**
After making a futile attempt to call CJ, Hugo grabbed Fragnarach and opened a portal to Centralia. Crysta came up behind him, the spear still loosely wrapped in its cloth. “What are you doing?”
“I’m coming with you,” she replied firmly.
“No, you’re not. You’d have to use your abilities, and then the Agency would know and you don’t want that.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“But-” Hugo tried again weakly.
Crysta motioned to the portal, “We’re wasting time, let’s go.”
He hesitated for just a moment longer, but she was right, they were wasting time and he would need her help. He stepped through the portal onto the edge of the field that isolated the Agency facility from the rest of the city. It was covered in zombies. They were all wearing suits and dresses in various stages of decomposition, staggering along, completely silent. From the looks of them, they were probably raided from a local cemetery. At the back of the field was a palanquin, all in dark reds and black lace, white sculls glowing in the growing twilight. It was being carried by four very large zombie men.
“This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen,” Crysta said softly, letting out a breath. Hugo went to agree, but they’d finally attracted the attention of the zombies on the fringe of the horde. They started shambling towards them, a lot faster than Hugo would have liked. He opened another portal to the back of the field, behind the palanquin, and pulled Crysta through.
Baron Samadhi was not alone. There was no way she was alone. Hugo scanned the crowd to the rattling gunfire from the Agency as they mowed down the zombies. The problem was that they would run out of ammunition long before the zombies gave up.
“Look out!” Crysta yanked on his arm, pulling him to the left of a bullet that was stopped in front of him. It dropped to the ground just as a tall, bulky man jumped out of the palanquin, the entire thing rising higher now that the zombies didn’t have to hold his weight. It took a couple seconds to recognize him. He was a matter chameleon much like Christian, and just as strong; he called himself Marinette.
“You come to die with them, little Badessy?” The Haitian sky god? Why did they know who he was, let alone what he could do?
Even as the man turned to diamond, Crysta pulled the gun from his hand, flinging it into the growing darkness. He looked momentarily confused, but recovered quickly to charge them. They both blasted him, which knocked the man back several feet, but did not deter him from charging forward again, giving Hugo enough time to create a portal right in front of the guy, that with his momentum, he couldn’t dodge. Now Hugo just had to hope he couldn’t turn into lava.
Hugo took a step towards the palanquin, well, he tried to, but his feet wouldn’t move. He looked down and the ground had come to cover them, hard as concrete. A gasp from Crysta told him she was having the same problem. And it was getting worse; the ground was growing around them, crawling up their legs. Crysta grabbed his hand, and then something rather terrifying happened. Every piece of jewelry or metal trinket the zombies had been carrying came flying at them, and that included the pins holding the palanquin together. It collapsed like it was made of cards. Tumbling out of it came the Baron and Grand Bois, the matter manipulator. For a moment, when Grand Bois lost contact with the ground, the earth softened, allowing Crysta to take a step towards him in the growing storm of metal that surround them. But as the palanquin collapsed and he hit the ground again the hardened earth started crawling up much faster. The Baron climbed slowly to her feet, brushing herself off, a smirk half hidden behind the funeral veil she wore over her face. She quickly backed out of the growing influence of the metal storm.
Hugo concentrated and the wind sped up, swirling around them until it was a howling tornado. He tried to keep his concentration as the hard earth squeezed around his waist, crawling up his stomach, and then as the tornado expanded to lifted both the Baron and Grand Bois back into the air, the earth crumbled into a soft pile at his feet. Crysta squeezed his hand, but he was focused on the funnel that was arching up around them, its two passengers flying apart. The Baron dropped into her horde of zombies, who caught her and gently lowered her to the ground. Grand Bois was not nearly as lucky. Crysta looked pale, staring almost blankly at the broken body too close to not make out the details. Her metal shield dropped around her like rain. Crysta’s body tensed, the Hippocratic Oath taking over.
Hugo grabbed her arm to stop her from running to check on the man, blurting out the first thing he could think of to distract her, “Want to wade into a horde of zombies?” He smiled apologetically. Then there was a loud gun bark and all the zombies fell to the ground, the Baron now among their dead.
Crysta’s cell phone rang. She shook herself, as if pushing away a dream, “Hello Charles.” She nodded, staring across the field at the man she was talking to on the phone, “You’re welcome.” She paused, glancing at Hugo, “Springfield, Illinois? Can you be more specific? Coordinates perhaps?” She nodded again, “Ok, got it.” She hung up the phone and gave her full attention to Hugo, “The central branch is being attacked as well.”
“Let’s go.” At her direction they stepped through another portal into a parking lot. This time it was a giant werewolf, maybe a story tall, which was not in the Agency database. A shape-shifter perhaps? Regardless, the thing howling in the darkness was almost to the door, tearing through the group of agents trying to bar its path. The lot was splattered with blood.
“No…” Crysta said softly, raising a hand to her lips, and then a black van was flying at the werewolf’s head. It smacked him on its way into slamming into the side of the building, sending out a spray of glass. But before it could drop to the ground, the van came flying back, knocking the creature over, dropping on top of him, pinning him to the ground. A moment later an unconscious man was lying under the car. One of the remaining agents ran up to him, shooting him with a dart.
And then something weird happened. Hugo reached behind him to scratch his back and hit something metal. His eyes widened as the pain suddenly slammed into him, sending a cold shiver ripping through his entire body. He turned, stumbling, to face a woman who was smiling sweetly at him, a bloody knife in her hand. She could become like a ghost, she was Kalfu. He tried to speak, but he felt sick and his back was wet. He reflexively grabbed onto Crysta’s arm. She screamed. Kalfu and her knife went flying across the parking lot.
“Hugo!” She caught him because he was falling. He understood that, but everything else was a jumble underneath the intense pain. His phone was vibrating. Pieces of metal, light poles, bits of car were spinning around them, plunging the street into darkness. He was freezing and it was kind of getting hard to see. “No, no, no…”
This was bad. Crysta didn’t know Kalfu could walk through her storm untouched, she was focused solely on him. But when he tried to warn her, blood filled his mouth. She was above them. It was ok, he could do this. Just as Kalfu turned solid to stab Crysta, Hugo vacuumed the area above them, and the woman collapsed. He was really tired. He felt incredibly warm for a moment and then the pain lessoned considerably. He leaned away from Crysta to spit out the blood that was still in his mouth. “Hugo?”
“Thank you. That really hurt.” He tried to smile because Crysta was on the verge of tears, but he probably looked awful and they needed to leave because Crysta had dropped her shield and the Agency would come over there in a moment to see what happened. So he opened a portal while Crysta helped him to his feet. It still hurt a lot, but he tried not to grimace as they stepped through. He hadn’t really been paying attention to where they were going, just as long as it wasn’t there, but it turned out that ‘anywhere’ was Crysta’s apartment. Oh, he shouldn’t have opened that last portal. Hugo fell.
The Sound of Wind Page 101
