Silver Phoenix (33 page)

S I LV E R P H O E N I X

She turned back to her friends, lightheaded from fright. Li Rong let out a long whistle.

“I see no way to enter,” Chen Yong said.

He withdrew his sword and began to walk the circumfer-ence. Ai Ling pressed a hand to her breast as he disappeared around the curve of the shimmering tower. She drew a long breath when he reappeared from the other side, after too many heartbeats.

“I counted nearly three hundred strides. I saw no windows or doors, no way of entering the tower.”

“I don’t understand,” Ai Ling said.

She laid tentative fi ngers on the sleek wall again. And the next moment, a surge of cold rushed from her fingertips through her entire body; everything flickered, and she was within the tower.

The stench assaulted her. A monster loomed over Ai Ling, the smell of death pluming from its gaping mouth.

She fought to remain standing, not to crouch and heave the contents of her stomach. The thing turned its sunken eye on her, black and circular, like a wound in its head.

Fetid arms hung to the ground and ended in sharp black claws.

She realized then that it was composed of corpses—arms and legs jutted from the top of its head instead of hair. Its naked mass was formed of human torsos, more limbs, and worse, heads and sagging faces. Some of the eyes were so decomposed only empty sockets peered from a putrefied 183

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skull. Ai Ling barely reached its knee, which bulged with human spines and sharp shoulder blades.

The monster lurched and turned to face her fully. She tried to step back, but her limbs failed; tried to scream, but found no voice.

Chen Yong materialized facing her, right below the thing, his sword gripped in one hand.

“Behind you!” Her voice sounded muted, her need to warn him dislodging the words from her clenched throat.

He bounded to her side in an instant, his face distorted by the stench that assailed him. “Mother of the heavens,” Chen Yong breathed when he saw the monster.

Li Rong appeared on the opposite side of the tower. He drew his sword and looked at Chen Yong and Ai Ling with wide-eyed terror. The monster took no notice, his eye boring down at her and Chen Yong. It dragged its black claws on the crystalline floor, making a horrific screeching noise. Ai Ling saw that the stone fl oor was etched with deep grooves.

“Stand back!” Chen Yong yelled. He vaulted forward, slashing his sword into the monster, cutting through a face and torso with flaccid breasts. The beast roared, a deep boom, and its cadaverous arm swept down like falling tim-ber, but Chen Yong had already twisted away. They now formed a triangle around the beast.

Ai Ling stepped back, her knees shaking. A familiar warmth gathered against her breast, and she looked down to see the glowing jade pendant. It fl ickered, grew hot, and 184

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a white blaze enveloped the monster. Please let it kill the thing.

The monster continued its attack, oblivious to the bright light surrounding its body. The heat around her throat cooled. She looked down. The pendant had dimmed; the intense glow faded from around the monster. Ai Ling’s heart dropped to the hollows of her stomach. How could it fail her now, when she needed its powers the most? She reached for the dagger tied to her waist and pulled it from the sheath, gripping the hilt too tight. She wanted to throw it but didn’t trust her aim.

Li Rong crept up behind the monster. He slashed a trunk-like leg with his sword. The beast roared again and turned toward him.

Chen Yong sprang, leapt off one decomposed heel, and stabbed the back of a thigh. He let the blade sink in, and he dangled like an acrobat from the hilt. The monster thrashed and lurched toward Ai Ling. She managed a small step backward, her entire body trembling. Chen Yong landed light on his feet, like a feline.

The beast blinked its black eye once, and in the next moment, she was behind the monster, where Li Rong had stood. They had switched places. She saw Li Rong where she had been. His eyebrows climbed so high from shock they nearly met his hairline.

“Its eye, it blinked . . . ,” Ai Ling said, knowing she made little sense.

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“Curses on the Devil’s daughter,” Chen Yong said.

Li Rong stood in a fighting stance before the beast, legs wide, both hands gripping his raised sword.

The beast thrust its claws at Li Rong. His blade met one with a resonating clang. He rushed forward and between the sweeping arms. He plunged his blade into its pale shin, then sprinted back to the side of the tower opposite Chen Yong and Ai Ling.

“Ai Ling, touch the wall!” Chen Yong shouted, his voice sounding too far away.

She laid both hands on the stone, and her fingers tingled with cold—but that was all. They were trapped.

The beast had turned its eye back to Chen Yong and her.

Chen Yong jumped away from Ai Ling, making himself the target by brandishing his sword. The monster stomped after him. Cornered, Chen Yong attempted to dodge the creature’s claws as he slashed.

“Watch out!” Li Rong shouted. He ran toward the back of the monster, his sword extended.

Chen Yong crouched low against the wall as the creature lifted its arm high, ready to strike. It blinked its sunken eye once. The hunkered figure of Chen Yong vanished, to be replaced by Li Rong, upright, exposed, with his sword raised. Frantic, he lunged forward.

The monster’s sharp claws crushed down, puncturing Li Rong through his chest. Li Rong’s dark eyes widened with shock, and his mouth slackened. Then his head lolled for-186

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ward, and his sword clattered to the scarred stone fl oor.

Ai Ling screamed.

“Little brother!” Chen Yong roared.

Chen Yong attacked the back of the beast in a fury. Over and over he raised his powerful arms and hacked at its dead flesh. Ai Ling watched, helpless, as the monster turned toward Chen Yong. Li Rong slumped over, almost as if he were resting in the monster’s palm.

Ai Ling threw a searching cord out to Li Rong but could grasp hold of nothing to anchor herself. Utter rage erupted within her as she ran after the beast. It lunged toward Chen Yong, not bothering to shake Li Rong from one hand as it thrust with the other.

Ai Ling stabbed her dagger at a rotting ankle, an elbow sprouted from the wound. The hilt glowed bright blue beneath her fingers, shockingly cold to the touch. She withdrew the blade and plunged again as deep as she could in its thick calf, but the monster continued to lumber forward.

Desperate, she placed one hand on the creature and leaped inside. There was no spirit, merely a deep pit of furor.

She saw Chen Yong through its eyes. His features hazed, his body was outlined in a blurred red. The need to seek and kill overwhelmed her. Then to absorb. The beast flicked one hand in impatience, flinging Li Rong’s body across the tower.
Kill. Absorb. Grow.
They were not spoken words, but amorphous images forming ideas. The thoughts thudded with each beat of its booming heart. That was how she 187

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found it. A large lump composed of dead hearts, drumming an inhuman rhythm.

Her spirit surged. She concentrated on the immense cadaverous heart, focused her grief and ire. What she could heal, she could also destroy. Her spirit whirled around it in a frenzy.

The heart erupted and splattered.

The beast howled once before it fell to its knees. It toppled, nearly pinning Chen Yong beneath its rotten bulk.

She snapped back into her own body, woozy, her head bent over the cold floor, her trembling hands barely able to hold herself up.

Strong arms pulled Ai Ling to her feet. “Are you all right?”

Chen Yong asked. He took her dagger, still clutched in one hand, and sheathed it for her.

She shook her head. “Li Rong . . .”

She crumpled against him, and he held her. Frustrated by her own weakness, she shoved herself from him and staggered toward Li Rong. He lay like a broken puppet, arms flung out, legs askew. Blood had pooled around him. His eyes were closed, his face ashen and taut.

She laid her hands on him, above where the claw had gored his sternum. The wound was ragged, wider than her palm. She tried to enter his body but could find nothing to grasp. Tears blinded her, spilled hot against her cheeks. But then she felt it—something was still there—barely clinging, just about to let go. She lunged for it with her own spirit, 188