Metal Angel: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Rings of the Inconquo Book 3)

by A. L. Knorr

  I settled in the air a handful of metres above him, glaring down at his attempt at nonchalance. I could feel his mind withdrawing the foundations. He could croon and chuckle all he wanted, but he knew he was in for a fight.

  “This ends now,” I declared, raising my voice to fill the amphitheatre. “The madness, the death, the domination. All of it stops today.”

  Ninurta threw back his head and laughed. “Really? You act as though I am an evil tyrant to be toppled, but your modern world is infested with a thousand petty despots. Small men and women with small ambitions. I am not here to oppress humanity, but to save it. If you could humble yourself and open your eyes, you would see the truth.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. “A megalomaniac talking about humility. Now there’s an informed opinion.”

  Ninurta shook his head and slowly rose from his throne, linen robes flowing around his powerful frame like an ivory waterfall. “I am not a proud man, just an honest one.”

  He gestured at the huddling groups around the amphitheatre. “Humanity has lost its way. It fell from the path of ascension that began with me. One of evolution’s million failures. For all its marvels and toys, humanity is merely a collection of apes beating their chests at what they can bully and cowering from what they cannot.”

  He looked up, his face pleading. His voice was soft, rich and pained, as if his heart was breaking. “I deserve better, you deserve better, and indeed all of humanity deserves better. So I will set things right, even if I must bear the burden, the crushing weight that such choices require. If there is to be any hope for our species, someone must dare to reach for a brighter future no matter the consequences.”

  This was a monster’s justification, the sort of lie a fanatic told himself to escape responsibility for his actions. I wanted to rebut, but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing I’d even listened his ramblings.

  “You talk too much.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Why don’t you get to dropping meteors already.”

  Ninurta shook his head at the taunt, sparing me a condescending smile. “I don’t think anything as dramatic as that is called for,” he replied. “And you should listen with more than just your ears, Inconquo.”

  There was an eruption of broken stone, and four kraken worthy tentacles of copper burst from the floor around his throne to reach for me.

  I hadn’t sensed him drawing some of the seams up from the ziggurat’s bowels, but the fact that he was desperate enough to use them to attack me, despite their importance to his plan, put a smile on my face as I dodged the flailing metal.

  I darted around one, slipped by a second, and managed to deflect a third with my wings before the fourth tendril sent me spinning toward the floor. I tried to right myself, but the other tendrils rallied to buffet me over and over until I crashed down before the throne.

  Ninurta sprang down the last few steps, landing in front of me, light and agile as a cat, and then kicked me squarely in my armoured face. Even protected, my head snapped back with the force of the blow, and I went tumbling over my wings. I skidded to a stop, my wings biting into the stone floor and forcing me upright.

  “You’ll have to do better than that.” I straightened my wings with a flex of mental power and faced him squarely.

  The four tendrils slithered back into their holes.

  “Oh. I think you know I can.”

  A flash of metallic awareness saved me and I sprang into the air a fraction of a second before the tendrils erupted again, opening a yawning hole in the floor where I had been standing. I accelerated upward as they flailed after me before turning sharply and diving down into their midst.

  I heated two of my wings with that searing power again, thankful that the tempered steel from the firearms could withstand the incredible temperatures. I hacked and hewed as I spun and bounced amongst the writhing tendrils. The copper did not succumb like the tin, but with each stroke it warped and began to run. I shunted a thrust of mental power through the rings to drive the tendrils into one another; within seconds they became a knotted clinging mass, twisting violently against itself.

  A hiss of frustration rose from Ninurta as he reached out to disentangle the tendrils. Knowing I had scant seconds, I burst out from the morass and made a beeline for the distracted demigod.

  Two blazing wings in front, two ready to shield me, and two churning the air, I piled into him with all I could muster. The blazing wings cut smouldering gashes in his robes before lodging in his shoulders, pinning his arms back, as my armoured fists drove into his chest. I savoured his look of surprise as I drove him back toward his throne. His foot struck against the steps and he fell, landing hard on his back with a clang.

  Digging the sharp tips of my wings deeper in to his metal-infused flesh, I prepared to pile-drive a fist into his face.

  With a wet, bestial snarling sound he twisted underneath me, wrenching free at the same time kicking upward. Committed to my heavy swing, the kick between my legs sent me crashing into the steps fist first as he slid out from under me. The impact would have snapped bones had it not been for my protective shell, but pain radiated up my arm and into my shoulder, making me grit my teeth.

  Before I could rise, Ninurta sprang on my exposed back, gathering my wings like flower stems in huge hands. I tried to twist away, to swivel my wings, to break free or at least stab at him but his grip, both physical and mental, was inescapable. Metal squealed and tines snapped with sharp plinks as his grip tightened. I kicked while scrambling for purchase on the stone, but he laughed at my feeble efforts before raising me up by my wings to smash me against the steps.

  The first impact struck like a gong. My armour held. But he slammed me down again, and again, until I felt like battered jelly inside my dented armour and the stone of the steps caked me in a fine powder.

  “I don’t think you will need these anymore,” he growled next to my ear in that awful leonine voice. I tried to form thoughts to fight back, but all I could do was keep the metal around me by sheer instinct. He planted a foot on my back, bearing down as he pulled upward.

  I held onto the twisted metal that had been my wings as hard as I could, but felt my hold coming apart millimetre by millimetre. I heard metal tearing a second before my will gave way. My mind staggered, reeling as an aching numbness washed over me and I blacked out.

  I came to as I crashed down next to the wound in the floor where the mangled copper tendrils still writhed. Skidding across the stones, my metal skin kicked up sparks.

  “You could have been a queen!”

  I looked up with bleary eyes to see Ninurta stalking forward, muscles rolling with predatory elegance. “I offered you the world, and you rejected it.”

  Despite the rings channelling inward, I was recovering more quickly than I had any right to. Control over my armour was awkward, the metal shell stiffened in places, making my motions jerky.

  He loomed over me, a colossus of muscle and bone, every fibre having the strength of steel. Swelling behind his incredible physical presence was the shadow of his titanic power. I was hopelessly, absurdly, outmatched.

  “Ungrateful insect.” His voice was as flat and cold as a razor blade.

  He reached out, pushing past my defence, rings or not. His fingers sank into the gunmetal skin as though it were cloth, twisting the brass frame beneath so it bit into my skin. I lashed out with sharp kicks that rang off his shins and knees with dull clangs.

  He drilled down into the fabric of the armour and severed my connection with a single savage twist of power. I looked into his chilling stare and saw nothing but contempt as he tore the metal skin from my body in one sharp pull. The metal parted like rotten lace, small spurs raking my arms and face.

  I reeled backward and realised with horror that I was at the edge of the tunnel where the tendrils writhed. My heels scuffed the jagged edge.

  Before I could right myself, Ninurta’s hand shot out and closed around my throat. He drew me from the edge and off my feet to loo
k him in the eye. My fingers dug at his crushing fingers as my legs kicked feebly, but I might as well have been clawing at an iron vice.

  “You are unworthy. Unworthy of my time, my attention, and my blood.” Ninurta bent his head forward to place his lips next to my ears.

  “Die knowing you were not enough,” Ninurta whispered as his fingers began to tighten. “Die knowing you failed.”

  Twenty-One

  The pressure on my neck, the tissue of my throat, the bones of my spine, was so incredible I had a fleeting thought that I was about to explode. Then the pressure was gone and I was falling.

  Is this what it’s like to die?

  I landed on the stone floor hard enough to make my teeth rattle and raw, hacking gasps rocked me. I forced myself to my hands and knees to give my greedy lungs as much room as they needed to claim the oxygen they had been denied. I looked up at Ninurta with tear-bleared eyes.

  Every sinew stood out as his body like an electric current was passing through him; his teeth bared in a frothing grimace. Across his taut neck, a bloom of black veins stood out like venomous vines burrowing into the trunk of a tree. From those tumorous growths a shadow tentacle of an edimmu stretched behind the stricken demigod to Daria standing a few paces away. Ninurta had been so intent on me he didn’t notice when a living darkness separated itself from the shadows of the throne, rearing back like a black serpent ready to strike.

  “I’ve been waiting for this day for a long, long time,” Daria hissed through jagged fangs.

  A hard hand seized my arms and hauled me to my feet. I looked up and saw Sark’s demon-ravaged face, but he wasn’t even looking at me. His eyes were fixed on Ninurta, and I could hear the grinding engine pulse inside his chest building momentum. Kezsarak’s voice bubbled up from deep within, a poisonous, hateful noise that stung my ears.

  TRAITOR

  Still fighting for air, I remembered the ancient history between Kezsarak and Ninurta. Ninurta had convinced Kezsarak to aid him against the demon’s father Asag, but despite his promises to the contrary, Ninurta had slain Asag and set the gallu on the path to madness and damnation. Kezsarak’s hatred of humanity in general, and the Inconquo, in particular, all began with Ninurta.

  “Remember the plan, Sark,” I croaked. “We’re so close. Remember.”

  Sark’s gaze didn’t leave the demigod, but his cracked lips quivered, and he ran a pale tongue over them.

  “Hurry, Ibby,” he whispered hoarsely. “I’m not sure how long we can hold him.”

  We? Oh no! If Sark and Lowe were working together and could barely keep the demon at bay, things could come undone just before the finish line.

  Pulling from his nerveless grip, I staggered a few steps away from the demigod and the gaping black pit. The copper had sunk back down into the depths without Ninurta’s will to animate it.

  “Not yet, Kezsarak,” I gasped, as I fought to slow my pounding heart and steady my laboured breathing. I had one shot at this.

  “Hurry!”

  Lowe’s voice revived me, and with hardening focus I drove my metallic awareness into Ninurta’s rigid body. I plunged deep and found the nebula of living metal, its movement sluggish, slowed by Daria’s poison. It was a testament to his terrible will that it still flowed at all. It quickened and pulled against me: even against the crippling demonic poison of an edimmu the demigod fought on.

  The rings before me, I poured everything I had into drawing the living metal out of him. At first it felt like trying to drag a mountain, but with agonising slowness, the current began to bow and turn my way. A fresh coat of sweat broke out across my body and stung my eyes as I dug deep, pulling from depths I didn’t know I had.

  Crimson motes sprang from the demigod’s skin and a tight, impotent scream of rage slipped from between Ninurta’s teeth. Sark stalked forward, Kezsarak’s demonic heartbeat hammering like an engine ready to explode.

  TRAITOR!

  “Not yet!” Daria shouted, muscles standing out on her neck. “She has to draw it all out. Not yet!”

  The stream of bloody particles coming off Ninurta grew by the second, coalescing into a flickering cloud. I could already sense places in Ninurta where the choruses of metal had gone silent.

  “Almost … there!” I snarled through clenched teeth. “Almost!”

  Sark lurched forward, hand outstretched, his body recoiling as though he was trying to pull away from a fire.

  “Sark, no!” I screamed. “Almost—”

  VENGEANCE!

  Sark’s hand plunged into the swirling motes, fingers curling into a gnarled claw. The sour tang of Kezsarak’s corrupting influence spread like wildfire, and the red turned to black. The glimmers of metal turned to bleak stars flashing with lethal promise. I knew what was coming as my grip came undone and the last particles of living metal were drawn back into Ninurta.

  The catastrophic detonation came, and time seemed to slow to a crawl even as the sparks bloomed into fireballs. Sark’s eyes bulged in terror as a mad, rambling laugh burst from his lips. Daria’s grip on Ninurta withered before the surge of heat and light. I reared back, certain I was dead.

  A silver silhouette detached itself from Sark with a sound like ripping parchment. The figure stretched into the shape of a tall and lanky man. Pearly translucent arms enveloped me. The shade’s touch was cold yet comforting, an embrace that soothed and steadied me.

  I will hold you.

  The voice was the rich, articulate tones of a century-old ghost and a very dear friend.

  The fireballs swelled, as time returned to normal, devouring everything they touched. Heat and force wash over me, but I felt little more than a summer breeze. I squeezed my eyes shut as the explosion grew bright as the sun.

  I won’t let you go.

  Flashes of heat prickled across my skin, slipping through as the force of the blast tore at the protective layer Lowe had created around me, but the breaches mended even as I felt Lowe’s grip slacken.

  The seconds stretched and Lowe’s grip thinned into a bare caress as more and more of him was ripped away by the fury he was holding at bay. The final aftershock of the eruption rolled by and dragged away the last traces of Lowe’s spirit.

  I’m so proud of you.

  Then he was gone.

  ---

  Blinking in the wake of Kezsarak’s fatal error, I stood on unsteady legs and looked around.

  An ache like a piece of my heart was missing throbbed in my chest and I wanted to crumple to the ground and weep. My gaze swung left and right, seeing things without understanding, hearing things without comprehending.

  Lowe was gone and Ninurta survived. How could this happen, the plan had been …

  Ninurta survived!

  The world snapped into focus and I heard a scream of pain accompanied by the hiss of searing heat.

  I spun around and saw Ninurta, ravaged and burned to a nightmare, sinking his fingers into the exposed metal throbbing in Sark’s chest. Sark shrieked as the grinding gears of Kezsarak’s infernal engine whined and snarled. More of Ninurta’s flesh peeled away as he sank his hand up to the wrist, revealing bones that glimmered with a metal sheen.

  “So close, Kezsarak,” Ninurta rasped, his voice a ragged sound in his scorched throat. “So very close.”

  The demigod’s hand closed around something inside Sark’s chest and his scream rose then crashed into a breathless groan. Ninurta’s hand gave a sharp twist and withdrew. Sark collapsed to the floor and stared upward, his mouth working soundlessly. He shuddered and went limp, a puppet with its strings cut.

  In Ninurta’s hand, dripping molten metal was a heart. Around the metallic organ, a shuddering shadow, almost like a lightless flame flickered and shrank. The sound of Kezsarak’s hellish motor coughed a final turn and then fell silent as the shadowy flame extinguished.

  Ninurta gargled a laugh and tossed the heart over his shoulder into the pit.

  Daria, her human guise in tatters, crouched next to me. Just like Pierre, the crea
ture beneath the beautiful woman’s skin was a black-skinned horror; but also like him, the power of Lamashtu’s curse knit her back together. When most of her human face had reappeared, I was surprised to see neither fear nor sadness. In that instant, looking into her eyes, I saw acceptance, even peace.

  “Why can’t any of you fools understand?” Ninurta drew my attention back to his skeletal hulk, all that remained of the once magnificent king. “I am unstoppable. I am irresistible. I am perpetual!

  He threw a hand toward his feet and with an enraged bellow launched his will outward and downward simultaneously. I felt it like a rip-tide and was nearly drawn into the undertow. Bracing myself against it, I realised others were not so lucky. The wills, the very life energy, of the other Inconquo-blooded were being dragged from beyond the temple walls to fuel his downward questing blast. It was not as clean or elegant as the ritual, and I felt wills snapping like the Inconquo with the bronze club, their minds and bodies buckling under the strain.

  Ninurta would have his new world, even if he had to kill all of his descendants to do it.

  I reached out, trying to divert his efforts, but it was like trying to redirect a flooding river. I was more likely to get dragged in than I was to change its course, much less stop it.

  I turned to Daria, despair welling up, and saw a sad smile spreading across her face. She reached out and clasped my hands in hers.

  As the earth beneath us began to shake, she said, “I’m glad it will end this way, and I’m glad it will be with you.”

  I wanted to argue, to tell her not to give up, but I was beaten, nearly broken, and so tired. I stared at her as she bent her head and kissed my hands. Something small, cylindrical, and feeling of earth slid into my hand before she pulled away.

  Daria turned back towards Ninurta, her eyes gleaming fiercely.

  “You look ragged and weary, o’ king of kings.” Tendrils of darkness spread around her. “Come rest in my embrace!”