Nemesis - Legacy Book 5 (Legacy Series) Read online

  The speech stunned me for a second.

  I’d never thought of it that way. Okay, yeah, when I lived with the Vensir on the island I felt sorry for them, but that wasn’t the reason I confronted Leviathan. He was a Sin.

  Not to mention there was this crazy angel that threatened to break down the world.

  When Leviathan’s world collapsed, the Vensir had little choice: stay in rapidly degenerating pocket universe, or come here.

  “I thought I was helping you,” I said.

  “And you have,” he responded. “We owe you a great debt, Erik Ashendale. Both to you and your sister. You have given us a chance at a second life, one free from tyranny.” He spread his arms. “But we are creatures of freedom. We are explorers.”

  I sighed. “I understand.”

  “You do?” Amaymon stood up and stretched. “Cos I sure as shit don’t. Hey, Elf Boy, you got any idea how fucked up that logic is? You wanna explore a world twice as deadly as yours? Be my guest. But you can’t come whining and bitching to us when it comes back to bite you in the ass.” He looked at me. “Greede wasn’t huntin’ them. These idiots practically walked right up to his doorstep.”

  “Transformed Vensir have indeed been taken from us,” Legolas said. “And while I do not understand everything you said, Erik’s Friend, I do believe your sentiment is in line with our own.” He looked me dead in the eyes. “We must go to war.”

  I slapped Amaymon on the head. “Are you happy now?”

  He grinned. “Well, I ain’t sad.”

  Legolas led us to a second workshop, this one piled high with freshly forged weapons. Legolas picked up a silver rod and pressed a rune. The rod extended, forming a spear head on one end. Legolas expertly twirled the weapon, eyeing the spear head with a keen eye.

  “My scouts inform me that all attacks are carried out in a snatch-and-grab fashion,” he said. “There are usually two vehicles, both black and lacking any distinguishing features. Men covered in black fabric and carrying a variety of weapons would rapidly descend from these vehicles and converge on a single Vensir.”

  “Sounds military,” I said.

  “At the helm of each van is a magic practitioner, usually marked with a thick black circle,” he said, before cocking his head. “This is most quizzical. Is the black circle a human rune of sorts?”

  “Yeah,” Amaymon said. “It means asshole.”

  “It’s the mark of a terrorist group my sister and I have been after,” I explained. “We call them the Black Ring Society.”

  “Because we don’t like to stretch our imagination,” Amaymon interjected, while picking up a stout dagger and running his finger along the edge.

  “And have you managed to locate and apprehend this society?” Legolas asked. “I am given to understand both you and your sister are extremely competent at your jobs.”

  Amaymon snickered.

  I shot him a glare before answering Legolas. “Yes and no. We know who the leader is. We know they were responsible for a few bad deeds, including stealing the device that ruptured the dimensional fabric between our two worlds, resulting in your home dimension collapsing on itself.”

  His expression darkened. “Then we have all the more reason to end them.”

  “And I couldn’t agree more,” I said. “But not like this. If you go in guns blazing, they will tear you apart.”

  Legolas set down the spear. “You will have us do nothing?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Or you will die.”

  “And you know this for a fact?”

  I opened my mouth to reply but no sound came out. How do I begin to explain how vastly over his head — or my head for that matter — all of this really was?

  Last time I tried facing off against Alan Greede, I ended up having my ass handed to me. And I wasn’t alone. The fourth most powerful member of the Grigori came along for the ride, and it still made no difference to Greede.

  Brute force was not the way to go.

  Before I could articulate any of that, the armory door burst open and a young Vensir boy stood panting in the doorway.

  “Leader,” he began, wheezing in between every other breath. “Leader, they have come. Our aid has come.”

  Legolas followed him, and Amaymon and I jogged along.

  “Were you expecting reinforcements?” I asked.

  “Yes. The ones your sister promised,” he replied.

  Even from this far I could see the pair of black SUVs pulling up at the edge of the encampment.

  “Gil knows about this?”

  That made Legolas stop. From the edge of my peripheral vision I could see a dozen armed Vensir casually approaching the SUVs, smiling and welcoming the soldiers my sister sent.

  “Of course,” Legolas told me. “Is that not why you are here, to act as her emissary? You are to help us free the captured Vensir, no?”

  Captured Vensir? There was nothing to rescue anymore but black bones strapped to a van.

  My alarm bells went off.

  Two SUVs.

  A clearing full of vulnerable Vensir.

  “Shit!” I pushed past Legolas, startling him, and ran towards the SUVs.

  “Hey!” I screamed. “Get away from those vans. Get away!”

  One or two of the Vensir turned around to look at the madman running towards them, but the rest remained oblivious.

  “Get away! It’s a trap!” I screamed again.

  This time they all backed away but it was too late.

  The SUVs doors burst open. Men dressed in black military outfits, carrying semi-automatics streamed out. A single man wearing a sleeveless burgundy robe walked out. The fat cutlass sabre at his hip swung to and fro. His face was covered in piercings and a black ring tattoo was clearly visible on his neck.

  He grinned as he caught my eye and gave out an order.

  “Fire!”

  Chapter 6

  “Amaymon! Protect the Vensir!”

  The demon disappeared from my side, dashing forwards at inhuman speeds. The ground rumbled lightly — a fence of jagged rock divided the rushing Vensir from the soldiers opening.

  The Black Ring guy drew his cutlass, a thick piece of metal sliced off at the tip making it impossible to stab with. I felt a brief surge of magic before my breath left me. He swung the weapon in the air and Amaymon’s rock formation was sliced in half, allowing the soldiers to vault over it.

  He tried swinging his sword again but I rushed in. Djinn clanged against the cutlass. He snarled at me, his piercings making him look an ornamental figure. It was way too disturbing.

  So I head-butted him.

  “Lemme guess,” I said, watching him hold his face in agony, “you’re the villain of the week.”

  “Motherfucker,” he moaned through his hands. When he stood back up, he spat something gold and I saw part of his lip split cleanly all the way through.

  “Dude,” I said. “That’s just nasty.”

  He swung his sword again. Whatever magic he was using drew on the air and atmosphere. A razor thin beam sliced through my right hand, literally disarming me. I screamed in pain, clutching my stump. Metal Face kicked me in the stomach, before kicking away Djinn and my dismembered hand away from my reach.

  “You shall not interfere with our plunder, asshole,” he said.

  I looked around.

  Those Vensir who could hold their own wielded a mixture of silver spears and curved swords. A few shot arrows. None were effective against assault rifles that could spit out thirty bullets in half as many seconds.

  Amaymon ripped through the human ranks with ease, but again, I was limiting his power. Gil’s protective magic was delicate, and if he cut loose she would have to redo them — a process that had taken her weeks the first time round, leaving the colony exposed for that length of time.

  We would have won the battle but ultimately lost the war.

  Still, with his combination of superhuman strength and speed, vicious claws, and a blood thirst conceived since before the Earth took
its first rotation, Amaymon wasn’t having much trouble.

  He saw me on the ground.

  “You got this?” he yelled.

  “I got this.”

  Metal Face kicked me again. “The fuck are you talkin’ about?”

  He whipped his sword around, drawing magic, and shot another beam of whatever magic he was using at Amaymon.

  The blast was thin and made a low whooshing sound. It cut cleanly through a pair of soldiers that were busy emptying their guns on my familiar, and bifurcated the rock construct that Amaymon erected in defense. The magic caught him in the chest, shredding his clothes, but otherwise leaving him unharmed.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” he yelled.

  I wasn’t sure whom he was mad at, the Black Ring guy for cutting him, or me for not having taken him out by now.

  I never got to find out — more soldiers converged upon him, providing him a fresh target for his rage. Amaymon punched a guy clean through the chest, tearing a cavity. His hand poked from the guy’s other side and he had trouble pulling it out. Amaymon grinned and proceeded to use the guy as a human shield until his own comrades ripped through enough flesh for him to take his hand out. Then he resumed his punching, kicking, and, at one point, even pulling a guy’s spine clean out.

  A scream.

  Everyone’s attention was momentarily on the group of Vensir that Legolas was yelling at. I had no idea what they were saying since I don’t speak Alternate Dimension Elf, but the sentiment was something along the line of “No, no, no. Don’t do it. No!”

  Because the handful of Vensir ignored him and began growing.

  Have you ever seen that shitty Batman movie, the one with the nipples on the costume, where the crazy scientist guy injects Bane with a serum and the skinny guy suddenly starts swelling up? I was witnessing that but with elves.

  The Vensir grew and grew until they reached a muscle mass that would have made prospective bodybuilders give up on their achievements. Black bones jutted from their extremities; elbows, knees, a few along the spine. Each Vensir had a different amount. One or two stopped at just a handful. One of them sprouted black bones from his face, little spikes that came out of his cheekbones and eyebrows. That one was freaky.

  They walked like gorillas, hunched over on their knuckles, with upper bodies somewhat larger than the lower half. Don’t be fooled by that — I’ve seen how far those Vensir can leap, or how fast they chased anything that pissed them off.

  Shaggy fur, ranging from iridescent blonde to dark muddy brown, covered their bodies in patchworks, replacing the torn garments that now lay in tatters on the ground. Curved claws like fish hooks gleamed obsidian under the sun, matching the dirty white sabre teeth that jutted from their lips.

  The one with the most horns roared, eliciting a similar response from the others. This wasn’t guttural and primal thought. A word was being yelled, maybe the Vensir version of “For Glory!” or something.

  Like I said, I don’t speak Vensir.

  What I did know is that they collectively charged at the soldiers, barreling into them like bowling balls to a set of pins. Bullets pierced their flesh, rendering muscle and sinew, but those bones made it unlikely the Vensir would be stopped by anything less than a bazooka.

  “Capture them,” yelled the Black Ring guy.

  Sure enough, the soldiers began assembling nonlethal weapons to their weapons, while others unhinged cattle prods and stun batons from their person. One by one they began slowing the enraged Vensir down, even managing to render one unconscious.

  “Amaymon, protect the Vensir,” I yelled.

  “On it, boss.”

  The demon leapt over the unconscious Vensir, just as a trio of soldiers were trying to pile it into their van.

  “Sorry boys,” he said. “No delivery for you.” He paused. “No, wait, I think I have a better one. Something about a package.”

  One of the soldiers fired at him. Amaymon crushed the barrel of his M16, before punching the man so hard his face caved in. He snapped his fingers. The ground melted beneath the other soldier’s feet, pulling them under until only their heads remained above ground. Amaymon grabbed one of their assault rifles and whacked them over the head swinging the weapon from the barrel like a baseball bat.

  The Black Ring guy snarled and collected magic. I scythed his legs from under him, sending the razor sharp blast of magic up in the air instead. I rolled back up and punched the guy in the face.

  With my fully regenerated right hand.

  He collapsed on the ground, his eyes wide open as he looked at my hand.

  “I know,” I said. I found Djinn, pried off the fingers of my previous hand, and hefted the weapon with my regenerated limb. A small blast of magic disintegrated the dead hand — the last thing I needed was my body parts lying around the battlefield. There are a few thousand spells that required DNA and a severed hand would be a godsend to those freaks.

  I grinned at the guy, twirling Djinn. “You probably should have done your research. Seriously, how am I not on the Black Ring Society billboard by now?”

  I had more quips but something fell on my head. Little droplets of rainwater showered me and the Black Ring guy. I looked up. The skies were clear.

  It took my brain a while to put two and two together.

  “A water jet?” I asked incredulously. He glared at me. “That’s your magic? That’s what you’re bringing to the table? A freakin’ water jet?”

  “Cut your hand off, didn’t it?” he countered.

  “Touché,” I said. “And what’s with the cutlass and the facial jewelry?” I raised my eyebrows and sighed. “You’re going with the pirate theme, aren’t you? That’s why you said plunder earlier. I gotta face off a freakin’ pirate.”

  “Shut the fuck up!”

  I understood how his magic worked now. I knew he was drawing moisture from the air, compressing it through the sword’s edge and shooting it out at high speeds. It was ingenuous in its simplicity.

  It did, however, have one giant weakness.

  I raised Djinn and channeled my own magic. Blue light exploded from the tip. Steam hissed from the azure blade.

  The Black Ring guy swung his weapon…

  And nothing happened.

  Suddenly, he collapsed on the ground, wheezing for breath. “Wh-what?” he began.

  “You need moisture from the air to use your magic,” I explained. “That’s why right before you used yours, I used mine. A basic heat transference spell. No moisture for you to draw on. But an idiot like you probably didn’t learn proper control. You should have released your spell; instead you probably pressed harder, forcing your magic to draw from the nearest source of water: you.” I grinned and lowered a steaming Djinn. “You dehydrated yourself at a super fast rate, dumbass.”

  I pointed my weapon at the discarded cutlass. “That’s an interesting choice for a weapon. You use it for visualization, don’t you? Cos judging by your stance and the way you swing that thing around, you’d be better off with a tire iron.” My magic flowed into Djinn’s blade, reforming it. “I wonder just how tough you’d be without it.”

  Djinn’s blade elongated and speared into the cutlass’ blade, snapping it in half.

  Seeing that, the Black Ring pirate wannabe began sobbing. I sighed, and not for the first time wondered if either these guys were hiding their real powerhouses, or if maybe me, my sister, and the whole lot of us were really that dumb to still be chasing after these idiots.

  “Right then,” I said. “Amaymon-”

  A black figure smashed into a tree trunk next to me. Amaymon lay mangled at the base before climbing out of the crater he had made.

  “They don’t want my help,” he said, rolling his shoulders. “Damn. Those Vensir guys are tough.”

  But not tough enough.

  The soldiers had managed to load up two of them, and only one of the original five Vensir was still in any fighting condition.

  I charged forwards, unleashing a streak of ene
rgy that threw off a team of soldiers.

  “The Warlock,” I heard them say. “Retreat.”

  “Like hell,” I yelled, throwing another blast at them.

  A jet of water deflected my magic. The Black Ring guy lay on the ground with his hand outstretched, grinning through his bloodied lip and bejeweled face.

  Amaymon stepped on his hand, crushing it.

  I turned back to the vans but it was too late. Both of them sped off, while from the back, a couple soldiers tossed smoke grenades. The explosion of sound and sudden burst of light and smoke disoriented me, and by the time I recovered, there was nothing except a canopy of trees and a trail of skid marks.

  “Fuck.”

  I turned around, ignoring the horrified and injured Vensir. They could take care of themselves, having incredible healing powers. I saw Legolas aiding a couple from my peripheral vision and kept walking.

  I grabbed the Black Ring guy and slammed him against a tree.

  “Where did they take them?” I roared.

  Black Ring guy spat blood and saliva at my face. He grinned. I punched him in the stomach, folding him over.

  Amaymon tapped me on the shoulder. “Let me have a go,” he said.

  The demon grabbed the guy by the shoulder and stood him up. Then he hooked one clawed finger into a lip ring and pulled. Black Ring guy screamed.

  “You may wanna answer him,” Amaymon said. “Because, you see, he’s the only one who can stop me. Now, me, I don’t give a shit one way or the other. I just enjoy inflicting pain.”

  To prove his point, he grabbed an eyebrow stud and ripped it off.

  “Tell ‘im what he wants to know and he’ll stop me,” Amaymon said.

  Black Ring guy began sobbing again. “I can’t,” he said. “Please. They’ll kill me. See this tattoo.” He pointed at the thick black ring tattoo on his neck.

  “Hard not to,” I said.