Born of Hatred (36 page)

I used air magic to push him away, but he'd sprung backwards, the gust of wind missing him by inches. We circled one another, watching for any signs of attack. My magic couldn't kill or seriously hurt him, but my sword could, and he knew it. And so could my other blades.

He avoided the first of the small daggers, but the second and third kept him on his toes long enough for me to close the gap between us and stab the sword through his heart. 

The ghoul shrieked as I dragged my sword from its chest, black blood oozing out of the wound. The ghoul collapsed to the ground and I wasted no time in using the Jian to decapitate it, just before its friend rejoined the fray. 

I barely managed to stop the second ghoul from tearing my ribcage apart, its claws glancing off my arm. 

Blood dripped down the back of my hand, making the sword’s hilt slippery. 

The ghoul barely paused before launching another attack, sprinting toward me and swiping continuously with its deadly claws in the hope that something would catch. I dodged or blocked the first few, but I couldn't keep it up forever, and the ghoul only had to get lucky once.

I released an explosion of fire directly between us, which gave me space, but the ghoul merely waited until the flames had died down and then walked toward me. 

I waited until the ghoul was close enough and unleashed a fresh inferno. There was nowhere it could dodge in time to avoid the flames, and while it wouldn't kill the ghoul, the howls of pain told me that it had done enough. The ghoul flailed wildly in my direction, and I dodged aside, plunging my Jian into its neck and tearing open the jugular. A few seconds later its head joined that of the first, rolling across the ground until it stopped by a set of steps.

I left the ghouls to dissolve into the earth and made my way toward the bar at the end of the street. As I stepped into the shadow of the large building, several windows were smashed and shots were aimed at me. I sprinted behind the nearest wall and tried to ascertain exactly where the shots were coming from. 

I edged to the far end of the wall and peered around to the bar again. The ground floor window was smashed and a rifle barrel poked through the broken glass. The same was true of the window directly above it. Both rifles were still aimed at the point where their users had last seen me before I vanished from sight. 

A quick sprint across to the nearest building adjacent to where I was, and through the open front door, made sure that I was no longer a target for either of the two rifles, but it also put me in direct contact with another barren—the young red-haired woman who had been sent to kill me in the bath.

She was crouched on the ground, feeding on a small animal of some kind and hadn't noticed me. A small jet of fire left my finger tip and hit her in the temple, ending her suffering. She slumped forward just as a bullet crashed through the broken window beside me. I ran through the building to the rear and blasted the locked wooden door into tiny pieces.

I darted down the narrow opening between the buildings, stopping before it opened back out into the street. More shots were being fired at the front of the building I'd just left, and I wondered if the shooters actually had any idea of what they were doing. 

I made my way to the edge of the opening and, still concealed by the shadows of the buildings on either side of me, used air magic to gather as much of the loose dust and grit from the street as possible, and set it rotating until I had something that resembled a small sand storm. The shots stopped as the mass of grit and dirt got larger and larger until I flung it at the front of the bar. 

Glass shattered as the wind-controlled mass slammed into the bar windows, quickly followed by shouts and screams as that same glass was plucked up and added to the contents of the spinning cyclone.

The entire front of the building was ripped apart and flung inside at whoever was hiding there.  I sprinted to the front of the bar, as the wind died down, and found two men inside who were rubbing their eyes, both of whom I recognised as having worked for the sheriff. 

Too disorientated to fight back, they were easily put down with a gust of air, lifting them from their feet and slamming them into the nearest wall. They fell to the floor with a thud, as I made my way up the stairs to check for any other holdouts.

Sure enough, they were found without too much trouble. Two more armed men sat by the window at the end of the corridor. Neither of them appeared to be moving, and on closer inspection, I saw the long jagged piece of glass that had been torn from the ruined window and imbedded in the throat of one of them. The shock had apparently caused him to spin round and fire his shotgun directly into the chest of his companion—the same man that Chief Blacktail had taken prisoner. A fitting end to a partnership with murderers and monsters.

It took only few minutes more to check the rest of the upstairs and discover it empty, so I made my way back to the ground floor where I found Sheriff Bourne crawling toward the entrance. A large cut was seeping blood down his face. 

"So what hit you?" I asked, as I kicked him onto his back and relieved him of the silver revolver still in its holster. The sheriff winced in pain. Apparently the cut wasn't his only injury. Good.

He pointed behind me at a table leg which had come loose from its home, and apparently struck him in the head. 

"Well, you stay right there." I punched him in the face, knocking him out. I wasn't finished with the town yet.

I took Sam's father's revolver with me and stepped out of the bar as the first drops of rain fell. I fastened my coat and walked toward the sounds of battle as Sam ran around it, followed by two barren. 

"Drop," I shouted, and he dove to the floor as I launched a jet of fire hit at the two barren, incinerating them where they stood. 

"What the hell are you playing at?" I snapped at Sam, dragging him to his feet. "I told you to stay back, to stay away."

"And I told you, I need this," Sam's retort was full of anger, at me or at the sheriff, I wasn't sure which.

I swallowed my reply and I got back to more important things. "What are you doing here?"

Sam pointed behind him. "Sergeant Roberts and Chief Blacktail are fighting barren at a crossroads up the road from here, and they're being overrun. Sergeant Roberts asked me to find you. They need your help."

I was moving before he finished speaking, running in the direction he'd pointed. Sam kept pace for a few steps. 

"How many?" I asked. 

"Forty, maybe more. I think the whole town was turned into one of those things."

"Stay here," I commanded Sam and sprinted away without waiting for a reply. 

I was almost at the end of the street, when two barren burst from a house and ran toward me. I picked them both up with a gust of wind and flung them back at the building. The impact and loud crack suggested it would be the last thing they ever did. 

I rounded the corner and saw Chief Blacktail and Lieutenant Roberts, fighting side by side with daggers and swords, killing barren that got close, their men following suit. I was a hundred yards from them when Sergeant Roberts was knocked to the ground by a barren who leapt onto his back. Chief Blacktail killed the barren with an axe to the head and offered his hand to Sergeant Roberts who accepted and together they continued fighting. 

Despite their camaraderie and superior numbers, they were fighting barren who felt no fear or pain. There were no such things as retreat or surrender. If it wasn't a killing stroke on the first blow, they might not get a second chance.

I readied a huge charge of magical energy, but as I was about to release it, the barren stopped attacking en masse and turned toward the opposite end of the street. The human fighters took the opportunity to dispatch many of their foes, but around a dozen barren had already started to make their way toward whatever it was they were waiting for. 

"Get back," I shouted, fearing that Sky had failed her job and the lich was about to make an appearance. 

Chief Blacktail and Sergeant Roberts did as I asked and moved all of their men away from the now stationary barren, and back toward me. Some of the men had cuts and at least one had been rewarded for his efforts with a nasty gouge across the arm. 

"How many did you lose?" I asked. 

"Nine," Sergeant Roberts said. "Four were too wounded to continue and the other five died fighting."

"Eight," Chief Blacktail replied. "Three of those are wounded."

"Anyone got any bullets?" I asked.

"We're out," Sergeant Roberts said. "We sent the wounded back to the fort to get treated and prepare for the worst. We kept shooting the bastards, but they wouldn't stop coming."

"Is this about to get worse?" Chief Blacktail asked. 

I didn't answer. I wasn't sure what the answer was. The barren were milling around, all of them staring at the corner of the adjoining street. 

I thought about having everyone attack the barren, but if the lich were to make an appearance the humans would be too close to retreat without suffering heavy casualties. "I think we're about to find out," I finally managed. 

A man in a long, dark duster emerged from around the street corner and seemed to notice the barren. 

I breathed a sigh of relief. "Lower your weapons."

Everyone obeyed my order without hesitation.

The wind blew the man's long white hair over his shoulders, and one of the barren decided that was the moment to strike. It howled something and sprinted toward the newcomer, whose response was to raise one hand out on front of him. The barren kept running for a second and then just fell to the ground, twitched twice and was still.

Several of the remaining barren sought their own opportunity and charged the man. This time he raised both hands and once more the barren stopped running and fell to the ground. 

One barren climbed onto the roof of a nearby building and launched himself toward the stranger. The man didn't even move, he raised one hand, like before. But instead of dropping to the ground, the barren just stopped in mid-air, held by some invisible force, until the man clenched his hand in a fist and the barren exploded in a shower of blood.

All of the remaining barren remaining ran at the man, but none of them got within six feet of him. He waved one arm and they fell like downed trees, until only one remained. The man grabbed it by the throat as it ran toward him, lifting it off the ground until its feet were a few inches above the dirt and gravel. 

"Vermin," he said. "Your master is dead." He touched the snarling barren on the forehead with one finger, and the body went limp before being dropped back to earth, where it began to dissolve like its kin.

Despite my order to lower weapons, the fear and awe radiating off both the Crow and the soldiers was almost tangible. A measurable fog of thick terror, that hung in the air from what they'd just witnessed. 

The man walked past them all and embraced me. "It's good to see you," he said.

"Hades," I said with a smile. "I didn't realise you would be here, it's good to see you, too."

"I was in the area; a lich is not something to trifle with." He turned back as Sky and six men followed in what had been his path—one of them helped to walk by another, his leg heavily bandaged. 

"The lich had silver knives," he said, almost anticipating any questions I had about what had happened. "But he's no longer an issue."

Sky helped the injured man sit on the ground and then came over, embracing me. "I'm glad you're not hurt," she said.

"I'm fine," I said. "Although, both Chief Blacktail and Sergeant Roberts lost men today."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Hades said, turning to the two men. "They were brave to fight against these things. Your men will be honoured tonight when we remember our fallen."

"Thank you," Sergeant Roberts said, sounding more than a little confused. "What did you do back there?"

Hades glanced behind him. "Oh," he said as if only just aware that he might have done something out of the ordinary. "I removed their souls."

"Their souls?" Chief Blacktail asked. 

"Everything has a soul, even the most evil deplorable beings on earth. They might not be technically alive, but everything needs a soul to be able to function. A barren's is just twisted and rotten. I removed them."

"But one exploded,” Sergeant Roberts said.

"I used the energy I'd taken from absorbing the souls to put them all back into that one barren. The effect is quite spectacular."

I left Hades to talk to the two confused men, and found Sky by herself, washing blood from her hands in a nearby water pump. 

"Everyone survive?" I asked.

She nodded. "I have something for you." She reached into her coat and removed an old leather bound book. "I assume this is what you're looking for here in Montana. I spoke to my father, and he agreed that you can have it."

"Thank you," I said, and then realised what the rest of Sky's words had been. "Your father? Hades is your father?"

"I was adopted by him and Persephone a few centuries ago. I'm sorry that didn't come up before." She smiled a wicked, sly grin.

"You do realise that having sex with Hades' daughter might not have been my greatest idea."

"Good thing I didn't mention it at the time then," she laughed, and walked off to talk to her father as a single shot rang out across the town.

I darted into the bar and found the sheriff knelt on the floor, his hands tied behind his back and his ankles tied together. Sam stood in front of him, his father's other revolver in his hand, a match to the one I'd taken off the sheriff earlier. A large bullet hole pierced the woodwork close to the sheriff's head. 

"Sam, what are you doing?" I asked, taking great care to keep my voice calm and careful.

Sam's eyes were trained firmly on the sheriff. "I'm doing what I need to do; what I have to do to make everything right."

"He should die," I agreed. "He made a pact with an evil monster, and then when everyone else in town was being killed and turned into barren, he got to keep his life."