Alsvior pawed at the ground with his hooves and whickered softly.
She ran her fingers through his mane. "Impatient, are we?"
The stallion tossed his head.
Sighing, she took stock of her weapons again and nodded. "Alright, then."
She gazed at the factory. Heat waves from the glaring sun obscured her view. Like the buildings on the rest of the street, it appeared abandoned, but the voice in her mind whispered otherwise, and for a moment, she had the odd sensation of something slithering inside.
"You feel that?"
Alsvior shook until he was coal black again, but stopped short of transforming his mane and tail. If it was dark in there, riding in on a flaming horse would be akin to strapping a target on her back. He pawed the ground and snorted.
Quite a few men have fallen victim to those hooves.
She mounted lightly, her hands tight on the grips, and they began their approach.
* * *
The first time she encountered a feeder, she had taken pity upon its legion of human prey. She was haunted by images of previous lives—children, spouses, family pets, dream vacations on the beach never taken.
Riding on the outskirts of the crowd, she spotted a young man, one that couldn't have been older than fifteen. She was struck by his lost youth and the cruelty of his fate, and she decided to save him.
Later, she would wonder if she was also trying to save herself.
She drove Alsvior hard, trusting that he would figure out her intent. Once she was close enough, she leaned sideways in the saddle, grabbed the youth, and strapped him over the saddle horn, ignoring the way he attempted to gouge out her eyes and spit in her face. She jumped off and slapped Alsvior across the rump, yelling for him to get clear.
Once the feeder had been dispatched, she whistled for her mount.
Yet when the horse returned, the light had gone out of the young man's eyes. Vaguely, she understood that the man was just a shell now, that whatever had made him human had already vacated his body. She refused to give up, ministering to him gently, feeding and bathing him when necessary. And then one day, she came home to the charred ashes of what had once been the basement.
It had taken some time for her to sift through the pile for the skeleton. That night, before she fell asleep, she imagined an errant spark blowing out of the fireplace and igniting one of the wooden planks on the floor. The fire would have spread quickly to the dry walls, turning the entire room into a blistering inferno.
In her imagination, the young man, whose name she never learned, would sit there, motionless, either not comprehending or not caring about his impending cremation.
In her dreams the next night though, it was the teenager who determined his own fate. In a moment of sudden lucidity, he wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth, leaned over to the fire, and pulled out a burning brand, ignoring the way his skin melted to it. Then, he turned around and deliberately lit the walls on fire, before throwing himself into the fireplace.
A feeder's prey was already dead, crossed over into something past human. Still, it had taken her a century before blowing them away didn't drive a stake into her heart and fill her nose with the scent of ashes.
FIVE
The barred entrance presented her with no difficulty. She merely swung her hand in front of her, palm first, and called upon the akra of doors.
It swung open with a groan, revealing a dark cavern. She waited for a warning shot, but there was no movement from within.
She dismounted, guns drawn. Alsvior was fast, but she was more nimble and a smaller target. She gave him the hand sign for "stay" and rubbed his nose, and his head bobbed in acknowledgment.
Thank you, friend. My life has depended on you many times before. Alsvior was also smart enough to know when to disobey.
She padded in silently, blinking as her eyes adapted to the darkness.
The first barrage of bullets exploded around her. One whistled by her hair, while another grazed her cheek, bringing with it a zing of pain. She threw herself up feet-first, flipping backwards as a second barrage peppered the area where her head had been. Between the synchronized bursts, the spent lead pinged on the floor like rain.
Without the advantage of surprise, there was no point in hiding in the dark any more.
“Alsvior, light!” She shielded her eyes so her vision wouldn’t reset. The horse shook himself, his mane and tail erupting into a roiling blaze. He galloped in, filling the massive room with the flicker-dance of fire and shadows and the drumming of hooves.
Shooters will be blind for a few seconds. She jumped to the wall and climbed up, nimbly using ledges, shelves, and window sills as footholds. In seconds, she had reached the top, and she swiveled around to look down on her attackers.
The hundreds of white faces were in straight rows, a cornfield of humans that the feeder—yes, there was no denying it now—was harvesting for psychic food. The back of her neck tingled, but she couldn’t put her finger on why.
Why don’t they scramble? At the snake-voice’s hiss, she squinted and watched as the heads all turned as one. It was clear from their erratic turns that they were searching for her.
Ah! They're linked together. She looked up and spied a rafter, and crept higher to use it for cover. She nodded at Alsvior, and he extinguished his mane, plunging them back into darkness.
Temporarily safe behind the rafter, she grit her teeth. I will probably die here. Thanks to the snake-voice, she had gone in without planning and allowed herself to get bottlenecked. I blazed in here like a damn cowgirl. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The rattlesnake voice whispered in her head, alerting her to a possibility she had not considered before. Are you sure this is my fault? Maybe you wanted it this way.
Could that be true? One eye on the zombies below, she tried to think.
At first, her targets had all been mindless animals. A century passed before she was assigned something sentient, self-aware; she still remembered the way the demon had eked out the broken fragment of a word, right before the bullet took it.
After another century, her prey was of human intelligence, smart enough to set traps and even occasionally trick her. Finally, their powers and ingenuity rivaled her own.
And then, in her three-hundredth year of solitude, the Angel had come to her again and offered her total freedom—not only from Hell, but from the mercenary life as well.
Unless—already, the demons were as clever and as tricky as she was. What if these last five are impossible, and the Angel knows it? Worse, what if she knew that?
Do I have a death wish?
The gun of many names hummed in her hand and tore her away from her thoughts. It was the Spirit-Maker, the death-bringer. It was Kali, goddess of carnage. Bluot craved sacrifice.
The ivory grip pulsed, its power flowing into her hand and then through her body. With it came the mind-silence, the quiet steel that transformed her from demon mercenary into something more. It settled upon her like a cold fog, blocking out the rest of her thoughts.
It was time, and she was ready. I may not have a kevra, but my akras are many—and strong.
Especially the akra of bullets.
"Light!" she called again, and Alsvior erupted back into flame.
She led with the pistol first, taking her shots in groups of two, alternating left and right. Bluot hummed in her hand. With every bullet, the death-bringer's grip warmed and she knew its time was soon.
Every pair of shots was met with a scream, the entire group of golems wailing in deafening unison. It’s their pain, traveling through the psychic net the demon has created. Each victim’s agony radiated through and paralyzed the others. She took advantage of the situation fully, working so quickly they couldn’t recover.
And with each completed cycle, a body slumped to the ground, adorned with a bloodless hole in both the head and heart.
The feeder has to unlink them soon. They are useless like this.
Left-right, left-right, le
ft-right.
Her heartbeat shots claimed three more lives. Alsvior stood motionless to one side, forgotten by the mob.
The golems moaned and shivered as one. De la Roca gasped at their trembles, and then the men broke formation, running in all directions at once.
A man stood and tried to bellow a command—she shot him first. Now separated from the feeder, the men tried different positions. Some dropped to one knee, while half of them merely pointed their guns at her from a standing pose. Bullets hailed toward her, and she felt fire tear through her left arm. She glanced down and spotted the dark ichor seeping out of her sleeve.
Nice shot, asshole.
She whistled once—Alsvior's cue. He reared up and screamed, his entire body bursting into a conflagration, and then went barreling through the crowd. Men and women flew through the air like bowling pins, while others jumped backwards at the threat of snapping teeth and sharp, heavy hooves.
Alsvior had akras of his own, of course. He was a very hard horse to shoot.
The temporary distraction was enough for her to jump off of the rafter. As she hurtled toward the ground, she tucked both guns into their holsters and unslung the shotgun from her back.
She aimed for the center of the largest grouping. At least seven people fell. They’re not human anymore, just husks without strength or fortitude. As Alsvior continued to drive individual golems into the ground, she methodically worked her way around the room.
The confusion of the mob over the new weapon lasted only a few precious seconds, but when they had finally rallied enough to return fire, she was already on the move. She jumped from floor to ceiling, wall to desk, taking cover constantly. It was a dance she had long ago perfected.
Finally, the golems were sparse enough that the shotgun would be wasteful. The revolver was singing with so much heat, she could feel it burning through the holster. It could smell the blood, and it wanted to play a different game—Bluot's game. Not time yet, but almost.
She drew the gun, and the blood frenzy leapt into her, trying to overtake her. Once affected, she would not try to protect herself and would take no heed of anything except for her own bullets. She pulled back as hard as she could, but the effort left her panting. Not yet. Just a little bit more! Still, she could not keep all of it out, and she could feel the killing joy rise up within her—earthy, savage and primal.
She whistled again, and Alsvior ran toward her. She jumped onto his back, as she had done outside the bar, and he galloped ahead at full speed. She left him to his own devices then, and pulled out her pistol in addition to the revolver. Many of the ghouls he merely ran down. Most fell to her guns though, the akra refilling the chambers with endless bullets—left-right, left-right, left-right—until there were none left standing.
Now, to make it show itself.
She dismounted in the middle of the carnage and chose the body of a fat man on which to sit. She pulled a cigarette out of her jacket and lit it, inhaling the smoke and blowing rings in the air.
"I know you're here," she murmured to the air. "Come out, come out."
The silence was broken by a gentle rumble. The earth quivered, shaking the bodies until they danced, the rumble growing into a deafening roar. Solid lines of the factory floor started to bulge and slide, making snakelike shapes that shattered entire expanses of concrete.
She continued to sit on the body and smoke her cigarette. Taking the last drag, she stubbed it out and shoved the butt into the hole through the man's back.
"Got to keep the place clean.” She winked at Alsvior, and he whickered. She knew he hated the jokes, but they brought her mind to a ready place.
She heard a scream, a loud primal screech like the twisting of metal. A lump of flesh the size of a barrel exploded halfway through the soil. The entire exposed end of it was a glistening mouth, armed with concentric rows of sharp teeth.
Lamprey. De la Roca tensed. Fuck.
The demon screamed again, and the earth resumed its dance. With a crash, four more heads burst through the ground, all of them ending in the same tooth-covered orifice.
The lamprey’s garnet skin shone slick with slime. All five heads turned skyward and rose toward the ceiling, as the serpentine lengths of its body streamed out of the earth. When it had finally finished unburying itself, the demon turned its five mouths toward De La Roca and screamed again. Next to the creature, Alsvior was a gnat.
She could feel its psychic influence pushing in on her mind, willing her to let it feed.
She tensed, and as the first head swung at her, she leapt into the air, landing on the other side of its gaping mouth. The head lunged up further from the ground, soil showering down onto Alsvior below. Patient as always, he merely waited, motionless.
The air warmed, and heat-waves rippled in front of her eyes. Seconds later, the lamprey groaned and spit a tower of flame. She jumped again, arcing toward another head, narrowly passing by the mountain range of gleaming teeth. The two heads lunged for her, but by the time they met in the center, she was gone, scaling again up the windows and walls toward the ceiling rafters.
Alsvior screamed, a shrill wail that cut through the fog of the lamprey's influence.
Seconds had passed; she had been dreaming, somehow. She leapt again, barely avoiding a third head that slammed down into the wood and threw up a thick cloud of dust and splinters.
JOIN ME.
The call was stronger than before, forcing its way through the boundaries of her body and mind. The pulse of its thoughts drilled into her. YOU WILL NEVER WANT ANYTHING ELSE.
Her senses clouded over with its spell, and she was dreaming again, swimming through flashing fragments of thought that she couldn't follow. The creature slithered into her mind, his giant body flowing through the outer rooms and into its deepest reaches. It coiled against the back wall, pausing for only a moment before it combed the room. Then, it turned into the next room, and then the next, rummaging through boxes and corners. If it came to a locked door, it would push, an odd reverberation that made her stomach hurt, and she could feel her defenses topple like sandcastles in a tide. He is looking for something, she realized. Perhaps he has been waiting for me all along.
In the most hidden part of her mind, she saw Alsvior far below her. He screamed again—what does he want—and then threw himself at the lamprey. One of the giant heads swooped down and smashed into him, flinging him up against the wall and onto the floor. Brick and concrete crumbled with the impact, and when the cloud had cleared, he lay still upon the ground. And then she felt the lamprey slide even further into her mind, and the image of her horse disappeared.
Through their link, she could feel the demon's quivering anticipation, and she knew it had located the object of its search. It was a grey box, a thought long-sealed, lined in a patina of dust.
The lamprey tried the lid, and she could feel the slimy flesh scraping along its outer surface. She sensed a sort of dull frustration, a warm beat that must have been the lamprey’s thoughts. She watched as it knocked the box along its outer lengths, the taps reverberating in her mind as the creature investigated. Yet the box remained sealed.
With a wail, the lamprey picked it up in one of its giant mouths and rattled it vigorously, like a child probing a Christmas present. When that didn't work either, it whipped its head around and threw the box onto the ground. The crash shook her to her core, yet the box's integrity remained uncompromised.
The demon leapt at it hard, pushing with all of its force. De La Roca could feel her insides quivering, and she was knocked to her knees by the blow. Still, the box did not open.
She could feel the lamprey thinking, and she knew it was considering its next move. With a hiss, it resumed slithering through her mind. It turned corners and alleys, investigated dark hallways, and searched under the errant thoughts that had accumulated after centuries of a hunter's life.
It was looking for clues. One by one, it opened up other promising boxes, and like flashes of light on a movie screen, memories p
oured into her consciousness. She could see herself for the last three hundred years, riding on Alsvior, Bluot in her hand. There were hundreds, thousands of kills, demon ichor staining walls and ceilings and skin.
But there was nothing from earlier. Frustrated, the demon flipped the boxes open faster, and she was overwhelmed with the velocity of the memories. The kills ran together, an endless series of bullets and near escapes, until finally, there was a different one, one without blood, and the demon seized it, pulling it to the forefront of her consciousness, and expanded it.
It was her first memory, of being dumped in the desert. She watched as the Angel choked her and bestowed her akras upon her. And then, in her mind, as he had in life, he placed Bluot in her hand, and a grey box appeared in her mind.
The lamprey screamed. No matter how powerful its kevra, it would never be able to unlock something that had been sealed by an Angel. It hammered all five of its heads against the box in blind fury.
The demon's hold upon her mind shattered like a pane of glass. Her head reeling, she looked down. She squinted hard, trying to make out the shape below her, sensing that something significant had happened.
It was Alsvior. Somehow, he had risen from his impact with the wall. Tears sprang to her eyes as she saw his leg. It hung at an awkward angle, with pieces of bone sticking through the flesh. Dark blood traced rivulets across its surface.
And what was the black sludge on his mouth—
The answer drifted to her through the fog in her mind. Oh, God, he bit the lamprey!
He had been her only friend and constant companion for three hundred years. Three centuries, fifteen generations of humankind, and he had been the only one to share her campfire. He had seen her kill countless times and escaped death with her almost as many.
Her breath caught in her throat.
Two of the demon's heads, working in unison, swept down toward Alsvior and paused inches from his body. He stared back, his gaze proud and his nostrils flaring and snorting fire. The lamprey laughed in response, a coughing whoop that blew currents of air through the room. Springing like a whip, a third head cracked out and then slowed to touch him delicately on his broken leg.
Hunting in Hell Page 3
