Really big.
In fact, it had to be as big as the black coyote that materialized out of the shadows above and around me. For a half-second I thought the Old One had managed to manifest outside my body, but his howl of outrage at being seen in the form of a coyote quickly disabused me of that notion. The canine beast sheltering me growled in a low voice, then lunged forward at the sphinx, its ebon teeth gleaming with the light of the fire the Redwings had started.
As the two titans nipped and swatted at each other, I dove over to where the woman lay. A second or two later Zig and Zag joined me. Zig grabbed my shoulder. 'Raven's here-he got Stealth's message. He said to get her out as fast as possible. Says he can't be sure how long he can hold the sphinx back!'
I lifted the girl into Zag's arms, then gave Zig the ignition sequence for the Fenris. 'Get her home or to a hospital. Go, go-the car's back at the cannery.'
Zig hesitated. 'Raven said to get you out of here, too. He said there's something very wrong here.'
'He's got that right. Go on. I'll catch up with you later.' I massaged my left leg for a second, and I saw them both shudder as they recalled the last time I'd sent them away.
The pair of street samurai vanished into the shadows and I turned back to find Raven. With the Old One's help-he let me see Raven through his eyes-I spotted the Doctor up on top of one of the crates near the first boat house. Wreathed in the golden nimbus of a defensive spell, he looked magnificent. Incredibly tall, even for an elf, he looked very much a human because of his powerful build. His coppery skin and high cheekbones bespoke the Amerind heritage he was likewise heir to, and the sea breezes lifted his long black hair back from his well-muscled shoulders. Fists thrust into the air so he could channel more energy into the coyote he had created, he looked every bit a god.
Opposite him, now standing on the yacht's bridge, Hasan came into view. The Old One showed me a purple glow surrounding Hasan. Sweat beaded up on the mage's forehead and pasted his black hair against his pate. He also held his fists aloft, but I noted a tremble in his limbs that I had not seen in Raven. Hasan, powerful though he might be, was not Raven's equal in skill or magical energy. The battle would not last long.
The sphinx jumped back on its hind feet and slashed with a paw at the shadow coyote. The golden claws sliced through the canine's snout like sunlight streaking through boarded-up windows, but the wounds sealed themselves quickly enough. The coyote responded by lunging in and catching the sphinx by the throat. The attack bowled the feline over, but it managed to twist free, leaving the coyote's black teeth stained with gold.
A new surge of magical energy swept forward from the ship, making my hands and feet tingle as if I'd stepped on a live wire. The sphinx's wounds healed over immediately, then the creature became half again larger. I shot a glance at Hasan, but instead of seeing a man crippled by the effort, he looked as if he'd been rejuvenated in the process. The purple glow now stained the ship's bridge and forecastle and Hasan stood invincible within its cocoon.
Raven's limbs quaked with the strain of sustaining the coyote. The defensive spell around him shimmered, then died because of the lack of energy to maintain it. Raven's lips peeled back from his white teeth in an angry snarl as he redoubled his effort. The tremors in his limbs ceased, but the pain on his face told me he would not last for long.
/have to do something. I'd tossed down the Viper, so now I looked around for any other weapon I could find. I spotted and scooped up my MP-9 and cocked it.
Recalling the special loads Stealth had made, I drew a bead on Hasan.Maybe the silver will get the bullets through the spell, eventually, then the mercury loads will do him. Something for magic, and something for flesh.
It hit me like a virus wasting a database. I shifted aim and squeezed the trigger. As soon as I burned that clip, I jammed another home and let it rip.Something for magic, perhaps, and definitely something for flesh, especially if it's gold flesh! Poor pussycat.
The mercury loads in the silver bullets bonded instantly with the gold of the sphinx's flesh. The silver bullets themselves did a great job gnawing into the beastie. The result manifested itself in a bizarre display of feline leprosy. Silvery gobbets of demon-cat splashed to the wharf. The beast whirled to snarl at me and I let a burst go that ate away half its lower jaw.
The coyote hit it hard on the left flank. The sphinx twisted back, but its hind right leg gave along a line I'd scored with several shots, crashing the beast down on the docks. I directed a stream of fire at its spine, burrowing in just at the base of its neck, while the coyote ' distracted it with lunges and feints. Once my fire severed its spine, the creature lay still for a moment, then evaporated into a mist.
I ran over to Raven as the coyote likewise disintegrated. Raven had slumped to his knees on the crate and held himself up from total collapse on his hands. His chest heaved and the black curtain of his hair hid his face from me. Sweat glistened on his arms and shoulders and I saw droplets stain the wooden crate.
I reached over and squeezed his left shoulder in congratulations. 'We got him, Doc. We got his monster.'
Raven shook his head and looked down at me. 'He's not defeated yet.' He pointed back at the yacht, purple highlights being etched onto his face by the glow still surrounding Hasan. 'He's getting an energy boost from the ship. It's an ally spirit of incredible power and it's using him as a conduit. Whatever summoned it must have been unbelievable.'
The same voice I'd heard Hasan use before now burst into my brain without the sham of having the man's lips move. 'It is true, Richard Raven. What summoned me was beyond your mortal ken to understand. You have interfered with the mission given me by my master, and now you must pay! But first, you will see this one of your friends die because I relish the pain it will cause you!'
I felt magical force begin to gather around me, then tighten like a chain wrapped around my chest. It crushed in from all sides and I wanted to scream, but I could get no air from my lungs. I wanted to beg Raven to destroy the ship, but I realized that was impossible. How do you kill a thirty-meter-long ally spirit?
The burning agony drove me to my knees. The Old One howled in pain and fought to win my release, but even it was helpless against the power that held and crushed me. Sparks began to float before my eyes, then great shimmering balls of light sizzled across my field of vision.
I knew the end had come.
I felt certain the explosion I heard was my heart bursting, and the sudden cessation of pain only meant I'd died. I could smell death in the air and I recall having been disappointed that it did not smell differently when it came for me. I waited for the blackness to steal my sight, but it did not. In fact, the light grew brighter and I laughed that death was not so dark and grim after all.
Then I realized I'd heard myself laugh.
That meant I wasn't dead.
I scrambled to my feet just in time to have a second, larger explosion blast me back into the boathouse wall. Whereas the first explosion had only torn a small hole at the base of the ship's superstructure, the greater blast punched fire out through all the portholes below the main deck and pulsed a flaming corona out over the deck itself. Then the whole superstructure lurched to port and dropped down a deck level. The ship listed to port and started to take on great floods of water. High on the superstructure the purple glow imploded. A column of fire whirled up into the air and Hasan combusted instantaneously. I saw his skeleton outlined in black against the golden fire, then it too vanished.
The ship screamed, then sank from sight in a steaming caldron of bubbles.
By the time Raven helped me to my feet and we then picked our way through flaming debris to the edge of the wharf, Stealth had managed to awkwardly haul himself up out of the water. His left arm hung limply from his shoulder and showed where most of the working parts had been crushed when the sphinx had batted him out of the air. Water poured from the arm compartments where he carried plastic explosives, and his talons gouged their way into the decking to steady him.
Raven and I exchanged smiles while Stealth turned and nodded grimly at the burning ally spirit. 'Underwater I could see no props or jet nozzles-the ship had no natural way to move. I figured that made it very special, therefore I resolved to destroy it. Then a grunge corpse strapped to a flamethrower drifted down from the surface, so I improvised a bomb. Not much can stand up to napalm and Semtek.'
His mention of the flamethrower brought my earlier encounter with it back to mind in full sizzling detail. I shifted my shoulders around to ease the soreness in my back. 'By the way, that was pretty tricky shooting you did when that grunge popped up with the torch gun.'
