Magic and Loss

Chapter 33

“A dragon—?” Boss Marz scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous!”

Suddenly there was a second, even more thunderous bellow, which shook the entire warehouse like a maraca. Using the distraction, Syra hurled a bolt of lightning at Marz’s head. Although the Maladanti was able to deflect the blow at the last moment, it still sent him flying across the floor.

“Hexe! Get Tate and the baby out of here!” Syra shouted, putting herself between her son and a livid Boss Marz, who was already back on his feet.

The Maladanti threw a ball of hellfire directly at Syra, which she was able to swat away with her right hand. The fireball flew wild, striking one of Marz’s croggies and instantly setting him ablaze. The gang member screamed and slapped at the white-hot flames as they seared through his clothes, reducing his flesh to the consistency of burning marshmallow goo, but all that did was spread them even further.

Hexe and I made a dash for the loading dock; it was at the far end of the warehouse, and although the loading doors were down, it was the only visible means of escape.

“Don’t let them get away, you idiot!” Erys shouted.

“Bonzo! Fetch!” Boss Marz commanded.

The organ-grinder’s monkey squealed in delight as it disappeared in a puff of brimstone, only to reappear in its monstrous hell-ape form, blocking our way. Flashing canines the size of steak knives, the familiar yanked me away from Hexe.

“Get rid of the nump and her half-breed bastard!” Erys told Marz. “I’ll use the others’ blood!”

“You heard the man, Bonzo,” Boss Marz commanded. “Kill the woman and the brat.”

As the hell-ape opened his hideous multicolored snout, exposing his daggerlike teeth, I saw Syra out of the corner of my eye reach into her cleavage and pull out what looked like a white silken cord. As she hurled the white thing to the ground, Boss Marz threw another fistful of lightning in her direction. Caught off guard, Syra was able to deflect only a portion of the attack and was knocked to the ground and badly dazed.

What I had mistaken for a piece of rope instantly transformed into a twenty-five-foot-long albino king cobra as it hit the floor. Trinket reared up, hissing like a steam engine, and flared her hood, causing different heads, all belonging to various lethal snakes, to sprout from her milk-white torso.

Trinket lunged at Bonzo, but the hell-ape grabbed me about the waist and leapt out of the way. As Syra’s familiar regathered for another strike, a vulturelike creature, larger than a condor, with the toothed bill and reptilian head of a pterodactyl, swooped down from the rafters of the warehouse, clawing at Trinket’s ivory scales. I recognized it as Esau’s own familiar, Edgar, in his demonic plumage.

Trinket’s extra heads hissed and struck at Edgar, momentarily scaring him off, while her cobra head spit venom at Bonzo, striking the familiar square in the eyes. Bonzo shrieked and let go of me, clawing at his face. I took full advantage of my freedom and ran for cover behind a stack of palettes as the hellspawns continued their fight to the death.

As the blinded Bonzo staggered about, screaming like a monkey house, Trinket wrapped her two-story-long body around him faster than a thought. Once her enemy was caught within her limbless embrace, the hydra’s heads struck as one, delivering a chorus of death bites. Bonzo screeched in agony as the venoms of the black mamba, krait, pit viper, puff adder, rattlesnake, and sea snake were pumped simultaneously into his body.

Boss Marz was standing over the prone figure of Lady Syra, his left hand aglow, ready to deliver the coup de grace, when he heard his familiar’s death-scream. The crime lord’s face turned pale as he saw Trinket slither away from the hell-ape twitching on the warehouse floor.

“Leave him alone, you monster!” Marz screamed. He turned his back on Syra and ran to his dying familiar. Dropping to his knees, he grabbed Bonzo’s blood-smeared hand and pressed it gently to his cheek. “You can’t die here,” he told the hell-beast. “If you die in the mortal world, you die forever. Please, go home, Bonzo.”

But it was too late. Perhaps Trinket’s hydra venom had paralyzed the familiar, or maybe he needed eyes in order to travel between dimensions, but the hell-ape did not disincorporate the way it had when Scratch came close to killing him in battle. With a final, childlike whimper, Bonzo shuddered and went still.

Suddenly there was a huge thud, as if a battering ram had been slammed into the side of the building, and one of the loading dock bay doors abruptly gave way. The clockwork dragon, still dressed in the golden skin of the last battle-dragon, pushed its way past the twisted metal. As Boss Marz and his assembled Maladanti stared in disbelief at the creature before them, the clockwork dragon’s hinged jaws fell open and issued a thunderous call to war.

PTU officers in riot gear, leprechauns armed with shillelaghs, Amazon archers, Valkyrie spear-maidens, centaurs in war-armor wielding maces and swords, merfolk equipped with tridents and nets, and unarmed satyrs, fauns, and huldrefolk came pouring through the breech. At the head of the charge was Captain Horn, dressed in his formal uniform, his hands empty save for their magic. “For the Witch Queen!” he shouted. “For Golgotham!”

Boss Marz quickly got to his feet, his dead familiar forgotten, to marshal his own troops. “For the honor of the Maladanti!”

And the battle was on.

The gang members surged forward to meet the invaders, hellfire and lightning leaping from their left hands. Some of their volleys found their marks, while others were dodged or batted away by PTU with strong right hands, sending the deadly missiles careening through the warehouse like errant pinballs. Within seconds the interior of the warehouse had become utter chaos.

A group of leprechauns, lead by Seamus O’Fae, swarmed a Maladanti like soldier ants, beating him mercilessly with their shillelaghs. As they took their much larger opponent to the ground, Little Big Man gave a war whoop and bashed in the gangster’s skull. An Amazon archer put an arrow in the chest of a Maladanti spellslinger, only to be engulfed in hellfire. A Maladanti screamed in terror as he fell under the rending hands of a half-dozen maenads. Old Lord Chiron, accompanied by Kidron, Canterbury, and Lady Syra’s chauffeur, Illuminata, charged through the madness, smashing their adversaries with flying maces and flailing hooves.

I saw Kidron gallop forward, snatching up Hexe and swinging him onto his back. Together the childhood friends stood their ground, the centaur swinging a battle-axe while Hexe bashed their attackers with a morning star.

Elmer, Lady Syra’s former footman, charged one of the Maladanti, catching the gangster on his horns and sending him flying into the air with a single toss of his thickly muscled neck. The minotaur’s bellow of triumph quickly became a scream of agony as he was fried by a shock of lightning and dropped to the floor like a side of beef. In turn, the Maladanti responsible for slaying the man-bull did not have long to gloat before finding a Valkyrie’s war-spear in his gut.

Giles Gruff, still wearing his monocle, used his shepherd’s crook to pole vault himself into an enemy, smashing his cloven hooves into the gang member’s startled face, while his fellow satyrs and fauns surrounded a couple of spellslingers, keeping them off balance and unable to defend themselves by butting them from every possible direction.

I heard the roaring of big cats and saw a pair of tigers and a mountain lion maul a Maladanti spellslinger. Once they were finished with him, Lukas, Meikei, and Dr. Mao set about looking for fresh prey. A half-naked huldra leapt upon one of the gang members, bearing him to the ground as she throttled him with her tail, only, in turn, to be set ablaze by yet another of Boss Marz’s croggies. And in the middle of it all was the clockwork dragon, its golden hide immune to hellfire the same way a duck sheds water, lashing out at its attackers with its whiplike tail. I could feel the leash of energy between us, allowing me not to so much consciously control its actions, but guide them. The animating spark that I had placed within my creation made it both a part of me, and yet a thing of its own, not unlike, in its own way, the child I now cradled in my arms.

From my hiding place, away from the bloodshed of the battlefront, I could see that Erys had finished charging the portal that would serve as the doorway between worlds, the sigils and signs that covered the massive stones now glowing like they were radioactive. The red fog had all but disappeared, providing an all-too-clear view of what lay in wait beyond the threshold, not just for Golgotham, but the entire world as well.

“Bring me my sister!” Erys commanded. “With her blood, I can at least open the portal wide enough to allow the first wave through! Once my allies have a toehold in this world, there is nothing these fools can do that can stop them.”

Marz turned to grab Lady Syra, who was lying on the floor, still dazed from his attack, only to find Trinket in his path. The familiar’s multitude of heads hissed angrily at the Maladanti as she tried to defend her fallen mistress. But as the hydra advanced on the gangster, there was screeching noise and the hell-bird Edgar descended upon her yet again.

With a snap of his toothy beak, Esau’s familiar succeeded in biting off one of Trinket’s extra heads. Boss Marz summoned forth flame, scorching the flailing neck stump before it had a chance to regrow and multiply. The hell-bird snipped off another head, then another, and each time Marz cauterized the neck before it could regrow, until Trinket was left with just the one. The badly wounded familiar spat a streamer of venom at the Maladanti in a last ditch effort to protect itself, only to have it fall short of its mark. With an angry hiss, Trinket disincorporated in a puff of sulfurous smoke—fleeing back to whatever hell had spawned her to avoid meeting Bonzo’s fate on the mortal plane.

“On your feet, woman,” Marz growled as he dragged a semiconscious Syra to where Erys stood before the portal, ritual knife in hand. “The Witch King commands your presence.” As he let go of her arm, Syra crumpled to the floor like a Japanese lantern at the feet of her brother’s stolen body.

“Look at you,” Erys sneered. “Your love has made you grow old and soft before your time, little sister. I’m doing you a favor, really. But in memory of our childhood—I shall make it quick. I can not say the same for the others.”

As Erys raised the ritual dagger above her head, the knife was abruptly wrenched from her grip, as if yanked by an unseen hand. The dagger hung suspended in midair, just beyond Erys’ reach.

“Who dares?” Erys shouted, her face flushed crimson with rage.

“I dare, Esau,” Captain Horn replied defiantly. He raised his right hand, levitating the knife farther from reach. Although his uniform hung in tatters and his face was bruised and smudged with soot and blood, a fierce determination blazed in his eyes. “You’ve done enough to your sister already—I’m not going to let you hurt her any more.”

“You’re in no position to stop me from doing anything,” Erys sneered. “I am the Witch King—the blood of our gods courses through my veins. While you are nothing more than a servant, the son of a scullery maid and a bootblack!”

“You’re wrong there, Esau,” Horn replied. “I’m more than a Servitor. Even more than a Kymeran, or even a Golgothamite. I’m also an American and, by damn, a New Yorker, and I am not going to let you destroy this world simply because your father knew better than to trust you.”

Erys’ face abruptly lost its look of cool detachment and contorted itself into a mask of rage. “You want the knife so damn much?” she snarled. “You can have it!” With a flick of her left hand, the dagger flew at Captain Horn as if fired from a crossbow, striking him in the chest.

Upon seeing his father fall, Hexe leapt down from Kidron and ran to Horn’s side. “Dad! Heavens and hells! Dad—are you all right?”

“I’ve—been better,” Horn grunted.

“Lie still. Don’t try to move,” Hexe warned him. “The knife barely missed your heart—damn it, why are you smiling?”

“You called me ‘Dad.’”

“How touching,” Boss Marz said with a humorless laugh as he loomed over father and son. “I’m a big believer in closure.” As the Maladanti’s left hand filled with hellfire, Hexe lifted his own left hand in defense. “Lot of good that’s going to do you,” Marz smirked.

Although I knew the man I loved was about to be killed right before my eyes, I could not look away, if for no other reason than I owed it to our son, should we somehow survive this awful hour, to one day tell him how his father died. The fireball shot from the center of Marz’s palm like a flaming tennis ball fired from a pitching machine. And, by all rights, it should have burned a hole through Hexe’s face and exited out the back of his skull. Instead, it ricocheted back toward the Maladanti like a handball striking an unseen wall, scorching the left side of his face and boiling his left eye in its socket like a poached egg. With a dreadful shriek, Boss Marz fell to his knees in shock. Gaza came running to the fallen crime lord’s aid, slinging a fistful of lightning at Hexe as he got to his feet. Hexe lifted his left hand to block the incoming spell, but wasn’t fast enough to catch all of it and was sent flying into the side of a shipping container.

“Hey—you! Asshole!” I shouted as I stepped out from my hiding place, holding my child close to my breast. “That’s my man you just sucker punched!”

Gaza turned to look at me and smirked. “What are you going to do about it, nump?”

There was a sharp snapping sound, like the crack of a bullwhip, only much, much louder, as a copper barb punched its way out through Gaza’s chest and shirtfront, killing him instantly. The clockwork dragon gave its tail a little shake to free itself of the dead gangster, and then stepped forward and lowered its head so I could pat it on the snout.

“Good girl,” I smiled. I hurried over to where Hexe was regathering himself from Gaza’s attack. He seemed slightly dazed, but no worse for wear. “Are you hurt?” I asked.

“I’m going to be feeling this the next day—assuming there is one—but I’m okay,” he said. “But we’ve got to get my father to Golgotham General.”

Suddenly Illuminata and Canterbury were with us, their battle armor spattered in blood and their flanks covered in lather. Illuminata set aside her mace as she knelt to gather the wounded Horn into her pale arms. “Leave it to me,” the centauride said. “I’ll get him there. I used to be an ambulance driver before I was assigned to your mother.” With that, she wheeled about and galloped off through the smoke and clash of battle in the direction of the exit.

Once he had seen his father safely away, Hexe turned and pulled me to him, kissing me as if he might never kiss me again, and then delivered a far gentler kiss to the top of his son’s head. As I looked into their golden depths and saw the resolve burning deep with them, I realized, no matter what anyone said, that Hexe truly had his father’s eyes.

“Get ’em out of here, Canterbury.”

Before I realized what was happening, the centaur had snatched me up in his arms and was galloping for daylight as if it was the final leg of the Kentucky Derby.

“Let me go!” I shouted. “Put me down right this minute!”

“Hexe is right,” Canterbury replied. “It’s too dangerous here for both you and the baby.”

“But I don’t want to leave him!” I wailed. “I can’t leave him!”

“You don’t have to,” he reminded me. “Part of you is still on the battlefield.”

Even as the centaur spoke the words, I opened my mind as far as it could go, reaching out to that fragment of myself that dwelt within my creation. As I felt something like a low-voltage shock run up my spine and lodge itself in the back of my head, I wondered, for a split second, if I did succeed in possessing the clockwork dragon, whether I’d be able to return to my body just as easily.

Before I could rethink my decision, I found myself staring out of a pair of unblinking eyes from an unaccustomed height. Although I could see and hear, my other senses did not seem to exist at all. It was as if I was drifting in a sensory deprivation tank, watching a video game through a virtual reality helmet wired for sound.

To my surprise, Boss Marz was still alive, although perhaps not for long. He had managed to crawl to Erys, who stared down at the Maladanti writhing at her feet with unalloyed disgust.

“You disappoint me, Marz,” Erys said as she prestidigitated another dagger from thin air. “Honestly, I got better results from the homunculi than from you and your men. I guess it’s true that if you want something done right, you better do it yourself.” With that, she bent down and grabbed Syra by her hair, yanking her into a sitting position so that the blood from her severed jugular would squirt into a brass cuspidor. But as she put the knife edge to Syra’s throat, she was rewarded by a shower of sparks, like those from an arc welder. Erys cursed and quickly let go of Syra in order to slap at the tiny mouths of fire clinging to her clothes.

“Leave my mother alone,” Hexe said, placing himself between Syra and his uncle, his left hand held before him, fingers bent in the mirror-reverse of the traditional defensive pattern of Right Hand magic.

“How could you even do that?” Erys yelped. “You don’t even have a right hand anymore!”

“But I still have my left one,” Hexe replied. “Right hand, left hand—it doesn’t matter whether I heal or harm, protect or destroy; the magic isn’t in my hands. It’s in my heart.”

“Let’s just see about that, shall we?” Erys snarled as she slung a fireball at Hexe’s head.

Hexe returned the volley so fast, Erys had to lunge out of the way to avoid ending up like Boss Marz. The ball of hellfire struck the back wall of the warehouse, splashing like napalm, and instantly set it on fire.

As Hexe turned to check on his mother, Esau’s familiar attacked from above, beating at him with a punishing fifteen foot wingspan and clawing at his head with a slashing beak and razor-sharp talons. Blood from lacerations to his scalp poured down into Hexe’s eyes, momentarily blinding him. He dropped to his knees, trying his best to cover his head and the back of his neck from the vicious attack as Edgar repeatedly dive-bombed him, drawing blood from his exposed back with his talons.

Suddenly, with a mighty roar, Scratch, red of saber-tooth and claw, came zooming out of nowhere, striking Edgar in midair. The hell-bird and the hell-cat locked talons, twirling about like a living bolo, before crashing to the floor of the warehouse. Being a cat, Scratch landed on his feet—but Edgar was not as lucky. The demon squawked in panic as it tried to hop away from its foe, grounded by a broken wing. Just as Scratch pounced, the familiar disincorporated, surrendering the field in a cloud of brimstone.

“Yeah, that’s right; you better run, chicken,” Scratch sniffed.

Meanwhile, Hexe was doing his best to try to revive his mother and get her back on her feet. “Mom—Mom, snap out of it!” he pleaded.

Lady Syra’s eyelids suddenly fluttered open, and she smiled weakly upon seeing her son kneeling over her. “Tate and the baby—are they—?”

“Yes, they’re safe,” Hexe replied. “But we’ve got to get you out of here!”

“Hexe—watch out!” Syra cried, her eyes wide with alarm.

Before Hexe could react to the warning, Erys grabbed him from behind, jerking his head back by the hair to expose his jugular.

“Mom—run!” Hexe yelled, as he grappled with Erys. “Get out of here!”

But just as Erys pressed the blade of the dagger to Hexe’s throat, a strange look crossed her borrowed face and she jerked her head first one way, then another, as if listening to someone calling her name.

“Who are you?” she snapped. “What are you doing?”

As if in reply, the knife fell from Erys’ hand, allowing Hexe to quickly scuttle free of her grasp. Her face abruptly went slack and a hollow, distant voice issued from her gaping mouth. “I’ve come to reclaim what’s mine, my love.”

“No! Leave me be!” Erys said, her face returning to its usual, intense expression, like a rubber band snapping back into place.

“Enough is enough, husband.”

“But I’ve done all this for you, Nina!” Erys protested, sounding more like a petulant child than a dark wizard bent on the destruction of mankind and the harrowing of worlds. “This is your revenge!”

“Do not place this abomination on me! My Esau would never do such things in the name of love! You are not the man I married—you are a demon in all but name!”

Erys’ face began to contort, the muscles flexing like snakes locked in mortal combat. Then her features abruptly relaxed and Hexe found himself looking not at Erys, but Nina. Although the features were identical, there was now a kindness and warmth, mixed with a profound sadness, which had not been there before—or, rather, had not been there for a long, long time.

“Do it now, while I have control,” Nina said urgently. “Do what only a strong Right Hand can do: exorcise him!”

Without hesitation, Hexe raised his left hand, chanting the rite of purification as he moved his fingers into the mirror-reverse configurations used to drive forth demons. A burst of white light shot from his palm and into Nina’s body, lighting her from within like a paper lantern, chasing out a cloud of wispy black smoke that buzzed like a nest of hornets.

“You’ve thrown him out,” Nina said with a weary smile. “Now you must lock the door. Kill this body before he returns.”

“No,” Lady Syra said, pushing her son aside as she got up off the floor. “This falls to me. Just as it was up to Lord Bexe to end his brother’s threat, Esau is mine to put down.” And with that she drove the sacrificial dagger into her sister-in-law’s heart.

Nina took a step back, wavering like a dandelion caught in a stiff breeze, crimson rapidly spreading from the knife sticking in her chest. “Thank you, Syra,” she said with a beatific smile.

“I’m sorry, Nina,” Lady Syra whispered tearfully.

“Why?” the ghost replied. “I’ve been dead for decades.”

As Nina’s truly lifeless body dropped to the floor, there was a horrific howling noise from the direction of the portal. Hexe and Syra turned to see Esau—once more unified with his corporeal form—standing atop the bier carried by his monstrous servants, his face contorted in fury. But as they watched, Esau’s shriek of outrage became first a scream of protest, then anguish, as the legions of the damned that had, moments before, been eager to carry him to power, turned on him at once, dragging him down from his lofty perch, clutching and gouging at his flesh as if to tear him apart with their bare claws. And while in the Infernal Realm there is no unconsciousness, or sleep, or any means of alleviating pain, and neither is there death, there are consequences for making promises you cannot keep. Esau was still screaming as the portal closed.

Thanks to the reckless use of hellfire in an enclosed space, not only did the warehouse catch fire, so did the rest of the pier. While most of the Golgotham Army escaped the inferno, the same could not be said for the Maladanti, most of whom had either perished in the battle or simply refused to admit defeat and vacate the Stronghold.

Among the last to leave the burning building were Hexe and Lady Syra, who exited in style on the back of the clockwork dragon. As the Witch Queen and her Heir Apparent approached what remained of the gates to the pier on their mechanical mount, the crowd of onlookers who had been drawn from their nearby homes by the fire gasped in amazement. It was the first time in over a thousand years that members of the Royal Family had been seen astride anything that resembled a dragon.

I experienced a weird jolt as I saw myself through my creation’s eyes, perched on Canterbury’s back, my child still cradled in my arms. Then suddenly I was back in my own body. I quickly dismounted and hurried to greet Hexe as he and his mother climbed down from the clockwork dragon.

“Praise Arum you’re safe!” Hexe said, throwing his arms about us. “What about my father?”

“Illuminata took him to Golgotham General,” Seamus replied.

“Your father’s been hurt?” Syra gasped.

“Not to hear him tell it!” Seamus said with a laugh. “You’d think takin’ a knife to the chest was nothin’! He’s a stubborn cuss, your da, but a brave one. He’s just the kind of man I’ll need, once I’m mayor.”

“What about casualties?” Hexe asked.

“The ferrymen to the necropolis will be busy,” Kidron replied solemnly. “But we gave better than we got. Luckily, once Marz and Gaza went down, most of the Maladanti broke rank and deserted the battlefield.”

“Where’s Scratch?” I asked, searching the crowd of exhausted warriors. “He’s not still trapped in there, is he?”

“It’ll take more than a burning building to slow me down,” a voice said from above. I looked up and saw Scratch, still in his hell-cat aspect, coming in for a landing. “Sorry I took so long, but I wanted to bring you a present,” the familiar said, spitting out Boss Marz’s beringed left hand.