by Ben Zackheim
She’s not a wordsmith, but she was good at getting to the point. I knew who we were up against the instant his shadow broke over the water.
His reflection soon followed.
“Not this guy again,” Rebel said.
It was Raijin. The Japanese god of thunder. The god who, according to his messenger Ronin, wanted the sceptre of Was for himself. He towered over us. His face was the size of a baseball diamond. A damn ugly baseball diamond. His snarling snout covered most of his orange eyes. His body was cloaked in pitch-black shadow that moved like smoke in a whirlwind.
“IT IS YOU, OF COURSE,” he said with a voice that made my teeth shake. “WHY HAVE YOU ATTACKED MY DEMONS?”
I covered my ears with the palms of my hands. “Can you lower the volume, please? If we’re going to have a conversation then I need to have my eardrums intact, sir.”
Dino was awake. You know how I knew? He was yelling at me. “Kane! He’s a god, not a job interview!”
“Lay off, Dino! I’m trying to show some respect!”
Rebel stepped up and answered his question. “Your demons attacked us when we arrived. Demons don’t do the whole ‘welcoming host’ thing very well.”
As Rebel spoke, I tried to reach out to the demons with the sceptre to get back control. The response was instant. A handful of them moved their frowns from me to Raijin. I needed them to be ready to attack a 200 foot tall god with a Mad Dad voice. But I’d have to grab more demons if I wanted a chance to win the fight. I clenched the sceptre tighter. I breathed deeper. I took myself out of the moment. Raijin definitely knew I was up to something. But I had no choice.
I felt a tugging sensation on my guts, like someone was trying to pull my intestines out of my body.
“Kane!” Rebel yelled. She ran to my side and handed me the sceptre. I’d dropped it from the agony of the struggle. When it touched my palm I rejoined the psychic fight. Psychic fights weren’t usually my thing. Psychic fights were Rebel’s thing. I usually got to watch. It’s actually kind of amusing to see two beings battle it out with only their minds. Those magicians have no idea how silly they look.
“Relax,” Rebel whispered to me. She moved closer to my ear. “Breathe into the pain and you’ll find the pattern to his attacks. Breathe. Good.”
She was right. As I focused on my breath, I could feel Raijin’s efforts ramp up and die down.
“Play defense. Wear him down.” Rebel’s voice wasn’t usually one to calm me. If she was talking to me, it was usually an insult, a challenge, or ‘pass the tacos.’ But there was something deeper to the voice she was using. It meant more. It said more. It was coming from a place inside her that I’d never sensed before. I was experiencing her world, the world of magic, on a level usually reserved for magicists. The sceptre wasn’t making me a magical being all of a sudden but it allowed me to tap into a language, a flow, that Rebel had trained with for a long time.
I liked it there.
It was real. It felt connected, meaningful, like a firm plot of land to get a real close look at the world, and maybe to even understand it. To change it.
For one split second, the feeling felt familiar. As if I’d plugged into magic a billion times before. All I had to do was remember and I could have a demon army at my fingertips.
Rebel moved to the comm.
“That’s it, Kane. Good. Do you feel him weakening?”
“Yeah.”
“Is it time to attack?”
“No.”
“Do you sense an opening?”
Dino broke into the comm with, “Oh, I sense an opening, all right.”
“Dino!” Rebel yelled. The spell she had over me, if that’s what it was, broke for a moment. “We’re trying to win a war here!”
“I was just feeling the moment!” the troll yelled back, raising his hands.
It didn’t matter. I was back in the fight. I felt confident. I closed my eyes, thinking I didn’t need to see. In fact, the less I saw of the god standing over me, the more evenly-matched our battle felt.
I shouldn’t have closed my eyes.
One of the demons, a tiny one the size of a baseball, whizzed past my ear and clipped my temple with something hard. The flow of the battle was lost.
Raijin used the moment of confusion to direct a swarm of the small assholes to cover Dino like thousands of attacking bees. I couldn’t believe it. They were lifting him from the ground and carrying him straight up. The troll clawed at his throat, as if he were struggling for oxygen. The unholy swarm suddenly moved swiftly toward the water, Dino in tow. They slammed into the dark river with my friend.
“DINO!” I yelled. Or at least I think it was me. The rage and adrenaline mixed together. I dropped back into that psychic place where my breath listened for Raijin’s breath. The flow of my blood anticipated his flow.
As if I’d done this a billion times before.
I felt Rebel’s hand on my shoulder. I heard her say from somewhere far away, somewhere worldly, that she would watch my back, that the wound on my head was small, that Dino would be fine. Her reassuring tone gave me a boost. I felt an opening in the battle. Raijin’s guard was down. His concentration was broken, just for a second, but that was all I needed to break him.
With a surge of a thousand feelings, all of them wonderful and horrible at once, I released an attack. I don’t know if the others could see it, but I could on the plane of existence I inhabited. A rolling blade of blood red light broke through the sky and dropped hard on Raijin’s head. His scream swept across the waterfront, knocking everyone back, including a thousand demons.
I don’t know how much time passed before I saw the world through my own human eyes again. Suddenly, I could feel the breeze on my face, see the color of the sky, hear the eerie silence.
A drenched Dino broke the peace with, “Maaaaaan. How long did you have that pent up in you, Arkwright?”
A nearby demon hissed and flew at Raijin. I lifted the sceptre. “Stand down! That goes for all of you!” The antsy demons stopped moving. I had control of them again. All of them.
The god laid on his side. I got as close to him as I could stomach. It’s not easy to look a creature in the eye who has eyes that are 20 feet wide, even if they were closed.
They opened.
Chapter 25
Up close, I could see the texture of the god’s orange irises.
Thousands of small flames flickered in those eyes, with pitch-black spaces in between each ball of dancing fire.
“Why do you want the sceptre, Raijin?” I asked.
He blinked. The motion of the closing eyes fanned me with a soft breeze. It was warm, calming. It made me sad. “To keep you from ruling the demons, boy.”
“But you have power over them, too.”
“Not as much as the sceptre does.”
I took a seat on the ground cross-legged. I didn’t feel like I was in danger anymore. The sun was about to set and the world felt relaxed. “Are you going to die?”
“Now that I have no army, no power, and no plan, I hope so.”
“I can keep you alive. You could still fight with us.”
“I will not fight with an army led by Fox.”
“You mean Lancelot?” Fox had been his name for a few hundred years before he’d embraced Lancelot again.
Something like a chuckle escaped the giant’s mouth. “Lancelot. Bah. He is more a fox than a knight.”
“What’s your problem with him?”
“Do you not know? And you call him a friend. HA!” His booming voice was back. “If I tell you, you must promise me you will use the demons against the undead. They must not rule this world.” His voice was weakening again. He was a god, but he was dying like a human. His presence was fading. I’d seen it many times before but it’s something else when it’s a god checking out.
“Of course. That’s why I fought you so hard, Raijin. We’re going to end this war with demons, pixies, and even trolls if we have to.”
“Hey!” Di
no yelled. He didn’t like that. I knew he wouldn’t.
“I hate your good friend, because he started this war.”
“What are you talking about? Set started this war.”
“He ran from his past, this Lancelot. He embraced my culture and he brought the most powerful weapon ever made with him. Fox forged Excalibur in his own image. His own false image. Like a fool, he did not think there would be consequences. He is a traitor, a thief, and an idiot.”
“Lancelot reforged Excalibur as a katana?”
“No, you fool. He does not have the power to do that. But he found someone who could. May whoever it was find no honor in the afterlife.”
“But how did that start the war?” He didn’t answer. The fire in his eyes began to die out. “Don’t you die on me, damn it!”
One eye flicked slightly. “Excalibur is one of The Four. It is a weapon. It is a door. It is a god.”
“The Four? What’s The Four?”
His eyes closed again. “Poor human. So much to learn about your own history. I do not have enough time to explain it all. Ask your friend. He will know. He will tell you how removing the fourth leg from a beast won’t kill it, but it will be weakened. It will be vulnerable. It will survive at the mercy of a billion hunters who want its hide.”
“Fuuuucking riddles,” Dino said.
I turned away from the god to give Dino my best angry look. He pursed his lips together and pretended to zip them together. I turned back to the god. “So you’re saying that altering Excalibur weakened a binding spell between it and three other relics?” I didn’t get an answer. The flames in his eyes were out just as the sun went down.
That’s when the vampires showed up.
Dozens of shapes appeared in the sky over the city.
“We’ve got company,” Rebel said.
“Shit, we never catch a break, do we?” Dino whined.
Rebel click-clacked her fingernails together. “I don’t know, troll. I could use some good hemogoblin action.”
“Hold off you two,” I said. I used the sceptre to keep my balance as I stood. “Let’s meet these vampires before we pick a fight with them, okay?” Nickolas just stared at the oncoming undead and held onto his pistol tight. “Nickolas, you hear me? Stand down.”
“Who made you…” Nickolas started to say before Dino’s growl shut him up. He secured the weapon, but his frown made it clear he didn’t like it. Tough shit.
“Demons! Line up!” I yelled.
Good thing I went for the peaceful route because the hemogoblins were led by Bonehead, otherwise known as Hakkar, otherwise known as Osiris, leader of both Set’s army and the rebellion. He and several of his fellow vampires floated over our heads.
“Do you want to lose this war, Kane?” Osiris asked.
“Hello to you, too, Bonehead,” I called out.
“Answer me.”
“Uh, no. That’s not my plan, no.”
“You should tell me this plan of yours then, because you’re about to become First Meal for Set’s army. Your fireworks show is…”
He stopped short and locked his eyes onto the giant, dead god under his floating feet. Yeah, it took him that long to see what was right under his nose. I didn’t give him the nickname Bonehead from the skull-like mask he once wore. He was also called Bonehead because he tended to lose battles in the short term with his tunnel vision. His charm came from the battles he won — the ones that counted the most.
Osiris did not look happy. “You killed a god? Were you aware he was an ally? He controlled the demons you fool!” I waited for him to notice the hordes of peaceful demons all around us. When he finally did he aimed his annoyed expression at me. “Explain, Kane.”
I did my best with some help from Rebel. He and his cronies floated in silence, absorbing every word. When I was done filling him in, he spoke. “So the sceptre in your hand is the sceptre of Was. How did you learn to use it?”
“I get the feeling it’s learning how to use me. It just responds to my desires sometimes. My needs.”
“You defeated a god with it,” Osiris said, clearly annoyed.
“I don’t know how I did it. I felt like I was swept into another layer of reality. Or at least my perceptions shifted in a way that made me see things differently.”
“He was fantastic,” Rebel said with no sense of snark in her tone. Now I’d heard it all. I’d heard the last words of a god I’d killed, and the battle cry of demon hordes I ruled. I’d heard the breeze of Valhalla, and the rushing waters of magic in the ancient Nile. I’d never heard anything quite like that full-throated compliment from Rebel — in front of other people, too!
“Come,” Osiris said. “We don’t have time to stay outside. The vampire’s first watch will be here soon. If you want to live through the night I’d recommend you hide in the sewers.”
“Of course you do,” I said. “It’s always the sewers.”
“The smell will make it hard to…”
“Yeah, I know. We all have a lot of experience with you vampires. But you’re coming with us, Osiris. We need to talk.” He hesitated. “You don’t want to hang in the sewer with me? Come on. It’ll be fun!”
“Follow me.” He landed and walked to the waterfront with those long strides he was known for. He always carried himself like a fighter walking into the arena.
I raised the staff. “Demons! Find me more of you. Tell them they will fight with us.”
“I don’t think you need to raise the staff in the air like that,” Rebel said.
“It’s fun.”
We watched our new recruits scatter across the ground, soar into the sky, and burrow into the concrete. A type of demon I wasn’t familiar with blended into the environment. If I’d seen that a few hours before I would have been terrified. But these were my troops now. I pondered the ways I could use their skills in battle.
“You look like you know where you’re going,” I said as I caught up with Osiris.
“I know this city well. I’ve studied it for years. Including its underground. It’s remarkable what has been created under our feet in only 300 years.” He stopped at a sewer grate on the coastline. It was a massive thing but he lifted it out with one hand and placed it gently on the sandy pavement.
He waved me in. “After you. It’s a straight line to our destination.”
Rebel followed me into a tight space. The tunnel descended at a deep slope into darkness. Like a slide at a water park. Where the water was shit and ocean junk. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been on a slide,” she said. She sounded like a giddy girl.
“Where does this thing go?” I asked Osiris, as Alix and Nickolas followed us in.
“Best you don’t know, I think,” Osiris said. He shoved Alix, who bumped into Nickolas, who knocked into Rebel, who shoved me onto the slide.
It was my turn to sound like a giddy boy.
Chapter 26
Sometimes, it’s best to give in to gravity, even if you have no idea where it will take you.
After a solid ten seconds of sliding down the wet steel tube, I eased into the thrill. It was out of my control. I could fight gods, but I couldn’t fight a freefall.
Not yet, at least.
I’m pretty sure I heard Rebel squeeing behind me. I don’t know why we enjoyed the 30 second ride so much. Maybe it was a release from all the pressure and fighting and mayhem and end-of-the-world shit. By the time we hit bottom we were all laughing.
Even as I rolled across a cold stone floor, I managed to have a good time. I rolled to a stop. Rebel bounced against my butt. We stared at the darkness all around us and caught our breath.
“Everyone okay?”
“C’n we do it again?” Alix asked.
“Do you have a Light Spell in you, Rebel?”
“Not unless you have some bacon or fried chicken in your pocket. I need more time or fuel. You could try the sceptre, though.”
I’d managed to hang onto the relic. I really needed to get it back into the Vau
lt Portal for safety. But the thought of doing so made me uneasy. It was almost like saying goodbye to a girl after a first date and you really don’t want your time together to end. The relic definitely had a hold of me, but its pull wasn’t like Excalibur’s. It wasn’t nasty or angry. It also wasn’t like my blood bond with Tabitha, hot and yearning. It was strong, compatible with me, vulnerable. I felt like it needed me too.
“Kane?” Rebel’s voice broke my trance.
“Sorry. Yeah. Um.” I lifted the sceptre up over my head.
From somewhere in the pitch black, Rebel said, “You’re lifting it up, aren’t you?”
“No.” I dropped it down to my side and said, “Light!”
Nothing but dark.
“Magic doesn’t need to be verbal, Kane.”
“I’m aware of that, Rebel. I’m open to ideas.”
“Try doing what I told you during the fight.”
I closed my eyes and listened to my breath. My senses opened up a little bit but I didn’t know how to process the information I received.
I heard breathing.
It didn’t belong to anyone in the room. It moved to the rhythm of something bigger, yet smaller. Something quiet and as loud as the Big Bang.
Was it the space around me?
“Light?” I thought or said or felt.
I opened my eyes to the sight of Rebel, Nickolas and Alix gawking at me.
“What happened?” I asked.
Rebel smiled. “You did it, is what happened.” The sceptre gave off a light glow. It was nothing spectacular. I’d seen Rebel pull off Light Spells that made a rave look tame. But it was bright enough to give us a good view of our new hideout.
The ceiling of the small room was low enough for me to touch with my fingertips. The floor was sewer water. But the walls were straight out of an old boat’s hull. Wide, long wood planks ran from corner to corner.
“We’re in a mine,” Alix said with confidence.
“How do you know?” Nickolas asked.
“I’m a dwarf, boyo,” He walked to a wall and ran his stubby fingers over the wood. “Yeah, a recent mine at that. Maybe a hundred years old.”