Vesik 3 Winter's Demon (27 page)

Zola took the lead, cracking her cane against the path with every step. We followed as the old trees closed around us, standing sentinel over the ancient land. We followed the thin yellow rope where the trail was lost to leaves and mud.

“Look at the size of those rocks,” Dell said as we passed a red granite outcropping the size of a car. It was small compared to what was coming.

“It’s a lot nicer in summer,” I said as a chill ran down my spine. “Bloody cold out here.”

“Really?” Foster mumbled from within Zola’s hood. “I hadn’t fucking noticed.”

“It could be worse,” Frank said.

“Yeah, my balls could freeze off,” Foster said.

Dell laughed and started to say something, but then he stopped dead in the middle of the path. “Holy crap.”

He was staring ahead where the path crested. A short, wooden staircase led to a gently sloping plain of granite. Boulders the size of cars and houses were strewn across that plain. Last time we’d been here, the leaves and moss had added color to the landscape. In the dead of winter, with the sunset burning behind it, the place looked stark and lonely.

I stopped at the pools of water on top of the granite hill. It only took a minute to find the right one. It was the only one not frozen solid.

“Oh my god, Demon!” Sam said. “Do you remember these? They looked so much bigger when we were kids.” She jumped to the top of one of the smaller house-sized boulders and then up to a precariously balanced boulder with a small stalk holding it in place. She tapped her foot a couple times and grinned. “It’s solid.”

My mind raced back to the photos we’d taken as kids. Sam and I standing beneath that rock, pretending to hold it up. Dad laughing as we climbed up the lower ones while Mom wrung her hands together, ready to catch us before we tumbled to our doom.

“What are all the names for?” Dell said as he crouched down to inspect a few bold letters carved into the granite. “They’re old, not so much as the Old Man, but still.”

“You’re hilarious,” the Old Man said. “The names are warnings.”

“Yeah,” Foster said. “Warnings of the ‘don’t fuck with me unless you want to get flattened and immortalized in stone’ type.”

“Harsh,” Dell said.

I crouched down next to the largest pool. It was exactly how I remembered it, a handful of smooth pebbles at the bottom of the water.

“Call him,” Zola said.

There was no question in her voice. I’d seen the ritual once, and as far as she was concerned, once was enough.

I reached my hand out and a dull, yellow-green glow began to rise up between the rocks. Fragile fingers reached out and wrapped around their neighbors. They formed tiny fronds of light and a pattern began to rise.

“Ehwaz,” I said and a glyph appeared beneath the water. It was shaped like a jagged capital M. “Uruz.” The glyph dissolved and another rose between the pebbles, a lowercase n with a severe slant joining the top of each side.

The pool boiled, but there was no heat to warm the chill from the air. Bubbles broke the surface, pooling and oozing and rising quickly into a pillar of light. The entire mass expanded outward and the light began to fade. The bubbles grew opaque and then reddened into a solid granite surface. Two jagged chasms formed on the topmost boulder and a wiry crack opened below them.

“Do I need to bow my head and call you Lord?” I asked.

Dell gasped and his hand moved toward his gun.

Zola snorted a laugh.

The crack in the boulder curled up at the edges and the chasms lit with a dull yellow-green light. The earth laughed.

“Damian,” Aeros said, his voice deep and grinding. “We are all friends here. There is no need for formalities.”

“Good, no grinding the mortals to paste today?”

His smile grew wider. “Not today.”

“Have you heard what’s happening?” Foster asked.

Aeros nodded as he raised his arms and flexed his back. “There is much to hear. Falias is under attack. The wolves treat. The Watchers scatter.”

“Yes,” Foster said as he glided to Aeros’s shoulder and settled himself. “Ezekiel has found a way into the hidden cities. We have to kill him.”

“Kill an immortal?” Aeros said as his eyes swept around our group. He paused when his gaze came to Zola, and leaned forward. “Where is the Smith?”

“You do not play coy well, old friend,” Zola said as she patted the boulder that formed the Old God’s knee.

“So the demon rushes to his forge,” Aeros said. “What fate befalls the countries when the Blessings are lost? Rome fell, Atlantis drowned, civilizations you mortals have never dreamed of vanished.
This
country will not survive another civil war.”

“There won’t be another civil war here,” Zola said. “Uprisings, riots, perhaps. Ah don’t believe we’re headed for another civil war.”

“No,” the Old Man said. “We’re headed for a war with Philip and Ezekiel. Only now it’s a war on two fronts. I don’t think Philip plans on being anywhere near Ezekiel.”

“Philip Pinkerton,” Aeros said. “He is powerful. I have faced him before, as you know. Powerful as he is, I do not believe Pinkerton would be foolish enough to lay siege upon the hidden cities. To invite the fury of Gwynn ap Nudd …”

“Is to invite the fury of the Wild Hunt,” Foster said. “No one stands against the Hunt.”

“No one with a soul,” the Old Man said. “A creature with no soul to lose can wade through the Hunt like water.”

“We cannot let it come to that,” Zola said. “Ezekiel dies before it comes to that.”

“You are not wrong, Adannaya,” Aeros said. “Do you understand the consequences of forging the demon blade and slaying an immortal with it? It will take life not meant to be taken and a Seal will fall because of it. What will you unleash on this world to stand in Ezekiel’s place?”

“A Seal?” I asked. “A true Seal?”

“Yes,” Aeros said.

I raised my eyebrows in question. Aeros stared at me and cocked his head to the side.

“Seals keep our world safe,” Aeros said. “Some were built by the Old Gods. Some were built by the Fae. And some too were built by human hands, though those hands did not realize what they were building.”

“So why will killing Ezekiel affect them?” I said.

“Some Seals are woven into nature. Tied to the very fires dwelling inside the earth or the seas where your Nixie used to hunt. Those Seals will endure until the world itself is destroyed.”

I nodded. “Zombie apocalypse, sure.”

Frank and Foster laughed as the fairy grinned and shook his head.

“Unlikely,” Foster said with a smirk before he turned to Aeros. “May I?”

Aeros nodded.

Foster turned back to me. “Some of the other Seals are tied to living beings. In times both older and more innocent, tying them to an immortal seemed like a wise decision.” He sighed and leaned up against Aeros’s head. “It seems instead to have been a very unwise decision. Depending on what Seals fall, we could unleash almost anything onto this plane.”

“Ezekiel was worshipped as Anubis,” I said. “Does that tell you anything?”

Foster shrugged.

“Yes, it tells us some things,” Aeros said. “The immortal Anubis, his life is bound to two Seals, the gateway to the Burning Lands and the binding of the Old Gods. The immortal Amun-Ra is bound to the Seal on the Burning Lands as well. It will hold so long as he lives, though it will weaken. I need not tell you the binding has grown weak on the Old Gods, for I stand here before you, and I am such a being.”

I knew that already. Zola had told me what he was. The Old Man didn’t know, though. He took a step back and then rocked onto the balls of his feet. Dell did the same, slipping to the side of a boulder and reaching for his useless gun once more.

“Old Man, stop,” Foster said. “He is a friend.”

“Yeah, you’re an Old God, and?” Sam said.

Aeros turned to my sister and blinked. “You know what I am?”

She nodded. “Vik told me. I thought everyone knew.”

Clearly, keeping that secret from my sister had been an unnecessary exercise.

Aeros chuckled as he stood up, the sound like a rockslide. He took two steps and settled himself on the nearest boulder. “And how did Vik know?”

Sam shrugged. “He told me all of the Guardians are Old Gods, so I just assumed you were.”

All of the Guardians are Old Gods.

My gaze snapped to Zola. “Happy?” I said. “If Vicky is becoming a Guardian, does that mean … what does that mean?”

“No,” Aeros said. “She will not become a god. Some of the first Guardians were Old Gods. Nothing will rise to become an Old God in this age. That magic is gone. It will stay in the past with the dragons.”

With the dragons. I met Zola’s gaze. She gave a tiny shrug. Mike had bought an entire basket of dragon scales. Mike had called the lady out on the fact she had a living dragon. What the hell did that mean?

“Later,” Zola said as if reading my mind.

I nodded.

“Adannaya,” the Old Man said as his stance began to loosen. “You have kept things from me.”

“Oh, and Ah suppose you never kept one little thing from me, yes?” she said, snapping off the last few syllables.

He sighed and closed his eyes. “Indeed. I cannot argue that.”

“Tell me friends,” Aeros said. “What brings you to my home this evening?”

“Ah believe Philip is coming for me,” Zola said. “He will strike my home, and my friends. Ah cannot abide his survival.”

“What of the wolves?” Aeros asked.

Zola closed her eyes and lowered her head. “Carter and Maggie died for us. Ah will not risk Hugh or Alan, or any of our other friends. And you already know they treat with the packs.”

“Hugh is wise,” Aeros said. “He would not have let you come alone if he thought you all doomed. What would you have me do, old friend?”

“Help us,” Zola said. “We’re heading for the cabin.”

“Philip will bring his army upon you,” Aeros said.

Zola’s head rose slowly, her wrinkled face fracturing into a death’s head grin. “And we will kill them all.”

God, I hoped she was right.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“A
re we there yet?” Sam asked as I climbed back into the car after opening the gate.

“Just about,” I said. “You grumpy ass vampire.”

Frank choked back a small laugh as we started moving forward again. My car was not cut out for a gravel road, and Dell cursed as his head bounced off the roof.

“Seatbelt’s advisable,” I said.

“Yeah, I noticed,” he said as he rubbed his head.

“Can we trust Aeros?” the Old Man asked.

“Yes,” Zola said. “Ah trust him with my life. He should be there already. He’ll stop us if it’s an ambush.”

The car bottomed out as we crossed a creek.

“You okay?” Foster asked. “You didn’t even curse.”

“Just distracted,” I said. “I’ll curse later. Probably a lot.”

“Oh, good. You had me worried.”

We passed a field and quickly drove into another tunnel formed from the forest’s canopy.

“Now this is a place I have not seen in a century,” the Old Man said.

“It’s changed,” Zola said.

“The city is gone, it would seem,” he said as he leaned toward the window. “The old sawmill, the homes, they’re fields and forest now.”

“Yes,” my master said in a quiet voice.

“I’m sure it is still beautiful in the day,” he said. “It seems a bit spooky at night.”

“Did you seriously just say spooky?” Foster asked.

“We’re here,” I said as we rounded a turn and an open field of grasslands spread out before us, climbing a gradual slope. The old oak waited to greet us before the house.

“It’s all shadows and nature at night,” the Old Man said.

“Is the cabin really from the Civil War?” Frank asked.

“It’s a little older than that,” Zola said.

I parked the car next to the well off to the west. Sam and I paused to look at the night sky. It was clear, and the moon was starting to rise.

“God but you don’t see that from the city,” she said as we started pulling weapons out of the trunk.

“No,” I said as I smiled. “No, you don’t.”

I strapped on my black body armor. A dozen speed loaders were already mounted in the elastic straps across the front. Frank brought some of his old favorites, Uzis and the like. Real subtle stuff.

I glanced at the steel-shuttered windows as we approached. Nothing made a sound aside from us and the car’s quiet clicking as it cooled.

“It’s too quiet,” Dell said.

“Yes,” Zola said.

“Foster, stay on me,” I said. “We’ll take the front. Dell, Old Man, watch our backs. Make sure no one comes up the drive behind us. Zola, Frank, Sam, take either side and circle back.”

“Drive?” Dell said. “It’s an open field a mile wide. They’re not here. No one’s here.”

“Shut up, Roach,” the Old Man said. “Damian’s right.”

We split and I crept up the three short stairs to the covered porch. I stayed to the left side of the first step, avoiding the squeaky nails, and then skipping the rotten board two steps from the door.

“Anything?” I whispered.

Foster shook his head as he glided up and down before the front of the cabin.

I pushed on the front door and strained my ears for the faintest sound. The quiet clink of a pewter chess piece falling told me no one had come in through the front door. I could have guessed as much from the layer of undisturbed dust.

Foster snapped into his full-size form with a shout, and then cursed as he smacked his head into the ceiling. I almost shot the man standing in the kitchen.

“Fuck!” I said. “Edgar!”

He tipped his hat and took a sip from the teacup in his hand. “Zola has excellent taste in tea.”

“Ow,” Foster said as he rubbed his head. “That is a low goddamned ceiling.”

The gun slid back into its holster without me really thinking about it. I glanced around the living room. The couch was undisturbed and the wood stove was still cold. “What are you doing here?”

“This is the endgame, son. I brought your backup.” He pushed open the back door and my heart skipped a beat as my eyes flicked from face to face.

Aeros waved from behind the group, near the tree line. Scattered in front of him were Cara, Ashley, Cassie, James, Alan, and Hugh.