A thought occurred to me, and I turned to Call of the Sun. “Is it possible parties who were against your mission planted the elf who objected to my presence at the meeting?”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Call of the Sun answered. “It is possible, however unlikely.”
“We’ll need to check that when we see him next,” Fred said, cracking his knuckles in a suggestive fashion.
“Oh, Fred, will you wear the leather pants that flatter your assets to do so?” Tatsuo asked.
Fred turned to look at the dragon, his jaw dropping.
Tatsuo licked two fingers and drew marks on the air. “Two points to me.”
“I can see there are things here I do not understand,” Call of the Sun said. “However, I believe there is a spell we need to cast. Golden Circle, do you have a map of the planes?”
“Yes, father, in my things back at the hotel.”
“Foreman?”
“We will follow you to your hotel, Call of the Sun,” I said. “One last thing. I do not know what is going on, exactly, but the forces arrayed against us have made a move, I believe. Be watchful, everyone.”
Traffic back to the elves’ hotel was light. We ran lights and siren anyway.
Call of the Sun came to my Tahoe once we had parked. “Golden Circle and Sharp Blade are going to her room to get the map. Where would you like to cast the spell?”
“The best place would be…R&D at QMG, honestly. Sola sited the building well; there are many lines of power to draw from.”
“Yes, that might make things easier,” he said.
Golden Circle had replaced her glamour and balaclava on the ride back. She entered the building first, Sharp Blade trailing a respectful three paces to her left.
We sat outside, waiting on them to return. Something shattered a window on the fortieth floor.
“Our suites are there,” Call of the Sun said as broken glass rained on downtown Austin.
“Tatsuo?”
“Yes, Foreman!”
The dragon slid from the back seat, running across the parking lot. By the fourth step, she had begun to transform—by the sixth, she was airborne, her wings pushing great blasts of air downward with every beat. Car alarms sounded in the parking lot as the rest of us crossed into the building.
“Fred—cover the elevators,” I said.
Something slammed into the bottom of one of the elevator shafts as Fred and the dwarfs ran across the lobby, scattering guests everywhere.
A tentacle forced the door open.
“Where’s the damn dragon when you need her?” Fred shouted, opening fire on the eldritch horror at the bottom of the shaft.
“Fred?”
“We’ve got this, Foreman. Check on the others!”
Somewhere in the chaos, someone had pulled a fire alarm. Guests were streaming down the stairs from the mezzanine and stopping, balked by the firefight in the lobby. Some of them pulled out cell phones and started filming the action.
“We’ve got to get them out of here,” Padgett said. “Dalma, Singh, Wilson, you’re on me!”
“I can open a portal to the fortieth floor if you’d like,” Call of the Sun said.
Speaker stood behind the elf, his weapon at the ready.
“Yes,” I replied. “I’ll go through first, Hovis, then Baxter. You and Speaker follow.”
“Yes, Foreman,” he replied, clapping his hands. When he drew them apart, I could see a hotel room on the other side.
“Go,” I shouted. Just as I stepped into the portal, the building shook.
We stepped out into the elves’ suite of rooms.
“Very nice,” Baxter said, looking around the room. “I might want to stay here sometime.”
“That means we’ve got to save the place,” I said as Call of the Sun sealed the portal behind him.
He stepped to the door, placing a hand on it.
“There are two—no three elves in the hall. There is also a presence I have never felt before…”
“That rules out Darth Vader,” Hovis said, stacking against the door on the right side. “How you want to do this, Diindiisi?”
“Me first. This scatter gun,”—I held up my Roadblocker—“doesn’t discriminate. Then Speaker, Call of the Sun, you, and finally Baxter.”
“Oh, sure, put me behind all the tall people,” Baxter said, taking her place at the back of the stack.
“On three…one…two…three!”
I threw the door open and stepped out into the hallway after a quick look to ensure I was not going to run into anyone. The building swayed under another impact.
A glowing shield blocked the hall to the elevator foyer. Something dark and sinister beat itself against the shield.
“Daemon!” Hovis shouted, bringing his weapon to point.
“Hold your fire—the round will only ricochet off the shield,” Call of the Sun said.
“There has to be a way around it,” Speaker said.
“She has encapsulated the entire foyer,” Sharp Blade said. He stood to one side, his left arm hanging loosely.
Golden Circle chanted in the Fair Tongue. Whatever she had captured shrieked in time with her chant. Finally she made a wrenching gesture with both hands, and her shield collapsed inward, compressing the thing inward until it imploded.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Ar’thaa,” Golden Circle replied. “A very nasty one at that.”
“Foreman, we have an issue,” Tatsuo thundered outside.
My phone started ringing—it was Jed’s number, so I took it.
“Is this important?”
“Yes. Where are you?” he asked.
“At the hotel where the elvish delegation is staying, why?”
“You need to get the hell out of there right now,” Jed said. “The place is turning into monster central.”
“Yes, I know,” I replied.
“Foreman! The Piasa approaches!”
“I’ll call you back,” I said, turning to Call of the Sun. “Can you make another portal to the lobby?”
“I can do one to QMG if you’d like,” he said.
“I’m not abandoning the dwarfs or our drivers,” I replied.
“Yes,” he said, clapping again. The lobby appeared, and we stepped through.
“Diindiisi,” Fred said. “I don’t know what you did, but that mass of tentacles disappeared.”
“It was a manifestation of the Ar’thaa,” Golden Circle said.
“What’s an Ar’thaa when it’s at home?” Ozzie asked.
“Daemon. Very powerful,” Sharp Blade said.
“Mount up, everyone,” I said as the Piasa slammed into the building just above the fortieth floor.
Stone dragon verses modern steel and glass construction. The dragon won, easily.
“There are people above the point of impact,” Call of the Sun shouted, gesturing.
Gravity stopped. By force of will alone, Call of the Sun held the building together.
Tatsuo thumped to the ground in the parking lot, transitioning as she walked into the building.
“Foreman, the Piasa is destroying the building,” she said.
“Yes, and we can’t leave. Call of the Sun is holding the building together. Any suggestions?”
“What about Fred and company punching the Piasa for a while?” Padgett suggested.
“Won’t work,” Fred said. “We haven’t got anything that will punch through his scaly hide. By the time we lift a scale or three to get pitons planted, even he’s going to feel it and try to scrape us off.”
“I…I could try something,” Tatsuo said. “I could get him down to this level, at least. Dalma, do you have those magic bullets?”
“The depleted uranium penetrators? They’re in the case with the S-18, why?”
“Not those, the other ones.”
“Mistletoe? Yeah, they’re in there, too. I didn’t get a chance to clear the magazines. Sorry, Ozzie.”
“No worries,” Ozzie said. “I t
hink there’s some incendiary tracer in the box as well.”
“There’s a story that the Piasa is allergic to mistletoe. Deathly allergic. You’re going to have to shoot him more than once to be sure, though,” Tatsuo said. “Fred, if you say anything about what I’m about to do, I’ll eat you, no matter what the Foreman says.”
“You have my word,” he replied.
“People, I can hold this spell all day long,” Call of the Sun said. “It would be easier if there weren’t a giant stone dragon trying to tear the building down, however, so if you’re going to do something, please do it.”
“Give us two minutes to get the S-18 set up,” Dalma said, running to the garage with Ozzie and Alfie in tow.
“I’ll lure him down into the parking lot out front!” Tatsuo said, running out the door.
“Why not hit him with a spell?” Padgett asked as we took up positions around the door.
“He is older than language,” Golden Circle replied. “He would just shrug off any spell I used.”
“Well, fuck,” Padgett replied. “I guess we’re depending on Dalma’s accuracy then.”
Tatsuo walked to the middle of the parking lot and transformed. She lifted into the air, grunting.
“What’s she doing?” Padgett asked.
“Oh, my,” Fred replied. “I’ve seen this once before, a hundred and fifty or so years ago. What’s the one thing a male is guaranteed to respond to?”
“Food?”
“Even you aren’t that dense,” Fred replied as Tatsuo started dancing in the sky.
The Piasa lost all interest in destroying the building; his head came out of the hole he had torn and followed her dance.
“Is she…” Padgett asked.
“Oh, she’s good,” Fred replied. “And he’s a horny old thing, following a hard-wired biological imperative.”
“Dayum,” Padgett said. “That’s sex?”
“For dragons, yeah,” Fred replied.
The Piasa exited the building and chased Tatsuo across the sky, bellowing.
“He’s out of tune and doesn’t care,” Fred said. “Of course, with dragons, that kind of thing doesn’t really matter for the ancient ones. The young ones adapt.”
“You’re a veritable font of knowledge pertaining to dragons,” Padgett said.
“The old man was a biologist,” Fred said with a shrug. “He wanted me to follow him into the field, until the mine supported the wrong side in the American Civil War. I got voluntold to go prove we were loyal citizens, and found I liked that better.”
“Look sharp,” I said, watching the dragons circle lower across the sky.
Tatsuo landed first, facing the hotel. The Piasa landed between her and the building, flaring his crest.
The dance continued on the ground—the Piasa tried to get a grip on Tatsuo’s neck so he could mount her, and she deftly avoided it every time. Finally they swung about so the Piasa was on the far side. He opened his mouth to grab Tatsuo.
“Smile you son of a bitch!” Dalma said, firing.
She had timed things perfectly—the round entered the Piasa’s maw, punching through the roof of its mouth and through what passed for a brain in the ancient wyrm. It went down as if it had been hit between the eyes with a sledgehammer on the killing floor.
“HELL YES!” Dalma said. “I get to keep the trophy this time!”
“She gets to pay for the cars the bastard crushed as well,” Fred said.
Dalma came over, the barrel of the S-18 over her shoulder. Ozzie was carrying the action. They trotted past, Alfie in their wake.
“What the hell are you doing?” Fred shouted.
“Picture. I’ve got to get a picture of this for my album!”
* * * * *
Chapter 27 – Jesse
“How you doing, Jesse?” Warren asked.
“I’ve had better days, you know? I wondered what I was going to do to top getting poisoned by Tiamat last time I took a vacation in the Shadow Lands,” I said, pointing to my stump. “This kicks that in the ass.”
“Good to know,” Warren said. “Townsend says you’re doing fine, by the way.”
“He would. Damn Docs are all alike.”
“I heard that!”
“I wanted you to, otherwise I’d have whispered it,” I said. “How long was I out?”
“Two days, if my watch is still keeping time,” Warren said. “Your hand went missing a long time ago.”
“Yeah, I figured it would,” I said. “Hey, Townsend, can I sit up?”
“Go for it. I’m tired of cleaning the mess.”
Warren helped me into a sitting position.
“Yeah, he’s right, I need to piss,” I said. “How many bags of fluid did y’all put in me?”
“Ten,” Warren said, helping me to the toilet sink. “The good news is we haven’t seen fucking Clepstone since you showed him what he was sticking his dick in. Man…those things were fugly.”
“Well, some folks got no taste in women. You know, quantity has a quality all its own, that kind of shit,” Townsend said, coming into the cell.
“Guys, I love you like brothers, but this is starting to feel like a gay porno, with me as the bottom,” I said.
“Just don’t drop the soap,” Warren said, leaving the cell. “You hungry?”
“I’d seriously maim someone for a T-Bone steak and fries,” I said.
“How about beef patty, grilled, jalapeno pepper jack?”
“Man, you know how to kill someone’s appetite,” I said.
“Let me take a look at you,” Townsend said, easing me down on the bed again.
He did the doctor thing—blood pressure, pulse, temperature, etc.
“So am I alive?” I asked when he was done.
“More or less. I’ve been making a shiv out of an MRE spoon just in case, though.”
“What are you using to sharpen it?”
“Another MRE spoon, of course.”
The walls flickered, turning from concrete to badly plastered mud brick. The bed turned into a cloth bag stuffed with straw, and the lights became torches.
“That isn’t a good sign,” I said, bracing on Townsend and standing.
“No, I’d say it isn’t,” he replied.
Out in the main area it was worse, and the few “modern” touches highlighted the surrealism of the rest.
“You ever see something like this before?” Warren asked.
“Yeah, once,” I replied. “Abzu tried to force an opening in London County. The local courthouse took on a look like this.”
“So what do you think has happened?”
“Either Abzu has figured out how to seal off the Font, or he’s figured out how to move the Shadow Lands again. Neither option bodes well for Ms. Salazar’s little boy.”
“Just you?” Warren asked.
“Well, yeah, I’m the hero of my own story, you know?” I laughed. “You guys are probably fucked, too.”
“I can feel your concern,” Warren said. “No, seriously.”
Daemons flooded into the room, led by the one human female who’d been with Clepstone.
“Your time has come,” she said. “Will you come willingly, or must these drag you?”
“Looks like someone got promoted from Clepstone detail,” Townsend said.
She gestured, and a daemon punched him in the gut.
“Man, that’s so cliché,” Townsend said, standing back up. “I wish, just once, someone would do something besides punch you, you know?”
“Flowers would be nice,” I said.
Daemons grabbed me on either side, doing the same to Townsend and Warren.
“Frog marching it is,” I said as they dragged us out.
Things had definitely changed outside as well. Instead of the remains of a medium-sized college town, we were now in ancient Akkad. Mud brick structures clustered at the bases of mud brick ziggurats.
“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” Warren said, seeing the changes.
“More like a bad Led Zeppelin cover band, man,” Townsend said. “Houses of the Unholy or some shit like that.”
“Silence!”
Daemons and a few miserable-looking humans looked out from some of the mud brick structures. They dragged us through the town in the most round about manner possible, almost as if Abzu was showing off his captives to his minions.
“So what do you think they’re going to do to us?” Townsend asked.
“Well, Pete, I don’t think Abzu is going to give us a big feed and the keys to the city,” I said. “Something tells me we’re about to be the main attraction at a big sacrifice.”
“Well, I was hoping for something different,” Townsend said. “Hell, been good working with you, Bob.”
“Same here,” Warren said. “Gonna miss you too, Jesse.”
“I can think of worse folks to die with,” I said.
“Clepstone comes to mind,” they both said.
“Yeah, fuck that dude,” I said as we reached the bottom of the ziggurat. There on a stake was Clepstone’s head. “Told him he hadn’t read the whole contract.”
“Bring the one with one arm up first,” Abzu called from the top of the ziggurat.
“I’ll see you guys on the other side,” I said.
Climbing to the top was another parade—up a level, around the side to the next ramp, up a level, and so on and so forth until we reached the top.
“If I’d known I was going to do the Stations of the Cross, I’d have worn sneakers,” I said.
“You have been brought here to usher in a new age, not make jokes, human,” Abzu said.
I swear I saw Billy flicker in and out for just a second. If so, he and any rescue team were cutting it pretty damn close. Not that I would complain if they got my butt out of here. Though if they were going to pull off a rescue, it would be nice to get Warren and Townsend as well.
“I see you are now properly awed,” Abzu said.
I shot him the bird. For good measure, I gave it to him Akkadian style, circa 2005 or so. “Properly awed my ass.”
Abzu gestured, and I fell to my knees. Something had struck me from behind.
I pushed myself back upright.
He knocked me back down.
Last Call Page 20
