by ST Branton
“Throw off the chains the gods have placed upon you!” I shouted. “Let’s show these fuckers the mighty wrath of Earth.”
The last word echoed into a void. No one moved on either side. The long silence stretched painfully before someone in the front of the holding pen grabbed a rock and flung it at the gods. It was followed by another, and another, and another. A shout rang out—a lone voice cursing the gods. Soon, it was bolstered by countless others. The human-Forgotten front began to shift and hundreds of thousands poured onto the plateau.
“Kill them, you fools!” Delano screamed. His whole malformed body quivered. “Kill them! Kill them all!”
The other gods, half-galvanized by his frenzy, stumbled uncertainly to meet their foes, and all hell officially broke loose. I dropped over the edge of the roof and landed neatly fifteen feet from the monstrosity that had swallowed Delano. He turned his pulsing eyes to me. The sword raised up above his head, and his many legs readied themselves up for the charge.
He had been intimidating in his previous form, but now, he was mostly plain gross. It was the Gladius Solis I worried about. The first wound I’d received from that thing had yet to heal completely and I did not want to sustain another.
I craned my head back as Delano bore down on my position. The black sword sliced downward as anticipated. I put my hand out, summoned the spear, and caught the edge of the sword’s blade across the shaft. It wasn’t hot anymore but neither was it cold.
The sword simply reeked of evil.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Delano bared his crooked fangs scant inches above my face. His mouth filled with rows and rows of teeth jammed in there in such numbers that they seemed to burst outward when he dropped his jaw. I gathered my strength behind the spear and shoved him backward. His extra arms pinwheeled to try to maintain his balance. “This is a fucking joke,” I said to him and stepped forward as he staggered back. “Have you seen yourself? You don’t look like the sum of all gods, Delano. You look like Frankenstein’s experiment gone off the rails.”
He shifted his ponderous girth and backed hastily around the temple wall. The Gladius Solis slashed haphazardly through the air and left a black, noxious trail wholly unlike the arcs of fire I was accustomed to seeing. Where the blade scraped along the earth, its black aura lingered. “Give it up, Delano,” I called and followed relentlessly. “You’re making Kronin’s sword look bad.”
“Kronin?” Delano roared with laughter. “Don’t make me laugh, girl. Kronin knew nothing of glory.” He paused to taunt me. The whole building quaked as one of my giant buddies slammed a god with an armored shell into the side. The carapace and the stone both cracked and dust shook loose from the eaves of the roof. Delano cast a worried glance into the shadows and turned to face me. He charged with the Gladius Solis poised to carve out my heart.
The tip of the sword drew sparks when it collided with my spear. Delano roared and struck repeatedly. He tossed the sword from arm to arm in an effort to catch me off guard but I danced around him, traveled with it, and dueled each arm in turn. They were as strong as they were creepy, and I only managed to slice one off at the wrist. It fell with its fingers curled in like a dead spider.
Delano hissed. Blood poured down the backs of his legs from the brand-new stump. Annoyed by the sensation of a dead limb, he calmly pulled the whole arm off and whipped it at me. I sliced it at the elbow joint in midair. “Come on,” I said. “You can do better than that.”
He glanced around and a sick little smile slid across his features. His skin had assumed a greasy yellowish sheen. “I won’t have to,” he said. The smile evolved into a giggle and from there into full-on maniacal laughter. It was at this point that I noticed that the other fight between humans and the Forgotten and the gods had closed in around us. In a matter of minutes, the swarm of chaos would overtake me and I’d risk losing him in the melee.
“Fine.” I threw myself into a vengeful sprint. My trajectory aimed the point of the spear into the center of his distended abdomen. The spearhead became a white-hot streaking comet as I increased speed. “Have it your way, shit-face. I’ll bring the party to you.”
He evidently hadn’t considered the effect that his monstrous proportions might have on his speed, which was shamefully slow. Still, I was about to learn that the mutant god was more in tune with his horrible vessel than I expected. At the last minute, much like a car that took a turn way too fast, he careened onto one foot and teetered precariously, threatening to topple the other way. His laughter still rang in my ears, but I was the one who emerged with a grin because he wasn’t quite fast enough.
The spear met almost no resistance on its way into his stretched, overstuffed side. Delano shrieked. A plume of murky blood spurted from the wound and his extra limbs went crazy. I leapt back to avoid the worst of their frenzied defense and yanked the spear out as I moved. The blood pumped harder to coat the ground in pools of deep-red, viscous liquid. One of the gods slipped in it. He was immediately pounced on by an angry Were and had his throat torn open.
Delano glanced at me. His misshapen face was sallow now as the blood seeped from the maltreated vessel he had created from his body. “It was a mistake,” he rasped, “for you to return.” He coiled, pulled all his energy into his legs, and spun away, trailing a kite of blood. His grotesque shadow sailed up and over the lip of the roof. I pulled my throwing arm back and prepared to release the spear. He was in for a big surprise if he thought he would get off that easily.
The ground beneath me shifted and threw my balance off. I stumbled but regained my feet, intent on my pursuit of Delano’s ugly ass until a wave of people and Forgotten crashed in around me and blocked the way.
“Fuck!” I yelled and fought furiously against the tide, but it was too strong. The former caravan was a body in motion; its inertia could not be stopped.
I turned in search of another way and felt much like I was in a human washing machine. The fight raged on every side, and as I pushed my way in the general direction of the temple, I caught glimpses of my badass friends as they faced the chaos head-on. Brax’s hammer was missing, but he had somehow gathered a whole militia behind him who hung on his every command. They swarmed an earth god the size of an elephant and worked together to bring it to the ground with a stupendous crash. As I turned away, Brax called to Smitty, and a squadron of west coast Weres flooded in to protect Brax’s team. The blacksmith and the demon nodded stoically to one another.
An enraged howl shredded the air. It emanated from a smallish, red-tinted Were whom I could have recognized in my sleep. As always, Hurricane Maya left a wake of utter destruction. She had, I noticed, learned to differentiate between allies and enemies without losing her trademark strategy of simply throwing her adversaries at one another. Gods sprawled around her like discarded old boxes. I couldn’t tell if they were dead, unconscious, or merely dazed.
Knowing Maya, I would bet that they won’t get up anytime soon, Marcus said.
“Good,” I answered, spitefully. “Fuck ʼem.”
Indeed, he agreed. Delano, however, remains at large.
“Yeah, where the fuck did he go?” I raised my gaze to scan the roof but Delano was nowhere in sight. “Maybe he fell through,” I said, half laughing. “We did put that hole in the skylight.”
He has probably returned to his quarters, said Marcus. I would not be surprised to know he has some tricks left.
“Dammit.” I stood still for a second too long, momentarily paralyzed by a bout of indecision. It felt wrong to leave the center of the fight behind like a general abandoning her troops. But I also knew without a doubt that since I was the one who had forged the spear in Carcerum, I needed to wield it. Anyone else would be crushed by Delano’s might.
I stepped forward to resume my journey to the temple, only to be stopped by a rising wall of screams. The combatants behind me either scrambled or were tossed aside to make room for the massive beast who hit me in the back like a semi-truck. I pitched forward and ba
rely managed to break my fall. A lumbering, rank shadow fell over me.
“Hello, you little witch,” jeered the ogre and his nose wrinkled in disdain. “Surely you must remember me.” He notched his knuckles under my chin. The skin stretched taut on my neck as he forced my head up. With his fist holding my jaw closed, the only reply I could muster was a decisive middle finger. He growled and increased the pressure. My jaw and the vertebrae at the back of my neck creaked audibly.
At that moment, a furry hand clamped down on the ogre’s greasy, bald skull. The razor-sharp claws raked over his skin and released a trail of foul blood to the air. He only had a moment of fleeting horror as the first hand’s mate latched onto the other side of his head and the two tore him in half from head to toe. Ogre blood sprayed across me in a fine mist. I closed my mouth and eyes tightly.
“What are you doing?” Maya roared. Her arms were bloody up to the shoulders with fur caked into it. “If I can remember my humanity on a daily basis, you can damn well save it.” She pushed me toward the temple. “Go, go, go! We can handle things on our own.” I picked myself up with a smile. She was very serious.
The sharp reports of a gun cut through the din. Steph and Frank broke through the ranks and dodged around a falling god. She grinned at me as she took pot shots without looking. “Vic!” she shouted. “Go after that living ball-sack. We have it covered here.”
“Tell him Frank says hello!” the vampire added.
Steph flashed him a warning look. “Don’t tell him that.”
More gunshots snapped through the air. Another god fell dead where it stood, killed by an unseen assassin. If I squinted hard at the temple door, I thought there might be a glimpse of Amber, holed up in her makeshift nest with a huge grin on her face.
“Don’t just stand there, Vic!” The newest voice made me whirl around. Jules leapt across the carnage and swung Brax’s hammer as if it rained money instead of fire. She had a look on her face that I’d only seen in the courtroom before—raw, intense conviction. Clearly, those two had enjoyed a few discussions about the philosophy of violence, and so far, it looked like Brax had won. “You heard Steph,” Jules shouted again. She made another mighty swing and a smallish woodland god, all leaves and delicate branches, catapulted out of her path. “Don’t let him get away.”
It seems as though your friends know best, after all, Marcus said.
“Okay, okay!” I gave the battlefield one last glance. My crew would hold it the hell down. Righty and Lefty, the two giants, hung on the outskirts and picked up any stragglers dumb enough to try to leave. “I get it,” I said with a grin. “They don’t need me.” Pride swelled in my chest. I was still smiling as I turned toward the temple and broke into a run.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
This time, instead of sneaking around like a hunted animal, I brought the tide of hell into Delano’s temple. No sooner had I taken the first two steps down the wide aisle of the center hall than the pillars on both the left and the right came to life. They spilled out of their uncomfortable, tightly bound formations and shambled toward me with obvious intent to fight. Fortunately, all that time in suspension had weakened them severely while I was at the top of my game.
The Solis spear blazed a vengeful trail and branded its permanent mark on every emaciated body. I kept a special eye out for the silver nymph with the hole in her face, whose terrified eyes I had gazed into not so long ago. The spear’s intrusion had half blinded her and she attacked with a scream of rage, one eye uselessly opaque.
I plucked her out of the air like a fly on the tine of a fork. Her body dropped to rest with the others, completely free at last of Delano’s control. I hardly considered myself a saint for dispatching so many of Delano’s thralls, but I wouldn’t lose sleep over it either. They had made their ultimate goals clear in no uncertain terms and it was my job to make sure those goals never reached fruition.
Still, there were a lot of those frail, desperate entities that scrambled madly for their second chance. A grotesquely beautiful arachnid goddess somehow managed to slip behind me and lunge at my back with her sharp, barbed front legs. The first sting burned on my neck but I was momentarily deafened by an inhuman death screech in my ear. As I turned and cringed away from the terrible shriek, Deacon pulled his claws from the thorax of the huge black spider.
He grinned at me and shook slime from his hands. “And that,” he said, “is why you keep me around.”
“I can think of a few other reasons,” I answered.
There was nothing left of the pillars now. The temple floor was strewn with bodies and slick with innumerable shades of blood. The last surviving holdout, an archaic, uncanny, almost-human creature, fled halfway down the hall before the door at the back banged open and Delano swooped out.
He snatched the god in his flabby clutches, seized it with his innumerable pairs of hands, and sucked its life force dry. Like so many others, the remaining husk was tossed aside. A moment later, each crooked, jutted limb began to elongate and elevate his disturbing corpulence too high in the air. The limbs were imbalanced in strength and perhaps too weak to support his bulk. He swayed dangerously atop his new supports and maneuvered to face us. Deacon and I gaped at him, a reaction he mistook for shock and awe.
“Power,” he said. His voice was uneven and warbled a little, bordering on incomprehensible. Whenever he spoke, a chaotic mix of teeth flashed in his mouth. “Strength.” He raised his arms like bristles across his body. “I can feel it. I can taste it. So close. So sweet.”
“So fucked,” I said. “You know as well as I do that it’s time to end this madness. And I’m right here, right now.”
The god’s many eyes narrowed into glittering slivers. His face had lost all sense of structure. It was now merely a mess of features squashed together in a way that would have been extremely unsettling if I hadn’t been so determined to kill him from the get-go.
“Very well,” he declared at long last. “As you wish. Let us settle this petty, meaningless score.”
The whole time, he’d gradually inched forward and now lashed out with one of his huge new legs. I dodged its cruel sweep only to have to leap aside again as it impacted the wall. The impression it left in the stone was deep and wide. He was terrifyingly fast now, as well as terrifying in general. I honestly didn’t want to go near him, but I knew I had to. The tip of my spear needed to bury itself all the way down into that black heart.
After a few minutes during which we danced around one another, Delano finally seized an opportunity to attack and the impetus forced the air violently from my lungs. I severed a few of his legs as he charged, and the uneven distribution of weight finally began to hinder him. He now walked with a crooked gait and jerked around like a broken marionette.
Before I could anticipate his next move, he reared back and flames brimmed at the corners of his mouth. He spat them directly at Deacon and me. I threw myself out of the way, not at all fazed that I landed prone on the floor of the temple. I expected one of those snaky limbs to wrap around me at any moment and braced myself to slice straight through the flesh. But Delano had chosen to take Deacon out of the game and he did so with one swift blow.
“Deacon!” I couldn’t keep myself from calling to him as he slumped onto the cold floor. Delano pushed his former Apprenti away like a pile of trash. “Fuck you! I’ll make you answer for what you did to him.”
“What I did to him?” The monster made the closest approximation to a smile that he could. “Darling, I improved him. You should thank me for that skin, those horns, and his increased longevity. All he had to do was admit that I’ve been right all along.” He tucked his head into his tank-like body and launched himself toward me like an artillery shell. I scored his flesh as he passed.
“You made him an Apprenti!” I yelled. “You took everything from him and made him empty promises.” I charged at the god’s grotesque form and hurled the spear from a distance. It stuck hard in a flesh crease on his side and more grape-hued blood tric
kled from the wound. The spear disengaged at my silent call and returned to my hand. “And for what, Delano? So he could defy you for real in the end anyway? Nice plan.”
Delano frowned. “Humans are weak,” he hissed contemptuously. “The earthworms of the universe. No magic, no strength, no speed. Nothing to set them apart from every other completely trivial race that’s ever been created. I threw away the dreary chains of humanity so that I might have a chance to elevate myself and learn more about how to fix the regrettable circumstances of my birth. I yearned to be something greater.”
I motioned to his whole face as I danced barely of his reach. “I’ll be honest with you, man. This whole hybrid thing you have going on isn’t actually greater. You went too far. You crossed like fifty lines. There’s no way to get this back the way it was.”
“Silence!” he bellowed. The array of hands snapped out again in an attempt to snatch me. “I wanted everything for Deacon. I would have treated him like my own, as Lorcan did for me. He had potential to learn the ways.” He paused, then smiled. “That’s not true. I wanted to hurt you as badly as possible. And I did, so it wasn’t a total failure. That’s my favorite thing about humans.” He smirked. “They have so many soft spots.”
“Shut up!” Even the mention of Deacon’s ordeal still threw me into a rage. “What do you know about pain and weakness, you scumbag fucker? You were never fucking human. That’s why you could give Lorcan your heart in the first place. Because you didn’t need it. You were already empty.”
If I had expected Delano to be offended or hurt, it was a naïve hope. He beamed with pride instead. “Perhaps that is true,” he admitted. “And what a wonderful Apprenti I was. Lorcan couldn’t have asked for better, really.”
“That’s funny,” I said. “Because we both know what happened to him.”
A spark of anger flashed in Delano’s eyes. He ran at me on those creepy, multijointed legs and tried to sweep me forward into a hug of death. His teeth gnashed relentlessly like a portable meat grinder that simply waited to chew me up. I didn’t doubt for a second that he’d swallow me whole if he caught me.
