Hush by James Maxey

Author:James Maxey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
Publisher: Solaris

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

LAST, BEST HOPE

WITH A FLAPPING sound like the world’s largest swan taking to air, an angel rose next to the Freewind. I use the term angel only because that’s what springs to mind when one is confronted with a human body held aloft on giant feathered wings. Of course, calling the body human was stretching things a bit. The thing that flew above our ship was shaped like a woman, slender and well-muscled, but the limbs and torso were covered in black and tan fur similar to a hound. The woman’s hair was a mass of long platinum curls and as the breeze pushed the hair from her face I was shocked to find that her visage bore a striking resemblance to my wife. Menagerie had some of Infidel’s blood in him after all.

In the creature’s left hand was the Jagged Heart. In the right was the Ice-Moon Blade. The blended thing before us bent back her head and laughed as she flapped to the level of the crow’s-nest.

“What a marvelous shell!” she said, growing an extra set of arms from beneath her first two as she spoke. “It’s as malleable as false matter!” The black and tan fur rippled as it changed to a downy white. The enormous pelican wings were mostly white save for their black tips, but even these faded to the color of new fallen snow. Purity’s pale eyes glowed red with the reflected light of the omnidirectional sunset as she stared down at Gale and Mako.

“I’m almost grateful enough for this protean gift that I’m tempted to let you live,” she laughed. “Almost.”

She extended the Jagged Heart toward Captain Romer. I turned, intending to grab Infidel and carry her to safety since the Gloryhammer was downstairs in the hold, but she was gone. In the passageway beneath me I heard running footsteps.

The deck above the main hold splintered as Infidel exploded into the air, flashing toward Purity faster than I could follow. She slammed the head of the Gloryhammer into the woman’s jaw with a fury that made me wince. Purity’s head snapped backward, tearing at the throat, nearly decapitated by the blow. Infidel’s momentum carried her skyward, leaving Purity dangling in mid-air for the microseconds it would take for her wings to realize they were dead.

Only the wings kept flapping. Even as Purity’s head continued to tear from its shoulders, a new head grew in its place. Menagerie had been able to change shapes too swiftly for the eye to follow. Purity had inherited his speed.

“That was unpleasant,” Purity’s new head grumbled as her old head dropped toward the Sea of Wine. High above, Infidel had managed to halt her upward course and was now turning back down for another pass.

If Purity had delayed even a tenth of a second, Infidel might have stopped her. As it was, the four-armed witch waved the Ice-Moon Blade toward the mainmast of the Freewind and suddenly there was a full scale iceberg looming above us, the mast caught within its core.

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