Authors: A.J. Aalto
“Of course she's mundane, you fool,” Malas lied. I carefully swallowed my uncertainty. He had to know what I was. There was no hiding the mingling of energy between our palms, and though he was physically repulsive, the unnatural force behind his touch was incredible. My skin moved under his, literally crawled, stirring around on my bones.
Kinetics
, my mental alarm bell rang.
This thing is telekinetic.
He'd been putting all his focus into increasing his magic, warping the infernal gift, forgoing his physical regeneration. For how long? Decades? Centuries? Judging by the way the room groaned and protested as he entered, it felt like millennia.
That's why he's ragged around the edges
.
Something had to give
.
I knew, then, if forced to kill this creature, I would regret it for the rest of my days, even more than I regretted staking his Younger, Gregori Nazaire. Not because Malas deserved to live. Not because Malas was righteous or evil, but because his power was flat-out magnificent, and I couldn't bear the idea of snuffing it.
Malas looked up at Harry. Malas’ gold-shot eyes shone like a cat's caught sideways in moonlight. My own revenant gave the elder revenant a discrete nod that went unnoticed by most, and through our Bond, Harry's unhappy anticipation rolled into my gut. Whatever they were planning, it was going down now, and if it was capable of making Harry anxious, it was going to be bad. I had to get the civilians out of here.
My headphones made a soft click in the helmet on the floor behind me and my heart jerked. A tiny voice began speaking in an excited tone, repeating things the way cops will, over and over, to make sure their message gets through. The words were unclear to me, but if I could hear the voice, the revenants surely could. I shot a panicky look at Malas.
Malas barely moved. His withered fist drifted parallel to the ground in a motion that appeared casual but brimmed with force. His good hand tightened on mine.
C
HAPTER
4
“
RESTER A MES CÔTÉS
,”
he told me, his voice gaining strength. I spoke so little French that I figured doing nothing was the safest course of action.
Voices dropped off around me as if scissored mid-sentence. People began to sway on their feet, throwing their arms out for stability. Since they were costumed, it was hard to gauge what was happening; when several rocked on their heels, I tensed on their behalf. A gorilla who had removed her helmet pitched forward and hit the ground so hard her nose split open along the bridge, lashing the stage with a scarlet stripe.
The giraffe fell in three stuttering movements to her back, and she wasn't alone. Once grounded, the Furries writhed but not unhappily: a shock of lust spiked through the room, rinsed across my skin and left me. The mass of bodies on the floor moaned in unison, a chorus of pleasure.
I wasn't sure what he expected, but I wasn't being affected by much of Malas’ power; I felt it wash through the costume to trickle into my veins like ice water louching absinth, but Harry's presence was a sturdy crutch. I remained on my feet, clear-minded if confused. Twitching bodies littered the floor. Ben wavered at my side as though drunk.
Harry watched the prone Furries with narrowed eyes, assessing.
“Find the betrayer,” Malas demanded of Ben, dropping his kinetic control. One by one, the Furries went limp, released. They flopped, rolled to their sides, crawled to find purchase like blinded swimmers, robbed of their equilibrium and their ecstasy with a simple flick of Malas’ claw-like finger. “Find the betrayer. You will not fail me.”
Ben's body rocked forward in a limping half-run; he hurried from one Furry to the next removing helmets and nodding, apparently familiar with each one he saw: giraffe, the Siamese, the gorilla, all expected. They greeted his inspection with dizzy smiles or irritated swats as they made loose clusters on the mat.
Ben's need to find one person in particular was a cramping urge like the after effects of a bad meal, and I felt his dread. This time, it was not so much the fear of failure as the need to protect someone. Protect Malas? Protect himself? Protect one of the guests? His anxiety shot through the roof when he came to the adolescent pink kitty.
Several things happened at once, and I had barely a beat to register any of it. Kitty rolled dexterously across the mat to her knee like a gymnast, simultaneously loosing two weighted wooden stakes from her wrists. They whipped through the air with deadly precision. Ben bolted to his feet with a strangled cry. His worry ratcheted up to panic.
I didn't think; I threw myself bodily in front of Malas.
Ben and I collided and I crashed to my knees. One stake took Ben in the shoulder hard enough to penetrate the unicorn suit; he jerked back with a surprised
gwak!
The other stake hit an invisible wall in front of Malas’ raised palm and ricocheted noisily into the corner.
The elder revenant hissed exultantly and stood, throwing his shoulders back, power rolling off him like he was a supertanker plowing out of a fog bank.
The zebra burst off the floor like he'd been drawn up by puppet strings. In a controlled rush, he took Kitty off her feet via running tackle; she cried out from between clenched teeth. Harry tore down from the raised platform and grabbed for her, catching wind as she rolled Zebra and kicked him high over her body. Zebra flipped into the leaded glass window; he made a hole in the tinkering glass with his heels but didn't go through.
Harry bounded across the floor and skidded with a squeak of skin as his palm gripped hardwood. His frustrated snarl prickled my every nerve, but Malas’ will and kinetic power now held me motionless, a human shield before him.
Zebra righted himself and jumped back to body-slam Kitty. She dodged him, and as he passed, aimed a hard kick at the side of his left knee. Her shot landed well, and I heard the wet crack of bone.
Zebra howled, a fragile human keen, and dropped like a slab of meat. My need to defend Harry finally snapped through Malas’ hold, blocking all else. I vaulted to my feet and ran to thrust myself between Harry and Kitty. I was too late.
Flinging her agile young body in Harry's direction, Kitty was a blur of scissoring legs, her feet pitching at his midsection. Harry's hand shot out and tripped her by the airborne knees. When she came around, he caught her by the throat and slammed her body to the floor with a reverberating thump. He held her there easily, and with his free hand, tore off her cat mask.
Fourteen, fifteen at the most
, I thought, panting. She bared human teeth at him, her face screwed up with hatred. In that adolescent voice, she spat, “Fiend, you are damned to writhe in Hell.”
“Come now, angel,” Harry soothed, “the daughter of a paladin should know better than to speak of damnation.”
“—deliver you to Hell,” she gurgled.
“For that, you would have to approach Hell yourself, little one,” Harry said. “Are you prepared to make such a dark and terrible journey with me?”
Ben the Unicorn moaned. I felt rather than saw Malas rise in the air and craned to watch as his cavalry boots levitated clear of the floor. The sight backed me up against the stage, and I tripped over Harry's violin case, sprawling on my ass. The force of his summoning stirred the room, tearing things from the table toward him, as though Malas was a swirling black hole of chaos, gobbling up, slurping down, chewing through the forces around him. He raised both arms in his effort to squeeze the last drops of kinetic sap from his surroundings, and the hair on my scalp stood straight up. His anger cracked the air like the sizzling snakes of downed power lines.
“How dare you come against me, Prioress?” Malas boomed.
Just as his arms drifted above his head, the black hen flew up from its spot on the floor, bearing a stake.
I was back on my feet, not knowing how I got there, words abandoning me. Helplessly, I shouted, “
Fuckshitwitchystuff!”
Lucky for me, intent is often more important than word choice; I blinked through a bleak and windless limbo space, spilling from thin air directly in front of the killer chicken without a split second to
think. The lack of time to consider what I was doing was probably for the best.
I slammed into her just as she leapt. The collision knocked both of us back; she landed with pissed-off grace, I stuck my landing in pure surprise. Anyone watching might have thought we'd done a celebratory chest bump until I lunged forward and tried to drive my knee into her cloaca. I felt my kneecap connect with squishy bits under her feathers and padding. She squawked, doubled, and her breath huffed out in a mewling whine.
I grabbed her wrist and bent it back sharply, twisting until she dropped the stake. I brought my knee to her chin, hard, and sent her flying spread-eagle backwards into the table. Food and dishes clattered while the candles jittered and began to topple, their meager flames whiffing out.
The air crackled a warning behind me; I hit the deck, covering my head.
Malas’ kinetic heat, a blast wave finally freed, roared past me; wavering blue fingers of psi licked around the killer hen like electric tongues, snatching her up higher and higher in a visible vortex. The woman inside the suit shrieked as every muscle in her body contracted as if pulled by a thousand tiny wires. Her puppet master was a speed fiend; each flailing jerk was frantic and eye-blurring. She hung at Malas’ mercy, airborne and arching, head whipping back and forth. Her helmet flew off, revealing a black woman in her mid-thirties who howled agonized nonsense.
Malas shot his withered hand forward. Released through the room, the revenant's power rocked everything in front of him to one side, shuddering the very air. The house trembled on its foundation. Hen buckled as her face caved in, a cascade of bone and bits of grey matter sprayed in a slimy fan as the rest of her sailed toward the stairs.
Didn't even get a chance to see her face
, I couldn't help thinking, as my brain digested the carnage. In her wake, the remains of the table tumbled end over end, contents tossed in an ear-splitting crash.
The giraffe was the only one who screamed; I felt the remaining Furries’ horror as a wave of empathic chill, but their terror froze them in place, desperately certain that this did not involve them, that when it was over they'd be safe.
“Yes, Prioress, you see now what you have stirred.” Malas turned on Harry and the girl, pointing down with his withered hand through the haze that enveloped him. The kinetic suction caused a second dormer window to shatter inward, showering the room with tinkling glass shards. “I will drink from the chalice of your battered skull.”
Harry urged, “Malas, you mustn't.”
Malas’ jaw unhinged, wider than humanly possible, a grey-pink strip of lip quivering around that single fang. “Come for me, Prioress.”
Kitty screamed her wordless challenge over the howling wind tumbling into the room. Under Harry's hand, she writhed. Her hair flew in rippling waves against the blue mat, a tossing whirlwind around her tiny face. “Return you to the dust, fiend. Return you to the abyss. You and your kind!”
Kitty cut her attention up at Harry; with a dagger no one knew she had, she hit him square in the throat.
Harry mouth's dropped open in a soundless cry. My feet were in motion before the fountain of his watery blue blood could jet across the mat.
“No, you little bitch,
no!
” I went for her, fingers crooked into claws.
Harry's arm clothes-lined me, sweeping me back. He struggled to grip the slick handle of the dagger with the other hand. Taking her chance, Kitty rolled twice, spun, and sprang to her feet, shooting her hands out in some sort of martial arts readiness position that made me feel entirely inadequate for the fight.
“You will not surrender, Prioress, though your efforts are futile?” Malas’ laugh was a snake's rattle.
Just before things went from bad to worse, I lost my breath to an unseen force. I heard the waking shuffle of something far more infernal than a revenant behind the push of Malas’ voice; Hell's brush stung my tongue (
cinnamon hearts, the shock of tart-red pain
) and tears sprang into my eyes. The next thing out of Malas’ mouth felt final, felt like something I should fight with every fiber of my miserably inept being.
“Servant of the Eversea…”
His voice, heavy with the authority of the Overlord now, hit me like a fishhook in the heart, and I stumbled toward him; he'd landed his shot, reeled me in. He said it again, and the barbs in my chest yanked tight.
“Servant of the Eversea: serve to me this insolent wretch, for her end.”
This is not what I'd come for, but there was little hope of freeing myself without having my face melted. With dread, I glanced at Malas to see if he
for sure
meant me; he was staring at me expectantly with gold-shot cornflower blue spotlights.
“Oh. Right,” I said. “Shit.”
Kitty's bright eyes settled on me. Harry struggled around the silver in his voice box. “MJ …you must not …”
“It's okay, Harry. I got this.” I circled closer to Kitty, arms out to block any tricks she might pull. “What's your name, kid?”
“I am the Hand of God,” she said.
Well then
. “Are you currently seeing a shrink? They could write a paper on you. Make some doctor's career.”
Kitty looked confused for a heartbeat. “Are you not a servant of Hell's Second Circle?” she demanded.
“Uh.” I rolled my eyes back into my head to look for the answer. “Never been there, so, I'm gonna say no.”
“I do not kill innocents,” she told me.
“Might wanna double check your policy. There's a unicorn bleeding out around your stake.”
“Minion,” she spat, as though that explained everything. She avoided looking at Ben, tightened her mouth. “Protecting abominations. I cannot be held responsible for his mistakes. You're all to blame, and vengeance is coming.” She pointed at Harry, who was slap-dragging his way across the mat at her.
“Hand of God or not, you touch him again, I'll kick you so hard you'll piss out your mouth.”
She planted one boot on Harry's shoulder, staring at me the entire time, forcing him down though the springy, shaking tension in his arms fought her. He was completely in the clutch of his healing power now, as it began to overwrite every other revenant function in his body, including his strength. She grabbed her silver dagger by the handle, wrenched it from his throat. He swiped at her but fell; his agony ripped through the Bond as his slashed carotid emptied down his chest.