His teeth were slowly descending toward my face. I grabbed at his throat, digging my fingers in, trying with all my strength to push him back.
It was not how I imagined this going at all. I was sure that there would be something of William left. That I would be able to get through to him, to convince him that he could be salvaged, that he could triumph over this monster that had been unleashed within him. Instead, I was fighting a losing battle against, not my brother, but a berserk creature that was going to tear out my throat inside of about two seconds.
His jaws and slavering teeth were right above me, and I knew that this was it, this was how the great Ben Finn was going to meet his end, ripped apart by a brother he had long thought dead, and suddenly William brought his jaws down and to the right of my head. His body was trembling as if he was physically fighting some sort of inner urge, then his barely human voice emerged hoarsely from his lips.
“Gnome . . . told me plan . . . good plan . . . wrong . . . person . . .”
Then, just like that, the pressure was gone. I sat up, bewildered, unable to process what was happening.
William, still moving in a feral crouch, had gone over to Page’s prostrate body. He propped her up slightly and yanked the bandoliers filled with grenades from her. He started draping them over himself.
“No! William—!” I started to shout.
He turned toward me, and I could see the brutal struggle in his eyes. Every word he spoke was like a rock that he was pushing uphill. “William . . . not here . . . much . . . longer . . . don’t want . . . to live like this . . . let me die . . . a man . . .”
I had no idea what to say. There seemed to be nothing to say.
With the twin bandoliers slung over himself now, William leaped clear of the parapet, sailing in one long, glorious arc straight toward the middle of the square. I could see the packets of gunpowder scattered all over, forming a circle like a target. He was heading for the middle of it.
He landed in a crouch and tossed his head back and howled. It was an incredible noise, eerie and arcane and primal, like something that might have been torn from the very first humans ever to stand upright and bay at the moon.
Instantly, the other beasts stopped their assaults upon the soldiers and citizens.
Apparently, William was still their Prime, their leader. I suddenly had the feeling, although there would never be any way to prove it, that he had been the one responsible for the slaughter of the alchemist. His animal nature must have won over human reasoning at that moment, and he had seen, not the individual who might be able to rescue him from his bestial state but simply the human bastard who had tormented him and was worthy only of punishment and death. Perhaps by killing the one who had tortured him, William had managed to reestablish his position as leader of the Half-breeds.
William let out a series of snarls and howls, bounding around in a circle, as if celebrating a great triumph. The others started to converge around him, the attacks apparently forgotten. The soldiers, covered with blood that was either theirs or the Half-breeds’ or perhaps a combination of both, couldn’t believe their luck. They started to bring their weapons to bear and I shouted as loudly as I could, my voice carrying across the compound, “No! Hold your fire! Back off! Find shelter fast! Fast!”
Either they then realized what was about to happen, or else they simply decided that getting some distance from the Half-breeds was a solid idea no matter how you sliced it. Whichever one it was, they heeded my commands and fell back, dashing toward buildings or horse troughs or whatever covering they could get.
The Half-breeds were echoing William’s howling. He was calling them to him, as if they were engaged in some ritual that had its origins in the farthest dark times of mankind’s beginnings. He began to gyrate in place, and the others instantly copied him. My descriptions of it do not begin to do it justice. Trust me when I say that you actually had to be there to appreciate the spine-chilling strangeness of the entire thing. It was an undulating mass of flesh and fur, coming together, then moving apart, and they waved their claws in the air, claws dripping with blood from the victims whom they had assaulted and rent apart.
And in the middle of all this unholy insanity was my brother, once a boy whom I had admired and even revered, once a man whose absence from my life had been a wound that had never quite healed, and now the leader of a tribe of monstrosities who—within moments—no doubt intended to turn their attentions back to their victims and complete their slaughter.
I only realized belatedly that I had unslung my rifle. I didn’t have a target of any sort; it had just seemed the natural thing for me to do, to have it at the ready.
Now all of the Half-breeds had joined him, their howling and chanting sounding like some ancient rite that was long forgotten by modern man but easily remembered by creatures whose roots could be traced to humanity’s very beginnings. And then I saw William’s finger curling around the ring of one of the grenades.
He was about to pull it free. When he did that, within seconds, the grenade would detonate, setting off all the others, the gunpowder . . . the explosion would be massive. It would be the end of the Half-breeds.
It would be the end of my brother.
My hands were trembling, and I could feel tears welling up.
Then I became aware, out of the corner of my eye, of the last rays of the sun vanishing below the horizon line. And I remembered what Reaver had said about how much time was left before all traces of humanity were going to disappear.
At which point I realized the grenades hadn’t gone off.
I looked to my brother just in time to see his fingers slipping clear of the ring that would detonate the grenades. Then he let out a howl, and this was different from the rest. This one was pure, inhuman bestiality, and I knew that whatever there might have been left of my brother, it was now hopelessly and forever trapped inside this monstrous form, doomed to spend eternity begging for the one thing that only death would provide: release.
And I knew that within the next second or two, the Half-breeds would destroy anything and everything that stood in their path.
In one breath, I swung the rifle up, aimed it, and my hands were not trembling in the slightest, and whatever moisture there might have been in my eyes was gone. In the seething, jumping mass of fur and flesh that was the Half-breeds, I targeted one of the hand grenades and I fired. And as I did, I whispered, “I’m sorry.”
The bullet was across the distance in an instant and struck the sphere cleanly.
There was a brief glimpse of surprise on the face of the creature that had been my brother, then all the grenades erupted. William was blown apart instantly, and all the Half-breeds anywhere near him went up along with him. Seconds later, the fire spread to the pockets of gunpowder that had been layered just below the surface, and the detonations moved from one to the next with the speed of chain lightning.
The Half-breeds had been so caught up in their primitive ululations that it took them moments to realize what was happening and to react. It was those moments that cost them. By the time they started trying to get away, it was too late. They were being blown in all directions, enveloped in a huge fireball. Some of them were lifted up and carried by the impact, sent hurtling across space and slammed into walls with such force that one could actually hear the skeletons within shatter to pieces, and they collapsed to the ground, nothing more than dead or dying sacks of meat. Others erupted in flame and ran about screaming, as if that would somehow enable them to escape the fire that was consuming them; instead, of course, all that accomplished was to feed it faster. Some of them fell to the ground, trying to roll around and thus beat out the flames, but the damage was too extensive, and they would soon just roll to a halt and lie there while the fire devoured them. One of them actually managed to make it to a horse trough and fell in, enveloping himself in water. At that point I saw the captain, Thorpe, stride quickly forward, reach down, and keep the Half-breed’s head submerged. There was frantic splas
hing, with water cascading over the sides. It just caused Thorpe to bear down harder, and soon the thrashing ceased.
Then Thorpe shouted, “Tend to the fire and the remaining creatures!” as the explosions died off, but the flame kept going. It was a reasonable cause for concern. It would have been a hell of a thing if they had managed to destroy the enemy only to see the entirety of Blackholm reduced to ashes because the fire was burning out of control.
The people of Blackholm charged into action, sprinting out of the shelters they had taken and doing whatever was in their power to deal with the situation. Quickly, a bucket brigade was formed, and there was a line of men, soldiers and citizens together, passing buckets of water around as quickly as they could in order to douse the flames.
Meanwhile, some of the Half-breeds, astoundingly, were still moving. They’d been severely burned, but there was still some fight left in them. That wasn’t the case for long, though, as they were quickly dispatched by everything from bullets to the head from soldiers to an angry woman repeatedly staving in the head of one of them with a shovel while punctuating each blow with a lengthy torrent of abuse: “This . . . is . . . for . . . killing . . . my . . . husband . . . you . . . bastard!”
The entire process took about an hour. An hour of soldiers who had conquered the village working side by side with the people they’d conquered. An hour of hearing the final, pained, agonized howls of the Half-breeds. Every single one of the poor creatures had once been human, and it was quite likely that none of them deserved the hideous fates that had been handed to them. Certainly, my brother hadn’t. But nobody cared. Nobody gave a toss about the tragedy of these once-human monsters. All they cared about was that they were alive, and the monsters that had tried to kill them were not.
On one level, I could totally understand that mind-set. At that moment, though, I wasn’t thinking about understanding it at all. All I cared about was that my brother was dead; that I had killed him; and that all the people below were thrilled about it and celebrating with boundless joy.
I almost started shooting them because, at that moment, I hated them.
I hated them because their survival had come at my brother’s expense. I hated them because what had they done that was so marvelous, really, that they got to live while he died? What made them better? More deserving? Why did they get to be lucky and keep living, and have siblings they got to spend their lives with and know and love as adults?
All of those dark thoughts, all of them and more went through my head, as I sat upon the parapet, not having moved an inch from where I had been when I fired the shot that detonated the grenade. I had to think that even the townspeople didn’t fully understand what had happened. Perhaps they thought that one of the Half-breeds had simply been holding some hand grenades and accidentally set it off himself. They had no idea that one of them had still possessed sufficient humanity to want to sacrifice himself rather than become a monster permanently and was willing to take those like him along with him. They had no idea that I had been the one who had actually set off the grenade that triggered the rest of the explosions.
No, they had no idea at all. They were just so happy to be alive.
How I hated them all, and I felt a growling monster stirring deep within me that wasn’t all that dissimilar to the one that had overtaken my brother. It urged me to give in, to indulge myself, to make them feel some of the pain and sorrow that I was feeling, because really: Didn’t they have it coming?
Then a gentle hand was laid upon my shoulder.
I looked and saw that it was Page. There was a large lump on her head from where it had been banged around.
Once more, in that way she had, she seemed to gaze into my eyes and through them into my soul. Or at least she tried, because this time my soul was very far away, and she was staring only into darkness. She drew her head back in surprise, as if she’d been slapped across the face, then she looked at me with what seemed genuine concern.
“Are you all right?” she said.
I held her gaze, then, with great reluctance, released the pleasing mental image that had me picking off various villagers one by one with my rifle.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Are you okay?”
“I’m alive. And a little puzzled. What happened?”
There were a lot of ways that I could have put it, a lot of detail that I could have gone into. Instead, I boiled it down into four words.
“William saved your life.”
She took that in and nodded very slowly. “Well . . . that was a very decent thing of him to do.”
“He was a very decent man. I wish . . .” My voice caught for a moment. “I wish you could have gotten to know him better.”
“So do I.”
She draped an arm around me and pulled me close, and we sat there, leaning against the wall, not saying a word as the people below worked on cleaning up the mass of destruction and picking up with their lives. The remaining bodies of the Half-breeds were being dumped onto what was going to be a sizable pyre in order to rid themselves of the last of the creatures.
At one point, we turned and looked at each other at the exact same time. Our faces were inches away from each other.
I thought about kissing her.
She tilted her head and looked at me dubiously. “You weren’t thinking of trying to kiss me just now, were you?”
“Good Lord, no.”
“Because you know, back in the woods . . . I just did that to shut you up. You get that, right?”
“Of course.”
We went back to watching the pyre.
Chapter 17
Aftermath
THE ARRIVAL OF WARLORD DROOGAN in Blackholm a week later was a rather glorious thing to bear witness to.
Apparently, word had reached him that the threat of the unleashed Half-breeds had been attended to, and so he came riding in imperiously astride a very large and impressive black stallion. The main gate had been left wide open to welcome him, and he looked about his latest dominion in a very confident manner.
His approach had been spotted by scouts, and word of his arrival had been relayed forward. Captain Thorpe was standing in the center of the town square to greet him, his arms folded. Trevor and Baron were to either side of him, and various of the warlord’s troops were scattered about the town, looking on and watching with great interest.
“Captain,” said the warlord approvingly, looking around. “You seem none the worse for wear after the recent unpleasantness.”
“Thank you, Warlord,” said Thorpe, and he saluted. “It was something of a challenge, but my men were up to it. We had some casualties, but fortunately they were somewhat low in number.”
“How excellent that it wasn’t worse,” said Droogan.
“And what of you, Warlord? How fared you during this distressing time?”
“Anxious to fly to your side and aid in the defense of my latest acquisition,” he said. “Unfortunately, I was unavoidably detained.”
“In a harsh environment?”
“Harsh and extremely challenging,” said Droogan as he slid off the horse and dusted himself off. One of the soldiers walked up and extended a hand. Droogan promptly gave him the reins, and the soldier took the horse off to be tended to. “Trust me, Captain, I would not have wished the conditions I lived under on my worst enemy.”
“Who knew,” said the captain, “that when my men and I were fighting for our lives, we, in fact, were getting the better end of the deal?”
The captain barely managed to keep the bitterness out of his voice when he said that, and the warlord almost noticed. He gave the captain a slightly bewildered look, then shook it off, as if it was something that he must have imagined and was just as easily tossed aside. “So . . . the city is secure, then?”
“Yes, sir, it is.”
“And the people ready?”
“Ready, warlord?”
He appeared surprise
d that the captain was looking politely confused. “To be sold into slavery, of course. After all”—and he started to laugh as if it were the most obvious thing in the world—“how else am I to generate money to buy the services of more troops and thus expand my army?”
“I thought you were wealthy, Warlord.”
“I am, but one doesn’t stay wealthy by spending all one’s money, does one?”
“So to save money, you would sell these people, then. These people? These would be the same people who fought bravely by our sides? Whose spilled blood mingled with that of my men? Whose healer tended to the wounds of my men? Whose holy man prayed for them to heal with as much fervor as he did for his own flock? Whose cooks prepared food for us? Whose women were”—and the edges of Thorpe’s mouth twitched—“generous . . . in their appreciation of our efforts?”
It was at that point that the warlord, I think, got his first true glimmering that something was terribly wrong. “Captain, what are you—?”
Not allowing him to finish, the captain continued, “All of this while you were relaxing in the lap of comfort at the home of Reaver and declaring that our fates were of little concern to you because you could easily get more men?”
I have to think that if the warlord had had the presence of mind to think for perhaps even five seconds before speaking, things might have gone differently for him. Instead, he said the worst possible thing that he could have:
“How did you—?”
Immediately, he realized his error and tried to reverse course. “Why . . . why that’s absurd,” he started to say. “How dare you—! I’ve never heard such insolence!”
I should note that “started to say” were the key words there. He got as far as “Why . . .” and the rest of it is, I blush to admit, mere guesswork on my part. Because after he said “Why . . .” the captain’s fist lashed out and struck him full in the face. Blood gushed from it like a newly drilled fountain. He stood there for a moment, wavering, then he fell backwards and landed as heavily as a tree. He lay there staring upward, still trying to process what had just happened.