The fire seared through his own arm and shoulder, utterly destroying his right hand and lower arm. He’d regret the months it was going to take to regenerate that…but he wouldn’t regret what it had bought.
Three quarters of Ekhmez’s form disintegrated in the blast of silver flame. The loop of flame and the hands holding it vaporized. The demon’s head and torso disappeared. For a moment, Michael thought even that hadn’t been enough, half-expecting ichor to wrap itself around the surviving pieces…
And then the remnants of Ekhmez’s body, no longer animated by the Pure’s will, disintegrated into black goo.
42
“The gap is holding.”
It was hard to cheer on dragonback, but David’s people managed it. They weren’t getting a lot of information on the status of the battle so far, but so long as Echelon Two and Three were holding the path of retreat open for Fifth Army, something good was coming of this entire mess.
“Echelon One is on the ground and poking the bear,” Riley reported. “We’ve got their attention.”
“Echelon Central Force, be advised, there are airborne units heading in your direction,” the Army officer playing coordinator told them. “It looks like everything they’ve got left—about forty of the bat demons and that dragon.”
“The dragon is mine,” Charles said grimly. “But I need to get the monkeys off my back.”
“Thanks, Charles,” David told him. “Your care for our survival is appreciated.”
“How about a distraction?” Stone asked. “Linking a friend onto this channel.”
“Echelon strike, this is USS Harry Truman Actual,” a gruff voice told them. “Rest of the fleet is still trying to figure just what the hell is going on with your communications, but the President ordered us into the coast.
“I’ve got two guided missile destroyers and twenty-five Super Hornets already in the air. I won’t have more planes for a bit, but if you need firepower, I can put cruise missiles or jet fighters on any target of your call inside ninety seconds.”
“Can you hit a dragon?” David asked instantly.
The carrier admiral coughed.
“That is not a question I ever expected my destroyer captains to have to answer, but they gave me their best estimate this morning,” he admitted. “We’re not sure. We can get SAM missiles into her area, but…the Hornets might be the best chance you’ve got.”
“I need you to take down flying demons,” David replied. “Can you hit them?”
“We have the Air Force’s software package for that,” the admiral confirmed. “And silver packaging for our special friends—but I understand we have a flak problem now?”
“Fly high, clear the demons, and see if you can scare off the smaller dragon with missiles,” David instructed, burying the crazy voice in his gut that was trying to point out he was giving orders to a US Navy admiral.
“My boys can do that,” the admiral agreed. “Stone will pass targets to my destroyers, we’ll pound any of those flak units we can locate as well, but I understand everything we’re doing is to get you to the target.”
“Best guess is killing the Herald will close the portal, and that’s going to take one of a very few magic swords,” the ex-ONSET Commander replied.
“The thought of building a strategy around delivering magic swords to target makes my head hurt.” The admiral paused. “But by god, we’ll make it happen. The Navy will cover you all the way in, Echelon Strike.
“Give ’em hell!”
“Charles, fall back a bit,” Kate ordered over the radio. “We’ll cover you while you offload Echelon Five, but we can’t stop these guys.
“We’ll distract the dragon, let you get David to the target.”
The dragon grunted, but he drifted back for a moment, allowing the attack helicopter to pass him as all of them headed toward the oceanfront.
David’s eyes were good enough that he picked out the oncoming enemy from several miles away. The dragon Serena led the way, the Mage she’d dealt with, Arianna Wong, strapped onto her shoulders.
They’d underestimated the number of demons, too. It was more like sixty of them following the dragon across Portland’s airspace. As David quickly mentally counted them, he was suddenly slammed against his harness as Charles dodged sideways.
A blast of metal spikes flashed past them into the air, and the dragon rumbled in displeasure.
“Do they think I’m that slow?” he muttered. “They can’t even see the helicopters, but the demons at least know those manticores can’t hit me.”
“They have to try, Charles,” David pointed out. “It’s not like there’s any other targets available right now.”
“I hope there are some soon,” his dragon friend replied. “Serena is getting damn close. We were promised friends, right?”
“We were,” David confirmed, eyeing the closing dragon. Maybe a mile and a half away, with Charles perhaps five miles from their destination. They were about to be in serious—
A hundred glowing lights descended from the skies, cutting through the fog the Herald had wrapped the city in as the Navy jet fighters dropped from above the demons. Each of the twenty-five launched four missiles that hammered into the bat demons from above.
Then the guns opened fire—and a second salvo of fifty smaller missiles blazed down at the survivors. In thirty seconds, they’d gone from facing dozens of bat demons to clear skies.
“And that was for the Air Force,” David murmured. The bat demons had taken a horrendous toll of the aircraft the USAF had sent in to relieve Portland—and their Navy cousins had not forgotten.
More brilliant lights appeared, accompanied by sonic booms as the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers accompanying Truman emptied their surface-to-air missiles at Serena. The Super Hornets had focused their fire on the demons and left the dragon for their surface-bound siblings.
This wave of a hundred lights was faster, more maneuverable, and focused on a single target. Maneuverable, prescient, and powerful as a dragon was, there was no way Serena could dodge them all. The Mage on her back flung up defensive screens to protect herself, and the dragon swung north, flying as quickly as she could to buy herself time.
Which gave Black Echelon the time they needed.
“Tell the Navy ‘thank you’ for us, Colonel Stone,” David told the army officer. “The path is clear; we’re going in!”
Charles dove in low and fast as the manticores around the Portland Eastern Promenade tried to drive him off. One of the bursts of spikes cut too close, and for a moment, David thought Lisette Belmont had been hit—only for the metal spikes to pass through the suddenly-partly-ethereal woman as she and her sisters laughed.
“Get ready,” the dragon barked as he careened down to the ground, slamming into the concrete of the street west of the Promenade park with enough force to leave a foot-deep crater around each of his limbs.
“And go!” Charles snapped.
The harnesses had been designed with a focus on making sure no one fell off rather than quick release. David struggled with his for a moment and then, cursing, simply tore the fabric in half.
That option wasn’t available to most of his people, and it took far longer than he’d have liked for his team to get clear. His two big shifters, Nukilik and Carver, were clear as quickly as he was, though, and their animal forms bounded toward the closest demons.
The trio of manticores behind those demons were also heading their way, and all three of David’s Elfin Mages were still struggling… and then three shots rang out, so close together as to be almost a single noise, and the demonic Awakened simply stopped.
Tatton jumped down from Charles’s back, the massive single-action revolver he’d just fanned the hammer on in his hand.
“Thanks,” David told him.
“Anytime.” The sharpshooter emptied the revolver’s cylinder into a pocket and slammed a speed-loader into it. “I wasn’t kidding about what I shot staying dead. On the other hand”—he grinned, stunni
ngly white teeth flashing in the light—“these are custom-built seventy-cal bullets with depleted uranium APDS rounds. I’ve learned I’ve got to actually hurt things for them to stay dead.”
He gestured at the slumped manticores.
“Those take some hurting.”
“Everyone is down,” Amelia Belmont whispered in David’s ear, the ethereal sister suddenly right at his side. The way they moved was terrifying, even to him. “We’re ready to go.”
“Charles?” David asked.
“She’s on her way back,” the dragon replied. “You can find the Herald from here. I’m just air cover. Go!”
As the dragon lifted himself back into the air, a spray of fire from Echelon Four’s helicopter cleared away a group of demons that had managed to get closer than David preferred, and the Mages of Kate’s team started to jump out of the aircraft.
“Here we go,” his girlfriend told him. “Where do we go from here?”
David was about to reach into his Sight when he looked north and chuckled.
“Well, there’s an army or so heading at us from over there,” he said, pointing, “so I’m guessing that way!”
43
Army was the right word, too. The Herald had apparently kept most of his mind-wiped black-coats and actual human cultists around himself, a final literally-human shield against any last-ditch effort that made it this far.
That didn’t mean there weren’t demons and golems and manticores in the force moving to meet them. Just that there were enough humans to make what had to come next painful.
“Is there any chance of recovering the mind-wiped people?” he asked Ix, the demon eyeing his oncoming brethren with disdain.
“I…do not know,” Ix admitted. “Not quickly. Not in a battle. Perhaps once the Herald is dead…”
“I can knock them all out,” Joshi offered, the Indian woman standing nearby with a black shawl wrapped over her headgear. “I do not believe I can hurt the demons or the Awakened, but I can disable their human thralls.”
David was taken aback, but it made sense. What little he knew about banshees like Joshi confirmed that, when fully trained, their voices were among the most flexible weapons known.
“Do it,” he ordered. “Everyone else, cover Joshi. Take down the golems first.”
The Echelon teams waited. There was nothing anyone other than Joshi could do that wouldn’t have collateral damage when a mostly human army was rushing toward them. They needed to clear a path through the demons and golems, but they left it to just one of their number to deal with the thralls.
It started as a song, a keening dirge in Hindi that David didn’t understand a word of. It rose in pitch, shifting in volume as Joshi threw her voice away from her compatriots, toward the enemy.
Words faded as the song continued, fading into simply a shriek that rose and rose in pitch. Even shielded from most of its power, David felt himself shiver as Joshi’s power awake, modulating the sound that emerged from her lips and hammered across the park.
The advancing army slowed first. Then stopped. And then the human members started collapsing. First one. Then two. Then in tens and dozens until there were none still standing and Joshi slowly releasing her song.
She was breathing heavily but gave him a firm nod.
“There you go, Commander,” she told him.
“Kendall, Carver, Nukilik,” David snapped. “Go!”
The three strongest direct combatants in Echelon Five after him led the charge, with Mages and the sharpshooters providing fire support. Tatton’s terrifying bullets hammered the Awakened down as they tried to move up to cover the demons.
Between Echelon Four’s ten Mages and the three in his own team, fire and lightning lit up the sky as well. The attacking force disintegrated. Demons didn’t run—killing the current forms only banished them back beyond the Seal. Half-sentient Awakened definitely didn’t run.
“We’re clear for now,” Young said.
“Agreed. That won’t last,” David replied. “Let’s move.”
The sky above them was split with the roars of dragons fighting as they moved toward the baseball diamond the Herald was supposedly holding court in. David’s gift told him they were heading the right way. That knowledge came with a horrible sense of foreboding that something was going to go horribly wrong, but he wasn’t really surprised by that.
They picked their way over the unconscious forms of the Herald’s thralls and around the ichor and shattered rock that had been the defensive contingent held back to protect the Master’s avatar in this world.
Even without the foreboding, David wouldn’t have believed that this had been everything. No mid-court demons. No greater demons. Not even toad demons. Just thralls, shadow demons and Awakened.
The battle above them only seemed to grow fiercer as they moved north. Now that the two were circling around each other and attacking, it was clear that Charles was significantly larger than Serena. The smaller dragon was faster, though, and she had a Mage on her back.
So far, the fight was disturbingly even, and David couldn’t wait to see how it settled down.
“There are more coming up behind us,” one of the Belmont sisters—he didn’t see which one—said from behind him. “A lot more. They are commanded by a powerful presence…”
David touched his own senses and sighed. He could feel it too.
“A greater demon,” he said softly. “Ix? What do we do?”
The other demon sighed and rolled his shoulders, cracking his knuckles as he stopped.
“A Servant of the High Courts,” Ix said. “Such once commanded me. One of the strongest of the Pure. They have lost their way and who they were, but they are powerful nonetheless.”
“The Herald is stronger,” David noted. Now he’d reached out, he could feel that malevolent presence to the north of them.
“Yes. I can’t fight the Herald for you.” The demon paused thoughtfully, then smiled. “But I have grown since we met Ekhmez. I can’t fight an army alone…but I can hold off the Servant.”
David glanced around his team.
“Kendall, Carver, Nukilik, Wong, Joshi,” he reeled off quickly, marking off half of his people. “Go with Ix. Hold them back. Caroline, go with them and keep your sisters updated.”
Kate quickly dispatched two of her Mages as well, reducing their force by almost half. They needed that line to hold, however. This was going to be a rough-enough fight.
David touched Memoria for reassurance and then traded firm nods with Young and Kate. Leaving Ix and his companions behind, they set off north again.
The baseball diamond had been heavily modified since the Herald had taken up residence. There had once been grass and a giant metal fence around one corner. Now there were earthen walls, raised from the ground by magic and hardened with the same.
There was a single clear entrance, however, with a double row of the largest demons David had ever seen. They were roughly humanoid, with golden skin, four arms, and the head of an animal. None of them were quite the same, even ignoring the animal heads, with arms and legs positioned strangely and the heights varying from eighteen to thirty feet.
David drew his sword, but before his team could attack, the formation split. The demons retreated, falling back to line a path leading into the diamond. They were silent and impassive, but the invitation was clear.
“I don’t like this,” Kate muttered.
“Neither do I, but if the Herald wants to invite us into his den, I’m not turning down the chance to avoid at least one fight.”
They watched the demons all the way in, David expecting the golden giants to attack at any moment. He was mildly surprised, however, to realize that there were no greater demons in the earthen stockade the Herald had assembled.
There was the Herald himself, and a company of two dozen or so mid-court demons, and a scattering of humans…but that was it. The stockade encompassed the old diamond and seemed almost empty.
The mid-court demons presen
t had more in common with the golden giants guarding the entrance than the usual dark-red-skinned creatures. These were silver-skinned and naked, their bodies a continually shifting form of glittering liquid.
A raised dais stood in the middle of the circular stockade, and David recognized both occupants of it. The luxurious chair held the same ivory-white-skinned demon he’d seen in his vision. Standing to his right and directly behind him was John Buckley, still dressed as a priest.
“You see, John?” the Herald said in a surprisingly melodious voice. “The child can be reasonable.”
“You have an interesting definition of reasonable,” David pointed out cautiously. His hand was still on his sword as he advanced, his team spreading out behind him.
The other humans in the area were all Mages, cultists like Buckley. Half a dozen of them, including David’s old mentor. Two dozen silver-skinned mid-court demons. Thirty or so of the golden giants outside.
And the Herald himself.
It was a fight he was quite certain his people could win, now they were here. So, why had the Herald invited them in?
“You’re here to fight me, Battle Seer,” the Herald noted. “And that is…inevitable, I suspect. I find that unfortunate, but I was born for a reason. I know no human who can say that with such certainty.”
“You are a weapon,” David said. “Sent to destroy the world.”
“Sent to remake the world,” the white-skinned youth replied. “To make it as it was, as my fathers and mothers remember it. The Pure do not deny there were crimes committed! Wars fought. Innocents harmed.
“But only a few were guilty of such—and all of my parents’ kind were barred from the world. Exiled into the darkness beyond That Which Is.
“Is it wrong, then, to see to undo that injustice?” the Herald asked, his voice smooth as silk. “To release the magic back into the world? You are a child of what was stolen.”
ONSET: Stay of Execution Page 26