by J. C. Diem
Apparently, it took effort to maintain the continual regeneration of the golems and the hell spawn. After a couple of hours of slaughtering our foes, the flood of demons slowed to a trickle. The golems stayed as inert stone rather than breaking down into sand and their remaining animal minions were dismissed. My undead hordes had decimated the animals to the point where they weren’t posing much of a threat to the surviving humans now. The streets were clogged with bodies, cars and people on foot as millions of civilians tried to flee from the carnage.
Even with the added power that I’d gained from my zombies, it still wasn’t enough and I was exhausted. I had enough energy to retreat to where I’d left my clothes and to dress before returning to Mark and Ava.
Still in their wereforms, my friends and family gathered around us. My father and Kala were a matched pair with their feline forms and tawny pelts. My dad had taken to being a shifter with almost frightening ease. Thanks to his years of military training, he was probably the most efficient killer on the planet now.
Reece and Zeus flanked me, lending me their energy as best they could. I wanted to sleep for a week then eat an entire cow, but the battle wasn’t over. I was pretty sure this was just a reprieve.
My hunch was proven to be correct when Kurt and his sidekick appeared. My army of shifters snarled and Reece growled low in his throat in warning. Zeus took a threatening step towards the pair, but I motioned for them to stand down. My zombies and vengeful ghosts were poised to attack, but they would wait for my command.
“So,” Kurt said gravely, but his pale eyes danced with glee. “It seems that we are at an impasse. Your army appears to be a match for mine.” He gave me a mocking bow. “I must admit that I underestimated you, my dear.”
“Most people do,” Mark said. “She was chosen by Fate to be a champion of this world, after all.”
Kurt’s pet demon uttered an evil chuckle that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. “Maybe so, but what you have seen so far is just the beginning. The creatures that I have called forth are just a fraction of the number that I can unleash on this world.”
“Why haven’t you summoned more of them then?” I asked. He flicked a glance at Kurt and I smiled knowingly. “Ah, your master won’t let you. Kurt is afraid that you’ll gain ascendency and turn the tables on him if he lets you off his leash.”
“He is not my master,” he hissed. “I am a Demon Lord! No one has supremacy over me!”
“You made some kind of bargain with him, which means you have to do his bidding,” Mark pointed out.
“Don’t you know how dangerous it is to bargain with a faery?” I said in a pitying tone. “I saw him using his fae magic to make you agree to his deal. You had no idea you were being bamboozled.” I pretended to think about it and smirked. “Do you realize what that makes you? You’re the faerie’s bitch.”
At my snigger, his hand lashed out and he seized me by the throat. I was taking a serious risk by pushing him to the edge, but I didn’t know what else to do. Making the demon lose control was the only thing that might force Kurt to rein his sidekick back in.
Lifting me high enough for me to stare into his scarlet eyes, he snarled at me in rage. “I will show you who the master is here, puny werewolf!” Tossing me aside, his eyes blazed as he raised his hands.
Hitting the ground, I scrambled to my feet as he shouted in his hellish tongue. Squawking angrily, Kurt was ignored by the creature he’d made a deal with as more and more pits began to open. I could sense the half-faerie’s fear as dozens, then hundreds of portals opened and an army of leviathans clawed their way out of hell. With earthshattering roars, they shook their fists at the sky as they celebrated their freedom.
The demon turned to Kurt and spoke to him in German. Once again, Flynn translated the words for me. “The last time someone tried to control me, it did not end well for her. You will suffer the same fate as that witch if you attempt to manipulate me again.”
My mouth went dry with fear as I realized that my calculated risk had failed. With all of his hoarded power, Kurt could no longer control the creature that he’d aligned himself with. Not even his fae magic was strong enough to bamboozle the demon now that it knew that it had been played.
“What did he say?” Mark asked me. I repeated the conversation and his puzzlement changed to understanding. “That’s where I know the name Regina Chesterfield from,” he said to himself, speaking almost too quietly for me to hear him.
Something told me the information would be crucial. “Where did you hear it?” I asked him urgently enough to make him frown.
“I read it in Thomas’ journal,” he shouted over the deafening noise of the hell spawn as they began to rampage through the city. “It was from one of his earliest missions.” The rest of what he had to say was drowned out as a nearby building collapsed, but I was too lost in memory to have heard him anyway.
Something that I’d read when I’d first joined the agency came back to me. When Mark had given me access to the archives, I’d read about a demon who had been summoned by a witch. Even now, the story gave me chills. She’d sacrificed her own daughter to bring the creature forth. Her name hadn’t been mentioned in the translated copy of the journal. I’d seen photocopies of the original journal, but her name had been smudged out. Knowing Mark, he’d probably read the original journal itself. It was the only way he could have known her name.
Turning to the gray demon, I finally realized why he was so familiar. Thomas had drawn a picture of this exact creature in his journal. Regina Chesterfield must have been the witch who had summoned this Demon Lord. She’d given Kurt the knowledge he’d needed to spring the creature free from hell.
My hopes had already been low, but they withered even more now that I knew what I was up against. Something this powerful could only be banished back to hell by someone who could wield holy power. I had talents that no other shifter had ever had before, but holy power wasn’t one of them.
With a fresh wave of large and small demons and hell hounds to fight, my ghosts sapped more energy from me and went on the attack again. The two thousand shifters that we’d rescued from the EERI bases threw themselves back into the battle. The elemental magicians were tiring and I wasn’t sure how much longer they’d be able to throw lightning, fire, earth and water at our foes. I’d siphoned so much energy from my zombies that they were beginning to move sluggishly. I was almost at the end of my endurance and I wouldn’t be able to continue for much longer.
Seeing my fatigue, Ava and Mark exchanged a look. “Allow me,” the nagi said as Mark opened his mouth to speak. “There is a chance that she might turn you into a shifter if she were to feed on your blood.”
“How do you know she won’t turn you?” he asked in concern.
Her smile was enigmatic, yet I sensed her nervousness. “I have told you what I am, but you have yet to see me in my natural form. There is no chance that Lexi will be able to transform me into a monster, for I already am one.”
Moving away, she closed her eyes and ignored the battle that was going on around her. As we watched, she shimmered and began to change. Her transformation wasn’t like a shifter or a lamia. One moment, she was a human, then the illusion was gone and we saw her in her true form.
Mark gaped up at the serpentine creature that towered above him. Her body was long and sinuous. Almost as large as the golems, she had four legs, a long tail and wings that were too small for her to be able to fly. Her scales were bronze on her head and back, lightening to gold on her abdomen. Her head was sleek and resembled a lizard’s. Her teeth were long and needle sharp. Her talons looked like they could cut through even the golems’ stone hide.
“You’re a dragon,” Mark said in a dazed tone. His astonishment changed to awe. “My God, you’re magnificent.”
Tension seeped out of her and she lowered her head and nuzzled his chest. He put a hand on her scaly head in stunned awe. Their mutual love flowed from them both then she took hold of her emotions and tur
ned to me. I couldn’t read her mind, but I knew what she wanted me to do. I’d never fed from a nagi before and was unsure what affect her blood would have on me. With my head swimming from fatigue, I walked to her on unsteady legs. She lifted a leg and turned it over so I could reach the softer underside.
“Are you sure?” I asked her. She gave a single nod, so I did what was necessary and bit into her flesh. As her thick, sweet blood flooded into my mouth, visions rocked me. I saw her life pass by in rapid succession. Five thousand years of pain and loneliness washed through me. I saw the Viltarans arrive and turn the people who would one day become a race of Vikings into walking corpses.
I watched as the Asgardian army came next. A figure that was dressed in a dark cloak rather than bright, gaudy costumes stood out from the others. Cynical and brooding, yet undeniably handsome, Loki unleashed his magic that had created shape shifters. His smirk told me he knew that he’d caused a lasting legacy of chaos when he and his kin finally left our realm.
Time sped by with misery and desolation as Ava’s only companions. Then she’d met Mark and her entire world had changed. She knew he was just a mortal, but she’d fallen for him anyway. He was the most intelligent, kind being that she’d ever met. For ten years, she’d longed to tell him the truth about herself, but fear had held her back. Now he was an immortal just like her and he loved her as deeply as she loved him. Finally, she’d found her true mate and her true purpose. Together, they would protect this land.
Blinded by the barrage of her memories, I barely noticed when she pulled away. For several long moments, I was caught in a stasis. I saw the world as it had been when Ava had been young and I knew what the future would be if I failed. Every possible choice was laid out for me and they all resulted in the same conclusion; failure. Kurt Jorgen couldn’t die. He’d told me himself that nothing on this earth could kill him. We would lose and our planet would become uninhabited and empty except for the mad faery and us.
Then the visions faded and the world came crashing back. I gasped for air as her blood burned its way through my system. Far stronger than anything I’d ever consumed before, power slammed into me until I thought I’d burst.
“Are you alright?” Mark asked. He took hold of my arm and shook me when I didn’t respond. “Agent Levine! Snap out of it!”
“We can’t win,” I said to him in despair. “I saw us fail over and over.” I met his eyes and knew mine were defeated. “There’s no way we can beat him.”
Seizing me by the shoulders, his grip would have hurt a normal human, but I barely felt his fingers biting into my flesh. “There has to be a way! You just have to figure it out!” His tone and grip gentled, but he didn’t lose his intensity. “Don’t give up, Lexi. You’re the only one who can save humanity.”
Turning away from me, he shouldered his assault rifle and strode into battle with a dragon guarding his back. Mark was the one who should have been chosen. He was the hero here, not me. Our world was going to be torn apart and it would be all my fault. I wasn’t the champion that Fate needed me to be. I was just a scared kid who had no idea of what I was supposed to do.
₪₪₪
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Filled with more power than I knew what to do with, I struggled to rally. I infused my zombies with more death magic, bringing them back to full strength again. My necromancer was eager to stretch her wings, so I let her loose. Reaching out, she touched the corpses of every human in L.A. who had fallen to Kurt’s hordes. Using the blood that had soaked into the ground, she called on them.
Green fog sprang to life, blanketing the entire city. Hundreds of thousands of bodies stirred and lurched to their feet to join my army. Their spirits hadn’t had time to move on yet, so I converted them to my cause as well. Already full of rage and loss, it didn’t take much for them to turn vengeful. Bodies and souls that had been torn from each other joined the battle.
It still wasn’t enough, so my werewolf took over. Stretching out with her mind, she sensed the shifters who were spread out all over the country. As one, they turned towards me. I need your assistance, I said to them all. The fate of our world hangs in the balance. Knowing that I was their supreme ruler, they bowed their heads in submission. All were in their wereforms, hunting down prey. With a thought, I sent my zombies out. They appeared beside the werebeasts, took them in their arms then returned with the shifters who should have been their mortal enemies.
My army of shifters had just been increased to five thousand. I didn’t need to be concerned that they would turn on my zombies. I’d already given them their orders and they had no choice but to obey me. They moved into packs and loped towards the hell spawn that were flushing out the humans from their hiding places.
Kurt had resurrected his golems again and they were back on the rampage. More and more demons were clawing their way out of the hell pits. Vengeful ghosts flew through them, turning solid and tearing them apart almost as fast as they appeared.
Walking over to the edge of a pit, I looked down into utter darkness. Impossibly far below, a portal opened and I saw into hell itself. In the blasted, fiery landscape, tens of millions of gigantic red demons were waiting for their turn to claw their way to our world to feed.
Milling at their feet were an even larger number of small black imps. Hell hounds waited patiently for their turn to emerge. One of the behemoths was sucked through the portal and began to climb. The door closed, but opened again almost immediately. This time, a dozen black imps clambered up the walls like oversized cockroaches.
Even with the new shifters, zombies and ghosts that I’d added to my army, it still wasn’t enough. I needed more allies. A short battle erupted inside me, then my werewolf and necromancer reluctantly let my vampire rise. She reminded me that there were other beings that I could call on. Beings that were the enemies of everyone on this planet.
Stunned by her idea, I’d never considered that vampires could actually become useful. They were just as dangerous and evil as the hell spawn, but I was pretty sure I was now powerful enough to control them. With glee, my vampire reached out and sensed the undead all around the country. It was almost disturbing that there were roughly the same number of vampires as there were werewolves. I didn’t have to send my zombies to retrieve them. Undead, they were animated by a similar type of death magic as I possessed. I simply had to reach out and connect with their minds to bring them to me.
Sinking into the ground, they emerged to surround me. Staring around wildly at finding themselves in a strange city and confronted with unfriendly vamps, they shifted into defensive stances. Like werewolves, they tended to fight to the death when encountering rival nests of bloodsuckers. I stepped in before they could break into a fight.
Under normal circumstances, I’d have to feed them my blood and force my will on them to make them mine. I didn’t have the time to resort to such measures. Trusting my instincts, I sent a blast of death magic outwards. It blew past the vampires, fluttering their filthy, tattered clothing and matted hair. Their dirty faces turned to me in astonishment.
Infused with Ava’s magical blood, I forced myself into their minds. I am your master now, I said to them all in an implacable tone that couldn’t be resisted. Most were only a few decades old and submitted to me immediately. Some of the master vampires had been undead for centuries or even several millennia. Beneath my unyielding stare, they succumbed to my power and bowed their heads in submission.
“What do you wish of us, Master?” an aged, decrepit looking female vampire asked in a thick European accent. I sensed her age was somewhere over three thousand.
My instructions were simple. “Kill the demons and send them back to hell.”
Given free rein to do murder, their grins were wide enough to show their fangs. All five thousand of them sprinted into battle. Moving almost too fast for the eye to follow, they tore into the flood of imps that emerged from the hell pits.
A nest of twenty vamps banded together to tackle one of the behemot
hs. Almost as strong as werewolves, but much faster, they clambered up its legs. Burrowing deep inside its body, they worked their way upwards. Rending and tearing its insides with their bare hands, they ripped the demon to pieces from the inside out. They didn’t need to worry about running out of air. They’d given up on breathing the moment they’d become undead.
Bellowing in agony, the demon tore at its own skin as it tried to get at them. Falling to its knees, it was so gravely wounded that it couldn’t heal itself. Soaked in its black blood, vampires broke through its flesh and wormed their way out like maggots emerging from a carcass. The behemoth crashed onto its face, but they weren’t done yet. It scrabbled at the ground as they clawed their way through its throat. When its head came free, they raised their gory hands in triumph then turned to the next monster.
Mark sent me a panicked look when he realized that vampires were swarming through the streets. “Please tell me you have control of them!” he shouted above the din. A grinning black demon crept up behind him. Before I could shout a warning, Ava darted out of the shadows and bit it in half.
“I have them in hand!” I yelled back. Relieved, Mark turned and blasted the imp’s face apart with his assault rifle as it was trying to drag itself over to him. Staying low to the ground, Ava was a menacing presence as she kept the threats away from him with her tail, teeth and claws.
Yelping in terror, a hell hound bounded past me with Zeus hot on its heels. He was having the time of his undead life hunting them down. Tiring of playing with the hound, he winked out of existence and materialized in front of it. Crashing into him, the hound fell to the ground and tried to scramble to its feet. Zeus pounced, sinking his teeth into the hound’s throat and burrowing in deep.
