by Helen Adams
Singly or in pairs I’d battled all these types before. Each had hurt me. Some had almost killed me. But they weren’t single opponents now, weren’t in pairs. They were a fucking army. And I was already hurt.
The power required to control that many creatures was terrifying. I should be terrified, but instead I felt deep sadness. As a magic-using berserker, Mina could have been the best of us. Instead she had a ragged tear in her heart and shadows in her soul.
The realisation drained my violent rage. It pooled in my stomach and bubbled away. I couldn’t kill Mina. What she was doing to Alice was terrible – one look at my best friend’s face was enough to confirm that – but Mina wasn’t at home right now. The fracture of her mind had destroyed the woman she’d once been.
I let her go. Her skin returned to normal – though ‘normal’ was open to interpretation – and her eyes stopped bulging.
“Killing us can’t fix the damage inside you,” I warned, sagging. Magic didn’t work that way. Her madness was drawing her to what she could never recover.
“If I kill enough, it will. It has to.” She paused, glanced to one side, looked at me again. She rubbed her neck. “It has to.”
“Mina, we can help you,” Raz called. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”
“Let it end here,” I added. Please. Let it end here.
I expected Lee to chime in, but he kept his mouth shut.
Mina said nothing. She just watched us, black eyes bright.
I swallowed hard, mind scurrying like a rat in a maze to think of a way out of the trap. We couldn’t fight a horde of golems. I could take one – even with the leighis on my calves pink with my own blood I could still take one – but…
I drew a short, sharp breath. Was that an idea? I chased it down. At my back I heard the others moving into a defensive formation, making a protective triangle.
We were going to be slaughtered. But they weren’t giving up. I’d dragged them into this mess, and they weren’t giving up. So neither would I.
“Mina,” I said, “just listen to me, OK?”
She tilted her head to one side, considering. “Alright. I suppose I could do that. For a minute.”
“Let’s duke it out, just you and me.” I wondered if I was signing my own death warrant. “Two girls, two swords, maybe a bit of mud wrestling at the end. A duel.” It had worked for me with Lukas. “First person to lose their sword loses the fight.”
“And what does the winner get?” She hadn’t said no, not outright. A good sign.
“If I win, you dismantle the golems and let us help you.” I didn’t know how much help we could give. Mama Denique would know more.
“And if I win?”
Yeah. Hell would freeze over before that happened.
“We fight your golems and probably die trying.”
A slow, creepy, crazy smile crept across her face. I shivered hard. Cold fear inched along my spine.
“Done.”
She stuck her hand out. We shook.
Arms grabbed me from behind, pulling me back. I was tensed and ready to snap until a harsh voice whispered in my ear.
“What do you think you’re playing at, you idiot?”
“She’s going to kill you and then she’s going to kill us,” Lee grunted in my other ear.
I almost smiled. When a girl had voices on her shoulders, it was usually an angel on one side and a devil on the other. All I had was a pair of devils.
Raz yanked me around to face him. His eyes were wide and staring. I could see the whites.
“You could die,” he groaned. “That rootbeast –”
“We’ll all die if I don’t do this.”
“Let me –”
“No, Raz. It was my idea. It’s my fight.”
“I’ve got more experience than you!” His nostrils flared as he tried to contain his anger. No, not just anger – fear. He was terrified for me.
I was terrified for me.
“You’ve got a family!” Looking at his face now, I realised that Raz would kill Mina to protect me, and damn himself in the process.
“You can’t trust her!” he growled. “She’s mad. You can’t trust any promise she makes!”
“In madness there is truth.” I didn’t know where that saying had come from, but it felt like a real thing. A true thing. “Sane people lie. Crazy people have no reason to. We have a chance to get out of this alive, which is more than we had a few minutes ago.”
I looked at Lee. He was following the whispered conversation but still paying attention to Mina, the golems and my friend. Alice’s eyes were wide and staring; she showed no sign that she was even listening. She didn’t look at Mina or me. She didn’t look at anyone.
“What do you think, Mr. SIU?” I asked. “To duel or not to duel?”
“Break her face, Daphne.”
It was the first sensible thing he’d said. I couldn’t argue with that.
TWENTY-FIVE
Raz’s face fell. I mean it literally fell. The corners of his eyes dropped, his mouth turned down and his eyelids sagged.
“I’ve taught a few people over the years,” he said, gripping my shoulder. His hand lingered. “Of them all, I like you the best. You embody the spirit of a berserker.”
My throat was tight. “And what’s that?”
“The one that sticks two fingers up at the world and says ‘fuck you’. Now get out there and show her what I’ve taught you.”
Tears pricked my eyes, sharp and hard. I blinked them away, nodded, and turned to face Mina. Chant flapped his dusty moth-wings and flitted from my shoulder to the top of Raz’s head. I was going to make my mentor proud.
My calves had stopped throbbing, at least for now; adrenaline was every bit as good a painkiller as leighis, and right now the good stuff was pumping. When it ran out I’d crash and burn. I just had to stay alive long enough to get through this. I couldn’t think about what might happen afterwards… especially if I lost.
Mina held a rapier. It was a neat weapon, a long, slim length of metal ending in a razor sharp tip. A precision sword. I didn’t know where she’d been keeping it, where it had come from, and frankly I didn’t care.
“What do you call her?” I asked, as if exchanging pleasantries with a woman I was about to fight was an everyday occurrence.
“Nipper. She’s my little Nipper.” The smile on her face was chilling. “She takes nibbles out of people and leaves them all bloody. Then she runs them through.”
Note to self – she liked to bleed her opponents before killing them. Maybe she’d been a little nuts even before her mind had broken.
I looked at Alice. She was watching us, now, with a kind of vacant interest that made me want to cry.
“This is Baby.” I swung the falchion a few times, enjoying the feel of the heavy blade. “She isn’t pretty like Nipper. I doubt she’s as fast. But I’ll tell you one thing – when she takes a bite people don’t just bleed. They break.”
“May the best berserker win,” Mina said, and attacked.
I moved out of the way just in time to stop her slicing my thigh, then answered her blinding attack with one of my own – an evil side-sweep that should have cut her open. But she danced aside and the blow went wide. She hadn’t even needed to defend.
Fuck. If she was so fast that I couldn’t catch her, this fight would not go the way that I intended.
Mina came in again, Nipper sliding down Baby’s blade as I held her off. Sparks flew.
She aimed low. My defence was clumsy, the angle awkward. She slipped past my guard and nicked the open wound on my left calf. Fresh blood spurted through the thick cream, soaking into what was left of my leather trousers.
The world went white. I bit back a scream by sheer willpower, already stumbling away, desperate to stay out of her reach until the pain subsided to a manageable level. I heard groans and shouts from my cheerleaders.
Mina followed my stumble. The bitch was relentless. My leg howled, and I blocked another low blo
w by the skin of my teeth.
Shit. If I didn’t get my act together, Mina was going to bleed me out long before I could disarm her. She was lighter than a dancer on her feet, moving as if she was cushioned by air. I felt like a country clodhopper next to that.
There was only one option left. Raz had taught me many skills, and one of those was that, if your opponent had the edge on you, you had to take it away pretty damned quick. That meant levelling the playing field.
I crouched, head bowed, free hand resting on the ground. I wanted her to think that I was finished, that the pain in my legs was too much to bear and that she could just flip Baby out of my hand. It wasn’t far from the truth.
“Giving up so soon?”
She sounded genuinely disappointed. Lee was still shouting – exhorting me to get up, to move my arse, to do something – but Raz had fallen silent, eyes narrowed.
“It’s been a long day.”
“The dryad was a nice touch, don’t you think?” I heard leaves crackling as she stalked closer.
“How did you get her to obey you?”
“I burned down a few trees. She was only too willing to help after that.”
She stepped within range. I launched myself at her, teeth barred in a feral growl of rage, and slapped a handful of soil and leaf litter in her face. With a choked cry she dropped Nipper and stumbled back, clawing the dirt out of her eyes.
“Cheat!” she yelled, blinking at me with earth still clotting her eyelashes. “Filthy cheat!”
“Berserkers don’t play by the rules!” I snarled. “Now give me Alice, dismantle the fucking golems and give up already!”
“You will not have Alice.” Her eyes seemed huge and black in her white face, the only colour in her cheeks two wild blotches of pink. “I will not dismantle the golems and I will not give up!”
She threw her head back and screamed; Alice flinched, I raised Baby into a guard position, Raz dropped into a crouch, and Lee stood with his fists up. In the silent moment after the scream died, I saw diamonds of sunlight glinting on his knuckle-dusters. Bizarre what we notice when we know we’re about to die, right?
Mina threw her hands out to the waiting throng of golems.
“Kill them!”
“Death and glory,” I muttered as the golems tightened the circle. “Can’t hope for much more.”
I held Baby up, sweating, hurting, bleeding. Wishing that I’d been able to get Alice out of this mess, that I could get to her now, to protect her in our final moments. Wishing – more than anything – that I could see Lorl again.
And then a host of faeries swarmed through the trees.
My jaw dropped. This was more than the battle party that Daisy had lent me, more even than the whole Clan. There were hundreds of faeries. Where the fuck had they come from?
Then the golems attacked, and I stopped wondering about anything.
I moved like a dervish. The pain was still there but it drove me on; I turned it into a stick to flog myself with. I spun and whirled, blocking blows from fists that could have taken my head off, ducking, weaving and rolling out of the way. I couldn’t keep track of anyone else. All I saw was Baby’s flashing blade and the next target.
This couldn’t last. In a few seconds I’d take a hit and go down hard. If I wasn’t ripped to pieces I’d be trampled.
But as seconds turned to a minute I was still on my feet. The golems were dropping, cut down by berserkers or buried under hundreds of faerie warriors. By sheer weight of numbers Clan Briar and their swarming extras were dismantling Mina’s horde. I let out a wild scream of joy and hurled myself at the next target.
I hacked off a wood golem’s head. As the twisted branches of its body collapsed, I saw Mina, face contorted and eyes narrowed. She reminded me of a snake, ready to bite at any second.
She thrust her fist into the air. Primal magic surged out of her, bringing with it a stench of burned chicken so intense that I gagged. With it came the feeling of power, old power, tainted with madness and fear and hate.
“Now!” she howled, spitting on the ground. “Now! Now! Now!”
I ran across the battlefield, dodging fists and grasping arms, leaping over golem corpses. She saw me coming and whipped around to face me, Nipper arcing through the air, but too late – I grabbed her in a one-armed tackle and took her down, driving her into the churned-up mud. I smashed Baby’s hilt into her face, taking savage pleasure from her cry of pain. She tried to get Nipper up. I pinned her hand down and smashed her face again. She didn’t move.
I checked her pulse with bloody, mud-smeared fingers. Still alive.
What the fuck had she just summoned? It could only be some new horror, something that could give her the edge after we’d taken her horde to pieces. It was time to play my trump card.
I grabbed the Sowilo Stone out of my pocket, muttered the magic words, and shoved it back. I stood and assessed the carnage.
Sudden wind pushed me back and the trees shook. I stumbled, almost falling, exhaustion weighing me down. A deep, booming roar sent an ancient shudder along my spine.
A huge shape appeared in the empty air above us. At first glance I thought it was another vaengrjarl, and then my horrified brain noticed the details. Vast wings billowed like cloth, great swathes of boysenberry purple silk snapping in the wind; bones made stark protrusions against the fabric, an ugly conglomeration of joints and limbs pulled together into a dragon’s shape. Wicked claws sprouted from twisted paws.
The great, spiny neck drew back. Horror made my shaking knees weak. The thing’s misshapen head was made from hundreds of skulls, white bone shining in mocking imitation of a vaengrjarl’s natural glow.
I had an instant to wonder how many creatures – people, animals, Mythic Racers – had been slaughtered to make this mongrel golem, this bastard of primal magic. This monstrosity.
Lukas exploded out of the trees, every inch of his human body expressing thunderous rage. A thick, heavy shimmer began to surround him, but not quick enough to hide him from view – I saw his knees try to elongate, to change shape. They flickered like a bad TV reception and turned backward.
I tasted vomit in my throat and closed my eyes. When I opened them the man was gone and I started backing up, instinct driving me until I got my legs under control. In this skin Lukas was huge and terrible and utterly gorgeous, the embodiment of war. His long face and whirling golden eyes spoke of frightening beauty.
In that moment I loved him. He was what berserkers strove to be – a hard-as-diamond, fearless protector of humanity. In the back of my head I knew that it was a front; I knew that his every action was a ploy to get back in my knickers or, worse yet, get a ring on my finger. If I survived this I’d go back to hating him. But in those few seconds I didn’t care: - he was a fucking battle demon.
“We need to go!” Raz bawled, hauling me further back. Blood poured down his face from a gash on his cheek. Behind him, Lee was fighting off the dregs of Mina’s golem attack force, backed up by hundreds of ravening faeries.
“Alice! I have to get Alice!”
Lukas leapt into the sky, massive wings pumping as he gained altitude. The dragon-golem roared and dive-bombed his challenger. I couldn’t drag my eyes away from them.
They met in the air. Both screamed as they hit each other, tons of magical flesh and bone slamming together at speed. Their wings tangled. Great jaws clamped on limbs. The golem’s razor-sharp claws scored across Lukas’s scales.
The sky prince and his twisted twin went at each other hard. Bright red gashes opened up on Lukas’s hide, terrible wounds that dripped blood onto the churned earth and leaf litter below.
I had to look away. I didn’t know if Lukas would win, but I did know – with complete certainty – that I wanted him to survive.
Looking away saved my life, because I saw a flesh golem’s charge in time to take a few skipping side steps. Then the faeries swarmed in and took care of the problem.
A flash of dark hair made me look round. Mina was c
onscious and standing. Fuck! Why couldn’t that bitch just have the decency to stay down?
Her hand was around Alice’s wrist, pulling my friend away. Taking her out of the combat zone.
Away from me.
No. Fucking. Way.
I shook myself out of Raz’s grip and ran after them.
I heard another booming roar behind me and cringed in helpless evolutionary response. The ground shook; one of the combatants had landed. The golem, or Lukas? I gritted my teeth and ran on, eyes fixed on Alice.
A body hit me with the force of a speeding car. I tumbled through the air. There was no pain – not yet – but I couldn’t breathe. Baby was gone.
I thudded into the ground. Now the pain came, rampaging through my system like a troll with a sore head. The world turned grey.
I forced myself up, drawing on my last flickering reserves of strength. My knees felt like spaghetti; my ribs and spine screamed and my legs howled loud enough to wake the dead. I heard squealing, yelling, shouting. It was so noisy. Why did everyone have to be so fucking noisy?
I wanted my sword. Everything in my head was scrambled, but I knew that much – I wanted my sword.
I looked up. Then I looked up some more.
Enormous, empty eye-sockets, gnarled and twisted, set in a mass of splintered skulls. Nose holes the size of aircraft engines. Jagged, grinning teeth, wet with blood. Blackened bones, cracked and broken by intense flames. Scraps of silk were all that remained of its incinerated wings.
Bone flashed as the jagged stumps of claws lashed out.
Searing agony across my stomach. Unexpected heat.
I looked down. Blood soaked my clothes. Actually it was spurting out, drenching the trembling hands I clapped to the wound.
The Korpiklaani T-shirt was ripped. So was my stomach.
Shouldn’t my insides be – well, on the inside?
My senses sharpened with exquisite precision. The world burst into sharp focus. I saw, heard and felt things with perfect clarity.
