by R. L. King
Winterhawk paused. He blinked. His eyes were wide, his jaw set, his body shaking.
“They’re deluded. Their minds are weak. They’re trying to mislead you.”
“No…they are not,” he bit out through clenched teeth. He looked at Ocelot, then shifted his gaze to Dreja. “He’s right? That’s what you see, too?”
She nodded, looking as terrified as he felt. “Yeah. It’s not chains. It was never chains.”
Another look at the thing. All the eyes were focused on him.
All the mouths were screaming in cacophony, so loud that he couldn’t hear himself think.
But he didn’t have to think. Not just now.
What he had to do was trust his friends.
“Do it,” he said.
He pointed his hands, not at the thing itself, but at the nearest chain, and let loose.
This time, the blast didn’t dissipate. The screams grew louder as the chains broke, and the thing canted off to one side like a basketball hanging in a broken net.
“I WILL KILL YOU!” This time it wasn’t a whisper, and it wasn’t calm. It was a shriek of such malevolence, such hatred, that it was all Winterhawk could do not to clamp his hands over his ears and roll up into a ball to block it out.
But he didn’t, and neither did Ocelot and Dreja. Both of them took aim and fired. Dreja opened up with her assault rifle on full auto, the muscles in her arms knotting as she strafed the thing right and left. Ocelot threw open the choke on his shotgun and worked on the other side. They seemed to have endless ammunition, never having to stop to reload.
“Save your strength, ’Hawk,” Ocelot ordered. “We got this. But I think you’re gonna have to kill this thing on your own once its support system’s gone.”
It didn’t take long under their combined assault. The thing’s screams echoed through the room and through Winterhawk’s mind, evoking images of every nightmare he’d ever had, every horrific thing he’d ever seen, every doubt and fear he’d ever experienced. He sagged back against the wall as the last of the chains came free and the thing dropped. He expected the whole cavern to shake when it hit.
It didn’t hit.
It disappeared—or rather, it looked for a moment like it had disappeared, because the enormous thing writhed and shrank until it was a whirling shadow about the size of a large van twisting its way toward the ground. The screams didn’t get any quieter, though.
Ocelot and Dreja didn’t wait to see what it was—they just kept shooting it. They might as well have been yelling insults at it for all the good it did, though: their rounds and shot now went through it like it wasn’t even there.
Winterhawk studied it for a moment, then pushed himself off the wall and walked forward. He moved steadily, at an unhurried pace, until he was only a couple of meters from it. “You’ve lost,” he said. His voice was even, cold, contemptuous. “You’ve failed.”
Pain lanced into his chest. “It does not matter. It is too late. You are dying. And when you are dead, your soul will be my plaything for all eternity.”
“Well, then, I’d better make sure you’re not around for that, then, hadn’t I?”
Raising his shaking hands, he pointed them at the twisting shadow-thing, and focused every shred of magical energy he had left into a beam of pure white light.
This time, it didn’t bounce off. The shadow’s screams rose to a crescendo. It made one last effort to penetrate Winterhawk’s mind, but too late. As it surged forward and tried to engulf him, the light took it apart, scattering it into tiny, shrieking wisps. And then they were gone, and so were the screams. The silence left behind was almost deafening in its enormity.
Winterhawk stood swaying, staring at the space where the thing had been. “Well,” he said. “That was fun…”
And then he fainted.
CHAPTER 38
ABORIGINE CAMP
TUESDAY MORNING
“So you’re sure it’s gone now?” Ocelot asked.
Winterhawk nodded, his eyes closed. “Gone. Destroyed.”
He was half-sitting, half-lying in the back of the Jeep, which was jouncing back to the main camp. Dreja was driving, with Ocelot in the shotgun seat. Thuma, exhausted from the effort of conducting the ritual, rested in the back next to Winterhawk; the old koradji appeared to be deep in meditation.
“How do you feel?”
Winterhawk considered. “Tired. Starving. But—good. Better than I’ve felt since this whole thing started, all things considered.” He hadn’t said much since he’d awakened, still lying in the center of the spent ritual circle. As soon as his awareness had returned, he’d felt it: a lightness to his body, a sense of wholeness that had subtly eluded him all week. It was an odd combination of feelings: like he could sleep for days or leap out of the car and run the rest of the way back to the camp. He supposed at least some of that had to be the profound sense of relief that he was no longer operating under a death sentence.
Ocelot nodded. “So that’s it, yeah? We leave the snake with Thuma and his people, and we can go home.”
“Can’t see any reason why not. I’ve got some unfinished business with Mr. Ortega, but that’s for me to deal with. I—”
“What’s that?” Dreja interrupted, pointing at something off in the distance in the direction they were headed.
Ocelot leaned forward. “Is that smoke?”
Suddenly Thuma’s eyes flew open and he sat upright. “No…” he muttered.
“What is it?” Winterhawk demanded, sitting up too.
“Oh, spirits, no…” Thuma gripped the back of Dreja’s seat, hands shaking. “Go faster. We need to get back to the camp. Quickly!”
“What’s going on?” Dreja asked, increasing the Jeep’s speed as fast as she dared on the rutted, uneven road.
“Something’s wrong,” Thuma said. “I’ll be back.” He slumped back in his seat without another word.
By the time they pulled into the Aborigines’ camp a few minutes later, Thuma hadn’t returned to his body yet. They didn’t need his report, though: smoke rose from a couple of the small, temporary huts, and even from a distance they could see bodies littering the ground.
Narrah, Thuma’s apprentice, hurried out to them. His arm was in a makeshift sling made from a leather strap, and he was obviously struggling to keep calm.
Ocelot leaped out of the Jeep before it stopped moving. “What happened?” Beyond Narrah, several Aborigines tended to prone forms in a small area near one of the few surviving huts.
“They came—a half-hour or so after you left with Thuma,” Narrah panted.
Winterhawk climbed more slowly out of the back of the Jeep. “Who came?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know who they were. But—they took it.”
Winterhawk stiffened, a chill running down his back. “They took the serpent?”
“Where’s Tiny?” Dreja demanded. “Scuzzy, and Bodge?”
“Tiny’s dead,” came a voice behind them. They all turned to see Scuzzy limping toward them. He had a bloodstained cloth wrapped around his head and he favored his right leg.
“What?” Dreja’s gaze flew wildly around the camp.
Scuzzy’s pale, greasy face face looked uncharacteristically serious. “They came—wanted to know where the serpent was. The Aborigines wouldn’t tell them, so they started shooting. I ran up to the cave—I was gonna try to hide it so they couldn’t get it. But Tiny was already there. He—” he swallowed. “He was trying to grab it. To run off with it.”
Ocelot’s gaze hardened. “What happened to him? Did he—”
Scuzzy swallowed again; he looked like he was going to throw up. “I…I killed him.”
“How?” Winterhawk stared at him.
“He…he tried to shoot me when he saw me. Yelled at me to mind my own business. I ducked behind a rock and…” He took a deep breath. “I hacked his cyberarm. He couldn’t stop himself in time. He…he put his own cyberspur through his throat.”
Dreja looke
d at him with new respect. “Frag…” she murmured.
“But what about the serpent?” Winterhawk demanded. “Where is it now?”
“They took it,” Narrah said. He looked miserable. “They figured out where it was, and we couldn’t fight them off. We tried—”
“Yeah,” Scuzzy said. “I was useless, though. I saw them coming, and there were so many of them…I just hid. I’m sorry…” Then he looked at Winterhawk, as if surprised to see him moving around under his own power. “Listen,” he said, his voice urgent. “She was with them. Kivuli.”
Winterhawk stared at him. “Are you sure?”
Scuzzy nodded, still trying to get himself under control. “Yeah. She’s hard to miss.” He let out a loud sigh of frustration. “I hate it out here. Without a Matrix connection, I feel fraggin’ useless!”
Thuma sat up with a sudden gasp in the back seat as his spirit returned to his body. He looked ashen. “You must go after them,” he whispered. “You must stop them before they unite the two serpents. I think they mean to do the ritual to summon Akurra’s spirit.”
“But we don’t even know where they’re goin’,” Ocelot said, eyes narrowed. “If they’ve got a head start, and we don’t know where they’re—”
“Can you follow them?” Dreja asked, turning to Winterhawk. “On the astral plane?”
Winterhawk shook his head. “Not now. That thing isn’t inside me anymore, but I haven’t the strength for that kind of astral tracking right now. And in any case, the astral plane here is too hostile to foreigners to try it.”
One of the Aborigine men hurried over and said something to Narrah. He replied and the man took off again. To the group, Narrah said grimly, “Cole says they found one of them alive.”
“One of their guys?” Dreja asked.
“He’s in bad shape. Cole says they must have left him for dead.”
Winterhawk gripped Narrah’s shoulder. “Take me to him,” he ordered.
“Why?” Ocelot asked, eyes narrowed. “What are you gonna do?”
“What needs to be done,” the mage said, his tone cold.
They left Thuma in the Jeep, assisted by two more Aborigines, and set off to follow Narrah.
The man was inside one of the intact huts, stretched out on the dirt floor. An Aborigine man holding an old, battered rifle sat on a low bench, guarding him. He looked up as the group came in, and he and Narrah carried on a low conversation.
Winterhawk examined the captive. He was a human Aborigine, dressed in bloodsoaked bush clothes with an armored coat tossed in a heap next to him. His dark skin was sweat-dotted and blotchy, and he didn’t look like he would be alive much longer.
“Anyone have a stim patch?” Winterhawk snapped as he dropped to his knees next to the prone form.
Dreja produced one and handed it over. He pulled the man’s shirt aside and slapped the patch on a non-bloody part of his chest. After a second, the man gasped and his eyes flew open. “Wha—” he began, then his gaze moved past Winterhawk to the small arsenal of guns trained on him.
“Where are they going?” Winterhawk demanded. “Your friends. They’ve left you here for dead. Where are they going?”
The man appeared confused for a moment, then a smug calm settled over his features. “You won’t find them,” he said in an unsteady voice that was nonetheless full of conviction. “Not until everyone knows where they are.”
Ocelot’s gun clicked behind Winterhawk. “Better talk, asshole,” he said.
The man’s smug expression deepened. “Kill me,” he said. “I’m not important. I’ll tell you nothing.”
Winterhawk glared at him. He considered for a moment: what he was contemplating was not something he liked to do, and it wasn’t something he did casually. It was, however, something he, unlike many mages, was willing to do if it was necessary. “Oh, but you’re wrong,” he said through his teeth. “I am completely out of patience right now, my friend. That means you don’t get a choice.” His right hand shot out and clamped on to the man’s forehead. The man struggled feebly, but his strength was gone.
“’Hawk—?” Ocelot started.
Winterhawk barely heard him. He was fully focused on his task now.
The man’s mind was harder to crack than he expected, but he soon discovered why. Fanatics’ minds were disordered, chaotic, but their mental defenses were often stronger than a normal person’s. None of this mattered, though: the man’s barriers didn’t stand a chance against the onslaught of a trained and determined mage with Winterhawk’s magical power.
He screamed, both inside his mind and aloud. Winterhawk ignored him, probing further, sifting through memories, pouring mana into making the spell as effective as he could manage so he could get as much information as possible before the man died. At this point, whether he was causing discomfort to his subject was not even on his list of considerations.
When he had what he wanted and loosed his grip on the man’s mind, he bowed his head for a moment, panting. His own head pounded—he shouldn’t have done anything that magic-intensive this soon after everything else he’d been through—but at least it was an honest pain. It would pass soon.
And he had his answer. He glanced down at the man’s dead body and turned back to his friends. Ocelot, Dreja, Narrah, and the Aborigine guard all stared at him with expressions ranging from horror to disbelief.
“What?” he demanded. He didn’t have time for this. They didn’t have time for this. He hauled himself to his feet and motioned toward the door. “Come on. Let’s find Bodge. I know where they’re headed, and we need to get going.” Without waiting for them to respond, he stalked out of the hut.
“Where are we going?” he heard Ocelot yell after him.
“Sydney.”
CHAPTER 39
EN ROUTE TO SYDNEY
TUESDAY MORNING
Kivuli settled back in her seat, glancing at the rest of her group with a feeling of satisfaction that had eluded her ever since the debacle with Toby Boyd. The box containing the serpent figure was nestled securely in a large, black backpack between her feet: there was no way she was going to let it out of her sight again until it was delivered into the hands of the people who were paying her to procure it.
She wondered idly what they wanted with it. They’d never told her, and she’d never asked. None of her business. Probably some wealthy collector, she figured. She’d worked with their type before, people who accumulated rare items just for the sheer joy of owning them. She had no moral opinion regarding such people; they could do what they liked with the serpent—once they’d paid her for delivering it to them. After her nuyen was safely tucked away in her account, she didn’t care if they blew the thing up. It had certainly been enough trouble to everyone connected with it that she would shed no tears at its destruction.
The only loose end, as far as she was concerned, was Winterhawk and his team. When her group had assaulted the Aborigine camp and secured the serpent, they’d reported seeing only two of the others: the decker and the big ork samurai. Winterhawk himself, along with Ocelot and Dreja, were nowhere to be found. Where had they been? Was Winterhawk already dead from the poison? Had they been killed or diverted somewhere along the way? Or had they been off doing something else, and only returned after she and her team had left with the serpent?
She doubted they were following now—how could they be? They’d only left a couple of teammates behind, both dead. She hadn’t known them; in fact, she hadn’t known any of the people her employer had arranged to meet her. Most of them were Aborigines, hard-eyed men and women who kept to themselves and spoke in a language Kivuli didn’t understand when not conducting team business. The other three were shadowrunners like her; Perth natives hired to help with the retrieval, an
d who now traveled with them as well.
Kivuli was looking forward to getting to Sydney and taking her leave of the Aborigines. There was something particularly odd about the group; they gave her the creeps. Maybe it was the way they kept glancing at the backpack containing the serpent when they thought she wasn’t looking.
Only a few more hours and you can go back to Seattle, she told herself, tightening her grip on the pack. Just keep it together until then.
The Aborigines who’d been part of Kivuli’s team were creepy. The ones they met up with to deliver the serpent, she discovered, were stone cold, card-carrying freaks.
The plane landed in Canberra, where they transferred to a high-speed train to Sydney because there wasn’t anyone willing to fly into the city. When they arrived, a VTOL craft met them at the station and delivered them to the top floor of a high-rise just outside downtown.
By the time the craft reached its destination and everyone piled out, Kivuli was ready to chuck the serpent at the nearest person who looked important, collect her cred, and get the hell out. She didn’t know what was going on with these new Aborigines, but they all had the same odd, fanatical gleam in their eyes as the other ones, and they never took their eyes off the bag she carried. Biz was biz, but this whole op was making her skin crawl.
The man who met her was yet another native Australian, this one sporting a thousand-nuyen suit and a slick corp-style haircut. He smiled as she and her team approached, flashing a mouthful of pricey dental work. “So pleased to see you at last,” he said. “Excellent work. May I?” He reached out as if to take the bag containing the serpent.
Kivuli shook her head, gripping the bag tighter. “No way, chummer. This job’s been more trouble than it’s worth, all the way along. You pay up first, then you can take your snake and we’ll get out of your way.”
“Of course, of course.” He pulled out his commlink, tapped something into it, and nodded. “Please verify the amount. I’ve even added a little bonus for the…inconvenience.”