Vicki Pettersson - Cheat the Grave

His refinement was gone, replaced with an aggressive warrior’s stance, and the illness that forced him into a wheelchair last week, and to carry a cane today, shed like a cast-off blanket. His aura flickered and bulged, and his true visage flashed: the barbed shoulders and spine, the whipping tail, the teeth like daggers and eyes of fire.

“Tell me what you know!” The too-low baritone thrust like shrapnel, pinning me back to the fireplace. The leaded windows shattered behind their heavy draperies. Yet he didn’t whip the door clean off its hinges a second later.

No, that was done by another monster altogether.

Fear hit me like a natural disaster, and the cry that burst from my mouth echoed through the room to thrust the Tulpa’s probing power from my body. Seeing the direction of my petrified stare, the Tulpa whirled just in time to avoid Mackie’s viciously curling blade. Clearly mistaking him for some sort of defender, Mackie ignored me for the moment and faced off against someone who also wanted me dead.

I doubted the Tulpa had ever seen anyone like Sleepy Mack before…I wasn’t even sure he knew who he was. But he bared teeth as sharp as Mackie’s were jagged, and power burst like an A-bomb as he tackled him. Smoke poured from his malleable body, and vibrations whipped at me in waves, not threatening to smash me against the wall-I was already there-but to send me right through it. Mackie soared backward too, body half catching on the door frame before the power flipped him back outside. The Tulpa strode forward, but paused to shoot a warning growl at me.

It cost him. Mackie plowed into his stomach like a line-backer, and the thing that was my father distended to absorb the blow like putty. Mackie’s face twisted and he wailed like a tornado siren before redoubling his efforts. Feinting like a madman, he flicked the blade from one hand to the other before swiping upward in an unlikely blow.

The Tulpa was fast…but he lost two fingers.

I screamed again involuntarily, not out of any sort of empathy, but because a magic that could injure a tulpa was that frightening. The Tulpa’s fingers twitched on the ground, before steaming and dissolving into nothing. All that remained was black blood streaming from his left hand. Then the Tulpa’s own surprised and infuriated cry joined mine.

Mackie leapt away, hunching his back like a startled caveman, his head jerking with quick, audible sniffs. He had no eyeballs, so they couldn’t widen, but his mouth did, and a dried and blackened stump of a tongue licked air. He scented out me, my father, and our shared bloodline. Again, mistaking the Tulpa for my guardian, he lunged.

He struck at the knees this time, and while the Tulpa could morph, there was little he could do about being swept completely off his feet. Mackie literally bowled him over before he pivoted to thrust the Tulpa through the air and onto Xavier’s thick antique desk. In the same motion, he swiped at me. I could only watch as his weapon appeared before my face, the sharp blade cutting air, the last of his soul singing in the iron.

It struck…and an invisible wall sparked with the blow. Mackie screamed as the blade sent sparks scratching over the wall. Lowering his head, he whirled with a snarl. Skamar, framed in the doorway like a diminutive devil, quickly calculated the situation-the Tulpa clamoring from his back on a destroyed desk, Mackie’s knife still singing my death-and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Then she turned away and lunged for the Tulpa.

Mackie’s head rotated on his shoulders and he offered me a skeletal scream. My back again hit the fireplace as he began stabbing at Skamar’s wall, impaling its center over and again, causing sparks to fly and the wall to thrum with pulsing light. In the moments it took his rotted brain to understand this wasn’t the most effective approach, and I realized Skamar had chosen her beloved vendetta against the Tulpa over helping me, I found the levers leading to the secret room and pulled. The secret entry clicked open, but I couldn’t lunge. Mackie was too fast, and wall or not, he’d find his way around it if I forced a chase. For now he struck horizontally, intent on finding the edge. I inched the other way with each stroke, already knowing I wouldn’t be fast enough.

Meanwhile, the tulpas brawled. For the first time I saw Skamar’s full power, the advancements she’d received from having a recorded name in the manuals of Light, all the power that had been thrust into her body when I brought the fourth sign of the Zodiac to life. The individual move ments were too fast and blurred for mortal eyes, but when a punch landed-and she delivered twice as many as the Tulpa-light burst from her body in blinding waves, covering the Tulpa like dust, momentarily freezing his dark movements.

No wonder he was exhausted. It was like pushing the pause button on his ability to morph, and the flashes showed an uncontrolled muddle of body parts disjointed from powerful blows, his unnatural length and limbs and talons torqued into even more sickening poses. She’d blast him with light, and while he was still breaking, strike him again.

But the Tulpa was experienced, crafty, driven, and crazed. What he lacked in power he made up for in fury, reminding me in no little way of Mackie. Snarling and swiping, they punched body-sized holes in the walls before careening across the room. Then they were out the door.

I had no time to rejoice. Mackie’s blade called my name again, found the wall’s end in a squeal of sharp delight, and I bolted. Then, as expected, an explosion of weight hit my back. I cringed reflexively on the ground, but the pinning weight didn’t shift. I couldn’t hear a thing. Lifting my head, I realized there really had been an explosion behind me, and I shifted quickly to climb from under Mackie’s dead weight. Then I turned.

Harlan Tripp stood in the middle of the room, a look of fierce pain stamped beneath his ever-present Stetson. Smoke rose from an archaic conduit, the grocery bag of weapons at his feet. “Go,” he croaked out, voice strained. I frowned even as Mackie stirred at my feet, yet my expression quickly turned to horror as I realized the smoke wasn’t coming from the weapon, but from burning hands as Tripp grasped the barrel tight.

“Let it go!” I yelled, though as Mackie pushed to his hands, I thought, But plug him first!

Tripp shook his head, grimacing. “Can’t.” He blasted Mackie again so he fell flat. More smoke, and Tripp’s hands were suddenly one with the gun, his flesh sliding like molten wax before hardening, the weapon instantly a part of his body. A part, I saw, pulse hammering, that was killing him.

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

“Go, for fuck’s sake!”

I bolted for the shattered windows, leaping over Mackie’s body. I had to salvage what I could of this, which meant protect my own life…yet I skidded to a stop, one hand on the heavy curtain. The binder. It was flung open on the floor from when the Tulpa’s body hit the desk. “Wait!” I yelled, already running back behind the invisible wall, past Mackie, who was stirring once more.

“Hurry!” Tripp didn’t want to fire again. I couldn’t imagine the agony each shot cost him, and I didn’t want to be the cause of any greater pain. Picking up the binder, I folded it tight to my chest and turned…into Mackie.

My eyes widened at his low, whirring growl. This close, I smelled old sweat overlaying decay, and saw every sinew in his muscular arms tense as his hand squeezed his knife. Behind him, Tripp was shaking his weapon ineffectually, gaze whipping to meet mine, helplessness etched on his brow. His skin had melted beneath the trigger. He couldn’t fire another shot.

Mackie leered, poised like a king cobra, and Tripp shot forward. All accomplished warriors have an awareness when someone is behind them, and Mackie was no different. My own warrior’s nature had me sprinting while he turned, but I wasn’t so fast I didn’t see that slim, deadly blade find a home in Tripp’s chest. It pierced the leather vest, sent a black button flying, then found his skin, and his heart. He fell still, eyes going dead while still on his feet.