We arranged ourselves in the formation Nicholas had ordered and headed towards the double doors. There was another terminal with a round lock, and Nicholas inserted the rod. Like the one outside, that terminal beeped and whirred, and the doors began sliding open. I pulled together magic, preparing to cast a spell as the stale air beyond the doors washed over me, but the tunnel beyond was empty. It looked identical to the entrance tunnel, built of the same polished concrete, with the same light panels every twenty yards or so. Unlike the entrance tunnel, there were metal doors built into the walls at regular intervals, and the floor sloped downward. About a hundred yards ahead the tunnel went into a right-angle turn that looked exactly like a parking ramp.
“So far so good,” said Russell.
“That’ll change,” I said.
Nicholas started forward, and I followed him.
Then I felt a pressure in my mind, and I came to an abrupt halt.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said. “Stop, guys. Stop.”
“You feel it, too?” said Nicholas.
“Feel what?” said Russell, but Hailey nodded.
“Wait,” I said. “I feel it. Hailey feels it, and so does Nicholas. Corbisher?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s like a pressure inside my skull. I’m…not sure what it is.” An uneasy look came over his scarred face. “But my Dark One doesn’t like it.”
“Yeah, a tragedy,” I said. Corbisher scowled. An idea came to me. “Russell, Morelli, Leonid. You guys don’t feel it?”
“No,” said Leonid. “I feel fine. Given that we are entering an ancient base filled with weapons, of course.”
“But I feel it,” said Murdo.
I cast the spell to sense the presence of magical forces. I didn’t feel anything nearby, but there were several sources of magical power radiating from deep below us.
Dark magic.
But I didn’t feel any spells nearby.
“Wait,” I said. “Hailey, try to cast the rift way spell.”
She scowled. “Why don’t you do it?”
“Because I need to save my strength for the next time someone tries to kill us,” I said.
“Hailey,” said Nicholas.
“Fine,” she spat.
She took a few deep breaths, gestured, and cast the rift way spell. The familiar curtain of gray light and mist rose up before her, started to open…and then fell apart and vanished into nothingness.
“What the hell?” said Hailey. I started to tell her to cast again, but she was already doing it. Again, the rift way started to appear, and sputtered into nothingness.
“Something’s blocking rift way spells to the Shadowlands,” I said. “That’s why we can feel that pressure in our heads. Magical force comes from the Shadowlands. I’ll bet the entire base is somehow sealed against access from the Shadowlands.”
“A Seal of Shadows?” said Murdo.
“No, I’d be able to detect that,” I said. “And those wraithwolves came from inside the base, remember? A wraithwolf wouldn’t voluntarily enter a Seal of Shadows. It’s something else.”
“Probably a security measure to protect Last Judge from intrusion,” said Nicholas. “At the moment, it doesn’t matter.”
We walked forward, our shoes and boots clicking against the polished concrete. A faint humming filled the tunnel, and a light breeze blew past us, just enough to ruffle my hair and tug at the hem of my coat. I suppose the air circulators were still operating. If Last Judge extended hundreds of feet below ground, something needed to pump air into the lower levels so the men working down there would not asphyxiate.
We went around the corner and down the ramp to the next level without incident. The second level tunnel looked the same as the others, with metal doors and light panels. There was no sign of any security measures or defenses. It was like walking through a tomb. A well-ventilated tomb, but still a tomb.
Then it all went to hell.
One of those metal doors hissed open, and a defense drone clanged out.
Turns out those things could move fast.
Its metal legs hammered like pistons, and moved so fast they were steely blurs. It shot out the door at thirty or forty miles an hour, and it did a complicated maneuver with its legs that let it make a tight turn without sacrificing much of its speed.
The twin miniguns on the turret rotated towards us.
At the same time, a swarm of insects surged out through the opened door, and for an instant, my brain locked with sheer terror.
I had fought those insects before many, many times in the Eternity Crucible. They were beetles the size of dogs, and not little dogs. The goddamned miserable things were the size of a St. Bernard. They were black and glistening, covered in translucent slime, and they moved forward with a jerking, skittering motion. Each beetle had a pair of enormous sword-like pincers in front of their elaborate mouthparts.
Oh, and they could spit acidic goo. Did I mention that? I had died a lot of times in the Eternity Crucible, usually ripped apart or blown up or set on fire. But getting killed by the beetles had been some of the worst ways to die. Especially when the acidic goop got into my mouth and nose and into my lungs. It had been like getting burned alive from the inside out.
The horrible memories froze my brain for an instant, and then terror and rage blasted through me.
“Down!” I screamed, casting a spell. “Get down!”
The others scattered as the beetles surged forward and the gun turret whirled towards us, and I cast a spell. White mist swirled up in a curtain, and it hardened into a glittering wall of ice. Nathan Vander would have been appalled that I was using an ice wall to block enemies again, but I didn’t have any choice. I could Shield myself from bullets, but I couldn’t protect the others with a Shield spell, and those damn beetles would just skitter around the Shield.
I got the ice wall hardened in time to seal off the tunnel and block the beetles, but not in time to block the first burst of gunfire from the minigun. The others scattered for cover, and I heard the whining ricochets as the bullets bounced off the floor and the corridor.
Most of the others moved fast enough to avoid the gunfire.
Nicholas didn’t.
He started to take a step to the side, and one of the bullets hit him right in the forehead. The minigun was firing .50 caliber rounds, probably armor-piercing, so basically the top third of his skull turned into a giant bloody crater.
He went down.
“Nicholas!” screamed Hailey.
I didn’t have time to do anything else because the beetles started swarming up over the top of the ice wall and down the side facing us. Turns out the little bastards could climb straight up.
“Don’t let them get close!” I shouted. “They can spit acid! Don’t let them get close!”
I cast a fireball that zipped forward and jerked back and forth, drilling through the beetles. I got eight of them, and the others opened fire. Murdo, Russell, Morelli, and Leonid raised their AK-47s and pistols and started shooting, and the thunder of the gunfire was deafening in the enclosed space. Wraithwolves were immune to bullets, but the beetles had no such luxury. Their armored carapaces exploded with greenish goo as the bullets punched into them. Corbisher and Hailey began casting spells. Corbisher’s lightning globes struck with enough force to kill the beetles, and Hailey’s bursts of shadow fire turned them into withered husks.
Something clanged, and a huge metallic shape heaved itself atop my ice wall, spiked legs digging into it. The spider drone crouched atop the wall, its minigun turret rotating towards us. I reacted first, drawing together as much magic as I could hold, and I cast the lightning globe spell. A volley of seven blue-white lightning globes leaped from my hand and screamed towards the drone.
The spider’s builders had been clever, but they hadn’t anticipated a crazy wizard half-scared out of her mind. The globes slammed into the spider’s carapace, and fingers of blue-white lightning crawled up and down its body. Sparks and flames exploded from its joint
s and its rack of sensors, and the spider heaved and fell sideways off the wall, landing with a ringing clang and a crunch of stressed metal. That also had the useful effect of crushing about half the remaining beetles.
I started another spell and hurled another fire sphere, sending it dancing through the beetles. Corbisher and Hailey cast more spells, and Murdo, Russell, Morelli, and Leonid sent volleys of gunfire at the beetles. The smell of gun smoke and cordite filled my nostrils, along with the acrid stink of the beetles and the metallic smell of the blood pooling around what remained of Nicholas’s skull. I kept waiting for the spider drone to get up and attack, but the fall had crushed a couple of its legs, and smoke rose from its carapace. My lightning attack must have cooked its internal electronics or something.
Murdo shot the last beetle through the head, and it twitched and fell over, its legs curling up over its belly.
I let out a long breath, my hands raised before me.
Silence fell over the tunnel as the last echoes from the gunshots and my spells died away. I glanced at the others, but they were unhurt. Well, except for Nicholas. Hailey stood gazing at Nicholas’s corpse, her expression tense and her blue eyes wide. Corbisher, Morelli, and Leonid were looking at me, as if waiting for me to react. Murdo and Russell alternated between looking at me and looking at the Rebels, and their guns’ muzzles pointed at the Rebels.
I looked at Nicholas’s corpse and fought down the absurd, overwhelming urge to laugh.
God, after all of this, could it really have been so simple?
Nicholas had gotten shot through the head, and that was that. Morvilind and the Forerunner’s deal had been broken, and it wasn’t my fault. I had even tried to save Nicholas. It wasn’t my fault he hadn’t gotten out of the way in time. Nicholas wouldn’t get the Sky Hammer, I would turn the Inquisition on the Rebels, and we could rescue Murdo’s girlfriend from whatever hold Nicholas had on her.
“All right,” I said. I glanced at Murdo and Russell. “We’re leaving.”
“No, you’re not,” said Corbisher, his voice sharp. “Stay right where you are.”
“Let me lay it out for you, Marty,” I said, trying to keep him and all the other Rebels in sight at the same time. “Lord Morvilind’s deal was with the Forerunner, and the Forerunner passed it to Nicholas. Except Nicholas got himself killed. The deal’s over, and I’m leaving with Rory and my brother. I’m feeling generous, so I'll let you go, too. But if you try to stop me, I’ll deal with you the way I dealt with Lorenz.”
“Don’t presume to threaten me, you little bitch,” said Corbisher. Russell and Murdo pointed their guns at him, which was sweet of them. “I know something you don’t know, and…”
“For God’s sake,” said Morelli, his exasperation plain as he reloaded his pistol. “Martin, shut up.” Corbisher glared at him but fell silent. “Miss Moran, look at Connor.”
“He’s dead,” I said. “He got shot through the head by a .50 caliber minigun round. You don’t get up from one of…”
“Nadia,” said Murdo, his voice hard.
I fell silent and looked at Nicholas’s corpse.
The blood…
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen anyone get shot through the head. (I hope you haven’t.) But if you have, you know that anything that comes out of the exit wound looks kind of like blood mixed with lumpy gray oatmeal. If there is serious damage to the skull, the face can sort of…deflate, or spread out, which somehow looks worse than the brains. The bullet from the drone’s minigun had been big enough to do all of that to Nicholas’s head. He didn’t look nearly so handsome now.
Except the blood was flowing back into his head.
I blinked, not quite sure that I really saw it. The blood and the brains were oozing back into his skull, and a shudder went through Nicholas’s corpse. Shadows and purple fire started to burn in his staring eyes and his fingers, and even as I watched the wound in his skull sealed itself shut, his face twitching as the muscles reseated themselves.
In another heartbeat, it looked like he hadn’t been shot at all. There wasn’t even a bloodstain on the concrete.
“What the hell?” I said.
Corbisher smirked. “Might have been counting your chickens before they hatched, Miss Moran.”
I tried to think up an insult, but I couldn’t.
Nicholas shuddered, took a deep breath, and sat up.
“Nicholas!” said Hailey, and she dropped to her knees and hugged him. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“Yes,” said Nicholas, his voice rusty. He blinked a few times, and his eyes came into focus. “God, that always stings.”
“You were shot through the goddamned head,” I said. “How the hell does that just sting?”
Nicholas blinked and then smiled at me. “I told you, Miss Moran. The benefits of using a Dark One are well worth the risks.” He rose to his feet, dusting off his trousers. “As you have just seen.”
I didn’t say anything. I knew that the Dark One that Nicholas had bound within himself was more powerful than the normal ones, that it was a noble or a knight or something of the Dark Ones. During our fight against the myothar in the ruins of Chicago, Nicholas had been able to shapeshift into something that looked like a giant armored panther, and none of the other Rebels had been able to do that.
And it seemed his Dark One also let him recover from mortal wounds.
Because that wound had been fatal. I was certain of it. People don’t recover from having the inside of their skulls cleaned out by a high-caliber bullet. They just don’t. I couldn’t have used the regeneration spell to recover from that, and Nathan Vander couldn’t have used bloodcasting to heal it.
So if Nicholas could bounce back from something like that…then how the hell was I going to kill him once the deal was done?
I didn’t know, but I had better think of something soon.
“I’m just glad you’re okay,” said Hailey. There were actual tears in her eyes, and I didn’t think she was faking. “I knew…I knew the Dark One would heal you, but to see you like that…”
Nicholas gave her a gentle kiss and then eased her away. “But you knew it wouldn’t kill me. I know it was unpleasant to see, but we must all endure unpleasant things in the cause of our Revolution. But final victory is at hand.” He smiled at me. “Isn’t it?”
I didn’t say anything.
My ice wall disintegrated with a resounding crash as it started to melt, some of the shards sending the beetle carcasses sliding further down the tunnel.
“Shall we continue?” said Nicholas. “The Sky Hammer awaits.”
Chapter 9: Black Ops
We were attacked twice more before we made it to the third level of Last Judge Mountain.
The first time was a pack of wraithwolves. Ribbons of mist poured out of the sealed doors and congealed into a dozen of the creatures, and they charged towards us. Murdo, Nicholas, Hailey, Corbisher and I unleashed magic in a storm of lightning and shadow fire and wiped out half of the miserable creatures before they could close. Murdo called his elemental blade into existence and charged the remaining half, and held them at bay as the rest of us cast our spells.
I noticed something odd then.
Murdo was moving faster than he should have been.
I had seen him fight many times before, and I knew he was fast and strong. Yet he seemed to be getting faster as he killed wraithwolves. Like their deaths were making him stronger.
I knew people who could do that kind of thing.
Was Murdo a Shadow Hunter?
He didn’t show any of the signs. Usually, when Shadow Hunters drew on their Shadowmorphs for speed and strength, their eyes turned black, and the Shadowmorph appeared on their skin in the form of black lines like a tattoo. I had never seen any tattoos on Murdo, but I had never seen him without clothing, either. It was possible a Shadowmorph had been hidden on his body, and I hadn’t seen it.
I knew he kept things from me. Was the fact that he was a Shadow Hunter one of th
em?
I felt like I was overlooking something about him, something obvious, but I couldn’t quite pull all the pieces together.
But I still trusted him. I had kept things from him, too, until Lorenz had blown open my secrets. Murdo had kept faith with me through some hideously dangerous situations. If he needed to keep things secret from me, I trusted that he had a good reason.
And I had much more immediate things to concern me.
Like the second attack.
The second attack came just as we reached the third level, and it was much worse. Three of the side doors opened, and a mob of anthrophages rushed out, dozens of them. The gaunt, gray things didn’t have any guns with them, but they hardly needed weapons, not with their black claws and fangs. That was bad enough, but two of those defense drones stormed out, both robots equipped with more miniguns.
This time we saw the threat coming, and I focused on the defense drones, hitting first one spider with a volley of lightning globes, and then the second. They were formidable machines, but they hadn’t been built with blocking magical lightning in mind, and I fried both robots in short order. The anthrophages proved harder. They charged forward without regard for their safety, and we met them with a storm of gunfire and lightning and shadow fire.
Russell shot three of them, and then his AK-47 clicked empty. He ejected the magazine and started to load a new one, and an anthrophage slammed into him, driving him to the floor. Its jaws started to yawn wide to bite off his face, but I struck first. The sphere of magical fire blasted through the anthrophage’s skull, turning everything above its neck to ash, and I sent the sphere zipping into another anthrophage, and another and another.
That finished off the rest of them, and the sounds of gunfire and magic died away.
“Russell,” I said, yanking the anthrophage off him. “Are you all right? Russell?”
From the corner of my eye, I noticed that Morelli’s gun had drifted in my direction. He was smart enough to realize that if Russell was dead, I was going to take it out on the Rebels. Murdo moved towards Morelli, his gun’s muzzle turning towards the assassins.
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