The screeching didn’t stop. It was getting closer. And this time it sounded like it was only one voice. The might of hundreds of monsters, collected into one. And that made it so much worse. The noise suddenly ceased, but it didn’t matter. We knew it was coming for us.
“This way,” Trip said. We rushed over to his improvised barricade. It looked like he’d piled up all of Earl’s old army crates and filled them with bricks to use for cover. Now that was showing initiative.
Albert Lee raised his head over the edge of a crate. “Welcome to Fort Kickass.”
When Melvin stood up to his full seven feet of hideous, green, bumpy ugly, I had to bellow, “Hold your fire! He’s on our side,” before the Catholics could waste him.
“What the hell is that?” Messina shouted.
“It’s a troll.” Gutterres was perplexed, like werewolves were one thing, but trolls were annoying. “You’ve got a troll? Why?”
“He’s our IT department. He’s cool.”
Melvin looked at the newcomers with his beady little eyes. “Melvin cool. You cool?”
“We cool,” said Warrington, though he kept his gun at the ready, because Melvin had that effect on sane people.
I surveyed the crew of Fort Kickass. Trip and Lee appeared uninjured. Melvin was missing one hand, but trolls were pretty ambivalent about amputations since they’d just grow a new one. “Where’s Cody?”
Trip jerked a thumb at the bank vault-style door in the back of Earl’s room. “He went inside to try one last time to figure out how to get the Ward from Sonya so we could turn it on and maybe kill all these things.”
“Silas Carver was born on Earth,” Gutterres said. “The stone has no power over him. It wouldn’t work.”
“Cody figured it was still worth a shot.”
“As long as your man doesn’t destroy it,” Gutterres said. “If we lose that stone—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, millions dead. Got it.” I pointed down the hall at where the ghost light was building. “We’ve got more pressing matters right now.”
A single Drekavac lurched into view.
As more and more power coalesced into fewer bodies, they weren’t getting any bigger, but this one was giving off an aura of sheer wickedness. It made the hair on my arms stand up. The temperature plunged. All the Hunters could see our breath. Melvin spit out the Red Bull he’d been drinking, because this thing felt evil. It hadn’t just gathered up the life essence of the ones we’d killed, but who knew how many hundreds more from above.
The Drekavac started toward us. All eight of us started shooting.
I watched in horror as our bullets shattered against the monster’s body. A weapon materialized in the monster’s hand. It wasn’t one of the tiny pistols. Oh, no. It was that damned blunderbuss that had nearly torn the roof off of our headquarters.
“Down!” Gutterres and I shouted at the same time, because we’d both seen that thing in action.
Everybody but Melvin listened.
Lightning hit Fort Kickass. I was pelted by splinters and wet troll chunks.
Melvin hit the wall. His legs were gone.
Most of us popped up and started shooting again. The Drekavac was manipulating its weapon to obliterate the rest of us and only seemed mildly inconvenienced by the dozens of bullets hitting him.
Maybe it was the whole Chosen thing, but I could see what was happening. The ghost fire had collected around this body to strengthen and protect it. Each time we hit it, more of that energy was being used up. Each time it attacked us, more energy was expended, which was why when there was a bunch of them, they were only using the little pistols, and now he’d broken out the big stuff. Give us enough time and we’d break him, and he’d disintegrate like the rest.
Except this one had gathered so much energy that we’d be dead long before that point.
“Get inside the vault!” I shouted.
Trip rushed to the door and started opening it. Lee got there a moment later because of the bad leg. Trip spun the wheel and then the two of them started swinging the incredibly heavy thing open.
I ran to Melvin. He’d been splattered against the wall. Our troll looked down at where his body abruptly ended at the pelvis, then at me. “That is bullshits!”
“Hang on.” I grabbed Melvin by his remaining arm and dragged him toward the vault. He’d lost so much weight suddenly that I could actually do that easily now.
Trip got the door open. “Inside. Go. Go!” Only Trip didn’t go in himself. He’d hold his ground, covering the rest of us, until he was sure we were inside, and only then would he get to safety. Because that was just the kind of hero he was. Except as I went in, I grabbed him by the armor and dragged him and Melvin both inside. Heroic or not, Trip wasn’t going to accomplish shit shooting at a bulletproof monster until he got flash-fried by a lightning cannon.
The mercs were laying down fire, especially Messina with that SAW. LoPresto’s carbine went down and he immediately drew a DWX and kept shooting as they made an orderly retreat into the vault. If we survived, I was definitely going to see if these guys wanted full-time jobs.
Gutterres was the last one in. And he must have been freakishly stronger than he looked by the way he pulled that giant door closed by himself so fast. Lee was waiting and spun the wheel to slam the massive steel locking bolts. There was no way to open it from this side. We were now locked in. Lee quickly let go, which was lucky because he was one second away from possibly getting electrocuted. The whole room shook as the Drekavac blasted the door. It held.
For now.
We all stood there in the emergency lighting, breathing hard, looking at the door, kind of surprised to still be alive.
“Uh, Hunters?” Melvin said. “Where’d hole come from?”
I turned around to see what Melvin was talking about and dropped our poor dismembered troll in surprise. Ben Cody was lying on the floor, either dead or unconscious. There was no sign of Sonya. Earl’s full moon prison cell was just a plain concrete room with a drain hole in the middle of the floor, just big enough to contain a furious werewolf. Earl was like a beacon of calm compared to most werewolves, but even he turned into a bloodthirsty psycho when he transformed during the full moon, so this place was for his protection and ours. Except now the back wall was missing, and there was an eight-foot-wide earthen tunnel leading off into the darkness on the other side. And by missing, I don’t mean torn down or excavated, I mean a big circular section of the concrete had just disappeared. And it had happened so recently that the edges that had just been sheared through were still smoking hot.
“Ben!” Trip knelt next to Cody and checked his pulse. “He’s alive.”
There was a bunch of blood in his hair and beard. My guess was that he’d gotten clubbed, or maybe thrown down in such a way he’d banged his head on the floor. Had Sonya sucker punched him and bailed? Or had something else done it?
“She screwed us again.” Gutterres started toward the tunnel.
“You don’t know that,” I said.
“What else could it be?” he snapped. “She probably got a better offer again. She’s played us before.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think she knows how to do this.” I gestured at the hole, which had obviously been made by magic. Then I remembered what Franks had said before he’d run off. Lana is here. Despite Stricken’s words about trusting me to handle his mystery problem for him, he was still grabbing the stone for himself. “But I know what could. Stricken has a succubus who works for him. I saw her do something like this when she teleported him out of MCB custody.”
“That can’t work here though,” Lee said. “Julie had Tanya’s people put spells up all over the compound. None of that stuff should be able to operate on compound grounds anymore.”
“That’s what the MCB director thought about their offices too.” Except Tanya was too proud of being MHI to do a half-ass job for us like those other elves clearly had. Which meant that if Lee was right, Lana might have grabbed Sonya, but
she’d have to travel on foot until they got outside the range of the elves’ enchantments.
BANG.
We all flinched and looked toward the vault door. It had just gotten hit hard. And it wasn’t the big gun either. From the amount of force, my guess was that he’d willed a sledgehammer into existence and had sucked up enough dead monsters to give himself super strength.
BANG.
The vault door shook. Little cracks formed in the reinforced walls around it.
“They’re getting away,” Gutterres said. “Let’s go.”
“Give us a minute to get our wounded to safety.”
“There’s no time, Pitt. That stone is more important than any one of us.”
There was no way I was going to leave Cody. And yes . . . even Melvin. “You’ll get lost without us.”
Gutterres glared at me, but he was a man on a mission. “Stick around if you want. I’ll pluck that Ward out of the shape-changer’s corpse if I have to.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Trip said.
“Test me and find out.” Gutterres entered the tunnel. His men shared an uneasy look, but they followed.
A moment after the Secret Guard were out of sight Melvin said, “What’s got up his ass?”
“He’s just trying to save millions of lives. Pressure makes you cranky. Are you okay?”
“Melvin will grow new legs. Old ones had rash anyway.”
BANG.
“We can’t stick around here though,” Lee said. “We’ve got to follow them.”
“Hang on.” The thing that Gutterres didn’t realize was just how much of a maze the old tunnels beneath the compound were. If the Vatican Hunters didn’t pick up a trail, they’d probably take the wrong path. Lana—or whoever had broken Sonya out—had a few different tunnels she could choose to get out and if we didn’t know which one she’d taken, we’d never catch her in time.
SCREEEECH!
A glowing blue sword point slowly punched through the vault steel. The Drekavac had given up on smashing his way in, so he was cutting his way in. The tip was glowing like a plasma arc. It had to be using up a ton of the Drekavac’s remaining power, but he was shearing through the locking bolts.
“There’s too many tunnels to cover even if we split up, and we’ve got two wounded to carry.” I checked my radio, but still got nothing but static. Not surprising, considering the source of the distortion was on the other side of the door.
“We’ll just have to pick a route and hope,” Lee said.
Cody was a big guy, but even missing three limbs, Melvin still weighed more. So I scooped up our troll. “You’re going to have to ride piggyback.”
“Melvin’s ego not fragile.”
Trip and Lee dragged Cody to his feet and each of them got one of his arms over their shoulders. That Drekavac was making unnervingly steady process. The door was dripping molten steel. An incredible amount of heat was coming off of the metal. It wouldn’t hold for long, but at least whatever was left of the Drekavac would have been weakened by such an expenditure of energy. We were about to make a run for it when the sword tip suddenly disappeared. There was a muffled crash and a crunch on the other side. For twenty seconds we heard the sounds of violence but couldn’t really tell what was going on. The Drekavac screeched, but that sound was abruptly cut off.
Whatever had just taken out the Drekavac must have known the exterior combo, because a moment later the wheel began to spin. The door swung open.
Earl Harbinger staggered into the room. He was human, or at least mostly human, but still in the process of turning back. His body had been savaged. He was covered in so many rapidly healing bullet holes it looked like he had the chicken pox. One eye was still werewolf yellow; the other was filled with blood. He’d burned so many calories regenerating that all his still twisting bones were visibly poking through his skin. The blood-soaked figure made it a few halting steps into the cell, and then slowly sank to his knees.
“Damn, man,” I said. “You look like shit.”
“That’s the last of them,” Earl gasped, exhausted. He was so tired he sounded drunk. Then he looked past his battered Hunters and saw the hole in the wall. “The fuck you do to my room?”
“Sonya’s been taken. I think by Stricken.”
“Oh . . . ” Earl said as the fog of the last Drekavac he’d just taken out swirled by him, past my legs, and flew down the tunnel out of sight. “Thought we were done, but that slime’s going somewhere.”
The Drekavac wasn’t stupid. He hadn’t sacrificed all of his thirteenth form against us. He must have left a body hiding somewhere in the compound to fall back to, and it had collected who knew how many monsters’ worth of power. Lana was going to carry Sonya right into that thing’s arms.
Earl tried to stand up, but then flopped over on his side, too injured to keep going. “Gimme a minute.” Then he promptly passed out. Which was saying a lot about how badly he’d been torn up, because Earl Harbinger was a tank.
I dropped Melvin again, who made a very disgruntled noise when he hit the floor. “Lee, stay with Earl and Cody.”
Trip knew what was up. We were Sonya’s last chance. “Better. Get to the intercom, alert the others, then stay with these guys.”
“Will do. Good luck.”
At least I wouldn’t be here when Lee found out that I’d had a gunfight in his library.
Chapter 22
Trip and I ran through the tunnels.
This section had been dug clear back in the Bubba Shackleford era. They were seldom used now because they were prone to cave-ins. Our weapon-mounted flashlights revealed crumbling brick walls. Obnoxious spider webs got over my face. We reached a fork in the tunnel, and when I aimed my light down each, it revealed more side tunnels ahead. The floor was mostly small rocks so we couldn’t even see tracks to tell which way Gutterres had gone. Even though we were on our home turf, we were just as lost as the Catholics probably were.
“How are we going to find her?”
“I’ve got a secret weapon.” Then I raised my voice to shout as loud as I could. “Justinian! I need your help.” The sound echoed in the narrow space. I had one hell of a loud voice. You get a lot of practice when you have to be heard over gunfire. The key was to speak from the chest. “Justinian or any of his legion, if you can hear me, MHI needs your aid.”
“Who?” Trip asked, confused.
I held up a hand to shush him. “Which way did she go?”
“What was that about?”
“Sorry. I’ll explain later. Just listen.”
“Is that . . . ?”
I hadn’t heard it, but Trip had less hearing damage than I did. “What?”
“Something’s squeaking.” He pointed down the left fork.
“Go! Follow it.”
To his credit, Trip didn’t question. He trusted me and acted. Like Harbinger had taught us, a Hunter’s greatest weapon was a flexible mind. But I also knew that he was a bit of a germaphobe who kind of freaked out about stuff he thought was gross. “Don’t step on any rats!”
“What—” He suddenly leapt to the side. “Yikes!”
There was a big brown rat standing in the middle of the tunnel, and Trip had nearly run over him. I knew right away that this was one of Justinian’s tribe because of the way he stood there on his rear legs, defiantly rather than scurrying away. The rat began squeaking rapidly and gesturing down the tunnel.
“Which way was the girl taken?” I pulled out my phone and flipped it to the notes app. Then I knelt and held the phone where the rat could reach it. Without hesitating he quickly began typing a message.
I AM ATTICUS SON OF CIPRIAN SON OF JUS
I temporarily moved the phone away. “Great. Owen, son of Auhangamea. Nice to meet you, but we’re in a hurry.” I moved the phone back.
The rat began typing again.
“Wait . . . That rat can write?”
“Yes, Trip,” I said while Atticus wrote. “Big brain rats, escaped science experiment. Long stor
y.”
THE CHANGELING WAS TAKEN BY A SUCCUBUS BUT SHE SURPRISED IT AND ESCAPED. THE DEMON SEARCHES FOR HER.
That sounded like Sonya. And it wasn’t like her getting snatched was good news, but it was better news than her betraying us and knocking out Cody. “Where is she now?”
While Atticus rapid-fire punched the letters, Trip said, “Why didn’t you tell me we had smart rats?”
“I made a promise to their emperor and Sid to keep them as secret as possible.”
“Sid the janitor?”
“Yes, Sid the janitor.” But Atticus had stopped, so I flipped the phone around to read.
GO LEFT, THEN RIGHT, THEN GO STRAIGHT PAST TWO TUNNELS, THEN RIGHT AGAIN AT THE THIRD. SHE HIDES THERE.
Trip read over my shoulder. “The little dude is good with mazes.”
Atticus was gesturing for me to give him the phone back.
BEWARE. THE EVIL YOU WARNED US ABOUT HAS ONE BODY LEFT. TWO WERE KEPT IN RESERVE BUT WE TOOK CARE OF ONE OF THEM FOR YOU WHILE IT WAS WEAK. THE LAST HAS GROWN IN STRENGTH BEYOND OUR DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS TECHNIQUE.
Even taking one was really impressive. “You guys rock.”
WE DO ROCK. ONE MORE THING. THE HUMANS YOU WANTED US TO WATCH DID NOT BETRAY MHI YET. BUT THE CHANGELING INTENDED TO.
“Sonya? What do you mean?”
WHILST FLEEING THE DEMON SHE REVEALED THAT HIDDEN UPON HER PERSON WAS A PAGE TORN FROM A BOOK. IT IS A MAP OF THESE TUNNELS. SHE IS TRYING TO ORIENTATE HERSELF NOW IN ORDER TO ESCAPE.
“Son of a bitch.” So that was what Sonya had been doing in the archives when I’d found her. She must have ripped it out of a book in the library and had been planning on bailing the whole time. Looking at her dad’s original memoirs had been a handy excuse. She’d probably turned the tears on when she’d heard me coming and stuck the map in her dad’s book to hide it. I’d even sent her back to her room with that book! “Thanks, Atticus.”
The rat bowed to us.
I bowed back. Trip bowed too, because that seemed like the thing to do. Then we rushed in the direction the rat had indicated.
“What else do we have down here that I don’t know about? Ninja turtles?”
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