Crowley pulled Will to his feet and shouted in his ear. “These are what you saw, right?”
“Yeah, but more and different things might be coming through.” Will snapped off two bursts at the first creature to reach his former shelter. It went down, and one of his men pulped its head with a sledgehammer before breaking and running back behind the Japanese line.
“Coming through?”
“I told you, they were coming through in a circle of termite nests.”
The Yidam joined the two of them and shouldered his incredible rifle. Longer by a good bit than Will was tall, the rifle spat out a two-foot flame and the recoil half-slewed the Yidam around. Will saw another of the behemoths jerk upright, then fall lifeless.
“What the hell is that, an antitank rifle?”
“It is, and aren’t you glad he’s carrying it.” Crowley pointed off back toward the hill. “Will says there is a dimensional gate up there. We have to shut it down or he’ll have reinforcements in a second.”
The Yidam nodded. “Ryuhito will not like that.”
“Agreed.” Crowley grabbed Will by the back of the neck. “Let’s go.”
“But wait...” Will looked back and through the smoke he saw Tadd go down. “They need us...”
The battlefield vanished in a gray haze as Crowley tugged him backward. “No time, Will. We have to stop the troops from coming through or everyone dies.” The shadow man half-carried him forward and up, then parted the gray mist with a knife-like chop of his hand. “Look sharp.”
Will brought his gun up and swept it toward the circle of termite mounds to the south. He was about to pronounce the way clear when one of the smaller creatures popped up and scrambled toward them. He fired a burst that started the beastie spinning, and Crowley hit it with another that stitched a line of holes across its chest. It went down and did not move.
The Yidam raised an eyebrow. “They appeared much more vital than that to me before.”
Crowley grunted as he knelt beside what looked like a firepit and dirt clearing surrounding it. “Chlorophyll, remember? They’re feeding off Ryuhito, and in the dark their batteries run down. He has their metabolism cranked, so in the dark they’re dormant. Chances are he doesn’t really realize this.”
Crowley fell silent as he studied a set of eight shallow holes scooped out of earth. Set in two rows of four, each hole had a small pile of pebbles in it. He poked at a couple of the stones, then glanced back at the termite mounds. He shrugged and thumbed two stones from one hole and pitched them into the depression opposite their original home.
Will squatted down beside him. “Owari?”
“Close. It’s the control mechanism for the dimensional gate.” Crowley picked a red stone out of a hole and tossed it away. As Will watched, the stone reappeared in the hole. “Primitive, but effective. Now I’ve set it to block more things from coming in.”
“Good.” Will let the distant sounds of gunfire punctuate his sentence. “Now we can go back and help the others.” He stood and checked his last clip. “I have a dozen bullets left to nail those things.”
Crowley shook his head. “We can’t go.”
“Why not?”
The Yidam shouldered his rifle by its sling. “We have to wait.”
The peaceful finality of both men’s voices acted like a heavy blanket to smother the vengeful fire in Will’s soul. “We have to wait here to make sure no one reopens the gate, right?” As both of them nodded, will continued, “Which means we’re waiting for him.”
Ryuhito, riding a helios-disk, streaked up and over the lip of the hill. “Who are you that dares thwart a god?” The Japanese prince landed and strode forward, the solar glare lighting the hilltop like a halogen lamp. “Your friends are dying below, and I will kill you here.”
As Ryuhito strode casually into range, Will threw a punch at him. The prince parried the blow with little effort, tossing Will aside like a toy. Where Ryuhito’s forearm touched him, Will felt a searing pain. Hitting the ground, he clutched his burned arm to himself and rolled up onto one knee.
Ryuhito laughed at him. “I am a god, little man. It is not allowed for you to touch me.”
The Yidam lunged forward and grabbed Ryuhito’s wrists in his powerful upper hands. He lifted the prince from his feet and held his arms wide apart, but Ryuhito seemed neither concerned nor frightened. His glow intensified, and smoke began to rise from the Yidam’s clothing. The sling on his rifle burned away, but the Yidam maintained his grip and started to pummel Ryuhito with his lower set of arms.
“It is not possible! I am a god!” Ryuhito roared.
“As I have become, as well!” The Yidam gnashed his teeth as he rammed his head into Ryuhito’s chest. “To catch a god, you set a god.”
The prince gasped aloud and his glare faded just a whit, then it started to build in intensity and focus itself down through Ryuhito’s eyes. The solar light tightened down into twin nova-beams that started the Yidam’s flesh sizzling at their touch. The Yidam screamed in pain, then pulled his clawed thumbs back and drove them both through Ryuhito’s wrists.
The Prince’s blood ran like liquid fire over the Yidam’s flesh.
Will dashed forward, smelling the bittersweet scent of singeing hair, and grabbed the Yidam’s rifle up off the ground by the barrel. Without looking, without thinking, but trusting in the spirits to guide him as they had before, he swung the massive rifle around like a baseball bat and smashed Ryuhito in the back of the head. Light exploded, and the gun ignited, then Will felt himself spinning like a top through an ocean of molten gold.
In a heartbeat, everything went dark. Will didn’t know if he had fallen or had been knocked unconscious or what. He felt dazed and dazzled. His hands began to hurt, pulsing with the angry sensations of a bad bum. He tried to take a step forward, but found he had to stand up first, then he blinked his eyes and saw shadows moving in a dark gray world.
One more blink and tears ran down his cheeks. He saw Crowley pulling Ryuhito’s motionless body off the Yidam. Will crawled over in their direction and looked up at the shadow man. “Is he dead?”
“You cracked his skull, I think, but enough of the rifle stock had combusted that you didn’t kill him.” Crowley rolled Ryuhito onto his face and folded the youth’s arms across his chest. “He’ll be out for a good long time, and I know of a dimension where time runs slowly enough that he’ll be out until we decide how to treat him.”
Will nodded unconsciously and looked down at the Yidam. Ryuhito’s eyebeams had burned criss-cross scars over the chest, blistering and charring flesh. The Yidam’s upper arms and hands were badly burned, and Will knew the creature had to be in incredible pain. “What can I do for you?”
The Yidam forced his face into a smile, “it is too late to ask for sunblock, I think.”
Crowley shook his head. “We’ll dip you in aloe and get you healthy again.”
“No. I was not god enough to stop Ryuhito on my own, and I am too much a mortal to recover from the attempt.” The Yidam glanced over at Will then again at Crowley. “Tell my daughter I remembered her as such.” His back bowed as pain radiated off him, then his body slackened and his eyes went glassy.
Crowley reached over and closed the Yidam’s eyes. “One more thing for which Pygmalion will pay.”
Will shook his head. “Ryuhito killed him, not Pygmalion.
Your people believe in an eye for an eye, don’t they?”
“Yeah, but we also hold the person responsible for the actions of their agents.” Crowley hoisted Ryuhito up and draped him over his shoulder. “And, yes, I’d shed no tears if Ryuhito here ended up dead. Of course, I’d rather see him on our side. I know some people in a place where he could learn some things. The Yidam came from there.”
Will stood slowly, holding his hands carefully in front of himself as the pain built. “I’d like to learn, too.”
Crowley nodded. “I can arrange that. Want a lesson now?”
Will smiled and followed him
over to the eight holes, then squatted down. “What do I do?”
“Move one of those blue stones from hole two to hole four. Good. Once I go through the dimensional gate, you have to move the stones around so Pygmalion will have a hard time tracking me.” Crowley shifted Ryuhito around as sporadic gunfire sounded from the encampment. “Get back down there, gather the survivors. I’ll return for you then.”
As Crowley turned toward the termite mounds, Will saw something move behind him. The Native American kicked out, knocking Crowley down as the beastie they had shot before snapped both arms forward. The chitin-stars hissed through where Crowley had stood, missing him by inches.
The shadow man shed the Prince in a roll and came up on one knee, with his Mac-10 blazing. The bullets tore up sod on a direct line between the creature’s legs, then tracked upward. The .45-caliber slugs opened the monster up from groin to throat and knocked it back against a blood-splashed termite mound.
Crowley jammed a new clip into the smoking Mac-10. “Ryuhito’s light display must have been enough to revive it for that last shot.”
“It made it count.” Will tried to roll up on his side, but the pain in his chest from where the chitin-stars had hit stopped him. He coughed once and felt a sliver of agony pin him to the ground. Again he coughed, and it hurt less, but he tasted blood in his mouth and felt a rivulet trail down his cheek.
Crowley knelt beside him. “Hang on, Will. I’ll dump Ryuhito and be back.”
Will weakly pushed him away. “Go, go before I can’t move the stones.”
Crowley nodded grimly and stood up. “Your son wants for nothing in his life. You know that. You have my word.”
The Native American nodded. “My grandfather trusts you, so do I. The Man Who Dies Far From Home believes the Ghost Who Lives.”
Like a phantom, Crowley retreated with Ryuhito to the circle of termite mounds. Will saw a bluish flash, then reached out with his left hand and began to brush stones from one hole to another. He measured the rest of his life by the number of stones he could move between coughs. He didn’t die as fast as he feared he might, nor did he live as long as he hoped he would, but he died happy knowing any search for Ryuhito would die right where he did.
Book III
Inflammation Contagion
Chapter 19
Awakening from a nightmare of pain and fire is not a pleasant experience. It is made less so by opening your eyes to find yourself lying on a bier in a sepulchre. I could feel death around me, clinging like stale perfume, and my return to consciousness came with a knowledge of death’s reluctance to surrender its grip on me. With an etheric until we are one again, death left me alive but not at ease.
My eyes, having been closed, were pre-adjusted to the darkness, but it took my brain some time to become used to seeing again. I had no idea where I was nor how long I had been there. I raised a hand to my chin and felt no stubble, which would have suggested only a short stay, but back at the edge of my jaw near my right ear I found a spot the person who had shaved me had missed.
That hint of beard provided no clue as to the length of time I had spent in the small cave, but it did tell me other things that were valuable. The first was that I had not been left entirely alone to recover from my wounds. Second, and more significant, I found the attention to my appearance disquieting. It suggested at least one of those watching over me had given some thought to more than my recovery, but no one in my circle of acquaintances shared with me the sort of relationship that would bring with it such concerns.
My right hand moved up from my jaw to touch the garland of laurel leaves encircling my head. It surprised me at first, then prompted a smile. I could have seen Crowley crowning me with such a wreath, but only after I had recovered. I realized then that the wreath, short kilt and sandals I wore were all of a set, and that answered some questions while creating more.
Crowley had told me of a proto-dimension in which regeneration was part and parcel of the natural laws. I remembered enough of my last moment of consciousness to know I had to have been in dire need of that place’s powers. Just the fact that I knew I wore sandals because of how the straps bound my calves and the leather felt against the soles of my feet meant that my broken spine and severed spinal cord had been repaired.
I idly scratched my chin with my left hand and smiled when I felt no pain in the joint that had been destroyed fighting the Aryans. The return to functionality of my limbs, my return to life and my attire all suggested strongly that I had been deposited in the proto-dimension that had been placed as part of the Greek Tartarus in legends. Crowley would have seen to that because he knew better than anyone else that I would be needed to destroy Pygmalion.
Crowley, on the other hand, would not have worried about my attire being in character with the place he left me. The cave would have been his choice because of the relative safety it granted me, but had I not been disturbed since he brought me to it, I would have still been wearing whatever clothes I had worn at the accident site or in the hospital.
Closing my eyes, I brought my breathing under control. As I had been taught to do by Fiddleback’s minions, and had reinforced by Lama Mong at a Tibetan monastery, I reached out with my mind to tear open the fabric of reality. I focused my mind on the suite I had once lived in at the Galactic Brotherhood headquarters, since its stark simplicity reminded me of the cave and bier. Pouring all my energy into it, I tried to force my way back to Earth.
My attempt failed utterly and completely. I felt as if the proto-dimension in which I existed had become fossilized. The shell that protected it and segregated it from other proto-dimensions had become as hard as diamond. I could not penetrate it and I knew, consciously and intuitively, that my egress had been blocked very deliberately.
I also knew that Fiddleback could not be doing the blocking and that Pygmalion, had he been able to discover me, would have destroyed me. That meant another Dark Lord, or someone of similar powers and abilities, had become enmeshed in my fate.
For a moment, returning to my nightmare seemed like a pleasant alternative to living. I knew that, as inviting as that surcease might have seemed, allowing myself to accept it would have doomed millions as Fiddleback and Pygmalion fought for control of Earth. I had decided long ago that I would not be a party, either active or passive, to such a thing, so I resolved to live on.
With my stomach muscles aching in protest because of their long inactivity, I sat up. The cave, with its glassy-smooth walls, appeared to have been formed when an oval bubble of gas became frozen in the middle of a lava-flow. At the end toward which my head had been pointing, a narrow tunnel led out toward sunlight, yet contained enough twists and turns that only a diffuse amount of light illuminated the interior of the cave.
And the woman standing across from me.
Swinging around to face her, I let my legs hang over the edge of the bier and dangle an inch or so above the ground. I smiled. “I would have hoped for more suitable attire when I met the Empress of Diamonds.”
The petite woman covered her surprise well. I felt none of it, and only caught a hint of it in the slight tremor running through the dark veil hanging down from the brim of her hat. Wearing a sleeveless, black leather dress that fell to her calf, elbow length gloves and ankle-high boots, she seemed appropriately dressed for a graveside appearance. A diamond choker, bracelet and anklet provided a striking contrast to her clothes, and the choker looked especially attractive against the darkish flesh of her throat.
She spoke carefully, in a voice I recognized, with a diction and vocabulary I could not reconcile with the person I had known in the body she wore. “Your deductive abilities have been woefully underestimated. Shall I call you Coyote, or does another of your pseudonyms please you more?”
“Coyote will suffice.” I chose not to stand, which left us at an equal eye level. “I admit I am amiss in not having established contact with you sooner, but until now I had not pieced together the implications of the things in which I have been in
volved.”
“You have been preoccupied. Opposing one like Fiddleback is not a task that permits distraction.”
I nodded appreciatively. “True, but it is a task that demands certain skills and abilities which prompted my predecessor to choose me to continue his crusade to keep Earth free. Those abilities include things like being able to actually perceive things in dimensions outside that of your birth and dimension walking. Coyote could not do those things — he was blind to the reality outside that of Earth.”
I gestured toward her. “This is the reason he concluded an alliance with you and invited you to place Natch Feral as your agent within his core group. He needed someone through which he could gain information about Dark Lord activities. Jytte had knowledge of Pygmalion, but even she denied it and denies it still. Entering into an alliance with a Dark Lord is a difficult thing to justify. Did he see you as the least of the evils?”
Even her laughter sounded different. More throaty, it carried with it less of an edge and spoke to eons of life and experience. “I believe he saw me as the last of the evils.” She stepped closer to me, crossing the small chamber in two steps and readjusted the laurel wreath on my head. “How do you like your clothes?”
“Functional, though a bit less utilitarian than I might prefer.” I narrowed my eyes and tried to pierce the veil’s shadow, but even knowing what lay behind it, I could see nothing. “How are you the last of the evils he could face?”
She laughed again, throwing her head back and giving me a fleeting glimpse of her jaw. “Unlike your Pygmalion and Fiddleback, I do not have an aggressive aspect. They are builders and synthesizers. I am a salvager. I salvaged your clothing from the Titan who is imprisoned here.” She held up her right hand and jiggled the bracelet. “If you think of it, even these diamonds are salvaged from carbon. I salvage things and make them my own.”
I reached up with my left hand and carefully pulled off her hat. “You salvaged Natch’s body.”