Freedom followed him to the altar.
Max ran his fingers along the futuristic katana’s blade. The engraving looked like printed circuits. He tossed it back on the table. “It’s crap,” he said. “The tang’s not much more than a steel bolt and it’s just riveted onto the blade.”
“What does that mean?” asked Billie. She’d supervised the pile of weapons being brought in from guards and scavengers. A few civilians had heard about the search and donated fencing sabers and ceremonial weapons.
“It means it’s crap,” said Max. “You could wreck this thing by twisting the pommel two or three more times. Hitting something with it will just make the blade snap off in your face.” The sorcerer waved his hand at the table of weapons. “Most of this stuff is crap. The only blades that are any good are ones that wouldn’t work for this.” He reached up and grabbed the back of his head and took a few slow, deep breaths.
“So,” said Stealth from the gates, “we have nothing.”
Max let go of his head. “Yeah.”
“There’s got to be something we can do,” said St. George. “You trapped this thing once before, can’t you do it again?”
“It took three years of preparation and an eclipse,” said Max. “If you can scrounge up an eclipse in the next seven hours, I’ll see what I can do about the rest.”
“Can’t you just make a stronger barrier?” Billie asked.
Max reached up to loosen his tie. “With the right materials and a few months of research, sure. This just isn’t something I ever planned on, facing off with a physically manifested demon.”
St. George drummed his fingers on the table. “Can it be hurt?”
The sorcerer raised an eyebrow. “Without the sword, you mean?”
“Yeah. Once it’s physical, can we hurt it?”
“Technically, yeah,” said Max with a shrug. “You’ve got to understand, everything we’ve got in the Mount—even some of the big stuff you brought back from Krypton—it’s going to be like hunting dinosaurs with slingshots. And if it’s possessing Regenerator, it’s going to have his powers, too. We’ll have a minute, tops, before it heals from whatever we do to it.”
Stealth looked at the table of blades. “Including wounds from the sword?”
“No. Well, it’s hard to explain.”
“Please attempt to.”
“You don’t even have the right knowledge for a frame of reference. It’s like trying to explain quantum physics to one of those isolated tribes in the rain forest. I can give you some neat analogies, but that’s about it.”
“Then, again, please do so.”
Max sighed. “Okay, in simple terms, if the demon believes it can be hurt, and we believe we can hurt it, it’ll be hurt. It’s like Jung on steroids. That’s why all the big symbols are so important. It’s the same reason silver bullets have been able to kill werewolves ever since Siodmak wrote the Wolf Man screenplay.”
Billie’s brow furrowed. “What?”
“Never mind, bad example,” he said, shaking his head. “Okay, you know how you can be in the Matrix and even though you know it’s all just in your mind—”
“You’re using The Matrix again?” asked St. George.
“You don’t like it, get Barry some new DVDs,” snapped Max. “Even though you know it’s all just in your mind, the injuries will still translate through to the real world because the illusion is so perfect. The sights, the sounds, the feelings—no matter what you know, your mind can’t deny all the information coming in. Belief trumps knowledge, like a psychosomatic injury.”
“I do not accept that,” said Stealth.
“Look, just trust me, okay?”
“Okay, then,” said St. George. He picked up one of the swords from the table. “So what’s our best choice here?”
Max shook his head. “We don’t have a best choice here. If this is it, our best choice is getting some pointed sticks and painting them silver.”
Billie stepped forward. “I’ll make sure they all get back to their owners,” she said.
“Don’t bother,” said the sorcerer. “They’ll all be dead by tomorrow anyway.”
“We have to do something, Max,” snapped St. George. Fire flashed in his mouth. “Anyone can sit around and bitch about how bad things are. We’re the ones who are supposed to fix it.”
“We can’t fix this,” said the sorcerer.
“Well, that’s the difference between you and me, then,” said St. George. “I’m going to try.”
“Meaning what?”
“We can’t just wait for it to get in here,” said the hero. “Ilya and Dave should be done with their search soon. If we’re lucky, they’ll have another dozen swords and one of them will work, or at least be useful. Supposedly I’m tough enough to stop it from possessing me, so I just need to hold it off as long as I can while I look for Josh.”
“If what Max says is true,” said the cloaked woman, “the odds are it will kill you.”
Twin streamers of smoke curled up from his nostrils. “Probably, yeah.”
Max cleared his throat and killed the moment. “Not probably,” he said. “You’ll be going to your death.”
Stealth glared at him. They could all sense it, even through the mask. “If you continue to speak in such a demoralizing manner,” she said, “I will paralyze your larynx.”
Two fingers on each of his hands curled back. He met her glare through the blank planes of the mask. Max didn’t back down, but was aware Stealth was two inches taller than him, not counting her cowl. After a moment his face calmed and she turned away.
St. George looked at Max. “Symbols are important, right? I’m the guy who beat him before, so maybe it’ll remember me and be a little scared or something. It might give me an edge.”
“It will,” said Max. “Not much, but it’ll help.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” said St. George. “We’ll get the best sword we can and I’ll go out to find Josh and face the demon.
