by Steve McHugh
“Go,” I said to Sorcery and she sprinted back through the forest, the sounds and smells of the horde behind us, driving her forward.
Sorcery knew this track and she raced, sure-footed, the sound of her hoofbeat and snorts of breath soon drowning out the sounds of our pursuers. I didn’t dare look behind me. We reached the village, and I risked a look behind me, but there was nothing there. None of the werelions had followed us out of the forest. I looked up at the dusk colored skies.
“Nate,” Remy said running over. “Tommy came back, said we’re about to be under attack.”
“This is the arsehole who lead the assassins,” I told Remy as Sorcery trotted through the village. I saw the stable-hand and climbed down from the tusked-horse. “Werelions are coming,” I told him. “Get the tusked-horses to safety.”
“Where?” The stable-hand asked, clearly scared as I spotted dozens of people being shepherded into the castle.
“In the castle,” I said. “I don’t care who complains, I’m not leaving them for werelion fodder. How long will you need?”
“Ten minutes,” he said, flustered.
“You’ve got five,” I said and knocked out Farkas again as he began to come around. I dragged him from the back of Sorcery and dumped him unceremoniously on the ground at Remy’s feet.
“So, you’ve been productive,” Remy said, poking Farkas with his foot.
“More is yet to come, we need to get everyone into that castle,” I told him. “There are at least fifty werelions coming this way.”
“Fifty?” Remy asked. “Great, just what the day needed.”
Remy ran off and I left Farkas in the hands of several of Tommy’s people as I spotted Tommy himself running toward me, Victoria being helped along by Lex.
“The poison still in her system?” I asked when Tommy arrived.
“No idea,” he said.
I told him how many werelions there were.
“That’s not good,” Tommy said. “But there are a lot more of us than them, so I’m not sure just how much damage they think they can do. Waiting for nightfall isn’t going to do them any good either.”
“I guess we’ll find out soon,” I said as Lex and Victoria arrived.
“Do you know who killed Viktor?” Lex asked me.
“Yes,” I told her. I was pretty sure I did, although now was hardly the time for that conversation. “Get in the castle, get Victoria somewhere safe. Somewhere guarded. Heavily.”
Victoria looked over at me. “Is there a problem, Mister Garrett?”
“We’re about to be attacked by several dozen werelions,” I said. “I doubt very much that they all belonged to Viktor’s pride.”
“He was joining prides with another from Hungary,” she said.
“So I heard,” I told her. “I think they want to expand outside of their own borders. Kill all of the competition, and you get free run of eastern Europe, and the Nordic countries.”
There was a roar somewhere in the distance that made everyone stop and pay attention.
“My people are preparing for war,” Lex said. “They will come in armor, and with weapons. This pride does not fight just in their werebeast forms. They will use silver. They have little honor.”
“Well, they were going to murder you all during lunch, so honor is probably not something they worry about too much,” I told her, and Lex and Victoria were hurried into the castle.
I looked over and saw several of the stable-hands leading in tusked-horses. Good.
“We going inside?” Tommy asked. There were still a lot of people heading into the castle, and I wasn’t sure how long they had.
Remy, Diane, and Sky came and stood with Tommy and me. “We do this together,” Diana said as more roars broke out in the darkness of the forest, and the last embers of light died.
Chapter Ten
The first werelions to attack ran over the drawbridge directly in front of where Remy, Diana, Tommy, Sky, and I stood. They were a snarling mass of werebeast. All claws and teeth in a din of noise. They wore leather armor, the runes bright in the darkness, and as the moonlight glinted off the weapons they held, it was obvious they hadn’t just come to fight, but to butcher and kill.
I put up a barrier of air, and the moment the first wave hit it, I dumped lightning into it, throwing at least a few of the werelions back, but no one else stopped, even those who had caught fire from the lightning. They ignored the flames as Tommy and Diana took the fight to them.
Sky and Remy stood to one side of me, Remy with his swords drawn, and Sky holding her soul weapons—physical manifestations of her necromancy—a long dagger and a tomahawk axe, both shimmering blue. Soul weapons don’t physically hurt people, they cause damage to the soul, killing without leaving a mark.
A large werelion, covered in armor, and with a battle-axe that was probably half my height, charged toward me. He swung down at my head, and I darted forward, stabbing him in the stomach with a blade of fire, the runes on his armor flashing as they stopped working. He kicked me in the chest, sending me flying back, but I anchored myself with air magic, and landed on my feet only a dozen feet away. The expression on the werelion’s face suggested he’d expected something different to happen.
More werelions managed to dart around the five of us, and run into Tommy’s people who were holding the line in the courtyard behind us. Tommy didn’t employ idiots, so I knew they’d be able to take care of themselves.
The werelion in front of me started a slow, methodical walk, swinging the silver bladed axe from side to side as if it was meant to terrify me, or something. I created a blade of lightning in one hand and held it down to the ground, the tip crackling as it touched the snow.
The werelion went from walking to sprinting in the space of a step, and shadows leapt out of the ground, wrapping around his feet, tripping him. He roared as he fell forward, and tried to swipe at the shadows with one massive claw, but the second his attention was turned, I slammed the blade of lighting into the top of his skull and detonated the magic inside him.
If the blade itself hadn’t kill him, the magic tearing him in half from the waist down, probably did. But just to be sure, I picked up the axe and buried it in what remained of his head.
“There are a lot more of them than fifty,” Remy shouted as I walked past him, while he removed one of his swords from the skull of an enemy.
“I was on horseback riding away from them,” I said. “Next time I’ll stop and make them take a census.”
“That’s all I ask,” Remy said as even more werelions ran toward us.
“I had no idea any pride was this bloody big,” Tommy shouted, avoiding the swipe of a sword, before plunging his own up into the werelion’s throat.
I threw balls of flame and lightning at anything that moved, but Tommy was right, this was a pride bigger than I’d anticipated. They must have been a hundred strong. There were wolfpacks with less numbers.
Tommy took off toward the fighting in the courtyard, with Remy and Sky behind him as the numbers rushing toward us thinned, mostly avoiding me to try and climb the walls of the castle. I dragged a few down with air magic, but as I couldn’t find Diana, I didn’t want to rush off and leave her to whatever she was facing. I raised a shield of air and scanned the area for her.
As I should have known, I needn’t have worried. A hut wall exploded as a werelion crashed through it at high speed, an exceptionally pissed off Diana in full werebear form storming after it as she tossed aside the head of a second werelion.
The werelion got to his feet and looked at me, as if asking for help.
I shrugged.
It turned back to Diana, just as she punched it in the face hard enough that I heard the bones shatter even from twenty feet away. Werelions were stronger than werewolves, but werebears were in an entirely different league of strength. I’d have felt sorry for the werelion, had it not been trying to murder innocent people.
I turned back to the mass inside the courtyard, the sounds of fi
ghting, the screams of pain mixed in with roars and howls from those there.
“Are you leaving?” A voice behind me asked.
I turned to see a man of about forty, walk toward me across the bridge. He wore a large fur coat that, considering it still had the animal’s head attached, had once belonged to a grey wolf. He was white, over six feet tall, with broad shoulders, along which sat the aforementioned grey wolf hide.
“And you would be?” I asked.
“I am the leader of this pride,” he told me. “My name is Demetri.”
“Well, Demetri, your people are going to lose,” I told him. “You have no element of surprise, you have no financial gain to still be here, either. Viktor is dead.”
“I know,” Demetri said. “This is about more than being paid, it’s about making my pride the biggest in Eastern Europe. It’s about making my pride a world power.”
“It’s about killing people who disagree with you,” I said.
“That too,” Demetri admitted as I spotted Diana slowly move toward him.
“Viktor told you about Kozma and Varol, and you figured you could use his hatred of the people here to clear out a whole lot of competition.”
“I’ve been absorbing prides into my own,” Demetri said. “Lex was offered the chance to join, and she turned me down. This is what happens to people who turn me down. Who turns down progress?”
“You’re going to lose,” I told him. “There are too many defenders.”
“I don’t need you all dead,” Demetri said. “But enough of Lex’s family will be dead, and that will satisfy me. It will cripple her pride; it will give us the edge.”
Diana rushed Demetri, who ducked underneath her jab, and drove his elbow into her stomach, following up with a punch to her jaw that cracked her head to one side with vicious speed. Before I could move, he drove his knee into Diana’s head, and I blasted him with air, sending him back into the hut that Diana had almost destroyed only moments ago.
Diana got back to her feet, shaking her head. “He’s fast. He’s not a werelion.”
“What is he?” I asked her.
“I think we’re about to find out,” she told me as Demetri walked out of the hut. The fur was gone now, and he wore only leather trousers. He rubbed a hand over his muscular stomach, and then ran it through his long black hair.
There were shouts and screaming coming from the castle.
“Nate you got this?” Diana asked me.
I nodded without taking my eyes off the pride leader. “Go help,” I told her.
“You shouldn’t have sent her away,” Demetri said.
“You shouldn’t have gotten up this morning,” I told him. “I guess we’ve both made mistakes.”
“I don’t know who you think you are, but you’re going to die here,” he said.
“My name is Nathan Garrett,” I told him.
He shrugged. “I guess you’re not as famous as you think.”
“Farkas said the same thing,” I told him as we began to circle each other at a distance. “It didn’t work out so well for him.”
“I’m not Farkas,” the man said, and changed into a his weretiger beast form.
Weretigers were rare and dangerous, almost as strong as werebears, and almost as fast as werewolves.
“A weretiger leading werelions,” I said. “Never heard of that.”
“I don’t care what I lead,” Demetri said. “I care how much power I can amass.”
Demetri was nearly two feet taller than me and outweighed me by several hundred kilograms. Weretigers were dense, heavy creatures, with a thick hide, and claws that I’d seen personally tear through metal. I rolled my shoulders and sighed. Today sucked.
I threw a ball of fire at Demetri, and clicked my fingers, causing it to explode as he darted aside, showering him in the remains of flame. Demetri ignored the flames, changed direction, and closed the gap between us in a second. He barreled into me, his claws raking along my chest as I kicked out and leapt back.
The thick jacket I’d been wearing was shredded, and I’d managed to get a shield of air up in time to stop Demetri from disemboweling me, but there were still three red welts on my chest where his claws had raked.
I removed the tattered jacket and tossed it aside, doing the same to the t-shirt beneath.
“You’re no one impressive,” Demetri said. “I’ve killed sorcerers before. You will be no different.”
I said nothing as I created a blade of lighting. Shadows leapt from the ground, but Demetri was already moving faster than they could track him, and I was forced to duck one of his punches, and block another, which made my arm sting and lifted me off my feet.
“Stronger than you,” he said, kicking out at me.
I dodged aside and drove the blade of fire down toward his leg, but he’d already moved out of the way.
“Faster than you,” he said, his attitude superior and cocky.
He moved toward me again, and I blocked a punch, pushed aside a jab that was only there to think he was leaving himself open for a counterattack, and kicked him in the knee before he could kick out at me. I stepped toward him, intent on keeping up the attack, but he spun back and caught me in the chest with his boot, sending me up against the wall of a hut.
“Better than you,” Demetri said with a smile.
I shrugged, cracked my knuckles, and readied myself into a fighting stance.
Demetri covered the distance between us in a moment, throwing a jab-cross combination, which I easily blocked and avoided, before he followed up with a knee, that I simply side-stepped. With my air magic activated, I was much faster, probably not weretiger fast, but it would hopefully keep me from getting kicked in the face.
I stepped around Demetri and punched him in the side of the head. He tried to backhand me, but I put some distance between us, and winked.
“Nice trick,” Demetri said. “That’s going to cost you.”
“You talk a lot.”
Demetri rushed me, moving much faster than he had before, and it took everything I had to keep him from catching me with his claws. I kept tracking back toward the courtyard where the fighting was still intense. I threw fire and air magic at Demetri as I moved and blocked, but he just ignored it and continued the assault, until he finally caught me with a punch to the side of the head that knocked me silly for just the right amount of time for him to drive his knee into my ribs and bring an elbow down into my temple, sending me sprawling to the snowy ground.
Demetri placed a foot on my chest and pushed down, and I gasped as the air was driven from my lungs.
“Is this the best you’ve got?” Demetri shouted to the heavens, and I saw that the wooden door to the castle had been broken open, the fighting having spilled into the castle, while only a half dozen werelions stood in the courtyard, cheering Demetri’s victory.
Demetri reached down and pulled me to my feet, lifting me off the ground by my throat, my feet dangling in the air.
“Do you have anything to say?” he asked, his breath warm on my face.
“I was hoping for a bigger crowd of your arsehole friends,” I said.
“Why?” Demetri asked. “Do you need an audience to die?”
“Because people tend to stop fighting when they realize they can’t win,” I said, my voice hoarse as Demetri’s one-handed grip on my neck tightened.
“This was fun,” Demetri said. “I wish I could keep you as a pet.”
I drove a dagger of lighting into Demetri’s armpit, twisted it as he released his grip, and then extended it into a long blade, that almost removed his arm from the shoulder.
Demetri screamed as he moved back, blood pouring from the wound.
I used one of my own spirit weapons—a battle axe—and drove it into his stomach, which caused him to cry out as he threw himself back to put some distance between us.
“This isn’t a fight you can win,” I told him as I created a sphere of air in one palm, spinning it faster and faster as I added my lightning
and fire magic to it, until it was the side of my hand.
“I had you beat,” Demetri said, jumping toward me, the claws on the end of his one good arm, out to catch me. I snapped forward, and drove the sphere up into his exposed chest, releasing the magic that threw him fifty feet up into the air. He hit the ground with an unpleasant splat.
He got back to his feet as I drove a blade of fire into his ribs, twisted the blade when he took a half-hearted swipe at me, and detonated the magic.
Demetri was engulfed in flames, and the smell of burning flesh and fur filled the air around me. He dropped to his knees and screamed, so I extinguished the flames and turned back to the half dozen werelions who were watching the fight with wide eyes and open mouths.
“Surrender or you’re all next,” I told them.
“You’re not a normal sorcerer,” Demetri said. “That power.”
“My name is Nathan Garrett,” I whispered. “You might know me as Hellequin.”
The name clearly meant something to him, as Demetri looked up at me with genuine fear in his eyes. “I’m so sorry,” Demetri said.
“Fuck your sorry,” I told him and drove a blade of lighting into his ear, detonating the magic inside his skull.
I turned to the werelions who were still watching. “Who’s next?” I shouted.
They all dropped to their knees, hands on their heads, and changed back into their human forms.
“Good fucking choice,” I said, as I walked past them into the castle.
Chapter Eleven
Any werelions who were directly inside the castle foyer and had seen me kill Demetri had surrendered immediately. I found twenty werelions on their knees, just like their friends in the courtyard.
The fighting was over pretty quickly after that. The werelions who had been inside the castle hadn’t seen his death, but Tommy, Diana, Remy, Sky, and everyone else who was there were more than a match for the werelions once the wedding guests had joined in.
There were close to forty werelion prisoners by the time we finished, and they were all marched outside of the castle, forced to wear a sorcerer’s band to stop them accessing their powers. They would wait for Avalon to arrive and take them for whatever punishment was deemed appropriate.
