On Wings of Chaos (Revenant Wyrd Book 5) (25 page)

She saw a blond fallen stalking toward the wall, gathering in its hands a massive ball of wyrd. It hurled it even as Joya lashed out at him with a ball of her own pink wyrd. She struck the fallen true, and he tumbled sideways into the sword of a scared soldier who happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Joya hadn’t been fast enough. The black ball of wyrd struck the wall, and exploded. Stone and mortar rained down around them.

“
Retreat!”
she heard someone yell behind her, and recognized the voice as Cianna. Joya backed up, but she just couldn’t leave all these people here. Mag had been there somewhere, and Shelara was still lying next to the wall. She didn’t know if the ooslebed was still alive, but she couldn’t leave her, and Joya knew what this meant. The wall had been breached; the dwarves could make it inside.

The gray mist that had been protecting her shuddered and then dissolved before her eyes. Joya stood her ground. The fallen stalked closer. Joya pumped more wyrd into her shield and resolved herself to either die there protecting those within, or kill this fallen.

The fallen called its wyrd, but Joya didn’t wait. She lashed out with her own pure, unfiltered wyrd. The torrent she called sizzled and burned the air, cutting a black swathe across the ground and striking at the fallen. It launched its own wyrd at her, but Joya’s attack was making a mark. She felt emboldened, strengthened by her purpose of protecting the keep and those that resided in it.

The fallen’s wyrd started leaking through her defenses, and she took a moment to strengthen her shields, her wyrded attack falling silent even as the angel’s black wyrd surrounded her in a burning ring of midnight fire.

Joya played on it. She motioned with her hands, gathered the black wyrd to her. As it formed into her hands, it changed from black to pink. She pumped more of her wyrd into it until the color of her energy spilled out onto the ground, claiming the ring of dark fire as her own, changing it pink, and sprouting up like a wall of fiery protection around her.

And then she blasted out with all of her might, throwing all of the wyrded fire that she could at the fallen. Through the waves of heat she watched the fallen try to take flight, and she thought one of the darkest things she could.

Hard for birds to fly with clipped wings.
Her face twisted with the effort, but she put all of her body behind the motion. She pushed with her mind and curled her fingers up. The pink fire obeyed, lashing up and igniting the wings of the fallen. The angel let out a scream like nothing Joya had ever heard before, and the clouds themselves seemed to tremble, but it worked.

In a ball of pink fire the angel fell back to the courtyard, smoldering and injured greater than Joya could have imagined. Now it was Joya who had the power. She stalked toward the fallen, gathering a sword from a soldier’s dead grip as she came.

“So you want to reach the Ever After?” Joya asked, coming to a halt before the fallen. The angel’s wings were burned to nothing more than bone, and still the pink fire clung to her, fueled by the angel’s wyrd. “Then let me send you there.”

Joya swung the sword above her head and put all of her strength into the downward arch, burying it deep in the angel’s skull.

The fallen crumbled to the ground, twitching as her life seeped in crimson rivers from her body.

Cianna didn’t know which way to turn. There was Mag, smashing into the wall, and then Joya stirring to wake. She had a moment to cast a barrier of wythes up in front of her cousin before another fallen attacked the wall.

Joya blasted out with her wyrd, knocking the angel into the sword of a soldier who had been standing there like a statue, wanting to strike the angel, but pissing his pants in fear at the prospect of what might happen if he did. The decision had been taken from him, and moments later he was shaking the injured form of the angel off his sword. But the fallen wasn’t dead.

“
Retreat!”
she yelled, but no one seemed to be able to hear or answer her. A portion of the wall was down, and soon the dwarves would be on them.

Cianna saw the soldier who had inadvertently injured the angel backing away toward a barracks, but the angel was faster. With a beat of his wings, the fallen was on the soldier, burying his teeth in the man’s neck. There was a gurgle of a scream, and blood squirted out of the man’s neck, painting his chest in ruby red.

The fallen fed.

It was from death that the rephaim got his power, and it was in death that Cianna got hers. She felt the soul of the soldier slipping away. Her eyes shifted, and now she saw a world lit up by wyrd, by death.

Spirits stood all around the courtyard, lost, their deaths having come so swiftly that they didn’t even realize they were dead. But there was something here they could still do for her.

Cianna drew on them, pulling their silvery wyrd to herself like a weapon. She fashioned it into a sword and dashed at the rephaim, now crouched on the ground, feasting the soldier’s neck.

She jumped at the angel’s back, burying the blade of souls deep within him. She pumped her necromancy into the souls, expanding them and feeding them all the anger she could.
These are the ones that killed you!
she thought.
Make them pay.

The sword exploded, throwing her backwards from the rephaim. She landed in a painful heap on the ground.

The necromancy blew outward in a sphere, held its position for a moment in a swirling orb of death, and then retreated to the body of the rephaim. He stood, shook himself off like a wet dog, and turned to Cianna, his face painted with blood. He smiled.

“Thanks for the boost,” he cooed at her. He took a step closer, his body rippling with muscles under the black toga he wore. “And from the lady necromancer herself. Care to join us?” He held out a hand to her, but she could feel the souls inside of him.

Goddess,
she thought.
Help me.

Cianna closed her eyes and felt a power she had never known before infuse her mind. It was as if an awareness joined with her, an idea of what she needed to do. Cianna reached out with her mind, felt the streams of death flowing through the rephaim, repairing his injuries. She grabbed at them with every ounce of her mind and twisted, turning them backwards, undoing the healing they had done.

She heard the rephaim halt in his approach.

“What’s . . . happening?” it gasped.

She opened her eyes and saw blood running from his mouth, from the hole in his chest where the soldier had accidentally stabbed him, from several other wounds. Cianna dug deeper as she pushed to her feet, empowered by her success. She twisted her hands and watched the angel fall to one knee, his fists clenched at his side.

“I’m stronger than you!” he raged at her. “You have no power over me.”

And then she yanked her hands apart and felt the death power inside of him tear apart as well. His wings slipped from his back like a tree sliding down a slope. His skin loosened, cracked apart, sloughed from his bones to pool on the ground at his knees.

He opened his mouth to speak again, but his jaw fell from its hinges, clattering onto his chest, and then pulling away from the muscle and shattered on the ground. In moments the angel was reduced to nothing but a skeleton, kneeling in a pile of his own soupy skin.

Jovian heard the yells in his room.

“What’s that?” Angelica hollered to him from the common room.

“I don’t know!” Jovian said, dashing toward his window. A large blast lit the glass and he stumbled, falling into the wall and slipping gracelessly to the floor. He stood on wobbly knees and made his way to the window.

“Fallen!” he yelled to Angelica. “Outside!”

“We have to go to them!” she yelled.

“No time. Attack from the windows.”

The smell of burning flesh stirred Mag from her sleep. She was surrounded by a field of white, but it didn’t take her long to remember what had happened. What she couldn’t figure out was where the smoke was coming from. It was a smell that terrified her beyond reason.

With a burst of wyrd she pushed herself from the snow and saw the carnage before her. Two fallen were still ambulatory, while two others lay dead at the feet of Joya and Cianna. But it wasn’t the fallen she worried about just then, because Mag saw the source of the smoke. A hole the size of a barracks was blasted out of the wall, and she could hear the war cries of approaching trolls and dwarves.

“Goddess help us,” Mag whispered. She formed a ball of wyrd in her hand and spoke into it. She launched it to the center of the courtyard and willed it to expand, to trumpet her orders to the soldiers.

“Mind the walls! Archers, prepare your bows. Soldiers, to the breach!”

People started obeying immediately. Above her she could hear the twang of bow strings, this time facing out toward the coming threat rather than in toward the angels. Soldiers scurried around in the courtyard, making good for the breach.

A fallen stalked toward them, but a blast of red wyrd from a second-story window struck it in the back, knocking it flat on its face in the snow. It was female, with flowing red hair and a pretty black dress. It batted its wings and was in the air in moments, wheeling toward the open window.

“Goddess, may my wyrd fly true!” Mag said and let loose a stream of green fire at the fallen. It ignited its dress as if she had touched a torch to hay. The flames licked up the folds of the dress, eating away at the blackened feathers. As the angel started spiraling toward the earth, a blast of purple wyrd struck it from another window on the second floor, and the angel exploded.

Cianna and Joya were on the last angel, and Mag concentrated on the breach. She swung to the left, climbing the stairs two at a time.

“STEADY!” she yelled. “THEY COME!”