The Borderkind (30 page)

The Perytons swept down from the sky, eleven strong. Jezi-Baba floated down the steps of the pyramid as though gliding on the wind, but the Manticore was faster. It raced down those high stone stairs practically sliding on its belly, hissing death through rows of needle teeth.

The open plain around the pyramid had become a killing field.

Cheval Bayard stood, paralyzed with uncertainty. The giant treelike men that had herded them into this clearing stood at the edge of the woods but did not come any further. The bloodred birds that had soared in circles around the top of the pyramid had settled down on its peak.

“Cheval!”

Flinching, she glanced over to see Chorti lumbering up beside her. The wild man gnashed his metal teeth and bared iron claws. It steeled her resolve, having him there. They had fought side by side against marauders and mercenaries—killers all—first to protect their lives and avenge her husband, and then to safeguard Chorti’s family home. Always they had prevailed. Scarred and bloody, they had stood at each other’s side.

“Fight!” he growled.

She shifted, her bones cracking and stretching as she cast off her human mask and transformed into the kelpy, long horse’s legs unfolding beneath her.

At the pyramid, the Manticore leaped the last half-dozen steps and tore across the clearing toward them. Jezi-Baba cackled and began to sway even as the blue-skinned hag floated in the air…then she shimmered like a ghost and vanished.

The Borderkind tightened into a battle circle, all of them with their backs to the center. She heard Frost and Blue Jay shout, and a blast of fire shot into the air. Li, the Guardian of Fire, had begun the war.

A green blur dashed from the sky. The Grindylow tried to bat it away, but the Peryton sank its claws into him. Grin shouted in pain as the thing carried him up into the sky, blood spattering the ground below. The Grindylow swore loudly, roared in pain, and beat at the Hunter, but then Cheval lost sight of them amidst the angry swarming of the Perytons.

Leicester Grindylow was gone.

Another Peryton dipped from the sky. Cheval launched a kick at it. Her hoof glanced off of its body with a crack of bone, but the Peryton kept flying, baring its long black talons. Its antlers hung heavily upon its head and the sharp prongs lowered.

Chorti thundered across the ground and leaped, barreling into the Hunter as it flew toward her. The Peryton and the wild man rolled in the grass and dirt. The Atlantean beat him with its wings, trying to gouge him with its antlers. Chorti’s metal claws flashed in the sunlight as he struck out, razors scoring antlers and flesh. One of the Hunter’s antlers snapped off and the taut skin of its head tore, gashed to the bone.

Then it shook Chorti off and leaped upward, wings carrying it skyward again.

The defensive circle had shattered. All around Cheval the Borderkind were at war, the Perytons screaming unintelligibly, green-feathered wings blotting out the sun.

As one, Cheval and Chorti moved together, eyes turned to the sky.

“Well done, my friend,” Cheval said.

She spared a glance at him and saw the smile that split his savage features, revealing those shining metal fangs. Proud of himself, pleased by her praise.

The Manticore struck from behind, careening into Chorti and driving him down. The impact drew a cry of pain from the wild man. One of his arms lay trapped beneath him and with the other he flailed behind him, trying to dislodge the weight of the Manticore. But the thing’s ferocious speed was too much.

Half on top of Chorti, weight pressing him down, the Manticore opened its maw so that its nearly human face unhinged. Its jaws snapped open, impossibly wide, and it thrust downward. Rows of razor teeth closed upon the back of Chorti’s head like a sprung trap, and the Manticore bit off the rear of his skull, wrenching away skin, bone, and brain. The beast threw its head back and gulped it all down.

Cheval could only stare as it took a second taste, nesting its muzzle in the open back of her friend’s skull, sucking and gnawing at the viscera there.

All the will and strength went out of her. This simply could not be.

Then it turned on her.

Her flesh seemed to shift of its own accord. Cheval transformed again, taking on the human form that so captivated men and women alike. The river was so close. She could smell it, could practically feel the water enveloping her. If only she might reach it she knew that she would be safe, and some instinct told her that she might distract the Manticore with this change.

It
did
hesitate and sniff the air.

Cheval quivered in terror, about to bolt.

The Manticore smiled. Its teeth were stained with Chorti’s gore. At the sight, grief closed in around her, oppressive and terrible. In some way, having Chorti at her side had kept her from feeling the loss of her husband as keenly as she would have otherwise. Trusting him, having faith in him, she had never been alone.

Now he was gone.

Cowards run,
she thought.
Chorti would not have run.

With a harpy’s shriek she ran at the Manticore, about to change once again. In her mind’s eye she could see herself shifting forms, kicking out with her hooves, knocking the beast back and trampling it until its bones were powder.

A shadow blotted out the sun above them. Both Cheval and the Manticore glanced up to see green feathers plummeting toward them.

But the Peryton did not spread its wings, did not swoop in for the kill. It struck the ground with a sickening, wet thump, and only then did Cheval see the figure with which it had been struggling, the hugely muscled creature that had pinned the Peryton’s wings and ridden it down from the sky.

Leicester Grindylow rose from the Peryton’s corpse.

The Manticore turned toward Grin, baring its fangs, about to lunge. In the same breath, Cheval
shifted,
transforming, and lashed out with her hooves. She struck the Manticore in its side, knocking it sprawling on the ground. Quick to recover, it rose painfully, injured just enough to take away some of its ferocious speed.

The monster was not fast enough. It crouched to lunge at Cheval.

Grin jumped upon it from behind, wrapped his obscenely long, sleek arms around its neck, and twisted, tearing the Manticore’s head from its body.

CHAPTER
16

L
i knelt in the grass beside his tiger. The creature shuddered, her damp eyes locked upon his own, as her heat and blood ran out and soaked into the earth. The tiger’s eyes held no fear, only sadness.

The charred remains of two Perytons lay upon scorched earth not far from where Li knelt with his loyal beast. Perhaps a dozen feet further, the Black Devil lay upon the ground, eyes glassy and still. The tiger had killed it, but received terrible wounds in return. The Black Devil’s throat had been torn open and already flies buzzed around the wound. A single insect began to circle above Li’s tiger and the Guardian of Fire glared at it, flames spilling from his eyes and incinerating the fly instantly.

A horrid chuffing noise began to come from the tiger’s throat.

“No,” Li whispered, in the ancient language of his kin. “Do not go, my friend.”

The little man ran his hands over the tiger’s fur, felt the soft velvet and the heat of the animal’s body, felt her tremble in pain and confusion. Tears began to slide down Li’s cheeks, liquid fire that dripped upon the ground. The grass began to burn. The fire from his blazing tears spread, but he willed it away from his friend.

The tiger grimaced, black lips pulled back from her bloodstained teeth, and then went still, chest compressing as she exhaled her final breath. In a single moment, the light in her eyes vanished and they became glazed and dull.

Li felt her heart cease its beating. He bent over the tiger and embraced her, but made no more effort to keep the fire away from her remains. Fiery tears spilled upon her and her fur began to burn. Liquid fire spread quickly, engulfing both of them.

With a scream to ancient gods, Li stood and turned to seek out more of the Hunters, to destroy those responsible. His ears were full of the roar and crackle of the flames that raged around his fists and engulfed his upper arms. Fire spilled from his eyes and jetted from his nose, and when he screamed it erupted from his open mouth.

But he was diminished now, both in power and in spirit. The passing of the tiger had leeched so much from him that he felt old and weak. The fire that blazed within him still burned, but had lost some of its heat.

Still, he was a warrior. And the fire in his heart cried out for vengeance.

Off to his left he saw Cheval and Grin attacking a fallen Peryton. Above him, a blur of deeper blue spun across the sky, and green feathers floated down with a rain of Peryton blood. Li ignored them both. Ahead of him, Frost struggled with one of the Atlantean Hunters. He had managed to tear one of its wings off, but the winter man was out of his element here. The heat of Yucatazca weakened him. He ought to have been able to kill one Peryton with ease, but Frost had managed barely to root himself to the ground and now he grappled with the Hunter.

The Peryton slashed at Frost with its talons, gouging ice. Frost hissed in anger and pain and reached up, fingers wrapping around the Hunter’s antlers. The ice of his hands spread, quickly weighing down the Peryton. It bent under the weight of the ice and its own antlers. The creature shouted and thrashed its body, cracking the ice that had formed upon it, shattering Frost’s fingers.

The winter man did not so much as moan. Instead, he formed what remained of his left hand into a single dagger of ice and, with all his strength, impaled the Peryton upon it. The Hunter shrieked and bled, then died.

The last of the creatures shouted in fury as it dove from the sky toward Frost, intent upon his death.

Li screamed in return, a battle cry filled with all of his love for the tiger and all of his grief at her loss. The Guardian of Fire felt flame burst from him as though some volcanic explosion had come from his hands and his heart. Never again would he burn so brightly or with such heat as he had—he had lost a part of himself—and perhaps his command of the flames had lessened, but still he was the Guardian of Fire.

The last of the Perytons crashed to the ground in flames, twitching and dying.

The winter man felt weighted down with sorrow and frustration. He’d had enough of fighting, enough of death. Jack Frost had never been a warrior, but he had not been given a choice. That he had discovered himself quite capable of such horror provided little comfort.

The pyramid stood still and silent and Frost glanced toward it to see if any more enemies would emerge. But nothing stirred there save the bloodred birds that now took flight. He paused to see if they would attack, but they only circled, carrion birds above a field of battle, awaiting their meal.

Though the Minata-Karaia, those bizarre treelike creatures, still watched from the edge of the forest, they made no attempt to attack. The Perytons had been slain.

Grin and Cheval dragged Chorti’s broken corpse between them toward the blazing pyre Li had made of his tiger. Cheval, bent with grief, cast a pleading, hollow-eyed glance at Li, who nodded once, simply. As Grin helped her heft the wild man’s shaggy, blood-matted remains into the fire, Frost saw that half of his skull had been sheared away.

Had he been able to spare even a bit of water, the winter man might have wept.

He staggered toward Li, but did not dare go too near to the Guardian of Fire while the other Borderkind’s hands and eyes still burned. Li looked pale as ash, and his flesh was spotted with places where the skin glowed like fireplace embers. Something had happened when his tiger had died, changing Li and the fire inside him, weakening both flame and flesh.

Even so, the heat from within him rippled from his flesh in waves, shimmering in the air, and the winter man kept his distance. He’d had enough of heat.

When night fell, Frost would be better. The sun plagued him. The river water would be cool and could replenish him for a time, but not yet.

A small blue bird flew down from the sky and alighted by his feet. For a moment it hesitated as though wishing it might rest, but then the bird spun into a blue-streaked cyclone and, a moment later, Blue Jay stood beside Frost. The trickster gave him a mournful look and then slipped his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

“You’ll be all right?” Blue Jay asked, glancing down at Frost’s shattered hands.

The winter man nodded.

One by one, the surviving Borderkind began to walk toward the pyramid, while the silent Minata-Karaia watched, the air filled with the quiet whistle of the wind through their hollow heads. The pyramid was not their destination, however.

At the base of the pyramid’s steps—steps high enough that they must have been built to be scaled by a god—a ball of black flame burned. The ebon fire flickered in the air, tendrils rising a dozen feet from the ground. Within the black flames, two figures stood rigid as flies trapped in amber.

Frost and Blue Jay reached the sphere of darkness only a moment before Grin and Cheval stepped up to it on the other side. Li joined them an instant later, the flames around his hands having subsided, though fire still danced in his furious eyes, and those ember patches still flared upon his pale skin.

Black as it was, enough light passed through the circle of flames that they could identify the figures within. The Mazikeen had his long, slender fingers wrapped around the throat of the witch, Jezi-Baba. Her neck was broken and her head lolled to one side, yet even in death she killed him, her blue-skinned hands buried to the wrist in his chest. A rictus grin split her features, showing pitted stone teeth and a lunatic’s amusement.

“He lives,” Blue Jay said, voice low.

They all moved nearer the flames. Though the black fire hissed and crackled like the blaze in a hearth, no heat came from it. Rather, it felt cold as the first snow of winter.

The Mazikeen’s eyes moved. The sorcerer glanced at each of them in turn, even as the black flame began to consume his flesh. His robes burned with it.

“Go,” the Mazikeen said. “My brothers will find you.”

Yet, even with his urging, they stood and watched him burn. Frost had begun to think that the black fire had been Jezi-Baba’s magic, but the moment the fire engulfed the Mazikeen’s face, the witch’s entire body disintegrated, crumbling to blue-black ash.

For a long moment he said nothing. At length he turned and surveyed the grim, mournful faces of his comrades, his kin.

“We must head for Palenque with all speed. Other Hunters will come soon.”

Cheval stared at him, shaking her head. “No. Can’t you see that you’re only leading us all to our deaths? This is madness. We cannot hope to succeed when so many stand against us.”

Her hands trembled and she cast her gaze downward, swiping at the tears that began to slip down her face. “You’re only killing us faster than the Hunters would have. There’s nothing left now. We should find somewhere to hide. Let someone else fight them—”

Frost did not take a step nearer or make a gesture. He only spoke one word.

“Who?”

Cheval flinched, raised her chin, and stared at him defiantly. Her features were taut with sorrow. “We cannot—”

“If not us, then who?” the winter man demanded. “I know you mourn, Cheval. Perhaps you do not have it within your heart to continue. You wish, now, to do nothing but crawl into a cave and hide, but I tell you this: the Hunters will not stop. You might live longer in hiding, but when the rest of us have fallen, they will come for you, too. And then Chorti will have died for nothing.”

Cheval glared at him.

Frost turned and strode toward the river, needing the cool water to sustain himself. It would not return him to his full strength, but it was the best he could hope for here.

One by one, the surviving Borderkind followed, their fallen comrades still burning on the battlefield behind them. Cheval Bayard came last, but then hurried to catch up to the others.

The bloodred birds descended.

The Borderkind did not look back.

Oliver could not breathe. The ambassador’s daughter slept on in her floral canopy bed. The two-year-old’s gentle breathing was the only sound in the room save for the eerie scratch of sand eddying across the floor in an unnatural breeze. Kitsune’s body stretched languorously against his, warm and pulsing with the beat of her heart, but he sensed that even she now held her breath.

In the center of the room stood a tall figure in a black bowler hat and a dark woven greatcoat with a high collar. Its hem nearly reached the floor. The figure had tombstone-gray flesh and a thick, drooping mustache. There was about him the sense that this was a man from another age, a time past. His hands were overlarge, the fingers long and slender and somehow
wrong
. When he moved them, as he did now, raising one to point a stern finger at them, grains of dust sifted off his hands, falling to the ground.

“You are trespassing,” the Dustman said, his voice deep and sonorous, with an edge of gravel.

Oliver swallowed, his throat dry and tight. “Yes, we know. But with good reason.”

He would have gone on, but Kitsune held up a hand to silence him. She turned, slowly pulling her legs beneath her, and bowed low in a manner more customary in the land of her own legend than in that of the Dustman. His English accent was clear.

“We beg your pardon, sir,” Kitsune said. “We do not wish to incur your wrath, only to have a few moments’ discourse.”

Beneath the rim of his bowler, the Dustman’s eyes glittered like stars; pinpoint white amidst deepest black. He raised both hands and dust sprinkled to the floor, where it began to swirl upward, raising a cloud that reached toward them as though he were a puppeteer holding its strings.

“Wait. Stop!” Oliver said, voice rasping in panic even as he tried not to wake the little girl. “Just talk to us. What harm will it do? The Borderkind are being slaughtered. She’s here as your kin, not your enemy. Do you really want to help the Hunters finish the job?”

The Dustman cocked his head to one side and regarded them both. Cold radiated from him, and Oliver shivered.

On her bed, the ambassador’s daughter began to stir. She reached a tiny hand up to rub the sleep grit from her yet unopened eyes. Oliver and Kitsune fell completely still, but the Dustman gestured toward her and a tendril of the dust that swirled around his feet reached out toward her, breezed past her face, and the girl’s arm slid down. She did not stir again, and her breathing grew deeper.

“Continue,” the Dustman said. He slid his hands into the pockets of his jacket, an oddly human gesture. But the more Oliver looked at him, the less human he seemed. The Dustman did not breathe. The air that he expelled with his words was a breeze through a hollow cavern, and when he turned his head, the substance of him, flesh and mustache and hat and coat, shifted like sand.

“May we rise?” Kitsune asked.

Oliver studied her. The subservient tone was quite unlike her, but he saw the spark of something in her gleaming jade eyes, a dark, calculating intelligence. It ought not have surprised him. She was a trickster and had a great deal at stake here—not only on Oliver’s behalf, but her own as well. When Collette had been rescued, the Dustman might make a powerful ally in the war against the Hunters.

The Dustman nodded, glittering eyes eclipsed for a moment by his hat brim. Oliver let out a tiny breath of relief to be spared his attention even for that moment.

“Tell me your tale,” he said in that gravel voice. “Whispers have reached me about the Hunters, but I would know more.”

So Kitsune and Oliver began, taking the story in turns. They told the Dustman of the conspiracy to murder the Borderkind, of Oliver’s first meeting with Frost and their flight from the Myth Hunters, of the losses and betrayals they had suffered on the road to Perinthia and later to Canna Island, of the death of Professor Koenig and the massacre there. Oliver touched the hilt of the Sword of Hunyadi to illustrate the tale, but he made no attempt to draw the blade for fear the Dustman would misinterpret the gesture.

They spoke of Twillig’s Gorge and the allies and enemies found there.

Most important, they spoke of the Sandman, the gruesome killing spree the creature had embarked upon, the murder of Oliver’s father, and the abduction of Collette. When the Dustman inquired as to why Oliver and his sister had been targeted, silence reigned. They had no answers, only overheard conversations and suspicions.