Matt Archer: Legend (18 page)

“Brandt!” I yelled. “Hang on! We’ll—”

The horde surged forward. Brandt slashed and fought as they
took him down, but they took him down just the same. Only a moment later, he
crumpled to the ground. Three green demons stooped over him and tore him limb
from limb right in front of us. I roared in frustration and fought as hard as I
could, but I couldn’t break free to protect our downed wielder. I couldn’t even
pause to digest the loss of yet another man on our team.

As we watched, Brandt’s severed arm, still clutching his
knife in the lifeless hand, was flung toward one of the cracks in the earth.

Everything stopped for a second. It got so still, I heard
the knife clatter against the rocks.

Then all hell broke loose. The Greenies still on the
offensive came at us full tilt, while the three monsters who killed Brandt went
after his knife.

“No!” Will left my side before I could stop him and barreled
toward the Greenies, slamming into them with the speed of an all-American
linebacker. They squealed and flew through the air like bowling pins, getting
dashed against the cliff wall where they disappeared in a cloud of green dust.

My breath caught. He was alone in a swarm; I’d as good as
killed my best friend by asking for him to come here with me. What would I tell
his folks? All this flew through my brain in a split-second, even as I tried to
cut a path through the Greenies to try to save him.

Lunging, Will made it to Brandt’s knife before the demons
did and he pulled it free from Brandt’s hand as a crowd of creatures ran at
him. The bronze handle of Brandt’s old knife flashed blue in Will’s hand,
before fading to an angry green.

Before I could make sense of what had happened, Ramirez
bellowed, “Use it!”

All the demons attacking me and Ramirez turned and ran all out
at Will.

Will spun around and sliced through the Greenies like they
were made of paper. I stood, stunned, unable to move as my best friend hacked
and slashed his way through a dozen demons. He didn’t pause, or even act
surprised. He just went to work like he’d known this was his true purpose all
along.

Ramirez gave me a shove and we ran to help, slicing down Greenies
left and right, but we weren’t anything like Will. For every three I killed, he
took down five. His face was grim, determined, a nightmare. His clothes were
torn and his skin was covered with demon-ooze; a Greenie-killing machine, bent
on sending all of them home to their dark master.

When the last one exploded in slime all over him, Will took
a step back and cleaned his blade on his pants, then tucked it into his belt.
He gave me a crazy smile, showing me the whites of his eyes. “I see what you
mean, dude. Those spirits talk loud.” He patted the knife’s handle. “This guy’s
one chatty Cathy.”

Ramirez and I watched intently as Klimmett worked to bring
Will’s body temperature down with ready-cool packs and wet rags. Will had
collapsed in a boneless heap right after the fight and his temperature had spiked
to one-oh-four. We’d erected a small canopy out of our survival gear to keep
him out of the sun, and Klimmett worried about shock; so did I.

The rest of the team went to retrieve what pieces of our
fallen they could find and keep watch. Uncle Mike seemed to realize I wanted to
hang back, because nobody asked me to go help. I was glad…between Will being
unconscious, Brandt dying and the dark voice pounding dire consequences into my
head for our insolence—without Tink’s help to filter it out—I needed some
space.

“I need more water,” Klimmett said. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

He strode over to the others, asking if anyone had a spare
canteen, and I turned to Ramirez. “I still can’t believe Brandt’s dead.”

Ramirez wouldn’t look at me; instead he took Will’s pulse.
“I can.”

I swallowed back the bitterness welling in my throat. Of
course he could; it had almost happened to him. “It just makes me sick.”

“It makes all of us sick, Archer,” he said softly. “All we
can do is avenge him and make sure his loss means something in the end. Every
person we save adds to his tally, you know?”

“Yeah.”

Ramirez laid Will’s hand down. “His pulse is crazy
fast—one-sixty. I hope he didn’t overload.”

“Ever see anything like that?” I asked, keeping one eye on
Will. Every so often, he’d twitch and moan, but he didn’t come to. Sweat rolled
off of him in puddles. “I mean, that was…a freak show.”

Ramirez gave me one of his stone-cold stares. “You’re
kidding, right?” He laughed, except it wasn’t funny. “I see that every time
you
fight. Only difference is that you snap back a little faster. I’m betting
Cruessan’s having a harder time because he got taken over in the middle of a
fight, having never wielded before. His spirit was probably so enraged about
Brandt it slammed Cruessan’s consciousness aside, and he doesn’t have…whatever
it is you have to ward it off.”

That made sense, and I thought of something else…if Brandt
hadn’t ever really connected with his knife-spirit, then it had probably been
fully charged and ready to go as soon as the blade found Will’s hand. It was
kind of weird that my best friend happened to be a wielder, though. Or maybe it
wasn’t. I should’ve known Will had it in him; he took on all the same things I
did, and usually in a better mood. Maybe Brandt’s…no,
Will’s
knife had
searched for Will for a while, waiting for the moment when the two of them were
in the same place to switch its allegiance.

And what about Brandt’s last words? In the end, did he
finally see the truth? He’d ignored the spirit, hadn’t trusted the magic and
yet, in those final minutes, he’d heard something that convinced him otherwise.

I had a chilling thought: would the knives sacrifice someone
for the right wielder, let a man be torn to pieces, just to change hands? Had
we been brought here by the monsters…or by Brandt’s knife?

The dark voice howled words that made the hairs on my arms
and legs stand up, and my knife-spirit hissed back in the dark voice’s own
language. I clutched at my head, wondering what had set the two of them off
like that.

Be ready!
Tink snapped.
He’s got nothing to lose now.

All of a sudden, Will sat up, sending the rags cooling his
forehand to the ground. “Did I miss something? Why’re you staring at me?”

Startled, I said, “Dude, you’ve been out cold for fifteen
minutes. Don’t you remember?”

He frowned. “Didn’t mean you had to hover like a couple of
old ladies.” Then Will’s gaze fell on the knife laying by his right hand. “Shit.
That wasn’t just a long nightmare, was it?”

“About you being a wielder?” I shook my head. “Not even.”

Will’s eyes darted about. “We got incoming, then.”

As he said it, the ground shuddered.

I barely managed to keep my jaw from dropping open.
“Okay….Um, Tink, you getting anything?”

The knife-spirit sighed.
Stop calling me call me Tink.
But yes. Only one—Ga-Gorib, a servant of Gaunab. He failed in his duty, so now
he comes to finish his task. That’s his only chance to avoid his own death.

“I’m not sure what a Ga-Gorib is, but I guess we pissed him
off, huh?” I asked, taking off to regroup the team, with Will and Ramirez right
behind me. The ground trembled such that I tripped and had to catch myself with
my hand to keep from face-planting. “Major Tannen! We got trouble!”

More than you know,
the spirit said.

I didn’t have time to ask her what she meant, because a huge
sinkhole opened up in the earth between the wielders and Uncle Mike’s group. I
skidded to a stop with my toes hanging over the edge. Green mist wafted up from
the hole, nearly obscuring the taloned hand reaching out of the darkness below.

“Get back!” I yelled across the gulf, which stretched a good
twenty feet wide from either side of the canyon, effectively cutting us off
from everyone else. “Major—take your team back to the cliffs! Hurry!”

Uncle Mike turned and nodded. He gathered everyone together,
sending them running for the rappelling ropes. A stockpile of empty weapons had
been cast aside, forgotten and useless.

I turned to Will and Ramirez. “We have to give them time to
retreat. We’re all that stands in this thing’s way.”

“Let’s go, then! I’m ready!” Will said, sounding way too excited
about his first hunt. That’d be something we’d need to work on later. Gung ho
could get you killed. Just ask Tyson.

“We need to figure out what we’re dealing with first,” I
snapped, wincing at the surprised look on Will’s face. “Look, we go one step at
a time, man. You know how this works…by the book, okay? No superhero stuff;
it’s too dangerous.”

Will nodded, then blanched and pointed at the sinkhole.

The hand rising out of the darkness had now reached the edge
and dug its claws into the earth. Based on the size of that hand, this thing
was about as big as a T-Rex. The creature’s flesh was the color of old maggots
and slick with slime, but what made me recoil was how its skin seemed to drip
and ooze from its bones, as if it were made of warm wax mixed with snot.

“Dios mio,” Ramirez murmured.

He’d never spoken Spanish in front of me before, but we’d
never seen anything like the monster rising from that hole before, either. Another
hand reached up to grip the other edge. I didn’t want to think about how big
its wingspan had to be to reach across twenty feet. We were dealing with a
Goliath.

“Tink, are you back online?” I asked, backing away from the
edge.

Not fully.

“Great. So it’s just the wielders and the blades against a
monster the size of a two-story house?”

Look closer
, the knife-spirit whispered
. Ga-Gorib
has been a thing of the deep places since his creation, so we still have an
advantage.

The monster—Ga-Gorib—pushed itself up so that its elongated
head rose above ground-level. It had seven eyes clustered unevenly along a
sloped forehead and a skull’s nasal cavity for a nose, but the worst of it was
the gooey mucus oozing from every surface of its body. The smell coming from
the hole could only be described as barbequed pus.

As much as I wanted to look away, I kept examining the
creature for a weakness. It reached into a patch of sunlight to get a better
handhold and howled. A pool of flesh dripped off the monster’s arm to sizzle on
the parched earth, leaving a black stain.

“That’s it!” I turned to the guys. “It can’t stand the
sunlight. We just need to keep it busy until it burns.”

“Unless it climbs out on the other side, in which case it
kills the entire team before it gets ashed,” Ramirez said.

“But why’s it even coming out?” Will asked. “Is it stupid?
It’s daytime in the freaking desert!”

It failed. The creature faces death either way,
my
knife-spirit said.
Unless it kills Will. That’s it’s only hope for survival.

Kills…Will? I sucked in a shallow breath. “Why is that its
objective?”

He wasn’t supposed to get this far. Now stop asking
questions and pay attention. It’s nearly free.

I snapped my gaze back to the monstrosity crawling out of
the dusty earth. Its skin was searing right before my eyes, but its chest was
as broad as a school bus, and if we didn’t act fast, it’d crush us and dive
back into the dark before the sun finished it off.

“We need a way to get on top of it,” I said. “To keep it
busy so the team can get away.”

“There’s only one solution, then.” An icy gleam shone in
Will’s eyes as he scanned the sink hole. “It’s time to fly, dude.”

I nodded and, over Ramirez’s protests that he should go
first, jogged back to the cliff wall. By now, the monster had pushed itself up
waist-high and soon it would be able to pull its legs free. Assuming it had
legs. I shuddered at that thought and a low grumbling, not unlike a giant
diesel engine, beat against my ears. The dark voice I’d heard since last night
was roaring angry chants across my brain.

A different buzz pressed against the dark growls and my
hands began to shake as the knife-spirit spun me up. She was still low on
power, but I’d get an extra assist on this jump now that Will had his own
supernatural link.

I touched my knife’s handle and took a slow breath to steady
the urge to plow ahead without thought. “Let’s do this.”

Then I ran, stepped onto Will’s hand at just the right angle
and pushed off with all the strength I had. Will launched me farther and faster
than ever, such that I soared
over
the creature’s head and had to dive
to catch it by stabbing the blade into its shoulder. My momentum caused the
knife to slice through Ga-Gorib’s melting skin until we hit bone, and I jerked
to a stop. Dangling over the hole, I tried to get my feet under me, but the
thing’s flesh was too slick for my boots to stick.

Ga-Gorib shook its body like a dog shaking off water after
bath time. I held onto the knife’s handle with all my might, but ended up
getting smacked against gooey, slimy skin over and over again. Puke rose in my
throat at the stench now covering my BDUs. If I wasn’t so worried about just
how deep this hole was, I probably would’ve let go.

“I could…oof…use…a little help!” I shouted.

Will and Ramirez yelled something at me, but the monster was
on the move again, hauling its ponderous body out of the hole at last,
revealing it had legs after all. Long legs, like a spider’s, and almost as
many. Its six feet were simian, more like hands with flexible digits, and it
reached out to grab Will. I screamed for him to look out and somehow he scrambled
out of the way. When the thing’s foot slammed into the dirt, Ramirez leapt onto
it and started a long slippery climb, using his knife as an anchor every so
often to keep from falling off.

Will, in the meantime, danced around the monster’s legs, stabbing
one of its feet to keep the monster’s attention fixed on him. He was taking too
many risks in my opinion, but I was one to talk, hanging off the creature’s
back over a giant freaking hole in the ground.

The monster roared as Ramirez stabbed it hard to draw even
with me, and the dark voice thundered in my head. It was all I could do to
maintain my hold on the knife’s handle. As Ga-Gorib lumbered after Will, my
boots made better contact with its back. The creature’s skin was drying out in
the sun and it gave me traction. Ramirez pointed upward with his free hand and
I nodded. We climbed up onto its shoulders. The monster’s flesh sizzled and
cracked under our feet.

Even with the two of us climbing, using our blades as
anchors, Ga-Gorib stayed fixated on Will. It backed him against the canyon
wall. Trapped, Will let out a crazy yell and sliced one of its ankles open. It
screeched and I took that opportunity to stab it in the back of the neck.
Wrenching the blade in a twist, I opened a large wound at the top of its spine.
Ga-Gorib thrashed hard, and the knife pulled loose. Somehow I managed to catch
myself and slide down the creature’s back before I was thrown off, landing with
a crash onto the sand below. Ga-Gorib raised a massive foot over my head, ready
to smash me into paste, but hands grabbed me under the arms and yanked me
backward. Will hauled me to my feet and I gasped in horror at the sight looming
over me.

Ga-Gorib was covered in smoking sores and there were red and
black sear marks all over its beige skin. It danced on all six legs, trying to
shake off its final unauthorized passenger. Ramirez wasn’t letting go, though,
and had climbed onto the creature’s skull. The ground shook and the sink hole
widened as Ga-Gorib swiped at Ramirez, but its arms couldn’t reach the back of
its head. Sand rained down into the abyss on the far side, but on our side, a
big chunk of earth broke free and tumbled in. One of the monster’s feet slipped
over the edge.

“The ground’s gonna give way,” I said.

“Looks like it,” Will said. “We have to get out of here.
Now.”

“Major!” I yelled. “Look out! It’s going over the side!”

Ramirez shot me an ice-cold look that would’ve made a sane
man run. Raising his knife over his head, he plunged the blade into the
creature’s sloped skull. The thing collapsed slowly, heaving with death spasms
as it tipped over the side of the sinkhole. Ramirez ran down the monster’s
shoulder, then arm, until he hit the ground running as Ga-Gorib fell back into
the earth where it belonged. Ramirez put on a burst of speed, but a crack
opened up between his feet as he ran.

“Gotta go!” he huffed, outpacing the crack tearing through
the ground, and we hurried to catch up.

We retreated to the cliff wall. I glanced up at the edge of
the canyon to see guys moving around. Murphy caught my eye, then turned,
calling to someone I couldn’t see. A few seconds later, Uncle Mike appeared.