Demon Lord 6: Garnet Tongue Goddess (31 page)

Rage surged; my blood boiled.  Adrenaline hit my system, a copper taste on my tongue.  I spun, one hand against my broken ribs, teeth gritted in agony, and swept my other arm blindly—the attached short sword slicing air.

No contact; the revenant had moved.

1

THIRTY-ONE

“Death is for other people, and things.”

                                                  —
Caine Deathwalker

Osamu intercepted my blind swing.  Our swords clashed, scraping.  Then I saw the Old Man had rushed in to pluck the revenant off me.  I’d come very close to slashing my adoptive father across the side.  Osamu had spared me a load of guilt.

The Old Man had the revenant by the neck, slowly crushing it, forcing his head and fangs away.  The creature’s feet dangled off the ground.  He pounded a fist into the Old Man’s arms but they didn’t weaken or budge.

The Old Man’s face was grim and hard, lightning blazing in his eyes.  Mirroring his mood, the sky was bruised, black, charcoal, and purple clouds seethed and roiled.  Webs of electrical fire burned in them.  A heavy rain fell.

“I expected more,” the Old Man said.

The sound of running feet told me reinforcements had arrived. I stayed where I was, making a strategic decision; plan for worse case, always.  “Osamu, the yantra.  Your sword can cut the brass.  I want it in pieces.”

“Yes, Caine-sama.”  He moved quickly to do as I’d ordered. Running off, taking a deep horse stance, he postured for his first swing—and got tackled by a nagi who’d come across the roof from an unexpected direction.  She was snake from the waist down and human otherwise.  Hissing, she was climbing Osamu like a tree.

Fuck!  I knew it.  Things were going too well so of course the revenant’s girlfriend has to pop up, too.

The fey men waved swords around, trying to move in on the nagi without hurting Osamu.  Ryella hung back, an amulet in both hands, waiting for a clear shot.

My instincts screamed at me that I really didn’t want the nagi to die up here and have their blood and energy tangled up in a yantra keyed to a snake deity.

Why did I not think of that earlier?  Still not myself.

Shiva moved behind the revenant in the Old Man’s clutches.  Using a boxer’s stance, she punched his kidneys with all her stony strength.  Then a punch to his spine.  I heard vertebra breaking.  And knew it wasn’t enough.  Damaging dead things doesn’t really hurt them, or often slow them down, especially when they have nagi shape-shifting strength and cellular regeneration.

The revenant’s lower body finished changing.  The legs were fused and scaled.  The upper body was all snake as well.  This made the revenant even bigger, and harder to hang onto as the heavy rain made him slick.  Flailing, tail slashing, body clubbing, the snake burst free.

The Old Man muttered something suspiciously close to a bad word.  He reached skyward to drag down some lightning.

Fuck no
.  We weren’t all in an insulated battle suit.  Standing on wet concrete, meant we couldn’t bring out lightning.  And Hell help us if the storm dropped a high-voltage bolt on the rooftop.

Holy pushed Ryella toward me and said, “I’ve got this.  You help the boss.  He looks hurt.”

Every breath was a knife in my side.  My back hurt fiercely, and I’d done something bad to one knee.  But I knew a mistake when I saw it.  Holy’s answer to the girlfriend was going to be a friggin’ bolt of lightning once Osamu was clear.

I tried to yell a warning.  “No, lightning.  The rain will—”

The damned snake suddenly remembered it wanted me dead.  It lunged my way, maw wide, fangs leading the way.  I braced myself as best as I could, bringing my forearms up to block with the attached swords.

Ryella knelt beside me, an amulet extended in her hand like a gun about to go off.

“No lightning,” I repeated.

The snake coiled up mid-air like it had slammed into an invisible wall.  “
Iron Air
spell.  I can do that two more times.”

“I got this,” I said.  “Make sure Holy doesn’t fry us all.”

Ryella looked down at the accumulating water.  Her eyes got very big.  And then she was gone, running back to Holy.

And Mr. Snake was up, shaking his head, glaring hate
and
annoyance.

I’ve got to go on the attack.  Playing defense sucks ass.  Going to risk a spell.

Dragon Flame could fry friend and foe as easily as lightning.  I decided on Demon Wings instead.  That would let me get in close to the snake.  Now where did I drop my guns? 
No matter.
  I concentrated and they went back to my armory as a fresh set of semi-automatics filled my hands.

I pulled raw magic—slightly contaminated magic—to the tattoo across my shoulders.  The tribal-style wings absorbed the magic that activated the magic in the ink.  Pain came for payment of the magic.  It now felt like my ribs were being sawed off while my fingers went into a meat-grinder.

Double fuck.

I lifted my guns and let mf-tipped bullets fly.

And missed as my slugs hit the
Iron Air
still dissipating.  My bullets went through, but were deflected, like shooting in water.  Miniature explosions bloomed all around the snake without doing more than showering him with concrete chips.

Not trusting my knee to support me, I stayed grounded, dragging myself to a new position.  He knew where I’d been; that place wasn’t safe.  From my new vantage point, a great deal closer to the yantra, I took aim again.

The snake’s head swung toward me.  He stared at the guns as if he could see them.

The Old Man yelled at me.  “Caine, I can see the guns.”

I let go of them.  They ghosted away, returning to my armory.  I rolled away, getting clear of that spot.  Banging my knee in the process. 
Damnmitdamnitdamnit!

The giant snake heaved himself to the spot I’d just left.  He thrashed, unable to see me, but knowing I was close.  His head swayed.  His garnet tongue flicked out, tasting the air.

The Old Man had his lightning-shaped sword out.  He ran at the snake, drawing its attention away from finding me.  The only thing I could figure was that my Demon Wings you-don’t-see-me spell had been weakened with the poison in my system, which I’d known was possible.  I was still being shielded, but not the things I touched, maybe not anything I might say.  I couldn’t be sure when the spell might collapse and totally expose me.

While I had a second to spare, I looked to see how Osamu and the girls were doing against the nagi.  A billow of fog made details blurry.  Osamu had escaped the lady snake.  He and the two fey warriors were flat shadows surrounding her.  Swords struck in unison.  One went into her torso, one slashed her tail-tip off, and the last sword lopped off her head and sent it flying.  The nagi collapsed, dead but writhing in death as snakes tend to do.

The fog thinned and I saw Ryella and Holy behind the yantra.  Fresh arterial blood from the nagi had spurted everywhere.  A lot of it had washed across the yantra.  A twisted sea-foam spray leaked from the headless corpse—a soul on the way to wherever.  The nagi soul sank into the yantra and vanished.  The brass grillwork corroded and turned butter soft in the blood splattered areas.  The whole pattern of brass deepened to a hunter green.  Glimmers of lime twinkled along the metal as it morphed into something not of our world.  The grill legs that were anchored in the concrete shivered and rippled.  I had the weird impression that the whole thing was trying to pull loose and go for a walk.

Not good, but not OMG-I’m-gonna-die either, not yet.  We need to end the revenant fast so we can deal with a freakin’ yantra coming to life.

I looked back at the Old Man.  He’d driven his made-in-China sword through the revenant’s snake form, piercing its heart, pinning it to the concrete and whatever lay under that. 

The snake hissed like escaping steam, twisting its undead body violently, trying to pull free.

The Old Man retreated, but he wasn’t done; a band of shadow formed like a collar on the snake, just behind its head.  The band was shadow, thick, strangling.  The Old Man was using shadow magic to choke the snake and restrain it.

Good idea.

I reached deep in my spirit for the darkness buried there.  I called it to hand, shaping the emptiness into a blade that jutted from my hands.   I didn’t move to swing or stab.  I didn’t need to.  The blade was an extension of my dark desires.  It lengthened—sword into spear—and pierced the giant snake, in one eye, out the other.

And then Ryella was there.  She tossed an amulet, chain and all, at the wounded monster.  A bile green mist frothed up out of the amulet.  The swirling vapor clung to the snake’s skin, eating it away.  In a moment, the muscles became soup, dripping away.  Organs rotted into black clumps.  The acid mist thinned to nothing, leaving a white spine and countless curved ribs, all picked clean.

Even the Old Man looked impressed.

As if she hadn’t done enough, Ryella unsheathed her war hammer, walking up to the eyeless skull that was finally still.  She raised her hammer and brought it down. 

Thwunkk!

Pieces of skull rattled around, tumbling like leaves.  Another blow broke the skull completely open, showing an empty braincase where no brain remained.

The shadow weapon I held smoked away.

For some reason, my heart pounded with a terrible urgency.  My hands were shaking, but I didn’t think it was an adrenal reaction setting in.  I felt my
Demon Wings
tattoo go dormant and knew it had lost power.  I was visible again. 

Suddenly, seeing me from the corner of her eye, Ryella spun my way, leaping, the hammer raised over her head.  Realizing it was me, I saw the temptation in her eyes to just continue and bash my head in, a mistake made in the heat of battle. 
Accidents happen
.  Cue the big goofy smile.

But she stopped, honor outweighing vengeance.  I wouldn’t have made that mistake.

A frosty green light hung in the air, a blobby, spiky mass of spectral energy.  This was the unified energy of the revenant’s many eaten ghosts.  The revenant’s corporal death had freed the spirits.  The shape of the ghost-light kept changing, as if it fought an internal war.  The strongest ghost in there was the naga baby, but if the others were coordinating an attack…

I heard a drawn out metallic
screech
behind me that made me look. It was the yantra pulling free of the concrete.  Some of its metal was left in the splintered concrete.  The square fifteen-by-fifteen foot grid was bowed, its corners almost meeting underneath it.  From the corners, the brass legs tapered, thinning, becoming spider legs.  Inside the brass shell, in the hollow core, I saw a spectral face, the revenant’s girlfriend—just her head and shoulders materialized.  Her gaze focused on the cluster of fighting ghosts.

She tottered that direction.

Osamu slashed one of her legs, severing it, but more of the brass flowed down to extend the limb.  The yantra bobbed but recovered its step.  It put on a burst of speed and scuttled into the struggling ghosts.  They bled through the brass grillwork and joined the ghost inside, becoming an even more chaotic fusion.  The girlfriend’s face dissolved.  The yantra wobbled and spun in a frenzied dance.

Teresa better pay up.  This is a hell of a show.  Uh-oh. 
The yantra was scrambling, running into a fall it tried to avoid. 
Coming straight at me. 

A blast of wind hit me like a sledge hammer, right in my good ribs.  I now had a matched set of cracked ones.  The mother of all dust devils tossed me into the air.  Holy had saved me from the yantra, but if I landed wrong, ribs were going to completely shatter and stab into my lungs.  I’d probably drown in my own blood.

Thanks a lot.

The yantra crashed and rolled, spider legs bending, folding, one of them snapping off.  That much I put together while the world spun.  And me without my wings.

The Old Man caught me with strands of shadow magic.  Arms and legs were tangled.  I don’t know how he knew to avoid stressing my ribs.  He made doing the right thing look easy.  I’d always hated that about him.

I flew past him and swung back.  He turned, holding the ends of the shadow strands.  I orbited him gradually slowing with every turn as he reeled me in.  Finally, he eased me to the concrete at his feet.  The shadow strands unpeeled from me, smoking away in the storm wind.

The yantra climbed up on damaged spider legs and scuttled across the roof, heading for the cherubim line in front. 

The Old Man picked me up as the rest of our crew gathered around me.  Straightening up, holding me effortless, the Old Man said, “C’mon, let’s go get it.”  He led the charge, his big feet thudding on the wet concrete. 

“Hey,” I yelled.  “Where’s Shiva?” 
How long has it been since I saw her? 

Silf huffed beside me, but found breath to answer.    “I think I saw her fall through the roof.”

Dhal was in better shape and didn’t even sound winded.  “She definitely fell through the roof.”