by Joey Ruff
I eyed the ape. “Are you…talking to me?”
The ape smiled. “Perhaps it is just that you are now listening.”
I looked at Nadia. “What the fuck did you do?”
She smiled. She looked so young. “Just testing a theory. I remembered what you said about the bonnacon. How you were able to communicate with it through your ability.”
“Great. I can hear its thoughts. Now what?”
She motioned toward the ape with her eyes and a slight nod of her head.
I sighed and turned back to the ape. “You’re after the elves?”
“We are. They have invaded this realm while we were unaware.”
“Unaware? Do you remember what happened? The Ballad Nocturne?”
He didn’t answer for a few seconds. “No. I know nothing of this Ballad. We thought we had all fallen asleep.”
“You were being controlled. Magically. Bad things happened. It wasn’t your fault.”
He grew suddenly very angry. “Our free will was violated by magic? What dark sorcerer did this?”
“The same one that wanted the elves here. We’re going to stop him, but we need your help.”
“We will not harm humans.”
“Nobody’s bloody asking you to. I just need you and yours to handle the Alfar. We’ll do the rest.”
The ape nodded. “We will assist. It is our sworn duty to protect this realm from the spirits.”
“I think I know where they were going. You can follow us.”
“When they are closer, we will feel them.”
I looked beyond the orange Skunk ape to the gathered horde among the trees. “I’m glad you’re on our side,” I told him.
I let go of his hand and rubbed my palm against my pants. Nadia handed my glove back, but I didn’t put it on. “What are you now, their queen?” I asked.
She laughed. “Don’t be silly.”
Anyone watching us as we walked the few blocks to the church might have thought we were a crazed group of rioters. Big, hairy, smelly rioters. Or maybe protestors. We were the million bigfoot march.
We turned onto the street that led to the church. It was the same street as the café where I’d sat with Lara, and I knew the church would be straight ahead and just around the corner. I couldn’t see the building from where we were, but I could see the glow that surrounded it. It came as light pollution and it shone like a halo around the building on the corner.
I felt a hand on mine and heard Orange’s voice, “The Alfar are ahead. We can feel them.”
“I can see them,” I said. “The light elves glow in the dark.”
“They should glow brighter,” he answered. “These are sick. They have been poisoned. They may be slower and weaker, but that makes them more dangerous. Alfar are not known to harm humans, but these are desperate. Be careful.”
I nodded. “That’s what I have you for.”
“We will go ahead of you and engage the Alfar. Do what you can to find the dark wizard and end this.”
“We’ll need a clear path to the front door.”
“Understood.”
When he let go, I slipped my glove back on, to hopefully discourage any further strange Bigfoot conversations. Orange turned to his kind, making a few mewling noises that must have passed for talking in his native tongue. When he fell silent, the nearest of the skunk apes broke into a run and sprinted as fast as they could towards the glow. Let’s be honest, it was pretty fucking fast. Then they were all running, disappearing around the corner. As soon as the first disappeared, a call went up and was answered.
Nadia and I weren’t far behind, but we weren’t as quick as the apes. “Stay close,” I told her. As we moved, I made sure both the FN’s were loaded and chambered some fresh rounds into Grace.
We rounded the building on the corner and froze.
The street in front of the church, from the bakery to the front steps, along with the entire parking lot on the side of the building was glowing with the Alfar. There were a hundred of them if there were five. Each held a sword or spear, some had shields. Some wore armor while others were nearly naked.
Surrounding the perimeter of the gathered Alfar were the skunk apes. They were limbs and raw strength against the armored elves. I wouldn’t have thought they would have even stood a chance, but as I watched the apes engage the Alfar, I understood.
In the midst of the chaos, I found the orange ape. He rushed two Alfar warriors. Each wore a breastplate and a helmet with their leather skirts and leg bracers. As he approached, they swung their swords. He caught a fist in each hand and twisted, turning the sword blades to face straight down at the ground. He must’ve squeezed with incredible pressure, because the blades just dropped from their grips and clattered to the ground.
The elf to his right swung his fist in, but the ape ducked and countered, throwing a punch directly into the elf’s chest, knocking him back a step. The ape then turned his attention to the elf on the left. He was still holding one fist, and he grabbed the other. Then he pulled in separate directions. With a little effort, the limbs tore away from the shoulders. As the Alfar’s torso fell back against the ground, it shattered into dust.
The right elf charged back in, and the ape turned to meet him, catching his arms in the same way, and tearing him apart exactly the same.
All around, that was the going trick. The Skunk apes were heavily outnumbered, but they weren’t fazed by it. They were focused, driven, knew exactly what their best move was, and they applied it expertly. Arms were torn from shoulders, legs from hips. Heads were savagely ripped from necks and shoulders. There was no blood, just a thin, black fluid that looked like oil. But each and every fallen Alfar, once destroyed, became dust and crumbled apart. Even their weapons.
“What am I seeing?” Nadia asked.
“Is this really the best fucking time for a learning experience?” She didn’t say anything, just gave me that look that women give, her eyes firm, her head cocked to the side, her mouth slightly open. I took a deep breath. “The Alfar are spirits. They live in a spirit world, and to cross over, they use a portion of their power to create a physical body that they can inhabit. The Saksanai…”
“What are the Saksanai?”
“The…fucking bigfoots. They aren’t trying to kill the elves like a dragon would. They’re just trying to keep them from the physical world, so they’re destroying the bodies. Apparently, whatever Ezra was doing made them sick, so they’re weak. That’s why they want her dead.”
It wasn’t a one-sided battle, though. The Alfar were great warriors, even slow and sick as they were, and the Skunk apes were physical creatures. They bled. As the Alfar carved lines in their backs and shoulders, arms and legs, the apes bled like fuck. It matted their hair and got sticky, but they kept fighting. One or two of them fell as the Alfar double- or triple-teamed them. Their bodies didn’t crumble to dust. They lay there and were trampled underfoot. Their blood seeped onto the pavement.
“That’s horrible,” Nadia said in a quiet voice.
“Come on,” I said. “We have to get inside.”
As we moved toward the door, the orange ape made good. He threw his head back, releasing a cry, and a path slowly opened in the crowd from the street to the front stairs. The elves didn’t care about me and Nadia. We didn’t pose a threat, we hadn’t poisoned them, and for the moment, we weren’t attacking them. We passed along to the door virtually unnoticed, but the door was locked.
I looked at Nadia. “Do your thing,” I told her.
Nadia threw her hands out at her sides and summoned a green energy disc. She tossed it at the door, and it swung in. We stepped in to the cool, dark room, and shut the door behind.
39
Ape
London gurgled and then fell over. He twitched once, twice, and then fell completely still.
Kol stepped over London’s body. He looked straight at me with those green eyes and, in Aegir’s voice, said, “No more need die tonight, caretaker. Tell me where
to find Perun. Now!”
I wanted to rage, wanted to scream and tear Aegir limb from limb, watching London lying there, but I couldn’t. I was weak and aching. I was bleeding and light-headed. If it weren’t for the adrenaline, I would have fallen over by now. It was all I could do to hold the cane sword in my shaking hands. I felt Omri’s presence at my side, and while I wanted to charge ahead…I couldn’t. But not just because of my physical limitations.
I’d seen plenty of people die in my time. Friends and strangers, alike. People that I fought beside. Some I’d considered like family. You didn’t stop the battle to mourn. You pushed that anguish and grief and sadness down deep, used it to fuel whatever you had to do to survive. You finished the fight. Only then did you mourn the dead. London was abrasive, but he was a good man, and his loss would be mourned. Just not right now. Now, I needed to think. I needed to end this.
Aegir had said “tonight,” but I couldn’t help but see the sky behind him breaking with hues of orange and red. It wasn’t quite morning yet, but it was close. I felt my heart quicken.
There was a reason that people like Jono and me were called Night Hunters, a reason that the monstrous things we hunted were termed the Midnight. They didn’t come out during the day. There was something about the sun’s natural light, dawn especially, that cast the shadows away and sent the monsters back underneath the beds that they crawled out from under.
But that wasn’t what I was thinking about. For the past twenty-four hours, Chess had been talking in riddles. As I understood it, Ouroboros, whatever it was, was a twenty-four hour countdown. It began at sunrise yesterday. Once the sun rose, it would be over. I had a feeling that whatever it was that Aegir wanted with Crestmohr, it was becoming more time-sensitive. I wasn’t sure exactly why, wasn’t sure what it meant, but I kept thinking, just gotta hold out a little while longer.
While I wasn’t sure, I had the sneaking suspicion that Crestmohr was nearer than I could have guessed and made a conscious effort not to look toward the cave.
Kol pulled his mask over his face, leaving only his eyes visible, and charged toward us, brandishing the black dagger. As he did, Omri whistled. It was the whistle I had heard back at the house, but that time it was from Levi. The whistle was a signal to his brothers. I didn’t have to look to see that Levi had become aware of Kol’s possession. Undoubtedly, he was getting ready to take action of his own. But as he approached behind Kol, it quickly became obvious that he was wounded worse than before. Perhaps Kol had turned on him before moving toward London. Still, he managed to pull his bow up and nock a couple arrows.
Omri drew his sword, but didn’t move. I took my cue from him, guessing he had something planned, and I drew my sword, also. Kol continued to close the distance, and when he was less than ten feet from us, he was dropped by a volley of arrows. One hit his shoulder, one sank into his gut. A third quickly followed, striking him in the side of the neck. He fell like a stone.
For three seconds, Kol was still. Then Aegir’s voice erupted, and the green light on the locket pulsed with a vibrant light. “Three against one hardly seems fair. Had I my full power, you could bring an army against me and I would crush your bones. Let us settle the score.”
Kol sat up. The green light in his eyes became more vibrant, and he gripped the necklace in one hand. Without warning, the pond beside us began to bubble, and four hooded monk figures crept from the depths. They were draped in black tattered robes that looked more like seaweed than cloth, and their faces were completely hidden. All that could be seen from beneath their hoods were the same green, firefly eyes of the neak and Aegir’s own possessed victims.
“What madness is this?” Omri said.
“These are the Kittim,” I said. “They’re his…children. This is…good.”
“We are weak and wounded. Another battle is anything but good.”
“He only summoned four. Last time I fought him, there was an army. He’d summoned wave after wave. Which means he has limited power in this form. Aegir isn’t actually in this realm, it’s more like he’s skyping in through the amulet, gaining temporary possession. He has very little power.”
“Skype-ing?”
I didn’t have time to answer as Aegir’s laughter poured from Kol’s mouth. He just stood there, as two of the Kittim headed directly toward Levi. The other two moved straight for me and Omri.
Levi met the first with an arrow to its head. It was a well placed shot, and the Kittim exploded into water like a burst balloon. The other lifted its arms toward Levi before he could nock another arrow, and white, milky tentacles shot out at him. We barely had time to act before translucent tentacles burst out of the two that were headed toward us.
What made Kittim dangerous were the sheer numbers that they showed up in. One hit, and they collapsed into a puddle. The fact that only two of them were coming for us was less of a threat and more of a minor inconvenience.
The tentacles split easily beneath our blades, and after those had fallen away, the two Kittim brandished knives that looked like the jagged shards of broken sea shells. They charged us. Omri twisted his blade in the air before him and took the head off one. My sword pierced directly through the chest of the other, and they both exploded into wet puddles.
In the short time it took us to dispatch the Kittim, Kol had plucked the arrows that stuck from his body, and he’d stabbed one into Levi. The Edomite lay on the ground, writhing and bleeding.
Once Kol had noticed that the Kittim had all been defeated, he spun on Omri, hurling another arrow directly at him, with more force and accuracy than any bow. Omri just barely saw it coming, and dodged enough that the arrow only pierced his shoulder.
Kol was already in motion before Omri hit the ground.
I stepped forward, thrusting my blade out at him, but he swatted me to the side with a backhanded blow. I hit the ground on my stomach and turned to see Omri lifted high into the air, Kol’s hand gripped tight around his throat.
As the obsidian dagger appeared to be the only weapon he had, Kol thrust it into Omri’s side and let him fall. Omri whimpered as he hit the ground, and then went still.
I watched as Kol stepped away from Omri and crossed the grass to the burnt husk that used to be Boaz’s body. He stooped over it and dug around in a pouch at Boaz’s waist, taking a small, cylindrical object, and slipping it into a pouch on his own belt. When he stood, he looked around the little clearing, his head cocked to the side as if he were listening for something. He spun around, examining the entirety of the round courtyard, pausing for a moment at the colors of sunrise that were beginning to smear greater splotches across the eastern sky. Then he spun toward the crag, not that far away, and his eyes saw the cave. Even at the distance, I could make out the hyena smile that spread over his lips.
Then he moved to the cave.
I fought the urge to rush after him. I didn’t know what his endgame was, but knew that it was getting nearer to time with every passing second. The only hope I had was to try to catch him off guard.
I lay there for a minute, watching as he got closer and closer to the mouth of the cave, and the moment he disappeared inside, I pushed myself to my feet, sheathing the sword into the cane and hobbling over to Omri.
His eyes were closed as I knelt beside him, grabbing his wrist. He had a weak pulse, but he was alive. I stripped out of my shirt and wadded it up. His other hand was holding the wound at his side that was bleeding freely. As I lifted the hand, his eyes cracked open and looked at me. “Get that bastard,” he said.
I nodded and stuck my wadded shirt against his wound, setting his hand back down over it. “Keep pressure on it. One way or another, this is almost over. We’ll get you help.”
He nodded weakly and gave a little cough.
I managed the thirty or so yards to the cave’s mouth with only a little trouble, relying more heavily on my cane than I had for most of the night. I was thoroughly exhausted, but determined nonetheless to see this through. There was almost a supern
atural yearning that propelled me forward, and with effort, I made it to the crag and slipped inside.
The cave was dark and cool. I don’t know if I would say it was humid, per say, but a damp, earthy smell hung heavy in the air. I had taken my glasses off, but as I wound my way around the corners, further in where it was too dark for natural light to penetrate, I slipped them back over my eyes. The glasses, for the most part, picked up and illuminated heat signatures, but they also amplified ambient light. The incandescent spectrum, or the visibility of heat, ran from coldest to hottest as black, red, orange, yellow, white and then a bluish white. I was confused, then, by what I was seeing. Most of the cave floor was purple, not unlike the light from my cane sword, except that the cane grew dimmer and dimmer the further in I walked and the ground grew steadily more vibrant in color. But the color wasn’t solid. It was almost like someone had taken a giant paint roller and ran it through the middle of the path, fading out toward the edges, and completely missing where the floor became the cave walls.
Having no other direction or light source, I followed the trail.
As I rounded another corner, the corridor twisted around a giant spire that sprung up from the cave floor and created a column in the center of the path. There was enough space for one person, maybe two, to walk on either side of it.
I leaned against the column for a few seconds, just enough time to catch my breath, before continuing on. As I walked, the hallway seemed to grow a little wider, gradually, though, so I didn’t notice at first. The only thing that really clued me in was the way the walls grew further and further from the edge of the purple trail I’d been following.
I didn’t know the cave was even here, but seeing it from the outside, I never could have guessed it would lead this deep. After another minute or so, I stopped walking and looked around, realizing that I wasn’t in a hallway anymore, but a room. It was maybe sixty feet across and round. The walls here were smooth, weathered and eroded. Looking up, the ceiling stretched maybe a hundred feet tall before narrowing, though it never really ended. From what I could see, there was a sort of natural chimney that emptied out into open sky. Far above, fingers of orange spread across the cobalt night and the first morning clouds were stretching into view.
