Backing toward it, he opened fire on the exit door as it opened, blasting the first through into smithereens. The far door banged open and Sakura dropped one man, then two, then five.
Matt fired three more shots, shouldered his weapon, and leapt. His hand closed on the bottom of the maintenance ladder, metal cool against his skin. He hauled himself up, shouldered open the roof access and clambered out into hazy sunlight. Sakura's rifle popped below. He took aim into the hole and yelled, "Clear!"
She appeared at his side before he could pull the trigger, sending a trio of fragmentation grenades down the hole. The access door slammed closed under its own weight. It had no lock.
"Let's go." He took a step and she grabbed his wrist.
"Not yet."
She nodded toward the mob on the street, hundreds of people still flowing into the building, faces twisted in inhuman rage but without the slightest sign of pushing or shoving. A green circle appeared on his HUD, high in the sky and approaching fast.
"Oh, shit. Sakura, these people are innocent."
She nodded, almost more of a bow. "Yes."
"Goddammit." They didn't have the ammo, even at a bottleneck, to deal with thousands of fanatical civilians. Even if they did, they'd never kill them all before more arrived, and General Valdez would run out of options.
Sakura fired as the hatch cracked open. It shut, then opened again a moment later. The first body erupted out of the hole, and though she shot the woman in the head two more spilled out, barely slowed by the bleeding meat obstacles in their way.
"Fuck," Matt said, bowling a grenade into the hole as Sakura double-tapped the three on the roof. Red mist puffed from their heads, and they dropped.
"Now." Sakura disappeared in a blast of wind, and he turned to follow her blur as she disappeared off the roof, flying out toward the hardware store.
"Incoming," Janet said.
Feet crunching across the gravel, Matt reached the edge and leapt. A concussive wind knocked him forward, the rising fireball from the Hellfire Romeo turning the world orange red as he sailed over the street.
Legs churning, he hit the terracotta tiles and tumbled forward, using his momentum to roll from his shoulder to his hip before regaining his feet on the precarious slope, taking five more steps and leaping again, skidding off the tin roof of the shed to land on the ground, weapon raised, scanning for hostiles.
A cloud of concrete dust rose above them, billowing out to blanket the neighborhood.
His shoulder burned.
Janet chimed in. "About a thousand down, but there's a lot more where that came from. If you're going to make that temple, you need to hoof it."
Matt took off at a run, Sakura at his side. "What have you got left for armament on those Reapers?"
"Five Hellfires and four whatever the hell those others things are. But the Powell has moved into position in the Gulf, and can provide us with some other options." A US Navy Destroyer in weapons range opened all kinds of possibilities.
"Like what kind of options?"
"High Speed Strike Weapons, bunker busters, if the Mexican government authorizes it." Still experimental, HSSWs traveled at six times the speed of sound and used compression shockwaves to provide lift. The four thousand-pound missiles slammed tungsten rods into their target with the energy of a ton of TNT each, a tiny fraction of even a small nuclear warhead, but concentrated on a tiny area. The shock of impact would obliterate reinforced concrete and ravage living bodies before the explosives even detonated.
"Tell them General Valdez authorizes it, and when we're a quarter mile from that temple, have them level it. Then use the Reapers to play crowd control while we find Mr Happy, if there's anything left of him."
* * *
The church – and the pyramid below it – disintegrated a split second before the sonic boom hit, slamming Sakura against the wall of the building behind her. She took off at a dead run, straight toward the collapsing ruin, covering half the intervening distance before the ground had settled.
A figure rose from the rubble, ten feet tall and radiant. His almond eyes accentuated rugged skin tanned a deep brown, and his pronounced forehead and protruding jaw proclaimed him a creature from an earlier epoch. A cloak of woven corn husks trailed down his back and across the ground as he stalked forward, his enormous, muscular body bedecked with jewelry – simple beaded necklaces, bracelets, and anklets of green jade connected with fine silver links – and nothing else. His eyes burned with an all-consuming black fire.
Her gaze traveled down to his comically large penis, engorged and swinging with every step, and back up past oversized hands and giant, square teeth to meet his eyes.
Desire bloomed in her abdomen, and lower, a physical need more powerful than any drug. It consumed her, and for the first time in her life she wanted a man. She wanted to be violated by this heinous monstrosity, consumed, broken and used.
Kazuko laughed, and Sakura laughed with her, an American laugh made for effect, and the daitengu scowled. Rowley called them Watchers and rolled them into his Judeo-Christian mythology, but Sakura recognized a demon when she saw one, and didn't need Rowley's monotheistic trappings to see through this one.
It spoke, nonsense words in a pre-Olmec tongue. Guttural and low, they reverberated in her bones, and she stumbled to a stop.
Another wave of desire shuddered through her, her body wet and ready and wanting him to destroy her. Her uncle had wanted her like this, as had oyabun Kasahara Noboru. The first had taken her innocence at far too young an age, while the second she had used for three years to decapitate an ancient dynasty of boryokudan, what the westerners called Yakuza. Both had wielded the pathetic flesh between their legs to stake a claim, to subjugate beyond all human decency and reason, to enslave and to own. One dead, the other in prison, she'd shown each their folly, but not before Kasahara had given her a daughter.
She laughed again, and spoke to the giant creature in formal Japanese. "Surely you understand me, daitengu, at least in speech." Head raised in defiance, she drew her combat knives. "But I understand you so much more."
It spoke again, and she flushed again, this time with rage. The desire to kill, to take its life – to take any life – a raging fire in her breast threatening to burst forth and consume all around her in an orgy of never-ending violence. She wanted nothing less than to paint the ground with its blood, and gorge on the remains.
Her first kill had been a john beating her mother. She'd picked up a kitchen knife and slid it into the side of his fat belly, sawing forward as he pulled away in shock and horror. His entrails had spilled out onto the bed, coating her mother and the sheets beneath, a seppuku borne by choices without honor. Instead of incarcerating her, the police had used her, and she had lost count of how many she had killed while undercover as Kasahara-san's mistress and enforcer, nor how many more as an augmented soldier for ICAP.
And not one of those murders had come from rage or desire, but only duty and honor.
She laughed again, and stepped forward. "Perhaps you do not understand me at all, daitengu. Perhaps you are just a pathetic thing in want of an audience."
His arrogant scowl deepened, lips twisted into a snarl, the paragon of the expression worn by his murderous followers. It spoke in all languages and none. "I am Ometeotl, the father of Gods, and I will not be mocked."
Shaking her head, she advanced on the balls of her feet, ready to spring, keeping the wry smile on her face. "It is not my fault that the truth mocks you, daitengu. You are a relic, sad and old, deserving only of pity, a wounded dog lashing out with mindless, misplaced fury. It is fortunate that I am here to put you down and end your dishonor."
With a roar, Ometeotl charged.
* * *
Matt hefted the sign, a seven-foot chunk of metal with a ball of concrete on one end and a red octagon with 'ALTO' in white letters on the other. Almost w
ell-balanced, it packed a much heavier punch than his combat knives and carried a significantly smaller chance of injuring Sakura than the AA-12.
Their conversation over, she stood in the middle of the square as the egregoroi charged, knives at her sides, an actual, honest-to-goodness smile on her face. She'd kept her visor clear, so she meant the fallen angel to see it. To make it angry. Matt ran, and timed his swing for the moment before it hit her.
Concrete shattered against Ometeotl's ribs, the blow knocking the fallen angel sideways. It grasped for Sakura and she whirled in a blur, severing two of its fingers in a spray of hot black blood.
Matt swung again, bringing the sign down in a vicious overhead chop. The demon dove to the side, and shock ran up Matt's hands as the sign sparked off of the concrete. He swung the makeshift axe again, then backpedaled as Ometeotl's hand gushed blood across his visor. Wiping it away, he grunted as a punch shattered his ribs and sent him tumbling, chest aflame.
He landed on his back and skidded. Sakura's REC7 chattered, a welcome distraction from the itching fire as the fused bone that made up his ribs knitted. He kipped to his feet, reached for the AA-12 and met air.
Ometeotl held it like a baseball bat, hands around the barrel, as he charged Sakura.
Both figures blurred, too fast to differentiate. Blood sprayed, red and black, as Matt approached, flexing, giving his body time to heal enough for round two, scooping up the sign along the way. In the distance a missile popped like a star flower on the Fourth of July, raining countless tiny objects like falling bees onto the ground below. The earth rumbled as the cluster munitions detonated, and Matt wondered how many innocent lives this egregoroi had made them take.
A heft of the sign told him what he needed to know. Walking up behind the thing, he spun, putting all his weight and might into the blow. Metal bit deep into its bicep and the egregoroi stumbled, white bone showing through the dark red flesh.
Sakura stepped in and her knives flashed, dull black streaks punching in and out of the thing's neck and upper torso. She ducked under its arms and rolled between its legs, coming up behind it, both knives buried in its kidneys.
It whirled, ripping them out of her hands, and back-handed her. Her visor burst sideways in a mess of reinforced glass, teeth, bone, and unidentifiable chunks of bloody meat.
Matt chopped down, severing Ometeotl's arm at the shoulder. It fell next to Sakura's limp body, both gushing blood across the sidewalk. Red mingled with black and sought cracks and crevices, the greedy earth sucking up the warm liquid.
The demon roared and lashed out with the AA-12, a clumsy, noncommittal swing. Matt grabbed it and stumbled sideways, alert to the new limb snaking forth from the gushing hole in its shoulder. Ometeotl spun him as he stretched his finger forward. As the biometrics read his fingerprints he pulled the trigger.
Its lower arm exploded. Hot, bloody shrapnel pinged off of Matt's helmet as he fired again and again, sinking four more rounds into the demon's torso. It fell in a black-red heap. Wiping steaming mess from his visor, he stalked forward and stomped down on the thing's exposed spine, crushing vertebra and severing connection to its legs.
Another cluster munition carpeted the neighborhood to his left, and in the burst of light, fear shimmered in the creature's eyes.
It spoke, black words that shocked through Matt's mind, pulsing with the murderous whispers and commanding him to take his own life. He crushed Ometeotl's throat with his boot, then kneeled next to the gaping, struggling head, plucking a thermite grenade from his bandoleer – designed to destroy enemy vehicles and melt through enemy bunkers, it burned at over two thousand degrees Celsius, hot enough to vaporize steel. "You don't belong here. This was never yours to take. Go back to the hell you earned."
The thermite grenade just fit between its large, square teeth, and he shoved the canister back, hard, putting his weight into it. He pulled the pin, stood and stepped back. A second later the white-hot fire reduced Ometeotl's head to ash, and Matt's eyes ghosted despite Augmentation and his auto-darkening visor.
He turned on his heels and kneeled down next to Sakura, her head a mass of blood and hair. He plucked glass from the remains of her face, and breathed a sigh of relief as they pulled away from newly-forming skin. Gently, his fingers sought the extent of the damage – a burst eye, missing teeth, most of the bones in her face crushed beyond recognition.
Her jaw worked up and down, and her tongue writhed in a mouth she couldn't close. He shushed her, then triggered the COM. "Janet, report."
"Hostiles are standing down. They seem pretty confused."
"Good, 'cause Sakura's going to need a while."
"Mmkay, I'll hold off the locals. The paperwork on this one's going to be a bitch."
He stroked Sakura's hair and pulled off his helmet. "Let Valdez do it."
CHAPTER TEN
Monica Rowley watched her husband sigh and lean back from the papers scattered across the kitchen counter, the breakfast nook where they took almost all of their meals.
"If I'd wanted a desk job I'd have become an accountant." She mouthed it with him, the familiar frustration a balm to her soul. Their counter made a poor office, but Matt worked from home as often as he could, which usually meant days and days of paperwork he hated after every mission – and it had only gotten worse since the dissolution of ICAP. A man of action, he needed to create or destroy, to fight, to protect.
Ted bellowed as Adam pulled his tail, both running in tight circles on the carpet by the fireplace. He let go, and Ted bellowed again, tail a joyous fury against the couch, loveseat, mantle, and floor. The TV blared a nonsense show that could only have been designed by people who hated parents and Monica in particular; Adam loved the music and colors and didn't seem to mind the utter lack of plot or coherence.
The house phone rang, and Matt banged his forehead into the table.
"Got it." Monica hurried to the charging station and plucked it up on the third ring. Adam fell silent, and Ted followed, content to scratch his back on the floor and let his boy rub his belly. She hit 'Send' and spoke. "Hello?"
"Hey, Button. Your husband home?" Only her dad called her 'Button', the origin of the nickname lost to time and memory.
"Sure is, Papa. What's up?"
"Dick dropped twelve face right in front of the barn. I was hoping for some help getting it moved to the shed." Twelve face cord of wood in the wrong place would be a terrible backache of a problem for an old man, and maybe two hour's work for her husband – somewhat longer if Papa helped out, which of course he would.
"I'm sure he'll help."
Matt's head jerked up, eyes wide, a smile on his face. His cheeks jiggled with his frantic nod.
"I'll be around all afternoon if he can stop by."
"Let us grab some lunch."
"You got it. Love you."
"You, too."
Matt stood as she hung up, grin bigger than a moment before. "Physical labor? Please tell me it's physical labor."
Adam took his hand off of Ted's head and the dog flopped over, squirming and biting at the air, a contented, whining groan erupting from his throat. Adam squealed and dropped to his knees, hands on Ted's belly, rubbing furiously. Matt squinted at the noise, his face scrunching around his left eye, and Monica laughed.
"Okay, you two outside. A few minutes of running around will be good for you."
She marched them to the back door as Matt called out, "I'll make lunch!" They piled onto the deck, galumphed down the stairs as she plopped into a deck chair and chased each other through the yard, squealing and barking in frenetic spirals until Ted bolted around the side of the house.
Adam ran after him, and Monica shot to her feet. "Adam, in sight!"
The bellows and squeals got farther away, so she shot down the stairs and across the grass, still damp from the morning dew. "Hey! Get back here!"
Her han
d went to her mouth as Ted bolted into the road, Adam two steps behind. Aaron Walters ran for them, thirty feet away, suit coat flapping like a superhero's cape. Too far.
Tires squealed, the loaded, bright yellow construction truck locking its brakes ten feet from them. Aaron cringed, turning his head.
Adam fell on Ted, head down, and disappeared from view with a sickening thud.
A scream erupted from her throat, half her son's name, half a mindless wail, as the truck ground to a halt. She covered the ground before the trucker's boots hit the asphalt, and rounded the front of the vehicle.
One hand on the dented bumper, Adam still crouched over Ted, wings of ice enveloping them both in a shimmering field of silver and white. A deep rut dug into the pavement, chunks of asphalt skittering across the road. She blinked; the wings vanished.
Ted barked as the trucker came around the corner of the vehicle, tail a whirlwind of oblivious joy. Adam stood and held up his arms, a worried grin on his face, as Aaron stumbled up.
"Ma'am, we should get back to the house."
She picked Adam up and squeezed him, maybe too hard, never hard enough or long enough. He shushed her and stroked her hair, whispering through her sobs. "Ted's okay, Mom. Ted's okay."
Matt appeared behind her, wrapping them both in his massive arms, the scent of gun oil and aftershave mingling with burnt rubber and diesel exhaust. "Come on, let's go."
Through panicked tears she resolved the crowd, open-mouthed, staring, dropping to their knees one by one.
"Let's go." He pulled them, turning her, putting her back to the crowd. "Let's go, Ted."
Ted chuffed and heeled, a good dog. Aaron's footsteps crunched behind them, followed by lighter, faster ones.
"Sir," Aaron's baritone reverberated through her. "I'm going to have to ask you off the property."
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