Magic and Loss: A Novel of Golgotham (27 page)

“I hoped to use the gauntlet to strip him of all he held dear—his friendships, his reputation, and his family. He thinks he’s so much
better
than the rest of us, blathering on about the Right Hand path and how Kymerans should stop bartering in curses. I wanted to bring him to such despair that he would finally recognize the Right Hand path for the foolishness it is—and then break him like a bundle of dry sticks across my knee.”

“You did
all
that just to torment my son?” Syra scowled. “Your own flesh and blood?”

“Whatever kinship I felt for your half-caste bastard disappeared when he took up with that nump bitch,” Erys snarled. “He’s nothing more than a race-traitor—and now he has completed the disgrace to our bloodline by siring that five-fingered freak! The birth of such an abomination is sign that the time has come for a second Unholy War.”

As if to illustrate her point, Erys aimed her left hand at the portal, contorting all six of her fingers at such angles that they looked as if they’d been broken and pulled out of joint. A lightning bolt of purplish-black energy leapt from her hand and struck the lintel stone, causing the inscribed sigils to glow with dark energy. A red mist began to form within the stone doorway as the membrane between this world and the Infernal Region thinned itself.

There were movements in the dim red fog that filled the portal’s threshold, and vague shapes began to emerge, gradually becoming more distinct. I saw what looked like an army, lined up and girded for war. What little I was able to glimpse of the waiting hordes was so appalling I shuddered in revulsion and horror.

At the front of the Infernal legions stood four foot soldiers—if masses of human entrails given form and movement could be called such things—upon whose slimy shoulders a funeral bier was balanced. Although I could not see its occupant, I knew the body the frightful creatures carried was the corporeal form of Esau.

“If there is anything left of the brother I once knew and loved, I beg you to let Hexe and his family go,” Lady Syra pleaded. “Whatever you have planned for me, I will not fight it, as long as they are granted safe passage.”

“And have the hybrid bastard pop up twenty years later, looking to lay claim to my throne?” Erys sneered. “I’m sorry, Syra—but your son’s blood is of more use to me as paint.”

“That’s exactly what I thought you’d say.” Hexe said as he turned and looked at me. “Okay, Tate—give ’em the high sign.”

I took a deep breath and reached out with my mind, seeking the invisible tether I knew to be there, channeling my will as Canterbury had taught me. Seconds later I was rewarded by a roar so loud it made the walls of the warehouse vibrate.

“Heavens and hells!” Boss Marz exclaimed in surprise. “What in the name of the Outer Dark was
that
?”

As if in answer, a young Maladanti came running into the warehouse, looking like the Infernal huntsmen were already on his heels. “Boss! The gates on the pier have been breached! We’re under attack!”

“Is it the PTU?” Marz asked.

“It’s not just them,” the croggy said with a shake of his head. “There’s leprechauns, centaurs, satyrs, huldrefolk, and a bunch of angry dames on motorcycles! And merfolk are climbing out of the river on the far end of the pier! They’ve got us surrounded! But that’s not the worst part. They’ve got a
dragon
!”

“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.”