Curse Breaker Omnibus

by Melinda Kucsera

  “Are you coming or not?”

  “Since when were you helping us?”

  “She’s the reason we’re still alive,” Rat Woman volunteered from somewhere ahead, and the buzzing assent of Insect Man meant he was okay for now.

  “Yet you still tried to skewer me, you’re learning.” Snake Woman gave Rat Woman an appreciative smile, but it was all fangs. She closed Jerlo’s mouth with a scaly finger. “Don’t look so shocked. I’m on no one’s side, but anyone can join my side, even you. I’m not picky.” She sashayed over to the rightmost tunnel at yet another intersection and knocked on it. “It seems sound.”

  Snake Woman danced aside as a hail of fist-sized boulders cascaded down blocking that tunnel.

  “No dear, this is sound.”

  Vanya appeared sitting cross-legged on the rubble. Every hair was in place, and her purple dress bore not a single wrinkle. She looked the same as when Jerlo had met her in Lord Olav’s office. She rolled her shoulders then a second Vanya peeled off her and dropped into a crouch. Vanya Number Two’s black eyes tracked them as her muscles bunched for an attack.

  Vanya patted her doppelganger on the head mussing her double’s chignon. “Soon my dear one,” she crooned, “but not yet.” Then she pursed her lips and emitted a tone so heartbreakingly pure, it shattered Jerlo.

  He dropped to his knees lost in the ecstasy of that perfect note. It was the music of the spheres, the envy of every bell and the key of the celestial choir humming in the background of creation. As he listened, it slammed into the phantasmagoria of the past day, cracking it. Pieces fell and spun away reflecting images of a cliff-side conversation that had happened only in his mind. Then Cinder’s sedimentary mug flashed by and was vacuumed up by that sustained note.

  Icy water choked Jerlo as it closed over his head. He clawed at it until he breached the surface seeking that magnificent sound. It echoed in the oubliette. Sarn gripped the bars of the Judas window, his glowing eyes beseeched Jerlo.

  “Why won’t you let her help me? She can undo what you did, restore me to who I would have been if you hadn’t interfered.”

  Jerlo coughed as another frigid wave rolled over his head. Hadn’t he left the oubliette hours ago? That perfect bell-like tone darkened as it repeated, singing a song of his mistakes.

  “Why won’t you let her help me?” Sarn rattled the bars. His knuckles were so white they glowed. Cracks crisscrossed his fists. Pieces flaked away, draining the water. Jerlo spun around a drain then landed on his knees beside a Kid fragmenting into a pile of broken bits.

  “Help me,” Sarn begged. His hand pawed the ground seeking Jerlo’s.

  “How do I help you?” Jerlo clasped that icy hand and was engulfed by it. The Kid lay across his lap bleeding from scores of open wounds in an eerie recreation of the Pietà. He held the dying boy as that tone became his voice echoing around him.

  ‘Soon that boy will be someone else’s problem, soon…’

  ‘Nolo would make a fine role model and father figure for this damaged kid. I’ll just hand him over. Problem solved.’

  And on it went, a litany of denial and handoffs. The wall across from them collapsed into a pile of broken stone revealing the swirling grayness of possibilities yet to come. Was this the end of his charge? Had he brought it on through negligence?

  Pain stabbed Jerlo in the heart. He had failed the one commission his Lord had given him. And an innocent boy was again paying the price—again.

  “Why won’t you help me?” Sarn asked as his eyes lost their shine. “Even now you deny me the help I deserve.” The Kid turned his head fixing his darkening eyes on the fifteen-year-old boy staggering out of the grayness onto a meadow set afire by the setting sun. That spotless lamb regarded Jerlo with patient green-on-green eyes.

  “I’m sorry Kid, so very sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I was only trying to help.” Jerlo said as a tear slid down his cheek shattering him. He held the cold boy expelling his last breath.

  The unblemished Kid Sarn had been nodded, accepting an apology five years’ overdue then he spoke. “Remember,” he said.

  Behind him, Genar’s golem appeared, and he flung red projectiles at Jerlo.

  Two dozen leaves from the Tree of Memory slammed into him, lacerating his mind as that one word repeated in his skull. ‘Remember.’ It was a lifeline Jerlo clung to as he face-planted on the ground at Vanya’s feet.

  Vanya Number One gripped her doppelganger by the scruff of her neck. “Oh Jerlo, I love your mind. It has so much material to work with—such depths of delicious guilt to plumb, such decadent regrets to savor again and again.” She shuddered in delight then blew him a kiss. A black bubble spread outward from her lush purple lips, but a leathery hand yanked Jerlo to his feet before its edge touched him.

  “Run!” Insect Man shoved Jerlo toward another bend in this never-ending nightmare. Apparently, he’d had time to reconstitute.

  Rat Woman pulled Snake Woman to her feet, and the four fled the expanding black sphere. No doubt it was another of Vanya’s mind games that thing and the energies crackling around it.

  “This way, I know where we can defeat them.”

  “How? You said beheading is the only way.”

  “It is,” Snake Woman winked as she outpaced Jerlo and vanished around a bend. When he turned it, she was gone.

  Great, first he’d lost Hadrovel and now Snake Woman too. Some commander he was. Jerlo shook his head and sped along the narrowing tunnel. Behind him, something large crashed into an unyielding object and obliterated it. When he glanced back to see what Vanya had destroyed, he met Rat Woman’s frightened silver eyes.

  “Run!”

  “What’s chasing us?”

  “Her aegis. All demons have them. If we get caught in its field, we’ll never escape.”

  “She’s right. We can only defeat her from outside that shield.”

  “Why not from inside it?” Getting past a shield was usually sound tactical advice. What invalidated that?

  Jerlo’s two companions exchanged nervous glances. Insect Man even generated eyes just for the occasion, but they reshaped into lips, so he could speak.

  “Because it’s inverted. That’s why it’s black. It absorbs everything inside it except its castor making her immune to attacks.”

  Oh, well that was a fantastic reason to stay far away from it, but they still needed a plan to take Vanya out. “Where are we running to?”

  A cloud of insects soared over Jerlo’s head and from somewhere in its middle, eyes mashed together above Insect Man’s lips, so they could scan the featureless tunnel. “Snake Woman said she knew a place. Where is she?”

  “Gone, as usual,” Rat Woman scoffed. “She never sticks around.”

  “What do we do now?”

  Both regarded Jerlo for the answer. In Insect Man’s case, the swarm coalesced into a hovering face bearing an uncanny resemblance to Jerlo’s.

  “Nice trick. Are you offering to distract her with my ugly mug?”

  Insect Man shook his head and glared at him. He was still waiting for an answer, but Jerlo had one ready. After all, that was his day job.

  “Any chance there’s a font of holy water somewhere around here?”

  Insect Man’s queer eyes nictitated then focused on the horde of rats scampering past Jerlo’s leg. Rat Woman had disassembled herself and was quickly outpacing him. As well she should since the banging and clanging of their pursuer was growing closer.

  “Well, is there?”

  “I think so. She’s going to check out our hunch. For now, keep running. Vanya’s after you, but she won’t hesitate to harm anyone who blunders into her aegis’ path. Thankfully, our maker’s beloved lives far from the centers of habitation and there’s not much out this way that we know of.”

  “Great, so I just keep running for my life and hope that aegis thing doesn’t catch me while you two reconnoiter?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Fantastic. Lord, you wouldn’t happen to have
a solution handy, would you? I’ll donate next year’s salary to the Sisters of Charity if you do. No pressure of course.”

  “Who are you talking to?”

  “God, who else would I beseech for aid?”

  “Does he ever answer?” the flies coalesced into a rough approximation of a man’s face again. An army of spiders swinging from web to web across the ceiling dropped down to complete the ensemble. This time Insect Man’s features took on a different cast, one as unlike Jerlo’s mug as the minion could manage.

  “Not always in words but yes, I always get some answer.”

  A black tentacle shot through the stone wall ten inches above Jerlo’s head. Had he been of normal height, Vanya would have crushed his skull. Her arm shined in the lumir’s light. Jerlo wasn’t interested in finding out how she’d leveled up, so he put on a burst of speed and fled the tunnel before she finished coming through the wall.

  But he glanced back once and cringed at the bestial thing Vanya Number Two had deteriorated into. Drool rolled off Number Two’s canines as it sniffed for him. Behind it, the smooth curve of a black shield expanded around a metal-clad woman imitating Vanya Number One’s loose-hipped swagger.

  “Jer-lo, I know you’re there. You don’t want to piss me off, or I might hurt someone.”

  Rocks fell, and dust choked the air as first one monstrosity knocked down part of the wall, then a second one demolished it, destabilizing the tunnel. The ceiling dropped in chunks. Jerlo dodged one giant piece of debris, wove around another and jumped over a third before tripping over a goddamned rock. He landed badly gashing his side on a protrusion then rose, gripping the wound to staunch the blood flow.

  “Jer-lo, I’m growing tired of these games. I could squash you into jelly if I chose, but I don’t want that.” Vanya Number One traced a line along the wall, and the rocks vanished into a mirrored substance that twisted into a familiar scene.

  Sarn sat on a cot with his knee drawn up under his chin and his bandaged limbs stretched out before him. Beside him, a nine-year-old Miren sat glaring at Jerlo, who eased behind a fold of rock.

  “You did this. You should fix it,” Miren’s piping voice said.

  “Jer-lo, you should listen to him. I’ve seen what lies beneath your amnesia. Do you want to know what I found?”

  No, and yet part of Jerlo did want to know. Was the ‘yes’ rising to his lips born from two decades of wondering, or was it a suggestion placed in his mind by a demoness?

  “Why so silent? Do you know what I found? I think you do. In your heart of hearts, you’ve always feared you were worse than the monster you locked up.”

  She was talking about Hadrovel, of course. When this was all over, if it ever was, he had to find that psycho and put a permanent end to him. But the question remained. Was she right about him? Was his zealous faith atonement for some heinous sin? Jerlo backed away from the question tearing at his mind.

  “What, no refutation? No grandstanding about what a swell guy you are? Jerlo you disappoint me.” Vanya rounded the rock formation and shook her head. “Here I am offering you a way to expiate all your sins. Imagine righting every wrong with one single command. You can do it. I can show you how, but you need to let me deeper inside you than I already am.” Sincerity glittered in the black diamonds of her eyes as she extended a silver hand.

  On her open palm, her entire plan unfurled. It began with a single command that forced Sarn to draw shining, interlocking circles like the ones etched into the floor of his cave. And it ended with a black arrow piercing the radiant trunk of the Queen of All Trees. All else between was shifting colors and light proving there was more to her terrible plan than she was willing to admit.

  Smoke belched from below cooking Jerlo’s left side, and it broke his fascination with the imagery. Stunned by what he’d seen, he swayed and lost his balance. He landed hard on the metal bars blocking access to whatever lay below.

  “It’s the only way. She’s the reason for all of this. She brought us here to play her little game. What does she care if we die? We’re all pawns she’d sacrifice without a second thought. Worse than that, we’re just fodder in an endless war between her and the Adversary. And you know what the cruelest irony of all is?”

  Too shaken to reply, Jerlo shook his head as he felt for a handle. Blood soaked his side. He had to escape her seductive logic. Doubt niggled at him. That couldn’t be her real plan.

  “All the Adversary wants is her. Hand her over, and he’ll leave us be. He has no other interest in this world.”

  “If you believe that, you’re mad. He’s locked out of this world for a damned good reason.” And it wasn’t his place to question what God had ordained. In one painful swing, Jerlo levered the grate up. He dropped into hell right before darkness smote the spot he’d been standing on.

  The walls were solid red lumir dying everything ruby. They flared burning Vanya’s aegis when it pushed through the grate. She screamed and retracted her aegis before that merciless red glare could disintegrate it. Score one for that ubiquitous stone. Could it keep her out long enough for him to find a weapon? How about that miracle Lord? Do you have one handy? Lord, can you even hear me? Or has that demoness blocked my cries for help?

  Jerlo coughed and staggered past molten metal flowing into molds through open tubes lined with the hottest lumir he’d ever encountered. Intense heat blasted him, drying the sweat drenching his back and parching his throat. Maybe it would clot the blood flowing from his wounded side before he bled out.

  The deafening ring of hammers forging steel suddenly ceased. A scream cut through the silence. Jerlo wove around anvils and tables full of implements dreading what he’d find.

  “Come out Jerlo. I didn’t want it to come to this. I thought reason would prevail. I can fix what you broke, and you did break Sarn. Everything I’ve said is true. Come out, now or things will get messy.”

  Jerlo crept around a mold standing taller than his five-foot-nothing and grimaced at the scene. Three Vanyas stood back to back, their heads on a swivel. Each gripped the neck of a leather clad hostage—one stout woman with a horsey face, one pimpled apprentice and one gray-bearded fellow missing an eye. And all his companions had abandoned him, just great.

  Jerlo yanked on a pair of heavy work gloves from a nearby bench then edged out of cover with his hands up.

  “I’m here. Let them go.”

  “Not until you say it. We’re done doing this the easy way. We’ll let them go only if you let us all the way in.” Vanya the metal marvel smiled displaying a shark’s teeth, and there was a hungry gleam in her smoky-quartz eyes. Shreds of her purple gown fluttered in a breeze issuing from one of the many ducts.

  “Give us control of your body.”

  Jerlo paused and cocked his head as if he were considering her offer. His mind was a warren of holes and fading imagery. Every moment before he’d woken up in the Sisters of Charity’s care was hidden behind an impenetrable black shroud. Twenty years ago, he’d awoken with nothing but a name. If he acquiesced to her demand, what would he wake up with this time?

  Jerlo let his hand fall to the steel handle of the red-glowing blade lying discarded on a bed of molten lumir crystals. “How do I do that? Is there something I need to say? Some ritual I need to perform? How do you take on a psychic rider?” His fingers tightened on a familiar grip.

  Three Vanyas threw back their heads and expelled a jet of ink as they shrank, releasing their hostages. The three victims needed no prodding. They disappeared between work benches and vacated the area. Only Jerlo was fool enough to stick around for act two. Good thing he had a sword to hand.

  The ichor cloud circling the three Vanyas’ heads gathered into a bat, and it dove at Jerlo, but he was already moving. The Rangers might be marksmen with their bows, but he was born to fence. He swung the burning blade, and it left a smoking line across the demon’s chest. Vanya bared ebony fangs and swiped at him. Sparks flew as her six in claws impacted with the sword. But Jerlo parried her every str
ike until she bladed her hand and extruded a black broadsword giving her reach. One powerful swung with that four-foot smoking monster slapped his rapier out of his hands and sent it flying across the chamber.

  Dodging her next strike, Jerlo held his side as he circled an orange fall of molten iron ore. But the demon was so determined to reach him, she flew through its spray and came out the other side covered in the red-hot ore. Jerlo kicked the supports out from under a water pot for quenching blades and tipped it onto the demon encasing it in rapidly cooling iron.

  “Jerlo, up here!”

  Rat Woman’s hand shot through a square hole overhead. But the distance was too great for Jerlo to jump. No way in hell would he climb any of the fiery surfaces around him. They’d cook him alive on contact. No, he had to find another way out.

  Whistling disturbed the peace. Jerlo ducked, and a dozen half-tempered daggers struck the red lumir crystal wall to his right, cracking it. Scorching hot shards spun across the stone floor. More arrowheads slammed into the remaining crystals and large sections sheared off. Jerlo screamed as one glanced off his arm, searing his skin.

  “I’m tired of chasing you,” rasped the demon as it molded itself into a woman-shaped piece of purplish darkness.

  “Yeah well, I’m tired of running.”

  Jerlo stopped, there was nowhere else to go, and his side was leaking like a sieve. He was cornered and slowly roasting to death thanks to the overabundance of red lumir and the magical flames dancing in their hearts. Something about their flickering called to him, but he ignored it.