Ghosts of Albion: Accursed (Ghosts of Albion #1)

Ghosts of Albion: Accursed (Ghosts of Albion #1) Page 21

"For Albion!"

Tamara let loose that rallying cry as she raced along the base of the northern wall of Buckingham Palace and rounded the corner that brought her to the front. Her hands churned with the golden light of her magic, spheres of power that rippled around her fists and made her skin prickle with pleasure and heat. Nigel was on her left and John Haversham on her right. The vampire seemed to have recovered entirely from his earlier encounter with Dunstan. The fog had thinned a bit, some of it burning off at contact with her magic, and with the arrival of the ghosts.

Above her, Bodicea and Horatio took up the cry. Regal and commanding, they led a charge of spirits too numerous to count. The specters flitted through the fog above, and others sped along the ground nearby, mere silhouettes in the night and the mist. Tamara heard the hissing of Kali's Children out there in the dark, but the ghosts made short work of them.

As she came around to the front of the palace, she nearly faltered. There were misshapen, reptilian corpses littering the ground, with Rakshasa scattered among them. The mist rolled slowly over the bodies, filling every crevice, as though it truly were a death shroud.

But what almost brought her to a halt was the sheer number of horrors that still loped and staggered toward the palace gates. Even with the street and the park beyond draped in fog, she made out at least half a dozen Rakshasa and forty or fifty of the Children of Kali, and she was not yet close enough to see the gates through the veil of mist. Dark figures moved all through the gray, filthy blanket that lay over the city. Far, far more than Tamara had ever imagined.

"So many of them," she said as she began to run again.

"Do not worry," Nigel growled in the dark beside her. "Our allies are legion!"

Heartened by the strength of his voice, she nodded and ran on. Above her she heard Bodicea and Nelson shouting orders, and a moment later the ghosts who had dedicated themselves to Albion's cause darted ahead, rippling the fog as they descended upon the poor, accursed souls Priya Gupta had twisted to her own ends. The shouts of angry phantoms and the shrieking of hideous men filled the air.

"William!" Tamara shouted. "Farris!"

Yet there was no reply from within the fog. They were supposed to have been guarding the front of the palace, but thus far she had seen only monsters. Still they had not reached the gates. A tremor of dread passed through her.

A hiss filled the air and John Haversham grabbed her arm. Tamara let him pull her to a stop even as Nigel also halted. Just ahead, several of the Children of Kali were crawling up the outside of the palace wall, their talons dug into stone.

"Oh, I don't think so." Tamara grunted, and she raised both hands. She muttered a single word, burning two of the vermin off the wall with an arc of flame that erupted from her palms.

A new sound reached her, of something lumbering across the ground, and she turned just in time to see a pair of Rakshasa rushing toward her through the gloom. John began to work a spell, his fingers contorted, muttering in German as he weaved something out of the energy that already existed in the air. Being an ordinary spellcaster, he had no innate magic.

Nevertheless, a streak of silver light leaped from the ground right in front of him and speared the Rakshasa's chest, impaling the thing. It let out a roar of fury that disintegrated into that high, barking, hyena laugh. For a moment it was lifted off the ground on the spike of magic that had impaled it, and then it roared again and shook itself free, dropping to the ground in a crouch.

Its eyes gleamed that sickly, filthy yellow as it glared up at John and then lunged for him.

Tamara was about to intervene when Nigel leaped past her and threw himself directly at the demon, driving it back and onto the ground, where he began to scuffle with it. Ghosts swept down from the shroud of fog and began to tear at the other Rakshasa. Two of them grabbed hold of the powerful beast and a third slashed a spectral dagger across its eyes, blinding the demon. Then they began to tear it apart.

"Well done!" Tamara shouted, spinning to peer at the palace wall again, where several of the accursed men were still climbing. The tide had most certainly turned. The ghosts would swarm the demons and overwhelm them. But it would be up to her to make certain that none of the monsters got inside the palace before it was all over. It only required one for their mission to end in failure.

Even as she looked up, however, she saw a ghost sweep down out of the fog, laughing perversely. It was Byron, in that foppish velvet shirt of his. He seemed to be having a sadistically wonderful time as he grabbed hold of one of Kali's Children and tore the horror right off the wall, then began to fly higher. The spectral poet rose up and up and up, and then he simply dropped the monster. It fell like a stone, vanishing and reappearing in the roiling fog, until it struck the street with a wet crack and lay still.

"Right, then. Things are well in hand. Let's get to the gates and find William and Farris."

"Lead on," John replied.

Together they ran alongside the wall. They had gone no more than a dozen feet when the muffled boom of a gunshot filled the night. Tamara quickened her pace and saw several dark shapes resolving themselves in the billowing gray ahead. Her heart thundered in her chest and she held her breath as she forged on.

The wind gusted, parting curtains of fog ahead, and she saw the gates of the palace.

Farris stood before the gates, alone, one of those pepperbox guns clutched in his left hand and his saber in the other. Dark silhouettes emerged from the mist as Children of Kali. One of them wore the clothes of a nobleman; two others were dressed in rough, dirty fabric. Here there were no classes, no caste system. The very wealthy and the very poor had met the same horrid fate.

As Tamara ran toward Farris, summoning the magic that crackled around her fists, that courageous man raised his pepperbox and fired at the nearest creature, the bullet obliterating the monster's face and bursting out through the back of its skull. He swung the thick, revolving barrel toward the next and pulled the trigger, but it fell on an empty chamber.

Farris tossed the useless weapon aside and changed his stance, holding his saber at the ready and preparing for an onslaught.

"Take heart, my friend!" Tamara called to him. "You are not alone!"

She paused to steady herself, carved through the air with contorted fingers, and magic coursed through her body and burst from her fingertips. The ground rumbled beneath her feet and she could feel the connection between herself and the earth, then, through the spell she had cast. It felt as though the land were an extension of her being, her muscle and bone.

The street buckled and ruptured as enormous tree roots thrust from the soil of Albion and wrapped themselves around the accursed monstrosities that were lunging at Farris. The roots twined about their limbs and bodies, cracking bone and pulping flesh as the creatures were pulled down into the earth, dragged under the street. An arm was sheared off one of them before it disappeared into the ground, and then they were gone.

Farris turned and gaped at her, awe and perhaps a bit of fear there in his gaze. "Mistress Tamara, that was . . . it was simply . . ."

Then his eyes went wide.

"Watch yourself!" he cried as he ran toward her with his saber held high.

Tamara turned to see that she had nearly forgotten John Haversham, some yards back. And in that moment of her forgetfulness, something terrible had happened.

For John had fallen to his knees in the street and was staring at her with forlorn eyes that were growing darker by the moment. The fog swirled around him, but it was plain to see that his flesh had begun to take on a greenish-yellow hue, as though his entire body were bruised. His face was adopting the rough texture of scales.

"Oh, John, no!" she cried, and she raced back toward him.

Farris shouted at her to stop, to stay back, but she could not. This man had come to her and given her the gift of truth, had apologized for embarrassing her, had hinted at feelings far deeper than what he had previously allowed. He was an ally and a friend, and within her heart and the yearning center of her, she knew he might one day be something more. Or he might have been, for the memory of Frederick Martin's transformation was still fresh in her mind and she recalled the revulsion with which she had recoiled at his filthy touch.

"No," she whispered into the fog.

But she stopped a few feet away, knowing it would be foolish to get too close. The curse was taking him over. Soon he would be one of Priya's creatures, if he was not already.

"John, how?" she asked.

The grief in his eyes tore at her heart. "I . . . I was a clumsy thief," he stammered. "One of the idols . . . my protection . . . faltered and . . ."

He shuddered and groaned with the pain of transformation. Tamara racked her brain. There must be some way to help him, she thought. Some way to stop the curse. But she knew that once the transformation was complete, his humanity would be gone. I need time to research, time to . . .

There was only one way. She would have to somehow arrest the process, freeze John in the moment to buy the time that she needed.

Before she could act, however, her brother's voice cut through the fog, echoing all around her. He was calling her name.

Tamara spun, searching for William, but through the fog and the darkness she could not find him. There was chaos all around the front of the palace. Byron and other ghosts were plucking Kali's Children from the walls. With an unsettling savagery, Bodicea was hacking a Rakshasa to pieces in front of the palace gates with her spectral sword. Tamara could hear Nelson somewhere above her, in the shrouded sky, shouting commands as though he were back on the deck of the Agamemnon. And Farris was running toward her, both guns discarded and his saber raised. He had seemed bent upon the murder of John Haversham a moment ago, but he had heard William's voice, as well, for now he slowed and began to search the night for her brother.

Once again, she heard William call her name. This time, though, it was more distinct. She peered to the east, where just the edge of St. James's Park was visible through the fog, and there among a group of Kali's Children, she saw him.

Priya Gupta was wrapped around William from behind, riding him like a child. Her legs twined around his waist, and her left arm was hooked over his shoulder. The upstart, the cruel witch, held a gleaming silver dagger against his throat. The streamers of pure crimson magic she had manifested earlier now seemed to stream from her sides, though the way she was pressed against William it was difficult to know for certain. They caressed him, those razor-sharp ribbons, and where they touched him he was cut. His clothes were dark, but blood streaked his white shirt, and Tamara thought she could smell the copper tang of it on the air.

"Oh, no," Farris said beside her in a low voice.

Tamara's nostrils flared and her jaw clenched. She took two steps toward the park.

"Leave him be, Priya. You've no choice here. We've already won, don't you see? The ghosts of Albion are here, and no matter how many of Kali's Children serve you, or how many Rakshasa you may summon, the ghosts will be here. And so will the Protectors. If there were only one of us, perhaps you might still be victorious. But if you slay my brother you shall still have me to reckon with. You have the advantage over him, but I swear on the souls of my ancestors and of Albion itself that you shall not be so fortunate with me. It ends here and now.

"His death will avail you nothing."

Her words resounded in the fog, and Tamara held her breath, praying that the madwoman would not see how it crushed her inside to see William so helpless. She set her chin high and tried to keep emotion from her eyes, to be cold.

The Indian girl's dark eyes were bright with mischief. She pricked William's throat with that ceremonial dagger and laughed.

"Kali whispers in my head, English whore! The goddess guides me and shows me the truth of your words. Your brother is worthless to me dead. I need his blood, you see. There is a ritual to be performed here tonight. My country has been trammeled upon by the boot of British imperial ambition for the last time. Your people have been the bane of India, a curse upon the land. Now that shall be reversed. Bharath will subsume Albion and by the will of the goddess, I shall rule the two nations as one.

"The blood of the Protector of Albion will be the ultimate sacrifice. The ritual requires the death of your queen and the blood of the Protector . . . but not his death. Make no mistake, however, I will kill him, unless you withdraw your forces, living and dead. If you comply, I shall still shed his blood, but I will spare his life.

"Choose."

Tamara could breathe only in shallow gasps. Her throat was dry and she shook her head as though she could not grasp the things that Priya had said. But she understood very well. The fog continued to swirl around her, rolling across the street that separated her from the sorceress and her brother. William's eyes were wide, but there was a grim determination to his features.

"Tam-" he began.

"Hush, now, William," Priya sneered, pricking his throat again with that blade. "It's in your sister's hands."

The battle continued around them; the monstrous sounds of the horrors that served the sorceress filled the night air. Yet their death cries were louder, as Nigel and the ghosts destroyed them one by one. Where was the rightful Protector of Bharath, she wanted to know. Where was Tipu Gupta? Had his daughter already murdered him?

And John . . . Lord, she had nearly forgotten John. She spared a quick glance over her left shoulder. The diamond pattern some of the others had shown, like the back of certain snakes, ran down the center of his forehead, but he was not entirely changed. Not yet. His eyes were wide and pleading even as they darkened further. If he made a move toward her, Farris would surely behead him.

"Help me," he rasped, fingers lengthening into claws as he tore at his clothes, sprawled there on his knees in the road.

Tamara could not look at him. She did not trust Priya to spare William's life even if she did as the girl asked. Yet even if she had . . . the queen? All of Albion sacrificed simply to save her brother?

She gazed at William now, studied his eyes as though somehow in their depths she could find the solution.

"Will?" she whispered.

Priya glared at her, raven hair blowing in the wind, mad eyes gleaming, and sneered.

"Choose."

TIPU GUPTA WRAPPED the fog around himself as though it were a cloak. It had been conjured to hide the horrors wrought by his daughter, so that the people of London and the soldiers in service to the queen would not realize what was happening until it was too late. Yet now he turned the fog to his own purpose.

The old man had been a master of the mystic arts long before he had been chosen as Protector of Bharath. The power of Bharath, the innate magic of his homeland, was an extraordinary weapon, but he was a skilled spellcaster even without it.

He held his staff in his right hand and used it to steady himself as he moved through the night and the fog, working his way from the gates of the palace and around behind Priya. The moment he had seen her attacking William, the old man had withdrawn from the chaotic battle. One malformed creature more or less would not end Priya's dark obsessions, her twisted ambitions. The dark goddess who whispered in her mind had too great a hold on her for a physical war to overcome.

There was only one way to end this. He had to take back what his daughter had stolen.

So even as Priya wrapped herself around William Swift and pressed that ceremonial dagger to his throat, Tipu moved through the fog as though he were invisible. His staff clacked on the street and he could not walk very quickly, but he passed unnoticed within inches of several Children of Kali, and only a few yards from a pair of Rakshasa. The monsters ought to have been able to smell him, but he had erased himself from the world, hidden within that fog. It was magic he had learned forty-seven years earlier, and that sorcerous stealth had saved his life many times.

The spring night was cold, and yet there was a clammy warmth to the fog that sickened him. He shuddered at the way it slid over his skin. Tipu entered the park and began to work his way around behind his daughter. Images filled his mind of Priya as a child. Even as an infant her eyes were so dark and her skin so rich that she seemed somehow unreal, like a painting of a baby girl, idealized to perfection. As a toddler her laughter had been infectious, the thought of her enough to bring light to his heart even in the darkest of times. In the war against the darkness, there had been times when another man would have lost all hope, but he had held the image of her so close inside that Hell itself could not have wrung the last drop of hope from him.

And when, as a young girl, she had discovered his library and lost herself in the study of magic, trying so hard to make him proud of her, Tipu Gupta had known such contentment as human beings were rarely allowed.

How has it come to this? he thought, nearly faltering in both step and spell.

More than ever, he felt his age. His muscles were slack and his bones ached, joints popping and grinding against one another. The spirit of Bharath, the magic that was the gift of the Protector, had given him strength and filled all the empty places, summoned from within him a vitality unusual for a man of his years. Now that had been drained from him, along with so much of the magic of Bharath.

He was still the Protector-Priya had stolen power from him, but not his duty or the favor of his homeland. Yet he felt frail and alone.

A grimace touched his lips. You do not feel frail and alone, Tipu. You simply are.

A Rakshasa loomed out of the fog to his left. The thing paused a moment, seeming to sense him. Its filthy yellow eyes narrowed and it sniffed the air, growling low and ragged in its throat. The old man ignored it. The demon could not see him, even if it sensed the strange ripple in reality that was made by his passing.

Tipu focused on the street ahead. Through the churning fog he could make out parts of the palace wall and the upper portion of the gates. The ghosts were a remarkable sight, darting across the ground and through the air, translucent shades of muted color, spectral figures barely glimpsed until they paused to attack one of the Children of Kali or a Rakshasa.

And there, right in front of him, was his daughter.

The old man stood perhaps fifteen feet behind Priya. She still rode William Swift's back, and the image cut him deeply, so reminiscent of the way he had carried her on his own back when she was a small girl. But Priya was not playing with William. If anything remained of his daughter's mind, it was filled with malevolence. Tendrils of crimson magic stretched from her sides and whipped at the air, gently brushing against the young man, cutting his clothing and the skin beneath.

She would not kill him that way, though. No, Priya wanted him alive for her precious ritual.

"Choose!" she snapped at Tamara, who stood on the other side of the street with her man Farris. Another man sprawled beside her on the ground, in the midst of the transformation set upon him by Kali's Curse.

The memories of his Priya, his precious child, clamored to press themselves into his mind now, as if they had form and conscience and knew what he was about to do. He forced them away. Fate had chosen their path long ago, and there was no way to divert from it now.

"For Bharath," he whispered, even his words hidden in the fog-cloak he had drawn about himself.

Tipu Gupta had inherited the duty and power of the Protector of Bharath. The magic was his, connected to him just as surely as he was connected to the soul of his homeland, a circuit that could not be broken. Priya and whatever demonic sponsor influenced her had leached some of that power and used it to summon horrors from the darkest realms, to spread a plague of horrors . . . but if he could catch her unaware, he might still be able to take it back.

He took a step nearer. Clutching his staff in his right hand he raised the left and began to sketch circles in the air with his fingers.

The fog began to swirl and quickly took the shape of a tiny tornado, a spinning white funnel that extended from Tipu Gupta out toward his daughter. When his spell touched the magic that surrounded her, the old man flinched at the contact, a shock going through him. Pain clutched his chest, but he steadied his breathing and began to draw back the magic she had stolen from him.

So intent was she that she did not see what was happening. The air around Priya sparkled with red, as though a spray of blood drifted on the breeze. Those red flecks began to wink out, one by one, changing color from crimson to silver as they eddied in the air and were quickly drawn into the tube of fog he had created. The old man chanted silently to Shiva, keeping his pulse steady, shoring up the spell that kept him hidden.

He could hear her screaming at Tamara Swift, but had no idea what the two women were saying to each other. The hand holding the dagger to William's throat tensed, muscles in her arm tightening, and the old man hesitated.

The voice that came out of Priya's mouth did not belong to his daughter. It was a shrill, knife-edged sound, words uttered in his native tongue with an undertone like the distant shriek of the damned.

"What do you think you're doing, old fool?"

Tipu held his breath, but he did not break off his silent attack. The demon-goddess within Priya had sensed him, so he could not stop now. He grunted with the effort, and fresh pain spiked through his chest and along his arms as he siphoned the stolen magic from her.

When Priya cried out in pain, it was in her own voice. Her father thought himself the cause of her suffering, but then he heard the crack of bone, and a moist, tearing noise.

The ribbons of magical energy that she had manifested disappeared even as a second set of arms burst from her sides just inches below those she had been born with. They were dusky gray, the color of thunderclouds and the ash from a funeral pyre. Priya screamed and her voice was in harmony with another . . . a second voice from a second mouth, as the back of her skull warped and her head thrashed and her hair was tossed aside to reveal the source.

A face was emerging there, with blazing eyes and terrible fangs, blood streaming from the corners of that mouth.

"What in Heaven's name-" William Swift began to shout, whatever magic had kept him silent now broken.

Then he was thrown to the ground.

Priya leaped off him, dropping into a crouch, but did not turn to face her father. Instead her entire body inverted. Arms and legs reversed and her sari tore away to show the darkening of her flesh from copper to coal gray, that hideous shade of death. Her breasts were large and tipped with ebon black, and now in addition to that ritual dagger, she bore items in each of her hands, as if they had grown from her very flesh. A cleaver, a shield, and a bowl fashioned from a human skull and filled with fresh blood.

On her four arms were circlets fashioned from human bones. Her tongue lolled lasciviously from her mouth. As he watched in awe, her skin shifted from ash to indigo, the deep blue of evening, and a third eye opened in the center of her forehead.

Of his daughter, there was no sign. Only the goddess, this thing that had corrupted her.

"You are not Kali. The goddess is cruel, but not evil. What are you?" he demanded.

The demon brought her cleaver down and cut away his siphoning magic as if it were a limb. The funnel dissipated, and he felt a tug in his heart as though she had set a hook there.

"Dakshina Kurukulla, two faces of the goddess in one . . . and soon greater than Kali herself!" the thing hissed, black tongue spattering blood from her lips with every word. "With the magic of the Protector in this body, this frail human girl flesh, I shall become Bharath's soul myself."

Tipu Gupta sneered now. Full of sorrow and rage and love, he raised his staff and summoned that same siphoning magic. Even as he did, he sent a tiny spell along the length of the wood-and its tip sharpened.

The old man stepped forward suddenly and ran the goddess through with his staff. Her expression became one of surprise, then pain. He shuddered where he stood, rocked by the power of the demon-goddess and by the return of his own energies. The magic of Bharath had been siphoned from him, and now he stole it back. It raced up the staff and poured into him, his muscles painfully rigid as it filled up those hollow places inside him once more.

"I am the Protector of Bharath, deceitful godling! Hear me, Kurukulla, the power is rightfully mine, and I shall-"

Suddenly he stopped, as he looked upon the creature that had been his daughter. Her red, rolling eyes cleared, and for just a moment it was Priya looking out at him from that monstrous face.

"Father?"

Once more he remembered the smile and grace of the little girl she had once been.

Then the four arms of the demon-goddess were in motion. The dagger punched through the side of his neck. Tendons split and veins burst, but it was merely to hold him in place while Kurukulla brought the cleaver down upon his skull.

TAMARA SAW PRIYA release William and hope sparked within her. Then she saw him begin to rise, pushing himself up on his hands and knees. She called his name and he looked up. He was obviously weak, and had been injured, but he gave her a small wave to indicate that he would be all right. Relief flooded her, but then she forced herself to focus. William would live.

That knowledge left her free to see to John Haversham, whose fate seemed far less certain. He had already risen to his feet, and there was little trace of the human left in his face. His flesh was patterned with rough scales and tinted green and yellow, and his fingers had curved into wicked talons.

Yet he was resisting. She saw it in his eyes and the way he held back. His every motion was a struggle, a jerking, staggering progression as the human in him fought the Curse of Kali, laboring against the metamorphosis and the monstrousness of Priya's magic.

"If you cannot . . . help me . . . ," he said, gazing at her with eyes that seemed lost, as though he peered at her from a cage in Hell, "then you . . . must . . . kill me."

Farris was beside her, then, black bile and blood on his clothes from the creatures he had already slain. He raised his saber and started for John.

"Do as he says, miss! You've no choice. The evil's in him already. He'll have your heart out in a moment."

The stout, courageous man swung the blade in an arc and it whickered toward John's neck.

"No!" she cried, and already her hands were moving, her fingers twisting. There was no spell that she had studied that would accomplish her intent, but she was the Protector of Albion. She had magic in her veins, in her flesh, and now she collided several spells into one and felt the power rush up from the fiery core of her.

"Claustrum articulus!"

The fog around Farris and John evaporated, and the air grew still, trapping them both, frozen in that very moment. Frozen, until Tamara could figure out what to do with them.

Then she heard a terrible cry and Tipu Gupta began to shout. She spun and watched in horror as Priya's body bucked and her flesh shifted and the god pushed out from within her.

Tamara had no words.

HIS THROAT STUNG with tiny wounds and was warm with the trickle of his own blood, his body covered with long, searing cuts. William forced himself to stand.

His stomach roiled with nausea from the way Priya had violated him, binding him with magic, working him like some marionette, trying to force his sister to sacrifice the queen-Hell, all of Britain-just to spare his life.

"Fucking cow!" he screamed as he staggered toward her, tapping the magic within him again. He could feel the soul of Albion. A moment ago it had been dormant, but now it roared through him with such force that his entire body shook. His eyes burned and he could feel pressure coming from them, could see arcs of golden lightning sparking from them. His hands contorted and he began to summon all the destructive magic he could recall into one devastating spell.

So blinded was he with pain and rage and the surge of magic within him that he did not notice when Priya began to change. Now, as he turned to attack her, he saw what she had become, the hideous, blue-skinned demon-goddess. A belt of human skulls hung around her waist and her sari was in tatters, revealing naked flesh inscribed with whorls and sigils that might have been some ancient language.

Before he could utter a word of incantation, the goddess roared in pain and a wooden spear burst from her back, bright lights of crimson and silver dancing upon its tip. William hesitated. The fog coalesced around him and he took a step closer, trying to discover what was happening.

He saw Tipu Gupta, realized that the old man had run the demon-goddess through with his walking stick, and that he was draining magic from her, somehow. The Protector of Bharath seemed reinvigorated, as though he were growing younger before William's eyes. He shouted in triumph and sneered at the goddess, whom he called Kurukulla.

And then she killed him. Plunging the dagger into the side of his neck, she hacked his face in two with an enormous gore-stained cleaver. He fell to the ground, hands still clasped around his staff, which slid wetly from her wound.

William screamed in horror. This was not how it was supposed to end. Kurukulla turned, then, her deep blue face stained with Tipu Gupta's blood. Whatever was left of Priya Gupta, it was trapped inside the goddess, as twisted as Frederick Martin and all the others.

The magic had been building up in William, and now he roared words that erupted as little more than a guttural bellow, and thrust out his hands. The power that burst forth was twined gold and black-a black dark as pitch-and it shot toward the demon bitch goddess with such force that he intended it to tear her body to pieces.

Kurukulla raised her shield and William's magic struck home, shattering it. The fragments showered to the ground, some of them igniting with flames before they hit the buckled street. The hollow skull she carried as a bowl fell from her grasp and shattered, as well.

The goddess sneered, fresh blood sliding from the edges of her fanged mouth like the slaver of a dog, dripping from her chin. Her shield had protected her, left her untouched. Now with her two empty hands she reached for him. He tried to fight her but she batted his arms aside as though he were a child and grasped him by the shoulders, lifting him from the ground.

Her other two hands came up, ritual dagger in one and scarlet-stained cleaver in the other.

That was the moment when William Swift knew that he was going to die.

And then Tamara's voice echoed through the fog. "Nigel!" she screamed. "Now!"

William heard a rustle of clothing and a savage grunt from off to his right. He caught only a glimpse of the terrifying face of Nigel Townsend, no less gore-streaked than Kurukulla's own, as the vampire lunged out of the fog and threw himself at William. Nigel tore him from the goddess's grasp and continued moving, uncannily strong, carrying them both into the fog. Toward the palace, toward Tamara.

Nigel stumbled, and the two of them sprawled on the road, but William scrambled to his feet in time to find Tamara shouting in Latin, in time to see thick tree roots bursting up through the street and wrapping around the four-armed demon-goddess, who screamed, three eyes wide with fury, rolling and red. Blue-white magic leaped from Tamara's hands, and the air separating her from Kurukulla warped and crumpled. The spell struck her, buffeting the goddess. The air around her froze and ice formed on her flesh.

Kurukulla began to laugh.

"What can you hope to do?" the demon-goddess roared in thickly accented English. "Your empire is over and mine is about to begin. I claim vengeance for Bharath. I claim blood and fire and death! The might of Kali is in me! And now the soul of Bharath itself, the magic of Bharath, passes from that decrepit old . . ."

The demon took a halting step backward, clad in blood and rags, chest heaving with astonishment. Her empty hands grasped at the air as though she might capture what she had lost. She turned and glared down at the corpse of Tipu Gupta, then spun toward William, Tamara, and Nigel, her bloodred eyes flaring with a crimson storm.

"What have you done? The power . . . the magic of the Protector is meant to pass to me. The girl stole a taste of it, but she was his chosen successor, his heir. Now that he is dead it should all fall to this flesh, to this body."

Silver light shone around her, connected to the ravaged remains of Tipu Gupta. As they watched, that magic drifted away into the sky, slipping off into the night and the fog, returning to India.

To Bharath.

"Stupid tart," William snapped. "Did you really think old Tipu wouldn't have chosen a new successor after his daughter betrayed him? His first loyalty was to Bharath. The magic will never be yours."

Kurukulla almost seemed to shrink now. A ripple of crimson light flashed around all four of her hands, and she looked at them with hatred more pure than any emotion William had ever seen.

"Then whose? Who is Protector of Bharath?"

Tamara stepped up beside William, and once more that golden light roiled around her clenched fists. The street beneath her feet rumbled as though the Earth was yearning to answer her call again. William held his breath, awed by the natural force that churned inside her.

"We'll find out one day," Tamara said, her voice firm, yet almost gentle. "But not you, demon. Not you, Priya. You'll be dead."

"Priya?" William asked. "What do you-"

But Tamara wasn't listening. She raised her hands above her head and shouted into the already dispersing fog. "Bodicea! Horatio! Byron! Come to us, all you ghosts of Albion! Already she is diminished, but the night is not yet over! Come to us!"

And at her summons, they came. William and Nigel could only stand and watch as the ghosts swarmed them, darting through the air and across the shattered road, flitting across the top of the palace walls and out of the trees in the park. In seconds, hundreds of the specters had gathered around.

"Do you really believe they will be of any help to you?" Kurukulla snarled, starting forward, three eyes glaring. She brought up the ceremonial dagger with which she had planned to slit William's throat. "The blood of Albion will still run red this night!"

Even as she spoke, the gathering of phantoms parted to allow a trio of translucent figures to the fore. Bodicea stood with her spear in one hand and sword in the other. Nelson was grim-faced and dignified, though his own sword had vanished. Even with one arm missing, the sleeve pinned back, he had an air of command that was undeniable.

And then there was Byron. All his humor had gone from him earlier, in the thick of the fight. Now he only rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, hovering slightly higher than the others.

"My friends, do you know what I hate about lunatics?" Byron sighed. "They never know when they've lost."

Tamara reached out for William's hand, and he clasped hers gladly. He felt the connection instantly, the magic that cycled through both of them. The Protectors of Albion stood side by side, hand in hand, and the entire street trembled. The few accursed men that had not been destroyed by the ghosts had been creeping toward that gathering, still determined to serve their mistress, but they paused now. Whatever remained of rationality in their savage minds was chilled by the sight of the Protectors.

The monstrous thing-the demon-goddess-let out a roar and charged at them.

"Destroy her," Nigel whispered, his voice velvety and dangerous. "You can't risk leaving her alive for another try at this."

William and Tamara exchanged a glance. He nodded.

"Bodicea. Horatio. Take her."

The spectral queen raised her spear and let out a war cry. Then she rushed at Kurukulla, first into the fray. The goddess's cleaver swung toward her but, warrior that she was, Bodicea dodged it easily. Without the magic she had stolen, the demon-goddess was weakening.

Bodicea ran her through with her spear and brought her sword down, shearing off one of Kurukulla's arms. "You might have had the power to stand against us before, demon!" she shouted. "But no longer!"

Then Nelson was there, and others joined him, moving so quickly that in seconds the demon-goddess was only barely visible among the semi-transparent forms of the ghosts, who tore and hacked at her, ripping apart that deep blue flesh, plucking out eyes and snapping bones.

A specter William did not recognize took up the ceremonial dagger with which Priya would have killed him, and drove it through the center of her head, into the hollow, bleeding socket of her third eye.

Despite all the demon-goddess had done, Tamara turned to William and buried her face in his shoulder, so as not to see. But only for a moment. Then she took a long breath and forced herself to look, to bear the horror of the war she was so much a part of.

At that moment, the scattered few of Kali's Children still alive let out a chorus of shrieks. They contorted in pain and began to wither, and in seconds they began to die. One by one they crumbled to the ground, leaving little more than ash and a few scattered scales.

All but John Haversham, who was frozen with Farris in some kind of magical stasis just a dozen feet away, trapped between human and monster.

Byron stayed out of the massacre of Kurukulla, and his expression was troubled. Just when it seemed he was about to call a halt to it, Nelson was the one who drew back from the remains of their enemy.

"Enough!" he cried. "She is dead. We are not barbarians."

Bodicea swung around, war paint still streaking her face and naked flesh, and glared at him.

"Well, not all of us, at least," Byron noted.

The ghosts began to disperse. All save Horatio, Bodicea, and Byron.

William began to walk toward the corpse of Kurukulla. Tamara fell into step beside him and Nigel followed along, his eyes dark and his nostrils flaring with either distaste or hunger, William was not sure which. Beyond the corpse was another, the broken, bleeding form of Tipu Gupta, the true Protector of Bharath. Nothing remained of his face that would allow them to recognize him, but William had seen him die. The old man was gone, and somewhere in India, another had risen to bear the burden and receive the gift of Protectorship.

All their enemies had been destroyed, so they were startled by the wet, shifting sound that arose from the remains of Kurukulla. Her followers were gone or dead, the fog dispersed. The ghosts had torn her apart. How could she have survived? William stared in shock at her corpse.

A low moan came from beneath the gore and shattered bone.

It shifted.

A hand worked its way up through ravaged flesh, and then a second. Long, slender hands.

Priya Gupta tore her way out of the remains of Kurukulla.

"Careful," Nigel warned.

Byron scoffed. "Careful, really? Look at her eyes."

William did look, and he saw what Byron already had. The girl gazed around at the ghosts with wide eyes, lost and afraid. She did not know where she was, that much was clear.

"What's happened to her?" Nelson asked, his spectral essence shimmering in the night beside them.

"Something in her mind has snapped," William replied.

Tamara hugged herself and shivered as she stared at the girl. "I don't think so. I think her mind snapped a very long time ago. And I think she was more powerful than her father ever knew. I confess, I'm not sure there ever really was a goddess . . . except that Priya wanted there to be."

William gaped at her. "You don't think she did all this herself? The curse and the Children of Kali, summoning the Rakshasa to serve her . . . why, look what she became! The goddess transformed her from within, warped her flesh, and-"

"Did she? I wonder," Tamara said.

Then she strode away, back toward Farris and Haversham, arms still crossed, and shivering as though she was so cold she feared she might never be warm.

Nigel was beside William then, and he also watched Tamara go. Then the two turned to stare at Priya Gupta, who gazed around at the ghosts with wide and fearful eyes.

"If she's right-" Nigel began in a dark rumble.

He never completed the sentence.

A jangling discordant sound filled the night, and the space between Priya and her father's corpse wavered, then split open. There was only blackness beyond, a liquid dark that William had seen before.

"Tamara!" he shouted. "The Rakshasa!" For that tear in the fabric of reality was a portal to the realm of those vicious, bestial demons.

"Will, get back!" Tamara shouted as she ran to aid them.

Nigel shouted something to the ghosts. Bodicea and Nelson took to the air, floating above the Protectors. The vampire dropped into a crouch and bared his fangs, eyes gleaming red in the dark.

A pair of Rakshasa leaped from the breach with a sound like paper tearing. They did not so much as glance at William, Tamara, and their allies. With terrible speed they fell upon Priya Gupta. One grabbed her legs, claws puncturing her flesh, and the other took her by an arm and a fistful of her hair, and even as William and Tamara began to react, they hauled her back through that rippling black portal.

That jangling noise came again and the portal collapsed in upon itself, leaving only a small eddying breeze in its wake.