Rings of the Inconquo Trilogy

by A. L. Knorr

  “Let her go!” Marcus bellowed behind me.

  Pierre’s laugh raked against my fevered nerves like a saw blade.

  “Your time will come soon enough, little man,” Pierre chortled, a garbled sound around all those teeth. “Now be quiet and let me enjoy my work.”

  My body was in the grips of some terrible fever, sweat pouring off me even as my teeth clacked together with uncontrollable shivering. I wanted to fight, to scream, to run, but I was so tired, so weak, struggling to stay upright. Another surge of icy poison from the black tentacles, and I sank to my knees. The room spun, and though I thought I heard voices, they were muffled and distant, unlike my heartbeat that thundered in my skull. My chin sank, and I began to lean forward, unable to hold myself upright. Only the biting grip of the living shadows kept me from collapsing to the floor.

  It was over; I was done.

  I couldn’t fight it anymore. I didn’t want to.

  Sorry Jackie. Sorry a’am. So sorry …

  Three distant claps of thunder came in quick procession, their percussive call traveling down some long tunnel. With each bludgeon of sound, my senses returned with agonizing clarity. My body shook violently, and I felt I might vomit, but I could also feel the frigid poison retreating. Inch by inch, it was pulling back, siphoned out through burning portals in my arms. Another thunderclap, this one much closer, and the surrender of my veins picked up speed.

  “Let. Her. Go!” Marcus bellowed again just before another blunt hammer of explosive sound.

  I cried at the pain of the sonic pummelling, but the cry became a sob of relief as I felt the last of Pierre’s noxious venom leave my body, and the tendrils released my arms.

  Catching myself with outstretched arms, I toppled forward, my whole body trembling. Tears blurred my eyes, but as I raised my face from the floor, I could make out Pierre kneeling a few steps from me. His dark clothes were torn across his chest, but something about the wounds beneath was wrong.

  “Ibby, come on!” A strong hand wrapped around my arm and hauled me upward. “We need to move!”

  My vision blurred again as I rose, my legs scrambling to catch up. I retched then gagged on bile at the sudden dislocation. Once on my feet, I spat the foul taste from my mouth and took a deep breath to clear the remaining infirmity from my mind.

  I looked at Pierre––no longer the lamp-eyed, fanged monster––on the ground in front of me; Marcus had one big arm wrapped around me while the other shakily levelled the revolver at Pierre. I looked up at Marcus. His eyes bulged as his mouth ground out words between clenched teeth.

  “Ibby, please. I only have one more shot.”

  I wanted to ask him why he would need more, Pierre’s at our feet with multiple chest wounds, but the horrified look on Marcus’s face brought me up short.

  I turned back to Pierre. Dark ichor dribbled from the corners of his mouth as he grinned. My eye was drawn from his wide, rictus smile, by movement. The wounds in his chest would have been difficult to make out with his blood being the colour of tar, but they ... squirmed. Something slithered and twisted in the spaces where ruined flesh should have been, issuing small squelching noises as they writhed.

  “Did you really think it would be that easy?” Pierre rasped, spilling more dark blood upon his chin.

  The wings of starless night sprang from his shoulders, and with one flap, he was back on his feet. He looked down at the bullet perforated shirt then behind him where two bullets had punched holes in the wall beside the shattered French doors.

  “That’s your first time ever firing a gun, isn’t it?” Pierre turned to smile at Marcus, eyes shining. “Not bad. In another life, I would have added you to my security staff.”

  Marcus snarled a curse, but his hand was shaking so badly I doubted he could pull the trigger again. Though my body still felt shaky, and cold sweat clung to me, I reached out for the only thing that might stop this monster in human clothing

  “Yet,” the edimmu continued, his voice growing rough as the fangs reappeared. “You only have this life, and it is about to come to a very messy end.”

  The black wings became huge, shadowy hands springing from his shoulders. With disdainful slowness, they reached towards us. I wiped the sweat from my eyes as I threw my will into high gear, amplified by the fused Rings, and was rewarded with an incredible crash from the office.

  “How’s this for a mess?”

  Gwaffu’s secret safe, twisted fragments of the steel support beams clinging to its side, spun end over end before smashing into Pierre’s chest. The edimmu may have been an immortal demon, but physics was against him. His body twisted around the quarter-ton of metal before both flew out the shattered doors and off the balcony.

  My grip on the safe relented as it soared into the open air, and I nearly collapsed. If it weren’t for Marcus’s arm around my waist, I would’ve crumbled to the floor.

  For a moment, there was only the sound of my laboured breathing, and then a long low whistle sounded from next to the bed.

  “Impressive,” Sark muttered groggily propping himself up on the bed with one quivering arm. “But did you miss the part where you were supposed to run?”

  __

  “Wait!” I hissed as the last of my disorientation fell away and I recognized the array of metal shapes outside the door.

  Sark froze, his fingers centimetres from the knob, and craned back to see my face.

  “Guards,” I mouthed then made a gesture with forefinger and thumb, pointing towards the hallway beyond. “Guns.”

  Sark nodded and took a careful step back, turning all the way around to face me.

  “Can you handle them?” he asked in a soft whisper. “We’ve got a minute, maybe two.”

  “Until what?” Marcus asked in a subsonic rumble.

  Sark’s face twisted into a baffled sneer at the question, and then he turned to me. “Why is the meat talking?”

  “Until what?” I repeated, rolling my eyes.

  “Until Pierre comes back or they come in.” Sark shrugged. “Take your pick.”

  “Even after that?” Marcus growled and pointed emphatically to the gaping hole.

  “Why is he still talking?” Sark asked with a shake of his head.

  I felt the seconds ticking away as Marcus levelled a glare at Sark, who continued to sneer.

  “Shut up, both of you,” I snapped and then handed Marcus my purse with the ledger in it. “Hold this.”

  Marcus took the purse with a stricken look, before turning to glare at Sark. I saw Marcus throwing up a rude hand gesture before I shut my eyes and focused on the guns mere feet from us.

  For a second, I considered reducing them all to slag, but a trembling from my stomach to my toes reminded me that I was still recovering from my poisoning and the particularly heavy lifting I’d done with the safe. A mass un-fashioning like that would take juice that I might not have, and even if I did have it, there was a chance I’d faint afterward.

  I didn’t reach out to the multitude of complex metallic mechanisms and alloys which made up the guns, but instead focused on the singular aura of the steel tubes that made the barrel of each gun. I felt the tough, tempered metal respond sluggishly at first, resisting my touch.

  “Come on luv,” I muttered as I leveraged more of my will. “Play nice with Auntie Ibby.”

  Sweat began to bead on my forehead before I felt the barrels giving in. Sharp, metallic pings sounded beyond the door, one after another until every pistol barrel had snapped in twain.

  Curses and shocked exclamations filtered through the walls.

  I let out a long, satisfied sigh and took an unsteady step backwards. My stiletto slid on a chunk of glass in the carpet, and I slipped.

  Marcus’s powerful arms caught me, and for a moment, I wanted to give myself over to the comfort of being held. I looked up into his concerned gaze and felt something silly and situationally inappropriate flutter up and tell me to ask him if he minded me staying a while.

  “Are
you okay?” he asked, his eyes sweeping over me for any sign of injury. In that exhausted, vulnerable second, I didn’t care what he saw, and that fluttery voice was back saying we hoped he liked what he saw.

  “She’s fine,” Sark snarled, shattering into the private moment like a spiked wrecking ball. “And she needs to stand on her own feet. Now.”

  I stood, ready to tell Sark in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t in charge, but the sight of him shaping a brass lampstand into some kind of weapon stole my voice. It wasn’t clumsy work, but it seemed Sark couldn’t shape metal he wasn’t touching or very nearly touching. What would have taken me a moment’s thought took him several seconds. Still, when he was done, he held several feet of barbed chain stretched between his fists.

  “You know how to use that?” Marcus gestured with the barrel of the Webley.

  “A damn sight better than you know how to use that,” he retorted, wincing away from the flailing gun. “Point that somewhere else, before you hurt somebody.”

  The two exchanged glares as I drew the poker, tongs, and shovel from the fireplace, adding the grate as an afterthought. I kicked off my shoes as I shaped the metal like putty. In a heartbeat, my limbs were encased in a rough skin of iron, savouring the comforting support and resilience the familiar metal shared.

  “Aren’t we in bit of a rush?” I asked stepping to the door, the metallic shell giving the slightest crackle as it shifted sympathetically with my muscles, a boon rather than a burden.

  Sark let go of one end of his chain and gave it a twirl. “After you.”

  I cocked one fist back, then looked back at Marcus, who was staring at me with a mixture of dread fascination and utter awe.

  “Stay close,” I instructed. He nodded dumbly, arms crossed to hold my purse to his chest, the revolver in one hand, and the black box in the other.

  I turned and launched a punch that sent the bedroom door hurtling across the hallway.

  18

  The door flattened one of the guards against the far wall.

  Racing in its devastating wake, I hit the closest with a haymaker that sent him spinning to the floor. Of the two remaining, one was staring at his defunct pistol in utter confusion. I headed for him, but his compatriot sprang towards me with a manic scream. I swung my arm down to block a stepping front kick and heard a wet snap when my iron-clad club of an arm connected with his shin. His scream climbed several octaves as he collapsed to the ground clutching his broken leg.

  I spun towards the last guard, iron giving a protesting growl at the twisting movement. His eyes bulged at the sight of me, my iron-shod footsteps ringing on the floor. He staggered backwards and lost his footing; he raised one hand in a warding gesture while with the other hand, he crawled away.

  It was all over in a few seconds.

  Seeing he was no threat, I turned back to the doorway as a shimmer of serpentine grace flashed by me––Sark’s brass chain as it coiled around the cowering guard’s neck, barbs digging into the man’s throat. I was too stunned to cry out, as the chain gave a savage twist. The chain withdrew an instant later, letting the corpse slump to the floor.

  I tore my eyes from the dead man’s accusing stare to look at Sark and saw that he’d already finished off the man with the broken leg.

  “They weren’t a threat,” I gasped, as a wave of nausea came over me. “Either of them.”

  Sark looked at me with open incredulity.

  “Not then.” He coiled the bloodied chain around his arm. “But, when they got more guns? What about when they told the others? What about when we turn our backs or are running for our lives? Seriously, Ibby, I could go on all day.”

  The nausea faded as seething anger rose inside of me at Sark’s flippant justification.

  “We don’t just kill people,” I snarled, taking a heavy step towards Sark.

  To my outraged surprise, Sark didn’t argue and instead moved down the hallway. He drew out a phone.

  “Sark!” I yelled after him, but he kept walking.

  “Ibby.”

  “Sark, you bastard!”

  “Ibby.”

  I whirled to see Marcus, his expression grave. “We need to move,” he said simply. “I’m sorry, but we do.”

  I heard Sark telling Jackie we were going to need a pickup in short order. I turned away from Marcus to look at the two bodies on the ground, then the two men I’d pummelled into unconsciousness. Bile rose in the back of my throat, and the iron armour began to tremble and peel. I tried to focus my mind, but the eyes of the dead men locked me in place.

  “This isn’t what I wanted,” I sobbed to their cold, lifeless faces. “I’m not a murderer.”

  I felt Marcus’s fingers squeeze a bare patch on my shoulder.

  “I know you’re not. We’ll sort it out soon, but right now we need to move before—”

  “RUN!”

  Sark was pelting back down the hallway toward us from the door to the stairs pursued by a tide of roiling darkness. Riding that swelling wave, like some profane Neptune, was Pierre Gwaffu, grinning monstrously.

  Finding ourselves cornered, our choices were the bedroom or the window to the front of the house.

  “Follow me,” I barked to Marcus before springing for the window, arms raised over my face.

  The glass exploded, and the night’s chill prickled through my iron-skin. Half a heartbeat and gravity grabbed me hard, and I plummeted towards the front lawn like a comet.

  Striking the dirt, I ploughed a long shallow furrow into the sod that nearly took me to the circle drive where bedlam reigned. People piled out of the manor, some got into expensive cars, while others just ran.

  Jackie was in that mess, but I didn’t have time to consider that when a scream pierced the night air. Marcus had leapt from the window as well, but without a protective layer he would be lucky if the drop just broke his legs. I threw out a hand and seized upon the largest bit of metal on him––the revolver in his right hand. I willed its descent to slow, hoping to slow Marcus’s free-fall.

  It did, but the speed differential between Marcus and the gun pulled him up hard by the hand clutching the revolver. His body twisted around the axis of the gun, and I heard his cry of pain. The black box and my ledger-laden purse tumbled from his grasp.

  Marcus was two-thirds of the way down when Sark burst from the window, rappelling down the wall using his shaped length of brass, clinging and crawling like a metallic centipede. He disengaged from the wall half-a-dozen feet up, turning his plummet into a roll across the grass. He sprang up, chest heaving. A second later, sharp tendrils of black lashed through the shattered window and gripped the wall. Pierre emerged, suspended in the air by the grasping tendrils that coiled around him. I saw the immense wounds made by the flying safe – huge ragged tears that would have killed a human one hundred times over. Within each of these breaches that slimy black flesh quivered and seethed.

  His glowing eyes stared down at us with disdain, but, as I watched, his shadowy tendrils gave a shiver, his eyes narrowed, and his serrated maw twisted with outrage. I followed his gaze to where Marcus stooped to pick up the purse and box with his undamaged arm, the other dangling useless at his side.

  “Get your filthy hands off that!” Pierre roared, and like a pouncing spider leapt from the wall aiming to land on Marcus’s bent back.

  I moved almost before I thought, propelling my will into my metal shod legs. But I wasn’t going to make it. The edimmu would be on Marcus before I could intercept.

  “Marcus, drop!”

  Marcus dropped flat over my purse, screaming as his limp arm struck the ground. At the same instant, I lashed out with one arm, desperate fear giving me the focus necessary to launch half-a-dozen iron spikes from the metal that had encased my arm.

  Some infernal sixth sense warned Pierre of my attack, and he tried to twist away, but it was too late. Four of the six spikes struck home, snapping the edimmu out of his dive and pinning him to the brick wall. Pierre let out a piercing, raptorial sh
riek of rage as he squirmed on the impaling iron.

  Marcus scrambled away on his belly, purse in hand.

  As I hurtled towards the pinioned edimmu, one arm and shoulder exposed, I was sure he would run me through, but in that split-second before impact, I realized Pierre wasn’t looking at me or even at Marcus. His burning eyes were fixed on the grass, where the little black box lay.

  In an eruption of brick, dust, and shattered cement, we flew back into the manor.

  19

  In a swirling storm of debris and disjointed sounds, Pierre and I smashed into the room. I was on top, my metal enhanced weight bearing down, but as I pulled back to club him, he twisted and kicked upward. Smoky tendrils pulled me forward, skidding across the floor.

  Rage and terror drove me. Keep moving. Keep fighting. Every bit of metal in the room light enough to be thrown answered my call and hurtled toward the edimmu, even as his serpentine coils writhed towards me.

  The assault caused the edimmu to stagger as his human disguise became shredded to tatters, and his reaching darkness retreated. In that brief pause, I beheld the truth. Beneath the clinging shreds of flesh and clothing stood an emaciated creature with moist, wormy skin the colour of crude oil. Its gaping mouth was a snarled collection of stained fangs. Eyes too large for its wrinkled misshapen head bulged and glowed like something from the depths of the ocean.

  “You’ve looked better, Pierre.” I extended a hand to the piano, which juddered from its corner. With a sharp series of twangs, the metal strings slid from beneath the lid and restored my armour.

  Pierre slashed out with a tar coloured tentacle, and a spike of darkness smashed into my chest. I slid backwards, gouging into the wood. I drove hard into the wood in an effort to stop, but a floorboard snapped, and I rocked backwards. Another edimmu tendril slammed into me, and I flew into a built-in bookshelf.

  Wood cracked and groaned, and books tumbled to the floor. Pierre’s tentacles pressed against me with an awful grinding pressure. Sharp tendrils dug like probing fingers into the metal shell protecting me. Without the iron casing, my chest would have collapsed, so I threw my will into reinforcing it. If Pierre got one venomous barb inside …