“Snap out of it, Kal,” said Brute through my earwig, snapping me out of days past. Reality slapped me in the face and I found myself a few dozen yards away from Sue, the rest of the team staring at me like I’d gone nuts.
“Sorry, guys,” I replied sheepishly. “Did I ever tell you that Jurassic Park is one of my favorite films?”
Waldo spat on the floor, bits of tobacco threading the saliva. In the gray tones of nightvision he looked less than amused. “Yeah, mine’s [DELETED] Revenge of the Nerds.” He flicked a finger at Sue. “Unless this thing is coming back to life to eat us all, what say we get a move on, if it pleases your highness?”
Okay, I deserved that, so I gave the team a rueful nod and Brute continued on, everyone following with Mouth tossing me a grin.
We traveled east between more Greco-Roman pillars to the Yates Exhibition Center, where the Jerusalem Exhibit resided. It was there the young security guard had been found, shirtless, with handprints burned into his skin. Artifacts excavated from near the Temple Mount, the most important religious site in the entire world, were displayed inside thick, high-grade, bullet-resistant polymer viewing boxes attached to the walls and pillars secured to the floor: the remains of swords, daggers, cups and chalices, necklaces, bracelets, and gem-studded circlets made to adorn the brows of royals. A fortune in archeological wonder, not to mention precious metals and gems.
Frenchy shook his head. “So this is where he was found?”
“Yeah,” answered Growler, “but the location might not mean dick to the demon. It might have been a kill of opportunity.”
“I don’t know, guys,” said Mouth. “Look at all this old stuff. Maybe the demon was after something here. A security guard is the logical place to start if you want access to some possibly magical trinket.”
I took a moment to read a large sign between two cases relating to the history of the Jerusalem Exhibit. A German named Wilhelm Fessler and his wife Louise had been given permission to excavate (gently of course) near the Temple Mount. Apparently a recently discovered fragment of scroll unearthed in the Old City section of Jerusalem mentioned a cave near the Mount, much like the Well of Souls under the Foundation Stone of the temple, the site where Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son, Isaac, to the Lord. This new cave, carefully hidden, was said to be the storehouse for King Solomon’s greatest, most sacred relics. Of course they’d thought it must contain the Ark of the Covenant—visions of Indiana Jones dancing in their heads.
Instead of a cave, however, the two found a closet-sized hole filled with all manner of items, some valuable beyond measure, some merely rubbish, and many more decayed and broken, of uncertain provenance and historical value.
Waldo seemed less than impressed as he eyed the treasures. “How long do we wait, boss?”
“An hour or two. Surveillance cameras in this area went down at twelve-oh-three a.m. When the cameras came back online at twelve thirty-one a.m., the guard was as we saw in the photos, shirt off with handprints burned onto his skin. It’s eleven forty-five p.m. right now, so I reckon we wait for an hour before splitting up.”
Frenchy cut in, “Why here, boss? Any idea?”
Brute’s hooded eyes were focused on a small glass case. “I have an idea.”
Chapter Twenty
Dove
The Boys Are Back in Town
“Jesus, he’s dead.” Rat sounded scared and exhausted. His face was covered with tiny welts, as if he’d been stung by a nest of hornets. Still, he looked much better than Ng. From crown to throat, his face was deeply lacerated with thin, almost surgical cuts that bled freely. He’d be disfigured for life, his face a patchwork of scars, if he didn’t get magical healing soon.
I stared at Atkins, who did his own staring at things only the dead could see. With shaking hands, I closed his eyes in a gesture of farewell. Though a Green Pea, he had a lot of potential and the kind of temperament you wished everyone possessed.
I fought back tears as I looked at Atkins. I hadn’t known him long, but he was one of us and not a pervy little skeeze like Rat. Without Kal, I was the senior Agent in charge and that didn’t sit too well with me.
“Everyone else okay?” I managed through a throat swollen half shut with grief. Ng and the Magician nodded, although the Asian had his right hand clutched to his chest. It looked swollen, ready to pop. As for Rat, he seemed more subdued than I’d ever seen him, his face pale and covered in sweat.
“Rat,” I told him, “see if you can magic up a healing for Ng.”
The thin Magician shook his head. “Can’t. I’m low on juice. Ever since I arrived back in this world, it’s like I’m bein’ drained dry like a battery in a flashlight that’s been left on.” Mechanically, without his normal cocky attitude, Rat related what he’d seen in the blue world and what had happened to Tweezer. Meanwhile he began first aid on Ng, stitching and taping his lacerations closed. I felt my stomach perform a slow roll at the mention of spiders bleeding from Tweezer’s body.
“I noticed it the second I cast the spell on Tweeze—the drainin’ feelin’—but I still managed to escape.” Rat’s voice shook, but his hands remained steady. “I think the murderin’ man is leechin’ offa me somehow.”
“How is that possible?” I asked.
Rat shook his head. “Dunno. That guy ain’t human. A demon perhaps.” He shut up for a second while he applied a topical anesthetic and used surgical staples to close a particularly nasty cut near Ng’s left eye. “What’s the play … boss?”
Few things shake me, but at that moment being called ‘boss’ was one of them. Still, it felt kind of nice, empowering. “We take time to heal and wait for Kal. I imagine Ghost will let our AIs know when he’s on the way. We wait because Ng is severely injured and Atkins is dead and we don’t have a damn clue as to what’s going on.”
“And if Kal doesn’t come for us?”
I felt my lips curl into a snarl. “You think he’ll abandon us?”
Rat shook his head, eyes never leaving his delicate work. “What if he can’t come for us? What if he’s dead?” He paused. “More staples, please. I’m out.”
It was good thing we each carried surgical staples as part of our basic first-aid kit because it looked as if Ng would need them all. I gave Rat mine then rummaged through Atkins’ Bat Belt for his stash and gave them over as well, all the while thinking what to do if Kal were dead.
What if he was? What then? The thought filled me with terror I wasn’t about to voice. Nothing destroys a team faster than a leader who utters the words, ‘I don’t know.’ It’s like a poison that eats away at the edges before attacking the more delicate vitals. But losing Kal would be like losing a leg—you weren’t sure if you’d be able to stand without it.
“We do what we have to do to complete the op,” I said, the words sounding feeble and useless to my ears. It wasn’t a real answer, and the tightening around Rat’s eyes told me he knew it but chose to say nothing. That raised my opinion of him from sub-basement to basement level.
My eyes lit on the knife sticking out of Atkins’ leg, which definitely belonged to Billings. I recognized the hilt with its sharkskin grip colored black with years of sweat. I subvocaled Specter for confirmation that it was Billings who’d killed our comrade.
“I am afraid so, Ms. Jacobs. The Ghost copy residing in Mr. Atkins’ DRAFTlite has confirmed the deed. Would you like me to download all the relevant data to Mr. Carson’s and Mr. Ng’s computers?”
“Do it.”
“Done. The other Agents are receiving confirmation now.”
Before Specter finished speaking, I saw Ng’s eyes narrow and the muscles at the corners of Rat’s jaws bunch. They’d gotten the information, all right.
“Okay, gentlemen,” I said aloud. “We carry on, patch ourselves up, and then we finish the op, with or without Agent Hakala.”
“Gotcha, boss,” said Ng through clenched teeth.
Rat chimed in with, “Heard.”
“Good. Now pay attentio
n. I think we need to see this. Specter, play back the fight between Billings and Atkins on all our DRAFTlites, audio at fifty percent.”
It was like watching television up close, or a movie at a theater with a giant screen. The HUD filled with the true-to-life color of an HD recording. The three of us watched the seventy-second clip and marveled at Atkins’ grace as he circled and whirled around the huge form of Billings like a gymnast around an elephant.
And what an elephant! Each muscle on Billings’ torso was perfectly outlined as if Michelangelo had sculpted the form out of flesh-colored clay. Human bodies don’t look like they do in the comic books—anatomy precisely delineated—but it definitely seemed as if someone drew Billings a new musculature. I knew he was a strong man with flat abs and legs like tree trunks, but nobody is that perfect. Not even underwear models.
“What happened to him?” mumbled Ng when the show was over. Rat had finished with the staples and his face and neck was crisscrossed in silver. Unless Alex could put in a good spell, he’d look like Frankenstein’s monster for the rest of his days. From the way he moved his lips and the sweat on his forehead, I knew he was in considerable pain.
“Rat, give him an Oxy.”
Ng shook his head, but I wasn’t having any of it and glared at him until he reluctantly swallowed the pill. Why do men think they can macho through a painful situation when relief is one tablet away? God help them if they ever experienced real pain. Like childbirth—not that I’d experienced that personally, so maybe I shouldn’t judge.
We waited twenty minutes until the Oxy took effect and turned our attention to Ng’s mangled hand.
“What did you do?” I gasped, seeing that the swelling of his digits had the ballistic cloth stretched tight.
“Critter had my hand and was poking it with needle-thin tendrils,” he explained.
An image cropped up on the HUD and I saw a bowling-ball with hair attached to his hand. It was a replay of the scene. A Mac-10A appeared in the frame and unloaded an entire clip into the spherical mass of tendrils, pummeling the hand underneath. My gorge rose.
Rat flicked open a stiletto. “Gotta take this off, dude,” he said, his jaw set in grim, hard lines. “Gonna hurt like you ain’t even imagined yet.”
Ng’s eyes were glassy but focused. “You do what you have to, Rat. The painkiller has me feeling pretty good.”
However stoned he was, Ng sure let out a yell when Rat slipped the tip of the knife under the glove at the back of the wrist. Sweat popped out all over Ng’s face and streamed down to his pointed chin as he clenched his teeth. Spit drooled from the corners of his mouth while Rat sawed at the tough cloth.
Blood spurted right along the slice line that traveled to the tip of Ng’s pinky finger. How he held on for four more cuts was anyone’s guess, but he kept his composure.
“There’s somethin’ under the glove, but I can’t see it through all the blood,” whispered Rat as he detached the stiletto. “Boss, hold him steady while I remove it.” To Ng, he said, “This is gonna hurt awful again, dude.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” ground out Ng as he held his hand rock steady in front of the Magician despite the pain. “Just do it.”
I put my arms around the slender man, surprised by how hot he felt. His muscles were thin, yet corded to an iron hardness that told me he’d done a lot of aerobic exercise, and from his build I’d guess martial arts. “Ready, Rat.”
“Gotcha, Boss.” The Magician laid his fingers against the flaps of cut ballistic cloth and yanked it away so fast that I barely had time to blink.
Wesley Ng screamed like the damned.
It wasn’t the scream that chilled me to the bone, but the hand. Where flesh should have been writhed a mass of black tendrils, each about an inch long. It looked like a hand-shaped sea anemone. Underneath the thick tendrils, the flesh continued to swell, each finger growing within seconds to three times its normal size before Rat pulled the glove off.
“Jesus!” screamed Ng, eyes wide and feverish. “Jesus, Jesus-oh-damn-Jesus!”
“Hold him tight,” Rat hollered over the shrieks. “Don’t you dare let him go!”
I nodded, eyes fixed on the writhing mass at the end of Ng’s arm. What was growing inside him? A parasite? One of the blobbies he mentioned? The thought of those tendrils sliding beneath skin, along bone, nerve, muscle, and vein, made me dizzy. Ugly, whispery words slithered across my brain: hello, lovey-dovey.
No! None of that. In that direction lay madness, and madness was a weakness I couldn’t afford. I’d long ago made up my mind to leave weakness to the men. As for me, I was strong. Stronger than men, strong as I needed to be. Strong as death.
“Wes, man,” grated Rat through clenched teeth, “don’t [DELETED] move.” One of his hands, palm down, hovered over the back of Ng’s hand; the other was palm up underneath. Both kept enough distance so the tendrils could not reach. Rat closed his eyes for a moment, then adjusted his hands so they were below Ng’s wrist. I could see the skin at the base of Ng’s thumb hump and bump as tendrils quested beneath.
I will not vomit. I will not vomit, I thought over and over again.
Rat’s eyes sprang open, the whites glowing gold. A thin white worm of light circled Ng’s forearm four inches from the wrist. The glow became a glare, which glowed blindingly bright, causing my eyes to leak tears. The light moved up the wrist, to the base of the thumb, to the palm, and finally enveloped the hapless Agent’s fingers.
And went out. Poof, as if somebody had thrown a switch.
Ng’s hand was gone and all that was left was a cauterized stump a few inches from where his wrist had been. As for the man himself, he’d passed out in my arms, all sweaty and gross and so pale that the dark olive of his skin had turned a light green. His breathing didn’t seem too labored, but his heart was beating a mile a minute. I hoped he had some good dreams, but considering the onslaught of pain he’d endured, that was highly doubtful.
“What did you do, Rat?” I asked while lowering Ng to the carpet. “Thought you didn’t have the power for magic.”
“Healin’ is hard, boss. Damn hard.” Rat looked like he was sweating buckets. “Gettin’ flesh to knit, regeneratin’ bone and such, coaxin’ it back to what it’s supposed to be—that takes some major juice. Most Magicians need spell gems to perform a good healin’, ’cept for maybe Alex and Kal’s tasty gal Jeanie. Me, I ain’t that powerful, so tryin’ a healin’ on Ng woulda drained me dry, maybe even killed me.” He lifted a finger. It shook a little. “Destroyin’ things, however, is easy and doesn’t take much juice at all because to destroy takes a lot less effort than buildin’. Heck, the human body is filled with potential energy ready to go all kinetic and stuff, so I used Ng’s own body energy to help me cast the spell and control the destruction of that hand. Hardly took anythin’ at all. Piece of cake.”
I eyed his pale face and shaking hands. Right. Piece of cake. Rat was trying to put a brave face on it, but he was exhausted and he knew I knew it. Men. Macho idiots, all of them.
Except for Alex. Just thinking about my boyfriend gave me a warm feeling deep between the points of my hipbones. Alex has a way about him—not macho, not cocky, but self-assured. Yeah, that’s it. A combo of self-assurance and self-control. A man of awesome power, the greatest Magician of this century, and he still read The Amazing Spiderman and loved Star Wars. All that power and no desire to lord it over people.
I’ve had lovers over the years. Uncle Carl didn’t totally ruin me. I couldn’t let that happen because that would mean he’d won, and I’d take a dip in sewage before that’d happen. The only one I didn’t want to kick out of my bed in the morning was Alex. In fact, I’d often lie there next to him watching him sleep, the light of dawn caressing his boyish face, the delicate bone structure of his cheeks and nose.
I sure couldn’t tell you if it was love or sustained lust (I know what Rat would say), but for now it was something I wanted to explore some more. There was no one like Alex. He didn�
�t look at me with lust in his eyes—well, there was some lust; he was a man after all—more like a deep intensity filled with equal parts respect, adoration, and admiration. Let me tell you, except for Kal (who has a hell of a woman in Jeanie) Alex was the first guy I met who wasn’t undressing me with his eyes in under a minute. Most men made me feel like a walking pair of tits and ass cheeks.
Despite being a prize moron, Rat had earned some respect from me, so I felt it was my duty to dole some right back. “Good job, Rat.” I looked at Ng. He seemed peaceful. “What happened to the hand? I didn’t feel any heat, just a lot of light.”
“Hmmm.” Rat stood and stretched, limbs trembling. “Hard to explain, you know. You have to be a Magician to understand the dynamics of a spell.” A few seconds of considering and he continued, “Let’s just say I rendered the hand into energy, most of which was funneled into a dimension parallel to ours.”
“W-what?” I sputtered a bit, trying to wrap my head around it. A parallel dimension?
That earned me some weak laughter. “You should see your face, boss. You gotta realize that light energy can actually penetrate dimensional barriers, and the barriers around here are particularly thin. We receive radiant energy from other dimensions close to us and we bleed that same energy into others, so it didn’t take a whole heap of magic to send the excess away to keep us from being blinded by the release of so much energy or cooked well done. That’s kind of a simplistic way of explainin’ it, but words don’t do the concept justice.”
Whatever. At least it worked. A girl could get her brains fried trying to understand the world of Magicians. “You’re a lot smarter than you look, Rat.”
“I ain’t just another pretty face.” His grin was pure evil lust. “In fact, the rest of me is awful darn great, too.” Before I could kick him in the uprights, he reeled and leaned heavily against the wall, knees buckling until his ass was planted on the floor. “But now I have to pass out for a while. I am done like dinner.” With that, he closed his eyes and slipped into unconsciousness.
The Spirit in St. Louis Page 20
