Queen of Wands-eARC

by John Ringo

  “That’s why I was supposed to be taking point,” Barb said, flicking both of the sheathed swords to the side so the sheaths clattered against the wall. She took one in either hand, and a deep breath. Closer to the hole she could smell the stink of the Old One. The professor must have been so caught up in his role of expert he hadn’t noticed. Or was it getting…?

  “Is that a…slithering sound?” Janea asked.

  “Looks like we get to depend on your pronunciation,” Barb said, backing up. “Now would be a good time!”

  The creature emerging in the helmet lights was pure nightmare. Its very form was hard to determine. Mostly a mass of writhing tentacles, there were suckers and pseudopods extending in chaotic order, and everywhere there were eyes that were oddly human. The color was not black but a nauseous, leprous green that shaded to black and purple in places as if the entire being was one mass of gangrenous corruption.

  Janea hefted the battery-powered sprayer and showered the mass with a yellow powder.

  “A-ku-surgo, ka-ka-gree!” Janea shouted triumphantly, then grimaced. The tentacles were continuing to creep into the room. The thing, fortunately, wasn’t moving fast. As if it wanted to maximize the terror.

  “Isn’t working,” Barb commented, still backing up. There wasn’t much more to back to.

  “I noticed,” Janea said. “A-ku-surgo, ka-ka-gree!”

  “Right,” Barb said, flipping onto her back. “Let’s try this my way. Lord, send me Your aid in battle against evil and I will in Your name kick some unholy ass!”

  With her back on the floor, she pushed off of a notched spot in the ceiling and slid towards the monster on her back, wakizashi crossed.

  Over the years Barb had studied practically every form found in the East. Traveling from place to place, the one constant was that as soon as they arrived, her father would use his contacts as an FAO to find not only a martial arts studio but the very best that would take a female. As time went on, and Barb’s ability improved, the word would usually precede them.

  But there was never, or rarely, the same style available at the best facility at the next posting. Hong Kong, it was Wah Lum; Singapore, Mantis; Thailand, kickboxing and krabi krabong; Japan, bushido and karate; Okinawa, tuete, and so on. All of them had combined into a personal style that Barb mentally dubbed Barb-do-kicki. Which translated as: “whatever works.”

  Fighting a multitentacled demon from nightmare was never part of any of the training. But she’d fought up to six students of centipede who were used to working together, so it was close. The position was centipede, the sword work krabi krabong, the swords Japanese. Barb-do-kicki at its essence.

  The only problem being that the swords bounced right off the tentacles.

  “Janea, find another chant or something,” Barb said, spinning around and slamming a tentacle with a round kick. The tentacle tried to grab her leg but slid off of the slippery suit. Spinning again, she slapped two more away with the swords and flicked a point into one of the thousands of eyes. That, at least, sunk home.

  “God, now would be a really nice time to prove the Priestess wrong,” Barb said, concentrating on her channel. Finally, she felt a surge of power. “Thank you, Lord,” Barb said, slicing a tentacle off at the tip.

  The thing keened a loud cry and redoubled its efforts to get through the spinning swords and legs. It pulled itself fully into the chamber, revealing a bulbous body at the center that was no more pleasant than the rest of it.

  Janea was chanting a series of prayers, some of them in languages Barb actually recognized.

  “Was that Tibetan?” Barb asked.

  “Yes,” Janea said, desperately. “I don’t know what this thing is! If I don’t know what it is I don’t know which dispel to use!”

  “Fine,” Barb said, her eyes lighting as the swords began to glow. “We’ll do this my way.”

  She slid forward again, the wakizashi crossing in a butterfly pattern and shredding tentacles as she went. They did regrow, and were covering her in pumped ichor, but the important thing was that they were opening up a hole to get to the body of the creature.

  One finally managed to wrap around her arm, but she countered by rewrapping multiple times, reeling herself rapidly into close quarters with the Old One.

  Once there, a single stab of a glowing wakizashi drove deep into the amorphous body of the creature. As the sword reached its vitals she felt a massive wave of power pass through her, and the thing exploded like a pus-filled water balloon, drenching the chamber in ichor and an unholy stench.

  “Ack!” Barb said, rolling onto her stomach and blowing out ichor. There was more in her nose than her mouth, but it was foul either way. And it stung the eyes like acid. “Yuck! Ptui!”

  “Okay, so I guess The White God does get involved with Old Ones,” Janea said, shaking the ichor-covered mass of papers in her hand. “And…yuck!”

  “Lord,” Barb said, rolling to her knees and bowing her head. “Thank you for Your assistance with defeating evil this day. May Your Name be glorified in company with Your Son, Jesus Christ. Bring comfort to the soul of Professor Argyll and take him into Your arms. Whatever his sins of this life, he died in battle against evil in Your Name. Amen. Okay, Thane, how do I…” Barb paused and shook her head. “Sugar.”

  The student was back against the wall, his eyes wide and unseeing. A line of drool was hanging from his open mouth and the only noise he was making was a faint mewing of terror.

  “Well, Freya does get involved, as it turns out,” Barb said, flicking the swords to clear them of ichor.

  “How?” Janea said, somewhat bitterly.

  “You’re not totally insane,” Barb said, gesturing at the student. “That makes three bodies we’re going to have to extract.”

  “You’re really going to try to go up there after the girl?” Janea asked.

  “Of course,” Barb said, looking at her in surprise. “How else? I’m also going to have to get the professor.”

  As she said that, Lazarus came out of the far opening a bit sheepishly.

  “Welcome back,” Barb said. “And next time I’m going to listen to you.”

  “Barb,” Janea said, eyeing the hole. “Look, let’s try to drag Thane back then get some more professionals. I’m not even sure I can find the way out.”

  “There’s a li…” Barb looked towards the exit and stopped. “Where’s the line?”

  “Cedar took it with him,” Janea said, shaking her head. “I’m really unsure about finding our way out.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Barb said, sliding over to the opening. “I’m gonna need a push. Oh, and I suppose we need to tie me off in case I get stuck.”

  * * *

  “Aaaruck!” Barb snarled as she finally cleared her hips from the hole. “That felt like being born again.”

  “Should work fine for you,” Janea said.

  “Christian jokes,” Barb muttered, rubbing her hip. It turned out that bringing the pistol in a holster was impossible. She’d ended up sticking it in her belt on her front. She’d had a wakizashi in either hand, though. One up, one down, unsheathed and being very careful. “It’s more open up here.”

  The cavern was a chute climbing upwards at about a sixty-degree angle to the north. At about six feet wide and more than ten feet high, it was one of the more open areas they’d passed through. She could see where it leveled off again about twenty feet up, and possibly an even more open area at the top. Getting up it was going to be a chore, though. The floor was slick with slime, ichor and blood.

  “Professor’s not here,” Barb said. “Safety first,” she added, sheathing the swords.

  She got down on all fours and tried to climb up the chute, but she kept sliding down. The second time, her leg slid into the hole to the lower chamber, nearly breaking it.

  “This is impossible,” she said, sitting down. Then she noticed that the rope that ascended up the chute. Presumably still tied to the professor’s ankle, it was tucked to one side in
a slight cleft that ran along the chute.

  She pulled it out and flicked it to the side, trying her weight on it. Wherever the professor was now, he seemed to be solidly stuck.

  “This is a bit morbid,” she said, pulling on the rope, then carefully climbing up the chute hand-over-hand. About halfway she slipped and fell on her face, bruising her chin, but she was able to get enough purchase with her feet to make it to the top.

  As she neared the top, she stopped and sniffed and listened. The smell of ichor was overwhelming but there was no sound from the chamber beyond.

  “How’s it going?” Janea shouted.

  The voice boomed through the cavern and Barb suppressed an ungodly curse.

  “Quiet,” she hissed, listening again. Still nothing.

  She pulled herself over the opening and drew her pistol, triggering the SureFire flashlight on it in addition to her helmet light and quickly shining both around.

  The cave was, for once, high and wide with the traditional stalactites and stalagmites. It was still dark with the slime mold, and in places there were deep pools of ichor. It definitely looked like the creature’s lair.

  She followed the rope to a crack between two of the stalagmites where the professor’s body was wedged. All the body except the head.

  “That explains the blood,” Barb said, pointing her pistol around until she spotted the head. It had apparently rolled into a corner of the cave. “Okay, that’s the professor.”

  But search as she might, she couldn’t find the kidnap victim.

  “That’s odd,” she muttered, getting down on her knees and shining the light into every crevice.

  By dint of much searching she found three openings off of the cave. All of them had signs of being used by the creature but none of them had traces of the victim.

  “Ssssh…sugar,” she muttered.

  She went back over to the entrance and called down.

  “Janea. Found the professor. No sign of the victim. Three exits, all used. At this point, we need to call it.”

  “Got it,” Janea said.

  “I’m going to try to stuff the professor down the chute,” Barb said. “I’ll roll you his head first.”

  * * *

  Lazarus walked out of the cave and then over to a patch of brush, and started rolling in the leaves as if trying to rub something off his fur.

  Barb pulled herself out of the opening, then pulled the body of professor Argyll through. She’d gotten good at that over the last few hours.

  “You’d think there’d be somebody waiting for us,” Barb said, shaking her head. “Give me Thane’s hand.”

  Getting out of the cave had been nearly as much of a nightmare as fighting the thing in it. Fortunately, every time the two agents got lost, Lazarus had directed them to the right course. The major problem had been maneuvering the stiffening body of the professor and Thane. Thane could and would perform minimal functions—would crawl when they told him to crawl—but getting him through the restrictions had been a special pain. And any time the light started to go away, such as the one time Janea’s helmet-light battery had given out, he would start to howl.

  As the student exited the cave he started to mutter, a precursor to a howl. Night had fallen by the time they exited the cave and apparently the light from Barb’s helmet wasn’t enough.

  “It’s okay, Thane,” Barb said, pulling him to his feet. The FBI was still clearly investigating the area around the trailer, and there were Klieg lights set up. “Go to the light, Thane. It’s okay, I’ll be with you.”

  * * *

  Randell looked up as a tall figure stumbled into the light and collapsed right on top of an evidence marker.

  “Watch where you’re…” he said before recognizing the lost caver. “Holy shit!”

  “Watch your language, Special Agent,” Barb said, holstering her pistol as she walked into the light around the trailer. She was dragging the body of the professor by one wrist. His body had stiffened into a slight U, which had actually helped with most of the restrictions. “Area’s cleared but we couldn’t find the girl.”

  * * *

  “Trying to give a cat a bath in the shower is a baaad idea,” Barb said, toweling her hair as she walked out of the bathroom. Lazarus darted past her, yowling.

  The agents had wanted to question them immediately but they’d given in to the argument that both needed a shower badly. So the foursome had returned to Barb and Janea’s hotel. Barb and Janea had driven in a different car by mutual agreement with the agents. Their rental car now smelled like rotting skunks.

  “Cedar said you were all dead,” Randell said. “At least what we could get out of him. He’s nearly as bad as Thane. All he’d do was scream about blackness and repeat that you were all dead.”

  “Which was why there wasn’t a welcoming committee,” Janea said. “O ye of little faith. Actually, that’s exactly what ye are.”

  “So what was it?” Graham asked.

  “Not sure,” Barb said.

  “It wasn’t a Shambler,” Janea said. “Underestimated the threat again. It didn’t respond to the Jagana spell or the Jugu powder, which a Shambler would have. And Shamblers don’t have those eyes. I’m going to have to call a researcher at the Foundation to see if they have a clue. But the good news is, it’s dead. Which, I suppose, explains why you got the Calling. If I’d gone in there expecting a Shambler we all would be dead.”

  “The professor is,” Barb said, shaking her head. “I should have listened to Lazarus.”

  “No sign of the girl?” Randell asked.

  “There were three openings off of the lair,” Barb said, tightly. “All used. We had a dead team member, one who was catatonic, and neither Janea nor I were cave experts. I turned the penetration at that point.”

  “In case it sounds like we’re being ungrateful,” Graham said, looking at Randell sharply, “good job on taking out whatever that thing was. And thank you for recovering the professor and Th—” He paused as his phone beeped, looked at it, and flipped it open.

  “Agent Graham… Yes, sir. You’re sure. Yes, sir, right away.”

  He closed the phone and looked at Barb with a flat expression.

  “You’re sure this thing is dead?”

  “All are not dead that sleeping lie,” Janea said, her brow furrowing. “But it’s as dead as anything like that can be. Why?”

  “We’ve had another attack.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Your creature has been identified,” Augustus said over the video link.

  Janea had sent a report to FLUF before heading to bed, and the next morning she and Barb had headed back to the FBI forward base after a brief stop to drop off the rental car and pick up a new one.

  Graham had headed to the site of the new attack, so it was Barb, Janea and Randell receiving the call.

  “The creature is a skru-gnon.”

  “A child of foulness?” Janea said, her eyes wide. “Oh, no, no, no…”

  “And what is a…skru…” Barb asked. “That’s Tibetan again, right?”

  “A skru-gnon is an unholy mating of human and Old One,” Germaine said. “It is a way for Old Ones to enter into the world.”

  “And more,” Janea said, her eyes closed. “The children of the foul are…” She paused and opened her eyes, slitting them slightly. “The children of the foul are the children of gar gyi dbang phyug ma, the mother of all demons.”

  “Tiamat again?” Barb asked, exasperated. “Doesn’t she ever learn?”

  “No, gar gyi dbang phyug ma is not Tiamat,” Janea said, shaking her head. “It was assumed at one time that they were the same but they’re not. The Gar is an Old One, not an Old God. It was said that it was banished—or vanished, the translation is tricky—from this plane before the first civilization of man arose. It was the creator of the Shamblers, they were of its essence but separate…” She paused as she saw the looks Randell and Barb were giving her.

  “Okay, look, this is pre-science,” she
said. “And it’s all legend. Tibetan and Incan and some from Basque, of all places. But this is the best guess on the part of the researchers. The Old Ones do not reproduce sexually. Most of them don’t reproduce, period. The Gar, though, can. It mostly reproduces asexually, fissioning off creatures like Shamblers. But the Shamblers cannot reproduce. All of the remaining Shamblers that haven’t been destroyed were created from the essence of the Gar.”

  “So what’s a skru…” Barb asked.

  “Skru-gnon,” Janea said. “A child of foulness. The Gar can, somehow, induce reproduction in human females. Only humans, not animals. Through them it can produce a mixture of Old One and human, an unholy union, as Augustus said. They are much more powerful than Shamblers or any of the other creatures it produces by fission. They may be the souls of Old Ones brought to this plane.”

  “So that…thing,” Barb said, closing her eyes.

  “Was born out of the body of a woman,” Janea said, her face firm. “The worst possible sort of rape, the highest violation of the credo of my goddess. If Freya had a fraction of the power of the White God, she’d be turning up in person to kill this Old One.”

  “The worst part is that they can, in turn, reproduce,” Germaine said. “They can only reproduce by…the term means ‘breaking selves,’ which is assumed to be fission. But that means they are able to once again flood the planet with their minions. And the skru-gnon are, of themselves, powerful and fell creatures. However, there has not been a child of foulness found on earth since the very dawn of history. There are indications that, yes, the Old Gods battled the Old Ones for power on this planet and won in the very dawn of man. Gods versus the Titans is the most commonly known myth. If so, there should be no skru-gnon on earth: they would have never allowed them to remain. But now there appear to be at least two.”

  “Which means that someone has managed to bring the Gar back,” Janea said. “And if so, we are all in serious trouble. That means that the stars have aligned: the Old Ones are returning.”

  * * *

  “We need to figure out where these things are being produced,” Barb said.