by Jake Bible
“Except for yourself,” Hannah said.
Highlander blinked then nodded. “Yes. True. Except for myself. I did that.” He nodded at Desiree. “I did that too.”
“You did your best,” Elisa said, her eyes on Desiree’s face. “She’ll make it or she won’t.”
“She’d better make it,” Coins said as he stood on top of a table and tried to see out one of the long, narrow stained glass windows along the infirmary’s wall. “That’s the last Stonecutter right there. If she doesn’t make it, then we might as well close up shop and call it quits for the day. And by day, I mean forever.”
“I did my best,” Highlander shouted. His hands went to his temples and he pressed in hard enough to make his eyes bulge slightly. “I did my best!”
Elisa hurried around the table and pulled his hands away before he could seriously hurt himself.
“You did,” Elisa said in a soft, soothing voice. “You did your best.”
“Last Stonecutter?” Kimmy asked, her voice cracking. “What does that mean?”
“It means she can make more of us,” Olivia said. “She can help build an army of grotesques so we can fight the demons.”
“That girl can do that?” Rider asked, sounding awed. “How? Is she like super fast at carving stone?”
“No,” Coins said and looked back at everyone in the room. “She’s not. She’s a girl with a special gift that I know she hasn’t been trained to use properly. There hasn’t been time.”
“You know her,” Elisa said as she helped Highlander strip off his latex gloves. She moved him over to a chair and forced him to sit down. He did so without protest or comment, his eyes completely focused on the still and faintly breathing form of Desiree on the medical table. “How do you know her?”
“Her grandfather carved me,” Coins said. “I keep telling you all that I was made in the 1990s, not earlier. I thought he was the last Stonecutter since his daughter, who wasn’t much more than her age when I was taken from the workshop, didn’t have the gift.”
“You remember all this?” Olivia asked. “How? Most of us only have snatches of memory from our time of full solidity.”
“I’m newer?” Coins asked, obviously unsure of his answer. “The magic was fresher?”
“It’s not milk,” Olivia said.
“I don’t know, Olivia,” Coins admitted. “I remember some things. That’s all I know.”
“So what can she do?” Rider asked. “Why is she so important that she has to be saved? If she can’t like carve a bunch of you guys in like five minutes, then she’s not worth much. We need an army of Gs like now.”
“I can’t argue with him,” Elisa said. The sound of the horde outside could easily be heard. “We need a hundred Gs built to fight. Otherwise, the possessed are getting in here.”
“I know,” Coins said and shrugged. “But she’s a girl. She’s only human. To carve one of us, if she even knows how, would take months. There’s a reason there aren’t thousands of animate Gs in the world. It’s hard damn work.”
“So we’re fucked?” Brian said. “Great.”
“We could use you as bait so the rest of us can escape past the possessed,” Highlander said, his eyes turning from Desiree to glare at Brian. “That would be appropriate, I think. Yes. I think that would be very appropriate since you let them in here. You let in the killers.”
“Careful, Highlander,” Olivia said. “Your hands are as bloody as theirs.”
“No they are not!” Highlander shouted. He leapt to his feet and pointed a finger at the group of teens. “They are the ones that are bloody! Over and over! My blood! Over and over! My blood! Over and over!”
“That was Gil,” Kimmy cried. “We didn’t like it.”
“Calm down,” Elisa said and wrapped Highlander in a strong embrace. “Take a deep breath. Calm down.”
He shoved her away. “Get off me,” he shouted. “Don’t touch me! No one touches me again! No one!”
“Calm yourself, Highlander, or I will calm you in a way you would not like,” Olivia said, her body taking on a slight glow.
Highlander shot her a look of pure hatred, but did not respond. He sat back down and closed his eyes, his arms folded across his chest.
He would have stayed that way forever, but Desiree stirred and moaned. He was up and at her side instantly, his fingers on her wrist to check her pulse. “Stronger,” he said, pure joy in his voice as if none of the strife from the moment before had happened. “So much stronger.” He looked back at Coins. “How?”
“She’s born of magic,” Coins said. Before the teens could butt in, he added, “She still can’t carve an army of Gs, though.”
Desiree mumbled some words and Highlander leaned in close to hear.
“What is she saying?” Elisa asked. Highlander shushed her. “Sorry.”
More mumbling, and Highlander stood up straight, backing away from the table so fast he tripped over his own feet and fell down against the chair he’d been sitting in, sending it clattering across the floor.
“What did she say?” Elisa asked, helping him back to his feet.
“Her blood,” Highlander said. “She said to take her blood. It’s the only way.”
“Only way to what?” Olivia asked.
“I don’t know,” Highlander said. “She didn’t say.”
All eyes turned on Coins. He flinched.
“Do you know?” Olivia asked.
Coins hesitated then nodded and said, “Yes.”
“What does it mean?” Elisa asked. “Why would she say to take her blood?”
Coins shook his head.
“Out with it, Coins,” Olivia ordered.
“Come on,” Coins said. “Look at her. She’s only a girl!” He shook his head over and over. “Nope. No way. I won’t be part of this.”
There was a huge crash and rumble from outside the infirmary. Then screams and shouting followed by gunfire. A lot of gunfire.
8
“WAHOO,” NISSA yelled as she strafed the oncoming horde with automatic rifle fire. Possessed bodies were ripped in two, in three, torn to shreds by the hot bullets. “Come and get some, you demon fucks!”
“Fire in the hole,” Tessa shouted as she pulled the pins from four grenades and threw them through the broken front doors.
Explosions tore apart the horde and body parts shot into the air, raining back down immediately, coating everyone in blood and guts.
“Beautiful,” Nissa yelled.
The horde pressed back to the opening in the cathedral. The weight of the mass behind the front line refused to retreat despite the certain death those in the lead faced as Nissa and Tessa emptied magazines full of bullets, tossed grenade after grenade, and thoroughly, completely enjoyed themselves with their armaments.
“How?” Morty yelled at Antoine.
“Artus,” Antoine said and hooked a clawed thumb over his shoulder, pointing it toward the courtyard. “One of the intruders took him down. He’s hurt and no longer attached to the cathedral directly.”
“He’s what?” Morty shouted, but didn’t wait for an answer.
He took off running through the nave, ignoring Antoine’s and Xue’s calls for him to stop and come back.
Morty also ignored the cowering wards who refused to leave their corner of false security. He raced past them and into the courtyard to find Deek playing his flute while crying at the same time.
With one look, it was obvious that Artus was solid. He wasn’t resting, he wasn’t saving his energy or strength. He was completely solid, no different than any non-magic gargoyle.
“When? How?” Morty sputtered.
Deek didn’t stop playing.
“Deek,” Morty shouted. “How did this happen?”
Deek’s ey
es fell on Jon’s body.
Morty looked at it then grabbed it up in full rage and tore the corpse apart, ensuring that any part of the courtyard not already coated in blood was thoroughly covered.
Deek stopped playing, his eyes wide with shock.
“What?” Morty growled, his stone body dripping with Jon’s blood. “It had to be done.”
“Okay,” Deek said and let his flute fall from his fingers onto the courtyard’s cobblestones.
“Mordecai,” Xue roared from the front of the cathedral. “We need you!”
“Keep playing,” Morty said to Deek.
Before Deek could pick the flute up again and start playing, Morty had turned and stormed out of the courtyard. He stomped back to the gallery, ignoring the wards once more.
The horde was filling the doorway. Xue, Antoine, and even Nissa and Tessa, were fighting them back with brute force, shredding the possessed bodies as fast and brutally as Morty had shredded Jon’s corpse back in the courtyard.
“The shitty thing about guns is they run out of ammo,” Nissa shouted at Morty as he joined the fight to hold the gallery and keep the horde from making it inside the cathedral. Her faerie fist was dainty, but it had no trouble going straight through a possessed woman’s forehead and out the back of her skull. “That’s why the gods made fists, though, right?”
“Fucking A right,” Tessa yelled as she ripped a man’s arm off and shoved it through his rib cage.
Morty pummeled as many faces as he could focus on, his fists a blur of violence. To his left was Antoine, who was putting his claws and fangs to their full use. It was like watching a wood chipper in action, but with flesh and bone instead of pruned branches and fallen trees.
On the far side of Antoine was Xue. The huge grotesque didn’t lay a hand, or paw, on a single possessed vessel. He didn’t have to. His mouth was wide open and a stream of what looked like liquid fire shot out at the horde, ripping through the possessed like water through cheap tissue paper.
Morty had seen Xue use his power once before and knew it wasn’t so much a stream of fire as it was a stream of molten rock. Basically, the grotesque was puking lava. Morty had always thought it was way cooler than Olivia’s blue body flame, but he would never have said that to her face. Less cool or not, Olivia’s flame still did a lot of damage.
Morty almost felt less than adequate as he started throwing boring old punches with his boring old stone fists into the horde. Almost. It was hard to feel too inadequate when crushing skulls, breaking bones, and tearing hearts straight out through rib cages.
Nissa screeched and fell back, nearly taking Tessa with her. Her torso hung limp as an obsidian blade stuck out from her chest.
“Nooooo,” Tessa roared and began fighting ten times as hard as before, shredding every possessed that was within arm’s reach.
“Get her back,” Antoine yelled at Morty.
He was about to shove Nissa and Tessa out of the way and take their place, but the two were snatched up by a hundred grabbing hands and pulled out into the horde. Tessa fought like a wild animal, nothing but teeth and claws. But her screams and bloodcurdling cries of violence were cut short the second she was lost from sight and buried deep within the horde.
Then a huge explosion tore a twenty-yard hole in the horde.
“Guess she still had some grenades left,” Morty said in a voice that was a mix of pride and sorrow.
The others said nothing. There was nothing to say. They adjusted their positions to make up for the gap left by the faeries and kept on fighting.
9
“WE WON’T MAKE it,” Geffe yelled as he ducked and rolled under another swipe of an obsidian blade. “They have too much black glass!”
“We will make it,” Tom shouted back at him, snapping an arm off at the elbow as one of the possessed tried to stab him with obsidian. He laughed, but it was empty and mirthless. “Nice try! I do not fear your blades!”
“Yeah! Because you got the stuff built into you,” Geffe shouted. He slammed his fist into a kneecap and it popped free, ripping right through the man’s skin to fall bloody and useless onto the grass. The man fell and Geffe ripped his throat out. “I gotta be a little more careful!”
Geffe clambered over the corpse then fell back onto his ass as a hard kick to his donkey head sent him reeling.
“Get up! We are almost there,” Tom said, clearing the possessed out of the way with wide swipes of his sword. He was using so much force that he almost crushed the possessed as much as he sliced them in two. “Get up!”
They were almost there, true, having fought a good deal more than halfway through the horde, but they still had a lot of ground to cover before they reached the stone steps. Then the explosion hit and Tom was sent flying back from the blast’s concussive wave.
Geffe was low enough to the ground that he wasn’t affected nearly as much and recovered quickly, scrambling across body parts to reach the fallen grotesque.
“Your turn to get up,” Geffe yelled. He donkey-kicked a woman who tried to grab for him despite having half her body blown to crap. Most of her face caved in as his feet connected, but Geffe didn’t take credit. He was pretty sure the explosion had softened her up for him. “Get up, you big galoot!”
Tom moaned and struggled to sit up. He frowned and pushed Geffe away.
“Hey,” Geffe protested before a blade of obsidian struck the spot right where he’d been standing. “Oh.”
Tom went for his own blade, but it was no longer in his hand. The broken one was still on his waist, though, and he pulled that out, blocking another strike from the possessed man holding the obsidian blade. Tom’s stone eyes went wide as the two blades connected.
“That’s mine,” he roared and slid his broken blade down the man’s longer one then twisted and slashed, slicing the man’s hand off at the wrist with a quick flick. “Mine!”
He let his broken blade fall away and caught the undamaged one before it touched the ground. He kicked the possessed man back and lurched up onto his feet, stabbing the man through the head before he was fully upright.
“Good, you’re up,” Geffe said and pointed as the horde of possessed closed in around them again. “Just in time.”
Then he saw what the possessed all held. Obsidian. Every single one who had surrounded them was holding an obsidian blade or shard, brandishing them with obvious menace and intent to do serious harm to their stone bodies.
“I can take most of them, but not all,” Tom said, holding his blade out as he turned in a slow circle. “You will need to take on the rest.”
“Brother, I ain’t so sure I can do that,” Geffe said as the possessed tightened in on them.
“You don’t have a choice,” Tom said. “Fight and win, or you will die out here at the hands of the demon abominations.”
“Since ya put it that way,” Geffe said.
Geffe prepared himself to fight again, but it was quickly clear that they weren’t going to make it. There were too many possessed. That simple.
The sky, the ground, the possessed erupted in fire. The screams were of the vessels and the demons inside, a cacophonous wail of excruciating pain and pure outrage. The bodies burst apart from the heat, melting into bubbling pools of flesh punctuated by scorched bones and dotted with singed teeth here and there. Clumps of burning hair drifted up into the sky like innocent embers from an innocent campfire.
Roan landed directly on a clump of burning bodies and turned his head left then swept it right, his mouth throwing flame like an Army sergeant clearing brush in some jungle theater of war. The screams lifted, lifted, then faded as the fire’s fuel burned out.
The horde of possessed stopped in their tracks. Thousands of demon-filled vessels halted their march and attack on the cathedral and turned their eyes on Roan as the dragon grotesque spun about and
cleared more room around Tom and Geffe. Obsidian glinted in the intense light of Roan’s flames, but no one made a move to stop the G.
“Get on,” Roan ordered.
Geffe didn’t hesitate. He hurried forward and scrambled up onto Roan’s back, settling in at the base of the G’s neck. Tom did not move so quickly. He watched Roan carefully, his sword still out and ready for a fight.
“Get on,” Roan shouted. The power of his voice made Tom take an involuntary step back. “Now!”
Tom nodded and climbed onto Roan’s back. The dragon grotesque was not quite as huge as the dragons of legend, but he was pretty damn close. He had more than enough room for a G Tom’s size to settle between his wings.
“Hold on,” Roan said as he lifted up off the ground.
The gunfire began immediately, the bullets bouncing harmlessly off Roan’s underside. An RPG was fired from somewhere in the crowd, but Roan only laughed as he dodged the missile easily. He sent a fireball soaring out over the landscape and the RPG followed immediately, colliding with the fireball and detonating harmlessly over the far-off trees.
“The protection is down,” Roan shouted, angling his head back so Geffe and Tom could hear him. “Artus has been removed from his perch!”
“Then why take us to the cathedral?” Tom yelled as the dragon began a circling descent toward the stones steps of the cathedral entrance. “We’ll be trapped inside.”
“I will take care of the protection,” Roan stated. “Yes, you may become trapped, but the cathedral will become a sanctuary once again under my power.”
“But for how long?” Tom shouted.
Roan gave him a side-eyed glance. “For as long as I can hold on.”
The dragon let loose with a wide swath of flame so hot that it was bright blue. It eradicated all of the possessed who were fighting to gain entrance to the cathedral. The steps were clear and Roan set down, his head facing the regrouping horde.
