by Mel Odom
The lights darkened for a moment again, and the med decks controlling the equipment that kept Rachel stabilized winked out for a second. The med hardware reset with shrill beeps and chirps that grated on Flicker’s nerves. She needed to get out of the room, but she couldn’t because there was nowhere else to go.
Through it all, Snakechaser sat singing in a low voice, some tune that Flicker couldn’t understand, yet somehow felt she might have known from somewhere. He rocked slightly on his haunches, head back and eyes closed. Occasionally, he shivered and looked like he wanted to back away from the girl on the bed—or whatever had bound itself to her. Then he would dig in again, and another shimmer would pass between him and the girl.
Flicker didn’t want to watch, but she couldn’t look away.
Rachel ran through the jungle. She had gotten lost in the darkness of the cave until, by chance, she’d found herself back at the entrance. The bloated thing was gone from the cave mouth, no doubt hunting something else to cram into its maw. She wasted no time clambering down the mountainside, following a thin trail worn in the stone that she’d had to look hard for to find in the first place.
The forest floor wasn’t any safer, due to the flying and crawling and slithering predators there, but as long as she stayed beneath the thick branches and leaves of the trees, she was hidden well enough. There were also clusters of berries and a small creek of clear water that meandered over the rise and fall of the landscape.
Not knowing where else to go, she’d headed down, hoping to find a civilized place that would tell her where she was. Tall blades of grass came up to her waist, and she gave wide berth to all fallen trees after discovering the nightmarish, fist-sized parasites living within them. She didn’t recognize them, was certain she’d never seen them before in her life, but they also looked strangely familiar.
Even now, she couldn’t remember what the things looked like because her mind refused to see them again, but she knew they were horrible. A cluster of them had been feasting on the bloody ruin of—something. She hadn’t looked closely enough to figure out what it was.
“This is your test.”
Rachel stumbled and fell, catching herself on her hands, almost slamming her face into the doughy ground. Her fingers slid through the mud and wetness as she glanced around wildly, searching for the source of the voice.
The ground ruptured as tentacles burst up from the earth around her. Easily as long as she was tall, they whipped around as if searching for her. Viscous liquid dripped from thorn-laden maws lining their undersides, opening and closing hungrily.
Rachel scrambled to her feet even as one slapped around her left ankle and yanked, now long enough to lift her off the ground. She dangled, helpless, as other tentacles homed in on her.
“Escape!” the voice thundered. “Escape or die!”
Another greedy tentacle lashed at her, snapping like a whip to ensnare her right wrist. Thorns plunged into her flesh, and the greedy maws began sucking her blood.
Overcome by pain and fear, Rachel screamed and fought to break free, but more tentacles wound around her, enveloping her, growing into a cocoon that threatened to cover her.
“Fight! This is your heritage! Break free of the shell that binds you!”
Rachel pulled and twisted frantically, not following any logical path now, just fighting like a trapped animal. Blood limned her arms where the tentacles had latched on, and the acidic burn grew stronger by the second. A tentacle curled around her neck and she felt her pulse exploding in her head. Another one swept toward her eyes, maws snapping in anticipation, and she knew she’d at least be blinded.
Just before the tentacle latched onto her face, a strong hand reached out and caught it. Instantly, the limb rolled and turned on its captor.
A man Rachel had never before seen stood next to her. Broad and powerful-looking, his skin a dark coffee color, he stared at her with bright golden eyes. He wore a tuxedo jacket with the sleeves ripped off over his bare chest, which was adorned with white paint, and black slacks. Black leather sandals covered his feet. Peacock feathers stood up from the band of his black top hat. A white painted skull lay over his face.
Instinctively, Rachel tried to draw back from the man, thinking he was another threat.
“Nasty things, aren’t they, cher?” The man grinned, the skull overlying his features robbing that expression of any reassurance. “And powerful, too.” He squeezed the tentacle in his fist. “Not powerful enough, though.”
Blue flames sprang from the man’s hand and the tentacle turned to gray ash in an eyeblink. The ash drifted away, but other tentacles turned toward the man.
He laughed, the big, booming noise coming from deep inside his broad chest. He clasped his palms together, called out in a language she didn’t understand, then drew his hands apart. When he did, an ebony walking stick appeared between them. His right hand closed over the handle, which was a black flower with furled petals around a stamen that towered over them.
More strange language poured from the man’s mouth as he stood his ground. He waved the walking stick like a sword at the tentacles, and whatever he touched turned to ash. He laughed again, the joyous sound filling Rachel’s ears. She didn’t know why or how, but somehow, hearing him made her feel a bit better.
Freed from the tentacles, she plummeted to the ground. Immediately, she pushed herself up. More tentacles sprang from the earth and chased her.
The man stabbed the walking stick into the ground and held on with both hands. The tentacles swept over him at once. He lifted his voice in song, and the tentacles blew away as ash in a whirlwind.
“Enough games!” he shouted. “Come out and face me yourself!”
For a moment, nothing happened, then the ground broke open like a suppurating wound. A large caterpillar-looking thing squirmed out of the mud. It wasn’t a caterpillar, though. It was covered in chitinous plates that undulated over segments of what looked like gooey mucus. The creature reared several meters tall, dwarfing the man. Its entire body was festooned with tentacles that waved wildly around it.
Standing before the thing, the man held his ground. He took his hat from his head and held it in one hand as he sang more of the strange melody. The creature swayed as though entranced. Grinning, the man gripped his walking stick, then rapped it on his hat.
Immediately, flickering miniature skulls flew out of the hat and headed straight for the creature. They adhered to it and started burning, filling the area with the stench of burned, rancid grease.
Squealing in a macabre, high-pitched whistle, the creature spun and whipped its appendages against its body, but only succeeded in spreading the fire. It tried to dig back into the ground, frantically undulating its body to get traction, but before it could escape, it fell over, quivered a little, and died, curling up into a limp, smoldering, tentacle-covered ball.
The man clapped his hat back on his head and held out his hand to Rachel. “C’mon, cher. We don’t have much time to figure out how we’re going to get you out of here.”
Dazed, afraid to trust the stranger, but not wanting to be alone, Rachel took his hand. His flesh felt warm, comforting, and his palm was callused. “Who are you?”
“I am Remy Bordelon, at your service, cher.” He smiled. “I am a dabbler in the occult, and I was sent here by Katar Hawke to aid you.”
“Do you know where I—we—are?”
Bordelon shook his head. “Not yet, but I am confident we will figure that out.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
“This is the place?”
Not happy with what he was looking at, Hawke stood across the street from The Pink Cadillac and stared at the small bar shoved in between a Stuffer Shack and a dingy electronics store.
A graffiti-covered, three-story eyesore that had seen its better days decades ago, the bar’s flickering sign blinked neon radiance over the Detroit suburb. The failing lights sizzled like frying meat, even above the thrasher metal blasting from inside the venue, but it still
created a complete image of a buxom blonde driving a pink Cadillac every third or fourth try.
Stuffer Shack wrappers whirled over cracked concrete, and takeout cups bounced along the narrow two-lane street, propelled by a wind that picked up the foul odor of nearby livestock barns. Like the bar, the neighborhood was well past its glory days.
“Hey, mon.” Twitch punched him in the arm. “Rolla’s down on his luck right now. I told you that. And as I recall, you’ve been there a time or two yourself. We all have. At least he’s working at something sensible instead of suiting up for one of the corp sec armies. He likes to be his own man. In some ways, he reminds me of you.”
Out on the street, draped in the night, Twitch sounded different than she had on the island. She was more confident, more like her old self. Maybe it was the guns. She wore curve-hugging black body armor that fitted her like a second skin. Hawke thought she somehow looked more undressed now than she had in the bikini. Of course, he was looking beyond the guns. People who didn’t know her, chances were they wouldn’t see anything but the guns.
Two Ultimax 70 slug-throwers were lashed to her thighs in counter-terrorist drop holsters. The heavy-caliber pistols were fairly primitive, with laser sights but no smartlinks. Not that Twitch needed them. She was an all-natural shootist.
A pair of Cavalier Deputies rode in shoulder leather. The pistols were replicas of Old West pistols, but carried seven rounds in the cylinders instead of six. The weapons were deadly accurate at distance, and favored by competition pistoleers.
An Ares Executioner hung down her back in a scabbard. The submachine gun was a favorite of Hawke’s when he had to spray a lot of rounds into an area.
Twin black bracers produced by Tiffani Élégance covered Twitch’s forearms from her wrists almost to her elbows. Raised images of sea turtles covered the four barrels of each built-in weapon. The small-caliber caseless ammo didn’t have much stopping power unless it was deliberately placed for kill shots. Twitch could do that in her sleep, but she had to be close up to use them.
In this burned out suburb, Twitch wouldn’t draw much law enforcement attention. Inside Detroit’s eight-meter wall, Knight Errant Security Services ran a tight ship. Ares Macrotechnology, KE’s parent corporation, had turned the metroplex into a safe place for the wealthy to come and make their fortunes. In the distance, the spires of Ares’ global headquarters gleamed as they reached for the dark heavens. A suborbital heading for space looked like a falling star in reverse.
“So?” The gunslinger looked up at Hawke. “You waiting for the chicken to cross the road ahead of you?”
Hawke shook his head. Twitch radiated confidence. It had come to her the moment she’d started strapping on iron.
“This guy better be all you say he is.” He stepped off the curb and headed for the bar.
“Or what?”
“Or we’re still looking for muscle, and I’ll have to take an anti-bacterial shower for nothing.”
Twitch’s lips crooked in a smile. “He is.”
A sour burn twisted in the pit of Hawke’s stomach. They’d spent the last twenty-seven hours tracking down street sams he’d worked with before. Three were dead, not unusual for the job they did. One was incarcerated. And two had gone corp, accepting big signing bonuses to work for the man.
Twitch had been prompting him to take a look at this street samurai, Rolla, since they’d left Negril. Hawke had put her off, saying he wasn’t working with anyone he hadn’t worked with before. It was a good rule.
Unfortunately, rules got broken when things didn’t turn out the way they were supposed to.
Just as he reached the sec door leading to the club, a man stumbled out and threw up on the sidewalk. He was middle-aged, bearded, and wore glasses. He glanced up at Hawke as he wiped his arm across his mouth.
“I wouldn’t go in there if I was you.”
Hawke paused. “Why?”
The man hooked a thumb back toward the club. “Got a dozen thrill gangers in there, slumming from the metroplex, who thought it’d be wiz to rob the club tonight.”
Muffled by the door and the music that continued unabated, gunshots cracked inside. Now that he was listening, Hawke could hear screams and yells, too.
“Is Rolla working tonight, mon?” Twitch asked.
The man nodded. “Yeah.”
Twitch grinned. “Bad night to be thrill gangers.” She grabbed the door and entered before Hawke knew she was moving.
Unlimbering the Savalette Guardian Twitch had arranged for him when she’d picked out her own weapons from a local fixer she knew, Hawke brought his wired reflexes online and juiced the smartlink to the pistol. A reticle ghosted into view, sitting in the lower right quadrant of his vision until he actively aimed the weapon.
Once through the door, Hawke had to fight through the crowd fleeing the bar. The guests crushed through the hallway outside the main bar area, jostling him against the wall again and again. Somehow, Twitch went through them like a bullet, untouched by flailing arms and driving legs.
Finally, Hawke reached the main room, shouldering through a wedge of street toughs who’d found better things to do than slake their thirst at The Pink Cadillac. He gazed out onto the open floor, where a dozen gangers confronted a troll holding a heavy, round metal table as a shield against their bullets. Divided between male and female humans, dressed in posh clothing and wearing gang colors that announced them as the Carraways, the gang members spread out in a loose semi-circle in front of their target.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
“You all got five seconds to leave the premises!” the troll roared. “The boss here tells me I gotta tell you that first.”
He was three meters tall if he was a centimeter, and too big to get complete coverage from the metal table he held effortlessly in his big hands. Thick horns curved back from his forehead and twisted up behind his head. A short goatee framed his chin. His heavy face was mostly unblemished, and considering his occupation, was something a noob wouldn’t understand. Someone new to the fighting biz would think Rolla hadn’t fought much. To a trained observer, those unmarked looks were a badge of honor, proof that he was good at what he did. He wore a black suit that didn’t fit the environs. It was buttoned down, complete with a tie, and made him look professional.
“We don’t need your warning!” one of the Carraways yelled back. He opened up with the machine pistol in his hands and tracked a line across the table Rolla held. “Give us the creds, or we’ll burn this place to the ground!”
“Rolla!” A small man leaned out from the doorway at the back of the bar. “Don’t do anything! I’ll pay!”
“See?” the ganger leader taunted. “The old man knows the score. Put that table down and walk away.”
The troll didn’t move. “Five. Mr. Edgarson, you don’t want to do this. You let scum like this walk over you tonight, they’ll just show up again. Four.”
“It’s not your decision!” Edgarson yelled.
Rolla’s huge chest rose and fell. “It’s more than just your bar, Mr. Edgarson. Three. I’ve got a rep to protect. Two.”
“Rep? What rep? You’re a bouncer. I hire you to bounce. And to do what I say. And I’m saying you need to walk away.”
“Better do what the old man says, trog, otherwise we’re gonna leave you smeared across the wall so bad DocWagon won’t be able to put you back together.” The gang leader shoved a new magazine into his weapon.
“Like we agreed, Mr. Edgarson,” Rolla said in a loud, calm tone. “These null-brains have been warned. One.”
The ganger leader glanced at his followers in disbelief.
Stepping fluidly to his left, Rolla turned, presenting his profile to the gangers as they leveled their weapons. Both of his huge hands were now close together on the table’s edge. As he turned back, he released the table, then followed it, roaring like a bull.
The flying furniture smashed into the center group of gangers, mowing them down like tenpins. Rolla headed left and rais
ed his left hand up in front of his face. A folding transplas shield had appeared from under his jacket sleeve. It and his jacket took rounds from the gangers’ weapons, but the bullets didn’t penetrate.
The raucous gunfire filled the club, bullets smashing into the walls and bar furniture, turning them into explosions of splinters and shattered pieces of wood and metal. Edgarson squawked in surprise and vanished behind the doorway.
At Hawke’s side, Twitch crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the wall. She smiled at his tenseness. “Chill, mon. Rolla knows what he’s doing. Take a look at what you’ll be gettin’ when he signs on.”
Hawke watched the developing action, but didn’t put his pistol away. Even if they didn’t take part, which he was loath to do, that didn’t mean someone wouldn’t take a shot at them. There weren’t many neutral parties in a free-wheeling gunfight.
Reaching the knot of gangers, Rolla barreled into them, knocking them off their feet with the shield, reaching out to smack the farthest one into the wall. Dropping into a crouch, Rolla grabbed a dazed ganger’s leg, twisted, and heaved the hapless individual across the room into the other group of Carraways blasting away in an attempt to find a target. The flailing ganger missile took down half of the crew there.
Rolla went through the rest like a thresher, popping his big hands out in punches and backhanded slaps, leaving unconscious opponents in his wake as he worked his way across the room.
Getting to his feet woozily, the leader aimed his machine pistol and fired in uneven bursts. Bullets plonked against Rolla’s suit, flattening against either his underweave armor or dermal plating, and dropped at his feet. The troll grabbed a nearby chair and flung it at the ganger. The chair spun and the legs bracketed the punk’s slender body, propelling him backward.