by Jack Conner
“Neither will I,” Hildra said, patting the bedside table where she kept her own weapon.
Outside, an intercom blared: “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, GUESTS OF THE SURUGAL, THIS IS CAPTAIN SAGRIMUND. A RIVER PATROL HAS DOCKED WITH US AND WILL BE CONDUCTING AN INVESTIGATION OF THE MURDERS. UNTIL WE ANNOUNCE OTHERWISE, A CURFEW IS HEREBY DECLARED. NO ONE MAY LEAVE THEIR CABINS. REPEAT: STAY IN YOUR CABINS. MEALTIMES SHALL BE COORDINATED AND OVERSEEN, ONE GROUP AT A TIME. IF YOU ARE USING A COMMON HEAD, UNITS WILL PERIODICALLY TAKE THOSE WHO NEED IT. DO NOT BE ALARMED. STAY IN YOUR CABINS AND ASSIST THE OFFICERS HOWEVER NECESSARY. THEY MAY NEED TO SEARCH YOUR CABINS. UNTIL THE KILLER IS FOUND, OUR STOP AT LUSTERQAL HAS BEEN SUSPENDED.”
The voice droned on, but Avery and the others quit listening.
“This is bad,” Hildra said, downing another shot with shaky fingers. Avery wanted to chastise her for drinking. Instead, he found a shot glass, poured himself a dose and tossed it back before he could think about it. The reassuring burn coursed down his throat.
“I knew it, godsdamnit,” Janx said. “They’re going door to door. Well, I’d just like to see them search this cabin.” He smashed a fist into a meaty palm.
Avery crossed to the covered porthole that peered out into the passageway and drew back the curtains. Two Octunggen soldiers strode down the hallway. One spoke into a radio. Strange black clubs hung at their waists beside their guns; each had an odd device at its tip.
“They have shock-prods,” he said, naming what they had come to call a certain extradimensional weapon designed for use against Layanna and other Black Secters. “They’re prepared for us. These soldiers must have been specifically trained and dispatched for this. I can’t imagine the Collossum allowing just anyone to use those weapons.”
They exchanged glum looks at this. It meant Layanna’s otherworldly abilities could not be counted on to help them.
“But wait a minute,” Hildra said. “If they sent the god-squad ...”
Avery saw it, too. “Captain Sagrimund must have described the scene of the murders to the higher authorities, and they figured it out, only they think it was Layanna that killed those men.”
Janx swore. “That beats all.” He frowned, then grunted. “It means our Collossum hasn’t made his presence known to ‘em. He’s acting on his own.”
That was a disconcerting thought. Pondering on it, they packed and readied themselves to slip out after the next patrol passed by. Every now and then Avery heard, and felt through the floorboards, the bootsteps of troops down the passageway outside. He fancied he could even hear the soldiers’ breathing.
“Now,” Janx said finally. “The patrol’s just passed the cor—”
Knocking came from the door.
All heads jerked up.
“Fuck,” said Hildra.
Janx recovered first. He moved toward the door and reached out a hand toward the knob. He would clearly rather open it than have them kick it in.
“Get ready,” he said.
It seemed as if the big man moved in slow motion. Avery felt himself brace for the door to explode inward, for a phalanx of troops to pour in, guns blazing. He realized the others were also poising themselves for a fight.
Janx pulled the door open. It creaked as it swung in.
Revealed in the doorway was a man. A single man, not an army. He was of average height or slightly taller, wore a vanilla suit with a black tie, and his vanilla fedora had a matching black band around it. His face was lean, his chin small, but a great, predatory beak of a nose jutted over a black mustache. Eyes of the palest blue peered out from gold-rimmed glasses. In his left hand he held the handle of a slim, expensive-looking suitcase.
“Good day,” he said in Octunggen, his voice surprisingly rich.
Janx grunted, his gaze sweeping the outside for sign of troops and apparently not finding any.
The man in the vanilla suit took in the occupants of the room, and Avery felt himself straighten as the man’s eyes found him. Avery felt the urge to smooth back his hair. Whoever the man was, he possessed a great force of character. He had presence.
Layanna, too, straightened when she saw him. Their gazes locked.
“May I?” said the man, taking off his hat and gesturing inside.
“Come in,” Layanna said after a moment.
Janx stepped back. The man entered. Quickly Janx moved around him and slammed the door.
“Who are you?” Avery asked.
The man’s eyes were only for Layanna. “You can call me Sartrand,” he said.
“It ... was you, wasn’t it?” Layanna said. “You’re the one that killed those people.”
Avery felt the blood drain from his face. A Collossum.
Immediately, Hildra jumped toward the bedside drawer, pulled out a gun that had a longer barrel than normal and was oddly bulbous. Avery, who never went anywhere without his own similar weapon, pulled his from the interior pocket of his jacket.
While Avery and Hildra pointed their extradimensional weapons at Sartrand, Janx crouched, ready to tackle the being from behind.
Sartrand laughed. “Easy now. Easy. We’re all friends here.”
“You’re a fucking Collossum!” Hildra said.
Sartrand shrugged amiably. “So is Layanna. That doesn’t make me an enemy.”
“It does when you kill innocent people,” Avery said, staring down his sights at Sartrand. He realized his heart was beating unnaturally fast, and he blinked sweat out of his eyes.
“I had to feed, and they would have offered themselves to me anyway,” Sartrand said. “I am one of their gods, after all—the reason they mutated themselves. They changed their very natures to emulate mine—however palely—and to be able to provide me sustenance. Of course, they may not know all that, but it is the way things are.”
“How did you find me?” Layanna asked.
“I have ... means ... that other Collossum do not.” He did not explain further.
“Why are you here? Are you to take me in?”
“If I were, I wouldn’t be talking, would I? And skulking about, furtive, like a fox in the night? No. When the Elders were assigning agents to watch the rivers, I asked for this assignment. With my means, I was in a better position to find you than the others, and so I have.”
“To what end?”
“Just this. To meet with you. Alone.”
“Why?” She was starting to lose her patience. Avery could begin to see the air blur around her.
“To give you this.” He attempted to hand over the briefcase, but Layanna did not reach out to take it. With a rueful chuckle, the man stepped to the bed—Avery and Layanna moved aside for him; Avery could smell his cologne, all sandalwood and leather, and even his sweat, slightly electric—and set the briefcase down. With a click and a snap, he opened the case.
Despite himself, Avery leaned forward to take a look. Inside rested a small device, a ribbed metallic tube, made to fit in one’s hand, with a rust-colored button on top. It was strapped to the briefcase with tape, the tube entirely too small for its container. Avery sensed a touch of drama about putting it in the briefcase. Sartrand’s whole air was theatrical.
“There,” Sartrand said, staring down at it. “There is your salvation. Or it could be, depending. Your call. I am only here to offer you the choice.”
“Who are you?” Hildra said.
He merely smiled.
“Do you recognize him?” Avery asked Layanna.
“No,” she said. “There are only about fifty Collossum, and some of us know each other quite well. But there are others kept at a remove, as if the Elders don’t want all facets intermingled. The right hand and the left hand, independent from each other. Controlled only by the head. Some took human forms that were designed not to stand out. To enable them to ... mingle.”
Sartrand shook his own head sadly. “A crime to be separated from one such as you, my dear, but so it has been. Now I offer you this choice: salvation or damnation.”
“Are
you trying to bring me back into the fold?”
“Far from it!” Chuckling, Sartrand said, “We do not serve the same masters, but neither do either of us serve the Elders. They are our common enemy. I think we can help one another, you and I. And ... your friends.” He swept the room with his pale blue gaze, and Avery had to stop himself from flinching when Sartrand’s gaze landed on him.
“How can you help?” Avery said.
Sartrand nodded toward the briefcase. “The beacon there will call me, and my colleagues, whenever you need us. We can be there—” he snapped his fingers “—like that. So take heed. And take the beacon. It might bring you luck.”
With that, he placed his hat back on, moved to the door—Janx lumbering out of his way, as if trying to avoid physical contact—and stepped out. Avery tried not to jump as the door slammed closed behind him.
“Wait, I’m not done with you,” Hildra said. She wrenched the door open and stared up the hall and down. She swore and turned back to the others. “He’s gone.”
“How?” Janx said.
As one, their gazes traveled to the beacon resting in the briefcase.
Layanna reached out, ripped off the tape and held the beacon up in the air. It gleamed dully in the soft cabin light.
Somewhere a door banged open and people screamed. Soldiers shouted, and an uneasy silence fell.
“It’s a trick,” Janx said. “Got to be. That little toy there’s probably a tracking device or something. Maybe worse.”
“He’s right,” Avery said. “We can’t take it with us.”
Layanna frowned. “It’s not giving off any signals. I would be able to feel it, sense it. It’s not tracking us. It’s not a bomb. It’s completely inert. Unless ...”
“Unless what?” Hildra asked.
”Unless I push this button.” Layanna lightly placed her thumb over the button on top. As she closed her fist around the tube, only the button poked out.
“Don’t!” Hildra said.
Layanna looked at her and sort of smiled. It was a friendly, amused smile. Hildra relaxed. “Don’t,” she said, a bit more softly.
“Who could he have been?” Avery asked. “I thought all Collossum were loyal except the Black Sect. He wasn’t Black Sect, was he?”
“No,” Layanna said. “But he hasn’t turned us in.”
“Can he be trusted?”
“He’s a fucking killer,” Hildra said.
“He’s a rotter, all right,” Janx agreed.
Layanna studied the beacon. At last she shook her head, raised the machine high, and brought it down sharply on the bedside dresser. The machine erupted into a hundred pieces. Strange blue innards winked in the light.
“There,” she said. “It’s over.”
But, somehow, Avery sensed, looking at her face, that it wasn’t.
* * *
“Now we need to lam it,” Hildra said. “Sartrand—enemy, friend or man of the year—left us in deep shit. His little gorging session at the poker table has brought the Octs down on us hard. We’d better high-tail it while we can.”
“Hopefully it’s still dark enough,” Avery said.
They moved to the door and waited for a patrol to pass by. Janx led the way out, Hildra taking up the rear. Somewhere down a passageway a door banged in and an Octunggen officer shouted for silence. Janx guided the way up a ladder, through a door and outside.
Black clouds covered the sky, so much so that Avery couldn’t tell whether it had dawned or not, and an oily, sticky rain pattered down. He cringed as he felt it drenching his hair, coiling down his neck and sticking his shirt to his back. At least it’s warm. But even its warmth was somehow unwholesome.
Ten armed guards rounded the corner. Avery sensed the shudder through the floorboards an instant before he saw them, and he had just enough time to feel his scrotum contract before the two groups collided, actually running into each other.
Janx and Hildra didn’t hesitate. Janx slammed two of the soldiers’ heads together while Hildra pitched Hildebrand on one’s face and kicked his knee so hard Avery heard the snap. Another man brought his gun up at Janx, but Janx knocked the gun aside and smashed the trooper across the face with a massive fist, visibly breaking the jaw. Hildra was gutting one with her hook when the remaining troops prepared to fire.
Avery, who had been paralyzed by the suddenness of it all, could only watch as Layanna brought her other-self over. For a moment she was surrounded by strange white lights, and then a great, rippling sac that resembled something like an amoeba, with thrusting pseudopods fringed in pink and purple and orange tendrils, swelled out from inside her. It transposed itself over her, but she was still visible within it even as it grew to gigantic proportions. A tendril whipped out and stung one trooper with otherworldly venom, then another, and they spasmed like hooked fish. One burst into flame and dissolved. The others she lifted off the deck and ripped open in showers of blood, then hurled their body parts to all four corners. They thunked and bounced, leaving viscous smears behind them. It all happened so quickly none of them got off even a single shot.
The fallen soldier, the one with the broken knee, pulled out a strange-looking pistol, surely an extradimensional weapon, and trained it on Layanna.
Avery, shaking off his paralysis, kicked the gun aside just as it fired. The shot went wild, but it rang loudly.
Janx clubbed the man on the head with a stolen submachine gun, and the man sagged to the ground. Layanna’s otherworldly self vanished inside her with a weird sucking sound, leaving the stench of ammonia behind. The effort seemed to exhaust her, though, and she wavered on her feet. Avery supported her.
“Shit,” Janx said, as the echoes of the gunshot reverberated in the night. “We’d better hurry.”
They rushed across the deck toward the nearest lifeboat, aluminum and unpainted, which hung out over the gunwale, suspended above the water by a wench mechanism. Janx and Hildra ripped the canvas off the boat and ushered Avery and Layanna inside. Hildra climbed in next, pistol clutched in her one hand. Hildebrand crawled down her leg, alighting in the boat and instantly looking for a place to hide. The boat rocked around them.
Janx, jaw clenched so tightly Avery could see the bulge of muscle below his ear, spun the wheel that lowered the boat toward the choppy waters. He had not asked if anyone else wanted to stay behind but had assumed the role himself, and Avery realized he himself hadn’t even thought about it. It hadn’t even occurred to him that someone would need to remain to lower them to the water.
“Janx,” he started. “Are you sure—”
Hildra nudged him. Avery fell silent.
She and Janx exchanged a grim glance, and then sight of him vanished as they lowered past the gunwale. The waters rushed up below. Something large splashed to starboard.
Suddenly, before the boat had reached the water, boots thundered on the floorboards above, and Octunggen voices cut the night.
Gunshots rang out.
Hildra’s face drew tight. The boat had stopped descending, which could only mean that Janx was occupied. More shots rang out, fast and rattling, likely coming from the submachine gun Janx had stolen.
The water was frustratingly close, just a few yards below the boat. Just a little more ...
Avery saw that a line connected the boat to the wenching mechanism from both the bow and stern. If he could sever both lines—it would have to be at the same time, otherwise he and the others would spill into the water—but if he could ...
He pressed his gun to the bow line and shouted for Hildra to do the same for the other. She seemed frozen, her face upturned to the gunwale of the Surugal, seeking some sign of Janx.
Layanna took the younger woman’s gun and pressed the muzzle to the stern line. She nodded to Avery.
“On three!” he shouted. “One—two—!”
They fired, the lines snapped, and the boat plummeted to the water. The impact dashed Avery to his knees, and he tasted blood in his mouth. Hildra sank beside him. She was u
p in a second, wrenching the gun back from Layanna and firing upward.
Janx climbed down one of the ropes that had been connected to the boat, using only one arm. The other he held tightly to his side. Avery felt drops of blood spatter down, speckling his glasses No, he thought. Not Janx ...
The shapes of Octunggen soldiers peered over the gunwale, guns flashing. Hildra fired. One of the shapes reeled back, brains spurting. The others hunkered low. Avery lifted his gun and fired at the remainder. He was painfully aware that he was using the extradimensional gun, wasting precious bullets on human enemies when he should be saving them for inhuman ones, but there was no choice.
Janx dropped into the boat, which heaved sickeningly at the impact, while Layanna opened up the small motor and the lifeboat shot away from the Surugal. Troopers fired at them. Bullets kicked up the water all around. Hildra and Avery fired back. The Octunggen ducked.
Soon Avery could no longer even see the riverboat. The Surugal was lost to mist and rain. Along with the thumping of his heart, the roar of the motor filled his ears.
Chapter 3
Hildra threw down the gun and huddled over Janx while Layanna steered. The big man, swearing, lay in the boat, bleeding mainly from a wound in his side. He had another, smaller wound on his arm and another on his leg. Avery, whose medical kit was in the suitcase slung over his shoulder, quickly located his equipment and set to work. The bullets had found Janx in the meat of his torso and limbs, but he was a man with plentiful meat and the bullets did not seem to have punctured any major veins or arteries.
Just the same, blood wept from the wounds and pooled in the bottom of the boat. Avery felt it soak his knees as he probed the wounds with his tweezers. Hildra held Janx down as best she could, but he was a strong man and hard to control, so Avery shot him up with a small dose of morphine, not enough to knock him out but enough to help the pain. None of us can lift him if he goes under.
As he worked, Avery slowly realized that Layanna was steering them toward shore.
“Don’t,” Avery said when he saw the lights of land. “The patrol boat will have alerted the authorities. They could be waiting for us.”