by Rowan Casey
That was their endgame: a new kind of queen for when the Veil came down.
I grabbed her wrist, intending to pull her hand away from my cheek even as I shuddered at her touch, and as I did her other hand closed around my wrist with a vicelike grip I couldn’t break and twisted the bones until they cracked. I felt each one surrender to her, breaking, and stil she kept on crushing my wrist until jagged spurs of bone pierced through the skin. I’m not to proud to admit I screamed. And I mean "heard all across the valley" screamed.
She pushed me away with the same negligence she’d shown for Merchant, and I fell with about as much grace, clutching my ruined wrist. There was blood from the torn skin, and two white shards of bone stabbing out beneath my useless hand. It was a mess. I fell to my knees.
She stepped around me, eyes only for Grimm, who struggled to free his blade from the folds of his coat. As his hand closed around the hilt it seemed to earth the magical charge still coursing through his system, that same weird blue light chased down the blade to discharge into the ground beneath him.
It scorched the earth, searing the scrub grass which shrank away from the old mage, smoking.
"You are spent, old man, there isn’t a lick of magic in your corpse. But please, keep on fighting. It will be no fun killing you if you don’t at least try."
"Just kill me and get it over with, you old hag," Grimm muttered, and for a moment I saw through the pain and knew he was out of tricks. I don’t know what I’d expected, but after he’d told me the trade he’d made to bring me back, I should have known what it meant for a man like him to have lost his magic. He has lived for centuries with it as part of him. Without it, he couldn’t trust his instincts, or his flesh.
He struggled to rise, using the mighty sword as a crutch.
Theomacha delivered another shocking charge, this one causing every muscle in his body to lock rigid, his jaw to clench and his arms to be flung wide as the power sought a way out of his skin. He burned. Every pore bled with that unforgettable fire. It transformed his body into a human torch. And through the fire his screams were a match for anything I had managed.
I couldn’t just kneel there feeling sorry for myself. I needed to fight back, somehow. It all came down to this. Everything the last twelve hours had taught me about choices and destiny, they’d all led to this moment on Mount Lee, beneath the Hollywood sign, looking out over the city of angels. And I realized the one fundamental truth about the last twelve hours: knowing that I was going to die at the end of it, I’d come to an understanding with my own mortality. I wasn’t afraid. Hell, I was ready to embrace it if it made a difference. And I could make a difference, because as much as I was Sam Lake, seedy upskirt photographer of the stars, I was also Lancelot du Lac, Veil Knight and that meant something all the way down to my soul.
I found the strength to stand, cradling my wrist, and ran at her.
I wasn’t fast enough.
She unleashed a third incantation, more potent than the previous two combined. Grimm lost his grip on the weapon and staggered back into the giant L. Instead of crashing into the letter and stumbling away winded, he hit the letter hard and seemed to sink into it. The stuff of the sign absorbed Grimm into it, sucking him in deep despite both of our screams, and closing around him so that he was trapped within the sign, hands up doing the whole Han Solo in carbonite thing. There was no way he could breathe in there.
A crystalline sheet of ice frosted across the front of the letter. I could see Grimm trapped beneath it. There was no life in his eyes.
"What have you done?" I screamed, hitting Theomacha with the full force of my charge like a linebacker sacking the quarterback.
She went down hard, vulnerable to such a straightforward attack. I took the full weight of the fall on my shattered wrist. The pain of the impact was blinding.
But I didn’t care. Grimm was dead.
Was that how it always worked with magic? One for one? I’d made it through the night so someone else had to die?
I wrestled the wych in the dirt. She was incredibly strong and I was a shadow of the man I had been, but I was desperate enough to make her hurt. I failed out, grabbing a fist full of her hair and slammed her head down into the dirt, while she tore me another one–in this case literally–grasping me where it absolutely hurt, nails shearing through the denim as she made a mess down there.
I knew what I needed to do. It was a million to one shot, Jim, but it might just work. She still had the dagger, Carnwenhau. And that meant there was a weapon capable of hurting her within my reach, if I could just find it. That of course meant enduring more excruciating pain as she sank her nails into my balls and started to shred them.
"It’s not like I need ‘em" I gasped as another shockwave of pain tore through my system.
"A boy and his balls are easily parted," Hollywood’s greatest madam said, and she ought to know.
I reached around, which was a lot less fun than it might have been and found something stiff between her legs. Yeah, no, not that. White hilt, strapped up against her inner thigh. There was no way I was getting her black cocktail dress up over her head, and frankly no way I was holding onto consciousness for more than a handful of seconds before I blacked out.
"This isn’t how I imagined us rolling around," I grunted, earning a grunt back from the mystical queen.
"Nice to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor along with everything else," she said, meaningfully.
That hurt almost as much as her nails.
"Why?" I said, stalling for time as I struggled with her dress.
"Oh, do shut up," she said. This isn’t some Hanna-Barbera cartoon where I tell you all my plans and mutter about how if it wasn’t for you meddling kids I would have gotten away with it. This is grown up time. I did it for the good of the world, something that fool of an old man could never grasp. I did it for progress. I did it because men have destroyed this world systematically from day one, and it is time we undid their mess before we run out of time. I did it because I believe in something greater. I believe in both forms, the masculine and the feminine, the shadow and the light, the monde and the demimonde, neither can exist without the other, and that is what that fool Myrddin has forgotten. We are counterparts, without one the other will always fail, and that is what is happening now. Cut off from the source of all magic this world is losing its miracles, and a world bereft of miracles is a barren place."
"So, you’re the good guy in all this?" I said, my hand around the hilt of Carnwenhau like I was stroking her erection through dress.
I felt something then, a presence inside my head, a blunt force lacking any finesse or control as it sought to overpower my body through its invasion: the succubus pulling the same shit her dead partner had.
Suddenly I was fighting on two fronts, and it was a fight I had no hope of winning. I twisted my good wrist before I lost control of it altogether, and felt the vorpal blade slice clean through the meat of Theomacha’s inner thigh, cutting through the femoral artery in the process. It wasn’t pretty, but it was effective. Her screams weren’t of pain, but rather rage as she was forced to disengage. The wych rolled out from under me, pushing my lifeless body away. I couldn’t fight back. I just lay there in the dirt thinking that, as far as deaths went, this was a pretty shitty one after all.
"I won’t kill you quickly," she said, looking down at me. Blood streamed down her legs. I couldn’t understand how she was still standing, but it didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest. As though mocking me, she hiked up her dress and I saw the hideous wound. A normal person would have made fifteen, twenty seconds left at best. But Theomacha was far from normal. She stood over me, bleeding over me, and began to whisper the words of an incantation that, as she touched her ruined thigh with her index finger knitted the flesh, fusing the wound and stemming the blood loss. She made it appear to be so effortless. Simple. I had no idea how I was supposed to fight such a powerful entity.
Or why I should even bother.
There was no win here.
No matter what Charlie Sheen or the Orange One said, this wasn’t winning. Or if it was, well, then I was bone fucking tired of it.
All that, and barely a scratch to show for it once the blood was cleaned away?
I couldn’t move.
I was forced to just lie there and watch as the wych walked to where the wounded succubus lay, and laid on hands, performing a miracle that involved drawing the bullet out of the demon and casting it aside, then sealing the wound with a kiss. "Fly," she breathed into the demonic creature’s parted lips as she drew in a breath full of the wych’s powerful life. "And see that our little girl grows up safe and strong."
The succubus unfurled her leathery wings, beating the air once, twice, and on the third began to rise, backlit by the moon. She looked like an angel rising into the heavens, disappearing into the darkness as she rose beyond the reach of the light.
I could hear her wings long after she had vanished from sight.
But more importantly than that, I could move my pinkie finger. It was just a twitch to test it, because I couldn’t feel the weight of the demon presence inside me, and if she was gone, well then Theomacha had screwed up, because that demonic BDSM mind control was the only thing stopping me from grabbing Grimm’s sword with my only good hand and launching it at her. My finger twitched. My lips curled into a cruel smile.
Excalibur is a huge bastard of a sword, and heavy. I reached out for it, curling my fingers around the weapon’s hilt. I hadn’t held something as natural in my life. This sword belonged to me in ways that defied logic, and to be blunt, I belonged to it. Lovers entwined, divine, divine, as the song went. I steeled myself, fighting to keep my breathing deep and steady, and as Theomacha turned to look back down at me, I put all of my strength into one desperate throw of the dice. I hurled the greatsword through the air at the sorceress’s heart–and my aim was true.
The silver blade spun end over end.
Theomacha saw it coming and raised both her hands, I thought defensively, but as Excalibur’s blade bit into her breast clapped both hands around the blade arresting its flight.
She stared down at it.
I stared up at it.
The tip of the blade was buried six inches deep in her chest. There was blood forming around the wound where it had opened her up. Her hands were clasped together as though in prayer.
I thought she was simply going to close her eyes and draw it out of her body, like Arthur from the stone, though of course that never happened. She didn’t. I realized her lips were moving, though I couldn’t hear the enchantment the wych was weaving.
She still wore the mask of black feathers, though it had come slightly dislodged, exposing more of her cheek than it was meant to. The air eddied around the feathers, causing a ripple to run through them. The faster her lips moved the more the feathers ruffled, until she drew the sword out of her flesh. There was no sealing the wound this time. Excalibur was unlike any other blade as it was not of this realm, but rather, like its wielder straddled both this world and the Demimonde, making it immune to her charms.
With the wound unplugged, the life spilled out of her.
Theomacha breathed one last breath of the incantation, and the feathers flew in a flurry from her mask, breaking and rising to reform as a raven high in the sky above us even as her legs buckled and she fell.
I could feel the hatred burning off the bird like some all-consuming fire, blazing bright enough it could have put out the moon. But there was nothing the creature could do: it’s mortal body was in deep shit which was about to get deeper as I staggered to my feet and stumbled across to where she had fallen, and used all of my strength to draw Myrddin’s blade and cleave what little remained of her head from her shoulders. I figure that’s always a smart move: I’ve watched my share of Romero flicks.
I sank to my knees beside the two parts of Theomacha’s corpse, knowing that the wych was far from dead, and sat there, looking at Grimm frozen within the Hollywood sign.
I couldn’t save him, but I was damned if I was going to leave him in there like that.
I had to get him out of there.
My wrist was such a mess that without the adrenalin coursing through my system I was absolutely screwed. I couldn’t swing the weapon with anything approaching the savage ferocity needed to shatter the spell that entrapped him.
Then I remembered something he’d said about the one difference this time, compared with the last time I’d lived this day through, and that was the Colt. It had been important enough to make the pact with whatever he’d gone to to beg them to turn back time, so I could get it…
What if it had never been about me dying?
What if that was just more Hollywood lies from a man I trusted with my life?
What if it had always been about Grimm’s death?
Then why was the Colt so important?
I could only think of one answer, so I crawled on my hand and knees to where Arondight lay discarded and forgotten, gathered it up, and turned myself to sit facing the huge letter where Grimm was trapped. I braced my good hand on my ruined one, taking my time to aim and fired five times in quick succession, the bullets cracking through the crystal skin of Myrddin’s prison. For a moment I thought I’d gotten it wrong. But then the first sharp crack echoed through the Hollywood night, followed by a second and a third as the frosted tomb broke apart. Huge pieces of glass broke and fell, crumbling around Dante Grimm, who stood in the middle of it, utterly still.
And then a huge gasp escaped the old man’s lips and he collapsed forward, breaking through the last of his prison to fall sprawling across the Hollywood hillside.
He lay on his back, gasping and fighting to control his breathing, no strength for words.
I still cradled Arondight in my good hand, but the pain from my ruined wrist was unbearable now, all of my body’s natural drugs worn off, and when I looked out over LA all I saw was the punishing descent. I had no idea how I’d make it. I just had to focus on the win: we were alive. That was more than I imagined when I woke up this morning.
"Welcome back," I said.
I sat with my back against one of the wooden stanchions supporting the sign, face-to-face with a still very dead Nik Devaigne, and despite everything, all of my promises to myself that I was going to be a better man, I took my phone from my pocket and took what would become the iconic photo of the murdered rock star. We weren’t going anywhere for a while, so before I dialed 911 I sent an email to my guy at TMZ and offered him the scoop, including the photograph, for a not so small fortune. The reply came back instantaneously. He’s one of these people who, if they don’t answer in a couple of minutes, aren’t going to answer. The message was two words: How much?
I put a number with several zeroes.
His reply was just as to the point: if you’ve got what you say, deal.
I attached the last photo of Nik Devaigne, backlit against the Hollywood sign, the ultimate rock star moment of his rock star death, and there was no mistaking it was him.
The next message was a terse: Holy fuck!
So yeah, that was a done deal. The money shot.
In the days to come that photograph became my shot seen around the world. It appeared in every magazine, newspaper, on tv news reports, everywhere. MTV, cable, and network news. And every time they used it, they paid for the pleasure. So maybe I hadn’t changed all that much, after all. You can’t imagine how many zeroes it added to my bank account. One shot had made me a very wealthy man.
While we waited for the cops and the paramedics, Grimm finally got his wits together and crawled across to the dead queen and taking her head in his hands, he held her face to his. I thought for one weird moment he was about to do some very uncomfortable necrophiliac stuff, but before their lips touched the last breath that had been trapped within Theomacha’s mouth escaped into his and Grimm breathed in the tiniest trace of her essence. It was the single spark that would, in the coming hours, reignite his
magic. I don’t know how it worked, but I saw the spark. It was a single crackle of electricity that leapt from her lips to his. And in that moment he was connected to the earth’s magic again, though the wych had taken most of her battery of residual magic with her as she’d transformed and fled her failing body, that last lingering trace had been enough to reawaken his own connection to the old ways.
Alive again, Grimm turned to me, and said with a smile, "You took your time. I was beginning to think you’d never work it out."
I hadn’t until that moment, but I wasn’t letting on.
"It was never about me saving myself was it?"
"No."
"I get it. You’ve got the second sight. You saw this future and knew the wych queen was going to win. There is no déjà vu. You didn’t turn back time at all, did you?"
Now his grin was fierce. "Of course not, foolish boy. I am powerful, but not that powerful."
"So how did you lose your magic?"
"There is more than one wyrd sister, Sam. The old queens have a lot of power. Collectively they are more powerful than I could ever dream of being. Theomacha’s name means, quite literally, the Enemy of God. She is one of nine such sisters of lore, the eldest and most powerful of her clan of fay sisters being Morgana. They have twin aspects, the hauntingly beautiful women of the wildwood and the black birds that you have noted several times today, watching your progress. Things are happening, my friend. Strange, unprecedented things. Like me, the wyches are blessed with second sight, so they too knew that this confrontation was inevitable, but no one could have foreseen the subtle changes that Nimue had wrought by hiding the Tar Pits from sight for the duration of your meeting. That was the bargain I made, knowing the wyches sought to remove me from the field before the coming battle. Should they have succeeded, we would have lost. I don’t need to tell you what would have happened, you are awake. You know."