“Hello, old friend,” Conan Doyle whispered, bent down beside him. “Time to wake up, now. We need you, Clay. More than ever, I fear. Trust me, you don’t want to sleep through this.”
Nothing happened.
Troubled, he glanced around at the rest of the Menagerie.
Shuck whined low. Conan Doyle glanced outside, then nodded to Ceridwen and Graves and tilted his head toward the door. Someone moved back and forth in front out there, shadow blocking the light. They had only seconds.
The she-wolf growled softly.
“What now?” Danny asked, jittery and anxious, ready for a fight.
Conan Doyle took the blunderbuss from Squire’s hands.
The hobgoblin started to protest, but shut up when the mage leveled the barrel of the big gun at Clay’s forehead and pulled the trigger.
Iron and silver pellets blew off the top of Clay’s head. The sound boomed through the cairn-hut, echoing off the walls, even as Danny started screaming at him, asking what the hell he’d done. Other shouts came from outside. The ground shook with the approach of their enemies.
In the dirt, different shades of clay sifted away from one another. Clay’s head re-formed, though very roughly. Then his entire body shifted, earth flowing into flesh as he transformed into a creature unlike anything Conan Doyle had seen before—a strange mixture of bear and rhinoceros, and something else he couldn’t name.
Clay staggered to his feet and shook himself. He glanced at Conan Doyle. “Thanks for that.”
The mage gave a small bow of his head as he handed Squire back the blunderbuss.
Jelena threw back her head and let loose a howl that shook the stones of the cairn, a cry of anguish and fury. From a distance, even through the walls of the cairn, they heard the cries of a thousand beasts of Eden, howling in reply.
“They’re coming,” the she-wolf snarled.
“Arthur,” Ceridwen said, his name a caress.
Conan Doyle looked up to see Duergar stepping into the stone hut, axe raised. He lifted his other hand, and the earth around them began to tremble, about to split and perhaps swallow them all.
Ceridwen raised both hands and shouted a summons to the spirits of the wind. They answered. She gestured toward Duergar, who gnashed his teeth, glistening tusks already covered in the blood of some poor creature. The wind struck him with such force that Conan Doyle heard bones breaking. The entire wall around the door collapsed, stones tumbling down as Duergar tumbled end over end across the ravaged patch of the Garden of Eden.
Dust flew up from the collapsed wall. Vampires and Drows came at a run. Coinn Iotair, the dog-beasts they’d fought in the Twilight Wars, raced at their sides. The demons would arrive in moments—already something hideous circled above their heads.
Duergar rose to one knee. He nodded as though pleased that the moment had finally arrived. As one, weapons raised, magic swirling around them, phantom bullets flying, the Menagerie erupted from the wreckage of the stone hut.
The true battle for Eden had begun.
16
THE wind kicked up dust from the dry, loose soil beneath Ceridwen’s feet. A glance over her shoulder revealed the beginnings of some hellish city being built. Demons from a dozen theologies and cosmologies worked at the base of the bizarre cocoon-structure that overshadowed the volcaniclooking earthen tower beside it. Some walked on hooves, heads heavy with horns. Others were headless things with saw-toothed mouths gaping in their bellies. There were insectoid things and larval crawlers, moist, half-melted things and others that defied description.
But the demons either had not noticed the disturbance or were in no hurry to respond.
The air filled with shouts and cries and the distant howls of the beasts of the Garden of Eden. At the edges of the wretched camp, birds of prey darted out from the trees and began to circle. The odd shotgun Squire had brought barked loudly.
Conan Doyle called to her. She nodded without turning his way. They were in battle together, again. No matter what they felt for one another, they would not allow their love to distract them. If the melee went badly, and death seemed imminent, only then would they come together, reaching for a final embrace before the end. Until then, they would bring their wrath upon their enemies, swift and merciless, for evil had no mercy in its heart or no heart with which to cradle mercy.
Clay charged the undead rotting Drows that tried to attack them, shouting his brother’s name, an anguish in his voice Ceridwen had never heard before. The ghost of Dr. Graves flitted across the battlefield so quickly her eyes could not track him. Only the shots that rang from his phantom guns pinpointed his location for her. A band of vampires, ancient by the look of them—and only creatures of such age would be allowed by Abaddon to station themselves this close to the center of camp—swept in from the left. Jelena howled again, then bounded into the air, claws stripping away faces and slashing throats. Hawks and huge eagles dived from the sky and clawed at the vampires’ eyes.
Twenty feet away from her, Duergar rose to his feet. His fingers opened and closed on the handle of his axe, getting a better grip. It glowed dully in the dim light that filtered down from Eden’s sky. His orange-red hair flowed in the wind, its white stripe like some kind of scar on his head. The tribal marking on his forehead seemed not black but bloodred.
“Kill her,” the half-breed snarled, teeth gnashing as though he could not wait to tear into her with the tusks that jutted from his lower jaw.
The Drows were not intelligent creatures, but they understood killing well enough. Their dead were even slower than the living. Even so, they closed in around her.
Ceridwen tensed. Across her back she had slung a Gemini sword that Squire had forged. Where he’d hidden these weapons all of this time, she had no idea, but she had never appreciated the hobgoblin more. In her right hand, she held a katar forged from the same mystical alloy. The blade was long and wide, and she held it in her fist as the Drows came toward her.
“You waste my time with such as these,” Ceridwen called to Duergar.
The first Drow lunged for her. She swept the katar in front of her and sliced off its right arm, the silver-and-iron blade cleaving rough leathery flesh and bone with ease. The Drow screamed and clutched at her with its left hand. Ceridwen spun inside its grasp and drove her elbow up into its gut. As it groaned and bent over, gasping for breath, she spun again and whipped the katar around, slashing its throat.
A second Drow tromped toward her. The Princess of Faerie pistoned her legs and dived at it, katar held before her in both hands. The monstrosity was slow and could not grab her before the blade split its abdomen. The katar sank to her wrists in its guts and Ceridwen twisted it. A hot torrent of blood and viscera spilled onto her arms.
The corpses fell simultaneously, the dry soil greedily drinking the stinking ichor that bled from them. Abaddon’s power would raise them soon enough, but not yet.
Ceridwen faced Duergar. Annoyance contorted the warrior’s features.
“You’re more formidable than I recall,” the half-blood said, green eyes narrowing. “But your magic is diminished here, cousin, and you won’t find me as slow and stupid as the Drows.”
A smile touched the corners of Ceridwen’s lips. The wind gusted, blowing strands of her blond hair across her face.
“Not as slow, perhaps, but no less stupid, Duergar. Magic diminished is not magic erased. Are you truly such a fool? I killed your lackeys by hand because I wanted to wash in their blood. I’m Fey by birth, an elementress by nature, but the Twilight Wars made me a warrior as well. I’ve more weapons than sorcery. And as for my ‘diminished’ power . . .”
Ceridwen dropped to one knee, driving the katar deep into the dry soil. The scent of fresh, sweet earth rose up from within.
“The taint of your demonic allies has not spread as far as they would like us all to think.”
Duergar began to speak, muttering some denial, she felt sure. But Ceridwen did not listen. The elemental spirits of Eden flowed up
from the soil and into her. With a single desire, she located the roots of a tree that had once stood here and teased it upward, nurturing it in seconds. The tree thrust up through the ruined earth, leaves rustling as they grew, dry ground cracking as it was pushed away. Sweet, lush fruit weighed down the branches. New, healthy grass burst from the ground around the tree, and the restored area began to spread, transforming the land all around her. In the space of a few heartbeats, the dead Drows lay on a patch of Paradise.
Ceridwen left the katar buried in the ground. She snapped off a branch and in her hand it grew into her elemental staff.
Fire flickered at its head, and an ice sphere formed around that flame.
The half-blood creature, Duergar of Faerie, laughed at her.
“Sorcery or not, I’ll have you, princess. You survived our last encounter only because I was told to distract you, not to kill you.”
“Perhaps,” she replied, staff in hand, Gemini sword slung across her back. The spirits of the wind danced around her, whipping at her hair and her dress. The ground shifted under her feet as roots spread, and more of the tainted soil was reclaimed.
She could feel the presence of water running far below the surface. The fire elementals sparked in the air around her.
“But circumstances have changed.”
Moments ago, Ceridwen had been diminished, just as her enemy believed. But she had connected with Paradise once more. The elements here were more pure than anything she’d ever felt, and she felt suffused with their power.
“I’m an elemental sorceress in the Garden of Eden, you fool. And Eden is on my side.”
DANNY fought side by side with Conan Doyle. Danny had known that Doyle was one of the most powerful mages in the world, and he’d seen the man’s magic in action, but never anything like this. A couple of zombified troll-dudes came at them. Conan Doyle raised a hand, and a flash of purplish light flowed from his fingers. The Drows rotted down to bone, then even the bones crumbled.
“Hey, boss!” Danny called, mimicking Squire. “Leave some for me!”
Off to the right, the hobgoblin shouted something the demon boy couldn’t hear over all the shouting and killing.
Vampires had started to surround them, the bloodsuckers rushing in from all sides of the camp. They were an array of leeches from filthy to regal, of every race and style of dress, but they were all the same to him—all maggots with their mouths open like lampreys, waiting for something to suck on.
Danny didn’t give Conan Doyle a chance to hog all the fun. He ran to meet the leeches as they swarmed around him and the mage. In his hands was a long, curved scimitar made with the Gemini alloy. Danny swung the blade in an arc that decapitated the first vampire to get near him and chopped through the torso of the second. Then three of them were on him. One sank its teeth into his throat. Danny drew a silver-and-iron dagger from a sheath at his hip and shanked the vamp through the right eye. The ones he’d killed exploded in a burst of ash that eddied away on the wind.
They were many. Another vampire grabbed him from behind.
Danny shot his head back, shattering her face with his skull, then twisted in her grasp and drove the small points of his horns into her cheek. He struck her with the dagger so hard that it broke through her chest and burrowed into her heart. Danny twisted around, but then the dagger was knocked from his left hand.
Fine by him. The sword was easier to wield with two hands.
Out of the corner of his eye, Danny saw movement at the edge of the camp. A glance made him pause in amazement.
Animals raced out onto the ruined ground, some of them still howling in response to the wolf-babe’s voice. He saw a pride of lions, huge elks or something, gorillas—freakin’ gorillas—and all sorts of other animals. They started trashing the vampires tents and chasing down some of the leeches.
Danny laughed out loud.
Claws raked his back.
He spun to find a demon looming above him. It had curved horns like a ram that were bigger than its head, weighing its skull down so that a huge hump stuck up from its back. Its arms hung by its sides, and its matted fur dripped with some foul ooze. Its withered, vestigial lower body twitched, dragging behind it, little more than a husk, so that it floated in the air. Hundreds of beetles clicked and crawled on its face, eating the flesh and each other.
It spoke the language of some ancient Hell—and Danny understood.
“You should be with us, child,” the demon spit.
“Yeah, no,” Danny said. “Been through all that, but thanks.”
He drove the Gemini sword into its face and twisted, coring its skull. The demon faltered and sank to the ground, flopping around. The blade had lodged in the bones of its head, and as Danny tried to remove it, the beetles raced up the metal toward his hands. He let go and backed off.
“Fuck it, take the sword. Close up and personal is more fun.”
Conan Doyle shouted something, and Danny turned in alarm. But the words were a spell and as the demon boy spotted him, a ripple of sorcerous power swept from the mage’s hands, and the vampires all dropped to their hands and knees and began to puke up blood. It streamed from their eyes and noses and ears. As the blood left them, they withered until their flesh was as dry and cracked as the ground beneath them. One by one, they crumbled to chalky dust.
“Nice!” Danny called.
Conan Doyle glanced at him, then ran toward him. Danny turned to see a couple of demons flying down at them from above, wingless things with scorpion tails. More vampires were gathering for another rush. A couple of dead Drows lumbered their way.
“So, am I gonna be in trouble for disobeying, skipping out on house-sitting duty?” Danny asked, arching an eyebrow.
Conan Doyle actually grinned. “Not bloody likely.”
The monsters kept coming. Danny laughed and, side by side, he and Mr. Doyle prepared to give them a bit of monster in return.
CLAY felt aware of every atom in his body. He grunted, chest heaving, and marched across the ruined ground.
Undead Drows—resurrected again and again by Abaddon’s demonic power—tried to slow him or to kill him. The tallest of them stood fourteen feet, but in this form Clay himself was only a few feet shy of that mark. The Drows grappled with him, and Clay tore them apart. He drove the horns on his rhino head into their chests and backs to rip them open, then thrust the matted, hairy claws of a bear into their bodies and broke them up into pieces, scattering their remains.
That would take awhile to recover from. Even Abaddon’s power might not be able to repair them now.
Squire shouted something to him. Clay glanced over and saw the hobgoblin and his shadow hound, Shuck, under attack by a pack of Coinn Iotair. The dog-beasts didn’t stand a chance. Shuck picked one up and shook it in his teeth so fiercely that pieces of it tore off and flew around the hound’s head. Squire shoved the wide barrel of his shotgun into the open jaws of another Coinn Iotair and pulled the trigger, evaporating its head. Then the hobgoblin started swinging a Gemini-bladed axe around—a double-sided war axe that Clay coveted. The little bastard might not know sorcery, but he was a magician at the forge.
With a growl, another Drow lumbered toward Clay. As he started toward it, a shadow passed over his face. He glanced upward to see a falcon dropping down from the sky. A pair of lions leaped on a vampire a stone’s throw away, and Clay felt hope spark in him. Jelena had summoned the animals of Eden to their aid, drastically improving their odds.
But the falcon didn’t veer off toward one of his enemies.
It dropped toward Clay, talons raised and aimed at his face.
With a single beat of its wings, the falcon rippled on the air, growing, shifting its form into that of a massive gryphon, the mythical beast with the body of a lion and the wings and head of an eagle.
Legion.
Clay braced himself and raised his bear claws just as the gryphon slammed into him. They crashed to the ground together in an earth-shaking tumble of claws and horns, talons
and wings. The eagle’s beak dug into the matted fur of his chest and tore away a strip of skin and muscle. Clay let out a roar as he struggled with the shapeshifter who’d masqueraded as him. Blood spilled onto his fur.
With a thought, he changed. A silverback gorilla with a tiger’s head. Powerful, feline jaws clamped down on the foreleg of the gryphon, and he ripped tendon and meat, muzzle soaking in blood. They struggled against one another. Legion raked gryphon claws across Clay’s chest and back, opening up foot-long gashes that spilled even more blood, which the dry, ravaged ground greedily absorbed.
Clay twisted the gryphon around, got an arm around its throat, and jerked, snapping bones in its neck. With all of his strength he forced the shapeshifter over, slammed one foot onto its spine, and tore off one of its wings with a crackle of marrow.
Legion screamed. The sound made Clay rejoice and grieve at the same time.
His brother—and he felt sure now that this was true, that somehow the other shapeshifter truly was his brother, for what else could he be?—transformed into a serpent and coiled instantly around his leg. Clay reached down to tear the thing from his body, and Legion changed again, taking the form of an outback dingo. Jaws clamped on Clay’s hand and tore away fingers. The dingo swallowed without chewing.
They were at one another then in a flurry of claws and blows, beneath a rainstorm of spattering blood. Their flesh changed so swiftly—breaking, ripping, healing, and re-forming, reabsorbing what had been carved away—that neither could gain the upper hand. Clay caved in the chest of a dragonlike beast even as it incinerated his face with fire and ripped off his left arm with a swipe of claws like scythes. Legion transformed into an enormous python, and Clay used alligator’s jaws to snap the thing in half.
Still, the bloodshed continued. They healed and inflicted hideous injury on one another again and again until their battle transcended time and flesh. To Clay, it seemed there had never been a time when agony did not sear his every fiber.
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