The Maiden had brought it down to the roof just as he had asked. It must not escape. It pulled its head back a few more inches out of the snarl of metal ropes that had muzzled it. With a grinding squeal, the fin jerked again and dropped another few feet. It was practically horizontal now. Grímnir pushed himself to his feet. The cloudburst stopped. The rain melted away as if it had never been.
With one final heave, Cú Roí pulled its massive wedge-shaped head free and roared triumphantly into the damp air. Failure. Disappointment and anger coursed through Grímnir. He looked over to the Maiden, desperately. Was there nothing more she could do?
She was down. A golden Therian squatted over her. The human soldier was running towards them. Grímnir could not help. He turned back to Cú Roí; it was staring at him malignantly, slowly working its wings free.
You fail again. She was much more powerful than I anticipated. She will not surprise me again, even if she lives. You squandered your chance, zealot. The world is mine.
Titanic laughter slammed through Grímnir’s head. The monster was right. He could not die, but if it burned him to a cinder, it would escape before he healed. The dragon clung to the wreckage like a malignant bat and turned its head towards him. Its mouth opened and hellfire bubbled up at the back of its dark throat. Grímnir threw himself to one side. Fire washed past him and hit the centre of the roof near the metal wagon. Even damp with the rain, the surface couldn’t stand up to that maelstrom; it began to burn.
Cú Roí’s head swivelled on its ophidian neck away from Grímnir. The dragon looked down at its trapped right wing and another billowing wave of fire rolled over it, melting the cable that held it. The fire kept going and hit the western side of the roof and it set on fire. The roof below the solar panels surrendered to the heat and collapsed. Flames, finally liberated from the inferno below, punched up through the hole to claw at the falling sky.
The dragon turned his attention to its left wing. Grímnir charged up as fast as he could, ignoring the perilous swaying of the fin. Cú Roí sent another blast at him, and Grímnir rolled to his side. The whole structure juddered and dropped, and Grímnir slid through a wide hole torn in it when it first collapsed. He flailed around desperately as he fell, and grabbed at whatever he could.
A piece of shattered glass ripped his right arm open from elbow to wrist, and then tore away the heel of his hand and his little finger. He kept his remaining fingers clenched tightly around Camulus. His left hand caught hold of a steel rod. He came to a jarring halt, and something in his left shoulder popped. Grímnir hung beneath the fin. His feet dangled five hundred feet above a small shadowy yard nestled between this tall building and a smaller annexe that stuck out from the back of it at ground level. Even in the twilight, it seemed like he could see the entire world from up here. It looked gloomy and dirty. He felt the strange discomfort of his finger growing back. Then he heaved Camulus up above his head and hooked his right forearm over some dangling wreckage.
He still had the sword. There was still hope, but he was trapped. If he dragged himself back up, Cú Roí would incinerate him. The fin was swaying and vibrating hazardously. Pops and cracks and the screeching of tormented metal filled his ears. The creature was nearly free, but there was still some time. He looked at the hard ground so very far below. There was one last chance. His decision made, Grímnir began using his bodyweight to jerk the broken framework down as fast and as hard as he could.
A blur of yellow fur had hit the Maiden from behind. The thing was big – bigger than a man at any rate – standing seven feet tall with huge muscled limbs and a thick, powerful torso. Rowan charged towards it with no clue how he could kill it.
It stood upright like a man, but its shoulders hunched in such a way that it looked like it would be as comfortable on all fours. It was vaguely feline, with a wedge-shaped head split by a massive snout that was rimmed with nasty-looking teeth. Its fur was spotted like a leopard’s, and its fingers were long and powerful with claws jutting from them.
The thing dove on the Maiden and tried to bite her face. Rowan acted instinctively. He pointed the handgun at it and emptied the magazine. Tufts of golden fur shredded away from its body in bloody clumps. The creature turned to face him. Rowan suddenly realised where he had seen it before.
It was the woman from the underground train station: the one who had changed into this thing. It looked different without the creepy green glow of the night vision goggles to distort it.
He stopped running. The were-leopard stared at him balefully, its slit yellow eyes filled with blind hate. Rowan began to edge towards the access hatch. It watched him, its claws clenching. The Maiden lay at its feet, apparently dazed by the juggernaut of thick muscle that had driven her there. As far as he could tell, she was unconscious. He kept circling slowly to his left. The dragon began breathing fire, and in a few moments the far side of the roof was an inferno.
Over the were-leopard’s shoulder, Rowan could see Grímnir. He stood precariously, halfway along what had once been the big glass slab that had topped the Beetham Tower. Now it was broken and bent. Most of the glass had shattered, and the steel pylons at its core that had kept it upright were twisted sideways. The whole structure stuck out past the edge of the roof and hung over the streets below at a five- or ten-degree angle. Cables and tangled metal jutted out in a thick razor jumble, and the dragon’s left wing was snared in that web of debris.
Rowan didn’t know what to do. He hesitated, and the dragon sent a lance of flame towards the big man. Grímnir vanished. ‘No!’ Rowan shouted helplessly. The were-leopard rumbled something close to a laugh and took a step towards him.
A squeal came from the lightning rod and it jerked down and then bounced back up again. Another squeal, like fingernails on a chalkboard, and the wreckage drooped farther towards the ground.
Once, twice, three times in quick succession the glass and steel ruin bounced up and down. The dragon began writhing urgently and screeched in anger. The were-leopard turned at the sound of its Master’s voice and took a tentative step towards the dragon. On the fourth jerk, there was a low groan from the structure. On the fifth, something scraped and snapped with a tortured wail. On the sixth, the whole thing suddenly came loose from the side of the building and disappeared. The dragon screeched again as it was dragged down to the unforgiving ground.
The were-leopard kept its back to Rowan, staring at the empty space where the dragon had been. He could have sneaked off, but he didn’t want to leave the Maiden alone and vulnerable. He quickly swapped out the clip and fired another barrage at the were-leopard. Its head jerked forwards with each bullet. Rowan stopped with three bullets left. They were his last. He had no other weapon – even the Immortals’ Requiem was out of reach next to Cam. He didn’t know why he kept the ammunition. Bullets didn’t have much effect on these things; it just made them angry. But having them made him feel more secure. God help him, he needed all the security he could find.
He turned and sprinted for the access hatch. An angry roar told him the were-leopard was chasing him.
Consciousness brought with it a great weariness. Grímnir’s body was still healing. It felt like most of his bones were shattered. They squirmed and crawled together, and it hurt with a raw, insidious pain that burrowed through to the core of his being. He waited until the worst was over. It took everything not to scream.
He opened his eyes and stared up at the dark, tumultuous sky. Slowly, he tested his limbs. Everything was slightly off. He felt crumpled, as if his insides were misshapen and his bones were buckled. Everything was serviceable except for his right shoulder and his left arm. They throbbed, too damaged to repair themselves without a little help. Large joints and hinges had always been complicated. If they healed wrong, they could deform and had to be reset. Sometimes they needed to be forced back into place, like a dislocation.
Dislocation. That was a good word. It summed up how he felt. Dislocated. Wrenched out of place. Cumbersome and painful. He was so tired.
Tired of it all. A fat coil of smoke drifted overhead. He wanted to close his eyes. He wanted to sleep. He wanted it to end.
The ground was wet. Water had soaked through his clothes and into every fold of skin. There was noise – lots of noise: the discordant scream of the alarms the metal wagons sounded when they were damaged, and the occasional muffled boom as something exploded. He could hear a soft wind and the faint crackling of fire. He could hear breathing: loud, rumbling, panting breathing, too loud to be human.
He still had his quest. One last labour. One last monster to slay. With a grunt, he tried to sit up. Something was pinning him. He turned his head to the right. A spike of sheared-off steel had impaled him. He looked to his left. His arm was unnaturally bent. He tried to move it and grunted at the pain. Ignoring the discomfort, he began to thrash his left shoulder. It felt like his arm was stuffed full of hundreds of pebbles that ground against each other with every movement. On his fifth attempt, his left arm flopped flaccidly onto his stomach. He reached awkwardly with his right hand and felt along the length of his broken arm. He made a quick assessment. Pinned as he was, he did not have the leverage to reset the arm.
The shaft of metal was lodged in his clavicle. Between that, the suction, and his position, it would be impossible to pull himself off it. He stared up at the smoke-tarnished sky and took a deep breath. Then he wrenched himself sideways. The metal pulled at his collarbone, sending daggers of agony shooting through him. He gritted his teeth and did it again.
He felt the bone trapping the spike snap. Again. The thick muscle of his shoulder tore. Again. Gouts of blood pulsed from the widening wound. Grímnir moaned, but kept at it. Slowly, inch by inch, he tore his body from the metal. Finally, the skin of his shoulder parted and he rolled away. Automatically, he staggered to his feet and took a half-step, fleeing the thing that had caused him so much pain. His legs felt like liquid, and he collapsed to his knees. For a second, his mind was empty and he stared at nothing. The dragons on his skin writhed to cover the obscene gash and knit his flesh back together.
He shook his head to clear it, took hold of his left elbow, and wrenched it into place. Once the elbow was back in its socket, he moved on. The humerus had fractured obliquely, and the bottom half of the bone had lanced up towards his shoulder, overlapping the upper half. He pulled the arm down, hard. The bone grated into place, and he began pushing and pulling until the two ends met and fused back together. The arm felt wrong, somehow crooked. The humerus had not healed straight, but it was the best he could do. The monstrous breathing was becoming shallow and rapid.
The pain was fading, but the memory of the pain stayed with him. It would haunt him – so many things haunted him. He hung his head. There was a puddle below him. The water was stained with his blood. In the half-light, his red-tinged reflection looked demonic. His eyes were black holes, his skin swam and shimmered, and his beard was wild and knotted.
Grímnir looked up. He was kneeling on the hard tarmac of a small triangular car park, surrounded by shattered glass and the twisted steel shell of the fin he had brought down from the top of the building. The wreckage was propped up at a steep angle, one end on the roof of an annexe that was attached to the taller building, the other crumpled up on the floor around him. The annexe was three storeys high and black. The window of a corner office had shattered. A white shirt that had been hung up just inside flapped and fluttered, a frightened ghost in a greying world that caught at the corner of the eye.
Cú Roí’s head hung upside down over the side of the roof, snared by steel cables and pinned by girders. It was on its back. Its eyes were closed, and its throat was bared. It looked unconscious. Vulnerable. The wreckage that had fallen with them formed an almost vertical ladder up the side of the black annexe. Grímnir's heart leapt. He could finish it now. He could kill the beast. The Jötnar surged to his feet and took a step towards the insensible reptile. He stumbled. His left leg was an inch shorter than his right. His whole body felt wrong, and his gait was clumsy. It didn’t matter: he had to go on. He took another limping step and stopped.
Where was Camulus? How could he have lost the sword again? He looked around, but he couldn't see it amongst the wreckage. Grímnir raised his face to the blackened sky and let out a roar of frustrated rage. The dragon's eyes snapped open, and it roared back at him.
When Rowan and his small party had first come into the penthouse apartment, they found it devastated. Fires raged through what might once have been a small copse of trees, as fantastical as that sounded at the top of a building like this. The windows behind were shattered, which was a small blessing because the smoke got sucked out, making the atmosphere survivable, if little else.
The windows on the opposite side of the building were broken too, but by some small miracle, the fire had not yet spread that far. There was a flight of stairs leading from one of the apartment’s floors to the other. Just like a house, the lower floor comprised the living area and the upper floor hosted the bedrooms. During whatever catastrophic battle that occurred before they arrived, something had demolished a fair chunk of the wall at the top of the stairs on the upper floor. There was a service corridor through the hole. The access hatch onto the roof was at the end of the corridor. Cam had melted the locking mechanism to get it open.
Now Rowan was back. He fell through the hatch and landed awkwardly. Recovering his balance and saying a silent prayer of thanks that he hadn’t snapped an ankle, he ran towards the hole in the wall. Hearing a thump behind him, Rowan glanced over his shoulder as he reached the gap. The were-leopard crouched beneath the hatch, its eyes focussed on him malevolently. Its jaw hung open and a huge purple tongue lolled out, dripping saliva.
Rowan slipped through the gap into the apartment, and charged down the stairs. The white walls to either side were stained with soot. Something flashed above his head, and the huge Therian landed at the bottom of the stairs. He turned and ran back upstairs. He heard a gurgling growl. The thing was laughing at him.
As he reached the top a clawed hand snagged his left foot and he tumbled to the floor. He turned onto his side and drove his right foot back into a razor-toothed snout. The thing recoiled with a wet snuffle, and Rowan dragged himself free.
He scrambled to his feet desperately and, not wanting to get trapped in the service corridor, ignored the hole and instead turned right along the landing. The rail to his right was waist high. The thing gurgled another growl behind him. It was playing with him. He turned and leapt over the rail, falling with a gasp, seven feet to the designer tiles. His stomach lodged briefly beneath his sternum, then he landed, tucked and rolled. The floor was smooth and slippery, and he slid a few feet and nearly fell through the broken window. He pushed himself away, got up, and turned. He faced the charred and burned-out remains of a kitchen and dining area. The table and chairs were little more than smoking, splintered kindling on the floor. The walls were on fire. The heat reached out for him, and he narrowed his eyes against it. There was nowhere else to go.
Holding his breath, he darted through the conflagration and found himself vaulting up a small wall and into a shallow, empty pool. Around him, well-spaced trees burned. Ahead of him was another shattered window. Cold wind and smoke blew around him. There was nowhere to hide. ‘Open-plan bollocks,’ he muttered to himself.
Another growl. He turned. The massive Therian stood at the edge of the pool. He backed slowly towards the broken window. ‘Who are you?’ The question was guttural and slurred, but undeniably feminine.
Rowan answered to buy some time. ‘My name is Rowan. I was looking for my sister, Tabitha.’ He kept moving backwards. The were-leopard matched him step for step. He saw the precision of its movements and knew that it was stalking him: toying with him.
‘Tabitha? You mean Sam’s wife?’ It laughed.
‘You know her?’ Rowan asked.
‘I know of her. The Master took her, raped her, forced his seed into her. The Master’s progeny grows quick and wild – you have seen the
m: the Barghest. Big and pink and hungry? Covered in tentacles? She begged him to spare her, but the Master used her and discarded her, nothing but a vessel for his spawn.’ What she said was all the more horrifying because they issued from that guttural and malformed palate.
‘She will be dead by now, ripped open by her child’s birth. Have you seen that movie, Alien? Like that. Not a pleasant way to go, but merciful compared to what I have in store for you.’ Her rough purple tongue ran across her fangs. Trails of thick saliva dripped to the floor.
Rowan barely noticed. Mark had said Tabitha’s death was not easy, but this? In his heart of hearts, he knew it was true. She had been in the hands of the monsters for too long. He fought off an overwhelming need to scream, knowing that losing it now would only make him more vulnerable. There would be time to grieve if he survived, but for now …
The were-leopard exploited his distraction. It threw itself at him. He instinctively ducked and sidestepped out of its way. Its feet slipped on the smooth base of the empty pool as it flew towards him. It tried to turn to follow him, but it couldn’t stop sliding, and it skidded past him. It tumbled towards the broken window and the void beyond. Lithely it twisted and its claws flashed out, managing to catch one edge of the window. It had too much momentum; it slid inexorably out and fell to dangle over the burning city.
Carefully, Rowan approached the creature and stared down at it. A thick plume of smoke billowed out of one of the lower apartments so that the thing looked like it was hanging over black fog by the tips of its fingers. It morphed as he watched, and suddenly there was a beautiful young woman staring pleadingly up into his eyes.
‘Please, don’t let me fall,’ she begged. ‘I can’t help what I have become – I didn’t ask for it. I don’t deserve to die. Please help me. Maybe we can find a cure together?’
‘A cure?’
Immortals' Requiem Page 45
