by A. L. Knorr
I understood his frustration, but for all his strength and bluster, he really was a gentle giant. I moved in front of him and reached up to take his face in my hands.
“Hey, no one’s here now, hard case.” I drew his face down toward me. “It’s just you and me.”
He almost surrendered, bending close enough that our lips nearly brushed, but he twisted his head to the side. My mouth grazed his stubbled cheek as he leaned forward to whisper into my ear.
“And soon it will just be me. Alone, again,” he whispered, pulling back to watch the words sink in.
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t pretend,” he grunted, his expression incredulous as he straightened. I let go of him, crossing my arms as I stared up into his face, forcing my expression blank.
“I’m not pretending,” I lied, a keen stab of guilt driving all the way to my heart. I thought I knew what was coming and I didn’t have an answer. “Could you just tell me what is bothering you?”
He cocked an eyebrow, his scowl deepening.
“You mean besides your new boss threatening to have one of his little tin soldiers put me in a hospital bed?” He snarled.
“Yes.” I rolled my eyes. “Besides that.”
Marcus threw himself down on a loveseat, which gave a groan of protest.
“How about the fact you signed up with Marks without even talking to me about it first? And now you’re off chasing danger around the world while I’m stuck in an office-shaped prison.”
I glowered. “I don’t need your approval to do anything. You don’t own me, Marcus.”
Marcus sat up sharply, his mouth hanging open in a way that just made me want to smack him. He made an outraged scoffing sound in the back of his throat.
“I may not, but TNC does now. Don’t they?” he shot back, the words sharp and hot.
“That’s a choice I made,” I spat, desperate to say something to drive off the sting of his words. “And you have to get used to me making my own decisions; otherwise, we aren’t going to last long.”
The implied threat had the desired effect as I watched Marcus’s anger turn to fear, but it wasn’t gratifying in the least. Instead of triumph, I felt sick, and rather than feeling strong, I felt ready to crumble. Regret moved in, hard and fast.
“Marcus … I …”
What was it about romance that robbed a person of the basic ability to communicate? My heart throbbed painfully at the look on his face, a look I had put there. My mouth went dry and words wouldn’t come. Why was it so difficult to apologize?
Marcus held up a hand, quieting my floundering, before turning it to squeeze at his temples.
“Ibby,” he began in a sad, weary voice. “I’m not trying to control you or own you. I … I love you too much for that. But when you signed that contract, you signed me up too. That’s what being in a relationship is, sharing things, sharing life. I just wished we could have talked about it.”
Another needle of guilt. He wasn’t wrong. Even if he had considered leaving me to face Ninurta and Winterthür alone, he couldn’t go back to his old life. The enemy had seen him. He was bound to me now, like it or not, and though I’d made the choice for his benefit, I’d made it without him.
“I’m sorry,” I croaked, looking down. My cheeks felt warm. “I should have talked to you; it’s just… I feel like things are building. Even before learning Ninurta had awoken—”
Marcus muttered a low, vicious curse.
I blinked with surprise before I realized why… I’d forgotten to tell him about what happened in Fes. Damn it.
“I’m sorry, I was going to tell you.” I put my hands out. “It’s just that things have been moving so fast.”
Marcus waved off the apology and then bent over and held his head in his hands.
“So that’s what you found out in Morocco?” he asked. He dropped his hands between his legs and looked up, misery etched into his features. “That Ninurta is awake?”
“Sort of.” I shrugged, not having the time or the energy to go the sorry details. “It wasn’t proof so much as hearsay, but I just know it’s true. I can feel it.”
Marcus nodded and I loved him for the simple, trusting gesture that said he believed in me.
For a moment, the conversation hung there, caught on the inescapable dread we both felt. Ninurta awoken meant, as best either of us understood, apocalypse cometh, and the end is nigh. Standing in the wake of that moment, it seemed appropriate to share a moment of silence.
“So that’s what’s next then,” Marcus sighed, his voice catching and cracking softly. “You’re going demigod hunting with the goon squad.”
I almost laughed but then something hit me like a brick-hauling lorry.
What if we faced Ninurta tomorrow? The speed with which everything happened, combined with Stewart’s dismissiveness, had driven the terrifying thought out of my mind, but what if Ninurta was there in Iraq? There was some underlying assumption that he was out converting Winterthür operatives, but maybe not. What if they came to him? What if I was literally walking into the lion’s den with a crotchety old bully who wanted to keep me side-lined?
My knees turned watery as I fought back a shiver.
“I guess so,” I said, unable to keep the quiver from my voice. Suddenly, my chest felt tight and I struggled to draw a deep breath.
Before I knew what was happening, Marcus had risen and scooped me up in his arms.
“Hey, hey, Ibby,” he muttered softly as he drew me against his powerful chest. “You don’t have to go tomorrow. You can stay, stay here with me.”
There in his strong arms, feeling the pulsing warmth of his body next to mine, that was exactly what I wanted to do. Just stay. My contract had formalized it--all operations were voluntary. That meant I could bail even now. Stewart didn’t want me anyway.
But… if Ninurta really was awake and in Iraq, I was the security team’s best hope, no matter how meagre that hope was.
“I have to go.” I sobbed into his neck. “I know it sounds crazy and stupid, but I’m an Inconquo. I have to go.”
“It’s not stupid,” he breathed against my cheek, but I felt disappointment soft his frame. “It’s part of why I love you. But if you have to go, then I should go with you.”
“They won’t let you.” I pressed myself against him, hungry for his willing strength and warmth.
In response he drew me even closer, tightening those arms around me.
I knew that wouldn’t be the end of it. I could practically feel him thinking, shifting through ideas and options like a dealer shuffles a deck of playing cards.
But at least for the moment, we were together.
Five
“Your boy’s got stones; I’ll give ’im that.”
Stewart’s expression made it clear that he was a far way from being truly impressed.
We were en route to Iraq, TNC’s plane chasing the dawn as we coasted over what might have been Turkey.
“What happened?” I cringed waiting for the answer.
I’d fallen asleep in Marcus’s arms on the loveseat and woken alone in my bed as my alarm went off. I hadn’t seen Marcus as I left and didn’t want to wake him if he was sleeping in his room.
“Came to my quarters,” Stewart said with a slow shake of his head. “Woke me up.”
“Oh, boy.” I rubbed a hand over my eyes.
“Stuck my service pistol in his face,” Stewart grunted. “Explained with some choice phrases how I didn’t appreciate the interruption. Didn’t have a round chambered of course, but don’t s’pose he knew that.”
For a moment, I gaped at what he was describing, trying to convince myself that the thrum of the engines had confused my ears.
Stewart continued. “Boy didn’t even flinch. Rare for a civilian.”
I took a steadying breath, reminding myself that I was part of a hierarchy now, one I was just getting to know. The long looks the sergeant was giving me gave me no illusions as to what this was: a
test. Unintentionally, Marcus had provided Stewart with the perfect opportunity to see how I handled it when my superior did something I didn’t like.
“Then what happened?” I asked, flattening my expression and tone.
Stewart nodded incrementally, and I dared to hope there was the barest hint of approval there.
“Told me he would be comin’ on a mission someday, but until then, I better treat you like any other member of my team. You’d earned that much, he says.”
I’d braced myself to not display emotion. But what Marcus had asked of the stoic old soldier: he understood what I really valued, and in his own blunt way he’d tried his best to see it done.
Something might have blurred my vision, but I blinked it away. Clearing my throat, I held his gaze. “And what did you tell him?”
“To get stuffed, obviously,” Stewart stated mildly. “I’m not going to treat some tourist as anything but what they are. Magical powers or not.”
I sighed, leaning back against my seat. “Glad we cleared that up.”
---
After being redeployed from a hidden airfield by helicopters, we crept along low hills until we reached the rocky cliff face; the entrance to the compound. The round portal had two peeled wings of metal around an opening a person could easily step through.
“Sarge, this nut’s been cracked,” someone observed, obviously disappointed that we didn’t need the breaching charges.
A corrupt, cloying smell wafted ominously from the gaping entry.
Several of the team stole glances in my direction before entering. Over the radio I heard soft curses and even a muffled gagging sound.
Once Hadlynne and I entered, we understood why.
It was an utter slaughterhouse. If I’d thought the carnage in Fes had been bad. Bodies were strewn from one corridor to the next. Flickering fluorescents revealed one example after another of exactly how people could die, and we had to wade through the miasma of their graceless decomposition.
Through it all, beyond what mortal sense could provide, a putrid tenor resonated across my metallic sense. A creeping unease stole over me.
Something squelched under my boot, and my stomach twisted violently. Two steps later I was sick.
Since realizing my Inconquo heritage, I had all to quickly been exposed to too much violence, too many bodies. Sitting in a lecture hall back at the university, surrounded by lively, healthy students had been my daily reality not that long ago. My greatest concern then had been making good grades and dodging Adrian Shelton. My daily reality now was a far cry from what it once was and it filled me with a longing to go back in time. I’d take Adrian Shelton over this, any day. I might slowly become desensitized to the death of others, but I wasn’t there yet. In some small corner of my mind, I didn’t want to desensitize to it. Horror at the pain and murder of other people was part of being human.
Shuddering, I straightened and took a drink of water from my camel pack, swishing out my mouth. I might have been more upset about losing it in front of the team, but I’d heard some of them sharing the ignoble experience with me.
“We’re a little late to the party,” Stewart grunted as he trudged on, sounding as stoic and unflappable as ever, but the blood drained from his face as we moved deeper into the compound.
“Most of these died fighting,” Bordeaux said, nudging a tangle of assault rifles whose barrels had been twisted together. “Or at least they tried to.”
We moved down a series of metal stairs set into the stony floor and came to a rectangular room whose far wall encompassed a large vault-like door that had also been ripped open. The curls of metal spiralling out from the door were made of welded sheets of metal thicker than the breadth of my hand. That much metal could have put even our unused breaching charges to the test, but it had done the people inside no good.
“What the bloody hell can do something like this, Sarge,” one of the team asked, his voice barely audible in horrified wonder.
I turned to see the muscles in Stewart’s square jaws hard at work, grinding up one unspoken explanation after another. He must have felt my eyes on him because his gaze snapped over to me and narrowed with suspicion.
“Is this Ninurta?” He spat the name, as though he didn’t like the taste and wanted to expel it as quickly as possible.
“I don’t think so,” I said, and then seeing his waiting glare added, “it feels familiar in an unpleasant way. Give me a moment.”
Closing my eyes and letting my metallic sense broaden and deepen, I blocked out all other auras and drew on the cords which rose from the huge door.
I was staggered by the potent and utterly rancid presence that filmed the metal door. The unease that had been encroaching on me with every step into this abattoir swelled into a sickening certainty that I did indeed know this particular blend of corruption. It had been over a year since I’d felt its consuming, volatile touch, but in such potent quantities, I couldn’t mistake it for anything else.
“It’s Kezsarak.” I felt my soul grow heavy as I uttered the name.
The fused rings on my fist pulsed with a pugnacious sympathy, remembering the old enemy.
“Wasn’t that a demon?” Bordeaux asked, his eyes searching the ruins. “I thought they were trying to raise some kind of demigod or sorcerer-king.”
“They were.” Stewart pointed back towards the entrance. “But this looks like someone goin’ out, not comin’ in. The evidence suggests gunfire going outward. Poor bastards were holdin’ the line as the devil walked among ’em.”
A grim silence followed and I felt a pang of pity tug at my heart for the men who’d made this desperate stand. I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened when Sark had taken the cube containing the ancient demon. I’d been brained from behind only moments before it had happened, so my recollection was unsteady. More than what I saw, I remembered feeling multiple wills being bound together even as they tore and twisted from each other. I feared the worst, but voicing only ill-bodings seemed less than helpful. The soldiers were on alert, that would have to be enough.
Stewart signalled the point team inside while the rest took up defensive positions, some facing in, some facing out. I hunkered in a rocky alcove next to Hadlynne, whose main attribute besides a hefty crop of dark freckles, was his determination to be supremely laconic. The man wouldn’t use two words when one would do, and if he could get away with none, all the better.
I ground my teeth as the point team swept the deeper points of the compound. Waiting there in the stale, refuse-sodden air was agonising enough, but fearing at any moment the world might explode into bloody violence was nearly unbearable. My senses straining, I could only hear the occasional rustle of a nearby team member or the tread of those moving in the rooms beyond.
“Initial entry cleared.”
I flinched as the words came through my earpiece.
“Central, proceed,” Stewart growled. “Rear-guard, hold.”
Hadlynne and I were just about to move from our position to join the central group when there was a snarled curse over the headset and a burst of weapons fire within the vault-like chamber.
“Contact!” a voice bellowed, and a high pitched shriek tore through the air. The subhuman sound set my teeth on edge and my skin prickled up into gooseflesh.
Half-formed visions of what new horror waited on the other side of the door materialized in my imagination, but as quickly as the shooting and screaming had started, it stopped.
“Bordeaux?” Stewart demanded in a low, rumbling voice.
There were a few more curses, these muttered, and then what sounded like someone sobbing.
“Clear, Sarge,” Bordeaux reported, and then with obvious irritation added, “we’ve got a non-hostile survivor.”
You could feel the exasperation in Stewart’s tone as his commands went out again.
“Central, resume. Rear-guard, hold.”
Passing through the rent portal, disgust rippled through me at the oily skein of the demon’s p
sychic residue. I made sure to steer clear of the edges, not simply for their sharpness, but so that I wouldn’t touch the filth that threatened to overwhelm my metallic sense.
Inside this central chamber was a long rectangle whose sides sported multiple doors to other passages. The far wall was a massive sheet of smoked glass or tinted plastic. The stuttering light made it glisten like a wall of seething black ice. Standing a few feet from this peculiar wall was Bordeaux’s point team. Most had taken positions to cover the room’s many points of access, but the fireteam leader stood with another soldier, rifles across the chests, looking down at a ragged form pawing at their feet. The blubbering noises were from the wretched creature on the floor.
Central fireteam moved to take positions in support of the point team, but taking a little initiative, I moved to the back toward the survivor. Hadlynne followed.
“Please … please, before it comes back,” he whined in a wheedling voice. A Brit by the sound of it. His clothes weren’t just mussed and torn, but filthy.
“Care to explain what all the shooting was about?” Stewart asked as he faced his men, ignoring the wretch mewling at their feet.
“He attacked me,” the other soldier offered with a shrug. A specialist who I thought was named Dalal or Dalel or something.
“He hugged you,” Bordeaux corrected, his voice flat.
“Same difference,” Dalal shrugged again. “Especially with him smelling like that.”
“I’m sorry, s-s-so sorry,” the man panted, pawing at the men’s boots. “I was j-just so happy to see you. I’ve been hiding for days and d-days.”
The man had begun to tremble, his frame shivering inside his ruined suit. He’d left off pawing at the soldier’s feet, much to Dalal’s relief, and wrapped his arms around himself. He began to rock on his knees, bending his head to bite down on the arm of his stained coat. Even through the fabric, I could hear a pitiful whine sliding between his clenched teeth.
“He was in the room?” Stewart asked, looking at the man for the first time.