Red reckoning, p.6
Red Reckoning, page 6
I straightened and unleashed a wave of raw kinetic force, which swatted him into the far wall, crushing his body like a soda can.
There was so much movement all around me that it was hard to see what in the hell was going on and that was no bueno. I vaulted over one of the chairs and landed on the table, kicking aside a platter of spoiled meat crawling with white-bodied maggots. Nasty sons of bitches. With the advantage of height, I could see the madness enveloping us. And it was madness.
Levi had shed his human form and now stood head and shoulders above everything except the Fear Gorta, who had somehow swelled in size over the past few seconds. Unfortunately, the army of eaters was swarming him like blood-starved mosquitoes, trying to overwhelm him through sheer numbers. And the ploy seemed to be working, though Sullivan was managing to buy Levi a little breathing room—chopping down eaters with his silvered sword in one hand, unleashing powerful constructs with his other. An eater dove from the table, wielding a pair of steak knives, but Sullivan batted him away with a sizzling javelin of blue-white lightning.
Turning the creature into little more than a greasy smear.
Ferraro was pressing toward the pair, working the shotgun, but placing each shot strategically. She was carrying a tricked-out Mossberg, but the thing only had an eight round capacity before it needed reloading, so she couldn’t just fire willy-nilly.
She was a pro, though, and knew what the hell she was about. Still... There were so many of these damned creatures that eventually she would run low, and unlike Levi and Sullivan she only had human means to defend herself.
“Levi,” I yelled, amplifying my voice with flows of air and fire, “clear a path and get us the hell out of here! We need to get to the throne room, and we need to be there yesterday. Sullivan, guard Ferraro!”
Without waiting for a reply, I turned and faced the real ringleader. The prodigiously fat Fear Gorta was floating above the table like a fleshy hot air balloon. The rest of the eaters were spelled and enthralled, and that weasel was the source of the power. If I could knock him down a peg, I could end this thing in an eyeblink. And shit, I might even be able to free all the schmucks that had been stuck in this never-ending death banquet time loop, which would be good for a few extra karmic points.
After housing a pair of demons and committing unspeakable sins while kicking around down in Hell, I could use all the extra good Karma I could get.
Thick boots clomping, I strode down the center of the banquet table, kicking aside disgusting food and pitted silver plates. I moved steadily, but I didn’t run—one wrong step could see me flat on my ass with ravenous eaters swarming me like old folks at the Golden Corral.
The hungry dead were clawing their way toward me, scrambling over each other to get a bite of something new and fresh. Thanks, but no thanks. I pulled my pistol with a flourish—it was loaded with regular ol’ monster-killing rounds instead of the immortal-killing kind—and went to town. I leveled the barrel, breathing slowly as I lined up each shot and gently squeezed the trigger, sending rounds downrange.
Each bullet found a home. Exploding a head here, devastating a chest there, blowing through most of a neck and dropping the unfortunate creatures where they stood. But I had to be careful—my gun was powerful, sure, but it still only held six rounds. I had a couple of speed loaders in my pocket, but even with those reloading took a solid handful of seconds. And in a fight like this, a handful of seconds could be a friggin’ death sentence. So, with my off hand, I slung power. Thick javelins of fire, wielded like an old military-issued flamethrower, kept the hungry, mindless mooks at bay.
There were other, more elegant, solutions to the problem at hand, but flame had always come easy to me, and with Azazel in my corner that had never been truer.
I glanced left as I moved, keeping an eye on the rest of my team, making sure they weren’t in immediate peril. Well, any more peril than we were already in. Levi had shaken free from the swarming eaters and was busy bludgeoning the shit out of one of them with a blocky sledgehammer fist, while simultaneously slicing and dicing another with a limb turned meat cleaver. Nice.
I eyed a small forest of obsidian spikes that had erupted from the floor in a half circle around Ferraro. Levi’s ability to shapeshift at will was damned impressive, but he could also alchemically transmute just about anything, so long as he was willing to shed a little of the golden ichor flowing through his veins to do so. I’d seen him conjure obsidian spears before, but it still gave me pause—the guy was as tough and as deadly as they came. Ferraro was hunkered down behind the earthen spears, firing rounds in between the shafts, carefully picking out her targets for maximum effect and chaos.
Sullivan, meanwhile, was tearing his way through a pocket of resistance using his sword cane and a wicked combination of chain-lightning and raw force—literally ripping limbs from bodies and hurling torsos through the air.
But we weren’t making much progress in our attempt to get out of this nightmare cafeteria. We were in deadlock, and that favored these supernaturally cursed goobers, because they wouldn’t get tired and run out of ammo over time, while we sure as hell would.
Worse, more than half of the eaters had scampered away from us, forming up a fleshy barricade at the far end of the hallway, right in front of the door—which presumably led to Dagda’s throne room. Assuming, of course, that the Fear Gorta wasn’t completely full of shit, which was always a possibility. But either way, those doors were our way out, and there was no way we were gonna be able to plow through all those horror shows without taking some serious damage. Levi was giving it the good ol’ college try, but those eaters were all over him like flies on stink.
Which meant it was time to deal with the real problem.
“Hey, you humpty-dumpty sack of shit,” I called out, taking a quick break in the action to reload my pistol. I flipped out the cylinder, slammed down the ejector rod—letting the spent brass rain down—slid home the fresh rounds, then pushed the cylinder shut, locking it in place with my thumb. “How’s about you get out of our way and show us where Dagda is before I force-feed you enough lead to choke a friggin’ horse.”
“You have ruined everything!” the Fear Gorta shrieked, his face bright red, a vein bulging in his forehead. “You’ve ruined the feast. For a thousand years we’ve eaten without interruption, and you’ve ruined it! Look at my table.” Spittle flew, and his eyes bulged. “Look at my guests. Sprawled out across the floor. Meals ruined. Conversation interrupted!” His voice dropped as he floated higher into the air. “You are an uncouth heathen with terrible table manners, and for that...”
He rose higher into the air, and his stomach swelled dramatically outward, straining against the vest covering his substantial girth. “For that you will pay with hunger unending,” he finished. Buttons popped off, flying across the room like bullets, and the fabric split, flapping open to reveal an enormous circular mouth filling up most of the Fear Gorta’s belly and chest cavity. Rings of serrated teeth encircled the mouth, leading into a throat that seemed utterly bottomless. A black hole in the fabric of space and time.
The Fear Gorta let out an undulating wail and those stomach teeth began to churn, air suddenly whipping past me at gale-force speed, vanishing into the creature’s belly.
Ah. He was literally a black hole. Good to know.
All around me plates and platters lifted from the table, flying toward the gaping maw, only to disappear down his gullet.
“Hey, here’s an idea. How’s about you go eat a dick!” I yelled, leveling my pistol and firing off all six rounds, aiming at his face and chest. The gun barked and kicked, barrel vomiting out flashes of light. With that much enhanced lead flying, I expected the chubby bastard to pop like the giant balloon he appeared to be. But instead of exploding, the rounds never found their mark. As they got within striking distance, they vanished. Sucked into the toothy stomach mouth just like everything else.
Huh. So that probably wasn’t going to work.
And the suction was getting progressively more powerful.
Chairs were rattling, slowly screeching as they inched across the floor and toward the bulbous tick of a man. My clothes flapped, my jacket tugging against my arms and back as the ravenous wind funneled into the creature’s stomach. With a thought, I stowed my pistol in the holster running along my side and decided it was high time to bring some serious firepower. I planted my feet, straightened my shoulders, and leveled both hands, unleashing a telephone pole of raw flame, interlaced with delicate beams of purple Nox.
The beam of death sliced through the air like a razor blade, painfully bright, and hit the creature like a battering ram. The Fear Gorta should’ve gone up like a friggin’ wildfire, but the flames seemed to bend, waver, and distort, vanishing into the colossal hole just as my bullets had seconds before. But I noticed immediately that although the construct wasn’t nearly as effective as it should have been, it was still working. Just slowly. Painfully, dangerously, so. Flashing tongues of orange and purple managed to escape the pull of the vortex, licking at the pasty flesh surrounding the maw, blackening skin and burning meat.
So, instead of cutting off my flows of power, I hunched forward and doubled down, pulling more Vis and more Nox into my body, absorbing them like a wet sponge until I felt the power rage through my veins, scorch my bones, and pound inside my head. The column of flame expanded, growing wider and wider.
But the Fear Gorta responded by stepping up his game, too. My feet started to slide across the tabletop, drawing me closer and closer to the creature.
That terrible, sucking force grew more powerful by the moment, consuming my flames even as I dealt them out.
Around me, chairs, plates, and silverware exploded away from the floor, hurtling toward the bottomless vortex, disappearing into the creature’s stomach without a trace. Even at fifty feet out, the winds were nearly impossible to resist. I clenched my teeth and focused my thoughts, splitting my flows of power and conjuring a shimmering shield of shifting emerald energy that acted as a makeshift barrier, protecting me from the brunt of the blustery pull. The doomed dinner guests, however, had no such protection. Besides, they were mostly skin and bones, so they didn’t stand a chance.
As the Fear Gorta’s attack became ever more ferocious, desiccated bodies lifted from the floor and whipped across the dining room, vanishing down the creature’s gullet with silent screams etched into the lines of their faces.
Levi, Ferraro, and Sullivan were also damned close to the monstrous vortex, but my boy Levi was already on it. The guy weighed near half a ton all on his own, but he’d also sprouted rocky quartz along his arms and legs and his feet had shifted. Strands of gray clay dug down into the ground, rooting him in place. He had one arm wrapped around Sullivan and another around Ferraro, holding them in place. Sheltering them from a certain and grisly fate. But they were real close—only ten feet or so from the vortex—and I had no idea how long Levi would be able to hold his ground.
I needed to finish this shit, and I needed to finish it ASAP.
And for that, I would need to be closer.
Crap but this was a terrible idea.
I dismissed the shield encompassing me, since I would need all the metaphysical muscle I could conjure for my stupid and totally reckless plan to come together. Still laying down flame, I reached out with strands of earth, spirit, and will, reaching into the ground beside me. Unlike fire, moving around earth was a lot of heavy metaphysical lifting, because physics still existed even with magic like mine. What I wanted to do was simple but brutal. I drove tightly woven strands of raw power into the earth and pried, my body trembling as I rudely ripped a chunk of stone and dirt from the ground.
I hoisted it up on flows of air reinforced with bands of magnetic power to help keep it aloft. Between that and the constant onslaught of flame, it felt like trying to juggle a trio of chainsaw-wielding elephants. But, the Fear Gorta was so preoccupied with hoovering up all my conjured fire, he didn’t even notice the big friggin’ rock I was about to swat the holy crap out of him with. Muttering a silent prayer while simultaneously cursing my own stupidity, I cut the flows of fire and jumped into the air, right hand darting for the handle of my pistol.
“Yancy, no!” I heard Levi bellow, but it was too late.
My plan was in motion—literally—and there was no stopping it now.
The howling winds picked me up like an errant leaf and sucked me forward. Absolute delight and triumph flashed across the Gorta’s pinched face... At least until I pulled the boulder forward, using every inch of metaphysical muscle to propel it toward the creature. The gusts of unnatural wind caught the boulder and sucked it directly toward the creature’s undulating stomach mouth, just like everything else. Problem was, that hunk of stone was the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. The triumph evaporated from the Gorta’s face, and the sucking pressure vanished, but I used my own power to keep that boulder moving forward.
It slammed into the creature’s still open craw a second later, landing like a friggin’ wrecking ball. Knocking him onto his back, the stone lodged firmly in the creature’s oversized belly. My feet touched the table a heartbeat later and I sprinted forward, closing the rest of the distance in next to no time. I leapt from the edge of the table, landing on top of the boulder in a crouch. With a snarl of rage, I dropped the barrel of my pistol, lined up my shot, and fired directly into the creature’s head. Shock seemed to register for the briefest of moments and then gore exploded out from the back of his head and his eyes went blank. Glassy with death.
Its body instantly started to deflate with a loud whoosh of fetid, rushing air that, of course, sounded like the biggest fart in the entire world.
Even after murdering this thing in the coolest way possible, it couldn’t even have the dignity to die without being an asshole. A literal farting asshole.
I stood with a sigh and hopped down.
Levi set Sullivan and Ferraro down, the ghost of a smile on his lips.
“Not bad,” he said, which was high praise from the golem.
“Same.” I offered him a nod in return. “You guys okay?”
“Fine,” Ferraro said, crinkling her nose at the stink filling the air. “Though I’m ready to get out of here.”
“Same,” I replied again, repressing the urge to vomit from the smell. “It’s high time we find Dagda and Lord Lugh. They have some shit to pay for.”
“Like my bloody dry cleaning,” Sullivan muttered darkly, inspecting his coat, which was splattered with rancid guts and moldering food from his dustup with the eaters.
“Good to see at least a few things haven’t changed,” I said with a smirk. “Now let’s move.”
Blood of Godlings
“AH, IF IT ISN’T OUR esteemed guests,” came the patronizing voice of Lord Lugh as I pushed my way through a set of colossal doors at the far end of the nightmarish banquet hall. I gritted my teeth and reached for the Vis, just out of sight, preparing for more tom-fuckery. I let out a sigh of relief when I found myself in a room I instantly recognized, even though it had been twenty years since the last time I’d been here. It was hard to forget a place like this, though. And that was saying something, since I’d literally been to Hell and back.
We’d finally made it to the throne room of Tuatha De Danann.
Although room was a misnomer.
It was more a circular clearing, the ground covered with grass so vibrant it looked spray-painted on. A riot of flowers ran amok, their petals so pristine and colorful it hurt the eyes. A small, slow-moving stream meandered on the right, and a handful of short trees—elegant slender things that seemed to mimic the form of dancing humans—dotted the space and bore luscious fruits studded with actual gems.
Hulking slabs of gray stone formed a ring around us.
This was an inverted, mirror version of Stonehenge: a primal nexus that the High Tuatha De Danann used to move between the realms. The gray stones formed a series of crude, slanted archways, each peering out onto a different landscape: A beautiful coast, the sky overhead stormy and dark, the waves battering against some forgotten, rocky shoreline. Another led to a forest filled with towering oaks and wild apple trees, a tangle of dense vegetation blanketing the ground—a wild place, as ancient as they come. A forest untouched by humanity.
Others still led to wild, impossible landscapes or dark alleyways that could’ve belonged in Denver or Paris.
“Truth be told, I’m more than a little surprised to find you made it,” Lugh said, drawing my eye. He waited for us at the far end of the clearing, leaning against a sprawling throne of ancient granite and twisted tree roots, which the massive stone archways had been painstakingly built around. Occupying the throne itself was the man we’d actually come to find, King Dagda, ruler of Tír na nÓg. The guy didn’t speak, but his silence conveyed more than enough.
Dagda was a friggin’ giant. Not metaphorically, either.
He was nine feet tall if he was an inch and so heavily muscled, he looked deformed. His skin was rough and gray like the stone around him, his facial features crude and malformed, like an artist had started carving a humanoid statue, then got bored halfway through and said screw this, I’ve got better shit to do. The only thing that screamed “king” was the circlet of gold wrapped around his lumpy, lopsided brow. Dagda looked like a roid-head who was about as bright as a sack full of rocks, but nothing could be further from the truth. He was sharp and shrewd and all the more so because he had Lord Lugh whispering in his ear.
He also looked pissed as hell.
And worried, though he was trying his best to hide that.
“The twisting halls are difficult for even the Low Tuatha De Danann to navigate,” Lugh said after a pause, lips pulling back into a thin smile. “I honestly can’t remember the last time any mortal managed to navigate them.”
“That is because no mortal has ever done so,” Dagda replied, his words rock steady. Tone unflappable. But I was pretty good at reading people, and I sensed that those still waters didn’t run as deep as Dagda wanted us to think.
