by James Axler
At night, as long as they kept to the shadows, they had nothing to fear of early discovery, until it was far too late for their unsuspecting victims.
And there one was, the first up to the entrance, wearing its disguise, formerly a man who had thought nothing of keeping other humans as slaves, like a suit that had been stuffed under a mattress and then slept on. The rumpled corpse should have moved jerkily, especially given the amount of tearing and stretching that its semiliquid owner had subjected it to, squeezing through wounds and orifices to set up shop. Instead, the snot-beast inside maneuvered with deft grace.
Kane had been up close in dealing with the prowess of the creatures, and, for now, he wanted to avoid that. No matter what kind of firepower he could assemble, the reanimates were swift and deadly. The artifact had provided a minor evening of the odds, as had grenades and bullets pumped relentlessly into them, but that took time, time the other killers could use to flank Kane and his allies.
While Fargo seemed capable of taking care of himself and Lyta was willing to fight, Kane did not want to risk the night, or the rescue of his friends, by engaging in an all-out gun battle. The noise alone would draw down far more trouble than Kane wished. No. Silence and stealth were going to be Kane’s advantages.
It was bad enough that Neekra had preternatural psychic abilities, and they could only be shielded from her detection by the Nehushtan. As it was, Kane and Lyta were both touching the artifact, while Fargo relied on his own gifted enhancements to maintain his low profile.
At the same time, the three of them had made use of blankets, canvas tape and foliage during the day. They had hidden themselves in a small recess in the ground, behind the tree line outside the camp. In the rut and covered by handmade camouflage netting that they’d produced during the day, they should be invisible. Kane had taken the extra step of adding a thermal blanket to their cover, a heat-shielding square of foil and polymers that prevented body heat from being lost in the deepest cold. It would also reflect the broiling beams of the sun, keeping them from roasting the wearer. Even if the creatures had some form of infrared sensitivity, it would be unlikely that they would be seen from within.
As well, there was plenty of ground clutter and flora about them. They were off the beaten path, and no one was going to find them unless they were combing every inch of the forest.
Kane heard more of the vampiric creatures moving about, and he closed the slit through which he observed them. They were coming out of the underground necropolis now, and Kane held his breath.
He glanced toward Fargo. However, beneath the blankets and the foliage and with bushes between them, he couldn’t actually eyeball the man. But he knew where he lay, and he prayed that Fargo wasn’t going to blow their cover.
Kane counted his heartbeats, waiting for any sound to interrupt, his fingers wrapped around the staff’s shaft until he could feel the tendons stretch and the skin pull thin over his knuckles. Lyta shifted next to him, but she didn’t dare speak. The tension under the tarp was growing unbearable, and, thanks to their mutual connection to the artifact, Kane and Lyta shared a vibration of each other’s emotional states. She was worried, and it was mostly because of Kane’s own concern. He wished that she wasn’t so distressed, and, even as he did so, he realized that he had to calm his own doubts.
Kane was a warrior, a man of discipline. His focus had allowed him to survive in Neekra’s telepathic hell. He centered himself, calmed himself, and in doing so, spread it to the girl lying beside him. She nodded, not enough to disturb their camouflage tarp but more than enough for Kane to notice.
An unspoken thanks surged through Nehushtan.
He returned his attention outward, opening the eye-slit, peering at the vampiric horrors loose among the forest. He waited. Fargo had promised that he would not move until Kane felt that the enemy had abandoned the scene and spread out to seek Kane and Lyta. Even if they did not have Neekra’s impetus to discover and snare the man and his newfound companion, they had suffered at the hands of the two. Despite not dying from bullets and bashings, Kane was fully aware of the amount of pain they’d inflicted on the creatures. He’d heard their screams and squeals.
The “children” of the vampire goddess were in the mood for revenge, and though Kane was certain that he would not be killed outright, he was confident that if they got their desiccated hands on him, they would inflict as much punishment as they could on him.
After a pause of a few minutes, his eyes and ears probing as hard as possible, seeking out the slightest cue that one of the creatures could have held back in reserve to ambush him, Kane slid out from under his camouflage. He left Nehushtan behind, and Lyta. She was to be his backup, the ace up his sleeve, and she was crouched, unmoving, ready to come to the rescue, guns blazing if necessary.
Fargo rose from his hiding space, as well. The man had a whip on his belt, notched in a snap strap, ready to deploy with a flick of his wrist, and a powerful handgun on his other hip. Fargo had gone on far-ranging travels and had never felt the need for anything else to supplement his personal gear. Though, beforehand, his escorts had been armed consortium troops with machine pistols, and now he had the ability to blank out cameras and communications equipment.
He also seemed to have the reflexes to disarm a healthy, professionally trained young woman.
Kane didn’t want to know what new tricks the man had learned. Actually, he loved having foreknowledge; he simply didn’t want to learn those tricks with himself as the recipient. Fighting shoulder to shoulder with Fargo would give him insight but spare him the blunt introduction to whatever Fargo’s powers unleashed.
Better to experience them secondhand and maybe learn how to avoid them altogether.
The two men moved in silence, walking parallel into the darkness. Kane crouched low as they reached the railing overlooking the underground shaft, the balcony of twin spiraling walkways down into the necropolis below.
Fargo’s stealth was good, as fine and soft-footed as Kane’s own, but the man from Cerberus was glad for the fact that he’d been able to recover a shadow suit faceplate and a fallen Commtact plate. These must have come off either Brigid or Grant, but at least now Kane didn’t have to rely on the artifact to provide him with night vision. Though he could activate the pintel-mounted Commtact if he desperately needed to contact someone, the only one he thought of who would have a spare plate would be Grant.
Kane actually had both discarded Commtacts, as well as some of the other gear stripped from his allies. Most of it was packed in a war bag, hidden with Lyta, but Kane had decided to strap on Grant’s discarded Sin Eater. He still kept the two other guns and a Colt .45 pistol with him, knowing that he’d have to arm the others in their breakout.
The Sin Eater, though, felt better. It was a familiar, comforting weight on his forearm. Sure, he’d gotten on fine without one, but now, he felt as if his arm was complete. That didn’t mean he intended to get into a blazing gunfight. Kane was far too smart and experienced to allow himself to see the problem as a nail just because he had his favorite hammer back. Instead, he and Fargo continued their slow crawl down the spiral.
Every so often, he paused to listen. He and Lyta had set up a schedule, and, sure enough, within a moment, he heard a softly whispered “still clear” on his Commtact.
The girl would be his early warning system just in case the vampires sought to return to their underground home. Kane hoped the brief transmissions wouldn’t be traced. The radios that they’d provided to their allies had been encrypted, as were the Commtacts, but Kane was fully aware that Durga came from a city that had some of the finest surveillance and intelligence machinery on the planet and had heard communications and details of Cerberus for years.
Kane didn’t fool himself that Durga would give up such an advantage. He’d been present in Africa for a while, operating the cloning facilities that had created the Kongamato
that had menaced them. Who knew what other technology Durga had availed himself of?
One mistake, and his rescue mission would end very badly. Kane was aware that Durga knew him. The Nagah prince had observed Kane’s loyalty and willingness to sacrifice himself for the sake of his friends.
There was going to be a trap waiting for him. Kane only hoped that they hadn’t expected Fargo, and whatever special abilities he was gifted with, to be alongside him, rather than Lyta.
It might not have been the greatest of surprises or weapons, but it was an advantage, and it could give him the edge he needed against whomever Durga held in reserve.
Kane paused, catching the heat signatures of three tall figures in the shadows at the base of the ramp. He crouched out of sight and peered down at them. The unmistakable sheets of muscle that formed the hoods between the sides of their heads and shoulders marked them as Nagah, but Thurpa had said that Durga had left most of his compatriots back in India, running the show and preparing for his return in full health. That meant that these might have been entities brewed up on the spot. Earlier, Lakesh and Domi had encountered manufactured agents, creatures who were, at their core, Nephilim who had been specially recrafted to resemble human or Nagah.
Domi had barely survived hand-to-hand combat with two of those monstrosities, and she’d won only from savagery, surprise and leverage, and the fact that neither of the faux cobra men had been armed with assault rifles or similar musketry. Kane could see the rifles gripped by the trio of Nagah warriors, and he also noticed that they had been allowed to stand naked. There was no fidgeting, no lack of comfort. These three guards were resolute, untiring.
They had to be clones, and that meant that Durga had indeed plugged the formula for full-grown warriors into the same facility that had produced the Kongamato.
What made Kane particularly despise these three was that Durga had hidden them from his young assistant, Thurpa. The boy knew that Durga was producing winged horrors in order to buff out an army to wrest a prize from the heart of Africa, but the Nagah soldiers were something that the fallen prince had neglected to tell him about.
That meant that Thurpa had been a sacrificial lamb from day one. The Nagah youth was a throwaway sympathy gainer, one that had faded from Durga’s use.
Kane glanced at Fargo. The enhanced archaeologist nodded. They were going to need to be stealthy on approach to these men. Their attention was rock solid.
Kane’s footsteps were whispers, and he was a shadow trotting lightly down behind them, knife in one hand, suppressor affixed to the muzzle of the Sin Eater in his right fist. He didn’t look to see what Fargo was doing; he just had to focus on his targets and hope that he was swift enough to end the threat of these armed guards before they awoke the entire necropolis.
With a lunge, Kane was at the back of one of the Nagah soldiers, and he poked the cobra man in the back of his head with the blunt suppressor affixed to the muzzle of his Sin Eater. The instant he made contact, he pulled the trigger. Suppressor tube and flesh of reptilian guard formed a seal that swallowed the entirety of the gunshot, even as the gun bucked in his fist. The bullet struck skull, punching through sheet muscle and burrowing deep into the cobra man’s brain.
Within a heartbeat, the Nagah slumped to the ground, his central nervous system destroyed, unable to cry out or do more than release a dying rasp as his lungs emptied.
The other Nagah turned at the sudden motion, the harsh breath, and as he did, Kane brought up his knife, spearing the point under the scaled chin. As the point plunged, taking just a little more force than usual to get through the snakelike hide of his target, Kane heard the weird whistle-pop of a whip deploying. It was not a gunshot or a shout, but that amount of noise would draw some attention.
Kane couldn’t undo this attack, the betrayal of their silent approach by Fargo’s whip, and cursing his luck wasn’t going to do anything toward regaining their stealth. And if he didn’t continue his attack on the other Nagah, then both of them were going to be overwhelmed by all manner of guards at Durga’s beck and call.
Kane finally struck bone, either the guard’s skull or neck bones, but, even so, the point glided inside, deflecting and causing even more trauma as muscle, blood vessels, nerves and tendons scissored against the razor-keen edge of his combat knife. Kane twisted his hand with the Sin Eater and brought the butt up hard against the Nagah’s face, feeling nasal bones crunching underneath the weight of his gun.
With his windpipe speared, and now his nose crushed, this sentry was not going to release another sound for the rest of his truncated life. That same life spurted over Kane’s forearm, a hot, sticky rain of blood that was as human as anything else. Kane had been a man trained to kill, but the sensation of driving steel into a living creature was not something he relished. It was an ugly, brutal affair, and only his undying concern and loyalty to his friends had forced his hand against Durga’s cloned drones. There had been some grim satisfaction, over twenty-four hours earlier, when he’d killed men who tortured and enslaved innocent people, but this was pure butcher’s work.
And even when he’d engaged in that bloodbath, Kane had still felt an edge of queasiness as he’d eviscerated his opponents.
This is a necessity, Kane told himself as he lowered the corpse of his foe to the stone floor.
He glanced over to Fargo and immediately saw the reason why he distrusted the man so much. The whip was wrapped around the neck of the third Nagah guard, wound so tightly that it tore and collapsed the hood that marked him as a cobra man. The poor thing’s eyes had gone wide, glinting like gems in Kane’s night-vision optics, bulging and pouring tears and blood as they popped in their sockets. Scaled fingers clawed at the leather braid strangling him, and the guard, clone or not, suffered a slow, brutal end as Fargo pressed the sole of his boot against the sentry’s head.
There was a low, ugly crunch, and finally that guard was no more.
Kane saw the smirk, the self-congratulatory twisting of Fargo’s lips, and now more than ever he contemplated simply plunging his knife through the bastard’s heart. The trouble was, Kane needed the man’s backup for now.
However, there would be time for the killer to meet his justice. Once Brigid, Grant, Nathan and Thurpa were free.
“Nearly gave us away,” Kane murmured low enough that his voice wouldn’t carry more than a few feet.
Fargo regarded his temporary ally as he wound up the whip. His voice was conversational but not especially loud. “No. I calculated exactly how much noise to make. This was well within my parameters. The others suspect nothing.”
“Others,” Kane repeated, his words remaining low and soft. “You see them?”
“There are eleven. Nine more clones such as these, Durga and the creature that Neekra inhabits,” Fargo responded.
Kane grimaced.
“Your distaste for her speaks of how you know what she did to get that body,” Fargo mentioned.
“Enough said about that,” Kane murmured. The less said about the images that Nehushtan brought to his mind’s eye, the better. “You’ve got the enemy mapped out. Where?”
Fargo touched Kane’s faceplate and suddenly images flared, projected into his eyes through the machine interface. Now, Kane could make out the locations of the guards, and he could also see the signatures of the four prisoners. He frowned, stepping away from Fargo, an odd tingling buzzing at the base of his neck. Kane was fully aware of the origin of Fargo’s technological control, but this seeming effortless input of information was nothing short of the kind of witchcraft that inspired less educated and civilized men than him to burn people at the stake. It was a frightening bit of nonchalance that only fanned Kane’s paranoia against Fargo.
“That bit of information didn’t please you?” Fargo asked.
Kane glared at the man. “Warn me next time.”
Fargo snorted.
>
“All right, since we know where my friends are, we should just go get them out of their cells. Then we have the opportunity to fight our way out of here,” Kane muttered.
“That is a more passive mode than I would have taken you for,” Fargo responded. “Though, I can now see, you’re more concerned about a hostage situation.”
Kane turned and looked back up the ramp. He activated his Commtact.
“...got movement up at the surface...”
“Read you,” Kane responded.
“‘Bout time you activated your Commtact,” came a familiar growl. Grant was on the line, too. One sentence, and Kane was heartened by the situation.
“They’re moving toward us,” Fargo mentioned. “Approaching the ramp and cutting us off from the cells.”
“And vamps up topside,” Kane added.
“Are we aborting?” Fargo asked.
“No. But find a spot,” Kane ordered Fargo. He held up a couple of objects. “Get them both to Brigid.”
Fargo took them. One was a spare Commtact plate. The other was a small pocket multitool. If Brigid got hold of something to undo the lock on her door, then she could get the others out to escape.
“Now disappear,” Kane snapped.
With that, the archaeologist took off into the dead underground city. Kane returned his attention to the sound and heat signatures of the Nagah troops approaching. With the spare hood, he had the means to deal with them while they were in the dark.
“Lyta, stay put,” Kane said in a quick burst over his Commtact. “I’m going to draw some hell down here.”
There was no reply except a single click, the press of a transmit button that signaled the girl had received the message. With that, Kane returned to radio silence.
Stealth had gone out the window. Nine Nagah soldiers were aware that he was on the move down here. There were also vampires returning. Already he could see the movements of the living humanoids, and there was also motion far above. The hijacked corpses had split up, some going down each of the spiraling ramps. There were two who made amazing leaps and bounds from ledge to ledge.