CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
My boot scraped across the steel grating of the walkway. Claude Lumiere turned to face me with casual disinterest. Behind him, the otherworldly flames of the distant dream city burned against the sky, throwing his silhouette into sharp contrast. When he saw me, Lumiere cocked his head to one side.
“You are just as persistent as they warned me you would be,” he said. His voice sounded like sandpaper on bone. “The valkyries, those demons you sent back to hell, even the noble old dragon, they spoke of you with much hatred. I thought it misplaced, but”—he shrugged—“you seem worthy of it.”
“I try to piss off the worst sort of people.” I set my feet and drew my sword. “And you are absolutely the worst sort of person.”
“You don’t have to die here, you know,” Lumiere said. “This isn’t even your world. It’s no one’s world. A false place, full of faux people.”
“None of the Eccentrics strike me as fake. Ida’s the purest nerd I’ve ever met, and Adelaide has more life in her trigger finger than you have in your entire body. Literally. Even The Good Doctor is a real person, somewhere under that mask,” I said, stalking toward him. “You’re the only one that rings false. A lich in a steampunk costume. An abomination, pretending to be a miracle.”
“Clever words. Come, join me in this conquest. I can give you something your costume kingdom can never offer.” He held out a hand toward me. “Immortality, in the heart of a true realm of magic and power.”
“You should have made that offer before Evelyn tried to kill my friends, or the valkyries crashed the Silverhawk. Or, heck, before you turned Greg into the Quaker Oats guy.” I swung my shield down from my shoulder, firming the straps against my forearm. “That’s three strikes. I’m here to collect.”
“Worth a try.” He held his empty hand out to the side. There was a crack of lightning, and the gnarled length of his skull-wing staff appeared. “Don’t say I didn’t offer something like mercy. Which is more than you deserve.”
He came at me like a street thug, swinging his ridiculous staff with both hands in a wide, sweeping arc. I ducked down, letting my shield deflect the opening blow, then chopped at his leg. Lumiere hissed and fell back. I pressed the advantage, hacking at wrist and shoulder before slamming my shield against his chest, forcing him even farther back. My sword wasn’t doing much against the brass and iron of his body, but it was clear Lumiere didn’t like it. I was starting to feel pretty good.
“You know, I have a question. Where’d you get the whole lich schtick from?” I asked. Lumiere punched at me with his iron gauntlet. I ducked aside, smacked him on the inside of the arm with my shield, then hacked down at his shoulder as his arm flew wide. He stumbled back. “I’ve met your daughter. You died a long time ago. Gygax hadn’t even rolled initiative yet.”
“Do you honestly care?” He caught my next swing with the body of his staff, twisted my arm down, then took a swipe at my head. I gave ground. He used the space to gather himself. “Or are you simply looking for an excuse to talk?”
“Bit of the former, bit of the latter,” I said, adjusting my positioning. Lumiere had drawn me toward the edge, and I didn’t want to slip and plunge to my death. “I would say that I’m trying to get under your skin, but you don’t have any.”
“Your confidence is admirable. It will serve you well in Hades.” A quick thrust of his staff tested my shield, and when I tried to chop down at him, I was surprised to find his hand wrapped around my wrist. “Lucy likes an ego.”
“Why am I not shocked that your devil is a woman.” I tried to twist my hand out of his grip, but he shrugged off my effort with steel fingers. “How very French.”
“I heard that,” Chesa said, finally emerging from the middle of the platform. She drew an arrow to her cheek. “Drop my ex, or I’m going to fill you full of holes.”
“Ineffectual whelp! You dare to threaten a living god?” Lumiere boomed.
“‘Living god’? Man, I really wouldn’t go that far.” With a grunt I finally freed my wrist. “You’re more like a haunted mannequin. I hate to think what’s going on under your belt.”
“Fools!” Lumiere tried to backhand me, but I pedaled clear, catching his clumsy strike on my shield. Steel gonged like a bell. “Do you understand where you are? Do you understand what I can do?”
As soon as I was out of the way, Chesa let loose with a quick volley of arrows. The first flight glimmered with magical light, and struck with a heavy thud on the lich’s metallic carapace. That clearly stunned him, but then the rest of the arrows clattered harmlessly off his armored hide. Chesa grimaced as she reloaded.
“Your magic fades, even as mine grows.” He threw his hand in Chesa’s direction. A pair of icy blue bolts shot out of his palm to race at her. She tumbled out of the way. Where they struck, the bolts left a patch of glimmering frost. Lumiere laughed. “Where is your science now, Nikola? Where is your power?”
“Don’t get cocky,” I spat, charging forward to catch his wrist with the steel rim of my shield. His arm snapped back. “That’s my job.”
Rather than answering, Lumiere gave an iron-lunged roar, smashing at me with his open hand. I brought my lingering magic to bear, creating an invisible shield around the hilt of my sword. It held for only a second, flickering blue and red before it collapsed like a soap bubble in a hurricane. The lich’s fist went into my belly, doubling me up. I stumbled backward. Chesa sprinted toward us, dropping her bow and drawing the twin crescent blades. Lumiere spared her only a glance.
“Ches, wait, he’s—”
When she got close enough, Ches leapt into the air, blades drawn back to strike, legs arching forward, a grim expression creasing her face. Lumiere caught her with one iron fist around the neck. She jerked to a stop in midair, flopping like a doll at the end of the lich’s arm.
A wave of power surged through Lumiere. It pulsed through Chesa’s limp body. She twitched, her arms going rigid, eyes and lips straining back, as though every muscle in her body was firing at once. She tried to scream, but the only sound was a strangled rattle.
He dropped her. Chesa fell to the ground, stiff as a board, eyes wide open and staring at me.
“—death to touch,” I finished.
“Not death. She will live, for now.” He stalked toward me imperiously. “To watch your end. To see you fail. After that . . . I may have need of a queen.
“Here you are, at the end. Alone. A pity they left you here to fail.” I kept backing up, and he kept following me. “I would like to see Tesla’s face when this engine fulfills its purpose, and my soul is sealed to this body, and this domain. We are at the beginning of something wonderful, you and I. I would have loved an audience.”
My back came up against the railing. Behind me there was nothing but the open sky, and a deadly drop. I glanced over my shoulder, then swallowed and set my shield. No turning back now. When I looked back, he was grinning hideously, as though he was feeding on my terror. It was a healthy feast, I assure you.
“Nowhere else to run, Sir John. What are you going to do?”
“I have one question,” I said. “Before you kill me.”
“Why not?” he assented. “What would you know before I extinguish your pitiful life?”
“Is that important?” I asked, pointing over his shoulder.
Bethany crouched next to the pylon. In the time it had taken him to drive me across the platform, she had pried open the panel and lifted the metal tube from its couch. As we watched, she slipped the glass vial from its niche. When she saw us looking at her, Bee smiled and lifted the glowing green tube over her head.
“Don’t want me to drop it, do you?” she asked.
“DON’T!” Lumiere and I shouted simultaneously. When Bee gave me a funny look, I continued. “Souls, Bee! We’re going to need those!”
She scowled at me, but instead of smashing the vial to the ground, she slipped it into her haversack and gave Lumiere a jaunty salute. “Be seeing you, Boney!”
As soon as the vial left the pylon, the mists closed in around us, and the constellation of stars emanating from the spinning generators flickered and went out. Though I could see flickers of flames through the cloudbank, the shoreline disappeared.
“Gah!” Lumiere whirled away from me, chasing after Bethany with his staff outstretched.
Before she got halfway to the ladder down, he sent a bolt of blue light after her. She dodged two of them, shifting into the shadows to stutter-jump across the platform. But her third jump failed, and she was left sprinting for the exit in a very mundane manner. The lich slashed at the air, and a portal opened in front of him. He disappeared, to reappear at the top of the ladder. Bee skidded to a halt before she slid into him.
He reached toward her with a finger that glowed with necromantic power. “Two queens are better than one!”
“You’re not my type!” She spun blades out of her cloak, throwing half a dozen with the flick of her wrist. They bounced harmlessly off his metal body, but distracted him enough for her to run back toward me. “What’s the next step in this plan of yours, John?”
“Persist,” I said as I marched past her.
“I’m out of magic!” she shouted.
“Then improvise!” I answered. The lich charged toward me, glowing hand outstretched. “You’re going to have to go through me, Lightpole!”
“Through all of us,” Tembo said as he and the Saint clambered out of the ladder shaft. Lumiere glanced at them dismissively, until a gesture from Tembo’s hand jerked the vial out of Bethany’s satchel, drawing it to the big mage’s open palm. Lumiere swung at it, but Matthew struck him with the bristled flange of his mace.
“You have a weapon?” I asked, incredulous.
“It’s mostly decorative,” Matthew said. “It’s supposed to have this censer thing in the middle, but I always forget to light it. Pretty cool effect, really, and in the right light it—”
“Enough!” Lumiere shouted. He lifted his staff overhead. Green lighting coursed along the metal spars of the tower, joined by bolts of flickering light from the surrounding storm. “All Flesh Dies!”
Slamming the staff into the ground, Lumiere conjured a wave of coruscating black energy that washed across the platform. Matthew was the closest, and the first to fall.
The Saint’s face turned as white as bleached bones. The mace tumbled from his quivering fingers to bounce off the floor. It was quickly joined by his trembling form. The wave washed over him, turning him the color of mist about to melt before the sun. Tembo was next. There was a flicker of the mage’s other form, the massive elephantine giant that stalked Tembo’s domain, but as the spell hit him, Tembo crumpled. Thankfully, only his arm went over the edge of the edge of the shaft, to dangle limply against the ladder’s iron rungs. The vial rolled from his twitching fingers, to rest against the twisted mask of Tembo’s horrified face.
Bethany tried to outrun it, but without her magic, she was little more than quick. Not quick enough to outpace the inevitability of death, and all the terror it contained. Her bright face turned the color of ash, and tears filled her eyes as she fell. All she could do was whimper as she bounced off the floor.
The wave rushed forward, straight at me. This was it. This was the moment, sink or swim, fall or fly. I ground my heels into the platform and braced myself.
It was so much worse than I was expecting. Pure terror gripped me. My legs went limp, and an endless chasm opened in my heart. My soul, my flesh, everything I knew and cared about, fell into that vast and bottomless pit of despair, to be swallowed whole by hopelessness. I felt my knees hit the platform, and the sword slip from my numb fingers. In my head, I was back at the most hopeless moments in my life. The rejection that had plagued me through my youth, the mockery of a hundred bullies, the dismissive glare of my mother and the cold indifference of a father who knew more about sports than his own son. Burying my first dog, and my second, then my grandmother, and a close friend whose drunk brother sent them both over an embankment before I was old enough to understand such a loss. The realization that this is what waited for all of us. Loneliness at the moment of death, and the empty grave. My blood turned to ice, my lungs emptied in a long, jagged sob, and my heart froze in place. Fear held me in place.
Lumiere strolled casually to Tembo’s limp body and, stooping, picked up the pulsing green soul vial. He gave the big mage a desultory kick, then returned to the pylon. I could have sworn he was humming to himself.
But fear is nothing but the knife you hold against your own neck. My life had been ruled by fear. It had crushed me, ruined me, driven me to darkness. Until, one day, I chose to face those fears. The day I joined Knight Watch. The day I became the only kind of hero I understood.
The man who falls down, and stands back up. Fear knocked me down.
I stood back up.