by A. L. Knorr
“Then what happened?” I asked, flattening my expression and tone.
Stewart nodded incrementally, and I dared to hope there was the barest hint of approval there.
“Told me he would be comin’ on a mission someday, but until then, I better treat you like any other member of my team. You’d earned that much, he says.”
I’d braced myself to not display emotion. But what Marcus had asked of the stoic old soldier: he understood what I really valued, and in his own blunt way he’d tried his best to see it done.
Something might have blurred my vision, but I blinked it away. Clearing my throat, I held his gaze. “And what did you tell him?”
“To get stuffed, obviously,” Stewart stated mildly. “I’m not going to treat some tourist as anything but what they are. Magical powers or not.”
I sighed, leaning back against my seat. “Glad we cleared that up.”
---
After being redeployed from a hidden airfield by helicopters, we crept along low hills until we reached the rocky cliff face; the entrance to the compound. The round portal had two peeled wings of metal around an opening a person could easily step through.
“Sarge, this nut’s been cracked,” someone observed, obviously disappointed that we didn’t need the breaching charges.
A corrupt, cloying smell wafted ominously from the gaping entry.
Several of the team stole glances in my direction before entering. Over the radio I heard soft curses and even a muffled gagging sound.
Once Hadlynne and I entered, we understood why.
It was an utter slaughterhouse. Bodies were strewn from one corridor to the next. Flickering fluorescents revealed one example after another of exactly how people could die, and we had to wade through the miasma of their graceless decomposition.
Through it all, beyond what mortal sense could provide, a putrid tenor resonated across my metallic sense. A creeping unease stole over me.
Something squelched under my boot, and my stomach twisted violently. Two steps later I was sick.
Since realizing my Inconquo heritage, I had all too quickly been exposed to too much violence, too many bodies. Sitting in a lecture hall back at the university, surrounded by lively, healthy students had been my daily reality not that long ago. My greatest concern then had been making good grades and dodging Adrian Shelton. My daily reality now was a far cry from what it once was and it filled me with a longing to go back in time. I’d take Adrian Shelton over this, any day. I might slowly become desensitized to the death of others, but I wasn’t there yet. In some small corner of my mind, I didn’t want to desensitize to it. Horror at the pain and murder of other people was part of being human.
Shuddering, I straightened and took a drink of water from my camel pack, swishing out my mouth. I might have been more upset about losing it in front of the team, but I’d heard some of them sharing the ignoble experience with me.
“We’re a little late to the party,” Stewart grunted as he trudged on, sounding as stoic and unflappable as ever, but the blood drained from his face as we moved deeper into the compound.
“Most of these died fighting,” Bordeaux said, nudging a tangle of assault rifles whose barrels had been twisted together. “Or at least they tried to.”
We moved down a series of metal stairs set into the stony floor and came to a rectangular room whose far wall encompassed a large vault-like door that had also been ripped open. The curls of metal spiralling out from the door were made of welded sheets of metal thicker than the breadth of my hand. That much metal could have put even our unused breaching charges to the test, but it had done the people inside no good.
“What the bloody hell can do something like this, Sarge,” one of the team asked, his voice barely audible in horrified wonder.
I turned to see the muscles in Stewart’s square jaws hard at work, grinding up one unspoken explanation after another. He must have felt my eyes on him because his gaze snapped over to me and narrowed with suspicion.
“Is this Ninurta?” He spat the name, as though he didn’t like the taste and wanted to expel it as quickly as possible.
“I don’t think so,” I said, and then seeing his waiting glare added, “it feels familiar in an unpleasant way. Give me a moment.”
Closing my eyes and letting my metallic sense broaden and deepen, I blocked out all other auras and drew on the cords which rose from the huge door.
I was staggered by the potent and utterly rancid presence that filmed the metal door. The unease that had been encroaching on me with every step into this abattoir swelled into a sickening certainty that I did indeed know this particular blend of corruption. It had been over a year since I’d felt its consuming, volatile touch, but in such potent quantities, I couldn’t mistake it for anything else.
“It’s Kezsarak.” I felt my soul grow heavy as I uttered the name.
The fused rings on my fist pulsed with a pugnacious sympathy, remembering the old enemy.
“Wasn’t that a demon?” Bordeaux asked, his eyes searching the ruins. “I thought they were trying to raise some kind of demigod or sorcerer-king.”
“They were.” Stewart pointed back towards the entrance. “But this looks like someone goin’ out, not comin’ in. The evidence suggests gunfire going outward. Poor bastards were holdin’ the line as the devil walked among ’em.”
A grim silence followed and I felt a pang of pity tug at my heart for the men who’d made this desperate stand. I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened when Sark had taken the cube containing the ancient demon. I’d been brained from behind only moments before it had happened, so my recollection was unsteady. More than what I saw, I remembered feeling multiple wills being bound together even as they tore and twisted from each other. I feared the worst, but voicing only ill-bodings seemed less than helpful. The soldiers were on alert, that would have to be enough.
Stewart signalled the point team inside while the rest took up defensive positions, some facing in, some facing out. I hunkered in a rocky alcove next to Hadlynne, whose main attribute besides a hefty crop of dark freckles, was his determination to be supremely laconic. The man wouldn’t use two words when one would do, and if he could get away with none, all the better.
I ground my teeth as the point team swept the deeper points of the compound. Waiting there in the stale, refuse-sodden air was agonising enough, but fearing at any moment the world might explode into bloody violence was nearly unbearable. My senses straining, I could only hear the occasional rustle of a nearby team member or the tread of those moving in the rooms beyond.
“Initial entry cleared.”
I flinched as the words came through my earpiece.
“Central, proceed,” Stewart growled. “Rear-guard, hold.”
Hadlynne and I were just about to move from our position to join the central group when there was a snarled curse over the headset and a burst of weapons fire within the vault-like chamber.
“Contact!” a voice bellowed, and a high pitched shriek tore through the air. The subhuman sound set my teeth on edge and my skin prickled up into gooseflesh.
Half-formed visions of what new horror waited on the other side of the door materialized in my imagination, but as quickly as the shooting and screaming had started, it stopped.
“Bordeaux?” Stewart demanded in a low, rumbling voice.
There were a few more curses, these muttered, and then what sounded like someone sobbing.
“Clear, Sarge,” Bordeaux reported, and then with obvious irritation added, “we’ve got a non-hostile survivor.”
You could feel the exasperation in Stewart’s tone as his commands went out again.
“Central, resume. Rear-guard, hold.”
Passing through the rent portal, disgust rippled through me at the oily skein of the demon’s psychic residue. I made sure to steer clear of the edges, not simply for their sharpness, but so that I wouldn’t touch the filth that threatened to overwhelm my metallic sense.
Insi
de this central chamber was a long rectangle whose sides sported multiple doors to other passages. The far wall was a massive sheet of smoked glass or tinted plastic. The stuttering light made it glisten like a wall of seething black ice. Standing a few feet from this peculiar wall was Bordeaux’s point team. Most had taken positions to cover the room’s many points of access, but the fireteam leader stood with another soldier, rifles across the chests, looking down at a ragged form pawing at their feet. The blubbering noises were from the wretched creature on the floor.
Central fireteam moved to take positions in support of the point team, but taking a little initiative, I moved to the back toward the survivor. Hadlynne followed.
“Please … please, before it comes back,” he whined in a wheedling voice. A Brit by the sound of it. His clothes weren’t just mussed and torn, but filthy.
“Care to explain what all the shooting was about?” Stewart asked as he faced his men, ignoring the wretch mewling at their feet.
“He attacked me,” the other soldier offered with a shrug. A specialist who I thought was named Dalal or Dalel or something.
“He hugged you,” Bordeaux corrected, his voice flat.
“Same difference,” Dalal shrugged again. “Especially with him smelling like that.”
“I’m sorry, s-s-so sorry,” the man panted, pawing at the men’s boots. “I was j-just so happy to see you. I’ve been hiding for days and d-days.”
The man had begun to tremble, his frame shivering inside his ruined suit. He’d left off pawing at the soldier’s feet, much to Dalal’s relief, and wrapped his arms around himself. He began to rock on his knees, bending his head to bite down on the arm of his stained coat. Even through the fabric, I could hear a pitiful whine sliding between his clenched teeth.
“He was in the room?” Stewart asked, looking at the man for the first time.
“No, he came through there,” Bordeaux answered, nodding to the last door on the left-hand wall before the smoked glass. “Dalal was securing it when he opened the door and hugged him.”
Dalal bent his head and sniffed his sleeve, his nose wrinkling in disgust.
“If you smelled like this,” he huffed, nodding down toward his offending arm, “then you’d call it an attack too.”
Despite the thrumming tension, or perhaps because of it, I had to stifle a snort. As Bordeaux and Stewart turned to look at me, I realised I’d made a fatal error. Neither of them seemed to appreciate the humour of the situation.
“Something you’d like to add, Ms Bashir?” Stewart asked, clearly nonplussed.
I should have shrunk back with my tail between my legs, but I ignored the sergeant’s question to crouch next to the man on the floor. The smell made my eyes water, but I gave him a gentle smile and spoke to him in a low, soothing tone.
“It’s okay you’re going to be safe now. We’re here to bring you back home.”
The whining noise stopped, but he continued to rock, his eyes darting to my face every so often, when he wasn’t looking at the men with guns standing over him. I inched closer, feeling my skin wanting to jump up and run away, but keeping the same tender look by sheer willpower.
“You said you’ve been in here for days,” I said. “Why didn’t you leave?”
His eyes snapped toward the ravaged door, and a parched tongue rasped over his cracked lips.
“I was afraid,” he whispered. “Afraid it would come back.”
I nodded, wondering if the horror this man had endured had broken his mind. Even I, who possessed a way to fight the demon, had found Kezsarak terrifying. To a person helpless before his fury, I could only imagine the terror.
“The thing that did this,” I asked, gesturing to the room, “did it kill everyone else? Everyone in the compound, I mean?”
Part of me fostered a spark of hope that Kezsarak had killed the awakened Ninurta. It might make Kezsarak even more terrifying, but I’d beaten him once before. He was a devil I knew.
“Everyone that fought him, yes,” he sobbed, but sent a guilty glance at the corpses lying around us. “And then he went after the survivors from the escape tunnels.”
“Escape tunnels?” Stewart barked, stepping closer. “We have no intel on escape tunnels.”
The small man shied away from Stewart’s gruff interjection, scooting closer to me. Our survivor’s gaze darted between me and the sergeant, his preference clear in his alternatively cringing and pleading expression.
Stewart looked meaningfully toward me and nodded.
“Where are those escape tunnels?” I asked delicately, keeping my encouraging smile fixed.
“You can’t get out that way!” he declared with a shrill cry. “He rigged them to collapse. They’re blocked now, full of dead bodies.”
He shuddered, and his hands shot up.
Instinct wouldn’t be denied anymore, and I lurched backward to my feet, fearing an “attack” like Dalal had experienced. To my relieved surprise, his grimy hands didn’t reach for me but clutched his head. He alternated between tugging on his limp, hair plastered scalp, and boring into his ears with grubby fingers.
“He laughed while he killed them!” he wailed. “I heard the big voice laughing over and over again while the other two argued. Even in the lowest maintenance shafts, I could hear it.”
I stared at him, trying to figure out exactly what I’d just heard. The big voice? That had to be Kezsarak, but the others? And they were arguing?
Stewart leaned over and growled into my ear.
“We need to know about those escape tunnels, now.”
I nodded and asked the man, “The other voices, what did they sound like?”
The survivor stopped scrabbling at his head and stared at me, and I wondered if he’d heard me clearly between his spasming attacks on his ears. The wretched little man began to bob his head, slowly at first, but with growing speed and ferocity.
“Yes-yes-yes-yes,” he gibbered. “Two other voices besides the big one. Three! Three voices. I heard them before, when he saw me and then again when he went to the escape tunnels.”
He pointed to a door on the wall opposite the one he’d come through.
“Even down that tunnel I could hear all three of them. Two argued with each other while the big one laughed as everyone died.”
Stewart began to bark out directions for the point team to investigate. I crouched down again next to to the man, trying to hold his attention as soldiers moved around us.
“The other two voices,” I pressed. “What did they sound like?”
His eyes followed the first members of the point team toward the door, and he began to shake his head vigorously.
“Can’t get out that way. You can’t!”
“Look at ME!” I snapped my fingers. His gaze ripped toward me, his expression wary.
“Tell me about the other voices.”
His lip trembled, looking for all the world like an oversized child caught playing with matches.
“One was hard, sharp … sounded angry, but also a little scared. It was telling the other voice to shut-up so it could do what had to be done.”
It sounded like Sark. The end justifies the means; that was gospel to the self-serving traitor.
“And the other?” I urged.
He scratched his face. “It sounded almost um … tired, kind of old. Maybe like a grandfather. It was that voice that saved me when he spotted me.”
“Saved you?” I asked.
“I was trapped,” he moaned and began wringing his hands. “He’d trapped me even as he killed everyone else in here. Then, when he was about to kill me, the old voice told me to run and set me free.”
He clutched his legs and resumed rocking.
“I ran and hid.”
My heart gave a painful thud at the evidence given supporting what I had feared. Lowe. My ghostly mentor and friend had been caught in a kind of dual possession with Kezsarak in Sark’s body. Lowe’s strong soul vying with Sark and Kezsarak for control in a perpetual struggle.
Despite the horror of Lowe’s position, I couldn’t help feeling some relief. Lowe wasn’t gone, and unwittingly or not, he’d saved a messenger to pass that information along.
“Tunnel’s blocked, like he said,” Bordeaux reported over the wire. “Mess of casualties too.”
“Acknowledged,” Stewart grunted, and then he was at my shoulder.
“Ask about Ninurta, and then we’ll get out of here,” the sergeant commanded.
My mind still buzzing with the news about Lowe, the command jarred me back to the present.
“Was Ninurta here when he attacked?” I asked the survivor.
A dramatic and chilly change swept over the little man at the mention of Ninurta’s name. The terror which had shone in his bulging, bloodshot eyes began to bleed away, and something like adoration or even longing took its place. The transformation was out of place yet so complete that an uncanny sense of wrongness crept up my spine.
“You know of the god-king?”
“Yes,” I managed to force out. “Was he here during the attack?”
“Of course not,” he cried, looking at me as though I’d suggested it was raining fish and chips outside. “If the bright and glorious one, the untarnished king, had been here, things would have been different … very different.”
The utter conviction, fanatical as the gleam of the dying woman in Fes, had me hiding another shiver. “Where is he then? Where is Ninurta?”
“He left, flew from here to carry the great news of his return. He stayed here only a few days to learn of the changed world and to learn some of our languages. Who but a god could learn so much so fast?”
Stewart and I shared an unsure glance.
“He is on his great mission, his great quest. Soon his wayward children will be gathered to him, and then they, under his guidance, will make the world anew. Upon the bones of the old world, will his kingdom rise, but he must have his children first. With them it will be a rule that has no end!”
Stewart gave a singularly dismissive grunt behind me, but I couldn’t shake the sense of dread that crept over me when I heard those apocalyptic words. Gather his children? Did that mean the Inconquo? Make the world anew? What did that entail?
