by Sam Cheever
I rose to my feet.
Morta watched me stand, the dead eyes widening as she looked me in the eye. I saw the moment she realized her mistake. She’d brought a dull blade to a sword fight and given it the means to sharpen its edge. Behind Morta stood an army of ghouls I hadn’t seen arrive. The hoods on their flowing robes hid their ugly faces, but the moonlight turned the bones of their skeletal hands the color of new snow. Their scythes caught the glow of the moon and sent it back out in silvery sparks of light.
In that moment I knew I was toast. Even if I could fight off the queen of death, I’d still have her armies to contend with. A sizzling touch brushed across the nape of my neck. I turned my head to the side and, eyes widening in shock, realized I had an army of my own. All of the spirits in the cemetery had lined up behind me, their dead eyes a hostile imprint on the frosty air.
I had one more chance to take the necromancer down and I was going to take it. Sucking air into my lungs, I flexed my fingertips. “Okay, ghosts. Let’s do this thing.”
I knew I wouldn’t have time to consume the energy the dead were offering me the usual way. By the time I reached out and started sucking it in, Morta and her skeletal goons would be on me and it would all be over but the fat demon’s singing.
So I made a sudden decision and went with it. I spun on my heel and threw up my hands, flinging everything I had into the army of spirits filling the cemetery for as far as the eye could see. With a scream of sheer determination, I wrapped my energy around them and yanked, dragging them forward. My magic called to theirs, creating a high-pitched wail of sizzling power that arced from the first dozen spirits in the pack and then, as they fell, dissolving back into the ground, from the next dozen, and so on. Their energy felt clean, not evil, but it was infused with the bitter chill of the afterlife.
By the time I’d consumed several dozen of the dead, I felt like a block of ice and my teeth were clacking together. I would have dropped to my knees under the onslaught but my limbs were frozen. My legs wouldn’t bend. My heartbeat grew sluggish in my chest, and my outstretched arms and hands were blue with the cold.
I’d thought Morta and her goons would be the end of me. But I was starting to consider that I’d kill myself by consuming too much death energy.
The first scythe plunged into my back, flinging me forward under the brute force. I didn’t feel the blade slicing through me. Though I knew it was gonna hurt like hell, later. At the moment I was numb, my body twisting and jerking under the bombardment of an impossible amount of energy.
The trees started to sway around us. Flinging leaves and small limbs to the ground with supernatural violence. A branch the circumference of my arm hit me on the shoulder with enough force to throw me to the ground. But I only jerked under its assault and it exploded into dust.
That was when I realized how much energy I was channeling. My aura had spread until it cast a glow a hundred yards from where I stood. The tombstones all around me were bathed in a soft blue light. The sky above me roiled with charcoal colored clouds, lightning spearing through them as my energy reached upward.
Morta screamed, the sound horrific in the chaos of the night. The spirits still standing before me began to twist away, their dead eyes wide with fear as Morta dragged them unwillingly to her.
I slowly turned to face the necromancer, my eyes throbbing in my head as energy swelled beneath my skin. I lifted my hands and looked at my fingers, in awe of what I’d created. Power sizzled above my skin. Not just in my palms, but over my entire body.
I realized then that the ground was much farther away than it had been. My body had literally grown to accommodate the new magic. I lifted my gaze to Morta and found her standing as I was, her eyes wide and her hands outstretched. A similar energy bubbled over the surface of her skin and blue-black sparks spat from her eyes.
She stared at me for a long moment and then smiled, her jagged rows of teeth blue in the cast-off light from her magic. When she spoke, her voice boomed above the cacophony, rumbled through the ground. “I see I’ve chosen my apprentice well. But it appears you’ll need to learn humility before you’ll be ready to serve.”
I shook my head. “It’s doubtful I’ll live that long. But then,” I told her with a smile, “...neither will you.” I closed my eyes and threw my arm above my head, releasing every bit of energy bubbling beneath my skin. It left my body with a boom that turned the ground beneath us into a roller coaster, waves of dirt and grass bucking beneath my feet.
Trees fell around us. Tombstones toppled, and ghouls screamed as the earth split open and dragged them under where they belonged.
Morta stood where she’d been when I’d begun bombarding her with my magic. Her hands were up and she’d formed a wall of her own energy to combat mine. At first glance, she appeared to be relaxed, barely straining to hold me back. But I used my magic to focus in on her face and saw the strain there.
Holding me off was taking a toll.
I gritted my teeth and forced more energy into the wave I was pelting her with. She stumbled back a step and I screamed with joy. “Die bitch!”
Morta looked even worse than the last time she’d exposed her demonic form. The stretched, dry skin was torn, the bones of her face showing through in several spots where the flesh had fallen away. Her arms were almost completely fleshless, and her hair stood up in a brittle spray, sparse and yellow on her bony skull.
She was failing.
Pain sluiced through my legs and I blinked, looking down. I’d dropped to my knees without even realizing it. My arms suddenly felt too heavy to hold up. It took everything I had to keep them lifted. At the same time, Morta seemed to straighten. The magic spitting from her fingertips pounded me, like physical blows to my chest and I fell backward, my head smacking hard against a fallen tombstone.
My power faltered and the full force of Morta’s magic assailed me, like laser bullets slicing holes in my flesh. I was done. It was over.
I’d lost.
The air beside me shifted and a familiar scent washed over me. The pain in my chest stopped and the chaos drifted away, lost behind a bubble.
Hard hands touched my face, lifting me into warm arms that held me too tight. “Princess, what have you done to yourself?” Slayer’s sexy voice soothed over me, filling in all the hurt places and making me smile. He wasn’t really there. He couldn’t be. I was dreaming. But that was okay. I could think of better ways to die than with a dream of Slayer to ease my passing.
Hard hands rubbed my fingers. Painful heat flared over me, forcing the holes in my body to heal. I wanted to scream at the pain but I was so tired. So cold. I didn’t have anything left inside me to fight it.
Then the hard hands slipped away and I felt their loss as if someone ripped my heart right out of my chest. “No,” I murmured in my dream. “Come back.”
I need her, an urgent voice said.
I frowned, trying to place the voice. Oh, yeah. Astra. “What up, sis?”
As you can see, she’s delirious, my sexy Slayer said. She’s in no condition...
She’ll have to be. I can’t do this alone. A soft hand fell to my chest, over my heart.
Astra, no!
Stand back, halfling or you’ll force me to pull my sword.
I smiled at the sound of Slayer and Dialle bickering. It felt like home. Then something seared my chest, sending energy directly into my heart, and my smile melted under the resulting agony. I sat bolt upright, with a scream on my lips. “Frunk me straight to hell and back!”
Astra was grinning. “Welcome back. Come on, we need to finish what you started.”
She grabbed my hand and, rubbing my sore chest, I let her pull me to my feet. “Okay, but if you ever do that again I’m going to kill you myself.”
“Noted,” Astra said, still grinning. “Now let’s go extinguish this bitch.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Die Bitch!
When all my friends come out to play,
Things tend to get a
bit hairy.
Astra and the guys had shifted me outside the cemetery walls. As we hurried back toward the scene of the battle, I looked up at the silvery glow that filled the sky above it. “What’s going on?”
Dialle pulled an iron gate open and ushered us through. “Angels.”
I frowned. “Angels?”
Astra nodded. “After Morta grabbed you I called Myra. She had to pull some serious strings but the Big Guy finally agreed to let them help.”
I didn’t understand. “Why would she have to pull strings?”
“They’re not supposed to take sides against Morta,” Slayer said. “It’s part of the contract between Heaven and Hell from two centuries ago. The devil is allowed his environs as long as he doesn’t overstep. If he oversteps, the angels are allowed to intervene.”
“But they don’t think Morta threatening the entire earth dimension is overstepping?” I couldn’t believe it.
“They can’t act on intentions, Darma,” Astra told me. “She hasn’t done anything so far except try to make you work for her. And since we went to her in the first place...” Astra shrugged.
Slayer finished the thought. “At best it’s a gray area. They’re expecting us to clean up our own mess.”
We ran toward the fighting in the distance. Morta stood in the center of the chaos, flinging energy toward a holding circle of angels in the sky. The angels were simply blocking her magic and keeping her inside their circle with light magic.
Around Morta, however, a real battle was going on. Caninra and her pack were there, fighting some type of long-horned demon I hadn’t seen before. The things walked on four hooves and had tails like swords, which they used with deadly accuracy. Several of Caninra’s Hellhounds were down and bleeding.
A strident cry had me jerking my gaze skyward to find the death dragons from Morta’s environs encircling Gerch and his soldiers on the backs of red and black dragons. There were a few Royals up there too, fighting valiantly against Hell’s minions. Unfortunately the soldiers for the side of good seemed to have taken more than their share of hits. That battle didn’t seem to be going any better for the good guys than the one on the ground.
Guilt flooded me as I watched my friends suffer and die because of me. “I can’t believe the angels aren’t helping,” I murmured crankily.
“It’s up to us,” Astra said in her usual dismissive way.
“I tried to beat her, Astra. I gave her everything I had and she didn’t die. I don’t know how you think we’re going to beat her.”
“We got here just before you went down,” my sister said. “You almost had her. If you hadn’t run out of energy you would have won.”
“Okay. So?” I glared at her, feeling grumpy with my failure.
“So...” She swung her arm, indicating the thousands of spirits which had risen again as we entered the cemetery...as if our presence had drawn them to us. “There’s enough energy in this cemetery to take her out. We just need a bigger vessel.”
I frowned toward the hovering dead, some of whom had lifted their hands toward me as if asking a question. I could already feel their energy dancing on the air around us, stinging my skin and sending the small hairs on my arms to attention. “And where are we going to get that?”
Astra indicated Dialle and Slayer. “It’s us. All four of us. We’re going to share the energy so we can hold more of it.”
I scrubbed a shaky hand over my face. The idea of consuming that arctic energy again made me nauseous. “Is that even possible?”
Eyeing me carefully, Slayer responded for her. “Theoretically.” He didn’t look convinced. “I told you she’s not up to this, Astra.”
“And I told you we don’t have a choice. She’s arguably the most gifted with necromancy, followed by me and, through our mark, Dialle.”
Slayer gave my sister a hostile smile. “And I’m just a warm body?”
“Not at all. I sense some ability in you to hold death magic. Hopefully by dividing it between the four of us, we’ll reduce the strain on any one of us.” The unspoken reality was that Slayer was barely equipped under the most limited circumstances. What we were about to do would put him in danger. Panic flared at the thought. But before I could address that terrifying concept, something almost as horrifying came to my attention. I heard a shout and looked up, my blood running cold at what I saw. Torre was riding a big black dragon in the battle above us. As I watched, a death dragon swung its razor sharp tail spike at the black and scored a hit, sending Torre’s ride plummeting toward the ground on a pain-filled roar. With a scream of alarm, I took a step in their direction, not knowing what I could do.
Fortunately the black righted itself just before it crashed into the ground and, flapping its enormous wings with a power that reverberated on the air, managed to pull out of the death spiral and return to the battle.
I pulled air into lungs that had cramped from lack of oxygen. I’d seen more than enough. “People are dying because of me. We need to get this done.”
“Right,” Astra grabbed my hand and Dialle’s. I took Slayer’s hand as Astra turned to me. “Start slowly. It won’t take Morta long to notice what we’re doing. As soon as she sees us we’ll need to work fast. Draw as much power as you can and let it ease into Slayer and me. I’ll do the same. I’m hoping the energy’s natural tendency to even out will allow us to share it equally. If not, we’ll need to pull it back and take her alone...just you and me.”
I glanced toward Slayer, worried for him. “Maybe we should just...” He stopped me with a kiss that lingered longer than it should have in the circumstances. But the heat coiling through me at the touch of his lips went further in giving me the will to do what needed to be done than anything my sister had said. When he broke the kiss he gave me a soft smile. “We’re in this together, Princess. Don’t hold back.”
“But...”
He placed a warm finger on my lips. “I can do this.”
Astra gave me side eye. “We will be talking about what I just witnessed later. After we save the world again.”
I sighed, nodding. Then I closed my eyes and reached for the latent energy that was waiting all around us. I was expecting it to ease forward, slowly filling my core, instead it rose up in a rush and slammed into us.
I gasped and Astra stiffened as the death magic surged into her. After the initial assault I accepted it easily, my cells having memory of the arctic energy from earlier in the night. My sister didn’t fare quite as well. She went rigid, her limbs twitching violently as it slammed through her and her eyes rolled back in her head.
Dialle screamed her name, his black gaze swirling with the golds and vibrant greens of alarm. He reached over and tried to tug my hand from Astra’s. “Let go! You’re killing her.”
I panicked, realizing if he succeeded, everything I was holding back from Astra would crash into her, overwhelming her system and maybe even killing her.
He was wild-eyed, determined, but I couldn’t let him separate us. “No, Dialle! It’ll make it worse. We need to pull as much as we can away from her.”
But he was too upset, he wasn’t listening. He had Astra in his arms and, I was convinced that if she didn’t have a death grip on his hand he would have already let it go in a misguided effort to soothe her.
I turned to Slayer. His handsome face was tense, his eyes wide and his muscular form trembling under the power surging through him, but he was holding it together. He looked at me. “What do you need me to do?”
Tears slid down my cheeks. “We need to pull some of the energy from her until her system can adjust.”
He nodded and, without hesitating, reached over and placed a hand on Astra’s shoulder. Black energy, rimmed in blue shot out of Astra and spun on the air, then was sucked into Slayer and me like through a straw.
Slayer cried out, his eyes going closed, and his grip on my hand was crushing. But somehow he held on and Astra seemed to be accommodating the new level more easily.
I looked at Diall
e. “Pull some of it away until she gets acclimated.” I had to scream to be heard above the din of battle but he finally nodded and did as I asked. Finally, Astra stopped twitching and seemed to relax.
The earth erupted before us, throwing us backward. I barely kept hold of Astra’s hand and Slayer managed to keep his grip on me. Unfortunately, Dialle was thrown several feet away and lay motionless.
I looked at Astra. Her eyes were open. They were filled with swirling blue light and unless I was mistaken, she’d grown a couple of feet. Looking down at myself, I saw that I’d done the same. Slayer’s grip on my hand had lessoned and I glanced his way, happy to see him holding the energy without much effort.
Astra’s hair rose from her head, the dark red curls riding a magic induced wind as if it were dancing. I realized with a start that mine was doing the same.
Another burst of energy exploded near us and I focused my attention on its cause.
Morta had found us. She was floating across the cemetery, several inches above the ground. As she moved, bodies and broken bits of wood and rock flew away from her feet and anything living that got in her way was flung through the air with a single swipe of her arm. Blue flame shot from her gaze and energy roiled around her like a tornado.
She was coming for us. And she was pissed.
I glanced at Dialle, wondering if we could do it without him. “Is he okay?”
Astra’s gaze swung slowly my way. “Yes.” The single word boiled from her lips, a force too large to have come from such a petite form, and echoed through the cemetery.
I blinked, realizing for the first time probably in my entire life how very scary my baby sister was. She was a force to be reckoned with, a magical creature of enormous power. The fact that she hid her capability behind a self-deprecating disposition didn’t take anything away from that. When she needed to throw down to save the world. She did it without hesitating.
I nodded and, giving Slayer’s hand a squeeze, turned my attention back to the evil necromancer. Using my power to focus in on her movements, I watched her long, skeletal body tense as it readied to send out another burst of deadly power.
