Death's Mantle: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Revelations Book 1)

by J. A. Cipriano

  “Look, we can’t do that. Jormungand has to be stopped first, no matter what. It makes more sense for all of us to go after him together. We can take on Loki afterward, together. He’s still sealed away. We don’t need to fight him right now.” Ian swallowed as he took a step backward, trying to clear his head, but all he heard was the sword saying, “Let the fool unleash Loki. When the god breaks him, we can feast upon them both.”

  “No! This time we’re doing things my way!” Malcom’s face hardened into a mask of anger as he waved his hand, and for a split second, the crowd’s eyes grew glossy. They all turned toward Ian and shouted at him.

  “Murderer!”

  “Killer!”

  Malcom shook his head. “I wish it could be different,” he said, exhaling slowly. “But I knew it couldn’t be. The path of death is mine to walk. Alone.” He turned and walked away as the crowd surged toward Ian, hurling themselves bodily at him.

  “What the hell is going on?” Ian cried as he dodged an elderly lady swinging her walker at his head.

  “I’ve used my powers not just to make them think you did all of this, Ian, but to make them want to kill you,” Malcom said over his shoulder as he tapped his hammer to his forehead and saluted. “Now stay out of my way.”

  Ian shut his eyes and gripped the hilt of Haijiku. Time slowed around him as the temperature dropped. First a degree, then ten, then fifty. He opened his eyes as the insatiable, unending hunger of winter surged around him in an unyielding gale, filling the winds with snow and flinging everything away from him. People and debris tumbled away like matchsticks as he took a crackling step toward Malcom.

  “I won’t let you do this, Malcom.” Ian pulled Haijiku free from the sheath, and the dark blade swelled in the light. Frosty butterflies flitted along its edge as he pointed the weapon at his friend.

  “Why? Because a doddering old man told you to stop me?” Malcom turned, shaking his head sadly. “How silly…”

  Before Ian could reply, Malcom slammed his knee into Ian’s gut. The breath whooshed out him as a single thought splintered his mind. How had Malcom crossed so much distance so quickly?

  Light flared from Malcom’s hammer as he grabbed Ian by the throat, his huge hand cutting off Ian’s air supply with ease.

  “I don’t want to hurt you. We’re friends.” Malcom flung Ian backward, and he landed hard on his back, his vision swimming. “But I can’t let you stop me.” Malcom’s eyes burned like fire as he lifted the hammer into the air. The sky darkened and thunder rumbled through the foreboding grey clouds. “This is the right way. My way.”

  Rain fell. The first drops were like ice on Ian’s skin, and as he lay there, lightning flashed across the heavens, spilling fractured light across the horizon.

  “Yeah well, I’ve never really been good about listening to people,” Ian said, crawling to his feet and staggering forward.

  “Come on…” Malcom said, and his confidence fractured just a touch. “Please, don’t make me stop you…”

  “Then stop,” Ian replied, reaching out and touching his friend’s shoulder. “Just stop.”

  “I…” Malcom turned away. “I can’t.” He spun, his hammer lashing out through the air.

  Haijiku moved with a will of its own. It brought Ian’s hand up, catching the huge hammer on the flat of the blade. The force of it flung Ian backward. He slammed into the huge glass window of a pawnshop offering to buy all things gold and silver. Ian hit the ground in a rain of glass, his head cracking against the laminate tile within. He lay there, trying to force himself to breathe as Haijiku writhed in his hand.

  “Enough talk,” it cooed in his brain. “That time is over…”

  “He’s my friend,” Ian wheezed. “I can’t…”

  Malcom’s hammer burst through the window, knocking away the shards of glass still clinging to the frame before he stepped though. He patted the hammer against his palm, each strike sending a flurry of green sparks leaping into the air.

  “I’m not going to kill you, but I can’t let you stop me…” Malcom’s feet crunched on the broken glass as he approached.

  The scene slowed down, and Ian felt someone next to him, supporting him. Shadow stretched along his arm and down his fingers, forcing his hand closed around the hilt of Haijiku. Power surged through him as he raised his arm, angling the blade in front of himself. His lips curled into a smile as the heat surrounding them filled the blade. Wisps of frost flittered through the air like tiny, translucent butterflies.

  The shadow whispered in his ear, breath like a winter’s storm, and he repeated the words, calling upon a power that was not his own, not really. “A long time ago, before man and beast, there was the cold and the dark.” Ian’s voice came out in a burst of white fog. “It waited, and in its waiting, it hungered.” Ice spread outward around him, rippling over the tile like spilled water.

  Malcom stopped, his hammer falling to his side as he stared, wide-eyed. “Ian, what are you doing?”

  “We have hungered for so long, Malcom.” The rain outside turned to ice as darkness fell, covering the land. Ian narrowed his eyes and got to his feet. Rime covered his clothes and laced his hair as he reached out toward Malcom with his free hand. “You have forgotten our hunger, death. You have forgotten you are merely a byproduct of our power. You have forgotten, but now you will remember.”

  Butterflies with wings like snowflakes rose from the ground. Moths with bodies of hail grew from the falling sleet and filled the air. They flittered through the wind, swirling about like a hurricane of rain and ice. They converged in a single, unending mass and crashed into Malcom, knocking him backward through the front window in a flurry of sleet and snow.

  Malcom slammed to the ground and hoarfrost spread out across his clothes, freezing him to the ground. Eyes half-shut and unseeing, Ian stepped forth onto the street. Frost blanketed the pavement, crunching beneath his feet as Malcom tore himself free in a burst of emerald flame. He wrenched a jagged icicle from the shoulder above his right arm. With a flick of his wrist, Malcom flung the shard at Ian’s head. The ice fell before him, dropping to the ground and shattering into a million indistinct crystals.

  Ian’s vision tinged with red as he watched the vein throbbing in Malcom’s neck. He sniffed and the smell of blood filled his nostrils. He could taste it on his tongue, warm and hot, and he was hungry, so hungry. He swallowed hard, trying to force the thought down, but try as he might, Malcom smelled like food.

  “Malcom, stop this madness,” Ian cried, voice strained and desperate. “I can’t hold the hunger back. It wants you…”

  As Malcom reached out for the hammer lying next to him, Haijiku writhed like an eel. The ice came alive with a million frosty butterflies. If it hadn’t seemed so deadly and sinister, the light glinting off their crystalline wings would have been beautiful.

  “You just don’t get it, Ian.” Malcom shook his head. “All of this is a lie. All of us are just puppets.” His fingers touched the hammer, and the butterflies surged forward, slamming into him and hurling him backward through the air. Rime spread across his flesh as he flew through the air.

  Lightning flashed in the sky, slamming into Malcom, and green sparks exploded from his body. Sickly, emerald light spilled off him as he surged forward, hammer out in front of him.

  Before Ian could react, Malcom swept under his guard and slammed the hammer into his midsection. Blood spurted from Ian’s lips as he flew backward through the air. Oddly, Malcom was behind him and caught Ian in the center of his back with a herculean swing. Pain shot through him, dousing every sensation in cold unending agony.

  Ian hurtled through the partially intact wall of the pawnshop. Haijiku slipped from his grasp and disappeared into the darkness. He tried to focus on the room but couldn’t push away the anguish rippling through his body long enough to see clearly. He staggered to his feet as numbing cold filled him, stripping away his pain in an instant and leaving a profound emptiness behind.

  Haijiku glinted, e
mbedded up to the hilt in an immense stone statue of a creature with horns like the devil himself. Haijiku glowed violently, blue-white sparks spitting off the blade. Ian reached out and grabbed the hilt. As he did so, something monstrous swept past him. It reminded him of the time he’d gone scuba diving in Australia and a great white had swam by him. It hadn’t attacked, hadn’t even noticed him, but the feel of the predator so close to him had been unnerving. This was like that, times infinity.

  Before Ian could even think about what to do, Malcom tackled him. Ian flew sideways, tearing his katana free from the outstretched palm of the stature in a shower of sparks that hit the ground as ice.

  They crashed into a glass counter, splintering it under their impact and crushing the porcelain teacups within. Ian spun, whipping his body around as they fell, bracing himself against Malcom’s chest. They smacked into the ground so hard the force rippled up Ian’s arms. Malcom’s head cracked into the laminate with a sound like a dropped egg and his eyes went distant and far off. Malcom collapsed, his hammer slipping from his fingers and hitting the tile with an empty thud.

  Amy 01:04

  The blackened land of Jormungand’s alien world filled Amy’s eyes. What remained of the ancient decaying buildings was covered in thick ash from the fires dotting the otherwise barren landscape. The sky, burned to a suffocating black mass, was lit up by an unceasing lightning storm. Vermin skittered from crack to crack in search of food, darting to and fro between patches of molten rock.

  A spire loomed menacingly in the distance, and the lightning and fire seemed concentrated in that area. The path toward the structure was littered with the bones of hapless victims and the charred remains of various beasts.

  Amy took a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves, and the soot filled air made her lungs burn. She coughed and wiped her stinging eyes with the back of her hand.

  “You know what concerns me, about those bones?” Caden asked from beside her. “They don’t appear to be terribly old. I don’t want to find whatever killed them.”

  Amy motioned for him to keep quiet and follow her up the path through the desiccated town. She wasn’t sure why he’d wanted to come, but he had insisted for all the good it would do. Then again, if he wanted to see this through, who was she to stop him?

  Something made her hair stand on end as she trudged forward, and it wasn’t the sweltering heat even though it was so thick and cloying, it was like being wrapped in a heavy blanket. Amy rubbed her eyes one more time, trying to ignore the heavy smoke in the air.

  “That’s it. I’m sure of it.” Amy pointed to the spire, her arm wavering slightly. She didn’t know why, exactly, but something drew her toward the structure, even though every part of her told her it was the one place she shouldn’t go.

  “Great, we get to charge into the pit of Hell, confront the meanest bastard in the whole god damned universe. Not to mention, he is in Hell’s castle, in the suburbs of Hell, no problem,” deadpanned Caden.

  “What doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger,” replied Amy, giving him a quick smile.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of,” Caden mumbled, shaking his head.

  “Hey there, pretty girl, where are you going?” Vali called out from above them. “Come back to visit?”

  His voice rippled along Amy’s spine, twisting her gut with rage and fear alike. She looked up into the sky, but saw no one. She shut her eyes for a long moment and took a deep breath. When she opened them, her head swiveled to a shadow clinging to a wall a few meters to their left.

  “So you see me at last?” Vali asked, not so much stepping from the shadows as materializing from them. “When you look into my eyes, do you see your nothingness?” Vali pulled down the flesh under his eye with one slender finger. “Part of me is half-inclined to take you to Jormungand myself just so I can see what happens.” Vali shook his head as a sly smile crossed his lips. “But what fun would that be?”

  Amy’s eyes narrowed. Her heart began to beat faster and faster. Something snapped inside her, and crimson flames exploded from her body, knocking Caden to the ground as her eyes turned into violent red orbs. Inhuman screams tore from her throat as she surged forward. Her fists crashed into Vali’s body, staggering him backward as his clothing caught fire.

  “Amy!” Caden cried as Vali smashed his forehead into the bridge of her nose. She fell backward, crumpling to the ground as pain seized her, blinding her to everything else.

  Vali looked toward Caden and pointed at him, his hand glowing with an off-shade of ghastly white. Amy swung herself around, leaping in front of him as Vali released a torrent of crackling madness from his palm. It slammed into her chest and agony swept through her. Smoke billowed from her skin as she toppled to her knees, the collar of her shirt flaking away like bits of ash.

  “Sacrificing yourself won’t matter, Bellum.” Vali raised his hand. “It’s not you or him, after all. Then again, that’s the downside to wielding the mantle of War. You always want to sacrifice yourself for the greater good. It really makes no sense because no one will ever love War.” He grinned. “They’ll always prefer Victory over War after all because she gets results and you, well, you’re just a means to an end, aren’t you? After all, what’s the saying, ‘in a war, no one wins?’”

  Her vision went scarlet. The sight of a battlefield torn asunder, fire rippling across the sky, shrouding the earth in flames surged across her brain as she stared at him wide-eyed. A means to an end? No… no she was the end. It would do him good to remember the ferocity of war.

  She kicked him, her heel connecting sharply with his knee. It twisted with a loud crack, and he toppled to the dirt, shrieking. She coughed, blood dribbling down her lips as she touched her chest. The cauterized flesh beneath where he’d blasted her felt foreign, but strangely it didn’t bother her as much as it should have.

  Vali shrieked, pulling himself toward her with his hands, his useless leg dragging on the ground behind him. He grabbed onto her shoulder with one hand, his fingers digging into the tendon and muscle. She coughed up blood as he jerked her body toward him, sending up a cloud of crimson dust. He placed his free hand on her chest and pushed. Her ribs cracked. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything.

  Vali stood, his injury no longer bothering him and looked down on her. She curled up into a ball, struggling to breathe through her ragged lungs. Vali spat on her, his sticky saliva smacking against her cheek and dribbling down her flesh.

  “Do you think this is the first time I’ve faced one of your kind, Bellum?” Vali grabbed her by the hair and hauled her to her feet. “Who do you think sucked the marrow from your bones last time?” The red-bladed knife slipped into his hand, and he held it up in front of her. “Where do you think I got this?”

  She coughed, her lungs felt like fire. Each breath seared her insides. Her left arm fell uselessly to her side. Try as she might, it wouldn’t move a single inch. She shut her eyes and screams of battle filled her ears. The hoof beats of thousands of cavalry thundered around her, drawing machinations of war across the land with one purpose, to destroy the enemy.

  Vali swung at her. She blocked with her right hand and drove her knee into his midsection. He wobbled backward, and she leapt on top of him, driving her knees into his chest and riding him to the ground. Blood splashed over her as his head cracked against the blackened earth.

  “How’s it feel!” she snarled, flames swirling around her, expanding her chest and causing her bones to snap back into place. She reached down, wrenching the knife from his hand. As he tried to scramble backward, she drove it into his chest. Scarlet light exploded from the hilt of the weapon like the last dying gasp of a fallen star before winking out completely.

  She stood, turning toward Caden. He looked at her wide-eyed. She’d seen that look before, and it scared her. As she took a step forward, he pointed at something. That something grabbed her leg. She stumbled, falling to the ground as Vali pulled himself closer to her with one hand,
his other gripping the bloody blade.

  “I’m not dead yet,” he growled. The intensity of his eyes overwhelmed her, freezing her in place. He swung the weapon at her throat. She threw herself to the side, barely dodging the blade as it sank into the ground all the way to the hilt. He yelled a horrible guttural sound that exploded across the horizon and made lightning flash and thunder crash. Everything seemed to move in slow motion as he bit down on her neck and tore her flesh loose.

  The pain released her from her trance, and she drove her fist into the side of his skull. The blow flung him sideways like a burning comet of scarlet flame. Vali hit the ground a few yards away as flames billowed around him. Amy stood slowly and took a wobbling step toward Vali, holding her neck tightly as blood seeped through her fingers.

  “I’m going to bleed to death,” she murmured, and as she said the words, the blood seemed to stop flowing. She pulled her hand away, staring it in disbelief. “What’s going on?”

  The wind blew listlessly in response and great carrion birds started to circle above her.

  Kim 01:09

  Kim took a step backward. She had just gotten out of the tank and had barely finished dressing when Ian arrived with Malcom’s unconscious body slung over his shoulder. He tossed Malcom onto the floor before them with the strange sort of pride a cat has when it brings a dead rodent to its master.

  “He’s not dead,” Ian affirmed, staring at Sabastin. “What’s next? I hear there’s a viper’s den that needs entering.”

  Kim raced forward and grabbed Malcom, holding him close. Despite how cold he felt, his almost non-existent heartbeat told her Ian’s words were true. He wasn’t dead. She spun, carrying him up the stairs and dropping him into the regeneration tank. His body bobbed on the surface as she slung the mask over his face, and pressed him into the confines of the liquid.