Metal Guardian: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Rings of the Inconquo Book 2)

by A. L. Knorr

I heard Sark telling Jackie we were going to need a pickup in short order. I turned away from Marcus to look at the two bodies on the ground, then the two men I’d pummelled into unconsciousness. Bile rose in the back of my throat, and the iron armour began to tremble and peel. I tried to focus my mind, but the eyes of the dead men locked me in place.

  “This isn’t what I wanted,” I sobbed to their cold, lifeless faces. “I’m not a murderer.”

  I felt Marcus’s fingers squeeze a bare patch on my shoulder.

  “I know you’re not. We’ll sort it out soon, but right now we need to move before—”

  “RUN!”

  Sark was pelting back down the hallway toward us from the door to the stairs pursued by a tide of roiling darkness. Riding that swelling wave, like some profane Neptune, was Pierre Gwaffu, grinning monstrously.

  Finding ourselves cornered, our choices were the bedroom or the window to the front of the house.

  “Follow me,” I barked to Marcus before springing for the window, arms raised over my face.

  The glass exploded, and the night’s chill prickled through my iron-skin. Half a heartbeat and gravity grabbed me hard, and I plummeted towards the front lawn like a comet.

  Striking the dirt, I ploughed a long shallow furrow into the sod that nearly took me to the circle drive where bedlam reigned. People piled out of the manor, some got into expensive cars, while others just ran.

  Jackie was in that mess, but I didn’t have time to consider that when a scream pierced the night air. Marcus had leapt from the window as well, but without a protective layer he would be lucky if the drop just broke his legs. I threw out a hand and seized upon the largest bit of metal on him––the revolver in his right hand. I willed its descent to slow, hoping to slow Marcus’s free-fall.

  It did, but the speed differential between Marcus and the gun pulled him up hard by the hand clutching the revolver. His body twisted around the axis of the gun, and I heard his cry of pain. The black box and my ledger-laden purse tumbled from his grasp.

  Marcus was two-thirds of the way down when Sark burst from the window, rappelling down the wall using his shaped length of brass, clinging and crawling like a metallic centipede. He disengaged from the wall half-a-dozen feet up, turning his plummet into a roll across the grass. He sprang up, chest heaving. A second later, sharp tendrils of black lashed through the shattered window and gripped the wall. Pierre emerged, suspended in the air by the grasping tendrils that coiled around him. I saw the immense wounds made by the flying safe – huge ragged tears that would have killed a human one hundred times over. Within each of these breaches that slimy black flesh quivered and seethed.

  His glowing eyes stared down at us with disdain, but, as I watched, his shadowy tendrils gave a shiver, his eyes narrowed, and his serrated maw twisted with outrage. I followed his gaze to where Marcus stooped to pick up the purse and box with his undamaged arm, the other dangling useless at his side.

  “Get your filthy hands off that!” Pierre roared, and like a pouncing spider leapt from the wall aiming to land on Marcus’s bent back.

  I moved almost before I thought, propelling my will into my metal shod legs. But I wasn’t going to make it. The edimmu would be on Marcus before I could intercept.

  “Marcus, drop!”

  Marcus dropped flat over my purse, screaming as his limp arm struck the ground. At the same instant, I lashed out with one arm, desperate fear giving me the focus necessary to launch half-a-dozen iron spikes from the metal that had encased my arm.

  Some infernal sixth sense warned Pierre of my attack, and he tried to twist away, but it was too late. Four of the six spikes struck home, snapping the edimmu out of his dive and pinning him to the brick wall. Pierre let out a piercing, raptorial shriek of rage as he squirmed on the impaling iron.

  Marcus scrambled away on his belly, purse in hand.

  As I hurtled towards the pinioned edimmu, one arm and shoulder exposed, I was sure he would run me through, but in that split-second before impact, I realized Pierre wasn’t looking at me or even at Marcus. His burning eyes were fixed on the grass, where the little black box lay.

  In an eruption of brick, dust, and shattered cement, we flew back into the manor.

  Chapter Nineteen

  In a swirling storm of debris and disjointed sounds, Pierre and I smashed into the room. I was on top, my metal enhanced weight bearing down, but as I pulled back to club him, he twisted and kicked upward. Smoky tendrils pulled me forward, skidding across the floor.

  Rage and terror drove me. Keep moving. Keep fighting. Every bit of metal in the room light enough to be thrown answered my call and hurtled toward the edimmu, even as his serpentine coils writhed towards me.

  The assault caused the edimmu to stagger as his human disguise became shredded to tatters, and his reaching darkness retreated. In that brief pause, I beheld the truth. Beneath the clinging shreds of flesh and clothing stood an emaciated creature with moist, wormy skin the colour of crude oil. Its gaping mouth was a snarled collection of stained fangs. Eyes too large for its wrinkled misshapen head bulged and glowed like something from the depths of the ocean.

  “You’ve looked better, Pierre.” I extended a hand to the piano, which juddered from its corner. With a sharp series of twangs, the metal strings slid from beneath the lid and restored my armour.

  Pierre slashed out with a tar coloured tentacle, and a spike of darkness smashed into my chest. I slid backwards, gouging into the wood. I drove hard into the wood in an effort to stop, but a floorboard snapped, and I rocked backwards. Another edimmu tendril slammed into me, and I flew into a built-in bookshelf.

  Wood cracked and groaned, and books tumbled to the floor. Pierre’s tentacles pressed against me with an awful grinding pressure. Sharp tendrils dug like probing fingers into the metal shell protecting me. Without the iron casing, my chest would have collapsed, so I threw my will into reinforcing it. If Pierre got one venomous barb inside …

  Chopping down at the coils, they dissolved like shadows. Their insubstantial nature surprised me, and I lurched forward, carried by my own momentum. Pierre hit me again with a one-two of bludgeoning darkness. The bookshelf buckled, and the supporting timbers groaned in protest.

  “You came into my home.” Pierre launched four tentacles, enfolding me. “And dared to steal from me?”

  Two tendrils dissipated as I flailed at them, but the other two clutched tightly, pinning my arms down before slamming me back against the remains of the bookcase. My ears rang, and pain blossomed everywhere.

  Fighting off panic, I looked through the swirl of slithering shadows and saw the edimmu drawing closer. I couldn’t hold out much longer; I needed my energy to ensure he didn’t breach my armour rather than fighting.

  “The Group of Winterthür would pay a pretty price for parts of you,” he hissed, leering with monstrous eyes. “But the satisfaction of sucking the marrow from your flayed bones is something money can’t buy.”

  A long, grey tongue snaked through his briar-patch of fangs.

  The pressure redoubled, and the torturous squeal of metal filled my ears.

  He kept enough distance that I couldn’t strike if I broke free. I wished I could launch more missiles, but shedding iron would guarantee a breach in my shell. The pressure built on my ribs, the metal buckling millimetre by millimetre.

  If only I had more … metal spikes!

  I risked a sweep with my senses and found all four of the iron bolts were still lodged in the sagging, wasted flesh of his true form. I threw every ounce of energy I could spare, twisting them free.

  Pierre swore in a language that stung my ears to hear, and the pressure eased. I used the reprieve to send a wild surge through my right arm, ripping free and scattering a tide of shadows in its wake. Tines of piano wire sprang forth, attaching to the drilling iron barbs.

  He still had several tentacles around me, but I had a hold of him now too.

  I was made of iron; he wasn’t.

  I pivoted
hard, swinging him like a ball on a chain until he smacked wetly against the wall. His hold on me weakened a little more, so I did it again. And again. And again. The wall was already compromised, and Pierre’s ichor spewing form plowed through it as my anchoring spikes tore free. His body slid across the evacuated dance floor. Music still pulsed over speakers suspended from the vaulted ceiling, and in the dim lights, Pierre looked like a giant smear across the floor.

  “Get up!” I shouted, ducking through the hole in the wall, blood pumping hot and furious through my veins. “Come on big boy, get up so I can knock you down again!”

  Darkness swirled around Pierre, contracting and congealing, the menacing tentacles drawn into him like smoke sucked up an exhaust vent.

  I advanced with fists up, my iron-clad legs and feet making menacing footsteps on the floor.

  As the darkness drew inward, the disgusting shape of the edimmu vanished, and Pierre in his human guise emerged. His clothes were destroyed beyond modesty or function, but his tanned flesh didn’t show a single mark. This enraged me further. I closed to within arm’s reach of him, and he threw back his head and laughed.

  “I’m going to beat you into paste!” I bellowed raising a hand to stove his head in.

  He smiled back with a roguish human grin.

  “Go right ahead.” He chuckled, a rich, dark sound that prickled at the edges with malice. “You can’t hurt me.”

  My iron fist descended like a meteor, cratering his face. He was knocked backwards hard enough to bounce off the polished floor.

  “Did that hurt?” I stood over his prone form.

  Through his crumpled mask of flesh, I saw his real face, the huge subterranean eyes mocking me with perverse joy. Then, like a balloon receiving a shot of helium, his false face reformed.

  “Didn’t I tell you,” he cackled up, hands spreading out in welcome. “You can’t hurt me.”

  Fury and a wisp of dread drove my fists down onto his head and shoulders. Ichor splattered until the floor looked like a shallow tar pit. Every time I paused, shoulders shaking and chest heaving, Pierre’s sneering grin re-emerged from the crushed mass. My mental and physical fortitude were slipping, but I was buying time for Sark and Marcus to escape with the ledger.

  At least, that was what I told myself.

  As I staggered back from another fruitless burst of violence, my foot hit a thick patch of clinging filth, and I fell backwards with a clang. The armour shell shivered, and I fought to steady my breathing and keep it together. I tasted blood in the back of my throat.

  “With all that power, you still know so very little,” Pierre crooned as he rose from the floor, ascending on a soundless flex of black wings.

  “Just taking a breather.” I forced myself to sit up. “I’ll get back to smashing your arse in a second.”

  Pierre shook his head slowly, his face contorting into a noxious look of pity.

  “Take all the time you need, my dear. It won’t make a bit of difference. You could burn me to ash, grind me into dust, or one of the thousand methods others have tried, but it won’t make a bit of difference. None of them could stop me. Neither can you.”

  I growled, but the voice in my head told me he was right. The iron and steel were weighing me down, my powers flagging. Each breath was a little harder than the last. Soon, I wouldn’t have the strength to lift my arms, much less fight.

  I looked into Pierre’s twinkling eyes, both of us knew I was beaten.

  I considered a final desperate gambit––launching my armour at him in one suicidal blast––when a voice cut across the music’s dull throb.

  “None of them had this, though, did they?”

  Sark stood at the edge of the dance floor, arm upraised.

  My heart sank. What was he doing here?

  “What are you talking about, Eli?” Pierre’s smile slipped, and an ugly scowl crept across his features.

  Glinting dully in the false twilight of the dance floor, Sark held the small black box from the safe. I remembered Pierre’s strange preoccupation with the box and the fleeting sight of an engraved clay cylinder.

  What was Sark playing at?

  “Don’t bluff me, Pierre,” Sark warned, giving the box a little shake. The edimmu cringed. “You know me better than that.”

  Pierre wilted, his writhing aura of darkness drooping to the floor.

  “I thought I knew you better than to betray a friend like this, Eli.”

  A bark of laughter burst from Sark as he took another step, shaking the box again. Pierre winced and looked even more pitiful.

  “You’re breaking my heart,” Sark mocked, enjoying the defeated look on the edimmu’s human mask. “Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”

  Pierre’s gaze fell to the floor, shame evident, but something dangerous glinted in the corner of his eye. My gaze swivelled between Sark and Pierre, something was wrong.

  “What do you want, then?” Pierre asked. “Money, contacts, my entire bloody operation?”

  Sark grinned wickedly as he opened the box and drew out the clay cylinder. His grip flexed just a little, and a few grains of crushed pottery sifted down as Pierre visibly writhed.

  “A phylactery,” Sark said, looking up at his plunder. “I never thought I’d see one, much less hold it. My God, Pierre, it must be agonizing seeing your very existence held in my hand.”

  “What do you want, Eli?” Pierre repeated, a strident note of pleading rising in his tone.

  “I’m not sure.” Sark shrugged with a sneer. “How do you put a price on immortality?”

  A shadow slithered along the edge of the dance floor, and I tried to cry out and warn Sark, but the night-black lash was already in motion

  “I guess you’ll never know,” Pierre said in a low, lethal whisper.

  The black tendril snared Sark’s ear, tearing a cry of pain and surprise from his lips. Instantly veins of throbbing, venomous darkness spread from Sark’s neck. His arm flew upward from the shock of the sudden impact, and the poison. The phylactery shot into the air, spinning end over end.

  “NO!” the edimmu screamed as he launched another tendril to snare the fragile clay before it shattered on the floor.

  Moving like lightning, I released my hold on my iron shell, allowing it to fall away except for a single jagged shard of steel. Spots sprang across my vision, and I tasted blood on my lips, but I threw all my remaining strength into that single sliver of metal. It sang through the air, keening like a raptor, a little metal shrike on the hunt. The lights glinted off its sharp edges as it sliced through the edimmu’s gloom and struck true.

  The phylactery burst into a thousand shards of fractured clay.

  Pierre howled, a ripping inhuman sound, as he released Sark and spun towards me.

  “Do you know what you’ve done?!” he screeched, his monstrous countenance erupting through the human guise. “DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE DONE?!”

  I scrambled backwards, unarmoured and exhausted, the cast-off iron biting into my hands. He’d released Sark, who had crumpled to the floor, retching and shuddering. Pierre’s hideous, glowing gaze fixed on me.

  He froze as a terrible cacophonic chorus tore through the air.

  A single word escaped his malformed mouth.

  “Lamashtu.”

  A pig squealed, a donkey brayed, a lion roared, and a dog gave a guttural snarl, all unnervingly in tune. The sound rose, louder and louder, circling the room. Pierre’s blazing gaze turned this way and that, gaping at things I couldn’t see, his mouth working lopsidedly as he gibbered in terror.

  “No!” he screamed, throwing his arms up to ward off some unseen horror. “No! My mistress, my goddess, my lover! Please, no!”

  The darkness writhed around him and erupted in sickly green flames, and from the crackle of the burning shadows, a woman’s voice, sharp and cruel, rose over the din of the tortured beasts.

  “Empty cradles and bleeding bellies,” the voice said in a sing-song tune that dug at my mind like needles. “Have I merc
y for them, Ekur?”

  “Please!” Pierre shrieked as he sank to his knees, the flames biting at his flesh. In moments, his human guise was devoured and shrivelled, the ghastly creature laid bare.

  “Please! Mercy!” he screamed as his body began to twist in on itself, snapping and splitting as the voice cackled louder.

  “Mercy?” the voice asked. “Oh, little worm, you spent all these years worshipping the wrong god to ask for mercy!”

  The bestial chorus rose in answer with a fresh burst of cutting laughter.

  The flames flared, and with a single, rending cry of despair, Pierre Gwaffu, once called Ekur, crumpled to the floor as cinders and ash.

  Chapter Twenty

  “What the hell happened?” Jackie asked for the tenth time, as we tore down the dark road in the Maserati.

  “Just drive,” Sark growled as he leaned against the window, one hand held his head, the other braced against the dashboard. Twice he’d rolled down the window to be sick. I wasn’t sure if it was Pierre’s poison or seeing what had happened to the edimmu that had hit him so hard, but he was in bad shape.

  I felt tired to my bones, but a blend of nervous shock and power flowing through the Rings kept me from dozing off. An interesting side-effect of having the Rings fused together was that they created a sort of power feedback loop: drawing on my will and then sending it back magnified. While using my powers, this made my metal shaping and moving more potent, but while I was still, it had a restorative effect. The enhanced energy rippled through me, softer than a caffeine boost but in some ways more potent. My body ached from the fight, and probably would for days, but my muscles were already feeling less fatigued. Too bad the Rings couldn’t also restore my dress.

  My mind craved the oblivion of sleep, in vain hope of erasing the memory of the fate of Pierre Gwaffu: the voice of Lamashtu, the bestial choir, seeing him burn. Surreptitiously, I split the Rings in two and moved one half to my left hand, hoping the diffusion of power would let me relax and doze a little. The metal came apart with a soft clink.