No Deadly Thing

by Tiger Gray

  ~What, so you hopeless ass fools can act like cowards and hide? If you won't help, leave me alone.~

  ~There's nothing we can do.~

  ~Fuck you.~

  She made her shields hard and sharp and forced Brenna out on a hundred mental knife points. Gerolt dragged her to her feet. Her communicator went nuts in her ear, Daniel's voice:

  "Revelators in the building! I repeat, Revelators in the building!"

  He didn't have to tell them they were armed. Revelators were always armed.

  Shit shit shit we're eight stories up.

  Gunshots. She pelted out into the hallway and hit the emergency exit at a run. The alarm wailed, separate from the main system that Daniel had already taken care of. She took the stairs in a rush, Gerolt's boots echoing off the metal steps as he pounded after her.

  The scene in the lobby hit her in a series of disconnected images. Liz by the desk, the employee shot dead. Young guy, Jericho thought in the tiny part of her brain disconnected from all this. Damn shame. Liz knelt nearby, and Jericho guessed her teammate had tried to save his life. That would be just like Liz.

  She counted five Revelators, dressed all in white. The outfits made it hard to differentiate them, and their goggles made them even more anonymous until she could barely tell if they were male or female. Her heart tried to punch through her ribcage; one of them wore a mask that covered his entire face.

  Shadowmancer.

  She went for her sidearm just as Sonth and the commander came into the building. The lights flickered and died as Sonth's shadow absorbed their energy. Two Revelators turned to her, guns ready, whips at their belts dripping with something that left smoking holes in the carpet where it fell. Nightmare power.

  She called her middle form just as they raked the stairs where she and Gerolt stood with bullets.

  * * *

  Ashrinn felt it more, maybe, than the rest of them. The sensation of the Nightmare opening, the realm from which all dark things issued forth, spewing its contents into the mundane world.

  Ahura Mazda, come to my call.

  The snake familiar writhed, and Ashrinn could feel it as clearly as if it had already slithered through into the mortal world. A rush of images set his mind aflame, and there was plenty of that in his connection with it, fire and pounding drums and funeral rites.

  The veil between the mundane world and the astral hung thin and torn, and his comrades shone so bright he could hardly bear it. Couldn't have, if he too hadn't been alive with the divine. He let his human shell fall away like a sigh, and when his armor came to him this time it glittered the same way the serpent did.

  A Revelator grabbed at his sword, sheathed on his back, and he cursed himself for getting so caught up in magic that he'd very nearly been beaten at his own game. He twisted, grabbed, flipped the man over his shoulder. Ashrinn pulled his sidearm and put two bullets in the Revelator's head. A release of power rushed up from the corpse, the very thing he commanded but threaded through with the red-black sludge.

  Not just Revelators. Paladins. And corrupted.

  No time to process that particular horror. The figure across the room took his attention, eyes black beneath its mask, and for a moment he couldn't make himself lift his Colt for a third shot.

  Shadowmancer? Spirit, no.

  Liz whimpered. Ashrinn saw her in a series of sickening flashes as magic went wild all over the room, her hands pressed to the gunshot wound in her belly, Revelator standing over her and raising his AK to finish the job. Just as he realized he couldn't manage a spell in time to save her, the ground shook and Jericho bounded out of the darkness of the stairwell, her fur streaming blood.

  She hit the Revelator like a tank and left about as much behind. Liz's healing spells shimmered around the hulking werewolf, a shower of amber sparks over an oil slick.

  He charged after his snake familiar and towards the shadowmancer. He'd unfrozen now that he'd nearly lost a teammate. The two remaining Revelators pulled their whips, and Ashrinn wondered what the hell would make them choose such ineffective weapons against guns until he saw the venom dripping from the hooked lengths. Terror sat hard in the back of his throat. It would have to be whips, the bastards.

  A series of short clicks told him that Sonth and Gerolt had clear shots. Sonth waged that battle on another front too, energy gathering around her as she prepared to fight mind to mind if the guns didn't fix the problem.

  Two short taps in return, even as he met the remaining Revelators and a whip lashed around his forearm.

  Take it.

  Chaos erupted for the second time that night. The masked figure drew himself up to his full height and the room went black. Sonth screamed. All the glass in the bottom floor windows shattered.

  Ashrinn felt a surge of satisfaction. He could work in the dark. The whip biting through his armor soaked his skin with corrosive fluid, and even that felt good, gave him a kind of power he badly needed. He grabbed the whip and pulled its wielder towards him, forcing the handle from the Revelator's hand. He threw the enemy into his companion before the second Revelator could master his whip or his AK, sending them both crashing to the ground.

  The garrote in his hand, for killing this time instead of reminiscing. He knew he had only seconds before Daniel thought to conjure a light to see by, though he wondered why the mage hadn't managed any spells so far. Had the shadowmancer done something to prevent it? Ashrinn reached for his familiar only to find himself barred from doing so. Mental magic, a black hole that sapped everyone's abilities, whirled in its place.

  By the bare illumination of Liz's healing, he saw Daniel and the two remaining Revelators wrestling Daniel for his .45. Daniel's magic flickered, trying to assert itself, but the physical distraction and the Shadowmancer muddling his mind had the mage trapped. Both Jericho and Gerolt had missed, and Ashrinn knew the shadowmancer had done that, too, only gaining in power as he and Sonth pitted their shadows against one another, great tentacles of pure void wrestling and thrashing between them.

  Nothing for it. No finesse or specialized training when the enemy had him at such a disadvantage. He hit the shadowmancer at a dead run, and they went down in a tangle of limbs. Ashrinn struggled to get a grip on the other man, who was already fighting to be free with a strength out of keeping with his slight frame.

  He raised his fist --- if he couldn't muster his training then by all that was holy he'd turn this into a barroom brawl --- but the shadowmancer broke through his psychic shields before he could land the punch.

  His own breath, so loud that for a moment he could hear nothing else. He always knew things had spiraled out of control then, when blood pounded at his temples, when his eyes felt swollen, too big for his skull.

  The pain threatened to destroy him and he fought back by compartmentalizing his injuries, making a list of agony in as cold a mental voice as he could manage.

  Left wrist is probably broken, he thought as Kiriana lashed him to the bench, right shoulder hyper extended.

  She tightened the rope around his broken wrist as cruelly as she had the whole one, and the sensation made his thoughts scramble into white nothingness. His body, confused, jerked and twitched against the unyielding board beneath him. That sick part of him that found it all arousing squirmed inside him like a disease.

  Whip welts. Put antiseptic on those later or they'll get infected.

  Later. Would there be a later?

  What had he done to upset her? He couldn't remember now. The strap tightening around his neck made him whimper but he didn't have much fight left in him. Held in place by ravaged flesh, even his magically enhanced good health could no longer stave off the consequences of the torture.

  Kiriana leaned over him, god-like. Was this her altar then, and he the sacrifice?

  The red-black corruption closed on him as if all the breathable air had been sucked from the room, and his violated mind bled and howled. It was a simple thing, in the end, that made him reject it, made him force his hand to his c
ombat knife.

  He wanted to live.

  His knife in the shadowmancer's guts, his arm jerking to complete the cut before he'd fully comprehended the stabbing itself. His familiar, rising with its mouth open on a throat of fire. Ashrinn turned his head as the man clawed at his face, but he couldn't muster the strength to roll the body off of him. Had that been a real memory? Something the shadowmancer had concocted, with just enough truth to truly tear him apart?

  No. Not now, dammit.

  Jericho rescued him, grabbing the man by the neck and crunching his spine, shaking the body until it flopped. He saw Daniel dive for the desk, one Revelator dead, the other spraying the area where Daniel had just stood with bullets. Ashrinn gritted his teeth, ignored the breath seizing in his chest, and raised his gun to put a bullet through the man's head.

  The last Revelator dropped and Ashrinn struggled to sit up, desperate to assess his teammates and any injuries they might have taken. Liz looked as though she'd managed healing herself, anyway, and Jericho had taken her human form to help the dryad stand. Daniel and Gerolt walked up, picking their way through bodies, most so mutilated by werewolf claws their own mothers wouldn't have recognized them.

  It took him a moment to see Sonth, crumpled on the ground like a mangled bird. Gerolt moved towards Sonth but Ashrinn scrambled to get to her first, cradling her to him and praying like hell she wasn't dead. She was breathing, though he couldn't know what the enemy shadowmancer had done to her mind.

  Better than nothing.

  Daniel came over to them. He lifted a trembling hand to rake his hair out of his face.

  "Shadowmancers creep me out," he whispered, as if Sonth could hear him even in a faint.

  "Think how I feel," Ashrinn said, and he didn't just mean the mental intrusion. He looked over at the collection of broken bodies. "Paladins, Daniel. That's what they are. Corrupted."

  Daniel swallowed and paled. "What the hell are they worshipping?"

  Gerolt holstered his gun. "Don't have time for that. We need to get the hell out of here."

  For once Daniel and Gerolt had nothing to argue over, and Ashrinn had to agree too. He gathered Sonth into his arms and stood. Jericho helped Liz over to them, though Liz had found her stride and straightened up as the healing took a deeper hold. Ashrinn wished Liz could regenerate as quickly as their Wolfen teammate, but she kept pace as they ran for the doors.

  The streets were pure bedlam. Crying civilians clogged the alleys. Battered cars sat sideways, windows smashed, horns blaring, their owners bailing out in a wave of panicked humanity. The crash of broken glass.

  Psychic slime sat heavy on the buildings, and creatures from the deepest pits of the astral wreaked havoc on everything they touched. Pure darkness pooled in the gutters, oozed through doors, welled up from foundations.

  Ashrinn saw a pack of things that resembled hyenas, fanning out to harry and kill anything unfortunate enough to get their attention. Their toothy jaws reminding him forcefully of the cat construct, even more so when they found hapless humans to disembowel. And they were the least of the monsters. The inescapable rattle of gunfire called his attention, and here and there he saw shining spots of righteous magic. The White Eagle soldiers.

  So. The Nightmare had come to Washington, and the battle for the Pacific Northwest had begun.

  * * *

  Ashrinn didn't believe in the concept of apocalypse, per se, but the shadow of a massive wing falling over them certainly made him rethink.

  Dragon.

  He bolted out to the sidewalk and laid Sonth at his feet. They needed her, or the humans would stay here to die. "Mary!" Liz startled at the use of her code name. "Come here, I need Tor. Get the Stinger!" Daniel leapt to obey, and by the look on his face he was grateful for an order. Gerolt went over to help and serve as Daniel's spotter.

  "Commander," Liz said, running to him, "I do not do mind healing!" She ducked and rolled as the dragon landed on the nearby library, dislodging a chunk of steel and masonry that cracked the concrete she'd stood on a moment before.

  Ashrinn was halfway to his feet when Liz got up and thudded into him, pressing him back to his knees. "We have a connection," he said. He remembered that touch when he and Sonth had first met, the involuntary bond they'd made. He huddled in Jericho's shadow, arms full of anxious dryad. "I can get inside her mind. Can you use that?"

  Liz opened her mouth to respond but she froze as the dragon mantled. Ashrinn saw it, perfect and gleaming like a ruby, its sinuous head whipping from side to side as it watched humans run back and forth. It had the mad gaze of a rabid predator, yellow fields shining with otherworldly rage. It spread its wings, shimmering red-gold feathers tapering into scales.

  The dragon swept low and sunk its talons into a fleeing human. The dragon took the body back to its perch and began eating the struggling shape, limbs first.

  "Yes!" Liz said. "Yes, I can do it!"

  He opened himself to Liz. She was the Amazon rainforest, as terrible as she was beautiful. He sucked a hungry breath in through clenched teeth. Liz moaned as she passed her hands over Sonth.

  He could feel the connection with the woman supine before him, a tenuous thread that tugged at his metaphysical guts. He grabbed it before he could think about it, and roaring void rushed to meet him. Sonth's mind, sensed through the dryad serving as conduit. Her connection to the darkest places of the collective unconscious had been blasted open. Only his grip on Liz's hand grounded him. Through her he reached for Sonth, Liz's magic a shout in an empty room.

  A panther of amber light, Liz raced down the path he had made. The pure exultation of clinging to her spirit self made Ashrinn arch and shudder, his hand hard on her hand. Sonth's essence surfaced, a crystalline prism caught in blackness, and Liz smashed that psychic cage with claws that burned.

  The three of them rose to the surface of consciousness, and Ashrinn's psyche met his body in a violent collision. Sonth sat up ramrod straight and wailed, an inhuman sound that scored Ashrinn's soul. The dragon shrieked in response.

  Ashrinn surged to his feet. His spirit armor firmed, and at his call the divine rushed into him like a firestorm, obliterating all other magics. His sword in his hand, the handle hot in his palm as though it were alive, his familiar struggling to free itself until Ashrinn commanded it to stay in whatever astral pocket it called home. He didn't need to cause more panic by adding a giant serpent to the mix.

  "Ready to fire!" Mage energies sparked on Daniel's skin as he hefted the launcher to his shoulder.

  "Tor," Ashrinn said, feeling oddly still inside as he watched the dragon, "Get the civilians out of here, any you can."

  The shadowmancer had stopped wailing but she knelt curled in on herself, her hands pressed to her ears. Ashrinn couldn't afford to worry about her, though he prayed she would find the inner strength that had made him choose her for the Storm against all of his instincts to the contrary.

  She cloaked herself in shadow and Ashrinn felt a surge of magic pass him by as she reached out to the panicked people, forcing them to march away from the heart of the intersection.

  The dragon launched itself from the building, its hunger not yet satisfied. It unfurled its wings to their full expanse as it swept low once more.

  "Target in sight," Gerolt said. "Lock on."

  "The wing. Take it," Ashrinn drew his sword. Dragon hide would part more readily under a paladin's weapon than it would give into bullets. A plume of smoke streaked across the night sky. The dragon wheeled and faltered as the missile impacted on its wing.

  The Stinger would have exploded a plane with a single direct hit, but it only made the dragon lose altitude.

  "Reload!" Gerolt said, and Ashrinn moved forward with Jericho and Liz flanking him. Sonth, having evacuated as many people as she could, stumbled along behind. Ashrinn couldn't count on help from the Order members scattered around the intersection, as beleaguered as they were. The fear hadn't hit him yet, that it was just him and his team against a creature more armore
d and mobile than any military vehicle.

  A second missile followed the first and the dragon tumbled to earth. The ground rippled. Ashrinn kept upright, wrestling with the divine that so badly wanted release. If he couldn't keep it in check, it would melt him down to nothing in one final consecration.

  Jericho plastered herself to his side while Gerolt joined him on the other. Sonth, Liz, and Daniel fell back, Daniel disassembling the Stinger as he went. Daniel and Sonth unlimbered their firearms and laid down suppression fire.

  Ashrinn summoned a red-gold light to rival the dragon's own, shielding himself and his teammates as best he could. "Back to the Nightmare!" he commanded. The divine gave his words the power to cast out demons, but it wasn't strong enough to banish a Nightmare creature, even if that creature was corrupted. The dragon rose on its back legs and struck. The words had stung.

  Jericho and Gerolt leapt wide, then Jericho was on all fours, rushing the thing at inhuman speed. Gerolt's M-14 barked once, twice. Ashrinn jumped backward, barely avoiding teeth. The concrete where he'd been moments before flew apart in chunks.

  Ashrinn hit the ground hard. He raised his sword just as a giant claw swiped at his face, catching it on the blade and avoiding it by inches.

  If the dragon's scream was nightmares, Jericho's was the space between the stars, crawling chaos. It shivered down Ashrinn's consciousness like talons on a carapace, screeching and sparking. Ashrinn found his center once more and the divine sang within him, a star going supernova.

  He got up and ran, the broken street littered with crushed cars and stinking of death. The dragon turned to give chase. Jericho clung to its back, tearing at it. Bullets destroyed what remained of its wings. The intersection glowed with its blood.

  Come on, Daniel, Ashrinn prayed as he ran, hurry up.

  As if the thought had been a telepathic link the street became an ice slick at Ashrinn's heels. The dragon scrabbled for purchase and spun to the side, throwing Jericho from its back in a shower of gore as a section of flesh came with her. She smashed through a nearby storefront, still clinging to the scales she'd ripped free.