Bite Back Box Set 2

by Mark Henwick

  Acid. Shit, I hope they can’t spit like cobras.

  The Hecate swore. It sounded Scandinavian.

  Ash?

  I tried again.

  ASH?

  Nothing. The substantiation had cut my link to the soultree.

  I had no reserves of power to break out. Like the Hecate, I had no ability to do anything more than fight off the next snake.

  And we were losing. The snakes were still growing.

  “Beware above,” I said.

  That’s where they’d come at us from next. Too many angles. That was what was going to kill us.

  “Hold them, Amber!” the Hecate shouted. “Whatever you do, keep them away from Tullah.”

  I felt her back press against mine, and then it wasn’t pressing. It was slipping down. She was falling.

  “Gwen!”

  No response.

  I couldn’t even spare the time to look.

  I stepped over her body, trying to protect them both.

  Tara howled a warning.

  They struck at me from above at the same time as some came in low. Three of them bit me. Arm. Leg. I knocked one away that was going for the Hecate. Another attacking Tullah. I stabbed too hard at that one. The snake jerked back with my knife in its eye. I didn’t have time to reach for Gwen’s knife. I took the rod in both hands. At least I had more room for a full sweep. Not too much, or I’d overbalance.

  Swing.

  A satisfying crunch of a snake’s skull.

  After the pain of the bites, my wounds were going numb. I couldn’t feel my right leg. My left hand was getting weaker.

  I swung again, but the weight of them against the rod pushed me and I fell to one knee.

  Smashed the skull of another going for Gwen.

  There were too many of them.

  I struggled up to stand over Tullah and Gwen. Couldn’t fall, or it was all over.

  The snakes were poised above, wary of the rod, but gathering so thickly I could barely see the roof of the crucible.

  And then, all together, they lunged at me.

  A wheel of fire burst in front of my eyes.

  The screaming redoubled. I couldn’t think in all the noise.

  My hand found Gwen’s knife. Stabbed a snake head.

  There were half a dozen snake heads lying on the floor in front of me, twitching.

  Decapitated.

  Not by a wheel of fire. By a sword. A burning sword. Six foot of longsword with flames that leaped further from it the faster it was swung.

  Swung by a seven-foot-tall woman in mail and leather.

  I blinked.

  Hallucinations? Poison in the snake bites?

  The woman was screaming, and she was screaming even louder than the snakes as she swung again.

  There were still too many of them. They filled the room and they came at us from every angle, suddenly desperate, heedless of any damage we inflicted.

  They swarmed Tara.

  They wrapped themselves around the tall woman’s arms.

  The woman’s back flexed, bulged. Wings erupted out. Not soft and feathered. Sharp. Not really wings as such, unless you count metal blades as feathers.

  The wings sliced off snake heads, tried to cover me and Tara and Tullah, but the press of snakes was too much. The wings couldn’t get free.

  We were still going to disappear under the wave of attacks.

  As the least threatening of their opponents, the snakes had left me alone for a second.

  I changed my grip on the iron rod, rocked back, and then threw it like a spear with everything I had behind it.

  Straight at the part of the soultree that looked like Weaver’s face. It hit in the eye, punched right through into the shaking bulk.

  But it didn’t kill the soultree.

  The winged woman twisted and her lethal wings cut more snakes, but it wasn’t going to be enough.

  The whole soultree raised above us, started to topple. It was going to swamp us and I knew once inside that bulk, we were finished.

  Weaver’s face was above me, the rod emerging from his eye.

  I reached up and grabbed it. That made the construct stop, but then its flesh started to flow down the rod like melting fat.

  ASH!

  Almost as if it were part of me, I could feel something punch through the working that surrounded the pit. Broke the substantiation.

  And I reached out. Found Ash. Pulled.

  The end of the rod began to glow. I could see it inside the monster. I could see flames consuming it from the inside out. I pushed the rod, swept it in circles, trying to hit something vital with the incandescent end of it.

  Too late. It had my hands. They went numb.

  Tara leaped and bit and tore.

  The winged woman got her sword free.

  The monster’s liquid flesh ran down my arms.

  I fell back to my knees again, struggled up against a crushing weight.

  I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see.

  The room was full.

  Movements.

  Noises.

  Glimpses of the pale corpse flesh of the snakes... and the green, gleaming scales of the dragon.

  “Kaothos?”

  She didn’t answer.

  The crush eased.

  I fell over.

  The screaming had stopped. There was a thud, an impact, like a train hitting the buffers.

  Then all movement stopped.

  There was no substantiation cutting the room off from the rest of the world.

  No isolating spell.

  No monstrous soultree.

  No sound.

  No Weaver.

  No Adepts.

  No snakes.

  No seven-foot woman.

  No Tullah.

  No firewolf.

  No Kaothos.

  Just me, kneeling beside Gwen’s body, and somewhere far away, my House, Ops 4-10 and packs of werewolves digging their way into the mine and slaughtering the defenders.

  A parting whisp of understanding from Kaothos floated through my head, and the craziness all finally began to make a strange kind of sense to me. Even the Hecate and the winged angel with the flaming sword.

  Chapter 74

  Gwen was lying where she’d fallen, crumpled like a discarded coat. Her face pressed against the concrete.

  I knelt and touched her shoulder gently.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Okay to give you a hand?”

  Her face was pinched with anger.

  “Nothing I can do about it, is there?” she said.

  I took her waspish comment as a yes. “Anything I need to be particularly careful about, moving you?”

  “No.”

  I lifted her out of the pit and onto the step where the first row of Adepts had sat. Despite her denial, I took care to support her neck while I did. I straightened her legs out, and crossed her hands on her chest. Then I tugged her coat until that was straight and tidy too.

  She was bleeding from cuts on her head.

  I licked them clean. My aniatropics would heal them quickly in the same way she could have, if she’d had her spirit guide.

  “Bit of anti-snake venom in that as well,” I said.

  She ignored that, staring at the ceiling. Without her spirit guide, her eyes had reverted to hazel. Her hair had relaxed into its natural wavy brown and framed her angry face. Angry, and now more angry because she felt somehow ashamed as well, as if she’d been diminished. She wouldn’t meet my eye.

  “You knew,” she said. It was a statement.

  “I suspected something.” I reached out a hand to untangle her hair, and stopped. “May I?”

  Her jaw worked. Then she nodded once—no more than a dip of the chin.

  My fingers ran through the soft, wavy hair, combing it into some kind of order.

  “Every time you took a break from your spirit guide,” I said, “your hair and your eyes would change.”

  “That’s not what—”

  “No. Of
course not. It just made me alert to the changes in you. The thing that really made it clear was your body language. You don’t fidget when you’re like this. At all. No tells, no tics, no twitches. And then I thought back and noticed your spirit guide only ever left you when you were sitting down securely. Made me start to wonder. It all seemed to make sense when your spirit guide joined the battle after you collapsed.”

  “Is she allowed to come back...” Gwen swallowed and her eyes glistened. She kept staring at the ceiling. “Please...”

  “Shh. You don’t have to ask. Your spirit guide will be coming back. I should have said that right away. I believe Kaothos is having a bonding and sorting session with them all. Mine included.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “I can’t keep calling her your spirit guide. What’s her name? The angel with the flaming sword?”

  “Bryn,” Gwen said. “Short for Brynswere.”

  “And she’s a...”

  “Valkyrie. Yes.”

  Valkyrie. Someone had said something to me recently about light and shapes and names. Or was that a dream? Was valkyrie as accurate a name as vampire? A sort of mixed bucket of myths and superstitions, a set of vague guesses at a truth.

  Regardless, something that was not a standard spirit guide.

  “A dragon and a valkyrie. That makes two guides who are... different, and have come together.”

  “Three unusual guides. Or have you forgotten your firewolf?”

  “You’re right. But I’m not worried about Tara,” I said. “Bryn... this isn’t a Saint Georgina and the dragon situation, is it? I mean, she helped Kaothos. She protected Tullah.”

  “Bryn would never harm Kaothos, or Tullah. She believes her role is to protect and advise the dragon. She thinks that’s what went wrong with dragon spirit guides before—they had no one to protect them from misuse.”

  “A guardian angel,” I said and frowned. I’d had another dream about that, hadn’t I? Something about a corridor and a conversation about guardian angels.

  Weird.

  Aloud, I said: “I think Kaothos might like that. Might need that. Someone she can talk to about spirit guide things and difficult decisions. I know my advice hasn’t been much use. I’ve caused Kaothos more problems than solutions.”

  “You haven’t, and besides, you were doing your best with what you knew,” Gwen said. Her jaw worked again. “Bryn thinks a lot of you.”

  “Hmm. I don’t want to pry, but why doesn’t she... ah... fix you?”

  “No!”

  “If she doesn’t want to, I could heal you.” I leaned over her. My Athanate glands were working, and I could taste the flavors of the aniatropics. I bared my fangs.

  If she could have, her whole body would have tensed up. As it was, an expression of horror slipped across her face.

  I put the fangs away quickly.

  She didn’t seem to be the sort of person who was fang-phobic, but you couldn’t always tell.

  “I’m pretty sure I can repair nerve damage. And if I can’t, Bian could.” I stroked her hair away from her throat. “Such pretty hair. The damage is near the top of the spine, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” The word seemed torn from her.

  “Is that yes I can repair it?”

  “No! Don’t bite me. Please. Yes, the damage is at the top of the spine. Yes, you could probably fix it. No. I don’t want you to. It’s part of what gives me my power.”

  “Let me get this straight. Without Bryn, you have no feeling and no control of your body below the neck, and you have to stay like that so your magic mojo works?”

  “Yes.” Her lips became a thin line, pressed together.

  “A sacrifice,” I muttered. There was something about that in the strange corridor dream as well. “A balance in your mind, so you can use your power without falling prey to the temptation to misuse it.”

  “Something like that.”

  Something that felt right to her, and actually served the purpose, but wasn’t necessarily right, or the only solution.

  I kept that to myself.

  “Well, I’m not going to fix you against you wishes,” I said. “But I’m going to have a long talk with Bryn.”

  A shiver of magic ran across the skin of my arms, but it wasn’t Bryn returning. It was my firewolf.

  “Tara!”

  Amber!

  Then the firewolf shimmered and became human, almost a mirror image of me, but fully dressed and without the all mud. I’d always imagined my twin sister would look like me, and she did, but she was still her own person, not just the image in the mirror.

  She hugged me, and an old, old pain eased deep inside.

  Our tears were interrupted by Gwen.

  “One is bad enough,” she said, with a hint of laughter in her voice.

  Tara stuck out her tongue.

  “Bryn will be along shortly,” she said. “Until then, lie there quietly like a good little girl.”

  I was trying to form how type questions, but Tara anticipated them.

  “We’re together. Me and Hana. Something happened when we moved to Tullah, which we totally didn’t mean to do or expect to happen. We just woke up there, and we’d merged. Not only merged but we kinda adapted to the space left by Kaothos. We’re not that strong, but we gained some dragonish abilities with fire.”

  She changed back to wolf, raced around the circular pit and belched flames.

  Then she leaped at Gwen. She changed mid-flight and came down human, looming over the Hecate with her weight braced on her arms and her face inches above Gwen’s.

  Gwen blinked.

  “Congratulations,” Tara said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You get what you wanted; you and Bryn are best pals with Kaothos. You get to be the dragon’s advisors and protectors.”

  “Why am I waiting for the other shoe to drop?”

  “Because you’re as paranoid as Amber.” Tara rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah, and you get to be part of Amber’s House and you get to set up a new Denver coven, with Gabrielle, Alice, Flint and Kane of course. And Amber’s got to be in your coven, just as you’re in her House.”

  “What?” Gwen’s eyes bulged.

  “Hey! What’s happened to the Denver Adepts?”

  “Oh, complicated. Kaothos will explain.”

  She disappeared and I felt the weight of her in my head, missing for so long.

  Missed you, sis. Really, really missed you.

  Another shiver of magic and a seven-foot valkyrie stood in the center of the pit. Her head was bowed, the blade clenched in her left fist. The longsword wasn’t burning now, but the woman still radiated scary vibes.

  “Bryn!” Gwen called out.

  I stood up. Even on the raised step above the pit, that didn’t put me eye to eye when she looked at us.

  Chilling blue eyes. Hair like ice. Gleaming mailed armor from her throat to her knees, and over her arms. Blue tunic underneath. Leather pants and boots. Golden winged helmet. No wings sprouting from her back.

  She held the sword against her chest and it shimmered and shifted. When it stopped shimmering, the sword had gone and it was replaced by an image of it on her chain mail. She moved to sit on the lower step, one hand resting on Gwen’s shoulder.

  I sat back down.

  “Thank you, Amber Farrell, for protecting Gwendolyn,” she said.

  “Thank you, too. You saved us.”

  “I think we might share those honors with each other and with your firewolf.” She stretched her hand out toward my face, then paused. “If you permit?”

  I hadn’t any idea what I was supposed to be permitting, but I trusted this crazy spirit guide, all seven foot of her, so I nodded.

  Her cool fingers slipped underneath the edge of the collar, gently tugged, and then I could feel the coolness all around my neck.

  I put my hands up. No collar. It was dangling from her fingers. It had been sliced through.

  “Neat,” I said, and shivered
.

  Yes, neat. Also scary.

  She rolled her shoulders as if she was making herself more comfortable, and wings erupted from her back.

  I gasped. They were beautiful. And deadly. I hadn’t had much time to examine them before, while I was just about to die, so I took the opportunity now.

  There were no handles to the blades, no obvious way they connected. Each blade was a thin, slightly oval shape and looked razor sharp. They were glossy, each tucked into the next one like a feather would be. I couldn’t decide on what color they were. It was like the inside of a seashell coated with mother-of-pearl. Lustrous. Pink? Violet? Iridescent. They seemed to change color depending on the angle I looked at them from.

  Bryn pressed the collar against the edge of the right wing, and wiped upwards with her hand. The collar disappeared and fresh new blades appeared.

  The wing shivered as if settling into place, and she extended and contracted it to check that the blades were sliding smoothly against each other.

  I made a guess: “These were all weapons?” Cautiously, I put fingers out to touch the blades, alert and ready to hold back if it caused some kind of offense.

  “Yes,” she said. “I collect weapons from battles. Usually from the dead.”

  I wasn’t going to count, but that was a lot of battles or a lot of dead people. Not only was the paranormal stranger than people thought, even paranormal people, but it seemed it was bigger as well.

  She didn’t seem offended by my touch on her wing, and the sensation was pleasant. The blades seemed to tingle beneath my fingers. They were firm, and it felt as if they were alive somehow. They were warm, very smooth. The sort of surface I wanted to stroke just for the feeling of running fingers over it.

  “That’s crazy cool,” I said.

  The corners of those blue eyes crinkled. Bryn was obviously very amused.

  “What?”

  “You are not to know of course, but caressing a valkrie’s wing blades is very sensual. A declaration of desire.”

  Beside us, Gwen cleared her throat.

  “If you’ve quite finished seducing my spirit guide, I’d like to get up,” she said.

  “Finished?” I said. “I’ve barely started, but go ahead.”

  The little demon that used to live in my throat and say inappropriate things at awkward times seemed to have returned with Tara. What a surprise.