Magic and Loss

“You’re in no position to stop me from doing anything,” Erys sneered. “I am the Witch King—the blood of our gods courses through my veins. While you are nothing more than a servant, the son of a scullery maid and a bootblack!”

“You’re wrong there, Esau,” Horn replied. “I’m more than a Servitor. Even more than a Kymeran, or even a Golgothamite. I’m also an American and, by damn, a New Yorker, and I am not going to let you destroy this world simply because your father knew better than to trust you.”

Erys’ face abruptly lost its look of cool detachment and contorted itself into a mask of rage. “You want the knife so damn much?” she snarled. “You can have it!” With a flick of her left hand, the dagger flew at Captain Horn as if fired from a crossbow, striking him in the chest.

Upon seeing his father fall, Hexe leapt down from Kidron and ran to Horn’s side. “Dad! Heavens and hells! Dad—are you all right?”

“I’ve—been better,” Horn grunted.

“Lie still. Don’t try to move,” Hexe warned him. “The knife barely missed your heart—damn it, why are you smiling?”

“You called me ‘Dad.’”

“How touching,” Boss Marz said with a humorless laugh as he loomed over father and son. “I’m a big believer in closure.” As the Maladanti’s left hand filled with hellfire, Hexe lifted his own left hand in defense. “Lot of good that’s going to do you,” Marz smirked.

Although I knew the man I loved was about to be killed right before my eyes, I could not look away, if for no other reason than I owed it to our son, should we somehow survive this awful hour, to one day tell him how his father died. The fireball shot from the center of Marz’s palm like a flaming tennis ball fired from a pitching machine. And, by all rights, it should have burned a hole through Hexe’s face and exited out the back of his skull. Instead, it ricocheted back toward the Maladanti like a handball striking an unseen wall, scorching the left side of his face and boiling his left eye in its socket like a poached egg. With a dreadful shriek, Boss Marz fell to his knees in shock. Gaza came running to the fallen crime lord’s aid, slinging a fistful of lightning at Hexe as he got to his feet. Hexe lifted his left hand to block the incoming spell, but wasn’t fast enough to catch all of it and was sent flying into the side of a shipping container.

“Hey—you! Asshole!” I shouted as I stepped out from my hiding place, holding my child close to my breast. “That’s my man you just sucker punched!”

Gaza turned to look at me and smirked. “What are you going to do about it, nump?”

There was a sharp snapping sound, like the crack of a bullwhip, only much, much louder, as a copper barb punched its way out through Gaza’s chest and shirtfront, killing him instantly. The clockwork dragon gave its tail a little shake to free itself of the dead gangster, and then stepped forward and lowered its head so I could pat it on the snout.

“Good girl,” I smiled. I hurried over to where Hexe was regathering himself from Gaza’s attack. He seemed slightly dazed, but no worse for wear. “Are you hurt?” I asked.

“I’m going to be feeling this the next day—assuming there is one—but I’m okay,” he said. “But we’ve got to get my father to Golgotham General.”

Suddenly Illuminata and Canterbury were with us, their battle armor spattered in blood and their flanks covered in lather. Illuminata set aside her mace as she knelt to gather the wounded Horn into her pale arms. “Leave it to me,” the centauride said. “I’ll get him there. I used to be an ambulance driver before I was assigned to your mother.” With that, she wheeled about and galloped off through the smoke and clash of battle in the direction of the exit.

Once he had seen his father safely away, Hexe turned and pulled me to him, kissing me as if he might never kiss me again, and then delivered a far gentler kiss to the top of his son’s head. As I looked into their golden depths and saw the resolve burning deep with them, I realized, no matter what anyone said, that Hexe truly had his father’s eyes.

“Get ’em out of here, Canterbury.”

Before I realized what was happening, the centaur had snatched me up in his arms and was galloping for daylight as if it was the final leg of the Kentucky Derby.

“Let me go!” I shouted. “Put me down right this minute!”

“Hexe is right,” Canterbury replied. “It’s too dangerous here for both you and the baby.”

“But I don’t want to leave him!” I wailed. “I can’t leave him!”

“You don’t have to,” he reminded me. “Part of you is still on the battlefield.”

Even as the centaur spoke the words, I opened my mind as far as it could go, reaching out to that fragment of myself that dwelt within my creation. As I felt something like a low-voltage shock run up my spine and lodge itself in the back of my head, I wondered, for a split second, if I did succeed in possessing the clockwork dragon, whether I’d be able to return to my body just as easily.

Before I could rethink my decision, I found myself staring out of a pair of unblinking eyes from an unaccustomed height. Although I could see and hear, my other senses did not seem to exist at all. It was as if I was drifting in a sensory deprivation tank, watching a video game through a virtual reality helmet wired for sound.

To my surprise, Boss Marz was still alive, although perhaps not for long. He had managed to crawl to Erys, who stared down at the Maladanti writhing at her feet with unalloyed disgust.

“You disappoint me, Marz,” Erys said as she prestidigitated another dagger from thin air. “Honestly, I got better results from the homunculi than from you and your men. I guess it’s true that if you want something done right, you better do it yourself.” With that, she bent down and grabbed Syra by her hair, yanking her into a sitting position so that the blood from her severed jugular would squirt into a brass cuspidor. But as she put the knife edge to Syra’s throat, she was rewarded by a shower of sparks, like those from an arc welder. Erys cursed and quickly let go of Syra in order to slap at the tiny mouths of fire clinging to her clothes.

“Leave my mother alone,” Hexe said, placing himself between Syra and his uncle, his left hand held before him, fingers bent in the mirror-reverse of the traditional defensive pattern of Right Hand magic.

“How could you even do that?” Erys yelped. “You don’t even have a right hand anymore!”

“But I still have my left one,” Hexe replied. “Right hand, left hand—it doesn’t matter whether I heal or harm, protect or destroy; the magic isn’t in my hands. It’s in my heart.”

“Let’s just see about that, shall we?” Erys snarled as she slung a fireball at Hexe’s head.

Hexe returned the volley so fast, Erys had to lunge out of the way to avoid ending up like Boss Marz. The ball of hellfire struck the back wall of the warehouse, splashing like napalm, and instantly set it on fire.

As Hexe turned to check on his mother, Esau’s familiar attacked from above, beating at him with a punishing fifteen foot wingspan and clawing at his head with a slashing beak and razor-sharp talons. Blood from lacerations to his scalp poured down into Hexe’s eyes, momentarily blinding him. He dropped to his knees, trying his best to cover his head and the back of his neck from the vicious attack as Edgar repeatedly dive-bombed him, drawing blood from his exposed back with his talons.

Suddenly, with a mighty roar, Scratch, red of saber-tooth and claw, came zooming out of nowhere, striking Edgar in midair. The hell-bird and the hell-cat locked talons, twirling about like a living bolo, before crashing to the floor of the warehouse. Being a cat, Scratch landed on his feet—but Edgar was not as lucky. The demon squawked in panic as it tried to hop away from its foe, grounded by a broken wing. Just as Scratch pounced, the familiar disincorporated, surrendering the field in a cloud of brimstone.

“Yeah, that’s right; you better run, chicken,” Scratch sniffed.

Meanwhile, Hexe was doing his best to try to revive his mother and get her back on her feet. “Mom—Mom, snap out of it!” he pleaded.

Lady Syra’s eyelids suddenly fluttered open, and she smiled weakly upon seeing her son kneeling over her. “Tate and the baby—are they—?”

“Yes, they’re safe,” Hexe replied. “But we’ve got to get you out of here!”

“Hexe—watch out!” Syra cried, her eyes wide with alarm.

Before Hexe could react to the warning, Erys grabbed him from behind, jerking his head back by the hair to expose his jugular.