Wings of Death

by James Axler

  Durga was beside him again, crumpled and battered, looking just like Kane had felt. Still, the Nagah prince drew himself to his feet, scaled lips curling in a sneer.

  “You distracted her,” Durga murmured.

  “Her?” Kane repeated.

  Those amber eyes glimmered for a moment. “She took a different tactic with me than you. It did. As a she. As Hannah, specifically.”

  Durga’s hand filled suddenly with an odd-looking sword—long and rectangular, with saw teeth along each edge, and a blunt, ugly looking pry-tip at the end. “My Khanda.”

  “It failed with you?” Kane asked.

  “It tried, but once you started putting up the fight—”

  “Silence, you worms!” the void being roared.

  Kane looked up at the monstrosity looming over them.

  “You have been tested, and found annoying,” the entity growled.

  “So, smash us, almighty ink blot!” Kane bellowed in return. “Or are you just too damned afraid?”

  There seemed to be a smirk descending across the countryside. “Then throw your frail little psyches into the fray, humans,” the entity invited, seeming to spread its “arms.”

  Durga nodded to Kane and, grimacing, the two men lunged toward their psychic tormentor, blades drawn.

  * * *

  THE KONGAMATO PAWN glared at Brigid Baptiste as she aimed her pistol at the thing. It suddenly swung to one side in a blur, so quick that her shot missed. The bullet cracked against a tree trunk, and the creature was in motion. Luckily, Brigid was able to make out its shadow, thanks to the advanced optics installed within the faceplate of the suit she wore.

  The beast moved quickly, bounding through the forest. Brigid held her fire, even dumping out the partially spent magazine and putting a fresh one in place. Her first few shots had either missed or struck thick muscle and bone designed to get hundreds of pounds of mammal airborne. Clearly, the pistol she carried was less than ideal for a brutish predator as this, at least when firing at its most heavily muscled and armored body parts.

  Her mind raced through the anatomy of the creatures Grant and the others had brought back from their first encounter with the beast. The lower abdomen was similar to those of humans and other mammals, meaning that there was a main trunk line artery to the hind legs that branched off to feed each of those limbs. That was a traditionally weak area, and upon examination, she spotted a few good “landmarks” to aim for with either a firearm or a blade, which could cause rapid exsanguination. The head itself was big, heavy, but it had large eyes, nostrils and ears, meaning that she could shoot through its face or the side of the head in order to get to its brain. A shot to the forehead or the dome of the skull would be wasted, due to the high peak of muscle and bone that went along with those powerful jaws and inch-long canines.

  That was one thing about Brigid’s photographic memory. Once she got a good look at a creature, she could figure out its anatomy by extrapolating it against similar species. On her original examination, she’d determined that the jaw muscles of the kongamato were more than sufficient to provide a ton of bite force based on the sheets of muscle along the top of the skull and the thick ridge of bone that anchored them.

  That bit of knowledge would help her direct her bullets to better effect, but there was no way she could fire without a decent target. The kongamato was dodging, darting sideways to keep her from getting a good sight picture so she could fire with effect.

  Brigid cursed her luck, and realized that the entity in charge was aware that she still had a chance of fighting back. The kongamato’s puppet master had enough fear for itself that it was reluctant to send the monster into fair combat with her.

  That, too, was information the archivist could add to her quiver of advantages. Perhaps the possession of the mutant allowed it to feel the pain inflicted upon it.

  And maybe the 9 mm rounds that had struck the creature hasn’t been completely useless. After all, Brigid had never been hindered in combat with Nephilim or large, muscular men in the past with her TP-9. She scanned quickly back to the spot where she’d initially struck the creature, and the high-tech shadow suit optics picked up on droplets of blood, their infrared signature cooling, but still discernible from the background foliage.

  Emboldened, she swung her attention toward tracking the bestial enemy. It was nowhere to be seen, which meant that it had somehow found a hiding spot, or was looking for some way to flank her. Brigid knew where the redoubt was, and took a mad dash toward it at a ninety-degree angle, her long legs propelling her over ruts, tangled roots and shrubbery in an effort to cover some distance. The tactic of rushing at an angle to her initial goal was intentional.

  The malevolent intelligence controlling the kongamato was obviously trying to keep Brigid from rejoining her allies. Even now, she realized that the creature had let her off easily, using blunt swats that her shadow suit could protect against. The entity wanted her alive, perhaps to make use of her intellect, as others had attempted in the past.

  The move away from her goal left the possessed animal dumbfounded long enough for her to pick up its bulk in the periphery of her vision. With a fluid movement, she pivoted and brought the sight of the small TP-9 to bear, firing off two more quick shots at the mass of muscle perched in the crook of a bough twenty-five feet off the ground. The kongamato released a shriek of pain, but even from this distance, Brigid could tell that her bullets caused little damage.

  The thing’s reactions were quick, but blood, glowing hot and yellow in her infrared filter, spattered against the trunk where it had rested. The creature spread its wings, glided twenty feet to the next tree, then lashed out with one arm, yanking itself out of sight even as Brigid sent a third shot after it. The bullet missed.

  She let out a breath and turned, darting quickly through a thicket, bending low and cutting along a narrow game path that even her slender shoulders were almost too broad to squeeze through. Branches scraped her arms, splinters of wood stabbing, but the shadow suit fabric kept her from snagging on the undergrowth. Brigid had dropped onto her butt, using gravity to draw her down an incline, when the suit’s optics went wild.

  Something was moving at the bottom of the gully she’d dived into, and she paused, digging in her heels before landing at the edge of achurning stream. The optics were picking up millions of individual moving elements in one great crawling force, but Brigid’s own sharp, canny mind clicked on the truth of them.

  Genus Dorylus. Known by the Swahili speakers as siafu. Commonly also called “driver ants.”

  In central and southern Africa, the sight of a colony such as this, millions of them on the march, was cause for terror and retreat. Fortunately, Brigid had stopped herself just in time before stumbling into their column. She recalled the encyclopedia entries on the creatures. These old-world insects were blind, operating by an incredible sense of touch and smell, and inside her shadow suit, with its environmental seal, Brigid would be safe from either. Even the piezoelectric seam that kept the faceplate and hood connected to her suit wouldn’t allow the tiny creatures under the second skin.

  However, if she had crashed into the group, their sense of touch and vibrational sensitivity would have identified her as a threat, turning the relatively slow-marching horror into a teeming, hungry swarm. While they didn’t possess the deadly tail stingers of their South American fire ant counterparts, the driver ants had jaw strength proportionally as strong as a kongamato, and the deadly insectoid soldiers would still bite and chew into human flesh, even with their bodies torn from their grabbing mandibles.

  Brigid let out a scream of terror and pain, her mind formulating a plan even as she inched a little farther back from the stream of hungry, monomaniacal biomass beneath her. She hoped that her cry sounded sufficiently weak and helpless, and just to be certain, she slid her pistol beneath one buttock, so it wouldn’t be v
isible. It was a risky maneuver, but she had to make the effort to bait the brawny kongamato and its dark passenger into attacking.

  A sharp barking shriek split the air, a hammer of sound and pressure buffeting Brigid even through the environmental and audio dampeners on the shadow suit. Had she not been wearing it, her ears would have been left ringing, and even so, she still suffered a headache from its ultrasonic bark.

  Almost immediately, the kongamato dropped from its position above her, landing on the opposite side of the gully. Brigid looked up at it and realized her instincts were right. The creatures were, in general, twice her mass, so while she herself had trouble slowing down while skidding on the gully’s sloping side, the kongamato was unable to stop at all. It crashed to the ground, and though its hind claws sank into the dirt, its body weight took it skidding to the bottom of the gully.

  Once there, it scrambled to its feet, eyes locked on to her, likely looking for her weapon. When it confirmed that she wasn’t visibly armed, the corners of its mouth rose in a sneering grin.

  And then the siafu’s ferocious bites started drawing its attention. Thousands of jaws stabbed at the creature’s flesh, and it thrashed violently.

  “Noooo!” Its scream was agonized and unending as the swarming flood of driver ants attacked the kongamato in its midst. Brigid hated to do that even to a puppet of an inhuman intellect, but she needed to break the control it held on these creatures.

  Swarms of ants rushed toward the bloody gunshot wounds she’d inflicted upon the beast, and in desperation the kongamato leaped, hurling itself back out of the gully. But it was too late. Siafu were all over it, snarled in its thick fur, their jaws sinking into flesh and tearing into skin. Its open wounds quickly became homes for hundreds of hungry ants burrowing into the exposed tissue and blood within.

  The kongamato staggered and stumbled, moving without its former precision and grace. Brigid had driven the controlling entity from its mind. She’d reached for her TP-9, hoping to end the creature’s suffering, when three more of the winged monstrosities dropped from the forest canopy above. Powerful, clubbing knuckles hammered into the skull of the suffering being, and the unmistakable crunch of shattering bones reached Brigid’s ears.

  The kongamatos were not going to allow one of their own to suffer.

  They looked at the corpse, and Brigid remained still, frozen in place on the other side of the gully, shaded by trees and long grass. She didn’t even dare take a breath, especially when a pair of bestial eyes turned and met hers—or would have had not the black, nonreflective faceplate been sealed to her hood.

  Brigid watched as the trio of creatures bounded back to the nearest trees, hurling themselves up the trunks and higher, where they would have more mobility and freedom.

  Brigid closed her eyes and let out a tense breath.

  “Grant, the kongamato have overtaken me, and are now between the redoubt and my position,” she said through her Commtact.

  “Copy that,” Grant replied. “Unfortunately, we’ve got plenty of problems on this end now.”

  Brigid bit her lower lip. “Did they get through underground?”

  “Not yet, but the lockup system on the main vault doors has failed, freezing them in the open position,” he said. “Something is inside the computer system, and it’s doing its damnedest to screw us up the ass.”

  Brigid scrambled to her feet, then gauged the jump to the other slope of the gully. “I’ll try to help, but all I have is my TP-9.”

  There was a grunt behind her.

  She whirled, heart hammering, to find a large form looming in the shadows just above her. She reached for her gun, but it skidded down the slope, landing amid the churning river of vexed siafu.

  Unarmed, she looked up as the shadowy hulk reached out for her.

  Chapter 20

  Brigid Baptiste grimaced as she realized the gun she’d tucked against her thigh, in an effort to seem like bait, had dropped as soon as she reacted to the shadowy form above her. The figure blended into the foliage so completely that even the advanced optics built into her faceplate were stymied by the shape. Her attention was split between the gun falling into the stream of powerful-jawed killer ants at the bottom of the gully, and the presence of the figure above. so it took a few moments for her sharp mind to recognize that the latter was the same size and shape of former magistrate Edwards.

  Rather than a heavily camouflaged kongamato or some other menace, the new arrival was there to assist her. Even so, she’d lost the TP-9. After seeing how the driver ants had swarmed the puppet kongamato, seeking out every possible opening, she didn’t want to risk reaching down to grab her gun. She recalled that those jaws were so powerful, the locals sometimes used driver ants as “living stitches,” making them bite the sides of a wound, then tearing off their bodies, the death grip of their mandibles holding for days until the skin could heal.

  “Come on, Brigid, reach up!” Edwards commanded from above.

  She complied and his brawny arm hefted her easily to his side. Domi was crouched nearby, hood down, her ruby-red eyes scanning the jungle around them.

  “She’s got better night vision than I do,” Edwards said, as if to answer an unasked question. “Plus I was tired of getting smacked in the face with branches.”

  “Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?” Brigid asked.

  Edwards tilted his head. “You were shooting at something. We wanted to flank whatever you were fighting, and didn’t want to draw more attention to this spot.”

  “They all passed,” Domi said tersely. “Between us and redoubt.”

  Brigid could hear the brittle tension in her voice. She was in full-on siege mode, and the effort it took her to use multisyllable words was almost palpable.

  “Thanks for letting me know that Edwards and Domi were on their way to get me,” Brigid mock-growled into her Commtact.

  “Things have been moving way too quickly,” Grant said. “I’m keeping both ends of this redoubt buttoned down. Word to Edwards.”

  The big ex-magistrate nodded. “What’s up?”

  “We heard your first two lines of traps go off in the tunnel leading to our back door,” Grant told him. “That might just slow them down. How many did you leave?”

  “Three lines,” Edwards returned. “Trip wires to implode grens.”

  “So, that could have taken a good number out,” Grant surmised.

  “I don’t think so,” Brigid interjected. “The first group heading down that tunnel may have been unaware of a trip wire, but there is an intellect behind these things.”

  “It never goes easy,” Grant sighed. The three people in the forest could tell that he was speaking under his breath, relying on vibrations conducted through his mandible to carry his words via the Commtact, rather than actual speech. They could also pick up the muted sound of sporadic but heavy gunfire, also carried by the communication device. “Domi, did they follow you up through the vent?”

  “No,” the albino girl answered.

  Grant knew better than to question her awareness of that. Even so, both Edwards and Brigid swept the forest with the optics on their shadow suits, and ended up confirming Domi’s supposition that they hadn’t been followed.

  “Want us back there?” Edwards asked.

  “I’d like some extra bodies, but you should see the Zambians here. They have the ‘front door’ buttoned down tightly,” Grant answered. “Brigid, do you think that this entity controlling the kongamato might be out there in the forest with you?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it, if only because someone accessed the Threshold to deposit me out here,” Brigid answered. “And then immediately dropped an intelligent kongamato on me.”

  “Nathan wasn’t able to ascertain whether it was the Threshold in the room with you, Kane and Durga that launched you out there,�
�� Grant responded. “But then, it’s not like a Sandcat. He touched its surface, but the motor seemed cold to him.”

  “And North hasn’t been acting strangely?” Brigid asked.

  “He’s with me,” Grant said. “No glazed eyes, no look of concentration.”

  Gunfire resounded, conveyed by the Commtact once more.

  “I need you to see whatever happened to the Manosha militia,” Grant said. “I’ll have Bry send you GPS links to where they’d last been seen.”

  “You think they might have something to do with this?” Edwards asked.

  Brigid nodded. “There are more players at this table, Edwards. I hate to say it, but we’ve stumbled into something a lot larger than Durga and his bat-winged army.”

  The silence both at their and Grant’s end of the conversation was not made any more comfortable by the fading howls of the kongamato making their way to the redoubt.

  * * *

  THE ENTRANCE TO the redoubt had all manner of furniture thrown into a barricade, and the smell of hot metal seared Grant’s nostrils. The Zambians were holding the line, their rifles chattering loud and hard, smoke streaming from hot muzzles and spent brass. One thing in the defenders’ favor was that the vault doors, while massive, provided only so much room for the kongamato to try to get through, and it was still a bottleneck for the enemy forces.

  As soon as the creatures appeared in the opening, they were immediately in the line of fire, and with limited room for them to maneuver, the automatic rifles of the Zambians tore into them with brutal, swift efficiency. As one soldier exhausted the ammunition in his magazine, he was promptly replaced by a fresh man with a full weapon, and the line was strong.

  “You don’t seem pleased with this turn of events,” Lomon said to Grant as they watched the coordinated defense against the seemingly mindless foes. So far a dozen of the kongamato had fallen, and each had been torn to shreds by concentrated fire. The probes by the assaulting creatures were sporadic enough that the Zambians had managed to hold off from using the light machine guns.