The Shadow Realm (The Age of Dawn Book 4) (24 page)

Walter slipped into Warrior’s Focus. The shadows grew darker and everything moved a little slower, making it easier to process. He felt the urge to run and never look back. The village had the appearance of being abandoned. He felt his skin tingle as if there were eyes on him from all around. He peered through windows and into empty hallways through doors left open. Not a person in sight. There was an axe on the ground before the tavern, its haft a deep cheery. The earth was scarred if as it had been tossed.

“No!” Grimbald threw a leg off the Blood Donkey and stumbled from it before it came to a stop. Grimbald bent over the axe for a second and jerked up. He leaped up the steps leading to the front door. The wind sighed, air coursing through the tavern’s crevasses like a death rattle.

The banded door of the Hissing Gooseberry had a splintered hole through it the size of a melon. It hung from a single hinge at the top, the others torn free from the frame. Glass, nails and strips of wood littered the landing, crunching under Walter’s boots as he followed Grimbald inside.

“Pa!” Grimbald roared. “Where are you?”

Walter followed him in and stopped a few feet after the entrance. Grimbald ran behind the bar, and rummaged through a storage closet. The main room was dark, windows still covered with curtains. A log popped in the hearth, smoldering with embers. A pile of beer steins were clustered in the middle of the long bar, beside them a neatly folded towel. The scent of spilled wine and beer clung to the air, an odor not even the cleanest of taverns could remove.

“Pa!” Grimbald shouted. A tree creaked from outside a window. Walter met his eyes for a moment. They were frantic and wet with tears. “Help me damn it, would you?”

Walter nodded, eyes involuntarily tracing a path towards the stairs leading to the second floor. He felt numb to the pain. Numb to it all. Numb to the world. What more could it do to him?

Grimbald’s lips twisted and he pushed past him, stomping up the stairs. Walter’s body felt limp, easily cast aside. There was hardly enough strength in him to keep standing. The wood screamed and dust rained down from between the boards.

Something wet struck Walter’s nose. He wiped it and swallowed, smearing red on his fingers. He looked up at the swathe of blood welling out over the swollen wood, clinging there like a puddle defying gravity. He couldn’t take his eyes off it.

A shriek of pain, agony unlike anything Walter had ever heard came from Grimbald. The floor thumped and rattled. “No! No, why? Why?”

With each hammer of Grimbald’s fist on the floor above, more blood fell onto Walter’s face. He couldn’t pull himself away from it, couldn’t stop staring at it. His friend’s shrieks became blubbering sobs, echoing down the stairs. That wail was agony in its truest form. This world, the land of the living was just like the Shadow Realm. They were mirror images of each other. The Shadow Realm showed the truth in the hearts of men, didn’t disguise it behind false smiles, nodding heads, and kind eyes.

He dropped to his knees and dry heaved onto the floor. His abdomen spasmed and wrenched at a stomach without content to expunge. Walter fought for breath and wiped the thick strand of drool swinging from his lip. He staggered up on unsure legs and gripped the handrail leading upstairs. Grimbald needed him. He squeezed its intricate ridges, eyes locked on its smooth curves. One step at a time, he trudged up the stairs, eyed the nooks and dents in the handrail forged in the harrows of time. There was a heavy thump and Grimbald’s sobbing drew out with ragged breaths.

Walter reached the top of the stairs and turned. Grimbald’s back was against the far wall, protectively clutching something round in his hands. The bed had been made, all the corners firmly tucked in. Walter saw Grimbald’s father’s body sprawled out on a round carpet, flat and incapable of absorbing the all blood oozing from his neck. The body was on its back, half a tattered robe opened on one side. Streaks of blood made a path from his father to Grimbald, his shoulders heaving. One of the curtains had been drawn, casting Grim’s side in a morning ray. The edges of his axes shone with its brilliance.

Walter took a step.

“This is a dream. This didn’t happen. Didn’t happen, didn’t happen, didn’t happen.” Grimbald rocked back and forth, arms wrapping tighter around his father’s severed head. The metal on his axes banged against the wall with his rocking.

“Grim.” Walter lifted his right arm, lips forming a line at the stump. He lowered it. He slowly crept his way over to him, doing his best to avoid the blood.

“He couldn’t have done this, could he? Could he?” He repeated himself at least ten times, rocking and nodding. Rocking and nodding.

Walter stopped in front of the body, saw where a blade had likely cut through the wood. Juzo usually liked to kill with his hands, he knew. There was no proof of anything here. He walked over to the broken window and pushed aside the other curtain half, its texture rough as a potato sack. The window was broken through the middle, a few remaining shards lanced at the center.

Walter peered through it, down at the square. Figures shifted in the shadows of doorways. They skirted along houses, trying, but failing to stay in the few remaining shadows. He saw a man’s leg. Caught the reflection of a scarlet eye, gleaming like a ruby into his. A boy peered up at him, one corner of his lip raising into a snarl. His lips were tainted with the far too familiar pink of blood.

“Grim.” Walter snorted. Men, women and children were converging out of houses and shops, meeting at the well. There were at least fifty of them, all with eyes glowing with the color of a dying sun, skin white as ivory. He swallowed. “Grim.” Walter felt his guts sink to his feet. Juzo was there, beckoning for them to gather round. He was pointing at the tavern in three distinct directions. The mass split off into three groups. “Grimbald!” One group strode down the path leading to the front door. The other two headed for the tavern’s flanks, forming the shape of a trident.

“Grim, we have to go.” Walter turned to look at him.

“What! What do you want?” he snapped, recoiling like a scared dog. He wrapped the bloody skull tight in his arms.

Walter almost choked on the words. “The Blood Eaters. Juzo.” He shook his head. “You were right. They’re coming for us.”

“What?” He shot up from the ground, his father’s head tumbling unceremoniously from his lap. It hit the floor with a thump and rolled into the leg of a bedframe. One of its eyes stared at Walter, its nose crushed flat; its neck flattened like it was designed for a puppeteer’s hand. Maybe that’s all it would take to bring it back to life. A well-trained hand to go in there; make the mouth work, eyes blink and lips contort into a smile. “I’ll kill them all,” Grimbald said. Walter had no doubt he would, if he could. Grimbald had a savage look in his eyes, axes drawn and already bathed in blood. His polished armor shone like red stained glass.

Grimbald screamed and tore down the stairs. He held his axes to the side, drawing long scars in the walls as he went, a warning for anyone bold enough to tread near him.

Walter followed, fingering the tails of the Dragon, brushing his mind against the cool feathers of the Phoenix. “Juzo,” he whispered. “Why?”

Screaming came from the barroom before Walter got there. The clanging of steel on steel rang out. Grimbald swung with both axes, chopping the arms free from a wiry man’s shoulders. A sword clattered against a chair. Blood streaked the air, spilling onto a table and chairs. Grimbald wore a butcher’s grin, seeming to find joy in the dark work.

“You need to take their heads.” Walter said, nodding at the man crawling on his knees and face. Grim’s axe chopped into the wood, severing the man’s head with the pity one would pay a bothersome insect.

Grimbald turned towards the door and smashed his axes together, welcoming them all to taste his edges. His breath hissed through his nose. He sat there waiting like an unsprung bear trap.

Glowing eyes and hissing throats sprinted up the path, lunging for the front door. Walter caught the sight of Juzo standing behind them all. He met his eye for an instant. Juzo shot him a fevered stare. Walter nodded, accepting that it had come to this. If Juzo wouldn’t let the surrogates go, Walter would have to do it for him.

“Stop!” Walter raised his hand in a warning they ignored. He gave them a chance to turn and run. One chance was all he had time for. “Stay there,” he barked at Grimbald.

Grimbald inched back towards the wall and banged his axes together with a piercing clang. Veins thick as ropes spiraled around his forearms, twitching as he adjusted his grip.

Walter closed his eyes and let the Dragon fill him up from fingers to toes. Its chaos whirled like a tidal wave in his body, every muscle flexing and convulsing with boiling rage. Fire crackled and roared before the landing, filling the air with licking flames. Two Blood Eaters stumbled through it, screaming as their flesh cooked. Walter opened and closed his fist, making a portal horizontally split the air. It severed the two in half at the torso and sending their ruined bodies squelching into the barroom. A severed arm burned and mindlessly crawled at him.

Walter pushed with his hands and a volley of eight fireballs tore through the roaring wall. He heard their screams of surprise, smelled their burning flesh on the air. It was a smell one never grew accustomed too.

Shapes flitted past the curtains in the corners of Walter’s eyes. The windows shattered with arms and legs bursting through, sending shards tinkling to the floor. Grimbald leaped to one side of the room. He swung with both axes at a fat man worming his way through the window, stuck on his own bulging belly. They chopped into his chest with the cracking of bones. Blood splashed onto the floor as Grimbald freed his axes. One came down on the writhing man, taking his head.

Walter slashed with his stump at the burning entryway and a lash of fire cut through the doorway in a great arc. New shrieks and cries cut the air. The air inside filled with black smoke from a few other burning bodies who had crossed the gauntlet of flames. He blasted them with a spiral of air, tossing them, rolling out. The groaning of strained wood rained down from above. He must have damaged a support beam. He reckoned he’d have to be more careful.

Grimbald screamed with every fatal slice of his axes. He ran from window to window cutting them down as they tried to squeeze in. The widows were too small for even the scrawniest man, their efforts futile. His screaming became seconds of sickened howling followed by uncontrollable sobbing. He hacked through the bodies of men and women he likely once knew. People that had cared for him, familiar faces all. No form of cruelty would pass without sprouting its wicked bloom.

They were meat to be put the flame, nothing more now. Walter let the wall of fire dissipate and strode through the front door. The fading flames sent warm air lapping under his cloak. The charred wooden landing cracked under his boot, splinters lanced his shin, dropping his leg into the gravel below. He stared around, searching for Juzo.

The square was empty now except for the mangled bodies littering the ground. A leg hewed at the knee burned with tongues of Dragon fire. A small boy’s head had been torn apart by a fireball, split down the middle. A bare foot twitched, a singed boot lying beside it. An abdomen had been split in a diagonal from hip to shoulder, offal charred and strewn about a bale of hay. A bearded man in overalls lay quivering on the ground, hands held over his crotch. Blood spat from the wound.

Walter jerked his leg free and snorted a breath through his nose. He staggered over to the man in overalls, eyes red as the river of blood in the Shadow Realm. The man hissed at him with a feral rage. Walter tilted his palm towards its face and splayed his fingers. “You’re not going to like the world that comes next.” A cone of fire roared from his hand, vaporizing the flesh from the man’s head and blackening the bone. A tuft of hair smoldered on the side of his ear with a curling tendril of smoke. The Dragon pushed him onward, legs pumping with strength.

“Juzo!” he roared. “Look at what you’ve done! All this blood. All of it is on your hands.”

“Why?” Grimbald screamed from inside, axe thudding into wood. “Why? Why?”

Walter stumbled around to the side of the Hissing Gooseberry. There were at least ten Blood Eater’s there. A few slammed bloody fists into the walls. One was trying to ram his head through it. The rest were clawing over each other trying to get through the narrow windows, like roaches fleeing at the sight of torchlight.

They were lambs for the slaughter and once again, he’d have to play the part of the butcher. One day the karmic scales would have to balance. How would he pay for all this pain? Had he already paid?

“Burn!” he roared. Fire sprouted up from the ground in waves, crashing over the Blood Eater’s with volcanic heat. They screamed and writhed, tearing off clothing as if that would stop the melting of their flesh and cooking bones. He saw an eyeball push from a socket and pop in the roaring heat. Their screaming ripped at his mind, raked his heart, tore at his skin. He had to stop it, couldn’t take it any longer.

He narrowed his eyes, willed the fire to burn hotter and brighter. He poured more of the Dragon’s rage into it. It flared with a burst of light as bright as the sun. It filled his vision with a flash of white, putting everything else in a single shade of gray. The screaming cut off in an instant. He heard a clattering like breaking porcelain.

He rubbed his stinging eye, waiting for the after image of that flash to fade. He opened his eye and waited for the colors of the world to return. He braced himself for a sword cut, biting teeth and ripping claws. He saw what remained of the Blood Eaters as the colors of the world returned. All that remained was a pile of rib cages, thigh bones, arms and skulls tangled with bits of flesh that managed to escape the conflagration. They were black as coal as if they had been pulled from a smith’s forge.

“Shit, Walt.” Grumbled stared at him through the ruined wall. Most of the boards had been torched away. His Dragon fire left just the supporting columns in place. One them cracked and split, coughing out charred dust.