“We’re on suspension, our superior officer is at this exact moment getting his arse kicked from one end of Edinburgh to the other, and the only resources we have are what we’ve got with us down here.”
Wiggins interrupted.
“So, does that mean we shoot the fucker’s head off? Because I want to shoot the fucker’s head off.”
Banks smiled thinly.
“Sounds like a plan to me, Wiggo.”
*
Seton stood by the tall Pictish cross, put a hand on the stone as if trying to leech energy from it, and began the chant. His voice was thin and wheezy at first, but the echoing reverberation in the chamber appeared to amplify each syllable, and also give energy back to the older man, for his voice grew stronger with each repetition.
“Ri linn cothrom na meidhe, Ri linn sgathadh na h-anal.
“Ri linn tabhar na breithe Biodh a shith air do theannal fein.
A series of ripples ran across the water’s surface, emanating from the far end from where they stood. Banks was looking directly at it when, over a hundred yards away, the beast’s head came up out of the water, and it let out a bark that rang like a gunshot around the cavern.
- 14 -
Seton continued to chant. The beast moved forward, not straight toward them, but showing all three humps side on, cruising in a zigzag fashion that was bringing it, slowly and cautiously, across the lake. It raised its head only to bark at the last syllable of each repetition of the chant.
Banks saw the strain show on Seton’s face, pain etched in hard lines at the side of his eyes and at his mouth, but the older man kept up the chant in perfect time, and the beast continued to move ever closer, its bark now sounding almost excited. The sheer bulk of it as it swam caused the whole surface of the lake to ripple and sway, sending green and black shadows dancing in the stalactites in time with its languid movements.
Banks turned to the others just before the beast came into range.
“Right, lads, this is it. No hesitation, no fucking about, we take this bastard down fast then we can bugger off home to the mess for that pie and a pint I missed at the start of this shitstorm. Plugs in.”
The three of them shoved the soft plugs that protected their hearing deep into their ears.
“For Cally,” Wiggins shouted, and both Banks and Hynd nodded.
“For Cally.”
*
Seton’s voice faltered and failed at the last, fresh spittle of blood showing at his lips. But he’d done his job, and the beast had cruised forward so that it was almost directly below them. Banks smelled it strongly now, musk and blood and heat. It looked up, directly at him, and barked, twice, not so much excited now as angry.
“Aim for the head, and fire,” Seton shouted.
Remembering the thing’s reaction to the floodlight at the castle, Banks turned on his gun light and shone it direct at the beast’s eyes. It yelled, a high-pitched squeal, and was still squealing as all three of the squad pumped three rounds each into its head.
Even then it didn’t go down, but using its back legs and tail, launched up toward them, sending a splash of cold water across them from the knees down. It scrambled frantically, tearing chunks of rock from the edge. Banks stepped back and succeeded in putting another two shots above its eyes, but still it came, finally grabbing hold of the ledge with its front feet and hauling its whole length up to loom over them.
“Say goodbye to your bollocks, you wanker,” Wiggins shouted, and shot it three times in the heavy sack that hung, silhouetted and framed against the shimmering of the lake beyond. Banks and Hynd concentrated on the head, even as the maw of its mouth opened, showing the white, six-inch canines. Blood ran from numerous wounds in its face, and its left eye had popped, gore running down its cheek.
It looked straight at Banks, gave out a bark that was more a shriek of anger and pain, and lunged forward, mouth open, thick pink tongue lolling on the left side, dripping bloody saliva. Banks stood still long enough to put three shots down its throat then rolled away, clearing Hynd’s view enough that the sarge was able to put two in its good eye.
The whole cavern, still ringing and echoing with the impact of the shooting, rang again, even louder as the beast gave out one final, piercing shriek, its back legs scrambling for hold on the ledge as its weight shifted.
The three men stood in a line and all put three more shots into the huge head, splattering what was left of the eyes in a spray of fluid and blood. The beast’s head went up, it overbalanced, and finally tumbled backward and into the water with a splash that sent ripples the length of the lake and shadows skittering and running across the walls and roof of the chamber.
Wiggins stepped forward to the edge and sent three more rounds into the beast as it started to sink.
“That’s for Cally, fucker.”
*
The whole chamber fell quiet as the echoes faded and the ripples on the surface slowly stilled until the dead beast lay, just below the surface, in a once again flat, calm lake. The three men stood, weapons still aimed, looking down until they were sure the beast wasn’t going to make a final resurgent attack. The water was slowly tingeing red all around the body, and after a few minutes, it was obvious the creature was truly dead.
Banks took out his plugs. His ears rang, and they would for a while yet, but he wasn’t deaf, and heard Wiggins clearly enough.
“Fuck me, we’ve killed Nessie,” the private said. “That calls for a fag.”
Banks took two smokes when offered, lit one for himself, and took the other to where Seton sat, slumped at the base of the Pictish cross.
“Job’s done. It’s dead,” he said as he handed the smoke over and lit it for the older man when Seton put it to his bloodied lips. “How are you doing, wee man?”
“Bruised, battered, and bewildered,” Seton said out of the corner of his mouth. “But I guess I’ll live a bit longer yet. It’s a damned shame we had to kill the beast though.”
“It had to be done,” Banks replied, “after what went down back at the castle. And after those BBC men in the chopper, and Cally, and the wee lassie and the other missing woman and those campers from Foyers and that poor bloody polar bear in Kincraig and…”
Seton put up a hand to stop him.
“I understand. I really do. But it was unique, a legend, a one of a kind thing we’ll never see the likes of again.”
“Don’t be too sure of that, wee man,” Wiggins shouted from along the ledge. “We’ve got incoming, Cap.”
*
They came from the far end of the loch, swimming fast and each leaving a v-shaped wake behind it. There were six of them, smaller than the one they’d just killed, but Banks gauged that each was at least 15 feet nose to tail, and they all showed the same distinctive three humps in the water. They formed a rough arrow-wedge as they swam, pointed directly at the ledge where the squad stood.
“Juveniles,” Seton said, with a degree of awe noticeable in his voice.
Banks saved asking how that was possible for later.
“We’re too exposed here to hold off an attack. Back to the stairwell, lads. We can control the terms of engagement from there. Seton, get behind us and up the steps a ways.”
The smaller beasts reached their dead kin just as Banks began to back away from the ledge. They swam around the corpse, as if confused, then, as if a silent command had gone through them, raised their heads as one and stared straight at him. He saw the same look in their eyes he’d seen in the big one minutes earlier; anger more than fear, and more than a little hunger.
At his back, Seton shouted out the old Gaelic command.
“Dhumna Ort! Dhumna Ort!”
The beasts ignored him and leapt forward and upward, throwing themselves out of the water and scrambling up the sheer rock face. Banks put three bullets in the left eye of the closest one, sending it back down to splash on top of its mother, then had to retreat fast, herding Seton ahead to where Hynd and Wiggins were covering them in the doorway
of the stairwell.
“Get up those fucking steps when you’re told, auld man. These buggers aren’t listening to you. I don’t think the kids have had any schooling.”
He got Seton into the doorway and turned, just in time to see the beasts clamber over the ledge and come at them. He shoved his earplugs in deep again and raised his weapon as the beasts barked excitedly in unison.
- 15 -
“Remember, go for the headshots,” Banks shouted. “Center and sides.”
They all knew what the command meant; they each had a sector to defend with Wiggins on the left, Banks in the center, and Hynd on the right. The beasts gave them enough time for three hurried shots each. Wiggins put one of them down hard, Hynd wounded one in the shoulder, and Banks laid two bloody furrows along the back of a third, but the beasts had momentum on their side, and the squad had to retreat completely into the narrow doorway. Wiggins knelt down, Hynd crouched just above him, and Banks went up one step so that he could fire over Hynd’s head.
Wiggins put the closest beast down by putting three bullets down its throat when it tried to bite him. It fell at his feet, effectively making a barrier that the others had to clamber across. Banks helped Hynd put another down on top of that, blowing half its head away with six closely placed shots. That only left two, barking and howling out on the ledge behind the dead.
“Fire in the hole,” Wiggins shouted and pulled the pin on a stun grenade, lobbing it out over the dead beasts onto the ledge. The three men turned their backs and closed their eyes as the grenade went off with a blinding flash.
Wiggins was first to turn back. He jumped over the nearest dead things and Banks stepped down into the doorway just in time to see him finish off the two others where they lay, concussed and bleeding from eyes, nose, and ears on the rock shelf.
*
Seton came back down the steps to join them.
“You don’t need to come down if you don’t want to,” Banks said, taking out his earplugs for what he hoped would be the last time. “It’s a hell of a mess down here.”
The ledge was slick with blood, shards of skull and brain tissue that felt sticky underfoot, and the stench of piss, shit, and blood was almost overwhelming.
Wiggins and Hynd rolled all of the bodies off the shelf to splash down alongside their mother below and they all stood, watching the surface of the lake return to its previous flat calm.
“Are there any more of these buggers?” Wiggins asked Seton. “And where the fuck did they come from?”
Seton had picked his way through the gore to stand beside them.
“Whether there are more, I have no idea,” he said. “But I think the big one must have given birth when it came to full maturity, and did it fairly recently at that.”
“Bollocks,” Hynd said. “How could it get pregnant? There was only one of the fuckers.”
“Self-fertilization is my guess at that,” Seton replied. “One of the results of the alchemical quest is the perfect, immortal hermaphrodite. I think Crowley got closer than anyone ever imagined, at least for one of his experiments. And we also have a reason for the large one to have become so emboldened in recent times; it was hunting to feed its offspring. Otherwise, it would have stayed nocturnal and reclusive and we might never have known it was here.”
“And the young? They’d be hermaphrodite too?” Banks asked.
“In theory, yes.”
“And what if there are more? What do I tell my superiors about this bloody mess?”
Seton laughed.
“Tell them the loch will once again have its monsters, but they will be elusive as ever, staying mostly nocturnal and quiet, feeding on fish or maybe the odd seal. They won’t reach full size or maturity for a hundred years or more. It’ll be somebody else’s problem by then.”
They made the climb back up into the light in silence, each man lost in his own thoughts.
- 15 -
The real end to the affair came a week later.
Banks’ superior officer had survived the fiasco at the castle after Banks made a full report on their return to Lossiemouth. The incident in the car park was reported as a domestic terrorist incident, which kept the politicians happy as they had somebody concrete apart from themselves to take the blame. A team went down into the chamber under the house, found the dead beasts where Banks said they were, and then sealed the place up by pouring, in Wiggins’ words, a shitload of rock and concrete down any hole they found in the area.
Banks got a letter on Saturday morning, and took it along to the mess to show the sarge and Wiggins. He got a round in, a pie and a pint for each of them, then took out a photograph to show them. On the back, it had a date:time stamp of early morning of the day before, and a handwritten message.
“She’s back. Love, Sandy Seton.”
Banks turned it over to show them the other side. It was a photograph of the loch, under a heavy gray sky. The photograph looked grainy, slightly out of focus, and there was no sense of scale.
But the three dark humps were clearly visible.
The End
Read on for a free sample of The Curse of the Viper King
Chapter One
Taking this job had been the worst mistake of Emiliano’s life.
That fact grew clearer each day. Cutting timber in the Amazon hadn’t been the adventure he’d thought it would be. He slept in a hammock under a thatched roof with nineteen other men. Food ranged from bad all the way down to inedible. Even after sunset, the temperature never dipped below incinerating and the humidity threatened to suffocate him. The work was tough, the biting insects tougher.
Then there were the nights. Darker than any he’d ever experienced. The creepy animal noises from the rainforest and the impenetrable blackness stoked primal fears he thought he’d left behind under his childhood bed. This logging camp made him wonder how many stories of Amazonian monsters were actually true. Many days he doubted he was any better off than he’d been in the Sao Paulo barrio shack he’d abandoned.
This morning, men worked around the edge of the several hectare clear cut, swinging axes and wielding chainsaws. Near the center stood a pile of scrap timber and debris. Bruno, a stout man in baggy shorts and a tattered red T-shirt wore the tanks of a flamethrower on his back. He aimed the wand at the debris and sent a stream of orange fire into the heart of the pile. It burst into flame.
Emiliano finished filling his chainsaw with gas and screwed the gas cap back on. Fuel leaked from the carburetor’s base and created a shiny trail down the saw’s side. The chemical stink combined with the oppressive heat made his head swim. He stood up and shook it off.
“Gabriel, come on,” he said.
His younger brother approached with a chainsaw resting on his shoulder. Two years younger but four inches taller, with a shaved head and broad shoulders, the muscle shirt he wore exposed strong biceps and a simple five-pointed star on a heavy chain around his neck. Gabriel should have been intimidating as hell. But mentally, he’d never gotten past eight years old, and Emiliano had been looking out for him ever since. Recruiting his brother, his last living relative, for this adventure had seemed a necessity. He’d been afraid to leave Gabriel behind to fend for himself. Now he was afraid he’d led him into a jungle hell instead.
Emiliano pointed to a huge mahogany tree at the clearing’s edge. “That one’s ours. You ready?”
Gabriel gave one of his goofy grins, made even more comical by his crooked teeth. “Okay, Mili.”
Emiliano wished he deserved the complete trust Gabriel bestowed on him, but after getting them into this mess…
“I’ll go high, you go low,” Emiliano said. He judged which way the tree would fall, then pointed to where he wanted Gabriel to start cutting.
Gabriel went to the other side of the tree. They both yanked their chainsaws to life and sent the teeth biting into the dense wood. Two rooster tails of shavings sprayed through the air.
The mahogany surrendered slowly to the saws. Gabriel’s
saw bit too hard and stalled. He worked it back out of the slot he’d cut.
But he’d done enough. Emiliano drove his saw deep. A wedge of wood dropped out of the trunk. Emiliano extracted the saw. The tree began to buckle at the cut.
Then, meters away from the trunk, the roots at the far side began to pull from the ground. The tree leaned in the opposite direction of the cut. Its shadow swept across the ground and landed on Gabriel like a sniper’s crosshairs. Gabriel stood oblivious in the dark stripe, trying to restart his saw.
“Gabriel!” Emiliano dropped his saw and charged his brother. He gripped Gabriel’s waist in his headlong rush and drove him away from the falling tree’s path. Gabriel dropped his saw as Emiliano drove him to the ground.
The tree smashed to the ground with the staccato crackle of snapping branches. It missed their feet by millimeters and sprayed a shower of dirt all across their legs. The trunk crushed Gabriel’s saw and the stink of gasoline and oil polluted the air in an instant. The echo of the crash rolled away and left the clearing dead silent.
Other workers sent up a cry. Men from around the clearing sprinted to Emiliano and Gabriel. Emiliano shook his brother.
“Are you okay?”
Gabriel grasped the star around his neck with one hand. He wiped some dirt from his mouth and nodded. “I think so.” He looked over at his crushed chainsaw. “The boss will not be happy about that.”
Emiliano got to his feet and swept some leaves from his hair. He helped his brother up.
A worker arrived at the tree and cried out in terror.
The fallen tree displayed a fan of dirt-clotted roots like a peacock’s tail. They exposed a sheet of gray stone underneath. Emiliano stepped around for a closer look.
Operation Loch Ness Page 12