“The money,” I said. “Stability. When I retire, I can write my own ticket. Everyone who can afford it wants a former BSI Agent as a bodyguard. You know, there’s a former Agent named Hakim Kouri who makes seven figures guarding that billionaire playboy guy who invented, ah, a technical doodad, or something, and Kouri is set for life.” I stood and stretched. “Assuming he doesn’t catch a bullet for his billionaire boss, that is. Having a former BSI Agent on the payroll is like a huge status symbol these days.”
As I trudged down the stairs, the AI said, “That sounds rather oversimplified.”
My laughter felt brittle. “You have to realize that everything is simple. Everything breaks down to something else, very simple things, and those simple things are the root motives of what digs at a person.”
I’d made it to the twenty-eighth floor and reached for the doorknob when the AI said, “Are you sure everything is that simple, sir?”
The knob turned. “Everything is—” I began just before a fist about took my head off.
My nose went crunch and my butt hit the stairs hard enough to send pain all up my spine and back down to center on my tailbone. Maybe I blacked out, or maybe the stars in my eyes and the sharp pain in my nose took my sight away. Either way it took a couple of seconds for me to get my bearings again. When I did, I was a split second away from finding out what the other side of life looked like.
He (I think it was a he, hard to tell) stood over me, fists raised and massive boot careening toward my face. I rolled to the side in time to miss the boot, but the sound if it hitting the stairs pummeled my ears. I thrust out a fistful of Ruger and pulled the trigger four times. The reports were almost deafening in the confined space of the stairwell. The result was as dramatic as the noise.
My assailant arched backward as the top of his skull came off in big, ugly piece. A second later he fell to the floor with a dull thud, leaking brains and blood all over the cement. I stood and stared down at what (or should I say who?) had attacked me.
Looked like a man—wore a pair of stonewashed Levis and big old whomping boots that seemed large enough to put a hole in a Cadillac. Other than that, he was naked, and that included a total lack of skin. I mean the whole epidermis—hair, zits, moles and all. Bulging red/pink muscle, clumps of yellow fat here and there around the hips, chest and under his flayed chin. Before his current condition, I guessed he used to be slightly tubby, maybe more than slightly, but the fat was starting to dribble off, no longer contained by skin. He had the big, ropy muscles and wide shoulders of a large man. In fact, he looked to be taller than my six feet one. I knelt and examined the corpse a little closer and saw striations on the muscle and fat, regular lines straight as a razor. I guessed those marks were made by a knife, left when the skin was sliced away. Despite the cruelty and brutality of the act, there was no blood smell. All the exposed veins appeared intact. I told the AI to note that fact; Kal would definitely want to know.
The smell of fear began to clog my nose and stink up the stairwell. I was well and truly freaked out, but hard-earned training kicked in, keeping me from running and screaming my head off. Still, it was a close thing.
I reloaded, staring at teeth bared in a permanent smile and expressionless hazel eyes. He looked human, moved like a human, but had made no noise when attacking; he merely stared at me through lidless, unseeing eyes. Killing him had been as automatic as scratching my ass. Thank God for training.
My nose throbbed a bit and hurt like the blazes, but it didn’t crunch when I applied pressure, so I cleaned the blood from both nostrils and got back to business.
I went through the door, Ruger at the ready, but saw no more skinless bad guys.
“You know what kind of Supernatural that was?” I subvocaled.
“No idea, sir,” came the reply. “I know of no skinless entities; however, I do not have detailed files on Supernatural beings because of the hastiness of my creation.”
“Keep an eye out. Or should I say a camera.”
“Of course.”
Left or right? Right it was, weapon raised, stepping softly. My nerves were on edge, my senses preternaturally keen. I was ready for any flicker of movement, unusual vibration, or the tiniest of noises. It was quiet. An office building like this should’ve been bustling, full of the subdued noises of footsteps and soft conversation. This was the quiet of dead, sterile places pale of personality.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” I crooned.
“Sir?”
“Never mind. Nerves.”
Fifty more feet and a turn later, the outside wall was in sight. The light had faded from midday to early evening, a slight sepia tone coloring the air.
“Behind you!”
The warning came just in time. I turned and fired blind, but got lucky, the bullet entering the throat of a charging flayed man. He fell hard, neck shattered by the round. I put two in the head just to be sure.
Breathing hard, adrenaline rushing through me, I checked the corpse. Nope, not a man this time. A woman. Petite but muscular with long legs and slender build. There was very little yellow fat on her body except her small breasts. She was naked to the waist, a ratty pair of Levis concealing the rest of her.
Her eyes were cornflower blue. I wanted to vomit.
“Another one.” Despite the urgency, the AI sounded almost bored.
From down the hall, running like an Olympic track star, light from the outside wall shining behind, came another skinned man. Three shots dropped him—two to the chest, one to the head—more proof of the value of training.
The AI cut into my concentration like a razor. “Again.”
Thank goodness for the DRAFTlite’s fore and aft field of vision. But this time there were two flayed men and I emptied the Ruger, stopping them both. The hallway reeked of blood.
I didn’t need the AI’s warning for the next two that came at me as I reloaded. Two shots to one and three in the other dropped them in a heap next to the other. The hall was starting to get crowded.
Then things got interesting.
From front and back came more skinned people, at least five, pink muscles flexing and yellow fat dripping, all soundless except the clomp of work boots and the swish of denim. Lipless, all wore identical, manic grins, the smiles of the damned, and my stomach muscles clenched tight with fear.
I ran out of bullets on the second attacker and I knew they’d be on me before I could get off two shots after a quick reload. It was time to get down and dirty.
Kal carries around that big Bowie knife of his, fourteen inches of blade with a six-inch handle. Agent Alsate has the same kind of knife—a gift from Kal I hear. During training, Kal drove us Green Peas into the ground learning a close-in weapon. Some used hatchets, clubs, easy-to-learn weapons that didn’t require a lot of finesse. I chose a different tack—a Celtic short sword.
Two feet of blade with eight inches of hilt. The guard was barely a formality, a place where the transition from blade to hilt was covered by a U-shaped bit of bronze. I carried it strapped to my thigh. A little uncomfortable, but it worked and it fit my hand perfectly as I drew it forth.
The first one met razor steel to the neck, and the head parted company with the rest of the body. Unlike in the movies, the stump didn’t spurt blood in a fountain, but there was enough arterial spray to nearly blind me. I sidestepped the falling corpse and took out the next one with a stab to the heart.
Things became a little confusing as training took over and put me on automatic.
I pirouetted like a dancer, sword flashing and stabbing, the tip slipping past an eyeball into a brain and bursting the orb like an egg dropped on cement. I carved through necks and stabbed into chests as blood slicked the carpet and my boots started to squelch. The sword became jammed in ribs, but I pulled hard, sliding it free, but the time lost cost me as I was tackled from behind.
Fists and boots and blood and stars ….
Chapter Eleven
Kal
Once Bi
tten, Twice Shy
The spiderhead creature started forward, clear amber venom dripping from his fangs (I assumed it was a ‘he’; I wasn’t about to check under his robes). I reckoned he was drooling over a good all-you-can-bite Kal buffet, and that scared me more than the sight of a spider’s head attached to the body of a big man dressed in a pale cloak and cowl—a hellish version of a monk. Spidermonk sounded cooler than Spiderhead. Could be a sequel to all those Spiderman movies littering the theaters nowadays.
Fear paralyzed me and I stopped struggling as visions of the old classic, The Fly—not the incredibly gross Jeff Goldblum version, but the original with Vincent Price—popped into my mind. At the end of the movie, two men spot a fly trapped in a web. It had a human head and was screaming “Help me, help me!” as a spider bore down. Just as the spider bit into the helpless human-headed fly, one of the men crushed the bugs with a rock.
Help me, help meeeeeee!
No big rock came down to save me.
Spidermonk drew close, kneeling down, mouthparts quivering, and I wanted to vomit, wanted to scream, but I couldn’t, couldn’t do anything because of the fear that pinned me in place, and I couldn’t tear my eyes from the eight black ones that stared at me with all the emotional depth of marbles. My guts felt like bags filled to bursting with hot water. Very hot water.
Hot water.
Hot?
Epiphanies are rare, so when they come, take advantage of them, just as I did at that moment. You see, when my sister’s soul attached itself to my psyche (long story) she suppressed what would have normally become a considerable gift for magic. Yeah, a Magician—I still couldn’t believe it. But because she suppressed my gift, when she left to travel to that place where only the dead go (a longer story), my gift was an atrophied thing, a useless limb. Although in a time of extreme stress—like during that whole Omaha thing—my magic had healed a broken arm, I hadn’t been able to repeat that success. (It took a lot of juice and left me a little dizzy.) No matter how much I practiced, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t perform the most basic of spells—except for one, the Zippo spell, which creates a small flame like a cigarette lighter or candle.
Spidermonk placed a pallid hand on my bound stomach. The webbing did not stick to his fingers. I think I peed a little more.
It took everything I had to break Spidermonk’s gaze and lower my eyes to the fibers encasing my chest. I concentrated, not bothering to think about what I was doing. Rational thought took a back seat to the primal need to survive, even if survival might not be what you’d call comfortable.
The Shape appeared, a 3D image floating in my sight, a pattern of twisting lines and a couple of right angles. Not too complex at all. A pressure formed behind my eyes and nose, as if a head cold was barreling in, but it didn’t hurt—it was something that needed to be released. I knew that if I gave it the tiniest nudge, it would do what I wanted it to do, what it had been designed for. It would become.
I pushed the Shape out and I felt the magic leave me, the pressure behind my face draining away. The effect turned out to be rather dramatic.
Magicians—the fake Houdini kind who use misdirection and illusion, not the real Bureau types like Alex and Jeanie—use something called flash paper, or nitrocellulose, also referred to as gun cotton (also used as a propellant). Flash paper burns in, well, a flash. You’ve seen it, no doubt. It’s gaudy, quick, and the sudden burst of flame often distracts the viewer from what the magician is really doing, which is the whole point of misdirection.
All you need to make nitrocellulose is nitric acid, sulfuric acid, and cotton balls. I know this because I have a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, and I like to blow things up for fun and profit. And by ‘things,’ I mean Supernaturals. The fun and profit part is actually incidental to my overall desire to give most Supernaturals an explosive enema.
Back to flash paper. A little heat, and wham! Burns quickly, almost maniacally. In the 1880s, Eastman Kodak made the first nitrocellulose film base, but it degraded quickly and had the unfortunate effect of bursting into flame when passing through a projector’s film grate, which is why it’s no longer used. Nitrocellulose has a low kindling point and doesn’t need oxygen to burn, so you can’t douse it with water to put it out. That makes handling large amounts of the stuff extremely dangerous for us happy humans.
Now, with all that in mind, consider an enormous cave—oh, say, like the one I was lying in—its walls, floor, and ceiling covered in the stuff that I certainly hoped resembled some form of gun cotton. Now imagine some moron—our favorite Finnish adventurer, for instance—setting fire to it with a crappy little cigarette lighter Spell.
As Pepé Le Pew would say, Le Boom!
Le ouch.
Awesome.
The flame touched the webbing, and in less than a second, it caught fire. A second after that, my body was encased in bright, orange flame, the webbing burning away in less than two seconds. Old Spidermonk made his first noise, a chittering sort of wet shriek that sounded a lot like marbles in a blender, and leapt almost straight up, disappearing into the darkness in the world’s greatest standing high jump. As for me, I was curled up in a fetal position, trying to put my hair out as a flaming circle of destruction blossomed around me. Heat like I’d never known dried my eyeballs and did no good things to my exposed skin, so I covered my face with my gloved hands and lurched to my feet.
“Ghost, guide me!” I shrieked as the roaring flash of fire spread throughout the cave, traveling faster than a man could run. Faster than I could run. Good thing Ghost was on the ball.
“Go right,” he buzzed over the flame. “More right. Now straight, run straight. Don’t stop.”
I didn’t have to worry about stepping in fire; it had already burned out all around and raced ahead of me. No, I had to worry about something far worse as I kept my face covered against the heat generated by a burning cave.
Lack of oxygen.
Spidermonk’s webbing might’ve burned like flash paper—probably not even needing oxygen to flame—but that didn’t mean the fire didn’t consume all available oxygen in the cave.
Within a few seconds, I was gasping and coughing, smoke scoring my lungs. All I could do was listen to Ghost because my eyes were burning, watering from the smoke, and my chest felt like hot coals were nestled into the delicate tissues inside.
“Bear left slightly.”
Left, got it. I didn’t reply, couldn’t reply because I was starting to get dizzy as lack of oxygen started to catch up to me. I was using it up and taking none in, and I wanted to inhale, to take a big breath of air, fill my lungs to the bursting point, but I knew that would be the end of me. If smoke inhalation didn’t get me, then Spidermonk would, because Supernaturals didn’t go easy into that good night. He would be out there somewhere, watching, biding his time until it was safe to come in after me. Nothing would be safer than my unconscious body on the cave floor for him to munch on. Finnish take-out.
Gagging, I stumbled onward as Ghost kept me on the straight and narrow. Red and yellow flashed behind my eyelids as dizziness swept over me and my footsteps faltered. I couldn’t go much farther; I was running out of gas.
“In the tunnel now, Kal,” Ghost urged, almost sounding worried. “You’re doing fine; keep going. I will keep you safe.”
A breeze in my face and the roaring of fire at my back. A tunnel. A tunnel! That breeze was air flowing in, feeding the fire, and if it could feed fire, it could damn well feed me. I took a ragged, tearing gulp, and it hurt like ten-penny nails in my lungs, but it felt so good, so right so I continued to gulp, my hands still covering my face, letting Ghost guide me even though I could simply drop my arms and look around because it was easier to let someone else drive for a while, and my exposed skin hurt and the smell of burnt hair polluted my nose and I really didn’t want to open my eyes because I didn’t want to see how bad the damage was. I really, really, didn’t want to see that at all.
The transition from stumbling along to lying on the floor was abrupt. One second I was gasping, pulling in air, the next my nose felt flattened to my face and blood slicked my teeth. A hard ache from my eyebrows to chin, hot and throbbing, told me I’d met a solid surface with the front of my skull instead the soles of my boots.
“Argh!” I sputtered, spitting blood. “Warn a guy, would you?”
“Watch out for the wall,” cautioned Ghost.
If you weren’t already dead, Casper …. “Don’t make me call Ghostbusters.” I teased my eyes open, and through a glaze of tears I saw that I lay in a hallway with tastefully recessed lighting. Nearby was a dark, wooden door with the words DERVISH INDUSTRIES engraved on a centered brass plaque.
I felt my nose. Not busted, thank goodness. I hate it when my nose breaks. My eyes swell up with big purplish bruises and my lids swell shut. We Finns bruise like bananas; handle with care.
I was up against the wall, butt on the floor and pinching my nose between thumb and forefinger to stem the bleeding. Time to check a theory. A gem from the Bat Belt, an AAAA tanzanite packed solid with a general healing spell. I let loose with the activation word.
Nada tostada. Just what I needed. “Ghost, the spell gems aren’t working.”
“So I surmise.”
“Any ideas?”
“None.”
I wiped the drying blood from my lips and unclipped my small canteen. Taking a sip of tinny water, I swished it around my mouth to rinse my teeth clean. Damn, when I hit the wall, my teeth cut into my front lip hard and it was oozing.
“How did we get here, Ghost?”
He took a second or two before answering, which was a long time for a being who measures time in picoseconds. “I do not know, Kal. One moment you were running in a tunnel of rough stone, the next you hit the wall at speed, knocking your glasses off. By the way, will you please don them again? My current perspective is the ceiling and the carpeting, which is in need of a good vacuuming.”
The Spirit in St. Louis Page 11