“So now we’re here, you should listen to what I have to say.” The Deacon continued to work the weapon into John’s body, levering it into his frozen form. “You did everything I foresaw, and for that, I thank you. We are one step closer to the final showdown with a great evil… and you played your part to the end. The very end.”
How the hell was he holding a field like this? I fought to bring the knife around, but it was like trying to move through resin.
“For the service you have done, I’m going to show you mercy. Uncommon mercy. It’s something very few people deserve.” The Deacon reached out, and took the Wardbreaker from John’s hand as his fingers loosened on it and his skin began to streak through with thick violet veins, bulging and creeping under the skin of his throat and face. “Unlike this gentleman here. He’s a liar… a man so proud that he’d rather make himself up than live. There’s a reason that pride is the greatest sin in the Bible. It’s pernicious. You start thinking you can do anything, be anyone, but it’s just not true. We’re always stuck with ourselves, alone.”
Replying was out of the question. I was still trying to get up and run.
“It’s funny how things work out. When Jana made contact with Lev Moskalysk, I told him I would have preferred to meet you instead of Vanya, but I was warned that you would violently reject what the Father has to offer mages like you and me.” The Deacon pulled his glove off and pointed the weapon down at my face, gathering a deep breath. Beads of blood appeared on the pale skin of his forearm, drawn up by the wave of arcane power I felt rising in the air around us. The liquid collected like mercury, then slid up along his hand and filled the grooves and sigils that were engraved along the barrel. Each one of them flared to life in slow motion, burning a baleful red. “It’s a shame. You do good work. I remember this gun, for example… nice toy. We used it to get into your apartment. All of those books you wrote, all those instructions you left on your Phitometry… In another life, you’d have been my apprentice. You could purge the world of the filthiness you hate.”
I wanted to retort, to say something in reply, but all I could do was observe as he dropped the muzzle down. John was open-mouthed now, eyes bulging, his hands very slowly reaching for his face as he fell to his knees.
“But you’re too proud. That’s the problem with self-taught mages. You evolve in solitude, and know that you’re better than everyone else.” The Deacon’s voice was warm, even friendly, and I was sure he was smiling behind the mask. “But even so, I admire the will to power, Alexi. You tried for a high score before you lost the game, even took out a few other players. Better luck next time.”
As I fought to react, The Deacon leveled the Wardbreaker in a steady one-handed grip, and shot me in the stomach.
Chapter 40
Getting shot in the torso doesn’t really hurt – not at first. It’s like a punch that goes right through you, a wave of pressure that tears out your back and ripples outward. And THEN it hurts.
There was no exit wound. This gut-shot tore out the front of my body: I saw the magical pattern of energy flare brightly around the Wardbreaker as the round left the chamber and flew, spinning before impact. Blood erupted from my shirt front in a slow-motion arc, lit by the Red energy of dissolution that I had crafted with my mind and hands and skill. The bullet shattered the binding that Sergei had laid on me, as well as The Deacon’s temporal field. Time snapped like an elastic band, and I screamed in real-time as the parasite’s sigil-form collapsed, legs whipping around and gathering under my skin. It pushed, squeezed itself out the entry wound like an octopus, and launched itself at The Deacon’s face.
John screamed, garbling and then retching onto the ground as The Deacon backed away, battling the freed Wrath’ree. It had lost its black color – it was now a brilliant orange mass of energy, half sea anemone, half lightning bolt. I rolled over, clutching the soil, and felt the energy of my Neshamah mesh through me. Power, sensual and thick, rolled up my spine and turned the throbbing wound into an icy void.
“Kut… kha…” I gasped aloud. Writhing, clutching at my gut as it oozed between my fingers, I looked up and saw a corona of descending black wings and burning white eyes, shimmering as if through water.
“Oh, my Ruach,” Kutkha whispered, a psychic voice like leaves whispering along the pavement at night. His voice was eager and bittersweet, heavy with sorrow. “We are reunited, but too late.”
The Deacon was fighting for his life against the Wrath’ree, pushed back towards the line of cars, and John… John was transforming. He twisted in agony, clawing at his face and mouth, and then retched a gout of blood and torn flesh onto the road as his back split like a cicada’s shell.
“You were right,” I said.
“I am not always right.” Kutkha fell around me like a blanket. “But perhaps I was, this time. Take comfort, my Ruach… dying is difficult, but death is easy. This, now, is the hardest part.”
John Spotted Elk didn’t explode so much as unfold into something that was half assassin bug, half coyote – an insectoid DOG the size of a schoolbus that drove its legs into the tarmac as it split and bubbled and divided and reformed. I stared at it, huffing through my teeth. “Will I see Vassily again?”
“It is inevitable, without intervention,” Kutkha replied, sweet and sad. “Only the NO destroys.”
The thing in front of me, shaking ichor from its body, was the NO. I’d kill myself before I let it take us. “I don’t Will to stay here. Help me cut the pain… I’ll fight to the end.”
“Yes.” He breathed the word like an incantation, the same gravity I had heard in Zarya’s voice. Kutkha’s presence swelled, and then the pain of my wounds receded into the far distance, sucked back by gravity. I reached out, and wrapped my hand around the knife. Slowly, I got to my feet, swaying, bleeding, but numb.
A cougar charged past me, and then a lion – an African lion, fully maned and golden furred. Right behind him was Talya’s American Lion, injured and bloody, but still moving fast. As the insect reared up, legs raised over me like an attacking spider, the three cats leapt onto it in different places: thorax, abdomen and head. The first two slid off, unable to get a grip on its slippery armor. Big Ron’s lion bit down on the bug’s armor with a crunch, only to be shaken off. The thing flung him into the door of the semi; he hit with a snarl as he bounced to the road in a sprawl, the metal dented. The bug was stupidly fast. Ron barely scrambled out of the way before its proboscis punctured the door like a sheet of paper and tore it free. Then it came after me, slamming the door down on the tarmac like a hammer.
The pain was gone. Deliriously focused, I swayed to the side and ran underneath it. I jammed the knife into the joint of its leg, and the bug screeched as it dipped down on that side. Talya leaped again, flexing her claws under the edge of an armored plate. The insect whirled, knocking me down, and I saw the lion swing as she clung on and began to rake with her back legs.
I was stumbling up again when a huge orange shape hit me like a cannon ball, bowling me out from under the insect’s body just before it dropped its bulk to crush whatever was underneath. We rolled together, and then the tiger – Jenner – sprung back up to her feet. She was heaving, her flanks soaked in blood, her chest, neck, and hind legs ripped like canvas cloth. One of her eyes was missing: the right side of her face looked like raw hamburger. She roared in defiance, and charged the bug as it rolled and twisted, stabbing at the cats and the road, tearing up asphalt and the soil beneath.