by Nazri Noor
“On the plus side,” Vanitas said, “I’m three times as likely to taste some god blood tonight. This should be interesting.”
“When the hell did you get so bloodthirsty? And I mean the question in the most literal way possible.”
Vanitas hovered for a moment, his garnets dim as he thought in silence. “I don’t know what you mean.” He slid his sword out of his scabbard, and Vanitas’s two halves flanked me, my very own verdigris security detail.
“So the shadow beast unsheathes his blade,” Amaterasu said. “See, brothers, how shameless he is about exposing the taint of the Old Ones in the face of our divinity.”
“Yeah, about that,” I shouted. “Maybe we should be focusing less on this silly trial and more on stopping the Eldest, huh?”
“Nothing silly about this,” Tsukuyomi said, his smile so friendly that I could almost believe he meant me no harm. “This banter is greatly amusing, shadow beast. But you have bared your metal, and so we must do the same.”
The three gods extended their hands to their sides, each at the exact same angle, like three copies of the same silhouette. They snapped their wrists, and three swords flashed from out of the darkness, appearing in their hands, one wreathed in fire, another in lightning, and the last in the alluring glow of moonlight.
I curled my fingers, readying a steadily burning ball of flame in the palm of my hand. Beside me, Herald grunted under his breath, then flicked his wrist, producing a sleek, razor-sharp sword of his own, one formed out of a huge sliver of pure ice.
Sterling bared his teeth and hissed, his eyes watching Amaterasu’s every move with the intensity of lasers. Vanitas’s garnets glimmered in the moonlight, but he stayed at my side, watching, waiting. Further down the line, the sound of bones snapping and cracking interspersed with Gil’s groans and cries of agony: the transformation was beginning.
And midnight had come.
Nyx raised her hand above her head, the Crown of Stars appearing in her palm for the briefest moment, then vanishing once more to rejoin the twinkling constellations above us.
“Brothers and sisters of the Midnight Convocation: so begins the battle for the destiny of one Dustin Graves.” She looked to either side from her perch atop the cairn. “To the death, then.”
I swear I could hear the witnessing stars singing, whispering madly in the corners of my mind. Murderer, they called me. God-slayer. Sure. I could live with that.
Nyx dropped her hand.
Chapter 26
And with the battle begun, Nyx disappeared in a glimmer of stardust. I waited, watching for the gods to make their first move, crouched low and prepared to vanish into the Dark Room, where I could plan my steps.
“Brothers,” Amaterasu cried out. “Handle the others. I’ll take the vampire.”
“Like hell you will,” Sterling snarled, hooking his arm under Herald’s. “Igarashi, you take this one.”
“What are you doing?” Herald said, but he hurtled across the field, propelled by Sterling’s strength.
The self-satisfied grin on Amaterasu’s face dropped. Herald’s feet skidded against the earth, and the two came face to face, barely yards away from each other. Issuing fierce battle cries, Herald and Amaterasu lifted their respective swords, then brought them down against each other in a crash of shards and sparks.
It was for the best. Amaterasu could have fried Sterling in a second flat, but Herald’s command of ice magic meant he had a fighting chance against her arsenal of sunlight and flame. With frost left to fight against fire, Sterling zipped across the battlefield in a blur of silver and leather, heading straight for Susanoo. The storm god smiled cockily, his body wavering as he disappeared in a flash of lightning.
Sterling sped onwards, thrusting his fist out for a vicious, velocity-driven punch – and where his knuckles should have met with thin air, they instead made a thunderous smash. Susanoo reappeared, laughing and rubbing at his cheekbone. The god was fast, but Sterling’s heightened senses and preternatural reflexes evened the playing field.
“Nice threads,” Sterling said, shaking his hand loose.
“Likewise,” Susanoo answered, slashing his sword in an electrified arc. Vampire and storm god collided, and the resultant flash forced me to look away with its brightness.
So that left Gil, Vanitas, and myself to deal with the moon god. Three against one? I was perfectly okay with those odds. I like it when I walk away from fights with my ass in one piece and my appendages intact.
Gil’s bloodcurdling howl gave away his intent, but it didn’t look like it presented Tsukuyomi with any real advantage. Our werewolf was exactly as Sterling had described him, a tornado of claws and lupine fury. Gil’s fur glistened a sleek black in the moonlight, the same color as his human hair.
His eyes, however, glowed a horrible red. I bode my time, watching as Gil took the frontal assault, and as each half of Vanitas flew in to smash at Tsukuyomi, a three-pronged attack that should have been powerful enough to flatten any enemy.
I’ll keep this simple. Tsukuyomi wasn’t just any enemy.
Still beaming his huge, infuriating smile, the god of the moon stabbed the end of his sword into the earth. White light shone around him in a momentary pulse, a faint bubble that faded as quickly as it had appeared. And as werewolf, sword, and scabbard hurtled into that bubble, they were summarily repelled, recoiling as if they’d struck an iron wall.
Vanitas’s halves rebounded at such an angle that I crouched even lower to the ground, barely avoiding his scabbard as it flew so close past my head that it ruffled my hair. Gil yowled like a wounded dog, tossed several feet away by his impact with the force field. But within seconds he had picked himself up off the ground, snarling, frothing, angrier than ever.
He sprinted for Tsukuyomi once again. I shouted after him, but the skin of the wolf had taken Gilberto Ramirez. He wouldn’t listen to reason, whether it came from friend or foe. In fact I suspected that turning into a werewolf destroyed his capacity for language altogether.
It didn’t end well. Even without my saying so Vanitas was prudent enough to hang back and regroup, but the berserk fury of lycanthropic transformation had sunk its hooks deep within what was left of Gil’s brain. He slashed at the empty space just feet away from Tsukuyomi’s face, and was once again brutally rebuffed. This time I definitely heard something break. Gil bounced off the force field again, limply clutching his wrist, which had been bent at an odd, horrific angle. He sank to the ground, and howled.
Tsukuyomi laughed good-naturedly. “You there. Shadow beast. You really must stop your friend before he attacks again. He can keep going, but he’ll only break every bone in his body.” He shook his head, tutting. “And what a terrible fate that would be.”
I scowled at him, unsure of how I could even hold Gil back. I wanted to call Tsukuyomi out for cheating, but the accusation hardly seemed fair. The problem was that I was far more accustomed to having the guys with the force fields play on my team. The last time we had to fight anyone who used shields was when Bastion’s mind had been controlled. Gil had broken off his talons then, but at least he was still human at the time, still possessed of enough sense and intelligence to stop.
The werewolf wasn’t. It kicked off the ground in a cloud of dust, then shot straight for Tsukuyomi again. The god laughed.
“I am so sorry, Gil,” I whispered to myself as I sent Vanitas’s scabbard rocketing towards him.
This wasn’t going to be pretty, but it was better to take Gil out of the fight than risk letting him hurt himself even more. With a sickening crunch, Vanitas met the side of Gil’s face. Gil thudded heavily to the ground, then stopped moving.
Tsukuyomi laughed even harder, clapping his hands. “Brother, sister. Do you see this? The mortals have turned against one another. They’ve taken their greatest, most spirited warrior out of the fight.” He raised his sword, its blade flashing in the moonlight. “And that leaves three scrawny humans and a flimsy flying blade. This should be far more manage
able.”
I caught a glimpse of Herald leaping out of the path of a dozen birds made out of pure flame, which was Amaterasu’s idea of artillery fire. He flicked his wrist towards Gil’s prone body, and a blast of frost lanced from his fingers, rapidly forming a dome of protective ice. Without missing a beat, Herald whirled, dodging another salvo of Amaterasu’s fire-birds, then countered with a lethal spray of knife-sharp icicles.
Damn. Okay, that was slick. Plus it proved that he supported what I’d done. No sense letting Gil beat himself to death against Tsukuyomi’s force field. My turn to play my hand, then.
“He’s down for the count, Tsukuyomi,” I called out. “The werewolf’s injured. Let’s leave our friend alone.”
“Fine by me, shadow beast. Now show me what you’ve got. My siblings say you defeated them in battle, Amaterasu twice.” He raised his hand to the sky. “So far all I’ve seen is cowardice and a reluctance to fight.”
He was baiting me, trying to get me all pissed so I’d do something impulsive. I hated to admit that it was working, my anger threading its way into the ball of fire hidden in the palm of my hand. But as I watched Tsukuyomi’s upraised hand, I realized that he was really only distracting me from what he was doing. The moonlight was filtering through his fingers, cascading into a spray of thin rays, as if passed through a prism.
And each of those rays had transformed into a solid javelin, all headed straight for my throat.
“Holy shit,” I shouted, leaping into my own shadow as the javelins struck the earth and cratered the ground just inches from my feet.
I dashed through the Dark Room, quickly thinking over where I could reappear next. Tsukuyomi was using the same tricks that Thea once did, transforming light into solid shields and weapons. Moonlight, specifically. And here we had stupidly thought we’d outgunned him on the night of a full moon. It turns out we’d decided to fight a walking cannon with an unlimited supply of ammunition.
The worst thing about it? His shit-eating grin.
I jumped out of the Dark Room, reappearing behind Tsukuyomi just as Vanitas screamed directly for his throat. The god tapped his sword against the ground just in time, the moonlight surrounding him hardening into another protective bubble.
Maybe if I timed it right. I waited for the clang that indicated Vanitas had struck his shield, and threw a fireball towards the dead center of Tsukuyomi’s back. As if he had seen it – without skipping a beat – Tsukuyomi spun in place and brought his sword sideways against the oncoming fireball, snuffing it out into a puff of nothing.
I blinked, shocked at how he’d completely neutralized my magic. “You’re joking,” I said.
“I do love to laugh,” Tsukuyomi answered.
I hadn’t expected him to slash his sword again so soon, this time taking a rapid step forward. I twisted away just in time, the edge of his katana biting into my cheek with a glancing blow. Hot blood welled up on my skin, the wound stinging.
“Dust!” Herald shouted from somewhere across the arena. He had seen the attack.
“I’m fine,” I shouted back, praying he could hear what I really meant to say. Don’t worry about me, I thought. Focus on fighting Amaterasu. Don’t get hurt. “I’m fine,” I said, this time to myself. “This is better.”
I fell to one knee, smashing my fist into the ground. In hooks and blades and daggers the Dark Room emitted its terrible might in our reality, spikes as sharp as steel erupting from the shadows that Tsukuyomi himself cast on the ground.
Checkmate. I grinned at him, almost enjoying the comforting warmth of my own blood as it dripped down my cheek. Tsukuyomi smiled back – and before the Dark could claim him, he disappeared into a shaft of moonlight that fell instantly from the sky.
“You can’t fool me, shadow beast,” his voice called out. “The moon is my eye. I see everything.”
Turning on my heel again and again, I scanned my surroundings for his location. I spotted everyone else in the process. Gil was still unconscious. Herald and Amaterasu were still duking it out, locked in the elemental push and pull of ice and fire. Sterling’s hair looked frizzier, and he’d somehow wrested Susanoo’s sword away from him. But where the hell was Tsukuyomi?
I should have looked up.
Roughly nine javelins slammed into my body all at once, knocking me off my feet, and knocking all the air out of my lungs. The combined force tossed me like a rag doll, and I skidded across the ground roughly, skinning the palms of my hands.
Tsukuyomi floated gently back down to earth, clucking his tongue, his sword rested over his shoulder. “And here I thought you would be more of a challenge, shadow beast. See now. The Midnight Convocation is watching you and your mortal friends break under our assault. Who are you to wear the Crown of Stars? What good would you be against the Eldest?”
Metal clanged as Tsukuyomi waved his hand and casually deflected Vanitas again. Deep in my head I heard Vanitas cursing. All I could do was leave him to fight on his own. He definitely knew a lot more than I did when it came to tactics.
Plus there was the matter of me trying not to vomit my guts out. I clutched at my stomach and groaned, twisting into the earth. It was like being punched by someone wearing brass knuckles, nine times, all at once. I felt all over my body for the points of impact. Some of the missiles had struck me bluntly. Others had drawn blood.
Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe the solution was simpler than I thought. But simple isn’t always easy.
I slammed both my palms into the ground, roaring at the very top of my voice as I called on all the writhing denizens of the Dark Room to sprout from the shadows. Somewhere nearby Tsukuyomi chuckled, and when I turned to look, he only stood there, feet away from me, crafting another of his force fields. That was how he grew more powerful, after all, by siphoning directly from the light of the moon.
“You tried that once,” Tsukuyomi said. “It hardly makes sense for you to try again.”
But I didn’t want the Dark Room to harm him. I hadn’t called on them to slash and raze. I told the shadows to rise, to surge in a massive wave, to reach their fingers and tendrils to the night sky.
I told them to blot out the moon.
Chapter 27
The shadows burgeoned and grew, reaching for the heavens, their spines and sabers thickening as they formed a canopy of darkness around us, as the blades of the Dark Room whirled in a vortex of black swords.
That was when Tsukuyomi panicked.
“You can’t do this,” he said, his sword hand falling from his shoulder, his face etched with worry. I kept my smile to myself.
I strained even harder, little cuts ripping open across my skin as the Dark Room collected its price. Blood seeped into my shirt, down my legs. It dripped from the palms of my hands, its warmth tracking across my fingers. I watched the sky, grinning as the shadows made solid closed around us in an ebony sphere, blocking out the moon, the Convocation, my friends, even Vanitas.
Darkness prevailed. The glow of Tsukuyomi’s sword faded. He couldn’t see me, but because of my bond with the Dark Room, the shadows weren’t a hindrance. I could see how he was glancing around him with increasing anxiety. I could see the uncertainty in his eyes.
Tsukuyomi chuckled, but this time nervously. “Who will come to save you now?” he taunted. “You’ve locked your allies out.”
I couldn’t help myself. I had to say it.
“Actually – I’ve locked you in here with me.”
Tsukuyomi bared his teeth, his eyes flashing with something like fear. “Then let’s finish this,” he said, brandishing his sword.
“Gladly.”
I sprang at him with everything left in my body, using the darkness to my advantage, wreathing my hands with fire, pelting him with bolts of bloodied flame. God that he was, Tsukuyomi still dodged flawlessly, but I could see his defenses withering, his energies fading. Without the moon, he was nothing.
“You can’t defeat me,” he said. “It isn’t possible.”
“I’ve
beaten gods,” I said. “I’ve bested demons. I’ve destroyed angels. You underestimated me from the start.” Where the hell was this all coming from? My chest swelled with pride, with power.
I took a risk. I bathed my right fist in flame, the way I’d only done a few times in the past, and aimed a punch directly at Tsukuyomi’s face. That should have ended it. But it had slipped my mind, somehow. God or no god, Tsukuyomi was still a warrior – and a better one than I was.
And as with all displays of bravado, as my head swelled with the whispers of my ego – so was it easier to send me crashing down. He dodged my blow, and in a horrible, flashing arc, sent his katana slicing deep into my thigh.
I cried out and fell to the ground, clutching my leg, grimacing against the searing pain. Tsukuyomi strode over me, raising his sword, grasping its hilt with both hands. The killing blow.
My fingers dug into the earth, my soul desperate to use the Dark Room as an escape hatch, but I’d already taxed it so much. It had taken most of my power to generate the massive sphere of darkness around us, much less the blasts of fire. Damn it. Carver was always right. I was too brash. Always too impulsive.
When Tsukuyomi spoke again, he was no longer afraid, but neither was he laughing. It felt like a hunter mumbling an apology, a prayer to its fallen prey. In some ways, it reminded me of how a man might swat an insect.
“This is the end,” Tsukuyomi said, his head bowed in reverence. “It was a good fight, shadow beast.”
Something rustled out of my backpack, bolting through the gloom. Tsukuyomi screamed. In the darkness he staggered away, one hand still barely holding his sword, the other groping shakily at his neck. I squinted my eyes to make sure I was seeing things right. He was reaching for something that had been stuck in his throat. It was –
Jesus, was that a butterknife?
A shimmer of copper flitted around the moon god’s head as he kept on screaming and swatting at the air, and a familiar voice told me it was time to put an end to the fight.
