Cloak Games: Hammer Break

by Jonathan Moeller

  Murdo threw open the trunk and reached inside. You couldn’t take guns into the Royal Bank, but the Rebels never liked to go anywhere unarmed, so Murdo passed me a Royal Arms .45 semiautomatic pistol with an extended eighteen-round magazine.

  Against a mob of anthrophages, it was like using a toothpick to fight an angry dog, but it was better than nothing.

  But I could do far more damage with my spells than with any firearm.

  “We need to get under cover,” said Murdo. “This is downtown DC. Every Homeland Security unit for ten miles in all directions is getting scrambled.”

  “Yeah,” I said again, a plan coming together in my mind. “Let’s find someplace and hide. I’ll use a Cloak, and we’ll wait till Homeland Security deals with the anthrophages. Then we’ll go back and complain to Nicholas.” Because I was going to rip Nicholas a new one. All his big damned talk about controlling his people and the Revolution. This was probably Corbisher’s doing. No wonder the damned rat hadn’t wanted to come to the Bank. He knew he would have gotten caught in the crossfire. “Someplace without cameras, though.”

  I looked around, trying to decide where to run, and then two distractions demanded my attention.

  The first was a middle-aged man in a suit with the overfed look of a long-term bureaucrat, his eyes wide as he ran up to me.

  “Are you all right, miss? What’s going on? Did a gas line explode?” His eyes got even wider as he saw the pistol in my right hand.

  The second thing was the passengers of the SUVs. The doors of the SUVs opened, and I saw anthrophages wearing dark suits over their gaunt, gray forms, AK-47s and M-99 carbines in hand.

  However, I also saw orcish mercenaries.

  The High Queen doesn’t like orcs, so the only time they turn up on Earth is in the employ of her enemies. The orcish soldiers stood nearly seven feet tall, their skin a peculiar metallic blue, their eyes black, their faces fierce with tusks rising from their lower jaws. The orcs wore a peculiar mix of modern armor and armor suited for the Shadowlands, with chain mail beneath ballistic vests and black carbon-fiber impact plates. The orcs carried AK-47s and had pistols at their belts, but most of them also had double-bladed battle axes and greatswords strapped to their backs. Backed by an orc’s strength, those weapons could split a man in half, and even a glancing hit from an orcish axe had left James Marney in need of a cane for the rest of his life.

  Of course, orcish mercenaries were practical. Why bother doing all the hard work of cutting off my head when it was more efficient to simply shoot me dead?

  The AK-47s swung in our direction.

  “Run, you idiot!” I shouted. “It’s an Archon attack!”

  The middle-aged man whirled and sprinted into the fleeing crowds, and I cast a spell a heartbeat before the orcs started firing. White mist swirled around my hands, and it hardened into a wall of ice six feet high and eighteen feet wide in in a shallow arc in front of us and the wrecked car.

  The bullets slammed into the ice wall.

  “Come on!” said Murdo. “The lobby of that office building. I don’t think we’ll be able to do any better than that.”

  I started to protest, but I realized that he was right. We needed to get someplace out of Sight so I could cast my Cloak spell. There would be cameras in that lobby…but, hell, we were already on camera someplace, weren’t we? Homeland Security and the Inquisition would examine this incident with a fine-tooth comb. Our wrecked car would be on video entering and exiting the parking garage. We were on camera at the Royal Bank. That wouldn’t have been a problem if there had been no reason to review the footage, but with a gun fight in downtown Washington DC, the footage was going to get reviewed.

  Goddamn it! The next time I saw Corbisher I was going to blast that smirk right off his ugly scarred face.

  I nodded and followed Murdo as we ran towards the office building.

  Right about then, something else went wrong.

  Lines of blue light burned across the sidewalk, as far as I could see in either direction. It was a Seal, a massive magical Seal, and my heart sank as I recognized it.

  It was a huge Seal of Unmasking.

  “How the hell are the anthrophages doing that?” I said. Had Corbisher sent a team of anthrophage elders after us? Anthrophage elders could use dark magic, but it would take several anthrophage elders to cast a seal of that size.

  “Orcish battle wizards, probably,” said Murdo. “They’re good at wards. Go!”

  I nodded and ran alongside him towards the office building. Our only chance was to get out of range of the Seal so I could Cloak us both and wait out the battle. The orcish mercenaries and the anthrophages would not be able to operate for long without Homeland Security, the Inquisition, and the local Elven nobles responded with overwhelming force, and all Murdo and I had to do was to stay alive and uncaptured until the local defenders struck back.

  And not get killed in the crossfire as well.

  We pushed into the building’s lobby. It was a big lobby, though not nearly as impressive as the lobby of the Royal Bank. Neutral beige office carpet covered the floor, and a plaque on one wall listed the various useless bureaucracies housed here. On the far wall, I saw a row of three elevators and a door leading to a staircase. There was a long receptionist’s counter halfway across the lobby, and behind the counter, I saw four terrified-looking middle-aged women.

  The glowing lines of the Seal stretched across the beige carpet of the lobby.

  “Run!” I shouted to the receptionists. “Get to your shelter locations!” I vaguely recalled that government employees did drills for this kind of thing. “It’s an Archon attack! Move!”

  The women pushed away from the desk and disappeared into a door on the right-hand wall.

  “The stairs,” said Murdo, pointing at the door. “Says there’s an underground parking garage there. If we can’t get beyond the boundaries of the Seal, we’ll steal a car.”

  It was as a good a plan as any.

  We headed for the stairwell door, and as we did, my brain started working again, and a disturbing idea pushed its way through my aching head.

  This whole ambush had been specifically designed to kill a wizard who could cast a Cloak spell. No doubt Corbisher had told them all about me when he had ordered up his anthrophages and hired his orcish mercenaries. But they had done a thorough job of it. The rocket launcher, the SUVs full of mercenaries, the Seal – they had planned it out well. Likely they had an open rift way somewhere nearby to let them retreat to Venomhold in a hurry.

  Had they planned for me to run into this building?

  The elevator doors dinged and started to slide open.

  “Shit,” I said. “Murdo. We’re being herded. We’re…”

  The elevator doors opened, and inside each of the elevators stood three orcish mercenaries in full battle armor, AK-47s in hand.

  I was already casting a spell, and Murdo raised his pistol in a two-handed grip and started shooting. Two orcs in the left-hand elevator fell dead, blue blood erupting from their foreheads, and I flung a sphere of fire, all my power in the spell. The sphere landed in the central elevator, and it exploded in a howl of flame and smoke, killing all three orcs in a single heartbeat. The blast made the floor shake beneath my shoes, and it also staggered the orcs. Murdo blew away the last orc in the left-hand elevator, and I twisted to face the right-hand elevator, casting another spell. I flung a volley of lightning globes into the right-hand elevator, killing two of the orcs at once and the third a heartbeat later.

  But in that heartbeat, the final orc shot me four times.

  The first bullet hit me in the left thigh. Two more punched through my stomach and burst out my back, and another one buried itself in my chest just below my left breast.

  I missed the next few seconds.

  When my brain came back, I was on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, trying to catch a breath and not quite making it.

  I was in a hellish amount of pain. Though it didn’t freeze my t
hinking. I had been in a lot of pain for a long time. Getting shot wasn’t fun, but it was better than getting burned to death, and I had gotten burned to death a few thousand times. I had also been ripped apart a few thousand times. Overall, I would rate getting shot as more pleasant than getting burned alive or getting ripped apart by anthrophages or wraithwolves.

  It still wasn’t pleasant.

  It really hurt. Felt like I’d had metal rods punched through my body and out the other side. Suppose I had if you considered bullets to be metal rods. All the muscles around the entry wounds were clenching up, which hurt even worse. I couldn’t seem to get a good breath, which meant one of the bullets had torn up a lung.

  “Nadia!”

  And I was hallucinating, too. No one here knew my name. That meant I was going into shock. Maybe the bullet had hit my heart. Maybe I was going to die here. I hoped Russell knew that I had tried my hardest, that I…

  I growled and made myself sit up.

  Oh, that hurt.

  I hadn’t tried my hardest, not yet. And if I could get the hell out of here, not even four direct hits from an AK-47 were going to kill me.

  “Miss Stoker.” Murdo went to one knee next to me, the smell of cordite heavy around him as smoke curled from the end of his pistol. “You’re hurt.”

  “Bad, isn’t it?” I croaked.

  Murdo hesitated. That was all the answer I needed.

  “Get me to a car and get us the hell out of here,” I said.

  I got to my right knee. That made the torn muscles in my left thigh flex, which sent fresh agony shooting down my nerves. Odd how familiar it felt. But I was used to agony, wasn’t I?

  “We need to get you to a hospital,” said Murdo.

  “No,” I rasped. “Car. I can take care of this. For God’s sake help me up.”

  He grimaced, grabbed my hand, and pulled me up. I shrieked a little as I got to my feet, wobbled, and leaned on him. I happened to glance at myself and wished that I hadn’t. My white blouse had turned red, and my black skirt was sticking to my leg from all the blood. I switched my pistol’s safety on, shoved it into my purse (I didn’t want to leave it behind because of the fingerprints), and patted at my chest. That hurt, but it didn’t feel like I had a spurting wound.

  That was good. I could hold on until Murdo got me to a car.

  “We need to get you to a hospital,” said Murdo as he kicked open the stairwell door. “If you don’t have a doctor look at those gunshot wounds you’ll be dead in an hour.”

  “Nope,” I said as we started down the stairs. “Get me to a car, and I’ll be fine. I’ll…ah!”

  I had run for my life in high heels before. I had run for my life down stairs in high heels before. I had not, however, ever attempted to run for my life in high heels with a gunshot wound in my thigh.

  I don’t recommend it.

  My left leg seized up, agony blazing up my hip and spine. I would have lost my balance and cracked my head open on the metal railing, but Murdo’s arm coiled around my waist like a steel band.

  “Damn it,” I said.

  “Hell with it,” said Murdo. “Let’s run. This is going to hurt.”

  Before I could protest, his right arm went under my shoulders, his left under my knees, and he picked me up as if I weighed nothing at all. He was right. It did hurt, but I could still think. I wanted to protest that I could walk on my own, but I had been badly injured enough times to know that I could not. Usually when I was this badly hurt in the Eternity Crucible, the wraithwolves or the cowlspawn or the anthrophages or those damned beetle things (I never did find out what they were called) finished me off.

  “If they have anyone in the garage, I’ll have to put you down to fight,” said Murdo.

  “No, don’t,” I said. “I can still cast spells.” I focused my will and called lightning globes. Five of them sputtered to life and started whirling around us, sputtering and throwing sparks.

  “Fine,” snapped Murdo. We reached the door to the parking level, and he kicked it open, turning sideways to get me through without banging my head on the doorframe.

  The parking level looked like every other underground garage I had ever visited, with long rows of cars and SUVs parked under harsh fluorescent lights. Unlike many other parking garages, this one had a pair of orcish mercenaries with AK-47s. They started to turn as Murdo stepped through the door, but I was ready for them. I thrust out my hand and sent my volley of lightning globes hurtling towards them. Orcs were tougher and stronger than humans, but not strong enough to withstand a pair of lightning globes to the chest.

  They went down, and Murdo ran into the parking garage, looking back and forth.

  “This one,” he said, stopping next to a battered-looking gray SUV.

  “Why that one?” I said. I didn’t like how weak my voice sounded.

  “I know how to hotwire this model,” he said. “I’m going to have to set you down. Lean against the wall.” He set me back on my feet, and I winced as a bolt of agony shot up my leg, mixed with the blazing pain in my torso.

  “Great,” I said. A wave of gray went over my vision. Too much longer and I was going to pass out from blood loss, and if that happened, I was going to die.

  For the last time, admittedly. But I couldn’t give up. Russell needed me. And I had to stop Nicholas, stop whatever he was trying to dig up from the past.

  Murdo ripped off his jacket, wrapped it around his left fist, and smashed the SUV’s driver-side window.

  “More safety glass,” I said as Murdo opened the locks. “Yay.”

  Murdo opened the back door, picked me up again, and lay me down in the flat space in the back of the big vehicle. That was one advantage of being short – I fit comfortably. Some empty soda cans and chip bags littered the back of the SUV, but Murdo swept them out and used his rolled-up jacket to make a pillow for my head.

  “Aw,” I said. “Aren’t you sweet. You don’t look sweet but you are.”

  Yeah, I was getting woozy.

  “I’m getting you to a hospital,” said Murdo, climbing into the driver’s seat. He ripped open a panel on the dashboard and started fiddling with the wires. “To hell with Connor and his games and to hell with the Rebels.”

  “Nope,” I said. “Nope, you’re not going to need to get me to a hospital.”

  “You’re not going to die,” said Murdo, but the grimness in his voice betrayed his doubts.

  “Not from this,” I said, and I cleared my mind and started summoning magical power. “At least, probably not from this. I should warn you. This…this is probably going to look a little weird.”

  “What are you doing?” said Murdo. The engine sputtered to life, and he backed out and spun the SUV around with a squeal of tires.

  “I think,” I said, summoning as much magical energy as I could manage, “I think I’m about to find out if I can trust you or not.”

  Murdo glanced back at me and did a double take. “What are you doing?”

  My hands were glowing with harsh golden light, so bright that I could see the shape of the bones in my hand.

  “Just drive,” I gasped, trying to concentrate. I had called as much magical force as I could hold, but I wasn’t sure if it would be enough. If this didn’t work, I was going to die in the back of a stolen SUV. Of course, if I did nothing, I was going to die in the back of a stolen SUV before Murdo got me to a hospital.

  Murdo cursed and hit the gas. The SUV jolted as he drove right through the arm at the security booth, and the tires squealed as he spun the wheel and sent us careening around a turn.

  It was now or never.

  I cast the regeneration spell that Arvalaeon had taught me before sending me into the hell of the Eternity Crucible.

  Agony exploded through me.

  I screamed as the pain of the gunshot wounds multiplied through my flesh again and again until it felt as if every inch of my body had been shot. My nerves caught fire, and every single muscle clenched at once. My back arched with enough force that
I almost folded double. My jaw clenched, and I kept screaming through my clenched teeth.

  The amount of power the regeneration spell required depended on how badly I had been hurt, and I had been hurt badly. The pain roared on and on, golden fire filling my vision. The magic burned through me as if I had been dipped in acid, and I wanted nothing more than to let go and die at last.

  But I held on, fighting through the agony. I had to keep going. Russell would die without me. And Nicholas was going to do something horrible, something to make Baron Castomyr and his Great Dark One look harmless by comparison.

  I had to stop him, I had to stop him, I had to stop him…

  Then the golden light vanished as if it had never been, and I collapsed back against the carpet, the agony vanishing.

  The relief was so welcome I sobbed a little.

  “Miss Stoker?” said Murdo.

  I reached down, grasped my blood-sodden jacket and shirt, and managed to pull them open with a last spasm of strength. The skin of my stomach was smooth and unmarked, and the bullet wound in my chest was gone. Something hot and metallic rolled against my stomach, and I picked it up.

  It was one of the bullets. The regeneration spell had expelled them from my flesh.

  “Oh,” I said. “It worked. That’s good.”

  “Miss Stoker?” said Murdo again.

  I would have answered him, but every shred of strength faded my body.

  I collapsed against the carpet and knew nothing more.

  ###

  The regeneration spell can heal almost anything, but there are nasty side effects.

  The roaring agony, for one. Still better than dying.

  Then there are the dreams.

  Imagine a fever dream. Then imagine a bad trip from powerful hallucinogens. Mix them together, and you get the kind of dreams I experienced after using the regeneration spell.