Courageous Read online

  And while all of these feats of swordsmanship were impressive, Katrina was practically artistic. She danced around attacks with an inhuman grace, parrying claws, ducking under swipes, delivering counterstrikes and punches and kicks. She broke one demon’s knee, spun, drove the sword behind her and impaled it through the back. As she did, another demon closed in on her and tried to catch her in a bear hug. She dropped to the ground, rolled to the side and brought the sword up as she stood, eviscerating her opponent and then flitting away before the blood sprayed from its wounds.

  As I watched, transfixed, I heard noise from the door above. Wolfram turned his head, brow furrowed. Eva and five of her pals stepped into the room and stopped as they tried to take in the scene before them.

  I twisted in the shadows’ grasp and faced Wolfram. “Tell me these assholes aren’t part of the prophecy.”

  “Not precisely,” Wolfram said.

  “Does that mean I can beat them up?”

  “I have your word that neither you nor your consort will interfere with the paladins’ battle?”

  Petra raised an eyebrow at Wolfram’s choice of words, but she looked more amused than anything else. “Cross my heart and hope to die,” I said. Now, had this been just a few days ago, I would’ve had to enter this situation into Orcus’s book of promises. But since I’d lost my godhood, I could lie about this if I wanted to. But I wouldn’t.

  The shadows unraveled from Petra and me, and Wolfram deactivated his artifact dampener. “Then be about it, Vincent Corinthos,” Wolfram said.

  I stepped in front of Eva and gave her men the up and down. Most of the group were dressed like shock troopers, clad in crimson body suits and sporting black body armor and helmets.

  “I see you’ve recruited from the Nameless Henchmen club,” I said to Eva.

  “Corinthos,” she said, pointing a gun at me. “You turn up at the most inopportune moments.”

  “It’s a gift,” I smiled. “Here’s the deal. The folks with the swords”—I gestured over my shoulder with my thumb—“are friends of mine. I’m guessing you’re here to try and help the boys from Below. That’s not going to happen. Leave now, just walk away, and you and your disposables don’t get hurt.” This was a huge bluff on my part. We were outnumbered three to one, and they had guns. And there was the distinct possibility that these assholes probably brought some sort of arcane ammo, too. But I kept the wise guy smirk on my face and hoped that they couldn’t see me sweating.

  Eva shook her head at me. “I saw the wards upstairs. I know you can’t use your extradimensional energy here. You don’t have fire or telekinesis. Why would you even think you have a chance?”

  I couldn’t help myself. I planted my fists on my hips, squared my shoulders, and gave Eva my best Commander Courageous smile. “Because I’m a hero, dammit.”

  She shot me.

  Or rather, she tried to.

  Something shifted in my chest, and I felt much more… solid? It was an odd sensation, as if I were made of metal rather than flesh and bone. The bullet bounced off my chest and ricocheted around the stairwell with a high-pitched whine.

  Eva and I stared at each other, dumbfounded. That gave Petra an opening to reach forward, grab the nearest trooper’s wrist and break his arm in two places before hurling him into another of his friends. They both went down in a heap. I recovered enough from my sudden invulnerability to snap out my switchblade and slash at Eva’s gun arm. She pulled back fast enough to avoid getting cut, but the Olympian steel sliced through the barrel of her pistol as if it were butter.

  Eva grabbed my wrist, twisted, and slammed my head into the wall. Stars blossomed in my vision, and despite the ringing in my ears, I heard Eva say, “Kill the girl! Use grenades!”

  My sight cleared enough so I could watch as Eva and one of the troopers, the one farthest from Petra, both lobbed something into the room.

  Three.

  Time slowed down for me. The grenades drifted toward their targets, and I recognized them from Gearstripper’s workshop. These had three-second fuses.

  Two.

  If Katrina got caught in that blast, the fight against the demons was over. That sword didn’t convey any magical healing powers; the boss’s death had been proof enough of that.

  One.

  If Katrina died, there wouldn’t be anyone who could stop those demons. The world would end. A world that I had fought so long and hard to keep safe. A world that Kat had only begun to know. And in that moment, I was more terrified for her than I’d ever been for anyone else.

  Zer—

  Shimmering orbs of green and red light appeared around the grenades. Muted whuff sounds came from the spheres as the grenades’ explosions were contained in force fields. I’d gotten back to my feet, not needing to look down at my chest to know that the Anisa Amulet was glowing.

  I rounded on Eva.

  “Let this go,” I said. “You can’t win here. What has Treggen promised you, anyway?”

  “Only what I deserve,” she snarled. “Power. All my life, people have told me what to do, how to act, how to feel. Treggen will let me take control back, let me decide who gets to do what, and when.”

  “You’ve always had that power,” Petra said. “All you would have had to do was stand up for yourself. Do you really think Treggen will just let you wave a magic wand so the world will be exactly as you pictured it? That’s not how life works.”

  Eva’s eyes narrowed at Petra, and she drew a backup weapon and fired three rounds, all of which bounced off of Petra, then me, and at this range, they ricocheted right back into Eva. She fell to the ground, blood rushing from the holes in her stomach. I was aware of Petra dropping another trooper with a single hit to the jaw. The remaining two had drawn their weapons and were slowly backing away, retreating up the stairs. She let them go, and I wasn’t about to pursue them.

  “Eva,” I said, looking down at her. “Where’s Treggen?”

  “Go to Hell,” she whispered.

  “I’ve been there,” I said. “I think you’ll get there before I do again.”

  She grunted, and a bit of blood dripped from the corner of her mouth. “Your file said you were a smartass. It just didn’t say how much of one.”

  “Eva—” But the light had already left Eva’s eyes. I stood up from her side and turned my attention back to the battle between the paladins and the demons.

  The lead demon was nursing half a dozen stab wounds and had definitely looked better, but he’d noticed what Eva had tried to do, and unfortunately, it had given him an idea. “Kill the brat!” he hollered. “If she goes, they all go!” The demons rushed at Kat with renewed fury, but the other Galahads formed up in front of her, sending up a wall of slashing swords.

  Kat calmly stepped back and looked around, her head again tipped to one side. She gave a nod and jogged toward the pylons that stood just a few feet from me. She tapped several of the runes on the pylons in rapid succession, and I felt extradimensional energy flare around me, weaving itself into a geometric pattern that matched the shape of the various runes inscribed on the pylons. This extradimensional energy wasn’t like what I use. I bend space and time to my will, allowing me to step from one point to another. This was a predefined portal, something that was only going to open on one location, and would always open, regardless of what bullshit runes a Stranger painted in the room.

  It was a gateway to Hell.

  The all-too-familiar scent of brimstone flowed through, and the screams of tormented souls echoed around me. Through the portal, I could see a spot on the other side with a human-sized depression in the ground, as if someone had fallen from a great height and landed without being liquefied. I shuddered as I looked at the spot where I’d landed in the Pit just the other day.

  To my utter horror, Kat stepped through the portal. As
she crossed its threshold, her body erupted in white light, encasing her in an aura that was almost painful to look at. She grew a few inches before my eyes, and spectral wings burst from her back. Holding the sword over her head, she pointed at the demons, who were still battling against the other Galahads.

  A tendril of golden fire snapped out from Kat’s extended finger, ensnaring the closest demon around the waist. It shrieked in pain and doubled over as Kat retracted the snare, pulling the demon through the portal. It scrabbled at the chamber floor, its claws leaving deep furrows in the stone, but Kat continued hauling it toward the portal as if it were a toddler throwing a tantrum in the grocery store. As it crossed the portal’s threshold, the demon’s flesh burned away, adding the new smell of barbequed infernal denizen to the brimstone-scented air. The demon’s skeleton remained behind, and a moment later, that crumbled to dust.

  The remaining demons had broken off their combat with the other Galahads to watch their brother meet his demise, and now they broke, running for the doorway that led back up into the church proper. The other Galahads formed a wall and began driving the demons toward the portal as Kat’s fiery snares lashed out and latched on to more of them.

  The demons screamed as the flaming ropes dragged them away from their combat, away from the plane of men, and into the Pit. As each one passed through the portal, it too was consumed in a column of white fire, leaving behind nothing but an ashen skeleton, which quickly crumbled to dust.

  Katrina turned to someone I couldn’t see and said in a voice that was hers, but much more grown up, “I have returned the twelve to where they belong. See to it they do not return to the plane of men.” Then she stepped back through the portal, her body returning to normal and her aura disappearing.

  The portal to Hell snapped shut, but not before I saw Scathiks, the little asshole demon who’d tormented me during my recent trip to the Pit, staring dumbfounded at the ashen remains of the twelve.

  Kat stood there for just a minute, breathing hard, and dropped the sword, which vanished and rematerialized in the block of marble. Petra went to her to make sure she was all right. The spectral Galahads began to fade away one by one, until only two remained. One was the knight in shining armor, who stood on the other side of the room, speaking to Leslie in hushed tones.

  The other remaining paladin was the boss. He walked over to me, smiling. “I am glad you were here to see this, Vincent. And I thank you for playing your part.”

  “My part? I didn’t do anything.”

  “You ensured Treggen’s forces did not interfere. You protected Katrina Grady from the dangers we could not.”

  I tried to smile but couldn’t. “Boss. I’m so sorry. I tried to save you—”

  Galahad XI smiled as he held up a hand. “Vincent. Think. If you had stopped that bullet, you would have saved my life, but damned the world. There were twelve demons. Had there only been eleven Galahads to stand against them, the forces of Light would have lost. No, when I left this life, it enabled the sword to pass to another, and thus the odds were even.”

  “But you thought the forces of Light would lose,” I said.

  “Twelve shall open the gates of Hell, and all shall burn,” Wolfram intoned.

  “The prophecy was never about the demons, was it?” I asked.

  “I thought it was,” Galahad XI admitted. “I was wrong. It was always about that remarkable young lady right there, Galahad Twelve.”

  Petra had taken a knee so she could be closer to Kat’s eye level, and the two appeared to be chatting happily.

  “I need to go now, Vincent,” the boss said. “I have every faith that you will watch over the city in my absence.”

  “You know I will, boss.”

  “Call me Dan,” he said with a grin. “Technically, you don’t work for me anymore.”

  “Dan,” I said, trying to ignore the lump in my throat. He chucked me on the shoulder, feeling remarkably solid for a ghost, and then he was gone. No fading away, no dissolving into mist, just here one second and then gone the next.

  “The prophecy is complete,” Wolfram announced to no one in particular. “So, it was written, so it was done.” He turned to Kat. “You have performed your part in the prophecy admirably, Katrina Grady. I am certain you will do the mantle of Galahad great honor. And you, Vincent Corinthos, your assistance is appreciated. But now, I must go.”

  “Whoa, hold up,” I said, catching him by the sleeve. “I need more information about what Treggen is up to. You must know something. You Strangers have a prophecy for everything under the sun.”

  Wolfram smirked at me. “Not all your problems are worthy of prophecy, Corinthos. Don’t flatter yourself.” And with that, he dissolved back into the shadows.

  Across the room, the original Galahad placed a hand against Leslie’s cheek and then took a step back, vanishing as the boss, as Dan, had. Leslie’s face was wet, and I gave her a moment to compose herself before trying to speak to her. She cleared her throat and dabbed at her eyes with a hanky, then dusted her hands off and walked over to Katrina and Petra.

  “You did well, Katrina,” Leslie said.

  Kat tipped her head and looked at Leslie, as if seeing her for the first time. “The sword was calling to me earlier, so even though I saw your face change, it didn’t really register with me. Who are you, really?”

  “I am the custodian of that sword.” She nodded to the blade in the block of red marble.

  “So, you’re not the youth group leader?” Kat asked.

  “For you, I will be,” Leslie replied. “I will always be close at hand should you need me.” I thought back to the last conversation I’d had with Leslie. She’d told me that she always took a job that kept her close to the person currently wielding Galahad’s sword. She’d been a lady in waiting for Joan of Arc, a seamstress to George Washington, and Daniel MacPherson’s secretary. Now, she’d keep working at Kat’s church.

  Katrina looked from Leslie to me, and back again. She shuffled her feet uncomfortably. “What happens now?” she asked.

  “What do you hear?” Leslie replied.

  Kat tilted her head to the side, like I’d seen her do during the fighting. “I can choose to help people, to fight monsters, or I can walk away.” She rubbed her face. “While I was confronting the demons, when I was saying all those things, He was telling me what to say, He was making it so I wasn’t scared. Now He’s giving me the choice to keep going or to give the sword back.”

  I didn’t need to ask who “He” was. I could hear the capital H when Katrina said it.

  “And?” Leslie asked.

  “No way am I walking away,” Katrina said. “I can help people like Mr. Corinthos does. I’d never give that up.”

  “Then you will fight the darkness and be a symbol of the light, Katrina,” Leslie said with a smile.

  “But school, and chores…” She shrugged. “I’m not sure how to balance all this.”

  I hid a grin. Katrina Grady now wielded one of the most powerful relics I’d ever seen and was being guided by a deity jillions of times more powerful than I’d ever been, and here she was worried about her homework. Frank and Laura were raising her right.

  “We will figure that out, Galahad,” Leslie said, and my smile vanished. I liked Katrina, and knew she’d been chosen to wear that mantle, but could I address her as Galahad? That was the boss’s name, no matter what he’d told me to call him.

  Luckily, Kat solved that problem for me. “Galahad is a boy’s name,” she said. “You can call me Gal.”

  “As you wish, Gal,” Leslie said with a smile. “You and I have much to discuss. But not here. You have time before your father gets home, yes?” Kat checked her watch and nodded. “Excellent. We will begin by preparing dinner at your home, and we will talk while we cook.” Leslie’s face shifted, once more becoming
Senni’s visage. She turned to me. “Vincent, thank you so much for your help.”

  “I know you will,” I said, “but I have to say this anyway. Take good care of her, Leslie.”

  Her smile broadened. “Don’t think that I’ll be doing this all by myself, Vincent Corinthos. She’s thirteen. I’m closing in on nine hundred. I don’t have the energy I once did. I expect a whippersnapper like you to pitch in from time to time.”

  I smiled back. “Count on it.”

  Katrina hugged Petra, then me. “You’re going to be great, Gal,” I said, rubbing her hair.

  She giggled. “Thanks, Mr. Corinthos. You’ll help me learn?”

  “However I can, kiddo. That’s a promise.”

  Chapter 12

  “So, now what happens?” Petra asked once we were alone. The door leading back up to the church had been forced open by Eva and company, and Leslie and Kat had left to begin Katrina’s education on how to be a Galahad. It hadn’t occurred to me at the time, but Eva must’ve done some anti-runecraft of her own to break in.

  “Let me see what I can learn from Eva, here,” I said. I went to focus my Glimpse and froze, noticing a thick leather cuff poking out from Eva’s sleeve. I knelt down, pulled back her shirtsleeve, and found a chronometer, its twelve hands spinning in all different directions.

  “She’s a Chronicler?” Petra asked.

  “That would explain why I couldn’t bend time around her earlier,” I replied. “And Treggen used to be a Chronicler once upon a time. Maybe he recruited some other assholes.” I rubbed my chin. “But if she were a Chronicler, she should have a chronopistol instead of a regular gun. And she didn’t try using time as a weapon against us.”

  “Wolfram had put up wards against your powers; maybe they affected her, too?”

  “Maybe, but I didn’t even see her try to use this.” I gestured at the oversized watch. “That’s an extremely powerful artifact. To rely on a gun instead of that… Even if she was just a rookie, something doesn’t add up. The way she acted, she seemed more Caulborn than Chronicler.” I tried Glimpsing, but only got static. Pulling back her other sleeve revealed a tattoo of an anti-divination rune on Eva’s left wrist. Treggen had been thorough. I moved to one of the men Petra had knocked out and found he sported a similar tattoo. He was also dead.