Chapter 40 Rising, Inexorable
Rising, Inexorable
No time to wish Jake was providing fire while Erik and Ignatius took the brunt of the attack, retreating only when forced to.
No time for anything other than stabbing the double-lobed eye of the nearest hound—the guns just couldn’t put them down fast enough, knifework was his only hope—wrenching the blade free, kicking another one in the snout as it lunged for him, a quick sharp curse turning into a blood-glittering dart on his lips, splattering on yet another hound’s face and making the monstrous thing squeal.
Its falsetto, pain and rage mixed, scraped through his skull, but he didn’t care.
Sanity was overrated, anyway. It was an investment with no return, especially when you’d just thrown a woman into a hole leading to the very veins of the planet without preparation and without warning, betraying her trust and killing her outright.
He’d killed plenty since becoming a Son. It was inevitable, an act performed several times each night, and it was just a job.
But today, in the bowels of a sanctuary, he’d committed murder. Even if he’d had no choice, even if it was a cleaner death than these things would grant her—if the Flame chose this one time to not answer a lirai’s need, it was unspeakable, inexcusable, and he was doomed.
He always had been. The paper-whisper laughter in his head was proof. The Mad God was pleased, and now it only remained to take slow, painful vengeance upon an errant Son.
More hounds crowded behind the dying leash-holder, scuttling and keening.
Erik spat defiance, ignoring the blood coursing down his thigh and the burning of hound venom.
The slices on his shoulders and cheeks—barely missing his eyes because he had time to snap counter-curses—bled freely as well, and the smell of claret would madden them.
The last hound died as he wrenched the knife back and forth in an eyesocket, grinding against bone, and he knew that the leng-spider crouching above the screeching lun’nyie would spring and he would have to take the hit.
He was going to go down, and they were going to feast on his guts.
His left knee buckled; he folded just as the thing leapt and when it reached apogee, its eyes glowing with hellfire and the dying leash-holder hissing yet another curse, Erik’s shoulder hit stone wall with bruising force and his eyes stung.
Stung? No, they were scoured, a nuclear flash burrowing inward through tender, bleeding holes, and at first he thought one of the unclean filling the stairs’ throat had managed to spit acid at him, a rugose horror like the taik flowers or a wingéd ghoul-cat.
But those were creatures of deep darkness and the taik weren’t ambulatory enough to chase; they simply lay in musty corners, waiting.
Erik staggered, almost going down in a graceless heap, but a vast painless wind was at his back, holding him upright.
The sensation was welcome, warm, and familiar, for all he’d rarely felt it before receiving his posting and arriving at a frontline temple with Ignatius in the lead and Jake in tow, both Elder and Younger nervous at being sent to an inactive temple and hoping the assignment wouldn’t last long.
But it had. It had lasted forever, and he’d never asked Ignatius if he, like his boys, longed for a chance at something else.
What the hell?
It poured through him, a delicate, immensely powerful touch closing the worst of the wounds as it filled him from toe to scalp with brimming pleasure.
A soft inhalation drew him back from the doorway he was supposed to die guarding, but he couldn’t struggle.
He couldn’t even twitch; the invisible force dragged him free of the aperture before surging through him and away, stone creaking as it sought to contain a more-than-physical immensity.
The sharp, evil laughter inside his skull cut off with the feedback scratch of a needle dragging across a record’s valleys, gouging and splintering. Erik’s arms jerked wide, dripping knives running with brilliance, and that was the pain in his eyes.
It was light.
Rainbow coruscations edged with dappled gold flooded the stairs, rising inexorably, and a mad god’s hunters died under its lash.
Erik was held ruthlessly in place, a lens focusing the laser to killing intensity and paradoxically spreading its force wide enough to catch every beetle in a killing jar.
A low thrum, every church organ in the world all giving out the same chord at once, passed through him and receded like a tide along a rocky shore.
He dropped, a discarded doll. Knives clattered on stone, a sweet metallic chiming. Blood crackled, dried on his skin by an immense warm draft smelling of golden spice, warm bread, and everything good in the world.
Erik’s eyelids fluttered. Illumination flicker-strobed, clean glorious golden light reaching into his brain and shutting the basement door with a bang, leaving the Mad God howling outside. The mark on his wrist gave a painless twitch; he spilled onto his side and lay, exhausted.
And behind him, light as a leaf, he heard a pair of sneakers kiss stone.