Then someone had come through with a machine gun of some kind. The pillars had been shredded, and the carpet was spattered with what David recognized as demonic ichor. No one had bothered to clean up, and three human bodies also lay in the room.
Even through his filtered helmet, he could smell the stench of bodies left dead for several days, and it took him only a moment to identify one of the fallen men—clad in the same black combat gear as David himself now wore—as an SSTTR man he’d seen with Casey in Montana. The other two bodies were in OSPI Security uniforms, and the machine gun had torn them apart beyond recognition.
One wall had been completely blown away by what David’s Sight showed had been magic, and the battle had clearly moved into the foyer through the blasted wall. The path of destruction continued down a side corridor away from the foyer. It took only a moment with the floor plan to confirm that that was the fastest route to the security center.
He followed the trail of combat along the corridor and found more bodies waiting for him. Just outside the foyer appeared to have been the heart of a firefight, where whatever had been left of the SSTTR platoon at that point had clashed with a team of OSPI security people.
The SSTTR people hadn’t had David’s option of stunning the entire building. They’d cut through the security personnel who’d tried to stop them, with deadly force, and David couldn’t be sure how many dead there were. No one had tried to clean up the mangled piles of body parts, and it would have taken a forensics team to separate them all for identification.
Seven of the bodies, however, spaced irregularly along the corridor, were Stutters in full combat gear. The last David had heard, the SSTTR force had forty members, which meant he’d now seen a fifth of the platoon dead with his own eyes.
He rounded a corner, expecting to see more bodies, and his prescience screamed a warning. With inhuman grace and speed, David turned his step into a dive as assault-rifle fire cut through the air where he was standing.
A pair of toad demons, like the ones on the main floor, was halfway down the corridor. At the end of the corridor, David’s enhanced sight could pick out the armored security door leading to his destination. It was closed and barred. More bodies were strewn along the corridor, and the demons—presumably lacking the human inhibition against such things—had piled a dozen or so of them into an impromptu and effective barricade.
David rolled away as more fire came his way, and found himself kneeling beside the body of another SSTTR soldier, this one a familiar youngish woman. Forcing himself to ignore the smell and sight of her mangled body, he noticed her weapon—a stubby device like an oversized shotgun that he recognized as a man-portable grenade launcher.
He was going to die here, he knew, but he didn’t let that slow him as he picked up the weapon. He was going to die in this building, amongst these dead comrades, because his odds against a greater demon were less than nothing. He wasn’t going to die to a pair of flunkies.
The demons fired again, a continuous burst that followed David as he grabbed the launcher and rolled away again. For a moment, he thought they were going to succeed at walking him into the wall, and then the gunfire stopped as the demons ran out of ammunition.
The Empowered ONSET Agent reacted with deadly speed, coming up onto one knee long before the demons could expect him to. With a cold smile, he raised the launcher and fired.
The grenade blasted down the corridor and hit the ground halfway between the demons and the armored door. David hit the ground as the shrapnel came blasting back toward him, presuming the grenade was probably loaded with silver.
When he rose, the demons had dissolved into ichor, confirming his guess on the grenade’s content. David stepped back to the fallen Stutter woman and recognized her. It was Pam Uphoff, who Casey had introduced to him when he’d been here before.
“Thank you, Pam,” he muttered softly as he removed her bandolier of grenades and slung it over his own shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
He moved over to the demons’ macabre barricade, checking that they were definitely dead, and eyed the devastated stretch of corridor between him and the security door. Bodies were everywhere, and he couldn’t even separate the security people and the SSTTR men anymore. There couldn’t have been much left of Stutter by the time they’d made it through there.
The security door looked intimidatingly intact, and David glanced down at his grenade bandolier. It took a moment to remember the meaning of the markings, and then he extracted an armor-piercing high-explosive grenade and snapped it into the M79’s breach.
With another muttered apology to the bodies of the dead in the barricade, he aimed the shotgun-like weapon at the door and fired, ducking behind the pile of bodies as he did.
The explosion hurt his ears, and he slammed another grenade into the launcher as he prepared to assault the security center of his own government’s supernatural police headquarters.
#
David charged through the shattered security door into the cool air of an air-conditioned central security room. Video screens covered three out of four walls of the large room, and a circular setup of computer consoles with more screens occupied the middle of the room.
About half of the video screens had been shot out, but the rest still showed parts of the building, many of them blocked or separated by the metal shutters and blast doors that the Judas Protocol had sealed. The source of the bullets that had shattered the screens lay to David’s right, where Captain Anderson’s body lay slumped against the wall. Texan officer had lost his helmet somewhere, and his bleached white hair was stained with blood. His body was over half-covered by the massive six-barreled minigun he’d brought in with him.
More of his team lay around him, cut down by gunfire from within the room. They were the only corpses within the room, but David spotted several more of the patches of ichor that marked the death throes of a demon.
“You are not the one I expected,” said a melodious voice, and David turned to point the grenade launcher at the speaker. A tall man in a black suit and holding a sword stood behind the circle of computer consoles. His hair was black as night and his skin paler than snow.
The sword had a simple hilt and a narrow crossbar, connected to a long leaf-shaped blade with an unsettling red tint to the steel. David’s Sight told him the blade was a lot more than it seemed, and the man who wielded it…was something else again. However human he looked, he was far from it. This was Ekhmez, a noble of the courts of the Masters Beyond.
“Ekhmez,” David said quietly, the grenade launcher pointed unwaveringly at the demon.
“You are David White,” the demon replied, equally quietly. “I was expecting Michael O’Brien.”
“O’Brien had a messy encounter with a sniper,” David replied coldly. “He’ll live, but he won’t be here today.”
“Like I said,” Ekhmez told him with a smug smile, “I was expecting O’Brien. You are an unexpected bonus.” He shifted slightly, bringing the sword up, and David’s finger tightened on the trigger.
“Don’t be so hasty,” the demon said silkily. “One of us is going to die before dawn, but there’s no need to be rude about it.”
“I’ve passed a few too many bodies on my way in here to be particularly polite,” David told the monster in the suit. “Give me a reason not to pull the trigger on this.”
“You have passed thirty-four bodies belonging to your Special Supernatural Tactics, Technology, and Reconnaissance team,” Ekhmez said, his voice calm and soft. “Along the way here, they killed seventeen demons I had brought into this world and seventy-six of your security personnel.
“The other seven members of your SSTTR died elsewhere and more productively,” he continued, his voice gentle and almost warm as his spare hand caressed the red-tinged blade of his sword. “I was impressed with the manufacturing facilities concealed within this building. Minor, I know, compared to other sites your Omicron possesses, but sufficient unto my needs.
“As for a reason n
ot to shoot me,” he said, his gaze locking with David’s, “it won’t exactly do anything.” David realized that the creature’s eyes were blood-red. No iris, no cornea, just a slightly glowing red.
“Let’s test that theory, shall we?” David said calmly, and fired. The high-explosive grenade caught Ekhmez directly in the chest and detonated. The demon was blasted backward, crashing through a set of computers in a cascade of sparks and breaking plastic.
David slammed a second grenade home in the M79 as Ekhmez rose back to his feet, barely even scuffed by the explosion and glaring in anger.
“I told you…” he started, but David shot him again before he could finish. A second silver-tinged explosion blew Ekhmez into the wall with a crash that shattered monitors and dented the concrete.
The demon was up and moving before David could fire again, and the red-tinged blade of his sword sliced through the barrel of the M79. Even David didn’t see the creature move, and he dove backward, releasing the destroyed weapon, as Ekhmez slashed at him again.
He dodged the sword a second time and drew the Omicron Silver. The weapon was still on burst mode, and David emptied the nine rounds remaining in it into the demon noble. The sheer kinetic force of the heavy bullets drove Ekhmez back, but none of the bullets penetrated his skin. Splotches of silver on his clothes marked the impacts, but the demon was unharmed.
Dropping the gun, David drew his mageblade. Its seven-inch blade looked pathetic next to the full three-foot length of Ekhmez’s sword, but Ix had said it could hurt the demon. It didn’t look like anything else could. In the end, even if the demon killed him, all he had to do was take off the thing’s head.
His Sight wasn’t giving him as much of an edge as it normally did, he realized as he dodged out of the way of another cut. Somehow, he could only See Ekhmez’s actions moments into the future, not his usual second or so. Only his unnatural speed was allowing him to keep dodging. The demonic noble was fast, but so was David.
He used that speed. As Ekhmez attacked again, the ONSET Agent ducked under the strike and stabbed forward with the knife. Its enchanted blade sliced through the demon’s skin like tissue paper, ripping open a gash that would have disemboweled a mortal.
Ichor oozed from the wound, but no organs spilled out. The demon’s form had no internal organs anymore; the stolen body had rotted away, and what remained was simply a creation of the monster’s will. No wound could really inconvenience the demon. No injury would slow it or distract it.
David had expected being gutted to distract Ekhmez, if only for a moment. In that moment of expected relief, the demon attacked. The long red-tinged sword shot forward in a lunge that David should have been able to dodge—but the demon’s power meant he didn’t See it coming.
The blade pierced the ex-cop’s chest in a burst of searing flame.
Chapter 47
David opened his eyes to a surprising lack of pain. He couldn’t help himself glancing down, and realizing that not only was he lacking a gaping hole in his chest, he was in his old cop uniform, not his ONSET bodysuit.
“This isn’t real,” a gruff voice said quietly, and David looked up at the speaker. The huge black form of Leonard Casey stood before him, dressed in camouflage fatigues.
David began to take in his surroundings. It wasn’t a room, more of a…space. Sharp metal and shining colors, all tinged red, surrounded him. He’d never seen anything like it.
“What do you mean?” he asked his former fellow trainee. “You look pretty solid to me.”
“Yeah, I know,” Casey replied. “And the issue with that is that I’m dead, David. I was captured and ritually sacrificed along with six of my friends to forge the sword that is embedded under your heart right now. Our souls were folded into the metal and the blade was quenched in our blood. The power of our life flows through it.”
David blinked. “Am I dead, then?” he asked. He’d hoped to do more. He’d hoped to do anything to Ekhmez before the demon killed him.
“Dying,” Casey answered bluntly.
“I’ve survived that before,” the ONSET agent replied, looking around. “Where are we?”
“Inside the sword,” the black soldier told him. “And inside your head. It’s weird—a form of communication we can sustain as long as the blade is inside you. I don’t recommend trying to talk to us this way later.”
“I see why,” David said dryly. “What happens when Ekhmez pulls the sword out?”
“This conversation is cut short,” Casey admitted with a throwing-away gesture that seemed…un-Casey-like to David. “Subjective time is different. We have an hour or so of time in here.”
“Other than giving me an extra hour of subjective time, why are we here?” David asked.
Casey turned away. “The blade Ekhmez wields is forged of souls, blood and magic as much as it’s forged of steel,” he explained. “The souls are warped—broken. In a very real sense, I am not Leonard Casey. I am the gestalt of the souls trapped in the blade. Casey is the one you knew, so we wear his face.”
“And this?” David queried, gesturing at his uniform.
“You are as you see yourself,” the sword told him gently. “Even now, you are first and foremost a police officer, sworn to serve and protect. Your own mantra.”
“How do you know that?!” David demanded.
“This is a very…intimate form of communication,” the Casey-figure reminded him. “Right now, we know you better than you know yourself. This is why we are here.”
David watched the figure of his dead friend pace back in the strange confines of his dream.
“This weapon is called a bloodsword,” the gestalt finally told him. “Among its many powers is inhibiting regeneration. Any wound that would be fatal to a mortal human, like the one you have taken, will be fatal even to one like you or O’Brien.”
“Dammit,” David cursed. He’d feared something like this. “So, what? I have an hour of subjective time here and then I go back to my body to die?!”
“No,” Casey said firmly. “Being the sword, we are relatively certain of its properties. We can also control them. Ekhmez can punish us for defying him,” he continued with a strange shudder, “but we can make sure your regeneration still functions once he withdraws the sword. We can, in fact, actually enhance your regeneration so you’ll be healed almost as soon as the blade is removed.”
“Then do it!” David ordered. “What more is there?”
“We will only ever have this one chance to speak to you, David,” Casey said quietly. “And only ever to you, we think. We’re not sure why, but we don’t think we’ll ever be able to talk to anyone else.”
“What do you need to say?” the cop asked, his voice suddenly quiet. This was a gestalt of seven men and women who had died a horrible death. “I can pass messages on to your families if I live. What more do you want?”
“The sword cannot be unmade with modern magic,” the Casey-gestalt said softly. “We are dead, but we are bound into this blade, this weapon. Understand this also: this sword is ancient, powerful magic, stronger than any weapon Omicron can forge. We can kill Ekhmez.”
The ONSET Agent looked at them in understanding. “I need you, don’t I?”
“And we you,” the gestalt replied. “We were soldiers, David White. We died because we chose to fight, to protect others. We…killed so many trying to get Ekhmez.” Casey’s voice twisted now, becoming more high-pitched and choked.
“And we failed,” he continued, his voice now carrying the tones of at least three people saying the same words simultaneously. “But in forging us, he has created a weapon that can kill him—and others like him!
“We died to protect our people, but in death, we can still serve,” the strange voice continued as the figure of Casey faded to become simply a glowing humanoid form, speaking with seven voices. “We can give you the chance to defeat Ekhmez, but only you can take it. Only you can destroy him and stand against those that will follow.
“We were forged lik
e this for evil, but we gave our lives to protect,” the voices continued, in perfect sync. “If what has been done cannot be undone, then let it serve as we did. Let it protect, as we could not.
“We will give you your chance, David White,” the blade gestalt told him. “But we have a price. One price. One command. Remember us! Wield us!”
David looked at the figure before him, formed of souls and loyalty and power. Seven souls, slain in horror to forge a weapon of evil, demanding that he take up that weapon for the very cause they had died to protect. For the very cause he had sacrificed the life he’d known.
To take up the weapon to serve and protect his people.
“I will,” he said firmly, and then the confines of the sword were gone, and he was staring once more into Ekhmez’s eyes, the length of red steel being slowly withdrawn from his chest.
With a gasp, David stumbled backward, hitting the wall by the door and slumping down. Pain racked his body as his heart tried to beat and failed. He focused on it, willing the warmth of regeneration to surge through it, to give him the chance he needed.
For a moment, he feared that the gestalt had failed, that his regeneration was gone. Blackness dropped over his vision as unconsciousness came for him. Then the sword’s parting gift of energy hit him. Warmth surged through him, and the pain faded as his chest healed and his heart beat. Once, twice, and his blood flowed again. Oxygen rushed back to his eyes and brain, and he could see once more.
He saw Ekhmez turned away, the soaked bloodsword casually gripped in his hand as he checked a computer to see if it was still working. He saw a video camera in the corner of the room; it was focused on him as if the team following him through the security cameras was praying for him to get back up.
He saw Anderson’s corpse, just out of arm’s reach, and the massive minigun with its belt of silver bullets across it. Ekhmez’s back was still turned, the demon showing his contempt for his fallen foe.
ONSET: To Serve and Protect Page 37
