by Jack Conner
“I’m skipping ahead. They needed to destroy Roche’s empire, already in chaos, so they picked the second largest immortal army in the world, Liberty, which was also in a state of tension. Ludwig wanted to disband it, but the majority wanted to preserve it and advance its plans. How could the Balaklava capitalize on this situation?
“Junger and Jagoda confronted Ludwig. I guess they wanted to size him up, see if they could push him around. See if they could get him to attack the Dark Lord. They couldn’t, so they did something even better, something to unify all of Liberty and set it on a mission of revenge against Roche. Making their presence known to the army, relying on the fact that their artwork for the Dark Lord had been publicized enough to reach the Libertarians—in brief, attaching themselves to his image so that they’d appear his minions—they killed Ludwig.
“His murder was the catalyst they needed. They made no attempt to hide their identity. They agitated and confused Maleasoel into such a state of outrage that she had no choice, in her own mind, but to reorganize the army and go after Ludwig’s killer. Problem was, she didn’t trust the Balaklava. They counted on this.
“In all her attempts to torture possible employers of the assassins, she sank ever deeper into a moral morass, exactly what Junger and Jagoda were probably hoping for. Ultimately, she wound up on the darker side, her morality set aside for the moment. Then Junger and Jagoda subtly encouraged her to explore the trappings of evil, of power, and they made sure she liked it.
“Maybe at that point it was inevitable. She’d become a creature of hate, a thing separate from her past self. The lure of power, in this light, wasn’t much of a step. So she enjoyed and abused her new authority, becoming corrupt in the process—all of which served the assassins’ needs. In the end, she did what they wanted; she attacked the Castle, in which the Balaklava had already firmly embedded themselves, using Singer’s chalgid blood to create their own army and enslave the Sabo.
“But I don’t think even they anticipated their good fortune when Malie allied herself with Subaire. Thus, all three armies were able to attack at once. Unwilling to take any chances, the assassins used a nuke to wipe out over half the Castle’s population. They were counting on the ambitions of both Malie and Subaire, counting that the two would kill each other off, which they did. All went according to plan. And had it not been for Roche’s Refuge, we couldn’t have used the dragons ... Or, rather, they couldn’t have helped us. And without Francois’ blood, we’d be dead several times by now, I’m sure. Without those two things, Junger and Jagoda would’ve won. They’d have the Castle, a wonderful Labyrinth, their own undead army—and remember they consider death an art, or something like that. In short, they’d have it all. A perfect morbid paradise in which they were the supreme rulers.
“Plus, of course, they were counting on Francois to relate to you that I was here so that you’d come. They were wagering that your love for me hadn’t diminished over the years. I guess it was an easy wager to make, knowing that the Titan used me, through them, to stop you from taking his place. They were very clever. Thankfully, you were a lot stronger than they bargained for. You beat them. I think my biggest mistake all along was thinking of them as assassins, as mercenaries—people that would require an employer. I was wrong. Assassins they might be, but lacking in ambition they are not. They saw an opportunity and seized it—and were damned close to achieving their goal, too.” He paused. “I guess that’s about it.”
“You did fine,” Amelia said. “From what they’ve been willing to tell me, your story matches perfectly. Smart bastards, aren’t they?”
“Dangerously so.”
“Their plan was so complex, yet so simple. Almost genius, really.”
“I don’t doubt their intelligence. It’s the other workings of their minds I have problems with.”
“My love, I fear they’ll continue to trouble you.” With a movement so fast he saw only a blur, she whipped out her sword and plunged it through his stomach. Shoving a boot on his chest, she withdrew the blade and made a cut toward his neck. Now understanding (if only in part) what was happening, Ruegger leapt aside, her blade just nicking his cheek.
Amelia threw back her head and laughed. It was a wicked laugh, and filled with Jamaican inflections.
Simultaneously, the large dark figures in the lowered cages rose. Their prisons exploded about them, and Junger and Jagoda stood tall and proud.
“Now that,” one cried, “was art!”
Immediately, the heretofore lifeless Collage rose up, quite ably, and loped towards the pilgrims. A horde of zombies issued from various archways, bearing arms and leers. Lyshira, smiling, leapt into the air and transformed into a long, sensual, beautiful dragon reminiscent of Chinese drawings.
With a sick feeling, Ruegger realized that Amelia hadn’t been victorious, at all. They’d drained her of blood, becoming kavasari themselves, and turned her into a zombie.
That’s when the true last great battle of the War began.
Chapter 16
To Danielle, the whole thing possessed a surreal, dream-like quality. Thankfully, the shock didn’t prevent her from taking action. Yanking out her half-scythe rapist-killer, she leapt towards Amelia, slicing straight for the jugular.
Amelia, quick, sure-footed, well-practiced in swordplay and many centuries old, easily dodged the younger kavasari. She stepped forward suddenly, then twisted to the right, leaving a boot in Danielle’s path—which Danielle stumbled over.
The younger shade sprawled on the ground, coughing dust, and swore when she got the breath to do so. Before she could recover, Danielle felt Amelia’s blade plunge through her backside, out her front and through the ground itself.
“I’ve got your Gutter Angel pinned, Ruegger, darling—what should I do with her? This, maybe?”
Amelia twisted the blade, skewering Danielle and ripping the hole wider. Danielle cried out.
“Damn you bastards!” Ruegger said.
The sword pulled free of Danielle’s backside. She heard blades clanging furiously. When she rolled to the side and rose from the now-bloody ground, helped up by Ladrido, she saw Ruegger and his former lover going at it, hell for leather. Danielle chanced a look toward the Balaklava—she still couldn’t stop thinking of them that way—to see them still standing in their sundered cages, laughing. Making no move to join the fray. Puppet-masters till the end. God, how she hated them.
Ruegger called, “Danielle, you okay?”
“Holy.” It came out as more of a gasp than she’d intended.
Scimitar knocking and sparking against Amelia’s sword, not taking his eyes off his opponent, Ruegger said, “Then you—and Ladrido and Kiernevar—go kill that fucking Collage. Khark, Sophe, Jean-Pierre—do what you can with—the zombies. I’ll deal with —Amelia.”
“You’re cute when you’re angry,” Amelia grinned, and leapt past his defenses to stick him in the chest.
He kicked her in the crotch, batted her sword away and took the air out of one of her small breasts. Feeling little or no pain, the zombie only smiled and shook her head.
“Come on, lover—come on!”
Ruegger and Amelia, dancing and slashing, sparks and blood flashing in the torchlight, never hesitated. Only one would walk away from this fight. The Collage was loping ever closer, and the Hunter, the albino and the ex-Ice Queen had already scattered to fight the rotting horde.
Danielle hated leaving Ruegger without any protection, but, as the Collage was lumbering closer, she figured that destroying it would protect them all.
She turned to the sorcerer and the vampire he’d damned and said, “Ready for another?”
They nodded, and she led them toward the towering mass. Not so big and impressive as Laslo, and scorched in several places—no doubt the real Amelia’s work—it was still of giant stature, arrayed with many wicked limbs and exuded in all its roiling shifts of flesh and people the overwhelming monstrosity of its creators.
Danielle flew straight towards
its three-tongued maw, thinking it the creature’s greatest threat. She’d rather die by its limbs than be consumed and assimilated by it. At least this one didn’t spout Gospel. Still, it was all the more revolting for not having lips. Instead, many arms and faces popped out from around the cavity, acting the part of mandibles.
Kicking and punching at its teeth, she raked the mandibles with her blade. Tongues darted out and ensnared her legs. Drew her toward the maw.
She closed her eyes and focused her powers. Opening her eyes, she channeled her energies: the tongues caught fire and released her—but only for the moment. Retreating into their home, they doused the flames in the creature’s drool and shot back out again.
This wasn’t working. Danielle took off, quitting the mouth and flying over its roiling back instead. When possible, she unleashed her energies and was rewarded by seeing a puff of smoke rise from a fire she’d started. Nothing like the great scorch marks Amelia had left behind, but it was something. She rose to see what the other two were doing.
Ladrido: diving into an assimilated body, possessing it and attacking the other assimilated zombies within reaching distance. Then lighting out from the destroyed body and possessing another. It was the strategy he’d used on Laslo. Since this Collage was smaller and already somewhat beat-up, Ladrido was causing it to weaken at a quicker pace.
Kiernevar cursed and muttered to himself, still visible. Occasionally a bolt of lightning would flare out from him and score the hide of the leviathan, but it was clear to Danielle that the sorcerer had nearly exhausted his magical energies for the time-being.
She joined him on the ground.
“It’s fading,” he said. “Once, I could keep this up all night, but it’s been so long ... Give me time and it shall come back, but we haven’t got time.”
This was the man who’d saved her life—twice now. Also, he’d tried to kill Ruegger. And had killed many others, including Lyshira (who was now flying down low over Kharker, Sophia and Jean-Pierre) in his mad quest for power. He was changed now, but Danielle didn’t really know the new Kiernevar.
“Snap the fuck out of it,” she said. “If you haven’t got much power, then make what you’ve got count. The blunt limb—see it?—that’s how Ruegger killed Laslo. Laslo hid there. Save your energies till you’re sure of a strong shot and blow the limb to hell.”
“You must not think well of me, Danielle.”
“Like you told Ladrido, you’ve got to earn it. So earn it!”
She took to the air again and did her level best to lay waste to the Collage’s flank. The problem was that once a significant portion of a section of hide had been destroyed, the Collage would sift another layer of hide on top of it, presumably nurturing the wounded layer in the interim and smothering the fire. Danielle had to admit that Junger and Jagoda had designed these things well.
She glanced back towards them: still standing erect, smiling, though she could only see their profiles. They watched Amelia and Ruegger duel it out, not lifting a finger themselves, just enjoying the show. She gritted her teeth and redirected her hatred back towards the Collage.
“Die, already,” she said, landing on its back.
The resident deaders rose and encircled her. She cut one down, then another. So many, she thought. So many lives destroyed by the fuckers for their art and thirst for power. Killing these things seemed a cruel kindness, but she didn’t see them as individuals. They were past that now. They were machines of death, mere pieces in a work of art that symbolized everything she hated, and she cut them down, one after the other, with the force of that passion.
For every one she ended, another rose in its place.
A rotted hand reached for Danielle. She hacked it away. Another tried to grab her around the middle. She slicked its head in two. Gore sprayed her. A half-liquefied creature seized her ankle. She sliced it off at the gooey wrist. The fingers still dug in.
Suddenly the roiling floor of flesh beneath her parted. She was sucked into the chasm by groping hands and arms, disconnected from bodies, just sticking out of the sides of the fleshy well. She braced her own hands against the edges of the hole, but the hole widened. Her grip slackened. The deaders above shoved her down, the disembodied limbs below pulled her towards them. She tried to fly, to break free. They caught her and forced her deeper.
Suddenly she was inside, and the roof of flesh above sealed shut, trapping her. Hands held her in place, stilling her blade, dragging her deeper as inner walls of flesh closed around her.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I don’t think so.”
A spark—a flame! Then another.
“Take that, assholes.”
Heedless to her scorching, the walls closed tight around her so that she could feel their sticky surfaces, their groping hands. A man’s head pushed itself past a purplish, heart-colored wall and smiled at her.
“Join us, Danielle,” said the Collage. “Join us and be free.”
With a surge of adrenaline, she ripped out of the imprisoning arms and kicked the face so hard that her boot lodged in its brain. As she tugged her foot free, more arms caught her.
The fleshy walls pressed tighter. Tighter. Like being in some monstrous womb. Finally, she could see nothing else but the section of flesh immediately before her. Her small chamber began filling up with a thick, acidic fluid, stinging and biting into her boots and ankles. She would be assimilated into this thing without passing through the mouth at all ...
“No!”
She exerted all her power, but the bastards’ designs were too perfect. In minutes, she’d be like Roche Sarnova, not even an official zombie, just another article in another of the fuckers’ masterpieces.
“NO!”
The fluid was almost to her hip level, and it seemed that the walls no longer pressed against her. She was pressing into them. Becoming a part of it. She threw back her head and screamed.
Then, suddenly, a great shudder passed through the Collage. It stiffened, calmed, and grew quiet.
It fell. Her stomach lurching, Danielle felt the sensation of a short plummet. The acidic fluid surged up and over her, but the hands and walls had ceased to pulse with life. Kicking and scratching and clawing, she propelled herself up through shifting slabs of flesh until finally she emerged from the beast’s innards.
Gasping, she stood in the open air and tried to wipe the slime off her. She was on its back again. Looking around, she saw only the occasional twitch or spasm of a zombie.
Smoke caught at her nose.
The Collage had collapsed, and Danielle was now just twenty feet from the floor of the Feeding Room. She saw the blunt limb cut raggedly at the base, blackened, and the limb itself lying dormant on the ground. Its amputated end looked scorched and whiffs of smoke trailed up from it towards the ceiling.
Off to the side, Kiernevar, arms folded across his chest, smiled to himself. The sorcerer gave her a nod acknowledging her rather unflattering condition, and said, “Am I earning my keep yet?”
She pulled a trail of slime from her hair. “You’re starting off damned well.”
A cloud of bats circled about her, formed a shape. Together she and Ladrido leapt off the back to join the sorcerer.
“Nice work,” the bat-man told him.
“You did good yourself,” Kiernevar said. “I couldn’t believe you actually flew into the mouth—”
“You did what?” Danielle said
Ladrido shrugged. “Saw you go into its back, figured maybe I could help you from inside, so I flew into the mouth, three tongues and all. Burned a bit.” He winked at her “I tried to penetrate, but couldn’t. Flew back out. Nothing more to it than that.”
“Like hell,” she said, touched. Impulsively, she hugged him. Then Kiernevar. “Thanks. Now let’s go help the others.”
Ruegger was still fighting Amelia, slashing at her back and forth. He seemed to be holding his own for the moment, but Jean-Pierre, Kharker and Sophia weren’t doing so well against the zombies. Danielle was setting
out to help them when suddenly she noticed the Balaklava staring at her.
“Fuck you,” she called.
“Sorry, dear,” Junger said, removing one of his miniature tusks and picking his over-large teeth with it. “But it’s not quite that easy.”
The horde of zombies moved toward her group, and it was about this time that fins erupted from the ground.
* * *
Kharker, for his part, was enjoying himself mightily. Bashing in zombie skulls was just about the most enjoyable pastime he could have invented. Of course, in this particular circumstance, he’d have made the game more level if given the chance. When the coven of five had faced off against Subaire’s thirty soldiers, that had been a battle easily, if bloodily, won. And those shades had been responsive to pain in a way that these fucking deaders could never be.
He estimated them to number in the seventies or eighties. Over half bore great scorch marks where, undoubtedly, Amelia had assaulted them. Probably she’d killed a great many of the things when she’d attacked. Wounded or not, however, the zombies were quite up to the challenge.
Many had adopted defenses similar to those at Laslo’s mission—Jean-Pierre had told him all about it—wearing the skulls of their dead on their own heads to make it that much harder to slice their rotten melons open. Also, some wore pelvic bones or metal collars about their necks, thwarting attempts to behead them. On top of all this, they were almost all armed.
Kharker liked a challenge. He, Jean-Pierre and Sophia were out-numbered, true, but the three were kavasari now. That counted for a lot. Unfortunately, they couldn’t use their power of flight, as the Lyshira-dragon circled overhead, and she was at full strength.
Kharker tried to exert his pyrokinesis, but even against these half-dead creatures only a few small sparks flickered. Nothing the zombies couldn’t overcome.
So, one-armed, Kharker was stuck with brute strength and telekinesis. It would have to do. In his hand, he held a saber, the largest he’d been able to liberate from the claws of his victims, and about him hovered a dozen other blades—which he put to ample use.
