Five feet ahead, a wave of billowing violet energy echoed her gesture. It slammed down from the heavens with the weight of a marble pillar and crushed the man beneath it, smashing him into a blood-soaked mass of pulped flesh and twisted metal.
* * *
Hedy tried to keep Nessa and Marie in sight as she led her coven along the southern trail. She saw their battle begin, watched them fight their way down the center boulevard, then lost sight of them behind the frosty white paint of the penguin house. Up ahead, to her left, the gunfire was closer. So were the screams of the wounded and the dying. Harmony’s men were losing their fight.
She froze a moment, eyes darting left and right, forced to decide.
Gazelle watched her, uncertain. “Mistress?”
“My mother can take care of herself,” Hedy said. “These men can’t. Let’s go, we’re helping them.”
They made it ten feet before a dark figure plunged from the trees to land squarely in their path. More figures boiled from the tangled underbrush and rounded the bend at their backs to cut off retreat.
“Thieves,” hissed a Sister of the Noose.
“Thieves and blasphemers,” said another, clutching a silken garrote in her squirming fingers.
The witches clustered in a tight circle as Hedy swallowed a surge of terror. She’d lost so many of her apprentices to these monsters, watched them die for the choices she’d made, and she’d thought that nightmare was over. Now she was going to lose the rest. It was a hopeless fight, no way out, and—
Gazelle took her hand.
Hedy blinked. Gazelle squeezed her hand, tight, and locked eyes with her.
“We believe in you,” she whispered.
Other hands were on her now, touching her back, her shoulders, her arms. Her students, her children, telling her without words that she had never lost their faith. She was still their Dire Mother, and they were counting on her to lead them.
Hedy raised her head high. She rolled her shoulders, and her free hand curled in a ritual gesture, beckoning a curse to her fingertips. The air above her hand shimmered like a heat mirage.
“We are the Pallid Masque,” she said to her coven. “And as the Owl taught us, sacrifice is what happens to our victims. Not one of you is permitted to die tonight.”
Gazelle let go of her and clenched her hands into eager fists.
“Understood,” she said.
“Then prepare for battle. And victory.”
“Not alone,” said a new voice from the shadows.
The sisters turned, heads raised and veils rippling as if they were sniffing the air. The Mourner was a ghost walking, luminous in her white gown and gloves. The sisters hissed as one, a furious rattlesnake sound.
One pointed her gloved finger. “Traitor.”
“I tried to show you the glory and beauty of freedom,” the Mourner said. “You refused to listen, blinded by your devotion to a false god. It seems the only way you’ll find freedom is in death. And so, my old sisters, I love you so much that I’ve come to grant it to you.”
Two sisters dove toward her. The Mourner’s leg shot out in a whip-crack kick, ribs snapping under her heel; then she spun and threw a flurry of punches so fast the air blurred in her wake. The coven moved as one. Hedy unleashed the curse on her fingertips, lancing toward the closest sister like a dart made of bubbling acid, as her apprentices broke in all directions. Butterfly dropped to her knees, choking, as a silken noose dropped over her head and cinched around the slender woman’s throat. Gazelle was there in a heartbeat, slicing through the line and cutting her loose, while Mantis hurled herself onto Butterfly’s attacker and plunged a dagger straight into the assassin’s veiled face.
The Mourner dropped low, gloved fingers to the stone, and swung herself into a circle kick. She put her entire body behind it, brute force and sheer momentum, throwing two more sisters off their feet. She raised her veiled face and called out to the witches.
“I can hold them off—the humans up ahead need your help. Go!”
* * *
Daniel and Caitlin had made it as far as the old food court, an elevated plaza atop a long-drained fish habitat, when a portal ripped open in their path. The things it spat out were barely human. They had skin like beef jerky and distended jackal jaws, segmented eyes glittering like faceted opals as they loped on long, jagged-clawed hands and feet.
Daniel brandished a brace of playing cards in his right hand and a .45 automatic in his left. He let the cards fly, his razor-edged opening argument, and followed up with three quick shots. Muzzle flash lit the darkness and one of the creatures hit the plaza floor, kicking and thrashing in its death throes. Another tumbled over the railing, plummeting to die in the dry aquamarine veins of the fish habitat below.
Caitlin slung back her coat. Her bullwhip slithered free. Inside the other half of her coat, snaps broke loose and she tugged out a foot-long shaft of tempered bronze. She gave it a shake. It sprouted a long haft and bloomed a wickedly barbed tip, becoming a full-fledged spear in the blink of an eye.
The whip slashed down upon the pavement with a crack of thunder, and blue flame raced from the handle to its tip like a trail of lit gasoline. Then she twirled the whip above her head and lashed out, snaring one of the creatures around its neck and dragging it close. The tip of her spear punched through its chest and out the other side.
They were coming too fast, too many of them. One bowled Daniel over, knocking him onto his back. He pointed his automatic toward the moon and pulled the trigger, blasting the creature off him and rolling to the side as another pounced claws-out toward his head. He flicked another playing card, barely looking, and slashed its throat wide open.
Caitlin dove into the fight, gleeful, laughing as the creatures tried to swarm her. She lassoed one with her burning whip, its body igniting like a torch, then swung it like a wrecking ball. It slammed into three of its brothers, sending them scattering, plummeting over the railing, braying as they burned like dying stars.
“Oh,” Daniel called out, dodging backward as claws sliced at his face. “Who is loud and flashy in this relationship?”
She rolled her eyes. “Behind you, pet.”
He turned, pulled the trigger, and blew a creature out of the air in mid-pounce. He used its corpse as a springboard as he ran to get some distance. There was movement to the east. A brick wall of a man standing atop the old lodge building, gesturing and talking into a vintage microphone. As he pointed the tip of a copper blade, another cavernous maw ripped open on the far side of the zoo.
Down below, he spotted Harmony and Jessie on the move, running to support their team. He let another two cards fly, dropping his closest attackers, and shouted out to the agents.
“Hey, looks like the asshole on the roof over there is the one opening these portals—take him out!”
* * *
Redbird Cell was overrun by the reptile house, two men down and waging a fighting retreat against the Network’s undead soldiers. Beach Cell wasn’t doing much better; they were lighting up the radio, screaming for reinforcements, and Harmony heard the crump of a flashbang grenade detonating in the distance.
They heard Daniel’s shout, and they were closer to the lodge, but a wordless glance between them settled it. Priorities. They had to take care of their people first and hope someone else could get up on the roof. They rounded a bend and hit the ground as automatic-rifle fire chopped the air above their heads. Redbird’s operatives were pinned, trapped behind the bullet-riddled gecko statue, and their leader was doing battlefield triage on an agent with a sucking chest wound.
Harmony called to her magic. The air turned to congealed syrup, trapping a hail of bullets and slowing them to a crawl. She held the weave as her partner sprang past her, turquoise eyes blazing, and hurled herself onto the shoulders of one of the Network zombies. She grabbed him under the chin, twisted, and pulled. The flesh of his neck stretched, then ripped wide, his head tearing free with the crunch of splintering bone.
Another grenade went off, over by the swan lagoon. Beach’s team leader was screaming over the radio, begging for reinforcements. Harmony fought to hold her spell, to hold the line, but she couldn’t be in two places at once.
A blur of purple mist blazed over her shoulder. It plowed into the gaping mouth of an undead soldier.
A second later, his head exploded in a storm of shattered bone and blood.
Hedy and her coven formed a line, the air crackling with magic. She gave Harmony and Jessie a nod.
“We’ve got your people here. Go. Help the others.”
* * *
The Mourner was a dervish, a lethal blur delivering pinpoint strikes and bone-crushing kicks. The corpses of her former sisters littered the path around her, their funeral-gray gowns turned to burial shrouds.
It wasn’t enough.
There were too many of them, and even as she whittled their numbers down, she was running out of strength while they were still fresh and ready to fight. A gray-gloved fist plowed into her gut, doubling her over, and a silken noose dropped over her head from behind and yanked taut around her throat. She clawed at it as it yanked backward, hauling her off her feet. Two more were on her as she rolled and struggled to get free, their sandals stomping on her belly and ribs. Her air was gone, vision clouding in a blur of pain as something snapped inside her chest.
A buzzing sound filled her ears. She thought it was her own blood, boiling as she suffocated, but then the knot around her throat went slack and the kicking stopped. She coughed and rolled onto her knees.
The sisters were thrashing on the ground, batting their worm fingers at the air as a storm of gnats washed over them. The gnats choked out everything, turning the air flickering gray like static on a dead television, forming a protective barrier around the Mourner. They chewed into gray gowns and ate through the lace holes in the sisters’ veils, devouring the corrupted flesh beneath.
Dora strolled up, uncorked soapstone cask cradled in her arm, and offered the Mourner a hand. She helped her to her feet and they watched the last of the sisterhood die.
“Really?” Dora said. “You don’t even invite me to the party?”
“Old and unfinished business,” the Mourner said. “Needed to handle it alone.”
“How’d that work out for you?”
The Mourner didn’t answer. One of the sisters raised an arm that was little more than scraps of silk glove clinging to bloody bone and half-eaten tendons.
“We’re a coven. You know better. You call me before you go looking for trouble.” Dora glanced over her shoulder. “And speaking of knowing better, we should clear the scene before our Lady gets pissed off.”
“We can help them.”
Dora shook her head.
“Sure,” she said, “but this is their day. We’re creatures of an older world, sis. We gotta let the kids win this one on their own.”
“Do you think they can?” the Mourner asked.
Dora thought about that.
“I’d say they’ve got a fair shot,” she said, “and that’s more than a lot of people ever get. C’mon, let’s watch the fireworks from a distance.”
* * *
A small rip in space billowed open and spat the Golden Saint onto the roof of the lodge. The suit of armor landed in a kneeling crouch, white-hot steam leaking from its battered joints, and the runes along its copper-red breastplate scattered sparks across the broken shingles.
The helmet telescoped open, and Rosales gasped for breath. Savannah’s oil-slick body sprayed from the neck of the armor, landing with a splash at her side. They’d just battled their way across a city of gold, tearing the wings off angels and leaving a trail of blood and feathers behind.
“Open a portal on my mark, to delta…” Adam looked to his left. One eyebrow slowly lifted.
“I can explain this,” Rosales told him.
“At the moment, I genuinely don’t care, and I’ll take any help I can get.” He pointed across the zoo, down to the heart of the labyrinthine paths where two small figures were plowing their way along the boulevard like twin juggernauts. “Roth and Reinhart. Stop them, and all is forgiven.”
“Doc?” Rosales said.
“I get Vanessa.”
Savannah oozed over the side of the roof and splashed to the pavement below. Rosales shrugged. Her helmet rattled back on, concealing her face. Then she triggered the jump jets, her armor propelling her like a shooting star into the night.
Forty-Seven
Nessa and Marie had cleared a path, leaving the first wave of opposition dead and dying at their backs. The boulevard ahead was clear, all the way to the smoking ruins of the King of Rust’s command deck.
Then Rosales streaked down from the sky, landing in a crouch with one steel-jacketed fist punching cracks in the pavement. She rose up, her voice amplified by the speakers in her helmet.
“Did you see that shit? Perfect superhero landing. I love this armor.”
Savannah oozed down the path behind her, and her oil-slick form billowed upward to take on the shape of a woman.
“I saw,” she replied, unimpressed.
Marie brandished her batons, one foot sliding a few inches to the left as she dropped to a fighting stance. She was already winded from battling her way up the path, and she stole a few stray breaths while she could.
“You don’t want to stand in our way tonight,” she said. “You get one warning. Leave. Now.”
Rosales’s laugh rode on a blurt of electronic distortion.
“Are you kidding me? I’ve got an eighty-million-dollar suit of power armor. You’ve got a couple of sticks. What are you going to do?”
To Marie, the answer was obvious.
“Fight you.”
“Talk about wanting to do things the hard way,” Rosales said. “Eh, whatever.”
She charged at Marie, throwing her servo-enhanced strength behind a haymaker punch. Marie ducked under it and lashed one of her batons across the back of the armored suit. It connected with a thunderclap of concussive force and a shower of rune-words that fell from the air and hit the pavement as a spray of blinding sparks.
Nessa moved to help Marie—and twin whips of black oil locked around her wrists. They hauled her across the rough pavement and hoisted her in the air.
“I’m afraid not, Professor,” Savannah said. “We have our own score to settle.”
Rosales reeled from the impact but rallied in a second, spinning, driving one armored heel into the dirt at the edge of the path and catching herself from falling. She came at Marie, relentless, punch after punch whistling as they split the air. Marie dodged left, then ducked, moving as fast as she could but playing pure defense now, no opening to hit back.
“I can do this all day,” Rosales said. “I’m not even tired. The armor does all the work for me. How about you? Getting a little winded? You look worn out. You wanna take a break or something? I could go get a sandwich, come back later.”
Marie jerked her head to one side, steel knuckles so close she could feel them slicing the air beside her cheek. Her lungs were burning, arms like lead weights. She kept fighting.
Ten feet away, Nessa summoned twin bursts of raw magic, lancing down the veins of her wrists like a pair of live wires. Savannah’s shoulder tentacles jerked, spasmodic, and let her go. Nessa hit the ground hard, landing in a sprawl, pain jolting up her leg as her ankle twisted.
She forced herself to rise.
“So what is it?” she asked Savannah. “Do you want to study me, capture me, kill me? Is this science or revenge? Do you even know anymore?”
The tentacles quivered as the woman’s oil-slick face seemed to lose definition, becoming an uneven blur.
“Are you familiar with the story of Theseus’s Paradox?”
“I’m an anthropology professor,” Nessa said. “Of course I am.”
“An educated woman. God, why couldn’t we have been friends?”
“Because you’re a homicidal maniac who tortured my lover.”
“What?” Nessa pointed toward the distant figure on the roof of the lodge. Adam raised his knife, brought it slashing down, and another portal ripped open on the far side of the zoo. “For him? You claim you’re following the cause of knowledge, but all I’ve ever seen you do is take orders from men who use your gifts for themselves. And now look at you. Was it worth it?”
Savannah wavered on her oily feet, trapped in a moment of indecision. And as Nessa mentally flipped through the arsenal of magic at her command, she knew exactly what spell to use.
“I don’t remember things that I should remember,” Savannah said. “It never bothered me before. And it bothers me that it never bothered me.”
“I’ve got a fix for that,” Nessa said. Fingertips of thought ran along the spidery lines of an incantation, internalizing it, sparking a fire in her heart.
“Too late. I’m sorry, Professor Roth, but there’s only one way this can end now.”
One of her tentacles lashed out, cutting the air with a razor’s edge. Nessa dove under it but instead of trying to escape, she darted in close, almost toe to toe with the figure of living ink. Another tentacle slammed down, smashing against the pavement, and she sidestepped it with feline grace. Nessa held the Cutting Knife tight but didn’t even try to strike her.
“Why aren’t you fighting back?” Savannah asked, confused. “Are we dancing or fighting?”
“Dancing,” Nessa told her.
Then her free hand shot out and plunged deep into Savannah’s oil-slick face, fingers digging in, and the world flashed like sunlight on a bed of diamonds.
* * *
There was pure, perfect light, then darkness.
An end-table light snapped on. Nessa and Savannah stood side by side, gazing into a cutaway section of a bedroom, like the set of a television show. A ruffled bedspread, a stuffed black cat propped up on the pillows, a framed poster of the first space-shuttle launch on a pastel-pink wall. A teenage girl sat at a desk with a bulky old computer monitor and a sheaf of handwritten pages at her side, the receiver of a corded phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear.
Bring the Fire (The Wisdom's Grave Trilogy Book 3) Page 35