Thief Trap

by Jonathan Moeller

  “Yeah,” croaked Russell, getting to his feet. He smiled at me, but I saw the tension around his eyes. He had almost been killed, and he knew it. “Man, those things stink.”

  “You should take better care, Mr. Moran,” said Nicholas, reloading his pistol. “Your sister will not be there to save you every…”

  I wasn’t in the mood. “Where the hell are all these creatures coming from?”

  “Pardon?” said Nicholas.

  “The wraithwolves. The anthrophages. The damned beetles…”

  “Spitters, we called them,” said Leonid, “back when I was a man-at-arms.”

  “This place is sealed off from the Shadowlands,” I said. “Nobody can open a rift way. So where are those creatures coming from?”

  “I don’t know,” said Nicholas.

  I glared at him. “What, it wasn’t in the files you had us steal from Chicago and the Royal Bank? Or didn’t you bother to get around to reading them yet?”

  “Don’t talk to him that way,” said Hailey. “He’s…”

  “In point of fact, I read them all,” said Nicholas. “Unfortunately, none of them happened to include a complete schematic for the Last Judge facility or an overview of its defenses.” He gestured with his weapon. “My guess is that the creatures were summoned to defend the base, and they’ve been waiting here for targets ever since.”

  “Wouldn’t they starve to death?” said Russell.

  “Creatures from the Shadowlands don’t have biology the same way that we do,” I said. “Anthrophages don’t need to kill people and eat them. They just enjoy it.”

  “I have heard it is possible,” said Murdo, “to summon creatures from the Shadowlands through a Seal of Shadows. It requires a lot of preparation and a dedicated summoning circle, but it can be done.”

  “You think Shane left a summoning circle down here?” I said. I remembered that Morvilind had a dedicated summoning chamber just off his library. Maybe Last Judge Mountain had something similar.

  “Doubtful,” said Nicholas. “Shane would have refused to countenance any such experiments. But he inherited Last Judge Mountain when he became Secretary of Defense. Perhaps there were experiments ongoing, and he didn’t have time to shut them down before the Conquest started.” He beckoned with his pistol. “Regardless, we need to keep moving. Standing here makes us a target for any remaining defenders.”

  “It shouldn’t be too much further to the SUMMONING/BLACK OPS area if that map was accurate,” said Morelli.

  “No,” said Nicholas. “Let’s keep moving.” He held his pistol in his right hand, but I could tell that he also had gathered magic for a spell.

  There wasn’t anything else to do but to follow him as he strode down the tunnel. We resumed our previous formation, and I scanned the massive doors on the walls, but no new enemies appeared. After another few hundred yards, we came to a stop before another set of double metal doors. A small plaque next to the doors bore the words SUMMONING/BLACK OPS, and below it was a terminal identical to the ones I had seen earlier, with the same round port for the data rod.

  “Nicholas,” I said. I felt magical power behind those metal doors, and I cast the spell to sense the presence of arcane forces.

  There was a lot of magic behind those doors.

  Dark magic, for one, and something I was sure was a summoning spell. Whatever those long-dead scientists had been working on down here had involved a lot of dark magic.

  “I don’t know what behind’s that door,” I said, “but it’s powerful.”

  Corbisher cast the same spell and flinched. “She’s right, for once.”

  “All right,” said Nicholas. “Cover the doorway. Be ready to attack anything that comes out.” The others nodded and pointed their weapons at the doors, and Corbisher and Hailey both readied spells. “Miss Moran, I suggest you prepare one of those ice walls you enjoy so much. If there are enemies beyond those doors, the ice wall will give us the time necessary to ready a more robust defense.”

  “Yeah,” I said, flexing my fingers as I concentrated. “Let’s get it over with.”

  Nicholas stepped to the terminal and inserted the rod. There was a whirring click, a clang, and the terminal ejected the rod. As Nicholas took it back once more, the doors slid open. I braced myself to cast a spell. I expected to see a mob of anthrophages waiting behind the door, or beetles, or wraithwolves, or cowlspawn, or bloodrats, or something worse.

  For a searing instant, I was back in the Eternity Crucible, crazed and in agony and wanting nothing more than to kill as much as possible before the creatures of the Shadowlands killed me yet again.

  My surprise was absolute when the doors finished sliding open, and I saw…

  A comfortable-looking waiting area.

  We stared at it in silence for a moment.

  “Okay,” I said. “Wasn’t expecting that.”

  It was a big room, large enough that a truck could maneuver through it, though it would be a tight fit. There was a beige carpet, a little brittle with age, and the walls had been painted a cheerful blue. Chairs sat in rings, and there was a receptionist’s counter against the far wall. Big TVs had been attached to the walls, hooked up to boxes I recognized as archaic video game consoles. More tables held a collection of beverages and snacks that had dried up or fossilized a long time ago.

  “I guess SUMMONING/DARK OPS was code for the employee lounge,” I said.

  “No,” said Murdo, voice grim. “It’s worse than that. We had lounges like this in the bases of the Wizard’s Legion.”

  “So what?” said Corbisher. “If the High Queen wants to waste money indulging her pets, then that…”

  “Use your brain,” snapped Murdo. “Militaries are always run on the cheap. And if the commanders of this base spent money providing a lounge like this for the men working in the SUMMONING/DARK OPS department…”

  “Then that duty was so psychologically unpleasant that the commanders thought it necessary to give their men lots of recreation so they didn’t crack,” said Russell.

  My uneasy feeling got worse.

  “How did you know that, kid?” said Leonid.

  Russel shrugged, still looking over the room. “I read it in a Malcolm Lock novel once.” Murdo snorted. “Uh. Nadia. I think we had better look at that circle of chairs over there.”

  I did as he suggested. At first, I didn’t notice anything strange. It was a circle of crumbling chairs around the collapsed remnants of a table. Except that was a lot of debris for an end table, and it had turned this odd brownish-yellow color…

  No. Not debris. Bones.

  Quite a lot of them.

  I walked closer, and the others followed.

  A small heap of human bones lay in the center of the circle of chairs. The empty eyes of three skulls stared at me. On some of the bones, I saw long, shallow grooves, and I realized they came from the marks of claws and fangs.

  I bet my own bones had looked like that a few times in the Eternity Crucible.

  “Okay, then,” I said. “I guess we know what happened to the men who were here when Shane got assassinated.”

  “Why didn’t the cleaning robots take care of the bodies?” said Russell.

  “Maybe any cleaning robots that come into this part of the base don’t come out again,” I said.

  “Cheery thought,” muttered Leonid.

  “Whoever these people were,” said Nicholas, “they’ve been dead for a very long time. Come along.”

  We crossed the room to the far wall behind the receptionist’s desk. There was another double-door there, and another terminal with a round port. Nicholas inserted the rod, and the mechanism unlocked with a clang. The doors slid open with a metallic rasp, and beyond I saw…

  I blinked a few times, trying to make sense of the sight.

  Beyond was a vast, long room that looked sort of like a fancy hospital ward, the kind where the walls are made of glass so the doctors and nurses can observe potentially contagious patients without exposing t
hemselves to pathogens. The long corridor stretched away in the distance, and the walls were made of thick ballistic glass. More glass walls marked off dozens of individual rooms on either side of the wide corridor. Outside each room was an ancient computer terminal, and steel frames marked off the glass doors. There were light panels in the ceiling every ten yards, which didn’t provide much illumination and threw the glass rooms into shadowy gloom.

  The individual rooms might have looked like hospital wards, but they didn’t have beds or chairs or any other furniture. On the floor of each room lay a polished square of black stone about eight feet by eight feet. Cut into the surface of each of those squares was an array of symbols.

  I moved closer.

  A summoning circle marked each of the squares.

  It wasn’t an Elven circle. Rather, it was a design I had seen Dark Ones cultists use, marked with ancient cuneiform symbols rather than Elven hieroglyphics. Even without using the spell to sense magical forces, I felt the dark magic radiating from the nearest circle.

  And there had to be at least two hundred of the glass rooms lining the long corridor, each one equipped with its own slab of black stone.

  “Summoning circles,” I said. “Lots and lots of summoning circles.”

  “An observational laboratory, obviously,” said Nicholas. “The facility’s researchers would summon creatures from the Shadowlands, bind them in the circles, and record their observations on the computer terminals.” He gestured at the nearest room, and I saw the black plastic dome of a camera in its ceiling. “And they could observe long-term as well.”

  “Dark Ones cultists use that design of summoning circle to this day,” said Murdo.

  “Fascinating,” murmured Nicholas. “I wonder if the United States government was using the Dark Ones cultists, or if the cultists had infiltrated the government. Certainly, that would explain some of the government’s more…erratic decisions in the final years before the Conquest.”

  “Bet Shane wasn’t happy when he found out,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Nicholas. “Shane was farsighted and a visionary, but I’m afraid he was something of a traditionalist. He wouldn’t have approved of using the Dark Ones as weapons. Well, no one is perfect. Still, had he not been assassinated, he would have overthrown the High Queen. We shall simply have to finish his work in his stead.”

  “Why are those summoning circles all radiating magical power?” said Hailey. She cast the spell to sense the presence of magical forces. “In fact…God, all of them still have active spells.”

  “After three hundred years?” said Russell.

  “A spell can last that long if it’s empowered properly,” I said.

  And knowing Dark Ones cultists, they had likely used the blood of the innocent to empower their spells.

  “The Last Judge researchers might have worked out a way to summon creatures from the Shadowlands on an industrial scale,” said Nicholas. “I’ll have to come back here and examine the process. It might prove of use to the Revolution.”

  “If you have the chance,” I said, voice quiet. I didn’t intend for Nicholas to leave here alive with the Sky Hammer.

  But he knew that, too. He smirked at me, and then looked back down the long glass corridor.

  “Let’s keep moving,” said Nicholas. “If those summoning circles are active, we don’t want to hang around.”

  He took a step forward, and then things went to hell again.

  I felt a surge of dark magic to my left, and my head snapped around, my hand coming up as I called power for a spell. In one of the glass rooms, I saw a pillar of gray mist swirling over the slab of black stone and its summoning circle.

  Nicholas had been wrong. Or he’d only been half-right. The scientists of Last Judge Mountain hadn’t just worked out an industrial way to summon creatures from the Shadowlands.

  No, those assholes had worked out an industrial process…and then they had automated the entire thing.

  The gray mist hardened into a hideous, alien-looking creature. It looked like a cluster of staring, volley-ball sized eyes about six feet across, all of the eyes red and glaring and glistening with slime. A score of barbed tentacles hung from beneath the floating cluster of eyes, their lengths tangled atop the summoning circle.

  I had fought creatures like this many times before, and I died from those tentacles many, many times. The thing was called a cytospawn, and they were powerful and could sometimes use magic. As if that were not enough, those long tentacles were as strong as steel cables and were covered in lethal poison.

  And in a horrified instant, I realized that I was the only one who had seen the cytospawn appear over the circle. I was the strongest wizard in the group, which meant I was the only one who had sensed the surge of power that had accompanied the creature’s appearance.

  “Watch out!” I screamed, staring a spell.

  The others whirled or tried to take cover, and the cytospawn surged forward. Its tentacles snapped like whips, coiling around the edges of the doorframe, and it heaved itself forward. It was too big to fit through the door, but that didn’t matter, because it squeezed its body through, the mass of eyes compressing and distorting.

  That was a really disturbing sight, let me tell you.

  I cast a spell, hitting it with a volley of lightning globes. That stunned the cytospawn as it burst into the corridor, and it let out a keening wail, the tentacles lashing at the glass walls and the concrete ceiling. Russell and Murdo and the others retreated, throwing a hail of gunfire at the cytospawn. That was useless. Bullets couldn’t hurt cytospawn. At least Murdo realized it, and he threw a pair of lightning globes into the creature while the others dodged.

  Leonid wasn’t quite fast enough.

  One of the tentacles coiled around his neck, and his head just kind of…popped off his shoulders. It was so fast that if I blinked, I would have missed it. His head hit the floor and rolled away, and a spurt of blood burst from his neck and spattered the ceiling. Leonid’s body collapsed, blood puddling around the ragged stump of his neck. The cytospawn squelched all the way into the corridor and floated against the ceiling, its tentacles swirling as it prepared to kill the rest of us.

  That was a mistake. Cytospawn can take a pounding and keep on fighting, but they have one big weak point. On their undersides, where all the tentacles attach, is this big leathery bladder. It’s full of flammable gas, and it helps the cytospawn fly.

  And I had more than enough magical power to punch through it.

  I hurled a sphere of fire that drilled into the exposed bladder, and the cytospawn blew up.

  That made a mess. Chunks of meat and ichor sprayed in all directions, and the shock wave knocked me to the floor. I scrambled back up at once, ready to cast another spell, but the cytospawn was finished.

  “You okay?” I said to Russell as Murdo helped him to stand.

  “Yeah,” said Russell, blinking at the chunks of meat. They were already starting to dissolve into mist. “What was that thing?”

  “Cytospawn,” said Murdo. “Creature from the Shadowlands. Extremely dangerous.”

  “Yeah,” said Russell again, looking at what was left of Leonid.

  “Rogomil’s done for,” said Corbisher, glaring at me. Like it was my fault.

  “Casualties are inevitable in warfare,” said Nicholas.

  I looked at Leonid Rogomil’s corpse. I had worried that he would find out that I was the one who had killed his brother Sergei and that he could try to take vengeance. Guess that was one less thing to worry about. Though considering the kind of dangers down here, the vengeance of a Rebel seemed like small potatoes.

  “If you want to avoid more casualties, then listen to me,” I snapped. “Corbisher, Hailey. Both of you keep a detection spell going. You’ll be able to feel it if those summoning circles start pulling more creatures into the corridor. If you feel anything, say so, and then Rory and Nicholas and I can deal with them.”

  “Don’t presume to give me orders!” sna
rled Corbisher. “How…”

  “Martin, do it,” said Nicholas.

  “But…” started Corbisher.

  “She has more combat experience than you do,” said Nicholas. “Unless you have a better plan?” His temper seemed to have frayed a little. Perhaps Leonid had been a friend the way that Sergei Rogomil had been. “Well? Do you?”

  Corbisher scowled. “No.”

  “Then kindly cast your detection spell,” said Nicholas. “You too, Hailey.” They both cast the spell, their faces tightening as they concentrated on holding it in place. “Mr. Moran, watch their backs. Murdo, Nadia, with me.”

  We were attacked five more times as we moved down the corridor of summoning circles.

  Twice by anthrophages, once by wraithwolves, twice by a pack of those beetles, and once by a bloodrat the size of a pig. Fortunately, my plan worked. With Corbisher and Hailey holding their detection spells ready, they sensed the surge of power before the creatures could appear atop the summoning circles. That meant I was facing the circles, ready with my best shot the instant the creatures appeared.

  At last, we came to end of that endless damned tunnel. There was another pair of double metal doors there, with a terminal next to them. Nicholas unlocked the doors with the rod, and they slid open to reveal a large room that looked like an open-plan office. I saw rows of desks and cubicles, and offices with closed doors lined the walls. Only a few lights shone in the ceiling overhead, throwing shadows everywhere.

  “What’s with all the desks?” said Russell.

  “Probably an administrative center,” said Murdo. “Even a secret government black ops base needs all its forms filled out in triplicate.”

  “No doubt,” said Nicholas. “If that map is correct, we’ll pass through this office area, and then to the BIOHAZARD section.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “We had better be careful. You won’t be able to get the Sky Hammer if we’re all dead of nerve gas or a biological weapon or something.”

  Nicholas smiled. “Why do you think I brought Lord Morvilind’s shadow agent with me? I do not intend to…”

  I felt the surge of power within the office area, and both Hailey and Corbisher stiffened.