by Dyrk Ashton
Kabir speaks at his side, “There is foul sorcery at work here.”
Peter grunts in deliberation, then nods to Edgar’s corner. “Would you?”
“Of course,” Kabir replies, and begins to fight his way across the room. He dodges the blow of a Buffalo Demon’s mace and it shatters the marble floor. He sidesteps the charge of another, slashes a tendon at its knee with his claws, then leaps on its back and bites deeply into its shaggy neck. The beast roars, smashes its back—and Kabir—into a wall. The first tugs its mace from the floor and swings in an attempt to remove Kabir from its clone, but Kabir sees it coming and drops. The mace crunches into the spine of the second Mahisha and it disappears in decay and green flame.
Kabir is of equal age with Mahisha, but The Buffalo Demons are a whole lot bigger, and buffalo are tough. He can take them in single combat and has in the distant past, but he must take care when they are in numbers, especially in these close quarters. Of greatest concern is Mahisha’s mace. It not only gives him, and only him, the ability to multiply himself, but it is also a high grade Astra weapon, its razor sharp flanges capable of incapacitating a True Ancient and killing all others with a single blow.
The Mahishas, however, seem more intent on Peter. They rush him from all sides, swinging their maces overhead. He blocks and feints, but two strike down on his head and shoulders. Flanges bend and break and stone explodes beneath Peter’s feet at the impact.
Mahisha’s mace is capable of harming all but Father, that is. No sooner have they lifted their weapons for another blow than he’s on the attack, completely unharmed. He splits one down the middle with his spear, grabs hold of another’s lower jaw with his free hand and tears it clean off, leaving the Mahisha hacking, grasping at the gushing empty space where it had been. A third he springs over the top of, gripping it by one horn as he goes, bending it over backward, then spinning to knock down others with its body and flinging it into the path of another’s mace.
But every time their numbers dwindle, another incants, “Samavari Maya,” and pounds his mace to replenish their ranks.
Kabir takes a place alongside Edgar. Protecting others—its what he does—and he’s always liked and respected the young waeponbora. He doesn’t know the young man and woman who seem to be in Edgar’s care, but it doesn’t matter. They will live through this, or Kabir will die in their defense.
A sudden roar and a glimpsed black form above.
The Buffalo Demons and Kabir may be matched in combat, but the notorious Cù Sìth is in another class entirely. He descends from the balcony in an arms-out dive, right into the center of a pack of Mahishas. In short order they are disemboweled or dropping with throats removed to the neckbone, reduced to rot and smoke. His reaction to their uncanny decomposition is a rumbling grimace.
Even Cù Sìth is susceptible to the Astra mace, however, and he must take care. But this kind of battle is what the Cerberi have always lived for. Sheer mayhem and slaughter. Kabir is still shocked that Cù turned on his brothers and defied his Asura master—Kleron could dispatch Cù Sìth as handily as Cù takes out Mahishas—and especially that he saved Kabir’s life. Shocked, but leery. It will take more than this for Kabir to trust Old Shuck, the harbinger of doom, the vile Gwyllgi, the treacherous Barghest, the dreaded Moddey Dhoo. By whatever name he’s ever been known, Cù Sìth has never done a kind thing for anyone in his life. Not without evil intent.
The wamps and weres are merely a nuisance to Peter and Cù, like chipmunks on lions, and those who get in the way of the Mahishas are stepped on with no more thought than walking on grass, or swept aside by a mace like dry leaves before a broom. Yet they keep coming, throwing themselves at Edgar and Kabir with reckless abandon.
Peter and Cù Sìth take the Buffalo Demons down as fast as they multiply. But only as fast. The gonging sound comes again and again. Meanwhile, wave after wave of werewolves and wampyr continue to spill into the house.
* * *
Kleron hands the goggles back to the wampyr and calls up into the rain and darkness. “Robber!”
Something shifts high in the shadows of a wizened oak, gazes down between branches with an eye like that of a dead fish.
Kleron shouts, “Go!”
It just stares at him, bereft of life.
“By authority of your master, do as you are bidden!” Kleron orders. It still doesn’t respond. Kleron’s voice rises in the revolting invidious tongue of his old master. “Obey me! The one who has summoned you commands it!”
The creature blinks sluggishly, then hops from the branch and soars into the dismal sky.
* * *
Fi fears for Edgar. He fights on, but his clothing is torn and he’s bleeding from scratches on his arms and face. Kabir helps tremendously, casting wampyr and werewolves aside like annoying chaff, but there are so many of them.
Zeke senses her anxiety. If there was only something he could do. He’s never felt more worthless in his life.
Something shoots in high through the broken windows and circles along the ceiling, artfully dodging flailing maces. It moves too quickly for Zeke and Fi to fully identify, but it’s not a wampyr. This has shining feathers of iridescent blue and green, and a long wide blur of a tail. It lights on a ruined section of the balcony and Zeke and Fi can now see that it’s form is much like a bird with a craning neck, but its blue-feathered face is strikingly like a man’s, with an unnaturally long and pointed (beak-like, in fact) white nose. Elegant stalks topped with blue puffs crown its head. Its eyes are like the Mahishas’, with irises of milky gray.
“HARK!!!” it cries in a voice that sets Fi and Zeke’s ears ringing. Louder than Cù Sìth’s roar or Kleron’s terrible squeak, louder than the bellows of the Buffalo Demons, louder even than Peter.
The bedlam grinds to a halt. Buffalo Demons back away from Peter and Cù Sìth. Kabir dispatches the few weres and wamps that remain too close.
Edgar takes advantage of the break to check on Fi and Zeke. “All well?”
Zeke frowns. That’s a relative question, deserving a relative response.
Fi gives it to him. “Okay, I guess, considering. But how are you?”
Edgar smiles appreciatively. “Right as rain, dear.” He touches his bloody fingers to her shoulder. “Hang in there, you two. We’ll get through this. Have faith.”
Fi and Zeke wonder. Faith seems like a strange thing to worry about right now.
“Tengu-Andrealphus!” Peter hails up at the new arrival. “You, too, are supposed to be dead and gone!”
“I am,” Tengu-Andrealphus replies, seeming doubtful of the fact himself.
His image ripples like a disturbance in still water. Sitting on the railing now is a stately looking man garbed in breeches and a shining blue blouse embroidered in gold beneath a silken green cape, wearing tall gilded boots and a slim sapphire crown. The eyes, however, remain the same.
“Tengu-Andrealphus,” Edgar says with a tone of dread. “The Peafowl.”
The stately man’s image ripples again. His features become less comely, his wardrobe less urbane. A simple green and blue tunic, hose, boots of sandy suede laced to the knee, a felt cone cap topped with feathers.
Edgar mutters, “The Nightingale Robber.”
Zeke gapes in response.
Tengu-Andrealphus moves his gaze over the crowd, but his dead eyes focus on nothing. “No choice,” he says almost to himself. His image shifts back to his bird-like Trueface and he fans out his impressive tail, which displays multiple false eyes of black, green, purple and gold. He sets them to subtle vibration and sway.
Edgar blocks Fi and Zeke’s view with his shield. “Do not look upon his tail!” he warns, averting his eyes as well. He regards them both very seriously. “And cover your ears.”
For the first time today, for the first time in her life, Fi sees fear in her uncle’s eyes. She does as he says and squeezes her eyes shut, then opens one and elbows Zeke to do the same.
Zeke complies, but when hers are closed again, cu
riosity overrides good sense and he peeks around Edgar’s shield.
The herd of Buffalo Demons stand at the ready, all dead eyes on Peter. Peter glowers at The Peafowl, curious and appalled.
The wampyr and weres are enthralled by the hypnotic movement of Tengu-Andrealphus’s tail. So is Cù Sìth. His jaw sags and long furry arms hang loosely at his side.
Overcome by his own inquisitiveness, Zeke looks. The eyes of the bird-man’s tail kaleidoscope in his vision, and he can’t look away.
Tengu-Andrealphus’s expression is blank and his gaze distant. “No free will,” he whispers, the words sounding to Zeke as if they’re spoken right in his ear. The Peafowl puffs out his bird breast, larger than should be naturally possible, and swells his throat.
“Stop!” Peter roars. He raises his spear to fire off a bolt, but a mace knocks Gungnir aside and Mahishas rush Peter in a bellowing mob. He slashes and throws them off, tries to leap away, but they crush in, slapping and grabbing to keep him down.
Kabir, who has purposefully kept his eyes averted from Tengu-Andrealphus, repeats Edgar’s warning to Zeke. “You heard the man, cover your ears!”
The harsh earnestness of his voice jolts Zeke from his spellbound haze in time to see Kabir bolt to the nearest Mahisha. He bounds to its back and scrambles across Buffalo Demon heads and shoulders, hunching beneath the ceiling as he goes. A mace grazes his ribs, horns gouge his shins, but he keeps on his precarious path long enough to launch himself at Tengu-Andrealphus.
The Peafowl thrusts his head forward, throws his mouth open and emits a sound beyond that produced by any creature that’s ever lived or machine ever invented. Kabir goes stiff in mid-flight, stunned by the auditory shockwave, and drops.
Zeke’s head snaps back as if he’s been hit by a club.
Shards of glass still hanging in the windows splinter. Plaster cracks. In the foyer, the chandelier explodes.
Cù Sìth collapses to his knees, clutching his head. He throws his jaws open in a roar but no sound can be heard over the devastating vociferation of The Peafowl.
Wampyr and werewolves shove and tug at their ears, howl noiselessly, stagger and fall.
All Kabir can manage in his defense is to lock his fingers behind his head, squeeze his forearms to his ears, and curl up into a ball.
Peter, however, is completely immune to the stentorian clamor. And by some effect of being already dead, so are the Mahishas. Their lips move and maces hit the floor. They tackle Peter, bounding over each other to bury him beneath a Demon Buffalo mass, packed in from wall to wall and piled nearly to the ceiling.
As soon as Tengu-Andrealphus loosed his clamorous assault, Edgar discarded sword and shield and threw himself on Fi, wrapped his arms around her head and pressed his own ear against her shoulder. She blindly found his other ear and now holds a hand against it while hugging Mol’s furry head tight to her chest.
The Peafowl’s cry carries such force that it’s almost no sound at all, but the crushing pressure of ocean depths. Zeke’s skull and teeth buzz. The skin of his face feels as if it’s in danger of being peeled off by a thousand forces of gravity. His bones hum. Sickening waves of nausea wrack his body. He’s certain he’s about to be squashed to nothingness, or explode.
Then the sound suddenly alters—the whine, whir and squeak of frequency modulation, like the changing of an old fashioned radio dial.
* * *
“You’ve been bad again, Zeke.” Sour beer breath and garlic sweat. “And you know what that means.” A fleshy smack! Sudden searing pain on his bare behind. Zeke gasps his eyes open.
Naked, face down on a coffee table. The woman’s hard hands holding his wrists over his head. He knows better than to struggle, but can’t help squirming. Her mouth close to his ear, cigarette breath through tobacco stained teeth. “Bad Zeke.”
The man spanks him again. The clink of a belt unbuckled and slip of leather on cloth. The sting and burn of a whipping belt. A gut-wrenching rush of fear and pain. The total helplessness of a child.
Zeke remembers these people. He knows them. Their names, faces, where they live, what they eat. And how they abuse the children. Foster parents in a very bad home. Zeke’s aware of it all, but he’s of two minds. One is present with the child, in the moment, seeing through the boy’s eyes, feeling with his skin, sucking breath through his teeth, thinking every terrified thought. But he is Zeke, too, completely aware of himself as an observer, mute, bound and helpless.
Z-z-zip. Zeke knows what comes next. “Bad Zeke, bad,” the women croons, her calm voice and twisted grin more frightening than rage could ever be. “Punish him, baby.”
“Yeah...” the man grunts.
“Give it to bad, bad Zeke.” And she laughs.
Heartbreaking torment, pitiful, tragic anguish of a child plainly and literally tortured.
“Bad Zeke! Bad Zeke! Bad Zeke! Bad!”
He squeezes his eyes shut, spilling hot tears and terror. “Please!” his little voice cries. “I’ll be good! I promise!”
It has nothing to do with being good or bad, Zeke is well aware, just young and helpless in the hands of sadistic psychopaths, the sickest strain of sexual predators humankind has to offer.
Zeke remembers it all, every agonizing detail—but it never happened. Not to him.
Whine, whir and squeak...
* * *
The pressure claps back like air rushing in to fill a vacuum after an explosion. Hands still clamped to his ears, Zeke fears if he opens his eyes they might pop out of his skull, but he forces them anyway. The nightmare of childhood trauma has come and gone in a split second. Fresh and raw as it is, the horror of what he has returned to is little better. In fact, this time he’s sure it will be his end.
Everything’s fuzzy, like the whole room is an oscillating vortex mixer in some ungodly laboratory, but he makes out Edgar, Fi and Mol still knotted together. Edgar gritting his teeth, and though he can’t hear them, Mol howling and Fi screaming. Zeke can’t scream. He can’t even breathe. He’s drowning and boiling from the inside out. His mind swims. Blood gushes from the ears and nose of a nearby wampyr. The blurry form of a werewolf staggers by, vomiting its guts out.
A Mahisha kicks through the heap of dead wamps and weres and looms over him. Its spittle-spewing roar makes no dent in the Peafowl’s clamant wail. Zeke’s consciousness fades. With his last smidgeon of awareness he throws his arms around Fi, as well as Edgar and Mol by default. The Buffalo Demon winds up to crush them all. Zeke finds the breath to cry out and cringes back.
The jagged spearhead of Gungnir pierces through the Mahisha’s chest from behind before it can deliver the deathblow. Its mace dematerializes and the beast tossed aside to fester and burn—but when Peter looks to where Edgar, Fi, Mol and Zeke had been, there’s no one there.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Flowers & Figs 13
The horrendous ringing in Fi’s ears subsides gradually as she floats to consciousness. Sweet, blessed silence. Just the whispering calm of a warm breeze. The dreadful bellow of Tengu-Andrealphus is gone.
She peels Edgar’s arms away. He groans, opens his eyes. Mol levers up and shakes vigorously while they survey their surroundings.
It’s the same house, but much of it has crumbled away long ago. The entire structure is canted, rocked back, the windowed wall and part of the ceiling and upper floors toppled out to spread in ruin on the slope behind the house. Moonlight sparkles with dust motes, illuminating the rubble. No furniture, guitars, or books on the shelves.
“Are you all right, Fiona?” Edgar asks.
“Yeah, I think,” she replies. “What happened?”
He rises stiffly and his eyes fall on Zeke, who is leaned back on what’s left of the empty bookshelves with his arm draped behind Fi. “Zeke...”
Fi slides over to peer at him. His head lolls from her shoulder. Blood trickles from his left ear. “Zeke!” She takes his face in her hands, pats his cheek. “Zeke!” But there’s no response. “Edgar!” Her u
ncle crouches to help, but Mol crowds past him and licks Zeke lavishly.
“Zeke!” Fi pleads. “Wake up!”
Mol barks forcefully, right in his face.
Zeke jumps and his eyes pop open. “What!? Shit! Fuck!” He breathes in arduous gulps as if he’s been held too long underwater.
“Oh God.” Fi takes him by the shoulders. “What happened!?”
In his stuporous trance, he recoils at the sudden slap of a belt, the sharp burning sting on his skin. Bad Zeke! Bad!
“Please don’t!” he pleads, cringing. “I promise! Please!”
Fi exchanges a quick look of worry with Edgar, then shakes Zeke again. “Zeke! It’s me! It’s Fi!”
His eyes focus in recognition. “Fi...” Mol laps at him happily. He sputters. “Aww! Yuck!” Mol backs off, wags his tail and barks.
“Looks like you’ve made a friend,” Edgar says with approval, scratching Mol between the ears. “Not easily done, but none could ask for better.”
Zeke eyes Mol dubiously, then sees where they are. The memory of Tengu-Andrealphus and the Mahishas hits him like a bucket of ice water. “Where are we?”
Edgar rises. “I was hoping you could tell us that.”
“I did that, thing,” Zeke realizes with trepidation. “I slipped us here.”
“That is the only explanation.”
“But I... I...” He looks like he’s going to pass out again.
“Hey, calm down,” Fi reassures him. “It’s okay. We’re okay.”
“For now,” Edgar adds.
Fi frowns at Edgar, turns back to Zeke. “You saved us.”
“I don’t know... I just...” He winces and reaches for his ear.
Fi stops him. “Don’t, you should leave it alone. It was bleeding a little, but it’s stopped. Does it hurt?”
There’s a dull ache and the hearing is muffled, but it’s nothing he can’t endure. “No, not really.” He tries to sit up, but can’t.
Fi scoots out of the way. Zeke tugs at his arm, the one that was behind Fi, which disappears above the elbow through a hole in the wall between broken bookshelves.
