“What the fuck are you doing here?!” I rage whispered, as soon as she removed her hand from my mouth.
“I believe you need help,” she replied, in a much calmer whisper, as if that explained everything.
“Ok, but—”
“Ms. Marmot, can I be of assistance?” asked a deep voice that I hadn’t expected to hear again anytime soon.
“Torrence?” I asked, looking up at the looming bovine who suddenly, impressively, appeared right behind Renata.
“Where the hells did you come from? Is there a party down here I wasn’t aware of?”
Both Renata and Torrence blinked at me for a moment.
“A party would be inappropriate at thi—”
“No, I came from Hel—”
I held up my hands to forestall both explanations, throwing a glance over my shoulder and hoping that no one beyond the boulders had heard or seen the growing crowd out here.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, sarcasm fail. I get it. Ok. Torrence, seriously, where did you come from? I had half assumed you were dead.”
“I am not dead. Albert insisted on entering Dryer’s office alone. I waited for him to return, then watched as Dryer dragged him into the dungeons, following from a distance.”
“Wait. Does that mean you just watched us fight Dryer, without helping?”
“My assessment led me to believe that ‘helping’ would only end in one or more of us getting shot.”
My mouth dropped open. I wanted to argue, especially since one of us had been shot, but he made a fair point. Dryer had been wandering around with the safety off on a gun pointed at Albert’s head. Surprising her would likely have ended with Albert’s brains decorating a wall.
“But you followed me down here without making yourself known because…?”
“I was following at a distance when I noticed the grey haze behind you. As I didn’t know what it was, I thought it would be prudent to wait until the haze made itself known as friend or foe before I made anyone aware of my presence.”
I did my best not to sigh, because we were making too much damned noise already.
“Which brings us back to the grey haze. Renata? Why exactly are you here again?”
“Hel sent me to follow you. Tracking you here was quite difficult, and I did not arrive until after the woman in the tunnel was dead. I assume that is the woman Torrence did not help you fight. I passed the cow man on the way down, but he did not seem threatening, so I left him alone. Hel did not say that I could not help you, but it was not clear at first that you needed help.”
I stood there, waiting for more, but I should have known better. Renata just stood there blinking at me, as if she’d given all the explanation necessary for someone who had recently betrayed me, Azrael, and my parents to an out-of-realm deity. Maybe she had. What did I know? Is there an etiquette for that? A certain number of days before you send flowers and a card that said, “Sorry I sold you out to the reigning monarch of the realm we met in,” or something? Whatever. So not the time.
“Ok… well, we don’t have time to sort through how weird it is that both of you are here right now, so I’m just gonna roll with it. Torrence, you said you owe me your life. Now might be a good time to pay that debt. To be clear, that does NOT mean that I want you to die— far from it. Renata… I’m still not sure I trust you, but whatever, if you were here to kill me I’d be dead already, so I’m going to have to assume you’re cool for now.”
I took a deep breath.
“We need to get close to the guards before they shoot us, so just… follow my lead.”
I took a deep breath and steeled myself for the batshit thing I was about to do.
“Oh, and try not to kill anyone,” I added, before I turned, grabbed my two accomplices, and stepped out from behind the boulder.
~~~
The first part of my plan worked. No one asked us questions until I’d dragged a subdued-looking Torrence and a more solid-seeming than usual Renata right up close to the nearest set of MOME guards. They were still far enough away that we had a decent chance to get a look at the cavern that surrounded us. The air still smelled of damp rock and stale air, and the underground lake that extended from the back of the cavern went on farther than I could see. The “troops,” such as they were, responded to barked commands, attempting to drill with AR-15s and basic marching patterns. They all practiced on the hundred or so meters of “beach” that stretched from where we’d entered the cavern to where the lake began. For every group of 25 “soldiers” (if soldiers was the word for folks who repeatedly ignored commands and periodically attacked their leadership) there were three MOME guards dressed just like the one I’d knocked out earlier.
The nearest three guards were milling about in the center of a group of grunts who were repeating a basic marching drill for—judging by their vacant expressions—the thousandth time.
“Where’s Amy?” asked the first guard I nodded to, thus utterly ruining the rest of my absolutely piece of shit plan with a single question.
“Lying unconscious in the tunnel where I left her when I took her uniform?” I replied, before my brain could stop me.
You could say I panicked a little bit.
To be fair, this plan had never been much of a plan, and everyone but me seemed to have a gun, so I was kind of shitting my pants (only metaphorically for the moment, but possibly literally if someone pointed an AR-15 in my direction).
In defense of my not-actually-a-plan, it’s worth noting that dudeface was probably expecting me to say “getting coffee while I process these yahoos,” or something similar. After all, even MOME assholes tend to be maze rats just showing up to work every day. No one really expects a security breach, and even if they do, they don’t expect the classic I’m-Harrison-Ford-and-I-just-stole-this-uniform-what-now-punk approach to security breaches. Which… might explain why the dude who’d just asked about Amy exhibited full-on, cartoon-level surprise when I punched him in the mouth and took his rifle from him. (Not sure why the guards all had bolt action rifles, while the training troops held AR-15s, but hey, it wasn’t the first time I’d thought MOME was a bunch of idiots, so I didn’t think much of it.)
Of course, stealing the gun would do little to keep the other guards from turning on me and opening fire with their own weapons, which is why I grabbed Where’s-Amy as he was still reeling from the sudden punch to the face and pulled him in front of me as a human shield, making use of a really fabulous headlock I’d learned from my Krav Maga instructor a few years ago that left one arm free for gun wielding.
It was also why I’d brought friends.
Before the nearest guard could do more than jump back in response to me decking Where’s-Amy, Renata had dropped them to the ground. I hoped she’d remembered the bit I’d added about not killing folks, but now wasn’t the time to worry about it. Torrence, meanwhile, had the third guard in a very painful but non-damaging looking arm lock, and was dangling the woman’s gun in one hand like a dirty set of underwear.
“Right,” I said, looking around. “That could have been worse.”
“Hey!” called someone from one of the other platoons. “Why do you have Gerald in a headlock and—”
The voice cut off abruptly, and a quick scan of the immediate vicinity suggested that Renata might be the cause, as she was no longer anywhere near us.
“Nice,” I muttered, turning to see if any of the other guards had noticed what we were up to. “This might actually work.”
Then a high pitched whistling noise rent the air, and a cold shiver went down my spine.
“Troops, attack the intruders!” someone in the distance yelled.
Then over a hundred people holding AR-15s suddenly turned on us as one.
“OH. FUCK.”
My mouth didn’t have time to drop open in shock, because I was too busy swinging Gerald around to block any potential gunfire while Torrence dropped into a fighting stance immediately behind me. I would have to do the whole shock thing later.
>
I noticed the guard Torrence had been holding lying suspiciously still on the ground in front of him. I had to hope he was heeding the whole “don’t kill anyone” suggestion and simply rendering them unconscious, but, again, no time to check. ‘Cause we were being rushed by everyone in our immediate vicinity.
The nearest of the trainees lurched towards me in an almost mechanical motion, and I wondered if androids were a thing in the magical world that I had yet to learn about. The woman looked human enough, but if I’d learned a single damned thing in the past three weeks, it was that that meant less than nothing. At any rate, I was trying to focus on how she moved, not what she was, because she was clearly going to be the first person to reach me.
I was doing my best to position the still-struggling Gerald in between me and her, assuming that she would raise her gun as soon as possible and open fire the moment Gerald wasn’t in the way.
I was giving her entirely too much credit.
Maybe because I expected her to fight like someone with free will.
Maybe because I didn’t realize that her gun was made of solid plastic, rather than the multiple moving pieces that are supposed to make guns work. Something that became entirely too clear when she raised the gun up over her shoulder and tried to clock me in the head with it, instead of firing any bullets. Thankfully, I was able to duck, and get my not-Gerald-holding arm up in time to block the strike.
Which hurt like a baseball bat, since solid plastic training weapons don’t skimp around on the heft. I was lucky it didn’t break my arm. I had to drop the rifle that I’d stolen from Gerald in order to make the block, which was less than ideal, but I wasn’t super stoked on the idea of shooting anyone, now that I knew the guns the grunts had weren’t real. But it meant that I had to hold on extra tight to Gerald, because I didn’t want him getting ahold of his rifle again.
Since he was still struggling with every move I made, I was contemplating switching to a choke hold until he passed out, but I didn’t have time. The lady who’d nearly broken my arm hadn’t decided to stop, just because it hadn’t worked the first time.
I watched her hips and shoulders, waiting for her core to telegraph where her next move would come from, but I didn’t have to bother. Whatever they were training these folks in, it wasn’t hand to hand. She just lifted the fake gun up in her hands and brought it back down again in a hacking motion. This time I turned Gerald into it, letting his side take the hit as I pushed back into Torrence, who seemed to be using the first person who had approached him as a broom, swinging them so that they took out the legs of everyone else who came at him. I didn’t have time to be impressed, but I made a mental note for later.
Meanwhile, the other twenty people who had been approaching behind the first woman finally caught up. And, since this wasn’t a movie, they all decided to attack at the same time.
Thank Gwen it was the most uncoordinated attack I’d ever witnessed. Half of them tripped over each other, falling in a sprawl that blocked everyone behind them from making it to me. Which still left me fighting a half dozen people at once, but… they were awful. I mean, they moved with almost zombie movie jerkiness, and telegraphed every move as if they were holding up signs saying “kick,” “punch,” “stomp.” I was beginning to think that I was trapped in an old school Batman comic.
I smiled as I managed to block a few kicks with Gerald’s legs, and then use him to sweep the legs of two of my nearest opponents who hadn’t already tripped themselves. But any humor I might have felt at my opponents’ lack of skill faded as I realized that the people attacking me were still managing to injure themselves, and they were eventually going to overwhelm us in enough numbers to also hurt me, Gerald, and probably even Torrence.
Ok, that last one might be a long shot. Torrence—likes to frolic in flowers and make daisy crowns in his free time Torrence—appeared to be a seventh degree blackbelt in every martial art I’d ever heard of, and a few I hadn’t. He was taking down swaths of oncoming opponents, and barely working up a sweat. He took down incoming attackers almost as efficiently as Renata had dispatched the harpies in Hel’s realm, but he didn’t appear to be shifting between dimensions or anything, as far as I could tell.
Even still, the initial wave he’d been dealing with was apparently just the tip of the grunt troop iceberg, because the next wave of people attacking was so thick I could no longer see the lake behind them, or the entrance to the cave we’d come through, or anything but the wall of people that surrounded us. And even though they tripped over each other, and even trampled each other to get to us, we were so not going to make it out of here in one piece if they all came at us at once.
Plus, they were probably killing the people on the bottom of the pile, and that was kind of the opposite of what I’d come down here for.
“Gwendamnit,” I muttered, as the crowd surged closer.
“What am I damning?” asked a familiar voice, from behind me.
I didn’t look, because I didn’t have time. I also didn’t need to look to know Gwen was now standing behind me.
“Thissss issss a troublessssome ssssituation, Living Cat,” Rhelia’s voice commented behind me.
I was too busy dodging the three different training guns that were being bludgeoned in my general direction to express my utter astonishment that Rhelia was here too. I finally had mercy on Gerald, who’d been clocked in the head by one of the last attacks anyway, and was now hanging limply in my arms, and launched him into the closest attackers, hoping they would ignore him, since he hadn’t been one of the “intruders” they were ordered to attack.
“You will need the whisssstle,” Rhelia said from behind me. Her voice sounded mildly strained, and I had to assume that meant she’d joined in the fight.
“Do I even want to know how and why you’re here?” I asked.
“Thissss wassss my ssssecond guessss for where MOME wassss sssstowing their newesssst army.”
That sentence held so many layers of implications, I didn’t even know where to start, and besides, I had to keep fending off the wall of limbs and torsos encroaching on my space.
“Is this the whistle in question?” asked Renata’s gritty voice, from somewhere close by. I was too busy grabbing my nearest attacker and pushing them back into the oncoming throng to notice.
“Perfect. Thank you,” Rhelia said, before a high pitched trill cut through the air around us.
“Cssseasssse fighting,” Rhelia called loudly, after the whistle cut through the crowd.
To my relief, and horrified fascination, everyone around us came to a grinding and eerie halt at the exact same moment.
“NOW, SSSSLEEP,” RHELIA called.
I almost threw up when the whole crowd collapsed to the floor as one.
“That’s going to give me nightmares,” I muttered.
“It will be nice to have a bit of variety, won’t it?” asked Gwen, from behind me.
“What would you know about my nightmares?” I asked, before I could think better of it.
“Goddess, remember? Besides, I was briefly your narrator, remember?”
“Thought you didn’t have access to that info anymore?” I asked, turning to glare at her, despite myself. It was amusing to find Torrence staring bewilderedly at the red haired goddess, even though they’d met before. Or maybe he was more surprised to see Rhelia here, seemingly having popped in out of nowhere.
“That doesn’t mean I don’t remember the few pieces I had to narrate already,” said Gwen.
“Would you two sssstop bickering pleasssse? We have more pressssing issssuessss.”
“Are the dragons still planning to raze this place?” I asked Rhelia.
“Yessss. Though General Aira agreed to wait until we emerged, before beginning the desssstruction.”
“Well, at least she knows we’re here. So…” I took a deep breath and looked around the cavern that was now the (hopefully temporary) resting place for around a hundred and fifty people. Renata was a grey haze in m
y peripheral vision, and looking around the room I had to assume that she was the one responsible for taking out all of the MOME guards. I didn’t think the whistle had worked on them. “We still have to figure out a way to get all hundred and whatever people out of here, don’t we?”
“Unlessss you wish to ssssacrificssse them for the greater good, yessss.”
“Could have saved myself the detour, if sacrificing them had ever been the plan,” I replied. “I know we don’t really have time, but seriously, how did you know to come down here?”
Rhelia sighed, “You sssstill know very little about what I wassss doing when MOME captured me in Bolivia. Did you never wonder what missssion I might have had that would have enabled MOME to detain me?”
I shrugged.
“Seriously, MOME has captured, detained, or killed so many people close to me that I honestly just assumed it was because you were a part-time dragon.”
Rhelia laughed, but the mirth didn’t reach her eyes.
“That issss cssssertainly the reasssson they put on paper. However, them catching me ssssearching their dungeonssss for ssssecret training facssssilitiessss may alsssso have been a factor.”
Right. Ok. Sure. I’d known Rhelia worked for the dragon realm’s intelligence gathering. I was just… way behind on a few pertinent details about her work.
“So… you eventually realized they weren’t in the Andean office, and then?”
“My nexsssst besssst guessss wassss Shanghai,” Rhelia added calmly.
“But when they didn’t have training facilities, you realized it was here instead, and asked Gwen to drop you off?” I guessed.
“Oh, they had the facssssilitiessss, they were merely empt—”
“There is something wrong with your redhaired friend, Victoria.”
That was Torrence, whose shoulder appeared to be the only thing keeping Gwen off of the floor. To say that Gwen was looking unwell would be the understatement of the year, but I didn’t know how else to describe it. Her skin was dripping sweat and had taken on an unpleasant yellow tinge. Her hair, normally a mane of fiery curls, now clung limply to her face and shoulders, and looked brittle enough to snap if I so much as breathed on it too hard. Not to mention, her legs didn’t look like they were holding her weight at all.
Victoria Marmot- The Complete Series Page 57
