Black City Saint

by Richard A. Knaak

  Removing it was as easy as unwinding it. That was the curious nature of Feirie, even those elements able to act on this side of the Gate. Some could be incredibly complex, others child’s play.

  But what mattered now was that I could draw the blade.

  I moved carefully toward the building. There were two autos outside, one a roadster like the one I’d taken from the dead thug, the other a Model T. I doubted that Oberon would’ve ridden in either one of them, even if he’d evidently worked all these years to keep the heavy amounts of iron from burning him. As either himself or Delke, Oberon would’ve traveled in better style.

  That didn’t mean that Fetch wasn’t inside. Of course, it also didn’t mean that Fetch was alive, either.

  Show me, I ordered grimly.

  The emerald world took over. I saw not only the two goons left to guard the front door, but also the webbed shadow over that door. The guards were decoys; the webbed shadow was the danger. I’d seen a shadow like that eat the top half a soldier’s body away so quickly that it’d left the bottom still walking a few steps before the gruesome truth set in.

  Without the sword, I couldn’t have entered. With it, the web didn’t concern me.

  Neither of the two bored thugs heard me as I moved in on them. I’d fought in a hundred wars over many centuries, all my battles to preserve the sanctity of the Gate as it continually shifted from location to location. This pair was nothing more than street trash picked up by Moran to give Oberon the muscle he asked for. Expendable.

  I put one hand over the first’s mouth, then slammed the back of his head against the wall. As he dropped, the second started to reach for the gun he should’ve kept out, rather than put away so he could light a smoke. I was already on him before he could do that or yell for help.

  Covering his mouth while pressing the hand in his jacket against his chest, I muttered, “Make this easy on yourself—”

  He tried to yell despite the hand. At the same time, I sensed something amiss. I didn’t have to look up to know that the shadow was dropping on both of us.

  I had no choice but to push away. Thinking I’d for some reason given him a second chance to draw his piece, the guard grinned. As the automatic came out, he tried for a third time to yell.

  That was when the shadow covered him.

  His scream went as unheard as his yells. I already had Her Lady’s gift drawn, but it was too late for the thug. There was a soft, squishing noise as he vanished into the living web.

  A thing like this could feast for hours on a meal still struggling. I did the guard a favor by skewering both at the same time.

  The shadow fragmented, but didn’t die. Oberon had probably found it in the same place he’d uncovered the one I’d fought in the fireplace. They weren’t so much life as the essence of Feirie, which made them no less hungry and no less evil. The web reformed, creating a thing with one huge moon-colored eye and a mouth that stretched big enough to consume two or three of me. I could still see bits of guard in its crimson teeth.

  I did the only thing I could do. I let it lunge at me.

  It impaled itself on Her Lady’s gift. There were those creatures of Feirie, like the Court, that had clever, insidious minds. There were other, more primal things like this, incapable of thinking of anything but devouring flesh and soul.

  I took particular pleasure in watching the sword devour it in turn.

  Oberon didn’t want too much outside attention to his activities, so he’d once more picked a beast that hunted in silence. That suited me. I could still feel its agony as Her Lady’s gift took pleasure in ripping it to pieces and absorbing it. The blade burned black for a moment, and then its shining brilliance returned. This time, there’d be no repeat of the unexpected incident at the fireplace. The sword had adapted to that trick.

  Taking one last glance at the weathered wooden door, I kicked it open.

  Dead silence greeted me. I’d already assumed one of two scenes. The first was Oberon facing me with pretty much everything he had. The second was this. An almost empty building.

  “Hello, Fetch.”

  He managed to pick up his head. I was struck by how emaciated he was, even though I’d just seen him otherwise only hours before. Now, he looked as if someone had starved him for a month.

  “Master—Master Nicholas . . . is everything d-ducky with her?”

  Even as ruined as he was, Fetch still had to be Fetch. I took that as a promising sign. “She’s fine.”

  “I seem—seem to be snared.”

  Through the dragon’s eyes, I could see that. Fibers of darkness crisscrossed where he lay. I could see that each of them pulsated. I could also see that they were feeding from him.

  And as I followed some of the fibers to their origin, I also saw that “they” were actually a “she.”

  I’d just found the other shadow’s “mother.”

  She filled the ceiling, filled it with one huge eye and a mouth that stretched from one end of the huge room to the other. I’d seen some horrors from Feirie, but she was by far one of the worst. I tried to figure out just how Oberon had managed to sneak this through the Gate. I also tried to figure out if even Her Lady’s gift would be enough.

  “Mother” decided not to give me the time to do either.

  The air filled with black strands, all of them streaming toward me. If I’d not worn the dragon’s eyes, they would’ve been invisible to me. I wasn’t sure whether seeing them made me any happier, but at least I had a better target.

  I spun around, and Her Lady’s gift cut through them as if they were nothing. I severed a hundred or more, and still they kept coming.

  One finally got past my defenses. Then another. Each one went through my clothes, my flesh, and somehow into my soul. I felt an emptiness, a hollowness, growing.

  Her Lady’s gift made short work of those strands, but others replaced them. I managed to keep the numbers from growing, but I knew that I couldn’t just stand there.

  “Master—Master Nicholas . . .”

  I looked at Fetch, still being eaten away inside. Still a creature of Feirie, he was feeding her something other than a soul . . .

  I knew what I had to do.

  Spinning again, I used Her Lady’s gift to create a momentary respite. Rather than just stand there, though, I charged toward Fetch.

  Strands darted at me from all sides, as “mother” began to understand just what I was doing. Small wonder that she’d been able to grow so large in this realm. How many exiles had Oberon fed her over the years to get her this way?

  Two strands caught my leg. I stumbled, giving several more the chance to perforate my back. I wanted to curl up and pray for the emptiness to either go away or consume me, but I knew better than to do that.

  Half a dozen more strands dug into me before I reached Fetch. I tried to focus only on his situation. Anything else threatened to take what remained of my resolve.

  I slashed over Fetch, severing nearly every strand attached to him. “Mother” tried to restore her vampiric link, but I kept them at bay. I also succeeded in cutting the last few.

  The effect on Fetch was almost instantaneous. He began to fill out and, while his eyes remained a bit sunken in, he soon looked like his old self.

  That was good, because I wasn’t feeling very well anymore. “Fetch! Light!”

  He darted for the chain dangling near the door. At the same time, I made an even more concerted effort to slash at every thread in range. I didn’t know how much pain cutting them caused “her,” but apparently more than I thought, because suddenly the entire ceiling seemed to be raining on me. It was as if “mother” had turned entirely to strands. I slashed and cut, but I knew that I couldn’t stop them all—

  The light finally came on.

  “Mother” squealed, a sound that cut through my soul as harshly as the strands. If I’d tried the light before I’d freed Fetch, I doubted it would’ve hurt her much, but the moment I’d severed her link to a fellow creature of Feirie—the
greatest reservoir of primal energy from which she could dine—she’d started to lose strength. I’d counted on that, aware that such power couldn’t be maintained without constant replenishment.

  But even if Oberon’s beast was losing strength rapidly, she was hardly defeated. The downpour buffeted me to one knee, more strands than ever eating into my soul. My grip started to slip.

  Eye will help! Let me help!

  I was just about to give in to him when something else—someone else—took precedence in my thoughts. Claryce. I suddenly feared for her if I lost now. Oberon wouldn’t leave any loose ends that Her Lady might use against him.

  I squeezed the hilt, then, with a scream fueled by both my pain and my fear, I shoved to my feet and cut a swathe over my head. The strain on my soul lessened, enough to enable me to focus on “mother” herself. Even as she poured over me, I once again aimed not for the eye but for the bottomless maw.

  She swallowed me. I felt the chill on my soul grow again, but not as much as it might’ve. I heard the voices of her victims, their essence forever trapped as part of her, their endless torture part of her very being.

  Even though most of them had probably been as dark of spirit as my opponent was, I said a prayer for all of them, then thrust Her Lady’s gift where the voices most seemed to come from.

  The blade burned dark blue. I’d never seen it do that before. I might’ve worried about it if I didn’t also immediately notice the blackness that was the shadow creature melt away. The voices faded at the same time.

  And suddenly I stood in the middle of the building, sword raised, facing nothing.

  Lowering Her Lady’s gift, I turned to Fetch. He sat under the light chain, his breathing still rapid.

  “You okay?” I asked, as I returned the Feirie blade to my coat.

  “I have a great urge to pull a Daniel Boone,” he rasped. “I still have the screaming meemies from that thing, Master Nicholas.”

  “Try to hold it in,” I recommended. As he nodded and swallowed, I surveyed the interior. Without “mother,” it was completely empty.

  “He left me for ye,” the scraggly lycanthrope muttered, as he joined me. “He said, ‘Let’s see how good a friend ye’ve got, mutt. Will he come after ye, or is the girl the only thing he ever cares about?’” Fetch looked disdainful. “Can ye believe he called me a ‘mutt’?”

  I could see that Fetch was recovering fast, but not completely. I noticed he still had a bad arch to his back. “Did he do anything else to you before he left?”

  As I’d spoken, I’d begun to reach a hand for his back. Fetch, though, shied away as if I were about to beat him.

  “Little things, Master Nicholas. Little things. I’ll be right as rain soon enough.”

  I doubted I’d find anything else around here, but I did a swift search, regardless. As usual with Oberon, I was certain I was missing something, but what it was I couldn’t say.

  With Fetch at my heels, I finally left the building. The one guard was still out. I decided to leave him where he was. Either someone would find him with half of his partner nearby, or he’d wake up, see what was left of his buddy, and run. Oberon wouldn’t have left him with any important info, and so he was nothing to me.

  I’d barely made that decision and walked past the slumped thug before I heard a savage growl from Fetch. Her Lady’s gift already drawn, I spun back and discovered Fetch atop the guard.

  Fetch, his jaws full of blood.

  He done a tidy and mercifully quick job of tearing out the hood’s throat. I glared at him, remembering the Fetch I’d first met, the one who’d come close to killing me when Her Lady had thought it better served her purpose to rid the Gate of its guardian. When I’d spared him then, and saved his life from Her Lady’s wrath, I’d made the shapeshifter swear by his own existence that he’d never wantonly kill again.

  “It’s all jake, Master Nicholas! It’s all jake! He opened his peepers right after ye went past him, then went for his heater! I had to stop him!”

  One of the automatics did lie near the hood’s limp hand. It wouldn’t have been the first time I’d had an enemy play possum on me. I probably would’ve noticed it myself if I hadn’t still been so drained from the strands.

  “Good job,” I finally said. “There’s a puddle on the other side of the street.”

  He didn’t need any more suggestions. Trotting over to the puddle, Fetch sloppily lapped up the foul water, rinsing most of the blood off in the process. I didn’t have to worry about him getting sick from the puddle; his guts were a lot stronger than that. I just didn’t want anyone, especially Claryce, wondering where the blood had come from.

  “Nice iron,” he commented a few minutes later, as we climbed into the Packard. “Better than that jalopy you rented, Master Nicholas. A little airy on top, but I like that.”

  “Pleased to know.” My mind was already focused on Claryce. Not just how she was doing but how merely thinking about her had given me the wherewithal to keep battling. I knew that my fears of how deep she might get into my heart had all come to pass. In fact, if anything, they’d proven to be worse than I’d expected. If Claryce died like her earlier incarnations . . .

  “Where’s the mistress?”

  I didn’t think Fetch had read my mind, only that he’d seen my expression and made the logical assumption as to what or who it concerned. “With Kravayik. We’re going right there.”

  He beamed. “I like Kravayik. He listens well.”

  It was late enough that I paid no mind to speed, driving as fast as could. I got no arguments from Fetch, who thrust his head out the passenger side, the roof, and, before I shoved him back so that I could see, my window. I was secretly glad to see that he was doing so well, even if his back still had that stiffness to it. Oberon had done something awful to him, but Fetch still wouldn’t say what. It was just one more thing on the lengthy list of things His Lord had to pay for.

  Deciding that the Packard didn’t exactly look like the kind of auto the clergy at Holy Name would desire to have parked in front, I located a spot around the corner and left it there. I reminded myself to check with Barnaby when I had the chance, to see how the rental was doing. With the Packard having no owners that’d claim it, I figured I’d continue to make use of it for a while.

  Fetch paused at the edge of the cathedral grounds. “Can Kravayik come out?”

  “We’ll see.” When I’d had Fetch keep an eye on Holy Name before, by necessity Kravayik had had to check with him now and then. I already knew from Kravayik what those confrontations had been like, and so I doubted he’d be that happy to rejoin Fetch too quickly.

  The lycanthrope sat, his tail wagging in anticipation. I noticed his back still had trouble bending, but I refrained from saying anything more.

  As ever, I had no trouble gaining entrance. I prayed for God’s forgiveness for constantly trespassing but doubted I’d get it. I eyed the other saints as I walked through the empty interior, wondering if they’d felt as I always did when it came to my growing mountain of sins.

  “Georgius . . .”

  I looked into the shadows near the altar. “Here I was thinking maybe you’d moved on when you weren’t here last time.”

  He gritted his teeth. “Georgius! Let us put aside enmities for the moment! I have to tell you—”

  After everything that’d happened tonight, I had absolutely no patience for him. “It’s Nick.”

  “Nick—”

  He was too late, though. At that moment, Kravayik and Claryce both appeared. I immediately forgot all about the late Emperor Diocletian when I saw their expressions. Kravayik looked aghast and Claryce . . . Claryce stared at me as if I were something akin to the beast that’d been feasting off of Fetch.

  “Claryce! Kravayik! Why’re the two of you here? She should be kept hidden—”

  “Master Nicholas! Forgive me! I made a terrible assumption! I shouldn’t have been so careless! I thought she knew! I thought she knew!”

  I’d only se
en Kravayik so upset once and that’d been when he’d lost the only person he’d ever loved—a rare emotion by Feirie standards—and learned that she’d been executed at the command of His Lord. What bothered me most, though, was that he continued to look as if he’d just betrayed me into Oberon’s hands.

  “You are him, aren’t you?” she demanded. “It all makes sense with the story you told me! I didn’t realize it! You are Saint George from the legends . . .”

  My mind raced. I glared at Kravayik, who seemed to shrink into himself, then met Claryce’s eyes. “It’s true. I am. I thought you’d be safer if you didn’t know—”

  I stopped when her gaze burned stronger. Something I’d just said had only made matters worse.

  “‘Safer’?” Claryce seemed barely able to contain herself. “And is that what you thought when you failed to mention anything about me?”

  I couldn’t answer. Still facing Claryce, I asked Kravayik, “Just how much did you tell her?”

  “She is the one who brought it up! Mentioned that she knew! Wanted me to explain more! Master Nicholas, with all she did know, I could not help but think you had opened up to her!”

  With all she did know . . .

  “Oberon . . .” I muttered. “Claryce! What he told you! He did it all to foment chaos! He knows—”

  “I know what he wanted, Nick. I also know that after what Kravayik verified for me, what Oberon said was true enough. Kravayik told me about the last version of me. He told me just what Oberon told me about how she died.”

  I saw that death again, but with Claryce’s distinct features on that incarnation, not the original ones. “I tried . . . I tried to save her, but I failed . . .”

  “And you failed the time before that. Before that, too.” Claryce had gone utterly white. Behind the anger and defiance, she’d been hiding tremendous fear. “And every time . . . every time before . . .”

  She dropped onto one of the pews. Behind her, an even more dour Diocles materialized. I understood now what he’d been trying to warn me about. He’d heard everything.