Distant Star (19 page)

He was a Knight, moaning and
clutching at the bloody stump where his foot used to be attached. I shook him
off, stood up, and helped him up onto his good leg. “What happened here?”

The man was missing an eye.
“About a thousand nightmares poured out of the Degradation, and the Renegades
turned on us. I… I…” He focused on me. “Aren’t you Dec—?”

A luminescent arrow pierced his
neck from behind and a spray of arterial blood splashed across my face. I let
him drop, and Clare pulled me away.

“Up there!” she said, pointing at
the ridge about half a mile away. The very edge of the Degradation sliced the
raised terrain in half, but the flag of the Dragon Throne—the King’s
flag—was planted firmly against its edge. “If Faraday’s there, Morpheus
Renegade won’t be far away.”

We stayed low, argent shields
spinning ever faster around us as our combined Will deflected all it could. “Do
you think they’re still friendly? This is a whole new game, Clare. The Tome
Wars renewed!”

Clare and I ran across a small
tree line, keeping to the dusky shadows as much as possible and avoiding all
but the minor skirmishes of the battle.

“I don’t think—” Clare
stumbled, and I caught her. “Thanks. I don’t think they
care
, Declan. This is about Atlantis, remember. They’re both trying
to breach your Degradation. I don’t think they care about all these soldiers
tearing themselves apart! A renewed war won’t mean a damn thing if one of them
takes the Lost City without the other.”

“Good point.”

Marcus and Sophie could look
after themselves, but I was worried about Ethan and Aaron. Aaron didn’t command
the talent, and Ethan was only good for party tricks. With any luck, Marcus had
cleared them off the field, although from my vantage point, the entire lowland
seemed engulfed.

Under a hazy smoke cloud, the
main fighting spread across the Plains of Perdition for a good two miles. Thick
columns of smoke obscured the eastern grasslands and rose up along the edge of
the Degradation. The cloud cast the dome in a purple, almost turquoise, light.
Anything could be emerging unseen from the depths of the shield.

Worse than a scream is a scream cut short…

Clare and I ran towards the
ridge, well clear of the main battle and a quarter mile from the rim of the
Degradation. We encountered very little resistance from the scattering of
soldiers below the hill. Most of them were focused on the battle.

We reached the base of the ridge
below the Degradation. Moss-covered and weatherworn tombstones protruded from
the earth like the teeth of an ancient and terrible beast. The cemetery was old
and rose up the hillside. Some of the graves looked fresh, and were marked with
the sigils of the Knights and Renegades alike.

These men and women had died here
in the five years since my shield around Atlantis came into being, since I’d
crippled the Story Thread. They had died because of me, to destroy the
creatures seeping out of the Degradation.

“Hale!”

Breathing hard, I snapped out of
my thoughts. King Renegade stood above us on the crest of the lower graveyard,
alone and arrogant. He held a familiar looking dagger, stained red, in his
hand. A key to Atlantis, torn from my side.

“Come on down, Morpheus!” I
called. “Let’s put an end to this.”

Renegade snarled and slapped his
free hand against his leg. Cords of fetid yellow light flew from his fingers and
flowed into the ground. I cursed and shot a bolt of silver light at the mad
king, but the ground shook and knocked me aside. Clare caught me, and I kept to
my feet.

The grass began to
ripple
and bulge in warped, undulating
waves.

“Oh dear…” I knew what Renegade
had done.
Bastard.

A third army entered the fray.

They came from below, from the
shallow graves that littered the vast ridge. Rotting skeletal arms burst
through the dirt and clawed for the surface.

The earth spat up a dread legion of
the undead.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Fury

Fucking
necromancy.

Summoning zombies, the soulless,
walkers, politicians, the undead—call them what you will—was a
desecration against everything I knew to be true and right. To be 
just
. A primal rage, as red-hot as
burning coals, descended over my vision.

Such anger, once upon a time, had
scorched a city in blind arrogance. My rage that could annihilate and kill and
disrupt the flow of time, a rage as raw as sin, was only intensified by the
cries of Clare Valentine trying desperately to pull her leg clear of the
rotting-fleshed hand rising from beneath her feet.

“
What move to make next, Declan?
” Renegade was laughing, still
miles clear of sanity and heading straight to the heart of crazy town juggling
TNT. “
Atlantis is mine!
”

His voice shuddered through my
mind, and I realized a moment too late that he’d caught me in a web of
compulsion, a thick, persuasive binding of Will—like the kind I’d used to
send Jeff Brade spinning across the Void during the attack at my shop. Morpheus
turned and fled up the hillside, leaving me pinned to the ground and unable to
move.

I fought it. I hurled my Will
back against his touch and gnawed at the strands of biting steel that bound me.
The hold he’d placed on me, as brutal as any physical beating but somehow so
much worse, like jagged hooks digging deep furrows across my brain, shook and
spun.

My Will wasn’t strong enough. The
shambling creatures risen from below the earth surrounded me. Even if I did get
free in time, I was trapped—

Firm hands, like sledgehammers,
pushed me in the back and I was thrown across the tombstone-ridden dell,
through the clawing arms of the undead. I slammed into the base of the ridge.
The wind was knocked from my lungs, but I was clear of the disgusting
creatures.

Clare had hit me with a pound of
raw Will.

She saved my life and freed me
from Renegade’s compulsion.

Gasping for breath, I stumbled to
one knee in time to see Clare’s arms alight with purple fire. She swung lances
of sharp energy at the onslaught… but it wasn’t going to be enough. One of the
creatures sank its teeth into her neck from behind, biting into the ropy scar
tissue that crossed her throat.

“NO!”

I stumbled forward, firing shots
of wild Will into the fray. A recently deceased Knight, stinking of death and
decay, latched onto my arm in a surprisingly strong grip and pulled me round in
a vicious circle.

A burst of heat energy exploded
out of my palm and into the zombie’s neck, severing its head. The distraction
cost me. Clare had vanished from my sight, beneath a horde of the bloodthirsty
creatures. I could hear her screaming.

Suddenly, I was channeling more
Will than I had in five years. I was back in the wars, in truth and in heart.
Twin jets of dark green fire flared from my palms, wreathing my arms in deadly
flame. My skin, the only flesh immune to my power, tingled beneath the
ferocity.

I danced among the dead, cutting
a path toward Clare. My strength to sustain the flame waned, and I stumbled,
breathing hard, spit running down my chin. I’d cleared great swaths of the
creatures, but I’d not done enough. I could barely breathe, let alone reach
Clare in time to save—

A voice roared behind me. “
Let her go!
”

Aaron, alone and unarmed, hurled
himself, all one hundred and thirty kilograms of hefty fat, into the shambling
creatures and began to tear them apart
with
his bare hands
. He fought as if possessed. Something swaddled in a cloth
bundle was strapped to his back.

I watched, stunned, as one of the
zombies latched its teeth into his meaty bicep. With a bellow, Aaron drove his
fingers into its hollow eye sockets and wrenched its rotten head from its neck.

Seeing that jarred me into
action.

I leapt back into the fight,
shooting short bursts of explosive light—all I could manage—into
the creatures, and gave Aaron room to work. He knelt down where I’d last seen
Clare and, with a wail, lifted her up into his arms and turned to run as I
covered him.

Most of the damn things had been
destroyed. I cleaned up the survivors stumbling in Aaron’s wake as he crossed
the desecrated earth, bleeding and panting. He fell to his knees against a rise
in the ridge populated with swaying daffodils and carefully lowered Clare to
the ground.

“Declan! Declan, you heal her!”

I took out the last shambling
corpse and turned away sickened. Clare’s wild screams had simmered down to
something shallow and desperate, to something final. I spat out a mouthful of
blood and ran to Aaron. My legs failed me when I saw Clare, writhing on the
hillside.

She was unrecognizable, save for
a single perfect eye that fluttered from blue, to red, to gold. My palms were
lit with healing light, but I was too late. Her blood oozed from dozens of deep
bites. The grass beneath her was stained a shocking shade of purple. I put a
hand on the back of her neck and gently lifted her head onto my lap.

She bucked in my arms, and I
whispered sweet nothings, holding her tight.

Aaron burst into tears, his
massive chest heaving up and down. He seemed indifferent to his own wounds.

“Take…” Clare groaned. “Take…
cake, Dec…”

“You too, sweet thing,” I
whispered.

Then she was gone.

Clare died in my arms under the
glare of the Degradation, under the very last of my good intentions.

After a time, perhaps a minute,
though it seemed stretched into an awfully long year, Aaron and I abandoned her
at the base of the ridge and set off after Renegade. Our fight was no longer
for Atlantis.

A king dies today,
I thought. Warm tears
coursed a narrow track through the blood on my face. My earlier rage became
something else… something
cold
.

Shadowless.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Ruthless

“Where are the others?” I asked
quietly, walking up the hill to the Degradation’s edge with my fists clenched.

Aaron sniffed and wiped his eyes
on a sleeve slick with blood. We were beaten and ruined before the true battle
had even begun. Our efforts were madness but the kind of madness I’d been good
at, back in the day.
Shoulda, woulda,
coulda come alone…

“Marcus… he fled, Declan. He
tried to bring me with him, but he cannot control my Will—I have none. He
took Sophie and Ethan and faded back along the Void. Back to my villa, if I
properly understand your diving.”

Trust Marcus…

I nodded. “Good, I suppose. He
saved their lives.” Sophie would be furious with him, but it was done. “I think
he caused this, Aaron.”

“Marcus? This battle?”

…until he gives you a reason not to.

“I think he told Renegade, or
Faraday, that we were coming. When I sent him to get
Tales of Atlantis
. I think he wanted me stopped.”

“But why?”

I shrugged. “He wasn’t my friend,
these last five years of exile. No, I think he was sent to watch me. To make
sure I didn’t make a move on Atlantis, and if I did… to stop me. He told
Morpheus Renegade, I’m sure of it, and Renegade turned his army here against
Faraday to make it that much more difficult for us to reach the Degradation.”

“So… he has betrayed you.”

“In a way, I suppose. But it kept
Ethan and Sophie alive.” Marcus had been at my side during Nightmare’s Reach,
and before. We had been Knights of the highest order—trained to kill and
worse. “No matter. He’s doing what he thinks is right.”

We reached the top of the ridge
at long last and found the flag of the Dragon Throne alight with orange flame.
A wide-open space, grassed and covered in supplies and military vehicles from
Ascension City, lay in ruin before the Degradation. The rippling indigo shield
stood less than twenty meters away. From this distance, I could smell the hot
and heavy stink of it, like burning plastic.

The encampment was devastated.

Jon Faraday and a cadre of
Knights stood in the center of the grassy area, surrounded by dead Knights and
masked Renegade soldiers. Their supplies and support vehicles had been
destroyed. Of King Renegade there was no sign, but he had to have come this
way, the only path to Atlantis.

“Faraday!” I called across the
clearing, my voice harsh and unyielding. “Where is he?”

Faraday glanced over his
shoulder. Beneath his crown, a momentary flicker of dismay at my presence
crossed his features. One of his Knights bellowed something, and he turned back
toward the Degradation.

A shadowy creature of torn
leather skin emerged from the shimmering shield. It was a cousin of the demons
that attacked me in the Fae Palace. As one, the Knights still standing raised
their glowing blades and cast bolts of heat and energy into the monstrosity. It
went down wailing.