Spires of Infinity (54 page)

As mutants began to flow past her lowered guard, they hardly even seemed to

notice she was there. Though they pushed, jostled, and bumped past her, some stepping on her tails, they seemed more intent on getting over the wall than on killing her.

Straining for all she was worth, Kari felt nothing. It was pointless. She couldn’t do it, and the Apostle would make it to safety through the Gate as Gabriel predicted.

Frustration and anger warred against each other in Kari’s heart. Her self-esteem had taken some pretty brutal hits of late, and her failure to sense the Apostle was not helping. Making one final, desperate effort, she found, to her surprise, that she could feel something like a dark stain on the fabric of reality creeping up the wall nearby.

Twirling her spear, Kari leapt onto the railing on the courtyard side of the wall, dashing to where the Apostle would appear. Fighting like a woman possessed, she cleared the wall top around her, washing the blade of her spear with blood of various colors.

As a black cloaked figure leapt over the railing, landing before her in a crouch, Kari grinned. Now it was time to end this. The Apostle had made a fool of her, and shown her the holes in her own identity. Even worse, she’d harmed countless innocent lives with her teachings and actions. She would pay with her life.

“The two tailed fox,” the Apostle’s mechanically distorted voice held surprise as she drew her black-bladed rapier. “I don’t know how you managed to follow me, but a dead fox follows no one.”

“And a dead wolf devours no sheep,” Kari spat as she threw herself at her enemy.

Crashing together, Kari and the Apostle began a duel like few that had ever been witnessed. Each was a master of her weapon, and knew the capabilities of her own body intimately. If there was an edge between them it lay with Kari due to a hair more speed and an eyelash more strength, however the Apostle made up for it with centuries more practice with her blade.

Flowing together, they attacked and defended as if they could see the other’s

movements a second before they were made. Their blades spat off showers of sparks as they clashed together almost constantly. To the casual observer they moved so fast that the human eye could not follow, seeming to blur from one stance to the next, from attack to parry, to deadlock.

The mutants flowing over the wall gave them a wide birth as they flitted around, striking, blocking, punching, kicking, and flipping over each other or off the railings for better position. Though they fought savage and dirty, pulling no figurative or literal punches, it was a beautiful and terrible thing to watch.

Seeming to have an infinite reservoir of strength, the Apostle never flinched, wavered, or slowed her relentless assault. Having never fought anyone so close to her own abilities before, Kari felt her stamina depleting rapidly. Despite the Apostle’s best efforts, Kari began pushing her onto the defensive more often. She could feel victory coming toward her inch by bloody inch.

Exhilaration burned in Kari’s breast like a red-hot iron as she swept the Apostle’s legs and slammed the butt of her spear down on her wrist hard enough to numb her hand.

Kicking the sword away Kari leveled the blade of her spear at the Apostle’s

throat. Victory was hers, and now the Apostle could never destroy another world ever again.

“Do you honestly believe that killing me will give you an identity of your own,”

the Apostle’s mechanically distorted voice reached Kari’s ears over the sounds of battle.

Kari froze. She could feel the Apostle’s touch on her mind, like a cold, dark hand rooting through her skull.

“What is it like to live your life so much for the benefit of others that you’ve completely forgotten about yourself? I can’t imagine. It’s left you so hollow I can see right through you.”

“Shut up,” Kari growled, driving her spear at the Apostle’s throat. In her outrage, Kari missed, her blade drawing sparks from the ground beside the Apostle’s head.

“Do you honestly believe that killing me will somehow create an identity for you?

You’ll be known as the slayer of the Apostle of Cain. Then what? Is that who you are?

Is that who you want to be? Will that define you?”

“Stop it,” Kari growled, raising her spear above her head to deliver the finishing blow. “I’ll kill you.”

“Revenge is what drives
me
. It’s the reason I do everything I do. It’s who I am, what I am, and all I want out of life. I know myself. Such a simple thing, yet you cannot say the same. Go ahead. Strike me down with all of your misplaced anger. Killing me will not give you an identity, not even if you took up my cloak and mask to continue my work after I am gone. You’d only be a shadow trying to copy the person who cast it.

You are nobody. You are no one. You will never be anything more than the protector of two men that need no protection.”

“
No,
” Gabriel screamed behind her. “
Stop
!
She has to live
!”

Slamming into her back with enough force to stagger her, Gabriel tried to wrestle her to the ground, but she was far stronger than he was. With a minimal struggle, she threw him off, but she was too late.

“A gift to see you on your way into hell,” the Apostle said as her hand shot out to grip Kari’s leg tightly. “You can’t see it, but I can. I see what is in the deepest, forgotten recesses of your heart. Your true enemy has never been me. Oh no, your true enemy is none other than yourself. Now rot in your own living hell for eternity!”

Everything was swallowed in darkness, and Kari fell into it, spinning this way and that, in a world that no longer seemed to make sense. As she fell through nothingness, the Apostle’s laughter followed her.

When she finally righted herself on solid ground again, Kari found herself facing the Apostle in a place blacker than the deepest night. The darkness was not the absence of light. Rather, it was the absence of everything else. Though it felt solid beneath her feet, it appeared as though she was standing on nothingness.

As Kari stepped forward, the Apostle mirrored her movements, carrying a spear

identical to her own rather than a sword.

“What is going on,” Kari whispered. “Where am I?”

Reaching up, the Apostle removed her mask, tossing it aside where it shattered like glass, and beneath it was her own face, as clear as if seen in a mirror, except devoid of color.

“Who are you,” Kari asked.

“What you fear most,” the other answered. “I lurk in your heart, always waiting for my chance to take what is rightfully mine. I am your desire to turn everything to nothing so that no one will have what you do not, an identity. I am Kari’s jealous rage. I am Kari’s lack of substance. I am Kari’s desire to become her enemy, and complete her quest. Once you are dead, I will take control, and the Apostle will have a new ally.”

Leaping forward, the shadow Kari unleashed her fury. With her mind reeling at what was happening, Kari was pushed steadily backward. Snarling like a beast, the shadow fought like a madwoman and it was all Kari could do to fend off her attacks.

Driven backward by her own dark fears, she could do nothing but defend.

“No,” Kari desperately tried to push herself onto the offensive, only to have her every attempt foiled before it began. “I’m not like that. I don’t want what she wants!”

“You are so much like her that it’s frightening,” the shadow hissed. “You want to destroy everything that you cannot have.”

“You can’t be serious,” Kari cried. Sure she had flashes of anger, and irrational thoughts, but so did everyone else. She couldn’t count the times she’d wanted to strangle Jonathan and Michael, but that was normal. She didn’t want to do anything so drastic as destroy all of reality like the Apostle did.

“If nothing exists,” the shadow pressed, “then everyone else will be just like you, nothing. That’s what you want more than anything else. You want everyone else to be as sad, pathetic, and worthless as you are. You’ve never even thought what you might do with a life of your own, have you?”

Staggering backward, Kari glanced at her arm to see a deep gash pouring out

blood. The shadow examined a similar wound on her left forearm. Then Kari knew. She could never fight against this foe. The shadow was more than a mirror image of her. It
was
her—a part of herself that she’d never wanted to acknowledge before—and every wound she inflicted upon it would be mirrored back on her.

Had she attacked this phantom conjured from her own fears and insecurities,

she’d have plunged a blade through her own heart. Raising her spear to defend, Kari truly looked at the shadow, at what she was, and what she represented.

On some, deep, unconscious level, she’d let her sudden lack of identity drive her to dark thoughts, even if she’d never dared acknowledge they even existed. True, if all existence were unraveled, then everyone else would be the same as her, without identity.

Such thoughts frightened her deeply, and she’d locked them away to fester. If she did that, she was just as bad as the Apostle, who was evil to the core. Looking at it now, she could see how silly it all was. There really was nothing to fear. She had a conscience, and she knew that she could never do something so horrible as what the Apostle planned on Cain’s behalf.

She saw one way to defeat this phantom, and that was to embrace who she was,

and what shaped her life. It was time to be herself, rather than looking to the needs of others to define her. When she really looked into her heart, she knew who she was, and couldn’t believe she’d ever missed it before. How could she have been so blind?

Doing the hardest thing she had ever done in her life, Kari tossed her spear aside.

The spear in the shadow’s hands vanished.

Sneering, the shadow took a step back. “You think you’ve won with a little

trick?”

“No,” Kari said. “I think I’ve won because now I know that there is a darkness in my own heart, and I choose to cut you away. Knowing that you are a part of me, I can easily control or discard you.”

Reaching toward the shadow, Kari forced her mirror image to do the same. Their hands touched, and Kari grasped the shadow tightly, lacing their fingers together.

“I know who I am,” Kari said firmly. “And I am
not
you. I will never become the Apostle, nor would I ever do anything to harm the innocent. I can be anyone that I choose to be, and I choose to be a protector of those who cannot protect themselves. It is who I wish to be, and I have no more need of you. Be gone, you foul, wretched piece of filth!”

As the shadow blew away like smoke on the wind, Kari stepped back into the

light. She did so a split second too late to catch the Apostle as she leapt from the wall, and hit the ground with a roll. Jonathan tackled her to the ground and they struggled for a few seconds before she broke free and dove through the Gate.

Beside her, Gabriel was picking himself up with Sam’s help. Rushing to his other side, Kari helped him to his feet.

“Sorry,” she said. “Sometimes I forget that humans are a lot more fragile than I am.”

“Nevermind that! She went through the Gate,” Gabriel cried. “Sam. Mister

Mittens. We’ve got to get you down there. Do you two remember everything I told you about what you need to do?”

“Yes,” Sam and the cat chorused.

Glancing around, Kari found that most of the mutants were ignoring the staircase down to the courtyard in favor of climbing down the wall, or simply leaping from it.

Below, the soldiers were cutting them to ribbons with the help of Jonathan and Michael, but they could only hold out for so long before the sheer numbers overwhelmed them.

“Come on,” Kari pointed to the stairs. “I’ll clear a path for you.”

Snatching her spear from the ground, she began cleaving her way to the stairs.

With guns blazing, Gabriel and Sam followed.

Chapter 46: Paradox

In movies, the gritty battle scenes were always filmed with the camera bouncing around all over the place, looking around aimlessly. The sound was always muted, and sometimes things ran just a little slower or choppier than they should have. It had always annoyed Gabriel, because the point of a movie was to show people what is happening, rather than set the camera on a pain mixer and laugh as the audience tried to figure out what was going on.

He’d never thought, until now, how much like a real battle those films were. His eyes were never still, always moving and jerking toward any movement. His heart was pounding so loudly in his ears that it seemed to mute any other sound. His breath rasped raggedly in his throat and the recoil from his pistols jolted up his arms continuously, filling his joints with a dull ache.

Dashing toward the stairs, hard on Kari’s tails, Gabriel could hear someone

screaming a desperate battlecry. He wasn’t sure, but he thought it might be him.

Sheer confusion milled about in every direction as Gabriel dashed down the stairs in the wake of Kari, who seemed a whirlwind of blood and death. He’d seen her fight against the Apostle, and that had been epic. The way they’d moved with supernatural speed and grace was both awe-inspiring, and terrible.

Scanning for anything that Kari missed, Gabriel fired his twin pistols at anything that moved in her wake. Blood was heavy in the air, hanging like a mist, as hideous creature after hideous creature fell dead. His left hand burned with the effort of holding onto his pistol missing a finger and a half. He seemed unable to catch his breath and his muscles were trembling with the amount of adrenaline coursing through his veins. He could hear gunshots behind him as Sam fired her pistol, but it was distant and unimportant.

Wiping misted blood from his eyes, Gabriel stepped into the courtyard, Sam

pressing against him from behind. He could feel the unnatural heat of her body against his as he stared at the spectacle before him.

It was like walking into a slaughterhouse. The ground was slick with blood and other things Gabriel would just as soon not try to identify. Screams, howls, and wordless warcries mixed with the bestial shrieks and guttural roars of the mutants pouring over the wall. Everywhere Gabriel looked men were hacking at deformed beasts. Blood flew into the air, falling back down like rain. Unlucky soldiers, overwhelmed by the numbers of the mutant hoard screamed as they were torn apart. Some screams cut off abruptly with death, but too many went on for far too long.