by Jack Conner
Raulf turned to his twenty troops, naked and burned and riddled with bullets from their own weapons, and said, “We’ll deal with that fucking kavasari later. We have other business first.”
They nodded dumbly. Probably, none of them had ever had experience with a kavasari or even knew what such a creature was capable of. Raulf himself lacked the former, but he knew the latter all too well.
“Ready to kick it in gear?” he said, not making it a question.
“Aye, sir,” many replied. The rest nodded, but not so dumbly this time; they were regaining their wits, and their nerve.
“Then let the charge begin,” he said, and led the way up the ruined staircase. Pieces of it were missing, and in several instances Raulf had to vault across gaps to reach the next stair. He brought his troops up to the “first” story, where five Castle soldiers lay in wait.
A missile whizzed past Raulf and slammed into the wall just behind him; the blast knocked him several yards to the side. Ironically, this saved him from the most severe volleys of the Castle soldiers. Even as his platoon came racing up after him, he shifted into his beast form and lunged at the nearest enemy soldier.
Raulf tackled him to the floor, while the man’s closest comrade turned from firing on the Libertarian platoon to fire on D’Aguila.
Ignoring the bullets, Raulf expanded his wings, lifted himself into the air and rolled over so that the soldier he’d been pinning to the floor was now above him, but just as frozen, his every limb locked into place by Raulf’s claws. The Captain dropped onto his back, wrapped his wings about the doomed man in the familiar death shroud and bit off the man’s head with his long crocodile mouth. Outside of his cocoon, he could hear his troops cheering him on.
When he unfurled his wings and tossed the carcass to the side, the other four Castle soldiers were dead. Raulf morphed back into his more human form and appraised the scene. Two of his troops had been killed by missiles and five others sported serious wounds from bullets, but otherwise his platoon had come out on top.
“Good job,” he told them.
Going to the bodies of the two dead troops, what was left of them, he bade the rest of his platoon to give them a moment of silence, and they bowed their heads.
That done, Raulf snapped up his broadsword from the ground, where it had fallen when he’d shape-shifted, and raised it high overhead.
“Onward!”
He charged to the next level to find it deserted. As was the next. On the fourth floor they met heavy resistance, but prevailed. At the end of the battle, Raulf’s platoon had been reduced to eleven troops, most of which were seriously injured. Raulf had anticipated this and had ordered them to leave several of their enemies alive, if barely. Now he ordered his troops to feed on the Castle guards and heal themselves. Raulf partook in this himself, as his wounds were among the worst.
The fifth floor, the highest, was deserted. Raulf had taken the tower. Mission accomplished. He walked over to a window and peered out at the next tower, this one roofless. For a moment, there was no life, but then three zombies (the only ones still “living”, Raulf learned later) and eight Libertarians marched onto the top of the battlement, all covered in blood but obviously victorious.
Raulf greeted them and they whooped at seeing him. Then, remembering the kavasari, Raulf ordered the troops and the zombies on the other battlement to descend to the second-highest floor, where they’d be safe from the Ambassador’s attacks. Sure enough, a second later and their clothes burst into flame and their guns started firing at each other. They quickly scampered downstairs.
Beyond that tower mounted another, this one badly damaged. Once, he could tell, it had had a roof—such as the tower in which he now stood—but it had been torn away in the nuclear blast. On top of the ruined battlement stood the Sonia Collage, surrounded by half a dozen Libertarian soldiers.
As soon as the Collage saw him, the blunt limb rose into the air, its petals peeling back, and Sonia popped out, waving at him. He just barely resisted the compulsion to flush. Instead, he shouted that they should all take cover, which they did just as the Libertarians’ clothes began to catch fire and their guns turn on them.
“Fucking kavasari,” he muttered.
D’Aguila communicated with Maleasoel via radio. She’d been successful in taking her tower. Indeed, all the towers had been taken and the Castle loyalists hiding in the cracks in the great wall had been slaughtered.
“Now,” she said over the hiss of static, “it’s time to finish off the east side and that damned kavasari. You realize I’m naked and burned right now? Fucker. I’ll show him to mind his manners.”
Raulf had to smile at that image of Malie. “Yes,” he said. “It’s time we finish this.”
He was about to add something else when he saw Roche Sarnova and a skinless demon streak across the abandoned courtyard below.
* * *
When Sarnova, hidden in the chest of Montalvo’s corpse, realized the helicopter shower was over, he ushered Ladrido out through the great red dragon’s neck and emerged, wet, into the cold night to hear the sounds of battle raging nearby.
“Thanks,” Roche said.
“For what?”
“Your idea to hide in Montalvo. You saved my life.”
The skinless ghoul grinned. “I guess you get to be my slave for eternity. Isn’t that the old Chinese custom?”
“Good thing I’m not Chinese.” Roche watched the battle, trying to get a sense of it, then swore. Francois had ambushed the Libertarians, but the Libbies had the advantage of greater numbers and firearms and were quickly overcoming him. He saw Francois himself standing on top of the southeast tower.
“We’ve got to get to him,” Roche said, and pointed.
Ladrido strained his eyes. “Then let’s hurry. The Libertarians should be almost through with the west by now.”
Together they ran across the ruins of what had once been the Upper Courtyards. Roche was surprised there was anything left of them at all, or of the entire structure itself for that matter, but fortunately the Castle had been built too well and the warhead on the nuclear device too small to have destroyed anything more than it had.
As he ran, he saw the places where fountains and monuments had been. At one spot, he saw the tall sculpture of the woman with a sword in one hand and a globe in the other. The statue was all but obliterated; it had been tossed up against the eastern wall and been fused there by heat.
“Damn them,” he said. “They’ll pay for this.”
He remembered Ruegger and the rest of the coven and for an instant thought about calling a halt to his dash to Francois. But no. The Libertarians would be finished with the western walls and towers by now; indeed, he could see many of their blood-stained forms stirring in the battlements. He had to get to his friend. Together, maybe they could stop the invasion and ... perhaps ... eventually, rebuild what had been lost.
He reached the great crater where the fatal missile had struck and hedged his way around it. He levitated off the ground for a few seconds to speed up his plight, then realized he could actually fly up to greet his oldest friend if he wanted. That would mean abandoning Ladrido, though. He stayed grounded.
It didn’t matter, though. That brief exercise of his kavasari powers proved disastrous.
* * *
Previously, Maleasoel had been more focused on the fight than studying the blasted courtyard below, but when her eyes caught movement there, she looked.
When she saw one of those figures leap into the air and maintain his position there, she recognized him for a kavasari. A moment later and she recognized him as Roche Sarnova himself—not through personal interaction with the man, of course, but through photographs and paintings she’d seen throughout her life. Though her desire to avenge Ludwig’s murder had been subordinated to the task of winning the Castle, she felt her priorities flip for an instant. This was the man who’d killed her husband.
She snapped her head about. The Sonia Collage clung to the
side of a nearby battlement, all the monster’s available eyes on the Dark Lord. The thing seemed to be twitching in anticipation.
Malie understood. The Sonia Collage recognized him. Not simply as the Dark Lord, whom she had known well before becoming part of Junger and Jagoda’s tapestry of death, but as a kavasari, too. Programmed by both the Balaklava and the Libertarians to attack any kavasari except Amelia when possible, and also to kill both Dark Lords if she could, Sonia was barely able to control her instinct to dive off after Roche Sarnova.
Maleasoel grinned. Maybe she’d have to sacrifice a formidable ally to deliver justice to Ludwig’s murderer, but in her instant of rage that seemed a small price to pay.
“Attack!” she ordered Sonia, and pointed.
The creature didn’t hesitate. The Sonia Collage leapt from atop her battlement, realigning into a giant net or parachute to slow her descent, and fell almost on top of Roche Sarnova. Shifting again, she seized him in one massive pincer.
* * *
Roche gasped. One moment, he’d been running to save his friend. The next, a shadow had fallen over him and he was being lifted into the air to stare at the glistening mouth of the Collage.
Junger and Jagoda, he fumed. They had created this abomination. They had sent that missile. At that moment, he didn’t see the Collage as presented in the flesh; he saw it as the manifestation of those two evil bastards. Consumed with rage, he unleashed his pyrokinesis on the creature, setting many of its bodies aflame and catching Sonia off-guard so much that she stumbled backward …
… and plummeted into the nuclear crater. She took Roche, snarling and thrashing in that pincer, with her.
Flames and darkness and screaming. The scores of bodies that comprised the Collage squirmed hungrily all around Sarnova, and the great, flame-lit mouth gaped just ahead ...
The pincer shoved him toward the maw. Three long tongues thrust past the triangular shark teeth toward him.
“You bastards!” he heard himself shout. It almost sounded like another person. “Junger and Jagoda, you’re nothing but—”
The pincer tightened. That hideous blood-spattered maw drew closer. Its three tongues slapped Roche across the face, leaving slimly trails, and he wrinkled his nose at its fetid breath.
Closer ...
Now he could look down its throat and see the hungry pulsing things waiting there. His last thoughts, as the Collage pulled him down, and in, were of Francois and Kharker, and of the utopia that could have existed if not for the fucking Balaklava.
He threw back his head and roared.
It was the last anyone ever saw of him alive.
Chapter 11
Enraged, Ruegger watched Subaire’s troops close in on Kharker.
“We’ve got to help him,” said Danielle.
“Yeah, but how? Taking the dragons will torch Kharker, too.”
There was only one way, and he knew it.
“No!” shouted Danielle as Ruegger leapt from Majestica’s neck and flew down to the mountain. “Ruegger, no!”
Somewhere in her voice he heard the words He’s not worth it, baby, but Ruegger flew on. Evidently, Jean-Pierre had had the same thought, as Ruegger saw him fly down from atop Draekshar. On her three-legged steed, Sophia cried out after him, but the albino pretended not to hear.
Jean-Pierre and Ruegger merged, flying side by side, as they swept down to save their adopted father from certain doom.
“How’d they do it, do you think?” Jean-Pierre asked over the whip of the wind. “We know the Sangro Sankts were giving them blood, but how did they suddenly build up the power to drive those rockets like that?”
“I don’t know,” Ruegger said. “I suppose they must have come up with a way to combine their efforts. For all we know, they’ve got a warlock down there.”
Jean-Pierre didn’t smile.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ruegger saw a dark shape shooting straight towards him. Danielle was coming, after all, but she didn’t look too happy about it. Jean-Pierre swore as his own beloved hopped off her dragon and raced towards him.
“Can’t stand to be left—”
He stopped as his gaze fell on Kharker making his last stand. Bleeding from a thousand wounds, the Hunter rushed the horde of enemy troops with his machete. Bullets and missiles flew at him, but none were driven with the force that had taken down Shalung, and Kharker managed to divert all but one of the missiles, even as tired and bullet-ridden as he was.
One was all it took.
It caught Kharker on the hand holding the blade. He was swinging his fist so fast that it created the necessary weight for the rocket to detonate. His arm exploded in a cloud of fire, blood and bone, and the blast kicked the Great White Hunter twenty yards to the side.
Ruegger pushed himself to fly faster. Kharker sprawled bleeding into the blackened earth, charred and missing an arm, a thousand bullet holes in him, and it didn’t look like he was going to get up. His leg twitched. Subaire’s goons would be on him before he had a chance to recover.
Jean-Pierre and Ruegger steeped their dive, barreling straight toward Kharker.
Only at the last second did Ruegger realize his mistake.
* * *
Subaire realized it, too, and she was in a position to twist it to her immediate and world-altering advantage.
When Shalung and its rider had crashed, Subaire sent off nearly thirty of her soldiers. Her hope was to capitalize on the sentimentality of the kavasari leader and draw him into the open where her seven snipers could shoot him down. Then she recognized Shalung’s rider, and that just made the circumstances more bizarre. How can the Hunter be a fucking kavasari?
To her shock, all four of the other dragon-riders leapt off their mounts and flew towards the spot where Kharker was dying.
“Jesus,” she said, more in awe than anything else. Five kavasari—and dragons! It was too much. Nonetheless, her cunning had paid off, as it always had before now, and she realized that this was perhaps her best stroke of luck yet.
She grinned. The riders had left their dragons defenseless. The kavasari leader had slipped up. What a pleasure it is to be so smart.
“Keeg,” she addressed the leader of the seven remaining kavasari-gifted shades. “Get your group’s asses up, point your rockets at the largest dragon and keep shooting till you’ve got them all.”
In succession, three projectiles blazed toward Yazback, and Subaire nearly laughed out loud as the flaming pink wyrm bellowed as the missiles stuck him, then dropped down the side of the mountain to his death.
“Now that one,” she said, and indicated Draekshar.
* * *
When Roche Sarnova disappeared into the void with the Collage, many voices shouted their protest. Six in particular shouted the loudest.
Ladrido was the first. He lay along the perimeter of the crater, his borrowed ghoul body half crushed by one of the Collage’s legs. He looked like nothing so much as a roach squashed by a boot but still somehow alive. After his initial shock, he gathered himself up and flew out of the useless body and formed his usual human figure with the bats. Looking down into the crater, all he could see were flames and shadows in a fiery ball, descending slowly through the bowels of the Castle ...
Captain Raulf D’Aguila was the second. When he saw Sarnova fly briefly through the air, he thought, God damn, ANOTHER one? How many fucking kavasari can there be? He realized that it must have been the first one, the Ambassador, that had changed Sarnova—but how many others had he altered? That was a sobering thought. Then Sonia leapt off her tower and Raulf screamed at her to stop, knowing all the while he was wasting his breath.
Cloire and Harry were the third and fourth. Looking down from the eastern tower in which they were stationed, they’d immediately recognized the Dark Lord, if not the skinless apparition running alongside him, and felt hearted by his appearance. Devastated by the fall of the western wall, they’d given up hope that the Libertarians could be driven back. That was, until they saw Roche.
But as soon as he appeared a Collage took him with it into the dark hole of the crater. They shouted in horror, each gripping the other’s hand tightly.
Maleasoel was the fifth. She roared insults down at Sarnova’s falling form and smiled. Finally, she thought, justice had been served.
Francois was the sixth. He’d been smiling as he watched his old friend run across the courtyard to join him, and then all of a sudden that thing had leapt down from western battlements ...
The Ambassador screamed, then, without so much as a conscious thought, he leapt off the tower, flew through the air and dove into the hole after his friend. As soon as he did, he remembered his duties to rout the Libertarians, but what sort of creature was he if he’d let Roche be killed when there as a chance he could do something about it? And damned if there wasn’t.
Through the darkness, he saw the end of the hole below, the scattered debris where the thirty Castle soldiers had ambushed the Libertarians just fifteen minutes ago, the rubble and their bodies illuminated by the flickering fires thrown high from the great mass of dead flesh and kindling that was the Collage. The beast lay in a nightmarish heap, its amorphous form kicking and twitching as if caught in the grip of death. Francois landed next to it, hunting for any sign of Roche, screaming his friend’s name. There was no response.
The Ambassador stepped closer to examine the still-twitching Collage. He saw its great lipless maw, but Roche was not there, nor was he caught in any of the pincers or arms. Perhaps he’d been crushed under the weight of the monster and was even now trying to dig himself out.