Destroyer Rising (17 page)

“Where?” I asked, and then I saw the dip in the
earth. We walked forward, and where the bridge ended, high up on a
cliff, a steady decline fell away. At the bottom waited another of
the impossibly long castle-like structures.

“Be wary. We will not be left alone.”

I turned back to the bridge. “Should I drop it into
the fire?”

“It is tempting,” Mike said. “Should some of us need
a path back, it would not be advisable.”

Mike said a lot without actually speaking his fears.
If he died, or if I died, everyone else would be trapped. Some part
of me wondered if that was really true. The Ghost Pack could come
and go as they wished, but would that change after darkfall? Or
would the rise of Prosperine change the Burning Lands forever?

A dark shadow zipped over the Burning Sea and
vanished beneath the cliff we stood upon. A massive claw hooked
over the edge of the rock, and Jasper’s long neck followed it up.
He folded in on himself until nothing remained but the furball
rolling up to my feet.

I held my hands out and he jumped into them again.
This time, the vision showed me the dark-touched we’d met before,
walking across the bridge behind us, but something was following
him, as well.

“It’s the same bastard from before,” I said as the
vision faded. “Something’s behind him, though, moving in the
shadows.”

“Strange,” Mike said. “I do not understand his
motivation. He doesn’t have the power to challenge us on his
own.”

“Intel perhaps,” Carter said.

“Let us hope you are wrong,” Mike said with a long
look over his shoulder. “Perhaps whatever follows him is no more an
ally to the dark-touched as to us. Enough delay. Come, we make our
way into the land of thieves. Be wary of anyone we meet. Things are
not what they seem.”

With that, he stepped onto the steep slope and began
a long slide down the rocky face.

I watched him until he came to a halt before a stone
bridge. “I guess this is one way to die,” I muttered, and followed
him down.

We made it down without any broken ankles or
gravel-marred faces, though there was one casualty. I dusted off my
jeans and frowned at the hole in the knee.

“Damn. I liked these jeans.”

Mike waited on the other side of the quaint stone
bridge. I looked over the edge and groaned. What appeared to be a
never-ending chasm vanished into absolute darkness far below.

I walked the rest of the way across the bridge
without looking down. Instead, I focused on the turrets and giant
stones of the castle wall before us.

“Damian.”

I looked up at Mike the Demon.

“Look again into the chasm.”

I glanced down, surprised to find I’d crossed the
bridge already. When I looked back at the chasm, something
slithered. A grating series of clicks echoed up from the darkness.
It wasn’t nearly as deep as I’d thought, which meant whatever was
clicking at us was far closer than I wanted it to be. “What the
hell?”

“This place is filled with things best not disturbed.
We make for the gate, and beyond that we will encounter the next
chasm. There are many chasms here in the seventh fortress.”

The earth shook beneath us, and I followed closer to
Mike. We moved quickly to the gate. This one sparked like the
first, but Mike did not slow his approach. He walked into it, and
vanished.

“It’s not physically there,” Sarah said. “He should
have explained that, but he’s in a hurry.” She followed the demon
through.

“Oh,” I said. “Sure, now everything makes sense.”

“Come on,” Maggie said, dragging me by the sleeve of
my T-shirt. “You can grumble later.”

Vicky and Happy stepped through next. I walked beside
Maggie. Lightning and power licked at us, and I could have sworn I
felt a jolt of shock, and then nothing. We were through, and the
others waited in a modest stone corridor.

It looked familiar. Too familiar. “This is the Royal
Court of Faerie,” I said.

“An approximation of it, yes,” Mike said.

The massive statues here were black obsidian instead
of the cold marble of those in Faerie. Souls wandered freely in the
halls, golden life given purpose in the hollow fortress.

I looked to either side when we reached the center.
It was a perfect copy of the Royal Court. It felt like the center
of an empty stadium, circled in stone benches and evenly spaced,
ornately carved thrones. Only Glenn’s throne was different here. It
bore the head of a dragon and not the horns I remembered.

“You’ve done well.”

I spun to face the speaker. The dark-touched stood at
the entrance we’d come through moments before.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you go farther.” His wings
unfurled, stretching toward the roof of the fortress. His fangs
grew longer and thicker as we watched.

“Let’s kill him,” Jimmy snarled. The wolf shifted in
a heartbeat, and pounded across the stones.

“Jimmy!” Maggie shouted. “Stop!”

The dark-touched barely moved. A quick swipe of his
wing talon tore a hole through the ghost’s side.

Jimmy screamed and fell to the stone floor.

I ground my teeth and unholstered the pepperbox,
taking aim as the vampire leaned down to the werewolf. Two quick
shots drew his focus, and he glanced at the holes in his chest.

Clearly bullets weren’t much good against the
dark-touched.

“You’re a fool, as is your master.”

It may not have damaged him as much as I’d hoped, but
at least I had his attention. I let my aura flow out, calling to
any dead thing I could find. I smiled when the whole world
responded.

The dark-touched stretched his wings and crouched
down. “Come, let me relieve you of your—guck—”

His words cut off into a gargled mess. A blade
appeared in his face, wide enough to have cut through his throat at
the same time it split his nose. The bloody silver vanished, only
to be used as a scythe, sending the dark-touched’s head bouncing
across the floor.

A reptilian form stepped into the light, grabbing a
section of the dark-touched’s wing to wipe her blade. I’d seen her
before. I knew her face.

“Utukku?” I asked.

She raised her scaly hand in greeting. Her yellow
eyes glistened in the light of the crimson sun.

“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in the
courts?”

She walked closer, her thin reptilian lips barely
raised in a smile. I glanced at Mike. He didn’t move. Neither did
the wolves, nor Jasper.

Utukku was close enough now for us to see the subtle
break in the color around her eyes. Nothing else in the room moved.
This was wrong. She wouldn’t be here without her glamour. She’d
remain hidden, she’d …

The strike came fast, a quick lunge that almost
skewered me. She missed and turned the blow into a slicing attack,
aimed at my leg.

“
Impadda!”
I didn’t know what would happen,
but when the option is risking an art without a ley line or getting
your leg cut off without protest, you take chances.

Instead of the electric blue crackle I expected, a
dome as black as the night flashed up from my hands. Utukku’s blade
shattered on the stone-like surface. I released the incantation and
drew the pepperbox in one motion.

No more chances. I pulled the second trigger.
Utukku’s head split open with the boom of the pistol. No smoke rose
here, only the echoing blast and my throbbing palm told me the gun
had fired.

Utukku collapsed, and her body changed. Something
smooth and red and squishy replaced her on the floor of the
fortress.

My allies began moving again. Maggie ran to Jimmy’s
side, helping him up and inspecting the hole in his stomach. The
gap looked translucent.

“Vicky,” Maggie said. “Can you please help him?”

She nodded quickly and knelt beside Jimmy, holding
her hands up to form a small circle. The wound closed as I watched
her work. How much had the kid seen as a Harrower in the Burning
Lands? I couldn’t stop the frown that crossed my face.

“Fuck,” Mike spat. “How did you kill it? It had us
all.”

“I shot it.”

Mike frowned. “Unlikely. Gunpowder doesn’t work
here.”

I dumped the shells out and reloaded, taking aim at
the body and firing again. The pistol jumped, and the boom echoed
throughout the hall. The body jiggled from the impact. I started to
break open the pepperbox when Mike put his hand on my arm.

“Don’t. Just aim and shoot again.”

“I don’t have any rounds left.”

“Just … try.”

I slowly pulled the trigger until it clicked, and the
gun boomed again, tearing flesh from the gelatinous body before us.
“Oh.”

“So what’s it shooting?” Vicky asked as she leaned
over the corpse. “It definitely shot something.”

Mike nodded. “This entire realm is at Damian’s
command. It is firing what it can, even if it is the very air
around us, condensed and mixed with fragments of stone.”

I stared at the pepperbox for a moment before
holstering it. “That wasn’t Utukku.”

“It was a Geryon,” Mike said. “An imposter.”

A small knot of angst untied itself in my chest. I
remembered Utukku’s story about her people’s genocide by
necromancers. A small part of me feared I’d added to the toll.

“What the hell is a Geryon?” I asked.

“A shapeshifter,” Sarah said. “An imposter that can
take any form.”

“They are not usually so bold as to attack a group,”
Mike said. “They are subtle and vicious and terrible.”

“Enough,” Carter said, toeing the body with his foot.
“We need to move on. Darkfall is almost upon us.”

We fell into a quiet march, following the one-time
Alpha of the River Pack. The werewolves led us into the next
corridor, leaving the Geryon’s body behind. Bubbles took up a
steady trot beside me, her fiery ears rotating at every sound and
breeze.

***

The statues diminished in the next hall, perhaps only
a foot taller than I was. The details lessened, breaking down into
abstract forms and bulges, where the giants before had been
intricately made.

“Why are these so different?” I asked, studying the
smooth lines of the nearest sculpture.

“You slew the Geryon before it completed this room,”
Mike said. “Come, keep up with the wolves.”

I looked ahead and realized how far out Carter and
Maggie were. Jimmy and the others trailed behind them while Mike
and I took up the rear. My pace quickened. I felt like I was nearly
running, but Mike still had an easy stride. It was unnerving and a
blatant reminder we were entirely different beings.

“That creeps me out,” I said, watching his feet take
smaller steps, yet cover more ground than me.

He glanced down and smiled. “It’s an old trick. I can
only do it here, at the inner circles.”

“Why?”

Mike shrugged. “I don’t know, honestly.” He nodded
and pointed ahead. “We’re at the next chasm.”

Carter and the others had stopped before what looked
like an old bridge made of wooden planks and rope.

“Will it hold?” Carter asked when we wandered
closer.

Mike frowned. “Yes, it has held for thousands of
years, but I don’t understand this.”

“What do you mean?” Carter asked.

“This is the natural state of the chasm. There should
be a Geryon here, an imposter of some sort, but I see nothing.”

I looked out over the chasm. It was a short walk
across the pit, maybe twenty yards at most, but infinite darkness
waited below. I shivered and looked away. My fingers flexed on my
pepperbox. I wanted to shoot anything that so much as blinked.

“We should go while we have the chance,” Maggie said.
“We don’t have time to bicker about this.” She struck off across
the bridge.

“Maggie, wait!” Carter hissed and reached for his
wife. “We don’t know if it’s safe.” By the time he’d finished
talking, Maggie was across the chasm and gesturing for the rest of
us to follow.

Maggie gave Carter a sharp wave and he sighed. “She’s
usually right,” he said. The werewolf walked forward with long
strides, crossing the bridge in a matter of seconds. Bubbles
followed with Jimmy, sniffing at the ropes as she closed the
distance to the wolves.

“It’s not even shifting a little bit,” I said. The
ropes and boards didn’t move an inch. I expected to see some kind
of sway or give or an indication of motion.

Vicky and Happy went next.

“It won’t move,” Mike said. “Each bridge over the
chasms is carved from the flesh of an ancient titan. There are few
beings that can manipulate it.”

“Like an Old God? The bridge is made from an Old
God?”

Mike nodded. “That is the simplest answer, though
there is more to it. Let’s join the others.”

I stepped onto the bridge behind Mike, still
expecting to feel some sort of movement, but the planks beneath my
feet felt solid as stone.

At the other side, we moved forward across a rocky
plain. It wasn’t long before another chasm appeared, but this
crossing wouldn’t be so simple.

“I don’t see anything,” Maggie said. She gestured at
the endless plain before turning back to Mike.

“This is the next chasm,” Mike said, his voice
growing quiet. “How I wish it were not.”

“What’s wrong?” Sarah asked.

Mike flickered and wavered in front of us.

“Mike?” I said.

“We must pass through Nightmare,” Mike said, casting
a shaky look back at the seventh fortress.

I followed his line of sight to the distant shadow
that cut into the horizon. It didn’t feel like we’d walked that
far. This place screwed with my perceptions at almost every moment,
and that made it more dangerous that I could imagine.

By the time I turned back to Mike, the smooth plain
was no more. Darkness closed in around us before it exploded into
violent life.