“Yeah, but we don’t have time to worry about that right now. Corinna, are your people better for close quarters combat, or open terrain?”
“Our magic is of the earth, lord of my mistress. If you’re going into the catacombs, you’ll want us at your back.”
I took her at her word. “Alright. Gronir, go get Elin and see if you can get her close enough to those fires to put them out. Take a skimmer and your pack, but be careful not to get in over your heads. If you get surrounded don’t forget you can just close the doors and run them down.”
“Marcus, hold this position and be prepared to throw back more assaults. If more civilians show up looking for shelter use your judgment. Small groups are fine, but we don’t want a huge mob covering the island.”
“Corinna, you’re with me. Cerise, you know where the closest entrance to the catacombs is? Let’s go check it out.”
Those dryads could run like the wind, but the bike was much faster. Cerise had to hold it down to thirty or so, but that was still a pretty amazing rate of speed for this world. We sped halfway across the docks in a matter of minutes, before Cerise pulled up in front of an ancient mausoleum crammed in between two warehouses.
“In there,” she pointed.
I dismounted as Corinna’s warriors came pelting up after us, their breath steaming in the cold. It had been quite a run, but they didn’t seem even slightly tired.
“Hey, Cerise? How did you know about this place, anyway?”
She grinned. “I figured we might want to use the tunnels for smuggling or something, so I introduced myself to the local ghouls while you were out of town. I know enough of the layout to get us from here to any of Kozalin’s other districts.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You just walked up to a pack of ghouls and said hi?”
She dropped her illusion, and resumed her full demonic appearance. “It’s not that hard. You just have to look like you’re a more dangerous creature of darkness than they are. Come on, the way in is back here.”
The mausoleum appeared to be sealed at first glance, but around the back there was a snow-covered bush that camouflaged a hole in the wall. Cerise crouched to crawl through it, but I put my hand on her shoulder and shook my head.
There had once been protective spells on the stone, but the passage of centuries had worn them down to almost nothing. I brushed them aside, and reshaped the stone of the wall to form a proper doorway. Sure enough, there were half a dozen skeletal warriors waiting to ambush anyone who came through what had previously been a narrow opening.
“Oops,” Cerise said.
I threw our enemies back with a burst of force magic, but that was all I had time to do. Corinna charged past me with a wooden blade in her hand, and Cerise leaped to follow her before the rest of the dryads piled in behind. In the blink of an eye the interior of the mausoleum was a confused, densely-packed melee that I didn’t dare cast a spell into.
Fortunately, our enemies were badly outmatched. I caught a glimpse of Corinna smashing a skeleton’s head from its shoulders, and her dryads simply tackled their opponents in the crowded confines and tore them limb from limb. In a few seconds the fight was over.
“No blood,” one of the dryads pouted.
“No marrow,” another added.
“Unnatural things,” a third hissed. “Can we kill them all, Corinna?”
Yeah. Anyone who thinks dryads are sweet, innocent nature spirits hasn’t thought much about what nature is actually like. This bunch was reminding me more and more of a pride of lions.
“We shall destroy all the unliving that we find,” Cerise announced, letting a hint of her allure slip out. The dryads all turned to her with shining eyes.
“Yes!”
“Thank you!”
“We hunt for the lady of shadows and lust tonight!”
Corinna crossed her hands beneath her mountainous breasts. “Control yourselves, sisters. We kill until all our lady’s foes lie dead, and only then do we celebrate. Lead us to victory, Mistress.”
“Girls, I think this is the start of a beautiful relationship,” Cerise purred. Then she turned to me, and made a show of bowing her head. “This way, Master.”
“Imp. Stay serious, Cerise,” I chided. “The city may be at stake.”
“I am serious, Daniel. They need to understand who submits to who here, or they won’t listen to orders in the heat of the moment. But I think that was enough to get the message across. How do we do this?”
I conjured three short lengths of stone, and started sticking light spells on the end of each one. Red light, and relatively dim, so it wouldn’t spoil our night vision too badly.
“You go first. You’ve got a better idea of where to look than I do, and you’ve got the fastest reflexes. Then Corinna, then me, then the dryads. If we find a large group of enemies I want you to hold position and let them come to us. There are a million things I can do to even the odds, especially underground. Don’t worry about dropping the torches if there’s a fight, they won’t go out unless someone dispels them.”
A narrow stairway in the back of the mausoleum led down to a small chamber, with alcoves full of bones in the walls. Not complete skeletons, just piles of ancient bones stacked up to fill the space. There must have been forty or fifty skulls in that one room.
Two narrow passages wound off in opposite directions. Cerise turned right and led the way past more niches filled with bones, seemingly confident of her path. That led to a chamber with three exits, and another short flight of stairs going down.
I tried to keep track of where we were, but it wasn’t long at all before I found myself wondering if I could find my way back. The tunnels wandered, branched and intersected seemingly at random. Most of the tunnels were lined with bone-filled niches, with barely enough room for our group to pass in single file. Sometimes there were side chambers, or pits piled high with ancient skeletons.
There were enchantments on the tunnels, too. Remnants of consecrations performed centuries ago, and wards against intrusion that had long since been broken. Another network of spells was still active, working to keep the tunnels from collapsing or being flooded with seepage. But the air was thick and heavy, and I realized there was no magic to keep it breathable. With this many people in one party that could become a problem.
“Is everyone breathing alright back there?” I asked quietly.
Most of the dryads looked confused at that. But one of them smiled, and slipped past her companions to approach me.
“Foul air is no hazard to us, lord wizard. But if you like, we can come closer and breathe sweet air for you.”
She leaned against me, and laid her cheek against mine. How odd. The air was actually fresher when she exhaled.
Were they plants instead of animals? Breathing in carbon dioxide, and exhaling oxygen? I wasn’t sure how that would work, since there obviously wasn’t any photosynthesis going on down here. But it seemed to be the case.
“No, I’m fine,” I told her. “I just wasn’t thinking about the fact that you’re dryads. You breathe like trees instead of like animals, don’t you?”
She smiled as she pulled away. “We do, lord wizard. I see you know the hidden lore of the woods that the gods taught to no man.”
“Some of it,” I admitted. “But this isn’t the place to talk.”
She nodded, and dropped back to take her place amid the pack of dryads again. We traveled in silence for some minutes after that, until Cerise suddenly stopped in an intersection.
“Come out, corpse eater,” she called. “I know you’re there.”
“Murder witch,” a voice hissed from the shadows up ahead. “You bring a crowd this time. What do you want?”
“We’re looking for the necromancer,” she answered. “Her creations are attacking the city. Do you know where she is?”
“What do we care about fighting among the sunwalkers?” It replied. “What will you pay us for answers? One of the pretty trees? The meat?”
Ceris
e’s aura swirled around her, repelling the dim light of our torches. “Don’t be stupid, Urkl. The pretties are my pets, and the man is a wizard strong enough to bind me to his service. I’m not asking for anything that demands an extravagant price. Tell me what you know, and I’ll bring you a fresh goat tomorrow.”
“War on the surface means feasting below,” the voice objected. “Tomorrow, maybe Cerise be dead. Tomorrow, maybe Cerise forget. Tomorrow, Urkl have full belly anyway. Pay Urkl now. A life, or Urkl won’t talk.”
“You are a fool, Urkl.”
The lights flickered for a moment, and Cerise was gone. There was a panicked shriek from somewhere out in the darkness. A smack of flesh against flesh. Then Cerise stalked back into the range of our lights, with a misshapen creature in her grip.
I almost thought it was a zombie at first. Its leprous flesh stank of decay, and gaping yellow sores dotted its gaunt limbs. It was curled up in a fetal ball, choking and flailing as Cerise dragged it by the throat. She threw it down in front of me, and planted her boot on its chest.
“I only pay you because touching you disgusts me, Urkl. I’ll offer you a life for answers all right. Your life. Start talking, or I’ll start cutting off body parts.”
It tried to struggle for a moment, until I made the floor grow into cuffs around its wrists and ankles.
“Unraveler pay three goats, to not talk,” it complained.
“Is your miserable life worth more to you than three goats?” Cerise countered.
It sagged in defeat. “Yessss. Unraveler not here.”
“What do you know about what she’s been up to? Did she pay you to do anything else?”
It nodded. “Unraveler come, weeks ago. Go to lowest crypts, take treasures. Raise bones to guard crypt, say tell no one. Come again, days ago. Paint bones, make magic. Now many bones come out.”
Cerise frowned. “Where?”
“Crypt of scales! Left, right, down, left, left, right, down, right, left, there.”
“Fine. Get out of here.”
She let the creature up, and it fled into the darkness.
“That doesn’t sound good,” I said. “Did anyone get those directions?”
“Left, right, down, left, left, right, down, right, left, there,” Corinna repeated confidently. “I assume those are turns in these sunless tunnels.”
Cerise nodded. “Yeah, but I don’t get how Mara is doing this. A crypt that undead keep coming out of sounds like a portal to Hades, but there aren’t any of those near here. Unless maybe she found one that was blocked, and opened it?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” I said. “Let’s see where those directions lead.”
If I’d thought the upper catacombs were macabre, the lower levels were ten times worse. There the air was so thick it was hard to breath, and the bones were piled in careless heaps and drifts. Water trickled down the walls to form dark pools across the floor, some of which hid treacherous bone pits. Anyone but Cerise would have fallen into at least one of them.
Sound echoed and distorted strangely in the twisting passages. Sometimes we heard what might have been other parties marching through the depths, or it might have just been our own footsteps echoing back to us. We turned, and turned again, carefully checking and double checking to make sure we didn’t get lost.
Then we saw light up ahead, and stopped.
Cerise crept back from where she’d been leading the way, ten paces or so ahead of the rest of the group. “It’s coming from around that corner, to the left. That should be it.”
Corinna put her head next to Cerise, and the dryads all gathered around us. The air freshened, and the warm weight of two lean huntresses against my back somehow made the darkness seem less oppressive.
“We should rush them,” Corinna whispered. “Hit them hard, before they can respond to our presence.”
“Alright,” I agreed. “But stay together, and if we find an army of undead don’t rush into the middle of them. I have a lot of magic that can kill a whole mob of enemies all at once, but none of it can tell friend from foe.”
“If Mara is there, let me be the one to fight her,” Cerise advised. “Corinna, she’s a demigoddess with powerful fire magic, and she turns into a giant two-headed fox. She’ll burn your girls to ash if she gets the chance.”
The dryads all shuddered at that.
“We understand,” Corinna said seriously. “Don’t worry about us. Most of us fought against the Aesir when they marched on Olympus. We understand how to stay out from underfoot when titans clash.”
“If she tries to use my amulet I can turn it off,” I told them. “Otherwise I’ll keep her minions busy, make sure she can’t escape, and shoot at her if she gets out of melee.”
“You should be in the back, then,” Cerise suggested.
“That works,” I agreed. “Alright girls, let’s do this.”
We took our positions, and Cerise counted down from three. Then we rushed around the corner. We couldn’t actually run full tilt in those close quarters, but we could move pretty fast.
There were sentries in the corridor, but by the time I came around the corner they were already being mobbed by dryads. Cerise swept past them and through the doorway the undead had been guarding, with Corinna hot on her heels.
I rushed after her, cursing under my breath about the fact that my companions could all outrun me so easily. Apparently I needed some kind of mobility spell. Force magic on my boots, maybe? A thought for later.
The dryads abandoned the broken bones of the sentries they’d dismembered, and rushed through the doorway. I followed them in, and came to an abrupt stop.
There was a surprisingly large room, with a high vaulted ceiling of stone. The remains of another half-dozen skeletal warriors littered the floor around Cerise and Corinna, who had obviously just finished dispatching them. But there was no sign of Mara, or a portal, or anything else along those lines.
Instead, the middle of the room was occupied by the biggest skeleton I’d ever seen. Keeping in mind that I’ve been to museums that had dinosaur skeletons on display, that’s saying something. This thing’s skull was substantially bigger than a Tyrannosaurus, with two long horns behind the eye sockets and a shorter one rising from its snout. The ribs could have come from a whale, and the tail bones were laid out in an arc that must have been thirty feet long. But it was the wings that made it obvious what I was looking at.
“A dragon,” I said flatly.
Cerise nodded, looking around nervously. “There was a pulse of magic when I entered the room.”
A cold blue glow sprang up inside that vast skull, and spilled out to flow down the spine and into the cavernous rib cage.
“Ah, Mistress?” Corinna said hesitantly. “That doesn’t look good.”
“A dragon,” I repeated.
Bright blue pinpoints of light sprang up in the empty eye sockets. The skeleton stirred, and the head rose.
“That bitch animated a fucking dragon,” I groaned.
“I have returned,” the dragon said, in a voice that drove all warmth from the room. “After centuries of haunting the caves of Hades as a powerless wraith, my strength is returned to me. I am Varfin the Hungry, worms, and you shall be the first meal of my new life.”
Chapter 24
The great skeleton stirred, and rose to its feet.
Intellectually I knew that it was much smaller than Narfing. But the dragon had a sheer presence that dwarfed anything I’d ever encountered. The dryads quailed, falling back before it, and even Corinna seemed paralyzed with fear. Its malevolent aura pressed hard against the protection of my newly-wrought coven bond, bleeding cold terror into my subconscious. For a moment all my magic was forgotten in the face of a foe I couldn’t possibly fight.
Cerise was completely unaffected.
She sauntered towards the dragon as the blue ghostlight poured over its bones, coalescing into tendons and gaunt, dead flesh. Her slender hips swayed with every step, and her long tail waved i
n the air behind her. Shadows crawled across her form like living things, and her demonic aura hung heavy in the air around her.
“Greetings, Varfin,” she purred. “I am Cerise Black, High Priestess of Hecate. You should have refused Mara’s call, and stayed hidden in Hades. But you didn’t, and now I’m going to feast on your soul.”
“No witch can kill a dragon,” Varfin scoffed. “Your stolen power has gone to your head, demonling. But I’ll happily kill you first.”
It lunged with blinding speed, its bony snout coming down to smash her into the floor. But Cerise was even faster. She seemed to dissolve into the darkness for an instant, and reformed on top the dragon’s head.
A silver dagger plunged into one of those gaping eye sockets. The dragon roared and shook its head, throwing her off. A trail of cold blue magic followed the dagger as Cerise tumbled across the room to land feet-first against a wall, but I couldn’t tell if it had done any real damage.
Her gun spoke, but the bullet just bounced off the dragon’s skull. The dragon whirled towards her, and I shook myself. She couldn’t kill this thing alone.
“Corinna!” I said urgently. “Pull back. You don’t want your girls in the room if it starts breathing fire.”
She shuddered. “Mistress. W-we have to help her.”
“Leave that to me.”
I pulled my gun and spun the cylinder. Cerise was sparring with the thing now, darting in to land blows when she could, but she didn’t seem to be doing much damage. A sweep of the dragon’s tail grazed her, and sent her flying again.
I fired an explosive round into the monster’s body.
A ball of white-hot nickel-iron appeared for the briefest of instants where the bullet struck, before it exploded. The superheated metal blew a huge hole in the desiccated flesh that had begun to cover the dragon’s ribs, and I could see glowing blobs sinking into its bones. In the enclosed space the explosion was deafening, and dust rained down from the ceiling.
The dragon whipped its head around, and vomited up a deluge of oily black flames.
Black Coven (Daniel Black Book 2) Page 37
