by A. L. Knorr
“Hello, what’s this?” Marcus said as he pried open the black box. We saw a red velvet interior holding a cylinder of clay before I snapped the box shut. Marcus’s eyes shot up to me, his mouth opening.
“Marcus, we need to go. Now,” I said firmly, moving out of the office.
“Fine, but I’m keeping this too.”
Crossing the bedroom, I nearly yanked the door open but checked myself at the last second.
Shouts sounded again from below but also in the hallway outside. I flattened against the wall, raising a finger to my lips as I looked back at Marcus. He nodded and tried to draw the revolver, but the front sight caught on the edge of his pocket. It took several seconds to free and ready the weapon. I was sure he was about to shoot himself.
I reached out with my metallic sense to the hallway beyond. Eyes closed, I tried to identify who was out there and what they were doing. I drew in several deep, steadying breaths as I sifted various choral tunes of the metal in the old home’s construction, to settle on a collection of bound metal presences that I recognized––guns. Four of them, two pairs, moving as if they were playing leap-frog. Their owners were going room to room sweeping for intruders, for us.
We had a minute, maybe two.
“Do you hear something?” Marcus whispered hoarsely.
“What?”
I tried to judge which of the two teams would reach us first. They were near the limit of my power to influence precisely, but if I could disable those guns before they got to us, we had a good chance of getting out alive.
“Is that the wind?” he hissed, a little louder.
“Marcus, shut up, please!” I tried to twist metal I couldn’t see despite several intervening walls. “I need to concentrate.”
“Ibby!”
Before I could round on him, there was the crash of glass shattering.
My eyes snapped open to see the last shimmering pieces of the balcony doors tinkling to the floor. A tumbling lump––a body––bounced across the floor to strike the foot of the immense bed with a dull thunk. The body gave a groan, then lifted its head. Sark, his face a mass of thin, oozing slashes, looked at me and managed to croak: “Run.”
But it was too late.
Gliding into the room with wings of raw, light-devouring darkness, Pierre Gwaffu was upon us.
Chapter Seventeen
“You seem to be lost.” Pierre cocked an eyebrow as the wings evaporated like black mist. “However did you end up in here?”
“I was looking for the loo,” I replied dryly.
Pierre’s eyes narrowed, and he smiled in a way that showed all his teeth. Only most of them were human.
“How very amusing.” He chuckled, and a baleful light shone from his eyes. Marcus swore with a fearful gasp, but I stared right back at the bastard without a flinch.
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” I growled planting my feet as I called the metal in the room to my aid.
Pierre sensed what I was doing because his eyes widened before narrowing in a cruel, calculating glare. His smile shifted, and there were suddenly more teeth than seemed reasonable for one mouth and not one of them looked human. When he spoke, there was a wet hiss to his voice, as the words slid through a hedge of fangs.
“Just ask your friend,” he said, thrusting his chin towards the prone form of Sark. “You don’t want to see the best I can do.”
“All offence to Eli,” I said, straightening. “But the bloke’s punching outside his weight class. Different story when you’re messing with me. I’m true Inconquo, not some half-blooded punching bag.”
Pierre’s eyes flicked to Sark. I forced myself to stare into those unnatural glowing eyes, but I could have kicked myself for letting the cat out of the bag so carelessly. I wasn’t naive enough to think I could intimidate a millennia-old monster like Gwaffu, but I did hope I was convincing enough to buy time. With a little more time, Sark might pull it together and help me out. I had no idea what Pierre was capable of.
“You are welcome to try,” Pierre hissed, spreading his hands out expansively. “But I think you and I both know that your fight is much bigger than me, little Inconquo. Your cursed bloodline has been a pet project of Winterthür for a long time. No matter how this ends, you’ll be lucky to be the next blood-bag shipped to Iraq.”
Iraq? That was new, and more specific than ‘Middle East’.
“Winterthür and everyone helping them are going to find themselves hurting very soon,” I said ominously. Lamps, drawers, and mirrors from the bedroom lifted to float around me. “You’ve picked the wrong side for the last time.”
Pierre’s eyes crinkled with glee; his mouth no longer fit for smiling.
“Ibby!” Marcus screamed, his voice high and tight with panic. “The floor.”
I realized too late that I hadn’t been the only one buying time.
Pools of inky black crept along the perimeter of the room and flanked me on both sides. As I readied myself to attack with the floating metal, coils of darkness shot out with viperish speed and snared both my arms. The sting of their cold grip foiled my attack, the missiles falling to the floor.
I twisted and pulled against the black tendrils, but they held me fast.
“Such defiance.” Pierre sauntered closer. “Can be bad for your health.”
The tendrils undulated, and I felt a prickling along my skin as something frigid drove through it. In horror, I saw dark ichor blackening my veins until they stood out like a web-work of ink. I screamed and tried to twist away from the venomous grip, but my whole body ached at the slightest effort and the twisting made me dizzy to the point of nausea.
“Sark,” I groaned weakly, casting about for him, but my vision was blurring, and my heart throbbed in my ears. “Sark—”
“Let her go!” Marcus bellowed behind me.
Pierre’s laugh raked against my fevered nerves like a saw blade.
“Your time will come soon enough, little man,” Pierre chortled, a garbled sound around all those teeth. “Now be quiet and let me enjoy my work.”
My body was in the grips of some terrible fever, sweat pouring off me even as my teeth clacked together with uncontrollable shivering. I wanted to fight, to scream, to run, but I was so tired, so weak, struggling to stay upright. Another surge of icy poison from the black tentacles, and I sank to my knees. The room spun, and though I thought I heard voices, they were muffled and distant, unlike my heartbeat that thundered in my skull. My chin sank, and I began to lean forward, unable to hold myself upright. Only the biting grip of the living shadows kept me from collapsing to the floor.
It was over; I was done.
I couldn’t fight it anymore. I didn’t want to.
Sorry Jackie. Sorry a’am. So sorry …
Three distant claps of thunder came in quick procession, their percussive call traveling down some long tunnel. With each bludgeon of sound, my senses returned with agonizing clarity. My body shook violently, and I felt I might vomit, but I could also feel the frigid poison retreating. Inch by inch, it was pulling back, siphoned out through burning portals in my arms. Another thunderclap, this one much closer, and the surrender of my veins picked up speed.
“Let. Her. Go!” Marcus bellowed again just before another blunt hammer of explosive sound.
I cried at the pain of the sonic pummelling, but the cry became a sob of relief as I felt the last of Pierre’s noxious venom leave my body, and the tendrils released my arms.
Catching myself with outstretched arms, I toppled forward, my whole body trembling. Tears blurred my eyes, but as I raised my face from the floor, I could make out Pierre kneeling a few steps from me. His dark clothes were torn across his chest, but something about the wounds beneath was wrong.
“Ibby, come on!” A strong hand wrapped around my arm and hauled me upward. “We need to move!”
My vision blurred again as I rose, my legs scrambling to catch up. I retched then gagged on bile at the sudden dislocation. Once on my feet, I
spat the foul taste from my mouth and took a deep breath to clear the remaining infirmity from my mind.
I looked at Pierre––no longer the lamp-eyed, fanged monster––on the ground in front of me; Marcus had one big arm wrapped around me while the other shakily levelled the revolver at Pierre. I looked up at Marcus. His eyes bulged as his mouth ground out words between clenched teeth.
“Ibby, please. I only have one more shot.”
I wanted to ask him why he would need more, Pierre’s at our feet with multiple chest wounds, but the horrified look on Marcus’s face brought me up short.
I turned back to Pierre. Dark ichor dribbled from the corners of his mouth as he grinned. My eye was drawn from his wide, rictus smile, by movement. The wounds in his chest would have been difficult to make out with his blood being the colour of tar, but they ... squirmed. Something slithered and twisted in the spaces where ruined flesh should have been, issuing small squelching noises as they writhed.
“Did you really think it would be that easy?” Pierre rasped, spilling more dark blood upon his chin.
The wings of starless night sprang from his shoulders, and with one flap, he was back on his feet. He looked down at the bullet perforated shirt then behind him where two bullets had punched holes in the wall beside the shattered French doors.
“That’s your first time ever firing a gun, isn’t it?” Pierre turned to smile at Marcus, eyes shining. “Not bad. In another life, I would have added you to my security staff.”
Marcus snarled a curse, but his hand was shaking so badly I doubted he could pull the trigger again. Though my body still felt shaky, and cold sweat clung to me, I reached out for the only thing that might stop this monster in human clothing
“Yet,” the edimmu continued, his voice growing rough as the fangs reappeared. “You only have this life, and it is about to come to a very messy end.”
The black wings became huge, shadowy hands springing from his shoulders. With disdainful slowness, they reached towards us. I wiped the sweat from my eyes as I threw my will into high gear, amplified by the fused Rings, and was rewarded with an incredible crash from the office.
“How’s this for a mess?”
Gwaffu’s secret safe, twisted fragments of the steel support beams clinging to its side, spun end over end before smashing into Pierre’s chest. The edimmu may have been an immortal demon, but physics was against him. His body twisted around the quarter-ton of metal before both flew out the shattered doors and off the balcony.
My grip on the safe relented as it soared into the open air, and I nearly collapsed. If it weren’t for Marcus’s arm around my waist, I would’ve crumbled to the floor.
For a moment, there was only the sound of my laboured breathing, and then a long low whistle sounded from next to the bed.
“Impressive,” Sark muttered groggily propping himself up on the bed with one quivering arm. “But did you miss the part where you were supposed to run?”
__
“Wait!” I hissed as the last of my disorientation fell away and I recognized the array of metal shapes outside the door.
Sark froze, his fingers centimetres from the knob, and craned back to see my face.
“Guards,” I mouthed then made a gesture with forefinger and thumb, pointing towards the hallway beyond. “Guns.”
Sark nodded and took a careful step back, turning all the way around to face me.
“Can you handle them?” he asked in a soft whisper. “We’ve got a minute, maybe two.”
“Until what?” Marcus asked in a subsonic rumble.
Sark’s face twisted into a baffled sneer at the question, and then he turned to me. “Why is the meat talking?”
“Until what?” I repeated, rolling my eyes.
“Until Pierre comes back or they come in.” Sark shrugged. “Take your pick.”
“Even after that?” Marcus growled and pointed emphatically to the gaping hole.
“Why is he still talking?” Sark asked with a shake of his head.
I felt the seconds ticking away as Marcus levelled a glare at Sark, who continued to sneer.
“Shut up, both of you,” I snapped and then handed Marcus my purse with the ledger in it. “Hold this.”
Marcus took the purse with a stricken look, before turning to glare at Sark. I saw Marcus throwing up a rude hand gesture before I shut my eyes and focused on the guns mere feet from us.
For a second, I considered reducing them all to slag, but a trembling from my stomach to my toes reminded me that I was still recovering from my poisoning and the particularly heavy lifting I’d done with the safe. A mass un-fashioning like that would take juice that I might not have, and even if I did have it, there was a chance I’d faint afterward.
I didn’t reach out to the multitude of complex metallic mechanisms and alloys which made up the guns, but instead focused on the singular aura of the steel tubes that made the barrel of each gun. I felt the tough, tempered metal respond sluggishly at first, resisting my touch.
“Come on luv,” I muttered as I leveraged more of my will. “Play nice with Auntie Ibby.”
Sweat began to bead on my forehead before I felt the barrels giving in. Sharp, metallic pings sounded beyond the door, one after another until every pistol barrel had snapped in twain.
Curses and shocked exclamations filtered through the walls.
I let out a long, satisfied sigh and took an unsteady step backwards. My stiletto slid on a chunk of glass in the carpet, and I slipped.
Marcus’s powerful arms caught me, and for a moment, I wanted to give myself over to the comfort of being held. I looked up into his concerned gaze and felt something silly and situationally inappropriate flutter up and tell me to ask him if he minded me staying a while.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his eyes sweeping over me for any sign of injury. In that exhausted, vulnerable second, I didn’t care what he saw, and that fluttery voice was back saying we hoped he liked what he saw.
“She’s fine,” Sark snarled, shattering into the private moment like a spiked wrecking ball. “And she needs to stand on her own feet. Now.”
I stood, ready to tell Sark in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t in charge, but the sight of him shaping a brass lampstand into some kind of weapon stole my voice. It wasn’t clumsy work, but it seemed Sark couldn’t shape metal he wasn’t touching or very nearly touching. What would have taken me a moment’s thought took him several seconds. Still, when he was done, he held several feet of barbed chain stretched between his fists.
“You know how to use that?” Marcus gestured with the barrel of the Webley.
“A damn sight better than you know how to use that,” he retorted, wincing away from the flailing gun. “Point that somewhere else, before you hurt somebody.”
The two exchanged glares as I drew the poker, tongs, and shovel from the fireplace, adding the grate as an afterthought. I kicked off my shoes as I shaped the metal like putty. In a heartbeat, my limbs were encased in a rough skin of iron, savouring the comforting support and resilience the familiar metal shared.
“Aren’t we in bit of a rush?” I asked stepping to the door, the metallic shell giving the slightest crackle as it shifted sympathetically with my muscles, a boon rather than a burden.
Sark let go of one end of his chain and gave it a twirl. “After you.”
I cocked one fist back, then looked back at Marcus, who was staring at me with a mixture of dread fascination and utter awe.
“Stay close,” I instructed. He nodded dumbly, arms crossed to hold my purse to his chest, the revolver in one hand, and the black box in the other.
I turned and launched a punch that sent the bedroom door hurtling across the hallway.
Chapter Eighteen
The door flattened one of the guards against the far wall.
Racing in its devastating wake, I hit the closest with a haymaker that sent him spinning to the floor. Of the two remaining, one was staring at his defunct pistol in utter confusion. I he
aded for him, but his compatriot sprang towards me with a manic scream. I swung my arm down to block a stepping front kick and heard a wet snap when my iron-clad club of an arm connected with his shin. His scream climbed several octaves as he collapsed to the ground clutching his broken leg.
I spun towards the last guard, iron giving a protesting growl at the twisting movement. His eyes bulged at the sight of me, my iron-shod footsteps ringing on the floor. He staggered backwards and lost his footing; he raised one hand in a warding gesture while with the other hand, he crawled away.
It was all over in a few seconds.
Seeing he was no threat, I turned back to the doorway as a shimmer of serpentine grace flashed by me––Sark’s brass chain as it coiled around the cowering guard’s neck, barbs digging into the man’s throat. I was too stunned to cry out, as the chain gave a savage twist. The chain withdrew an instant later, letting the corpse slump to the floor.
I tore my eyes from the dead man’s accusing stare to look at Sark and saw that he’d already finished off the man with the broken leg.
“They weren’t a threat,” I gasped, as a wave of nausea came over me. “Either of them.”
Sark looked at me with open incredulity.
“Not then.” He coiled the bloodied chain around his arm. “But, when they got more guns? What about when they told the others? What about when we turn our backs or are running for our lives? Seriously, Ibby, I could go on all day.”
The nausea faded as seething anger rose inside of me at Sark’s flippant justification.
“We don’t just kill people,” I snarled, taking a heavy step towards Sark.
To my outraged surprise, Sark didn’t argue and instead moved down the hallway. He drew out a phone.
“Sark!” I yelled after him, but he kept walking.
“Ibby.”
“Sark, you bastard!”
“Ibby.”
I whirled to see Marcus, his expression grave. “We need to move,” he said simply. “I’m sorry, but we do.”
