by Eric Asher
What seemed to have taken hours had in reality only taken them a few minutes as they traversed the halls of that place. Angus made his way to a wall, slid a brick to the side, and opened another hidden doorway into the light.
Terrence frowned, not understanding how their trip through the hall had brought them so much closer to the colossus. But the sight of the thing untied some of the anxiety in his chest, bringing him an odd sort of relief. But whatever relief Terrence felt, Angus’s rigid posture told the ghost his companion didn’t share it. The Fae stared down at the half-moon auditorium over which the colossus loomed. Inside stood a small cadre of dark-touched vampires, and a horn-helmed figure draped in dark cloth.
“Nudd,” Angus growled.
CHAPTER SIX
“I’m afraid this is going to be up to you,” Angus said.
Terrence looked up at the towering form of the fairy beside him. It didn’t appear Angus was happy with what he had said. But it also didn’t look like Terrence could say anything to change his mind.
“What do I do?” Terrence asked.
One moment Angus towered over the ghost, and the next he had snapped into a much smaller form. He settled onto the arm of a sconce holding a torch and let out a slow breath. “Being this close to Nudd is too big a risk. His people will recognize me. They know I’m allied with the Obsidian Inn.”
Terrence studied the colossus. “And what does that matter now? What do you hope to hide from them?”
“As much as I can.” Angus looked off into the distance, back the way they’d come, as if he could see through those walls, see the battlefield beyond, and see the allies they’d left behind. The fairy turned back and held Terrence’s gaze. “You get to the light you told me about. Find out what the hell it is. If your contact with Vicky somehow broke through to Damian, it could very well be him.”
“And what do I do if it is?”
“You run. You get out of there as fast as you can. Find me, or the wolves, or the Morrigan. If there’s a chance we can get Damian back, we have to take it.”
The determination on Angus’s face reminded Terrence of the words the necromancer had spoken in Greenville, and the passion that had helped drive Dirge into a new alliance.
He might not have known the fairy long, but if Angus was anything like his friends, he deserved a little trust.
Of course, trust didn’t matter all that much just then. Even if Angus told him to turn back now, Terrence doubted that he could. The pull toward the colossus was undeniable. Irresistible even. He only hoped that compulsion would let him help his friends, and not damn them all. These thoughts he didn’t speak aloud, as he didn’t know how the fairy might react. But doubt settled in his heart beside the hope. It reminded him of the calm before the battles he’d fought so long ago.
Terrence nodded. “Find the girl, will you?”
“Vicky?”
“Yes, I’m afraid she’s in trouble. Save her if you can.”
Angus let out a humorless laugh. “I don’t know what you’ll see out there …” He gestured to the massive black form. “But there’s no shame in running. Survive. Get word back to the Obsidian Inn. I’ll do what I can about the girl.”
“Thank you.”
Angus met Terrence’s gaze. The fairy flexed his wings and vanished into the skies.
* * *
Terrence kept to the shadows. He stayed close to the walls when he didn’t have the darkness to mask him. Whatever was happening inside the little amphitheater had drawn the attention of every creature in the area. Terrence moved silently beneath the dark-touched vampires perched on the roofs. But the closer he got, the more he saw the shifting shadows in every crevice of the street. The flesh of the dead hid between the golden tiles. The closer he came to the colossus, the more obvious it became, for they were all an extension of his power, his form. And that was a terrible sight to behold.
Much to Terrence’s horror, he realized he was going to have to walk across the bark-like substance. There was no open path leading up to the colossus. The ghost took a deep breath he didn’t need and strode forward. The first step felt as if the blackened bark pushed back, and the second crunched beneath his translucent boot. By the third, something changed. The substance forming the back of the colossus’s leg parted like flesh around a blade. Terrence hesitated. This felt right. This was what he was supposed to do. He hurried into the small pathway carved in the creature’s flesh. It had formed a kind of staircase. It felt solid under his feet, but it trembled and vibrated as the massive figure swayed.
The path behind Terrence collapsed as he moved. There was no turning back now. Whatever that beacon was, he would reach it.
* * *
Voices sounded around Terrence. It took him some time to realize they were echoes from whatever was happening in the auditorium below. He could make out a few words at first, but the farther he moved up the colossus, the more the words became no more than a buzz in the background. If he thought the shifting flesh and staircases were odd as he traversed the calf of the colossus, things only got stranger from there. Once he reached the knee of the beast, the flesh no longer shifted beneath him. Instead, it grew out to the side like a branch covered in the rough bark of dead things.
Terrence glanced up, but the way the colossus’s leg was bent, he couldn’t see the golden beacon anymore. He wished at that time he could fly like the fairies. But the most he’d ever seen a ghost do was hover, and calling attention to himself here could spell his end. Terrence couldn’t tell if it had all been an illusion, or if that newly formed branch was the least strange thing he’d see today. Terrence squeezed the nearest of the branches and whispered, “Don’t let me fall now.”
He wasn’t really sure if he could die, or die again, if he fell from this height, but he was fairly certain it wouldn’t feel good. He had some sensation back in his hands and arms ever since Damian had instilled him with energy in Greenville. As much as it had been a blessing to be able to feel the strings of his guitar beneath his fingertips once more, he could also feel pain again.
Terrence swung forward on one of the branches of flesh, but nothing happened. He dangled there for a moment, watching with some distress as the stairs he’d been standing on vanished under his boots, but a short time later a branch oozed its way out of the crease of the colossus’s knee. Terrence grabbed it and another rose up. He wasn’t able to reach this one, but he lodged his feet on the first branch and pulled himself up.
From there, he could make the short hop to grab the next. This pattern continued for a time, and Terrence marveled at the fact that he wasn’t short of breath, and that even as his muscles flexed to pull his weight from branch to branch, he didn’t feel the exhaustion in his bones. It was a strange thing, as in life he’d never been great at pull ups. He’d had friends that enjoyed climbing rocks, but Terrence would usually have waited for them at the bottom of the mountains, prepping the camp and writing a new song. But here he felt none of it. As he grew more sure of the branches, and the absence of enemies, he hurried up the blackened flesh as fast as his body would carry him.
He reached the waist of the colossus, now higher than several of the buildings around him, before he saw the faces. They weren’t everywhere, but between one step and the next, milky white eyes rose up from the wall of the giant’s back. Empty mouths filled with nothing but shadows and whispered groans. He hurried past them, unnerved at the things and the pounding sense of dread inside his chest. Whatever they were, it wasn’t something he cared to stay close to. He’d seen them on the battlefield before, shadows and darkness. When he was alive, some men told him tales about the things they’d witnessed crawling through the grass around their fallen brothers. Terrence had never been one for ghost stories, but things had changed.
While he was lost in those thoughts, an arm tore free of the flesh of the colossus. The bark-like appendage wrapped around Terrence as if it were a vise.
Terrence cursed, and then snapped his mouth closed. He’d bee
n lucky enough not to run into any of the dark-touched vampires on the back of this colossus. But if he screamed now, screamed at the pain of claws and fingers digging into his legs, into his gut, they’d be on him in moments. This was nothing like the dull pressure of the owl’s talons, this was a piercing fire. Terrence tried to shift the barrel of the gun strapped to his back into the face of the monster, but even if he had managed it, the shot would call attention to him. He felt as if his bones were creaking, as though the pressure of a mountain was bearing down on him. In a desperate effort, he pulled the sword from the scabbard at his hip. It sang out, a deep golden light that slashed through the arm pinning him down. The flesh crumbled away only for the shower of ash to be reabsorbed a few feet below him. But he lost his grip on the branch and he couldn’t stifle the scream as the creature released him and he fell forward.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The sky became earth and the earth sky. And then everything went dark. Terrence crashed onto a platform that hadn’t been there. The flesh of the colossus had flashed out, catching him and carrying him back to the branches he’d used to climb.
Terrence’s breath came hard and fast. It wasn’t that he needed the air, but the panic, the certainty something horrible was about to happen when he hit the ground, was a feeling he couldn’t escape. The colossus shook, and Terrence glanced down the way he’d come. It wasn’t a sight he wanted to see. His scream, or the motion on the back of the giant, had called them. At least two of the dark-touched vampires leapt out and were climbing the colossus far faster than he’d be able to.
But it didn’t stop him. He dove for the branches. Three quick steps, a leap, and he was swinging once more. He moved as fast as he could, ignoring the milk-white eyes when they appeared in the walls around him. Terrence climbed faster and faster, his feet slipping, only to be caught by a resurgence of the flesh of the colossus. He reached another platform, above the waistline of the giant, and he dared to glance back. What he saw put his jaw on his chest.
The colossus was having none of the dark-touched. Bodies cloaked in wisps of shadows oozed out of the colossus’s flesh only to wrap the dark-touched in a silent embrace. The vampires vanished, reaching out as if for help before they were simply absorbed into the mass of the colossus. None resurfaced. That’s what would’ve happened to Terrence. He knew it. And perhaps if he stayed in one place too long, it would still happen.
His jaw flexed as he ground his teeth together and looked up the back. Something like a ladder of dead flesh replaced the branches. As if silver bones had been inlaid along the spine, and Terrence sprinted up them.
He focused on each handhold. If they’d been evenly spaced, he could’ve fallen into a rhythm, but some were set at odd angles. Others were slick, as though coated in blood and oil. So instead, he focused on his grip, focused on one boot rising up a rung and settling in place before he leapt up another. His pace was good, but he’d seen how fast the vampires could move. And fairies could fly, which meant if the wrong person noticed him, or the wrong creature, he didn’t have a chance.
It wasn’t until the rungs disappeared that Terrence risked another glance back. He was high now. Too high. He’d never had a fear of heights, but the vision below unnerved him. It was like a leaning off the side of an enormous building, with nothing but air and pavement between you and death.
But the vampires were nowhere to be seen. If the first group that had given pursuit were the alarm, the colossus had made short work of them, silencing whatever klaxon they’d hope to raise by smothering it. With the rungs of the makeshift ladder gone, Terrence continued up, using breaks in the colossus’s flesh to leverage himself higher.
He kicked at it with his boot, and split the charred flesh wide to get a good foothold where he could. Terrence hadn’t seen many of the Fae as he rose higher on the back of the colossus. Just over the hunch of the creature’s back, Terrence could see the golden beacon once more. A few more steps, and the flesh of the giant flattened out, giving him a place to rest. Though his body didn’t need it, his mind greatly appreciated it.
The call of the beacon had done nothing but grow stronger as Terrence neared, like a cable tied to his heart that drew more taut with every step. The golden light was nearly blinding now, and it made Terrence fairly certain he was the only one who could see it. If the creatures below or around the buildings had been aware of it, he had little doubt he wouldn’t have been left so alone to climb the colossus.
But now he was there. He frowned at the small gap in the charred and blackened flesh. He knelt and pried a section of it away, only to realize that what waited inside was the bare flesh of a man’s neck. He reached out to touch that pale golden patch. The world flashed brilliant white around him; it wasn’t the blinding vision that he experienced when the girl, Vicky, had touched him. This was different. This felt like coming home.
The voice was weak, but it was there. And he knew it.
“Take the pack. Take the pack to Vicky.”
It was Damian’s voice. Terrence tried to dig the necromancer out of the colossus. But with every fistful of flesh he tore away, it filled with the charred covering of the monster.
“Not monster,” Damian’s voice whispered. “Gravemakers. Get the bag to Vicky. The innkeeper. Go.”
Terrence cursed in frustration. Every bit of flesh that he could tear away from the colossus reformed in an instant. He unsheathed the sword at his waist when he found the strap. The gravemakers frantically tried to close around his hand, but he would not relent. Terrence felt the leather stretch out when the colossus tried to pull Damian back in earnest, and the entire beast moved, shaking Terrence’s foothold.
But his sword slid in easily. The first strap severed, and he leaned in, fishing for the second he knew must be there. But his sword missed, and it caught the flesh of the necromancer instead. This time, soaked in Damian’s blood, the flash came to him like a thunderclap.
His life replayed as if in slow motion until it came screaming back to his death, back to Dirge, and those the last moments, his resurrection at the hands of the necromancer, and his awakening at the hands of the child. The child, Vicky. Terrence screamed as he leaned into the colossus and ripped his sword back out through the charred flesh. The second strap separated and the bag ripped away. Again he reached for the necromancer, but Damian was gone.
The blinding light of the beacon faded as Damian disappeared. The platform trembled beneath Terrence as if whatever control Damian had over the flesh of the colossus was waning. It tilted until there was no place for him to grab hold. He cursed as he started to slide downward, barely managing to find a handhold and save himself from a plummet of God knows how far. But with the straps cut on the backpack, Terrence had trouble balancing it. He held on to a small hook at the top, but it was interfering with his grip, making movement down the colossus much harder.
He was going to be seen. He was going to be caught. And he didn’t know why, but in his heart he knew if he failed here, they were all doomed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Vicky woke with a scream. Wherever she was, it was dark. And she wasn’t alone. She’d been in dark places before, disoriented, and torn to pieces.
She’d learned much.
A soulsword exploded in her hand, and Vicky barely caught the flap of wings as a fairy rocketed away from her.
“Easy lass!”
“It’s okay, little one,” Wahya said, shuffling around the fairy and crouching down beside her. “You’re safe.”
Vicky’s heart pounded in her chest. She trusted Wahya. He was one of the few that she trusted with her life. But the fairy … she wasn’t so sure.
Wahya caught her staring, and glanced back at Angus. “He’s a friend. He’s practically family to Aideen and Foster. Cousin of Cara.”
Vicky let the soulsword recede until it snapped out of existence. Angus summoned a small light that showed more of the room. She could make out golden stone surrounding them, but it was faded, as if its very life force h
ad been drained away long ago. That’s how she almost always thought of them when she saw the stones of Falias. That golden glow was like the rock had a life of its own.
Her thoughts scattered when she remembered the vision. “Terrence. We have to get to Terrence.”
“He’s chasing Damian,” Angus said.
Vicky pressed her palm to her forehead. “He has a … he has the backpack. He…” She squeezed the bridge of her nose, a dagger of pain threatening to make her sick. “We need it.”
“You need rest,” Wahya said. “We can go later.”
Vicky shook her head. The pain began to recede, ever so slightly, and she drew herself up to her feet. “We have to go.”
“Damian’s in the heart of Falias,” Angus said, exchanging a look with Wahya. “It’s not safe passage.”
“Not much is,” Wahya said. “A small force would be better.”
“No,” Vicky said, the harshness of the word bringing silence around her. “I’m not risking any of you. Stay here. I’m taking Jasper.”
A small ball of fluff trilled in the corner. The fact Vicky hadn’t realized he was there made her question the acuity of her perceptions. But the vision had been powerful, and the strength behind it was overwhelming. Damian was still alive.
Vicky paused beside Jasper. “Did you get Enda and her family out?” She glanced over her shoulder at the werewolf and the fairy. Pale light glinted in Wahya’s sunburst eyes.
“They’re safe, little one. Deep inside the Inn behind the guard of a forest god, so I am told.”
“Good. Then … then Jonathan and Hess didn’t die for nothing.”
