Vesik 04 - This Broken World (30 page)

My attention snapped back to the giants as they met in the center of the ridge, their hands locked at each other’s necks. The explosion of power tore at my aura until it felt like I was on fire, and then it increased exponentially.

The landscape changed around us. Where I expected trees, fields now stood. Men gave us odd looks as they jogged by, readying their guns for the impending charge. I stared as a stray shot took one of the Fae in the back of the head. Half of his face vanished into a chunky mist and he fell to the earth as his body began to dissolve.

“Stay down!” I screamed at my allies, although I knew those standing opposed to us would hear it too.

Some did take cover. Several called shields on the opposite side of the ridge, assuming the fire was only coming from behind them. I watched more of the line fall to the ancient rifle shots. I doubted the Confederates could actually see the Fae. They were simply in the path that led up to the Union forces.

Cannon fire exploded among the shouts and orders of officers and their regiments. The acrid scent of burning powder filled the air with a nearly blinding smoke. The Old Man and Anubis disengaged, and the world fell back into silence.

The landscape returned to what it had been as the massive forms circled each other. The Old Man squared off, facing Anubis as the jackal-headed god took a position to the east.

“Stronger than I thought,” Anubis said, “but you still cannot win.”

The Old Man released a primal scream as his dead, milk-white eyes widened. He pushed forward with his shoulders and his hands followed the motion. A bright, golden glow formed between his palms. It grew more and more intense until it looked like the sun a moment later. A beam of light launched from the Old Man’s hands.

In the time it had taken him to gather the power, Ezekiel had done the same. The collision of those incantations turned the world white in a blinding flash of violence. As my vision returned, I could see the two gravemakers were locked in a stalemate. The power swelled and rolled between them, casting violent explosions of lightning and fire. Some of that stray power lanced through the nearby lines, annihilating friend and foe alike.

It’s what the Fae had been waiting for. The line of Unseelie came streaming across the ridge.

Someone slid in beside me. I glanced to my left and found Ward huddled down. “The water witches are holding back a small force of Fae near the Pennsylvania Monument. Samantha and Foster are with them.”

I knew where the monument was, but I couldn’t see it, crouched down where we were.

“I’ll knock out the front line,” Ward said. “Follow the hole through and do not hesitate to kill everything.”

“Why not attack Ezekiel?” I asked. Ward was powerful, damned powerful.

Ward shook his head. “They are beyond us, Damian. That damned gravemaker armor they’ve taken on can’t be hurt by anything I can do.”

Briefly, I wondered about the Splendorum Mortem. But how would I even get close enough to try it without getting annihilated myself? “Where’s Zola?” I asked.

“With the witches.”

“Good.”

“Ready?” he asked.

I nodded as the nearest Fae came into focus in the light.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

W
ard stood, touching one of the many patterns across his chest. Streamers of light followed his fingers until he snapped them forward. Thick white beams of power dissolved the front line of the attack and carved a path to the opposite side of the ridge.

Something rustled in the trees behind us. I glanced back for a moment, and then turned away as my brain tried to process what I’d seen. A squadron of fairies flew overhead, but half or more were riding atop owls.

Ward focused on our left flank, closer to the gravemakers, and I began firing into the approaching line on our right. The pepperbox shot flame and death into our enemies while I kept a shield up with my left arm. One of the Fae made it past Ward and lunged at me. I backhanded the Fae with my shield. He stumbled, and Ward’s next attack created a gaping hole where our enemy’s chest should have been.

My shield deflected an incoming incantation in a shower of blue sparks. I swung my arm around and the shield curved around my fist. I caught another Fae with a vicious jab. I wasn’t left handed, but the Old Man’s training had already paid off in spades. Ward casually flicked his fingers and removed the attacker’s head.

The ley lines began to absorb bodies and less defined piles of gore. Flashes of green light and streamers of energy shot off in random directions as the ley lines tore the fairies to pieces. Between that and the mass of energy coming from the Old Man and Anubis, the entire battle was cast into an eerie, shifting light.

Ward and I cut a bloody path to the top of the ridge, and then our attack slowed. We looked out over the fields at the living nightmare of Fae warfare. I slammed a speed loader home as I watched a wall of werewolves sprinting to the west. They were met by an equal number of armored Fae. Even from our vantage point, we could hear their roars and snarls.

Beyond that carnage of dying screams and airborne limbs, the vampires swarmed. I couldn’t tell what they were fighting, but the speed of the exchange suggested more vampires. Aeros fought beside them. He threw a sweeping haymaker into one of the trolls from the Burning Lands. The collision echoed from the top of the ridge as the troll literally came off his feet and crashed down onto his allies. More trolls stormed in from the west. Their speed was terrifying for such huge beasts.

It didn’t seem real, looking at that mass of flesh undulating in a constant, murderous dance.

“Focus,” Ward said. “Keep your head on a swivel. I am not explaining your death to your master or your sister or your witch.”

I smiled without looking at Ward. “They do have a reputation.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” he said. “Now move!”

There was no cover as we started down the hill. The woods faded behind us. A sea of men, women, and ghosts spread out before us.

The violence swallowed us whole, and part of me reveled in it. As fast as I could pull the trigger, I dropped six necromancers. A small circle of zombies collapsed to the earth, and the werewolves closest to us swarmed through the opening.

A part of me wanted to run screaming from the thunder of paws and growls as an entire company of werewolves roared, and clawed, and chewed until there was nothing left of the opposing company of Fae. No success comes without a price on the battlefield. When the wolves moved deeper into the fray, I could see a dozen of them dead on the ground, slowly changing back to human. A light breeze caught the piles of fur, sending small drifts of the stuff across the field. Fae metal pierced the wolves’ heads and hearts, and some of them had been blasted to pieces by violent incantations.

A massive arc of lightning shot toward us from the northeast.

“Fuck!” Ward screamed as he tried to backpedal. The glow of whatever incantation he’d been working faded as he scrambled for a different ward.

I leapt in front of him and slammed my staff into the ground, grabbing the rune that would summon a circle shield. The shield flashed blue-white as it rose and the lightning seared my vision before the thunder threatened to deafen me.

I let the shield fade.

“Damn good staff,” Ward said.

I tossed it to him and he caught it as it slapped against his palm.

“I’m guessing you already know the wards,” I said.

He laughed but didn’t answer.

“That blast came from the monument,” I said. “My friends are there. Stay close.”

This time, I led Ward. The thought of whatever fired that lightning strike getting its shots in at Sam sent my adrenaline into overdrive. I ran hard toward the back line of wolves.

The werewolves had turned back the first wave of Unseelie, but the next wave was already moving in. I didn’t recognize any of the bulky wolf-man forms engaging the Fae in beside us, but my mind was focused on making it to Sam.

The white stone dome of the Pennsylvania Monument loomed ever closer. My Sight was wide open and I almost stumbled as I saw the hideous mass of red and black swelling and twisting at its peak.

“What the fuck?” I said, not expecting an answer.

Ward grabbed an incoming sword strike with his bare hands as the line of wolves broke in front of us. Shock flooded the Fae’s gray face when Ward snapped the blade in two. Ward brought the broken blade up over his head and slammed it home through the Fae’s helmet.

“Cannons,” he said, stepping over his slain enemy. “They melted down battlefield cannons and cast that thing from them.”

I fired six quick shots with the pepperbox, sending three more Fae to be sucked into the ley lines. I slid a speedloader out of the bandolier and slammed it home.

“Fucking hell,” Ward said. “I hope you’re ready.”

I followed Ward’s gaze and stopped. I hadn’t even noticed that the Unseelie we’d been fighting didn’t have wings. A line of winged faeries came in from the west, led by two giant trolls. The fairies were as big as Foster, and clad in gleaming midnight armor, more like Nixie’s than the golden armor of the Seelie Court.

“Run!” Ward said. “Make for the monument!”

We smashed through the nearest line of the smaller Fae. It stalled their flanking maneuver against the wolves as we crossed deep into their lines. We easily picked off the front line, turning their flanking strategy against them. They surrounded us a moment later. I holstered the pepperbox and drew the focus.

A glance over my shoulder showed one of the larger fairies closing on us fast. His wings were like Foster’s, black and gray and loosely patterned like an Atlas moth’s. He raised his arm to strike. I planted my right foot and altered course in a heartbeat. The fairy didn’t have a chance to react as the blood-red aural blade shot from the focus. I whipped the blade upward in a sweeping arc, removing the upper half of his body as I snarled. Blood sprayed across the Fae behind him and the nearest wolves went insane. I didn’t know why until I saw the new fairies had been chewing through the wolves like puppies. Their dead were strewn across the field in pieces.

My victory over one of the newcomers drew the attention of the rest. The wolves hadn’t missed a beat. In the center of the line I could see a golden wolf. His snout was covered in blood. He held a fairy’s armored head in the claws of his left hand. He didn’t drop it until it started fading into the ley lines. By that time, he downed the next fairy and tore at the back of its head.

“Wahya,” I said, turning away as a murderous grin crawled over my face. Ward had gotten away from me. He had one of the winged Fae in front of him, and a troll closing on him from behind. The troll’s fist rose into the air. Ward didn’t have a chance. “Ward!”

His head turned slightly and he frowned as he realized what was coming.

It happened so fast. I sent my hand into the air and the gravemakers came to me. The earth exploded a foot behind Ward. A Hand of Anubis rose into the air. The troll didn’t even try to stop. Its body slammed into the mass of corroded flesh.

The fingers bulged and grew, gaining enough length to close over the troll’s shoulders. I laughed as power filled every fiber of my being. I curled my fingers into a fist against the resistance of the gravemakers, and the Hand of Anubis snapped closed. There was a grotesque pop before blood and viscera oozed between the bark-like fingers.

I released it, enraptured at the way the mushy torso held the arms together, before I turned to the line of Fae. Weak, pathetic, Fae. They ran from me, shouting warnings to the other Fae. They weren’t worthy of my attention. The trolls though … so many trolls.

The Hand of Anubis slowly filtered back into the earth, and I screamed, spreading my fingers and raising my arms, bringing hell out of the earth. I didn’t need the Hand of Anubis. All I needed was target and a mass of gravemakers. Here, I had both. Obelisk-like spears of gravemaker flesh rocketed out of the ground, rending the ground and drawing in more gravemakers as they went. The more I absorbed into the art, the more were drawn into it.

The spears struck ten trolls at once, not so much piercing their hearts as blasting gory holes through their chests. The creatures went down in heaps and I laughed. I wanted more. I wanted to end them all.

“The fuck was that?” Ward asked as we marched toward the dome. It was close now … there was something I was supposed to do there. Something with Ward, but what did that matter?

We rounded the corner, and I froze when I saw Sam and Zola. They stared at me like they didn’t know me, like I might be a threat, and it cut me to the bone. I let go of the power. Slowly, almost painfully, it slid back into the earth, leaving trolls to collapse all across the battlefield.

“Damian?” Sam said.

I nodded. “I’m … I’m here.”

There were four or five dead trolls piled up on that side of the monument. They formed a rudimentary wall to the south, and two fairies cloaked in golden armor stood atop the corpses. I wondered why the trolls weren’t disappearing, but at the same time I didn’t really care.

“Keep yourself locked down,” Zola said. “That was too close.”

Sam stood beside her. Blood coated my sister, and much of it wasn’t evaporating into the ley lines. I wanted to stay with her. I worried about her, though I knew she could damn well take care of herself. I didn’t see Jasper anywhere. A man stood beside them. His arms were crisscrossed with dozens of cuts. He held a wicked looking dagger in his right hand and nodded to me. His face looked carved from old stone, and it took me a moment to recognize his blood coated, balding head.

“Cornelius?” I asked.

“Damian,” he said as he held his arms out.

One of the fairies dropped down from the dead troll, landing beside its huge, open mouth. Aideen leaned over Cornelius’s hands and then began healing each arm. “I can close the wounds, but you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“I can lose more.” He grimaced beneath her power. “Ward?”

“Odd times, Cornelius,” Ward said.

“You have long had a gift for understatement.”