DIRE : TIME (The Dire Saga Book 3)

by Andrew Seiple

  The passage ended with a twist to the right, and a large, oval cavern. Not a single light shone inside, and I twisted the monocle, upped its yield. It seemed mostly empty, and I frowned to see it. “He has to be here.” Stalactites on the ceiling, stalagmites on the ground, but the cave was dry and warm without a hint of water, and in the center a large circle of powder, with an ugly, grime-encrusted statue of a huddling man. Nearly naked and hairless, with nothing but rough hide pants on its legs and wispy hair on his balding head, it hugged its knees in a perfect picture of misery.

  And then it looked at me.

  I found myself staring into dark pits of eyes that held nothing of humanity within them. Even moreso than the fae we’d traveled with not half an hour ago, this... thing radiated danger on a scale that I’d never encountered before.

  “Do you speak?” I asked it.

  Its lips curved in a smile, showing many, many teeth. It was built on a larger scale than a man, and it straightened up, up, reaching perhaps eight feet in height, all spindly limbs and ropes of muscle on a pot-bellied frame. It had a beard, I noted, with a streak of color running through it, red even though red shouldn’t show up in my nightvision.

  It leered at me, and I growled. No time for this. I turned my back on the god, and addressed Bryson. “All right. Talk to her. Those tattooed people in the cages, what’s the deal there?”

  “Now? Here? I’m not sure I have the time to—”

  “Do it.” I’d had a long night, and the tone in my voice shut him up. He nodded, and told me of what the Nazis had done to the Jews.

  And with every word, the anger that had kindled in my chest at the sight of Timetripper grew, banked, and blazed into a searing fire. I hated the Nazis now. Hated them with a strength I hadn’t felt since I’d gone to war with the twisted Black Bloods gang. No, these... these people were worse than the Black Bloods had been.

  All in all it took perhaps a minute, perhaps less, but by the end of it the blood was pounding in my temples, and I was practically quivering with anger. Hundreds of thousands... Millions of people lost to this sickness.

  It wasn’t enough to get home anymore. It wasn’t enough to kill them when they were in my way. No, now it was personal. They offended me, and I would end them.

  Shouts from the direction of the wine cellar, and gunshots echoed in the tunnels. Bryson cursed. “We’ve wasted enough time!” He pushed past me. “Old god, hear my request. I would bargain with you.”

  I pushed him to the side. “You,” I said, meeting Loge’s eyes. He blinked, perhaps surprised. “You are bound?”

  His grimace was all the evidence I needed.

  “What are you doing?” Bryson hissed.

  “This circle constrains you?”

  He nodded.

  “Doctor, let me do this. We don’t have much time to bargain, and if we—

  I walked over and kicked a hole in the circle, sending powder flying into the air like a spray of diamonds in my nightvision.

  CHAPTER 12: VORPAL – FEAR BEYOND REASON

  “Ah yes, Vorpal. Her record's spotty. A college student who exhibited powers during a fencing match, and maimed her partner... could have been an accident, but she fled. Then she popped up in Eastern Europe, here or there, acting as a mercenary and thug for various villains. Moved to America sometime shortly after Y2K. No one paid much attention to her, up until, well...”

  --Agent Rook of the MRB, during a question-and-answer session on outstanding warrants, circa 2009.

  Vorpal leaped from building to building, using the grappling hook that Dire had built into her wristguard to swing across long gaps.

  It still wasn’t enough to keep up with Minna, especially after she started blasting the road, sending debris and dust fountaining upward and spraying across the route.

  To her absolute disgust, some of the pedestrians along the route stayed and tried to phone the destruction. Idiots. Too soft, this city. Too many bleating fools waiting on heroes to save them from themselves. Well, she’d spare no tears. Vorpal focused on planting the grapnel, reeling herself in, landing with the inbuilt shocks in her heels, and jogging to the next building. She’d keep up, no matter the cost.

  Six minutes into the run, while she was lining up a long shot, one of the fallen civilians near her clambered to his feet. She ignored him, until he staggered closer.

  Vorpal scowled. “Go! I have no help for you—” Her words died on her lips. The chunk of rubble sticking out of his head was the size of her fist. Blood and brains leaked out from the edges of it, dripped to the ground. “Mein Gott...”

  “Vorpal,” the thing muttered through fleshy lips, and she took a step back. Minsk. This was Minsk all over again. No, wait, it was talking. Dark Harvest’s servants never did.

  “I know you?”

  The corpse that had been a plump, middle-aged black man studied her with its one remaining eye. “Deadweight.”

  Ah, okay. One of the Graveyard Gang, the zombie controller. He must be nearby then... she didn’t quite know his range. “Ja, okay.” Vorpal glanced over at Minna’s departing form, in the few seconds before she disappeared into the night. “Kind of busy, can it wait?”

  “You still with Dire?”

  “Why do you ask?” It was hard to read anything in that creepy, wheezing monotone. She’d worked with the Graveyard Gang before, they all had in that raid against Professor Vector. But at the end of the day they were mercenaries...

  “Louis Caviliogne wants her dead.”

  Ah. The mob boss. Slowly, Vorpal slid to the side, and reached a hand to her saber. “I see. He is paying you?”

  “Hell of a lot of money. But you’re not on the contract. If you leave now...”

  The offer was generous, under the circumstances. Mutually beneficial, too. They were giving her a way out, and in exchange, they wouldn’t have to fight her.

  She looked away.

  Bunny has cancer. A breath, two. Bunny had held that back, and the sting of that betrayal was keen. Vorpal didn’t know if she wanted another screaming argument with Bunny. Didn’t know if she wanted her anymore, could trust her like she had, once. Dead sometime soon, anyway. With that out of the picture, what was holding her here, really? Certainly not the civilians, or Martin’s guilt. She was no hero. Thirty thousand people dead or alive, that was something for heroes to worry about. Dire’s retrieval... well, who’s to say she wasn’t better off wherever she was? She obviously was around in the future, so she survived this one way or the other.

  What did she really owe Dire, in the final analysis?

  But...

  Running now, from a bunch of refugees out of a horror movie, it didn’t sit right. Didn’t fit for the Vorpal she wanted to be. For the name that she’d carve into the world. Her thing with Bunny was a mess, but she’d untangle it later. This would dodge the question, anyway, for a while. Fighting always cleared her mind.

  “Well?” the corpse rasped.

  She drew the saber, and took its head in one clean motion, black energy crackling as the lump of bloody flesh crashed to the ground. “I think not.”

  Turning, her gaze sweeping the ruined streets, she found it clear. Few casualties here, only the stupid and unlucky. Still, he didn’t need more here yet, did he? Now that he knew where they were, it was only a matter of time before he arrived, with more zombies and the rest of the team.

  Or would he?

  She forced herself to calm down and think rationally, as she used the grapnel to return to the rooftops, and resume her pursuit. They had no way of knowing that Dire would strike here. Their territory was nearby, true, but not that close. Which meant that they were out looking for her, or conducting other business. This was a chance encounter.

  The normal transport for the Graveyard Gang was either by vehicle or through one of Gravedigger’s tunnels. And even with the torn-up street, he could only tunnel through loose material, like sand, dirt, or gravel. The asphalt and the pipes under the city prevented that, here.


  Which meant that the first responder would probably be their only flier, Grim.

  She thought she could take Grim. She wasn’t sure what he could do to the Dire Armor, but if they were hunting her he’d have something. So she’d do her job, and engage Grim before he could ambush Minna.

  Grim could fly, he could heal from damn near anything, and that scythe of his was sharp. Sharp enough to shear titanium and ceramic alloy? Hard to say. Probably not. So he’d be aiming to slow Minna down, keep her busy until the rest of his team showed up. Epitaph could maybe crack the Dire suit. Whippoorwill could render the whole fight moot unless Minna turned off the suit’s audio sensors. Did Minna even know how to do that? Probably not skilled enough to react in time.

  She hopped a crumbling brick chimney, and glared as a silver bolt headed skyward, cracked off of Minna’s forcefield.

  Ballista.

  Vorpal growled, low in her throat. Already the first heroes were arriving. Grim would have to work around that too... except he wanted her dead. He could maybe use that to his advantage.

  Well.

  Ballista wouldn’t want Dire dead. Grim wanted her dead. Minna would be on her own against the hero, Vorpal would help her mop up... if it mattered. The teleporter would render it all a moot point in minutes.

  The priority was spotting Grim before he spotted her. So she adjusted the grapnel, and fired a line up at the tallest building around, an old radio tower. Rappeling up the side, using the motors in the grapnel’s head to pull herself up, she found a good perch and tapped her mask, making the built-in nightvision lenses slide down. Another piece of tech bought from Dire... she was big on supplying her allies with good utility gear.

  That was a reason to fight for her, anyway. No way to repair the useful little machines if they broke. She’d have to find another engineer or supergenius, and that brought its own problems. Still, she could manage if she had to.

  A flashing lightshow from Minna’s general area, a shuddering crash from across the way, and the lights went out. Finally, Minna had hit the damn wires. She had one job, and she finally did the damn thing. Vorpal rolled her eyes. So inefficient. Then she turned her attention to scanning the skies.

  Vorpal almost missed him.

  Ballista’s fight with Minna was throwing up clouds of dust and smoke and steam, and he came flapping through them like a great bat, black robes snapping in the wind as he hugged the tops of the western buildings.

  First step: get him away from that goddamn scythe.

  Braced against the long-defunct spire of the radio station, she finished bracing herself against the brickwork and took careful aim.

  Closer... closer... He made a beeline for Minna, drawing the scythe from his back as he went, and Vorpal smiled to see it. There!

  A puff, a hiss, and the grapnel arced out, cable snapping behind it... and thudding into Grim’s ribs with the force of a bullet. He twisted in midair, nearly fell from the sky—

  She hit the button to retract the cable.

  The mechanism whirred to life, handling his weight just as easily as hers, and jerked him through the air at a frantic speed! He twisted, tried a slash at the cable, tried another slash, oriented himself and managed to sever the cable—

  But by then he was too close and it was too late. Vorpal ran, hopped, and throwing caution to the wind, snapped her saber out as she glided by him, black energy snapping as she cut. His hands fell to the street below, the scythe with them, and she barked in triumph as she landed on the rooftop of the adjoining building.

  A quick pivot, a turn, and— shit, he was already upon her! She dove to the side, flicked her blade out as he charged by, and an arm went flying, a newly-formed bony hand scrabbling at the building as it dropped. But a new arm was already forming, bones there within half-a-second, muscles there as he turned.

  Grim chased right after her again, not giving Vorpal the space to regroup. Vorpal’s instincts betrayed her and she went for the thrust. He charged right up the blade, slamming into her and bearing her back to the edge of the roof, scrabbling at her neck. She ripped the blade loose, hewed at his arms again, but then she was at the edge of the roof. Her leg stepped out onto open air and she dropped the saber, pinwheeled her arms as she grabbed at Grim... who let her latch on as he wrapped bony, bloody hands around Vorpal’s throat.

  He had muscle in those bony arms, and he lifted her, let her feet dangle over the edge of the roof. She grabbed at his wrists, fought to keep her air flow. Her eyes flicked to the wristlauncher, but it would be no help if she fell. He’d cut the grapnel. It was a long way down.

  “You should have taken ’Weight’s offer.” Grim rasped.

  “I wonder why you... took the mob’s?” Vorpal managed to get out, fighting to keep his fingers from squeezing her throat shut.“I heard... about you. You do... not do... wetwork normally.”

  “It’s special occasion stuff. Only when the target really deserves it.”

  “And Dire... does?”

  “Tens of thousands of people dead? Yeah, she does. I’m disappointed with that, sorry I read her wrong. But hey, her atrocity is my chance to make a paycheck.” He turned his head, studying her face, catching her eyes under the mask. “Last chance. Walk away while you still have unbroken bones.”

  “Question,” she wheezed, as his fingers clamped in harder, twisting and squeezing. He sighed, and let up a bit.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you regenerate this?”

  A kick of one foot against the building, and her boot knife slid free. She gave up on holding Grim’s hands away, clamped down on them, and twisted, wrapping her legs around him as she twisted and buried the knife into his back. He let go of her hands, stumbled as her torso dropped back, and she caught herself on the wall, keeping him in a pseudo-wrestling hold.

  “Really?” he asked.

  “Really,” she said, and activated her power, calling upon electricity. She watched him sizzle and dance as volts coursed through his body. He flailed, tried to grab her, and she grinned as a hand hit her forehead and she failed to be electrocuted. “Grounded costume, freak.”

  It took him time, as he sizzled and popped and jittered, healing as fast as he fried. It took him time to manage despite the raw lightning rushing through his nerves, but eventually he did, and he threw himself away from her, blue sparks and arcs crackling down as he hit the ground, panted, and shook his head. Charred flesh dripped from his eyesockets as new orbs grew to fill the hollows.

  Hard to tell without skin, but he looked pretty pissed.

  “To answer your question... yeah. Yeah I can regenerate that,” he rasped, and Vorpal laughed, flipping to her feet, sweat dripping down her face. It had been a long night, and she was starting to tire. He wasn’t. Well that was fine, her blood was boiling now! All the rage, all the hesitation, all the doubt that had assailed her since Bunny’s secret came out, she had a target now that she could beat until everything made sense again.

  “I am going to hurt you now,” she taunted, drawing Der Schmetterling from its sheath. “And I do not know when I am going to stop.”

  Grim’s teeth clicked together, and he raised his hand. A whistling sound behind her, and she dove to the side as the scythe whirled past and slapped into his hands. She gasped as an eye opened on the blade, red and slit-pupilled and angry. It almost whined, nuzzling at Grim as he caressed it, letting his blood fall freely upon the living weapon. “Come then,” he said. “I’ve been through worse.”

  She charged him, and sparks flew.

  Vorpal tried lightning, and the scythe didn’t seem to care. Fire was met with roars of rage, and the thing split open like a mouth, tried to feast upon her as Grim whirled and jabbed it but she was a dancer, she was a dervish, she was a goddess as she leaped and parried and slashed. Ice seemed to make it shrink back and she pressed the attack home, scoring hits upon Grim and actually slowing him. Whatever his regeneration was, it didn’t seem to register frozen tissue as injured tissue.

  A weakness! Ra
re to uncover one, she could sell this for a good amount of money on the Darkgrid! She grinned—

  —and nearly lost her head as the building shook, and an arcing swipe from the scythe came within inches of her neck as she stumbled.

  The building was shaking. What the hell?

  Grim laughed. “Finally. You know most of this part of Icon is built on clay, once you get down far enough?”

  “Gravedigger!” Vorpal snarled and ran for the next building, but too late. With a creak and a groan the building shattered, and shuddered, and fell.

  Everything slowed, and in her nightvision the puffs of dust rose like smoke as the roof she was standing on fragmented and came to pieces.

  It took every bit of her agility, legs pumping, as she hopped from larger chunk to larger chunk as they separated and fell, moving faster and faster until her nightvision blurred and she knew it was now or never as she leaped—

  —and caught the lip of a lower building’s roof, muscles shrieking and straining as she hung on, Schmetterling going into its storage mode as it curled around her arm like a serpent.

  Vorpal hung there for a second, but pain exploded against her back as something, some chunk of rubble or bricks caught her and she shrieked as she let go. It was a drop of perhaps twenty feet and her ankle gave with a sickening pop as she hit the ground and rolled, gasping for air and inhaling choking dust. She coughed, pounded her fist into the ground to distract her from the pain, and grabbed her foot, feeling the joint.

  Out of place, but not broken. Didn’t make it hurt any less, though,and she howled as she stood, leaning against the building to pull herself up. She tried a step, almost fell, tried another hobbling step, got it, and started looking around for Grim.

  She found him.

  Grim stood on top of the rubble, black cloak flapping in the wind, and next to him a white-skinned woman in a black suit, wearing a Bolero hat, cracked knuckles white as marble. Hard as marble, too, Vorpal knew. Epitaph was a walking tombstone, in more ways than one. And just past her, a dozen dead men loomed out of the fog, maggots dripping from long-dead flesh. But the guns in their hands looked perfectly functional, and they were all pointed her way.