by JM Guillen
I didn’t speak, didn’t create an Empyrean Seal. I gave no direction to the Wind other than my sharp, emphatic cry.
Gusts of wrath poured from me, fierce, and filled with fury. On my wrist, the bracelet sang a silent song; the Aegis of Dudael burned azure and topaz.
The Wind cried my name.
My hair whipped wildly around me, and the cold of that torrent blossomed in my mind. I saw it in the eye of my imagination, thundering forward toward friend and foe alike.
An unstoppable force.
And yet, like a self-aware river of wrath, it coursed around my friends; only ruffled their clothes and tousled their hair. Meanwhile, the Wind absolutely speared into the monstrosities. The two in mid-leap sailed backward and landed somewhere in the shadows.
In some places, the Wind was sharp. It sliced the creatures to ribbons, and left little more than splatters of otherworldly ichor. In others, it punched like a cannonball or flung them into the shadows.
For the tiniest moment, each of my friends stood in place, stunned. Then, as I wearily sauntered up, Rehl chuckled and shook his head.
“The Masked Brava saves the day again.”
“I wish the Masked Brava would get us out of here,” Baxter said through clenched teeth. “This is a little more than I signed on for. I was promised Chinese food.”
“Are they gone?” Rehl spun in place and pointed the gun out in front of him. “Just like that?”
“Nah.” Baxter swallowed. “Too fucking easy.”
“Over here.” If Alicia had heard Baxter curse, she chose not to comment on it. Instead, she stepped between a couple of the bookcases and peered at a glass-doored display case.
“Yeah?” I stepped closer to take a peek of my own. I’d been curious about Simon’s trinkets since I met the man, and I knew I hadn’t seen nearly all that he’d created.
The things I had seen had been pure wonders.
The mahogany case had been well cared for. The brass latches and hinges set into the old hardwood gleamed, and the curved, clear glass front revealed a treasure trove.
Several small knick-knacks and gewgaws lay within the five shelves. In the corner closest to me, I glimpsed a small hourglass, but a tie pin, a deck of cards, two different chess pieces, and an old silver lighter had also been displayed.
And a ninja star? I peered closer, fascinated.
“What are they?” I opened the cabinet and turned to Alicia. “Did Abriel assist Simon with all of them?”
Her lips parted but it wasn’t her voice I heard.
“You are a truculent, spoiled child.” The words, like gigantic stones grating together beneath the world, boomed from the shadows, quite close. “There isn’t a choice here, Elizabeth. Not really.”
Shit.
“I disagree. There’s always a choice.” I couldn’t see the Houndsman; he lurked somewhere in the shadows. Yet it was an easy thing to feel his presence, an ominous shroud that hung over my mind.
“Alicia,” I hissed. “Did he move over here with us?”
“Um.” There came a momentary pause. “Yes. I didn’t feel him move, however.” She paused. “He simply appeared.”
“The only choice there is to make is whether or not your friends die.” The heaviness of his footfall echoed in the room, along with the sound of his stave as it struck against the wood.
“We seem to be doing well enough so far.” I peered into the darkness, trying to see.
“Is that it, then? Are these willing to die for you?” Another footfall. “It matters little. Either way I will take you to the Gaunt Man.”
“I love ya, Liz,” Baxter jibed nervously. “But I wasn’t planning on dying for you. Not today.”
“No,” I growled. “Definitely not today.”
My mind raced over the possibilities. My friends had done well, but I had seen the kind of strangeness the Houndsman had at his beck and call. With little more than a word and his will, he had dismissed the Wind, utterly deconstructed one of my walls.
That was scary levels of power. If he did it again, it removed me from play. Even if we did make use of some of Simon’s trinkets, what would it matter? If the creature could dismiss my talents so easily, I had no reason to think any of my mentor’s clever little tricks would do any better.
I sighed. If I wasn’t careful, I’d get my friends killed.
The Houndsman only wanted me.
“All right!” I called into the darkness and glanced over my shoulder at Rehl. “If you let them go, then I’ll come with you!”
“What are you doing?” Rehl hissed.
“Lying,” I whispered. “No one can ever tell when I’m lying.”
“I suspect you lie,” the voice rasped. “I know others have been sent. Now you expect me to believe you would surrender as easily as that?”
Shit.
“Get out of here,” I hissed at Baxter and Alicia. “I’m fast. I’ll make the window idea work.”
“What?” Baxter practically snarled. “We fought through all of that bullshit, and now you’re just going to quit?”
“You don’t understand.” I bit my lip as I thought. “This isn’t your problem. You called it, Bax. You didn’t come here to die today.”
Truthfully however, it was Mr. Serin’s words that made up my mind for me.
“Influence grants us choice, Elizabeth.” Serin smiled. “We have far more choices than the average person.”
“Then let your actions fit your word,” the creature rumbled. “Come to me now. Leave your friends and your crafted spirit behind you. Keep the oath you made.”
“Give me a minute.” I glanced each of them one more time. “When you can, make for the trap door. We’ll hook up later.”
“The fuck you say,” Baxter seethed.
“Let her go, Bax.” Rehl placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You’ve seen how fast she is. It’s not over yet.”
I nodded at Rehl, and then I turned from my friends.
I stepped into the shadows.
Alone.
10
As I crept into the darkness, the light of Abriel faded from my mind. The shadows not only grew long, but heavy around my heart. Even though the hounds crouched in the darkness, several yards off, I felt the shroud of hopelessness, of despair that hung around them.
“Liz!” Baxter hissed as I stepped away from my circle of friends, but I did not look back. If anything, I crept along more quickly, and hoped to get far enough away that he wouldn’t do anything stupid.
Like step into the shadows. That would be stupid. I had to bite back a sarcastic quip. In truth, I trembled and my heart beat like a furious drum. The sorrow, the pure melancholy the creatures emanated, clung to me like a physical thing.
“Interesting,” the grating, growling voice of the Houndsman rumbled in the darkness. Ahead, I made out his silhouette, a greater darkness in the shadows.
“Well,” I cleared my throat and tried again. “You said you’d let them go.” I gestured behind me.
“What?” The Houndsman’s eyes burned like slumbering coals. “I said no such thing.”
“You did, asshole.” Though exhausted, I lent more than a little fire to my words. “You said I could choose whether they lived or died. Fine. I’ll come with you. They live.”
“Miss Shepherd.” The pitch black apparition shook its head, almost as if amused. “I said the only choice was whether or not your friends died. This was ever my choice, not yours.”
“Oh yeah?”
“The implication was that you were coming with me no matter what you chose.”
“I see.” I began to consider this might have been a mistake. As a person who never made mistakes, it was difficult for me to tell.
“Perhaps they may yet be safe,” the Houndsman mused. “Come to me and we shall leave this place. As soon as we are gone, my hounds will withdraw with me.”
“And how do I know that?”
“You assume I am the one who would deceive?” For reasons I could
not understand, the fiend seemed to find that highly amusing. “Rest assured, Miss Shepherd, some of us keep the pacts we make.”
“So you claim.” I continued to walk forward and my mind raced. Even through the despair that grasped and throttled my heart, I still felt the Wind as it crouched at the edge of my mind, like a great hunting cat ready to pounce. “Yet one who was intent to deceive might say the same.”
“You’re a task, Miss Shepherd.”
“Liz.”
“You are simply a favor owed, something to be collected and tallied. There is no profit for me in games.”
“Th–then dismiss your hounds.” I stammered a bit, but stared straight into the darkness of that silhouette and pretended as if doing so didn’t make my lizard hindbrain want to run for cover. “I’ve agreed to come peaceably. You’ve proven you’re more than a match for my wind, even if I were to cause trouble.” I shrugged. “Calling off your cute little pups would be an act of good faith.”
“Faith.” One of the hounds, close enough for me to be able to see the dull red of its eyes, croaked the word back to me. “Faith. Faith.”
“I am not here to keep troth with you,” the creature sneered. “We’re not bargaining. I simply informed you that I would be taking you with me regardless of your choices.” He paused. “The time for wordplay is over, mortal-born girl.”
“If you say so.” I swallowed and dropped my head. The elemental coldness, the sheer darkness of the despair pressed against my chest, made it difficult to draw breath.
Get ready. I pushed the thought outside myself, as if the very wind itself could hear me.
“Yet I am not cruel. When we are quit of this place my hounds shall follow. If the mewling children who remain take no action against them, they may well survive.”
“Fairly offered.” I slipped my hand into the pocket of my hoodie. “Allow me to rebut.” I grasped my power and dug deeper into myself than I knew I could.
Empyrean sigils, bluer than the deepest sky, burst into a cacophony of brilliance around me. The light cast into the deeps of the shadows, and I saw dozens of the hounds there, eager and poised.
I grasped the throwing star; the one Simon had left in his cabinet. I spun and hurled the wicked little thing, and cast forth Wind with it. Against the inside of my wrist, the Aegis of Dudael sang and cast ripples of harmony through the room.
I gave it all I had.
That star sliced through the air of the room, so fast it couldn’t be seen. As I had hoped, my hundreds of hours of knife throwing did confer a similar bonus to kickass ninja stars.
I just hoped that, for once, this one time, Simon had been completely truthful with me.
“A playing card, huh?” I nodded toward his coat. “Not the throwing star?”
“No!” He seemed horrified. “That would’a killed everyone here!”
“Yeah?” I raised an eyebrow.
The throwing star struck the Houndsman center mass, and the Wind drove the weapon deep into its dark body. The fiend screamed as it stumbled backward, a sound that rent the darkness.
The explosion shattered sound itself.
In all of my adventures, I hadn’t really experienced ‘an explosion’ yet. It’s easy to assume that it’s something like in the movies. Blake Runner shoots the car, maybe hits it in the gas tank, (I really didn’t think that would work) and suddenly there is a firestorm of noise and smoke.
A real explosion is concussion. It is force so intense that all that exists is the thunder of it in your body, the echo of it all the way in your skull.
One minute I stood, mouthing off to the shadowy Houndsman, the next, I lay flat on my ass, staring up at the darkness, wondering why I shouldn’t just keep laying down. At first, I only heard the high pitched whine that sang in my ears.
Until I heard the hounds.
They grunted and growled as they gamboled toward me. The sound seemed far, so far away…
“Liz!” Rehl’s cry came from equally far away. For a moment, I wasn’t certain who it was, wasn’t even certain if it were real. Gunfire convinced me to get up.
“Damnit.” I raised my head to look around and diligently ignored the bone deep tiredness. My everything ached, and my mind swam.
More gunfire. No time.
Why aren’t the cops here yet? This was New York, after all. Where’s Dad?
A long moment passed before I blinked the wavering bleariness from my eyes, but when I did, the first thing I saw was the sharp orange bursts from a gun muzzle. Someone, little more than a silhouette only a few feet away from me, fired four quick bursts and then stepped over to me.
“Liz?” Rehl leaned close, put his fingers beneath my chin, and lifted my head. “Are you okay?”
Was Rehl wearing a cowboy hat?
“Oh yeah.” Even though I felt as if I had been killed two or three times already I couldn’t help but let the sarcasm seep through. “I’m doing great. I’ve never done better.”
“Sounds like she’s fine.” Baxter stepped closer. He started to say something else, but two of the macabre spider dogs leapt on him from the shadows. One caught him squarely across the face with the razored end of its horrific leg.
Baxter’s blood splattered as the young man screamed.
“Fuck!” Rehl turned from me and his pistol blazed. In a fury he walked straight toward the blood spattered arachnine and fired and fired and fired. He had a methodology to the way he shot, two quick double taps followed by a pause, a momentary re-aim, and then two more quick double taps.
As I watched, Abriel’s light fell over me. It felt like cool spring water, like cleansing summer rain. The moment that light touched my mind, the horror and unreasoning terror vanished, like shadows before the sun.
“I need you to stand up, Liz,” Alicia’s quiet voice came from behind me as I felt her slender arms start to pull me to my feet. “We have to move.”
“What about the… the guy?” I knew I didn’t make sense, but for the life of me, I couldn’t find the words. “The shadow guy. The guy with the hounds.”
“He’s gone.” She paused to consider. “I think. I can’t feel him in the attic anymore.”
“But the spider things.”
“We’re back at almost three dozen,” she answered.
“Of course.” It had been too much to hope somehow the hunters were bound to their master, that if he were slain or driven away they would vanish as a matter of course.
I supposed things only worked that way in tabletop games.
But still…
“Come to me and we shall leave this place. As soon as we are gone, my hounds will withdraw with me.”
That was worth considering.
“Ha!” Rehl’s triumphant cry sounded like a bell ringing in the darkness. “Didn’t expect that one, did you?”
I blinked and glanced over to where Rehl held six or seven of the creatures back from Baxter’s unconscious form. He shot at one of them, struck middle mass and dissolved the horror into a puddle of tar-like filth. Yet, another one—that he did not see—leapt at him from behind.
“Rehl!” I reached forward, powerless.
But the arachnine struck something that burned with a brilliant, golden light.
It shone from the cowboy hat, of all things.
“Weird.” I struggled to sit up.
An electrical discharge, like the hunter had struck the world’s largest bug zapper, zapped and it fell to the ground where it began to melt into pitch black ooze. It smelled like burnt hair and hatred.
Rehl felt my stare, and took a moment to tip his hat at me.
“Miss Lawson,” he drawled.
Was that the hat Simon always wore? One of them, I thought.
“Rehl!” Baxter croaked. The prone young man reached for his shotgun, but couldn’t get a blast off. Instead, he swung it at one of the scrabbling nightmares and drove it back.
“We need you up, Liz.” Alicia placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Do we?” I struggled
and wobbled myself to my feet. “I feel like we need me in bed.”
“You’ve pushed the Aegis too hard,” Alicia muttered. “It takes its reckoning from you.”
“I’ve seen.” I hobbled toward Rehl, who pulled Baxter to his feet.
“Twenty-seven of them,” Alicia informed the guys as we got closer. “I feel the Masked Brava may be out of the fight.”
“The Masked Brava whips the closest spider-wolf.” I mimed rolling dice. “In the face. She wants to whip the monster in the face.”
“Of course she does.” Rehl chuckled.
“Big-bad gone?” Baxter peered around the room at the shadowy figures. “Can we trap door this already?”
“I do not detect the entity, not anymore.”
“Naw.” I shook my head. “Maybe he’s gone, but his power’s still here. We’re still in sideways-world.”
I watched as comprehension dawned on my friends. Except for the light that shone above Alicia’s head, the attic remained the dead, horrific grey that the Houndsman had brought with him. I felt certain that if I’d actually killed the abomination, the world would have CRACKed, and we’d be back in Dad’s attic.
No. The Houndsman still lurked about, even if we didn’t know where. I might have hurt him, maybe badly.
But he wasn’t done.
“We can still escape.” I blinked and tried to focus. “Just like the movie room. If we move far enough away, we shift back.” I waved one hand at the thought that I didn’t make much sense. “We get out.”
“The creatures mislike Abriel’s light.” Alicia’s voice retained that soft, fairy-like quality. “We may be able to exit without fighting them all.”
“Okay.” Rehl turned from me to Baxter. “We move toward the trap door.”
“Unless they try and stop us,” Bax responded.
“In that case we kill them.” Rehl gave our friend a meaningful glance.
“I guess so.” Baxter sighed and patted his left arm.
I peered closer and realized Bax wore something I hadn’t seen before. “Is that a gauntlet?” I stepped closer. “Like, an actual leather gauntlet? Keeping your wrist safe, are we?”