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In the meantime, Adam had gotten a clear look at the monstrosities being birthed from the cave floor. He Who Makes Things Sprout, my ass, was his only clear thought as the creatures burst from their glistening birth-sacs, snout-first, lips pulling back from curving white teeth. Dog-faced, four-limbed, with black, sleek flesh that looked as smooth as a frog’s. At the end of each limb, a clawed, monkey-like paw, and, sprouting from their hindquarters, a long, prehensile tail, coiling into loops . . . with another hand at its tip. And most disturbing of all? Their eyes were completely human.
His mind rebelled against what he was seeing, and he flinched for a moment as the creatures opened their mouths to howl and gibber at the ceiling. Hunt-calls.
“Ahuizotl!” one of the Eagle warriors shouted, in dismay, and the five of them unlimbered their muskets and began to open fire on the creatures.
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In the meantime, on the other side of the pool, Kanmi and Trennus were looking directly at another pack of the same creatures. “I have no idea what those are,” Kanmi shouted. “Can you banish them?”
“They were summoned by a god. I’ll try, but I might only be able to slow them down.”
“Do that—oh, shit!” Kanmi ducked as the magma-like whip being controlled by Xicohtencatl sizzled through the air over his head, searing a line through the stalagmite mount behind which he and Trennus were taking shelter. “I’m on Xicohtencatl. Do what you can about the dog . . . things. Then start breaking the Tholberg coils.”
“Are you crazy?”
“I really hope not. I think that’s how they’re redirecting the . . .” Gods, help me, I don’t even want to say this is possible, “god’s energy.” I have to assume he’s allowing them to do so.
“That could also blow us somewhere into next week. All right, all right, I’m on it.” Trennus sounded rattled.
Kanmi sucked in a breath, heard another series of shots, and watched as one of the demon-dogs fell to the ground, bleeding black out on the earth. There were enormous amounts of energy in the air right now, but most of it was emanating from a god, and he had no idea what would happen if he tried to use it or reshape it to his own ends. Probably blow my damn head off, he thought, grimly. So I’ll just work with what Xicohtencatl gives me.
He stepped out from behind the stalagmite mound, planting the rubber soles of his shoes firmly on the ground, and reached into his pockets. Cupped his hands around the batteries he found there, and pulled up a shield around himself—just in time, as Gratian attacked him with that lash of fire. The barrier gave Kanmi enough time to see the lash of fire for what it was: a portion of the stalactite curtain behind Xicohtencatl, liquefied with raw magic, and turned into a blade of searing heat. Still physical, however. Not just a pure energy release, as flame was. I can work with that, Kanmi thought, just barely smiling . . . . and pulled all the energy out of the liquefied stone, setting up the construct in his mind and muttering under his breath. The suddenly-cooled stone, flung like a spear, slammed into the far wall of the cave, where it shattered. Kanmi was left with far too much energy on his hands, so he redirected it as soon as it came to him, backwards against the flow of the stone, recoiling into Xicohtencatl’s flesh in a wave of flame and heat. “Buzz a little louder, bumblebee,” Kanmi taunted. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”
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Trennus felt chips of stone cutting into the flesh of his upper arm and face as the spear of stone shattered against the wall, but he was focused on the monkey-dogs that were heading straight for Kanmi, as if they knew the smell of magic, and hungered for it. He reached down into the earth, seeking out the ley-lines and their resonant force, and tapped it. As he did, he reached a hand up as if snatching a ball out of the air and snapped his fingers closed around empty air.
In response, the limestone of the cave floor boiled up like skeletal fingers and closed around one of three remaining dogs like a cage. It howled and reared up to tug on the bars with its monkey-like hands, scrabbling with its long claws . . . and then the other two were on him. One of them was bleeding black from a musket ball that had been fired into its side. Tren caught the first one that launched itself at his throat, taking it out of the air, spinning, and slamming it to the ground on its back. His hands tingled at the touch of the creature’s slimy skin, but he put it to the back of his mind.
Then the second creature, the wounded one, darted behind him and sank its fangs into the tendons at the back of his knee, tearing at it as if the beast were a wolf in truth. Trennus shouted and staggered, feeling blood already coursing down the back of his leg, hot and wet, and managed to turn. Focused. And pulled the stone of the cavern directly up, in one smooth spike, skewering the creature through belly and spine. A distorted, hellish whimper, a mix of human, dog, and monkey harmonics, and then the light went out of the all-too-human eyes.
The bleeding from the back of his wounded leg was problem number one. He needed to get that under control. Trennus yanked off his shirt and tied it around his knee, trying to slow down the blood, at least. Problem number two was . . . worse. His hands were tingling far more now. His mouth was dry, and his vision skewed. “Poison!” he shouted. “The dogs’ skins! They’re poisoned somehow!” Trust me to find these things out the hard way . . . . Trennus shook his head and tried to focus. It wasn’t unlike all the bad parts of being drunk—the room spun, the floor tipped from side to side, or at least appeared to do so, as his equilibrium gave out completely. Trennus dropped to his knees, swearing, and tried to focus his mind. Have to take out the Tholberg coils . . . . Lassair? Saraid?
I’m . . . here. Lassair’s voice was terrified, little more than a whisper. This is a very bad place, Trennus. He can see me. I’m trying to stay as small as I can.
I am here, as well. Saraid’s soft voice was no less frightened.
Can you help me? He didn’t have time to bargain specifically.
I . . . might be able to stop the bleeding. Lassair ventured.
No, clear the poison first, if you can.
Trennus, if you die, I die with you. Bleeding first. Then the poison. But . . . I’m going to need to . . . Lassair’s sense shuddered. I’m going to need to be inside your body to fix it.
There was little that terrified the gentle spirit more. The summoner who had bound her before Trennus had released her, had used her, in so many foul ways. He’d bound her into dead bodies, so that they would move, like a ghul . . . and then had fucked the rotting corpses, requiring her to move the body convincingly for him. Forced her to dwell inside of a mortal shell that had no functioning nerve pathways, no spark of life. And in between performances like this, the summoner had also compelled Lassair to give of her own energies to heal his body. Keep him young and healthy. He’d robbed her of her energies, never any return, just compulsion by will and by Name. No bargains. Just . . . theft and rapine.
Trennus had, quite deliberately, never thought of the man’s Name since he’d killed him. Then again, when he’d been done with the man, he hadn’t had a Name anymore. There were reasons why he felt compelled to protect and nurture Lassair, and show her that not all humans were vile. And there were reasons, too, why Lassair panicked at the mere thought of being contained in a mortal body.
Just do what you can to clear my head. This will all be over soon, either way.
No! Saraid’s sharp cry was echoed by Lassair, and they both manifested at the same moment. Lassair flared into white life beside him, and, terror in every part of her being, slipped into Trennus’ body. He felt her like a flame, all through him, and part of him fought her, with all his considerable mental strength. Please, I can’t fight you and my own fear at the same time. Please, relax. Let me help you . . . .
Saraid stood before him, in her ephemeral stag form, attacking the monkey-dogs with her antlers as they advanced on him. She didn’t have enough substance to throw them, but with every blow,
the creatures cringed away from her pale glory, hissing and screeching in pain. In that moment of reprieve, Trennus leaned against the rock, and stared ahead of him. He was supposed to be doing something right now. Something important. But his mind was going gray and vague, and the world around him . . . .blurred. Trennus! Hold on! You go, we both go!
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Sigrun, for her part, had pulled Ehecatl more or less upright as his body stopped spasming. “You all right?” She could feel the power of the god radiating everywhere in the cave, and it was making her sick to her stomach. The closer she got to him, the worse the nausea became.
The Nahautl man rolled the rest of the way to his feet, and staggered, leaning against the wall where she’d taken cover. “Give . . . give me a minute . . . .”
“Don’t have one—on your feet!” And that was when the black, slime-sided dogs closed on them. A couple of musket balls from the Eagle warriors slammed into the head of the closest, killing it, but then three others were on her, and she didn’t have time for anything else. She caught one in midair as it launched itself at her with a monkey-like spring from its hind legs, and jabbed it in the belly with her spear, stepping through. She let its inertia and seventy pounds of squirming, dying flesh pass her, reversing the spear’s direction to allow the beast to slide off the blade and onto the ground behind her, and then scythed the blade back to slice the muzzle off the next incoming dog. The horrible part, as it opened its ruined maw to howl in agony, was that human tears bloomed in its eyes.
No time to think, no time to reflect, because in that moment, the third one launched itself through the air and landed on her right arm, staggering her for a moment. Four sets of claws scrabbled for purchase, jabbing through her chain shirt, but unable to rend. White fangs tore into the side of her throat, and as she worked a hand up to try to tear it off of her, the creature loosed its grip with its rear claws and did a handstand of sorts. Its spine undulated, and it brought its rump down over her head, allowing its prehensile tail to come into play, wrapping around her bleeding throat like a noose, constricting tightly just above where its fangs were buried. The freakish hand at the end of the tail worked its way up now, reaching for her eyes with its savage claws. ____________________
Adam watching from cover, stared at the creature for a dumbfounded instant, and then shouted. “Hold still, Sig!” over the noise of battle. Disregarding Xicohtencatl for the moment—the sorcerer seemed heavily occupied by the mage-duel between himself and Kanmi, anyway—he aimed very carefully with his .45. He was all too aware of the fact that Sigrun had told him there were two absolutely sure ways to kill her. Removal of the head and a wound that obliterated her heart. He considered a .45 hollow point to be just as valid a way of decapitating someone as a sword-blade, when all was said and done. As such, he held his breath as he aimed, and did a little silent, but very fervent praying as he squeezed the trigger.
The monkey-dog . . . whatever it was . . . exploded in a shower of black gore, and Sigrun tore its tail from around her throat, gasping for air. But, to Adam’s disgust, four more of the creatures had just finished being birthed from the ground. Two of them charged Ehecatl—the Nahautl man fired his one-shot derringer directly at the creature. It was a fire-enchanted bullet, and his aim was true, but it didn’t matter; the creature staggered, but slipped around behind him, tearing at his hamstrings, while the other caught at his throat, pulling him to the ground. A tumble of arms and legs, and Adam couldn’t risk firing into that scrum . . . and then there was a yelp of inhuman pain as Ehecatl rolled atop the beast, and sank his obsidian knife deeply into its chest. “The damned things definitely have poisoned skins!” Ehecatl shouted. “Feels like touching a poison dart frog!”
Harah. Adam fired at the fourth creature as the one under Ehecatl died—and missed. He was peripherally aware that Sigrun was laying waste to two more of the creatures with her spear once more . . . .but the last creature leaped on Ehecatl, and the Jaguar warrior and the beast rolled across the floor, panting and struggling, the human’s efforts already weakening from the effects of the poison in his body, and the creature’s inhuman contortions bringing them closer and closer to the altar now . . . .
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On the other side of the room, Kanmi did indeed have Xicohtencatl’s full attention. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” Gratian called to the Carthaginian mage. “I know you, Kanmi. I know how you think. And right now, you’re fighting for the wrong side. This is a revolution. This is how it starts . . . we throw out Rome. We give the country back to its people. And then we go about liberating the rest of the damned world.”
Oh, you have got to be kidding me, Kanmi thought, distantly, his mind reaching out to his surroundings, looking for the faintest wrong twitch in the energy patterns and currents around him. “You mean to tell me,” he said, maintaining his shielding in front of him, “that this is all for the benefit of the common man? What exactly do you know about the common man, patrician?”
Kanmi was dimly aware of more of the dog creatures running through the area, birthing themselves from mud pools closer to the tunnel entrance, and attacking the Eagle warriors there. One of them killed one of the dogs with a knife to its throat, and then threw the obsidian blade directly at the sorcerer; Gratian’s shield of power, invisible when not under attack, caught the blade, stealing all the kinetic energy from it, and letting the stone knife fall into the water at his feet. That’s a powerful shield, but it’s static. He has to shift it, can only face it a one direction at a time . . . he really never has learned flexibility, has he?
He felt the twitch of power, and was ready as Xicohtencatl pulled in energy, and the ground under Kanmi’s feet began to superheat, the rubber soles of his shoes melting. Kanmi hissed and took the energy out of the rock again, this time sending it into the pool under Gratian’s feet. I wonder what will happen if you get too much energy in that water. I can see copper wires running from the Tholberg coils . . . you’re mediating the god’s energy through them, and running it into the pool, so it’s . . . less direct. So you can tap it, use it, but not have to be a god-born to do so. A technical transubstantiation, in place of a religious one. But you’ve got a finite capacity for energy, Gratian. We all do. And I don’t think you’re nearly as good at finding different places for energy to go as I am.
As it was, the superheated pool boiled, instantly turning into a blast of steam that hit and cooked the other mage from below. Gratian screamed, and Kanmi’s awareness of the whole battle situation widened for a moment, as he heard shots being fired, and screams from the other side of the pool. “You think you know what the common man wants?” Kanmi gritted out between his teeth. “The common man wants food on his table, a wife, a couple of kids, and not to have to worry about any of them being hurt or killed or sacrificed to a god. The common man wants to be left the fuck alone.”
Gratian hissed and sent a spray of a hundred tiny droplets of fire at him; too many to count, too many to react to in time. Kanmi tore energy out of the air in front of him, and the air itself solidified into a slab. He couldn’t keep the nitrogen-oxygen mix solid for long, and he needed something else to do with the energy, which he was pouring into the batteries in his hands, feeling even these high-capacity cells heat up. Don’t explode, don’t explode, I don’t want acid burns all over me or metal embedded in my hands . . . . The fireseeds slammed into his barrier, which was only an inch thick, and already subliming away, not even making it back into liquid form before dissipating as cold gas back into the atmosphere . . . but the barrier stopped the projectiles. And then Kanmi pulled the energy back out of the batteries, grunted with the effort, and threw the solid wall of frozen air at Xicohtencatl.
Nitrogen, oxygen, and even carbon dioxide chilled to the point of solidifying are cold enough to do tissue damage on contact with human skin, and Xicohtencatl was clearly not expecting a defensive shield to be turned into a projectile. His shield was tuned, currently, to absorbing kinetic
energy from small objects—knives, bullets, and spears—not to repelling two hundred pounds of frozen death. Kanmi couldn’t see the man’s face, thanks to the size of his projectile, but he could imagine Gratian’s eyes widening in surprise as it slammed into him, at about twenty miles an hour, and then fell down, like a door without supports, driving him down into the boiling water below. “Hail and farewell, you son of a bitch,” Kanmi told the sorcerer, who was trapped below a sheet of rapidly-dissipating ice, and suspended in boiling, electrified water. Gratian might be good. But even the best sorcerer tended to be only capable of defending against one or two things at a time. And pain was a magnificent distraction and deterrent to sorcery. Not to mention, he hasn’t gotten to the point yet where he doesn’t need to incant to cast. Kind of hard to incant when you’re trying not to inhale the water. “Have a nice trip across the Styx, assuming you believe in it.” He glanced back, and blinked. There was a phantom stag hovering in the air between him and Trennus, and Trennus’ entire body was limned with white and red flames. Kanmi reached for the heat of the flames, trying to keep them from burning Trennus to death . . . and found absolutely no heat. No energy that he could grab. Oh, gods, those are his bound spirits . . . .
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Trennus’ eyes snapped into focus, warmth drifting all through him. Is that better? Lassair asked him, a little frantically.
Oh . . . gods yes. Actually, that feels . . . really good. He staggered upright, and glanced around; Kanmi was slamming a white wall of something at the sorcerer in the pool, gunshots on the other side of the room, Eagle warriors fighting with the damned monkey-dogs, screaming and trying to pull them off of each other, and then turning and tearing at empty air with their hands and knives. Two of them were actually setting on each other, and Trennus swore and hastily pulled the stone of the floor up around each of them to protect them from each other. Gods, thank you. I could have turned on Kanmi or someone else if you hadn’t pulled the poison out of my body.
The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Page 40
