by Tiger Gray
Jericho leapt and scored on one of them immediately, crushing him under her weight. These guys were easier to handle than the ones she and the team had encountered back in the Plaza building. She moved fast enough to keep anyone from raising an alarm, or so she thought; her people ended up having to do a lot of guessing since the Cult had shadowmancers, meaning sneaking inside as a hopeful member wasn't possible. She tore the throat out of the last man and let his body fall, the spatter of scarlet blood blazing against the gray pavement. With how spaced out the patrols were, she doubted anyone would hear the thud.
She thanked Jesus for her dark fur as she slunk forward on massive yet silent paws. These humans couldn't see all the shades of black and grey and violet that she could and wouldn't spot her unless she did something wrong.
The stink of death had been in her nostrils from the get go, but now the scent had an eerie active quality, the stench of decay and ozone. It was what she had always imagined watching grainy black and white Frankenstein B movies as a kid, when lightning would strike and the stitched together corpse would start to twitch and groan.
A static charge zigzagged down her spine, making her fur stand up. The wards. She couldn't see them quite like Gerolt could, but she could feel them, especially since her corruption and the demon taint the Cultists had taken on weren't that different.
She knew James would have at least two geists protecting him. The Order of the White Eagle didn't yet know where the Cult was getting their undead shock troops --- necromancy was a rare talent, and the sheer power required to turn out this many monsters was downright spooky --- but their numbers were growing. Now every time they moved in on a target, that target was likely to have some kind of twisted thing protecting it.
The still-human guards on night watch were close enough to touch. She melted into her human form and flattened herself to the ground, hands tucked under her so she could rise again at a moment's notice.
"Jericho." Sonth's voice, with that cold quality she got when she was lining up a shot. The mage moved into sight at one of the only windows. "Go."
Sonth's bullet shattered the window, cut the spell, and hit the mage square in the temple. Jericho didn't stop to think, just ran towards the door as the human guards fired wildly into the shadows. She hit the ground in her most massive form, hunched on all fours, and launched herself towards the door where Nikolai waited.
She burst into the room. No time for subtlety now. Just like her training exercises, Jericho had only moments to assess the situation. The main target and his guards, three geists and two humans. For a moment she felt an energizing shot of hope; there weren't nearly as many of them as she'd expected. Then she realized that even though they were shouting, her own tainted blood was pounding in her ears so hard she couldn't even hear them.
She leapt for the nearest human, barely avoiding a spray of acid from the nearest geist's hand canon. The bullets in her shoulder, courtesy of the human guards, only spurred her on. Her sickness dug into her brain with feverish fingers. The human died screaming and again the hot gore shone like a stoplight to her wolf eyes. The geists closed on her and Nikolai stepped back, hidden behind a wall of rotting flesh.
She lost herself to the point where she stopped to take a bite out of her prey, crunching at the man's head with fangs dripping ichor.
Somewhere inside her mind she knew something was wrong, that she was starting to lose her hard won and dearly held control. Brenna's mindvoice wailed behind the walls she'd put up, like a person slowly suffocating, begging to be let out. Problem was, she couldn't remember how to listen to Brenna now.
"On our way to you!" Gerolt's voice in her communicator made her lift her head. Beyond that she could hear gunfire and the sizzle of spells, telling her Randolph and Serwin had moved in for their part of the plan.
Venom burned the fur on her shoulder and neck away, and then ate through to her skin as the undead attacked her again. The agony made her reach for a place inside herself she normally tried to deny. The song of null space hummed in her bones and tentacles of corrupted energy squirmed on her body, lashing out to sear and crush her enemies, revealing James at the center of the group, surrounded now by mangled body parts.
Her inner alarm system shrilled and she rose up to her full height, nine feet of muscle and infection. Through the haze over her vision she saw what was happening and fear chilled her even through the thunder of corruption.
James had his hand outstretched, palm outwards, and that palm burned with holy power. The old stories talked of werewolves and silver, but for a corrupted shifter it was holy magic that could really hurt. His characteristics blurred together --- blond hair black eyes smell of terror now ebbing into something mad --- until he was nothing but a vessel. It was like looking at the Commander, but all wrong. A paladin, but for a demon instead of for something divine.
Jericho's mind lurched, like a steering wheel wrenched to the side, and she lost control of herself the same way she would have lost control of that hypothetical car. She could see it happening but couldn't do a damn thing to stop it.
She prayed that Lizbet and her dryad friends would succeed at their ritual. Maybe that would lessen the evil power around here enough that she could break free. Was this James' signature power? Making people crazy?
She tried to press forward against the chains of holy magic wrapping around her, but the agony made the madness worse. She couldn't make her claws work, couldn't tear the spell away. God, he was strong, fanatic-strong.
Jericho could hear Gerolt's heavy bootfalls, spaced out in a way that told her he was in a dead run, Sonth behind him. The world turned red and she had time for only one thought --- oh god no --- before she turned and launched herself at her friends. She caught the bullets Gerolt had meant for James. The part of her mind that still belonged to her, albeit the smallest part, gave him credit for pumping more bullets into her without pausing.
Then his face blurred and became meaningless. The depthless blues and violets that had colored her vision before became throbbing reds. Fever bubbled in her blood and her mind became a howling void full of crawling chaos. The figures around her --- they were doing this. They pressed in on her like nightmares, on fire and reaching for her with talons that dripped disease.
She tore into the one closest to her. She glimpsed Gerolt's shocked face for only a second before Sonth shot her in the head.
* * *
Dryad magic made the whole place smell like a field of summer wildflowers instead of an open grave, and the magical air cleared the same way. Jericho's madness eased and she lifted her head, still shifted. The bullets she'd taken had put her down for the count, but it wasn't enough to kill her in this form. The Wolfen disease didn't let its sufferers go that easy.
The smell of blood cut through everything else. Fresh blood. Gerolt's blood.
"Get me a healer!" Sonth shouted. It took Jericho a long moment to figure out what was going on, but then the image of Sonth crouched over Gerolt's form, holding his skull together with gory hands, slammed into her.
Ugly panic made her go cold and hollow. She let the wolf go and shifted into her human form again. She tried to go over to her friend but Lizbet materialized out of the astral and knocked her back before she could. She snarled and made to get up so she could ask her teammate what the hell, but something caught her eye.
Her hands were bloody. And her forearms. And she had gore spattered across her chest.
Just from the bad guys. Killed a lot of them, she told herself. She looked at Gerolt, felt Lizbet spend so much magic the dryad blew through all her reserve gardens and went right into personal magical stores, tearing off pieces of her own self to bring Gerolt back around, the way Lizbet hadn't been able to do when it had been the Commander.
No. It wasn't just that. She could smell Gerolt on her. Images smeared themselves across her vision, those menacing figures reaching for her, how they grew stories high and got all black-green and fiery. She'd lashed o
ut to keep them away. She had to keep them away. She looked at her bloody palms.
What if ---
It was the last thought she had before her mind shut down.
* * *
Ashrinn poured divine magic into his battered and abused body, pushing himself into as much of a jog as he could manage once he'd crossed onto the astral. One of Natalie's birds had landed on his porch railing less than an hour ago, chirping its head off. There hadn't been much scrawled on the message it had strapped to its leg, but it was enough to alarm him and impress upon him that he was badly needed.
Harbor Island opened up before him as he willed the astral to let him pass. The signs of pitched battle were everywhere, fresh corpses, smashed crates, shattered windows. Here and there a crumpled form lay in the darkness, and he could just pick out the White Eagle armbands standing out against the blue uniforms.
His heart dropped, but when his boots touched pavement and he left the other world behind, he could see as many Cultists scattered around. He felt proud of that and yet sorrowful; all of these deaths were tragedies, brought about by zealotry.
He felt superstitious about walking through the blood spattered on the concrete, but he tried to put it out of his mind as he searched for Malkai. There was so much magic that when he tried to use his Othersight it took him a long moment to sort out all of the different threads, to find Malkai's blue-white frost amid all of that riot. He made himself move as quickly as he could, spotting Randolph and Serwin nearby.
"Mal," he said, coming up to tug on Malkai's sleeve. "What's wrong? Where are they?" He knew it had to do with the Storm, but by the shine in the air the dryad's ritual had worked. The water already seemed cleaner than usual.
"Ash." Normally Ashrinn hated being referred to by anything but his full first name, but the tired, taxed look on Malkai's face made it seem tender instead. "It's Jericho and Gerolt. She went nuts and attacked him, nearly crushed his skull. He's okay now --- Serwin and Liz fixed him right up --- but you might want to go and deal with her. We reckon it was that Revelator's signature power, so he saw a Wolfen coming at him and well. You can guess the rest."
"Oh shit," he said, before he could keep himself from swearing. "Where are they?"
"They're over by the Machine Works building. Everyone's okay but Jericho won't talk to anybody. Figured she might listen to you."
Ashrinn didn't wait to hear anything more, just turned and pushed himself that much harder, ignoring the way the scarring made all of his limbs feel tight and restricted, even with all the physical therapy, or the way his legs ached all the way down to his toes. Not to mention he could have eaten a whole goat by himself, a state he found himself in more often than not since getting out of the hospital.
He saw Gerolt first. The man was sitting in a pool of what Ashrinn guessed was his own blood, and his hair was sticky with it. He had his legs pulled up towards his chest and one of his rifles across his lap, and there were big claw marks in his chestpiece. He didn't look hurt, though. Ashrinn supposed he had Lizbet to thank for that.
Lizbet looked beside herself, weeping into her hands. He grimaced. She'd always been the one least suited to the kind of work they did, and had a hard time with death even now. She seemed diminished somehow, and he could barely see her magic. He walked up, and only then did he get a good look at Jericho.
She was in her wolf form, the closest to a normal wolf she ever got, and she might as well have been dead for all the emotion and sense she was showing. Ashrinn went over and knelt by her, putting a gentle hand on her head. One ear twitched. That was it.
"Status report," he demanded without looking at them, grinding his teeth and trying not to show his discomfort as the night deepened and cold settled into his bones.
Sonth stepped out of the shadows and cast off her cloak of the same. She put up her sniper rifle, and he realized she'd been standing watch over her teammates in case any leftover enemies thought to make trouble. He was impressed, and if they'd been the kind of outfit that stood on medals, he would have given her two.
"Commander. The Revelator, James, was easy enough to get to. I neutralized the mage protecting the building without incident and our only resistance were some geists and guards. But the Revelator's signature power..." She faltered, and for once her serious façade cracked and she swallowed audibly. "I think his signature power was something to do with inducing madness. She turned and tried to kill Gerolt, so I shot her."
He realized by the quality of Sonth's voice that Sonth didn't know if Jericho was alive or not. "You didn't kill her," he said. He could feel Jericho breathing, albeit only just. Sonth went limp with relief and sunk to the ground. "Gerolt? All right?"
"Well, she broke my fucking watch. It was a nice watch too; guy at the beach back home told me it was a real Rolex," Gerolt growled. "You tell her she owes me a new one."
Ashrinn knew that was Gerolt's way of joking, and of forgiving Jericho for hurting him. Ashrinn rearranged himself cross legged and pulled Jericho's head into his lap. He stroked her ears and her mane, and after a moment, her eyes flickered with the beginnings of sense. He guessed maybe the trauma of what had happened had trapped her in her wolf body.
"Kassie," he said, daring to use her first name, hoping it would get through to her in a more primal way than what she usually went by, "it's Ashrinn. You're all right. Everyone's all right."
He'd never seen her shift take her so slowly, her form blurring, changing and swirling like rising mist, so that a few heartbeats later he held a woman instead of a wolf. Jericho was such a tough person that it was hard to reconcile the needy way she held him now, and he suppressed a wince as his ribs creaked; she was stronger and bigger than he was.
"I didn't mean it, Commander. I swear. I don't know what happened." She hid her face against his shirt and he put a sheltering hand on her head, like she was a child no more than Rosi's age.
"It wasn't your fault," he tried to tell her, though he suspected that his words fell on deaf ears.
"They're right about me. I'm rabid. I couldn't stop it," she mumbled, huddled in his arms, face still hidden.
"Kassie, it was magic. It could have happened to anyone. You didn't know that Revelator could do that."
Again he felt annoyed that his team couldn't employ the full talents a Unit team would have been able to utilize. There was no sneaking into the enemy base for his guys, not while the Cult's demon master could identify anyone who didn't carry a shard of its taint. If they'd been able to breach those defenses, maybe they would have known that James could induce insanity. It was certainly not a power he'd ever seen anyone but a Shadowmancer wield, and even then only those Shadowmancers who had gone mad or were working for the enemy.
"He's right," Gerolt said, wiping blood out of his eyes. "Wasn't anything you did wrong, and see? I have all my pieces still."
Jericho stiffened and pulled away from him, looking around for Gerolt. Her gaze fell on him and a ragged intake of breath was the only warning before she burst into tears.
Ashrinn almost started crying out of pure sympathy, he was so shocked by Jericho of all people breaking down like this. He didn't know what to do except hold her, which he did when she crumpled into his embrace again.
"Jericho," Sonth said, slipping a hand into her close fitting jacket and pulling some folded pieces of paper free, "we got the intel we needed. It's right here. Everything went right. You couldn't have known. None of us did, and we're just as responsible for what happened. It could have just as easily been me and then we'd all be worse than dead."
There was a nervous quality to Sonth that told Ashrinn she was haunted by the idea. Jericho might turn into a terrifying monster that crushed and mutilated her enemies, but Sonth could do worse, leave a person alive with nothing but ragged bloody scraps in place of a mind.
Jericho seemed to realize she was crying because she stopped, shaking with the effort of forcing back her tears. She untangled from him and Ashrinn didn't look at her, not wanting to
embarrass her by calling attention to the fact that he'd been hugging her. She moved away, dragging the back of her hand across her brow. "I'm sorry," she said, and for once her voice had no energy to it.
"It's all right. Once combat starts it's all Rafferty's Rules anyway," Gerolt said. He glanced around. "Chaos. Jesus. It's like no one owns a T.V." Ashrinn didn't bother pointing out that one really had to be Australian to get that one. It was Gerolt's way to be gruff and crass when things were heavy. "But you still owe me a new watch."
"What?"
"You broke it, you fucking mongrel."
For a moment Ashrinn thought Gerolt had gone too far, but then Jericho started to laugh and didn't stop until tears rolled down her face again. Once she had calmed down Ashrinn rose, trying not to show how it ached to unfold.
"Right, well. Let's get the fuck out of here, shall we?"
Without being asked, Gerolt and Sonth helped Jericho to her feet. Ashrinn was glad she'd gotten it together for the moment, but there was a drawn, pinched look to her he didn't like. This one was going to follow her forever.
"Eloquently said," Lizbet offered, and Ashrinn noted she couldn't seem to make herself stand. He went over to steady her and she leaned against him once she was up. "I think I went too far," she whispered.
He steered her towards the main group. He thought he could see Serwin, and Randolph stood out in a White Eagle uniform and armor this time instead of a tailored suit. His heart jumped as he realized they'd taken all the ships. Despite the cost, they'd broken the Cult's hold on Harbor Island.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
"Natalie's birds are back," Randolph said, standing behind his desk as was his habit when he had much on his mind. Ashrinn gripped the armrests of his chair; he could feel that battlefield adrenaline building within him, knowing that this was the final push for information that could pinpoint the Cult's main location. He'd long ago figured that they too had taken their operation underground the way the Order had, or they would have revealed their position already. "And we have the information we gleaned from our attack on Harbor Island. I've sent scouts based on that information and their reports indicate a high level of demon corruption at the Snake River watershed."
