Rose: Briar's Thorn (16 page)

I said, “Let them come to us.  Let the mortal creatures and the lesser demons waste themselves upon my thorns.”

The bear creature bellowed again and I could feel him tearing at my briars like they were tissue paper.  His front hand-like paws were dripping black as the magic in the vines ate at him, he didn't seem to notice nor care.

The Alphas kept to the back of the chaos around us as they watched their wolves sacrificing themselves in droves.  There weren't many left.  I couldn't see more than a dozen or so witches and druids guiding the others.  We had decimated their ranks, and the beasts were doing the rest for us.

Red said, “Parker, you and Nicole take out any straggler werewolves that get through.  Daria and I will go after the Alphas.  Gretta, take down the last of the witches if you will, they are a pesky bunch.”  She looked at me, “Rose, keep the demons busy until Gretta can back you.”

Then she grinned, “Ella?”  She pointed at the demon bear who had almost made its way to us with the other demons traveling in its wake, and said, “Smash.”

Everyone but Nicole and I laughed at the woman.  Were we missing something?  Daria bumped hips with her mate.  “Hulk jokes, love?  Really?”

Ella was just grinning like a fool as she stood directly in the demon's path, cracking her knuckles.  Snow took wing toward the nearest magic users.  I sealed off our wolf fighters with a wall of vines,  then turned to wait, gathering my strength. The creature tore through the last of the brambles.  Ella bunched her hands into fists and I could feel the Earth itself gathering beneath her, flowing into her.

The creature reared up to possibly fifteen feet tall then dropped to all fours again and charged, bellowing.  Ella shouted her own challenge and charged at the beast.  She was either insane or incredibly brave.  The way it handled my briars, I wouldn't stand a chance against it.  This bear demon could most probably grant my wish for death and release from my curse.

They collided with a massive impact of her fist and its forehead.  There was a huge whump that I more felt than heard as all the stored energy Ella had brought into herself was released.  It felt like the entire world dropped down beneath my feet when she did it.

There was a sharp crack and it seemed like time stood still at the instant of impact.  At first I thought nothing happened but then the compressed blast waves of the impact bloomed outward and knocked all of us back and Ella fell on her backside and the demon fell back onto its hind haunches.

They were both stunned and it shook its head, blackish sulfur smelling blood was oozing from his forehead.  His front paw shot out faster than I could follow and grabbed Ella's leg and flung her like a ragdoll behind him, into the roiling mass of demons in his wake.  There had to be at least a hundred of them.  He turned and charged back after her, he had no interest in us, just the one who hurt him.

Parker was screaming, “Ella!”  But then relaxed a little when we felt a “whump” and saw a catlike demon go sailing through the air.  That was our signal and the rest of us went into motion.

From my vantage point on my long, spidery legs, I could see Ella surrounded by demons that were hacking, slashing and striking at the woman from all sides as the bear approached.  She was staggering and I could hear clinking with each step she took.  She was paying a toll for the fight, as the earth slowly claimed her body with crystal from the feet up.

I slashed my arm down and vines tore out of my fingertips, it was a sharp pain when I did that instead of the thrumming pain from my chest.  Half a dozen deadly, twisting, thorny vines sped across the distance between us.  Death, dead, venomous, anathema to life, poison.  These demons were going to...  Intense flames incinerated my vines before they could pull Ella's attackers off of her.

I followed the stream of fire and what looked to be a cross between a dragon and a woman was spewing the fire from her mouth.  She was charging at me.  She looked to have scales covering her body but as she got closer, I saw they were faces.  Faces of the damned screaming in agony and despair.  They all looked at me with unseeing eyes.

What sort of abomination was it?  I clapped my hands together and two groups of vines mimicked it to crush her between them, but she twisted away and screamed.  Her unholy scream became gouts of white-hot flames that burned my briars to ash on contact.  I heard another whump from one of Ella's strikes followed by the bellow of the bear.  I caught her body sailing past in my peripheral vision.

Then I was suddenly on defense instead of offense as this dragon lady charged at me, spewing her hellfire.  Demons, I reminded myself, demons are not of this realm.  We weren't used to fighting creatures like these.  I noticed Gretta in her Perchta form in the sky battling the bat-winged creature I saw earlier.  They were slinging around so much magic up in the sky that the city was lit up almost like daylight.  It had to be the Trickster up there to be able to battle a nature goddess like that.

As the dragon lady burned away shield after shield of vines as I retreated, feeling the scorching heat on my face, I saw Daria and the Red Hood, facing off with the two Alphas.

Damn, they had done it again.  Out thought us, outplayed us.  They were going after their mortal enemies while they had selected specific demons to counter the powers of each of us.

Demons were slowly breaking through the defense I put up for our wolf fighters.  Some were dying on my poison thorns, the black magic in them working like my toxins on mortal creatures.  They were killing the wolves that were attempting to attack them as they dug through my briars.  They were inadvertently helping to dwindle the forces.  There were just stragglers here and there besides the group trying to get to the women in my briars.  The new group of demons was the biggest threat.

I had to get over there, Nicole couldn't face a demon, no matter how spectacular of a swordswoman she was, but this dragon bitch was pressing me.  Relentless, pushing, corralling, no... guiding me toward the other demons.

I hissed violently at her, my venom mixed with the spittle spat forth.  Her scales actually screamed where it hit her, I could hurt her if I could get my vines past that hellfire of hers.  I slapped aside two musclebound demons, who had no eyes, but were screaming an eerie scream that seemed to be filling me with sorrow.  Flame girl had maneuvered me right into them, but the automatic defenses of my curse blocked their blows.  I had injured one and a couple demon dogs dove on the wounded one.  They didn't seem to discern between friend or foe, just attacked weakness.

I was diminishing my power as the fight progressed, I had long since exhausted the boost of energy I got from the druid talisman.  I slung vines in long arcs around the fire breather, attacking from multiple directions at once.  She slung her head around wildly and incinerated most of them with that unholy pyre of flame she breathed.  Finally, one got through and impacted her side.  Again her scales screamed and some of them closed their eyes.

She spun away like a cat and hissed back at me.  Her eyes looked like two black pits of hell, glinting in the immense light display coming from the sky above.  She put a hand over her injury then narrowed her eyes at me and sprang directly at me.

I crossed my arms in front of me and a dense wall of black, thorny vines and brambles formed in front of me.  She struck the wall and I heard her hiss of pain, then as they were of no consequence, she incinerated my defenses with those ungodly flames.

Her grasping arms came through the hole she had burned.  My reflexes were slowing in my exhaustion but my curse wouldn't allow her to get to...  she burned through the new shield of interceding vines that sprang from my chest on their own and one of her hands grasped my throat.  I could feel the searing heat as her hand burned my flesh.  Nobody in centuries has ever laid a hand on me in battle.

I fell back onto the ground, my vines cushioning me.  She fell on me.  I could see all the damage her flesh took getting through my vines, there were black oozing pustules all over and most of her scales were either silent or torn off with little pieces of flesh.  Her eyes were half-crazed as she slithered through the hole she made in my tightening vines, but her skin and scales seemed to slough off.  She was shedding!

The madness in her eyes... I recognized it... was I like her?  Was I like this unholy creature?  Simply a monster devoid of humanity?

She released my throat and grabbed my hands and slammed them back.  She had me pinned and my flesh was burning, it was a new kind of agony for me.  Time seemed to slow down as I caught a glimpse of Gretta in the sky being struck by a black and red seething mass of energy that tossed her through the air as her Perchta form faded. She slammed through a building in a rain of debris and shattered glass, and fell toward the ground.  The darkness of the night swallowed us again.

I turned my head, in that agonizingly slow time paradox I found myself in, to see the grizzly demon holding a bloodied Ella above its head as it reared up over fifteen feet into the air on it's hind legs then slammed her violently into the ground, concrete and asphalt buckling and cratering.  I looked the other way and saw the demons break through my briars to the others.

In the distance, Daria was bloody and staggering, with one arm hanging limply at her side as an Alpha wolf slammed into her.  The Red Hood was on her back, holding the jaws of the other Alpha open to prevent it from tearing her throat out.

I closed my eyes, we had lost, we had come so close, but we were outplayed.  The Scales chose the wrong pieces for the board.  At least I could finally be done with this cursed life, and I could be with Nicole in the next world.

Then time sped back up again, and my eyes snapped wide open when a wolf howl filled with power rippled over the battlefield.  Enemy and ally alike turned our gaze to the Space Needle.  There on the saucer near the peak was a huge black wolf with two men.  His howl was reinvigorating.

I murmured, “When all is at its bleakest, look on high for salvation.  Fuckin' cryptic Grimm brothers.”

The third Alpha, Cristian had arrived, and he was with the Scales.  Did that mean he was on our side?  It was all so confusing, befuddling, not sense making, bewildering to me.  I shook my head, I couldn't think of such nonsense now.  The howl was pushing away the cobwebs of despair that I had not noticed had descended upon us like a mist.  It had the stink of demon magic to it, I could almost sense a brimstone scent.  And the acrid smell of my own burning flesh.  We had been under an enchantment that had eroded away our confidence.

The dragon lady on top of me snapped her eyes from the Space Needle back to me and she inhaled deeply to land her final attack and incinerate me.  I smirked at her open mouth and hissed violently again, my venom splattering on her face and in her mouth, being pulled into her lungs by her inhalation.

She skittered back in a fashion worthy of my spider legs as she screamed, trying to wipe the burning liquid off her face and clawing at her throat.  I was instantly up and flowing toward her on my writhing vines.  Then I did the thing she least expected.  I grabbed her face and slammed my forehead down on hers.  The forehead is the hardest bone in the body, as hard as concrete.

I heard her nose crack and some of that sickening, black ichor spewed from it.  She staggered back.  Now I have never really learned to fight, I'm quite sure I'd be abysmal at hand to hand.  I have always fought with my briar vines and brambles.  So I decided to go with what I know best.  I slung a hand across myself and a group of vines mimicked me and struck the stunned woman across the face, sending her spinning to the ground.

She opened her mouth to attack with her flames, but grasped her throat in pain instead.  I said in a tone that was far more calm that I was,  “Let me share an interesting fact about dragons with you bitch.”

I slung my arms back and screamed as thousands of vines sawed and chewed their way out of my chest with explosive force.  Some slammed through her body, lifting her up high and the others formed an ever tightening cocoon around her.  Black ichor started to drip out from between them.  “They're extinct.”

I heard a cracking noise to the left as I held her.  Concrete was breaking in the crater that Ella had been in.  She stood up and she looked to be mostly living crystal from the neck down.  Her bloody face was smiling a smile I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of.  I could feel the power of the earth gathering up into her, more than ever.

She said, “Is that all you got you sodding wanker?” As she brought one crystal thumb up to her nose and wiped it as she clenched her hands into fists.  “Bring it!”  The grizzly demon bellowed and charged.  She matched his roar and charged back, but with a decidedly different outcome this time.  It reared up, swiping a large claw at her as they collided.  Her fist shot out and there was a huge whump that shook the buildings around us, shattering windows, and causing us all to stumble to maintain our footing.

Then they just stood there, facing each other.  I couldn't tell what had happened, but then slowly, like a tree falling in the forest, the bear-demon fell backward, off of Ella's fist which was embedded in its chest.  Leaving her standing there holding it's crushed heart in her fist.  Her Cockney accent got heavier as she said, “Yeah, that's what I thought you tosser.”  Then she turned to face some oncoming demons.

I may have barked out some laughter, but I'm not sure, my immediate concern was getting to Nicole.  I pulled my hands apart, making a shredding gesture, and my vines obediently made lizard jerky of the she-dragon.  Then I turned and started flowing and skittering to aid my girl.

I saw Maireni grin up at the wolf on top of her.  She had one arm in it's jaws, but it seemed the Alpha couldn't bite through her impossible red cloak.  Her other hand was inside the folds of that cloak, and she pulled out an honest to goodness flintlock pistol and fired at the Alpha point blank into his forehead.

That was useless, a single shot can't hurt a...  the Alpha fell off to the side, unmoving, and started changing back to human.  The hole in his head foaming white.  Then I got it.  A silver musket ball!  Tricky Red is sly and cunning, Alphas will do no running.