A tall form strode through the mist. The metal refuse crunched and groaned, protesting the weight, and a monster stepped into the clearing. Tall, broad shouldered, wrapped in steel-hard muscle and clothed in gray fur, striped with slashes of darker gray.
Curran.
What the hell was he doing?
“You first,” he said. His jaws were big enough to enclose my skull, his fangs were longer than my fingers, but his diction was perfect.
Behind the Shepherd, Ugad shifted the cross forward, setting it down with a heavy thud. I saw a small, thin body stretched on the pole, legs tied, arms spread wide on a cross-piece. Julie. Oh God.
I grabbed Bran by his shirt and dragged him to me. “Take me there now!”
“I can’t!” he snapped.
My heart tried to break through my chest. Slayer smoked. Julie’s eyes were closed, her color so pale she might have been dead already.
I would have given my right arm to be there now.
Curran raised his hand, displaying charms and coins dangling from his claws.
Bran howled. “What’s he doing? Stop, you whoreson! No!”
“The child for the necklace. As agreed,” Curran said.
The Shepherd’s whisper raised the tiny hairs on the back of my neck. “You shouldn’t have come alone, beast.”
Reeves burst out from under the metal scrap. They swarmed Curran, falling onto each other. In a blink he was covered with a mound of squirming bodies.
I clenched my fists, expecting him to break out. Fight, Curran. Fight back. Any moment the bodies would come flying and he’d burst free from the pile of flesh. Any moment…My neck constricted as if caught by a garrote. The reeves screeched.
“No, no, no! Damn you, sonovabitch, do something!” Bran hurled his crossbow into the vision. It pierced the image and shattered against the wall.
A jaguar crashed into the Shepherd. He gave no warning, no snarl, no sound at all. Huge fangs flashed and the Shepherd’s head drooped to his chest from the broken neck. Jim paused for the briefest of moments, reveling in the kill, and chased after Ugad.
Four beasts darted from the mist, snapping and biting at Ugad’s legs. A wolf let out a short snarl.
Huge hands thrust through the reeves and tore them aside. Curran emerged. Red gashes marked his fur. Now I understood the plan: he had expected a double cross and chose to bear the bulk of the assault, buying time for the shapeshifters to retrieve Julie.
The reeves scrambled back to him. He grasped one, tore it in two, and hurled the twitching remnants to the ground. The reeve went liquid. The puddle of its slime twisted upward in a corkscrew and solidified into the reeve. She was once again whole.
“Why isn’t she dying?”
“The cauldron’s too close,” Bran said through clenched teeth.
They couldn’t win. The best they could do was to break away.
Curran swiped at another reeve, crushing her head like an eggshell. She went liquid too and re-formed within seconds.
“Stop killing, dimwit! Maim! Maim them, you son of a whore!” Bran yelled.
Two dozen yards away Ugad stomped and spun about, raking at the shapeshifters with his enormous fists. They lunged at his feet, driving him forward, into the metal spikes. Ugad spun. The huge barbed tail swung like a club and smashed a shaggy body. The shapeshifter flew through the air and bounced off the metal shell of a ruined car. The beast crashed to the ground, stunned.
Ugad jumped. As if in a nightmare, I saw his huge foot stomp onto the prone beast and heard the crunch of broken bones. Blood sprayed. The monster turned, leaving a nude human body broken on the ground. I saw the shock of electric-blue hair stained with bright red spray. I clenched my fists. I could do nothing. I couldn’t make it stop. I just watched, helpless.
The jaguar leaped onto Ugad’s head. The giant hurled the cross aside to pummel at the new threat. The cross spun on its base, teetered, plunged, Julie hanging limp like a ragdoll, about to be crushed. A slight, sand-colored shape leaped forward and caught the cross inches from jagged iron. Andrea ripped Julie off the cross.
A whip of green tentacles struck her, ripping fur and skin from her thigh. Raw muscle, red and wet, glared through the wound. The Shepherd hissed. He was once again whole, his rags flaring about his thin body. Andrea ran. Tentacles slapped her. She cried out. I winced. Andrea kept going.
One step.
Two.
She fell.
Her hand clawed the ground, as she clutched Julie to her, crawling away.
The tentacles scoured her again and again. Andrea curled into a ball, trying to shield Julie with her body.
The wolves broke from Ugad and rushed the Shepherd. Tentacles flailed like green ribbons echoed by startled yelps of pain.
Ugad pummeled at his head, trying to knock the jaguar off, but hit his own horns. The huge cat hung on, his claws wedged. Watery blood drenched Ugad’s massive forehead. Jim dug deeper, clawing at the eyes. Ugad charged in a mad rush, crushing the iron under his feet, straight into the forest of metal spikes.
Jim leaped straight up.
The monster’s huge body hit a spike.
Jim landed awkwardly, slipped, and slid, rolling down the sheet of corrugated metal. His fur left a long red smear. He tried to rise, but his feet slipped out from under him.
Metal emerged from Ugad’s back, awash with crimson. He strained and pushed himself off the spike. Ugad turned, oblivious to the hole in his torso, stomped over to Andrea’s prone form, and kicked her. She flew from the impact and crashed into the refuse. Ugad scooped Julie off the ground, an odd, imbecilic expression of satisfaction on his ugly face…and found himself looking at Curran.
Little by little, fighting for every inch, bleeding from wounds, the Beast Lord had gained ground. Curran thrust his clawed hand into the hole in Ugad’s torso and ripped a red clump out.
To the right, the Shepherd stretched his arms. His robes tore, revealing his thin, awkward body. Tentacles swirled around his shoulders and snapped forward to catch metal spikes. The tentacles contracted and the Shepherd flew past the wolves and clutched at Curran’s back. As one, the reeves clumped onto Curran’s limbs, exposing the necklace wrapped around his forearm. The Shepherd’s icy eyes flared with hungry fire. His mouth unhinged and serrated teeth bit into Curran’s arm and the monisto wrapped around Curran’s wrist. Coins went flying as the cord snapped under the Shepherd’s teeth.
Curran screamed and I screamed with him.
“Idiot!” Bran hit his head with the heel of his hand.
Tentacles whipped. A bloody hole gaped in Curran’s arm. The Shepherd withdrew, back toward the hangar. Three of the reeves followed in a gaggle, swiping Julie out of Ugad’s arms, while the rest of the reeves clamped onto Curran’s feet. The giant stared at Curran stupidly, turned and ran to the hangar, blood spraying from his body.
The wolves fell upon the reeves. Curran shook like a dog flinging water from his fur.
Ugad’s body punched through the thin metal wall and through the gaping hole I caught a glimpse of the pile of crates.
“No!” Bran’s mouth gaped open.
Ugad hit the crates head-on. Shards flew, revealing a metal cauldron as tall as me. Bran swore, biting off words like a pissed off dog.
Magic hit in a huge choking tide. The witches went down to their knees. The vision wavered and the dome quaked.
“The flare…” the youngest Oracle whispered. “It’s here…”
The magic crashed into me, and my body drank it in, more and more and more. No head rush this time. No pause. Just power, pure power streaming through me.
The Shepherd hovered over the cauldron. His body doubled over and a gush of liquid spilled from his mouth, carrying a glittering spark with it. The spark hit the cauldron and expanded into an enormous lid. He must have bit it off the monisto and swallowed it.
Curran was almost to them, a trail of broken reeve bodies in his wake.
Ugad gripped the lid and leaned back. His th
ick arms bulged. With a guttural snarl, he tore the lid free of the cauldron, opening the gate to the Otherworld.
Like a storm cloud with a mind of its own, a blotch of darkness mushroomed above the cauldron. Within that shadow, a deeper darkness appeared, hinting at a humanoid form, huge and misshapen. Two hands thrust from the gloom as if welcoming an ovation. Feet in black boots solidified on the cauldron’s rim. Thick forearms emerged into the light, their bulging muscle crisscrossed by shiny strips of scar tissue and dotted with warts. The darkness slunk back, an eager-to-please pet, revealing first a chest in a scalemail enameled black, and then a pale face.
His nose protruded forward, too long, too flat, like the carapace of a horse skull, like an enormous beak, sheathed in a meager layer of flesh and tapering to a sharp, horn-tipped point. Below the nose a massive jaw supported two rows of oversized teeth. One of the incisors jutted like a boar tusk falling just short of touching the left cheek. His eyes, small and white, sat deep under Neanderthal eyebrows. Between the eyes cartilage broke through the skin to form a thin, sharp ridge that vanished into his fleshy forehead.
It was as if the skulls of a horse and a human had somehow been blended into a horrid whole. A human face stretched over the meld, with barely enough meat and skin to cover the bone. This thing could not be man.
Behind him the darkness slithered and gained shape, solidifying into long black hair and a thousand crow feathers, streaming like a mantle behind him.
Morfran.
He raised his hand and spoke a word.
A gray bubble popped into existence by his fingers and began to expand. It swallowed his hand, then his head, then his feet. Instinctively I knew I didn’t want the bubble touching Curran.
The Beast Lord hesitated.
“Run, Curran!” The words left me even though I knew he couldn’t hear.
The bubble gulped the cauldron.
My heart clenched. “Run!”
Curran turned on his heel and ran, swiping Jim’s body off the ground.
“Andrea!” I screamed, but he couldn’t hear me.
The bubble hid the Shepherd and the vision faded.
Chapter 23
Three hours later Bran and I rode up to the pack keep. The witches had lent us the horses and we had ridden them until they were soaked in sweat. Bran seethed. He cursed me for not giving him the lid in time. He cursed Curran for losing the lid. He cursed Morrigan for denying him the mist as a punishment for his failure. He cursed the Fomorians by name, reaching for stronger and stronger words until his curses no longer made sense. I said nothing.
After a half hour of cursing, Bran wore out his voice and lapsed into silence. “The gray bubble we saw is a ward,” he said finally. “The Fomorians can only crawl out of the cauldron one at a time. Morfran is buying time to build his army.”
“Can we break the ward?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Cú Chulainn himself couldn’t break through it. In fifteen hours it will fall and your city will drown in blood. We are riding through the Otherworld because all of them”—he swept his hand past the houses crowding the street—“all of them are dead. We travel through the city of the dead men. All because that son of a whore was trying to save a beggar child.”
She was my beggar child. I would’ve risked a horde of demons to save her, too.
The gates of the Pack Keep opened at our approach. A clump of shapeshifters waited for us in the inner yard. I searched for the familiar figure.
Please. Please make it.
And then I saw him. His hair fell on his back in a mane. I had missed it, because it was no longer blond, but gray, the gray of his fur in beast-form.
Bran jumped off his horse and strode into the yard, his face twisted. “You! You fucking whoreson!”
Oh shit. “Curran, don’t kill him! He’s Morrigan’s Hound. We need him to work the cauldron!”
I jumped off the horse and chased Bran.
The shapeshifters parted, giving Curran room. A white bandage covered his arm. That was a first.
Bran shoved Curran, but the Beast Lord didn’t move.
“You gave it to them! For what? A scrawny street kid! Nobody cares if she lives or dies! You’ve killed hundreds for her. Why?”
Curran’s eyes had gone gold. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.” He raised his hand and shoved Bran back. Bran stumbled a couple of steps.
I caught him. “Don’t do this. You’ll get hurt.”
Bran pushed free of me and lunged at Curran. Curran snarled, grabbed Bran by his arm, and threw him across the yard.
Morrigan’s Hound leaped upright. An inhuman, terrifying bellow erupted from his throat and slammed my ears with an air fist.
Bran’s flesh boiled. Muscles swelled to obscene proportions, veins bulged like ropes, tendons knotted in apple-sized clumps. He grew, stretching upward, his elbows and knees sinking into engorged muscle. With boneless flexibility, his body twisted back, distended, flowed, melted, and finally snapped into an asymmetric aberration. Bumps slid across his torso like small cars colliding under his skin. His left eye bulged; his right sank; his face stretched back, baring his teeth and a huge, cavernous mouth. Drool sagged from his uneven lips. The one visible eye swiveled in its socket.
Warp spasm. Of course. The fourth gift he was born with. He was a warp-warrior, just like Cú Chulainn. I should’ve seen it.
“Let’s play, little man!” Bran charged Curran.
The Beast Lord twisted out of the way and hammered a punch into Bran’s misshapen gut. Bran grabbed his wrist and tossed him at the wall like a kitten.
Curran flipped in midair and bounced off the wall. A man had started the leap, but what hit Bran was a hashish-induced nightmare of lion and human.
The beast smashed Bran off his feet. Curran snarled, his gold eyes luminescent with rage. His huge, prehistoric maw gaped open and three-inch fangs nearly sheared Bran’s nose from his face. The Beast Lord was pissed.
Bran kicked Curran off with two enormous legs, and leaped upright. “Come on, princess! Show me what you’ve got.”
Curran lunged. Bran swung a meaty hand, missed, and took razored claws to his ribs, slicing him like a pear. The wounds bled and closed.
People scattered. Bran swiped the loup cage that once held the reeve and smashed at Curran with it. The Pack King caught the cage. The wound on his arm bled, the bandage long gone. Mammoth muscles bulged across Curran’s back and he ripped the cage from Bran’s hands and tossed it aside. “Still second best,” he growled, his eyes drowning in gold.
They hammered each other, swiping, kicking, caught in a savage contest. Bran managed to land a kick, batting Curran across the yard. The Beast Lord’s rebound took Bran off his feet and slammed him into a wooden shed sitting against the wall. The wall gave, and Bran fell through in an explosion of splinters. Curran dived after him. A moment later another section of the wall exploded, pelting the ground with fragments and Bran’s warped body stumbled back into the open. He bled from a half dozen places but didn’t seem to notice.
“Is that all you got?” When no answer came, he stuck his head into the hole. “Where are you…”
The blow sent him hurtling across the yard. As he slid past, I had to jump aside to keep from being crushed. He hit the loup cage with his head and bounced off.
Curran appeared in the gap. Half-lion, half-man, gray mane flaring around his head, his eyes on fire, huge teeth dripping spit, he looked demonic. His roar shook the air.
Bran surged to his feet and charged. Curran caught his lunge, slid back, and ground to a halt. They strained, clenching each other’s arms, muscles bulging, teeth bared.
I turned away. I could kill one of them with relative ease, given that they were otherwise occupied, but there wasn’t a force on this Earth that would make them stop. I could scream myself hoarse, but until they tired enough to see reason, neither of them would notice my existence. They’d beat on each other until they got tired. They both seemed to be dealing with damag
e just fine.
If Jim and Andrea were alive, they would be in a medward.
* * * *
When not sure where to go, barrel forward on pure determination. It was a good motto and it led me to the door of the medward after ten minutes of squeezing my memory dry and wandering through the Keep’s maze of hallways and stairs. It took me only a minute to find the right room.
The room lay steeped in gloom, all lamps out except for a small feylantern glowing blue, more of a night-light than anything else. Its soft glow traced the contours of a familiar odd body, stuck on the crossroads between human and hyena.
I stood in the doorway, unable to enter.
“I can smell you, you know,” Andrea said. “I have your sword.”
Andrea raised Slayer, hilt first, still in its sheath. I came to sit next to her on the edge of the bed and took the sword.
“Not even a thank-you?”
“Thank you,” I said. “How are you?”
“I lost Julie. I had her in my hands and lost her.”
“I saw. You did all you could.”
“You saw? How?”
“The witches showed me and Bran a vision of the fight.”
Andrea sighed. “If I had my guns…they wouldn’t have worked. Jesus, what a clusterfuck we made of it.”
“Are you going to make it?”
She sighed. “You’re worried about me. Why? I’m beastkin. I heal fast. The flare is going full force, and the doctor has worked his magic. I’ll be up by tomorrow.”
“And Jim?”
“Which one is Jim?”
“The jaguar.”
“Heavy muscle damage,” Andrea said. “Ligaments all torn to shreds. He’s in the next room.”
I felt like scum. If I stayed any longer, I would scream.
Andrea looked at me from the sheets. “It was a good plan. Curran creates a distraction, occupies them while they key on him, and we grab the girl. Except those bitches wouldn’t die and we failed.”
“You tried.” That was more than I did.
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