Bring Down Heaven 01 - The City Stained Red

by Sam Sykes

  Her sleeve split apart in a burst of crimson, erupting in a hellish light that painted her skin red and her bones black. It lasted for but a moment, an eye into the keyhole in the door between earth and hell that closed shut in a breath.

  But the scream that followed lasted much longer.

  The demon’s grasp slipped from her as it fled down the alley, chased by its own wail. It coiled over itself defensively, clutching the blackened, smoking flesh where her hand had touched. Between its coils, it scowled spitefully from a withered face.

  “You dare to touch the learned Disciple?” it snarled. It leveled a thin black fingernail at her. “She is a vessel, tainted! Unfit to hear His word! Rend her.”

  “KAPIRA!”

  She turned and saw the Khovura’s eyes first, wide and crazed. She saw the blade second, held high overhead as he rushed her, its steel quivering with his screeching charge. He was coming at her fast. He was crazed. He and his knife wanted her dead.

  He’s not a knife, the thought came instinctively. He’s a wrist.

  A wrist that she caught, pulled, turned as she forced the momentum of his charge into the nearby wall. She drew fiercely on his arm and planted a boot at the base of his spine; she heard a snapping sound as the limb came free from its socket, and a scream as the man dropped his blade and fell to the stones.

  She turned to face her remaining two opponents. They were warier, holding their knives defensively, not willing to give her any more momentum to use against them. She drew in a deep breath and steadied herself.

  They’re not knives, either, she told herself. They’re just—

  Something lashed against her back. A sharp pain lanced through her. She felt cloth split and blood weep. She turned and saw the demon’s long tongue, wet with her life sliding back into its mouth as it began to claw its way toward her.

  Or maybe we just run this time.

  This she did, guarding her face with her arms and barreling between the two Khovura. She felt the blades nick her, kiss her flesh, and paint her further scarlet. She could run through that; she could bite that back. Pain could have her attention later, after fear had its turn.

  She burst out of the alley and into the streets, breaking into a sprint. She heard feet behind her, screams of a name she didn’t know on the lips of the Khovura.

  And then just ordinary screams.

  She glanced over her shoulder; the demon came howling out of the alley, smashing the Khovura out of its way as it slithered after Asper, clawing toward her upon black nails.

  Don’t think about that. She forced herself to look forward. Don’t think about the pain. She forced herself to ignore the searing lash upon her back. Don’t think about what it’ll do to you if it catches you in its claws and finishes what it was about to do last time when it—

  She felt her arm burn. The wounds where the last demon had dug its nails into her flesh quivered, as though they knew she was thinking about them.

  I said don’t think about that. She picked up speed, biting back pain. Think about escape. Get back to Temple Row. Get help. She nodded to herself. Right. How’d we do that again?

  The buildings were a blur of ancient wood and decrepit stone as she sped by. She couldn’t remember how she had gotten here, where she had been led. She certainly didn’t know where she was going, save for away from the—

  Something caught her ankle. Her chin hit the stone. She watched a trail of her blood grow as she felt the ground moving beneath her. She whirled onto her back and saw the tongue lashed about her ankle and the cavernous maw to which it pulled her ever closer.

  Asper shrieked, clawing futilely at the stone for a moment before remembering her arm. As the demon’s tongue drew her toward its body, she lashed out with her left arm, hoping that the curse would act then.

  But when the beast caught her by the wrist in a withered claw, her arm remained painfully, unbearably mortal. The Disciple hauled her up, heedless of her screaming as it lifted her off the ground. Its scribble-black eyes scowled over her arm spitefully, looking at the burned flesh upon its own limb.

  “We remember the first vessels,” it rasped. “When we sought to improve the frail mortality by sealing our kin within them. The ungrateful hosts repaid our gifts with betrayal, turning to our foes and turning our gifts upon us.” It drew her closer. “Now, we reclaim what we gave you in blind generosity.”

  The demon’s free hand rose and made a beckoning gesture. And instantly, Asper’s flesh was alight with pain. The wounds in her arm that had been struck by the first demon in the Souk began to tremble and burn as they were called to agonizing life. She felt her flesh ripple like liquid, watched it bubble and boil at the beast’s behest.

  “Such frail gifts your creators gave you,” the demon mused through her agonized shrieking. “What love could they have had for you? See how it springs to life at our command? We used much the same techniques in crafting the first vessels.”

  Asper could form no question as to what a vessel was. For Asper could form no thought amidst the pain that wracked her body, sent her writhing in its grip. Between the shrieks pouring from her mouth, the bright flashes of pain clouding her mind, the fiery heat lancing her body as her flesh danced at the demon’s command, she knew nothing but agony.

  “Come to us, brother,” the demon whispered. “Be free of your prison.”

  And certainly, she knew not what her arm was doing.

  Not until it had burst to fiery life. Not until it seared with a pain sharper than any the demon could coax from her. Not until it answered the demon with a voice that shrieked long and loud.

  The demon was aware of it before she was: the steam seeping between its fingers, melting its flesh to her own and devouring it into its red light. The Disciple screamed and shook her, trying to dislodge her, but its fingers locked tight by a will stronger than its own. Its limb, already withered and twisted, deformed further. It grew bloated, then shriveled, sinew and flesh and bone dissipating and becoming as steam that faded on the setting sun.

  Asper knew what was happening only when she felt the pain fade from her, drain from her body and flow back into her arm. A glowing beacon to which all agonies, demon and mortal, were called to pay tribute.

  The demon’s arm was too withered and pitiful to hurl her, to even lift her. When she fell, the arm fell with her, an ugly, blackened strand that shriveled into a black stain.

  When the demon recoiled, clutching the stump where once had been a limb, it was not with fear, nor with anger.

  “Brother, you… choose her over your own? What did we… why?”

  And for a moment, Asper saw an agony upon the beast’s face that seemed greater than any she could have inflicted upon it. Betrayal, astonishment, hurt: the fringes of human emotion strained to make themselves known in the spiteful wrinkles of an inhuman face.

  There were no curses as it fled, no promises of vengeance. It slithered into a nearby alley, leaving behind only a black stain upon the stones, the lingering whispers of a clash of agonies, and Asper.

  Alone.

  But alive.

  She reminded herself of that with each breath as she sat there, bleeding from the chin, her robe’s sleeve tattered, her head pounding behind closed eyes.

  I am alive, she reminded herself. I am still alive.

  You’re welcome.

  A thought not her own, but painfully close. For a moment, she wondered if this was the moment Talanas would reveal Himself to her, if this darkest hour was when she would finally be told that everything she had suffered for was worth something.

  But only for a moment.

  Because in the next, she felt something in her left arm: a tingling, itching, crawling sensation. It was as though something beneath the skin rotated slowly and, through the muscle and blood and flesh, looked straight at her.

  I sense your alarm, child, those thoughts said. We’ve not yet spoken properly. Forgive me; I have been too famished to concentrate. But now that I am fed…

  And
with the same skin-crawling certainty, she could feel something beneath her arm form a smile just for her.

  We may be properly introduced.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  SHARED BLOOD

  It was only when he stood absolutely still and took a deep breath without the scent of blood that Gariath realized just how injured he was.

  He looked down at his hand and watched the scars on his knuckles turn pink as he curled his fingers into a fist, each joint popping as they did.

  “As far as I know,” he said, “I am the last one.”

  He put his hand on his shoulder and rolled it. The joints creaked in protest, its pain smothered by a layer of muscle.

  “I could be wrong, of course,” he said. “Even when there were more of us, we never had much contact with each other. It was mostly just families, living on their own where they could. Once in our life, we’d wander off, find a mate…” He sniffed and drew a thumb down a long scar that ran from his collarbone to the left side of his chest. “And then beat the shit out of each other.”

  His wings twitched on his back, stiff from being folded so tightly to his body. Didn’t matter; those were mostly used for attracting said mates to beat said shit out of. That hadn’t been a problem for him in a long time.

  “I suppose, at some point, we started dying off.” His sigh was vast enough to have scars of its own. “Humans taking our land, fighting each other, not breeding enough; who knows. I didn’t. And I didn’t care, so long as I had my sons.”

  He drew his legs up and down, feeling the muscle strain beneath his skin as he forced blood back into his calves, sensation back into the soles of his feet.

  “And when they died…”

  He stood still. He took a deep breath. And he held the scent of blood in his nostrils again. And rain. And damp, cold earth.

  Like he was still there.

  He shook his head. No. His sons weren’t a part of this story. They—their lives and their deaths—would be for him alone.

  “I’ve always wanted to believe that we died for good reasons,” he said, breaking the silence. “Going down fighting for something we believed in, stopping a great enemy; legendary deaths, ones that made ours more important than other peoples’.” He shrugged. “Maybe some of us did die good deaths.”

  He stared down at his hands once last time. He squeezed them into fists so tight they trembled and saw the blood weep out from his palms as his claws dug in.

  “But it’s taken me this long to realize that the Rhega can die for stupid reasons, too.”

  When he looked up, Daaru stared blankly back at him.

  “Uh, all right,” the tulwar said. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  Gariath leaned down and plucked up a heavy burlap bag, a sticky liquid and accompanying reek seeping out of it. He tossed it over his shoulder.

  “I thought that was obvious.”

  He ventured out of the alley onto the lamplit harbor streets. No cloak, no disguise, nothing but a dragonman and a smelly bag. Those few people still on the streets—those not yet drunk enough to know what they were looking at, anyway—started at his approach and fled without a word. Whether alarmed by him or his macabre baggage, Gariath didn’t care.

  His business was with the building looming at the end of the lane.

  Daaru was talking again. Something about “another way,” “this is really stupid,” “pummeled into a fine paste.” Distractions he didn’t need. As with any argument, concentration of mind, body, and purpose was needed. And for that sort of focus to be maintained, one needed to have at least some semblance of disregard for personal safety.

  He came to a halt before a looming building of shoddy stone and plaster and set his burden down at its door.

  Thunder House, as it was known, was one of the few establishments in Cier’Djaal capable of providing any sort of service to Drokha. Largely by virtue of its truly colossal doorway opening into a gigantic room where a dragonman’s dark shape towered over the human rabble of the bar, assisted by a pair of servants who hauled barrel-sized tankards to him.

  Gariath drew in the scent. The odor of liquor, ash, and desperation clouded the smoky room in abundance. He glanced at the doorway and saw Kharga’s weapon—a massive hunk of metal battered into a vaguely ax-like shape—leaning against the wall.

  He was here. A ten-foot giant, heavy as a house and brimming with muscle beneath a thick hide, bristling with scorn, skilled—or as skilled as one needed to be—with a weapon the size of a human male, of which there were more than a few inside.

  None of whom would likely have many nice things to say about a Rhega.

  Gariath could feel Daaru standing behind him, but he did not look at his companion. He was relatively certain that he already knew what the tulwar’s expression would be, because he was certain just how crazy he looked as he drew in a deep breath and roared.

  “KHARGA!”

  The scent changed almost instantly from desperation to rage. He knew Kharga had picked up his own scent at that moment and knew exactly who was waiting outside for him.

  The sound of thunder followed shortly after.

  “You might want to leave now.” Gariath directed a grunt behind him.

  He felt Daaru’s resentful stare for a moment before he heard the shuffle of feet on stone as the tulwar took off running.

  The earth shook beneath his feet; every grain of sand that had settled upon the stone trembled, rising and falling and giving the impression of a liquid earth, quivering like waves.

  A storm was coming.

  And it wasn’t alone.

  Kharga emerged a moment later, his great ax slung lazily over one shoulder, black eyes staring contemptuously down a horned snout. Gariath turned his scowl upward. Scant evidence of their previous fight in the Souk remained: Kharga’s cuts had faded; Gariath’s claw marks had withered into tiny little gashes in a thick hide that had seen much, much worse.

  Behind him crowded five others. Humans, bearing the same badge of the naked human on a pile of coins that he did, wielding spears and wearing masks of quivering confidence that would turn to liquid and drip off their faces if they didn’t have Kharga with them. Even then, they made a clear effort to keep the giant between them and Gariath, content to throw only scowls and muttered curses at the smaller dragonman that still dwarfed them.

  “Son of a bitch,” one whispered. “Is that the thing from the Souk?”

  “Looks just like ours… except smaller.”

  “Kill him, already. Our food’s getting cold.”

  Gariath would only barely notice them, even if they weren’t lingering in Kharga’s shadow. It was likewise apparent that Kharga didn’t notice them, either. They were unimportant. What they saw, undoubtedly, were two monsters staring at each other when they should be killing one another.

  What they didn’t see, what they could never see, was why it was crucial that bloodshed not be the first resort here.

  Gariath drew his leg back and the humans tightened their grips on their weapons. He kicked the smelly bag forward. It fell open, a small pile of glistening meat and blood rolling out to settle before Kharga’s massive feet. The Drokha looked down, impassive.

  His human company, less so.

  “Ancaa,” one said with a hiss, “what is that?”

  “Did… did he do that? Should we… should we get help?”

  “Gods, it reeks.”

  “It is—was—a human.” Gariath spoke firmly. “He was eaten alive by a spider. Your human master owned that spider. You protected the human who did this.” He leveled a claw at Kharga. “This is what your world creates: a snake that devours its own tail and calls itself sane.”

  Kharga’s nostrils flared. “And?” He waved a hand. “You call humans inferior and worthless in one breath and then toss a dead one at my feet as though it’s some great loss. Which is it?”

  “This is not about that.” Gariath snarled, kicking the bag. “This is about you. You, who kill them. You, who serve the
m. You, who take their coin, drink their drink, and live in their cities like you’re one of them.” He snarled. “You and your entire breed. The Drokha all snivel at the boots of humans and think to wear them for themselves.”

  “There are few Drokha.” The fury building behind Kharga’s voice was tempered by frigid contempt. “And fewer Rhega. Does the fact that you are all dead make you so noble? Did you think I did not see the humans you walked with in the Souk?”

  “I protect them from their own stupidity,” Gariath growled. “I keep them alive when they are too weak to do so. I do not beg for their coin.”

  “Then what is it that drives you to stay with them?” Kharga rumbled. “What is it you feel for them? I take the humans’ coin. But they are not my family.”

  Gariath fell silent at that. There was no answer to offer. What could he say? That the humans viewed him as an equal? As a friend?

  “Look around you.” Kharga gestured to the harbor, the lanes lined with buildings, the ships bobbing at the docks. “This city was built by strong hands, keen minds. Even the Drokha could not stop it, even if we tried. You do not hate us for living here. You hate us for living.” Kharga fixed a cold stare upon Gariath. “You hate us for not dying out in the wilderness until only a few of us were left.”

  He narrowed his eyes, spat the words.

  “Like you.”

  Gariath had suffered many wounds in his days. He had lost track of even the most life-threatening ones. But barely could he remember a time when he felt more winded, more numb, more wounded than he did at that moment.

  Kharga’s ax did not rise. Gariath’s scent had already given away his weakness.

  He had no answer.

  “Here, Rhega, we have a future,” Kharga spoke, voice dripping with scorn. “We don’t stand in this city. We are a part of it. We do not work for humans. We work with them. We are equals here.”

  A long silence ensued. Neither Kharga nor the humans behind him said a single word. And for a very long time, Gariath found it hard to meet the Drokha’s eyes. When he spoke, it was soft and it was weak.

  “Do you drink with them?” he asked.