"But—"
"Back!" Eyes still on the circling bug, he pulled Gerhard's shoulder. "Turgen will have our ass if you engage!"
A huge shape swung over the stair rail. The creature stood nearly two meters, stripes of greenish yellow ran across its bony armored plates. The mantismere hissed and spat. Its armored mandibles opened wide enough to fit both of Gerhard's fists. It raised its bladed arms and thrust them forward and down like a thresher. Luc lurched back, barely dodging the attack, but collided with Allan in the narrow hall as Allan finished off the bug he'd already maimed.
The mantismere lunged and raised its blades again in one quick motion. Unable to retreat, Luc closed the distance, his mace blurring in an arc. The deadly points vaporized as the mace smashed through them. Shrieking, the demon leapt backward, dark blood pouring from the broken ends.
Fresh crying sounded from behind. Gerhard wheeled as two more bugs came through an open door. He stabbed at one, the blade seriating as it moved. The screamer scuttled to the side but Umatri lashed out, bending toward it and taking a chunk from the creature's flank. The other bug raced up the nearby wall as Gerhard skewered the wounded bug with a second thrust. Wailing that horrible scream, the impaled creature's leg's flailed, its claws raking the filthy tiles. Then they curled inward and the shell blackened and melted outward from the death wound.
Blue light erupted behind him, filling the halls. Gerhard glanced back to see Luc standing above the flaming mantismere, its side completely caved in and greasy, flaming guts splattered on the neighboring wall. The screamer running across the ceiling fell at its master's demise, leaving a trail of reeking steam like a falling meteor.
The last infant wail ceased as Orlovski chopped the bug on the nearby wall, splattering he and Gerhard with some of its foul ichor.
"It didn't die with the master," Orlovski said, turning to the hunters.
"Then there's one demon left." Allan looked up the stairs, then nodded to Gerhard. "What's through there? Basement?"
Braving a peek, Gerhard looked through the darkened door where the two bugs had come. Having first mistaken it for a closet, he now saw the narrow brick steps leading down into blackness. "Yes."
"Rest of this floor clear?"
Still panting, Luc nodded. Blue fire flickered along Velnepo's flanged head. "Yeah."
"Okay. You and Gerhard stay down here. Watch that basement and don't let anything escape. Orlovski and I will clear the upper floors." He glanced at the flaming monster at the big man's feet. "Move that body away from the door so no one can see it."
Allan and Orlovski headed up the step, leaving Gerhard painfully aware of the dark basement doorway beside him. Umatri's undulations had ceased, but that didn't calm him. What if there was a third monster? Maybe a fourth?
"Give me a hand," Luc said.
Not wanting to take his eyes from the doorway, Gerhard slowly made his way past the steaming mounds. His eyes watered at the stench that evoked memories from his thirteenth summer. A rat had died in the wall beside his bed, unreachable, and the stink of its decay accompanying him to sleep every night for a week, despite all the scented candles and room spray his mother had tried to mask it.
"Check your corner," Allan said through the radio.
"Clear," Orlovski replied. Footsteps creaked above as the knights moved along the second floor.
Gerhard stopped beside the burning monster. Blue flames flickered and danced over its entire length, brighter above the eyes, mouth, and gruesome wound. The steady flow of air coming through the smashed front door, and around the leaning back one, neither stoked or diminished the fire in any way. There was no smoke and no heat. While he'd been told about it, the non-fire disturbed him more than he'd anticipated.
Luc slipped Velnepo into his belt ring and bent before the creature's long-toed feet. "Grab it under the shoulders. We'll move it to the back room with the other."
Gerhard swallowed. Even with the gloves on he didn't want to touch it. Luc gave a sharp, commanding nod. Gerhard slid Umatri back into his sheath and, clenching his jaw, bent, reached through the dancing flames, and slipped his fingers beneath the dead thing's chitinous arms. He wondered if Umatri could even penetrate the hard shell.
Awkwardly they moved the corpse back up the hall, its hemorrhaged guts threatening to spill from the gruesome wound. A faint tingling worked along Gerhard's arms, making the hairs stand on end. He shivered, as if he could somehow shake the sensation off.
"I hate the way it feels, too," Luc mumbled, his voice so low Gerhard mostly heard it through the radio.
"It's in your head," Allan muttered through the radio. "Second floor clear. Heading up to three."
Together Gerhard and Luc moved the burning corpse into the rear room and dropped it to the floor. The sharp, insectile features on the first slain demon had softened since he'd last seen it. Its black eyes had shrunk and moved closer together, its nostrils rising up into a nose between them. The sides of its face had flattened, appearing more like cheeks. Burning blood and brains oozed out from its cloven skull. Luc drew his mace and led Gerhard back out into the hall to watch the exits and basement door. The radio buzzed as the other two hunters scoured the upstairs, searching every corner.
Three minutes later they came back down, having found nothing but trash and empty rooms.
Allan didn't speak as he returned, Ibenus ready before him. He gestured to Luc, who extended his thick arm and eased Gerhard farther from the basement door. Snapping a finger into the air and pointing, Allan directed Orlovski to one side. The Russian pressed his back to the wall, his kukri ready. Allan nodded, once, twice, and on the third he lifted his powerful light and darted in. Orlovski shot down behind him as if connected by an invisible tether.
Their footsteps thumped down the stairs. Lowering his protective arm, Luc stepped closer to the door and shined his light down after them.
Orlovski's voice came through the radio, "Clear."
"Check under the boiler," Allan said.
"Nothing."
"Fuck. You see this?" Allan asked.
Orlovski grunted.
"Gerhard, come down. We need you."
Gerhard tensed, excitement and fear. Needed him?
Luc motioned his head, urging him on, and Gerhard stepped through the door, Umatri before him, and headed down the narrow brick-lined stairway. It opened up to a hall with three doors and a giant spray-painted mural of a nude woman spread eagle on the floor. Light moved within the furthest room. Gerhard glanced in the others as he passed, a large closet with a tile shower and a laundry room with no machines. A cardboard sleeping pallet and a torn and spilled backpack rested against the laundry room's far wall.
The final room was wide, taking up almost half of the building's footprint. An ancient green and rust-streaked boiler dominated the far wall, so large Gerhard wondered if they'd simply constructed the building around it. Its thick door hung partially open, revealing more trash and refuse shoved inside. Beside it, hacksawed pipes led to a square where a presumably a smaller, newer, and now absent model had once been.
Allan and Orlovski stood to the left of the giant boiler's door before a wide round hole in the floor. Remembering the urban explorer photos, a metal grate had once covered it, but it was nowhere to be found.
Allan didn't look up as Gerhard approached. "Is Umatri sensing anything?"
"No," Gerhard answered. The keris' blade hadn't moved since the last of the screamers had died.
Allan frowned and circled his light down the open hole.
Gerhard stepped over a broken wine bottle and joined them. The circular opening was about a meter across. Their bright flashlight beams revealed a long, brick-lined tunnel extending down so far their lights barely reached the bottom. Metal rungs protruded from the mortar down one side, their surface buried beneath dust and a rust patina. Something glinted in the hazy blackness. Metal? Glass? He thought of the empty spray-paint cans lying around. Maybe one fell d
own there. Easily twenty meters down.
"There's a tunnel leading off at the bottom," Orlovski said, angling his light as best he could.
Allan nodded. "Could be the sewers. Maybe the old mine catacombs."
"You believe it's down there?"
Allan nodded again. "We can't just send someone down one at a time. Not if it's waiting." He curled his lip, seeming to ponder it.
Gerhard looked at him, then to Orlovski, and returned his attention to the shaft, stretching down like a backdoor to hell. If there was another demon, and he believed there could be, he wanted it. He wanted its blue fire along Umatri's blade. "So what do we do?"
#
"I know it's in here," Luc grumbled from the open back of the van, digging through a rectangular tub. His deep voice came through Victoria's foam earpiece, echoing his words with only a moment's delay. They'd pulled the van outside the abandoned building's shattered door. Splinters hung from the hinges the same as they had in Manchester.
Victoria scanned the dark street, her gaze searching the high-rise apartments that loomed over the tops of the neighboring buildings, its rows and rows of balconies making it appear like a giant stack of wafers. Most of the windows were dark, but not all. She wondered if she'd even see a watcher up there if the lights were off. Could they see her looking for them? Maybe TommyD was up there. Though they'd never met, she owed the man her sanity, if not her life. Her mental descent after James' death hadn't led to the darkest of thoughts, but they could have if TommyD hadn’t found her. Now he, or one of his agents, might be watching her through a high-power lens, likely one attached to a camera.
A feminine voice came through the scanner's speakers in assertive French, something about a traffic accident Sam explained. So far, no one had called in the hunters.
"Here you are." Luc held up a roll of silver duct tape, the faint lights gleamed off the sweat-slicked face visible through the mask's oval slit.
"You all right?" Allan asked.
Victoria turned back to where he stood, digging through a dull aluminum case. A trio of cameras and their necessary accoutrements filled the niches in the shiny black foam. "Fine. Just feel a bit out in the open here."
"I understand." Allan popped a little door on the back of one of the cameras and slid a rectangular battery in. "This shouldn't take too long." He winked. "We'll be back in a few."
"You want me to circle around again?" Sam asked.
He glanced down the empty street. "Stay here and watch the feed. Move if someone starts coming this way."
"Roger that."
"Good luck," Victoria said.
Allan gave a nod, his smile hidden beneath the black mask, but she could see it in his eyes. Camera in hand, he closed the van's door and darted back to the building, drawing Ibenus as he did.
Victoria slid back into the front passenger seat and rested the laptop across her knees so she and Sam could both watch. A black, gray-framed window dominated the screen with little icons running along either side. She couldn't help a glance to the short-barrel pump shotgun resting against the Australian girl's inner thigh.
Sam closed her hand over the microphone by her mouth and whispered. "You know everyone's going to assume you're screwing, right?"
A cold, defensive gush surged through Victoria's stomach, rising up her chest. She put a hand over her own mic, feeling the heat of in her cheeks. Was she blushing? "But…we're not."
The young woman shrugged. "Doesn't mean they aren't assuming it. They've thought that about me and Taras for two years now."
"But you're not?" Victoria did confess that while Allan had said otherwise, she'd suspected there was more to Sam and Orlovski's weirdly close relationship. Their hands always touching each other's arms when they spoke, the way they seemed to carry entire conversations with only a look.
Sam snorted. "No. He's practically my brother. I'm just letting you know that people are going to talk. Especially with the way you two look at each other."
"How?"
She grimaced a little shrug. "There's just a flirty vibe."
"It's nothing."
Sam's brow arched knowingly. "But you still like him, though?"
Victoria nodded, the confession seeing to cement her unspoken crush.
"I knew it."
"You're not going to—?"
"No." Sam waved it off. "Don't worry. What's said in the van stays in the van."
"Thanks."
"Back when I first came on, Master Schmidt would come with me on these."
"Really?"
"He's too old to hunt any more, so he elected to show me how to run the surveillance. The things we talked about…" She shook her head, exhaling a breath.
"Like what?"
She shook a finger. "What's said in the van…"
"Ah," Victoria said. "Right."
After a moment's silence of listening to the hunters debate how to lower the camera, Sam said, "Honestly, it's pretty cool to have you here. Can get lonely, you know?"
"I can imagine." Victoria peered through the side mirror, making sure the street was still clear. Years of being a copper and never once did she fully realize the paranoia of seeing the blue lights. In that event, Standard Operating Procedure was to drive, radio the team to evac to a set rendezvous point. They'd drilled it in her. But now, now that she was here, Victoria couldn't guess what she'd do if she saw the police. Would she lose her senses, panic like so many suspects had, or would she freeze? It was so weird to be thinking this way. In the event they were apprehended, everyone had forged IDs, everyone but her and Gerhard that was. Real IDs and phones, the ones linked to their real identities were still in Brussels. Until the new identities were ready, it was even more imperative that she not get caught.
"You'll get a good idea as soon as Master Turgen splits us," Sam said, pulling Victoria back to the present.
"Well, until then, you have a lot to teach me." She removed her death-grip from the mic, but paused and squeezed it again. "I, um, wanted to apologize again for shoving a gun in your face. I'm…very happy we've gotten past that. I truly am."
"We'll get past it a lot faster when you stop bringing it up," Sam said. "I appreciate it, but it's really in your best interest to stop reminding me."
Victoria smiled. "Noted." She glanced back at the high-rise, hoping for the first time, that TommyD or his agents weren't actually up there. The idea of Allan or the other knights getting ID'd made her uncomfortable. They'd taken her in, shared openly, and offered their trust. Even Sam, who had every reason in the world to hate her, had moved past it. A barbed, regretful pang slid between Victoria's ribs at what she'd done. What she might have done. And what she'd promised to do.
They'll make you trust them, TommyD had written. All cults and extremists do that first. That's how they work. They draw you in and make you feel important. But don't buy into it. Don't believe the lie.
She ground her teeth, the needle sliding deeper. What the hell did he know?
"I think we have it," Allan announced.
Green light shone from the laptop's screen as the gray-framed window flashed to life. A blank wall appeared, washed out, only the barest features visible. The details sliding into focus. A brick wall, cut pipes hanging from the ceiling above spray-painted scrawl. The image whirled, losing focus, then coming in on Gerhard and Luc. Their eyes glowed through the slits in their ninja masks. The camera lowered, revealing a round manhole. A board lay across it, a notch chipped into the side above the very middle.
"I got you," Sam said.
"Lowering you down."
The camera moved lower, past their feet until stopping at an extreme close-up of a brick wall. It swayed little and the bricks began moving up at a slow, unsteady pace. The flashlight beams from above played off the tunnel's walls.
"Looks like there used to be a ladder," Victoria whispered, noting the bent and cut brackets jutting from the mortar.
Sam nodded. "Slow down, we
're starting to sway."
The camera's descent stopped until the rocking ceased, and then it continued. The tunnel seemed to go forever, worn and irregular bricks rolling past as if on a video loop.
"Just a little over halfway down," Allan said as if reading Victoria's mind.
She braved another glance. The streets were still empty.
Blocks of digital static shifted across the screen.
"Reception is acting up," Sam said. "How much further?"
"Not much."
"If we lose it we'll need to move the computer in there."
"Just a little more," Allan said.
The brick wall ended, revealing a long, stone tunnel, its pale walls bright in the camera's infrared beam. The stones seemed to move.
Victoria's eyes widened as the image shifted into focus. "Shit! Allan, they're coming!"
#
Allan stood above the open pit, shining his light down as Gerhard fed the white nylon rope through the notched board and lowered the suspended camera. Luc had affixed little duct tape flags along the line, marking two-meter increments.
He breathed through his mouth, trying to avoid the sickly sweet stench of the screamers they'd killed still clinging to his mask. He'd encountered enough rotted corpses over the years to know that all-too-familiar stench. It only took once and you'd never forget it. There was an article he'd read once where weapon manufacturers were studying various odors for non-lethal riot control stink bombs. They'd concluded that the most repulsive smell was that of rotted human flesh, a stink hardwired in people's brains as the foulest. He grinned, imagining the effect that tossing a couple dead screamers into a mob might elicit.
Sam's calm voice sounded in his ear bud. "Reception is acting up. How much further?"
The eighth duct tape flag slid past the notch. He shined his light along the passage's walls, guessing three more at most before the bottom. "Not much."
"If we lose it we'll need to move the computer in there."
He'd worried about the stone walls' interference but hadn't mentioned it, hoping it wouldn't be necessary. Another flag slid through the notch. "Just a little more."
Ibenus (Valducan series) Page 13