I still hoped Nicole’s words were the mad babblings of a confused woman pushed to the brink. Between her century-long possession and whatever hell she’d survived in the asylum, it wouldn’t be surprising if her mind had snapped. I had experienced the hospital staff first hand. None of those monsters would have won any prizes for their bedside manner.
The best I could hope for was that Nicole had gone insane.
So why did I harbor such nagging doubts? The psychic’s forlorn final words haunted me. She had been genuinely afraid for us. This, more than anything, prevented me from dismissing her warning. I also vividly recalled Diamonique whispering into the unconscious psychic’s ear. What I had believed to be private words of encouragement might have been a terrible hex that had sped up Nicole’s aging process.
What if the resurrected Guardian had made sure Nicole would never wake again?
My stomach churned at the thought of such treachery. If Diamonique was in cahoots with the Shadow Cabal, we were all in deep-shit trouble. According to Octurna, Diamonique was far more powerful than her. She could easily destroy us both.
This war might end before it even got started.
I stormed down a passageway, took a sharp left, and rushed into the armory. I had used up all my spells, and I was still waiting for the 24-hour cycle to run its course so my magic could kick in again. Until my powers regenerated, I would have to rely on my weapons. My gaze swept the armory’s walls. The whole chamber was empty. Walls usually lined with blades and guns were bare.
My blood turned to ice. Was this somehow Diamonique’s doing?
Deeply disturbed, I hurried to the observation room with a lot less enthusiasm. I was going up against Diamonique unarmed. How could I face a Guardian with nothing but my fists? I knew my odds were terrible, but I had no choice. I prayed this would be one giant misunderstanding.
Keeping dreaming, bud.
I slowed my approach as I spotted two limp forms on the ground, legs and arms akimbo. The golems! Someone had put Octurna’s constructs through the wringer—and for a change, it hadn’t been me.
I kneeled before them to check for life signs and then shook my head at my foolishness. The constructs weren’t flesh and blood. They didn’t have a pulse. Octurna's inhuman servants were out for the count.
I turned away from the downed golems and pressed forward.
The doorway leading into the Sanctuary’s observation chamber came into view, and I slowed down, making as little noise as possible. Voices drifted through the door. From the sound of it, Diamonique was the one doing all the talking.
I crept into the chamber, sticking to the shadows. About a hundred feet ahead, the sorceress sat on her black throne. Diamonique stood, facing her. The windows flickered violently, painting the space in hues of red and green. The resurrected Guardian’s features were locked in an icy mask, and it was hard for me to remember that I had made love to this woman less than an hour ago.
Thankfully, Diamonique remained unaware of my presence. Every time she leveled her cold gaze in my direction, I vanished behind one of the monster skull displays and bided my time. I was making good progress through the room, but to be honest, I had no idea what I was going to do when I reached them. I was still unarmed. Harsh language and a penchant for bad jokes would not save the day. Drawing closer, I realized Octurna’s black throne had transformed into a prison. Magic had reshaped the stone armrests, which now wrapped around the sorceress' upper body, making it impossible for her to move her hands and cast any counter-spells.
One glance at her haunted, disbelieving expression told me everything I needed to know. Her best friend’s betrayal had shaken my partner to the core of her being. I didn’t even want to imagine experiencing such treachery.
The bigger question was why. Why had the resurrected Guardian turned on the people who'd brought her back from the dead?
Diamonique glanced around the chamber, and I quickly ducked behind a pedestal holding a vampire skull. The icy blonde shook her head.
“It fills me with sadness that you have chosen to lock yourself in this dismal fortress. It’s a pale shadow of the chateau we once called home. You’ve chosen to hide in the ruins of your old life, surrounded by ghosts. How pathetic.”
“Why are you doing this?" Octurna asked, clearly struggling to maintain her composure. "What happened to you, my darling Diamonique?”
“I serve new masters.”
“I don’t understand…”
Diamonique tossed her hair over her shoulder. “You call this place a Sanctuary. I call it a tomb. The past is dead. The old order has fallen. The future belongs to the Shadow Cabal.”
“How can you say that? They murdered you!”
“Did they now?” The resurrected Guardian’s lips curled into a sneer.
The windows behind Diamonique shimmered and expanded. Man, she was fucking powerful. Somehow, she was already in control of our magical surveillance system. The new scene on the glass showed two magic users furiously hurling energy balls at each other in a densely forested landscape, a large medieval chateau silhouetted against a full moon in the background. Fearsome blasts lit up the skeletal trees around the two combatants. The windows zoomed in on the spellslingers, revealing them to be none other than Diamonique and Arion, the third member of their cozy little family. Their attractive features contorted with the effort. This battle was pushing the Guardians to their limits.
But why were they fighting each other?
In the window, Diamonique flung a series of energy missiles at Arion, who brought up his hands defensively. Power crackled as a magical shield formed around him and absorbed the incoming volley. At first, the energy bubble held, but Diamonique continued to rain down blasts. I knew from personal experience what would happen next. The shield fizzled and broke down under the spellslinger’s relentless onslaught. And then the protective field dissolved, leaving Arion naked and exposed. Diamonique eyed the vulnerable Guardian without mercy and lobbed a ball of magic right at him.
Octurna watched in shock as the fireball engulfed Arion and sent him flying.
“All these years you believed the Shadow Cabal murdered Arion and me,” Diamonique said, “but the reality was a little different.”
“You killed him. But why? We loved each other,” Octurna said, her voice a glassy whisper.
Diamonique inched closer, tears welling up in her eyes. “I did. I loved you both. But I knew things were changing. I refused to perish with the other Guardians. I offered the Seven Dark Masters my loyalty, and they demanded I prove my devotion. Either I convinced you to join me, or…”
Octurna’s expression shattered as she realized what her former lover had done.
“They ordered you to turn on us. And if we refused to join the Shadow Cabal, you were to kill us.”
“I wish there had been another way. I thought if I could convince Arion, you would follow his example. That's why I confronted him first. But the stubborn fool wouldn't adapt to a changing world. And then he tricked me.”
The window tracked Diamonique as she homed in on her fallen enemy. She towered over Arion, whose chest was a crater of singed flesh. Nobody should have survived such a grave injury. But Arion wasn’t an ordinary man. His eyes snapped open, burning with rage. His hand came up, and a terrible fire engulfed Diamonique’s form.
A beat later, she had been reduced to a smoking skeleton. I can’t say I was sorry for it.
“We destroyed each other. But unlike poor Arion, I had anticipated my demise and made the necessary preparations. Death would not be final for me."
Octurna’s brow wrinkled. “I still don’t understand. If you switched sides, why would the Shadow Cabal hide your remains and have their monsters protect them?”
“My masters worried the Guardians might punish me for what I had done.”
Octurna’s teary eyes lit up with dark understanding.
“The Shadow Cabal wasn’t concerned we might resurrect you. They feared we would retrieve your remai
ns so we could destroy you for good.”
Diamonique shrugged. “When my masters discovered that they could not revive me, the best they could do was protect me from you. I had only entrusted you, Octurna, with the details of my resurrection spell. Perhaps I was foolish, but I truly believed that I could convince you to join me.”
“I would never join the enemy,” Octurna spat.
“Ultimately the Cabal kept my remains in safe areas where no Guardian could find them while they searched for a solution,” Diamonique continued as if the sorceress hadn’t spoken.
In the window, mysterious robed figures—I guessed they were the Seven Dark Masters— brought Diamonique’s bones and blood together to attempt various resurrection spells. Each time, the skeleton regrew flesh but failed to reconstitute itself successfully. Diamonique would look human for a few seconds, and then the skin would bubble and melt off her frame.
The windows changed again. Fear clutched my throat. Was the resurrected Guardian about to establish communication with our greatest enemy?
As I desperately searched for some way to stop Diamonique, the dragon skull that served as my latest hiding spot grew hot to the touch and exploded in a cloud of bone fragments. The explosion’s shock wave sent me flying into another skull, and I crashed to the ground, pieces of bone raining down on me. Some of the fragments embedded themselves in my chest, and my blood turned the floor red.
Diamonique’s cold laughter filled the observation chamber.
“You think you can sneak up on a Guardian? My poor Octurna, you plan to go to war with the Shadow Cabal with this weakling as your champion? There are far less painful ways of committing suicide.”
I tried to move, and agony rippled through my body. I gnashed my teeth and fought back my rage. I didn’t want to give the witch the satisfaction of seeing me lose my shit.
Diamonique shifted her attention to Octurna and the windows, ignoring me. I was a joke to her. And perhaps compared to a fully trained combat magician I was.
But this wasn’t over yet.
I looked at the shattered dragon skull. A few of the beast’s razor-sharp teeth had dislodged from the jaw. My eyes fixed on fifteen inches of jagged enamel as sharp as a freshly honed sushi knife.
I bit my lips, doing my best to ignore the pain as I reached out for the dragon tooth. I blocked out all other thoughts, and my entire world whittled down to a simple aim. I swallowed a shout of triumph as my fingers closed around it.
About fifteen feet separated me from Diamonique and the sorceress. I would only get one shot at this. I toyed with the idea of throwing the weapon. I was skilled at hurling knives with precision. There had been a lot of downtime during my Marine days, hours upon hours when I would stave off boredom by flinging my K-bar at trees. I guess I had visions of Rambo dancing in my head. Of course, throwing knives looked cool in the movies but didn’t work so well in the real world. Knife fighting was all about stance and grip, using the blade to target your enemy’s vital areas while protecting your own.
Even if I had wanted to throw my makeshift blade, the tooth's weight and balance were all wrong. What other options did I have?
In the end, there was only one.
I would have to try to cast my Teleportation Spell and get in close enough to drive the dragon tooth into Diamonique’s black heart.
Stabbing a woman I had been intimate with less than an hour earlier was way out of my comfort zone. Deep down, I was a gentleman when it came to the fairer sex.
But Diamonique was no lady, and if I didn’t take her out now, the darkness would win. We’d lose the war, and the Shadow Cabal could use the world as their plaything.
I clutched the dragon tooth, gritted my teeth, and reached inside myself.
I visualized myself appearing right in front of Diamonique, imagined the shock flickering across her face.
Nothing happened.
I tried again. And again.
Each attempt at projecting my aching body through space produced the same dismal results.
It was useless. I still hadn’t sufficiently recovered from the last time I’d cast the spell. There were rules to my new powers. Rules I had to follow.
Should I throw the dragon tooth and pray it would reach its target? I have nothing against the power of prayer, but I wasn’t willing to stake my life on it. There had to be another way. Had to be.
I needed for Diamonique to come close enough that I could make my move.
I would have to provoke her. Push Diamonique's buttons and hope she would fall for it. It was worth a shot. If there was one thing I had mastered, it was the power of being a sarcastic son of a bitch.
“Hey, Diamonique! You must be fooling yourself if you think the Seven Dark Masters really failed to crack a simple resurrection spell,” I said in the cockiest voice possible.
She froze and shifted her attention from the flashing windows to yours truly. “What’s your pet monkey yapping on about, Octurna?”
Ha! I had the treacherous Guardian now.
“You know what I think? I think the Cabal forgot all about you. Maybe they were even glad you had failed. A crazy bitch willing to betray her friends might turn on her new masters some day.”
My harsh words cut into Diamonique like sharp barbs, and her face fell. I had tapped into a deep vein of insecurity. This woman had betrayed her lovers and her order, and all she had to show for it was a hundred years of imprisonment in a nuthouse. Fuck, for all I knew, I was actually telling the truth.
She reacted as I had hoped. One moment she fronted Octurna’s throne, and the next she was standing over me, moving too fast for the human eye to discern more than a streak of light. An invisible force pulled me to my feet.
“You didn't seem to mind this crazy bitch an hour ago,” she said. “Who is the real fool, Jason? You risked your life three times to bring me back.”
I gritted my teeth, and my eyes narrowed into slits. “I never said I was the sharpest knife in the drawer. But this is.”
And with that witty comeback, I drove the dragon tooth with all my strength into the chest of the platinum blonde. I felt enamel sink into soft flesh, sliding between the ribs to reach its target.
Diamonique let out a pain-filled scream and recoiled. She regarded me with saucer eyes, as if unable to process what had happened. An instant later, the invisible force released me, and I slumped to the floor. Diamonique clutched the dragon tooth, her hand slick with gore, and then her pained grimace shifted into a deranged smile. A peal of terrible laughter rang out.
“Is that all you got, Slayer?”
I didn’t like the sound of that at all.
“Guess who won when the dragons declared war against the Guardians?”
The question hung in the air. I knew the answer to this one. Diamonique’s horrible smile deepened as she grabbed the piece of the tooth sticking from her chest and pulled it out of her with a wet sucking sound.
Fuck.
I had a decent idea what she planned to do with that tooth in the next few moments. And I didn’t like it one bit.
She took a forceful step toward me…and then she stopped dead in her tracks. Her eyes went wide, and all her blood left her face. The effect didn’t stop there. Her rosy skin turned alabaster. It was almost as if someone had drained her whole body of every drop of blood in one split second.
She let out an animalistic wail that sent chills racing up and down my back.
“That which has been given can be taken,” said Octurna’s voice.
My eyes widened at the giant pool of blood now widening around Diamonique’s feet. I traded a quick look with the sorceress, and a different chill gripped me. I didn’t see any hint of the sly humor I’d come to admire. Her face was a cold and terrible mask. All this time when I believed Octurna to be in shock she must have been mouthing silent words, engineering a spell that didn’t require hand gestures but only the power of her will.
A spell that was reversing Diamonique’s resurrection.
All I could do was stare at the two women. One light, one dark. Once lovers and best friends, now turned mortal enemies.
Diamonique staggered toward the black throne. With each successive step she took toward the imprisoned sorceress, she deflated more, losing shape and substance. Her outstretched arm fell forward as if someone had broken the bones in multiple places.
No, not broken. Octurna's magic had extracted the bones from her arm.
The blonde woman wailed again, a high and keening sound that set my teeth on edge.
More bones evaporated, her once-lovely skin collapsing on itself. Within seconds, Diamonique crumpled like a punctured balloon.
I rose to my full height and approached the shapeless, bloodless bag of meat before me. Dark wonder mixed with disgust as I fixed my gaze on it. And then I nearly jumped back in horror as the thing moved. The Guardian was still alive, her soul trapped in this mess.
A rumbling sound echoed through the observation chamber. Cracks ran along the sorceress’ black command chair, and her stone shackles shattered with explosive force. A hail of rocks sprayed the room. When the dust cleared, Octurna stood at the center of a pile of rubble that used to be her throne, her eyes alive with a cold rage.
She glanced at me, and she smiled thinly. “Thank you, Jason.”
Her smile evaporated when her attention shifted to the pathetic creature splayed out at her feet. Horrified eyes peered up at her from the slug-like mass.
“I loved you, Diamonique. But the person I cherished died a hundred years ago.”
Octurna wiped the tears from her eyes and regarded the church windows.
The windows transformed into a giant portal looking out into a raging volcano. Geysers of hot magma and steaming sulfur erupted from the angry mountain. Octurna drew a circle in the air with her left hand, and an invisible force scooped up the boneless bag of skin. Diamonique looked like a twisted real live version of Gumby.
Octurna flicked her wrist, and the thing that had been Diamonique hurtled through the open portal. Mercifully, the bag of skin and meat couldn’t form words any longer, and we were spared Diamonique’s death screams as the volcano consumed her.
Night Slayer 2: Monster Quest Page 15