The Dossiers of Asset 108 Collection

by J M Guillen

  “With pleasure.” Baxter trotted back to us as Rehl fired a couple more shots.

  “It’s clear this way.” I gazed at the three of them. “If you boys step ahead, maybe we can make certain things stay that way. I’ll hold the wall for another few moments and then I can join—”

  The room quaked again, sudden, violent tremors that rumbled through the entire building. At the sensation, my eyes grew wide.

  “He’s bringing more.” Alicia’s white gaze seemed distant. “There are currently eighteen of the creatures.”

  “That’s what those tremors mean?” Baxter turned from Alicia to me. “There’s an earthquake every time he gates in more wolf-spiders?”

  “Yes,” I snapped, though I didn’t mean to. “It doesn’t matter. We’ve got a game changer over against the far wall; we just need to get to it.”

  “Understood, Miss Lawson.” Rehl tipped his imaginary hat. “Let’s get this done.”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle. I had never seen Rehl so exuberant, but then I supposed I understood why. Nothing in his life had ever indicated he might have the opportunity to actually be an honest-to-goodness monster slayer.

  Moreover, he was great at it.

  If I weren’t careful, I’d have to give him a raise.

  9

  I reshaped my Windwall as my friends sprinted off to the far side of the attic. For a good half minute, I held back the scrabbling monstrosities. Then I turned and sprinted through the labyrinth of bookshelves and display cases.

  I refused to acknowledge the truth; weariness had begun to seep into my bones.

  Gunfire barked in the shadows before I caught up with my friends.

  “To your left!” Baxter sounded as if he were only a little bit scared to death.

  More shots cracked, and then I came around one of the bookshelves and saw my friends. Alicia stood between the guys, the radiant light of Abriel like a starburst over her head. Rehl and Baxter faced to either side of her and fired into the shadows.

  As I sprinted toward them, one of the hounds leapt at Baxter.

  I heard the young man’s soft grunt as he went down, while frantically trying to wrestle the thing’s maw away from his face.

  “No! No, no, no…” I hit top speed.

  Alicia stepped over to his dropped shotgun, picked it up, and aimed toward them.

  “No!” Baxter yelled at her as he struggled with the many legged horror. “Too close! You’ll hit me!”

  “I won’t.” Alicia fired.

  I couldn’t exactly see what she hit, but since Baxter didn’t scream, I assumed it wasn’t him.

  To be fair, my attention was focused elsewhere.

  Behind my friends, another small pack of the coursing spiders bore down on them. The small, separate group slunk in the shadows.

  The gang didn’t even see they were there.

  “Fuck that noise.” I started to form an Empyrean Seal, but my heart leapt into my throat as I realized the truth: I had less than a second to act. The creatures were too close and far too fast. Panic gripped me as I realized I was about to watch people I cared about get devoured by canine monstrosities. I gestured with one outstretched hand and let out a wild, inarticulate screech.

  Two leapt at Rehl’s back.

  He didn’t even see them, and Alicia had turned all her attention to Baxter.

  I didn’t speak, didn’t create an Empyrean Seal, gave no direction other than my sharp, emphatic cry.

  On my wrist, the bracelet sang a silent song; the Aegis of Dudael burned azure and topaz.

  The Wind cried my name.

  I saw it in the eye of my imagination, thundering forward toward friend and foe alike.

  An unstoppable force.

  And yet, like a self-aware river of wrath, it coursed around my friends; only ruffled their clothes and tousled their hair.

  Meanwhile, the Wind punched into the monstrosities like a wrecking ball.

  The two in mid-leap sailed backward and landed somewhere in the shadows.

  The Wind sang sharp in places and sliced several creatures to ribbons, leaving little more than splatters of otherworldly ichor. In others, it punched like a cannonball or flung them into the shadows.

  The entire pack was momentarily down.

  For the tiniest moment, each of my friends stood in place, stunned.

  As I wearily sauntered up, Rehl chuckled and shook his head.

  “The Masked Brava saves the day again.”

  “I wish the Masked Brava would get us out of here,” Baxter grumbled through clenched teeth. “This is a little more than I signed on for. I was promised Chinese food.”

  “Are they gone?” Rehl spun in place and pointed the gun out in front of him. “Just like that?”

  “Nah.” Baxter swallowed. “Too fucking easy.”

  “Over here.” If Alicia had heard Baxter curse, she chose not to comment on it. Instead, she stepped between a couple of the bookcases and peered through a glass door display case.

  “Yeah?” I stepped closer to take a peek of my own.

  I’d been curious about Simon’s trinkets since I met the man, and I knew I hadn’t seen nearly all that he’d created.

  The things I had seen had been pure wonders.

  Several small knickknacks and gewgaws lay upon five shelves. In the corner closest to me, I glimpsed a small hourglass, a tie pin, a deck of cards, two different chess pieces, and an old silver lighter.

  And a ninja star? I peered closer, fascinated.

  “What are they?” I opened the cabinet and turned to Alicia. “Did Abriel assist Simon with all of them?”

  Her lips parted, but it wasn’t her voice I heard from behind me.

  “You are a truculent, spoiled child.” The words, like gigantic stones grating together beneath the world, boomed from the shadows, quite close. “There isn’t a choice here, Elizabeth. Not really.”

  Shit.

  “I disagree. There’s always a choice.” I couldn’t see the Houndsman; he lurked somewhere in the shadows. Yet it was an easy thing to feel his presence, an ominous shroud that hung over my mind.

  “Alicia,” I hissed. “Did he move over here with us?”

  “Um.” There came a momentary pause. “Yes. I didn’t feel him move, however.” She paused. “He simply appeared.”

  “The only choice to make is whether or not your friends die.” The heaviness of his footfall echoed in the room, along with the sound of his stave as it struck against the wood.

  “We seem to be doing well enough so far.” I peered into the darkness, trying to see.

  “Is that it, then? Are these willing to die for you?” Another footfall. “It matters little. Either way I will take you to the Gaunt Man.”

  “I love ya, Liz,” Baxter jibed nervously. “But I wasn’t planning on dying for you. Not today.”

  “No,” I growled. “Definitely not today.”

  My mind raced over the possibilities. My friends had done well, but I had seen the kind of strangeness the Houndsman had at his beck and call. With little more than a word and his will, he had dismissed the Wind and utterly deconstructed one of my walls.

  That was scary levels of power. If he did it again, it removed me from play. Even if we made use of some of Simon’s trinkets, what would it matter? If the creature could dismiss my talents so easily, I had no reason to think any of my mentor’s clever little tricks would fare any better.

  I sighed. If I wasn’t careful, I’d get my friends killed. The Houndsman only wanted me.

  “All right!” I glanced over my shoulder at Rehl. “If you let them go, then I’ll come with you!”

  “What are you doing?” Rehl hissed.

  “Lying,” I whispered. “No one can ever tell when I’m lying.”

  “I suspect you lie,” the voice rasped. “I know others have been sent. Now you expect me to believe you would surrender as easily as that?”

  Shit.

  “Get out of here,” I hissed at Baxter and Alicia. “I�
�m fast. I’ll make the window idea work.”

  “What?” Baxter snarled. “We fought through all of that bullshit, and now you’re just going to quit?”

  “You don’t understand.” I bit my lip as I thought. “This isn’t your problem. You called it, Bax. You didn’t come here to die today.”

  Truthfully however, it was Mr. Serin’s words that made up my mind for me.

  “Influence grants us choice, Elizabeth.” Serin smiled. “We

  have far more choices than the average person.”

  “Then let your actions fit your word,” the creature rumbled. “Come to me now. Leave your friends and your crafted spirit behind you. Keep the oath you made.”

  “Give me a minute.” I glanced each of them one more time. “When you can, make for the trap door. We’ll hook up later.”

  “The fuck you say,” Baxter seethed.

  “Let her go, Bax.” Rehl placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You’ve seen how fast she is. It’s not over yet.”

  I nodded at Rehl, and then I turned from my friends.

  I stepped into the shadows.

  Alone.

  10

  As I crept into the darkness, the light of Abriel faded from my mind. The shadows not only grew long but heavy around my heart. Even though the hounds crouched in the darkness several yards off, I felt the shroud of hopelessness and despair that hung around them.

  “Liz!” Baxter hissed as I stepped away from my circle of friends.

  I did not look back. If anything, I crept along more quickly and hoped to get far enough away that he wouldn’t do anything stupid.

  Like step into the shadows. That would be stupid.

  In truth, I trembled, and my heart beat like a furious drum. The sorrow, the pure melancholy the creatures emanated, clung to me like a physical thing.

  “Interesting,” the grating, growling voice of the Houndsman rumbled in the darkness. Ahead, I made out his silhouette, a greater darkness in the shadows.

  “Well,” I cleared my throat and tried again. “You said you’d let them go.” I gestured behind me.

  “What?” The Houndsman’s eyes burned like slumbering coals. “I said no such thing.”

  “You did, asshole.” Though exhausted, I lent more than a little fire to my words. “You said I could choose whether they lived or died. Fine. I’ll come with you. They live.”

  “Ms. Shepherd.” The pitch black apparition shook its head, almost as if amused. “I said the only choice was whether or not your friends died. This was ever my choice, not yours.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “The implication was that you were coming with me no matter what you chose.”

  “I see.” I began to consider this might have been a mistake. As a person who never made mistakes, it was difficult for me to tell.

  “Perhaps they may yet be safe,” the Houndsman mused. “Come to me, and we shall leave this place. As soon as we are gone, my hounds will withdraw with me.”

  “And how do I know that?”

  “You assume I am the one who would deceive?” For reasons I could not understand, the fiend seemed to find that highly amusing. “Rest assured, Ms. Shepherd, some of us keep the pacts we make.”

  “So you claim.” I continued to walk forward, as my mind raced.

  Even through despair that grasped and throttled my heart, I felt the Wind as it crouched at the edge of my mind, a great hunting cat ready to pounce.

  “Yet one intent on deception might say the same,” I reasoned.

  “You’re a task, Ms. Shepherd.”

  “Liz,” I growled through the despair.

  “You are simply a favor owed, something to be collected and tallied. There is no profit for me in games.”

  “Th-then dismiss your hounds.” I stammered a bit but stared straight into the darkness of that silhouette and pretended as if doing so didn’t make my lizard hind-brain howl that I should run for cover. “I’ve agreed to come peaceably. You’ve proven you’re more than a match for my wind, even if I were to cause trouble.” I shrugged. “Calling off your cute little pups would be an act of good faith.”

  “Faith.” One of the hounds, close enough for me to be able to see the dull red of its eyes, croaked the word back to me. “Faith. Faith.”

  “I am not here to keep troth with you,” the creature sneered. “We’re not bargaining. I simply informed you that I will takeyou with me regardless of your choices.” He paused. “The time for wordplay is over, mortal-born girl.”

  “If you say so.” I swallowed and dropped my head. The elemental coldness, the sheer darkness of the despair, pressed against my chest, made it difficult to draw a breath.

  Get ready. I pushed the thought outside myself, as if the Wind itself could hear me.

  “Yet I am not cruel. When we are quit of this place my hounds shall follow. If the mewling children who remain take no action against them, they may well survive.”

  “Fairly offered.” I slipped my hand into the pocket of my hoodie. “Allow me to rebut.”

  I grasped my power and dug deeper into myself than I knew I could.

  Empyrean sigils, bluer than the deepest sky, burst into a cacophony of brilliance around me.

  The light cast into the deeps of the shadows, and I saw dozens of the hounds there, eager and poised.

  I grasped the throwing star Simon had left in his cabinet. I spun and hurled the wicked little thing and cast forth Wind with it.

  Against the inside of my wrist, the Aegis of Dudael sang and cast ripples of harmony through the room.

  I gave it all I had.

  That star sliced through the air of the room so fast it couldn’t be seen. As I had hoped, my hundreds of hours of knife throwing did confer a similar bonus to kickass ninja stars.

  I just hoped that, for once—this one time—Simon had been completely truthful with me:

  “Not the throwing star?”

  “No!” He seemed horrified. “That would’a killed everyone here!”

  “Yeah?” I raised an eyebrow.

  The throwing star struck the Houndsman center mass, and the Wind drove the weapon deep into its dark body.

  The fiend screamed as it stumbled backward, a sound that rent the darkness.

  The explosion shattered sound itself.

  In all of my adventures, I hadn’t really experienced an explosion yet. It’s easy to assume that it’s something like in the movies: Blake Runner shoots the car, maybe hits the gas tank, and suddenly there’s a firestorm of noise and smoke.

  A real explosion is concussion. It is force so intense that all that exists is the thunder of it in your body, the echo of it all the way through your skull.

  One minute I stood, mouthing off to the shadowy Houndsman; the next, I lay flat on my ass, staring up at the darkness, wondering why I shouldn’t just keep lying there.

  At first, I only heard the high pitched whine that sang in my ears.

  Until I heard the hounds.

  They grunted and growled as they gamboled toward me. The sound seemed far, so far away…

  “Liz!” Rehl’s cry came from equally far away. For a moment, I wasn’t certain who spoke, wasn’t even certain if it were real.

  Gunfire convinced me to get up.

  “Dammit.” I raised my head to look around and diligently ignored the bone deep tiredness. My everything ached, and my mind swam.

  More gunfire. No time.

  Why aren’t the cops here yet? This was New York, after all. Where’s Dad?

  A long moment passed before I blinked the wavering bleariness from my eyes, but when I did, the first thing I saw was the sharp orange bursts from a gun muzzle. Someone, little more than a silhouette a few feet away from me, fired four quick bursts and then stepped over to me.

  “Liz?” Rehl leaned close, put his fingers beneath my chin, and lifted my head. “Are you okay?”

  Was Rehl wearing a cowboy hat?

  “Oh yeah.” Even though I felt as if I had been killed two or th
ree times already I let the sarcasm seep through. “I’m doing great. Never been better.”

  “Sounds like she’s fine.” Baxter stepped closer.

  He started to say something else, but two of the macabre spider dogs leapt on him from the shadows. One caught him squarely across the face with the razored end of its horrific leg. His blood splattered as he screamed.

  “No!” Rehl turned from me and his pistol blazed. In a fury he walked straight toward the blood-spattered arachnine and fired and kept firing. He had a methodology to the way he shot, two quick double taps followed by a pause to re-aim and then two more quick double taps.

  As I watched, Abriel’s light fell over me. It felt like cool spring water, like cleansing summer rain. The moment that light touched my mind, the horror and unreasoning terror vanished, like shadows before the sun.

  “I need you to stand up, Liz,” Alicia’s quiet voice came from behind me. I felt her slender hands tug my own. “We have to move.”

  “What about the… the guy?” I knew I didn’t make sense, but for the life of me, I couldn’t find the words. “The shadow guy? The guy with the hounds?”

  “He’s gone.” She paused to consider. “I think. I can’t feel him in the attic anymore.”

  “But the spider things?”

  “Almost three dozen,” she answered.

  “Of course.” It had been too much to hope that the hunters were bound to their master, so if he were slain or driven away, they would vanish as a matter of course.

  I supposed things only worked that way in tabletop games.

  But still the Houndsman had said as soon as we were gone, the hounds would withdraw. That was worth considering.

  “Ha!” Rehl’s triumphant cry sounded like a bell ringing in the darkness. “Didn’t expect that one, did you?”

  I blinked and glanced over to where Rehl held six or seven of the creatures back from Baxter’s unconscious form. He shot at one of them, struck middle mass and dissolved the horror into a puddle of tar-like filth.

  Yet, another one leapt at him from behind.

  “Rehl!” I reached forward, powerless.

  But the arachnine struck something that burned with a brilliant, golden light.