A beast of nine horns, p.45
A Beast of Nine Horns, page 45
part #3 of Into Vermilion Series
Avalanches of plaster and brick, rebar and gnarled T-beams all formed a rushing tide behind them. Exhaustion began setting in. Though Coral’s will was unbowed, her muscles were enervated and her breath was shallow and damp. As they shot out of an alley and onto a deserted four-lane street with mid-rise buildings lining both sides, Coral couldn’t take any more.
Pain squeezing her organs, she doubled over, coughing and gasping, trying to clear the saliva clinging thick to her throat. The wave of collapsing rubble behind them was growing nearer, louder. She felt each chunk of wreckage slamming the earth and ringing through her bones like funeral bells.
“Hey, c’mon,” Tamara said, her own breath labored. The girl turned about, grabbed Coral’s shoulder. “We can’t stop here.” She tried to pull her down the street again, but Coral twisted out of her grip.
“We can’t run,” Coral said. “It’s never gonna leave us be.”
“We can’t fight it either,” Tamara shot back. “You can’t.”
“I can.” She wheeled herself around toward the mouth of the alley behind them. The waterfall of wreckage was nearing. Each mammoth step rattled the earth and set the dead traffic lights swinging. She tightened her grip on Crux Caedis. It burned her skin, lapped at her thoughts, bubbled with mocking laughter. “Get outta here, Tams. I’ll hold it off.”
“Not happenin’.” Tamara appeared at her side again, quick as a ghost. Her hand found Coral’s shoulder. “There ain’t no way we’re stoppin’ now! C’mon, let’s—”
A roar cut off her words. Coral’s ears rang with it. She welcomed it.
With an apocalyptic crash, Kakrinolas burst from the alleyway, a cloud of brick and plaster and glass steaming off its silvery scales. As it emerged, it lurched to a stop. It was ten yards from them now. Its enormity filled the entirety of Coral’s vision. Tamara reeled back in fear, but Coral stood her ground.
Its eyes blazed with intelligence and thought, its crown of horns glistening in the scant lighting from the low-powered street lamps. Kakrinolas reared back, coming to tower above them like a cobra, imperial and supercilious. Mocking. Jeering. Laughing with its hissing, snarling thoughts.
Fool. You cannot defeat the Carnage Father with the sword, Crux Caedis whispered, amusement rolling thick through the wordless stream scratching against Coral’s mind.
“So smug,” Coral breathed in reply. “I’m doin’ a good job so far, ain’t I?”
He shall never be bested by a broken Vessel such as you.
“Sounds like you’re tryin’ to convince yourself of that, Cruxy.” Her stance shifted. She raised the sword point, angling it toward the underside of the monster’s jaw.
Kakrinolas pulled its head even higher, each labored breath its own weather system of humid, metallic air that whirled off it like a storm. Slowly, it slinked a step nearer, its talons punching through the sidewalk and cracking the asphalt. The smell of icy, rain-damp tar filled the air.
You think you can win? Look at you. You can barely stand.
Freezing air seethed in and out of her lungs, gusts of fog forming before her. Her limbs felt like stone. But tired as she was, Coral couldn’t give up. She knew: Kakrinolas was after the sword. And if it reclaimed the sword, it would be complete, and the world would end.
And what’s wrong with allowing it to end?
Although Coral knew those words flowed from Crux Caedis, they still gave her pause.
What would be wrong with letting all this end? Was that not why you came here in the first place?
Coral paused in thought.
That’s right. The world created this goddamn mess in the first place. The world had birthed her, broken her. Broken them. Even Tamara had spoken so zealously about how much she hated the world.
This is what you both wanted, isn’t it?
She tried to find the words to protest, only to find her convictions jumbling themselves up. It was what she wanted. Or, wasn’t it? Why else had they come so far here, if not to put an end to everything? And as that question found the sweet spot in her core, she knew she’d lost. Because she could no longer tell where her own thoughts ended and the sword’s began.
At some point, Crux Caedis had needled its way in. The more she drew upon its power, the more it had slipped into her head, spreading like the scourge. Was it in control? Had it really guided her here, to be absorbed into the hemoclasm despite Lady Descoteaux’s best efforts?
Or had the sword rewired her, changed who she was and what she wanted, until they really were one and the same? Maybe it had been living in her body this whole time, merely carrying on and pretending to be Coral.
And if it had, was that even such a bad thing?
Because Coral was still barely a person. On her own, she was nothing. Just a child of briar, hated by the world, incubated by enmity. Ever since she discovered her own hemomancy, she’d grown walls instead of roots, told endless lies to protect herself.
But because of Crux Caedis, because of the Carnage Father, Coral had become more than she ever could’ve been alone, more than she ever was with Tamara. Because of Crux Caedis, she’d become revolution. Like the Lady Saint before her, she’d become an unstoppable force of change.
The two of them had set out to change the world. They’d made it to the gates of their Eden. Alone, they could go no further.
So at last you understand, Crux Caedis cooed. Simply relinquish the blade, and all you have ever wanted shall be yours.
Coral’s knees went weak. Her grip on the sword began to loosen. The monster rumbled a massive step nearer. Its breath enshrouded her, warm and rank and welcoming.
The Carnage Father shall be whole again.
The Blood and the Body. The dead and the sword.
Kakrinolas shall be one again.
Coral’s resolve wore to nothing as she stared up into the monster’s blazing eyes. She’d never been so tired.
Scourge Maiden. Lay your weary head in my lap.
A low growl rolled off the Beast. It loomed over her, a mountain of scales and teeth. Ponderous, it drew another step closer.
And then Tamara’s voice was in her ear. “Coral! Snap the fuck out of it!”
A gallop of gunfire thundered. The monster cried, so loud it nearly knocked Coral off her feet. The thing’s head—now one eye fewer—thrashed from side to side, boiling blood splattering the pavement.
Coral’s shoulder ached from Tamara’s grip, and suddenly the world was pitching like a ship in a storm. She turned, tried to force herself to run again. But the Beast’s roar reverberated through all of existence, a sound that could split the planet apart.
Screaming its rage and pain, Kakrinolas lunged toward them, its maw wide enough to swallow the sky. And as its shadow overtook them, Coral could do nothing but scream.
Chapter 57
Nissa’s hands were shaking, both from fear and exhaustion. Sprinting after the Beast as it waded through Saint Isabeau had probably shaved a decade off her life, but she’d gladly pay that price. As she gasped for breath, one hand barred against the wall beside a channel of fresh-flattened wreckage, it was all she could do to keep herself from crumpling into a ball.
Because she knew what came next. And she’d been dreading the possibility of it since the first time she’d brushed against the mind of that thing, since the first time she plunged into the void separating all human minds and realized what lurked between.
Auntie came jogging up beside her, expression tense and drawn. “Hope nobody was expecting the cavalry to show. The guard’s not answering my calls. They must’ve swapped frequencies after that jamming attack. That or they’re icing me out. Either way, looks like they’re pulling back from the city.”
“Didn’t like what they saw, I’m guessing,” Mom said.
“I don’t know whether to feel relieved or betrayed.” She traded her radio for a muter bomb and beginning to twist its arming dial. “You know what to do, Nissa?”
She nodded. Gulping down sharp rasps of air, she tried to calm her raging pulse.
Lena stood tense nearest to the canal in the wreckage. She was itching to fight. But Clive looked almost as scared as Nissa felt. Still, he was trying to be brave, projecting iron and stone and titanium, instead of the porridge-soft spirit Nissa had. Looking at him scorched her, like touching a burning stove, and her reflex was to try being like him. She had to be brave and strong, because everything relied on this.
Seeming to sense her distress, Clive gave her a timid smile. “Scared?”
She swallowed hard and nodded.
“Can’t imagine what you must be feelin’,” he said. He must’ve meant it innocently, but it just made Nissa feel worse. Because he couldn’t know how it felt to delve into the dark that lived within humanity.
“It’s moving,” Mom said sharply from atop a knoll of shattered concrete slabs. “This is our chance.”
Nissa shivered despite the blazing heat in her skin. Then she felt the soft warmth of Clive’s hand on hers. Her heart skipped one of its furious beats. She looked up and found his gray eyes on her, and she wanted to fall into them. He took her other hand, held them both between them, comforting and stoic. “It’ll be alright,” he said. “I’m here. Whatever that’s worth.”
She nodded, licked her lips, wished she could project how much it was worth. Then she let her eyes fall closed. Her pulse was racing, but the fear’s grip loosened. Her psychomancy came alive.
It came on as it always did: a horrid static buzzing that encompassed her awareness and blinded her. And then she was in the dark. Not the dark behind her eyelids, but a total, abyssal dark.
She should’ve seen nothing. Without a hemomancer who’d been tuned by Auntie’s process into a relay to the between, Kakrinolas should’ve remained hidden to her.
But Kakrinolas had one foot in their world now. It loomed out of the dark at her, a colossus rising from the mists. And when she looked upon it here, in the astral plane, she realized how right Auntie had been. The monster crawling on six legs and stampeding through office buildings truly was nothing more than a larva compared to the thing it would become.
Because on the astral plane, it was a god.
Scales like mirrors, legs like skyscrapers. A run of dorsal spines along its sinuous back, greater than any mountain range. A mouth that could drink the sea. It dominated everything in its orbit, could stop the hearts of every living thing on the planet with but a shudder of a thought, its nine horns dwarfing the branches of Yggdrasil. It had grown since her last visit to the betwixt.
But so too had the Scourge Maiden.
Far from the cowering girl she’d once seen in the demon’s shadow, she was now wreathed in a halo of psychic power. Her aspect had changed. The noösphere was aglow with her presence, and though her light was dim and diminutive beside the power of the Beast, Nissa could see the threads of belief and intent feeding into the Scourge Maiden from all directions, weak and few, but collectively bright enough to stand against the dark. Almost as if…
Nissa swallowed hard. Almost as if the Scourge Maiden has herself become an egregore.
Her knees wobbled. She heard her name from outside. “It’s alright,” Clive was saying. She felt him squeeze her hands tight. She squeezed back, trying not to let on how scared she was, how she felt like an insect before the world-shaping powers gathered in Saint Isabeau.
But now wasn’t the time to cower. There was something only she could do.
Nissa centered herself, swallowed hard, and pushed her mind toward Kakrinolas, just as she’d done with the shrike in the labs. Her perception went all funny as she neared, like everything was screened by oil. The dark seethed and hissed as she passed through its corona, entering a black crush of memories and emotions, a storm of smoke and fangs.
What felt like an eternity passed, thoughts and reflexes buzzing around her. Then, all at once, the pressure receded, walls of violence passing on either side, like flesh yielding into a wound. She was through.
Nissa took a deep breath, felt it in her lungs and let it ground her. She reached out, following the traces of swarming thoughts. Like the shrike, it was alien but familiar enough. And so she gathered up her psychomantic power, condensed it into a white-hot blade of focus. Please let this work, she prayed. Then she stabbed the entirety of her power right into the creature’s parietal cortex.
Everything went white, and Nissa felt her own body convulse violently in sympathy. A screech tore her ears, and the Beast’s legs folded, muscles tightening in response to the direct, blinding injection of pain.
Gods don’t bleed. Gods don’t feel pain.
Agony eclipsed everything. There was no ground, no sky, no self. Nissa existed only in the flicker of electrical signals ripping through the Beast’s mind. She was a ghosting, a memory of a person overtaken and overwritten by complete, excruciating pain.
The screaming grew louder. Kakrinolas thrashed, its baying deafening in Nissa’s skull. Resonating through that agony, through that sound, was a deep, hideous rumble. A choir of serpents sibilating.
The monster’s hatred took shape in the dark. Its rage clawed at her, dragging runnels through her and shattering her bones. But she had to endure it. She could endure much more than this, because after this she would be free. She’d never again have to pry open the gap between human minds, would never again have to hurt as this made her hurt. She could have some semblance of a normal life, free of the burn and the pain and the dark.
Drawing back for the briefest of moments, Nissa thrust her thoughtblade again, twisting it right into the monster’s pain-center. The earth quaked underfoot. She felt as Kakrinolas swung itself about, each muscle in its legs taut enough to snap. She could sense the palpable fog of its hatred condensing, all of it focusing on her.
She saw through Kakrinolas’s eyes, saw her own outline on the astral plane. And she saw herself smile as she twisted the knife of her thoughts deeper.
Another flash washed her vision away. And in the noösphere, Kakrinolas loomed even higher as its body buckled. Then it surged toward her, a thunderous roar splitting the air and shaking her to the bone.
A flurry of voices reached her in her hell.
“It’s working.” Auntie. “Here it comes.”
“Get ready.” Lena.
“Oh, I was born ready for this.” Auntie again. “Keep it up, Nissa. Don’t stop.”
She set her jaw, forced the meagerest nod, and poured the rest of her strength into severing thoughts, digging deeper and shivering herself and Kakrinolas to bits. She flared and burned, twisted and carved, until she thought she would come apart.
Everything was an earthquake. She was too close to herself now. The blurring was starting again, but that just made everything hurt more. She felt the uneven ground racing beneath her as Kakrinolas barreled over rubble and debris, concrete bursting into powder underfoot.
One more thrust. Just one last attack, and it would be over. She had no time to hesitate. Her hand was on the knife. She could go deeper. And so she did.
This time, she heard her own scream, piercing and warbling, melody to the demon’s rumbling baritone. As her vision went white with the echo of the soul-deep stab, the monster regained its footing. Nerves ablaze with electrical fire, Nissa felt Kakrinolas charge straight for her and Clive.
Then everything went black.
Chapter 58
The attack that should’ve taken Coral’s life never came. As its jaw unhinged itself, rows of bloody teeth closing in from both sides, the Beast suddenly hitched, its neck twisting about and throwing its bite wildly off target. Coral kept receding, blind steps impelled by Tamara’s unrelenting grip, as the monster began to shriek.
Kakrinolas thrashed to the ground in front of them, cracking the asphalt. Its four remaining eyes widened, flared with animosity. A murderous howl crashed against the sky. Seizing, it struggled back to its feet and stumbled forward. At last overcoming its inertia, it swung itself about, its tail whipping out behind it and chopping a telephone pole in half. A shower of sparks lit its curves with a ghostly blue flare as it stalked away from them.
“Jesus Christ, what the fuck,” Tamara gasped, grip still tight on Coral’s shoulder.
And at that point, all Coral’s strength left her. She fell to her knees. Crux Caedis tumbled from her grip and clattered to the ground a dozen feet away from her. Her fingers still tingled with electric needles of power. Her heart skipped forward in a gallop of triplicate beats.
As her brain churned to catch up with what had just happened, a crush of dread and sorrow overwhelmed her. She collapsed onto her front, drained and hollow.
Tamara gasped her name, was at her side in an instant, grabbing at her arm and trying to help her up. “Coral, c’mon, get up.”
“I was about to throw everything away,” she said. A wound gaped in her soul as she spoke those words.
“The hell are you talkin’ about?”
“I…” Her gaze caressed the pristine silver of the sword. Even in the dim, its garnets gleamed malefically. “It made me realize just now…we came here to destroy the world, didn’t we? So why not just give up and let it happen? And… I’m not sure, but I think maybe that’s what I really wanted. I don’t know my own thoughts from the sword’s anymore. Because I don’t even know who I am.”
Tamara went quiet. Her panic dispersed, and Coral could feel her gaze on her.
Her chest tightened with a sob. Self-hatred quivered through her, from the base of her spine to her fingertips. It gave her the strength to sit up again, if only so she could survey the damage she’d done. Beyond the barrier of buildings on the other side of the street, the sound of shattering concrete rose, clouds of dust and powdered asphalt creeping over the rooftops.
“I don’t know who I am,” Coral said again, her voice breaking. “Because I’ve spent my entire life just tryin’ to be someone else. Wearin’ different masks, playin’ different roles. Pretendin’ to be a normal human girl. Pretendin’ I could be a hemo. Pretendin’ to be worthy of bein’ your girlfriend. Pretendin’ to be the Scourge Maiden. And at this point, I don’t even remember who the girl wearin’ all these masks was.”
