The crowd parted as a long wooden crate was brought forward. A cultist with a crowbar bent to open the crate and reveal a pair of metal spikes, each of them ten feet long and wickedly curved. Their tips looked sharper than icepicks.
Erasmus waved at Ayaan and walked over to stand next to her. “It won’t be much longer,” he said. “Wow, did you ever really think we’d make it this far?”
“Yes,” Ayaan said. “I believed. This is Sarah, by the way.”
“Uh. Yeah. Hi.” The cheerful werewolf didn’t seem to know how to talk to the girl. He looked instead at the two metal spikes. “Nice to meet you, I guess.”
“It isn’t mutual,” Sarah spat but Erasmus was unwilling to take the bait.
“I think I see how this works,” Ayaan said as the work crew bolted one of the long spars to either side of the scaffolding. “The Tsarevich will climb up there and grasp either of these extrusions with one of his hands. The energy will then flow through him like an electrical current.
“Yeah, kinda,” Erasmus said. He scratched at his face with his inch-long fingernails. “Look, Nilla’s ready to go.”
Ayaan looked where he pointed. The blonde lich was moving steadily toward the Source. Two female cultists—living women—followed behind her. Each of them carried a spool of wire which she unwound as she walked. The loose ends of wire connected to the scaffolding.
As Nilla approached the zone of exclusion where any undead thing would catch on fire Ayaan wanted to rush forward and drag her back. Erasmus knew better, however. “It’s okay. This is why we needed her so much. You’ll see. Nilla is the only one who can actually go to the Source. As far as we know she’s the only dead person ever to get close enough to touch it.”
“And she will take those wires and connect them to it?” Ayaan asked. She’d never been very good with electronics.
“Yeah, although on their own they don’t do anything. She needs to act as a conduit for the life force. A transformer, I guess—she can take the power of the Source and feed it to the Tsarevich out here as healing energy.”
Nilla vanished without fanfare as she crossed the event horizon. She just turned invisible. The female cultists in her train looked frightened for a moment but they must have been warned what would happen because they kept walking.
“He’s coming,” someone said in Russian. “He is ready,” someone else shouted. Some of the cultists dropped to their knees as the flap of the yurt was drawn back. The ghouls kept working—they didn’t even look up.
A young girl, maybe twelve years old, stepped out of the yurt. Her head had been shaved and she had a fresh cut on her cheek. She wore a silk dress stained with blood in a couple of places. Ayaan barely recognized her at first but slowly her brain worked it out. It was Patience, the girl she had taken away from the farm in Pennsylvania. By the look of things she was the new Cicatrix.
A hand appeared out of the darkness of the yurt. A length of twisted forearm. The Tsarevich hauled himself forward, pushing his misshapen skull out into the light. He couldn’t walk. His legs were two different lengths—his left was nearly a foot longer than his right—but clearly he intended to emerge under his own power. Inch by inch his deformed flesh hauled itself out of the yurt.
The green phantom waited at the side of the flatbed with a shiny metal shopping cart. The Tsarevich lurched forward and slid down into it, his off-center hips jamming down into the metal basket. His shorter arm reached forward and his fingers wove through the bars while his longer arm draped over the side of the cart and nearly dragged his knuckles in the dirt. The green phantom pushed him forward with visible effort, toward the scaffolding.
“What’s that?” someone said, and Ayaan assumed they’d never seen the Tsarevich before. She almost laughed. She had been holding her breath—except that she had no breath to hold. Her chest had locked into rigor with anticipation. “No, seriously,” the voice called again, and she turned to see who had broken the tension. “What is that?”
She looked—everyone looked—and saw someone walking towards them from the far side of the valley. A dead person, clearly, because his face was a bare skull. There were scraps of skin adhering to the bone, and a pair of prominent eyes in the sockets, and a wispy lock of hair or two. The figure was perhaps six feet tall and extremely thin—except for the skull its entire body was wrapped up in a heavy olive drab blanket.
It didn’t really have any feet, though. Sharp-looking ends of bone stuck out of the bottom of the blanket. Instead of walking forward it scuttled forward, kind of like a crab.
“Dad,” Sarah breathed. But the figure wasn’t Dekalb—it couldn’t be.
“Get a sniper over here,” Ayaan shouted but it was too late. A female cultist in a paper smock approached the strange figure. She had a pistol in either hand and she raised them to shoulder height. She demanded that the creature stop at once. “Come on, we need a fire team!” Ayaan yelled. She half-turned to relay her instructions to Erasmus but that would mean taking her eyes off this new enemy.
The woman with the pistols opened fire, her handguns barking like angry dogs. Bullets tore into the green blanket and spun the stranger around in a circle. It fell over not like a human being falling to the ground but like a camera tripod being knocked over. And then it got back up.
The blanket whirled open and away. The creature had no body, only six enormous jointed legs of yellow bone that flashed out like the fingers of a giant hand. Two of them snapped outward and neatly impaled the living woman. They flicked in different directions and she came apart in pieces.
Screaming and shouting and general alarm rolled around the encampment. Cultists and ghouls rushed to the attack. Snipers climbed up into the rocks surrounding the valley while a team of rifles rushed forward to kneel in the dirt before the Tsarevich, protecting him.
Someone brought out a machine gun, a crew-served RPK-74, which looked like a big AK-47 with a reinforced stock. A teenage boy fed the long curving magazines into the weapon as its operator lay prone on the ground, angling the barrel up on its tripod. The operator tore through an entire magazine of forty-five rounds in a few seconds.
The monster took another step forward and fell on its face, three of its legs crumpling beneath it. Chips of bone fell from its body. One of its eyes burst and jelly dripped out of the socket like ugly tears. Ayaan closed her mouth. It had been gaping open. The thing was dead. Its skull had been punctured in a dozen places.
Somebody cheered.
Then the monster stood back up. A new eye opened in the empty socket. Its broken legs fused themselves back together. If anything the beast looked bigger—it looked like it was ten feet tall. It surged forward fast enough to impale half a dozen ghouls. Around Ayaan the living began to panic. They ran in every possible direction, some of them throwing away their weapons. Disorganized and panicked they posed no threat to the monster. It came right towards Ayaan. It came right for her.
“Who...” she wondered out loud. Except she already knew. “Who is it?”
“Gary,” Sarah gloated, her face parted by a broad and exultant smile. “It’s fucking Gary, that’s who!”
15
Gary swept through the crowd, slashing cultists, disemboweling them, stabbing them in their throats. He was vicious and completely remorseless. He seemed to have no plan, just an insatiable need to kill. Someone hit him with a grenade and he fell down on one knee—then rose again unharmed. Twelve new barbed spines emerged from under the bottom of his skull. They shot out like pistons and skewered the heads of ghouls, right through their helmets.
“He gets stronger every time you shoot him,” Sarah said. She had told her father Gary’s secret in an attempt to break his heart. Instead he had turned it—turned Gary—into a weapon of mass destruction. Maybe she’d been wrong about him. Maybe Dekalb had more strength than she thought. “It’s all over, Ayaan. It’s all over.”
Ayaan sucked on her lower lip. Sarah watched the woman who had been her mentor. If
you just glanced at her she looked the same as ever—she was still Ayaan—yet if you took a closer look it was unmistakable. She was a corpse now. You could see the way her skin was tightening in her face. You could see it in how much weight she’d lost—she was half the size she used to be. Or maybe it just seemed that way. In life Ayaan had been a towering figure to Sarah. She supposed everyone’s parents were like that. In death she was just one more ghoul.
“Stay here,” Ayaan told her, and started hobbling away toward the yurt. Was she going to protect the Tsarevich? Sarah could hardly believe it. They’d done it. They had broken Ayaan, broken her mind. Such a thing shouldn’t have been possible. Yet Ayaan herself had frequently warned Sarah that humanity was a liability. Sarah remembered perfectly what Ayaan had said around the campfire one night when Sarah was sixteen years old. “None of us,” she said, “is immune to death or madness. The time may come when you have to sanitize me. You may have to shoot me because I’ve panicked so badly I threaten the squad. None of you may hesitate, when that moment comes.”
Now she seemed to have changed her tune. Was she really a believer? Did she really believe in the Tsarevich, like the two liches Sarah had already killed? Or was she just afraid of death, like her father had been, and Gary before him?
Speaking of the devil—Sarah looked up to see Gary whirling through the Tsarevich’s army like a top. He was under sustained gunfire and his skull had taken on a patchy and mottled appearance—he was being healed as fast as he was being injured but the process wasn’t perfect. Sarah just didn’t know how long it could be kept up. She knew her father was doing it. She knew he had to be somewhere nearby. Gary’s legs flexed and sharp fragments of bone jutted out of him, covered him in vicious spikes. He tore through a machine gun position and the weapon’s wooden stock shivered into pieces. The gunners were thrown away like crumpled bits of paper.
Sarah suddenly realized she’d been left alone. Ayaan and the werewolf had both abandoned her. Well, they had more serious problems. Sarah’s hands were tied so securely there wasn’t much she could do, anyway.
Or maybe there was. She turned around in place, taking in the frenetic energy of the camp, the people running in every direction, the ghouls taking up defensive formations. She found what she wanted and headed toward it at a run. A single mummy, standing alone at the back of the valley next to a big rock formation. It—she—held a jar in her hands with something round and murky inside.
“I was sent by Ptolemaeus Canopus,” she said, skidding to a stop in the dirt. “Are you alright? We need to work together if we’re going to get out of here.”
The mummy didn’t move. The thing in the jar didn’t move either but she could feel a haze of dark energy wafting off of it. It was desperately trying to get her attention. She looked down, through the glass, and saw a human brain there. Nasty, but hardly the worst thing she’d ever seen.
Behind her she heard a prolonged scream and she turned to look. Blood jetted high over the crowd, a fountain of it. Gary had grown an extra joint at the end of his legs, a curved, scythe-like foot that looked perfect for evisceration.
She looked back down at the brain. It was trying to tell her something. She felt a strange weight in her left hand. It felt heavy, as if it was being pushed downward. She frowned. What the hell did the brain want? She could reach into the pockets of her sweatshirt, just as she had done while she watched Ptolemy’s execution. She reached in and felt something soft and hairy. She drew it out of her pocket.
Oh. Okay. They had taken the green sword away from her, as they had stripped her of all her weapons. They had left her the noose and the withered piece of matted fur Mael Mag Och had once worn as an armband.
Sarah, he said, as she ran the fox fur between her fingers. I didn’t really expect you to make it this far. I suppose I didn’t expect you to fail, either. Though some things run in families, alas.
“Hello,” Sarah said. “You must be Mael Mag Och. I’ve heard all about you but I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.”
The voice that roared its reply into Sarah’s head held a trace of regret. Or maybe she was just imagining it. If I had come to you in my own shape you would have run away from me. I pretended to be Jack because I knew it was a name to conjure with, lass. Does it really matter so much? I still gave you your gift.
“Why?” she asked. “Why did you do that? Why did you do any of this? Did I really need another parent who was just going to disappear on me at the worst possible moment?”
It was Nilla’s notion, to be honest. The blonde lass you saw vanish out yonder.
“I’ve never heard of her.”
Ah, Mael Mag Och said, and yet she’s heard all about you. The daughter of the lost hero, turned out in a foreign land to be raised by warriors, made strong and fierce. Her heart went out to you, lass, and where Nilla’s involved, my heart goes there too. She’s and I have much in the way of history, and I owe her a significant debt.
“I refuse to believe you did anything out of the goodness of your own heart. You planned this—all of this. I half believe you got Ayaan captured just so I would come chasing after her and end up right here.”
All too true, he admitted. Yet incomplete. The entire world does not revolve around you, Sarah. I had plans for the others as well. Ayaan was supposed to assassinate the Tsarevich for me. She was the perfect candidate, I thought. Once he was dead I could take over his empire, seeing that I was the only one capable of controlling his undead army. That didn’t work out. You were my backup plan, and you failed as well. It is supposed to be me who triumphs today, not his Majesty the undying deformity. Didn’t I tell you to bring an army? Instead you brought a handful of mummies and one twisted freak.
“My freak seems to be doing alright for himself,” Sarah said, turning around to watch Gary plow through a line of ghouls. His bony frame had grown considerably while she spoke with the brain until he resembled nothing so more as a giant spider with a tiny human skull perched atop its carapace.
The werewolf came at him, claws on hands and feet flashing through the air. Gary stabbed downwards with a bony tail like a scorpion’s sting that penetrated deep into the earth. Erasmus rolled to the side and came back up to slash at one of Gary’s tree-trunk legs. Gary knelt forward under the pressure and Erasmus tried to scamper up onto his back, his clawed feet digging into Gary’s bony carapace to find purchase.
A toothy mouth opened in Gary’s side. Lips studded with bony spikes grabbed at Erasmus’ left arm and the teeth sheared it clean off. Erasmus howled in agony as his furry body pinwheeled down to the ground while the giant mouth chewed the werewolf’s limb into pulp. A dozen thin spines lanced down from Gary’s body to impale the werewolf in as many places. Erasmus didn’t get back up.
“See? Look at that,” Sarah crowed, excited.
Ah, the druid said, our Gary. He’s a scrapper, I’ll allow you that much. Yet the only thing he believes in is the integrity of his own hide. He’d never take on this fight if he was in any danger. And unless I miss my guess, your Ayaan is about ready to strike.
“What are you talking about?” Sarah demanded. The mummy holding the brain inclined her head and Sarah pivoted around to look where she indicated. She just had time to see Ayaan crest a pile of boulders high up on the ridge wall to the south. Sarah looked closer and saw her father on the other side of the pile. He was sitting calmly, his eyes closed, his arms outstretched, the palms of his skeletal hands pointed at Gary.
“No,” Sarah said, the syllable meaningless in her mouth. “No, that’s not right.”
It’s a hard world, lass, Mael Mag Och told her. It has been for twelve years.
Ayaan grabbed Dekalb’s head in both of her hands. He jerked and flexed and tried to escape from her but he was caught like a fish on a line. Ayaan pressed harder and the skin on Dekalb’s head darkened and split like the skin of a rotten fruit. Sarah’s father kicked out with his legs but he couldn’t seem to hit Ayaan.
Sarah watched in mute horror as her father’s face peeled off in long dry strips of skin. The skull underneath glowed with dark energy. The skull flexed and shook and a network of fine cracks appeared over its surface. Shafts of dark energy leaked through the fissures. Darkness burst from empty eyesockets and Dekalb’s skull cracked open in a hundred pieces.
Ayaan let the headless body fall forward. She was done. Down on the battlefield Gary must have felt it right away. He must have realized instantly that he was no longer immune to the attacks of the Tsarevich’s army. He made a quick slash at all the ghouls and cultists nearby and then ran for the hills.
Just like that his attack was over. Just like that he was gone. The green lich sent cultists to chase after Gary but everyone could see he was retreating.
Sarah had more important things to worry about, of course.
“Daddy,” Sarah said. The last thing she’d said to him was that he was a bad parent. He had begged her not to get herself into this mess.
“Daddy,” she said again. The brain had enough tact to keep silent.
16
“If,” the Tsarevich said, his voice loud enough to roll around the rocks and bones and echo in the still, cold air, “if there are to be no more of interruptions. Then perhaps it is possible to do this thing.”
Some of the cultists had still been screaming. All of them had been shouting for help or for succor. They fell silent at their lord’s command. Those who had been busy before with assembling the machinery around the scaffold and those who had been erecting the two sharp metal spikes at its top got back to work. There were a lot of bodies to be removed from the battlefield, many of them already struggling to get back up, to begin the next glorious phase of their existence.
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