I couldn’t see any of the others. I couldn’t turn my head far enough. But nobody was up to fighting. None of us could move beneath the horrible pressure of will of the Red King and the Lords of Outer Night.
“Insolent beast,” snarled the Red King. “Die in agony.” He seized another guard by his jaguar skin and jerked him close, as if the brawny vampire had been a child. “Need I repeat myself?” he seethed, and shoved his bloodstained ritual knife into the warrior’s hands. “Place that child upon the altar and kill her.”
Chapter 46
Guys like the Red King just don’t know when to shut up.
I fought to raise my hand, and it was more effort than anything I’d done that night. My hand shook and shook harder, but finally moved six inches, to touch the surface of the skull in the cloth bag on my hips.
Bob! I screamed, purely in my head, as I would have using Ebenezar’s sending stone.
Hell’s bells, he replied. You don’t have to scream. I’m right here.
I need a shield. Something to ward off his will. I figure this is a spiritual attack. A spirit should be able to counter it.
Oh, sure. But no can do from in here, boss, Bob said.
You have my permission to leave the skull for this purpose! I thought desperately.
The skull’s eye sockets flared with orange-red light, and then a cloud of glowing energy flooded out of the eyes and rose, gathering above my head and casting warm light down around me.
Seconds later, I heard Bob thinking, Take this, shorty!
And suddenly the Red King’s will was not enough to keep me down. The pain receded, smothered and numbed by an exhilarating, icy chill that left my nerves tingling with energy. I clenched my teeth, freed from the burden of pain, and thrust my own will against his. I was a child arm wrestling a weight lifter—but his last remark gave me some extra measure of strength, and suddenly I drove myself to my feet.
The Red King turned to face me fully again, and extended both hands toward me, his face twisting with rage and contempt. The horrible pressure began to swell and redouble. I heard his voice quite clearly when he said, “Bow. Down. Mortal.”
I took one dragging step toward my friends. Then another. And another. And another, moving forward with increasing steadiness. Then I snarled through clenched teeth and said, “Bite. Me. Asshole.”
And I put my hand on Murphy’s left shoulder.
She’d already moved her hand halfway to the sword. As I touched her, touched our auras together, spreading my own defenses over hers, and felt the direct and violent strength of her own will to defy the immortal power brought against us, her hand flashed up to the hilt of Fidelacchius and drew the katana from its plain scabbard.
White light like nothing that ancient stadium had ever seen erupted from the sword’s blade, a bright agony that reminded me intensely of the crystalline plain. Howls of pain rose from around us, but were drowned by Murphy’s sudden, silvery cry, her voice swelling throughout the stadium and ringing off the vaults of the sky:
“False gods!” she cried, her blue eyes blazing as she stared at the Red King and the Lords of Outer Night. “Pretenders! Usurpers of truth! Destroyers of faith, of families, of lives, of children! For your crimes against the Mayans, against the peoples of the world, now will you answer! Your time has come! Face judgment Almighty!”
I think I was the only one close enough to see the shock in her eyes, and I realized that it wasn’t Murphy speaking the words—but someone else speaking them through her.
Then she swept her sword in an arc, slashing the very air in front of us in a single, whistling stroke.
And the will of the Red King vanished. Gone.
The Red King let out a scream and clutched at his eyes. He screamed something, pointing in Murphy’s direction, and in the same instant the rest of my friends gasped and rocked in place, suddenly free.
Every golden mask turned toward my friend.
Bob! I cried. Go with her! Keep her free!
Wahoo! the skull said, and gold-orange light fell from my head toward Murphy and gathered about her blond hair, even as the joined wills of the Lords of Outer Night fell upon her, so thick and heavy that I was knocked away from her as if by a physical force. The very air around her warped with its intensity.
White light from the sword flowed down and over her, and her garments literally transformed, as if that light had flowed into them, become a part of them, turning night to day, black to white. She staggered to one knee and looked up, her jaw set in stubborn determination, her teeth bared, her blue eyes, through the distortion, blazing like fire in defiance of thirteen dark gods—and with one of the most powerful spirits I’d ever met gathered around her head in a glowing golden halo.
Murphy came to her feet with a shout and a smooth stroke of the sword. The Lords of Outer Night all reacted, jerking back as if they’d been struck a blow in the face. Several golden masks were ripped from their faces, as if the blow had physically touched them—and the molten presence of their joined wills was suddenly gone.
With a scream, the jaguar warriors, half-breed and vampire alike, surged toward Murphy.
She ducked the swing of a modern katana, shattered a traditional obsidian sword with a contemptuous sweep of Fidelacchius, and struck down the warrior wielding it with a precise horizontal cut.
But she was outnumbered. Not by dozens or scores, but by the hundreds, and the jaguar warriors immediately fanned out to come at her from several directions. They knew how to work together.
But then, so did Sanya and I.
Sanya came forward with Esperacchius, and as it joined the fray, it too kindled into blazing white light that seemed to lick out at the vampires, forcing them to duck, to slap at white sparks that danced in their eyes. His booted foot caught one jaguar warrior in the small of the back, and the raw power of the kick snapped the warrior’s head back with force enough to break his neck.
I followed Sanya in, unleashing a burst of freezing wind that took two warriors from their feet when they tried to flank Murphy from the other side.
She and Sanya went back-to-back, cutting down jaguar warriors with methodical efficiency for several seconds, as more and more of the enemy swarmed toward them. I kept slapping them away—not able to do any real harm, but preventing them from focusing overwhelming numbers on Murph and Sanya—but I could feel the fatigue setting in now. I couldn’t keep this up forever.
There were quick footsteps beside me, and then Molly pressed her back to mine. “You take that side!” she said. “I’ll take this one!”
DJ Molly C lifted both of her wands and turned the battle chaos to eleven.
Color and light and screaming sound erupted from those two little wands. Bands of light and darkness flowed around and over the oncoming jaguar warriors, fluttering images of bright sunshine intertwining with other images of yawning pits suddenly gaping before the feet of the attackers. Bursts of sound, shrieks and clashes and booms, and high-pitched noises like feedback on steroids sent the hyperkeen senses of full vampires into overload, literally forcing them back onto the weapons of those coming behind them.
Vampires staggered through the handiwork of the One-woman Rave, not stopped but slowed and stunned by the incredible field of sound and light.
“I love a good party,” Thomas shouted merrily, and he began to dance along the edges of Molly’s dance floor, his falcata whipping into the limbs and necks of the jaguar warriors as they wobbled forward, struck down before they could recover. I didn’t think anyone could have moved fast enough to catch them, but my brother evidently didn’t agree. He struck down the foe as they came for us, and he threw in a few dance moves along the way. The part he borrowed from break dancing, where a wave traveled up one arm and down the other, was particularly effective, aesthetically, when it was bracketed by his falcata beheading one vamp and his automatic blowing apart the skull of another.