The Dormant (The Sublime Electricity Book #4)

by Pavel Kornev

  The armored vehicle flew into it at full speed, and the invisible microwaves bored a tunnel right before us. And still, such a fierce cold swept over us that the armor was snaked with lines of hoarfrost. Not able to bear the icy wind, I hid in the back and the armored vehicle was immediately shaken by a severe blow. Something scraped along the left side, as if some beast was trying to break through the steel sheets with its claws. Then I heard a hum, a thud, and the stench of the grave wafted over us. But the heavy self-propelled carriage stayed on the road. An instant later, there was cloudy sky above us once again.

  After flying past the next two intersections, our armored vehicle was right near the palace. But instead of turning onto the street that led to the back gates, the driver headed straight for Palace Square.

  "What the devil?!" I cursed out when the wheels jumped onto the tall curb and I was shaken to the point my teeth chattered.

  The heavy armored vehicle barreled through an accurately groomed row of acacias, plowed through a dead lawn, turned a corner and made it to the edge of the square.

  In the very center, there was a towering pedestal with half a dozen Aztec priests. With confident slashes, the pagans were opening the rib cages of their sacrifices with obsidian knives, cutting out their hearts and throwing them into a ritual basin. There were haphazard heaps of dead bodies all around, but there were still plenty of victims left. Hundreds of possessed people were crowded on the square, unaware of anything. Without any forcing, they walked up the blood-soaked steps, humbly giving their lives to the diabolic ritual. And in the depths of the gaping whirlpool above us, I saw the purple luster of the underworld glow stronger and stronger.

  The air on the square was simply permeated with magic, and it flowed in a ghostly stream from the pedestal to the palace fence. Just past that, electric wires spit sparks, and most of the otherworldly power was turned back. That was where the icy fog that had nearly overwhelmed us was coming from. And still, the palace complex was not totally untouched. The main gates had been blown away, and there were plenty of gaps in the fence.

  And then, all the armored vehicle's machine guns started up at once. Long bursts stitched through the crowd and swept the priests off the pedestal, adding a bit more blood to the already red granite tiles.

  Only then did William Grace's plan become clear to me. The lieutenant had decided not only to rescue the heiress to the throne, but also to cut off the pagan ritual.

  "Damned idiot!" I cursed out, having noticed some possessed people rolling an artillery cannon out of the gates.

  I slipped off my perch into the back, pulled the lieutenant off the side machine gun and shouted in his ear.

  "They've got a cannon!"

  William Grace found himself instantly. He pressed up against the cabin window and shouted:

  "Full speed reverse!"

  The armored vehicle's engine barked and started backing off the square into an alley but, at that very instant, a highly explosive bomb hit us. A deafening thunder rang out. The self-propelled carriage shook strongly, and everyone in the back was knocked off their feet. Thick black smoke started pouring out of something.

  "Reverse!" the lieutenant shouted out again. "Full speed reverse!"

  It was no use. Although the bomb had hit the transmitter, which covered in a steel sheet, the guardsmen in the cabin were riddled with the shrapnel that got through the defense.

  I grabbed the hand mortar, leaned out the side door and sent an explosive round at the artillery cannon. But it landed five meters from the target, and all the shrapnel was absorbed by the cannon shield, shuddering from the strike. Then I jerked the barrel higher and totally emptied the drum in a few seconds.

  A successful shot threw the possessed in all directions before they managed to get a second shot off. But then, bullets started clicking off the paving stones, and I had to hurriedly take shelter behind the fountain.

  William Grace joined me with the machine gun, extended the bipod of the Lewis gun on the marble parapet and let out a ceaseless string of bullets toward the possessed coming down from the pedestal in our direction.

  "Let's get to the palace!" he barked, straining to overcome the thundering gunfire. "On my command!"

  We really didn't have any other options left. More and more smoke was pouring out of the wide-open doors of the armored vehicle, and the engine could blow at any moment.

  "I'll cover you!" I shouted, placing new rounds into the mortar drum with shaking hands.

  "Me too!" Thomas Smith called out to help.

  The lieutenant gave him the machine gun, threw the cable gun electric-jar pack over his shoulder, grabbed the pneumatic gun and dashed to the corner of the palace fence.

  "After me!" he shouted to the others as he ran.

  The guardsmen and lady-in-waiting tore off in pursuit, but Thomas Smith had loaded another disk into the machine gun and was now knocking down the possessed running toward us with short bursts.

  I reloaded the hand mortar and shot a few rounds into the crowd, practically without aiming. The explosions threw steel fragments and bits of stone in all directions. And although that couldn't fully stop the possessed, their agility had taken a noticeable hit.

  At that moment, the guardsmen had reached their position around the corner and started giving us supporting fire. Elizabeth-Maria jerked me by the arm.

  "Leo!" she shouted. "Let's get out of here!"

  I threw the mortar on my shoulder and dashed from the fountain to the fence, and the succubus raced after me. Smith, meanwhile, stayed behind to finish the Lewis gun disk, then retreated. Elizabeth-Maria and I had already crossed the open space when, just some ten meters from the fence, the investigator rolled along the paving stone, his ankle shot through.

  He splayed out on the ground with a moan and tried to stand but was unable. He started to crawl along the causeway. I threw down my mortar and raced to his aid. Another of Grace's boys ran after me. We grabbed Thomas under the arms and started dragging him after us. We had almost reached shelter when an explosion blasted out with such power that the earth underfoot shook.

  The armored vehicle was blown to smithereens. A stray iron fragment split open the head of the guardsman helping me, and he collapsed dead on the sidewalk.

  "Devil!" William Grace cursed out heatedly. "May you all blow up!"

  "Curses!" I swore, tearing the pants of the investigator and beginning to bandage the wound.

  "What happened to the leg?" Thomas asked, leaning up on his elbows.

  "The bullet went clean through," said Elizabeth-Maria, who was helping me. "The bone was not damaged."

  By then, the machine-gun disk was empty, and the guardsman started away from the corner. Then William Grace tossed two grenades at the possessed at once and commanded:

  "Let's get out of here!"

  The incendiary bombs hammered out together, and under cover of the wall of fire and toxic white smoke, we ran along the stone fence to a gap left by a steam car ramming it at full speed. The many-ton monster hadn't managed to enter the grounds of the palace complex, but one of the sections had collapsed, opening a path inside.

  Elizabeth-Maria and I had to drag Thomas on our backs, otherwise the investigator risked being left hopelessly far behind. A trail of his blood stretched out behind us on the paving stone.

  "Careful, don't touch the wires! They're live!" William Grace warned after clambering up a heap of stones.

  The lady-in-waiting, her skirt rolled up, was scrambling after us, while a guardsman had thrown the Lewis gun over his shoulder, waiting for us. At that moment, something abruptly whistled past above us, and the ribcage of the soldier exploded in crimson fragments of lungs and ribcage.

  The boy, ripped in two, flew five meters back and collapsed on the sidewalk. Then, a blurry human figure in a long cloak weaved together from the fog of the neighboring street. A ghostly luster glowed from under the deep hood, and another magical bomb raced toward us.

  The succubus and I dragged Thomas be
hind the back of the armored vehicle lodged in the fence, and the spell tore up one of its sides, casting it about the palace complex.

  "Faster!" the lieutenant shouted, extending us a hand from atop a heap of rubble.

  He pulled the wounded investigator after him, and Elizabeth-Maria and I got over the heap on our own. At that very instant, the ghost tore off after us.

  The damaged electric defense couldn't hold the infernal beast back, but, slipping between the sparking wire fragments, it lost a large part of its physical nature. Elizabeth-Maria spun in place and easily split the otherworldly creature in half with a wave of the saber. The blade cleaved the ghost into a cloud of dust and it dissolved into tiny burning particles in the air. Just that and it was no more.

  "Faster!" William Grace cried.

  I grabbed Thomas and dragged him after the lieutenant along the lawn with black brittle grass. All the trees in the garden were dead, and there were only green leaves near the far-away castle with its neat towers. But in that direction, we could hear an intense exchange of gunfire, which was covered up from time to time by exploding grenades and artillery rounds. Although the defense kept the demons at bay, the possessed people they made managed to fortify positions on the palace grounds and were now sieging the building.

  Fortunately, William Grace was not intending to fight his way through. Saddling the cable gun on his shoulder, he hurried through the dead garden to a granite-tiled square bordered by the wide-open gates of empty carriage houses. A long administrative building stretched along the fence from there, which is where we were headed.

  The lieutenant ran up on the side porch first, opening the mortice lock with his own key and racing through the barricade. Immediately, a burst from inside thundered open the front door. Two possessed people spilled out, their eyes burning with the gloomy fire of the underworld and their faces covered in blood. They ran down the stairs with unexpected speed, but I met them with a long burst from the Gauss caster, aiming at their legs. Elizabeth-Maria then came from the side and beheaded the now immobilized dead with two confident slashes.

  She was simply soaked in blood to her ears, but she was happy as a kid in a candy store. The lady-in-waiting was looking at her with uncomprehending astonishment and even some fear. Oracles are extremely perceptive of the otherworldly, and all that remained was to pray that she had not recognized Elizabeth-Maria’s true essence.

  William Grace saved the situation.

  "After me!" the lieutenant commanded and went first to take shelter in the building.

  The lady-in-waiting ran after him, and the succubus tailed the procession with the saber in her hand, so I had to drag the wounded investigator on my back all alone. It was quite a challenge to get him up to the third story. Near the end, I was fully soaked through with sweat and nearly collapsing in exhaustion.

  The stairs took us to a long hallway, which stretched down the whole building. Right at the exit from the stairway, we ran into a disfigured body, prostrate on the blood-painted floor. The dead man was illustrious. I could make out the colorless gray of his wide-open eyes perfectly.

  The lady-in-waiting walked around the dead body and suddenly shouted and squeezed her head in her hands.

  "There's something there!" she groaned, pointing to a ghostly white glow at the far end of the corridor. An instant later, the infernal spirit, bending space itself with its unnatural presence, ran on the attack!

  Doors swung open and flew off the hinges. Light bulbs exploded under the ceiling, stucco was torn from the walls, and the parquet floor stood on end in a forest of splinters. The demon, indistinct in the semi-gloom of the corridor, started gaining more and more speed. I pulled an incendiary grenade from my bag but was too late. William Grace stepped out forward, aimed the cable gun and fired.

  Its two-pronged spear raced down the corridor, and the spool started humming in rage, letting the wire out. An instant later, the lance hit something invisible and hovered in the air. It began to be pulled back but, after a second of delay, a blinding arc of electricity flashed between the prongs. With that, the demonic spirit dissolved without a trace, leaving just a gust of musty air racing down the corridor at us. Electricity had proven stronger than magic yet again.

  "Run!" William shouted, reeling in the wire.

  "Drop it!" I advised him.

  "It's still got plenty of charge!" the lieutenant answered. "Run! I'll catch up!"

  And we ran and ran through the whole building. At the end, we found a long, covered gallery leading to the neighboring building, the castle with towers from earlier, the lesser Imperial Palace. There were almost no full windows in the gallery and, in places, I saw gaps going through the walls. There was a battle raging below, rifle shots clacked and grenade explosions thundered.

  William Grace caught up to us and walked in front, shouting:

  "This is Lieutenant Grace! Don't shoot!"

  "Let them through!" came an instant command behind the barricade blocking the passage. "William, faster!"

  The guardsmen defending the palace moved aside a combination safe that was lying on its side and slid a high-caliber Gatling gun out of the way, allowing us to slip through the crack.

  "Any wounded?!" the totally gray gaunt gentleman in an Imperial Guard captain's uniform got on guard with his non-uniform unbuttoned collar. "Stretchers, now!"

  Thomas Smith was instantly laid on a stretcher, which Grace and I had to carry. The captain wouldn’t allow any of his guardsmen to leave their post.

  "Her highness said you'd arrived," he told us, looking at our company, "but she was talking about some kind of transport..."

  "Ugh," the lieutenant went gloomy, "our armored vehicle got bunged up on Palace Square."

  The captain just croaked out in annoyance, not grieving pointlessly about the lost possibility of leaving the palace.

  I guessed he must have gone gray quite recently...

  THE PALACE looked more like a besieged fortress from inside. There were guardsmen armed with electric dischargers and Gauss casters standing watch at the windows. The servants who were still alive were hard at work. Some were loading machine-gun belts, while others were moving massive furniture, setting up additional barricades. There was something for everyone, though perhaps only to avoid a panic.

  Soon, the corridor led us to a central stairway where guardsmen were manning several firing positions at once. And not for nothing. The main entrance was without a doubt the weakest defense point. The stone walls, one and a half or two meters thick, couldn't be penetrated by the possessed, but they could remove doors.

  My eye was met by a lower hall filled with dead bodies. It even seemed that some of the possessed were still moving, but I didn't look particularly closely. I was already nauseous enough.

  We went two stories higher up the central staircase and carried the stretcher into a guest room with terrified ladies-in-waiting. Three Imperial medics immediately ran up to the wounded investigator, and I left Thomas to their care with an easy heart. Elizabeth-Maria was also taken for wounded at first, and the illustrious oracle led her into the washroom to wash the dried blood off her face and hands.

  "Her Highness is expecting you, lieutenant!" the gray-haired captain declared, buttoning up his collar and turning his gaze to me, as if mentally comparing me with a description. "And you as well..."

  "Just a minute!" the lieutenant tarried, throwing the pneumatic caster and electric-jar backpack against the wall. Then, standing at the mirror, he started feverishly smoothing out his disheveled hair.

  "Lieutenant!" the Imperial Guard captain raised his voice. "Her Highness expects you immediately!"

  "Yes, yes! I'm on my way!"

  We surrendered our weapons to the guardsmen standing at the door to the Princess's personal chambers and walked into the spacious room. We stopped at the threshold in respect, though, waiting for the heiress to the throne to deign to pay us attention. As it was, she was frozen at the window with a pair of binoculars in her hands.


  Short, pale and with a frail boyish figure and dark bags under her starry eyes, the Princess gave the impression of a very ill person. There was no reason to expect anything else from someone who had spent the last month in a coma, but she simply got lost in the spacious room with elevated ceilings.

  "Captain, check the posts!" Crown Princess Anna ordered, and her voice was unexpectedly authoritative and strong, as if it wasn't coming from such a sickly body.

  The gray-haired captain pursed his lips but obeyed and left the room. And quickly I heard the lieutenant’s pistol being cocked behind me with a click.

  "What is this, William?" the Princess demanded explanations.

  "We don't need him anymore," Grace answered with so much ease it was as if he were talking about a broken tool.

  I didn't turn around, just raised my right hand and laughed:

  "Did you really believe that tall tale about the werebeast heart, lieutenant? I mean, come on, you cannot seriously be so naive!"

  As soon as I'd crossed the threshold of the medicine-stinking room, I started hearing the vexing beating of a heart. It had once been mine but was now beating in the chest of the Princess, and it was extremely simple to imagine fingers grasping it and giving a slight squeeze.

  I clenched my fist. Princess Anna gasped and grabbed the table with the battery of variously colored flasks but still couldn't stay on her feet and slid down to the floor. William Grace threw himself on the heiress to the throne, lifted her head from the carpet and pointed the pistol at me.

  "Stop it!" he shouted. "Stop it this instant!"

  I unclenched my fingers and the Princess started breathing hoarsely.

  "That is low!" she reproached me, when she had gotten onto the bed with the lieutenant's help and laid her head on the pillow.

  "What’s low is cutting out your cousin's heart!" I parried, placing a hand behind my back and walking over the luxurious Persian rug, looking at the landscape paintings of famous painters hanging on the walls, mostly depicting endless steppe. Some of them were made in such detail that they seemed to be windows into another world. But, unfortunately, they were not. Simple pictures, nothing more.