Page of Swords (The Demon's Apprentice Book 2) (32 page)

“Kill them!” Darth Fedora yelled, breaking the moment.

Vampires and hopefuls ran toward us, but they never made it. As they started our way, I saw a glow start from Wanda’s pentacle, then spread from her entire body and the whole room was suddenly lit up with a blinding white light. When it faded, all that was left of the vampires was their clothes, and the vampire groupies were screaming in agony on the floor.

“What was that?” Shade asked.

“Faith,” I said softly. “All her hopes rewarded, and her fears quieted in the presence of that which her Goddess sent to comfort and aid her.” Again, words that were not mine were coming out of my mouth, but they still felt right. “However unworthy the vessel,” I whispered. Somehow, I got the impression someone was laughing at that, but it wasn’t me.

“Can I get a ‘Blessed be’?” Lucas joked in a shaky voice.

“Amen, brother,” Steve said.

“Keep an eye on them,” I told Steve as I headed over to Wanda.

I pointed the paintball gun at the chains holding Wanda’s hands over her head and pulled the trigger. Links shattered under Wanda’s weight, and she fell into my arms. I laid her gently down as Lucas knelt beside her. Tears ran down his face as he saw the extent of her injuries.

“I prayed that you’d come,” she said to us.

“I know. She told me.”

“You saw Her?” Her split lips stretched into a pained smile, and my heart wrenched at the thought that the Goddess had appeared to me instead of her. If anyone deserved a vision like that, it was Wanda.

“I did,” I said softly as I felt my hand start to get warm. “She gave me a gift for you.”

I put my palm on her cheek, and I felt the warmth flow from me into her. The bruises and swelling faded, and her face glowed as her eyes closed in relief. When she opened them again, her face was back to normal, and she put her hand on my face.

“I saw Her. She’s beautiful. Thank you, Chance.”

“It wasn’t me,” I said as I turned my face away. “It was all Her. I just carried it for a while. It’s yours now,” I said, not sure of how I knew that. Maybe it was because the warm place that it had taken up in my head was gone, or maybe it was because all that was left was the rage of the Horned God who stood behind her. What I
did
know was that Wanda was the one to give comfort to those who needed it. My job involved a lot more bloodshed.

There was still a lot to do before the night was over, though, and I had more than one more promise to keep. One at least was going to be easy. It only took a few steps to retrieve the G’Honn fragment from the floor and slip it into my backpack. I turned to Lucas and Shade and pressed my backpack into Lucas’ hands.

“Stay with Wanda. Shade, can you get the rest of them out of here? Lucas, hang on to this. There’re extra hoppers for the Ariakon in there. Just don’t give it to anyone else but me, okay?”

Lucas nodded and dug the extra hoppers out and stuffed them into his pocket. The rest of the pack started working on the chains holding the other kids up. I looked them over as they pulled them down. All of them were outcasts, outsiders. Crystal wore skinny jeans, a black shirt with a band called Kill Hannah on the front, and had piercings on each eyebrow, her nose, and one through her lip. Another wore black strappy pants with a mesh shirt and had the sides of his head shaved. Another girl closer to Wanda had the remains of a spiky Mohawk drooping over her head. A couple looked like the invisible kids everyone talked about but never to, one with a headband that Lucas had told me was part of an anime character’s costume. Of the thirteen, only four of them were white. The rest were as diverse as New Essex: black, Asian, Hispanic, and Arabic faces looked back at me, and my mother’s Romany blood boiled in my veins. Between their race and their differences, they were the kids people would be least likely to go looking for. The ones the cops would be less likely to connect as part of a pattern. The ones too many people thought didn’t matter.

“What did you do to me?” Karl cried out to me.

I went over to him and squatted down in front of him. His legs didn’t seem to be working, and both of his eyes were red like they were filled with blood. He only seemed to have partial use of his left hand, too. Bruises stretched along his face and neck.

“Me? Nothing. But I’m guessing all that vampire blood you’ve been sucking just got purged. Bet that hurt.”

“I’ll kill you!” he screamed.

“No, you won’t,” I told him. “Do you remember what I promised you would happen if you hurt Wanda?”

“Fuck you!” he snarled.

“No. I promised you even death wasn’t going to be mercy enough if you hurt Wanda. And while this hurts, it’s nothing compared to what I’m going to do next.” I stood and headed for Steve.

“You’re too weak!” he crowed. “You can’t kill me, you don’t have the balls!”

I gestured for Steve to come with me, then turned to look at Darth Fedora over my shoulder.

“I don’t have to kill you to hurt you. I’m going to go kill your master.” We left the room to the sound of his impotent screams.

“You’re a cold-hearted bastard,” Steve said as we walked through the old bar.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I said coldly.

“Maybe not right now. So, what’s the plan for this Etienne guy?” he asked as we took the steps.

“We kill him.”

“Yeah, I got that part. But how?”

“Violence.”

“I’m good with that.”

Chapter 22

~ The worthy always refuse power when first offered. ~ Merlin.

When we got back up to the first floor, Dr. C, T-Bone, and Cross had joined the fight and the Sentinels, down by five from what I could tell, were starting to turn the tide of the fight with their help. By now, they held the middle of the main floor. It was still twelve against more than fifty, so I figured it was going to take a lot of time, and that wasn’t something we had a lot of.

Steve and I crept up the spiral staircase as Cross went toe to toe with another vamp carrying a pair of blades, and T-Bone put bullets into vampires so fast that the sound of his pistol was more a single roar than a series of shots. Cross’s sword barely seemed to move as he parried the twin blades, and when T-Bone’s gun went empty, he dropped the clip and had another one in before the spent magazine hit the ground.

Dr. Corwyn knelt over one of the fallen Sentinels with his staff in one hand and his own pistol in the other. He fired at a charging vamp and the slide locked back. As the disintegrating corpse slid toward him, he holstered his gun, got to his feet and started to spin his staff. Each end lit up with a blue white fire, and the staff wove a pattern of light in the air in front of him. A pair of vamps tried to rush him from opposite sides, but they’d underestimated what a badass my mentor was. He spun around to slam the tip against the face of the one on his right, then kept going and planted the other end in the chest of the one on his left. Another tried to rush him and he spun the staff to spear it in the chest, then brought the length up into another charging blood-sucker’s face. As it reeled back in a spray of broken teeth, he brought the staff around his body and started weaving it through the crowd that had closed around him. As we slipped through the door, I saw Cross’ blade slip forward and impale his opponent as one of the paired blades took him in the shoulder.

The hallway we were in was carpeted in green, with a flowery pattern running down the middle of it. Halfway down, a pair of double doors waited, carved with ornate designs and covered with gold accents. The door closed behind us, and the sound of the fight downstairs disappeared. I almost expected to hear elevator music. We stopped outside of the double doors and looked at them.

I glanced over at Steve. He’d picked up a few bruises and cuts, and one sleeve of his t-shirt had been ripped away. I was down to my wand, one touchstone, six rounds in the LeMat’s cylinder plus the Sunflare, and the Maxilla. All Steve had was that metal club of his, and it was looking pretty bendy.

“Your stick’s looking pretty bad,” I told him. “You want the sword?”

He shook his head and grabbed the end of the length of metal with one hand. Muscles in each arm flexed, and the bar slowly straightened.

“Nah, I’m good. Thanks though. Maybe later.” He hefted the club and tapped it against his palm. I smiled, happy that at least one thing was going the way it was supposed to.

“So, I kicked in the last big door. You want this one?” I offered.

“What if we just knocked?” he asked with a mocking grin.

“Sends the wrong message.”

“Good point.” He leaned back and planted his foot along the center-line of the doors. Wood splintered and they flew off the hinges, and we stood there like a couple of action heroes. Facing us from across the room was the pretty vampire I’d seen in the window earlier. His shirt was gone now, and the lack did his narrow, pale chest no favors. Behind him I could see matching Lemurian circle glyphs for the ones in the basement. They went as far around the wall as I could see, and I was betting they went all the way around the room.

“Welcome, little warlock,” he said. “You’ve chosen a good night to die.”

I didn’t bother with a snappy comeback. Instead, I pulled the sword and charged across the room at him. He stayed still until I swung the blade at his head, then he was gone, and I was stumbling through the follow-through. I turned to see him duck under Steve’s swing and return the favor with a casual looking backhand that sent him flying into the wall beside the door. Then he turned back to me, and started slowly walking across the room.

“You need not die tonight,” he said as I braced myself to swing again. “Not by my hand, and I can see to it that you need never fear the Conclave’s judgment. We two are too much alike to waste such symmetry.”

“Not seeing the similarities here, Etienne. I’ve got a pulse, you don’t. That’s a hard one to get past.”

“Nonsense,” he said with a smile, and I could feel the compulsion trying to work its way into my mind. Even as amped up as he was, he wasn’t in either Dulka’s or Thraxus’ league and his compulsion buckled on my defenses. “We’ve both been enslaved to an uncaring master, and like you, I’ve found a way to throw off the yoke of my servitude.”

“By assuming the mantle of Mammon,” I said and straightened. I let my right hand fall away from the sword’s grip, and the point dropped to the floor slowly.

“Correct. With Mammon’s power, I will become far greater than my Master, and reshape the world to my liking. Those whom I have sired will share in my power, and those I favor will be granted all that they desire. You could be one of those favored few.”

“I could be,” I said slowly, as if the charm was working. He stepped closer, almost within arm’s reach.

“You would enjoy such power,” he suggested. His hand slowly reached for my throat.

“No,” I said and swung the blade up from the floor.

He almost dodged it completely, but the tip scraped his chest and left a line of fire as he spun to my right and backed away. I drew the blade up over my head in a two handed grip and sent it spinning across the room at him. He barely moved as it swept by him, but when he turned back to face me, I could see the blisters on his skin that close proximity to the Maxilla had raised. The blade stuck in the wall a few feet from Steve’s limp form, and my best weapon was gone. Now all I had was faith, treachery and my barbed wit.

“You’ve lost the only weapon you had that could hurt me,” Etienne said.

“It wasn’t mine to begin with,” I said as he took another step closer to me, bringing him just within reach. I let my eyes slide into aura sight, and saw the unhealthy black and putrid green of his aura. Even the undead had one, and just like living people theirs broadcast their intentions if you knew what to look for. His went red around his right fist.

Before I even saw him move, I was ducking, and his hand swept past over my head. Another flare of red appeared around his hand. I dodged to my left and felt the wind of his fist right before it hit the wall. When I hit the floor, I rolled to me feet with my wand out and fired off a TK blast at him. It caught him as he pulled his fist free of the wall and threw him to the rear of the office.

When he bounced off the wall and landed in a crouch, I knew I was in deeper trouble than I was going to be able to dig myself out of alone. He stood slowly and closed his eyes. His chest seemed to expand, then his body turned gray and contorted. Bloody bone erupted from his shoulders, then stretched away from his body with strands of muscle and flesh growing along its length until it became a pair of leathery black wings. His legs and arms seemed to break and twist, then expanded, with horns and spikes bursting from his skin. It looked like it should have hurt like all Hell, but he was laughing as it happened.

The circle behind him started to glow, then the two on either side began to glow faintly. As the center circle got brighter, the two beside it did as well, and the two beside them started to glow. If he managed to activate all of them, the spell would be complete, and all Hell would break loose. Literally.

I pulled the LeMat and aimed it at him with a trembling hand before thumbing the hammer back. He saw the movement and started across the room toward me. I pulled the trigger and the round caught him in the chest. He barely slowed down long enough to brush the flaming ball of lead off his chest. He didn’t even try to dodge the TK blast I sent at him, and waded through it like it wasn’t stronger than a stiff breeze. I threw another TK blast at him and followed it up with a shot from the LeMat, and that did stagger him. Three more wand and bullet combos bought me a few more seconds, then his hand was around my throat and I was pinned to the window. I could feel the prickly, crawling sensation of the Lemurian glyph circle on my skin even through my jacket and shirt. His gaze hammered at me, and I felt his thoughts pressing against mine. Someone had just taken a couple of levels of badass.

“So much rage, little warlock,” he said softly, almost tenderly. “And so little of it for the world I seek to destroy. Your heart burns for the lambs I must slaughter. They are nothing. Even if it were not me who ended their pathetic lives, no one would miss them. They are awkward and ugly. Why do you care for them? There are sheep, made for slaughter. Nothing more.”

“Because when I look at them, I see myself in their eyes,” I told him, yielding a little more to the compulsion than I liked. “And they’re not sheep. They have the balls to be different, not to be what asshats like you want them to be. That’s why you’re nothing like me.”

“Then there is no hope for you, little warlock. You are not the first human I have killed, nor will you be the last. Perhaps you will be one of the more memorable, though, and that is honor enough. You are one of the few who fought me to the last, instead of trying to run.”

“Believe me, I wanted to. I just needed your undivided attention for a few seconds,” I said as Steve rose up behind him and drove the Maxilla into his back.

Even being struck from behind, his reflexes were fast enough that he turned before Steve could drive the glowing blade all the way into his heart. I ended up flying into Steve as Etienne screamed and arched his back. He spun around a few times as he tried to reach the sword, but Steve had managed to hit a spot between his wings that his arms wouldn’t bend far enough to get to. I looked at the walls and saw that the glow had spread halfway along the wall to the three circles etched in the glass. Even as I picked myself up, another pair of them lit up on either side, and I could feel reality warping around me. Etienne stopped his thrashing and looked at the purplish-black glow from the circles and realized what I had known since yesterday: this spell wasn’t going to go down the way he thought it would.

“We’ve got to finish this quick!” I told Steve as I pulled him to his feet.

“He’s too fast!” he said.

“Be ready to follow my lead, then,” I said as I slipped the wand under my pinky and middle fingers, and over my ring and index fingers.

Etienne let out an agonized roar as his attention came back to his more immediate problems, then spat a gout of fire at us.

“
Obex
!” I spat, holding my hand up to keep the shield at an angle.

Most of the heat slid off to my right, away from Steve and me, but enough of it made it through that my right hand and the right side of my face felt like they were going to blister up. Then the heat let up, and I could hear Etienne cursing us.

“I will flay the flesh from your bones, and slaughter your families!” he bellowed as he took a step toward us. “You cannot stop me, not even with the holy little toothpick!”

I lifted my reddened right hand and pointed at him with my index and middle finger, and pulled the deepest voice I could from my throat.

“I find your lack of faith disturbing,” I intoned.

The last pair of glyphs on the walls started to glow as the telekinetic ring closed around his throat. Only three left before the ritual was complete. I lifted him into the air and started forward with Steve only a couple of steps behind me. Etienne’s wings flared as he moved toward the glass wall, and slowed him down. I pointed at the heavy desk and Steve stepped to the left and shoved it toward Etienne. It caught him behind the knees just as I spun him around, and pinned him to the glass as the two outer glyph circles started to glow faintly. Etienne’s claws scraped against the glass with a sound that made fingernails on a chalkboard sound almost angelic as I jumped on the desk, planted my right knee in Etienne’s back and drew the LeMat. Steve followed me up and grabbed the Maxilla’s handle as I pressed the gun’s barrel to the glass and thumbed the lever on the hammer down before I pulled it back. The sword glowed even brighter as he tried to thrust it deeper. The edges of the glyph beneath us started to brighten, and we were out of time. I pulled the trigger.

When Dr. C had named the round in the LeMat’s lower barrel the Sunflare, he hadn’t been kidding. It melted through the glass and sent a tongue of white-hot fire belching down toward the McLaren. The glass Steve, Etienne, and I were pressed up against didn’t so much break as it melted and shattered. We plummeted toward the ground, and I saw the long stream expanded out from the middle to make an oblong of superheated fire that scorched the paint off the car and made half a dozen vamps taking cover near it burst into flame.

Behind us, the room exploded, raining bits of wood, steel, and glass on us as we fell. I had a split second to see all that happen, then we hit the burning remains of the bar. Even with the bulk of Etienne to break our fall, it hurt when we hit.

I came to my senses to see Steve stumbling to his feet and backing away from the shining blade that was stuck far enough through Etienne that I figured the tip was several inches into the floor. I rolled away myself, because the demonic vampire was starting to burn in places, and if he was as powerful as I thought he’d become, this wasn’t going to be pretty or safe to watch from too close. He screamed and thrashed as a brilliant flare burst through his skin, and I could feel the heat through my jacket. The skin around it started to melt and drip upward. More and more holes burned through, and it was like watching magnesium burn, only upside down. His screams reverberated through the room, and every piece of glass in the room shattered. I dropped the LeMat to clap my hands over my ears, and almost everyone with a pulse in the room did, too. The vampires were too busy dying to worry about their eardrums. When the last bits of Etienne flew toward the ceiling, the Maxilla dimmed and the last of the vampires crumbled to dust, shattered, or exploded into gooey chunks.