Dragons & Dwarves (69 page)
Authors: S. Andrew Swann
The bell tolled one, and the gate opened in front of the Solara.
“Now, show me to my adversary.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
T
HIS time, the way was harder, and time seemed to progress even slower. The snow had drifted up to my knees in places and my legs burned with the cold. My breath fogged, and I could feel it freeze on my cheeks.
HIS time, the way was harder, and time seemed to progress even slower. The snow had drifted up to my knees in places and my legs burned with the cold. My breath fogged, and I could feel it freeze on my cheeks.
And with every step, I felt the presence behind me. A massive weight I could sense, as if it was about to envelop me. A heat that offered no warmth, the sound of a heavy breath that smelled of carrion, the sound of muscle and skin moving. But when I looked behind me, I saw nothing. Some enchantment hid the demon from my sight.
I only looked behind me once. He corrected me by drawing one of his claws across my back, one of the same ones that had cut through the skin of my Volkswagen. My clothes were nothing to it, and it cut, burning, through to my shoulder blade. The wound wasn’t disabling, but it hurt like hell, and the wind found another stinging patch of skin to attack.
As the blood froze on my shoulder, I heard a whisper in my ear.
“Do not turn again. Do not show you are followed.”
I didn’t even nod. I just trudged forward.
“Good.”
It may have been my imagination, but I could feel the desire from this thing behind me. This close, I couldn’t escape the sense of a black sucking need that seemed to overwhelm even the waves of power that surrounded the thing. It was as if I was leading the personification of lust, in just about every depraved connotation that word had. The kind of lust that made child molesters and serial killers seem civilized.
I knew this thing behind me had come from the Portal, and was just another in a long line of immortal entities to take up residence in my city. I knew that its physical presence was a self-creation, almost certainly modeled on the belief and customs it found here. It probably found that—like the ritual-imbued position of the Thesarch helped amplify the power of mana—taking a predefined demonic role was a shortcut to even more power . . .
I knew all this.
But when my feet found the first of the stairs, I knew in my heart that what followed me was the Devil himself. I was walking a path to certain damnation and I didn’t know how to stop.
Even though the passage to the base of Hephaestus’ tower took an eternity, we came upon the great ebony doors too soon for me.
The tower struck twelve.
The doors remained shut.
I could feel the fury rising behind me. The power of it passed me in waves, and I could almost see it wash against the doors. I thought I could see a tint of blood-red ripple across the black-green script.
It happened again, and it wasn’t my imagination.
Waves of glinting red washed across the script in pulsing waves, emanating from the base, where the doors met. Behind me, I heard a laugh.
“The great Hephaestus hides behind his walls like a child.”
“The great Hephaestus hides behind his walls like a child.”
Visible now, he stepped past me, to face the giant onyx doors. On them, the script now glowed a pulsing red. With wings outstretched, the demon was almost as large as the doors themselves.
“I’ve come for you, dragon. And I will not be denied.”
The script glowed a solid red, as if the door’s core had become molten. Something urged me to back down a few steps.
“Your wards do not deter me,”
it said as it reached out and touched the door. The demon’s touch unleashed a holocaust. Balls of flame erupted from the door, and instead of blowing outward, wrapped themselves around the demon, shrouding him in a fire burning red, then yellow, then white. The air filled with the smell of roasting flesh as the demon’s skin began to blister and peel.
it said as it reached out and touched the door. The demon’s touch unleashed a holocaust. Balls of flame erupted from the door, and instead of blowing outward, wrapped themselves around the demon, shrouding him in a fire burning red, then yellow, then white. The air filled with the smell of roasting flesh as the demon’s skin began to blister and peel.
The demon laughed.
It kept laughing as more fire erupted from the door, sheets of flame and energy pouring into the spot where the demon stood. The flames were so hot that I could smell my own hair burning, and my eyes watered to look at it.
I backed down a few more steps.
Still it laughed.
The demon’s flesh roasted away, leaving a carbonized skeleton that soon disappeared under the heat of the rippling fire. Still the flames enveloped the demon, erupting from the doors faster and faster.
Still the laugh.
The door slowed, sputtering, the script fading from white-hot to a dull red. Before it stood a pillar of fire in the shape of a demon. The flaming image stretched its arms, and from the flames came a voice.
“So like a dragon, to focus on the body.”
I don’t think it spoke English anymore. I don’t think it “spoke” in any real sense.
The flaming arms embraced the door. I heard something sizzle and pop, and long cracks crawled across the glowing script of the doors, the cracks glowing hotter and emitting steam. The doors groaned and screamed as if they were living things.
I took cover flat against the stairs before the doors imploded in a shower of gravel, smoke, and red-hot ash. For a moment the entrance to the tower was wrapped in an impenetrable cloud. As it settled, the fire was gone, replaced by a demon form made of crackling red-hot onyx. Enchanted alien script still glowed on the surface of the stone, but the words somehow had become disturbing, obscene.
It flexed a new onyx claw.
“I think I like this better.”
It stepped though the smoking hole that had been the grand entrance. I took the stairs upward, slowly, until I could see the great entrance hall. The onyx demon walked into the chamber spreading its arms and wings, facing upward.
“Show yourself, dragon!”
“DEFILER!”
The nonword screeched through the tower, tearing directly into my brain. The force of it caused the great pillars to crack. Then, arcs of green twisting energy burst from the pillars, converging on the demon. The whipping tendrils buzzed and hissed with power so dense I needed to lean inward just to stay upright. My singed hair danced with static.
The nonword screeched through the tower, tearing directly into my brain. The force of it caused the great pillars to crack. Then, arcs of green twisting energy burst from the pillars, converging on the demon. The whipping tendrils buzzed and hissed with power so dense I needed to lean inward just to stay upright. My singed hair danced with static.
The script on the demon’s skin now pulsed green as the tendrils danced across the surface of its body, pulsing in time to the buzzing energy. More tendrils exploded from the surface of the wall, blowing free plaster and marble, leaping from pillar to pillar, to slam into the onyx creature.
The demon groaned as the buzzing became a roar. Its back arched, as the substance of its body began to shake. The black-green glow pulsed more intensely as the tendrils, whipping and dancing, pulled the thing off its feet. The demon, body shaking and whipping around with the tendrils of energy, rose until it was in the center of the great room.
For a moment, it seemed as if Hephaestus was about to win.
Then the onyx demon froze in the midst of its seizure. The green tendrils of energy suddenly seemed to stretch and vibrate like elastic bands. The green in the demon’s skin faded, and began pulsing red. The red leaked from the script carved in its skin to bleed into the suddenly taut, linear bands of energy connecting it to the walls of the room.
When the red reached the walls, the walls exploded. A cascading disintegration of fire, stone, and smoke, that rolled counterclockwise around the inner surface of the chamber tearing off every finished surface, crumbling stairs, burning tapestries, and imploding pillars. The force of it blew me back, rolling across debris, causing blinding pain in my shoulder and arm.
I blinked the pain and smoke out of my eyes and found myself facedown at the edge of the tower stair, looking down through blowing snow at the faint image of the Cuyahoga River.
I slowly rolled on my back.
The great entry hall had been blown apart. The interior had been razed to the outer stone walls, the great pillars blackened stumps, every surface steaming, the floor blasted, cracked and covered with ash.
If anything, Old Scratch seemed even bigger.
“Tasting your flesh will please me.”
“OBSCENITY!”
The sense of the word shook the tower to its nonexistent foundation.
The sense of the word shook the tower to its nonexistent foundation.
The ceiling erupted. The arching dome collapsed, shedding blocks the size of large SUVs to crash into the floor around Old Scratch. The demon knocked some of the stones aside as they fell, sending one smashing through the skin of the tower wall to tumble into an imperceptible infinity between us and the Cuyahoga below, into a dimension I couldn’t point out.
Something screeched from above, and the dragon Hephaestus flew down out of the descending rubble, flames belching forth to fill the room below him. The great lizard fell through smoke, and rubble and the burning remains of the library above. The wings of the dragon stretched from wall to wall in the remains of the great hall.
Hephaestus reached down into the pool of fire with taloned hands and scooped up the demon’s body and slammed it into the floor. As the flames cleared, I could see the crater formed by the blow. In it, I could just see the remnants of crumbled bat wings.
Hephaestus slammed the demon down again.
Even though I saw a black leg snap completely off, I knew that Old Scratch wasn’t beaten. Couldn’t be beaten.
As if it sensed my thought, the demon started laughing.
Hephaestus brought the broken remains of the demon up for another blow, and the demon’s arm shot out impossibly far, impaling the dragon’s chest. Gouts of blood sprayed from the wound as the demon dug into the dragon’s body.
A spasm racked the giant form, and Hephaestus crashed to the ground. The impact shook the floor, and as I looked up, I could see great cracks forming in the edifice of the tower itself, as if the dragon was part of the building’s structural integrity.
Hephaestus’ grip went slack on the demon, and the onyx creature, broken, humpbacked and laughing, attached itself to the dragon’s wounded chest like a twisted lamprey. It wasn’t even a laugh anymore, it was more a perverse childish giggle.
“Oh, yes. Such a feast. I shall wear this flesh.”
The area around the wound began glowing red as the demon burrowed, spreading blood and gore. Above everything I could hear the fabric of the tower split and crumble.
Hephaestus’ great head lay on the ground, and it shifted slightly to focus one gigantic eye on me. And, I could swear I saw the dragon smile, right before the great body vanished.
“What?”
The demon, suddenly alone in the center of the tower, tried to stand, but its body was half formed, fleshy and larval.
“Brace yourself, Mr. Maxwell.” Dr. Shafran ran toward me, diving. He grabbed me and we rolled off the edge.
Suddenly in free fall, I tumbled under the tower. Dr. Shafran was gone and the wind whipped by me as I fell toward a river I knew I’d never reach. Above me, the great tower fragmented, the upper stories falling. For a moment it was exactly the image on the tarot card.
I felt more than heard the demon’s voice,
“No!”
“No!”
The tower itself began twisting, the broken remnants turning in on themselves, the space it occupied whirlpooling in on itself as if everything was being sucked through a cosmic drain. The whole edifice folded into nothing.
Something swept by me and a clawed hand bigger than I was scooped me out of the air. Something twisted, and Hephaestus and I were flying over a normal Cleveland skyline.
A draconic chuckle shook the fillings in my teeth and made my injured arm ache.
“And he said I focus too much on the body.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
M
Y desperate plan had worked better than it had a right to. It had relied too heavily on Old Scratch’s weakness—a desire to dominate that went beyond any reason. I had been betting that giving the demon the chance to defeat a longtime enemy would preoccupy it, and it wouldn’t consider the fact that, if Hephaestus created a Portal to a private retreat, it could just as easily close it.
Y desperate plan had worked better than it had a right to. It had relied too heavily on Old Scratch’s weakness—a desire to dominate that went beyond any reason. I had been betting that giving the demon the chance to defeat a longtime enemy would preoccupy it, and it wouldn’t consider the fact that, if Hephaestus created a Portal to a private retreat, it could just as easily close it.
However, almost everything had gone like clockwork. I had led him to Hephaestus’ doorstep, and my strategic revelation of the tower’s nature caused Old Scratch to show up “in person” without giving the bastard the time to consider the possible consequences. Arrogance and overconfidence led the way from there to Hephaestus’ doorstep. And while the dragon’s continued assault on the demon’s physical body might not have been effective in terms of damaging his adversary, it was a pretty damn good distraction, preventing Old Scratch from picking up on the fact that he was in the middle of a trap, and it was closing shut on him.
It helped that I had told the dragon what was coming when I phoned him in his Dr. Shafran form.
As we flew through the biting winter air, I screwed my watering eyes shut.
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