She wasn’t quite fast enough.
Jurdan had been at the back, leaning against a wall, while Kate and Koren talked. He had pushed himself away from it when Kate was getting ready to give the command to go. He was closest to the rampaging demons.
The blond hunter drew out an arrow, nocked it, drew the string to his cheek, and released. Then he did it again, and again. He moved so fast, all three of the shafts were in the air at the same time.
Then the projectiles struck. One after another, they found their mark. Each of the three buried itself in a demon’s eye and the creatures dropped to the floor immediately. Kate had no doubt they were dead.
Having used the last of his strength, Jurdan’s arms dropped to his sides. He swayed dangerously, turned his head toward Kate, brought his fist to his heart, and smiled.
“It was an honor, Kate Courtenay.”
And then the demons reached him and tore him apart.
33
“Nooooooo!” Kate screamed. They had been so close, come so far. It wasn’t fair that Jurdan be taken from them now.
She slammed into six demons, all with pieces of human flesh on their claws and blood all over their teeth. The bloody carcass that had been Jurdan seconds before dropped to the ground as her shield threw half the demons away and made the others spin into each other.
Then her sword came down. Revolving and throwing her shield arm out, she pushed the demons far enough away from her to use the momentum of her spin to cleave through parts of them. Foreslash, backslash, vicious thrust, then withdrawal of her sword while pushing out again with her shield—she ended three demons’ lives in the blink of an eye.
But she didn’t stop.
The battle rage took her, something Dante had always warned her against allowing to happen. She didn’t care at this moment. All she cared about was chopping these damn monsters into as many pieces as she could before stomping on them.
In a moment, everything in front of her was dead. Chunks of demon flesh littered the hallway, and blood that had splattered on the walls ran down in rivulets. A piece of what Kate thought might be a demon ear slid down the wall in front of her, after sticking there for a few seconds.
She stood, breathing in and out so quickly she saw flecks of light in the edges of her vision. She knew she had to get her breathing—in fact, herself—under control, but she didn’t care enough about her own well-being to make it happen.
She only saw the carnage she had wrought, and in the midst of it, Jurdan’s body. Or what was left of it. In those few seconds, the demons had shredded the man’s body, defiling it with their filthy claws and disgusting teeth.
She wished she could kill them all again.
“A little help,” Koren’s voice sounded from behind her. When she turned to look, she realized she wasn’t done yet.
The remaining members of the team were fighting at least thirty demons. They had opened the doors on the other side of the room when the first group of demons had ambushed them from Jurdan’s side.
Kate harnessed her anger again and charged, screaming a battle cry so loudly, some of the demons winced at the sound.
This time, the force of her charge was directed at just one demon, the biggest one. It wasn’t quite the size of a demon commander, only about seven feet tall, but it had to have outweighed Kate at least two to one, probably more.
She didn’t care. She snugged her arm and shoulder against her body to stabilize her shield, and she used every ounce of her strength to clash with the monster. At the point of impact, she channeled her momentum and her strength from her feet up through her trunk and to her shield arm. At precisely the correct time, she slammed the steel disc out, turning it just enough to catch the demon with the serrated edge.
The demon’s face twisted in surprise and pain as it left the ground and began to fly toward the doors it had just come through. Kate twisted her hips sharply and threw her elbow out, changing the angle of the shield.
The serrations tore through the demon’s torso, splattering all the combatants surrounding her with hot, green blood. The demon screeched in pain as it finished its flight and smacked against the half-open left side of the door. The planking snapped and the door itself was torn from its hinges, skittering off into the hallway beyond.
Keeping her momentum, Kate continued her spin, slashing another demon close to her and following up with a back-handed slice as she made another revolution. One of the hapless demon’s arms flew off while the other dangled precariously.
Kate calmly punched the point of her sword through the demon’s eye before kicking it off her blade and turning to find the next enemy.
The remaining dozen or so demons didn’t last long after that. In fact, all but two of them turned and tried to flee. The team cut them down before they could take two steps.
When there were no more demons standing, Kate stopped moving and stood in place. Breathing.
“Jurdan. No, no, no. Jurdan.”
She muttered the same things several times until Koren stepped up to her carefully and pushed her sword down from the guard position it had been in.
He looked into her eyes, searching them for something. Then his softened slightly. “He’s gone, Kate. A hero’s death. He didn’t suffer. It was quick.”
She stifled a sob and shivered. Clamping her eyes shut couldn’t dispel the sight she had seen, the demons literally ripping her friend apart. She shook her head helplessly and sighed.
The others left Kate alone for a few minutes, letting her grieve. She figured they were accustomed to continuing with their responsibilities after the death of a friend. It wasn’t that they were callous, just practical. As she stood there, trying to come to grips with the death of someone who had come to mean something to her, she recognized the sadness and anger in their eyes.
Snap out of it, Kate, she scolded herself. She had seen death before. True, she had not had the connection with the others that she had with Jurdan, but letting it paralyze her and affect her performance would not help.
She could grieve later. For now, they had a demon mage to kill.
Then it struck her.
“Arkith?” she said to the air.
“Not here,” Benedict said. He was closest to her, searching through cabinets near the doors where Kate was still standing. “Just a bunch of grunt demons.”
“Damn,” she said. It almost made her smirk at the thought of her mother and father being shocked at the course language she had adopted and might use in front of them accidentally.
No mage. All of the killing, the loss of Jurdan, it was all for nothing.
“Kate,” Koren said, “can you come here for a moment?”
She walked woodenly toward him. He was on the other side of the massive room, past the tables and benches arranged in the middle of the room, obviously for the experiments Arkith carried out. She wondered off-handedly which of the tables Koren was strapped to when he was tortured and studied here for all that time.
“We found a few things,” the veteran said. “The most important are probably these.” He pointed to a bench top. On it were three dark gems on cords. They looked like black diamonds, but flawed. The smoky material from which they were made was dirty and cloudy, looking like someone had started cutting them but abandoned the job in the middle, leaving portions rough.
“What are—” she started as she reached for one. Just as her hand made contact, a wave of weakness slammed into her gut and made her knees buckle.
“Careful,” Koren said. He picked one of the stones up, but didn’t seem to suffer any ill effects. “They seem to react with the firestones, causing weakness and even pain.” Peiros stood nearby, nodding and rubbing his hands together as if one of them pained him.
“Oh no,” Kate said. “Arkith succeeded.”
“Yes, it appears so.”
Kate gritted her teeth. The mage had created anti-firestones. That spelled doom for the world of humans.
“If he left these here…” she said.
“—then they must be prototypes and weaker or less effective than the ones he took with him,” Koren said.
“Then we have failed,” Kate said. “We sacrificed Jurdan, went through all this, and we still failed. Our world is doomed. With this power, the demons will be invincible. The firestones will no longer enable us to harm them. They’ll be unbeatable.”
Weakness and nausea worse than the dark stone had inflicted on her descended like a tidal wave. The captain had given her a mission, gave her command of a team of the best people the Order could muster, and still she failed. And because of her, the entire human race would die. She let her knees finally give out and she sat down hard on the stone floor, putting her head in her hands. She stayed like that for several moments as her team stood silently around her.
“There was a man once,” Koren said. Kate didn’t emerge from her misery to look at him or even to try to figure out who he was talking to.
“He was not the best of men, nor the strongest,” the recent prisoner continued. “He did think something of himself, but that’s a different story. He, in a moment of weakness, or a spell of bad luck, or just in one of those times life tends to kick you square between the legs, was subdued by his enemy. This man was brought to his enemy’s lair and he was hurt, hurt badly. Body and mind.
“They took something precious from him and used it to harm not only him, but promised to use it to harm everyone else he had ever known.
“He wanted to give up, to give in to the injuries they added to him daily. His mind was a hair’s breadth from breaking. His will was closer than that to allowing him to cease the seemingly useless hanging onto the rope of his life. Death seemed…easier, somehow.
“And when he could bear it no more, an angel appeared to him, red hair and bright sword flashing. In that instant, when the angel slew the demon who had helped bring the man so close to death, the man realized something.
“Do you know what that something is, my red angel?” Koren said, touching Kate’s shoulder.
She knew she shouldn’t have listened. She hadn’t meant to, wanting only to wallow in her agony. The story drew her in, though, as it was intended to do. She heaved a great sigh, opened her eyes, and looked up at the man.
“No,” she said.
“It is never the end until we are dead,” he said. “There is always hope, always a chance. By all accounts, I should have been dead, but I was too stubborn. Even that has limits, though. I was ready to die before you and your team showed up to help me. To make me see that I am not quite done yet. There may be one good mission left in these old bones.
“How about you?”
“How about me, what?” Kate said.
“Are you up for finishing this mission? Until we’re dead, there is always a chance. Jurdan knew that and used the last of his energy to make a difference. Will we? Will you?”
Kate didn’t know what to say. She knew as well as anyone that a hero never quits, that the Black Command never quits. But it all seemed so overwhelming. Arkith’s weapons would make it impossible for them to harm the demons.
But that was what a hero did, wasn’t it? Despite not being able to gain victory, they still gave everything they had to try to snatch it from the jaws of defeat.
She opened her mouth to speak, to admit she didn’t know what they could do, that she was afraid, that she was not fit to even be in the same company as them, but Koren spoke first.
“We need you, Kate. Help us end this.”
Emotion crashed down on her like an avalanche and she couldn’t breathe. She hadn’t really let everyone down yet, but what she was contemplating would finish the job. They needed her? She couldn’t figure out why, but it reminded her of her mission, of her duty. Was she going to throw all that away, spit in the face of her family’s long history of honor?
Her father’s words came back to her. The night of the ball. If you’re going to do it, you must live up to the family name. She had told him she would.
That simple thought cut through her unthinking sorrow and discouragement. She still felt Jurdan’s death keenly, and she understood that Arkith’s weapon was a powerful liability for the humans, but she wasn’t drowning in her feelings anymore.
Kate took a sharp breath and glared at the room. When her eyes met Koren’s, she saw sympathy in them, but also determination.
“You’re right,” she said. “We’re still alive, though battered and bloody. We still have some strength left. Maybe even enough.”
Aurel put his huge hand out to Kate and she took it, pulling herself to her feet. She wiped the tears from her eyes. She was not embarrassed for them, but they had no place in what she was about to do.
“Thank you, everyone. I—”
“No need for explanations,” Benedict, of all people, said. “We’re with you, Kate. Tell us what we’re going to do and we’ll see if we can’t pull a victory out of this mess.”
Kate smirked. It was good to be part of a family.
“Right,” she said. “Let’s find Arkith. Maybe he hasn’t finished his project yet. There hasn’t been much time. Let’s see if we can take his head off before he does any more damage.”
“Uh, Kate,” Visimar said, looking out of one of the windows “You might want to come look at this.”
All six of them crowded around the window.
Kate’s blood went cold.
Coming over one of the hills was a massive force of demons. At its head, riding proudly toward Arkith’s fortress, was the instantly recognizable figure of Thozrixith, the demon lord.
34
The army of demons was even bigger than the one Kate had seen at the gate. There must have been ten thousand of the creatures swarming over the cracked ground around the fortress.
At the head of the column, brilliant in his glory, strutted Thozrixith. Tall, muscular, with the long curved horns thrusting up from his head toward the sky, he looked at home in the front of the van. He held the same staff in his left hand Kate had seen before, a gnarled length of some type of wood with a massive head. The top consisted of four blades, each like one that would be found on a great battle axe. Where they curved in and almost met, a glowing stone floated, throbbing with orange-red light.
Kate had seen all this before, but one difference made her mouth drop open. He rode some kind of demon beast. It was built like a muscular cat, something like a lion that had been lifting weights for years. Its rear legs were formed like they were from a mountain goat or other hoofed animal, though thicker, but its front two legs were hairless and showed striations of muscle all the way down to the four-taloned claws. A face much like a lion’s, with a mane of flame, swung from side to side, considering the path ahead of them. Its long ears and two goat’s horns swept back from its forehead and seemed to pinch the creature’s eyes so they squinted.
The monster’s tail demanded Kate’s attention. It was a huge snake with fangs that looked like they could puncture armor. That she could see these details made her realize she was much too close.
“They seem to be coming to the fortress,” she said. A cold sweat broke out on her forehead.
“They’re probably just passing by, on their way to the gate,” Peiros said. “I am sure the demon lord knows that Arkith is not here. The mage is probably waiting for him at the gate.”
“The gate?” Kate asked.
“Yes, we discussed it briefly when you were…indisposed,” Koren said. “During the battle, I felt my stone change. Actually, what I felt was my stone cease to exist. I think Arkith destroyed it. With that connection gone, I sense the gate more strongly. It’s exactly opposite the demon army, on the other side of the fortress. Peiros is right. They are probably heading there.”
“Opposite…” Kate murmured. “If they’re opposite from where they’re going, we can take the opportunity to get out of the fortress and head toward the gate. They may not see us.”
“Exactly,” Koren said.
“Then let’s hurry,” Kate commanded. “
If they see us, we’re done for.”
The team leaped up, ready to head out. Koren leaned over Jurdan’s body, whispering. Kate thought it was to pay his last respects. When the man straightened, he held Jurdan’s firestone.
“Good idea,” Kate said. They had collected the other firestones. Hopefully Molara would be able to figure out who they had belonged to. Bringing back a soldier’s firestone was tradition.
Then Koren slipped the stone around his neck.
“What are you doing?” Kate asked, her face twisted into a grimace.
“I am using Jurdan’s stone. Mine has been destroyed, and I lack protection and the ability to harm the demons.”
“That’s…practical,” Kate said as she sighed. The anger left her in light of the reasonableness of the action. She still didn’t like it, thought it was disrespectful, but it gave them a little edge over Koren fighting without the stone’s protection. “Let’s go. We don’t have much time.”
She placed her hand on Jurdan’s forehead. It had a few blood smears but somehow remained unmarked by the demon claws and teeth, unlike the rest of his body. She turned and headed for the hallway that would take them to the side of the fortress that was out of view of the army.
“Pretty Kate,” Aurel said.
She turned and saw him standing over Jurdan, a confused look on his face.
“We have to take him back with us. We can’t leave him here to be eaten by demons.”
Kate’s heart felt like it shattered into pieces and her throat swelled, making it hard to breathe. She swallowed and a small sob escaped her lips. “We can’t, Aurel. We have to flee. He…it will slow us down. We may all die if we try to bring him out.”
The big man’s eyes got liquid as he nodded solemnly. Then the muscles in his jaw twitched. He tore a tapestry off the wall near where Jurdan’s body lay and in a few quick movements, he wrapped his friend up and threw him over one massive shoulder.
“He is my friend. He will not slow me down.”
Kate felt a warm tear trickle down her cheek. “Thank you. Let’s go.”
Hero of Fire Page 23