Devil Take Me

by Jordan L. Hawk

  I was growing tired.

  I never got tired.

  Raising my swords once again, I pulled together as much of my strength as I could muster and prepared to strike the Red Queen dead. Then I heard Naomi call out once again.

  “You’re not even a real dragon!” Her words stunned the genuflecting crowd to silence. Our world once hung on an unraveling thread when similar words were spoken what seemed like lifetimes ago. No one dared even a whisper, and time hiccupped, caught on a balance between realities. And then Naomi unknowingly but firmly brought the hammer down upon us all. “You can’t eat me. And when I wake up, you won’t be here. Because you’re not real!”

  Eight

  “YOU’RE NOTHING but a pack of cards!”

  Those words whispered in the darkest corner in every house and in every court. To hear them come from Naomi’s lips sent a shiver through the Red Queen’s lackeys. I hadn’t been there when Alice tore apart the Queen of Hearts’ elite force, but I’d heard the stories. Alice was the reason I existed. She was an unstoppable malevolent force whose wave of destruction brought about the Ace of Spades. I, like those who came before me, were to be the last line of defense against the warping of our world.

  When I arrived, broken and mewling from my life on the other side of the looking glass, the queen decided the best thing to fight a threat from Alice’s world was to turn someone from that world into her own personal executioner.

  She hadn’t been wrong, but the humans I’d been forced to defend her from had been adults.

  Children were something completely—and wildly—different.

  That truth became glaringly apparent as Naomi’s fear-tinged fury broke over us.

  The slender ribbons pouring out of her widened and snapped into sharp lines with edges keen enough to cut through a Wonderland City being. The courtiers who’d gathered around the edge of the courtyard fought to get clear of the swift-moving undulations, but one cannot outrun the wind.

  A wave touched the dress hem of a beautiful, hauntingly featured woman. She’d stumbled over her own feet—a soft ballet flat spangled with jewels was her downfall. I caught bits and pieces of her death with the Red Queen weaving about in front of me, but what played out in the courtyard would fuel Wonderland City’s nightmares for centuries to come.

  Naomi’s invoked perspective licked at the woman’s bare foot when her slipper slid off her heel. The hardening ribbon slowly grew less transparent as it moved away from Naomi, marbled with a frosted gleam. It barely glanced off the woman’s arch, but the tiniest touch was enough to disrupt her life. Leaving the slipper behind, her bared sole touched the floor, and as she tried to break into a run, the disintegrating marble seized hold of her skin and ripped it from her foot.

  She left a bloodied print on the marble, and it seemed as if that was all the price she would pay for crossing Naomi’s path, but the world I’d come from would have its full pound of flesh.

  The pawn’s undoing was swift, an unstitching of ensorcelled dead limbs and bones. What lay in store for the woman was far more horrifying, and despite the dragon snapping at my head, I couldn’t pull my attention away from the courtier being eaten alive by a little girl’s scream.

  A single curdle of air caught at her skin and peeled it from her ankle into fine threads. Her mind didn’t grasp what was happening to her, or at least that’s all I could think of to explain why she tried to run as her frail flesh unraveled from her skeletal frame. Her clothes melted from her limbs and dripped down like wax caught in a roaring fire. The profanity of her death struck me speechless. Her blood became dust, and her limbs churned and fought to propel the woman on, but each minute stagger forward carried less and less of her.

  Another wave smacked her from behind and shoved her down into the marble, but her body never struck the floor. The bends of reality were brewing their own storm, and a frenetic heat much like a wildfire grabbed hold of her unspooling remains, flung them up into the air, cast the earth and grit of her existence into the wind, and then moved on to consume another.

  Only her face remained. A limp, paper-thin mask made of skin and paint drifted on the air flurries and battled the faint snowfall coming through the courtyard’s open roof. It landed a few inches away from my feet. The woman’s final, unheard scream turned her face into a gargoyle mimicry of her beauty.

  The Red Queen lashed out with her injured leg, and her claws came down and shredded the dead woman’s mask, her last bit of existence.

  It all happened in the blink of an eye, yet wearing the remains of the Ace’s armor drove every detail straight through my brain. I caught every whiff of her fear and tasted her blood on my tongue as its ashy flakes swirled around me. Caught in disbelief at her death, her soul’s passage into the unknown was unseen by anyone but the girl who unwittingly caused it. I wouldn’t know how to fix that loss of innocence. I didn’t even know if Naomi would remember any of it when she returned, but if she did, she would be like all of us who’d come through—broken beneath the weight of our humanity and the savagery of this place.

  “Xander! Don’t let it touch you!” Jean Michel’s order broke through the stupor I’d been caught in. “I’ll see if I can get to her.”

  That was possibly the most spectacularly bad idea Jean Michel ever had.

  “Help me with the queen!” I shouted back, adjusting my swords in my hands. “Blue will protect the girl!”

  My little dog was fierce, a cobalt-lit protector unwilling to give an inch when threatened. As silly as it was to place my trust in a canine, Blue was our best bet to keep Naomi safe. Well, him and the fragmented bits of reality tumbling out of Naomi’s tiny, shivering body.

  She’d curled up against the column, dragging the dog in close. Her eyes were screwed shut, and my jacket swaddled her slender frame, but it was all the protection I’d had to offer against snow. I could only hope Blue’s ambient warmth would keep her from freezing long enough for us to kill the Red Queen, then escape.

  Or at least I hoped we would escape.

  God, let me escape.

  The winds were growing fiercer, filled with the grit of the dead. Its heat rose, smashing into the cold snowfall overhead. The battle between the elements raged as hotly as the Red Queen’s temper, sparking a roll of electricity spikes across the courtyard’s length. A strike hit one of the columns, leaving a smoking hole in the stone, and another caught at the curtains hanging behind the queen’s throne, consigning it to flames. The palace creaked and groaned around us, the structure caught in a war it would eventually lose. If Naomi’s frosted ribbons didn’t send it tumbling down around our heads, the Red Queen’s death would bring its walls crashing down to its foundations.

  “I will not let you destroy me,” the dragon spat, her breath as fiery as the currents rising from the crumbling marble floor. The tiles were disintegrating beneath our feet, becoming a sea of red-and-white sand. “I will see you dead before I let you kill me. I will not let that thing bring about the end of our realm. Not when that will be my legacy.”

  “No.” And with that, I was done talking to the Red Queen.

  Jean Michel was at my side before I could take the first swing. I dwarfed him in my armor, its bristle of plates and spires meant to intimidate as much as protect. He brought with him the bloodline of the Hearts, and the ace on my chest flared with his proximity. He looked better than I expected. Although still smeared with blood, sweat, and dust, he was ready to fight, hoisting up his borrowed long sword. His dark eyes were alive with an intense fire I could only hope would carry us through.

  If I could have, I’d have ripped off the helm covering my face and taken one last kiss from his mouth, just in case we fell.

  I was going to have to be satisfied with the quirk of a smile he gave me and the roaring yell he let out as he attacked.

  I’d grown up on kung fu movies where a bad guy waited his turn to attack and everything was a fest of choreographed punches, kicks, and nerve-rattling grunts. Having been in my own share
of trouble as a kid, I also knew fights were ugly, messy, and sometimes without a clear winner.

  Battle was something completely different.

  There was no space in a man’s mind to contemplate the grace of an attack. Each second pounded forward, fed by a low-simmering edge of fear and desperation. Even as close to invincible as the Queen of Hearts made me, the flight instinct of human nature ran strong beneath my drive to kill.

  Dragons tended to bring out the worst in me, and this one was no exception, especially since I already knew she could tear me apart.

  “Stay to my right,” Jean Michel barked, glancing to his side.

  “Done this before, asshole.” I threw him a disparaging look. The Red Queen lashed out at me, and I countered, slicing at her front leg’s upper joint. I hit bone quickly, carving up a piece of flesh onto my blade. It slid down to the tip of my sword and I flicked it clear, not wanting to find it beneath my feet later.

  The madness shone in her faceted eyes, a sickly yellow spreading through them. Blood dripped from her wounds, and her forked tongue slithered around the edges of her open mouth, spit hanging in long threads from her chin. The sands soaked in every drop she shed, sucking it up and sticking together into chunks. She was tiring but mustered up enough strength to snap at Jean Michel, catching her fangs on his arm.

  My swords gleamed black under the pale sun, rivers of light playing over their bony surfaces when I brought them both down on the Red Queen’s stretched-out neck. They went in deep, and she twisted around, flinging her head back. Her crown of horns hooked into my side, tangling through the plate ridges protecting my ribs.

  A spur found the slice of exposed skin there, and agony sent my stomach muscles into spasms, her jutting horn tip ripping through my side. Blood gushed over the spike, and I fought to pull free, but the hooked spur was lodged in deep. A twist of the Red Queen’s head sent me tumbling to the left, and Jean Michel barely got out of my way. The courtyard spun around me, a jittery zoetrope playing out before my eyes as she thrashed about with my pierced body impaled on her crown.

  I caught bits and pieces of the palace: a flash of terrified courtiers falling beneath Naomi’s expanding curls, Blue in a fierce stance at her feet, and the shifting mounds of the dead’s unraveled remains piling up against the stairs and column bases, tumbleweeds of dusty flecks and bloodied threads rolling over the growing marble dunes.

  And Jean Michel’s determined, scowling face as he sprinted toward me.

  Jabbing in between us, Jean Michel hammered at the horn with his sword’s pommel, its metal hilt end striking up sparks with every hit. His grunts were harsh, explosive bits of anger giving way beneath his frustration. The dragon’s head jerked to the side, taking me with it. Jean Michel’s sword came dangerously close to my stomach, clattering against my armor, and the bounce back drove his hilt straight down into the Red Queen’s glowing eye.

  I didn’t know how much of her was left in the dragon. Her cries were frenzied, animalistic in their fury, and the scream she let loose echoed about the courtyard, drowning everything else out.

  Reeling, the Red Queen lunged forward, digging the horn in deeper and pushing me farther back. I choked on the dank air caught in my chest, my tongue folding back into my throat, and I struggled to catch my breath through the pain working down my body. Jean Michel was back between us before I could cry out, slamming into the Red Queen’s nest of horns as hard as he could.

  The piece broke, freeing me from the Red Queen’s horns, and I collapsed, clutching at my side. Blood oozed from between my fingers, coating my gauntlet. Breathing heavily, I shook off Jean Michel’s offered hand, nodding at the dragon.

  “Go.” I’d lost my weapons in the fray, and while it took me a second to get to my feet, I staggered upright. “Hold her off. I’ll get my swords.”

  Jean Michel leapt back into the battle, taking the brunt of the Red Queen’s recovering lunge, but his swings were slower, growing weaker with each stroke. My weapons lay only a few feet away, but I struggled to get there. My cuirass dragged me down, and the ace in its center sputtered, dimmed to a flickering glow.

  My hands were on my weapons’ hilts when the Red Queen got a hold of Jean Michel’s sword arm, and my heart stopped.

  Her teeth clamped down on his arm, piercing his bicep, and she lifted him up off the floor. A pained flush mottled his face, his jaw clenched tightly, and he worked himself around, wrapping his legs around her neck to prevent her from flinging him about. Curling his hand into a fist, he punched at the Red Queen’s injured eye, driving as much force into his blows as he could.

  “Off with her head,” I reminded myself, echoing a long-hated refrain.

  It was the only way she would die. One of the few ways any of us could be killed outside of whatever a human child could do to us. With the exception of the Cheshire Cat, an enduring mystery in an enigmatic world, decapitation was final. I just needed to get it done.

  Digging my swords into the sands, I hit solid a few inches down and heaved myself to my feet. The light had gone out of my cuirass, and my armor creaked, pieces of enchanted black metal falling away with each lurching step I took. There was a crack along the top of my helm. I could see the sky above my right eye, and the fingers on my left gauntlet were difficult to close. The bit of horn stuck in my side continued to dig into me, but I couldn’t stop to pull it out.

  I had a dragon to slay, even though I wanted to fall to my knees and sleep forever.

  The Red Queen flinched under Jean Michel’s blows, tossing her head back and forth in an attempt to dislodge him, but the prince held fast. His powerful thighs bulged to ride through her thrashing, and he’d dropped his sword, focused on striking her temple in the hopes she would release him.

  My swords were heavy, and my arms shook from their weight. I felt every snowflake hitting my shoulders, their brief cold touch burning through me before melting off my battle-heated armor. My bones ached from wearing the heavy plating. I didn’t know if the magic was leaving my armor or if Naomi was stripping it out of the air. I was sick to my stomach, spitting blood out of my throat in order to breathe, and it didn’t look like anything we did was slowing the Red Queen down.

  “Strike her heart!” Jean Michel shouted down at me. His toes skimmed the ground when one of his legs lost its purchase, and he fought to hook it back over her neck. “Now, Xander!”

  It took everything I had to lift my blades up. Something I could’ve done without thinking, as if brushing a leaf from my shoulder, now left me as weak as a nearly drowned kitten. My abdomen burned, and something in my spine cracked, shooting pain down to my hips, but I brought my swords up, then drove them through the dragon’s chest.

  She let Jean Michel go.

  He tumbled to the ground, tossed with a shake of her head. I tried to catch him, leaving my weapons buried in her flesh, but all I did was make matters worse. He hit my right arm, taking me down with him. The sudden punch of his weight into my beleaguered body drove me down into the sand. The horn tip wormed its way along my side, and I began choking on the blood seeping into my mouth from where I bit my cheek. Somewhere a few yards away, Blue began to bark, but I didn’t have the strength to do anything other than lie there and wait to die. The Red Queen’s frenzied convulsions brought her sharp talons dangerously close to our sprawled bodies, and her eyes were now fully engulfed by bilious yellow swirls. It was difficult to tell if the woman was still there inside the dragon, at least from where I lay. She said nothing, no words layering through her deafening shrieks.

  Death was not going to come for her because I placed my blades in her heart. She was too old, too powerful. Someone—anyone—needed to cleave her head from her neck. That was the only way we’d be rid of her, providing she didn’t go the way of the Cheshire Cat.

  I had to move. This wasn’t a game. The Red Queen’s power stripped me of my strength and broke through the Ace of Spades’ armor, but no one was going to come and save us.

  “Get off of me,” I
said, shoving Jean Michel aside. “We have to finish this.”

  He rolled, groaning as he clutched his chewed-on arm. Getting to his feet, Jean Michel nearly lost his balance, but I wasn’t much better. Somewhere in the sand and the dead lay his sword, and I needed to put my hands on it. A spear wouldn’t do. The blade needed to have enough strength to cut through bone and nerves, severing her spine.

  “Xander! Get down!” I didn’t have time to reply or even question. I turned to see what new threat we had to face when Jean Michel tackled me to the ground… just as the air turned into a skein of opaque ribbons above our heads.

  “You can’t hurt them!” Naomi stood at the top of the stairs, her filthy face streaked with dried tears and full of rage. Blue’s teeth were clamped into my jacket’s sleeve, his hind legs working to pull her back from the edge. She leaned forward, trying to tug free of the dog, but he wasn’t having any of that. Giving up, she took a long, shuddering breath and wiped her nose on the back of her hand as new tears fell from her frightened eyes. “Leave them alone!”

  The air smelled different, like freshly made donuts dipped in hot melted sugar. I could’ve sworn I heard laughter and the rattle of wheels on a track, but I could only see the courtyard and the Red Queen, her draconian body heaving with the effort to breathe. She was hunched over, scraping at the ground with her chest to dislodge my blades, but the soft sand slid around the hilts, giving her nothing to wedge against to push them free.

  “You’re not even really a dragon,” Naomi pronounced, her voice raw from screaming. “You’re just a mean old lady.”

  The ribbons above us fell, and the Red Queen began to twist inside out.

  Time is broken. Hell, we were broken. The sky above us was patchy, sheets of familiar gray heavy with the promise of ice cutting through great stretches of deep blue dotted with fluffy white clouds. Seagulls cawed while they flew from one cerulean spot to the next, never appearing in the smoky gray. We were in the mountains, much too far for seagulls, but there they were, diving in between the blues before vanishing in the clouds.