Disciples of the Serpent: A Novel of the O.C.L.T.

by Williams, Sidney

  “The sea’s got an upset stomach,” Ahlstrom said.

  Bullfinch watched from his window, studying the deep black-gray water’s movement, rising and assaulting the ship again. He couldn’t disagree, and the troubled sea concerned him. That had to be more of a tempest than usual, and it had to stem from the events they’d left behind. He prayed the judgment had been right.

  “Can you set down on it in this?” Bullfinch asked.

  The pilot gazed out at the sea as the rain pitched against the wind screen.

  “I might if that was one of the OPVs with a helipad. Hate to say it, but the best bet’s to set you down with a harness. Even if we could land we’d go right over the side unless they could run out and tie us down immediately. That’d be, what’s the official term for it at sea? Iffy.”

  Bullfinch looked down at the ship and the harsh gray waves.

  “So I’m going…That’s why you asked for…”

  The response team member beside him looked over and gave a nod.

  “I’d better get bundled up.”

  Ahlstrom chuckled. “Guess you’re gonna see why the Garda puts up with me. Captain’s gonna think I’m crazy, but I can hold it pretty steady. If you’d give a wink and a request to St. Christopher, wouldn’t hurt us just now.”

  “Let’s give it a try,” Bullfinch said.

  The ship below dipped and rose again.

  “Let me radio and tell them we’ve arrived. Cinch your buckles tight.”

  Bullfinch moved into position.

  “They’re wanting us to give it up until they get to calmer seas,” Ahlstrom said in a few seconds.

  “There won’t be any calmer seas,” Bullfinch said. He bit his lip. “Let’s do it.”

  In a few moments, Bullfinch gave the flagging end of his harness a tug in compliance, then curled his fingers around the edges of the chopper door and closed his eyes. He’d wrapped his tablet carefully and secured it to his body under a life vest.

  A team was coming out on deck, secured with their own lifelines.

  “I guess this is going to be hairy for a while,” Bullfinch said.

  “Actually you should go down pretty fast,” the team member said. “Gravity’s on your side.”

  He didn’t smile.

  In a few seconds, Bullfinch felt the descent begin and he left his throat and stomach at the altitude where they’d started. He was almost deafened as the wind tore into him.

  He’d caught words like insane from the ship’s communications officer as Ahlstrom had conferred on the drop, and with his head bowed, Bullfinch reminded himself of the things he’d survived so far. If giant winged things and other monsters hadn’t done him in, would fate be content to batter him against the deck of a ship? There was O’Donnell-think creeping into his head again.

  Surely fate would wait for a more spectacular way to bring his demise.

  As the descent continued, he felt the aircraft buffeted and churned above, flinging him about. He held tightly to the line and kept moving downward.

  His head bounced side to side, needles of pain shooting through the base of his neck. If he survived this, he’d need muscle relaxants if not a cervical collar. He entertained then dismissed the idea of opening his eyes. Nothing he could see would help.

  Good or bad, he’d deal with the outcome when he reached the deck or the cold North Atlantic waves rushed in on him. Dashing off a farewell to Mack and Crease and Rebecca might have been a nice touch, but there wasn’t time now.

  Finally, he opened his eyes to see crewmen just below, waiting, ready to grab him. He wasn’t quite in reach. He gritted his teeth and tried to stretch his toes, but he was pulled in the wrong direction by a gust.

  He swallowed and held tight as Ahlstrom adjusted somewhere above him. He felt himself moving. Moving. Almost over the deck.

  Then he slid into the arms of the crewmen. Hands closed around him, grabbing him tightly. A thumb pressed his throat.

  “Was afraid your heart had stopped,” someone shouted.

  “That was a good test for it, my boy. It’s still ticking.”

  It was still holding when they were ushered onto the bridge a few minutes later after he’d been shoved into a tight little room to change into dry clothes including a heavy blue sweater.

  “Have some tea.”

  A mug was thrust into Bullfinch’s hand by a young dark-haired female officer in a white shirt with epaulets. Bullfinch accepted and took a gulp. It felt better than he could have imagined burning down his throat. In all the excitement he’d failed to notice he was chilled to the bone.

  “Haven’t seen much like this in a while,” the woman said. “Lt. Kieran Darcy.”

  Bullfinch introduced himself and looked toward the narrow windshield that faced the front of the ship. A man of about fifty-five in another dark blue sweater with a captain’s insignia stood there, thin and blond-haired with equally blond eyebrows.

  “I don’t think it’s a normal storm,” Bullfinch said.

  “We didn’t have anything on the radar or in the weather forecast,” Darcy said. “Thought the situation must not be quite normal, taking a risk like that. Helluva pilot you’ve got there. He’s headed to the nearest shore to set down. Come meet the captain.”

  “Geoffrey Bullfinch,” Bullfinch said extending a hand as he was ushered over.

  “Lt. Commander Leonard Curl,” the man said, taking his hand. “What is this occult service they’re telling me you work for?”

  “Orphic Crisis Logistical Taskforce, O.C.L.T., not actually “occult,” but it often gets pronounced that way. How far out are we?” Bullfinch asked.

  “From Ballinskelligs? We’re not fast, but you caught us at a good time. At this point, forty-five minutes. That quick enough?”

  “I honestly don’t know. Can you fill me in on your firepower?”

  “We got outfitted with a bit of new equipment for the Mediterranean mission,” Curl said with a jerk of his head toward the bow. “But that’s still the centerpiece.”

  The pitch of the ship continued, and water sloshed against the wind screen, but Bullfinch could make out a small cupola on the deck not far outside the window.

  “It’s called an OTO Melara 76 millimeter. The Italians made it, and they called it super rapido. We can take planes or missiles out of the sky. One hundred twenty rounds a minute, and with the special operations we’ve got lots of shells on board including some guided rounds and incendiaries.”

  “Fiery bullets sound good in this case,” Bullfinch said with a hoist of his mug. He wished it sounded better, but he kept that to himself. “We’ll see what they’ll do, Captain Curl.”

  The corner of his mouth ticked up. He hadn’t noticed the alliteration until it rolled off his lips.

  Forty-Five

  A short, heavy gray-haired man in a red slicker stood at the edge of the tarp, solemn and patient.

  Kaity watched another bottom section come off the printer and watched Alison Syn hold it up for inspection, checking especially for irregularities around the end that would need to interlock with the top section. When it got a nod, she turned and moved to the man, expecting speech.

  He took her arm instead, tugging lightly and gesturing toward the shoreline.

  “Liam’s ready?”

  The solemn expression didn’t falter.

  She nodded, and the man led her from the tent’s edge across to another vehicle where Nelda and Alison waited. Kaity gave a nod, and they opened the door. Alison leaned in and took the arm of someone seated in the back, guiding her out against mild resistance.

  The lithe girl was about sixteen, wearing a long white dress under a heavy coat. Long hair spilled down over her collar and shoulders. She blinked in the gray light outside the car, lifting a sluggish hand to shield her eyes. Vita Burke, Professor Burke’s niece, had been drugged for a while. Some of the effects were wearing off, but she remained compliant.

  “Let’s take her down to the waterline,” Kaity said.

 
“There are Garda up the shore,” Alison said. “We need to pass through the line and move quickly.”

  Nelda slipped off the girl’s coat, and then they each took an arm and guided her behind Kaity.

  The cacophony of notes played by the swirling winds from inland had risen and turned into a discordant tonal pattern like nothing Kaity had ever heard aloud. When they’d discussed it, it had always been theoretical. Now the buzz-tinged shriek funneled through the row of open loops on the staffs, drifting in the direction where Liam stood, still flanked by the slick gray figures who protected him. As the water had begun to pull back, they were no longer submerged. They crouched, all scale, tentacles and menace.

  Kept busy by the production line, Kaity had not looked toward the water for a while. The part in the waves had widened, forming twin, towering walls that shimmered like two great foam-topped parentheses.

  Her gasp was sudden and involuntary, and the air stayed in her lungs until she almost felt dizzy and faint. There was no bay floor before them, but a parted opening that looked somehow like a night sky, or a vast beyond of stars, or an abyss of negativity. What did a black hole look like?

  The dark figures around Liam parted, and he turned back to her and extended a hand, inviting her.

  Her lungs snapped back to activity, and after a second, she walked across the sand and took his offered hand and stood at his side, and they gazed together as wind pounded and those walls of water throbbed and something moved down in that other place that was revealed before them.

  The throng of supplicants stretching along the beach showed little reaction as the Garda team moved behind the line, shields raised, shotguns poised. The participants were too mesmerized by what occurred before them and by the odd sounds playing through the one-note instruments to notice the team.

  “These people are dazed,” Quinn said. “I don’t think they even know what’s happening.”

  “Can’t disagree there,” O’Donnell said. Behind the team, her focus had moved from the line-up to the water and the huge swirling opening.

  “What the hell’s going on out there?” Quinn asked. “Are we dreaming?”

  “Afraid it’s real.” O’Donnell looked toward the tunnel of water. “If we break the line does that close the waves up again?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Rees spoke absently because he was staring at the new dance that had begun at the heart of the channel, slippery, slithering, profane appendages crept upward beyond the line.

  “We’ve got to try breaking their concentration,” O’Donnell said. “Push forward.”

  “Hold the line,” Quinn said as a command. “Let’s interrupt our friends there.”

  Keon had been working a while, flexing fingers, concentrating on folding his thumb under just right, and at last, though excruciating, he slipped his hand through the loop that had secured his wrist and soon he had himself free. Then he turned his attention to the van’s back doors, which popped open, having been left unsecured.

  Wind and moisture hit him instantly. He needed to adjust to these abrupt changes. He flinched and raised an arm at the blast, hesitating before moving out, picking up the cicada-edged sound borne on the wind.

  He turned, determining the direction, and ran across rugged, dead grass that gave way to sand, and at the beach edge he could see the line with more people falling into place with staffs while what looked like police advanced from the other end.

  Then he looked to the black-armored police. Thank the heavens.

  Maybe he could get to them.

  But what help could he offer against…?

  His gaze moved to the bay and the opened waves.

  He saw Kaity and, god, it was Liam tugging a girl in a white gown forward, and his heart froze or felt like it had.

  Before his old friends were rising figures, a pair of things starting to appear from nothingness, foul amalgamations of gnashing…what were they to be called? He had to get to the coppers.

  Sprinting across the beach, moving parallel to the line-up at the shore, he angled toward the black shields inching toward the crowd, hands raised to try and look non-threatening even with his speed.

  He’d shout when he drew closer, let them know he was on their side and had something to share.

  “It’s a bloody wall of water,” Darcy said looking through binoculars out the bridge window. “It’s frozen straight vertical.”

  Bullfinch took the glasses and stared at the horizon, moving them until he’d trained on what she was seeing.

  “That’s different from what we saw before,” he said. “Probably accomplishing the same effect, ripping an opening.”

  “In what?” Curl asked. “The sea floor?”

  “Probably the fabric of the universe.”

  “Do we keep forging toward that?”

  “Best we can do for now. Can you load up your incendiaries?”

  “I’ll give the order.”

  “What’s beyond that?” Darcy asked, unable to take her gaze from it.

  “If it’s like we saw before, it’s a… It’s hard to describe,” he said finally. “But you’ll wish you’d never set eyes on it.”

  “Dear God. The thing behind the curtain of water,” she said. “Right out of my nightmares. And we thought this was a routine mission.”

  “Possible hostile approaching,” an officer from the end of the team line shouted.

  They’d been inching into the crowd, using the shields to nudge people out of place and knock the staffs aside. So far it had had little effect on the overall screech.

  O’Donnell spun to see the man charging them, hands raised. She kept her hand on her sidearm but waited. He looked more terrified than like someone who wanted to attack.

  She couldn’t blame him on the terrified front.

  She stepped from the ranks and put up a hand, wanting to slow him and…

  And then one of the shotguns blasted somewhere beside her. The charging man’s forward motion was interrupted. A beanbag packet struck him in the shoulder. As agony flared on his features, he was spun partially sideways before he crashed back onto the sand.

  “Easy,” she shouted. “I don’t think he was attacking.”

  She moved forward and dropped to his side, touching his cheek slightly and moving his face toward her. He was stunned, but his eyes moved in their sockets a bit and focused.

  “You’re Keon Bello.”

  His fear and confusion turned to an expression of surprise, a frown wrinkling his brow.

  “Eileen O’Donnell,” she said. “Special Garda operations. We were looking for you to try to protect you. Are you behind this?”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “Is this your party?”

  He struggled to sit up.

  “No. No. They’ve done a terrible thing.” He lost it for a moment, shuddering. Under better conditions, O’Donnell would’ve called in a medic. Now, she helped him into a seated position, and began to massage his shoulder.

  “My old friends are deluded,” he said. “That’s Liam Hennigan out there, and Kaity White. They’re going to upset…”

  “I know what they’re gonna do. I got a preview. What can we do to stop it?”

  “There’s a pulp writer…”

  “I know. What…can…we…do…to…stop…it?” She spoke slowly and emphatically over the screech and wind roar.

  “Break the line?”

  “We’re working on that. Not having much effect. If you move anyone, more fall into place.”

  “They’re playing what’s called ‘The Song of the Air,’ channeling these lost sounds that harness…”

  “I’m getting the picture. How…do…we…stop…it?”

  “If you could, I don’t know, blow the sound back? It might interrupt it. With the chopper over there?”

  “The chopper against this wind at this point? Lost cause. You need to talk to the professor.”

  “Who?”

  “Our secret-agent-of-the-strange friend who’s on
a ship at sea now and ready to direct a ramming of those things. If we’re lucky.”

  She dragged him to the chopper and pulled him inside, sitting by the door to block some of the noise.

  Forty-Six

  Bullfinch watched the thing rise above the wall of water, just not a shimmering coil like before, but what looked like the tips of leathery wings and a form more horrible than they’d seen before stretching above it, the worst of it lost and indistinct in the pall from mist and cloud that hung above everything.

  “Oh my God.” Darcy’s jaw dropped almost to her chin. “It’s the gates of hell.”

  “I’m not sure we’re seeing daemons,” Bullfinch said. “Whatever the Fomoire and Crom Cruach and their cousins were, and wherever they came from, they probably inspired the legends of a few, though.”

  At the moment, it looked considerably worse than a rabbit in the moon.

  “Ready weapon,” Curl said into a mic. “Don’t fire until my command.”

  The canopy spun a quarter turn, and the barrel tilted upward, targeting the shape in the storm. Bullfinch leaned against the bridge, gripping the unit’s casing until his joints ached.

  “It’s going to move toward shore,” Darcy said.

  “It is starting to move,” Curl agreed. “Prepare to fire.”

  The cannon barrel ticked upward almost imperceptibly amid the waves crashing across the bow.

  “Let the birds fly,” Curl said.

  The barrel made quick, short jerks.

  Ka-boom.

  Ka-boom.

  Ka-boom.

  Huge casings belched from its side to clatter into the wash on deck. Shells flew and eventually arched into the mist above the waves revealing themselves as little bursts of orange that ignited for seconds then faded as quickly as the gun had roared.

  “If it was a plane or tank it’d be gone now,” Curl said.

  “I don’t think it even felt it,” Darcy said.

  “Let’s try for the heart,” Curl said. “We’ll guide one in.”

  “Sir, we have someone on the horn looking for Mr. Bullfinch. Saying urgent.”