by Joe Ducie
Annie’s comrades were still hot on our tail, weaving in and out of traffic. Red and blue sirens followed in our wake. I had to downshift as we took the bend onto the coast road, but it was a straight line to the harbor now, and we gained on Emissary.
Or he’s letting us catch up...
Annie rested her forearm on my shoulder alongside my head and pointed her gun up toward the swirling mass of shadow. She took aim, thought about deafening me, and lowered her arm with a growl. Above, Emissary laughed—his voice a dull roar not unlike crackling flame.
A minute later, we entered the car park of the harbor, a thousand lights from the jetty and boardwalk twinkling orange and white against the night. Emissary landed on the rooftops about a hundred meters away and disappeared from sight, just as a three-car cadre of police screeched to a halt behind my idling bike.
“Don’t move! Switch off the bike, mate!” shouted one of the officers. He held a hand on his gun, and his partner pointed a taser at my face.
Annie jumped off the bike and flashed her badge.
“Officer...?”
“Murie. Gary Murie, Detective.”
“Officer Murie, there’s a man here that just killed at least a dozen people in Joondalup. I’ve called in back-up and tac support, so you’re with me now. We’re going to take him down.”
“Who’s he?” Murie asked, slinging a thumb my way.
Annie stared at me, her gaze hot and lips pursed. “He’s... a consultant. This is Declan Hale.”
“Now that we’re all friends,” I said. “Don’t get in my way.”
I shifted down a gear and spun the back wheel of the bike, forcing Annie to jump aside, and then took off across the car park alone toward the boardwalk. I heard the detective and her officers calling after me, but I didn’t stop. They had no idea what they were dealing with and would just get in my way.
Crowds scattered and dived for cover as I drove down a small flight of limestone steps, onto a grassy barbeque area, and out onto a bridge spanning the water over the harbor. I used a convenient wheelchair ramp to avoid a set of wooden steps that led up onto the boardwalk and gunned the bike along a strip of restaurants and bars, wide-eyed patrons gawking at me as I zipped past.
Where are you?
The boardwalk split the harbor in half. On one side were the docks and boats, on the other a strip of beach and a small fairground. If I kept following the boardwalk around, I’d end up back at the start in the car park where I’d abandoned Annie. So I stopped and listened for the screams.
They started soon enough, away to my right, toward the boats.
I could feel the vibrations of a hundred pairs of feet running and clamoring against the boardwalk, and something else—dull explosions, rattling the support pillars and shaking years of dust down from the corrugated roof panels.
My engine rumbling close to idle, I drove slowly through a maze of shops, passed Subway and Gloria Jean’s Coffee House, and followed a bend in the walkway around to an open area, roofless, seawater lapping at the wooden pillars on either side. I saw the flame before I saw the monster.
Eyes of coal, mouth stretched open wide enough to swallow a man, Emissary breathed ruby fire against the wooden boardwalk and up into the starry sky. The planks of wood and most of the storefronts burned like kindling. Whatever unnatural fire Emissary could produce, it stuck a lot like the sticky liquid-fire of napalm. Brothers Grimm dragon fire, I thought, thinking of the enchantment. A messy, unquenchable flame that devoured even the strongest steel and left behind scorched, blackened puddles. Fire with fire?
Emissary belched another wave of liquid flame, which writhed on the air as if it were a basket full of snakes, into an ice cream shop. The storefront exploded.
People—men, women, and children—emerged screaming from the shop, aflame, and hurled themselves over the side of the boardwalk and into the dark ocean water below. The water shone eerily green, and steam rose in furious curls as the fire fought the ocean to stay alive.
I clenched my fist around the handlebar grip of my bike and revved the engine, seeing if I could get Emissary’s attention. He turned slowly, offered me a large, goofy grin, flame dancing between his teeth, and waved. I waved back and prepared a quick enchantment. Luminescent light swam in the air between my fingers.
Emissary rubbed his hands together and spat a fireball at me. The flame rolled off his tongue and sizzled through the air. I spun the bike around, leaving a vicious skid mark on the wooden decking, and dodged the missile. The fireball struck the boardwalk and slammed through the weak wood, hitting the sea beneath. A cloud of steam burst through the hole, just behind me, as I gunned the bike and sped toward Emissary, closing the gap between us fast.
He planted his feet hard against the boardwalk and spread his arms, welcoming me, daring me to hit him. Chicken, is it? I’d never been one to blink in the face of ugly, murderous men in finely tailored suits. I bared my teeth in a snarl and leaned in low against the body of the bike, and shifted up a gear.
“Come on!” Emissary roared, his voice echoing up into the night. “Show me your immortality, Hale!”
Fifteen feet from the monster, white light exploded from my palms. Twin beams of pure, raw will that carried me up and back off the bike. I flipped in the air, the beams cutting through wood and steel, and landed hard on my knees. Drawing a quick breath, almost choking on smoke, I threw my hands together and clapped. The raw light turned silver and a dome-shaped shield popped up into existence just in front of me—as the bike, doing at least eighty, slammed into Emissary and exploded.
A wave of heat and shrapnel struck my shield, ricocheting off in a hundred different directions, splitting the worst of the debris down the middle and sending it flying past either side of me.
BOOM, you son of a bitch.
Garnet and ruby flames roiled and blazed in the air where Emissary stood.
I found my feet, hoping for the best, but the voice of long experience had me reaching into my waistcoat holster for the copy of Groust’s Midnight Steel I’d stashed earlier. Flipping to a dog-eared page about halfway through the novel, I sent my Will surging into the book, and the words on the page glowed with a dark, almost wraithlike light.
Emissary emerged from the maelstrom of destruction and straightened his collar. He grinned at me, brushed a bit of ash from his shoulder, and pulled what looked like part of an exhaust pipe from his gut. The wound sealed over instantly, and his shirt rippled, another pebble cast on still water, and was whole. He was unharmed.
“What now, Hale?” he asked.
I held the book up and forward like a gunslinger of old, and my enchantment literally leaped from the pages. This was the true source of my power and how I’d learned to fight men and women with the same power at the Infernal Academy all those years ago. My Will was tempered steel, hard and unbreakable, and the books I used to duel were written to wound and ensnare.
In this case, Midnight Steel was written for the Knights by the Knights. The section of the book I’d ignited with my Will described an area of black space, where nothing but dead stars and dust existed, folded back on itself in an infinite loop—the perfect place to send Emissary. Even if he could survive the vacuum, it would be centuries, if not more, before he escaped such a prison.
This was what made the Knights and the Renegades so dangerous. Never mind the spells, charms, wards, or enchantments we could learn from the right books, never mind our armies or our fleets of Eternity-class battleships. We could bind our enemies in shackles of words and, with a thought, cast them beyond perdition and into prisons of such complex cruelty that escape was impossible.
The words jumped off the page of Midnight Steel, warped in the air with a harsh whip crack, and lashed themselves, physical and real, around Emissary’s wrists. The words ran up his arms, under his shirt, marking his skin as though he had a living tattoo, and yanked him forward.
He grunted, resisted the pull, and, throwing his arms up toward the sky, snapped the words th
at bound him.
“Sweet, merry fuckery,” I whispered, gaping.
That was impossible. Midnight Steel burst into flames in my hands, and I dropped the book with a cry, my fingers blistered. The flames consuming the tome were made of dark, fetid Void-light.
“The walls of the Eternal Prison crumble, Declan Hale,” Emissary said, and strode toward me, whole and unharmed despite my best efforts. His jaw had shrunk back into his face, making him look normal—handsome, even—but his eyes were still orbs of burning coal, spoiling the illusion. “You think to bind me with your paltry new words, bound to mere paper? The weak scratchings of your race are an insult to the Knights of old. I was there, fool, ten thousand years ago, when the Infernal language, runes of such tremendous power, were used as weapons by humanity. But those days are dead, and the old locks shattered. The Everlasting will inherit True Earth.”
“Why are you doing this? Murder and chaos? What could killing these people possibly get you?” I took a step back, away from the flame eating the boardwalk at my feet, out of the curling smoke that burned my eyes and my throat. Emissary followed. “If you wanted me, you should have just come for me!”
Emissary nodded. He raised his hand and a pool of ruby fire shone in his palm and between his fingers. “If this was only about you, Shadowless, then you would already be dead. Why the chaos? Well shit, son, why not?” He rolled his head and cracked his neck. “I’ve been sealed away for aeons, Hale. Ten millennia in darkness! Why? Spill enough blood and the walls of reality begin to crack. What, perchance, may slip through then, hmm? You’ll see soon.”
“I won’t let you kill unchecked. I may not be a Knight anymore, but I’ll stop you.”
Emissary snarled and jabbed a finger into my chest. “You place yourself between me and them because you’ve come to view your life as something that’ll bounce back. You’ve died and will die again. You’ll live forever unless you’re killed.” He laughed. “But you’re vulnerable. Just because you outwitted the natural order once… does not make you one of us. One of the Everlasting.”
“You’re not of the Everlasting,” I spat. “You’re not one of the Nine.”
“I am of Their kind. A first cousin, if you will. The Emissaries serve the Everlasting. We are legion, Declan, and it will take more than flashing light and storybooks to best us this time. We are aged. We have learned in our exile. You humans break so easily.” He looked over my shoulder and nodded.
I followed his gaze and cursed. Annie, and six of her fellow officers, hung suspended in the air. Emissary wiggled his fingers, and they danced back and forth like puppets on invisible strings, six feet above the floor.
“Let them go.”
Emissary chuckled. “Times were, even the smallest of your kind could wield Origin and protect their souls against our touch. Now... you are scattered. The few of you with any true power fight amongst yourselves, cowering in your steel cities. You have forgotten the night, Declan. You have forgotten to be afraid.”
Emissary clicked his fingers and snapped the necks of two of the uniformed officers. They hung lifeless, limp, and he cast them aside. Annie and the others stared at me, eyes wide and terrified, unable to move or speak as flame licked at the boardwalk beneath them.
I lunged at Emissary, but he backhanded me with his flaming hand. I was thrown aside and over an aluminum table and chairs, scattering what looked like some damn fine fish and chips, and came to a stop against one of the boardwalk’s support pillars. Dazed and seeing stars, I struggled to stand but fell back disorientated. Blood dribbled down into my eyes from a cut, and the Paddy’s steak special churned in my gut, threatening to make a disturbing reappearance.
While I was down, Emissary snapped four more necks—the remaining uniformed officers—and left Annie dangling alone and helpless above her fallen comrades.
“Last one, Hale,” he said. “Oh my, there’s something special about this one, isn’t there? Something...” he sniffed the air, “... ancient and kind. Bah, so soon? Aeons become seconds—”
Emissary was knocked back, and the fire in his hand spluttered and died. Crimson holes appeared in his shirt, and the retort of a heavy, powerful gun cracked the air. Annie fell to the boardwalk, among the bodies of the other officers, and her eyes rolled into the back of her head. Dead or alive, I didn’t know.
Senior Detective Sam Grey stepped into the pale, green light of the fire eating the boardwalk, his service revolver smoking and empty. He emptied the spent cartridges and reloaded from a stock in his jacket pocket.
“Hale,” he said, and offered me a hand. “Just what in the hell is that man?”
I stumbled to my feet and took a deep breath. Forced to his knees by the barrage of shots, Emissary counted the holes in his chest and laughed.
I pushed Grey back. “You need to take Annie and run—”
Almost faster than the eye could follow, Emissary was back on his feet. He covered the short distance between us in the time connecting heartbeats and drove his arm—fingers lengthened into black, ten-inch claws—through Detective Grey.
Emissary gutted Grey, and his clawed hand erupted from the old detective’s back, clutching his spine in its grip. I’d seen some truly awful things in my time, and this was definitely up in the top twenty. I jerked away from the sight, but Emissary lunged forward and grasped my left forearm, pinning me to what was left of Grey.
I brought the full force of all my Will to bear, pooled in my right hand—and choked.
Fetid Void-light slithered between Emissary’s claws, gripping me tight, and I screamed as an intense fire rippled down my arm. Pain not unlike dying forced me to my knees. Emissary let me fall, cackling high and proud, as tendrils of thin smoke wafted up from my arm.
I fell back and grasped my wrist. Through tear-blurred eyes I saw a familiar rune branded into my flesh, as black as night and red-raw around the edge, like dull embers fading in the fireplace.
An Infernal Rune—old magic. Oldest magic.
From lessons long ago at the academy within the Fae Palace, in Ascension City, I recognized the symbol. The judicial arm of the Knights’ iron justice system used it often during the Tome Wars, mostly on prisoners of war.
“Ah, hell...”
Emissary tossed Detective Grey aside, toward the pile of dead policemen and Annie—her fate unknown.
“That should keep you here for the finale,” Emissary said, grinning through bloody teeth. One of his eyes had reverted to clear, cerulean blue. The other remained pitch-black and burning. His suit was splattered in blood and gore.
I reached for my Will, for a drop of ethereal light, and came up empty. A wall as tall as the sky and as vast as the sea had appeared between me and the power. The rune on my arm stung all the more for trying. This demonic messenger of the Everlasting had barred me from breathing.
“You... bastard.”
He straightened his bloodstained collar and did the first button on his gore-soaked suit jacket. “Blessed Scion requests the presence of the Immortal King, the man who severed the Clock, at His ascension. Be good until then, Declan, and do not interfere with my work. Trying to build a tower of beating love here. Hearts abound, you know? Yeah, you know.”
Emissary laughed and stepped sideways into nothing. He disappeared behind a black curtain of shadow and was gone, uninjured and, for all that mattered, victorious.
Great, add freakin’ Void travel to his list of skills. Son of a bitch had an impressive résumé.
I cradled my branded arm against my chest for a long moment, staring at nothing as blood dripped down my face. I found my feet and wandered over to Annie—hoping for the best but fearing the worst.
She lay curled on her side, arms wrapped under her breasts. I felt for a pulse against her soft, olive-skinned neck.
With a start her eyes flew open, and she sat up, grasping at my shoulders. “What...?” It took her a moment, but she remembered.
I stood and stepped back, giving her a view of the fallen officers a
nd Grey. Annie made an awful sound, somewhere between defeat and despair.
“He’ll pay for this,” I said because I didn’t know what else to say and the silence was terrible. I’d stood here before, in the aftermath, and was just no good at it. “They don’t get to do this. Not here. This world is off limits.”
Dazed and confused, Annie reached for her trusty phone and called for help. I stood silent as she relayed what had happened, on the verge of tears. The lights overhead cast wicked shadows across the boardwalk. Annie stared not at me but at my shoes, at what was missing under those lights.
My shadow.
She snapped her phone closed and found her feet—and her gun. This time there was no mistaking the look on her face. It was one of righteous fury. The look of the wronged and the vengeful.
Annie reached under her leather jacket and produced a pair of steel handcuffs. “Give me your hands,” she said. “Declan Hale, I’m placing you under arrest.”
Cut off from all my terrible power, I had no choice but to agree.
Chapter Seven
Downtown Clown
And that’s how I found myself chained to a desk in Joondalup Police Station. My head wound throbbed, and blood dribbled along the curve of my nose and down into the corner of my mouth. All things being even, I’d gotten lucky tonight—damned lucky. Whatever Emissary was, he’d had me dead to rights and decided to play a little longer.
...keep you here for the finale.
Well, keeping me alive was his second mistake. The first, daring to attract my ire at all.
A young nurse dabbed at my head wound with gauze and some alcohol-based disinfectant while Annie sat opposite me, tapping away on her computer and trying very hard not to cry. I rubbed some burn cream into the Infernal rune marking my forearm. That, more than anything, was perhaps the worst thing to have happened to me tonight. Emissary had left me defenseless, open to attack from anyone who wanted to take a swing. And that list could be damn-near infinite.
The atmosphere in the station, just as the clock ticked over midnight, was one of denial—the first stage of grief. They had lost seven of their own in a devastating attack. Plain-clothed and uniformed officers moved past each other as ghosts—some angry poltergeists, slamming drawers and whispering furiously into phones. Slim televisions attached to the walls played footage of the Hillarys boardwalk falling into the sea. The body count was unknown—some dozens, including Officer Murie and his men.