by Tim Waggoner
"What's wrong?" Devona said.
I started to tell her, but before I could get more than a couple words out, the crowd around us shrieked and moved rapidly away as Lazlo's cab raced toward us.
I smiled grimly. It's good to have friends you can depend on, even when they look like mutated tarantula-bats. The cab's new tires screeched as the vehicle swerved to a stop in front of us.
Lazlo stuck his head out the window and favored us with a toothy grin.
"Going my way?"
The Grotesquerie is located on Sybarite Street, not far from the House of Mysterious Secrets. It covers several square miles and is surrounded by a hundred-foot-high wall made of a polished black substance that looks like solidified shadow, atop which sits a complex array of metal and crystal that continuously glows with a gentle, pulsing red light. The force field the wall generates is invisible to the naked eye, but it encloses the Grotesquerie in an unimaginably powerful energy dome that's a synthesis of the highest of high-tech science and the most potent of ancient magics – all in order to keep what the Grotesquerie houses from getting out. But this wasn't a prison. Nekropolis' prison is called Tenebrus, and it's located underground beneath the Nightspire, and I'd once had the dubious pleasure of being a guest there for a short time. What the Grotesquerie holds is far more dangerous and terrifying than anything a mere prison might contain, for the Grotesquerie is a zoo. But not just any zoo – it's a Darkfolk zoo.
When the Darkfolk decided to emigrate from Earth, they gathered up every wild monster they could find, like a twisted version of Noah and the Ark, and brought them along to live in the Grotesquerie. But new ones occasionally surface, due to natural or unnatural evolution or scientific experiments gone hideously wrong, and the Grotesquerie's hunters make periodic expeditions to Earth to search out these monsters and bring em back alive, as the saying goes. They do it for the sake of preservation – many of the Grotesquerie's monsters are rare species or literally one of a kind – but a side benefit is that humans don't have worry about getting stomped on by gigantic radioactive lizards, so it's a win-win all the way around.
Lazlo dropped us off at the main entrance, and brilliant detective that I am, I immediately suspected something was wrong when I saw all the people running screaming into the street. I turned to Devona and almost asked her to stay outside and watch Shamika, but given how the girl had handled herself with Magilla, I figured she was probably be in less danger going in than I was.
The three of us pushed through the mass of fleeing zoogoers, Varney right there alongside us. With his camera-eye inoperative he should've had no reason to follow us into what was undoubtedly a hazardous situation, but I wasn't surprised that he'd decided to accompany us. He might've been a reporter, but it had become clear to me that he had a hidden agenda for sticking so closely to us, and right then wasn't the time to try and figure out what it was. There'd be an opportunity to question him later – assuming the four of us survived our visit to the Grotesquerie.
Once we made it past the crowd and through the main gate, we moved off to the side to get out of the way, but we needn't have bothered. The majority of the Grotesquerie's visitors had managed to make it out, and only a handful of stragglers remained.
Inside, the Grotesquerie resembles an Earth zoo, with paved walkways winding between habitats set up for the creatures on display. The major difference is the landscaping. Instead of the pleasant trees and shrubs of an Earthly zoo, the Grotesquerie's paths are lined with deadly leech vine, tanglethorn, and rotweed. Visitors are always careful to give the plants a wide berth, and the plants usually leave them alone. But then they weren't put there to attack visitors. They were an additional deterrent should any of the Grotesquerie's attractions manage to escape their enclosures.
Huge Frankenstein monsters were employed as keepers, and a half dozen of them clomped past us in their gray coveralls and overlarge work boots, each of them clutching long metallic rods with glowing red tips at one end. The keepers' expressions were grim, but since Frankenstein monsters aren't known for their cheerful, sunny dispositions, it was hard to tell if they were upset over whatever was happening or if it was just another day on the job for them. Given the panicking visitors fleeing for their lives, I opted for the former. Told you I was a brilliant detective.
"Follow the keepers!" I said, and we did so, setting off at a run.
Given my undead state, I'm not that well coordinated at the best of times, even if I've just had a fresh application of preservative spells. But considering that I was currently a jigsaw puzzle of a zombie holding himself together through sheer concentration, I was even less coordinated than usual. With every galumphing shuffle-step I took, I felt my body literally threatening to come apart at the seams, and it took an extra effort of will to keep myself intact.
We followed the keepers past several enclosures, and though it had been a while since my last visit to the Grotesquerie, I remembered the creatures we passed well: the Beast with a Million Eyes, the Killer Shrews, the Monster That Challenged the World, the Crawling Eye, Q the Winged Serpent, and my personal favorite, the original Hound of the Baskervilles. Each of their enclosures had been specially designed to contain the beasts, using a combination of high-tech science, powerful sorcery, and good old-fashioned titanium steel. And if by some impossibly remote chance any of them somehow escaped, the Grotesquerie's deadly flora would stop them – or at least slow them down long enough for visitors to flee for the exit. The creatures glared, snarled, snapped, roared, and raged at us as we ran by their cages, but that was all they could do, and we were damned thankful for it.
When we caught up with the keepers, we found them, along with a dozen others, battling a large di nosaur that, despite all the Grotesquerie's safety precautions, had escaped its enclosure. I recognized the beast as Titanus, an oversized version of a T.Rex that had been captured in a hidden valley on Earth, and from his less than placid demeanor, it was apparent that his time in captivity hadn't mellowed him. The dinosaur stood on the path, roaring in fury, bleeding legs wrapped in tanglethorn, while Frankensteinian keepers jabbed him with their energy lances. The keepers were tall and their lances long enough to reach Titanus' abdomen and sides, and every time a lance struck the dinosaur's leathery hide, there was a bright discharge of crimson energy accompanied by a sizzling sound. Titanus thrashed and tried to get away from his tormentors, but the tanglethorn lining the path was doing its job, holding him in place while the keepers fought to subdue him.
As impressive as the sight of a dinosaur in full battle fury was, our attention was immediately drawn to a large chunk of meat caught in Titanus' dagger-like teeth – a chunk that looked disturbingly like the upper half of Tavi's body. Like most Darkfolk, lykes can take a lot of damage and survive, but getting bitten in half is a damned serious injury no matter what species you are, and though it was difficult to tell with Titanus shaking his head back and forth and roaring in pain and anger, Tavi appeared to show no signs of life.
"We have to get Tavi out of there!" Devona said. "As long as his brain's intact, there's a chance he'll be able to regenerate the rest of his body. But if Titanus swallows the rest of him…"
Devona didn't complete the thought. She didn't need to. Once Tavi's brain had been dissolved by the digestive juices in the dinosaur's stomach, neither magic nor science would be able to bring him back. We had to rescue Tavi – or what was left of him – but the question was how? We couldn't exactly walk up to Titanus, give him a stern look, and say, "Bad dinosaur! You spit that out now!"
"I think those keepers could make better use of their lances," Devona said, and without waiting for a reply, she dashed toward the closest of the Frankenstein monsters.
"What's she going to do?" Shamika asked.
"Something ridiculously brave and incredibly foolish," I said with admiration. I turned to Varney. "Well, what are you waiting for?"
He gave me a look that said he should be trying to come up with some excuse to act, but then he obv
iously decided to hell with it. His expression changed, and I watched as Varney the slightly airheaded hippy cameraman once more became a cool, determined man of action. He raced after Devona, and I followed at the best speed I was capable of. Shamika kept pace with me, but I didn't worry about her. Maybe she would summon a few hundred chiranha to show Titanus what it was like to be someone's dinner.
Devona reached a keeper and snatched the energy lance out of his hand. The Frankenstein monster might've towered over my love, but she's a hell of lot stronger than she looks, and she'd had the additional advantage of taking the keeper by surprise. She flipped the lance into a throwing position, aimed, and hurled it at Titanus' open mouth. The metal rod streaked toward the dinosaur, its tip glowing a baleful red, and struck the roof of his mouth with a crackling blast of released energy. Titanus, unsurprisingly, was less than thrilled with this development, and he opened his mouth wide and let out an ear-splitting cry that was half roar, half scream.
The moment the lance struck Titanus, Varney leaped into the air and transformed into a whirling black vortex of shadow that flew toward the dinosaur like a miniature dark tornado. I'd never seen Varney assume his travel form before, and I was impressed as he flew swiftly up to Titanus' mouth, wrapped his shadowy substance around Tavi, pulled him free of the dinosaur's teeth, and carried him back down to us, keeping the lyke aloft by spinning beneath him to create a cushion of air. Once Varney deposited Tavi gently on the ground, the vampire reassumed his normal shape, and Devona and I grabbed hold of Tavi under his arms and together carried him a dozen yards to get him out of further harm's way. Varney and Shamika followed, and we laid him down gently once again and examined him.
It wasn't pretty. The lower half of his body from mid-abdomen down was gone, and bits of viscera dangled from his open body cavity, though there was little blood. His shapeshifter healing ability had already cut off most of the bleeding, and it was struggling to grow new skin to close off the huge gaping wound where his abdomen had been. It was slow going, though. Tavi's injuries were incredibly extensive, even for a lyke, and repairing them was pushing his system to its limits.
Devona placed a pair of fingers against the artery in Tavi's neck. "His pulse is faint and erratic, but at least his heart's still beating."
As if her words had roused him, Tavi's eyes flickered open and a long sigh escaped his lips. He began speaking then, pausing now and then to catch his breath. As he spoke, his wildform slowly gave way to his human guise.
"I… tracked Papa Chatha's scent to the… dinosaur's enclosure, and–" He broke off coughing, and bloody spittle flecked his mouth. "– the trail dead-ended there. I… called you, Matt, and as I was talking, somehow… the enclosure's force field deactivated, and… the dinosaur got free. I was… so shocked that I just stood there." He looked down at what remained of his body and gave us a weak smile. "And as you can see, the beast was… rather hungry."
Devona gently touched Tavi's cheek. "Don't try to talk anymore. We need to get you to the Fever House."
Given enough time, Tavi might have been able to regenerate the lower half of his body on his own, but the doctors at the Fever House could speed up that process considerably, and help make him a damn sight more comfortable while he healed.
"Lazlo's still waiting for us outside," I said.
"I'll carry him." Varney stepped forward and bent down to pick up Tavi, but as he did I caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. It wasn't the keepers and Titanus. The tanglethorn held the dinosaur fast and the keepers kept harrying him with their energy lances, and though the dinosaur still roared his fury to the world, his exertions were beginning to lessen as the fight left him. It was only a matter of time before the keepers managed to subdue him and force him back into his enclosure. The movement I saw was much smaller and low to the ground. I had the sense of small black shapes moving silently along the paths around us, though when I turned my head to look at them, I saw nothing.
I knew it wasn't my imagination, though, for Shamika was turning her head back and forth, as if her eyes were tracking something that mine couldn't quite catch, and in a soft, frightened voice she said, "This is bad. This is very bad."
I started to ask her what was wrong, but I was cut off by the sound of alarms going off throughout the Grotesquerie.
Tavi drew in a wheezing breath, and then said, "That's exactly what it sounded like… when the dinosaur got free."
The keepers broke off their battle with Titanus and looked around, startled and – I was more than a little disturbed to see – scared. The keepers had been produced by Victor Baron in his Foundry, and while he endows his creations with free will so they aren't merely the equivalent of organic machines, they do share certain qualities: strength, a strong constitution, and an almost complete lack of fear. So if the keepers were frightened by the sound of alarms going off throughout the Grotesquerie, I knew we were in some truly deep shit.
We felt it first – vibrations beneath our feet as if an earthquake was happening, followed by assorted roars, bellows, growls, and shrieks, a horrifying symphony of rage, malice and bloodlust. All around us gigantic creatures shambled forth from their enclosures, freed from their captivity to once again run rampant and wreak destruction on whatever was unfortunate enough to be in their path. Which in this case was us.
"We need to leave," Devona said in a small voice. "Now."
I wasn't about to argue with her, but we also needed to get Tavi to the Fever House, and I feared that carrying him would only slow us down. And since we couldn't leave him, that meant we needed to make him easier to carry. I reached into one of my pockets and pulled out a shrunken head. I held the withered thing up to my face and gave it a hard shake.
Its eyes sprang open and it glared at me. "This better be important. I was dreaming that I was trapped on a tropical island with the head of a supermodel." Its lips were stitched together with black thread, but the loops were loose enough so it could speak. I'd picked up the head when I stopped the Goremeister from killing the Wizard of Odd, and this was the first time I'd had the chance to put his talents to use.
"I don't have time to banter with you, Livingstone," I said. "We're in trouble, and I need to you do that voodoo you do so well."
Livingstone sighed, which was rather impressive considering he didn't have any lungs. "A guy gets carried around in a pocket all day, then is rudely yanked out of a great dream, and it's straight to work without so much as a 'Hi, nice to see you, how are you doing?'" He sighed again. "All right, just point me in the right direction."
Varney hadn't picked up Tavi yet, so I turned Livingstone around to face the injured lyke. Twin beams of dark light shot out of the head's eyes and struck Tavi on the chest. The lyke shuddered and then rapidly began dwindling in size. You see, Livingstone isn't just a shrunken head: he's a shrinking head, too. Within seconds, Tavi had been reduced to the size of an action figure – or in his current condition, half an action figure – and I knelt down and scooped him up with my free hand.
"Sorry about this," I said. "It may not be the most dignified ride you've ever taken." I didn't need to apologize, though, for Tavi had lapsed back into unconsciousness. I tucked him in a pocket, did the same with Livingstone, who grumbled that he'd received better treatment at the hands of the witch doctor who'd shrunken him in the first place, and then I stood.
"Ready to run?" Devona asked me, as giant monsters of all sorts lumbered toward us.
"Like the wind," I answered, and the four of us turned and began running toward the exit.
TWELVE
We had a couple things going in our favor. Compared to most of the escaped creatures, we were small, which meant we didn't easily draw their attention, and they were more interested in attacking each other than they were in going after the tiny things scampering past them. Plus, the keepers began fanning out through the facility, attempting to subdue the monsters with their energy lances, further distracting them, although considering that the keepers usu
ally ended up getting stomped, chomped, or zapped with radioactive energy blasts of one sort or another, it would've been better for them if they'd had the sense to flee with us.
We maneuvered through a forest of segmented legs as a giant spider and a praying mantis fought to turn each other into dinner. Too bad I didn't have a few thousands cans of Raid stashed in my pockets.
"Is this another attack by Talaith?" Varney asked as we ran.
"Maybe," I replied. "If the monsters break out of the Grotesquerie and rampage through the Sprawl, they'll cause more destruction than a hundred armies." Good thing Varvara had gathered her demon soldiers. If the Grotesquerie's perimeter security failed, she was going to need every warrior she could muster to try to contain the giant monsters.
Next we encountered a giant Gila monster easily the size of Titanus blocking the path. The lizard's forked tongue flicked the air, and its beady black eyes fixed on us as we approached. The creature was slower than many of its gigantic brethren, and Devona and Varney had no trouble avoiding its snapping jaws as they ran past. But Shamika slowed as she drew near the lizard, almost as if she wished to give it a closer look, and the creature opened its maw and lunged toward her. Gila monsters are venomous, and if this beast managed to bite Shamika, it could well prove fatal to her.
I was behind Shamika, so I put my hand between her shoulder blades and shoved. She stumbled forward just as the lizard's jaws snapped shut on the space where her head had been only an instant before. Angered at losing its prey, the Gila monster hissed and thrashed its head, unfortunately slamming into me. I felt no pain from the impact, but the force sent me flying backward, and I lost concentration and along with it, cohesion. My body parts became disconnected, and while my clothing kept most of them more or less together, when I hit the ground my head and hands popped off.