Prowling the stage in a shift that went down to her ankles and hugged her curves, she was wearing a complete set of ancient Egyptian regalia. In her right hand she held what looked like a clay boomerang, which I recognized at once as an Egyptian magic wand. She was pointing it at an electric blue pyramid that was standing in front of her in the middle of the stage, right in front of the cinema screen, surrounded by a circle of burning candles in tall holders. As I watched she continued chanting in a language that sounded a close match to the stuff that Zian had said earlier during his manifestation as the goddess Isis.
I took a quick look at my phone and saw that the doomsday clock was down to eleven minutes. But I had made a fatal error of judgment, for when I looked up again a couple of burly men in Viking costumes were standing immediately in front of me. Before I could pull out my Sig, the nearest one of them had landed a hard punch in my solar plexus while the other one knocked me over the head. My cry of pain provoked immediate responses over the earbud.
“Vale, what’s going on?” Kennedy asked in alarm.
“Bell? You all right?” Zian asked with even greater panic. “Bell!”
I was too battered and out of breath to say anything. As the guards grabbed me and dragged me to the stage, I was thankful that the earbud had stayed in and that neither of the doormen had noticed it. Ten more similar Northern assholes were approaching the stage right behind me and my captors.
Jacinta Galatas looked down at me with a combination of amusement and contempt as her lackeys dumped me at her feet.
“So glad you could join us, Mr. Vale,” she said with a sneer as one of the goons patted me down for weapons. “I was hoping that you could make it.”
I did my best not to betray my despair as the Sig and the explosives pack were taken from me. “I aim to please,” I struggled out.
“Yourself, most of all,” Galatas replied. “Just like nearly everyone else in this restless wreck of a city … it’s far past time for it to be leveled.”
“Why destroy a place that you’re already the mayor of?” I demanded. “What did it ever do to you?”
“To me, nothing,” Galatas told me as her goons hauled me to my feet. “To everyone who has ever come here looking for safety and stability, everything. The balance of this place has marked it as beyond redemption. Today, the balance will be corrected by He Who Rules Below.”
I filed the name away for later reference. “That little title could apply to a lot of the Underworld’s resident landlords. Who did you have in mind?”
Galatas gave me a mirthless grin. “Why tell you when you can meet him yourself in the next few minutes?”
She had a point.
“Your persistence in interfering with my business has been remarkable,” she said. “Even that curse placed upon your new girlfriend barely slowed you down.”
Why did everybody automatically assume that Kennedy and I were seeing each other?
“That was you?” I said, playing for time I didn’t have. “You were the one who put the curse on Kennedy?”
The costumed mayor pulled her head back, plainly impressed. “Very good, Mr. Vale. I admit that, compared to the writing of my ancestors, the Ogham alphabet is child’s play. So was slipping a clerk a piddling bribe to draw the necessary sigil in invisible ink on her pharmacy receipt.”
“And the will o’ the wisp?”
“A holdover from Connor’s incompetent attempts to stop me,” Galatas said with scorn in her voice. “It followed its masters’ wishes long after they stopped being their wishes.”
“Bell, if you can hear me, we’re down to a little over nine minutes,” I heard Zian say into the earbud. “If we want to cock up Her Honor’s bridge between worlds, we need you to take out your pyramid too.”
“Give me some more time,” I said.
“Oh, but you are out of time,” Galatas said, not sensing that I wasn’t talking to her. “I have an old friend of yours who would like to illustrate that point.”
Two of the Viking boys got out of the way as the Berserker entered the circle with one of his trademark growls.
“Not your typical muscle for hire,” she mused, “but he served his purpose well. Watching him chew you up is a bonus.”
I stood, empty-handed, and swallowed as I wished they’d at least left me a weapon.
“My charge is all set,” Kennedy said as the Berserker crossed the stage. “I hit the switch, she’s gonna be pebbles three seconds later.”
“Bell, whatever you’re going to do—” urged Zian.
“Hold off,” I whispered, hoping they heard me. “Got an idea.”
The bear skull-covered head turned to me and rumbled, “Human.”
“Murderer!” I answered back with contempt.
That got me another punch to the solar plexus from one of the Viking goons. I fell to my knees once more but defiance raged in my heart.
“What?” I snapped at the Berserker after taking a ragged breath. “Need one of your groupies to hand out your beatings? Need that junkyard armor to feel like a man?”
I knew I was hitting a nerve when a bear roar bellowed out of his throat.
I pulled the knife from my boot as I got to my feet. “You and me … no back-up, no protection. Just steel in the hand and blood on the floor.”
The Berserker growled his acquiescence, while Galatas snorted and then gave a shrug. As far as she was concerned, me dying wouldn’t get in the way of what was about to happen.
“What the hell you doing?” Kennedy all but yelled in my ear as the stress made her Texan accent thicken to the level of the fog outside.
“When I give the word, blow the pyramids,” I whispered under my breath.
“But we’re down to—” Zian started to say.
“One last chance!” I interrupted as I waited for the Berserker to have his armor removed. “Trust me on this—okay, Z?”
One look at the musculature on my opponent and I wondered if I’d live long enough for my plan to work. His muscles seemed to have muscles, giving his frame the sort of build most people associate with an overdose of steroids. His face may have been human once but there was nothing much left of that with the thinnest of lips, the filed teeth, and the glowing red eyes that lusted for blood. His skin was paler than you would expect, a very pale flesh tone that looked like it was two short steps from pure white. A number of scars ran down it, telling me that he hadn’t always relied on the armor to keep him safe.
One of the Vikings ripped my shirt from my back while another handed the Berserker a vicious-looking dagger. What was left of the bastard’s lips pulled back into a smile. “Now you die,” he grunted.
My Navy training kicked in with a vengeance. I knew I was quicker and more agile than him. I would have to use that. Speed would be my best ally in this fight.
I made a feint at his chest that he fell for. By the time he realized that he’d thrust his knife arm out too far, I’d sliced the inside of his forearm with a quick swipe of my blade. That didn’t seem to do anything except piss him off. He swung the knife at my throat. I just had time to duck under it before ramming my shoulder into his hips to take him down. I’ve run into softer concrete walls. Oh, and he didn’t budge an inch.
I felt a couple of stabs sink into my left shoulder, thankfully not my knife arm. As I went down, I sank my own blade into his right calf and slid it all the way to his Achilles’ heel. With a great bellow, the Berserker went down on one knee.
I was just getting my breath back when he staggered to his feet again and wrapped his arms around my chest. Before I knew it, he had me upside down and then threw me across the stage like a rock from a catapult. I slid across the floor until one of the Vikings at the edge of the circle stopped me with a kick to my wounded shoulder. Somehow, I’d managed to hang onto my knife.
I got back to my feet as fast as I could, then moved to
one side, placing myself out of range while I got my breath back. The Berserker came at me again. I noticed that he was moving a little slower with the leg I’d done impromptu surgery on. That gave me a slight edge, but he could more than make up for it with one blow if I got careless.
“Vale, we’re down to two minutes!” Zian yelled into my earbud. “What in the name of the Styx are you waiting for?”
“The right moment,” I whispered before making a lunge at my weakened opponent.
As I expected, he caught my arm but not before I had dropped the knife into my other hand. I buried the blade in his gut and then repeated the action Jack-the-Ripper style as many times as I could. I got six stabs in before he head-butted me backward, breaking my nose. I was seeing stars when I felt cold steel slice into my flesh again a couple of times in my upper chest. I felt him drive the second blow up to the hilt.
As my vision cleared, I got a too-close-for-comfort view of my attacker’s face with that rictus smile on it. “Die,” he gurgled, leaning in.
But he’d gotten a little too close. My teeth grabbed his wasted lower lip and bit down. He howled as I ripped the thin skin off his face and then drove my knife under his armpit. He in turn trapped my knife hand in his armpit and with his other hand ripped his own blade out of my chest. I bit back a scream as I used my free hand to grab his bull neck to deliver a head-butt of my own. My reasonably hard skull had to hit him four more times before he loosened his grip on my knife hand. I made it hurt coming out; the blade sliced all the way across the armpit.
He pushed me off him. One of the Viking spectators who were howling for their idol to finish me off took a second to push me back in his direction. My head connected with his arm way too hard as he clotheslined me, sending me back to the floor. I spread the force of the impact across my arms as I tucked in my head and slapped out the fall. Then I rolled over and did an ice pick number on the Berserker’s right foot.
I had just pulled my second stab out when he used that foot to kick me like a soccer ball. But this time I was ready for it. I got my legs in position to stop myself before getting to the edge of the ring and lurched back to my feet.
“Vale, it’s happening!” Kennedy yelled at me. “My pyramid’s glowing!”
“Same here,” Zian reported. “Ten seconds left!”
“Wait!” I snarled through the blood in my mouth.
“No!” the Berserker snarled back, his right leg all but useless now.
I was feeling fire from every one of the blows he’d managed to land on me. My chest wounds were throbbing and gushing out blood with every heartbeat. I was starting to feel faint from the blood loss. I shook my head and tried to spot Galatas.
She was just behind the Berserker, going back to her chanting while the rest of her people were distracted by the floor show. I could feel the power thrumming under my feet from the ley lines. Her pyramid was starting to glow too, the energies syncing up.
A bright blue beam flared from the pyramid, scorching two of the spectators surrounding me down to nothing in the space of a second. It made the rest of them back up but the Berserker only had eyes for me as he made another stumbling charge in my direction.
Not sure that I’d even be conscious when I was done, I rolled past his right side and forced myself to get up again. The Berserker was already readying himself to have another go at me.
“Now!” I yelled as I launched myself at his weakened side and latched onto him. I used his momentum to spin him around and then executed a hip throw that sent him flying straight into the pyramid beam. He had just enough time to scream before the terrible force of the ley lines ripped his body into blue smithereens.
I collapsed to my knees on the floor. That superhuman effort had taken everything I had left. I watched the beam falter and wink out like a dying star as I struggled to stay conscious. I was dimly aware that the rest of the Berserker’s fan club had made a run for the exits. But I had eyes only for Galatas and the now useless pyramid in front of her.
“A valiant effort, Mr. Vale,” she said drily. “But far too late.”
The white screen behind her darkened then turned into a swirl of necrotic energy that froze me to the bone marrow. A blind man could have seen the decay, chaos, and outright entropy that was spilling through that dark opening. The Underworld was stretching a clammy hand out to our world.
Somehow I found the strength to lever myself upright. Some trick of muscle memory even allowed me to pick up the knife from where it was lying on the floor. I was half past dead, but damned if I wasn’t going to go out without a fight. Nothing like a little death to make you feel alive.
I could feel a wavering in the Underworld’s energies, like an old-school TV with bad antenna reception. The final pyramid was holding everything together, but it was too much. The sheer strain of keeping an Underworld gate open was more than one charged-up pyramid could handle for long. However, when it came to anything and anyone from across the border, it didn’t need long to do some serious damage …
Galatas didn’t seem to notice me approaching the gate. All her attention was focused on the shadowy figure that was walking toward her from the other side. From what I could tell, it was a man, or looked like one, walking with some sort of staff in his right hand.
The mayor opened her arms in welcome as the shrouded figure got closer and closer. The way she tilted her head back, I could imagine that she was smiling. I wondered if she still was when our mystery man reached forward to jab his staff right into her chest. Two points came out of her back … a bident then. Just as quickly as she’d been stabbed, the bident was yanked back across the threshold. Galatas collapsed on the stage like a puppet whose strings had just been cut with a sword swipe.
Up against that kind of weapon, my little knife just wasn’t going to cut it. I grabbed one of the candleholders and used my blade to knock the candle off it. Then I held it like a Japanese bo staff, dread in my heart over the real possibility that I had just met my match.
At that moment the man on the other side of the gate did something I really didn’t expect … he sighed in exasperation. “What are you waiting for?” he demanded. “Destroy the pyramid!”
His response stopped me in surprise. But then I started hearing the noise made by the nasty things that the Underworld is full of growing louder behind the mysterious figure.
“Hurry!” he commanded, turning to face the incoming creatures. “I will not be able to hold them off forever.”
I didn’t need another invitation. I swung my candleholder at the pyramid with all my remaining might. It bounced off the stone without so much as chipping a single block.
“Dammit!” I whispered as I raised the holder up for another attempt. Before I could bring it back down, however, the pyramid cracked right on the spot where I’d struck it. The crack started to spiderweb, spreading to the rest of the pyramid as though it was an eggshell instead of solid stone. The structure crackled aloud as the stone began to disintegrate and a blue glow started coming through the cracks.
I had just enough presence of mind left to step back before the whole thing exploded. The fragments fanned out like a pineapple grenade, catching my face and raised arms. The gate started to fade away as the energy that powered it was dispersed.
Through some trick of the cross-world lighting, I was able to get a glimpse of the face of the person Mayor Galatas had thought she wanted to see. I had never thought I would owe my life to the regal nightmare Lady McDeath had been visiting when I tried calling her at the start of the case. He gave me a stern but approving nod before he and the gate faded away to nothing.
That wasn’t the only thing that had faded away. I felt my body pitch forward as my own batteries ran dry. I wasn’t even concerned about doing more damage to myself as I saw the floor coming up to me.
Chapter twenty-nine
A job well done
A pair of hands caught
me before I could kiss the floor … Kennedy.
“Goddamn!” she yelled at me as she laid me down and dug bandages out of her supply. “How the hell are you still alive?”
I would have answered with one of my wisecracks if I hadn’t been so wasted. Zian came up and helped apply some iodine that woke me up in a hurry. After they had cleaned my wounds as best as they could, Kennedy covered them with bandages. They spent the next hour letting me recover my strength.
“The Vikings,” I managed to gasp out at last. “They’re …”
“Not a problem anymore,” Zian assured me. “The speed they were running from here, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve already made it back to Valhalla.”
Once they were sure I could travel, they found something to wrap me in, placed my gas mask on my head, and manhandled me to another exit Zian had found near his pyramid.
***
I stayed in my bed until the sun sank and came back up again, and then some. It was hunger that finally roused me up.
I found Lady McDeath waiting on the couch for me. She seemed to be the only person about. She was wearing widow’s weeds, complete with a pillbox hat, a black veil, and arm-length gloves to complement the clingy black dress.
“I believe you dropped these,” she said, holding up my Sig and my knife.
Once it was obvious that I wasn’t going to say anything, she dropped both weapons on my coffee table.
“This matter was sloppily handled,” she said.
I harrumphed as I limped to the kitchen. “You’re welcome.”
“Candice Kennedy now knows about our kind,” she went on, rising from the couch. “And about Alterum Mundum.”
“Well, given the fact that she was a major part in cleaning up you and your pals’ mess, maybe you ought to cut her some slack,” I suggested.
I found a slice of pizza on the counter and wolfed it down. “Besides,” I continued, my mouth full of pizza, “it’s not like we had much of a choice … and we told her the bare minimum.”
Hostile Takeover (Vale Investigation Book 1) Page 25