The Demon Code

by Adam Blake

  It was the best Diema could do and it took a heartbeat longer than she would have liked. Because she knew for certain that she was blown. There was just no way Ber Lusim’s Elohim would come for Rush and not for her. And no way, given enough time and patience, that they wouldn’t have made her, sitting up in the tree, and gotten into position to take her.

  The satchel was an arm’s length away, with all her kit – apart from the nine-millimetre and the walkie-talkie, still strapped to her belt – inside it. It might as well have been on the dark side of the moon. She straightened her legs, slid forward and let herself fall straight off the branch. Rifle fire shredded the foliage above her and reduced her former perch to a threshing floor.

  Diema used the canopy to slow her fall, turning it into a cascade roll, and caught herself on another branch ten feet lower down. She’d been able to gauge the direction of the gunfire, at least roughly, and had angled her fall to the left, away from the flank of the hill. Now she scrambled a few feet further over, even though it meant crawling out towards the thinner end of the branch she was on. The branch dipped precariously under her, but the bole of the tree was between her and the shooters.

  For now.

  She snatched up the walkie-talkie, but before she could open the channel, let alone speak, more shots smacked into the bark right above her head.

  She was pinned from at least two directions. And they could see her.

  Tillman saw the knife first, already in the air, the knife-man a half-second later. It was much too late by that time, and though he turned and dropped by subliminal reflex, that only meant the sica caught him higher up on his side and at a shallower angle. Sharper than a razor, it went into the angle of the pectoral and deltoid muscles on his right side and embedded itself deeply. Along with the pain came the shock of realisation that the hurt he’d just received was probably his death warrant. The anti-coagulants the Elohim used to coat their blades could render even a shallow graze deadly, and he’d just taken a deep wound at a nexus of two major arteries.

  Two men – presumably Messengers, given their choice of weapon – were coming at him from two different directions around the circular gallery, intentionally cutting him off from the stairs and the lift. Tillman’s gun was tucked into the back of his belt and there was no time to get to it – especially with the protruding knife impeding his movements. Any of the Elohim would already have the advantage over him in speed. The man who’d already thrown was drawing another blade. The second assassin, marginally closer because he hadn’t taken the time to aim and throw, was coming towards Tillman at a run.

  He carried the knife in his right hand, the left hovering above it seemingly en garde – but then he let the two hands draw apart, the knife-hand stabbing low while the supposedly defensive hand darted up to jab at Tillman’s throat.

  Tillman walked right into the attack. Being wounded already freed him from that particular concern, although not from the danger of being disembowelled. He struck down with his own right hand to knock the knife aside and leaned to the side so that the throat-jab went wide.

  He clamped his left hand onto the assassin’s shoulder. Still advancing, still turning, he ducked to transform the lock into a throw. He took the man’s knife-arm just above the wrist, pulled him around and down in a clumsy but quick kitap, but since he maintained his grip on his opponent’s forearm the weight of the man’s own body ripped his arm out of its socket.

  And gave Tillman a knife.

  He brought it up in time to fend off a slashing attack from the second man, the two knives clashing once, then twice, as though they were swords and this was a fencing bout. Tillman was aware that every movement was forcing more blood out of the deep wound in his side, but there was no time to think about that.

  More worrying was the fact that he was facing a knife-fighter far more experienced and comfortable with this weapon than he was. He was giving ground with each feint and guard, backing towards the wall. He was going to lose, and he was going to die.

  So he did the only thing he could think of. He bought a half-second with a wild horizontal slash, used it to back away another step – leaving his knife way out of line, his torso unprotected.

  The assassin took the invitation, moving in with terrifying speed, but Tillman was already angling his body away from the blow, and because he had to make the call he decided it would be a high thrust to the heart. Luck was with him: his opponent, over-committed, leaned in past him. By this time, Tillman had dropped his knife. He grabbed the man in a two-handed embrace and pivoted on his left foot, adding his own momentum to the lunge.

  They went through the tall window together, but the Elohim assassin was the lead partner in this short, ugly waltz.

  Tillman kept the other man beneath him as they fell the twenty feet to the ground. They landed on bright blue tiles, in a shower of glass shards, and gravity delivered the coup de grâce.

  Where they landed was a decorative apron next to the outdoor pool, in the middle of a dense crowd of sunbathing tourists – who screamed and leaped to their feet, scrambling to avoid the hard rain of broken glass and then to get away from the blood-boltered madman who reared up, staggering, in front of them, standing over a pulped corpse like a lion over his kill.

  As they backed and ran from him, Tillman’s walkie-talkie vibrated on his belt. He thumbed the ACCEPT key and heard Diema’s voice.

  ‘Tillman! Rush! The plan’s shot. They were waiting for us. They’ll kill us first, then go after—’ Her voice was drowned out by the white noise of gunfire. An automatic rifle, from up close.

  Tillman snatched up the walkie-talkie, already moving. He had plenty of empty space to move into, suddenly. The bathers were fleeing away from him on all sides as quickly as they could.

  ‘Where are you?’ he yelled.

  He heard a single word. It sounded like ‘hill’, or maybe ‘kill’.

  He hoped the boy would survive. He hoped they all would.

  But he did what he had to do.

  Kennedy heard the gunshots first – the precise, hammer-on-nail iterations of Diema’s handgun, followed by the nerve-shredding road-drill roar of an automatic rifle. A moment later, and much closer, a window shattered.

  From where she was, the side of an awning hid the falling bodies of Tillman and the Messenger, and the first screams drowned out the sound when they hit. She only knew that violence was erupting all around her – and from this, that their plan had both succeeded and failed. The Elohim had taken the bait, but somehow they’d missed the target. Or else they were choosing to take her out in a way that involved a lot of collateral damage.

  She took three steps in the direction of the sounds, but that was as far as she got. The people closest to her backed into her, turned and started to run, infected with the panic of those at the epicentre of the disturbance. Except that it wasn’t really running. In the space of seconds, as hundreds of people surged towards the few available exits, the crowd congealed into a single, struggling mass. Kennedy couldn’t swim against that tide: she tried to stand her ground and let it sweep past her, but even that was more than she could manage. She was carried with it.

  Men and women with the hotel’s red logo on their chests – lifeguards, presumably – were trying to divert the tide and stop people from being crushed against the walls. One of them was shouldered aside by a fleeing man and pushed into the pool. Probably the safest place to be right then, Kennedy thought, but she had to find out what was happening, and she had to do it quickly.

  She let the crowd carry her. Once she was downstairs, in the changing area, it would be easier to peel off and go her own way.

  ‘Itt!’ the lifeguards were shouting. ‘Here! This way!’ Two of them, a man and a woman, were holding a door open against the crowd’s barging, stumbling turbulence. Kennedy went through it and down the stairs beyond. Each step was a fight to stay on her feet and avoid being trodden under by the sheer press of people.

  At the bottom of the stairs, emptying i
nto the wider space of the changing area, the crowd spread out a little and the crush was lessened. Here, too, though, urgent men and women ushered them onward – ‘Itt! Itt!’ – and pushed them if they stopped.

  A man stepped into their path and yelled into Kennedy’s face. ‘Itt kell mennem, asszony – itt!’ She went the way he pointed, through another door off to one side and into a white-tiled corridor that was mercifully empty. She’d already taken several steps along it when she realised that the man who’d just spoken to her hadn’t had the house logo on his chest. He hadn’t been wearing a T-shirt at all, but a plain white shirt and a linen-weave suit.

  She stopped and turned, just in time to see the man pull the door closed and draw a bolt across, locking himself in with her.

  55

  As soon as he saw the man walking towards him with the knife in his hand, Ben Rush turned and ran. The street market was right there beside him and it was pretty much the only way that wasn’t blocked by shouting, screaming people, so that was where he headed.

  But the knife-man was running too, and after one frantic glance over his shoulder, Rush knew that he wasn’t going to win this race on the flat. Jesus, this guy was fast!

  So his only chance was to make it into a steeplechase. He vaulted over counters, to the indignant bellows of the stallholders, barged through clothes racks and stacked boxes, swarmed under tent flaps, and generally did his best to get out of his pursuer’s line of sight. But every time he thought he’d shaken him off, the bastard hauled into sight again, dogging Rush’s heels so closely that there was never any chance for him to go to ground.

  Rush was young, and reasonably fit, but he knew he couldn’t keep this pace up for long. And it was getting harder to manoeuvre as stallholders and shoppers stopped what they were doing to watch the chase. They formed a semi-solid wall now, blocking him from most of the bolt-holes he might have used and giving the assassin – with their attentive, curious stares – a signpost that pointed towards Rush in real time.

  If Diema had only given me a gun, he thought wildly. But how could he have started a firefight in the middle of a thousand innocent bystanders? And besides, he’d never fired a gun in his life. The only thing that was certain if he’d tried it here was that he wouldn’t have hit the one man he was actually aiming at.

  He rounded a corner, legs and elbows pumping, and skidded to a halt. No more road. The market went all the way to the river, and that was where he was. There was a low parapet wall ahead of him. A long way below, the broad ribbon of Zela Utca, the river road, stood between him and the Danube. Not even an Olympic athlete could have jumped across that distance.

  Rush thought furiously. He did have the paint grenade and he took it from his pocket now. Maybe he could let the guy get up close and then blind him with it? But he’d seen people messing with these things on YouTube – they sprayed paint in thin streaks, not in waves. They were a nuisance, designed for drunken prats who think damage to property is hilarious in itself.

  The inspiration hit him when it was almost too late to be of any use. He still had a second or two before the assassin turned the corner and saw him again. He staggered right up to the nearest stall, which was selling sweet and savoury strudels, held the grenade above his head and pulled the pin. ‘Debreceniiii!’ he yelled, his voice ragged. ‘Debreceni are a load of bollocks. Polecsik is a wanker. Liverpool shagged you up the arse!’

  The grenade kicked in his hand and the world went green.

  The gunfire was coming from at least three directions and Diema could only think of one way to respond. She couldn’t return fire: she couldn’t even see where the shots were coming from, and if she fired at random she might kill one of her own race – the sin that would bar her from ever going home.

  So she kept on dropping and sliding down through the branches of the tree, hiding herself from one shooter or another, trying to find a space that would offer her cover from all quarters. As a strategy, it was only a little bit better than praying.

  As soon as that thought crossed her mind, she realised that she had at least one more option.

  Diema began to sing. She knew a hundred blessings, and most could be sung as well as spoken. She started with the funeral hymn, which for obvious reasons was uppermost in her mind. Forgetting cadence and harmony, she shouted it at the top of her voice, hoping that it would carry to where Ber Lusim’s Elohim were.

  The gunfire slackened and then stopped.

  Yes, Diema thought. Home-town girl. Now you know.

  Somewhere close by, a shrill, rising voice screamed out an order in bastard Aramaic. ‘Y’tuh gemae le! Net ya neiu!’ The order was utter blasphemy: never mind who she is, complete your mission. For a moment, and then another, nothing happened. But the speaker had pronounced Diema’s death sentence.

  The branch she was squatting on was barely able to support her weight – but the one above it, to which she was clinging with her hands, was longer and thicker. As the shooting began again, she hauled herself up onto it, found her balance and began to run.

  She was still maybe ten feet above the ground – clearly visible from below now as she broke out of the tree’s thickest canopy into semi-open air. But these trees were old: centuries ago, they’d linked arms in solidarity against the city’s incursions, tying their extremities into a lovers’ knot.

  At the end of the branch, Diema jumped. She wasn’t aiming for any particular part of the neighbouring tree, just using its foliage to soften the impact and then its branches to allow her to complete her controlled fall to the ground.

  She landed on her feet, which was a welcome miracle. There was a man directly in front of her, already turning – a rifle in his hands. Diema shot him in both legs, and then as he toppled towards her she swung the handgun up to meet him, driving the butt into the side of his head. He was unconscious when he hit the ground.

  She took the man’s rifle and retreated up the hill, darting quick glances into the trees around her. There was movement there, and another shout: ‘Be hin et adom!’ Yes, Diema thought. She’s on the ground. Maybe you’ll be a bit less free and easy with the rifle fire when you might hit one of your own.

  Meanwhile, her own rifle fire would sound like theirs and make it harder for them to track her. It also lent itself very well to her new tactics. She cut another man off at the knees with a short, sweeping burst, and left him screaming – then she waited until one of his comrades came to check the damage, and shot him too. She was happy to keep this up until Ber Lusim didn’t have a single Messenger left who could walk.

  She kept on moving, always upwards – which she hoped would draw the Elohim along with her, away from the others. The plan was moot now, but they still needed a living Messenger to question. Kennedy had the Dan-inject, so she had the best chance of landing that fish.

  Of course, the slopes of Gellert Hill were now full of Elohim who were in no fit state to walk away, but their comrades would collect them as soon as they’d dealt with Diema, and for all her efforts that couldn’t take long now.

  Even as she was thinking that, she heard a soft, thudding impact on the ground close by. Looking down, she saw a grenade rolling to a halt against her foot. She kicked it away down the hill and threw herself flat on her stomach.

  Or started to.

  She was still in mid-air when the shockwave took her.

  Kennedy had encountered the Elohim before and survived the experience – mostly by means of luck or outside help, and once (in Santa Claus, Arizona) by the time-honoured device of bringing a gun to a knife fight. She knew enough to be certain that if she let this man get in close to her, she was probably finished.

  As he advanced, she took the Dan-inject out of her bag. Then she threw away the bag, dropped her free hand to her side like a duellist in a Victorian novel, and took aim with the flimsy, almost weightless device – one-handed and with her arm straight out in front of her, a stance she’d never have used with an actual gun. But this wasn’t a gun, it was a modified versio
n of the dart-launchers that zookeepers use to sedate dangerous animals. Instead of bullets, it fired flechette darts with a payload of three millilitres of fentanyl. Recoil would be minimal, too small even to feel.

  The assassin was on Kennedy in three strides. In that time, she fired off both of the pre-loaded darts, aiming for his chest. But the darts were slower than bullets, as well as lighter. The Messenger, whose addiction to the drug kelalit profoundly altered his perceptions of the world, walked around them, tilting his body first to the left and then to the right.

  Which kept his mind occupied while Kennedy brought up the jabstick and stabbed him in the shoulder.

  The jabstick was manufactured by the same company that made the dart gun. It was gas-and-spring loaded, modifiable to release the sedative payload either automatically or on depressing a trigger. The one Kennedy was carrying – illegally customised and cut down from its original two-metre length to just under five inches – was set to automatic. And because it was a weapon of last resort, it carried five millilitres of fentanyl instead of three. The assassin’s eyes registered a momentary shock as the drug hit his system.

  But he didn’t break stride. He swatted the jabstick out of Kennedy’s hand and at the same time punched her hard in the stomach.

  She didn’t see the punch coming, so she had no chance of leaning into it and lessening the impact. She doubled up, the breath leaving her in a huffing bark of agony. The follow-up blow to the back of her head made her crash down onto her knees, her sight strobing black and white.

  Fentanyl was a relatively recent addition to the line-up of commercially available sedatives, a synthetic ethyl compound discovered in the 1960s and at first used almost exclusively for emergency pain relief. Its spectacularly quick action made it perfect for use by paramedics on burn and trauma victims, and that instant knock-out effect was one reason why Diema had chosen it. The other was a chemical oddity that the drug’s inventor had noted enthusiastically at the time: even long-term drug addicts whose habit had made them too tolerant of opioids to be treated with morphine would respond to fentanyl.