Ibenus (Valducan series)

by Seth Skorkowsky

  Heart racing, Allan flipped off the locker's lid and reached inside. He touched the loosely coiled loop of antennae wire from one of the repeaters. He felt along it until he reached the end and unscrewed it from the unit.

  Allan eyed the doorway. He was going to require both hands to tie the tourniquet but he didn't want to lower his guard. Better make it fast.

  He drew a long breath, held it, then dropped behind the boxes and began tying the ten-foot cable at his knee.

  A baby's laughter shattered the silence. Innocent. Terrifying. Close.

  Fucking hell. Allan cinched the cable, his ribs burning at the strain, but the blood was still flowing from his boot. Frantically, he searched around for something to use as a winding lever.

  An infant's coo, then shots erupted from the hallway.

  Allan hunkered down, one hand on the half-tied tourniquet, the other grabbing his gun.

  Sobs and wails poured from the passage ahead, punctuated by the rapid pop, pop, pop, and flashes of gunfire. Lying on his back, Allan aimed his pistol along the side of a locker.

  TommyD launched past the doorway so fast Allan couldn't get a shot before the man was already down the left passage. The infant cries grew louder. Then four screamers scuttled into view, three along the wall and another on the floor, black ooze dribbling from a severed leg. They continued down the hall, not paying a moment's attention to the room where Allan hid.

  A pale mantismere with burnt orange stripes came next. Allan froze as it stopped in the doorway. Its black eyes shied from the brilliant light of his gun and turned toward Gerhard's corpse. Ibenus lay just a few feet from it, far closer to the demon than to Allan. Its mandibles clacked like some old Morse message.

  Shots came from somewhere down the passage. The beast swiveled its head, hissed, and hurried after its minions.

  Allan released his breath. Keeping his eyes on the passage entrance, he drew the round, aluminum torch from his belt, worked it into the tourniquet wire, and began to wind it tighter. The all-too familiar stink of rotted flesh prickled his nose. Evidently TommyD had killed a screamer.

  His gaze moved to Gerhard's body, dead eyes staring upward. This is my fault, he scolded. I shouldn't have left him alone. That cocker might have pulled the trigger but Gerhard's blood was on Allan's hands. Now Umatri was gone.

  The shots were growing more distant. Four more screamers ran past.

  Allan scrunched his eyes to wipe away the stinging sweat. He was cold and he wondered how bad he was bleeding on the inside. He pictured the splintered bone chewing into his lungs with each movement.

  No time for that. Just get Ibenus and get out. I need to warn the others. He looked down long enough to tie off the tourniquet. A new shot of terror hit, washing away the cold as he turned back to the doorway.

  Two doll-faced screamers stood at the entrance. One cocked its head and giggled. Somewhere nearby another responded, followed by the clicking of tiny legs. Allan's grip tensed on the gun as the two bugs scuttled into the room. They stepped over Ibenus and headed toward him.

  Chapter Sixteen

  "I suppose that answers that," Victoria grumbled as Allan raced back down the tunnel. The red light from atop his helmet seemed to strobe as he blinked his way back to the catacomb's entrance. She'd yelled that the radios were out, then he'd shouted Gerhard's name, and raced off.

  "These repeaters are shit." Sam stared at the black screen that only seconds before had shown Gerhard sitting on a stone bench. "I say we disassemble them all and start over."

  "Well, it'll give us something to do." Victoria shut the door before all the cold air could escape. Sitting here while Allan crawled around in a labyrinth looking for a fight was bad enough. But as Sam had warned, the silence was the worst. Rewiring electronics might help keep her mind off of it. She snorted. Not likely.

  With the exception of those silent terrors while the radios were down, the day had been spectacularly dull. There had been a brief moment when a police car had slowed as it rolled past the drive's entrance, but then it continued on. Nothing to see here. Just a repair crew. Carry on. The police car, or another one, Victoria couldn't tell, had passed again two hours later, but didn't even slow.

  The only other lingering itch was TommyD. She thought about him every time she or Sam stepped out to stretch their legs and every car or cyclist that slowed along the overpass sent tingles along the back of her scalp. He'd never responded to her scolding for that last video stunt and her promise to get him a weapon. Hopefully that meant he understood and was going to lay low and stop stirring the nest.

  Of course that only delayed the inevitable. How could she ensure that he wouldn't post the other information she'd sent him? Once he figured out she wasn't going to come through, he'd simply just post all of it. Names, addresses, detailed demon and weapon dossiers. Enough information to ruin the Order. Even if they did somehow endure the exposure, she wouldn't. They'd leave her in the ashes, her name scrubbed from memory and only referred to as 'The Betrayer' just like Anya. She wanted to tell Allan, but how? I'm sorry, but before I got to know you and fell in love, and I really do love you, I sent every file I could find to the man who wants to expose you. Can you forgive me? No, she needed to fix this before she confessed.

  If she could only get TommyD to talk to them, maybe they could convince him why they needed to remain secret. Maybe he could help show why they needed to work together, release some of their information to save lives, use his network, and they could both benefit. They just needed to sit down and talk.

  The headset crackled in her ear. At least the radio was working again. For now.

  "Vid's coming back up," Sam said, almost bored. She gasped. "Oh shit."

  "What?" Victoria turned to see the vibrant green picture and her stomach dropped. The image was foggy from the smoking carcasses of three screamers that she could see. Gerhard lay on his back, one of the bugs crawling over his face. Ibenus' blade glinted in the infrared's light, but where was Allan?

  A pained cry came through the radio as if in answer. Allan dragged himself into the lower edge of the frame, his gun raised.

  Victoria's hand went to her mouth. "Allan!"

  Three pops sounded in the headset momentarily followed by Allan's firing those shots at another screamer charging through an open doorway.

  "Help," he croaked. "Knight down."

  The screamer leaped from Gerhard and onto Allan's back. Yelling, he rolled, batting at it with his gun. He jammed the barrel into its side and blasted it apart, splattering his face with black ichor.

  "Mal!" Sam shouted. "Allan's in trouble. First camera. Screamer swarm."

  Malcolm's voice crackled through. "Gerhard?"

  "Dead." Allan wiped the steaming mess from his face and rolled.

  Two more doll-faced bugs scuttled through the doorway.

  "I'm on my way," Schmidt said.

  "No, Max!" Malcolm yelled. "Come back!"

  Victoria's hands balled into fists. He won't get there in time. Malcolm was yelling something at Schmidt in the radio but she couldn't hear it. Allan was hurt and was going to die right in front of her. No.

  Without a word, Victoria drew her pistol from the open satchel beside her and pulled open the door.

  "What are you doing?" Sam yelled, her voice shrill in the headset.

  Victoria ran. "I have to save Allan." Her shoes crunched across the gravel. She sidestepped through the bent gap in the wrought-iron fence and ran down the train tunnel. He's not going to die.

  Still running, the tunnel growing darker with each step, Victoria fumbled with the light under her gun. She jammed her thumbnail down into the rubber button and was rewarded with a brilliant beam.

  "There's a mantismere," Sam called through the radio.

  If the warning was intended to dissuade Victoria, it failed. I have to save him.

  Muted gunshots popped ahead. Beneath the rapid staccato, babies screamed.

  "Just passed th
e well," Schmidt said.

  Victoria slid as she reached a wide gap in the wall framed in a bright corona of spray-paint and crowned with huge letters. The wails echoed out from the hole, but the shots had ceased. She scrambled through it. The floor dropped on the other side and she banged her knees as she hit the bottom. The screams were louder now, pushing her onward.

  "It's got him!" Sam yelled in Victoria's earpiece. "Allan's down! Repeat, Allan's down!"

  Navigating the stepped gap, Victoria came to a wide, low tunnel. The air was thick with gun smoke and that all-too-familiar stench of rotted meat. Inhuman shadows moved in the lights ahead. She ran toward them on all fours, one hand still clutching the pistol.

  A spidery silhouette scuttled into view. A baby laughed.

  Dropping to her elbow, Victoria lifted the pistol. The screamer's pale face shone in the spotlight, pincered jaws wide as it charged. The gun thumped loudly and the creature's chubby face folded in on itself as the bullet took it just below the left eye. The bug tumbled backwards, landing feet up.

  She clambered past it as the screamer's shell began dissolving in dark steam. Another screamer charged toward her as she entered a room.

  It leaped at her face, jaws open.

  Recoiling, Victoria swung her pistol, smacking it with the big silencer. It hit the wall and she shot it as it struck the ground. Blood and brass shell casings speckled the floor as well as several black and gooey screamer corpses. A smeared trail led from a crimson pool to where two of the horrible bugs were dragging Gerhard's body toward an open doorway. Allan lay face up near the far corner, Ibenus only a foot away. Mouth open, he stared vacantly at the ceiling as a huge, six-legged mantismere hunkered above him, jaws clamped on his upper arm.

  Damn, you. The demon had him. Had his soul.

  "Passing the first repeater," Schmidt said in her ear.

  Allan let out a rasping gasp as the demon released its grip, turning its black eyes toward her. Blood stained its chittering mandibles.

  Victoria shot it twice in the head.

  The demon reeled back, ooze dribbling from a ruptured eye. Then the holes closed, the eye re-inflated, and the monster hissed. The screamers released Gerhard's corpse and headed toward her.

  Victoria swung the gun their direction, firing one ineffective shot and the mantismere lunged. Stumbling, she ducked the demon's stabbing forelimbs. She scrambled to the side, peppering it with point-blank shots as the demon swung one of its blade-like arms in a blurring arc. Her foot came down on one of the dead screamers. It popped, spewing black guts, and she slipped on the greasy mess. Victoria threw her arm out the catch herself, skinning her palm as she hit the floor.

  The mantismere loomed above her, its forelimbs raised like twin scorpion tails. A wailing screamer crawled onto her leg, ready to bite. Victoria threw herself to the side, knocking it off as she rolled. The mantimere's arms hit the floor behind her with a hard thunk that would have surely skewered her.

  Firing back at it, she scrambled away as the demon swiped again. The gun's slide locked back as the last shot emptied. Fuck.

  The demon hissed and two screamers started up the walls to either side. Allan's gun lay on the floor, its own light casting long shadows across the room. Its slide was back, too. Empty. There was still one magazine in the pouch below his right arm.

  Victoria ran as the mantismere charged. As her hand moved toward it, a glint from Ibenus' blade drew her eye. With no time for both, she leaped over Allan's body and seized the sword.

  The mantismere slammed into her, knocking Victoria on her ass. The beast loomed above and drove its piercing arms down.

  Clutching the khopesh in both hands she brought it up, desperately trying to deflect the spear-like points.

  Air whooshed in her ears with an instant's weightlessness and Victoria was now standing beside the creature as its points jabbed into the empty floor where she'd been.

  "Passing the second repeater," Schmidt's voice said in the earpiece.

  A sudden rush surged through Victoria's veins, singing through her body like taut piano strings. She hacked Ibenus into the demon's side. The shell split open with a solid crack. The beast shrieked, its armored plates bristling as it spun, nearly wrenching the imbedded sword from Victoria's hand.

  She yanked it free, swinging it back for another strike as the demon came for her. The air whooshed again and she was now behind it. The euphoric tension in her muscles shot up her spine, blossoming behind her eyes with a sense of perfect clarity. In that pure calmness, she hated that monster and its screaming brood more than anything. With a primeval scream she brought Ibenus down into the back of the manismere's plated skull.

  The beast jerked forward, an oozing canyon in the back of its head. The screamers wailed as it stumbled, and then a flare of blue fire erupted from the wounds as it collapsed.

  The screamers crumpled, their pale shells withering and blackening like a time-lapse of mold overtaking an apple. The demon's blood along Ibenus' blade ignited with the same icy blue flames now consuming the fallen mantismere.

  Sam's voice came through the earpiece, sounding a million miles away. "Oh my god." Three breaths later. "Demon neutralized."

  "What?" Malcolm said. "How?"

  Only vaguely aware of the radio chatter, Victoria's gaze fixed on the gleaming bronze blade. A strange and beautiful weightlessness moved up her arms and fanned out down her body. She felt as if she were being unraveled, unmade. Then at the zenith of her disintegration, the fibers of her being rewove with new threads, beautiful, alien strands joining her. At their ends, she recognized Ibenus and Allan both being knitted into her, into each other. As they merged, a horrible pain swelled in each of her senses—smell, taste, the sound of it—and Victoria realized the source.

  Allan! She pulled herself from her stupor and dropped by Allan's side. "Allan, talk to me."

  His eyes rolled toward her, focusing for only a moment before fading off.

  "You'll be all right." Blood ran from the Y-shaped, puckered gouge in his bicep. She clasped her hands across it as she looked around for anything to stanch the flow.

  "There's a trauma kit in the supplies," Sam said.

  Victoria spied the two stacked tubs across the room, riddled with bullet holes. She ran to them, finding the shattered remains of a repeater inside the top one. Pushing it aside, she popped the lid off the second locker. A red nylon bag rested along one side, a white cross emblazoned along the top. She yanked it free and ran back to Allan.

  "Passing the third repeater," Schmidt said as Victoria drew the bandages from the bag.

  She began wrapping Allan's arm, the blood instantly soaking through. "You'll be all right. Stay with me." His face was terribly pale. "We need to get him to hospital."

  Victoria then noticed the loops of black wire tightly bound at Allan's knee. A slender metal flashlight was wound into the knot. Panic rising, she looked down to see the blood-caked hole through Allan's boot, wide enough to fit a finger but too narrow for one of the mantismere's bladed arms. A tourniquet implied he'd had time to wrap it.

  She glanced over to Gerhard's body, his arms stretched above his head from when the screamers had dragged him. Blood and gore ringed the edges of his empty right eye socket. Brains spilled out the jagged hole in the back of his hardhat.

  "They've been shot."

  "Repeat that?" came Malcolm's voice.

  A new fear rippled along the back of her neck. A jagged hole of shredded nylon marred the side of Allan's vest. She looked closer, seeing that it wasn't from a slash but a straight puncture. "They've been shot. Someone shot them."

  "How? Have you seen—?"

  A baby's laughter sounded behind her.

  Victoria spun as pair of doll-face bugs peeked into the room, their inky eyes transfixed on her.

  Grabbing Ibenus, she stood to face them as they scuttled around the rim of the door.

  "Fresh contact," Sam called in her ear. "Screamers."r />
  Keeping herself between the monsters and Allan, Victoria squeezed the sword's handle, feeling the power of it, the hunger. The screamers spread to either side, flanking her. Glancing to the left one, Victoria swung, blinked closer. She swung downward at empty floor. The air whooshed in her ears and she was now above the bug, Ibenus' descending blade cleaving it half. She wrenched the sword up, teleporting with the movement. Two blinks later she turned the blade into a low upswing and appeared beside the scuttling screamer in time for the khopesh to lop off its head.

  More crying sounded from the doorway as another screamer, this one with a broken leg, shambled into the room. Behind it, a mantismere dropped from the ceiling and charged.

  Victoria swung Ibenus as it neared, blinking out of its way. Before she could reorient herself, the beast whirled, flailing its arms outward. The flat of a blurring spear arm struck Victoria's side like a club. She hissed as the sharp, pointed bumps along it tore through her shirt, raking her skin. Stumbling, she managed to keep her grip on Ibenus and looked up just in time to deflect a strike aimed at her chest.

  The hobbling screamer circled around behind her. She sidestepped another thrust, swung Ibenus, and appeared three feet away. The manitsmere clacked its plated jaws, raised its arms out and up like a pair of angry cobras. It took a tentative step.

  Victoria swallowed. There was no time for this. Allan was dying. She readied Ibenus before her, one hand on the grip, the other on the haft below the crescent blade. "Come on!"

  The demon's mouth opened wide and hissed. It took a second step and paused. A red light grew across its pale surface. The beast swiveled its head toward the door behind Victoria. Air rushed past her ear. A dark shape blurred by and the demon flew back, its body splitting open beneath its raised arm. Black blood fanned out. The demon lurched around, left arms hanging limp beside it.

  Max Schmidt crouched against the far wall like a spider, his head raised and red helmet lamp shining on the monster. Dark blood smeared the sword in his hand. Dust and scrapes completely covered Schmidt's body like he'd been dragged behind a car. The old man's eyes narrowed at the demon. He flew toward it, spinning his body around. The arc of his movement curved mid-air and he landed on the ceiling, his kneepad scraping with the momentum. The monster fell, blue fire spewing from its mouth and wounds, its minions fading at its death.