Hammer of Darkness (Veil Knights Book 8)

by Rowan Casey

  This was, in its own way, just as terrible as the voracious, infinite space all around me. A stone buttress arched into space, made of flagstone over massive granite slabs black with age, so horribly black with age.

  The walkway jutted outward nearly thirty meters before ending in a crumbling pie crust hanging out over nothing. Over nothing but stars like grains of sand and spinning, innumerable galaxies. The ends of the arch were broken as if they had cracked and fallen away. I was staring at the ruins of a bridge. A bridge, now broken, that had spanned out into that infinity. A bridge that must have been at one time, galaxy spanning.

  On the bridge next to a strange bronze altar, stood the Hamper, the thing I’d come so far and done so much to acquire. Next to the Hamper, of course, stood Erica. I limped toward her, feeling doomed to lose.

  “Go back,” she shouted. “I’ve shown you mercy so many times, do not push me, Berk.”

  I kept walking. What was there to say, really? We’d done our talking before this and I was talked out. So I shrugged my shoulders, settled in my grip on the ancient chisel, and walked straight at her.

  I remembered the Marine Corps favorite tactic in taking ground. Hey diddle-diddle, straight up the middle.

  “Berk,” she warned, “this is your death.”

  Then she, too, fell silent. She knew as well as I that there remained nothing left to say.

  She left the Hamper, an unimpressive woven wicker construct, and ran straight at me, hair flying behind her in a tattered banner. I stepped onto the bridge and lifted the chisel.

  She rushed in and I turned a shoulder like I was blocking a tackle. The impact sent us both stumbling off to the side. I recovered and half ran up the arc of the bridge toward the Hamper. To either side of me past the edge of the bridge lay endless nothing.

  Can I fall out of this world and into another? I wondered.

  Erica leapt after me and caught my ankle. I went down hard in her grip, and my face bounced off the stone of the bridge. It made a wet, audible, smack that sickened me. I rolled and tried a backhand swing with the metal bar.

  She caught my hand. She snapped my wrist. The chisel fell out of my grip and I yelped like a wounded animal. I struck at her knee with my foot and she took the kick off her upper leg without flinching.

  I lunged sideways for the iron chisel. I was too slow. She snatched it up and stood over me, feet spread, every inch a pagan queen. She lifted the bar up and then brought it down. My arm broke at the shoulder.

  Pushing with my feet, I wiggled sideways.

  “This is what you choose?” she shrieked. “This death is what you choose over me?”

  The bar fell again. I tried talking the impact along my already wounded side. If I were slowed on both sides of my body I’d have to lie there, immobile, as she pummeled the life out of me. The bar slammed into my hip and that leg went numb. She hit me again and the femur cracked. Desperate, I rolled sideways. She kicked me as I went and something sharp and electric jolted through my lower back. She’d cracked a vertebrae or squashed one of my kidneys. I couldn’t tell which.

  I was inches from the ledge, out of room to run even if I could have. Erica stepped up and casually broke my jaw with a backhand swing. Blood filled my mouth and ran down my chin. She slowed her tempo, picking her shots with sadistic satisfaction. There was a lusting glow in her eye that could have matched Euryale’s.

  She broke my forearm. It was a pretty clean shot and the radius actually cracked apart so the ragged end speared up through skin and muscle in a compound fracture. I was in so much pain I’m not even sure if I cried out. I shifted over closer to the edge.

  I’m sure you know what I had in mind. I couldn’t beat her, but gravity could. Unfortunately, I didn’t think I was in shape to pull off the necessary move. She broke more ribs with the bar, and I thought she may have sent splinters into my lung with that blow.

  I made the last, desperate play.

  Turning on my back I exposed myself to her, arms wide open as Christ on the Cross. I caught her eyes, let her see my fear and pain, my weakness. It wasn’t a trick.

  “Finish it,” I whispered.

  She smiled that wicked smile.

  Taking up the long chisel in both hands, she stood over me and lifted it above her head like a dagger. She was going to ram that thing straight through my heart like I was a sacrifice on an altar, and no doubt pin me into the stone with it.

  “Goodbye, Berk,” she said.

  The chisel came down and I tried rolling to avoid it. I wasn’t fast enough. As I turned the point slammed into my side to the left of my heart, broke my ribs and punched through my latissimus dorsi, the wing-shaped back muscle under your arm. The chisel sliced open the meat of it and drilled into the stone beneath me.

  The impact jolted her forward just a bit and I was already in motion. My good hand, the still working one of the pair of those big, strong strangler’s hands I’ve mentioned, closed on her right wrist. My good leg came up between her legs as she pitched forward slightly on her toes. Screaming, I twisted at the waist and hauled back with my good arm.

  She went over easy. Just sailed past me and off the side of the shattered bridge. I completed my turn and coughed up blood from someplace deep inside of me. My vision grew cloudy as I lifted my head.

  Erica screamed as she fell away. The screaming went on for a long time, getting fainter, but playing out for long enough to become a soundtrack to the endless loops of images I carry in my mind.

  After some time, I crawled over to the bland looking Hamper. I pulled it to me by one rope handle. It felt much too light for all it had cost me to get it. I thought I should do something about all the blood I was leaking but found I couldn’t.

  I closed my eyes.

  Chapter 24

  Sometime later I opened my eyes again.

  I looked out at eternity, not thinking, just suffering. I watched the Veil shimmering. Then, out of the endless dark and that sense of boundless space, a streak of light rushed, hurtling towards me. I felt no apprehension.

  After awhile, the light formed into shape out of blinding motion and I beheld a giant mounted in a horseless chariot. The godling was huge compared to me, yet remained insignificant in the face of the teeming eternity around us. Pale skinned, dark haired, he was magnificently formed. His beard was wild, reaching his chest, and he wore only a loincloth, folded under angular hips, and sandals strapped to knee.

  I am Crom Cruach, he announced. You have the Hamper I allowed Gwyddno Garanhir to possess.

  Crom Cruach, the bloody crooked one of mound. His worship extended far back into the past of the British Isles. He was known to appreciate human sacrifice.

  “He hasn’t taken very good care of it,” I told him. “I think I’ll hold on to it for you.” My blase reply was ruined by the fit of coughing that struck me when I finished talking.

  No.

  I looked up into the eyes of the godling and beheld neither pupil or iris but galaxies revolving. When the son of morning spoke, his open mouth revealed the same. A feeling of crushing insignificance hammered into me.

  He spoke. I have not come to take it. I have moved past such capabilities into a realm of understanding at once far more powerful than you could comprehend, but also more limited than you would believe possible in one such as myself

  “Or as obtusely cryptic?”

  You have piqued my curiosity, Green Man, he said.

  Loose, icy slush filled my bowels. At the same time an awkward, bitter laugh ripped from my throat.

  "That name is dead as cold ash," I said.

  He threw back that great head and laughed into the cosmos. It felt as if the noise could shatter planets.

  You've made it very far. Very far indeed. But tell me, do you think you'll make it any farther?

  Perhaps you remember me bragging about being hard to kill? Yeah, well, it seemed a hollow boast just then.

  "I suspect that nothing happens here but that it happens in accordance with your wil
l and whim."

  This, is gospel. He looked at me. I would say you have caused me consternation, but this isn't true. I barely noticed the activities of this coven and the Hamper, the reliquary, is of no consequence to me. When I am a god on earth I am a god of chill, mist entombed lands and the Mounds that rest upon them. I care not for trinkets. I am a god of bloody knives.

  You live for but one reason, I repay a boon.

  “To whom?” I asked.

  You know her as LaVey.

  I put my face into the ground and laughed. It was a mistake and I groaned with the pain. Then I coughed up more blood.

  “I am familiar with her.”

  Yes. You may go to her.

  I knew better than to laugh again. “Thank you, that’s very kind. I’m going to be honest, I don’t see me leaving here under my own power.”

  I send you to her.

  I blinked.

  I was looking up the bay at the lights of San Francisco in the distance. The Oakland hills formed steep canyons across which mansions, brilliant as carnivals, stood in enclaves of wealth.

  I looked around the sunken living room at the Henkle Harris furniture tastefully decorating the place. There was an original Andy Warhol on one of the walls not taken up by floor-to-ceiling, panoramic windows.

  I turned my head. LaVey, beautiful as ever, stood beside Grimm wearing a strapless Halston couture dress. Neither one of them seemed surprised to see me.

  “Crom says his debt is paid,” I told LaVey.

  She smiled. “Berk, how I’ve missed you.”

  Concerned, Grimm rushed forward.

  “I’m going to go to sleep now,” I told him.

  I let go of the Hamper. I was going to rest for awhile.

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  The Veil Knights Series

  The Circle Gathers (Book 1)

  The Questing Beast (Book 2)

  Hound of Night (Book 3)

  Run of Luck (Book 4)

  Cloak of Fury (Book 5)

  The Medusa Gambit (Book 6)

  White Mountain Rising (Book 7)

  Hammer of Darkness (Book 8)

  About the Author

  Rowan Casey is the pseudonym for twelve New York Times, USA Today and Amazon bestselling writers who have come together to create the Veil Knights shared-world experience.

  With more than ten million copies of their books in print around the world, they include Lilith Saintcrow, CJ Lyons, Joseph Nassise, Steven Savile, Annie Bellet, Jon F. Merz, Pippa DaCosta, Robert Greenberger, William Meikle, Steve Lockley, Hank Schwaeble, and Nathan Meyer.

  For more information, visit

  www.rowancasey.com

  rowan@rowancasey.com

  Copyright Information

  The Medusa Gambit

  Copyright 2017 by Rowan Casey

  With special thanks to Nathan Meyer

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.