Destroyer Rising (15 page)

Light waited at the end of the narrow path. We burst
out of it as a creepy, slithering voice echoed around us.

The fates have spoken.

The last statue was Nixie. Her body was stone,
shattered across the floor.

“It’s not her!” Mike shouted, as though he knew
exactly what I was seeing.

In the fragments, I saw Sam and my parents and
friends I hadn’t seen in a decade. A dark specter rose in the
center. I stared at the hooded form, the mirror image of myself,
standing upon a kingdom of death.

“Don’t!”

Mike’s words were lost to the rage.

The Servants had miscalculated. They thought the
vision would break me, that I’d somehow abandon my quest to save
Vicky. The only thing broken that day would be them.

The scream that echoed from my chest wasn’t mortal.
It wasn’t human. It was the death throes of a million souls, the
fear of the lost, and rage of the hopeless. The room exploded into
a bath of golden light.

I could hear nothing above the voices inside my head.
Opening myself allowed me to siphon away every ounce of power that
fueled the Servants’ illusions. Three of them huddled behind the
rubble of an actual statue.

Their faces moved and twisted as though each was made
from a tangle of vines. Vacant holes met my eyes and I let a
deathly smile curl up over my clenched teeth.

“Stay back,” I hissed, and my voice echoed through
the room, whispering my words back to me.

“No!” Someone shouted before they yanked on my arm.
“Stop!” A small girl stood before me, pushing on my chest. “Damian,
stop!”

“Vicky, move.”

“You’ll bring the fortress down and kill us all.
Stop!”

Her words cut through the bone-rattling cascade of
voices in my head. I stepped backwards, slowly releasing the mass
of power that I’d gathered. But what if she was an illusion too?
What if it was all a ploy?

It was too much to risk, either way, so I released
the power and watched the Servants. One of the creature’s faces
slithered where a mouth should have been, and the voices sounded
through the chamber once more.

He is no mortal!

“Leave this place,” Mike growled.

Fire demon, you have no power over us.

“This house was abandoned by the stone demons.” Mike
raised the hammer and it burst into fiery life. “Abandoned by the
dark-touched.” His body grew and distorted, his voice reaching the
depths of Aeros’s. “You are welcome to challenge my right, but it
will become my prerogative to destroy you.”

A loose reading of the laws. We know of your oath.
You cannot harm us.

The trio stepped out from behind the statue. The
broken stone peppering the floor flickered and levitated before the
cloaked woman reappeared with the dagger in her hand.

Mike laughed through his teeth. He opened his jaws
and his entire body burst into flame. “I swore never to harm the
innocent, Servant. You have misjudged.”

Wings burst from Mike the Demon’s back as he leapt
into the air. The first of the wriggling creatures exploded beneath
an overhand blow from the Smith’s Hammer. Flaming bits of
serpent-like flesh splashed onto the far wall.

It was then that I noticed the terrible burn in my
own hands. I held my palm up and marveled at the cracks appearing
in the flesh, leaking golden light. I’d siphoned off too much
power, and it had to be released.

A shadow formed at the corner of my eye, the Little
Necromancer. She could help. She knew a great deal about the darker
arts, and if I gave her just a little … The mere thought was enough
to cause an arc of golden light to leap into the ghost. She
screamed at the sudden shock and her eyes went wide, locking onto
me.

After a moment she whispered, “More.”

I didn’t know the why, or the how, really. The
knowledge just bubbled up. I let some of the fragmented souls
loose, bits of power without enough sense of self to ever remember
who or what they were. The ghostly light flowed and seeped into the
Little Necromancer. Her body grew brighter, and the light faded as
she became more than a ghost, as she stepped back into a world not
meant for the dead.

It would be temporary—I knew, though I don’t know how
I knew—unless I tied everything together. I pinched the flesh at
the back of her neck and sent a needle of necromancy through it. It
anchored the souls to her throat chakra and color returned to her
aura.

I expected a flash of knowing, something, anything,
but nothing came. The cracks in my arm closed and hissed, leaving
only thin tracers of burnt flesh behind.

“Sarah?” Mike’s voice shook. He held one of the
Servants by the throat. The distraction left an opening for the
last. It threw its arms wide, and snake-like
things
erupted
from his chest. They burned and twirled and hissed as they closed
on Mike’s face.

The Little Necromancer held up her hands and chanted
three words before pushing at the air in front of her. An
impossible gust of wind blasted the snakes out of the air and
smashed them against the black stone wall.

Mike squeezed, and the second Servant’s neck
collapsed with a gurgling crunch. The body writhed when it hit the
floor, only to still a moment later.

“Sarah?” The flames around Mike dimmed.

She smiled and made a quick gesture with her hand. A
brand appeared on the last Servant, a tangled web of lines and
runes that was nothing I’d seen before. The Servant screamed and
clawed at his chest, tearing away his cloak and the flesh
beneath.

In the time it took for Sarah to wrap her arms around
Mike, the Servant was ash.

“What the fuck just happened?” Jimmy said, stepping
toward me, and then veering off toward Carter.

“I’m not sure,” Carter said.

Mike fell to his knees. Sarah ran her fingers
delicately over the thick, twisted horns on his head.

“It’s Anubis,” Mike whispered, his voice shaking.
“You have the power of Anubis, Damian. Lord and master of the
dead.”

My knuckles cracked as I clench them into fists.
“Ezekiel. Goddammit.”

“Can you do that for us?” Jimmy asked. “Make us real
again?”

The hope in his voice made the words feel so much
worse on my tongue. “No, it’s different. You’re all bound to the
River Pack. I can’t … it’s like some of the parts are missing. I
don’t think I can do it with any ghost. Sarah has a gift in
necromancy, and we’re inside Mike’s realm. It felt like I was just
restoring a bond that was already there.”

Jimmy looked away and frowned.

“You’re still real,” Vicky said. “We’re all still
real.”

Jasper hopped back up onto my shoulder. I wasn’t sure
when he’d climbed off. He rolled down my arm until his eyes were
level with my wrist. The furball studied it for a time before
returning to my shoulder.

I reached a shaky hand up to scratch him. Vicky
leaned on Happy and held her stomach.

“You okay?” I asked.

She nodded. “I just feel a little funny. I’ll be
fine.”

“We need to move,” Maggie said. “Time is short, and
we cannot fail.”

“Come on kid,” Jimmy said, putting his arm around
Vicky’s shoulders. Happy bumped the werewolf with his hips and
trundled over to Mike.

Sarah pulled on the demon’s hands until he stood over
her once again. “Come on. We have to help Vicky. Happy’s right.”
Quietly, I heard her mutter, “So is Maggie.”

Our pace quickened as we made our way through the
sixth fortress. It felt like we walked in constant loops until we
finally turned a corner and a gate waited for us. Mike pulled it
open with one hand. There was no visible lock or mechanism on the
black obsidian latticework, but it slid smoothly to the side.

I followed the wolves out, Bubbles walking at my
side. The gateway slammed closed behind us, leaving our group
beneath the crimson sun once more. Pockets of that awful forest
waited here. The only path around led to a cliff.

Mike waited at the edge with Sarah, the little
necromancer, and I stopped behind them both, my heart dropping to
my feet.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Burning Sea,” Mike said. “Barrier between the sixth
circle and the rest of the Burning Lands.”

“Ugh, it’s like the street that cuts between the bad
neighborhood and the good neighborhood,” Jimmy said.

I agreed wholeheartedly, and as much as I wanted to
smack the kid sometimes, I kind of liked him.

“Except it’s demons instead of minorities in the bad
neighborhoods,” Jimmy said.

And in one sentence I was back to not liking him.
Some people were just born to be assholes. “How do we get
across?”

“I thought this would be low tide,” Carter said. “We
don’t have time to wait for the seas to recede. Look at the
sun.”

“He’s right,” Sarah said. “We don’t have enough time.
We’ll never make it to the tenth circle before darkfall.”

“Damian can get us there,” Mike said.

“What?”

“Anything you can imagine, you can create in this
place. This is the calmest part of the sea,” Mike said. “We can
sail across, or you can build us a bridge.”

“I can what?” I tilted my head and stared at the
demon. “What do you mean?”

He studied the earth beneath our feet. “I did not
mention it before as I hoped your time here would temper your
magic. Accidentally destroying the world with us on it would be
unwelcome.”

I slowly arched an eyebrow.

“You have the powers of any god that has ever walked
within this realm.” Mike raised his eyes to mine. “Use them. If you
can’t help us all across, get yourself to the last fortress. Find
Prosperine, and destroy her.”

He was telling me to leave them behind. “I can’t do
it alone.”

“When you raise the Demon’s Sacrifice, the souls will
come to you,” Mike said in a quiet voice. “They need not be beside
you.”

A shadow moved, leaping up from within the Burning
Sea. It struck fast, launching a trident at Mike. The fire demon
deflected it. The tines clattered against the rock as Mike’s hand
stretched out and snatched another from the air.

Happy struck like a jackhammer, his paw flashing out
to smash the demon into the stone cliff. It didn’t look like the
wriggling masses that formed the Servants we’d encountered. His red
flesh looked almost normal compared to that.

I unholstered the pepperbox and leveled it at his
head.

He leaned forward, hissing, before Happy smashed his
face with a quick paw strike.

“Strike me down, Anubis-son. It matters not.”

“It’s going to matter to you,” I said.

Happy cracked the demon’s head again, and I winced.
Parts of the demon’s face weren’t where they had been a moment
before.

“Prosperine controls the gathering of souls,” the
mangled face whispered. “You can’t stop her.”

I glanced at Carter and grimaced before turning back
to our captive. “You’re wrong, demon. I am not bound to the rules
of my realm in this place.” I flexed my hand, and the ground
exploded around him. The fingers of the Hand of Anubis wrapped
around the demon and ignited, pulling the burning creature into the
earth. His screams grew muffled before they vanished entirely.

“There goes another one,” Jimmy said.

“Damian …” Carter said. “It seems you wield enough
power here to kill any creature foolish enough to strike at you,
and yet your confidence seems thin. What aren’t you telling
me?”

I holstered the pepperbox and ran my fingers through
my hair. “I know how to kill Prosperine in this realm, to bring an
end to the terror she showers on the world.”

“That’s fantastic!”

“No. It requires a soulart, Carter, and half a dozen
willing souls.”

Carter glanced back at the Ghost Pack. He sighed and
looked to the sea.

Maggie stepped up beside him, her eyes blazing with
golden light. “Will it free the girl?”

I gave one sharp nod. “It should.”

“Then there is no choice to make,” Carter said. He
turned back to me. The crimson light glinted on his golden eyes and
caught fire.

I frowned. “Yes, there is. You’ll die. We have to
find another way.”

“We’re already dead, Damian,” Maggie said. “We told
you once we were thankful for the time we had together. If we can
help destroy a demon and bring about peace for that child, you
won’t stand in our way.”

“I
can’t
do that,” I said, clenching my fists.
“The pack needs you.”

Carter’s mouth lifted in a small smile. “Damian, the
pack has Hugh—a rightful Alpha for hundreds of years now. Vicky
needs us. When the time comes, when you can strike down the
Destroyer once and for all, that will be our purpose. That will be
our legacy.”

“Let us help,” Jimmy said, biting off the words.

I was taken aback at the young ghost’s heated
words.

“No.”

I turned to look at the speaker.

Vicky frowned and eyed the wolves. “No one is dying
for me.”

“You are our strength, little one,” Carter said.
“When your curse is broken, there will be no need for the Ghost
Pack.”

Vicky’s lips trembled. “You’re my friends. My best
friends other than maybe that stupid bear.”

Happy chuffed and flopped onto the smooth stone
ground.

“That is the end of this conversation,” Carter
said.

“This is not a decision to be made lightly,” Mike
said. “I would consult with Hugh before enacting something so
severe.”

The demon was right. “How?” I asked.

Mike turned to Carter. “You can contact the Alpha at
will, yes?”

“At times,” the ghost wolf said. “There are other
times he seems blocked, for lack of a better term.”

“It is the bond with Damian that allows it,” Mike
said, and his certainty surprised me.

“How can you know that?” I asked.

“It is the only thing that makes sense. No one can
communicate across the Abyss, except for Hugh and the Ghost Pack.
The only thing unique about them—”