Page 25 of Hexbound
One, two, three... ten... twenty?
Death was his Art. Every sorcerer leaned toward one of the three Arts: Light, Gray or Dark. And he was Dark through and through. If someone thought to send these creatures against him, then they didn't know what they were dealing with. Bishop reached out and captured the darkening flicker of one of the constructs' minds with his power. There was a filmy barrier between him and the creature's soul; somehow he had to push through, but necromancy had never been something he dabbled with.
Bishop clenched his teeth, fighting to crush that bubble with his will, but it flared beneath his touch and just for a second he saw a startled face lift from a cauldron of immense darkness.
Then a punch of power sent him staggering back into the wall.
"Bishop!" Verity reappeared beside him with a gasp as she helped him to sink to the cobbles. The heat of her skin lured him, and he realized his own was as cold as death, his power reaching out to hers, tasting it, hungering for her life....
Bishop snatched his power back. "Someone's controlling them."
She gave him an odd look. "Well, yes, they didn't just rise from the grave of their own inclination."
"Yes, but... he's powerful."More powerful than I am. "And I think he has the Chalice."
Verity paled. "Right. Well, let's deal with the immediate problem first."
She vanished and reappeared behind a zombie, catching hold of the back of its coat, spinning it, and shoving it into the arms of one of its brethren. "Anytime you'd care to help, Mr. Bishop!"
Somehow he shoved himself to his feet, leaning heavily against the wall.Just got to get my breath back.Whatever the unknown sorcerer had hit him with, it had knocked his feet out from under him for a moment.
A sitting sorcerer is a dead one,Agatha's voice whispered and his training kicked in. Bishop spun and slammed a hand against a construct's chest, "Ignitious!"
Flinging her hand into the sky, Verity shot a flare of power from her fingertips. An explosion of white sparks erupted in the air, like Chinese fireworks. "Backup," she gasped, and he could see the strain on her face as she translocated out of the grasp of a pair of constructs.
Boots pounded on the cobblestones, Hex gang members flooding from every nook and cranny of the Dials. Some of them wore the white rabbit's foot on the back of their hand, others had four-leaf clovers, and one even wore a black cat.
"Threat to the Dials!" A huge man with a handlebar moustache bellowed, brandishing an axe, which he swung to decapitate one of the creatures. "All in, laddies!"
"The Hex!" a prostitute screamed, flinging a curse at one of the creatures that sent steam bubbling from its mouth as she boiled its insides. Somehow it kept going, crawling across the ground to latch a hand around her ankle. The woman fell with a shriek, and the construct ripped her leg clean out its socket.
More men fell on it, a woman stabbing it in the head, trying to get it off the fallen prostitute.
"Burn them!" Bishop yelled, and the older lady who'd been lighting the witch globes stepped forward, fire forming between her cupped hands.
Breathing over the smoldering flames sent them shooting toward the construct and the old lady cackled. But more of them were ambling out of the alleys, grabbing men and women from behind and tearing into them with blunt teeth.
"Burn them!" Verity yelled, vanishing and reappearing here and there as she launched a kick at one of the constructs’ faces, then dragged a woman out of the way of two more just seconds later.
She was fine on her own. Bishop forced himself to stop looking for her. The man with the handlebar moustache went down in front of him, screaming as the construct sank its dull teeth into his throat. His axe clattered to the cobbles at Bishop's feet.
Slowly, he bent and picked it up, still feeling the strain from the unknown sorcerer who controlled them. The axe was heavy but he forced his muscles to move, using his sorcerous power to send blood rushing through his veins in an attempt to fire his body with strength.
The axe whirred in his hands, striking into the creature's throat with a squishythunk. Black ichor splashed up the walls. The creature staggered. Bishop swung again, this time decapitating it. The head tumbled to a halt in the alley and slowly, like a tree toppling, its knees gave way beneath its body, and it fell onto its front. A kind of blackened jelly oozed from the stump where its head had been.
As if drawn by some sense of knowing, he looked up as four of the constructs closed in on Verity, one of them wielding a club and another a knife.
Verity smiled. "Come on boys," she said, then vanished.
The manacle around his wrist gave a vicious tug and then she reappeared a foot away from where she'd vanished, falling forward. The club thumped down on her shoulder and she tumbled to her knees, just as the knife slid with sickening accuracy into her side.
"Verity!" Bishop bellowed. He didn't have her skills but it took barely a second to thunder through the fighting to her side, cutting down flesh constructs and shoving men and women out of the way.
One of the flesh constructs crouched over her, its teeth bared as it went for her throat, and his insides tightened in horror.
"Absolemma hecratius!" He flung his hand out and once again encountered that filmy wall surrounding the construct's life force.Not this time. Bishop slammed through it with all the finesse of a sledgehammer, and the flesh construct's soul glittered beneath his grip. Bishop crushed it, setting the soul free, heat and energy rushing through him and leaving him both giddy and dangerously overextended. He hadn't thought he'd have the power to get through that ward.
Breathing hard, Bishop lowered his hand. "Are you all right?"
