by J. S. Miller
A man was walking toward us. He wore long, white robes studded with light gray beads, which camouflaged him against the colorless walls. His face was indescribably old, and his nose was buried in a book — so deeply, in fact, that he got within 10 feet of us before stopping, glancing up, and fixing us with a stare that would have wilted an entire field of sunflowers.
“Where in the names of all the sages did you come from?” he asked. His voice was deep and echoed on the stone walls.
“Um, hi, hello,” I said. “Just passing through.”
“One does not ‘pass through’ the Archives of Annendium. Who sent you? Speak!”
“No one sent us. Cross my heart and hope to die. Well, not die … you know what I mean. The archives of what now?”
Rather than responding, he tossed the book over one shoulder and circled his arms, lowering into a tai chi stance. I almost laughed — but then I felt the energy gathering around the old man. And holy shit, was he centering a lot of it. The gray beads along his robes pulsed with light, and I realized with horror that those weren’t beads at all. They were hundreds of philosopher’s stones.
“Elena,” I said. “Now would be a great time to tunnel a way out of here.”
“I told you, it can be tricky,” she said. “Don’t worry. I can handle this old man’s kung-fu.”
“He’s not using kung—”
A torrent of raw force lashed out, narrowly missing our party and punching a crater into the rock behind us.
“The next shall not miss,” the man said. “Speak.”
“Listen, we were just leaving,” I began, but I could already feel the old man readying another blast of energy.
Without a sound, Stern leapt forward, locking his razor teeth around the man’s wrist. The old guy grunted, and the second blast pulsed out, carving a trench in one wall and spraying us with tiny stones. But I saw no blood. And then the man’s eyes were alight with white fire.
He whirled, throwing Stern over his head and slamming the massive shi dog down against the stone. The creature huffed out a breath and let go, but then rolled backward and came up into a fighting crouch. He snarled, showing obsidian fangs, and squared off against the old man, who was waiting calmly, hands raised.
“Dad, what’re you doing?!” Glynda said. “That guy … he’s one of them …”
“I do what needs to be done,” he replied. “Go, my child!”
“There’s no way in hell I’m leaving you here,” she screamed.
“Go,” he repeated. “Our people will need you.”
Stern looked away from her and locked eyes with me. Something that didn’t require words passed between us, and I nodded. Then I grabbed the portal gun from Elena’s hand, aimed it at the floor beneath the group, and glanced back to Stern.
“Follow us if you can,” I said. “And … thank you.”
“Watch over my kin, Lord Alchemist, and you may consider this debt paid in full.”
He charged at the old man, and I pushed the button. White stone vanished beneath us, and as we dropped, the sounds of snarling wolf and crackling energy clashed overhead. Whoever the old man was, he was unleashing torrents of force unlike anything I’d ever seen or felt, but Stern wasn’t going down without a fight. For once, I was glad to be free-falling in the void.
We spilled out onto a city street. Around us, Astoria was burning. People were fleeing, but without direction or purpose … and many couldn’t even do that. Some limped aimlessly, blood flowing from various wounds, clothes caked in dust. Some lay motionless beneath the ruins of toppled buildings.
I averted my eyes from the carnage and found myself staring up into the portal, still open above us. Something glowed deep within it, suffusing the inky void with yellows and reds. It grew brighter and brighter. What was that?
Oh. Fire.
Flame surged through the hole as if the devil were unhappy we’d just escaped from hell. Without thinking, I pressed the button on Elena’s handheld portal gun again, and the universe resealed itself, compressing into a single point, which then blinked out of existence.
“No!” Glynda cried out, turning to me. “Open it! Bring him back!”
“I’m sorry,” Elena said, throwing me a look. “We don’t know how to get back there.”
“But … Coppersworth said …”
“Only a theory, I’m afraid,” the metal man said quietly. “And a risky one, at that. We could easily end up someplace else entirely. Or trapped in the darkness between.”
Astor Sylvana approached Glynda and put a hand on her mane.
“Your father saved our lives,” she said. “I see now that you inherited his courage. But returning to that place would only render his sacrifice pointless. Tens of thousands here need our help. Need your help. Will you help them, Glynda of the Shi?”
Despite the tears rolling down her granite cheeks, Glynda squared her shoulders and set her face in a grimace of determination. I could tell she would do whatever it took to make her father’s sacrifice mean something. It was reassuring, even though, behind her, soldiers and citizens alike were running by in panicked disarray. Pillars of smoke rose from the Astorian skyline, and in the distance, I could hear the muffled cries of the bone masked. No doubt about it now: The Laughing Man’s army was here.
Fen’s plan had been sound. Launching a surprise attack after sucker-punching the enemy command was a good strategy. If you succeeded in killing the commanders, that is.
“How did they breach the gravity moat?” one of Astoria’s leaders asked.
“It does not matter,” Astor Sylvana said. “We have work to do.”
She strode into the crowd. The other city leaders followed, and she began barking orders as she went. An immediate shift in organization and morale took shape in the citizens around her. It was obvious why Astor Sylvana was in charge, but even with proper leadership, they were going to be fighting an uphill battle. I needed to help in the only way I could.
I looked around, trying to get my bearings, and noticed something strange happening to the pillars of smoke as they climbed higher into the sky. After reaching a certain altitude, they appeared to hit an invisible barrier and disperse, spreading over the city like storm clouds. The gravity moat. It gave me a crazy idea. My favorite kind.
“How accurate is the Bull-Dog?” I asked Coppersworth.
“Alas, I’d love to claim it capable of vaporizing an apple from atop your head with minimal singing of hair, but it is more a weapon of brute force.”
“I can shoot,” Elena said. “With this.”
She swept her cloak aside to reveal a strange rifle in a side holster running up the length of her leg. It was covered in dials and valves and fitted with a long-range scope. There also appeared to be a hinge in the middle to allow for flexibility of movement. Huh. Leave it to Elena to find the world’s first concealed-carry sniper rifle.
“Local weaponry,” she said. “I confiscated it when I arrived in Astoria.”
“Perfect,” I said, then turned back to the shi dog. “Glynda … I’m sorry. Are you going to be OK?”
She sat up even straighter.
“Yeah,” she said. “Dad wouldn’t want me sitting around like a hot mess anyway. I’ll pass the news to our pack and then we’ll make those bone-faced bitches pay.”
“Be careful out there,” I said. She nodded and started off after the Astorian leaders.
“Wait up,” Claire called out, and her eyes flicked back to me. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. I don’t know what you have planned, but something tells me I’ll be safer, and able to do more good, if I go toward the battling armies.”
“Fair enough,” I said, nodding. “Stay safe.”
She smiled. “You too.”
As Claire departed, I turned back to the skyline, scanning for the tallest structure in the area. My eyes settled on an enormous bell tower. It was shaped like a pint glass and had a huge G on it. Well, I’ll be damned. I started walking that way.
“What about u
s, Boss?” Cagney piped up behind me. He and Brando were standing there, trying their best to look brave. It wasn’t working.
“You’re coming with us,” I said, grinning. “You’re our muscle.”
Elena, Coppersworth, the gargoyles, and I hurried down side streets and alleyways toward the Sacred Temple of the Guinness Pint. Soldiers ran the other way, toward the fighting. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small, white, transformative orb.
“This is the key to everything,” I said. “Coppersworth, how far can you throw?”
“Come now,” he said. “My hurling arm is second to none. But are you sure you wish to bandy it about so? I’ve seen what these alchemical baubles of yours can do … you’re certain it won’t simply raze the city to the ground?”
“Mostly, but that’s why I want to run an experiment first. I just need a few test subjects …”
As we rounded a corner onto a side street, I noticed that the flow of soldiers going the other way had stopped. A single streetlamp illuminated the way ahead, so I couldn’t see much, but something felt wrong. I put on the brakes and extended my arms, catching my companions.
My eyes searched the shadows beyond the light from the lamp. The darkness seemed to be shifting … moving … writhing. Icy fear washed over me. The soldiers hadn’t been running toward a fight. They’d been running away from one.
Ahead of us, a wall of red flesh and white faces rolled forward into the light, devouring brick and mortar as it came. The light pole bent, and the bulb shattered.
Coppersworth’s arm whirred and clicked apart as he turned to me, still dimly visible in the ambient light of the city. I heard one metal eyebrow clink against the brim of his bowler.
“To paraphrase the esteemed Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, old boy, one should always be careful what he wishes for.”
Chapter 32
The crimson infantry surged forward, its members piling onto one another, screeching, scratching, shoving. It was a force of nature, a tidal wave of blood and claws crashing down the alley toward us.
The urge to flee almost overwhelmed me, but running would accomplish next to nothing; there were too many of them, and they were moving too fast. They would trample us in seconds, and we’d die screaming as they tore into our backs. No way was I going out like that. Not after everything I’d been through.
Stepping in front of my friends, I swung the blunderbuss into one hand while extracting three colored bulbs from my pocket with the other. I rolled them into the barrel of the enormous gun, leveled it at the oncoming wave of death, and centered the energy within and around me. The air crackled and buzzed. Squeezing the trigger was an afterthought.
The alchemical savagery that burst from the barrel of Arthur Rundale’s blunderbuss hosed down the onrushing horde like a blast from a high-pressure paint cannon. While the weapon lacked the Chemslinger’s concentrated wallop, it made up for that in coverage. Hissing liquid engulfed the first wave of monsters, gnawing at their scales and eating away at their masks. The front line wailed and fell — but the next wave crashed over them, only momentarily slowed by their dying comrades.
“Well, shit,” I said, backing away and pulling the sword from my back. Fire licked up the blade, throwing flickering light into the darkened alley. The monsters faltered at the sight. “Fall back!”
The five of us fled back up the road, Coppersworth’s Bull-Dog barking like that neighborhood hound that won’t shut up, only this time I didn’t want it to. As we ran, I grabbed two more alchemical bulbs from my pockets and looked to the sky, where the gargoyles were flapping erratically. Even they were terrified, and I could see why. Several of the things chasing us had wings too.
“Cagney! Brando! Catch!”
I quickly imbued the orbs with energy, and they pulsed with light as I tossed them. Cagney holstered his M1911 just in time to catch the orb, but Brando nearly fumbled his, and I wondered for a moment if I had just killed us all by accident. But he got it under control, and they gave each other a quick nod before drifting back a bit and hurling the orbs like a pair of glow-in-the-dark hand grenades.
Multicolored mushroom clouds erupted from the sea of red, shaking the street. It made me miss a step, and I stumbled. This was it, the last mistake I would ever make.
Then someone caught me under the arm and kept me on my feet.
“Like a woman in a bad horror movie,” Elena said. I grinned up at her, and she rolled her eyes. “Come on, this way!”
I recovered as best I could as we staggered toward an intersection of alleyways. We turned and raced down one … and came to stop before a tall, sturdy brick wall.
At first, the bone-masked legions hurtled past us, and for a moment I hoped they’d be too stupid to realize their quarry had changed directions. Then, a few at a time, they started turning our way. The current of the red river shifted and flowed down the passage toward us.
My friends raised their weapons, unwilling to surrender even in the face of such overwhelming odds, and in the light from my sword, each of their faces stood out in the darkness, momentarily clear to me. Coppersworth’s steel brows clenched tightly above shining monocle. Cagney and Brando, their faces sculpted into grimaces of determination, the weariness of previous days now replaced with furious purpose. Elena … her alien rifle to her shoulder, her tattered hood and scarf drawn up. Not a trace of fear on her, like some kind of beautiful, war-torn Angel of Death sent back from a dystopian future. If Fen really had done all this for her — well, at that moment, I couldn’t say I blamed him.
The creatures flooded the alley, filling the space with eerie white targets floating in red. My friends opened fire. For the first time, I got a good look at Elena’s weapon in action. The rifle released streaks of plasma similar to Coppersworth’s arm cannon. She was good with it, too, firing fast but rarely missing a headshot. Despite her skills, our small arms lived up to their name. For each monster that fell, five more were lined up behind it.
I stepped forward, raised the flaming sword above my head, and let out the most fearsome battle cry I could muster. My voice seemed amplified in the narrow space, and several monsters shifted their focus to me. Good. If this was going to be my end, I wanted to take as many of these bastards with me as I could.
That was when the wall behind us exploded. Shards of brick showered my back, but the indestructible smoking jacket did its job. I waved away the dust, coughing, and saw that Elena had taken cover behind Coppersworth’s steel frame. Then I glanced over my shoulder at what was left of the wall.
Through the cloud floated a small figure sporting a threadbare fedora and a mismatched set of wings — one carved from old stone, the other fashioned from leather straps and steel. Seeing his face in that dark, hopeless place nearly got me teary-eyed … until he went and opened his big, fat mouth.
“You wanna fuck with me?!” Hanks shouted at the oncoming swarm. “You wanna play rough?! OK. Say hello to my little friend!”
With that, the gargoyle lifted an object that looked like a battery-operated electric shotgun. It was short and blunt, covered in glowing blue muzzle brakes. He gripped the underside of the barrel, and the weapon hummed to life. We all hit the deck as the device clapped like thunder and discharged a shockwave of cerulean force that pushed past us, expanding as it slammed into our enemies, who went flying in every direction.
“You fuck with me, you fuckin’ with the best!”
“Hanks!” Cagney screamed.
“We thought you was dead, you goomba!” Brando said.
“From what, that bum in the hospital?” Hanks said and fired another blast from his energy weapon. “I ain’t so easily wacked, my friends.”
Behind him, a squadron of Arclight Security soldiers, armed to the teeth, emerged from the dust and marched toward the army of demons, firing their concussion guns in alternating volleys.
Each soldier wore explosives on crisscrossing bandoleers, but not the kind typically used in active combat. These were the kind you plant and lea
ve for later. Either way, I wasn’t going to complain. In the confined space of the alley, their weapons were driving the monsters back.
“You got somewheres to be, Boss?” Hanks asked over the sound of the fighting.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, turning my attention back to my old friend. “I’m trying to put an end to all this. Seen a church around here?”
“You mean the sacred chapel of that unholy swill you drink?”
“Yeah, but for the last time, it’s not swill, you heathen.”
“You know me,” he said, grinning. “It’s gotta be a dry red from Lo Stivale or bourbon, neat. That being said, you should head back thataway. Through the wall we busted.”
“Thanks. And damn, it’s good to see you.”
“Feeling’s mutual, boss. Now get the hell outta here. We got this covered.”
“Not without us you don’t!” Cagney said. “We let you outta our sight once and look what happened!”
“Me savin’ your asses is what happened.”
“After getting yours royally kicked,” Brando said. “Also, that new wing looks like shit.”
“Says who?” Hanks said, flipping a switch on the harness that held the wing in place. A set of blue lights rippled across the wing as it flexed and flapped, letting Hanks do a quick spin. The other two gargoyles looked impressed for a moment before recovering their poker faces.
“You always been big-boned,” Brando said. “But now you really look like a 747.”
“Why, I oughta—”
“Now’s not the time for this, guys,” I said. “Focus on helping Arclight. Drive all the monsters out into the open, if you can. Tell the soldiers to do the same. I have a plan.”
“You got it, Boss,” they said in unison before flying after the soldiers. Hanks took point with his energy shotgun while the other two watched his back with their pistols. I smiled. Somehow, against all odds, the gang was back together. Well, the mob. They made a good team, and I knew they’d watch each other’s backs until the end. I hoped that would be enough.