Page 72 of Mystic Justice
Suddenly the scent of rot was hanging on the air and I gagged at the stench of it. I heard the faintest scuffle behind me, just a beat too late. I spun, then I slammed into a tree as a heavy force knocked me sideways. Pain flared in my ribs. I blinked for a moment, gasping for air.
Next to me, Krieg roared: so much for silent stalking. It looked like we were full into mêlée territory. He swung his mace towards Harbinger and the griffin reared up, trying to slice Krieg with his claws. They found their mark but slid off his leather clothing without even leaving a mark.
Griffins were fifty-percent lion, fifty-percent eagle and one hundred percent deadly. Harbinger looked like hell: his lion fur was thin and dull, and some of the feathers from his avian head had fallen away. He looked half-dead, which I supposed he was.
Krieg was smiling as he swung the mace, looking like he relished the opportunity for a nice spot of hand-to-hand combat – or claw to tusk. But he could handle himself – at least I hoped he could – so I dived into the clearing to find Ji-ho before it was too late to save him.
Calder had a shovel in her hand and she was piling earth feverishly into place. I summoned my magic and released it with a sharp breath, sending her careening through the air into a tree, just as I’d done moments before. Unlike me, her head hit the trunk and her eyes rolled back into her head as she slid to the ground unconscious. Good.
I gathered my magic again; although earth wasn’t my main element, I could deal with all four elements to a limited degree. I sank to my knees next to the newly disturbed earth and buried my hands in the soil. I needed to be careful; I didn’t want to harm Ji-ho and I had no idea if he’d been put straight in the ground or buried in a coffin to maximise his terror and suffering. Probably the latter, but I still need to sift carefully through the dirt. I gathered my intention, imagined a small layer of earth rising then commanded, ‘Up!’
The cloud of earth that spiralled up was larger than I’d intended so I directed it to a rock nearby and dumped it in a heap. It was just earth: no Ji-ho, no coffin. I peered into the hole I’d made but there was still no sign of him.
‘Up!’ I ordered again, hauling up more of the soil by sheer willpower and repeating the process. Still no Ji-ho, and I had to be four-feet deep by now.
Desperation was clawing at me as I pictured more earth rising. ‘Up!’ I barked, then discarded the next batch of empty dirt. But this time I saw wood beneath the mud when I looked into the hole. Fuck.
I prayed Ji-ho was alive in there. He couldn’t have been buried for more than a handful of minutes and a coffin held more air than he’d need for that, didn’t it?
I jumped into the hole onto the coffin and cleared the remaining dirt off its lid with my bare hands. I scrabbled around for a handle so I could wrench open the lid, but the bloody thing was locked. Jeez, paranoid or what? Obviously when you buriedpeople alive you didn’t want to take chances they’d somehow get out.
I gathered my magic, ready to send a small and sharp blast of air at the lock – but that was when Harbinger got away from Krieg. ‘Incoming!’ the ogre hollered at me.
‘JANE!’ Harbinger screeched as he saw his fiancée collapsed beneath the tree. With a snarl of rage he launched himself towards me and his shadow loomed, his talons spread wide, fury in his golden eyes. As Jane had hoped, the deathshadsomehow resurrected his feelings for her and now he was really pissed.
He was heading straight for me and I was stuck in a hole in the earth. I was a trapped target.
I summoned my intention and used my air magic to push myself out of the grave, hit the ground hard and rolled clear. Harbinger’s claws scraped the soil where I’d been, gouging thick furrows that would have made one helluva mess of my back. Kevlar was good for bullets but it did fuck all against raging griffins.
Lungs burning, I landed on my back beside the half-exhumed coffin. ‘Stacy!’ Krieg roared. ‘Catch!’ Something silver spun through the moonlight towards me and my fingers snapped around it mid-air. His dagger. I loved it when he gave me presents.
We were well past the point of bringing in Harbinger alive – and anyway he was already a walking, murderous, undead beast – and today’s plan was to put him down. I had a green light for a kill order, so there was no need to weigh up the pros and cons, no need to worry about the consequences. Later it might eat at me, but at that moment I knew there was only one way we’d survive.
Harbinger shrieked. His massive wings beat the air as he rose then plunged down for me again, his beak open in a snarl. I didn’t run; instead I yanked my father’s pocket watch from mypocket and flipped it open to access a small bit of the temporal Third realm.
The world lurched as time slowed. Wind froze mid-whip and leaves hung suspended in the air. Harbinger’s dive became syrup-slow, each wing beat thunderously and terribly, drawn out over aching seconds.
I took one precious second to breathe then gathered my magic the way my father had taught me. ‘Be deliberate, Ace,’ he’d told me. ‘Know what you want. Picture it in your mind and go for it.’
I imagined a wall of pure force, something strong enough to knock Harbinger clean out of the sky. I built it inside me, the shape of it clear in my mind, taut and humming behind my ribs, then I gestured and released the concussive burst.
Magic roared from me like a shockwave and time snapped back to normal with a jolt.
The shimmering force slammed into Harbinger mid-air, diverting his trajectory. His wings snapped wide in panic and he crashed to the earth in a spray of leaves and earth. As he rolled, his massive body thrashing, I pocketed Dad’s watch and raised Krieg’s blade.
I moved forward to finish him but Harbinger was already up again, blood matting his feathers. His eyes locked with mine, promising death. Fuck: I’d hoped for another couple of seconds of slowed time to get him while he was down. I guessed it was time for Plan B.
He lunged and I met him with my blade. We clashed, claw to steel, and my arms trembled with the effort of keeping his talons from sinking into my flesh. Then, with a righteous roar, Krieg waded in and struck the griffin on his back with his mace.
Harbinger screamed as the metal spikes penetrated his leonine fur and he withdrew his focus and his claws from me. As he thrashed about, I ducked beneath a swipe that could haveremoved my head from my shoulders, then spun and slashed, burying Krieg’s dagger deep into the griffin’s flank.
Blood sprayed, hot and black in the moonlight. The griffin howled again and jerked back from both of us to inspect his wounds. He obviously thought they were pretty bad because he took a moment to shift to human and then back to griffin form.
His wounds disappeared: the shift had completely healed him and once again he was back to his full undead strength. There was a reason griffins were so feared: they were damned difficult to kill, which made them the perfect assassins. They could face impossible odds and walk away smiling.
I noticed that the shift hadn’tfixed Harbinger’s missing feathers and dull skin tone, but I assumed he’d lost those before he was raised and the shift had only restored him to his new life’s level. Even so, he was formidable and we needed a killing blow to end him. We couldn’t defeat him with a war of attrition; a thousand blows wouldn’t work here; we neededonethat would do the job.
‘Can you pipe him?’ I gasped to Krieg, ducking behind a tree as Harbinger lunged at us again.
