“Have any idea where they were holding you?”
“Isn’t it here?”
“No. Joe, I said it’s hard to explain.”
“Well, if it’s not here, I don’t know. They stuffed me into a trunk.”
“The important thing is that we got you back.”
“Yeah,” Siry said, grabbing his back. “Ouch, damn it. Yeah, thanks.”
“What’s wrong, Joe?”
“My friggin’ arm. Hurts like a bastard.”
“Any chest pain?”
“Yeah, some. I’m okay.”
“Sit back down. Sit down, Joe.”
“Damn,” Siry said, clutching his left shoulder. “Going right down my arm. Hurts.”
“I’ll call 911.” Sara took out her cell.
“Damn. Damn. God, that smarts. Never thought it would hurt this much.”
“Joe, keep calm. Hello? Heart attack, abandoned warehouse . . .” She gave the address.
“Jesus.”
“Keep calm. I’m here.”
“And so am I,” came a voice from behind the stack.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
Sara turned as a figure came out from behind Manny the computer. It was a large, bearded man in the dress of a past century, somewhere in the Middle Ages. He wore a fur cap and cape, red tunic, black tights, and boots. His eyes were dull black, like soot on a crematorium.
“And who might you be?” Sara asked as the Witchblade began to transform.
“Vlad Tepys,” the man answered. He pronounced the surname Tepish.
“So, we finally meet,” Sara said. “I’ve been observing your handiwork for some time.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Vlad said. “I have been summoned for a killing. You, I think, are the one intended. You can submit now, and I will be merciful. Resist, and I will create a death for you that will linger for an eternity.”
“I’ll just bet your women can’t get enough of you, Vlad,” Sara said.
Vald continued walking forward. “You are a beautiful woman. I’ve never seen your like. And you have . . . something . . . what is that thing? Ah.” He took another step. “Ah. I know of that.”
“Then you ought to know I will resist,” Sara said, “and that I can provide you with a death that will make one of your impalings seem like fondling.”
Vlad’s smile spread across his face like a stain. “You are tigress. This will be sport for me.”
“Let’s play,” Sara said.
A huge sword with a two-handed haft appeared in Vlad’s left hand, and he advanced swinging it. It made a swishing sound like an immense scythe.
The Witchblade grew into its blade configuration, a double-edged shaft of steel that gleamed like a mirror. It took Vlad’s first cut, issuing sparks from where the blades clashed.
Vlad swung again, and again Sara blocked with her blade. His cuts were wickedly fast, viciously forceful. She blocked again and again, and had no time for a riposte.
But that was not the worst of it. The worst of it was that the swipes became ever more forceful, the momentum packing more and more punch, until she came within a hair’s breadth of losing her footing.
Vlad’s blade came round and hit hers like a runaway freight train. She staggered and lurched across the room, hit the wall and sprawled.
Vlad laughed. “A woman warrior. What a silly thing. How can you hope to stand up to a man?”
Sara picked herself up and looked around. The wall seemed to have receded. The room seemed bigger now. Lots bigger, but she had little time to notice.
Vlad came at her. She backed off, having the space now.
Vlad swung. She blocked the blow and a stinging sensation went up her arm like a bolt of electricity.
“Ah, you hurt,” Vlad said with satisfaction. “It feels like fire in the arm, eh? Like your hand is on fire. It will hurt more. I will defeat you, little woman, and I will make you feel pain. I will gut you from gills to gullet and relish your screams. Then I will take your soul to Hell with me.”
Sara suddenly dropped to her knees and swiped at his shanks. The move forced him into an awkward position, which Sara capitalized on immediately with a thrust at his midsection. He barely knocked the point of her blade away.
“Ai!” He laughed maniacally. “You make it interesting! Lovely!”
He began swinging again, more forcefully than before. Sara got batted around like a stuffed toy and was beginning to think she did not have a chance when something extraordinary happened.
Vlad’s head detached from his body and hit the ground. It bounced twice and came to rest. The eyes were round with incomprehension. And the mouth spoke. “What . . . who . . . ?”
Fire came out from the truncated neck.
The body went to its knees. Behind it stood the figure of Ian Nottingham, hair flowing, dressed in studded leather and black velvet.
“Hello, Sara,” he said pleasantly.
“Ian! Where the hell did you come from?”
“I believe you summoned me. No?”
“I guess I did,” Sara said.
“Not sure of the circumstances, but here I am. Anything I can help you with?”
As if in answer, Vlad’s body rose and charged Ian. The head shifted its eyes to follow the action as it attacked. Ian backed, off parrying slamming blows that seemed to come from all directions. Even headless, Vlad was as demonic as the flames and smoke issuing from the neck.
Sara rushed to attack from the headless body’s rear. She thrust at the spine, wondering whether it would do any good to attack anatomical points. It did not. She buried the Blade squarely in the middle of the back, severing what would have been the spine, if it existed, but the body did not go paraplegic, did not collapse. Flame shot out of the hole she had made in the fur cape.
The mouth on the disembodied face roared, and the body turned around. This stereo-like effect was disconcerting. Sara backed off to take the thing’s measure.
Ian took advantage of Vlad’s presenting his back and attacked. He had some success backing the apparition toward Sara, who lunged.
Vlad’s blade came around fast and blocked, then slashed back at Ian. Sara swung, was blocked, then Ian swung and met the same defense on his side. The sword moved fast enough to snap the air like the end of a whip.
Sara and Ian locked eyes and swung together. Vlad chose to block Ian, letting Sara’s sword bite through his right arm, severing it at the elbow. Flame shot from the stump.
The head bellowed its frustration again, but the body did not stop fighting. Left-handed, it hacked and slashed at its two opponents.
The fight ranged across the now-cavernous room, which hardly resembled the computer installation any more. The monstrous, unnatural thing fought furiously until Ian managed to land a solid blow on its left shank. The huge form stumbled and fell.
“Witch woman!”
Sara spun toward the disembodied head.
“Tell me. Do you know what they call me?”
“Other than Vlad? Haven’t the slightest.”
“I am called Dracula.”
“Not without justification,” Sara said.
“Do you know what it means?”
“Nope.”
“The Dragon.”
“Uh . . . okay, if you say so.”
The headless body disappeared in a gout of flame.
Something else took shape out of the smoke and fire and fluid electricity of the expanded space. An immense saurian form flapped its wings and roared.
“Ian, thanks awfully much for showing up.”
“Ah, I do not think the show is over.”
“Not by a long shot. How do you propose we deal with this new thing?”
“I propose we run like hell.”
“Good idea. In what direction, might I ask?”
“Around in panicked circles, if nothing else.”
“Right.”
“By the way, when did this room become a cave? A flaming cave, to boot.”
“Don’t know. Wasn’t paying attention.”
The dragon opened its mouth and vomited fire. It hit them like the blast of a tactical nuclear weapon.
When the heat had passed off and the acrid fumes dissipated, Sara and Ian raised their heads and looked. The dragon was advancing toward the lake of fire that occupied the middle of the cavern.
Sara felt her eyebrows, checking to see if they’d been singed off. He felt her hair. It was still intact, at least not on fire.
“I guess I have to handle this,” she said.
“Why don’t you go and do that, old girl,” Nottingham said.
“I wish we were doing Chinese mythology.”
“Say what?”
The dragon glided into the liquid fire like a duck taking to water. Flapping its huge leathery wings, it began swimming across, puking flame in a narrow, directed stream like something out of World War Two combat footage.
Sara used the Witchblade to ward it off. Fire splattered to her left and right, dancing off the black rocks, cascading and spreading, dark smoke rising from it.
When the monster paused to take a breath, Sara sprayed.
Not fire, but foam, thinking she’d continue the scientific motif of the original location. The modern stuff hit the ancient dragon and enveloped it in runny white goo, spewing out with a sound not unlike whipped cream from a can. As it landed on the surface of the lake, a great hissing and bubbling commenced. The fire churned and spat.
Sara continued spewing foam, delivering great quantities of the stuff, mounting in the middle of the lake like a mound of dessert topping. Underneath, the fire reacted violently, sputtering and throwing back huge gouts of the foamy stuff. Splatters hit the shore and doused fires among the rocks.
Ian Nottingham stood on the shore of the lake of fire, astounded beyond words. He thought the sight of the dragon being enveloped a singular sight indeed. He applauded.
Sara finally decided enough was enough. She could see nothing but foam, a mountain of it. All it needed was some nuts and a cherry.
She walked over to where Ian was standing. “See the dragon anywhere?”
“No sign of it from this standpoint.”
They watched. The foam was sliding and slopping every which way. Something could have been moving underneath at any number of points. Finally, with a splash of foam and fire, the dragon’s head emerged. It swam to shore and lay its long neck along the rocks. It coughed and sputtered and spat white stuff. Then it exhaled, and nothing but blue smoke came out.
“Out of gas,” Sara said.
The dragon looked at the two forlornly.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
Gradually, the lake of foam and fire began to fade. The rocks turned to smooth flagstone. The floor flattened out, and the dragon and his foam coat receded into mist. Perspectives shifted. The subterranean world was gone.
“Sara, I don’t know quite how to put this,” Nottingham said, his voice growing faint, “but are you by any chance growing?”
Sara, already beyond Nottingham’s ken and filling another space and a different time entirely, found herself towering over the polished temple floor.
Reality shifted, and the million-stranded warp and woof of existence twisted into a new thread and wove itself into a new fabric.
Screeeeeeeeee . . .
Sara looked up. The Bird approached, consumed with a jealous anger. Its feet were extended, and its talons gleamed with metal. It was not a natural creature. It was a god, and it was angry.
She was ready for it. She looked down at herself. She was a giant. She was the statue she had seen, the Witchblade, standing atop her inlaid pedestal. But there was no roof to her temple. It was open to an infinite sky.
Sara had never taken flight. She did now. She leapt, and the air took her. She climbed on her immense metal wings, wings that rent the air with their beating.
She found it hard work, but felt exhilarated. She rose higher and higher in a widening spiral, into thinner and thinner air, then banked and soared on an updraft.
It was glorious. The wind was in her face and the earth . . . no, not the earth, but the ground . . . spread out beneath her like a blanket. Pastures, meadows, forest and field, mountains in the distance. An idyllic land, yet a strange one. She saw the city below, the whole of it. It was a tower-covered island between two rivers, and but that was all it shared with its counterpart in Sara’s world. There were no other cities around it. It was a bustling urban island in the middle of rural expanses.
She folded her wings and dove, leveled out, rose on thermal currents, dove again and glided. She got the idea then that her wings were merely symbols, that she did not need actual wings to fly. She acquired the overwhelming sense that she could do anything she wanted.
The strange world got smaller, its horizon curving slightly. The sky darkened to violet and clouds were now scudding at her feet. Yet she could breathe. Or she did not need to breathe.
She decided to glide to a lower altitude, gathering speed in great widening circles. Wind snapped at her hair, sent it flowing behind her. She felt the low temperature of these altitudes but did not feel the cold. The winds were icy but they did not bite. It seemed as though she were born for flight.
She grew greater and greater wings. They spread out against the curve of sky and space, ethereal and yet substantial at the same time, and they undulated rather than beat, like a display of northern lights against the fall of night, like veils of energy, sparkling multi-colored plasma.
Something came up below, a huge palace complex sitting atop a high mountain, a glory of alabaster colonnades and marble porticos. She swooped and landed on a capacious terrace.
She looked down. The world of the Chorus spread out beneath her. She looked around and knew this to be her intended home, her Olympus.
Screeeeeee . . .
The Bird approached, beating its wings furiously, seething with righteous anger, resentful of the intruder, wanting confrontation. It flexed its talons in anticipation, extending them forward, ready to swoop, to pierce, to clutch and tear. It needed prey and it would have it. It needed something to attack, for violence was at the heart of its being, its nature, its reason for existence.
Diving from the terrace, she obliged.
She headed straight for the god-creature and as she neared she sensed something of its fierce nature. It was petty and avaricious, demanding horrendous sacrifices. It loved the smell of fresh blood, and relished pain and suffering.
It bulked huge against the clouds. She had never realized just how massive the creature was. And it was getting bigger.
She extended the gauntlet and directed a bolt of energy at it.
A sharp report split the sky, and the bird-god tumbled, its wings gone slack and rubbery. She was shocked to see that it did not have much strength, for all its bulk. It was too used to bullying creatures of lower link on the great chain of being, much too used to having its sadistic and arbitrary way. After all it was a god, and few can oppose the gods.
She had no trouble. She banked to the right and watched the Bird recover and begin to climb. She glided, picked an angle of attack, and dove, coming at the creature out of the low sun.
At the last minute the Bird executed a whirling turn and counterattacked, bringing its razor-sharp talons up to slash at her. Her gauntlet swiped at them and sent the huge bird tumbling again.
She waited for it to rise again. It seemed dazed a bit, somewhat disoriented, and disinclined to continue the conflict. But it mustered the strength and shot out toward the horizon, needing time and space to gather its resources.
She did not intend to let it. Beating her wings furiously, she took off after it, pursuing it into an expanse of rarefied, etheric blue. She overtook it and directed bolts of searing energy at the bird-god, ionizing energy that came from the depths of her own resources.
The god screamed its pain. It was a new sensation. If it had ever felt pain before, it had been eons since the event
. Yet it kept up its counterattack, its talons clicking as they flexed and tried to grab, tried to sink into human flesh, a kind of flesh they had never tasted. The creature was intrigued by its smell. It was sweet.
But it would not get a sample.
A flash of red fire came out of the sky and grew into an explosion of light and radiance that enveloped all of space. The concussion shook the world below and was of such power that it knocked the Bird’s true nature loose, the form that it had been hiding for ages. Its true form, that of a vast scaly beast, amorphous and shifting, everchanging. The Bird was simply a guise, had been its cover and stability for millions of years.
She watched the thing fall, but not wanting to see its end, for she knew it already, she turned and headed back to the palace.
As she alighted on the terrace, a concussion of light grew on the horizon, followed by a huge volcanic gout of flame. The earth had swallowed the Bird for good. It was banished from the skies forevermore.
She looked down at her transfigured form. The Witchblade had transformed and was now a glory of silver filigree, a cloak of scrollwork and arabesque, flowing from her almost naked body and spreading out from her flanks and behind her.
The gauntlet still covered her right arm, and she brought it up to look at it. Its own nature was changing, and hers with it. Together, they were becoming a third entity, something whose dimensions she was just now beginning to grasp. Vistas of new consciousness extended before her, ranges of thought and feeling and sense far beyond those of human ken, intelligence and perception undreamed of. Her sensorium cast its net over her proud new world, from which a great chorale of joy had arisen.
My people, she thought. My world. A world over which I will reign in glory and in truth, in justice and in mercy.
Joe . . . what had happened to Joe?
My domain, my dominion. I am a goddess, and I will reign forever and ever . . .
Hallelujah?
Listen to those voices singing praise. I am a god. I am truth and light. I will rule wisely and with compassion . . .
What the hell is going on? The Blade. The Blade . . .
Millions singing my praises. I am a goddess, my dominion is the sky . . .
Witchblade: Talons Page 19
