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.