The leading edge of imps reached the lip of the crater, and in a brainless lemur rush, they tipped into the swirl of energy. Lux lucis frothed and bubbled, consuming dozens of imps in indiscriminate swallows. Atrum hopscotched across the surface, kissing a few imps along the way. Those imps ballooned in size, bounced another step, and disappeared into lux lucis.
Energy within the pit swelled, atrum arching and ballooning toward the rafters. Vervet bounded through it, exiting as large as baboons. They turned on their brethren, using tiger claws to rend smaller vervet to pieces. The rafters fast became a cannibalistic feeding frenzy.
On the ground, lux lucis flared with maddening irregularity, killing a handful of imps, then allowing another group to slip through atrum and swell to the size of wolfhounds. What was cute at the size of a gerbil or bunny became a nightmare of fuzz and forearm-long teeth when tripled and quadrupled in size.
Their rapid growth didn’t faze the imps. They bounced around the pit like moths around a bug zapper. As quickly as the imps grew, most died, their larger bodies vulnerable to the slightest touch of frothing lux lucis. But for every twenty that disintegrated, five enormous imps didn’t.
My ankle twinged. I tore my gaze away from the insane spectacle to look behind me. The flood of imps and vervet hadn’t slacked. If anything, it was increasing.
“Help, please.” I’d barely whispered the words, but they carried in the eerily quiet garage. Despite hundreds of clawed feet all around me, not one of their steps made a noise discernible to human ears, not even enforcer ears. Neither did the increasingly agitated energy of the pit.
Jacob shifted his feet, and the scuff of his shoes on dirt made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Deliberately, I kicked my foot against the ground, reaffirming my own solidness in a world overwhelmed with pure Primordium energy. Unlocked from paralysis, I fought against succumbing to a panicked dash to my car.
A Clydesdale-size imp bounded toward the plastic to my left, dinner plate–size ears vibrating with each bounce. Have they always had ears? I’d never looked that closely before. The imp almost reached the plastic before I realized it was going to bounce right out of sight, mindlessly unleashed upon the world. A normal-size imp could, over time, deposit a fair amount of atrum on a person’s soul as it fed. What would an imp the size of a small tractor do?
I sprinted across the seething ground, leaping clumps of imps whenever possible. Behind me, I heard Jacob curse, then scuffle into action. How much atrum comprised this imp? More than had coated the charred remains of the Christmas tree stand. More than my entire body’s balance of lux lucis?
Tightening my grip on the pet wood, I darted around a concrete pillar just as the Clydesdale turned. Glistening black eyes latched on to me. A boneless jaw dropped open, stretching from the base of the imp’s eyes to its feet. Sword-length teeth spiraled into the infinite blackness of its throat.
I shrieked and dove to the side, rolling through piles of normal-size imps. Gravel bit into my back and arms, but I sprang to my feet before the Clydesdale turned, thanking the lux lucis gods for not increasing the imp’s intelligence with its size. I jabbed my pet wood into its flank and pumped a wallop of lux lucis through it.
The imp jumped forward, unaffected.
“This is so not good.”
Where a normal imp’s hop would have covered a little over a foot of ground, this beast bounced as high as the first beams and easily the length of my Civic. My eyes felt like saucers as panic skittered through my veins. I searched for Jacob, finding him on the opposite side of the pit, his sword swinging through two gorilla-size vervet. Lux lucis flared in the pit, blocking my vision before I could tell if Jacob’s efforts were more successful than mine.
The Clydesdale imp jumped in an exaggerated circle, clumsily orienting on me. I lurched for its flank, using its cumbersome size against it. My second copious dose of lux lucis disappeared within the imp’s inky, airy body without effect before it bounded out of range again. After my third attack, I thought I saw a minute decrease in the imp’s size, but I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t wishful thinking. This was hopeless.
“Madison! Behind you!” I whirled and leapt aside as an imp the size of a sheep pounced. Its feet slid through my shoulder on the way by, sending a jolt through my soul like an electric charge. One knee buckled. I gasped and staggered to my feet. A heavy smear of atrum clung to my shoulder, but I didn’t have time to cleanse myself. More agile than its larger companion, the sheep imp pivoted and attacked, a double layer of razor teeth leading its charge.
I swung my pet wood through its body as I scuttled out of reach, pulsing lux lucis through the wand. When the imp landed, it had decreased to the size of a goat. It sprung several steps before realizing I wasn’t in front of it. I used the reprieve to sprint away from the Clydesdale imp, which had finally maneuvered its mouth toward me again.
My eyes glazed across the sea of atrum mayhem. I hadn’t been mistaken earlier: The tide of evil creatures had increased. Wall-to-wall vervet and imps, most of them abnormally large, littered the garage. It was too much. Too much to take in. Too much to fight. I didn’t have enough lux lucis in my body to disintegrate the two imps who’d fixated on me, let alone half the evil creatures rushing in. Maybe if I had a forest to recharge in, but all I had at my back now was an angry-looking pooka pit, and even its lux lucis had proved dangerous to me.
I had a vision of the pooka overwhelming me again. If I blacked out, I’d be covered by imps. They would suck the lux lucis from my body while I was unconscious, and I’d awaken . . . changed.
“Madison!” Jacob dashed to my side. “We’ve got to drive them to the pooka. There’s no way we can take them out by ourselves, but maybe it can.”
We dodged in separate directions as a lion-size imp leapt for us. Jacob swung his sword up through its body, and it fell to the ground at half its size.
“How?”
“These ones are after you. Run toward the pit, and they should follow.”
I stared at him incredulously. “What happens if the imps get a boost of atrum? Or I do?”
“Make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“Your plan sucks.” Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of anything better. “What are you going to do?” I shouted, dodging the clumsy Clydesdale imp.
“Try to round up some others. Use your knife. It’ll pack more of a punch.” Jacob darted across the garage, sword swirling.
Ooo-kay. I looked at my short knife, then at the three feet of pet wood. Hadn’t I been excited to make some up-close kills yesterday? For some reason, I couldn’t muster the same enthusiasm now.
“Here, little impy,” I called, jogging a few steps toward the pit.
As if they shared one brain, three monstrous imps cocked their bulbous heads, then leapt as one in my direction. A fresh spurt of adrenaline tingled through my toes, and I zigzagged through the bouncing, oversize imps, attracting a few bloated vervet in the process.
Though the sheer number of normal-size creatures could take me down if they coordinated their efforts, to say nothing of the stronger imps and vervet, the pit scared me more. The closer I got to it, the more active the energies became, though I hoped my mind was playing tricks on me. Atrum swelled like a sheet blown from below, flapping high into the air before deflating again and again, its movements unpredictable. Lux lucis snaked across the floor of the garage in long tendrils like live electric wires, disintegrating swaths of imps and leaving clear charcoal patches of gravel that just as quickly refilled with imps again. Heart pounding, I gave those strands a wide berth.
A vervet chasing me pounced on the back of the Clydesdale, ripping a chunk from its back and swallowing. The imp deflated and the grotesque monkey inflated in direct proportion to its bite. The vervet’s spiky head swiveled. Shiny black teeth grinned at me.
I bounced off a girder beam and careened out of the trajectory of a leaping vervet. Nearby, a rush of imps flowed over the lip of the crater and into the atrum, s
welling like dry sponges at the first touch of water. Most continued their hop, landing in lux lucis beyond the atrum and disintegrating. A few bounced out, whole and hungry-looking.
I was the closest snack.
A swell of atrum billowed into the sky, dwarfing me.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God.” I stopped a few feet from the largest swells of activity, peripherally aware of the pooka’s incessant pull. This was close enough. If I timed it right, I could force my stalkers to leap directly into the pit. From there, luck would determine whether they landed in lux lucis or atrum.
Dropping into a tennis stance, I readied myself to run in whichever direction would save my life.
Lux lucis twined between my feet. My breath caught. The bar of light slithered through the endless tide of imps, killing with impunity. Before I could leap aside, another branch of lux lucis speared the air by my right hip, then my left. A fourth bar arced over me toward the girders, dividing like lightning strands. I trembled. I stood against the underside of a lux lucis octopus, with all its legs fanned out around my body, reaching, stretching, preparing to engulf me and suck me under.
Yet not a single strand touched me. The arms lengthened, encountering the oversize evil creatures by chance. The tip of a strand of lux lucis brushed a bear cub–size imp, and it disappeared. Another tendril took out two imps and a vervet. Another touch disintegrated the Clydesdale imp and the vervet feeding off it.
I held my ground, afraid to move a muscle, barely breathing. A base sense of self-preservation screamed for me to run or at least turn to face the source of all this energy, but my better instincts preserved me. Power flowed through the white energy outlining my body, vibrating against my skin and soul. My bones hummed. It was like standing a hairbreadth from a high-voltage wire, only there were a fistful of wires around me, and each could electrocute my soul.
Then, one by one, the tendrils receded, writhing back to the pit like snakes. I took a hesitant step, then another. When I was sure I was clear, I sprinted several feet before spinning to face the pit. It had calmed to a quiet storm, like the center of a plasma ball, just waiting for someone to stick their hand in it and cause it to spark.
In the moment of reprieve, I leaned my hands on my knees and listened to the harsh sound of my breathing in the still air.
“Not exactly what I had in mind, Spark Plug,” Jacob said. He trotted across the gravel to stand in clear ground with me. Lux lucis flowed down his body, cleaning the smear of atrum from his ankles.
I looked at my hand. My soul gleamed like solid ivory, and almost too bright to take in.
“You’ll learn to move faster with practice,” he said.
I straightened, a sour taste in my mouth. If light in Primordium traveled the same as in normal sight, Jacob would have been engulfed in the glow of my soul. Instead, I stood next to him, looking stronger than Niko and he as weak as I had after my first encounter with a hound. Yet he had the nerve to lecture me.
“I thought you couldn’t mentor me. Should I get out of the way and let you handle this?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then don’t talk to me like I’m brainless.” I stalked away from Jacob. My insides vibrated like a struck gong, and not completely from fear. I sheathed my knife. Jacob was wrong; it was too short to be useful against these oversize insubstantial creatures, even if it could pack a stronger lux lucis punch than pet wood.
A small, bright creature zipped in front of my vision. Fear and lux lucis wrapped so tight around my muscles that I levitated backward in a move that would have done Mr. Bond proud.
The blur crystallized, hovering at eye level as steadily as I might hold out my hand.
I stared into the large eyes of my very first prajurit.
She was no taller than the length of my hand, and absolutely flawless from the tiny braids holding her long hair away from her triangular face down to minuscule toes peeking out of the cloth wrapping her arches and ankles. She might have stepped straight from Val’s sketch, with a tight top and loose pants sewn with amazing details. In each hand, she held a slender sword glistening with lux lucis.
I’d encountered evil creatures whose bodies didn’t have normal-world counterparts, but prajurit were the first good creatures I’d met who didn’t look one hundred percent human. It was like being confronted with a griffin or a mermaid—a creature of solid magic hovered before me, and I did my best to wrap my unsophisticated mind around it.
“Uh, hi?” Madison Fox, woman of eloquence.
A handful of prajurit dropped beside the first. I jerked. Most were male, and all held toothpick-length swords.
The first prajurit darted forward and brushed a kiss across my forehead, zipping back out of reach before I fully registered the sensation. She giggled, tipped over backward, and did a series of loops toward the floor before zipping away.
One by one, the other prajurit kissed my forehead, then twirled into the garage. I stood, transfixed. Their wings had moved my hair. They had physical form. I’d been told as much, but it still made the reality of the tiny flying humanoids no less shocking.
“It’s your soul,” Jacob said. “They like the taste.”
I blinked, coming out of my daze. Across the garage, tiny white beelike bodies dove through the vervet, swords slashing. In nimble aerial feats, they evaded claws and stingers, and everywhere they passed, sparkles of dissipated atrum sprinkled to the ground.
“Jacob!” The cry came from outside; then the plastic parted, and Claire raced into the garage, her steps high and exaggerated. Beneath her feet, a fresh wave of imps and vervet surged into the unfinished building. Three vervet leapt onto her back from behind, sinking their teeth into her soul.
Jacob and I moved as one, but she disintegrated the vervet before we reached her.
“What’s happening? I was almost to my Escalade when the imps came out of nowhere—everywhere. I tried to stop them, but they didn’t . . . they . . .” Claire’s gaze snagged on the pit, and her words dried up.
Bubbles of atrum-soaked lux lucis lifted from the crater and floated in a slow rotation around the main energy like planets suspended in space.
“It’s a pooka,” I said.
Claire’s wide eyes blinked at me. “What the hell happened to you?”
I threw a thumb over my shoulder at the pit.
“Whatever.” She turned to Jacob. “I called Gavin. Did you call Grace? Isabel?”
I let Jacob finish answering her questions and surveyed the garage. I needed to do something with the energy pulsing inside me or I would explode. The number of enlarged vervet and imps was growing, and the incoming tide hadn’t slackened.
Rushing into the fray, I squashed a compulsion to sing. Nerves made me giddy, and darting around singing “Eye of the Tiger” wasn’t going to win me any points with my fellow enforcers. Plus, who was in charge of my inner sound track? It obviously wasn’t me.
For a while, nothing registered but the end of my pet wood, the dark bodies dying against it, and the accompanying scuffle sounds of Claire and Jacob battling nearby. I fought without much skill, dodging and sprinting as much as I hacked and slashed. For the most part, it worked, but I grew clumsy. Physical exhaustion emphasized by lux lucis depletion weighted my limbs. I’d been on my feet, battling evil in one form or another, for sixteen hours. I suspected the only reason I remained upright was the two generous boosts from the pooka—one this morning while I lay unconscious and the other more recent but rapidly expended against inflated imps. Even terror and adrenaline could keep me going only so much longer.
I turned from disintegrating a knee-high imp and came up against a wall of atrum. Backpedaling, I cast about for my bearings, afraid the pooka’s ever-present compulsion had pulled me closer to the pit than I realized.
The wall moved with me. Flaky fish scales glistened in the ebony surface. I lifted my head, my body moving too slowly. A thick cluster of black spikes protruded from the vervet’s chest, and scaly snake skin twisted
up its pillar neck. From above the first girders, glossy obsidian eyes the size of my head gleamed over a wide, sharp smile. My heart thundered against my eardrums. Two massive three-clawed paws punched the ground on either side of me, cutting off my escape.
The vervet opened its mouth. Rows and rows of jet-black teeth receded into its throat. I backed up, but not fast enough. Fast as a snake strike, all those teeth snapped around me, and my scream echoed through the structure.
14
What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger
Blackness, pure and unrelieved, coated my eyes, blinding me to anything beyond the coalesced atrum of the vervet’s throat. I expected a smell, but there wasn’t even a change in air pressure. The vervet was still little more than evil air, despite its size.
Shafts of atrum teeth skewered me from waist to ankles. Ice-cold and pain-free, those sharp blades couldn’t hold me physically, but they pierced my soul clean through. The vervet swallowed, and a wave of nausea coursed from my head down to my waist as lux lucis poured from my soul in reaction, sliding through the jagged cuts. My feet numbed.
I shoved at nothing with my arms and stumbled backward. My heel caught on a rock, and I landed hard on my tailbone. The vervet’s teeth jerked up my body, slicing tatters through my soul but leaving my head engulfed in atrum.
Another swallow, and the vervet guzzled lux lucis from every wound in my soul. I screamed again, hand convulsing on useless pet wood.
The world spun, and I collapsed on my side. Saliva pooled in my mouth. The lux lucis comprising my soul faltered and slowed like molasses, oozing into the vervet in a painful sludge. I pushed up on wobbly arms, crashing back to the ground when they gave out. The impact jarred my sight.
Yellow overhead lights blinded me. Normal sight, my sluggish brain supplied. The vervet still existed, invisible now; I was still skewered on its teeth and could still feel it sucking my soul down like a thick milkshake through a straw. Black fuzzy clouds narrowed my peripheral vision. My head insisted the world was dumping me off its surface, but my eyes confirmed I was lying on my back.
A Fistful of Fire: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Madison Fox, Illuminant Enforcer Book 2) Page 20