Jinx shrugged. “Can’t blame a clown for trying.” He turned to me. “Your curiosity satisfied?” he asked.
“Yep,” I said.
“How about you?” he asked Russell.
“I’m good.”
Jinx nodded. “Then let’s get this road on the show.”
Jinx made no obvious move, but a stream of liquid shot forth from his oversized lapel flower, and arced through the air toward Neil. Quietus hurled a pair of dark shards which
thunked
into Jinx’s chest, but the assassin was too late. The acid struck its target: the nozzle of Neil’s torporian gun. The metal hissed and sizzled, and the nozzle melted shut.
“Fuck!” Neil shouted and threw his useless weapon to the rooftop.
I fired my trancer at the Fata Morgana, and the multicolored beam struck her in the chest. My gun didn’t have much charge left, but I poured every ounce of remaining power into the ancient Incubus. Raw Maelstrom energy slammed into her, wreathing her in swirling, multihued light. For good measure, I pulled Jinx’s trancer from its holster and fired it at the Fata Morgana, adding its power to my own.
Without bothering to remove the dark shards protruding from his chest – and ignoring the blood oozing from the wounds they’d made – Jinx hurled Cuthbert Junior toward Quietus. The sledgehammer tumbled end over end toward the silent assassin with such speed that he couldn’t avoid it. The hammer struck him a devastating blow right between the eyes – or at least where his eyes would’ve been if he’d had any visible.
Neil let out a stream of foul language as he began rummaging through the numerous pockets of his gray jumpsuit, searching for another weapon, I assumed.
“Fuck-shit-damn-cunt-suck-hell!”
Russell, rapier in hand, ran forward to attack him. Before Russell could run him through, Neil pulled out a two-pronged device from one of his pockets and activated it. It began vibrating and humming, like a tuning fork, and a barrier of M-energy sprung up in front of him like a wall. Russell tried to thrust his rapier through the barrier, but his blade was turned aside. Russell attempted to maneuver around the barrier, but it moved with Neil, who kept it between himself and Russell.
Sanderson continued to stand motionless and expressionless, eyes dull and unseeing. Bloodshedder remained asleep, snoring rather loudly.
The hammer strike sent Quietus flying backward, and if he’d been human, the blow would’ve splattered his head like rotten melon. But he was an Incubus, and a strong one at that. He landed on his back and slid a few feet. Cuthbert Junior landed only a foot away from his outstretched hand, and he grabbed hold of the hammer and sprang to his feet, uninjured.
I continued putting the heat on the Fata Morgana, but both my trancer and Jinx’s were rapidly running out of power. The energy output was dwindling, and the beams were thinning out. The Fata Morgana remained encased in a cocoon of roiling M-energy, but I had no idea what, if any, effect it was having on her. All I could do was keep firing and hope.
Quietus started running toward Jinx, Cuthbert Junior raised over his head, clearly intending to give Jinx a taste of his own medicine. But Jinx wasn’t about to stand and wait for it. Springs shot out of his shoes and propelled him toward Quietus.
Jinx held his hands out before him – and although I only caught a blurred glimpse of silvery-gray on his fingers, I knew that he now wore high-voltage joy buzzers, like he’d used on Shocktooth in Nod, on each of his fingers. He slammed into Quietus and grabbed hold of the assassin’s throat as they both went down in a heap. Before Quietus could swing Cuthbert Junior, Jinx moved into a crouching position over Quietus, his rubber-soled feet firmly planted on the rooftop. He then activated his joy buzzers, and electrical power coruscated over them both.
Quietus jerked and spasmed as Jinx maintained his double grip on the assassin’s neck. Coils of smoke rose from Jinx’s hands, and his face was contorted into an expression of homicidal ecstasy that would’ve caused any bystanders to piss themselves in terror if they’d been present.
“Just call me the Electro-cutioner, baby!” he cried. He followed this with one of his earsplitting hyena laughs.
Russell, who continued his shuffling dance with Neil, called out, “How the hell can you stand to work with him?”
“He grows on you,” I called back. “Kind of like a clown-white tumor!”
My trancer finally came up empty, the energy field surrounding the Fata Morgana winked out, and a different being now stood in her place. I don’t know if she’d been able to maintain her Day Aspect even at night or if she was able to shift between them at will. Whichever the case, she now appeared to be a tall woman – almost inhumanly lithe – with alabaster skin and long raven-black hair that fell all the way to her feet. She wore a dark green Renaissance-festival-style dress that glinted in the parking lot lights as if the fabric contained flecks of diamond.
All of that made her an imposing figure, but the most disturbing feature of this Aspect was her face. It appeared to be made from uneven pieces of crystal that constantly shifted like a kaleidoscope. And set in the midst of the seething crystalline shards was a pair of gleaming yellow eyes.
The sight of the Fata Morgana’s true appearance startled me, as it did Russell. I lowered my useless trancers, and he broke off the attack on Neil. Both of us stared at her.
“I remember her,” Russell said. I could barely hear him over Jinx’s mad laughter and the sound of crackling electricity.
“Me, too.” When Kauffman closed her office door, day or night, she would shed her illusion of humanity and reveal this creature, her true self – the Fata Morgana.
If my trancer fire had done her any damage, I couldn’t tell by looking at her. She stood tall and steady, and exuded a palpable aura of strength.
“A for effort,” she said in a voice like tinkling wind chimes.
While Russell and I were distracted, Neil deactivated his tuning fork, tucked it away in a pocket, and then from another pocket withdrew a new object. It was made of M-energy and was roughly the size and shape of a yo-yo. He pointed it at Sanderson and thumbed a button on the side.
Sanderson stiffened as the collar around his neck began to pulse with white light. His eyes gleamed with the same light, and they pulsed in time with the collar.
Pain lanced through my skull as if someone had taken a white-hot iron spike and driven it into one of my ears and out the other. Crippling nausea twisted my insides, and I dropped my spent trancers, fell to all fours, and began retching uncontrollably. It took me several moments to get my body under some semblance of control. When I did, I looked at Russell and saw he was as bad off as I was.
I looked for Jinx, and I saw he was now on his back. Quietus was straddling him and plunging deadly shards into Jinx’s body, one after the other, in rapid succession. Tendrils of steam rose from the assassin, but there was no more electricity. Like the trancers, Jinx’s joy buzzers – all ten of them – had run out of power, and now Quietus was fighting back.
The Fata Morgana turned to Neil. “You took your time activating the Engine.”
It was difficult to read the Fata Morgana’s expression, given her constantly shifting features, but I was fairly certain she was displeased with Neil. He lowered his gaze, as if unwilling to meet her glowing yellow eyes.
“Sorry. I was busy trying to avoid getting skewered by Nocturne.”
Despite the agony that continued to explode in my skull, I was able to think clearly enough to wonder why Neil was unaffected by the energies being given off by the Incursion Engine. A resistance built up from years of exposure to M-energy? Some protective device he carried? Not that I cared much at that moment. As horrible as I felt right then, all I wanted was for some kind soul with a shotgun to come along and put me out of my misery.
I turned my face skyward and saw streaks of multicolored Maelstrom energy rippling in the air above us. Only a few at first, but more appeared with each passing second.
I lowered my gaze to check on Jinx. The activation of the Incursion Engine seemed to have had no effect on him, or for that matter, on Quietus. Jinx had turned the tables on Quietus, and now the assassin lay facedown on the rooftop, while Jinx – with a dozen dark shards sticking out of his chest – straddled Quietus’ back. He was repeatedly slamming the assassin’s face onto the roof, making a sound like a bag of cement being slapped against concrete.
I then looked at the Fata Morgana, and drawing on whatever reserves of strength I had left, I fought to concentrate past my pain and speak. I did so, but haltingly, each word an effort of will.
“It won’t… work. Deacon said… so. An Incursion this… large will only… destroy both worlds.” My vision went gray for a moment, and I thought I would pass out. I almost did, but somehow I managed to hold onto consciousness, or at least some semblance of it.
“He’s wrong,” Neil said, without the slightest hint of uncertainty. “Thanks to Sanderson, this Incursion will be completely under our control. It will create an opening between dimensions that will become increasingly larger, until the barrier between Earth’s universe and the Maelstrom’s collapses once and for all. And then a new world will be born. A free world!”
The Fata Morgana looked at him. “Take it easy on the rhetoric, will you, Neil? It gets tiresome after a while.”
Ribbons of Maelstrom energy now filled the sky above the building, their multicolored light illuminating the area in a panoply of ever-shifting hues. If I hadn’t known it meant the end of all existence, I would’ve thought it was beautiful. I could still see some stars, but not many. Soon, the night sky would be blotted out completely. I knew we didn’t have much time left. I had to stop this, whatever the cost.
I struggled to my feet, nearly blacking out for real this time. My brain still felt as if it were being devoured by fire ants, and my weak legs shook and threatened to give out any moment, but I was standing, and that alone was a victory, if only a small one.
Jinx was still slamming Quietus’ face onto the rooftop, the assassin’s arms and legs flailing as he tried to get out from under Jinx. The dark shards in Jinx’s chest had faded away, leaving behind rapidly healing wounds. It looked like Jinx had things under control on his end. At least I didn’t have to worry about him.
Sanderson, however, was a different matter. His eyes still pulsed with white light, only more rapidly now, and his body seemed to be shrinking in upon itself. He’d lost weight, and his skin was drawn tighter to his frame. Neil’s collar was draining Sanderson’s power to fuel the Incursion Engine – and it was killing my boss.
The trancers lay on the rooftop, spent and useless. Russell was struggling to rise, but he was having a harder time of it than I had. Maybe the Incursion energies had hit him harder than they had me, or maybe he wasn’t as used to functioning when he felt like shit. He lay on the roof only a few feet from Neil – and not too far from Bloodshedder, either – his rapier still clutched in his hand. I considered trying to reach him and grab the sword, but even as transfixed as Neil and the Fata Morgana were by the spectacle taking place above us, I doubted I’d be able to get the rapier without at least one of them noticing. Still, I had to try.
I ran – actually,
stumbled awkwardly
is a better description – toward Russell. A strong wind had risen, maybe as a side effect of the Incursion, and weak as I was, it threatened to knock me over. The Fata Morgana and Neil remained mesmerized by the multicolored lightshow above us, and I realized I could no longer see any stars. I reached Russell, knelt down, and pulled the rapier from his grasp. He struggled to hold onto it for a second, but then he released it and gave me a weak smile before closing his eyes and falling still.
He just passed out,
I told myself.
That’s all.
But I didn’t pause to check his pulse. There wasn’t time.
I straightened and, Russell’s sword in hand, started toward Sanderson.
I knew killing Neil wouldn’t do anything at this point, and neither would killing the Fata Morgana. But Sanderson was powering the Incursion Engine, and if I could sever his link to the machine, the Incursion would stop. I hoped. As I approached Sanderson, I couldn’t look him in the eyes – the white light blazing forth from them made that impossible.
I didn’t know if he was aware of what was happening, but I hoped the light worked both ways, and he didn’t see me coming toward him, gripping Russell’s sword. Its blade was fashioned from Maelstrom energy – and if a strike from a simple M-blade could kill an Incubus, how much more damage could a weapon like this do? Especially if the blade were thrust through the heart. If Sanderson had known what I was about to do and could speak to me, he might well have told me I was doing the right thing. But that thought didn’t make me feel any better about what I was about to do.
I don’t know what happened, whether I was clumsy in my approach and made too much noise, or if my luck simply ran out – but both the Fata Morgana and Neil lowered their eyes to look at me. I was within striking distance of Sanderson, and I thrust the rapier forward, point aimed at his heart. But the blade was stopped by a small flash of white light, no larger than the rapier’s tip. I tried thrusting the blade into Sanderson a couple more times, but with the same result.
Neil gave me a satisfied grin. “The collar has a built-in force field.”
The Fata Morgana gestured, and the sword flew out of my hand and into hers. She took hold of the blade with both hands and with a single – almost contemptuous – motion, she snapped it in two.
I’d known she was strong, but I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. Neil’s rapier had been made entirely of solidified M-energy. It should have been, for all intents and purposes, unbreakable. But the Fata Morgana had snapped it like a twig. Evidently, Neil was surprised, too, for he gaped at her as she dropped the pieces of the broken sword onto the roof.