by R. L. King
She didn’t even get time to scream before blood spattered over the group and her skull dropped down and landed on top of Bluey.
Several others screamed, and some of them started to rise.
“Damn you, stay still!” Winterhawk barked.
“Stay down!” Ocelot echoed, grabbing a couple of nearby Gypsies and pulling them back down into an untidy heap.
I can’t do it… Winterhawk’s whole body shook now, his heart pounding so hard he feared it would rip free of his chest. He tasted a salty tang as his nose began bleeding, red spots pattering like raindrops down on the rough wooden floor. I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I can’t—
And then it was over.
The pressure, the massive magical push from the manastorm was gone. Just like that. It moved on, following its unpredictable and inexorable path across the Outback’s dusty plain.
“That’s…it…” Winterhawk whispered, and then everything went gray and he passed out.
CHAPTER 30
GYPSIES’ COMPOUND
KOOKYNIE
MONDAY NIGHT
Winterhawk awoke to someone shaking him. Blinking, he focused as the blurred form sharpened into Dreja’s tusked face, her deep-set brown eyes wide with fear. “You okay?”
Okay was relative, but at least the vise in his chest had let up for the moment. It was something. “How long was I out?” he asked. His voice sounded husky and exhausted.
“Not long. Five minutes or so. You sure that manastorm isn’t going to turn around and come back?”
“Can’t ever be sure with manastorms, but I’ve never heard of one doing that.” He started to get up, pausing as a wave of dizziness hit him, and noticed the room was a lot less crowded than he remembered. A few shell-shocked Gypsies still lingered, tending to their injured friends, and Scuzzy slumped on a battered couch, knees drawn under his chin and looking like he didn’t know what to do next, but the rest of the team and the Gypsies were nowhere in sight. The unfortunate troll woman’s body had been removed, though a wide pattern of blood spatter still remained on the floor. “Where are the others?”
“Outside, checking the damage.” She offered him a hand and, when he gripped it, hauled him up, steadying him until the dizziness passed.
“What about the other gang?”
“See for yourself,” she said grimly, nodding at the door.
“Don’t,” Scuzzy called in an oddly manic tone. He was the same combination of pale and green he’d been when they’d chopped Toby Boyd’s head off. “Trust me on this.”
Winterhawk ignored him and followed Dreja out.
Outside, the Gypsies had gotten a few lights working, and the moonlight illuminated the wide, flat area outside sufficiently to make out the manastorm’s gruesome aftermath. Bikes, ATVs, and other small vehicles lay abandoned all around the perimeter fence, as if their riders had suddenly been plucked up by some covetous giant. It was only when he got closer that Winterhawk saw what had actually happened: each vehicle was accompanied by a horrific pile of bones, gore, and clothing remnants in a vaguely humanoid shape, draped over the controls or lying nearby in cases where the person had tried and failed to outrun the storm. The Gypsies wandered through the mess like postapocalyptic bomb survivors, aimless and pale.
“Bloody hell…” Winterhawk breathed. He’d seen plenty of manastorms in his career, and read accounts of more, but those like this one were exceedingly rare.
He spotted Ocelot, talking to Bodge near the Bison. Tiny walked back from outside the fence, his expression resolute and his arms full of weapons he’d gathered. He dumped the armload and headed back out as Winterhawk surveyed the carnage.
Bluey approached, pale and shaking. “That—that—” She stared up at Winterhawk. “You saved us. All of us.”
“Thank Maya,” he said. “She’s the one who warned me, or we’d all have been buggered.” He sent out a call for her, and she materialized on his shoulder, weightless as a cloud. He nodded toward the shredded attackers. “Any idea who they were?” he asked Bluey.
She shook her head, swallowing a couple of times before she could speak. “No markings, no colors…I don’t recognize any of their bikes.” She stared. “Dead…all…dead…”
Dreja took the dwarf woman’s arm. “Come on,” she said in a surprisingly gentle voice. “Let’s go back inside.”
Bluey nodded. “Yeah. I think we gotta talk.”
Ocelot caught up with them and the group was heading back toward the compound when Rhino came running up. “Your decker said to find you,” he said, breathless. “He says he found something on one of their ’links.”
They hurried inside. Scuzzy, clearly glad to have something useful to do, sat on the couch, several commlinks spread out around him. He looked up when they entered. “Check this out.” He put up an AR window. “Somebody hired those guys to go after us.”
“What?” Winterhawk paused to examine the displayed files, his expression darkening.
“Frag, you’re right,” Dreja said. She pointed. “Look at this message. Somebody in Perth arranged to get these drekwipes together and sent ’em out here. But why?”
“But who?” Ocelot asked.
“No intel about who,” Scuzzy said. He waved at the other commlinks. “I’ve checked ’em all for that—only that one had anything useful on it. It sounds like somebody wanted to make it look like a couple of biker gangs went at it.”
“Why the hell would anybody wanna do that?” Bluey demanded, eyes narrowing. She fixed her good eye on Winterhawk. “This have somethin’ to do with you lot?”
“How should I know?” the mage growled.
The dwarf woman held his gaze for several seconds, then sighed. “Come on,” she said, motioning for him and the others to follow her. “We definitely need ta talk.”
Winterhawk did so. As he exited the building, suddenly his knees buckled under him. He grabbed the doorjamb and gritted his teeth against a cry as the pain in his chest returned.
“’Hawk?” Ocelot and Dreja moved fast, grabbing him before he fell.
“It’s…all right…” he rasped. Fear gripped him as he wondered if being in the presence of such a powerful accumulation of mana or the exertion of keeping up the barrier had accelerated the poison’s effects.
Panting, he turned to the wide-eyed Bluey, eyes hard. “You’re right…” he said. “I saved your life. All of you. I don’t have any more time to be diplomatic. We have to go, and I want that serpent. Now.”
She stared at him for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, that’s fair. Come on.”
With Dreja and Ocelot supporting him, Winterhawk followed Bluey to another outbuilding that might have been a barn in its early days. In the corner was a pile of mismatched machinery, trash, and old scrap metal. “It’s buried under there,” she said, pointing. “Toby said we had to bury it deep to keep it from…I don’t know…broadcasting magically or something.”
Winterhawk sagged against the wall. Normally he would have just levitated the detritus away, but he feared if he tried any more magic right now he would pass out. He nodded at Ocelot and Dreja to do it, and soon they had it cleared away.
Between them and Bluey, it took them another fifteen minutes to excavate a square metal box about half a meter on a side. As soon as it was uncovered, Winterhawk felt the magic radiating from it. The power level surprised him: this was no minor item. No wonder Boyd had noticed it, even with his limited magical power.
There was something else, too. He shifted his perceptions, assensing the magical energy, then frowned. No…that can’t be right. I must just be tired and reading it wrong…
Ocelot held the box up in front of Winterhawk, and he slipped the catch and opened it. Inside, nestled on a pile of old rags, was the serpent figure. With even the minimal shielding from the box gone, it was easy to see that he wasn’t, in fact, wrong in his assessment.
This thing is…pulling at something.
His head twinged again, reminding hi
m of priorities. The serpent’s aura was interesting…but not relevant at the moment. He didn’t care what it wanted. All he cared about was getting it back to Seattle as fast as possible; the Johnson could deal with whatever it was trying to communicate with. For perhaps the first time in his life, Winterhawk’s usual overriding sense of curiosity was overshadowed by his sheer instinct for self-preservation.
“That it?” Dreja asked, craning her neck to see inside.
“Yes,” he said, relief weakening his knees again. He snapped the box shut. “That’s it. Tell Bodge we’re leaving.”
Bluey watched them, head tilted. “Can ya tell me something before you go?”
Winterhawk said nothing, merely waited.
“Are ya tellin’ the truth that Toby wanted ya to have this thing? Ya didn’t kill my brother, did ya?” She sighed. “It doesn’t really matter at this point—I can’t stop ya from takin’ it, and after what ya did, I honestly wouldn’t try, even if ya did kill him. But I hafta know.”
The mage shook his head. “No. We didn’t kill Toby. We failed him—we should have been able to get him out safely, and we didn’t. But we didn’t kill him.”
She considered, then nodded. “Okay. That’s good enough. Take that thing and go. I’m startin’ ta think it’s nothin’ but bad news for us anyway.”
CHAPTER 31
PERTH
MONDAY NIGHT
Kivuli wasn’t the type to get angry, or to exhibit any sort of excessive emotion. She thought it was wasteful, weakening her focus on the job. However, if she were inclined to do so, this would be the time.
She sat in the passenger seat of her team’s van and glanced over the last report regarding the group of bikers she’d hired to take out the Gypsies’ compound. As she read it, her hand tightened around her commlink so hard that if she had been stronger, she’d have crushed it into pieces. Then she initiated a call.
“Report,” the mechanical voice ordered.
She gritted her teeth. “The operation failed—the last reports indicate that the hired contractors were on their way to a decisive victory, but a massive manastorm hit the area. I’ve had no contact from any of them since. From the sound of the storm’s effects, I’m assuming they’re all lost.”
There was a long pause. “Yes, we heard about the manastorm. Our scans indicate that the package is on the move again. What do you know about that?”
“We think the target arrived before the contractors, and sheltered the group from the manastorm long enough to secure the package. Our magical scans showed it heading in a direction consistent with returning to Perth before it became untraceable again. We believe that the target was able to shield it. We’re on our way to rendezvous with them now. We should have the package in our possession within the day.”
“See that you do. When you have it in hand, advise us of nearest location and we’ll secure transportation.”
“Acknowledged.”
CHAPTER 32
GOLDFIELDS HIGHWAY
WESTERN AUSTRALIA
TUESDAY MORNING
The Bison rumbled south along the Goldfields Highway, about an hour out of the Gypsies’ compound and heading back toward Highway 94.
Scuzzy dozed in the back seat of the center compartment, trying to get the gory images from the battle and the manastorm’s carnage out of his mind, when an indicator buzzed and popped up in the corner of his visual display. He sat up a little more, propping his deck in his lap. His decryption programs had finally finished chewing through the data his agents had brought back right before the Matrix connection had gone belly-up. Between the lack of a connection and the complex encryption on the files, it had taken much longer than usual to deal with them, and he’d almost forgotten about them by the time they came back. He hit an icon to pull it up.
There weren’t many files: a small collection of messages, a few small audio and video files, and one large video that had probably claimed most of the decryption program’s effort. Whoever had encrypted this stuff really didn’t want anybody to see it.
Scuzzy grinned. That’s just too fraggin’ bad, isn’t it? Just try to keep anything from me and see how that works out for you. He hit another icon, brought up the first file, and began to read.
Before long, he wasn’t smiling anymore.
Winterhawk barely noticed when Scuzzy’s message came in. He half-sat, half-lay with his head propped against the window in the back section of the Bison, pretending to be asleep so nobody would talk to him. Maya had manifested and curled up on his lap; his hand rested on her back.
His head pounded harder than ever, his body alternating between hot and chilled, the shadowy things clawing at the edges of his mind battering harder against his mental defenses. He didn’t know what would happen when he wasn’t able to hold them back any longer—was there enough time to get to Perth and return to the Johnson before it was too late? He wasn’t sure anymore. Just focus…he thought. That’s what you’re good at. We’re going as fast as we can. It’s all you can do.
The message indicator buzzed again. Reluctantly he flicked his eyes open and saw Scuzzy’s big-eyed cartoon character icon in his AR. He shook his head. Of all the occupants of the Bison, the annoying decker was the last one he wanted to deal with right now.
He sighed and sat up a little, wincing as even the slight movement set off small explosions in his head.
In a moment, Scuzzy’s skinny form wormed its way into the rear compartment, and Maya vanished. The decker eyed Winterhawk for a moment, obviously troubled by what he saw, then sat down across from him.
“Listen,” he said. “A while ago, after you told us what was going on with you, with the poison and stuff, I figured I might be able to help. I sent out some agents to do some checking.”
Winterhawk stared hard at him, a chill that had nothing to do with the poison’s growing effects clawing at the back of his neck. “You what?”
“Hold on, hold on,” Scuzzy said quickly, holding up his hands to stop him. “I know, I took a chance and I’m sorry about that, but it worked. I got the data, and I guarantee I grabbed it without anybody catching on.” He frowned. “Look, I know I’m kind of a spaz and people think I’m annoying, but I’m good at what I do. Okay?”
Winterhawk nodded, not wanting to argue with him, but he couldn’t shake the growing fear: if Mr. Johnson had found out that he or anyone associated with him was poking around in his system looking for answers… “You wouldn’t be telling me this if you hadn’t found something, I assume.”
“Yeah. I found something all right. Hang on, let me just send it to you.”
“What is it?” he asked. “Can’t you give me the short version?”
“I can,” Scuzzy said, his tone sober as he settled back and pulled out his deck. “But I think it’s better if you just see it yourself. Look at the text messages first. That’s where the important part is.”
Clearly, Winterhawk decided, he wasn’t going to get rid of the kid unless he looked at whatever he’d found. He assumed it had something to do with the Johnson’s identity, but at that point it didn’t really matter who he was working for. It wouldn’t change anything. He called up the first file.
It contained a series of messages, their timestamps beginning around two weeks ago. There were no names on them, only initials he didn’t recognize: RO and KM. Some of the text was garbled, but enough was there to give him the basics: The exchange was a conversation between someone who was no doubt the puppet master behind the bland Johnson, and another person who was clearly some sort of parabiochemist. They were discussing the likely effects of using a particular experimental treatment on a human subject. As he kept reading, his eyes widened.
“Y
ou okay?” Scuzzy’s voice seemed to come from far away.
Winterhawk didn’t answer, just continued paging through the messages, skimming their content, zeroing in on keywords.
…Ritual…
…Sustaining…
…Blood component…
…Parasitic spirit…
…7-10 days…
…Fatality rate…
Oh, spirits, no…
It’s not just a poison. It has a magical component…bloody hell, why didn’t I see that?
His eyes snapped open. “They never intended to give me an antidote…” he said, very softly.
Scuzzy shook his head. “I don’t even think they have one,” he said in the same tone. “I don’t get most of this stuff—I thought you might since you’re a mage, but…”
“It’s not just a poison,” he said, slumping back into the seat. “In fact…I don’t think the poison is a poison at all. It’s—some kind of magical compound, designed to interact with a sort of…parasitic spirit. Give it something to feed on… The spirit’s the problem, not the compound. They must have done a ritual…”
“Yeah…” Scuzzy nodded. “That’s what the big video file is. I didn’t watch the whole thing—it’s, like, hours long. But I watched enough to see that they did some kind of magic ritual on you.”
“A blood ritual…” he whispered, flipping back to the text messages.
“Do you know this guy?” Scuzzy asked abruptly, popping an image up in Winterhawk’s AR.
Winterhawk studied it, blinking a couple of times and reaching out a shaking hand to enlarge the image. His vision was intermittently blurry now, making it difficult to focus. He didn’t have to look for very long to recognize the face. “That’s who’s behind this?” he whispered. It’s all starting to make sense now…
“Yeah,” Scuzzy said. “That’s RO, in the other messages. He’s got some short video diary files where he talks about arranging Boyd’s extraction.”