by Nazri Noor
This was bad news. I spoke too soon. In the battle at Central Square, there were dozens of mages from the Lorica fighting with us, experienced Hands and even Scions among them. When we last encountered Thea, we had Bastion, Prudence, Romira, and Vanitas to shore up our ranks. All we had tonight was a ragtag bunch of the undead.
Sure, we had a vengeful vampire and a furiously violent werewolf on our side, but we’d be overwhelmed soon enough. For the first time since we showed up I had the feeling that the Boneyard had bitten off more than it could chew. I glanced over at Carver. He was holding off huge numbers of the shrikes on his own, but lich, sorcerer, it didn’t matter. A mage was a mage, and we all had limitations to our power.
I fought off another shrike with Vanitas in one hand, then rummaged in my jeans pocket with the other, looking for my phone. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, but maybe getting in touch with the Lorica would help us. Herald, Prudence, Bastion, anybody. Hell, why hadn’t anyone shown up? Had Thea cast a glamour over the entire graveyard? Shit. Maybe she did respect the Veil, after all, even if it was for her own perverted purposes.
I retreated, still riffling through my pockets for my cell – where the hell was it? – when I bumped into something. I whirled, brandishing Vanitas in front of me. Good thing I didn’t swing him any further – it turned out that I’d bumped into Asher.
“I told you to hang back,” I said. “What are you doing?”
“I said I could help, but you wouldn’t listen.”
He pulled something out of his pocket, then lifted it to the sky. His hand pulsed with the sickly green energy of his necromantic power, and from between his fingers shone the blood-red glow of the Heartstopper.
“What the – where did you – ”
“Picked it up at Nirvana,” he muttered. “Also: get out of the way.”
I obeyed and hauled ass immediately. Asher yelled as he thrust his arm forward, directing the fused forces of his own gift and the Heartstopper’s magic in a braided twine of arcane power. My eyes scanned the hillside, waiting for his magic to take effect. It exceeded anything and everything I’d expected.
One by one, the bloodied and broken bodies of the homunculi rose from the earth, balefully resurrected by Asher’s necromantic energies. The Heartstopper must have preserved them as he prepared a reanimation spell powerful enough to affect nearly a hundred corpses.
I stood and watched, aghast, as the risen dead joined the fight against the shrikes. The homunculi demonstrated their unholy strength in full force, quite literally tearing the abominations apart, tentacle by tentacle, limb from limb, using nothing but their bare hands.
“Holy shit, Asher.”
“Well done,” Carver called out from across the way, his eyes sparkling with all of a father’s pride. “Brilliantly played, Asher.”
Asher grunted as he hefted the stone up high, wielding it like a weapon, a torch. His eyes bulged with terror, shock, and exhilaration, like this was his first true taste of power. I couldn’t have been more relieved. The extra bodies he raised meant that we finally had a fighting chance against the shrikes.
“Join the others,” Carver said, pointing at Sterling and Gil. “Asher and I will stay back. We need him to maintain the reanimation spell as long as he can. I’ll protect him.”
“Copy,” I said, rushing into the gap that vampire and werewolf had so surgically hacked among the shrikes.
Thea stood among them, still motionless, still without having cast any magic of her own. As I moved closer, I realized it was because she was incanting. Her lips formed around whispered words as she stared sightlessly, far beyond the battlefield, as if addressing something – or someone – that we couldn’t see.
A black, shaggy creature tore past me, roaring and growling. I yelped and leapt backwards. Sterling threw his hand over my chest, pushing me back.
“Stay out of Gil’s way. It takes more effort for him to distinguish friend from foe when he’s like this. I can heal out of it if he slashes me by accident, but you?”
“Got it,” I said, eyeing Gil carefully. He was unstoppable when he went full dog, the term we casually tossed around the Boneyard to describe his full transformation into a lycanthrope. It sounded cute, but was ultimately completely inappropriate considering the carnage he wrought each time he entered the wolf state. “I have to deal with Thea,” I continued. “She’s planning something, but I don’t know what.”
“No. We’ll deal with Thea.” Sterling pushed me again as he gracefully dodged a tumble of limbs and tentacles – a shrike and a homunculus locked in mortal battle, ripping each other to pieces. “The others have this under control. We need to stop her before she completes her ritual.”
We threw ourselves at Thea, raining down an assault from either side, me striking with Vanitas, and Sterling raking at her with his claws. Though making no sound, Thea’s lips continued to move with increasing speed, her eyes calculating the angles of our blows. She whirled in place as she incanted, her hands lifting to erect shields of blazing light, deflecting both blade and talon with unearthly precision.
Sterling, with his preternatural reflexes, found an opening between the shields somehow. He slashed, and Thea faltered, three lines of black blood blooming on her torso. She looked down at herself, momentarily stunned, but recovered quickly enough to conjure a spear of light, her teeth bared in anger.
“Sterling,” I shouted. “Get out of the – ”
Thea was always fast. The spear left her hand, soaring like a rocket, slamming into Sterling’s chest and throwing him off his feet. He screamed, clutching at the beam of solid light piercing his torso, struggling.
At least he wasn’t dead. That was the only consolation. Maybe Thea missed his heart. But this was my opportunity. I slashed Vanitas in a wide arc, aiming for her head. Thea lifted her hand again, her fingers supporting a shield crafted magically out of solid light.
I twisted my strike at the last moment, catching her at the wrist.
The slash severed her hand. I watched with dark satisfaction as it landed in the grass at her feet, fingers twitching, talons raking at the earth. Thea screamed, her eyes widening at the stream of thick, black blood dripping from the stump that was once her arm.
Then she locked eyes with me. Her horror turned into glee, and her screams warped into piercing laughter.
Chapter 28
I looked on in revulsion as the meat of Thea’s stump began to move. Sinew and muscle wriggled like little black worms, knitting and stitching even as she laughed. Bones erupted in slivers from the weaves of her ebony flesh, providing structure for her fingers.
Thea raised her hand in my face as a perfect layer of alabaster skin formed over it. Every finger looked pristine. New.
“What have you done to yourself, Thea? What are you now?”
She smiled, her fangs glinting in the starlight. “Better. Stronger. More powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
“This isn’t power, Thea. It’s madness. The Eldest will warp you the way they warp all of their servants.”
She laughed even louder, raising her talons to stroke at her cheek, as if both appraising and displaying her beauty. “I am not warped, Dustin Graves. I am a thing perfected.”
“No. You’re just insane.”
“Insane? What is insane, Dustin, is forfeiting a portion of your freedom in exchange for something that is dead.” Her eye fell upon my hand, upon Vanitas. “You bargained with a demon prince to bring back this weathered relic? How sentimental of you.”
“You’re one to talk. You’re still on your ridiculous crusade to bring back your children.”
I thought I caught the flash of anger in Thea’s face, but when she spoke again, her voice was even thicker with mockery.
“That seems entirely reasonable to me, Dustin. What wouldn’t you give to bring your loved ones back? Your family?”
My blood ran cold as her lips curved into a smile.
“What wouldn’t you give to bring back your
mother?”
The battle whirled around us. We were the eye of the cyclone, but every passing second, every word Thea spoke only stirred the storm in my heart. The Dark Room banged against its door. One thought, and I could kill her.
“She always did have a fascination for occult novelties, for strange antiques, your mother. All I did was sell her a box of trinkets. It was a simple matter of experimentation. With so much star-metal near her, I wondered, would the corruption take? Would her mortal body become fused with the energies of the Eldest?”
“You poisoned her. No human can take being close to that much corruption. We thought it was cancer. You killed my mother.” I gritted my teeth, my vision blurring with tears, my palm stinging as I gripped Vanitas’s hilt harder and harder. “Is that why you sacrificed me? Is that why you put your dagger in my heart, to test if I was the right subject for your insane plan?”
“Oh, it would have been glorious. If only you’d stuck it out with me, Dustin. If only the gem I placed around your throat could have truly controlled your mind. Imagine, me, an avatar of the Eldest themselves, and you, their greatest warrior, a thing that walks in the skin of a man, driven by the very darkest forces of the universe.”
“I’m not your plaything, Thea. I don’t belong to the Eldest. I don’t belong to you. I can fight what you’ve made me. I won’t turn into the monster that you are.”
She tilted her head. “Oh. Is that so? These brothers of yours, the homunculi. I could see through their eyes, every step of the way. And I saw the look on your face when you killed the homunculus in the forest. The one that attacked your father.” Thea smiled, her teeth glinting like daggers. “I saw the satisfaction in your eyes when you snuffed the life out of something that wore your face. Don’t you feel it, Dustin? The thrill of murder. The sheer joy of taking something in your hand, and crushing it until it starts bleeding. Until it stops breathing.”
But she was right. The urge to kill had become more and more difficult to resist, and my impulse to hurt and to slaughter had only grown stronger since the day I’d awakened to my powers. But I could control that. I was human, I told myself. I was Dustin Graves, a mage, a shadowcrafter. Someone’s son.
“I’m nothing like you,” I muttered.
“No. Of course not. And fortunately, for the sake of my experiment, you were nothing like your mother, either.”
“Don’t talk about her. I’ll fucking kill you. I swear I’ll – ”
Sterling leapt out of the darkness in a flurry of fangs and claws, his fingers extended as they reached for Thea. She held up one hand – and caught him by the throat.
“Dust,” Sterling shouted. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it now.”
But Thea – Thea had always been fast.
A gout of yellow brilliance roared out of her palm. This wasn’t one of her light spears, not one of the weapons she could summon out of thin air. It was warm, familiar, bright. Sunlight. She’d shot him, point blank, with a massive burst of sunlight. Sterling screamed, and screamed.
The tattered remains of his body – the tangles of bone that still had his flesh clinging to them – rattled as they fell to the ground. Half of his skin, muscle, and organs had been charred into cinders. His face remained miraculously intact, but not much else was. His eyes stared glassily at the moon, his mouth open, unmoving. Something icy gripped its fingers around my heart.
“Sterling. No. You killed him.”
“Undead filth,” Thea said, dusting off her hands.
“No more,” I shouted. “No more deaths. This is over.”
Thea spread her hands. “Then end it, if you can.”
I screamed as I charged at her, my heart thick with fury, my blood singing for vengeance. Vanitas’s hilt grew warm and slick in my hand. Blood. The Dark Room had come before I’d even thought to summon it. Bursting from the ground, twelve black spears of solid night pierced Thea’s body. She gasped, but did not falter.
“You tried that once before and didn’t kill me, Dustin. End it. End it, you pitiful coward.”
With both hands I raised Vanitas over my shoulder, rearing back with all the strength I needed to puncture Thea’s armor. And with a great roar I thrust the sword forward, watching with berserk relish as the blade pierced her chitin, then sank into her flesh, searching through her chest. When Vanitas met her heart, I felt it beat. I felt it tremble.
Thea gasped, her head thrown back. Black blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. I pushed. Harder, and harder, until I knew that Vanitas had penetrated Thea from stem to stern. The compound eyes of an insect stared at me, passive, yet analytical. I stared back, unable to comprehend the alien insanity of the woman that was once Thea Morgana. The pillar of light above us wavered, then vanished. The shrike attack was finished.
“Your last words, Thea,” I whispered. “Say them now. It’s over.”
Her eyes rolled down to stare me full in the face. “Do you remember,” she croaked, “when I used your blood to commune with the Eldest? When I told you that I needed your blood at its sweetest, the fruit of your talent at its ripest?”
I scowled, then twisted the blade harder. She choked. “What are you talking about?”
“One of our first lessons at the Lorica, Dustin. A communion must always come with an offering.”
Thea’s gaze fell to the ground. The pile of artifacts the homunculi stole. Wasn’t that her offering? But there they were, planted in the earth among the relics and trinkets. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed them before: two gravestones, small ones, that might have belonged to children.
My blood ran cold.
Thea wrapped her hands around Vanitas, her fingers pulling the verdigris sword deeper and deeper into her body. She trembled, grimacing in agony, and she lifted her mouth to the witnessing stars, the blood trickling down her chin.
“I offer myself to the Eldest.”
Chapter 29
Vanitas, the verdigris daggers, the chest of horrors left behind by my mother. All this time Thea was only waiting for her powers to grow, for her connection to the Eldest to mature, to make herself the greatest sacrifice there was. For how better could a priest of the Eldest serve her masters than by surrendering her very existence?
I don’t know when Thea decided to give up on capturing me again and using my blood for her rituals. I don’t know how she discovered that the watered-down blood of my homunculi was rich enough for inscribing the circle, yet not enough to offer as sacrifice. All I knew was that the heavens were screaming, twin beams of light lancing through the stars and the sky, each of them seeking one of the little gravestones on the hill.
Thea released Vanitas, then toppled backwards, the sword slipping out of her torso as she fell. She slumped to the ground, motionless. I felt no triumph, no satisfaction. We’d slain one threat, but all I had truly done was complete her ritual for her.
The shrikes had vanished, but so had the homunculi. The grass was thick with smears of blood, both black and red. Across the hill, Asher was sprawled on all fours, retching from the vast expenditure of his power. From somewhere behind me I could hear Carver calling my name. But above it all, what I really heard was the wailing.
Two voices, screaming, howling, from beneath the earth. Two children. The ground rumbled.
I ran for it.
“Dustin, to my side,” Carver yelled. You can bet I dashed straight for him. Whatever was happening, an entire localized earthquake – and the horrific subterranean shrieking? Not good omens at all. “Steel yourselves. The worst is still to come.”
But I wondered if we even had any fight left between us. Asher was still bent double, drenched in cold sweat. Gil remained in his wolf form, crouched by the edge of the hill, snarling and growling at something the rest of us couldn’t see. And Sterling – God but I know that it’s callous, but it was best for me not to think of what had happened to Sterling just then. We needed everything we had to fight. There was no time for grieving.
The little gravestones tumbl
ed over, and the earth of the hilltop split apart, scarring as the first set of massive white talons burst from out of the ground. Each talon was the size of a human forearm, all of them sprouting from limbs as thick as telephone poles.
My mouth parched, I looked on in horror as more of those limbs erupted from the earth, scattering the soil as they lifted their bearers out of their graves, their bodies bulbous and fleshy, glistening in some awful, slick fluid. Two of these creatures, each the size of a small truck, finally freed themselves from their former homes. Each had the body of a huge, writhing maggot. Each raked its spear-like claws and long, spindly arms at the air.
And each bore the head of a young, long-dead child.
“Her children,” Carver muttered. “She finally did it. She brought them back to life.”
And at what cost? This was exactly as Bastion told me all that time ago, and exactly as Carver predicted. The Eldest have no loyalty, no understanding of mercy or human emotion, and even the wishes granted to their servants would be corrupted, perverted beyond recognition.
The two abominations, one with the head of a boy, the other, a girl, shrieked and wailed, both from their human mouths and from the multitude of tooth-lined gashes ripped into their heaving bodies.
“My babies.”
I didn’t think that Thea had survived. Yet with twelve gaping holes in her body, and a thirteenth punched through her heart, she was still moving, crawling on her hands and knees towards the bellowing monstrosities that were once her own offspring.
They turned to her with unseeing eyes, the heads of the two children bowing as they spotted the woman writhing in a pool of her own blood. But they turned away again, uncaring, showing no signs of recognition, no memory of the thing that was once their mother.
“My babies,” Thea croaked, and something within my chest twisted.
I detested the very thought of feeling any sympathy for the woman who had murdered not just me, but my mother. Yet my heart still seized with foreboding when another beam of light slammed into the earth, only feet away from Thea’s ragged body.
