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CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO


Cecilia Lumiere was much reduced. The thin visage of her face floated over a mere sketch of feminine grace. The edges of her body hung frayed in the air. Her light flickered, and nearly went out.

Scooping the scarab off the pile of junk that the Mark V had become, I held it overhead like the skull of a vanquished god.

“Looking for this?” I shouted.

“Kill them!” Cecilia shrieked. Her voice had lost much of its volume, but none of its hatred. Claude nodded.

“I shall, my dear. Have no fear. But first . . . You have given so much.” He turned to the bare glimmer of Cecilia’s soul, then swept his staff in her direction. The mouth on the bat-winged skull creaked open. “I’m afraid I must ask for the rest.”

Cecilia’s eyes went wide as she was sucked into the staff. Her form disintegrated into a frantic cloud of glowing light, desperately trying to hang on to the physical realm. The sound of her passing was like glass shattering. When she was gone, the lich’s eyes flashed green for a brief moment. Slamming the staff onto the ground, Claude Lumiere tilted his head to the sky and laughed.

On the far side of the room, Evelyn Lumiere threw Tesla to the ground. Their battle had been going on in the background of all this. The ceiling and floor were charred from lightning strikes, and the air around them hung with smoke and the tang of electrical discharge. But not even the eighth manifestation of Nikola Tesla was a match for Evelyn Lumiere in single combat. Nik lay in a heap at the slayer’s feet. But her attention was entirely on the Iron Lich.

“What have you done?” she shrieked. The Iron Lich turned casually in her direction. A dusting of motes, the protoplasmic remnants of his wife, floated around his shoulders. Her stakes clattered to the ground. “You killed her!”

“Cecilia knew the risks when she began this endeavor. She understood the sacrifices that would be asked of her,” he said, taking a step in her direction. “Of both of you.”

“You abandoned her to die! The vampires would have never gotten her if you hadn’t locked me away. I’m the one who saved her from their curse,” Evelyn said, stalking toward him. “I’m the one who brought her back. Not you!”

“And an admirable job you have done. But the time for recriminations is over, my dear girl. Without the skills I gave you, and the knowledge I left behind, you would be lying dead in the ground. You should be thanking me for your power, not threatening me with it.”

“You never gave me a choice,” Evelyn said coolly. “But I’m making one now.”

She drew the sword she had taken from the valkyries, its clockwork and electrical coil spine whirring with aetheric life. Lightning coursed along the length of her wings and through her body, turning her eyes into bright spears of light. I felt a thrill of hope as she leapt into the air, sword held high, toward the abomination of her father.

“I don’t have time for this,” Claude said casually, then pointed the staff at Evelyn.

A bolt of lightning, as green as emerald and bright as the sun, traveled from Evelyn’s heart to the tip of the lich’s gruesome staff. For a brief second, the corrupted outline of Evelyn’s skeleton, much changed by magic and perverse science, shone through her flesh like wood in the midst of a bonfire. Then she was gone, and plumes of green-and-black energy swirled through the air to collect in the gaping mouth of Lumiere’s staff. Of the vampire slayer, there was nothing left—neither ash nor bone nor glimmer of flesh. She never even had time to scream.

“A pity,” Lumiere said quietly. “You give them everything, and what thanks do you get?”

“You bloody monster,” Tesla said, slowly pushing his way up onto his feet. “That was your daughter. Your family!”

“Family is nothing after death,” he answered. “Trust me, I’ve been there. She wouldn’t have lasted much longer, consumed by her own hatred, and the desire for revenge. If I hadn’t given her a trail to follow, both of them would have been trapped in the space between living and dying. Seething for eternity. I loved them more than that.” He stopped about thirty feet away. “At least this way, they got a chance to act out their fantasies of vengeance before their hatred snuffed them out. And now they may rest.”

“You almost sound merciful,” Tesla said. He limped to where I and the rest of Knight Watch stood in stunned silence. “What happened to you, Claude?”

“I died. It happens to everyone, eventually. I simply wasn’t willing to let things go just yet. I had plans that had not quite come to fruition.” He crossed his arms, resting them on the outstretched wings of his skull staff. “Fortunately, my lovely daughter was the curious sort. She did just enough to bring me back, but not enough to bind me.”

“Her mistake,” I said. “So what’s your plan? Are you going to come along quietly, or do we have to force the issue?”

“I never could get used to Americans. So direct. So crude.” Claude stood up straight, collecting the staff in both hands. “You will have your answer, monsieur. When I am ready to give it.”

“I’m afraid we really can’t wait.” I lowered my visor and fell into a guard position, pushing past Tesla. The rest of the team followed suit.

“Afraid? Not yet,” Claude purred. “But you will be.”

For a lumbering automaton of steel and bones, Lumiere moved with unexpected speed. He crossed the thirty feet between us in two strides, his feet skating across the marble as though it were ice. He swung the staff at me with a backhanded motion. I caught the blow on my shield, but there was enough strength in it to stagger me to the right. I tried to swing at him, but he was already past me, barreling into Tesla. The leader of the Eccentrics saw him coming, though, and dodged handily out of the way. There was a brief crack of electricity, and the air hummed with power. I thought we were about to witness a boss fight, but Lumiere kept going.

Right at Saint Matthew.

“He’s going for the healer!” I shouted. The Saint was still harassing Gregory in the back line, menacing him with prayers and foul-smelling poultices. Gregory had the damaged pauldron off, and his naked arm was streaked with blood. As the Iron Lich thundered toward them, Gregory looked up in shock. He waved Matthew away, then took up his sword and prepared to take the charge.

The lich thrust at Gregory with his staff. For all his undead celerity and gentlemanly behavior, Claude Lumiere had never dueled with sword and shield. He was depending on brute force and the unnatural constitution of his monstrous unflesh to win the fight. Unfortunately for him, Knight Watch spends all our time battling such things.

Gregory easily took the thrust with the forte of his blade, then used the inertia from Lumiere’s charge to send the lich stumbling to the side. He followed up by swinging his zweihander in a wide, overhead arc that would have decapitated a mortal. The blade clanged off the iron cage around Lumiere’s skull, throwing sparks and bending wire.

Lumiere snarled, battering at Gregory’s chest with the center of his staff. There was enough strength in the blow to knock the paladin back, but he recovered quickly, slamming pommel and hilt into Lumiere’s hands before thrusting the point of his sword at the lich’s face. Lumiere retreated, but only far enough to give himself room to swing the staff. He caught Gregory’s lead foot at the ankle, sweeping him off-balance. Greg stumbled, recovered, and set up a guard for the expected counterswing. But Lumiere didn’t press the attack. The lich simply reached out and laid one finger on Gregory’s exposed forehead. It opened him up to a wicked riposte, which Gregory gladly took, driving steel into Lumiere’s belly. But it was already too late.

A flash of emerald lightning passed up Lumiere’s arm, traveling from Gregory’s forehead up into the lich’s chest. Lumiere seemed to swell, as though his lifeless lungs were taking a deep, cleansing breath. Gregory’s eyes went wide. He crumpled to the ground.

Chesa and I both yelled out in shock. Matthew, ignoring the threat of the lich still looming over Gregory, rushed forward. Addie, Tesla, and the rest of the team were still processing what they saw.

Starting from his forehead and traveling across his face and down his arm, a wave of withering corruption consumed our paladin. His skin went dry and wrinkled. His eyes clouded. His hair, once lustrous, hung like dull rags on his head. The armor was suddenly too large for his shriveled body, and too heavy for his withered strength. He fell in a heap of disheveled steel. The sword slipped from spotted hands knotted by arthritis.

I was already moving to his side. Chesa screamed, but all I could hear was the blood hammering in my head as I charged the lich. Lumiere was still turned away, his attention fully on the Saint. I bulled into the lich’s hip, putting shield and sword into the back of his leg. He flopped forward gracelessly. I straddled Gregory’s fallen form, glaring down at the Iron Lich.

“Greg! Greg, babe, are you okay?” Chesa knelt at my feet, turning Gregory over on his back, feeling at his neck for a pulse. “Can you hear me?”

“My . . . knees hurt,” Gregory whispered. “And my . . . my everything else.”

“We’ll get you some Aspercreme and a nice Darjeeling, big guy,” I said. “Get him out of here, Ches.”

Working together, Chesa and Matthew dragged him out of harm’s way. The Iron Lich clambered gracelessly to his feet. He dusted off his collar, then cocked his head at me. Bethany and Tesla flanked me, their weapons ready.

“Anxious to die, are you? Fair enough. As your friend will soon discover, there are fates much worse than death.” He lifted his staff high overhead. The winged skull’s piercing eyes began to glow.

The report of a gunshot echoed through the Palais, and the tiny skull exploded in a cloud of bone dust and broken gears. A plume of protoplasmic energy jetted out of the top of the staff, like the flame of an oxyacetylene torch.

Adelaide cycled the chamber on her sniper rifle, ejecting a shell the length of my hand. The telescoping lens on top of the rifle whirred loudly as she took aim again.

Lumiere howled in frustration. The lich grasped the staff in both hands and twisted, cranking some sort of gauge closed, until the flame eventually sputtered and died. He whirled on Addie.

“This will not go well for you, Lady Adelaide! The Lumieres remember their grudges.”

“I’ll get over it,” she said without looking up, thumbing the cylinder closed. But before she could fire, Lumiere threw a bolt of lightning in her direction, spoiling her shot.

The lich roared and charged toward her. I intercepted him with a blow to the back of the head. He backhanded me, a casual strike that I deflected with my shield.

“You keep forgetting that I’m here and, frankly, I find that a little insulting,” I said.

“It is meant to be insulting,” Lumiere answered. “Now get out of my way.”

“Don’t think I will.” I slid more directly into his path and banged my sword against my shield. “This is what I do. Annoy villains.”

“You have a gift for it, I’ll grant you that.” He lunged at me, swinging the broken staff wildly. I deflected the main strike, turned his feint into a clean riposte, then kicked at his supporting leg. It was like kicking a light pole. The shock went all the way up to my knee, numbing my leg. I limped back, but he pressed the attack with the staff. I was desperately fending that off when he dropped the staff and grabbed my head with his open hand.

“Let’s see how brave you are after this,” he snarled.

There was a flash of green light, and then a sensation like having your skeleton pulled out of your body by the teeth. I could feel the necromantic magic coursing through my blood, plucking at my vital organs.

“Unhand him, fiend!” Tesla’s voice, followed by a bolt of brilliant white light. Fire arced through my flesh, and all my muscles seized up. But Lumiere dropped me.

I collapsed to my knees and clawed at my helmet. The steel was hot to the touch as I fumbled it off my head. Maybe that thin layer of steel plate and leather and chain saved me, or maybe I was already an old man at heart, and the lich’s magic was baffled by my bitter, cynical soul. But once I got the helm off, I could see that my hands were in one piece. I hurt, but not as badly as Gregory looked. I turned the helm over in my hands. There was a handprint burned into the face, throbbing with necrotic light. I whistled.

“That was close.” My throat was dry. I got to my feet and looked around.

Tesla and Lumiere were squaring off. Chesa had her bow in hand, but no arrow, and was looking between me and Gregory with growing concern. Adelaide had finished with her rifle, and was taking aim at the lich. Gregory, his hair white and the skin pulled tight across his skull, was in the care of the Saint.

“John, are you alright?” Chesa asked.

“I’ve felt worse. How do I look?”

“Like a cocky version of Revenge of the Nerds, minus the glasses,” she said. “So pretty much normal.” She glanced at me again, then smiled. “Your hair’s gone white.”

“Wait, what?” I tried to pull my locks down where I could see them. A couple strands came loose in my fingers. They were as white as snow. “Ah, heck! I look like Anderson Cooper!”

“It suits you,” she said. “Considering the alternative.”

“Yeah. Right.” I glanced at Gregory uncomfortably. “I’m sure he’ll be fine, Ches.”

“You’ve gone far enough, Claude,” Tesla said, interrupting our little conversation. “This ends now.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing, Nikola. It took so long to get here. I have sacrificed so much.” He took an uneven step toward Tesla. Apparently whatever Nik had done to get Lumiere to drop me had done some damage. “Think of the possibilities. Think what we could accomplish—”

“I’ve heard enough of your excuses, Claude. I am a man of science, not . . .” Tesla gestured dismissively at the Iron Lich. “Not whatever it is that you’ve become. An abomination!”

“Very well,” Lumiere growled. “You have made your choice. Now I must make mine!”

The Iron Lich charged forward, arms outstretched, hands grasping for Nikola. Addie fired first, two shots that ricocheted off the lich’s metal body before a third struck his skull, cracking the bone. By then he was too close to Nik to risk a shot, and Addie’s gun fell silent. Tesla backpedaled, but the lich was too fast, too large, and too determined for Nik to escape. At the last second, Tesla cracked his knuckles together, opening the circuit on the generator.

Lightning filled the air.

The first stroke limned the Iron Lich in golden light, shining through the cracks in his skin and outlining his skull in a corona of fire. Still he stumbled on, and so Tesla fired a second bolt into his metal body, and a third. By now, Lumiere was slowing down. Tesla dodged out of reach of those soul-sucking hands, but kept his finger on the trigger. Bolt after bolt arced from Tesla’s gauntlets into the Iron Lich. With each bone-jarring crack of electrical discharge, he slowed down. Until, finally, he stopped and sank to his knees.

“You were brilliant, Claude! A genius beyond your time!” Another bolt, and Lumiere spasmed. Tesla was furious, his eyes lined with tears, his face twisted in a mask of rage. “You could have been anything! The greatest of us! Your name could have lived in the halls of ether for all eternity.” Crack! Shiver! Lumiere slumped forward. Steam wafted off the glowing plates of his body. His skull, suspended in its cage of iron, smoldered. “But you threw it all away. For what? For what, Claude! Tell me!”

Out of the corner of my eye, the slightest movement caught my attention. The remnants of Cecilia’s tank were melting. No, no melting. Metal shuffled off the Vickers, dissolving into curls of rust and corroded copper. What remained was a hillock of moss and broken gravestones, out of place in the marble expanse of the Palais. I looked around wildly. The columns were dissolving into the rough bark of willow trees. Fog pressed against the paned ceiling, pouring through the broken windows to crawl along the floor like a predator. Even the air, heavy with electrical discharge and gunpowder, shifted into the deep funk of the grave.

Something was happening.

“Nik, wait!” I shouted. “I think—”

“Then you must take your secrets to the grave!” Tesla said. He clasped his hands together over his head, and a final, terrible stroke of lightning shot from the generator on his back. It pierced the Iron Lich through and through. Jagged bolts of electricity grounded into the floor, traveling through his hands and knees, dancing along his metal spine, until they flew out into the tower itself. The lattice frame of the glass ceiling turned into a net of glowing light.

High above us, the spinning generator arms glowed bright, then dissolved into a ring of glittering stars. Around us, the world changed.

Huddled on the ground at Tesla’s feet, the Iron Lich began to laugh.


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