by James Hunter
Unless that happened, Ryder would be the first one to go.
And, unfortunately, that fight didn’t seem to be going nearly so well.
Siphonei wasn’t rolling over and taking it, but the towering homunculus was one mean-ass son of a bitch. Watching that thing was a lot like watching a bigger, badder version of Levi. The creature reminded her a helluva lot of Levi, actually. The two didn’t share much by way of physical resemblance, but it was in the way the thing moved and fought. The homunculus was more sinuous and graceful than Levi, but he moved with the same confidence and purpose, each blow brutal, economical, and precise.
Even more surprising, he shifted, just like Levi. One minute he would lash out with clawed hands and the next one his fist would be a wrecking ball smashing into Siphonei’s leafy body. Uncanny. It was like Levi was the first generation and this freak was the new and improved version.
Siphonei wasn’t ready to give up the ghost, though.
Her tendrils covered damn-near every inch of Cain’s body; the black flowers chewed at his skin, while hooked barbs cut deep and miniature tendrils jabbed inside him, wriggling beneath and into his muscle. They wrestled and fought, careening around the room, slamming into stone pillars—the room quivering from each impact—then going to ground: her on top, trying to pin him in place, then him flipping her with a kick of double-jointed legs. Back and forth, each losing a little more of themselves with every attack.
Cain was too strong, though. Ryder had been in more than her fair share of fights, and she could pick a winner when she saw one. Every second Cain carved away more of Siphonei’s foliage, slicing off huge swathes of green—sometimes legs and vines, other times arms or even flower-faced heads—leaving her weaker and weaker with every passing second. The shed pieces of plant crawled back toward the temple guardian, keeping her in the fight, but not quickly enough. That mean son of a bitch was as fast and effective as an industrial-grade Weed Whacker.
And Cain was getting stronger.
Sure, the temple guardian was taking a substantial toll, but the more Ryder bled out, the more she felt herself merge with Cain. He was feeding off her life force—they were connected, souls intertwined, and Ryder knew the only reason Siphonei was doing this well was because the ritual wasn’t complete. Cain was vulnerable until she and her sister bit the big one, but once that happened, the crimson-skinned demon would be next to unstoppable.
A flash of movement near the professor pulled her eyes away from the knock-down drag-out of the century: Chuck had momentarily phased back into view. He was on one knee, gun tucked into the back of his waistband while he worked furiously to loosen the chains holding Professor Wilkie captive. Cain caught Ryder’s gaze—even while beating the holy shit out of Siphonei—and turned his head a fraction of an inch, his thousand eyes narrowing in on the lanky leprechaun as he worked. Oh shit.
With a wince, she pushed herself away from the column, trying to gain her feet. She dropped back onto her ass. No luck. “Heads up, Chuck!” She screamed, since she could do shit else, not with the pain in her stomach. “He sees you.” Those final words took every ounce of air in her lungs. She fell back, head rapping against the stone pillar—white starbursts flared in her vision. She pressed her eyes shut and breathed slow and steady through her nose—it hurt less that way—then pressed both hands to her belly, trying to staunch the blood flow.
The report of Chuck’s pistol filled the air, but she was too tired to give a shit.
Holy shit was she worn out—felt like she’d been up for a week straight, strung out on coke before running a triathlon. It didn’t help that her veins seemed to be filling with icy water instead of warm blood. Numbness stole in from her fingers and toes, working its way inward toward her heart, fogging her mind and her senses. This was the end. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as bad as she thought it’d be. The gut wound was ten different kinds of agony, but now she just felt faded and empty. Like she was being unmade. Unformed.
Kinda pleasant, actually.
Glass shattered somewhere, a whole pane of the stuff, followed by a familiar bellow of guttural rage. Levi. She cracked her eyes open in time to see the Mudman plummet through the air, a snarl on his face, both fists shaped like medieval battle-axes.
THIRTY-THREE:
Blood Brothers
Levi burst through the window, shifting his hands into massive battle-axes—a solid go to when an enemy needed a quick and brutal end—as he tumbled through the air. A broad smile broke across his face: this was it. This was the fruition of his life. Everything had led here, led to this moment, this fight. This was his purpose, what he’d been meant for, regardless of Hogg’s intentions or plans.
Levi fell in slow motion, as though time itself were taking a pause to acknowledge the gravity of the situation—appreciating all the history and tragedy that had brought Levi face-to-face with the monster he had been destined to become so many years before. The irony was thick as a cloud. Hogg had created Levi to house Cain, and now Levi was the only thing that could stop the murder god from resuming his reign on Earth.
Levi, always one for practicality, savored the moment but also used it to get his bearings.
Most of the Kobocks were dead or dying—though a few small pockets of resistance were scattered throughout the warehouse—and even though several Thursrs continued to fight, the leprechaun crews were already working to put them down like the rabid beasts they were. The battle was far from over, but on the surface of things, it appeared his mercenaries would win the day. Good. All good.
He spotted the wizened Kobock shaman or what was left of it: its lower body lay carelessly cast to one side, though there was no sign of its torso. The shaman’s demise was a bit of good fortune—one less threat to worry about—though there was some part of the Mudman that regretted not getting to finish the disgusting creature himself.
The homunculus, now housing the essence of Cain, dominated the scene, its crimson body like an infected wound that screamed for attention. It was a massive beast—long limbs, blood-slick skin, jaws the size of a great white, a glut of eyes, and an aura that set Levi’s teeth on edge and made his doughy skin crawl in revulsion.
The Mudman had seen plenty of evil creatures during his long life: wicked humans, and even wickeder beasts of Outworld. Doctor Hogg had certainly been among the worst offenders he’d ever encountered—with his black-hole aura, devoid of any trace of decency or goodness—but Cain was worse. Far worse. His aura wasn’t a static thing, not merely a living record of heinous deeds, which Levi could read. No, his aura was a living, active being, a thing of black smoke that wafted off him in a haze, filling up everything and everyone around him with its taint.
That smoke was infiltrating Chuck, Ryder, and the good professor, working its way into noses and mouths, wriggling into eye sockets and through ear canals. In limited quantities that black haze might not do much, but with enough exposure, Levi had no doubt it would drive the infected into a killing madness. The murder god was an abomination, a perversion of the natural order that had no place in a civilized world. Levi intended to make sure Cain never saw the outside of this bloody warehouse.
Levi broke into a toothy grin as he watched an all too familiar plant-hydra slam into the homunculus, hooked barbs tearing at Cain’s body. Having her on his side would certainly make the job a fair bit easier. Truth be told, Levi had never been so happy to see something that had once tried to ingest him.
The two horrors twirled as they fought, spinning and rotating like a tornado of claws and tentacles and teeth, tearing into each other and decimating anything that came close. The hydra was holding her own, but was slowly losing steam. Thankfully, he could even the odds a bit. Levi landed like a meteor—tremors vibrated up the walls, the concrete buckled, and slabs of stone cracked apart beneath his feet. The force even jarred the dueling monsters, momentarily throwing the pair apart, though Siphonei managed to keep her leafy tendrils wrapped around Cain’s trunk.
The murder god turned
, head tilted, face a mask of curiosity as he surveyed Levi. “Brother?” he asked, voice full of confusion.
Levi—never one for words, especially not when violence was a suitable alternative— ignored the accusation and lurched into motion, launching into the air with both battle-axes raised and ready to kill. The homunculous’ eyes, all of them, flared in surprise, then narrowed to slits as Levi flew through the air. Cain crouched and threw his weight left, an evasive dodge, but Siphonei was too quick. Levi watched with satisfaction as the temple guardian planted her limbs—arachnoid legs digging divots into the floor—while her ropy tendrils flexed and strained, anchoring Cain in place.
Strong as Cain seemed to be, he couldn’t escape Siphonei’s grasp.
Levi let loose with his right arm, his battle-axe screaming through the air and sinking into the red meat of Cain’s left shoulder, carving down with a squish. The murder god roared, the bellow of a T. rex, while he bucked and fought against the blade lodged in his arm. Levi, taking advantage of his immobile victim, brought the other axe whipping through the air. A hammer blow meant to lop Cain’s flat salamander head from what little neck he had—
A fist slammed square into Levi’s gut, the blow like a stick of dynamite going off in his abdomen. The Mudman’s axe tore loose as he soared through the air, flipping end over end, then crashed into the sacrificial stone table with all the grace of a plane wreck. The slab of slick stone cracked on impact, and Levi flipped over its top, finally coming to a stop on the floor ten feet away from where Cain and Siphonei still thrashed.
He grunted and shook away the throb building in his head as he picked himself up off the floor, ignoring the dull ache in his stomach, sides, and back. In all his years of hunting, he’d never been hit like that. Not once. In the early days of his life, he’d been struck by a German 8 cm Granatwerfer 34 mortar round while storming a Nazi pillbox—that experience had been comparable.
In the seconds that he’d been out of the fight, the battlefield landscape had shifted dramatically. Apparently, Siphonei’s holding tactic had exposed some vulnerability, because now she was retreating, tentacles flashing out, trying to keep the encroaching Cain at bay. The hydra was in bad shape, worse than Levi had realized when he’d first entered the battle. Her spidery abdomen was leaking pools of yellow fluid, scores of legs and arms were missing—sheared away—and only two of her seven serpentine flower-heads remained.
The cast off vegetation was wriggling across the floor, trying to reassemble itself, but it appeared to be a case of too little too late.
Levi needed to buy the temple guardian time to regenerate or he would have to tackle Cain alone, and he wasn’t optimistic about the outcome of that scenario. He shifted his left hand into a spear and his right into a spiked mace, then broke into a shambling run, thudding footfalls announcing his approach. Cain wheeled about to meet him, the creature turning and backtracking toward the altar in one fluid motion so he could keep both Levi and Siphonei to his front. Levi barreled in, ducking low and thrusting out and up with his spear, hoping to impale the creature through its throat.
Cain’s crimson arm flew in from the right, but as it moved it shifted, blurred, and morphed into a double-edged sword blade. The Mudman stumbled as Cain’s blade-arm parried his spear thrust and cut a deep furrow in his forearm, a blow which threatened to take Levi’s hand clean off. Levi had lost more than enough hands in the past few days, so he dropped to a knee, pulled back his spear-arm, and swung out with his spiked mace—the heavy weapon batted Cain’s sword away before it could finish its work.
Levi shifted again, his wounded spear-hand melting into a scythe blade, which he swept toward Cain’s double-jointed knees—
The murder god, far quicker than such a huge creature had any right to be, leapt back, darted left, then shot in, sweeping a sledgehammer fist, made of red marble, into Levi’s chin. The uppercut lifted the Mudman into the air, even if only a few inches, but Levi didn’t hang there for long: a front kick with the power of a battering ram landed, dead center, in Levi’s chest. For the second time in so many minutes, Levi cartwheeled through the air, tail over teakettle, before slamming into the ruby-eyed altar and sliding to the floor in a rain of rubble.
For a long beat he just sat there, struggling to breath and completely dumbfounded. The homunculus could shift. Could transform. It was a golem, not so different from him.
As Levi sat there, legs sprawled out, he noticed something else: a stream of blood, this one trickling from Ryder’s sister, oozed across the floor and toward his opponent. And it all clicked into place. The flesh golem from the Kobock temple had failed to hold together, so Hogg had taken a different approach. Instead of crafting together a Frankenstein monster, he’d engineered a single organic unit, a golem born, not made. A golem fashioned from blood. A living Mudman, grown in the belly of a human being.
If that was true, and Levi believed it was, it meant Cain could likely do all of the things Levi could and, perhaps, more besides. The Mudman couldn’t beat this thing. Not alone. And even with Siphonei’s help, he wasn’t optimistic.
Speaking of the plant guardian, Siphonei was up and moving again. Or, more precisely, several of her were up and moving. Instead of reforming into one massive guardian, the shredded vegetation had wriggled into separate piles, entwining together, until five of the lesser guardians had formed. They swayed and circled around the murder god. Levi knew from personal experience the lesser guardians wouldn’t be a match for the homunculus—they weren’t near as powerful as the flower-hydra—but they could attack on multiple fronts, like a pack of hyenas harrying a lone lion over a fresh kill.
Cain was fast, but the guardians were faster and they never stayed in one place long enough for the homunculus to close the distance. They moved constantly—swaying, circling, darting in and out again. One would strike from the rear, lashing out with tearing claws, only to retreat and leap away in a flash of green. By the time Cain could wheel about to meet the threat, the guardian would be long gone and another would already be moving in to attack from some other angle. The guardians’ strikes were no more than a nuisance to the murder god, but maybe, given enough time, they could wear Cain down.
But, they didn’t have time to play that game. Cain was feeding off the life force of Ryder and her sister, and once he’d sucked them dry it’d be the end of the road. Ryder had lost a substantial amount of blood, which meant she could be dead in no more than a few minutes. Levi pushed himself upright, his legs unsteady beneath him, and waded back into the thick of things. The lesser guardians were evading Cain, but they made no move to avoid Levi. Carefully as he could, he reached out and snatched one of the creatures up by the neck, pulling it away from the fight.
The flower-faced beast squirmed in his fist, tentacles wriggling like mad as black flowers snapped at his fingers.
“Cut it out,” he said, the words a whisper. “We both know you’re not strong enough to stop him on your own.” The plant ceased its struggling, vines growing slack, the gigantic flower head bobbing in acknowledgment. “Neither can I, but together … maybe. On the count of three this is what we’re going to do …” He laid out the crude Hail-Mary plan while the other guardians kept Cain’s attention.
He set the guardian back to the floor and withdrew an ichor pot—only two left—from his torso. Then he turned to Chuck, who’d finally managed to get the professor free from his chains. “Chuck!” he hollered over the chaos. “This is about to end one way or the other, so you need to get everyone out of here in case we can’t stop this thing. Get ’em gone, then you run. And don’t ever stop.”
The guardians were still keeping Cain on his toes, but the homunculus was getting smart, edging toward the far wall, which would mean the plant creatures would only be able to attack from the front. That would be a straight-up fight they could never win. Levi stumbled into a lumbering run, raising the clay pot as he moved.
“One,” he screamed, ten feet out.
“Two.” Five feet�
��he skidded to a halt, just outside of Cain’s reach.
“Three!” he bellowed. Everything seemed to happen all at once—a rush of movement and bodies.
The pot shattered on the ground, inches from Cain’s feet, and exploded outward in a wave of ultrafine dust, a cloud that swelled up and enveloped the homonculous, Levi, and Siphonei’s various forms. The cloud was harmless, but Levi reasoned a god with as many eyes as Cain would rely heavily on sight—without it, Levi might have an advantage, especially since the Mudman didn’t need to see at all. Levi could use his earth sense to read Cain’s movements through the concrete. It was possible Cain possessed the same ability, but it had taken Levi years to master the technique.
In the same instant, the Mudman shifted one mitt into an obsidian blade while tough quartz-scales sprouted along his arms, legs, face, and torso, transforming his body into an earthen tank. Even with all that, though, he still wasn’t strong enough to withstand Cain’s punishing blows, which is where the guardians came in. Instead of rushing at the temporarily blinded Cain, the plant-beasts converged on Levi, wrapping around him in a suit of living armor.
The Mudman rushed in, guided by his earth sense, and closed the distance in a heartbeat. He dove, slashing with his obsidian blade, which scored a nasty gash across Cain’s chest. Hot blood—or perhaps ichor?—splashed across Levi’s weapon and dribbled down his arm. The bloodlust took hold, transforming the Mudman into a hurricane of violence lashing out with feet, fist, and blade.
Cain retaliated in turn, but Levi was able to take advantage of the homunculus’ blindness and dodge most blows. And, for the few he couldn’t avoid, the guardians, entangled around him, took the brunt of the damage. Moreover, each of Levi’s monstrously powerful strikes was amplified by Siphonei’s strength, and as each blow landed, the guardians lashed out with slicing vines and pinching claws, tearing Cain apart a piece at a time.
