“I can feel what’s happening at the Main Library, same as you,” Rebecca said, resting her hand on Hayley’s shoulder. “We can’t just ignore whatever that is, however much we might want to.”
“Let’s do something,” Alice remarked, glancing at the covered body without a hint of interest. “No point in just standing around.”
“It’s been a bad day,” Hayley said. “I’m not sure.”
“I don’t want to lose anyone else, and jumping into the middle of whatever the hell is happening at the library is just asking for something bad to happen.” Rebecca shrugged. “Leaving it be pretty much guarantees that something bad happens.”
“Something bad already happened,” Min-jun said. “All that’s left is to respond.”
“Don’t lecture me, you sanctimonious brat,” Rebecca said, ruffling Min-jun’s hair. “Okay. Let’s go check it out.”
Chike?
Ready and waiting, Rebecca.
Alice and I will go first and scout around. I want you to collect Hayley and Min-jun, plus Grigori’s…and Grigori. Bring them back to base and get ready to redeploy on my mark.
Hayley put her hand on Rebecca’s arm.
“If you find Alistair, don’t kill him without us,” Hayley said. “We deserve a shot at him.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Alice snapped. “Alistair isn’t the kind of guy you play around with. If you have a shot to kill him, and you’re very confident it’ll work, then you take it. Otherwise, you run. Grigori isn’t the first Auditor he’s killed.”
“Oh, I know,” Hayley said. “We are all very aware.”
Alice put out her hand, and Rebecca took it.
“See you soon, kids,” Rebecca said, following her into the forest shadows. “See you soon.”
***
Egill waited for them in the courtyard in a rain jacket and black rubber knee boots. He looked calm and somewhat damp. His hands were empty.
Anastasia stepped forward, ahead of her retainers, maintaining perfect balance in her heels despite the gravel.
“Welcome to our home,” he said, with a gallant bow. “I am Egill Johannsson of the Thule Cartel. My uncle sends his regards. Unfortunately, he is indisposed at present. To be completely frank, he pleaded with the family to leave last night, but as he is currently in bed, delirious with fever, he is in no position to enforce that order.”
Anastasia cast aside her veil, to reveal furious eyes and mascara ruined by tears.
“Do you know who I am, boy?”
“You are Anastasia Martynova, of the Black—”
“I am death,” Anastasia said. “I have come for your family, boy. Do you want to run? Do you want to warn them? Go, then, if you like. It will change nothing.”
“I’m fine where I am. In fact, I’m intrigued,” Egill said, peeling off the leather gloves he wore and dropping them to the gravel. “I’m told you have a very unique talent, Lady Martynova, one that has been kept a closely guarded secret.”
“Yes,” Anastasia said. “Shall I show it to you?”
“I’d appreciate that,” Egill said, walking toward them. “A demonstration will make it easier to use, once it’s mine.”
***
The apport left them in a jumble on the grass just outside of the Main Library, far closer than was intended.
The library wall they stood beside toppled before they had even finished dusting themselves off, raining bricks and concrete down on them. Mitsuru activated a downloaded barrier protocol, which absorbed the worst of it.
“Hey,” Alex said, brushing brick dust from his hair. “What’s that?”
Before anyone could respond, a tumescent monster burst from the gaping hole in the library wall like a two-story scarecrow, steam venting from protrusions along its distended spine. The monstrosity screamed like an angry gull and wriggled fingers that were bladed like hedge trimmers.
“I am Mrs. Gimble, a Representative of the Church of Sleep,” it proclaimed, a booming voice emerging from a chest that was mostly rags and bones and feathers. “You will be purged/corrected.”
Mrs. Gimble hopped and scuttled across the debris like a spider across the bathroom floor.
“Holy shit,” Alex said, watching fearfully. “Is that thing the Church of Sleep?”
“No, dummy,” Leigh said, pointing at the towering white monstrosity that emerged from the Main Library like a contoured porcelain cancer. “That’s the Church.”
They all stared for as long as their eyeballs could stand the pain, the Church deepening like an abscess on the soft internal tissue of reality. The air boiled around the Church’s nonexistent boundaries, and the immeasurable dimensions of the structure blotted out even the horizon.
“Oh. I uh…I get the feeling there’s not a lot we can do about that.”
“Yeah,” Leigh said, her voice quieting as the Representative charged toward them. “I think you got that part right.”
***
Anastasia stood in the gravel driveway in all-black everything, as composed and still as any marble statue, her servants arrayed at a short distance, beside the gate of the Thule ancestral manor. Egill Johannsson stopped short of her, and their eyes met.
Nothing happened for a moment.
“Go ahead, boy. Do whatever you came to do,” Anastasia said. “My servants will not interfere. Or have you lost your courage already?”
“Sorry. I didn’t realize you were in such a hurry to die.”
Egill raised his hands and sent a telekinetic battering ram in her direction. Gravel flew and a bare maple tree next to the drive was torn from the ground and upended, thin roots reaching toward the faded blue sky. The manor shook and the grass swayed.
The wave of force passed through her, but not even a strand of Anastasia’s hair was put out of place, even as the driveway around her was obliterated.
“Impossible,” Egill said. “So, it is true, then. Brennan was right to be obsessed with you, wasn’t he? Tell me – were you always this way, or did you change, down in the waters below this place?”
“I am not here for conversation,” Anastasia asked. “Shall I begin?”
***
The monster looked to Alex like a horrible puppet, with narrow, grasping fingers, elongated limbs, and exaggerated features. Its gigantic form creaked as it moved; the fluted skeletal structure across which the creature’s flesh was draped seemed to be under tremendous strain, as if its own bulk were too great a burden to bear.
It looked at them, a thousand facets gleaming from spider eyes that protruded on stalks out of a skull that had an almost avian cast. Skin was stretched intermittently across the bones or layered in thick grey rolls that rippled across its belly, intercut with yellow-pink ribbons of blubber. Talons of dark metal protruded from unevenly distributed fingers and toes, grafted or implanted into the tissue, which was septic and weeping.
“The Changeling,” the monster hissed, turning innumerable eyes on Alex. “Where is it?”
Alex just stared, frozen by the same base and instinctual terror that caused him to flinch and panic at the touch of a spider. He could only watch in helpless terror as the monster carved a path through the wreckage of the library.
Rebecca grabbed him and pulled him back by his shoulders.
“Come on,” she said. “We need to get out of here!”
“What is that?”
“That was Representative Gimble of the Church of Sleep,” Rebecca said, leading him away from the wrecked library. “Whatever that means.”
He was too confused to formulate an argument.
Alice Gallow stepped from the shadow cast by a semi-intact wall on the library’s second floor, above and beside the Mrs. Gimble, blasting it twice in the back of the head with a pump-action shotgun.
Leigh tore strips from the monsters ragged legs with her claws, while Mitsuru dowsed it with flame from a downloaded protocol.
The Representative lashed out with her scissor fingers, shredding the concrete ledge, but Alice dove back in
to the shadow, disappearing a moment before the room was torn to pieces. A second swipe sent Leigh flying, while Mitsuru dove out of view, somewhere in the wreckage.
“What are you doing here, Alex?”
“Same thing as you.”
“No way,” Rebecca said. “You shouldn’t be here. You should be with Eerie, somewhere safe.”
“This is my problem to fix,” Alex said. “Wait a minute. Where is Eerie?”
“Was she with you? I didn’t see her.”
“Fuck! She was right next to me a minute ago,” Alex said, suddenly unsure. “Wasn’t she? She was on the platform, with all of us. Emily and everybody…”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t see Emily either.”
“Oh, shit. They were talking, before the apport. We didn’t all go to the same place, did we?”
“I’m not sure,” Rebecca said. “I don’t know exactly what Eerie can do, if she puts her mind to it.”
“I don’t…I mean, she wouldn’t…” He trailed off, looking at the impossibility of the Church of Sleep, stretching into the grey sky of Central and presumably continuing into infinity. “Eerie must have gone to the Church on her own. Don’t you think? It has to be that, doesn’t it?”
He tried to pull free of Rebecca’s grip.
“Alex, what the hell are you going to do? You’ll just get yourself killed!”
Rebecca dragged him further away, but Alex could not take his eyes from the terrible uniformity of the Church.
Mrs. Gimble freed itself from the wreckage of the library, and made for them on its massive, creaking legs.
Alice stepped out of its shadow, appearing between the monster’s crude feet. She put a solid slug into each knee, slipping back into the shadow before the Representative could react.
The monster stumbled, leaking black fluid down the lower half of both legs, but it did not fall.
“Do you think I could…?”
“Let’s not find out,” Rebecca said. “We’ll pull back and figure it out, okay?”
He allowed himself to be led in a daze. Rebecca took him into the nearby woods, the scent of the pines undercut by the increasing smoke that poured from the burning library. She tossed him beneath a tree, where he collapsed, unable to calm his reeling brain or his racing heart.
“Cut it out,” Rebecca said, bending to flick his forehead. “You’re bugging me.”
Alex gasped as a flood of dopamine hit his system, obliterating his fear like a tsunami scouring an unshielded coast.
Alice stumbled out of the shadow of a big Douglas fir a moment later, gasping as she tossed her empty shotgun aside.
“That did not go well,” Alice said, inspecting a deep gash in her shoulder. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to mind being shot.”
“I noticed that,” Rebecca said. “We need Xia, but that monster seems to fuck with telepathy. I can’t get the channel up or get a fix on his Etheric Signature. I know he’s gotta be close, but…”
“Well, we need somebody’s help.”
“I need you to go back to the Academy, okay?” Rebecca grabbed Alex’s arm. “Find Michael. Find Gerald Windsor. Shit, I don’t care, find Lord North. Anybody at all. Get ’em here as fast as you can. Got it?”
“No way,” Alex said. “I’m staying. I need to find Eerie and take care of the Church.”
“Not a chance,” Rebecca said. “I don’t want to lose you, kiddo. Find help, okay?”
Alice took his hand and smiled, and Alex was too frightened to object.
“You heard the boss,” Alice said, tugging him into the forest shadows. “We are gone.”
They stepped from behind the trunk of an old oak tree and onto one of the footpaths of the Academy, not far from the Administrative building.
“Find us help,” Alice said. “Don’t die.”
Then she was gone, before he could have said anything, had he been brave enough.
Which he was not.
Alex turned toward the Administrative building and made a hurried review of where the lights were still on. It was a big building, after all, and he had no time to lose, running around empty hallways and offices.
He did not hear a thing, but a fraction of a second before he was kicked in the back, Alex was certain that he was no longer alone.
***
Anastasia took two steps forward and lifted her umbrella like a rapier.
Egill raised a violet barrier, text in an unknown language orbiting him in concentric circles.
Anastasia stepped through the barrier effortlessly and drove the tip of her umbrella into Egill’s chest.
His eyes widened. She frowned.
The umbrella became solid, displacing a fountain of viscera from his chest.
Egill cried and stumbled, clutching the gaping wound in his chest. Anastasia followed him.
A wall of fire erupted from the gravel, barring her progress.
When the flames died down, Lóa Thule stood beside Egill, with braces clamped to her legs and canes in both hands. Gaul Thule sat behind them in a wheelchair, his head heavily bandaged. Mateo Navarre stood with his hand on handles of the wheelchair, while Courtney Lede pushed a trauma patch onto the chest of Egill. All around them were the remnants of the Thule Cartel, a motley collection of about forty individuals, made up of young and old cousins, recent recruits from the Academy, longtime retainers, and family allies.
“What a pathetic lot,” Anastasia said. “Do you not have something more formidable to offer? I am content to wait, if it will help you put on a better showing.”
“This is our home, Lady Martynova,” Gaul said quietly. “You are not welcome here.”
“You should have thought of that before you invaded my home,” Anastasia said. “I see nothing but heads before me, waiting to be severed. Collect them for me, beloved servants. Leave none to mourn their deaths.”
The Black Sun Operators surged forward, and the carnage began immediately.
Lord Gao leapt across the drive in three steps and crashed bodily into the Thule front line, followed closely by Donner and Blitzen. Renton launched a swarm of telepathic remote attacks and defensive routines, crowding the psychic battlefield as he opened fire with his MP7, spraying the Thule Operators with high-velocity rounds. Matheus and Ksenia used his fire as cover to advance, moving to flank. Simeon stood beside Anastasia and Mai, his barrier shielding them from Thule fire.
A telekinetic strike tore through the front line, crushing and maiming combatants of both sides. Ksenia unleashed her Poltergeist Protocol, and the debris from the telekinetic strike was immediately weaponized, battering the Thule forces with barrages of nails, gravel, and chunks of concrete. Egill activated his stolen barrier, absorbing the worst of it, but the damage was still immense.
The conflict snarled and twisted, as the general conflict broke down into individual skirmishes.
A Thule sniper took aim at Anastasia from atop the manor roof, only to lock eyes with Mai. He walked clumsily to the edge of the roof and then hesitated, gnashing his teeth and tearing at his hair, before leaping to land headfirst on the stone steps below.
Lord Gao was enveloped in flame from a pyrokine as he tore through Thule forces, the vampire burning like he had been coated in paraffin. Donner bore down on the pyrokinetic, carrying him to the ground and tearing out his throat.
Grenades sent shrapnel indiscriminately through the battle, a fragment tearing through the back of Matheus’s leg and causing him to drop Benjamin Thule, who he had nearly throttled. Egill grabbed Matheus’s arm and telekinetically severed it at the shoulder. He wrapped his hands around Matheus’s neck, but then was taken down by a charge from Blitzen. Egill only saved his throat by jamming his forearm into the slobbering mouth of the Weir.
An abrupt darkness descended on the field of battle, and then was just as abruptly dispelled.
Flames broke out on the fighters’ clothing, and then disappeared without consuming the fabric. The sun dimmed, and then brightened, and the sky was split by
flashes of lightning that had no preceding thunder.
Mai Quan and Mateo Navarre engaged in a ferocious staring contest, raising and dispelling telepathic illusions while the battle raged about them, secure behind respective barriers.
Renton cut Benjamin Thule’s throat, and then tossed the boy aside to bleed to death.
Egill telekinetically flayed the Weir atop him, invisible force peeling the skin from its bones.
Ksenia took a bullet in the leg from a concealed shooter using the manor porch for cover, and then Daniel Gao appeared behind the gunman and hacked him down with his machete.
Renton advanced on the barrier that protected Gaul Thule, his eyes locked on Lóa.
Simeon grimaced as his barrier was battered by gunshots and flame and telekinesis, but he held firm even as the color drained from his face, a nanite patch pressed to his flushed neck. Rivulets of sweat poured down Mai’s face and veins burst in her eyes as she contended with Mateo.
Lóa faltered, and was caught by Courtney Lede.
Renton turned his attention to Egill, attacking him telepathically while he attempted to gut him with his knife. Egill fought him off desperately, catching the point of the knife twice with a barrier just before it would have cut him. Renton ducked a telekinetic strike, and then evaded another, stabbing Egill in the shoulder. Egill brushed him aside telekinetically, but the barrier that protected Gaul and Lóa flickered, and then disappeared entirely.
Egill lashed out in desperation, a massive bolt of force that scorched the atmosphere as it came hurtling down onto the Black Sun forces. Simeon moaned and dropped to one knee, but the barrier held.
Daniel Gao stepped out of nowhere to bury his blade in the back of Lóa Thule’s neck.
Renton got back to his feet, neatly avoiding a jet flame that Egill launched at him and then knocking him down with a left hand to the jaw. Courtney Lede screamed as Donner dragged him to the ground, all pink teeth and slavering jaws. Simeon swayed and then collapsed, bleeding profusely from the nose and ears as his barrier disintegrated.
The Church of Sleep (Central Series Book 5) Page 78