“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.”
Suddenly Illuminata and Canterbury were with us, their battle armor spattered in blood and their flanks covered in lather. Illuminata set aside her mace as she knelt to gather the wounded Horn into her pale arms. “Leave it to me,” the centauride said. “I’ll get him there. I used to be an ambulance driver before I was assigned to your mother.” With that, she wheeled about and galloped off through the smoke and clash of battle in the direction of the exit.
Once he had seen his father safely away, Hexe turned and pulled me to him, kissing me as if he might never kiss me again, and then delivered a far gentler kiss to the top of his son’s head. As I looked into their golden depths and saw the resolve burning deep with them, I realized, no matter what anyone said, that Hexe truly had his father’s eyes.
“Get ’em out of here, Canterbury.”
Before I realized what was happening, the centaur had snatched me up in his arms and was galloping for daylight as if it was the final leg of the Kentucky Derby.
“Let me go!” I shouted. “Put me down right this minute!”
“Hexe is right,” Canterbury replied. “It’s too dangerous here for both you and the baby.”
“But I don’t want to leave him!” I wailed. “I can’t leave him!”
“You don’t have to,” he reminded me. “Part of you is still on the battlefield.”
Even as the centaur spoke the words, I opened my mind as far as it could go, reaching out to that fragment of myself that dwelt within my creation. As I felt something like a low-voltage shock run up my spine and lodge itself in the back of my head, I wondered, for a split second, if I did succeed in possessing the clockwork dragon, whether I’d be able to return to my body just as easily.
Before I could rethink my decision, I found myself staring out of a pair of unblinking eyes from an unaccustomed height. Although I could see and hear, my other senses did not seem to exist at all. It was as if I was drifting in a sensory deprivation tank, watching a video game through a virtual reality helmet wired for sound.
To my surprise, Boss Marz was still alive, although perhaps not for long. He had managed to crawl to Erys, who stared down at the Maladanti writhing at her feet with unalloyed disgust.
“You disappoint me, Marz,” Erys said as she prestidigitated another dagger from thin air. “Honestly, I got better results from the homunculi than from you and your men. I guess it’s true that if you want something done right, you better do it yourself.” With that, she bent down and grabbed Syra by her hair, yanking her into a sitting position so that the blood from her severed jugular would squirt into a brass cuspidor. But as she put the knife edge to Syra’s throat, she was rewarded by a shower of sparks, like those from an arc welder. Erys cursed and quickly let go of Syra in order to slap at the tiny mouths of fire clinging to her clothes.
“Leave my mother alone,” Hexe said, placing himself between Syra and his uncle, his left hand held before him, fingers bent in the mirror-reverse of the traditional defensive pattern of Right Hand magic.
“How could you even do that?” Erys yelped. “You don’t even have a right hand anymore!”
“But I still have my left one,” Hexe replied. “Right hand, left hand—it doesn’t matter whether I heal or harm, protect or destroy; the magic isn’t in my hands. It’s in my heart.”
“Let’s just see about that, shall we?” Erys snarled as she slung a fireball at Hexe’s head.
Hexe returned the volley so fast, Erys had to lunge out of the way to avoid ending up like Boss Marz. The ball of hellfire struck the back wall of the warehouse, splashing like napalm, and instantly set it on fire.
As Hexe turned to check on his mother, Esau’s familiar attacked from above, beating at him with a punishing fifteen foot wingspan and clawing at his head with a slashing beak and razor-sharp talons. Blood from lacerations to his scalp poured down into Hexe’s eyes, momentarily blinding him. He dropped to his knees, trying his best to cover his head and the back of his neck from the vicious attack as Edgar repeatedly dive-bombed him, drawing blood from his exposed back with his talons.
Suddenly, with a mighty roar, Scratch, red of saber-tooth and claw, came zooming out of nowhere, striking Edgar in midair. The hell-bird and the hell-cat locked talons, twirling about like a living bolo, before crashing to the floor of the warehouse. Being a cat, Scratch landed on his feet—but Edgar was not as lucky. The demon squawked in panic as it tried to hop away from its foe, grounded by a broken wing. Just as Scratch pounced, the familiar disincorporated, surrendering the field in a cloud of brimstone.
“Yeah, that’s right; you better run, chicken,” Scratch sniffed.
Meanwhile, Hexe was doing his best to try to revive his mother and get her back on her feet. “Mom—Mom, snap out of it!” he pleaded.
Lady Syra’s eyelids suddenly fluttered open, and she smiled weakly upon seeing her son kneeling over her. “Tate and the baby—are they—?”
“Yes, they’re safe,” Hexe replied. “But we’ve got to get you out of here!”
“Hexe—watch out!” Syra cried, her eyes wide with alarm.
Before Hexe could react to the warning, Erys grabbed him from behind, jerking his head back by the hair to expose his jugular.
“Mom—run!” Hexe yelled, as he grappled with Erys. “Get out of here!”
But just as Erys pressed the blade of the dagger to Hexe’s throat, a strange look crossed her borrowed face and she jerked her head first one way, then another, as if listening to someone calling her name.
“Who are you?” she snapped. “What are you doing?”
As if in reply, the knife fell from Erys’ hand, allowing Hexe to quickly scuttle free of her grasp. Her face abruptly went slack and a hollow, distant voice issued from her gaping mouth. “I’ve come to reclaim what’s mine, my love.”
“No! Leave me be!” Erys said, her face returning to its usual, intense expression, like a rubber band snapping back into place.
“Enough is enough, husband.”
“But I’ve done all this for you, Nina!” Erys protested, sounding more like a petulant child than a dark wizard bent on the destruction of mankind and the harrowing of worlds. “This is your revenge!”
“Do not place this abomination on me! My Esau would never do such things in the name of love! You are not the man I married—you are a demon in all but name!”
Erys’ face began to contort, the muscles flexing like snakes locked in mortal combat. Then her features abruptly relaxed and Hexe found himself looking not at Erys, but Nina. Although the features were identical, there was now a kindness and warmth, mixed with a profound sadness, which had not been there before—or, rather, had not been there for a long, long time.
“Do it now, while I have control,” Nina said urgently. “Do what only a strong Right Hand can do: exorcise him!”
Without hesitation, Hexe raised his left hand, chanting the rite of purification as he moved his fingers into the mirror-reverse configurations used to drive forth demons. A burst of white light shot from his palm and into Nina’s body, lighting her from within like a paper lantern, chasing out a cloud of wispy black smoke that buzzed like a nest of hornets.