“Who’s asking?” I said. My smart mouth kicked in. “If you want to give me pamphlets about Jesus or the Church of Mormon, it’s not going to go well.”
He blinked, and then he almost smiled. “My name is Rory Murdo.”
“Is it?” I said. I jerked back the coat just enough to let him see the revolver pointed at him. “I think you’re supposed to say something else with that.”
The sight of the gun did not faze Murdo. “Five minutes to midnight.”
That had indeed been the code phrase Nicholas had given me.
“Yeah.” I held the gun on him for a bit longer, then flipped on the safety and tucked it back into my coat. “Then I guess you’re really Murdo.”
“To my lasting regret,” said Murdo in a quiet voice.
I blinked. Something had slipped through his cold mask then.
He had seemed sad. Deeply, profoundly sad.
“We’ve all got regrets, buddy,” I said. “Tell you what, if you don’t tell me yours I won’t tell you mine. You’re my ride?”
“Yes,” said Murdo, the hint of sadness vanishing as if it had never been there. “I have an SUV outside. We should leave at once. We have a long drive, and our mutual employer wants to see us by tomorrow night.”
“Where are we going?” I said.
“Washington,” said Murdo.
“Washington State?”
Murdo shook his head. “Washington DC.”
I didn’t like that at all.
If Nicholas was planning something in Washington DC, that meant it would deal with the federal government, or maybe the headquarters of Homeland Security. The Elves were the true rulers of Earth, but the federal government still had lots of power, and it wasn’t staffed by nice people. Like, if Corbisher hadn’t been a Rebel, he would have made an excellent Senator. Come to think of it, he had been running for governor of Minnesota when I had blown up his life.
“I don’t suppose you know what this is all about?” I said.
“I am afraid not,” said Murdo. “Our mutual employer, as I am sure you have realized, likes to play his cards close to his chest. But we should go. If you have questions for me, I will be happy to answer them on the drive.”
“Fine.” I held up three fingers. “But I have three conditions.”
Murdo inclined his head. I found his calm annoying.
“First,” I said, “while we’re traveling, you might get ideas about stealing a kiss or copping a feel. If you do anything like that, I’m going to kill you.”
Murdo nodded again. “It would be best to keep our interactions professional, Miss Stoker.”
It had been a little insulting how quickly he had agreed.
“Second,” I said, “if there’s a crisis, listen to me. I know I don’t look it, but I have more experience with fighting than you do.” More experience getting killed, that was for sure.
Again, Murdo nodded. “You do seem the sort to enjoy taking charge.”
I scowled. “Third. What’s up with your name? Rory Murdo? Are you an Australian game show host?”
I expected him to get angry or to shoot back, but he only smiled. “I’m afraid not, Miss Stoker. I was born in the United States, and I spent most of my childhood in Texas.” He rose to his feet. “I can take your bag, if you wish.”
“How chivalrous,” I said, picking up my backpack and pushing my arms through the straps. “But no.” Actually, the damned thing was kind of heavy, but I wasn’t going to show weakness in front of one of Nicholas’s crew. Best to just think of it as extra strength training.
Murdo shrugged and turned towards the doors, and I followed him.
“Where are you parked?” I said.
“The outer lot,” said Murdo. “Out of range of the security cameras.”
“Sensible,” I said.
I took two steps after him and came to a sudden stop.
Murdo turned at once. “What is it?”
“Hey,” I said. “Did you invite your church group here or something?”
I asked because five big white vans were pulling up to the hotel’s front doors. The outer walls of the lobby and the doors themselves were panes of glass, so I had no trouble seeing the vans. They were big people-mover vans, the kind that can seat sixteen passengers, and every single van had tinted windows.
That set off alarm bells in my head.
It was eight in the morning, on a weekday in the winter. There was no reason for five big unmarked white vans to be driving up to the front doors of the hotel.
“What do you think?” said Murdo, his voice quiet and calm, but I saw the sudden tension in his stance. “The cleaners, maybe?”
I shook my head. “Cleaning company would have its logo painted on the side of the vans.” I would know, given how often I had hired onto a cleaning company as part of my cover for Lord Morvilind’s various jobs. “Same thing for a church group or a company retreat or whatever. Hell, even if they were rentals, they would have the rental company logo.”
“Maybe we should go out the back,” said Murdo.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Let’s…”
The vans stopped at the curb, the doors sliding open, and a man in a suit got out.
A bolt of alarm went through me.
The man was thin, almost gaunt, his face emaciated. He had black eyes and slicked-back black hair, his skin pale and unhealthy-looking. I had never seen this man before, but I recognized him at once.
Because that was the form anthrophages liked to use when masquerading as humans.
More gaunt men got out of the vans, more and more. Five sixteen-passenger vans, plus the driver and the front passenger, meant ninety anthrophages. And the only reason ninety anthrophages would drive to a tourist hotel in Denver was to kill me.
Which meant that Nicholas had set this up to kill me.
“You son of a bitch,” I snarled at Murdo, gathering power for a spell that would turn his skull into charred coals, “you set me…”
I fell silent.
Murdo…well, Murdo looked surprised. I think he was as surprised to see the anthrophages as I was. Come to think of it, he looked pissed.
“Connor set us up,” said Murdo in a calm voice. “He set both of us up.” He looked down at me. “Guess he decided to get rid of two of his problems at once.”
“Then you didn’t know about this?” I snapped.
Murdo reached into his coat and produced a Royal Arms .45 semiautomatic. I tensed, but he took the pistol in both hands, shifting into a shooter’s stance as he faced the doors. “I might be an idiot, but I’m not dumb enough to walk into a trap with ninety anthrophages waiting for me.”
“Really?” I said. “Because it looks like we were both dumb enough to do that.”
Most of the disguised anthrophages had gotten out of the vans by now. Many of them carried AK-47s. Any minute now they would see us through the glass doors and start spraying fire. Their accuracy wouldn’t be great, but with a few dozen of them shooting at us, they wouldn’t need to be accurate.
“We need to run,” said Murdo. “If they surround us we’re finished.”
“Nope,” I said, flexing my fingers as I summoned magical power.
“Do you have another plan?” said Murdo.
“Yup.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And that is?”
“I’m going to kill them all,” I said. “You can help if you want.”
Murdo’s expression was dubious.
The initial shock had worn off, and my mind kicked into overdrive as I drew together magic. Had Nicholas sent the anthrophages to kill me? This kind of thing wasn’t his style. Granted, he had planned to bomb a soccer stadium, but he absolutely hated anything that drew attention during the planning phases of an operation, and he was planning something huge right now. So why throw a small army of anthrophages at me?
Maybe one of the other Rebel leaders had decided I was a liability and wanted to present Nicholas with a done deed. Or maybe the Dar
k Ones cultists had caught up to me. Every day I cast the spell to block my psychic spoor to keep the anthrophages from tracking me down, but maybe they had followed me through good old-fashioned detective work, the way I had been harassing Nicholas’s organization.
Whatever. I could think about it later. Right now, it was time to fight.
I took a few steps forward. Murdo frowned at me, and then walked next to me in silence, gun held ready. He was brave enough not to turn and run.
“We should leave,” he said. “Slip out through the back.”
“Nope,” I said again.
Murdo frowned. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“Not particularly,” I said. “But there must be two or three dozen people working here, and at least as many guests. If the anthrophages can’t find us, they’ll go berserk and kill everyone they can catch. And Connor or whoever else sent those anthrophages probably told them to kill everyone in the hotel to leave no witnesses behind. I’m not letting that happen.”
“And how do you intend to stop it?” said Murdo.
I shrugged. “I’m going to kill all the anthrophages.”
I waited to see his reaction. Nicholas would have simply left without another word, leaving me to my fate. Someone like Corbisher or Swathe would have insulted and mocked me, and then run like hell. Or, if Nicholas had ordered them to bring me back, they might have tried to overpower me and take me with them.
I wondered which kind of man Murdo was.
Instead, he only nodded, his pistol in both hands.
“All right,” said Murdo. “How are we going to do this?”
I blinked in surprise. “You’re not going to run?”
Murdo shrugged. “I’m not letting those workers get slaughtered by the anthrophages, either.”
What the hell kind of Rebel was he? I had never met a Rebel who cared about collateral casualties. I could worry about it later.
“Well, super,” I said. “Let’s kill some anthrophages.”
“And just how are we going to do that?” said Murdo.
“Weren’t you listening?” I said. “I’m going to kill them all.” More anthrophages had spilled out of the vans, AK-47s in hand. “Follow my lead.”
I stepped past him, flexing my fingers as I held the spell ready in my thoughts.
“Hey, guys!” I shouted.
A dozen anthrophages looked in my direction.
I grinned my mirthless grin at them. “Remember me?”
They did. Oh, they did. Or at least they knew of me. Several of the anthrophages screeched something in their hideous language, and in unison, all the anthrophages abandoned their human disguises for their true gaunt, gray-skinned forms. Their yellow eyes burned as they stared at me, and the black claws on their fingers clicked as they lifted their AK-47s, which unfortunately had not disappeared with their disguises.
I just had time to note that Murdo had not flinched at the sight of the anthrophages, which any sensible person would have done. That meant he had seen and fought the creatures before. Or worked with them.
Then I cast my spell.
I thrust out my hand and sent a sharp push of telekinetic force into the doors. It was a lot of force, and I concentrated the push into an area about six inches across at the meeting point of the two doors.
The impact made the doors explode outward in a rain of glittering glass shards. It hit harder than I expected, because multiple panes of the massive windows on either side of the doors blew apart as well, throwing a rain of plate glass shards into the anthrophages. The anthrophages stumbled back, arms raised to shield their faces from the rain of glass. A few of them squeezed off shots at random from their guns, but the bullets didn’t come anywhere near Murdo and me. For that matter, the glass didn’t hurt the anthrophages that much, and once they recovered themselves, they would kill us both.
Fortunately, I had only intended the broken glass as a distraction.
I cast my next spell and hurled a spinning globe of fire about the size of my fist at the anthrophages. The anthrophages were all packed together, which made them a marvelous target. The fireball landed in their midst and then exploded in a snarling bloom of flame. A dozen anthrophages went up like candles, and a dozen more were thrown to the ground, parts of their bodies aflame. The van behind them rocked from the explosion, the interior catching fire.
A savage thrill of mixed glee and rage went through me. The Eternity Crucible had broken me, but I didn’t want to turn into a monster. I didn’t want to start slaughtering people just because I could. But the anthrophages…the anthrophages were monsters. And they had killed me.
They had killed me over and over and over again for decades.
I always enjoyed the chance to pay them back.
But I didn’t let the glee override my self-control. Before the anthrophages could recover, I cast another spell, opposite to the one I had just used. I had thrown elemental fire into the anthrophages, and now I used elemental frost and ice. I called up a wall of elemental ice about eight feet tall and two thick, and it was wide enough to seal off the doors, the shattered windows, and some of the adjacent window panes.
It was just in time. Twenty of the anthrophages opened fire with their AK-47s, pouring bullets into the wall of ice. The ice held, shivering from the impacts, but it would not last long. Another thirty seconds or so, I thought, and the wall would shatter.
I shot a glance at Murdo. His face was still calm, but his black eyes had gotten a little wide. I had wielded this level of magic power for decades, and I had forgotten that most human wizards couldn’t do the kind of things that I could do.
“Come on,” I said. “We need to get on the second-floor balcony by the time those anthrophages get through the ice.”
Murdo nodded and followed me as I ran for the stairs to the second floor. I dashed up to the balcony and whirled to face the doors, Murdo a half-step behind me. From here I had a good view of the front doors of the hotel, and the rapidly disintegrating wall of ice.
“Listen to me,” I said. “I can kill them all, but you’ve got to keep them off me. They’ll come up the stairs, and they can climb the walls like insects…”
Murdo nodded. “I’ve fought anthrophages before.”
“Goody for you.”
“You be the artillery,” he said, checking something inside his coat, “and I’ll be the shielding infantry.”
“Great,” I said, starting another spell. The ice wall was shuddering. “Get ready to…”
The ice wall shattered, and a mob of angry anthrophages poured into the hotel lobby.
I was ready for them, and I drove my hand forward, hurling another fireball just as the wall broke and the anthrophages stormed inside. The glowing sphere hurtled forward and struck the carpet a few feet in front of the anthrophages, and exploded with a roar and a flash of light. Again, I killed a dozen anthrophages and threw another dozen burning to the ground.
I noticed two things then.
Murdo had started shooting, the muzzle of his pistol flashing. My first thought was that he was just firing at random into the anthrophage mob, but every time he squeezed the trigger, an anthrophage went down with a bullet through the head. Murdo was a good shot. A really good shot. I mean, it’s hard enough to hit a stationary target at a distance with a pistol, and he was hitting moving anthrophages.
The second thing I noticed was the sprinklers.
The Rocky Mountain Mile Restaurant And Hotel had an excellent sprinkler system, and my little display of pyrotechnics had set it off. A shrill alarm was ringing, and every sprinkler in the lobby had started spraying water. Thankfully, the ones on the balcony hadn’t been triggered, since I was cold enough as it was. But water poured down on the anthrophages, covering their gray hides in glistening dampness.
It didn’t improve their appearance, but water does conduct electricity, and I could call a lot of electricity when I wanted.
I grinned as I cast the lightning globe spell.
Riordan had taught me that spell long ago, and after a hundred and fifty-eight years of practice with it in the Eternity Crucible, I had gotten really good with it. Five globes of spitting blue-white lightning spun into existence around my outstretched head, whirling around me like moons orbiting a planet. They made a harsh buzzing, snarling noise, like a transformer about to overload, and the sound made me think of a power saw.
I gestured and sent the lightning globes hurtling towards the charging anthrophages.
That made a mess, let me tell you. The lightning ripped through nearly twenty of the anthrophages, fingers of blue-white power shooting up and down their limbs. Sparks exploded from the carpet, which caught fire again despite the downpour from the sprinklers, and several more anthrophages burst into flame as the current tore through them.
The stench was nasty.
But the anthrophages kept coming, and I flung spell after spell at them. I cast a sphere of fire that shot forward and zipped back and forth, drilling smoking holes through the gaunt skulls of the anthrophages. I hurled a lance of ice a dozen feet long that speared four anthrophages and threw their bodies to the floor and followed it up with a burst of telekinetic force that threw anthrophages back with enough force to shatter even their black bones.
But still the damned things kept coming. The survivors darted under the balcony, out of reach of my spells, and I heard the rasp of their claws on their stairs. I cursed and turned towards the stairs, already calling more magic. Murdo still stood there, gun leveled at the stairs.
“They’re also crawling up the pillars,” said Murdo, voice calm. “I’ll cover the stairs. You deal with the ones climbing up the side of the balcony.”
That meant turning my back on him. I didn’t like that thought at all. But he was right. I couldn’t fight in two opposite directions at once.
Fine. If Murdo tried to shoot me in the back, I would blast a hole through his chest.
I shifted position, letting me keep an eye on the edge of the balcony and the stairwell at the same time, and started throwing fire and lightning at any anthrophages as they leaped over the railing, sending their burned and smoking bodies tumbling to the lobby.
Murdo sent shot after shot down the stairs, killing anthrophages as they appeared. Black slime exploded from their skulls and spattered against the walls as his bullets drilled through their heads. Once again, he didn’t miss, not even once. His gun clicked empty, and he ejected the spent clip and jammed another into the weapon.
Cloak Games: Hammer Break Page 5