There had to be at least ten more of them. As the light faded to shadow cast by dancing flames, Roberto flung his glowing hand forward and let off another burst of sapphire fire that boomed like thunder in the tiny space. Another imp exploded as lines of red light appeared on Roberto’s chest. He dove to the side as flames lanced through the space he’d just occupied and melted the wall into slag.
He scrambled to his feet and sprinted toward me, turning every so often to fling more fireballs at the drones. He got a couple, but for the most part they were able to dodge his fire and avoid serious damage. Damn.
I spun on my heel, willing myself to move. I couldn’t see Chuck anywhere, but a door up ahead was lying cockeyed in its frame. From here it looked like someone had torn it free of the top hinge. If that didn’t scream Chuck, I didn’t know what would.
I reached the door a second later and darted inside, my lungs sucking in mouthfuls of air. The room was semi-lit by a pair of fluorescent lights in the ceiling. Chuck was across the room, wrestling with some kind of metal case. All around me, bodies lay contorted across the floor. Yellow goo dripped from their mouths and eyes. I resisted the urge to lose my lunch, but just barely. Had these people been killed by the gas? If they had been, it certainly hadn’t been a pleasant way to go.
Even though they worked for the Agency, it still bothered me. I sighed. I was not cut out for the ‘whole murdering people indiscriminately’ gig.
The walls felt like they were closing in on me as I took one small step toward the closest body and knelt down next to it. The woman had short brown hair and freckles spread out across her cheeks. Blood covered the front of her lab coat, staining it crimson. She didn’t look like she was that much older than me. The badge around her neck read Teresa Smith, and as I stared at it, the urge to cry for her nearly overwhelmed me. Would Teresa be dead now if I had just let Tom blow up those people outside Gabriella’s hideout? Would Lisa have gone crazy and killed her and how many others?
Then again, maybe this was all Tom? Maybe he had done something to his daughter when they were alone in his lab. Yes, that had to be it. The Lisa I knew would never do this. I just had to find her and stop Tom…
I stood up as Chuck finally got the cabinet open and pulled what looked like a solid black bazooka free. Roberto dove into the room and slid across the floor like he was trying to steal second base. Chuck dropped to one knee, the bazooka braced on his shoulder.
“Fire in the hole!” he called and pulled the trigger. Fire and brimstone launched from the cylinder as the first imps appeared in the doorway. They dodged by the projectile, but it didn’t matter much. It slammed into the wall behind the creatures and exploded with enough force to throw me from my feet. I landed hard on my back, my breath whooshing out of me as bits of flaming debris clanged to the floor.
“Come on, Abby! Who knows how many more there are,” Roberto said, pulling me to my feet and half-dragging me toward Chuck before I got my footing underneath me.
Chuck was standing in front of the cabinet, and as we approached, he tossed me a weapon that sort of reminded me of an AK47. “I didn’t want you to feel left out,” he said before turning away, his bazooka over one shoulder as he pushed open a side door to reveal more stairs. Joy.
“If you’re wondering about the elevator, let’s just say I’m not super fond of enclosed spaces governed by a system that has been taken over by psychopaths,” Chuck added as he began climbing downward. It was a good point, so I followed him without grumbling… much.
22
I wasn’t sure how far down we’d gone, but I was beginning to feel like we were descending into the bowels of hell itself. With every step, the air got increasingly warmer so now it was like standing next to a blast furnace. My clothing stuck to my body as sweat dripped down my face. I wiped it away with the back of my hand and tried to take a deep breath, but the air was so hot it scalded my lungs.
“So, where are we going? The devil’s lake of fire?” I asked.
“That’s not too bad of a description, actually. See the secondary backup power for this facility is a thermal generator that taps into the magma below the earth’s crust. I can’t explain it in all the technical terms exactly, but the plan is to cut off that source of power. Having access to the base’s systems won’t mean squat if there’s no power.” Roberto smiled at me.
“You could have mentioned we were taking a journey to the center of the earth,” I mumbled, glancing over my shoulder at Chuck. His skin was glistening like a well-oiled bodybuilder. “I’d have brought some SPF five million.”
“If you’re too hot, you could always take off all your clothes,” Chuck said, from behind me. “I won’t mind.”
“Dude, seriously?” I replied, barely resisting the urge to turn around and smack him. “Stop hitting on me.” I glared at Roberto who was strangely silent. “And you could tell him to stop, dad!”
“Chuck, stop hitting on my daughter. She doesn’t like it,” Roberto said, though he didn’t even bother to look back.
“She just thinks she doesn’t like it,” he replied before stopping so suddenly that the absence of his footfalls in the quiet stairwell was noticeable. I turned to see him point his bazooka at the stairs above. “Crap. Um… guys, you better hurry. I’ll try to hold them off.”
“What is it?” Roberto asked, reaching out and maneuvering me down the stairs ahead of him. “More imps?”
“Worse. Ninjas,” Chuck called, starting back up the stairs, one hand pulling a machete from the waistband of his camo-pants. “I freaking hate ninjas.”
Roberto scooped me up in his arms and sprinted down the stairs so quickly I could barely process what Chuck had said. Ninjas? How the hell were there ninjas coming after us?
“Um… is ninjas a code word for something?” I asked, trying to ignore the fact that he was carrying me bodily down the stairs as fast as he could. Before he could respond, an explosion boomed overhead, and the stairs shook. Wow… they must have been close.
“It’s code for ninjas,” Roberto wheezed as he leapt over the railing and landed on the giant black grate below with a thud that jarred the breath from my lungs. His landing had not been as smooth as Chuck’s had been earlier, that’s for sure. Far below, I could see orange murky liquid that looked suspiciously like hot lava.
Heat so hot it made my skin flush an angry shade of pink hit me in bursts as Roberto raised his free hand and summoned his blue fire once more. As it coalesced into a basketball sized sun, he pointed at the wall on our left.
“Like real ninjas?” I asked as he forced me into the corner with his other hand. “That seems a tad bit unlikely.”
“They’re undead ninjas,” Roberto said, launching his fireball at the wall. The stone didn’t explode so much as it flared with bright sapphire light before vanishing completely. The wall crumbled to dust, leaving a me-sized hole in the stone.
“Did you just say undead ninjas? Like that’s somehow better than normal ninjas?” I asked, not believing him.
He ignored me. “Okay, all you need to do is go in there and shut down the emergency power. I’d tell you how to do it, but just trust your instincts, and I’m sure everything will be fine.”
“Are you being serious right now?” I asked as he shoved me toward the hole. “You want me to go in there while you stay out here and what? Fight off the undead ninjas?”
“Yes. You’ll be fine, Abby. I believe in you.” He shot me a wry grin. If it was supposed to inspire confidence, it failed miserably.
“I’m not worried about that, I just can’t deal with this.” I waved my hand dismissively and crinkled my nose as I approached the hole in the wall over the active volcano. “Whatever, I’m just going to go with it.”
Roberto smirked at me. “I think that’s probably for the best. Too much thinking never helped anyone in these situations.”
I tried to dismiss the feeling I was trapped in a really bad action movie and climbed through the hole. A second later, I was standing in
a room filled with whirring machinery. Gears spun and buzzers buzzed. It was so loud I could barely hear myself think as I picked myself through the mass of moving metal, looking for some kind of computer terminal or interface. After what felt like hours, I spotted a small screen embedded into the front of a control panel that read “Danger 12,000 volts.” That seemed like a lot of volts, but then again, the pumps in here were ginormous. Maybe they needed that many volts to run.
I stepped over the yellow line on the ground and sort of shivered as I stepped past the red line as well. I wasn’t quite sure what they were there for, but something told me they had been put there for a reason. I tapped the screen embedded into the panel. It came to life, showing me a layout of the room filled with badly drawn boxy 3D art. Great, just freaking great. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath… and the sound of gunfire shot holes through my concentration.
“Okay, let’s do this,” I said to myself as an explosion outside rattled my teeth. My eyes snapped open, and my fingers started flying across the tiny screen. I pulled up menus and adjusted things, and as I did so, I realized why we had come down here. This control panel was cut off from the rest of the system. Lisa and Tom couldn’t access it from wherever they were. If I initiated a shutdown from here, one of them would have to come down here to manually reset it. I wasn’t sure if this was a flaw in the system or some kind of safety protocol, but right now, I was happy to exploit it.
All around me pumps ground to a halt. Overhead, a pipe shook dangerously. I smirked and stepped back toward the hole.
“Ninja vanish!” screamed Roberto from outside and another burst of gunfire cut through the air followed by another explosion. When I was as far away as I could get, I realized the room had gotten a lot quieter. That was when the lights overhead started to dim. I took a deep breath and raised my own hand like Roberto had done and pointed at the panel.
“Here goes nothing,” I whispered to myself and concentrated.
Blue fire similar to Roberto’s leapt from my fingers. Sweat broke out on my forehead as the power in my outstretched hand. My heart began to hammer in my chest as I sucked in a breath.
Then I let loose that breath along with the magic I’d called up. The fireball smacked into the control screen, melting a crater-sized hole in the industrial grade plastic. The panel sparked and went out, and for a moment, that was all that happened.
As I took a step back, my chest heaving, the electrical panel exploded in a geyser of fire that shook the place. It only lasted for an instant, but it was so hot I knew I’d have a bad burn even from across the room.
The lights went out, but thankfully, the glowing magma beneath my feet shed enough light into the room to let me find my way out.
When I clambered out of the hole, Roberto and Chuck were standing back to back beside an oncoming mound of blackened corpses. Chuck glanced at me and started picking his teeth with his machete. On the stairs above, undead were frozen in various states of movement, making it seem like someone had hit the pause button during an intense action scene.
“Good job, Abby,” Chuck said, holding one huge hand out to me. “I didn’t think you could do it. I’m glad you proved me wrong.”
I shot him an angry look as I took his hand and shook it. His grip was strong and firm, but it didn’t hurt at all. Maybe when you’re used to being physically stronger than everyone, you don’t feel the need to break every bone in someone’s hand when you shake. It made me smirk. I knew some boys back home who could stand to take a lesson in handshakes from Chuck.
“So now what?” I asked when he released me. The stairs above were filled with black shadows, and I knew the moment we left the lava, we wouldn’t be able to see anymore.
“Now we find Tom, kill him, and celebrate our victory,” Roberto said, getting to his feet with a grunt.
“Don’t you mean save the world?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.
“No, I more meant take over the world, but we can talk semantics later.” He shot me a very interesting look and moved toward the stairs, his breathing heavy and labored.
“Oh my God, you’re hurt!” I squealed as I sprinted toward him, my hands outstretched. “You can’t be hurt!”
“It’s just a flesh wound,” he wheezed as I pulled his blood-drenched shirt away to reveal a slice to his side that scared me to death. Blood seeped from the wound as Chuck looked at it over my shoulder.
“Is it bad? It looks bad,” I swallowed, trying to wipe away the blood with my hands. God, we needed stitches and some antiseptic. I spun in a slow circle looking for supplies I didn’t have. Chuck stared at me for a long time before pushing past me.
“It actually isn’t that bad,” Chuck said as he took Roberto’s shirt and tore it into strips. A few moments later, my father’s torso was wrapped up like a mummy. “How do you feel?” Chuck asked. “It looks like the bleeding has stopped.”
“I feel great,” Roberto replied, pushing himself back to his feet with a grunt and making his way past the mangled body of a man-sized robot with katanas for arms. “Now let’s go kick some ass.”
As I watched Roberto shuffle up the stairs and into the darkness above, the bad feeling in the center of my tummy clawed its way up my throat and threatened to suffocate me. I could have lost him.
Okay, maybe he hadn’t actually been in danger, but what if he had been? What if he got killed… like Esmeralda, like Stephen, like pretty much everyone I cared about? I swallowed, trying to shove the feeling away, but it did no good. Sure, he was a supervillain, but at the same time, he was all I had left.
Chuck put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed gently. “Abby, he’s fine.” His face was strangely serious as he looked at me. “I promise.”
“I’m not worried about right now. I’m worried about ten minutes from now when someone shoots him in the head,” I replied as Chuck steered me toward the stairs.
“Then make sure that doesn’t happen,” he said and squeezed my shoulder one last time before stepping in front of me and jogging up the stairs. “Hey, Rob! Why don’t you let me take the lead for a bit?”
23
I’d barely made it ten steps when the stairs beneath my feet vanished, and I fell to what would be my certain death. Something grabbed my wrist and my shoulder jerked hard, sending a lance of pain rushing through my tortured limb as I hung there, dangling above the lava several stories below. Heat wafted up at me, unbearable and very, very real in a way it hadn’t been when there had been solid ground between me and it.
“Thanks!” I called, and whatever had my wrist began hauling me up. I looked up toward it, but found I couldn’t see anything. The glare of the magma off the bottom of the stairwell was so bright it made sun spots dance across my vision. I sighed and reached out with my other hand, grabbing my own wrist and trying to balance myself as I was hauled upward an inch at a time. Which, now that I thought about it, was a little weird. Both Roberto and Chuck were strong enough to yank me out of this hole like I was a bag of potato chips, so what was going on?
A horrible thought struck me. Maybe whoever had me by the wrist wasn’t Roberto or Chuck? But if that was true, who else could it be? A chill ran down the back of my neck despite the intense heat, and while I thought about struggling, I was pretty sure that would result in my death and not a whole lot else. No, it would be better to play it cool until I had solid ground beneath my feet. I’d just have to let the chips fall where they may… for now.
When my wrist cleared the edge of the ragged metal hole in the stairs, I grabbed on with my free hand. The moment my fingers wrapped around the steel, I felt a million times better even though I was still dangling above an active volcano.
I hauled myself out, but as I landed on the stairs and gasped, sucking in lungfuls of too hot air, I realized I couldn’t see who had saved me. I spun, trying to blink my night vision back into focus and found myself looking at one of the lifeless undead ninjas. There was nothing else in the room. Had it saved me somehow? No… that was impo
ssible, right?
I stared at it anyway. It was about six feet tall and like the others, had two sets of arms because someone had sewn on a second set that curved into sharp katana-like blades in addition to two other, more normal looking arms. Its rotten flesh was covered in thin black material except for its grotesque face. Its face looked as vacant as any corpse ever, but could there be someone inside? No, that would defeat the purpose of having zombies…
Still, why did it feel like it had been watching me? I reached out tentatively, and as my fingers brushed its face, it moved. Not a lot, mind you, but enough to make me leap out of my skin.
“I thought you were all deactivated?” I whispered, though I’m not sure why.
“No,” it warbled in a weird raspy voice that reminded me of Dawn of the Dead. “Not all of us.”
“Okay… so why didn’t you let me die?” I asked, taking a tentative step backward. Man, where were Roberto and Chuck when you needed them?
“My command is not to kill you, Abigail. It never was. It was always to capture you. If you fell to your death, it would violate my orders. As such, I must save you. Now come with me.” The zombie turned and began walking down the stairs. When I didn’t follow, its head swiveled practically one-hundred-eighty degrees around and looked at me, which was creepy as all get out.
“Why are you not coming?” the zombie asked, and while its razor sharp arms didn’t twitch, they might as well have. My hand slowly started moving toward my gun, when I realized to my horror I’d lost it in the fall. Damn. Damn. Damn.
“Why would I go with you?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest and fixing it with my best stern look. I just needed to buy time for Chuck and Roberto to realize I was gone and come fetch me.
The Magic Within: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Found Magic Book 2) Page 17
