Promise: Caulborn #2

by Nicholas Olivo

The tentacle sensed the change in the air and shot forward, snaking around Laras’s neck. As he struggled, reality ripped a little more, and a second tentacle slithered into the world. This one wrapped around Laras’s waist. Together, the two tentacles dragged Laras toward the tear. He wrenched back and forth, his breath coming in high-pitched wheezes. The Keeper pulled at the tentacle around his throat to no avail. He gave up on that and was starting to fumble at the device on his wrist when the tear ripped again and a third tentacle shot through and grabbed his arm. A fourth followed and caught his other arm. Laras made strange yarking sounds as he tried to free himself. The tentacles heaved in unison and the man disappeared into the rift.

  Okay, that was one problem solved.

  I stretched out and felt for the energy that made up the rift. All I needed to do was seal it up. Except I couldn’t get a grip on the energy that had created it. I could sense the energy, could feel it warbling like a tuning fork, but it felt like the rift had been covered in Crisco. It ripped again, and this time five tentacles came through. I swallowed.

  “Laras?” Julie’s voice. “Laras, I can’t sense you anymore. Laras?”

  Julie moved into my field of vision, one hand outstretched as she felt her way forward. Her other hand was pressed against her face, and from my vantage point on the floor, I could see blood running through her fingers and down her arm. “Laras?” The tentacles shot toward the sound of her voice and latched on to her. She was in no state to resist and was pulled through with a yelp of surprise.

  The fog had finally dissipated. I could see Herb’s crumpled form in a pool of blood across the room. A chunk of the Rosario protruded from his chest, the once smooth blade now warped and melted. Looked like the alchemical metal couldn’t withstand alien disruptor technology. I couldn’t tell if Herb was breathing or not.

  A faint scratching sound caught my attention. Gearstripper crawled into view. He was pulling himself on his forearms, those having already healed. His fingers were at odd angles and he suddenly grimaced as one of them abruptly popped back into place. A few seconds later, his joints had healed. Gremlins had literally been built to be blown up and then recover to sabotage again. I’d once watched Gears reform after being burned to a crisp, and it’d only taken him a few minutes. He looked at me, concern evident in his yellow eyes. “You okay, Vinnie?”

  “Been better, pal,” I replied.

  “We’ve gotta get outta here,” he said.

  The rip in reality tore wider. Six tentacles this time. “Be quiet,” I whispered. “I don’t think they can see, but they’re attracted to sound.”

  Gears nodded. “Can’t you close that?” I shook my head. He tapped a claw absently against the floor. I winced, fearing the sound might attract the tentacles. They didn’t notice. Gears looked back at the tentacles, then at the dead Glawackus lying atop me. “Can you push that thing off?”

  “Outta faith, buddy.”

  “Thought so. Hang on, I got this.” Gears pulled himself up on the Glawackus’s back. Even his tiny amount of extra weight made my ribs groan. “Hey, Cthulhu! Yeah, you, you hentacle reject, over here!” The tentacles shot forward, unfurling to new lengths as Gears leapt backward off the dead creature. The tentacles latched onto the Glawackus’s neck and hoisted it off me. It bounced twice as it was dragged toward the tear. My switchblade clattered out from under it and slid twenty feet away from me. I started to try to move toward the knife, but froze as I watched the SUV-sized creature get pulled up to the mouth of the tear, where it was folded in on itself until it could fit. There was no snapping of bones or tearing of tendons, it was like the Glawackus had been turned into a two-dimensional object and folded like a piece of paper.

  I stared at the tear, unblinking. Holy shit, I really need to close that. The energies had gotten slipperier. I concentrated as hard as I could, imagining a giant zipper around the tear, then I imagined that zipper pulling shut. I opened my eyes to see nothing had happened. Fuck.

  Gears trotted across the room to the backpack lying on the ground. He was rummaging around in it when the tentacles came back through. Gears pulled out the extradimensional cylinder and began tapping on the buttons. I pulled myself up to a sitting position and looked myself over. In addition to my broken ribs and right leg, my right elbow was shattered and bone had broken through the skin. My right hand was broken, too, and my fingers were swollen like sausages. This was worse than I’d expected. I must be going into shock. Not good.

  The tentacles extended out into the room, drifting along as if they were weightless. Occasionally, one would brush across the floor as if sniffing it. Then one of them brushed against Herb. The tentacle caressed him, slithered around his thigh and began pulling him toward the tear. The tear had ripped again, and this time, instead of another tentacle, an eyeball the size of a trash can lid pressed against it.

  I couldn’t help but yelp in surprise. The eye was yellow and had a diamond-shaped pupil. I couldn’t see any other parts of the thing’s head, if it had one. For all I knew, this was a giant eyeball on a stalk. The eyeball swept the room, and more tentacles flicked out with lightning speed. Faster than I could follow, one of them wrapped around Gears’s waist and another two around my legs. I screamed in pain as my broken right leg was squeezed with a force like a vice.

  The creature dragged us toward the tear. I flailed at my switchblade, but my right arm was useless, and I slid right past it. Gears stabbed at the buttons on the cylinder a few more times. If I’d been able to focus, I might’ve come up with a way out of this, but the pain was so intense now that I couldn’t think. I’d blown it.

  Being much lighter, Gears reached the tear first. He hurled the cylinder into the tear and swiped at the tentacle with his claws. The attack surprised the creature, which momentarily loosened its grip on him. That was all he needed to slash twice more and drop to the floor. A second later, there was an explosion. A shockwave of green force burst through the tear, blasting Herb and me across the room. Wispy plumes of green smoke drifted through the tear, carrying the stench of sulfur. The tear shrank before my eyes, and a moment later, it was closed.

  My body screamed in agony as I worked to untangle a severed tentacle from my legs. Gearstripper rushed over and handed me my switchblade. I took it awkwardly in my left hand and began cutting the tentacle away. “Go check on Herb,” I said.

  He shot off. “The sword’s melted into him, Vinnie,” Gears called. “He’s still breathing, but it’s shallow, and he’s really pale.”

  “How’s Megan?”

  Gears trotted over to her. “She’s still in stasis, I guess.”

  All right, that meant if nothing else, she was “fine.” We needed to get back to Medical.

  “Um, Vinnie? Can we still get home?”

  “Not sure, Gears,” I said. “That cylinder was the only thing that let me focus my power to Open portals. If I try again, we’ll just reopen the tear with the tentacle monster. What made you think to throw the cylinder into the tear, though?”

  “You know how in D&D if you put a bag of holding into another bag of holding, you risk destroying the universe? Same idea. I figured, what did we have to lose?”

  Gremlin logic can be absolutely terrifying sometimes, but I had to admit, if I’d thought of that, I’d have done it, too. I looked around the room. The door leading to the hallway was shut. I thought for a second then painfully and awkwardly pushed myself over to the door, sliding on my butt and using my good foot. I touched the door. The extradimensional energies that made up this place were still intact, but they were weakening fast. I concentrated as hard as I could on the entrance to Medical and forced the door’s portal to Open there.

  The portal didn’t like that. It strained against me, but after a second that lasted three lifetimes, a door into our office stood open. “Gears,” I said through clenched teeth. “Get help. Go!”

  The gremlin took off like a shot. I heard him yelling for Jake. The big man and Mrs. Rita came tearing through a moment later. Jake g
rabbed Herb and carried him back through. Gearstripper and Mrs. Rita scrambled over to Megan.

  The world got dimmer. At first, I thought it was from my injuries, but then I realized the room was shrinking. Whatever dimension we were in was collapsing. “Hurry!” I called out. Jake came hustling back through. The electricity sparking around Megan vanished as Gearstripper disabled her stasis field. Jake scooped her up in his arms and charged back through the portal, Mrs. Rita and Gears right behind him. As they crossed through, Mrs. Rita grabbed my shirt and with a surprisingly strong yank, hauled me through into Boston. I cried out as the movement aggravated my, well, everything. I let go of the portal, and it sealed with a pop.

  I collapsed onto the carpet. It was much too rough. We really should have soft carpet for occasions like this. “I bet that paranormal worm silk would make fantastic carpeting,” I said to no one in particular. “It could handle the high traffic areas and yet still be super comfy for when you fall down.”

  Mrs. Rita knelt over me and shone a flashlight into my eyes. “Vincent, what day is it?” There was a buzzing in the air. I didn’t like it.

  “Not sure, Mrs. Rita,” I said back, “but I’m pretty sure it ends with a ‘y.’” The buzzing got louder. “Somebody answer the door, I think the pizza’s here.” Mrs. Rita’s expression was concerned. And why was it so dim in the office? Probably light bulbs blew out when the portal opened. The buzzing got louder, the world got darker, and my eyelids suddenly weighed two thousand pounds each.

  The world spun and the blackness took me.

  Chapter 14

  Sir, there have been several instances of late where Vincent Corinthos has attempted to Open gateways. The tachyon veil we put around him to prevent him from gaining precognizance is reacting violently with the extradimensional energies he channels, and is tearing holes in reality to outside dimensions. We must re-evaluate the tachyon veil and find a solution to this problem before Corinthos inadvertently allows an eldritch horror into the universe.

  —Missive from Brother Wheatson to the Tempus, leader of the Chroniclers

  I woke up on a bed in Medical. My throat was dry and my eyes burned. “Good morning, Vincent,” came a voice from my left.

  “If it’s morning, Mrs. Rita, what are you doing here?” I rasped.

  She smiled as she took my temperature. “It has been a most eventful evening, which has become an eventful morning as well.” She looked at the thermometer. “Your fever has broken. How do you feel?”

  I successfully wiggled my toes and fingers. The bones in my arms and legs had knit overnight. I saw a squeeze bottle of water on the table next to me and took a long pull from it before replying. “I’m worried. How’s Megan?”

  “She’s fine,” Mrs. Rita replied, and I tried not to wince at her choice of words. “Joseph and I were able to wake her from the stasis field.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “Of course, she’s in the next room over.” I jumped out of bed and then realized I was only wearing a flimsy hospital gown. Mrs. Rita’s grin was wicked. She’d been waiting for me to do that. “Though you may want to put on some shorts before going to see her. Petra might get jealous.”

  Three minutes later, I was dressed and walking into the adjoining room. Megan was sitting up in bed, a blanket draped over her shoulders. Red rimmed her eyes and there was an empty box of Kleenex in the crook of her arm. She held a fistful of tissues in her left hand and mopped them at her face when I walked in. “Vincent, hi.”

  “Hey, Meg,” I said as I went to stand at her bedside. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine,” she said, and the word stung again. “Doc Ryan says I’m the picture of perfect health. He’s just keeping me for observation.” She blew her nose and tossed the tissues in the wastebasket next to the bed. “He says that Herb is comatose,” her voice cracked and my guilt-o-meter cranked up another few thousand notches. “He and Mrs. Rita are doing all sorts of wondrous medical things, but Herb’s not coming out of it.” She screwed her eyes shut and talked through her teeth. “It’s not fair. He’s a good person. He doesn’t deserve this.” Tears leaked from the corner of her eyes. She scrubbed them away with the back of her hand. “Why did this happen, Vincent? Why did those men kidnap me?”

  I looked at my Reeboks and summoned up all my courage. “It’s my fault, Megan.” I wanted to look her in the eyes but couldn’t. “It’s because of me, and a stupid slip of the tongue.” I told her everything then, about the promise, about how Orcus was holding me accountable, about how I thought I was being clever by finding a way around it. “I’m so sorry, Megan. I never imagined anything like this would happen.”

  “You’re sorry,” she said coolly. I looked up and she’d assumed her diplomat mask. “I see. Would you care to explain why you didn’t tell me this sooner, Vincent? Did you think I wouldn’t see that promise for the nicety you intended it as, rather than an all-binding oath? Do you think me that unreasonable or unfair?”

  “No, that’s—”

  “And because of your lack of trust in me, a good man is now lying in a magical coma in the next room. A man who, according to Gearstripper, violated his own personal code of ethics to protect me. A man who went down defending my helpless body.” Her eyes were so cold they might as well have been chips of ice. “And now you stand here, not a scratch on you, and tell me that you’re sorry.”

  “Megan, I—”

  “Get out of my sight, Vincent.” The mask broke, and I saw Megan honestly and truly angry for the first time. Her jaw was tight and her body was actually shaking with rage. It was her eyes that made me step back. In them I saw a barely restrained wrath that I wouldn’t have thought possible from someone normally so perky. Her left hand clutched a bunch of the blanket at her waist. The outline of a pocket cannon kept flickering into her right. “Leave now,” she hissed. “Now!”

  I fled from the room, the door shutting automatically behind me. On the other side, I heard Megan break down in sobs. Mrs. Rita brushed past me and went into Megan’s room. Doc Ryan came around the corner, a cigarette between his fingers. He jerked his head to a side room and stepped inside. I followed him.

  Doc leaned against a window, his back to me, a tendril of smoke spiraling up to touch the No Smoking sign. “You heard Wallenby is comatose, right?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder. I nodded. He turned back to the window and took a drag on his cigarette. “We have no accounts or data on what happens when the Rosario’s poison is applied to a human. It was only intended to weaken paranormal beings.” Another drag. “Best I can figure, the poison targeted Herb’s necromantic powers.” Doc turned to me, still leaning against the wall. “When a necromancer forces the dead to do his bidding, he’s exerting a part of his spirit over the deceased’s. The poison’s embedded itself between Herb’s spirit and his body, preventing his consciousness from returning.”

  “Will it wear off?”

  “Can’t say. A paranormal immune system, like yours, is used to supernatural pathogens and knows how to handle them. So you’d naturally break the toxin down over time. Herb on the other hand, is just a plain old human. His body has no idea how to fight this stuff.”

  “Can you create an antidote?”

  Doc gave me an exasperated look. “Jesus Christ, Corinthos, do you think I just stand around here smoking all day? I’ve had the computer analyzing this particular flavor of poison all morning long. I’ll have a better feel for what can and can’t be cured later on.” He crushed out the cigarette against his heel and dropped the butt into the wastebasket. I unconsciously extinguished the butt completely so he wouldn’t burn the place down. “I’m telling you all this because, quite frankly, Herb’s chances don’t look good. Megan seems pretty attached to this guy, and if he kicks it, she’s going to be a wreck. So you mind your manners and keep your nose clean around her, got it?”

  A little late for that, I thought. Just the same, I nodded and he patted me on the shoulder. “One other thing,” he held up a finger under my nos
e. “If you ever, ever disobey an order from me to stay in Medical again, I will have Galahad throw your ass out of the agency so fast your head will spin. You got lucky, Corinthos, but you could’ve just as easily been killed running off in your condition. Don’t ever do that again. Got it?” I swallowed and nodded. With that, he left the room, muttering about upstart punk ass kids.

  Galahad walked in then and beckoned for me to sit down at the table. “Vincent, we need to talk.”

  A feeling of complete dread filled my stomach. When your boss or your girlfriend uses that phrase, things are going to be bad. I sat down and folded my hands in my lap. Galahad took the seat across from me and rested his palms on the table.

  “Vincent, when you first came to us, you were a thoughtful, reflective young man who wanted to protect people from paranormal threats. Over the last eight years, that desire to protect has grown stronger, and I respect you for that. However, since the Urisk adopted you as their god, I have watched you become more and more reckless.” Galahad’s voice was dead level; the kind of dead level that meant he was only a hair’s breadth from completely losing his temper. “You act first and think later. You rush into danger, heedless of the consequences. Each time you do that, you put yourself and the other agents in peril. Your partner does not deserve that, nor did Mr. Wallenby. Caulborn agents understand the risk associated with this line of work, but Wallenby is a civilian. And you roped him into something that should’ve been handled by the agency.”

  I looked at my hands in my lap. What was I going to do, argue with him? He was right and I knew it.

  “You are not a bad person, Vincent,” Galahad continued. “If I believed there was even a hint of malevolence in your actions I would call the Inquisitors in to deal with you.” That got my attention. The Inquisitors were the Caulborn’s secret police; invoking their name was not something you did lightly. They dealt with paranormal threats that no one else could; they were the people who’d see fighting a half-god as part of the daily routine. I realized just how angry Galahad was just then, if he was bringing them up. “But you are not malevolent. I believe I have failed you, pushed you into a role you were not properly prepared for. When you came to us, I put you to work in a support role, but the powers you acquired from the Urisk made you uniquely qualified to be a field agent. Perhaps that was a bad decision.