“I love you, da bao,” Michael said in Gabriel’s mind, his mental voice full of love.
“I love you, solnyshko,” Gabriel replied. “Very, very much.”
THE WHOLE building shook, and Liam was already on the ground when Declan yelled, “Quake! Hit the deck!”
Liam reached out for Baxter and clung to the soft white fur of Baxter’s wolf shape as dust and small stones dropped down from the ceiling. The shaking of the building continued for several moments that felt like several eternities, and when it stopped, Liam cautiously looked up.
Declan was looking around, his flashlight a bright white stripe in the darkness. His expression was furious, and Liam wondered what it was his brother was looking at. Before he could ask, Declan answered his thought.
“The fucking door’s been covered over. We can’t get out.”
“What?” Liam was on his feet even as Baxter licked his hand quickly.
Liam felt a great sense of relief at the small touch. He shot Baxter a quick smile, although he wasn’t sure Baxter saw it. Clicking on his flashlight, Liam shone it toward the door and saw that Declan was right. The door itself lay on the ground, and the opening was covered by what looked like rock and dirt.
“Shit,” Liam muttered.
“Don’t get cranky,” Angelique said. “There’ll be more than one way in and out. A service entrance and exit if nothing else. We can find it while we search for survivors.”
“Do you really think there’ll be any survivors? ” Danny’s telepathic voice was heavy with skepticism.
She considered it, the few spots of russet in her fur looking like old blood in the stark light of the flashlight. “I don’t know,” she said. “But it wouldn’t be right to assume there aren’t any. I want to be damn sure before I call for evac.”
“Are we getting evac? We’re not going to look for a door?” Baxter canted his head to one side, his golden eyes full of curiosity.
“We might have to. Cross that bridge when we get to it.” Angelique shook herself. “All right, there’s nothing for it. Let’s get to work and see what we can find.”
“Let’s start over there.” Lily pointed with her nose toward a large archway to the left of the little group and not far from the door. “It looks a bit like a lobby, with the scents of lots of people in and out of it, and computers and paper, don’t you think? Maybe there are some records or something there.”
“A good thought,” Angelique said. “You two okay?”
“Of course we are,” Declan said. “Why the hell wouldn’t we be?”
“Can we not debate this right now?” Liam asked. “Let’s just go through the arch and see what’s there, okay?”
“Fine,” Declan said.
They moved as one, the wolves sticking close to each other and Liam and Declan. The wolves’ noses were twitching, their ears moving back and forth. Liam wondered what they could hear and smell. As they made their way slowly and gingerly across to the archway, Liam looked about them, shining his flashlight around, but he could see nothing of interest. He held his .50 once more, gun and flashlight held in both hands in the manner he’d been taught. The air was stale, he thought as he sniffed it, and there was the scent of something metallic and of dirt and dust. The dirt he could understand—they were, after all, inside a building that was beneath an avalanche of rock and mud. The metal was unidentifiable.
The lit le group stopped at the archway as Declan and Liam shone their flashlights into what lay beyond. There was, as Lily had suggested, a lobby, complete with reception desk and chairs and coffee tables. Magazines stil sat on those tables, and there was a vase of dead flowers on the reception desk.
Liam took a breath and shrugged mental y as they all remained motionless.
Nowhere to go but through, he thought, so he stepped forward boldly toward the reception desk and climbed over it to see what lay behind it.
“Anything?” Declan called.
“Not really,” Liam said. “A switchboard—it looks old—a calendar, some pens, paper clips. A TV Guide. That’s about it.”
“No files or anything?” Lily asked.
“No, not that I can see. No computer, no filing cabinets or anything like that. No drawers in the desks; it looks like it’s all been cleared out and taken away—oh, wait a minute.” Liam spied something at the far end of the desk and he picked it up. It was a large piece of paper, folded and creased, and he opened it, smoothing it out. “This could be useful,” he said. “It’s a map of this place. A facility guide, it says.”
“Bring it along,” Declan said. “We’ll need it.”
“Right.” Liam folded it up again and tucked it into his flak jacket. He went back around the desk to join the others. “This is stil so weird, though, don’t you think? There’s no life and no death. No ghosts, no bodies, nothing.”
“The lack of corpses is actually really damn creepy. Great. We’ve walked into a Clive Barker novel. I’m telling you right now, if we find a puzzle box, we need to get the hell out of Dodge and call an angel. I don’t want to run into Pinhead and his buddies,” Baxter said.
“Who? What?” Declan looked down at Baxter.
“You’ve never read Clive Barker? Dude. You are missing out on the finest horror ever writ en. Okay, so it’s also fucking terrifying and you’ll have nightmares forever, but stil . Lots of his books were made into movies.”
“I don’t think I need horror books or movies,” Declan drawled. “My life is full of enough damn horror as it is.”
Baxter actually looked abashed and let out a small whine. Liam went to him and scratched his ears. “When we get home, you can show me this Clive Barker book with a puzzle box and a pin head.”
“Pinhead, babe.”
“That.” Liam gave Baxter’s ears one more skritch, then looked around. “Now where?”
“Over there?” Riley’s voice was a surprise—he’d been so silent since their arrival that Liam had almost forgotten he was there.
“What is it?” Declan asked.
“We don’t know, so that’s why we go look,” Angelique said. “Over there it is.”
They crossed the lobby toward the area Riley had indicated, and Liam was surprised by the plaque on the closed door. “A library? This is a library? What the hell is a library doing here?”
“What would a betterment or whatever it is facility need with a library?” Declan asked.
“Maybe they were big readers? They collected books in their spare time and liked to show them off?” Danny suggested. He shook his head. “I got nothing.”
“Maybe they had staff who worked long shifts, and the library was a perk, somewhere to relax and unwind between shifts. There’s probably a cafeteria around here too,” Lily said.
“This is beginning to seem less like a research facility and more like some sort of military base or hospital or both,” Danny said.
“No arguing with that,” Liam said. He looked over at Declan. “Shall we go in?”
Declan seemed to be thinking. “I dunno, bro. It could be as Lily says, but it’s stil fucking strange. Let’s have a look at that map you found first.”
Liam fished it out of his flak jacket and handed it over. Declan took it, unfolded it, and peered at it by the beam of his flashlight for several moments.
“Huh.”
“Don’t say ‘huh.’ It’s annoying. What did you find?” Liam asked.
“Well, Lily seems to be right about a cafeteria, but there’s also a level beneath us marked as ‘Medical and Science Wing,’ and there’s all kinds of toxic-material symbols and stuff like that. I don’t think this place is as benevolent as it was pretending to be.”
Liam moved over to stand beside him and look at the map. “What’s this? Kennels?”
“Oh, I do not like the sound of that, dude,” Danny said.
“If they’ve been breeding some sort of uber-Cujo….” Baxter trailed off.
“Clive Barker again?” Liam asked.
Baxter let out a l
oud, wolfy sigh. “You’re all pop culture philistines.
No, silly, Cujo was a book about a rabid dog written by Stephen King, the master of horror.”
“Pop culture later, focus now,” Angelique said. She nipped Baxter’s shoulder. “Shall we go into this library?”
Liam exchanged a look with his brother. He was curious about this place, more curious than ever, and he could tell that Declan was too, but both of them were wary, made cautious by far too many years of tracking demons and monsters. Finally he sighed and shrugged. “I guess. I can’t think of anything else, and there might be a service exit in there, for books and things. Or something. Hell, I don’t know. Would a library need a loading area or a place like that? Whatever. Yeah, let’s take a look, just in case.”
“It’s possible,” Declan agreed. “This map is useful to a point, but there are no exits or entrances marked on it, which just makes it even more suspicious and weird.”
Liam took the map, refolded it, and tucked it back into his flak jacket. “All of this is damn weird and suspicious. We’ve never heard of this whole thing. It’s not like we never listen to the news, you know. We use the ’net to research. How come we haven’t come across any mention of this place before? We’ve got contacts who keep in touch, and no one’s said anything about this place or The Betterment Thing at all.”
“Too many questions,” Declan muttered. He shook his head and reached for the library door handle. “On three, I’ll open the door.”
Liam held up his gun and flashlight and nodded. Declan counted down, then twisted the door handle and shoved.
The door opened easily and silently. The room beyond was full of dust and bits of plaster that had sprinkled onto every surface from the ceiling. Liam shone his flashlight slowly around, noting that the stacks were stil standing and that there was a large, round table set with eight chairs in the middle of the room. A desk marked Librarian was on the far side of the room.
“Can you smell anything, Venatores?” Declan asked.
“Dust,” Angelique said.
“And metal,” Lily said.
“You know, I’ve been getting a whiff of metal too,” Liam said. “I wonder what it’s from.”
“I can smell urine,” Riley said. “Stale.”
“Someone pissed themselves?” Danny asked.
Riley gave a wolfy sort of shrug that Liam interpreted as “I don’t know.”
“Stay together,” Declan said. His voice was low. “Let’s not get separated if we can damn well help it.”
They entered the library in pairs, spreading out along the line of the wall, but there was nothing, save for books, dust, and furniture. No one said anything and the silence stretched out, becoming ominous, oppressive.
At first, Liam wasn’t sure what he’d heard. It sounded like a clock, faint but clear. Tick-tock, tick-tock. He frowned, looking around, and as he did so, it seemed to grow louder.
“Can you hear that?” Declan hissed.
Liam nodded. The wolves al had their hackles up and their ears back, their lips drawn back from their fangs in silent snarls. Liam didn’t blame them—in the dark and dust, the sound was more than a lit le sinister.
“What’s that?” Lily asked. “In the corner, by the stacks there.”
They turned as one, Liam and Declan both shining their flashlights in the direction Lily had said. It took everything in Liam not to yell.
Six beings, vaguely humanoid in that they each had two arms and two legs and a head, were slowly coming toward them. Their bodies were metal, the mechanism of a large clock embedded where their stomachs would have been, and it was that mechanism making the noise. In their metal hands, they held strange devices that looked like opaque plastic wands, and there was a sickly sweet smell coming from them. Liam gagged a little and breathed as shallowly as he could, even as he backed up toward the door.
The creatures came closer and Declan let out a startled oath. “Fuck,” he gasped. “Look at their faces!”
Liam did so, although he felt growing dread. His gorge rose as he realized that, unlike their bodies, the heads were entirely human. The flesh was pasty and had the greenish tinge of old corpses left to rot, and their eyes were milky. But worse than that were the fixed rictus grins that spread their lips so thin that they were barely there.
“You need medication,” one of the beings intoned, thrusting the wand in its hand forward threateningly.
“Medication,” echoed the others.
There was a puff and the sickly sweet smell grew stronger. Liam realized that the beings had released some kind of gas, and he wasn’t really interested in hanging around to find out what it was. He turned and threw open the door, yelling, “Run!”
The Venatores did so, bolting through the door as Declan aimed his gun and fired at the beings. The bullets did nothing, simply ricocheted off their metallic bodies. Declan swore and changed his aim, shooting the nearest one in its dead face. The bullet passed through, leaving a hole in its wake, but the beings kept coming.
Liam swore and grabbed his brother, pulling him along as he ran through the door back into reception. He let Declan go and slammed the door shut, leaning against it. “Dec, get something to push up against this,” he shouted.
Declan did, still swearing sulphurously. He dragged over coffee tables, the wolves pushed chairs over, and Liam piled everything haphazardly against the door.
“Take cover behind the reception desk,” Angelique said, her mental voice sharp. She barked once, the sound echoing through the lobby, and the Venatores moved as a pack, running low to the ground to do as she’d ordered.
“This is fucked-up,” Declan said as he and Liam followed.
“So many kinds of fucked-up,” Liam said.
Behind the reception desk, Declan reloaded his gun while Liam pulled out the map and searched it for a way out. There was a flight of stairs at the rear of the reception area, marked only as Stairwell, and they seemed to go nowhere but down. There weren’t many other options, however; the front door had been cut off, and the metal-human creatures in the library were beginning to pound on the door and splinter the wood.
“Back this way,” Liam said. “I don’t think we’ve got many options.
We’re going to have to use the stairwell and go downstairs.”
“To the medical area?” Declan asked.
“Yeah.”
“Riley,” Declan said, “would you be able to identify what’s what down there and what those medical and science type symbols mean, in case we need to take cover in a hurry?”
The red and brown wolf nodded.
“Good deal,” Declan said. “Let’s go.”
They moved toward the rear of the reception, and the plain, unadorned doorway opened easily when Liam tried the handle. There were lights on beyond, emitting a dull red glow Liam recognized from many abandoned buildings as being hazard lights or security lighting. At least they wouldn’t need to use all the battery power in their flashlights, and he wondered suddenly if Declan had thought to bring extra batteries.
The wolves trotted onto the concrete landing, Declan with them, and Liam followed after making sure that he could lock the door. It turned out the wood was just a patina, a finish laid over solid concrete and reinforced steel. The lock would be easy to jimmy so it wouldn’t open, and Liam quickly took care of it, even as he heard the strange whirring and tick- tock, tick-tock noise of the awful creatures approaching, and the robotic insistence that they all needed medication.
“Door’s done,” he reported.
“Great, but we need to move,” Declan said. “It’s not airtight, is it? No.
Then we need to move, so we don’t get affected by that gas, whatever it is.”
“Riley, do you know what that gas might be?” Lily asked.
“I think it’s a tranq,” he said.
“Tranquilizers? What the hell?” Danny asked.
“This place is fucked-up,” Angelique said.
“Amen,” Liam said. �
�All right, let’s get moving.”
They started down the stairs, Liam straining for each sound not of their own making, moving as quickly and quietly as they could. They went down three flights before they hit the next landing and the next door.
There was a sign on the door that simply read Level Two.
“Here or keep going downstairs?” Declan asked.
Liam rubbed his cheek with the hand holding the flashlight. “Here, I guess.”
Declan grunted. “I wish we could be a bit more certain about what we’d find.”
“Nothing good, I bet,” Liam said. “Still, this is the medical level, right? So we might be able to find a storeroom or something like that we can take cover in for a bit while we figure out what to do next.”
“Calling the angels is what we should do next,” Angelique said.
“Yeah, call Mike,” Baxter said.
“And Gabe. And every angel alive,” Lily said.
“Right, so calling the angels it is,” Declan said.
“Let me just take another look at the map and see if it tells me where a storeroom is,” Liam said.
“Good thinking.”
Liam pulled the map out again and studied it careful y. While it did say what was on each level and where each set of stairs were, it did not label what many of the rooms were used for. It was, all in all, more than a little frustrating. “No help,” Liam said, tucking the map back into his flak jacket.
“Fucking fuck,” Declan growled.
“We can’t do anything about it here, loitering in the stairwell. Let’s just get out there and deal with it,” Angelique said.
“You heard the lady,” Declan said.
“Open the door, then,” Liam said.
Declan took a deep breath. “Cover me.” Then he shoved open the door and stepped through. Liam and the Venatores fol owed him, Liam closing the door and mangling the lock behind them. While that might not have been very smart, Liam wasn’t sure that leaving an open stairwell at their back was a bet er option. Declan watched him, saying nothing, and as Liam met his brother’s gaze, he saw understanding as well as a grim determination.
Archangel Chronicles 7 - Shot In the Dark Page 9