“The fanger library?”
“More of a museum—”
“We’ll argue Webster’s when those two abominations are exhibits in hell, Doc.” He swung his light up and down the walls and along the tunnel ahead. “Besides, this doesn’t look much like a museum or a library does it?”
She studied the glyphs more intensely, willing her heartbeat to slow, and the contents of her stomach to stay put. Could she have made a mistake?
“Colonel,” said the soldier who’d called them to the stone. “I think these are hinges.”
Corinne and the Colonel looked close at the cracks along one side of the rock. They were well disguised, but not perfect. For the first time, Corinne saw a smile flicker at the corners of his mouth.
“Demolitions,” he barked and stepped aside for the soldier carrying the explosives.
Kusuma glided down like a snowflake of claws. Arms extended, fingers weaving the air currents as they whipped her black hair away from her porcelain features. Green light shimmered from the floor of the chamber far below where blocks of crystal, each lit from within with ethereal light, formed ever-expanding concentric rings.
These modern humans had built such structures in their past but never so large or so deep beneath the earth. Directly below the entrance to the chamber on a bare patch of earth, writhed her companion. His moans and hisses echoed in the chamber, his thoughts likewise in her head. Pain twisted through his body as he forced himself to heal. Even from so far above, she could see scorched skin through the holes in the smoldering folds of his robes. His once beautiful hair hung in bloody patches from his charred scalp.
Fool.
Sensing her thoughts of disapproval and disgust just as she’d heard his, his protests stopped. He pushed himself into a sitting position. “Indeed, Kusuma? Am I?”
“They have grown wise, Svaacha. And strong.” She landed next to him, the thickened air dissipating in a gush.
Skin quivered across a tear in his cheek and his bones cracked into place as he winced and pushed his limbs into their correct positions. He straightened his tattered robes, patting out the last of the embers. To fully heal would take days.
“Time we may not have,” said Kusuma.
“I know this.” He bared his fangs and raised an accusing, claw-tipped digit toward her. “You must help me if we are to survive.”
“I fear our time—our world—is over, Svaacha.”
“I will not accept that. There are only seven more of them and, with your assistance, we can take them easily.” We have to survive. We are the last.
“There are seven outside this chamber, yes, but seven billion still above. Do you think no others know of us? They sing songs, write stories, entertain themselves en masse with movies of us. Do you think they will ever stop?”
“If we work together—”
You are a fool.
“So when I beat them back like the vermin they are, will you just travel to some other corner of the planet and build another reliquary?” He swept his arms wide. The slabs of crystal flared in response, revealing shapes suspended within; a menagerie of those long extinct.
“We must be remembered, Svaacha. We have walked this world, soared high in its firmament, feeding deeply on its bounty for ages. That must not be forgotten.”
In a flash of fluid movement, Svaacha closed the distance between them, his long fingers clamping around her neck and lifting her into the air. Kusuma slashed at his throat, spinning and kicking in a fan of brutal blows, sending Svaacha reeling back and landing hard against the stone floor.
Blood dripping from her own fingers, she snarled. Do not make this about me. “You brought this upon us.”
Svaacha dabbed at the fresh slashes in his throat. “I admit my mistake, I do. Surely you must see my cause is the right one now and yours idealistic folly.” He coughed, droplets of blood spraying from his mouth and holes in his neck.
Kusuma strode away toward an intricately carved crystal dais, a break in the ring of monolithic slabs. “What I have done is so that we might be remembered.”
“And I, so that we might live.”
“At what cost? What you have created is an abomination.” She spun from the dais, raising a clawed finger at the capstone entrance, the peak of the hemispherical chamber. “Do you really doubt the outcome here? You and your sermons of harmony and balance—yours was the only folly.”
“That is not fair. My logic was sound…”
“There were too many of us, you said. The ecosystem could not support us all. But the ecosystem was fine.” Kusuma looked at her own outstretched hands, fingers poised to strike again. The rage boiled in her gut, nature screaming in her mind to strike. Her muscles tensed, responding automatically to the smell of blood dripping from her fingers and pooling around Svaacha.
Our time is over. Her own words echoed in her head. Lowering her hands, she gazed at the monoliths. “Nature culls itself, Svaacha.”
The male asra’pa hung his head, his voice a whisper. “Not fast enough.”
Kusuma knelt at the dais, fingers tracing over glowing symbols. The air convulsed above in a deafening blast and Svaacha rolled aside as chunks of stone smashed to the floor.
“Kusuma, please, let us end this,” he coughed, but she didn’t answer. He bared his fangs at her huddled form before turning his gaze upward. The stone cap to the reliquary was blasted completely away. Waves of heat oozed through the hole as the humans moved about, their voices no more than the chattering of monkeys. A metalized rappelling line dropped through, then a second, uncoiling like eager snakes preparing to unleash their venom. Svaacha shrieked his hatred to the distant sky and rose into the air, gaining speed. Long, boney fingers snapped open, ready to release the blood from the invaders’ puny bodies.
An orb the size of a head fell through the opening, glistening like a jewel.
“Fire in the hole!”
Corinne dove away from the opening. The cave lit up like the brightest day, white light streaming upward through the hole as the sunburst grenade the Colonel had tossed down did its work.
Ears still ringing, Corinne took the rare opportunity to glare at the Colonel through the smoke and dust. “A little more warning would be nice…sir.”
“Lousy fangers. Soon as we blasted the hatch off, I could see both of ’em standing down there. Then one took off—coming right for us. Would’ve been here in seconds, only now we’re playing by my rules, aren’t we? It’s been a long night, but here comes the sun.” His face was stern and emotionless, making his sometimes-campy comments more maniacal than humorous. He kicked aside the empty carrying case for the spent sunburst grenade and offered her a hand.
Kneeling at the opening, Corinne’s jaw dropped in astonishment. Green light shown through as if she were staring through night vision equipment. Great concentric rings formed by chunks of roughly rectangular glass or stone surrounded a central clearing—like an etheric mandala, or an endlessly entwining Celtic knot. She couldn’t tell how big the rings were or the individual stones they were comprised of. Without something familiar in the scene, the distance to the floor was equally ambiguous. The bottom of the chamber could be a hundred feet below or a thousand. How long had the stones taken to strike the floor? Five seconds? Ten?
Formulas ticked by in her head. Ten seconds would be a drop of fifteen hundred feet. The individual stones must be yards on a side.
Incredible.
“Would you get a load of that,” said the Colonel. “Looks like one of those crop circles or—what’s that pile of rocks in England?”
One of the other soldiers leaned over the hole. “Stonehenge, sir. Only this one’s on steroids.”
The Colonel grunted his approval and turned to his remaining team members. “I need fresh lines dropped. Sunburst charge probably burned the temper out of these when it took out that flying fanger.” With the release of two catches, the metalized rappelling cables detached from their anchoring pitons, snapping over the lip of the hole li
ke angry whips.
Striding to his fallen comrades, the Colonel placed a hemacite-treated bullet in each of their chests and snatched dog tags from around their necks. Seconds stretched as the chemical coating each round reacted, first boiling then burning the remaining blood in their bodies—a precaution against the victims’ possible rising. No one had ever observed asra’pa victims returning from the dead but the legends were filled with enough references and the military was taking no chances.
The air surrounding them all was a mixture of icy cold and gouts of misty white as they breathed. A smell like burning meat rose from the corpses and Corinne locked onto the clenched jaw of the Colonel, fighting the tremors in her limbs and the urge to look at their sinking features. The Colonel’s face was impossible to read as he lingered over each body in the uneven lighting, but his unyielding determination was not.
She wanted to say something—for him to say something. Shouldn’t they honor the fallen? “I want to be on the ground in two mikes. You two get Betsy set up. If this is the only way out, and I’m betting it is, I don’t want anyone—or anything—getting out without my written consent…in triplicate.”
Fighting back a sob, Corinne gathered her gear. If they couldn’t survive…
The two soldiers unpacked several large bags and began assembling Betsy. Corinne didn’t remember what the actual acronym stood for, but Betsy was a heavier version of the UV laser rifles, only Betsy was tripod mounted and automated with high-speed tracking. Once they descended, the weapon would be lowered just inside the hole and toast anything in its database flagged as hostile, which included every known profile and configuration of the asra’pa.
Corinne closed her eyes as the rappelling harness did its job, lowering her for what seemed like minutes to the floor of the chamber. Charred metal fragments from the sunburst grenade crunched under her boots as she touched down.
Unclipping from the cable, she took in the scene and gasped. The dome-ceilinged chamber was massive, with distant walls encrusted in crystals and carved stone shapes, all interconnected by a maze of pipe and conduit. A ring of glassy monoliths, the smallest over six feet tall, surrounded her, their cracked and pitted surfaces lit from within by an eerie light that made her skin warm but her spine icy cold. In the gaps, she could see the next ring of monoliths, and so forth. Endless. A dark shadow hung in one of the blocks reminding her of a mosquito caught in a chunk of amber. Only this mosquito was as big as a person and roughly the same shape. She looked at other slabs, trying to focus into their translucent depths. Most contained similar figures.
The Colonel grabbed her shoulder and pulled her out of the way. She stumbled through the tangle of abandoned cables as another soldier zipped downward to a stop.
She opened her mouth to thank the Colonel, but stopped, caught in his glare. “I need you focused, Doctor. Cold as ice inside. You cannot—I repeat—cannot be going all nerd-girl orgasmic over anything. Anything. We’re here to do a job. You’re here to do a job. Kill first. Study later. Clear?”
Her face burned and she was glad the only light in the immense chamber was green. “Yes, sir.”
“Only one left, Doc. See if you can find anything helpful in the scribbling.” He pointed to the intricate scrolling of asra’pa symbols etched into the surface of the dais and similar marking on the nearest of the monoliths.
Static popped in their headsets on the common channel. “Colonel, this is Strade. I found the body of the male, sir. Burned to a crisp…wait, sir. He’s moving—”
Light flashed in the distance, sending bands of black shadow dancing in disorienting patterns. Automatic weapons’ fire joined the sensory explosion, reverberating amongst the stones, mixed with human screams and other-than-human shrieks.
A flurry of uniforms bolted in the direction of the fracas. The Colonel was living motion, shouting terse coded commands to his people as he made ready his own weapons and followed them into the maze. Corinne stood motionless in the clearing, terrified. She was only vaguely aware her hands were moving. One fumbled with the catch on her sidearm holster as the other tugged at the sling of the UV laser slung across her back.
Alone in the clearing, she drew up inside as the sounds of death raked at her ears. Flashes of light strobed from the forest of monoliths like a fireworks show viewed over a hilltop from too far away.
She shuddered, confused by the unbidden tears and the dread clenching in her stomach like a fist. Hands shaking, she raised her pistol in the direction of the latest battle. Long, pale fingers draped across her weapon as a shadow stepped between her and the fight.
The scream froze in her throat, her eyes tracking up from the claw-tipped fingers staying her hand—fingers with too many joints; thin and misshapen like the legs of spiders or deep-sea creatures. Her heart thudded, slowing as the blood thickened in her veins.
Another hand cradled her chin and lifted her face. The asra’pa female was seven feet tall, her face unblemished and angelic like fine marble. Black hair swayed around her perfect features as if underwater. Her eyes were bottomless pools of black, tugging at Corinne’s every fear, every dream.
I’m going to die.
Her muscles slackened and she heard her gun clatter noisily to the stone floor.
Svaacha, hear me.
The twisted remains of her fellow asra’pa lay scorched to a near featureless cinder at the base of a burned and gouged monolith. Kusuma edged along the adjacent monoliths in a symphony of movements. Lightning fast one instant and ponderous the next—each perfectly choreographed to bring her closer and closer to her fallen companion without detection. She was close but still he did not respond. Perhaps she was too late.
A single human male stood a few paces from the fallen asra’pa. His weight shifted slowly from one foot to the other, eyes darting from shadow to shadow but unable to detect her approach. He reeked of blood and sweat, the meaty smell of an animal. In the past, on those rare occasions when she’d hungered for weeks without sustenance, she’d wondered. Could Svaacha be right?
Straining her senses, Kusuma heard the other humans as they continued their systematic search of the reliquary. The whisper of low-friction synthetic fabrics crinkling and metal parts, machined to exacting tolerances and well lubricated, rattling against one another. They’d not expect to find her so close to the central clearing and certainly not with the abandoned body of her fallen comrade. Soon they would find the human woman where she lay on the dais, as Kusuma had left her.
Kusuma?
Every spark of energy in her body firing in unison, she flew into motion, tearing across the open space to the human. Her fingers clamped around his skull before his pupils had time to dilate in her shadow. Her free hand ripped the weapon from his grip, preventing it from dropping noisily to the stone floor. With a twist, she pulled his head from his body. Arterial blood sprayed from his neck like a fountain, coating her face. Kusuma dropped to her knees beside Svaacha, pulling the human corpse along with her and directing the flow of blood to his burned remains. Motes of ash sizzled upward where the blood touched charred flesh.
“No.” Svaacha’s voice crinkled, brittle like old paper. He reached out a fingerless hand, the skin of his arm cracking and falling away in chunks. “You were…”
Silence, dearest Svaacha… She squeezed the corpse’s torso, milking blood from the severed neck.
Svaacha writhed on the ground, struggling to move away. “You only prolong…my suffering. I surrender my failure…to the ages…” The remnant of an incinerated arm twitched in the air. Crystals studding the domed ceiling of the reliquary began to glow and the smell of ozone grew in the air. We will go, yes, but we will take them with us.
“No.” Kusuma tossed the body aside and took Svaacha’s arm in both hands. Immediately the light growing in the crystals faded. “I have sent them a message. They can understand. They must understand.”
You were right, you know. Svaacha convulsed. “First was my folly…that we matter…”
“Q
uiet, dear Svaacha.”
…And now yours…that they do.
Human sounds reached her, controlled breaths and pounding hearts, giving way to shouts and running as they abandoned stealth for speed. The clatter of equipment ricocheted around the chamber as they discarded all except what they needed to set a perimeter and fight. They had found the female and were attempting to revive her. Kusuma looked at the only escape from the room, the apex of the chamber. Black metal and light swiveled there, just below the lip of the blasted hole. She could hear the whine of charged capacitors and excited waveguides. The energy needed to disperse her own image from the machine’s sensory components was minimal at this distance, but there was no way she could approach it without suffering a similar fate as Svaacha. But she had decided on another path.
The humans were a fatal blight on the asra’pa. A disease she and her kind had brought on themselves. Evolution was a tricky god and no species should wield such power. If only Svaacha had realized that truth.
She felt only the coldness of stone and time from him now as his thoughts faded in her mind, millennia unraveling with each passing instant.
…Until…nothing…remains.
Kusuma placed her hands on him, his body crumbling beneath her fingers. “I will remember you, Svaacha.”
I know…
Waves of green water lapped at her skin and she floated. Darkness moved around her just beyond sight, massive shadows poised to strike…
Pain flashed across her face and Corinne gasped in a lungful of frigid air, sitting upright. The Colonel was still lowering his open hand from the blow and she resisted the urge to strike him in return.
“Are you alright, Doctor?” His voice was wary and she noticed his other hand gripped his sidearm. Directed at her.
Both Barrels of Monster Hunter Legends (Legends of the Monster Hunter Book 1) Page 24