Death Masks

Ursiel recovered its feet, tore the saber from its shoulder with a jerk of its jaws, and went after Sanya, but the white-haired old man menaced its flank, forcing it away from the wounded man and, incidentally, from me. For a few seconds, the old man and the demon circled each other. Then the demon lashed out at Shiro, a flurry of slashes with its claws.

The old man ducked them, retreating, his sword flickering and cutting. Twice, he left cuts on the demon’s paws, but though it screamed in rage, it only seemed to grow less intimidated, more angry. The old man’s breathing grew visibly labored.

"Age," Ursiel’s voice purred amidst its attack. "Death comes, old man. Its hand is on your heart now. And your life has been spent in vain."

"Let him go!" spat the old man between breaths.

Ursiel laughed again and the green pair of eyes glowed brighter. Another voice, this one not at all beautiful, the words twisted and snarling, said, "Stupid preacher. Time to die like the Egyptian did."

Shiro’s expression changed, from stolid, controlled ferocity to something much sadder, much more resolved. He faced the demon for a moment, panting, and then nodded. "So be it."

The demon drove forward, and the old man gave ground, slowly forced into a corner of the alley. He seemed to be doing pretty well, until one close swipe of the demon’s claws caught the glowing silver blade near its hilt, and sent it spinning away. The old man gasped and pressed back against the corner, panting, holding his right hand against the left side of his chest.

"So it ends, Knight," purred the smooth, demon-voice of Ursiel.

"Hai," the old man agreed quietly. He looked up above him, at a fire escape platform ten feet off the ground.

A shadowed figure dropped over the rail of the platform, steel rasping as it did. There was a low thrum of power, a flash of silver, and the hiss of a blade cutting the air. The shadowy figure landed in a crouch beside the creature.

The demon Ursiel jerked once, body stiffening. There was a thump.

Then its body toppled slowly over to one side, leaving its monstrous head lying on the alley floor. The light died from its four eyes.

The third Knight rose away from the demon’s corpse. Tall and broad-shouldered, his close-cut hair dark and feathered with silver, Michael Carpenter snapped the blade of his broad sword, Amoracchius, to one side, clearing droplets of blood from it. He put it back into its sheath, staring down at the fallen demon, and shook his head.

Shiro straightened, his breathing quick but controlled, and went to Michael’s side. He gripped the larger man’s shoulder and said, "It had to be done."

Michael nodded. The smaller Knight recovered the second sword, cleared the blade, and returned it to its wooden sheath.

Not far from me, the third Knight, the young Russian, pushed himself up from the ground. One of his arms dangled uselessly, but he offered the other to me. I took his hand and rose on wobbly legs.

"You are well?" he asked, his voice quiet.

"Peachy," I responded, wobbling. He arched an eyebrow at me, then shrugged and went to recover his blade from the alley floor.

The aftereffects of the soulgaze had finally begun to fade, and the simple shock and confusion began to give way to a redundant terror. I hadn’t been careful enough. One of the bad guys had caught me off guard, and without intervention I would have been killed to death. It wouldn’t have been anything quick and painless, either. Without Michael and his two companions, the demon Ursiel would have torn me limb from literal limb, and I wouldn’t have been able to do a damned thing about it.

I had never encountered a psychic presence of such raw magnitude as upon the great stone cliff face. Not up close and personal like that, anyway. The first shot I’d taken at him had surprised and annoyed him, but he had been ready for the second blast and swatted aside my magical fire like an insect. Whatever Ursiel had been, he had been operating on a completely different order of magnitude than a mere punk of a mortal wizard like me. My psychic defenses aren’t bad, but they had been crushed like a beer can under a bulldozer. That, more than anything, scared the snot out of me. I had tried my psychic strength against more than a few bad guys, and I had never felt so badly outclassed. Oh, I knew there were things out there stronger than me, sure.

But none of them had ever jumped me in a dark alley.

I shook, and found a wall to lean on until my head cleared a little, and then walked stiffly over to Michael. Bits of broken glass fell from folds in my duster.

Michael glanced up as I came over to him. "Harry," he said.

"It isn’t that I’m not glad to see you," I said. "But you couldn’t have jumped down and beheaded the monster about two minutes sooner?"

Michael was usually pretty good about taking a joke. This time he didn’t even smile. "No. I’m sorry."

I frowned at him. "How did you find me? How did you know?"

"Good advice."

Which could have been anything from spotting my car nearby to being told by an angelic chorus. The Knights of the Cross always seemed to turn up in bad places when they were badly needed. Sometimes coincidence seemed to go to incredible lengths to see to it that they were in the right place at the right time. I didn’t think I wanted to know. I nodded at the demon’s fallen body and said, "What the hell was that thing?"

"He wasn’t a thing, Harry," Michael said. He continued staring down at the remains of the demon, and just about then they started shimmering. It only took a few seconds for the demon to dissolve into the form of the man I’d seen in the soulgaze-thin, grey-haired, dressed in rags. Except that in the soulgaze, his head hadn’t been lying three feet away like that. I didn’t think a severed head should have held an expression, but it did, one of absolute terror, his mouth locked open in a silent scream. The sigil I’d seen on the cliff face stood out on his forehead like a fresh scab, dark and ugly.

There was a glitter of orange-red light, the sigil vanished, and something clinked on the asphalt. A silver coin a little smaller than a quarter rolled away from the man’s head, bounced against my foot, and then settled onto the ground. A second later, the body let out a hissing, sighing sound, and began to run with streaks of green-black goo. The body just deflated in on itself, noxious fumes and a spreading puddle of disgusting slime the only things remaining.

"That’s it," I said, staring down and trying to keep myself from visibly trembling. "The weirdness has just gone off the end of my meter. I’m going home and going to bed." I bent to recover the coin before the slime engulfed it.

The old man snapped his cane at my wrist, growling, "No."