Chapter 64: Of Demons and Angels

A radiant sword came hurtling through the huge sheets of glass at the front of the house to tumble across the front lawn and lodge itself to the hilt in a massive ash tree. A moment later, a feminine voice screamed in rage. Even as the painfully bright luminescence was fading from the sword, Björn’s house shuddered with some tremendous inner blow and the central roof started to collapse.

Seeing that, Björn decided it was time to introduce himself before his weak woman let these interlopers break more of his stuff. “Stay here, couch-man,” he said. “I have people to kill.” Then, wrapping himself in shadow as much as possible to protect against the blazing sun, he threw open the door and jogged to the house.

His skin was just starting to smoke when he reached the front porch and reached for the door.

Before he could take the knob in his hands, the door burst open and his soulmate and her stupid, flatulent dog bowled into him, then fell over like bowling pins, his masculine body unswayed by their tiny, weak forms. Immediately, he prepared to give her the speech of forgiveness of her transgressions that the couch-man had coached him to give. Tell her you're sorry and that you want to start over.

“Mardöll, I—”

“Run!” Shannon screamed, jumping up and bolting like a terrified rabbit. The dog followed, snagging up the book it had been carrying in its drooly jaws before bounding after her.

Björn frowned as the rush of the Nótt Danzleikr made him stumble to comply, a heady wave hitting his mind for the first time since she had abandoned him at the café. He blinked after her, fighting the urge to bolt, baffled. Had that command been meant for him? Did she actually think he would run from a fight? He guffawed.

“Who do you think I am, Mardöll?” Chuckling to himself, he said, “I am Odin’s Chose—”

From inside the building came an avian shriek of rage and the sound of wood splintering.

Slowly, the little hairs on his back and neck rising, he turned to look.

The shattered inside of the house was being set aglow in ethereal white light, and he caught a glimpse of a flash of luminescent wings…

Björn felt his guts grow cold. Odin’s hairy nutsack, that looks like a Fur—

The Fury hit him head-on, knocking him off the porch with enough momentum to carve a brown furrow in the lawn with his body. “Out of my way, beast!” she snarled, shoving him aside. Now that Björn was looking, he saw a putrid blood-web coursing through her veins, a rot of the very spirit.

Önd Sótt-Dauðr, he realized, stunned. Soul-sickness. He’d seen it enough times on the battlefield of Hjaðningavíg after one of Odin’s Chosen got caught in a tusen dødsdager. It was the same thing he had seen, dozens of times, right before Odin called upon him to use Skofnung on his own brethren. What in the fuck…

Yet he'd never seen it in anyone who didn’t fight the daily battles between Valhöll and Guðrhöll. He’d just assumed it was just an affliction of Ásgarðr…

The Fury flared her wings, fully focused on the queen and her dog, who were even then sprinting across the yard. Snarling, she bunched her legs…

Realizing she meant to slay his soulmate, Björn grabbed the Champion of War by the foot, spun, and, with an overhand throw, slammed her full-body into the ground. “Your fight is with me,” he snarled.

Matter sizzled out where the Fury’s wings pounded the earth as the Fury tried to right herself. “Barghest!” she screamed, flailing back to a crouch. Something had wounded her in the stomach—which, Björn thought, was strange, since it was only a Fury’s sword that could effectively do such damage. She lunged to grab him by the neck…

Björn caught her arm and threw her to the ground again, kicking her hard enough to lodge her into the wall of his house. Ignoring the burning of his skin with the heady rush of a good fight, Björn grabbed her by a foot before she could recover and, spinning, hurled her six feet into the ground. Instead of staying down, however, she launched herself from the crater, slamming her heel into his jaw, throwing him off his feet. Then, as he lay there, spread out and smoking in the full light of the sun, she dropped on top of him and started punching him in the face, driving his head several inches into the ground with every blow.

Catching the Fury’s fists in one of his own, Björn laughed. “It would’ve hurt more if you hadn’t blocked the sun.” He punched her back, snapping her head back on her neck.

It was the wrong thing to do. She screamed and started beating him about the head and neck with her radiant wings, obliterating the shadow he used to buffer the sunlight…

Before he lost his upper half to her wings, Björn shifted to the nearby shadow of the house, chuckling. He cracked his knuckles as the Fury, her attention now fully on him, turned to locate him in the darkness. It had been a long time since he’d had a good fight…

#

Jessie was watching the exchange between Björn and the girl on the front porch tensely, wondering if he needed to intervene, when the girl just flat-out bolted, taking her dog with her.

Oh, this isn’t gonna be good, Jessie thought, knowing how poorly the barghest would take rejection after trying so hard…

Björn turned to scowl after her, and, seeing the hurt and shock on the barghest’s face, Jessie decided it was time for the couch-man to get out of the car and stop World War III.

He was halfway out of the driver’s side door when an angel burst out of the front of the house like an exploding Jack-in-the-Box. She hit Björn head-on and, despite being less than half the size, plowed his huge body through the front yard like a meteor strike. Then she stood, spread her shimmering wings like something out of a holy book, and prepared to take to the sky…

The barghest snagged one of her petite ankles and, spinning, slammed her into the ground like a toy. She screamed another raptor’s scream and the ground itself seemed to disappear under the arcs of her wings.

Jessie stopped getting out of the car. Then, as he felt the ground underneath him shuddering at the impacts of their fists to their faces, he quietly pulled the door shut again with a gentle click.

He had to be going nuts, he decided. He subconsciously realized his wife had been fucking his best friend for years and he had a mental break. Yeah, that has to be it, he thought, as Björn proceeded to throw the angel through the front of the house, leaving her half-embedded in the wall. Psychosis. It explains everything…

A hand-sized luminescent feather drifted down through the front windshield, cutting through the glass like a laser. It hit the passenger seat and sizzled through the leather, disappearing into the upholstery, leaving a feather-shaped hole in the stuffing. In trepidation, Jessie leaned closer to look down.

Through the hole in the passenger seat, he could see light and gravel. A white feather was curling and smoking on the ground, turning brown and losing its luminescence as it melted.

Gingerly, Jessie touched the hole, found his finger able to poke through it.

Then the vehicle jumped around him as they were punching each other, titanic thuds rattling the windshield and reverberating even through the limo’s fancy shocks with every blow.

I think I’m going to be sick, Jessie thought, realizing that just one of those blows would have left him a reddish pool of meat-paste on the ground.

Then she was beating Björn with her wings, and the swirling shadows protecting his face and chest were being beaten away…

From the forest, several men in black were stepping from their hiding places, sniper rifles hanging limply at their sides, their mouths open in raw reverence. Several of them dropped to their knees as the barghest and the angel screamed and started choking each other, making the sign of the cross on their chests.

A knock on the windshield made Jessie jerk away distractedly from the struggle. Huddled outside the door was the woman from the café. She was frantically gesturing for him to follow her.

Hesitating, Jessie rolled down the window.

“You’re that guy from the café, right?” the girl whispered. In the background, the barghest had hit the front wall of the house hard enough to bring it down, then dragged a beam out of the rubble, spun, and slammed it into the angel’s head, knocking her out of the air.

Jessie nodded.

“Come on!” the girl whispered. “Angus knows a safe place nearby.”

Looking at the dog…who was dribbling drool all over an ancient leather-bound book…Jessie swallowed. “What about him?” he asked, glancing at Björn, who was now rolling across the ground in full demon form, half cat, half dog, all claw and fang and shadow the size of a raging grizzly bear.

“Angus says leave him,” the girl said. “There’s nothing we can do.”

And, indeed, Jessie couldn’t think of anything he could do. “Is that an angel?” he asked, though it was a stupid question. Björn was fighting an angel… Had he been shrinking Satan? He suddenly didn’t feel so good.

“Not an angel,” the girl insisted, shaking her head. “Angus says there’s something wrong with her.” Her eyes were fixed on the battle with terror.

Well, at least I’m not the only one who is shitting my own pants, Jessie thought ridiculously.

“Come on,” she insisted. “We need to get out of here before she sees us.”

Jessie swallowed, suddenly unsure where to place his alliances. On the one hand, he had spent enough time with Björn to realize that the guy wasn’t innately evil, just broken and brainwashed. On the other hand, he was currently being throttled by an angel who was doing her best to drive his brainpan through a cinderblock retaining wall. Björn, for his part, was tearing open his own chest, digging, trying to get at whatever was inside…

“I…”

The girl’s eyes widened and she ducked away just in time to avoid Björn’s heavy body crushing the front of the limo and rolling to the ground nearby. He must have taken a blow from one of the matter-vaporizing wings, because a good portion of one shoulder was missing, that arm limp. Worse, the shadow was rolling out of him in uneven waves, now, sputtering as the sun crisped his exposed skin.

Seeing that, the girl and the dog bolted. Jessie, who couldn’t get out of the car without stepping on Björn, stayed where he was.

The barghest groaned and started to push himself up with one arm. “Ooohh fucking Furi—”

Then the angel was there, face twisted with uncontrolled rage, grabbing Björn by the foot.

Dazedly, he mumbled, “Oh shii—”

With an avian scream, the Fury flipped the barghest overhead in an arc and slammed him into a gravel-crunching thud on the ground that rocked the whole vehicle with the shockwave. Wide-eyed as he watched through the front windshield, Jessie realized that Björn wasn’t going to last much longer. Maybe if it weren’t broad daylight, but it was pretty clear the sun was taking the fight out of him pretty quick…

Björn’s gonna lose, Jessie realized. He glanced in the direction of the two who had fled, then back at Björn.

The barghest was trying to crawl away, the skin of his body crisping and black from the direct sun exposure. Jessie immediately felt sorry for him—he couldn’t help but experience a pang of regret, that loss of knowing he could have helped this creature break the cycle of death and violence he so claimed to adore, but Fate had decided to throw him right back into the chaotic mess that had broken him in the first place.

Jessie could have helped—he knew it in his heart. Maybe it would have taken a month or a year, but the psychologist in him recognized that he could have helped this creature open his eyes to the horrors around him, recognize his own battered humanity, and heal. Instead, Björn was going to die and go right back to that fucked-up never-ending battle, all the more driven to do death and violence because he’d yet again been denied simple companionship.

I could have helped him…