He knew she could kill them and there wasn’t much he could do about it. Still, he had a minute or two left.
Zal looked at the fire. He walked across to the edge of the tumbled pile and crouched down. His orange wings and the blue
creeping witchlight combined to form an ugly, smoglike colour on the covers of the books and the blank faces of the scrolls.
He weighed up the chances of surviving what he was about to do versus it being an effective distraction and felt the armour
quiver subtly as it connected to the Lila prime. She was nearly there. Malachi was shot in the shoulder but it had only made
him mad. He figured that if Xavi could suck the power from the books, she could suck it out of him too, but he could suck
back – junkies have their uses after all.
Xaviendra seemed to have thought along the same lines because she dropped the book she was holding and fixed him with a stare
across the flames. ‘Don’t even think . . .’
Zal put his hand into the fire. Their aether bodies merged.
‘Oh, you
filthy
. . .’ Her disgust hit him like a blow.
Zal felt them connect, felt himself exploding into his full demon form, shadow and fire, the armour melting around him into
its own liquid shapes as the music roared into deafening decibels and mixed up with all that Xaviendra was trying to pull
out of the scripts. He didn’t know how long the music archive would last, or him after it, but she was going to have a tough
time chewing him up because he was going to taste as nasty as possible, he was going to make sure of that.
‘Gonna getcha good . . .’ screamed the vocal – Zal’s own cover. He grinned into her face and gave her his best glam-rock wink.
Orange fire and blue met. The dry, heated paper beside him immediately burst into yellow flames. Zal felt Xaviendra scream
as the orange fire of his demon flare burned her and then he felt her gather
herself and
pull.
It was like a millstone dragging on his heart. His strength began to drain inexorably away.
‘Oh,’ he was surprised. It was much, much worse than he had imagined. He realised he was an idiot of course. He should have
used the other hand, where sleeping Wrath slept on. Trust a junkie to forget the important bit.
Then the violet fire of Xaviendra’s consumption filled his entire aetheric form and the coil opened in his hand.
‘Pull back,’ it said to him. It’s voice sounded like a child’s. It anchored him in his hand.
Xaviendra was going to stretch him out like cartoon toffee, but however much she tried, she wasn’t going to get him after
all.
Wrath wasn’t angry. That surprised Zal too. Wrath was calm.
‘Don’t worry,’ it said. ‘The others are coming. We will take her away and then we will die.’
That wasn’t as comforting as it might have been intended to be, he thought, hoping that he wasn’t included. He pushed as much
clear focus into the demonic music as he could, forcing Xavi to slow down what she was doing, grinding at her concentration.
Lila would be pleased, he thought, to find that the game wasn’t just chance and determinism. Skill had something to do with
it. And just when you didn’t expect it, the rules changed. He thought he would have to fight this Titan, but it was going
to fight for him.
The tug of war went on, Zal losing steadily, slowly, as the music ran through him and into her and was destroyed.
Lila felt the rain running down her face, at her side the beast in the darkness breathing heavily and Zal’s life flowing away
from her like sand through her fingers.
She snapped the two AI units shut regardless of the sensory distortion that resulted from being in two places at once, and
let the black android Sandra Lane move ahead of them through the open doors. The sopping rags that bound her torso, legs and
head with their black dripping burnwater tightened like steel boning. She was dead, but walking. She knew it. She was dead,
but not crossed over, because Tath was standing in the way.
This understanding had come to her in the office at some point when she understood how the phantom called Nemesis was able
to cross over. The collapsing house at Solomon’s Folly had fallen on her and the quantum forge had done the rest. Maybe the
faery dress had
pulled a divine intervention at its own cost. She didn’t know, but she did know that she’d lost interest in Xaviendra’s story
around the time Sarasilien had been talking about the this and that of it, the organisation, the time, the game, the stake,
because simultaneously she’d been with Zal in this vile place, reading the names, watching the papers burn, feeling the poison
of the demon’s last curse leaving him and listening to the insane dub of his endless supply of music and it had come to her
that she could place bets wherever she liked but when it came to play there was only one way – forward. It was her move.
As she came around the door’s heavy block on Lane’s tail, she saw the inferno that the room had become, a war of lilac and
orange fire in which the elven figures of a man and woman could just be discerned. One had wings and was on his knees. One
had a tail and stood over him in a position of power.
Lila commanded her secondary body to release Zal and reattach. There was nothing she could do for him any more.
Shards of metal flew out of the conflagration towards her as she did something she hadn’t tried to do since she and Bentley
had spent a few hours revising the plans and working bugs out of the systems: she activated her battle systems.
Lane stood, taking in a scene Lila was already on top of. From behind Lila the dark slinking shape of Nightbane oiled forward,
strangely flat and two-dimensional as if he were no more than the bad dreams of children seeing shadows in their room at night.
He leapt on Xaviendra’s back and the blue fire faltered. She staggered but only for an instant. The fire itself coiled around
the catlike body, immobilising it and pulling it away in a web of force.
Malachi screamed.
‘Clear,’ Lila said to Lane, and watched the android perform an inhuman leap sideways out of range as she let two shatter grenades
rip free of her arm and into the detonation point of Xaviendra’s partially material ribcage. Fragments of super-hot, depleted
plutonium reactor core charged with a faintlife aether frag capacity, exploded in the confines of the shell’s split-second
forcefield, their violence contained within a three metre radius well clear of Zal.
The elf’s small body flew apart.
She knew it wouldn’t kill Xavi. Nothing that Lila had would kill her, but it would buy some time.
Then the blue fire snapped back to its mistress with a single, backdraft surge and it let go of Malachi and of Zal.
‘Suppressing fire,’ Lila said to Lane, who was in position now, on one knee, her arms opening up into the huge silvered fans
of radiant reflectors as she shielded herself from the backwash of the light pulses coming from her fingertips. Super-focused
beams sliced the blue fire into strips, strobing with a speed no eye could match.
Lila watched as Xaviendra pulled herself together. Zal was much slower to do the same. They were almost out of delaying plays.
The light hit Xaviendra and for a few moments the form shuddered and seemed as if it shrank. Then with a pulse much brighter
than before there was a returning bolt of purple violence and Lane was knocked backwards with a sharp cry, her reflectors
wrapping and crunching around her. She did not get up.
From the white-hot burning cyclone that stood where Xaviendra had been, came a sharp pissed-off voice.
‘Where is that damned book? You can save a lot of time and life if you just give me what I want, Lila. Then you can be free
of that pathetic spirit and we can all go our lovely amicable ways.’
Lila reloaded the shell launcher in her arm. It was her last shot. She watched Zal, an agonised figure of light and shadow
getting up, but so slowly. She willed him to move, but she could see he’d taken too much damage. He might be able to fuel
himself on firelight or darkness but Xavi could fuel herself on him much more effectively.
A line of blue-white flame licked out towards him. He fell down, agonised and the coil began to draw him towards the whirling
tornado of energy. She guessed it was too hard for Xavi to return to a physical form now, required too much of an effort to
reconfigure all that detail, all that information. She waited as Zal clawed the floor, trying to escape, but was dragged relentlessly
back by the white-lilac flares of Xavi’s hunger. Cries of pain came from what was left of his mouth.
Lila shot the second grenade when she knew he was still safely outside the blast radius and watched Xaviendra falter and flicker.
Zal breathed again for an instant.
Pop a few more of those and she’d collapse the local instability enough that there wouldn’t be much of anyone left to worry
about. She measured the time it took for the mage to pull it together. Not much longer than the first time. Meantime Zal hadn’t
moved an inch.
Lila backed a step and reached down to Lane. The android gave off no signals. When she touched the body there was no response.
She
tried hacking a port but there was no resistance in any channel. Lane was blown. Even her reactor core had shut down.
‘Too late,’ Xaviendra’s voice said. The coil and the cyclone were back. Zal was unconscious now, the orange fire dying out
quickly all across the dark form of his body. Lila picked this for a bluff but she didn’t know for sure.
Then there was a light behind her and a burst of quantum particles flaring their unpredictable tracks.
She turned and saw an angel behind her, radiant with white blazing wings and a halo so intense it burned out several photo
receptors in her head. There were hints of metal feathers in its wings, razor-edged and gleaming with jewel glints of blue
and yellow and in its face two red eyes stared straight at her.
Zal woke up. He got to his feet slowly, swaying like a drunk and pointed accusingly at the angel. ‘You’re late,’ he slurred,
falling to his knees.
Teazle held out a plastic food carton towards Lila.
Xaviendra saw the huge, spiked form of the armoured cyborg turn, glimpsed what was behind it and then saw the carton. It was
blue, scratched, uneven, unmistakable. Inside it was a single playing card. She didn’t need to see it. She knew it. The Queen
of Cups.
In those days she had liked a joke and storing her soul in something that mimicked the fey queen’s own tricks pleased her
enormously, a perfect twist of fate. She felt sick, giddy. Her head was full of music and a sensation as if she had feet and
was dancing, dancing, unable to stop.
She reached out and saw the cyborg’s black metal gauntlet close on the plastic carton, crushing and melting it so that the
running plastic and the card inside caught fire.
Strange, she thought, that you cannot feel a spirit, even when it is within. Strange, she hadn’t expected to see so many moves
turn out this way as she watched the machine open its empty fist and receive the angel into it in the form of a sword, a blazing
shard of impossible light, existing equally and fully in all dimensions, the axis of the world at that moment.
Rooks, she thought. He said it would be like rooks. And he wasn’t even here to see the victory of his one Titan in her revenant
rags and scattered bodies.
Friends, she thought.
The possibility had never occurred to her after so long and all that was done. Lila’s face was emotionless, impassive. Xaviendra
wished for something else, anything but indifference. If she had had eyes they would have cried.
Lovers, she thought, watching the blade swing free of the air, free of everything. Why wasn’t he here? They had all come for
each other. Not for her. He’d loved her once. Lovers. Why hadn’t he come?
‘It’s not for you,’ she said to Lila, meaning no and how could this happen and it isn’t supposed to end this way and no. No.
No. How could the blood that bound her all this time not hold this sword and this arm back? Friends. Lovers.
‘It’s my name,’ Lila said, and her expression changed in that instant as the blade cut. ‘Friendslayer.’ There were tears in
those mirror eyes. And then they weren’t mirrored, they were blue.
Mercy,
thought Xaviendra,
I
. . . but then Render had her and she was no more.
Zal felt Wrath leap through him, a flash of power.
‘Goodbye, friend,’ said the child’s voice, strangely exultant.
He heard other voices, an argument, stilled by that childish
tone that said they all must go now, yes, time to go, long past time, it was late. And then he knew no more.
Teazle stood as Hellblade shed him. He felt all that power leaving him, all the ability, all the knowledge. It took some of
him with it as the ghostly figure of the elf child standing over Zal’s body held out its hand. He saw a tall elf and a huge
demon for an instant, each touch their hands to that small one, and then they were gone. Wrath had consumed them, transformed
them. In front of Teazle, Lila’s huge armoured form locked into position with a solid, machinelike finality and moved no more.
‘Nemesis, you cannot stay,’ said the child’s ghost. ‘Come away now.’
‘Wait,’ Teazle said.
But a tall shadow peeled away from Lila’s body and paused. It looked back at him, dark pits for eyes. ‘It’s been too long,’
she said. ‘She cannot come back so far. I’m sorry.’ She moved forward, a graceful curtain of darkness, touched the child’s
hand and vanished.
Teazle stared at Lila’s empty body in disbelief.
‘Hello, angel,’ said the boy, turning to him. The small face was peaceful and a little sad. ‘Because I am the Eater, I cannot
eat myself. Only your blue sword can end me. The others are gone now. No more pain. No more tears. Don’t worry.’
Teazle stared at him. He looked at Lila’s immobile wreckage. Zal was a heap, almost invisible beneath the boy’s glowing outline.
A scrape of claws made him turn around. He saw the strange drake Zal had ridden and was about to turn back when suddenly it
wasn’t there any more. An old dwarf had taken its place and came hurrying across the stone, almost tripping on a discarded
book.