The Lamb tilts back his head and unleashes a bleat that sounds like sadistic laughter, as if he’s pleased by the falling building. They’re stomping through the financial district. Maybe the Lamb hates Wall Street as much as the next guy. As evidence of that theory, he uses Liberty’s flailing form like a club to batter another building into rubble.
I can’t just stand here and watch this. I don’t know where Halo fell, but I have to try to find her. There’s a big shaft just ahead of me, what’s left of the staircase that used to go up into Liberty’s body. I slip and slide across the bloody rubble, then make a jump for the nearest intact step, a good six feet down. I land less than gracefully but pull myself up and start racing down the steps three at a time.
I find Halo near the bottom, midway to the first landing, crawling. Carrying the bolt hasn’t been good for her health. The voluptuous succubus I met earlier is now little more than a skeleton. Her skin, once creamy and translucent, is now charred and crispy, falling off in big flakes, revealing a good chunk of her skull.
“You…missed…” she gasps, as she lifts the bolt.
I grab the missile. “Won’t happen again. For one thing, I’ve lost the crossbow.”
“Great,” she says.
“It’s not important,” I say as I get my shoulder under her arm and help her limp out of the building so we can get a view of what’s going on. “With this wind, I’d never make the shot. We need a helicopter or something, some way for me to get above this thing. I’ll jump down and stab him.”
“How…heroic,” she pants.
“Just desperate. Baby’s getting her ass kicked.”
Halo nods. “Prophecy’s hard…to shake. At least we know…she won’t be fighting alone.”
“For all the help we’ve been, she might as well be alone.”
“No.” Halo shakes her head. “There I saw a woman…sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names…and had seven heads and ten horns.”
“Um,” I say.
“Revelations 17:3.”
Just then, there’s a howl from the other side of the statue’s base. I turn the corner to see the Lamb staggering backward. He’s on fire again. Jets of what look like lava splash against his torso. I strain to find Baby amid the destruction. Their battle has left half of Manhattan flattened. I wonder where she is.
Finally, I spot her. She’s in the sky, riding a dragon with a wingspan so wide the tips disappear among the clouds of smoke. The scaly thing has seven long necks, like a hydra, with its dragon mouths spitting geysers of molten brimstone at the Lamb.
“Is that—”
“The great dragon,” says Halo. “He has the most to lose if the Lamb wins. If he loses this battle, he’ll be cast in to the pits of hell for all eternity.”
“I don’t think he’s going to lose,” I say. As big as the Lamb is, the dragon is bigger. The creature lands amid the ruins of Manhattan, bracing himself on legs the size of sequoias as he sinks his teeth into the Lamb’s charred flesh. Baby is blasting the Lamb with dazzling beams of light, blinding him. In his agony, the Lamb stumbles, howling. The dragon presses his attack, destroying buildings with each sweep of his massive tail.
The Lamb drops to one knee. He raises both fists, then pounds them against the earth. The ground cracks open, revealing a massive pit of smoke and flame that grows beneath the dragon’s feet. The dragon flaps his wing to fly away, but the Lamb grabs the nearest neck and breaks it, then uses it as a line to reel the beast in, snapping its necks one by one.
Baby’s still on the dragon’s back, holding on for dear life. When this thing goes down, she’s going with it.
“We have to save her,” I shout. “Can you fly us—”
“I can barely stand,” says Halo. “Though…there’s a way to regain some strength.”
“How?”
“Jude wasn’t completely wrong when he called me a succubus.”
“What does—”
“I’m a bit like a vampire,” she explains. “Only instead of sucking your blood, I drink your soul.”
I furrow my brow.
“I won’t drink it all. There’s no time to fully drain you anyway. But a kiss will restore some small portion of what I’ve lost.”
“Take what you need,” I say, closing my eyes.
Her dry, thin lips crackle as they press against mine. She smells like a steak that’s been burnt to a crisp. Her nails dig into my back.
Without warning, her tongue snakes between my teeth, forcing itself down my throat. I gag, but she doesn’t let go. I can’t breath. The world spins. It feels like she’s licking my heart.
She lets go and I drop to my knees. The backs of my hands are wrinkled, aged. My arms look thinner than they did a moment ago.
I look up. She’s not as voluptuous as she was when I first saw her, but she looks filled out, full of life. My life.
“Don’t drop that bolt!” she says, grabbing me by the collar. “Definitely don’t let it touch me!” Her long wings flap and we lift into the air.
Five of the dragon’s heads hang limp.
We lurch across the sky, tossed about by the tempest. My heart rises in my throat as we plummet in a downdraft, but Halo just laughs and folds her wings, diving even faster, until she spreads them wide and we zoom upward.
“I’ve been flying since the dawn of creation,” she boasts, clutching me tighter as we rise above the struggling monsters. “Nothing can touch me in the—”
Her voice cuts short as her arms go limp. As I tumble, I see one of the mounted angels looming above us, his lance jutting from her left breast, wet with gore. I spin and see I’m falling right toward the Lamb. There’s still a tuft of wool relatively intact amid his crown of horns. It’s like landing on a mattress, jarring, but nothing is broken. Was it luck that I’ve fell here, or did Halo aim me?
It doesn’t matter. I scramble on my belly until I’m between the closest eyes. I gaze out at the destruction, the city blocks flattened, the flames stretching for miles. Any doubt I had about whether fighting this thing was right or wrong vanishes. I rise to my knees, lifting the bolt overhead with both hands and plunge it into the Lamb’s brow with all my strength.
The bolt bounces off. I don’t even scratch him. I nearly lose my balance from the recoil. Why didn’t this work? If this thing is some all powerful weapon…
I eye the braided hair that wraps the tip. Removing it will free the wrath of God. It might make our situation infinitely worse. Or maybe…
The dragon only has one head left. Baby’s still hanging on, unable to do a thing while the Lamb is thrashing the dragon so badly. I’ve no choice.
I tear the hair away with my teeth and strike again.
This time, the bolt plunges into the skin and through the bone as if they were mashed potatoes. I keep pushing until my arm is shoulder deep in the Lamb’s boiling gray matter. The Lamb howls, jerking his head, throwing me into the open air. As I fall, I see the Lamb’s grip on the dragon’s last head weaken. The beast latches on to the Lamb’s throat with a thunderous growl. Lava splashes through his teeth as he blasts brimstone directly into the Lamb’s jugular. But I can’t focus on whether on not this attack is working since I’m plummeting directly toward Hell.
Liberty’s hand juts out and snatches me from the air. She places me atop her crown, then takes her torch in both hands. The Lamb is writhing in agony, his skin bubbling and boiling. There’s a huge smoking crater in his brow, right at the point I pierced him with the bolt. Baby leaps from the dragon’s back and plunges her torch into the crater.
Light explodes from every orifice of the Lamb. He stops howling in agony. He stops everything and simply falls. His ropy entrails entangle the dragon and they both tumble toward the hellfire. Baby makes a jump for the edge of the pit and hooks a single arm across the lip. The ground shakes violently as the Hell pit starts to close.
“Run!” she gasps.
I run, sliding down her face to land on her shoulder, scrambli
ng toward freedom. I make a leap for a steel beam near the edge of the pit and stick the landing. I turn, shouting, “Get out of there!”
But she loses her grip and vanishes into the ever-narrowing gap. Before I can even call out her name, the crack closes, and she’s gone.
I throw myself onto the broken earth, vainly, foolishly clawing at the rubble, as if I might somehow free her. My tears blot away by vision. I rub my fingers raw for a while, then wipe my eyes. I study the ground, searching for any sign of an opening.
It’s then I discover that the sidewalk I’m sitting on is completely intact.
I look up and find myself surrounded by towering skyscrapers. Through the haze of light cast by the city, I see a single star in the night sky, Venus I think. I rise, and see a dozen people on the street staring at me. I look at my ruined hands and suddenly it all makes sense.
Halo was right! It was only a nightmare, and now we’re awake. I race down the sidewalk, heading for the waterfront, laughing like a maniac. I feel like Scrooge on Christmas morning. All a dream. A dream.
Then I reach the harbor and my laughter dies. I stare across the waters, toward a distant island, where a hundred floodlights illuminate the base of a vanished statue.
Not everyone woke, it seems.
Fallen, fallen, is Babylon the Great.
But she went down fighting.
And she didn’t go down alone.
Dead Men’s Bones
Josh Reynolds
For Clark Ashton Smith and Bert Ira Gordon,
Creators of the Colossal
“Put out that damn light,” a rough voice snarled.
Charles St. Cyprian flinched as a calloused hand flashed out of the wet darkness and slapped the newly-lit cigarette from his lips with stinging force.
“I say, you could have just asked,” he muttered, rubbing his mouth. He glared daggers at the craggy-faced American, who didn’t seem all that worried.
“I was making a point,” the American said. He spoke in the mushy nasal drawl characteristic of many men in the 81st Infantry Division. South Carolina, St. Cyprian thought, or North Carolina. It was almost certainly a Carolina of some cardinal description.
It was late in the war, but the Americans had finally gotten involved, after a generation had spent its blood in the mud of the trenches that now stretched from one side of the continent to the other. The war would be done in a year, maybe two, if the word trickling down from the high command could be believed. Then, back in 1914, they’d said that the war would be over by Christmas. Four years later, the guns were still thundering and the wire was still strung.
“And a fine point it was, Sergeant Bass,” Carnacki murmured from where he crouched in the rocks, peering through a set of binoculars. “Take note, Charles. You’ve been at this long enough to know that light is not a chum in these circumstances.”
St. Cyprian made to reply, and then thought better of it. It was two against one, and he was too damn wet to argue. Instead, he shifted slightly, and peered over the escarpment and through the curtain of rain and mist at the foreboding shape of the fortress of Ylourgne. Or, rather, the remains of such; the great craggy pile hadn’t been anything other than a ruinous eyesore since the death of the last of the line of marauding French barons who had built up its cliff-founded walls sometime in the eleventh century. The province of Averoigne was full of such relics, and practically every church, monastery, and nunnery in the region had been planted on top of a druidic ruin or a Gallic fort.
“Bloody Otranto,” he muttered. He looked at Bass. “I say, keep an eye out for giant helmets, what?”
“What?” Bass looked at him.
“Americans,” St. Cyprian said, “No appreciation for the classics.” He sighed in disgust. He couldn’t believe he’d left his warm cot and the warm young woman who had been sharing it with him since he’d made her acquaintance at the cabaret back in Vyones in order to come out into the wet and cold.
“I wouldn’t as call Walpole a classic. Ain’t no Miss Austen, that’s for sure,” Bass said, turning away. The American swiped rainwater out of his face and looked at Carnacki. “We going down there any time soon, or you want to paint you a picture?”
Carnacki put his field-glasses away and looked at Bass and St. Cyprian. “I believe there’s actually a rather smashing rendition of Ylourgne—or perhaps Chateau des Faussesflammes—in the Louvre. Oils, I think,” he said. “In any event, yes. Though frankly, I’d rather level the place from a safe distance.” He pushed himself to his feet. The rain was beginning to slacken. “We should hurry. We can’t count on the weather to keep us unnoticed for much longer, if anyone living is about.”
Bass lunged to his feet and tackled Carnacki to the ground, even as the latter spoke. A moment later, the sound of a bullet striking rock echoed over the escarpment. St. Cyprian drew his Webley from its holster on his hip and pivoted smoothly. He fired, and then took cover. “I’d say we’ve been noticed,” he said, as more bullets struck the rocks around them.
“Your observational skills are as tip-top as ever, Charles,” Carnacki said as he struggled out from under Bass and drew his own revolver. “Sergeant, you didn’t happen to see where that first shot came from, did you?”
“Up thataway,” Bass said, crawling towards his rifle where it lay stacked against a rock. He grabbed it, rolled onto his back and swung the rifle up. “Bastards are sneaky.”
“The enemy, by definition, is sneaky,” St. Cyprian muttered. “When he’s on our side, he’s just cunning.” He took a guess and fired. The enemy replied, with interest. St. Cyprian hunkered down and pressed his hands to his ears. “Thomas, I must say that this isn’t what I signed up for. I was hoping for a nice bit of rest and relaxation in Vyones!”
“One does what one must, Charles. Now show some pluck,” Carnacki said. He peered up at the slope above them, and fired several times.
“Pluck, he says,” St. Cyprian muttered, “easy for him to say.”
Carnacki knew all about pluck. Before the Great Powers had slouched into war, Thomas Carnacki, late of Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, currently afforded the rank of captain in His Majesty’s armed forces, had served in the capacity of the Royal Occultist of the British Empire. To the public at large he had merely been ‘the Ghost-Finder’, whose adventures had decorated the pages of The Idler, even as those of the Great Detective had appeared in The Strand in the decade prior to the War. But his days as ‘the Ghost-Finder’ were done and only the grinding, grisly monotony of his duties as Royal Occultist remained.
Formed during the reign of Elizabeth the First, the office of Royal Occultist (or the Queen’s Conjurer, as it had been known) had started with the diligent amateur Dr. John Dee, and passed through a succession of hands since. The list was a long one, weaving in and out of the margins of British history, and culminating, for the moment, in one Thomas Carnacki and his erstwhile assistant-cum-apprentice, Charles St. Cyprian.
During more peaceful times, it was the remit of the Royal Occultist and his assistant to investigate the strange and the sinister, anything that might threaten the peace of the Empire. In war, that remit was not much changed, though its scope was extended. Weird worms of all sorts struggled to the surface after a rain of artillery. And sometimes, it wasn’t worms at all, but bodies which got up and danced away.
Such was the case now, in the disputed province of Averoigne, where the American Expeditionary Force’s dead, as well as everyone else’s, had begun to get up and walk away, trailing their various bits and viscera. The field hospitals in Vyones, Les Hiboux ,and Ximes were emptied, mass graves overturned, and even those caught on the wire tore themselves free to follow whatever silent, siren call had brought them to their feet. Hundreds of thousands of dead men, from both sides of the line, had stumbled, crawled, squirmed, and staggered into the crags and cliffs that clustered about the northern edge of the province. The dead were flooding north, as if fleeing the German spring offensive.
The Americans had been frantic, c
onvinced as they were that it was some new German weapon. When Haig had dispatched Carnacki and St. Cyprian to investigate, Pershing had, in a display of bellicose one-upmanship, introduced Sergeant Bass into the mix, insisting that, since many of the dead were American, an American ought to investigate. Neither Haig nor Pershing had bothered to get a French opinion on the matter.
Bass had some small reputation among the doughboys for being a bit of a backwoods conjurer, or so Pershing had said. They said that Bass had carved his name on a bullet and wore it about his neck, so that he had nothing to fear from enemy snipers, and that he whispered at night to the dead men caught in the wire, as if to comfort them. Despite the stories, the taciturn sergeant had not claimed to be anything other than what he was—perpetually annoyed at his new duties, mostly, St. Cyprian had found.
Together, the three men had followed the eerie trail of shed flesh and sloughed off body parts that marked the route the dead had taken into the mountains. They’d seen emptied village churchyards and lonely graves, long-since ruptured from within.
Something—someone—was calling the dead. He could feel it, in the pit of his belly and in the back of his skull. It was like an itch he couldn’t scratch, as if someone had given a tuning fork a great big thwack and pressed it to his ear. St. Cyprian was psychic; indeed, that was one of the reasons Carnacki had chosen him to be his assistant. If he sensed something, if it was affecting him this badly, then it was dangerous indeed.
That grisly trail led them up into the crags where Ylourgne sagged. They’d seen no lights, and heard nothing save the constant crash of rainwater in the valley below. Now, they heard plenty—the steady ricocheting of bullets biting rock, and the sound of men moving all around. Voices as well, engaged in harsh, Teutonic conversation.
Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters Page 36