Irregulars, page 26
The head facing them hissed. Deven raised the Aztaw bone from Rodriguez’s apartment. “Show us what he died to hide,” he commanded in English and in Aztawi. He threw the bone at the serpent. The smoke rippled where the bone shot through the vision. The skull in the natural world pulled away and the obscured skull of the supernatural world turned to face them. Its jaws opened and dislocated, revealing what looked to be a filthy, dark Mexican alley. An Aztaw lord walked slowly through this alley, dragging one leg as he moved. His body rhythmically pulsed as if he were a walking heart. The vision of the lord was vivid, even in the dark, flickering only as air currents disturbed the smoke.
He was Aztaw, no doubt about it, but he didn’t look like any lord Deven had ever seen. Paper-thin, translucent skin stretched over his luminescent skull and spine, weathered with age. His face bones were painted in black and yellow stripes, and his eyes burned in their sockets, wide and lidless. His lipless mouth opened to reveal teeth sharpened into long fangs.
His left leg ended in a sandaled foot, but the right terminated at an exposed shin bone that scraped along the ground as the monster walked. He wore black and yellow Aztaw armor and carried a tall staff in one hand. In his other hand he held an axe with a handle as long as a man’s body. An obsidian mirror was strapped to the back of his head.
All Aztaw lords were terrible in appearance, but this one was particularly unusual because his flesh was so thin it revealed coursing red blood moving underneath the surface, pulsing around his spine. He resembled a fat, transparent tick, swollen on blood. Dozens of red arteries streamed out from his spine and stretched into the ether. The blood vessels hovered above the alleyway pavement, turning the corner as if the creature were the heart of a city-sized circulatory system. As he walked, dragging his right foot behind, his entire body pulsed and the blood under his skin pumped.
“Christ...” August blinked at the vision.
Deven recognized the black and yellow paint from oral legends. “Night Axe,” he said. “Lord of Hurricanes.”
The lord spun and stared straight at Deven, pupils contracting to pinpricks. His mouth opened wide, revealing sharp, jagged teeth.
Terror rushed through Deven. “He’s seen us!” He kicked over the copper bowl, spilling the remains of their blood onto the concrete.
“I thought it was only a vision,” August said.
“Somehow he knows we’re looking at him.” Deven cursed himself for not crafting a jade spell breaker. “Enough!” He waved at the vision serpent. “Turn your face away!”
But vision serpents were notoriously disobedient and the terrible image of Night Axe remained. The lord seemed to smile. His body throbbed as he pointed his staff directly at Deven. He dragged the sharp tip over his own neck in warning.
“Look away!” Deven commanded again, and at last the jaws of the vision serpent snapped shut. Its tongues hissed at Deven, screeching as it dissipated back into the copper bowl. The smell of sulfur and ozone permeated the air and soot scorched the back wall of the warehouse, forming a final, murky image of the serpent.
Deven breathed heavily. Fear tingled down his spine. Impossible.
“Shit.” He heard August curse somewhere off in the distance. Then the lights switched on. Deven covered his eyes with the palms of his hands.
“Is that what Aztaw lords look like?” August asked.
“No. He’s mutated.” Deven lowered his hands, wincing at the light.
“Do you know who he is?”
“Yes, but I don’t know how he could be here.”
August frowned. “Your hands are shaking.”
Deven swallowed. “Night Axe...he’s the bogeyman to Aztaws. And I’ve never seen any lord break through a vision spell and peer back at the spell caster like that.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means he’s here.” Deven fumbled on the ground for his bottle of water and took a deep gulp.
“Here?”
“He’s not on another plane. He’s here in Mexico City, hidden by magic but in the natural world.” Deven’s tongue throbbed angrily in his mouth.
August frowned. “So Carlos and Bea were trying to find out where he was?”
Deven nodded. “Yes, although why I have no idea.”
“Who is he?”
“He is the Lord of Hurricanes, although Night Axe is what Lord Jaguar always called him. Almost a thousand years ago, the lords banded together in a rare moment of unity to collectively exile Night Axe from Aztaw. Even by their standards he was considered too evil—reckless in his manipulation and excess. I’ve heard of him spoken of only in whispers, but he has many names. He’s the Trickster, the enemy, the Lord of the Smoking Mirror. His house power allows him to change his appearance, even mimic the shape, movement, and sounds of others. Doing so, he brings discord and deception wherever he goes. The lords exiled him for the unadulterated pleasure he gained by continuing a cycle of destruction. He once burned crops to purposefully bring famine to his own vassals. And when Aztaws suffered, he’d use his smoking mirror to reflect their pain and prolong their suffering.
“But he didn’t just hurt Aztaws. Even though all Aztaw lords sacrifice humans for their blood, they treat us respectfully in the underworld until death, because our role is so important. Aztaws truly believe humans will be reincarnated as part of the eternal house powers they die to fuel. But Night Axe showed no such respect. Night Axe entered the human realm and killed en masse, torturing his sacrifices.”
August walked back over to the table and pulled on his coat. “If the other lords feared him so much, why didn’t they kill him?”
“He was too powerful,” Deven said. “He had enchanted armor and he can modify his body, allowing him to hide in plain sight in the guise of animals or other Aztaws. Coupled with his insatiable passion for battle, the other lords lost and were forced to offer gruesome tributes, killing their own people in the dark to be eaten by Night Axe’s soldiers. His soldiers were fierce and he had the tzimimi under his will.”
“So instead of killing him they exiled him here? To Mexico City?”
Deven scowled. “No! That would have defeated their purpose. They needed him stripped of power. And of course, human blood only strengthens the lords. Since they couldn’t defeat him, they worked together to align two tricky calendars and forced Night Axe to the realm of light, hoping he would weaken without darkness and starve without human blood or Aztaw food.”
“Clearly it didn’t work.” August snapped open a bottle of water and took a deep gulp.
“I don’t know how he managed to escape the realm of light, but he’s here.” Deven shook his head. “It shouldn’t be possible. There are no natural calendar alignments between the realm of light and anywhere else. It was the perfect prison.”
August arched an eyebrow. “The Irregulars have a report on the realm of light. From the way it was described it isn’t a prison, rather a place full of peaceful, bodiless beings.”
“No body means no blood. That’s hell for an Aztaw lord.” Deven shook his head.
“What were those veins floating all around him?” August asked.
“I don’t know, but it must have something to do with how engorged he was on human blood,” Deven said, frowning. “None of this makes sense.”
“Night Axe needs sacrifices to fuel his magic, yes?”
“Of course.”
“If he’s trying to keep a low profile here, it would draw attention to him if he murdered dozens of people to extract their blood,” August said.
“You think he’s developed another way of collecting sacrifices?”
August shrugged. “Hell if I know. Can you use your mirror to look into the future and see?”
“I can try, although I doubt it will help.” Deven pulled his obsidian mirror fragment from his pocket. He unwrapped its cloth and dipped a corner of the mirror into the puddled remains of their mixed blood.
Deven spat on the mirror. He didn’t expect to see much. Premonitions were murky at best and subject to change. He’d rarely found anything worth learning when peering into the cloudy uncertainty of the future.
The opaque surface of the mirror shimmered and cleared. He looked at the image. From a pool of darkness glowed the bones of a horde of Aztaw soldiers, running full speed, weapons raised as they charged.
Deven pulled out his knife and shouted to August, “Run!”
Chapter Seven
The air snapped like exploding light bulbs. The corner of the warehouse ripped open to reveal a jagged pool of darkness. At least a dozen Aztaw soldiers poured from the breach between realms, raising dart blowers, swords, and batons spiked with obsidian blades.
Deven caught August’s sleeve and pulled him to the front door. Adrenaline tensed the muscles of his body into flight mode.
August stared at the coal black crack in the air, then seemed to finally comprehend the danger. He pulled his new shard pistol from a holster hidden under his jacket.
“Too many! Run!” Deven urged.
“There are civilians out there!” August cried. He grabbed another object from his pocket, a powdery white ball that resembled something for a bath. He hurled it at the soldiers. It hit the Aztaw in front and a fine white powder burst out explosively, shooting upwards to coat all of them in glittering fragments of light.
“What the hell is that?” Deven cried. He yanked open the door.
“Glamour bomb!” August shouted. Half a dozen poison darts flew past their heads, embedding in the door. “We can’t have them seen here.”
“Go, go!” Deven pushed August out into the street. He broke into a run.
The hot midday sun blinded Deven. He followed August down a narrow side street. Something knocked over behind him and he heard angry yelling in Spanish.
Deven glanced over his shoulder to see what looked like a mob of angry Mexican men charging him.
The masking spell was good—from afar, they appeared rough, unapproachable, but undeniably human. But the masking spell hadn’t applied evenly and at certain angles Deven saw their Aztaw bodies poking through the deception.
In their natural form, the soldiers were slightly larger than humans, with pale skin like rice paper stretched over their glowing bones. Skirts of cotton and feathers covered their waists and armor of finely braided, enchanted husks protected their bony chests like bulletproof vests. The fierce black and yellow markings of the Lord of Hurricane’s house darkened what could be seen of their skulls underneath the human camouflage. One of them had obviously protected his face from the glamour bomb and his lidless eyeballs rolled in his skull sockets.
They moved as if drugged, slower than August and Deven, but their determination to follow didn’t waver.
“We’ve got to get away from all these goddamn people!” August gasped, sprinting from a busy intersection and down another side road.
The Aztaws continued doggedly in pursuit. Glimpses of raised spears and batons shimmered into sight and disappeared as the masking spell failed under the heavy sunlight. The range was too far for Deven’s knives but maybe not too far for his new freeze balls.
But as he pulled one from his pocket, August barked, “No! Too many civilians.” He stopped for a moment, concentrating, as if discerning their location. He pointed to the left. “This way. Hurry!”
Deven did as he was told, racing to keep up. Up ahead a temporary fence cordoned off a vacant construction area. Vaguely he remembered it was a Sunday.
But there was a guard for the site, who yelled and rose as if to physically restrain them from entering the property.
“Corre!” August shouted at the man. The guard picked up his phone. Then his mouth went slack as he saw the dozen angry men chasing Deven and August. The guard dropped the phone and ran toward a trailer on the periphery of the site.
“Where are we?” Deven panted.
“New subway tunnel drilling site. Come on!”
“Good thing I took up running!” Deven shouted to August. To his surprise, August barked a short laugh.
At the poorly barricaded tunnel entrance August paused to pull out his utility knife and quickly selected a tool that came off the knife. He cradled the small metal sliver in his hand.
The masking spell was wearing off the soldiers. They looked more like a furious attacking Aztaw army. But it wasn’t as if Deven didn’t have practice running for his life from Aztaw soldiers. He knew what to expect. Aztaw soldiers were fierce but unimaginative; they hunted in formation and never strayed. Normally, Deven would do anything but flee in a straight path from Aztaws. But he was stuck following August into the tunnel.
They entered the smooth, cylindrical shaft, lined with concrete walls. The ground was roughly hewn rock and soil. Dim emergency lighting lined the ceiling, but as they plunged deeper, shadows overpowered the light. The tunnel entrance gaped like a minstrel’s mouth, a circle of light in swallowing darkness.
Once the soldiers entered the tunnel, August tossed the sliver he held in his hands and it spun like a propeller. August shoved Deven hard against the concrete wall and covered Deven’s body with his own.
An explosion rocked the tunnel. A blast of hot air knocked both of them over. August held him tightly underneath him as another wave of heat threatened to blow them into the darkness. Deven’s nostrils burned with the stench of scorched ozone.
After a moment, August pulled himself off Deven and stood. Deven blinked, feeling stunned. “What was that!”
“Mage grenade.” August stared intently at the tunnel entrance.
Deven stood to watch as well, bracing his hands on his knees, catching his breath.
August leaned against the tunnel wall, breathing hard. “Goddamn Aztaws are scary.”
Deven nodded, remembering the first time he’d met one, age ten; he’d thought his father had dragged him down to the hell his grandmother had always been going on about.
A shuffling sound directed Deven’s attention to the tunnel entrance. Most of the Aztaw soldiers remained motionless on the ground, but several slowly rose to their feet. August looked shocked. “Shit!”
“Can I use these freeze balls now?” Deven asked.
“Yes, yes!”
Deven pulled one of the balls from his pocket. It fit nicely in his palm and was soft and slightly warm.
The soldiers moved toward them, cursing in Aztawi. One’s glowing tibia protruded through his skin. Another had lost the bottom half of his jawbone. Still they charged. Deven threw the ball. As it spun in the air it hissed and popped like fire on dry wood. It launched itself at the nearest soldier and slammed into his body. The Aztaw gasped, freezing solid, falling backward from the force of the impact.
The soldier beside him tossed his spear and barely missed Deven’s neck. He and August ran deeper into the tunnel. He threw the other two freeze balls in his pocket. Each hit their mark, but the three remaining soldiers were close. Deven tossed one of his knives, but it hit the soldier on his armored chest, causing no damage.
August fired his shard pistol. Thin, needle-like slivers of metal sprayed from the smoking barrel. Several of the thin slivers sliced through the soldier’s rib cage and stuck in his bones, but others shot through him and out the other side. The wounds were severe but not debilitating. The soldier’s knife was nearly long enough to be a sword and he raised it to cut August down.
Deven didn’t know if August had experience with hand-to-hand combat. He wasn’t about to find out the hard way. He threw himself between the soldier and August, blocking the blow clumsily with a knife. The blades clashed and his knife clattered to the ground. The soldier swung again. Deven ducked low and threw himself forward into the soldier, knocking him off balance.
He spun and pushed August out of the way as the other soldier swung his baton. The blow landed hard on Deven’s arm, sprawling him onto the tunnel floor. Pain radiated up his side. As the soldier raised his baton again, Deven pulled the last knife from his back pocket and hurled it at the soldier. The blade sank deep into the soldier’s eye and he screeched, dropping the baton as his hands fumbled blindly at his face.
Two remaining soldiers were nearly upon them, and Deven was out of weapons. Without another choice, he yanked the pen from his hair and frantically started scribing glyphs on the ground. Each symbol brightened, then dulled into deep black, sinking to the underworld. He wrote around himself in a circle, the pen growing colder in his hands. It was a dark, purplish red when full of his energy, but almost immediately the color began to drain from it as he wrote the spell, and Deven felt himself weaken as his energy drained out to fuel it. He could almost smell the stench of corn on Lord Jaguar’s breath as he held the weapon between his fingers.
He drew the symbol of a dog eating itself, the pyramid, the black reed. He drew crossbones and a quail feather. He drew the images of the lords who created the house power.
August stood in front of Deven, shard pistol aimed at the soldiers. “What are you doing!” he cried.
Deven finished the last glyph and jumped to his feet, grabbing August and yanking him into the circle as a wall of sparks shot from each glowing glyph and linked to form a fiery curtain around them. The sound of howling wind filled the circle, deafening in volume.
“Is it a shield?” August shouted, covering his ears.
“No! I took us out of time!”
“What?”
The soldiers charged through them into the black emptiness of the unfinished subway tunnel. August spun to watch, gun aimed.
“Don’t shoot!” Deven cried above the wind. “We’re in a time lock. It won’t do anything.”
“They passed right through us!” August shouted.
Deven felt sick with exhaustion. The benefit of being able to fuel his own magic without sacrifices was lessened by the fact that it sapped most of his strength. The sucking wind grew louder. They didn’t have much longer. “We have to get out.”
“They may double back when they reach the end of the tunnel.” August watched for them anxiously.
