Armageddon
Page 12
Rose turned toward us, her head cocked almost upside down like she was deciding what to do with us. I swallowed, truly afraid of the unhinged look in her eyes as vines wrapped her body as if to cover her bare skin in modesty as her head snapped over like a bird of prey spotting a mouse, then she charged forward on her spider-like legs at the enemy grouped in front of us, hissing inhumanly the whole way.
They never had the chance to scream.
She settled in front of us, then smiled maniacally as she said, “Hello.”
Raz actually waved from her hip, then engulfed Rose in a hug as Nicole wrapped her in her cape so that Rose could draw the vines back into her body. Me? I replied lamely, “Hello.”
With the sounds of screaming and the enemy dying on the other side of the briers, Gretel looked around sadly then in the direction Kat and Belle's bodies lay and asked in a tiny, lost voice, “Now what do we do?”
Before anyone could answer, we were falling through the fabric of space. I instinctively knew that Masika was pulling us back to her. I was expecting to arrive in Seattle in the darkness of night, compared to the midday sun here. But instead, we arrived in a world on fire.
Chapter 14 – Seattle Burning
“Parker.”
A voice was calling out to me as I just stared dumbly at the remains of Seattle, my home, as it burned. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but desolation, and the waters of Puget Sound even burned. How was that even possible?
I had to blink. Standing on the other side of some sort of shield in that burning wasteland of rubble I was behind, I could make out a figure as the shield, which smelled of Perchta's nature magics, dissolved. A figure in a billowing, tattered and singed cloak of crimson as it fluttered in the swirling, scorching wind and smoke that seemed to be repairing itself as I looked on.
Maireni Damaschin bellowed to the huge figures a hundred yards in front of her, “Is that all you've got? We're still standing right here!”
My chest tightened as I fought off a sob. That was one of Ella's favorite taunts. My Ella-Marie, who I'd never hold in my arms again. Again, my sorrow was replaced with a rage I would normally have hated, but I embraced it now, it was all I had left in this world.
I staggered when something huge tore through the fabric of space with no finesse like it took a brute force effort to make the transition. I looked up to the groaning of timbers in the air. Silhouetted against the moon that was close to being full, was the Sea Devil. It was smoking and listing, one of the main masts was missing and the sails looked tattered in the moonlight.
I saw a figure leap off of it, her left arm glowing like a silver beacon as she flew to Mari's side, the light from her hook illuminating a face filled with so much rage it made me pause.
The ground exploded in a rippling wake as Dorothy flew past me, to join them. Her power was not contained by her will anymore as that eerie green lightning wrought havoc on any matter it struck. It tasted of sorrow, loss, and blinding hatred, and my blood chilled when I realized I couldn't feel anything of Dot in her anymore. Heaven preserve us all, there was no Dorothy Gale anymore, only the wicked witch of Oz.
Again my name was being called out.
“Parker?”
I spun and snapped, feeling immediately guilty for my tone, “What!?”
Rachel, face smeared with soot and ash, looked as if she had been through a war, stood beside Perchta.
My heart seized and I looked back behind me, into the burning wreckage that had once been the crown jewel of Washington state. I audibly sighed in relief as the vice on my heart loosened slightly as I saw a huge wolf prowling the broken bones of the city taking up a flanking position on the Elders.
I apologized immediately. “I'm sorry.”
Rachel quelled the automatic snarl on her lips, pushing down her wolf tendencies to show dominance. She asked as she looked around, “Where's Ella-Marie and Toto?”
My shoulders shook once as I suppressed a sob, my cheeks wetting again, a crystal tear plinked on the ground as I refused to break down again. I just shook my head, not even able to voice the pathetic, “gone,” on my lips.
Rachel looked at me in horror as Perchta seemed to appear at my side without moving from where she had been, pulling my head to her chest as she said in a voice full of compassion and anguish, “Oh you poor child.”
She kissed the top of my head then stiffened and looked up... “But that means...” I knew her eyes were on Dot.
I didn't know what that was going to mean if we survived, like the wicked witch, Dorothy had terrorized the entire realm of Oz in what they called the Dark Years, before the Good Witches of the North and South sacrificed themselves, letting Dorothy take their power so that she could find balance within herself. If we survived, would she terrorize the mortal realm the same way? Would we Avatars have to face her as the next threat?
My heart couldn't take that on top of losing my girls. God, why did my heart hurt so much?
I jumped when Perchta released me and someone landed beside us. It was Amanda, in her pirate garb. I was hugging her in relief before anyone could speak. Knowing we hadn't suffered any more losses was... I let go of her and looked around, brows furrowing, then up toward the broken Sea Devil.
I felt a pit growing in my stomach as I glanced into a crying Amanda's eyes to see a mirror of my grief.
No.
She shook her head. “The fucking Russians nuked London. Robyn and Tink sacrificed themselves to get me behind the Sea Devil's wards in time.”
I held her until she straightened, then she looked around.
Before she could ask, I shook my head, and she whispered, “Oh, Parker.” Then she was drawing her flintlock pistols as another Elder tore a shaky, wavering portal in space next to the other three, and dragged itself through on the ground. “All those bastards are coming here.”
Spite and malice I'm not proud of feeling in myself had me sneering as I said to the group, “Not all of them.”
The look of satisfaction on her face likely mirrored mine, and I hated the Elders for showing me I was capable of such hateful feelings.
Then she was being taken away from me, as Masika pulled her to her, engulfing her in a desperate hug. Mandy broke and sobbed in muffled wails into the Voodoo Queen's shoulder. I hugged myself, feeling all alone until a cloak of white feathers fell over my shoulder as Perchta hugged me to her side. I smiled weakly up at Snow, I could see both of herselves in her eyes.
Then the others stepped out of nowhere to our side. Another part of me broke inside when I realized there were too few. And Illya's demon form was screeching and charging across the ruins toward the Elders. I chilled, realizing one of the missing was Belle... but without her, Illya would...
How much pain could a heart take? How many of my girls had I lost? Kat was not with them either. As I gasped, I thought that it must be true that you could die of a broken heart. My chest hurt so very much.
I froze at the almost inhuman face before me. Rose looked so much like Red that it was scary, but now, her eyes were bereft of the sanity she had regained over the last two years with us. Her sickly pallor and green lips just added to the madness in her eyes as her head tilted inhumanly first one way, then the other.
She reached out a hand and touched my cheek as a crystal tear started to fall. She looked confused for just a moment, then she spun in realization, looking for those who were not here. Then hissing like a snake and spitting literal venom, she started flowing toward the Elders on a roiling mass of blackened vines and brambles as they lengthened to propel her on grisly spider-like legs. I hadn't even realized she had no clothing on until just then.
Perchta said to me, “I must join the others. Stay here where it is safe.” Then she looked back. “Titania?”
The Elder nodded and reached an arm out to hug me to her and Mandy. Then before I could blink, Perchta was simply a white crow flying out to the Avatar Titans, to land on Red's shoulder.
I had satisfaction in knowing that they knew they were in a fight now, and now one of their own had joined our dead.
I glanced at the others. We, the weakest of our people, and I was having none of this coddling. We nodded to each other and then detached from the protection of Masika, and marched out to join our sisters.
I asked Rachel as we went, my eyes flicked around the destruction as far as my eyes could see, “What happened here?”
She shook her head and assured me, “I've been fooling myself all this time thinking I could make a difference in this fight. But what happened here... the titanic scale of this fight was that of gods. All we did was run interference with the hordes they brought with them. Mari just took their best shot, that Perchta says broke part of the Earth itself.”
I nodded in understanding. I felt insignificant too, but to hell, if I was going to hide in a hole somewhere while my girls, my sisters, faced the enemy alone. We would stand and die with the women we loved to defend the mortal realm.
She cocked her head, listening, and sighed, said in resignation, “One thing I can say for the US military, 'quit' is not in their vocabulary. Even when the anti-Avatar weapons failed here, they've just kept sending in waves.”
Mandy asked, “Waves?” as she flew by my shoulder. She hated being shorter than she had been before, since her return from Neverland, so she flew to keep at eye level with us all the time. And I feel bad that I find her so adorable in her new form, complete with fluffy wolf tail.
I know a badass soldier and cop, Amanda Danes, is stuck inside that shell, but I see her as the perpetual teen verging on adulthood that she appears now, especially since the make believe whammy the Lost Boys put on her, has her acting even younger than her apparent nineteen years. And all I wanted to do was to protect her, even though she was ten times deadlier than me on a good day.
We stepped beside Red and the others, and not one of them gave us a look or told us to get back. I felt a hand in mine and looked down, Mandy, chin high, glared at the Elders. Mari took my other hand, her eyes, like unblinking forged steel, homed in on the enemy. Then the others clasped hands. We stood in defiance, the remaining Avatars, and we would defend our home.
To punctuate that, what seemed like thousands of missiles started striking the Elders as cruise missiles and fighter jets ripped past at barely a hundred feet off the ground, kicking up flames and embers as their jet-wash stirred the ground in their passing, firing salvo after salvo of air to ground missiles at the juggernauts.
The Elders swatted the air, slapping down some missiles, and the two weakened ones seemed more bothered by the explosions all around them than the others, but I could see it was simply an annoyance to them. The one with the severed leg looked up into the air and clapped. A shockwave tore all of the planes from the air, the planes exploded into flaming debris which rained all across the hellscape.
Then what could only have been a bunker buster bomb, struck the lead Elder, who was dressed stupidly like Apollo of the Greek Pantheon of gods or something, from above. Perchta waved a hand to attenuate the blast wave and fire and debris that came our way. Ok, that seemed to hurt the would-be god as he growled and thrust a hand to the sky. Far above a fireball bloomed as the stealth bomber was torn into a million bits.
Rachel looked over to me and Mandy then nudged her chin toward the sky. “Waves.”
She went on as she looked at Red, looking almost afraid of our red-clad friend then spoke as if she couldn't hear us. “She and Daria have been nipping at the Elder's heels, through all of this...” She nudged her chin around at the devastation. “They haven't been able to hit them while Perchta protected the military the best she could. She sent most of the Elder's army... somewhere...”
She gazed over the hellscape my home had become and said, with a bit of trepidation in her tone, “Lapetus, their leader, had had enough. So instead of targeting Mari and Daria directly, he with another Elder, did... this.” She whispered, “But the Red Hood yet stands. How did she survive that? She wasn't behind Snow's wards with us.”
I knew the answer already. Red and Daria were the Scales, a mantle of power that came directly from the Elders. When the Grimm brothers were the Scales, I had watched them avoid attacks without any effort at all, almost casually sidestepping. They only got hit when they wanted to allow us to take out our frustrations on their noses.
So I would assume they had some sort of partial resistance to the magic of the Elders, and the power couldn't be stripped from them involuntarily or they would have already done so. Add to that the curse of the Red Hood. There were only a couple ways a Red Hood could die. Death by asshole wasn't on that shortlist.
I cut back a snort. Mari and Daria would have been a frustrating annoyance to them in any case, but the Grimm brothers found a way to weaponize the power of the Scales. I'm so very glad those annoyingly frustrating men were on our side.
We stood by our friends to lend whatever support we could and we all stood there, holding hands in a chain of defiance and comradery, sharing my and my sisters' losses as we all watched as a hellish unicorn charged through the fires and molten rock strewn about the landscape between us and our enemy. We wouldn't be able to get her to stop, and nobody wanted to. She deserved to workout her rage on an enemy she could actually hurt since Masika had told us that demons could damage her people.
Besides, none of us could rein her in even if we wanted to. I took solace in the fact it wasn't a suicide run for her. If they were able to destroy this body of hers, she'd just be sent back to the demon realm from which her innocent blood had been used to forge her into that terrible, yet beautiful demoness. One who could provide even demons a true death. And Perchta could summon her back from the realm of the demons.
Lapetus made a hand motion as Illy dove over a pit of molten lava, a wall of debris rose up between them, and just as he was making a slapping motion to bring that wall down on Illya, she burst through the wall, her grotesque black horn tearing the remains of the concrete wall asunder and goring the Elder's hip.
I think he was surprised as he bellowed in pain and struck at her. She snapped her oversize horse's mouth at him, her teeth elongating into blackened ichor soaked fangs as she took a chunk from the side of his hand.
He kicked at her, connecting with her flank and sent her tumbling and sliding along the ground. I took a halting half step forward still holding the hands which held me back. Rose was hissing like some sort of primordial snake as she tried to move forward to help, but Perchta gripped her hand tighter, preventing her from charging in, even her vines wrapped around Perchta's grip could not free her.
Our nature goddess looked at her with compassion. “No, not yet. Let her have this. Let her work out her anguish first.”
Lapetus scuttled backward like someone would a rat or exceptionally large spider as the demon unicorn righted herself and charged again, slashing with her razor-sharp horn that could penetrate Elder skin. Another Elder looked almost afraid as if they had already tasted the horn of our girl. “It is from the demon realm.”
The other Elders looked taken aback. Lapetus growled to them, “It is but one. Just send it back to whence it came, Themis.”
The Elder with one leg didn't seem to be listening, his eyes were welded on Illya as she charged toward him where he sat on the ground. He was deathly afraid of our sister for some reason. Had she... did she sever his leg?
With an anguished screech, then angry growling screams, Lapetus caught Illya by her mane of grasping hands and then slammed her to the ground. She roared in pain and frustration and struggled to regain her feet, thou
gh she looked too hurt to make it. He struck down with a massive fist, and struck her back into the ground like a pile driver, cracking the stone beneath her.
My heart ached again when she didn't struggle to get up. I knew she couldn't die this way, but she could feel pain. We all let go of each other as one in an attempt to move to intercept when Lapetus raised his fist for another blow.
But we all hesitated when his fist was caught in mid-strike by... by a string of shells held between Masika's hands. She had stopped the most powerful of the Elders with a simple string of shells as if she did it every day.
He growled at her as she wrapped his wrist once, entangling him so he could not pull his hand back no matter how hard he tried it seems. He bellowed at her, “Titania! When you left us, you swore an oath not interfere in our dealings with other realms in exchange for our tolerance of your autonomy.”
She cocked her head almost sadly at him. It looked so odd that an average size old woman was holding a twenty-foot tall man immobile. Then she spoke, “I swore that oath just as you swore to not interfere with my chosen life. But you... because of the pettiness that has poisoned you all, and your need for revenge upon realms who did not cow to the might of the Elders... you took my love from me in Neverland. Yet I still keep my word though yours is broken.”
She smirked as she released him then scooped up Illya and held the broken unicorn to her chest protectively... had she somehow grown without us noticing, or had Illya shrank? “Even now you go against all that we Elders stood for. You have defeated this poor woman, she is no longer a threat to you, yet your thirst for vengeance, for petty revenge has you wanting to make her suffer more. When had we fallen so low as to be the very thing we despised?”