DIRE:SINS (The Dire Saga Book 5)

by Andrew Seiple

  “I should hope so!” Khalid moved his plate aside. Instantly Beta whisked it out of the way, and topped off his coffee. Khalid scrutinized him, as the android carried the dishes off to the washer.

  “Something on your mind?” Gamma asked.

  “Greek letters on each of your masks... running commentary on your master’s work and life... yes, that fits.” Khalid’s smile spread under his mustache. “You are a proper Greek chorus after all!”

  Greek chorus? I tilted my head as I considered it. In traditional Greek plays, the chorus acted as narration and explained the hero’s actions, feelings, and sometimes the larger themes of the play. They acted as a counterpoint, and almost a gestalt character in their own right.

  “Yes,” I said. “That fits. You’re now the Greek Chorus.”

  They accepted the designation with good grace, and breakfast ended as we turned our attention to the day and the coming operation.

  “So. Apple Market?” I asked.

  “Yes. In the heart of Covent Garden.”

  “Not too far from our old apartment,” Alpha said. “That might cause some problems.”

  “I don’t think so,” Gamma spoke up. “There’s more security and police on the streets, but life goes on. Traffic has been rerouted around the blast radius in Southwark, but we should be able to reach the booth without trouble.”

  I stood up and started pacing. “Reaching it isn’t the problem. We can teleport in, get there, and get through without issue if Khalid’s information is correct. But there’s no way Sloth won’t see us do that, and there’s no way the Maestro won’t have a welcoming committee, or worse, a pile of bombs waiting on the other side when we come back out.” There had been enough bloodshed in London over our struggle. I was disinclined to allow him another shot if we had any say in the matter.

  “Then there’s yer armor, dear. I may be a bit out of touch, but I think people might have a few words when you walk in there eight feet tall and shouty and suchlike. But I might could help you with that.” Dru tapped her teeth with one fingernail.

  I raised an eyebrow. “She’s listening.”

  She held up the bony, runny hand that she’d had Beta go and dig up in the wee hours of the morning. It had been crusted in yellow wax, and looked like a fried giant spider. “Hand o’ Glory. Old trick but good one.”

  “Most definitely not a good one,” Khalid said. “Perhaps not a damnable offense, but definitely coming close to a line that should not be crossed.”

  “Villain, remember?” I tapped my chest. “What does it do?”

  “It will put those around you into a fugue state. They will see you, but not think anything of it. Unless they are extremely strong willed, they will forget that you were there.”

  “Sounds like exactly what we need,” I nodded. “Wait. What’s the downside?”

  “It doesn’t discriminate, Miss Dire. It hits everyone close around the one what uses it. Which will include us.” Dru smiled. “We’re going to be a proper bunch of numpties until it’s out.”

  “Actually, we might not be affected,” Epsilon pointed out. “In which case we can keep charge of the Last Janissary and Mrs. Dru, here.”

  “All right. Don’t suppose it will work on Sloth, too? Make him too stupid to watch us?”

  “Unlikely,” Khalid rubbed his beard. “The hand’s magic is limited by proximity. I’ve lost track of the number of fleeing thieves I’ve seen cut down by bows because they trusted in the hand’s magic.”

  “So it will help with the entry, but not the exit.” I gnawed my lip as I thought. “Khalid, what about different forms?”

  “What?”

  “The Maestro’s non-magical, from what Vector told me. He left that part to Lust. So he’ll be watching for us to return, not necessarily any magical shifts, or portals, or however it works. What if we have potions that turn us into house cats or something, and come back through as those?”

  He let out a breath. “Risky. And anything I could come up with would not work on your minions.”

  “Oh, no problem there,” Beta said. “You can just leave us behind.”

  Delta hastened to explain. “Our thinky parts and personalities are actually in those servers downstairs. I mean we’ll still be ourselves while we’re downloaded into the shells in fairyland, but if we die or get stuck in there forever we can recover and be re-uploaded to new bodies. Heck, Alpha and Doctor Dire stuck enough android shells throughout London that it wouldn’t be hard.”

  “You’d lose your memories of your time in there,” I pointed out.

  Khalid raised a hand. “Getting back to the subject of transforming your bodies, it is still a bad idea. Perhaps another way?”

  We hashed out the details, and after Khalid described in gruesome detail the many ways transformations could go wrong, we decided to go with a batch of invisibility potions instead. The principle was still the same. We’d come through, Sloth wouldn’t see us, hopefully, and we could teleport out of there within seconds.

  It wasn’t a perfect plan, and I saw a lot that could go wrong with it. Hopefully whatever situation we ran into on the other side would allow us to investigate alternatives.

  That was the rough part, really. This was one of those times where we were flying blind, and presented with a situation we couldn’t predict until we were in it. Any plan I could make wouldn’t survive contact with the enemy, until we had enough solid intel to adapt and overcome.

  This was more a hero’s job than a villain’s, this whole deal of jumping into the unknown and trusting to your abilities and team. Irritating, that. Fortunately we had enough skills and firepower between us that I thought we could pull this off. Especially with the other talismans that Dru was able to craft for us.

  Finally, I knocked on the table and stood up. “All right. Let’s get moving. Take five minutes to wrap up any unfinished business and get down to the teleporter.”

  For my part I didn’t have much to take care of. Just a quick check to make sure that Alpha had installed the railgun correctly, and with the ammunition I required. I wouldn’t be caught out with the wrong tools for the situation twice.

  In the teleporter room, Dru handed me the twisted Hand of Glory, and a book of matches. “Light the fingertips and we’ll go, dear. We won’t be much use while they’re lit, mind you.”

  “DULY NOTED.”

  We faded in to a busy sidewalk, just outside St. Paul’s Church. Immediately the crowd around me slowed, and stopped talking, looking straight ahead with bleary eyes. They didn’t seem to register us, so I took that as proof the talisman was working.

  A gentle bump on my shoulder. Khalid stumbled into me, attempting to push my armor out of the way, feet slipping and striding ceaselessly on the concrete.

  “Chorus?” I asked through the vox. My androids hurried up. Beta and Gamma took charge of Khalid, while Delta and Epsilon took Dru’s elbows. Alpha nodded as he fell into step beside me, and we crossed the street toward the small market between the buildings. The magic didn’t affect their thoughts, thankfully.

  The Apple Market was central to the lower part of the district, more or less. Wasn’t much to look at, really, just a collection of stalls and stands between a few buildings, with an overarching roof to keep the rain off. It was a minor part of the area at best, which was probably why Lust had a backdoor here.

  As we passed through the stalls, invariable chatting Londoners and tourists would look up, see us, then fall into a stupor as their words drifted off to nothing. The Hand of Glory burned, gave off a greasy smoke, and twitched as I held it in front of me like an unholy symbol. I didn’t like the thing, didn’t trust it, but we didn’t have far to go.

  “There,” Alpha voxed, pointing. I followed his gaze to a placard on a pole, advertising ’Lilith’s Temptations.’ I pushed through the loose cloth of the tent, into a gaudy affair, decorated like a stereotypical gypsy wagon, only instead of mystical signs and gewgaws this one had lingerie draped everywhere. The proprietor was a vo
luptuous young lady who took one look at me, and fled out the back. The Hand of Glory didn’t work on her, and that was all the evidence that we’d come to the right place.

  She tried flee, but failed. Alpha was there, blocking the door, before she could react. She recoiled from him, turned to me, and then my free hand was around her throat. “TAKE US THROUGH,” I commanded.

  “Please, no! She’ll kill me!”

  “YOU FEAR DEATH?” I bent over, put my eyesockets an inch from her wide, trembling eyes. “THEN FEAR DIRE.”

  The woman licked her lips, considered her options. It didn’t take long. “All right, all right. Shit, I liked this job, too.” She tapped my hand, and I let her go, as the Chorus spread out to block the entrances and exits. “It’s going to take a few minutes.”

  I considered the satellite I’d hacked to provide overwatch on the area, and the approaching black vans. “YOU HAVE ONE.”

  She went pale, and started throwing panties and brassieres aside, pulling out something that looked for all the world like a marble bust of a handsome bald man with pointed ears. Pulling out a few vials from her bosom, she doused it with fluids I couldn’t identify. “This next part is vital. Please, do not speak or it could go horribly wrong.”

  The head moved. Marble eyelids slid over pupil-less orbs, as it twisted to survey the tent, and opened its mouth.

  “Who comes to pass the gate?”

  “Travelers!” The woman replied.

  “And where do you go?” It asked.

  “To the realm of deepest desire!”

  Everything blurred, and in that second of hesitation she dove between my legs and was out of the tent. I cursed, reached for her—

  —and then we were somewhere else.

  Immediately I pinched out the fires burning on the hand of glory, and Khalid and Dru jolted awake.

  “Sorry boss, our sensors fuzzed out when she did her mojo. She was gone before we could stop her.”

  “JUST AS WELL,” I said, turning to survey the area. “IF SHE CAN DODGE HER MISTRESS’ PUNISHMENT, POWER TO HER.”

  I don’t know what I had been expecting. A fairytale castle perhaps, or, given her powers, something like a pornographic storybook place with boobs growing on trees and satyrs and nymphs getting it on. What I got was an old, dead forest, tangled and unkempt, with thorn bushes growing waist-high between the trees. We were in a sort of clearing, marked with jagged gray stones in a circular pattern, and bones connecting the spaces between the stones. The sky overhead was clear and silvery, and there came a light from it but I couldn’t see any sort of sun.

  I didn’t bother checking my GPS, or other means of navigation. This wasn’t Earth, or any part of it. A headache buzzed in my skull, and I winced, closing my eyes as my thoughts jumbled into each other. Then as fast as it had come it was gone, and I took a breath, took three.

  “Connection re-established,” I thought I heard Gamma say, then disregarded it. More important matters at hand. This land was alien to me, and it would have been the height of lunacy to take it at face value.

  In any case, I was glad to have experts along.

  I turned to Khalid, found him groggy but alert, looking around the clearing as if he was taking notes for later study.

  “THIS DOES NOT RESEMBLE THE LAST FAIRYLAND DIRE HAD TO TRAVERSE.”

  “They are all different,” Khalid said, his frown deepening. “Did you put out the hand of glory immediately after we arrived?”

  “YES. WHY?”

  “Then where is the gate?”

  “THERE WAS NO GATE. LUST’S MINION PETITIONED A TALKING STONE HEAD TO GET US THROUGH.”

  Dru snapped around to look at me. “Are you sure about that, dearie?”

  Khalid was looking alarmed as well, his high, arched eyebrows raising even higher. “There is no mistake?”

  “I can confirm it,” Alpha said. “Why? What’s the problem?”

  Khalid ran his fingers through his hair. “They have changed the means of access since I last entered this realm. That head is... old sorcery, of a sort.”

  “The hogboy, the king in the ground,” Dru muttered. “Set upon his hoard in old stone, ’till stone he be and controls he the gates of heaven and hell and all between.”

  “Not precisely,” Khalid said, “but close enough.”

  “WHAT DOES THIS MEAN IN NON-MAGICAL TERMS?”

  “It means we’ve no easy way back,” Dru said. “Me great-granddaughter probably controls the exit. No fleein’ until we’ve done with her.”

  “OH. IF THAT’S ALL.” I motioned to the Greek Chorus, turned, and started trudging up the path. “COME ON THEN, TIME’S WASTING.”

  “You are not concerned?” Khalid hurried to keep up with us.

  “ABOUT THIS? NO. THE PLAN IS TO DEAL WITH LUST ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. HER CONTROLLING THE EXIT IS JUST ANOTHER VARIABLE TO TRACK.” Although it did negate plans H through N. Which was aggravating, because I was particularly fond of plan L. But hey, life went on. “DO KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR ANY MEANS OF EGRESS, AND INFORM DIRE THE SECOND YOU SPOT THEM.”

  “Of course.” Khalid said, right before he stopped. “Ah! Be wary! Those thorns are enchanted. One prick, and—“

  I snapped my metal fingers and the Greek Chorus waded into the edges of the path, ripping the thorns away faster than a human could blink. One of the thorny branches lashed at me before it went, and I let it rasp along my armor, fruitlessly.

  “Ah. Yes, well, that would work too,” Khalid muttered.

  Twenty steps later a bear the size of a city bus charged out of the woods, growling loudly enough to shake the trees.

  “A glamour! The actual bear is much smaller!” Khalid cried, diving to the side and pulling out his sword. “When it closes we must—“

  My wide-beam particle blast caught it, and blew the smoking, furry remains through six trees before it fell to the ground. Bear meat and organs rained down in a soft, squishy hail.

  “Or you could do that,” Dru observed. “Bit noisy, though.”

  I didn’t break stride. There had been altogether too much magic in the last few days, and I was getting fed up with it. I hadn’t expected Maestro’s minions to have this much mojo, and even though I had allies in that realm now, it was still far outside my comfort zone. The sooner this was done with, the better off I’d be.

  Fifty paces later a hive hanging from a tree branch twitched, and tiny screaming winged women launched themselves at us, spears glittering. “Do not let them stab you!” Khalid shouted. “Their spears will find gaps in even the strongest armor, and—“

  I fired a concussion missile. The blast liquefied them, and sent them splattering to the ground like the bear bits behind us.

  “Oh don’t feel bad, Mister K,” Delta patted Khalid’s shoulder. “If she wasn’t a badass you woulda saved her life three times over by now.”

  “I would not mind, except her way is very noisy. And that worries me, because something has not happened that should have already occurred.”

  “YOU’VE NOTICED IT TOO.”

  “I could not miss it.”

  “What are you going on about?” Dru asked.

  “No guards,” Khalid said. “The last time I was in this realm they were on me before I had taken thirty steps.”

  “The bear and vines and murder pixies don’t count?” Delta waved her hands. “They seem pretty guardy!”

  “THEY WERE NOT INTELLIGENT, RAISED NO ALARM, AND WERE ENTIRELY UNSUITED TO STOPPING DIRE. LUST KNOWS DIRE SEEKS HER DESTRUCTION. WHICH MEANS...”

  “We are perhaps walking into an ambush,” Khalid finished. Gods, it was good to be working with him again. He wasn’t a supergenius, but he had experience I could never match, and a sharp brain to boot.

  “No.” We looked to Dru, surprised at her tone. “This isn’t how they work. They’d have watchers on us, looky-loos. But I rubbed me eyes with ointment that’ll see through their glamour, and there ain’t a single watcher. Something is amiss.”

  We found that some
thing a few hundred yards later, as we stepped out of the treeline, into a plain full of scraggly grass.

  It hung in the air with no visible means of support, wispy, greenish decks and translucent sails, ropes blowing in an unfelt breeze, bobbing on unseen water. The name Gallowglass was inscribed upon the hull, and her flag bore a skull and crossbones.

  “Please tell me I’m not glitching,” Gamma spoke up. “Because my optics are showing me a ghost ship, right over there.”

  “YOU’RE NOT GLITCHING,” I replied, walking right up to, and around it. “WHAT THE FUCK?”

  “I have no explanation for this,” Khalid said, after scrutinizing it. “Though it appears to be English in origin. They used this sort of schooner in the early nineteenth century, I remember.”

  “Before me time, sorry love,” Dru shook her head.

  “EIGHTEENTH CENTURY...” I slammed my gauntlet against my mask. “RUMJACK.”

  “Of course!” Khalid snapped his fingers. “Queensguard must be following up on this lead as well! But lacking my knowledge of the way in, they resorted to other methods of arrival.”

  “Such as a ghostly pirate ship capable of traveling between here and the faerie realm.” Epsilon moved up, tried to grab a rope. His hand passed through it. “Hm. Useless to us.”

  “NOT NECESSARILY.” I remembered how ghosts could touch me through my armor, and tried to swipe my hand through the phantom ship. It passed through without resistance. “OKAY, THAT DIDN’T WORK.”

  Khalid shook his head. “If this is indeed Rumjack’s vessel, it will be tied to his very essence. There is little we can do to commandeer it, I fear.”

  “WELL, WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO LEAVE WITHOUT IT. STILL, ONE WONDERS WHERE THE HEROES MIGHT HAVE GONE.”

  “They went this way,” Beta called. “Don’t worry, the beings on the ground are alive.”

  What?

  I glanced over to my minion, and found him about a hundred feet distant, on a small rise, looking down over some tall grass.

  “HAVE YOU FOUND SOMETHING—“ I began, then I was up to him and saw what he was looking at. About a hundred bronze-armored, blue-skinned forms, lying in heaps all over the scenery.