Irregulars - lanyon Josh - Страница 79

Another round from the shard pistol flung Night Axe back and Deven fell into the water. The lord growled the command to summon his army in Aztawi. Urgency overwhelmed even Deven’s pain. He had to warn the agents above him. They didn’t know what to expect.

Night Axe ripped a bead from his necklace, shattering the string. He threw the obsidian bead upward and growled the Aztawi curse for a dark ward.

The opening of the well sealed shut with an oily pool of dark liquid, blocking the light from the agents and the world above them. Deven’s heart sank. Dark wards took heavy magic to build and dismantle, and Deven’s own abilities weren’t enough to rip a hole in it.

Desperation filled him. Neither he nor August would survive, that was obvious at this point, but he had to stop Night Axe.

He reached for his knife, but Night Axe was stronger and faster. He grasped Deven’s wrist and twisted, breaking the bone with ease. Pain shocked through him. He tried to move away, but Night Axe kept hold of him, jerking his knife free with one hand as he bent Deven’s broken wrist backward.

Deven gasped and shuddered, unable to concentrate on anything but trying to move away. Night Axe tilted the mirror in his headpiece. Deven’s pain reflected back to him and he cried out in agony. Every sensation multiplied, reinforced by the echoing mirror.

Night Axe split open the front of Deven’s overalls with Deven’s own blade. The tip sliced through Deven’s clothes and skin, and the pain magnified, built and repeated, growing until he could no longer contain it.

Night Axe searched through Deven’s inside pockets with bony fingers. He held the pen aloft in triumph. A primal instinct forced Deven to breathe past the blinding pain.

Night Axe let him go. Deven fell back into the water. He forced his aching body to move, using his undamaged hand to push water and distance himself. But to his surprise, Night Axe didn’t follow him.

Instead, Night Axe began to convulse. His uninjured eye rolled. He roared and gripped something invisible at his waist and pulled, twisting furiously. He thrashed in the throes of a seizure.

Deven turned to see August slide down the wall of the well, dropping the empty vial of poison onto the limestone. Blood began to stain August’s overalls.

Deven started swimming toward August, but hesitated as Night Axe thrashed, gurgling water.

This was his one chance to end Night Axe. But he wanted to be beside August. August motioned toward the Aztaw weakly, and Deven didn’t need a second request. He pulled the last of his knives from his back pocket and forced his injured body into movement.

It was difficult, holding his knife in his left hand. Night Axe resisted him, even as his body trembled with affliction. Deven wrenched his pen free of the creature’s grasp, put it back behind his ear, and sawed his blade deeply into Night Axe’s neck. Rage filled him. August couldn’t reach his antidote and would die in this fetid well. Deven chopped inelegantly with his left hand. Blood burst from the engorged Aztaw and stained the water. He cut until Night Axe’s vertebrae were visible. He severed Night Axe’s spine and wrenched the bastard’s head clear off. Only then did he fall back, exhaustion and pain making it impossible to continue.

Deven crawled up the bank of the well. He dropped his blade and climbed over August’s writhing body. “You idiot!” He grabbed August’s sodden lapels with his left hand. “Why would you do that!”

August wheezed in response. Sharp shudders wracked his body as if he were jerked by marionette strings. Blood oozed from his chest.

Deven’s throat tightened. “You said you wanted to die old in your bed!” Tears burned his eyes. “Old in your bed, not here!”

August smiled weakly, his eyes closed. “Don’t always get what we want,” he whispered. “I wanted you to slowly make love to me this morning. That didn’t happen either.”

Deven leaned down and kissed August. It hurt his bruised and bleeding mouth, and August gasped for air as his body shook, but Deven didn’t care. Regret overpowered everything. He’d lost more than his chance with August—he’d ended up killing him with his terrible plan.

Deven broke the kiss and August struggled to intake air, his body convulsing rapidly. His eyes rolled back in his head and Deven realized he had to stop this, at any cost.

To keep the poison from killing August, he had to suspend him in a time trap, just like Lord Jaguar had done to him all those years ago.

He scored the tip of his pen into August’s neck, writing clumsily with his left hand. Time traps were different than locks, and he struggled to remember the subtle differences in the glyphs. He finished the time trap and rolled off. August froze mid-gasp, fingers rigid as claws, back arched mid-spasm. He didn’t move, frozen in the suspended animation of the trap.

Time traps sapped power unlike anything else and Deven lay alongside August’s frozen body, utterly spent. The pen lay limp in his grasp, bone white and ice cold. Only a small amount of inky color remained at the very tip.

Deven weakly tapped August’s frozen side. “Help is coming,” he whispered. He glanced up at the sealed well, wondering how long it would take the agents to defeat Night Axe’s soldiers, find a way out of the sunken temple, locate a ward pruner, and lift them out.

Now that he had a moment to pause, he realized how badly he was injured. His face felt pummeled; his broken wrist and fingers hurt unlike anything he could remember. The cut down his ribs was shallow, but it oozed blood. The only thing staving off the worst of the pain was his numbness, the cold water evaporating off him as he lay, bare chested, on the hard ledge of the well floor.

He closed his eyes. Maybe he could rest a bit until the Irregulars came to rescue them. There was, of course, a part of him that was near panic; the badges had failed him before. What indicated he could trust they’d save him now?

Something trembled in his trouser pocket.

Deven held his breath in the dark, senses coming back to full alert. He moved his left hand slowly, feeling in the remains of his overalls. He pulled out the sodden scrap of jaguar skin.

It writhed in his hand, alive.

No, Deven thought, slowly sitting up. He dropped the jaguar skin on the rocky surface and watched it writhe into the water.

He glanced up, past the floating remains of Night Axe. He saw nothing but the wet contours of the cavern.

A faint glow moved into the cavern from the narrow well passageway. Water lapped against the rock.

Deven carefully replaced the pen behind his ear.

Lord Jaguar entered the cavern. He’d been hiding in the wells for some time—his luxuriant jaguar skin skirt and gold breastplate were drenched with moisture. Lord Jaguar’s black dotted face paint had streaked in the water. His headdress was simplified— instead of the magnificent jaguar skull with obsidian jaws and long tail of human finger bones, he wore a gold and jade feathered crown spiked with jaguar teeth. Carved human knee bones clanked together around his neck.

“My lord!” Deven knelt on instinct, breathing fast. His entire body shook from adrenaline and cold.

“I see you’ve kept my house power safe in your own stupid way.” With his bony fingers Lord Jaguar snatched the pen from behind Deven’s ear. Panic seized Deven as the pen left his possession. Lord Jaguar’s touch sent a shiver of repulsion through Deven’s body.

“I thought you were dead, my lord.” Deven gripped the hilt of the knife beside him. There was only one way Lord Jaguar would be able to refuel his pen and use it.

“No, not dead. I traveled undetected to the realm of light to free the Trickster.”

“But why?” Deven stared at Lord Jaguar, the creature he had been willing to die for, over and over. Nothing but fear filled him now.