Authors: Joe Ducie
My engine rumbling close to idle, I
drove slowly through a maze of shops, passed Subway and Gloria Jean’s Coffee
House, and followed a bend in the walkway around to an open area, roofless,
seawater lapping at the wooden pillars on either side. I saw the flame before I
saw the monster.
Eyes of coal, mouth stretched open
wide enough to swallow a man, Emissary breathed ruby fire against the wooden
boardwalk and up into the starry sky. The planks of wood and most of the
storefronts burned like kindling. Whatever unnatural fire Emissary could
produce, it stuck a lot like the sticky liquid-fire of napalm.
Brothers
Grimm dragon fire,
I thought, thinking of the enchantment. A messy,
unquenchable flame that devoured even the strongest steel and left behind
scorched, blackened puddles.
Fire with fire?
Emissary belched another wave of
liquid flame, which writhed on the air as if it were a basket full of snakes,
into an ice cream shop. The storefront exploded.
People—men, women, and
children—emerged screaming from the shop, aflame, and hurled themselves over
the side of the boardwalk and into the dark ocean water below. The water shone
eerily green, and steam rose in furious curls as the fire fought the ocean to
stay alive.
I clenched my fist around the
handlebar grip of my bike and revved the engine, seeing if I could get
Emissary’s attention. He turned slowly, offered me a large, goofy grin, flame
dancing between his teeth, and waved. I waved back and prepared a quick
enchantment. Luminescent light swam in the air between my fingers.
Emissary rubbed his hands together
and spat a fireball at me. The flame rolled off his tongue and sizzled through
the air. I spun the bike around, leaving a vicious skid mark on the wooden
decking, and dodged the missile. The fireball struck the boardwalk and slammed
through the weak wood, hitting the sea beneath. A cloud of steam burst through
the hole, just behind me, as I gunned the bike and sped toward Emissary,
closing the gap between us fast.
He planted his feet hard against the
boardwalk and spread his arms, welcoming me, daring me to hit him.
Chicken,
is it?
I’d never been one to blink in the face of ugly, murderous men in
finely tailored suits. I bared my teeth in a snarl and leaned in low against
the body of the bike, and shifted up a gear.
“Come on!” Emissary roared, his
voice echoing up into the night. “Show me your immortality, Hale!”
Fifteen feet from the monster, white
light exploded from my palms. Twin beams of pure, raw will that carried me up
and back off the bike. I flipped in the air, the beams cutting through wood and
steel, and landed hard on my knees. Drawing a quick breath, almost choking on smoke,
I threw my hands together and clapped. The raw light turned silver and a
dome-shaped shield popped up into existence just in front of me—as the bike,
doing at least eighty, slammed into Emissary and exploded.
A wave of heat and shrapnel struck
my shield, ricocheting off in a hundred different directions, splitting the
worst of the debris down the middle and sending it flying past either side of
me.
BOOM, you son of a bitch.
Garnet and ruby flames roiled and
blazed in the air where Emissary stood.
I found my feet, hoping for the
best, but the voice of long experience had me reaching into my waistcoat
holster for the copy of Groust’s
Midnight Steel
I’d stashed earlier.
Flipping to a dog-eared page about halfway through the novel, I sent my Will
surging into the book, and the words on the page glowed with a dark, almost
wraithlike light.
Emissary emerged from the maelstrom
of destruction and straightened his collar. He grinned at me, brushed a bit of
ash from his shoulder, and pulled what looked like part of an exhaust pipe from
his gut. The wound sealed over instantly, and his shirt rippled, another pebble
cast on still water, and was whole. He was unharmed.
“What now, Hale?” he asked.
I held the book up and forward like
a gunslinger of old, and my enchantment literally leaped from the pages. This
was the true source of my power and how I’d learned to fight men and women with
the same power at the Infernal Academy all those years ago. My Will was
tempered steel, hard and unbreakable, and the books I used to duel were written
to wound and ensnare.
In this case,
Midnight Steel
was written for the Knights by the Knights. The section of the book I’d ignited
with my Will described an area of black space, where nothing but dead stars and
dust existed, folded back on itself in an infinite loop—the perfect place to
send Emissary. Even if he could survive the vacuum, it would be centuries, if
not more, before he escaped such a prison.
This was what made the Knights and
the Renegades so dangerous. Never mind the spells, charms, wards, or
enchantments we could learn from the right books, never mind our armies or our
fleets of Eternity-class battleships. We could bind our enemies in shackles of
words and, with a thought, cast them beyond perdition and into prisons of such
complex cruelty that escape was impossible.
The words jumped off the page of
Midnight
Steel
, warped in the air with a harsh whip crack, and lashed themselves,
physical and real, around Emissary’s wrists. The words ran up his arms, under
his shirt, marking his skin as though he had a living tattoo, and yanked him
forward.
He grunted, resisted the pull, and,
throwing his arms up toward the sky, snapped the words that bound him.
“Sweet, merry fuckery,” I whispered,
gaping.
That was impossible.
Midnight
Steel
burst into flames in my hands, and I dropped the book with a cry, my
fingers blistered. The flames consuming the tome were made of dark, fetid
Void-light.
“The walls of the Eternal Prison
crumble, Declan Hale,” Emissary said, and strode toward me, whole and unharmed
despite my best efforts. His jaw had shrunk back into his face, making him look
normal—handsome, even—but his eyes were still orbs of burning coal, spoiling
the illusion. “You think to bind me with your paltry new words, bound to mere
paper? The weak scratchings of your race are an insult to the Knights of old. I
was there,
fool,
ten thousand years ago, when the Infernal language,
runes of such tremendous power, were used as weapons by humanity. But those
days are dead, and the old locks shattered. The Everlasting will inherit True
Earth.”
“Why are you doing this? Murder and
chaos? What could killing these people possibly get you?” I took a step back,
away from the flame eating the boardwalk at my feet, out of the curling smoke
that burned my eyes and my throat. Emissary followed. “If you wanted me,
you
should have just come for me!
”
Emissary nodded. He raised his hand
and a pool of ruby fire shone in his palm and between his fingers. “If this was
only about you, Shadowless, then you would already be dead. Why the chaos? Well
shit, son, why not?” He rolled his head and cracked his neck. “I’ve been sealed
away for aeons, Hale. Ten millennia in darkness! Why? Spill enough blood and
the walls of reality begin to crack. What, perchance, may slip through then,
hmm? You’ll see soon.”
“I won’t let you kill unchecked. I
may not be a Knight anymore, but I’ll stop you.”
Emissary snarled and jabbed a finger
into my chest. “You place yourself between me and them because you’ve come to
view your life as something that’ll bounce back. You’ve died and will die
again. You’ll live forever unless you’re killed.” He laughed. “But you’re
vulnerable. Just because you outwitted the natural order once… does not make
you one of us. One of the Everlasting.”
“You’re not of the Everlasting,” I
spat. “You’re not one of the Nine.”
“I am of Their kind. A first cousin,
if you will. The Emissaries serve the Everlasting. We are legion, Declan, and
it will take more than flashing light and storybooks to best us this time. We
are aged. We have learned in our exile. You humans break so easily.” He looked
over my shoulder and nodded.
I followed his gaze and cursed.
Annie, and six of her fellow officers, hung suspended in the air. Emissary wiggled
his fingers, and they danced back and forth like puppets on invisible strings,
six feet above the floor.
“Let them go.”
Emissary chuckled. “Times were, even
the smallest of your kind could wield Origin and protect their souls against
our touch. Now... you are scattered. The few of you with any true power fight
amongst yourselves, cowering in your steel cities. You have forgotten the
night, Declan. You have forgotten to be afraid.”
Emissary clicked his fingers and
snapped the necks of two of the uniformed officers. They hung lifeless, limp,
and he cast them aside. Annie and the others stared at me, eyes wide and
terrified, unable to move or speak as flame licked at the boardwalk beneath
them.
I lunged at Emissary, but he
backhanded me with his flaming hand. I was thrown aside and over an aluminum
table and chairs, scattering what looked like some damn fine fish and chips,
and came to a stop against one of the boardwalk’s support pillars. Dazed and
seeing stars, I struggled to stand but fell back disorientated. Blood dribbled
down into my eyes from a cut, and the Paddy’s steak special churned in my gut,
threatening to make a disturbing reappearance.
While I was down, Emissary snapped
four more necks—the remaining uniformed officers—and left Annie dangling alone
and helpless above her fallen comrades.
“Last one, Hale,” he said. “Oh my,
there’s something special about this one, isn’t there? Something...” he sniffed
the air, “... ancient and kind. Bah, so soon? Aeons become seconds—”
Emissary was knocked back, and the
fire in his hand spluttered and died. Crimson holes appeared in his shirt, and
the retort of a heavy, powerful gun cracked the air. Annie fell to the
boardwalk, among the bodies of the other officers, and her eyes rolled into the
back of her head. Dead or alive, I didn’t know.
Senior Detective Sam Grey stepped
into the pale, green light of the fire eating the boardwalk, his service
revolver smoking and empty. He emptied the spent cartridges and reloaded from a
stock in his jacket pocket.
“Hale,” he said, and offered me a
hand. “Just what in the hell is that man?”
I stumbled to my feet and took a
deep breath. Forced to his knees by the barrage of shots, Emissary counted the
holes in his chest and laughed.
I pushed Grey back. “You need to
take Annie and
run
—”
Almost faster than the eye could
follow, Emissary was back on his feet. He covered the short distance between us
in the time connecting heartbeats and drove his arm—fingers lengthened into
black, ten-inch claws—through Detective Grey.
Emissary gutted Grey, and his clawed
hand erupted from the old detective’s back, clutching his spine in its grip.
I’d seen some truly awful things in my time, and this was definitely up in the
top twenty. I jerked away from the sight, but Emissary lunged forward and
grasped my left forearm, pinning me to what was left of Grey.
I brought the full force of all my
Will to bear, pooled in my right hand—and choked.
Fetid Void-light slithered between
Emissary’s claws, gripping me tight, and I screamed as an intense fire rippled
down my arm. Pain not unlike dying forced me to my knees. Emissary let me fall,
cackling high and proud, as tendrils of thin smoke wafted up from my arm.
I fell back and grasped my wrist.
Through tear-blurred eyes I saw a familiar rune branded into my flesh, as black
as night and red-raw around the edge, like dull embers fading in the fireplace.
An Infernal Rune—old magic.
Oldest
magic.
From lessons long ago at the academy
within the Fae Palace, in Ascension City, I recognized the symbol. The judicial
arm of the Knights’ iron justice system used it often during the Tome Wars,
mostly on prisoners of war.
“Ah, hell...”
Emissary tossed Detective Grey
aside, toward the pile of dead policemen and Annie—her fate unknown.
“That should keep you here for the finale,”
Emissary said, grinning through bloody teeth. One of his eyes had reverted to
clear, cerulean blue. The other remained pitch-black and burning. His suit was
splattered in blood and gore.
I reached for my Will, for a drop of
ethereal light, and came up empty. A wall as tall as the sky and as vast as the
sea had appeared between me and the power. The rune on my arm stung all the
more for trying. This demonic messenger of the Everlasting had barred me from
breathing
.
“You... bastard.”
He straightened his bloodstained
collar and did the first button on his gore-soaked suit jacket. “Blessed Scion
requests the presence of the Immortal King, the man who severed the Clock, at
His ascension. Be good until then, Declan, and do not interfere with my work.
Trying to build a tower of beating love here. Hearts abound, you know? Yeah,
you know.”
Emissary laughed and stepped
sideways into nothing. He disappeared behind a black curtain of shadow and was
gone, uninjured and, for all that mattered, victorious.