The battle came into full view.
A dozen standing stones maybe nine feet tall formed a ring, with three more stones at the ring’s center. Twelve stones in the outer ring, and bound to either side of each stone, arms intertwined, were prisoners. Three more were bound to the shorter inner stone. I sucked at arcane arithmetic, but I felt pretty sure that three times nine sacrifices tied to thirteen stones added up to some serious ritualistic mojo. Glowing lines of twined spiritual and magical energy ran from the prisoners toward the center of the circle.
I recognized a couple of the bound men and women immediately, important and powerful members of the ARC leadership. The relatives of all those exiles that Grandfather had framed, I realized, no doubt the ARC members most opposed to the Arcanite agenda. Grandfather was killing two birds with one stone by using the sacrifice of his ARC rivals to fuel his grand spell to kill the Fey. Or, I guess, killing lots of birds with thirteen stones.
Circling the outer ring of stones, at least fifteen arcana stood ready to defend Grandfather and protect his spell. Not all were wizards. I saw alchemists with potion grenades and squirt guns; thaumaturges holding bizarre contraptions that I could only guess the purpose of, or with large balls of stone in front of them ready to crush their opponents; wizards with their tattoos and wands at the ready; and others that might be sorcerers or necromancers, but until they threw an illusion or ripped out someone’s spirit I couldn’t tell which.
Inside the ring of stones blazed a fire in a small fire pit, its flames blue and green and sending sparks flitting up to join the stars. And between the two taller stones floated a shimmering doorway into the Other Realm, revealing the green hillsides of Avalon outside the Silver Court castle.
A bright flash from the portal as Alynon’s faint spirit attempted to pass through it, and bounced back. He didn’t look good, much of his mass lost now, the wisps of dissipating energy fainter than before. I could only imagine his frustration, to be so close to home and unable to reach it. I should have realized that of course Grandfather would put a shield over the portal to make sure no Fey could pass through.
Grandfather. He stood at the center of the ring beside the fire. The lines of energy flowing from the bound prisoners converged beneath his hands, to some object sitting on top of a short stone pillar—
Frak. So that was what happened to the Kin Finder 2000.
The microwave-sized contraption normally located one living spirit using resonance with a second spirit, either through family bond or true love. Grandfather had found some way to pervert it, using it to link the bound arcana here to their exiled relatives in the Other Realm, cutting through whatever protections the Fey had created against spiritual attacks after Verona’s spirit bomb. Links that he used now to poison the Other Realm.
Grandfather turned to study the portal, his face fully illumined. He looked much younger than the last time I’d seen him, and for a second I wondered if this entire ritual was really just his bid to achieve true immortality at last. Then I noticed the upside-down heart birthmark had changed sides on his face, and realized Grandfather must have claimed the second twin’s body after using up the first. He seemed blissfully unaware of the fighting and noise outside the stone ring.
Both the fire and the portal cast flickering azure light and long shadows over the battle being waged. Or more accurately, the battle being lost.
The gnomes had done some obvious damage on the far side of the ring. There were several arcana bodies that looked to have been smothered in vines, or severed at the kneecaps, writhing or twitching on the ground. But there were also a scattering of charred, smoking lumps that I assumed were gnome remains. Priapus had rallied his last four gnomes in a small wedge behind him, and they retreated before a pair of wizards who fired lightning and fireballs at them. Priapus was able to focus the combined magic of his little squad of gnomes into a shield so that the blasts peeled off to either side of the wedge as if sliced in half. But even as I watched, each blast got closer and closer to Priapus before splitting, and I could see the gnomes’ beards fluttering and smoking in the searing drafts of heat and electricity that blew past them.
Pete and Vee fared little better. Pete had gone full wolf, transformed into a creature the size of a small bear, his coat shifting between grays and light browns as he danced and dodged his way amidst three arcana who surrounded him. Two other arcana were already fallen with enough blood covering them to mask exactly where Pete had taken a chunk out of them. But Pete limped on his front left leg, had lost most of his right ear, and had been scored by fire along his side.
Vee stood in her half-squirrel state, still largely human but with squirrel ears and a giant fluffy tail waving up behind her like something a Ziegfeld Follies girl might wear. She seemed entirely occupied with running back and forth distracting several men who had wands or fingers pointed at Pete. She would dodge in front of them, and make a weird chittering noise while vibrating her tail, and the wand or finger would sink as the man’s face went slack. But before she could take advantage of his distracted state, another man started to recover and raise his hand again, and she would run to distract him.
Why didn’t more arcana join the fight and simply overwhelm Pete and Vee? They—
A bloated-looking fellow with a goatee started to leave his position near my end of the ring and raise a silver pistol toward Pete. Damn it.
While there were arcana who used guns, like Reggie, the purist types who might join an arcana supremacist group like the Arcanites tended to view using guns in much the same way a famous movie actress might view flying coach—sure, you could do it, by why lower yourself to the level of a mundane?
The man edged even further out of line, and the woman next to him snapped, “Don’t break the circle! They could be a diversion.”
And then a couple of the enemy arcana not being distracted by Vee laughed at her display, the kind of mean laughs I remembered well from my less popular days in middle school.
Oh frak. They were just toying with Pete and Vee at this point. Whatever damage the pair had done must have been done in the first minutes of the attack with the element of surprise, or momentum. Now, the Arcanites were back in control.
Someone called out, “Stop playing with the beastbloods and finish them.”
Damn it. I had to put an end to this.
I dropped the stick, raised my hands, and walked out into sight of the Arcanites. “Wait!” I shouted. “Let them go, and I will—”
A gunshot. I looked to Pete and Vee, but they were okay. I felt suddenly lightheaded, and my knees went wobbly. I looked down, and noticed blood spreading from a hole to the right of my belly button.
Huh. That was strange.
“Don’t shoot,” I muttered in a daze. “I’m with the science team.”
35
STEP BY STEP
Suddenly, the hole in my stomach hurt. A lot.
“Ahhhg! Son of a—” I pressed my hand against the wound, and sank to my butt on the cool dry earth.
This sucked worse than a Highlander sequel. And it hurt even more.
The world took on a slightly watery edge. I heard Patrick Swayze saying in my head, “If you project weakness, you draw aggression. That’s how people get hurt.”
I should have listened to the Swayz. Such a wise man.
“No more shooting!” Grandfather shouted.
The small part of my brain not fuzzy with pain and shock noted that Grandfather didn’t move from his position to actually make sure his followers stopped shooting. Whatever he was doing, he was locked into it, committed. He probably couldn’t even stop to defend himself from an attack. That was good, right? All I had to do was somehow fight my way through a small army of Arcanites to get to him, and game over.
“Bangarang,” I muttered. Yet I remained sitting there, feeling dazed.
Grandfather shouted again, “Bring me Finn alive. Kill the others.”
Sammy’s voice rang through the clearing, “Like hell, you sick
bastard!” The booming gunshots of the family revolver sang out, causing me to startle and look over at the battle. The two wizards attacking the gnomes jerked and fell to the ground.
A distant soft foomp! sounded between the gunshots, and a Nerf ball struck one of the arcana hemming in Pete. With a soft implosion of air he disappeared, replaced by a baby wallowing in a pile of clothing. Verna shouted, “Down with the man!”
Pete took advantage of the distraction to leap on a second enforcer, knocking her to the ground.
Sammy changed her aim to the enforcers facing Vee, but her first shot ricocheted off of the enforcer’s damned suit.
Meanwhile, the four black-suited enforcers from the near side of the ring began marching toward me like the Reservoir Dogs, their faces promising I would be joining them as Mr. Black-and-Blue.
Dawn ran around the near edge of the clearing, past the fighting, racing the enforcers to me. One of them fired a wand at her. A venomous green magic missile streaked across the night and struck Dawn in the side—and shattered into sparks against her own borrowed and beautiful enforcer jacket.
I wanted to shout at her to go back, to get away, but sucking in the breath to do so caused a pain in my gut like swallowing a whole ghost pepper with a cup of boiling ouch-this-really-hurt!
The gnomes, slightly singed, rallied behind Priapus and began marching back toward the fight. Priapus shouted something, and vines sprang up around an enforcer about to unleash something unpleasant at Pete’s back. Pete scrambled off of the writhing body of his downed opponent.
Several of the arcana to either side of Vee began to march toward Sammy and the gnomes. Apparently, they were done with playtime and concerns of trickery. The Arcanites were responding full force.
Sammy and Verna had bought us a few minutes of life, but we were still on the losing end of this fight.
Dawn reached me shortly before the Wizervoir Dogs did, and stood between me and them. She wielded the tire iron from the hearse in her right hand.
“Back off!” she shouted at the enforcers. “Or I’ll unleash my power.”
This actually made the enforcers stop, and blink at her, confusion clear on their faces. Here was a woman with wild purple hair in an ill-fitting enforcer jacket, wielding a tire iron, known to be a mundane.
“You have no power,” Mr. Red Head said, coming to the obvious conclusion. Yet they didn’t come any closer.
“Dawn,” I whispered. “Run.”
One of the enforcers began to raise his hand.
Dawn raised the tire iron and shouted, “Shazam!”
The enforcers backed up, surprise and uncertainty flashing across their faces.
I, too, was surprised, that they’d fall for such a bluff.
Then over the sounds of battle, I registered the growing clunk clunk clunk of metallic feet thudding on the dirt.
I turned, wincing at the pain, and went cold. The robigot marched at us. Was it running free now, rage brain unleashed from any constraints?
Then it raised an arm, and fired a saw blade at one of the enforcers.
The blade ripped right through the man’s suit, knocking him back onto the ground.
The other three Wizervoir Dogs fled back toward the protection of the standing stones and their fellow Arcanites.
The robigot stomped past me and Dawn, and I watched it advance on the line of Arcanites who formed up to defend Grandfather’s ritual.
Dawn turned to me. “What in Gort’s name—?”
“Long story,” I replied. “And the short version is I have no idea.”
Pete and Vee had retreated to join with Verna and Sammy in the shielded space behind the gnome wedge, and were squared off against a knot of Arcanites. From behind the gnome’s protection, Sammy and Verna fired their guns, and Pete and Vee struck out to either side against any Arcanites trying to flank them.
One of the thaumaturges moved a golf ball–sized stone across the palm of one hand, and the knee-high boulder at his feet responded to the sympathetic magic and sped across the ground. It bounced toward the triangle of gnomes like an oversized bowling ball.
A bank of earth rose up in front of the gnomes, angled past them. The stone hit the bank and deflected, rolling harmlessly off to the side, and then suddenly dropped into a sinkhole.
Borghild’s head rose out of the ground beside Petey.
The arcanite wizards unleashed a full-on barrage of lightning and fireballs at the gnomes’ invisible wedge-shaped shield, colorful flashes lighting up the area like a disco.
Closer by, a similar wave of energy blasts rolled over the robigot.
The strikes had little effect on the magically shielded robigot. More of the arcana went down as punches from the death machine sent them flying. Two, three, four arcanites down. None of the fallen were enforcers, though, the real fighters.
One of the enforcers shouted something, and he sank into the dirt as if a hammer had pounded him on top of the head—a density spell.
Then a thaumaturge sent his stone ball crashing into the robigot’s legs.
The robigot kicked at the ball, the collision ringing with a hellish gong! through the night air. The stone stopped, the hulking machine wobbled, but managed to stay on its feet. Still, its momentum was blunted. The dense enforcer stomped forward and began pounding at the robigot, and the robigot stumbled back, barely holding its own against the aggressive heavy hitter.
“Uncle Finn!” Mattie cried behind us, rushing down the path with Mort.
“Thank the gods!” I said. Dawn grabbed Mattie, and used her momentum to swing her over behind the gateway stones. “I worried you were inside that thing again!”
Mort pulled up short, as if worried we’d attack him.
“It’s Papa G!” Mattie said.
“What?” I looked back to the robigot. Father?
I stared, fully smacked in the gob.
I suppose if anyone could have gotten that thing working again, it would be Father. Gods damn it. Had he even really understood what he was doing, or did he think this was all a fun game? My eyes filled with tears of frustration as I watched the dense enforcer land a blow against the robigot’s head containing the ragebrain, denting it in. He was not attacking Father directly yet, but it was only a matter of time before the robigot went down.
I clenched my jaw, and lurched forward, one hand pressed hard against the wound in my gut.
Mort grabbed my arm. “Don’t!” he said. “You can’t help him.”
“It’s Father!” I said.
“I fucking know who it is!” Mort replied. “Don’t you think I’d help him if I could?”
“Would you?” I snapped back.
Mort looked like he wanted to Carrie me to death with his mind. “You saved Mattie after I fucked up. I have to make that right. But you don’t get to question my love for Father!”
Dawn gripped my other arm, as much to hold me up as stop me. “Do you have any magic that could help?”
“No,” I said reluctantly, watching the robigot exchanging blows with the density enforcer. Father retreated a step with each blow. Pete, Vee, Sammy, Verna, all being overwhelmed. And I could do nothing.
I shivered. It seemed to be getting colder, despite the growing light in the predawn sky. But at least the wound felt less painy and more numb.
Silene stumbled down the path to join us, looking ready to collapse on the spot. She was alone.
“Sal?” I asked, afraid to hear the answer.
“He will live,” she said. I felt a surge of relief, even as I wondered if Sal was the only one who would survive.
“We need to save my father.” I pointed to the robigot still retreating before the enforcer’s blows. “Is there anything you can do?”
“Wait,” Dawn said. She moved between me and Silene. “Finn’s shot. Can you heal him?”
Silene studied me, then the chaotic scene, and closed her eyes as if she’d just been asked to build a life-size Mall of America out of toothpicks. “I can stop one, maybe two
of the weaker fighters, and stop your bleeding, but I cannot do more.”
“Do neither!” Mort said. “Damn it Finn, we need to stop Grandfather! Or else we’re all dead anyway. Mattie included.”
I looked at the enforcers now surrounding the robigot, and then at Grandfather, still focused on the Kin Finder. Stopping either seemed an entirely and equally unfeasible task.
But I knew which was the unfeasible task I had to fease. Mort was right, damn it.
“Get me to my grandfather,” I said to Silene. “And then help my father if you still can.”
“Finn!” Dawn said. “You can’t stop anyone if you’re dead!”
“I love you, too,” I said, ignoring her argument. I waved my hand once in front of her face, and intoned, “You want to go home and rest up for your record tour.”
“Nice try,” she said, slapping my hand down. “But I’m not letting you kill yourself charging into that!” She jabbed a finger at the battle, and the standing stones with their bound prisoners and arcing lines of bright magic.
“I’m not afraid to die,” I said, which was true. Not because I was all heroic and brave, but because as a necromancer I knew perfectly well that my spirit would continue on just fine afterward. “But I hope not to. And I couldn’t live if you and everyone I love were destroyed by Grandfather.”
“Finn—” Dawn began again, but then just shook her head. She knew I had no choice.
I nodded to Silene.
Silene reached into one of her pouches, and pulled out two small twigs. She tossed them in the direction of the standing stones, then knelt. She nearly fell over, but caught her balance, and dug her hands into the grass at the edge of the clearing.
Two thorny, tangled walls rose up and shot forward, punching through and past any Arcanites in their path, shoving them aside to create a corridor from us to my grandfather. The bastard remained transfixed over the Kin Finder, rocking slightly as he mouthed something.
I charged forward.
For one whole step. Then I fell to one knee and almost did a face plant in the mossy grass.
Smells Like Finn Spirit Page 38
