The Graves of Saints (37 page)

Could Octavian remember his mother’s laughter? She thought not. And yet he had made himself a good man, and that gave her hope for her own future.

If you have a future
, she thought.

‘This is—’ she began.

Octavian put a finger to his lips to shush her, as they ran across the open field. And he was right – nervous talking for the sake of talking was a bad idea right now – but she
couldn’t imagine the vampires could hear her over their own chanting and the thunder of the shelling from the tanks that had been caught inside the wall Octavian had put up.

And according to Octavian, Cortez and his coven wouldn’t be able to see them, either. Charlotte reminded herself that they were not invisible, although if she understood correctly the end
result of the spell Octavian had cast would be the same. As long as they moved steadily and did not meet the gaze of any of the vampires, they would pass unnoticed amongst the coven until they drew
attention to themselves. Since shooting people with bullets tended to draw attention, the first shot she fired would effectively break the spell, but by then she’d be right in the center of
the circle.

Only yards from Cortez.

She reminded herself that she had promised to leave Cortez’s fate to Octavian and kept moving in broad, quick strides, never quite running but never slowing. In moments Charlotte, Allison,
and Octavian passed through the outermost circle of vampires. Charlotte had to battle the temptation to look at their faces, to see if they had noticed the intrusion, but she didn’t want to
be the cause of breaking the spell too soon. Octavian had gone to the trouble of working his subtler magicks, and she wasn’t going to blow it.

He had worked a second spell as well, one he had alluded to with Commander Metzger. Back in the trees, just before they’d set out, he’d had everyone – Shadow and human alike
– lay out all of their ammunition on the ground and he had cast a spell upon every last bullet, ensuring that each would find its target. She and Allison had assault rifles filled with
Medusa-laced bullets that were guaranteed to hit what they were aimed at. But now that she was walking amongst the vampires – passing through a second circle – she wondered how much
help that would be. She heard their chanting in a language she did not recognize and she tried to count the feet to her right and left as she rushed past. Extrapolating, she realized there really
were over a hundred vampires, and probably closer to one hundred and fifty.

A ripple of revulsion passed through Charlotte as she slid between two vampires in the second ring. They stank like offal, and she wondered where they had been sleeping during the daylight
hours. One of them moved, raising his arms as an extension of his chanting, and she had to dart aside to avoid him touching her.

Reflexively, she glanced back at him and caught herself just before their eyes would have met. In that small glimpse, however, she saw that he was smeared in blood and human viscera and fluids,
and she knew where the rank stench had come from. Though it now looked like a disaster site, this had been a tourist area. Anyone who had been here when the earth tore open had been slaughtered by
Cortez’s followers, their innards used as some filthy element of this ritual. Anyone who had come in response, people who had rushed here to help, had likely suffered the same fate.

Hate calmed her. Fury burned inside her, an engine to power her onward.

The ground trembled with the movements of the giant death gods. She glanced over to see that the antlered one now towered higher than the trees she had left behind. Even at that height, only the
upper half of its body had emerged from the trench. It put its hands on the edges of the broken earth on either side of the crevice and tried to pull itself free, but for the first time Charlotte
realized that it was stuck. Both of these enormous ancient beings were forcing themselves slowly from their own world into this one as if tearing free of a caul from their mother’s womb.

Oh my God
, she thought, staring at the impossibility of it all.
What am I doing here?

As they passed through the third ring, almost at the center of the circle of vampires, she thought of her mother again, but suddenly Charlotte could not recall her face. Panicked, she tried to
summon the memory of her mother’s laughter, which had been so simple for her just moments before and now seemed impossible. The memory seemed just out of reach and she needed to hold on to it
tighter than ever.

The world seemed to go still for a moment. The tanks had stopped firing and the chanting reached a pause. Even the wind dropped for a second. Only the last ring remained, perhaps twenty vampires
in a tight circle, with a lone figure at the center who could only be Cortez. She would know him on sight, but even with the army lights glaring, the circle around him cast their shadows upon
him.

The moment of stillness threw Charlotte off, and she hesitated. Stopped moving, just for a moment.

A moment was enough.

‘Who the hell are you?’ a vampire snarled, and she felt his hand clamp onto her bicep.

Nearby, she heard Allison swear, glanced over and saw Octavian catch her eye. She thought he would be angry but he only gave her a tiny, almost imperceptible nod and raised his hands, magic
blazing and sparking around them in icy blue fire.

The world had held its breath. Now it seemed to shatter.

She twisted, tore her arm loose, raised her assault rifle and pulled the trigger. Bullets punched into vampire flesh as she ran amongst them. Arrogance and confusion combined were their worst
enemies. They had not anticipated an attack from within and as she kept moving she saw the same expressions over and over – hunger followed by amusement at the idea of being shot, and then
the horror etched in their faces as they realized the Medusa toxin was coursing through their blood.

Someone grabbed her hair and she tore free, darted and fell and rolled and popped up again. A huge vampire woman caught her by the shoulder, talons growing long, tearing her flesh, and Charlotte
turned and fired a bullet into her face . . . waited a second and fired again, killing her on the spot. She didn’t want to waste Medusa, but if they took her down before she had hit as many
as possible with the toxin then it changed the odds for everyone.

Shouts arose. The last of the chanting died as gunfire echoed. She heard Allison’s gun barking off to her left, making its way around the circles. Lights flashed as Octavian tore through
clusters of vampires and the air crackled with his power, seared by magic.

Somewhere not far off a familiar voice cried out and more gunfire erupted and she knew that Metzger, Galleti, and the others had arrived and were trying to kill as many of the Medusa-afflicted
as possible.

And all the while, all she could think was
don’t shift, don’t shift, don’t shift –
because none of them had been certain what might happen if she and Allison
shapeshifted with their guns loaded with Medusa toxin. If she went to mist, she might never be able to shift back.

Abruptly, there was space around her.

Charlotte spun, aiming her weapon all around her, looking for targets. In the splashes of light from Octavian’s magic, she saw that most of the figures that loomed around her were made of
stone . . . the mage’s own version of Medusa.

Half a dozen vampires were closing on her. Lifting the gun with a speed only her species possessed, she shot each one. Then, with Metzger’s people too far away and the vampires too close,
she shot them again.

Whipping around, on guard, she realized that she had made it to the center of the now-shattered circle. A pair of naked human corpses lay on the earth, wrists and ankles staked to the ground,
torsos flayed open. From their faces she took them to be twins, one male and one female, perhaps fifteen years of age.

Beyond them stood Cortez, clad in black trousers and a simple white cotton shirt now drenched in blood.

With his sad eyes and wispy, pointed goatee and the black hair he wore at shoulder-length, he looked more like a poet than a monster. But that sad face lived in her nightmares with all the pain
and humiliation she had ever felt. She switched her weapon over to continuous fire.

Cortez scowled at her in disgust. ‘Prodigal.
You
, I did not expect. But perhaps I’ll have use for you yet.’

Any other day she might have mustered up an insult or a profanity. Instead, she took aim and pulled the trigger, spraying a dozen bullets at his face and chest.

With a gesture, Cortez threw up a shield of purple-black light. When the bullets struck it, they melted in mid-air and dripped to the ground.

Charlotte stared, hope fading.

Cortez was a mage, like Octavian. She had never seen a hint of it before, never seen him do the slightest bit of magic, but there it was. Gunfire still punctured the darkness so she knew that
Allison and some of Metzger’s people were still alive, and so were some of the coven. But none of that mattered.

The only thing that mattered now was which mage was more powerful.

As if summoned from the ether by her thoughts, Octavian stepped out from behind the stone figure of a dead vampire, hands still burning with flame that had turned a rich, coppery gold.

‘Hernan Cortez,’ Octavian said. ‘I thought you were dead.’

Cortez turned to face him, smiling. ‘Aren’t we all?’

Octavian burned with the magic inside him, felt it searing through his bones, eager to be unleashed. The sorcery within him had a clearer connection to his heart than to his
mind, and the urge to incinerate Cortez on the spot nearly overwhelmed him. But he had seen the coven master use magic to shield himself from Charlotte’s bullets – more than that, he
could feel the dark magic seething inside Cortez, coiled and ready to strike – and he knew he had to be wary.

Hands at his sides, fingers splayed like a gunslinger at high noon, he moved two steps nearer to Cortez, careful not to stray too far from the nearest of the vampires he had turned to stone.
They were statues now, frozen in death, but they could provide cover.

‘Peter?’ Charlotte said, her weapon still in her hands.

He ignored her, hoping his silence was message enough. They had passed the point where her presence could be helpful. More than anything he wanted her to go, to just take cover, but he feared
what might happen if he gave Cortez any reason to think that her fate mattered to him.

‘It’s over, Cortez,’ Octavian said.

‘Is it?’ the vampire mused.

Octavian could feel the magic charging the air between them. The ground began to crackle, grass to stick straight up as if electrified, and little particles of earth swirled, small stones
floating off of the ground, vibrating.

Gunshots ripped the night sky, but fewer than before. Allison and the TFV soldiers were still fighting. The Medusa toxin and the element of surprise had given them a chance and they were making
good on it. Devil-bats wheeled and darted overhead, but they seemed unwilling to come too close to Cortez. The ground rumbled and a terrible miasma of stink began to roil across the ground, rolling
off of the death gods. Octavian saw a serpent coiled around the upper arm of the second of the gods, while black birds roosted on the antlers of the giant who had climbed three quarters of the way
out of the breach.

Hell was breaking through into his world, but none of it seemed important to him now. The only thing that mattered was the cruelty of the creature in front of him. He heard shuffling over his
right shoulder and knew that Charlotte had not gone far. She had taken cover behind one of the stone vampires.

‘There’s just one thing I . . .’ Octavian began, and then faltered. He trembled with his hatred. Even speaking to Cortez made him feel sick. ‘All of this . . . everything
you did to distract me from your plans . . . killing Nikki, the breaches in Europe and India . . . If you wanted to keep me away, you’d have been better off doing nothing. Had you done
nothing, odds are I wouldn’t be standing here right now.’

The smile Cortez had been wearing slid away, leaving a malevolent intelligence that glittered in his eyes. When he sneered, his fangs glistened in the moonlight.

‘Call it a roll of the dice,’ Cortez growled. ‘As for killing your mate . . . that was mostly for pleasure. If you’d heard the way she screamed—’

Octavian raised a hand, cold murder in his heart. Scarlet light sliced a broad arc across the darkness, aimed for Cortez’s mid-section.

‘Quiet,’ he said, though what he really meant was,
Die
.

Cortez held up both hands and a sickly yellow light flashed around them, cleaving that scarlet arc in two so that it passed on either side of him, leaving him unharmed. He snarled, fangs bared,
and sketched at the air with contorted fingers, drawing into existence a pair of silver silhouettes, like the ghosts of wolves, apparitions that dove through the air, jaws wide with silent
hunger.

Octavian shook his head in disdain as he waved them away, the silver running like liquid mercury and vanishing as it touched the ground. He still had questions, things he did not understand, but
he could live without knowing the answers. He required only one thing of Cortez.

Memories of his imprisonment in Hell seared his mind. Images flashed inside him of the abominations he had seen there, of the magicks he had studied and the torture he had endured as he learned,
only to rise up and make demons scream. As powerful as he was, Octavian had locked those memories deeply within him, but now they came surging back, right alongside images of Nikki, lying dead in
her hotel bed.

A single word burst forth from his lips, in a language never before spoken in the human world. He thrust his hands out and the magic that flowed from him had no color or form, none of the static
most spells gave off. The lines that traced the air from his fingers to Cortez’s flesh were like rips in reality, glimpses into a darkness this world had never known. Using such magic,
Octavian had clawed at the skin of creation. Dangerous sorcery, but he would risk anything to put Cortez down.