Birthright - Book 2 of the Legacy Series (An Urban Fantasy Novel) (32 page)

“Nice little slice of paradise you got here. All you need are a couple of humpin’ bunnies and you can have one scenic spring time up in here.”

You know that sinking feeling you get when someone has been in your house and messed stuff up? Like, their very presence was enough to forever taint the purity of your most inner sanctum? I felt violated as I watched Crowley’s ugly face grin like the bastard he was.

If Tenzin felt the same, he didn’t show it. The man had the same serene composure he’d always assume in tense situations. Crowley extracted a large bullet casing from his trouser pocket and threw it casually over his shoulder.

“Just in case y’all were wondering,” he said smugly, “it was the little weasel that opened up your hidey hole.”

“You used the energy you stole from me to open the portal,” said Tenzin calmly.

“And Bingo was his name-o,” replied Crowley. “Only question now is what to do.”

“Erik.” Tenzin had his hand on my shoulder. “Please step backwards. This is my fight.”

“But I-”

“No arguments, please. I have the advantage here,” he insisted. Tenzin had that twinkle in his eyes that reassured me that he was confident.

And this was one man who was rarely wrong.

I backed away, far enough to see everything and not be caught in any explosions, but still close enough to strike. Djinn’s energy spells provided good long-distance support if needed, and if Tenzin was in danger I’d step in no matter what he said.

When Crowley saw me retreat, he grasped the situation.

“Wait, wait, so lemme get this straight,” he sneered at Tenzin who stood rooted in front of him. “I got no more weapons up my sleeve. Hell, I ain’t even got a sleeve no more.” He tore off the remnants of his silk shirt. “Just plain old me left. But you ain’t got much either. Your powers don’t work on me, old man, and all the kung-fu fightin’ in the world ain’t gonna be enough to bring me down. So, what the hell kinda advantage you think you got? Face it, buddy, we’re at what they call an impasse.”

It was Tenzin’s turn to chuckle. It wasn’t a nice sound. He removed his jacket, letting it curl around his backside. Half of it was torn anyway.

As he chuckled, I heard the popping of bones as he flexed his muscles. Veins throbbed around his thin arms that were once laced with thick muscles. His aged body rippled as it revealed the remnant of a once-ripped physique. But despite his age and apparent frailty, Tenzin went from old man to grandpa-on-steroids. At first, I thought it was the bull deva at work again, but I didn’t sense any energy from Tenzin.

This was no magic - this was just pure physical badassery. Scar tissue gleamed under the sun as its rays reflected from his back, shoulders and chest. Still, Tenzin flexed his body. I felt foolish for thinking that Tenzin needed my help. I even felt foolish when I thought he was too weak to chase after Crowley. Even the villain took a step back, with his mouth slightly agape.

“Did you really believe that you could just walk in the Ryugyu’s most sacred place and pillage it to your evil heart’s content?” Tenzin’s voice had an aura of power and dominion to it. Crowley’s mouth moved, but Tenzin’s voice boomed again, drowning any sound the abjurer might have made.

“I will show you my true calling, Alastair Crowley. I will show you the true power of an exorcist.”

Light exploded from Tenzin like a flare going off. He stretched his arms apart, palms facing outwards. The light became an infernal blaze. Fire erupted from him, covering the exorcist and the surrounding vegetation, and seemed to reach the clouds above. And yet, there was no scorching and no burning. That is, until Tenzin brought his hands together and pushed outwards, toward a stunned Crowley. Flames twisted into the shape of a tiger as the deva rocketed toward the villain. The area was soon a sea of flames. Grass, trees, soil – all became ash. Even the sky darkened as clouds formed overhead. I heard Tenzin’s cry and the tiger deva’s roar as one sound. The fire raged, emitting its own scream. Red flames became yellow, and then white, until I couldn’t see anything. The last thing I heard was the roar of fire, and I smelled the acrid odor of ash.

Then, there was just fire, burning with the intensity of a thousand suns.

The flames receded, and I could feel again. The landscape was scorched, but my senses picked up a blanket of energy coming from the very core of this pocket universe. The soil repaired itself, and tiny green seedlings sprouted from the ground. The trees were regaining their brown color again as their stumps grew into tall trunks. The plane was slowly, but surely, re-growing into its previous splendor. Tenzin was in the middle of a large patch of ash, still jet-black from his previous spell. The snake deva was wrapped around him – steam hissing out as red patches of skin reverted back to their tanned state. The tail of the snake deva shot out, reaching towards me. It wrapped around me and I understood. The tiger deva’s flames attacked the body and soul. Only a deva can fully heal a deva’s power, and my healing abilities would only heal my body, not my soul.

The process took half a second, but for that short time I felt part of Tenzin’s spiritual connection to God.

I can’t describe it. How do you describe something that you cannot even begin to understand? But I can say this - whatever Tenzin was connected to was so far from human reach that it is enough to make you cry with its sheer beauty, and wish you were dead in utter desperation at never achieving that perfection. Not even in a thousand immortal lifetimes, with all the power in the universe.

Then again, I suppose that’s why they call him… it… God.

Tenzin cut off the connection, making the snake deva disappear. I grabbed Djinn’s blade and sliced my own palm against its sharp edge. The pain was real, it was human. The experience with the divine would probably haunt me for the rest of my life, but I could ask Tenzin later. Right now, I needed to be here in this reality, where imperfect and damaged beings run the show.

In front of Tenzin was a large, black husk that was making the slightest of movements. The Asian man, still retaining his calm but domineering composure, simply observed as Crowley rose up like a zombie. His skin was charred and parts of his hair had been burned off, leaving him with bald spots, but otherwise, he appeared as solid as ever.

“That,” he rasped, “was somethin’ else.” He laughed maniacally. “Can we do it again, please?”

“You are damaged, Mr. Crowley,” said Tenzin with a sneer. “Perhaps your specialization did not account for magic that damages your soul as well as your body.”

“Oh, shut up,” shot back Crowley. Tenzin’s comment clearly pushed his buttons. “I ain’t got no soul. That’s just a fairy tale. All I know is I ain’t hurt, much. So, is that the best you could do, Mr. Exorcist?”

“Not quite.”

Tenzin placed his hands together in prayer and energy flowed from his body. Static crackled around him, producing thin bolts of electricity.

“I will show you the most powerful of devas in its unrestrained form,” he said as he made a circular motion with his arms until his right palm faced outwards and bent high, while the left palm faced outward with the fingers pointed downwards.

I remembered that pose from one of our training sessions. Tenzin had explained the concept of opposites and how one can generate energy from the harmony between the two. My senses saw that mass of power around Tenzin break in two, each vibrating separately, before coalescing back together into a separate form of energy. I knew that pattern. My mind brought up the memory of my sister explaining the concept of electricity for a physics class to her dumber brother. Something about electricity being the product of positive and negative charges rubbing against each other. At the time, I had made a stupid joke using the word “rubbing” in a less than appropriate manner.

But as I saw Tenzin’s process, I couldn’t help but notice the similarity. Both memories were about the same concept, opposites. Positive and negative – might as well just call them Yin and Yang.

Electricity crackled around Tenzin. A lightning bolt descended upon him, filling the air with the smell of ozone and the sharp crack of lightning. The blue-white lightning bolt arced from Tenzin over the dark clouds that had assembled. The entire sky was dark, with one continuous bolt racing through it.

Behind Tenzin, lightning bent and twisted, transforming into a titanic, horrific Chinese dragon with its head reared up, complete with a pair of long incisors, whiskers that trailed sparks into the clouds, and horns that branched into a million lightning bolts and disappeared through the clouds. Its long body snaked behind Tenzin and all the way up. It was as wide as the entire field, and it planted a pair of claws around Tenzin, each of its three talons as large as a tree trunk. Everywhere it touched, it scorched. Grass and bark sizzled in a shower of blue-white sparks. The dragon dwarfed everything by comparison. I couldn’t see the rest of its body, which had disappeared beyond my vision. The full length of its long serpentine body reached beyond the sky and disappeared into the clouds. It seemed that the lightning dragon was too large to stretch comfortably in this pocket universe. The entire beast was formed from white-blue lightning, like the personification of the most horrendous storm that ever existed.

“The embodiment of harmony between Yin and Yang,” boomed Tenzin’s voice above the loud crackle of lightning that had become the very nature of the sky. “The dragon deva!”

The dragon deva roared, and more lightning descended, bestowing destruction everywhere it met. Crowley cowered in front of it, physically trembling.

“What are you?” he screamed.

“I am the messenger of
Kami-sama
. And by his power, you shall be defeated,” roared Tenzin. It didn’t sound like him anymore. He was completely taken over by the deva, or perhaps, by God itself.

How could I tell? Because I felt godlike powers emanating from him – or from the deity to which he was connected. I didn’t know if he had become a god or an avatar or whatever, but I could tell that Tenzin had stopped being human and had transcended into something beyond us by calling upon the power of his god.

Crowley, on the other hand, stood defiantly despite his trembling. “Every fiber of my being is telling me to run away, that I can’t beat you,” he said. A psychotic smile stretched across his lips. “But I wanna know.” His hands squeezed into claws as he looked at his tense fingers. “I wanna know what happens after I decay a god.”

Tenzin roared and turned his body sideways, his right hand straight and pointing at Crowley, with the other pointing at the opposite direction. The dragon deva rose to the clouds and descended upon Crowley with a roar that shook the earth. Crowley let out an ecstatic scream and intercepted the deva with both hands.

The resulting explosion could have rivaled a nuke.

I stabbed Djinn into the ground, burying it to the hilt, and braced myself. Debris went flying and the blast slammed against my body, pushing me away. I clung to my handhold and hoped that the entire plane wouldn’t be destroyed.

The dragon deva’s roar reverberated throughout the plane. The vibration blew away the debris.

There was no crater or overturned earth. Tenzin stood rooted in the same spot, still displaying his calm demeanor. But he wasn’t standing proud. The toll of slinging around heavyweight power like that must have caught up with him. A billow of dust rose where Crowley once stood, and my senses felt nothing.

No deva, no Crowley.

The spell must have vaporized him.

Tenzin looked at me, and I gave him a thumbs-up. He returned the gesture.

“I want one of those,” I called out with a smile as I dug out the sword. Tenzin’s usual smile returned, and once again the man I knew had returned.

Crowley was gone forever, Tenzin was back, and I couldn’t be happier. I felt like we had finally won. It had taken me sixteen years to figure out the evil plot and defeat the bad guys, but it was all over now. I could return home and see Gil again. I could introduce her to Tenzin. Heck, maybe we’d be a happy family like I always wanted.

Only difference would be that Tenzin wasn’t an evil sociopath.

The Asian man was about to say something in return, but Crowley, his skin burned black and his body covered in blood, burst forward towards him. He drove something small and shiny into the old man’s gut. Tenzin could have avoided that with his eyes closed, but the strain was too much for him. I understood just how injured he was when Crowley drove his fist into his face. Tenzin hunched over and intercepted a second strike aimed for his face. He twisted, smashing his forehead into Crowley’s nose, breaking it, and kept spinning. Crowley’s arm snapped as he was sent flying into the air.

“Tenzin,” I screamed. “Use the snake.”

Tenzin’s aura flared and I expected to see the familiar brilliant white cobra. He extracted a penknife from his gut and blood streamed out, soaking his clothes.

But the snake deva never showed.

“I cannot use it,” he said as he fell to his knees. I ran to his side. My mind began to panic, and I searched for something, anything, to help Tenzin.

“Why not?” I asked.

He looked at me, a twinkle in his eyes. “It is not God’s will,” he said with a tone of simplicity. His aura flared with enough force to throw me backwards. “Erik, please back away from me.” His voice had an air of finality to it that scared me. “Please stay back and do not interfere, whatever you see.”

“What?” My voice was high-pitched, and a tear trickled down my cheek. Tenzin smiled, his eyes full of love and benevolence. I found myself scrambling backwards, as if some invisible force was controlling me.

“Alastair Crowley.”

Tenzin’s voice was back to ethereal deity mode. Crowley stood, clutching his nose as blood streamed out from between his fingers. “You are the vilest of beings. You chase after innocents for nefarious ends, you trample upon the Ryugyu Temple’s most sacred ground, and you wounded a vessel of the great
Kami-sama
. Your very nature is twisted and malevolent, and I shall bring upon you divine justice.”

The Buddha of light formed around Tenzin. It appeared more solid than usual, and was composed of a golden aura, corporeal enough to compress the vegetation beneath it. Blood from Tenzin’s wound mixed with the apparition, slowly darkening it. I saw Tenzin clenching his teeth, but the deity’s will was stronger. The Buddha grew darker and darker, until it seemed a solid gold statue encompassed Tenzin. It grew in size, towering over both Tenzin and Crowley. The sheer power of it was enough to dwarf anything I’d met before.