If they established a beachhead, we were all dead. I drew Kindness and charged.
The first dead guy took a step back, right into two of his buddies. One stroke gained me three heads. I blocked a sword, sliced the head off a mace, and turned one orc into two half-orcs.
One of the soldiers jumped on my back, pulling a cloak over my head. I spun to the right, dropping to one knee and holding Kindness at full extension. I felt the blade slice through something and heard a body drop.
The bastard on my back stabbed me. The blade skipped along my ribs. I reached back, grabbed a handful of bone, and flipped the guy over my shoulder. The cloak went with him. I thrust Kindness up through his jaw and out the top of his head.
Ackerman fired two more rounds into the undead horde and fell back. I followed, clearing the field for the others to keep shooting.
A dead Elven woman leaped onto the roof of the Range Rover. She aimed and fired two arrows before her feet touched metal. The arrows struck Hugh and Emme, a couple I only knew slightly through BADASSES, and emerged from their backs. The arrowheads split open and spread out like flower petals.
Gold chains trailed from the arrows back to the Elf. She grabbed the chains and yanked Hugh and Emme off the roof. Dead soldiers swarmed the spot where they fell.
Ackerman fired his last three rounds at the Elf. She dodged them, nocked, and let fly. Her arrow split into three shafts, and then again into nine. All nine arrows struck. Three in his heart, three in his throat, three in the middle of his forehead.
Miranda dropped to one knee and aimed her Glock, shouting “Keep her busy!” Jake and Ember launched a volley of arrows at the Elf. She grabbed two arrows out of the air and nocked both. Miranda fired just as the Elf loosed. Rotting Elf brains sprayed all over my car.
One arrow sent the Glock flying. The other went through Miranda’s eye. She fell backward and didn’t move. Jake sank down on his knees next to her. Ember dropped her bow and joined him. I looked away, and spotted the dead Dwarf hauling himself up onto the far end of the roof. He rolled to his feet and charged.
I walked out to meet him. He leaped, swinging his axe over his head with both hands. Kindness removed both arms and his head. I didn’t feel any joy. I didn’t feel any satisfaction. I felt like I was killing a mosquito.
Harmony and Rose came out onto the roof. Rose was armored up, as I assumed Harmony was. Harmony stood at the edge of the roof, arms out at her side. She brought her hands up and around in front of her face, thumbs down and palms out. She began chanting in Draconic, sounding like a pair of didgeridoos pitched about three octaves apart. As she moved her hands apart, a wall of force pushed the undead back, away from the front of the store.
Rose stepped up next to Harmony, moving her hands around an antifreeze-green ball of energy. She brought it above her head and hurled the spell out over the mass of undead. The ball burst, and green flames rained down on them.
I spotted Thain standing against the far side of Harmony’s energy barrier. He tried spell after spell, attempting to break through the barrier. All of them failed. The green flames enveloped his legs and back. Flames blossomed inside his ribcage, sending burning pieces of parchment wafting to the ground. He fell to his knees, pounding on the barrier with his fists. He kept pounding on the barrier until the flames burned his arms into ash.
Harmony kept chanting far beyond any Human lung capacity, until the last of the fires died and nothing moved anymore. She released the spell and staggered back from the edge of the roof. She embraced Ember, and I did the same with Rose.
“What happened? What was all that? Are we safe?” The last two survivors of Lucas’ regular customers, a husband and wife in their mid-sixties, clutched at each other and stared, half-dazed from shock and adrenaline.
I looked around. I didn’t see any more dead soldiers, but that wasn’t much comfort. All around us, the cyclone was still roaring and churning away. Even looking straight up I couldn’t see open sky. “That was being attacked by an army of the dead, and no, I don’t think we’re safe yet.”
Rose shook her head. “No, we’re not. The portal would have collapsed by now if Thain were dead. He’s trying to trick us.”
The woman stood up. “Then we’re leaving. Whatever this mess is, it’s your fault. It’s not our problem. We’re not dying for people like you.”
Lucas got up and stood next to them. “I’m out of here too. This is nuts.”
The three of them rushed downstairs and out through the range’s side door. They didn’t even try to get to a car—they ran flat out for the main road.
I wished them luck as they vanished into the maelstrom surrounding us. This wasn’t something any of us had asked for. War never is.
Jake and I moved the people we’d lost off the line and arranged them next to the stairway. We had nothing to cover their faces with, so we closed their eyes as best we could. I tried to say something to Jake about Miranda, but he brushed me off. “We’ll hug it out when the bastard’s dead. Now cover me while I get the shotguns.”
He went out the side door, pulled two gear bags out of the trunk of his car, and ran back inside. Rose and I stood ready to shoot at anything moving toward him, but the field stayed clear. When Jake got back up on the roof, he draped one of Miranda’s uniform shirts over her face before setting about getting both shotguns loaded.
Neither our cell phones nor Ackerman’s radio were getting any signal. Ember tried the shop’s land line and got no dial tone. She grabbed a rubber-tipped small game arrow and wrote out a short message, which she secured to the shaft with rubber bands. Back on the roof, she aimed the arrow as high as she could and sent it flying into the wall of wind. “You never know,” she said. “Message in a bottle and all that.”
“This tornado has to be visible from downtown Denver,” I said. “The Lafayette police are missing two officers, and three people just tried to make it out of here. If they succeeded, if the way was clear, at the very least we should have seen a robot camera being sent in by now. Based on all that, I’d say we’re cut off.”
“Cut off by whom?” Ron asked. “And what do they want?” He rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Try again. Why is whoever they are trying to kill us?”
“To keep us from stopping his invasion of Earth,” I said. “He’s not going to give up until we’re dead.”
Ron gestured to the empty parking lot. “So, where is he?”
“He’s here. He’s watching, probably planning a second attack. He wouldn’t send all of his forces in at once. He’ll find a weak… Oh, shit.” I turned around and looked at the grain elevator towering over us.
Something moved on top of the grain elevator. It was Thain, flanked by several horribly familiar shapes.
I grabbed my bow and shouted, “Hostiles on the grain elevator!” I loosed one of my flint-tipped arrows, aiming on instinct alone. It was enough. The arrow sunk into Thain’s chest, but he did not drop. Instead, he crumbled into broken pieces of clay, which fell and shattered on the ground.
In response, two of the undead Dragon hatchlings launched themselves off the grain elevator, streaking toward us with outstretched claws.
In Death Ground, Fight
Hatchlings can’t fly, but they can glide. Even with torn and rotting wings, Thain’s monstrosities had enough altitude to reach the roof where we stood. Only Jake managed to bring a weapon to bear. As a hatchling closed on him, he brought shotgun to shoulder and took the monster’s head off. The horse-sized corpse plowed into him, bowling him over and sending the shotgun spinning across the roof.
The hatchling’s claws raked Jake’s side open from hip to armpit. The body tumbled off of him, careening into the storage shed. The shed walls buckled, pulling away from their supports. The door sprang from its hinges and fell, revealing nothing but the promised air conditioner parts.
The second hatchling struck Ron, pinning him to the ground while disemboweling him with its rear claws. It moved off him, hissing and lashing its tail. I raised Kindness and…dropped her.
Nausea and blind panic. Gut-wrenching helplessness. That feeling out of nightmare, of trying to run and being unable to move, unable to speak. Rose was near to paralyzed with hysteria, and she was taking me down with her.
I fell back on years of geek training and began reciting everyone’s favorite litany for banishing fear. The familiar cadences didn’t work completely, but they worked well enough. I managed to pick up Kindness and get to my feet.
Rose was sitting on the roof, still frozen by fear. Thirteen was keeping the hatchling busy, stroking at its snout and eyes as he backed up away from the rest of us. Ember was down, bleeding from a blow to the head. Harmony was standing over her, keeping a bubble of energy around us. Half a dozen Thains faced her, hurling spell after spell against her shield.
Thirteen leaped onto the hatchling’s head, ripping its left eye out and shredding the remnants of an earfin. The hatchling turned left, trying to claw the cat away. I took advantage of the distraction and chopped the hatchling’s head off. The corpse took two more steps before collapsing.
Three more hatchlings landed on the roof. One lunged for Jake, clawing his chest and tearing at his neck with its fangs. Jake roared back at it, jamming his pistol into the hatchling’s mouth and blowing off the top of its skull. He fell back onto the roof and died reaching for Miranda’s hand.
The second attacked Harmony, intent on disrupting her spell-work. Its claws tore the back of her shirt open, but shattered against her skin. I moved close, looking for an opening against its back flank. It kicked out at me with a hind leg. I jumped back to avoid the talons, right into position to be tail-whipped across the roof.
The third hatchling jumped on top of me, pinning me to the roof. It lunged at my head. I managed to roll to the side. Its teeth snapped on air. I drew my obsidian dagger and slid it into the hatchling’s elbow joint. The foreleg came off, just like boning a chicken. I held my breath, trying not to gag from the stench.
The hatchling’s severed foreleg skittered back across the roof, pulled along by its wriggling talons. It came at me from the side, leaping when I glanced away from it. It clamped onto my face with its talons. Gagging, I clawed at the air until I touched rotting skin. I grabbed the hatchling’s neck with both hands, trying to keep it from chomping on me. The severed foreleg dug its talons further into my skull, and I felt blood flowing from the wounds.
I grasped the base of its skull with one hand and thrust the knife up through the bottom of the jaw. The hatchling quivered, but kept trying to bite me. I pulled the dagger out and plunged it back in, trying to hit the base of the skull without cutting my own fingers off, and the blade glanced off its armor.
The hatchling lunged at me again. I heard it hissing, and aimed the knife blade at the sound. When I felt teeth against my hand, I twisted the blade up into the brain. The hatchling shuddered once before collapsing to the side. I pulled the foreleg free and threw it off the roof.
Rose had the remaining hatchling by the neck and tail. It couldn’t attack her, but she couldn’t hurt it, either. Kindness split its skull in half.
Rose rolled to her feet and summoned a gout of flame up from the ground beneath one of the Thains attacking us. The flames burned away the semblance of flesh, leaving a clay mannequin that shattered and collapsed. None of the others looked at it.
Harmony laughed. “Is that your magic? Nothing but
shabti
? Pathetic!”
The number of copies suddenly made sense.
Shabti
were clay figures enchanted to do the deceased’s labor in the afterlife. Things like planting wheat and shoveling mud. No one ever mentioned them being able to cast spells.
Harmony pushed her left hand forward, supporting the energy barrier with it alone. With her right hand, she pointed at the remaining images of Thain while chanting in Egyptian. When she finished, she yanked her hand sideways, and all but one of the figures collapsed into a pile of broken clay shards.
Rose leaped off the roof and charged at Thain. He met her with a bronze dagger, stabbing her in the throat. The dagger bent and flew out of his hand. Rose pounded Thain’s face and chest, ripping chunks out of him with fingers turned into talons.
Thain ignored the blows. He grabbed Rose by the throat, lifting her clear of the ground. He held her in front of him, using her as a shield. “So you’re the one doing all the magic. You had me quite fooled, thinking David an arcane prodigy. Shame on you, little Dragon.” He looked around her at Harmony and cocked his head. “Your blonde friend is one of your kind as well, I take it. I’d say she’s older than you. Much older, yes.”
Thain tightened his grip. “You were right to hide from me, child. Your existence changes the equations somewhat. I’d planned to conquer this world without using my armies. They would make it far too easy. I wanted to do this world in…what do you call it? Hardcore mode. That’s it. But you just had to interfere. I guess I’ll have to, as you say, reroll.”
I lowered my bow.
The math is wrong
. That line made sense now. Too little, too late. I drew and aimed again. “Go home, Thain, and be satisfied with one world. You can’t raise the faithful of this world. You’ll never raise an army of any size, and now the armies of a second world will rise up to oppose you. Give it up.”
He laughed. “Be satisfied with one world? Boy, I’ve conquered
four
of them. I dare say I’ve gotten to be very good at it. Conquest is an addiction, and I am jonesing for a hit.” He shook his head and waved the words away. “Oh, that was rubbish. Don’t ever let me speak that way.”
“No problem,” I said. “Let Rose go and you’ll never have to utter a trite catchphrase ever again.”
“Don’t think me a fool, boy. I have no such thoughts toward you. You’re a man of hard purpose, who would strike me down in a moment given the chance. Her life preserves my own. Rest assured, I shall not harm her.”
Rose smiled at him. “Good to know.” She pulled one of the ceramic tactical knives from her belt and stabbed Thain up and under the ribcage. The blade struck something hard and glanced off to the side.