The Grandmaster barked at Sergeant Wells to organise the fire teams. A great rumble sounded, and the pile of reanimating vampires stood as one, ending the time for debate.
Bullets impacted along the row of monsters, throwing the vampires back, limbs flailing as they hit the ground. Up close, the men all bled. The vampires, the First, had marked them all out for death.
For every vampire knocked down, another sprinted forward with bullet speed. Men frantically resighted and took down as many as they could. It continued to pound on the bars of Its cage, lunatic.
Two great hulking shapes blurred into the middle of the formation, throwing men aside like grass. It waited. His black magic was a handbreadth away …
Brude’s voice intruded. ‘Ah wis hoping ah could wait tae show ye this later, fir the trip back oot the Pit …’ Cole glanced down. Just above the torrent of black Murk energy, a pure green thread lay. An untapped line of power, pouring clean energy up into his heart and lungs: his life force.
It moved, wailing, willing him to give up. Instinct took over. He opened a tiny puncture in the fabric of reality, a pinprick, hardly an opening at all, right above his life force. Power trickled into him through that pinprick, feeding It. He leapt high, his gauntlets extending while he fell on the first huge vampire, hammering down through its body with his full weight, puncturing straight through it.
The beast vampire went down under him in a tangle, flashing claws the size of daggers, striking out blindly. He rolled off it as it thrashed, leaping for the second one which had just torn a man’s arms from their sockets. Cole landed on the vampire’s broad, rough-haired back, digging into its flesh with sharp raking punches.
Sergeant Wells ran toward him, ducking to avoid a swinging talon. ‘Catch!’ The ball sailed toward Cole. A grenade. He pulled the pin and lobbed it into the holes made by his gauntlets.
‘Fire in the hole!’ He leapt back. The grenade detonated. The creature’s outer skin held, but its innards fountained out of the hole like a pressurised jet.
‘Aim for the holes!’ Men pumped fire into the first beast Cole had knocked down, now standing, and already knitting back up as bullets began to gouge and track into its exposed innards.
It went down in a roar, another grenade lobbed inside it, bringing it crashing to the ground. The men cried out, a wall of triumphant noise. ‘Armiger!’ Sergeant Wells yelled, and it was echoed along the formation as the men peppered the dozens of remaining beasts with gunfire.
Another beast vampire broke through. Cole leapt again, It squealing in his guts. He spun over the vampire in mid-air, severing its head at the neck. His breath was shallower and laboured already, the green, vibrant thread of his life force already dimming.
Jumping away, he caught a glow from the inside of the downed corpses. Even after a grenade was lobbed into their bodies, or their heads were cut off, the vampires wouldn’t stay down.
The dirge – before now only audible as an echo from the Pit – suddenly rose in a chorus. A soldier covered his ears and dropped his rifle, running full tilt toward the mouth of the Pit. Another man followed, a mage, his face mad with pain and pouring blood.
Cole’s face was suddenly covered in fresh, thick blood, spilling from his eyes, ears and mouth. The men around Cole wiped their faces and cried out. As the men heard the rising voice of the First, they buckled. Cole looked up to the sky and prepared to give it all, wishing Natalia, Nessie, Henry, anyone, was there with him for the end.
*
Natalia spun, avoiding the deadly point of the midnight-black spear held at her throat. It was a scramble to create enough distance not to be impaled. She invoked her spear cantrip and gripped it in two hands, spinning as she turned, adding attack to her defence and driving the Mother back.
Mixcoatl’s due stung with fatigue. Her spear key was suddenly weighty. She couldn’t understand why, but there was no time for the conjecture her mind tumbled through – the madness had to stop. ‘The vampire progenitor, it’s rising from the Pit! It’s not too late; you can stop this! Help Ethan get the Anvil into the Pit.’
‘You lie!’ The Mother snarled as they circled. Around the platform, a ruin of bodies lay on the ledges and steps. Good women, dead and corrupted. A third of the world’s total mages. The fire rekindled.
‘Why did you do this? You were the best we had, the hope for humanity. Why did you bond with the undergods?’
The Mother paced, watching her with unreadable eyes. ‘I still am the hope for humanity, Natalia. It is you who have chosen the wrong side. Who fills your head with lies about the First Vampire?’
Natalia looked down as she thought. Faces, covered with blood, looked up from the floor. The cost of all this recklessness and vanity.
The Mother came toward her, and Natalia was on her feet in an instant, lashing out, attacking hard. The Mother leapt straight up and yelled, ‘Íss!’ The ground hardened into ice, betraying Natalia as she tried to feint around the Mother’s descending spear. Only her fall saved her from being skewered, her feet losing grip before she slid along the floor under the thrust of the midnight spear.
Natalia lay for a moment, then rolled onto her side, lashing up in quick, short jabs to halt the Mother’s inevitable press for advantage. But the Mother just smirked, circling her again.
‘You killed them. You killed these women; they trusted you!’
‘The cause was worth their sacrifice. And whatever you accuse me of, Natalia, I came to this city by my own choice, for my own reasons. The Anvil chose nothing. It is my tool! I use it. I bend it to our cause.’
Natalia danced in, trying to catch the Mother in the offbeat of conversation. The Mother leapt and soared to a ledge, gaining space.
‘The Anvil’s extending a hand into the Pit itself. Where is your siphon? Valeria? She must be able to see it!’
Caution dawned on the Mother’s face. ‘Valeria left. By my decree, to carry out my will. I will have no more lies from you, Natalia Torres.’
Natalia wiped angry tears from her face. ‘What were you doing trusting a siphon? Why would I lie?’
The Mother’s arrogance had blinded her; she had been used. But she deserved no sympathy. She had chosen to bond with darkness, and fallen mages deserved only death.
Natalia stepped from the platform, fighting to keep her rage in check, she stepped over bodies and navigated the bridge. To leap after the Mother would be reckless. It was too easy to impale a dropping target that could not get out of the way.
‘You’re a fucking disgrace. Look at what you’ve caused!’
The Mother snarled. ‘I caused nothing! We were going to save humanity. Cure vampirism. Until you brought the Council down around us. Until you freed the Council’s pet siphon. How dare you judge me, Natalia Torres. You who have been kept in your lovely glass cage and now see fit to throw stones!’
Natalia was close, moving carefully, looking for an opportunity for attack. She reached the Mother and charged. The narrow ledge cut down the Mother’s options. Natalia’s spear crashed into the night shield on the Mother’s arm, shattering. She skidded to a halt, and the haft of the Mother’s night spear cracked her in the skull. Stars exploded as she scrambled back, trying not to fall into the abyss.
The Mother continued as though nothing had happened. ‘I came here to Edinburgh after I discovered the truth about you and your gift, Natalia Torres. You are the reason I’m here.’
She would not have this cataclysm put on her, not even tangentially, by this crazy woman. Natalia shouted, ‘Tepoztopilli.’ Her spear did not appear. She formed the image – the harder form for the key – in her mind, but it was suddenly weighty, heavy to invoke in a way it should never have been, like a higher difficulty spell. But there was no time for thought. She had to have a weapon. She shredded the pain of seeing Millie die, consumed by a fireball, and offered it to Mixcoatl. Her spear shone in her hand, and she jabbed forward, her attack a fraction too slow as the Mother’s feet fell away from her assault.
; ‘You think I care about why you want me? You’re going to stand there and deny the truth that your hubris will destroy the world? Instead of ridding the world of vampires, you will give them their god!’
The ground shuddered, halting Natalia’s press forward. The wall to her left collapsed to slush a few metres away. She couldn’t doubt her magic or the weariness her cantrips suddenly caused. She couldn’t wonder about the Mother’s bonding with more than one Myriad patron, and also with the undergods. She pulled deep, her eagle cantrip rock-heavy, and offered a glimmering shard of her life to her bond god. She soared toward the middle of the chamber, back to the platform where she would be taxed less harshly than the fight on the ledge. She had to kill the Mother, somehow. Deluded or not, she was not innocent.
The Mother landed a moment later a short distance off and sprinted toward Natalia, their spears clashing briefly as the Mother darted past. Natalia spun, ready to repel the night spear. There was a fevered gleam in the Mother’s eye when she spoke.
‘He kept you well hidden from me, but not well enough. Your gift would give you away anywhere.’
Heat flushed Natalia’s face. Nessie had hidden her for fear that more of the cult her parents had died fighting might seek Natalia out. Was the Mother somehow part of that cult? Something in her heart warned her.
‘Why did you use me like this? You lied to me. You told me we would save people. You dragged me into this, made me responsible for their murders. And now, even faced with the truth – that you were raising the First Vampire this whole time, you deny. You lie to yourself, just like you lied to me!’
Natalia pressed an attack. The Mother’s face split into an angry snarl – a sudden change so startling it pushed Natalia back.
‘He used you; he has been using you. The Council used you. Together, we can save the world, Natalia. I am here to show you all you can be, to free you with the truth of who you really are.’
Nessie had looked after Natalia her whole life. He had shown himself a good and true man and a fair mentor. Natalia laughed. ‘And what truth is that? That the Mother has lost her fucking mind?’
Still, tears threatened. She couldn’t find her centre, the accusations unsettling her core.
The Mother tilted her head. ‘You know, somewhere in there. You feel it, don’t you, Natalia?’
She was off balance as she thrust her spear at the Mother. The Mother parried, batting her spear aside and pulling her retaliation strike short of skewering Natalia before dropping her night spear to the floor where it dissolved.
‘I don’t know what you’re on about! Fight me!’ She raised her spear, but something in the Mother’s eyes looked sad. That strange sense they had met before haunted Natalia. There was something so familiar in the Mother’s gestures – in her stance, the set of her shoulders.
The fight ebbed from her arms while her chest drowned in hurt. Roaring filled her ears as a wave of dizziness passed over her.
The Mother just stood, staring, a dim purple light filling her. Natalia stumbled. What was happening?
‘You’re meant to be the best of us; you’re meant to help humanity, not throw it to the vampires. Please, you can still help do what’s right!’
She lowered her spear. It was so heavy. She wanted to stop the fight. She was exhausted and outmatched, but the Mother smiled. Then she realised the Mother was playing with her, casting a spell to drain her will, and Natalia was allowing it.
This woman was in the wrong. Natalia was right. Justice had to be served, for all the tattered bodies around the room. For Millie. For what the Mother’s scheme would cost Natalia still, if she survived to face the Council. Vengeance was required. She had given her word. The Council had not believed her. She would not see them proven right. Punishment had to be met out for the veiled accusations against her mentor – the most decent man she had ever known.
Natalia’s hands suddenly blurred as she shot toward the woman who had betrayed them all. The Mother’s eyes widened, the purple glow dying. Natalia’s spear danced and weaved, whirling, blazing with the sun of Mixcoatl.
The Mother cried out, trying to pull away, but there was nowhere to go. The Mother brought her midnight shield up, trying to catch the sun spear, but wherever she moved to block, a reversal of Natalia’s grip spun the sun spear in a new angle.
Satisfaction and fierce blood lust simmered. The Mother misstepped and the haft of Natalia’s sun spear struck the Mother in the chest, behind the knee and cracked into her skull. The Mother fell to her knees, her hands up to halt Natalia.
‘I am not corrupt, Natalia! I serve the highest powers! Magic is leaving the world; something must be done! There is a war coming; that is what the powers have shown me.’ The Mother was still adamant. Still unapologetic. She would die a fool.
The Mother was talking still, but murder filled Natalia’s veins, blocking everything else out. She raised the spear of blistering light, sharp and lethal. The fight below flared up. She could see it through the floor as though the battleground around the Pit was feet away.
The vampires overrunning. Cole, stranded, the Anvil a hundred metres from the Pit. He stabbed futilely at the air, over and over, trying to use whatever siphon magic it was he thought could save them. He would die. They would all die, and the world would end.
She raised the spear, the Mother crying out, her hands up in a warding gesture. ‘Don’t make the powers choose, Natalia! Please, don’t do it!’
Natalia plunged the spear down toward the Mother’s exposed throat.
*
Cole was lathered in sweat and blood. This wasn’t a fight to be won. It was fast becoming a massacre. The Grandmaster and the few remaining mages threw the heavens at the horde of vampires, as the Coalition’s guns stuttered and died. Knights and mages bled, died or ran, mad, into the mouth of the Pit. Some fled the battle altogether.
In a few moments, it would be over. Sergeant Wells, blank-faced with terror, held a group together, flinging threats at the men and his last grenades into the advancing pack of brutal vampire flesh. Admirable but hopeless. They came on like a wall of tanks.
Cole focused. It squirmed. The green stream of power, his own life energy, dwindled as he drew it up into his gauntlet. He punctured the fabric of reality with enough strength to open a portal, the small black hole spinning. His heart fluttered in his chest. Reaching out to open the exit was so much easier than creating an entrance.
He aimed for the Pit mouth; the universe blinked. He stood with the Anvil, a hundred metres away from the Pit mouth, the voice of the First lashing his eardrums like nailed whips. Pain radiated down his left side. His lungs heaved, a crushing weight on his chest. He was alone, and he had failed, unable to extend the portal far enough to reach the Pit. The rope from the Anvil into the Pit blazed. The god was climbing.
A beast vampire crested the Pit, found Cole and blurred forward. In Cole’s weakened mind-prison, his parasite hammered. He ignored the blinding pain in his chest and the spike of boiling adrenaline caused by the rushing vampire; he clung to the prison walls, blocking anger, hurt and defeat out. It would die, trapped inside him. He owed that much to the city, at least.
The vampire closed, a battering ram of death. The air above him was split by a jabbering, frothing choir of voices, passing low overhead. Screams of agony and mourning cries flooded the field of battle. The few men remaining looked up, some firing wildly into the night sky.
Raw vampire, a huge, boiling mass of it, spun through the sky. Cracks in reality shattered in its wake, plainly visible to Cole. It was the ghost of all the vampires fed to the Anvil, and it drank the panic and fear of the men on the ground, adding their grief to its tortured notes as it whirled across the open ground.
At the ghost vampire’s centre sat a black, spinning mass, surrounded by a corona of burned-green misery. It passed overhead again, circling Cole like a vulture. The beast vampire closed the last few yards and leapt, its chest already open, its soul exposed.
The vampire-ghost p
lunged downward. Cole fell down more than dived; the ground was freshness in a world of shit. His parasite made a final bid for control, trying to siphon from the power-thick air, but he clung on to his mind-prison.
Strange peace filled him as the beast vampire came down, its limbs ready to mangle him while he was drunk to nothing by its soul. The ghost vampire sailed straight over his body and struck the beast vampire mid-leap, tearing the soul right from its chest.
The ghost vampire shot past Cole, into the Anvil, and ricocheted away. The tank-sized mass of the beast vampire vanished; simply gone. The vampire-ghost howled as it spun into the night above, a hell-full of grief.
Cole lay on the ground. He didn’t have enough life left to get the Anvil into the Pit. It was over. Brude thumped the inside of his skull. ‘They’re coming, more vampires, ye useless bawbag! Hurry up and dae something!’
Wells was suddenly above him and dragged him to his feet. ‘Armiger, sir!’ The sergeant’s group, not more than eight strong, formed a ring around them. A vampire fell among the knights, ripping armour and bodies with rakes of its dreadful claws.
Cole stood on a field of gore and prepared to feed the last of his life energy into his fist-knives, in defence of the knights who had come to help him. The vampire-ghost flew away, circling high above the battlefield. The ghost vampire was its own tear in reality. It was huge, much bigger than the tears he could produce.
If he could catch it, could he use it to move the Anvil? It moved too fast to catch, but he had a way to get it to come to him. He leapt forward, gauntlets sheathing his wrists. Brude sounded loud in his mind. ‘Ah no, yer no thinking … That’s mental!’ Cole landed in front of the minibus-sized vampire. ‘This isny brave, this is just stupit!’
The beast vampire swiped at him. The swipes should have halved him, but he matched the vampire’s speed, blurring into a roll and coming up at its heel. Pain rippled, blooming in his chest, a flower of impending death.
He fought not to topple from the pain, his gauntlets slicing neatly into the vampire’s tendons. The vampire collapsed forward. Cole scaled it, pulling himself up its side, onto its torso and its exposed chest.
The Cost of Magic (The Ethan Cole Series Book 1) Page 33
