Authors: Edward Lazellari
Reverend Grey placed his hand over Daniel’s head. His eyes were closed; he chanted in the language of his order. With the other hand, he reached for a small plastic container shaped like the Madonna, and sprinkled water on the boy.
“What the heck?” said Daniel.
“It’s a blessing,” Lelani said. “To protect you. Prelate, the water…?”
“From a Catholic church,” Grey said. “We only do full immersion at my church and I hadn’t had time to make my own holy water.”
“Will that actually do anything practical?” Tim said mockingly.
“Yes,” Lelani said. “It changes the odds—a fifty-fifty circumstance becomes fifty-one–forty-nine in Daniel’s favor. But that means someone else … Who?” she asked Grey.
The cleric shook his head slowly. “I drew from no one’s well … it is the gods’ choice.”
The remaining golems had begun climbing up from the street. They must have had some sort of rudimentary language, and the first wave must have signaled some degree of success on top of the building. Gunfire and screams came from the roof only a few floors above them. Some of the beasts had made it through the shield.
“Lelani, will these things die?” MacDonnell asked.
“Yes,” she said. Although, not easily. The captain held his carbine rifle. This felt wrong to the centaur.
“My lord, may I see your sword?”
MacDonnell unsheathed it and handed it to her without hesitation. The MacDonnells had been guardians of the rulers of Aandor for generations, probably even before recorded history. They were defenders of the truth, upholders of the law, and protectors of the innocent. Bòid Géard was an inherited family heirloom, well crafted and handed down over many generations.
Lelani suspected the sword might be unique. The MacDonnells also descended from royalty many generations removed. Though their resistance to magic was nowhere near as complete as a ruling royal, they were very hard to fool and could see through complex illusions. It stood to reason the family weapons would be uniquely suited to their vocation. She ran her fingers over the flat of the blade. Yes, it was there, she could feel it in the metal.
“Malcolm, this sword—was it forged by dwarvs?” she asked.
“Heck yeah,” he said. “I could spot a dwarv weapon from twenty feet.”
“Why?” asked Cal. “Is it enchanted?”
“Even better, my lord … it’s disenchanted. The alloy contains faerie silver. It’s a nullifier. This sword, not your rifle, is your best weapon.”
“I was hoping not to have to get that close to one,” Cal said, securing his carbine and pulling up his police shield. He stood, sword in hand, in his Hercules Unit armor and helmet, a knight for the modern age.
The building shook. Again, only Grey and Lelani felt it.
“My lord, I must reach the roof to bolster the shield. Dorn is almost through.”
Something hit the hallway with a deep thud and a roar. Rapid gunfire just outside the door mingled with howls and the cries and screams of Malcolm’s security detail. Stray bullets from the far end of the hall cut through the door—Cal and Lelani shoved everybody back.
“Oh fucking shit!” cried Tim. “This is all your fault!” he said, screaming at Malcolm. “You fucking forced me here! I just wanted to tour with my band! I didn’t want any part of this! I should have taken off with Ball Sack.”
Lelani had hoped the cocktails would bolster the musician’s bravery, but instead they were detrimental to his mindset … only freeing Timian’s inhibitions toward his own cowardice. Lelani had always been puzzled by human women’s propensity to fall for such selfish, feckless creatures as minstrels. They were foppish, barely capable of building a cabin much less defending home and hearth from the ravages of invaders.
Lelani placed more stock in Clarisse’s ability to handle a crisis than her boyfriend. But she and Brianna were ultimately under Lelani’s protection. As always, it fell to her to wear the pantaloons, so to speak … even if she did have four invisible horse legs.
“We need to get up to the roof anyway,” MacDonnell said. “The copters are coming, right Mal?”
Scott, holding a big fancy Motorola combat radio cell phone nodded to his partner.
“Yep,” Malcolm confirmed.
The door to the suite splintered under the weight of the beast smashing into it. The men that had been screaming on the other side of the door moments earlier were silent. Malcolm with his axes, Lelani with her longbow, Callum with his sword, and Malcolm’s last remaining security man in the suite with his Uzi formed the front line—behind them were Colby Dretch with his revolver and Allyn Grey holding one tine of an old iron pitchfork that he procured from the farm in North Carolina before they left. Daniel stood between them. Scott, Clarisse, Bree, and Timian stood farther back in the rear, against the wall, and Balzac …
Where was Balzac?
The beast burst through the door like it was made of Popsicle sticks. Bree and Clarisse let loose a duet of high-pitched screams.
Malcolm charged with a raging howl of his own even as Lelani let loose a barrage of arrows that sailed past the billionaire’s head and into the beast’s left rib cage and thigh. Malcolm put his fire ax into the golem’s right ankle and jammed the spike atop the two-sided ax straight up into the beast’s under jaw. The creature backhanded the dwarv, and Malcolm flew over the couches, into the marble fireplace with a resounding crash, shattering the mantelpiece and painting above it. Colby shot at the thing from his vantage point and Lelani let fly two more arrows into the creature’s chest and neck. The room trembled at its roar, which hit them with the force and rage of an F5 tornado.
MacDonnell and Mal’s security man charged the creature. Cal managed to get his shield up before razor talons sliced him in three. The security man stood farther back shooting his Uzi point-blank into the beast’s torso, agitating the monster. When the Uzi’s clip emptied, it lunged past Cal toward the security guy and came down on his head with its massive open maw. An ugly crunch and a twist took the agent’s head clean off at the neck.
The headless body shook with seizure before hitting the floor. The beast spat the head at Allyn Grey. It bounced off the cleric and landed before him, covered in bloody mucus. The creature took a step toward the prince, but Lelani dropped her bow, put up her arms and erected a shield between them all just in time. The creature pounded and pounded, fixated on Daniel.
MacDonnell slashed at the tendons behind the knee joint with his sword. It roared with pain and turned back toward the knight. The creature swiped at him; he ducked then stepped back just out of the way of a second swipe. MacDonnell swung at the beast’s wrist, burying the sword halfway through. When the creature attacked again, MacDonnell finished the job, hacking through the rest of the sinew and bone, depriving the thing of its left paw. As it came at him, MacDonnell leaped over the couch, leading it around the grand room, away from the others. It lunged at him. He fell to the floor on his back and thrust his sword straight up into the monster’s throat—using the sword to keep its jaws at bay. The beast made a choking sound, a coughing gurgle, and spit blood on MacDonnell’s visor. A few more seconds of the sword in the beast drained the golem’s energy until it was spent, and it finally stopped moving.
“Everyone okay?” MacDonnell asked. The prince and Bree were unharmed, Clarisse nodded yes. Only Tim looked worse for wear.
Scott rushed over to help Malcolm, who was coming around. He shook his head. “What happened?” Mal asked.
“We got it,” Colby said. Everyone looked at the detective skeptically. “Uh,
he
got it,” Colby reiterated, pointing to MacDonnell.
“Ow, my head,” Malcolm said, as Scott helped him up.
“Good thing it broke your fall,” Cal said. “You could have hurt something vital.” He slapped Mal on the back and handed him his big silver ax.
2
Lelani checked the hallway outside the suite with an arrow notched on her bow. The torn and broken bodies of Malcolm’s security people were strewn everywhere. Blood dripped from the ceiling; the walls were smeared with it, as well as excrement and random unidentifiable goo. They looked like they had been put through a Cuisinart.
She stepped into the stairway—MacDonnell’s hand was suddenly on her shoulder, holding her back.
“I’ll go first,” he said. “You behind me. Mal and Colby cover the rear—everyone else between us.”
They went up the stairwell single file. On the landing just before the roof another creature was mortally wounded, bleeding, but not yet dead. MacDonnell easily slid his sword into the beast’s back. After a few seconds, it was dead.
They continued onto the open roof where diced and sliced remains of more security people lay about. All of Malcolm’s people were dead. They found Tom Dunning’s shredded torso in the mess. The top of his head had been bitten off.
Whatever Malcolm Robbe paid these people, it wasn’t enough. Mal’s thoughts turned inward, trying to wrap his head around the human cost of this endeavor. He brought these people into this fight—to tackle things they were never trained to handle. Scott let Mal rest his head upon his chest and he put an arm of support around his partner.
Lelani found another creature among the carnage. “That’s four,” she said.
“If we’re keeping score, we’re surely losing,” Malcolm said, bitterly.
“We don’t know how many Dorn sent,” Cal said.
“He would have been limited by his mana reserves,” said Lelani. “I’d guess twenty at most.”
“I’ve got three climbing up this side,” Colby said from the southern edge of the roof. “Halfway up.”
“Three over here,” Mal said, on the western side. “The same.”
“Two here,” Daniel said from the north. “Farther down.”
Cal grumbled, irritated at his team for letting Daniel walk to the edge alone. He pointed at Allyn and then pointed at Daniel as if to say
Fetch and watch
.
Lelani suddenly turned southeast.
“There!” she said, pointing to the tall thin building with the radiating decorative silver crown and spire.
She threw her bow to the ground to ward off another attack. The force of it pushed her back, invisible hooves tearing into the top covering, toward the edge of the roof.
“Dorn’s on the Chrysler Building,” Malcolm said. “Why the hell would he be there?”
Reverend Grey stepped up to get a good view of the Chrysler Building. He looked around the roof, taking in Midtown Manhattan from the forty-two-story vantage point.
“My God,” he said. He turned to Lelani. “Can’t you see it? That building is a conduit. A segment of the lay river flows into our reality at that point, and the building is saturated with that energy, focuses it. Dorn can master all he surveys from that position.”
Another attack came at them—Lelani just barely got her defenses up, but it mattered little. The attack overwhelmed her and shattered the mana stones on the roof. They were out of reserves of magic to maintain the shields. All Lelani had left was her personal supply, barely enough to protect a few people in close quarters.
Fear gripped the centaur like never before. “We have to get off this roof,” she told MacDonnell.
They heard the remaining creatures tear wildly into the building from below … from whatever floors they’d reached when the shield dissipated—they were in the building and in the stairwells.
“The copters?” Colby Dretch asked.
Scott pulled the state-of-the-art radiophone from his ear. An ashen look descended on him. “Uh … this whole area has been declared off limits by the NYPD. Cops won’t let any birds off the ground.”
“Shit!” Mal yelled.
Disbelief and despair settled into the group. MacDonnell looked deflated.
“We are so fucked!” cried Tim.
For once, Lelani agreed with the feckless musician.
CHAPTER 41
JERSEY BOYS
1
“Everyone downstairs!” Cal ordered. “Colby, you take the rear, Mal and Lelani up front with me, everyone else in the middle.” They descended single file. Cal could hear the beasts’ echoes below rushing up the well. He couldn’t account for the other stairwells, but there were definitely two in this one.
“Mal, do you think we should risk the freight elevator?”
“Big steel box sounds safe to me. They’re coming up and we head down.”
“Can’t we take the regular elevator?” Daniel asked.
“She wouldn’t fit with all these people,” Cal said, pointing to his redheaded wizard. “Lelani and I will hold these two golems while you get to the service corridor,” he told Malcolm.
Lelani shot down the stairwell, her arrows hitting their marks every time. By the time the two beasts rounded the platform below them, each began to resemble a pincushion. Lelani drew the knife she’d confiscated from Symian and together they made short work of the beasts, which were already half dead before they reached the pair’s landing. Lelani retrieved her knife and showed it to Cal.
“Pure faerie silver,” she told him. “I hesitate to use it because if I cut myself, I will have no magic for the better part of a day.” She sheathed it carefully and secured it to her belt.
They were shocked to find the rest of the party with two more beasts—one dead by Malcolm’s bloody axes, and the other growling and snapping but unable to move from its spot. It was pinned by an invisible force.
“What’s going on?” Callum asked.
“It was so cool!” Daniel shouted. “Reverend Grey pointed that piece of metal and they both just…”
“A binding,” Grey said. “I can hold one for a few minutes.”
“Why is it still alive?” Cal asked.
“I’m going to attempt to communicate with it,” the reverend said.
“You can do that?” asked Clarisse.
Something about the beasts disturbed Cal greatly. He hadn’t been able to put his finger on it because of the frenetic pace leading up to this moment, but now, with the golem immobile, he understood that it was their eyes—gunmetal gray and almost human looking. It was more than just an element of humanity; the glimmer of intelligence had an intimate quality. He recognized that gaze but not its source … not the eyes of nightmares. They evoked a feeling of home to him. It must be part of Dorn’s magic—causing Callum to suffer a deep sadness every time he struck a deathblow and saw the light fade from these golems—like he was eradicating pieces of his soul.