Whatever game we were going to be playing, it wasn’t baseball.
The playing field was venomous green, usually Astroturf but now transmuted into short fleshy spikes that twisted and rippled obscenely as the crowd-roar passed over them. The glare was amazing, a nuclear flash prolonged until it was a scream of whiteness, a world-killing light. I blinked, my eyes watering, and forced myself to scan.
The field was bare and green, an indecent hump in the middle with a low block of darkness placed precisely on its crest. The sound was immense, swelling through feedback and screaming, the roar lifting my hair and blowing it back as etheric bruising tightened and my aura sparked, every inch of silver on me running with blue light.
It halted, a sudden silence filling the vast dome, and that quiet stole all the breath out of my lungs, the way a sudden jolt at the end of a rope will. Training clamped down, my lungs shocked back into working and my pulse dropping as my right-hand gun cleared leather. A rush of warm air slid past me and toward the closing doors; they latched shut with the clicks of bullets loaded in a clip.
Perry laughed. He spread his arms and grinned with sheer mad good humor. “Darling! One appreciates punctuality in a woman, almost as much as one appreciates beauty. Then again, my dearest one, you are so worth waiting for.”
He wore black. A thin V-neck sweater and narrow pleated trousers, a sword of darkness against all the glare. His hair was pale tarnished silk, and his eyes glowed hellhound-blue. The change from his usual white linen was a shock, too, and my busy little brain started worrying at it. What did it mean?
Just let it go, Jill. You’ll find out soon enough.
Super-acute senses are sometimes a curse. My eyes stung, but I caught movement up in the stadium seats, behind the screen of glare. How many? Sounds like a lot, but echoes, hard to tell. Jesus. I kept the gun trained on Perry, shook the whip slightly to assure myself of free play. “Actually, Hyperion, I’m early.”
“We can argue later, my dove. And Brother Michael?”
“He sends his love.” An answering grin pulled my lips back from my teeth. “You’re being an asshole, Perry.”
“Oh, you wound me. I have kept faith with you in every possible way. I allow you so much more than I would ever allow another.” He backed up a step, two, his wingtips touching the fat blades of not-grass with slight squelching sounds. “For example, it was necessary to allow you to betray me. Or whatever you thought you were doing, darling. I don’t expect you to be anything other than what you are.”
“Which is what, Perry? What do you think I am?”
“My unwilling ally, darling. My enfleshment, my entrapment, and my lovely, lovely doom. In the old sense, of course. Doom as in ‘inescapable.’ ” He actually lifted a hand and blew me a kiss. A susurrus went through the invisible crowd, a breaker of whispered titters. “Come here, dearest. Come see what your suitor has created, all for you.”
I shot myself in the head to get away from you, Perry. Don’t pretend you’ve got my interests at heart. But sick knowledge impelled me forward.
I had to see.
The altar was long and low, made of black volcanic glass instead of a chunk of a hangman’s tree. I took it in with short, sipping little glances, between scanning the rest of the stadium. It seats an ungodly number of people for Wheelwrights games and other foolishness, a real sink of taxpayer dollars from the seventies when everything was whiskey-a-go-go out here in the desert. Santa Luz fought like hell to get the stadium pried out of the grip of the Noches County seat, and the success was Pyrrhic when everything went over budget and repairs started coming due.
And now it was full of hellbreed and Traders, bright-eyed and staring, whispering at each other. Popcorn passed from hand to hand, and I smelled hot dogs and hellbreed. The place wasn’t quite packed yet, but it was filling up.
This is not good.
My pulse settled down. The sudden calm would be ominous, because it meant I was ready for action. But Perry just smiled, and the scuffle of finding seats intensified.
It was the altar’s surface that made my throat seize up and my stomach sink. Twisted runes—the closest you can get to Helletöng in written form—were scored deep into the volcanic glass, their sharp edges full of diseased blue hellfire. There was a chalice of heavy golden metal, full of clotted scum. Not gold, because pure elemental metal—copper, silver, gold—is always a bane to them. Silver works best, and the silver in my hair was sparking continuously now. My apprentice-ring was dangerously warm.
There were other things on the altar. Deformed claws, lumps of meat. Organs from their victims, a loop of hanging-rope, a knife of sharp alien geometry… and the Lance.
La Primera Lanza del Destino, wrenched from its hiding spot at Sacred Grace, lay on the unholy altar, curls of steam rising around it as it shivered uneasily.
A long, fluted cylinder of dark, stained wood, or a metal veined and carved to look like wood. It vibrated also, etheric force barely held in check, and its long, leaf-shaped blades looked too delicate to do any harm, both of them trembling like high school kids on a first date.
The world spun out from under me. I knew what it was, now. Hutch’s books had shown me everything once I knew where to look.
The granddaddy of all Talismans, the one all other Spears are copied from, the Spear of Undoing. No wonder the Church had kept it so secret. It was older than the pagans, far older than the savior they prayed to, and it probably hadn’t been anywhere near his martyrdom… but still. It was a Major Talisman, and you don’t leave those lying around. Especially when they have a nasty habit of being able to unmake things.
“It’s not going to work.” My voice was a thin tremor from the dry cave of my mouth. “There’s no way it’s going to work.”
“Oh, you’re such a pessimist.” Perry sighed. “We have everything we need, my dearest. You and I will deal with my master, the hellmouth will remain open, and when the smoke has cleared, we shall be the undisputed rulers of a world remade in our own image.”
Whose image? Not mine, you bastard. “Your master?”
“Father, master, whatever.” He shrugged. “You didn’t think I was common, did you, Kiss? I’ve taken an interest in your line for a very long time. And in Dresden, lo these many years ago, your predecessor Jack Karma and I had a meeting of minds. I gave him something he wanted, he gave me something I needed. And beautiful music was made.”
This much, at least, I knew about. “Argoth. Your father?”
“One of many, darling. I told you, I am Legion. But he is very, very angry. You’ve barred him twice now. Ever since dear Jack sent him back, he’s been aching and frothing to return and play games in this most fascinating of worlds. And to reclaim me, of course.” He tilted his head, grinning at me. The silence was full of whispers, nasty mouthings, wet silk against sweating legs. “He thinks I’m going to help him.”
“Aren’t you?” I edged closer to the altar, but Perry resolved out of thin air next to me. The air tore itself apart with malevolent children’s laughter. His fingers closed around my upper arm, slim steel bands, and I went very still, my left hand still on my whip handle.
“Now, now. Close enough for the moment. Don’t be hasty.” His fingers flicked, claws sliding free of pale narrow hardness, and leather tore. Perry grabbed my wrist, locking it.
He drew in a deep breath, his ribs crackling as they expanded. “My children!” he roared, and I almost flinched. His fingers bit down, and he shoved me back from the altar. “Now is the hour of our glory!”
“Glory!” A sea’s foaming roil. The crowd went wild, arms lifted, claws and fists shaken. They howled and screamed and yapped, Trader and damned, all of them twisting under their screens of human flesh.
I stumbled back, using Perry’s shove to get some space. Ran through the next few minutes in my head. There was just too much that could go wrong—
“Open the door!” Perry yelled, and the exotic thought that I was going to witness the creation of a hellmouth got me moving.
“The door, the door!” the crowd screamed back, and surged forward against the metal rails keeping them off the ten-foot drop to the stadium’s floor. “Open the door!”
Thou Who, I thought, as my weight dropped back into my left leg, muscles tensing in preparation. Thou Who hast given me to fight evil, protect me, keep me from harm.
It was now or never. I exploded into a leap, aiming for the altar. If I could get my hands on the Lance—
Except it was too late. The gem on my wrist screamed, a high thin note like glass shivering into breaking, and Perry grabbed my ankle. He twisted, his fingers sinking into my boot with a sickening crunch, and hurled me across the field.