“How?” Asaph said, his voice reaching across to Shade like a whisper on the wind.
Shade’s rage boiled over. “NO!” he bellowed, rocketing to his feet and careening headlong at the man. He passed the beeping Spear of God, swung Rosetta from his back, and pulled the trigger. The weapon bucked in his hand, and Asaph jerked to the side, screaming as he fell to the ground.
Shade closed the distance between them in a heartbeat, and pumped another round into the chamber as he stood over the prone man. Asaph’s shirt had been torn away at the shoulder, and his pulped flesh glistened in the light of a thousand Heartcubes. Shade lowered Rosetta with one hand, pointed the muzzle at the bald bastard’s face.
“I saved you,” Shade growled through gritted teeth.
Amazingly, Asaph smiled. “You did.”
The man spun to the side just as Shade fired again. Hundreds of steel balls, ejected from the barrel at greater than the speed of sound, embedded themselves in the chamber floor. There was movement to his right, and Shade wrenched backward. A black smear flashed in front of his eyes. All of a sudden, the weight in his hands seemed much lighter than before. Something clanked at his feet.
Shade glanced down. He held only Rosetta’s grip; the barrel rested on the floor. Both sheared halves smoked. He lifted his eyes, spotted Asaph within a hair’s breadth of him, his dark sword held back.
Though Shade couldn’t see her, Vera still spoke. “He isn’t important. The Spear is what matters.”
“You don’t know what you’re up against,” Asaph said, as if he hadn’t heard.
Shade ripped his Eldersword from his belt and glanced at his dying older brother, who clutched at his smoldering chest a few feet away. Shade’s sword flared red with rage.
“Neither do you.”
Meesh could count on one hand the times he’d felt truly afraid. But as the wall of dead flesh collided with the first pathetic line of Outriders, he felt the unwelcome onset of panic.
There were so many of them, pouring through the gaps between buildings in a wave, swallowing everything in their path. Metal signposts collapsed, concrete barriers crumbled. Cooper’s men loosed round after round, but there was no stopping the advance. Meesh swallowed his fright and did what he did best; shot after shot blasted from his revolver, his Eldersword hacked off heads and limbs alike. A corpse grabbed the back of his vest, and the leather tore. Meesh stumbled, barely keeping his feet, and put a bullet in the center of a dead woman’s forehead.
“Screw you!” Meesh shouted. He lopped off a man’s head. A bullet whizzed past his ear, and he ducked. “Hey, not me!”
More hands grasped at him, and Meesh spun to shrug them off. At least the bastards are slow. He raised his gun and fired. Click. “Dammit!” He joined the gun-toting Outriders in retreating, while those behind thrust forward with sword and spear. Each of the defenders looked sick beyond compare, and the undead pressed on. Five poor souls shrieked, consumed by the wall of rotting flesh.
“Get to the buildings!” Meesh shouted as he scythed a dead man in half.
He turned in time to see Cooper throw his head back to reiterate Meesh’s order, but the brigand prophet launched into a coughing fit and fell to his knees. Blood spewed from his mouth, his nose, even trickled from his eyes. Meesh ran toward him, utterly terrified, ready to haul him away by his collar if need be, but Cooper’s eyes rolled into the back of his head. He collapsed before Meesh could reach him, body shuddering. Those standing around the fallen man began to spasm. Two more fell, then another four. Meesh ran right past them, putting distance between himself and the horde.
Their bodies disappeared beneath churning, peeling feet.
More of the retreating Outriders crumpled as they ran. One man dropped like a stiff log; his chin split open when it struck the rock-covered ground. Meesh leapt over his body, shoved against two others to quicken their pace. Their backs were boiling, soaked with sweat. The pair lost their balance and toppled over. Meesh left them behind.
When he reached the wide junction that led to the concrete bunker, Meesh stopped short and spun around. He’d put a good distance between himself and the undead, and with a moment to gather his thoughts, he considered heading down to the Heartcube chamber. No way, he concluded. There’s only one way out of there. Deathtrap. The best he could do was buy his brothers time to finish whatever the hell it was they were doing. He sheathed his spent revolver and drew his second. When he looked back at the horde, he saw the fallen Outriders staggering and lurching alongside the dead.
“Oh, come on!” he shouted.
Around the corner of the building to his left, a small cluster of Cooper’s followers were still alive, bunched around the building’s entrance as they tried to squeeze through the doorway all at once. Meesh pulled them away by the backs of their shirts. “Don’t be dicks!” he said. “Single file! Get it?”
A hand grabbed his shoulder, and Meesh spun about, Eldersword raised, but it was only Kamini, bent over before him and panting. He retracted his blade and helped the woman stand upright. The breath wheezed in her lungs.
“What’s… happening…” she gasped.
“Don’t freaking know, but it ain’t good,” Meesh said. He turned his attention to those trying to cram into the door. “C’mon you bastards, use your heads!”
Gradually the Outriders wedged their way into the building. Meesh staggered in last and slammed the door just as the undead rounded the bend. He pressed his body up against the door, breathing heavily, and peered around. At least these panicked people had chosen their shelter wisely; this structure was a warehouse of some sort, the ground floor windows beginning seven feet up, much too high for the ungainly things to use for entry. That meant the only ways in were the door behind Meesh and the huge overhead one on the opposite end of the building.
As if to mock him, he heard a metallic shriek and a hollow crash, followed by the shuffle of countless, sluggish footfalls inside. “Oh, great.”
He kicked himself off the door, found a solid wooden beam, and wedged it against the door handle. He then reloaded his spent revolver and took inventory. There were seventeen people huddling in there with him, coughing, crying, and moaning. The faint moonlight streaming through the high windows made them all look like ghosts.
Kamini slumped to the right of the door, knees held to her chest. Meesh knelt down beside her. She looked at him with wide, terrified, bloodshot eyes. Her nose was bleeding. She was burning up.
“It’s okay,” Meesh said, running a hand over her sweat-soaked hair.
“I… I…” Blood dribbled over her lips, and when she coughed, two teeth struck Meesh in the chest. Kamini began convulsing. Her thrashing was so violent that when her arm struck Meesh’s head he was thrown to the side, stars in his vision. He crawled away, hair hanging in his face. Someone let out a spine-chilling shriek.
“What the…”
The remaining Outriders hiccupped and thrashed and contorted at odd angles. The air in the room was saturated with the coppery tang of blood and the reek of purged bowels. Meesh rose to his feet, backed away slowly. One by one, they all stopped moving.
The door in front of him shattered; splinters rained down as the undead stumbled through the entrance. More shuffled their way into the wide space from the rear. The dead Outriders, including Kamini, twitched where they lay. Meesh backed up against the wall. The odds were insurmountable, and in the absolute hopelessness, the last of his fear melted away.
“Well ain’t this something,” he said, and laughed. He raised his revolver and fired.
Shade wasn’t even close to the greatest swordsman in the history of the Knights Eternal, but what he lacked in style and skill, he more than made up for with sheer aggression.
He hacked into Asaph time and again, their Elderswords exploding with sparks at each collision. They danced across the room, the knight pressing the older man, but each time Shade thought he was about to land the killing blow, Asaph would suddenly twirl out of the way. The man
didn’t seem to tire, while with each progressive thrust and chop, Shade’s arms grew all the weaker.
Asaph’s face was maddeningly stoic; his every parry seemed effortless, whereas sweat dripped into Shade’s eyes. Shade grunted, and hissed, and chomped his teeth, while Asaph didn’t even seem to breathe. Even the bald man’s shoulder, which should have been pulped to useless meat from the shotgun blast, seemed not affected in the slightest.
It all combined to make Shade madder.
He shoved his opponent against the tall bank of blinking lights that ringed the room, let out a mighty yawp, and came down on Asaph as hard as he could. Their blades met, burning cinders leapt from the glowing steel. Shade shoved all his weight into the man, and Asaph’s face finally showed an ounce of fear as he bent over backward, shoulders pressed against the steel shelf. Shade jutted his chin over their locked swords and spat in his face. The cutting edge inched closer to the bald bastard’s chin.
“I saved you,” Shade growled. He wanted to say more, but the Rush-fueled rage stole away his words.
He shoved harder, knowing all it wouldn’t take much for the wildly vibrating sword to shear clean through Asaph’s neck. Their faces were close as lovers, so close that Shade could clearly see his thick spittle drip down his adversary’s cheek. Asaph then smiled at him, pitched his head back. His mouth opened, and a thin, fleshy tube ending in a needle-like point ejected from beneath his tongue. It thrust into Shade’s eye, and he squeezed his lids shut, jerked his head to the side when the sharp pain arrived. The pain retreated along with the needle, and Shade panted, sapped of strength. He couldn’t open his eyes. His arms twitched as he tried to drive the man’s head into the console. No matter how weak he became, no matter the odd lessening he felt or his unexpected weakness, he wasn’t about to stop.
“You’re a persistent one,” Asaph said, and laughed. Shade finally looked at his grinning face, tried forcing his weakened arms to be stronger, but he was abruptly grabbed from behind and hauled off the man, arms pinned to his sides. Whoever now had him in their clutches was strong, so strong. Shade struggled, but couldn’t get free.
Across from him, Asaph straightened himself out, swept invisible dust from his chest. He glanced at his shirt’s ruined shoulder and ripped away a dangling strip of fabric in disgust. His Eldersword grew all the blacker, and for the first time, Shade wondered how the hell the guy was holding one.
No time for that, he told himself, even as his exhaustion heightened. He wriggled in the grasp of his unseen attacker, peered down at the grayish hands clasped around his midsection. Shade uttered a prayer, not to his god or anyone else’s, but to the love he’d lost. Just thinking of Vera gave him the strength to rotate his right wrist. The Eldersword came up, bit into the arm holding him. It slipped easily through the clothes, the flesh and bone, and one arm fell from around him, the hands still clasped.
Finally free, Shade twisted to the side, gave his attacker a kick in the back. A woman’s form with flopping blond hair stumbled toward Asaph, still clutching tight to her severed right arm, which dripped far less blood on the floor than it should have.
Asaph sashayed to the side and glowered. The one-armed man steadied himself and pivoted, and Shade could plainly see it was the woman Cooper had ordered to assist in the activation of the Spear of God—Erin, he remembered. That woman was clearly deceased—her skin chalky, her gaze empty, stilled blood created a huge purple blotch over her exposed right breast—just like the undead Meesh and Cooper were fighting a hundred feet above him. Shade hunkered down, returned Asaph’s glare.
“It was you,” he seethed.
Asaph stalked around him, leisurely, keeping fifteen feet between them. Shade was so worn out it was difficult just to match his movements. Even the Rush didn’t seem to help.
“You look drained,” Asaph said, smiling.
“What did you do to me?” Shade asked. He stumbled, hastily righted himself.
“I borrowed some of your essence,” the bald man told him. “You won’t miss it. You have millions of lifetimes worth.” He jabbed forward with his blade, and Shade clumsily knocked the thrust aside. Asaph’s grin widened. “Did I tell you how thankful I am that you rescued me? It really was much appreciated.”
He was taunting him, and Shade’s hackles rose. “She was mistaken,” he grumbled. “She should’ve never brought me to you.”
“Who? Vera?”
Shade stopped short, the tip of his sword trembling. He could barely hold it aloft as he stared at the man across from him, confused, livid, and utterly exhausted.
“She was my pet, you know,” Asaph said. “She was sweet, so sweet. And innocent too. She served me well.”
“What…?” Shade said.
“Who do you think sent her to you? She was bound to me since the moment I took her life. I controlled her! It was me who drew you to pursue Cooper, who led you to find me beneath the Great Pine. She was a puppet, Shadrach. Just like you.” He pointed his sword across the room, where Abe still lay, struggling for breath. “Just like him.”
Shade clutched his fist tighter around his sword’s handle. “Don’t,” said Vera’s voice. He blinked, and there she was, standing beside Asaph, her ethereal eyes filled with fiery hatred as they bored into him. “He’s trying to goad you.” Again, Asaph didn’t seem to notice she was there.
“Why should I listen to you?” Shade grumbled. His foot slipped on the smooth metal floor, and it took all his effort not to topple over.
“You don’t have to,” Asaph said. “Your life is forfeit in five minutes.”
But Shade’s words weren’t directed at him.
“Because I’m not controlled by him any longer,” said Vera’s spirit. “His influence ended the moment you destroyed my body, but he and I are still connected. I am only here now because he is distracted.” She drifted toward him. “Please, Shadrach, you must hurry. Free me.”
“How?”
The ghost pointed toward the beeping, blinking Spear of God. “By stopping the sickness.”
“What do I have to do?”
Asaph’s head tilted to the side. “Who are you talking to?”
“Go to it,” Vera told him. “Draw him in. I’ll show you.”
Without another word, Shade took off as fast as he could toward the blinking column, Asaph right on his heels. Shade’s legs and chest burned, but Vera appeared in front of the machine, and the sight of her gave him purpose, strength. He pushed his legs faster, no matter the pain.
He collided with the solid metal thing, bounced back, and drew back his Eldersword. “No!” Asaph shrieked, and Shade skipped out of the way just as the black blade cut through the air where he’d stood. The tip pierced the outer casing of the Spear of God, and electric sparks danced. Shade stumbled; his sword fell from his hand.
Asaph was off balance, and Shade drove his shoulder into the man, pumping his tired legs, forcing him backward until they collided with the Spear. Asaph raised his sword, and Shade caught his wrist. They wrestled there for a moment, the blade coming ever closer to Shade’s cheek, radiating immense cold, like the nothingness of the cosmos. Shade’s grip trembled, and he thrust his head forward, teeth sinking into Asaph’s wrist. The man let out a scream as tangy, rotten blood flowed into Shade’s mouth. He gagged, but refused to let go. Asaph struggled and squirmed, trapped between him and the large metal column.
“Now, Shadrach!” Vera pleaded. “Look!”
With his teeth still firmly rooted in cold flesh, Shade flicked his eyes to the side. Asaph’s chest shone with blue light, and Shade ripped his head back, tore out a chunk of skin before grabbing the frayed shoulder of Asaph’s shirt. The skin beneath was pristine, not a mark on it, but he didn’t have time to ponder how. Instead, he yanked downward, tearing the shirt further.
Against the bald man’s chest, the circular pendant glowed.
Vera didn’t need words to communicate; Shade could feel her guiding his actions, and he surrendered his control. He walloped Asaph i
n the face hard enough that the older man lost his grip on his black Eldersword. Shade then spun the man around and held him with one arm while he planted the naked skin of his free hand against the Spear of God. Asaph kicked at him, pulled at his beard. The walking corpse strode toward them, its severed arm held up like a club. Shade drove his knee into Asaph’s spine; his fingers fumbled over the man’s chest until he found the dangling pendant. When it was firm in his grasp, he jerked his arm and broke the string. Shade pressed down on a button with his thumb.
Asaph shrieked. Shade closed his eyes.
Everything went to hell.
The undead surrounded him, staggered toward him, packed shoulder-to-shoulder in the spacious warehouse. Meesh repeatedly fired his revolvers. There were no headshots this time; each bullet shredded the skin and bone of the dead things’ legs instead. Those hit teetered and fell, though they still dragged their useless lower bodies across the gore-splattered concrete floor.
Twenty-thee, twenty-four. His revolvers clicked empty, but he’d succeeded in creating a gap where those he’d felled crawled over one another. Meesh took off in that direction, his every hurried step flaying skin, snapping bone.
He made a beeline for one of the support columns, swung behind it, and reloaded his pistols with his last nineteen rounds, spinning the cylinders into place. Decaying hands reached around the column.
“One last go-round.”
He came out shooting. Two, four, six shots took out knees and thighs. The silver bullets in his left-hand pistol didn’t have any more of an effect than the lead ones. Really wish I had Abe’s railgun right now, he thought, holding out hope that any second now both his brothers would rush into the warehouse, guns blazing. Or even better, that the undead would just up and keel over.
Neither seemed likely.
“Oh well.”
He fired his last shot with his right-hand pistol—a headshot this time, screw practicality—and then swiftly sheathed both weapons. Meesh’s blood pumped vigorously, his grin stretched the corners of his lips. He gazed at one of the high warehouse windows and brought out his Eldersword. The green flash coming off it, reflecting the thrill surging in his veins, was nearly blinding.
Soultaker Page 30
