by A. L. Knorr
My eyes flew open as I made a connection. Dillon is Inconquo.
Winterthür had spent decades looking for the rings. Of course, the agent they used was Inconquo. How could I not have guessed?
I hung my head, defeat weighing like a crown of lead. Jackie lay on the ground nearby, bound and foetal, her red-rimmed eyes and battered face staring up. Hope was gone from her expression. I’d failed her and without much of a fight.
“I’m sorry, Jackie,” I said softly. “I tried.”
Jackie just blinked at me until Dillon drew closer, then she curled in on herself. A moan escaped her throat.
“Now, you be quiet and watch the show,” Dillon said, stooping to pat my head before lifting his voice to someone in the dark. “Lights up! Let’s bring out our next guest!”
The overhead lights, framed in heavy cages of wire, came to life, each one burning a dull mustard shade before rallying to full fluorescent life. These miniature industrial suns dawned the length of the hall. The buckets hanging from chains were rigged to overhead gears and tracks. They ran the space in two parallel lines, passing over wide vats recessed in the floor. Steel-sided carts sat mouldering on the rails, and a few scabby-flanked lorries had died in the middle of the floor.
Dillon’s men — more of them now — stood at a foldout plastic table. Several dark forms lay there, but at the centre was a single cube.
An icy claw seized my heart. I’d never seen the cube before, but I knew what it was. Kezsarak’s Cask. My nightmares dragged themselves from my subconscious. I could hear ‘the voice,’ whether it was memory or a fresh assault.
YESSS.
Dillon’s thugs came over and began to drag-carry Jackie and me towards the table.
I writhed, but the coil pinned me from shoulder to mid-thigh, so I only managed to throw myself on the floor twice. Each impact jarred my bandaged ribs against the rail and squeezed a cry of pain from me. Then hands hauled me up to drag me towards the cube again.
I was breathless with pain and exhaustion by the time Jackie and I were deposited near the table, where Dillon now stood.
A cornucopia of firearms lay on the table like some macabre street merchant’s display. Handguns like the ones I’d seen the thugs use and tactical carbines that police officers carried. Multiple shotguns, one with its barrel cut down to a finger length. Shells and magazines sitting by each.
Dominating the display was the cube, a miniature idol keeping watch over this offering of violence. Constructed of intersecting and overlapping bands of metal, each one different, not just by colour but by their resonance. Each band was etched with a strand of cuneiform. Though the cube looked dingy and worn with age, each glyph was sharply defined and looked fresh.
Staring at the cube, I recalled the blistered wasteland of my nightmares, the terrible gears, the burning steam. That voice roaring, then bubbling.
SSSO ClOSSSE.
The words slithered through my thoughts, and I knew I was hearing Kezsarak, not remembering him. The voice was smaller than it had been in my dream, muffled and constrained.
“Dillon, please!” I tore my eyes from the cube to stare pleadingly at his back. “Don’t do this! He wants you to do this!”
Dillon’s posture stiffened, but he didn’t turn around. “Raza,” he called. One of his men moved behind me.
A fist clubbed my ribs that were exposed between the rails, and I screamed in pain. Men chuckled, and when I opened my leaking eyes, a huge man stood between Jackie and me. He glared down at me from under beetled brows, daring me to say anything else.
“Dillon!” I shouted again. The demon in the box scared me more than any mere man.
Raza didn’t strike me again, but Jackie gave a frightened squeak as the giant leveraged his foot on her throat.
“One more word,” he growled and then held up a finger, daring me. “One.”
He leaned a little more of his weight on Jackie, and she gave a gagging choke.
I glared up at him, imagining ripping up one of the plates from the floor and whacking him with it. Rage and terror stoked my heart to a thunderous pitch, and the most caustic curses I knew seethed in the back of my throat. I buried it all. Jackie’s life depended on it.
I lapsed into silence and then turned my gaze to Dillon at the table.
“Very good.” He held his ringed hand over the cube. “Now let’s see about taming another beast.”
I felt the energy of the cube, as interwoven and complex as the metals that wrapped it, respond to Dillon’s call. The bands began to shift and slide with a soft hiss, gliding precisely, each movement corresponding perfectly with each other. Something stirred inside the cube. A rumble like thunder echoed from an impossible depth.
My mind and soul screamed, and I ground my teeth together, desperate to stop this before it was too late.
Trickles of soot and cinders rose from the cube.
It seemed as though it was a retelling of my nightmares in fits and starts. A cinder here and sooty curls of smoke there. The noise within the cube grew louder, less distant. It wasn’t thunder but the throaty voice of a great engine. The sound grew near. More ash and burning fireflies emerged until a small cloud formed over the cube.
Within that cloud, I sensed a malignant awareness. I bit my lip to hold back a scream. He was nearly free.
Then the pitch shifted as Dillon altered his grip. The bands stilled. The engine’s growl became a furious blast of anger as something screeched and ground within.
Dillon’s arm was shaking as he held it out over the cube. “All right, gallu.” His voice trembled. “I’ve opened it as far as I’m going to. Let’s talk.”
The engine snarled and hissed to a chugging standstill. The ash and cinders seethed in the air. Dillon’s hand steadied over the cube, the rings glowing in the light of the flashing cinders.
“Come now, don’t be shy.”
Cinders flared and danced, and in them formed a hellish pair of eyes, throwing ripples of hateful heat as they pressed to the fore.
RELEASE ME.
The sound pounded in my ears like the ringing of a hammer against an anvil. Raza winced, and Jackie whimpered, pressing her face to the floor.
“Nothing is for free,” Dillon quipped, anxiety thinning his tone. “My employers insist we come to an arrangement before you are freed.”
The eyes flared, and cinders sprayed in every direction. Dillon raised his free hand to shield his face.
RELEASE ME NOW, VERMIN.
“This ‘vermin’ is going to shut you back in the box forever if you don’t cooperate,” Dillon snarled. “Work with me or prepare for another eternity of prison, Kezsarak!”
The eyes narrowed into searing slits, and the ash thickened, only a few cinders sparked from the top. When he spoke again, it was sullenly. He almost sounded bored.
TERMS.
“I knew you could be reasonable.” Dillon gestured to the table, where the guns lay. “I believe you know weapons of war when you see them. If the old stories are true, then you’ll have no problem enhancing this small offering, as a show of good faith.”
The smouldering eyes regarded the weapons.
AGREED, RELEASE ME.
Dillon actually laughed, and the eyes narrowed again. It like watching a time bomb counting down to detonation, and felt like all the air had been sucked from the factory.
“I don’t think so,” Dillon said, snorting. He waggled his outstretched fingers. “Now, please. Before I lose my temper.”
The eyes remained hateful slits, but something reached over the table from the cloud. Kezsarak’s will gave off waves of power, distorting everything. The power rested over the weapons, then sank into the metal like descending rain. Kezsarak’s influence curdled the guns’ resonance with a sour, prickly texture. With the barest hum, the dark metal of the guns shone with a red light.
COMPLETE, RELEASE ME.
Dillon eyed the weapons, no doubt sensing the wrongness in them just as I did.
“Some verif
ication is in order.” He snapped his fingers at the weapons. “Miggs, Jonesy, Damien, test these out.”
Three men stepped forwards, each taking a weapon and a handful of ammunition. Moving away from the table, they began to load. The deviant auras livened as the first rounds were chambered, trembling with distorted, mutant life.
The men glanced at Dillon, hesitant.
“Get on with it, damn it!” Dillon levelled a finger at the man holding the handgun. “Jonesy first, and down the line. Step to, boys.”
Jonesy looked like he would rather have dropped the pistol and run for his life. Sweat beaded on his pale forehead. He lifted the weapon in a two-handed grip and spread his feet. Aiming at one of the lorries, Jonesy’s hands began to shake, as though he could feel the unfriendly evil brooding in the weapon.
“Shoot!” Dillon screamed.
A plume of scarlet erupted from the muzzle, and the door of the lorry exploded into gnarled, ribbons. It was almost comic, as the door peeled back like a trick cigar. A stunned silence followed as the last bits of metal and glass tumbled across the floor. It wasn’t just the door on the side facing us that had been obliterated, but the one on the opposite side as well.
The men looked at each other in wonder, but Dillon was already jabbing his finger at the next man.
“Miggs, come on!”
Miggs hefted the shotgun to his shoulder, and after a single steadying breath, he pulled the trigger.
The damage struck from just above the front wheel well to the opposite wheel. It looked as though a giant, serrated blade ripped through the lorry, throwing part of the engine block into the air. The twisted hunk of metal spun, throwing off blackened pieces before it crashed to the ground.
Now the men were smiling.
When Damien opened up with the carbine, snapping off a trio of shots at the cab and the bed, metal flew, and the lorry’s frame sagged, a broken, bifurcated shamble.
The goons clapped and hooted now in juvenile appreciation of the grandiose display. The three with demon-touched weapons shared wide, greedy smiles.
“That will do,” Dillon cooed to the glowering demon. “I know quite a few parties who would be very interested in what you could do for them, my friend.”
Kezsarak had given simple firearms the power of light artillery weapons. I shuddered with loathing. If he could multiply the destructive power of weapons, what would happen with a tank or a missile? What could he do to a nuclear bomb?
My mind was beggared by the horrific potential, and I understood just how high the stakes were. Lowe hadn’t prepared me for this. I had had no idea what I was getting into when I set about to stop Dillon.
The three stooges with hell-guns unloaded on another of the abandoned lorries, which nearly disintegrated entirely by the time they were finished. My ears rang with the immense noise but I could vaguely hear the men cheering and hollering at the display of destructive power. Dillon beamed like a proud parent watching his children at play.
This was an opportunity, I realised with a jolt. While they were distracted, I had to act. Do something. I wouldn’t get another chance. I clenched my eyes shut, willing my abused eardrums to still so I could think.
Not knowing if Dillon held the rail around me with his power or not, I threw caution to the wind and hammered my own powers against the warped rail, pushing out and up all at once. The force of it dragged me to my feet. The coil released me, and I landed on quivering legs. Realizing with a shock that I was loose, with a backhand and a metal blow, I sent the rail spinning into Raza’s face. It took him across the cheekbone, sending him flying backwards.
The apes were still all shooting and hooting when Dillon’s head whipped around, and he saw me coming. He shrieked, but Kezsarak decided to make his own move for freedom.
Coalescing into tendrils, cinders and soot whipped out and wrapped around Dillon’s outstretched wrist. One of the guns fired, and Miggs crumpled to his knees, both hands … simply missing. Then Jonesy was screaming, the twisted shotgun tumbled to the ground as his hands pawed at his bleeding face.
Dillon screamed. His whole body arched as he tried to free his wrist from Kezsarak’s cask. I lunged towards him, but moving towards the cube was like wading through melted toffee.
RELEASE ME.
The tendrils of burning ash tightened, and there came a series of snaps from Dillon’s wrist and elbow. His ringed hand lurched forwards. The rings of the Inconquo struck the cask, and each cuneiform etching flared with a sullen red light.
YESSS.
The exultant cry was a sonic hammer that drove me to my knees. Before flowing back into the cask, the soot and cinders released Dillon, who crumpled to the ground. The infernal engine revved to life again, and its pounding heartbeat shook the table as the cube shuddered and bounced.
FREEDOM.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I screamed through the pain of Kezsarak’s roar, crawling on hands and knees towards Dillon. Seizing him by his shirt, I hauled him away as the table collapsed. Dillon’s face was screwed up in pain, eyes pinched shut. His whole body was rigid, except for his arm, which he cradled. He didn’t seem to notice I had him.
The cask swelled as it juddered about. A sound like metal screeching accompanied the thundering engine. The overhead lights flickered, buzzed, then went out, casting the foundry into darkness. Only the cube’s baleful red glow illuminated the space.
The rings were still on Dillon’s fingers, unharmed, though the skin on his hand was blackened and cracking. I touched the rings. They were hot but not enough to burn. Bracing a knee on Dillon’s chest, I pulled both sets of rings from his fingers. They came off easily, as if too big for him.
Scrambling away, I clutched the rings to my chest. I slid the two sets of rings on my fingers. The broken halves clinked against one another. The rings slid over my knuckles loosely, then I felt them tighten as the supernatural alloy allied itself to its new owner. They now fit snugly, perfectly.
Glancing up at the cube, I watched in mute horror as the metal bands — now swollen and stretched beyond possibility — began to form a body. A vague impression of a wide humanoid shape with blade-like horns sweeping from the sides of a huge head. Soot and cinders swirled like a burning dervish. Through the rush of black and red, the smouldering eyes glared, ingots pulled fresh from hell’s own forge.
TRAITOR, FAITHLESS.
Kezsarak loomed over me, at least twice the height of the tallest man I’d ever seen. Those burning eyes glowered a red darkness. Through rushing wisps of ash, a wide mouth gaped. I knew what awaited me inside. I could hear the gears whirring and clacking already.
My nightmare made real.
With the full set of rings on my fingers now, all the metal songs around me came through with strength and clarity. Even through the terror gnawing at my brain. I threw all the mental force I had into peeling up a wide section of the metal plating on the floor. My temples throbbed and the metal screamed as it broke free. Screws, shrapnel and dirt flew everywhere. With a catapulting arm, I sent it spinning like an enormous jagged disc.
He didn’t even duck, letting the missile bury itself in his chest, face and neck. The metal plating began to melt and bubble, disappearing into his form … a welcomed addition. He took another step towards me, and I felt it reverberate through the floor. I backpedalled, cursing silently, as the last of my metal projectile vanished into the metal beast.
The gaping mouth rose at the corners.
Jackie screamed, and I swept the space for her. My heart lurched as I saw her crawling away from the demon towards the shadows. Her gag was loose around her neck, hanging like a kerchief. Her hands were still bound in front of her. Thinking Dillon’s men might catch her, I scanned for them, eyes wide. But in the short time I’d engaged with Kezsarak, Dillon and his men had vanished, leaving me here to deal with the mess.
Every stride of Kezsarak’s equalled four of mine, but he seemed in no hurry, enjoying the certainty of my destruction.
J
ackie staggered to her feet and ran a few steps before turning to scream my name.
“Run!” I shouted back. “Get out of here!”
She stood there torn and trembling. Looking at Kezsarak helped her find her legs, and with a sob, she ran. She disappeared into the gloom behind the vehicles and vats. I was relieved to watch her go.
Kezsarak plodded for me as I backed up, mind whirring like a top.
Sensing the rails running along the floor and the great buckets overhead, I cast about for inspiration. This place was full of metal. Find something to use, Ibby!
Kezsarak took another step. There was a soft jingle from the chains, barely audible over the grinding gears inside his maw.
Desperately, I grasped a long piece of tempered steel beam where it lay on the flatbed of an old truck, unsure if I could even lift it. Throwing an espresso machine had nearly knocked me unconscious.
The rings amplified my power beyond what I expected. It was like wrestling a python, but the beam responded with greater fluidity. Like a rearing snake, it swung up behind Kezsarak and swayed there. His huge horned head turned to look.
Screaming with effort, I swung the immense tendril of steel like a bat, driving the demon onto one knee. My fingers curled, and the beam encircled Kezsarak, holding him fast. His burning gaze flared in outrage, but I squeezed the coil even tighter, clenching my teeth so hard I wondered if they’d crack.
AMUSING.
Pain hammered through my head. I wasn’t done yet. Keeping hold of the beam, I reached for the chains holding the industrial buckets. Flex. The chains swayed and the bucket tipped. Decades-old dust and slag rained down.
“If you liked that, you’re gonna love this,” I snarled and broke the links holding the bucket.
Kezsarak looked up to watch the meteoric fall of the bucket. His limbs were still enclosed behind the beam, which had begun to bubble and melt.
Like a huge bell, the bucket plummeted, smashing down on Kezsarak and trapping him inside. The impact shook the floor, and my legs splayed out for balance. Hand outstretched, I unleashed my power on the bucket. Old, crotchety steel cracked as my breath came in gasps, and spots danced in front of my eyes. I kept pressing, kept squeezing, until the old steel buckled and imploded.