“You feel that, boss?”
What? Suddenly I was back to myself, right foot a bare inch from eternity, the flesh rope spinning close, no longer rotating, but staying oriented toward me, multiple ruby lips quivering as if in excitement. I quickly backpedaled and tried to think about Rat’s words. “Feel what?”
“That thing. It’s radiatin’ so much magic …. Can’t you guys feel it?”
Dove and Ng shook their heads, but I shut my eyes for a moment in an effort to feel what rattled Rat’s cage. There. At the edge of my mind, like a half-remembered dream, an almost inaudible buzzing. Soft, subtle, and easy to overlook.
“What is that?” I asked.
I received a reply, not from Rat, but from Ng. “That is the voice of the Engine,” he said aloud, startling all of us. “Only Magicians can hear it. The Angel summoned it to bring Those Who Dwell Between to our world.”
“Subvocal, Wesley!” I hissed.
He failed to heed my urgency. “You see, the Angel has escaped from Hell many times, and each time he’s been caught, dragged back to suffer more than we can imagine. This time, however, he came upon the idea of using us, the BSI, to call the Engine, to bring into the world beings even Hell fears more than the wrath of God. Not to kill mankind, mind you, but to destroy civilizations and to distract the Lords of the Abyss so they will be too busy fighting these new monsters to deal with him. When the first team arrived, the Angel sucked out their magic then killed them one by one to harness the energy generated by their deaths. All to bring the Engine here. The terrible power of Necromancy. Even Sixer, driven mad by hallucinations, gave the Angel tremendous power when he killed himself. This power, coupled with the weakness in the fabric of reality that lies beneath St. Louis, allowed him access to the pocket dimensions you were in. These pocket dimensions, had you died there, would have funneled magic directly into the Engine, making it unnecessary for him to use himself as a conduit. Had you died in those dimensions, the gateway would already have opened and we wouldn’t be talking right now. We would be screaming.”
I was starting to get creeped out on a major scale. “How do you know this?”
The confidant, smug smile he turned to me seemed awfully familiar. “If the Angel can bring these beings through to this world, millions, perhaps billions will die and then he can kill to his heart’s content while mankind and all the forces of creation battle them in an effort to save the universe. It’s a win-win for the Angel of Mass Murder, a being as old as mankind. He can skip through the rubble of this world, gathering worshippers and shedding blood.” Ng showed all his teeth. It wasn’t a smile. “Did you know he’s the creator of the Kali cult? The Thugees? He’s got quite an imagination, that one.” He shook his head, teeth still bared in a not-smile. “Only thing is, you all proved much too resilient; you didn’t die when you should have.”
Rat took a step back from Ng, fear written on his face, while Dove looked like she wanted to sock him in the mouth. I took a step forward, keeping my voice low. “Wesley, or whoever you are, what’s going on?”
Sweat ran from his skin in such quantities that I thought he’d desiccate in seconds. “I’ve given you enough information, Kal. It’s time for me to pass out now.” With that, he closed his eyes and fell to the floor. Or would have if Dove hadn’t caught him and lowered him gently. Although a good foot shorter than Ng, she packed enough solid muscle on her tiny frame to give a linebacker pause.
“What is wrong with him?” she asked once Ng was settled. His face still dripped sweat, but not as much as before.
“Someone is messin’ with us,” said Rat, staring at Ng’s prone form. “I bet that Angel fella took over his mind, just to screw around and twist us all about.”
I considered Ng for a moment, moving the last bit of my cigar from one side of my mouth to the other before spitting it out onto the floor. It hit me then, as that moist hunk of tobacco rolled to a stop, where I’d seen that smug, crap-eating smile before, and a slow burn of anger began in my gut.
“Goddamn it,” I muttered to myself, “played like a rube.”
That got Dove’s attention. “What are you talking about?”
I shook my head, still staring at the remains of the cigar. “Not relevant now.”
“Urrk!”
My head swiveled up in time to see Dove folding over and falling to the floor. Billings stood over her in the doorway, bloody knife in hand, his perfectly muscled bare torso gleaming with sweat. A large fist blurred and cracked Rat on the jaw, lifting him up off his toes. He hung there for a split second before crashing to the floor.
“Very good, Mr. Billings,” said a voice from behind. I turned to see a man dressed in a black waistcoat, a lime cravat, and dark gray pants floating in the void next to the fleshy Engine. On his head rested a black silk top hat. In one hand he twirled a cane, topped with an amethyst the size of a baby’s fist. “Do you think you can kill Agent Hakala?”
Billings’ bushy beard split to show teeth grown pointed. “Of course.”
“The Angel, I suppose?” My voice remained neutral, as if I were discussing the weather, but my mind was racing, calculating the odds and inventorying the weapons secreted around my body.
A tip of the top hat to me. “Of course. I commend you on your resilience.” To Billings, “Sir, I appreciate your inestimable skills, but I respect Agent Hakala too much to leave him to a single agency to dispatch.” A horrid, wet smile split his face. I couldn’t tell whether he was handsome or not; the more I looked at his face, the less I saw. “Let us do this together. Let us kill a legend.”
And they attacked.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Kal
(And I Feel Fine)
A fistful of K-bar arced toward my throat. I leaned back just far enough for it to miss, but near enough for it to give me a close shave. My own K-bar met air as Billings danced back, oddly graceful for a man that big. I followed up with a forearm smash that flattened his nose across his cheeks, spurting blood all over the NewTanium armor.
A glint of purple and that same arm came up, blocking the large amethyst at the end of the Angel’s cane. The shock of it numbed the flesh beneath my armor. The Angel sped away through the air before I could counterstrike.
I whirled, almost pirouetting, trying to keep my assailants in sight and grow a set of eyes in the back of my head. No dice there, but I planted my backside into a corner and waited for them to close in. My prospects looked grim as they both slowly approached, cane raised and K-bar ready.
My boot slammed into Billings’ chest. It felt like I’d hit a brick wall, but it staggered him enough that his jab missed my knee and skittered along my thigh armor, slicing through the Kevlar weave and exposing shining metal. Next the Angel’s cane came swinging, the amethyst head slamming with tremendous force against my left shoulder. Normally the bones would have, should have, broken with the impact because the cane didn’t even bend, transferring all that kinetic energy to my delicate Finnish tissues, but the armor held, only buckling slightly, while my shoulder gave way to the semi-precious stone, which also should have shattered but didn’t. The pain, deep and sharp, almost drove me to my knees as the ball and socket joint separated, and I almost dropped, almost swooned. My vision went dark around the edges and I might have screamed but couldn’t be sure. Right then I wished for the rage, but it didn’t answer because my magic, my sister’s magic, was history. Right then all I could do was flail with the K-bar that rested in my good hand while what felt like shards of glass ground down bone in my damaged shoulder. It was ticket-punching time for Kal Hakala.
Dylan Thomas had it right—‘Do not go gentle into that good night’—but I couldn’t rage against the dying of my light. I could, however, let Billings’ know he’d been in a damn fight.
“No.”
Ignoring the Angel, I threw my best tackle, a bone-breaking, arm-twisting, back-shattering throw down right in the middle of Billings’ rock-hard, sculpted-out-of-alabaster abs. He actually emitte
d a surprised oof as I lifted him off his feet and slammed him to the ground, and for a moment, the lights went out as the agony in my shoulder drove consciousness into the backseat.
“No.”
The word hammered into my skull from somewhere, a denial that brought me back into the light, and I rolled in time to see the amethyst cave in the floor where my head had been.
“NO!”
I knew that voice, that droning, buzzing voice. It filled my head like the incessant noise of a swarm of locusts and it was carried through the DRAFTlite speakers and the bone induction ear patch.
“NOOOOOO!” Ghost’s voice was a painful roar of staticky rage that took my breath away. Bright lights began flashing along the rims of the DRAFTlite and the amulet resting against my chest grew painful, almost scorching-hot.
The Angel cocked his head, top hat firmly seated despite the severe angle. “What is this?”
My vision took a brief vacation as the light flashing on the rims of the DRAFTlite became blisteringly intense. Desperately I clawed at the glasses and threw them to the side, blinded. Nothing but yellow and black blobs floated before my eyes.
Once again the Angel asked, “What is this?”
“This is me finally becoming angry,” said a familiar droning voice that sent a thrill through me, even though all I could see were spots. “This is me not playing it safe anymore.”
Although Ghost’s voice remained the same annoying buzz, it now contained more raw emotion than I’d ever heard. There was a new tone of fury and outrage, and that scared me more than the possibility of him crashing the Internet and starting World War III. I blinked rapidly and rubbed my eyes. What appeared before me as my vision cleared made me realize that the clean underwear I put on that morning might be superfluous.
Outlined in blue and green witch lights, standing defiant before the Angel of Mass Murder, the Saint of Slaying, was the translucent image of a young man in wire-rim glasses. Skinny and tall, he looked like a member of a technogeeknerd boy band, complete with polo shirt and ghostly khakis. His spectral eyes were fixed on the Angel, but he held up his hand, palm out, to me. “Stay there, Kal. I have this.”
The Angel smiled. “So the little crab has decided to emerge from his shell.”
I still couldn’t quite process what I was seeing; my mind seemed to be stuck in a feedback loop. The impressions still made it to my brain, but the brain kept sending back a message saying, ‘What the [CENSORED]?’
“Ghost?”
The spectral young man nodded. “I guess I finally found something to provoke an emotion, Kal. Let me take care of the Angel. You deal with Billings.” His opponent was grinning hugely, a smile that left no clear image, only an impression of razors slicing into intestines. Ghost told him, “You forget, crabs have claws,” and launched himself at the Angel.
Instead of meeting Ghost head on, the Saint of Slaying shrunk into his ugly beach ball form and flew away, which didn’t seem to bother Ghost. Extending his arms like Superman, he flew after.
“Just you and me now, Kal,” said Billings as he rose to his feet. I scrambled up a second later, my shoulder on fire. “I always wanted to see which one of us is better.”
I pointed to his bare, almost inhumanly muscular and perfect torso. “No fair. You’re obviously on some serious steroids. Why don’t we call this a draw?”
His answer was a thrust for my eyes with the pointy end of a razor-sharp K-bar. I blocked with my good hand and danced back, keeping an eye on his shoulders and eyes, looking for any telltale sign of attack.
Billings’ left deltoid twitched and I leaned back as the knife whizzed by, a hairsbreadth from my nose. Another twitch and another dodge; this time the blade parted the Kevlar at my right triceps, exposing the shiny NewTanium underneath.
“You’re slowing down, Kal,” Billings said, a feral grin splitting his long beard. “Too hurt, you can’t avoid this forever. Give up and I’ll make it quick.”
My overhand right took him by surprise, a sharp blow that split his lips against his teeth. A follow-up kick to the shin sent him stumbling almost to his knees, but he met an uppercut that straightened him right up to his tippy toes before he crashed backward onto his ass.
I went after him like a one-armed Angel of Death, stomping and swinging for the cheap seats. A well-planted boot slammed down on his right ankle and I felt an uncharitable rush of excitement as I heard it snap like a pine log in a fire. Another kick to his knife hand sent the blade flying to plant an inch into drywall.
Fire rolled around my neck from my shoulder, but I was far too high from the fight to care. I was drawing back a boot for a good kick to a kneecap, when suddenly Billings rose up as if pulled by marionette strings. The ankle I stomped on didn’t seem to bother him a bit.
He spat a bloody gobbet at my feet. “My turn.”
Uh-oh.
A fist blurred toward my nose and I tried for a block, but it felt like pushing against a speeding semi. The blow exploded against my nose and lifted me off my feet for a clean second, knocking me back on my butt. After the initial thrust of dull, hammering pain, the world went away for a while. I went away for a while.
Stinging and a crushing pressure against my gut brought me back from la-la land, the pain a sharp and insistent tattoo on my cheeks. With barbed hooks, they dragged my consciousness to the surface and forced my eyes open. I immediately wanted to close them again.
Billings was sitting on me, big hands rising and falling with the precision of a metronome, each fall bringing a slap, each slap a nail of pain and a flush of heat. His eyes lit with almost unholy joy as they met mine.
“Blg,” I mumbled, vaguely aware of the void below my skull—my head lay halfway over the cutoff. The hungry whispers of the Engine were close enough to touch.
“There you are, Kal,” crooned Billings, his lips drooling blood onto my chin. “Thought you were going to miss what comes next, did you?”
I didn’t bother to answer—my lips and cheeks hurt too much—so I spat a thin stream of bloody saliva that went as far as my chin. From far away I heard the howl of the red/gray orb and the harsh buzz of Ghost’s screaming.
Billings’ laughter expressed equal parts amusement and disdain as he leaned in close, his long beard tickling my throat. “And I thought you were tough.”
That damn beard, long and full. He looked like a reject from a ZZ Top lookalike contest. All I could do was stare at that glorious mat of hair that was his pride and joy. That damn hair.
Wait a minute.
That hair.
I didn’t think, didn’t even consider the pros and cons, I just did, motivated by fear and the need to survive because Billings was about to do me some dirt that would most likely finish me. The Shape was a simple one, the easiest of all the spells in the Bureau arsenal, according to Alex. It rose up in my mind’s eye, elegant and modest, a spell even a piker like me could understand and I thrust it up and out, right into that bushy beard.
And again.
And again.
Five times in rapid succession I cast the spell, spurred by fear and anger and desperation. Five points of fire began on that bushy long beard, which lit up with a whoosh of flame that reached all the way to his mad eyes. I threw in one more spell for the hell of it, right in the middle of his screaming mouth. That scream died quick as he started to gag and choke, hands covering his eyes to protect them from the flaming mess that was his beard.
His antics gave me enough wiggle room to grab a marble-hard shoulder and bring my feet up to his stomach. Heaving up and back, I tossed him out toward the Engine.
The world turned a little topsy-turvy, and I felt myself sliding over the side. I grasped the edge with both arms, adrenaline-fueled panic a terrific anesthetic. The agony in my shoulder was forgotten, put in the rearview as I scrambled for safety, afraid I’d become Kal pizza on the floor far below.
Fingers scrabbling, I snagged a loop of carpeting, gaining enough traction to dig at the fibers and the half-i
nch pad beneath until I found concrete. Smooth, as if lasered clean and perfect, it offered enough of a handhold to arrest my fall. I hung there, swaying, craning my neck around. What I saw aged me ten years in an instant.
I’ve seen some bad crap in my time—harpy poison liquefying its victims, a bone-white anaconda the size of an Amtrak train swallowing schoolchildren whole, parasitic black worms slowly consuming the brains of their hosts, to name a few.
This beat them all dead solid cold.
The Engine no longer revolved. Well, at least the larger, outer ring had come to a standstill. The inner rings still spun, but at a greater rate, becoming a bluish blur, the perfect red lips a crimson smear. Billings lay on the ring, held at an impossible angle, almost perpendicular to the floor far below. His body was barely wider than the flesh ring he lay on, his beard burned away, leaving a dark char on the skin of his half-melted cheeks. It wasn’t the burns that caused him to scream—oh no, not by half—but the dozen or so mouths he lay on. I mentioned earlier that behind those perfect red lips lay long throats circled by rows of needle teeth, right? Well, those luscious lips pulsed and sucked against his flesh, clamped on as if glued to his muscular perfection. They pulled at him, sucking him in like a flesh milkshake. He tried to free himself, thrashing and shaking, but he had no leverage; the flesh of his back and ass suspended him. He planted one boot against the ring, but a small mouth widened just enough to swallow his foot whole, the boot vanishing down that gullet until the lips were locked clean around his ankle, sucking, sucking, sucking.
Imagine toothpaste extruded from its tube in reverse, but instead of a white paste or colored goo, think of flesh-colored Jell-O mixed with swirls of strawberry.
The Spirit in St. Louis Page 25