“A very pretty image.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“What I understand is that a world of living things is overrated.”
She sensed a change in his stance, in the expression on his face. She held herself steady, using her magic to buttress her failing strength, a little here, a little there.
“You struggle so hard in the service of the Word,” the old man said quietly. “But in the end, you die anyway.”
She had summoned what magic she could to defend herself, but it wasn’t enough. The old man’s bright fire exploded into her with pile–driver force, knocking her off her feet and sending her sprawling. She felt all the strength leave her, felt pain rip through her body. Smoke rose from her clothing in wispy trailers. She lay helpless on the ground, the black staff clutched against her body.
Help me, Johnny, she prayed.
“Such a waste,” the old man said, shaking his head as he approached across the flats.
Sudden movement caught her eye. Feeders, thousands of them, were oozing from the ground like the ghosts of the dead come back to life. They emerged like strange, twisted trees, their black shapes liquid and sinuous, their eyes bright with hunger. They were there to feed on her.
The old man saw them, too, and he smiled approvingly, until a sudden explosion of fire generated by a magic that was not hers caught him squarely in the back and threw him to the ground.
SIMRALIN AND LOGAN TOM watched in disbelief as the boy Hawk used his gypsy morph powers to open the earth and swallow the demon army whole. They stood atop the embankment until the shaking of the ground forced them to their knees, and then they remained kneeling as the shock of what they had witnessed left them momentarily frozen. How could any creature possess power enough to do what they had seen this boy do?
But then the skrails flew the old man over the empty flats to con–front Angel Perez, and Logan Tom was back on his feet instantly. He could hardly believe what he was seeing. It was the enemy he had searched for all these years. He knew him instantly, as if he were eight years old once more and standing amid the bodies of his family and the destruction of his home, as if seeing that sly smile and those cold, hard eyes, as if feeling anew the other’s tacit approval of his killing of the once–men with the Tyson Flechette.
He turned at once to Simralin, and she saw everything he had told her about the old man reflected on his face. “Is that him?” she asked.
“It’s him. I have to go down and face him. I want you to wait until he is engaged with me, and then I want you to slip around behind us and get Angel and Hawk on their feet and across the bridge. Can you do that?”
She nodded. “But I want to go with you.”
He shook his head, backing away. “I can’t be worried for you when I do this. I can’t bear thinking of him hurting you, too. Don’t ask it of me.”
She let him go then, not because she had no other choice, but because she understood the kind of determination that ruled him in this matter and knew there was no point in questioning it. They were close enough by now that he didn’t need her to tell him so to know that it was true. There was something in her eyes at the last, just before he turned away, but there was no time left to consider what it meant. He did not look back, hurrying down the embankment and onto the flats, intent on reaching the old man, who had already been set down by the skrails and was walking toward Angel. He felt the adrenaline pump through him; he was almost light–headed with expectation. This was the reward the Lady had promised him all those weeks ago. By finding and protecting the gypsy morph, he would have his chance at avenging his family. He had wondered all along if the promise had meaning, if it would be kept. Now he found himself wondering if he could make it count.
He was a long way out yet when the demon set fire to the dam to stop the futile rescue attempt from the eastern bank of the gorge. He was still too far away to be effective when the demon tried to go around Angel, and even though she was clearly wounded and sapped of her strength, she blocked his way. He wasn’t much closer when the two began talk to each other, and the feeders began to appear. He saw all this in glimpses as he passed through curtains of residual smoke and floating ash. The tableau played itself out in small snapshots, as if an album of pictures taken of a single event. He kept thinking that he was going to be too late to save either Angel or the boy, that the old man would kill them both before he could get close enough to prevent it.
But suddenly he was through the last of the haze, and the confrontation between the old man and Angel Perez was taking place right in front of him. Neither saw him, and he did not wait for them to do so. Levering the black staff, he summoned the magic of his order, letting it build until it was so thickly gathered within him that he could no longer contain it. Then he released it in a blinding explosion that ripped through the still afternoon air with a sound like metal tearing.
The demon was unprepared for the attack, its attention focused on Angel. It had no defenses in place, save the ones that its preternatural instincts allowed it to summon at the last minute. The Word’s fire slammed into it, lifted it off its feet, and threw it to the ground, singed and smoking. Logan did not slow. He came on, walking toward the slumped form, catching a quick glimpse of the hard old face as it turned to him, feeling the sting of those terrible eyes.
He sent the Word’s cleansing fire burning into it a second time, a long, sustained stream that engulfed the gray–cloaked demon and set it aflame. Logan watched it burn as he closed on it, fighting his way through fresh waves of smoke and ash. He was filled with a fierce, terrible joy. For my mother and father, he thought. For Tyler and Megan. He kept the magic of his staff burning into the demon until he felt his strength begin to sap. Then, and only then, did he pause his attack to measure the results.
He was very close by then, but flames and smoke hid much of what he needed to see. He moved closer still, wary now, his instincts warning him that this might not be over, that he might not be seeing things as clearly as he should.
His instincts were correct. Just as he realized that the smoking, flaming lump in front of him was only empty robes, he was struck a terrific blow from behind and sent sprawling. He managed to hang on to his staff, but only barely. As he tumbled to the ground, he caught a quick glimpse of the skeletal form that had been standing at his back, stick–thin and hunched over, the demon in its old man form.
Then its killing fire was burning into him, and all of his concentration was on mustering sufficient magic to ward it off. He did so at terrible cost to his own reserves and only barely managed to keep the flames at bay. The demon had tricked him, giving the impression that it lay helpless on the ground when in fact it had slipped away after that first strike. He had been too ready to accept what his eyes told him. His eagerness had blinded him to the truth.
The demon fire ceased, and Logan rolled away from a scorched patch of earth so hot that it made him cry out. He tried to rise and couldn’t. Feeders hovered at the periphery of his vision, crouched and waiting. With his black staff shielding him, he faced the demon from a prone position, looking for a way to fend it off. Again, he had misjudged. This demon was so much stronger than any other, and he had not been sufficiently prepared to defend against it.
The demon was approaching him now, a strange look on its face. It moved a step closer to Logan, as if needing to see him more clearly.
“I know you,” it hissed, its voice a whisper that spoke from the depths of a bottomless well. Surprise reflected in its wicked green eyes. “You’re the boy from the compound, all those years ago …”