"He's right," I told Samm. "If we're flanked by multiples you can't save them or yourself anyway."
"Yeah, Little Mama," Zotz continued, "the only way that suggestion could be any worse would be to stay behind to have sex!"
He cackled and she gave me a quick, awkward look.
"Here we go," I said.
* * *
Of course it was a temple.
Never mind the swimming pool, no other chamber on the ship had tiled walls and ceiling as well as the floor.
There was an adjacent steam room and it was flooding the pool area with enough water vapor to give the illusion of an undersea grotto.
The pool was lined with mer-people. Deep Ones knelt around the edge three deep and took communion at the water's edge. Cupping their hands they reached down in and drew forth its steaming contents to sip from their palms or lick from their fingers. Some were marking themselves with it, making symbols on their chests and sigils upon their foreheads.
And finally, I could make my mind say what "it" was, for the swimming pool was not filled with water but with human blood. A great soup bowl of blood, viscera, and even fresh bodies as, one by one, the human cattle was being laid out on the diving board and being butchered.
A Deep One stood at the diving board wearing a robe and a jeweled tiara, shaped almost like a religious miter. He chanted a strange and unintelligible incantation—something with a lot of nonsense syllables and then something that sounded like "Vater Dagon!" Then "Mutar Hydra!"
The congregation chanted: "Ia, ia!"
And drank from the pool as a golden dagger, its hilt encrusted with gems, flashed down and sliced open another sacrifice. The victim was pushed from the diving platform and another was brought forward, the next in a long line of struggling, shrieking captives that stretched across the diving area and through a side door, into another storage room.
It seemed like we stood there, frozen, for an eternity overwhelmed by this spectacle of wanton cruelty, this glimpse of the new world order. But only one life had been taken since we entered the room. We had only witnessed the fall of the blade once.
Time, however, continued to unspool.
The next sacrifice was already on the "altar".
Zotz and Cuchulainn and Volpea were already charging the line of hostages. I stood back and let them. The Frogs on the other side of the pool had noticed us and were getting to their feet and I wanted no part of them. Yet.
The golden blade came back up.
So did the big Smith & Wesson in my hands.
"Ia this, Motherfucker," I said, and pulled the trigger. The boom of the 50 caliber slug was deafening in the tiled room. Everyone stopped and stared at me, at their high priest.
At the fact I'd missed.
The high priest grinned, exposing teeth like a Moray eel's. The chanting began anew. This time the nonsense syllables were more familiar: "Ia! Ia! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!"
The other congregants took up the chant: "Ia! Ia! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!"
And as the words repeated over and over, a strange sort of nauseousness rose up in me. The room seemed to distort. And two shadows seemed to form in midair, one upon each side of the high priest.
"Ia!" screamed the congregation. "Dagon! Hydra!" They flung their clawed and scaly hands about, beat their breasts, tore at the own faces. "Vater! Mutar!"
The shadows seemed to coalesce, to take on forms.
And the forms were of a hideous aspect! Scaly, tentacled, lizard-like—
Samm was walking right up to the diving board, her dark diminutive form unnoticed in the midst of the religious frenzy and the posturing of us macho warrior folk.
Three sharp reports ensued as the Glock made golf ball-sized holes in the priest's face chest and belly. He crumpled, the shadows faded, and pandemonium erupted.
Samm was instantly swarmed by the closest Deep Ones and she went down under a pile of them. Lucky for her they were too much in each other's way to do any serious damage before I arrived and started using the magnum-sized revolver like a steel mallet on their heads. I was like a machine only joyous. Efficiently cracking skulls and laughing with the pure joy of confronting something evil without restraint, concerns for my own humanity, or concessions to political correctness.
Claws raked at me but the nanites kept ahead on the repairs and that was good as I needed to shield Samm with my body as well. Liban, Volpea, Irena, Camazotz, even Cuchulainn and I were preternatural in one way or another. But Sammathea D'Arbonne was only human, now. And after all of the times she had looked after me and mine, it was my turn to see that she came out all right on the other end.
At last, the Frogs either died or ran and the room was nearly quiet again.
I was bruised and battered and exhausted and getting that alarming little buzz that I was overdue to feed the nanos again.
Fortunately there was an abundance of blood around to keep my little nano-vampires happy for a long time.
And fortunately I was finally monster enough to not care that the blood wasn't given willingly.
It was blood. It would go to waste if I didn't use it. I wasn't the one who had taken it from the victims in the first place so there was no chain of guilt, of obligation.
I went to the pool and knelt and began to scoop up the precious fluid of life with my hand and drink, even as the fish folk had been doing a half hour before. That produced a momentary gag reflex but the need was on me and drank again.
Suki joined me, mimicking me by dipping a paw into the crimson goo. Then she jumped in and began to swim about.
I almost gagged again.
But, the monster thing. If I was going to save my family, I was really going to have to get on with being all that I could be—monster-wise, that is. I drank some more. Made my nanites happy.
It wasn't as potent or satisfying as Liban's or some of the more exotic hemoglobin I had sampled over the past two years but you can't go wrong with the basics. And this was a unique experience as I was getting a mixture of all different types at once, thickened up with some viscera and actual bodies that had fallen off of the board and into the pool during the ceremonies. One was floating next to where I knelt and, as I pushed it away, it rolled over and opened its eyes.
I knew those eyes!
Those ruby-red eyes that so perfectly matched her hair!
Everyone dumped in the font of blood had hair the color of gore, now, but only one person could have eyes the color of arterial blood . . .
"Deirdre!" I cried, "Oh my God! Deirdre!" I tried to pull her out but she screamed.
"Don't move me!" she whispered. "The baby! It will kill the baby!"
Suddenly Liban was next to me. And Volpea was diving into the pool.
"Deirdre," I said, "where's Lupé? Did you see where they took her?"
"Found her!" Volpea cried. More splashes as Zotz and Samm jumped in.
And then a door opened and the room started to flood with the damned Frogs!
Chapter Eighteen
For just a moment in time the situation was very simple.
Deirdre and the baby might live or they might die.
Lupé and my son might still be alive or they might already be dead.
But one thing for damn sure, they didn't have a chance in Hell if we let any more of these Froggies come a courtin'. I leapt to my feet and joined Cuchulainn in meeting the charge.
We smashed into the first half dozen and Cuch immediately cut three of them down with the great-sword. I smashed two amphibian skulls together while a third fish man tried to climb me like a telephone repairman.
"She's alive!" Zotz bellowed behind me.
Of course she was. Lupé was a were. Unless they used a silver blade she'd be hard to kill.
I threw the climber off and onto a couple of his wingmen. Cuchulainn had sliced and diced through three more to get within ten feet of the door.
"I'm not sure the baby will make it, though!" Volpea yel
led.
I wrenched one of the Deep One's heads so viciously it popped off showering me with ichor-like blood.
Of course not. We were more than a hundred and fifty miles from a doctor and adequate medical facilities. And the odds were against the hale and healthy getting off this boat at this very moment.
Cuchulainn cut down two more Deep Ones and then slammed the door shut with a massively muscled shoulder. Turning and bracing his back against the shuddering entryway, he tossed me the sword and I made short work of the remaining three Frogs.
I ran back to the pool and knelt down to where Volpea and Zotz had borne Lupé. Her face and hair were a study in scarlet and her eyes remained closed. Her breathing was ragged and all the more worrisome as she was breathing for two.
"Lupé?" I whispered.
"Save the baby," she whispered. "Save our son. Nothing else matters . . ."
I looked back over at Deirdre. "Where's Dr. Mooncloud?"
My former enforcer groaned. "Not here. Stayed with Theresa."
"What? They didn't come?" It vaguely occurred to me that Laveau had kept her word in giving Kellerman her own body and freeing Deirdre in the process.
Samm put a hand on my arm. "I thought you knew. Theresa refused to leave. Mooncloud stayed behind to help provide cover—"
I nodded. "So Irena could get the others out without Laveau's goons stopping them. Okay. No doctor." I would think about the likely fate of Dr. Mooncloud, Theresa, and one of the cloned fetuses later. Right now: the problems at hand!
Since Lupé was a were and I was a—what? No longer fully human but still largely undefined. The point: our son should have some genetic toughness giving him the edge in a medical emergency. And Deirdre, as a former vampire and now also undefined preternatural entity—she had survived a human sacrifice. But would the cloned human embryo implanted in her womb survive? And which one was it? My deceased wife? My dead daughter?
Dead twice because of me?
I ground the heels of my fists into my eye sockets. "Is there anything in the room we can fabricate stretchers out of?"
"We are running out of time," Cuchulainn called from his post at the door, the repeated pounding making his voice shake.
"Getting tired, Big Guy?" Zotz growled.
"No. Just thinking that no matter how stupid these things are, sooner or later they're going to figure out there are other ways into this room." It was the longest speech I had ever heard him make.
The rest of us looked at each other.
And I looked at Liban.
She was holding Deirdre's head up out of the carnage soup and looking at me.
"Can you open the door here?" I asked. "Take them to your healers?"
"Take them now?" she asked. "Both mother and son?"
"I can't let them die!"
She nodded. "But if he is born in my realm, you will never see him again."
"I thought that was the deal."
"No. Only that if I took him as changeling, you could not follow to visit. There was always the possibility he could come to you. You are his father. But if his mother comes to us and he be born in our realm then, under The Accords, he is no longer yours nor of your kind. The Blood bond is severed. You sacrifice your claim forever."
I started and stared at her. "Sacrifice?"
Her breath stuttered and her eyes grew wide. "The Telling . . ."
My heart caught in my chest. Sacrifice . . .
Fate . . .
Fatum in the ancient Latin.
From fari, meaning to "tell" or "predict".
Was this The Sacrifice preordained by some distant oracle from the start?
Or was it a more nebulous destiny that there would be some kind of sacrifice, some kind of loss, and every time I had conspired to keep my son from Fate's altar, events shifted, possibilities changed, outcomes wavered—but the final destination remained: there would be some kind of sacrifice?
The room was suddenly quiet.
"They've stopped trying to break through the door," Cuchulainn said. "They will try another door in a moment. Mayhap more than one."
"Save them," I told Liban.
"The mother and the child?"
"Both mothers, both children," I said. "I want you to take Deirdre, too."
She shook her head. "I do not know what the others will permit. I do not know if I have the strength to port all of us."
"If everyone wants my son so bloody much, those are the terms of the deal!"
She looked down at Deirdre then over at Lupé. "I can but try."
I leaned down and kissed Lupé on her forehead. The last time I had done so, the silver compounds in my tissues had burned her badly. Perhaps the nanites were detoxifying my lips for this one specific task. Or maybe the slimy skein of blood that coated her hair and skin protected her just enough from that chaste, momentary contact. "Take care of our son," I whispered. "Take care of yourself." Anything more seemed hurtful and inadequate. I eased her over into Liban's embrace.
Deirdre opened her eyes again and looked up at me. "Don't I get a kiss? I'm having your baby, too."
I think I started to laugh. I couldn't tell: there were tears in my eyes. "Which one? My wife or my daughter?"
She coughed a little and I couldn't tell if the bloody spittle on her lips was her own or from the pool. "Does it matter? You're never going to see us again, anyway."
"Hey," I murmured, "I'd rather never see you alive than see you dead."
"Yeah, yeah . . ." She rolled her eyes over at Volpea. "You the new Enforcer?"
Volpea nodded.
"Take good care of him until I get back."
Samm leaned toward me and stage whispered. "She doesn't understand. She thinks they'll let her come back."
"She understands," Lupé muttered. "I'd worry about the elves if I were you."
And that was that because three different doors flew open and more Deep Ones burst in to reclaim their temple.
Six things happened at once.
Liban began to chant.
I tossed the sword back to Cuch and picked up the Mossberg.
Volpea and Zotz climbed out of the pool streaming blood and gore like a couple of wedding fountains in a slaughterhouse.
Irena slipped from the tent of Cuchulainn's shirt, crouched down, and her smooth brown flesh rippled and flowed into a pelt of sleek black fur. The panther growled then screamed a challenge
Samm raised the Glock and adopted a shooter's stance.
And something that looked like a cross between a bulldog and a komodo dragon with mange burst out of the pool and lunged at the largest knot of Deep Ones like a fat man at an unattended hotdog stand.
Chaos reigned. Blood flowed. Grievous wounds ensued.
There are those who have complained, upon those few occasions when I can be compelled to recount certain events, that I do not provide sufficient details of the epic battles, the face-to-face to-the-death matches in which I saw my enemies fall before me or else saw them dispatched by my allies. It is as if some would find entertainment value in graphic descriptions of gruesome deaths, bloody mutilations, horrific acts of savagery—battle porn for the armchair warriors. I understand the bloodlust that rises on battlefield, the body's fight-or-flight response to danger and the berserker rage that takes over in the presence of those who would do you and your family harm. It is one thing to joyously commit to the destruction of evil, personified by its foot-soldiers in a physical confrontation. Quite another to revel vicariously in the tales of old soldiers, lusting for the gory details while surrounded by the peace and comforts of hearth and home.
Perhaps the details would be more important if, one by one, my companions were falling beneath the teeth and claws of the Children of Daddy Dagon. The Deep Ones presented a frightening visage to humans whose closest encounter with the Dark Side was a tax audit. One-on-one they were a lot less formidable for a Mesoamerican Bat-demon or an immortal Celtic battle-god, or even a cybernetically enhanced, necrophagically juiced, semi-undead,
majorly pissed-off guy who had just lost his family, thanks to these finny cretins. One-on-one, we kicked ass like there was no tomorrow.
The disparity in numbers changed the dynamics, however. For each Deep One dropped, two more appeared to take their place. The room was getting crowded, not just from the pile of bodies but from the new bodies piling on. Slowly but steadily we were being backed toward the pool again.
Then the ambient light changed from red to purple. I looked over my shoulder. A nimbus of pulsing blue light surrounded Liban, Deirdre, and Lupé, contrasting with the red glow of the emergency lights. They flickered like an optical illusion and a fragrance of sap moss momentarily leaked into the sharp, sweet, metallic-tasting air.
I turned back to deal with the three Frogs that were attempting to eviscerate me with their claws and mostly getting in each other's way. I had yet to fire the Mossberg; it held a finite number of shells and our foes were beginning to appear infinite in numbers. It worked well enough as a club and I had just beaten down the second amphibian when the bang of displaced air behind me told me that my family was gone forever. I swung the Mossberg hard enough to take off the third creature's head and guarantee that the shotgun could never again be discharged in a safe manner.
I looked back at the empty place they had occupied and saw a fearsome sight.
A scaled creature was climbing out of the bloody swamp of sacrifices.
Humanoid, it was barely five feet in height and it glittered from head to toe in brass-colored scales. Metallic wings flared back from its bulbous head and sharp spikes and angles jutted from its elbows and knees. Its torso was encased in a hard-shelled carapace like a pale gold beetle and a curtain of blood veiled its face and draped its body in such a way that I didn't recognize her until she drew near and drew her short sword.
"Run," Fand said. Take the others and leave the ship."
I stared at Liban's sister all decked out in archaic battle armor. "There are hostages and wounded all over the place."
She stared back. "You have made the hardest sacrifice. The rest will be easier, now. Go. The pathways are merging one last time. If you do not leave now you will miss your transport. And then how will you fulfill The Telling and save the world?"
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