by Jack Conner
“You call your zombies angels, Laslo?” Ruegger said. “That’s a stretch even for you.”
“Ruegger, my wayward sinner, ye who I have longed to bring into the Fold for some time now, ye see not the angels here? Those once bereft of life, but now through My power of Resurrection restored? And once restored and purified, admitted to My Heavenly Gates, of which you so rudely tried to kick the teeth! Yes, my sinners, I am the Messenger and the Deliverer. It falls to Me to purge and restore you, to wash your sins in fire and drag you through it, then clean, to a place in My Heaven. Be good, and thee shall rank angelic! Continue to be wicked and I’ll place you in my foulest extremes—”
“Just don’t let it be near your mouth,” said Danielle, squirming in the grip of a pincer. Blood leaked from her hairline down one side of her face.
“Harlot, watch thy tongue or ye shall suffer the gravest of consequences. Blasphemy is high on the List of Ten, and I shall administer justice accordingly.”
“Isn’t murder on your goddamned list?” said Jean-Pierre.
“Murder?”
“You plan to eat us.”
“Eat? Eat! Dear Me. My son, you shall be consumed—made pure, elevated in spirit. Christ does not sin, does not murder. Christ raises you to a new level of peace and understanding.”
Ladrido continued to hop back and forth across the great expanse of roiling flesh that was the Collage, killing zombies wherever he went, but he couldn’t hope to kill enough to weaken Laslo before the coven was consumed. Ruegger remembered Raulf D’Aguila’s words about how to destroy a Collage: “I’d hate to do it, but if it had to, I think it could be done, by cutting off her head”, he’d said concerning Sonia. Cut off the mouthpiece’s head. But how?
Ruegger thought back to the time last night when he’d sliced a mud-shark into ribbons using his blades. Eyeing the tubular blunt limb in which Laslo hid, Ruegger saw the possibilities.
He struggled against the massive hand that gripped him. Kharker’s scimitar had been pressed against his side, where it was now being driven thanks to the considerable pressure exerted by the six undead digits of the hand. He latched hold of the hilt and pulled and squirmed and kicked until, with a groan, he yanked the scimitar free. Too tired to raise any sort of war cry, he simply hurled the blade through the air, guiding it with all his kavasari strength.
It cut lengthwise through Laslo’s protective limb, then doubled back and cut a second niche. As it continued to amputate the limb at the limb’s halfway point, Ruegger permitted himself a smile. He could see that he had all the other pilgrims’ attention; several had caught on to his plan and were lending their own blades to the task.
Finally, with a dead sucking sound, half the limb fell from the stem and dropped to the wet red floor, sending ripples through the shallow water. Ruegger watched the severed section intently, hoping to see Laslo pop out.
Instead, Laslo erupted from the ragged cavity of the limb still attached to the body of the Collage.
“Ye Hell-spawned agents of debauchery will not prevail against Christ!”
“If you say so,” Ruegger said, and sent his blade hurling back towards the would-be Savior.
Laslo swiveled and caught the scimitar in his real hands, then turned another smug smile Ruegger’s way. “Your toys cannot affect the Holy Messenger. Now come through the Gates of Heaven and be purged. Join the legions already here. Become one with Me—one with God!”
“Ladrido!” Ruegger said. “Enter him, he’s exposed!”
But Ladrido was not visible. He must be presently possessing one of the corpses. Just as Ruegger was turning his thoughts to how to cut off Laslo’s now-exposed head, the Collage visibly started—leapt, actually, its primary mouth issuing an indignant shriek.
Smoke billowed over the monster’s head. Then Ruegger heard a distinctive crack and the Collage flinched again. It spun so that it could face its new enemy, thus giving the kavasari a view of the monster’s backside, which bore large blackened scorch marks, before the members of the coven were moved in rotation to the body by the long undead arms.
Lightning crackled from a point on the ground, stemming from no discernable entity, and zapped the Collage just beneath its mouth. Skin festered and blackened and a pall of smoke issued from the wound in a proud black column.
The Collage lurched toward the spot in the river where the lightning had been issued, but its arms found only air. Then, at a different point, the invisible entity unleashed another barrage of lightning, this one blowing off one of the monster’s legs. In rapid succession, two more bolts struck out and disabled two more of the Laslo-Collage’s legs. The priest howled as if he could personally feel the agony, and again the beast—the Heaven on Earth—stumbled laboriously around, trying to locate its assailant. But after every blast, the lightning-wielder relocated, eluding Laslo’s many arms.
Bolt after bolt slammed into the smoking bulk of the Collage, until it finally folded under its blasted legs and sank to the level of the river.
Still, Laslo would not relent. Its many-jointed arms lifting it up, the Collage crab-walked in ardent pursuit of its attacker. Ruegger had the unfortunate experience of being in one of the hands propelling the thing about, and though the hand still retained its fist-shape in order to keep him imprisoned, the jarring pressure of the grip and the river basin squeezed Ruegger unmercifully, grinding his very bones.
A continuous cacophony of thunder reached him, and he relished every smoldering roll. Each signified another hit against Laslo. Lightning blazed onto the scarred and walking mountain of flesh, one bolt actually scoring on the leviathan’s primary mouth. Ruegger knew this because suddenly the monster stopped its ravings—at least, the primary mouth ceased to function. When it did, Laslo renewed the sermon in his own voice, damning the heretic or demon currently assaulting him.
A white-light bolt slammed into the limb bearing Ruegger, blowing it half-apart so that only a few remnants of skin and bone tied the forearm to the rest of the limb. In seconds, the sheer weight of the nearly-severed forearm broke those threads and the amputated thing fell into the river.
The static electricity causing his hair to stand on end, his ears and brain humming, Ruegger pried open the fist and floundered free of the Collage.
A converted foot swung down to smash him, but he rolled clear in time to be carried by the small waves the impact created. Crawling out of the Laslo-Collage’s way, Ruegger rose to his feet and shook his head to clear it. Water and blood sprayed out.
Just what the hell was going on? Lightning, invisible opponents ...
Ruegger could see Danielle and the others, some trapped in the hands that were even now dragging the insane monster about in an ever-increasing frenzy.
Ruegger leapt into the air and landed on the back of the leviathan, a back composed of many immortal zombies that rose to attack him. He kicked and shoved his way through this wretched forest, driving towards the front of the creature. Soon Ruegger found himself on the precipice overlooking the ruins of the blackened primary mouth and the many appendages still functioning in aggressive pursuit of the invisible foe.
Ruegger jumped down on the halved limb in which Laslo resided, made his way to the edge and peered down. No sign of Laslo. Like a turtle, he’d doubtlessly retreated as far back as he could into his Heaven in order to avoid the ear-splitting bolts of lightning—which, Ruegger noted, were diminishing in number, as if the attacker’s powers were nearly spent.
If that was true, then time was short.
Ruegger grabbed the bloody edges of the cavity and swung down into the dark recesses. He felt jostles and tremors through his feet as the Collage barreled along and smelled the rot of death and the acrid fumes of the river all around him. He saw little but shadows.
He stepped forward. “Laslo, this is your chief sinner here, so come and get me.”
A flash of light: Ruegger’s borrowed blade, swinging forward, Laslo right behind.
“I’m here, you insufferable agent of the
Dark One, I’m here and ready to send you back from whence you came. Sinner, begone!”
Ruegger lunged forward, but the arms and hands extending from the inside of the living cave grasped at him. They tried to hold him so their master could finish him off. Ruegger knew he couldn’t last long in here.
With the Darkling stymied, Laslo sprung forward, not on legs exactly (he didn’t seem to have any) but propelled by a network of nerves and fleshes unique to the Collage. The priest slashed Ruegger across the chest. Ruegger belted him in the face, then grabbed the arm of the hand wielding the blade and arrested it. Other arms, those of the Collage, jerked him backwards, and his grip was lost.
Laslo stuck Ruegger through the middle. Even as the Darkling cried out, he grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the scimitar and, with his free hand, encircled Laslo’s throat and squeezed. Hard.
Laslo pressed the palm of a hand to the hilt of the scimitar and drove it further into Ruegger’s body, Laslo’s eyes widening with pleasure.
Trying to ignore the pain, Ruegger, still throttling the mad priest, plunged a thumb into one of Laslo’s big dark martyr eyes. Blood spewed from the wound and the priest screamed, but in that moment his grip on the scimitar grew lax.
Ruegger reclaimed the blade and, struggling against the myriad of arms that sought to entangle him, sliced Laslo across a raised arm. The blade severed the flesh cleanly and the forearm fell to the ground. Only then did Ruegger fully remember the might of a kavasari.
As Laslo cringed and slunk backward into his den, Ruegger advanced. “Die, already. You crucified Danielle and me, you’ve done ... evil, evil things to your goddamned angels. You’re a hypocrite, Laslo. You call yourself Christ, you think this monstrosity is your own little Heaven. Well, if you want to be Christ so much, you know your fate already. So step forward, damn you."
“No!” cried Laslo. “Don’t ... Stop. My time is yet to—!”
Ruegger swung. The blade tore through the priest’s neck so cleanly that the head didn’t even move. Only a circle of blood proved the blow. Disgusted, Ruegger drove a boot into Laslo’s nose and kicked the offending head into the recesses of the tunnel. Then, swiftly and fastidiously, he began hacking apart the carcass so that Laslo would never rise again.
His labors completed, the whole Collage gave a great shudder, knocking Ruegger to his knees, and the world tilted as the behemoth died and sank into the river.
After taking a moment to collect himself, Ruegger exited the limb and waded through the sludge until he found Danielle, who was just freeing herself from the now-dead fingers of the fist that enclosed her. Once extricated, she ran to Ruegger and threw her arms about him. Too full of fading adrenaline to articulate his thoughts, he merely took comfort in the reassuring weight of her.
For several minutes, they went around freeing the various members of the coven, who didn’t really need much help now that Laslo was dead. They asked Ruegger few questions, and his answers were short and to the point. A cloud of bats descended over the coven and materialized into Ladrido’s more human form. He smiled at everyone and bowed in acknowledgment to Ruegger.
Jean-Pierre broke from the group and knelt over the three-pronged tail of the Collage, where he studied the faces of Loirot and Kilian, now restored to their human shapes through death. Sophia joined him, a hand on his shoulder. Ruegger and Danielle quietly discussed going over there, but realized this was something private the albino and his wife must do.
“You were assholes,” Jean-Pierre said, his voice thick. “But you deserved better than this. Fucking Junger and Jagoda.” Almost in tears, he raised a dagger. “May this bring you peace.”
He lopped off Kilian’s head, then Loirot’s. Solemnly, he rose and, arm and arm with Sophia, rejoined the others.
The kavasari examined the mountain of knitted corpses that had nearly killed them, making sure that it was, once and for all time, dead, then raised the question of the “sorcerer”, if that’s what Laslo’s nemesis had been. Where was he? Where’d he come from?
Suddenly, out of air that had been empty only moments before, a figure emerged into visibility.
“Indeed,” he said modestly. “I am a sorcerer. Perhaps the only one still living.”
The man was tall, skinny, dressed in a blue robe, clean-shaven, clean-haired, and exuded an atmosphere of serenity, health, and, even, respectability. So it was with great surprise that Ruegger finally recognized the face.
It was Kiernevar.
Chapter 15
Jean-Pierre was dumbfounded. He had barely gotten over the shock of surviving Laslo and beheading Kilian and Loirot—and now this?
Kiernevar, the mortal he’d personally turned into a werewolf, an act he had regretted until now, when the sorcerer had helped save them all. But how could Kiernevar be such a thing? Jean-Pierre had just grown to accept the existence of magic, but to meet a creature that could control magic … and that this creature was Kiernevar …
Further, from what Ladrido had told him, sorcerers could not become shades; so what the hell was going on? Before Jean-Pierre could speak, Ladrido stepped forward and pointed an accusing finger at Kiernevar.
“You. Great Jehoshaphat, it’s you ...”
Kiernevar studied the bat-man critically. “Yes, vampire, it’s I. And you’re the evil little leech that killed my niece.”
Understanding dawned on Jean-Pierre. Jesus. It had been Kiernevar’s niece Ladrido had fed from, and Kiernevar that had transformed him into his current form. But ... but that would have to mean that Kiernevar was at least a thousand years old.
“What the fuck’s going on?” demanded Danielle with her usual forthrightness. “Kiernevar, what ... who ... how? Goddamnit, what happened to you?”
Kiernevar gave her a sad smile. “Quite a bit, Danielle. Not all of it I can remember. The past ... it comes back in pieces, but I remember the gist of it. As for the last nine hundred years, I remember them only as a blur, a dream. One from which I’ve just come out of.”
“But,” said Jean-Pierre. “I made you. I ... I mean, what are you? How did you ... ?”
Kiernevar nodded. “Yes. You all deserve to know my tale, but I must make it brief, as other events demand our attention.”
“Very much so,” said Ruegger. “In fact, why don’t we walk and talk at the same time? But first, let’s make sure Laslo never rises again.”
He spun about to face the immense broken heap of the Collage, and Jean-Pierre and the others turned to join him. Ruegger directed a hand at the rotting mountain and a burst of fire exploded from the Collage’s flank. The rest of the coven, and even Kiernevar with his thunderbolts, joined in, and soon the fallen Heaven was a conflagration so bright and hot the coven stepped back from it. Silently, they watched the monstrosity that Laslo had become ignite into a bonfire of singular proportions, and if any of Laslo’s souls escaped from the thing, Jean-Pierre could not see them for the pillar of smoke that rose, rich and black, from the putrid Paradise itself.
That done, the group set out, bound for the stronghold of Junger and Jagoda, and the former madman told his tale on the way.
“As you’ve surmised, I was a sorcerer,” started Kiernevar. “I was born about 850 AD, if memory serves. I won’t bore you with my childhood or early years. I’ll advance to the final part of my life as I was then ... and which I’m only now recovering. Around 1100, the Dark Lord Roche Sarnova began banding up all the most powerful sorcerers for some mysterious purpose; this coincided with the disappearance of a great many magical creatures.
“I, being an adept of considerable reputation, was invited, and I use the term loosely ... to join Roche Sarnova at the Castle with the other sorcerers he’d been collecting. I begged not to go, fearing something sinister. Besides, to tell you the truth, I was something of a hermit and didn’t relish the thought of society. Especially, I dreaded long conversations with my colleagues. Ultimately I couldn’t go because my researches had been building toward a great discovery, which I was then on the
brink of, and I could not leave them unattended. So I did not join the glut that rushed to the Castle to do Sarnova’s bidding.”
“On with it,” said Kharker.
“Sorcerers are mortal. But, through use of their powers, they can extend their life for long periods of time. Sometimes, as in my case, for centuries. Not being a religious man, I greatly feared death and my studies were leading toward a solution to that problem. The only creatures then who could be labeled invulnerable to oblivion were, of course, immortals, so I did some exhaustive research on what kept them alive. Their curse was not known then and is not known now, to the best of my knowledge. I, of course, being a sorcerer, could not become undead—besides which, I rather disliked most shades and didn’t wish to live for eternity among their company.
“Ultimately, my studies showed that shades must give up something for their immortality; they must be critically flawed or damned in some way. I figured that this might, perhaps, be the secret, though I was reluctant and quite unsure of how to curse myself. Then news filtered to me that the sorcerers Roche Sarnova had enlisted had all been killed and that the Councilwoman Subaire was endeavoring to rid the earth of our kind, once and for all.
“We became a hunted species, what was left of us. Mostly the youths and the ill-trained, the ones Roche Sarnova had neglected to ‘invite’. Subaire tracked and killed them easily. I like to think that a few, like myself, went underground and survived, but of this I have no proof.
“I now had a new and very real reason to become immortalized and I needed to do it soon, hopefully with the added effect that whatever I would become would discourage Subaire from pursuit. In this, I succeeded, but at great cost. I discovered the secret of immortality, and my studies had shown a way to achieve it and accomplish the desired goal of foiling Subaire; she would never know me to be a sorcerer in my new form. Unfortunately, my studies were harried because of my very literal deadline and I never did completely explore the ways in which I could achieve a life without death.