I removed my coat, throwing the ball of fur his way. “Sure. Don't go freezing to death in the meantime.”
“A gentleman and a scholar,” replied Germaine, burrowing into the folds of my fallen coat.
The sound of helicopters. It was unmistakable now. The field was crawling with Veiled Order personnel. Commandos stood in formation, eyes glued to the sky. Missile launchers lined the runway where a private jet was usually parked.
Before the helicopters were even fully visible, I noticed something else in the sky. Something lumbering through the clouds, impossibly large. The Manticore came into view as the popping of a gun on the rearmost Black Hawk lit up the sky. Compared to the creature we'd last faced off against, this was Manticore Version 1.5. Probably forty feet long and twice as thick around, it was a train undulating in the night sky, swiping at the helicopters that egged it on.
I hadn't been prepared for that. I'd heard that the thing had grown, but a change of this magnitude made me more than a little nervous. I hadn't been strong enough to tangle with the Manticore during my previous encounters with it, and now I was supposed to somehow keep it busy when it had grown bigger and stronger? My confidence sagged.
From the rear, I heard a grunt. Atticus dashed his palm open with the dagger and immediately began marking the circle in the necessary places. He was all ready. Pressing his hands together, he looked sternly at Kubo and Malcolm “Say the word.”
The assembled commandos loosed a collective gasp as one of the Black Hawks started to weave unsteadily. The Manticore had swiped its tail and it was now losing altitude.
No, that was too gentle a wording.
It was in free fall.
The Black Hawk crashed into the open field, narrowly avoiding the highway, the vibrations of its impact being felt even from where I stood.
That was when everyone opened fire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
26
I wasn't sure whether to be surprised or not when everyone started firing at the Manticore without being ordered to. When you've got a school bus-sized monster punching military-grade helicopters out of the sky, I guess the basic human instinct is to go all-out.
The Manticore hovered just low enough to catch a bit of heat to its underside, and upon noticing the annoying masses gathered down below, it lost interest in the helicopters and coasted down into the field on its vast, leathery wings.
I don't speak Manticore, but when it roared and broke into a run towards the line of commandos, I knew what it was saying. “I'm fucking starving.”
Like it was reaching into a bowl of Sour Patch Kids, the Manticore dipped into the line of firing commandos and whipped a couple of them into its gullet. No amount of body armor could protect them from its punishing jaws, and though they fired into its throat with their serious rifles, the Manticore devoured them all the same. I was vaguely reminded of my childhood dog who, for whatever reason, had made a Summertime hobby of eating bumblebees in my backyard.
The Black Hawks built some distance from the creature, the guys on board doubtless thankful not to be playing the bait role any longer. As they fired off a rocket, striking the beast in the right flank, Kubo ordered us to the front line, paper seals in hand. “Come on! Let's go!”
I sucked in a deep breath, the air already scented with death and exhaust, and just went for it. Sprinting past Percy, Kubo and Malcolm, I clenched my fists and got ready to take the worst of it. The Manticore could try and eat me, but unlike the mortals it'd sampled so far, I had a feeling it wouldn't like the taste of me. I'd fight all the way down and still be kicking even as it went to shit me out.
Standing face-to-face with the creature was astoundingly frightening. It wasn't the first time, mind you, but it had grown so much since I'd last laid eyes on it that it was practically a new creature. Its tail was raised like a cat's, and it choked down one of the troopers it'd scooped up as I drew near. The missile blast, a direct hit, hadn't taken it out, hadn't really fazed it. The leather-like skin on its flank sizzled, but appeared to be healing rapidly, not unlike my own tended to do after a grievous injury.
Rushing forth, I knocked a few commandos away from its reach and delivered a hammer-fist to its snout. “Chew on that, you prick!” My hand met its nose, cold and snotty, and sank into it with an audible crack.
The Manticore roared, its voice deafening as it buried its snout in the ground and recoiled.
“Didn't like that?” I reached out and slugged it in the chin, narrowly missing its teeth, and it teetered back with a wince. “How about that?” Despite my terror, it was heartening to know that I could harm it if I hit it just right. It wasn't bulletproof after all.
...Well, technically, it was. None of the bullets that had hit it so far had done a damn thing to it, but you know what I mean.
It had vulnerabilities.
The fight didn't have to be totally one-sided. I could hold my own against it until Atticus revved up the Binding of Hekatonkheir and put this puppy down for a nap.
At least, that's what I thought. The Manticore's tail said different.
Striking from out of nowhere, the segmented tail slammed into me, a tan blur, and damn near broke me in two at the waist. Wind and blood were forced out of my throat upon impact, and I hit the turf like a groundball, leaving a long divot in the field as I skidded to a halt.
For a second there, I don't even think I was alive. The hit had been so severe that my consciousness had been jettisoned from my body and what landed in the grass was a lifeless husk, a doll with all its stuffing pulled out.
When life returned, I couldn't even roll over. A shadow loomed over me, darkening the grass. I knew it was the Manticore preparing a follow-up. I wasn't capable of piecing together full thoughts at that time, but knew what I was in for the moment I felt its breath on my back.
The worst was yet to come.
What I didn't expect was to hear the yeehawing of Malcolm Sterling as he unloaded his motherfucker of a gun on the beast and succeeded in dislodging two soccer-ball sized knobs of flesh from its hide. “How'd you like the taste of that?” asked the old hunter.
The cavalry had come.
When I managed to roll over and glimpse at the scene unfolding over my crushed abdomen, I saw Percy heaving his sword into one of the Manticore's paws, causing it to stumble for a moment. He dodged the tail, barely, and then moved aside while his dad put away another two rounds in the creature's belly.
OK, Gadreel. Can we do something about the busted organs? Taking up handfuls of grass, I set about recovering. My lungs were bursted balloons, and there was nowhere for the breath to go but still my abdominal cavity filled out and I felt things returning to their proper place.
It was like waiting for a computer to finish running updates.
Kubo was nearby when I stood back up, one hand pressed to my side. He was ordering the commandos back, urging them to fire from a safe distance, all while emptying his own gun into the beast's face. The bullets didn't do much damage, but damn they must have been annoying.
It was time to try something more direct.
Lunging towards it, I reached out and smacked it across the jaw, winning a groan of pain from its cavernous mouth. It took a few steps back, its crocodilian body writhing, and then fixed its narrow eyes on me. I was ready for more, sinking one of my fists into its mane in search of soft tissue to rend. I only managed to graze one of its ears before the tail reentered the picture. The red tip of the thing crashed down upon me, sending me to the ground.
I saw stars, but the stars were quickly blotted out by the blood flowing into my eyes. The stony nub of hardened flesh that held the stinger tip was practically concrete, and my skull had been parted by it. When the Manticore dove on top of me, pinning me to the ground and preparing to savage me like a grizzly bear, I couldn't even see it at first.
Both of my arms were held in check by two saurian paws, the claws buried in my flesh and the sheer weight of the animal pres
sing me into the ground. The remainder of my body was being crushed beneath its bulk. I tried to wiggle free, to lift it off of me, but the thing had grown too strong, too heavy, for me to just push it around.
Gadreel's power gave me supernatural might. I could punch through stone, climb walls like Spiderman and perform spectacular feats of strength. Under any other circumstance, I was so goddamn impressive that I could feature on every page of the Guinness World Records book. But the Manticore was a very different matter. I couldn't lift it, and from this position, I couldn't even break free. I was being subdued, crushed by it, and there was nothing I could do.
Well, not nothing.
Whipping my head around, I knocked the blood out of my eyes and stared up at the thing. Then, tensing my entire body against its incredible weight, I raised my head up off of the ground and spit in its face. One supersized loogie struck it between the eyes, the acidic component of the demon's spit burning through its fur easily and attacking the vulnerable flesh beneath.
The creature roared and reared back.
That was all the time I needed. I rolled out from underneath it and, filling my flattened lungs with a sharp breath, buried both heels in the monster's side. My Chuck Taylors hit the leathery belly like a sledgehammer, and I succeeded in tipping the beast over. Its wings spread across the ground, flapping chaotically, as its clawed paws searched the air.
The Manticore wasn't going to stay grounded like a turtle, though, and it managed to roll back over with a growl, its face already in the process of healing.
It was clear as day to me now. I could spend a hundred years hitting this thing and I'd never make any progress. I couldn't kill it. Not this way. I'd ridden through many challenges in life on brute force alone, but this wasn't going to be one of 'em. I hoped that Atticus was almost done with his spell, that the snarling fucker before me would get put on a leash soon, lest it show me what it was really capable of.
The tail was back, and this time I had just enough time to side-step it. The Manticore looked at me with the purest hate I've ever known, a stare so hideous that even the demon in me was a little rattled. Hooking an arm around the tail, I gave it a squeeze.
It was longer than I gave it credit for, though, and with its remaining length it began to coil around my midsection. I started punching the pale segments, trying to free myself from the vise, but in no time flat I had an anaconda as thick as a tree trunk wrapped around my waist several times.
The beast began to squeeze. It went slow, focusing on the breakage of each of my bones even as assault rifle fire peppered it on all sides and Malcolm's boomstick threatened to leave a bigger impression. Ribs? Shattered. Vertebrae? Forget about them. Feeling was lost in my legs, and with that feeling I lost the pain as well. There was only pressure.
With a flap of its wings that was strong enough to knock bullets out of the air, the Manticore took flight. It bounded upward, gaining altitude at an incredible rate. Three stories, ten stories, fifteen... When next I looked down, I could only see the haze of battle, the barest outlines of the helicopters and rocket launchers.
Holy shit.
The Manticore's tail began to sway, and I knew what it was thinking. Where can I throw this guy to make the biggest splat? The creature seemed to know it couldn't kill me. It had jumped on top of me, beaten me thoroughly on more than one occasion, but still I kept coming back for more. Instead of trying to kill me then, it was going to focus on the next best thing.
Making me wish I were dead.
My legs were flopping in the air like limp windsocks. My only way out of this was going to be with my hands, which clutched the Manticore's ass for dear life. I had no oxygen in my system to draw off of, no sensation to speak of beneath the waist. My head was fuzzy, due to the ridiculous altitude and the serious injuries I'd sustained. The only thing I had left was a mountain of demonic energy.
Gadreel was pissed, and I felt him shove my candy ass into the background. Fist balled, he focused on hardening my bicep, my forearm, until the limb was trembling. Then, with a crack like a whip, the demon sank a hard jab into the Manticore's leathery flank.
That got its attention.
In the moonlight I watched as bright, red blood erupted from the wound, my arm buried up the wrist in the beast's body. The creature shrieked, lost a good deal of altitude, and its tail began to let up.
With the pressure off of me, my fractured spinal column started to mend and I tasted, for the first time in way too many seconds, delicious oxygen.
The wound in the Manticore's flank was healing rapidly; so rapidly that I almost didn't get my hand out of its body in time. Pulling a gore-slick fist out of the creature, I held onto the tail that was still coiled feebly around me and swung my legs up, thumping it with both feet in—you guessed it—the groin.
The Manticore didn't have a proper groin per se, but my kick struck it right around where a dick might've been, if it'd had one. I wasn't above fighting dirty with this thing, and was ready to hit it there again, except that it began to spiral towards the ground.
The battleground below came into view once again as I rode the Manticore like a doomed 747. This thing was going to smash into the ground, and I figured there was no way it wouldn't break into a thousand tiny pieces upon impact.
That went for me as well.
I managed to push off of the thing and free myself of its tail in the moments before it struck the ground. I rolled a good hundred feet, leaving a trail of blood and torn clothing in my wake, but eventually stopped.
Ever seen a big, juicy bug hit your windshield at ninety miles per hour?
Yeah, that's what the Manticore was like.
Barreling through the air from so high up, he hit the ground like he was fixing to kiss the mantle layer of the Earth, and the surrounding area sustained no little damage thanks to the impact. It was a monster-shaped meteor, breaking into pieces. Our surroundings shook, men dove for cover, and for a moment the only sound to be heard was that of the helicopters chopping the air.
I took my sweet time in standing up. The aches and pains I felt were incredible, and my jeans had been pretty well shredded, a trail of tattered, bloodied denim pointing straight at me like an arrow.
But I still grinned. Swaying as I gained my feet, the icy winter wind accosting my fresh wounds and making them sting like hell, I flashed my blood-stained pearly whites. “And that, my lovely Manticore, is why you don't fuck with a demon.”
I limped across the battlefield, gaining my bearings as I went. A few commandos stood nearby, appearing stunned. One of the helicopters landed, cutting its engine and leaving the field even quieter than before. I saw Malcolm, Percy, weapons still at the ready, glancing over at the monstrosity whose broken body was half-buried in the dirt.
Kubo jogged over to me. “Lucy, you all right?” He looked me up and down, not bothering to hide his disgust. “You look like shit,” he said.
I ran a hand over my scalp, coming away with a palm's worth of blood, dirt and loose black hairs. “I'm still alive, anyhow.” I looked past him at the crater where the creature still rested. “Did I get him? Did I do him in?”
Kubo shrugged, his gun in hand. “It sure looks like it. Hitting the ground like that...” He shook his head.
“But is it dead?” I asked. “Think its heart got boo-boo'd in the deal?” I started searching the grounds for the platform where Atticus had been preparing the Binding of Hekatonkheir. “Is Atticus finished with his spell? Has he bound it yet?”
“I'm not sure.” Kubo led the way, pushing past a mass of commandos and starting towards the platform. In the smoke and dust that filled the air I could see Atticus' shirtless frame still standing upon the stone platform, his palms pressed together as if in intense prayer. As we drew closer however, I became less sure that everything was fine.
The blood erupting from his eyes, ears and nose was a pretty good clue.
The spellcaster was thinner than he'd been when last I'd
seen him, and I figured this gauntness was due in part to the loss of blood. His blood painted the stones at his feet, obscuring the intricate iconography. The rail of a man looked barely able to stand, wavered with every gust of wind, and drew in sparse, ragged breaths.
And his eyes. God, his eyes. They were thrust open so widely that they looked ready to pop straight out of their sockets. His long beard was so saturated with blood that it was beginning to freeze, and his skin had lost its color.
“Lucy!” cried Germaine, bursting out of my coat and dashing up my leg. “This ain't workin'. I think... I think the poor guy's had it!”
Kubo gulped, scrambling up the side of the platform and giving Atticus' shoulders a shake. “Atticus, are you all right?”
The cadaverous spellcaster didn't reply, except to fall into a bloodless heap in Kubo's waiting arms.
He was dead.
“What happened?” I asked, standing on the edge of the platform. The air was heavy with the smell of the man's blood. “Did he mess up the spell?”
Kubo nodded solemnly, leaving Atticus on the stones and looking back at me. “He's finished. Something must have gone wrong. Or else his body couldn't handle it.”
There was a burst of gunfire in the distance. I looked over to find a cloud of commandos gathering around the crater where the Manticore was stationed, emptying their weapons. “Chief!” one of them called. “It's still moving! The damn thing is still--”
From beneath the rubble there came a jab of the creature's tail. It sank into the man, crashed through his body, and then cast him aside with a jerk.
The Manticore was still very much alive. I'd hit it hard, had winded it, but I hadn't killed it. Not by a long shot. Frankly, I was an idiot for ever thinking that such a thing could kill the beast. I watched in horror as it slowly began to pull itself out of the ground, one terrible paw at a time.
Happy End of the World (Demon-Hearted Book 3) Page 12
