by Kenny Soward
Elsa fared better than the rest of them, being naturally fluid when it came to physical tests. Her shoulder blades split, releasing her whorchal wings. She leapt and glided, sometimes even floated, her voice laughing in soft, dangerous tones, an evil nymph in a haunted forest.
After three-quarters of a mile, Lonnie’s legs burned with the strain. Bess stopped them at the edge of a tree line where they peered across the Citadel grounds. It was a rear approach with a footpath leading through a long yard, copses of trees and gardens interspersed throughout. A fountain sat near the house.
Several buildings were on fire, including part of the main facility.
An explosion rattled the air from the side they couldn’t see. They caught the bright orange flash and the smoke billowing skyward.
“Damn,” Bess said. “That was one of the fuel depots.”
Lonnie peered through the darkness. Nothing moved out there. “So, what do we do?”
“We have cameras monitoring this field. Not sure if there’s anyone left inside, but I’m thinking we move diagonally. Show ourselves to the cameras.” She indicated several vehicles, a small shack that wasn’t burning, and the obvious garden niches. "Head in that direction."
“Sounds like a plan.”
Bess turned to address everyone. “Tighten it up, but not too much. You heard Jedi. They’ll have automatic weapons and grenades. Don’t give them an opportunity to take us out in a single stroke.”
Lonnie looked at his gang. They were tight lipped and focused.
“Okay, let’s go.”
And with that, Bess jogged the footpath with the nose of her M-16 pointed ahead. Lonnie, Elsa, Selix, and Crash followed, staying spread out without losing sight of one another. He knew the whorchal wouldn’t have a problem given her excellent night vision, but the rest of them didn’t have her eyes.
They met no resistance crossing the fifty yards to the first stone wall. Bess raised her rifle in the air and waved it back and forth, then ducked for cover. The gang followed suit, crouching.
Lonnie’s heart raced, a rush of adrenaline riding the raw wave of his heroin high. He felt the violence brewing despite the quiet. He sensed something waiting for them.
Part of him looked forward to it. They had a promise to keep and a debt to pay. It was more than just holding up their end of their bargain with Bess. It was personal to Lonnie, a chance to get back at the assholes who’d killed the Brit and tried to take them out at Rose Park.
After a minute of waiting, Bess shook her head. “I guess no one’s home. So, we attack. If it moves, kill it, until I say otherwise.”
Elsa grinned. “I like this lady, Lons. So glad you found her.”
Lonnie smiled, catching Bess’s frown, then prepared to run to the next point. Just as they were about to hurtle the short wall, Bess’s phone bleated, vibrating in her pocket.
They hunkered back down. Bess dug out the device and flipped it open, putting them on low speaker.
“Yeah. This is Bess.”
“Bess, this is Steph Lark. I’m going to text you with a confirmation code which I want you to translate into the E21 SEC language.”
“Okay.” Bess’s phone buzzed a second later, and she lifted it away from her face to read the letters and numbers flying across the top. She ran the string through her head and translated it into the correct response.
“The baby bird returns to the nest,” she told Steph.
“Oh, blessed be the Lord. It really is you, Bess. So much as happened—”
“Just give me the quick and easy. Where are you?”
Steph’s voice became pinched and professional. “Right. We hold the control room and are working on restoring communications. It was an all out assault on seventeen ECC locations across the United States and two dozen in Europe and Asia. It took twenty-four hours to reestablish contact with other citadels in the States. Ten of them were unresponsive. The others are in similar positions as us. Calling in agents from the field and re-securing bases. It’s ugly, Bess.”
“Is my father okay? Where is he?”
“Bess…” Steph’s word hung in the air.
“Damn it, Steph. Tell me where he is!”
“Shh. It’s okay. We have him. He’s here. But he’s been wounded.”
“What's the nature of the injury?”
“Oh, in the neck. It's a neck injury. We’re cut off from the medical team. They're pinned on sub-level three.”
“I’m coming now.”
“Bess, we have Alex Rios incoming along with his raiders. I’d advise you to wait for him.”
“What’s his ETA?”
“Thirty minutes.”
“I’m not waiting.”
“Bess—”
“My dad might not have thirty minutes.”
Steph didn’t dispute that.
“Plus, I have help.”
“Who—?”
“Stand by.”
“Wait! Bess. Don’t hang up.”
Bess flipped the phone closed, stuffed it back in her pocket. She bowed her head. Voice low and filled with a flat, unyielding determination, she prayed, “Dear God, I’m not Your fiery sword today, but Your Angel of Death, come to reap a field’s worth of vengeance. Please welcome into Your heart the souls I’m about to set free from their corporeal husks. And please protect those who are helping me today. They’ve been…they’ve been good.”
Bess looked askance at them, into each of their eyes. Lonnie realized, with bemusement, that they were a team now. An idea he would have balked at yesterday.
“You rippers ready?”
Selix nodded, already humming a tune.
“Let’s do this, people. Let’s do it right. Going to be tight.” Crash hopped in his crouch, flexing his hammer fists, even the injured one, in front of him.
“Time to play,” Elsa said, hoisting her M-16.
“Yeah,” Lonnie said. “Let’s fuck `emup.”
Chapter 34
As they descended on the main building, Bess’s heart pounded, her nerves thrumming comfortably. There were a myriad of branching stone paths that led through the gardens, and Bess took the center one which she knew reached the expansive back deck of the Citadel. She put her measured jog on autopilot and used her godsight to flush out any creatures laying in wait. Invoking it while running caused her head to swim, threatening to tip her forward and off balance, but she reoriented, steadying herself. Her vision showed two dark auras in a copse of bushes. She pointed in that direction.
Gunfire met the gang, pieces of leaves and shrubs ripped to pieces by flying lead. Crash angled toward the flaring weapons, his boots plodding off the path and through the mossy loam they used to fertilize the grounds. Head lowered and taking bursts, he plunged into the bushes, throwing up dirt and branches in every direction.
The rest of the gang jogged right, around an expansive section of garden, but the the grunts and crunching of bones from inside the shrubbery continued. Muffled gasps, another gunshot ripped off, and then silence.
As they circumnavigated the massive display of greenery, Crash tore out from the other side, trailing twigs and leaves and pieces of brush (hands covered in blood) rejoining them as they advanced.
Bess glanced at the giant. His forehead had widened, slanted back like the front end of a Peterbilt rig, brow pushed forward over his eyes in a protective mantle. His chest heaved as he brought the slung M-16 to bear, the weapon looking small in his hands. The skin around his puckered wounds glowed.
Silvershard. Poison to fade rippers.
Bess halted the team and fell to one knee, ripping off several bursts from her M16 at a long, black SUV parked near the rear of the building in the grass. Crash followed suit, shredding steel to pieces and sending shadows scattering in every direction.
Up and running again, Bess urged them on.
“Where to?”
“I’m thinking right up to the deck," she called. "We have a couple of options once we get there.”
She refocu
sed on her godsight just in time as a set of four spidery arms reached from the overhanging branches. Bess jerked back. Lonnie ran into her, knocking her forward into those hooked appendages. Crash grabbed hold of two of them before they could grasp her, Elsa snatching the other two, and together they pulled the thing out of the tree where it struck the ground with a crunch.
The dog-sized arachnid flipped and turned and squealed at them, sinking its hooks in wherever it could find flesh. Bess caught a flash of several bulging eyes glaring at her from a sleek, black carapace. Hooked fangs stabbed at her. Panic charged her movements as she leapt back, fearful of being nicked and wondering what its poison could do.
It came apart in an explosion of ichor, Crash and Elsa having yanked its legs off.
The squealing torso tried to crawl away on its remaining appendages, but Crash brought his boot down on its head and the noise stopped.
They continued their assault.
Emerging from the gardens, Bess led them towards the SUV, sprinting until she hit the passenger side door with her shoulder, then falling into a crouch. Another hail of gunfire greeted them, and Bess peeked up to see five figures hunkered at the base of the tall decking, backed by a whitewashed cross-hatch of wooden lattice.
Lonnie gripped his XDS and said, “Elsa,” and popped over the hood of the SUV, providing cover fire for the whorchal. Bess fired around the front of the vehicle while Elsa vanished in a flutter of skirts, billowing sleeves, and the flapping of leathery wings.
Bess knew what was coming next. Was on the same page as Lonnie and his strange and terrible gang. “We charge them in three…two…one…”
Crash circled to the back of the SUV, Selix on his heels. Bess and Lonnie attacked from the front, moving sideways and with enough distance between them to make for harder targets.
Bullets snapped past her head. Several kicked up the turf around her feet. She scored a hit on her target, a thigh shot, then got it in the chest as it collapsed naturally into her sights.
The other enemies jerked as lead riddled their bodies. The swooping Elsa struck one, ripping out its throat out so violently the warm spray of blood reached Bess from twenty yards away. Elsa dragged her dying prey away, face buried into the crook of its neck, feeding briefly before dropping the corpse.
Jesus Christ, Bess thought, saying a silent prayer. It felt sinful to be on their side, but a part of Bess loved the idea. The depravity with which these creatures delivered death. Their absolute cold-bloodedness. She both hated them and admired them.
And they weren’t monsters all the way through. They were loyal and clung to a brutal code. And more than that, her godsight agreed. Bess could only do what she’d always done. Give in to that depravity enough to satiate her bloodlust and ask for the Lord’s forgiveness later. Hope he allowed her to live in His graces once the fighting was done.
“Watch out.” Bess pointed as three beasts dropped the twelve feet to the ground and into the light of the fuel depot still burning. "Ghoulkine."
The one Bess was tracking touched earth and sprung at Elsa. Elsa crooned in a weird, chilling, tone that sent Bess’s skin crawling. A laughing challenge, she realized, as the whorchal unloaded her M-16 into the thing. Set to fully automatic, the magazine emptied in a few seconds. The gray-tufted beast jerked with every hit, its black blood seeming to cling to the rounds as they exited its body, throwing globules and sprays in all directions.
Bess changed targets, put a round in a second creature before it reared on its hind legs, catching Crash as he slammed into it with the force of an economy car doing thirty MPH. It clawed the man’s back as they plunged through the deck lattice, landing somewhere beneath the porch.
Lonnie circled with another ghoulkine, the monstrous thing lunging for him with black razor claws, bulging eyes trying to get a fix on him even as Lonnie brushed the runes of his gun hand, somehow appearing a foot from where he’d just been, firing his weapon, and flashing to a new spot. The ghoulkine huffed its frustration, swiping and diving, rearing again, doing its damnedest to catch him.
Selix lingered behind Lonnie, her humming now risen to a full melody in a slick, eerie language Bess couldn’t quite place. Some war song, but a song of longing, too. A song of defiance in the face of great odds, rising to the heights of devilish glory. It had the essence of a church hymn, reminding Bess of Sunday Mass at St. Benedicts. It filled her with resolve.
The ghoulkine threw its hands over its ears, and Bess put two rounds into it. Lonnie was there with his gun. Jammed it beneath the ghoulkine’s chin and fired, making it rain blood as the three-hundred pound body buckled and fell backwards.
“Fucker,” Lonnie said as it dropped.
Bess heard a cry, and reeled to see Elsa and her ghoulkine tumble into the garden, locked in a death grip.
Shadows flared behind her eyes, and she focused her godsight. More ghoulkine landed on the deck.
“This way!” Bess called out, diving into the gap Crash and his opponent had left.
She lowered her gun as Crash got to his feet above the limp form of the beast he’d tackled, his fist a bloody mess. He'd smashed the ghoulkine's head into a divot in the gravel. Chest heaving, and still favoring his right arm, Crash’s dreadlock-framed visage turned as she approached.
“It’s me,” she said, marveling at the rends and tears the ghoulkine had made in the man’s back and wondered how he was still standing.
Crash nodded.
“We’ve got more incoming. From above us on the deck.”
Crash’s head jerked up, and he followed the footfalls as they crossed above him.
Selix, Lonnie, and Elsa appeared at the gap, and Bess indicated for them to follow. They hugged the house where it went another thirty yards around the back side. She stopped by a storm door, only it wasn’t some old piece of wood or even a thin sheet of metal. No, this was thick steel with two heavy handles and a coded lock system.
“This deck is new,” she explained. “They built it over one of these cellar doors.” Bess opened the lock cover to reveal a glowing green keypad. “Now, as long as they didn't change this.” She punched the number and was rewarded with a click.
She jerked the door open. “Get in.”
The crew took care descending the stairs. Bess let herself in last as more ghoulkine forms filled the gap left in the latticework.
She code-locked the doors behind her and followed them down.
The gang was waiting at the bottom for her, bathed in the red emergency lights. She nodded at Elsa, head lowered and leering with a chin covered in blood, eyes up and burning with a cold, pale green. Wings furled against her back like soft leather. Crash flexed and breathed bullishly while Lonnie and Selix stood in the quiet nearby.
Bess tested her godsight. Nothing there but the pull of evil coming from the upper floors, and some from below.
“What now?” Lonnie said.
Bess walked past them down a short, cement hall. Heard the footsteps of the others as they followed. This wasn’t an old house where things could tear through the foundation and grab them from above or below. Nor could her team blast a hole in the ceiling and climb. No, the Citadel was concrete and brick and steel, so they’d need to find an easier way.
“There’s an elevator at the end of this room. Goes straight up to the third level. My father and the last remnants of command are holed up there.”
“And what then?” It was Elsa’s voice, thick accent gone thicker as she fed her primal blood lust. “Your friends try to put little holes in us?”
Bess reeled on them. Gestured with her gun as if it were her finger. “That will not happen. I won’t let it. I made a promise. They'll have to kill me before I’d let them harm you. Okay?”
Elsa gave a slow nod.
Bess's own conviction surprised her. But she was proud to say it, and mean it, with her entire heart. This was a sorry lot, to be sure, drug addicts and sinners in the eyes of the Lord, yet somehow He had accepted them. He was all forgiving and all know
ing, and Bess was confident that through her godsight He showed her the truth. “Okay, let’s go.”
The cellar was deep and long, filled with a strange mix of supplies and junk. Stacks of old computers the ECC needed to wipe data from before decommissioning. Packs of climbing equipment, military grade flashlights and boots and jumpsuits. Boxes of communion wafers and cases of wine used for the daily masses held on the premises.
Bess searched one of the pallets and pulled out a grappling hook and some coiled rope. She placed the rope on her shoulder and moved to a set of stairs wrapping around an elevator bank. Bess stopped in front of the elevator doors. The lights on the control panel were dark as she’d suspected they would be.
“We could take the stairs, but it's packed with beasts. The elevator shaft is less dangerous, I think.”
Lonnie nodded his understanding.
“The cables will be too slick to climb.”
“Elsa.”
Bess handed the whorchal the rope while Crash moved to the sliding doors and jammed his fingers into the gap.
They rest aimed their weapons ahead.
“Ready,” Lonnie said, nodding to the big man.
Crash flexed his shoulders and pulled the doors apart in one smooth motion, backing away as Bess and Elsa pressed in.
The eerie red glow of emergency lights bathed the elevator shaft. Big bodies clung to the elevator cables. Heads turned their way, hungry yellow eyes boring. Maws yawned from the warped gray faces of ghoulkine, the walls crawling with those spider things.
Bess grinned and opened up with her M-16.
Elsa did the same.
Crash pounded them with lead.
The elevator shaft erupted in a spray of gore. The two ghoulkine clinging to the steel cabling tried leaping out of the shaft, but the hail of bullets tore them to shreds. One of them fell back, arms shot to pieces while its paws still clung to the cables, and dropped. The other howled as it slid down the blood-slicked steel.