Heart's Darkness

by H D A Roberts

  He turned to look at me as I approached.

  He stood with his hands on the shield, the other four behind him, two facing forwards, two facing back, the formation defensive and professional even to my layman's eyes.

  The closest man was simply huge, a Vampire of some sort (goodness knew how he got past the screening (or was that screaming?) process), one of the varieties that could stand sunlight without too many deficits (which was more than half of the active bloodlines, so I wasn't getting much of a warning there). He was seven feet tall and very broad; hell, his muscles had muscles. He had dark hair and darker eyes, the pupils dilated and staring so that his irises appeared completely black. His fangs were two inches long and looked sharp; his meaty hands held machine guns like they were pistols. He too wore a suit, but his was charcoal and bulged with even more weapons.

  One of the women was short and blonde, a little stocky, but attractive in a tough sort of way. She was built like a gymnast, but was wider at the shoulders. She was a Lycanthrope, though I couldn't say what sort. She didn't wear much, presumably so she could change quickly, just a tracksuit and sweatshirt, but she was coiled and ready to leap on someone.

  The last man was young, about my age, short and a little rotund, with astonishingly dark skin, almost midnight-black, with startlingly white hair and cold, grey eyes. He reeked of Magic, but not in a good way; there was something distinctly off about him. I took a closer look at his Aura; he was a Sorcerer-level practitioner, that much was obvious, but his powers looked... wrong, twisted and... violent. I grimaced and nearly recoiled.

  I knew what he was. I'd read about people like him; Warlocks. I'd never met one before, but they were Magicians who knew nothing but Battle Magic, who lived to kill with it. His Aura dripped with death, with murder and violence. My lips twisted in revulsion. I hated the very idea of Warlocks, they were abhorrent to me, and this one looked especially nasty. It was all I could do not to swat him on the spot, but it wasn't the time for that... yet. There was still a chance I could talk my way out of this.

  The last woman was... very different. She and the half-cherub were the ones I'd been told about; warned about. Vampires, Were-creatures and even Warlocks could be dangerous, but rarely to an Archon. The other two were the problems.

  The woman... she was unlike just about everything else I'd ever seen. The term Valkyrie sprung to mind. She was every inch the warrior woman, tall, athletic and strong, with just enough femininity to make those features beautiful rather than striking. She had long blonde hair, with red eyes (slightly worrying), and was wearing fitted, black, leather armour, almost like thicker motorcycle leathers. She carried a whole plethora of weapons about her person; guns, knives and swords.

  I had real trouble getting any sort of handle on her Aura. There was some Magic in there, wisps of Space, some flashes of Fire and Flesh, but something beyond that. Hopkins had mentioned that there was some Demigod in her ancestry, but I was damned if I could begin to understand how that all fit together in the woman standing in front of me.

  Yes, apparently Demigods were a thing, now. There was even a sort of breeding program somewhere in the Mediterranean, trying to get enough 'divine' blood back into a human line to rekindle the ancient pantheons (a cosmically powerful monster ate the originals). Sure, it wasn't working, but that didn't stop them trying, and producing some truly powerful individuals as a result. Cassandra was from something of an... offshoot family, and had more than a little touch of the bloodlines herself. She didn't like to talk about it, though.

  The Champions turned towards me as I approached. I decided to start off politely. I didn't need to start yet another conflict with a group of powerful monsters that I couldn't kill off.

  "I'm going to have to ask you to stop that, please," I said.

  See? I added a 'please'. Normally I'd start with Shadow Tendrils and it generally got nastier from there.

  The half-cherub (and that was still funny, by the way), whose name was... Barney? Barabas? Crap, I should have been paying more attention when Hopkins told me about them, but I never thought I'd actually meet them, much less have to contemplate beating the snot out of them. Let's go with Mr White for the moment. Anyway, White cocked his head, turning those odd eyes of his on me, trying to look inscrutable and intimidating. It would have been more effective if he wasn't dressed like Colonel Sanders (and as a result, all I could think about was fried chicken. I was starving after a two week coma!).

  "We're here to dispense justice, Mortal," White said, his voice deep and booming.

  I couldn't help but snort; he'd said it with such dramatic flair! He glared at me; he was likely unused to that sort of reaction.

  The silence stretched for a long moment.

  "On who?" I asked. I wanted to move the process along, I was already tired, and I could practically hear the siren call of my nice warm bed.

  "Everyone in here," he said acidly, his tone ugly... and too eager. It snapped all of my concentration back to the matter at hand.

  "Meaning?" I asked, my eyes narrowing, "And what form is this justice of yours to take?"

  "Each man or woman is to be judged. We will brand the fornicators and geld the whores," he said.

  "Geld?!" I asked, "You can't geld a woman, you lunatic!"

  He smiled again. It had to be the nastiest smile I'd ever seen, and it reminded me of what Neil had said, "-if Demonic doesn't always mean 'evil', then can Angelic always mean good?"

  And suddenly the Colonel was much less funny.

  "We'll see," he said, that ugly smile widening. Now that I was close up, I could actually see the madness in his eyes. They were full of hatred, though goodness only knew what of, since he was actively working with a vampire, a murderer and a Were-thing. But then hypocrisy often walked hand in hand with fanaticism.

  I knew this, though; he was not a good man. Which was nice, it meant I could do terrible things to him without feeling guilty about it later...

  I'd started this encounter moderately pissed-off, but that had rather rapidly graduated to furious. I was (and still am) somewhat... old fashioned. I didn't like it when people hurt women. I didn't even like it when people talked about it around me. When it's women I knew, women I cared about... I didn't necessarily act rationally.

  "Question," I said in a very cold voice that made all but the Demigod take a heavy step back, "when you call me 'mortal', does that mean you're not?"

  "Of course!" White said, quickly recovering his nerve and resuming his glare.

  "So... you can't actually die then?"

  He sneered, "No. Even if you banished me, I'll just come back!"

  I could believe it, he radiated divine power, and I think I remembered something about this topic from when Palmyra had told me about Angels and their various sub-species. If he was damaged enough to 'die', he would simply vanish, regenerate, and return at some point in the future.

  "Excellent," I replied.

  And then I tore him in half.

  It was actually rather a simple bit of Shadow Magic. You'd be amazed how much dark, empty space there is inside the human body. In the stomach, in the lungs, throat, sinuses; you get the idea. He wasn't undefended; I could even feel those protections, and there were a lot of them, bound to his very nature and what passed for a Well, but they were all inactive. The arrogant prick hadn't considered me a threat. Oops for him...

  He screamed once, horribly, and then vanished, body, blood, mess and horrible suit, all into some sort of cosmic holding zone, or such; it wasn't really my area of expertise. He'd be back eventually, but I could just chop him up again.

  "So," I said to the remaining quartet, who were staring at me in shock, "has my point been made, or do I need to knock down another pin?"

  Valkyrie's reply was a scream.

  Right at me, she screamed, but there was far more to it than simple sound. It was Will and power and raw hatred. I felt that horrible sound sear into my mind, if not my soul, a form of energy I'd never experienced before and w
asn't prepared to defend against.

  I felt as if my brain was being flooded with terror, banishing reason and will into a maelstrom of emotion. It was like every higher function just juddered to a halt for a long moment.

  And then that energy just... stopped.

  The terror had been drowning me, filling me up until I was ready to burst with it. But then it reached the parts of me that were damaged, broken by what had been taken away, and the woman's strange power was like salt in the psychic wound.

  If I'd been a normal, healthy human being, it's likely I would have died right there, bulldozed by Vampire, Warlock and Demigod. But, being somewhat damaged, the energy that was supposed to incapacitate me instead soaked into the exposed parts of my mind, picking and slicing at already raw emotions, making them worse, causing them to build upon one another until I felt as if I was drowning under an ocean of emotional pain.

  And through it all, running through a tide of misery, loss, fear, hate and panic, there was something darker. A rage. An utter, dreadful, horrible rage that burned through me, banishing thought and reason until there was nothing else left. I hadn't known that I was capable of fury like that. It was as all-consuming as the terror had been, almost as if my fight-or-flight switch had been firmly slammed in the angry direction and then subjected to a power surge.

  At least it was more useful that cowering in a heap, waiting to die, if somewhat less pleasant for my long-term mental health.

  To Valkyrie's scream, I returned one of my own, and she quickly recognised that it wasn't quite the sort she was hoping for. She looked right at me, and she must have seen something rather terrible in my eyes, because she drew a sword, stepping back.

  Yes, she had guns, but drew a sword... I'll never understand some people.

  My Shadows came as my rage reached its crescendo, flooding in from every nook and cranny, a black wave that went right for that little clutch of monsters. The Warlock looked like he was going to try something to stop me, gathering heat, but the Lycanthrope girl took one look at what was surging towards them and thought better of the whole situation. She wasted no time, simply slung the Warlock over her shoulder, and legged it down the hill.

  Clever girl. I would have killed him first.

  The Vampire charged forwards at the same instant Valkyrie did, but he got slightly ahead of her and drew my attention. My Shadows were operating at an instinctual level, responding to my subconscious as much as to my Will. They lashed out at him, the tendrils razor-sharp, harder than rock.

  They simply tore him open, connecting with enough force that he went spinning into a decorative tree, spilling blood and viscera in a grotesque pattern that would leave me feeling quite ill when I remembered it later (once I wasn't feeling quite so... murdery). I knew that it wasn't enough to kill him, but that it would keep him out of my way for a long while.

  That left the woman. She really was something well beyond human. Divine blood had been greatly watered down over the generations since the last pantheon had been destroyed, but she seemed to be as close to a true demigod as it was possible to be (not that my experience in this arena was extensive).

  The impact of my Shadows knocked her away like a bowling pin, bouncing her off the fortress shield and down the hill a bit. The force of the strike should have broken her body from head to toe, but it hadn't. She was back up in a second, like some grotesque, martial whack-a-mole.

  My thinking was fragmented; actually, shattered was more accurate. All I could feel was bloodlust and sheer loathing. It was like the most important parts of me were stuck in a loop of hatred and rage. I wanted to kill this thing in front of me, the one who'd come for my people. I wanted to cause pain and suffering. I wanted it to hurt as it was going to make my friends hurt.

  But, mangled though my thinking was, some part of my reasoning was intact enough to recognise that this was a horrifically dangerous woman. Anyone powerful enough to shrug off a hit like that, and keep coming, was someone who could turn me into paste if she could land even a glancing blow.

  So I cast a Spell.

  It was normally very complex, but in that moment, it seemed so simple. I did it on instinct, and in seconds, Spellwork that should have taken at least a minute. My Shadows coalesced onto me, moulding around and around my limbs, head and chest into a suit of form-hugging black armour.

  Even monsters paused at the sight of that armour. But she just smiled, spat blood (it would seem my swipe wasn't as ineffective as I'd thought, which was somewhat reassuring. Invulnerable enemies could be a pain), and came at me again. She was quick, much quicker than any mere muscle and nerve speed I could have managed, but I still had my Will, tied to my rage-addled mind, and that was even faster than she was.

  She smacked into a plane of Will and bounced off. Her eyes opened in shock, and she froze for an instant, an instant in which I leapt for her and grabbed her sword arm with my armoured fist, though she was fast enough to wrench herself out of the way of my other hand. With only one firm grasp on her, I did the only thing I could.

  With all the power at my command, I squeezed.

  Her bones were harder than steel, stronger than titanium, but I wasn't some hedge-wizard shaking a stick with chicken bones tied to the top. I was an Archon, the First Shadow, Lord of the Deep.

  There was a wet crunch. She didn't even cry out, only grunted, that was the only indication of her discomfort. Once I'd finally got my wits back, I would be impressed by that. When my bones broke, I tended to make distinctly un-manly sounds.

  She dropped her sword, though; there was enough damage to ensure that. But her other hand came up and she started emptying projectile weapons into my armoured face, one after the other. Within seconds, she blasted away with four pistols, two submachine guns, and even a sawn-off shotgun (which I had no idea where she was hiding), until there was a small heap of guns at our feet.

  All of this, by the way, before I'd had the chance to do more than collect myself after making the grab. Damn, but she was dangerous! If Cassandra found out the specifics of this fight, she'd never let me out of her sight again.

  When the guns failed, she drew knives and short-swords, many of which were enchanted in one way or another, and tried to stab me. Finding that each in turn had no effect, she dropped them to join the guns. Finally, she came up with a knife wreathed in Dispel. It likely wouldn't have worked, but she did manage to wedge it under the helmet section of the Spell. But, in that moment, there was a fraction of a second where she was off balance, and I was able to swat the weapon away and grab her by the throat.

  Once again, I started to squeeze.

  Her face went white, and she started to die. In that moment of triumph, deep under all that ugly armour, I was smiling; smiling about the fact that I was slowly throttling a person, a living, breathing human being, to death. Later, much later, I would realise that it wasn't me, it was Valkyrie's Magic, but that was small comfort.

  In that moment, I fully intended to kill her, and that would leave me feeling horribly ashamed.

  But then she managed to get her fingers in among mine, and twist our combined digits just enough to wheeze out two words.

  "I surrender!" she gasped. Then she put her free hand out of the way, raised up.

  I paused, neither releasing nor squeezing harder. It was like my brain was trying to turn over like a badly tuned engine, desperately trying to restart and understand what was happening.

  Unarmed, surrendering. Harmless. Her Aura was right there for me to see, I hadn't shut down Mage Sight and it had remained active, somehow.

  Unlike the other Champions, there were no telltale streaks of black or red in her Aura. She hadn't murdered an innocent. She was no monster.

  But she worked with them...

  She should die, a nasty part of me said. She was going to hurt our friends.

  Magic isn't for that, said something else, something from deeper inside me, something which cut through the rage and the hatred that I knew wasn't entirely my own, to get t
hrough to the better parts of me, the parts that were asleep, half smothered.

  I breathed slowly, and with great concentration, released my grips on her.

  She didn't fall as I let her go. She just stood up, tall and proud, like she was the winner of our little contest.

  "What did you do to me?" I asked, that anger threatening to erupt again, my voice sounding hard and cold through the armour.

  "I... I don't know. That shouldn't have happened," she said, her voice was surprisingly gentle, high and... girly. It was incongruous.

  "What's your name?" I asked.

  "Margaret."

  "I'll remember you, Margaret. If you should threaten my people again, I shall not be this nice."

  She nodded.

  "Tell the same to your partners, and take the Vampire with you when you leave, he's stinking up the place."

  She nodded again and walked slowly over to the tree, backing away so as not to appear threatening or dismissive. She acted as if she were dealing with a dangerous animal, which was probably a good idea. I was just waiting for an excuse to make a mess.

  After some work, she pulled the Vampire out of the tree, shovelling as much of him back inside as she could before wrapping his torso up in his jacket.

  Her arm seemed perfectly fine already.

  She looked me over very carefully.

  "We'll meet again, Warrior," she said.

  "You'd better hope not."

  She smiled her predatory smile and darted away, running down the hill, the half-dead Vampire over her shoulder, his head bouncing against her shoulder blades, blood flowing from his nose and mouth.