Roaring Blood (Demon-Hearted Book 2)

by Ambrose Ibsen

  I felt Germaine squirm against me and lifted the chest piece of my armor just a bit to give him more room. What would I do once we arrived at the RenCen? It occurred to me that I wasn't armed. All of these dudes had guns on them; I could hear the clack of the straps as they balanced big rifles on their laps. Shit... didn't think that far ahead, did you? All I could hope for would be a chance to sneak away before anyone called me out on it. No one had noticed so far, but if I followed everyone else into battle without a gun I'd get a talking to for sure.

  Better get used to all of this sweating, I thought with a seasick smirk. Hell is going to be pretty damn hot. Something I hadn't considered was the possibility that we might lose this fight. Yeah, we had the angel sword and I'd snuck in at just the right time to assist the rest of the team. Overall, things were looking promising. But there were no guarantees. There never were in battle, especially when your enemy was a super-powered necromancer.

  It was very possible I'd buy the farm. And if I did, I knew just where I'd end up.

  Hey, don't write off that possibility just because I'm sitting here relating this tale to you. For all you know I'm dead and dictating this from the Lake of Fire.

  Make no mistake, death was a very real possibility. It'd never been realer, in fact. Not a pleasant thought right before go-time.

  I kind of wished I could talk the matter over with Germaine, but in the SUV it just wasn't possible. That's right; I actually wanted to chat with the mouthy spider. I'd have spoken to anyone willing to listen just then. Expressing my fears in words seemed like the best way to vent, but I had no choice to bottle them up as we drove along.

  And then the SUV rolled to a stop.

  Well, time to shift gears. I banished those dreary thoughts and prepared to leave the vehicle.

  It was true: I might die. But focusing on it too much would make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. I was alive right now and we'd made it to the RenCen, by the sounds of it. That meant that I still had time to cause Agamemnon a world of hurt.

  And maybe I'd be lucky enough to see him get cut down today.

  ***

  I could smell fire the instant I exited the SUV. Even with the respirator in place, the choking taste of smoke filled the air outside of the barricade. The Veiled Order, in cooperation with the Detroit police, had blocked off all of the streets leading to the RenCen, making it so that no one would be able to enter unless they'd been cleared by us.

  We ambled out into the blazing sunlight, all of us a little twitchy in anticipation of the fight, and got into a line as we waited for Kubo's orders. When the Chief joined us, it was with a couple of other people who'd just stepped out of another SUV.

  It took me a few minutes to realize it was Percy and Joe standing there next to him.

  Through the foggy lenses they'd just looked like colorful, human-shaped blobs.

  Gritting my teeth, I decided upon my first course of action. Before rushing into the building and kicking zombie ass, before rescuing any hostages or anything even remotely heroic, I was going to ditch this fucking helmet.

  Kubo started talking, but I was too busy trying to get a look at the smoking set of skyscrapers ahead. The center building; that is, the tallest one, and the one I knew to be a hotel, wasn't actually on fire. At least, it wasn't actively burning down. From where I was standing, squinting at the far-off roof of the building from behind sweat-soaked lenses, there seemed to be something on top of the skyscraper that was burning. A few of the windows were leaking smoke, too, but only those in the upper stories.

  Kubo began to explain. “During our last flyby we discovered something on top of the center building. It's a giant steel cauldron of some kind, and Agamemnon's guys seem to have filled it with straw and other flammable materials. The thinking is that they want some sort of smokescreen; they don't want us looking in there till they're ready to reveal themselves. It worked on the news helicopters, but we've managed to peek in through the walls with our thermal imaging tech and there appears to be a lot of movement inside. The zombies don't give off much, if any, heat. But the hostages do. And so does Agamemnon. We're not going in completely blind, but we're also not sure just how many enemy combatants we're dealing with here. I'll be hanging back, giving out orders.” He motioned to his busted arm. “I'd go in there if I could. We've selected a nearby entrance into the sewers from which we'll be able to breach the complex's basement. When HQ gives me the all-clear, these two will lead you on, along with Kanta. She was in another vehicle, but should be here any second.”

  This was my chance. It was time to go before the lovely exorcist showed up and exposed me. The outfit had been a great idea on my part, but when Kanta showed up there would be no fooling her. I could trick her eyes without a problem, but she'd sense my demonic energies from far-off. I hadn't anticipated that. I started wandering away from the line, slowly. I walked past the bright orange cones and wooden signs blocking off the streets and began towards the RenCen. I wasn't about to sit around and wait for HQ to give us their blessing. The sooner we got in there, the more lives we could save.

  “Where are you going?” asked Kubo, pointing to me. “It's not time yet.”

  “Sorry,” I replied, voice low in the hopes that none of them would recognize me. “Gotta take a leak.”

  Kubo sighed. “Should've taken care of that before you left headquarters. Hurry back here when you're done, got it?”

  “Yessir,” I said, darting around a corner.

  Germaine, panting like a dog, poked out from beneath the lower seam of my chest-piece. “Home-free,” he muttered.

  Out of view, I took off the helmet and took a big, gasping breath. It was damn hot outside, but the breeze that washed over my matted hair felt incredible. I set the helmet down on the sidewalk and continued towards the complex, Germaine sitting atop my shoulder.

  “Holy shit, feels good to be out of there. Any longer and I'd have come down with a serious case of dehydration.” Germaine glanced at the building as we approached. “So... what's your plan? I don't suppose you're gonna turn around and join the others going the underground route, are you?”

  I shook my head. “Hell, no. We're going in from the top. We'll meet them halfway.”

  “The top?” asked Germaine.

  “Better hold on tight.” I began to sprint. There were a few cops hanging around the edge of the RenCen, sitting in their cruisers. I did my best to stay out of their way but didn't really care if any of them saw me. I was racing down the empty street like a gazelle, one of the seven skyscrapers in my sights.

  “Jesus, kid,” gasped Germaine. “You're not going t-to jump, are you?”

  Hell yeah, I was.

  I'd run some tests during my downtime, done a bit of practice, and I have to tell you that my demonic vertical jump had become pretty incredible. I could leap higher than any mortal in the record books. But with a running start? Twenty or even thirty feet wasn't impossible. I'd considered trying out for the NBA; dunking over the heads of those seven-foot dudes would have been child's play to me, but Kubo had smacked me for even suggesting it.

  I took off like a rocket, sailing through the air, leaving the cop cars and Veiled Order foot soldiers behind, and gripped the exterior of the building.

  And then I climbed.

  I'm not sure what it is that allows me to climb walls so easily. My skin doesn't change; I haven't got little hooks in my hand or anything that allow me a better grip. Scaling buildings or mountains was a simple thing now that I had Gadreel; as if held in place by magnets I had zero trouble climbing up obstacles, no matter the composition of the surface. I raced up the side of the building, going up about ten or fifteen feet, before I happened upon a window I could smash.

  It was time to make my entrance. It wasn't so subtle as what Kubo and the rest had been planning, but it was fast. I hesitated briefly before kicking in the window and rolling into the room. There was no telling what I might find inside; for all I knew there were doze
ns of zombies jam-packed into this room, and they'd lash out at me the moment I entered.

  That was a chance I'd have to take.

  I buried my heels in the windowpane and sent a shower of fine glass into the room.

  My feet met solid ground and the spider precariously clinging to my shoulder trembled like he was going to pass out.

  “We're in,” I said, taking a moment to catch my breath and glance around the room.

  It was dark in there.

  And it wasn't exactly what I'd expected to find in a building overrun by zombies.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Germaine and I were in an office space. There was a desk in the corner with a somewhat antiquated PC on top of it. A potted fern sat near the window from whence I'd just scrambled in, the terra cotta pot now half-filled with shards of glass. Two comfortable-looking swivel chairs sat in the other corner, near the door.

  But you know what was missing?

  Zombies.

  The room was completely untampered with. Where I'd expected to find a bunch of rotting bastards fouling up the place, I found only a comfortable-looking workspace where I could sit down and create some Excel spreadsheets. Color me disappointed.

  “Where are they?” asked Germaine.

  “Beats the hell out of me.” I tongued my molars and approached the door to the office, cracking it and looking out to the hall. The hallway was completely empty. The air in it felt undisturbed, smelled vaguely of air freshener. Not a sour or rotting note to be found. This simply wasn't adding up. “None out here, either?” I muttered.

  One-by-one, I checked out the other offices along the hall.

  The only upsetting thing I found was in a Mr. Crescenzo's office. Hanging on the wall was some hideous modernist piece drawn up in blues, yellows and browns. A real eyesore. The kind of thing that someone who wants to appear sophisticated and artsy might hang up in their office. Well, I'm here to tell you that a bunch of brightly-colored, ugly-ass geometric shapes shouldn't pass for art-- no matter how nice the frame. Whoever this Mr. Crescenzo was, he had awful taste. I plucked the picture off of the wall and snapped the whole thing over my knee. Maybe upon returning to work he'd find the sense to hang up something truly tasteful in its place. A Picasso, a Goya--

  “Where the hell are all of the zombies?” asked Germaine. He sounded almost offended at the lack of foes in the tower. “They sleepin', or what? The whole world's mobilizing against them outside and there ain't a single one to be found.”

  I chuckled. “Yeah, maybe they packed up and left. Found some better things to do.”

  Something occurred to me as we started for the stairwell. Zombies were capable of operating in the daylight. It'd been explained to me that they were weaker in sunlight, and so tended to operate mainly after dark. Though the zombies had moved into this complex and had plans for it, they were probably in no state for a full-on fight.

  “Zombies are weaker by day, yeah?” I asked Germaine, climbing up to the next level. “Why doesn't Kubo just storm the building and kill them all with ease? Seems obvious.”

  Germaine kept an eye on my rear as I started down the hall. “These secret societies are all the same. Bloated. Inefficient. They're all about bureaucracy, kid. I agree with ya, but the fact of the matter is that these guys don't really care about getting in here and saving the hostages. They just want to do things their way. Know what I mean? They'll save the world, but they'll do it in their own arbitrary fashion.”

  This floor, too, was empty of zombies.

  “What the hell, man? There ain't a single zombie in this whole building, is there?” I spit on the ground, doubling back towards the stairwell. “Most of the activity seemed to be coming from the hotel building. Maybe we should just focus on getting over there, huh?”

  Germaine agreed. “Let's do it up, kid.”

  I'd never been in the RenCen before, so finding my way to the center building was going to be tough. I guessed that the seven skyscrapers were all linked, and that they shared walkways by which the hotel could be accessed, but I had no idea where they were. I burned more than half an hour trying to find a way to the hotel building, and the entire time I encountered no one, living or dead.

  Wandering through this empty building was creeping me out a whole lot more than the zombies would have.

  I made it down to the ground floor and found what appeared to be a hallway linking the building I was in to the hotel. “Jackpot,” I said, pushing open the door and starting into the passage. The hallway was lined in windows, and a well-manicured courtyard replete with flowers and shapely trees surrounded us on both sides.

  “Nice place,” said Germaine, staring out the window as we passed. “Might get a room here sometime if I'm ever back in town.”

  The hallway was perhaps forty or fifty feet long. I walked slowly, not sure what I'd find once I passed through the other door. Arriving at the metal double doors whose signage welcomed would-be guests to the hotel, I placed my hand carefully upon the handle and pushed it open.

  On the other side of the door was a lobby.

  A lobby dressed in a light wreathe of smoke and the stench of rotting flesh.

  THIRTY-NINE

  My hackles went up the minute I walked in, and for good reason. The place smelled like a slaughterhouse. It's a tough thing to describe; the smell of blood, of meat left to fester in the heat, permeated every inch of the lobby and struck me with all the force of a punch to the nose.

  But there was no one to be seen in the lobby.

  “Where the hell is that smell coming from?” I asked. “And the smoke?”

  Germaine buried his face against me to try and shut out the smell. “I haven't the slightest. Let's, uh... let's turn back, eh?”

  So, there were zombies in this complex after all. Without having entered the other five buildings, I had a pretty strong hunch that the rotting invaders were relegated to this skyscraper alone. I stood for a while, listening, but heard nothing. The cries or sobs of tortured hostages never rang out, nor did the characteristic death rattles I knew the zombies to make when they sensed a threat.

  There was silence.

  “I've got a real bad feeling about this, kid. Didn't the Chief say that this was zombie central? I can smell the bastards but I can't see them. And I don't like that. Something's going on here.” Germaine jumped off of me and scaled the handsome counter where ordinarily a clerk would have been stationed. “Feel like we've walked into a trap, to be honest.”

  I kept on walking, passing through the lobby and into one of the hallways that I presumed would lead me to the hotel rooms on the first floor. I stopped short, though, pausing at the threshold to said hallway because I saw someone.

  I'd been expecting a rotting corpse, something eminently punchable. What I found instead, though, was a little girl. She walked very slowly down the hall, on tip-toes, and held something black in her hand. Approaching her slowly, I motioned to Germaine and brought a finger to my lips. The girl was walking down the hall, wearing a ruffled, knee-length dress with a flower print on it. Her red hair was naturally wavy, but looked awfully out of sorts. Maybe the girl was lost, looking for her parents? I closed the distance between us, trying to get a look at what was in her hand and hoping that I might catch her attention without scaring her.

  That black thing she was holding looked an awful lot like a timer. As I snuck up behind her I saw the three red zeroes on the side of the thing.

  And then I put two and two together.

  I've seen enough action movies in my day to know what that was.

  An explosive.

  “H-hey,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Little girl? Could you... could you come over here?” I chanced, quickening my pace. “I'd like to talk to you for just a second.”

  The girl didn't turn around. She just kept on walking. She never walked faster or slower, but maintained the same leisurely pace. As if she were being led, compelled. And then, when I was within a few f
eet of her, I noticed just how pale her skin was. Reaching out to touch her shoulder, I found her cold as ice.

  The little girl turned to face me, eyes completely glazed over and trails of dried blood at the seams of her mouth. A zombie.

  Germaine and I jumped back, anticipating an attack, but to our surprise the zombie girl paid us little mind and kept going down the hall. She turned a corner, leaving our stunned asses behind.

  “Follow her,” said Germaine. “Follow her. I don't know where she's going, but if we follow her deeper in, then I think we're going to figure out what's going on in this place.”

  I took my time in walking down the rest of the hall, and the stench of death waxed to nigh unbearable levels as I turned the corner. The lights along the next stretch were flickering and the doors to numerous rooms were hanging open. Soft footfalls were the only sounds that broke the silence.

  Aside from the little girl, I glimpsed three other figures shambling down the hall. They were disheveled, but they didn't look like they'd just crawled out of the grave. Like the child, they all held black devices that I took to be explosives. “What the hell is going on?” I asked the spider, pointing to the figures ahead of us. “Why aren't they attacking us? Where are they going with those?”

  I started jogging down the hall, calling after the undead, but got no reply. They didn't even turn around, were living in a completely different world, by the looks of it. I followed them down the hallway and into a large atrium where there was a sprawling fitness center. The atrium was dotted with large columns, and it was to these supports that the undead were flocking.

  I watched as the little girl tapped a button on the black device in her palm and then wrapped her arms around the nearest column. The other zombies did the same. Walking through the atrium, I saw no fewer than ten or fifteen zombies gathered around the columns with explosives in hand. They were clinging to the things, apparently planning to trigger explosions and bring the whole house down.