by Maynard Sims
Then Holly sat down and the fierce heat in their brains dropped.
“I never liked this suit,” Holly said. He lifted his legs out in front of him and the men stared as the feet began to expand, the shoes lasting only seconds before the expensive leather and stitching split open. The legs of the pants ripped along the seams as throbbing leg muscles bulged out, the legs lengthening with gray rippling flesh.
“Jesus,” Bailey said.
“Spiraci,” Carter said.
Holly stretched his arms over his head as if invigorating himself after a sleep. The arms were getting longer, the biceps bunching into an impossible size as the gray skin rippled with vessels and muscle. The suit jacket tore like paper as the chest expanded and the shirt disintegrated. Hairless and adorned with small openings that seemed to be breathing independently of Holly, the chest became huge. At the ends of the hands, the fingers were curled into vicious claws, talons flicking in the air, each dancing to its own tune as the ends opened and closed as if singing.
The creature stood, dwarfing the men who backed against the closed door.
Then a window crashed open as a shape broke through it. Holly turned, the massive head lolling on the shoulders like a boulder at the start of an avalanche.
Standing in the room, oblivious to the broken glass, was another creature, as big as the one Holly had become.
Snarling like an angry beast, Holly launched himself at the new entrant.
They locked arms around each other in a parody of love, but there was no romance in the way their teeth tore at throats. No caress in the claws ripping at chests, no tenderness as the feet scrabbled to rip at legs and at flesh.
The noise was so loud the gun battles still ensuing outside the room were all but drowned out.
Both creatures were huge and powerful. Injuries were being inflicted but ignored. This was a fight to the death.
Carter took hold of Bailey’s hand.
“What the…”
“We’ll never have a better chance.”
Bailey realized what Carter had in mind. So did McKinley as he held on to Bailey’s other hand. Carter looked to his side as he felt Pike take his hand and they completed a circle.
Together they sent out layer after layer of pulses, probing into the Holly creature. It was hard to keep track of which one was Holly, as the fight spun round and round, but once locked in on the target, their minds were as one, fixed like a heat-seeking missile.
Gradually, over nearly an hour, one beast began to weaken. The hour was long and grueling, and the concentration of effort was draining. Carter was exhausted, but he could see both Pike and Bailey become ashen under the strain. This was going to seriously damage their health for a while.
Then it was over.
With a triumphant roar, one of the creatures locked its jaw over the throat of the other and ripped and tore and bit and chewed. Blood spurted like a fountain, coating the floor with the color of victory.
Holly was dead.
The winning creature was badly injured. Huge, standing for a moment before lowering itself to the floor, panting for breath.
“Should we…”
Pike shook his head. “Leave her to revert. Let’s find what we came for.”
Chapter Sixty-nine
Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.
—Winston Churchill
Faircroft Manor, Hertfordshire, England
Outside of the library the house was relatively quiet.
Frank Allen in the hallway talking into a mobile device. “Outer perimeter secure? Upstairs all cleaned out? Ground floor is friendly, so that leaves the basement. Two detachments down there. Thermal imaging doesn’t reveal many large shapes so it may be little resistance, but keep the guard up.”
Carter brought him up to speed on what had happened with Holly. Allen was concerned about having a creature on the loose, but Pike explained, as best he could, that fairly soon a bloodied, battered, but ostensibly human figure would walk out through the doorway.
“Can we go with your men to find the others?” Carter said.
Allen watched as the first of his men went down the stairs to the floors below ground level. “You and Mr. Pike can go. I’d prefer to keep some of your expertise aboveground if you don’t mind.”
Carter turned to Bailey and McKinley. “You both okay with that?”
Bailey and McKinley were both drained by their efforts; they had no energy left to argue.
Carter and Pike followed the soldiers down the steps to the basement. They had decided to use the old entrance rather than trust the elevators. The stone-flagged steps were worn smooth from the countless feet that had walked them over the centuries. But no one was in the mood to appreciate the history of their surroundings. Everyone was tense. The soldiers walked with guns poised, treating every turn in the corridor as a potential trap, a death trap.
The rough-hewn walls of the original building gave way to a newer part of the basement where the surfaces were flat and painted white, with discreet lights set into the plaster walls. Later the walls were smoothly tiled in clinical white.
At each doorway the soldiers performed their search ritual. Two would stand at each side of the entrance while a third used an electronic device to listen for sound inside the room. When they were ready, all three pushed open the door and would enter in a low crouch, guns ready.
In two of the rooms they found security guards, but each time the soldiers swamped the room with gunfire and resistance was quickly extinguished.
Gradually they reached the end of the corridor, where one door remained before there was a corner.
The soldiers went through their check and the opinion was the room was occupied.
They tried the handle.
The door wasn’t locked. Inside the room were two forlorn and defeated-looking figures.
“Jacek,” Pike said, and embraced the bewildered Pole.
Carter took hold of both the hands of the woman. “Dr. Payne. Are you hurt?”
Payne shook her head, tears in her eyes. “I thought they were going to…” She dissolved into sobbing. Carter held her close.
Farther along the corridor they could hear machine-gun fire and a tumultuous noise like a million birds taking flight together.
“Jacek,” Pike said gently. “Where is Julia?”
Jacek seemed confused by the question, and Pike had to repeat it. Even then it was Miranda who answered.
“Unless they’ve moved her, she’ll be in the nursery at the end of the corridor.”
“Nursery?” Carter said.
The noise of the birds was getting louder. Only they weren’t birds.
Pike stayed with Jacek and Miranda. Carter followed the noise.
The white-tiled corridor ended in reinforced glass that had been set into a steel door. Behind the glass, thousands of black shapes were spinning and weaving in the air, crashing against the transparent surface in a futile attempt at escape. The incubation room that had given them birth was now the coffin of the young breathers.
The sergeant of the assault force was taking orders from a cell phone, a grim look on his face. He put the cell phone into a webbed pocket in his tunic. “Destroy them all.”
Carter watched as two of the men set explosives into the hinges of the door. Working silently and quickly, they seemed to give the thumbs-up signal almost before they began.
A button was pressed and the door was blown away. Grenades, machine-gun fire, and incendiary devices obliterated the breathers, the nurses in the room, and all the furniture that had been there.
All but the Plexiglas box.
Tentatively the soldiers went to it.
It began to shake.
Gray fingers, long and curled, gripped the top of the box.
“Help me.”
The words were spoken in a whisper, an echo, but they came from the box.
The finger
s disappeared from view and a long groan of pain was heard. It was a female voice.
The men circled the box. Close up, the box was transparent. While they got into position, Carter was able to confirm what he already knew; there were two life forces in the box. One was human, and one most definitely was not.
When they were next to the box, they could see clearly what was inside. They wished they hadn’t.
As Carter had realized, it was Julia in there. The baby creature that Holly had created with Alice Spur was suckling at her naked breast. The breast was ripped and torn. If milk was being produced, there was no sign; the breather seemed to be drinking blood.
Julia’s eyes were closed. She opened them, but they didn’t see anything. Then they glazed over and her body went limp. The creature continued to gnaw for a few more seconds before instinct made it realize it was feeding from a corpse.
Without warning, and with a speed that surprised them all, it launched itself upward and leaped from the box. It slipped a little on landing and fell onto all fours as it turned and faced the group of men. Although still young, it was large and misshapen.
It roared and jumped at the group. It managed to kill two soldiers before a hail of machine-gun fire ended its doomed existence.
Everything was quiet. Smoke wafted across the silent room.
The soldiers busied themselves with a brief search of the rest of the basement area, but there was nothing else to be found.
Carter went back to Pike and the others.
“I’m sorry, Jacek,” he said.
“I think I always knew she would not live a long life, but I would have wished her a happier one.”
“I know there are other considerations,” Pike said. “But I don’t trust Rachel Grey.”
“We couldn’t have beaten Holly without her,” Carter reminded him.
“I know that, but killing him was as much to her advantage as it was ours. More so in fact.”
“You think she has a wider agenda?”
“Don’t we all?”
Allen and Fulbright were as organized in victory as they had been in attack. The house was secure, the remaining security guards disarmed and restrained.
The library, with the body of Holly inside, was sealed and guarded. Instructions had been received from the upper echelons of the government that the body would be removed shortly. Analysis would be carried out at a hidden, unmarked location by scientists sworn to silence under the Official Secrets Act. Each of the scientists would die in apparent accidents within months of the research being concluded.
A strategy would at long last be put in place for future dealings with the breathers.
A breather was still among them.
Rachel Grey had reverted to human shape and was smartly dressed in a loose-fitting summer dress of reds and yellows. She looked ready for an elegant garden party at a country house. Only the deep bruises and tears in her skin showed otherwise. She was seated in a drawing room with McKinley and Bailey.
Carter handed Jacek and Miranda over to Allen and ensured they were taken away in one of the ambulances that had been waiting for casualties.
Pike seemed reluctant to go with Carter to join the others. “What’s wrong, Jason?”
“I don’t trust her.”
“And she probably doesn’t trust you either. But with Holly gone, you two are going to have to work together.” Carter didn’t add, in fact he had been deliberately building a complex layer to conceal the fact, that the department was already at work on a plan to wipe out the Spiraci wherever they could locate them.
In the drawing room three couches had been pulled in front of the windows, and Grey, McKinley, and Bailey were seated on separate couches, all staring silently out into the night, even though it was pitch-black outside. It was like the awkward first moments at a party where no one knows the others.
As soon as Pike entered the room, Rachel Grey stood and walked across to him.
Carter thought they might embrace. He was wrong.
Rachel slapped him so hard across the face that Pike took two steps backward.
“I didn’t realize you were so full of hatred,” she said.
Pike stroked his cheek, feeling the skin start to burn. “I hate you and all your kind. It has been my life’s work to destroy you all.”
“Was it worth so many lives?”
“Those and thousands more if that is what it takes.”
Bailey looked at Carter, but neither knew what was going on. “Care to tell us what the hell you are talking about?”
Rachel looked at Carter as if suddenly remembering there were others in the room besides Pike and her. She took a pace back from Pike and turned to Carter.
“Him.” She pointed at Pike. “He has orchestrated all of this. Daniel Milton, Julia, Alice Spur, all his own people who died before. He has sacrificed all of them.”
“And I would willingly do it all over again.”
“He let Holly know where Milton was. He led Holly to Julia in Poland. He arranged the abduction of Czerwinski and Dr. Payne. All of it suited his purpose.”
“Which was what?” Carter said.
It was Pike who answered. “To pit breather against breather. Holly against Grey. A civil war between them so that every last one would be wiped out. Destroyed and cleansed from the world forever.”
“Instead…” Rachel never got to finish what she was saying.
From within his jacket pocket, Pike produced a small pistol and shot her once through the eye. The second shot, which took out the second eye, wasn’t needed.
Pike turned to Carter, the gun hanging limply in his fingers.
At the periphery of his vision, Carter saw movement at the window. He shouted to Bailey and McKinley, and each of them managed to throw themselves to the floor before a volley of automatic weapons fire blew out the windowpanes, the light fittings, and ripped into Jason Pike.
He was dead before his body hit the floor.
In the seconds that followed, Carter scanned the windows. Whoever had killed Pike had vanished; it had to be men Grey had positioned in the woods, ready for any eventuality.
When they guessed the danger had passed, those in the room got to their feet and looked at one another.
The door opened and three soldiers rushed in, weapons scanning the room.
Allen walked in a pace or two behind. He barely glanced at the bodies. “More work for the hired help.”
Carter gave him a quick recap of what had happened in the last few moments.
Bailey, typically, had found a decanter of whiskey. He was pouring large measures into three crystal tumblers.
McKinley took one, Carter the other, and Bailey jealously guarded the third.
They raised their glasses and clinked them together in a toast.
Carter broke the silence as they drank. “I suppose I had better report events to Crozier.”
Bailey poured another measure without asking the others if they needed a refill. “Yes, let’s wake the bastard up and spoil his beauty sleep.”
Robert Carter reached into his pocket for his cell phone.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We offer grateful thanks to Don D’Auria and the entire Leisure team who present our books to the world with style and grace. The patient encouragement of Clare Sims is acknowledged, and the youthful inspiration of Emily Rose Sims is appreciated. Sally Melton offers her American retreat for essential battery recharging. All the people who took the time and trouble to give criticism in reviews, blogs, or verbally are thanked because they provoke a reaction that makes us want to do it all again with the next book. We thank Ian Drury for taking us on and offering us hope for the future. Hugh Lamb has always been a quiet encourager, and Stephen Jones has been a modest mentor. We acknowledge unreservedly that if you, the reader, didn’t buy the book and read it and have an opinion on it, we wouldn’t have the opportunity to be published in the first place.
Critics Rave About L. H. Maynard And M. P. N. Sims!
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nbsp; “Maynard and Sims write with a voice that is both uniquely entertaining and profoundly disturbing. Their fiction reflects classic old-school style themes told with a decidedly modern perspective.”
—Brian Keene, author of Darkness on the Edge of Town
“Maynard and Sims make readers accept terrible denizens from nightmare as casual fact.”
—Cemetery Dance
“Maynard and Sims write with a fluid graceful style and know how to involve the reader in their story.”
—Masters of Terror
“Reminiscent of the work of Ramsey Campbell.”
—Gothic Net
“Maynard and Sims know what makes a horror story tick.”
—Shivers
“L. H. Maynard and M. P. N. Sims are a duo of talent to be reckoned with.”
—The Horror Review
“L. H. Maynard and M. P. N. Sims write a true horror story that will scare the heck out of readers.”
—The Best Reviews
“Maynard and Sims are erudite horror stylists whose stories leave a lingering shiver of delicious terror that leave the reader wanting more.”
—Author Link
“[Maynard & Sims] know when to take a quiet tack, using the carefully chosen line to disturb, to evoke a feeling of dread anticipation, the hint of something seen out of the corner of an eye, and when to render limbs and buckets of blood all over the text so that the reader is shocked and the odds against the characters heightened.”
—Case Notes
