“We don’t have a choice,” Charles grunted. “If you’re not up to it yet, drink in more of her damn energy. We have work to do.”
I nodded and did as he asked, filling myself with as much of it as I could stand.
Tamara’s beautiful alabaster face crinkled with worry. “Are you sure you two can do it?”
Charles stared across the open expanse to where the possessed Vulcan had crushed half the visitor’s center and was beginning its climb down the steeper side of the mountain. “God willing,” he muttered, mopping his brow with his bush hat before handing it to a slightly grossed-out looking Tamara, “we’re about to find out.”
My veins burned. I held myself upright. “Then let's get this show on the road.”
“Wait!” Tamara grabbed me, turned me to face her. In a flash, her soft lips met my cracked, bloody ones, a different kind of lightning. Only a second passed, not even long enough for Charles to groan or complain, but it made me smile despite the exhaustion, despite the corruption prickling at the ends of my nerves. “Ashes.” She grabbed my face in her hands. “You’d better come back to me,” she warned.
“Awwww.” I grinned. “How could I say no to that face?” I pulled away; she let me go.
But I felt more like myself than I had in hours.
I wasn’t even surprised as Charles clambered awkwardly onto my back.
He placed the staff across my throat, trying to straddle me like some weird, dead horse, and I settled him more firmly into place.
“I need to buy some straps for this,” I remarked, glancing over my shoulder at him. “What’s the plan, Chief?”
“Get me in place,” he responded, hooking an arm around my neck and pointing toward the disappearing Vulcan with the glowing end of his staff. “Tear away some plates and expose where her heart would be. I’ll finish it.”
That sounded easier than it could possibly be. “Then you’d better hold on tight.”
“…Oh shit,” he muttered.
I kept the borrowed energy coursing through me as I launched myself into the night. I stepped from shadow to distant shadow, dragging Charles with me. I latched onto the Vulcan’s empty pedestal with my claws, flinging myself upward, all too easy to ascend to the top with the power churning inside my gut. Once at the apex of the city, I scanned the darkness for the climbing figure of Vulcan-Meladoquiel—
—And threw myself off the mountain after it.
“Ohhhhh shiiiit,” Charles bellowed directly in my ear as we plummeted.
One more jaunt through the shadows, and I latched onto the Vulcan’s exposed ribs as it descended, crumpling trees like twigs as it climbed directly toward the city’s busy core. The statue paused as I dug in my claws, scaling it as I headed towards its heart.
“Ashley? Charles?” I’d never heard a statue chuckle before, and I decided I could live with never hearing it again. “I can feel your presence, you know.”
One arm anchoring it to the mountain, the enormous statue slapped at us with the other; I leapt aside at the last moment as it swatted at us like mosquitoes. Charles’ grip around my neck tightened as we slid and skidded, my claws finally taking hold again halfway down its stomach.
“No, dammit! Higher!” He demanded.
“I know that!” I snapped back, climbing and watching for giant statue hands trying to crush us. “Shut up and let me work.”
“What do you gain from stopping me?” Vulcan-Meladoquiel asked, tilting the god of the forge’s head to look down at us. “Accomplishment? Thrill? I can understand those.” Ink splashed down from the statue’s huge, gray, emotionless eyes. Charles grunted as my bare foot slipped in the hot, oily liquid, and we thumped hard against the Ur-demon’s thick iron skin.
“Or do you defy me simply because you can?” A massive hand came crashing down, blocking out the light. I threw us upward, and the cast iron statue rang like a dull bell from the impact as the blow barely missed, the gust of wind from its passage tossing our hair and clothes upward. “I suppose that, too, I can understand.”
“Look out!” Charles shouted; I glanced back to see the mountain rushing at us and leapt aside, jumping sideways to a nearby treetop, then back as the Vulcan ground its chest against the rock and pushed away again.
“After all,” Vulcan-Meladoquiel mused in her hollow, deafening voice, “I have stood tall in those particular shoes as well.”
I latched onto the right side of the Vulcan’s chest, digging my claws in and skittering to the left, narrowly avoiding another ponderous, ringing strike from the statue’s palm.
“Here!” the wizard on my back announced. He pulled himself forward, and I winced as Rhongomyniad blazed to life in his outstretched hand, the spear’s brilliant light nearly as abrasive to my nature as Meladoquiel’s unholy will.
The ruby spear point burned as it contacted the statue’s body, melting a thick line in the dull iron, but not penetrating. Meladoquiel rumbled thunderously overhead, but she didn’t cry out like she had before. “She has too much power in this form,” Charles cursed. “Dig into her or something. Open her up, get me a shot inside.”
“Uh-oh,” Vulcan-Meladoquiel commented calmly from above, every massive word falling on me like a physical weight. “I seem to keep missing,” she complained. I glanced back as a shadow loomed; slowly, carefully, the Ur-demon maneuvered a great gray hand directly over us, lowering it down to smash us flat.
Frantically, I tore at the figure’s cast iron skin with my own rusty iron claws, leaving scratches, then gouges, then long, thin rents in the old metal.
And then there was no more time.
I tossed Charles forward, into the statue’s damaged chest, putting my boot under his ass to hold him in place and hoping he didn’t fall over anyway as I stood, horizontally, and caught the Vulcan’s hand.
Even empowered, my muscles strained to their limits, my iron-hard Strigoi bones groaning and flexing. I had to shift the majority of weight off of my battered knee as it immediately threatened to give out, and I poured all of my will into holding Vulcan-Meladoquiel’s mighty hand at bay.
I couldn’t tell if my herculean efforts were working, or if she was simply taking her sweet time about killing us.
“Do…something…dammit!” I shouted at the dazed wizard, my voice as strained as everything else in my body. I felt like I was about to snap in two at any moment.
Nodding, barely glancing back at the looming Hand of Doom, Charles stuffed Rhongomyniad’s tip into the largest crease in the Vulcan’s armor, and I felt an immense surge of power. The world blurred a little as Charles reached Next Door, funneling energy directly into the ancient spear and magnifying it.
Static arced and leapt along us and the Vulcan alike, and I had to turn my head away from the artifact’s dazzling corona.
But the statue didn’t fall.
I shifted nervously as a dribble of molten iron ran toward my boot. “Charles?” I called out, panic swiftly swelling in my gut.
“It’s not enough!” he called back, his own voice wild.
“That was close,” Vulcan-Meladoquiel chided us from above.
“I need inside,” the wizard shouted.
“Too close,” the possessed statue finished.
The crushing weight abruptly doubled; I cried out as something tore and I fell to my knees. I barely caught Charles with my other leg, preventing him from tumbling down the mountain. The Vulcan’s might flattened my outstretched arms, and I pressed my back against its palm, straining in desperation. Bones cracked and bent. I reached downward, scraping the tips of my claws against the cuts in the iron, but I couldn’t reach, couldn’t apply leverage while fighting the statue.
Resignation settled over me, and I prepared to kick Charles free before he was crushed alongside me; he was much more likely to survive a fall from this height than the crushing hand of a demon-possessed statue.
Then I shook the feeling off.
We’d come so far; I didn’t want to fail here.
Not wit
h us…
I reached down again, my back and bones shuddering, and scraped the statue ineffectually with my claws, putting every last shred of my will into opening up the Vulcan. Charles fell forward as my body started to give way, his face bouncing off the iron as he accidentally head-butted the statue.
So…
I felt a strange resistance at the tips of my claws: a spark, a weight, a resonance. The corrupted energy crawled along my nerves, sickening me, disorienting me. I focused on the statue, pushing at it with a claw.
Close…
And at my touch, the iron melted away, parting seemingly of its own accord as I scratched at it.
It was only a split second before the feeling eluded me again, leaving only a small slash the size of my two fists.
I didn’t ask questions; it was enough.
I hoped.
“Charles!”
The wizard shoved himself precariously upright, grabbed the new hole with one hand, and stuffed Rhongomyniad into it with the other.
A surge of power and static bleached the color from the night, and Meladoquiel finally cried out, a piercing, metallic cry of agony; her outcry was joined by another, alien wail as the ancient spear-staff in Charles’ fist glowed radiant one more time—
—and blew apart into a thousand dazzling ruby and wood pieces.
Then the immense pressure cut off, and we were falling.
I grabbed Charles with my free hand as he stared, dumbfounded, at the bundle of smoking splinters in his blackened fist. My undead body shuddered, trying to remember how to respond to my commands.
“You two ‘heroes’ don't know what you've done.” Meladoquiel’s voice, now mercifully smaller, wound its way through the inside of my thoughts. Charles twitched.
The wind whistled past us; I got a better grip on my wizard and forced my aching, straining muscles to relax a little, prying my torso free of the statue’s crushing embrace.
The Ur-demon’s voice and laughter followed us as we fell. “You'll regret not letting me go.”
I gathered myself, locked my eyes on a shadow, and stepped away from the Vulcan, letting it continue its fall in solitude.
“But don't worry,” Her voice chased us, growing swiftly fainter, an acrid whisper on the wind. “I always win in the end.”
Two more leaps and a little climbing saw us to the top of Red Mountain once more.
“After all…”
We peered over the side as the Vulcan tumbled down, flattening trees and everything else in its path.
“…This game’s been rigged from the start.”
“I hope to hell there are no houses down there,” I rasped, wincing as the iron man bounced, one arm flying free from his torso as he rang dully against rocks and started to slow. “And that it stops before it finds some hidden mountainside suburb.”
Charles nodded. “But whatever casualties it causes, it’s better than the alternative.”
“She didn’t seem to think so,” I replied.
He grunted.
“Do you think we got her this time?” I looked away from the statue’s trail of destruction and toward the wizard. “Actually banished her, I mean?”
“Ashley…” Charles ran a hand through his messy brown hair and sighed. “At this point, your guess is as good as mine.”
With a ringing boom that echoed in my bones, the Vulcan came to a final stop…and exploded.
In a metaphysical sense, of course.
Its momentum spent and the spirit inside it gone, all of the concentrated death, despair, and ritual magic blew outward like a great, foul wind, plucking at my supernatural senses as it passed. I looked around, feeling it out in my mind’s eye as it settled over the whole city like magical fallout.
“That’s…probably not good,” I commented.
“That,” Charles replied firmly, “is for tomorrow.” And with that, he turned his back on the view and limped away.
o o o
By the time we rejoined Tamara and the now-conscious rooftop girl, they had company.
Hershel blinked down at me, Fright’s coldfire blade slung over one shoulder, the hilt of his verdant zweihander protruding from above the other one, its Zelda keychain swaying softly in the wind. “The good guys won?” The big fairy raised one bushy eyebrow; apparently it wasn’t obvious.
“I think so?” I supposed it wasn’t obvious to me either.
He noted me still eying the glacial blade casually gripped in one big hand. “Spoils of war,” he said.
Charles grunted. “You’re all just lucky Hershel came and found me when he did. You couldn’t have done this without me.”
I nodded. So that’s what had provoked Charles’ timely entry. “You and Fright.” I glanced around again. “Where is Fright?”
Hershel shrugged. Tamara shuddered. I rasped out a sigh, feeling tired. Meladoquiel’s energy was dispersing; I could hold on to it for a bit longer, but I could already feel exhaustion and blood hunger creeping back in.
Tamara said something softly to the nervous human girl, giving her a gentle squeeze around the shoulders. I nodded to her, and she gave me a shy, timid smile in return.
Tamara met my eyes, and I smiled warmly. There’d be plenty of time for us later.
I glanced at Hershel. “So…what do I owe you for your services tonight?”
The big fairy looked thoughtful for a moment. “Maybe a Snickers?” He shrugged. “This was mostly self-serving.”
I breathed out a stale breath of relief and nodded.
“Really wish I knew where Fright went,” I turned around, making a sad note of Charles, leaning against a tall stump, gazing at the fistful of burnt splinters in his hand. Even Rhongomyniad’s golden chain was blackened, the large ruby gone save for a few charred red shards. “I wanted to ask him about—”
Heart rates spiked as the human girl screamed. I spun back around in time to see her topple to the ground—
—As Juris rose stiffly to his feet, pulling Tamara with him. In one hand, he held a sharp, silver stake, the point drawing a single ruby bead from the pale flesh of Tamara’s throat. In the other, he clutched a small holdout pistol, his grip wavering as he pointed it erratically around at us.
“It seems,” the Moroi croaked, his voice raw and broken. “That fate has given me a second chance.” The bead of red at Tamara's throat turned into a trickle as she struggled and he pressed the stake more firmly into her neck.
I made to move toward him, but the gun jerked toward me, the anointed aura emanating from the short barrel a barrier of its own. “No,” I demanded, anger rising. “Stop this. It’s me you want, remember?”
He laughed, a damaged, awful sound. “No, Strigoi. I wanted you to suffer.” Blood trickled from the edges of his smile. “Grief for grief. Remember?”
Tamara shifted on her feet, and he wrapped his stake arm completely around her neck, turning the small gun and pressing it directly against her temple.
Hesitating, I glanced from Hershel to Charles. I looked into the shadows behind the Moroi, running the angles. I could step behind him, or rush him, and close the distance in less than a second; but could I do it before his inhuman reflexes pulled the trigger?
I continually pushed the rage away as I fretted, searching for a fail-proof way to save the woman I cared about…
…and finally relaxed as I looked deep into her sapphire eyes and realized it didn’t matter.
Juris frowned, staring at me with bloodshot hazel eyes. “I will do it. You know I will. I owe you this much and more—”
“Yeah, yeah,” I cut him off, rolling my eyes. “Family blood debt, I murdered everyone you ever loved, blah blah blah.”
I smirked as he stared at me; it looked like his eyes were going to pop out of his head. His arm shook as fury overtook his face, leaking out into the air.
Charles put a reassuring hand on my shoulder, leaning on me for support. “Should we tell him?”
I shook my head. “Nah. He’s about to figure it out all on his
own.”
Juris’ finger trembled, tensed, and pulled the trigger.
Tamara jerked herself downward at the last moment, simultaneously shrugging her cousin’s clumsy grip upward as she read his intentions. The first shot flew harmlessly over her head, grazing Juris’ other arm, and sailed off the mountaintop and into the night. Then she set her feet and twisted, almost yanking the other Moroi’s arm out of socket, and stepped in close to him before he knew what was happening.
Juris’ second shot buried itself in his own stomach.
Hershel laughed as Tamara took the gun away from her wounded cousin, tossing it aside as she rose and kicking the silver stake away from his shocked fingers for good measure. “Nice one,” the fairy commented.
Tamara smiled grimly.
Juris moved to rise, and I kicked him over and perched on his chest, dangling eighteen inches of Strigoi claw in his face. “Yeah. As it turns out, this guy makes a lot of mistakes on his own.” I smiled fondly at Tamara, and she trailed an affectionate hand across my shoulders. “He didn’t even realize…”
“…That he was picking on the wrong fucking damsel in distress,” she finished, her dull sapphire eyes sparkling. “I mean, we were never close, but to think I was helpless…” Slowly, her mirth darkened. “But what do we do with him?”
“There’s only one safe answer,” Charles commented flatly. I nodded, inching my claws toward the prone Moroi’s throat. Tamara looked away.
“Stop!”
Tamara shook, nearly cowering as a raspy, melodic voice caught us all off guard. Rooftop Girl scrambled away, hiding behind me as Fright burst from a section of intact trees, Kitty following close behind.
Even Charles flinched away at the Fae’s sudden appearance, his heart rate rapidly rising as his fingers dipped Next Door.
“Fright!” Juris’ triumphant voice called out. “Save me! Kill them!”
For a long moment, everyone stared at the little Fae, who, in turn, stared at Juris, his eyes large and curious.
“No?” he finally replied.
Juris stammered, pale, staring up at my claws as I smiled and poked him in the face. “But…you have to! We have a deal—”
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