“Niky,” Shayla called. She bypassed the officer and quickly approached.
“Niky,” she repeated, and Shayla embraced her. Nico felt cold; too cold, even to feel Shayla’s touch. She was too far away to smell her.
“I’m not going to make it,” Nico uttered in her arms. “He’s here.”
“Who is?” Shayla moved back to look at her.
“I won’t let him out, so he has nowhere else to be.”
“Where.” Shayla’s gaze searched hers. “Where is he?”
My wean, he laughed.
A Makepeace watching. A witch with a gun. They should kill her that instant.
“He’s me,” Nico whispered.
She broke away from Shayla’s grasp.
“Nik—”
Nico pushed through the barrier, the crowd, and out into the street, running low and fast—out of range, out of reach—of Shayla’s touch and a Makepeace’s gaze.
“Niky!” Shayla shouted.
Shayla’s voice could not drown his.
I am without angels.
And the truer hell is waiting.
Nico ran into the night.
If you are me, I have one thing I can control, and that’s my death.
When her maker burned atop the Rocklyn Hotel, Nico nearly burned up with him. She had needed to witness, with her own eyes, his passing. It had taken her a week to fully heal from her own injuries, but his finality had been assured.
If he had resurrected within her, a mirror could not tell her. She would not wait for him to act, harming Heloise or Shayla and leaving a Makepeace to make the decision of death for her.
If I am you, I will take you with me to my death.
Nico walked a littered street with closed storefronts and found what she was looking for.
Punk Monk Martial Arts Supplies and Weapons Shop was still lit. Men and boys loitered within, dressed as if they’d ended practice at the dojo next door. Nico opened the door with its Closed sign and walked in.
“This is a stick-up,” she said. “Just kidding.” Nico walked to the counter and the young man with the street-wise stare standing behind it. He looked like a dojo minion, a possible were-mix of doubtful Other strength, but Nico decided she would speak to him anyway.
“I heard you’d supply a Slaughter Spawn fighter in exchange for some guaranteed odds. The fighter would be me,” she said.
Dojo boy looked at her, incredulous, and laughed, the guys around the store joining him. He then struck the glass counter with both palms and stared hard.
“Punk Monk picks the fighter, not the other way around.”
Nico put her hand on the counter, shortening the distance between her grasp, his head, and the glass.
“If you don’t give me what I want, I will take it,” she said, her voice calm and slow. “And then I’ll give this place the name of someone who can pay for what I’ve taken, once I’m done.”
Kill them, Nicky.
She grabbed dojo boy’s head by the hair right when an African man stepped into view from the back room. She looked at him.
“Argh,” dojo boy said as Nico twisted, torquing his neck.
The man was long and wiry, and a calm radiated from his centre. His bald head and skin bore leopard marks. He looked at Nico, his placid face inscrutable, and Nico decided the only reason she would win in a fight with him was because her death spirit was greater than his.
“What’ll you need,” Leopard Man said.
“A kukri, please. And a lighter.” She shook dojo boy when he tried to move. “And lighter fluid. Two aerosol cans of lubricant. Three flash-bangs. One grenade. No, three grenades. A pair of goggles. Duct tape. Half-mask. I’ll wear your logo if you want. And if you’ll let me use your tub, I’ll need 88 pounds of sodium borate and 38 pounds of boric acid.”
She let dojo boy go and he scrambled back, holding his neck.
“And I need a car,” she said. She looked at the men standing around the store.
I’ll put ya in the trunk and set it on fire, her maker said.
“One you don’t plan on seeing, ever again,” she added.
***
A big, bearded Polynesian man fetched what Nico needed, filling a cardboard box, while dojo boy pulled out kukris and laid them on the counter for Nico to choose. She balked.
“What is this?” she exclaimed. “You don’t need eighteen inches to cut off heads. Get me Gurkha British service issue, Sarkhuri Khukuri.”
“But that’s only ten inch—”
“It’s ten and a half and can dispatch you to Kali before you realise you’re severed from your neck,” Nico barked. “And hurry up, I need to sharpen it.” Another boy approached Nico while dojo boy found the requested kukri and put it on the counter.
“Uh, sensei wants to know what the boric acid and stuff is for?” the second boy said.
“Fire retardant,” she answered, pulling the blade from its scabbard and examining it.
“What era are you from?” Bearded Man exclaimed and placed a small canister on the counter. “We got your fire retardant right here.”
Nico looked at the little can, sceptical. “Set dojo boy on fire, and I’ll believe you.”
***
To Nico’s surprise, they did set dojo boy on fire, and when Nico saw that he didn’t light up, she consented to being sprayed. Bearded Man pulled out a firefighter’s canister, the size of an oxygen tank, and Nico stood in the store’s practice yard while he applied the hose. She had Bear doused too. Getting sprayed by the contents tickled, especially when Bearded Man asked her to lift her arms. To her surprise, a giggle broke from her lips. When he suggested she spray up her skirt herself, Nico nearly laughed again.
“You can change your mind,” Bearded Man said, and she knew he meant about the pit.
Nicky.
She shook her head. “I need to end something tonight.”
Kill him.
“I’m going to kill you,” Nico said.
“Huh?” Bearded Man said.
“Sorry. I was talking to my demon.”
Bearded Man left her with the cardboard box and kukri, and Nico pulled out the chakmak from the scabbard and began sharpening the blade. Each stroke made her mind more still, and she finally remembered.
The Leningrad traffickers, their throats torn apart by her own teeth, and the hot blood given up because she had reaped it, as easily as the ghosts from their eyes. The spines she’d severed, the bodies she’d shot, cut, maimed, and burned. A piling body count that had sated nothing. All that had been him, his poetry, his words, had become personified in her. She had become his mirror, magnifying his romantic self-image: the death hero. But even when manifested as his death angel at last, Nico was still Nico. She stalked and killed every trafficker she could find because she thought she was killing him.
Nico stopped sharpening.
She rose, kukri in hand, and picked up a wooden karate breaking board. She tossed it and lashed out.
Air whistled, and nothing gave resistance to her blade. When two pieces hit the ground, she understood then that she hadn’t missed.
“This time,” she said to Bear, “we end him.”
***
Someone played Queen’s We Are the Champions within the shop while Nico secured grenades and flash-bangs to her harness. She packed Bear, papoose-like, into a utility pouch with only his head showing. Then she tied a little half mask on him using a black bandana with the Punk Monk logo and tightened a pair of child’s goggles over his eyes.
“Esche comes too,” she said, and refastened the choker around Bear’s neck. She tied up her hair.
She was pinning Shayla’s buttons to her harness when a small old man with long, grey hair woven with falcon feathers stepped into the yard. His left hand lacked three fingers.
“Hau, I am Chaytan. Leopard sent for me. I fought the spawn in ’78,” he said.
“Hau, Chaytan. I’m Nico and Bear.”
Falcon man nodded, then yawned mightily. “And I am damn s
leepy. You eyasses should do your fighting in the daytime.”
“Sorry.”
He laid a piece of paper and a pencil on the table. “Show me your plan.”
She drew it for him, drawing a huge circle for the pit and a burning car in the middle. He took the pencil from her.
“The hanging rope to get out is over here. A blue light in the wall marks it.” He made an X, then pointed at the spawn tunnel she drew. It lay directly across the pit from the X representing the rope’s position.
“A red light marks the entrance to their burrow. You’ll die here.”
“I need to see him,” she said. He looked at her. “My maker is in there. Will you let Leopard Man know the odds?”
“Yes,” he said. He drew four more circles, each positioned twenty feet from the pit. “The pit guardians are towers. They deactivate the shield over the pit for a fighter to get through. They also film the fights. Nothing lives in the tunnel. No one is on duty. No one watches except the towers. You will be alone.
“The sound from the pit sickens. Those exposed to the sound always flee. It is why seconds abandon their fighters.
“They know you—not hear, smell, taste, or see you. They don’t need senses to find you. You are what they are not. And they’ll devour you for it.”
Ye are what he was not, Shayla said.
“Light, fire, and smoke confuse them. But they won’t stop because of it. Never stop when you’re in the pit. Stop, and you die. You kill one, and they multiply. You must outlast the spawn.”
She out-deathed the spawn, the shoe shiner said.
“Fight true. May the gods walk with you.”
***
One hour after entering Punk Monk, Nico stood on the walk with goggles pushed up to her forehead, mask at her throat, loaded harness strapped on, and kukri scabbard at her side. Chaytan had already left to make a bet on her at Winkie Bets, and only Leopard Man stood near while the others hung back.
No one offered to be her second, and she knew why. They were scared of the pit, and they also needed her to lose.
I should bet on myself and take all their money.
But there was no time for that, and Nico did not want to be distracted. She thought of who would have seconded her if given the chance—Heloise, who lay unconscious somewhere, and Shayla, who still searched for her. Nico continued to ignore Shayla’s messages. She could not risk both women figuring out her final solution, once Nico viewed the truth in the pit.
If I’m him, I have to leave, she told them in her mind.
A worn, little vehicle drove up, its engine emitting a little rattle, but the windows and hatches were all present and the body and interior intact, per Nico’s request. When it stopped before Nico, its holo interface played Queen. Bearded Man disembarked, humming.
“Wished there’d been time to make napalm, but this’ll do.” She turned to Leopard Man. “Okay, thanks.”
He looked at Nico. “You gonna kill yourself?”
“I don’t want to,” Nico said.
“Whatever tried to kill you before you came to me, forget what it did to you. Come back to life. The pit needs your heart, not cold eyes,” Leopard Man said.
“Okay,” She straightened. “I’m here.”
“The pit guardians know to let you through,” he said. “May the gods walk with you.”
Nico boarded the vehicle. “Let’s go,” she told the BRAI, and the vehicle advanced. She didn’t bother to look back at the men and boys of Punk Monk. They had served their purpose.
The streetlights streaked past as the vehicle zoomed. She left all the windows down to admit the city’s sounds and night’s cool air. She spotted Makepeaces, positioned on buildings like marble sentinels, but none stopped her, and the vehicle drove on. Nico pulled out Dorothy and typed a simple message to Specs.
Thanks for looking out for me.
She typed two more messages, one to Shayla and one to Heloise, timed to release in the morning. Then she secured Dorothy behind Bear.
“Dorothy, play me ‘Lords of the Null-Lines’.” Nico put in her sound-buds.
The vehicle approached a deserted overpass, then turned into the chain-linked fence beside it. The gate was open, and the vehicle passed through and descended down a ramp for an overgrown open passageway strewn with debris, the train rail in the centre long disused. The vehicle lumbered over it, then sped along, following the rail between its wheels. Nico watched the buildings, trees, and street lights above that they passed, then looked at the concrete walls on either side as huge graffiti art appeared.
KAHU NAKAHI, one said, displaying the great figure of a noble Maori man, a mass of flowers and flickering candles before it. Art monuments of other celebrated fighters decorated the passageway’s sides, and Nico saw nimble figures ahead, moving with spray cans in hand, intent on the concrete wall before them. Two more figures held lights for them. Goggled and wearing gas masks, the artists worked rapidly on a fresh graffiti, their spray cans spelling:
страшная месть и медведь
Nico held up Bear to see as their vehicle passed, and the artists paused to solemnly watch her drive by.
“That’s us, Bear,” Nico said, securing him again. “We’re vampires, all the way down.”
She opened the lighter fluid can and began squirting the backseat with its contents. More names came into view on either side, some spray-painted over old names, and Nico paid them no heed, knowing they were of the many who were dead.
But a massive graffiti of glow-paint came into view that gave her pause, one that had obliterated many names on the wall. Flowers bloomed in the concrete’s cracks and pressed gold leaf gleamed in the artwork. The name rose, luminescent, a night-sun rising out of sucking darkness:
SHYLA O’FEY
“Jaya Mahakali,” Nico said, raising her fist. She turned back to the dash and pulled down her goggles. The cavernous mouth of Jotun tunnel loomed. “Okay, Bear, let’s screw this up.”
Her little vehicle entered, splashing through trapped water.
Steel girders ribbed the cavern’s throat, stretching to infinity. The tunnel stood three trucks high and four across.
“Plenty of space and oxygen,” she told Bear. “I don’t think we’re going to cause a sucking inferno.” Or melt down most of the spawn with this small car.
“Raise the windows to a one-fourth opening, please,” she requested of the onboard BRAI, then activated the lighter. She locked the flame and tossed it into the back seat. Flames immediately licked, crackling. Nico deactivated Dorothy but left her sound-buds in. The faint sound of gnashing teeth and screams rose, an ascending, echoing cacophony that seeped into her dampened hearing. A glowing graffiti marker on the tunnel wall said:
YOU AR HAV WAY TO HELL
She slowed the vehicle and hopped out.
“Accelerate, don’t stop,” she ordered, and the hatch clicked shut as smoke filled the interior. Nico ran alongside, applying duct tape over her nose and mouth. She pulled up her half-mask with the Punk Monk logo. The vehicle sped up, pulling away. Thick, black chemical smoke spiralled from the vehicle’s windows and rose to cushion the tunnel’s top, then expand. The vehicle’s interior flared, yellow and white, its fire roaring, and Nico pursued its light.
The screaming of the spawn pierced through the fire’s noise and reverberated, chilling Nico to her bones, and had sense not fled her soul she would have turned around right then. But something more ran with her as she watched the vehicle roll, her wild, flaming chariot to hell. Her passageway became a tunnel of ghosts, from her parents to Fedosov’s victims, and she was Anubis’s herald, leading the souls to their common murderer at last.
The vehicle’s fire cast light upon the four towers surrounding the pit, then abruptly dropped from view. Its smash resounded amid frenzied screaming. Black smoke billowed, evidence of plastic, metal, foam, and polymer burning and melting. The pit’s sides lit, a giant’s hellish campfire. Four booms sounded from rubber tires blowing and launchin
g—Nico hoped—melted goo to take out spawn. The hatches blasted open as pressurised struts flew. Nico reached the pit’s edge and the blinding heat hit. She leapt.
FOR ESCHE ABRAM-ANGEL, her mind shouted.
A frenzied infestation of grey and pink raw flesh swarmed below, exposed by the conflagration’s light. Burning, screaming, they flailed, half-formed and malformed, erupting in limbs, claws, and teeth. Those not crushed by the vehicle surged, furiously clawing and biting as they burned.
Her feet hit the vehicle’s hot roof. She pulled a grenade’s pin and launched it towards the red light embedded in the pit’s side. Nico leapt again, hurling through smoke and fire as the pit thundered from the grenade’s explosion.
She landed at the blackened impact site amid raining spawn parts and before the mouth of their tunnel, an aerosol can in each hand. A flaming spawn hurtled for her and Nico pressed the nozzles.
FOOOOSH
A single streak of white-hot fire ignited from the spawn’s flame, the streams of lubricant fuelling a three-foot long blowtorch. Nico sidestepped the burning spawn and pointed her flamethrower into the tunnel. She had only seconds before the cans ran out. The spawn within ignited, raking the air. Smaller than the spawn outside, they screamed, stretching from bio-matter clinging to the cave’s sides.
Nico threw the cans deep within the tunnel. She sent a flash-bang down with the cans. The explosion ignited the cans and fire spread. She drew her kukri.
I’m coming for you, she mentally shouted, jumping in, and her arm whipped, slicing death through everything.
Nico advanced, cutting spawn down that reached for her from above, the ground, and the cave’s sides, their limbs stretching from the bio-matter birthing them. Spawn detached and flung themselves. More clawed for her legs and she swept, a scythe to mow them down. The screaming ascended. She sent down another flash-bang to anger them further. She was deep in evil’s maw that made tinier maws, all come into the world killing.
Monster Stalker Page 27