Decimation, p.1
Decimation, page 1
DECIMATION
NEON
BOOK 6
ALLYSON LINDT
ACELETTE PRESS
This book is a work of fiction.
While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2024 by Allyson Lindt
Cover Art: Daqri Bernardo of Covers by Combs
All Rights Reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
Manufactured in the United States of America
CONTENTS
1. Nico
2. Bragi
3. Magnus
4. Bragi
5. Nico
6. Magnus
7. Magnus
8. Bragi
9. Nico
10. Magnus
11. Magnus
12. Bragi
13. Nico
14. Magnus
15. Magnus
16. Bragi
17. Magnus
18. Magnus
19. Nico
20. Bragi
21. Nico
22. Magnus
23. Bragi
24. Magnus
25. Nico
26. Bragi
Epilogue
For everyone who keeps asking me “BUT WHAT NEXT?”
“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.”
- C.S. Lewis
ONE
NICO
About 100 years ago
No matter how many centuries I lived, each one held something new and unexpected to discover.
One of the most recent examples being the man—the god—in our sitting room, in front of the fireplace. Despite the fact that he knew people who could summon light in many forms, Bragi insisted on ensuring electricity ran through our home, and that we had electric lights.
The dim bulb flickered over his shoulder, illuminating his book.
It had taken years for me to admit it to him or myself, but I did adore him. He was smart, creative, stubborn, and he cared.
“You make me nervous when you just stare.” Bragi didn’t look up from his book.
I chuckled to myself. “I do not. You love it when people stare.”
He glanced at me with a raised eyebrow. “That I do. However, I prefer it when you’re touching, too.” He set his book on a nearby end table. “Join me.”
I didn’t need to be asked twice, and I crossed the room to settle into his lap.
Bragi wrapped his arms around my waist. “You’re worried.”
“Yes.” It had taken me a while to get used to the fact that there were no secrets with him. In some ways it was disconcerting, having him always know what I was feeling. It was also a relief. There was no reason to hide any of it. “Aren’t you?”
He pulled me into him. “Yes. I’m working on a solution, though.”
“You do not solution away a prophecy.” I would laugh at the absurdity of the idea, if the details of the prophecy in question weren’t terrifying. One of the reasons I’d locked my heart away from Bragi for years after I met him, was because gods tended to be tied to fate.
It was a cycle. The newest pantheons got too big for their britches, they thought they ruled the world, and destiny came along and took them down a notch. Replaced those who were too cocky with updated variations.
“Perhaps not. However, Vidar has a theory that the outcomes can be redirected.” Bragi was definitely cocky, though not necessarily about being a god. There were ancient poems about him though. The bard. The fool. The artist who dared to think he could have it all, and would lose every bit of it, including his power, and his lovers.
Me.
The redheaded woman we’d both seen in our visions, who couldn’t possibly exist because she was a Valkyrie and there were no more of those.
Not that the ancient words said any of that in so many words. However, if one spent enough time studying the poems, their meanings typically became clear.
Slightly cloudy.
The cycle had started again. Gods and immortals feared for their lives, and—more important to them—the loss of their status.
I’d never taken issue with Vidar. He was a bit abrasive for my taste. However, Bragi had a literal sense for how honest people were, and if he trusted Vidar, I did as well.
That did not mean I trusted that the prophecies could be overcome. Time had taught me that lesson more times than I could remember.
“Where is Vidar this afternoon?” I leaned more of my weight into Bragi. Vidar was our guest for the next month or so, but he was as prone to wander as Bragi.
Bragi kissed my shoulder through my sleeve. “I’m not enough company for you?” he teased.
“You’re quite often more than I know what to do with.” Which was the reason I didn’t want our guest walking in on us.
Bragi let out a heavy and exaggerated sigh. “He left a few hours ago with an idea. I must talk to Finn, before I forget.” He spoke in tone two octaves deeper than his own.
“Any hints as to what his idea might be?” My question was more idle curiosity. Vidar’s ideas tended to be structured and intricate, but not creative.
“Not the slightest idea. I assume it has something to do with avoiding the prophecies. I truly think he’s got a good plan.”
Ahh. “He may. I simply don’t wish you to get your hopes up.”
“I will try not to.” He trailed a light touch down my torso, to tease along the top of my trousers. “I may need to get something else up instead, to numb the disappointment.”
I grabbed his hand before he reached my cock, and adjusted my position to face him and straddle his legs. “Are you trying to fuck me, to forget your woes?”
“Absolutely not.” He broke free and caught my hand in a single twist of his, then captured my other wrist as well. “I’m trying to fuck you because I like the sounds you make in the throes of passion.”
I smirked. “Then by all means, please continue.”
Bragi loosened the laces on my trousers, then captured the back of my neck in a tight grip as he crushed his mouth to mine. The intensity of the kiss was magnified by the wisps of passion flowing through our connection.
He could share a tiny fraction of the emotion he felt. It was something he avoided outside of sex, and even then it was rare. Which made the slivers I felt of my affection mingled with his that much more enticing.
I pushed his shirt up, tugging the loose fabric out of the way to kiss along his neck and down his chest. To tease a nipple with my tongue.
He pulled my face up for more kisses, stealing my breath and a gasp from me. There was a power in this sensual dance. A type of allure I’d never felt elsewhere. Bragi trailed his mouth down my jaw to suck on the tender skin where my neck met my shoulder.
Incredible.
With each touch and moan, his or mine, I grew harder. I felt him stiffen underneath me as well. A reverberation of arousal.
Bragi teased my mouth with his, over and over. Kissing and nipping and sucking my lips, while he trailed his fingers down my chest. His touch through fabric sparked along my senses. This was always intoxicating with him.
When he brushed my cock, I jerked against his touch. When he wrapped his fingers around my rigid shaft, I groaned into his mouth. His slow stroke was a drawn-out torture of the most delicious variety. His soft hand moving up and down, occasionally squeezing and always milking.
I rocked against him, grinding against his erection as pressure built inside me. His touch grew more insistent and so did my movements, becoming a steady hump. He stroked harder and faster, and I reacted in kind. A cyclical build of desire, flowing between us. Making me harder. Making my need swell.
I bucked against his touch, and his cock jerked beneath me. My body tensed with the need for release, and my breathing stuttered.
Climax surged through me, and I spilled as Bragi continued to jerk me. I emptied myself into the space between us, and kept rocking. Kept grinding into him.
His touch was too much against my now-hyper-sensitive skin, but it also felt wonderful. As did the grunting noises coming from his throat. His cry when he came was music to my ears. His explosion of pleasure from his own physical responses as well as my orgasm.
I collapsed against his chest, not caring about the mess between us.
I should tell him not to have this conversation with Vidar, but I didn’t have a reason to offer him beyond instinct.
“Ask me,” he said.
I couldn’t. Despite knowing he felt what I wanted to say. “I won’t let my doubt destroy your chances.”
“Our chances,” Bragi corrected me. Because the prophecy applied to him and his loves.
“Exactly.” I had no reason to worry about Vidar’s plans. What I’d seen with past prophecy was exactly that—in the past. I wouldn’t stop Bragi from trying to save us.
That didn’t mean I could stop myself from being concerned.
TWO
BRAGI
Pubs. Saloons. Taverns. They were among my favorite things. A place where people could imagine themselves as anything, and share those tales with anyone.
&nbs p; I sat across the table from Vidar, in the one down the street from the house I shared with my love, and let the ambiance wash over me. It was its own form of worship and prayer. Patrons giving thanks to the inspirations that kept them hoping.
“You told me another came true last month.” I hated to harp on about the subject, however answers were critical to preparing the rest of us for whatever came next.
Vidar sipped an ale, his stoicism not hiding the disquiet that radiated from him. “Cú Chulainn…”
“Ooh.” I winced, not needing to hear more. The once-king had succumbed to madness long ago, but that wasn’t to be his final fate. The sisters—the dragons who wrote the prophecies eons ago—saw him losing everything. His family, his kingdom, his life, and any chance he had at redemption.
Experience, a good portion of it Nicodemus’s, showed that these things happened in cycles. One prophecy came true and then dozens more, like soldiers falling one after another in a brutal battle. I assumed because most of the collections of tales ended in brutal battles themselves.
I didn’t believe that it would all happen tomorrow, or in the next decade or two. This was something that would take place over the next couple of centuries; still a blink in time to some immortals.
“Myself and a handful of others are coming together,” Vidar said. “We feel like there’s not only strength in numbers, but knowledge. We want to diminish the collateral damage.”
Which was a polite way of saying Vidar and others he’d spoken with wished to stay alive. The fear he radiated, the worry at the idea of losing who he was, was potent and genuine.
Not that I blamed him or any god. I had a lot left to experience, especially now that I’d discovered love. Especially because the ancient texts about me involved Nico as well. The man I loved. The man I would obliterate reality for.
“What do you want from me?” I was honored to be invited, but I wasn’t a fighter. The other gods he’d mentioned were all warriors. Symbols of battles and wars.
“Your survival.” He meant the words.
Hints of other feelings lay underneath, marring the sincerity, but that was the case with everyone. Emotions were as complex as those who radiated them. It was rare for an individual to feel one thing and only one at any given time.
When they did, I had no interest in being near them. A feeling so pure it obliterated all other thoughts was as toxic to me as a patch of poison ivy. It could infect me, blister my soul, and leave me incapacitated for hours or days while I tried to shrug off someone else’s heart.
“I’ll ask again.” It warmed me that Vidar valued our friendship enough to include me in this venture, despite the ego that drove him, and most gods, to want to be the sole survivor. There had to be more to his request, though. “What is it I can do?”
“Research. Reading. Your knowledge of what’s come before and your ability to draw out the tiniest but most significant pieces of a tale from those around you.”
That was something I could do. “Who else has agreed?” When we’d spoken about this on previous occasions, Vidar had given me the names of others he was talking to, but it wasn’t a complete list and most of them hadn’t agreed at the time.
“Hel. Morganna, Macha, and Finn. Loki—”
“No.” That was enough information for me. “Loki is unpredictable.”
“Is he? He wants the same thing any of us do. To live long enough to see what comes after Ragnarök.”
That wasn’t my concern. “Unlike you or me, his methods can be… arbitrary.”
“He can be guided. Nudged.”
“Does he truly offer anything that we can’t find somewhere else?” The way I asked the question, it sounded as if I’d already made up my mind.
I supposed I had, which meant I had a say in who else I worked with.
“He can be quite persuasive when required. Like any of us, he has a lot to offer.”
Unlike most of us, he had experience with destroying another god. I did hope that wasn’t a consideration.
There was also a prophecy about Loki that said he’d be brought to his knees by some little upstart of a goddess. Fascinating how each person Vidar had recruited stood to lose something big if the prophecies came true.
Then again, why would those with a bright future want to sign up to stop it from happening? “Count me in.”
“Excellent.” Vidar grinned, and finished his ale in a single swallow. “Welcome to the board.”
The conversation shifted to other topics. Which continents Vidar was frequenting for worship. With what were the other gods busying themselves.
Though Vidar was staying with us, there was something about the pub setting that made swapping stories more fun. Id enjoyed Vidar’s company for centuries, and the ability to simply sit and reminisce was one of the biggest reasons why.
I was riding the high of hope when Vidar and I headed back to the house that afternoon. Vidar retired to his room, and I sought out Nico, who was baking.
He wanted to be happy for me. He wanted to share my enthusiasm.
His worry kept him from feeling the smile he gave me, as he kissed me on the cheek. “How did it go?” he asked.
“Wonderfully.” This entire plan was going to be amazing. The things that Vidar had planned… “I know you have your doubts, but this will work out for us. Who knows? Perhaps some day in the future, we’ll even meet our redheaded Valkyrie.”
Nico frowned. “Most of the time I hope we won’t.”
“Why?” I could feel his reservations, but couldn’t place a reason.
“I’d hate to meet someone like that, only to have her snatched away by a bitter fate.”
I gave him a reassuring smile, though I didn’t feel it. All the Valkyrie’s were gone. “You don’t have to believe yet. When it works out, you’ll see. You’ll know.”
Now
The most effective lies are the ones founded in the truth.
A century ago, I had no idea then that Vidar’s plan, Hel’s plan, would mutate to include torture. Brainwashing. Manipulation. Murder. And it never occurred to me that after centuries of what I thought was friendship, Vidar had been manipulating my emotions.
Possibly intentionally, though to this day I doubted it. He was just such a raging fucking narcissist, that any concern he felt, any fear or worry, was all genuine because it was all centered on his own life and salvation.
He believed he was saving the world… for himself.
He believed that by any means necessary was the only way to keep himself going.
As the years and decades bled away, the little things that nagged at me about TOM became big things. So many times, Nico begged me to stop. I didn’t recognize at the time that feeling the anguish of students day after day was gnawing at me. Wearing away my defenses.
Filling me with the kind of negative emotion that bled from me when I was with Nico. It was why he’d started wearing a crystal that kept me from influencing him.
By the time I figured out that TOM had eaten away at my kindness, I was so tired of feeling, so sick of how sick the world was, that it was easier to hurt—me and those around me—than to wallow in the pain, curl up in a ball, and surrender.
Why weren’t Nico and Magnus back yet? Had it been that difficult for him to convince her to return?
I headed outside, and called their names.
Nothing.
Where were they?
The longer I searched, the closer I moved to the border that kept us hidden, the more my concern grew. Did they leave?
It was difficult for me to believe they’d both agree to do that without letting me know.
Did Vidar get them?
The fury and concern that surged inside was potent. I called Magnus’s phone. When the other end of the line clicked, I fully expected Vidar’s voice. I braced myself, as a plan raced through my head. I’d have to call in favors. I’d have to prostrate myself in front of other immortals and beg for help.
