Blood Demons

by Richard Jeffries

  Lancaster’s lips tightened, biting back any trite, essentially useless, hollow advice like “be careful” or “keep your eyes peeled.” The Cerberus standard equipment all over their uniforms was already taking care of that. Instead, he fed them information Logan might not share.

  “The area is under constant infra-radiation radiological tech,” he reported. “It reveals a network of caves and tunnels that are filled with successive groups of attackers waiting to ambush anyone entering.”

  Daniels’s eyes narrowed as the copters floated down some fifty feet away from a cave entrance. He looked from it to the armament hanging on either side of the Osprey doors. In addition to the craft’s standard Gatling guns, Hellfire missiles, and Hydra rockets, he recognized new, laser-sighted, computer-controlled, “leapfrog” landmine cannons. “Well, that explains that,” he murmured, looking forward to seeing the cannons in action.

  He didn’t have long to wait. As soon as the Osprey settled, Logan signaled the leapfrog tech. The brigadier general and the Cerberus agents watched the techie’s screen, which looked like an animation that foretold the future. A line went from the cannon to inside the cave, then skipped, like a flat rock on the surface of a pond, through the tunnels, even around corners, leaving small discs in its wake.

  The animation had hardly stopped when the techie’s thumb twitched, and the cannon blasted out with all the energy and power of an electromagnetic thrill-ride launch ramp. Logan, Daniels, Nichols, and all the troops watched as what looked like a hat box disappeared into the cave. Then only the latter trio, plus the techie, watched the screen as the hat box seemed to divide into slim, discus-shaped sections that sped deeper into the caverns—leapfrogging each other to get there. Then they all heard the whomps of the detonations from inside the caves, saw the cave walls crackle, and felt the ground shake.

  “These mines combine the most effective attributes of explosive, napalm, shrapnel, sound, and sight assaults,” Lancaster’s voice said into his agents’ ears. “Designed to kill, incapacitate, blind, and/or deafen.”

  Logan wasn’t done, however. As that was happening, the hundred troops had emerged from the Super Stallions. As soon as they were out, crouching, their copters relaunched, floating above the cave systems. As the troops watched, the undercarriage armaments launched what Daniels recognized as new injector lance missiles, designed to burrow into landscapes before detonating. More whomps followed until the entire area seemed to wobble.

  Logan turned expectantly to his techie, who studied his screen carefully before giving his commanding officer a thumbs-up. The screen was clear of infrared shapes that could be identified as living humans. Daniels and Nichols shared a look. Both knew that the screen didn’t, and couldn’t, show living dead humans. Thankfully, even Logan wasn’t dropping his guard, but probably not for the same reason.

  He hauled himself up and scuttled toward the copter door. Although both Daniels and Nichols had started after him, their boots hit the ground before his, their bodies between his and the smoking cavern entrance. As Logan watched the Osprey troops deploy, the Cerberus agents only had eyes for the cave entry.

  “There’s nothing for it,” Daniels heard Logan say tightly. “We’ll have to go in.”

  Everyone had hoped they could have made this a small-unit, nighttime assault, like the team that took out bin Laden, but, as with everything else so far, the Marines had to dance to Zaman’s tune. This wasn’t so much a surprise attack, but an early morning RSVP to an obvious invitation. They could only hope that the terrorist had underestimated the speed with which they had managed to mount the assault. But everyone in Cerberus doubted that.

  Daniels and Nichols carefully placed themselves around Logan so the brigadier general didn’t get the impression that they were restraining him as he, like a baseball coach, gave silent commands with his arms and hands. The troops responded expertly, approaching the cave from two sides, weapons at the ready. As two backed up one, the lead man went in, made sure the area was clear, and signaled the others to follow.

  Logan heard their reports on his own earphones and grinned rapaciously as one team after another announced “all clear.” He nodded, then gave an order that was music to Daniels’s ears. “Strafe the walls, floors, and ceilings.”

  Lancaster grunted in response himself. “Ah,” he said in his agents’ ears, “seems he can learn from experience.”

  They all heard a renewed chorus of “all clear,” but that didn’t seem to cheer Logan at all. His face remained grave until he heard a quiet comment from the team leader up front.

  “Got something.”

  Logan stepped toward the cave, Daniels and Nichols moving with him as if they were his moonshadows. “What?” he asked.

  “Can’t be sure,” came the team leader’s report. “Body too disfigured by damage, but it might be Zaman.”

  At the mention of the name, Logan started striding toward the cave. It took all of Daniels’s not-considerable willpower to keep from wrenching the brigadier general back. Instead, he and Nichols quickly followed, subtly sandwiching the man from possible harm. They both wanted to offer warnings, but remembered their place—as well as the likely effectiveness of that.

  Whatever their concerns, they found themselves in eerie green night vision light, standing amid the leading squad, looking down at a disfigured, crumbled, shattered corpse. The Cerberus agents’ night-vision glasses were superior to the military issue, so they could see the man’s face, body, and clothing better than the others.

  “Yeah,” Daniels muttered. “Looks like Zaman all right.”

  “It’s not outside the realm of possibility,” Lancaster told them doubtfully. “The bombing was intense.”

  “Only one problem,” the normally quiet Nichols said, surprising both her boss and partner. “It’s only his corpse. Where’s the others? Where’s anybody else?”

  “Shit,” Daniels snapped. “She’s right.”

  “Wait, wait!” Lancaster warned. “It’s entirely possible that—”

  The phrase was as far as he got before several things happened at once. Logan was leaning down to check the body when the team leader spun around at the sound of a rifle. The soldier next to the team leader grunted and staggered as the rest of the soldiers’ helmet lights converged on a turbaned, burnoosed man holding an AK-47 at an outcropping at the far wall of the cavern.

  The other soldiers opened fire as Logan fell atop what appeared to be Zaman’s corpse. Daniels placed himself between the brigadier general and the other men as Nichols grabbed a fistful of the corpse’s remaining clothes and threw him in the opposite direction. Daniels was again impressed by her strength as the body that might be Zaman smacked into the wall by the cave opening they had entered.

  Daniels tried to look everywhere at once as the sounds of the soldiers’ shouts filled his ears. “Shit,” he repeated. “Don’t chase him!” But it was too late. Like starving cats spotting a mouse, they raced after the man who had shot at them. “What do you see?” the master sergeant asked his boss.

  “They can’t get a bead on him,” Lancaster replied, expertly deciphering the jumbled images Safar had hacked from the soldiers’ camera feeds. “The tunnels are getting smaller and twistier the deeper you get into the caverns.”

  “Of course they are,” they all heard Key say from their Chinese Versailles headquarters. His clear, strong, voice was welcome, but not so much after what he said next. “Trap, trap, trap. Get out of there. Get Logan out of there.”

  “How is it a—?” Daniels started, but his body was already responding to Key’s orders as his brain tried to catch up to the fact that no good ever came of questioning Key’s deductions. He took one step back toward the copters just as Logan ran by him in the opposite direction. “Shit,” he said a third time as he tried to grab the man, but Logan was too fast.

  The brigadier general got to the outcropping just as Nichols
sidled in front of him like an electric eel. But despite her enhanced speed and reflexes, Logan’s intensity and bulk slid her back. By then Daniels had caught up, and the two Cerberus agents crammed the commander between them.

  “Get out of the way,” Logan barked. “My men—I have to reach my men!”

  Both Cerberus agents saw the truth of Key’s guess. The outcropping was more than that. It disguised an opening into a deep, multi-tiered cavern—a cavern that was even now being cut off by a sliding slab of rock.

  “Fuckaduck!” Daniels seethed, unable to figure how the slab of rock was being moved, or from where. All he knew was that if he stayed where he was, he would be crushed in seconds.

  Logan was blocking Nichols’s exit. She’d never get out in time. Daniels could simply step back and escape, but he had his orders. He grabbed Logan by the arm and head, then practically threw him over his shoulders like a rag doll. He could have used a German suplex to hurl them both to safety, but there was no way he was going to save himself at the cost of Nichols.

  Instead, he tossed Logan the way Nichols had tossed the corpse, then purposely stepped to the redhead’s side as the slab of stone slammed across the opening, sealing them in the darkness with the other soldiers. Even her enhanced reflexes couldn’t help her dive out now.

  “Trap sprung,” Daniels announced to whoever was listening. There was no answer. “Logan out, us in.” No answer. “Stay tuned.” No answer.

  The master sergeant grimaced as the truth sank in. Not only were they trapped, but they were trapped in a space that somehow cut off all communication. Daniels lowered his head until he could see Nichols only by the glimmer of her green eyes.

  “We’re screwed,” he whispered to her.

  No answer.

  Chapter 25

  Josiah Key couldn’t think of anything that could stop him from joining Lancaster to find out what had happened to Daniels and Nichols. Within seconds of their ear-comms going silent, he was already collecting the tools he’d need for an extended field assignment.

  In fact, he was on his way to Gonzales’s hangar to see which aircraft he could pilot when both Dr. Helen and Lailani blocked his way. The Chinese woman had no translation device nearby, so the Filipino was the one to tell him.

  “The naked malfeasant,” she said. “Not dead.”

  Lancaster may not have heard Daniels and Nichols any longer, but he heard the woman’s words as clear as day.

  “Go,” he told Key from hundreds of miles away in his command post aboard the Discrotor Jetcopter high above the clouds of the Hindu Kush battlefield. “Or, more accurately, stay. See what this is all about, and what you can find out. One thing we don’t need right now is another helpless agent wringing his hands and walking in circles.”

  “That an accurate description?” Key wondered, marching down the Hall of Mirrors toward the clinic’s morgue, flanked by the two Asian women.

  Lancaster looked toward Safar in his corner of the craft’s cabin, all but banging his fist on the ear-comm’s control board. “It’ll do,” he told Key before checking his own readouts and screens. “Logan’s on the ground with the surviving copter crews, raising holy hell for additional forces to drill through the rock wall. He doesn’t want to use a missile in case it kills the trapped troops.”

  Key nodded as he entered the cold, sterile medical examination room. “Logan’s a shitload of things, but he’s not dumb,” the team leader said tightly. “He knows that operational HQ will want a positive ID on the corpse he’s got ASAP.”

  “Or negative,” Lancaster agreed. “Although he’s had a crisis of conscience, if I know Pat, he’ll get over it soon enough. Better a live possible hero back at base than an impotent commander in the field. If that body is Zaman’s, the powers-that-be will be satisfied, no matter how many troops were lost.” Lancaster paused, taking just enough time for a nod. “Yup. The Osprey is taking off now. Faisal, stop trying to get through to Daniels and Nichols. It’s a waste of time and effort at this point. Keep apprised of the military chatter.” The retired general returned his attention to Key. “What do you think?”

  Key stopped in his tracks, looking at the withered, wizened corpse of the monstrous old man that had haunted them from India and back. He lay, naked, looking like a ruptured human-shaped balloon—but one that now had grown ragged fleshy patches on lumpy outer extremities. Key looked at Lailani, who nodded.

  “Once creator is gone,” she said, “many legends state that victim’s curse fades.”

  It tragically fit. Now that the one who fed on the creature’s feeble life force was beheaded, her victim was returning to his previous state.

  “Doesn’t matter what I think,” he told Lancaster. “Now it matters what Craven knows.” Key motioned at Dr. Helen, who started unwrapping her largest acupuncture kit with one hand while motioning at the body on the metal table with another.

  “She says,” Lailani interpreted, “she needs his whole body.”

  Key quickly studied the room, seeing metal tracks in the ceiling from which thin chains hung. “Do you need his thumbs?” Key asked her, then, when she looked confused, pointed at his own thumbs. Dr. Helen took a second to tap the tip of Key’s thumbnail. He responded by pointing to the base of his thumbs. The old woman curtly shook her head “no,” then went back to her preparations. “Okay then,” Key said dourly.

  When she was ready, so were Key and Craven. The former had strung up the latter with bands tight around the base of the knobby, nude, corpse’s thumbs. Craven hung from the ceiling with his toenails just scraping the metal floor—allowing Dr. Helen access to every centimeter of his body except for a half-inch band where his thumbs met his hands.

  Key hefted the lightning gun, parked one buttock on the edge of the examining table, and watched with Lailani as the Chinese doctor did her needle dance. It took almost a half hour, but finally Dr. Helen stepped back, revealing the pincushion that was now the child murderer. There had to be hundreds of needles in the thing’s form, with the most being in his arms, legs, feet, and ears. In fact, the latter two places could hardly be seen through the steel pin forest.

  She nodded at her work, then at Key, then stepped over to the medical console. She sat on a wheeled chair there, and switched on the electricity. Both Lailani and Key saw the monitors light up—their graphs veering wildly. Craven seemed to tremble in the air, but otherwise Key waited for no approvals.

  “Friend,” he said to the seemingly passive thing that passed for a face. “Chhaaya nahin.” Craven’s eyes opened. They were dry and still bloodless, but clear. “You think I’d forget so soon?” Key told him. “No, friend. Now you may answer. Chhaaya nahin.”

  It looked as if Craven was trying to smile. At least the corners of his ruined mouth were twitching. “No shadow,” the creature breathed, the words carried to Key’s ears as if by dust and wind. “They had no shadow, so I became their shadow.”

  “And the children became yours?”

  This time Craven managed to turn his head, and the mouth corners twitched again. “Goonga,” it breathed.

  Key nodded, finally understanding why this monster would think him silly. “Not your shadow,” he realized. “Your reward.”

  If Craven could beam, he would have. “Yes,” he said. “Finally, yes.”

  “For being their shadow,” Key urged.

  “Yes,” Craven said, then became silent as, with every word, it seemed as if extra vitality was pumping into his body from an invisible tank. As they watched, his nose, lips, fingers, and toes began to take on a more familiar form.

  Key looked back at Lailani, who was staring at the thing like a bug. “Legend says vampire have no shadows,” the young woman whispered, as if Craven would react badly if she was heard.

  Key looked from her back to Craven, his mind chopping at the puzzle, trying to figure out where that legend came from. “Vampires avoid light,” he
muttered. “Light casts shadows.”

  “If they in light,” Lailani said, “people see no shadows.”

  “They see nothing behind them.” Key sat up. “People would see no one behind vampires.” He turned from Lailani’s confusion back to Craven. “They let you have children as reward,” he said. “For being behind them, for backing them up. For—”

  Suddenly the puzzle pieces started clicking into place. Key wasn’t sure whether to nod, shake his head, or both. Instead of either, he raised his hands, bringing the lightning gun with them. “Oh, God,” he chastised himself. “So moorkh. I am so moorkh.”

  A noise emerged from Craven’s mouth that combined wheezing and choking. He was laughing at Key. “Yes, hadda. You stupid before. Not so much now, henh?”

  Key opened his mouth to continue, but before he could, Lancaster came back on his ear-comm line. “Major,” he interrupted, “the corpse has been positively identified. It is Aarif Zaman.”

  “Of course it is,” Key replied.

  “What?” Lancaster responded. “Never mind, that’s not important. What is important is that, as far as command is concerned, the mission is complete. But at a terrible cost. They’ve done an even more intensive infra-radiation radiological search, and there’s not a sign of life in the entire cavern any longer. I am truly sorry, Joe.”

  “Don’t be,” Key snapped.

  “What?”

  Key ignored his boss, keeping his attention on Craven, while answering them both. “You brought them Zaman, didn’t you? Zaman and his men, who would then bring them more men, better men.”

  Craven’s exultant, bitter laughter filled the room. “Yes, hadda. They did not want me. They wanted you, and the others.”

  “What?” Lancaster exclaimed again in Key’s ear. “Why?”