“After she shot the countess twenty-fucking times!” Righty yelled at me again, waving at d’Arc, who was working her way back up her chest and into her body.
“It was only fifteen.”
“That’s it, duel over!” Righty growled at everyone. “We’re taking off.”
“No!” D’arc gasped, eyes going crazy like you’d imagine from some girl that believes she communes directly with God. Here was the woman, a vampire, six-hundred years old, and she still believed. “It looks worse than it is, Pierre,” she told him, standing up. “They went right through. It is hardly a scratch,” she added, blood dripping from her mouth.
“It’s just a flesh wound,” I mumbled in the appropriate accent.
Annie B turned to me. “I’m still mad at you about the knives . . . but that’s funny.”
“Kick her in the balls so we can get out of here already,” I told her.
Annie B glanced at the artifact in my hands, then up at my eyes. She knew I’d fucked up. It was all bluff from here on out.
“Behind you!” I yelled at her, but too late.
D’Arc didn’t even care that she bled and oozed all over the place. The holes on the front of her body twisted up, blood hardening until there were fifteen spikes of blood in their place. No matter how many times I saw it, it still freaked me out.
She jumped forward, honor out the window once the pistol got brought into play, and chopped with the two feet of sword she still had left.
Annie B is quick. Smart too.
Somehow she must have tracked my eyes and figured out where d’Arc came from. Or heard it. I’m not sure, but when she sidestepped to get out of the way of the chop coming for the back of her head, she stepped the best way, not the wrong way. Instead of her head getting split or her shoulder getting gashed halfway into her chest, her arm took the blow. Just above the elbow, her forearm was lopped completely off. It cartwheeled from the impact, sliding onto the dance floor.
Annie B barely acted like she felt it. She turned into d’Arc, her other arm flying in a backfist that smashed across the countess’ jaw. It threw her back just enough for Annie B to bring up a knee into d’Arc’s stomach.
Fifteen spikes disappeared as d’Arc grunted. One single spike reappeared with a vengeance, spearing itself right through Annie B’s ankle.
The baroness cried out, caught. A cheer went up from the vampires and I knew this was bad. D’Arc’s arms grabbed at Annie B’s shoulders, her sword forgotten as she dragged them both to the ground. Shells were suddenly unimportant. Here is the true fight of vampires. Real vampires. Of blood on blood. It took place inside Annie B’s body.
Really bad.
Annie B’s next scream was so primal it dragged my body off the table and dragged my thoughts back to the Shaky Stick.
I couldn’t put anima into it but what if I can take anima out of it? I thought to myself.
An Artificer can trap anima into a vial, we can take it from the vial into an artifact, we can make the artifact act as its own recharge or as a storage chamber, we can make the artifact do certain things once we figure flow and formulas and certain requirements. Most artifacts are keyed to be set off by either a small burst of anima or by a simple mechanical trigger. My original static ring is by a small burst, as an example, and my Cold Cuffs by the trigger of being shut.
But the Shaky Stick . . .
The Shaky Stick basically threw anima at everything that came near it. Hence all the discharge over the years. It wanted to give anima away.
Humans can only use the anima they pool inside of themselves . . . you can’t take from nature, it’s impossible. But what if some artificer a thousand years ago had figured out another way? What if he made an artifact that could take from nature and then refine it for a mancer’s use . . .
I think I’m holding the most valuable item in the world in my hand, I thought. Or . . . in my coat pocket with the thing pretending to be the most valuable item in the world in my hand . . .
“Don’t even think about interfering,” Righty told me, pointing from across the other side of Annie B and Joan d’Arc struggling on the ground, bloody goo flowing from d’Arc’s stomach and into Annie B’s ankle. “I’ll kill you even if you bring the whole building down on top of us.”
I believed him.
On the ground, Annie B screamed again.
D’Arc laughed over it all. “You like that, you whore? Your own medicine! Exactly how you killed him, you disgusting cannibal!”
Another scream as Annie B tried to push her off, but d’Arc went nowhere.
“This is how you killed him, is it not? This is how you ate him? This is how you destroyed the man I loved? The man I was going to marry once his service as a human ended? He was a true saint, a man of God, and you murdered him! Scream, you bitch!”
Screams turned to laughs in Annie B’s throat.
D’Arc looked pissed. “What is so humorous?”
“The . . . man . . . you . . . love,” Annie B gasped between whatever happened inside her body as the two warred over veins and arteries. “Your . . .true saint . . .” Another laugh. “It’s funny because . . . he . . . fucked me like a jackrabbit . . . that’s how I got close!”
“Liar!” D’Arc hammer-fisted Annie B across her broken nose, but the baroness only kept laughing.
“He wasn’t even . . . good . . .”
“The words of a dead woman!”
“King Henry . . . the Artificer . . . right there . . . he’s better . . .”
Hell yeah.
“Your betrothed . . . wanted me . . . to spank him . . . did you . . . spank him, Joan?”
D’Arc full on pimp-slapped Annie B. “Shut up! You will be dead in a few minutes, just shut up!”
Annie B turned her head so she could see me. “If this doesn’t work . . . glad to know . . . you, King Henry.”
“Same,” I told her, motioning the fake artifact.
Annie B’s right hand, the one still attached to her, came out of her pocket with the ring I’d given her on the tipping point of sliding down her finger. It worked the same as Cold Cuffs only it didn’t impair movement, didn’t even try to last for a long period of time, it just straight up slammed cold into a person. One really good jolt.
Might kill a human . . . a vampire . . .
“Joan . . .” Annie B said, “Sorry . . . you’re a . . . self-righteous twat . . . that couldn’t . . . give it up . . .”
“What is that?” d’Arc asked in puzzlement. Last words she ever spoke.
The ring slipped on.
Annie B met d’Arc’s eyes and you could see the battle turn just by the way their faces shifted. Raising her other arm, the one that had been cut off, Annie B held it over the countess’ heart. “You were never supposed to survive the fire,” she whispered. “Heretic. Blasphemer. Godless.”
D’arc’s eyes went wide the exact moment a huge spear of vampire-manipulated blood shot through her chest. Some straight up Terminator shit. The spear shifted behind d’Arc, shrinking back into her body, until I could see Annie B’s wound was forming an arm and a hand made entirely of manipulated blood. Her teeth showed as she grasped within the countess and then d’Arc’s heart tore from her chest. Shells are useless without a heart . . .
What a way to die.
All left to d’Arc was to see if she’d grown old enough to survive the atmosphere by herself, where she might do better than survive and be declared a duchess.
Die or flourish.
Goo slid from the body, onto Annie B, and then to the floor. It moved towards Righty, making no sound, but there was something in its movements that could only be called shrieking—a wiggle like a lightning bolt that said pain without words.
Halfway to him . . . the gooey mass stopped.
Righty gazed down at his countess’ true from, then to her body, then to Annie B as she breathed heavily, then to me and the Shaky Stick, finally at the vampires still surrounding us. Looking for a way out of what had just happened. W
hen he couldn’t find that way out, he was happy with someone to crush.
I was already moving to stand over Annie B, to protect her.
Righty snarled, he stared at d’Arc’s body and snarled again.
Annie B went ahead and put salt in the wound. Not just a little shifting salt shaker. She took a mound of fine white salt and slammed it down into the wound. Then she rubbed it in. “I claim her body by right of duel.”
“Murderers!” Righty screamed.
That was my cue.
I pulled at the anima inside the Shaky Stick. Feeling what came out of it, I instantly realized my mistake and realized exactly why it got called the Earthquake Baton. It’s not made to cause an earthquake, but it could. It’s exactly like my hour long pools, only at such a size that it wasn’t even a lake but an ocean of anima.
The problem is that some idiot—like me—comes along and instead of picking at the scab they yank the whole thing off and take Annie B’s arm right on with it.
All that anima and how could you control it?
I grabbed at an hour’s worth and still missed enough to crack every metal object in the room. Plutarch told me once that I’m one of, if not the strongest geomancer he’s ever met. A poor normal geomancer? Not an Ultra? He didn’t have a chance.
Me?
I grabbed at every piece of anima I could and started slamming it into things . . . and I knew the second I started doing it, that it wasn’t going to be enough. There was just too much . . . how long would it take to drain the Pacific if you had yourself a container for all the water and really tried? We’ll even give you industrial pumps. Months? Years?
The earth shook under my feet, the earthquake building. My first piece of anima smashed into the ground at Righty’s feet, the concrete foundation riding a wave of soil strong enough that it catapulted a block the size of a VW Bug up into the air, rolling right on top of Righty and killing him where he stood. Cars might be made to give, earth ain’t.
More anima escaped.
There wasn’t enough to do. Not enough targets. Not enough earth around me. Not enough time to think of ways to use it. I couldn’t stop it, no matter how much I tried. One-hundred years worth of anima.
The building shook.
Outside, you could hear the car alarms start going off, even as metal on those cars shattered when unleashed anima found them. I grabbed more, trying to hold back the ocean. More concrete slabs flew, smashing vampires that wanted nothing to do with me now, that were all trying to escape, but I had to do something.
I broke those slabs into dust and then formed them back. I made the metal of Annie B’s knives reform. I made art out of what remained of d’Arc’s sword. I spewed soil from deeper than the foundations, sending it in waves all around the dance floor. I pumped anima into my own body, my old iron fist but for every single bone.
Annie B got to her feet and kept her balance despite the shaking ground.
I could feel deep into the earth now . . . our shaking was localized but not for long. The anima poured and stretched and wanted to be used.
In front of me, Annie B reattached her arm like nothing special. D’Arc’s body stayed at her feet. “Can I do anything? Knock you out?”
“Won’t work,” I gritted out through my teeth. Around us, the soil formed into people and the concrete coated them like clothes and they danced around the room in a waltz as I controlled each of them in turn, even each grain in turn.
Below Fresno, deep in the ground, the anima found it’s outlet among the deep faults running over California and the entire earth shifted. All around the city, home for half a million people coated in gray fog, the ground moved, their houses swayed . . . an earthquake, a huge earthquake up and down the fault and what could I do . . . there was still more . . .
“I need to burn it all,” I gasped, “But it’s too much.”
Annie B watched the room of dancing soil people. “This isn’t enough?”
“Not even close . . . can’t you feel it? It’s a big one!”
Across the room, where I’d earlier broken two pieces of steel reinforcement in the roof, the roof gave way, crashing down on a pair of earth dancers. The magnitude built . . . not one earthquake but consecutive ones as the anima streamed down into the fault like water that had found its way through a single hole.
4.9.
5.3.
5.7.
5.9.
6.0.
6.1.
“Help me!” I screamed.
“Artificing,” she shouted over the rattling building and the moving earth. “Make one.”
“You need a design and formulas and more, it’d just go wrong and that’d be worse than this! I need something else!”
Annie B grabbed at me to keep me standing. One of my hands stayed in my coat, the other holding what looked like the Shaky Stick.
She didn’t seem to notice as her eyes lit up with an answer to our problem. “Divination! You can do that, right? Do the biggest geomancy divination ever on all this soil!”
“Brilliant! That’s brilliant!”
I threw almost all the remaining anima of the Shaky Stick into the soil around me, finally getting a handle on it. I flooded it all, so hard and thick the soil and concrete snapped like it was explosive. A pair of gigantic concrete hands gathered the divination soil into a huge ball of earth—soil, broken metal, ground-down rock, even glass, all the types I could control—it was almost ten feet wide. It hovered before us, concrete hands shattering themselves to nothing, anima alone keeping the ball of earth in the air through magnetism, waiting, anima saturating more and more, pushing it even more tightly together until . . .
It burst apart, littering the dance floor with cursive writing, a clock-like shape of twelve verses.
Holy shit . . .
This wasn’t a divination . . .
This was a full on Anima Prophecy.
My eyes found the words.
And I think it was about me . . .
Daerht reh stcelloc ydal eht
For idle play not a king’s heart is
Can break more than one madman’s mind
Ruoy slavir stiaws, eht tsol stiaws uoy
Tnuocca ot dellac eb nac sgnik
When another possesses found never enough
But not yet has been shell-less
Ro ylerus htob lliw gnah
Yadot maercs senivid, yawa klaw daed eht
Stand again and meet anew
Relief comes among ring and steel
Evivrus ro ton, rof eurt s’neeuq noisiced
Netaeb eb tsum gnik trid eht
Go away easily pain will not
Stolen by he of gruesome renown
Eh gnilliw ot ecifircas llahs niw
Yawa sdaelp yad s’tnias fo ehs
Other’s face the both hate
Mangy canines ravage at chest’s latch
Dna ecaep tsum eb edam, trid gnik
Kcohs ni nopu decnahc buc tsol
Will be needed all the ladies
Out of past comes a Virgin Foe
Rof sebab era knil ni erom naht tsuj tneserp
Neeuq daed gnol dna gnik trid
And neither gives in King Dirt King faces Dog
No matter how big a chorus sing
Erom sedir no siht tset naht a elgnis doohilevil
Gink, lleb ruo seog gnir
In eternal battle mortal enemies lock
Yet both will face the same fate
Won resolc ot a gnik naht reve erofeb
Gnik trid, ecnirp daed
Have run ahead a pair and more
All your secrets will be given
Sdneirf sevil od gnah yb a s’llub nroh
Kcolc eht tuo dessim, dekcol era spil
Broken and gone what is thought
Armies are gathered
Ecaf niap yb gniwollof a s’lavir dnuoh
Ylowls sehcaorppa yad wen
Once been headless has Long Dead Queen
Red sweet must be had, Dirt King
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Eht gnik tsum worth meht sih enob
Llah ot semoc dloc, llac eht seog wak
Love gone scorn to forget another
A king must hold back the powers
Tseildaed fo nek ot hserf sdnah og
A burst of anima wiped the words out. That didn’t make sense . . . it was gibberish . . .
One last bit of anima . . . small . . . not even a second worth . . . went into the artifact in my hand, the very last to remain in the Shaky Stick.
The earth stopped shaking.
I could barely breathe. I could also barely stand.
“King Henry?” Annie B asked, worried.
It was over . . . I’d done it . . .
The artifact in my hand crumbled into jade dust right before I passed out.
The ground caught me softly, just like always.
Session 8
“I hear you’re still a free agent, King Henry.”
I was on my favorite bench, up near the top of the Mound. It was old as dirt, some floromancer construction of wood that refused to give into the elements, the rain and wind and snow, refused to rot. I liked that about it. Instead, it was hard and smooth, the lines of grain cracked open near the surface but still holding together on the inside.
Guess you’d call that a metaphor. Beaten and used, still fighting despite the scars. I liked the bench. We had some shit in common.
The bench sat on the side of the Mound facing south towards the Field. Four-hundred-ish mancers, including twenty-eight Ultras, had graduated three days before, the entire Asylum and selected parents turned out to watch. I’d worked hard so my dad would be on the list, but he’d been unable to get the time off work, which is nothing new for me, I guess . . . at least I’d gotten a phone call out of him, even if it had ended in cursing . . .
Three days, but that’s a lot of mess to clean up, the Field still remained covered in debris—discarded programs and tissues, even a graduation cap or few—the platform where the diplomas had been handed out was still erect, but it wouldn’t last another day. The Asylum had moved on from Class 2009. I was the only one left. Still undecided. The last one . . . just like Day Number One.
The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady (The King Henry Tapes Book 1) Page 26