A Deeper Darkness

by Jamel Cato

  The knight jumped ten feet and swung his sword in an arc that completely severed Kantu’s right arm.

  The minotaur bellowed in agony.

  Then the knight punched Kantu in the rib cage, making the beast’s roar turn into a breathless wheeze.

  I swung wildly at the knight’s shin, but he raised it above my blade and then stomped down on the top of my arm. I screamed out as the bone was fractured.

  The knight reached down and snapped off one of Kantu’s horns. The minotaur mewled like an injured bull. The warrior stabbed the pointed end into Kantu’s right eye socket.

  Wet, sticky flesh that was ejected from the socket pelted my face. I rolled away, hoping to extend my life for a few more seconds. As I rolled, I glimpsed the Asian woman sprint back down the corridor toward her prison chamber.

  The knight plunged his sword into Kantu’s heart with an overhand thrust.

  The minotaur’s body went limp.

  The undead killer stepped over Kantu’s dead body and moved in to finish me.

  Groaning, I flipped back the flap on the lamp case, which I’d never released.

  The knight paused to look down at the brass lamp inside the case. He reached down and scooped it out.

  I had hoped that obtaining his ultimate quarry would make him forget about killing me.

  When he grinned and twirled the hilt of his sword to change his grip, my hope was dashed. I was about to die for the second time in one day. And this time, there were no gate mavens to whisk me to safety or ghosts to call me back from the afterlife.

  I clutched my dangling limb with my good arm and stared my executioner in the face like a grown man should.

  Then the knight was cut down by a hail of Hellfire bullets fired from his rear. He fell face first into my lap.

  I looked down the corridor to see Other Preston and Third Preston standing on either side of the Asian woman. They were still pointing their weapons my way.

  After my doppelgangers returned to their worlds, the Latino man, Hector, used the handle of the hammer as a makeshift splint for my forearm. Then the four of us headed to the surface.

  We exited the mine into chaos. The broken bodies of three dead Guardians who’d apparently tried to keep the Knight from the mine shaft littered the ground just beyond the opening. Several large plumes of black smoke rose toward the sky. The popping of gunfire, the clanking of metal hitting metal and the screams of the dying filled the air. An acrid stench assaulted my nostrils.

  “Stay close,” I told the group as we started the trek back to the waypoint.

  We did an admirable job of ignoring the corpses we passed until we reached the ridgeline above the main battlefield. Then we stopped and gawked in horror at the carnage before us.

  At least three hundred Gheecie defenders were dead or dying. Their orderly defensive lines had disintegrated into haphazard gaggles of fighters with bad firing angles and swing arcs. A third of the raised platform where Queen Caroline and Gillian were swinging down at climbing enemies had broken away. A contingent of ten black-clad Knights, who seemed to be immune to conventional bullets and tiredness, was cutting through the Gheecie ranks from the South like a lawn mower over Spring grass. Two additional teams were flanking the Gheecie from the hills to the East and West. Hundreds of civilians behind the platform were being herded into a central area.

  It was a slaughter, not a battle. And the Duchess had not yet arrived to make it worse.

  I wanted to tell my group to keep moving, but I couldn’t find the words.

  Daniel pried an axe from the hand of a dead Guardian Leprechaun and began purposely walking toward the incline leading to the battle.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “To help the Gheecie.”

  “You won’t last five minutes. I can take you to safety.”

  “There is no where you can take me where I will be safe from my conscience if I do nothing in the face of genocide.”

  Anieko, the Asian woman, intercepted him and placed a hand to his chest. “I feel the same, Daniel, but we must fight with wisdom.”

  His response was drowned out by the overpowering thrum of millions of Carghill bees streaking toward the battlefield.

  We turned just in time to dive beneath the leading edge of a massive swarm that was coming from the direction of the local hives.

  It took more than thirty seconds for the horde to pass us. Once it did, I crawled over to the edge of the ridgeline to see that it was just one of seven groups that were descending on the battlefield from every direction. The bees engulphed two thirds of the knights, forcing them to stumble and clumsily flail their swords. The insects made Kamikaze dives into their targets’ ears, mouths and armor joints.

  One knight, his face swollen with bee stings, broke through the stinging vortex surrounding him. He was immediately trampled by an endangered species of rhino.

  I swung my head to the East to see Pradeep Ramachandran standing on the crest of an adjacent ridgeline with his arms thrust forward and his fingers spread wide. To his left and right were two of the other persecuted Indian Tryvodyns who had found refuge in the Gheecie Court. With my gifted sight, I could see millions of fine lines of energy connecting their minds to the bees, rhinos and elephants who were flocking onto the battlefield and changing the tide.

  I breathed a small sigh of relief. I had sent Stanella’s gate to retrieve them from India and I was pleased they made it in time to avoid a total annihilation of the Gheecie people.

  Four humongous bald eagles with twelve-foot wingspans swooped down and lifted Queen Caroline and Gillian from the platform that was being overrun by Blackshire knights.

  It took me a moment to realize the birds were carrying the two women directly toward our location.

  After the Queen and her attendant were gently deposited to the ground, the eagles flapped off to rescue others.

  Caroline headed straight to me. “Thank you.”

  “All I did was get them here. Pradeep and the others did the rest.”

  “What you have done is prevent the total destruction of my people.”

  “I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet.”

  We both noted my choice of contraction.

  “Yes,” the Queen said somberly. “Our spotters tell me the Duchess approaches.”

  “That’s why I have to make one more trip.”

  “Surely your Maven is exhausted by now. It must’ve taken several trips to deliver Pradeep’s beasts.”

  “She’ll be okay.” My third wish to Serenity was to bolster Stanella’s stamina. Because completing a large number of jumps without a recovery period could permanently damage a gate maven’s mind and body, this wish had to be limited to a single day.

  “Then wind’s speed to you, Preston Tiptree. You are a friend among friends, regardless of how this day ends.”

  I bowed, then winced when this act caused my fractured arm to graze the top of my thigh.

  “You are injured.”

  “It’s just a scratch.”

  She delicately lifted my forearm. “A scratch above a broken bone.”

  “He broke it helping Kantu fight a knight,” Anieko said.

  The Queen knew what this meant for her Minotaur. “So much honor lost to a single day.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She looked up at me. “Close your eyes.”

  I did as she asked.

  When she touched my arm, I felt a warm sensation radiate out from her fingers. This went on for about a minute.

  “It is done,” she said.

  I took an involuntary step back after opening my eyes. The Queen had visibly aged at least twenty years, perhaps more.

  But my arm felt great. “I…I don’t know what to say. Thank you so much.”

  “Thank me by surviving.”

  CHAPTER 39

  “You look great,” I said when I walked up to Stanella’s gate.

  “Bullocks.”

  “Seriously, how are you holdin
g up?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  “You know we don’t have to do this.”

  “That’s what wags always say when they’re trying it on with you. I’d rather they just say they’re up for a shag and whatnot. Saves time.”

  “You know I don’t speak Brit, right?”

  “Where to now, Captain?”

  Her eyes widened when I answered.

  When we returned to the battlefield a little over an hour later, Pradeep and his beasts were dead. Millions of bee carcasses covered the ground, forming elevated mounds where they rested upon the hundreds of fallen Gheecie warriors and dozens of Blackshire knights.

  The air stunk of burning flesh. I knew what that meant.

  I reached the top of the ridge to find a ghastly scene. Fourteen bodies which had been burned beyond recognition were spread about the ground, including at least one knight. Hector’s dead body was pinned to the trunk of a tree by a sword that had pierced his heart. Mallius lay draped over a rock, his cape in tatters and his skin painted in stripes of red blood and black ichor. Ingron slumped nearby with a broken spear shaft just beyond his reach.

  In the center of the clearing, the Duchess of Blackshire stood ramrod straight with two knights standing sentinel on either side of her. She had long flowing black hair, a thin build and a face that was undeniably pretty behind her excessive black makeup. She was wearing a skintight black bodysuit beneath a padded leather battle vest with side laces and a pleated faux skirt.

  A bruised and wheezing Queen Caroline was on her knees with a tuft of her red hair clutched in her enemy’s right fist.

  One of the knights shouted, “Kneel before her Highness, Corella the First, Duchess of Blackshire and Liege of All who Dwell Beneath the Dark Sky!”

  When I did not immediately comply, Corella’s free hand lit like a torch flame.

  I held up a thin cylinder with a wire running down to the lamp case in my right hand. “This is a thermometer. If the ambient temperature around my body goes above one hundred degrees, it will spill sulfuric acid on the lamp.”

  The flames receded and her eyes cut to the lamp case. “Bring my vessels to me, Nubian.”

  “Do I have your word that no further harm shall come to me, my loved ones or others present here?”

  “You are in no position to bargain.”

  “I beg to differ.”

  “You have my word, but you are traveling dangerously close to the limit of my patience.”

  “Return Darlene to me.”

  She smiled. “I have rarely encountered a man willing to go to such extremes for a former lover. Her womb must be lined with gold. Perhaps I should keep her as a slave so she may teach me this art.”

  “If you do that, I will break every bone in your body and feed your flesh to the sharks you have swimming circles around Edenshire.”

  “Such sweet flirtations. Perhaps I should keep you as a slave as well to see if what they say about your kind is true.”

  I retrieved Jira’s urn from my pocket and then smashed one edge with a quick strike of the hammer I pulled from my other pocket.

  “Fool!” she said, raising her hand. An impressively accurate gout of fire lanced from her fist and melted the hammer to slag.

  I dropped the sizzling object and raised my foot over the urn in preparation for a crushing stomp. “Release Darlene.”

  Corella dismissed the invisibility spell that was cloaking my ex-wife’s bound body and then pressed one flaming finger to Darlene’s cheek.

  “Let’s see which of us has the greater resolve,” she yelled over Darlene’s agonizing scream.

  “Stop it!” I shouted. “Please!”

  She pulled the finger from Darlene’s face, leaving behind a grotesque patch of charred flesh.

  I tossed the lamp case to the Duchess.

  She snatched it from the air and then brusquely kicked Darlene in the rear end, sending her captive careening toward me.

  I caught Darlene’s stumbling body.

  Corella pulled open the top flap of the case with a grunt. There was a tearing sound like two strips of Velcro separating.

  Black magic is stronger than other types of sorcery because it comes at a greater cost. To possess it, one must prove their fortitude and commitment to darkness by killing someone they love. In Corella’s case, that person had been her mother. Yet even with all their power, practitioners of the Dark Arts cannot render themselves immortal. To cheat death, they must pluck hairs from the head of the sacrificed loved one. Each hair grants one year of youth.

  “No!” Corella wailed after seeing that the case held her mother’s disembodied head rather than a brass lamp.

  Opening the flap with such force had torn every remaining hair from the head’s scalp. Some of that was due to natural decay, but most of it was attributable to the industrial strength epoxy that I had used to bond the hair to the flap. After having Stanella transport me to Edenshire, I relied on my gifted sight to find the ghost of Sophia Barcroft, the original Duchess whom Corella had tossed into the sea during her uprising. Sophia’s ghost eagerly led me to the spot where Corella had been hiding and preserving her mother’s corpse.

  “Turn away,” I whispered to Darlene, who quickly buried the uninjured side of her face in my shoulder.

  Corella’s body aged five hundred years in a span of ten seconds. Her clothing flopped to the ground after the flesh and bones beneath them disintegrated into dust.

  When the two knights drew their swords to avenge their Duchess, Mallius and Ingron leapt up from the spots where they were feigning death. Without Corella’s magic, the knights were as vulnerable as any ordinary mortal. The Guardian Leprechauns brutally demolished their opponents in a matter of seconds.

  I clutched Darlene and closed my eyes to the unfathomable destruction that was all around us.

  CHAPTER 40

  I used the final wish Serenity had given me to supernaturally convince Byron Sturdivant and Silvia Dunbar that they had always been in love with each other.

  I sat in a cavernous hotel ballroom in West Virginia watching the two of them laugh, kiss and dance like their love was the most natural thing in the world. Maybe it was. Maybe they were better for one another than Darlene and I could have ever been. Either way, I would be sleeping well and leaving the ethicality of my decision to philosophers and better minds like Other Preston.

  It was election night and we were celebrating Serenity’s victory.

  Jasmine was in attendance because she had worked out a deal with Ashley to become Serenity’s new Chief of Staff. The rider of the political winds was staring lovingly at the main stage, where the Alonzo Perry Trio was performing a rousing Jazz tune. Come Monday morning, Zo’ would temporarily put down his horn for a few days while he tended to the legal needs of the Ozark Institute and Facebook as a part-time lawyer with his own practice. Caroline Brokenborough and Elizabeth Minton had been more than happy to send some business his way as a favor to me. I hoped this new balance of his passions would help him remain the kind of brother who judged people based on how they treated him rather than the position of their cards in the deck of life. The world needed people like that to balance the scales.

  I was surprised when Carmen Mercado walked up to the empty seat across from me wearing a form-fitting evening gown. Although Ashley had given her a ticket as a reward for helping us neutralize Garrison Peakes, I didn’t think she would come since Jason would be here with Tiffany, who knew Jasmine professionally.

  “Is this seat taken?” the comely officer asked me.

  “My ride-or-die chick is sitting there,” I said.

  “Mind if I keep it warm until she gets back?”

  “Be my guest.”

  She sat and placed her purse on the table. “Are you happy that Serenity won?”

  “I’m happy that Garrison Peakes didn’t.”

  “I know that’s right. He’s a piece of work.”

  “What about you?”

  “What do you mean
?”

  “I didn’t realize you were a big enough Serenity Blakemore supporter to drive all the way from Philly to West Virginia by yourself.”

  She looked slighted. “What makes you think I’m here by myself?”

  “Life experience and the way you keep scanning the room for Jason.”

  She sighed.

  “I love Jason like a brother, but you shouldn’t settle for this, Carmen. You look like a goddess, you carry yourself like a queen and half the men in America would run a red light to get pulled over by you. Plus, you have a gun.”

  She chuckled. “Nobody can argue with the gun part.”

  “Nobody can argue with any of it.”

  “You should stop. You’re making me uncomfortable.”

  I picked up my drink and turned back to people watching.

  Not five minutes passed before I saw Jason standing by an exit door signaling for Carmen to follow him. Tiffany was on the other side of the ballroom chatting with Ashley.

  Carmen stood and picked up her purse. “It’s not that simple when you really love someone.”

  Then she stalked off to go do what Stanella would call shagging.

  My favorite gate maven had sent me photos of her new smoothie shop in Newcastle and the flat on top of it where she now lived. Carlos Vasquez had kept his word and worked out a deal with MI9 that allowed Stanella to return to the UK after I gave his agency three of its top ten most wanted entities by providing the locations of the remains of the Duchess of Blackshire, a minotaur and a Tryvodyn who could tame humans.

  Darlene came back to our table. “Was that Carmen I just saw?”

  “Where?” I asked.

  She pointed directly at Carmen’s back. “Over there, in the blue dress.”

  “I’m not sure,” I said honestly. “Did you get your picture with Serenity?”

  “Yes, after waiting in line for forty minutes. These heels are killing me.”

  “Do you want me to rub your feet?”

  “Ask me again later.”

  “Can I see the picture?”

  She swiped to it and handed me her phone.

  It was a well-lit shot of the world’s two most amazing women hugging and smiling for the camera. Darlene was so starstruck she didn’t notice Serenity’s fingers magically wiping away the scar tissue left by Corella’s flame.