Babylon, behind the mist of obscurity I’d put up around it, was healing. I could see within the Joshua Spires, like I’d been able to see through the city buildings. Men and women formed circles around and inside the spires. I could see power rising from them, flowing out over the mythical city. Where their power touched damage, it healed. Only the bodies the Hunt had left behind remained still and unliving as the shamans worked together to heal their gathering place.
They dared focus on the healing because they trusted me to deal with the Hunt. I could feel that, too. Not supreme confidence, but quiet expectation, the belief that it was safe to pay attention to other tasks. Only the line of soldiers whom I’d seen first still stood linked across the street, watching me. I lifted a hand toward them, meaning to smile, but the sight of my own hand drove all other thought from my mind.
There was no hand, nor wrist or elbow or, as I looked down at myself, any of the other usual flesh and blood extremities that came with being human. I was human-shaped, with fingers and breasts and hips and feet, but it was like someone had taken all the coverings off and left me with nothing more than the spirit that filled those parts. No wonder I’d stopped hurting. There wasn’t anything physical left to hurt.
Color swam over what wasn’t my skin, like oil held in by surface tension. Rainbows gleamed and swirled and mixed and were reborn. It was ridiculously beautiful. For a second or two I just stared down at myself, lost in the random patterns of spirit unbound by flesh.
A small sound roused me, and I looked up, toward Cernunnos. Other than the groan, he hadn’t moved since I threw him into the spire. I discovered I was holding him down, just as he’d held me earlier, with the force of my power. The green of his strength met the silver rainbow of mine, pushing against it enough to prevent him from being crushed, but not enough to let him escape. I cocked my head and walked forward.
The host moved back from me, not precisely a retreat, but certainly a respectful and cautious distance. Their features were lost in the reddish haze as they looked away from me to their captured leader. I crouched beside Cernunnos, watching his power push against mine. It wasn’t, maybe, fair. I still felt the good will of my friends reaching out to me, pouring in to me, and he had only his own power.
Then again, he was a god. “Do you yield?” I asked, nearly as politely as he had. It seemed like a good protocol, although I knew he’d say no, just like I had.
The problem was, neither of us would ever yield. We could keep fighting until together we destroyed Babylon. At some distant point one of us would destroy the other. The only thing I had on my side was that if Cernunnos actually killed me, he’d have no one to take the Rider’s place. Suzanne Quinley’s place. Of course, it would leave him free to terrorize Babylon. I had fewer constraints, except I didn’t know if the Hunt could be led back into my world, or their own, if Cernunnos himself was dead. I preferred not to find out.
Cernunnos growled, feral eyes full of rage. “I do not yield,” he snarled.
“No,” I said, “I didn’t think you would.”
I tested the depth of the power I was tapped in to, not taking my eyes off the god. The power ran deep, but not deep enough: I could feel the bottom of it, like I was reaching through a stream-bed when I needed a river. I mumbled a prayer and reached for the rest of the people surrounding my physical body, the ones who didn’t know how to offer, but who hadn’t left the room when I’d explained what I needed.
And my hold on Cernunnos slipped. He roared and sprang forward, knocking me down. My damaged and too-solid flesh came back as I crashed into the cobblestones, the god’s taloned nails at my throat. My head hit the stones, and for another moment the gray veil around us wavered again, Babylon visible during that breath. Pain did bad things to my vision, narrowing it down to pinpricks. Cernunnos lifted one hand from my throat, extending it beyond where I could see. Then silver glittered, as he drew the broadsword into my line of vision. For one exciting moment I comprehended just how very long I was going to be dead. I brought my hands up to stop the sword, a futile gesture.
Then I remembered what else Gary had brought to the station.
The surprise on Cernunnos’s face was almost worth the near-death experience, as his broadsword bore down and clanged into the flat of my rapier. I held it extended at an awkward angle that barely prevented him from slicing my throat open, but it was all I needed. I gathered my strength with a shout and shoved him off me, rolling to my feet.
That’s when I found out, for the second time in two days, how much it hurt to stand up with a two inch hole sliced through your insides. I nearly fell over again right there, content to have done with it, but Cernunnos smiled, a bright flash of triumph. The idea of letting him win pissed me off enough to keep me on my feet. Bleeding and swaying, with an arm wrapped around my abdomen, but on my feet. It’s the small victories, I tell you.
It didn’t seem fair that he wasn’t actually hurt, while I was bleeding and staggering all over the place. He came at me carelessly, an easy overhead stroke that expected nothing in response. Without any particular conscious intent on my own part, the rapier came up, catching the broadsword a second time. Metal rang out again, pure clean tone of a bell, and the god once more looked surprised. Hell, I was surprised, too. I wouldn’t have bet on being able to parry a toothpick, much less the heavy blade Cernunnos carried. I could feel the rapier, though, as if it came from the same source the coil of energy within me did. The slender sword’s strength was from more than just the metal it was forged with. It was filled with my will and the power lent to me by my friends, and its very presence was a response to my need.
Since I didn’t have any world-class fencing skills, I kicked Cernunnos in the nuts again. I didn’t have to know how to use a sword to do that, and he was standing there like he was asking for it, so it seemed justified. Shock and rage filled his green eyes all over again as he doubled. I guess there must be rules that people fighting gods usually followed. Next time, maybe somebody would give me a primer. Since nobody had this time, though, I kicked him in the head while he was doubled, and knocked his sword away as he fell gracelessly to the ground. It was the perfect moment to bear down upon my enemy and smite him in a gladiator-inspired hour of triumph. Too bad I was digging the rapier into the ground for support and afraid that if I moved I’d collapse on top of him.
Instead, I did what I’d been trying to do before.
I took all my own power, and the offered strength from my friends, and reached just a little farther and took what the others who had stayed didn’t know how to offer. Fear surged through a few of the new links, and those I let go as quickly as I could. The last thing I wanted to do was leave scars in my friends’ minds.
The remaining power I wove into a net, visualizing all the colors spinning together, shoring up weaknesses and sharing strengths. They bled together and knotted, becoming heavy in my hands. When I looked down I almost couldn’t tell where the net began and I left off. My skin had disappeared again, leaving me nothing but a network of power and strength, silver-blue oil-slick rainbows.
I wanted to stay like this forever. I could feel everything in Babylon: the healing, the fear, the confidence that I would make good my promise and take Cernunnos and his riders away from this place. Beyond that, between the blackness of the stars, I could feel other life, a tremendously deep hum that spread from one end of eternity to the other. It was the void that bound all the worlds, and I knew I could step out into it, explore it, with just the impulse to do so.