Evil Ascending

by Michael A. Stackpole

  As Rajani saw the image of a bullet congealing in the woman's mind, she lunged toward the foot of the bed. The fingertips of her right hand slapped the silencer upward as the girl tugged on the trigger. Feathers flew as the bullet popped through the pillow.

  Heidi snarled and tried to bring the gun to bear on Rajani, but she'd moved inside the larger woman's striking range. Rajani drew her right hand back, then shot it forward and hammered the woman's sternum. Coughing out a gasp, Heidi reeled back as Karl tried to bring his gun up.

  Suddenly, a huge hole exploded in the door. Metal and splinters formed a cloud that blasted into the two white supremists. A yellowish tongue of flame stabbed through the hole, and the strobe light froze Karl in place as the shotgun pellets opened his chest. Heidi, who had caught most of the first load, smashed into the far wall and slid to the floor as if her bones had become as fluid as the blood leaking from her. Karl fell over her, and his gun clattered to the floor.

  The shotgun held to cover the two racists, Will kicked the door open. "Saw them enter and pay off a guard. I followed." He looked at his grandfather. "I saw them with your eyes, Grandfather. Thank God the rest of you were clear."

  Garrett grabbed Rajani's sleeve with renewed strength. "Go to The Pit. Speak with Bat. He'll help you. Go!"

  "Let's go. They had backup downstairs." Will kicked the pistol out of Heidi's hand. "At least two more."

  Rajani shook her head. "We can't leave you here. They will come and find you and kill you."

  "I don't have much choice." Garrett's body started to tremble from the exertion. "Take the guns and get out of here."

  "No!"

  Rajani's shout startled all three men. She plucked the IV needles from Garrett's arm and hand, then pointed at the tube in his chest. "Pull it."

  Will shook his head. "You are nuts!"

  She looked up at George. "You trust me. Pull it."

  The old man nodded solemnly. "She knows what she is doing."

  Rajani turned and pulled both her sleeves up. She took Garrett's head in her hands and pressed both thumbs gently into the hollow of bone where his brows met. Her fingers splayed out along the sides of his head, and her palms pressed against his cheeks. Garrett stared up at her from the space between her thumbs and forefingers. "Trust me, Hal Garrett. Work with me."

  The man nodded, then winced as George eased the tube out of his chest.

  "Clear."

  Rajani stared into Hal's eyes and projected herself down through them. She moved into his mind and sought what she had found in Mickey's father's mind. She worked in toward where his self-conception existed and found a scarecrow-thin doll with three gaping holes in it. Its limbs—save the paralyzed left leg—hung limply and flapped in an unfelt breeze. The fingers of his right hand swung back and forth barely above a shiny black coffin.

  «You know better than that, Hal Garrett. You did not kill your wife. There was nothing you could do.»

  The scarecrow's burlap face remained slack. «I could have done something. I could have gone away and made her safe.»

  In the background Rajani saw the images of two small children. «You will not fail them, Hal Garrett. You are strong, and you fight for their future. Surrender now, and those who hunt you will be free to hunt your children. Capitulate now, and that which hunts Coyote will hunt us all.»

  The scarecrow's arms slowed. «Not enough time to heal.»

  «Work with me. Trust me. I will heal you.»

  The scarecrow nodded, and Rajani shifted the focus of her vision. The mental images of his mind faded, and she replaced them with visions that Dr. Chandra had long ago worked her through. She saw Hal Garrett for what he truly was: a community of multicellular structures. Each depended upon the other, and all had come from common stock. They fought together to maintain life, but Rajani began to work on them so they would actively pursue life.

  She reached down into the neurons that made up Hal Garrett's brain and sent a trickle of electrical energy into certain cells. They dutifully passed the stimulation on down the line, spurring glands to produce hormones. Those hormones flooded through the body, triggering other cells to react. Dormant genes snapped on for a second or two, and cells began manufacturing proteins. These coded messages then drifted elsewhere in the body to prompt other actions.

  In an instant, the community of cells that was Hal Garrett went to battle stations. Cells at the sites of his wounds went into near-cancerous rates of division, multiplying wildly to seal the two holes in his lungs and the one in his stomach. Bone marrow pumped out new cells to help oxygenate the blood, while leukocytes and macrophages began hunting in packs for lingering bits of infection. His body began to metabolize what little fat he had left and fed the mitochondria everything they needed to fill him with energy.

  Rajani pulled herself back into her own skull and released Garrett's head. It did not fall back on the pillow the way she would have expected. Instead, his eyes tightened and the muscles in his neck bulged to hold it up in defiance of gravity.

  "Thank you." Hal threw the sheet back from the bed. Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed toward George, he clutched at the railing to steady himself. He massaged his left leg for a moment, then pointed toward the chest of drawers beside the door. "My clothes should be in there."

  Will shivered. "You can't leave the hospital."

  Hal sucked at the droplet of blood on the back of his hand. "Son, lots of people come into hospitals to die. I've just decided I'm not one of them. Now, unless you're really looking forward to a firefight with the other Warriors," Hal said slipping an arm over George's shoulder, "get me some clothes so my butt isn't hanging out, and we can blow this pop stand."

  Rajani smiled up at the big man. "And find Coyote to warn him."

  Hal winked at her. "And find Coyote to warn him."

  Coyote caught Mong's puzzled look out of the corner of his eye. Ignoring it, he cinched the Kevlar vest tight to his chest and pulled a dark T-shirt over it. He slipped his left arm through the loop on the Bianchi shoulder holster, then inserted his right arm through the other side and settled the Wildey Wolf in place on his left flank. He readjusted his web belt and the holstered Colt Kraits at each hip, then flexed his legs and decided the boots were laced tight enough.

  Mong shook his head. "For this first excursion into dimension walking, I want you to be comfortable."

  Coyote half-grinned. "Without this hardware, I would be most uncomfortable. I know there is danger out there, and I want to be prepared. More importantly, though, I'm likely to dimension walk wearing this much or more gear, so I might as well learn how to do it with this stuff on as not."

  "This is a good point, Kyi-can, and one I will concede to you." The monk pointed to a wooden bench at the foot of Coyote's bed. "Please, be seated. Begin your breathing exercises. Begin to clear your mind."

  Coyote did as he was bidden. Sitting, he ignored the clack of spare clips in the thigh pockets of his fatigues and concentrated on maintaining a good posture. He forced his mind to forget the itching sensation at the back of his head where Mong had stitched his scalp. Breathing regularly and slowly to an internal metronome, he closed his eyes and began to calm and control his body.

  "Your first venture out, Kyi-can, will capitalize on what you have seen and experienced in your meditations on the void. Your previous masters crafted you in a manner that has made you most adept at learning these skills. Mi-ma-yin had rejected his identities, but you never really had one. You were without labels and tags so you could assume them as you needed them. Even your lack of knowledge about your predecessor as Kyi-can is in keeping with this."

  Coyote nodded slowly as Mong's voice grew distant. I am. With that thought, he crystallized his core and cast off all but the last of his links with the reality that he had been born into. "Proceed."

  "The first place you will go is a proto-dimension. It is not far from here, so we are able to protect it the way we protect Kanggenpo." Coyote heard a swish of robes that suggested to
him that Mong had seated himself on the floor. "This is a dimension that we use to enter and exit the monastery. If it is necessary, the proto-dimension can be isolated and even contracted until nothing can exist in it."

  "The dimensional equivalent of an airlock?" Coyote smiled, then went back to breathing regularly.

  "Quite so. Now clear your mind and fill it with an image of a place that is neither light nor dark, warm nor cold, it is not sharp, nor is it entirely soft. It is safe and welcoming. When you find it, define it and move toward it."

  Sounds like the description of a womb. Coyote realized this characterization was not entirely inappropriate, so he latched onto it and wove it into the place he was imagining. As the concept completed itself in his mind, he felt a substance to it that he had not experienced before. He forced himself to stand and drift toward that substance, imbuing it with a gravity that pulled him in as he moved toward it.

  Something in his mind told him that his next step would carry him into the stone wall but, as his hand reached out to brace him, it encountered nothing. He opened his eyes and found himself standing in a smoky-gray world with dry air that smelled of long-dead flowers. He moved his right hand up and around in a figure eight that set the mist swirling, but the spirals he created vanished by the time they got six feet away from him.

  "You have done very well, Kyi-can." Mong materialized out of the mist, his red robes the brightest color in the small, spherical dimension. "You reached this place quickly and without difficulty."

  The tall man accepted the praise with a nod, then frowned. "I know one must crawl before he can walk, but this place has less definition and substance than the proto-dimension I first encountered outside Sedona in Arizona. There we had color and distance. This feels like being swaddled in gray cotton."

  "You must understand, Kyi-can, how proto-dimensions work. Imagine, if you will, that all the various dimensions are books shelved in an infinite library. A proto-dimension is a worm's burrowing through several volumes. This proto-dimension, for example, gives us access to several of the dimensions from which we harvest the staples that sustain Kanggenpo."

  As Mong spoke, Coyote saw several red-robed monks move through the swirling mist and vanish. "Then to stay with your library analogy, I could travel to a dimension directly if I knew where it was indexed in the library?"

  "Precisely." The monk gave him a pleased smile. "The index consists of a number of factors, many of them tactile and sensual more than quantifiable. Still, there are some creatures that have been able to define dimensions with a coordinate system that makes them accessible to their machinery."

  "I know. Crowley possesses a device that was able to send us to a dimension he called Plutonia. It was populated with creatures that reminded me of Fiddleback."

  The monk held his left hand up and circled it quickly. "Please, be careful. Here we are not as well warded as we are in Kanggenpo itself. It is possible for your thoughts to slip out and alert enemies."

  "I don't understand."

  "In the same way that thinking about a place enables you to find it and move to it, it is possible that something could track back along that link."

  "The mountain coming to Mohammed."

  "Precisely."

  Coyote nodded. "It would be possible, though, to travel to any dimension provided I could define it."

  "The journey could be difficult, but, yes, it is possible." Mong's head came up and he looked a bit distracted. "Did you have a particular destination in mind?"

  Coyote dropped his hand to the Colt Krait on his right hip. "Last time we fought on my home turf. I think taking the war to Fiddleback would be a good thing."

  "There is nothing good about going there!" Mong spun and caught a bleeding monk as the man reeled into the proto-dimension. Mong's eyes blazed scarlet, sending a red pulse of power straight down into the center of the ground. The mist immediately started to spiral down into its wake like water draining from a tub. "Go, quickly, run!"

  Coyote saw Mong toss the monk down into the widening hole and knew he should follow. At the same time the elder monk dashed to his left and disappeared through a dark gash in the dimensional wall. Without a second thought, Coyote leaped over the growing hole in the floor and dove through the shrinking black slit.

  He completed a shoulder roll and came up with a Krait in his right hand. His thumb snapped the selector lever off safe as a spark of red from Mong's eyes blossomed into a fire-flower on the roaring creature to Coyote's right. The fire's light turned the creature's dun fur coppery and filled the night with bitter, cloying smoke. The creature screamed and broke off its charging attack, but as it turned away, Coyote saw the fire burn all the way through to its spine, and the monster collapsed in a heap of limbs.

  "What was that?" Coyote crouched down in the brush and watched the thing burn. At least 12 feet in length, from bandy lower legs to the top of its head, the monster's general size and pelt reminded him of the mythical Bigfoot. At the same time, this creature had eight limbs and only one eye. An auxiliary set of legs posted down from the upper part of the double pelvis. A powerful set of arms hung down from broad shoulders, then another pair of weaker arms sprouted from a narrower set of shoulders. While clearly not as strong as the lower arms, they were set closer to the face and more suited to tasks that required finesse instead of strength.

  "It is probably the source of yeti legends." Mong dropped to one knee next to the broken body of a monk. He pressed his fingers to the man's neck, then shook his head. "He is dead."

  "What about the other one? There were three of them."

  Mong shook his head again. "The gorfash are meat-eaters, and there are more of them out there." Mong looked up at the starry sky and apparently made order out of stellar chaos. "Normally, their bands do not wander in this area until well after the harvesting season."

  Coyote looked down and saw that the brush came in neat rows. Huge gourds hung from lush vines and, breathing in, he recognized the faint scent of whatever had been a key component of his meals over the last week.

  "Can't say I like the idea of dying to defend squash. Shall we go after your other monk?"

  Mong hesitated a moment, then shook his head. "No, your guns would be useless against them."

  The tall man holstered the Krait and stood. He drew the brushed-steel pistol from his shoulder holster and took it off safe. "The Kraits are only 10mm, but this is a .457 Wildey Magnum. The bullets go fast and make big holes. Which way?"

  "No, Kyi-can, we need to get Trinle here back to Kanggenpo." Mong pulled at the dead man's arm, then recoiled when it came off in his hands.

  Before Coyote could ask the monk why he was trying to hold him back, a scream pierced the night. He turned to face the sound and sprinted off toward it. Dry saw-blade grasses rustled as they tore at his clothes. Coyote raised his left hand to protect his eyes, then dropped down as he scrambled up a tall, steep hillside. The grasses sliced the skin on his arms and shoulders, but he crested the hill without noticing the pain.

  Below him, in a valley drenched by the light of a blood-red moon, he saw a dozen of the gorfash whooping and dancing around in a circle. The hapless monk trapped in their midst darted back and forth, trying to escape. Casual cuffs spun him to the ground, then monsters leaned in and bellowed at him. They flashed enormous fangs and raked his clothes away with their claws. Naked and bleeding, he huddled in a fetal position on the grassy ground.

  Coyote's eyes narrowed. Twenty-five meters, a dozen targets. Two are juvenile and, judging from the breasts and swollen bellies, four are female. Six are males massing 400 pounds at the least. One bullet, maybe two. He reached down into his left thigh pocket and pulled out two spare clips for the Wildey. How fast can one of these cross this distance?

  He pointed the gun at the gyrating circle of creatures and squeezed the trigger. Fighting the recoil, he followed the one creature staggering out of line and pumped a second round into it. The first, he saw, had hit it wide of the midline, while the seco
nd produced a through-and-through hit on the abdomen. The gorfash went down, and Coyote smiled at his estimate of two bullets per creature.

  Then the wounded gorfash got up and charged at him.

  It raised its four arms and rushed him, making itself a perfect target. The third bullet caught it right at the bridge of the nose, snapping its head back. The monster stumbled forward, dead before it hit the ground, with its brains sprayed back behind it. Coyote kept the gun on it for a second in case it rose again, then brought it around as the rest of the troop roared in at him.

  This is not good. I started with 21 bullets. If each one takes me three, I'll be dessert. He triggered off two more shots and succeeded in knocking one back into the gorfash behind it. The trailing gorfash's chest smashed into the lead one's back, then he sailed up and over his wounded fellow. He brought his smaller arms in to cover his bullet head, then his larger arms flailed through the air before they hit the ground and broke his fall.

  Two shots kept him down, then Coyote dropped the clip and slammed a new one home. He let the slide snap shut, then he rapid-fired the Wolf. Starting low, he let the recoil track his aim-point up. He knew what he was doing would have been foolish under normal circumstances, but with the thick knot of gorfash bodies racing at him, there was no way he could miss.

  Another new clip went into the gun, and he screwed one eye shut. The loss of depth perception made the gorfash seem even closer as they ran up the slight incline to where he stood. It's over unless I think of something. He dropped into a crouch and popped the bullets off as fast as he could.

  I'm in too deep.

  Suddenly it hit him. They're cyclopses!

  As the rushing gorfash wall descended on him, he tucked himself into a ball and rolled back off the hill. He dropped through the air, then hit on his shoulders and continued to roll down the hill. He immediately splayed his arms out and grabbed on to whatever he could find to stop his tumble. Razor-edge grass filled his left hand and somehow held strongly enough to slew him around to the left and a resting place. Above him, the gorfash's momentum carried them out into the air. Their battle roars shifted tenor to screams of terror as they spun out of control through the air. Two of them collided in mid-air, then whirled apart. Crashes, crunches and whimpered shrieks filled the night as the creatures hit the ground.