Descent of Angels (16 page)

The creature sprang at him as if from nowhere.

It had hidden in the shadows behind a stand of twisted and ancient trees near the clearing’s edge. At first, as it charged through the foliage towards him, it was as though a monstrously spined rock had come to life.

Zahariel saw a dark, swift shape bearing down on him. The creature was huge and moved with impossible speed. Terrified, his destrier gave a sudden start and reared up in panic. He fought to stay in his saddle, gripping the reins tightly.

A Calibanite lion, and it was nearly on top of him.

Another second and it would tear him apart.

EIGHT

I
N ONE FROZEN
, fear extended instant, Zahariel saw a host of the beast’s anatomical details as it charged. Its body was wide and powerful, leonine only in the fact that it was a quadruped with a mane of blade-like spines growing from behind its armoured head. Each of its limbs was sheathed in glistening plates of natural armour that had the quality of rock, yet the pliability of flesh. Claws like knives extended from its front paws, and twin fangs, like the mightiest cavalry sabres protruded from its upper jaw.

Zahariel had wondered if the figures of how many people the beast had slain were inflated to better convey its horror, but in one terrible moment, he knew differently.

Only his instincts, honed by long hours in the shooting ranges of Aldurukh, saved his life.

Zahariel lifted the rotary barrelled pistol that the dying Amadis had given him and fired a rippling salvo of shots, sending every bolt towards the centre of the lion’s mass as his teachers had taught him.

The bolts struck home, but the lion appeared not to feel the blasts as they hit its thick hide. The rounds from his pistol had explosive cores designed to detonate deep inside a target’s body, and had enough stopping power to kill almost anything, even a creature of such startling appearance and shape.

The lion shrugged them off as though it barely felt the impacts.

Roaring in fury, the lion lashed out with a bladed paw as it leapt.

The blow struck Zahariel’s destrier, punching through the animal’s side with an awful, bone breaking crack. The destrier buckled as the lion eviscerated it, and Zahariel was flung bodily from his saddle, landing in a heap in the mud of the clearing.

Zahariel scrambled to his feet quickly as his horse collapsed, its innards spilling from its ruptured body in a flood of hot viscera. Distracted by such an easy kill, the lion’s attention was fixed on Zahariel’s dying mount.

Zahariel fired his pistol again, sending another fusillade at the lion as it took a bite of the screaming horse, the swords of its fangs tearing a great slab of meat from the beast’s rump. The armoured plates around the lion’s body slithered across its body, sparks and chunks of resinous material flying as each bolt struck home without effect.

His gun clicked dry as he emptied the last shots from the magazine, and the lion let out a deafening bellow that was part roar, part howl. Zahariel hurriedly reloaded his weapon, as he backed away from the monster, horrified at the sheer power of it.

The lion prowled around the edge of the clearing, its eyes serpentine and coloured a vivid orange with black slits at their centres. The mane of blades at its neck pulsed with protean motion, each one cutting the air with lethal intent.

Zahariel kept moving, taking sideways steps in opposition to the huge beast. Its throaty growls and the ropes of drool that hung from its opened jaws spoke of its terrible hunger, and he tried not to think of being ripped apart by its fangs.

Though the creature was an aberration, a monster from his worst nightmare, he had the impression that it was glowering at him with dark amusement. Fighting back the onset of fear, Zahariel was reminded of the winged beast he had fought long ago, remembering the spider and fly analogy he had used to describe how the beast had made him feel. This creature displayed the same malicious enjoyment of the hunt, as though he were a meaty morsel to be savoured before being devoured.

His training told him to keep the lion at a distance and use his pistol to full effect, but his knightly code told him to charge the beast and meet it in the glory of close combat.

Keeping his pistol trained on the prowling lion, Zahariel drew his sword as he considered his options. Counting the magazine he had just loaded, he had two clips left for his pistol. There was more ammunition in a pannier hanging from the saddle horn of his thrashing mount, but it was out of reach. Assuming he did not charge into close combat, he had twenty-four shots at hand with which to kill the lion.

Ordinarily, he would have considered twenty-four rounds enough to defeat any foe, or any other creature in the universe, but the great beasts of Caliban were chimerical monsters, combining the worst aspects of several different species of animal into one foul body.

A sticky red liquid stained the front of the lion’s body where it had been hit by the bullets, but he did not know whether it was blood or some vile secretion.

Even the chunks blasted from its rock textured hide seemed to have closed over.

Without warning, the lion pounced across the clearing towards him with extraordinary speed. He dived to the side, bringing his sword around in a low arc to deflect the creature’s attack. Whirring teeth sliced into the creature’s hide and splattered Zahariel with gore.

The lion roared and twisted in mid leap, its heavy hindquarters slamming into Zahariel, pounding him to the ground. He rolled as soon as he hit, keeping his sword extended upwards to avoid being torn apart by his own blade. The lion’s spines flared, and its heavy paws tore up the ground where he had fallen.

Zahariel stabbed with his blade, the whirring teeth cutting through the spines at the beast’s neck. Drooling fluids sprayed from severed blade spines, spattering his armour with hissing, acidic blood.

The lion spun and snapped at him with its enormous maw. Zahariel hurled himself to the side as powerful jaws slammed closed within centimetres of his torso. He fired as he dodged its attack, putting several bullets into its side. Again, the beast gave no sign of pain or shock, apparently immune to both.

Zahariel’s skin was already slick and dripping with sweat, and he could feel a tightness across his shoulders and down the length of his calves. His armour was equipped with mechanisms designed to keep him cool and support his movement, but they were no match for the exertions of his fight against the lion.

His life lay balanced on a knife’s edge, and the next few seconds would decide whether or not he lived to see another sunset. The time for caution had passed.

Sweeping his sword in a wide arc to gain a few moments of breathing space from the roaring fury of the lion, Zahariel suddenly leapt forward. Rolling as he hit the ground, he came up with Amadis’s pistol blazing, firing another salvo of shots as he ran screaming towards the lion.

For the briefest instant, the lion seemed almost surprised, opening its mouth in a loud bellow of rage. Zahariel and the lion charged towards each other, crossing the no-man’s-land between them in moments.

His proximity to the beast made his gorge rise. There was something loathsome, almost leprous about it. It was surrounded by a sickly scent of decay that he was not really sure was a scent at all, as though the creature’s inherent vileness was transmitting itself to every object in its vicinity.

Zahariel felt as if the beast’s aura of foulness had managed to seep into his pores through his armour. More than ever, its presence felt like a cancer at the heart of the world, a source of vile contagion that must be destroyed.

His hatred gave him strength.

Zahariel was at close range, standing toe-to-claw with the monster. He pumped two more bolt rounds into it at point-blank range in the instant before they met in a melee. Then, as the lion swiped at him with its claws, Zahariel slipped nimbly under their clumsy grasp and thrust hard with his sword towards the creature’s wide chest.

The lion bellowed and as its mouth opened. Zahariel fired his pistol into the yawning chasm, angling his shots towards the roof of its mouth.

He thrust again and again, the blade skidding as its whirring teeth cut through the armoured outer layers of the lion’s hide. The lion’s slamming head hit him a thunderous body blow, and he crashed to the ground, hearing the horrific sound of bones breaking within his body.

Zahariel hit the ground hard, the wind knocked from his lungs as the beast smashed its front limbs down on his chest. Blade-like talons punched through the outer layers of his breastplate, and he screamed as the tips pierced the skin and muscle of his chest.

He could feel the pressure of the lion’s weight, its head centimetres from his own and its thick, acrid drool spattering his face. He could barely breathe.

The hand holding his pistol was still free, and he fired several shots into the lion’s belly at point-blank range.

He heard an ominous cracking noise as the seals on his armour gave way. The lion stood atop him, knowing he was pinned and powerless, and content to watch him suffer a slow, agonising death as it crushed the life out of him.

Zahariel felt as though there was an iron band around his chest, stopping him from breathing. The lion’s claws lifted him from the ground towards its mouth as it prepared to bite him in two. The great maw opened, and the waiting gust of corruption that blew from its impossibly wide gullet was the foulest thing Zahariel could imagine.

The long tusks of its upper jaw extended from its mouth, each one like an organic sword blade, hauling him towards his doom. He struggled uselessly in its grip, the talons of its paw wedged in his breastplate holding him stuck fast. He screamed in anger and fear, feeling his hatred of the beast coalesce in a bright ball of furious energy at his core. He spat into the creature’s mouth as the fangs descended upon him.

He closed his eyes as the fangs bit down, and felt an outpouring of his hatred explode from his body in a glittering halo of light.

Everything stopped.

Though his eyes were closed, he could see the shimmering outline of the lion, its every bone and internal organ laid bare to his sight as though lit from within by some strange pellucid sun. He could see the blood pumping around its body, the pulse of its heart and the foul energy that had brought it into existence.

The tableau was in motion, but glacially slow motion. Each beat of the lion’s heart was a dull, thudding boom, like the arc of an ancient pendulum. Its fangs still descended upon him, but their movement was so infinitesimally slow that it took him a moment to even realise they were moving.

Every bone and muscle in Zahariel’s body ached. His chest was on fire, and he could feel an aching cold seep into his bones as this new and unknown power flowed through him. He looked down at his flesh, seeing the veins and bones beneath his skin.

As he had suspected, the beast had fractured several of his ribs. He could see the splintered ends grinding together beneath the transparency of his breastplate.

He lifted his arm towards the beast, his hand passing through the ghostly outline of its translucent flesh as though it were no more substantial than smoke. He smiled dreamily as he saw that he still held Brother Amadis’s pistol, its mechanisms and internal workings laid bare to his newfound sight.

He pressed his pistol against the monster’s heart, within the ghostly outline of the beast’s body. He opened his eyes and pulled the trigger.

An awful snap of reality reasserted itself, as the beast died in a spectacular fashion.

Zahariel’s hand was buried in its flesh, his armoured vambrace penetrating its chest as though it had been implanted there. Its jaw snapped closed on his shoulder guard, the blades of its fangs punching through the plate armour and burying themselves in his body.

No sooner had its jaws closed than the lion’s chest expanded with internal detonations.

Fire built behind its eyes and portions of its flanks exploded outwards as ammunition blasted out from inside the monster’s body.

Its underbelly exploded in a wash of steaming entrails and it collapsed to the ground, bearing Zahariel down with it.

He groaned in pain, the weight of the beast incredible, and the pain in his shoulder like a furnace of torn muscle and blood. Every muscle ached, and he could feel a burning pain all the way down his ribcage.

Zahariel squeezed his eyes shut and bit down on his bottom lip as he pushed against the lion’s corpse, rolling it onto its side. Breath heaved in his lungs, and he cried out as his broken ribs ground against one another.

The pain in his shoulder was extraordinary, the lion’s fangs were still embedded in his flesh and armour. Taking a deep breath, he dropped his pistol and placed his hands on either side of the lion’s huge head. Its eyes were lifeless, yet its fearsome visage still had a monstrous power. Though he knew it was unquestionably dead, he half-expected the jaw to open once more and finish what it had started.

Faster was better than slower, and he screamed in agony as he wrenched the monster’s head backwards. The sharp fangs slid from his body, coated in his blood and, free of its toothy embrace, he slid backwards from its corpse.

Blood streamed from the puncture wounds in his shoulders, and he spent the next few minutes removing the armour plates and tending to the grisly injuries. He cleaned his wounds as best he could with supplies taken from the saddle bags of his broken and gored steed, and applied heavy, wadded bandages to his body.

Curiously, the pain appeared to have diminished, but he knew that was simply shock. Soon enough, it would return with interest. When he had done as much as he could for his poor, battered frame, he sank to his knees in exhaustion and finally allowed himself to think about how he had defeated the beast.

What strange power had allowed him to see the beast as he had? Had it been some after effect of his journey into the dark forest, some unknown energy that the Watchers had imparted to him?

Or was it something darker?

The Watchers had said that the taint was already in him.