The Maelstrom

~ 18 ~ When Waters Run Red

Max rode swiftly back toward the citadel, shouting at everyone—every knight and soldier—to flee inside Northgate. Spying Sarah near Trench Nineteen, he yelled for her to blow the signal for a retreat. She hesitated, staring at him like he was crazy until he repeated the order. Taking her horn, she blew the call.

“Pull back!” yelled Max, literally herding people toward the gate and telling other commanders to blow their horns and signal a retreat. Gazing up at the battlements, Max searched anxiously for any familiar faces among the multitude. At last he saw Nigel leaning out from one of Northgate’s towers. Max called the man’s name over and over until he finally looked down.

“Get a message to Ms. Richter!” Max shouted, cupping his hands. “Sound the retreat!”

“What—why?”

“NOW!”

Nigel disappeared and Max wheeled YaYa away, urging everyone—everyone who could run, walk, or crawl—to get inside the Northgate as fast as they possibly could. Thankfully, people were beginning to respond, to leave their positions and trot uncertainly toward the citadel. But many stopped and looked skeptically over their shoulders, unclear why they were being ordered to abandon the fields where they had just triumphed.

Max could feel the atmosphere changing. The breeze was dying away, but huge clouds were gathering from all directions to obscure the first stars of evening. There was a charged, metallic taste to the air, and even YaYa snorted nervously, swiveling her shaggy head as though searching for an unseen threat.

At last Max heard the great horns sound from within the citadel, a shattering call to retreat as hissing red flares shot out from every casting tower. From inside the walls, even Old Tom’s chimes were ringing an alarm as though Armageddon had come.

The peculiar clouds and Rowan’s alarm had the desired effect. Whole battalions hurried toward the citadel at full speed. Max looked frantically about for Scathach, scanning the stampede of running figures and mounted knights to no avail. Sarah rode toward him on her charger. Her shield was dented and she was bleeding from a cut upon her forehead, but she did not appear to be seriously injured.

“Everyone’s heading in,” she assured him. “Are you coming?”

Max shook his head and implored her to go along with the Trench Rats. When it was clear he would not be joining them, she finally left to help evacuate the last of the wounded. Max turned YaYa to gaze out at the emptying battlefield. The ravens and gulls were also departing, hopping off of bodies and taking urgent flight. They wheeled south in dense, screeching flocks as swiftly as their wings would take them.

Twilight was settling upon the battlefield, leaving the grisly shapes in shadow. The wind was picking up once again, blowing in from the north along with a curtain of cold, glittering rain. The drops hissed on hundreds of fires and pinged on thousands of broken shields and bodies scattered across the landscape. Thunder rumbled high above in the swirling clouds, and Prusias’s drums began to sound again.

Boom boom boom boom!

Far to the north, Max spied movement. Raising his spyglass, he saw that Prusias’s palanquin and troops had regrouped and were moving again, creeping south toward Rowan’s citadel. Leaving them, Max swept the glass across the closer terrain and searched frantically for any telltale lights or motion.

At last he found a pinlegs. It was less than a mile from Northgate, scuttling over an ettin’s corpse. There was a second one a few hundred yards to the right, descending a shallow hill. Max’s heart was racing as he discovered more.

Five … six …

Hastily wiping rain from the lens, he resumed his count as more tiny red lights blinked in the deepening dusk. He’d tallied nine when the pinlegs seemed to halt their advance. The one Max was watching had climbed atop the empty, smoldering armor of a slain rakshasa and began circling like a dog chasing its tail.

Suddenly, the world went white.

The landscape disappeared in a phosphorescent flash as thirteen bolts of lightning struck the battlefield. With a whoosh, the surrounding air rushed toward the strikes as though filling a vacuum. The resulting winds blew with hurricane force, staggering YaYa and bending all the trees inward as though a bomb had imploded. All across the battlefield, bodies and carcasses were rolling and tumbling brokenly toward the strike sites along with acres of dirt and soil to create huge, spiraling vortexes. Thirteen mushroom clouds formed, rising ever higher toward the churning maelstrom above.

At last the swirling plumes crested and began to dissipate. Thousands of broken bodies and horses rained back to earth as the clouds settled. Shapes emerged, dark mountains that seemed to sway and shiver as though stirring from some long slumber.

The earth shook.

Initially, Max thought the dreadnoughts were elephants—colossal war elephants the size of castles. But that impression changed as soon as the creatures awakened.

Many eyes appeared in the gloom, piercing the dusk like monstrous searchlights. They scoured the smoking hills and trampled plains until they fell upon the citadel.

Giant flares shot out from Rowan’s towers, arcing through the rain to illuminate the creatures as they began to move. Max watched in mute horror as their particulars began to emerge.

Like the pinlegs, the dreadnoughts appeared to be a hybrid of animal, demon, and machine. Their heads were shaped like that of a pulpy pale octopus, knotted and swollen with muscles and vascular cables that connected them to shiny black bodies that resembled the abdomens of huge, bloated spiders. Enormous black smokestacks jutted from their backs in knuckled ridges, belching fire and smoke into the air as though great engines and furnaces burned at the creatures’ cores.

The dreadnoughts had eight long limbs, but they were nothing like a spider’s. Four of the limbs were thick, elephantine columns of muscle and flesh that bore the brunt of the creature’s weight and propelled it forward. The others were enormous, bloodred tentacles that sprouted from its sides, swinging grotesquely, digging and dragging through the wet fields as they helped to balance the towering creature.

Max found their uniqueness horrifying. No two monstrosities were exactly the same. The Workshop might have built them, but there was an organic asymmetry even to their creatures’ manufactured elements. They looked like they’d been grown and nurtured in colossal vats, a jumble of mutated cells that had been made to grow around a mechanical core until the machinery and engines were subsumed and buried within living tissues.

They had no mouths, not even a truly discernible face. There were only vast, unblinking eyes set atop bodies so colossal that Max could hardly comprehend them. The creatures must have been three hundred feet tall. Just one looked capable of razing Rowan to its foundations and yet thirteen were now advancing upon the citadel fifty yards at a stride.

The gae bolga twitched and gave a magnetic pull almost like a divining rod. The weapon tore Max from his spellbound stupor, bringing him back to the rain and wind and YaYa chuffing once again as the ancient ki-rin mustered whatever reserves she had. He gazed up at the attackers, at the smoke billowing from their backs, at the faint red pentacles now glimmering along the creature’s underbellies. Max’s ring began to burn again.

They’re just imps, he told himself. Imps in huge bodies, but imps all the same.

He recalled the words and warning of the Fomorian after the giant had reforged the gae bolga beneath the waves.

This weapon can never be broken. The wounds it makes will never heal. There is nothing it cannot pierce and nothing it cannot slay, for its essence will destroy both flesh and spirit … this blade will slay gods as well as monsters.…

That weapon was calling to him now, urging him forward. Max was not a mortal being; he was a demigod, a prince of the Sidh who had just driven half of Prusias’s army back across the field. The Morrígan could see his greatness; why couldn’t he? Max was stronger than they, wilder than the storm, and when his anger was roused, nothing on this earth could stand against him. He was invincible.…

Trembling anew, he stared out at the dreadnoughts like a rabid wolf. He spurred YaYa forward and she obeyed, breaking into a trot and then a rolling canter. The gae bolga burned, scalding Max’s hand as the blade keened and screamed like the Morrígan herself.

Breaking into a gallop, YaYa streaked across the battlefield, as swift as an arrow. She soon left the ground behind, springing into the air and racing over the gales and gusts as though they were a shorter path to her enemy. The dreadnoughts loomed even larger, filling Max’s view so that everything else disappeared. It was growing ever hotter, ever louder. Scorched air filled his lungs; all about him was the sound of heavy, churning machinery and the belching fires from the smokestacks. He focused on the nearest one’s central eye, so huge and luminescent it might have been the moon. Gripping the gae bolga, Max stood tall in the stirrups and reared back to strike as Scathach had taught him.

The impact was like a bomb.

Max and YaYa were thrown back with inconceivable force. They crashed into what remained of Trench Nineteen’s embankment, careening over rocks and sharpened stakes until they rolled down into the trench itself. Clawing blindly at the wet earth, Max sensed the gae bolga’s searing heat and seized hold of it. Coming to his senses, he glanced about and saw YaYa lying on her side in a small crater. Great waves of steam rose off her, as though the ki-rin were a meteor that had fallen to earth. One of the embankment stakes had impaled her shoulder, while a sickening shard of bone protruded from her foreleg.

Dirt rained down upon them as the creatures continued to advance. Scrambling to his feet, Max saw that the one he’d struck was stumbling. Half its knotted, pulpy head was missing as though it had detonated. Fire and smoke gushed from the gaping wound. Listing sideways, it flailed its tentacles in an attempt to balance, but its momentum was too great. Its legs gave out and the monster toppled like a falling skyscraper.

A savage elation overcame Max. The Morrígan was right; he was invincible. He was the son of Lugh Lamfhada, High King and greatest of the Tuatha Dé Danaan. And the weapon Max wielded was no mere sword or spear. The gae bolga was a conduit—it was a living tether to the war goddess herself. Together they could destroy the dreadnoughts. Together, they could destroy everything.…

Twelve creatures remained, advancing steadily in a line like a convoy of battleships. Scrambling out of the trench, Max glared up at them as energy from the gae bolga flooded into him, the Morrígan’s power mingling, multiplying with his own. He ran at the colossal things with blind, berserk rage. The nearest loomed above him, its bulk blotting out the sky. Raising the gae bolga high, Max plunged its point deep into the ground.

The instant it pierced the earth, the spear made a hideous scream and split the battlefield asunder. The shock wave sent Max flying backward, tumbling head over heels until he crashed against an overturned wagon. His leg slammed against its heavy axle, cracking his shinbone down the center. Ignoring the pain, Max focused on the battlefield. The very terrain where the gae bolga had struck seemed to be dying, rotting away and collapsing to form a great fissure that spread swiftly beneath the attackers. With a roar, the fissure became a yawning chasm as the surrounding earth sheared away in a flurry of avalanches and rock-slides.

Three of the dreadnoughts vanished from view as they plunged down into the gulf. There was an appalling crash as they struck water far below. Seconds later, jets of steam shot from the fissure like geysers, arcing high into the night and dissipating on the wind.

Gasping for breath, Max watched the geysers plume and drift. He could do little else as the remaining dreadnoughts steadied themselves with their tentacles and continued over the chasm as though nothing had happened. Once across, they began to pick up speed, charging now like Hannibal’s war elephants. The entire battlefield was shaking, but there was nothing Max could do. The Morrígan had grown silent and his own powers were spent.

Boom boom boom boom!

Through gaps between the dreadnoughts, Max glimpsed Prusias’s palanquin and his remaining troops approaching over the dark fields. Dozens of lightning bolts lanced the dreadnoughts from Rowan’s casting towers with no apparent effect. The creatures were running now, their ropy tentacles slapping at the ground while torrents of smoke billowed from their crowning backs.

They strode over Trench Nineteen, stampeding over the remaining terrain. Max was certain one would crush him, grind him into a red smear. He almost wished they would. He had no desire to witness Rowan’s destruction, to see its people murdered or enslaved as Prusias’s army swept in. Everything around him was blinding light and deafening sound and violent, terrifying tremors.

He gazed up, awestruck, as a dreadnought stepped over him, utterly heedless of his presence. There was a rending crack as the first reached the citadel. Twisting about, Max saw one of the monsters rear up on its hind legs to seize one of the casting towers with its tentacles. With a savage wrench, the creature heaved the entire structure off its foundation, ripping it free as though it were no more than a sapling. Others slammed into the wall, rearing up like great spiders to tear frantically at the battlements and masonry.

An overwhelming sense of anger and shame came over Max. Scathach was likely dead. YaYa too. By dawn, thousands more would join them. All of his efforts had been for naught; he had summoned every ounce of Old Magic in him and still the Enemy was grinding Rowan to rubble. Gazing out, Max saw Prusias’s forces halting at the chasm he had made. Already vyes were loping along its ledges, scouting for the narrowest gaps where they might devise a way to cross.

At this range, Max could see Prusias with his naked eye. The demon was standing at the palanquin’s threshold like some barbarian chieftain come to view the sack of Rome. Max’s anger kindled to blind rage. He had never wanted to destroy another being so badly in his life. If he could just get up, rise once more on this broken leg …

And then a dangerous, intoxicating thought occurred to him.

Astaroth!

Clutching the wagon’s wheel, Max twisted farther about so he could see Northgate. It had not yet fallen, but one of the dreadnoughts was lumbering toward it. There might still be a chance to save Rowan if only he spoke those words and called the Demon to him. Astaroth had promised to destroy Prusias’s army and protect Rowan if Max summoned him. And Astaroth never lied! He had the power to do so this instant … all Max had to do in exchange was slay Elias Bram. At the mere thought of the Archmage, Max gritted his teeth.

Damn Bram to hell!

The Archmage had not lifted a finger to help Rowan. For all his clever arguments, he had abandoned them. What would Bram know about aiding his friends, about helping those he loved? Marley Augur had been Bram’s closest companion, and look how he was treated! Bram was a snake; he was a loathsome, self-important snake and deserved to die a thousand times over. Max did not have to do it alone; the Morrígan would help him. Once Bram was gone and Rowan was restored, peace would follow; they would work with Astaroth to create something better, something beautiful and lasting. Wasn’t that what the Demon truly wanted? And Astaroth never lied.…

Something settled on Max’s hand. Glancing down, he saw a brown gypsy moth scuttling over his fingers, twitching its wings and feelers. Was it real? Taking flight again, the moth circled twice about Max’s head and then flew toward Northgate. Max followed its progress until his gaze settled on a pale, translucent figure gliding toward him.

It was Astaroth.

The Demon was in his spectral form, no more than a pale apparition walking across the battlefield amid all the destruction. He was smiling, but there was no mockery or amusement in those angelic features. There was only love; there was only compassion and understanding. Cradling the Book of Thoth, the Demon extended a hand and silently urged Max to speak the words that would summon him.

“Noble Astaroth,” Max whispered. “Pray favor thy petitioner with wisdom from under hill, beyond the stars.…”

As the words tumbled forth, the Demon’s smile widened.

He nodded at Max to finish, beckoned eagerly with a terrible gleam in his merry black eyes. But Max trailed off, blinking instead at a tiny figure that came hurtling out from Northgate even as the dreadnought reared up to demolish it.

The figure was David Menlo.

Max glanced back at Astaroth, but the apparition was already fading. Its smile was gone; its features blank and masklike as it disappeared into the night.

Utterly perplexed, Max pulled himself higher and stared in disbelief at his friend.

David was now directly beneath the dreadnought, screaming in terror and running in staggering zigzags as he sought to avoid the monstrosity’s stamping, shuffling feet and keep his balance on the shaking ground. On several occasions he stumbled and fell, but each time he righted himself and hobbled on with crazed determination.

He was making for Max, calling his friend’s name as though he could possibly be heard above the din. The sorcerer practically collapsed when he reached the wagon. Yelling for Max to take firm hold of the gae bolga, David seized his other hand as he had on Madam Petra’s balloon.

Torrents of energy suddenly rippled through Max, screaming through every blood vessel as though David had flipped a circuit breaker. His broken leg kicked and he tried to tear free of David’s grasp, but the sorcerer would not let go.

Strange things were happening to Max. He beheld not only David crying out in Latin, but also himself wreathed in a nimbus of golden light and slumped against the wagon. It seemed as though he were also seeing the world from David’s perspective, their visions overlapping. As David turned, Max’s view shifted. He was now gazing out at the dreadnoughts as they began to clamber and climb over Rowan’s broken walls.

Max caught his breath as the dreadnoughts came to a sudden, inexplicable halt. Huge golden pentacles were forming around each, their intricate symbols reflected in the monster’s shiny underbellies. The circles trapped the creatures where they stood. Once the pentacles were complete, the abominations could not even twitch without David’s permission.

David’s voice was growing ever stronger as his mind locked on to each of the spirits that were controlling the gargantuan bodies. Max could sense a mounting desperation as the imps fought against David’s will.

They fought in vain.

The sorcerer possessed all nine dreadnoughts, simultaneously shattering all resistance with terrifying strength and dominance. The imps were utterly overwhelmed. Still connected to David, Max became aware of these new presences on the periphery of his consciousness. Whenever he let his mind drift toward one of them, he found himself staring through a dreadnought’s many eyes. Through those fragmented, hazy lenses, he glimpsed Old Tom and Maggie within Old College. At first glance, they appeared undamaged, but it was too disorienting and painful to inhabit the dreadnought for long.

David Menlo had no such difficulties.

The boy did not merely command each dreadnought; he was each dreadnought. The sorcerer’s extraordinary mind controlled the bodies as if they were merely huge extensions of his own intelligence and will. At his silent urging, the creatures now turned slowly about and fixed their attention upon Prusias’s army.

The demon’s troops were beginning to cross Max’s chasm, marching over giant battering rams that had been laid across to form causeways. When the dreadnoughts wheeled upon them, those in front frantically tried to retreat, crashing into those coming up behind them. Many were thrust aside, toppling into the gorge and triggering a general panic as every vye and ogre tried to scramble back.

Sweat was coursing down David’s pale face as he followed the dreadnoughts’ earthshaking advance. Within seconds, they strode over Trench Nineteen and reached the chasm, obliterating the bridges with their tentacles. Striding over the gorge, the dreadnoughts now loomed directly over thousands of vyes, ogres, deathknights, and demons like smoldering mountains.

The ensuing onslaught was horrific. Whole companies were trampled in seconds; others were destroyed by the sweeping, flailing tentacles that pulverized everything in their path. David showed no mercy as the dreadnoughts began walling the army off and hemming them in against the gorge and the cliffs.

Some escaped, of course. Some vyes managed to flee beneath the dreadnoughts like mice darting beneath a cat. Several rakshasa transformed into spirits of fiery smoke and escaped through the air. But the rest were less fortunate as the dreadnoughts crushed, lashed, and drove them toward the steep cliffs and chasm. Thousands were sent hurtling over the ledges, plunging hundreds of feet to the sharp rocks and wild waves.

Throughout, Max had focused almost all his attention on the golden palanquin. Two dreadnoughts had seized it and were pushing the massive thing toward the cliffs, digging their tentacles beneath and slamming their bodies against it. As the monsters gained leverage, the litter flipped and began to tumble as though the creatures were rolling a gargantuan boulder. With a final frenzied effort, they heaved it and themselves over the edge, clinging to the carriage like hideous octopi as it plunged down to the sea.

The seven remaining dreadnoughts followed their example, charging the cliffs and sweeping along everything in their path as they threw themselves like lemmings over the ledge. More geysers came screaming up once they crashed, their mist floating across the landscape like shimmering veils of silver.

Max heard himself gasp when the dreadnoughts struck the water. A peripheral part of his mind and consciousness had been with them and experienced firsthand the tumbling blur of sky and sea, the awful glimpse of rocks and ocean rushing up to meet them.

Thankfully, David had released the psychic connection right before the monsters had struck. With a groan, Max leaned back against the wagon, feeling as weak and helpless as a newborn. He clutched hopefully at the gae bolga, but the spear lay dark and dormant in the mud. Rowan’s sorcerer was also apparently spent, for he doubled over coughing and wheezing for breath as steam rose off his body in ghostly wisps.

An eerie quiet settled over the battlefield. There were no more drums, no more horns or the terrible shaking of dreadnoughts. There was only the distant crash of the sea and the sound of their hoarse breathing.

“I’m sorry,” David gasped, finding his voice at last. “I didn’t have enough power on my own. I had to borrow yours. Can you stand?”

With a grimace, Max took David’s hand and pushed himself up on his uninjured leg. Leaning heavily on the spear, he turned to survey the ruin upon the battlefield and the crumbling foundations of Rowan’s walls and towers. People were reemerging, streaming out from the remains of the Northgate arch and a hundred other openings to see what had happened. They fanned out to survey the destruction. Some cheered; others fell to their knees in prayer. Most simply stared at the surrounding miles of burning, smoking devastation. Even the earth was trembling and shivering with aftershocks.

It was a minute before Max heard the first scream.

Another followed it and then another. Soon hundreds and thousands of voices cried out as people backed away and then fled from the cliffs.

Prusias was rising from the sea.

The demon had shed his human guise as a serpent sheds its skin. It was no barbarian king that rose above the cliffs, but a great red dragon with seven crowns set atop seven human heads, each slavering with wrath and fury. Max and David were sixty yards from the cliffs, yet the heat that radiated from the demon’s red-scaled body scorched their lungs. Prusias had grown since Walpurgisnacht, gorging and glutting himself on the bodies and spirits of his own kind. Each of his crowned, gnashing heads was swaying far above the battlefield, and yet Max could hear his serpentine coils lashing the waves hundreds of feet below.

The heads leered out at all assembled. Blood was coursing from black, festering slashes across several of the faces and throats, grisly legacies of Max’s last encounter with the demon. Max had not managed to slay Prusias, but wounds from the gae bolga would never heal and so the cuts continued to bleed, dribbling and hissing down braided beards to patter on the scaly necks and the ground below. But despite these injuries and despite the utter ruin of his army, the King of Blys gave a savage smile.

“You think you’ve defeated Prusias?” he roared, looming monstrously over the battlefield. “Ha! I don’t need those insects or machines. I don’t need an army to crush this den of fools and tricksters.” The demon’s eyes settled on Max and David. “I see the faithless Hound and Rowan’s cowering sorcerer, but where is Bram? Bring me the Archmage and Richter, too. Pile them all onto a great pyre and beg my forgiveness!”

The heads swayed lower, thrusting forward like great serpents to loom over the battlefield and its huddling hordes of people. All seven spoke in grinning, leering unison.

“You’ll bow down and raise my flag, you groveling little maggots,” they growled. “You’ll bow down and worship Great Prusias or he’ll devour every last one of you!” The central head whipped savagely about to glare in the direction of Old College.

“Where is the Archmage?” it roared. “BRING ME BRAM!”

As soon as the demon cried out these last words, there was a blinding flash and the sharp crack of thunder. Something had appeared instantly before Prusias, a radiant white figure amid a cloud of pearly, dissipating mist. But it was not Elias Bram who walked toward the demon.

It was Mina.

Prusias recoiled the instant he saw her, as though she were something grotesque and poisonous. The King of Blys swayed back and forth like an enormous cobra. Each of the demon’s seven heads appraised the little girl with a mixture of fear and wonder.

“What are you?” he demanded. “What are you called?”

But Mina did not answer. Spreading her fingers wide, she stretched one little hand toward the demon as though she were grasping at a shiny ornament just out of reach. When she could reach no farther, the girl abruptly closed her fingers and made a fist.

Seven crowns cracked and shattered.

The King of Blys shrieked as they fell from his tangled heads in great shards of hammered gold. Upon each of the demon’s foreheads, the Rowan seal appeared, branded into his flesh as though with a hot iron. With a rending scream, Prusias fell back into the sea and fled over the waves like a vast, repulsive sidewinder.

Mina watched him go, then turned and walked to Max and David. Already, her radiance was dimming and Max realized that the little girl was wearing naught but her nightgown. She padded barefoot through the mud, lifting the gown’s hem so as not to get it dirty. Coming to them, she took each of their hands and gazed up at them, utterly oblivious of the gathering crowds.

“I have cast Prusias down,” she said.

“I should say so,” replied David.

“And I teleported,” she announced, swelling up as though this was far more noteworthy than banishing a seven-headed demon. “You can’t pretend you didn’t see! You know what that means.”

“Another trinket for your magechain,” David sighed. “You shall have it.”

She beamed, clutching their hands as though she never wanted to let go, but at last she turned toward the cliffs and watched the white gulls as they circled and soared against the dark sky.

“I have to go down to the beach,” she remarked. “My charge is waiting for me.”

“How do you know he is there?” asked David.

“Max can say,” she replied, gazing absently at the dark ocean.

“ ‘When the gulls cry out and the waters run red, he’ll rise from the sea to find me,’ ” said Max softly, recalling the girl’s prophecy.

“And he has,” she declared excitedly. “Take me down!”

“I’ll take you,” said David. “I want to see your charge. And there may be something else of interest down there.” He turned to Max. “Can you come?”

“No,” said Max, glancing back at Trench Nineteen. “I have other things to do.”

“But can you even walk?” wondered David, glancing doubtfully at Max’s leg.

“I can ride.”

And indeed he could. As David and Mina departed, Max called out to a nearby knight and asked to borrow his horse. The man helped Max into the saddle. The climb up was agony, but the pain was manageable once he was settled and so long as he kept his mount to a walk.

Max rode to the embankments along Trench Nineteen, to the section where smoke and steam were still rising in little wisps. Peering down into the trench, Max braced himself for the worst.

But YaYa was nowhere to be seen.

Stunned, Max looked up and down the trench. Was he in the right place? Surely he was. There was no mistaking that crater of compacted earth and the smoke still rising from its depths. Prodding with his spear through the wreckage of soil and splintered stakes, Max even saw little pools and droplets of blood. But YaYa herself was missing.

Did ki-rin disappear when they died? Did they simply burn up like rakshasa?

There was no time to solve this mystery. Tugging on the reins, Max rode through the crowds along the ruin of the citadel walls. There was so much commotion, so many cries of jubilation and people streaming past. One group of ecstatic revelers was more than a little stunned when Max snarled at them to move even as they clustered around to thank him.

His eyes were constantly scanning the milling masses for Scathach. He barely noticed Old Tom chiming the Westminster Quarters or the colorful bursts as flares and starbursts exploded overhead. Pushing through, he shouted Scathach’s name and gazed about in search for her. Even in this moment of spectacular triumph, Max’s heart was breaking.

The dread was numbing. Max had not experienced anything like it since he’d found his father bleeding to death in an icy stream. He yelled Scathach’s name again, gazing wildly, frantically about. So many faces surrounded him and yet none was the one he sought.

He was approaching the citadel’s northwest section, riding in the shadow of the ruined walls, when the crowds finally began to thin. There was still an ungodly amount of commotion—ringing chimes and blaring horns and great bursts of fireworks over Old College—but Max could now see each face as people ran past to join the celebration.

As he rounded a tower’s remains to head for Westgate, Max reined the horse to a halt as a family passed by. The father was laughing, holding the hand of one child while his wife tried to corral an escaped toddler who was stumbling after some giggling lutins. Max watched them go and was about to urge the horse onward when a rider caught his eye. Gazing up, Max saw Scathach coming toward him.

She was on a different horse and looked wearier than he’d ever seen her, but when their eyes met, the maiden smiled and stood tall in her stirrups. Max’s sorrow and dread evaporated. He had never felt such a rush of pure, unmitigated joy. All pain was forgotten as he shook the reins and wheeled his horse toward her. He called her name, grinning wildly and urging his horse into a trot.

As they closed, Max heard someone behind cry out his name. He had no intention of stopping, until the person yelled again with such terrible urgency he could not ignore it. Stopping, he turned around to see someone tearing through the crowds after him. As the person raced past the family, Max finally glimpsed her face.

The person was Scathach.

“Morkün i-tolvatha!”

Even as Max heard those terrible words, he realized his folly. Whipping back around, Max merely glimpsed Scathach’s smiling imposter as the mounted assassin swung the blade meant to decapitate him.

With a deafening roar, a huge black blur crashed in from the side.

Max was merely knocked off his startled horse, but the false Scathach was nearly pulverized as YaYa took her to the ground in a furious assault. Arms and legs were pinned instantly. There was a popping of blistering flesh and a piercing, ungodly scream came from the assassin’s throat. Max had never seen YaYa so enraged; the ki-rin was shaking violently, her jaws slavering mere inches from Scathach’s terrified face.

Already that face was changing. William Cooper’s own rough, brutal features were emerging as though YaYa were drawing them forth. The Agent’s eyes were black as pitch, his skin cadaverously pale. There were more popping sounds as smoke billowed off of the man’s body. Cooper screamed again as though he were being burned at the stake. With furious effort, he tried to writhe free, but the ki-rin was much too strong.

The real Scathach’s arms gently closed about Max’s shoulders as she crouched behind him.

“YaYa’s killing him,” Max said, utterly stunned and horrified by the scene.

“No,” Scathach whispered, holding him close. “She’s saving him.”

Max was not so certain. YaYa’s teeth were bared, and she was growling with such ferocity that she looked capable of suddenly tearing out Cooper’s throat. The man had ceased struggling and now merely offered a bloody smile.

“Go ahead!” he goaded. “There’s always another—”

With another roar, YaYa impaled him.

When her horn pierced his shoulder, Cooper’s scream was like nothing Max had ever heard before. Nearby spectators covered their ears and drew away. Fiery symbols erupted on Cooper’s skin, evil runes and symbols Max had glimpsed in David’s grimoires. Cooper was weeping now, pleading with the ki-rin to simply kill him.

But YaYa was unmoved.

At last Cooper’s screams and pleas ceased. He simply lay still on the wet grass and took slow, sputtering breaths while smoke hissed and crackled about the ki-rin’s broken horn. As the fiery symbols faded, Cooper’s eyes returned to their clear, pale blue. His hand twitched, and YaYa raised her bleeding foreleg to release it. Tears ran down the man’s scarred, ruined face as he stroked the ki-rin’s muzzle. His voice was barely audible.

“Tell them I’m sorry.”

When he closed his eyes, YaYa slowly withdrew her horn from his shoulder.

“Is he dead?” Max asked, clutching Scathach’s hand.

Dipping her head, YaYa nuzzled Cooper’s face. “He is at peace.”