by Jamie Wyman
Grey’s voice continued with mounting zeal. “Sentinel of the East, breathe in the inescapable currents of Air. Though you may penetrate all things, let none past your blade!”
Another set of fingers touched the silver and another shaft of luminance sprang into being. This one swirled with silvery, cloudy mists.
“Feast, Sentinel of the South! Draw from the air, and cloak yourself in Fire’s blaze. Let it course through your blood until it boils.”
Grey’s words drowned beneath the waves of power as Baldy thrust both hands down to the circle. Fire erupted upward, flames contained by the spell licking at the air but burning nothing. The furnace flared with sympathetic ecstasy.
Though the ferromancer’s lips moved, I couldn’t hear Grey’s final invocation. Soon, however, a deep, watery blue light reached toward the sky. This final bar of the cage rippled and dripped. I saw it as a frothy waterfall one minute, and the next it resembled rain sliding down a windowpane. The ocean. A stream.
Four pillars of light and life conjured windows into the most primal, base ingredients of existence. Grey bellowed to make himself heard above the roar of water and fire. “Come together! Let the four elements come together so that they might bind the fifth!”
The din died down to a bass drone as each wall shrank and bent inward. Together, they formed an incandescent dome. I couldn’t take my eyes from the enchanting sight. I saw volcanoes erupt and lava flow over the ethereal surface as Fire caressed Earth. Steam rose as they all mixed together, and thunder rolled. The elements clashed, fueling one another and creating new forces. Through the tumultuous, intoxicatingly beautiful orgy of primal force, I saw the world. The dance of elements shifted and swayed, frothed and churned. If I just kept looking, I’d understand. I’d see everything.
As the spell fused into a breathing cage, the foundry became eerily quiet. None dared breathe lest they shatter that whirling magic with its terrible allure. Is that why Nate hadn’t yet moved from his cloak of shadows? Or why Marius still stood motionless as death beneath me? And what was Flynn up to?
Francis Grey leaned close to the priest. With a voice smooth as a lover’s caress, he crooned, “Call to Him.”
Calvert trembled, his mouth a tight line. He shook his head.
A coin winked in the air over Grey’s hand. As I watched, the coin stretched into a stiletto blade. It stopped growing when its tip brushed against the priest’s lashes.
“Call to Him,” Grey repeated. “Beg Him to deliver you from this foul place. Pray to your precious redeemer.”
Calvert lifted his eyes to the sky in a silent, helpless plea. Sweat glistened over his balding head and mixed with the tears trailing down his cheeks.
“Pray!” the ferromancer spat through his teeth. Grey brought the blade to Calvert’s throat and pressed, drawing the slightest orb of blood.
The priest let out a plaintive, terrified moan. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. Sagging under the weight of his burden, the priest sighed.
“Our Father who art in Heaven,” he began, voice trembling, “hallowed be thy Name. Thy K-kingdom come—” Calvert choked on the words, but when he started in again, his voice seemed stronger. Resolved. Fortified. “Thy will be done, Lord, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us. Let us not be led into temptation, Father, but deliver us…”
Gooseflesh prickled over my skin. Rapt, I listened as the small man, empowered by his faith, held the whole room captive with his tremulous voice.
“Finish it,” the ferromancer said, his voice barely a whisper.
I smiled as Thomas Calvert, a simple priest, shook his head. “Forgive them, Father,” he said evenly. “Forgive these who have been blinded by a lust for power. Lay your hands upon their broken hearts and heal the wounds on their very souls.”
Grey cuffed Calvert across the back of the head. The priest’s new prayer fell in threads of sniffles and coughs.
“Finish it,” Grey ordered.
Calvert’s shoulders slumped, the veil dragging along the dirty floor. Was it glowing? Or was it just white against the dust and grime of the foundry?
“Deliver us from evil,” the priest said quietly. “For thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory. Forever and Ever.” The priest’s head fell forward, and he bit on his lip. His Lord’s name burst out of his mouth on a sob.
Before he could seal the prayer with a somber amen, a shaft of golden light parted the air between ferromancer and priest. With a sound like a lion’s roar, Nate flew into view, his snowy wings unfurled. He pummeled Grey with one fist while grabbing Father Calvert with the other. Grey rocked with the force of the punch and took the angel’s foot to his mouth as Nate swept up and away.
Chaos erupted on the foundry floor. While the masked mages kept their cage powered, the other assembled cultists got to their feet. But before Grey could get his bearings, Flynn materialized behind him and threw his own glowing fist into the ferromage’s back. I saw naked steel casting back the shifting light of the magic circle. A flash of emerald green. Marius, horns bare, swung his sword in a piercing arc as he dove into the mass of black-clad cultists. Blood sprayed, black dots on the backdrop of the inferno.
A jolt of the catwalk nearly took me off my feet. To my right, Father Thomas Calvert huddled on the rickety bridge, eyes wide and thankful. Nate’s wings buffeted the air as he dove back into the boiling activity on the foundry floor.
Father Calvert heaved a breath. “You keep strange friends, my dear.”
Shaking my head, I gave a weak laugh. “You have no idea.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to keep it that way.”
He turned sad eyes to the scene below. The four sentinels, as Grey had called them, remained in their circle, still charging the cage. It took all of their focus to maintain their masterwork. Meanwhile, the cultists wielded multiple varieties of magic. Spells exploded in the air, powdery motes of colored dust turning the foundry into a Disney parade…well, if Mickey Mouse had a thirst for death and dismemberment. Sulfur-yellow clouds collided with blasts of gelatinous pink magic. Lightning zapped gouts of water, and they sizzled in the ether.
One mage flung a spell toward Nate, but the angel deflected the blast with his spear. He whirled like a dervish in a tangle of bodies, the diamond tip of his weapon glittering as it absorbed the magic being sent his way. Similarly, Marius used his sword to parry most of the cultists’ spells. Then a bolt of writhing black thorns caught the satyr across the cheek, and Marius shouted. Seconds later, the mage responsible for the offense landed on the floor, bleeding from the throat.
A blast of virulent yellow light arced through the air, a focused beam with filaments of power trailing behind it. The masked mage wielding this power screamed and dove toward Flynn, but he absorbed the blast with a shield of orange light and winked out of being—just disappeared. In less time than it takes to blink, Flynn reappeared behind the mage, long fingers jabbing into his opponent’s skull. Orange light illuminated the mage, his nervous system glowing like starlight through his skin, before he dropped to the floor, limp and spent.
As Flynn looked up to place his next attack, his amber eyes met mine. Like the magic circle meant to hold a god, symbols danced in the depths of those eyes, different than any I’d seen before. But I knew them. They called to something in me, and I understood them. Glyphs of power, of friendship, of simplicity. Runes that told the story of my life. Symbols written in the language of my stolen soul.
A scream from a flying cultist drew my attention away. The black-clad figure clung to the catwalk with one hand, the other clawing at the priest.
“I don’t fucking think so,” I spat. I balled up my hand and sent a fistful of power right in the cultist’s kisser. The force of my punch tossed him into the throng below where he landed on the mage currently sparring with Marius.
“Are you an angel, too?” Calvert asked.
> “No,” I said as I searched the scene for more danger. In the shadows, I found Francis Grey seething, his eyes darting around the room. That white-hot stare landed on me, and the very air crackled with the ferromancer’s rage.
“The Lord is certainly using you for His good works,” Calvert mused, oblivious. He took the veil from around his neck, dabbed his wet forehead with it, and let it drop.
“No!” I called.
I lunged forward and almost fell over the side of the catwalk as I groped in the air. My fingers brushed the gauzy trim of the veil, but the wispy fabric tumbled away as gently as a leaf in autumn. The veil of Polyhymnia fell to the grimy floor.
I spat an oath, pounding my fist on the railing in frustration. “Stay here,” I barked to the priest.
I’d taken two steps toward the stairs when the catwalk jerked beneath my feet. The steel bent and groaned. Rivets popped, bolts ricocheted like bullets, and the world tilted on its axis. My stomach flopped. With a scream of wrenching metal, the bridge tore apart. Father Calvert reached for me, but his reflexes were too slow. The catwalk and I followed the veil to the floor.
Chapter Thirty
“Thoughts of a Dying Atheist”
A shockwave of pain burst through my whole body as I landed, leaving behind a stunned, numb sensation. My head buzzed with the sound of electrified air and feedback, and my jaw throbbed. Blurry one moment, high resolution the next, the world shifted from dull nothingness to vivid color without any sort of rhyme or reason. Likewise, my ears didn’t hear the way they should’ve. My rushing pulse drowned out the sounds of chaos and spell casters.
“Get up,” Flynn called over the din, voice oddly modulated.
With heavy limbs, I somehow managed to roll to my side and spit out a gob of blood.
Flynn shrieked, this time in his normal voice, “Cat, look out!”
My brand burned wire-hot on my flesh, and again I heard the call of Loki’s gift in my head.
Defend!
Gathering all of my strength, I rolled onto my back and threw up my left arm. Blue light shot out of my fingers and landed on Hector Chu. Ice wrapped around his burned face, and he fell to the ground, thrashing. Suffocating.
I skittered backward. Dizzy, it took me a few tries to get my feet under me. My right arm hung in a tingly mass at my side. A glimmer of light was all the warning I got. I ducked instinctively just as Grey’s stiletto blade flew past me, opening a stinging seam on my cheek.
“Why did he send you?” Grey spat. “Why would Mischief want to stand in my way?”
I shrugged. If Grey thought Loki sent me, that was just dandy. “Why would a Trickster do anything?”
Grey cocked his head to the side.
I wiped the back of my hand against my bloody lip and found myself smiling wolfishly. “Because it’s fun.”
With a primal syllable that was equal parts terrified scream and maniacal laugh, I thrust a stream of power out of my left hand. White lightning blazed through the bluish energy granted me by Loki’s gift. My strike hit Grey with the sound of a gong, a low tone with a charged crash. As I screamed, I poured more into the attack. More energy, more rage. Lightning snapped, a million luminous whips slicing the air. My throat gave up, and the power stopped flowing from me.
Blue-gray steam curled in wisps from a silver shield, its mirror shine obscured by a layer of frost. When the ferromancer lowered the shield, the silver shrank to the size of one of his damnable coins. I took grim satisfaction that he wouldn’t be rolling that coin over his knuckles, charred as they were. Smoke wafted from his blackened fingernails, and the old scar on his bone-pale face formed an angry red welt as if it threatened to open anew.
“Learning new tricks, Miss Sharp?” he asked. Grey narrowed his steely eyes and focused on my left arm. On the rune there. “No. Merely standing on the shoulders of a giant, I see.”
He lifted one skeletal hand, and my left arm mimicked the movement of its own will. His fingers twitched and exquisite pain flooded me. I saw red. Fireworks of agony split through my skin until my very blood screamed for mercy.
Then the pain receded.
On my knees, with my left arm stretched out as if attracted to the ferromancer, I fought for control of my limbs. Grey sneered, the points of his teeth moist with his own blood and sadism.
“I think, my dear, that this does not belong to you. Why don’t I just cut it out?”
Skin-shredding pain rocked me again. Like ocean waves during a shark attack, wisps of crimson billowed and filled my vision. The air itself bubbled with blood as I watched my arm pulse and bulge. The shape of Eihwaz moved through my muscles, slowly pushing out of my flesh. I felt every single pore split, every cell give way, as Grey’s magic rooted it out of me.
The small metal rune fell to the floor with a tinkling clatter and the patter of my blood. I lurched forward and held my seeping arm to my chest.
More blood on Polly’s jacket, I thought darkly.
Marius danced into view, his blade a sanguine rictus. The fury in his face, his tousled mane… My heart ached for a moment.
I don’t think I’m going to make that date.
“You should not interfere, Miss Sharp,” Grey said as he loomed over me, oblivious to the satyr’s presence. “Nor should you play with toys that you do not understand.”
On the floor, the gleaming Eihwaz rune began to melt. Its edges rippled and spread like mercury.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t see reason. You could have been exceptional.”
Grey took my chin in his mangled fingers and jerked my head up. The stiletto was a promise away from my left eye. I rolled my head slightly, wanting one last glance at the people I loved. I didn’t see Flynn or Nate in the crowd. I only saw the satyr.
Marius slashed at another attacker then locked his luminous emerald eyes on me. Anger boiled in him as his skin flushed red.
With a bellow, Marius charged toward me. Toward Grey.
The ferromancer let go of me and stepped away.
Marius leaped over me and tumbled. He raked the air with his sword while his free hand scooped along the ground and retrieved the veil from the floor. He rolled up to his feet in one graceful movement.
Then he kept running.
Cold panic flowed over me like icy water. I watched him sprint back the way we’d come. Marius had what he’d wanted all along. And the last thing I saw was his back as the shadows swallowed him.
“No!” Grey roared. “Stop him!”
Metal groaned again, a sound I was quickly getting tired of, and the golems stirred to life. Their plodding steps marched after Marius.
He left me. He just left.
That tight lump of fear that I usually got around him, that flutter in my belly, slipped into the rest of my body. My limbs dragged with the weight of the knowledge that he hadn’t charged Grey to save me, but to scrape up the stupid relic. The scrap of fabric that had already killed too many people.
When those golems met up with Marius, would he be another body to add to the rising death toll? Did I care now that he’d cut and run?
He ran. The fucking satyr left you to clean up on your own. For a skimpy piece of cloth.
Anger roiled in my stomach, in my veins. Rage at Marius. At myself for giving a flying fuck about him. Wrath at Grey. At Polly for dying. At Loki. At anyone who had ever looked at me funny. The black emotions saturated my mind and bled like bile into my mouth. My teeth sang with a need to rend and tear, to take Grey’s throat with one snap of my jaws.
Fuck satyrs. Fuck the gods. Let them all rot in whatever hell would have them. I wouldn’t wait anymore for them to save me. I’d save my damn self or die trying.
Snarling, I whipped to face Francis Grey, the ferromancer that had started this whole shitty weekend. True fear streaked across his face, its rank, yellow smells fueling my fury.
Eiwhaz lay on the floor in front of me, a straight shaft with sharp angles spearing off it. Like a slanted, backward Z. I picked it up, and its shaft elong
ated in my fingers. Those appendages grew as well, curving slightly. Instead of a rune, I now held a chilly, gleaming weapon.
Like I would if lobbing a discus, I arced my good arm back and hurled it at my enemy.
The blades whistled through the air before burying deep between the bastard’s ribs. Grey’s flesh boiled and dripped with acid-green venom. In his guttural, pained choking, he spewed a litany of harsh syllables. I only understood two: Mo-loch.
The ferromancer threw a hand toward the furnace and the demon-faced fresco. The hydraulic lift rose, carrying Karma closer to the flames.
“No!” I cried.
I bolted to the lift and before my eyes the metal control panel crumpled like an aluminum can. The machine, though, continued to deliver Karma up to the lip of the inferno.
“Karma!” I yelled. “Wake up!”
I skidded to a stop next to the behemoth machine, the switches and buttons squashed to uselessness. Still, the current ran through it. Current I could harness and control.
I clamped both hands on the broken panel, closed my eyes, and sent my will careening into it. Severed connections sparked and popped around my thoughts, quickening as I flooded this thing with my very life. Every ounce of faith and hope I could muster, every shred of energy I had left went into this thing as I worked.
In my mind the violated circuit boards glittered with the pale fox fire of dwindling electric vitality.
“Please,” I whispered. “Show me.”
Light, pure and white, illuminated the paths from circuit to pulley to engine to machine. I saw the skeleton of the lift, its nervous system laid bare and ready for me to manipulate as I chose. My fingers tightened over the crumpled metal as if I could dig in and literally pull at the strings of power like some technical puppet master.
Vaguely, I caught the sound of my own voice. I sounded far away and overmodulated, as though I was singing through a whirring fan. Underwater. The meandering, wordless tune resonated in a voice that should have quivered like a bowstring.
My will speared through the nerves of the lift.