Yield. Swear fealty. You will stand only second to me. You will have power. An eternity of anything you could ever want. All you have to do is … surrender.
‘No.’
The dragon stamped on him again. The rebar twisted and bent and ripped out of his side. A coil of intestines slopped to the roof, but he was free.
These humans are nothing. They are weak and self-obsessed. I have examined them. There is nothing in them but petty fear and jealousy. They are worthless. Rule them with me.
‘Like Leach? Never. I will never kneel to you.’
Then you will suffer. I will bury you in a hole and I will leave you there. I cannot kill you, zealot. But I know how fragile is the mind. I will break you. I will turn you into a gibbering shadow. A ghost. I will destroy you. The barbed tail slammed into his forehead and Grímnir’s world turned white.
It was a particularly big Barghest. Its wide circular mouth was practically touching his ear. An acrid smell wafted from it. Hundreds of tentacles weaved through the space above Cam’s face.
‘Missed you, did I, you horrible cock-womble?’ he asked tiredly. Nothing hurt anymore. He felt cold, despite the seven-foot-high flames that encircled them. What was left of the roof around him was bulging strangely, and fine plumes of smoke twirled and spiralled through microscopic holes. Elsewhere, long rents spat ash up from glowing depths. A few of them had cut to within half a foot of where he lay. The roof was angled drunkenly. The whole thing was only a hair’s breadth from collapse.
There was so much smoke billowing from the various conflagrations that it formed a low roof, nine or ten feet above him. It was a swirling inky mass. Cam thought he could see forms in it – the flitting faces of the dead. He sighed and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see that.
‘I think we’re both fucked, don’t you?’ He turned to face the mottled pink monster and opened his eyes again. It looked slightly charred. He lifted his hand and pointed it at the thing’s mouth. He felt the heat somewhere in his shoulder, building, creeping up his arm, waiting to be unleashed.
The Barghest slumped to the roof next to him. Its tentacles pooled around it. A couple touched his bleeding leg. It whined gently, and Cam lowered his hand. The fire within him died away, but the flames around him only grew.
Cam closed his eyes again. ‘I suppose you’re right. Nobody wants to die alone, do they?’ he said to the Barghest. ‘It doesn’t mean I like you though.’
The Barghest hissed. ‘You’re brighter than you look, aren’t you?’ There was a groan and a crack, and two of the rifts zig-zagged forwards. The roof beneath Cam and the Barghest tilted, and a wash of flame blazed up around the cracks. The Barghest screamed.
‘Oh, be quiet, you big baby,’ Cam admonished. ‘God, I hate you.’ It hissed again, but it stopped screeching. It laid its big blind bullet head on his injured thigh. He looked at it and sighed but didn’t try to move it off him. ‘I wish I had something to drink,’ Cam said.
Cú Roí was playing with him. The dragon hit him and then stepped back, watching. Every time Grímnir got to his feet it slammed him down again. Grímnir stoically fought on, trying to get to Camulus, which was torturously close. It was futile. For all his strength, the dragon was just too big and too fast. Grímnir persisted. He had faith in the Maiden. She would not let him down.
His body was a hunched mess. His pelvis was crooked, and his spine was kinked. The ribs on his right side were concave and breathing was difficult. His vision was blurred and sickening – Grímnir suspected that his head had been flattened and his eyes were now unevenly spaced. His left leg was a fused clubbed mass of bone that wouldn’t bend at the knee. His right arm was twisted almost like a corkscrew and attached to a humped and lumpy shoulder.
Grímnir ducked inelegantly beneath a blast of the dragon’s fire, straight into the thick trunk of its lashing tail. The wind was knocked from him, and he slid backwards across the roof. Glass and chunks of concrete skinned the flesh from his back.
The big man lay there, panting. A series of heavy crunching footsteps and the dragon loomed over him. Its long face peered at him, its wide mouth slightly upturned at the corners as if it were smiling at him. He felt around for something, anything, to stab into one of those glittering eyes. There was nothing to hand.
It gives me great satisfaction to see you like this. My nemesis. My hunter. I wonder why I was ever so concerned about you. Look at you. You are a shambling ruin. You are nothing. The irony that I shall torment you forever because of the magic you have used to stalk me is … exquisite.
The dragon stepped away from him. Grímnir forced himself to sit up. Cú Roí flared its wings out to either side. I have a world to conquer, zealot, but when I am finished, I will come looking for you. Run and hide. When I find you, I will hurt you, and when I am bored … I will let you go. Run and hide, run and hide. You will be my plaything for eternity.
Both wings swept down and a blast of wind washed over Grímnir. The dragon lifted a few feet off the roof. Another beat of its wings and it rose another ten feet. The roof shook with a rumble, and Cú Roí’s giant head turned on its snaking neck to look behind it.
Something loomed above them. It was approximately the size of a lorry, and roughly the shape of a fist. Twenty-foot-long fingers opened. Before the dragon could react, the stone hand swatted it like a fly.
‘It’s going to fly away,’ Rowan said. He pointed the tip of the Immortals’ Requiem at the dragon. ‘I told you.’
The journey down the side of the Beetham Tower had been perilous. The personal rescue devices were remarkably efficient. Rowan and the Maiden sat in their harnesses, and the two units had lowered them at a steady rate. The danger came from the fires that burned everywhere. On three occasions, windows above them exploded outwards and glass rained down on top of them.
Rowan’s left shoulder bled from a deep gash, and the Maiden’s face was covered in blood from a split scalp. The superheated glass and steel had been almost unbearable. Hot choking smoke issued from broken windows. Fire crawled up the walls all around them, and it was only through happenstance that the personal rescue devices didn’t drop them straight through one of those vertical furnaces. Rowan’s eyebrows were crisp, and he felt like he had a bad sunburn. They had been lucky.
They had descended onto the part of the building that linked the hotel lobby to the annexe. The roof of this narrow slice was a storey below the roof of the annexe. Rowan and the Maiden had left their harnesses and climbed up a safety ladder onto the annexe roof. Then they had crept to the western side of the roof and taken shelter behind some air-conditioning vents. The dragon hadn’t noticed them – it had been batting Grímnir around like a cat playing with a toy mouse, but now it looked like it was going to leave. Rowan clutched his burned hand to his chest. ‘It’s in the air – do something!’ he said.
‘Quiet,’ the Maiden snapped. She closed her eyes. Calmly speaking to herself, she continued, ‘Fire, Water, and Air are the most feared elements. Fire burns, Water drowns, and Air can rip and tear even the most solid edifice away. Nobody thinks much about Earth. But Earth … Earth is the true destroyer. An earthquake can raze an entire city. I am stronger here, closer to the Earth. It is intractable. It is eternal. Earth can …’
The Maiden raised her right hand above her head. There was a rumble, and the building beneath him shook. He looked to his right, over the edge of the annexe, and down to the road three storeys below. It was confusing in the gloom, but it looked as if the tarmac rolled like liquid. Concentric rings rippled, as if somebody had thrown a gigantic pebble into a solid pond. Except they were flowing the wrong way, towards the centre of the disturbance.
The ground erupted, and mud piled up into the air. The column grew and grew until it towered over Rowan.
There was a pause. The Maiden splayed her fingers, and Rowan watched, amazed, as a gigantic hand appeared from the mass. It had taken less than a second. He blinked. The Maiden brought her hand sharply down.
The gigantic hand of Earth mimicked her, and the flat of its palm came down on top of the dragon and slammed it back onto the roof. The Maiden opened her eyes and nodded with satisfaction. She smiled at Rowan and dropped her hand to her side. Rowan looked back at the mud hand. Only, it wasn’t mud anymore. Now it was rock: an inanimate sculpture. The fingers formed the bars of a huge cage. Two wings thrashed out of either side.
‘Earth can do …’ she began, then her legs gave way. Rowan dropped the Immortals’ Requiem and caught her, lowering her to the floor. ‘I am okay,’ she said. ‘I am just tired. I will be fine. Go and help Grímnir. I cannot do any more now. Go. Go now!’
Rowan scooped up the black sword and ran. Grímnir was on his feet. He was naked for some reason, and he looked like Quasimodo.
‘Holy fuck,’ Rowan whispered when he saw the ruin of the big man’s body. ‘You must be in agony,’ he said. Grímnir ignored him. Instead, he limped straight to Camulus, his upper body rolling like a sailor at sea, and picked it up with his left hand. His right arm looked useless. He turned and looked at Rowan. ‘Camhlaidh?’ the big man asked.
Rowan wanted to tell Grímnir about their friend’s bravery, but they didn’t speak the same language. Instead, he pointed at the top of the Beetham Tower. It was wreathed in thick black smoke that climbed up and up into the dim sky. Rowan shook his head.
Remarkably, Grímnir’s reply was in English. ‘Fuck,’ he grunted. Grímnir turned back to the stone cage. His face was flat and hard. Rowan stood beside him, and the two swordsmen watched as the dragon’s wings rapidly shrunk away.
The fires were upon them. The Barghest’s head steamed as its slime broiled away. The tiles creaked and cracked all around him. The roof beneath Cam lurched. A crack appeared next to them, and fire rippled out of it. The Barghest whined.
Cam thought he understood why the creature had settled down beside him instead of trying to rip his spleen out through his ears. It was scared. So was Cam. He realised now that when the Grim Reaper ushers you towards the final exit, it doesn’t matter who or what you are, whether man, god or monster; all you really want is one last hug. He put a comforting hand on the Barghest’s head. It was sticky, and his skin began to sting.
The roof tilted violently and a chasm opened beneath them. The Barghest slid away from him. Cam reached out instinctively to try and catch it. Then he was sliding too, and he grabbed at the edge of a broken piece of concrete instead. The roof beneath him turned and crumbled into hunks of debris that disappeared into a boiling mess of fire and churning smoke.
Cam dangled over the fiery pit and watched the Barghest plummet towards the inferno. It didn’t make a sound. Its tentacles spread out around it as it fell. It seemed to take a long time. ‘Good riddance, you slimy freak,’ Cam said when it disappeared into the molten hell below him. His heart wasn’t in it though. In fact, he felt a bit sad. He supposed there was camaraderie in a shared death.
The top few floors of the building had been gutted. The lake of fire looked a long way down. The skeletal remnants of five or six floors jutted out from the walls on either side. Here, he could see a burning sofa; there, a charred corpse. Below him though, there was only the drop into oblivion. Cam supposed he might survive the fire. Who knew how the dragon on his arm had changed him? He would not survive the fall.
Cam hung there. He couldn’t bring himself to let go. ‘I don’t want to die,’ he whispered. Then his tired fingers slipped, and his body tipped into the abyss. Cam closed his eyes, folded his arms across his chest, and fell. His final thoughts were of his father. He thought Manannán would have been proud of him at the end. He hoped so.
Cú Roí was a demon, Rowan thought. The thing he had become was somewhere between a dragon and a man. It was huge and red, with a long snout and curved horns. It ducked from out of the stone hand and growled at Rowan and Grímnir.
Dusk had turned to night. The roof was lit by the huge flaming building behind them. Everything was shadow and false light. Rowan clutched the hilt of the Immortals’ Requiem in a sweaty palm. His shoulder hurt. His burned hand hurt. ‘Well,’ he said to the damaged Jötnar beside him. ‘This is it. Good luck.’ The huge hand at the end of Grímnir’s broken right arm clapped him on his injured shoulder and nearly sent him to his knees. ‘Arghh, shit. Thanks, I suppose.’
Grímnir looked at him solemnly and nodded. ‘You are masochistic twatscicle,’ he said in heavily accented pidgin English.
‘I’m sorry, what?’ Rowan demanded incredulously, but the big man had already set off towards Cú Roí at a lurching trot that turned into a disjointed run, which ended in a clumsy, wildly lumbering sprint.
Grímnir swung Camulus as he ran and Cú Roí darted back out of his way, deceptively quick for its bulk. It swung a huge fist back at the tattooed man. Grímnir raised his deformed right arm and blocked the crushing blow. Rowan heard it snap but Grímnir didn’t miss a beat: he ducked and slashed again. The movement turned Cú Roí’s back to Rowan, and he saw that wings were pushing out of its back.
Without thinking, Rowan ran up behind him and hacked at them. The Immortals’ Requiem sang its banshee song. One wing fell to the floor where it writhed and jumped as if trying to fly away by itself. The other was still attached to Cú Roí, but only by a thread of tissue.
The monster spun around with a shriek of outrage. Its talon-tipped fingers whipped towards him. Rowan stumbled backwards, raising the Immortals’ Requiem to defend himself. The force of the blow snapped the sword. The top third whistled as it spun away into the night. The rest of the blade shivered so violently that it numbed Rowan’s hand. He struggled to keep hold of it. Rowan took a step back. The demon followed, and panic sent shards of ice through Rowan’s stomach.
Rowan saw Grímnir behind Cú Roí. The big man’s broken face was set with concentration, and he was pushing and pulling savagely at his re-broken right arm. Rowan took another step, buying the big man some time. The demon stared at Rowan with mesmeric eyes.
Now you die, an awful voice hammered into Rowan’s head.
‘You killed my sister,’ the marine spat.
Grímnir charged in, Camulus once again held in his right hand. He came quietly and lunged for the monster’s broad back. Somehow the demon anticipated the move and one big hand caught the tattooed man’s sword arm before he could drive Camulus home. Seemingly without effort, Cú Roí lifted Grímnir by the wrist until he was dangling in the air. The monster turned back to Rowan.
I have killed many sisters, little human. I will kill many more. Unwatched, Grímnir reached up and took Camulus from his right hand. Holding it with his left, he sliced it down into Cú Roí’s wrist, and the monster roared in pain as its hand was cut from its arm. The tattooed man dropped to the floor lightly. Blood poured from Cú Roí’s arm. Grímnir hacked at the monster again, and it backed away and pointed its stump at him. Gouts of thick steaming blood hit Grímnir in the face and he reeled backwards. The skin around his eyes and cheeks sloughed away, and he wheeled around blindly.
The creature laughed, its voice deep and grating. All the fury Rowan felt over the death of his sister flowed through him. Cú Roí had its back to him. Rowan ran at it as fast as he could. The remains of two wings twitched, raw and bleeding, in its ruined flesh.
Jumping up, Rowan screamed with hatred and slammed the jagged stump of the black sword between Cú Roí’s shoulder blades. The monster spun around. The movement caused Rowan to fly from the creature’s back, the black sword left embedded in it. He landed with a bone-jarring thud, and the wind rushed from his lungs. His vision faded for a moment.
He shook it off to find the monster bearing down on him. Cú Roí’s face screwed up in a snarl that displayed the razor-wire tangle of its teeth.
Grímnir’s sight returned quickly. The demon’s boiling blood had cooled, and his injuries had healed. The human had done well. Grímnir had expected him to run. Instead, he had stood beside him and faced the dragon. He truly was a brave and honoured friend. Cú Roí stalked
towards the little man. Grímnir hefted Camulus in his right hand. The monster had his back to him: the hilt of the black sword stuck out from between its shoulders.
Grímnir shambled up behind Cú Roí. His badly set bones stuck out oddly, making him misshapen and throwing out his balance, but he had to take every advantage he could get. He hobbled as silently as he could to stab his enemy in the back.
Even so, the dragon realised something was wrong in the last instant – maybe it remembered Grímnir was behind him. Perhaps it just heard his clumsy feet as they pounded across the glass-strewn roof. Whatever the reason, Cú Roí spun and tried to grab Grímnir. If its hand hadn’t been cut away, it would have succeeded.
Instead, its stump, with the bud of a hand beginning to regenerate from the end, glanced off the side of Grímnir’s jaw. The tattooed man slammed Camulus into Cú Roí’s chest with all the force that his broken body could muster.
For a moment, there was silence except for the wail of distant car alarms. Even those seemed to fade away. Cú Roí and Grímnir stood toe to toe. They were completely still. Then Grímnir cried out and his neck arched backwards. Rowan clambered to his feet and stepped over to help the big man. He stopped. Blue waves seemed to ripple over Grímnir’s skin, starting at the hand gripping the sword. Rowan looked closer and saw his tattoos were writhing.
Slowly at first but then quicker, the tattoos slithered off his skin, along the blade of Camulus, and into Cú Roí. The demon’s flesh slowly turned a pulsing red, and Camulus shattered. Grímnir fell limply to the roof, his once tattooed skin pale and unblemished. He lay in a boneless heap, and Rowan knew he was dead. The colour in Cú Roí’s body leached away like pottery removed from a kiln. The Immortals’ Requiem stood where Rowan had buried it between its shoulder blades. Rowan could hear the faint clicking of rapidly cooling stone. Everything was still. After the fury and terror of the last few minutes – the last few days – it seemed abnormal. Rowan took a deep breath. The air was thick with smoke, but it felt pure and fresh. He was alive. For a split-second, nothing else mattered.
Immortals' Requiem Page 48
