Natasha took another careful look. The middle-aged man had a receding hairline and a cheerful demeanor, a pipe in his hand. The middle-aged woman had a ruddy complexion, messy curls, a red sweater, and a heavy build.
She could sense the power hidden inside their bodies, but if it was limited to the physical level, it really wasn't anything special.
"Do they have any supernatural abilities?" she asked.
Bella was extremely cautious, observing for a long time before answering. "Honestly? I can't detect any. No divine power, no magical energy, and they're certainly not rewriting the laws of reality..."
In her assessment, these two dark gods were laughably feeble.
Perhaps they'd once been formidable, but after Christianity conquered Europe and Santa Claus's image became embedded in the collective consciousness, they had withered into nothing.
Gods who fed on faith rose fast—and fell just as quickly.
After a brief discussion, Bella and Natasha reached the same conclusion: probe first.
Save him? That came last. They didn't even know what the enemy was capable of—who the hell were they supposed to be saving?
Within her means, Bella would always try to save a life—but not in a situation like this. If the person in the sack was still alive after the fight, then good for him. If not, neither she nor Natasha was going to put each other at risk for a stranger.
Fifteen minutes later, Natasha had borrowed some weapons and ammunition from nearby S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.
Compared to the power coursing through her body, she still placed more trust in firearms.
Bella had no objections. Her own philosophy was simple: if you have weapons, use weapons. Save the magic for when the guns run dry.
The two of them each hefted a Javelin anti-tank missile launcher.
Bella positioned herself at the northeast corner of the house. Natasha took the southeast.
Bella fired first.
A missile—three and a half feet long (1.1 m), weighing nearly fifty pounds (22 kg) — streaked forward on a tail of red flame and punched straight into the dark gods' little house.
It was completely unexpected. The two dark gods had just waved off their insufferable neighbor and were preparing for their evening "dinner." They'd survived on a handful of human victims per year to sustain their fading existence—it had never occurred to them that anyone might attack.
BOOM.
The two-story house was blown to pieces. Flames roared skyward. From the walls, from between ceiling panels—the explosion blasted out a mass of filth, along with countless bones and scraps of flesh that scattered like grotesque confetti.
The malice the dark gods had sealed away through supernatural means was released in an instant. Negative energy flooded the entire town. Many residents who'd been singing Christmas carols heard the explosion and wanted to come outside to investigate, but every light in the town had been snuffed out by the wave of resentful energy. In the pitch-black darkness, nobody dared set foot on the streets.
At the center of the blast, the two gods had no idea what had hit them. They'd assumed the microwave had exploded or something. Covered in ash and debris, they dragged themselves out of the wreckage—only to be immediately swarmed by vengeful spirits.
"Get off me!" The middle-aged man threw a punch, his previously genial face now twisted with savagery. A few stray ghosts dared to harass him? He'd only eaten a few people—was that really such a big deal? Before Christianity rose to power, every time he felt like celebrating, he'd devour ten thousand living humans. He'd been showing remarkable restraint.
"Over there! Move!" The middle-aged woman on the other side regained her senses. Her voice was shrill and thin—under normal circumstances it might have sounded kindly, but now it came out panicked and furious. Natasha's Stinger missile had just been launched.
One after the other, two missiles detonated in quick succession. Caught at ground zero, the two Winter Solstice Gods had long since lost the glory of their ancient era. Forget divine shields or reality-warping—all they had left was some brute physical strength.
The missiles had done real damage. The middle-aged man's left hand was simply gone. The middle-aged woman's plump, matronly figure had vanished as well—she'd burned through her internal energy reserves to heal her wounds. Now she was skeletal, corpse-thin, and visibly weaker than before.
The two of them barely managed to stagger out of the smoke—and walked straight into a hail of gunfire from Bella and Natasha.
"I'll eat you!" The now tall and gaunt woman spotted Natasha's rich, vibrant life force and her eyes went wide, as if she'd spotted a delicacy. Eyes blazing red, she lunged like a vengeful ghost.
On the other side, Bella intercepted the middle-aged man, who was trying to flee.
She locked down a three-hundred-foot (100 m) radius around them. Every step the man took, he faced ice blades erupting from the ground and icicles raining from the sky like needles. He was forced to dodge and weave frantically.
He was supposed to be a god of the Winter Solstice—yet he'd grown so feeble that he didn't dare take the barrage head-on.
Watching Bella control the ice elements from a distance, he gathered every ounce of his remaining strength and, with enormous difficulty, uttered a blasphemous incantation—so profane and alien that human senses could not comprehend it.
Bella's casting was disrupted instantly. The man's limbs stretched grotesquely, as if boneless. His legs coiled around her waist; his hands locked around her throat. With Bella staring in disbelief, his hands wrenched outward—Blood sprayed from the neck. The severed head stared back at him, eyes wide open in death. He grinned—savage, exultant.
But in the next instant, he realized that Bella's headless body was still standing bolt upright. Something was very wrong.
"Too late, you idiot!" The real Bella, who'd been hiding behind an illusion the entire time, thrust forward with her sword.
This technique was one she'd learned from Ogun—a spirit sword, specifically designed to harm ethereal beings.
All things possessed a spirit, and dark gods were no exception. The man's body was still entangled with the illusory Bella; there was no time to dodge. His only option was to transform again.
Flesh rippled across his shoulders. Two skeletal arms burst forth and barely managed to catch Bella's spirit sword.
His body was now grotesquely contorted—he looked like a six-legged cockroach.
"That's fucking disgusting," Bella spat. Even knowing it was just the illusion he was clinging to, the sight turned her stomach.
She pressed down with the spirit sword in her left hand while her right hand reached out—and a Mind Blast slammed into the depths of his consciousness.
WHAM. The man felt as if a sledgehammer had struck his brain. His awareness scattered; his expression went utterly blank.
The Mind Blast hadn't been painless for Bella, either. This creature was genuinely weak—not even close to Calypso, and couldn't hold a candle to the Incan Death God she'd fought before—but his divine foundation remained. The Mind Blast had felt like punching a wall of reinforced steel, and the psychic backlash left Bella dazed for half a second.
"Die." She recovered first—she'd been prepared for it. She dismissed the spirit sword and drew a weapon she'd readied in advance: a branch of evergreen.
This was the clue Santa had woven into his words earlier. Whether it was tying the dark gods to a tree or stringing them up on one, the repeated mention of trees made it clear: evergreens had a devastating suppressive effect on these two.
Seizing the moment while her enemy's mind was still reeling, Bella drove the sharpened evergreen branch straight through the middle-aged man's chest.