The creature stared at me stupidly. I moved to skirt him to the left and he snarled, coming to life. I kept going. He charged me. His huge head hammered my side with awesome force. I fell and saw his fangs above me. Drool dripped on my face, stretching from his teeth. He hovered above me, black lips quivering, legs rigid. The slack expression reasserted itself and he moved back, returning to his place in the ring of furry beasts.
I gained my feet. Not trusting his offspring, Bono was keeping them on a short telepathic leash.
Beyond the line of furry backs, the bonedragon bit at Nick. Crusader ducked and hurled something into the gaping mouth of the zombie. I waited for the loud boom, but none came. Nick's grenades wouldn't work. The magic here was too thick.
Far to the left, Curran and the upir battled. Bono moved fast, matching the shapechanger in both speed and agility. His wild hair flying, he leaped and spun like a dervish. His weapon was a blur in his hands, forming a wall Curran had trouble penetrating. A long laceration marred Curran's back, swelling with blood. It wasn't healing—the spearhead had silver in it.
Bono fought Curran and held his children in check. A man of many talents.
Time to jam a stick into his wheel.
I surveyed the horde before me and picked a thick, bald beast. It stood on disproportionately thin legs, staring at me with dull eyes. Its fat gut hung low, almost reaching the ground.
I flicked my wrist. The heavy round head rolled to the dirt in a gush of blood. The beast's heart pumped a few times, not knowing that the creature was dead, and more blood bubbled from the stump of the neck, saturating the air with a sharp metallic scent.
The horde trembled. The beheaded carcass crumpled to the ground and the ring of beasts around me nodded in tandem, mesmerized by its fall. I slashed the beast's gut and a clump of tangled bloody intestines spilled into the dirt.
I cut a piece of steaming entrails, speared it with Slayer, and dipped it in a puddle of blood. The horde's eyes fixated on the flesh. I raised it on the tip of my blade and held it before Arag's nose.
"Blood," I told him.
Arag's baboon nostrils flared. He sucked in the scent. Thick tongue rolled from his mouth, greedily licking the air. The quivering piece of intestine beckoned, dripping blood to the ground. I moved back a step and Arag moved with me, his gaze glued to the slimy morsel.
I took another step. Arag followed and jerked, checked in midmotion. The bloody, tender piece of flesh hung before his nose, so close that he had only to lean forward to touch it. And he wanted it. He wanted it very badly. Yet Arag did not move.
Bono's hold on them was too strong. There was nothing I could do to break it. Every moment I delayed was costing Curran and Nick in blood.
The twisted monstrous horde looked at me, seeming so pitiful.
I flicked the piece of flesh from Slayer's blade, sending it arching high into the night air. Arag died before it hit the ground.
Bono had never seen me kill before. I cut them down one by one, quickly, methodically, working with mechanical precision. Some fought when threatened, others just stared stupidly as the smoking blade sliced into them, cleaving muscle and tendon. In three minutes time it was over and I ran across the yard to Curran and Bono.
The bonedragon charged to intercept. Its skeletal tail swept at me, and I rolled to the side as the dragon pounded its enormous paw into the ground, blocking my way. The zombie snapped at me, jaws clanking inches away. I leaped to my feet and slashed at the rotting paw. Slayer sliced through decaying tissue in a spray of putrid sluice. The dragon's tail smashed into me. Pain exploded in my side as if I had been hit by a truck. I flew through the air and fell into the carnage I had wrought.
I leaped to my feet and slid on the blood of Bono's children, sprawling head first onto their corpses. Where the hell was Nick?
The dragon closed in for the kill. Huge teeth reached for me, and I pushed away from a corpse, sliding on my back across the bloody mess. The skeletal jaws dug into the spot where I had been a moment earlier.
The dead orbs of eyes swiveled, focusing on my new position and the dragon attacked. I squirmed to the side. Great teeth scraped the ground next to me and I jammed Slayer into the undead beast's cheek, sending a jolt of magic through the point where its jaws met. The dragon jerked its head up, taking me with it. I hung twenty feet above the ground as the zombie's jaws opened and closed, trying to crush my sword. The stench of decay choked me. Through the gaps in the dragon's teeth, I saw a ribbon-thin, half-rotten tongue flailing against the cage of fangs.
Slayer ate through the undead flesh, liquefying gristle and muscle. The dragon shook its head like a dog gripping a dead rat in its mouth. Something within its skull popped with a light crack. The enormous mandible broke free and crashed to the ground, taking me with it. I flipped in the air, trying to land on my feet and fell onto the jagged teeth. A sharp bone shard jabbed through my ribs. I cried out and pushed myself off the bones. Above me a clawed foot replaced the sky. I dove to the side and the dragon's paw crushed its broken jaw.
It didn't matter. I could hack it to pieces and it would still keep coming at me limb by limb.
I clenched my teeth, fighting the fire in my side and saw Nick above me pulling himself onto the roof of the building. He was aiming for the far end, where several silhouettes crouched by a vent. The navigators.
The dragon bounded after me. I backed away, almost stepping into a fire.
Nick sprinted across the roof to the clump of figures. It would take several navigators to pilot the dragon. If Nick knocked one of them out of the lineup, the zombie might collapse. Or break free.
I grabbed a branch from the fire and hurled it at the dragon. It arched across the sky and splashed across the undead chest. The rotting tissues failed to ignite. The dragon kept coming, undaunted. I ran around the blaze, keeping the flames between me and the dragon.
The beast snapped at me, but stayed away from the fire. Above me, Nick smashed into the beings on the roof and a shaggy body tumbled to the ground, screaming out its life on the way down.
The dragon skirted the bonfire, forcing me to move. I dug my fingers under my T-shirt as I ran. They touched broken bone, sending a shock of blinding pain through me, and came away slick. Not good.
The dragon hesitated and twisted away from me, huge head rising on an impossibly long neck to reach the roof.
A distraction. Lord, please, let the dragon's pilot be a coward. A couple of minutes, that's all I need.
I began to chant low, under my breath. The magic surged to me, coalescing about me, stalking my tracks like an opportunistic cat smelling tuna. I plunged Slayer into the ground and put my other hand against my ribs. Warm blood coated my palm and I thrust my hands into the fire. Flames licked my skin and blood hissed, evaporating. I kept chanting.
On the roof Nick struggled with something tall and clawed as the dragon snapped, trying to skewer them both with its fangs.
Magic grew, flowing into me and through my blood and flesh bonding with the fire. My hands blistered as I paid the fire for its service.
"Hesaad," I whispered to the flame. Mine. Suffused with my blood, the fire flinched like a living thing, no longer a simple reaction of oxidation but a force alive with the power it borrowed from magic. "Amehe." Obey. "Amehe, amehe, amehe…"
The flames detached from the refuse that served as its fuel. An enormous fireball hovered before me. With a wave of my hand, I released it. It streaked across the yard, roaring with fury, and smashed into the dragon's jagged spine. The impact broke the dragon in two. The back half fell, burning, while the front, lacking support, sagged to the ground, the huge head stretching helplessly, still trying to reach the combatants on the roof.
The flames consumed the undead flesh. It was so tempting to sink to the ground and watch them, but if I did that, I would not get up again.
I gripped Slayer's hilt and the skin on my right hand split. I cried out and let go. The pain was too much. My charred fingers found a vial of anesthetic in my belt. Numb. I had to make my hands numb. The belt wouldn't release the vial and my ruined fingers were so clumsy. Tears wetted my cheeks. Finally the vial came free and I gripped the cork with my teeth, pulling it out. I spat the cork to the ground and shook the vial, throwing a cloud of dust into the air. I walked into the dust, my hands before me. The world swayed, growing distorted, and numbness came.
I watched myself reach for the sword and grip the handle I couldn't feel and pull the sword free. Turning I walked across the yard to where Curran still fought with the upir.
A piercing howl cut through the roar of the fire, a scream of pure towering fury, so potent it could only be human. Two bodies plummeted to the ground from the roof. One of them wore a trenchcoat.
"Good-bye, Nick," I whispered, as the bodies smashed into refuse. The Crusader's scream died with him. The dragon shuddered and melted, decomposing before my eyes into a pile of bone and ooze. The abomination's pilot was dead.
I dragged myself across the yard. I could see the bloodstain on my T-shirt now. Not that much time left.
I saw Curran, exhausted and bleeding from a dozen places. Bono's body looked misshapen, as if he was missing pieces of himself. It looked like whole sections of muscle had been torn from his body and his skin had simply closed over them.
The upir spun the spear off his neck, catching it with ease and rammed its point into Curran's thigh. Curran snarled and ripped into the upir, tearing great chunks of meat from Bono's chest. The upir cried out and danced away. His skin knitted itself over the wound.
My legs failed me and I fell. The poison sphere rolled out of my pocket beyond my reach. Nice going, Kate. Nice going.
I bent my neck and watched the battle upside down, unable to flinch when their blood splashed me.
They were tired. Both of them. There were no taunts, no showy roars. Just fighting, grisly, bloody, and painful.
Once again Bono danced away, light on his feet. Curran snarled low and saw me. His gaze locked on me for a moment and I knew that this was it.
Bono lunged. Curran knocked away the spear, ripping at the upir's leg and missing, deliberately too slow. The spear came back in a shiny arch. Bono thrust. The razor-sharp point slid into Curran's stomach and out his back, pinning him to the ground. But Bono had leaned forward, putting all his strength into the thrust. Curran's massive hands gripped him by the shoulders. Enormous muscles strained. A horrible snarl ripped from Curran's mouth. Bones broke, muscle snapped, and I saw light through Bono's chest, as Curran tore his torso in two. For a moment the two halves of the chest were upright, the head and neck on the left half sticking out at a strange angle, and then the upir lost his balance and tumbled into the dirt.
Curran sagged against the spear. Blood poured from his mouth and his face went slack. "No," I heard myself whisper. "Please, no."
The upir's body jerked. His mangled chest shuddered and slowly he rose to his knees. He remained upright for a moment, fell again and pushed himself forward across the soot-stained ground toward me.
I watched him crawl, his body straining to mend the damage. His head came level with mine. I could see the red sack of his heart pulsing through the gap in his chest half-hidden by ruined spongy lungs.
"Nice fight," he said through the bloodstained lips. His right eye wouldn't stop blinking. "Something to remember on our honeymoon."
I jammed the bone blade into his heart.
Bono screamed. His unearthly howl shook the prison and the windows exploded. His hands flailed, trying to reach the dagger, but failed to find the small blade. He clawed at my neck, but I couldn't feel it. It didn't matter. That final thrust had taken everything I had.
There was nothing left to do but to lie here. I'd see him die before I did. That would be enough for me.
Bono lay on his back. "I don't want to die," he whispered between short, hoarse breaths. "I don't want to die…"
His body began to smoke. First a thin sheen of indigo fog coated his skin and then it grew, curling into long tendrils and escaping into the night sky.
"My power… leaving me," Bono rasped. The smoke thickened and the upir began to whisper in the language of power. His words made no sense to me. He chanted feverishly, trying to hold onto life or simply praying, I wasn't sure which.
A shudder troubled his ruined body. His speech faltered. His heels dug into the ground. The blue smoke vanished, like the light of a candle snuffed out by someone's breath. The upir's unblinking eyes stared into the night. It was over.
I wished I could push myself farther and reach Curran. Maybe I'd have someone to fight with in the afterlife if we went together.
It was a hell of a kiss…
Darkness claimed me.