by Rachel Green
“Black Lowry?” Felicia resumed cutting. “Here, is this big enough for you?”
“For me? I didn’t need a gap.” Valerie grinned. “It’s an eight foot fence. I could jump this.”
“Pardon me for being considerate.” Felicia slipped through the gap and paused to put away her wire cutters. “Have you opened the doors yet?”
“I can do better than that.” Valerie pulled on a head set which covered one eye and one ear and slid the computer back into her pack. She handed Fliss a plastic card. “I have Steven Lowry’s identicard.”
“Won’t this be flagged if he’s gone missing?”
“Not any more. I reactivated it.” Vixen slipped through the fence and crept up to the door. She went still for a moment, slipping a gun out of her holster. “There are two guards facing the doors but they’re watching Crime Scene.”
“Ooh! I like that programme. I set the Tivo for it.” Felicia eyed the gun. “You’re not going to kill anyone, are you? It’s bad karma.”
“Kill? No.” Valerie glanced at the hunk of metal in her hand. “Redeem a soul or two, maybe.”
“No.” Fliss put a hand on her wrist. “No killing of mortals. KO’s only.”
“Firstly, fine and secondly, if you ever touch me again without permission I’m going to rip off your arm and silver plate it. Is that clear?”
“I’d like to see you try,” Fliss glared at her.
“Anytime, Lassie.” Vixen held up a hand. “Enough. One guard’s just left. I wonder why.”
“Gone for a riddle, I expect.” Fliss nodded toward the door. “Let’s go.”
Vixen passed her the card and she swiped it across the lock. The guard looked up as the door hissed open and received a cluster of needles for his trouble. Vixen grinned and lowered her gun. “Relax,” she whispered. “They’re just sleepers.”
“Glad to hear it.” Fliss held the door open while Vixen slipped through. “I promised Gillian there’d be no unnecessary killing tonight. She can be a stickler for that.” She slipped through the door herself.
“Wait.”
Fliss froze at the high pitch of her sister as Julie came barrelling through the door. “It took me ages to get up here. You two are really fast.”
“Julie! What are you doing here?” Felicia took a nervous glance toward the security desk and hunkered down, pulling her sister down with her. “This is too dangerous for you to come.”
“I’m here already,” said Julie. “And it seems to me that the only people in danger are the people who work here.”
“She has a point.” Vixen fired another cluster of needles and the second guard fell the moment he walked around the corner. She grinned and tapped the headset. “I saw him coming.”
“Besides, how are you two going to recognize the pages of the missing book? You need someone who can understand it.” If Julie had been on Scooby-doo, she would have played Thelma.
“She has a point,” said Vixen. “I can read Latin, Greek and Hebrew but I’ve no idea what magic texts look like.”
“Pretty much like any other text,” said Julie, “but with pictures. The trick is knowing which text you’re looking at and when to stop reading and back away slowly.”
“Come on then.” Felicia moved forwards. “At least you wore something fitting.”
“Almost,” said Julie. “Except your legs are longer than mine.”
“You mean those are my leather pants?”
“All I had were jeans,” said Julie. “They weren’t appropriate.”
“Why not?”
“Blue denim with a black lace top?” Julie scowled. “I don’t think so.” They had reached the security desk now and she glanced at it. “Look!” she said. “They’re watching telly. Are they allowed to do that?”
“Not any more.” Vixen pulled up a floor plan of the facility. “We need to go here first,” she said, indicating the manufacturing plant, “and then down to the labs. If they’re working on something magical it’ll be down there.”
“So why are we going to the plant?” Julie asked.
“My fee,” said Vixen. “They make a lot of gear here that I can’t get anywhere else.”
“Such as?”
“Contact lenses for seeing the supernatural,” said Vixen. “Monofilament blades, ammunition for my needle gun and personal, transportable pentacles.” She bent down to extract the needles from the guards.
“You can’t see the supernatural?” Julie frowned and made a complex sigil with her fingers. “Good job I was here then. That revenant would have taken your face off.”
“Revenant?” Vixen looked at Fliss, who nodded.
“She’s right,” the werewolf said. “I saw it too but she’s a lot faster than I am when it comes to spirits.”
“How can that be?” said Vixen. “She didn’t do anything.”
“Are you sure?” Julie smiled and, bending down, plucked one of the caps from a security guard and rammed it onto her head. “If you could have seen, you’d have spotted me protecting you with a circle and opening a portal to the dead lands to suck it away like an earwig up a vacuum cleaner.”
“Er…Thanks.” Vixen looked at Fliss, who nodded.
“No problem.” Julie looked past the desk to the darkness behind the inner doors. “We go this way, yes?”
“Er…” Fliss and Valerie hurried to keep up. “Stay between us, Jules,” said her sister. “It’s not all the supernatural here, you know. You’re not going to stop a bullet with a twist of your fingers.”
“I could if I had the warning,” said Julie. She stopped, forcing Fliss into a sidestep to avoid crashing into her. “I could construct a darkling shield. Are we likely to be shot at?”
“Who can tell?”
“Come on you two.” Vixen, now twenty yards ahead, called back to them. “This isn’t a mother’s meeting.”
“I should hope not,” said Julie, hurrying to catch up. “We’re all vastly under-qualified.”
“And long may it remain so,” said Fliss. Vixen pointed to the floor ahead and leaped across an eight foot stretch of tile. Fliss picked Julie up and did the same, carrying her sister as if she were no heavier than a doll.
“What was that for?” said Julie.
“Fire trap.” Vixen paused and felt across the wall. “We don’t have security badges so it would have burned us to a crisp. There’s a door here somewhere.”
“Here.” Fliss extended claws and forced open a microscopic crack. “I could smell where it was,” she explained, “by the number of people who have touched the frame.” She sniffed. “Men, mostly.”
“How can you tell?” asked Vixen. “Is the scent so distinctive?”
“In a way.” Felicia pried the door open. “Most of them haven’t washed their hands.”
They trotted through several more areas until they came to a wide corridor with viewing rooms on each side. Next to the screens were buckets holding sealed packs. Vixen started helping herself to them. “What are in these rooms?” Felicia asked, flicking on a switch.
“Don’t…” Valerie began but it was too late. Fliss and Julie stared through the glass into an empty room. “What?” she asked, struggling to rip open a pack of contact lenses. “What are you seeing?”
She stuffed the lenses into her eyes and blinked rapidly to settle them. Now she could see beyond the apparently empty room to the glowing lines of force and the creature held captive within them, tentacles constantly probing its cell.
A demon.
“What the Hell is that doing here?”
Julie stepped forward and rapped on the glass. “What are you doing in there?” she asked again.
Several eyes flickered in her direction and the whole roiling mass coiled and shifted and shuffled in her direction. Despite the glass panel
, Vixen took a step backwards. Even Fliss looked aghast at her sister’s impulsiveness.
A mouth opened at the end of a tentacle, blood red lips forming random snatches of speech.
“What’s he saying?” Julie looked at Vixen as if the retired nun could offer an interpretation. “I can’t hear it.” She banged on the glass again. “I can’t hear you,” she mouthed. “Hang on.” She turned to Vixen again. “How do I get in here?”
“There’s a door on the other side,” Vixen said. “This is just the observation corridor. Access is one corridor over through a series of security seals.”
“Bugger that for a game of soldiers.” Julie opened another portal inside the laboratory and pulled it toward herself. It drilled a perfectly circular hole through the wall, allowing her to step through. “That’s better,” she said. “Now, Mister Demon. What are you doing here?”
“Temptations in the plane of ecstatic wanderings,” said the bloody lips. “Trials of separated intestines wailing in the shuttered darkness.”
“Quite.” Julie frowned. “I don’t follow, though. Are you here voluntarily or have you been trapped in this plane contrary to your perspicacious desires?”
The demon paused, tentacles wavering, then imploded in a shower of blood and shards of bone like a video tape running backwards. As the mist cleared there was a man standing there instead. He looked a lot like the man from the supermarket who packed groceries into bags.
“Sorry,” said the demon. “I couldn’t follow what you were saying. I plucked this form out of your mind.”
“It could have been worse,” said Fliss. “You could have become Mister Stay Puffed.”
“I don’t suppose you’d dismiss the circle would you?” The image of Tommy Sandling reached into his jacket and pulled out a cigarette case. “Thought not. Got a light then?”
“I don’t smoke.” Julie smiled in return. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “Why the elaborate pentacle?”
“An unfortunate error of judgement,” Tommy said. “I left my true name somewhere and these religious chaps got a hold it.”
“Religious chaps?”
“All dressed in white, yes.” Tommy lit his cigarette with a flaming finger, raising an eyebrow as Julie realized why he’d asked for a light. “Could you dismiss me?”
“What would be the point?” Julie asked. “They can summon you again if they have your name.”
“I’ll have it changed forthwith,” Tommy said. “I’ll swap names with an imp.”
“You still haven’t told me why you were here in the first place,” said Julie. “What did the scientists want with you?”
“Scientists?”
“The ones in white.”
“Oh.” Tommy sat down on a chair only he could see. “They spent most of the time poking me with sticks of various kinds. One of them really hurt.”
“Oh?” Julie smiled. “Which one?”
“A pointy one.” Tommy stood again, his cigarette vanishing in thin air. “Let me out of this cage and I’ll tell you which.”
“Hurry up,” said Vixen from the corridor. “We’re wasting time.”
“Hush.” Julie glared at her before returning her attention to the demon. “You’re offering to tell me which weapon hurt you?” she said. “Why should I care? I could just ask them.”
“You could.” Tommy took out another cigarette, tapping it against the silver case three times then using it to emphasise his words. “You’d get nothing but blank looks from them, though. I certainly didn’t let on it’d hurt. What am I, a fool?”
“Very well.” Julie peeled off her gloves. “Do I have your word that you’ll return directly to your home plane and not harm my friends or me, nor seek to endanger us in any way thereafter, including oral criticism?” She frowned before adding, “and moreover, owe me a personal favor?”
“No oral?” Tommy looked disappointed.
“None.” Julie folded her arms. “They’re my conditions. Take ‘em or leave ‘em.”
Tommy let out a long sigh. “Very well,” he said, lighting his cigarette. “I accept.”
“Excellent.” Julie poked her finger through the pentacle, breaking it as surely as rubbing out the lines of salt. There was the distinct lack of any flashes; no whiff of brimstone; no hiss of a billion tortured souls, as a Tommy-shaped demon appeared, puffing away at a Navy Cut.
“Ta,” he said. “Three-hundred and seventy-eight days I’ve been stuck inside that thing. Makes you glad to be alive, doesn’t it?”
“What does?” Fliss asked, ready for an attack despite the demon’s promises.
“Being alive,” he replied. “Of course, the best thing to make you appreciate being alive is being dead, but you’ll find that out in eleven days.” He grinned and dropped his cigarette, grinding it into the salt of the pentacle with his shoe.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Julie glanced from Tommy to her sister and back. “Are you claiming she’ll die then?”
“Claim? Me? Nah.” Tommy gave a circular wave and vanished.
“He was joking, right?” Fliss said. “I don’t want to die yet.”
“Demons are liars by nature,” said Vixen. “He was messing with your head. We’ll prove him wrong.”
“Of course we will.” Julie stepped through the hole in the wall back into the observation corridor. “You’re not going to die.”
“Not for ages,” said Fliss, mollified by the reassurances.
“Days,” agreed Vixen. She looked at her companions in the sudden silence. “What?” she said.
“You’re not helping.” Julie picked up a metal disc inscribed with a pentagram. “What’s this?”
“A portable circle.” Vixen stuffed a handful into the bag at her side. “It’s good to die,” she said. “Death brings redemption into the arms of the Lord.”
Julie nodded. “For you, maybe, but Fliss is a werewolf and she’d rather hang onto her mortal flesh, if it’s all the same to you. She doesn’t have the great glass elevator to look forward to.”
“Oh.” Valerie chewed her lip for a moment. “That was tactless of me, wasn’t it?”
“A bit.” Julie patted her on the shoulder. “Come on, we have a book to find.”
“You’re right, of course.” Vixen helped herself to several more sample buckets and led them to a door at the far end. “I only need access to this room and I’m done,” she said, pulling out her laptop and accessing the mainframe. The lock clicked open and she pushed through. “This is where they keep the weapons,” she said. Her voice trailed off. “They used to, at any rate.”
“Bummer.” Fliss looked at the empty racks. “They must have moved them.”
“Sucks to be you,” said Julie. “Now, if you’ve finished looting, can we get on with the job in hand?”
“I suppose.” Vixen took a last, wistful glance at the empty shelves and led them back through the door. Behind her, the shelves remained free of weaponry, a state they would remain in until someone opened the miniature portals on each of the racks to retrieve the weapons stored in another plane.
Julie jogged to keep up with the other two as they wove around corners and down stairs and dimly-lit hallways. “Where exactly are we going?” she panted.
“Labs.” Vixen activated her headset again. “One more floor down and we should be there. That’s where all the security is, so there’s a better than even chance that’s where we’ll find this book you’re on about.”
“And some action?” Felicia trudged along behind. “I feel like a bit of a spare part on this run. Where are all the security guards? All the traps and cunning monsters? All we’ve met so far is one amiable demon.”
“That suits me just fine,” said Julie. She stopped at a pair of massive vault doors. “What’s in here?”
Vi
xen’s eyes glazed as she accessed the headset. “Workshops, it says here.” She took hold of one of the doors and pulled. The doors didn’t budge. “Retinal lock on a secure system,” she said. “I can’t open these.”
“I can.” Felicia braced herself against one door and pulled the other. There was a sound like metal screaming, the sound of a skyscraper falling in an earthquake and the door came open.
“See?” said Julie. “We did need you after all.” She led the way into the huge chamber where huge metal cylinders had open fronts and metal coffins. Plans decorated the walls and in the centre of the room lay a laser etching table. The heat from the furnaces brought them all into a sweat.
Vixen sat in front of one of the consoles. “It’s some sort of robot,” she said as drawings and plans flickered past. “Clever, too. Instead of metal these furnaces contain a polymer resin. The robots are injection moulded then laser etched on the central table.”
“Won’t plastic robots melt?” Felicia leaned over, peering into the screen.
“Not these.” Valerie pulled up some figures. Once the resin sets it’s good to 1200 degrees C. They’re all but indestructible.”
“Like the movie about the robots that take over the world,” said Felicia.
“What movie?” Valerie and Julie stared at her.
“Robots That Take Over the World,” said Felicia. “It was very big a few years ago.”
“What are these etchings for?” Vixen pointed at various designs. “They look Arabic to me.”
“Oh God.” Julie paled. “These aren’t robots, they’re homunculi. Those are the designs from the book we came here for. He already has them interpreted and ready to go.”
“Who?”
“Jim Hunt.” Julie frowned. “He’s the director of this facility, isn’t he?”
“He was, once.”
The voice came from behind. Julie turned around to see a small demon sitting cross-legged on the etching table. Fliss and Vixen were already circling in opposite directions. The demon watched them, its pointed ears cocked.