Maybe, like many lonely wives, they were disappointed in Mordred’s ten-second-long performance.
My attention was solely on Mordred, because Yahn had just performed the first experiment of the night, delivering a fatal killing blow to Mordred. Now, we watched for the result. I gripped my spear tightly as I saw Mordred’s form shiver involuntarily. He took a desperate gasp of air, despite his supposedly ruined throat, and slowly climbed to his feet, shaking his head drunkenly.
The crowd gasped in disbelief, turning to each other for answers.
I ignored them as I noticed waves of power pulsing around my foe, but judging by their erratic nature, I didn’t think it was intentional on Mordred’s part. It looked kind of like when it was unbelievably hot outside and you stared out over a patch of concrete at a distant object – faintly able to see visual distortions from the heat radiating off the pavement, but not able to actually see those heat waves – just their distorting effect.
He touched his throat instinctively, feeling it twitching and quivering as it began to heal itself beneath his fingertips. Then his eyes took stock of the power waves coming off him, and he looked… mildly alarmed.
He looked up abruptly, eyes locking on Yahn with hatred, and took a determined step.
Then he grunted before he could take a second step, his body stiffening like a board.
The waves of power around him whipped about like a tortured octopus, and his eyes winced with fresh pain and horror. I was practically dancing on my feet, not necessarily with eagerness, but anticipation and hope that something very strange was happening. Mordred reached out a hand, clawing at the air.
And that’s when I saw it. The waves of heat were darkening, coalescing to form a humanoid shape outside his body. And like Mordred, it was screaming silently, reaching out a clawed hand towards Mordred’s outstretched fingers.
I squinted in disbelief. It looked… like that famous painting where God was lounging on a cloud, reaching out to touch fingers with Adam.
Mordred had just had his Adam’s apple crushed…
And was now unknowingly mimicking Michelangelo’s famous painting, The Creation of Adam.
I laughed at the irony, leaning on my Devourer for support. My laughter might have also been fueled by relief – witnessing proof to my theory. Mordred had entered this ring with Nine Souls from Hell and his own personal soul – for a total of Ten Souls we needed to face down. And my hypothesis was that killing Mordred would force one of his souls from his body, but leave the man behind. From Ten Souls down to Nine – Eight Souls from Hell, and his own personal soul.
Gunnar grumbled as he stepped up beside me. “Is it working?” he growled.
Alucard and Talon stepped up on my other side, watching with blank looks on their faces. Alucard didn’t take off his sunglasses or anything, so he mustn’t have been that blown away.
Yahn made his way over, clutching his stump with his other hand. Glass shards seemed to be dripping from his shattered fist like blood. But the look on his glass face told me he didn’t want to talk about it, just to witness what he had bought with that pain – Mordred’s suffering.
I nodded slowly, turning to Gunnar. “I think it’s working. Here’s the moment of truth…” I said, loud enough for only them to hear me. Mordred was too busy snarling and gasping to overhear us, but I didn’t want the audience to catch on yet. That tonight – for the first time in Fight Club history – someone could actually lose more than their dignity.
Since Mordred was cheating, sharing his body with Nine Souls, it was kind of putting a kerfuffle in the natural order of this strange realm – the Dueling Grounds ability to send souls back home with a body.
The cosmic judges were going to have to dust off their robes and take a vote, unable to rely on the system they had set in place long ago. If the nine remaining souls in a body were fighting to keep the body here…
What happened to the killed soul? Where could it go? It couldn’t go back to Mordred’s bed, since… you know, Mordred wasn’t in his bed. Mordred was stuck here, held hostage by his other nine souls. And nine were stronger than one.
At the Dueling Grounds, Mordred’s greatest strength might just become his greatest weakness.
We watched the struggle in awe, and I felt my stomach grumble as I caught a whiff of street food from one of the concessions stands. “I really wish I had grabbed one of those hot dogs,” I murmured. “I have a feeling this is going to be a long night.”
“Or a very short one,” Gunnar growled. I wasn’t sure if he was implying we were about to pay dearly for what we had done to Mordred, or if he was making some inner promise that he was going to drag out Mordred’s torment for as long as possible.
“Sunflower seed?” Alucard asked, holding out a bag. Gunnar snorted disapprovingly.
Mordred was on his knees now, reaching out at the departing soul, but it had stretched longer as if being forcefully pulled away from him. I was about to extend my hand for some seeds when my spear began to quiver. I clenched it with both hands, frowning at it. It must have sensed the strain of Mordred’s torment, and wanted to take the soul for itself. It was called a Souleater, after all. I gripped the haft harder, fighting it for a moment before it calmed. I hadn’t even considered my Devourer getting frisky. I let out an uneasy breath.
Yahn was smiling darkly at Mordred, unaware anything had happened with my spear, but Talon, Gunnar, and Alucard, had noticed, and were each frowning at it. They looked away as soon as my forearms had relaxed, certain my struggle was over. Alucard shook a few seeds into my hand, and I popped them in my mouth.
With a crack of power like a distant sniper round, Mordred abruptly collapsed, caught at the last minute by his outstretched arms, leaving him panting on all fours, and we watched as the dark soul was yanked into the very ground, silently screaming and clawing the whole way.
Alucard pointed at Mordred with his bag of sunflower seeds. “Look, Gunnar. A bitch in heat. Go nail it.”
Gunnar grinned, his fangs glistening. “Looks like that’s my cue, lads,” he growled, stalking towards Mordred with his claws out like a roman-Greco wrestling werewolf.
I rolled my shoulders, spit out the shells of my seeds, and tightened my grip on my Devourer. Maybe I wouldn’t even need it tonight. We just had to kill Mordred nine more times. Maybe I wouldn’t even need the coin hanging against my chest. But as Mordred slowly lifted his head, bloodshot eyes locking on Gunnar…
I wondered if I had chosen enough allies. Because he looked ready to burn the world down. As if he had just spotted Arthur, Merlin, and Morgause laughing at a tea-party on a pleasant summer day.
“Yeah, Gunnar’s going to need some help,” Yahn said in a growl, shaking glass shards from his stump. Talon’s fist tightened on his Eyeless, his eyes briefly darting to my Devourer and then back again uneasily. He had spear envy. I hoped I could fix that, because he just might need a Devourer himself if we couldn’t finish this off tonight.
We fanned out behind Gunnar, our faces grimdark.
“Let’s steal this bully’s lunch money,” I said in a low, sadistic tone.
Chapter 48
Mordred spread his hand in an arc before us, and a fan of ethereal swords suddenly floated before him. I rolled my spear over my knuckles, and shoved it into the holster behind my back, letting the blade peep over my shoulder, bathing me in brighter, red, smoking light the closer I got to Mordred – like a homing beacon.
No one had noticed the holster before, because it had been covered by my satchel, looking like part of the strap. Talon grunted. “Mine can disappear,” he bragged under his breath.
I ignored him and called out my fire and ice whips just as Mordred began flinging swords at our faces. Yahn exploded into dragon form, darting ahead of Gunnar and slamming his glass wing into the earth like a barricade, protecting us from the onslaught. Glass shards still dribbled from his other stump, like fresh droplets of blood, and I knew he didn’t have very long.
The inb
ound swords slammed into his wings, sending fissures cracking over the membrane.
I drew deeply on my own magic, funneling most of my power into my fire whip. It began to bloat, spitting droplets of liquid fire from the figurative seams, and I slammed it into the ground beside Yahn, creating a small puddle of liquid fire and an explosion of fiery, liquid sparks.
Talon hissed, batting away the embers, but Alucard merely brushed aside the fire, grunting, looking more upset that he’d been forced to drop his bag of sunflower seeds.
Yahn ignored the droplets of fire sizzling against his glass skin and met my eyes with a questioning look. I held up my fist and mimed punching the ground. He stared down at the puddle of lava, the concept finally dawning on him. He stump-punched the molten fire, hissing and shaking at the… heh, magma-tude of pain it no doubt caused him. But the glass wound flared orange and then yellow, cauterizing the stump.
Pain didn’t matter tonight. Only victory.
Yahn wilted slightly, snorting through his nostrils, and glancing through his wing – which was translucent, of course. In the confusion, Mordred had disappeared.
Gunnar let out a shout to Yahn that I didn’t understand, but Yahn apparently did. He instantly made himself opaque to conceal our own movements, and stretched out his other wing on the ground like a long ramp.
Gunnar was already sprinting at him, jumping onto the glass wing in a crouch. The moment he landed, Yahn catapulted the MANIMAL high up into the air. Way too high. Crap. Gunnar belted out the most stereotypical howl I’d heard in a long time, the sound causing the hair on my arms to rise up. It was more like a song than a warning bellow. Maybe he was also upset about Yahn throwing him too high.
Mordred suddenly appeared, rising up in mid-air to catch Gunnar by surprise from below.
Which was when Alucard screamed like a banshee, a blur of crimson-soaked robes and wings of fire, to tackle Mordred mid-air, his flaming claws tearing right through Mordred’s chest. I knew this because Mordred had twisted at the last moment, giving me an unobstructed view of his back.
Which let me clearly see Alucard’s flaming claws holding a sizzling hunk of meat the size of a heart, the organ still pumping blood that sizzled and baked over Alucard’s flaming knuckles. Alucard had already kicked Mordred’s body away in mid-air, still clutching his charred heart as a soul erupted from the wound like he’d been served an eviction notice, slamming into the ground like a comet. The soul spread its jaws wide, fangs as long as Gunnar’s as something began pulling it by the feet into the ground. This soul was fighting back, tearing divots in the ground as it fought the Dueling Grounds, but it was losing – only managing to slow down the inevitable.
All of this had only taken a few seconds, at most. I shouted at the top of my lungs, not daring to turn away from Mordred, but still needing to update the crowd. “FOR THE VAMPIRES!”
Mordred’s wound sealed almost instantly – much quicker than his throat had – and Mordred gasped as if given CPR after nearly drowning, back on his feet in an instant, even if his eyes were a little wide around the edges from shock, watching the soul being dragged down to Hell.
Mordred was shaken. He was down to Eight Souls.
No slow, drawn out healing and recovery process this time. Almost as if his Eight remaining Souls had held a meeting and decided that they needed to flex and get this fight over with immediately, rather than suffer the same fates as Brothers Nine and Ten.
I agreed with their plan.
I flung out my icy whip to snag Mordred by the throat, hoping to decapitate him – when my body suddenly jerked to the side, making me stumble and cast my whip wide, cracking the tip right in front of Mordred’s face to send an explosion of icy shrapnel into his eyeballs rather than beheading him.
My body shook back and forth, and I noticed the red smoke around me was thicker and denser, the pulsing red light brighter. My Devourer. It was trying to gobble up the soul being yanked down to Hell – only the head and claws visible now.
I reached back and gripped the haft, fighting it. The spear stopped the moment the soul disappeared in the earth. But I could sense it practically humming, now.
Maybe taking the Devourer along had been a bad idea. I’d missed the opportunity to kill Mordred for a third time tonight, damn it.
And the sound of twin gasps let me witness what that only-seconds delay had cost me.
Mordred was wielding twin beams of black power like sonic blasters, and they had connected with Yahn and Alucard, narrowly missing Talon, who I saw had singed his back in his effort to escape the blast.
His fur smoldered, but he ignored the pain, eyes latching onto Mordred.
Yahn’s wing had been held up to block the attack, but those black cords – whatever they were – had ripped right through the glass membrane, ripping straight through his heart.
Alucard’s face was slack, staring with lifeless eyes at the arm-thick bar of blackness piercing his own chest. Mordred had gotten a two-for-one, taking out both Yahn and Alucard.
But Mordred had forgotten about the MANIMAL and gravity.
Gunnar – still falling after Yahn’s excessive alley-oop – hammered down into Mordred from above, his massive, lethal jaws closing over Mordred’s cranium like a bear trap. The cords of power between Mordred’s hands and both Alucard and Yahn’s hearts winked out the moment the Alpha Werewolf of St. Louis…
Bit.
Off.
Mordred’s.
Head.
Yahn and Alucard collapsed into piles of dust that instantly evaporated to nothing, and I let out a sigh of relief to see proof that the Dueling Grounds was still working – they my friends were alive, back in bed. Mordred hadn’t found a way to permanently end them, no matter how strong that magic had been.
Gunnar’s momentum sent him rolling away from the twitching carcass of King Arthur’s cursed seed. And in that chaotic moment, I learned something about my pal, Gunnar. Something I had never wanted to learn about my best friend.
He was, surprisingly, a swallower, not a spitter.
This felt like one of those complicated moments where a person was forced to make an impossible decision.
I might be obligated to tell Ashley, as a good friend, what her husband got into when she wasn’t around…
While I considered that moral dilemma, I shouted out to the crowd. “FOR THE WEREWOLVES!”
The soul flew from Mordred’s body right before Mordred’s head suddenly reappeared as if by magic. Mordred was already back on his feet as if he’d only taken an annoyed slap at a dinner party. Gunnar licked his lips and charged as the departed Soul Number Three slammed into the earth as if drawn by a magnet.
I had been ready this time, so was already gripping my Devourer with both hands when it began to rattle.
Mordred met Gunnar with bolts of silver lightning like he had a thunderbolt Uzi, but Gunnar’s vest had been designed for that, thankfully. Still, he attempted to dodge the majority of them, crouching low and bounding back and forth as he ran.
Talon, using the tactics known to wolves fighting in packs, was already running as fast as he could towards Mordred’s exposed back, but he was too far away to really help. His pounding paws didn’t even elicit a whisper, thanks to his velvet boots, but the roars from the crowd would have drowned them out even if he’d been tap-dancing.
I threw down a Gateway about ten feet in front of Talon, ripping a dozen additional openings around the clearing within Mordred’s immediate line of sight, making him momentarily cease his onslaught against Gunnar. The werewolf kept on running, pouring on the speed, his protective armor nothing but shredded cloth, now.
Mordred’s eyes darted from Gateway to Gateway, and I was sure to make the first one reflective, so that the others showed mirror images of Talon sprinting at him from a dozen different doorways.
Talon was only a pace away from leaping through and tearing into the one Gateway I had placed just out of sight behind Mordred’s back, when Mordred spun towards me in t
ime to see my whips rushing his direction, only halfway there as he was surrounded by over a dozen different attack fronts to consider.
I’d expected him to Shadow Walk to safety, but he just locked eyes with me.
Without even looking, he flung a hand towards Gunnar – who had just launched himself in the air for another fatal attack – and a whip of silvery black chain slammed into Gunnar and wrapped around his torso.
Then Mordred heaved the werewolf at me, crouching down low at the immense effort of hurtling such a large creature so fast and hard.
As a result, Talon ended up sailing right over Mordred’s crouched form, his white Eyeless spear whipping through empty air where Mordred’s head had been.
I extinguished my whip and flung up my arms to deflect Gunnar’s mass from killing me, because his claws were still outstretched, and friendly slicing was a very likely outcome. At least I could deflect the lethality, if not the force.
I heard a clanging of blades, but all I could see was a giant fucking werewolf filling my line of sight. That’s why I noticed the chain suddenly tightening around Gunnar’s waist, making my best friend’s eye bulge as the lasso ripped him in half.
The upper half of my best friend hit me at an angle, sending me spinning rather than crushed beneath the weight, thanks to Mordred’s final jerk of the chain. Gunnar blinked up at me, looking like one of those realistic taxidermy wolves, his lower half simply missing somewhere behind me. Then he evaporated.
I spun at a horrific yowling noise to see Mordred slam Talon into the ground, ignoring a stab wound in his side, obviously not fatal enough to kill him and take out one of his souls. Talon’s Eyeless spear tumbled a few paces away, but Talon didn’t even hesitate, immediately pouncing back up onto Mordred, tackling him to the ground. Then my kitty began slicing and yowling, snapping his teeth like Mordred had attempted to toss him into a bathtub.
Blood flew with the tenacity of Talon’s claws.
I began racing towards them, readying my whips for any opening. They scorched and froze the earth at my feet, hungry for destruction. And the Devourer at my back was vibrating enough to almost rattle my teeth, now, no longer needing a fleeing soul to feel agitated. I ignored it as best I could and put everything I had into my sprint. If I could give Talon a distraction, he might just be able to kill one of Mordred’s Seven remaining Souls.
Horseman: A Nate Temple Supernatural Thriller Book 10 (The Temple Chronicles) Page 28
