“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!”
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.