by Eric Asher
I had little doubt that soldier wasn’t as green as the petrified man behind him. If they’d seen action before, it hadn’t been anything like this. For God’s sake, how many commoners did see action like this? I was afraid the answer to that question would be vastly different in the near future.
Two fairies sprinted between a cluster of burning tents, and I didn’t think anyone had seen them coming. They were still small, closing fast when I jumped out in front of the soldiers and shouted, “Impadda!” One fairy dodged to his right, circumventing the shield as he exploded into his full-size form. The other crashed headfirst into the crackling dome of blue energy, crumbling to the ground with a satisfying crunch. He was still moving until the soldier beside me shot a round through his head, obliterating the upper half of the tiny body.
The second already had his sword embedded in a stunned-looking soldier. I shaped the shield on my left arm and backhanded the bastard in the head. His helmet sparked and bounced off the dying soldier as the fairy turned to look at me. The slight hesitation, the curiosity in his eyes at who or what could’ve struck him so forcefully without him noticing was all the delay I needed. My soulsword lit through the hilt as I slashed with my right hand at an upward angle, careful not to catch any of the soldiers around me in the arc of that deadly blade.
The Fae’s left shoulder and neck separated with little effort. The body collapsed to the ground, and both of the fairies’ disembodied screams drowned out the horrors raging across the rest of the battlefield.
I watched as the vibrant aura of the injured private faded from blues and reds before solidifying once more at the screams of one of his comrades. His eyes snapped open.
I stared into the shell-shocked face at his side and wanted to help. These were just kids. These were just kids losing their lives in someone else’s war. “Get ready. It’s not over. Stay behind me, and try your damnedest not to shoot me in the back.”
“Who are you?” someone said behind me.
“I’m just a shopkeeper. A weird shopkeeper. Who’s in charge?”
“He was,” a young female private said, indicating an injured captain on the ground beside her.
The captain tried to speak, and I thought I caught the name Stacy on his tongue before he passed out again.
I cursed under my breath. Perfect. So I could run to Sam, who probably didn’t need nearly as much help as these kids, or I could stay here and fight with them, and possibly get myself killed trying to help them. Super.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“What’s that?” a private shouted, pointing up at a fireball that continued to increase in size. I stared at the conflagration and cursed.
“His name is Drake, and he wants to kill you. Blow him out of the air.”
Terrified though they might have been, the drills and training and repetition had paid off in spades. They raised their rifles nearly in unison, and the woman I suspected was the youngest of them gave the order to fire. I gritted my teeth against the explosion of sound around me. Half a dozen M16s firing at once were anything but quiet.
Electric yellow sparks flared and dissipated all around the whirling ball of fire. A stray thought flickered through my mind—would the Fae’s elemental fire spell be susceptible to a water incantation? Maybe some good did come out of Sam and I spending more than one summer with our asses stuck firmly in front of a million different role-playing games.
With every shot that deflected or vanished into that maelstrom, I figured more and more that I had nothing to lose. I held the soulsword out toward the swirling mass and shouted, “Minas Glaciatto!” A shower of dagger-like ice condensed in front of me, rocketing toward that hellish flame. It hissed and popped, steam exploding all around it. Still, the fires closed on us.
The shouts of the soldiers grew more hysterical. I raised the sword again and screamed, “Magnus Glaciatto!” The very air in my lungs turned frigid, and icy daggers the size of softballs rocketed toward the incoming mass. For a moment, as the steam grew thicker and the momentum of that nightmarish thing slowed, I thought I might have bought us some time.
The fire dissipated, and laughter rose in its place. Drake’s wings looked to be on fire, twice as large as they would have been without the flame, and the sight of that fairy having survived a magnus-level incantation sent a chill into my bones. “Fool,” was all he said before the fires swirled around him again. This time, however, he didn’t see the tiny winged form closing on him from behind.
Foster exploded into his full-size form and released a scream that could have pulled blood from the earth. Drake tried to spin to face the incoming fairy, but Foster’s iron sword found its mark, cutting into Drake’s shoulder, and extinguishing the fires on his wings.
Foster didn’t relent. Drake slammed a gauntleted fist down onto the sword, tearing it out of his own flesh. Foster spun, striking low with his dagger before bringing the sword to bear once more, aiming for Drake’s neck.
“You dare!” Foster screamed raising a knee into Drake’s groin. The dagger found its home in Drake’s side and Foster stabbed once, twice, before Drake could raise his guard. Drake dove toward the earth by the time I remembered to tell the soldiers not to shoot Foster.
Foster chased after the imposter Demon Sword. His body brightened until a sphere of fire erupted like the storm clouds of Jupiter. It made the magic Drake had summoned look like a distant star placed beside a sun.
The fairies vanished into the fires of the flaming tents.
“There,” I said, gesturing with a soulsword. A water witch had slithered into the clearing, and was only then beginning to solidify. “You see one of those, use either of those daggers. That’s the only thing you have that can take them down.
“Won’t the fires hurt them?” one of the privates asked.
I thought of the apprehension of the water witches around Mike the Demon. I knew they were susceptible to some fire magics. Natural fire was no threat. I didn’t think I needed to explain that to the soldiers, though.
Instead, I just said, “No.”
“How do they operate?” the woman asked.
I blinked.
“What’s their SOP?”
“Ambush tactics mostly. But they won’t hesitate to attack in a group either. Watch for water on the ground. It could be a witch.”
“Wait for them to get close enough, and then stab them?”
“More or less,” I said.
“Set a trap,” the soldier said, looking around the area. She slid a dagger into her belt. “I’m the bait.”
There was only one stone building, which looked like it might be cinder block, and I suspected it was either their command center, or a low-budget abandoned office building. “There,” I said, indicating the building. “Fall back to that. I’ll send my allies to meet you. If I can’t make it myself.”
“Don’t worry about us,” the soldier said. “We’ll take down as many as we can before you do.”
The fairies roared, and a water witch at the other end of the clearing dashed into the smoldering tent city. I followed.
* * *
Steel crashed on steel as the fires around me threatened to set my clothes alight. I followed the water witch’s path as she created a narrow trail of moisture. I suspected the narrow band of water kept her attached to the river in the distance. I winced and batted my head as a hot ember settled on my hair, the stench nauseating, but quickly overwhelmed by the burning reek of the tents.
I aimed my hand at the stretch of water on the ground and said, “Minas Ignatto.” The flame created a gap in the water, and that farthest from the river swelled up and stretched to find the end of the stream. So long as the water witch touched the river, she could send word to any other witch connected to the same body of water. There were distances they couldn’t cover, but for that, they had other means of communication.
Cutting the witch off completely might bring more. I didn’t want to do that while I was alone. An arm of fire reached out from a nearby tent, giv
ing me a small heart attack before I realized it was just more shriveling, flaming vinyl.
Something ran past me, crashing through the flaming tents with no regard for its own well-being. At first, I thought it was my imagination, until it happened again. The glint of gray metal helmets and the flash of silver teeth revealed a sight I had not expected. At least two dark-touched vampires had streaked past me. The soldiers didn’t have a chance if we didn’t get back to them.
This was no longer a matter of not alerting the other water witches, this was a matter of regrouping, or they were going to pick us off one by one. I lit a soulsword as I rounded the corner of the last tent and found the water witch with her back toward me. The field in front of her was lit by the fiery glow of Foster and Drake hammering away at each other. I kept one eye on the water witch, and another on Foster.
“It was never your mantle to bear,” Drake snarled, pushing Foster’s sword aside.
“It passed on when the Mad King died,” Foster snarled. “A fate you will soon join.”
Drake laughed and danced away from Foster.
The water witch raised her arm as if to summon an attack, and I had little doubt of who that attack would be focused on. I sliced through her back with the soulsword, sending a gout of steam out through her neck. She writhed on the blade before collapsing onto the ground in front of me. The soulsword wouldn’t be enough to kill her, but it would incapacitate her.
“Foster!” I shouted. “Dark-touched, here!”
Foster almost growled, his eyes glancing to me for a split second before he placed a boot firmly in Drake’s midsection.
“You’re already too late,” Drake said through a labored breath. He used the momentum of his fall to open a portal and escape with a grunt.
Foster’s body still glowed with the power he had summoned as the Demon Sword. “Get Sam,” I said. “You’re hurt, and we’re going to need her help with the dark-touched.”
Foster didn’t say anything. He looked down at his bloodied forearm and frowned. “Take this,” he said, holding out his sword. “I got lucky, Damian. I thought he had me.”
“I’m glad he didn’t,” I said. “Now go.”
Foster snapped into his smaller form and launched himself into the air. He tilted to one side for a moment before a strong stroke of his wings leveled him out. He glided over the rising heat of the fires and vanished into the darkness.
I pulled the sword out of the earth. I was under no illusions about my skills with a blade. The Old Man had taught me a few things, a few essential things, and the rest of the time I relied on the soulsword.
I walked back to the crumbled water witch at the edge of the clearing and rammed the sword through her chest. I’d seen what the stone daggers could do, turning a water witch into stone in a matter of seconds. The blades Mike had forged weren’t so merciful.
Fire blossomed inside her translucent form, lancing out like a poison, creating a webwork of veins, like stone. The witch tried to scream, but her throat was compromised by the pulsing magic. I ripped the sword out of her, and stared in horror as the magic ceased working, and instead left her in a paralyzed agony.
“Fucking hell, Mike.”
I raised the soulsword and cut through her neck. The stone shattered, and her translucent head rolled free. Slowly, the parts of the witch that hadn’t been turned to stone spread. The liquid hissed as it bled into the fires.
The awful weapon in my hand drew my gaze for a moment before I jogged back to the burning tents. Rain fell in earnest, the sky opening up as the tornado sirens echoed around us once more.
A swell of magic tugged at my aura, and I glanced over my shoulder to find a hellish sight. The tornado siren was no longer merely a warning of the attack on the city, but a warning of the enormous water spout that had formed over the Missouri River.
I didn’t think I could focus well enough to summon Happy without coming to a complete stop to send my aura out to find the bear, but I knew someone nearby who might hear me. “Aeros!” I shouted. “God dammit rock, if ever you’re going to listen to me, let it be now.”
Every glance over my shoulder showed me an ever-widening funnel cloud, saturated with water and debris. I had no illusions about the power of the creatures controlling it.
The earth beside me rumbled, throwing my sprint off balance as Aeros’s face rose from the grass and mud. “Oh, dear,” the Titan said.
“Get Graybeard,” I said. “If anyone can fight that thing, it’s him.”
Aeros hesitated, looking like he might say more, but instead he vanished into the earth.
Shadows moved in the field. I couldn’t tell if they were friend or foe, and the incantation fell from my lips without a second thought. “Modus Illuminadda.” A ball of light surged forward, revealing three dark-touched stalking the perimeter of the cinder block building. In the distance, more Fae clashed with gunfire and our other allies that I couldn’t clearly identify. More heads were hunkered down by the cinder block wall than when I’d left. I saw two faces appear in the doorway, and then vanish back inside. I hoped like all hell they’d come up with a plan.
Exhaustion crept into my bones. I’d used too many incantations too fast, and it was beginning to take a toll. I reached down for the arts that had become little more effort than a reflex, and called the dead to my side. I curled my hand into a fist, feeling my aura intertwined with an ocean of the dead. The Hand of Anubis rose before the farthest dark-touched, causing it to run into the wall of dead flesh. All three of the vampires froze and looked around, likely trying to identify the source of the distraction, as the Hand of Anubis snatched up the nearest of them, and dragged it screeching into the ground.
What appeared on the other side of the stone building worried me most—two water witches I didn’t recognize, with no trail behind them feeding to the river. These weren’t scouts. These were members of a raiding party.
The light of the illuminadda spell faded, and I sprinted forward, the roar of the water spout a harrowing thunder behind me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A sword flickered through the fiery light at the other side of the field, and a brief glimpse of Sam untied a knot of worry in my gut. She vanished into the smoke and flames a moment later.
A bandaged head peeked out from the cinder block wall before ducking inside once more. Someone bellowed an order to fire, and the clearing lit up with the rapid clatter of M16s.
One of the fairies went down in that hail of bullets, and I realized the soldiers must have had steel-jacketed rounds. A wailing cry echoed up from the earth as the Fae dissolved into the ley lines.
It became readily apparent that I was standing on the wrong side of the field when a round shattered a tree branch by my head and whined as it ricocheted off a stone by my foot. I cursed and summoned a shield, willing to risk tipping off the dark-touched to avoid those bullets.
I almost missed the clawed arm reaching out for me, the gray metal nails swiping through the air, embedding in my shield with an explosion of electric blue lightning.
They might have caught the fairy with their rounds, but the soldiers didn’t understand the dark-touched’s weakness. Round after round pinged off the vampire’s helmet and slammed into its obsidian flesh. Ten, twenty, thirty rounds found their mark, until the creature finally stumbled backward, dark blood pouring from dozens of wounds. But still, the thing came.
I reached down for the Fist of Anubis, thrusting my arm upward and splitting the earth beneath the dark-touched. The impact of that solid mass of dead flesh sent the dark-touched vampire spiraling fifteen feet into the air while the soldiers peppered it with more rounds. We’d caught the attention of the other dark-touched then, and their shadowy forms zipped across the clearing with terrifying speed.
A string of curses fell from my lips as I clumsily deflected the claws of the nearest dark-touched. The creature slowed as another hail of gunfire tore into it a moment before it managed to get its claws into me. The vampire tried to lash
out with a foot, tried to slip a hidden attack beneath my shield. But I saw it coming and crushed the shield downward, so the dark-touched tripped and smashed his face into it.
Electric blue lights sparked all around us, and that awful face, dripping black venom from its mouth, inched ever closer. A series of booms echoed behind me, and the roar of the water spout as it tore through the flaming tent city grew louder.
Through it all, I glimpsed the first water witch slipping into the cinder block building.
I ground my teeth, and the muscles in my forearm knotted, trying to aid the shield in fending off the dark-touched. Those horrible, pale white lines that showed the shield fracturing etched their way across the blue dome. I knew it wouldn’t be long before the shield fell. I slid the enchanted blade into my belt and drew the focus. A soulsword snapped to life, lancing out at the first dark-touched, who was now back on his feet and stumbling toward me. The instant the blade made contact I said, “Magnus Ignatto!”
The spell was too strong, and drew power like a starving vampire. The hurricane-force winds of the fiery maelstrom did their job, hurling the dark-touched across the clearing to smack into the flaming ruin of a tent. But it drained too much power. I couldn’t hold my concentration, couldn’t keep my shield lit.
The half dome of power shattered. The screeching clatter behind me was a death knell of gods knew what. I gathered the dead around me once more to raise another Hand of Anubis, but it would be too late. My best bet was that the dark-touched vampire wouldn’t cut through anything vital. But if it was on me for more than a second, I was already done.
At that moment, I remembered the Timewalker Seal. I remembered that my life was tied to Vicky’s. If I died, she died. Sam died. Instead of inspiring me to action, that thought paralyzed me. Despair leeched into my bones. The vampires outmatched me.
