by Joe Ducie
Emissary rubbed his hands together and spat a fireball at me. The flame rolled off his tongue and sizzled through the air. I spun the bike around, leaving a vicious skid mark on the wooden decking, and dodged the missile. The fireball struck the boardwalk and slammed through the weak wood, hitting the sea beneath. A cloud of steam burst through the hole, just behind me, as I gunned the bike and sped toward Emissary, closing the gap between us fast.
He planted his feet hard against the boardwalk and spread his arms, welcoming me, daring me to hit him. Chicken, is it? I’d never been one to blink in the face of ugly, murderous men in finely tailored suits. I bared my teeth in a snarl and leaned in low against the body of the bike, and shifted up a gear.
“Come on!” Emissary roared, his voice echoing up into the night. “Show me your immortality, Hale!”
Fifteen feet from the monster, white light exploded from my palms. Twin beams of pure, raw will that carried me up and back off the bike. I flipped in the air, the beams cutting through wood and steel, and landed hard on my knees. Drawing a quick breath, almost choking on smoke, I threw my hands together and clapped. The raw light turned silver and a dome-shaped shield popped up into existence just in front of me—as the bike, doing at least eighty, slammed into Emissary and exploded.
A wave of heat and shrapnel struck my shield, ricocheting off in a hundred different directions, splitting the worst of the debris down the middle and sending it flying past either side of me.
BOOM, you son of a bitch.
Garnet and ruby flames roiled and blazed in the air where Emissary stood.
I found my feet, hoping for the best, but the voice of long experience had me reaching into my waistcoat holster for the copy of Groust’s Midnight Steel I’d stashed earlier. Flipping to a dog-eared page about halfway through the novel, I sent my Will surging into the book, and the words on the page glowed with a dark, almost wraithlike light.
Emissary emerged from the maelstrom of destruction and straightened his collar. He grinned at me, brushed a bit of ash from his shoulder, and pulled what looked like part of an exhaust pipe from his gut. The wound sealed over instantly, and his shirt rippled, another pebble cast on still water, and was whole. He was unharmed.
“What now, Hale?” he asked.
I held the book up and forward like a gunslinger of old, and my enchantment literally leaped from the pages. This was the true source of my power and how I’d learned to fight men and women with the same power at the Infernal Academy all those years ago. My Will was tempered steel, hard and unbreakable, and the books I used to duel were written to wound and ensnare.
In this case, Midnight Steel was written for the Knights by the Knights. The section of the book I’d ignited with my Will described an area of black space, where nothing but dead stars and dust existed, folded back on itself in an infinite loop—the perfect place to send Emissary. Even if he could survive the vacuum, it would be centuries, if not more, before he escaped such a prison.
This was what made the Knights and the Renegades so dangerous. Never mind the spells, charms, wards, or enchantments we could learn from the right books, never mind our armies or our fleets of Eternity-class battleships. We could bind our enemies in shackles of words and, with a thought, cast them beyond perdition and into prisons of such complex cruelty that escape was impossible.
The words jumped off the page of Midnight Steel, warped in the air with a harsh whip crack, and lashed themselves, physical and real, around Emissary’s wrists. The words ran up his arms, under his shirt, marking his skin as though he had a living tattoo, and yanked him forward.
He grunted, resisted the pull, and, throwing his arms up toward the sky, snapped the words that bound him.
“Sweet, merry fuckery,” I whispered, gaping.
That was impossible. Midnight Steel burst into flames in my hands, and I dropped the book with a cry, my fingers blistered. The flames consuming the tome were made of dark, fetid Void-light.
“The walls of the Eternal Prison crumble, Declan Hale,” Emissary said, and strode toward me, whole and unharmed despite my best efforts. His jaw had shrunk back into his face, making him look normal—handsome, even—but his eyes were still orbs of burning coal, spoiling the illusion. “You think to bind me with your paltry new words, bound to mere paper? The weak scratchings of your race are an insult to the Knights of old. I was there, fool, ten thousand years ago, when the Infernal language, runes of such tremendous power, were used as weapons by humanity. But those days are dead, and the old locks shattered. The Everlasting will inherit True Earth.”
“Why are you doing this? Murder and chaos? What could killing these people possibly get you?” I took a step back, away from the flame eating the boardwalk at my feet, out of the curling smoke that burned my eyes and my throat. Emissary followed. “If you wanted me, you should have just come for me!”
Emissary nodded. He raised his hand and a pool of ruby fire shone in his palm and between his fingers. “If this was only about you, Shadowless, then you would already be dead. Why the chaos? Well shit, son, why not?” He rolled his head and cracked his neck. “I’ve been sealed away for aeons, Hale. Ten millennia in darkness! Why? Spill enough blood and the walls of reality begin to crack. What, perchance, may slip through then, hmm? You’ll see soon.”
“I won’t let you kill unchecked. I may not be a Knight anymore, but I’ll stop you.”
Emissary snarled and jabbed a finger into my chest. “You place yourself between me and them because you’ve come to view your life as something that’ll bounce back. You’ve died and will die again. You’ll live forever unless you’re killed.” He laughed. “But you’re vulnerable. Just because you outwitted the natural order once… does not make you one of us. One of the Everlasting.”
“You’re not of the Everlasting,” I spat. “You’re not one of the Nine.”
“I am of Their kind. A first cousin, if you will. The Emissaries serve the Everlasting. We are legion, Declan, and it will take more than flashing light and storybooks to best us this time. We are aged. We have learned in our exile. You humans break so easily.” He looked over my shoulder and nodded.
I followed his gaze and cursed. Annie, and six of her fellow officers, hung suspended in the air. Emissary wiggled his fingers, and they danced back and forth like puppets on invisible strings, six feet above the floor.
“Let them go.”
Emissary chuckled. “Times were, even the smallest of your kind could wield Origin and protect their souls against our touch. Now... you are scattered. The few of you with any true power fight amongst yourselves, cowering in your steel cities. You have forgotten the night, Declan. You have forgotten to be afraid.”
Emissary clicked his fingers and snapped the necks of two of the uniformed officers. They hung lifeless, limp, and he cast them aside. Annie and the others stared at me, eyes wide and terrified, unable to move or speak as flame licked at the boardwalk beneath them.
I lunged at Emissary, but he backhanded me with his flaming hand. I was thrown aside and over an aluminum table and chairs, scattering what looked like some damn fine fish and chips, and came to a stop against one of the boardwalk’s support pillars. Dazed and seeing stars, I struggled to stand but fell back disorientated. Blood dribbled down into my eyes from a cut, and the Paddy’s steak special churned in my gut, threatening to make a disturbing reappearance.
While I was down, Emissary snapped four more necks—the remaining uniformed officers—and left Annie dangling alone and helpless above her fallen comrades.
“Last one, Hale,” he said. “Oh my, there’s something special about this one, isn’t there? Something...” he sniffed the air, “... ancient and kind. Bah, so soon? Aeons become seconds—”
Emissary was knocked back, and the fire in his hand spluttered and died. Crimson holes appeared in his shirt, and the retort of a heavy, powerful gun cracked the air. Annie fell to the boardwalk, among the bodies of the other officers, and her eyes rolled into the back of her
head. Dead or alive, I didn’t know.
Senior Detective Sam Grey stepped into the pale, green light of the fire eating the boardwalk, his service revolver smoking and empty. He emptied the spent cartridges and reloaded from a stock in his jacket pocket.
“Hale,” he said, and offered me a hand. “Just what in the hell is that man?”
I stumbled to my feet and took a deep breath. Forced to his knees by the barrage of shots, Emissary counted the holes in his chest and laughed.
I pushed Grey back. “You need to take Annie and run—”
Almost faster than the eye could follow, Emissary was back on his feet. He covered the short distance between us in the time connecting heartbeats and drove his arm—fingers lengthened into black, ten-inch claws—through Detective Grey.
Emissary gutted Grey, and his clawed hand erupted from the old detective’s back, clutching his spine in its grip. I’d seen some truly awful things in my time, and this was definitely up in the top twenty. I jerked away from the sight, but Emissary lunged forward and grasped my left forearm, pinning me to what was left of Grey.
I brought the full force of all my Will to bear, pooled in my right hand—and choked.
Fetid Void-light slithered between Emissary’s claws, gripping me tight, and I screamed as an intense fire rippled down my arm. Pain not unlike dying forced me to my knees. Emissary let me fall, cackling high and proud, as tendrils of thin smoke wafted up from my arm.
I fell back and grasped my wrist. Through tear-blurred eyes I saw a familiar rune branded into my flesh, as black as night and red-raw around the edge, like dull embers fading in the fireplace.
An Infernal Rune—old magic. Oldest magic.
From lessons long ago at the academy within the Fae Palace, in Ascension City, I recognized the symbol. The judicial arm of the Knights’ iron justice system used it often during the Tome Wars, mostly on prisoners of war.
“Ah, hell...”
Emissary tossed Detective Grey aside, toward the pile of dead policemen and Annie—her fate unknown.
“That should keep you here for the finale,” Emissary said, grinning through bloody teeth. One of his eyes had reverted to clear, cerulean blue. The other remained pitch-black and burning. His suit was splattered in blood and gore.
I reached for my Will, for a drop of ethereal light, and came up empty. A wall as tall as the sky and as vast as the sea had appeared between me and the power. The rune on my arm stung all the more for trying. This demonic messenger of the Everlasting had barred me from breathing.
“You... bastard.”
He straightened his bloodstained collar and did the first button on his gore-soaked suit jacket. “Blessed Scion requests the presence of the Immortal King, the man who severed the Clock, at His ascension. Be good until then, Declan, and do not interfere with my work. Trying to build a tower of beating love here. Hearts abound, you know? Yeah, you know.”
Emissary laughed and stepped sideways into nothing. He disappeared behind a black curtain of shadow and was gone, uninjured and, for all that mattered, victorious.
Great, add freakin’ Void travel to his list of skills. Son of a bitch had an impressive résumé.
I cradled my branded arm against my chest for a long moment, staring at nothing as blood dripped down my face. I found my feet and wandered over to Annie—hoping for the best but fearing the worst.
She lay curled on her side, arms wrapped under her breasts. I felt for a pulse against her soft, olive-skinned neck.
With a start her eyes flew open, and she sat up, grasping at my shoulders. “What...?” It took her a moment, but she remembered.
I stood and stepped back, giving her a view of the fallen officers and Grey. Annie made an awful sound, somewhere between defeat and despair.
“He’ll pay for this,” I said because I didn’t know what else to say and the silence was terrible. I’d stood here before, in the aftermath, and was just no good at it. “They don’t get to do this. Not here. This world is off limits.”
Dazed and confused, Annie reached for her trusty phone and called for help. I stood silent as she relayed what had happened, on the verge of tears. The lights overhead cast wicked shadows across the boardwalk. Annie stared not at me but at my shoes, at what was missing under those lights.
My shadow.
She snapped her phone closed and found her feet—and her gun. This time there was no mistaking the look on her face. It was one of righteous fury. The look of the wronged and the vengeful.
Annie reached under her leather jacket and produced a pair of steel handcuffs. “Give me your hands,” she said. “Declan Hale, I’m placing you under arrest.”
Cut off from all my terrible power, I had no choice but to agree.
Chapter Seven
Downtown Clown
And that’s how I found myself chained to a desk in Joondalup Police Station. My head wound throbbed, and blood dribbled along the curve of my nose and down into the corner of my mouth. All things being even, I’d gotten lucky tonight—damned lucky. Whatever Emissary was, he’d had me dead to rights and decided to play a little longer.
...keep you here for the finale.
Well, keeping me alive was his second mistake. The first, daring to attract my ire at all.
A young nurse dabbed at my head wound with gauze and some alcohol-based disinfectant while Annie sat opposite me, tapping away on her computer and trying very hard not to cry. I rubbed some burn cream into the Infernal rune marking my forearm. That, more than anything, was perhaps the worst thing to have happened to me tonight. Emissary had left me defenseless, open to attack from anyone who wanted to take a swing. And that list could be damn-near infinite.
The atmosphere in the station, just as the clock ticked over midnight, was one of denial—the first stage of grief. They had lost seven of their own in a devastating attack. Plain-clothed and uniformed officers moved past each other as ghosts—some angry poltergeists, slamming drawers and whispering furiously into phones. Slim televisions attached to the walls played footage of the Hillarys boardwalk falling into the sea. The body count was unknown—some dozens, including Officer Murie and his men.
“How’s your head?” Brie asked, her eyes on the computer screen. A small frown creased her brow.
“Tickles. I’ve had worse.”
She briefly met my eyes. “Yes, I believe you have.”
Her fingers returned to the keyboard, and her tone became brisk and businesslike. “This is your arrest report, Mr. Hale. I’m about to ask you for a statement concerning the events that occurred at Hillarys Boat Harbor tonight. You understand your rights, but I’m going to ask you again, would you like legal assistance?”
“I’m very sorry for your loss, Annie. I know Detective Grey was important to you.”
“Would you like a lawyer, Mr. Hale?”
“Declan, please.” I thanked the nurse as she finished bandaging up my head. She left the young detective and I alone, dancing around the truth and sipping at terrible lukewarm coffee that could have done with a splash of scotch. “And no, no I would not.”
We moved through the formalities, and I gave my recollection of events as truthfully as I could. When I got to Emissary throwing cars and breathing pink flame, Annie sighed and lifted her fingers from the keyboard. “You’re making it sound as if he were actually doing those things,” she said.
“You saw what I saw, Detective.”
“I saw...” Annie shook her head. “I don’t know what I saw! But it was some sort of trick. Has to be.” The last she said to herself, and it almost sounded convincing. “We need to find this man before he hurts anyone else, so please, Mr. Hale, take this a touch more serious—”
“Oh, but I am. Now you need to take what I’m saying seriously. Like it or not,” I said, “Perth is my home for the foreseeable future. I need to be here, for reasons that will take too long to explain.” Even if you would believe those absurd reasons. “But, you see, this is a good thing. The city is under my protec
tion, and right now, I am uniquely capable of dealing with this type of threat.” With or without this damn rune, you coal-eyed bastard. “Annie, do you believe me?”
Her chin trembled. “I… Christ, I do.”
“Splendid. No place left to hide now. Time for the truth.” But how best to explain it? “Annie—”
“Detective Brie.” She sighed and relented. “I suppose Annie’s fine now. You’re not a killer.”
My indomitable charm could wear the best of them down. “Yes. I am. And I’m afraid everything I’m going to say from here on out will probably seem, if not outright fantasy, then a cruel and terrible joke, given the severity of what happened tonight. Please understand—and this is important—that I truly know how the loss you have suffered feels. Seven men and women are dead, six of them your comrades-in-arms, and one of them more than that, a friend.”
Annie opened her mouth to speak. I raised a hand to stop her.
“I say this because I would not have you think me cruel or terrible or perhaps insane. You’ve suffered a loss that cuts so deep and hurts so much that the pain is numb—a train bound for nowhere, do you ken?” I shook my head, catching my words. I’d slipped into Forgetful speech there—at once both archaic and modern. “Does that make sense?”
A single tear cut a lonely track down Annie’s face—that awful way single tears do. She let it fall unchecked. “Yes, yes it does.”
“You’re tired, you’re scared, you’re angry, and you want it all to stop. You want it to have never happened. For the darkness not to have crushed out the light like a spent cigarette.” I’d had five and a half long years in exile to think all these thoughts for myself. How to deal with loss, with death, with bitter resentment and consuming regret. With the guilt of being powerless or, worse, powerful. “You need to dismiss these thoughts. You need to embrace the truth—and the anger. The anger is good, useful.”
“And leads to the dark side... What is your truth, Declan?” she asked, using my first name for the first time. I liked the way it sounded, rolling off her tongue.