraisal and tried not to roll my eye. “You could say that.”

I’d hoped to sneak in behind Legba for a clear, clean shot, though the moment it had taken me to accommodate the new power adjustment might have cost me the ambush anyway. I was lucky Legba saw me as a supporter, or at least someone he didn’t want to kill right away.

I didn’t need the gun, either. I could feel it. Here, now, I could absorb Legba whole – the entire crowd, if I wanted, with the exception of the angels, who stuck out like pieces of grit – with a moment’s thought. Easy as moving an arm, and running counter to every lesson drilled into me since birth.

Nothing good came from absorbing souls. I hadn’t been entirely honest with Mayari about it back at the hacienda, because I’d known she’d want details and I hadn’t wanted to think about it.

Like Yahweh’s godkiller, souls didn’t go away. They just sat there, fully conscious within the limits of the body, warring for control between multiple shapeshifters until they could be separated again, or imprisoned and physically powerless if they lacked the ability. Mortal souls were left with no power at all. Extricating them wasn’t easy, either, since they lacked a physical form.

Being a god, Legba would only be partially contained; the more invasive equivalent of Tez in his amulet form. More than that, it was a line I didn’t want to cross, now or ever. I wasn’t under any illusions of being a paragon of morality, but I was a damn sight better than the enslavers and torturers of the current regime.

I’d use the gun, or more familiar methods, first.

Abrupt darkness descended on the piazza as though someone had applied a photographic filter. It wasn’t complete; the electricity grid was still on and phones still swarmed in the gaps like glowing ants. Synchronised cries filtered up from the square en masse. I checked for Grace’s expected distraction, but the blame lay higher; the moon had checked out of departures. Gone along with Mayari to some distant part of the universe.

Crucially, the CMO followed my stare. Smooth as silk, I passed the last godkiller into my waiting hand and unloaded it into his back.

Three muted shots rang out at point blank, sound conveniently covered by the chaos carrying on below. But they missed – somehow, Legba had anticipated the attack and moved. Senses heightened by the place of power, I guessed where and glanced to my right. Sure enough, he was there in my blind spot, waiting.

“That was uncalled for –”

I fired again, just in case, and was less surprised this time when it failed to make contact. If he was smart, he’d already have left to warn his team, or the other executives. Cursing under my breath, I warped myself out to the far side of the roof, reluctant to leave the place of power so soon after enjoying its benefits. If I had to, I could take control of the whole piazza, or at least the inanimate parts.

Legba was already there, waiting for me in the shadow of one of the basilica’s domes. “Loki, please.” He held up both hands, palms forward in unambiguous submission. “You and I both know I can’t defeat you. I’m a man of words, not violence.”

That answered that lingering question, then.

“You and I both know there’s little difference,” I echoed, and pulled the trigger a third time. Again, Legba vanished, leaving the bullet to bury itself in the side of the dome.

“You’ll scare the crowd,” his voice said behind me. I turned, again. He stood perched on the edge of the roof, back to the drop. “I’d almost believe you were trying to cancel the show, except that would be pointless. A little more chaos only contributes.”

“Nope, just trying to kill you,” I lied, firing shot number four.

It missed again, and a hand fell on my shoulder.

“I’ll just point out I could have turned you over at any time,” Legba said cheerfully. “But I didn’t. You’re fun, Loki. You should have been on my team. I asked for you. Odin said no.”

In reply, I stabbed poisoned claws through his chest and raked air.

“Not so much fun I won’t change my mind, though,” my adversary added from above me. This time he sat on the grey roof of the dome itself, watching me with elbows resting on his knees. “’Tis a joyful day; I don’t want to spend it doing chores.”

I aimed the pistol at him again, then blew air out my nose and dropped the arm. We could be here all day. Legba could have easily disappeared into the crowd or a building, instead of making it easy for me. Which meant he actually wanted to talk.

Legba grinned. “See? Knew you’d see reason. Carrying on in that theme, did you know I can alter the runes embedded in your little team? Unusual execution, very untested, but still under my purview. I’ve had fun this week guessing which one would come next.”

“You know what they say about people who are easily amused,” I replied in a sour tone.

The god ignored me. “I assume you know it runs down to the soul level, that whole thing. Who knows what would happen if I changed one to a different rune, or a sigil in another alphabet?” He pulled a thoughtful face. “Or a whole script. Or maybe I might decide that rune shouldn’t exist anymore. Odin wouldn’t have let me do it, but you can’t stop me. Runes are a dead language anyway. Maybe it’s time for that whole branch of magic to disappear. Yahweh won’t stop me, which gets me off the hook for your job on the task system. He is going to be so furious it made him miss his big moment.” The god of languages giggled, wiping a miniscule tear from the corner of an eye. “Really, it’s better than I could have hoped. You can appreciate that, I know you can. So, you can lay off or join me, or finish what Odin started, I don’t care. Just don’t get in my way today, and the boss doesn’t have to know. Later, we can renegotiate.”

“Nice monologue,” I called up, reabsorbing the godkiller with some annoyance, where it sat like a kidney stone in an inflamed appendix. Sticks and carrots. Mainly sticks. I wasn’t going to get anywhere until I fell back and tried to re-establish the element of surprise. The angels being out of commission had at least put a thorn in the planned performance. I hoped. Marketing would have to improvise, now, and without Uzume. Which meant opportunities.

“Thanks.” The CMO raised his head from his hand at an angle, slyly eying Grace and the popemobile chauffeur, who seemed to have taken impromptu bodyguard duties upon himself as they ushered themselves past a motionless angel up a narrow makeshift staircase. “It’s my job. Want a turn?”

I shook my head. “Not all secrets are equal, Leggy. Though I do want to know how you saw me coming.”

“Fair question. I could say it was because we’re in the middle of a whopping big intersection of friendly crossroads, which lets me hear every word passing through the lips, minds and rectums of everyone in it.”

“Naturally you’d be acquainted with the latter.”

“Says one of the few people for whom it isn’t a metaphor. I could also say it was because I got very, very lucky. The kind of luck one gets from having others in place to watch one’s back once a known meddler starts poking around in their ex-colleague’s costume.”

I squinted up at him. “How many others?”

Five metres away, Grace and his driver emerged from the top of the staircase onto the roof. The pope did his best to look dignified as he continued waving at the crowds while trying to sneak glances back at me. He made a double-take at the very much living Legba and shot me an accusatory glare as the chauffeur apologetically tried to guide him to the stage. In response, Grace put on a doddery impression of an old man fumbling to switch on his hearing aid with the same hand holding his crosier. The driver didn’t look convinced.

Why haven’t you killed him yet? Grace demanded. If you can off the Almighty, this guy should be a pushover.

“Oh, I am,” said Legba, not sounding remotely surprised at the latest gossip. He didn’t raise his voice, but from the way Grace stiffened and froze, I almost believed Vishnu was back. He laced his fingers together over his knees. “Thing about pushovers is that they find other ways to adapt. Find the joy where you can while your entire circle of friends and family are slaughtered around you. ‘Cause what else’ll you do? Die?”

“If we’re talking about you? Preferably,” I said, and turned to Tru and Vince elsewhere. “Legba knows.”

“For some time,” the god grinned.

“Any particular reason you didn’t turn me in?” I queried. Might as well milk the opportunity for all it was worth.

Legba’s smile didn’t falter. “As you say, not all secrets are equal. Sprinkle a few free samples, folk think they’ve experienced them all. You’ve had some very interesting conversations today, and I’ve adapted. My team has… new plans.”

“And yet you’re still here,” I pointed out, furrowing my brow dramatically. “Which means there’s something you want. I will say, I’m not above bribery.”

Legba vanished from the rooftop, reappearing beside me, much to the shock of Grace’s chauffeur. “Oh, I’m not expensive,” he said, giving my shoulders a squeeze. “I just want you to attend my big game. Don’t you know how many kids were thrust into messed-up careers as jaded high-powered executives because no one came to watch their piano recitals? Never say the nineties didn’t teach us anything.”

I extruded spines into the place his hands would have still been, if he hadn’t been faster. “Tch.”

“I told you, Loki, I have people in place. Not as many as I would like, seeing as how someone mysteriously trapped the rest of my team inside the Singapore incident, but enough. I can’t beat you, you can’t catch me. So we may as well be civil about it.”

“Yahweh’s dead,” I pointed out, spreading my arms. “What’s the point?”

“He might come back, you never know. But mainly, this is for your benefit.” He ushered me around the back of the stage, not touching me again or coming too close. “Come on, this way. Prime seating fills up quickly. You too, Popes.”

“Please,” I sniffed, following him round as Grace and his driver – by this point locked in to what must have felt like a rapidly-expanding pit of metaphorical quicksand – trailed after us. “I want the real agenda. I wasn’t even on your radar last week.”

“You don’t know that.”

I felt out the area as I walked, searching for anyone likely to be one of Legba’s supposed operatives. A lifetime of blurred vision had finally resolved into clarity. Outside the rifts, general enormous crush of souls and the angels’ notable pocks of absence, I could pick out other supernatural elements to varying degrees. Quite a few demons counted among the mix, clustered mainly around the angels. Gods, too, though fewer. I followed them through to specific faces in the crowd. I didn’t spot Gwydion or Bragi.

I did find Lofn, squeezed between a pack of excited plainclothes nuns and a family who’d set up early and were stubbornly clinging to the ground they were losing with their picnic chairs. Part of the off-hours shift, of course she hadn’t been in the office. Still clear-eyed, she saw me looking and outwardly cringed. Good old Lofn. I gave her my best Odin smile and promised myself I’d apologise for it later.

Only one divine soul felt obviously out of place, due to where I found it: dispersed through the air evenly around the piazza. It could have belonged to any number of people, but of those I knew with the ability, only one had reason for such an intimate, subtle interest.

A sense of unease niggled at my mind. If it was Tez, his presence would help make sure the plan stayed on track. He wouldn’t be working for Legba; any agreement would have been with his predecessor, and the pact wouldn’t have let him share anything until minutes ago. Unless he’d seen something in the future to prompt a sudden unexpected shift. Or Legba was the mastermind behind everything, and had been exempt from the beginning. He was senior enough to fit Pakhet’s criteria.

More likely, I reasoned, the CMO had planted a seed in my mind to make me jump at shadows. Except… an unobstructed seer onboard would explain his repeated uncanny evasions.

The sense of unease deepened.

As I racked my brains trying to think of solutions, the underwater grotto hauled itself back into prominence. Lucy’s circles of symbols were firing to life, activating in a bright white radiance that engulfed the small chamber.

A man appeared in the centre of it: tall, conventionally handsome and perpetually tired, deepening into exhaustion as he raised a hand to shield his eyes against the glare. He took a step towards the edge of the circle and stopped dead as the ring of light held him back.

“Oh,” said Enki, sounding only mildly disappointed. “I suppose I should have expected this, given the nature of the fault.” He curled the other hand into a fist and rapped on the light wall. It made a sound like a disembodied choir being tortured post-death, and only stopped when he withdrew the extremity, fading slowly into obscurity. He brought the hand up to join the first and leant forward again as far as he could to peer through the luminescence. “Lucifer? Is that you?”

Quietly, without speaking, I shifted the last remaining godkiller into the grotto with me, flipped the safety mechanism, and pulled the trigger. The noise of the bullet tore through the chamber, causing Vince to jump and hit his elbow on the wall. Lucy failed to react, and Enki, whom the bullet had struck dead on centre, simply lowered one of his hands and scratched absently where it had hit.

Well, it had been worth a try.

“It’s me,” Lucifer answered. He stepped forward, to the edge of the outer ring of symbols, so that the light clearly illuminated him. “Sorry. It has to be done.”

Enki frowned at him. “I can break this, you know.”

“Yes, but it’ll take you a few minutes, which you don’t have.”

Nudging Vince’s arm, I pressed the godkiller into his hand, feeling its state of matter subtly change to fit its new owner. Gesturing from it to the Chief Human Relations Officer, I made a shooting motion with my fingers. The demon lord accepted it somewhat uncertainly, before turning it gingerly between thumb and forefinger and attempting to hand it back to me.

“Ah,” said Enki. He didn’t ask for details. “Then I assume this is the end goal of the sudden string of recent incidents. Clever, making us think the traps ended at the office. I think that makes this the most coordinated takeover bid in company history.”

I gripped Vince’s hand, placed the gun in it properly and fiddled the safety mechanism off. As I raised the hand, he spread his fingers, sending the weapon spinning to the floor in a clang of metal.

Both Enki and Lucy turned towards the noise. I reached for the gun, only for Vince to kick it across the floor with his toe, aiming for the patch of water. It hit a rough patch of barnacles, leapt a few centimetres into the air, and didn’t make it any further.

Lucy raised an eyebrow. He backed up a few steps and picked up his pantheon’s weapon.

I glared at the elderly demon lord and spread my arms accusingly, to which Vince looked affronted.

“You said he was the nice one,” he whispered loudly.

I raised a palm to my forehead.

From the expression on Enki’s face, he knew what he was up against. “So that’s it, then,” he said, shoulders slumping. “Do you actually think you can win?”

“You’re the resurrector,” Lucy said, as if it was self-explanatory.

“One of them. You’ll also need to take care of Legba. It’s that whole redundancy thing about what happens if one of us gets hit by a bus.”

Shit. I kept my lips clamped firmly shut, in case Legba picked up on mouthed words as well. My mind raced. So far, Yahweh was the only adversary who was actually dead. Worst case, he’d come back along with the angels, and this time we had three times the number of effective weapons to use against them. As hurdles went, it was bad. But not insurmountable.

I didn’t think I was imagining the circle around Enki growing noticeably smaller.

“I’ll do my best,” Lucy responded.

“Which number am I? The first?”

“Fourth. After Odin, Vishnu, and Yahweh.”

Enki’s eyes widened. His spine seemed to straighten. “Is he dead?”

Lucy nodded.

“I –” Enki floundered for a second, running a hand along the path of his stubble, then repeated the action. He reached out to the barrier in front of him, and its shrinking circumference behind, and nodded to himself with a grimace. “If you fail, I’ll have to come for you. But there’s something you should know. At the top of Providence –”

A woman’s piercing scream choked off and became garbled in the vicinity of Colstee’s office, distracting me from the vital next words of the sentence as the wall and door separating the office from the rest of the building turned to glass and revealed a large, luxurious antechamber beyond.

In it stood our last executive target, white-garbed and businesslike, between two symmetrical pairs of coffee tables and thin-legged velvet sofas fluffed up with cushions. Directly behind the glass lay the back of a receptionist’s desk, where a well-groomed improbable sheep scrabbed from a matching velvet chair onto its smooth, slippery surface.

“– are being held –” I made out.

“Where is he?” Hera’s collar hugged her throat so tightly I wondered how she could speak. Her gaze swept the office, passing inconsequentially over Tru’s stiffened figure and landing on Colstee. Heart dropping out of my chest, I scoured the room for any variation of Durga, which shouldn’t have been hard. But the warrior goddess was missing.

I strained to catch Enki’s words.

“– couldn’t destroy them –” he said, as the door to the office stopped being glass and collapsed to the floor in a gentle shower of leaves. The inner wall followed it a moment later, not that Hera bothered to use either method of entry. She vanished and reappeared next to the Colstee, who had barely had time to recover from the anemone of arms waving in her face before being terrorised by another supernatural hazard.

“Ares. This whole situation reeks of his influence,” Hera snapped at the media mogul. “What did he tell you? Word for word. Quickly.”

Tru, smartly frozen, was standing at the edge of her peripheral vision. As subtly as I could, I motioned to the gun in his belt, nodded towards Hera and hoped he wouldn’t be the second demonic recruit to suffer an unexpected morality crisis.

He didn’t. Slowly, with trembling fingers, he reached under his belt, pulled out the weapon and aimed.

“You can see the whole thing,” Colstee answered, swallowing. “This office is outfitted with cameras.” Her eyes moved to the side. “Behind you.”

Hera vanished. Tru didn’t even get his finger off the safety before the godkiller clattered to the floor. In his place stood another sheep. In the darkened room, violet light emanated obviously from under one of its front hooves.

Fuck, raged the sheep, and ‘baaaa’d petulantly. Not again.