Imperium (Caulborn) (16 page)

I acknowledged the concerned people as best I could and felt something wrap around my waist. I looked down and saw a slender green vine coil around me. Thorns burst from it and lanced into my stomach. I cried out as I was pulled into the air and thrown against a parked car. I gave a telekinetic push as I hit, dampening the impact. Nothing was broken, but the wind was knocked out of me.

I struggled to my feet and jumped back in time to avoid another lash from a thorny vine. I followed the vine back to a man in the crowd. His arms were outstretched and vines were growing out of his hands. Great, another plant golem. I telekinetically latched on to him and yanked him forward. He let out a grunt of surprise as he jolted toward me, then more vines shot from his legs, anchoring him to a storm grate. I pulled harder, but he sent the vines at me again. I danced backward into the other lane, and then had to throw myself forward again to avoid being hit by a car that was going the other way.

Horns honked everywhere. I was exposed, in the daylight, fighting a plant golem. Innocents were already hurt. Galahad was going to be pissed. Containing situations like this was never easy or clean. Of course, first I had to survive the encounter. My forehead burned with the onset of a healing fever and my stomach itched where the thorns had bit into me. I threw out a wall of telekinetic force, blocking my opponent’s attacks. I just needed a minute to catch my breath and I’d be all right.

Something jumped onto my back and drove me to the ground. My telekinetic wall vanished as the pavement rushed up to meet me. I was struggling to my hands and knees when jagged daggers of pain burned into my shoulder. Teeth. I cried out and sent out a burst of telekinetic energy, throwing everything away from me. Cars lurched from the impact, people were thrown to the ground and debris scattered all over the sidewalk. The thing that had bitten me slammed against a Dodge pickup. A neo-gremlin. It fell to the pavement, its spine and skull shattered.

My muscles suddenly felt rubbery and my vision blurred. The neo-gremlin’s toxin worked fast. I thought of the Doc’s antitoxin and cursed when I remembered I’d left it in the apartment. I hauled myself up to my knees and blinked hard as I searched for my assailant. He was striding toward me, vines snaking out ahead of him. My peripheral vision was almost gone. The world was narrowing around me and I was so weak that I couldn’t even raise my arms. I swooned and the sounds of the world around me were a dull droning buzz.

In desperation, I opened my mind to my followers. The sudden jolt of their voices flooding into my head cleared my senses. They sounded more afraid now. The crystal creatures were closing in. They were praying desperately to me, and I tapped those prayers. I channeled my followers’ faith and blasted outward, sending a column of both telekinetic and pyrokinetic force into the creature. It shrieked as it burned. Normally, it takes time for a person to burn to death, but this thing went up like a pile of dry straw. In less than five seconds, it was nothing but a pile of ash.

I didn’t have any more time to waste. I lurched and staggered for the Children’s Museum. I figured police and fire trucks would arrive soon, and I didn’t want to answer any questions. Most of the people who had been on the sidewalk had fled earlier, but those who remained parted for me. I pulled out my phone and sent a preset text message to Uncle Dave. “Party Time.” He’d receive that, along with GPS coordinates of my location. I didn’t have time for anything else. The gremlin’s toxin was working fast, but I kept my mind open to my followers and drunkenly ran for Aviorla.

The phasilion must’ve sensed me coming, because she was already open. I dove through the opening. “Take me to the Urisk,” I called. My voice was slurred, but I knew Aviorla wouldn’t let me down.

A voice chuckled in the spiraling light that was the phasilion’s gateway. “The Urisk?” The voice was male. Not Aviorla. What the hell?

“Phasilion,” I called, straining to stay coherent. “I am Vincent Corinthos, god of the Urisk. I must get to my people immediately.”

“I should say so.” The voice chuckled. “Your people are dying left and right on the Bright Side. What sort of god leaves his people like that? I mean honestly, Lord Corinthos, I’d think you’d take better care of them.” The voice had a smug, sneering tone.

“Let me through,” I demanded. I was caught between worlds now. I couldn’t go back to Boston, and until this thing released me, I couldn’t get through to the Bright Side.

“I am not one of your servants to command, human,” the voice snarled.

I ground my teeth. Okay, we were going to do this the hard way. In Boston, my powers are finite. On the Bright Side, they’re nearly infinite. And I was standing inside a creature that was of the Bright Side. It wasn’t as good as actually being there, but I was a helluva lot more powerful right now than I had been two minutes ago. I quested out with my mind until I touched the phasilion’s consciousness.

And then I telepathically dominated it.

The spiraling around me brightened as the creature fought my will. But I was angry, desperate and afraid, and I took power from those emotions. I forced my way into the foreign landscape of the phasilion’s mind. I wasn’t sure if I was watching a memory from the phasilion or if my Glimpse had kicked on, but I saw a bald man with a tattoo of a sun on his neck standing before a phasilion. It was the same man from Megan’s photos and Thad’s shop—Robert Maxwell. “You will stay here and distract Corinthos during the attack,” he said.

“Yes, Lord Treggen,” the phasilion responded. Treggen? I filed that for later. I was too worried about the Urisk right now. I forced the creature to open its portal to the Urisk homeland and I staggered through the swirling lights into the dazzling sunlight of the Bright Side.

Which was on fire.

Chapter 15

To: Robert Maxwell
Once the golems were operational, I sent them into the city to hunt for paranormals. One of the first they discovered was a female gremlin. After many tests and experiments, I was able to replicate and enhance the gremlin’s genetic matrix. My breed of gremlins is much stronger and faster than their predecessors, and the venom they secrete can incapacitate creatures of up to five hundred pounds in weight.
Further enhancements are not possible without access to the original gremlin creator’s knowledge. NS has furnished me with the name and address of that individual, and I have taken steps to recover the desired information from her.
-Email message recovered from Kira Leevan’s computer

I was surprised that there wasn’t more smoke. Then I realized the fire was coming from my pyrokinetic followers. The Urisks’ faith flooded into me, and the last of the neo-gremlin’s toxin burned away from my body. My strength returned, and my powers surged. I had come out next to the Urisk city wall, right in the middle of a battle.

A group of my followers were perched atop the city wall, raining down fire and bolts of force against two dozen of the crystal soldiers. The soldiers stood eight feet tall and looked like linebackers made out of clear prisms. The runes in their chests pulsed and brightened as the Urisk struck them, but it didn’t look like they even felt the attacks. They ignored my followers and pounded against the city wall with their massive fists, cracking the thick stone and shaking the Urisk above. If they continued at their present rate, they’d break the wall down in a matter of minutes.

I threw my arms out to the sides and telekinetically latched onto the soldiers, intending to fling them away from the city. They barely moved, but the runes on their chests suddenly glowed so bright it was almost painful to look at them. I ground my teeth and imagined I was trying to lift a fleet of school buses. Then I heaved. The creatures were yanked from the ground and soared twenty feet up, so they were even with the top of the city wall. The runes on their chests glowed like tiny red suns.

Then they exploded. The shockwave picked me up and carried me close to five hundred feet. I crashed into a rock and the world went dark.

I’m not sure how long I was out. I felt like I was on fire and my arms and legs didn’t want to work. I hastily opened my mind to the Urisk. Their voices were panicked, horrified, angry and scared. Their prayers were filled with suffering and they were singing songs of lament. I hauled myself up, wincing as my bones knit. Here on the Bright Side, I’m not invulnerable, but I can’t be killed, either. My strength returned quickly and I ran for the Urisk city.

Most of the wall I’d raised earlier was gone. A giant crater that swallowed half of the city stood before me. Smoke trailed up into the sky. Homes that had not been destroyed were skewed on their foundations, and it didn’t look like any of the glass in the city had remained intact.

Urisk lay in the streets, some of them smoldering. I ran past them, sending out waves of healing energy. They groaned and began getting back to their feet. I continued on to the cathedral, where about a hundred of my followers had gathered. I burst through the doors and found them all lying on the floor. My shoes crunched on stained glass fragments as I hurried across the room to Lotholio, who slouched over the pulpit. He must’ve been leading the Urisk in a sermon to bolster me during the attack.

A wedge of glass the size of a slice of pizza had been driven into his chest. His eyes were flickering and pale pink blood covered his stole. I tore the glass from his chest and laid my hands on him. He gasped as the healing energy flooded into him. I cradled him against my body like an infant and, after what felt like a very long time, his eyes began to glow.

“Lord,” he whispered. “You came.”

“Rest, Loth. There are a lot of people who need my help.” He nodded and leaned back against the ground. I dashed over to the next fallen Urisk and laid my hands on him. This was taking too long. I sent out healing waves, stabilizing all the Urisk in the city. They’d be in excruciating pain until I was able to properly heal them, but at least they wouldn’t die. I cursed myself for not being faster, but even as a god I can only do so much. Healing a body isn’t like repairing the land or cleaning the air. There are a lot of complicated systems working together, and if you try to force a healing, you might kill the person.

So the stabilizing waves kept them alive as I worked. I lost count of the hours as I moved from Urisk to Urisk. One had lost both eyes to glass, and I restored them. Another’s legs had been severed, and I regenerated her limbs. A third had been impaled by one of the crystal soldier’s arms. And on and on.

I had just revived a small Urisk boy when I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Lord,” Lotholio said quietly. “You should rest.” I looked down at my hands. They were covered in pale pink blood. So were my shirt and pants. More of it was drying on my face and in my hair.

“No time,” I said as I moved over to the next victim. “The people need my help.” My eyes felt gritty and my head was pounding. Had I ever felt tired on the Bright Side? Had I ever felt like I was weak? No, I hadn’t. Too many of my followers had died, and I was drawing on everything, literally everything, the survivors had left to keep them alive. “Where are the healers, Lotholio? If I revive them, that will take some of the strain off.”

Lotholio was quiet, and I looked at him. “Well?” I demanded.

“The healers are gone, Lord.” he said in a half-whisper. “Their hospital was obliterated in the explosion. That entire half of the city is gone.”

I swore. I swore as loud as I could. “Who sent these things, Lotholio? What were they? Goblins and trolls don’t have allies like this!” Some of the volcanoes I had quelled earlier in the week suddenly belched forth clouds of smoke, and I could sense the lava welling up in them. The land began to quake around me. It took a moment to realize I was causing that. I shook myself and forced the land to quiet. Lotholio’s eyes were shimmering in a wavy pattern I knew to be fear. “Jesus Christ, Loth,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

He gave me a weak smile. “It is all right, Lord. I have ordered some of the remaining defenders to scout the area for more of the creatures, and if possible, to learn their origins. We will do what we can.”

I felt my faith reserves replenishing. This was the first time I’d ever been aware of my reserves while on the Bright Side. Usually I was bursting with power. Now I was depleted. Lotholio and his priests had been searching for more survivors, and they brought them to the cathedral’s grounds. The wounded group had swelled to several hundred Urisk. Several hundred more who needed my healing. This was too much for just me to do.

I turned to Lotholio. “The four priests who performed Shallar with us, Loth. Are they still alive?” Lotholio nodded. “Good. Go get them while I prepare.” As Lotholio hurried away, I knelt down and closed my eyes. My followers’ faith flowed into me, a trickle compared to the flood it had once been. It would be enough. I ran my hands through my hair. It was slicked with sweat and Urisk blood. I clenched my fists. Whoever did this was going to pay and pay dearly.

A few minutes later, Lotholio returned with the priests in tow. They were battered and bruised, but they were alive, and I could feel their faith in me.

“Kneel,” I said. They knelt down across from me. I took Lotholio’s feather-topped head in my hands. “I charge you with the health and well-being of my followers,” I said. I touched each of the other priests in the same way. “It is your duty to tend the people when they fall.” Power flowed from me into the priests, and the light in their eyes swirled, the equivalent of gasps.

“I have blessed each of you with the power to heal. Lay your hands on the sick and wounded and they will recover. The stronger your faith, the more complete the healing will be. I chose you because I know just how strong your faith is, and even now can sense that you are true to me.” I stood and motioned for them to do the same. “I have every confidence that the five of you will be able to heal every wounded Urisk.” I swept my arm across the cathedral grounds. “Tend to them. I’m going to repair the damage to the city.” I walked away, trying to keep calm. Revenge was for later. Damage control was all I could concern myself with now.