The rest of them endeavored to regroup, and James promptly switched tactics. “Inferno!” he called out, and a wall of fire erupted from him, blasting in all directions. A number of the balverines retreated in the face of it, but some of them weren’t fast enough. They went up in flame, shrieking.
“Going to need some help!” James called. “Flame alone won’t do it!”
“My pleasure!” Thomas leaped from the concealing woods and charged forward, wading into the melee with unrestrained joy. With each swing of his sword, with each balverine head that went flying, with every drop of blood that was spattered because of him, a bit more of the nightmares that had haunted him were shredded and sent screaming off into oblivion. The Hero of Strength was there to rescue not only his friend, not only the prisoners, but first and foremost, himself.
The Hero of Skill, as per the collective plan, sprinted through the battle, avoiding getting caught up in it so that he could reach the prisoners. Even as he disappeared into the mouth of the temple, there were more howls, the sounds of reinforcements.
“Follow Locke!” James said, turning to face the oncoming hordes who had not yet made themselves visible. “He may need help getting to the prisoners!”
“What about you?”
“I can handle it,” the Hero of Will said firmly, and his eyes burned red as he spoke. He brushed away some flies that were swarming about him. “Trust me . . . I’m going to enjoy this.”
Thomas hesitated, but only briefly. Then he stuck out a hand, and James clasped it firmly. “Remember who and what you are,” Thomas said.
“And you,” replied James.
Thomas turned and ran into the temple as James wheeled to await the inevitable oncoming mass. He was starting to feel the drain on his will, but he knew this was no time for weakness.
And then, with a collective roar that would have wakened the dead, a pack of balverines thundered out of the woods toward him.
“Vortex!” shouted the Hero of Will, throwing wide his arms, commanding the winds to do his bidding. It was a temporary spell to allow him time to prepare Blades, a spell that would enable him to conjure multiple magical swords that would, with any luck, cut them to pieces.
The air hardened, and the winds sprang to life, creating a whirlpool of air that picked up the foremost balverines and sent them spinning. Others of them fell back, grabbing at the trees, sinking their claws into the bark, and holding on for all they were worth.
James kept it up for as long as he could, smiling grimly as the balverines spun around him, up and up, tossed into branches or slammed into each other and sustaining terrible damage because of it. And when the balverines regrouped and Vortex had run its course, then came Blades, and after that, Shock, with living lightning flowing through him and into his enemies.
They kept coming at the Hero of Will, and he kept beating them back, keeping them at bay, determined not to let so much as one slip through.
But one finally did.
LOCKE, MOVING QUICKLY THROUGH THE temple, heard a swift footfall behind him, turned, and fired without even looking to see what it was.
It was a rare misstep for the Hero of Skill, and one that nearly had tragic consequences, because he saw to his horror that his target was the Hero of Strength. But the bullet was already flying, and the Hero of Skill never missed.
Thomas reacted without thinking. Instead of trying to dodge, he brought up his sword and slapped the bullet aside. It lodged in the wall to his right, right in the eye of a sculpture of a balverine. They both stared at where the bullet had lodged, and then at each other. “Well, that was a waste of a silver bullet,” said Thomas.
“Sorry.”
“I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you apologize, and it only took you almost shooting me to do it.”
“I said it once; don’t expect seconds. Come,” said Locke, “it’s almost midnight.”
TWENTY BALVERINES RINGED THE MAIN chamber where the sacrament of the Balverine Order was about to be administered. No timepieces of any sort were required; the balverines, by their very nature, were attuned to the world around them and knew precisely when the midnight hour was to strike.
Lugaru, retaining his full, menacing balverine form, had stepped up onto the altar with the three new converts. His jaw was slightly open in anticipation of administering the bite, and saliva dripped down from it on Molly Newsome’s face. She twisted her head away and spat out some that had dribbled into her mouth. Shaw was whimpering; Dean Carter was observing the activities in that same detached manner of his, as if he were endeavoring to make mental notes of everything so that he could tell others all about it.
In his deep growl, Lugaru said, “You are about to begin a new life. I know that all of this may be confusing to you now. But all will become clear to you.”
“The only thing clear to me is that I’m going to see you dead,” said the Lady Newsome.
A balverine’s face was not built for smiling, but his yellow eyes crinkled slightly as he leaned in toward her, and said, “You, my lady . . . you will be first. Do you have a preference as to where to be bitten?”
She spit at his eye.
His head snapped back, and he snarled in anger, wiping it away. Then he leaped up upon the altar, crouching over her, reached down, and tore away a section of her skirt, exposing her bare thigh.
The balverines, as one, raised their voices in a triumphant howl as the midnight hour arrived.
And suddenly, astoundingly, a single voice raised above the collective howls of the pack.
It was that of Thomas Kirkman, Hero of Strength. It was a battle cry of unrestrained fury, and Thomas charged into the assemblage with no plan, no strategy, nothing save to strike down anyone and anything that got within range of his blade.
As plans went, it was rather formidable.
He swung the sword so quickly, so furiously, that it sounded like a swarm of bees cutting angrily through the air. There was no grace or artistry to his attack; instead, scant yards away from the beast that had slain his brother, Thomas became a butcher with a blade. The balverines tried to attack, tried to come at him with tooth or claw, but anything that drew within range of the sword was quickly sliced off and dropped to the ground.
In such a paroxysm of fury was Thomas that he wasn’t even capable of speech. There were no shouted challenges, no declarations of intent to wreak havoc. Instead, the sounds that emerged from him were nothing but inarticulate rage, bellows of fury that were on a par with the howls that issued from the throats of a balverine. For so long had he lived with the image of a balverine rooting around within his sleeping mind that now, faced with his enemy, he had become little better than one. But the philosophical differences between the other animals and him in the vast chamber were of no interest to him. Even concerns about the prisoners had fallen away. All he wanted to do was hack his way through to Lugaru.
He almost made it entirely on his own, but he was betrayed by his own success. A sudden turn caused his foot to slide on some balverine blood that had spread across the floor, and the Hero of Strength slid and fell onto his back.
Instantly, the remaining balverines advanced, seeing an opportunity, and had Thomas been on his own, then his life would have ended there. Transforming him into a balverine was no longer on the mind of anyone in the chamber; they would have torn him apart given the slightest chance and happily feasted on his heart.
Fortunately for the Hero of Strength, the Hero of Skill had his back.
The Black Dragon erupted within the chamber, the blast echoing in the ears of the balverines.
Locke could not have been more precise with his aim, nor the bullets more powerful. Two balverines were trying to get at Thomas and were getting in each other’s way, one elbowing the other so that the other was behind him. Locke fired off a single bullet and it drove through the chest of the lead balverine, out its back, and into the chest of the second, piercing both of their hearts in one stroke. The two balverines went down, and
Locke fired off another shot, and another, each perfectly placed shot taking down yet another of the monsters.
Kreel, letting out a furious roar, leaped through the air and landed several feet away from Thomas. Thomas turned to face him.
“Your blade is trembling,” snarled Kreel. “Does fear finally seize you?”
“It trembles with rage,” said Thomas, “for what you did to your wife . . . to your daughter . . .”
“You foolishly believed what she told you, did you?” said Kreel. He moved around Thomas, looking for an opening. Thomas kept his blade at the ready, never dropping his guard. “Don’t. She wanted this. She wanted to be like me. She loved me above all others.”
“And now she’s dead,” said the Hero of Strength, “by my hand.”
Upon hearing this, Kreel stopped moving, his huge jaw hanging open.
Thomas braced himself, ready for the charge.
And then Kreel unleashed a thunderous roar, one so violent, so deafening, that it knocked Thomas off his feet. Thomas scuttled backwards as Kreel advanced on him and then got to his feet just in time as Kreel lunged at him. Thomas swung his sword, and Kreel barely managed to dodge the thrust. The blade slid across Kreel’s rib cage, leaving a bleeding gash that was painful but hardly fatal.
Then a high-pitched, womanish scream distracted Thomas. He looked and saw that Lugaru, who had not allowed himself to be distracted by anything, was about to bite down on Molly Newsome’s leg. The womanish scream had come from Shaw.
Quentin Locke was pinned down, the remains of the balverine pack trying to get at him. He had taken refuge behind one of the columns, and the balverines were proving to make themselves less-than-easy targets. And Locke was at a bad angle, unable to get a clear shot at Lugaru.
The Hero of Strength did the only thing he could think of. He drew back his arm and flung the sword as hard and as straight as he could. It pinwheeled through the air and, just as Lugaru was about to sink his teeth into the Lady Molly Newsome, the hurtling blade sailed past and hacked his right knee through. The lower half of his leg fell away, and Lugaru, with an agonized howl, tumbled backwards off the altar.
His hands empty, Thomas had no time to react as Kreel grabbed him and slammed him against the wall. Thomas lashed out, boxing Kreel’s ears, but all it did was irritate him. Kreel’s face came right up to his, and Kreel snarled, “You . . . are going to be alive . . . while I eat you . . .”
“Put him down!”
It was Locke. The bodies of the remaining balverines were scattered around the floor, and the Hero of Skill was advancing, his gun leveled.
Kreel immediately twisted Thomas around so that he was a shield between himself and Locke. “Try it, and he dies,” snarled Kreel.
“That trick didn’t work when your daughter tried it,” the Hero of Skill said evenly. “It won’t work now. Your only chance out of here is to put him down unharmed. Kill him, you die. Release him unharmed, and you may go.”
“Oh, really,” rumbled Kreel.
“You have my word as a Hero. His life in exchange for yours.”
Kreel was silent for a long moment. “Those weapons you hold . . . they will not protect you forever. They are powered by the essence of long-dead Heroes. But they are tied to their place of burial. You will have to return them, or they will become useless, and the greatness of the Heroes they were once a part of will be forever lost. You will be responsible for killing the spirit of the Triumvirate. Is that your desire?”
Locke said nothing. Neither did Thomas.
“So know this,” snarled Kreel. “I release him and leave here . . . but it will never be over between us. Never. I will hunt you down when you no longer have the spirits of Heroes long dead to look over you, and you will die. You will both die, terribly and painfully and slowly. Do you understand that?”
“Perfectly,” said Locke.
“And you?”
“Yes,” whispered Thomas defiantly. “I welcome the opportunity to kill you at some future date.”
“Done!”
With that declaration, Kreel shoved Thomas aside and bolted from the chamber.
“Shoot him!” shouted Thomas.
“I gave my word,” the Hero of Skill said calmly, although he kept his gun leveled as Kreel fled into the darkness. “We gave our word. And besides,” he continued once Kreel was out of earshot, “I’m out of bullets.”
“Oh.”
JAMES LAY ON THE GROUND, SURROUNDED by the corpses of balverines.
But he was not feeling any sense of triumph. Instead, he was keeping his hand buried deep in his stomach, trying not to think about what he was touching to keep the organs in there.
There had been so many of them . . . so many . . . and yet, even with all that, he had been certain that he would be able to keep all of them at bay.
He had been throwing spells around so quickly, with so little discipline. With death coming toward him apace, he knew that now. He realized his own shortcomings and wished that he could go back in time in order to refight the battle and do it properly. But that was not an option, even for one of his abilities.
Nor would a Heal Life spell serve him. The wound was too catastrophic.
How? How had that one damned balverine gotten close enough to gut him? James kept running the fight through his mind and couldn’t conceive of it. He must have left a blind spot during the fray, something that a quick-moving monster could get through and reach him. It had been so fast, incredibly fast. One moment he was beating back the pack, the next he had felt a ripping across his stomach, and the balverine had been right there. A quick twist of his will, and an ethereal sword had flashed downward and cut out the balverine’s heart. The Hero of Will had then used that considerable willpower to keep himself going, to put down the last of the balverines, leaving himself triumphant.
“A hell of a triumph,” he grunted to himself. His hands were thick with red, and the world was seeming more and more distant to him.
“Well, well, well . . .”
He looked up. There was a towering balverine standing in front of him, and it had spoken, which automatically differentiated it from the other balverines—little more than snarling brutes—that he had been battling. He recognized the balverine, recognized the voice.
Kreel slunk toward him, nose twitching. “The Hero of Will, I take it. Or is it instead poor James Skelton, a mere shadow of himself?”
“Somewhere . . . between the two.”
The towering balverine looked around at the carnage. “At least one of my brethren managed to get to you. I could just let you die on your own”—and he drew back his claws—“but in this way I can send a message to your friends . . . of what they have to expect. Any last words, Hero of Will?”
James managed a nod. “Just two . . .” And he stretched out his hand, reached into the deepest, darkest recesses of his soul, and whispered, “Drain life.”
Kreel looked at him uncomprehendingly for a moment and then suddenly let out a confused screech. A black force had issued from James’s fingers, like a malevolent cloud, and it penetrated Kreel’s open mouth, driving itself down into him. Kreel tried to get to James, knowing him as the source of the blackness, but was held in place by the fury of the black cloud. He trembled, shook violently, and then his voice vanished, leaving him issuing a silent scream.
James reached out and drew the spell back into himself, and it ripped violently out of Kreel, taking his life essence with him, infusing James with it. Kreel stood there, wavering from side to side, still in balverine form. He’s not changing back to human. No surprise. He’s more balverine than man by now, thought James grimly.
Then Kreel toppled over, thudding to the ground, as heavily as a chopped-down tree and equally lifeless.
Slowly, James got to his feet and, very carefully, he removed his hand from his stomach. There was still blood everywhere, and a deep scar across his belly, but the wound was now healed. Life was flooding through him once. Tainted life, but life nevertheless. br />
He looked down at Kreel’s lifeless body, then kicked it in the side and spat on it for good measure.
“That,” he said, “is for killing my dog.”
LUGARU, THE HEAD OF THE BALVERINE Order, was trying to drag himself across the floor, leaving a trail of blood behind him. There was a corridor at the far end of the room that led who-knew-where, and that was clearly his destination.
Quickly, Thomas ran toward him, stopping only to pick up his sword, and seconds later Lugaru saw the Hero of Strength blocking his path to escape.
“You—!” Lugaru said with a snarl, and even minus a leg, he shoved himself forward on three of his four functioning limbs.
He had no chance. The Hero of Strength sidestepped him easily and, with a quick spin, brought his sword around and cut off Lugaru’s left arm at the elbow.
With an agonized shriek, Lugaru fell over onto his side, thrashing about in pain. With supernatural calm, Thomas walked around him, studying him as if he were examining a horse that he was considering purchasing.
“Who are the other members of the Balverine Order?” said Thomas.
Lugaru actually laughed at that, despite the agony that he was in. It sounded like no human laugh, but instead the strangled grunt of an animal. “You actually think,” he said with a growl, his words barely comprehensible since they were more beast than man, “that I will tell you that . . . so that you can hunt them down? Why would I do that . . . ?”
“I’m hoping that you don’t tell me immediately,” said Thomas. “I’m hoping that I have to take my time getting the information out of you. Cutting you to pieces by inches . . . that would give me great satisfaction. It would be the merest taste of the agony that you put me through when you destroyed my life.”
“I destroyed your brother’s life. I made yours. You would be nothing without me. Nothing.”