Vesik 04 - This Broken World (33 page)

A thick beam of yellow light riddled with black energy swelled in Ezekiel’s left hand as his right held the Old Man’s attack at bay. He pushed it into the conflagration between them and the fiery exchange reached mammoth proportions. I couldn’t see any possible way either combatant could see the other. There was so much power pouring into the deadly light it felt as though my own aura was going to be torn away. The ghosts around us began to move once more.

“Knights!” Zola shouted as something crackled and detonated behind me.

I turned in time to see smoke rising from one of the ghost cannons. Charred wings fluttered to the ground, their owner a smear of gore across the field. I crossed my arms, drawing the pepperbox and the focus simultaneously. We were no longer insulated by our lines. The chaos of the battle loomed ever closer.

At that point, I’d decided to stop taking chances. I channeled a soulsword the instant the blade’s path would be clear of Ward. It was there, just outside the circle of gravemakers, that we started to realize how much of the Court stood against Gwynn ap Nudd.

They came from the woods, barely shadows in the cover of trees until they broke from cover. Clad in black armor like Glenn’s, but medallions hung around each of their necks. A smaller Fae, fast on his feet, closed on us first. I saw the antlers set into the Celtic knot on his medallion as he leapt at me.

Bits of his brain went in the opposite direction of his body as I pulled the second trigger on my pepperbox. I awkwardly slid a speed loader home while maintaining a soulsword,

Something roared in the north, drowning out the howl of power between the two giant gravemakers. I glanced over my left shoulder. Jasper’s wings whipped through the air as he carried one of the trolls skyward before slamming it down closer to the eastern woods. He’d keep Sam safe. I had no doubt.

Some of the Fae slowed as Ward made quick work of our next assailant. I caught a glimpse of Zola to the south. Far beyond her, Aeros ripped into the trolls, a panda barking at his heels and a whirlwind of golden death that could only be Vicky’s soulswords beside him.

I recognized faces, but I did not know their names. Beautiful, graceful creatures slinked along beside hunched, crudely armored Fae that could have passed for boulders.

“We treat,” said a pale, slender man.

“We fight,” Ward said in response.

“Join Hern’s ascension,” the pale man said, his hand sliding slowly through the thin covering of white hair that hung to his shoulders. “There is no need for more death.”

“He’s stalling!” Zola yelled from the south.

I started to move forward, but Ward threw his hand out to stop me as a black vortex opened on the far side of Ezekiel. It robbed what little natural light was left in the area before it snapped out of existence. I could only catch glimpses of the figure, as my attention was continually forced back to the pale Fae and the potential foes to either side of him. The new arrival looked like Hern, but short one antler.

“You must
not!”
I followed that desperate cry back to a man I’d never expected to hear desperation from. Gwynn ap Nudd’s breastplate was damaged, and dark liquid ran down his torso. “The Fae must remain hidden. Some cannot protect themselves!”

“You should have killed me along with my Queen.” Hern pulled his arm back and snarled as he threw something into the mass of power fluxing between Ezekiel and the Old Man.

“No!”
Glenn flashed forward. He was fifty feet away, and then he was there, reaching out for the spiraling stones. I wondered why one looked like a seeing stone and the other a soulstone. Glenn’s fingertips just missed them. The stones vanished into a swell of electric blue power.

I wasn’t sure what the stones meant, but I was sure it wasn’t good.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

T
here was a noise like a snapping arc of electricity. Something sucked sound away from the entire battlefield. Glenn threw himself violently to one side.

It was as if every horn in all the world sounded at once. My body shook with it. Every living creature in the field ran, or screamed, or covered their ears. Light came next. Only it wasn’t light. It was death on a scale the world had never seen. Unleashed by a Fae. Unleashed upon humanity.

Ezekiel’s body, with its jackal-like head, disappeared in the blast. A cone of power erupted from there, cutting a swath through the battlefield. It annihilated trees and wolves and Fae and earth in an ever-expanding field of destruction. Gravemakers and ghosts and souls vanished into that light, a light that brought nothing but shadows and darkness in its wake.

Glenn slid beneath that force. He screamed as he raised his arms around the light. The beam narrowed, as if focusing. He reduced the width of the beam’s reach, but I had no idea how much he’d helped.

Slowly, far too slowly, the light began to fade.

The Old Man lay sprawled out on his back in a crater, the inky blackness of the gravemakers slowly seeping into the earth around him as his body became his own once more. A similar sight waited at the other end of the pit, but Ezekiel’s body was burned and flayed and barely recognizable.

Most of the fighting had stopped across the battlefield. Fae and wolves and vampires and gods stood equally confused. Glenn rose to his knees. His hands smoked as his helmet evaporated into the ether. Blood dripped down his face.

“We rise!” Hern’s voice thundered through the silence. “You lost your way in this world, Gwynn ap Nudd. We return to our rightful place! The commoners will be fodder once more.” His voice slowed, and grew in volume. “Let them gaze upon Falias and kneel!”

“You are a fool,” Glenn said, his voice cracking. “You’ve brought war upon the world.”

Awestruck and horrorstruck Fae wandered into the field of destruction, their battle forgotten. Scorched, blackened earth spread out at our feet. Fires stretched into the distance, fire I had no doubt extended to the horizon.

A high-pitched whine filled the silence when Nixie came running up beside the crater.

“The blast!” Nixie was screaming, but I could barely hear her words. I wondered how I’d heard Glenn so well. I wondered where Nixie had come from, but my brain still managed to make out “Tsunami” and “Europe.”

“Go!” I said, my own voice rising to a scream. “Stop it!”

She smashed her lips against my own an instant before she became translucent and streaked toward the lakes with Alexandra.

Some of the Fae took up Hern’s cry. They reformed their lines, and I just stared at them in disbelief. Our own lines reformed, and I couldn’t understand the insanity.

Others ran from the battlefield. I saw the pale Fae, and it looked like tears ran down his face as he vanished into a small copse of trees. Many more escalated their efforts, cheering for the death of the commoners and the rise of the Fae that Hern so promised.

They started to push our line back. My stomach dropped as I realized the line might break. Aeros vanished into the ground, and I felt relieved when he reappeared beside us. Vicky and Happy followed suit. The little ghost maneuvered around behind us to guard our northwestern flank.

“We cannot stand up to this,” Aeros said. “Hern has rallied his troops. They’ve seen Glenn injured. They think victory is all but—” He stopped speaking and his head swiveled to the west. “All is not lost.”

The pack marks on my left arm began to burn.

“Carter,” I said, my voice cracked. “Maggie.” My heart rose as the largest pack of werewolves I’d ever seen came roaring out of the western woods. The Ghost Pack led the Irish Brigade, and the vampires came with them. Three bloody forms were mixed in with the Ghost Pack, and I smiled as I recognized Hugh and Alan. The third wolf was Caroline. She bounded from her legs to her arms, seeming to glide through air.

Their claws rent the earth as their roars tore the air.

Behind the line of werewolves ran three figures. Cara, Mike the Demon, and a little ghost that matched their pace, Mike’s little necromancer. Mike the Demon leapt into the air as the wolves in front of him crashed into the enemy lines. Trolls reached down to grab the wolves.

The Smith’s Hammer exploded in Mike’s hands and came down in an arc, crushing the first troll’s head. Mike hit the troll’s chest with his feet and vaulted off the falling body, rolling as he hit the ground. The next troll’s legs shattered as the fiery war hammer struck.

The wolves flowed forward through the gap in the lines. Anything that didn’t run, died, until some new horror came at us from behind.

“Get them off me!” The child’s scream cut to my bones.

I knew Vicky’s scream. I never wanted her to suffer again, and I turned to the east, ready to kill. Souls flowed over her, drowning her in a golden yellow light.

I stumbled toward the girl. “Hold on, Vicky!”

Flames poured from the earth beyond her, no longer the blaze of a simple fire. I didn’t have to see past that hell to know anything in the path of the blast was gone. People, cars, homes, cities. The souls of the dead rushed back toward the power that had stolen their life. Only the power was gone. It was just us now. The night skies brightened with a crushing wave of golden light. So many. My god, there were so many.

I reached out toward Vicky. I could tear the souls off her, I knew it. I knew how. I cried out to her as she fell to her knees, and my cry became a primal scream. My aura lashed out, bonded to my own soul.

The world around me decayed into a churning mass of screaming, golden, death.

I hear them all as I pull them away from Vicky. A mother laying her kids to sleep, a grandfather anxious to see his grandchildren the next day, a doctor delivering sad news to a desperate parent, a child excited about finishing his new book, an elderly woman angered about a failed car repair, a teenager celebrating a gaming victory, a college graduation that … that will never happen. Hern. Hern will die for this. I reach out to them. To protect them. Soothe them. Love them.

And I am consumed.

I clutched my chest as one hundred searing points of pain lanced through my heart chakra. It grew into the scream of a thousand, ten thousand, and my world went white with a million burning souls crying out for help. Help I could not give.

Some functioning part of my brain saw Zola fall to the ground before my vision was completely lost. She was screaming, clawing at her skull.
What had they done?
I wondered as my face fell to the charred earth.

***

“Damian!” I heard the voice first. The little girl’s voice. We’d saved her. No, we hadn’t. We’d been too late. “Damian!”

My eyes fluttered slightly, and something smacked my cheek hard enough to bruise.

My eyes shot open. Vicky and Sam were crouched over me.

“Damian,” Sam said as her voice cracked. “I thought you were dead.”

A bloody, battered fairy stood above me in shadow. He reached his hand down and pulled me to my feet. “Ezekiel is still alive.”

I stared at Foster. His face looked carved from stone.

Sam crushed me in a hug.

Vicky pushed up beside her and wrapped her arms around me. “You saved me from the angry lights.”

The battle around us was no more. Wolves and Fae and gods only stared to the east.

Golden souls flickered through the sky like fireflies. It was beautiful, and it was terrifying. Beyond those lights stood the ruins of architecture never seen by a mortal’s eye. I’d only seen it in paintings.

The ruins of Falias stood upon our world.

I started walking back toward the crater where Ezekiel and the Old Man had fought. I could see Leviticus on the other side of the churned earth. Aeros stood beside him. Blood coated the Old Man’s entire body. I thought it was probably from the gravemaker art he’d used to cover himself in those damned creatures.

The gravemakers around us had left. I didn’t know why, and I didn’t know where they’d gone, but I didn’t particularly care at that point in time. I squeezed Vicky and stepped away from her.

I slid down the embankment and stared at Ezekiel’s broken form. I frowned slightly. I wasn’t used to seeing such a powerful creature so utterly defeated. The Splendorum Mortem slid easily from its hidden sheath.

Ezekiel whispered something, but I couldn’t hear him.

I knelt beside the immortal and waited.

“This was not my intention.”

I laughed without humor.

I thought his eye was trying to blink, but most of the skin was gone from that side of his face.

“You only wanted to kill the world,” I said. “You’re as mad as Philip was.”

“I am a Seal,” he choked out.

“What could ever do more damage than you’ve done here?” another voice asked as a helmet fell to the earth beside me.

I looked up to find Edgar staring down at Ezekiel. Something like pity crossed his bruised and bloodied face.

“Don’t you want to know why?” Ezekiel asked, charred flesh flaking away as his jaw moved.

“No.”

The Splendorum Mortem slid easily through Ezekiel’s skull.

The immortal’s right eye widened, and then his body went still.

I heard Edgar take a deep breath, and his armor scraped together as he crossed his arms.

I stood up and put my hand on Edgar’s shoulder. He nodded, and we both turned to climb out of the pit.

CHAPTER FORTY

“S
o, no big explosion or fireworks when a Seal breaks?” I asked.

Edgar laughed quietly. “In the Abyss, perhaps, but not here. The Seal keeping the dark-touched at bay has fallen. They will return to this world with a vengeance.”

I sighed and held my hand to my forehead. Thousands of voices tried to speak to me at once, and I had to focus to fight them back. I started to say something else, but Gwynn ap Nudd’s voice drew my attention.

“Hern,” Glenn stared wide-eyed at the ruins before us and his voice broke into a growl. “What have you done?”

“I have done what you would not.” Hern let the blade of his axe settle over his shoulder. “I have brought Faerie to the world above.”