Hammer of Darkness (Veil Knights Book 8) Read online

  I couldn’t hurry, rushing wouldn’t help me identify the bottle I needed. But everything inside me told me I needed to hurry. There was another soft sound, riding quietly on the edge of my hearing. Voices perhaps. Perhaps distant, muffled screams.

  I found a squat, oval tub of cut glass the size of a tea cup. Pulling it free I felt around the top with my other hand. The whispers grew louder, but they shifted and there was an odd echo to everything. I began feeling an impression of vast size around me.

  Cynthia had preferred the ascetics of the Victorian age. Her bottles and little phials contained stoppers and plugs instead of more modern lids. This little tub was no different and at first I couldn’t figure out how to open it.

  The hushed whispers melted into the soft rustling sound, growing louder but still sounding eerily far away, like wind through a canyon on the other side of a river. Present, but fleeting.

  Finding no lip to the little tub, I rubbed my thumb across the top like a gambler dealing cards. A small clasp popped open and the top slid apart on a single clever hinge like a folding knife opening.

  In that moment I prayed to the mother who had guided Cynthia during her life. Blindly taking the tinctures and creams of any witch was a foolhardy thing at best. Desperate times, I thought.

  Gently I slid the tip of one finger into the tub. I feel a smooth, cool salve. It was the texture I’d been hoping to find.

  The whispers became voices.

  I didn’t recognize the language, but now I could hear distinct, repetitive sounds; words. The voices were about some mantra or chant. I did not judge this to be a positive development.

  I took one finger, smeared with the salve, and brought it up to my face. Carefully I rubbed the substance on my eyelids. Speaking in ancient Egyptian, I enchanted the word for ‘sight,’ irt. It came out as eeret on my tongue, the syllable liquid in my mouth.

  A warm sensation seeped into my face and when I opened my eyes my vision was clear. I stood at one end of a cathedral-like structure. Vaulted ceiling, hung with shadows, soared over my head. Along stone walls rotted tapestries hung in curtains of rags. The floor stretching out before me split into two rows of great stone sarcophagi sitting interspersed among stone columns like soldiers on parade.

  The air was dry, stale. I looked down and saw smooth worn tiles covered in a blanket of dust.

  Shadows? I thought. That’s not right…

  I jerked my head up and drew my pistol. The ceiling crawled with bat-like creatures, they squirmed and writhed, their movements making the rustling sound I heard. The whispers grew agitated. Bile flooded my mouth as I used my free hand to shoulder Cynthia’s bag.

  The whispers also came from the creatures. I narrowed my eyes, trying to bring them into focus. I could still detect nothing about their faces, but the sound of voices was like a crowd on a subway platform now.

  I looked up. The crypt was far more a sepultura than cathedral. At the far end of the vast hall I saw two great stone doors set with heavy, bronze rings. Off to one side a bat-creature dropped from the ceiling. It flew an erratic pattern then landed back in the squirming midst of its colony.

  The raspy chanting began to synchronize around a continuously repeated series of syllables until all of them chanted the word together. I began jogging down the center aisle running the length of the room. The teeming, wriggling cloud of black winged creatures began undulating in waves. More of the things dropped from their perches to fly briefly and then rest again.

  Shezmu, Shezmu, Shezmu

  I knew Shezmu.

  I began running. The pounding rhythm of their cries intensified. The air above my head swirled with the daemon familiars. Leathery wings fluttered and dark objects darted into my path. I was close enough to see the heads of the creatures and they were human. Tiny faces with rubbery mouths filled with needle teeth.

  The chanting became shrieks, Shezmu! Shezmu! Shezmu!

  There were far more of these things than I had bullets in the pistol, but the urge to blindly blast away was near overwhelming. One of the swooping things came close enough to rustle my hair. In front of me the chamber doors grew closer, but the scale of this place was enormous and I estimated I still had a little more than a hundred meters left to run.

  Flapping wings and a shrieking intonation erupted from the swirling, demonic, mass and swirled around me. I felt the sting of fang or claw on my face and burning lacerations began spilling blood down my cheek. I swatted at the things, but they darted away and the air around me filled with a hurricane of beating wings.

  I triggered the pistol.

  Sprinting hard, free arm held over my face in a futile attempt to block the creatures, I fired and fired.

  In the cavernous chamber the echo roared like thunder booming in canyons. The barrel spat flame as the recoil jerked the discharging weapon in my grip. I didn’t try to hit a target, probably couldn’t have if I’d wanted to. Instead I filled the great chamber with muzzle flash and deafening reports as I threw out a wall of burning lead before me.

  A slashing claw found the back of my head and cut deep. A ragged avulsion on my scalp leaked blood down the back of my neck to soak my shirt. Several of the creatures fell as wildly fired bullets found them, but the amount of dead were inconsequential in that black mass of things.

  But the reports and blinding flash seemed to be playing some havoc with them. With something like fierce joy I realized they were no longer chanting Shezmu’s name. Shezmu, Lord of Blood and Slaughter, that lion-headed man always shown on temple walls with a dripping blade in his hand.

  Now the sycophantic things could only manage screams of rage and fear and pain. I fired my last round as I made the chamber doors. The receiver locked open as the last shell casing ejected from the port in a tumbling arc. No time to reload. Two of the things smashed into my back with bruising force. I staggered, shoving the empty pistol back in its holster, and flung myself at the door.

  I flashed on the image of the great skeleton key Euryale used. I would not find the irony of these doors being locked amusing. I imagined the creatures on me in a piranha frenzy and I yanked on the massive black ring. The door groaned in protest. I hauled backward and it began to give.

  One of the things came down on my shoulder, its weight seemingly too heavy to fly, and its taloned feet, designed to allow it to cling upside down, dug into the flesh of my shoulder. Its claws slid through my skin, piercing the muscle.

  I cried out at the burning pain and reached back to grab the thing. I got a hold of it and threw it into the heavy door, smashing it. The door slid open several inches in the next moment and I bent around it, slamming my body into the opening.

  More of the things swooped at me, little human faces grotesque in the magical illumination of Cynthia’s salve. I shoved hard and the stubborn barrier shifted another two inches. I rammed more of my body through, and the door opened a little more.

  One of the things dropped down at me and raked my arm, drawing blood and ripping the sleeve of the shirt into rags. I swung at it wildly and it fluttered backward, then in the next moment, it swooped forward and slashed me again, this time reaching my chest. I felt the strap holding Cynthia’s bag part and it fell away. Bottles shattered as it struck the floor.

  The door wouldn’t budge. Pulling my head back, I just missed another swipe and this time my flailing arm connected with the vicious thing and sent it spinning back into the room. Almost panicked, I threw myself backward and more of my body made it through the narrow opening.

  Twisting, I put both hands against the door and shoved with everything I had. The effort made the blood pound in my temples. I grunted, ropes of spit flying from my mouth. The door shifted another inch and I was through.

  I hit the ground and popped back up. Taking the iron ring on the other side of the door in hand, I put my foot against the opposite door and hauled back with everything I had. Two of the creatures pushed through and I caught three more with the edge of the door as I yanked it close. The crunch
of them dying was like an aria to my ears.

  I turned, trying to get my bearings. One of the creatures dive-bombed me, I flinched away and a talon opened a cut under my eye. Then in the next instance something much bigger than the bat things swooped down. I stumbled backward as feathers struck me across the face in a powerful blow.

  Talons larger than my own hands snatched the bat creature out of the air and I got a good look at what I was facing. I saw an owl body big as Cynthia’s Rottweiler, human breasts like great, pendulous dugs, and a snarling, sharp, bird face under a filthy halo of matted air. A foul stench hammered my face on the current of air generated by the thing’s beating wings.

  Harpy.

  Chapter 21

  The harpy lowered its human face and brought the struggling bat thing up. The creatures wrinkled, primate face screamed like a human child and then the spiked teeth filling the harpy’s mouth came down in a crunch every bit as revolting as the one I’d just made with the door.

  Blood squirted and the bat thing’s cries cut short. I pulled the handgun and dumped the magazine. From a pocket I produced my back up magazine and seated it. My thumb found the release and the slide shot forward, seating a round.

  I backed up, looking around me. I had left a crypt and entered a more proper cathedral. Easily five times as large a room as the space behind me, the floor was covered with broken wooden pews and as covered with bird shit as a chicken coop. The smell of the place gagged me.

  Backing away, I tripped on the lip of the narthex and almost fell into the splintered pile of what once must have been the pulpit. I lowered the pistol, covering the harpy. It perched on one leg, tearing chunks from the bat thing.

  I had established the eco system around here. The harpy regarded me with beady red eyes, its gaze sharp. I heard rustling behind me and slowly turned. Across the room, above the floor, was a mezzanine and along the balcony perched a wake of harpies. Twelve, maybe fifteen, of the monsters balanced on the edge. Their hag faces regarded me with hunger.

  “I seek only passage!” I yelled in Gaelic.

  I backed up as I spoke until I came up against a wall. From my right the first harpy began retching, I looked over in time to see it vomit up the undigested bones of the bat thing into a vile puddle. She looked at me.

  “Pretty one,” she said.

  She tilted her head in decidedly avian fashion, cruel hag’s face twisted in curiosity. I swallowed.

  “I’m guessing you’re not signatories to the Reconciliation?” I asked.

  She hopped forward, each of her wings was as long as I was tall. A sharply pointed black and pink tongue darted from her mouth and licked bloody meat scraps from her teeth. I was not in a position to burn through my ammunition without concern.

  “I seek a witch, two witches,” I said.

  I scooted down the wall a little bit. Above me the wake began stirring, ruffling feathers as wings stretched, tongues flickering, talons digging into the edge of the mezzanine balcony as they inched their way along in one direction or another. Raptor eyes followed my every move.

  The first harpy hopped forward again. I blew a stream of breath out through my nostrils and centered myself. I was going to start with her. Double tap to the forehead, easy shot at this range. Then I would to shift and put one round each in the chests of the harpies closest to the space I intended to run under. Once under the mezzanine, I would take targets of opportunities as the wake swooped down to find me.

  I might not make it, but I could make it hurt. I don’t know how Erica got through the crypt other than by speed, but how she’d gotten through the stinking nest was a mystery. Then I got my answer.

  “Riddles?” the harpy asked.

  I closed my eyes. Of course, I thought. Absolutely of course. It wasn’t enough to just strike down prey capable of speech, they first had to be psychologically tortured with hope of escape. But the riddles of the Veil-kind and fey were usually obtuse nonsense. Either so cryptic as to be indecipherable by any but a psychic, or straight up nonsense like, “what’s in my lair?”

  Riddles with monsters was a sucker’s game. But talking birds weren’t attacking birds so I didn’t need much persuasion.

  “Sure,” I said. “I get it right I go free, yes?”

  “Three riddles,” the harpy said.

  Feathered bitch, I thought. Above me the wake gave rise to their voices in squawks and shrill whistles. The echo of the noise hurt my ears as it rattled around the sacellum.

  “One,” I said. “One riddle. If I answer correctly, you tell me about the witches.”

  The harpy smiled. “If you answer one right, we’ll let you pass. If you want the answer to your question then you must answer another riddle.” There were still bits of the bat thing stuck in her teeth.

  “I’ll find the witches on my own,” I said. “Ask me the riddle.”

  Would you be shocked to know I didn’t plan on giving up if I guessed wrong? By now I should hope not. Of course I don’t think the harpies were counting totally on my sense of sportsmanship either, but I also think they were counting on numbers to enforce the rules of the game.

  The harpy grinned, gray hair poking around her head like wire splashed with blood. That disgusting tongue flickered out again and the hag’s face cackled. I thought about just shooting right away. The only thing that kept me from it was the idea I might need my bullets later.

  In a voice like nails on a chalkboard, the harpy asked me the riddle. “Five hundred begins it, five hundred ends it, Five in the middle is seen; First of all figures, the first of all letters, take up their stations between. Join all together and then you will bring before you the name of an eminent King. Who am I?”

  I smiled. I’m sure that would sound like a bunch of nonsense to plenty of people, but I do believe I mentioned my classical education? I might have noted in passing that I speak Latin well?

  Speaking Latin includes being able to count in Latin. D is the Roman numeral for 500, as V is for 5. That left only the first of all figures, the first of all letters. The first of all letters was easy enough, ‘A,’ but figures meant numbers and that was a ‘1.’ I sighed, don’t overthink it. A one is a vertical line. I inserted the A and the 1.

  DAVID

  King David is pretty much the most eminent king in the bible after Solomon.

  “DAVID,” I said.

  The harpy was furious. Her angry cawing spilled from the crooked slash of her mouth and it instantly aroused the others to explode with mutual rage. Sneering at me she squirted bird poop onto the floor. It smelled foul.

  “I take it I’m right,” I said. I started edging toward the cover of the mezzanine. Two of the unsettlingly large creatures leapt off the balcony above me and flapped around the ceiling. Their breasts swung with each stroke of their wings like the end of a pendulum in a grandfather clock.

  They fluttered above me and began squirting white liquid fecal matter, forcing me to dodge and dance. As I fled without turning my back the first harpy hopped after me.

  “Another riddle,” she cawed. “Another riddle!”

  I saw an entrance to the chamber up a short flight of stone steps. The doors stood some eight feet tall and arched on the top like a cupola. At each hinge bands of iron reinforced the already thick, heavy structure. The door on the left was ajar by two feet.

  Turning to keep facing the harpy, I began walking backward. She, it, followed me in a series of short, jerky hops. Behind her it sounded as if the entire wake were in the air. Two of the things landed on the ground and began hopping toward me.

  “Another riddle!” the first harpy demanded.

  “No,” I said. “I’ll find who I’m looking for on my own.”

  The thing wasn’t taking no for an answer very well. I could shoot a couple of harpies and reach the door, no problem. But I didn’t know if the things didn’t have another way in or out of the church. I could get out and slam the door behind me just in time to see everyone of them shooting up through some hole in the roo
f and circling me with dinner on their minds.

  I felt strongly that discretion was the better part of valor.

  I shuffled backward, ready to bring the pistol up. More of the harpies flew in under the mezzanine and roosted on the mounded piles of broken pews. Abruptly, I smelled the sea and felt a gentle eddy of chill air. I realized I was within reach of the door now.

  “We had a deal,” I said.

  The first harpy stopped hopping. She looked simultaneously disgusted with my lack of competitiveness, and murderous on general principle. But I’d be damned if I was going to play a second round of guess the riddle with her.

  I stopped, thought about the situation, and decided I had a possible angle to play.

  “How about I ask you a riddle?” I countered.

  The harpy cocked its head. “You will ask me a riddle?”

  “I ask, and if you give the answer I intend our original deal stands,” I said.

  She hopped forward, dugs swaying, fecal matter streaking her leg. “We eat your flesh,” she said.

  “But if I win you tell me of the witches,” I clarified.

  “Ask.”

  I took my chance: “wondrously it hangs by a man's thigh, under the master's garment. In front is a hole. It is stiff and hard. When the servant’s own clothing raises over his knee he wishes to greet that well known hole with the head of his hanging object.”

  The harpy began cackling. She thought she knew the riddle, just as I’d known hers. I’d never thought to stump her, but I did hope to trick her. The Exeter Riddles were a 95 page book from antiquity, one of the four oldest examples of books written in Old English. The thing was, though a copy of the book and its riddles was found, no answers were provided in the text, and the obscene riddles were built almost exclusively around double entendres.

  Yes, the most commonly given answer to the riddle was obviously a penis. But it was not the definitive one. And I had arranged the wording of my question in the mostly lawyerly fashion I could manage; the harpy had to give the answer I intended. We had made an agreement. Unlike me, Veil kind are bound by even the most casual of their pledges.