by Nazri Noor
“Thanks,” I told Asher. As long as I knew she was safe.
The rest of us stood back as Carver and Asher prepared their spell, their voices rising in an ancient, forgotten song above the dreadful hum of the portal.
Behind us, the normals were looking more agitated, their attention finally drawn away from the movie. Some were approaching the portal, phones whipped out to document the curiosity. From out of the trees and the bushes, more people winked into existence: Wings and Hounds sent from the Lorica for crowd control. Knowing Royce, he’d called in a team of Mouths to perform mind wipes as well.
The rift was spinning faster and faster, the black dot at its heart growing. I hated that it meant that they were coming, and that we never knew who was waiting to step through. In every case it always involved an unending mass of shrikes, but sometimes there was a bonus entity in the bargain, one of the Eldest. I tried to imagine the kind of creature that could make the terrible dirge song that assaulted my ears, and I shuddered.
As one, Carver and Asher slammed their open palms against the portal, and the worst came to pass: nothing happened.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Gil said.
“Not this shit again,” Sterling said, his hand at his hip, gripping the hilt of the electrified blade that Susanoo had gifted him.
No, it definitely looked like the same shit again. The only portals so resilient that Carver and Asher combined couldn’t shatter them were the ones that the Eldest themselves used to approach our world. One of their number was coming tonight, a member of their deranged pantheon.
“Not here,” I shouted. “Not now. We have to close this thing.”
“Or,” a woman’s voice whispered in my ear. “You could move it.”
Izanami grinned as I spun to face her, no doubt pleased once again at the small terror she’d coaxed out of me.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The amulet you enchanted? The spell that I gave you. It is meant for sealing, for closing portals and gateways. A very clever thing, to use it as a key. Perhaps you can keep this door locked tight enough until you can transport it someplace else.” She looked around Heinsite Park, her tongue darting out to lick her lower lip. “Somewhere that isn’t full of so many witless innocents. So many lives for my kind to claim.”
I looked down at my amulet, at how its garnet was still glaring like a crimson eye. Transport the portal, huh? I held it out towards the rift, willing its closure, forcing my thoughts towards sealing, and breaking.
Brilliant tendrils of red light burst from the amulet. I gasped, but held it steady. Like strands of spider silk they wrapped around the portal, snaring and threading about of their own volition. Within seconds the rift was encased in a ruby cocoon.
“It worked,” I said, unable to keep the smile off my face. “I can’t believe it worked.”
“Not as precisely as we’d hoped,” Carver said, eyeing Izanami warily. “See how the magic isn’t holding? The rift is still spinning. Perhaps the goddess is right. We should move it if we can.”
I couldn’t even begin to imagine how that would work, but Carver had already laid one hand against the cocoon, ropes of amber fire crawling up his arm and across his fingers. In a flash, Royce appeared at the other end, gripping the cocoon himself.
Teleportation, then. I understood, and ran up to the rift. Who knew if we could pull this off – if it could even be done? But we had to try. I placed a hand on the imprisoned rift. The physics of it simply didn’t make sense – but in the arcane underground, did anything truly?
To either side of me, I heard Carver and Royce muttering incantations. I offered what I could: passage through the Dark Room. The only question was, where would we even take it?
“Not too far now,” Carver said, as if sensing my concerns. “But some place where innocents won’t be harmed.”
“Latham’s Cross,” Asher offered.
“Yes,” Izanami said. I hadn’t realized she was still with us. “Nothing but the dead. This would suit your purposes.”
The same place that Thea had been claimed as an offering by the Eldest. It only seemed fitting for us to bring another of their kind there, to slaughter it as it stepped out of the rift and into our reality.
I focused on the image of Latham’s Cross, ordering the Dark Room to obey, willing my body and mind to transfer the rift. Carver and Royce’s voices rose to a pitch, and a scorching blast of energy burst from the ground beneath the rift, swallowing us whole.
As my vision cleared, I saw where we were: headstones, crypts, mausoleums. We’d done it. Asher, Sterling, and Gil looked about them, dazed by the strained combination of such disparate schools of magic, but I knew they’d get their bearings back soon enough. We moved the rift, but we still had to deal with what it held within. And its song was going shriller. Louder.
“Excellent,” Carver said. “Now you have all the time you need to shut this infernal gateway. Do it, Dustin. Crush it. Splinter it to pieces.”
I obeyed, gripping my fingers in a tight fist as I commanded my amulet to do its duty. The tendrils of red light closed harder over the rift, but it remained unmolested, still spinning, still singing.
“Close, damn it,” I shouted. “No more of the Eldest. Just close, and leave our world forever.”
But nothing happened. I turned to Carver, but he only shook his head. I knew instantly what he meant. We skipped one of the reagents, after all. The breath of the dying.
Just by my ear, Izanami tutted. My lips tightened, but I held fast, focusing the amulet’s power on the rift.
“It seems that something is missing,” Izanami cooed. “Without the final ingredient, the enchantment is incomplete. Impotent. I do not believe you have crafted an artifact powerful enough to serve the recipe’s purpose.” She squeezed me by the shoulder, long nails digging into my jacket. “It was a masterful attempt, though, and a perfectly acceptable result for your first foray into enchantment.”
“Don’t patronize me,” I muttered.
Izanami shrugged, then walked off, examining her fingers. “Suit yourself,” she said. “But it truly is the only way.”
She sat on a headstone, producing a nail file out of nowhere, and went to work buffing her nails. I clenched my teeth, blood rushing to my neck. Entities, all the same, nonchalant even in the face of an apocalypse.
Then a snapping sound drew my attention back to the portal. The cocoon’s threads. They were breaking, one by one.
Chapter 27
“No,” Sterling hissed. “This isn’t happening.”
“I’ll call for backup,” Royce said, snapping his fingers and vanishing into thin air.
“Thanks for leaving right when it gets hot,” Gil shouted at nothing.
He growled, flexing his arms to either side as massive, bloodied wolf talons burst out of his fingertips. I sure hoped that would be enough. With the way the night was going I was pretty certain he’d need to go full dog.
All of us would need to go full everything. The final tendril looped around the rift burst apart, its remnants shimmering, then fading into nothing. The impact left a twisting pain against my neck, a kind of feedback from the amulet’s failure. I lurched away from the portal, stumbling into Sterling.
“You okay?” he asked, supporting my back.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, retreating for the moment, catching my breath. I reached for my backpack, ready to release the hounds. Or the one hound, rather, the bloodthirsty one that lived in my bag.
“Jump in when you’re ready,” Sterling said, his chest puffed out like a damn hero. “We’ll just be here carrying your weight.” He drew his sword, its edge glinting with electrical sparks, then gave me a wink.
“Jerk,” I said, still clutching my throat. “Don’t die now.”
“Please,” he said, chuckling. “Never.”
And the first of the shrikes came tumbling out of the portal, staggering out into Latham’s Cross – but they were different. At least the quantity o
f them. These things were ferocious, stumbling over each other in their frenzy to enter our world, dozens pouring out within seconds. My heart thumped as the five of us beat a hasty retreat, but we only gave the shrikes more space to fill. It was a flood, a tide of abominations, and I knew we wouldn’t be enough to stop it.
Carver’s disintegration spell took out a dozen, but that was hardly a dent in their ranks. Sterling and Gil whirled into the fray, katana and claws hacking and cleaving at rubber-black bodies, sending shrieking tentacles and thick droplets of gore spattering across the graveyard.
Sacrilege. That’s what this was. And Asher, it seemed, felt the same way, roaring as a massive spike of bone erupted from his forearm.
“Holy shit,” I mumbled.
He turned to me, eyes hard and furious as he transferred the spike to his other hand. Not a spike, I realized. It was a sword made completely out of bone, with pommel, hilt, blade, and everything. Crude, but wickedly sharp.
“Are you serious?” I choked out. “You made that?”
“Everyone gets a sword but me,” he shouted with misdirected anger. “It isn’t fair!”
It was Asher’s battlecry, and I watched his back as he launched himself into combat. Vanitas went speeding across the battlefield, ravaging his own quota of the monsters, savoring the massacre – but still we weren’t enough.
“Cavalry’s here,” a voice behind me said.
Bastion stepped up to my side, a hand on his hip, his blond hair expertly mussed. He cocked an eyebrow at me, then clucked his tongue. “You sitting this one out, Dusty? So lazy.”
I shoved him in the chest, even knowing it was a joke, a taunt. “You shut your damn mouth, Brandt, I’ve been teleported so many damn places tonight and lost so much blood that – ”
“Quit it, Bastion.” Prudence only just had enough time to give him that three-word command before she launched herself into the fight, fists and feet flaming with blue energy, exploding the shrikes with every strike.
“Yeah, Bastion. So rude.” Romira walked up to my side, her hands already loaded with little globes of flame. “He’s doing his best.” She held out her hand, like she was blowing a kiss, and the tiny fireballs followed, hurtling into the shrikes and exploding like grenades of pure eldritch flame.
“Thanks, you guys,” I said. “I’ll join you in a bit. Just – it’s been a long night.”
“Don’t mention it, Dusty,” Bastion said. He cleaved one hand through the air, and a huge, invisible blade severed six shrikes in a single blow. “I’ll be your hero.”
“Please, Brandt. That’s my job.”
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled as I heard Herald’s voice. I turned to him, the rainbow bolts of occult essence flashing, reflecting in his glasses like – like incredibly deadly fireworks. Thunderous arcane explosions and the dying, blubbering screams of so many shrikes filled the air. Very romantic. Herald nodded at me, but didn’t smile.
“Scale of one to ten,” I said. “How much do you hate me?”
“Hmm.” Herald bit his lip, bouncing a handful of what looked like ice crystals in his palm. “I’d say a solid eight. But we’ll work that out later.” He reared back, then twisted as he pitched forward, hurling the crystals at the shrikes. They grew into massive icicles as they flew, reaching the size of spears as they skewered the shrikes.
More and more sparks of magic brilliance shot across the battlefield, more than I could account for, and when I looked to either side of the portal, I saw why. The Lorica had finally – fucking finally sent people of their own. Wings and Hands, locked in battle, alongside the Boneyard at last.
Maybe we had a chance after all. We were about even with the shrikes, keeping the tide consistent. We just needed that extra push. I curled my fingers, summoning fire to support the others – except nothing happened. A plume the size of a candle flame appeared, wavered, then guttered out.
“Oh no,” I said, more to myself than anyone. “No, no, no.”
I’d finally done it. I was out of juice. No more mana. Between calling on the Dark Room so many times in one night and expending so much of my spiritual force in enchanting my amulet, I had close to nothing left for the fight. I could bleed myself again, I thought. But that worked just like my own energy, didn’t it? There wasn’t exactly an infinite supply.
I felt at my cheek and my chest, grimacing at the sting of my wounds. Blood was blood, wasn’t it? Wet and fresh, or coagulated and dry, surely it still kept my pact with the Dark.
My fingers parted, and despite the din of battle I focused on the frequencies of the Dark Room. I needed to fight. I had to help somehow. In the past I’d called on the Dark to deliver entire fields of nightmare scythes, maelstroms of black swords.
Just one, I told it. Just give me one blade. That was all I needed.
A gleaming point of solid night grew from out of the blood on my palm, longer and longer, until I had a sword of my own. I gripped its hilt in one hand, testing its weight. It was like wielding nothing, its balance so strange in its feather-lightness. And it was so thin, as narrow as a razor, like a sword rendered in only two dimensions, that I knew it would cut viciously if used in combat.
So cut I did, wading through the shrikes, hacking and slashing at the abominations, marveling at the night sword’s swiftness, its sharpness. One by one each shrike that approached perished, mutilated horribly by the blade’s cruel edge.
“Oh,” Asher yelled over his shoulder. “Another sword. How original.”
I swung my sword outward, killing another of the shrikes. “You’re really mean when you’re angry, you know that?”
Asher said nothing, just shouting wordlessly as he sank his bone blade into another shrike. Just ahead of me Herald was standing his ground, firing hail upon hail of razor-sharp shards made out of the purest ice. I ran up to him, eager to protect his back. He acknowledged my presence with a grunt, and we fought together, reaping a swathe through the shrikes.
“Listen, Herald,” I shouted. “I’m sorry I teased you so much. I like you a lot and this is all so new to me and I don’t want to ruin our friendship by messing up, so instead I – ”
“This is not the time, Dust,” he shouted back. “Shut up and focus. We’ll talk later.”
“Right,” I yelled. At least he was talking to me, right? That was one step.
Yet as hard as we fought, as many of the shrikes as we felled, more – ever more were pouring out of the portal. The speed of their birth was accelerating, as if compensating for the firepower coming from our end of Latham’s Cross. Something was seriously wrong. And as if my mounting dread wasn’t enough, the portal began to sing its terrible song louder, its shrieking voice reaching a horrific pitch.
“Ah. He comes.”
I shuddered at the voice, spinning on my heel, finding Izanami pressed too close to me yet again. Herald flinched when he caught sight of her, his fingers digging into the back of my jacket, like he was ready to drag me away. So. He did care after all.
“Who comes?” I asked her, gritting my teeth, irritated by her crypticness. I couldn’t tell if she was worse than Hecate. It was pretty close.
I followed Izanami’s finger as she pointed at the rift. The shrikes, the front guard of the Eldest, their infantry, meant to weaken us and tax our resources, had stopped coming. A single, gleaming white spike emerged from the portal, as long and as thick around as a spear.
“The hell is that?” I muttered.
“This one is named Shtuttasht,” Izanami said, her voice laced with both fear and reverence. “The Overthroat.”
“Overthroat, huh?” I said, trying my hardest to be cocky, and probably failing miserably in the attempt. “That explains all the screaming. But we’ve fought bigger. Yelzebereth was way huger than that. If that spike is just one of the Overthroat’s arms, then – ”
“Arms?” Izanami laughed derisively. “I see now why the other gods find you so amusing, Dustin Graves. No, that is not an arm. That is but a single one of the Over
throat’s talons.”
I looked back at the portal, my mouth fully open. The talon moved as four more of its kind emerged from the temple, followed by the massive paw to which they were attached – itself the size of a car.
“That thing won’t make it,” I said, my voice trembling even more. “It can’t even fit, so there’s no way it’ll come through.”
The talons clenched, digging huge furrows into the earth as the portal issued a bloodcurdling cry. The rift wavered, for a moment – then tripled in size.
Chapter 28
“Fucking hell,” Sterling shouted, turning over his shoulder, desperate to share this terrifying moment with someone, anyone. “Look at the size of that fucking thing. Is that just a foot?”
“That can’t be right,” I said. “Yelzebereth. The White Mother. She was humanoid, almost. Nothing like – like this monster.”
“Oh?” Izanami said. “Haven’t you met enough gods and demons and angels to know better? We are not all alike, mortal. I am somewhat slighted by the thought. For you to compare me to something such as Scylla, or Tiamat? Truly.”
She held a hand to her neck, making a mocking, exaggerated shudder. I frowned.
“Listen,” I growled. “It’s nice that you feel like you belong and you want to hang out with us and everything, but unless you’re going to get involved in this fight – stay out of our way.”
A hand gripped tight over my arm, and Herald’s urgent whispers filled my ear. “Um. Dust. Goddess of the underworld. Goddess of death. Watch. Your. Tone.”
I shrugged his hand off, defiant, tipping my chin in the air. Izanami only smiled and shrugged.
“Very well,” she said. “I will stay in my corner, like a good little goddess.” Again she sauntered off to a headstone. I shook my head, furious, turning back to the portal.
Two enormous sets of claws had made their way out of the gateway, their arrival heralded by an alarming, sudden silence. Gone was the rift’s terrible shrieking, replaced by strings of panicked, staccato orders and tactics thrown around on the battlefield.
