by Scott Eder
Not enough.
He called his inner flame to clothe himself and provide some measure of protection, but it wouldn’t ignite. Too weak to support a sustained burn, he would have to fight unprotected. The fire-laced adrenaline that pulsed through his veins would allow him to move and put up a short fight, but no more.
The beast charged. Sharp tusks speared the air.
Before the sweeping weapons could impale him, Dev spun to his right and slashed his elemental blade at the base of one thick tusk. To his surprise, the dagger sheared through and the heavy bone clattered to the street. He smiled grimly. A shred of hope sparked in his soul.
Dev waited for the beast’s charge again. His heartbeat hammered against his broken ribs, and his shoulder throbbed with each ragged breath.
It charged and swung its remaining tusk like a scythe.
Dev twisted away, but the creature still grazed him with its ribcage, knocking him off his feet. Agony jolted from his injured shoulder, but he fought off the black net of unconsciousness.
Heavy thuds drew closer. He rolled out of the way of those thundering hooves and saw the bone structure from a new perspective.
A sudden idea burned new life into his limbs. Painfully, he struggled to his feet.
This is ridiculous. When was the last time I ended up on my ass this many times?
With Cinder held in front of him at the ready and his legs flexed, Dev once again waited for death to charge. The massive skeleton slowed and made a ponderous turn amidst the wreckage.
Thank goodness that thing has the same turning radius as a freight train.
Head and torso finally aligned, the mastodon charged.
As the beast closed, Dev leaned to his left and swung his dislocated arm like a pendulum to build up momentum. The pain was incredible, but he stuck to the plan.
A spear-like tusk leveled on his midsection. Dev spun to the left as it grazed his hip, jammed his injured arm between the ribs of the beast and grabbed a fistful of bone.
The creature continued its charge, jerking Dev from his feet, but he held on despite the excruciating pain. He hacked through several giant ribs while the beast bucked and kicked until he had carved an opening large enough to crawl through then climbed into the belly of the beast.
The mastodon reared. Dev swung from one arm inside its chest cavity like a gorilla until the beast landed. Feet planted against the bottom curve of its ribs, he wedged the tip of his diamond blade between two of the shadow beast’s vertebrae. The dagger slid through the mineralized connective tissue and severed the creature’s spine.
Dev jumped free as the monster’s skeletal structure snapped, folded in on itself, and collapsed in a heap of brown bone.
Left arm twisted behind his back, Dev lay on the roadway and stared into the nighttime sky. He’d won. He’d defeated the undead spawn, but damn he hurt. He didn’t want to move, didn’t want to breath. But he had to, had to get out of there before the police or medics or whoever else showed up.
He’d ordered Wren to drive away. Despite the searing agony, he laughed as he imagined himself, a naked, wounded man wielding a big knife and lying next to a mound of old bones hailing a cab at the top of the Sunshine Skyway.
I bet they don’t see that every day.
A slow applause drifted out of the fog. He didn’t turn to the noise, didn’t move at all while he tried to place its exact location.
“That was quite impressive, Knight of Flame.” The deep voice oozed condescension.
Aw crap.
Dev rolled onto his good shoulder and leveraged himself to his feet. The melody of distant sirens rose out of the haze and reminded him of his quickly shrinking escape window.
Got to make this quick. Where is he?
“I didn’t expect you to defeat my pet.”
The voice had moved. It sounded like he was over the water, but that wasn’t possible.
“Show yourself, coward,” Dev said.
A jet-black reptilian visage from out of the darkest fairy-tale rose thirty feet in front of him. Large, coal-hued eyes regarded him with a lethal cunning. It hovered over the dead space between the north and south bound lanes of the bridge. The man from the tent sat comfortably on its back.
An engine revved inside the covering fog.
Dev wearily held Cinder before him like a shield to absorb whatever foulness this new creature would hurl at him.
The nightmarish face split, revealing rows of long, saber-length teeth, and sucked in a large breath.
A blue sedan ripped through the mist and skidded to a halt between Dev and the guardrail. Dev ran for the car.
The dragon roared—hatred and hunger given voice in an earsplitting cacophony.
The shockwave smashed into Dev’s back, flipping him up onto the car. Desperate to halt his momentum before he flew off the side of the bridge, he plunged his dagger into the hood. The elemental knife punched through the thin metal like it was soft cheese and sliced a long groove across the surface until the blade bit and held firm.
Dev lay spread-eagle across the hood, legs dangling over empty air, and turned to the driver. Wren. He shifted to the passenger.
Two glacial blue eyes gazed at him.
He was lost as soon as he met that stare. A beautiful stillness claimed his soul. He stopped breathing. His limbs went numb. His rage evaporated and contentment filled him like nothing ever had before.
The dragon breathed an oily black cloud that engulfed Dev and the car. The gale force tore Dev’s grip loose, sent him over the rail. His skin bubbled, split, and began to dissolve.
As he plummeted, the Knight of Flame’s soul swelled with an emotion vastly different from his usual anger or rage. His vision swam with the image of those two miraculous blue eyes until the warm water closed over his head and stole his senses.
Chapter 6
ALEXANDER GRAY SAT BACK IN HIS limo, put his feet up on the leather couch and sipped Krug ‘95 from a gold flask. It had been a wonderful night. The Knight of Flame was gone, smashed against the surface of Tampa Bay and flushed out into the Gulf of Mexico like so much pulverized offal.
After his victory, Alexander rode his dragon down to the surface of the water in the hope of finding the mangled body, but nothing floated up. He dredged the bottom with tendrils of shadow to find proof of the Knight’s demise, but there was nothing. Not a head. Not a leg. Not even a little finger. He was simply gone. Vanished.
Alexander smiled and took another sip. Yes. It had been a very good night. He closed his eyes, swished the perfectly chilled champagne across his palette, and let it sparkle down his throat.
For the first time he welcomed the scheduled call with his father, even considered initiating it early to share his news. It wasn’t every day that a member of the renowned Knights Elementalis met their demise.
The Gray Lord will be pleased. He pictured his father’s gnarled and wrinkled visage split in an evil mockery of a smile, with the twinkle of affection alight in those tomb-dark pupils.
Who am I kidding? Not even his own imagination could envision the all-powerful Bestok Molan uttering a word of praise for his third son, let alone allow something on his body to twinkle.
“Wake up, boy.” A high-pitched version of his father’s voice filled the cabin.
Ah. The grim image speaks. Alexander raised his flask and toasted the leering vision in his mind.
“To victory.” Alexander upended the container and drained the remaining liquid in two loud gulps. “To me.”
“Drunk, I see.”
Cold dread congealed in the pit of Alexander’s stomach. His eyes blinked open and he stuffed the flask behind a cushion.
The Gray Lord’s avatar paced across a serving tray on the other side of the cabin. Ten emaciated inches of malice and ego wrung its swollen hands and glared. The glare was the same, but the nervous attitude was new. Something troubled his father and he hoped that his good news would be well received, maybe even rewarded.
Bestok Molan, evil
incarnate in his Ken-doll frame, stopped dead in his tracks, ear cocked toward his son.
“No, Father, but I have been celebrating.” Alexander suppressed a giggle at seeing the Gray Lord in this diminutive form with a helium-esque voice, which threatened to blow his moment. “The Knight of Flame has been destroyed.” He led with his big news, but would keep the part about the club’s destruction to himself if possible. No point in bringing up that minor loss to tarnish his glorious day.
“What did you say?” The figure lowered his brow and stared, one side of its mouth twitching. Claw-like hands grasped the air.
Alexander clamped his hand over his mouth as the image of a Darth Vader bobble-head teetered in his mind. The temperature in the limo’s cabin dropped. Condensation formed on the one-way windows.
“Do not push me.” The little Gray Lord spat.
The limo jumped a speed bump too fast. The rear axle bounced up and threw the Gray Lord into the air. He landed awkwardly, backside first, followed by the loud click of boot heels against a thin sheet of aluminum.
Alexander laughed, on the inside, at his father’s rise and subsequent fall and waited for the intense reaction.
Slow, ponderous movements marked the Gray Lord’s ascent. Back on his feet, he arched his back and grimaced.
The laughter escaped, deep, gut-busting howls that grew more uncontrollable when he looked at the rage painted across his father’s minute face. For the first time in his life, tears formed and blazed a trail down his cheeks. Amazed, he collected the flow on one finger and flicked it at the tiny gnome of evil in front of him.
Bestok Molan destroyed the tear before it got close.
A pang erupted behind Alexander’s left eye, a sharp needle that jabbed and twisted and chased away all sense of levity. The enormity of his indiscretion settled in. He didn’t need to see his father to know what he was feeling.
“You were saying.” Civility. A dangerous sign.
“I said the Knight of Flame has been destroyed.” Alexander gained control of himself.
“Where? When?” The Gray Lord’s avatar took two eager steps forward.
“Gothrodul and I defeated him last night after he came to the club.”
“Bah. You cling to that old dragon like a wet nurse. Do you have the body?” The Gray Lord searched the car. “Let me see it.”
“No, Father. I did not recover the body.”
“Of course not, for that would have required thought.”
The last drop of champagne tasted like ash on the back of his tongue as his triumph turned to manure within seconds. This thing dressing him down was an aspect of his father, a communication tool controlled by the Gray Lord. Its capacity was severely limited. If his father tried to manifest too much power through the link, the device would fail.
“We searched the water. There was nothing left.”
“There’s always something, a toe, an earlobe, something. But you have nothing.” The figure paced across the tray and clasped his hands behind his back. “Were you recognized?”
Alexander shrugged. “I was not wearing a name tag.”
“Curb that tongue, boy.”
Don’t call me boy.
“That I was the owner of the club was no secret. However, any who saw me there last night are dead.”
“What do you mean was the owner of the club?”
Alexander cursed his careless language. “The club was destroyed in the fight along with many of the patrons.”
“Another failure.” The Gray Lord raised his hand, fingers splayed wide, and muttered a word Alexander had never heard before. A gelatinous green mass the size of a baseball appeared and spun before the Gray Lord. He pointed a bony finger at Alexander. The slime ball picked up speed. The hum of its rotation filled the cabin like a swarm of agitated bees.
Alexander held his ears, but the sound was everywhere—in his skin, in his bones, in his brain. It wormed beneath his palms and burrowed into his eardrums.
This was what he was waiting for, the punishment for his insolence. He collapsed on the soft bench next to him and clasped has head against the very real possibility that it would split open.
The green ball inched toward him.
Unable to look away, he watched its approach, certain that its touch delivered death. It reached the edge of the tray and the Gray Lord’s avatar looked on expectantly.
Alexander froze.
As soon as the ball spun out over open air, it and the Gray Lord winked out. Most of the pain vanished along with the Lord, except for the prick behind his eye. His father left him that as a reminder.
Like I could forget.
He slid across the bench seat and recovered his flask. After one whiff of that celebratory drink, he chucked the container against the front metal shield.
The intercom crackled. “Is everything alright sir?”
Absolutely not.
“Fine, Simmons, just fine. Take me to the office.”
Chapter 7
DEV SNORTED A STRONG DOSE OF warm saltwater that burned his nostrils and flipped his brain’s switch to ‘On’. Awareness flooded back in a series of images. The disjointed pieces came together in a collage that depicted the fight on the bridge and his fall.
Am I dead? He tried to open his eyes, but they stuck. He strained to hear something, anything, but only the steady thump of his heartbeat registered.
If I have a heartbeat then I’m alive. And, by extension, that means my brain is working. Right?
Dev tried his eyes again. This time he managed to pop the salt-crusted seal. Still, though, movement was progress. Heartened, he lifted the thing that should be his arm out of the water. It felt heavy and awkward and dripped liquid all over his face. He rubbed the crust from his eyes and stared into a clear night punctuated with a million stars.
A large swell broke against the side of his head, splashing brine across his face. He blinked away the sting and took a deep breath. Bone grated on bone. Pain slammed into him like a wrecking ball. His body’s pain receptors hadn’t kicked in until he tried to breathe. Then, not only his chest, but his shoulder, legs, hips, and back vied for attention.
Overwhelmed by a deluge of synaptic input, his brain overloaded and plunged him into a dream-like state of semi-consciousness where his past and present collided. Memories of a centuries old pain replayed in his head.
* * *
Filth, old straw and fresh blood covered the stone floor of his prison cell. From his fetal position against the wall, Dev eyed the boots of the man he’d learned to hate. Every day they shuffled into his cell behind a cart with squeaky wheels that served fresh torment. And for what? To force him to confess to heresy—to admit that upon orders from the Grand Master, he and his Templar brothers renounced Christ upon initiation into the brotherhood.
It was all a lie. No matter how many times he told the truth, screamed it as loud as he could, they continued to cut and stab, twist and snap. He wasn’t even a knight, by God, but an artisan, a weapon-smith. His jailers didn’t care.
His tormentor, mindful of where he set his boots in the muck, lifted his blue and gold tabard, and bent low. “Tomorrow.” The word oozed out of the fat guard’s mouth smelling of onions. “Tomorrow, hérétique, I bring fire for you.” He kicked Dev in the chest and squelched out the door behind that squeaky, infernal cart.
Dev hated that squeak, hated the man, hated all men wearing the arms and colors of King Philip of France. For it was by the king’s order that he and the Templars were falsely imprisoned. No matter what they did to him, he denied their accusations, refused to disgrace the Quinteele name by being weak. This last session was brutal, worse than the previous one, but he held strong.
Alone again…alone with the constant pain and cold, niggling thoughts of how he got there, Dev curled into a ball.
Blood ran from dozens of new wounds. His body twitched from the chills brought on by the high fever that ransacked his weakened body. The stench of his own waste mixed with newly spilled blood bro
ke through his normally numb senses—a horrid reminder of how his life had changed in so short a time. At least he thought it was a short time, but couldn’t be sure. Time lost all meaning in the dungeon and served no purpose other than to fill the void between agonizing sessions with the torturer.
Torchlight flickered through the slats in the tiny window set near the top of the cell door and danced with the shadows on the bare block walls. Fire. He missed the heat and the light and the smells of the forge. The ring of hammer on metal was the song of his heart. He’d spent long days and nights working on new swords or axes to martial perfection until Véronique pulled him away.
Beautiful Véronique. Long, auburn hair. Brilliant blue-green eyes. Tanned skin. Only she had the power to drag him from the fire and forge.
Soon, my dear. I’ll speak to your father when I get back from Paris.
This separation from his two passions hurt more than any physical torment. In these black moments of despair, when life lost its meaning, the flame from the torch outside his cell whispered to him.
At first he thought the guards had invented a new way to punish him. The unknown language wafted through the cell on a warm breeze. He peered through the slats to find the speaker, but saw no one. No guards. No prisoners. Just him and the flickering torch outside his cell. As the days wore on, the hiss and crackle started to make sense. That’s when he thought his senses had fled. On some basic level, the flame’s message resonated, gave him hope, promised that the end was near. End of what, he didn’t know and didn’t care. His body near to breaking, he no longer possessed the strength to fight back and considered any end, no matter its shape or purpose, a blessing.
I’m ready.
* * *
Dev woke with a mouthful of Tampa Bay. The saltwater had sneaked in while his head lolled to the side. With his good arm, he clamped down on his chest to hold it together during a coughing fit to clear the alien element. He lay back in the water and eased a few dry, shallow breaths into his system.
Once sure his chest wouldn’t burst, he opened his eyes and looked around. Dawn’s faint glow pinked the horizon to his left. A row of houses huddled along the distant shoreline to his right. The moving tide had carried his unconscious body across the shallow flats to the mouth of the bay where his heels snagged on a sand bar. To keep him alive, his body automatically drew the heat from the water through his pores. The process made him itch.