by Nazri Noor
Total mayhem. Utter chaos. A clusterfuck. Call it what you want, but the Viridian Dawn’s arrival heralded more trouble for all of us. I thought we’d taken care of the bulk of them at the infiltration, but one crucial detail about their ranks had slipped my mind. Most of their number had day jobs or other responsibilities away from their safe house. This was their full force, all sixty-something of them, and we were very likely fucked.
Bolts of crackling electricity sailed through the darkness. Shards of ice and hails of thorn whistled in lethal, razor-edged salvos, flying from the wands and outstretched hands of the Dawn’s cultists as they read greedily from ragged sheets of torn notebook paper, reciting hastily scrawled spells provided by their mad mistress.
Romira thrust her hands forward, a gout of flame roaring like the breath of a dragon, melting the frost and burning the thorns to cinders. A little further, my mind screamed at her, and she could burn those scrolls right out of their hands. But the old Lorica training stuck, and I knew she wouldn’t risk maiming or killing so many normals.
I could see the same from Bastion’s expression, his teeth bared as he seethed with frustration. The air before him gleamed, and I knew he had shields ready. Defense first, once more, but Bastion was good with multi-tasking. He’d have no problems setting up an attack, whether using splintered lawn furniture as a barrage of arrows, or a telephone pole as a baseball bat. No poles in the garden, but there were plenty of trees. I flinched when one of them shook, its leaves rustling as he plucked a tree straight out of the earth. Maybe he’d replant it, once we were done with this. If we lived through it, of course.
Gil thought differently, going on a full offensive. He’d already plunged into the fray, talons extended, using his supernatural agility to dodge the arcane blasts and bolts the Dawn’s cultists sent his way. He tore through their bodies as easily as a reaper threshes stalks of wheat, that is, if wheat was known for screaming and bleeding.
It was hard to miss the streaks of azure light flashing alongside him. Prudence launched imbued strikes to snuff out and shatter the Dawn’s wards and magical devices, alternating her blows with perfect precision, switching off the flames to break their faces with good old knees and knuckles.
From somewhere behind me I could hear Carver cursing under his breath, or maybe he was preparing more spells to defend the rest of us. His muttering stopped, and a web of amber fire leapt from his fingertips, cascading across the gardens. The sound of so many bones breaking in unison cracked horribly through the night, and dozens of the cultists fell to the ground screaming. Okay, so Carver was definitely super pissed.
I kept my contribution simple. Night meant that the botanical gardens were my playground, and between the extravagant flashes of arcane power and the lightning arcing from the Dawn’s wands, nobody would have noticed me slipping away. I stepped.
I could only hope that either Bastion or Carver had taken the precaution of setting up an invisibility dome for us, some way to camouflage us from the normals. Night had fallen thickly, sure, but there had to be at least one security guard wandering the premises. For all their talk of casting glamours and bending the light surely someone would have taken precautions.
That was where I emerged, incidentally, by one of those security lockboxes installed around the gardens. We would have to end the fight before someone came by and bumped into a brawl that had already escalated into a full-scale battle. The air was thick with the agonized yowls of the Viridian Dawn’s barely-pubescent followers. This was definitely going to attract attention.
About a dozen of the cultists were already on the ground, if not routed and running for the exits, some clutching at broken bones, others desperately trying to hold in their insides. None of them had spotted me, which was only appropriate since I’d elected to position myself right behind the bastards. I crouched from behind a bush and lifted the flap on my backpack.
“You can bleed them,” I said. “No fatalities, but get rid of them quickly.”
“With pleasure.”
Vanitas hummed as he ripped through the air, the sound of his flight something very much like laughter in the darkness. In a clash of metal coming asunder, scabbard and blade flew apart, then went about their grisly work. Screams, then silence, and just like that, the ranks of the Dawn were further scattered.
My eyes settled on Deirdre, tall and shining in her druidic raiment, somehow still confident that her people had a fighting chance. I focused on the familiar ivory white of her clothing, and it filled me with an unpleasant, immediate anger. Even though I could see nothing of Thea in her – Deirdre was older, her hair a dull gray, her mouth always upturned – it took every ounce of willpower left in my body not to tell Vanitas that he was allowed to kill her.
“Give us the Codex,” she shouted, either ignorant or oblivious to how her herd was so quickly thinning. Where there were nearly sixty now only fifteen stood, if that. Those who weren’t bleeding into the grass had already fled the premises. “Give us the boy, and we will depart.”
That unflagging confidence made me nervous, the steel in her voice very much suggesting that she had something hidden up her sleeve. Yet all she had was her wand.
“Leave this place, woman,” Carver said, his voice ringing even clearer above the din of battle. “Take your children with you. Disperse, and surrender your devices. Do not think to play with forces that you could not possibly fathom.”
Those last words he accentuated by thrusting both his hands forward, the pale fire dancing at his fingertips rushing at the crowd of cultists, very few of whom stood their ground as the wall of flame advanced at their feet.
Just once I found myself wishing that Carver would use something lethal, burn them to a crisp. But I saw the spell for what it was, the amber fire licking up the cultists’ bodies, reaching into their throats and their nostrils with tendrils of living flame. As one they collapsed, dead asleep in the grass.
“Give it up, Deirdre.” Prudence stood stock-still, her fists bathed in azure fire. So she knew who Deirdre was. Shouldn’t have been a surprise, considering the Lorica’s agenda. Had they known all along? Was stopping the Viridian Dawn their true objective?
Deirdre said nothing, raising the wand above her head, humming something tuneless. The hum turned into small noises, then syllables, then proper song, the point of the wand glowing a pulsing green – viridian, like her cult’s namesake.
The earth trembled, and the trees shook, the flowers across the garden seeming to sing in cadence with Deirdre’s eldritch melody, every petal and pistil giving new voice to her strange song. The gardens stirred, boughs and branches moving in snake-like rattles and rustles. Then the noises stopped.
We should have acted sooner. Prudence went down first, crying out something garbled in a voice that gave me pause for panic. She was hurt. Gil went down next. Shapes slithered through the grass, headless serpents called by Deirdre from deep within the earth. They were vines, their tendrils constricting and ensnaring Gil and Prudence’s bodies.
Gil fought valiantly for some seconds, hacking at the vines with his claws, until two more burst out of the undergrowth to entangle his wrists. He struggled and howled in vain, writhing against the grass.
A ball of fire blasted into the air and dissipated, Romira’s concentration slipping as the vines pulled her to the ground. She was down for the count, too. I couldn’t make out if Carver and Bastion were still okay. My feet fell from under me as vines snaked out of the bushes, lassoing me by the ankles. The air rushed out of my lungs as I hit the earth with a thud.
I groaned, my head pounding. At least I knew I hadn’t hit it against a rock, but there was no time to check. The vines were dragging me – where to, I couldn’t tell – but the faint cackle I heard coming from Deirdre’s general direction told me that nothing fun was in store for any of us.
Shouts rang out across the gardens, maybe from Bastion, maybe from Carver. All I could really see was the sky above me, the stars, and a bunched-up tangle of thorn
y vines, twisted into a huge, elongated spike. Like a battering ram made of brambles it shot straight for Asher and Enrietta.
No. If Enrietta wasn’t healed, the deal with Dionysus was off. It would be over for Asher, over for me. I arched my back, struggling to see, but the vines pulled harder. Was the shield that Carver cast still up? Did it matter?
“Vanitas,” I shouted. “Stop her.”
It happened all at once. In a blur of green and gold, sword and scabbard disengaged from their Viridian victims, one to hack and slash at the twisting fusion of vine and bramble, the other hurtling at breakneck speed towards Deirdre Calloway’s upraised hand.
To say that her screams were horrific would be an understatement. The crack that whipped through the gardens told me enough about what happened to her hand. Her wand tumbled through the air, its needle and the facets of its pinecone tip glinting in the moonlight. Wait. It wasn’t any old wand after all, but a thyrsus, one of Dionysus’s artifacts. The Viridian Dawn had found ways to acquire more than just one divine relic. It landed somewhere in the grass, forgotten.
“Done,” Vanitas pulsed in some corner of my mind. The vines around my feet loosened just as he hovered towards me, sword returning to scabbard. With a soft thunk, he came to rest in the grass. I sat up, massaging the blood back into my legs.
I tucked Vanitas back into my bag, hobbling over to Prudence. She wasn’t so lucky. She groaned as she tried to point her foot. A broken ankle, maybe. Gil prodded her foot gingerly, his talons now retracted, but his fingers still bloody. It was weird seeing them in such close proximity without one wanting to punch the other’s head off, but hey – people change.
“Ouch,” Prudence hissed. “Damn it. Yeah, it’s busted.”
“I can stick around,” Gil said.
Prudence looked up at him warily. Maybe her cheeks colored a little, but she said nothing.
“Bastion?” I said. “Carver? Everything okay? Did they finish what needed to be done?”
Carver, it seemed, hadn’t been affected by the vines at all, still unruffled, his suit uncreased. Bastion, on the other hand, was struggling in the grass, furiously slicing his hand through the air, every motion cleaving more of the vines away from his legs.
“Fine,” Carver said, smoothing his hair back. “All fine.” He turned away from the statue, heading towards Deirdre. “I’ll just go and – restrain our guest.”
“Like hell you will,” Bastion said, tripping over himself and the last segments of vine still wound around his legs. He trailed and stumbled after Carver, as if capturing Deirdre Calloway was just another thing he couldn’t give up to his newfound and, unbeknown to him, wildly overqualified rival.
“Almost done,” Asher said. Enrietta was standing on her own now, her skin fully colored, though from her returned vitality or in the excitement over the Viridian Dawn’s attack, who could really say?
“You’ve done so much,” Enrietta said, patting Asher on the cheek. “I couldn’t thank you enough. You’ve given me so much of yourself.”
Arnaud, supporting her with one hand pressed against the small of her back, the other clutching her upper arm, bent closer to speak.
“He’s given too much, perhaps.”
That voice. I knew the sound of it. That wasn’t Arnaud’s voice. But I recognized it too late.
Gore spurted from Enrietta Boules’s abdomen as huge, incandescent spikes burst out of her stomach in a steaming geyser of blood and broken organs. Her face twisted with pain, confusion, betrayal, and she turned her head.
“Arnaud?” Enrietta croaked. “Why?”
But it wasn’t Arnaud. Not anymore. The air wavered, and there she stood: a woman. Her hair was once blonde, but it had changed, now resembling wiry tendrils. Her eyes were black as pitch, and her skin glowed as if lit from within, an ethereal, unearthly firefly. In place of clothes her body was clad in plates that might have been armor, smooth and white, like an insect’s chitin. And at the ends of her fingers were massive talons sculpted out of solid light.
“Arnaud has been dead for weeks, Mrs. Boules.”
The woman smiled, then twisted her hand at the socket. What life was left in Enrietta Boules came rushing out through the hole puncturing her from back to stomach. The pulsating green energy that flowed from Asher to the dead dryad’s body reversed, running back to his fingers, climbing up his arms, sinking into his skin. He stared at his hands in horror, his cheeks painted with dark specks of cooling blood, like a boy flecked in warpaint, unprepared for battle.
Asher stammered, his knees buckling, feet too frozen in fear to truly move away. “Why? What – who are you?”
“Thea,” the woman said. “My name is Thea Morgana.”
Chapter 23
Thea wrested Asher’s wrist, hard enough that he cried out in pain. There was blood on his arm. If it belonged to him or Enrietta, I couldn’t clearly tell.
“Let go of him,” I said. “It’s me you want.”
Slowly, painfully slowly, Thea turned her head in my direction, the bottomless pits of her eyes seeming to focus on me with some difficulty. She tilted her head, and when she smiled, harsh light poured out of her mouth, radiant, and terrible.
“Dustin Graves. It is good to see you again.” She blinked once, the alien emptiness of her eyes sweeping across the gardens as she regarded each of us. “And here are your companions, old and new. Some from the Lorica, and – are these your new friends? Men of the Black Hand, perhaps? My, Mr. Graves. How the virtuous have fallen.”
“Again with this Black Hand nonsense,” Carver said, his fingers already streaming with amber energy as he stalked closer. Some part of Thea’s fractured mind must have led her to believe that the organization was real, convincing her that the Black Hand had always been responsible for my murder.
The reality of it drove an icy shard into my chest. In her heart, she believed that she was doing the right thing, always, that her actions were just. She only wanted to bring her children back – whatever the cost. That only made things worse. Her delusion had transformed into zeal, and she was all the more dangerous for it. Just as unsettling was her physical metamorphosis. She was human only in shape, so much of her altered and warped into an insectoid monstrosity. Was this the Eldest’s gift?
“Let the boy go,” Carver said. “Your quarrel isn’t with him.”
Thea’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, I have no quarrel with him. In fact I only mean to befriend him.” She scrutinized him carefully, her head angling as she took in his face. “Asher, was it not? We’re going to be friends. Yes, the fastest of friends.”
“Don’t think we believe that for a second, Thea,” Bastion said, his hands in fists. “You’ve killed enough people to get your way already. How many more?”
“Enrietta Boules.” Thea looked up into the night sky, then chuckled. “Oh, of course. Arnaud as well. The poor boy was only scratching out a living. But how else was I going to get closer to the Boules woman? I needed access to the Codex without drawing attention to myself. It’s a simple matter of bending the light.” The corner of her mouth twitched as one of her eyes swiveled down to stare at me.
Thea had been playing us all along, right from the very beginning. How could we have known it was her? She’d used a glamour as camouflage, to change her appearance, and if what Carver said about cloaking enchantments held true, then we never stood a chance of detecting her hand. All we had left was to ensure that this didn’t end in more bloodshed.
“Please,” Asher said, his breathing ragged. “I don’t understand. Please let me go.”
“It’s very simple. You help me with your magic, Asher, and I’ll let you live.” She grinned, light spilling out of her teeth, which had grown sharper, finer, less than human. “Show me the fullest extent of your power, and I’ll be gone. You needn’t fear me ever again.”
“Enough of this.” Carver slashed his arm forward, a jagged beam of amber light launching from the tips of his fingers, a spear of energy aimed straight at Thea’s head. W
ithout looking, without flinching, Thea raised her hand, caught it, then hurled it back. I whirled around as Carver groaned in pain. A hole had been bored straight through his shoulder, the edges of it ragged. I gaped in horror, though I didn’t have time to question why he didn’t bleed.
“Enough is correct. I’m tired of these interruptions.” Thea sent out one hand, and the golden-bronze rod of the thyrsus shot out of the grass, careening towards her outstretched fingers.
“Stop,” Bastion cried, attempting to wrest the thyrsus away with the force of his power, but Thea was too quick, or too strong. She wrenched Asher even closer, her talons digging into his skin, then pointed the wand’s tip at the ground.
The soil burst open to reveal a spire of vines, a furious mass of tendrils rushing out from a breach in the earth. Under the moonlight I could tell that these were different, not the green of the vines that Deirdre had summoned when she’d used the thyrsus, but something slick and crimson, like veins surging from some hellish pit in the earth, like great, glistening coils of intestine put forth by an unseen, screaming colossus.
I leapt away from the crater, Bastion helping Carver from its epicenter, the others hurrying to the edges of the garden. Upward the vines went, rocketing into the sky, taking Thea and Asher with them on a platform made out of so many smaller, wriggling coils. She smirked at me as she went, the thyrsus in her hand glowing an eerie reddish gold, her eyes jet black, glimmering with sinister glee.
“What about the Veil?” Bastion murmured, his eyes fixed on the massive twist of vines now dozens of feet in the air.
“Fuck your precious Veil,” Carver snarled, clutching at the gaping hole in his shoulder. “Do you truly think she cares? I’d like to see your precious Lorica explain this.”
“I can burn it down,” Romira said, her voice trembling, suffused with uncharacteristic panic.
“It wouldn’t work,” Gil said. “That thing – whatever the hell it is, it’s too damp. Both inside and – oh God – outside.”