“Who are you?” Harry asked me.
Without shifting either gaze or gun barrel away from Priest, I said, “I’m a friend of Joe Ledger.”
Not exactly true, but close enough.
At the mention of Ledger’s name I saw several interesting reactions. Violin cocked an intrigued eyebrow at me. Bolt looked confused. But Priest’s face darkened with surprise and anger.
“Ledger,” he said, spitting the name. “He’s a dead man.”
“Not yet,” I said. Again, not exactly true. Not if Acantha was right. Didn’t seem the time to share that info, though.
Violin’s eyes flared for a moment and then she nodded. “Ah. I know who you are,” she said with a faint smile. “Joseph told me about you. I believe you met in Pine Deep.”
I grunted. “He told you about that?”
“He told me everything about it,” she said, and she leaned on the word ”everything.” Balls. Not sure how I felt about that. I’d asked Ledger to keep all information about me on the DL. Either he was a Chatty Cathy or Violin shared a level of confidence that transcended Ledger’s promises to me.
Priest looked past me to the door. “Is Ledger here? Are you part of his team? Does he now run with dogs?”
Calling a guy like me a dog is supposed to be an insult. Some of my relatives would throw down for something like that. I kind of like dogs, and I don’t give much of a cartwheeling fuck what you call me, so I managed not to fly into a homicidal rage.
“First,” I said, “go fuck yourself. Just putting that out there.”
He inclined his head as if accepting that as an appropriate response.
“Second, who the fuck are you and why’s it worth killing people to get some dumb book?”
“You know what the book is?” asked Priest.
“Maybe,” I said.
“You know,” he said, nodding. “Then you know that Violin and her pet monkey are hoping to destroy it. They are on the side of the angels.”
Harry bristled, but Violin merely shrugged.
Priest’s smile turned into a leer. “Yes, they are on the side of the angels. I, however, am not.”
“Cool,” I said. “Good line. Do you practice stuff like that in front of a mirror or does it just come to you?”
Violin warned, “Don’t antagonize him…”
“I’m not,” I said. “Though I just have to mention that you and your butt-buddies all smell like fish rectums.”
Without turning toward his henchmen Priest started to say, “Kill—”
And then there was a shout from the hallway. Male voices and the sound of running. We all turned to see a bunch of men dressed in black pants, shirts, and ski masks come crowding into the doorway. At least a half dozen of them, and they had guns, too. Swell.
They froze when they saw what was going on inside. Everyone looked at everyone, and then the first of the ski-mask crew pointed at Priest.
“Traitor,” he snarled.
“Oh, shit,” whined Harry. “The Brotherhood.”
“Kill them,” bellowed Priest, finally completing his sentence, but directing it at the newcomers.
Guns swiveled but before a single finger could pull a trigger there was a strange sound. A hollow TOK! And one of the Brotherhood thugs exploded. Or, at least his head did. It was very immediate and messy, and we were all showered with gore.
I wheeled and saw that there was another group of men pouring in from the far end of Dr. Holland’s office. They wore black suits, white shirts, and dark ties.
Closers.
I shared a microsecond glance with Violin. She looked scared and amused in equal portions. Her hands flashed and a pair of wicked fighting knives seemed to appear out of nowhere.
Every-damn-body else started firing guns.
Which is when everything went over the edge and down into crazy town.
-20-
Hiro Tsukino
The Fairy Chimneys of Cappadocia
Central Anatolia, Turkey
One Month Ago
It cost Hiro to go over the edge and drop down into the darkness. He knew that he should not go. He was certain it was the wrong call.
But Rink was down there and something had happened to her. Hiro did not have much humanity left in him, not after all that he had done as part of Priest’s team. Although he’d never pulled a trigger, he was complicit in the deaths of so many. His soul was already scorched and stained with the shit of his own choices. His greed had damned him.
Rink, though, was an innocent. In Hiro’s view, at least. Bullied and cowed by Priest, dominated by Boris and Keppler, swept along in a raging tide of dreadful choices. A victim of Priest rather than an accomplice.
Her mad laughter dwindled to a low, broken chuckle. There was no sanity left in it. No hope.
Hiro could not leave her down in the shadows like that.
So he went over the edge. Keppler lunged forward to stop him, but Hiro swatted her hands away.
“Let him go,” said Priest coldly. “Let the brave knight rescue the beautiful princess.”
Those mocking words seem to chase Hiro down into the blackness.
-21-
Crazy Town
There are words that fit.
Clusterfuck is the first one that comes to mind. Oh, and FUBAR. That’s an endlessly useful military acronym for ”fucked up beyond all redemption.”
I dove for the wall and swept my hand down across the light switch and plunged everything into darkness. A computer screen was on and the ghostly blue light traced the outlines of bodies in motion. It wasn’t a strobe but with everyone in motion the effect was almost the same.
I saw Violin shove Harry Bolt out of the way as the Russian guy opened up with his automatic rifle. The hail of bullets tore into the leader of the Brotherhood, splashing his men with blood that looked black in the bad light.
Mr. Priest and his crew of zombie henchmen spread out, ducking low and firing at anything that moved. Half a dozen rounds from the Russian’s gun struck one of the Closers center mass, and although the dark-suited man staggered back he did not fall. Instead he caught his balance and brought up a very weird looking handgun. Instead of a barrel it had a ring of metal prongs and when the Closer fired the gun there was that same tok sound. The Russian’s body seemed to explode from within like a potato in a microwave if you don’t poke holes in it. His arms and head were propelled away from his torso by streaks of fire.
“Holy shit!” I heard someone say and turned to see Harry Bolt dive for cover. There was another tok and the wall behind where he had been standing erupted into bright flame.
Violin did not retreat from the attackers but instead whirled toward the Brotherhood killers and waded into them, her knives gleaming like hot silver as she attacked. I have never in my life seen anyone fight like her. She was like a great dancer, with all of the posture and dignity of a prima ballerina and all of the lethality of a threshing machine. Her lithe body evading bullets and blades as she moved among the larger, stronger male killers and cut them to pieces. Drops of blood seeded the air like thousands of black jewels. Men screamed and reeled away, clutching the stumps of arms or clawing at the holes where eyes or noses should have been. I don’t know if it’s even possible for carnage to have a kind of beauty, but if so, then Violin was an artist of destruction.
Mr. Priest was no slouch, either. He had a long knife in one hand and a snub-nosed pistol in another and was using the cover of desks, file cabinets, and work tables to make his way across the room toward the Closers. He shot one in the heart but it didn’t put the man down. The guy hardly winced, in fact, which made me wonder what kind of body armor he had beneath his suit. Priest didn’t burn up a lot of calories either being surprised or frustrated by that and put his next bullet through the bridge of the guy’s nose. Nope, wasn’t wearing body armor there. The heavy lead bullet made a small dot on the way in but exploded the back of the Closer’s skull. The man behind him got an eyeful and mouthful of hair, skull fragment
s, and brains. He reeled back, gagging and pawing the stuff away, and in that moment Priest stepped up and corkscrewed the point of his knife in the man’s eye-socket.
Harry Bolt began crawling across the floor toward an object and I realized that in his panic he’d dropped his gun. Idiot. But as he reached it, the Japanese guy kicked it away and aimed his own gun at Harry’s head.
So, fuck it.
I changed all the way. It’s a violent process and it hurts like a motherfucker. It also tears the shit out of my clothes. They flew apart and my backpack thudded to the floor. When I was younger the process took minutes. Now I can do it in the space of a leap. One minute I’m a short, dorky-looking guy with thinning hair, and the next I’m a wolf.
A big, bad wolf.
-22-
Mr. Priest
The Fairy Chimneys of Cappadocia
Central Anatolia, Turkey
One Month Ago
Priest stood on the edge of the shaft, bent as far forward as safety would allow. If he lost balance, though, he knew Boris and Keppler would catch him. They were fully attuned to him, a connection that he treasured but did not yet fully understand. He knew that Hiro and Rink thought that it was his own mind, his own will, or perhaps some dark magic he possessed that bound the Russian soldier and the nuclear scientist to him.
How wrong they were.
They were not his slaves.
At best, they were on loan to him. At worst they were there to insure that he did not fail or stray from his mission. There were forces more powerful than Oscar Bell, the Gateway Project, or the United States Government, and they wanted those books found.
No…they wanted them liberated.
They wanted the knowledge in those books to be rediscovered. They wanted the voices of those tomes to speak after centuries—and in some cases millennia—of enforced silence.
Already some of those voices were speaking in Priest’s head. They never left him, were never silent. Hiro was too dense to realize that his smiles were a screen. A façade. He never let them see the face he saw when he looked into his shaving mirror. When the smile was gone the terror was there.
The terror and…
It shamed Priest to know that there was joy there, too. A carnal delight whose shape and depth he shuddered to consider. Rink had glimpsed it only once, and that was why she now carried a gun. Not to defend herself against guards or monsters. She carried the gun because she was afraid of him. Of the touch of his hand and the appetites that were connected to his hands and tongue and cock. To the rapacious other who had taken up residence in his flesh on that first day in Poliske. Even Priest did not know its name. It was not one of the Elder Gods or the Great Old Ones. It was a slave to them, a worshipper or priest-spirit. Priest did not know what to call it.
All he knew was that it owned him.
Body and soul.
He could feel the tentacles of its energy wrapped around him. Probing tendrils of the thing entered him at every orifice and coiled around his heart. It knew everything about him. It shared knowledge with him, but only hints. Never the deepest truths. Enough, though. Enough to help him find the Unlearnable Truths. Enough to have limited precognition so that he could stay one step ahead of the Closers and the Brotherhood of the Lock.
Enough to keep him chained to the vehicle of this quest.
The ropes that trailed over the edge had been slack for long minutes and now they jerked, became taut.
“Pull them up,” he said.
Boris took hold of Hiro’s rope and Keppler grabbed Rink’s. They braced their feet, squatted, and then began reeling the others up, straining with the weight, pulling hand over hand as sweat burst from their pores. Boris was sturdy and muscular and he managed easily; but Keppler was half his size, and yet she worked without groan or complaint. Priest marveled at it. He knew that he could assign her any task and she would perform it with a kind of mechanical efficiency and inhuman dedication, even if it killed her.
So strange. Useful, but so very strange.
He watched without helping as the slaves pulled and pulled.
Hiro emerged first, pulling himself up even as Boris reeled in the line. When he reached the edge of the shaft Hiro snaked out a hand, caught the lip of rock, and hauled himself up. He rested on his knees and turned to watch Rink being pulled up. Priest could not see the urban explorer’s face, but he saw Rink as she came into the light. Her hair was wild and soaked with sweat, and her eyes were filled with madness.
She was smiling in all the wrong ways.
Rink grabbed Keppler’s proffered hand and swarmed over the edge to stand panting like a dog. The utility pack she wore strapped to her chest bulged and strained against its buckles. A dark joy leapt up in Priest’s chest, though he knew it was not his own emotion. The thing that lived inside him exulted at the sight as Rink unbuckled her pack and removed a thick book bound in plates of ebony wood.
“You got it,” cried Priest. “Give it to me.”
Rink held the book, looking at the cover, on which complex designs had been painted in gold leaf. They were star charts overlaid with the precise shapes of a perverse twist on sacred geometry. Rink bent her head toward the book and laid her cheek against it, eyelids drifting shut. Her lips moved as she silently murmured a prayer to the book.
“Rink,” said Priest sternly, “give me the book.”
Without opening her eyes, Rink turned her face toward the book. Her mouth curled into a lascivious smile, and then her pink tongue slipped like a wriggling worm from between her lips. She licked the cover of the book, then stiffened her tongue so that just the tip of it traced a pentagonal shape. The sight of this sent waves of revulsion and erotic joy through Priest, both emotions coming in equal measure. He felt himself grow hard.
“Rink…” began Priest again, but before he could finish, Hiro took the book from her, turned and offered it to Priest.
Priest paused for a moment and then reached out to accept the black-bound Eligoth Ministries. As soon as his bare flesh touched it his heart spasmed with deep pain and his knees nearly buckled. He looked up from it to Hiro. The urban explorer’s eyes were dark, his face expressionless.
“What happened down there?” asked Priest. “What did you see?”
Hiro smiled then. A broad, happy smile that pulled the corners of his mouth and exposed his wet teeth. His smile grew and grew and grew until Priest thought that it must soon rip the corners of Hiro’s mouth.
“Stop that,” he ordered.
Rink came up to stand beside Hiro. And after a moment Keppler and Boris joined them. The four of them in a line, and they all smiled at him.
They smiled and smiled and smiled.
Then Hiro reached out a hand and placed his palm flat against the book that Priest held.
He said, “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.
-23-
Crazy Town
I roared as I slammed into the Japanese guy and sent him sprawling.
He was fast, though, and managed to twist away from my claws, but his aim was for shit. He fired two shots and both missed me by inches. I landed and swiped at him, knocking his gun from his hand, but he scrabbled backward out of reach. I turned to Harry and shifted enough of my face to allow me to speak.
“Hide!” I snarled.
Harry Bolt screamed like a girl and kicked me full in the face.
It rocked me sideways and I caught a glimpse of him crawling as fast as he could past me. Asshole.
I pivoted and slashed at him. Not to cut him, though. My nails sliced through the straps of his backpack and it slid around and fell off. Harry looked back and I saw him give it a moment of thought. Grab the pack or run away from the scary monster. I guess I expected him to run.
He didn’t, though.
A sob of fear broke from his chest and he flopped forward to try and snatch the torn straps of his backpack.
Kid had some balls. No brains, but he did have stones. From the look of terrified surpr
ise I think he was startled by what he was doing. It was a weirdly endearing thing. Here was a kid who was totally out of his mind with fear and clearly out of his depth with the violent madness going on around us, and yet he tried to do the right thing rather than the safe thing. Maybe there was something in him that he didn’t yet recognize. A buried courage, or the makings of it, anyway.
Shame that I couldn’t let him have his moment.
I bared my teeth at him—all wolf again—and snatched the bag away, flinging it behind me. I heard it thump against the one I’d dropped.
Harry dove after it at the same moment that the Japanese guy lunged at me. The collision sent all three of us toppling backward in a sprawl. They both used a lot of elbows, knees, fists, feet, and knuckles.
I used teeth and claws.
The Japanese guy tried to make a real fight of it. He chopped me in the throat with an edge-hand blow. One of those good old-fashioned karate chops. A good one, too. And it hurt. I yelped—yes, werewolves yelp. Fuck you.—and fell sideways as the Japanese guy grabbed for Harry, caught his hair, yanked him away from the backpack and punched him in the face three times. Very hard. Blood erupted from Harry’s nose, but even as he fell back bleeding he stuck his thumb in his attacker’s eye. It burst the eye in a spectacularly ugly way. The Japanese man should have rolled away screaming. He didn’t. Instead he opened his mouth and vomited on Harry.
Not puke. Nope. That would have almost been okay.
Instead a black mass of some oily muck came pouring out. At first I thought it was blood but then it burst apart and became something else.
It became a mass of oily black tentacles.
Yeah.
Deal with that.
The tentacles wrapped around Harry Bolt’s face and probed at him, trying to enter his mouth and nostrils and ears. Harry screamed and I can’t blame him one bit.
I got to all fours and darted my head forward to clamp my teeth around the tentacles at the point where they erupted from the Japanese guy’s mouth. I bit down hard and felt rubbery tissue and something that crunched like bones. The taste was appalling. It was like biting fish that had been sitting in the sun for a couple of days. A smell both dead and alive with wrongness. I bit all the way through though, and then jerked my head to one side, ripping as much of them away as I could.
Limbus, Inc., Book III Page 32
