CHAPTER XVIII

Don’t fight. Rollo, you can’t win, don’t fight.

Red Wrath – Rollo – smiled and tightened his grip on the corporal’s throat. She choked and the Austere slipped from her fingers.

Please spare him he’s just a boy –

‘You do remember me. I’m so,’ Rollo slammed the corporal against the wall, ‘glad.’

With the last of her strength, Shalia seized Rollo’s leathery red flesh and golden light rippled through her fingers. The burns on her skin healed; her gasping grew less pained. Rollo grimaced, crimson and vicious muscles tensing, and threw her through the empty window.

‘Corporal!’ Morgan reached for her as though that would somehow brace the fall. He didn’t see her land outside but heard the impact of flesh against stone. Then nothing.

Like you spared those girls from their homes?

Morgan broke into a sprint, his goal to tackle Rollo to the ground while his back was turned and then somehow wrestle him into unconsciousness – even if he had to beat him to a pulp to do it.

The stink of sulphur and evil. A rush of red skin and heat and muscle. Rollo exploded into motion – no, he transformed, took on that demonic visage of muscle and bone. He had Morgan pinned to the ground with his powerful talons before Morgan could arrest his momentum, the shock of the blow and the onset of inertia momentarily stunning him. With those jagged teeth, he bit into Morgan’s shoulder.

Morgan howled. The demon’s teeth were swelteringly hot, like iron pokers; his Sleight burst to life to mitigate the assault – and match the hellfire wicking off Rollo’s red form.

You want me to spare him like that?

Morgan clawed at Rollo’s arms, trying to gain leverage, push him back, anything. He could break the skin but the effect was much like trying to move a boulder. Rollo lifted one giant paw and trapped Morgan’s arm beneath his talons, effectively stopping the one piece of leverage he had. His legs were too long to maneuver between them and his Sleight didn’t affect Rollo as he was now.

He was trapped.

Rollo shook his massive jaw once and Morgan’s screamed.

Looks like…

‘Morgan!’ Jude’s voice.

…your lives…

Purple vines of magic exploded across the empty window bays and coiled themselves around Rollo’s broad form, knotting and tightening, holding his arms tight to his chest. The coils snaked around his jaw, forming a muzzle.

…are spared.

Morgan wasted no time. He sprang to his feet and flung himself out of the nearest empty window, clutching a shoulder spewing steam. A tornado of flame nipped at his heels.

Outside, Jude stood on the edge of a newly and hastily-drawn magic circle; the vines that had hog-tied Rollo originated from there. Jude was breathing rather heavily, blue blood streaming from his nose, fingers splayed as he worked magecraft.

The corporal was nowhere to be found.

Rollo reformed just outside the church. He released a heavy sigh of relief, as though stepping into the sun after a day spent indoors, and cracked the bones in his neck. ‘Consecrated ground? Ha-ha, I didn’t think of that. Clever,’ he said.

Jude flexed his fingers and the coils retreated out of the building, snagged Rollo around the middle as they passed and tightened, gluing his arms to his sides.

Rollo smiled. He flexed his powerful arms and the neon vines tore apart like tissue paper.

‘Not good,’ said Jude.

‘No shit,’ said Morgan.

Had the church really been the only thing stopping Rollo from shrugging off Jude’s magic? If the exorcist didn’t have any more tricks up his sleeve and Morgan’s strength meant little, what else could be done? There was no negotiation, no dialogue; Rollo wouldn’t be dissuaded. This Morgan knew with dreadful certainty, as sure as he was when he took the life of Rollo’s father that day twelve years ago.

He could remember it clearly now. Morgan’s father had only been keeping him around as a tool, an extension of his will. The will of the kind of man that would send his eldest son into battle to kill his enemies – not the will of a father. Morgan had killed everyone else in Rollo’s family – his gang, really, of wretched, human-trafficking thugs. But something – call it misplaced pity, or perhaps a slow suicide, or despite how monstrous he had become he just simply couldn’t kill a child – something had made him spare the boy’s life. And Rollo had only been a boy then, not yet twenty. Now, they could almost be twins. He could have erased his memories. Found him a new home, like he’d done for Rhiley. Something, anything better than what he had done at the time.

And now it was too late.

The thought flickered into tiny life then, a weak candle flame smothered by darkness, growing brighter: Maybe I should just die.

‘Lieutenant!’

Morgan blinked.

Blood exploded from between his teeth, acrid and hot. A massive leathery forearm pierced him through, the length of which terminated in his gut. His mind almost couldn’t process what it was seeing, what had been done to him. He couldn’t feel the talons piercing his back, either. The familiarity of it stunned him – hadn’t someone done this to him before?

Rollo, in his demonic form, yanked his arm back through with a sickening lurch, leaving in its wake a head-shaped hole spewing steam and viscera.

‘Fucker’ was the last thing Morgan managed before he lapsed into darkness.