Honeyed Words (44 page)

I cut down a long serpentine critter that was taking its time eating a large elephant-sized spirit. I lopped off its head and sliced it down the middle.

Unfortunately this allowed the elephantine creature as well as several smaller, recently consumed biters to flood out.

“Get to the mirror,” I called, and Skella and Gletts pushed on.

I yelled a battle cry and sprang into the middle of the rushing mob.

Gram cut through them like smoke. They gave no resistance to her blazing arc, but it was exhausting hacking up shadows. I kept expecting to feel resistance, something to slow the blade, and it was screwing with my timing.

And they got in, stabbing, biting, clawing. It hurt like hell. I watched the elephantine monstrosity fading at my feet when I noticed a small group of dwarves rushing through Katie’s group carrying an urn. Melanie was knocked aside, and they dropped Ari. Gletts was yelling at the dwarves, and Katie did something, sang something different, changed chords. I couldn’t tell, but suddenly the T. rex–looking critter changed targets and dropped on the escaping dwarves. Two fell, chomped by his ghostly bite. The urn hit the ground, black blood splashing across the rocky floor. I bet that was the blood they’d captured, bastards.

The two dwarf torturers and blood-letters made their way around the room, ignoring their fallen, and dashed down a corridor just short of the other mirror, followed hotly by several of the bigger beasties.

I cut across the room at a shallow angle, avoiding Jean-Paul for the moment, taking out smaller targets, trying to angle an intercept for Katie and company.

“Ho, ho,” Jean-Paul’s voice rang out, echoing across the cavern. “You betrayed me in life, and now you reap your reward.” He scattered one of the final groups of dwarves, sending several flying across the room to smash into the wall. One limped away, but the others lay still.

Jean-Paul swooped down on one of the fallen and ripped his spirit out, eating noisily. He’d consumed a huge quantity of spirit, fair and foul, and was massive. He was nearly twice as big as he’d been in real life. When he reared back on his hind legs and roared, rocks crashed down from the ceiling and those of us on our feet were knocked to the ground.

Time to take him down a few pegs, if I could. I rolled to the side, attacked a spirit that was within reach, and angled my attack toward Jean-Paul. He fell back onto all fours and stuck his long neck down the corridor where the lead dwarves had fled with the blood.

“No,” Skella shrieked as Jean-Paul began to laugh maniacally.

“Canned food,” he said, and lunged to the side. There was a cell there—I could just make it out—and one of Skella and Gletts’s people was trapped inside. The elf prisoner fought the great beast with his bare hands to no avail.

Jean-Paul killed the unknown elf with a snap of his jaws, shredding the man’s spirit and dragging it back through the iron bars leaving the body untouched.

Okay, enough of that. I dispatched two froglike spirits, who were attacking a fallen dwarf, rending his spirit with their long, wispy tongues. I held a hand out to the dwarf, who accepted it with surprise. He scrambled away toward a group of his brethren, loping with a pained gait.

I ran forward and swung Gram through the thick, smoky shadow of Jean-Paul’s tail.

He reared back, smashing his head in the rock ceiling above the passage, and fell back. Before I knew what had happened, the head emerged from the back of his great bulk where his tail had been. Nice trick, bastard.

“Die,” he screamed, and lunged at me.

I dove to the side, keeping an eye out for his wing tip. I remembered his tricks. The wing passed over my head, and his jaws snapped shut where I’d just been standing.

“Nice try, loser,” I called, rolling to my feet. “You fought better last time.”

He spun his head around and smashed into me, the great scales of his head shredding gouts of my spirit loose, sending it splattering across the floor like blobs of white glue.

God, that hurt. That was part of me, and it hurt having it ripped away. I did a reverse sweep with the sword, and he pulled his head back, narrowly avoiding my blade.

“Bastard,” I shouted. “Afraid of a girl, still.”

“I will kill you this time,” he bellowed, rearing back to breathe fire on me. I recognized the move. I did what he didn’t expect and charged him. The flame shot over my head and struck the fleeing dwarf in the back. It wasn’t flame, exactly, but some form of glowing blue ectoplasm. I think I saw that in a movie once. The dwarf, however, was not merely slimed, but slimed with something that burned. Acid wash. I grimaced on his behalf as he fell to the ground, melting.

Okay, not fire, but very, very bad.

“Much better,” Jean-Paul said. “I’m stronger than I’ve ever been. When I kill you, I will consume everyone here and break out of this cage to hunt once again.”

Like in real life, he talked too much.

A tumble-bug spirit rolled by, and Jean-Paul swiveled to snatch it up. I dodged to the right and in under his wing. My blade whipped through what would have been the meat of his shoulder, but he felt it all the same.

He roared, losing his meal, which rolled on to catch its own prey.

“You’ll pay for that,” he screamed, kicking out with his front leg. I ran forward and launched myself into a roll, narrowly avoiding the smashing foot.

Shoulder rolls are not as effective on stone floors as they were back in my training days on mats, but the armor helped absorb some of the impact.

His wound closed, and he swung the wing tip around to smash a dwarf to the ground. They were harassing him from his right, and another group had dispatched the last of the beasties in their quadrant and were moving to his left.

Maybe with all of us, we could take him down, despite his unknown power.

We wore at him, weaving and attacking. The dwarves used hammers and swords, spears and axes.

I pulled out a hammer, the bloodied one, and gave it a whirl in my right hand. Two weapons were better than one. I felt more balanced. The hammer, steeped in blood and power from my first battle with him, seemed to have an effect on Jean-Paul and his ilk.

The dwindling number of spirits kept crossing our paths, and we fought them as well. It was horrible.

My blood was up; the battle lust flooded my mind. Thinking beyond the dance and carnage was growing difficult. I kept pace with my sudden allies, the orbit of the villains, and the great monster we harassed.

Katie, Gletts, Skella, and Melanie were carrying Ari by his arms and legs, shambling along like one of the multiheaded ghosties that hunted the room. They were nearly to the mirror when the T. rex saw them.

“Katie!” I shouted. “Look out!”

She turned her head just as the great monstrosity charged. He scattered them like bowling pins.

Gletts was the first back on his feet. He ran to a fallen dwarf, snatching up a blade. “Go,” he shouted and charged the fifteen-foot-tall dino-ghost.

Stupid kid. Earned a few points with me, but he was outclassed.

Thing was, we weren’t winning. They were whittling us down. It occurred to me that they were not dwindling; something was feeding them, and not just the fallen dwarves.

They were dragging Ari now, Skella and Melanie. Katie stood her ground, singing louder than I’d ever heard her sing. Her voice washed through me, clearing the battle fog, giving me something … made a connection with …

The mirror. That was it. I whirled around. There was a connection between the first mirror and the spirits. They were connected, all of them, back through the mirror to the nexus. No wonder they weren’t really falling. Only Gram seemed to be destroying them, and I was way too outgunned.

I was halfway across the room, but I saw it clearly. Dozens of black threads running back through the first mirror, the mirror to the house. I took a deep breath, letting Katie’s sweet voice fill me with her song, and threw the hammer.

It arced across the room, blazing with golden light. It was as if I was a conduit for her voice. The hammer struck the mirror with an explosion of energy and glass.

The spirits faltered, several falling to the ground. The dwarves swarmed forward, hacking those nearest, and the ghosts splashed across the floor like bloody urine, the colors of disease and death.

Okay, now we were talking.

Skella was at the second mirror, holding it open. I could see Evergreen Hospital through on the other side, only because I’d stood there, behind the wooden planters, watching them leave all those days ago.

I managed to kill a scuttling spider thing, slicing off its legs on one side, and then stabbing it in the main body as it fell to the side. It made a sad squishing sound as it dissolved.

Two more dwarves fell screaming beneath Jean-Paul’s rending claws, and a third flew through the air, batted by his mighty wings, but the rest were hurting him. His roar was a constant now, echoing inside the hall and inside my skull.

He breathed his ectoplasm acid at a scattering crowd. Two dwarves went down. Those with viable weapons swarmed forward, hacking and smashing. Those without were dragging back the wounded, forming back on Katie, behind her protective sphere. She was glorious.

The sphere around Katie continued to grow. Melanie, Skella, and Ari vanished through the mirror. For a second I thought they’d managed to escape unscathed.

Gletts fell.

It happened quickly. I was ducking under Jean-Paul’s mighty tail, coming in close to slice at his back legs, and the T. rex smashed Gletts to the ground. He slid across the room and crashed against the wall, unmoving.

Rage flooded through me. I swung through, cutting the hamstring on Jean-Paul’s rear right leg. He crumbled to his knee, shrieking. Gouts of ghostly blood sprayed the surrounding area, and the dwarves to my right sent up a cheer.

I ducked under the wing on that side and ran for the T. rex. It was nearly as large as Jean-Paul was the first time I’d killed him. It had eaten so many of the other ghosts that it was having trouble keeping its form. A second head emerged, fighting the first, as some malevolent spirit attempted to wrest control of the greater whole.

The moment of confusion was good enough for me. I unsheathed my second hammer and spun into a whirlwind of smashing and slicing. The beast was gaining density, as had all of the ghosties since I’d shattered the mirror. Now that they were separated from the nexus, severed from their power line, they were succumbing to physical laws once again.

And still Katie sang a sphere of protection around the fallen.

The T. rex fell, and I ran to Gletts. He had no outward sign of injury, but he was not moving. I grabbed his arm and began dragging him toward Katie. A dwarf, tall and shaggy, ran out of the sphere to meet me, took him, and lifted him to his wide chest.

“Go, warrior. I will see to him.”

I nodded and watched a moment as he ran back to the place Katie protected. Enemy of my enemy and all that. Gletts looked very small in his arms.

The dwarves had pulled down the last of the great shadow creatures, and Jean-Paul was staggering. He leaked oozing fluid from dozens of wounds, and he had no room to flee. He had grown so huge that he could not flee down the corridor, and he raged with a mindless abandon.

I flew back into the fray, dodging and weaving his wild strokes, cutting him whenever an opportunity arose. He was weakening and everyone knew it. The dwarves pressed onward, becoming more valiant in their attacks. Jean-Paul could not protect himself from all corners. He fell onto his great chest, his wings beating madly, knocking the dwarves aside.

I ran forward, throwing the hammer at him. He rolled, taking the hammer in his chest. While his left wing was pinned I jumped over one of the less-fortunate dwarves and brought Gram down with both hands. I landed on Jean-Paul, blade first, sinking it to the hilt in his chest.

He thrashed in his dying, rolling over the dwarves on his left and flinging me across the room. I managed to keep hold of Gram in my flight. I skidded to a halt near the place where the dwarves had been bleeding Ari and staggered to my feet.

Jean-Paul was melting. A fountain of fetid life force spewed from his chest. The dwarves fell back, away from his flailing limbs, his beating wings. He was dangerous still, deadly. He snapped at the dwarves, biting at them.

One was too slow, too elated by our apparent victory. Jean-Paul snapped his jaws closed on him, wrenching his broken spirit from his body. The wound began to close. The breach in his chest closed, and he rose up on his front feet, crawling to the cages in the hall, toward the helpless elves.

I climbed to my feet and ran forward. My right shoulder throbbed from where I’d slammed into the altar, and my muscles trembled from overuse. If he reached the elves, helpless as they were, he’d feed and be further healed.

The screaming was unbearable as he smashed into the first cell. Two elves died beneath his rending maw, and the wounds on his body closed.

A wail went up from the dwarves. Exhausted as they most assuredly were, they dashed forward again. We could not take him down again, not if he healed himself.

He smashed me to the side with his wing, a lucky blow on his part, as he was only paying attention to the food, the healing spirits he needed to consume.