Madeline and Julian said nothing, sweeping the floor for the return trip. Cora pointed over her shoulder at the makeshift prison.
“What happens to them now?”
“Their eyes are open. They can’t ever go back to the way things were,” Crowley replied. “Whatever happens next, they must choose. The illusion of free will remains, even after the veil is lifted.”
Julian huffed. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I think he means they’ll have to go on the run from Lucius now or face his wrath,” Cora replied. Her brow furrowed. “You did something magical to them that made them follow you, and their lives are ruined because of it.”
“I merely showed them a bigger picture,” Crowley defended, his body beginning to shake. His tone remained calm, even as his body language indicated distress. “There is...truth...oh, dear.”
Cora grabbed for the old man before he doubled over. Madeline and Julian spun around, keeping a nervous on to the hall ahead.
“I’m alright,” Crowley held up a hand. He nodded. “I can go on.”
A quick once over with her Arcadia light said that was a lie. Beads of sweat formed around his hairline. His hands had a tremor. As old as he appeared, the adrenaline shot to the heart may have been too much for him. Cora shook her head.
“He needs medical attention,” she sighed. “Julian, you have doctors aboard Camelot?”
Julian nodded. “Some of the best in the Royal Army.”
“God save the queen,” Crowley smiled, trying to deflect from the seriousness of his condition.
Cora helped him to a cool glass wall beside a fancy office. Confident he was stable, she took a step away and tapped the comm button on her earpiece.
“Echo-3 to Doctor,” she said. “How is the coil?”
“I am ready, yes,” Tesla responded, his thick Russian accent sounding calm and reserved.
“You can only take two and then you’ll need to reset the coil?”
“I still analyze data from the transport between you two. It can’t be more, no,” he replied.
Cora eyes drew up to Madeline. The girl barely said a word since the fight with the troll.
“Alright, lock onto Echo-2’s tracker and prepare for two incoming,” she said. Madeline’s head turned, alarmed. She didn’t seem happy with the decision. “One needs immediate medical attention, get a doctor on standby.”
“Is...Echo-2...”
“Echo-2 is not the medical emergency,” Cora replied, though that may not have been entirely true. She just couldn’t tell with that suit hiding everything. “I’m going to need you to replace that coil as fast as possible.”
“What are you doing?” Madeline insisted.
“We have to start clearing out, and I know you’re injured.”
The girl didn’t reply.
“That little ruse with the guards is only going to hold Bauer for so long. If they start closing in from the upper floors, Julian and I could be boxed into a firefight with a hundred men. We’re still going for the roof. We’ll buy time for Tesla to replace the coil.”
Julian took a deep breath through his nose and tightened his jaw. He was pleased with the news. “We’re going back against Lucius?”
“We don’t die today,” Cora replied, confident. She turned her head to the old man and motioned Madeline to him. “Go, get him out of here.”
Hesitant, Madeline collapsed her sword and walked to the old man. Wrapping her arm around his shoulder, she aided him to take a step away from the glass. With her other hand, she motioned Cora back. She tapped the comm button on her helmet.
“Echo-2 to Doctor. Begin transport.”
Cora and Julian averted their eyes. A bolt of lightning struck the middle of the hall, and they were gone. A moment later, Tesla came back in their comm.
“Confirm, both here,” he said, his voice stressed. “No fusion, which is good. Now I just have fix THIS-”
“Five minutes, Doctor,” Cora said, running for the stairwell with Julian. “Do what you have to, but please hurry.”
Borrowed Time
Julian double-timed it four flights of stairs, sweeping each set. They ran past the troll corpse, towards the disaster Madeline left on the 47th floor. For the time being, it seems Crowley’s followers had made their exit easier. He huffed to himself a few times, some distraction he refused to put to words.
“Hey,” Cora said. “I need you clear. Lucius is still up there. Where’s your head?”
“You could have taken Crowley, left Madeline and I to hold him off,” he said, his normally regal and pompous voice now shaken and confused. “You could have stabbed us both in the back, handed me over to Lucius on a silver platter.”
Cora rolled her eyes. “How many times do I need to go over this with you?”
Julian clenched his jaw and made time up the 47th floor staircase. “Of everyone we looked at and interviewed, everyone aboard that ship, you were the only one I didn’t trust.”
“You made a mistake,” she said. “We survive the night, we’ll figure it out. Together.”
Julian nodded. Stoic and stubborn, she finally saw his head back in the game. Maybe they could finally put the question of loyalty to bed for the last time.
As they entered the west end of the 48th floor, only corpses occupied the halls. Moving like a two-man team for once, they covered each other’s back and swept the halls down, around the corner, and finally back to the rooftop access door. Cora looked up the final staircase, staring at the sky above. No flashes of light, no flames. There wasn’t a single sound except Lucius’ voice, though she couldn’t understand what he said. Cora ran up the stairs without waiting for Julian.
She pushed open the door. The stranger crawled on his stomach from the north end of the building, near the mangled SAM launcher. His face a mass of bruises and swelling on the right side, he used one bleeding arm to pull himself forward, dragging the massive sledgehammer behind him in the other.
She spun her head right, and her mouth fell open. Lucius occupied the south end of the building. His wings draped limp over his forelegs. His eyes were narrow slits. His breaths came out like panting. He tipped at an angle, using his right legs to prop himself up. Every pipe, duct, and power unit, anything that stuck up from the roof in any way had been crushed flat or turned to debris laying around them. A dozen Bauer corpses were the only feature of the cratered, flattened roof. She’d not only never seen Lucius so weak, she couldn’t imagine how one man had done it himself.
Vincent squawked and landed above the rooftop access door. He didn’t like the look of this, either. Cora stepped forward.
“Lucius! End this!” she yelled.
“Cora,” he said, taking a deep breath. “How nice of you...to rejoin us. Things...were just getting interesting.”
“Surrender. Leave...it’s already over!”
“No!” the stranger shouted behind her. He pulled himself to his knees, standing the hammer on its head to brace him up. Lacerations and minor burns covered his hairless flesh. “You die today, dragon. I will have my revenge.”
Lucius chortled, then degenerated into coughing. It was a terrible sound, and made it seem Lucius may have been injured.
“You’ve expended your magic,” Lucius taunted. “The same as your ancestor when he fell before me. You have no storms left to strike me with. That leaves you a tall, strong, but otherwise quite average human.”
“Echo-3, two minutes,” Madeline said into Cora’s comm.
The stranger took to his feet like a drunken sailor. He scarce had the strength to lift his own hammer and settled on dragging it behind him.
“I’ll just have to crush your brains into the ground,” he replied, taking a shaky step.
Cora looked over her shoulder to Julian. She gave a silent instruction with her eyes for him to intervene. He nodded and moved slow, drifting away from her at the edge of Lucius’ periphery. The stranger quickened his hobbling pace, walking right past Cora as he made a line for the
dragon. Lucius smiled and bowed his head.
“Come and get me, then,” he taunted.
Perhaps it was her time with Lucius to thank, though she’d never actually thank him for the forced meetings under threat, drugs, or a gunshot wound, but she had started to read him. The bluffs he played, the lies he mixed with enough truth to distort them both, she was learning how he played his game. She only offered herself a moment to consider it, turned, and looked into his weakened, half-open eyes. He meant what he said. He wanted the stranger to come forth.
She closed her eyes and felt for the warm ball of magic inside her. With a touch of fear, she turned it around, facing its chilling flip side. With the well of power it offered, she pulled it up to her chest and envisioned her nightmare. She opened her eyes and found frigid tendrils of white light emerge from her chest. She threw out her arms and cast them like fishing line, flying in every direction. Each one attached to a fallen Bauer soldier. She could feel her connection to them, in the same way a puppet master feels the strings.
“Rise,” she said, her voice dark. Her breath came out visible, like winter vapor.
Julian turned his head to Cora. His lips parted. She tried to put his look out of her mind. He was terrified of what he saw when he looked at her.
The arm of a Bauer soldier’s corpse nearest to her twitched. Then again. He slid one foot along the ground slow, as if waking from sleep. A gurgling sound escaped from his throat, where one of Michael’s arrows protruded. His limbs came back to life, getting him to all fours. The stranger stopped in his tracks. In the space between him and Lucius, every corpse stood up, many with grievous and grotesque wounds. They stared ahead at Lucius.
Cora’s eyes were in the Spirit World, eying the tethers that held control of the bodies. Their souls long gone from this world, their empty shells awaited her orders. She looked past the beacons of white light that were the stranger and Julian, ahead to the dragon. Lucius, like the corpses, possessed no aura of his own. He was without a soul. She couldn’t believe she’d never looked at him like that before. It revolted her. She gnashed her teeth, her brow lowered.
“Attack,” she whispered.
The dozen bodies went from shuffling to swarming at Lucius from all sides. His head darted back and forth, eyes wide. He popped up to all fours. She knew he was playing possum.
“What dark sorcery is this?” Lucius gasped, folding up his wings and backing up a step.
A group of three came upon him at once, near his left side. He swiped at them with his massive foreleg, tossing all three to the ground. As he refocused to the next wave, the soldiers he’d knocked down already scrambled to get back to their feet.
She peered down at the tethers, trying to understand the control she had over the corpses. The ball of ice in chest expanded, beckoning her to draw more power from it. It promised more to give. All it asked in return was to grow and spread throughout her. Cora gasped, afraid of this new and dark power. She shut her eyes and took a breath. A chill spread across her chest. Goosebumps raised on her arms. She focused on the magic, imagining it a balloon. She compressed it, fought against it, wished it away. She pressed it down to her belly through force of will, and turned it over until the flicker of warmth she had left returned. Her breaths came fast and heavy, as though she’d won a battle. She opened her eyes, and only a split second had passed, one that stretched to eternity. The dead piled at Lucius. She caught Julian’s gaze.
“Go, now!” she shouted. Her eyes returned to normal vision, and she withdrew her katana.
The stranger ran in ahead of him. Julian pulled Excalibur off the magnetic sheath on his back and charged at Lucius’ flank. The ceaseless mob of undead came at the dragon two and three at a time, keeping him too busy swatting them away to mount an attack of his own. Cora took two steps, pulled from the light magic within her, almost drained, and sent what she could to her legs. Her nose dripped blood. She ignored it and ran another two steps before bounding into the air. She leaped over the stranger and Julian, across the mob she’d reanimated, and landed on Lucius’ head.
His skull shook back and forth, trying to throw her off. She grabbed a bony protrusion at the back of his head and held on with everything she had. Her other hand held the sword aloft, seeking a space between his scales to stab into what she assumed was his brain. She knew she didn’t want to do it, but Lucius came at her people with greater force than that. She had to be willing to return it in kind. He already expected nothing less of her.
Her attack proved a distraction. Below, six of the undead Bauer soldiers rushed in unchecked, grabbing hold of Lucius’ left foreleg. She couldn’t be certain from her elevated position, holding on as the dragon tried to buck her from his head, but it appeared the soldiers were trying to bite him. Vile chomping sounds and groans bellowed from below.
Cora’s head pounded as she felt the diminishing reserves of her magic leave her. Vincent swooped down and dropped a Stunbomb between Lucius’ eyes. The resulting explosion of energy snapped his head back. Cora held on for the ride, but again the spell failed to stun him at all. The damned dragon seemed invincible.
Julian rushed in from one side, the stranger from another. Lucius whipped his head around to Julian and fixed on him. Cora held fast, the tip of her blade seeking an entry point one-handed. Lucius shifted awkwardly, the weight of six men holding one of his legs down. He weaved away from Julian’s strike. Julian came in again, forcing Lucius back. He dragged his foreleg and the soldiers with him to avoid the blow, even as it put him in the line of attack from the stranger.
The stranger swung his hammer with two hands, putting his whole body into it, as if trying to fell a tree. The blow struck Lucius in the side of his jaw. It hit with such force that Cora heard scaled plates shatter like glass below. Lucius cried out, a shrieking roar that was both frightening and painful to hear. He yelled out again, this time a battle cry. His tail snaked around from his rear, a wild swing that batted Julian into the air. Julian came down hard, crashing a dozen feet away. His body sprawled out, unmoving.
The stranger readied another blow, but Lucius returned his attention to him. The last remaining soldiers moved in, grabbing Lucius’ other foreleg. With no other weapons available to him from the position, he ducked his head down and rammed the stranger with his brow, throwing him back. Cora’s katana tumbled from her hand and fell to the roof below. With another shake of his head, he threw her free. She slammed into the gravel and concrete. Rolling with the blow, she somersaulted back to her feet, inches from his nose.
Like an explosion, Lucius roared and reared up to his hind legs, throwing out his forelegs. The tip of his maw struck Cora in the chest. Her and her undead puppets sailed through the air. This time more prepared for his attacks, she grabbed hold to the back of her knees and flipped, positioning her enhanced legs to absorb the rapid descent. She hit the ground as if her calves were springs, absorbing the shock. To her surprise and horror, the Bauer corpses, now battered beyond recognition from their fall, shuffled back to their feet as fast as they had splattered on the ground.
The bodies stood up from where they landed, in a half-circle around Lucius’ maw, with Cora at the center and farthest away. Lucius crashed back down to all fours and surveyed the battlefield. The dragon’s lip curled as he looked at the abominations she’d created. His tail popped up behind him and stood erect. The scales at the tip of his tail flared out like an umbrella. Over a foot wide and sharp as a razor, it resembled a fish tail. With blinding speed he slashed, turning himself in a circle to cut through them all.
Cora had enough time to see the first undead cut in two at the waist, then the second, to realize she needed to get out of his path. She jumped back, pulling her stomach inward. As if the world slowed down around her, his tail moved through three, then five, then six bodies. Her head turned down, making sure she cleared his attack. The smallest point of his tail crossed over her shirt. Fabric split, replaced with blood. By the time she hit the ground, her body gave out. She co
llapsed to her knees, clutching at a gash across her belly six inches long. Searing hot pain filled her guts. Grabbing at both sides of the wound with two hands, she struggled to keep it closed and prayed her regeneration would kick in quick. She couldn’t fight like this, doubled over on the ground.
Lucius finished his swipe and turned completely back around to face her. He raised one brow. Cora gasped. She looked about her, and found she was the only one left. With a single, concerted slash, he halved every corpse she’d raised. A tinge of cold pinged her as the tethers snapped back to her chest like a rubber band. The Bauer soldiers, for better or worse, returned to their peace. Glowing amber eyes stared at her until they had her gaze.
“Sorry, Cora,” Lucius cocked his head to the side and stepped forward. “I have to try.”
Lucius’ neck pulled back. His maw opened, revealing teeth like a mouthful of swords. A deafening, sucking sound from deep within his throat pulled every ounce of oxygen from around her. Two black orifices at the back of both sides of his jaw sparked a flame like a candle. She searched within, and found an exhausted, depleted light at her core. She had nothing left, not that she knew of anything she could hope to defend herself with.
A ball of flame took shape, illuminating the back of his throat. From her side, Julian ran across, standing between her and the dragon’s maw. Her defeat turned to horror. She couldn’t bear witness to what happened next. She closed her eyes and turned her head.
The air around her became a blast furnace. She was uncomfortable, but she wasn’t dead. Cora opened her eyes. Julian hunched low, holding the broad side of his forearm aloft. On his arm, he wore a circular shield made of white light, half his size in diameter. Lucius’ flames were absorbed or deflected around it. Julian’s head snapped back to Cora, his face awash in confusion.
The Pendragon Codex Page 21