Damoren (36 page)

Matt raised the gun at Anya, now convulsing on the ground, her legs fused into a gruesome tail.
He fired. The blast caught one of the hooded cultists in the back, knocking him forward into the ring. His body blew apart as if caught in a wood chipper, joining in the bloody cyclone.

Cultists screamed, and
closed in the gap, forming a human wall between the gun and their goddess. Others broke ranks and charged.

“
Your subjects call.
”

Racking another shell, Matt ran toward Dämoren.
He fired at the oni about to destroy Allan’s sword. The beast jolted but the buckshot had no effect.

“
Rise and destroy.
”

Matt was almost there.
He shot one of the hooded weapon killers racing toward him. The oni raised its hammer.

“
Rise and rule.
”

Twisting its body, the oni brought the hammer down to the side, missing the anvil and smashing it down onto the plank.
Onto Dämoren.
The wood buckled, splitting in two as the holy revolver crushed and shattered under the maul’s power.

Matt froze, his eyes wide.
Bits of metal and ivory spun through the air, tinkling to the ground.
Gone.

A dark blur flew in from the side.
It slammed into him, knocking Matt to the hard stones. The shotgun fell from his hand. His arm cracked and broke, but he didn’t feel it.

The bald vampire stood above him, enraged.
Her long fingers wrapped around his neck and she dragged him across the unforgiving stones away from the ceremony. Matt didn’t fight. He only stared at Dämoren’s broken remains. She was dead.

The vampire threw him against the castle
’s wall. He slumped to the ground. The demon crouched over him, her fanged mouth inches from his face. “You failed, killer.”

A roar came from the ring.
Matt couldn’t see what was happening inside it. He didn’t care. He felt numb. A soothing wave rolled up him, like slipping into a warm bath. Blackness closed inward.

“
No one will save you,” the vampire cooed. “You’re going to die.”

Dämoren was dead.
Clay’s gun. The sword of Victor Kluge. Eight hundred years and now gone. He wanted to die. Deserved it. He felt helpless as he had all those years ago. Arm broken, his family dying. A monster glowering above him. Fitting.

“
I’m going to drink you dry and feed your corpse to the ghouls,” the vampire said. “Then your friends. They’ll die screaming.”

A searing pain stabbed into Matt
’s chest, hot and twisting. He gasped, trying to draw breath, but couldn’t. The burning spread like molten steel through his veins. Tears welled in his eyes. He’d felt this before. Dämoren’s slug.

The vampire laughed, her
putrid breath cold against his cheek.

The fiery blood coursed into Matt
’s brain and something erupted inside him. Awakened.

The vampire
’s eyes widened, glee melting into confusion.

A clawed hand sprung up into Matt
’s vision, grasping the vampire by the throat. Muscles bulged and swelled beneath its icy blue skin, shimmering in the firelight. Silver nails dug into the vampire’s neck. She screamed but the sound was squelched off as her throat crunched. Green flames erupted from the demon’s mouth as the strange claw tore out the vampire’s neck.

A surge of power, ecstasy and exhilaration shot
through Matt’s body. Fiery blood poured down the strange arm. Confused, Matt looked down to see where it had come from. Then, to his horror, he realized the clawed hand was his own.

Chapter
Twenty

Blue-green fire dripped down Matt’s monstrous arm as the vampire’s burning corpse fell. His bones crunched, body swelling with power. The handcuff, still locked around his left wrist, tightened against his expanding arm. The shackle popped and clinked to the ground.

A supernova of foreign memories exploded inside his
head. Thoughts and emotions, a seemingly endless history unfolded before his mind’s eye.

Standing, though not of his own will, he
looked around, seeing everything with more clarity and detail than he’d ever imagined, as if his whole life he’d only seen the world through a dusty window, now smashed away. Flecks and colored veins adorned each of the gray flagstones. The crimson moon above burned bright as any sun, rendering shadows meaningless. Seething lights of souls swirled in the cyclone of Icthwyn’s invocation. The brown eyes of the hooded cultist aiming her shotgun at him were ringed prisms of color.

The blast
knocked Matt’s head back, lead shot shredding his skin and shattering bone. The wounds closed as fast as they opened, leaving but a tingling memory. As if watching it, not in control of his own body, Matt closed the distance between him and the shooter before she had time to rack another shell. He knocked the gun aside, grabbed the woman and threw her to the ground. Bones cracked as easily as if they were made of dried spaghetti. A greenish wisp of light fluttered from her corpse as her soul retreated this world.

Matt noticed the children, their hands still bound behind them.
The eldest soul, Malcolm, whose gold-tinged purple essence reminds him so much of his own lost child, Clay, scooted across the stones toward the dead female.

What is happening?
Matt wondered, realizing his own consciousness was nothing more than a shrinking island within an ever-growing sea.

Malcolm
dug in the corpse’s pocket.

Fighting the invader, Matt tried to tell Malcolm to get the keys and save the weapons, but his tongue wouldn
’t move.

Matt
turned to face the blue-skinned oni. It was old, a general in the Legion. He knew its name once. It stood still, its hammer raised above Matt’s brother. The oni stared at him, her mouth open in a dumfounded O.

A drum
thumped. A wave of power sucked inward then exploded out from the ring at Icthwyn’s returning. Now was the time to kill her, while she was weak, disoriented, unused to the flesh. But he couldn’t. He had to save his brethren, those who shunned him for breaking the oath. He couldn’t let them die. Just as he couldn’t let the boy Spencer die. The boy’s death would have destroyed the child, Clay. Love made him break his most sacred vow. Not greed. Not power. Love.

Now Matt is charging.
The oni readied to meet him, its iron hammer whooshed through the air at his approach. Ducking the swing, Matt crouched below it and then sprang upward, his hand a flat blade, driving his silver-clawed fingers up beneath the demon’s ribs. His arm slid deeper into the sticky wound, finding the oni’s beating heart. Sweet fire erupted as he tore the demon’s heart free. The dead general fell and Matt held the flaming heart high.

Humans and demons alike turn
ed in horror, seeing Matt above the fallen oni. A great shape loomed behind them. Icthwyn had become flesh, become Tiamat. Matt opened his mouth, his jaw stretching wider than he could have ever imagined, and swallowed the oni’s heart. The demon’s soul tasted sweet.

A werewolf
roared and charged from the ranks. It lunged, hooked claws extended. Matt twisted to the side, grabbing the werewolf as it passed. Swinging his body, he yanked and slammed the demon into the ground. Stunned, the beast looked up as Matt’s foot stomped down, crushing its head like a pumpkin. Scarlet flames splattered across the ground.

Matt struggled, fighting to regain some control of his body and mind.
The lines between his being and the invader’s blurred and melted. He knew its name. His name. Urakael.

The blood within his veins
pulled to one side, warning of a demon’s coming. Spinning, he caught a ghoul’s arm as its filthy claws ripped into Matt’s shoulder. The pathetic creature howled and writhed, snapping at him with jagged teeth. Matt’s grip tightened and the ghoul’s arm broke. His other hand grabbed it by the neck and crushed it. He slung the sinewy body to the feet of its closing brethren, yellow fire igniting across its leathery skin. The cowardly ghouls scattered, their pack leader dead.

Urakael
’s control had grown too strong to fight, its consciousness too vast. Exhausted, Matt finally succumbed, allowing the being to take him.

They
are one.

He felt the bond, the love for each of his one-hundred-nineteen children.
The souls he touched, their hands wielding him as a sword then pistol. He knew their names. Mourned their passing. The illusion of time warps and cracks. He knows everything. The origin. The pact. The betrayal.

The blood pulls him again.
Urakael turns, seeing a crimson strutter and a pair of familiars, their golden eyes peering beneath their black hoods. Short knives glisten in the familiars’ hands. Steel poses no threat to his body.

The strutter
’s enormous tongue slithers out from behind its fangs and peels open, its nest of pink tentacles bursting out. The greasy strands wrap around him, their toxin burns, though not as horrific as before. Gritting his teeth, Urakael doesn’t pull away. He thrusts his arm deeper into the writhing mass. He loops his arm around the tendrils then yanks. Strands rip and pop like piano wires. The demon lurches forward. Urakael wrenches the tendrils again, harder. The sound of tearing meat and then the tongue rips free from the strutter’s throat. The demon staggers, the remaining few of its unbroken tendrils flailing wildly. Urakael throws the severed tongue aside and lunges. He drives his thumbs through the strutter’s golden eyes and pulls outward. Bone rips as the creature’s skull splits apart. The two familiars freeze, their enslaved souls released. Purple and orange flames coat his skin, healing the poisoned wounds.

Tiamat
’s enormous form rises up from behind her wall of followers, long and snake-like. Her skin glistens like beaten brass. Hundreds of squirming eels run the length of her back like wind-swept hair. Their pale noseless faces are all Anya’s. Their black eyes all look at him, though Tiamat’s remain closed.

A gun blasts behind him.
Turning, he sees the child Malcolm free of his cuffs, firing into the cultists as he and the others charge for Urakael’s brethren. Allan is the first to reach them. He takes Zhygan, Ibenus’s true name, from the anvil and swings, instantly teleporting behind a blonde vampire and decapitating it with one stroke.

Many of the Legion seem unsure, hesitation in their eyes.
Fear.

Luc snatches Velnepo from the ground.
He strikes a wendigo with the mace. The blow knocks the demon’s corpse away like a child’s toy.

A dark glimmer shoots toward Malcolm, a rakshasa, its form invisible to human eyes.
Urakael leaps toward it, cresting fifteen feet in the air. Malcolm spins to face him, unable to see the closing demon. Buckshot rips through Urakael’s chest.

Raising his claws high, Urakael slashes down as he lands.
Invisible flesh tears open. The demon takes form. A black shape, its eyes and mouth empty wells of nothingness. The demon blurs, then splits into two, four identical fiends.

They close.

Urakael swipes at one, but his hand passes through the illusion. Cold claws rip into his back, tearing muscle and tendons. Serrated teeth bite into his neck.

Screaming, Urakael reaches behind, blindly catching the frenzied rakshasa by the back of its head.
Flailing claws slice him as he wrenches the demon up and over, flipping it onto the ground. Urakael punches down, crushing the rakshasa’s head. Stygian fire spreads across the corpse. He scoops black flames to his lips. Sweet intoxication. His bleeding wounds mend. He rises.

Malcolm stands before him.
His warding palm is open, though still at his side, ready to be raised. “Matt?”

Urakael nods to Hounacier and Khirzoor still lying beside the broken plank.
Pieces of his own smashed vessel litter the ground beside them. A guttural voice resonates from Urakael’s chest. “Save them.”

Ten demon corpses lie burning on the ground.
Using the flickering shadows of a dead vampire’s light, Luiza cleaves off a werewolf’s legs.

Urakael turns to the remaining Legion.
They stink of fear. They were always cowards. Dozens of black-robed humans flee, those whose souls had been freed or whose fear of mortality outweighed faith.

Tiamat watches him
through slitted eyes. The wife of his father, though herself not a god. The betrayer made flesh, made mortal. Her death will give him absolution.

He rushes toward her.
A pair of glowing-eyed hellhounds race to meet him. One leaps, jaws open. Deflecting the beast with a forearm, Urakael spins to the side. The other hound crashes into him, knocking Urakael to the ground.

He lands on his back, the demon pressing on top of him.
Snarling, it snaps its jaws just above his face. Urakael brings a knee up, wedging it between himself and the hound and kicks. The beast flips up above his head. Urakael rolls to his feet just as the other hound comes at him again. It springs, sinking its fangs into his arm. It shakes its head, tearing the flesh.

Howling in pain,
he grabs the black hound behind its skull and drives his claws in. Vertebrae snap and crunch. Blue fire erupts from the wounds, but the beast’s jaws refuse to open. Urakael rips the animal free, tearing the meat from his arm. The power of the dead demon’s soul heals him quickly.

Blood pulls him from behind.
Urakael wheels around in time to catch the other hellhound flying toward him. He chomps into the demon’s spine, tasting the sweet fire explode into his mouth. He tears a piece free and swallows it, bone and all, then hurls the burning corpse at a rushing vampire.

He turns to face Tiamat, murderer of his father.
The demon mother has taken flight, her serpentine form undulating through the air. Coward.

Nearly twenty demons burn in the courtyard.
His brethren’s children move as a circle, cutting their way through the yard. A ring of bound corpses lies in the center, their bodies dissolved below the ribs. The blood moon above still glows red. As long as it does, the ring holds power. Not all is lost, but he must act soon.

Their mother gone, the Legion begins to flee.
A white-haired succubus flies off on leather wings. A trio of ghouls clamors over the castle’s wall like cockroaches. Urakael spies a werewolf lying in the corner, its feral features melting away as the demon moves to another body on this world. The child Allan appears beside it and splits the fiend open before the transference completes.

Urakael approaches the children.
A robed man with a knife charges. Urakael kills him with a backhand. Luiza is the first to see him near. Four bleeding gashes run down her arm. Luiza’s eyes narrow with fear, fear of what he has become. The others notice him as well.

“
Go,” Urakael says. “Tiamat will return. My brethren must survive.”

“
Who?” Luc asks. Blood oozes from a cut in his thigh.

Red tinges the mace
’s glow. Anger. Animosity. He is the betrayer. They don’t trust him, neither do their children.

“
The weapons,” Urakael says. “You must take them from here before she returns.”

“
Matt?” Luiza asks. “Is it you?”

“
He is with me.”

“
Wha... who are you?” she asks.

Urakael looks at the sky.
The eclipse nears completion. “I am Urakael.”
The Fallen.
He meets her gaze. “You called me Dämoren.”

Her eyes widen.
“How?”

“
Go. Now.” Urakael turns back toward the ring. Though weak, it still pulses with Icthwyn’s power. She is still bound to it. He remembers his father. How could he have loved such a creature? Urakael steps over black-robed bodies. Would his father have loved them as well? Was it wrong that he did not? His father was virtuous. Hatred was no virtue. Tonight Urakael’s hatred would die, either with Icthwyn or with himself.

He stops at the edge of the ring.
It stinks of death.

“
Mother!” he cries to the moon in the First Tongue, the language spoken at Creation. “I call you, Icthwyn. I invoke your name. Come. Come before me. I, Urakael, Seventeenth Son of Dythn, challenge you. Face me!”

Faint light swirls within the ring.

He looks about.
The children have left. “Icthwyn, come before me! Icthwyn, face me!”

His consciousness barely intact, Matt remembered Kazuo
’s words.

“
When the laws of the universe are called and powers are invoked or bound by their true names, waves are felt everywhere. That’s when prophecies come true. All worlds feel the ripples.”