As we moved forward the last few feet, the bottom of the pool finally came into view.
It was a snake pit.
The Sorrows lay together in a huddled mass at the lowest section of the deep end, twisted and curled about one another so it was hard to see where one ended and another began. They were moving, the dark flesh of one sliding over or against another’s, and I was reminded of a shark’s need to keep moving through the waters of the ocean lest it suffocate and die; their motion had the same frenzied yet purposeful sense to it.
Not one of them noticed our approach; none of them so much as looked up as the eight of us got into position. Ahead of me, Dmitri braced himself with one foot against the lip of the pool and pointed his weapon downward at the creatures moving below him, ready to cut loose as soon as the signal was given. Along the other side, Spencer and his men were waiting for Gallagher’s signal and readying their own power.
That’s when everything went to hell.
30
HUNT
Gallagher had been gathering his power since we’d first entered the building and he raised his hands, getting ready to send a blistering wave of mystical energy down at the mass of Sorrows at the bottom of the pool.
Spencer and his men followed suit.
I turned my face away and squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting the sudden light to hinder my vision.
I’d seen Denise unleash her power in our confrontation with the doppelganger, but she’d be the first to admit that her abilities didn’t run in an offensive vein. Gallagher’s certainly did, and, even without seeing it, I could feel the intensity of the blast that was poured into that pool from the mages surrounding it. The backs of my eyelids lit up like a Fourth of July fireworks show, and for a moment I couldn’t see anything, anything at all.
When I opened my eyes I stared down into the depths of the pool, expecting to see nothing but the charred remains of the Sorrows we’d targeted.
I couldn’t have been more mistaken.
The Sorrows were swarming up the sides of the pool in every direction, the magick having washed over them without any obvious effect!
My mind froze at the sight.
We had a minute, maybe less, before they’d be upon us.
How the hell did they survive that?
I might have stood there and stared, waiting like a sheep to be disemboweled by slashing claws, if one of the wardens hadn’t pulled the trigger on his weapon.
Bullets flew and the sound of the shots filled the room, echoing in the enclosed space, snapping me from my reverie.
As the first of the Sorrows raced up the side of the pool in front of me, I raised the barrel of my weapon, prayed like hell that I’d hit something, and squeezed the trigger.
The gun jerked in my hands. My aim must have been true, for I saw the Sorrow for just a split second as it was flung over backward. That was all I saw, however, for the brilliant flare of the muzzle flash pushed back the darkness and stole my sight.
I stumbled backward, unable to see anything for several seconds except the whiteout in my head. Gunfire erupted on all sides, the sound echoing in the enclosed space, hammering at my ears and destroying my usual means of orienting myself, leaving me to stumble about, afraid that I’d either fall victim to one of the Sorrows or stumble into someone’s line of fire and get killed by our own people.
Interspersed with the gunfire I could hear the shrieking of the Sorrows and the roar of an enraged bear, which told me that Dmitri had gotten into the fight.
Something grabbed my ankle and yanked me off my feet. Unable to see, I hit the ground hard, smacking my head against the deck surrounding the pool. Claws dug into my calf and began to drag me backward.
Shaking my head to clear it, I activated my ghostsight.
The white fog I’d been enveloped in fell away, revealing the snarling face of the Sorrow that had hold of my leg and was hauling me back toward the edge of the swimming pool.
I’d retained hold of the gun in my hand and I didn’t hesitate to make use of it. A quick burst struck the Sorrow square in the chest.
It jittered with the impact of the bullets, shrieking in rage, and dropped out of sight.
In the brief reprieve, I looked around. Given that just about every living thing in the room was supernatural in nature, I could see them all with my ghostsight. Dmitri had shifted and he stood a few feet away from me, driving back wave after wave of Sorrows as they threatened to overwhelm us. Across the pool, Spencer and his men were fighting hand to hand with the creatures and losing. Two men were down, surrounded by Sorrows, their life force being stolen even as I watched. Gallagher was still on his feet, blood trailing from a wound on the side of his head and a trio of Sorrows trying to corner him against one wall where they could all come at him at once.
Clearly, we were losing.
I scrambled to my feet just in time to see the Sorrow I’d shot start scaling the side of the pool for a second time. It wasn’t that I’d missed; I hadn’t. The bullets just weren’t effective against the Sorrows. The kinetic energy in the strikes was knocking them down, but it wasn’t killing them. Not even close.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one to realize that we were in trouble, for just at that moment Gallagher started yelling, “Fall back! Fall back!”
I didn’t need to be told twice. I turned and headed back in the direction we’d come, stumbling along with the others, keeping my gaze on the aura of the man in front of me so that I’d have a means of finding my way out.
The Sorrows harassed us through the halls but fell back as we neared the exit, letting us escape into the night air without further confrontation.
We stumbled to the vehicles, practically fell inside them, and got out of there as quickly as we could.
The raid had been a complete bust and, when the butcher’s bill was taken, cost us two good men.
31
HUNT
It took time to recover mentally from the failed attack. In the aftermath, we struggled to keep despair from overwhelming us. No one could have anticipated that the Sorrows would be resistant to magick, never mind modern firearms, and given what we’d faced as a result, we’d done well to escape with the loss of only two men.
But it was still a failure, a miserable failure at that, and we were hard-pressed not to succumb to the feeling that we were not only outnumbered but outmatched as well. It wasn’t just what we knew that could get us killed; it was what we didn’t know.
Those who’d made it out alive were all sporting injuries of varying degrees of seriousness. Denise and the rest of the medical volunteers had their hands full getting us back into fighting shape and even with the accelerated healing Denise could deliver through her Art, we still needed rest.
Forty-eight hours later, Dmitri, Denise, Gallagher, and I gathered together in the kitchen to consider our next move.
“We’ve got three problems facing us,” Gallagher said, by way of opening the meeting. “One, locate the other nests. Two, figure out a way to counter their ability to hide from sight, and three, come up with a way to hurt these things.”
There wasn’t any disagreement; Gallagher had hit the nail on the head.
He went on. “In the wake of our failure, I’ve had people searching round the clock through the books in the Council library, searching for additional references to the Sorrows. About an hour ago, we got lucky.
“It was a tiny reference, but it suggested that Sorrows have the same weakness that many other enchanted creatures do, and that’s iron.”
He paused, debating what he was going to say, it seemed, and then went on. “I have to apologize. Another half hour of searching might have brought this to our attention and we could have avoided the fiasco of the other night.”
Denise reassured him that he’d done the best he could and he seemed satisfied with that. I, on the other hand, wasn’t as inclined to let him off so easily.
“So how do we know that there isn’t more information over there? Shouldn’
t we wait to act before we’ve gone through it all?”
I knew he was shaking his head even as he said, “That would take too long. The number of attacks is growing daily and if we wait too long they will surpass our ability to respond to them. I’ve still got people looking, but we’re going to have to act now with what we’ve got.”
I was tempted to remind him that doing so was what had gotten us all nearly killed, but in the end I held my tongue. He didn’t need me to remind him of his failure. I’m sure he’d be hearing the screams of his men for the rest of his life.
Now was not the time for divisiveness.
Denise spoke up. “Why don’t we each take an issue? I’ll continue with my scrying efforts. Simon, why don’t you see if you can do anything about the visual problem, and Jeremiah and Dmitri can handle the weapons issue?”
With that, the meeting broke up.
Quite frankly, I didn’t have any idea where to begin with the task we’d been given, but not Dmitri. No sooner had we received our marching orders than he was headed for the front door, tugging me along in his wake.
I waited until we were in the truck and on our way before asking the obvious question. “Where are we going?”
“Garden District.”
I might not have been all that familiar with the Big Easy, but that, at least, was a name I recognized. It conjured up images of what I’d seen on my earlier wanderings: antebellum homes surrounded by beautifully landscaped gardens, where old and new money intermingled in full view of the tourists staring with longing through the windows of the historic streetcar running down the middle of St. Charles Avenue.
“Why, might I ask?”
“Why what?”
“Why are we going to the Garden District?”
He laughed.
“Cuz that’s where the armory is,” he said.
32
HUNT
Dmitri explained that the previous Lord Marshal, the man he’d personally worked for before leaving the city, Charles Winston, had lived deep in the heart of the Garden District. The original mansion had been built in the late 1860s, but after assuming control of the estate, Winston had torn out the wine cellar and replaced it with a custom-built armory. According to Dmitri, it was stuffed to the rafters with the latest and greatest in modern weaponry.
Even better, Dmitri knew where to find the spare key.
It didn’t take us long to cross the city and arrive at the Winston estate. Dmitri explained that the former Lord Marshal had lived alone, so we weren’t worried about running into anyone and having to explain our presence; as representatives of the current Lord Marshal, we had every right to be there.
Since he could see in the dark nearly as well as I could, Dmitri left the lights off once we were inside, allowing me to move around without his help or the use of my cane. There wasn’t time for sightseeing though; he moved through the ground floor like man on a mission, leading me into the kitchen and then down a flight of stairs to the lower level.
The door to the armory was a massive vaultlike contraption that required a digital combination to open. Dmitri strode confidently over to the keypad located to the right of the door and punched in an eight-digit code. There was a loud beep and then the door clicked open.
I’m not a gun freak, not by any stretch of the imagination, but even I was impressed when I got my first look at what was in that room. Racks lined three of the four walls, holding more firearms than I had ever seen in one place. Everywhere I looked the cold sheen of burnished steel winked back at me. There were pistols, shotguns, automatic rifles, even one of those monster machine guns you see in action movies. Ammunition for each weapon was carefully laid out on shelves beneath each rack, the colored boxes looking like soldiers lined up in rows.
Dmitri was like a kid in a candy shop: his eyes opened wide as he wandered down one side of the vault, his hands occasionally reaching up to caress the blackened muzzle of a weapon.
It was an impressive collection.
But it wouldn’t do us a damn bit of good.
“While I can appreciate your need to wallow in the equivalent of gun porn, we seem to be forgetting something important.”
He barely looked at me. “Yeah? What’s that?”
“Firearms don’t work against Sorrows.”
Reluctantly, he turned away from the guns and pointed toward the back wall. “Yeah, I know. But the guns aren’t what we came here for. That is.”
Instead of firearms, the rear wall was devoted to melee weapons of every shape and size: swords, axes, maces, flails, and a hundred other weapons I’d never seen before and couldn’t name if my life depended on it.
I watched as Dmitri reached up, pulled a broadsword down from its mount, and gave it a few experimental swings through the air in front of him.
“You know how to use that thing?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Of course,” he said, as if it was as common as pumping gas or changing a tire. He’d been a warden, after all.
I, on the other hand, had absolutely no experience with a weapon like that.
Trying to put a brave face on it, I said, “Right. How hard can it be?” and stepped over to give him a hand.
We found two big carrying cases in one corner of the room and began to load as many of the weapons as we could into them. Dmitri concentrated on the edged weapons, while I filled my case with those you’d use to bludgeon someone to death. It was cheery work, trust me.
Once we had a good assortment, we carefully sealed the cases and began carrying them out to the truck for transport back to the clinic.
As we moved through the house with our burdens, I happened to glance through an open door to one side. Winston had been in the process of renovating when he’d been struck down: the floor of the room was covered with dust cloths, and a set of hand tools was lying in a neat pile off to one side, just waiting for the work to begin again.
I stopped, staring at the tools. A tiny germ of an idea began to form in the back of my mind, and I did what I could to nudge it along.
Something about the tools …
Inspiration struck.
Son of a bitch, I thought, stunned at the idea that was unfolding in my head.
It might actually work …
Dmitri was already outside and I hurried to catch up, calling his name as I did so.
He was sliding the case of weapons he was carrying into the rear of the Expedition when I emerged from the house. He finished what he was doing and then turned to face me.
“What now?” he asked.
“I think I’ve just solved our problem.”
He gestured to the weapons we’d already loaded into the truck. “I thought that was what we were doing here.”
“I’ve got something better.”
“Like what?”
“Take me to Home Depot and I’ll show you.”
33
HUNT
When we returned to the clinic, Denise and Gallagher were waiting for us.
Gallagher sounded more tired than usual. I suspected he’d pushed himself a bit too hard. It had apparently been worth it, however, for he passed each of us a small jar, saying, “It’s not perfect but it will do in the short term. Just use it sparingly; we don’t have that much.”
I could hear the others unscrewing the lids to their jars. A horrible stench burst forth the minute they were opened.
“Ugh! What that hell is this?”
“A salve for your eyes. It’s a fairy ointment derivative. Rub a little of it on your lids and you’ll be able to see through the Curtain that separates this world from the next. If it works as well as I expect it to, the Sorrows will light up like neon signs.”
I could hear Dmitri sniffing loudly next to me. “What’s in it?” he asked.
“You probably don’t want to know.”
I knew I didn’t. I was also thankful that I didn’t need to use the stuff; my ghostsight allowed me to see the Sorrows without any assistance, even in the light of day.
<
br /> That was a good thing, as there was no way in hell that I was putting anything that smelled like that near my face.
Next it was Denise’s turn.
“I have good news and bad news,” she said. “The scrying worked, but perhaps too well.” There was a rustling sound, like that of newspaper pages being turned. Denise said, “I’ve marked the hits I got on this map.”
There was a moment of silence while the others took a look.
“Chyort voz’mi!” Dmitri said sharply and I didn’t need a translator to know he wasn’t happy with what he saw.
“Somebody want to fill me in?”
Denise sighed. “I got a hit on forty-seven different locations.”
Forty-seven? There couldn’t be that many, could there?
“How the hell are we going to manage forty-seven packs of these things?” Gallagher asked. The tiredness in his voice had turned to disgust. It sounded like we were outgunned from the start.
But Denise wasn’t finished. “It’s not as bad as all that.”
“It’s not?” Sure as shit looked bad to me.
“No,” she said emphatically, “it’s not. Without a proper focus to zero in upon, the scrying can’t be targeted properly. As a result, we end up with a forty-eight-hour window of possibilities.”
I thought that one through for a minute. “So, the circles mark locations were the Sorrows are now or where they have been during the last twenty-four hours?”
“Or where they will be by this time tomorrow,” Gallagher said. “How do we separate one from the other, then?”
Dmitri spoke up. “Correlate the sighting reports with the markings on the map. If a Sorrow was spotted in that area during the past twenty-four hours, we eliminate it from the list. It won’t be perfect, but it will at least start limiting the playing field.”
It wasn’t a bad idea, and Gallagher said he’d get someone right on it. In the meantime, we still needed to come up with a way to deal with the Sorrows when we confronted them.
Thankfully, my partner and I had already solved that problem. “Dmitri?”
King of the Dead (Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) Page 16