A whimper escaped my lips as I stumbled onto my hands and knees and my chest constricted. Some sort of invisible force was pushing me down. I gulped in air, trying to recover and fight whatever nasty magic was surrounding me. With a great effort, I raised my head in time to see all the surviving vampires collapse in a synchronised thud onto the slick cobblestones.
A voice rang out across the street. ‘Well, I suppose if you want a job done properly you have to do it yourself.’
I turned my head. Less than twenty metres away, illuminated by both moonlight and the orange-tinted light from the nearby lampposts, stood the glittering golden body of a fiend. No doubt this was who had been controlling the vampires.
And no doubt this was when the real battle would begin.
Chapter
Fifteen
The strange rippling magic ebbed away. I gave a shuddering breath and forced myself to my feet, ignoring my fluttering heartbeat and the sudden surge of drug-induced dizziness. I needed to face the fiend properly.
It was a male that I didn’t recognise. This wasn’t Baltar, and it wasn’t Athair. That didn’t mean I could relax, not by a long shot, but I was incredibly relieved that I wasn’t having to confront my supposed father.
I eyed him carefully. Despite the cool air, he was wearing a pair of bright purple, pink and orange Bermuda shorts, as if he were about to hit the surf on a sunny Californian beach instead of launching a full-scale attack upon a solitary elf on a chilly Scottish street. Unlike the younger fiends I’d encountered, this one had perfectly smooth, golden skin, which meant he was both old and experienced. In fact, I thought grimly, he was probably several hundred years old. Unlike an elf’s, his ears were rounded rather than pointed.
I scanned his body in all its brazen golden glory; it was leanand sinewy in a way that wasn’t wholly unfamiliar. ‘Sorcerer,’ I said aloud, without meaning to.
The fiend gave me a salacious grin. ‘Once upon a time,’ he said. ‘But I’m so much more now.’
I responded flatly, ‘I know what you are. I knowexactlywhat you are.’
‘Not many elves do, so I find it gratifying when I meet one who is aware of my kind.’ His lip curled. ‘If there were justice in this world, I would be worshipped as a god.’
I almost laughed. ‘You’re no god.’
The fiend swept an arm to indicate the devastation that surrounded us both. ‘Who but a god can control creatures such as those?’ His voice rose. ‘One day – one day I will be recognised for what I am. There will be statues of me in every city in this land. I will be granted the respect and the love that I am owed.’ His eyes met mine. ‘But you will not be around to see it because you will not see tomorrow’s dawn.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that,’ I said, sounding considerably calmer than I felt.
‘You are strong, but you are not a witch. You cannot banish me from this realm. And if you truly know what I am, you know that the likes of you cannot kill me.’
I smiled. ‘Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. Because you don’t know whatIam.’
No sooner had the words left my mouth than I threw out the strongest blast of air magic I could muster. I’d hoped that it would knock him off his feet but unfortunately, although it made the nearby windows rattle violently and sent several large bins careening towards him, it didn’t affect the fiend himself. As he was bald, I didn’t even have the satisfaction of seeing it flatten his hair.
‘Bravo,’ he said. ‘You’re powerful, even for a high elf. But as you can see, you’re not remotely strong enough to beat me.’ Hisaccent was odd, strangely clipped. It was possible that at some time he’d lived in some distant country, or perhaps he was simply unused to talking.
Although my recent experience suggested otherwise, fiends were typically solitary creatures. If this one was used to little more than the company of vampires, he probably never enjoyed the pleasures of a real conversation.
I shrugged. It didn’t matter to me whether he was a social butterfly or a hermit; he was a fiend. And he was in my way.
I gave an insouciant shrug, ‘I guess we’ll have to see about that.’ I sent out another blast of strong air magic. This time, however, I didn’t aim for the fiend but at one of the parked cars on the side of the road. I used the heavy explosion of air to raise the chunk of metal a foot into the air before following with a second blast of air that threw the car in the fiend’s direction.
From his expression, in the second before a tonne of Volkswagen metal smacked him in the face, that wasn’t something he’d been expecting.
The noise was tremendous as it reverberated down the street, and the damage to the car was extraordinary, too. The windscreen shattered and the metal doors twisted; it was particularly gratifying to see the vehicle roll three times and pin the fiend to the cobblestones. Go me. And go German engineering.
Unfortunately, my delight was short lived. Before I could follow up to ensure that the fiend was taken care of, a voice drifted out of the darkness. ‘Boss? You okay?’
My stomach tightened. Another one? I’d only had a slim chance of beating one fiend but I’d definitely lose against two of the bastards. I supposed I could still run for my life; I doubted I’d get very far but I’d give it my best shot.
I scanned the shadows for the source of the voice. There was a creak of metal as the trapped fiend used his own magic topush the fallen vehicle away from his body. ‘No, Chuchi!’ he spat. ‘This is my fight!’
My mouth dropped open as, a second later, the hulking figure of an ogre stepped out from the dark opening of a nearby alley. ‘Alright,’ he rumbled. He folded his massive arms, which had to be the size of bloody tree trunks, and leaned against the wall. Then he grinned and winked at me. ‘You’ll pay for that, sweetheart.’
I had no doubt that this was the same Chuchi who had manipulated Baudi into entrapping passers-by. How many ogres could there be with that name? But an ogre was better than a fiend; at least I had a chance with an ogre.
