by Kenny Soward
Bess tossed her empty magazine, jammed a fresh one in, and resumed firing.
The spider things fared much worse, the shaft now a blender of flying lead. They were destroyed in less than three seconds, coating the walls with sticky arachnid parts and pieces of chitinous shells.
Bess leaned in and glanced upward. A spray of bullets met her, and she jerked back in time to keep her head from being blown off. She grimaced. “Maybe four or five up there. Just your standard gang bangers with guns.”
“Easy,” Elsa said. She handed her M-16 and a spare clip to Crash and repositioned the rope and hook on her pale shoulder. She crouched at the entrance to the elevator shaft. “Cover me.”
Bess took one side, Crash the other. She looked across at him, raising her hand and doing a silent three countdown. On zero, they leaned in and fired. Bess angled the nose of the weapon back and forth as the rounds ripped upward.
The received cries and a token response of gunfire from above.
Another magazine empty.
Elsa leapt into the shaft, not grabbing the slick steel cables or anything else for that matter. Bess thought for sure she’d plummet, but in a miraculous burst of leathery flutter, her wings snapped open, beating to keep her airborne and then shoot her awkwardly, wildly, upward.
There were sounds of surprise. Grunts and screams. Three shots. The cables resonated and shook as something battered against them. The screams rose in crescendo, now panicked howls, strangled things calling out in desperation.
One body went flying by. Then another.
There was a final burst of rounds. A head tumbled by followed by the head’s corpse.
Silence loomed.
There was a light ripple of sound. The coil of rope fell past them, straightened, and hung taut. They leaned in and gazed up. Elsa sat on a beam at the top of the elevator shaft, her lithe body swaying, feet dangling beneath her as if she were sitting on a porch swing on a warm summer evening. The grappling hook was fastened securely around one of the machine beams.
“Come, dearies. Elsa has cleared the way.”
Lonnie chuckled and reached for the rope. Handed it to Selix. “Can you climb?”
The woman looked frail and faded. Her arms were so thin, quivering as she held on. Ever since half turning into a dragon and severing Makare’s tether, Selix had not been the same. Not even close.
She shook her head. “I don’t think I can. I don't feel so good.”
Lonnie put his arm around her shoulders. Took the rope away and gave it to Crash. “It’s okay. Crash will carry you, and I’ll be right behind.” And Lonnie pulled her close and kissed her on her temple.
She nodded. “I can do that. Yeah.”
It was touching the way Lonnie cared about her, and Bess felt a hot flash of shame for all the things she thought about him when they first met in the Under River.
Crash grasped the rope with both hands and squatted. Selix climbed on his back and held on tight. With cords of muscle standing out in his arms and shoulders, Crash left the platform, wrapping his legs around the rope like a pro and ascending with graceful ease, taking Selix with him.
“Ladies first.” Lonnie gestured to Bess.
“Thanks.” Bess didn't climb but remained at the threshold with her eyes locked on Lonnie’s.
“What?”
“Thanks for doing this.”
“Hey, no problem. You were right back at the river. You could have left us but you didn’t. And I, we, will never forget.”
Bess bit her lip, wanting to say something but not sure how to put her feelings into words. How did one explain they’d had a change of heart without going against everything they had ever believed? Complicated, no doubt. Best to keep it simple. She shrugged and gave Lonnie a half smile. “Yeah, I don’t know. I'll probably regret it later.”
“So, let’s do this?”
“Yeah.”
Chapter 35
Bess secured her rifle around her shoulder. Leaned out and clutched the rope, shimmying up to the others gathered at the top. The elevator doors on the third floor remained shut and Bess focused her godsight into the hallway beyond. The entire corridor was thick with shadow, death and monsters on the other side. They’d have to go through it if Bess wanted to save her father.
They should wait for Alex to get here, but she had no idea how he and his crew would take to Bess’s new friends. And how long would the gang's drug-fueled power last? She’d witnessed amazing things in the Under River, but there had to be a limit. And how much longer did Dad have?
With Elsa in the rafters, Crash and Selix clinging above her, and Lonnie climbing from below, Bess said, “There’s nothing but darkness beyond those doors.”
"We can’t hang up here forever, dearie.”
Selix shifted on Crash’s back. If she let go, she’d plummet three stories or more.
“Yeah,” Lonnie said, tension in his voice. Hanging from a rope was no easy task, even for someone with fade ripper strength, and especially if they had no experience climbing. Bess’s own fingers stung with the effort.
“Here, let me.” Crash worked his way down. Bess and Lonnie slid a couple of feet to give the man room. Once in position, he glanced upward. “Elsa.”
The whorchal spun onto her stomach, legs dangling over the void. She slithered down until she hung from her fingertips. Her wings unfurled and flapped, gathering wind. She let go. Caught herself with mad strokes to hover in front of the elevator doors. Wind and leathery webbing struck the walls and cabling, buffeting everyone and causing Bess to turn away. She heard a mechanical click, a whir, and the smooth movement of something sliding on tracks. There was a cry from Selix, and more crazed beating, then the air went still. Bess glanced up to see Crash’s shoulder pressed through a two-foot gap in the doors. Elsa clung from the ceiling once more, this time with Selix in one arm. She must have snatched the dragon voice from Crash's back before he swung onto the platform.
Sounds of gunfire erupted and rounds entered the shaft, yet Crash charged through, disappearing into the hallway.
Adrenaline and emotion carrying her, Bess wrenched herself up the rope, never mind how numb her arms had become from hanging there. She grunted, reached one hand over the other, until her head neared the lip.
The sounds of things smashing and crashing was a positive sign. It meant Crash was alive. Bess wanted to continue up, but she’d be chewed to pieces if she did. She could only wait.
The hail of bullets stopped. At least, the lead flying into the shaft did. Someone in the hall still fired, but it wasn’t reaching them. Bess shimmied up another foot or two, swung an arm over, and grabbed the lip. She let go the rope and clung there swinging her legs back and forth against the wall until she got a boot up and pulled herself through the gap.
She crouched in a long, wide hallway. One she’d walked many times as an ECC operative or sitting with her father as he directed a mission. She knew the staff and facilities well. On the right were minor communications pods, which they could switch to the control room in the event the Citadel was compromised. Like today. On the left were sleeping quarters, two and a half baths, and a chapel reserved for those working extended and demanding OPs.
Ten yards down the hallway Crash had dragged out a metal cabinet from a store room. Bathed in the reddish emergency lighting, he waved her ahead. Bess turned and caught Selix as Elsa swung her through the open doors with rough grace. Selix didn’t complain though, and Bess covered her as they scrambled to Crash’s temporary defensive position.
Bess gave the big man a quick once over, unnerved by his blood-soaked shirt, a huge spot of it forming around his hip. She would have asked about his injuries but knew he'd only shrug and keep going. He was like a tank. Better than a tank.
She checked in with Selix, still tucked under her arm. “You okay?”
Selix nodded, the blue in her eyes still washed out in an ashy color, gray around the edges. “I think so.”
Bess didn’t think so. She looked frail
, a fine piece of china easily shattered by the surrounding violence. Yet she’d also seen Selix’s power, so Bess would never doubt her. Would have dreaded going up against the Eighth Streeters on an OP.
She unslung her rifle, her trigger finger burning with rope friction. Elsa and Lonnie joined them, hunkering behind the cabinet. Bess wasn't sure, but she thought the thing was full of technical manuals, code books, and other random supplies that might absorb the incoming fire. She hated paper documents, but this was one time she thanked the Lord for them.
“Okay. The surviving members of the Citadel are in the control room at the end of the hall. My father is there.”
Crash nodded, turned his gun around the side of the cabinet and fired a burst. “So, just clear it?”
“Yes.”
“Easy enough.” Crash secured his rifle again and bowed his head. He squeezed his hands into fists, swelling with energy, physical force surging through his muscles and bones.
Bess’s eyes stung from the thick smoke. Not fire smoke, but gunpowder. Still, Bess’s hopes rose. Maybe Crash was right. Maybe all they needed was one more thrust.
Something tweaked her godsight, pulled her brain out of reality and into a different focus. She closed her eyes and put her hand against the cabinet, projecting down the hallway.
A single, dark shadow rushed toward them, fast.
Bess rolled backward, raising the M-16's barrel. “Hey—”
Two clawed hands caught the cabinet's edge and threw it aside, smashing it against the wall, knocking a surprised Crash to his ass. Lonnie and Selix tumbled, too, but Elsa stood her ground, arms held out at her sides, fists clenched. Teeth…
Her shoulders suddenly hunched, face turned away in fear of the thing standing there.
It was Krag. All seven feet of him, bare-chested and bristling, eyes a fiery shade of red, teeth bared in a maw extended three or four inches, wolfish and sneering.
“Youuuuu,” Krag said, glaring at Bess, his dark bushy eyebrows forming a deep frown as he reached for her leg.
Bess fired a burst into his chest before her M-16 died, magazine spent.
The whorchal flinched, seeming to remember what happened the last time he’d tangled with Bess. But when he realized these weren’t anti fade ripper rounds, he grinned and reached again.
His smile disappeared as Crash slammed into him from the side, driving him into the wall with a sick crunch. Pinned there, the whorchal used a forearm to catch Crash's jaw and push him away. Then he raised his other arm and brought his fist down on Crash’s shoulder with a heavy thud.
Crash grunted but stayed balanced, his wounded right fist hammering at the whorchal’s mid section.
Krag lowered a second blow that forced a pained grunt from Crash.
Bess raised her pistol, firing at Krag’s head. One round glanced off his temple. Another got him in the throat, but the big whorchal pounded Crash again, sending him to one knee before rending his shoulder with a swipe of razor talons.
Lonnie fired, too, hopefully scoring hits.
Crash jerked away from the wall, pulling Krag with him.
They spun and punched, clawed and grappled, as Lonnie and Bess tried to get a killing shot. Smart, the whorchal kept Crash between them.
Bess took a step right. Fired. Two steps left. Fired. She had to stay out of Lonnie’s way or risk taking one in the head herself. Still, the big sonofabitch wasn't coming down.
In a surge of strength, Crash swung Krag into the metal cabinet and turned the whorchal’s back to them.
Bess emptied her clip, then realized her rounds were worthless. She dropped her weapon. Pulled out the other pistol tucked beneath her belt up front. But then Krag buried his maw into Crash’s shoulder, teeth into flesh. Crash cried out in agony as the whorchal shook his head in an attempt to tear off a big chunk.
Elsa entered the fray with that warbling cry of hers. Her thin, wiry form latched on to Krag’s back, legs wrapping his torso, wings battering the ceiling, one arm around his neck while the other clawed.
Krag jerked his head backwards, smashing into Elsa’s breastbone while tearing meat off Crash.
Something zipped past Bess’s ear, and then another. She hit the floor, eyes glaring down the hall at the flares of muzzles. More flew by, thunking into the elevator shaft.
Someone cried out, and Bess turned her head to see Selix crawling away, holding her side. Lonnie grabbed her arm and pulled her so the steel cabinet was between her and those taking pot shots
Bess fired the last six rounds from the 9mm as options cycled through her brain.
She could rush Krag to see what damage she could do with her knife. She could rush the shooters and hope they didn’t fill her full of lead before she got to them. Or she could help Selix get into one of the side rooms. None were perfect ideas, but she had to do something. They were losing.
Then Lonnie rushed by. She caught his wicked, possessed grin. Knife raised, fingers brushing over the back of his right hand as alien symbols raced across his skin and spread beneath the cover of his jacket sleeves, he zipped up the hallway in a blur, in fits and stops, as if he were slipping and sliding on other-dimensional ice, flashing forward five feet at a time with unique speed, bullets whizzing by where he used to be.
Lonnie would make it to the end of the hall. Carve those poor suckers to pieces. You didn’t stop a man with an expression like that on his face.
Shouldn’t have shot Selix. Idiots.
That made her decision much easier. Bess drew her remaining knife from her boot and charged the whorchal, thrusting the blade into what she hoped was his kidney. She yanked it out. A gout of ichor sprayed the floor. Then she went for the back of his leg, swiping behind his kneecap. His thick leather pants kept the fine edge from biting too deep, but it was enough to partially cut the tendon and muscle.
The whorchal's elbow snapped, catching Bess in the chest and sending her flying.
It happened so fast. She was on her feet one second and then laying on her back the next. Her breathing hitched, heart spasming. Her ribs felt like someone had smacked her good with a two-by-four.
Bess swallowed, clutching her chest. She gasped for air, recalling a prayer, something poignant to carry her into the arms of the Lord. She’d heard people say life passed before a person's eyes before they died, but her only thought was of how she’d failed. Resentment calmed her panicked breathing, and Bess fought unconsciousness as the sounds of fighting raged all around her.
She breathed steady. Rose to her elbow. Saw Crash had Krag bent backward, the whorchal’s knee buckling. Crash’s arms strained taut, as if he were trying to break the bastard in two. Elsa had his head wrapped in a vice grip, talons goring him across the chest, teeth sunk into his cheek and tearing.
Bess rolled over and pushed herself to her knees. Selix rested against the wall, watching with a dazed expression, one hand held over the blossoming spot beneath her ribs, the other clutching her chest.
Bess nodded as if they were friends passing in the street. Selix nodded back, and Bess rose. Drunkenly, she reeled, staggered toward the combatants with her knife raised. She dove at the worchal. Stabbed repeatedly through skin as thick as tough leather. The pile of them moved and shifted, and Bess nearly slipped. Yet, she stayed on her feet, stabbing through muscle and flesh, feeling the blade glance off the monster's bones.
The rest was a dizzy blur. Hands slick, knife sticky, face spattered with warm wetness.
With a desperate cry, Krag toppled backwards, Elsa still on his shoulders. Crash fell with him, shoving Bess hard down the hallway where she skidded to her knees and slumped.
The hall went dead silent. No more gunfire. No more roaring, bellowing beasts. What remained was the sound of her gasps. The quiet sucking of Elsa feeding.
Lonnie lurched toward her, arms covered in blood, dark runes pulsing along the backs of his hands and up his neck and face. He dropped his knife as he walked by, gave Bess a solemn nod, and went to Selix, who’d somehow gotten to her
feet and leaned against the wall.
“Bess?” The question from the distant door. She recognized the voice although it sounded tinny and thin. It was Steph Lark’s voice. Bess got up and staggered down the blood-bathed hallway. At the end, a massive slab of an entryway, marked and hacked where the enemy had tried to penetrate.
Bess looked up into a camera set into the ceiling, spoke at the wall speaker situated near the lock.
“Steph! I’m here. Is my father…?”
“Bess. Thank the Lord. Thank God!”
“It’s me, Steph. I’m with friends. Let me in.”
“Of course, Bess. I’ll send you a text to decode.”
Chapter 36
Lonnie stood before the thick wooden door as the last of his strange rune power faded. He’d made it happen this time, drawn the angled runes for speed and strength across the top of his hand and became a deadly weapon in his own right. It wasn’t some fierce, desperate emotion that had spurred the magic.
Well, not entirely true. After hearing Selix’s cry and seeing her side shot, Lonnie's head filled with blind rage.
But he'd made the runes, like the Master's memories taught. Maybe not all of them. Maybe not the most powerful ones. But enough. He slipped past nipping bullets, feinting so the enemy would miss. The Crucifers, ridge-headed creatures like the ones from Rose Park, drew back in fear as much as the closed space allowed. Trapped, they had little chance. Lonnie knocked one's gun aside and plunged his knife into the man’s throat, hardly registering his gurgling death before he moved on to the next. He found an arm. Grasped it. Twisted the gun from the woman's hand and yanked the appendage from its socket, the woman jerking forward to chew on Lonnie's blade.
There were three more, and Lonnie dispatched each with equal violence. Still, he’d taken a hit or two. His body sung with pain from his hip and thigh. His left side was shaky and weak.