Page 90 of The Malevolent Eight

Chapter 51

All that Blood Had to Go Somewhere

I’d never understood why Temper had been so determined to drink the blood of his newfound home dry. I’d assumed there must be something addictive about it, or perhaps that wherever he’d come from, kangaroos happened to be the most bloodthirsty creatures imaginable. I suppose I should’ve given more thought to the particularities of the Pandoral spell I’d used to summon him here, seeking out a creature who for some reason wanted to be transformed into something other than what nature had intended. ‘Blood-sucking kangaroo’ had seemed a poor choice to me, but out there on that field, surrounded by far too many enemies, my only friends vastly outnumbered, I finally learned thatbloodhadn’t been Temper’s desire, but rather what blood could give him on this realm that it couldn’t in his own.

Blood magic, as I may have mentioned, is the only form of wonderism native to the Mortal realm. Everything else draws on the physics of other planes of reality. Galass had been hampered in her training both from a lack of available mentors in the art as well as rather too benign a nature. Temper, as it turned out, did not suffer from the latter. Turns out, there’s a lot you can do once you’ve ingested enough blood from humans, Aurorals and Infernals.

‘By the Void,’ Corrigan swore, fighting to stay conscious long enough to witness this particular. . . well,miracledoesn’t quite feel like the right word.

‘Are those—?’ Galass stopped herself, realising that if anyone was going to keep Corrigan alive it would have to be her.

‘Magnificent,’ said Alice with far less jealousy than I would’ve expected under the circumstances.

What had first appeared to be Temper exploding had been only the first part of his transformation. A fine mist of blood had sprayed from his every pore, clouding the air in a scarlet haze. Only when we felt the first aftershock, like the gust of a hurricane so powerful it not only banished the blood-mist, but knocked the nearest ranks of attackers off their feet, did we see what he’d become. Temper leaped into the air, far higher than should be possible, even with his formidable hind legs. Then came a second gust as the massive wings that hadbloomedfrom his back beat once more, sending him even higher.

‘The wings,’ Aradeus began, as mystified as we all were, ‘are they made of—?’

‘Blood,’ Alice finished for him. ‘Not even among the Infernal beasts has such a thing been witnessed in millennia. The artform for manifesting bloodwings was lost long ago, as was that of conjuring bloodfire.’

‘Bloodfire?’ Hamun asked, standing next to his mother and not looking nearly terrified enough for a small boy. ‘What’s that?’

He was answered a moment later when the Auroral forces tried to attack Temper. Their arrogant trumpets were answered by a crimson gout of flaming droplets of blood that disintegrated everything they touched. Angelics and Glorians screamed as they died, some trying with their last breaths to turn and attack the Infernals, who’d had the sense to step back from that fight.

We stayed like that a while, watching Temper obliterate our enemies, sounding his traditional battle cry between each blast of bloodfire. I could already tell it wouldn’t be long before all the blood he’d ingested to create this rather foul and clearly evil form of wonderism would be used up, but he was a smart kangaroo, so I was pretty sure he’d keep enough in reserve that we’d still have a rather nasty rejoinder to make when Tenebris inevitably came over to try to threaten us into submission.

That’s when negotiations would begin in earnest.

Chapter 52

Real Heroes Settle for a Draw

You couldn’t call it a peace treaty, but what Shame and Alice managed to negotiate with Tenebris and his cabal ended up being. . . well, a tolerable armistice. It would probably last about a week.

Our lives are plagued by absolutes. The Lords Celestine– up until they got their arses roasted by a faction of their fellow Aurorals– had insisted there was both absolute good and absolute evil. The Lords Devilish,stupid pricks, had gone out of their way to prove them right. A philosopher once speculated that fire was the absolute of heat and ice the absolute of cold. I’ve never visited the sun, but I’m going to take a wild guess that it’s significantly hotter than a campfire.

Human beings are prone to thinking in absolutes, it’s true, but we’re sure not built for them. There’s never oneabsolutelyright choice, or even anabsolutelywrong one. We never win an absolute victory, nor can we ever truly lose everything, even though it does sometimes feel that way.

‘What the fuck’s your problem?’ Corrigan asked. He reached up to swat me across the head, then groaned and slumped back on the mossy knoll where Galass had told him to rest after stitching the still sizzling golden wound.

‘What’s my problem?’ I repeated. ‘Oh, nothing much.’ I pointed to the ruins of the fortress, where Tenebris and his cabal of disaffected Aurorals and Infernals were already using some of the power they’d taken from the Celestines and Devilish to erect a grand palace. The Pantheon, they were calling themselves, those six arseholes. ‘We risked everything, killed who knows how many angelics and diabolics and malefics and all the rest, to prevent a war from turning the Mortal realm into one giant game board, and humanity into an endless supply of pieces for the Celestines and Devilish to play with.’

‘And we did,’ Corrigan insisted. ‘Those pricks are mostly dead or captive or whatever Tenebris and his merry band of idiots are doing with them.’

‘Yeah, only now that merry band of idiots are setting up shop as the gods of the Mortal realm.’

‘So? We’ll fuck them up, too.’ He laughed, groaned from the pain of aggravating his wound, then chuckled more cautiously. ‘It’s kind of our motto now.’

I tugged at the tatters of my coat. ‘Sorry I wrecked the uniform.’

Corrigan shrugged. ‘Ah, we’ll buy new ones. Aradeus says he’s got some more colourful designs in mind. I’ve decided I’m open to the suggestion. . . With your approval, of course, oh great and wise coven leader.’

‘Seriously?’ I asked. ‘You expect me to lead anyone after this mess?’ I held up my hand, which served no purpose, I supposed, but was meant to illustrate my current incapacity. ‘There’s no longer a Pandoral realm, Corrigan, which means I have no attunement. I’m not a wonderist any more.’

‘You weren’t much of one before, but we still followed you.’

That admission caught me off guard. ‘But why? Corrigan, you second-guess me at every turn– and you’re right to do so! My entire peace plan fell apart, our enemies played us for fools right up until the end, we barely came out of this ali—’

‘Don’t forget, you slept with a crazy doom-witch.’

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