The Stone Warriors: Nicodemus

by D. B. Reynolds

  “I’ve reached the final hallway, though not before meeting serious resistance in the one before this. I don’t see you yet.”

  “That’s because I’ve hit the same kind of resistance. Are you injured?”

  “Negative.”

  “What’s the final turn like?”

  “Empty. Which is just fucking weird. There has to be a catch.”

  “Agreed. Hold there, until I hear from the others.”

  Since the others were listening, they turned their comms up slightly, but not as loud as they had been, so that everyone could listen without anyone being drowned out. Damian was next to report, though there was no need to say Nick’s name first.

  “We hit the same kind of resistance Kato did,” Damian reported. “But those bastards made the mistake of shooting Casey, so they’re all dead now.”

  “What’s her status?” Nick asked.

  Casey who was on the same comm line as the others answered for herself, saying, “She’s fine. There was no need for the big guy to go crazy, but what the hell, it worked.”

  “And the injury?” Nick inquired.

  “Nothing. It went right through, upper arm, no bone involved, and not the arm I shoot with. I see Kato. We’re walking toward him, and now I’m waving.”

  Nick would have smiled, but he still hadn’t heard from Gabriel. As with Kato and Damian, he and Gabriel would see each other once they reached this hallway, since Sotiris’s office corridor was like the bar on an “H.” Kato and Damian were meeting on one leg, and he and Gabriel on the other. But in addition to the serious resistance which the others had met and defeated, Nick still had no sight of . . .

  “Nick.”

  Gabriel’s call interrupted Nick’s concerned musings, and he breathed a sigh of relief before answering. “Gabriel, good to hear from you.”

  “Yeah, the people in my way were easy enough to take down, but I had to work a little harder on the traps and spells. They don’t like my kind of magic.”

  “But you got through safely, right? No injuries?”

  “Nothing as bad as Casey’s anyway.”

  “Ha ha,” Casey droned.

  “How would you like to take our last hallway, Nico?” Gabriel asked.

  “I doubt they’re expecting both of us, so why don’t I go first—since their traps and spells do like my kind of magic—then we take down the people and meet in the middle.”

  “Ready when you are.”

  Surrounding himself with the strongest protective shield he could conjure quickly, Nico stepped into the open. Spells fired at him bounced off his shield, while Gabriel took out a couple gunners, until Nico sent a spell of his own thundering down the hallway in a destructive wave. It took out every magical device and spell it came near, making Sotiris’s people scream when spells they’d held waiting in their hands, were destroyed. They were still screaming when they died, as Nick and Gabriel stepped out in unison, with Gabriel shooting and Nick blasting magic, until they met in the silent middle.

  And looked down the crossbar of the H, to see Kato and Damian looking back at them from the other end of the hallway.

  “See what I mean,” Kato called. “No resistance once you get here. Weird.”

  Nick was about to reply, when he sensed something . . . no, someone who shouldn’t have been there.

  Damn.

  ANTONIA STOOD IN front of her father, holding the hexagon like a shield, watching him grow weaker by the minute, and wondering why he hadn’t done anything other than throw the occasional taunt her way, daring her to kill him. And when she didn’t, he’d mocked her, saying she was too weak, that she couldn’t kill her own father, and laughing at the tears that inexplicably filled her eyes.

  Her arms felt as if she’d been standing that way for hours, though she knew it couldn’t have been long. She could still hear the battle raging outside, and more recently screams and gunfire from much closer, which told her that Nico and his warriors were closing in. If she didn’t kill Sotiris soon, she wouldn’t get the chance, because Nico would do it for her.

  She hated Sotiris with every ounce of her being, so why couldn’t she do it? Was Sotiris right? Was she so weak that she couldn’t kill this monster who’d killed so many others, and who’d tormented her unbearably?

  “Your lover’s outside,” Sotiris crooned. “He won’t be happy with you, will he?” He laughed. “What’s it going to be? Will you finally prove yourself worthy of being my daughter, or will you let the big, bad sorcerer do it for you?”

  She stared at him, more puzzled now than angry. He had something planned. Something more than just an escape, although he certainly had that ready to go to. Why did he want her to kill him? Did he plan to kill her first? Was she to be some sort of sacrifice to whatever dark magic he had planned to defeat Nico? But then, why not just kill her?

  She was still trying to figure that out, when the door burst open behind her.

  NICK DREW CLOSER to Sotiris’s office, and his senses confirmed his suspicion. Antonia was definitely in there. Why? Signaling his warriors to remain on watch, he shoved open the door, and found Antonia holding the hexagon in front her like a shield, while facing down Sotiris. The sorcerer was snarling something at Antonia, his voice too low for Nick to overhear. But it was obvious that the only thing holding him back was the hexagon. And it was just as obvious that Antonia’s arms were weakening under the constant weight of the heavy stone, which made Nick wonder just how long she’d been standing there.

  “Nick.”

  His whispered name had him turning to see Hana standing on one side of the door, a miserable look on her face. And he finally understood that it wasn’t just the rock keeping Sotiris at bay. It was the rock’s power, boosted by Hana, who had probably boosted Antonia’s magic to get them this far. Fantastic.

  As furious as he was to find them in this office, he was more worried that anything he did might upset the fragile balance existing between father and daughter, and kill Antonia. It might kill Sotiris, too, but he didn’t give a fuck about that bastard.

  While he studied the flow of power between them, he saw for the first time the trembling of her muscles, the slight sheen of sweat on her face and neck, and he knew that Antonia’s physical strength might well collapse before the hexagon did anything at all. And if that happened, there would be little he could do to help her.

  Several painstaking minutes later—every one of which felt like an hour—he’d managed to examine the threads of magic stretching from Antonia to Sotiris, and the much more dangerous, barbed spikes of power coming from Sotiris himself, the bastard. He turned to study the third magic source in the room, which was Hana sharing her unusual magic with Antonia. It flowed between the two women in gently rolling waves, boosting Antonia’s power without making her work for it, or disturbing her concentration in any way. The sight of that sharing stunned him so thoroughly that he stared for a fraction of a second before jerking himself back to the task at hand.

  Brief as it had been, his examination of the balance between Antonia and Sotiris had shown him its weakness. It was in constant flux, as Sotiris fought back against Antonia’s power, only to have Hana’s boost cause Antonia’s strength to surge and push him away once more. The trick then would be for Nick to interrupt the flux at the peak of Antonia’s magical strength, so that he could replace her power with his own, forcing Sotiris to confront him without ever having a chance to strike at Antonia.

  Nick knew he could take advantage of the hexagon’s proximity to destroy his ancient enemy in that moment, when Sotiris’s power was diminished, while his own was as strong as ever. But as he told Antonia before, he didn’t want to defeat a weakened Sotiris. He wanted his dishonorable and cowardly foe to be forced to face him in a fight to the death, not flee as he’d done every other time they’d met, both in this world and their own. />
  Nick wished he could have warned Antonia of what he was about to do. Unless he was very careful, the backlash when the flow of her power was severed, however briefly, could hit her physical body a blow like that of a boulder slamming into her chest. He’d seen this kind of disruption stop a sorcerer’s heart. It would be only a matter of seconds, but it would feel like dying.

  He would have liked to warn her, but he couldn’t, because Sotiris might overhear, and use those few seconds to kill her.

  So Nick waited until he felt Hana’s magic strengthen next to him, until he saw Antonia’s magic surge . . . and then ruthlessly sliced her magic in two, and shoved his own power into the miniscule period of vacuum the disruption created. He couldn’t even look back to see if Antonia was all right. He knew she lived, and that her magic would survive, but he couldn’t know how badly she, or Hana for that matter, had been injured.

  All he could do was order her in a roar to, “Get out of here and take that damn rock with you!” And then he was facing a Sotiris who was now returned to the entirety of his full power.

  “Run, bitch. You’ll be next!” Sotiris screamed after Antonia, and immediately staggered under the strength of Nick’s first blow.

  “Worry about yourself, fool. Or don’t. Either way, you won’t survive long enough to touch her ever again,” he snarled and shaped a massive blade of shining silver magic and shoved it with massive force at Sotiris who hadn’t yet recovered from the double hit of Nick’s first strike on top of the shocking appearance of his most deadly enemy.

  But Sotiris hadn’t survived so long by being taken that easily. Shaping his own magic into a hammer blow of sheer power, he sent it hurtling at Nick’s head, forcing him to duck to avoid it rather than use the energy it would take to repel it instead.

  Instead of standing after the duck, however, Nick rolled, coming up several feet away from his previous position, and putting himself to one side of Sotiris, who was still focused on where he’d been. Forming a whip this time, and barbing it with fiery energy just as Sotiris might have done, he snapped it forward to circle his enemy’s neck, where it dug deep with both fire and magic, threatening to decapitate the sorcerer regardless of how he moved or what he tried to do.

  Compelled to use his magic to deal with the unnatural garrot around his neck before it killed him, Sotiris shrank his defensive power as far as he dared before using every remaining trace of his magic to forge a blade capable of severing the incredible strength Nick had vested in his weapon.

  Before Sotiris could achieve his release, and bring his power to bear once more on his own defense, Nick had launched yet another attack. A lightning strike of power swept in and exploded in bolt after bolt of brilliant gold energy, blinding Sotiris, even as it crippled him with shocks of electricity so strong that a single one could have traveled far enough, and over enough ground to kill a hundred humans, no matter the distance between them.

  Nick saw knowledge of his predicament in Sotiris’s eyes, and knew what the coward would do next. It was what he’d always done when faced with the possibility of his own death. He would run. But not this time.

  He sensed the wormhole beginning to form, and smiled. It had worked for Sotiris so many times. His mastery of that bit of sorcery had saved his ass, time after time. But Nick had been studying, experimenting, practicing over and over, for all the years he’d searched for Antonia. Long after he’d all but given up hope of finding her, he’d known that he would face Sotiris again someday, and that the coward would try to run again.

  But despite all his preparation, he hadn’t been ready when the time had come. Four times he’d battled Sotiris in the last few years. Every time one of his warriors had broken free, Sotiris had come for him, and every time he’d failed to stop the monster from slinking away down his hole.

  Not this time, he swore to himself. He would not permit Sotiris to live long enough to threaten Antonia ever again. Creating a cocoon of protection that surrounded and clung to his body, he stepped between Sotiris and the opening tunnel, crashing the wormhole around himself. A tremendous amount of energy pulsed against his shields, but the cocoon held.

  Sotiris screamed his fury and threw bolt after bolt of energy, striking Nick where he stood between the coward and what he’d thought would be his escape. When Nick shrugged off the powerful blows, Sotiris’s gaze sharpened with cunning. He turned and ran for the closed office door, behind which Antonia had escaped. But when he yanked the door open, another kind of nightmare waited for him.

  All four of Nick’s warriors stood in a semi-circle facing the exit, each one surrounded by the nimbus of his power—Damian, gold, and bright enough to make your eyes tear, even as you fought to gaze longer upon the sheer beauty of his godhood. Gabriel, surrounded by the silver gleam of a starlit sky, as he channeled the incredible power of his Sire, which was now a part of him. Dragan, whose magic had been unwanted for most of his life, and who’d once cursed the goddess who now defended her child with the red-tinted fury of a dragon’s eye against the evil that would destroy him. And Kato, who gazed at his enemy with the full power of the Dark Witch, while shards of black lightning flashed over his shoulders.

  Sotiris backed away, drawing every bit of his power to create a buffer between himself and the warriors he’d cursed into a tortuous existence that he’d hoped would last for eternity. Turning, he fought frantically to create a second wormhole. Weaker than the first one that Nick had destroyed, it would still have worked well enough in the hands of one as experienced as Sotiris. But in his desperation to escape, he forgot about Nick.

  Nick laughed as he exited the wormhole, and shed the shell that had once again protected him while he followed Sotiris, but without touching the bulk of his power, other than the small amount necessary to sustain the shell itself. Unlike Sotiris, who stood staring in disbelief that Nicodemus, who’d never succeeded in following before, now stood before him with his defenses and magic both at full strength.

  Nick met his enemy’s horrified gaze, watched him try to gather the shreds of his power to defend himself, while he pulled on the full power of his magic to form a ball of energy so fierce that he had to squint or be blinded by his own weapon.

  He grinned seeing the same terror on Sotiris’s face as he’d seen on so many of the sorcerer’s victims.

  “I surrender!” Sotiris screamed, still struggling to gather wisps of his power into a defense that might save his useless life. “You’ll never see me again, I swear.”

  Nick knew the bastard was only buying time, hoping to gather just enough magic to escape. But he wouldn’t have agreed to a surrender even if Sotiris had been on his knees, blinded and broken, and begging for his life. His enemy was going to die here, now, and by Nicodemus’s fucking hand.

  He granted himself another moment to enjoy Sotiris’s fear, mocking him by pursing his lips and blowing, as if that tiny wind was all it took to send the terrible destruction of his sparkling ball of magical death smashing into the sorcerer’s body.

  Sotiris screamed. Oh, yes, he screamed in agony, and Nick drank up every note of it like the sweetest nectar the gods had ever envisioned, but even they had lacked the power to create.

  The door slammed open behind him as Antonia ran in, screaming his name, as if afraid that those god-awful shrieks were coming from his golden throat. As if.

  Holding a hand behind him to stop her, he cast a quick spell to keep her back, knowing that the same magic killing Sotiris could strike her if she came too close.

  They stood that way until Sotiris was dead. It wasn’t fast. Nick hadn’t wanted it to be. Sotiris writhed in agony for the better part of an hour, and even that wasn’t long enough. Nick had wanted the person he hated above all others to suffer every sliver of agony he’d ever inflicted on those who’d had no chance of escaping.

  Antonia, who’d lived several lifetimes under his cruel hand, while he’
d played with her like a mindless doll, stealing what few memories she managed to collect, only to shove her into another transition, another empty life. His warriors, the strongest men he’d ever known, who’d had that strength used against them, condemned by their own courage and determination to prisons that would have driven weaker men insane. But his warriors had suffered for centuries, and still somehow survived. And finally, there were all the innocents who’d been in the way of Sotiris’s ambition. Those who’d have run and never come back if he’d but given them the chance. But he’d enjoyed their terror, their screams of heartbreak and agony, as the people they loved most died, only to leave them so broken that they welcomed their own deaths when it came.

  When Sotiris finally died, when he was nothing but a shriveled pile of blackened bones, Nick sent a searing blast of heat to reduce even the bones to ash, despite his conviction that the bastard still hadn’t suffered enough. He then collected the ashes into a tiny whirlwind and sent that into a quickly conjured urn which he capped and sealed with magic, intending to scatter the ashes into every ocean on earth, insuring that Sotiris’s evil would never rise again.

  And then, he stood perfectly still for a moment, trying to comprehend the enormity of what had just happened. He’d spent all but fourteen years of his life battling the same monster. And now, finally, that monster was . . . simply gone. Forever.

  He heard Antonia crying behind him, not for the man who’d never been a father to her, but for him. Because she knew what he was feeling, knew the strange sense of not knowing what to do next, what happened next? Because the thing that had driven him for so long was gone.

  His power collapsed back into his body, releasing Antonia and allowing her to slam into his back and hug him from behind. She was crying too hard to do anything else, to say . . . anything. He turned and took her in his arms, holding on until she finally gathered herself enough to speak through her tears. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry, Nico. I tried, I did. I tried so hard, but I couldn’t kill him. Why couldn’t I do it?”