by Nazri Noor
Of course, that also meant that we were locked in with the rift – and with the shrikes that began to pour out of it in the shrieking, gibbering dozens.
I glanced over my shoulder, desperately searching for my father. “Dad,” I yelled. “Get back. Run for cover!”
He was ten steps ahead of me. Or behind me, rather, clutching a knife and huddling behind a tree trunk. I guess I knew where I got my survival instincts from. He’d be safe there as long as we kept the shrikes under control.
I crouched close to the ground, my default setting in the face of danger. If you make yourself small and unthreatening, there’s less chance of something targeting you first. Conveniently, it also brought me closer to the shadows I cast in the grass, in case I needed to shadowstep myself into a more strategic position. Preferably far, far away.
But no. We were going to nip this in the bud. Burn away the shrikes, no matter how many of them came stampeding out of that portal. We were at our fullest strength, after all, both the friendlier bits of the Lorica and my own boys at the Boneyard gathered in one place. How convenient, I thought, as I backed away from the portal, as the first dozen shrikes whipped their tentacles at the air, loping and staggering for our throats.
I bent my knees, my hand hanging low as I formed my fingers around an invisible sphere, gathering heat into my palm, hissing through my teeth as the familiar vortex of white-hot air swirled against my skin. The shrikes tore out of the rift, sputtering and screaming. I gazed at the fireball growing in my hand, waiting for the right opportunity to strike.
Someone else struck first.
“Burn,” a voice bellowed from the back of our ranks.
A gout of fire, like something from the belly of a dragon, shot forth, roasting the entire front rank of the shrikes. I thought it was safe to assume that Romira had launched her offensive, but I knew she favored balls of flame, the way that I did. And the plume of fire kept going, like a flamethrower. I followed it to its source, and my jaw dropped.
Mama Rosa held a single burning coal in the palm of her hand, her lips puckered like she was blowing a kiss. From her mouth issued the massive stream of terrible flames. Rosa’s cheeks glowed red as she blew, her body straining, but it looked as if there was no limit to the capacity of her lungs.
Just beside her, Romira stood dumbstruck, her mouth half-open, before she remembered herself, launching a flaming orb the size of a beachball at the oncoming monstrosities. I lobbed in a couple fireballs of my own, quite unsure if my supporting fire was even necessary since I was so thoroughly outgunned by Rosa and Romira. Who the hell even knew Mama Rosa was a mage? I guess I never asked.
The rest of the party fell into battle with their respective skill sets, and as overwhelming as the flaming ladies were with their initial assault, we still needed every bit of firepower we could muster. The shrikes were pouring out in a steady stream, four or five abreast. I liked to think that we were ready for them, or at least that we were enough to fight back.
Carver hissed in strange, dead languages, long forgotten incantations driving the power behind the spells he used to transform the shrikes into clouds of worthless dust. Bastion slashed his hands through the air, each chop cleaving the shrikes at the torso with savage, invisible blades. Herald shredded the abominations with razor-sharp shards of ice, and Prudence and Gil were two halves of a whirlwind made up of talons and fists, flattening anything that came close.
And I hung back, pelting the stragglers with fireballs, saving my blood to feed the Dark Room in case shit truly got real. That was my actual concern with this spontaneous rift business, after all. We only saw shrikes when agents of the Eldest were around to summon them in such large numbers, and their appearance always meant that some huge fight was about to go down.
No evidence of that happening. And no evidence of what had caused the rift to tear open, either. We could shut this thing down, but how many more were going to show up around the city, and what were we going to do if no one from the underground was around to stop it? I shuddered to think.
But one step at a time. I hurled another fireball, feeling the strain in my skin and my lungs. I had never used so much of the flame in a fight before. Practice and Carver’s close instruction had taught me to be more economical about spending my reserves of arcane energy, but I could feel my batteries running low. In video game terms, I was almost out of mana. The others were still hacking and blasting away at the shrikes, but they had their limits, too. I wasn’t looking forward to resorting to bleeding myself.
“Push them towards the portal,” Carver called out, his voice thick with resolve and authority. “Take the fight to the rift.”
And so we did, nudging towards the gateway inch by painful inch. With one final, decisive push, our concentrated efforts battered the shrikes long enough to give Carver the opening he needed. With preternatural speed, he wove between our ranks, his voice soaring above the song of the portal and the noise of battle as he shouted guttural, barking phrases, terrible, forbidden words in a language long extinct.
He slammed his open hand against the portal.
Something in the world broke just then. The rift froze, then shattered with the clinking of so much broken glass, white shards of what used to be the gateway tinkling to the ground, then evaporating immediately into nothing. As quickly as it had appeared, the gateway had vanished. Had been banished, rather, by Carver’s spell.
“There,” he said, adjusting his tie, sweeping a single lock of displaced hair away from his forehead. “Did you all catch the words to the incantation? That’s how you shut the rifts.”
I stared at him, dumbfounded. “What the hell was that? Where the hell did you learn to do, well, whatever it was you just did?”
He frowned at me. “It’s called research, Dustin. I’ve been looking into ways of fighting the Eldest, and I found an ancient incantation designed to seal their rifts. It is the most reliable, most efficient way to stop an incursion into our reality. A method I can easily pass on to the rest of you.”
I looked around me, and everyone else’s face was a mirror of my own: we were all staring at Carver with our mouths half-open. We’d barely caught the words he had spoken – if they could even be called words – much less the language they belonged to.
“I didn’t understand any of that,” Bastion muttered.
“Arabic?” Herald offered helpfully. “I thought I caught some Arabic.”
“Right.” Prudence pushed her face into her palm and shook her head. “I guess we’re doomed.”
Chapter 4
“And the bigger question is why,” Gil said. “Why the hell is this happening? Why now?”
“How many times must I repeat myself?” Carver’s eyes rolled into the back of his head as he groaned, and I was sure I could hear his eyeballs rattling in their sockets. “The Eldest. Are coming.”
“Is there any way to tell if more of them will appear?” Herald asked, his teeth worrying at his lower lip. “These rifts?”
Carver narrowed his eyes, staring grimly, and said nothing.
“He can teach us,” I said, glancing hopefully at Carver. “To close the rifts. Can’t you?”
He looked over us, his lips pressed tightly together. “I am not so certain anymore. The incantation is more complex than I thought.” He turned over his shoulder, grimacing at the horrible, gelatinous mass of leathery black bodies the dead shrikes had left behind. “And then there is this problem.”
Right. And that was just inside Bastion’s force field. The Lorica would have to clean up the mess, and then they would still have to deal with the panicked normals who had seen us disappear.
“On it,” Prudence said, her ear already pressed to her phone. “I’m calling Royce. Bastion, keep the barrier up until then.”
Bastion nodded. I cocked an eyebrow. “Wait. I thought Royce was telepathic.”
She cocked an eyebrow back. “Like hell am I going to let him inside my head. I know better than that.” Her eyes unfocused, then
she held up one finger. “Royce? Yeah. We need backup. Oh, yeah. Big old cleanup. Nasty one. Normals were involved, so send some Mouths, too.”
The Lorica would deal with cleaning up the mess, but it wasn’t like they’d want us guys from the Boneyard hanging around. Prudence and the others would vouch for us helping to shut down the rift, but the Lorica would sooner lift the Veil than admit that we did our share of mopping up the mess. Not that we’d want to get involved in all that menial work, frankly.
No. Our problem was clear: figuring out the source of this clusterfuck. Carver was standing over by where the rift had vanished, arms folded tight, tapping his foot impatiently.
“This is messed up,” I said. “How do we even begin to deal with this?”
Carver frowned at thin air, as if willing the rift’s dissipated energy to give him some kind of clue.
“This cannot be happening spontaneously. The Eldest still require anchors in our reality to open the rifts, to enable them to step through. Their priests, their worshippers.” He scoffed. “Would you believe that this isn’t even the worst of it? It is when the Old Ones no longer need their minions to open the doors that we will truly need to worry.”
That was some shit I didn’t need to hear just then. The one thing keeping the Eldest away from the world was the imperceptible wall between our reality and wherever it was that they dwelled. If they could break that wall down whenever they wanted –
“Okay,” I said, shoving my thoughts straight out of my head. “So what you’re saying is that someone is doing this on purpose. Summoning the shrikes, tearing the rifts open from this side.”
“Correct,” Carver said. “There are certain rituals that must be performed. Prayers, if you will think of them that way, but they are functionally spells that weaken the barriers between worlds and enable the servants of the Eldest to intrude, even for a short while. I have access to some of these spells, from – from my time as their servant.”
I frowned. “How the hell are we supposed to stop them from doing that? These people could be anywhere. Everywhere.”
“The way that you seem to be everywhere yourself, Dustin Graves. Sowing chaos, stirring up mayhem.”
The words grated at my nerves, as did the voice that delivered them. I frowned even harder, turning on my heel to face Royce, who had seemingly popped up out of nowhere. Such was his nature, anyway, as a Wing, a teleporter for the Lorica. But I kept in mind that he was a Mouth, too, someone who could manipulate thought, and that combination of talents made him a Scion – a high-ranking sorcerer, and a formidable one at that.
“Nice to see you again, Royce,” I said, my raised chin and folded arms showing that I was thinking the exact opposite. My eyes flitted down to his thigh, to where I’d stabbed him with the Null Dagger. “How’s your leg? Healing up nicely?”
The corner of his mouth twitched in irritation, but the tic passed, as did his momentary annoyance. He grinned, the brashness pumping through his blood once more.
“Back in full operation, thanks for asking,” he said smoothly. “In much the same way that you’re back to your usual shenanigans, Graves. Figures we’d find you here. Where trouble goes, you follow.” He folded his arms and tilted his head. “Or is it the other way around?”
Royce said this with all the pomp and arrogance of someone only barely able to pretend that I hadn’t stuck a knife deep in his thigh just weeks ago. I clenched my teeth. My turn to be frustrated. Sure, the Lorica did its job of policing the country’s magical people and activities, but where were they all those times that me and the Boneyard saved the world?
Where was Royce when we had to stop a mad angel’s plan to kill every mundane human on the planet? That’s right: unconscious on the grody carpeted floor of some office, because I’d knocked him out and left him that way. Okay, okay, bad example.
Prudence, Herald, and the others watched us cautiously. The Boneyard was already in the precarious position of being frienemies with the Lorica, and there was only so much anyone could do to bail me out of trouble if I let my anger take over and socked a Lorica official straight in the teeth. I bit back the worst of it, swallowing my pride as more Wings and Mouths from the Lorica popped into existence around us.
“Listen, Royce,” I said. “Let’s cut the chitchat. We don’t want any trouble with the Lorica. We’re all friends here.”
“Are we, though?” Asher stepped in front of me, putting his body between myself and Royce. Wow. Protective much? I admit, it was kind of flattering. “I don’t know him, Dust.” He sniffed, glanced at me, then poked his thumb over his shoulder. “Who’s this asshole?”
Just past Asher’s head, Royce’s face twisted into a sneer. I could have hugged Asher right then. He was normally so docile, and so friendly with basically every person he’d ever met, maybe the side effect of being locked up in a death cult’s communal house for ages. Long story.
But this only proved that Royce was definitely a grade A jerk: if someone as sweet as Asher could hate him, then it clearly wasn’t a case of overreaction on my part. It just meant that Royce was a douche. No, a mega douche.
“He’s with the Lorica,” I said. “But not, like, the fun part of the Lorica. Tried to arrest me and shit. Got in the way when I was trying to stop that angel from destroying the world. Carver and Sterling were there, didn’t they tell you?”
Asher’s eyes lit up. “Oh, I remember now. Sterling said he screamed his head off when you stuck that knife in him.”
“I’m standing right here,” Royce said. “I can hear you.”
“That’s kind of the point,” I said.
I had to admit, this amused me to no end, especially the part where I realized I was sassing a Scion. Royce’s peculiar talents, in addition to his familiarity with certain destructive spells, were what elevated him to that coveted rank, and, curiously enough, made him fit to be the Lorica’s director of public relations. If you needed half the city to forget that they had just seen a bombastic display of magical skill – fireballs flying through the air, mages calling crackling lightning bolts from out of the sky – Royce was your man.
He was still a douche, though. An ultra douche.
“Enough,” Royce said through clenched teeth. “I’m not here to pick a fight. I’m here to clean up your mess.” He glared pointedly around him. Bastion stuck his hands in his pockets and looked away, whistling. “And I need to speak with you in private, Graves.”
“You can say what needs to be said right here,” Asher said. His hands were suddenly engulfed in green energy.
Oh shit. I knew that Asher had been spending time training with Carver, and that he was starting to like his new power. I’d never quite seen what it was he’d learned to do, but hell, I was starting to like his attitude, too. I was totally ready to stand back and yell “Fuck him up, Asher,” and watch our necromancer buddy totally rip Royce a second, and possibly a third asshole.
“I don’t have time for this,” Royce snarled, stalking straight for me. I lifted my hands, ready to fight –
When a wall of ivory spikes erupted from the ground in front of me. I leapt back, eyes wide. The spikes, made out of something sleek and yellowish-white, rose almost all the way up to my neck, their tips pointed and vicious. Almost like the fangs of some great subterranean beast. Like ribs.
Like bones.
Chapter 5
“Asher?” I mumbled, eyeing the forest of sharpened bones. “Buddy. You did this?”
I could tell Asher was holding back a triumphant grin. This was necromancy? Calling jagged bones to fight for him from deep within the earth? Hot damn. Consider me a fan.
“Call off your guard dog, Graves,” Royce growled. He glared at Asher. “You don’t want to try me, little boy.”
Asher bared his teeth. He clenched his fists even harder, and the spikes of bone grew impossibly taller, longer. Royce dodged out of the way, his face like thunder.
“There’s no need for violence,” Prudence said, pushing her way into our
midst.
“Right, break it up,” Gil growled, placing his arm across Asher’s chest and wresting him away from Royce. “That’s enough for one day, little buddy.” Asher sputtered and kicked at the air, his face red, but he relented. The wall of bones slipped back into the earth.
“All I need is a minute,” Royce said.
His gaze was boring into me, and I had the sneaking suspicion that he was doing his hardest to transmit his thoughts directly into my mind. I set my jaw and resisted. Sure, I didn’t know much about telepathy, but I had a little practice from talking to Vanitas with my mind so much.
I knew that I could block out the noise if I wanted to. And so I did, visualizing a wall being erected in my head, a barrier against his unspoken words. I smiled smugly when Royce furrowed his brow. Ah. So it worked. As long as he didn’t touch me – which was how he could bend the thoughts of others to his will – I would be safe.
“Damn it, Graves, just come with me. I’m not trying to hurt you. This isn’t some sort of trick.”
Carver’s voice cut like an icy blade. “No one is going anywhere unless I say so.”
He stepped over the freshly turned earth, walking dangerously close to Royce’s shoulder as he approached to join me, as if daring the Scion to touch him, to do his worst. I could say whatever I wanted about Carver’s occasional cruelty, or how he seemed to very strongly play favorites in the Boneyard, but as far as bosses went, he was bad-ass as all hell.
“We’ve met, have we not?” Carver said, fixing Royce with a leveled, piercing gaze.
“I, uh, yes,” Royce said.
“Hmm.” Carver clasped his hands together. “And surely you recall how our last encounter went.”
Royce grimaced. Oh, he remembered, for sure
“Do you want me to spike him?” Asher called from somewhere behind me, with a hilariously inappropriate amount of enthusiasm. “Say the word and I’ll spike him.”
