Blood Demons

by Richard Jeffries

  There were no stairs, or even a ladder. Key dropped a full fifteen feet, landing on raw ground—amidst a space that looked to have been dug by hand to the size of a standard mausoleum. Key dropped, rolled, and came up in a ready crouch, processing his impressions of shackled chains in the walls, just before he returned his full focus to the robed man, who, to his annoyance, was still standing.

  Key didn’t want to risk releasing the wires so he could pull out his Sig. He just kept pointing the dart gun and firing until the robed man wrenched up a heavy iron cage like it was made of chicken wire and hurled it at him.

  He heard Nichols screech, because her enhanced vision, added to the infrared, let her see what the men couldn’t see yet. Children were in the cages. Key couldn’t help that, certainly not at the moment. He dodged the thing, feeling its weight and stench as it flew by, and felt a tug in his hand as one of the wires twitched. If not for the Cali-brake and the Chain-silk, his hand would have been deeply sliced. As it was, the cage slammed into the floor with a vibrating, bouncing, clang—clueing Key that the enclosures had to be at least seventy-five pounds. The robed man had tossed it like a pinecone.

  “Morty! Kill the bastard!”

  “Can’t get a clear shot,” Daniels hissed in his ear-comm.

  He started to explain but Key stopped listening for two reasons. One, he saw packs of explosives everywhere—on the floor by the cages, on each wall, and every few feet on the ceiling. Two, the robed man came at him as if the two men were attached at the sternums by retracting springs.

  He saw the same feral face he had seen in the Sujanpur fort, then only the wall and floor, as he spun his body away from the attack. He pivoted on the balls of his feet just as the robed man came back, clawing at him as Key predicted he would.

  Key did not just stand there and let the man’s jagged fingernails tear at him. As each claw swung, he moved in rhythm with it, letting them move him without touching. He was close enough to see the remains of the darts he had fired into the man, splattered like pin-filled paintballs across his flesh.

  But as much as Key tried to counter the attack, the man was too fast and he knew the space too well. Key tripped on another cage and, because he was loathe to let go of either the wires or the gun, he let himself go down.

  By the look of vengeful triumph on the face of the robed man, the bastard-monster was sure he had Key at his mercy. Key emptied the darts into the man as he came to tear the team leader apart. But just before he touched him, a shape fell from above them, clamping onto the robed man’s back like a pouncing puma.

  Nichols had jumped the man, and, as Key watched, she nailed the barrel of her Sig Sauer to the middle of his back, and convulsively squeezed the trigger.

  Neither Key nor Daniels, let alone Nichols, would have believed it had they not been there. Later, Lancaster would watch their uniforms’ automatic video feed in super slow motion, seeing that, at the split second Nichols’s trigger finger tightened, the shriveled, withered, robed man twisted his torso so fast that the bullets only creased his spine skin and tore the robe cloth.

  But, in real time, all Key and Daniels saw was Nichols go down hard and the man twist away. But her bullets splattered, sparked, and ricocheted all over the space.

  As Key vaulted to his feet, he heard Nichols screech in frustration for herself, and in fear for the children. Then he heard Daniels roar like a wounded lion. Key looked up just in time to see the big man let his torso swing into the trapdoor opening, bringing his Sig Sauer to bear.

  “Morty,” Key barked, “hold your position!”

  But it was too late. Daniels tried to hurl his bulk onto the robed man, firing as he went. The man didn’t dodge. Instead, he leapt at Daniels, then, incredibly, used the big man’s dropping body as a stepping stone.

  His kicking leg, so seemingly scrawny, not only vaulted him upward but also propelled Daniels to the ground like a slingshot. The big man smashed into the dirt, his infrared goggles cracking, his weapons flying. Key was already up and grabbing the Thunderbolt in mid-air, swinging it around as the robed man’s claws sank into the trapdoor frame.

  Key emptied the dart magazine all over the opening, all but perforating the man’s back, ass, and legs. But even so, the next second the robed man was out and gone. Key and Nichols heard his bare feet crunching the splintered wood, asphalt, and glass of the front entrance. But the team leader and the driver saw two different things and had two different reactions.

  Nichols saw their quarry escaping, so she looked to where Daniels was just coming around.

  “Sorry, Morty!” she said as she used his back like a step stool.

  Nichols shot up fifteen feet like a gymnastic aerialist as the big man went down groaning again.

  Key, meanwhile, had noticed the small, red, flashing lights that suddenly appeared on every pack of explosives. The light was tiny, but the infrared goggles helped him see a small logo next to the light on every pack.

  Nichols was about to spring out of the trapdoor and give chase when Key’s cry stopped her.

  “No,” he said sharply. “Let him go! He’s primed the place with timed Octabane!”

  Nichols froze in a crouch just beyond the trapdoor lip. Octabane, short for octanitrocubane, was the most powerful non-nuclear explosive known.

  It, in itself, was not enough to keep her from going after the robed man. Octobane was insensitive to shock and wouldn’t go off on its own. But that was why Key had included the word “timed.” The bastard-monster had the explosive on clocks, and there was no way for her to know how many seconds were left.

  Key did. They had started at sixty. That was how powerful the Octabane was. Even the bastard-monster had given himself a minute to get clear.

  “Attach the towing chains to the trailer hitch,” Key immediately shouted, “and throw the other ends down here!”

  “Goddamn it, Joe,” Daniels growled as he lurched alongside, his eyes darting from one flashing red light to the next. “They’re not long enough to reach down here!”

  Key didn’t bother to say “I know.” Instead he stabbed one hand at the chains in the wall, and filled his other hand with his Sig Sauer. “Yeah, but they are!”

  The cellar was full of the sound of gunfire as the two men blasted the walls where the chains were bolted. Within fifteen seconds, their hands were full, and their hearing was clearing just in time for them to hear new noises—the Ecosport backing up, and its chains clanking over the trapdoor lip. Key used the chain’s shackles to lock them to the cages—not missing the irony that using things that kept the children prisoner might also help free them—as Daniels grabbed the chain ends and hooked them together.

  Forty seconds remained.

  “Ter,” Key shouted as he clutched one cage and signaled Daniels to do the same. “Gun it! Gun it! Get us out of here!”

  Nichols didn’t have to be told twice. She rammed the fifteen hundred cubic centimeter, four-cylinder engine up to its full turbo-charged ecoboost of ninety-nine brake horsepower at thirty-eight hundred rpm, shifted it into full four-wheel drive, and slammed down on the accelerator.

  The vehicle lurched forward, yanking the cages off the ground. Key and Daniels grabbed on with all twenty fingers and four legs—prepared to survive this motorized version of being keelhauled. Only the car stopped in the middle of the entrance, the cages hanging like wrecking balls over the floor. The tires spun and smoked.

  Thirty seconds…

  “Ter!” Daniels boomed. “Speedy added a super charger! Hit the super charger!”

  Nichols had wondered what the recessed red button under the dashboard was. She punched it, and it was as if retro-rockets had ignited. The SUV heaved forward like it had been shot from a cannon, and even Daniels had a hard time holding on as the cages leaped up into the air, nearly smashing the two men into the ceiling of the first floor.

  It was even worse when
they came down, both men wrenching their bodies so the heavy cages didn’t land on top of them. Even so, the rear ends of the cages hit the lumpy yard like hatchets. They felt like plows being dragged by runaway chariot horses as Nichols sent the SUV down the street.

  Both men were ready for the cages to swing like clappers, but no amount of preparation could help them when the they all swung into the estate wall opposite the school. Key grunted as Daniels howled. Although the Cali-brake saved their skin from shredding, each bump and swing was like getting pummeled by a heavyweight champ.

  Twenty seconds…

  Both men, clamped to the cages like ticks, thanked anything they could think of that the cages were as heavy as they were, or else they would have been crushed, lost, or scrambled at every turn. As it was, it was like being thrown into an industrial drying machine full of rocks.

  Finally the vehicle straightened out and tore down the street, giving Key a second to look up. There was a turn up ahead. As the SUV picked up speed, Key knew the odds of even Daniels holding on at the turn were slim. He refused to even imagine what it was like for the children inside the cages.

  Ten seconds…

  Nichols knew that any turn would send the cages and men flying, so, as she had for the entire trip, she made the least damaging decision she could—driving directly at the fence and yard on the corner while all but standing on the accelerator.

  The SUV smashed open the fence, tore up the yard, and rammed through to the other side. It sent the cages flying upwards and, for a second, Daniels felt as if he were back on a boogie board in the Hawaiian surf. He was wrenched to reality by the sound of Key’s quiet voice in his ear-comm.

  “Let go, drop, roll, duck, and cover.”

  Daniels did as he was ordered without the customary quip or question. The pain of hitting the ground was swallowed by the explosion and shockwave.

  The school was instantly turned into matchsticks and the detonation broke windows for miles. The fireball could be seen as far away as The Golden Temple, sending countless haji pilgrims into paroxysms of prayer.

  Chapter 9

  When Daniels opened his eyes he saw a ceiling that looked familiar. He took only a moment, glancing side to side to see Key and Nichols in the Rahal Clinic recovery room beds on either side of him—none with any sheet pulled over the head—before he spoke.

  “Fuck a duck,” he sighed incredulously. “Either tell me I’ve died and gone to purgatory, or tell me how you pulled off this particular magic trick.”

  Gonzales and Safar let Lancaster do the honors. “Well, you’re obviously not dead, master sergeant,” said the billionaire as he hooked thumbs toward the Hispanic and Arab flanking him. “And these gentlemen were already on their way the moment Terri saw the fuse wires.”

  “And given that Speedy is his nickname,” Safar said with a grin infused with the memories of the trip, “it wasn’t a leisurely jaunt.”

  “No,” Gonzales agreed. “It was actually one of the fastest, and hairiest, I’ve ever taken.”

  Later the entire team would get the details: a hasty F. B. Law hop to a waiting, specially equipped, four-hundred-and-twenty horsepower, four-wheel-drive, eight-speed, six-ton GMC Yukon Denali on the outskirts of town, then one of the nastiest races to Dhaul Kalan—all with Gonzales and Lancaster in constant communication with officials, sleeper agents, and contacts all over the Middle and Far East.

  “Fast, nothing,” Daniels marveled. “You could be faster than a speeding ticket, but how the hell did you get us out of Punjab?”

  “In good, old-fashioned terms,” Key said thickly. “I’m guessing you just smuggled us out, right?”

  Daniels looked over to see Key struggling to sit up, as Rahal stepped forward to discourage him with a tender touch of her hand on his shoulder.

  “How long you been awake, Joe?” Daniels asked.

  “Just long enough to hear you emerge from your oblivion, Morty,” he replied, his voice getting stronger. “Must mean that maybe you joined Terri’s and my concussion club, huh?”

  “No,” Rahal reported. “Although the explosion was at least as powerful as the fifty-caliber, point-blank bullet Nichols took to the head in Yemen, you managed to get far enough away that you could be saved by the same thing that saved her: the Cali-brake suits and headgear.”

  “Even the Denali was nearly sent into a ditch by the shockwave,” Safar reported, recalling his struggle to keep the rescue vehicle on the road. “But we thoroughly tested Cali-brake for months in Cerberus labs, even before you people were recruited. Not only is it bulletproof, but it has some of the same characteristics as exoskeletons. So I was pretty sure you were still all in one piece.”

  “Especially since your ear-comms were still sending and receiving even after the explosion,” Gonzales added. “The place was matchsticks, and your Ecosport was toasted front to back, but we were able to collect you all and get out of Dodge before the local bulls froze the village.”

  Both Daniels and Key shifted quizzical expressions to the boss man, who was ready with the explanation.

  “The local ‘bulls,’ as Speedy so quaintly puts it, quickly concluded it was not a terrorist attack,” Lancaster explained. “Not in an abandoned school on the outskirts of town—”

  “No matter how big the boom,” Gonzales interjected.

  Lancaster gave him a sardonically appreciative nod before continuing. “They’re still not sure what it actually was, exactly, but the flight paths were only shut down for about an hour.”

  “Giving us just enough time to secure your coffins aboard the HondaJet,” Gonzales concluded.

  “You using ‘coffins’ the way you used ‘bulls’ and ‘Dodge’?” Daniels asked, then lowered his chin to his chest after Gonzales and Safar slowly shook their heads no. “I don’t suppose the authorities were pleased,” he finally surmised.

  Lancaster shrugged. “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

  Key had finally made it to a sitting position. “You said you got us all.”

  The jokey pleasure the team’s awakenings had elicited in the clinic were subdued by Key’s comment. Gonzales and Safar lowered their heads, then looked to Rahal and Lancaster.

  “Yes, Joe,” Rahal finally said quietly.

  “So tell me,” he said when she grew silent.

  Daniels looked about to say “tell him what” when Lancaster cut him off. “I’m truly sorry to say that three of the four children were DOA.”

  A pall settled on the team, which was quickly made worse as they considered the circumstances.

  “What they must have suffered was truly horrible,” Rahal choked out. “They looked like stillborn fetuses rather than children.”

  Nichols, who had awakened first, finally spoke up. “Will they come back from the dead the way the other child did?”

  “I pray not,” Rahal told her, clutching the patient charts even tighter to her chest. “I did thorough examinations on them all.”

  They knew that meant autopsies, so if the children came back to life, it would be an even more nightmarish occasion. Daniels looked disgusted and Nichols looked tragic at the thought, but Key looked thoroughly pensive.

  “That’s three,” he said to Lancaster. “What about the fourth?”

  Rahal looked surprised, thinking that Key would have immediately asked for the findings of her examinations first. The Cerberus chief looked from her to the team leader.

  “In a coma,” he informed him. “But alive.”

  Key nodded, seemingly satisfied, but not happy. “Okay,” he told Rahal. “Now findings.”

  It was Rahal’s turn to look at Lancaster, who nodded with approval—his expression communicating that she need not have even inquired. But Key didn’t mind. He assumed she had done it simply to give her extra time to gather mental strength. She could dissect an adult with hardly a second thought. But wo
rking with these obviously tortured children had clearly unnerved her.

  “They had been undoubtedly fed on,” she said. “And not just their blood.”

  “He ate pieces of them?” Daniels asked angrily.

  “Hold on, Morty,” Key said quietly, not taking his eyes off Rahal. “She’ll get to it.”

  Even so, Rahal seemed grateful for the interruption. “No, Morty. Pieces of them were not missing, but—” She paused, seemingly struggling to figure out a way to say it accurately.

  “All their limbs, bones, muscles, and organs were intact,” Lancaster elaborated. “But somehow they were shriveled.”

  “Actually, not precisely shriveled,” Rahal corrected. “Depleted. As if somehow, something had taken from their bodies the ability to replenish and regenerate themselves.”

  Key remembered what Lailani and Rahal had said about the Ekimmu. “Like something was feeding on their life force,” he said almost to himself.

  Nichols looked worriedly at the scientist, but this time Rahal stood straighter and nodded.

  “Yes,” she said. “Souls are still up for question, but not life force. Whether it’s called the mitochondria, hydrogen pump, qi, like here in China, or even ‘the force’ in movies, there is energy inside us that allows us to talk, walk, think, move, live. That is scientific fact. And, although we have come across many creatures who drink blood, we haven’t come across anything that can drink this life force.”

  “Yet—” Key added.

  “Yet,” Rahal agreed, her face troubled, remembering his telling her that he believed everything, no matter how outlandish, had some basis in fact.

  The entire team reacted to that bombshell according to their own upbringing. It was Gonzales who ultimately broke the silence.

  “How is that even possible?” he marveled.

  “According to around five thousand years of human science,” Rahal said flatly, “it’s not.” She looked from one to the other. “But every other test supports the supposition that these four were, and are, normal children.”