Azrael’s long nose twitched a few times before they spoke again.
“I honestly don’t know, Luv. This is all new to me. I’d never heard of Technetium until you explained things to me after that first time MOME blew a bunch of folks up. I don’t know how to reverse that kind of thing, but at least she won’t die right away and take the whole world down with her, eh? Nice if we can put off the end of the universe for a little while longer, innit?”
“Why do you sound more human in your squirrel form?” I asked, unable to miss how Azrael’s accent had thickened the more we’d sat talking at the top of this cliff.
“Dunno, could just be your perception of me. After all, you’re not even listenin’ to me speak really, just a translation of what I’m saying in demon. Maybe I jus’ seem more human to you now?”
“But you aren’t actually from South London, so the accent is put on anyway, at least it is when you have vocal chords, so why on Earth would I—oh fuck it, who cares? Is that all you had for me? I suppose I should be getting back to inform Siara about her meal plan.”
Az began to nod, then turned, eyes growing wide with horror, as an ominous thundering rolled in from the distance.
“Az? What is that?”
“That, Luv, is our cue to leave.”
I shuffled myself towards the cliff ledge, getting ready to climb down to Siara’s cave again.
“Not that way, Luv. We need to get through the nearest seam and get out of here.”
“I can’t leave Siara down there,” I said, turning towards Az for a moment, mentally preparing myself for the climb down, all the while.
“Vic, stop! Don’t be ridiculous! You can’t get to her before the stampede gets here, and you’ll never make that climb without taking a falling demon to the head. You’ll just get killed and have nothing to show for it.”
“I can’t just leave her here, Az!” I said, lying down and dangling my feet over the edge to start my descent.
“You can come back!” Az shouted. He had to shout now to be heard over the distant rumbling. A rumbling that was getting terrifyingly less distant with each second. “You can take the seam out of here and come back in an hour and they’ll be gone! But if you stay here, you’ll die. Siara has that cave for cover, the demons won’t kill her unless she’s too dim to duck in when she hears the stampede. She doesn’t seem dim to me. Please Vic, believe me, you do not want to be stuck on that cliff when they get here.”
Az’s face was so earnest, such a tiny, squirrelish vision of concern, that I had to take his words seriously for a moment. Then something occurred to me.
“Are you just saving your own ass, Az? Because I know you can’t get out of here without help.”
Their eyes widened, but before they could protest, the wave of sound that had been slowly approaching crested a hill behind us and I saw a black sea of… writhing life? Demons? I couldn’t tell what it was exactly, but it was moving towards us far faster than I would have believed possible. I couldn’t make out individual shapes in the mass, but it was quite clear that nothing in the path of that wall of living creatures would be spared.
Before I could think about it again, I pulled myself up from the ledge, snatched Az from the ground in front of me, and reached for the nearest fold in spacetime.
I’m sorry, Siara. I’ll try to be back soon. Watch out for falling snacks
I HAD EXPECTED to find myself back in the same MOME dungeon I’d snatched Siara from. After all, the last time I’d used the seam at the top of the canyon in Az’s realm, that’s where I’d wound up. Instead, I found myself standing in a giant green field, waist deep in waving rows of a grain I wasn’t familiar with, but which could easily have been wheat.
The sky was blue again, so we definitely weren’t in Azrael’s realm, but beyond that I had no idea where we were. The air smelled of earth and plants. The sun was warm on my skin, and the only thing I could see, as far as the horizon, was grain.
“Well… this is new…” I muttered, as I turned to look from the landscape to Azrael, who had been in my arms as we’d arrived. They were no longer in my arms. They were also no longer Azrael. Or rather, instead of a red furless squirrel or a winged humanoid, I now stood a few feet away from an enormous death omen.
Since no one else was around, I was pretty sure it was Azrael.
“That’s different,” I said, taking in all of maybe-Azrael’s latest body.
Maybe-Azrael seemed to be a raven, except they were a raven that was at least a head taller than I was, and proportioned accordingly.
Caw.
“Let me guess,” I said, still staring at the feathers that were so deep a black they had a blue sheen to them. “There’s no translation magic in this realm.”
Caw caw.
“Well, at least you don’t sound like a dying cat every time you open your mouth,” I replied with a sigh. The giant raven’s feathers ruffled, and it snapped its beak angrily, making me fairly certain it was indeed Azrael who stood before me.
“One of these days, you’ll have to explain to me why your form manifests so differently in every realm,” I said, as I turned my head to the sky to take in our surroundings more clearly. It was going to be damned annoying that Azrael couldn’t explain things to me here. Which made me even more certain that Azrael was now a giant raven, because of course they would be. This is my life we’re talking about, and if it ain’t inconvenient and weird, it’s trying to kill me.
I had no idea where we were, but as long as nothing terrible happened, I supposed we just needed to wait an hour and then I could just find the seam that had brought us here and take it back.
“I suppose I should just make sure I know where that seam is,” I muttered, mostly to myself, as I stretched my hands out in front of me and felt for the fold in space and time that would get us out of here. “Just to be certain we can get back easily once we’ve waited out the stampede.”
CAW CAW CAW CAW CAW!
I turned to look at Azrael, even as I felt my fingers hum with the energy of the seam that had brought us here.
“What?” I asked, concerned by the frantic tone to Azrael’s cawing.
Caw.
Azrael’s last caw had contained a finality that sent a shiver down my spine, and when I turned to look at them, their eyes were gazing skyward at a spot in the distance.
A spot that was getting larger.
“Az… what’s that?” I asked, even though I knew the raven couldn’t answer me, at least not in a way that I could understand.
Caw.
Az hopped to my side, collapsing a swath of wheat in their wake, and hunkered down in a gesture that made it all too clear that I should get on their back.
I scoffed at that, and reached for my dragon form instead. Az wasn’t the only one with wings here. I closed my eyes and imagined the rush of air beneath my wings, the feeling of a mouth filled with fangs that could rend an entire cow in a single bite, a belly full of fire hot enough to melt a vampire’s skull, and…
Nothing. Nothing happened. Nothing changed.
Caw, caw, CAW.
Az was sounding more than a little bit anxious. I looked up and saw that the distant spot was now much larger, and I decided that having my own wings wasn’t worth getting caught by whatever was coming for us. I climbed onto Azrael’s back and clung on for dear life as the giant raven’s wings flapped in an ever more hurried attempt to get us airborne.
After a few heartbeats, Az shot us skyward. For a second I worried that I would slide right off their back, but then they evened out and we were aloft, streaking over the great field of grain and then over a forest that must have been just out of sight from the field we’d started in. Az put on a burst of speed I would never have though possible for a raven. Of course, I’d never seen a raven this large before, so it could just have come down to the physics of a raven about fifty times bigger than average. Though, when I thought about it that way, I wondered if it should be physically possible for a raven that size to a
ctually fly. I quickly abandoned that line of thinking, however, since Az was clearly flying whether physics liked it or not, and whatever had been coming for us was beginning to catch up.
As I looked over my shoulder I could see the shape of what had once been a burgeoning black dot on the horizon materialize into a cloud of wings and glinting metal behind us.
“That looks bad,” I admitted, even as I hunkered closer to Az’s shoulders. “Any chance you can go faster?” I asked, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. I didn’t know if it would faze Az at all, but panicking generally didn’t help anything and I knew it could be as contagious as a bad STI.
Caw.
It was a grumble that I wouldn’t have been able to hear at all over the sound of the wind in my ears, but as I was pressed tight against Az’s avian form, I felt it in my chest.
Panic or no, the vocalization made it clear I wasn’t helping.
And soon enough I didn’t have to worry about panic, or Az, or anything else except how I was about to die, because something large, winged, and screaming like a squirrel demon hopped up on cocaine dove from the sky and collided with me, knocking me off Az’s back and sending me tumbling through the air.
AZRAEL DOVE FOR me. Since I was falling to my death back first, I could see them tuck their wings to their sides and plunge away from the attacking winged warriors that were encircling them as I fell, but I knew enough about physics to know that they wouldn’t reach me in time. We hadn’t been that far off the ground—only a couple thousand feet. Not the tens of thousands of feet needed for Az to have time to reach me before I hit the ground.
I tried to reach for my dragon form, my snow leopard form, some random magic that might keep me alive or help me save myself, but nothing responded. It didn’t quite feel like being in the canyon in Az’s realm, but I couldn’t place how it was different, and didn’t have the fucking time to worry about it, anyway. I was about to die, and I couldn’t use my magic, that much was clear. Then, out of the corner of my eye, through the hair that had been ripped from its holder and was now flapping blindingly against the sides of my face, I saw… something. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I didn’t care, honestly, because I was about to die, and dying wasn’t something I wanted to do. Whatever it was might not help, but it wasn’t likely to be worse than dying by hitting the ground in another couple of seconds, so I reached for it. Grabbed at it. And felt somewhat gratified when my hand snagged around a feathered appendage. Then something shrieked like an angry eagle.
My momentum wrenched. I had been prepared for it, hoping for it even—not falling was my goal right now, so it didn’t actually tear my arm out of its socket, though it sure felt like it was going to.
Beneath my grip I could feel feather, muscle, and bones shift, as my hand clutched the limb of whatever it was I was clinging to. Then I felt something sharp and awful tear at the skin on my upper arm, but I refused to let go, because FUCK that. I held on as tight as I could. Whatever I’d just grabbed onto WAS NOT FALLING. And not falling meant not dying, maybe, at least for a little while, and I was not about to let go of that.
Unless it cut off my arm.
Which it was clearly trying to do.
I screamed, and looked up again through a flash of flapping hair to see that the thing I had caught hold of was the thing that had been attacking Az and I. The same type of creature that had charged into me and Az to begin with. Possibly even the same one that had knocked me to my narrowly avoided death, but I couldn’t be sure as I hadn’t gotten a good look at the time.
I got a good look now, though; eagle wings and eagle legs from the knee down, but the upper body of a woman who clearly didn’t think much of clothing and who definitely had a thing for weapons. Honestly, she seemed like the kind of person I’d have gotten along with pretty well, if she hadn’t been so obviously trying to kill me. Call me cold, but I take exception to people trying to throw me to my death.
The eagle-woman had multiple blades sheathed on her person in thick baldrics that crossed at the center of her chest, more than one scabbard belted to her waist, and possibly another over her shoulder blades—she almost looked like a pin cushion with all the sword and dagger hilts poking out of her—but not a stitch of cloth or armor covered her breasts, waist, or head. I managed to get a good look at her, despite the blood splatter that was flying in my face from where she was trying to hack through my arm with a spear. Honestly, there wasn’t much I could do other than stare at her while gripping her eagle leg for dear life, trying to grit through the pain of having my arm sliced repeatedly.
It must have been a terribly awkward angle for her. The spear was pretty long, and she still had it gripped for a more distant opponent, so she missed as often as she caught me, and rarely hit the same place twice. Perhaps she was just hoping to make me let go, rather than cut me all the way through the bone, but I wasn’t planning to let go before I bled to death or she landed.
She cried out again, and this time some of her compatriots must have heard her, because I could hear answering cries from somewhere nearby. It was almost a surprise to be able to hear anything but the rush of wind in my ears, but as my “ride” seemed content to maintain altitude instead of plummeting us to the ground, or racing off across the countryside, other sounds were starting to filter in. Like the sound of metal slicing flesh every time the eagle-woman caught my arm with her spear, the subsequent gritted screams from my own lips, or the sounds of the other eagle-warriors’ angry shrieks getting closer.
I had just begun to wonder why she wasn’t just trying to spear me in the throat, when I saw the weapon drive towards my face. I barely managed to get my other arm up in time to block it. Of course, that arm took a deep gash as it deflected the spear tip—why wasn’t I wearing bracers? I really needed to invest in a good pair of bracers—but the harpy, or eagle-woman, or whatever she was, was also slow enough in retracting the spear that I managed to get my hand wrapped around the shaft before she could pull it out of my reach.
And that whole exchange probably explained why she hadn’t been aiming at my throat earlier.
You can bet your ass I pulled on that spear with all the force I could spare, which wasn’t much, considering what my other arm was doing to keep me alive (holding my entire body weight, bleeding profusely, etc.), but apparently she had a bad grip on the thing to begin with, because my weak-assed yank was enough to pull it out of the harpy’s hands.
“HA!” I yelled, as the spear came free of her grip. I was still in a damned precarious position, but at least I was now armed.
I twisted the grip of the spear as quickly as I could, flipping the shaft around in a single hand as if it were a bo, trusting in years of martial arts training to keep me from dropping the damned thing, so that the pointy end was now angled towards the harpy. She didn’t seem to approve of that development, and she was damned quick to demonstrate her disapproval, because she met the spear point with the blade of a short sword she’d pulled from one of her many sheaths.
I don’t know if she thought I’d actually intended to stab her—which would be a stupid move on my part, since she was the only thing keeping me from plummeting to my death right now—or if she was just still working on killing me, but either way she was clearly ready to cut me any way she could.
We’d barely had time to exchange a few blows, mostly me using the shaft of the spear to parry her attempts to cut my arm off, before something huge, black, and feathered crashed into both of us and knocked me loose.
“GwenDAMNit!” I screamed, as I began to fall again.
I’d barely dropped for more than half a second though, when a taloned claw grabbed me around the middle and I realized that what had barreled into us had been Azrael.
“Ok. Ow, and thank you,” I half said, half screamed, as Azrael started a steep dive towards the forest that lay beneath us.
Something swished past my ear, and I turned to see a cloud of harpies flying above and behind us, launching various weapons in our d
irection.
We were so screwed.
Az was rocketing towards the trees below us, and I began to wonder if they were planning on slowing us down before we hit the trees, or the ground, or the whole cloud-of-harpies-below-us-fuck! Apparently, the dive was partially in order to blow through the harpies that had amassed between us and the tops of the trees. Trees that seemed much closer now than they had only five seconds earlier. Suddenly, my vision went almost black and my world became a haze of wings, talons, and branches. I couldn’t see what I was doing really, but I swung out blindly with my newly acquired spear a few times, just in case any of the harpies tried to attach themselves to us as we dropped. The cries that I heard even as we plummeted through the cloud of winged warriors gave me a sense of grim satisfaction. I still had no idea what had sparked the ire of these people to begin with, but I did not take kindly to people trying to kill me, no matter what their reasoning might be.
Just before we crashed into the forest floor, Az spread their wings and cut our speed by at least half, but we still hit with a jolt that shook every bone in my body, especially since Az had needed to drop me before slamming their feet into the ground. I rolled away from the massive raven, over soft earth and a thick layer of pine needles, and stood up, shaken, dirty, and bleeding, but already brandishing the spear I’d somehow held onto through our entire crazed descent, ready for whatever came at us next.
Which was, of course, more harpies.
Despite everything we’d just gone through, we’d only disabled one or two of them, and that left more than a dozen who were still all too eager to take us down. Thankfully, the dense tree-tops slowed their descent, and spread them out.
Sadly, that didn’t leave us any less outnumbered.
Az seemed to be stuck in raven form, and as far as I could tell, they didn’t have access to any of the powers that had allowed them to kick so much vampire ass on Earth. I had nothing more than ten years of martial arts training and a spear I’d never used before. From what I could make out in the shadows of the dense pine forest, we were up against more than a dozen armed warriors, and we would be totally and completely fucked once they had us surrounded.
Victoria Marmot- The Complete Series Page 47