Rings of the Inconquo Trilogy

by A. L. Knorr

  Chopping down at the coils, they dissolved like shadows. Their insubstantial nature surprised me, and I lurched forward, carried by my own momentum. Pierre hit me again with a one-two of bludgeoning darkness. The bookshelf buckled, and the supporting timbers groaned in protest.

  “You came into my home.” Pierre launched four tentacles, enfolding me. “And dared to steal from me?”

  Two tendrils dissipated as I flailed at them, but the other two clutched tightly, pinning my arms down before slamming me back against the remains of the bookcase. My ears rang, and pain blossomed everywhere.

  Fighting off panic, I looked through the swirl of slithering shadows and saw the edimmu drawing closer. I couldn’t hold out much longer; I needed my energy to ensure he didn’t breach my armour rather than fighting.

  “The Group of Winterthür would pay a pretty price for parts of you,” he hissed, leering with monstrous eyes. “But the satisfaction of sucking the marrow from your flayed bones is something money can’t buy.”

  A long, grey tongue snaked through his briar-patch of fangs.

  The pressure redoubled, and the torturous squeal of metal filled my ears.

  He kept enough distance that I couldn’t strike if I broke free. I wished I could launch more missiles, but shedding iron would guarantee a breach in my shell. The pressure built on my ribs, the metal buckling millimetre by millimetre.

  If only I had more … metal spikes!

  I risked a sweep with my senses and found all four of the iron bolts were still lodged in the sagging, wasted flesh of his true form. I threw every ounce of energy I could spare, twisting them free.

  Pierre swore in a language that stung my ears to hear, and the pressure eased. I used the reprieve to send a wild surge through my right arm, ripping free and scattering a tide of shadows in its wake. Tines of piano wire sprang forth, attaching to the drilling iron barbs.

  He still had several tentacles around me, but I had a hold of him now too.

  I was made of iron; he wasn’t.

  I pivoted hard, swinging him like a ball on a chain until he smacked wetly against the wall. His hold on me weakened a little more, so I did it again. And again. And again. The wall was already compromised, and Pierre’s ichor spewing form plowed through it as my anchoring spikes tore free. His body slid across the evacuated dance floor. Music still pulsed over speakers suspended from the vaulted ceiling, and in the dim lights, Pierre looked like a giant smear across the floor.

  “Get up!” I shouted, ducking through the hole in the wall, blood pumping hot and furious through my veins. “Come on big boy, get up so I can knock you down again!”

  Darkness swirled around Pierre, contracting and congealing, the menacing tentacles drawn into him like smoke sucked up an exhaust vent.

  I advanced with fists up, my iron-clad legs and feet making menacing footsteps on the floor.

  As the darkness drew inward, the disgusting shape of the edimmu vanished, and Pierre in his human guise emerged. His clothes were destroyed beyond modesty or function, but his tanned flesh didn’t show a single mark. This enraged me further. I closed to within arm’s reach of him, and he threw back his head and laughed.

  “I’m going to beat you into paste!” I bellowed raising a hand to stove his head in.

  He smiled back with a roguish human grin.

  “Go right ahead.” He chuckled, a rich, dark sound that prickled at the edges with malice. “You can’t hurt me.”

  My iron fist descended like a meteor, cratering his face. He was knocked backwards hard enough to bounce off the polished floor.

  “Did that hurt?” I stood over his prone form.

  Through his crumpled mask of flesh, I saw his real face, the huge subterranean eyes mocking me with perverse joy. Then, like a balloon receiving a shot of helium, his false face reformed.

  “Didn’t I tell you,” he cackled up, hands spreading out in welcome. “You can’t hurt me.”

  Fury and a wisp of dread drove my fists down onto his head and shoulders. Ichor splattered until the floor looked like a shallow tar pit. Every time I paused, shoulders shaking and chest heaving, Pierre’s sneering grin re-emerged from the crushed mass. My mental and physical fortitude were slipping, but I was buying time for Sark and Marcus to escape with the ledger.

  At least, that was what I told myself.

  As I staggered back from another fruitless burst of violence, my foot hit a thick patch of clinging filth, and I fell backwards with a clang. The armour shell shivered, and I fought to steady my breathing and keep it together. I tasted blood in the back of my throat.

  “With all that power, you still know so very little,” Pierre crooned as he rose from the floor, ascending on a soundless flex of black wings.

  “Just taking a breather.” I forced myself to sit up. “I’ll get back to smashing your arse in a second.”

  Pierre shook his head slowly, his face contorting into a noxious look of pity.

  “Take all the time you need, my dear. It won’t make a bit of difference. You could burn me to ash, grind me into dust, or one of the thousand methods others have tried, but it won’t make a bit of difference. None of them could stop me. Neither can you.”

  I growled, but the voice in my head told me he was right. The iron and steel were weighing me down, my powers flagging. Each breath was a little harder than the last. Soon, I wouldn’t have the strength to lift my arms, much less fight.

  I looked into Pierre’s twinkling eyes, both of us knew I was beaten.

  I considered a final desperate gambit––launching my armour at him in one suicidal blast––when a voice cut across the music’s dull throb.

  “None of them had this, though, did they?”

  Sark stood at the edge of the dance floor, arm upraised.

  My heart sank. What was he doing here?

  “What are you talking about, Eli?” Pierre’s smile slipped, and an ugly scowl crept across his features.

  Glinting dully in the false twilight of the dance floor, Sark held the small black box from the safe. I remembered Pierre’s strange preoccupation with the box and the fleeting sight of an engraved clay cylinder.

  What was Sark playing at?

  “Don’t bluff me, Pierre,” Sark warned, giving the box a little shake. The edimmu cringed. “You know me better than that.”

  Pierre wilted, his writhing aura of darkness drooping to the floor.

  “I thought I knew you better than to betray a friend like this, Eli.”

  A bark of laughter burst from Sark as he took another step, shaking the box again. Pierre winced and looked even more pitiful.

  “You’re breaking my heart,” Sark mocked, enjoying the defeated look on the edimmu’s human mask. “Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”

  Pierre’s gaze fell to the floor, shame evident, but something dangerous glinted in the corner of his eye. My gaze swivelled between Sark and Pierre, something was wrong.

  “What do you want, then?” Pierre asked. “Money, contacts, my entire bloody operation?”

  Sark grinned wickedly as he opened the box and drew out the clay cylinder. His grip flexed just a little, and a few grains of crushed pottery sifted down as Pierre visibly writhed.

  “A phylactery,” Sark said, looking up at his plunder. “I never thought I’d see one, much less hold it. My God, Pierre, it must be agonizing seeing your very existence held in my hand.”

  “What do you want, Eli?” Pierre repeated, a strident note of pleading rising in his tone.

  “I’m not sure.” Sark shrugged with a sneer. “How do you put a price on immortality?”

  A shadow slithered along the edge of the dance floor, and I tried to cry out and warn Sark, but the night-black lash was already in motion

  “I guess you’ll never know,” Pierre said in a low, lethal whisper.

  The black tendril snared Sark’s ear, tearing a cry of pain and surprise from his lips. Instantly veins of throbbing, venomous darkness spread from Sark’s neck. His arm flew upward f
rom the shock of the sudden impact, and the poison. The phylactery shot into the air, spinning end over end.

  “NO!” the edimmu screamed as he launched another tendril to snare the fragile clay before it shattered on the floor.

  Moving like lightning, I released my hold on my iron shell, allowing it to fall away except for a single jagged shard of steel. Spots sprang across my vision, and I tasted blood on my lips, but I threw all my remaining strength into that single sliver of metal. It sang through the air, keening like a raptor, a little metal shrike on the hunt. The lights glinted off its sharp edges as it sliced through the edimmu’s gloom and struck true.

  The phylactery burst into a thousand shards of fractured clay.

  Pierre howled, a ripping inhuman sound, as he released Sark and spun towards me.

  “Do you know what you’ve done?!” he screeched, his monstrous countenance erupting through the human guise. “DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE DONE?!”

  I scrambled backwards, unarmoured and exhausted, the cast-off iron biting into my hands. He’d released Sark, who had crumpled to the floor, retching and shuddering. Pierre’s hideous, glowing gaze fixed on me.

  He froze as a terrible cacophonic chorus tore through the air.

  A single word escaped his malformed mouth.

  “Lamashtu.”

  A pig squealed, a donkey brayed, a lion roared, and a dog gave a guttural snarl, all unnervingly in tune. The sound rose, louder and louder, circling the room. Pierre’s blazing gaze turned this way and that, gaping at things I couldn’t see, his mouth working lopsidedly as he gibbered in terror.

  “No!” he screamed, throwing his arms up to ward off some unseen horror. “No! My mistress, my goddess, my lover! Please, no!”

  The darkness writhed around him and erupted in sickly green flames, and from the crackle of the burning shadows, a woman’s voice, sharp and cruel, rose over the din of the tortured beasts.

  “Empty cradles and bleeding bellies,” the voice said in a sing-song tune that dug at my mind like needles. “Have I mercy for them, Ekur?”

  “Please!” Pierre shrieked as he sank to his knees, the flames biting at his flesh. In moments, his human guise was devoured and shrivelled, the ghastly creature laid bare.

  “Please! Mercy!” he screamed as his body began to twist in on itself, snapping and splitting as the voice cackled louder.

  “Mercy?” the voice asked. “Oh, little worm, you spent all these years worshipping the wrong god to ask for mercy!”

  The bestial chorus rose in answer with a fresh burst of cutting laughter.

  The flames flared, and with a single, rending cry of despair, Pierre Gwaffu, once called Ekur, crumpled to the floor as cinders and ash.

  20

  “What the hell happened?” Jackie asked for the tenth time, as we tore down the dark road in the Maserati.

  “Just drive,” Sark growled as he leaned against the window, one hand held his head, the other braced against the dashboard. Twice he’d rolled down the window to be sick. I wasn’t sure if it was Pierre’s poison or seeing what had happened to the edimmu that had hit him so hard, but he was in bad shape.

  I felt tired to my bones, but a blend of nervous shock and power flowing through the Rings kept me from dozing off. An interesting side-effect of having the Rings fused together was that they created a sort of power feedback loop: drawing on my will and then sending it back magnified. While using my powers, this made my metal shaping and moving more potent, but while I was still, it had a restorative effect. The enhanced energy rippled through me, softer than a caffeine boost but in some ways more potent. My body ached from the fight, and probably would for days, but my muscles were already feeling less fatigued. Too bad the Rings couldn’t also restore my dress.

  My mind craved the oblivion of sleep, in vain hope of erasing the memory of the fate of Pierre Gwaffu: the voice of Lamashtu, the bestial choir, seeing him burn. Surreptitiously, I split the Rings in two and moved one half to my left hand, hoping the diffusion of power would let me relax and doze a little. The metal came apart with a soft clink.

  “You okay?”

  Marcus, cradling his damaged arm, watched me with a concerned frown on his much-abused face.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Just tired.”

  Marcus’s eyes narrowed just a hair, and on some unspoken level, we acknowledged that I was lying, but right then wasn’t the time to press the issue. He nodded and sank back in his seat, legs stretching out until they bumped against the back of Jackie’s seat.

  “Sorry,” Marcus grunted as he adjusted his position.

  “And who the hell is this beefcake?” Jackie demanded, her glance flicking to me through the rear-view mirror. “I thought we wanted the ledger, not pick up extra-large party boys.”

  “I wasn’t there for the party,” Marcus rumbled.

  “Then what possible reason could you have for being at the party of the criminal bourgeois? You’re not dressed as a guard or a server.”

  “I … I snuck in,” he said lamely, with a shrug that drew a sharp wince. He rolled his head back and let the pain pass over him in a trembling wave.

  I felt an urge to reach out, to comfort him, to cradle him in my arms. I reached for him but stopped as I realized the first thing I would touch was his wounded arm. Marcus’s eyes were still closed, but the thought of him opening them and seeing me there with my arm outstretched made me snatch my hand back.

  Heat rose to my cheeks as Jackie studied me in the mirror.

  “He came for me,” I said, quietly. “Marcus followed us and snuck in because he thought I was in trouble.”

  Jackie’s eyes widened, and the car drifted towards the shoulder.

  “Eyes on the road!” Sark snarled.

  Jackie jumped and twisted the wheel hard enough that everyone rocked to the side. Marcus let out a low groan, and the stream of curses from Sark was acidic enough to scour a sidewalk. Jackie gripped the wheel in both hands. It was poor form for a getaway driver to crash in the middle of the getting away.

  For several long moments, there was only the rumble of the engine and the hum of the tyres on the road. I closed my eyes, intent on a nap. The fact that I didn’t want to deal with Jackie’s darting glances, or having to see Marcus in pain, was secondary to my exhaustion.

  “We are going to have to talk about this.” Jackie broke the silence. “Things were hard enough when it was just us, to bring another person into this mess …”

  My eyes snapped open, and without sitting up, I turned my gaze to Jackie’s reflection.

  “I didn’t bring him into this,” I replied flatly. “He brought himself in. Did you miss the part where he followed us?”

  The tell-tale scrunch of Jackie’s face meant she was determined to have a fight, rationality be damned. Didn’t happen often, but it was awful timing to have one of her moods.

  “And you didn’t give him any hints?” she pressed, her gaze darting between Marcus and me in the mirror. “No signs that you needed saving?”

  I sat forward, grinding my response between clenched teeth.

  “No. I. Didn’t.” My knuckles gave little pops as my fists clenched around the Rings. “He did all this because the poor bastard cares about me.”

  “My hero,” Sark spat petulantly over his shoulder.

  “Shut-up Sark!” Jackie and I snapped in unison.

  Sark glared at each of us, a crackle of tension racing around the car. A hunted, angry look crossed his face, something that reminded me of him lying on our pantry floor, but it quickly slid behind a wry smile.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I suppose I should be more respectful. After all, he obtained an invitation and transport to this party ... hold on. That was me, wasn’t it?”

  Jackie revved the engine a little but neither of us responded.

  “It must be because he managed to spin a con on the fly when Ibby decided to bring a fake instead of the real artifact. Wait, I think that was also me.”

  “She had her reasons,�
� Jackie muttered, but the look she shot me conveyed how little confidence she had in her answer.

  Sark dismissed Jackie with a wave. “Then it is because he was the one who recognized Pierre’s phylactery for what it was. Oh wait, that was me again.”

  “If I hadn’t kept the box with that philo-thing, you wouldn’t have even known it was there,” Marcus said, his voice sounding weak even as he glared at the back of Sark’s head. “So that’s one thing you owe me.”

  Sark fixed Marcus with a withering glare. “Good show, petty thievery seems to be your one saving grace.”

  “Better a thief than a murderer,” I shot back, the words springing from my lips sharp and hot.

  Sark stared back at me in bald shock.

  “You thought I forgot?” My voice quivered with barely suppressed rage. “Or are you so accustomed to murdering that you forgot about the men whose necks you broke after they were incapacitated?”

  Sark’s expression hardened as everyone in the car turned a condemning glare on him.

  “We are at war,” he said, his voice and face stony as flint. “What part of that don’t you understand?”

  “Even war has rules of engagement,” Marcus rumbled darkly.

  “Shut your mouth, you meat-headed tag-a-long,” Sark snarled. “I’ve been neck-deep in this since I was a teenager.”

  Marcus’s glare sharpened into a hateful stare.

  “If you want to survive this, listen up,” Sark declared, turning a sharp look to everyone in the vehicle. “In this war, the only rule is that you do what you have to when you have to do it. If you have to sleep with someone to get information, you hop into bed and give them the time of their life. If—”

  Jackie made a disgusted sound. I could relate to it, but I remembered that moment with Marcel. How far would I have gone when I thought Jackie’s life hung in the balance?

  Sark’s voice punched through my conflicted thoughts.