“I expect I’ll be in the middle of a fight,” the witch said dryly. “I’m sure they won’t have trouble finding me once the fireworks start.”
Dix eyed the three of them. “You all are going to stop a battle between gods. How exactly do you think you’re going to manage that?”
“Any way we can,” Ray muttered.
Logan just shrugged as if the question didn’t bear consideration. Maybe it didn’t. Ray had no idea how they were going to do stop this battle from happening, but he damned well meant to do it.
“Where are the bodies?” he asked Dix.
She jerked her chin toward her shoulder. “They’re in a circle on the top of the big mound.”
“Who found them?”
“Uniforms. Once the canvassing began in the area, people started figuring out a bunch of the women and children were missing, front doors left open like they’d walked out on their own. By the time our guys tracked them here, it was over.” Her nostrils flared as she sucked in a tight breath. “Killers worked fast. Couldn’t have had more than a couple hours max to kill everybody.”
Even with people standing still to be slaughtered, Ray had a hard time picturing one or even two people getting it all done in that time frame. Hearts, eyes, fingers, and toes. Though he suspected the Tahuizotls had eaten the missing parts, all but the hearts. Angie hadn’t mentioned they liked those. He shook his head, trying to wrap his brain around the level of carnage. He’d seen that sort of thing a couple times during the war. But not this bad, and not since. He’d thought those days were long behind him.
“All right. We’d better go in.”
Dix went to her squad car and popped the trunk. She pulled an earpiece from within and turned to handed it to Logan. She held out her hand to give one to Ray and Raven.
The witch shook her head. “No thanks.”
Dix shrugged and held one out to Ray. He took it.
“No point,” Raven told him. “You’ll burn it up soon as you start using magic.”
He handed it back to Dix who eyed him with a mix of disgust and hate.
“All this time—” She broke off and looked at Logan. “You knew?”
“Sorry,” Logan drawled, as he finished inserting his earpiece and tapped it to activate. “I don’t have any fucks to give right now.”
Her lips compressed into a white line, and her eyes narrowed to slits, but Dix said nothing more. Not that she wouldn’t have things to say later. If there was a later.
Ray fished a tactical vest out of the trunk. Squad cars were always kept fully stocked. He added a dozen magazines for his .45 and then grabbed one of the shotguns. A dozen shells already filled the loops on the front of his vest. Also attached to the vest were four flash bombs and four tear-gas canisters. He didn’t know if any human weapons would work on gods, but he was willing to use whatever he had.
“Let’s go,” he said when he was ready, and then headed into the rot zone.
It was slow going. Though the ground appeared fairly level, the mold and fungus hid a rocky, uneven terrain. Ray set his feet carefully, trying not to slip on the slick rocks hidden under the foul rot or step off into a hole.
The entire area smelled like dead bodies and a garbage dump on a hot day. Breathing through his mouth only made Ray taste it. Spitting did nothing to clear it.
Some of the stuff grew in wet, turgid clumps, while other molds grew in feathery gray swells, like cotton candy made from spider webs. Clouds of it grew in odd-shaped towers, bobbing and weaving on the breeze, parts of the puffs collapsing into themselves, leaving black holes in the rotting mantle like mouths.
Logan slipped and fell to one knee, swearing in a low voice as he caught himself on one hand, sinking elbow deep into the sludge. He flung himself upright, and little splots of crud flew through the air, landing with soft plops.
Ray glanced at him to be sure he was all right, and then kept moving.
“Better stop,” Raven said after they’d gone about fifty feet.
Ray and Logan instantly obeyed.
“What’s the matter?” Ray asked.
She came up beside him. “I’m not sure, but that looks like it’s moving.” She pointed to an area just ahead that looked exactly like the rest of the godforsaken terrain, but as Ray concentrated, he realized she was right. The ground undulated slowly.
“What the fuck?”
“Water, maybe,” the witch said. “There used to be a lot of catch basins and trenches. Could have filled up and been grown over.”
Before Ray could respond, a noise pierced the air. It knifed through his head and his gut and drove needles through the marrow of his bones. He clasped his hands over his ears, but it didn’t help.
He wasn’t the only one. Raven’s and Logan’s faces were scrunched tight against the onslaught, even as they also covered their ears.
Abruptly the sound dropped below hearing, but now it scraped against his bones like nails on a blackboard. He shuddered.
“What’s that?”
A roar sounded. A bellow of rage and challenge echoing up to the stars. That sound he recognized.
“That’s Kayla,” he said, jerking forward.
Logan caught his arm even as the roar was answered by another gut-chilling scream. A second one joined it. Ray wrenched to free himself, straining forward. The battle was beginning. He had to get to Kayla. Now.
“Take it slow,” Logan commanded. “We’re no good to her with busted legs.”
Ray twisted free, snarling, but he made himself take careful, deliberate steps. He wished for a stick or something to test the ground with.
“Can’t one of you give us a path?” he demanded.
Raven and Logan exchanged a look.
“If we do, it will warn them we’re coming,” Logan said.
“Won’t matter if we don’t get our asses up there to help Kayla fight. If they pick her off, we’re not going to be able to do much until backup comes, and who knows when they’ll show up?”
He spoke as if the thought of someone picking Kayla off didn’t shove a knife into his gut.
“True enough.”
“Me or you?” Raven asked Logan.
“I’ll do it.”
Logan didn’t use anything like finesse. Orange ropes of electric magic flew from his fingers. He swept them in front of him, burning away the mold and sludge. Oily acrid smoke billowed up and engulfed them. Ray pulled his shirt up over his nose and mouth, his eyes watering. A dull keening sound reverberated through the sludge all around, making his joints ache.
The flames died revealing a thirty-yard strip of scorched earth. Ray didn’t wait, he jogged down it, carefully avoiding piles of bones that seemed almost artistically arranged in little cairn towers.
Smoke made it difficult to see. He stopped when he reached the end of the strip, looking back impatiently for Logan who repeated his performance.
They were forced to twice go around murky ponds. The thick oily water moved as if something beneath had been disturbed.
The Mound loomed ahead, a broad, squat hill, steep sided and surrounded by ghostly trees with pale trunks and gray leaves that rustled with a sandpapery sound. The dry noise mixed with the ongoing keening sound in a discordant harmony. What worried Ray was the lack of noise from The Mound since the initial roar and shrieks.
As they approached, Ray caught a glimpse of movement among the trees. Tall shadows stretched too thin walked between the trunks. They didn’t appear to have any facial features. Their long, spidery fingers brushed the ground.
“What are they?” Logan asked Raven.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Can we fight them?” He’d no intention of letting these things keep him from getting to Kayla.
“Why do you th
ink we need to?” Scorn dripped from Raven’s words. “Magical creatures are not inherently evil, any more than humans are. We must talk to them.”
“We don’t have time.” It irritated Ray that he had made that quick judgement about the creatures. Whatever they were, they were also citizens of his city. A city he’d taken an oath to serve. They deserved the same consideration and respect of any human.
“We’ll have to make time,” Raven replied tartly.
She paused on the path as more of the beings appeared. They stood inside the tree line, ominous specters in the gloom.
“No time like the present,” Logan said.
He fell in beside Ray as they approached the trees. Raven stepped up beside him on the other side.
Ray felt like a powder keg about to blow sky high. Magic ran over his skin like electricity, standing every hair on end. It boiled inside him, the pressure rising. He had no way to ease it and no real desire to. He wanted it to build so he’d be able to release it like a missile. Maybe he could be of some actual use. But if he didn’t do something to let the pressure off soon, he was going to split apart at the seams. Literally.
They came to a halt just beyond the tree line. Up close and personal, the tree creatures appeared no more solid than the shadows they had seemed to be from a distance. Their heads were shaped like the top of a bowling pin, and the rest were taffy-shadows pulled long.
“You bring war,” one of them said, and Ray detected a faint movement, as if of a mouth.
“We’re hoping to stop one, actually,” he said. “We need to pass through.”
“Death,” another of the ghost-tree dwellers said, and an involuntary shudder ran down Ray’s spine. The word thrust inside him, ice filling his body and shriveling his dick.
Logan shifted and Raven shivered. Apparently Ray wasn’t the only one getting a cold burst.
He didn’t know how to respond to the one word. Was it a question? An accusation? Maybe a warning?
“Troubling,” said the first voice, and the leaves of the surrounding trees rustled louder as if in agreement.
“We need to go find out what’s happening,” Ray said, pointing to The Mound.
“Wounds,” the first voice said and up and down the tree line, arms lifted like shadowy claws, pointing behind the three visitors.
Ray looked back at the path Logan had burned through the mold and sludge. The dull keening that had started up when Logan first began continued, setting his teeth on edge. He took a breath and faced back around. This time he was pretty sure the word was an accusation. Maybe condemnation. But it was done and no way to fix it.
In the meantime, the silence on The Mound shattered. Snarls erupted, and then the frenzied sounds of enraged fighting.
Reason jettisoned out the window. Battle mode took over.
Ray plunged through the ghostly beings and trees. He was aware of surprise when the tree creatures proved to be solid. They didn’t try to stop him. He knocked through them, slipping and sliding on the thick mold as he scrambled up the steep sides of The Mound. Somewhere a road spiraled up to the top, though he couldn’t have said where. It had been the access during the burials.
He plunged his hands under the sludge looking for handholds as he made the climb. He pushed magic down to his hands and it burned through the mold, helping him to scale upward more quickly, but even so, the going was far too slow.
Screeches and snarls and growls poured over the edge of The Mound, punctuated by small pauses of quiet broken only by the rasps of breathing.
Ray had nearly reached the top when he encountered the ring of corpses. The bodies lay on their backs, legs hanging over the edge. Each person was barefoot, a meaty gash where their toes had been.
The coppery scent of blood overrode the stench of the mold. Ray’s gorge rose. The fence of legs circled the top of The Mound in what had to be some perverted sort of spell circle.
He clawed up between a middle-aged woman and a boy maybe twelve years old. Rigor hadn’t yet set in. Both stared upward, faces twisted in a rictus of pain and horror, minus their eyes. Their hands had been flung wide, the fingers also gone. Their chests had been sliced open from throat to pubis, their ribs ripped wide, their hearts torn free. Similarly, mutilated bodies lay as far as Ray could see in either direction.
He had only an instant to notice any of this. His attention was yanked to the center of The Mound where Kayla faced off against the three Tahuizotls, each the size of a Shetland pony. Behind her stood a pyramid made of stair-stepped retaining-wall stones, the top point constructed from what appeared to be sheets of beaten gold or brass. A ten-foot-by-ten-foot opening on the side provided the only entrance or window. Just within, Ray caught a glimpse of a woman.
Further out toward the middle of The Mound, a giant of a man crouched. He had to be near seven feet tall with long blond hair, some of it braided with beads. His beard was likewise long and braided. He knelt inside an intricate pebble pattern that had been laid out on a cleared space. The lines appeared to be made of obsidian, with crushed white stone in between. The shapes were a mix of jagged and curved. Eight pieces of two-foot-high obsidian stood at equal intervals around the pattern, flames burning blue on top.
In the center of the pattern, the man kneeled beside a glowing hole that bubbled with what appeared to be lava. He held a long stick of some kind in his hands and was chanting. What startled Ray was the woman just outside of the pattern. She wore dirt-stained witch robes with her brown hair caught up behind her head in a draggled bun. Her eyes were closed, and her mouth moved as she held her hands out before her. A flickering barrier of lavender circled away from her to seal itself in a dome protecting the chanting man.
She appeared to be in her early twenties, yet Ray was certain she had to be Theresa Runyon. But why would she be protecting the giant?
A flash of red smashed into the barrier, sending angry ripples through the lavender walls and exploding the ground just outside. Theresa Runyon staggered back a step, then straightened and seemed to pour more energy into the magic shield. Her hands shook with the effort.
More flashes. The source was two massive creatures on the opposite side of the dome. Their size would have put The Hulk to shame. Even the giant man in the middle of the pattern looked like a mere toddler next to them.
They must have stood twenty feet tall, their beefy shoulders rolling with muscle. Their hands were the size of dinner platters, each finger oddly squared off. Their faces were round and thick. Black mohawks sprouted from the middle of their otherwise bald heads, ending in thick tails that hung to their thighs, both decorated with bright feathers and bone beads. One wore two heavy gold earrings, the other had one. Both wore loincloths, arm bands, bracelets, and anklets. Ritual scars covered their chests and legs, appearing white against the elephant-gray skin, except where blood had dried dark red.
Most unsettling of all were their eyes. They glowed red, like the inside of a blast furnace. One of them turned and said something to the three Tahuizotls in a guttural, harsh language Ray didn’t understand. Instantly the animals leaped at Kayla.
Ray’s focus narrowed to them, their shining teeth, the poison that could kill Kayla in seconds if the dust in her blood had been activated.
Sound died. All he could hear was his own desperate breathing. He thrust out his hands. Slow. Too slow. Every move felt as if he were running into a hard wind. He shoved every ounce of magic his body held into his hands—raw, blistering, wild. The bolt launched like a comet, streaking across The Mound and smashing into the head of the third beast and the hindquarters of the second.
They both went flying. The first one crunched into the pyramid and dropped to the ground in a broken heap. The other spun in the air like a frisbee, then crashed to the ground. It lay still a moment, then rolled over and stood, shaking itself before launching again at Kayla, just behin
d the last of the three.
Her scales had lifted into razor petals. Her tail lashed as she batted aside the first Tahuizotl. It hit the ground and sprang back. She reared up on her hind legs and grabbed it in her claws, flattening it to the ground. She held it there, head raised as she searched for the other two.
The second one grappled her neck with its hand-like claws, then fell away, yelping. She shook herself, her crystalline eyes flashing brilliantly.
One of the hulks heard the wounded cry of the second beast and turned. It flung out a hand. A streamer of red magic rolled from his hand.
Ray heard himself yell a warning. He pulled up all the magic inside him. It wasn’t enough. He reached for more. It came in a geyser, pouring into him from everywhere and nowhere. He released it at the massive attacker, unaware of the heat blackening his clothing and searing his skin. He heard sounds vaguely, as if from very far away, or deep underwater. He saw his attack strike the colossal horror.
It moved faster than something its size should have been able to. It swung its arm and directed its attack at Ray. Their two magics collided.
The world exploded.
Chapter 23
Kayla
MAGIC SLAMMED RAY. His body arced high in the air before plunging over the side of The Mound.
Kayla’s brain went white.
She’d come to this place, driven by a protective instinct that overwhelmed everything else. She’d hardly known when she transformed or how she got to The Mound.
She’d arrived in time to see the two goliaths finishing their blood ceremony. They’d stood on either side of a pile of warm human hearts, chanting guttural words in a language she didn’t recognize. A cloud of red rolled up out of nowhere, enveloping them and the hearts. It flared and then vanished along with the hearts. Only now, the two giant creatures’ eyes had begun to glow blood-red.
They still hadn’t noticed her, but they turned toward an intricate pattern of stones where a blond man knelt. He was big, but more NBA to their Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum. He held a long object over a pool of molten rock and chanted, though Kayla couldn’t make out what he said.
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