by Norris Black
From the Seraph lines a shouted command was followed by the sound of dozens of swords being drawn in unison as the soldiers braced for impact.
As for me? I got the fuck out of the way. Or at least I tried.
Have you ever attempted to dart out of an elevator as the door was closing? Well, this was nothing like that.
Shouting to Mara and Jack to follow, I scooped Louie up and, tucking him under an arm, turned and sprinted to the side. Our only real hope lay in getting clear of the square before the two opposing sides met. Mara followed. Happy Jack did not.
The ginger Wardlord drew a matched pair of pistols from where they rested in holsters at the small of his back. With a roar he opened fire, pumping bullets into the air as fast as he could squeeze the triggers.
Here's the thing about dual-wielding pistols. It looks cool, but its absolute shit when it comes to hitting what you're aiming at. Striking a moving target when using both hands to control one gun is difficult enough, change that to one gun in each hand and it moves the needle from difficult to impossible. Now, if that moving target is moving directly towards you, then you're back into more reasonable territory, though still not ideal. When that target is a mass of targets twenty feet wide moving directly towards you? Then it's hard to not find a home for your bullets. The downside is those bullets aren't going to slow that wall down much at all. Might as well piss into a windstorm and pray not to get wet.
Happy Jack wasn't the praying kind, and he most certainly got wet.
He was still firing when the leading edge of the Blood Seraph hit him. A scything sword came in low and took his left leg off above the knee. The force of the blow spun him around and three more blades found flesh before the Wardlord hit the ground, his lifeless body trampled under the boots of the charging horde.
A screaming Blood Seraph rushed us. I dropped Louie to the ground and drew the Boxer from its side-holster, emptying both chambers into the monster's chest. There was no time to line up a headshot so center mass was the best option. Luckily, the double-barreled handgun had enough firepower to take the attacker right off his feet, not to mention sprain my wrist in the process. Cursing I popped open the breach of the gun and fumbled a pair of bullets into the exposed chambers.
Getting clear was no longer an option. The Seraph in their white armor surged forward to meet their former brothers and sisters head on. Mara spoke one of those unpronounceable words and a trio of Blood Seraph bearing down us dropped like puppets with their strings cut. She staggered, face haggard and slick with sweat as she spoke again and another corrupted soldier burst like a bag squeezed too hard, blood spurting out the joints of his armor. She couldn't keep this up much longer.
"We can't stay here!" I yelled, snapping the Boxer closed and squeezing off another shot. At my feet Louie yowled in agreement.
A screeching fanatic charged out of the gloom and straight at me. He wore the remnants of what may have once been a pink fuzzy bathrobe, and in his hands was a length of chain attached to an iron bell the size of my head. He howled as he ran, whirling the bell madly over his head. I shot him in the head, and he dropped like a sack of potatoes. Lying stretched out on his back, eyes wide and staring at nothing and with a substantial hole through the middle of his forehead, I was surprised to see the downed fanatic didn't show any of the mutilations synonymous with Ralph's minions.
"Huh," I said, and that's when it hit me.
Yes, it happened to me again.
Let me tell you something about sucker punches. They suck, which might explain the name. More than that though, there's nothing quite like the confusion of standing upright one moment and in the next you're staring up at the sky with an aching head and a ringing in your ears.
My view was suddenly blocked by a broad-shouldered form. One of Apoch's soldiers had come up behind me during the battle and laid me out with what I can only assume was the hilt of his sword.
Cold eyes looked down on my prone form and a sneer tugged at the Seraph's lips. Mara's back was turned, unaware of what was transpiring. I don't know why the soldier had chosen to knock me down first instead of just running me through, but Seraph have some strange ideas when it comes to what's considered honorable.
"Stop resisting," the soldier said, raising his sword high for the killing stroke.
Something barreled into my would-be killer, taking him from his feet and sending him crashing down onto the asphalt.
"Stand the fuck down, soldier!"
Dagda. Sweet, wonderful, incredibly strong Dagda to my rescue.
"Is that proper language for a lady of the Seraph to use?" I asked as she helped me to my feet.
"Shut up." The smile on her face took any bite out of the words.
"God's balls, is there a fucking bullseye back there or something." I rubbed the growing lump on the back of my head, a twin to the one Dancer had given me at the Yellow Crown.
There was a momentary lull in the surrounding action. Everywhere, Seraph tangled in violent knots of red and white.
"You don't look so good," I said as Mara joined us. Her face was gaunt with dark circles under both eyes giving her a bruised expression.
"Thanks," she said dryly. "Not that you're in much position to talk. Taken a look in any mirrors lately?"
"I Try not to, the last time I did it turned out badly." I turned to Dagda. "We're not going to last much longer out here."
She nodded and beckoned us to follow. We made an odd group, the petite wych with a regal, if tired bearing, a broken-down detective with a face full of old bruises and fresh blood running down his face led by a Seraph whose flashing eyes steered any of her fellow soldiers clear of us. In our wake followed a fat black-and-white feline who would occasionally hiss and swipe at any figures who came too close.
When we reached the hole where the church door had once been, we were greeted by the torn bodies of several soldiers. They were savaged beyond recognition, some no more than bloody shapeless heaps. Beside the hole itself was a massive figure, sitting down with eyes closed and back resting against the stone wall behind him.
"Dad!" Dagda rushed over to the check on the lord commander of the city's Seraph forces.
Mara joined her and checked the giant man's vitals. "He's alive," she said. "He has a broken leg, and he's lost some blood, but his pulse is strong. He's not in any immediate danger from his injuries.
Apoch was covered in so much blood he could've been mistaken for one of the Blood Seraph. In his right hand he clutched the hilt of a massive sword, the blade snapped off a few inches from the crosspiece.
Mara spoke one of her wychy words and touched the lord general on his temple. A moment later he opened his eyes, glassy at first, but then they focused on Dagda's anxious face.
"It appears I may have made some miscalculations." He winced as he spoke. Probably had some cracked ribs to go along with his broken leg.
While father and daughter talked, I scouted the area for signs of what had gone down. A trail of bloody paw prints, each the size of a dinner platter, led from the scene of the slaughter and disappeared into the dark confines of the church.
"Looks like you came face to face with the big bad wolf."
Apoch grunted. "It was a most fearsome beast. Is that the creature you were riding when my soldiers apprehended you?"
"Kind of, in the same way those maniacs over there who are running around with their skin peeled off are soldiers of the Seraph. Whatever's riding around inside Ralph takes them as its own, hollows them out and fills them back up with something dark and deadly." As much as Garm had made me uneasy, what Ralph had done to the poor beast was an atrocity. "Dagda, we can't let Ralph get to the corpse of Last God before us. If he seizes the power for himself, this carnage is going to look like a child's birthday party in comparison."
The blonde Seraph was torn with indecision. She knew the importance of the mission but didn't want to leave her father in such a vulnerable state.
"Go," said Apoch. "If what he says is true, the evi
l must be stopped. They're going to need your strength if they hope to survive the Battery long enough to do so."
I reached into a pocket and handed over a six-shot revolver, now daemon-free, along with a box of bullets to the injured general.
"A gun," he said with some distaste. "Hardly a weapon befitting a true warrior." He grimaced in pain as he reached out and accepted it. "Still, some sacrifices must be made. I will do what I can to ensure no one follows you through the breach."
Dagda leaned forward and gave her father a fierce hug. Over her shoulder his face bore an expression of vast discomfort, though whether in pain from cracked ribs or from the public display of affection it was hard to say. He patted her awkwardly on the back. "Go, child. I will hold the line."
Wiping tears from her eyes Dagda readied her sword and stepped through the broken wall, and the rest of us followed.
The Battery was just as I had seen it in my dreams. The smashed and hollowed out remains of buildings surrounded us on all sides. There were no functioning streetlights in here, but the moon was full and bathed everything in a silvery luminescence. The bloody paw prints had led through the interior of the church and out a hole in the back, a twin to the one we entered through.
Squatting down I could see the tracks heading straight ahead, towards the crater where the Last God lay dead.
The din of the battle still playing out was faint, muffled by the massive block building at our back. A light wind kicked up dust and a putrid odor, like spoiled meat, filled the air. I recalled my dream visits to this place, and the twisted creatures I saw from my rooftop vantage point as they grubbed through the ruins like maggots in rotten flesh.
"Mara, I don't suppose you can tell if there's anything nearby that might want to leap out and eat us, would you?"
"I'm a wych Gideon, not a guard dog." Still, she closed her eyes and stretched a hand out. "The currents of power are so strong here. I'm amazed you can't sense it." She frowned, concentrating. "There are things out in the night, I can feel their hunger. There's fear as well. Ralph, or maybe Garm, frightened them." She opened her eyes, the bruising under them less pronounced than they had been. "I think they'll keep their distance for the time being, but I wouldn't recommend setting up a picnic here."
That was good enough for me. With the Boxer in hand I headed off in the direction of the crater. Dagda followed on my right and Mara on my left.
I stopped so suddenly the pair nearly bumped into me. "Where's Louie?"
All three of us cast about, but there was no sign of the tubby feline.
"He was with us when we came out of the church," said Dagda.
Nothing I could do about it. "Louie's been always able to take care of himself. If anything, it's those poor beasties out there who should be worried." The words were cold comfort and the loss of our furry friend cast an even darker cloud over us as we trudged on.
A few minutes later we came across the scene of a grisly battle.
"It seems not all the Twists turned tail and ran from the bloody wolf," I nudged one of the corpses with my foot. It was human in form, completely hairless with long, pointed ears and a smushed-in upturned nose. Instead of teeth it bore yellowed fangs as long as my small finger. A dozen more of the creatures lay strewn about a small clearing in the rubble, surrounded on all sides by the heaps of collapsed houses. Each of the creatures wore nothing but a tattered loincloth.
"It was an ambush," said Mara. "They hid in the ruins of the houses and attacked as a group. They must have thought they had the numbers to take down Garm."
"They thought wrong." I picked up a broken spear. It had been fashioned from a length of wood tipped with a crudely sharpened iron spike. "These toothpicks weren't going to do much but irritate him."
One of the bodies was a little bigger than the rest, its loincloth of slightly better quality. Around its neck was some sort of necklace. Lifting it, I gave it a closer look. On a leather thong was what appeared to be a string of severed and dried penises. I dropped it in disgust. "You know, any bad I was feeling about how these fellas ended up just vanished. Any idea what these things were?"
Mara shook her head. "I only know a bit more about the Battery than you. All I can say is we should expect anything we come across in here to be hostile. This is very much a shoot first, ask questions never kind of situation."
"I plan on shooting first, second and even third if the first two bullets don't do the trick. Remind me to never come here again."
"If you ever need reminding of that dear Gideon, then I'll know you've completely cracked."
She had a point.
As we talked, Dagda studied the ground, a frown on her face.
"What do you see, kid?" I asked.
"The tracks." She pointed to where a mess of footprints had disturbed the dust covering the street. They were hard to make out in the dim moonlight, but something had snagged the Seraph's attention.
"What about them?"
Dagda didn't answer at first, instead walking to the far side of the clearing and the only other gap in the ring of ruins.
"Here," she said.
Walking over to stand beside her I could see where the mass of footprints dominating the center of the clearing ended and a single pair led away in the direction of the crater.
A cold dread gripped me as I realized the import of what I was seeing. A pair of bloody paw prints led into the ambush site, but none led out.
A warning on my lips, I spun to shout at Mara, but it was too late. With a cracking of rotten timbers, Garm surged from where he had been lying in wait under the debris of one of the houses and charged as Mara's small form turned to meet him.
Chapter 27
"Gideon! She's gone, there's nothing more we can do here." Dagda hauled at my arm, trying to pull me from where I knelt in the dirt and blood.
I barely heard her. It had all happened so fast. The wolf had torn from its hiding place with a speed and ferocity that had shocked us all and left us flatfooted. All, except Mara Valentine.
The beast bore down on her, its exposed muscles bunching and expanding grotesquely with a twisted snarl on its face, teeth as long as daggers ready to tear into the wych's tender flesh. With a calm that belied the peril of her situation Mara squatted down and grabbed a handful of dust. Straightening, she threw the dust into the face of the snarling wolf, now only mere feet from her outstretched hand, and spoke a single word. Garm hit the cloud like it was a wall of solid stone.
With a yelp the beast skewed to the side, slamming into one of the ruined houses and temporarily losing his footing.
My feet pounded the asphalt as I ran to reach Mara, Dagda beside me with sword at the ready. Garm had regained his footing and was once again barreling towards his quarry. Instead of standing her ground, this time Mara slid gracefully to the side, as if gliding on invisible ice. The beast snapped at her as it went past, unable to halt its own momentum and slavering jaws missed their mark by inches.
Bracing my feet, I fired both barrels of the Boxer into the wolf's side and watched with satisfaction as large chunks of flesh sprayed from the exit wounds. That satisfaction was short-lived as Garm growled, pivoted, and lunged at me,
I stood frozen, with what I can only assume was a dumb expression on my face with the useless weight of an empty gun in my hand, as several tons of skinless, possessed, giant wolf careened through the air at me. They say when you're about to die, your whole life flashes before your eyes. Let me say, from intimate, personal experience, that's a crock of shit. At that moment, the only thing going through my mind were the words 'oh fuck' on eternal repeat.
At the last moment I closed my eyes and suddenly found myself flying through the air. My eyes popped open as I hit the pavement. Dagda had shouldered me out of the beast's path and met its charge with sharp steel. She slashed Garm across the nose before dropping to the ground herself and letting the momentum of the wolf's leap carry it past her.
The beast hit the ground and spun in place, crouching on i
ts back haunches in preparation for another jump. But instead of soaring through the air it floundered. The asphalt under its rear paws had turned to thick muck and when it attempted to push off, those paws instead sunk into the blacktop. The wolf tried to pull itself free, but the tarry ground sucked it down further, trapping its entire hindquarters in liquid asphalt. A spoken word shivered through the air and the tar turned solid again.
I turned in time to catch Mara as she collapsed, exhausted from her efforts.
The beast snapped and snarled as it tried to free itself. I noted with dismay that both the bullet wounds in its side and the gash Dagda had opened on its nose were already healing.
"We can't kill him," said Mara, her voice strained. "Not here, he's drawing on the currents of power to heal himself."
"Will that hold him?" Dagda was a little dusty but otherwise unscathed from her close encounter.
"For a time, but not forever. I can already feel the strain."
"Are you sure we can't kill him? I can put a pair of bullets in those big old eyes of his and then Dagda can lop his head off with that oversized cleaver of hers. What could it hurt to try?" Garm howled, long and mournful, and then redoubled his efforts to escape. Small cracks began to form in the asphalt around his back legs.
"How strong do you think I am? Have you seen the neck on that thing?"
Dagda had a point.
"As much as I would like to put the poor beast out of his misery, there's simply no way," broke in Mara.
"Well we can't leave him here, there's too good chance he'll break free and come after us. Which, I don't know about you two, but to me that sounds about as close to a living nightmare as you can get. I don't suppose anyone has any third options they've squirreled away for a rainy day?" As I spoke, I reloaded the Boxer. It may not be able to put Garm down, but there were other things in these ruins that would hopefully be a little more responsive to a lead slug between the eyes.
"I can try to send him into the wyrd," said Mara after some thought.
