Fists of Iron: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Clans of Shadow Book 3)

by J. A. Cipriano

  Gabriela broke in now excitedly. “A convergence point is where dimensional threads overlap, allowing for rapid transit along those threads. If Max really is a convergence point for every dimension, he could conceivably channel portals to every dimension, maybe even all at once.”

  Max was excited now too. I think it was because he was getting to do some real good instead of being a victim. “Then we can get all the help we need! I mean, like you said, Frank, the universe is where the gods keep their stuff.”

  That’s what I’d been thinking too. Maybe, with Max’s help, we could bring every god to bear against the Old Ones. It might not work, but at the same time, what choice did we have? Sit here and wait to die? Go out swinging and still die? Neither of those options seemed particularly awesome, all things considered.

  John’s eye twitched and throbbed. He massaged his temple with one hand as he spoke, “But you don’t know how, son, that’s high level dimensional magic. Even if you knew, the strain would certainly kill you.”

  Tabitha adjusted her glasses. “He may not know how, but I do.”

  Yeah, John was really giving me bad vibes, but I had to concentrate more on the big problem at hand. “As for energy, I may not know much about magic, but we’ve got gods and angels and the power of Heaven sitting around, there’s got to be some way to use some of that right?”

  Krishna’s voice was grim as the noise of rushing wind was overwhelmed by sounds of the angelic choir, now thumping through a war chant, and the gibbering squeals of the chaotic armies. “You may need to figure that out on the fly, because we’re here.”

  As Garuda started to swoop down between the towers and archologies of Heaven, we all turned to gaze upon the battle at hand.

  23

  It was amazing how horribly things had gone on the frontlines so quickly. I guess the best way I could wrap my mind around it was like a dam breaking. Well, if that dam were the walls of Paradise and the water waiting beyond was a massive wave of primordial chaos slime and crazed, twisted monsters.

  The Pearly Gates were a twisted wreck, the doors shattered and ground into the earth. The only remnant left standing was one shattered pillar, the pearlescent finish cracked and scorched. The mighty wall had been pulled down, violated by burning ichor and eldritch energies for a mile to both sides. The bronze mesh was ripped and melted and the thirty-foot alabaster posts cleaved and toppled. Even the web of energy above was full of holes like a ragged piece of Swiss cheese.

  As for the battle, it had washed into the outer sectors of the city itself. Ghouls, slime beasts, fish monsters, and living flames flooded the streets while titanic, tentacle-mouthed monsters and twisted, wrinkled worms the size of apartment buildings tore into the pristine white buildings and crystalline arches. The cries of the souls echoed through the canyon-like avenues, threatening to drown out the war songs of the opposing armies.

  War is hell and now Hell had come to Heaven. The whole horrible scene made me sick to my stomach.

  The battle lines had stabilized maybe a half mile deep into the city, but who knew how long that would last? While the assault hadn’t yet plunged deeper, it was widening as more and more of the wall collapsed. Heaven was basically screwed outside of divine intervention.

  For once, that was a concrete possibility. Old Testament God stood like a monolith at the front lines. His fifty-foot-tall form towered over the battlefield, casting literal Bolts from the Blue onto the horrors below. While that was doing a real number on the hordes in the streets, it felt a lot more limited than I thought it should be. I mean, couldn't He just turn all the monsters into pillars of salt or cover the entire battlefield in burning hail or drown them in a flood of blood? Maybe it was all part of His plan, whatever the fuck that was.

  Still, as I watched the chaos, a cold shiver ran down my spine. There was a good chance Bobby was down there somewhere. The urge to have Krishna drop me off so I could start looking for him was nearly overwhelming. I didn’t, but only because the best way to help him would be doing what I was already doing: trying to fix the whole damned problem.

  Krishna swept Garuda into a spiral, descending toward one particular knot of resistance near the front lines. I think we had all expected him to pick out a quiet spot back a bit from the real fighting, but I realized what he was doing a moment later.

  Through the smoke and flames, it was the spiraling flock of ravens cawing and diving into the midst of battle that caught my eye and drew me down further. There I saw, surrounded by a circle of corpses of both angel and monster alike yet still holding their ground, Molly, Tyrone, and Abner. The Super Friends were back-to-back-to-back, tattered, torn, bleeding, but still standing. A crazy defiant stone in the middle of a raging river of demonic bullshit, anything that came within the range of Tyrone’s shotgun, Molly’s knives, or Abner’s fists were shot, slashed, bludgeoned, or magicked into their component atoms.

  A million questions flooded my brain, like how they had all survived in the first place, how they had managed to evade the long arm of Cop Dog law, what the fuck was up with all the birds, and how the Dynamic Duo had found Big Red in this chaotic mess of a war zone.

  Instead of questions, I let out a war whoop as Krishna brought the Thunderbird down for a strafing run. He came in low enough to see the yellow eyes of the ghouls and the fluttering gills of the Deep Ones, which was close enough to empty my Mossberg into the masses, while John took precise, controlled bursts at choice targets. That alone was enough to garner us some attention away from the Terrible Trio, but it was Tabitha’s incantation that really set things off. She unleashed a rolling ball of flame wrapped in an arcing array of lightning before blowing a hole in the monstrous horde large enough for us to land.

  Krishna wasn’t content to simply land. As soon as Garuda’s four wheels hit the ground in front of our friends, he slammed on the brakes and cut the wheel. The divine car tucked in his wings as he skidded, sideswiping into some non-burnt, non-electrocuted stragglers grinding others under his wheels, and hurling the rest away like bowling pins.

  “Last stop,” Krishna laughed in an infectious, berserk sort of way. “Everyone off!”

  A half-run over beast tried to pull itself up by the edge of the driver’s side door, only to have its head caved in by Krishna’s mace. For having seen the end of everything, he was in an awfully good mood. Well, it was better to die with a smile on your face than die being an asshole, I suppose.

  As we all piled out of the car, Molly, Tyrone, and Abner moved to close ranks with us. Molly was waving madly, not caring that she had a big, curved knife in her hand (a spoil of war, no doubt), as she shouted, “It’s about damned time you lassies decided to join us! I was about to say ye were missin’ all the fun!”

  Tyrone rolled his eyes as he fired another burst of molten metal from his shotgun. “What she means to say is she’s happy to see y’all are still alive. Even the copper there.” The runes along the AA-12 were dimming, giving the weapon the veiny glow of cooling lava. Who knew how much juice he had left? How much did any of the three have? Probably not enough and magical mojo was what we needed now, and lots of it.

  Abner’s blocky red brows knitted together as he looked us over. His gaze lingered on Max in particular before settling on me. “Indeed. Perhaps now there is a chance to hold off the inevitable. If nothing else, I am of glad to be able to be by your side once more, Bearer, and I apologize for–”

  I punched the big lug in the shoulder playfully. It still hurt my knuckles. “Put a sock in it, big guy. All is forgiven if we live through this.”

  John went into defensive mode, taking potshots at anything that got too close, while Krishna gladly bashed the heads or polyps or whatever of the chaotic nasties that got past the bullets. It was all to buy time for Gabriela to finish an intricate warding incantation designed to give Tabitha time to help Max do his thing.

  Tabitha wasted no time, grabbing Max by the hand and leading him to a relatively rubble-free portion of roadway.

 
; “We are still going to need a little time here while I draw out the ritual circle.” Tabitha frowned as she pulled out some pieces of chalk from her pocket. “We still need sufficient mana to pull this off. If anyone has any brilliant ideas, I’d suggest they reveal them quickly.”

  Tyrone’s eyes went wide at the sound of her voice. “Director, I didn’t expect … well, you see I…” Molly elbowed him in the gut as Tabby looked sidelong at him.

  “Please save any recriminations, apologies, or criticism until after we survive.” She knelt and began to scratch out a pattern in the golden street. “You acted as per your conscience and that is all that is important for now.”

  “Aye, boyo, especially when there’s mind-twisting horrors ta be fightin’!” Molly let out a cackle as she turned back to a spot of the perimeter where a pack of featureless, slimy-winged things were trying to swoop in before the doc’s spell concluded. The flock of ravens spiraled in with her to the attack.

  “Yeah, time to stop chatting and start whacking,” I grinned at him and the big black man grumbled his acknowledgement. He barreled after Molly and began blazing away.

  Which left me and Abner to try to figure out the mystery ingredient. Fucking brilliant!

  “Abner, as I know dick-all about magic, I hope you’ve got something up your nonexistent sleeves.” I tried to keep my tone light and jovial. No need to sound like I was scared shitless, right?

  Abner looked over at me with a frown. “It would be best to understand what it is you seek and what you wish to do with it once you have it.” He looked sidelong at Max, who was now sitting Indian style in the center of the growing pattern Tabitha was sketching out.

  “Right, yeah, assumptions, asses, I get it.” I ran my hands through my hair as gunfire and magic raged around us. Gabby was going for a big whammy this time, which was probably called for, but it meant everyone had to hold things off for even longer. “Short form: Max, convergence point, instant god portals, profit.” I shrugged. “Does that make any sense to you?”

  One of those block brows raised. “I believe I understand your mad ramblings, Frank Butcher, yet I do not think I have many answers to give. Such a monumental spell woven with no preparation or ritual requires vast energy. Perhaps if we had a thousand skilled ritualists all contributing their mana on hand, it would be simple. Otherwise, I am uncertain of a solution.”

  “Fan-freaking-tastic.” I contemplated pulling my hair out, as if that would help. “Hey Kris, you’re a god! Can you throw down some divine power over here?”

  Krishna turned his head, wrestling with an amorphous ooze of ever-shifting chaos stuff, and shouted, “First, really busy here. Second, I can’t even if I wanted to.” A pseudo pod wrapped around his neck and yanked him forward, cutting off any more discussion for the moment. Fucking rules about godly intervention. Where did the difference get called between “helping out” and “doing it for the mortals?”

  Gabriela finished her chant and spread her arms wide, surrounding the immediate area with a soap-bubble green glow. That would give us a little breathing room, but there were still some creatures locked in with us and, let’s face facts, that shield wasn’t going to hold long. I slapped my head, trying to get the brain thinking harder.

  Out of the corner of my eye, John grabbed Gabriela’s arm. “This is insanity! We can still get out of here, organize a proper response from Earth. You, me, and Max, anyone else who will listen to damned reason around here.”

  I turned distractedly, wondering what the fuck was up, as Gabby looked at him wide-eyed. “What are you talking about, John? How could you even consider that? You can’t honestly believe that’s the right thing to do, not in your heart! Even if these things weren’t going to eat the universe, how could we leave? The only portal is overrun!”

  Heart? Heart! Fucking genius!

  “I’ve got it!” I really should have been more concerned about the argument between Gabriela and John, but as I focused on la Corazon. If we needed to find powerful magic, the best way to find it was to look for the threads of it … and at worst, the most powerful anti-magical artifact in creation probably had a lot of magic to give itself.

  The on-rush of clashing colors and black corruption threatened to overwhelm me, even though I had been ready for it. Incredible amounts of magic were being spewed around the battlefield all around us, clashing against the blackness surrounding the worst of the monsters on the assault. The more “human” of the beasts had strangely human threads tangled with scarlet red magic while the angels were bright, luminous things in the eyes of the heart. Still, within our circle of allies, outside of Krishna, there were no founts of magical power anywhere near what I figured we needed.

  “I have a way, dear,” John half-pleaded, half-commanded. “There’s a way, something I’ve been trying to ignore, for us to make it through. You have to trust me.”

  There were two notable points though. One was very bad and one was very possibly the answer to our prayers.

  The very bad thing was the emptiness of black corruption contrasting the red threads I could see across John’s body. I want to say I was surprised and I was a little, but there had been plenty of signs. Hell, I had considered saving a bullet for John before I knew who he was, considering that he’d probably be insane. John had sat a year in the middle of an endlessly chaotic hellscape; if he had been even the least aware of anything, he had to have lost his mind. I hadn’t quite considered the whole “alien corruption” angle, but it wasn’t something that seemed all that unreasonable at this point.

  On the other hand, our possible salvation was close at hand. See, there were actually three things of immense power right there. There was Krishna, there was the heart, and then there was Garuda. I hadn’t even considered it until I saw the engine soaring with incalculable power. I could only hope that the bird-car wasn’t bound by the same rules as his owner.

  I snapped back to reality, my head throbbing. As I tried to get my bearings again, Abner was already approaching John and Gabriela, the rest of our little party still cleaning up the mess at the perimeter of the field. Max was already deep in meditation, likely prepping for the big whammy, and Tabitha was still tangled up in her circle-drawing to notice the drama about to get going nearby.

  “Peacekeeper, you speak madness,” Abner rumbled, “and I can feel a growing corruption in you. You should let me help you.”

  Gabby’s eyes went wide. “Abner, John, what is this all about?” She tried to pull away from John and he replied by tightening his grip. “Okay, that hurts. Let go!” I couldn’t see the man’s face from how he was turned, but his free arm was pulsing oddly, starting to swell. That couldn’t be good.

  And naturally that wasn’t all! Nothing bad in my life ever came alone, after all. Drowning out any response from either John or Abner, drowning out all the sounds of the battle, was a thunderous, explosive shriek, the sound of maddening insanity that almost made my ears bleed with that one shrill note. The ground shuddered under the weight of some immense weight and, through the smoke and flames, the flashes of magic, I could see an enormous shape rise in the distance.

  A mottled, undulating mass of flesh and sinew, the colossal creature vaguely reminded me of a vast and twisted toad standing upright, hundreds of feet tall at the very least. Its head was more like an enormous squid mounted on its shoulders, with immense, veiny tentacles ringed round a circular mouth ringed with serrated teeth. Those tentacles were ringed themselves with a million eyes, glowing with a pale green sickness, while immense bat-like wings stretched outward, seeming to soak up all the light around it. Even staring at it for these few seconds made my eyes twitch and my mind want to tear out of my skull at the mere unreality of it all.

  If I knew my horror lore as well as I thought I did, that was the Great Cthulhu, the big one, the undying Great Old One. As the books and movies might say, to gaze upon his visage is to know true madness. In other words, the truly apocalyptic big guns had come on to the field. Our time was just about up,
even if that cry was matched by the echoing chime of God’s celestial choir.

  24

  “Abner!” I cried as I ran for Garuda. We needed to do this thing, and we needed to do it now, so I had to trust Big Red on this one. There was another earthshaking footstep behind me, sending cracks through Gabby’s shield. It was followed by the distinct sound of a fist connecting with a jaw and John grunting in pain.

  “Frank, we need that power!” Tabitha shouted, her voice strained from effort and quivering in near-panic. “Now!”

  I skidded to a halt in front of Garuda’s hood as the doc pulled away from her husband and cradled her bruised knuckles.

  John’s face contorted in a mixture of confusion and pain as his arm kept pulsing and growing into a tentacle monstrosity. It was great shades of Akira and that wasn’t a good thing.

  Thankfully, Abner had managed to close the distance to the Peacekeeper with a couple huge loping steps. I wasn’t sure what his plan was to deal with John, but I hoped it was a good one.

  Either way, I didn’t have time to find out. I had to stay on target. “I’ve got something coming, Tabby! You and Max get ready!” I slapped my hand flat on the Thunderbird’s beak-hood and addressed the car. “Garuda, old pal, I’ve got a big favor to ask of you. Open up for me!”

  The engine let out a rumbling squawk, and I could imagine his head cocked sideways in curiosity. Curious or not, Garuda obligingly popped his hood, causing the beak to open up wide.

  Garuda’s engine looked like a normal internal combustion engine made of brushed gold and silver. The rest of the parts were extravagantly inscribed with strange signs and letters, but I didn’t care about those. No, I was way more concerned with the battery.