The Book of the Reaper

by Eric Asher

  There was no escaping Gaia’s arrival. No escaping the impact that shook the earth hard enough to send roof tiles cascading off the mansion. No escaping the electricity in the air as a power not seen in the world since the Titans fell ravaged the Eldritch thing.

  It had been a threat like no other, and then it was gone.

  Stump bellowed, raising a fist to the sky. “Destroy them!”

  The green men took to the river, rushing through the shallow waters to pursue what Unseelie Fae were misguided enough to remain after the return of Gaia.

  The Titan surveyed the damage done around them and took a deep breath before turning to Zola. She narrowed her eyes at the old necromancer and a soft smile lifted the corner of her lips.

  “Hello, old friend.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Nixie cursed as she stepped out of the Abyss and into the familiar fields outside the cabin at Coldwater. Zola normally kept the grasses by the cabin neatly trimmed. But they were high now, brushing the calves of her armor as she made her way up the hill and under the old oak tree.

  The screen door squealed as she walked inside and it slapped against the frame when she let it go. Nixie looked around the room, but she couldn’t see what Zola had been talking about. She trusted the old necromancer, but the warding on what she looked for was powerful.

  She walked to the far side of the couch close to the old wood stove and reached into the empty space below the end table. Her hand cracked against something solid she couldn’t see. Nixie felt her way to the edge and then pulled. The shag carpet parted around the invisible box.

  Nixie worked her fingernails into the edge of the lid. The hinges whispered as they opened, but once the seal was split, the old chest and its contents were plain to see.

  She reached in and took the black bag, pulling the drawstrings open just wide enough that a pale blue glow shone in the dim room. The power in the Eye of Atlantis intimidated Nixie. She didn’t like the idea of using it again, but desperate times called for uncomfortable measures.

  Nixie slid the Eye out and tucked it into a pouch at her waist. She fastened the buckle and checked to make sure it was secure before closing the trunk and sliding the box back under the table.

  She made her way outside. Only the wind and crickets sounded around her. Nixie dragged two fingers down the back of her gauntlet and stepped into the Abyss.

  * * *

  The golden path swelled up beneath her feet. A fork waited in front of her, three prongs leading into different directions. But Nixie had grown accustomed to the pull of the gauntlet. It hadn’t led her wrong yet, so she followed it to the right.

  And at each new fork in the road, even when it looked like it might lead directly into a towering leviathan or an unknowable Abyss creature, she trusted the pull. It wasn’t long until the golden stars of the Abyss were eclipsed by a towering shadow.

  The path circled around that shadow, as if it were the end of the path itself. Nixie walked that circle, studying the colossus she knew held Damian. The flesh moved, and an unnerving number of dead white eyes followed her.

  “Damian.”

  Nixie felt like a fool talking to a wall of moving gravemaker flesh. She looked down at her hands, her gauntlet glowing with the power that brought her to the Abyss as she clenched her fists. Nixie ground her teeth together and raised her eyes to the colossus.

  “Damian Vesik!” The awkwardness she’d felt talking to herself in that place fled as she let the anger rise inside her chest. Nudd had trapped Damian in that thing. Friends had died in order to give him a chance to come back, in order to stop him from becoming Nudd’s weapon.

  Her voice boomed as she raised it. “Damian Vesik! Your friends and family have journeyed wide. The Titan Gaia has gifted you her powers. Now get your shit together.” Nixie’s anger faded as the wall of gravemakers shifted around her.

  Her words fell to a whisper. “We owe you so much. The water witches would still be underneath Lewena’s rule if you hadn’t walked with me, if you hadn’t shown me there was another path, a way to overcome all the things that have gone before.”

  The golden pinpoints between the shoulder blades of the colossus brightened, the gravemakers pulling back until Nixie could see a chasm within the beast. Damian was there, his head bowed and bloody, Hern’s helmet embedded in the wall behind him. His eyes didn’t open, but something like a sigh rose from the colossus.

  Nixie’s first instinct was to climb inside and rip Damian out, but she knew what he was trapped in. She’d seen the destruction gravemakers were capable of more times than she cared to remember. Stepping into that shell was death. Death was something, for the first time in a very long time, Nixie did not care to be acquainted with.

  Instead, she raised the Eye of Atlantis, a pulsing blue beacon in the golden dimness of the Abyss. In her other hand, she held her Wasser-Münzen. She had inherited much with the throne of the water witches, knowledge she couldn’t explain, passed down through a magic older than any of the undines could remember.

  The Eye of Atlantis met the Wasser-Münzen, and Nixie closed her eyes. “Sam needs you. Vicky needs you. Zola needs you.” Memories of that day when the wolves had died and Ashley had almost fallen along with them came back into her mind. The day when she’d come to understand how wrong a life of killing had been. The day something inside of her chest had cracked, and something else had taken its place.

  “I love you.”

  The heaviness threatened to choke Nixie as she opened her eyes and saw the chasm in the back of the colossus closing, swallowing Damian once more. Inch by inch, the golden light dimmed, and the flesh of the gravemakers closed.

  Nixie let her hands fall to her side and watched as the thinnest filaments of gold etched their way across the shoulders of the giant, running up to the jackal-like head and down its legs until the entire colossus vanished.

  “I’ll find you.” Nixie left the Abyss behind.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “That was Nixie.” Did I say that out loud? It didn’t sound like my voice.

  “Your soularts can’t stop this, boy.”

  I tried to find the voice in the darkness. Slowly, the light returned, a golden line that followed the crack of every gravemaker surrounding me. And there, in the wall across from me, was the face of Hern. Dead, but not gone.

  Other voices whispered around us.

  Get us out of here.

  We aren’t done with them yet.

  They haven’t paid for Gettysburg.

  Those bastards took my family.

  Everyone’s dead.

  I didn’t know the individual voices, but I recognized the general hum of the souls. They’d been choked off while I’d been trapped inside the mantle, but now something was breaking through. I could hear them again, and perhaps more importantly, I could feel them in my aura.

  I wasn’t sure if Hern heard the voices too, because he responded to me as if I had spoken those words aloud.

  “Oh no, boy. This is where you’ll stay until the end of all time. When the seas rise and the world falls, I will be standing upon the cliffs of your ruin.”

  Those words. I’d heard them before.

  But I understood then what that golden power was. It wasn’t the souls, not entirely. This was Gaia’s power to walk the Abyss, to move between realms of her own free will, until Nudd had imprisoned her by breaking her apart.

  Hern’s rhetoric meant nothing in that moment. Memory came crashing back to me, the underground bunker of Nudd, the Mad King returned. I knew what had to come next.

  The battle was in Falias. That was where I needed to be. I squeezed my hand into a fist, as if lacing my fingers into the severed hand of Gaia, and I found a resistance that should not have been there. Felt that golden power rise into a blinding sun, and then darkness fell across us both as the world turned sideways.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Gwynn Ap Nudd sat upon a midnight steed. A beast that appeared to have died long ago, but which co
ntinued to serve him. Part of Vicky wondered how he’d gotten the animal up on top of the fallen wall. Logically, it seemed a silly thing to do, making himself such an easy target.

  And the owl knights didn’t miss their chance. Lances and arrows unleashed at the Mad King. With no visible effort from Nudd, every last weapon shattered against an invisible shield. Vicky couldn’t see so much as a shimmer in the air to betray where the shield was, and that spoke of a terrible power behind the incantation.

  Luna, recently healed by Aideen, groaned and stretched beside her.

  Wings brushed against Vicky’s shoulder. She glanced to the side and found Foster.

  “Direct attacks aren’t going to work against him. No one here has the strength to overpower the Mad King.”

  But even as Foster spoke, his gaze trailed up to the sky. “Oh, shit.”

  Above them, one a blazing sun, and the other a winged shadow against it, sailed Edgar and the Morrigan. Nudd’s only reaction was to raise his right hand, and the crumbled wall of Falias turned to shadow as his forces swarmed over it.

  Dust and darkness flowed around them. They’d fought their fair share of Unseelie Fae, but Vicky had never seen so many in one place. What perplexed her more was the lack of dark-touched vampires. A few were peppered in the ranks, but nothing like what had been sighted inside Falias.

  Those were concerns for another time. For now, she was focused on the slithering beasts crowning the walls of Falias. Four of the lamprey creatures revealed themselves. Vicky had thought, perhaps hoped, that they were mindless things. But she could see they were slipping through the ranks of the Unseelie Fae without harming them. The lampreys were smart enough to recognize their allies, and that was unsettling indeed.

  Drake’s dragon slammed into the earth beside them. “We can’t use the mantles of the Demon Sword against Nudd, but the rest of his pawns are fair game.”

  Foster nodded and hopped off Vicky’s shoulder, exploding into his full-size form. Aideen glided off of Aeros’s shoulder and joined him.

  The Old God spoke, his voice rumbling the earth. “I will intercept what Eldritch things I can.”

  Vicky didn’t miss the edge of doubt in the Old God’s voice. Aeros knew his limits, and Vicky worried that four Eldritch things might be beyond them.

  Nudd’s forces didn’t move in a simple formation. They formed a wedge, like a dagger plunged into the heart of Morrigan’s forces.

  The front line of the Obsidian Inn to the north of them shattered. Vicky could just make out the arcing, writhing form of that distant lamprey, and the rising screams of the dying Fae.

  She looked to Luna as the death bat shook her head, shifted from foot to foot, and flexed her wings. And to Terrence, as the old ghost ran his fingers down the length of his bayonet before readying his rifle. And to the fairies who hovered above her, the dragon, and the knights who had betrayed their master.

  These were her friends beyond anything she could have asked for. They’d fought for her, and she’d fought for them. She had little doubt they would die for her, and that thought sent a frisson of fear and anger down her spine.

  Vicky took a deep breath as the earth vibrated with the stampede headed toward them. She could stand there and wait for their enemy to reach them, but patience was something she’d lost some time ago.

  “Luna, drop me on the Fae.”

  She half expected the death bat to argue, but she almost squeaked when Luna pounced on her and took to the air. A damp chill cut through Vicky as Luna soared toward their enemy’s front line.

  She caught a glimpse of the fairies in her peripheral vision. They didn’t protest her decision to charge the enemy. They came along for the fight. A look down showed her Terrence, sprinting underneath them with the unnatural gait of a ghost who did not tire.

  Aeros was nowhere to be seen, but Vicky had little doubt the Old God was on his way to face the Eldritch things. It was the last thing to go through her mind when she saw her opportunity.

  “Now!”

  Luna’s claws opened, and Vicky fell at an angle as she lit her soulswords. They were almost dead even between the two southernmost lampreys. But that’s not what Vicky was aiming for. She came down into a squad of Unseelie Fae, squeezing her fists together as she spun, elongating the blades of her soulswords into a savage whirlwind.

  Her soulsword cleaved neatly through the first Unseelie Fae, something like surprise on the gray face as he fell to pieces. Luna continued past the front line of Unseelie. She crashed into a pair of dark-touched vampires, but they were fast enough to avoid her following strikes.

  Vicky focused on the Unseelie circling her, her soulswords taking down two more before the others realized what happened. She let her left sword flicker out and called a shield as an Unseelie blade thrust at her. Electric blue sparks ignited across her field of vision, and she didn’t see the incantation that struck her in the back.

  All she felt was fire and pain before the grass came up to meet her. She rolled to the side, lashing out with her remaining soulsword and cutting two Fae down at the ankles. The sword crashed against the third fairy, but a series of intricate wards exploded against the blade and rebounded toward Vicky.

  She scrambled up onto her knees and spun again, dropping her shield and igniting a second soulsword. The wound in her back throbbed, but the Unseelie had grown cautious of her, increasing their distance so she couldn’t attack more than one at a time.

  That wasn’t a problem for Foster. He crashed to the earth and wrapped his arms around Vicky. She stiffened as the fairy screamed, and the world became fire. A hurricane of flame erupted from the fairy, lashing out in a blinding fireball before it vanished.

  In its wake were the dissolving corpses of seven Unseelie Fae.

  Foster snapped into his smaller form and launched into the air before dropping like a hammer into another enemy formation.

  Drake wasn’t so subtle, guiding his dragon across the rear lines as Sparkles unleashed a torrent of searing blue flame. Nudd’s soldiers died in droves, but still they marched forward.

  But the rest of the front wasn’t going so well. Unseelie archers picked off owl knights one by one, sending feathers and Fae to scatter among the screaming dead below.

  The wall of Falias erupted into a fireball, a sphere of flame that consumed everything around it and threatened to steal the vision of all who looked upon it. Edgar had engaged Nudd, and the rear lines of the Fae turned back to attack.

  It was the first time Vicky had seen Nudd move. The circle shield protecting him vanished in a crackle of sparks as Edgar’s spell faded, and Nudd struck back. Vicky wasn’t sure what the Mad King had done, but from a distance, it looked like he had stabbed into his hand with a dagger and a javelin of gravemaker flesh exploded from the earth.

  It glanced off Edgar’s armor, and the mage solis retreated. But it was a calculated move. As Edgar’s fiery form fell back, Nudd stepped forward, and the space between them filled with shimmering black energy.

  It pummeled Nudd down to a knee before it split open to reveal the Morrigan. She was no longer the crow or the old crone, but a warrior of unrivaled beauty. Nudd raised a shield, but the strike from Morrigan’s sword shattered it.

  Edgar didn’t miss his chance, having circled around behind Nudd while he engaged with Morrigan. The sun god rocketed forward and tackled Nudd off the wall, spinning in a chaotic ball as they fell to the earth. Vicky lost sight of them.

  The earth churned underneath the nearest line of Fae while darkness flowed between them. Aeros burst forth from the earth, and at the same moment, the shadows of the lampreys took to the air in a deadly arc. They reformed and met the Old God in a thunderous collision.

  Those two giants battled as Vicky and Luna and Terrence moved around the outskirts, picking off what Unseelie Fae they could. But as careful as they were, Vicky could feel the blood running down her back where she’d been nicked more than once. And blood coated Luna’s right forearm, blood Vicky was sure was the de
ath bat’s.

  For every enemy they picked off, another took its place, and more came over the walls. The enemy lines felt endless. They needed more firepower, and Vicky knew it. She pulled off her backpack and dug through it. She found the pepperbox there and tossed it to Terrence.

  “You didn’t use this last time. Use it now.”

  Terrence grabbed the bandolier of speed loaders out of the air and threw them over his shoulder. It was an odd thing to see a ghost so able to interact outside of a ghost circle. Vicky had grown used to it, but there were times it was more surreal than others.

  Terrence raised the pepperbox and fired. Protective wards exploded across Unseelie armor, and fairies died with every shot. Terrence didn’t need precision, because every round went off like a bomb that Vicky could feel as the ley lines fueled it.

  The battle had gone on for too long, and Vicky felt the fatigue settling into her bones, watched as Terrence used one of the last speed loaders for the pepperbox. Luna limped along beside them.

  If they didn’t end this soon, they’d have no choice but to run.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Sam turned when a voice thundered across the field, drawing the attention of everyone left alive at Rivercene as the shadow of a bear materialized. “The fight is not yet done.”

  “Happy?” Zola said, stepping toward the panda bear.

  Gaia kneeled closer to Happy. “Young warrior, you have sacrificed much for your friends. Is it not time to rest?”

  The panda’s mouth blurred as he spoke. “You’re needed in Falias.”

  “I am needed in many places. The world is injured, and though it will survive, those who live upon it will not. I confess myself not entirely at odds with that thought.”

  Zola took a deep breath. “There is some good in the world, Gaia.”

  Happy stepped closer to the goddess. “Take us to St. Charles to gather our allies, and then to the front in Falias.”