Courageous

by Nicholas Olivo

  We walked down the stairs and into a chamber nearly as big as the church itself. Caulborn wards were chiseled into the walls, and a six-foot-tall pylon stood in each corner. More runes I didn’t recognize adorned the pylons. A reinforced metal door stood on the far wall, also covered in runes. “You know,” I said, “one of these days, I need to take a class in runecraft.”

  “We’re supposed to take that Irish Dancing class together first.”

  “Mmm. And the violin lessons.”

  “There just isn’t enough time for everything, is there?”

  “That’s just it. I’m a half-god with the domain of time,” I said. “There should be more than enough time for everything. Once this is dealt with, once Treggen is down for good, then you and I are taking that vacation. And who knows, maybe we’ll make it permanent.”

  “Vincent, I love you. I always have. But you and I both know that you won’t be happy unless you’re hip deep in a crisis. It’s what you do.”

  I shrugged. “Crisises are fun.”

  “It’s crises.” Petra smiled.

  “Potato, potahto,” I said, moving to the far wall. “I’m guessing this is the door leading to the demons’ prison. I’m pretty sure I saw the other side of it in a Glimpse.”

  “Are you going to open that?”

  “Hell, no,” I said. “The fact that it’s shut tells me that everything’s okay here. I was afraid we’d find the chains broken and the demons pounding at the door, trying to break free.” I pressed my ear to the cold, heavy metal of the door. “Nothing. I’ll have Alexis keep an eye on this place, maybe use one of the Gizmatron 3000 drones to watch the door.” I glanced around. “But what was that maintenance guy doing down here?”

  Glimpsing showed that he’d painted more invisible calligraphy on the walls of the stairwell and this chamber before he listened at the big metal door leading to the demon’s prison, checked his watch, made a note on a pad, and then left. He tipped his cap and raised his head at something. He still had his back to me, so I rewound the Glimpse and moved so I could get a good view of the man’s face. Up to this point, he’d managed to angle his body so I couldn’t get a good look at him. It was almost like he was intentionally avoiding me, which was crazy because there was no way…

  At that moment, the man looked directly at me, lifted his ball cap and winked.

  Wolfram.

  The Stranger who was in charge of the Dodici Prophecy had recently been here, painting things on the walls. Why? Well, I didn’t think it could be good, whatever it was. I released the Glimpse and tried to portal back to Courage Point. Nothing happened. I got a sinking feeling as I realized what Wolfram had been painting with his magical paint. He’d warded the area against extradimensional energy. But why? No, that was a question for later.

  “We need to get out of here, Petra,” I said. But before we took two steps, I heard voices in the stairwell. A second later, a girl with strawberry blonde hair in a ponytail stepped into the room.

  “Mr. Corinthos?” she blinked.

  Katrina Grady was the thirteen-year-old daughter of Detective Frank Grady, my primary contact at the Boston Police Department. Just yesterday, Kat had been instrumental in defending this very church against Croatoan’s wights, demonstrating that she’d earned her black belt in karate and sword forms.

  “Kat, we need to leave, this place may not be safe,” I said.

  “The door going upstairs to the church closed behind us,” Kat said.

  “Us?”

  A middle-aged woman stepped into the room. “Katrina, perhaps…” she trailed off upon seeing us.

  “Don’t worry, Senni,” Kat said. “This is Mr. Corinthos. He’s cool. So’s his girlfriend.” Kat walked over and bumped fists with Petra.

  I looked to Senni. She looked familiar. Kat caught me looking. “Senni’s in charge of the youth group here,” she said.

  Ah, that must be why she looked familiar; I’d seen her in the Glimpse earlier. “Nice to meet you,” I said. “But like I said, I don’t think this room is safe. We should get upstairs.”

  “Unfortunately,” Senni said, and something about her voice was familiar, too, but I couldn’t quite place it, “as Katrina said, the door closed behind us. We couldn’t find a way to open it.”

  “Leave that to me,” I said with a grin. I took the stairs two at a time, got to the door, placed my hands against it and tapped my apertus energy.

  Nothing happened.

  Again.

  Nothing.

  Did Wolfram’s wards block my other powers, too? Why would that be the case? Why would he want me stuck down here?

  Unless I was supposed to be stuck down here.

  God dammit, I hate prophecies almost as much as time travel.

  “Okay,” I said to the group. “Time for plan B.”

  “What’s plan B?” Kat asked.

  “Plan B is ‘we need to make a plan B,’” Petra said.

  We went back down the stairs into the chamber with the pylons. “Maybe there’s another way out of this room,” I said.

  Kat pointed at the metal door. “How about through there?”

  “I don’t think—”

  There was a thud, the sound of something heavy hitting a solid metal object. It echoed in the room, and my stomach sank.

  Something was banging against the door leading into the demons’ prison.

  Their chains had broken.

  “What is that?” Kat asked.

  “That, Kat, is the start of a very bad day,” I said. “Okay, we need to find a way out of this room pronto.” I ran to a spot between the pylons and felt around for hidden switches. My Opening powers weren’t working, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t find an exit. I needed to get Kat and the others out of here. If it were just Petra and me in this room, that’d be different. But I couldn’t look Frank Grady in the eye ever again if anything happened to his little girl.

  I spun around and took a step forward—

  —And something caught me right in the solar plexus. I staggered back, nearly doubled over, as I stared at what I’d run into.

  It was a sword. A sword driven point first into a block of red marble.

  Chapter 11

  I rubbed at my chest where the sword’s pommel had caught me, but the pain was already forgotten. “This is the boss’s sword,” I said. “Galahad’s sword.” Hope swelled within me for the first time in forever. How awesome would it be for the sky to open up and Galahad XI walk down from Heaven to open a can of whoop-ass on some demons? I looked up, waiting for some celestial staircase to appear, but all I saw was the concrete ceiling. The pounding came from the door again, louder this time.

  I grabbed the sword with both hands and pulled, but nothing happened. In desperation, I released a pulse of apertus energy into the blade, but it wouldn’t budge. “The sword is not yours to draw, Vincent,” Senni said. Her voice…

  And then her features morphed before my eyes. Her eyes brightened and her crow’s feet disappeared, her hair color shifting from salt-and-pepper to blonde. Senni’s cheekbones rose, and her face thinned out, revealing someone I hadn’t seen since Galahad’s funeral. Someone I thought I’d seen during the evacuation yesterday, but chalked that up to my imagination. “Leslie,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  Galahad’s former secretary, a sorceress tied to the sword I was trying to draw, smiled at me, and then at Kat. For her part, Katrina stared at Leslie, obviously trying to parse the shift in “Senni’s” features. Before I could say anything else, Leslie said, “The sword is not for you, Vincent Corinthos.”

  “Les, the sword’s here. I’m here. Galahad isn’t. Let me draw this so I can fight those things.”

  “Always, you try to interfere with prophecy, Corinthos,” a ragged voice from behind me said.
>
  I jumped and saw Stranger Wolfram stepping from the shadows. Whatever sort of wards he’d laid down in here didn’t impede his ability to travel. “I am not trying to interfere with anything,” I said, walking over to him. “You’re the asshat who’s blocked me from my powers. From where I’m standing, you’re interfering.” I was still pissed off at him for how he’d handled things the other day. Instead of just letting everyone stay safe inside a church he was shielding with a force field, Wolfram had instructed us to evacuate a whole bunch of civilians into a hot zone filled with wights. He’d said some lives “had to be tested,” whatever that meant.

  Wolfram just looked bored as he regarded me. “You have so much potential, Corinthos. You could look through time and see all of humanity’s greatest triumphs and darkest moments; gain understanding and insight that some would do much worse than kill for, and yet you are blind. And now that you have stepped away from the sword, the prophecy is about to be fulfilled.”

  “What are you—” I turned in time to see Katrina Grady, all four feet eleven inches of her, draw the sword from the block of red marble with no resistance.

  “Kat?” I asked, dumbfounded.

  “If you keep the blade,” Leslie said to her, “you will have tremendous responsibilities, Katrina. You will have to face great evils, both supernatural and mundane. You will be charged with doing God’s work, whatever it may entail. It will be a hard life, but I can assure you it will be a rewarding one.”

  “Leslie, she’s just a kid,” I protested. “She doesn’t know what she’s getting into.”

  “Yes, I do, Mr. Corinthos,” Kat said, her eyes never leaving the blade. “It means I have to fight monsters like the ones that tried to invade this church. I’ll have to stop bad guys like Ulysses Pendleton. But I’ll finally be able to do what you do; help the people who need it most. It’s what I’ve always wanted, ever since you saved me that first time.” She looked at Leslie. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  Leslie beamed. “Katrina Grady,” she intoned, “from this day forth, you shall be known as Galahad Twelve.”

  I spun on Wolfram. “You knew about this?”

  “Of course,” he said, sounding mildly offended. “We’re about to witness a very important prophecy come to pass.”

  “She’s just a kid, Wolfram. You need her in some bat shit prophecy, fine, but later. Let her have a childhood, don’t take that away from her.” The demons banged on the door again. Dents formed in the metal.

  Wolfram sighed. “You seem to think that this is my decision. I merely divine what will happen. Fate is who does the weaving.”

  Leslie’s hand fell on my shoulder. “Have faith, Vincent.”

  To my side, Kat was standing, shoulders squared to the door, the sword glowing in her hands.

  I stepped up next to her. “All right, kiddo. Whatever comes through that door, we face it together.”

  “You will not,” Wolfram said, and tendrils of shadow snaked out from around him binding Petra and me, and pulling us to the side of the room.

  I struggled and thrashed. “What the fuck, Tungsten?” I demanded, calling Wolfram by the name Gears had given him.

  Wolfram merely frowned at me. “This is not your prophecy, Vincent Corinthos. You have played a significant part in its build up, but the climax can only be performed by Galahad Twelve.”

  “Twelve demons against one kid?” I hissed at him, lowering my voice so I wouldn’t scare Kat. “That’s bullshit.”

  “You may observe,” Wolfram said. “And that is all.”

  I struggled against the shadows holding me. If I still had telekinesis, it would be a cinch to get out of this. But with all my other powers suppressed, all I could do was watch the dents in the door get bigger, as Katrina Grady stood silently, sword at the ready. To say I was terrified for her was the understatement of the century. And that brought up another question. I was terrified right now. Why wasn’t the Anisa Amulet doing anything? And then I saw another device Wolfram had in his palm. An artifact dampener. My amulet wouldn’t work near it. Son of a bitch, this guy didn’t miss a thing.

  The pounding against the door grew louder and louder. The dents multiplied, and the doors began to part. With a cacophonous squeal, the doors ripped from their hinges and clattered to the ground, the echo reverberating around the empty room.

  The first demon stepped through. Red-skinned and roughly human-sized, its ram horns nearly scraped the ceiling as it entered. The others filed in afterward, an infernal offensive line against a thirteen-year-old girl with a holy sword. While I’d been in the Pit, I’d seen a pretty diverse bunch of demons. Some were slight, some were built like trucks, others were monstrosities. Yet these twelve all seemed to be cut from the same cloth; about six feet tall, monochromatic skin, and ram horns. I wondered if perhaps the demonologist who’d summoned them could only work with this particular demonic archetype.

  I pushed the thought aside as the first demon that had entered the room pointed at Kat. “What is this?” he demanded. “A bitch pup wielding the sword of the bastard?” He laughed. “Oh, my brothers, our time is at hand. If this is all the resistance the Light can offer, then the world is truly ours.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Kat said. And there was steel in her voice that I’d never heard before. Even the demon flinched at it. “I will not let you harm anyone.”

  The demon’s black-toothed grin returned. “Child, you lost the moment you picked up that sword. Perhaps simple mathematics is no longer taught on this realm. There are twelve of us. There is one of you. We are not legion, but we most certainly are many.”

  “You shall not pass,” she said. And damn, if that wisp of a girl didn’t deliver that line even better than Sir Ian McKellen.

  “And how will you stop us?” The demon was clearly enjoying himself. He wasn’t threatened by Kat, this was just a game to him. “We have tormented humans for centuries, we have caused untold death and destruction, and we have poisoned the souls of countless men and women who sought to stop us. Even the Caulborn, your precious paranormal protectors, could not banish us, only bind us. And now those bindings are broken. We are free. Free to roam. Free to corrupt. Free to destroy. I have not had a good meal in nearly two hundred years. Your heart will make a fine appetizer.”

  Kat’s jaw set, and her eyes narrowed. While the demon had been speaking, her head had been cocked to one side, as if listening to a voice only she could hear. She looked the lead demon right in the eyes and asked, “So, you will not go quietly back to the Pit?”

  The laughter that erupted from the demons was painful to my ears. The lead demon wiped a tear from his eye. “I have not laughed that hard in centuries. For that, I will kill you before I eat you.”

  “No,” Kat said, the steel back in her voice. “No. You were summoned to kill innocents, and you failed. You were bound, and you failed to escape. Only when it was foretold did your bindings break, and now, you will meet your end.”

  This didn’t sound like Kat talking. Not entirely, anyway. How did she know all this?

  The demons seemed confused as well. “You speak to us of the prophecy?” The demon asked, incredulous. “The Dodici Prophecy states ‘Twelve shall open the gates to Hell, and all will burn.’” He gestured to his cohorts. “Here we are. And we shall unleash hell on Earth.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Kat said, her voice dropping to a menacing whisper. “You aren’t the twelve the prophecy speaks of. I am.” And with that, Kat spun her sword in a figure-eight pattern causing the holy blade to send ripples of light out to either side of her. Shimmering motes filled the air around her, and the sound of unseen trumpets filled the room. “I am Katrina Grady, Galahad Twelve, and I am here to end you.”

  The motes thickened and coalesced into humanoid shapes. I watched, dumbfounded, as eleven specters materialized
in a line opposite the demons. One of them was a legit knight in shining armor. One was a girl about Katrina’s height. Another was someone I recognized from the one dollar bill. But the figure that was closest to me was the one that held my attention. A man in a priest’s black shirt, sans the white collar, with iron-gray hair and a bit of a mischievous grin on his face. The boss was here.

  And damn, he looked good. He looked healthy and rested—definitely not dead. I couldn’t remember ever seeing Galahad XI without the deep hollows under his eyes, without worry creasing his brow. And now, I could see that he’d found peace. He winked at me, then turned his attention to the demon directly across from him. In unison, each of the Galahads drew a sword identical to the one Kat held and took battle stances.

  “You shall not pass,” Katrina said again, and the others echoed her half a second later.

  The demons suddenly didn’t look as confident as they had a minute ago. They exchanged worried glances with their leader, whose eyes had flared red. “I have not waited for centuries, tethered to this plane in chains, to be stopped by a bunch of ghosts and a brat. Brothers, attack!”

  I’ve seen full-on demonic warfare before. When Croatoan tried to take over the Pit from Hades, he led an army of undead against Hades’s demons, and that was a bloodbath. While this was a much smaller scale, it was no less fearsome. The demons lashed out at the Galahads with their fangs and their talons, and while some of these attacks struck home, they did little damage. If anything, the affected Galahad would shimmer slightly, sometimes becoming blurry in a particularly vicious attack, but always reforming and counterattacking. George Washington severed one demon’s leg while Joan of Arc drove her sword through a demon’s stomach and out the other side. The knight in shining armor, the original Galahad, spun his sword like a pinwheel and neatly decapitated his adversary.