“Gwen?” I asked, unable to formulate a more specific question.
“M’fine,” she mumbled. “Jus’need t’get out’vehere.”
Then she collapsed entirely, or would have, if I hadn’t reached forward to grab her. Torrence looked as though he would have grabbed her in the next second, but I happened to be standing in the direction she collapsed, so catching her was all but required.
“Living Cat?” Rhelia asked, sounding startled.
“Gwen’s sick or something,” I muttered. After a few moments of shifting my balance, I managed to lever Gwen up onto my shoulder. She didn’t weigh nearly as much as she should have; lifting her felt like lifting a small child. I suspected that was a bad thing. She already looked like a patient in palliative care.
When I finally reached a standing position, with Gwen draped over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry, I found Rhelia and Torrence frowning at us.
“She is a creature of dark matter, so this dungeon is probably killing her,” Rhelia said, her accent dropping away. I really wanted to ask her about when she chose to keep it and let it go, but now was definitely not the time.
“How could she have gotten here, with all the dark matter suppression going on?”
“She likely had a single chance to bring us here, and was then stuck. For someone as powerful as she, the getting here was perhaps not that difficult, but she would be even less capable of leaving than the rest of us, as the dark matter suppressors restrain all that she is, not just her magic.”
I let my jaw drop, as I considered why on Earth Gwen would have found that to be a worthwhile risk. I couldn’t imagine getting Rhelia here as backup was worth it, but maybe I underestimated how screwed we’d been before she mentioned the whole whistle business.
Which reminded me that I hadn’t seen Renata recently, and just as I opened my mouth to voice the question, she stepped out of the shadows and stood beside us.
“It should be easy enough to lead the mind control victims out of here, but I am unsure of what to do with the MOME guards.”
We all simply stood and stared at each other for a moment.
“I may be good, but I cannot convey all of these unconscious individuals to safety alone before the dragons would destroy us all.”
“It’s true,” Rhelia agreed. “Even if we were to emerge and inform General Aira that she must wait a few hours while we remove innocents, I doubt she would hold her attack. She… is not fond enough of non-dragons to risk the delay.”
“Right,” I said. “Rhelia, how does the whistle thing work, exactly? Can anyone give directions, or just the whistle blower?”
“There is no magic to it, else it would not work here. I believe the first person to give directions after the whistle blows will be heeded.”
I nodded towards the whistle she held in her hand, and cleared my throat for a moment.
She blew the eerie signal that had blown twice already today, and I struggled to keep my stomach in check as all the eyes of the sleeping troops opened as one.
“Everyone, please wake up and make your way to the tunnel in a calm and orderly fashion, helping those around you who need it. If there is an unconscious person nearby, please work with the people near you to carry them. We must all exit this facility as quickly and safely as possible.” I tried to use my best theater voice, hoping the acoustics of the cavern would help where my own vocal chords faltered.
A moment passed before, adding fuel to a lifetime of nightmares, almost everyone on the cavern floor rose as one, beginning to calmly progress to the tunnel behind us.
“So. Damned. Creepy,” I muttered, before turning to follow them with Gwen on my shoulder.
IT WAS HARD not to feel a giddy sense of relief as I led the march of over a hundred captives out of the heart of MOME’s North American dungeons and up towards light, air, and freedom. I was leading the pack, because I felt guilty allowing anyone else to risk encountering MOME resistance on the way out.
Luckily, all the MOME mind control victims seemed to be more inclined to follow a leader rather than push ahead, which meant that the glacial pace I was keeping, thanks to having an unconscious goddess slung over my shoulder, wasn’t pissing off anyone behind me. Still, about halfway up the tunnel leading back to the top of the dungeon, I passed Gwen off to Torrence, because I felt like my legs were about to give out, and the place where Rebecca Dryer’s bullet had gone through my shoulder earlier was starting to feel like it was on fire. Also, with Rhelia and Renata engaged in a whispered conversation just a few meters away, and no guards showing up to be defeated, Torrence looked desperate to have something to do. When I asked if he’d mind carrying the unconscious goddess, he practically jumped with glee.
As soon as Gwen was draped over Torrence’s shoulders, Rhelia pulled away from her conversation with Renata and dropped back to keep pace with him.
With zero fanfare, Renata appeared beside me.
“You must be careful with them,” she said, coming slightly more into focus through the shifting haze that always seemed to surround her.
I could guess who “they” were, since there was an army of zombielike people still trundling along behind us, but as for being careful…that could mean about a hundred different things at this point, and chances were good I didn’t even know what most of them were.
“What do you mean?”
“They are all still under a compulsion placed by the vampires. If we encounter anyone who—”
“Wait, vampires?”
“Yes. How else did you suppose they were managing mind control?”
“But I thought vampire mind control only worked on non-magical folks.”
“Normally, that is correct. However, it seems that MOME has discovered that even magical beings are vulnerable to vampire persuasion when their dark matter is supressed.”
“How does that work, though? Don’t the vampires need their dark matter to use persuasion? And then, how does that do any good? I mean, then you have an army of people who can’t leave the dark matter suppressing rocks, or whatever—”
“That is what the aquifer is for,” Renata interrupted, perhaps growing impatient with my continued divergence from her initial message of caution. “The water that wells there suppresses dark matter as effectively as the rocks it has filtered through. Once ingested, it stays in the system for days. Long enough to move the victims to where a vampire could manipulate them. And long enough to be forced to fight after they’d been ‘trained’ sufficiently.”
My stomach turned at the thought.
“They made everyone drink that stuff?”
“That is what both my and Rhelia’s observations would suggest.”
“Renata… what are you actually doing here? Did Hel seriously tell you to follow me all the way here?”
It was difficult to see through the haze, but I thought she might have shrugged.
“My father provided MOME with his services on more than one occasion, in his attempts to pursue me. I was… concerned about the legacy that would leave behind. Ever since you informed me of his demise, I have been wondering what wrongs of his it is possible for me to right. When Hel dismissed me and suggested that I could maintain my usefulness by seeing what you were up to, I thought perhaps I could… what is the term, murder two birds together?”
I swallowed, unsure whether or not she was joking.
“Close enough,” I admitted. “ So, you’re telling me that Edik had something to do with the MOME brainwashing scheme we’re now up to our ears in?”
Renata met the question with silence, but the look on her face was answer enough.
“Great. Edik is still fucking with me, even from the dead.”
“We are nearing the surface,” Renata continued, ignoring my jibe at her dead father. I looked around the tunnels and realized that she was right. We’d almost made it to the top of the dungeons. Soon we’d be out of the dark matter suppressing rock.
“You must understand that the vampire charms hold
ing these people will not break simply because we leave the dungeons behind us. They will be in danger of falling under MOME control again, should we meet anyone that has one of those whistles.”
“Right. Got it. Dewhistle the whistle holders ASAP.”
I glanced at Renata and decided she wasn’t done.
“Anything else?” I asked, warily.
“It will take them days to break free of the compulsions, and they will need help to break them. Until then… they may need assistance getting through their daily needs.”
I stared at her for a moment.
“Are you telling me I have to babysit a hundred zombie people so they can all eat, sleep, and shit properly?”
Renata shrugged.
“You do not have to, but if someone does not… it may be unpleasant for them.”
Ugh. I did not want to be in charge of these people’s wellbeing until MOME’s hooks were out of them, but leaving them to the side effects of MOME’s latest shitty plans to take over the world was unacceptable.
“Why did they even want a zombie horde? It’s not like they could use their magic, with their dark matter suppressed. They would just be cannon fodder.”
Renata’s mist-shrouded form merely stared at me for a moment, while I wondered what I had said that was so stupid. Then it hit me.
“Gwendamnit. That was the whole point, wasn’t it? Horrifying cannon fodder created out of our own allies.”
Renata only nodded, mutely.
“Ugh… and by the time we figured out we were killing people who weren’t voluntarily fighting for MOME, it would be far too late.”
I had kinda felt like throwing up ever since I’d encountered the whole mind control thing in the cavern, but now I could feel the bile rising in the back of my throat. I swallowed, because I hated vomiting in general, and right now I thought it would be exceedingly inconvenient—even though the idea of leaving vomit on MOME property was kind of appealing. Then again, so was lighting the whole place on fire. And, since that was part of the ACTUAL plan, I decided to save my petty bodily fluid revenge, and work on getting all these innocent people out of the way so that a few dozen dragons could torch MOME’s North American headquarters as originally discussed.
If only it had been that simple.
AS SOON AS we hit the top of the dungeon, the place where the dark matter suppressing stone ended and the normal prison began, Gwen seemed to regain her full weight. At least, that was my best guess as to why Torrence had suddenly collapsed under the unconscious redhead.
A guess that was confirmed when Torrence muttered, “How can anyone be that heavy?”
Considering that Torrence was nearly seven feet of pure muscle, that seemed like an odd question, but when I hustled over to grab one of Gwen’s still limp arms to try to help pull her off the giant man-bull, I could see what he meant.
“Holy shit,” I said, dropping Gwen’s arm. “Could this be some kind of MOME trap?” I asked, looking between Rhelia and Renata, who had hustled over to check on the trapped tauren with me.
The four of us were the only people out of our entourage who were actually looking at anything. Everyone else seemed to be staring blankly into space, after shuffling to a halt behind us. I shuddered, trying to ignore the zombielike horde that had somehow become my responsibility until they recovered themselves. My eyes snapped to Rhelia’s, since Renata’s were half hidden in the “mist” that seemed to constantly shroud her.
“I do not think sssso. I think thissss may be how much sssshe normally weighssss.”
“She feels like she’s cemented into the floor, Rhelia. How can she walk, if that’s how much she normally weighs?”
“She’s a goddess, isn’t she?” Renata asked. “That means she is mostly dark matter. Rather the reverse of the rest of us; we are blood and flesh that contain some dark matter, she is dark matter that has been molded to appear as blood and flesh.”
“It would exssssplain why sssshe weighed nearly nothing when we were in the dark matter ssssupresssssing partssss of thissss facsssility. It issss likely that sssshe can control how much sssshe weighssss when sssshe is conscioussss.”
“So what the hells can we do to make her light enough to carry?” Torrence asked wheezily from the floor, even as he managed to push Gwen a few inches to one side. It wasn’t quite enough to free him, but it was probably helping his breathing.
“Carry who?” asked a muffled voice, from atop the brown, furred chest she was currently pinning in place.
The four of us all stared at the still-unmoving redhead on the tile at our feet.
“Gwen?” I asked, unsure if I’d imagined the source of the voice.
“I’ll be fine in a few minutes,” the voice said. “Just leave me here for now. I’m afraid I won’t be able to make myself lighter for a bit, but by the time I can do that, I should have no trouble walking on my own.”
“Uh…” I looked between Torrence, Rhelia, and Renata again, hoping one of them would have some idea of how to respond to that. “Gwen, we’re… kinda still in the middle of the MOME HQ in Phoenix. I’m not sure we should just leave you here.”
“Oh, don’t worry about me. There’s really not much those asshats can do to me. In my current state, they can’t move me back to the one part of the facility where’d they’d actually be able to harm me, and as soon as I can make myself light enough to walk, there won’t be anything they can do to touch me.”
She sounded completely casual, as though she were explaining why her cinnamon buns needed a little more time to rise before she could put them in the oven.
“You sure abou—”
“You really should be going, Vic. There is much to be done still, and not much time to do it in. The fates don’t like to be kept waiting.”
“The fates?”
“I’ll tell you all about it later,” she said, her voice now muffled by the tile flooring that her face was pressed against. Torrence had finally managed to slide her off of his chest and onto the floor. “If there is a later. There won’t be, if you continue to linger here.”
“Right. Cool. That’s not ominous at all,” I muttered.
“Go, Vic. Seriously. You need to go, or there won’t be anything left to be sarcastic about.”
I was never sure how seriously to take Gwen, because she’d first shown up in my life as a naked crazy woman claiming to be my narrator. But ever since she’d revealed she was a goddess, it was difficult not to feel like there was a certain gravitas to everything she said. And when she said twice in one conversation that there was a chance there wouldn’t be a “later” if I didn’t get my ass in gear, I was going to listen.
“Gwenspeed,” I said over my shoulder, as the four of us turned and headed farther up and out of the MOME prison complex, our hundred shuffling mind control victims in tow.
“Cute,” said the muffled voice from the floor. “I see what you did there.”
I didn’t hear if she said anything else, because I was too busy running towards the exits.
IT WASN’T THAT I didn’t find it suspicious that we didn’t run in to a single MOME operative on our exodus from the building, it was just that I was too busy trying to figure out what Gwen could have meant by suggesting that there wouldn’t be a “later” if I didn’t hurry up. I mean, I got that we had a lot to do before MOME was completely out of business in the “accidentally/on purpose gonna blow up the universe” department, but I had been under the impression that we’d had most of that sewn shut by the time I got into the dungeons and found the cases of Technetium that I’d needed to neutralize.
If everyone else had found the stores of Technetium they’d been looking for, then we should have been golden. Rhelia and I hadn’t exactly had a chance to debrief, but when I’d asked about the cache of Technetium in Shanghai, she’d said she’d got it. If all our other agents had been as successful as Rhelia and I, we should be pretty much Technetium free by now… which is why what Gwen had said made me nervous. So nervous, that I didn�
�t think much of the fact that we didn’t run into any regular security or staff members as we ran through the halls of what had been a fully operational MOME facility not thirty minutes ago. Although, even if I had thought of it, I might have brushed it aside as Dryer having tipped everyone off to our whole “burn it with dragon fire” program when she realized we were there.
I certainly would not have guessed it meant we were about to be ambushed.
By what looked like the entirety of MOME’s fighting forces from across the globe… led by a short, balding mage with a wand aimed right at my heart, the moment I stepped out of MOME’s main entrance and into the way-too-fucking-hot-for-September Phoenix sun.
I had barely enough time to register the entirety of the force raised against us—over a thousand people arrayed around the paved parking lot that stretched outside the double set of glass doors we’d just plowed through, including clusters of folks wearing far more leather than was appropriate for the climate draped over parked cars, concrete barriers, and at least one tank, and a frontline of people holding actual AR-15s with an eerily familiar vacancy to their eyes—before I heard the word “fire” issue from the mouth of the short guy holding the wand.
And instantly felt myself tugged to my right, and into a grey landscape where the world around me seemed to be separated by a thick veil of water, and everything but me and Renata moved in slow motion. I didn’t have time to wonder what the fuck was going on—though a vague memory of Renata shuddering while talking about pulling people into her dimension came to mind—because, slow motion or not, the bullets that had started spraying towards me and the hundred or so stragglers I’d just pulled from MOME’s brainwashing basement were still moving as fast as a ball thrown by a professional pitcher, and dodging them was the focus of my entire existence. The spells being slung were moving considerably slower than the bullets, but they were still rolling inevitably towards us, and as far as I knew, no one in our entourage was bulletproof. Or spellproof.
Victoria Marmot- The Complete Series Page 58