Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (39 page)

“Are you sure you don’t want to visit the
armory?” I asked Peter, after seeing some of those men. “Maybe for
some kevlar?”

“You saw how the red-headed guy beat that man
up,” Peter said. “I’ll stick to flexible energy shielding, thank
you.”

“You’re implying you have flexible energy
shielding,” I said with more than a little sarcasm.

“It does sound that way, doesn’t it?” he
asked, lilting slightly.

The warden stopped at our door and opened it
before I could press him on it. The room was big enough for thirty
of us, and he took position outside in the hall, just as other
wardens had done. The room had lockers with benches along one wall.
Another wall was lined with mats and exercise equipment. The other
two walls were covered in scorched marks and long scores into the
rock below. Near the door, there was a small table with a large urn
of water and food high in carbohydrates and proteins: meats,
cheeses, breads, and some of the nasty purple fruit Shrank pushed
on me.

Picking up a ceramic cup and filling it with
water, I asked Kieran, “Do you know how the Loa are going to
fight?”

“No,” he answered, “I don’t know that much
about them. They tend to stay away from us, or so we thought. Your
point earlier was fairly valid. If we can’t see them that well,
they could be hiding just about anywhere.”

“How do you want to approach this, then?”

“Separating them from their hosts would seem
to be the best solution,” he said, turning to Ethan for
confirmation.

“That would be best,” Ethan agreed. “The
energy flow from St. Croix was very one way from the Loa to him.
Even the dimensional rift he created when he delivered your mother
to Cahill came from energy from the Loa, not from the human
body.”

“So you were able to look directly at the Loa
and see more than the flickering?” I asked.

“Yes, but I won’t know if it’s just to that
particular Loa or all of them until I can see more,” Ethan said.
“He straddled more than one dimension simultaneously, his and ours
and possibly others, I couldn’t tell.”

“Our best defense then is what we’ve taught
you already,” said Kieran. “While it is similar to some forms that
elves use, it has not been used before by humans and it will throw
them off.”

“Let’s get ready then,” I said, gesturing to
Peter. We moved to the mats and started moving through the
defensive forms Ethan and Kieran had taught us the day before,
warming up and stretching. We moved at an easy pace, stepping
through each motion and gathering the power in the room and
releasing it in the correct manner so that it flowed back over
without touching us. Just what you wanted in defense, for your
opponents’ power to not touch you. Ethan joined us on the second
rotation. Kieran stretched during this and joined on the third
rotation.

We stopped after the third when the warden
came into the room. “Gentlemen, it is time,” he said simply. The
anxiety was rampant in the hallway as the warden led us to the
field. Another team followed a few yards behind us and clanked
metal against metal as they walked. I couldn’t tell how many men
were on the team as the first man took most of the narrow hallway,
glowering at me when I looked back. By the noise, I’d estimate
fifty, but I was sure that was nerves on my part.

When we broke into the sunlight, the crowd
roared approval. The adrenaline rush disturbed me a little, but I
pushed that out of my head. I was about to be in a fight for my
mother’s life, for my life, and I needed to concentrate. The field
was split into eight equal parts now and the warden led us to the
sideline of the western most quarter of the visible side and passed
us on to a referee. I’m not sure why I considered them referees
since they didn’t decide anything, but they controlled the field
and I didn’t have a better word for their job. The team that was
behind us ended up having eleven members, not the fifty I
originally imagined, but I didn’t get a good look at the teams
behind them.

Kieran took a position slightly forward and
left of center and had Ethan take a similar position on the right.
He had Peter take a position much farther back and a little to his
left. I was in between him and Ethan as far back as Peter, but I
knew that wouldn’t last. He was trying to keep me in a protected
hole. Sweet, but that just wasn’t going to work. St. Croix wasn’t
going to let it.

The back wall started rising as the front
started falling. When it was halfway down, the first bell tolled.
This was the face off. I pushed my awareness out onto the energy
plane as tightly as I could, feeling for the flicker that defined
the Loa within my grandfather and was shocked to feel so many on
the other side of the wall as it slid into the ground. St. Croix
had fielded twenty men, all loaded with Loa behind them, powerful
Loa, strong. More Loa than the twenty men could account for. None
of the twenty men were particularly threatening physically. Half of
them even looked emaciated, withered skin hanging loosely on their
frames, gaunt faces barely showing recognition of where they
were.

I took the first defensive stance and zeroed
in on St. Croix and he fixed his attention on me. He set most of
his men on attacking Kieran, five of them in a group. Three were
slightly behind them. Five more stood between Ethan and Kieran,
eyeing them both and another four stood ready in front of Ethan.
St. Croix stood in the center with two zombie-like men in front of
him.

The second bell tolled. I felt like a
super-hero from a movie as I called the weapons forward: I armored
up! Before the bell even stopped ringing, the field changed
immensely as the Loa changed their mounts into more battle-ready
creatures. We were definitely not expecting that. They were not
exactly clear cut transformations either, but strange
bastardizations of various creatures. St. Croix was the only one to
remain human. The two in front of him were somewhat reminiscent of
goats but bigger and with really long and straight horns. The group
that I assumed as targeting Peter changed into bird-like creatures.
Their feet changed into talons and their necks and heads elongated
and stretched, forming sharp beaks. Their arms turned into short
leathery wings with claws at the ends. The main forces changed into
an odd mixture of lizards and animals I didn’t even want to
consider. It was worse than any nightmare I’d ever had. St. Croix’s
cackling was audible even through the third bell.

I fired the Crossbow in rapid succession,
twenty times, before anyone could move, scoring hits right between
the eyes on each and every one. Day was in my right hand as I ran
forward, watching St. Croix scowling and removing the Bolt from his
head. Others weren’t as quick to recover, but only two stayed dead.
The Loa had amazing recuperative abilities, apparently.

Kieran and Ethan took advantage of their
delayed recovery. Almost in unison, they spoke a short stutter of
words that made the ground shake and the air tremble around me. A
circle of flames leapt into being on the ground around the two
groups of five facing both of them, then rose higher and higher
with each passing instant. Inside the circle, the creatures started
to burn as the walls around them got hotter and hotter. The Loa
inside shrieked audibly for help and rushed the walls trying to
push out, only to crash back, seared and blackened by the
increasingly hot wall of heat. The swarming Loa outside the circle
clamored inside to add their power and aid their kin, slipping
insubstantially through the firewall. The regeneration of flesh and
bone increased in speed inside the newly created ovens, but the ten
mounts and the furious swarm of uncounted Loa remained trapped
inside.

Kieran and Ethan moved to their left,
circling around their firepits to get to the rest of the men. As
long as the fires held, we had more than half of the enemy down,
twelve in all. Kieran moved toward the center when two large,
blackened, and smoking figures jumped at him. As I ran after him,
he twisted his movement into one of the forms we knew and pushed on
their magic, changing the beasts’ momentum. It was a subtle move
that looked as though it merely pushed them off of him and in line
to attack Peter instead, but Kieran’s energy was wrong. His stance
and position were in the wrong place for that.

The bird-creatures shrieked at the
realization of missing Kieran, but targeted Peter now. They
shrieked again in anger when Kieran pushed his final attack on them
then ran forward between the oven circles, forgetting about them.
The push was a kinetic force, a wall of air that hit them as hard
as stone that batted them straight at me and away from Peter. If
this was baseball, it would have been a foul tip into the
stands.

I was already swinging at the first when the
Night’s magic flared at the bird creature and seared the Loa,
closing its connection to the second dimension it lived in and
trapping it here. As the dragon bone sliced through the flesh, it
sucked the life from the Loa. The second thing careened into the
blade’s path, making the Loas’ scream seem incredibly long as it,
too, was cut off from its home and the mount was sliced in half.
Four pieces of once-human meat thudded sickly to the ground.

The Night sword shifted me right so that the
bright green ball of fire would miss me. It was mottled with a
black substance that boiled like a skin on its outside. Peter sent
it flying at the lizard ten feet away from me and hit the Komodo
dragon-looking thing right in the maw as it readied to launch
itself at me. The green fire tore through its insides spreading the
black oily substance as it went. I’d come back to lizard man in a
minute to see if this worked. I moved in on the right since Peter
and Kieran had the center run under control.

That path took me straight to Granddaddy. He
was using one of the goat things for cover to sneak back
behind the line Kieran and Ethan represented. The goat things
had protruding red eyes and forward-facing, black, sharp-as-nails
horns. The most un-goat-like thing about it was the low hanging jaw
with the rows of sharp teeth. It made it look like a barracuda on
land.

Granddaddy saw me and started cackling again,
reaching out with both hands to grab at me. Night swung forward,
menacingly, and he backed off before coming within reach. The
goat thing, though, brayed at me, lowered its head, and
charged at me. Night swung again at the beast, intent to cleave the
horn from its head. Sparks flew when the black blade met with the
black horn and bounced off, shocking both the Sword and the Stone
as the change in momentum slammed into me and sent me reeling into
the wall of the enclosure. The goat-thing spun in a circle in the
opposite direction, shaking its head to regain its orientation. My
left arm was numb now. I couldn’t feel the Night Sword anymore and
I was dizzy. I tried to push up against the wall, keeping my eyes
on the goat. My feet didn’t work right and I kept slipping.

Granddaddy helped me out there. He grabbed me
by the throat with one hand and held me aloft, my feet dangling off
the ground. A man that age shouldn’t be that strong. His eyes
glowed with an unnatural yellow. A small rivulet of blood ran down
from the hole left by the Crossbow Bolt, congealed… something
filled the hole.

“Give up, boy,” he said, his voice a raspy
growl. “You can’t win against us. No one can, though many try.” His
grin was jaundiced and vile.

The goat trotted up, snorting. St. Croix’s
power was pushing on my armor, trying to find a crack to push on
and break through. He squeezed harder at my throat but the Stone’s
power didn’t fluctuate. I was starting to panic as I felt the
flutter of Loa around me on the astral plane building eagerly,
hungering. I couldn’t let St. Croix get me. There, over St. Croix’s
shoulder, I spotted the Night Sword sticking in the ground. That’s
why I couldn’t feel it; I wasn’t holding it anymore. Duh. But I
could fix that. I struggled against Granddaddy’s choking hand,
kicking at the goat as it got near. I needed the goat to be in
exactly the right position if this was going to work. Kicking St.
Croix got nowhere. Didn’t even knock the wind out of him. He just
cackled harder.

“Give up, boy, you’re just pissin’ me off!”
he growled again. I felt the power against my shield double. It
still didn’t seem to be near the Stone’s limit.

My left arm changed from numbness to pins and
needles. It was now or never.

“Let’s see if this pisses ya off, then,” I
said as I stopped struggling against him. Raising my left arm up
painfully, I called out, “Night!” The sword tumbled once out of the
ground, then flew to me, skewering the goat-thing through its hips
as it tumbled through the air. While I watched the Night’s path, my
thoughts went to the Crossbow and Quiver at my back. I loaded the
Crossbow with the black arrow and moved it to my right hand, barely
an inch from St. Croix’s chest. It happened so fast. St. Croix
turned his head to see why the goat was screaming. He tensed as he
saw the Sword flying through the air, but I fired the Crossbow
before Night reached me. I didn’t want to give him a chance to see
the Bolt before I fired.

The Bolt pierced him, throwing him back
several yards, and freeing me. He thrashed violently on the ground,
screaming and throwing energy onto several planes. I quickly
decapitated the goat-thing, just to be on the safe side, avoiding
the thing’s horns. It’d already “rebirthed” itself once. I didn’t
want it happening again.

I advanced on St. Croix and examined the
writhing old man carefully. The black Bolt was still searing his
power, blocking him from shifting into the other dimension and
eating away at his strength.

“You’ve killed for the last time, St. Croix.
For all that you’ve done to my world, to my family, you need to
die,” I said, calmly. I raised the Night sword and shoved it
straight down into his heart. Yellow energy screamed out of him,
out of every pore in his body. The scream reverberated through the
astral plane and into the Loa’s. They all sat up and took notice of
St. Croix’s violent passing. They panicked and swarmed for an
exit.