Ascendance (31 page)

30

L
ucille saved him. She didn’t start singing as much as shrieking when Dave stepped onto the porch. He was already raising his hand, reaching for the brass knocker, when the magical war hammer filled his head with the buzz of angry wasps and screaming eagles. He warped by instinct, without thought, simply to escape the horrible din which seemed to fill the whole world. He didn’t transition to the weird edge-state he’d found himself in earlier, where it seemed as though the fabric of reality itself might tear under the strain. He simply slowed everything right the fuck down as the door in front of him seemed to bulge and glow. Paint blistered, cracked and dissolved. For an uncomfortably long, suspended second the hardwood distended like the surface of a balloon. Then rents appeared, forced open by glowing fireflies.

No, they were wasps.

No, they were shotgun pellets.

And Dave was diving, rolling, twisting away, feeling muscles tear and repair themselves. Losing sight of everything when he flinched and squeezed his eyes shut, as though that might protect him from the shotgun blast that was tearing through altered space toward him. The world turned and spun and fire raked at his flesh. Long splinters of pain speared through him as white-hot lead shot tore through his body.

The world sped up again and he heard screaming, not just his own. And shouting, a woman’s voice. Two of them, both known to him. Karen, yelling at everyone and no one to chill the fuck out, calm the fuck down, and stop shooting.

And Annie.

Annie O’Halloran. Love of his younger life, bane of his later existence.

Annie screaming and screaming and screaming as Dave fell into darkness, pushed under by the tsunami of pain he’d just absorbed.

*

He came to in pain, but not the twisted agony of burning and ripping he’d felt when Pat O’Halloran had unloaded both barrels of his old Ruger 20 gauge on his one-time son-in-law. Or at the door he was standing in front of, anyway.

‘I knew you never liked me,’ Dave croaked, not really joking, as he cracked open his eyes. He expected to be blind. Dead.

Instead he was stretched on a couch in the lounge room of his former father-in-law. An old tarp, stiff with age and dried paint, lay under him and he suspected that Annie would have made either Zach or Igor go out to the garage to fetch it before she’d allow them to lay him on her father’s good lounge.

He blinked and his eyes felt dry and scratchy, but hell, at least he could blink and he could see. He winced at the memory of the blast which had nearly taken off his head.

‘He’s awake,’ somebody said, as Dave struggled to sit up. He felt at his cheeks, gently, gingerly with fingertips only, not sure what he’d find. A whole new face? Grotesque and misshapen, grown back over shattered bones and cartilage?

No scars. No wounds. A three-day growth.

‘Dad! Dad’s awake!’

It was Jack. Or Toby.

For a second he wasn’t sure which. It had been a while since he’d spoken to the boys face-to-face.

‘Dad, are you okay?’

That voice, higher, a little more lilting, was Toby’s. He was eighteen months younger than his brother and unexpectedly musical. Annie had insisted he have singing lessons and Dave thought he could hear it in his voice now, a measured timbre that his brother lacked.

‘Dad?’

And that was Jack. His voice was cracking. Dave blinked again and rubbed at his eyes. He expected to find them crusted with dried blood but somebody had cleaned him up.

After Annie made sure the couch was safe.

‘Hey,’ Dave said, looking for his sons in the gloom, unable and unwilling to keep the grin out of his voice. ‘Hey boys. Did you see your old man on the TV?’

‘Did we!’ shouted Toby.

‘You were on everywhere, Dad,’ said Jack. Dave’s vision cleared at last and he found them easily in the dark. His boys.

‘Come here,’ he said, or tried to around the lump in his throat.

‘Boys, you mind your father, he’s hurt.’

The speaker brought them up short and swift.

Patrick James O’Halloran. Boston Irish master mariner. A hard man and an even harder father-in-law.

Ex father-in-law, thank Christ.

Dave spied him standing by the cold hearth, cradling the gun with which he’d nearly blown Dave’s head off. He looked older, even harder if that were possible, and utterly unrepentant. The rest of the room came into focus. Zach and Igor standing by the windows
–
the
Palladian
windows
–
both of them peering out into the night, keeping watch. Karen stationed by the window at the far end of the room, which looked out toward the tip of Shermans Point. She was watching Dave, her machine gun held with casual ease, the handle of her katana protruding well above her shoulder.

‘How long?’ Dave asked.

‘Half an hour,’ she said. ‘We were waiting for you to recover. Or die.’

He looked for Annie but couldn’t see her before the boys slammed into him. Their small arms around his neck, their warm faces pressed against his cheeks.

‘We saw you on YouTube,’ said Toby.

‘Yes, and they saw you on TMZ and Perez Hilton . . . with Paris Hilton.’

Annie.

That flat nasal voice which could pack so much more hurt into a few words than Dave could ever load up into a fist. Not that he had with her. Not once, not ever, no matter how sorely she had tempted and baited him to do it. He felt his youngest son stiffen against him.

‘So where have you been, Dave?’ said Annie, her voice sounding tired rather than angry. ‘Besides partying with your new friends in Hollywood?’

‘Well, mostly here on the couch I guess, after Pat shot me in the face.’

He tried to ease the boys away from him, but they held on tighter.

‘Granddad didn’t mean to,’ Jack said. ‘We thought you were a Bigfoot.’

‘Can’t blame a man,’ Pat O’Halloran said, again without a trace of apology.

‘I could but I won’t,’ Dave said. ‘Am I still pretty?’

Toby loosened his grip and sat up.

‘We saw you! You were like . . .’ He made a sucking-snorkelling sound and danced his fingers around his face, which scrunched into a fright mask, and then returned to its normal, unblemished form.

‘It was like they said on TV,’ Jack said in something approaching a stage whisper. ‘You’re indestructible now.’

‘No, he’s not,’ said Karen.


‘That’s enough.’ Annie sighed. ‘You boys let your father be. He’s had a nasty accident. You’ve said hello. Now go get yourselves off to bed. You’ve hardly slept and he’ll still be here in the morning. You will be here, won’t you, Dave?’

‘Hey. It was you who took the boys and fucked off . . .’

‘Language,’ growled Pat. ‘Keep it civil, Hooper.’

Karen spoke over the top of them.

‘You can have your episode of
Divorce Court
when we’re out of here. You boys, go get dressed. Camping clothes. Good boots. Go now. You, Ms O’Halloran . . .’

‘I’m sorry, but who are you anyway?’ Annie asked. ‘These two I know now,’ she said, indicating Igor and Zach who remained studiously fascinated by the approaches to the cottage. ‘They had the good manners to introduce themselves properly. But you haven’t told us anything. Did you bring your girlfriend, Dave? Is that who this is?’

Karen snorted.

‘He wishes.’

‘No I don’t.’

‘Hey? Super Dave. Pretty sure I mentioned the psychic powers.’

‘You have psychic powers?’ Jack gasped, staring at Karen with awe.

‘And a magic ninja sword,’ Toby said. ‘Holy crap. You’re even better than Black Widow.’

‘Language, boys,’ Pat growled again. ‘Keep it clean on my deck or you’ll be swabbing the deck.’

Dave cringed. It had been a while since he’d been directly exposed to Cap’n O’Halloran’s patented nautical sayings.

Zach decided he had to say something.

‘Ms Warat is correct,’ he said. ‘We need to exfil. Our pilot confirms he’s been refuelled. And this location is not secure. I don’t want to remain here any longer than we have to. Dave, are you good to go? How are you feeling?’

Dave thought about it.

‘Really hungry.’

‘Of course,’ muttered Karen.
‘Fsyoe zaeebahnuh.’

‘Language!’ growled Pat.

‘Your kids speak Russian, Dave?’

‘They will if you keep up the cussing like that,
pizda staraya
,’ O’Halloran said. ‘I’ve had your sort on my boats before. So I’d thank you to watch your mouth around my boys.’

‘They’re my boys,’ Dave said.

‘Could have fooled me,’ said Annie.

‘Why? You weren’t banging Vietch back then, were you?’

Dave heard Zach say, ‘God help us,’ under his breath, but the white squall that blew up between the clans O’Halloran and Hooper buried it. Nobody was arguing with each other. It was more a matter of throwing words
at
each other. Pat avowing that he should never have let his daughter fall in with such a low life. Annie yelling at Dave about some Hollywood lawyer who’d been ringing at all hours of day and night,
all hours
, harassing both her and poor Pearson, making all manner of threats. Annie demanding to know where her share of his last bonus went. Annie lashing him about all the bills she could not pay, the responsibilities he would not meet. And Dave, forgetting about the boys who were still clinging to him, jumping to his feet with such speed that Toby actually flew a short distance through the air and over the back of the lounge chair with a comical cry of ‘Whoa,’ while Dave shouted, ‘Perhaps your old man could reach into his pocket for something other than fucking shotgun shells.’

It only ended when Karen stormed across the room, spitting out the words ‘Shut up shut up shut up,’ as she smacked her palms on Pat and Annie’s foreheads, and then gave Dave a cracking backfist. The old man’s eyes narrowed at her touch, Hooper’s ex-wife’s bulged in shock. Her mouth flew open in a wide, soundless ‘O’. Pat’s lips pressed together in a thin, bitter line. Dave knew why. He was familiar with the deeply unpleasant feeling of Karin Varatchevsky reaching into his skull and squeezing hard.

‘You two!’ she barked at the boys. ‘Go do as I said. Now!’

The boys both scuttled away. Toby seemed no worse for his maiden flight across the lounge room.

‘As for you,’ she rounded on Dave and jabbed a stiffened finger into his chest. It hurt, and he could imagine her driving it right through his ribs. ‘Wake up and smell the hell stew, Hooper. I’ve put up with you bitching and moaning about this poor woman from the moment I met you.’

Annie did an actual cartoon double-take and shook her head vigorously. Dave opened his mouth to speak but Karen jabbed him again,
pushing
a little this time.

‘You’re a terrible father, every bit as bad as your own. But you were a much worse husband.’

She threw up a hand like a traffic cop, to forestall his inevitable protest.

‘You have no secrets from me, remember. I came up here with my head full of your whining about this woman.’ She pointed at Annie. ‘I was expecting to find a castrating succubus because that’s what you’d convinced yourself you’d married. But I’ve had half an hour with Annie while you’ve been having your power nap, and what I actually found is just another woman who married poorly. She’s been terrified these last days, like everyone in the whole world, except you. You were partying, and she was here wondering when the orcs would turn up.’

The force of her censure was a physical weight that Dave could feel pressing down on his shoulders, immobilising him. It got worse.

‘That drop cloth you’ve been lying on. She didn’t put it there to protect the couch. We used it to haul your carcass in off the porch. But you just had to make it her fault didn’t you? Like everything was always her fault and never yours. You’re a selfish bastard, Dave. You’re smart enough to know that, but you’re selfish, so you won’t do anything about it. You never have. In some ways, killing Urgon was the worst thing that could ever have happened to you.’

She pushed him again, hard. Forcing him to see himself as others did. Not as Super Dave. More like Super Douche.

The psychic blow was heavy enough to cause Pat O’Halloran to stagger against a wall and his daughter gasped, collapsing to the floor.

It saved her life.

31

‘T
he attack on the village has gone as planned, your Lordship. And all the cattle have been cleared from these fields.’

‘Very good,’ said Guyuk, not bothering to correct the Sliveen MasterScout. Although the lord commander had vowed to give up thinking of the human foe as nothing more than a food source, he had learned that others of the Horde found it nearly impossible to do so. For now, he would have to content himself with the knowledge that he was better than them. He understood
dar ienamic
. Or he was beginning to, at least.

‘They’re going back to the blood pots right?’ Compt’n ur Threshrend said. ‘The cattle, I mean. Because I got me some powerful munchies and I plan to see to them when we’re done here.’

‘Yes,’ Guyuk grunted, ‘the blood pots. But first we must be done here, Superiorae.’

‘Pfft.’

Guyuk recognised the odd noise the Threshrend made as being a remnant human gesture indicating scepticism. Compt’n ur Threshrend seemed especially fond of it.

‘You can stick a big fucking fork in us,
jefe
, we are done,’ he said. ‘All except for the screaming and the shouting and the tasty, tasty feasting back at the ol’ blood pot. And beer. I think we should totally take some beer when we go back down.’

Lord Guyuk ur Grymm marched into the Above, away from the dark portal to the UnderRealms, maintained here by not one, but three Masters of the Ways, two of them at the far end of the connection, as suggested by Compt’n ur Threshrend. Motherfucking redundancy, he called it and Guyuk recognised the sense of the practice. It would not be wise to assume that because they had the Dave isolated and at some supposed disadvantage, the damnable human champion could not yet do them great harm. To lose a Way Master, for instance, and find themselves trapped on this small peninsula in the hours before dawn would not do. If the accursed sun did not burn them from the earth, some equally accursed human magicks almost certainly would.

A Dread Company of Grymm fanned out through the forests ahead of them. Two more Talon of Hunn stood ready in the staging area at the other end of the Way, waiting their turn to pass through and join them. They would fight without leashed Fangr, lest a single dominant losing control for just a moment give them all away. It should not matter. Every moment brought more forces of the Horde onto this headland. Every moment, Guyuk hoped, brought the Dave closer to his ending.

As they stole through the night, the lord commander tried to take a measure of confidence from the success of the diversionary attack on the nearby hamlet. The Hunn there had died of course, but they had died well and their names would be added to the scrolls no matter what came of this next chapter. Their mission was done. The Dave had been drawn here, away from the main human armies, and having so easily accounted for the threat he could see, Sliveen confirmed the champion had repaired to his nest, unaware of the much greater threat he could not yet discern.

‘My psychic Super Friends are ready to rock, boss, just in case you were wondering.’

‘I was not wondering, no, Superiorae. But thank you for informing me anyway. The finest warriors of the Regiments Select of Grymm are of course well known for their incompetence and without your constant blathering I am sure I would faint away with worry that they would fail to escort the Threshrendum to their required station as ordered.’

‘Wow,’ Compt’n replied. ‘That was like, wow. You laid down some choice snark there, boss. Good for you! You’ll be, like, doing irony and shit soon.’

‘Yes. Yes my . . . snark is coming along. Thank you for noticing.’

Compt’n ur Threshrend did indeed appear to be quite genuine in his appreciation for Guyuk’s use of the strange human form of communication known as sarcasm. It was, he had learned, a particular favourite of the Dave. He seemed to speak in high snark and nought else whenever he challenged a member of the Horde. Guyuk did not intend to look foolish should he ever have to cross wits with the man.

‘But be quiet now, Superiorae,’ Guyuk cautioned. ‘We draw closer to the quarry and this, after all, is your plan. Best that we afford it the highest chance of success.’


They advanced through the forest, the smell of salt and seawater strong in his nasal slits as he listened to the crashing boom of surf on rocks. The rumble rolled in from the darkness dagger-wise, the direction from which the sun would rise soon enough. Too soon indeed for his peace of mind. Beside Guyuk, shield-wise and a few steps behind him, Compt’n ur Threshrend hurried to keep up. Although he was the smallest of the daemonum investing the headland he was by far the loudest. Even the Hunn were able to advance on their prey with greater stealth.

‘If you stomped a little harder through the dead fall of this forest I’m sure the Dave might actually hear you coming,’ said Guyuk.

‘Pfft. The Dave has probably fallen into a barrel of rum by now,’ the Superiorae replied. Guyuk was not sure what he meant, but the empath did appear to take a little more care to soften the fall of his hind-claws.

The small hovel where Compt’n ur Threshrend had promised they would find the Dave’s nestlings slowly appeared through the trees. It was an unimpressive structure compared to the great towers Guyuk had seen in Manhatt’n, but far sturdier than anything recalled in the annals of the war scrolls. One of the human chariots waited in the clearing in front. The Superiorae surprised him by leaping into the lower branches of a tree, and scaling quite nimbly into the upper canopy. The lord commander suppressed the urge to scold him or even to ask what he was doing. He had to remember that, as perverse as the Superiorae could appear at times, he was their only expert in the ways of
dar ienamic
.

We must hasten to acquire more experts, Guyuk thought, as the Threshrend scuttled down again.

‘Lookin’ good, boss,’ Compt’n said in a low voice. ‘You want I should tell my peeps to start blocking his WiFi?’

‘If you mean, should the Threshrendum begin their attack? No. The last of the Hunn are still to move into position. I fear that fate shall gift us no more than one lunge at this foe. I would not wish to strike before we are set.’

‘Okay, okay, not judging. Just saying,’ the tiny empath daemon said hurriedly, throwing up its fore-claws. ‘It’s just, you know, sunrise and everything. And I don’t really tan. I burn. We all burn. Like, you know, horribly. So . . .’

‘I am aware of the danger, Superiorae. But war is risk. And this is a risk which might win us not just the human realm but the greater struggle against the other sects. It is a risk worth taking.’

*

It was totally fucking not worth taking. Or at least, not in person. Or not in monster.

Threshy stopped and frowned, an even uglier expression on this face, riven with scars and suppurating boils, than it had been on all his previous human faces. Or the faces he’d eaten. He snarled and shook off the thought. Sometimes the persistence of his old ways of thinking fucked him up.

Like when he thought of Polly Farrell. And all the things he’d like to do to Polly Farrell with his monster loins.

He quickly pushed those thoughts aside.

He was here, and not rotting in some Grymm dungeon, because he
could
think in those ‘old’ ways, the human ways of those whose brains he’d sucked up like an offal slushy. There was no pay-off in worrying about what might have happened if he hadn’t been spared by Guyuk.

It was enough to unsettle a motherfucker. Even a motherfucker who’d eaten the brains of a genius like Compton. Hell, even those SEALs he’d chomped had been a lot smarter than most people you’d eat. But not as smart as Compton, and that was why they were here. Because Compton had known Hooper would eventually make his way to his family.

Didn’t mean Threshy
needed to be here though. Or even Guyuk. They could have sent the Dread Company without adult supervision. They’d have killed every motherfucker who needed killing. And then everyone else. No need for Threshy to bother with anything but the celebratory kegger back at the palace. He didn’t even need to be here to control the Threshrendum. They were all battle-worn badasses and they knew now how to stop Hooper and his little dominatrix friend from speed-whoopin’ their asses like the Flash.

He sniffed at that, as the last cohort of Hunn moved quietly into position around them, the dominants slipping through the darkened forest with a stealthy silence that belied their size and the great weight of armour they all now wore. These were not mere warrior Hunn. They were dominants-exceptional. The finest of their clan. Nobody was going into this cage match with their dumb nuts hanging out.

It bugged the hell out of Threshy that he couldn’t figure out how Hooper and the Russian bitch were orbing around. Or warping, to use Hooper’s term. It also bugged him that he tended to think of the mysterious power as orbing, because that’s how the woman thought of it, and his empathic link was to her, not the so-called fucking Dave.

Warping was much cooler.

But the fucking Consilium Scolari took their lead from the Threshrendum in the field, not Threshy, and like him, the Threshrendum were linked with Varatchevsky, not Hooper. So orbing it had to be.

Even though nobody knew what the fuck it even was. There were no such things as orb daemons or warp monsters. The power seemed indigenous to Hooper, which was fucking bullshit.

Threshy sniffed as his nostrils caught the scent of something in the breeze. Gun smoke. Faint and almost faded. It gave him a start for a moment and he saw, and felt, that Guyuk caught it too. He could not see the bulk of the Dread Company, but he felt them suddenly freeze.

‘Human weaponry.’

The Sliveen MasterScout surprised Threshy. He had not sensed him there in the shadows. Sneaky fucker.

‘Explain yourself, MasterScout,’ Guyuk growled quietly. ‘You reported the Dave and his thrall were unaware of our approach.’

The Sliveen warrior sniffed at the night air again.

‘It has been some time since the calfling weapons were used, my Lord. And then not more than once or twice. None of my scouts reported being taken under fire by their magicks. It must have happened before we arrived.’

‘Ha!’ Threshy snorted, remembering at the last moment to keep his voice down. ‘Maybe his ex-wife shot the asshole. That’d be like her from what Hooper said. Or the Russian? Man, we shoulda just cut a deal with the bitch. Made her Queen of the Above for whacking him. She’d have done it for fucking free.’

He understood from the expressions on the faces of Guyuk and the MasterScout that they had little or no idea what he was talking about.

‘Meh. Too late now. Let’s just go kill ’em all.’

‘You are convinced this is not some trap, Superiorae?’ Guyuk asked.

‘Not convinced, no,’ said Threshy. ‘But it’s probably not. I reckon we should fire up the Threshrend and see what happens.’

‘Are the Hunn in place?’ Guyuk asked the MasterScout. The Sliveen bowed.

‘Yes, my Lord.’

‘In that case, Superiorae have your Threshrendum engage
dar ienamic
.’

‘You don’t have to tell me twice,
Jefe
.’