Dragonsword

by Chloe Garner

  “Depends on who’s involved. The low-level negotiators, like Ozy, will be willing to come out here to work, if the house is set up strong enough for mutual safety - that they can’t kill each other. The other ones, who are actually funding the thing, they won’t come. The exchange will be in New York because that’s where Carter is.”

  “How are you so sure?”

  “Once you’ve got him locked down, you don’t move him.”

  “Guess,” Jason said. They climbed over a stone wall and Samantha drew Lahn. The house was on top of a ridge, backed up against a man-made cliff in the rise of the mountain. It was a perfect setup, if you were defending from human attacks on a large scale. It didn’t make a lot of sense against demons, or Jason and Samantha, but it was pretty.

  “They’re no Rockies, but they’re nice,” Samantha said, looking at the range of hilly mountains around them.

  “Head in the game,” Jason muttered.

  The last hundred yards were landscaped lawn, open to the sun, and offering very little cover.

  “Just go for it?” he asked.

  “Kill anything that gets in the way,” Samantha answered, taking one last quick look at him and then striding into the clearing.

  Fifteen steps in, nothing had happened.

  Thirty steps in, nothing moved.

  Fifty steps, and the hair on the back of her arms tingled with anticipation, but still no one confronted them.

  They were two-thirds of the way to the house when the twin giants appeared.

  Samantha and Jason split in opposite directions as the pair of swords buried themselves into the turf behind them, and Samantha rolled back to her feet in slow motion. One of the giants was missing, but there were six other demons where she could see them. Kelly was engaged with one, a short, wiry demon who glitched without regard for his physical momentum. The way he moved, he wasn’t here to kill Samantha or Jason - if he managed to hit one of them, the blade wouldn’t have enough speed to do anything more than cut them, if he hit exposed skin. He was an angel-fighter. The dark metal of the blade he carried was special, designed to keep angels from regenerating without additional intervention.

  Kelly recognized it, and was on his heels, so to speak, fighting well, but out-trained and under-experienced.

  The giant Samantha could see was after Jason. He’d already glitched and was winding up to strike. Jason had Anadidd’na ready, and Samantha was again grateful that he had a proper demon sword to defend himself. Demons could generate supernatural levels of force, if you didn’t have the right defenses, and while Jason got stronger every day, Anadidd’na absorbed nearly all of the extra force behind the blows. Jason was only fighting the faster, older, angrier version of a human. Who could glitch.

  There were two gunmen, both well out of her reach, and a demon with a crossbow. She’d only heard of the old training demons had with crossbows, but it was somewhere between a fact and a myth that humans could only dodge bullets or arrows, not both. The Amazon was back, and Samantha saw one of the wolf pair, which meant she could assume the other was not far away. She had at least two demons behind her.

  She rolled in an arbitrary direction, hoping it wasn’t toward the missing giant, and unclasped her hairpin, flipping it into the air as she rolled and catching it when her feet hit dirt again.

  Help me.

  The distance between herself and Sam was excruciating, but as soon as he felt her, he jumped to vision. Her sense of him filled the space, and in the fraction it took her to make sure she had a grip on her pin, he told her where all of the demons were. Three behind her. She pulled toward Jason, and Sam pulled her away, then indicated the shooters. They were all aimed at her. If she went to guard Jason’s back, they’d hit him by mistake when she dodged.

  She sent Sam agreement, and he pulled her down and to the left as a heavy sword kicked sparks off of a rock she’d been crouched over. She relaxed, sending Sam an indication that he was driving, and she retreated into her core, feeling for magic. It was all there, but for a moment, none of it stood out.

  Then a piece of it glimmered at her. She took her breaths, slow, in, as her heart beat and Sam directed her limbs and her weight, out, with her vision turned out, seeing the blur of earth and sky as she tumbled and blocked. He used her bracers to deflect blows, concerned at how jarring the blows were, but she was serene. She saw the second giant, and then the first, who had come to join his brother attacking her. Bullets flew overhead and embedded in the two bare-chested demons; an arrow went whizzing to her right. The wolf pair were close and far, nipping at her, waiting for a mistake, waiting for an opening, but Sam was perfect. He was with her and ever so slightly in the future, alternating, knowing where the next demon would glitch in and being there to block.

  She didn’t know how he did it. She would have to ask one day, but for now she let the motion roll through her like a tide. Another breath. In, as metal buzzed against metal, the shrill, high-pitched noise of clashing swords reduced to the droning of insects at her speed. Insects at home in the heat and humidity of summer. She blinked, breathed out, swallowed, just to feel her throat. Sam forced her to relax, and something hit her in the back, hard, sprawling her out forward. She rolled to the side on her way down, and another arrow went over her head, hitting a wolf in the chest. She snarled, reaching for it to throw it back at the shooter. Samantha hit hip-first on the ground and rolled over her shoulder, landing on her feet with Lahn between herself and the wolf.

  Breathe in.

  She blocked something from behind her and swung at the male wolf, finishing her breath.

  “Anadidd’na Anu’dd Parroah’na Lahn,” she said. It wasn’t a yell. She didn’t need to yell for all of them to hear her. She continued on, feeling Sam roll back and speed forward to hear what she said, then feeling the echo of encouragement off of him. She wove power, and noticed Kelly gain advantage over his attacker as the angel-fighter cringed away under the sweep of magic. He was the lightest and most susceptible, but Samantha could see one of the shooters and both of the wolves alter how they moved.

  She pressed on, and Sam apologized. She saw as the female wolf slashed a pair of blades toward her and understood. She let Sam block the one and allow the other through. She felt his dismay as the second blade slit across her flesh, but it caught a rib and, other than being something that was going to generate a lot of pain later, wasn’t a big deal. She impressed on him that she was ignoring it, indicating that he should too, and she felt him resume his disciplined scan back and forth between the present and the near future.

  Jason and the Amazon were locked in battle again, but Jason’s time in New York, and the extra time he’d had training, had sharpened him. She was nearly impervious to Samantha’s magic attack, but he had just the faintest of advantages over her. Samantha wished she could spend more of the fight watching, because it could have lasted days, but in the end, Jason would have won. Unless he made a mistake. Or she did.

  Statistics and freewill. Nothing was ever certain.

  For her own part, Samantha was bearing down hard on the angel-fighter, and the crossbowman had started showing symptoms of wear under her barrage, but the giants acted like they could keep on as long as she could, and the wolves were always a little closer and a little faster than she could ultimately keep up with. She needed to free up Kelly.

  She re-shaped the magic, as Sam threw her sideways behind one of the giants to avoid another pair of bullets and an arrow, curling it back over its foundation to target the angel-fighter specifically. Magic of righteousness and holy power rolled through her like light, and she could feel the darkness of the demon on the other side, squirming like a tick under her thumb. Something jarred her shoulder, and she pulled further inside of herself, pouring pressure onto the demon until he popped out of existence. In the end, Kelly killed him, but there was no question she’d held the demon still for him. She expanded the scope of the magic again, noticing a bullet burn like it happened to someone else.

  Th
ey were getting closer.

  Sam threw desperation at her, letting her know he was running out of options, and she spent a split-second debating between targeting the shooters and the wolves, but Kelly was on the shooters like a blaze, glitching all around them and drawing their fire, despite the fact that he could regenerate almost anything that hit him. She turned at the wolves, tailoring the flow of magic to hit speed and agility, deviousness and cunning. Truth. Inevitability. Stone. In angeltongue, stone was on the list of virtues.

  Gradually, she bought more space. Kelly ashed both gunman and ended up in an absurd wrestling match with the archer over the crossbow until it mistakenly went off into Kelly’s stomach. That appeared to make him mad, and he crushed the iron device over the demon’s head, drew his sword from nowhere behind his back, and finished him.

  And then they were fighting together. Her and her angel valet. She tugged toward Jason, and Sam grudgingly agreed to move her toward his brother. She sent him sarcasm, and he poured a fountain of confidence over his brother. She mentally smiled to him, conceding that he was right, and her next roll went directly away from Jason again.

  Kelly was a genius against the giants. The wolves picked him apart worse than they did Samantha - he didn’t yet have the ability to predict what the two of them were going to do well enough to defend himself - and quickly his clothes were flecked with his bright red blood, but he kept on against the giants, appearing behind them when they committed to a blow and hamstringing them, then stabbing them through the thighs and then the spine. They regenerated with immense pools of power, but he kept them slow and injured.

  And then Sam cheered victory.

  An instant later, Lahn drove home, through the Norse giant’s metal breastplate and into his heart.

  Confusion and hatred fought for dominance on his face, and then he ashed. In the next motion, Samantha reached over her head to decapitate the other giant.

  A mountain of dark gray ash collapsed onto her and she felt Kelly’s hands, pulling her out of it. He looked worried, but she held up her hands. No injuries. She looked around the clearing. Jason was staring at empty space in front of him, and the clearing was empty. Sam pulled Samantha’s attention hard to Kelly. He collapsed to his knees. She put Lahn along his skin under his shirt and cut it away in a hard, sharp motion, finding four individual stab wounds that appeared to go all the way through his body. The edges were ashing white.

  “We won,” he whispered.

  “Idiot,” she muttered, laying him across the ground. Jason ran across the grass to stand over them.

  “That looks bad,” he said.

  “You’re going to be fine,” Samantha said. “Hold it together.”

  A larger hole started to form in the angel’s stomach as the ash collapsed inward, and Kelly groaned.

  “I hear there’s a ball hiding down in the woods over there,” Jason said. Kelly laughed, a hollow, husky noise. Samantha pulled vial after vial out of their sheaths under her shirt, finding the holy water and the anointing oil. She dumped out the jasmine and poured a third of the water and a third of the oil into the last vial, holding it up for Kelly to see. His hands clutched at his stomach, tearing the hole wider.

  “This will help,” she said. “But it isn’t strong enough. Do you agree to let your brothers save you?”

  He had trouble focusing his eyes for a moment, and it was clear he didn’t understand. She felt a spike of fear. She wouldn’t do it unless he told her to. If she couldn’t make him understand…

  He nodded.

  “I must protect them,” he whispered. “It means I must live.”

  She squeezed his shoulder and dug into the satchel on her waist, taking a pinch of the angeldust and putting it into the vial, then screwing the cap back on and shaking it.

  Oil and water may not mix, but both the holy water and the anointing oil stuck to the angeldust, forming a very thin mud. She opened the vial and poured the white paste into her hand, then slid her palm across Lahn, letting both edges of the blade cut her. She left her blood on the blade at the edges of the expanse of white, then turned the white face down, pressing it against Kelly’s stomach.

  The angel shrieked.

  It was the high pitch of something very small and very pitiful in excruciating pain.

  His organs re-knit from ash under Lahn’s hot blade, and Kelly’s fingers scrabbled at the blade, trying to pull it away.

  “Kelly, be still,” Samantha said. He squealed again as a large portion of flesh thumped back into place, kicking against the ground and trying to slide away. Jason knelt and she shook her head, jerking her head back at the woods. He stood again.

  Lahn did her work fast and well. In all it took less than a minute to fully heal Kelly. The angel lay, exhausted, for a moment, then sat up.

  “We’re exposed here,” he said. “We should keep moving.”

  “Damn,” Jason said. Kelly ignored him. Samantha gave Jason a small smile.

  “Thank you, Sam,” she said. Jason frowned, and she opened her hand to show him the pin. He looked at the sky.

  “Hey, bro,” he said. Sam sent Samantha amusement, then a soft sense of goodbye. She nodded to herself, and reached up to pull her ponytail tight and feed the needle of the pin back through her hair.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, then felt Sam go. Again, the distance was painful. She locked the pin again and shook her head, sad, as Sam vanished.

  “Let’s go find Cassie,” she said.

  <><><>

  The house had been decorated by someone who understood southern style, but had a twisted sense of humor. Vases sat on tiny tables around the entry, black glass with lilies and tulips, all dead. The painting on one wall was flecked with dried blood, and the mirror on the other wall was framed in broken glass. There was no one to be seen.

  Kelly stopped at the door and looked up at it.

  “I can’t cross.”

  Samantha nodded.

  “We’ll be careful. Get someplace safe.”

  He looked angry, but he didn’t say anything. Jason leaned back out the door and snickered.

  “He’s just leaning against the wall out there.”

  “He’ll be fine. You want to search the house or just get downstairs?”

  “Searching seems pointless, doesn’t it?”

  “Downstairs it is.”

  The rest of the house was lived-in. There were dishes in the sink and on the long table, glasses on the end tables in the living room, where the television was on. Football. Samantha found the remote and turned it off. Jason found a door that lead to a stairway into the basement, and Samantha drew Lahn. Her side was wet with blood, she realized as she went down the stairs. She slid the healing symbols on Lahn’s flat side across the wound there, expecting that the demon sword would result in an injury that was resistant to healing, but she didn’t account for the angeldust mixture there. She nearly fell down the stairs as the two edges of the wound slammed together and knit.

  “What? What’s wrong?” Jason asked as she clung to the railing. She shook her head, her vision blurry. “Do we need to talk about stairs and carrying sharp things?” Jason asked. “You have to be careful.”

  She grunted at him, getting her feet back under her and continuing down the stairs. The basement was dark. Samantha scanned for a lightswitch, staying in the pool of light from the stairs, but none of the nearby walls seemed to have one. There was a click and she took a step back, blinking at the light. Cassie stood in the middle of an empty room, purple and green whorls taking shape on her face and chest and arms. The floor was tracked with blood. Samantha was stunned for a moment as she stared at her own face across the room.

  “You do know how to ruin a good party,” Cassie said. “I’m probably going to have to kill you, one day.”

  “I don’t think both of us are going to make it,” Samantha said. “Hello, friend.”

  Cassie raised an eyebrow and opened her mouth to make a sarcastic comment, then figured it out. Her head twi
tched, then she slowly looked over one shoulder. She shrieked and jumped as O’na Anu’dd came into view.

  “No angels!” she said, her arms coming up in argument. She pointed at him. “No angels. You can’t be here.”

  He looked down at his body and back up, his nostrils flickering. Cassie stumbled backwards a step.

  “It’s you.”

  “Nothing can stop him,” Samantha said. Cassie glanced over her shoulder, eyes turning playful. Samantha had a queasy twinge in her stomach at the face that she saw in the mirror every day, that twisted and foreign, there across the room from her.

  Demons were truly messed up.

  “Yes, but he can’t attack me, either. He’s the pacifist,” Cassie said.

  “That’s not how I’d describe it,” Samantha said as the angel of death drew his sword. Cassie stumbled away. Samantha smiled. “Why are you here, my friend?”

  He looked at a door, then at Cassie with murderous anger.

  “Open that door,” Samantha said to Jason. “Be careful.”

  Cassie leaned against the staircase.

  “Never mind me,” she said. “I’ve got work to do, anyway.”

  She glitched away as Jason broke the door and the reek of rotten flesh poured out of the room. Samantha put her hand over her face.

  “There’s someone alive in there?” she asked. Jason had looked away, but he looked into the room again and coughed.

  “They’re all alive,” he said. Samantha looked at O’na Anu’dd with dismay. His eyes burned. She steeled herself and walked past Jason into the room.

  Nothing would describe what she saw. She’d seen it before, but not this advanced, nor at this scope. Natural and dark magics both had a solution for keeping a soul in its body, and the human would have had to consent to the process at the start, but it wasn’t terribly hard to make immortality involuntary after the beginning. Samantha tried not to breathe. She looked at each of them, forcing herself to see them as individual people, then closed her eyes and dropped her head.

  “What do we do?” Jason asked, standing next to her. She didn’t know how long he’d been there.