Chapter 24
Incursion
The baffle broke into shivering pieces; Erik almost took the door off its reinforced hinges.
His potential huddled amid rumpled sheets and blankets, her eyes white-ringed and her mouth contorted with a cry of utter terror.
That was worrying enough, but the bigger danger was the cracks flowering over the ice-freighted window, rippling and bulging as sorcerous energy wedded to its physical structure sought vainly to ward off something deadly.
Oh, shi—
He launched himself for the bed, hoping he wouldn’t snap any of her fragile bones, and hit just as the window exploded, broken glass and sorcery-stiffened iron shrapnel peppering walls, furniture, and floor.
A burning slice touched his calf right before he hit the ground on the left side of the bed, his arms full of stiff, still-screaming, impossibly small woman.
The oneiros dug into his chest, a dilating scorch-spot, and he was upright in a trice, wishing he’d been able to roll her to the other side.
As it was, he’d be bottled with her in a corner, which wasn’t so bad—he could hold out for a long time, if he had to—but it wasn’t optimal.
Still, she was unhurt. There was no delicious, wickedly perfumed tinge of lirai blood or trauma filling the room; the oneiros flashed with an uncoordinated flood of a Dreamer’s power, lighting up the battlefield as hairy questing tentacles coalesced through the shattered window.
The bulk of the creature was trapped outside by the temple’s solidity, and as soon as he realized as much Erik bent, his fist closing around her right arm, and hauled.
His lirai, now fully awake, screamed again and began to struggle. The tentacles, tiny hairs bristling at the sound and sensing a high-value meal within range, snaked for the corner with spooky, fluid speed—
—and retreated, bunching against themselves, as Erik lopped off two sensitive, questing tips with one knifestrike.
The lirai was a vulnerable softness behind him; he backed her up by the simple expedient of retreating so she was trapped against the wall between the bedside table and the corner; then he exhaled sharply, dropping into the groove of the battle like a record player’s needle into the vinyl valley.
Next came getting her over the bed and out into the hall, but he couldn’t do that until the thing in the window was at least partly driven away.
The wall groaned, the temple’s stones and massive timber frames tolling like a bell.
Something whizzed past his head—it was the pretty stained-glass lamp from the tiny bedside table, the twin to the one on the nightstand.
A good, accurate throw, and glass shattered against rubbery, squeaking tentacles.
Far more damaging was the burst of weak, untutored power wedded to it.
It was nothing more than a gifted civilian might throw under extreme duress, but when focused by the oneiros it must’ve stung like hell. The thing writhed, its screech spiraling into a diseased, sawing falsetto as its arms curled like salted slugs.
The knot’s outside. It’ll heave itself through, given enough time. The thought flashed through Erik and away, and something soft hit his back.
It was her fist. She punched him again, with more enthusiasm than skill or force, and Erik turned his head slightly as the tentacled shadowbeast pulled back, ready for another assault upon shattered stone, shards of sorcerous protection attempting to heal the breach. “It’s me,” he snapped. “Calm down.”
His lirai went still, but whether it was from fear, shock, or because she’d heard and understood was an open question.
Erik inhaled, bracing himself, and when the beast at the window heaved forward again he lunged, knives biting deep in unholy flesh.
It lurched back, surprised by the sudden stinging pain—which was exactly what he’d hoped for.
“Now!” he yelled. “Over the bed!”
She had far more presence of mind than the usual civilian. Liv scrambled onto the mattress, her knee catching in tangled blankets; she spilled down on the other side, freeing him from the need to keep her defended in the corner.
Now he had some space. If she ran for the door…
But she probably had forgotten the door even existed, at this point.
His lirai kept going, scrabbling across hardwood on hands and knees with little bruising sounds, and fetched up against the dark wooden wardrobe, making a soft hopeless sound that tightened every string in his body as Erik danced, knocking tentacles aside, lunging, one of his boots landing on a rubbery, ichor-spraying, slippery writhing that threatened to throw him if he hadn’t been moving so fast. Superhuman speed was a blessing; he rammed a knife into what he sensed was a direction-finding appendage loaded with dark nerves and was rewarded with a blast of foul air as the thing gave a partly psychic shriek.
The oneiros flashed, and in that transitory glow the thing was exposed in pitiless detail as it tried heaving through the crumbling wall again.
It wasn’t like a juvenile shoggoth to attack a temple, even a minor Sons building without a resident lirai and access to the Flame.
How the hell had it broken the perimeter?
Where was Jake, where was Father? He was making a lot of noise, they had to be alerted.
More unclean ichor sprayed, stinking and smoking; he retreated step by step, teaching the thing that the snack it was after had sharp spines and would use them.
“Get up,” he yelled, hoping she wasn’t yet in shock or crazed with fear.
“On your feet, lirai.” Erik almost barked soldier instead, as if she were Jake on a training run long ago.
That was when he heard the other noises—terrible slipslithering, tapping, inhuman steps, groan-creaking exhalations—coming from the wrong direction.
From the door he’d busted down in such a hurry, and the hall beyond.
Erik’s entire body turned to ice; for a moment he thought he was trapped in one of the Mad God’s nightmares.
The temple was not just breached but outright invaded, and the larger liraim was about to become a deathtrap.
He hopped onto the bed, ichor-filthy boots sinking into softness, and was at her side a moment later as the tentacles, many bleeding as they writhed, turned themselves to the work of busily widening the hole in the wall.
Most shadowbeasts weren’t exactly smart, but they were cunning. And robust.
Stone crumbled, and when Erik reached down with his spattered, tainted left hand she grabbed on with surprising strength, her fingers biting hard.
He hauled her up again, trying to be careful of her fragility; the oneiros spoke once more, a scintillating gleam describing the thing in pitiless detail.
His lirai let out a short, wounded cry at the sight of cilia-crusted tentacles slithering forward, some hanging by ropes of wet gristle, others painted with steaming, gushing foulness.
“It’s all right,” he found himself saying, though this was the very definition of far from fucking all right, thank you. “It’s okay,” he continued. “I’m here, you’re okay. Don’t look at it.”
“H-hard not to,” she stammered, and his heart hurt. For a moment he thought the beast had flung a spine-dart at him, never mind that it was the wrong species to do so. He snapped a quick glance at her, checking for damage.
Her hair was a soft, glorious cloud, her arms and legs bare. The black tank top and grey boxers she wore to bed clung to her curves, and if he hadn’t been full to overflowing with battle-rage he might have stopped for a moment to consider her state of undress with some appreciation.
Instead, he grabbed her arm and edged sideways, keeping an eye on the tentacles.
“Door,” he said, and they were almost there when the first jana-spider scuttled through and he shoved her for cover.
His lirai screamed, landing with a thump in the space between wardrobe’s flank and the wall; Erik was prepared to die fighting when a solid length of silver blurred down, piercing the thing’s fungus-starred carapace.
Bulbous red grape-bunch eyes flickered and the spider screeched, mandibles clicking angrily.
Ignatius twisted the broadsword viciously, ripping it free of the floor and tearing unlife from the thing with a muttered, sorcerous word.
Relief was a dirty orange explosion in Erik’s chest, but there was no time.
Now he heard gunfire echoing in the hall—Jake, mopping up jana-spiders and whatever else was scurrying out there.
Ignatius stepped over the thing’s remains and glanced at the lirai huddling behind Erik, her hands clasped to her head, mouth trembling, her eyes rolling like a maddened horse’s.
Father nodded fractionally and moved forward, thin purple ichor slithering down the broadsword’s shining length.
Erik promptly consigned the thing in the window to the realm of not my problem and hauled his potential for the door. She went almost willingly, and he had a terrifying desire to laugh.
She’d thrown a lamp. At a tentacled horror most normals would go gratefully insane upon encountering.
Good job, beautiful. Just stay with me, and it’ll be fine. The last part was a lie, but that wasn’t why he swallowed the sentence. It tasted like iron going down, no doubt his mouth was bleeding.
The hall was a shambles, splattered with purple ichor and scattered with jana husks crumble-rotting, sending up curls of nasty steam.
Jake put two bullets in the last spider, popping both primary compound eyes before glancing up, his face a feral mask and blue gaze furiously alight.
“Garage,” he snapped, his gaze passing down the lirai’s body in a smooth arc, looking for damage.
It didn’t even halt at her chest or hips, thank the Dreamers. “Let’s go.”
Their lirai stopped, digging her heels in.
“Come on,” Erik husked, his voice husky-strange after combat yells, and the liraim shook with a combination of the tentacled thing’s keening and Ignatius’s battle-roar, a sound too immense to come from such a narrow, seemingly elderly chest.
It had been a long damn time since Erik had heard that particular sound. Then he realized she was barefoot and the floor was awash with ichor. Shit.
His potential shook her head, wildly, but he’d already sheathed his remaining knife and bent, scooping her into his arms. Liv let out a short surprised sound, and Jake rolled his eyes.
“Fine, take the easy job,” Younger Brother snarled, the fey glee of a good fight still contorting his face. “Let’s go.”