by Eric Asher
Drake cursed and slid sideways on his mount as he dove past me, rocketing up toward the cavern’s roof in pursuit of Vicky and Jasper. At first, I wondered why. Then I saw the gout of blue flame as Jasper scorched the ceiling.
What had appeared to be stones above us moved, writhing away from the insane heat of the dragon’s flame. Drake patted his dragon’s neck, and a second blast of fire joined Jasper’s. Vicky and Drake strafed the ceiling, sending a shower of flaming things to fall from the heights and crunch onto the ground around us.
One smacked down between me and a fairy knight. The wide black eyes and fanged mouth made it look something like a vampire, but what flesh remained was pale and maggot-like. A being that had not seen the sun in a very long time. If ever.
Dead. Dead for so very long. It called to me, and my aura cried out to it, those creatures who served Nudd. The King of the Dead.
But that which served the Lord of the Dead would serve me. I reached out and touched the thing with my aura, and was greeted with a surge of power unlike any I’d felt before, save one—the electric chaos of touching a gravemaker, of donning the armor of the dead and wearing it like a new face. The mantle of Anubis felt like that, but what did that make these things?
The fairy knight stepped back when I raised my eyes to him. “They are cursed. Do not touch them! Run!” And he fled in earnest, darting back through the blood and gore and charred bodies raining from hell above.
It wasn’t a knowing that overcame me. It was something else. A voice, a distant thing that rasped through my connection. “They are coming. They are here.”
I tried to pull away, but exhaustion leeched into my bones, as if everything had led to this moment. Vicky, Cara, the Burning Lands, Dirge, the forest, Gaia, had all led back to this point. This doom.
The blackened gums of the dark-touched speaker gleamed as his smile grew mad. He lifted the lip of a large pouch on his hip and slowly raised the reptilian head of an Utukku. “You will all die as they died. Your armory is ours, and now your lives.”
I stared at the slack face, the soiled yellow markings beneath her eyes, the clean cut at her neck. The dull black orbs, one half closed, the other smeared with blood. “Hess.” The name whispered past my lips, and the spark of anger in my bones chased the exhaustion away. How many did we lose?
Vampires exploded out of a distant cell. Armored, with claws out, shouting commands back and forth as they crashed into our ranks. My heart skipped a beat as a black and white wing was ripped away, sent skyward to flutter to the earth. I couldn’t see through the chaos. The screams. I could only focus on what was coming.
What was here.
I exhaled and closed my eyes for a split second, forcing my aura out, calling the centuries of dead things around us. They’d planned their ambush well, shocked us to the point most might have given up, or despaired. But all they’d managed to do so far was piss me the fuck off.
Fingernails cut into my palms when I found them. Not far. Ready to move. Ready to kill. The gravemakers flowed through the earth above, filtering into the air like a cloud of black ash. I flexed my fingers, and the dead below me surged into the hall. A hand large enough to encase a distracted fairy erupted from the prison floor. I felt him resist, felt his bones shatter and his body burst as the Hand of Anubis dragged him into the earth.
Every step was a deliberate thing as I guided the gravemakers, trying to keep them from our allies as I unleashed them onto the dark-touched vampires. But these vampires weren’t the brainless killing machines we’d fought in Greenville and Saint Charles. They ran from the slow-moving wraiths, dodging and weaving past the gravemakers, luring them toward my own allies.
Foster and Aideen dove off the third story of the prison, narrowly evading a dark-touched vampire’s strike. Its claws only caught air, but I saw it launch itself into the sky after them, only to be struck down by Appalachia’s thorns. The vampires might not have been gifted with flight, but you wouldn’t know it from the terrifying leaps they made at their leisure.
Jasper tucked his wings in, diving as Vicky clung to his back with one arm while the other wielded a golden soulsword. A dark-touched met her blade, but instead of cleaving through the armor, the blade rebounded. I wanted to shout a warning, scream, anything! But Vicky had run with the Ghost Pack, she’d battled the dark-touched in the Burning Lands, and she wasn’t caught off guard. She used it to her advantage.
In one vicious motion, Jasper’s wings unfurled, and Vicky let go. Instead of soaring with the dragon, she wrapped her fingers around the edge of the vampire’s helmet and wrenched it upwards. The sloping head of the dark-touched revealed, and the wide black orbs of its eyes widened as the next thing it saw was one of Vicky’s soulswords, stabbing deep into it.
The vampire screamed and toppled backward, a flailing arm catching Vicky’s leg, but not hard enough to unseat her. Her legs tightened around the thing’s neck while she stabbed the vampire over and over until the gray flesh slowed enough that the gravemakers caught it. Vicky hopped away as the dead, bark-like fingers dug into the vampire. Its squeal died as its body was rent to pieces.
Every moment my concentration slipped, the gravemakers would start to wander. Coming too close to our allies, my friends. But I couldn’t send them away. Not yet. Not while the dark-touched still prowled this hall.
Instead, I sent them to the cells.
Iron squealed and cracked as long-rotten hinges were torn from their bases. Bars bent, and the few cells protected by shields resisted with a furious shower of sparks. But gravemakers were slow, plodding tanks. Not things to be intimidated by light or pain. The shields fell, and furious Fae poured out of the cells.
But anger can only fuel a being for so long. As intimidating as that flood of potential allies was, they were worn, beaten, and some were broken. I realized my mistake when the first wave broke against the dark-touched and died immediately. Blood and wings rained down across the battlefield as exhausted Fae were torn apart, finally sent to a screaming rest to rejoin the ley lines.
Even at that moment, that pang of regret, I saw Dominic crumble. The vampire that held Hess sent him to the ground, following with the Utukku’s head, beating the larger vampire senseless before howling in laughter. I took a deep breath, and time slowed. Vicky bounced from vampire to vampire, managing to score a few good hits, but ultimately retreating to Jasper. They rejoined the battle above with Drake, a whirlwind of fangs and blades and incantations that turned the air into a fine red mist.
Zola burned everything. Whatever creature thought to make short work of a frail old woman met a tortured end. Zola’s braids flew with a fury as she spun her cane like a quarterstaff, razor-like blades slicing through flesh and armor alike. The moment a Fae would shriek in pain and double over, an incantation would burst from her staff and end its life. Zola was brilliant. She was always brilliant. The enemies she could strike down died, but those she couldn’t easily defeat got blasted back into the core of the fight with explosive bursts of wind and ice.
Jonathan unsheathed his flaming sword from the eye socket of a dark-touched as he howled like a wolf and dove into the heart of the battle once more.
I slowly closed my right hand, feeling the resistance of the gravemakers as if each was a string tied to my fingers. But they obeyed. My soulsword dimmed as the gravemakers vanished into the earth and rushed toward their new target.
The speaker raised his sword to strike Dominic’s head from his shoulders. The Hand of Anubis exploded from the earth before him, sending Dominic’s limp body spiraling off into the shadows. I smiled at the sting I felt between my fingers as the sword cut into the Hand of Anubis. I tilted my own hand forward, and the mass of dead flesh reached out and snatched the vampire from the ground.
He shouted something, tried to call his allies back to free him. Part of me thought we should interrogate the son of a bitch. That part didn’t win.
I closed my hand into a fist and felt the power of the dark-touched struggle to
rebuild itself from the pulped mass of flesh that had so recently been his body. The flesh of the gravemakers flowed into the dark-touched vampire’s braincase, obliterating it. I absently saw a shadow out of the corner of my eye. Another vampire, another dark-touched, closing on me to bring this battle to an end.
But I didn’t care about that as I felt the power surge through my aura. What could one vampire do against a necromancer who contained enough souls to live a thousand years? The dark-touched vampire’s fangs drew close, but it didn’t much matter what I thought about that.
Jasper’s jaws closed around the creature, and the crack of flesh and bone echoed through the cavern beside me. Some part of my mind registered Vicky riding on his back, directing the dragon in who to eat, and who to leave to their own devices. She’d come into her own, that girl. She’d been reborn a warrior, thrown off the mantle of the Destroyer, only to become a destroyer of another sort.
My lips pulled up into a death’s-head grin. We’d done that. We’d brought her back, an angel of destruction, of death, whose purpose would topple the empire of a mad Fae king. I raised my right hand to my mouth, coated in blood and death and the stuff of gravemakers. The coppery scent of blood and the stench of long-dead flesh filled my nostrils. I let it crawl over my hand and up my arm until we were one, with one purpose.
I drew my hand away when Foster streaked out of the sky and landed before me. “What are you doing! Damian! Your face … it’s … that’s Nudd’s symbol. The white hand.”
“Sometimes it’s the history of the man that kills him,” I said, somewhat detached from the panic in my friend’s voice. “Get everyone back.”
“Back where?” Foster shouted as I strode toward the churning wall of destruction that rained down from above, and the scrambling forms below us who rose to meet it.
But they were all dead. Death was all around them, in the walls, in the air. I didn’t recognize the laugh that escaped my lips as the floor bubbled forth with the dead flesh of gravemakers, pulling vampires and Fae alike down into the stone, churning their bodies into so much liquid. What I could destroy of the dark-touched vampires, I liquified. The chaff of the gravemakers became what I wanted, what I needed, like a tide of razor blades to slice the flesh from our enemies.
There was joy in this, in the death of creatures meant to kill us. But even as columns of fire raced down through the tide of gravemakers, something called to me in the distance. A vague thought as another Fae exploded into its component parts, and one of the lamprey-like creatures dissolved into a sea of molten power.
“Damian, stop!”
Spears erupted from the field of dead, pinning vampires and knights to the ceiling in one violent explosion.
“Stop!”
I turned my head to that voice. Slowly, as if I were a colossus, and the effort it took to refocus my eyes was a long-forgotten task. The roiling waves of death calmed. The gravemakers that had covered my face reluctantly pulled away, and I stumbled forward, staring at the ruin of what lay before me.
“Damian.” Vicky stood behind Jasper. The dragon’s head reared back, and a blue spark lit its throat before he deliberately closed his jaws and blinked those massive black orbs at me.
I rubbed at the back of my neck and walked toward the cells, leaning against the nearest bars. “Sorry, kid. Lost track of things for a moment there.”
A firm hand grabbed the side of my head. Zola wrenched my right eye open and stared at me. “Are you back? You killed … everything.”
I frowned.
Zola glanced over her shoulder. “You’ve been covered in gravemakers for ten minutes, Damian.”
I flinched, as if her words struck a physical blow. “What?”
“We sent those we rescued back to the Obsidian Inn,” Drake said, stepping up beside Vicky. He hesitated before continuing. “I don’t mean to sound unappreciative of you saving pretty much all of our asses back there, but Damian?”
I glanced up and met his eyes.
“You’ve got issues.”
Zola barked out a laugh. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“I saw you destroy the green men on the banks of the Missouri River,” Drake said. “I saw the towers you summoned to slay the water witches. This was different. You were different. It was a power I’ve not seen in a great many years.”
Foster stepped closer to us, his arm around Aideen.
She looked exhausted, and that was being generous. Even her wings drooped as she leaned into Foster. “I healed who I could. Foster helped, too. It may be enough to get them back to our allies, but I don’t know.”
I rubbed at my wrist. It felt sore, and a thin line of blood trailed from the base of my thumb. “You did what you could. We can’t expect any more.”
Drake released a half-mad laugh. “You’re unhinged.” He gestured wildly around our group. “Vesik’s throwing soularts and death magic like they’re children’s toys, and none of you seem the slightest bit concerned.”
“He saved your ass, didn’t he?” Vicky asked before blowing out a breath. “Get over yourself. Damian killed Prosperine in the Burning Lands. His powers aren’t like anything you’ve seen before.”
“You’re wrong, child.” Drake wasn’t patronizing Vicky. His words were soft, kind. As if he worried the wrong words would break her.
The fairy perplexed me.
“There is another who wields power over the dead.”
“Nudd,” Foster said. “We know.”
“Yes, the Lord of the Dead.” Drake stood up a little straighter.
Zola almost growled.
“Hess,” I said, turning slowly to the empty armor and piles of dead vampires. “She’s gone.” Two shadows stood in the distance, one holding a flickering sword that spewed gouts of flame. The other, larger form held a body.
Dominic let the crumpled form fall to the ground. Dark liquid dripped from his mouth before he reached up and wiped the dark-touched’s blood away.
“Did they speak?” Zola asked, raising her voice.
“Yes.” Dominic’s words were slow, satisfied. “The Fae family was already taken. They’ll be executed this evening.”
“We missed them.” The words felt sour, wrong. I looked to Drake.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t tell him your precious plans.”
Drake turned away and met Dominic halfway down the row of cells. “Where?”
“The gates of Falias,” Dominic said. “Same place the media gathered for his little speech.”
Drake glanced back at us, a vicious smile cutting through his face. “The Obsidian Inn will devour that gathering. If Liam and his family can be saved, Morrigan will do it.”
“How can you be sure?” Zola asked.
“I knew Nudd and Morrigan many years before Nudd claimed his throne. Morrigan might not have the power to slay the Lord of the Dead, but you can be damned sure she’ll go out of her way to upstage him.”
“Then we head straight for the nukes,” I said. “They can’t stay in Nudd’s hands. Leave the others to Morrigan.”
Drake pursed his lips. “That’s what I just said.”
“That’s not exactly what you just said.”
“I’m pretty sure it is.”
“Children,” Zola said. “Save your bickering. We have bombs to steal, and nations to disarm.”
I blinked at Zola. She was right. That’s the core of what we were doing, and that was insane.
She strode toward the far end of the prison, and we followed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair. “All I’m saying is maybe I should get out of here and warn the others.”
“The risk is too great,” Aideen said, echoing Zola’s sentiments. “You may be able to step into the Abyss from here, but what if she can’t bring you back? You could be stranded above or outside the gates with the Obsidian Inn.”
Zola’s cane cracked on the stone floor. “We need you here, boy, like Ah said.”
&
nbsp; But I’d lost time. I didn’t feel safe staying here with everyone. Or perhaps it wasn’t so much that I didn’t feel safe, but I was afraid they weren’t safe. But what good would leaving with Gaia do me? Abandon my friends, my family, to the jaws of whatever lay ahead? Of all the risks set out before me, that was the least acceptable.
I yelped when Zola thumped my head with her cane.
“Stop it, boy. You lose yourself, Ah’ll have your sister out here to cut you down.”
The splendorum mortem. She could do it. That could stop me. That could stop anything. But it wasn’t the kind of thing you nonchalantly wielded when facing an army. To lose a weapon that powerful could be disastrous.
“No,” I said. “No one is killing me until I figure out a way to sever the bond of the Devil’s Knot.”
Vicky snorted. “Oh, come on. It’s fantastic motivation for you to not die. You get yourself killed, you get me and Sam killed. So don’t get yourself killed.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“I’m probably not the best one to ask for advice,” she said, turning away as she hid a smile. “I died.”
Jonathan took a deep breath, which I tended to notice when a vampire did it. “If I hadn’t known all of you for the past several years, I’d have to say this was one seriously fucked up conversation.”
“Agreed,” Drake said. He ruffled Vicky’s hair and followed her into the shadowed pathway on the other side of the bloody hall.
Foster sidled up beside me and said, “I don’t trust him.”
I crossed my arms. “I rather like his dragon, though.”
“Let’s just hope we don’t have to find out if he fights as well as Jasper.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You weren’t watching the battle, were you?”
“Actually, I was trying not to die.”
“A reasonable goal.” I watched the gray shadows slither along the ceiling and drop behind Vicky and Drake. Two dragons, one as deadly as the other. The thought brought me some measure of comfort, but I couldn’t silence the voice that whispered in the back of my mind. What if they aren’t on your side?
