The hole in the world glowed white-hot, and more hellbreed were draining through. The big one—Argoth, a nightmare made flesh now—crouched as he finished settling into form, a sheet of glaucous film tearing from the inside as he used his claws. He stood, naked, and my boots were thudding onto the squishy field, jolting agony through me like wine, laughing at the idea that I could be stopped by the blood I was losing or a little thing like the broken bones grating together, desperately trying to heal as the gem sang a descant of impossible, strained beauty.
I left the ground, sound coming back in stuttering bursts as my eardrums healed with spikes of wet red pain. Roaring, screaming, weeping, the cracks of thunder and wet sizzling sounds, hunters screaming their battle cries and Weres making a lot of noise, gunfire spattering—
Impact. Or not. I missed him.
He twisted aside, his mad blue eyes wide with delight, and the first shock was that he looked like Perry. Or maybe Perry was just a pale copy of this creature, a marvel of twisted pale beauty, his mouth a cruelly luscious crimson slash, his ears coming up to high points poking through the frayed mat of spun-platinum hair. Force transferred and I was thrown, the whip handle biting my hands as it was ripped free and the gem resonating to the chaos around me. Landed again, all the breath and sense knocked out of me. My body decided now was a fine time to just take a little vacation. Just lay there and breathe for a second, except I couldn’t get any air in.
Get UP! But nothing would obey me, my hands flayed and the broken bones healing but too slowly, everything inside me straining and even my will—that trainable, teachable thing that drives the body, that makes it obey—wasn’t working. What the mind requires, the body will do; but the body has its limits. Sorcerous gem or not, I suspected I’d reached mine.
Well, maybe not suspected. More like, found out.
A shadow fell over me. My eyes rolled. It was Argoth, standing with the Lance shaking unhappily in his pale, beautifully shaped hand. It wept and strained to get away, ash rising on a hot updraft, and he snarled.
He shouldn’t have been able to touch it, but it was probably drained from holding the hellmouth open. Tracers of ash ribboned back as the hungry mouth yawed, wind screaming as it sucked, shrinking—but not fast enough. It was gorged with incredible power, and it would close itself—but Argoth was here.
Perry could do all sorts of crap he wasn’t supposed to; why should I have expected his father, original, whatever, to be different?
I noticed, with a variety of shocked, swimming amusement, that his long, amber-burnished fingernails were buffed. Well, if you’re going to step out of Hell, you might as well make sure you’ve got a manicure, right? It was the merry voice of doom, caroling inside my weary skull, but the only thing I felt was exhaustion and a great drowsy sense of having let them down.
Wake up! Move! It was my own voice, shrilling at me. Usually when I’m hurt bad there’s someone else inside my skull, pushing me.
But I had nobody left.
He lifted the wooden Lance, glare of lightning playing along the slick, ash-weeping blade, and a wide, beautiful-ugly, triumphant smile twisted his face. Now he looked like a hellbreed, the shadow of the thing freshly released from Hell’s cold, screaming confinement rippling under his skin.
I braced myself to die again.
Then his head jerked back, black ichor spattering. And again. Bullet holes bloomed on his chest, and my head lolled drunkenly enough to see Gilberto, widelegged in the shooting stance I’d taught him, making his triangle and aiming nicely, squeeze the trigger again. His eyes were bright and lively, he was covered in black stinking ’breed rot, the bandage on his arm was torn and flapping, and the Eye of Sekhmet glowed on his chest, sending up a curl of smoke that wreathed his sallow, young-old face.
He was laughing. Even as Argoth let out a banshee wail that dwarfed all other sound and spun the spear, the bullet holes closing over and sealing the hurt away. Silver wasn’t going to put this bitch down.
The wall of sound hit Gil, and he tumbled over backward. But the dogsbody was already in the air, its blond hide streaked with spatters of smoking black, and it hit the baddest hellbreed I’d ever seen with a crunch I felt all the way down on the ground.
Now get up, Mikhail said inside my head, and I could swear…
No. I don’t need to swear. I saw.
One of the winged things was near me, a familiar hitching limp as he eased his sore knee, that clarity blooming over him in a waterfall of light. Not the sterile white nuclear light from the hellmouth, but the white of a clean sheet of paper, a freshly bleached sheet, sunshine on sugar sand, joy and sunrise. He leaned down, his hair a mop of pure silver, and grabbed my arm. It was the same hand, hard and callused from daily practice and nightly hunting. The same long nose and narrow mouth, the same pale blue eyes with dark lashes, the same cleft in his chin and the same vulnerable notch where his collarbones met the breastbone. He didn’t look tired, but there was still the faint shadow of knowledge in his eyes. His wings were iron-gray, like his hair used to be, and there was the scar along his jawline, now a thread of gold against his skin. And another scar on his throat, a thick, golden torq.
His mouth opened, but nothing came out. My teacher’s voice whispered directly inside my head, even as his lips soundlessly shaped the words.
Now get up, milaya, and kick bastard back to Hell where he belong.
He gave me a little push, as if we were in the sparring room and I had to do it again, but faster and better this time. I stumbled, glancing down to find my footing, new strength pouring through me and the gem resonating on my wrist.
When I looked up, he was gone. The dogsbody landed in a heap next to me, scrabbling weakly for a moment before going limp, twisted on itself. Its eyes fell shut, and it gave a little sigh.
Argoth grinned, licking his red, red lips. His tongue was purplish, shocking against the rest of his beauty, flickering between sharp white teeth. The world was tearing itself to pieces around us, but we stared at each other for a few heartbeats, and he lifted the warping, trembling Lance slightly.
I let out a long breath, my ribs finally healing fully with snapping crackles. The hellmouth pulsed behind him, casting knife-sharp twisting shadows, and the flood of Hell’s icy heat lifted my blood-soaked hair. I lifted my filthy hands, and the sharp pinpricks of Perry’s charms dug into my skull as they moved restlessly. The hornet buzz filled my head.
That’s so strange. Now I remember being dead.
Then he was on me, the Lance moving so fast it blurred, still wicked sharp even through the shredding of ash rising from every surface, screaming its bloodlust and defiance. But I’d thrown myself forward, already inside the arc of his attack, and grabbed.
My right hand closed on the Lance’s haft, and its chill jolted up my arms. Argoth had raw power, and a hellbreed’s ability to twist things into obeying him. But I was a hunter, and I was human, and I had an edge when it came to forcing a Major Talisman to do what I wanted it to.
Or so I hoped.
Because after all, we made the Talismans. They’re ours. They do not come from Hell.
My left hand clamped down over his, my fingers biting with preternatural strength, and we were face-to-face for a long, shattering moment while I drove him back. There was a warm wind behind me, and it smelled of peppery adrenaline and vodka, leather and musk and the warm smell of Mikhail’s skin as he lay beside me in our shared bed. I pushed, and the wind behind me wasn’t just Mikhail. It was my fellow hunters, Anya and Gilberto, and Monty and my cops; it was my city exhaling as dawn rose and shuddering as dusk fell, while I prowled its rooftops and alleys; it was the hornets buzzing and the spear singing a glassy bloodlust cry, the gem burning on my wrist and every inch of silver on me suddenly running with the same clarity that folded around the winged things.
And finally, it was Saul, his eyes dark with pleasure as he sighed into my hair. Saul cooking pancakes and yawning, his sleepy smile a reward all its own. Saul holding me while I wept, my own arms around him as we both shook, the promise of pain shared and halved in the darkness.
You will not survive, Michael had told me. You will have to sacrifice yourself again to destroy Hyperion.
All I felt, finally, was relief that Saul was safe with Galina.
I drove forward, legs pumping, and Argoth’s face corkcrewed in on itself as he realized what I was about to do. He tried to let go of the spear, but I had his right hand locked too. The gem sang on my wrist, a rising tide of light inside my bones.
I pushed against him, close as a lover, his hot rank breath in my face and his teeth champing, spattering me with yellow foam.
Not so pretty now, are we.
I threw us both into the hellmouth. The silver I was carrying and my hunter’s aura would disrupt it. The shock would shred my physical structure, but that was a small price to pay.
Wasn’t it?
Mercifully, everything went black.