Havoc Rising

by Brian S. Leon

  “Let’s walk,” she said without stopping to wait for me as she headed back up along the beach away from my shanty.

  My first reaction was that she was pissed about me dragging Sarah along, and all I could think was that I would not enjoy this conversation. Reluctantly, I jogged to catch up to her.

  “Look, it’s my team,” I said before she could start talking, “and I’ll choose anyone I damn well want.”

  “I’m not here about Agent Wright, and I approve of her addition. Things have escalated.”

  Her reaction stopped me in my tracks for a second, and I had to jog to catch up with her again. “Things? What things? What do you mean, ‘escalated’?”

  “There are reports of a hijacked passenger jet having crashed in a remote region of Western Bulgaria, in the Balkan Mountains near the border with Serbia. Jundullah is taking credit for it. The plane originated in Tehran. All passengers and crew are assumed dead.” She listed the details as if she were reading a menu. “Fakhri confirms Medea is behind this and is now on site as well. She says the chain is there.”

  “A hijacking? How is that—” I stopped myself in midthought. “You said Jundullah, right? Of course. They’re based in Iran and trace their roots back to the Medes, don’t they?”

  I had only dealt with Jundullah as part of the Teams and never thought about them much beyond that, but their involvement made perfect sense. They were a known terrorist organization that traditionally only operated within Iran. It was small-time compared to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, or al-Qaeda, but they did have a unique history that connected them directly to Medea.

  “Correct. And the founder of the Medes is historically credited to Medus, Medea’s son.” She stopped and smiled at me without amusement.

  “The chain is definitely there?” I asked, my mind racing for a plan of action. Screw it. If she was there now, I didn’t have time. My plan of attack would be simple: attack.

  “Exactly,” she responded, handing me a piece of folded paper. “You need to leave now for Bulgaria. When you arrive, you’ll meet a Sânziană called Gali. That paper should give you rough directions via the Ways. You’ll arrive in a wooded area outside the village of Stakevtsi, close to the wreck site. It’s not very remote, but the local village is small, so there shouldn’t be too much interference from rescue workers or governmental agencies yet. But you need to move now. Once they get on scene, more lives may be lost if Medea is still there.”

  Her eyes flashed electrically, and she walked off into the mangroves. I sprinted back down the beach to my shanty and dug through my gear bags to find my weapons and armor while everyone eyed me as if I were crazy. The human operators on my team wouldn’t be ready for a skirmish this quickly, and I couldn’t leave them alone, either. Ab wouldn’t be fast enough to keep up, nor was he social enough to help the others if I took Duma. I also didn’t have time to think up any small-group tactics, and without a plan, Duma would do what he did best—kill everything indiscriminately—and while not a bad idea, it wasn’t always the smartest strategy. I was going to have to fly by the seat of my pants on this one, and that was something I accomplished best on my own.

  “No time to explain. I’ll be back as soon as possible,” I shouted to no one in particular as I ran off into the mangroves. “Gear up, and be ready to leave when I return.”

  I stopped just long enough to strap on my vest and armor before opening the Ways.

  CHAPTER 29

  Using written directions to navigate the Ways was kind of like using a cleaver to do brain surgery, but whoever had composed them for Athena was remarkably detailed, which really helped. I ended up in a peaceful valley in a pristine old-growth forest. It reminded me of something out of a fairy tale—and probably was just that.

  Many of the trees were gigantic, but even the shortest had high canopies that cast ominous shadows. A beautiful mat of brown leaves covered the forest floor, which was broken only by an occasional stand of scrub brush or sapling growing in any light that made its way through the canopy above. It was cool and earthy and entirely medieval.

  This region of Bulgaria had given rise to legends of vampires and werewolves, and I knew the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler wasn’t far away. There were more Moroi, or energy-sucking mortal vampires, in this region than in any other place on Earth, but it was still remarkable and serene.

  As I got my bearings, a striking young woman with a greenish hue stepped out in absolute silence from behind a massive silver fir tree—definitely a Sânziană, one of the local fairy folk.

  “Hello.” I waved then corrected myself. “Zdravei.”

  I didn’t know much Bulgarian, but it usually didn’t matter with fae. They seem to understand all forms of communication, including among animals.

  At my greeting, the fairy suddenly stood a bit straighter and cocked her head inquisitively, and it occurred to me that she must have been using a glamour to try to hide herself from me.

  “Yes, I can see you. Gali? Pallas Athena sent me.”

  With that, she relaxed a bit and scrutinized me from head to toe. “Yes, I am called Gali. You must be Tydides.” She held out her hand stiffly as she approached.

  “Yes, but call me Diomedes.” I took her hand and gave it a brief shake.

  It was awkward and rigid. Some fairies tried hard to fit in with humans when they had to interact with us. Our customs, such as joining hands when we met, were bizarre to them.

  “Very well, but we must move now. A small group of humans is quickly approaching the wreck site, and a Căpcăun named Targoviste is already there, searching for something. Can you keep up?”

  A plane crash would provide a veritable buffet for the local variety of ogre. Căpcăuns were massive, nasty, and prone to violence, and they liked to eat people, too. Dead or alive.

  “I’ll do my best,” I replied, taking in the hugeness of the valley. The forest was too thick to see much beyond the dense foliage, but I could smell the acrid odor of burning fuel and rubber. I followed Gali, who was moving slowly for a Sânziană in her native realm. Alternating between running bipedally and quadrupedally and occasionally bounding between trees like some kind of lemur, she could have probably moved up and down these slopes through this forest faster than most cars could run the Autobahn. She seemed to be keeping it down to city-street speeds for my sake, constantly checking for my presence over her shoulder. We got to the crash site within fifteen minutes.

  While I recovered from our brisk woodland jog, Gali, who showed no signs of fatigue or even exertion, led me to a stand of trees that grew denser as we approached it. She placed a finger to her lips and beckoned me forward with the other hand. As I got to the trees, I could see smoke filtering through the scattered sunlight in the dark forest. But there was far more sunlight than there should have been. The smell of burning flesh and wreckage became oppressive the closer I got to the edge of the clearing. I could hear lots of movement—heavy, metallic banging and scraping, along with the teeth-grinding sounds of bending metal from up ahead—but couldn’t see what was making all the commotion through the smoke and bright sunlight. A gruff voice was bellowing in a language I didn’t know.

  I pointed at my ears and shook my head, trying to indicate to Gali that I didn’t understand. She shook her head and pointed in front of us. It took a second to adjust to the light and get into a good position to see the wreckage—mostly a massive dirt hole in a clearing of broken and twisted trees. Over the crater’s edge, I could just make out parts of an immense wing and the blue-and-white tail section decorated with a winged horse. Dense smoke billowed from the wreckage, and the caustic smell of burning metal, rubber, and flesh clogged my airways.

  The more I studied it, the more the sight struck me as odd. Very little of the wreckage lay outside the crater except part of a wing, and it appeared that the entire fuselage was crushed inside it. The t
ail section was sticking straight up as though planted in the earth. It was as if the plane had fallen out of the sky straight down to this spot.

  There were no survivors, bodies, or even body parts—not that an ogre would pass up the opportunity to finish them off if it had enough time. I did see a few crimson smears of blood along the visible parts of the white fuselage, but nothing that led to anything I could see. The only thing I could figure was that this crater was deep—far too deep for a passenger-jet crash.

  Based on what Fakhri had told Athena, Medea had Jundullah hijack the plane and then purposely crash it here in order to recover the chain she needed. Crashing a plane to get what she wanted was right up Medea’s alley off Crazy Street. What stumped me was where the chain would be located that she needed to do something so extreme to get to it.

  I quietly crept along the clearing’s edge to my right, trying to get a better view. Several people emerged through a furrow in the crater’s edge about a hundred yards in front of me, carrying out bright golden chests from somewhere inside the wreckage.

  Well, sort of people. The odd creatures carrying the chests quickly drew my attention away from the gleaming golden crates. They walked upright, but they were misshapen and malformed, and none of them projected any kind of magic or power of their own, but some sort of magical energy enveloped them all. They weren’t possessed by it like Sarah or the zombiis had been, but rather, the force played over and around them like the exploring tentacle of an octopus. The ones carrying the chests had massive torsos and arms, but their legs were all different lengths and builds. Others had only one arm, some had shriveled and withered arms, and some even scrabbled rather than walked, hunched over on all fours. They wore little in the way of clothing except for loincloths or ragged pants. Many were so skinny you could see bones under their skin, but the ones carrying the crates were heavily muscled. And there were a lot of them.

  Gali was gazing up, sniffing the air, her face unreadable. Within the span of a heartbeat, I could see her expression change to one of urgency and concern. She mouthed something and then a soft voice like a breeze whispered in my ear, “There is a mag’osnik here, also.” Gali pointed to a spot on the other side of the crater. “A powerful magic user.”

  The sorcerer’s power washed over me as soon as Gali said it. The hair on the back of my neck and arms stood up as my eyes were drawn to a hooded figure with a long staff who was just emerging from the furrow. I hadn’t seen her for a while, but I never would have forgotten that kind of evil. It was Medea. Son of a bitch!

  She had always been tall for a woman—nearly six feet—and her fiery red hair flowed out from her stark-white, hooded heavy cloak. I couldn’t see her face well, and she used the staff for support as she limped along, but there was no mistaking the black aura that surrounded her. It was her aura’s shimmering haze that extended to and fully enveloped every creature I could see around the crater.

  She screamed at the beings carrying the chests as if they were cattle, stopping briefly in front of several others, who instantly cowered at her feet. I could see her aura pulse and change to a bloody red, and without saying a word, she raised her staff and brought it down across the head of one of the creatures with a sickening crunch. It crumpled limply to the ground, and the other two scrambled away. She’d always had a short temper.

  I pulled out my Sig, chambered a round, and made sure my spare clips were handy. I quickly looked around the wreckage to make sense of the landscape and get a feel for how many I was up against. I counted at least twelve of the misshapen humanoids, and Medea. That was what I could see. I knew there was an ogre somewhere nearby, probably in the crater having a nosh, and I still had no idea what else was down there. Apparently, recovery of the chain was important enough for Medea to show up in person.

  “This area lies over the top of many peshteri—um, caverns. The airship’s impact must have penetrated them,” Gali said in her breezy whisper before gliding in silently next to me, flitting from tree to tree in a blur.

  “What are they taking out?” I asked quietly.

  They were placing huge, golden chests decorated in all manner of reliefs and designs at the edge of the trees less than seventy-five yards away, just off to our right. Medea began digging through the gilded coffers with the end of a staff as bloody red energy began to overwhelm her aura again. She was searching for something and not finding it. I felt a brief moment of joy.

  “I do not know,” Gali answered. “It does not feel like it belongs to this region, and it is not of this plane.”

  “What do you mean, doesn’t belong to this region?”

  More of the misshapen creatures were emerging from the wreckage, carrying golden chests, when a louder, more animated chatter and sudden increase in speed of movement ran through their ranks.

  “I mean that whatever they are removing was not in those caverns until just before the airship crashed here,” Gali said in a short, terse tone and with a stern cast to her face.

  I couldn’t tell if she was upset with me or with what was happening to her forest. Then two Ghilan and a pair of the humanoid figures emerged with a stone case that emanated a forcible and pure blue-white energy that I had only seen from items created in the home world of the Protogenoi toward Medea. The case was little more than three feet high, but it was immense in breadth and width, easily eight feet by twelve. It appeared to be made of some sort of smooth, pale stone-like marble, and its faces were carved with figures and symbols I couldn’t quite make out at that distance. Based on the effort expended by the creatures hauling it, the case was heavy as hell.

  Medea’s seething aura calmed back to a uniform black instantly when she saw the container. She limped heavily toward it, forgetting to use her staff in her excitement.

  I searched for a better vantage point from which to attack, but this was the only area that offered any cover at all without a person having to run from tree to tree. I was seventy-five yards away from Medea, which made a round from my Sig pretty useless. I was sure I could hit her, but at that distance, it wouldn’t do much damage, and with a witch as powerful as her, I would have to make every shot count—especially without backup.

  Gali was watching the situation intently. Medea attempted to open the chest while her Ghilan and other creatures stood aside, gibbering and bobbing. Then the giant ogre approached from the back of the crowd. The massively built and slightly hunchbacked Căpcăun carried a mangled human arm in one hand and an immense log in the other. His bald head was small on his broad shoulders, and the most notable feature on it at this distance was a single giant tusk projecting up from his lower jaw. He wore pieces of greenish-colored animal-hide armor over his shoulders, waist, and thighs.

  Whatever I was going to do, I needed to do it then before the kitchen sink showed up. The only advantage I had was surprise, and for maybe a few seconds after that, I’d also have the benefit of them not knowing how many were with me. I figured I’d have the upper hand for about thirty seconds at most. There was something to be said for shock and awe. To quote one of the greatest military strategists of the late twentieth century, “Yippee ki yay, motherfucker.”

  Gali stared at me with her eyes wide as I pulled one sword, kept the Sig in the other hand, and charged from the brush at full speed, roaring a battle cry at the top of my lungs. At least I had the shock part in my favor.

  Thanks to the clearing and the fact that the wreckage had gone straight down, I only had to hurdle a few broken tree trunks in my path on the way to Medea. I’d closed to within fifty yards before her creatures even turned around, and I opened fire with the nine-millimeter Sig P226, aiming for the densest mass of humanoid figures. I emptied the clip ten yards from them, dropped the gun, and pulled my other sword.

  The group had just begun to react by the time I assaulted them, and I tore through most of the oddly shaped creatures with ease, killing or incapacita
ting eight of them. The two Ghilan were significantly faster than the others, and they split up to flank me. The ogre was still farther back toward the wreckage.

  I tried to bank toward Medea before she could act, but the footing on the leaf litter and the loose dirt from the crater proved too unstable, and I ended up rolling about fifteen feet to her right. I used my momentum to carry me into a position on one knee, holding both swords down at my sides. The maneuver nearly brought tears to my eyes because of the burns on my legs, but the pain helped me concentrate. I focused on her as I came to an abrupt stop less than five yards away.

  Medea took one look at me and practically hissed. Her face contorted. She’d been a remarkably attractive woman when I first knew her several thousand years ago, but millennia of hate and evil had perverted her beauty. Her nose and high cheekbones were sharp and angular while her sinister eyes sat in heavily creased slits beneath a wrinkled brow. The skin of her lower face sagged into jowls and a turkey-like neck. There was no wart that I could see, but that was all that was missing.

  I needed to act before she could draw enough energy to attack, so I lunged at her, ready to bring my swords down. I made it about half the distance before I hit something I couldn’t see and caromed off, flying just over and behind her, landing with a jarring impact that sent waves of pain through my burned lower body. Whatever I ran into was stationary, like a wall or some sort of shield. Considering that it had been less than thirty seconds at that point, it was damn fast for a defensive spell.