City of Light & Shadow (11 page)

  The crumbled tower sat in a slight depression, as if the ground had sunk a little beneath its weight, though Tylus insisted otherwise when Kat commented to that effect, claiming that much of the detritus they now walked on would have settled after the station was built.

  The most disturbing aspect of the place was that no grasses or brambles or even moss had risen to claim it; the brickwork looked old but clear, as if it were too unwholesome for even the vegetation that flourished here to grow on. No, forget that. The most unsettling thing about the place was that the arkademic reckoned the Soul Thief was hidden somewhere inside it.

  "You're sure?" Kat had asked on their arrival, not willing to risk any error where this was concerned.

  The woman had nodded. "Positive, but my long sight can confirm it."

  Kat had never heard of long sight but was willing to bet the clue was in the name. If half the things rumoured about arkademics were true, this one doubtless had all sorts of tricks and weird abilities up her sleeve.

  Arkademic Haq closed her eyes. Kat watched closely, waiting for something else to happen – an aura, a shimmering – some indication of arcane manipulation, but she was to be disappointed. Everyone stood waiting, even the Kite Guards were grounded by mutual consent, nobody wanting to go too close and risk alerting their quarry.

  Oddly there was no real sense of anticipation or excitement, which Kat would have expected to feel, just a general air of impatience, though maybe that was just her. A minute or two dragged by before Isar returned to herself and gave the confirmation they'd been waiting for.

  
Now
Kat began to get excited. "Right," she said, preparing to address the men.

  "Kat…?"

  What did the blasted arkademic want? "Yes?"

  "Your swords, they won't touch it you know, they won't do any real damage." Kat knew, but that didn't mean she wanted to be reminded of the fact. "I can attune them," Isar continued.

  "Nobody touches my swords."

  "I won't need to."

  Kat glared at the older woman. "If you do anything to damage them…"

  "I won't, I promise. This will simply establish a resonance between your blades and that part of my whip which the Soul Thief absorbed. I doubt it'll give you enough to kill or even to seriously injure her, but you should be able to hurt her."

  Kat smiled her dark smile and, without saying anything further, whipped out her twin blades and presented them. The arkademic reached out with both her hands spread, holding them palms downward just above the proffered swords, as if the weapons were braziers she could warm herself over on a chill winter's night. Again Kat watched closely but was disappointed. There was no glow, no spark of light, nothing overt to indicate anything at all was happening. A few seconds, that was all it took, before Isar looked up and smiled. "There."

  "Is that it?" Kat said. What was the point of being an arkademic with all these wonderful talents if you couldn't be flash about it from time to time? Isar nodded, evidently happy with herself.

  Kat's smile was sweeter this time. "You couldn't do the same thing to the darts carried by our flechette gunners, could you?"

  "Certainly."

  Once that was dealt with, Kat quickly organised the Tattooed Men, though it took longer to get everyone in position than she'd have liked. The attack would come from five sides; one aerial and four at ground level. Two members of the Blade remained close to Isar, while the balance formed one groundside attack force; the Tattooed Men provided the other three, with Kat taking over the leadership of Halfhand's squad. The Kite Guards would attack from above, though quite what use they'd be or how they'd cope if the Soul Thief decided to go after them remained to be seen.

  Tylus seemed confident enough. When Kat tried to warn him what they were about to go up against he gave a knowing grin and said, "Don't worry, we've got a few surprises of our own."

  Smug bastard. Kat shook her head, tempted to say more but seeing no point in her fretting; she'd just have to trust that the Kite Guards really were capable of keeping their end tight. Maybe the sheer presence of so many flying things buzzing around would keep the Soul Thief groundside where Kat and the others could get to grips with the monster and settle things once and for all.

  Finally, M'gruth's squad were in position; they'd skirted around to the far side of the ruin and so had further to go than anyone else. Kat raised one sword above her head and twirled it – quite impressively, she thought – giving the agreed signal. Everyone started forward, their wide circumference constricting rapidly. Kat got a real kick out of knowing that the Blade had just moved into action at her command. Who'd have thought it?

  The earlier flat tedium of inaction was forgotten. As they closed in on the Soul Thief's layer, Kat could feel the excitement ratcheting up with every stride. Surely the bitch had to be aware of them by now, or was she so confident of her power that she slept soundly and unguarded out here?

  Anyway, who said she was asleep?

  The Kite Guards were the first to spot it. They circled above the stump of the ruined building like flies above a rotting corpse. One of them shouted something and Kat didn't need to hear the individual words to catch their meaning. Seconds later she could see it for herself. A black fog had begun to emerge from the stunted building, drifting out to tumble over the edges of the brickwork like liquid boiling from an overheated beaker in some experiment of the Maker's.

  The inky mist fell to the ground where it pooled and gathered and started to take shape; a column of darkness which built quickly, facing directly towards Kat.

  As the column was still forming and the suggestion of a face within that swirling darkness was still more imagination than actual impression, one of the figures circling above dipped its wing and dived towards the Thief.

  "No!" Kat yelled, even as she realised it was Tylus.
The idiot!

  But the Kite Guard didn't plummet all the way down to engage the Thief hand-to-mist as she'd expected. Instead he banked and levelled out, passing a little above the broiling figure. As he came close, something dropped from his belt, a fist-sized package that arced towards the Soul Thief to strike the ground at the foot of the black column. On impact the package exploded.

  Kat laughed. A bomb;
the Kite Guards were carrying bombs!

  The sound was deafening. Flame and smoke and clods of grass, mouldering earth and rotted detritus rose up at one edge of where the Soul Thief stood. Its developing form waivered and a shriek of pain or perhaps alarm rose from the mouth, which was now clearly visible.

  The shriek was music to Kat's ears. Tylus may have struck before she was fully ready, but she couldn't argue with the results, and perhaps it was just as well none of them had been any closer with bombs flying around. Two more Kite Guards were following Tylus' lead, swooping in and dropping grenades. Kat turned to Tug, the Tattooed Man immediately to her left, and said. "Hit her!"

  Tug nodded, braced himself, levelled the flechette gun he was carrying, and squeezed the trigger. A stream of metal slivers blasted from the muzzle, crossing the intervening distance in an instant and scything into the Thief's billowing form just as the two bombs went off one after the other, the sounds buffeting Kat's ears like the staggered beat of a giant's heart. The shriek was constant now, a wail of frustration and pain. They were hurting the bitch.

  This wasn't Iron Grove Square. There was no Brent and no would-be street gangsters to intervene. This time the creature whose murderous deeds had shaped so much of Kat's life wouldn't escape. She was going down, whatever it took.

  M'gruth's squad had moved in closer, shifting around the tower stub for a better angle. Their flechette gun now joined the fray as another pair of Kite Guards swooped in. Metal darts were tearing into the substance of the Soul Thief from two sides, passing through to chew into the more solid wall behind.

  "Careful!" Kat screamed, as the stream of darts from M'gruth's gunner flew through the Thief and past the tower, coming perilously close to Ox and his group who were manoeuvring around the opposite side of the ruin. Good leader that he was, M'gruth had already recognised the danger and instructed his man to stop firing, motioning for him to move around further so that he would only threaten the brickwork rather than his fellows. Kat's gunner continued to keep the Thief occupied as the Kite Guards swooped in.

  This pair proved less accurate than their colleagues, their bombs landing a fair bit wide of the target; due in part, no doubt, to the Soul Thief contracting. The smoky column collapsed rapidly into a dense ball which slipped and drifted around the side of the tower towards Ox, trying to get away.

  Kat went to yell at Ox but there was no need. The big man had already unslung the equipment from his back, flipped open the tripod with practiced ease and was slipping the cylinders into place. Beside him, a flechette gunner opened up, trying to persuade the Thief not to come any further around the tower after all. Kat signalled her own gunner to stop, to offer their target an easier route back the way it had come.

  The Kite Guards were back, two of them stooping for another run, right to left as Kat watched. They were getting cocky; this pair flew lower than any before them. The bombs were dropped, driving the Soul Thief back towards Kat, but this time the Thief was ready to try something different. She attacked, taking the initiative for the first time, funnelling away from the blast and stretching upwards with incredible speed. A strand of darkness shot into the air, as if drawn there by the Kite Guard's passage. It touched a trailing leg of the nearest Guard, instantly solidifying around the man's ankle.

  "No," Kat yelled, as, for an instant, the Kite Guard floundered, reaching for the air as if hoping to grasp it and somehow keep himself aloft. Then he was quite literally yanked from the sky.

  It all happened so quickly. One moment the Kite Guard was sailing majestically past, the next his cape folded and he'd been brought crashing to the ground. The inky blackness drew on that treacherous tether and used it to flow across, enveloping the fallen Guard.

  Kat was already on the move, sprinting forward. The flechette gunners had been caught by surprise. They'd adjusted now but couldn't fire for fear of hurting the fallen man, and the other Kite Guards weren't about to attack while one of their own was at risk. It was down to her. They'd been hurting the bitch, and now it was about to draw the life force from a victim and replenish its energies, undoing everything they'd achieved. Not if Kat could help it.

  She didn't give a thought to whether Isar's trick with her swords had worked or not, to whether she could actually
harm
the Soul Thief in any way, she simply reacted. Her arms pumped, sword in each hand in a manner that had become second nature to her, as she closed the gap across the uneven ground. Someone shouted her name but she ignored them. It was just her and the Thief now.

  She struck even as she arrived, a crude overhand blow accompanied by a shriek of effort and anger and hate. Her blade bit. She felt a hint of resistance as she drew it through the murky insubstance. The Kite Guard had been completely hidden beneath the Soul Thief, but at Kat's blow the darkness seemed to flinch, pulling in on itself. Kat's other blade followed the first. She struck again and again, in a fighting rhythm that came as naturally as breathing. The Soul Thief shied away from her blades, the Kite Guard evidently forgotten as it came upright, the wheedling yowl of its hurt, its indignity, ringing in her ears. She smelt rot and decay and death. A face took shape in the creature's shadowy form.

  "Kat, don't, please… you're hurting me!" Chavver, her features wracked with anguish, pleading, begging. The ghost of her sister, resurrected to disarm her. She'd expected this, steeled herself against it, but still it hit home – a bolt of loss slicing through her heart – but that wasn't enough to make her hesitate. If anything, she increased the tempo of her assault. This wasn't her sister. Charveve would never have begged, she would have died first.

  Next the face shifted into that of her mother, looking exactly as memory painted her, as if the passage of time hadn't marked her at all. "Why are you doing this to me… your own mother? All that remains of me is here. Katarina, please don't…" The shadowy face, so familiar from painful memory, plucked at her heart strings, but this wasn't enough to stop her either. The Thief had played this card before and this time around it only made Kat redouble her efforts yet again.

  "Kat!" That might have been M'gruth, but she'd pay attention to whatever he wanted later.

  Then her blade carried a little too far, or perhaps the darkness deliberately shifted. Her wrist brushed against the Thief, sinking a little into its misty substance where it stuck fast. Kat couldn't pull free.

  The face no longer pleaded. Instead it gloated. "Foolish, foolish girl. Come to join your mother and sister, have you?"

  Kat's arm felt cold, numbed, and she could no longer hold her sword. She watched the weapon tip from her unresponsive fingers and tumble towards the ground, seeming to fall in slow motion.

  She tried to twist, to pull away, but the darkness held her firm. In fact it was pulling her in, picking at her inner being.

  It suddenly occurred to Kat that she might die. Strength flowed out of her, drawn along that captured arm. Somewhere deep inside her a savage, bitter laugh threatened to bubble through. What did it matter? What did she have to live for anyway? But she couldn't die, not quite yet; not until the Soul Thief had first paid for all the hurt and misery she'd caused.