Nightlord: Orb

by Garon Whited

  A window finally melted enough to part from the frame. Flames boiled into the living room, licked along the ceiling. Part of the porch roof in front collapsed. I wondered what they were using as an accelerant. Gasoline wouldn’t burn with such intensity. Modern technology has its drawbacks.

  “A little late for the fire trucks, anyway. Hold still.” I burned stored power into a pair of deflection spells for us—very intense, but small, each surrounding head and shoulders. I dislike bullets in the brain or upper spine. Anything else is merely painful; those are show-stoppers.

  “Any last-second advice?” I asked, as the porch roof over the back door fell down and broke it in. The kitchen filled with flames.

  “Never look a Phrygian in the eye,” she ordered, over the sudden roar. “Other than that, I think we’re going to have to rely on brute force, and they probably have a bunch of Constantines as grunts.”

  I pulled Firebrand from the fireplace. Flames licked along the edges, deep yellow and bloody red.

  “Right now, I’m strangely comfortable with that,” I admitted. I reached out with a tendril and she took it in hers. We felt each other, understood what was about to happen, knew what each was about to do an instant before we did it. I could also feel Firebrand and Bronze. We were all together, all united, and had one grim purpose: kill them all.

  I went into overdrive and everything slowed to a crawl. Smoke swirls moved like summer clouds. Flames licked upward like lovers’ tongues. The roar of the kitchen inferno changed to a thousand small voices—a rush of air, the crack and pop of individual fires; an orchestra of sound broken into individual instruments.

  I pointed Firebrand at the inferno. Flames whirled, sucked through the house to spiral into the burning blade. Heat upon heat hammered down the hall as a sideways tornado of flames roared sideways, absorbed into the metal. Firebrand drained the fires at the rear of the house, burning everything impossibly bright and fast, until the rear of the house was nothing but ashes and coals.

  With that as the obvious way out, all eyes would be fixed on it, all weapons pointed at it.

  The wall next to the fireplace was weakened by the flames outside. I took a run-up from the far side of the living room and it exploded outward as I emerged through it. Mary followed me out while pieces of burning wood were still scattering into the yard.

  The first person I encountered was a startled-looking young man with a shotgun and fangs—and, yes, he was looking at the rear of the house, not toward us, when the wall exploded. His head snapped in our direction, mouth open in amazement, and his gun started to swing in my direction.

  Firebrand met him on the upswing, leaving behind a whirling cloud of blood-motes. I went through the gap; several droplets spattered into my clothes and swirled in my wake as though chasing me. I wondered, in passing, if it would have any effects. I was almost certainly about to get more of it.

  We hurried away from the house, curving to the right, toward the barn. We came to a halt with our backs against the left-hand side of the barn’s double doors. Bronze was still inside, but lining up for her big entrance onto the field of battle.

  A whole graveyard of undead were instantly after us. Vampires closed in on us like politicians on a fundraiser. It was easy to tell which tribe was which. The eight Constantines moved much more quickly than anyone else, hurrying along at speeds no human could match. They carried bludgeoning weapons, mostly metal bats, crowbars, and other things that wouldn’t shatter when wielded by vampire strength. I didn’t see Wallace, Teeth, or Knuckles, though.

  There were six Thessaloniki spread out behind them, armed with shotguns; I recognized Tony. Shotguns were a good choice. The scatter made it more likely to do damage at a distance, while up close it could literally blow a head off.

  Bringing up the rear were three Phrygians. They were armed with handguns and wore the latest in personal body armor. Obviously, they preferred not to get into the fight. Their real offense, though, was in looking keenly at us, ready at a moment’s notice to exercise their powers. I could feel their influence crawling across the surface of my mind, trying to distract me with thoughts of surrender. That wasn’t going to work; no one was going to surrender. Besides, the Phrygians thought they were focusing on one person at a time. They didn’t realize they had to overcome the combined will of Mary, Bronze, Firebrand, and myself all at once.

  I don’t like people poking around in my free will. They would find that out. The survivors might remember it. Assuming.

  Strangely, though, there were no humans involved. I wondered why. Did they think humans would be useless? Or unreliable? You don’t want to find your shotgun-wielding servant got his mind twisted to shoot you, after all. Maybe they didn’t want humans—servants or not—to see a conflict between vampires? Some vampires were going to get killed tonight; it’s possible humans weren’t allowed to see it, I suppose.

  That was only a flicker of thought in overdrive before the real fight started.

  As the Constantines closed in, my overdrive moved into higher and higher gear. The world seemed to slow even more. While everyone else seemed almost to be standing still, the Constantines only seemed to slow to about half-speed. They must have been nothing but blurs to mortal eyes.

  The Constantines tried to come at us all at once, thinking to mob Mary and I by force of numbers and take us down—possibly sink a fang or two into the ancient evil in the process. They quite reasonably expected to do so. They did not expect an expert swordsman moving at the speed of dark, wielding a dragon-sword.

  Through our tendril-touch, we knew what was to come. With perfect precision, Mary and I closed our eyes. Only an instant—literally the blink of an eye.

  I planted a foot deep into the hard ground and started forward as though coming off starting blocks. Firebrand flared and became a blazing bar of white light and searing heat, a photoflash, a firework, blinding anyone unprepared. For a moment, Firebrand blinded the attackers, and any moment can be a final moment in this sort of fight.

  We opened our eyes. One eyeblink. One moment. A blur of shadow and fire.

  The guy in front of me had a crowbar; I slapped it aside and felt Firebrand’s psychic snort of contempt as the crowbar glowed red at the contact. Forget parrying; these weren’t magical weapons. We could cut straight through.

  We took another step, turning full circle as Firebrand became a burning arc, a line of light, bisecting my adversary. We continued, whirling through the thickest cluster of Constantines. I tried to keep my movements fluid and smooth, guiding my trajectory—dancing along, rather than stomping craters into the earth. Firebrand cut through metal, flesh, and bone, leaving a trail of molten droplets, burning blood, and ashes. Vampires from this world, when they die by fire, apparently go up like torches before crumbling.

  Another step, and another, each one placed carefully because of my momentum. A trail of flame, a ribbon, a banner, a curling line of script written in burning ink on the parchment of night flowed behind me. Six vampires, holding pieces of weapons, were startled, agonized, and frightened as they fell.

  One eyeblink. One moment. A blur of shadow and fire.

  Mary raised her guns even before Firebrand’s initial flare died down. She shot the Constantines I didn’t pass close enough to hit. Careful, aimed shots, placed in the head to keep them down until long after the fight was over. Inhumanly fast they might be, but so was Mary. It seemed fair. Their timing was off as their confidence turned to fear, even to hesitation. She felt she could get them before they got to her. I trusted her feeling.

  What wasn’t fair was my own set of troubles. Merely gliding, dancing forward wasn’t going to do. I shifted to a more heavy-footed approach for dealing with my mass and velocity. Changing direction wasn’t easy, which helped make me a target.

  The shotguns volleyed at me, led by Tony. He fired the first shot, glaring at me over his sights with an expression of mixed terror and hatred. It wasn’t buckshot, although it might have been buckshot-sized. The pellet
s were on fire, a burning metal of some sort, making laser-like lines as they crisscrossed from the gun muzzles. Dozens hit my protective underwear and failed to penetrate, but I took one in the left forearm and two in that leg; my clothes started to burn. I heard Mary make a sound of pain, felt her injuries. Several pellets hit the barn and started small fires in a shape that silhouetted her head.

  I held on to my temper despite the searing lances of pain through my flesh. Underneath the sound of my clenched-teeth scream, I kept thinking, It’ll go away. It’ll get better. It’ll get better. It’ll all be fine!

  In case you missed it, those things hurt.

  I threw Firebrand, a fiery pinwheel of light, and split Tony’s head down to his chest. He started to fall, his flesh catching fire. A sharp gesture lashed out with a thousand-tendril tentacle, seizing Firebrand and jerking it free, sailing it through the air to intercept me as I continued toward the shotgun-wielder on my right. He was still working the action in a slow-motion movement while watching me rush toward him.

  Funny. I had no reflection in mirrors, but I could see myself in his eyes. I was terror-colored.

  Bronze emerged from the barn, blasting through the right-hand side of the door. She blew fire and smoke from her mouth and nose as wooden bits scattered like shrapnel. She screamed—an inhuman shriek that drove spikes of pain into every ear. I could no longer hear Mary’s gunfire; my ears were ringing too much. It was a banshee wail, arranged for bronze throat and blowtorch. Appropriate; someone was definitely about to die. She shocked everyone when she appeared. I don’t think anyone had the slightest idea what to make of her.

  She didn’t stop when she blasted through the barn door; she couldn’t. She kept her head down in a racing posture and closed like a fiery cruise missile on the leftmost Phrygian. He tried to run and failed. Bronze knocked him down and trampled him before starting her turn toward the next.

  She’s heavier than I am and still corners better. Four feet. It’s not fair.

  The second Phrygian—like everyone else—wanted nothing to do with the fiery, metal monster. He did a much better job of running for his life, so Bronze chased him, bellowing clouds of fire and black smoke. The third Phrygian stood transfixed, staring openmouthed at the fire-breathing statue as it gained on his fellow.

  I ran into the Thessaloniki I headed for. Firebrand’s plasma-cutter edge met him crosswise in the guts and I started changing course again. This drew the blade along the vampire’s midsection and burned completely through him. This didn’t actually kill him, much to my surprise—he didn’t catch fire—but it inconvenienced him terribly.

  The other Thessaloniki—Thessalonikis? The rest of them, anyway—didn’t seem to care their fellow was in their line of fire. Even as I cut him in half, they shot us anyway. The burning buckshot was really starting to become a problem. My right hand developed a smoking hole and my left knee wasn’t really working properly. A couple of other places were complaining, but those were merely agonizing, not structural problems. Only by good luck did I not go down when the knee suffered; I was leaning on the opposite leg, trying to turn. That injury slowed me down a bit, but what’s one more stabbing flare of flaming agony? The holes in my forearms were less trouble; the knee was load-bearing. No right turns for me, at least until that got better—and it wouldn’t, not until I pulled the burning metal out.

  Now thoroughly on fire and equally incensed, I closed with the remaining Phrygian. He saw me coming and thrust out both hands, his whole body arching in effort, all his power screaming, “Stop!”

  Firebrand, Bronze, and Mary said, GO!

  I would have anyway, but it was really nice to have everyone backing me up on that. Maybe it was the lack of eye contact that made it fairly easy to resist. Whatever, I kept my eyes on my target—his groin—and only met his eyes in passing Firebrand between them. By then, it was too late for him. He burst into flames with Firebrand’s upswing and fell in two directions, flash-burning to ashes on the way down.

  A few dozen yards away, Bronze already set fire to the fleeing Phrygian and was generously stomping the flames out. He didn’t seem to appreciate the kindness.

  I felt when Mary finished putting headshots into Constantines. She switched to a pair of long knives while my back was turned. By the time I turned around, she already decapitated one of the shotgun wielders and had his weapon. As I watched, she fired from the hip, angled upward, to put one of those burning shotgun shells through the person next to her. The woman she shot suffered—briefly—severe damage to her upper torso and head, blowing a largish amount of her head off, embedding incendiary pellets in her flesh, and setting her hair on fire. The flames spread rapidly and she went down, dead and burning. Even as Mary dropped her target, I continued my turn and started to home in on the remaining Thessaloniki.

  Mary had a couple of those pellets in her own body. Other than that, she was intact. Most of the gunfire was aimed at me. I knew how she felt, though. It hurt like hell. It also made me want to get this over with so I could make it stop.

  The two remaining Thessaloniki decided they had no further business here with an enraged vampiress, a monster with a flamethrower disguised as a sword, and the devil’s pet pony. They ran. Mary and Bronze went after them.

  I slowed to a stop and let them handle it. I had several burning internal issues to deal with and my knee was in no shape for a footrace. I couldn’t be sure, but part of the burning smell was probably some of my own bone being charred. I hate that smell. I stopped, dropped, and rolled; that took care of the external flame. Tendrils reached into my wounds and dragged out the burning pellets.

  With my external fires quenched and the burning metal out of me, I extinguished the barn. Those tiny fires hadn’t had a chance to spread, yet, but were definitely not about to go out on their own. Magnesium pellets? Some form of thermite? No, thermite would leave behind molten iron; this was burning away. I thought magnesium burned more white than that, though… Doesn’t zircon burn? I wish I’d been in a calmer frame of mind; I would have saved a sample.

  Mary and Bronze came back and I let go of her tendril; there was no need to relate what happened. I knew. Besides, they didn’t bring bodies with them. There were two dying fires out in the field.

  Bronze nuzzled me and made sure I was okay, or was going to be. I reassured her. My knee was still unhappy, but it was improving. The pellet had lodged between the thigh bone and the shin bones, underneath the kneecap. It burned not only both sides of the joint but the kneecap itself. Never let that happen; it’s more painful than it sounds. That was the worst of my injuries. Mary saw I was standing and nodded; if I’m not down and on fire, I’ll get better. She started the sorting and searching while I reassured Bronze.

  This is why I generally feel safer at home. I can’t always bring Bronze and Firebrand with me.

  Then I remembered Francine. What did they do to my dog?

  “Hold what you’ve got,” I told Mary, and dashed around the yard, limping slightly while my knee continued to regenerate. No sign of a doggie corpse anywhere… no, there she was, sitting by the front gate. I went up to her and wondered why she didn’t come to me. She obviously wasn’t dead. She watched me approach, was glad to see me, panted, all the normal stuff, but her butt stayed on the ground. I ran tendrils all through her, checking for injuries or…

  Ah. Of course. She had gone to investigate some smell or some sound and a Phrygian had told her to sit, then to stay. Now she would stay until it wore off.

  I tinkered a bit, finding the compulsion. It was actually pretty subtle. If it had been a human brain, I might be more certain, but I think this kind of compulsion would be rationalized by the target. If the rationalization could be broken, the compulsion would end. As it was, she was obeying a command to the best of her ability. At least, until someone gave her another one. Inside her little doggie mind was an echo of the command: Stay.

  “Francine. Come!” And now she had a new command; the old one vanished. “Good dog!”
>
  I went back to the barn and she followed me, sniffing at everything and growling at the undead.

  “We’ve got some live ones,” Mary noted. “Well, some not-completely-dead ones. You know what I mean. What do you want done with them?”

  Burn them, Firebrand suggested. Mary shrugged and nodded.

  “Actually, I want you to question them.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything. But you’re the person to do the asking; I don’t even know the questions. I’m a little interested in where all these vampires came from, for one thing. I don’t see Wallace, Teeth, or Knuckles, either—did they refuse to come, or were they killed for talking to us? That sort of thing.”

  “Ah. Got it.” I helped her drag the corporeal undead into the barn before they regenerated enough to be mobile. Most of them were Constantines—Mary put bullets into brains even if I already wounded them, just to keep them from getting up. Tough bastards.

  Not for the first time, I wondered at the seeming differences between my species and theirs. They didn’t seem too different, overall. I’d have hated to get into a fight with one back in the days when Sasha was still teaching me swordplay. Given ninety years in an Ascension Sphere and a lot of mythological blood, would they become as fast and dangerous as I? Or would such treatment have a greater or lesser effect on them?

  I’ll never know the details, but I would like to.

  Two Thessaloniki weren’t irrecoverable; I persuaded them to lie still by putting an un-ignited Firebrand in one eye and out the back of the head. The Phrygians were all ashes, though—Bronze breathes fire and knows my feelings on mind control. I tried to regret the loss and failed. I’m a bad person.