Nearby, an elderly woman in a long skirt and heavy sweater had fallen to the frozen ground, and a wight was closing in on her, its red eyes alight. My blaster dispatched it, and Petra helped the woman to her feet as I charged on. Ahead, Grady had his gun out and was firing at the wights who were coming at him. I fired off a couple of shots to help him out; bullets don’t do much against the undead unless you get them in exactly the right spot. “Headshots, Frank!” I called out.
And then the undead around me cleared, and a new wight, this one a good foot taller than the rest, lumbered forward holding the phylactery in one hand and a rock the size of my head in the other. There were screams coming from all around me, and sirens blared in the distance. A distant part of my mind, the part not focused on avoiding having my head caved in by a rock, hoped that Gears had gotten a message out to Uncle Dave. Croatoan’s wight lunged for me, and I Opened a portal directly ahead of myself and placed the exit immediately behind me. The end result was that the wight lunged through the portal and crashed into the frozen ground behind me.
I spun around and fired pointblank at the wight’s face. The gun, which had been growing warmer in my hands, just whined and died. Fuck. The wight spun, and I barely managed to dodge a backhand that should’ve taken my head off at the shoulders. The wight feinted, then came at me so fast that I didn’t have time to portal its fist out of the way. It connected solidly with my nose, which crunched under the blow and had me seeing stars. I fell backward, but Opened a portal beneath me, placing the exit above the wight. The end result was a sort of drop attack that would’ve made Corvo Attano proud. I slammed into the wight, drove it to the ground and snatched up the phylactery.
Which immediately burst into flame in my hands.
I yelped and dropped the phylactery as another wight dove and caught it in such a way that made me think I was up against an undead wide receiver. The burned skin on my fingers reformed as the wight charged past me, aimed right for the church. I Opened a portal in front of it, but misjudged the distance, and it was able to slide around it. The wight was on the church steps now, rushing for the open doors —
— When it bounced backward as if it had struck a solid object. The wight hammered against empty air for a moment, its fist sounding as though it was striking stone. Some kind of force field had appeared around the church. That was beyond any of my friends’ abilities. Was Wolfram doing it, somehow? At the moment, I didn’t really care how it was happening, but I was damned sure going to take advantage of it. I got another portal beneath the wight and dropped it onto the sidewalk next to me. “Jeal,” I called out, my voice sounding stuffy with my broken nose. “To me!”
I wasn’t sure where the little kobold was, or if she could hear me, but a second later, a shimmering portal of blue energy snapped open above me, and Jeal soared through in her dragon form. She landed on the ground and turned back into a kobold as I grabbed the phylactery again. As it burst into flame, Jeal’s hands shot out, and I felt her squelch the flames with her innate elemental talents. I winced as my healing powers popped my nose back to normal, which let me put an edge in my voice as I said, “You’re going back to the Pit, Croatoan. I’m taking you there now.”
All I needed was a second to gather the extradimensional energy and Open a portal back to Hades’s office. Two seconds, tops. But then I heard Katrina screaming for me. My head whipped around, and I saw that Frank had been overrun by wights. The big man had run out of ammo and after brawling with several, he was overrun and knocked to the ground. Kat was fighting, too, swinging a sword that one of the wights had dropped with surprising effectiveness, but the sheer number of the undead threatened to overwhelm her, too. That moment of hesitation was all the wight in front of me needed to grab the phylactery back and knock me to the ground. I Opened another portal, but this time, I fell through onto the group of wights attacking Frank and Kat. I bowled them over like I was in a Looney Tunes cartoon, and then set about portaling the undead as far away as I could.
The undead that remained fell quickly to Kat’s sword. Her pupils were huge and her breathing fast, but her movements were sure, almost graceful. I helped Frank back to his feet and asked Kat, “Where’d you learn to use a sword?”
“Karate class,” she said, wiping her brow. “Sensei is going to be jealous. She only jokes about fighting zombies.” I gave her a grin and glanced around. The grin vanished as I regarded the sheer volume of wights in the area. Jesus, how many undead had Croatoan raised? How many more of these damned things were there? If something didn’t happen to even the odds soon, we were looking at a full-scale undead overrun event. Where the hell was Herb?
As if summoned, the pudgy necromancer appeared at my side, a chain of orange characters trailing behind him like a banner. He flung his arms forward, and the characters shot off, spiraling into headstones and monuments. A moment later, translucent people in sixteenth – and seventeenth-century garb began pulling themselves out of their graves. I noticed the snow on the ground wasn’t being disturbed as they moved, yet they still pulled as if they needed physical purchase.
When I’d first met Herb, he’d raised a couple of lifeless to protect Megan and me from some skeletons in a graveyard. Lifeless were different from traditional undead in that lifeless came back to the land of the living willingly, instead of being forced back. As a result, lifeless were more apt to defend people rather than rage against anything with a pulse. The way Herb described it was that he asked the spirits who’d been laid to rest here to come back, and it was up to them if they did or not. Most wouldn’t, not wanting to leave Heaven or wherever they were, but some would. I counted five or six. It would be something, but definitely not enough against these odds.
And then a translucent man on a spectral horse came barreling down the path, scattering wights like bowling pins. He raised a sword above his head and cried out, “Defend the town, lads!” Dozens more lifeless, these not spawned by Herb’s orange characters, rose from their graves to battle the wights. In a moment, we had an undead Peter Jackson fight sequence on our hands.
“Who is that?” I asked Herb, pointing at the horseman.
Herb wiped sweat from his brow. The last time I’d seen him call up lifeless, he’d only summoned two. This had obviously taken a toll on him. “Pretty sure it’s Paul Revere,” he panted, looking at the rider. “He was buried here, you know.”
“Holy shit,” I breathed. Well, if there was anyone who could rouse spirits to defend their resting place, it’d be Paul Freaking Revere. “Where’d he get the horse?” I asked.
Herb shrugged. “Sometimes the dead can summon back possessions that were important to them. I guess his horse qualified.”
I looked around for Croatoan, but the little bastard had vanished. Petra and the Gradys had corralled the churchgoers in an area away from the fighting. I’m sure that the people would have been panicking if not for the minister. The older man gathered his flock in a circle, and they were praying for God to protect them. I spared a thought for the boss. It was the kind of thing he would’ve done.
I gave myself a shake and noticed that the sirens responding to the fire alarm still sounded a ways off. That wasn’t right, they should’ve been here by now. But I couldn’t focus on that, as I had my hands full with wights. I caught sight of the one holding the phylactery and charged forward, my switchblade flashing out to clear a path before me.
The phylactery itself was pulsing now, swelling and contracting, red light flaring from between spider cracks that had formed all along its surface. “It’s overloaded,” Herb yelled, pointing. What he’d said about a soul vortex earlier raced through my mind. A black hole that swallowed souls, and strong enough to wipe out half the life on the planet. I doubled my efforts, shouldering past some wights, flat out ignoring the cuts that others gave me as I caromed haphazardly past, all the while the phylactery pulsed faster, the spider cracks grew wider, the r
ed light angrier and brighter.
And then it exploded.
Time slowed down for me. I knew that at some subconscious level, I’d accelerated myself with tachyon. The phylactery was only beginning to come apart, but I could already see the beginnings of a swirling black vortex at its center. Despite my current situation, I only had a brief second or two to consider my options before I reached out and figuratively grabbed time, bending it around me — and the vortex. Blue light flared around my hands as I pulled time away from the explosion. The world around me, the phylactery, and the wight holding it switched into gray scale as I took us outside time. In my peripheral vision, the world that still had color was frozen, my friends stopped mid-strike as they battled against Croatoan’s forces.
Time strained against me. I’d never done anything like this before, and I didn’t have access to my full powers. I watched the soul vortex form, watched it swallow the wight holding the phylactery. Keeping my breathing steady took an extreme effort of will as I distorted time further, shifting it around the vortex. I concentrated, doing my best to fight down the panic as the vortex expanded and crept toward me. When Dad had done his trick with the Pepsi, he’d just released time, and it had snapped back to normal. But the Pepsi had finished spilling at that point. The vortex was still growing, and if it kept growing at this rate, it would no doubt swallow me.
Holding the image of distorted time firmly in my mind, I took a step back, into the part of the world that still had color. My friends immediately burst back into motion, but I stayed fixed where I was, still able to see into that gray-scale part of the world where the vortex raged. I bent time further around the vortex as it continued to grow. Claws ripped into my back, and something pulled those claws out of me. I ignored it, focused on keeping time warped. I collapsed on the ground as the vortex flared, expanded until it filled my vision, and then collapsed in on itself. Only when the blackness was completely gone did I let time snap back to its original flow.
I hauled myself up to my feet and glanced around. Petra was standing over me in a fighting stance, bodily throwing wights away who got to close to me. Gears and the others were still fighting undead. How was that possible? When Croatoan’s phylactery went up in smoke, it would’ve destroyed him and any wights he’d created along with him. Unless…
My head snapped around, scanning the battlefield. There. A wight slinking away, clutching something. I lurched forward, something in my back screaming at me to sit down and rest. I ignored it and managed to get closer, close enough to see the wight carrying Belzatha’s horn. The wight turned to me, gave a little wave, and then I heard Croatoan say, “We’re not done yet, Corinthos.” Then he created a portal and vanished.
Son of a bitch, he’d detonated the old phylactery and then jumped into Belzatha’s horn before it went supernova. He’d probably been using the horn as his primary phylactery for a while; that explained how he’d been able to raise so many more undead, both here and at Devil’s Altar. I ran a hand over my face. I would get that asshole soon enough, but right now, there was still a metric ton of wights to deal with here.
It took the better part of twenty minutes, during which time I lost count of how many wights I portaled or drop-assassinated. As Herb’s lifeless fought the wights, they lost definition, until they faded away like ghosts. The wights turned to ash as they fell, and when all was finally said and done, a good portion of the Burying Ground was covered in a fine layer of undead dust. I collapsed on the ground next to Petra, leaning on her for support.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Everyone okay?”
Billy was pretty torn up, looking more like a battle-scarred terminator than a cosplay accessory. A testament to Gearstripper’s engineering skills, though, was that while the mech’s aesthetics were banged up, it still seemed to be in good working order. Jeal was standing over Herb, using her healing magic to seal a cut he’d taken across the forehead. “We are victorious, Lord Corinthos,” she said. And the stabbing pain in my chest where the kobold’s faith had once been flared to life.
I did my best not to grimace. Getting to my feet, I tried to display confidence. “Great job, everyone,” I said. “You all did amazing.” I wanted to say more, but the sirens were still keening in the distance. “Okay, how is it those sirens — and the rescue vehicles — haven’t gotten here yet?”
“I thought you were doing something with time, Vinnie,” Gears said. When I shook my head, he added, “Yeah, that doesn’t make any sense. Let me see if I can get anything from Billy’s scanners.”
“Allow me to save you the trouble,” Wolfram said, materializing out of the shadow of a nearby headstone. “I have been altering fate so that we were not disturbed.”
“How the hell did you do that?” I asked. “You’d have to be working on a level of magic that I’ve only heard Mrs. Rita hint at.”
At the mention of her name, Wolfram’s expression darkened. “You are correct. This is an exhausting process, and it has consumed a significant amount of my power. However, there is nothing more important than seeing a prophecy fulfilled. That’s why I shielded the church so Croatoan could not enter, and why I delayed the sirens so they would not interfere with our business.” Wolfram tipped his head to one side, as if working out a math problem. “I expect you have three or four minutes before the police and paramedics arrive.”
“Whoa, hold up,” I said. “You were shielding the church? As in, keeping Croatoan and his undead out?”
“Correct.”
“I want to make sure I’m absolutely clear on this. You made some sort of force field that prevented Croatoan and the wights from entering the church?”
Wolfram looked irritated. “I have already said as much,” he said haughtily. “I used the magics of fate and chance to ensure that none other than those I wished could enter the building.”
“Why the fuck did you have me evacuate the church then?” I yelled. “That jeopardized all those people!” I waved a hand toward the churchgoers, still gathered in the circle a dozen yards away. “Some may die from the injuries they received. All of that could have been prevented if you’d just warded the church and let us fight the wights!”
Wolfram seemed bored with my reaction. “Corinthos, there are things beyond your comprehension in this universe. There are things that simply must be done. Some lives were destined to be tested today. That could not happen if they remained safe within the church.” He brushed some imaginary dust from his shoulders. “All that matters is you play your part in the prophecy. And you did.”
“Just got word back from Uncle Dave, Vinnie,” Gears said, interrupting me before I could go off on Wolfram again. “A memory-modification crew is on their way from Ashgate.”
“You know, Wolfram,” I said, rubbing my face. “What Galahad told me of the Dodici prophecy was that twelve demons run amok on our plane, that they stand against the forces of light, and then they win. That means things end badly for everyone, Strangers included. Why would you work toward protecting that?”
“Only human arrogance assumes that people are the most important thing in the universe, Corinthos. Unlike the Caulborn, the Strangers have been populated by numerous species throughout the many histories of this world.”
“Numerous species?”
“As one declines, another rises. Homo sapiens are but the latest link in the chain. What you would call Lizard People preceded humans, crystalline beings called the Tesson preceded them, and when the time comes, my brothers and sisters will pass on our sacred duties to who or whatever succeeds humanity.”
“But, dude, demons,” I said.
Wolfram pffd. “I have assisted numerous demons with their own prophecies. Greilon, Pazlam, Krampus, Iskillia—”
“Whoa, whoa, hold up,” Gears said, marching Billy forward. “Krampus? Krampus the Christmas demon? Yo
u helped him come back?”
“Of course,” Wolfram replied. “It was written, so it had to be—” Wolfram never got to finish his sentence because Billy cracked him across the jaw with a right cross.
“That was for Santa, Stranger Tungsten,” Gears said as Billy pointed menacingly at the Stranger. “You nearly ruined Christmas.”
“How is it you didn’t see that coming?” I asked Wolfram, genuinely curious.
“The cards told me he would strike me,” Wolfram growled as he rubbed his jaw, “and the cards said I should take that blow. I do not question fate, Corinthos.” He turned his attention back to Gears. “As for you, the prophecy said that the stripper of gears would deliver a shocking blow to the Christmas demon. That was you, I take it? Well, you performed your part in the prophecy admirably.” He rubbed his jaw again and took a wary step away from Billy. He nodded toward the church. “The church is safe, as I knew it would be, as it was written. You still figure into the Dodici prophecy, Vincent Corinthos, yet your future is uncertain. So don’t get yourself killed again, else you will not be able to play your part, and I will have to improvise.” With that, he stepped back into the shadows and vanished.
“I cannot believe he let Krampus back into the world,” Gears said as Billy punched his hand into his palm.
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