by Dave Gross
I screamed louder than the brimorak as my arm swelled up, tearing through the shrinking sleeve of my jacket. The skin wasn't red-brown like Viridio's. Instead it was blue-gray, with ridged whorls and lines running across it.
Nice shot, said a voice inside my skull.
"Quang."
And nice going with the summoning, he said. I don't care what anyone else says, I still think you're smarter than you look.
The rest of the jacket pulled away, tight across my chest as wings pushed out from my back. My spine twisted in spasms as I felt the tail grow out the bottom.
The pain of transforming cleared my vision enough to see a demon stalking toward me. It had the body of a pale musclebound man with rusty plates of armor nailed into its flesh, blood still flowing from the wounds. Bat wings hung folded across its back. Its horned and hairless wolf's head snarled as it reached down for me.
I tried rolling away, but it caught me by the wings and swung me back like a half-filled sack of grain. Twisting to escape, I felt my body slip out of its grip. It didn't feel like I'd pulled free so much as I'd turned myself into water or mist, if only for a second.
That is exactly what we did, said an oozing voice. I'd never seen the devil before, but I remembered the greasy feeling his voice gave me.
"Gharalon!"
Something between a growl and a roar sounded behind me. I turned to see the bloody-armored demon crouched, a lion's tail twitching behind it. It pounced, wings spread.
I jumped up right after it, my own wings snapping open behind me. I caught a glimpse of black feathers to either side. Those came from Eriakne, I thought. The fallen angel.
Concentrate on your foe, you idiot, came her husky voice.
The wolf-lion-man demon proved her point by clobbering me in the face. I reached for its throat but managed only to put my hand in its jaws. It bit down and savaged my fingers.
We fell together, its fists beating on my ribs. I grabbed its throat with my free hand. Instead of pulling my bitten hand out, I shoved it deeper into its throat. It started to choke, and we hit the ground. I wanted to roll away, but it kept its jaws clamped hard on my hand.
Is your attention so fleeting? said Gharalon. Surrender to my will, and I will free us.
No! cried out four other voices, one rough, one high, one sensual, and one that sounded both like a boy and the sound of nails on slate.
Give in to me, piped Quang. I can fly us out of here, buddy.
None of the others has flown higher than I, said Eriakne. Let my wings carry us away. Just give your soul to me, and I will keep it safe.
We will consume the demons, said the double voice. Hearing it reminded me of the image of a young boy wreathed in purple flames, a pair of tiny mouths where the devil's eyes should have been, a veil covering whatever it had instead of a mouth.
Say, "Dokange the Flaying Tongue, I surrender my soul to you."
Just how stupid do you think he is? said Quang. Then he snorted and giggled. Sometimes I crack myself up.
I will tear them to pieces, said Viridio. You have seen what I can do on the battlefield.
Gharalon, said Gharalon.
While the devils bickered, I wrestled with the lion-wolf demon. Thinking hard about not giving up my soul, I remembered what Gharalon said and concentrated on pulling my hand out of the demon's mouth.
The long gray fingers slipped out easy, wavering like mist for a second before turning solid again. I watched as dark purple flames licked along the ridges on its—my—skin. The deep gouges from the wolf fangs didn't look half so bad anymore.
With a snarl-roar, the demon leaped at me again. This time I caught it by the throat. We took turns grabbing and twisting, kneeing and biting. It damned near broke my leg with a kick from an iron hoof. We exchanged some harsh language. We battered each other with our wings.
I remembered I had a tail, too.
All it took was to think about hitting it in the back, and the heavy tip of my scorpion's tail snapped over our heads to curl around into the demon's spine. This time it howled and whined, losing its grip on me.
Fly, cooed Eriakne's voice. Let us view the fray from a height.
That seemed like a damned fine idea. I jumped up, thought about flapping my wings, flew barely above Tonbarse and Alase, and crashed straight into Aprian, knocking him from his horse.
"Sorry, pal," I told him as he staggered to his feet. One of the brimoraks he'd been fighting rushed toward him. I grabbed it by its smoking horns, shook it hard a couple of times, and left it dead on the ground.
Dragomir came running at me. He'd lost his shield and picked up somebody else's sword in his other hand. But it wasn't the shining crusader blades that bothered me. It was the look in his eyes. He was scarier than any of the demons.
I held up one of my creepy hands. "Hey, take it easy! It's me, Radovan!"
Dragomir snarled, but he changed direction and cut down a demon instead of me. "Thank you, Desna!"
"Radovan?" said Aprian. "You look ...different."
"Yeah," I said. "Don't let it bother you none. I'm still pretty on the inside."
Inside, I heard Quang cackling and got a clear image of Eriakne sneering. He can't even fly!
"Do me a favor and tell the others not to hit me. I'm going to— Hey, you can understand me?"
While I ride you, you speak all tongues, said Dokange.
"Handy," I said. "Maybe we can—"
Wolf-lion demon crashed down on me. I caught a hoof in the breadbasket. I batted away its thick white fingers before the demon could put one in my eye. It shifted its grip and grabbed something on my head. It didn't feel like hair, but it let the demon jerk my head around.
"Dammit! I've got horns!" That was the only thing that could have been worse than a tail.
Well, maybe it wasn't the worst. I remembered what I'd found when I took a peek down below the year that Norge had been riding my soul.
Wolf-lion shook me around until I got my hands on its wrists. Then it beat its bat wings and pulled us both up into the sky.
My tail snapped overhead again and again, but the demon's wings kept blocking the stinger. A stain crept up over the demon's white shoulder, swelling the dark veins in its neck. Maybe the venom would numb the wings enough to put us back on the ground.
Soon we were high enough that I struck that wish off my list.
Between twisting to catch the bruising kicks from my dance partner's hooves on my arms and legs, I finally got a good look at where we were. The boss and Jelani had managed to burn all the way through the briar maze, but his ice wall was still boiling off into a thick cloud. They couldn't see how close they were to Oparal.
She was struggling to reach a succubus standing in front of a couple of glowing books hanging in the air just outside a five-sided stone ring. A big stream of red light was flowing into the circle from somewhere far to the south.
No, I realized. It wasn't going into the circle, but into the ruined body of some thing lying at its center. The energy hopped from that body into that of a man lying beside Oparal, then into the succubus. It was feeding her, filling her with power.
Even from a distance, I could tell she was seven or eight feet tall and growing. She was also changing, her skin twisting up in dark red patterns, the dark skin of her wings turning transparent, like red glass.
Another hoof to the gut brought my attention back to the party.
"I've had about enough of this," I growled. With my head held fast, I swung high but hit only hooves and knees. My tail kept lashing, but apart from a few poisoned holes in the demon's wings, it wasn't doing much good.
Devour it, said Dokange. Just the "sound" of its voice in my head made me queasy. Burn it in the flames of your hunger.
I didn't feel hungry, but I was plenty mad. It had worked before, so I focused my thoughts on fire, trying to burn the demon.
For my troubles, all I got was another kick, this time in the chest.
Let me do it, said Dokange. Surrender y
ourself to me.
I gave him some advice of my own, the kind the boss calls "pithy."
Something kicked loose inside me. Maybe it was on account of my irritation with Dokange. Maybe it was because I'd looked straight down and realized how high we'd flown. Anger or fear or something else pushed through a dam I hadn't known was in me.
Purple flames rushed out of my eyes, and for the first time I realized they weren't eyes but mouths. For a second, I wondered how I could still see but decided it didn't matter. The lion-wolf demon howled in pain and let go of my horns. I was falling.
For another crazy second, I thought I saw the boss flying past me, going up as I was falling down. That was no delusion, I figured. He must have kept one last flying scroll in case of emergency.
I figured I qualified as an emergency.
Fly, idiot! said Eriakne. Spread our wings.
Since she put it like that, I stretched them wide. The black feathers caught the hot air rising from the boiling ice.
I still felt like I was falling, but my direction shifted with every yard, a little more to the side, a little less down. I swooped over the wilted ruins of the burned hedge, the thorns scraping my face and chest as I curved the fallen angel's wings, rising.
With a feeling like shrugging, I beat the wings and felt the air beneath me like water in my palms while swimming. They were my wings, now, a part of me, not just something borrowed from Eriakne. I turned, circling the battlefield.
Kronug was down, and Roga was missing—no, not missing. I saw pieces of him passing from demon to demon. Tollivel slumped against the body of his horse, clutching his belly with one hand, stroking the dying animal's nose with the other. Bolivar lay on the ground, blank eyes staring up at me.
Covered in gore and standing in front of fallen comrades, Dragomir was the one the demons couldn't stop. He own eyes blacker than Hell or the Abyss, he kept cutting them down as fast as they came.
Aprian channeled light from his god, scorching the fiends nearest him. As the demons reeled and veered away from him, the paladin ran to his fallen comrades.
The boss and Jelani fought side by side. She kept flinging spells, but he clutched a riffle scroll in his hand while defending her with the Shadowless Sword. When he swung the blade, I could hardly see it move.
He hacked the hand off a tusked boar demon. Then he snapped off his scroll and threw the sword. It flew end over end through a swarm of those babbling bat demons. By the time the sword came back to his hand, three of them fell to the ground in six halves, their mouths still yammering nonsense.
Me, I could barely hear the gibbering fiends. I had plenty of babble going on inside my skull.
We must flee, said Eriakne. She will ascend any moment. We must not be here when she does!
Let me loose, said Viridio. The others are holding us back. I will crush them all like insects.
You're a fine one to talk, said Quang. You're nothing but a big insect.
Arachnid, said Gharalon. Scorpions aren't insects.
Useless pedantry, said Dokange. What we should do is—
"Shut it, all of you!" I shouted.
Getting the hang of this flying business, I tried climbing higher. It felt weird, like straining muscles I never knew I had—which made sense, since I'd never had them before.
Once I had some height, I took another quick glance down at the battle. Everybody was on foot, the horses scattered, most of them running back to the west, where we'd left the drivers, carriage, and wagon. With any luck, the animals would find their way back without running into more demons.
The people weren't looking so lucky. Aprian and the boss tried rallying the Kellids and crusaders together, but a few were cut off. Urno and Naia fought back to back, his axe and her sword gleaming crusader silver as their enchantments sparked off of demon hide. They fought like heroes in a painting, the kind where you know the hero dies a second later.
I swooped down, thinking of all the stuff my devil body could do. First my tail shot through the neck of a lean flayed-looking demon. I slapped a couple of ratty hunchbacked fiends with the purple fire from my eyes—or mouths, or whatever the hell they were. The last one, a crocodile-headed thing, I grabbed by the head, snapping its neck as I rose back up above the fight.
Naia looked up, her mouth twisting in fear when she saw me. I threw her a jaunty wave and flew on.
You're getting the hang of this, said Quang. Now everything's going to be fine, as long as you keep us away from that succubus on the hill.
I wondered why he sounded so cheerful.
Be silent, you fool! hissed Eriakne.
The others growled and spat at each other, but I wasn't paying attention. I climbed higher, beating my wings as I spiraled around for a better look at the hill.
The succubus with the stained-glass wings had to be almost nine feet tall by now. Either that or she'd shrunk Oparal, but the paladin looked her usual size compared to the burned and bloody corpse lying on the stone circle. She had her feet on the ground now, her open hands crossed in front of her chest in the sunburst symbol of Iomedae. I'd never seen her do that before, because before she'd always had her sword to pray on.
It occurred to me then that she was in one hell of a lot of trouble without that sword, not that you'd know it by how bold she walked up to the succubus. They were too far away to hear, but I could see they were shouting at each other.
Oparal stepped into the light streaming from the fallen guy to the succubus. She blocked the stream of energy, her body convulsing as it poured into her. Her black hair floated up behind her, and her gray eyes glowed red. Her hands shook, but she forced them back together in the sign of Iomedae. Then I realized what she was shouting. It wasn't an argument with the succubus.
It was a prayer to her god.
The red light surrounded her body, denting what was left of her armor like some invisible hand was crushing her. She threw back her head and screamed.
"Hold on!" I shouted. "I'm coming!"
Don't do it, said Quang. I'm telling you to stay away.
Stay back, said Gharalon. His oozing voice seemed calm considering the situation.
I glanced down. The good guys were moving slowly up the field. With Aprian and the boss up front, they cut their way foot by foot through the demon cultists. At their rate, it was going to take them a month, except for the fact they'd be dead within ten minutes.
I needed to help them, too.
There was one way to do both.
I swooped down low over the crusaders and Kellids. The boss looked up, and I yelled, "Follow me!"
I poured out the purple fire, burning every demon in a line from my guys all the way to the top of the hill. There, for an instant, I saw Oparal screaming to the sky, her back arched in agony as her arms shook useless at her sides. From her mouth, the red light turned gold, shooting up to spill away in a fading fountain of dying sparks.
The succubus screamed something at Oparal. She reached out with claws the size of garden rakes, black fingers tipped in blood-red talons. But as I flew close, she turned her head to stare at me. Even before she saw me, she was hissing, a steam of blood surging out from between teeth that made mine look dainty.
Flying through the scalding blood, I crashed straight into Oparal. I held her close, shielding her from the bloody blast with my wings. Only then did I feel the flames on the black feathers.
A guy who's been on fire as much as I have knows what to do in that situation. Tucking all my bits and parts, I rolled over and over, across the stone circle and into the cool grass beyond. And I kept rolling, as much to get away from that succubus as to put out the flames.
Oparal started struggling in my arms. I unfolded everything and let her go. When she looked at me, her eyes widened. Her hands clenched in fists.
"Relax, Captain Sweetheart. It's me."
She blinked once and accepted it. "Get the books. I'll draw her attention."
"No dice. You look worse than me."
She looke
d—what's the boss's word?—incredulous.
"I mean you look pretty banged up. You get the books. I'm going to give the tart something to think about."
Oparal nodded. "Her name is Yavalliska. She wants to become the blood god."
"Got it."
We scrambled to our feet.
Yavalliska was already coming for us. I shot her the tines beneath my jaw. She sneered back at me. I stuck out my tongue.
What came out over my fist and between my fingers, we ain't never going to talk about. Let's just say I disgusted myself more than the succubus.
Once I sucked it all back in, I showed her my neck and said, "You thirsty, girl? I hear once you go devil, you never go back."
She took a step toward me and hesitated. She was bigger than I'd thought from the air. Or maybe I wasn't as big as I expected. I was a head above Oparal, anyway, so at least I wasn't little.
She hissed again. This time the blood spray wet the grassy ground. Everywhere a drop fell, the earth burped and sent up a slender red tendril. I'd seen enough of druid magic that I knew I didn't want to hang around to see what they turned into.
Beating my wings, I rose up and backward. Yavalliska spread hers, but she didn't beat them. She rose up like something under one of the boss's spells, using the wings for guidance, or maybe just for show. They glistened—not with sweat, but with blood.
"What are you?" she said. "You smell like a sister."
"Hey, I'm all man. Ask anybody."
Somewhere in my skull, Eriakne chuckled. Quang's cackling voice joined in.
"All right," I added. It was hard to move backward while flying, but I inched away. Across the circle, I saw Yavalliska's demon worshipers falling back as the boss and company approached the edge of the hill. "At the moment it's a little more complicated than that, but there's no call to disparage my manliness."
"I've never seen your kind before," she said. "But you are a devil, aren't you?"
"More than one, actually."
"Then you have more than one reason to die!"
She reached out both of her claws. Black fire curdled in her palms, but only for a second before beams shot out to hit me in the face, the chest—everywhere. The blackness covered me, and then it shattered into a million shards of all the colors. Each of them shone brighter and brighter until it was all white.