44 – Ritual

  Ward felt True tug one of the grenades off his belt, snapping the bit of cord holding it in place. At the same time, Lisa’s voice cracked through the air, “Vrakkun khorvek!” He looked toward the sound and saw her staff held aloft, the point crackling with ghostly white, charged energy. The ball of destructive mana shot forth over his and Haley’s heads to smash into one of the red-eyed cultists frantically trying to carve through his guard. The cultist howled as the roiling mana clung to her face and seemed to sink into her.

  “Hold yer breaths!” True screamed, and then the sound of shattering glass and the hiss of rapidly expanding gas came to Ward’s ears. Green fog billowed up from the floor amid the throng of cultists, and Ward followed True’s advice, taking a deep breath. Sure, he and the others had the antidote ointment smeared around their nostrils, but he wasn’t totally confident in its efficacy.

  As the billowing fog expanded through the pile of cultists, more than half of them collapsed, but those with demonic, red eyes and faces contorted with snarling expressions continued to press forward, albeit their pressure was significantly reduced as they stumbled and clambered over the bodies of their insensate comrades. Ward followed Lisa’s lead and held out his left hand, shouting, “Vrakkun khorvek!” The words rang out louder and more jarring than Lisa’s, and the ball of crackling mana that struck a cultist in the bare chest sank into his flesh and then immediately exploded from his eyes and ears.

  The cultist went rigid as he howled in agony, vibrating on the tips of his toes before toppling backward to thrash and seize on the black slate floor. Two more cultists rushed him, and Ward had to fend them off with his sword, thankful that the weapon gave him a reach advantage. Another bookcase sailed over his head, knocking a cultist backward, and the gap it created gave him a moment to assess the situation.

  Seven demon-possessed men and women were still pressing the attack, and a quick glance over his shoulder told Ward that Lisa’s cowardly house guards had rallied and were running back, weapons drawn. “Push!” He roared, waving his sword forward. He knew better than to wait for them to advance; he had to lead the charge. With his sword ready to parry, he charged forward, barreling into a large male cultist, hacking downward toward his neck.

  The man, wearing nothing more than a red sash around his waist, tried to parry with his curved knife, but the broadsword Haley had given him was heavy, and Ward’s arm was unnaturally powerful. He smashed through the smaller blade, ripping it from the cultist’s grip, and cleaved halfway through the fellow’s neck. Hot blood sprayed forth from the wound, dousing Ward and further driving the beast in him wild.

  From deeper into the hall, an ear-piercing shriek sounded, and words of power snapped through the air, bouncing and cracking off the hard surfaces, “Vrahl ignarak!” Though he’d forgotten them almost immediately, Ward recognized the familiarity of those words—the sorcerer at the countryside ambush had used them.

  “Take cover!” he screamed but didn’t follow his own advice. He knew his artifact sword might save the people in his party, so he stood his ground and held it before him. Just as he’d feared, a ball of roiling fire flew toward the group of them in the doorway, but it was worse than he’d expected. The orb of fire was easily twice the size of the one cast by the sorcerer he’d vanquished the night before. Even so, the runes on his sword blazed with blinding magenta-red light, and Ward saw the fireball veer toward it. He braced himself and then got ready to drop the weapon; he knew it would be hot.

  The flames engulfed his sword, and it flared white hot instantly. To his horror, the ball of fire kept coming—diminished but not gone. Ward dropped the sword before he burned the flesh from his palm, and the ball of fire burst with a roar, washing over him like a kiln opened mid-burn. Ward was thrown to the side, and he heard the screams of his companions and cultists too slow to get clear of the blast.

  The hot air and smoke obscured his vision as he flew through the air, and before he could wonder who’d been hit besides himself, he slammed into an unyielding surface. Darkness washed over his vision, dancing with tiny starbursts as his consciousness threatened to flee. The wolf inside him wouldn’t be shoved aside so easily, however, and as his lungs reflexively gasped for air, his sight came back, expanding from a pinpoint to a tunnel to a full view of the mayhem in the cultists’ ritual hall.

  Haley was on her feet, driving back two demon-eyed cultists, pummeling them each in alternating blows and kicks. They were weaponless and nearly naked, and they seemed woefully unprepared to deal with a Gopah expert with superhuman strength and speed. As Ward pushed himself to his hands and knees, he saw the burning bodies of several unconscious cultists who’d been caught in the fireball. Worse, he saw True desperately slapping her leather coat against a writhing, burning figure in the doorway—one of the DeGrand guards.

  He couldn’t see Lisa or the others and hoped they were outside the door, safe in the library. He’d just struggled to his feet, shaky with adrenaline, his skin raw and sore but not terribly burned, when he saw the three remaining cultists gathering near the tall, nearly naked sorceress who’d firebombed him at the center of the room before the crucified Sonder Yates.

  The woman, pale with deep-set, fiery eyes, wore a silver circlet around her brow, and as she screamed words Ward couldn’t understand, it glowed with pale blue light. She held aloft her knife and the golden medallion, rattling off her weird chant as blood flowed through the air, streaming from Sonder’s many gashes into the golden artifact in her hand. Ward pointed at her and shouted, “Vrakkun khorvek!”

  His mana bolt ripped through the air, crackling with destructive force, but the woman ignored him, and as the bolt was about to slam into her face, her circlet flashed even brighter, and his bolt streamed into it without so much as ruffling the sorceress’s hair. Frustration mounted in Ward, and the low growl he’d been holding at bay began to rumble with renewed intensity. The scorch marks on his hands, neck, and face were fading, and he felt his muscles and bones straining the fabric of his leather armor.

  His vision shifted tones, from vivid color and deep shadows to yellows and grays, while his chest heaved and saliva gathered in his mouth as his claws elongated. He was just about to attack the cultists at the center of the hall, determined to rip the sorceress to shreds before her ritual was complete, but then Lisa’s scream echoed out of the library, and Ward saw True struggling with not another cultist but one of the DeGrand men.

  Fury erupted in his chest, and he leaped for the doorway, bounding over the burning corpses of cultists. He charged the traitor, trying to stab a short spear into True’s guts, barreling through him and sending him sprawling down the short flight of steps where Lisa, too, fought for her life against the other DeGrand house guard. She employed her staff to good effect, jabbing it toward the man while he hacked with a hatchet. Blood ran down Lisa’s arm, no doubt from the wound that had wrung forth the scream he’d heard.

  “Ward?” True gasped behind him. “Are you well?”

  Ward didn’t answer. He leaped down the steps and another seven feet besides, landing behind Lisa’s aggressor and raking his claws down his back. Metal rings pinged and ripped out of the soldier’s leather coat while his hard, sharp claws dug inch-deep furrows in his back. He screamed in terrible agony; adrenaline and panic gave him the strength he needed to extricate himself from Ward’s claws, but he didn’t get far. He stumbled and fell, crawling toward the half-barricaded door, leaving a wide swath of blood in his wake.

  Meanwhile, True had fallen on the other traitor, hacking her short, cleaver-like sword into the side of his neck once, twice, three times, until his head rolled forlornly over the blood-smeared marble flooring. Ward didn’t wait around to answer True’s questions. He was half-wolf by then, and he had prey in mind. He leaped up the steps and into the ritual hall just in time to see Haley snap-kick one of her opponents in the jaw, finally dropping him for good. Knowing she was fine with a single enemy left to deal with, Ward charged the group at the crucifix.

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  He was ten feet away when Sonder Yates, silent and seemingly unconscious to that point, reared his head back and screamed such an ungodly wail that everything seemed to freeze in place while the sound echoed and rang through the chamber. Even Ward, driven into a killing frenzy by his wolf, slid to a halt, slamming his enormous beclawed hands to his ears, shrinking from the ghastly cry.

  With narrowed, wolfen eyes, Ward peered at the wailing man. Sonder was ghastly white; his wounds no longer wept, as it seemed every drop of his blood had been drained into the golden relic still clutched by the sorceress—Dame Ruby, Ward was sure. Even so, somehow, he still screamed, and as Ward watched, a cloud of black and red motes drifted out of his mouth, like a swarm of alien gnats, and flew into the sorceress’s waiting, gaping maw.

  As her body swelled with unnatural power, Sonder withered—a gray-flesh-clad skeleton. The scream sputtered into silence, his head lolled forward, and the light in his eyes winked out like a suffocated candle. As the spell of that weird wailing cry faded, Ward charged forward, only for the sorceress to whirl on him, throw out a long, red-clawed hand, and cry, “Brym Thalvek!” An invisible wall slammed into Ward like a runaway truck, throwing him dozens of feet through the air until he slammed into a wall with a bone-crunching impact.

  However, Ward’s lycan resilience and wolfen tenacity wouldn’t let him lose consciousness. Despite ribs that felt shattered, he kept his feet, stooping, panting, coughing blood. He watched Ruby spread her arms, and dark webs of corrupted mana flowed from her splayed fingers to wrap around the three cultists kneeling before her in supplication. Their bodies warped, dark forms ripping through their human flesh as their limbs elongated and extra appendages sprouted from their spines—clawed arms, stinger-tipped tails, and bat-like wings on one of them.

  Ward’s gut rumbled with a compulsory growl as his instincts told him he was witnessing the birth of unnatural creatures whose very existence was anathema to him. Rather than hold the wolf in check, rather than fight to maintain control, Ward relaxed his will—the invisible bonds he’d put on the lycan part of his psyche. His rumbling growl became a vocal snarl and then a roar as his body expanded.

  Ward’s limbs elongated and thickened, ripping the leather of his armor with snapping, popping sounds. His broken ribs knit together, his chest expanded, and the seams of his jerkin tore, leaving his armor to hang on him in flapping shreds. Dark fur sprouted from his flesh as his jaw stretched into a tooth-lined muzzle, and his boots popped, coming apart in shreds as his feet expanded, sprouting massive claws.

  When the transformation ended, Ward stood, hulking, his wolfen mouth leering, his silvery tongue tracing the length of his massive canines, his angular amber eyes narrowed menacingly as he stalked toward his prey. He moved not like a man or a wolf, but something in between—mostly erect on two legs, but with forelimbs that could touch the ground when he wanted.

  Dame Ruby stood alone, her minions having gone after Ward’s companions, no doubt, while his transformation had transfixed him. Ward’s lycan bloodline had fully asserted itself; his wolfish instincts were overbearing, but he still had his mind. He worried briefly about True, Lisa, and Haley, but he knew he had to deal with Ruby before he could aid them; to turn his back on an enemy alpha was pure folly. There was no doubt that’s what she was—Ruby had become something horrifying at the expense of her vile follower, Sonder Yates.

  She stood close to eight feet tall. Where before she’d been pale, her flesh had darkened to crimson. She’d pressed the golden medallion or broach into her chest, and it sat there, buried in her flesh between her muscular breasts, glowing balefully. Her red-painted nails had grown into claws not unlike Ward’s, and her eyes were huge red orbs that glowed with crackling flames. Seeing them, Ward remembered other flame-filled eyes—ones he’d grown fond of. Before leaping into battle, he growled, “Grace.”

  Some deeply buried part of himself felt relief when he heard her familiar voice beside him. “I’m here, Ward! Thank you! Be careful! She’s filled with tainted mana!”

  Ward didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t prepared to spare her words a single thought. He’d done as promised and invited her out of the place his wolf-self liked to bury her. Now, it was time to fight. With a howling roar, he bounded toward Ruby, stretching his long limbs into a mighty leap, springing off his forelimbs, his claws carving deep grooves in the hard slate floor. Ruby was ready for him. She growled more words of power so foreign that Ward’s instinct was to shut them out.

  A whip of fiery red energy appeared in her hand, and she lashed it out, snapping it like a thundercrack into Ward’s flank. Pain exploded through him, and the impact sent him careening to the side, mid-leap. Even so, as he sailed past Ruby, he stretched out one unnaturally long arm to just barely catch her bare shoulder with his claws, and he snarled with hunger and pleasure to see her flesh peel back and hot black blood flow from the cuts he inflicted. His joy was short-lived, for he hit the hard ground awkwardly.

  He tumbled and could have righted himself, but his instincts told him another attack was coming, so he leaned into the roll, pushing with his legs. He practically somersaulted just as the red energy whip smashed into the floor, shattering several slate tiles. When Ward came to his feet and spun, facing the sorceress, he glanced at his flank to see the shreds of his armor blackened and, beneath, a long, jagged, smoldering gash above his ribs.

  Ruby clutched her bleeding shoulder, and Ward licked his teeth in amusement. If such a glancing blow could sting her so, then wait until she felt his bite! He charged, claws tearing furrows in the slates. Ruby lifted her blazing whip, ready to snap it at him, and he did something he wasn’t sure would work; Ward growled out words of power, “Dhrak Vel!”

  His voice was coarse and rough, and the consonants crashed into the vowels so it sounded more like a jagged snarl than a spell, but the words came from his mind where he’d prepared them and left his tongue with hissing, sibilant snarls. The chamber was lit with red light from the chandelier, but the edges of the hall were well-shadowed, and those shadows streamed toward Ward, wrapping around him, hiding him from the Dame’s gaze. Her whip faltered, and she looked left and right, the first hint of doubt crossing her countenance.

  Ward kept running, his spell-bound, shadowy nature masking the sounds of his claws on the slates, and, knowing the spell would be brief, he circled the sorceress, reared up on his hind legs, and snatched her neck in his jaws with all the terrible biting power he could muster. His canines were like knives, and his bite could probably shatter a coconut. The dame was a demon incarnate; her flesh was thick and tough, her bones hard and sturdy, but Ward sliced into her neck like a jackal hunting marrow.

  She shrieked or tried to, but Ward pulled her down and began to shake her left and right, an instinct born of his lycan bloodline. Each powerful jerk of his thick, muscle-bound neck widened and deepened his bite. Hot black blood flowed over his tongue, and Ward snarled in disgust at the rotten taste. Still, he held on, ripping and worrying the enormous woman until, with popping, crunching eruptions, his cutting teeth chomped through her spine, and her head rolled free.

  Dame Ruby’s body thrashed and convulsed, but her head was still, her eyes blank, her tongue hanging, bloody from her gaping mouth. Ward stepped back, growling and coughing, trying to spit the disgusting blood from his mouth. He watched her body warily, wondering what could animate it so, with her brain three feet away in her severed head. He didn’t wonder long—a could of black and red motes exploded from the neck, the same vile stuff that had come from Sonder Yates. It rose into the air and streamed toward Ward.

  He growled, backpedaling. In his wolfen vision, colors were muted, but lights and people were bright. Dame Ruby’s corpse had gone gray, but the swarm flying toward him was bright with flickering, shadow-filled mana—he could see how the energy of magic swirled, its motes corrupted by a darkness that tinted them toward red. Ward’s wolf-mind was filled with adrenaline, but he tried to think. He tried to remember what spells he’d cast. Could he Shadow Step again? Did he have a Mana Bolt left?

  He almost turned to run, to put some distance between himself and that swirling, corrupted mana swarm, but then a blazing presence appeared before him. It was Grace, and she shone brightly in his lycan vision. She stood between him and the swarm and shouted, “Not this one, fiend! I’m here!”

  To Ward’s amazement, the swarm recoiled from her, swirling high into the chamber’s recesses. Ward wanted to look for Haley and the others; he had no idea how they fared—if the other twisted cultists had attacked them—but he couldn’t take his eyes off the swarm; he didn’t want it to get away. His two problems became one, though, as the swarm descended in a stream toward the doorway to the library.

  “Ward!” Grace screamed. “You have to capture it! Get the medallion from Dame Ruby’s body! Hurry! I think it’s going for Lisa!”