by Mark Johnson
Reeta, safely in the center of the walkway, looked behind as they walked swiftly, arm-in-arm. “No one’s following,” she whispered.
“Means nothing. Royals have artifacts to spy with. Our watchers could be miles away.” He stuck his hand into his pack and grabbed the tracker. If trouble found them, hopefully, ‘help’ was only a minute away.
Mist rose from the grass outside the corridor. There was no sound save the wind. And their own footfalls and quick breathing. They turned several corners, seeing no one.
Reeta squeezed his arm. “What do we do, Fen?”
“We can’t stay at homeless shelters forever. Maybe Pelina meant our place is already being watched and we can’t return? Maybe we just move somewhere else and forget this? Or we could sleep at separate houses to throw them off, or—”
They turned another corner and stopped dead. A chaos detector hummed merrily alongside a shopfront. On the cobblestone path beside it lay several small, still hairy objects. Cat corpses.
Tummil pulled Reeta close and almost pressed the tracker. No, he couldn’t. He couldn’t raise a false alarm. Maybe that was part of the demon’s strategy; to get him to panic now, so no one would pay attention later.
Reeta crouched, staring into the night. “Fen, this is impossible. The chaos detector should have gone off if the demon got this close! There’d be Seekers swarming all over if a demon had done this! This has to be the Royals.”
He rubbed her back in an attempt at reassurance. “Or, like Pelina said, the rules have changed. I’m thinking we run back to the pub?”
Reeta bit her lip. “Maybe there’re more Royals waiting there. Maybe all three demons are working together. Maybe that’s the rule change.”
“Then where?”
She gripped his hand. “The Grove, love. The priest might be there. Pelina said he can help.”
“How do we know he’ll be there?”
“No one knows what he’s capable of. The last thing the Royals expect is that we’ll run into the night, toward the Cenephan Grove. There aren’t any cadvers out there recently, so if this is some big mistake, we’ve got nothing to worry about.”
He bit his lower lip. The tracker in his hand was slippery with sweat. “All right. The Grove isn’t far. We run on three. One—”
Something rattled on the corridor’s roof. A rat?
He pressed down on the tracker’s button as he brought it out of the bag. Clutching one another, they stepped away from the sound.
The corridor ceiling cracked apart. Something large and dark crashed through.
Tummil pressed the tracker’s button.
Tummil and Reeta scrambled into the night. Within seconds, heavy feet thumped the ground behind them.
It was too fast! Reeta panted. Gods, she couldn’t run fast as him. He had to think of something.
He released her hand and spun to face the demon, brandishing the tracker before him.
“Gotcha!” he screamed victoriously.
A hulking shadow dodged to the side. White eyes glowed above him as they warily backed away. Whatever it was, it was tall and had excellent reflexes. It ducked from the tracker’s path as he pointed it, too fast to follow.
“Fen!” Reeta screamed.
He didn’t look back. “I’ve got this, babe. Run!”
How many seconds had he been holding the tracker’s button?
“You know what this is?” he screamed at the black mass. “Neither do I! I have no idea what it does, and I’ve activated it! It was given to me by someone who doesn’t give a damn whether I live or die. So get over here and tear me apart, you son of a bitch! Let’s find out what this thing does!”
He lunged forward, swinging the tracker before him as though it could kill on impact.
The monster backed away, white eyes blinking rapidly.
“Fen!” Reeta shrieked again.
Oh Gods, don’t tell me the Royal was lying about the tracker! “Hold still! C’mere!”
The silhouette of the monster’s head tilted. Then it stalked toward him, its rumbling growl making his body vibrate.
A sharp-clawed limb swung out of the darkness, taking him in the leg. Pain seared as he collapsed to the grass—white-hot, scattering his thoughts. All Tummil knew was deep pain in his leg. Nothing existed other than pain and Reeta’s distant screams.
The pain ceased.
Sweat broke all over his body. He grabbed at his leg. Thick wetness on his hands.
The demon’s growling formed into words, deeper than any human throat could produce. “Your toy does nothing. Your woman will—”
Something crashed into the pathway near Tummil’s head. The growling ended in a surprised grunt.
A stray blow knocked him away from the demon. He landed on his back, hitting his head.
Reeta’s hands were under his arms. “Up, baby, up!”
Crashes of thick, fleshy impacts behind him.
Despite the agony in his leg, he turned.
A dark, muscular monstrosity struggled with something white and metallic. The two beings tumbled and thrashed, hitting one another with furious speed and strength. He couldn’t get a good look at either. The combatants rolled toward the corridor’s light, and he recognized a metallic dome-shaped head and powerful, long limbs.
Gods, it was real. Zale Morgenheth wasn’t crazy.
“The Frogman!” he pointed with the tracker. The green pendant was unusually warm against his chest.
She pulled his arm around her shoulder. “Baby, where did it hurt you?”
“My leg. I can’t walk!”
Reeta swiveled toward the illuminated walkway alongside the buildings, then the Grove. A little closer now. Somehow, the Grove’s natural, bio-luminescent light looked safer than the walkway.
Tummil took a faltering step and almost passed out from the pain. “Babe, the Frogman. It isn’t winning. Look, it’s getting its blows in, but the demon’s more powerful. The pub’s too far. We gotta get to the Grove. The priest!”
Gods knew what the priest would do if he did turn up. But given the strength of the monster, he could tell the electric lights were false hope. They had to take a chance and pray the Gods would step in. Or they’d be dead.
He wanted to scream with each step. Blood pooled in his boot. If he survived, he’d never walk again. He’d be stuck at a desk for the next forty years.
The blows slowed behind them.
“It’s the demon. Catkiller. How is it beating the Royal Frogman so easily?” Reeta whimpered.
“The rule change,” Tummil panted. His vision doubled for a moment, then cleared. “Something’s changed in five thousand years. But what?”
They stumbled into the Grove. The tracker had grown hot in his hand.
Tummil checked his leg. His trouser leg was shredded and red from the thigh down. He looked away when he saw how bad the damage was. He left bloody footprints at each step, and he was having trouble focussing his vision. He needed to lie down.
Reeta squeezed his hand and her jaw trembled. “We’ll get you help.” She pointed. “What’s that?”
A bearded man snored beside a hedge near the plinth of Polis Armer the Comforter of the Bereaved, a bottle lying by his outstretched hand.
Tummil grabbed the machete from his bag, waiting for the demon to hurtle through the Grove’s entrance. “It’s just a drunk. Get behind me. Look, there, Armer the Forgiving. That’s where the priest—”
A black mass thumped to the ground yards away, snarling, its lips pulling back to reveal glinting fangs in its dog-like muzzle. It spread its wings and tensed its bleeding haunches, favoring one leg. Gods, the thing was huge and would be easily three times his weight. He’d have no chance against it.
Pelina hadn’t been warning them about the Royals.
The demon’s wings folded behind its back. It threw a mass of metal scraps at Tummil’s feet. The Frogman! The metallic suit’s side was ripped open, revealing a man-shaped cavity.
There’d been no one inside t
he Frogman! The Royal creature had fought with nothing inside. A golem!
Catkiller’s dark eyes held an awful intelligence. It didn’t lunge. Instead, it stared down at him, indicating the fractured Frogsuit with its sharp, powerful hands.
It wanted them to talk?
The hot tracker vibrated against his palm.
“…in case I need to destroy it from a distance.”
He hurled the tracker at the demon’s long face. It snatched the cylinder out of the air. Its lip curled up over its snout as if to say, ‘Really?’
The tracker exploded.
Silver flames engulfed the demon’s arm and the side of its head. It shrieked and flailed, thumping the flames.
Reeta pulled Tummil away from the demon.
He grimaced through the pain in his leg. “Armer the Forgiving’s statue. That’s where I met the priest.” Gods Above, he should have gone to pray at Armer the Defender’s statue that day he met the priest.
They backed against Armer the Forgiving’s plinth. Tummil tightened his grip on the machete.
Catkiller had mostly thumped the fire out. It crouched on its knees, shaking its head.
The homeless man by the bush still lay prone and blissfully unaware of the monstrosity just yards away.
Then the demon’s wings shifted, folding behind and into its back. Its snout retracted and its skin lightened.
The demon continued to change until a naked middle-aged man stood before them, grimacing. Black burns covered its arm and the side of its face. I’ve damaged it.
Its lip curled upwards and it indicated the homeless man sleeping beneath the hedge. “You’ll pay for that. But don’t make too much noise, or I’ll have to kill him too.” This thing’s voice was so normal, like any decently-educated citizen.
Its smile held ice. “You’re not Engineers. Not even their paladins with the poles.” It must mean Royals and Seekers. “How did you know I’d been awoken, if they didn’t?”
Tummil took a deep breath. Breathing had become difficult in the last few minutes. “I was approached by some sort of agent of the Gods. I don’t know what it was. It looked human, but it was able to read my mind.”
Catkiller’s lip twitched. “They’ve taken human form! That will make my task… more complex.”
Not explaining itself, the demon peered at its blackened arm and fingers with chagrin. The fingers were slow to clench and open. It looked up and snarled. “Now, what awoke me?”
He had to keep Catkiller talking in case another Royal golem was coming to save them.
“No one knows,” Tummil said. “It killed the humans it worked with, then returned to Sumad.”
The demon frowned. “Sumad? What was it doing here?”
“I don’t know.”
The demon lashed out, kicking Tummil’s injured leg.
Tummil roared in pain and staggered to the ground, gripping his sticky, wet mess of a leg. The world went grey. Reeta’s hands on his back helped him up. He had the sense he’d lost a few seconds of consciousness.
“I swear, I don’t know why it was here,” Tummil moaned.
Pelina Saarg had told him to keep the green pendant on him. Tummil groped beneath his shirt, pulling the pendant out. He almost dropped his machete as a dizzy spell took him. Blood pooled beneath his foot.
Catkiller leaned toward him, teeth bared. “Tell me what you do know. Make it good.”
Tummil racked his mind. “A few months ago, whatever awoke you also helped dig a massive hole for a research facility, where civilians were experimented on. I don’t know why.”
The demon hissed. “This research facility. What energy did it use?” It paced before the statue.
Why did it ask? Everyone knew demons used chaos energy!
Reeta stiffened. “The cats, back at the chaos detector. It didn’t detect you dropping them there because you’re using another energy, aren’t you? You’re not using chaos energy like you did five thousand years ago!”
Catkiller ceased its pacing.
“The powerheads whose generators exploded in the graveyard!” she continued. “You killed them to hide that you’d taken a working suppression energy generator. That’s the rule change. You’re powered with suppression energy, like the addicts, not the Darkness’ chaos energy! That’s why no chaos detectors can find you!”
The demon gave a snarling grin. “The new energy conceals the old. I keep both within me. Whoever created this new energy was a genius.”
Tummil groaned. The transmitters back at the manor house had been broadcasting suppression energy! The Seekers would never have searched for a suppression broadcast. Because the Darkness used chaos energy. No one knew chaos could conceal itself within suppression.
The world needed to know! But the only people capable of spreading the knowledge were about to die. Gods, how could they escape the demon?
Reeta swallowed. “You change form because you used to be a shifter, didn’t you? You imitated humans during the War, but now you imitate animals. Cats and bats because they’re nocturnal predators, not like dogs who’ve been domesticated.”
Catkiller grinned. “A new energy form, hidden from your paladins. New abilities, to match a new age of challenges. We’ve already killed one of your gods. The rest will follow. Five thousand years late, but better than never.” It lunged. Tummil swung the machete, but was too slow.
The demon dragged Reeta away. She screamed as its talons dipped into her shoulder.
“Ree!” Tummil shouted. His machete arm dipped. He could barely hold it. Gods, he couldn’t help her. He was barely standing.
The demon sniffed Reeta’s face, scenting her. She tried to pull back, but it held her firm, then licked its lips.
Its eyes flickered toward Tummil. “I will make you watch.”
“Use the pendant!” she shouted, grimacing.
How? Tummil was out of options. “God Armer, God Sumad. Help me destroy this evil,” he whispered, pushing one hand on the plinth to steady himself, the other clutching the drooping machete and pendant.
The demon smirked. “Your gods don’t work like that. You’re supposed to pick one.”
Was he? Both gods were in his blood. He still prayed to both.
The pendant warmed, flickering green light.
Time to gamble. “They’ll both hear me, demon. Because I have this.”
The demon rolled its eyes. “And what is that?”
Tummil struggled to lift the machete, but couldn’t. A chill permeated his chest. He was losing too much blood. He gritted his teeth. “It attracts Cenephan spirits. Pregnant women create children stronger than weavers if they wear this necklace.”
Catkiller’s eyes widened. It shoved Reeta to the ground. She grunted as she landed and rolled away.
It crouched, cradling its damaged arm, and bared its teeth. “It’s from the dead god, isn’t it? Do you have any idea what you hold, human?”
From Ceneph Himself?
Memory flared. Months earlier, the priest, seated where Catkiller now stood: Your genetic code. You are a child beloved of two gods. You are able to receive Their blessings.
Armer the Forgiving’s plinth tingled under Tummil’s palm. Ceneph’s pendant vibrated against the machete.
“I have no idea. But I know you’re scared of it!”
The demon laughed and straightened. “Relax, boy. All your bad decisions are finished. Just relax, and—”
Reeta screamed. “Fen, look—”
The demon lunged, clawed fingers straining toward Tummil’s neck.
Searing heat in both palms. Energy that was not his. The machete pulled Tummil’s arm, faster than his eyes could track it.
A jarring blow at his side. The thunk of wet flesh under the blade, crunching into bone. Hot breath on his neck. Pressure on his shoulder. A naked leg pressed against his damaged leg. A quivering hand around his throat. A weight he couldn’t hold up.
Tummil fell on top of the demon.
More pain in his leg! He rolled off th
e demon, screaming.
It gaped, baffled, at the machete in its chest, buried to the hilt. When it opened its mouth, dark, viscous fluid poured out.
“You’re not the only thing that’s changed in five thousand years,” Tummil spat.
The demon grabbed at the machete’s hilt as it thrashed. Its hands blackened as it touched the hilt. The flesh around its chest wound cracked and darkened. It staggered to its feet, then fell back to its knees. It screamed as it pulled at the machete.
Groggily, Tummil watched. Reeta crawled to him, holding him. He blocked the demon’s screaming with his palms against his ears.
Its agonized cries filled the grove. Grass browned and flowers wilted where it rolled. Smoke billowed from its blackening wounds, filling the air, diffusing the glowbulbs’ aura.
Black, ash-like specks fell from the demon’s hands. Its thrashing slowed, then went limp. The body continued dissolving, turning to ash and falling apart like a slow-burning newspaper.
Then, nothing remained but a thick pile of slushy ash.
“I think it’s over,” Reeta breathed.
Something moved at the grove’s edge. The homeless man stood, staring at the ash pile.
It was him all along?
“How’d we do?” Tummil called.
The man belched, then bent, picked up a half-full bottle and waddled unsteadily from the grove.
Never mind, then.
Reeta’s voice sounded very far away. “Your leg, Fen. It’s… bad. You need help.”
“Babe, I can’t move. I don’t think I’ll ever use it again.” Gods, he didn’t want to tell Reeta, but he’d likely bleed out before the grovekeepers came at dawn.
“How did you stab it?”
“Wasn’t me. Blade moved by itself. Babe… I’m cold.”
Reeta studied his face, then looked around. She ran to the ash pile and groped through it. Her hand came up, black slush falling away. The machete glinted green.
She rushed to him, placing the blade on his chest.
“The pendant?” he asked.