Authors: Nicholas Kaufmann
“That chick you liked?” Philip said. “Damn, man, that’s harsh. Did you at least get to tap that?”
I squinted at him. “I take back what I said about missing you.”
I peeked around the fighter jet for a better look at the pillar of red light. Dark shapes moved and swirled inside it, slowly beginning to coalesce.
“Shit, what is that?” I asked.
“It’s Behemoth. He’s coming through,” Isaac said. “Philip, did you get Nightclaw?”
“Yeah, sorry it took so long,” Philip said. “We ran into some trouble. But Aiyana came through, just like you said she would. She also told me to tell you she’s sorry. She said you would know what that meant.”
Isaac nodded. “I do.” Whatever history he had with the Goblin Queen gave him a faraway look in his eye.
Philip pulled a bundle of black velvet cloth from inside his coat and unwrapped it. Inside was a dagger, its hilt and blade as black as starless space.
I regarded it skeptically. “A magic dagger? Are you kidding me?” Just once why couldn’t it be a magic bazooka, or a magic howitzer? Something that actually looked like it could do some damage?
Philip turned his mirrored shades my way. “You’re fighting demons on Halloween, there’s a doorway to another dimension in the sky, but the
dagger
is the part you’re having trouble buying into?”
“Point taken,” I said.
“It’s no ordinary dagger,” Isaac explained. “Nightclaw is also called the Voyavold Slayer. It was forged by the Guardians themselves during their war against the Voyavold. It’s the oldest and deadliest blade there is. A single cut from Nightclaw can kill anything. It doesn’t even have to be a mortal wound. Just one stab, one cut, anywhere on the body is lethal.”
“If you want to kill a greater demon, you’re going to need a weapon like this,” Philip said. He wrapped it up again and put it back in his coat. “Unfortunately, it’s a close-range weapon. We’ll have to get up close and personal with whatever’s coming through that doorway.”
“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” Isaac said. “Behemoth hasn’t fully materialized yet. I might be able to close the doorway before he does. Trent, once I close it, that’s when I want you to put your plan into action. You’ll have to take Arkwright out quickly. Otherwise, he could use the Codex Goetia to summon more demons. We can’t let him. This has to end now.”
“I’m ready when you are,” I said.
Isaac stood, raising both his hands toward the rift in the sky. His whole body seemed to glow as he shouted an incantation. Bright beams shot out of his hands, soaring through the sky and into the rift. The rift began to dim. Isaac grimaced with effort, but it was working. The pillar of red light began to flicker. The shape coalescing inside it faded.
Up in vulture’s row, Arkwright gesticulated wildly and yelled orders at his army of lesser demons. A small handful stayed behind as his personal guard. The rest raced down the stairs toward us.
“Shit, here they come!” I shouted.
Above us, the rift seemed to resist Isaac’s spell, bulging and pushing back. The pillar of light brightened again.
“Hold them off!” Isaac said, forcing the words out from between clenched teeth. His face glistened with sweat. “I need more time!”
“I’m out of bullets,” I said.
“Here, take this.” Bethany threw me the hilt of the fire sword. As soon as I caught it, the blade of fire sprang out of it.
“Thanks. I owe you one.”
“Buy me a beer,” she said.
She pulled a charm from her vest. This one was a small, metal bracelet that she clamped around her wrist. A long, sharp blade sprang out of it, extending past her fist to the length of a sword.
Gabrielle flew into the air and started knocking lesser demons off their feet with shock waves.
Philip watched her in awe, his mouth hanging open. “Whoa. Gabrielle can fly now?”
“You missed some stuff,” I said. “If we survive this, I’ll fill you in.”
Gabrielle was doing a good job keeping the demons busy, but there were too many for her to handle on her own. They began slipping past her, running directly for Isaac, determined to stop him from closing the rift. Bethany, Philip, and I intercepted them. The fire sword was lighter than I expected. I could swing it faster and with greater precision than a metal sword. When the first demon reached me, I cleaved its head in two, right down the center. Remarkably, the demon stayed upright and kept fighting, the two halves of its head bobbing on either side of its neck. I parried its blade with mine, relieved that the fire sword was solid enough to use defensively. Then I jabbed it into one of the demon’s eyes. The eye ruptured and bubbled from the heat. The demon dropped dead.
One down, only an entire army to go.
I didn’t waste time aiming for anything but the demons’ eyes. In the chaos of the fight, I caught glimpses of Bethany stabbing demons through the eyes, too, her gore-soaked bracelet-sword lancing straight through the backs of their heads. Philip fought them with his bare hands, tearing the eyes out of their heads. Above us, Gabrielle continued her shock wave attacks, keeping the demons off-balance. And all the while, Isaac continued bombarding the doorway in the sky with his spell. The rift dimmed again. The pillar of red light flickered and grew fainter, then stronger again. I heard Isaac cry out.
“It’s too much!” he shouted.
I ran to him. Gabrielle flew past me overhead and landed beside Isaac before I got there.
“Let me help,” Gabrielle said. “I have magic. Tell me what to do.”
“No,” he said. His face was completely coated in sweat. It poured off his forehead and dripped from his chin. “Go. The others need your help.”
“Isaac—”
“It’s too dangerous,” he interrupted, grimacing with pain. “Using this much magic could—could trigger the infection inside you. Go, damn it!”
Gabrielle looked at me, but there was nothing I could do to change Isaac’s mind. Reluctantly, she flew into the air again.
“You, too,” Isaac growled at me. “Go!”
I didn’t want to leave him, but there was no point in arguing. I returned to the battle, but I was distracted by my concern for Isaac. A demon got around my defenses and struck me in the face with the hilt of its sword. I fell backward, tasting blood on my tongue. The fire sword fell out of my hand, its blade extinguishing instantly. The demon knelt over me, pinning my arms to the floor with its bony knees. It lifted its sword over its head, the point aimed straight down at my heart.
But the demon didn’t get a chance to strike. Its left eye popped in an explosion of goo as the tip of Bethany’s sword burst from its socket. More of the disgusting goo dribbled down on me as I tried to squirm out from under the demon. Bethany pulled her sword back out of the demon’s head. It fell on top of me. I groaned in disgust and pushed the body away. There was demon eyeball goo all over my face, neck, and chest. I’d ruined Isaac’s shirt, too. Maybe that was my true power: ruining shirts.
I stood up, wiping the goo off my face and trying to shake it off my hands. “Not enough showers in the
world,
” I muttered.
“You’re welcome,” Bethany said.
“I had it under control,” I said. “I was lulling the demon into a false sense of security.”
She rolled her eyes. “Right. Now that’s two beers you owe me.”
“It’s a date,” I said.
She grinned and ran back into the fray. I watched her stab one demon through the eye while kicking another away from her. She pulled her sword free and dispatched the second demon before it could rush her again.
Sometimes Bethany took my breath away.
No, scratch that. Not sometimes. All the time.
Isaac cried out suddenly. I spun around. He was on his knees, his hands still raised over his head as the spell poured out of him. He was soaked with sweat. His entire body trembled with exhaustion. In the sky above, the rift bulged and fought to stay open.
“I can’t!” Isaac said. “I can’t close it!”
The spell ended. His arms dropped to his sides, and he collapsed onto the deck. The rift burst back to life above us. The pillar of red light brightened and thickened. The shape within it began to solidify once more.
I ran to Isaac. He sat up, grimacing in intense pain. He held one hand close to his body, trying to hide it from me.
“I’m fine, Trent,” he said hoarsely. “I’m fine.”
“Isaac, let me see your hand,” I said.
He looked up at me angrily. “I told you, I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” I knelt down beside him. “Show me.”
Reluctantly, he held out his hand. I drew back in surprise. It wasn’t a hand anymore—at least, not a
human
hand. It was a twisted, grotesque appendage, halfway between a cockroach’s leg and a bird’s talon. It twitched and writhed at the end of his arm.
“The doorway was too strong,” he said, staring at his hand in horror. “I had to push myself further than I’ve ever gone. I’ve never tapped into that much magic before. It was too much.” He looked up at me. “It’s the infection, Trent. I’m infected.”
Thirty-Eight
“It’s not possible,” I said. “You can’t be infected. You’re a mage. Mages don’t get infected. That’s the rule.”
Isaac shrugged off his duster. With his good hand, he started rolling up his shirtsleeve. “It’s happened before. Other mages have gotten infected. Some were already predisposed to darkness. Others couldn’t keep the magic inside them under control anymore…” He paused, looking off into the distance. “Crixton knew. He said the magic had planted a dark seed inside me. He could sense it. One infected soul sensing another.”
“He was crazy,” I pointed out.
“He was right,” Isaac said.
He undid his belt and yanked it out of its loops. Using his good hand and his teeth, he wrapped it tightly around his forearm.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He fastened the belt tight, just below his elbow. He held out his good hand to me. “Give me the fire sword.”
I shook my head. “Jesus, Isaac—”
“Now, Trent!”
His tone told me there wasn’t time to argue. I picked up the fallen hilt and handed it to him. As soon as he gripped it, the fire sword blazed to life. He held it over his infected hand. He gritted his teeth and paused a moment to steel himself.
“Isaac, wait!” I said.
“It’s the only way to stop the infection from spreading,” he said.
“But you’ve stopped infections before,” I insisted. “You did it for Thornton—”
“There’s no time,” Isaac interrupted. “It’s spreading too fast.”
He was right. Already the flesh on his wrist and forearm was starting to change, turning squamous, mutating into an extension of the twisted thing where his hand used to be.
“But the infection can be reversed,” I said. “We’ve seen it!”
He raised the fire sword. “We don’t know how, and we don’t have
time
!”
I flashed on the vision the cloaked man had given me—an older, haggard-looking Isaac with only one hand—and then he brought the fire sword down. He cried out as it sliced cleanly through his forearm just below the belt’s makeshift tourniquet. The infected flesh fell to the deck with a sickening
slap
. The fire sword had cauterized the wound at the same time it cut through the flesh, filling the air with the odor of cooked meat. Isaac’s face dripped with sweat. He dropped the fire sword to the floor next to his own amputated appendage. He tried to stand but nearly fell over. I caught him. He leaned against me, his face buried in my chest.
“No matter what happens,” he murmured. “That’s what I said. No matter the sacrifices we have to make, we don’t—we don’t cede an inch…”
Philip came sprinting across the flight deck, body-checking demons out of his way. When he reached us, he pulled Isaac out of my grasp and supported the mage himself.
“I’ve got you, old man. You’re going to be fine,” he said. “Trent, what the hell happened?”
“The infection,” I said. “It came out of nowhere.”
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Isaac repeated.
His eyes were glazed over, but he fought to stay upright. Any other man would have passed out from shock, but somehow Isaac was managing to stay conscious, forcing himself, drawing on enormous reserves of strength just to keep standing.
At the ship’s stern, something massive was taking shape inside the pillar of red light. I could make out bits here and there: a thickly muscled arm the size of a tree, the ridged spine of a back, something that looked like a tail.
“We’re running out of time,” I said.
“Nightclaw,” Isaac muttered. He slumped against Philip. The vampire held him upright.
“I’m not leaving your side, old man,” Philip said.
Isaac shook his head. “Trent’s … not fast enough … has to be you.”
“I told you, I’m not—”
“Don’t argue … no time,” Isaac interrupted.
Reluctantly, Philip passed Isaac to me. While I supported the mage, Philip pulled the black velvet bundle out of his coat. He peeled off the cloth and gripped the dagger in his fist.
“Look after Isaac,” he told me, poking a finger into my chest. “If anything happens to him, I will hold you personally responsible.”
“I’ll keep him safe,” I said.
Then Philip was off and running through the battlefield. He slashed any demons who got too close. Wherever Nightclaw cut them, crooked black veins spread out over their bodies. A second later, they dropped to the floor, dead. I’d seen my share of strange and brutal weapons, but I’d never seen one so coldly efficient. All it took was one cut. No wonder the Guardians had kept its location a secret. Who could be trusted with a weapon like that?
Isaac leaned his weight against the fighter jet’s fuselage. “You can let go now.”
I released him. He didn’t fall. How he was staying upright was beyond me. I picked up the fire sword, prepared to defend us both if any demons came. I felt restless, like a coiled viper that wasn’t allowed to strike. I wanted to be out there fighting alongside the others. I knew someone needed to stay and protect Isaac, but hanging back and watching the others put their lives on the line made me feel useless.
But Gabrielle and Bethany were holding their own for now. They stood atop a pile of bodies, back to back, both of them covered in demon blood and eyeball goo as they continued to fight the horde. Philip battled his way through the crowd until he was through and running freely on the other side. He closed the distance to the churning pillar of light. A hundred feet, seventy-five, fifty—and then a missile of fire seemed to come out of nowhere. It struck him, exploding on impact. Philip was engulfed in flames and blown forcefully off his feet. He was hurled backward several yards, landing between two fighter jets.