by Karen Chance
They fell on him, reminding John of the colony of bats that had once attacked Caleb. Only those hadn’t been twelve feet tall. Or had the strength of ten men each. Or had skull-like faces, pale as the moon, until they were covered in gore as they tore, as they ripped, as they savaged Dagon with claws and teeth, while their wildly flapping wings all but blinded him.
He went down, and for a brief, heart stopping moment, John thought that was it. Until he rose up with a roar, coming out of a protective crouch and sending dozens of the fearsome creatures flying. Bodies hit the remaining buildings in the square, breaking windows and rattling like bags of bones. Blood splattered, wings tore, and John had to spring out of the way to avoid the giant fist smashing down where he’d just been standing.
Really thought they’d hold him longer than that, he thought, trying not to panic.
Because there was no time for a breakdown now. He had to give Caleb time to make his play, which meant mental combat since he was running out of places to hide. Make that was out, he thought, narrowly avoiding another car-sized fist.
He dodged the blow, but was peppered with sharp-edged rubble because he was still too close. He healed himself with a thought, but the effort staggered him. And, before he could recover, Dagon threw a wooden peddler’s cart at him, slamming him against a wall.
And set it on fire.
John screamed, tried to push the heavy thing off, and failed. He then tried a spell, to hurl it away, but couldn’t concentrate well enough. His skin was cooking, his hair was on fire, and his mind was racing in every direction, but going nowhere.
Unlike his body.
Dagon picked up John, the cart, and all, and sent them rocketing across the square, to shatter against the stone side of a building. A thousand burning pieces fell around him as John hit the ground, still burning. The square slurred about him, pain engulfed him, and just that fast, he was on the verge of losing consciousness.
And then the strange voice came again. “Oh, don’t die yet. You haven’t heard the best part.”
John looked up to see the huge demon stalking towards him. He wasn’t hurrying this time, because John wasn’t going anywhere and they both knew it. And, as before, he had someone with him.
“I want you to know what happens after you die,” Dagon informed him. “I had centuries to imagine a fitting punishment for you, while moldering away in the Circle’s noxious hole, yet couldn’t come up with anything good enough. Then I was released, and learned about her.”
John’s eyes fixed on the individual at Dagon’s side, carefully picking a path across the rubble. It wasn’t the creepy mage, this time. It wasn’t even a man. It was a small, delicate, deceptively fragile looking woman, with big blue eyes, messy blonde curls and—
It was Cassie.
Something broke in John’s brain.
“I heard that the demon council tortured that slaver I was working with, all those years ago,” Dagon said. “I wonder, did he ever tell you why I only imported women for my little hobby? What I did to them before I sucked them dry? What I’ll do to her—”
John didn’t remember moving. Didn’t remember the fire going out or even if it had. Didn’t remember anything except crashing into Dagon, the huge body no longer the ghostly distraction he’d projected outside, but real and firm and slimy.
And wet and meaty and gory as John cleaved the flesh with one of the most devastating combat spells he knew. It split the giant body open, sundered a gash up the center like the earthquake had done to the street, spilled out steaming guts, what felt like a lorry’s worth of them. Ribs snapped, like great tree trunks being hit by lightning, acres of fat sizzled and liquified and ran, and Dagon roared—with pain and surprise, but most of all with fury.
“You’re going to play the demon prince with me?” he snarled. “Incubus.”
John felt himself go sailing, but this time, something caught him before he hit another wall. Something that felt like a shield, only he hadn’t raised one. But he didn’t have time to figure it out, being too busy pushing off the wall, using Dagon’s own momentum against him.
He launched himself back into the fight, screaming the same anti-healing hex he’d used all those years ago.
And watched Dagon counter it with a word.
The spell dissipated into nothingness, barely a glimmer on the wind that the great demon lord stirred up as he whirled.
“Did you think I wouldn’t look that up?” he sneered, and slammed one of the great feet down on John.
For a second, all John could see was callused flesh all around his shield, as the great webbed slab tried to crush him into the ground. Horrifyingly, there were pustules under here, too, on the arch of the foot. Only these weren’t substitute noses. They were more like suckers, lined with serrated, spine like protrusions, trying to rupture his only protection and smearing mucus across the surface as they scrabbled against it.
John panicked and expanded his shields, not gradually as recommended, but all at once, in a great outward thrust of power that felt like it took his guts along with it. It snapped the shield, as such actions tended to do, but that was all right. Because it did something else, too.
The great body, which a second ago had been bearing down with all its might, was thrust upward so abruptly that it flipped, almost crushing John under the weight of the massive tail as it slung back around.
He ducked, rolled, and slid under the huge belly, sword in hand because this was his mind, and he could have a bloody great sword if he wanted! One big enough to slice open the still healing abdomen, spilling out more viscera that he evaded only because he was sliding on the last. And then scrambled to his feet on the other side—
Just in time to be snatched up by a huge fist, and jerked to the creature’s terrible face.
“Worthless spawn of a worthless father,” Dagon spat, sounding like a chorus of thousands. “You’re nothing. Your whole bloodline is nothing. Useless, stupid whores, leeching off other courts, infesting better worlds!”
John struggled against fleshy prison, but went nowhere. He tried to call up aid from the depths of his memory, which had plenty of heinous monsters to choose from. But found it impossible to concentrate as his breath was being forced out of him, as his bones broke and splintered, and as Dagon did his best to ground him into jelly.
His best was pretty damned good.
John would have screamed if he’d had enough air, but he didn’t. The best he could do was to expand the now very flimsy feeling ward around his waist in a vain effort to keep his core intact. But it was a field dressing, not a real shield, and it would only prolong the agony.
Already it felt like his organs were being rearranged, with a stabbing pain under his breastbone as broken rib ground on broken rib, as his heart was squeezed, as his lungs were punctured, as something sinuous unfurled in his belly—
John’s head jerked up.
“But not for long,” Dagon was saying. “I’ll pay your father a little visit, once I’m finished with your prized Pythia. Make him pay him for bringing such an abomination into existence!”
John barely noticed. He was too busy staring at what had just manifested on the ledge of a roof behind Dagon. His own face looked back at him, with a pair of glowing green eyes that stared straight into his, steady, searching, ready—although for what, John didn’t know.
He figured it out.
Wait, he thought, as Dagon jerked him closer, enough to see his own pale, blood-splattered face reflected in those huge eyes.
“Nothing to say, princeling? Your eloquence deserted you?”
“No,” John wheezed. “I just . . . can’t talk—”
“What a novelty. A silent incubus!”
“—and silent cast . . . at the same time.”
“What?”
“Now!” John gasped, and released the spell he’d ripped off a certain master vampire, right before his doppelganger shoved a sword through Dagon’s eye.
The blade sank deep; the bloody point er
upted on John’s side, spraying him with gore; and the mighty fist loosened in shock as the great body convulsed, trying to heal. And failed, the anti-healing charm preventing it, as surely as it had done to Zheng. John didn’t know what the dark mages had come up with, in their continued attempts to one up the Circle, but it didn’t matter.
Because Dagon didn’t know it, either.
And then the demon lord breathed in, all the little pustules opening to gasp for air, and took in something else besides. The black miasma of the spell disappeared, sucked deep inside the huge body. Internalizing the spell just as Zheng had.
And John remembered something.
Summoning the last of his strength, he threw a warded gauntlet over his own fist, just enough to protect the hand. And grasped the fluttering edge of the spell, barely visible against the dark. And pulled.
The spell erupted from the demon’s flesh, and with it came a great wash of bright green blood, soaking John as he hit the ground again, pooling in what was left of the fountain, slicking the piles of viscera already piled everywhere. Which was soon joined by more as John threw the spell back onto Dagon, lashing him with it like a whip, one that flayed off great gouts of blood with each pass and reopened old wounds.
But demon lords are not so easily disposed of.
And he wasn’t dead yet.
“Go!” John’s counterpart said, as Dagon roared, the sword in one hand, the other shoving palm out at John.
He tried to resist, to explain that they could take the bastard together, that two had a much stronger chance than one—something that was needed with a wounded monster who was twice as deadly now! But he didn’t have a chance. He had a split second to see his double and Dagon locked in mortal combat, and then he was falling—
Back into battle.
Chapter Forty-Five
J ohn landed hard, as if falling from a height, and maybe he had. Feathers flapped in his face, a pale body twisted and dropped, and his former ride died beside him, the last of its energy depleted by whatever had happened while he was away. He had no idea what that was, or why his demon half had sent him back here.
And then he looked up.
To see that the whole sky was burning.
With his mind reeling from the abrupt transition, and his body stunned from the fall, he just lay there for a minute, staring up in wonder. The area above him looked strangely beautiful, as if an artist had decided to render a space scape in fire. Ashes and embers flew through the air like a meteor shower. Burning vehicles left trails of smoke like speeding comets. One of the platforms the triad had put in place was burning whilst spinning slowly in space, creating a round ball of smoke and flame that looked oddly like a harvest moon, glowing in the night . . .
Until another blue geyser erupted from below, and turned it into a ball of ash.
John snapped fully back to reality, to find himself on the sole remaining platform, surrounded by a diminishing circle of allies.
Maybe a third of the glowing advertisements were still active, having somehow made it over here after the barge gave up the ghost. That included the safari guy he’d stolen his ride from, wielding a double-barreled shotgun; the dragon lady, who was lighting up the night with flame thrower like bursts; and the panda, who was using his bulk to shield a traumatized family of humans who must have crash landed at some point.
Zheng was also still on his feet, with the little dancer behind him, although she wasn’t cowering. She had his gun, and was helping to hold off a mass of zombified vampires trying to crawl over the edges of the platform. She was getting some help from the triad, who appeared to have switched sides—or realized that they were being targeted, too, alongside everyone else.
And John did mean everyone.
Buildings were blazing like torches on all sides. The ley line rupture had gotten bigger, cutting a jagged gash across the roads and gardens below, causing cars to scatter and crash into each other, causing little fires of their own. And directly below . . .
Was something unbelievable.
“What are they doing?” he yelled at Kong, who was firing bursts from his machine gun at something in the dark.
He turned a malevolent glance on John. “What it look like?”
That didn’t help, since what it looked like was a mountain of vampires, a squirming column of flesh extending from the ground to just below the platform. Which was absurd; it would have taken half the population of Hong Kong to make something like that! And then Kong’s desperate firing caused a dozen or so vamps to fall off, and John realized what was really going on.
“They stacked up the vehicles?” he said, in disbelief. But they had; they’d taken what must have been a hundred levitating cars, buses, and rickshaws, and piled them on top of each other like a ladder to the sky, a ladder that most of the army appeared to have climbed. They were six and eight thick all the way up, clawing, biting and savaging each other, to the point of knocking more back down, just to make it to the top.
Just to reach him.
John stared at them, his thoughts racing, wondering what the hell he was missing. Dagon had been relentlessly pursuing him all day, both physically and mentally, and when that hadn’t worked, he’d put himself in danger just to attack him. Because John had been vulnerable in that mental arena, but so had his opponent, who he’d left surrounded by a ring of his own bloody viscera.
And for what?
Did he want vengeance so much that he was willing to risk his life for it when he didn’t need to? When the city was literally coming apart at the seams anyway? And to keep on doing it, even whilst fighting for his life with John’s other half?
“What the hell does he want with me?” he asked Kong.
Kong didn’t answer.
Kong was screaming Cantonese profanity whilst firing again, trying to take out the latest wave attempting to crawl onto the platform—until he abruptly stopped. And yelled something that John didn’t need a translation for at Zheng, who whirled from kicking vampires off the side of the platform to stare at the now depleted machine gun. And then at John, who he apparently hadn’t noticed until now.
“Bad time to rejoin us!” he yelled, and tossed him a staff.
John caught it one handed and started to grip it with the other, only to make a painful realization. In his head, he’d still had the use of both arms. But not here. Here, he was a broken man about to die along with everybody else, unless Caleb worked his special brand of magic. And there was no way to tell—
—how that was going.
“Caleb!” John yelped, in shock from suddenly looking through another man’s eyes. And because the man in question was currently being slammed around the wharf by a massive, gelatinous appendage.
“Not now, John!” Caleb said, as the creature grabbed him again, jerking him high into the air.
“Tell her the child isn’t dead!” John yelled, as the wharf went skewing around him. “Tell her I didn’t kill it!”
“Yeah. I mentioned that!”
“Well?”
Another brutal blow sent Caleb and his shield bubble bouncing madly across the concrete. The shield finally broke, spilling the man onto the wet ground, unprotected. And giving John an excellent view of the blood coursing into his friend’s eyes.
“You know, I don’t think she believes me!”
Three huge, shimmering limbs, like a giant cephalopod’s arms, came rushing at Caleb, all at once. The big mage got another shield up, but it wouldn’t last for long under an assault like that. “Tell her to take the memories from my head!” John screamed. “Tell her—”
The image blanked out. Although whether that was down to what was happening to Caleb, or what was happening to him, John wasn’t sure. Because the growing mountain below them had finally crested, spilling dozens of enemies over the side of the platform.
A vampire knocked him to the wet boards, its slavering face in his, its eyes blank but its teeth bared and snapping. John had gotten the staff up, but it was awkward with only on
e usable arm, and wasn’t going to hold. He tried to raise a shield instead, but the creature got fangs in him before he could, and the shock broke his concentration.
Like the sound of a shot being fired from almost point-blank range.
His attacker went limp and John heaved him off, only to see the little dancer above him, brandishing the gun. “I out!” she told him. “That all I got!”
John nodded his thanks, a hand clapped to his neck, wondering how bad the wound was whilst looking around for the next assailant. Which turned out to be her. She grabbed him, gold tipped nails sinking almost as deep as the vamp’s fangs.
“That all I got!” she repeated. “What you got, huh?”
John thought the answer to that was self-evident, but she obviously didn’t agree, because she started shaking him. “You war mage! Do something!”
And yes, John thought. He was. But he was also only one man and that wasn’t enough.
Not by half.
He stared around at Zheng, being overwhelmed by no fewer than a dozen vampires; at Kong, who fell off the platform backward, still stabbing an attacker in the eye; at the courageous little advertisements, whose lights were going out, one by one, as they pulled back, surrounding him, dying for him, whether they knew it or not. And for what?
Why had his demon side bothered to send him back, if this was the best he could do?
“You’re going to play the demon prince with me?” Dagon’s words echoed in his head, clear as a bell.
“You are but a little human and less fey,” the Irin’s softer tones chimed in. “But you are half demon. Although you do not acknowledge it.”
“Don’t you dare!” his father’s long-ago voice snarled.
Not “don’t, you’re going to die,” John realized, his heart pounding in his ears. Not “don’t, a council member will easily overwhelm you.” Not “don’t, this will be a terribly one-sided fight.”
But “don’t you dare.”