by Ben Reeder
The hallway we were in was carpeted in green, with a flowery pattern running down the middle of it. Halfway down, a pair of double doors waited, carved with ornate designs and covered with gold accents. The door closed behind us, and the sound of the fight downstairs disappeared. I almost expected to hear elevator music. We stopped outside of the double doors and looked at them.
I glanced over at Steve. He’d picked up a few bruises and cuts, and one sleeve of his t-shirt had been ripped away. I was down to my wand, one touchstone, six rounds in the LeMat’s cylinder plus the Sunflare, and the Maxilla. All Steve had was that metal club of his, and it was looking pretty bendy.
“Your stick’s looking pretty bad,” I told him. “You want the sword?”
He shook his head and grabbed the end of the length of metal with one hand. Muscles in each arm flexed, and the bar slowly straightened.
“Nah, I’m good. Thanks though. Maybe later.” He hefted the club and tapped it against his palm. I smiled, happy that at least one thing was going the way it was supposed to.
“So, I kicked in the last big door. You want this one?” I offered.
“What if we just knocked?” he asked with a mocking grin.
“Sends the wrong message.”
“Good point.” He leaned back and planted his foot along the center-line of the doors. Wood splintered and they flew off the hinges, and we stood there like a couple of action heroes. Facing us from across the room was the pretty vampire I’d seen in the window earlier. His shirt was gone now, and the lack did his narrow, pale chest no favors. Behind him I could see matching Lemurian circle glyphs for the ones in the basement. They went as far around the wall as I could see, and I was betting they went all the way around the room.
“Welcome, little warlock,” he said. “You’ve chosen a good night to die.”
I didn’t bother with a snappy comeback. Instead, I pulled the sword and charged across the room at him. He stayed still until I swung the blade at his head, then he was gone, and I was stumbling through the follow-through. I turned to see him duck under Steve’s swing and return the favor with a casual looking backhand that sent him flying into the wall beside the door. Then he turned back to me, and started slowly walking across the room.
“You need not die tonight,” he said as I braced myself to swing again. “Not by my hand, and I can see to it that you need never fear the Conclave’s judgment. We two are too much alike to waste such symmetry.”
“Not seeing the similarities here, Etienne. I’ve got a pulse, you don’t. That’s a hard one to get past.”
“Nonsense,” he said with a smile, and I could feel the compulsion trying to work its way into my mind. Even as amped up as he was, he wasn’t in either Dulka’s or Thraxus’ league and his compulsion buckled on my defenses. “We’ve both been enslaved to an uncaring master, and like you, I’ve found a way to throw off the yoke of my servitude.”
“By assuming the mantle of Mammon,” I said and straightened. I let my right hand fall away from the sword’s grip, and the point dropped to the floor slowly.
“Correct. With Mammon’s power, I will become far greater than my Master, and reshape the world to my liking. Those whom I have sired will share in my power, and those I favor will be granted all that they desire. You could be one of those favored few.”
“I could be,” I said slowly, as if the charm was working. He stepped closer, almost within arm’s reach.
“You would enjoy such power,” he suggested. His hand slowly reached for my throat.
“No,” I said and swung the blade up from the floor.
He almost dodged it completely, but the tip scraped his chest and left a line of fire as he spun to my right and backed away. I drew the blade up over my head in a two handed grip and sent it spinning across the room at him. He barely moved as it swept by him, but when he turned back to face me, I could see the blisters on his skin that close proximity to the Maxilla had raised. The blade stuck in the wall a few feet from Steve’s limp form, and my best weapon was gone. Now all I had was faith, treachery and my barbed wit.
“You’ve lost the only weapon you had that could hurt me,” Etienne said.
“It wasn’t mine to begin with,” I said as he took another step closer to me, bringing him just within reach. I let my eyes slide into aura sight, and saw the unhealthy black and putrid green of his aura. Even the undead had one, and just like living people theirs broadcast their intentions if you knew what to look for. His went red around his right fist.
Before I even saw him move, I was ducking, and his hand swept past over my head. Another flare of red appeared around his hand. I dodged to my left and felt the wind of his fist right before it hit the wall. When I hit the floor, I rolled to me feet with my wand out and fired off a TK blast at him. It caught him as he pulled his fist free of the wall and threw him to the rear of the office.
When he bounced off the wall and landed in a crouch, I knew I was in deeper trouble than I was going to be able to dig myself out of alone. He stood slowly and closed his eyes. His chest seemed to expand, then his body turned gray and contorted. Bloody bone erupted from his shoulders, then stretched away from his body with strands of muscle and flesh growing along its length until it became a pair of leathery black wings. His legs and arms seemed to break and twist, then expanded, with horns and spikes bursting from his skin. It looked like it should have hurt like all Hell, but he was laughing as it happened.
The circle behind him started to glow, then the two on either side began to glow faintly. As the center circle got brighter, the two beside it did as well, and the two beside them started to glow. If he managed to activate all of them, the spell would be complete, and all Hell would break loose. Literally.
I pulled the LeMat and aimed it at him with a trembling hand before thumbing the hammer back. He saw the movement and started across the room toward me. I pulled the trigger and the round caught him in the chest. He barely slowed down long enough to brush the flaming ball of lead off his chest. He didn’t even try to dodge the TK blast I sent at him, and waded through it like it wasn’t stronger than a stiff breeze. I threw another TK blast at him and followed it up with a shot from the LeMat, and that did stagger him. Three more wand and bullet combos bought me a few more seconds, then his hand was around my throat and I was pinned to the window. I could feel the prickly, crawling sensation of the Lemurian glyph circle on my skin even through my jacket and shirt. His gaze hammered at me, and I felt his thoughts pressing against mine. Someone had just taken a couple of levels of badass.
“So much rage, little warlock,” he said softly, almost tenderly. “And so little of it for the world I seek to destroy. Your heart burns for the lambs I must slaughter. They are nothing. Even if it were not me who ended their pathetic lives, no one would miss them. They are awkward and ugly. Why do you care for them? There are sheep, made for slaughter. Nothing more.”
“Because when I look at them, I see myself in their eyes,” I told him, yielding a little more to the compulsion than I liked. “And they’re not sheep. They have the balls to be different, not to be what asshats like you want them to be. That’s why you’re nothing like me.”
“Then there is no hope for you, little warlock. You are not the first human I have killed, nor will you be the last. Perhaps you will be one of the more memorable, though, and that is honor enough. You are one of the few who fought me to the last, instead of trying to run.”
“Believe me, I wanted to. I just needed your undivided attention for a few seconds,” I said as Steve rose up behind him and drove the Maxilla into his back.
Even being struck from behind, his reflexes were fast enough that he turned before Steve could drive the glowing blade all the way into his heart. I ended up flying into Steve as Etienne screamed and arched his back. He spun around a few times as he tried to reach the sword, but Steve had managed to hit a spot between his wings that his arms wouldn’t bend far enough to get to. I looked at the walls and saw that the glow had spread halfway alo
ng the wall to the three circles etched in the glass. Even as I picked myself up, another pair of them lit up on either side, and I could feel reality warping around me. Etienne stopped his thrashing and looked at the purplish-black glow from the circles and realized what I had known since yesterday: this spell wasn’t going to go down the way he thought it would.
“We’ve got to finish this quick!” I told Steve as I pulled him to his feet.
“He’s too fast!” he said.
“Be ready to follow my lead, then,” I said as I slipped the wand under my pinky and middle fingers, and over my ring and index fingers.
Etienne let out an agonized roar as his attention came back to his more immediate problems, then spat a gout of fire at us.
“Obex!” I spat, holding my hand up to keep the shield at an angle.
Most of the heat slid off to my right, away from Steve and me, but enough of it made it through that my right hand and the right side of my face felt like they were going to blister up. Then the heat let up, and I could hear Etienne cursing us.
“I will flay the flesh from your bones, and slaughter your families!” he bellowed as he took a step toward us. “You cannot stop me, not even with the holy little toothpick!”
I lifted my reddened right hand and pointed at him with my index and middle finger, and pulled the deepest voice I could from my throat.
“I find your lack of faith disturbing,” I intoned.
The last pair of glyphs on the walls started to glow as the telekinetic ring closed around his throat. Only three left before the ritual was complete. I lifted him into the air and started forward with Steve only a couple of steps behind me. Etienne’s wings flared as he moved toward the glass wall, and slowed him down. I pointed at the heavy desk and Steve stepped to the left and shoved it toward Etienne. It caught him behind the knees just as I spun him around, and pinned him to the glass as the two outer glyph circles started to glow faintly. Etienne’s claws scraped against the glass with a sound that made fingernails on a chalkboard sound almost angelic as I jumped on the desk, planted my right knee in Etienne’s back and drew the LeMat. Steve followed me up and grabbed the Maxilla’s handle as I pressed the gun’s barrel to the glass and thumbed the lever on the hammer down before I pulled it back. The sword glowed even brighter as he tried to thrust it deeper. The edges of the glyph beneath us started to brighten, and we were out of time. I pulled the trigger.
When Dr. C had named the round in the LeMat’s lower barrel the Sunflare, he hadn’t been kidding. It melted through the glass and sent a tongue of white-hot fire belching down toward the McLaren. The glass Steve, Etienne, and I were pressed up against didn’t so much break as it melted and shattered. We plummeted toward the ground, and I saw the long stream expanded out from the middle to make an oblong of superheated fire that scorched the paint off the car and made half a dozen vamps taking cover near it burst into flame.
Behind us, the room exploded, raining bits of wood, steel, and glass on us as we fell. I had a split second to see all that happen, then we hit the burning remains of the bar. Even with the bulk of Etienne to break our fall, it hurt when we hit.
I came to my senses to see Steve stumbling to his feet and backing away from the shining blade that was stuck far enough through Etienne that I figured the tip was several inches into the floor. I rolled away myself, because the demonic vampire was starting to burn in places, and if he was as powerful as I thought he’d become, this wasn’t going to be pretty or safe to watch from too close. He screamed and thrashed as a brilliant flare burst through his skin, and I could feel the heat through my jacket. The skin around it started to melt and drip upward. More and more holes burned through, and it was like watching magnesium burn, only upside down. His screams reverberated through the room, and every piece of glass in the room shattered. I dropped the LeMat to clap my hands over my ears, and almost everyone with a pulse in the room did, too. The vampires were too busy dying to worry about their eardrums. When the last bits of Etienne flew toward the ceiling, the Maxilla dimmed and the last of the vampires crumbled to dust, shattered, or exploded into gooey chunks.
I shook my head and turned to take stock of things and a wall of knuckles slammed into my jaw and knocked me on my ass. I sat up and saw a pair of Sentinel Carters looking at his fist in disbelief. Just as my eyes started to focus, he started forward again, only to find himself facing a wall of people. Lucas was at the front, with Steve and Shade flanking him. The rest of the pack poured in behind them, and behind them I saw the kids we’d just rescued.
“Move aside. The punishment for aiding a warlock is death,” Carter said.
As if to make his point, he held up his ankh and extended the paramiir’s blade from the circle at the top. Magick-enhanced steel glowed as he held it in front of himself. I tried to pull myself to my feet and keep someone from getting killed when Cross appeared at my side and hauled me up with his good hand.
“You okay, kid?” he asked quietly.
“I just got sucker punched by a freight train, but other than that, yeah, I’m doing great,” I managed to slur.
“Back off, Carter,” I heard T-Bone say as I tried to stumble toward the Sentinel.
Cross helped me along, and I saw T-Bone step between my friends and the super-sized mage cop.
“I don’t answer to you, Hand,” Carter sneered. “We were charged with bringing the warlock in if he tried to take the artifact anywhere but to the Council. That’s exactly what I plan to do, and no one is going to stand in our way.”
“I’m standin’ in your way,” T-Bone said calmly. “You think you got a chance of goin’ through me?” Carter’s determined expression cracked, and I saw doubt on his face. I stepped forward.
“I’ll go with you on my own,” I said. Doubt turned to outright disbelief on Carter’s face. T-Bone just turned and nodded at me. “I just need to get the Maxilla.”
“The sword is no longer your concern,” he announced. “We will return it to the Council.”
“You’re welcome to try,” I said with a wave toward the sword.
He waved a dismissive hand at me as he went over to where the sword was stuck in the floor, retracting the paramiir as he went. He grabbed the hilt and tried to pull it free, then yanked his hands away with a cry of pain. Steam rose from the handle, but it didn’t look as if it was hot.
“Looks like it’s in there pretty good,” Steve said from beside me as Carter glared at the sword.
“Yeah. You sure you don’t want it?” I asked. For a moment, the heavy weight that had been on my soul seemed to shift as I offered the blade to him.
“I’ve got enough on my plate as it is. I don’t need to be adding a magic sword to my problems.”
“Guess I’ll have to hang on to it for now, huh?” I said.
“Dude, you’re welcome to it,” he chuckled. The burden on my soul settled back on my shoulders, both a disappointment and a relief as he inadvertently reaffirmed my duty to carry the Maxilla.
I stepped forward and gave Carter a smile. “Told ya,” I said before I grabbed the handle and pulled it out of the floor easily. I gave him a smile and shucked the scabbard from my back to sheathe it. “Now I’ll go with you,” I said to him.
He put a pair of spellbinders on my wrists and led me out of Inferno as it burned behind us.
In the distance, we could hear the sound of sirens.
Chapter 23:(Equinox)
~ The Seeker’s true task is not finding the Maxilla. The sword will see to that itself. The Seeker is burdened with a worthier task. ~ Sydney Chomsky.
Somewhere along the way, midnight passed, signaling the start of the Spring Equinox and my birthday. I’d made it to sixteen, but odds were stacked against me seeing seventeen. They’d blindfolded me and put me in spellbinders as soon as I turned myself over to them. They kept me in them during the ride, and while I sat and waited in a little room. I had no idea how long they made me sit there, but I was sure I dozed off at least twice. Finally, they came f
or me and led me to face the Council.
“This is most irregular! I call for a vote!” I heard Polter demand stridently.
“Really, Andrew, do you really want to squander the remaining influence you have on something so petty, or do you fear the presence of witnesses so much?” Draeden’s calm voice said. There was a mix of grumbling and laughter, then I was announced by one of the Sentinels and led into the middle of the floor.
“Master Draeden!” the voice I thought belonged to Hardesty called out. “This is an outrage! Allowing a warlock to come armed? Sentinels, relieve him of that weapon!”
“We can’t Madame Hardesty,” Carter said sourly from beside me. “He’s the only person who can pick it up or carry it. He came peacefully and gave an oath not to resist over the sword itself. I found it sufficient, given what we saw tonight.”
“We will see if this Council agrees,” Polter said. “For your sake, I hope that it does, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
“Chance Fortunato, you have been called to face the justice of this Council. You have been given an Ordeal, one which you appear to have failed. What do you have to say in your defense before the Council passes judgment?” another voice called out.
“I have a lot to say, but I’d prefer to say it when I can see the Council.”
“Remove the blindfold and the restraints,” Draeden ordered. “Unless anyone here thinks a fifteen-year-old warlock is too powerful for the gathered Council to face.”
No one said anything, and a few seconds later, I was facing the Council with my hands free. I could see Dr. C, Shade, Lucas, Wanda, and Steve in the crowd, and I felt a little less alone. They were probably what had Polter’s panties in a wad. I wished my Mom was there, but I felt better knowing she was somewhere safe.
“Speak your piece, then,” Draeden ordered.
“First, sir, I think there is the matter of what to do with my tools and my other property?” Several members of the Council nodded. “I’d like to bequeath my wand and my working tools, and all of my other possessions to my sister, Dierdre Murathy.”