Limbus, Inc. Book II

by Brett J. Talley

  “Sorry, Grandma,” I said.

  “What?” asked Ledger.

  “Nothing.” I held my hand out to him. “Give me your knife.”

  He didn’t hesitate, but instead reached for the rapid-release knife, snapped his wrist to lock the blade in place, and offered it to me, handle-first.

  I took it and looked at my reflection in the polished steel. “Understand something,” I said, “I’m going on what I’ve been told. I’ve never actually done this before.”

  “Kid’s going to die,” said Ledger.

  “This is a gamble,” I said. “This might kill him faster.”

  Crow shook his head. “A small chance is better than none at all.”

  Ledger and Sweeney nodded.

  “Do it,” said Ledger.

  I put the edge of the knife against the heel of my left palm, took a deep breath to steady my nerves, and let the wickedly sharp blade do its work. Bright red blood welled from the small cut.

  “Open his mouth,” I said, and Mike put two fingers between the kid’s teeth and then splayed them to push open Antonio’s mouth. I clenched my fist to increase the blood pressure and when the blood began rolling over my hand and down my wrist, I extended my arm and let the first fat drops fall. They splashed his lips, his teeth and then vanished into the darkness of his open mouth.

  The old ritual says to use seven drops.

  Seven, the number of heaven.

  I gave him seven and one to grow on and then put my cut hand into my own mouth and sucked off the last drops of blood. When I removed my hand, the cut was already closed. Kind of freaky. Grandma hadn’t told me about that part.

  Ledger, who had gone pale earlier, went milk-white now.

  “That,” he said thickly, “is some weird-ass voodoo bullshit.”

  I grinned at him. I probably still had blood on my own teeth. “Welcome to my world.”

  Crow smiled, too. “Welcome to Pine Deep.”

  Mike Sweeney said nothing, but his red eyes burned into mine.

  On the ground Antonio Jones groaned once, twitched.

  And died.

  Chap. 47

  We tried everything.

  CPR.

  Mouth to mouth.

  Everything.

  But the kid’s body settled into a terminal stillness. No pulse. No nothing.

  I turned away and felt tears in my eyes. I balled my fist and drove it into the top of my thigh. Over and over again.

  Son of a bitch.

  Son of a motherfucking bitch.

  This wasn’t right.

  It wasn’t fair.

  When I turned back, no one would meet my eyes.

  Crow looked old and tired. Sweeney got up and walked back to the line of shrubs that separated us from the blockhouse. Ledger, he sat there looking down at the kid, shaking his head slowly.

  He was the only one who said anything, though. “You tried, man. At least you tried.”

  Before I even knew I was going to do it, I grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled him halfway to his feet. “Fuck you, asshole. You should never have brought a kid into this. This shit is on you.”

  Ledger looked at me. If he was afraid of me, it no longer showed. He placed his hand on mine and pressed two fingers into nerve clusters. He did it without effort and my hand popped open. Just like that. Ledger gently pushed me back.

  “Don’t ever do that again, Sam.” His voice was very calm. It wasn’t a request and it was somehow more than a threat. He walked forward very slowly, which made me walk backward. Ledger got so close that his forehead and mine were touching. It might have looked like an intimate moment. Two close friends, two brothers, two mourners at a funeral.

  But this wasn’t that. This was alpha and wolf. His voice was very soft.

  “You’re letting emotions get in the way of your better sense. Don’t. That’s what happens to people when they get caught up in this kind of thing. They need to assign blame and because the bad guys are usually out of reach, they lash out at whoever’s close. The thing about that is—it’s what those assholes want. They count on it. Terrorism isn’t about overwhelming force. It’s about fear. It’s about grief. It’s about confusion.”

  “This isn’t terrorism—” I began, but he cut me off.

  “The fuck it isn’t. That’s the only thing this is about. These sons of bitches killed that kid. They fucked us all up in doing it.”

  “It’s not right!” I growled.

  “Shhh. Quiet now,” he said. “No, it’s not right. None of this is about right or wrong. None of it. It’s about evil. It’s about darkness. That’s what this is about. These fuckers want to shut out all the lights. Everyone’s lights. They want to be the boogeymen in the dark. That’s what they do so they can feel powerful.”

  I said nothing. Ledger moved his head back a few inches so I could see his eyes. They were cold and they were hard, but I saw a bottomless pain there. Endless hurt. I could feel Crow and Sweeney watching us.

  “Sam, the guys who did this are the same ones who killed the guy on the motorcycle and all of those other civilians. That’s what they do. They don’t have the balls to go to war with warriors, so they try to cripple us by targeting the innocent. The civilians. The ones who can’t protect themselves. If you lose your shit, that guarantees a win for them. Is that what you want?”

  “No,” I said hoarsely.

  “No,” he agreed.

  “This…this isn’t my sort of thing,” I said.

  “What is your sort of thing?”

  “When I take on a client, it’s like they become part of my….” The word stuck in my throat. I wanted him to understand. I didn’t want to sound like an idiot. But I said it anyway. “When I take on a client it’s like they become part of my pack.”

  He studied me, and nodded slowly. “And you’ll do anything for your pack.”

  It wasn’t a statement.

  I nodded.

  He took his wallet out, removed a dollar bill and stuffed it into my shirt pocket. “Consider that a retainer from Antonio Jones. He’s your client. When this is over, if we’re both standing on our feet, you can bill me for the rest.”

  “I’ve already been paid.”

  “By who?”

  “Limbus.”

  “Fuck Limbus. They’re not here. That kid is. You’re working for him. And if there was ever a client who deserved to be in your pack, then he’s it.”

  I shook my head, but even I didn’t know if that was a denial of his words or a refusal to accept all of this bullshit.

  “So what’s the alternative?” asked Ledger. “We could fall back and wait for reinforcements and hope that these bastards don’t slip away while we’re waiting.”

  “No.”

  “Or we can cowboy up and go in there and prove to these motherfuckers that they don’t have a right to do these things. That they aren’t allowed to do this. That there is punishment for it.”

  I cleared my throat. “We could be walking right into a trap. We don’t know what’s waiting for us in there.”

  Ledger smiled. His smile was every bit as alien and as awful as Mike Sweeney’s had been. “Maybe,” he conceded. “But they don’t know what’s waiting for them out here.”

  It took me a few seconds, but then I felt a smile growing on my own face. I couldn’t see it, but I was sure it wasn’t one I’d want to look at in the bathroom mirror.

  Chap. 48

  Ledger put a call into his people and told them to come running. But best estimate was forty minutes. We couldn’t risk that kind of time.

  We decided to hit the place ourselves.

  Ledger mapped out a plan. It was ugly, dangerous as hell, probably insane, and definitely suicidal.

  We all agreed to it.

  It had somehow become that kind of day.

  Chap. 49

  We crowded into the shed.

  Ledger took some goodies from his pockets and explained them as he set to work. The first thing was a pocket sensor tha
t identified which wall of the shed had a door hidden behind it. That was easy. Finding the lock and door handle took a little longer, but Ledger found it. There was a knot in the wood of the back wall. It was phony and hid a pressure switch. Ledger produced a second gizmo that would let us know if the door was wired with bombs. It wasn’t, which provided less of a relief than I would have thought. Then he took what looked like a Fruit Roll-Up from a metal tube, flatted it out, peeled off a plastic cover and pressed it in place over the switch. He pushed a small electronic detonator into the putty-like material.

  “Blaster plaster,” he explained. “Very high-tech pressure-reactive chemical explosive.” He held up a small trigger device. “Let’s get out of dodge.”

  We went outside and over the edge of the hill.

  “Once I trigger it, we’re committed. We go in hard and fast and it’s fuck you to anyone inside. Anything past that door is no longer American soil and whoever’s in there is to be considered an enemy combatant.”

  “Is that legal?” asked Crow.

  “Do you care?” Ledger said.

  “On the whole, not much.”

  Ledger nodded. “It’ll get loud and smoky. Everyone keeps their shit wired tight. You check your targets. I do not want a bullet up my ass.”

  “What do we do if they want to surrender?” I asked.

  “We let them,” said Ledger. “We’re not murderers, Sam. For right now, we’re soldiers. Rules of engagement apply. You good with that?”

  We all were.

  We were all scared, too.

  Even Mike, though it didn’t show. I could smell it. Faint, but there.

  Ledger was the coolest, but he had a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead. No doubt. After all, this wasn’t a cell of al-Qaeda. These were monsters. Scary monsters. Scarier than me, and I have my moments. Super-soldier werewolves. If there’s a worse-case scenario that trumps that, please do not fucking tell me.

  Ledger held up the trigger. “Good guys win, bad guys lose.”

  We nodded.

  As the Bible says, we girded our loins.

  He pressed the trigger.

  The blast was impressive.

  The shed stopped being a shed and became a rapidly expanding cloud of splinters and dust that blew over and past us. The door disintegrated and a big chunk of the interior wall blew inward.

  Ledger was up and moving before the first echo of the blast could bounce back at us from the surrounding trees. He had his pistol up, laser sight stabbing through the smoke. He bellowed through the thunder.

  “Federal Agents! Put your weapons down. Put your hands in the air. Do it now! Do it now!”

  It was rhetoric. It was like saying hello.

  None of us expected them to comply.

  And, fuck it, they didn’t.

  Chap. 50

  We crowded behind him.

  Crow and Mike Sweeney.

  Me.

  All of us with guns.

  We ran into dense smoke and burst through into the blockhouse, none of us really knowing what to expect. I had a kind of Doctor Frankenstein thing in my head. Arcane science, secret experiments.

  It wasn’t like that.

  There were two folding tables on which were laptops. And a third table crowded with some scientific junk. Open metal cases, high-pressure injection guns, alcohol swabs, IV bags. That was it. The whole shebang could have fit into the trunk of a midsized sedan. No exotic machinery, no bubbling vats or towering electrodes. This was Twenty-First Century microscience. Transgenics on the go.

  But the equipment wasn’t important to us. Not at the moment.

  The occupants of the room were.

  We were expecting two, maybe three of them. A handful at the outside. Some science geeks and a couple of their pet monsters.

  Yeah, that’s what we were hoping for.

  Fuck.

  There were fifteen people in the room.

  Two of them were Korean. Both in lab coats. Both pencil-neck geeks. North Korean, as we later found out.

  The others were homegrown. Twelve men, one woman. Americans and Canadians.

  And every single one of them was a werewolf.

  Every.

  Single.

  One.

  Ledger put the red dot of his laser sight on the chest of the nearest man. A guy who looked like a baseball player. Fit, long-legged, rangy. The man was ten feet from Ledger.

  “Hands on your head right now!” bellowed Ledger.

  For just a split second it all held together. A tableau. Them and us, with ghosts of smoke drifting around us.

  Then the man grabbed the shoulder of one of the Korean scientists and hurled him at Ledger.

  Not shoved him.

  Hurled.

  The scientist went flying into the air, well off the ground, arms pinwheeling, legs kicking, right at Ledger. The agent was able to twist out of the way and the screaming Korean hit Crow. They went down hard.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  The crowd rushed at us, and even as I swung my gun toward the nearest, he stopped being a man and became a wolf. It was the fastest change I’d ever seen, and I’ve seen my grandmother do the shift. She could do it in the space of a finger-snap.

  This guy was faster.

  In a heartbeat he stopped being a man and became a thing.

  When I change, I usually go the whole way into pure wolfshape. Most werewolves do. We’re faster as wolves. We have four feet and keener senses.

  He did not.

  None of them did.

  They shifted into wolfmen. A horror movie halfway point between man and wolf. He leapt at me and swatted the pistol from my hand. Claws like daggers dug into my chest, and if I hadn’t begun the change as soon as he leapt, I’d have died as a man, right there and then. The man has more vulnerabilities.

  He smashed me back and down, and immediately we were tearing into each other. Teeth and claws. Spit and blood.

  I heard gunfire and didn’t know who was shooting. Ledger, maybe.

  Crow, too, if he could.

  I doubted Mike Sweeney was still human.

  There was a scream of fury higher and stranger than any wolf cry, and I knew at once it had to be him. It was almost the shriek of a jungle cat. What was he?

  The wolfman who bore me to the ground was strong. Goddamn strong. He gripped my forelegs and tried to tear them apart. His grip alone was crushing. Pain exploded through my legs and shoulders. There was no way I was going to wrestle free. He was easily twice as strong as me.

  Super soldiers.

  What was it Ledger said? Someone’s trying to build a better werewolf.

  Yeah.

  Shit.

  So, fuck it, I stopped fighting a fight I couldn’t win, and instead darted my head forward and bit his throat. I was in full wolfshape, and if my muscles weren’t as powerful as his amped up physique, my jaws were. Wolf jaws were always stronger than wolfman jaws. My family’s genetics don’t go back to Canis lupis. Most werewolves do, we don’t. We Benandanti are in a direct genetic line from Canis dirus. The massive, prehistoric Dire Wolves. No canine predator in history had a stronger bite. And as werewolves, we get something extra added to the package.

  He tried to tough it out, to muscle through my bite.

  Fuck him.

  He didn’t.

  His throat tore away between my teeth.

  Blood exploded from him with fire hose pressure, smashing into my face, hitting the wall. The evil bastard died right there. His strength evaporated and his powerful and scientifically enhanced physique became so much cooling meat. I threw him off of me and rose to four feet with bloody meat and fur hanging from my jaws.

  The rest of the room was a madhouse.

  Crow had his back to the wall and had Mike Sweeney’s combat shotgun in his hands. He fired, pumped, fired, pumped, over and over again. I’ve been hit with shotgun shells before. Buckshot hurts. Bear shot will put me on my knees, but it won’t kill a werewolf. Not unless you scored a headsh
ot and blew apart the motor cortex or the brain stem.

  The rounds in that shotgun were explosive.

  He blew arms and legs off. He blew holes through chests.

  Hard as balls to shake off a ten-inch hole through your sternum, supernatural or not.

  Ledger didn’t have his gun. It was somewhere on the floor.

  Instead he had his rapid-release fighting knife in his hand and he was tackling two of the wolfmen at once.

  He should have died. Right away. On the spot, end of story.

  He was cut and bleeding, but damn it if that son of a bitch wasn’t holding his own. He fought on the attack and with counterattacks. Nothing defensive. They came at him and he went for them. He didn’t stab. Stabbing is for suckers who want to die. Ledger used lightning-fast slashes, jabs, and picks to open up dozens of wounds in arms, legs, bellies, groins, and faces. The wolfmen were the ones on the defensive. Maybe it was their arrogance, maybe they’d never fought a warrior before, but they were losing what should have been a nothing battle.

  It couldn’t last, though. Ledger was human. He’d tire.

  They wouldn’t.

  And even as I watched, I could see some of their wounds beginning to close.

  This could only end one way.

  I began making my way toward him. On the other side of the room, Mike Sweeney—or what had been Mike Sweeney—was fighting with the largest of the wolfmen. Two giants colliding. Both standing on two legs and slashing with clawed hands. Sweeney and the giant were well-matched and there was no way to tell who was going to win that fight.

  Before I could help him or Ledger, the only female werewolf in the room rushed at me. She was tall for a woman, and dishearteningly fast.

  She laughed as she slashed at me.

  If you haven’t heard the cruel laughter of a werewolf, I hope you never do. It’s so wrong in so many ways. There’s no humanity in it. Just malicious glee and a red anticipation of what’s to come.

  She raked me from shoulder to hip as I tried to evade, the slashes burning like acid. I hissed and snapped at her, but she danced away, lithe as a dancer. Her riposte was a slash across my forehead that filled one eye with my own blood.

  Bitch.

  I darted in and she danced back, she slashed and I jumped sideways. And that started our gavotte. She caught me more times than I evaded. I nipped her twice and did no damage at all. Unlike the first wolfman I’d fought, she used cunning and speed rather than relying on her strength.