Chapter 21 #3
A small arc of lightning pierced Mal’s shoulder.
He fell to one knee. Taran cried out behind him.
Mal’s shoulder turned black, overtaken by his shadow.
He pulled himself up and glimpsed Taran’s hand; a black ooze was eating at it.
Taran kept fighting, but with every blast, with each strike, they lost ground.
“I need his heart,” Taran said, a whisper in the storm. “Only you can get it.” Mal looked at his hands, smoking shadow covering bone. Mal forced out a nod.
“Don’t hold back,” Taran said, and then he vanished.
Fear and panic gripped Mal’s spine. A laugh rang out. Then an explosion of blue light. Mal let go and embraced all that he hated, all of himself.
The maelstrom stopped. The footsteps quieted. The dirt settled.
Mal remained unmoved, a skeleton emblazed in shadow, the white circles in his eyes shining out in the night.
Mazino seemed taken back—not scared or hateful, but delighted.
“You are magnificent,” Mazino muttered as he glided forward. Rain pattered on bone as the skeletons halted around them.
“A true horror to behold. They must hate you. Such power.”
Mal felt the look his parents gave him burning into his being.
“They force us out, lock us away. Keep from us all that is human.”
The years Mal spent isolating himself pushed into his mind.
“They fear all that we are. Even you have learned to hate our gift.”
Mazino drew closer. An arrogant smile on his oozing face.
“This is your truth, and they will always hate you for it. You know this. I can feel it within you.”
Mazino held out a hand.
“Together we could have all that was taken from us. Accept who you truly are.”
“I already have.”
Mal plunged his hand into the black ooze and grabbed at the ruby within.
He tore it out and held it up high. Mazino recoiled, the ooze chasing after the gemstone.
Taran appeared above him, a glowing blue angel in the storm; he took the ruby in both hands, then, surging with power, Taran flew upward into the sky.
Taran focused everything he had into the stone.
Mazino’s sickly form lurched upward. The two floated in the air, a swirling mass of lightning and hate.
A blue haze grew around them and the air began to crackle and thicken.
A smell like chlorine filled Mal’s nostrils and what now passed as his skin began to pinch and tingle.
A rumbling buzz built as Taran got higher and higher, vibrating Mal’s very being.
Mal fell to the floor, staring up at the writhing mass of lightning that surrounded Taran.
The sound built to a hideous crescendo. Taran raised his hands toward the sky. Lightning struck.
Des’s vision was rocked by an explosion.
An orb of blue light erupted above the graveyard; piercing lightning lashed out in every direction destroying the ground beneath it.
She looked down at the knife sticking out of her chest. Her breaths were shallow, incomplete.
Kosh seemed frozen in place above her. What was left of his hands were trembling.
“I just, I just …”
The skeletons around her collapsed into piles of bone. Kosh seemed as if he was struck by some painful malady. He swayed as though nauseous.
Des saw something appear in the dark. A figure standing behind Kosh. A scratching silhouette cut out of the world itself, barely visible in the night. Des smiled.
“I just want to live.” Kosh screamed as a skeletal arm punched through his chest, lifting him off his feet.
Bony fingers clutched ahold of his pendant as guts and viscera fell to the ground.
Kosh’s ghost screamed as the creature unsleeved the body into a slump on the floor.
Another bony hand pulled something slowly from the pendant.
There was an explosion of white. A ghostly figment of Kosh fought and wrestled with shadowy creatures, but to no avail.
With a shriek, Kosh’s soul was sent on. Mal let go, and fell to his knees besides Des.
“There’s my monster,” Des said, weakened and spluttering.
Mal sliced his palm with a penknife he had in his pocket, then gently brought his hand to her face. His blood flowed out the bottom of his palm as the red returned to Des’s eyes. She took a deep breath in and sighed.
“I don’t have a cookie,” she said, a red smile on her face.
“I’ll let you off this time,” Mal said, helping her up off her back.
As she sat up, she wrenched the knife from her chest and threw it at Kosh’s body. They both watched as the wound slowly pushed itself back together.
“Are you …”
“Covered in guts?” Mal said “Yes, I think I am.”
“You didn’t have to, you know, fist him like that …”
“It felt appropriate at the time.” Mal smiled as the rain rolled down their faces.
“You guys alive over there?” a voice that sounded like Hala’s yelled.
“I think so,” Mal yelled back.
“Is Elaine okay?” Des yelled.
“Yeah, all good over here,” Yu yelled back.
All three of them poked their heads up over the wall that sat between the road and the field.
The others looked only slightly less worse for wear than they did.
Mal let out all his pain and exhaustion in a long sigh.
They’d done it. It had been a bloody mess and they’d nearly died, but they’d done it.
“We should probably go find Walters …” Mal said, embracing Des.
“Good plan, Madstone,” Des said with a smile.