Evil Ascending

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Smiling, she threw her arms around him. «Father!» She lay her head against his chest and nestled herself in the security of his four-armed hug.

  Another mental voice pushed through the area and intruded on her happiness. From the surprised look on Sin's face, Rajani knew he heard it, too. «Ollie, Ollie in free! Come to the Zun Court

  , my friendz! Come one, come all!» Underlying the message, Rajani heard the human voice she had heard before, but the bulk came straight from Fiddleback. That made her fight to resist it, but she could find no hostility in the call. It might have been arrogant and patronizing, but not overtly threatening.

  Her father looked at his companion, and both of them nodded. "This is our only play," her father's friend said. "If you get a shot at Fiddleback, take it."

  "I will."

  As she left her father's strong embrace, she sensed from both him and his companion reluctance and resignation. They knew the Sun Court would be a trap, but it would also be their best chance to rescue Ryuhito. They knew that fighting a Dark Lord straight up was foolish, but her father's companion also believed Fiddleback's ego and confidence would give them an opening to defeat him.

  Sin walked a little ahead of her on the way to the Sun Court, but looked back and smiled confidently. "We'll win this one. Trust me."

  Rajani returned his smile. "You, I trust. Fiddleback, I don't."

  All four followed the Falcon team ninjas into the Sun Court and pushed on through to the front of the ninja ranks. Off to her left, she saw Eagle team with Colonel Nagashita at its head. Hal and Jytte appeared between her and Eagle team, and the Yakuza appeared with Natch, Bat and Kazuo on the right. Between her and the fountain, Rajani saw all sorts of folks dressed for the party Sin had quit earlier in the evening, and arrayed out beyond the circle of the fountain she spotted two dozen GBI security guards.

  What attracted her attention most was Arrigo El-Leichter. His fists balled, his cruciform body floated 10 feet above the illuminated base of the fountain. Below him, suspended between heaven and Earth, Ryuhito stood on a hovering green disk. Verdant energy crackled from a halo around Arrigo's head, and she saw it reflected in the eyes of noncombatants ringing the fountain.

  Arrigo's head came up, and his face locked into a demonic grin. "Ah, my pet haz returned to hiz zpawning plaze. Zplendid that the prodigal zon be prezent for thiz." He shifted his gaze and looked at everyone. "You are here to birth in a new order on thiz world."

  Rajani felt his stare as if it were a lecherous caress, and she immediately wanted to bathe. She retreated a step to the right, and Sin slipped his left arm over her shoulder. She shuddered, and he hugged her.

  "Ryuhito haz azked for a practical demonztration of the power I have to offer him. You know of thiz, your Internal Defenze Cadre?"

  Hands clasped at the small of his back, Ryuhito nodded curtly. "I also see that Mr. MacNeal has returned, when you said he had been dealt with."

  "That waz not me, but the vezzel I now occupy." Arrigo's body brought its arms together so his fists touched above his head. "You wizh to zee power? You wizh to zee that which I will give to you?" His arms shook, and his hands disappeared in long gouts of green fire. The flames swept over the crowd without burning anyone, then evaporated. "Thiz iz power."

  "It's nothing," Sin laughed. "It's gone."

  Rajani shuddered again. "It's not gone, Sin. Look at their eyes. Look at his disciples' eyes."

  Coyote did not need Rajani's warning to tell him something was very wrong. Right in front of him he saw a rather plain woman's head and body jerk down as if she were in great pain. Her head curled on through her stomach, and her upper body followed, emerging on the other side of her spine. As the ripple effect continued to turn the woman inside out, swallowing her arms and legs as it went, she rebirthed herself as a 20-foot-long snake with a woman's head and a serpent's fangs glistening with venom. She coiled herself sensuously and flicked a forked tongue at him.

  All around her, throughout the crowd that had willingly accepted Fiddleback's invitation to join him in power, other people started to change. One obese man's flesh disappeared back into himself as if his bones were sponges soaking it all up. He looked down at his skeletal body, then threw his head back in an attitude that should have been accompanied by wild laughter, but without lungs and vocal chords, the only sound he made came from the raspy click of his mandibles grinding in their sockets.

  As Coyote saw others transform into bizarre creatures, none exactly like another, he figured out the one thing linking them all. The plain woman became a serpentine seductress. The fat man became thin. A slight, balding man bulked out and had a thick, black pelt covering him—with Coyote certain the man would have become a gorfash if he had known to model himself on one. Each of these people is becoming a caricature of what they most desire to be. Fiddleback's gift is like a wish granted by an evil djinn. A child never again wishing to be hungry would find himself alone on an island with an unending supply of moldy bread and rancid butter.

  «Thiz iz becauze they are pawnz, Jaeger/Coyote. They are what they have made themzelvez to be. You are what I have wrought. You are a leader, and they are deztined to be your minionz.»

  Fiddleback invaded Coyote's mind through the opening the Yidam had created in his probing. Unbidden and undesired, Coyote saw Fiddleback's warped vision of the future blossom fully. Coyote watched himself become engulfed in the green fire that Fiddleback had used to baptize the crowd.

  Something deep down inside of him combusted. He felt incredible joy as unparalleled power pulsed through him. It raised him to heights he had never even dreamed existed. Legions upon legions of possibilities assaulted him, and he knew, with the power he had been given, he could do anything. He could make anyone's wish into reality, altering and adapting it as he saw fit.

  Suddenly, he heard the voices of all those surrounding him. The snake woman shouted out her exhilaration and unbridled pleasure at the transformation Fiddleback had wrought. The skeleton man luxuriated in his new-found slenderness, and yet others reveled in their transmogrifications. From them, Coyote felt a sense of right and justice.

  He saw his arms go out to embrace them all, then join with them physically. He absorbed them and their power.

  He grew larger and stronger, his raw energy grossly outstripping that which his gigantic form alone should have given him. As he grew, with people flowing into him like droplets of oil combining on a still-water pond, he saw Bat and the Yidam shrink. They were nothing to him because they did not possess the sort of power that sustained him. Unworthy as morsels, he saw them as threats in that they had the ability to destroy the creatures upon which his vast hunger fed.

  «I will give you thiz power, my pet! You will know your full potential. You will deztroy our enemiez, and we zhall become invincible!»

  The exultant tone in Fiddleback's voice sent a ripple of contempt through Coyote's mind. In the one second of clarity he had in its wake, he picked up a counterpoint to the joy and happiness still coming from those creatures he had allowed to become one with him. It resonated in low tones, but pulsed with dark energy. He dove down, clawing through all the positive affirmations and undying statements of gratitude. There, where his soul narrowed down into its blackest corner, he found the source of the undercurrent, and it greedily pulled him inward.

  Like black pearls that had been pitted and scarred by acid, he saw the fears and terrors of those Fiddleback had changed. Clinging to themselves, naked, cold and malnourished, the core identities of the people decayed. Flesh sloughed off in dry ashes. The trembling horror and anger shot out from them like dark rays that twisted and warped into the green energy empowering their new selves. They had been changed, but only through the torture of who and what they had been.

  «Now you know the zource. Now it iz all revealed to you. Come to me, my pet. Take up your rightful place at my right hand. What you azk will be yourz, if you will be mine!»

  "No!" Coyote leveled the Stormcloud at the snake w
oman as she reared back to strike. His first burst hit her two feet below her head, stopping her lunge more effectively than a stone wall. The second cloud of pellets obliterated her face. Her body went limp for a second as her head arced down to the ground, then uncoiled with a spasmodic jerk, causing the skeleton man to jump back.

  A huge winged shape that looked like the improbable marriage of pterodactyl wings to a shark's body soared into the air. It looped once to build up airspeed, then came in on an attack vector with its razor-studded jaws agape. It hit one of the ninjas and lifted her up into the air, then dropped her screaming body as it gobbled down her left arm.

  Sin turned and snapped two silent rounds off at the flying shark. Holes appeared in the taut, fleshy membrane of one wing. The shark dipped that wing and arced down into a turn that set it up for a run at Sin.

  Coyote tracked it with the Stormcloud and hit the trigger twice. The buckshot chewed a crescent bite out of the shark's dorsal fin, but did not even slow it down. The Dragonfire round, by contrast, did. The 25-foot-long flame jet hit the shark over its left-side gill slits. The fire stream continued virtually unabated out the other side, then the creature vomited flames. Its eyes went dead, and it crashed into the ground, rolling over and over, like a child's broken glider.

  Men and monsters alike scattered as a mottled red and blue triceratops stampeded through the courtyard. Tracer rounds from submachine-guns glanced off its bony shield and sailed like fireworks into the night sky. Blood glistened black from its horns, and a blue satin Yakuza jacket flapped like a pennant from the left-most one.

  Coyote turned to bring the Stormcloud to bear on the charging beast, but the Yidam's secondary arms pushed him aside. The alien giant calmly raised his PTRS to his shoulder and sighted down it like a white bwana hunting rhinoceri. The dinosaur, its eyes glowing with human knowledge of its invulnerability, raced straight at the Yidam.

  The gun roared once, and the recoil slewed the Yidam all the way around so that he faced away from his target. The bullet hit the charging triceratops cleanly between the eyes, punching through the skull as if it were made of sun-baked clay. The tungsten core blew back through the hole in the skull that allowed for the entry of the spine and spun its way through the creature's body. The incendiary charge exploded in the tiny brain case, blowing the eyes back out on fiery pillars, then splitting the skull like a dropped melon.

  The triceratops' nose dipped, digging into the ground like an anchor. Its body piled up behind the broad shield, stopping the creature barely seven meters from the Yidam. Its body settled back, leaving its legs splayed forward, then lolled over on its left side.

  The skeleton man vaulted the triceratops' corpse like an X-ray of Bruce Lee. The bony fingers of his left hand slashed the face of one Yakuza to ribbons. The skeleton man hooked his right hand up underneath the rib cage of a second Yakuza and carelessly tossed him back over his shoulder. The Yakuza flailed his arms and legs as he flew, but could do nothing to prevent himself from being impaled on the triceratops' horns when he landed.

  A look of pure, unadulterated joy lit Bat's face as he yanked two Yakuza back by the scruff of their necks to get at the skeleton man. The monster slashed at him with bloody claws, but Bat stepped back and contemptuously slapped the blows aside. The skeleton man's head came up in surprise, and Coyote knew he had realized that as frightening and dangerous as he might be, a trained fighter he was not.

  Bat's right fist hammered that point home as it exploded on the skeleton man's jaw. Bone shattered, littering the ground with teeth and bits of mandible. Bat's left fist came up in a murderous hook that snapped ribs. His right foot came down, crushing foot bones into ivory splinters, then another right first fractured the skeleton man's left collarbone.

  The skeleton man turned to run away, but even before he could bump into the dinosaur's corpse, Bat grabbed his spine in his left hand. Pleasure melting Bat's face into a nightmare mask, he reached down and took a firm hold of the skeleton man's right femur. Twisting it left and then right again, Bat ripped it free. As the bones below the knee dropped away in an inanimate pile, Bat spun the femur around and crashed it down through the skeleton man's skull.

  Colonel Nagashita quickly crossed the open area between him and the hirsute behemoth created out of the small, balding man. The creature took one swipe at him with a fist the size of Nagashita's head. The IDC ninja leader ducked beneath the blow, then darted forward. Coyote saw a flash of light as Nagashita drew his katana and heard the creature utter a soft oof as the blade passed through its chest. Its upper half started to pivot toward the ninja, but when its lower half failed to start the same maneuver, the creature fell over backward, dead before it hit the ground.

  «Rezizt, my pet! You know how I love to dizplay my power! You help me make my point to Ryuhito! Now, more playthingz for you to deal with, I think.»

  From beyond the fountain, GBI's transformed guards entered the battle. Walking tall like men, they had become sable-coated wolves with glowing green eyes. A snapping, howling pack, they fell on the Yakuza and ninjas as they streamed in toward Coyote and his people. Coyote turned and nailed one with a close-range blast that tore one of its arms clean off, but the wolfman kept coming.

  To his right, Sin dropped one with a single shot that went in right above its snarling muzzle and exploded out the back of its head. Beyond him, another died as Bat used the skeleton man's femur to cave its skull in. Natch popped a three-shot burst from her MP-7 through one's spine, taking it out of the fight, and Nagashita killed another by decapitating it.

  "Brain or spine!" Coyote shouted as he opened one up with a shotgun blast. Despite his best effort, it took another shot to kill it, and, despite his warning, the wolfmen pressed forward. Fiddleback's foul power, channeled out through El-Leichter's eyes, rebuilt new wolfmen from the scattered parts of the old ones.

  Coyote tapped Sin on the shoulder and signaled him back a step while he used the Stormcloud to knock another wolfman down. "Where can we go? We're losing!"

  Sin snapped off two shots that blew fist-sized chunks from a wolfman's head. "The main building. Room-to-room fighting, but they'll know it better than us."

  Dammit! I have to do something! The press of wolfmen had already split the IDC ninjas off from his group, though they seemed to be holding their own against the former guards. We are losing!

  «Join me, Coyote. I will then let you win!»

  The hopefulness in Fiddleback's telepathic message reminded Coyote of the earlier sendings. He wants me to come willingly. That way he gets more power. If I am broken, I am of no use to him. Together, we can be invincible, which means he is vulnerable now!

  «You are magnificent, my pet! But as I am vulnerable, so are your friends!»

  The Yakuza started to break and run as Bat went down with a howling wolfman on him. The howl shifted to a yelp of pain as Bat regained his feet and held the creature aloft by its head. With his left hand clamping its muzzle shut and his right hand capping its skull, Bat wrenched his hands hard to the right. The creature's body twisted along with its head, preventing him from breaking its neck, but the spasmodic jerking of its body showed he'd clearly hurt it. Not content with that, Bat shifted his right hand down to the front of its throat and grabbed a handful of stomach muscles with his left. He slammed the wolfman down on the edge of the triceratops' shield, snapping its spine like a candy cane.

  Though Bat's victory heartened Coyote, he knew they could not stand. A dozen of the wolfmen broke off to chase the fleeing Yakuza, but the rest poured around the open right flank and threatened to sweep around to cut off their retreat. Coyote could barely see the encysted ninjas off on the left for all the wolfmen attacking them. As the Stormcloud's breech snapped open and he unconsciously reached for a nonexistent spare clip, he knew the end had come.

  «Thiz iz your lazt chance, Coyote! Come to me. Now!»

  The sheer desperation in Fiddleback's sending made defying him easy, but still he hesitated. Cut and bleeding, his frie
nds pulled back, fighting against forces that would engulf and devour them. Coyote knew, deep down, that if he accepted Fiddleback's power, he could keep his friends safe. Then he also realized that when he accepted Fiddleback's power, he would have no desire to keep them safe.

  With a butt stroke from the Stormcloud he shattered a wolfman's skull and forced himself to ignore the stinging furrows left in his chest from its claw. "Never, Fiddleback, never."

  «No!» Fiddleback's frustrated screech sliced through his brain like a razor, but Coyote realized it was not directed at him. He sensed another power entering the Sun Court. He saw nothing at first, but noticed instantly that both El-Leichter and the wolfmen turned their attention back to their own rear area. He heard choked-off yips of pain, then saw a limp canine body flip end over end through the air.

  Through gaps in the humanoid pack, he saw a slender, dark-haired, clean-limbed youth rendered in shades of reflected green and black. His hands and feet moved with blurring speed, and black blood covered his arms from the elbow down. Over his body, worked lovingly in bold swirls that helped define his musculature, black lines both thick and thin decorated him.

  Where he struck, a body fell and, if it moved after that, only gravity or an involuntary muscular twitch was the cause.

  "How dare you!" Arrigo spun in the air and scattered his soldiers with the wave of a hand.

  The youth stopped in the oasis strewn with the torn bodies of his enemies, and blood streamed off his body. Beyond him, back where it could have been a gate in a wall, a golden circle glowed, and the tiny silhouette of a man slowly grew within it. Coyote thought, because of the image's size, that the man was far away, but when the silhouette assumed its full three dimensions, he saw the figure was indeed small.