by James Axler
The vampiric blob squirmed under the impacts, retreating as clouds of murk erupted from the burst sac within its anatomy. As it sought escape, Brigid swung the base of her false Nehushtan around and drove the tent stake base of the staff into what she figured was its heart. Impaled, the gelatinous form let loose a horrific cry, something akin to the most shrill woman’s scream she’d ever encountered. The audio pickups were a moment too slow in modulating themselves and dampening the earsplitting wail.
The blob exploded into another spray of viscous gel.
“Staked a vampire through the heart,” Brigid mused. “Digs the Vampire Slayer.”
She spotted movement and struggled to bring around the faux staff, but extended arms snatched at its length. Brigid lifted her TP-9 and fired at the opponent coming straight toward her, knowing that she couldn’t win in a wrestling match against two of these things, maybe not even one.
Brigid shot this attacker through the heart, and that slowed it drastically, but the wounds were nothing like a big long piece of steel—or wood, she amended—piercing its heart. The sudden reflexive spasm of the vampiric creature bought her a moment that allowed her to turn the gun against the two that grasped at the fake Nehushtan.
She shot them, knowing that she couldn’t kill them immediately, but her gunfire blazed through them, stunning, disrupting them for a moment. Brigid lunged, grabbing her fake Nehushtan from the weakened tentacles, wresting it free with her leverage and momentum.
So far, so good. Moving with every bit of speed and skill she could muster, she also knew that her reserves of strength were fading. Battling multiple monsters was difficult, energy-consuming.
Even so, Brigid was counting Lyta’s steps. Measuring her stride. Imagining how far she could have gone.
She’d bought plenty of time. And she’d made these things assume that she was armed with a powerful weapon, the very artifact that they’d been sent for. A stick with thunderous power, which had proved to be the death of two of their kind.
A pseudopod whipped around her neck, the tentacle pulling tight on her throat. The non-Newtonian nature of her shadow suit took the sudden flux of pressure and stiffened against it. She wouldn’t be strangled, now with the polymers having transformed into an iron collar to protect her neck and windpipe. She was lifted bodily from the ground and pulled into the darkness. Another limb lashed out, grasping her wrist.
The mollusk vampires reached for her, a dozen tentacles snatching at her, grabbing her other wrist, her ankles, around her thighs and upper arms, about her waist. Brigid twisted, pulling with all her might, trying to tug herself free, but those odd limbs had suckers on them. She could feel the pokes and prods of dozens of tiny needles, trying to push through the shadow suit, and she grit her teeth, pulling herself to freedom.
No good. While the suit provided protection from the crushing grip of the monsters, their combined might was just too much. She was immobilized, held fast.
A pseudopod slapped against her faceplate. With a yank, the seam between her hood and the rest of the suit parted. Another tug and the cool night air was on her face and her golden-red curls tumbled free in the breeze.
In the darkness, she may have felt some consolation that the creatures were not visible, that she could not see the gelatinous horrors seizing her. But Brigid’s photographic memory added in details that she’d noticed in the battle while she’d had the suit’s faceplate optics. A smooth tentacle rubbed against her cheek, and she recoiled from it.
“For our queen,” one uttered, its voice coming from nothing resembling a human mouth. It was a warbling tone, air burped past a gaping hole, which was as alien to a vertebrate as anything on earth.
The tentacle wasn’t slimy, as she’d imagined, but soft, like the skin formed on top of a pudding, slightly tacky, since it was in contact with air. And it was cool, unnaturally so. These things possessed no internal body heat. Brigid pulled on her arms, trying to wrest free again, but nothing happened except that the shadow suit’s seams between her sleeves and gloves came apart. That was how strong their grip was.
“No fight,” the horrible voice said. “You live.”
Brigid swallowed hard. She didn’t know which unnerved her more, the relative sentience of these things, or that they were following orders to take her alive. She also wondered if Nathan and Thurpa were still among the living, especially since it was highly likely that they wouldn’t give up without a fight.
“Comply?” the thing asked.
“I will comply,” she answered.
“Good.” Their ability to speak more than one syllable was problematic, but it wasn’t from a lack of vocabulary. It was simply a matter of anatomy that limited them to terse phrases.
“Bros...” It was another of the things, one without a tendril in the group that restrained Brigid, even though those long, sinewy limbs were no longer clutching her as tightly.
She was defeated, disarmed. No guns, no belt pouches of explosives and no faux Nehushtan. Just herself.
Brigid Baptiste, however, still had her wits and her incredible wealth of knowledge, an eye for detail second to none. They’d only stripped away the merest of tools that she’d brought with her.
The real weapon was her brain, but she didn’t want them to know that. They would have no clue about the kind of power she really had.
“Bros,” the thing said again. It was calling its brothers, and they turned their attention toward it, though none had a head with which to turn, per se. Brigid squinted, trying to pick up the figures in the shadows now that her light amplification was gone.
“Bodies,” came multiple grumbles.
“Later!” the one who’d spoken to Brigid snapped.
Brigid smirked. She could tell by the gibbering excitement among the gelatinous monstrosities that they were excited at the presence of corpses.
Her mind pulled up “facts” about vampires.
In medieval times, and closer to the present, when a vampire was suspected, the freshly dead were dug up. When a corpse appeared not only too fresh, but flushed and bloated with blood, the townsfolk knew that they had their vampire. They staked and decapitated the corpse, ensuring its eternal death.
These creatures, as much liquid as anything else, loved wearing the bodies of the dead, she figured. The bloated with blood bodies were actually places where these vampires nested for the night. Sometimes, they might even have been a form of armor, or at least a disguise, a means of moving about the world of humans.
As those bits of information turned over, calculated, digested by her intellect, Brigid had a new idea of what these creatures truly were, what they were capable of. She smiled, even though she was their prisoner. She was guided back to the subterranean entrance by the creatures. Nathan and Thurpa waited there, bound, heads hung low, equal parts exhaustion and defeat, sadness and embarrassment.
They were alive. That was all that mattered to Brigid right now. The bruises on their egos would actually prove even more useful in surging them from this emotional and physical nadir. Shame could quickly be turned into anger, and anger into the will to fight. These two young men had battled the hopeless odds of Warlord Gamal’s hideous Kongamato, and they would be spurred to take on these vampiric horrors.
Brigid’s intellect brought up another point.
The prisoners had been left to the point of near starvation and dehydration. The semiliquid beings would be able to utilize their forms more easily. The nearly dead prisoners would be grabbed, taken over, consumed and subsumed to form new hulls for themselves. That was the point of the death march, and Brigid and her allies had arrived just in time to save them, to spare them the horrific fate of these things injecting their gelatinous essence into their bodies.
Brigid didn’t know how terrible that would have been, but considering the volume of the amorphous beasts, and the fact that wha
t remaining fluids and organs within the body would not fit...
The mental image of her brain bursting through her ears, nostrils, mouth, even tear ducts...that was a grisly fate.
Brigid fought the urge to shudder.
Even when she saw the tall, hulking form of Grant stagger into view between two of the bodiless vampires.
“Grant,” she subvocalized, hoping that her Commtact could connect her with him.
Nothing. Grant’s Commtact plate was in place, and she could feel her own.
Someone had jammed them.
Brigid’s lip curled.
Austin Fargo was around. He’d interfered in their communications once before, utilizing the odd nanomachines that had become a part of his brain. Now they were deaf and quite likely blind. Cerberus redoubt would have already known that they’d lost contact with them.
Cerberus Away Team Beta would likely be on standby for any other form of threat, but one thing that Kane and Lakesh agreed on was that having both Beta and Alpha Teams in one place was not a good idea. If one team was overwhelmed, the other would be able to protect Cerberus and engage in battling threats to the world on its own. If both teams were wiped out, there would be no fighting team trained and available to respond to emergencies.
Certainly, the Tigers of Heaven, the warriors of Aten, even the Gear Skeletons of New Olympus could be enlisted, but, ultimately, they didn’t have the concentrated experience and training in dealing with the likes of the Annunaki overlords or other threats of their ilk. Even Domi had nearly died when the mad Tuatha de Danaan Maccan had attacked Cerberus redoubt while wielding the Hand of Nadhua.
Brigid had no delusions of her, Grant’s or Kane’s infallibility, but she did know that they had forty-eight hours to effect their own escape. She knew that she was already picking up clues and information about these horrific creatures. As well, Lyta was free, armed with the real Nehushtan. Grant looked a little scuffed up. His shadow suit’s top was torn off, and he stood, shirtless, in the dark.
Grant nodded to Brigid, his forehead wrinkled with concern.
No sign of Kane. And no communications signal.
Kane did not die easily. He still roamed free. And Lyta had escaped with an artifact that had already reached halfway across the planet to find the man once before.
Brigid knew how to kill these monsters. She’d already killed two of them.
They had a chance.
Things were dark now, but Brigid held the spark of hope.
The four people entered the underworld, accompanied by creatures of myth and horror.
Chapter 8
Kane spotted a faint glow a hundred yards away. It was the only form of illumination. He’d left his compact flashlight off in order to stay hidden from anyone else in the underground cavern and to preserve the rechargeable batteries. He directed himself mainly by running his fingers along the stone railing. When he actually saw what was across the chasm, he knelt by the wall and peered across.
There was a single torch among a group of many. He cursed not having the faceplate on his shadow suit, but, even from this distance, the height and breadth of Grant’s backlit frame was unmistakable. Kane frowned.
The glimmer of firelight off Brigid Baptiste’s hair also indicated that everyone who didn’t tumble down into a split in the ground had been picked up by the enemy who called this subterranean realm home. He couldn’t get more than a hint of the form of their captors, but he did recognize the silhouette of Thurpa. There was only one more human shape, and, considering that all four walked under their own ability, Kane calculated that either Nathan or Lyta had escaped.
Unfortunately, the bastards seemed to have captured Nehushtan; one of the captors wielded the ancient artifact. Kane gritted his teeth.
Neekra undoubtedly wanted to get a hold of that artifact...
Wait, Baptiste had made a fake, Kane remembered. He glanced at the ground again as they trundled down the distant walkway. He couldn’t tell from this distance, but Brigid and Grant seemed to be calmly going along with their captors. Neekra’s minions, whoever or whatever they were, didn’t seem to exert any control over them, but his partners did look bound. Kane set his jaw and checked back the way he’d come. There was an entrance on the far side of the yawning gap between himself and the others. He peered over the rock ledge, keeping his profile low so as not to give away his position.
Below, deep in the tenebrous pit, was a single sliver of light spilling through a doorway.
Someone who needs vision is down there, Kane thought. Durga? Fargo? Some other pawn of Neekra?
I’ll figure that out when I get down there, Kane promised himself.
Even as he was curious about what was at the very bottom of this chimney, Kane kept his eye on his captive allies. Right now he needed a way down, and Kane wasn’t certain of the path hewn into the wall of the hole. If he had the light amplification optics from his shadow suit, he’d have been able to see the layout. He didn’t know if they were all on one spiral or if there were multiple planes, especially given the gradual incline of the path under his feet.
If he moved too quickly, he might end up running into the group ahead, and while he would conceivably have a chance in a fight with the captors, that they’d taken Brigid and Grant was a telling sign Kane would be outnumbered and outclassed. As things stood, they were currently unharmed, which meant that Durga or Neekra wanted to know more about them and perhaps get hold of the artifact that Brigid had mocked up.
Kane also knew that there was little control men such as Durga possessed when it came to boasting and gloating over a defeated foe. There had been plenty of opportunities missed by Kane’s opponents when they should have simply blown his brains out rather than suffer him to live, break free and escape. Perhaps it was a delusion of power, or maybe it was the need for the approbation of those they defeated, but Kane was still alive.
Unfortunately, more than enough of those powerful enemies still lived, as well. Durga among them, despite the outcome of their initial battle, the detonation of a fuel-air explosion that overwhelmed the enhanced abilities and added biomass that had rendered the Nagah prince a superhuman. Kane also tried to forget that he’d actually put his life and mind on the line to bring the murderous being back to health.
I may have been too merciful, Kane thought, but then he remembered that Durga had saved Kane while they’d invaded the cloning facility that produced Kongamato. The Annunaki threshold gave them the ability to transmit their bodies into the distant facility, send out the control signal for them to return to their nest and then detonate the laboratory, turning the place into a gigantic firebomb and then a tomb to bury the few survivors.
The plan was simple. Follow the group that kept his friends prisoner. Spy on them. Evade the security this place possessed; then put together a break-out plan.
Simple. Kane remembered something Brigid had once told him. Simple is not easy. It’s simple to lift the pyramid, but nearly impossible to apply the right force. It’s easy to digest an apple, but the biochemical processes involved took millions of years to develop, and a man could starve before he could even finish the genetic and chemical codes to do so.
In other words, putting tasks into terms such as easy or simple was mental busywork. Kane moved, trying to keep up around the curve. It wasn’t difficult for him to follow the rail of the stone pathway he trod on, and the procession of prisoners wasn’t moving too quickly, so he could keep their torchlight in view easily.
Even so, Kane kept his pace slow and his profile low. If he could see them this “easily,” then there was the same chance that they could spot him, notice his movement behind them. He still could not make out the details of the things that held his friends captive, so he didn’t know if they were human or not.
Kane didn’t have many doubts about the nature of his enemies, or the
ir access to things that were more than human. He also had been paying attention when Brigid spoke of the potential for vampires, as she’d gone over suspected abilities they possessed, especially ones that seemed logical. Unfortunately, without getting close enough to these things that they could more readily notice him, Kane had no idea of their anatomy.
Not knowing the capabilities of your opponents was a sure path to being overwhelmed and killed.
Then he stopped. He heard the scrape of a foot on dust-fine gravel.
It took everything in his will to prevent spinning around and firing a shot from his .45 at the being behind him. A single gunshot would bring enemies running. Instead Kane’s hand dropped to the handle of his combat knife in its sheath.
If only the opposition hadn’t already called ahead, alerting its masters to Kane’s presence....
* * *
LYTA HEARD THE EXPLOSIONS, heard the gunfire. When it finally died out, cut off swiftly, she clutched the black staff tightly. She could feel its warmth and an odd sensation, as if things crawled on its surface. She looked down at it, but there was not enough light for her to see the ebony skin of the artifact.
They called it Nehushtan, and it resembled the caduceus, an international symbol of health and doctors, at least at first blush. Lyta had seen enough of the medical symbology to wonder at the change in its name. Even as she handled the staff, the two heads of the snakes wound about it seemed bent out of shape. Had she damaged it while scrambling for cover?
The heads, once separate, now were pressed against each other. She wanted to slap at it, try to knock it back into alignment, but as soon as the urge arose, she was frozen in place. She could hear the horrors taking Brigid prisoner, alive and unharmed.