THE blood-magic staff’s relentless force cut off suddenly as Zarathos picked up a warehouse-sized chunk of earth and flipped it like a pancake, dropping it on the scurrying Suns and a dozen faithful servants. The chamber below mostly collapsed with a shuddering crunch, and Satana heard a half-dozen explosions through the ground. Fenn’s carefully placed bombs rattled the stones on the surface, useless now to the Triumvirate’s purpose.
Satana shook herself, half-drained and battered, saw Zarathos part the massive heap of rocks, arcs of breaking stone and splintering clay rising on either side of his new path like cresting waves, landing in a crashing hailstorm across the ruined earth. A deep crevice peeled open, angling straight to the vault. It was too dark at the bottom to see, the sun’s angle was wrong, but Satana could sense that Fenn was down there, still alive.
She floated up from where she’d been mercilessly thrown, furious at the little witch, furious that Zarathos had robbed Satana of the chance to retaliate.
And my soldiers! Nothing stirred beneath the fresh heaps of damp stone. There were only a handful still alive, those who’d been missed by the big Z’s tantrum. They stared around with blank eyes, holding their Glox, most of them bleeding from various cuts and scratches. Their uniforms were stained and rumpled.
It doesn’t matter. None of this matters. The Varkath Star was what she’d come for, and Zarathos wasn’t going to lay his sausage fingers on it before her.
Satana could feel a few magical signatures buried in the rocks and called to her servants. If the Suns were alive, they’d still be digging themselves out by the time the vault opened, but better safe than sorry.
Seven empty vessels climbed onto the broken heaps, knocking stones into the narrow opening that led to the vault.
“Anything comes out of these rocks, you shoot it,” Satana said. “Keep them busy.”
Her faithful servants nodded. Any one of the Suns could wipe them out without much effort, but she only needed a few more minutes and then all of this would be over.
Satana floated down into the deep crevasse, saw light at the bottom—Zarathos’s big dumb head, burning, and Fenn’s tiny blinking lights, green and red and white, like fireflies in what was left of the shadowy chamber.
Satana called a light of her own when she reached the boys, crowded around the metal vault. Zarathos was exhaling heavy air, tinged with the scents of faraway worlds. Fenn had his shirt over his mouth against the fog of dust, his eyes red and watering. How he’d avoided getting blown up or crushed was nothing short of a miracle. He had some new device out, another dumb blinking box.
Satana cleared the air, glancing up at the huge crack of blue sky overhead. Zarathos’s impulsive smackdown had left them open to attack, should the Suns manage to crawl free of the mountain he’d dropped on them.
“Dark Lord, a spell to protect us as we wait, should more enemies come…” Satana did her best to make it sound sexy and obvious.
“Do so,” Zarathos rumbled, not looking away from the metal box.
“My power is diminished,” she said, careful to keep her voice even. Not that Zarathos cared, but holding off the blood stick’s assault had cost her. Satana had invested a healthy portion of her dimension’s energy into the stones, and the witch child had managed to extract it, separate it from Satana’s essence, and then pound her with the raw power. A despicable trick, and Satana sincerely hoped that the girl was now so much warm jelly.
Zarathos threw up one hand, grated out a few words, and the rocks around them shifted. They were in a new room, smaller than the original, the air suddenly thick with the giant demon’s murky signature. The sharply angled tunnel leading back to the surface widened and darkened, humming with gathering power. A screen of mist raised up to block their new room from sight of the broadened corridor, solidifying into rock that was Zarathos’s will made manifest; the fresh stone radiated deflection.
Satana moved to stand behind Zarathos, opening herself to his throbbing aura, drafting off the strength of his intention. If need be, she’d “borrow” some of his strength to touch the Star before him.
Let’s not jump the gun on that one. The second she took from him, Zarathos would mark her as an enemy. Dealing with the Suns had depleted him slightly, but he could still stomp her out if he chose.
“Any minute,” Fenn breathed, his red eyes glittering, and the Triumvirate waited.
* * *
BLADE had ducked and covered, sensing Caretaker’s spell as the force of the rocks drove him into the earth. His body was compressed, buried, but a thin, pliable shield had been thrown over him, a bubble that extended a handspan around his entire body.
All he could smell was dank soil and dark magic. Blade opened his mouth and let a thread of drool hang off his lip, orienting himself by its direction. He was on his side, the sky to his left.
He pushed at the stones over his head, then all around him, but a hundred tons of compressed rock wasn’t about to be muscled aside.
A sense of the other Suns opened into his awareness, and Caretaker’s voice spoke clearly in his mind. The Triumvirate are with the vault. We will assemble at once atop the rocks and break their barrier. There are more soulless. Beware.
Got it, Blade thought, and heard Robbie echoing him before the brief connection went dead. Blade felt the shield’s pliable energy stretch and extend, crunching new space out of the compacted stone, his skin tingling—
—and then he was standing on top of the devastation. He picked the closest soulless and rushed him, just as the creature raised its weapon and fired, spraying rounds.
Bam bam bam bam! A scattering of soulless fired brand-new Glock 22s, loaded with .40 ammo. The ragged hills echoed back the booming cracks, but none of them could shoot at all—fifteen rounds per mag and they wasted shots left and right. Blade’s coat caught a hole entirely by chance and then he was tossing the soldier into the guy next to him, both falling into a deep crevasse that had opened in the broken ground, that led straight to the vault.
The vault’s magic was faint, a bare whisper. Blade could feel Zarathos down there, he could smell Satana and John Doe, but they weren’t in sight. The observations occurred in a split second.
Blade spun and flipped a knife at a cleft-chinned soulless who was firing at Nico, neatly slashing the semi out of his hand, along with two fingers. The empty man howled but picked up a rock with his good hand. He still wanted to fight.
Blade flashed past Ghost Rider, who was stomping a pair of luckless soldiers and blasting the last two with a torrent of Hellfire. The Spirit laughed, and Robbie with it. Blade heard them just as he drove his elbow into the rock wielder’s temple and knocked him cold. The soulless dropped and didn’t come back up.
He turned, ready for more, but the Triumvirate’s victims were all down. Robbie kicked the last one twitching a couple more times, hungry to continue. Magik had cut a portal to Limbo and was glimmering with power, standing with Nico and Caretaker at the edge of the deep new tunnel, a sixty-degree angled slide to a block of shielded magic where the vault lay. The soulless that Blade had dropped in had slid to the edge of the demonic shield at the very bottom.
Caretaker opened her hands, breathing deeply. Blade could feel the old woman’s dimensional power pouring through the open portal, Magik floating easily on a wave of her own. Nico had stripped the area of Satana’s workings, blown it away like dust, and the Suns’ dimensional players were getting a boost. Nico’s staff had pulled her three feet into the air, enveloping her in purple swirls. All three women were focused on Zarathos’s shield, their eyes narrowed, their jaws tight.
Caretaker started murmuring in Latin, Nico’s voice falling in with hers on the third word.
Blade and Ghost Rider both fell back as the expanding urgency and creation around the women blossomed into a fierce and powerful intention, the weighted air bending to their shared will. Blade could only just get a sense of how vast the hit was going to be.
Blade flashed over to Robbie and backed them both up to a rocky rise in the trees west of the site. They had a clear view of the trio’s powers joining, Caretaker’s brilliant white river, Magik’s electric tinge of pale blue, the ropy thick twists of deep purple pouring from the Staff of One blending with them into an arrowing, explosive blast.
BOOM! The crash of imploding rock was nothing next to the terrific hiss of violently clashing magics, a roar that Blade felt rather than heard. The edges of the blasted pit crumpled inwards, and Caretaker promptly hurled a few tons of rock out of the way, tossing them aside. The deep ditch east of them thundered clattering echoes through the stony hills.
This time Robbie grabbed Blade, portaled them back to where the rest of their team stared down into the blasted pit. Caretaker had ripped rough, uneven steps down the length of the rocky slope. The vault was hidden by a demon-grown wall of rock, but the mega-shield had been obliterated. There was nothing left… except for the energies of a furious arch-demon and his sidekicks, and the delicate sliver of magic still holding the vault closed.
* * *
ZARATHOS pushed at the last of the seal’s magic, but it refused to give. Fenn sweated and fiddled with his toys. Satana stood at Zarathos’s right hand, silent, working not to betray her excitement. Who wouldn’t be excited, to witness his becoming? Songs and stories would be written about this moment for—
BOOM!
The air around them flared, a bomb dropped on them from above. Zarathos felt his shield melting and screamed with rage as the ground shook and shifted, boulders crashing into their new space.
No no no! He threw energy at the dissolving spell but there was nothing to save, his powerful ward sizzling away.
“HOW DARE YOU!” He roared, and phased through the outcropping that protected his vault, opening his bottomless need, expending his power to destroy these interlopers in all ways. He summoned the high air to create a storm, and the day instantly blackened to night, the crackling air rising to his call. He revealed his hunger to suck in their light and let it snatch for their souls. They would be obliterated, now. The Varkath Star was his!