I couldn’t let him get into this fight. The fire would be too hot. If he failed to dodge even a single fireball, he’d go up like a candle. I would not allow him to become a pile of ashes. “Stay here.”
He pretended to think it over. “I don’t believe I will.”
“So, the beta of Ice Fury is a liar?”
“Yes.”
I reached the door. There were ten feet between us. I had to do this fast. “You’re shameless.”
He grinned. It was the kind of smile that promised blood. “Yes, and many other things.”
“It’s not your fight.”
“I decide which fights are mine.”
His gaze caught on my bag. He would never let me get my hand out of it.
I yanked my magic to me.
“Don’t do it,” he snarled, reaching for me.
“Aarh!” Freeze.
The blast of magic tore through the house, freezing the shapeshifters in mid-move. Saiman halted, halfway off the couch. In front of me, Derek stopped, standing on the toes of his left foot, reaching for me like an ice skater about to leap.
The power word would buy me five seconds. More than enough.
I stepped outside and pulled a glass apple out.
The skin on Derek’s face wrinkled. Oh crap.
I threw the apple on the stone floor of the courtyard. It shattered, spilling my blood, primed with magic.
A muscle on Derek’s shoulders flexed. His body trembled, straining.
I punched a stream of power into the blood. It snapped into a hair-thin line, glowing with red, and circled the house. A wall of red shot up. Derek crashed into it at full speed and bounced off. The ward tolled like a giant gong.
His human body tore, and the terrifying silver beast spilled out. His eyes were on fire. “Open it!”
“Not your fight.” I turned.
The Firestorm splayed across the sky. It would be on us in half a minute.
The blood ward boomed behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder. Derek ripped into the wall of magic. He wouldn’t break through. It took an insane amount of power to pierce a blood ward.
I pulled a golden sphere out of my bag and hurled it into the air. Of the six in my sanctuary, I had taken this one because Grandfather had made it especially for a fight like this. The complex metal filigree unfolded like a flower, sliding and moving into a new shape. A hollow metal wolf the size of a pony landed in front of me, its skin an intricate metal lace held together by ancient spells. Like all of Roland’s weapons, beautiful and deadly.
The wolf snapped its fangs, and its eyes ignited with a red glow. I dropped my bag and my cloak. The canteen on my belt was filled with vampire blood. Just enough for a single set of armor.
Making the armor would drain me. Once I put it on, it would protect me from heat until its magic was exhausted. My immunity to fire bought me some protection already, and I had to endure until the heat became too great. I had to save the armor until the end.
I grabbed a handful of arrows from my quiver and stabbed them into my thigh. The pain anchored me. The world turned crystal clear. My blood coated the arrowheads. I shoved them back into the quiver and turned to look at Derek one last time.
He looked demonic, all claws and fur, a monster corded with bulging muscle tearing into the wall of magic. Nothing human remained in him.
I put my hand against the ward. Goodbye.
Claws gouged the other side of the spell, leaving no tears. The ward held.
I spun around and jumped on the metal wolf’s back. The magic would power it for twenty minutes. It would have to be enough.
The wolf charged in a dizzying sprint. Wind tore at my face. The cloud in front of me condensed and flashed with flames. The dense curtain of smoke churned faster. Dozens of red glowing fires ignited within the storm and streaked down. Fireballs rained on the plain, exploding left and right, shooting flames and dirt into the air.
The wolf zigzagged like a mad rabbit. Come on, show yourselves.
A fireball hit too close on my left. Heat bathed me. We tore through it, sprinting deeper, to the center of the storm.
I finally saw the pattern within the cloud, three churning maelstroms, three priests each generating smoke and fire in a dark spiral. An equilateral triangle, with a ma’avir in each corner. Individually they would be problematic; together, locked into a battle formation, they became unstoppable.
I guided the wolf into a turn and leaned back until my spine hit the metal. The left spiral spun directly above me. I nocked an arrow and fired. The arrow shrieked through the air and vanished into the cloud. A fireball answered. The wolf shied right, twisting like a cat in the air, and it took all of my skill to stay on its back.
Missed. Shit.
Fire pelted the ground around me, explosions so loud, I thought I would go deaf. I leaned forward, hugging the wolf’s neck, and we streaked through, scorched by flames, showered with dirt, moving forward on instinct and hope.
Keep moving, keep moving. To stop was to die.
We dodged another fireball, and suddenly there was an opening to the left, all three spirals clearly visible on the side. I leaned to the right and fired, sending a burst of magic with it, the same way my ancestors had done thousands of years ago when horse archers of the Koorghans ruled the steppe.
The arrow screeched, its red arrowhead glowing, an ember against the black storm. It pierced the center of the whirlwind. A ghostly scream rang out. The spiral collapsed, revealing a ragged circle of clear sky and the ma’avir at its center, my arrow in his chest.
The priest arched his back. Fire spilled out of the wound. The arrow shaft ignited and burned to ash in an instant, but the arrowhead was still inside him, eating at his body, sapping his power.
Soot blinded me. I fired again on pure instinct. The second arrow bit into the ma’avir’s side. I saw it strike home out of the corner of my eye, as the wolf and I raced out of the cloud of ash. Behind us fireballs drummed the ground, as if a giant was chasing me and pounding the ground with his feet.
The firestorm tore in half, the injured ma’avir convulsing.
A torrent of flames slashed into his side from the left. A second torrent hit him from the right. The other priests had anchored him.
The burning cloud melted away. The plain was ash around us. The three priests hung high above, connected by ropes of fire.
I fired an arrow at the priest on the left. It shrieked through the air and burned to nothing five feet from the ma’avir. Crap.
Moloch’s priests twisted themselves in identical strange poses. Three pillars of fire burst from their feet, smashing into the ground with a deafening thud.
I steered the wolf into a wide circle and fired again, at the other priest. Once again the arrow melted into ash.
The pillars solidified into ornate metal columns, red and glowing with heat. Each column, about two and a half feet in diameter, towered forty feet high. Two priests in front, one behind, still arranged in a triangle.
And what the hell were they doing now?
The wolf angled around the pillars, keeping far enough back to tolerate the heat. The arrows weren’t cutting it. I’d have to get close. Climbing up one of those pillars would be a bitch. Nothing I had could slice through them. Even blood weapons had their limits.
The priests clapped their hands. Fire shot out of them, colliding in the center of the triangle. A deafening thunderclap shook the plains, the sound of a colossal amount of magic released at once.
The fiery glow flashed with white and rained down, flowing into a bovine shape. A giant three-headed bull hit the ground. The steppe shuddered.
The beast raised his head. Twelve feet long, eight feet tall, and eight feet wide, with horns the size of sabers, it was flesh that emanated fire. Metal scales shielded its sides, chest, and back, and the heat surging from it warmed them to a dull red. The Bull of Tophet. In Sienna’s visions, she saw him rampage through Atlanta, setting the city ablaze.
Not today.
I emptied the canteen on myself and sliced across my thigh. My blood sparked with magic. The undead blood from the canteen reacted, shooting out in a multitude of streams and arching over my back, weaving itself over my body, forming a flexible cuirass over my chest, pauldrons and vambraces over my arms, cuisses and greaves over my legs, and a helmet over my head.
The bull dug a hoof the size of a turkey platter into the ground. Flames swirled along his hide. His six eyes sighted me. He blew fire out of his nostrils and charged.
I pushed the wolf into a gallop. It flew over the ground-raising clouds of ash with its paws. The drumbeat of the bull’s hooves shook the steppe. Fighting him head-on would be suicide. I had to take out the priests. They were the ones feeding it power.
The arrows were out. Trying to climb the pillars would burn through the armor and my fingers. Throwing Dakkan was pointless. They were too high.
I glanced over my shoulder. The damn thing was gaining. How in the hell could something with that much mass run so fast?
That was a lot of mass moving at a great speed.
I twisted the wolf into a tight turn, leaning so far out of the saddle my body was parallel to the ground. It skidded, turned, and we sprinted back to the pillars.
The bull tore past us, unable to make the turn in time. A bellow of rage tore from the beast.
Chase me, you stupid cow.
The bull came around like a barge turning and zeroed in on me, picking up speed. Faster. Put some of that bovine muscle into it.
The bull bellowed again, coming fast. The wind fanned his fire, and flames streamed from him like some hellish mane. He was gaining.
Seventy feet.
Fifty. The bull lowered his heads, six horns ready to gore me.
I aimed straight for the pillars.
Thirty. Heat scorched my back through the armor.
The wolf shot between the right and rear pillar, its sides softening from the heat. The air in my lungs burned.
The bull plowed into the rear pillar. The metal column careened, tilting, the priest atop it scrambling to maintain his purchase.
I twisted the wolf into a turn.
Three of the bull’s horns had pierced the pillar, biting deep into the red-hot metal. He lurched to the right, but the horns remained stuck, trapping two of his heads.
I dropped my bow and snapped Dakkan together.
Instead of backing up and pulling his horns loose, the beast pushed forward. The pillar held. He shook his left head back and forth, trying to rip the horns free through the metal. The pillar shuddered, swinging.
I darted in. Heat slammed into me like a suffocating wall. I plunged Dakkan into the bull’s captive head, straight into his ear. He brayed in fury and pain. I stabbed it again and again, in the ear, in the eye, in the nose, over and over.
The bull roared, throwing all of his weight to the side, trying to get away from my spear. Something snapped. The horns ripped through the pillar’s side. The metal column sagged, toppled, and plunged to the ground like a felled tree.
The priest atop it had no time to react. He flailed, his robes flaring out like wings, and fell. He hit the ground and found me there, above him. I plunged Dakkan into his skull.
The ma’avir convulsed, his robes flapping. I vaulted onto the wolf, and we broke into a gallop.
Go, go, go.
With a deep bellow, the bull gave chase. His hooves smashed into the jerking priest. The ma’avir exploded.
The blast wave slammed into us, the heat agonizing despite the fifty yards between us. The wolf stumbled, its melting legs too soft to hold our weight. I jumped and rolled through the ash. Pain stabbed through my left thigh.
A horrible scream deafened me, like a human howling in agony into a copper bell. I clamped my hands over my ears.
The scream rang out and died. The shaking ground announced the bull bearing down on me.
I jumped to my feet.
The beast tore toward me. Only two heads now, one of them with half a horn. Fifty feet, twenty…
Steady, steady…
Now.
I jumped aside. The bull’s momentum carried it well past me, too fast to stab.
The wolf limped forward, its legs a soft mess of bending metal.
The bull slowed, turning. Stabbing those thick necks would be like trying to saw through a telephone pole with a pocketknife. The legs were a better option. It couldn’t run without its knees.
The world turned dark. Pain exploded in my head, chest, and stomach, as if my whole body was rebelling against me. The ground spun and fell on my head.
I clawed through the agony, desperate to hold onto consciousness.
Feedback from the broken blood ward. Someone had shattered my spell.
I floated through the sea of pain. Reverse the magic flow, pull it inward, exhale out, wrap it… Reality exploded around me in a cacophony of light and sound. Ten yards from me, the bull shook his head, trying to dislodge the metal wolf impaled on his horns and melting over his face. The construct had sacrificed itself for me.
Above me a nightmarish meld of wolf and human bounded onto a pillar, digging his claws into the metal, scrambling up.
Derek, you stupid idiot! It’s too high, it’s too hot…
He jumped onto the top of the pillar. The ma’avir vomited a torrent of fire. Derek dropped under it, planting one hand on the pillar. The fur on his arm burst into flame. He swung his legs, knocking the priest off, and leaped after him, ripping into the ma’avir as they fell. They crashed to the ground in a cloud of ash.
“Run!” I screamed. “Run!”
A lupine shape rushed out of the cloud: Derek, sprinting at full speed.
The priest detonated. The blast wave picked Derek up, every hair on his body igniting at the same time, and tossed him like a rag doll.
The metal scream erupted again. I clamped my hands over my ears. To the right, another head melted from the bull’s shoulders. He was down to two horns now.
Derek staggered upright, swaying, stunned. Burns smoked all over his body. His skin crawled, sprouting fur, as Lyc-V tried to repair its host.
The bull sighted him.
“Hey! Here! Look at me!”
He didn’t see me. I was off to the side and Derek was directly in his line of sight, still dazed.
No.
I sprinted to the bull, melting the armor over my thigh, pulling blood onto my hands in twin ribbons.
The bull spun toward me.
You can’t have him.
The Bull of Tophet charged, but I was too close. He didn’t have time to build up speed. I twisted to the side, rammed Dakkan between the metal scales over its shoulder, and thrust my hands into bovine fireblood.
“Hesaad.” Mine.
Magic tore out of me. The pain shook me to my core. It felt like my bones cracked open and the marrow was sucked out into the void. The threshold for taking the bull over was too high…
The bull brayed. On top of his pillar, the remaining ma’avir screeched in agony. Our magic collided, wrestling for control of the beast. Pressure clamped me, the power inside the bull a dense knot.
Derek would live. No matter what it cost me, he would walk away from this.
Blood drenched my lips. My eyes and nose bled, and I fed every drop of it into the creature. The Bull of Tophet had been crafted from Molokh’s divine power. I was trying to rip a god’s beast away from him.
“Amehe, amehe, amehe…” Obey, obey, obey.
My whole body went numb. Tears drenched my eyes, making it hard to see. I couldn’t feel my hands. I was teetering on the edge of a chasm, about to plunge to my death.
“Amehe.”
The cocoon of magic within the bull burst. My magic flooded through it. A malevolent primitive intelligence that was the creature’s consciousness connected with mine, accepting the bridle of my will. I felt the overwhelming strength of the bull’s body, its weight, its power. I jerked my hands out and shoved the bull’s mind at the last ma’avir
’s pillar.
The creature charged and smashed into the metal column. The pillar quaked. The bull bounced back and struck again, like a battering ram. The priest above ripped his robes and fell to his knees, wrapped in flames.
The air shimmered and split, and through the gap a giant reached out with a perfect hand. He stood eighty feet tall, his face heartbreaking in its beauty. A mane of blond hair fell onto wide shoulders covered in ancient armor that glowed like a golden mirror. To look into his emerald eyes was to lose yourself. Moloch had come to see me.
He had to be burning through his magic at a crazy rate to manifest here and in the giant form. He couldn’t possibly keep this up. I had to outlast him.
Moloch’s fingers closed around the priest, lifting him in the air. He opened his perfect mouth. “YOU STILL RESIST.”
I hurled the bull at him. It charged the avatar, thousands of pounds of fury and flame.
Moloch reached out with his other hand. The bull connected and melted into his palm. The loss of magic brought me to my knees.
“YOU BELONG TO ME. COME TO ME, PRINCESS OF SHINAR, AND KNOW PARADISE.”
“Go fuck yourself.” Moving my tongue was a colossal effort. I had lost so much magic…
“YOU CAN’T DEFY ME. MY WILL IS ABSOLUTE. YOUR MOTHER WILL DIE, YOUR GRANDMOTHER WILL BE MY SLAVE, AND YOU WILL SIT BESIDE ME.”
“I’ll kill you and obliterate your name. Nobody will remember you, and you will pass into nothingness.”
He smiled, magic radiating from him, warm and brilliant. It pulled me like a magnet. It made me want to weep.
Moloch leaned forward, reaching for me.
I could do nothing. I was spent.
A silver werewolf thrust himself between us. Power boiled out of him, hungry and ancient, so potent it took my breath away.
Moloch stared at him. His eyes widened.
Derek raised his head and howled. It sounded like a vicious battle prayer.
The child-eating god took a step back. The rip in reality collapsed, the final echoes of his voice dancing on the wind.
“UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN.”
I fell on my back, my arms wide, and stared at the blue sky. The air tasted so sweet. Everything hurt.
Derek howled again, singing a song of triumph and blood.
Blood Heir Page 29