I loosed a resigned sigh as Daartan bore down on me, his eagerness spewing out in frigid huffs of breath. I felt like Don Quixote, tilting at a bullet train, but the least I could do was go out with my boots on. No one but the coroner needed to know they were filled to the ankles with shit.
Casting a quick glance at Karra, it was clear I couldn’t expect any help from her. A stumbling font of red, she had dragged herself to her father’s body and lay there, draped over him in a sobbing heap. She was out of the fight.
Squinting at the bright light emanating from Daartan, and wrestling with the urge to bolt, I stood my ground and got ready to meet the revenant’s challenge with hot, supernatural, blood-infused lead. I still had my ace up my sleeve, the power given to me by Baalth, but it wouldn’t do me any good if I pulled it out too soon. It’d be a case of premature assimilation.
Caught up in the ecstasy of a massive soul transfer, I might not feel the pain being dealt to me, my injuries healing as they were doled out, but I’d be helpless, a devilish punching bag. The magic would be taxed to its fullest as soon as the transfer wore off.
Even with the increase, it’d only delay the inevitable, Daartan still too much a stud for me to take out alone. My only chance was to stay mobile and keep the Knight occupied and away from Karra and her father, all the while, hoping for a miracle.
But you know what they say: wish in one hand, shit in the other. Which one fills up faster? Let’s just say there’s gonna be a shortage of wishes.
That’s when the sodden gray lump inside my head sparked into a semblance of functionality. I didn’t need to go after Daartan to hurt him.
I waited until he was right on top of me, his sword whipping through the air toward my head, before ducking out under his arm. The blade whooshed by, only millimeters from my skull, but it gave me the precious seconds I needed as his momentum carried him past.
Though I had Daartan’s back to me, undefended and vulnerable, it wasn’t him I wanted. Smiling from ear to ear, I raised my guns and let lead fly.
The unsuspecting revenants, piled together nice and snuggly close, broke out in discordant shrieks as my bullets tore into them, their chant disrupted. Just as I thought, their spell having transferred the majority of their powers to Daartan, their reaction to being shot was far from the confident invulnerability shown by their leader.
Obsidian holes, like festering mold, appeared wherever my bullets struck. Spider-web like striations spread out with lightning quickness, a plague upon their ethereal flesh. Several dropped under the first barrage, their already dim lights blinking out. Their corporeal forms turned to wispy dust and dispersed into nothingness, as though they never existed. The rest stumbled about, screeching and grasping at their blackened wounds as they stared at me in disbelief. My second volley was probably just as devastating, though I didn’t get the chance to watch its effects.
As the barest hint of a soul transfer washed over me, the revenants power so diminished as to be negligible, I heard Daartan roar behind me. Before I could determine the best direction to go to avoid him, Katon’s sword bit into the meat of my side.
I’d like to say I took it like a man, gritting my teeth and hopping back up to continue the fight, but I’d be lying.
I screamed like a pig being slaughtered as the blade sunk in, shrill and uncomfortable to hear. It was even worse when he yanked the sword out, my shriek trailing away into a wet gurgle as my vocal cords ruptured.
My eyes went white with pain, sightless, my legs disappearing from beneath me. I went down on my back in a shuddering heap, warm splashes of blood striking my face from the morbid geyser at my side. Daartan hovered over me, his presence like a brick. Though I couldn’t see him, I knew there was death in his eyes.
“You shall pay for your transgressions.” His words battered my face. “I intended to claim Longinus’s body as my own, but now, I must settle for his spirit.”
Through the muddle of pain, my mind aah’ed, understanding his motivation at last. It wasn’t much of a consolation, but at least I’d help screw the revenant before I went out. Hardly headstone worthy, but it’d have to do.
“You and the girl-child will never see the resurrection of your unholy lord. I will rend his spirit from this world with his own blade, ending forever the line Anti-Christs. When his essence has become mine, I will send his daughter to join him as you watch, helpless to save her.” He held Katon’s sword out. “Then when I’m done with them, I will peel the flesh from your bones and carve you apart, piece by bloody piece. Your death will last an eternity.”
I thought his speech would too.
Not content just to threaten, he slammed his sword through my shoulder to the hilt. Its blade pierced my back and sunk deep into the tarmac below, pinning me. It felt like ice sliding through, freezing cold and burning at the same time. Compared to the wound in my side, its clean entry was little more than a tickle, my mind already shutting down its sensory receptors. It’d had too much.
Daartan wrapped his frigid hand around my neck and pulled me up against the painful resistance of the blade, leaning in face-to-face. I could feel the frost of his breath, stinging my cheeks. Though still a little hazy, my eyes focused and met his, their yellow swirling so fast as to make me dizzy.
“Your heroics have availed you naught. The end has come. Soon your suffering will begin.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
Daartan’s eyes flew wide as the deep tones of Barry White rang out behind him. It was all he had time to do before all hell broke loose.
The searing, red blast of Rahim’s fury cast a crimson glow over everything, its vicious energy slamming into Daartan. The White Knight screamed as he was blown forward, his ghostly flesh alive with magical fire. He came down with a crash, half a football field away, the grass around him going up in flames.
Rahim marched past me, not so much as sparing a glance. He was on a mission. His only objective: hurt Daartan.
Through the murky fog of my thoughts, I knew it wouldn’t work out that way. Even without Daartan’s extra boost of power from his followers, Rahim was playing out of his league. He’d get some good shots in, no doubt about that, but it wouldn’t be enough. He might, however, keep him occupied long enough for the new me to join in.
Unsure exactly as to how I was supposed to take possession of Baalth’s gift, I hoped I could pull it off in time. Difficult to focus, I did my best to push away the agony-numbing miasma that guarded the remnants of my sanity-such as it is. As the clouds drifted back at my mental urging, the pain began to well up, gushing through the cracks, my nerves reawakening to a blistering torment that sparked off like firecrackers buried under my skin.
I fought it off and concentrated on the leaden mass in my stomach. Picturing the sphere I’d swallowed, I imagined myself absorbing it, willing it to crack open and join with my essence.
It was as easy as that.
Less than a heartbeat later, I felt the foreign hardness in my gut soften and melt away. Tingles spread through my body in a rush, phantom itches that couldn’t be scratched. They took a bite out of the agony, then another, and another, until I felt it no longer.
Then suddenly, I was sucked under. Pleasure like I’d never felt before caressed my every nerve, a lifetime of orgasms squeezed into an instant, every molecule of my body experiencing it at once. I lay there twitching, unable to see through the whitewash of rapture, the chaotic world around me a distant memory I wanted no part of.
I don’t know how long I was caught up in it, the ravaging force of the transfer leaving no room for anything but the bliss of its touch, but it seemed to go on forever. Gradually, I began to come down, the whirlpool of sensory overload easing off, my mind settling into a clarity it’d never known.
Suddenly very mindful of my surroundings, I looked to my shoulder and saw the blade no longer protruded from it. It lay on the ground beside me, covered in the dark blood of my now closed wound. My eyes drifted down to my side. It was the same. The eight inch deep gash that had been carved just above my hip was gone, not a trace of it left.
Having only gone through two other soul transfers, both minor in scale, I was amazed by how good I felt, how powerful. Feeling like I could take on the world, I hopped to my feet and looked for Rahim.
He stood before Daartan, a sputtering shield of red held out in front of him as he loosed a mystical blast at
