Drynn

by Steve Vera

  Cirena’s eyes were still closed, but Amanda could tell she was listening.

  “I don’t know why I circled back around. Like I said, I was late and it had taken an act of congress to align my girlfriend’s schedules, but I did, and when I came back from around the block, this man had gotten out of his car and was kneeling beside the dog. I drove by slowly and couldn’t stop staring at him. I mean, yes, he was very good-looking, but it didn’t even really matter. I don’t know what it was, can’t explain it. His eyes were closed and his head was down, but there was something dignified about his sadness. I pulled over in front of him and just watched, the ultimate, proverbial rubbernecker. After a minute, I got out of my car.”

  “That sounds very much like Stavengre,” Cirena said. Her voice had softened.

  It was strange hearing Gavin’s real name.

  “I asked him if he needed help. He looked up at me, but I don’t think he actually saw me. It was more as if he were staring through me. He telegraphed so many things in that one look—pain, strength and dignity.” Amanda paused, remembering. “And that’s all it took. Until that moment I thought that love at first sight was a crock, but I forgot all about my girl’s night out, forgot about my day and the boy I had just met the weekend before. All I wanted to do was get to know this guy, this man. People say men are from Mars. Well, I always thought Gavin was from some other planet, Jupiter maybe. As it turns out it was Theia.”

  Silence.

  “Go on—” Cirena’s words were seized by a fit of coughing filled with phlegm.

  Amanda listened with sympathy.

  “Continue,” Cirena wheezed when the coughing abated. “And you can keep your pity. I am fine.”

  Amanda didn’t bristle. “Well, Gavin looked up at me and told me he needed to find out whose dog it was. I asked him if he’d like help. And then I saw it, that crooked, lopsided smile of his. Though it was sad, almost gentle, it gave me the butterflies. I was hooked.”

  Was that a smile Amanda saw?

  “He accepted my help and one by one, we knocked on all the surrounding doors until we found a little boy. It was awful, but Gavin was so calming, so warm and soothing. It’s so hard to explain, but there isn’t anybody else you’d want to get your bad news from. I guess you’d just have to know him—”

  “I know him very well, Amanda,” Cirena said, the frost in her voice back with revenge.

  Amanda ignored it. “We’ve been together ever since.”

  It became very quiet.

  “You’re right. An unconventional introduction.”

  “How ’bout you, Cirena? How did you two first meet?”

  Her face, though pasty and ravaged, stretched tighter still, her full lips narrowing almost into a line. “Our first meeting was not as…auspicious as yours.”

  Amanda settled into her seat. “Tell me,” she said, imitating Cirena’s earlier comment.

  Once again it became very quiet. Amanda wasn’t sure if she was going to say anything, but after a moment she began to speak. “The first time I crossed paths with Stavengre and his brother, Lucian, I had him flogged an inch from his life.”

  Amanda cocked her eye at Cirena, wondering if she was kidding. Cirena’s eyes were still closed.

  “Before it was discovered that I was Magi, I was nobility, second-born to my father, the Archduke of the Northern March, the most powerful of the Marches besides the Royal Court itself.”

  Amanda was still stuck on flogging. “You mean, you could do that? You could just have somebody—”

  “I could do anything I wanted to. My only restriction was that I could not have anyone put to death because I was only eleven, though at sixteen, the age of adulthood, that would change.”

  Amanda’s hand had snuck up to her mouth. Cirena remained in repose.

  “Why would you do that? What made you want to have him…whipped?”

  Cirena took a deep, watery breath. “He refused to lick my boot.”

  Amanda did a double-take. “What?”

  “And what was worse, I was offended that I could feel such an attraction to a lowborn.” Cirena was silent a good fifteen seconds. Amanda couldn’t tell if she was done, being emotional or had fallen asleep. Finally, she continued. “I was merciless.”

  Amanda shook her head. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t say anything.”

  “That really is some history.”

  Cirena licked her lips. “Lucian tried to intervene, and I had him flogged an inch from his life as well. Him I could have had killed for interfering, but for a reason I cannot recall, I spared him. Though it was a long time ago and he has forgiven me, Gavin will never forget.”

  Amanda was speechless. “Wow. You win.”

  “You are familiar with the story of Cinderella, yes?”

  “Of course,” Amanda answered.

  “I was the wicked stepsister.”

  I can’t argue with you there.

  Something thudded downstairs.

  Cirena’s eyes flew open. She sniffed the air like a wolf at the approach of hunters. “Go get the others,” she whispered, standing with only a little struggle. She reached down with one hand for the crossbow next to her bed. Another thud, only this time there was the distinct heavy grate of crumbling rock. With the other hand she strapped on her Quaranai.

  Paralyzed, Amanda stared as the blue flames burning atop the sconces within the dojo began to hiss and flutter, creating a strobe affect.

  “Go!” Cirena snapped.

  A moment later there was a tremendous crash downstairs, followed by a stomach-curdling roar mixed with shades of shriek and scream. There was nothing on this planet that even came close.

  Amanda ran.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Terror was a mighty fine motivator, but had the dual effect of turning her legs into quicksand. What was only twenty feet to the outside doors stretched for two hundred and took an eon and a half to reach.

  A huge shadow materialized at the entrance of the large, arched double back doors but was blown backward in a snap of electric crimson. The yell just barely stayed free of becoming a yelp.

  It was Tarsidion. She could tell by his voice.

  From behind her a deep, guttural voice boomed through the castle, contaminating the air with its unnaturalness. Tarsidion slashed with his Quaranai at the door again but was repelled by a crack of electric crimson, although now there was a tear in the light. He hacked again and again, oblivious to the sparks of light that cascaded over his forearms and into his face with each strike.

  “Stavengre!” he bellowed.

  Amanda dared a glance behind her. A tsunami was rocketing toward them, sucking away the tide as it approached. Cirena was still back there. She looked down at her gun. Then back at the direction she’d just run from, knowing that Cirena was alone.

  Defying every shred of her body’s sense of self-preservation, refusing to even consider the consequences, Amanda turned around.

  She had a shotgun. She was going to use it.

  With a sense of purpose and confidence that seemed inconceivable yesterday, she marched right back into the inky darkness that clung to her skin like the humidity in the African Savannah and looked for Cirena.

  From behind her, Tarsidion continued to hack repeatedly at the field of light, the crackle of electricity near constant…a frenzy.

  Amanda entered the dojo. Cirena stood brave and calm, her crossbow trained directly at Hell itself. He loomed like a prehistoric nightmare, great leathery wings furled around muscle-knotted shoulders and lupine amber eyes burning from bone-armored eye sockets. His head was long and sl
oped back, culminating into a face that gave birth to fear and darkness. One solitary sconce burned from sixteen, a lone island of stubborn Bastion light, refusing to succumb to the evil radiating out of Asmodeous like black mist.

  Asmodeous turned to her and smiled through lips the color of raw tripe. “Hello she-cattle,” he said…inside her mind! Though the words that came out of his mouth were harsh and rolling, she knew exactly what they meant in her head.

  Cirena fired. The phosphorous quarrel streaked toward his head, but before it reached its target, Asmodeous batted it out of the way as if it were a mere spitball. The shaft deflected and speared through the shoji wall, igniting it, and then thunked into the reinforced granite wall behind, exploding into a blinding, spectacular explosion of white-hot light. The shoji walls rippled into flame.

  “Olonan na choki,” he said, laughing. Amanda could almost imagine him saying “Not this time.” And then it was Asmodeous who attacked, leading with his wing tips, which he used like long daggers.

  Cirena danced to the side with focus-defying speed, despite her injuries. She threw down the crossbow and a nasty-looking ax emerged from beneath her cape. With her other hand she drew her Quaranai. “Efil!” she yelled, and the short blade shot up and tripled in size. Her armor scintillated from the flames behind her; she was a double-fisted silhouette of hooded diamonds.

  This is not real. Amanda raised the shotgun, braced the stock against her shoulder as she’d learned years ago and aimed. A long time ago Amanda promised herself that should the time ever come, she’d never be the stupid blonde in horror movies who trips over a curb and falls down in the mud. Now was her chance.

  Amanda let out her breath and squeezed the trigger.

  *

  One thing the M107 most certainly was not, and that was compact, especially with a bipod hanging from the bottom.

  There was a roar, rather on the bloodcurdling side, and a few moments later, a flash that vaporized his night vision three floors up. Skip ran down the stairs of the castle three at a time, the long barrel of the M107 leading the way, his chest a knot of adrenaline and coiled terror.

  A moment later a wall of white, acrid smoke whooshed into him like garlic fog. Phosphorous. There was only one smell like it. Phosphorous was not the sort of thing you ever fired indoors. As if to make his point, he heard the crackling of flames.

  That meant that Asmodeous was inside.

  When his feet hit the bottom floor, a single blast from a shotgun roared through the reinforced granite walls of the Bastion, followed by a duo of women screaming.

  Skip ran faster.

  *

  The laws of physics could be maddening. Gavin saw what was transpiring within his mind’s eye even before it unfolded. Jack in front, staggering like a bloody scarecrow; behind him, the roar of Asmodeous the Pale, outflanking them yet again. How the hell had he punched through a fifteen-foot-thick foundation?

  “Go, Stavengre,” Noah whispered, staring across the acre separating them from the patio door.

  A pulse of crimson light echoed through the night as Tarsidion’s massive body bounced back from an electric barrier.

  With a nod, Gavin directed the churning, eager heat within his muscles and blurred, an advanced Magi ability that had him streaking toward the door so quickly that an image of his form was left behind like an echo.

  At the exact spot necessary for a clean slice, Gavin stopped, and like a machete through a spiderweb he cleaved through the barrier, sparking white-blue against crimson.

  Inside was a freak show.

  Momentary glimpses of terror were splashed around the room by the flicker of the still-burning phosphorous against the ribbons of darkness that remained like a wake from Asmodeous’s body, creating a strobe light effect. A deranged fun house on two buttons of peyote. Cirena’s body was pinned to the wall, impaled by glowing javelins of crimson light. Pink froth bubbled out of the side of her mouth. K’lesha lay ten feet beyond her dangling legs, a great glob of purple blood puddled around it. Her Quaranai lay at her feet. At least she’d gotten one lick in. The entire dojo was on fire, though it was not yet out of control. Amanda was nowhere in sight.

  Skip burst into the room, saw Gavin and trained the gigantic rifle on him.

  “Hold your fire!” Gavin barked, coughing in the smoke.

  “You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you!” Skip yelled. “You look like the frickin’ angels of death in all this smoke.” He waved his hand through the churning vapors while coughing. “Where’s Amanda?”

  “Stavengre! She needs you!” Tarsidion yelled. His voice cracked.

  The dojo walls were completely incinerated now, and though the floor was made of teak, it had not yet combusted. Gavin ran over to them, Skip on his heels.

  “Anatiu,” he said, and the crimson light of the javelins faded. They congealed to something like red ice and then shattered. The fragments wisped to smoke before they even hit the ground.

  Tarsidion caught Cirena as she fell.

  “Vo’ anatiu-akien.” The white phosphorous immediately died down, quenched by stone walls that began to weep, glistening as if they they’d been sprayed with dew. “Elunai,” he said, and all the sconces in the room burst into light, topped with blue-white flames, even the chandelier above. Gavin then threw his swordless arm toward the direction of the door they’d just come through, and a sudden wind howled through the Bastion, sucking the smoke and black vapors of the Underworld right out into the New England night.

  They looked everywhere at once, Skip with the fifty caliber sniper rifle, Gavin with his brandished Quaranai in the classic middle guard. There was no sign of Amanda or Asmodeous.

  “She’s almost gone,” Tarsidion whispered from where Cirena lay, and the note of urgency in the plainsman’s voice was as out of place as a growling swan. He had Cirena’s head resting on his thigh.

  Gavin hurried to her, his cloak spreading around his black boots. She was still alive. Barely. His heart boomed so hard he could feel it in his chin. Not you, too, Cirena. No way in hell…

  Noah and Jack burst in to the chamber.

  “Get over here,” he said to them. The moment he got in arm’s length of Jack he didn’t give them a chance to stop him. He focused, and at his command, rivulets of heat from different parts of his body met in his center, right below his navel, pooling into a churning delta. Gavin put his hand over his friend’s mouth, his other on Cirena’s forehead and swirled his cloak around Tarsidion. Like a brother might give a sip of his water flask, Gavin misted their bodies in magic. Just a little; just enough.

  The ugly, oxidized red cast to Jack’s shoulders began to fade. The fringes around the wound began to move, and though Gavin didn’t think he’d given so much, Jack’s wounds healed more than he’d projected. Jack opened his eyes, which were now clear and black, like buttons on a doll.

  Color returned to Cirena’s pasty skin, her eyes fluttered open, and Tarsidion scowled as the ugliness of his burn blisters receded.

  “Dammit, Stavengre,” Tarsy said.

  “I can’t face him alone, so quit squawking.”

  Tarsidion’s eyebrows dipped in a ferocious scowl; he looked closer at the amulet. All of them did.

  There was still a good amount of iridescence swirling around in there, but it was dimmer.

  “You okay, Jack?”

  Jack gave him a thumbs-up. He still didn’t have a tongue, but at least he wouldn’t bleed to death, and his arms no longer looked as mottled. “Just rest now, go into trance. If we need you, we’ll wake your ass up.”

  Jack nodded a
nd, given permission, closed his eyes, crossed his arms over his chest and gave another thumbs-up. Then he was out.

  Gavin looked at Tarsidion. No words were spoken; he would stay with Jack and Cirena. Gavin stood, turned on his heel and stalked deeper into the Bastion. Noah and Skip filed out right behind him, weapons at the ready

  Seeds of ice began to sprout tentacles in his bowels. Where was his baby?

  *

  Fear was fear. Whether it came in the form of constantly worrying if there was an improvised explosive device lurking in the nearest pot hole, the fear of dying in a crossfire of insurgent RPGs or getting devoured by the Lord of the Underworld, what separated the groupies from the rock stars was how one handled that terror. Some sick part of Skip actually exalted in it, harnessed it to sharpen his senses, to perceive all, to think quicker. It was when he was his best.

  The three of them fanned out through the grand chamber outside the dojo and settled around the pool of thick blood soaking in the rug. A few feet next to it lay Amanda’s abandoned shotgun and a spent cartridge. Twelve gauge. Buckshot. Dribbling upstairs like a trail of molasses was Azmo-blood, stinking like rotten eggs and decomposing walrus ass, which, incidentally, Skip knew what smelled like from his time with the big two-ten up in Alaska.

  Something boomed upstairs. They all looked at each other. Gavin jerked his chin at the stairs and as if they’d been doing it their whole lives, the three of them fell into line, Gavin on point, Noah at the six and Skip in the middle, M107 in hand. On Gavin’s signal, the three began their ascent, gliding up the stairs like an upside-down stream. The slung stock of Gavin’s submachine gun bounced softly against his back shoulder blade armor, muffled by his cloak. His Quaranai still poured ethereal blue light, while the steady sound of a Siberian wind blew through the room. Death’s Breath. The very fact that the sword made any sound was strange, but Skip found its call both comforting and ominous, like the ocean at night. Noah gripped her own Quaranai as well, and though no light or wind poured from its blade it rippled with different shades of silver and gray, threaded with glimmers of cobalt.