Not from a drop of ninety friggin’ feet.
But my mount responded to both my subconscious will and adrenaline-fueled fear, dipping one side of its body down, then jerking up hard, halting my slide, affording me the chance to readjust my grasp. I’d barely scrambled back in place when yet another bird-beast dove toward us from above, its wings nearly flat against its body, its beak trained on us like a heat-seeker. With gritted teeth, I lifted one hand free, palm open, and blasted the Garuda with a gout of flame, setting its wings aflame.
The bastard burned, its body going up like dry grass after a lightning strike.
It shrieked and flailed, but fell straight toward us all the same, a meteor cannonballing from the sky—
My winged mount banked again, this time throwing its bulk into a blazing-fast corkscrew to the right, the force of the roll so powerful it sandwiched me flat against the creature’s neck. The experience was a bit unpleasant and nausea inducing, but way better than plummeting to my certain doom below. We came out of the daredevil maneuver, leveling out as the burning Garuda careened past us, missing us by inches, a trail of rank, oily smoke wafting up behind it. I absently patted my mount’s broad shoulder.
Maybe some part of this thing’s fighting spirit was still hiding in there after all, working to keep me alive.
I glanced down, surveying the forest stretched out below, thinking I might try to lob another grenade down onto the asshole Brown-Robes, but was surprised to see Darlene’s squad of Judges had arrived in earnest. The black-clad Judges streamed through, unleashing brutal attacks against the Brown-Robes, who returned fire in kind: a flame lance here, the ground splitting asunder there, white hot beams of death carving through the foliage. It didn’t take long before the Brown-Robes were back on their heels, breaking up into smaller groups, scattering, retreating for tree cover.
In my periphery, I caught movement in a small clearing, so once more I clucked at my ride, pulling up on the dense fur under my hands. The motions were unnecessary, but I did them on reflex, and it wasn’t like the beast minded. The Garuda pushed out his formidable wings, angling to the left, catching an unfelt current of air, and suddenly we were spinning right. Flying toward the clearing—a sparse patch of earth, abundant with tall grasses and strange flowers, but devoid of trees.
We glided over the small meadow, taking one lap then another, and it didn’t take me long to spot a rustle of movement below: Ferraro slinking along the edge of the clearing, the grenade launcher at the low ready.
But she wasn’t alone.
A Brown-Robe slipped from the trees maybe twenty feet behind her, moving forward on silent feet, quiet as a bunny farting into the wind. Stalking Ferraro. Inching closer every minute. It was hard to tell from my elevation, but this Brown-Robe was awfully tiny, a petite thing, with narrow shoulders and a slim build. A woman. Not that it should’ve mattered—her gender didn’t change a friggin’ thing, she was an evil asshole just like the rest of ’em—but it did matter. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve killed my share of the fairer sex, but the act was always just a hair more difficult.
As the Brown-Robe padded ever closer to Ferraro, she raised her hands. The weaves for a devastating beam of sunfire—a white hot spear of absolute death—materialized in her palms, and that decided me. It was the Brown-Robe or Ferraro, I reminded myself, and that was no contest. Ferraro deserved to live, and if that meant some faceless McGoon—even a female one—had to die, so be it. I pulled my pistol, leveling the behemoth gun, then directed my Garuda into a treacherous dive.
The wind slapped against me as my mount dropped like a stone, plummeting in a move that put my belly in my throat, and my heart straight through the top of my skull. “Ferraro,” I shouted, summoning a simple construct of air and fire to amplify my voice, knowing the working would also give away my position and not caring. “Get down! Now!”
I pulled my Garuda out of the dive as Ferraro spun, head swiveling up, seeing me before catching sight of the approaching Brown-Robe behind her. The sunfire lashed out cobra-strike fast, but Ferraro was already moving, throwing her weight right, not into a smooth dive, but rather into an awkward face-plant, belly-flop combo, which was hands down the least graceful maneuver I’d ever seen from her. Chalk it up to the motorcycle accident, I guess.
The move belonged on a friggin’ blooper reel, but it did manage to do the trick: a death-ray of brilliant, blinding light carved through the space she’d been a moment ago, slicing through a copse of trees as cleanly as a buzz saw, setting the trees ablaze as they toppled over with the crack and snap of breaking branches.
“Dammit, Yancy!” the Brown-Robe shrieked, swinging her hands toward me.
For a moment I froze, gun leveled and ready, but my former resolve forgotten, my finger motionless on the trigger. I knew that voice. No mistaking it. Trisha Galindo. A member with the Fist of the Staff—one of my old teammates. She and I weren’t close, not in the way James and I were, but we’d run plenty of ops together. She’d saved my life more than once, and I’d returned the favor in kind.
Even more importantly, though, we’d shared many a beer over a backyard barbeque and I wouldn’t have hesitated to call her a friend. In my head, I could see her smiling, laughing as she nursed a cool drink on the covered patio of her place in Scranton. Smoke billowing up from the grill, the juicy aroma of meat dancing in the air as I puffed on a cigarette and enjoyed a beer of my own.
Knowing Black Jack was a treacherous douche-noodle was bad. Awful.
Knowing James might’ve sold me out for whatever misplaced notion was worse.
Knowing there were even more of my friends involved in this coup made me want to vomit. I didn’t want these dick-faces to remake the world in their image, but what was the price to stop them? How much bloodshed would be required, how many friends would I have to put down to finish the job?
I hesitated for a moment longer—that was my friend down there, for Pete’s sake—then saw the weaves for another beam of sunfire forming in her hands.
I pulled the trigger, emptying the cylinder, pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.
Even though the gun offered me enhanced abilities—better accuracy, damn near no recoil or muzzle flip, and the equivalent of a Vis-silencer—firing from thirty feet out from the back of a giant, flapping eagle monster isn’t like popping off a few rounds at the range. Most of my shots went wide: Puffs of dirt mushroomed up from the ground around her. The base of a wobbly palm tree behind her detonated like a bomb blast, a shower of wooden shrapnel exploding out as the palm toppled.
One round, however, flew true and clipped her in the neck, just above her collarbone. There was a spray of gore as brown cloth ripped away to reveal a savage, ragged wound. The force of the hit spun Trisha in a full circle as she tumbled to the ground like a crumpled cigarette butt, her hood slipping off in the process. She stared up at me, her brown eyes wide in shock and fear, her tanned skin suddenly waxy and pale, her thin lips quivering, trembling, dotted with bloody phlegm. One hand uselessly clutched at her neck, trying to stop the bleeding, but she knew it was too late for that.
The terror in her eyes said everything that needed saying.
I was tempted to touch down, to throw myself from the back of the Garuda and go to her. To hold her hand as she bled out. As she died. She’d obviously made a lot of mistakes, but we were still friends, and she didn’t deserve to go alone. No one should have to die by themselves.
But then another Brown-Robe emerged from the opposite side of the clearing, clawing a ginormous hunk of stone from the ground with a carload of Vis, then hurling the thing at me with bone-crushing force.
“Just go,” Ferraro hollered, taking aim at the shadowy mage and popping off several rounds from the launcher. “Get Ong. We’ll rendezvous at the pyramid.”
I nodded, pulling my beast into a sharp climb, dodging the stone by a hairsbreadth. “Be safe,” I shouted back to Ferraro, who was already slipping away, finding concealment and cover while she laid down suppressive
fire. My eye lingered on Trisha Galindo’s motionless body. It was stained with blood. It’d been me or her. Her or Ferraro. Still, looking at her hurt my heart. She’d forced my hand, but that didn’t change what I’d done.
No. I ripped my gaze away from her still form, refusing to look at her for another second. I couldn’t afford to think about her now, so instead I excised my feelings altogether, surgically removing them with an effort of will. Shoving them into a little box in the back of my head, locking them away for latter examination. Then, I fixed my sights on the monstrous snake-god coiled above the temple in the distance. Time to end this thing.
THIRTY-SIX:
Dogfight
I soared over the treetops, staying as low as I could, dodging the occasional swooping Garuda or the towering tualang trees jutting from the canopy like gnarled fingers. And, miracle of miracles, I found surprisingly little resistance on my way toward Ong. With the Brown-Robes and Judges flinging around so much power, most of the flapping, undead guardians ignored me completely, focusing on the flashier threats below.
Before I knew it, the jungle’s edge dropped away, cut back from both the mammoth Bodhi tree and the epic pyramid, which sat in a grassy clearing a couple thousand feet in diameter. From a distance, the temple had been damn intimidating: an ancient thing dominating the pristine jungle in every direction, drawing the eye like a rough gash across an otherwise beautiful face. Up close, it was even more intimidating. The stones were old and worn, crumbling in places, many carved with glyphs and pictures of Nagas doing all kinds of things:
Terrible scenes of snakemen ripping the wings from fierce Garuda. Garuda, in turn, slashing open the bellies of prone Naga.
Snakewomen having little snake babies, which looked capable of ingesting a full-grown man. Totally adorable, am I right?
Also, lots and lots of pictures of the Naga King ruling his subjects. Watching over the Buddha. Sitting atop his towering temple. Waging war against countless horrors.
And speaking of ol’ Ong, up close he was also a thousand times more terrifying. Like staring down a pack of T. rex with chainsaws in their stubby arms and head-mounted bazookas that fired great white sharks. At this point, however, there was nothing left to do but fly my disgruntled ass all the way up into the stratosphere and try to kick that shitstain right in the teeth. His giant, knife-blade teeth. My mount seemed reluctant to ascend further, though whether that was a genuine feeling, or just a subtle tremor picked up from me, I couldn’t say.
When I urged him up, however, he went. No hesitation or trepidation in his movements.
My Garuda craned his head back, climbing up, up, up, threatening to toss me as we blasted past the crest of the temple—
I barrel rolled left, over and again, avoiding the snapping jaws of a car-sized cobra head patiently waiting for us atop the temple. Huge teeth snapped down, catching nothing but empty air, slapping together with a sound like a steel gate slamming shut. A second head whipped at me, attempting to broadside me, to swat me from the sky like a line drive. My Garuda banked hard, dropping low, the huge snake head whooshing over us as my mount’s feet touched down, carrying us into an awkward gallop.
A shadow flickered over me, like the shade from a cloud on a hot, sunny day, and then another of the heads careened toward me. My feathery friend lurched and swerved, leaping up and off the edge of the temple as something crashed behind us; stone cracked and rattled from the sheer force of the tremendous blow. Then, we were climbing again, gaining elevation, bringing us to eye level with the Serpent King.
“Ahhhhh,” the monstrous head closest to us said, the sheer volume of the sound damn near a weapon itself. “Azazel,” he hissed, drawing out the name, “so it is you who challenges me. Long have you coveted my power, and long have I awaited this day.”
“Nope, dickhead,” I shouted, summoning every ounce of defiance I could muster, “just me, Yancy Lazarus, blueshound and asskicker.” I threw one hand out, conjuring a spear of flame, which splashed against a purple eye the size of a car tire. The creature bellowed, head flailing, jerking left then right, swaying and swinging like an incoming wrecking ball ready to crush a building. My mount shook and tumbled, the colossal whoosh of air causing us to lose altitude—
Another serpentine head sailed our way, jaws snapping, yellow saliva dripping in great strings. The attack was powerful, but slow …
Well, not slow, but Ong was too damned big to match the zippy, race-car speed of the Garuda. We were quicker—dodging, hooking, bobbing, banking, then wheeling back around once more, diving past in a streak of light, the Garuda’s claws lashing out, raking across the reptilian snout, leaving a set of deep slashes in the scaly flesh. And all the while, I unleashed spear after spear of angry molten flame, colorful streams in yellow, orange, and blue lapping at Ong’s reptilian face.
Yet another set of jaws snapped at us, but we were already gone, moving again, on to another of the writhing heads.
More flame. More raking talons. A deadly song played on repeat.
After a few minutes of exhausting battle, we glided wide, out of Ong’s reach, trying to get a little breathing room. I surveyed the Snake King as we flew.
For all of our efforts, Ong seemed unperturbed—annoyed, maybe, but not hurt. Not really. Flame, as versatile and devastating as it was in most situations, didn’t seem to faze the Naga King. I sniffed, then spit into the air. Obviously, I needed to change up my game. Using the Nox flowing in me to augment my power, I hefted one hand and formed a watermelon-sized orb of electric-blue force; the weave a complex thing of air and water, built around a core of earthen power.
Ball lightning—a James Sullivan specialty.
No better ass-kicker in the game.
This particular construct didn’t play to my strong suit, but with the Nox I could manage it. With the Nox, I felt like I could manage just about anything. The ball wobbled in my hand for only a second before the perfect target revealed itself. One of Ong’s heads swerved toward me, head dropping low, mouth flying wide in a display of teeth and spiked-gullet. Not even something like Ong could swallow ball lightning without repercussions.
“Chew on this, shitbag,” I screamed, flinging my hand out—
Something slammed into me from above, and my throw went wide, the crackling construct soaring up, away, missing Ong completely, which was incredible since he was bigger than a friggin’ barn. My ride dropped, tumbling out of control, flipping head over heels, falling fast. My legs fell away from the Garuda’s neck, and I couldn’t help but stupidly wonder what in the hell had just happened. Not that it really mattered. Not now. Shit, if the Garuda landed on top of me, nothing would ever matter again.
Remarkably, I still had one hand tangled in the Garuda’s fur, and with a heave of effort I managed to hook my other arm around the creature’s wing joint. I willed the creature to turn. To flip. To do something other than fall from the sky like an asteroid.
The Garuda stirred beneath my hands, responding to my insistent will, his wings jerking, body wriggling. Its considerable efforts, useless.
After a long beat, the Garuda flipped. Rolled.
It righted itself an instant before we smashed into the sloping wall of the temple and course corrected a heartbeat before we played the part of bug on windshield. I clung awkwardly to its back, my legs and arms splayed out, as the Garuda strained and fought to catch a draft, pulling out of the fall and away from jagged stone.
I slugged my way forward as the Garuda finally managed to steady itself before laboriously climbing back toward Ong. It took me a handful of seconds to get reseated, but once that was done, I finally saw what’d hit us: a shaft of gleaming purple-blue ice jutted from the ribs of my mount. Not far from where my leg naturally rested.
With a frown, I stole a look up.
Ah shit.
A halo of Garuda now surrounded Ong’s many heads, circling around him like a huge tornado of feathers and flesh; he’d recalled his troops now that the real threat had reared its h
ead. But the flock of undead minions weren’t the only new additions. The Savage Prophet, radiating purple light in waves—his eyes glowing, his skin frosty blue—sat astride one of the Garuda, his crook tucked under his arm like a knight’s lance as he blasted Ong with shafts of ice.
That no good buttweasel had stolen my idea, dammit. Then he’d sucker punched me. Again. Asshole.
With gritted teeth, I streaked toward him, angling my mount so we were directly below the Prophet, firmly in his blind spot. But the sneaky bastard spun away, launching himself into the cloud of squawking Garuda. Disappearing. Lost in the rustle of wings and the swarm of bodies. I couldn’t afford to leave that assclown at my six, knowing he’d impale me on a shaft of ice the second he had a clear shot, so I guided my mount into the raging currents of the undead flock.
I instantly regretted the decision.
We were immediately buffeted by wings, slammed by heavy forms, claws randomly slashing at us. Hard flying, that. I thrust out a hand and loosed a wall of flame, a tsunami of fire washing over the opposition, spreading from one Garuda to another, turning each of them into a falling star of burning meat. Maybe slinging around a metric shit-ton of flame wasn’t the wisest move, considering I was riding a highly flammable, flying death trap, but boy did it clear things up in a hurry.
Since the enemy Garuda couldn’t maneuver in the close quarters, this was almost the exact definition of shooting fish in a barrel—assuming those fish were undead, weighed in at a couple of tons, and had wings.
It didn’t take long before I broke through the first wall of feathered opposition, blasting clear into the dark sky beyond. The Prophet was maybe fifty feet away, ducking and weaving between a smattering of Garuda, launching pop-shots at Ong, then vanishing again, using Ong’s forces to camouflage his movements.
Savage Prophet: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Episode 4) Page 32
