by Steve Vera
“Was it even necessary?” Noah asked.
Tarsidion, Jack, and Cirena all answered “no,” while Gavin answered “absolutely.”
“Then I should be held accountable as well. It was my watch that failed.”
Cirena turned on her. “You will be,” she said in a toneless voice.
They held each other’s gaze for a moment longer, a mountain peak looking down on a hill before Noah nodded. “Good. And what are we to do with Skip?”
“He stays with us,” Gavin said.
“Is that wise?” Cirena asked.
“I gave him my word.” Gavin turned to Noah. “Do you trust him?”
Noah thought about it a second. “I do,” she said. “I believe him to be honorable.”
“Good enough for me. It might be nice to actually have some help for once.”
“Poor soul,” Jack said, but his eyes were serious. He leaned forward on his bike. “Let’s do this. Airport. Bastion. Home. No problemo.”
“And Stavengre?” Cirena said just before he jumped in his car. She always preferred his given name. “You’re welcome.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Gavin was all business, eyes riveted to the road. Beside him sat Noah, her storm-gray eyes absorbing all. Normally, Skip might have taken issue with riding in the back, but today…he made an exception. She looked like she belonged up there. For once, Skip was just going to sit back and watch, let somebody else take the reins for a while. The world had taken a decidedly more surreal aspect to it.
“So, you gonna fill me in on just what the hell is going on around here?” Max demanded. “Because I just got my ass handed to me by some psycho over you and your friends who you’ve never even mentioned before. I think that earns me full clearance. Plus, I’m your boss.”
“It does, and you will, I promise.” The vehicle stopped at a red light and Gavin turned around, locking eyes with his employer. “As soon as we’re safe.”
The light turned green. So did Max’s face. Gavin had a way of saying things that bordered on frightening, like right now. He held his young employer’s gaze long enough to get beeped at from the Civic behind them before it zoomed around them. “All right?” Only after Max affirmed did Gavin resume driving.
Nobody spoke. There was only the drone of the road and each of their own thoughts. Because their chairs faced inward like a luxury board meeting on wheels, it was hard to avoid the occasional glance.
“Tell me about the time Gavin saved your life in Berlin.” It was Amanda who finally broke the seal. She had a handkerchief filled with ice pressed against her eye.
“Now that’s a good story,” Max said, brightening. “How could you not have told her that one?” he called up to Gavin. “You can’t make up a better story than that.”
“Never came up,” Gavin answered with a shrug. There was a shift in the atmosphere, fractures of sun through stormy clouds.
“You amaze me,” Max said.
“Thank you.”
“That wasn’t a compliment,” he shot back.
“I have not heard this story.” Noah’s voice was quiet and penetrating, though her accent was much thicker than Gavin’s now that Skip heard them side by side.
“Well,” Max responded, fully registering her presence for the first time. He leaned forward. “It really is a good story. Think Berlin, summer, lots to drink and much to celebrate, except for the fact that this shady Hungarian tycoon—”
Max spoke with the enthusiasm of someone who’d told the same story five hundred times; he even managed to make his voice less nasally for dramatic effect. Skip phased out though, instead focusing his attention on every detail around him—the rusty crumbles of dried blood crusted on the side of Amanda’s swollen lips, the feel of the soft custom leather Maybach-style captain chair beneath him, the deep purple-pink fiber-optic lighting that ran along the soft gray panels composing the ceiling, and the gray world beyond their windows. Even with his hand resting on the butt of his Python he was nervous—it was like driving through Baqubah, Iraq during the worst of the war—you never knew when you were going to hit an IED. No amount of training or battle prowess could save you. Just luck. Fate.
Gavin’s body language shifted just then, leaning forward slightly as he accelerated onto the highway. Skip followed his line of sight. Beyond the windshield Jack had pulled over his motorcycle onto the shoulder and was pointing wide-eyed and frantically to the side of them while tugging ferociously at his jacket. Skip felt rather then heard Noah gasp.
“He’s come,” she whispered.
A long-dormant terror gushed from Skip’s bowels as the world slowed down to the speed of cold molasses.
Hurtling toward them like a black comet was a mass of vapor roughly the size of a pickup truck. In the instant its image was burned into his retina, a moment before a thunderclap of smashing metal tore through the interior of the armored limousine, and he knew beyond the dimmest shadow of a doubt that from here on out, if he survived this, his life would forever be measured by before and after this moment. A shape, no, the suggestion of a shape, was wreathed in vapor, grotesque and terrible.
Horrified, Skip watched a long blade the color of bleached bone punch through the steel roof of the limousine. The first time he’d heard that roar, it had been far away, separated by a barrier of earth and tomb; this time it bent his eardrums and filled his bladder. It was hell given a voice—cavernous, guttural and bowel-shaking.
Noah was in motion before Skip could even respond. In one movement, she slid like water over her Amanda’s chair, pulled a long, double-edged blade from beneath her coat and skewered the roof where the weight of something terrible crushed in. She was rewarded with an angry roar, and when she pulled the blade free, black-purplish ooze that Skip could only conclude was blood stained her weapon and contaminated the air. A moment later, the unmistakable staccato of Tarsidion’s fully automatic AK-47 boomed from behind them, and Asmodeous’s roar changed to a shriek. The weight from the roof suddenly disappeared.
“Gavin, what is that?” Amanda shrieked, hooked fingers trembling by her temples.
“Everybody all right?” Gavin yelled over his shoulder.
“Just drive!” Skip screamed. The limousine had screeched to a halt once it had jumped the curb and broadsided a fiberglass composite streetlight pole. But the car remained still.
Gavin turned toward them. “You,” he said, pointing to Skip, “are driving. Noah, stay with them. We’ll meet you at the Bastion. Be strong, baby,” he said to Amanda. He opened the door and stepped out.
“Gavin, what are you doing?” Her hazel eyes were wild.
The air behind them reverberated from another long burst of AK-47 fire. Gavin pulled out his own blade, a Japanese tanto or short sword by the looks of it, and an H&K Mark 23 pistol in the other hand.
He looked back into the car, somehow found a way to telegraph his love for her through the grim edge in his eyes and then he was running. Full tilt.
Max and Raymond stared at each other, an expression that might have been funny had liquid fear not pulsed through Skip’s own arteries. Noah remained calm, but there was the gravity of a black hole in her stare.
She turned to Skip. “Get in the driver’s seat.”
*
Gavin ran.
Cars that had been following too closely slammed into each other as they attempted to avoid the battle. Some reversed, others spun around and still others got out of their cars and simply ran. Through the periphery of his vision, Gavin saw one brave (or stupid) soul with his cell phone up, recording as Asmodeous rose like a demon-mirage into
the air.
Jack zipped past Gavin, one hand on the throttle, the other clutching the HK UMP 45 submachine gun, tracking Asmodeous from the ground. The black mirage soared through the air and rocketed toward Tarsidion, the unmistakable sound of flapping wings raining down from a dark mass of vapor streaked with glints of amber.
As Tarsidion reloaded, Cirena emerged from Gavin’s Audi, crossbow at the ready, set on her shoulder. A red laser beamed into the descending thunderhead, and a metal-gray shaft streaked out. Like a wasp hit midair by a stream of Raid, Asmodeous the Pale, Overlord of the Drynn and Lord of the Underworld, tumbled from the air and crashed into the earth.
To their dismay, he sprung up immediately, hissing and snarling as white, greasy smoke from the phosphorous head sizzled in his torso. The black veil of vapor that emanated constantly from his pores dissipated in his pain, momentarily revealing his true form. Inhuman and monstrous, Asmodeous hulked in the street, eyes ringed in blood and fire, with leathery skin the color of spoiling tapioca pudding. He was muscular in a misshapen way, broad shoulders that rippled like a snake’s coils, dry and glistening at the same time. The fact that this was not the first time Gavin had ever crossed swords with Asmodeous meant nothing. The same primal, irrational, dreamlike fear twisted his intestines and squeezed his guts.
Behold the Lord of the Underworld.
On exit 40.
Asmodeous writhed and gurgled as he dug into his own flesh, ripped out the quarrel and hurled it to the ground, where it continued to burn white-hot, combusting the grass. An expression of revulsion and hatred twisted his monstrous face as he glared at it.
In that moment, Jack skidded to a halt in the middle of the street and opened fire in one continual motion, stitching a burst of bullets into the wounded, snarling monster.
Asmodeous howled as a cluster of purple-crimson welts flared up around his chest. Snarling and hissing, he tried to ward off the swarm of .45 caliber rounds with his arm and wing. Though they clearly hurt him, the bullets didn’t penetrate.
The moment Jack’s magazine emptied, Cirena ran up the hood of the big SUV and launched herself at the Overlord, crossbow discarded, K’lesha cleaving the air.
Cresting the top of Asmodeous’s forearm like the dorsal fin of a shark, a blade of bone split his muscles and swept forward into a dagger’s point, as if half a battle-ax had been buried in his forearm. It could shatter steel and gut a man; a Drynnian ridgebone was made for combat, hunting, and tunneling rock. It was also a very good shield and with it, he parried the blow meant for his head. K’lesha bit, but not before it was changed from its original trajectory and chopped into his shoulder instead. Blood the color of a rotting eggplant spurted across her arms and face.
If Gavin had been home, he could have sent a pair of lightning bolts wreathed in cobalt flames crackling into Asmodeous’s chest. Instead he settled for a military design Heckler & Koch Mark 23, snarling in satisfaction each time the pistol kicked up. He would summon his own tribe of welts. His satisfaction was short-lived. Asmodeous raised his arm and left wing to block the bullets, gave a quick, venomous glance at Gavin’s pistol and leaped on Cirena, slashing at her with his left arm while at the same time ruining Gavin’s shot. Cirena danced away from him, changing into a silhouette as Asmodeous’s ever-seeping black vapors whirled around them, but not before the end of his ridgebone caught her across the left side. Gavin winced. Ridgebone wounds were always messy, tearing as much as they cut. She spun away with a grunt, her hair a spinning cape as she grimaced. Asmodeous ran his sinuous tongue along the edge of his bone, which gleamed scarlet with her blood. He grinned.
“Appetizer,” he said in a language Gavin had prayed he’d never hear again. Even if a Siren had spoken the tongue of the Underworld it would have sounded as revolting as nail-punched meat; spoken by the Overlord, it was a physical manifestation of evil’s very essence.
Tarsidion allowed no gloating. Fully loaded, he fired point blank. The Overlord put his hands up as if to physically stop the fusillade and draped his wings around his body just as the muzzle flash leapt from the barrel. The entire magazine of 7.62x39mm rounds thwacked against the backs of his wings and arms, and though they left ugly boils, none of them got through. An ominous silence filled the air as the assault rifle ran dry.
Tarsidion took three steps back as Asmodeous rose slowly from the street, unfurling his great wings, and snarled at the plainsman. Not a fan of the assault rifle. Smoke from the AK-47 mixed with the Overlord’s own black vapor, which had once again begun to emanate from his pores. With one hand Cirena clutched her side, with the other, the shaft of K’lesha. Blood leaked through her fingers.
Tarsidion threw down the AK-47 and pulled out his custom-made, L6 Bainite high carbon steel, single-edged short sword, along with a slim stabbing knife resembling a bayonet.
“Tarsidion,” Asmodeous rumbled, looming over the plainsman as he stood to his full height of over eight feet tall. Their eyes locked, and Gavin witnessed a faint shudder run through his old friend. It was brief, gone before it began, but Gavin was well versed in the dark arts of the Overlord. Guard your mind, a voice from his past whispered in his ear.
“Kneel before me and I will grant you mercy,” Asmodeous said to Tarsidion.
Gavin arrived next to Jack, panting embarrassingly loud.
“As soon as I have a clear shot, I’m going to empty this gun in his head,” Jack said quietly. He remained sitting atop his motorcycle, his body an extension of the submachine gun he now trained on the Overlord, folding butt-stock set against his shoulder. “The moment his head tips back and he gives you his neck, cut off his damn head, cut out his heart and let’s get home.”
“Yeah, sure thing, piece of cake,” Gavin said before taking a deep breath. “Just don’t hit me.” And then as if someone had fired a starter gun behind him, Gavin catapulted forward, tanto in his left hand, pistol in the right.
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Gavin heard come from behind him.
When Asmodeous saw Gavin charging he grinned, eyes glinting in hunger and anticipation, paying no heed to the other two warriors circling him, their blades in ready-stance, bodies crouched.
In the distance, police sirens wailed.
“Bull’s eye,” Jack said from behind.
A breath later a high-pitched jackhammer of bullets splintered the air. They would have caught Asmodeous square in the head, had the Overlord not snatched his arm in front of his face the moment the first shot was fired. The .45 caliber rounds pounded against his forearm and wing back, battering it, but not a single one reached his head. Asmodeous learned quickly.
From ten feet away, Gavin abandoned the pistol and double-gripped his Mitsutada, yelling at the top of his lungs, wishing it were his Quaranai but going for the gold anyway. Tarsidion and Cirena moved in, and all three attacked at once.
Asmodeous the Pale didn’t like to be crowded.
Just before Gavin got there, the Overlord leaped up and in one flap of his powerful wings launched up and back, landing some twenty feet away in a back somersault on top of an abandoned Accord, crushing in its roof.
He crouched in the Drynnian hunting stance, wings draped around his body, a sort of leaning-forward perch, both patient and menacing. His body and wings were peppered with angry blotches and purple-crimson welts left by both 7.62mm and .45 caliber bullets, not to mention that phosphorous quarrel wound in his side. Even from twenty feet away a hand-sized chunk of his chest looked like burned, crispy potato skin against pale, leathery flesh.
And yet he seemed smug, more imperious than usual. Like he knew a secret. And then the briefest glimmer of amber spiderlight washed over his eyes.
Oh my God. A mushroom cloud of dread blossomed in Gavin’s gut. “Now, now, now!” he yelled, charging forward.
Jack gunned the throttle and Tarsidion and Cirena charged.
Slowly, inexorably, Asmodeous stretched out his arm, amber eyes erupting into bands of roiling light that looked like mist over a crystal ball. There was only one kind of light like that.
Magic.
A crimson dart of light streaked out from his hooked fingers, exploding into a fork of lightning the color of magma at night. One prong speared into Tarsidion as he ran, the other Cirena, hurling them both backward, as if they’d been hit by a flying wrecking ball. A concussion of thunder rolled down the highway.
Cirena careened across the highway and bounced her head with a dull thud off the pavement. Tarsidion was blasted into the long grass on the side of the road. Bloody electricity continued to crackle around their inert bodies, fading slowly. Neither of them moved again. Both Gavin and Jack were stopped in their tracks.
“That’s just not fair,” Jack said in a calm voice.
“What ails you, cattle?” Asmodeous asked, jumping off the roof of the car. He strolled toward them in a disturbingly human manner.
The sirens in the back manifested to a crescendo as two cruisers pulled up behind the abandoned Accord. A middle-aged police officer with a full mustache and a crew cut emerged from one, a younger, taller officer from the other. Both froze in shock from the scene before them. The mustache officer began to speak frantically into the radio transmitter attached to his lapel.
“Get out of here!” Gavin yelled. “He’ll kill you!”
“Police!” the taller officer barked, eyes wide behind his pistol.