Summoner of Storms (21 page)

Until now, right when all hell broke loose
around them.

“John!” Sean shouted. “Here they come!”

Fuck. John tore his gaze from Gray’s
retreating figure. The controlled NHEs surged from everywhere else
in the fort, all of them aiming for the stairs and Gray. The narrow
space between casements and the sheer side of the Battery Huger
funneled them, keeping the NHEs from surrounding Gray. And sending
them straight at John and Sean.

John set his stance, aimed, and fired. Sean
did the same beside him, and the first round of NHEs fell to
silver-jacketed lead. Some tried to flank them, scrambling over
cannons, but Kaniyar, Tiffany, and some of the other Vigilant
formed a line of their own, laying down a blistering screen of
fire. John hoped someone had managed to get the surviving captives
somewhere halfway safe.

Time turned meaningless; he fired, reloaded,
fired again. The air stank of blood and rot, even as the wind grew
stronger and stronger. Not a natural wind; this one smelled of
ozone and desert rain. What the hell was going on atop the
battery?

A particularly clever werewolf launched
itself up the aging brickwork, claws scrabbling for purchase. An
instant later, it vanished onto the casement roof. Two others
scrambled after it.

“Damn it!” Sean had spotted the NHEs as well.
He turned and ran for the stairs, clearly hoping to cut them off
before they could reach Gray.

“Stop those things!” Kaniyar barked, taking
up Sean’s position. John nodded and raced after Sean.

The casement roof melded into the great
earthwork behind the battery, giving the lycanthropes a clear run
at Gray. Sean reached the top of the stairs; silver-jacketed lead
took down the first werewolf just as it touched the grass. Then
Sean swore and dropped the gun—out of ammo.

John yelled for Sean to get back and fired.
He hit one of the werewolves, but the other was too fast, running
flat-out.

Sean hurled himself in its path, burying his
silver athame to the hilt in its shoulder. It roared in pain,
before turning on him, claws slashing and teeth rending.

“No!” Moving on instinct, John braced himself
and fired. The shot missed, but it alerted the werewolf to a second
threat. Its head snapped around, and it snarled at him, revealing
blood-stained teeth.

Sean wrenched the athame from its shoulder
and brought the edge across its throat.

John lowered his gun and ran to Sean’s side,
as the werewolf collapsed and bled out on the grass. Blood soaked
Sean’s shirt, and John glimpsed ugly wounds through the gaping
edges of ripped cloth. “We have to get the bleeding stopped,” John
said, casting about for something to use as a makeshift
bandage.

Sean laughed weakly. “I thought you wanted me
dead. Instead you come running to my rescue.”

John swallowed against the tightness of fear
in this throat. “It’s my job.”

“Right.” Sean shifted and winced. “It looks
worse than it is. Even so, I won’t be doing any running. Go on—I’ll
put a bullet through anything that tries to come up behind
you.”

“Okay.” John started to clap Sean on the
shoulder, an old gesture whenever one of them was injured. But at
the last moment, he let his hand fall.

A titanic crash of lightning made them both
flinch. “Fucking hell!” Sean shouted, but the words sounded muted
and far away, John’s ears still ringing from the crack. Turning
away from Sean, he scrambled to his feet—then froze.

They’d made it to the top of the stairs and
grassy area there, giving John a clear view of the flagpoles and
the top of the battery. Nature itself seemed to have gone insane,
the wind rising to a scream, the waves pounding high enough to
drench him in spray. A swirl of clouds coalesced in a sky, which
had been perfectly clear only minutes ago.

The clouds grew and grew, a huge storm wrack
rotating overhead. Goddess. If Gray was the storm, and the drakul
Forsyth summoned some reflection of the sea, did the two together
make a hurricane?

The clouds grew thicker, and lightning
crashed, again and again, dangerously near. Nothing remained of the
bottles but twisted steel and broken glass. The wind rose to a
howl, forcing John to crouch or be blown over, and the waves
slammed into the island hard enough to send vibrations through the
earthwork.

Tiffany stumbled to a halt beside him, her
eyes going wide with horror. “No. We’re too late. They’re
manifesting.”

“Gray manifested fully at RD,” John said,
swallowing against a sudden dryness in his throat. “It was scary,
but we can still do this. Still take Forsyth out.”

Tiffany stared at him as if he’d gone utterly
mad. “Gray fully manifested? No. No he didn’t. Not even fucking
close.”

In the heart of the hurricane, atop the
battery, two figures coalesced out of cloud and sea spray. Both
were gigantic, taking up an impossible amount of space. Their heads
towered above the flagpoles. One was of seaweed and foam, with
claws of coral and bone-white teeth, its eyes the blackness of the
abyss.

As for the other, John finally understood why
Renée feared unleashing a drakul upon the earth.

It was a titan of storm and darkness, of
cloud and driving rain. Vast wings spanned the sky, and ball
lightning formed its eyes. It was teeth and claws, and streaming
darkness for hair, and when it roared its fury, the thunder
threatened to shatter John’s eardrums.

It was a monster of wrath and hunger. And if
anything remained of the men he loved inside of it, John couldn’t
tell.

* * *

They are the wind and the storm. All else
falls away: there is nothing but the pure ecstasy of being powerful
and strong.

They will hunt. They are created to hunt, to
pursue the single driving instinct that informs every particle of
their being.

Hunt. Feed. Grow strong.

But this other wishes to stop them. It wishes
to kill them.

So they will kill it first.

It tears at their body, claws of coral and
sharp shell shredding their wings of cloud and shadow. Hurting
them, and they strike back, ripping at it, biting anything that
gets within reach. Screaming in the voice of the sky, as it screams
back in the voice of the sea.

As quickly as it can injure them, they heal.
As quickly as they can injure it, it heals. It is mindless and mad,
attacking without thought, and it will not stop until they have
both been worn into nothing.

It is not to be tolerated.

They strike hard, seeking to overwhelm,
pushing the other back toward the ocean. At its very core, embedded
deep within energy and swirling sea foam, they glimpse a dark
shape. Something small, barely to be noticed.

A name comes to them. Forsyth. A concept: a
mortal body. A thing of meat and bone, so insignificant.

And yet so important.

They attack again, seeking to push the other
in the direction they wish it to go. Amidst the metal flagpoles,
even though it means exposing themselves to its claws. Ignoring the
attacks of the other as it shreds them.

It weakens them, and if this does not work,
they will not be able to fight back. The other will kill them.

The mortal body—if they can only reach
it—

They stretch great hands, like black smoke
against the night, tipped with jagged lightning. Plunging through
the etheric body of the other drakul, tearing aside everything
between them and the mortal body within, even as it mauls them in
return without mercy. They are bleeding energy into the night, the
wind beginning to fall, the time between lightning strikes slowing,
slowing. The storm dying.

As they are dying.

Their hands close on the mortal body.

Without hesitation, they shove it down, down,
onto the tip of the huge flagpole the other is backed against.

The other screams, the jagged shriek of sea
glass over shell. The flagpole bursts through Forsyth’s chest,
ripping out his heart and any other organs in its path, while the
drakul flails and howls around them.

But even this it could heal from. Would heal
from...did it not have another drakul to contend with.

They sink their teeth into it, driving deep.
Not the teeth of their mortal shell, but then it is not blood which
fills them, but pure energy. The other drakul tastes of saltwater
and seaweed, and a huge rush of etheric energy bursts into them,
greater than anything they have ever dreamed of. It tries to fight
back, to save itself, but they are stronger now.

So much energy, so much power, and it feels
so good.

They drink.

All of it.

All.

The giant of sea foam and coral comes apart,
dissolves in their hands. Forsyth’s body hangs limp from the
flagpole, blood streaking the metal and seeping into the cracks in
the monument below.

The other is dead. They have fed on all it
had to give.

They want more.

They will have more.

Hunt.

Kill.

Feed.

* * *

John staggered to his feet, utterly
transfixed on the spectacle before him. The newly summoned drakul
was dead, as was Forsyth. And yet Gray still commanded the sky, a
behemoth of cloud and lightning. His head turned, fangs bared, and
a low growl turned into a long rumble of thunder. The wind screamed
like a thousand dying men, and lightning danced amidst the grass
and waves.

“Oh God.” Tiffany whispered. “Look at it...I
unleashed this...I might as well have dropped a nuke on our
heads.”

And for an instant, John felt her terror in
his own blood. Because the creature towering over them was a
nightmare vast as the horizon, more beautiful and terrible than
anything he’d ever imagined. An entire army of exorcists might be
able to take it down.

Might.

“We’re all dead,” Tiffany went on, her voice
numb, as if she didn’t even realize she spoke aloud. “The other
drakul, the ones defeated in the past...they were young. But Gray
is old. Strong. He’s going to hunt and kill until there’s nothing
left, and there’s nothing we can do to stop him. And it’s my
fault.”

Wing of storm cloud and shadow flexed.
Lightning jagged through the sky. One of the poles snapped beneath
the strength of the wind.

They couldn’t stop this. Tiffany was
right.

Except she wasn’t.

Because this was still Gray, and maybe even
still Caleb. This colossus of wind and sky had lurked inside
Caleb’s thin body since day one. The only thing that had changed
was that John finally realized it.

He’d sworn he’d trust Gray no matter what.
Was he going to turn away now, from the sight of Gray’s true
face?

“No,” he said aloud. Because Gray’s love
didn’t come with conditions of face and form. So John’s couldn’t
either.

He began to walk across the rain-soaked grass
toward them.

Tiffany grabbed his arm. “What the fuck are
you doing? We have to get out of here!”

John pulled free. “That’s still Gray and
Caleb.”

Tiffany shook her head. Rain plastered her
braids to her face, dripped off her skin. “No, it’s not! They’re
gone, John, just like any other possession victim in the end. Solid
gone. If you go out there, that thing will make you its first
victim.”

“Maybe.” He turned away from her. “But I owe
it to them to take the chance.”

She didn’t try to stop him again. He crossed
the grassy space, heart smashing against the inside of his ribs as
if trying to escape. His legs felt shaky, his skin clammy, and his
stomach rolled.

“No,” he whispered. He couldn’t give into
fear. His nails bit into his palms, trying to keep his hands from
shaking, but he kept moving forward. One foot after the other,
toward the leviathan of cloud and streaming darkness.

“Gray!” he shouted. “Caleb!”

For a moment, he thought they hadn’t noticed.
He was too small and insignificant, no more than a beetle scuttling
about their feet.

Then he felt their attention lock on him, and
it was everything he could do to stand his ground and not run
screaming and begging for his life.

The monster of shifting shadow, of wing and
cloud, turned to him. Lightning-ball eyes regarded him for a
moment, before it bared its fangs and growled. An enormous hand,
made from shadow and rain, stretched out to seize him.

* * *

They feel the lives around them, little
mortal sparks. Hiding amidst the shattered brick walls. Fleeing
toward the boats drawn up on the sand bar. And beyond this island,
there are more on ships and crossing the thin strands of a steel
bridge, moving through streets and huddling within apartments.

And all smelling of blood, sweet and
thick.

Desire slithers through them, a distant
memory of ecstasy. They will feed and it will be so very, very
good.

One of the mortals impinges on their
consciousness. It does not even try to hide from their hunger, but
instead stumbles over the ground toward them. The shards of spirit
bottles shatter even finer beneath its feet.

An easy meal.

They reach for it, anticipation already
thrumming through them.

The mortal tilts back its head, rain
plastering dark strands of hair to its forehead. Its eyes blaze
blue in the storm-ridden darkness, the color so shockingly familiar
they hesitate, claws floating inches from its tiny form.

“You said you’d never hurt me!” it shouts.
“You promised!”

Memory tugs at them. They know this creature.
This mortal.

And it—no, he—knows them. He doesn’t even
glance at the waiting claws, even though any one of them could
punch through his body with ease. He only stares up at their
face.

Some of the wetness on his cheeks is not from
the rain.

“You promised.” The words are whispered, yet
they hear him with perfect clarity. “But you are hurting me. Right
now.”