The Ugly stumbled forward and grunted – but he did not fall.
Damn! Wodan thought, heart racing. His armor’s too heavy – I should have switched to the magnum!
The Ugly cursed as he tried to regain his balance. Wodan fumbled with his bag, then realized that the Ugly might have more traps, and could effectively own the hallway. He scanned the walls in a panic, then saw a black metal box fixed to the wall. A similar explosive device must have been attached to the far end of the hall; it was easy to see when he knew it was there, but its coloration helped hide it on the black wall. Wodan aimed his automatic at the box and fired as the Ugly turned toward him. The Ugly raised his long rifle – then the box exploded in a cloud of dust that filled the hall. Wodan pulled away from the corner just as the Ugly fired, blasting indiscriminately.
Hands shaking, Wodan stood and fumbled the Coil magnum from his bag. He glanced to the side and saw that the other Coilmen had already abandoned them – Pelethor stood alone.
“He’s armored!” said Wodan, brandishing the magnum. In between bursts of fire, he could hear the Ugly coughing violently. “We won’t be able to see each other through the dust, but we’ve got to do this together if we want to kill him!”
“Fine!” said Pelethor.
The Ugly’s rifle paused and Wodan’s heart hung on the edge of absolute terror. He was about to leap directly into the line of fire, not knowing whether the Ugly’s clip was empty or not.
Pelethor dashed into the hall and leveled his rifle. Wodan spun around the corner and, with his magnum in both hands, aimed into the cascading wall of dust. Over and over they fired blindly. The force of the magnum blasted through his arms, again, again, again. Finally it clicked empty – then the Ugly’s rifle spat fire and Wodan felt something like a sledgehammer strike his side and fling him into the wall. Unable to breathe, he dropped to the floor.
Pelethor reloaded his rifle and stared into the swirling dust. Wodan was deaf, drowning, numb from pain. As if in a nightmare he saw the black armored Ugly stride from the wall of dust. The red runes on his armor danced in the shifting, hellish lights. His heavy iron-shod boots ground up the rubble underfoot.
Then Wodan noticed that the Ugly carried his rifle limp at his side, swinging loosely on his trigger finger. A flood of dark blood fell in thick showers from his joint openings and shattered face plate. The armored Ugly leaned forward, then crashed into the ground.
Pelethor kneeled and Wodan finally sucked in a shallow gulp of air. He tore off his jacket, then pulled the heavy bulletproof vest over his head and tossed it aside. He was burning up and every breath was torture, but he was alive.
“Can you walk?” said Pelethor.
“Thanks, Jerry,” said Wodan, ignoring him as he gripped his side. “Thank you, Jerry.”
Pelethor turned away and stared at the Cognati leaning against the wall. The mercenary ignored them both as he rubbed his back, his face upturned toward the ceiling. Finally the Cognati’s force field hummed and his dead companion lifted into the air. The Cognati turned, stumbled, then left the way he had come. The dead man floated behind him.
“Can you-”
“I’m fine,” said Wodan, rising suddenly as he finished reloading his Coil magnum. “Let’s get Scorpio.”
The two crossed the hall, stepped over a dozen corpses, then entered the glowing room.
Wodan’s mind was flooded with horror as demonic shadow-puppets danced in an endless spiral, cast by machines spinning in every corner of the black chamber. An old woman sat in a mock throne with her head hanging limp. In the center of the room, radiating pure evil and majesty, stood Boris, naked to the waist with Scorpio stitched to his torso. His eyes were black diamonds as shadows leaped across his hard, expressionless face, a mask covering a bottomless pit. Boris held a long, dark blue sword at his side.
Wodan felt his body frozen in place, crushed by the man’s aura and strength of will. Pelethor jerked, then fell forward onto his knees with such force that his kneecaps sounded as if they had shattered. He retched loudly, then fell forward.
“Pelethor!” Wodan rasped. “Get up, man!”
Wodan tore his gaze from Boris. He felt himself drowning in confusion – the Captain who had, until now, shown nothing but completely selfless bravery now lay twitching on the floor.
Wodan summoned his will and stared into the eyes of Boris. The unyielding face bore into him, crushing his soul. Wodan raised his gun with both hands. Boris lifted his sword and touched it to the child’s head. Wodan fired and Boris’s head jerked back, his forehead completely torn open. Boris crashed into the ground and the sword clattered against the granite tiles.
Wodan dashed forward, dropped his gun, and unsheathed the Blade of the Engels. The child laid still and Wodan feared that something terrible had happened, but as he cut through the stitches little Scorpio jerked to life and wailed loudly and Wodan felt tears burning in his face. Wodan freed a little hand and it flew into the air and fiercely clutched at Wodan’s nose. The terrible stitches still stuck out from the little arm, and Wodan unconsciously touched his mouth to the little hand as he sliced through the rest of the bindings, his hands slick with blood.
“I’ve got you, little buddy!” said Wodan, pulling the boy close to him. “I’ve got you, buddy, I’ve got you!”
Wodan turned to the old crone, glaring at her. He realized that the woman was dead; the entire front of her gown was covered in blood. He held Scorpio close, then approached her. A torn sash hung from her neck. Wodan moved it aside with the Blade of the Engels, then pushed her head to the side. He could not tell if her neck was malformed, or if it had been torn out. A large chunk was missing, but the wound was very clean. Just then something scurried across the floor and Wodan jumped back in fright. Something like a rat or a snake dashed behind the long curtains covering the open windows, then disappeared. Wodan turned away and saw Pelethor sitting up on his knees, pale-faced and staring at him weakly.
Wodan knelt by his side and was about to pass Scorpio to him, then realized that the man would have to be carried himself. Wodan put Pelethor’s arms about his shoulder, then pushed them both off the ground with shaking legs. He returned to the hall, thinking that they could return the way they’d come, but Pelethor groaned and turned about. He pointed in another direction. Wodan gripped the father and son and stumbled down a dark hallway, then Pelethor pointed down another direction, then grunted and pointed at a stairwell that led upward.
They came to a landing and when Wodan opened the door the cool night wind hit them. The air reeked of smoke. They were alone on the roof of the fortress and, as Wodan looked out on the city, he saw that it was in flames for miles around, red tongues licking at the black sky of a dark world.
Wodan laid Pelethor on the ground, then removed his shirt and wrapped Scorpio in it to protect him from the cold. Sporadic gunfire echoed in the distance, and a few zeppelins dueled further out. Nearby, one massive fortress of a zeppelin hung over the courtyard. Storm of Man’s Last Breath was painted around a scarred skull-and-bones on its side.
With great effort, Pelethor lifted himself, then staggered to the edge of the fortress. He knelt and picked up something. A searchlight on the massive zeppelin swung about and fell directly on Pelethor, casting a harsh white halo around him. In the light, Wodan could see that he was holding a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher.
Just as voices called out on the airship, Pelethor lifted the rocket and fired. There was a tiny explosion on the surface of the balloon, then fire spread in a great flash. The Ugly on board cried out and the entire ship jerked as the force that held it aloft was snuffed out. The ship fell slowly, a giant tomb full of dead men drowning in ink-black darkness. A man with white dread locks looked at them from the side, wondering who had betrayed them.
Wodan looked at Pelethor and admired him greatly. Though he did not understand what had felled him before, he’d seen greater courage from him than from anyone else in Pontius.
Wodan stood on the e
dge of the roof and looked at the stars shining through a haze of smoke. His body was exhausted, but he felt full of life. Without their leaders, the Ugly were destroyed. The remnants would surely be hunted down by the other gangs. Barkus was still alive, but he would soon be hanged. Even if he was released from prison this very moment, he would have no home, no clan, no family, nothing. Wodan’s revenge was complete. He smiled, for he could now take his first steps on a greater path.
“I’ll free them all, little Scorpio,” he said. “I’ll free them all.”
* * *
Far from the battle, in an abandoned section of Pontius, four cloaked men tended to another cloaked man lying on the ground. Finally one of them rose and approached the doorway of a darkened shell of a building. The small figure threw back his hood; it was Jared, the young Cognati.
“Hand,” he said. “You still there?”
A dark figure stirred in the doorway. “I’m still here,” said the Hand, his voice distorted. “I’m still waiting here.”
“That’s right, Hand. You just wait in there and your new employer will pick you up.”
Jared studied the immobile figure for a long time. Finally the Hand said, “I would have protected him if he was not weak. If he had not led us to destruction. I would have fought you harder.”
“You don’t have to explain anything,” said Jared.
“I would have fought you harder.”
Is he retarded? Jared wondered.
“Well, anyway,” said Jared, “we’ve fulfilled our end of the contract, including the secret addendum added to the contract by your new employer. The Ugly are gone, we are paid, and we’ll be leaving first thing tomorrow. The city’s yours, so enjoy it.” Jared smiled wickedly.
The Hand stood in silence for a while, then said, “If he’d been stronger, if he’d truly been the Head, then I would have fought hard enough to kill you.”
Jared laughed, then said, “Guess we’ll never know, though, will we? Ultimately, we’re both mercenaries.”
Part Three
Die by the Gun
Chapter Twenty-One
The Throne of Pontius
Director Janice leaned against a table in the break room and waited for the Smith-made coffee maker to finish its work. He rubbed his bald head like a lucky totem as he stared into space.
Detective DeSark approached, then offered a smile that lifted his bushy, white mustache. “Looks like the young bucks are busy,” he said, “now that we’re enforcing the revised Law against self-scarring.”
“We’re picking up the stragglers left and right,” said Janice. “Don’t know if we’re gonna have a place to put them all.”
“Going to have to start hangin’ ’em, then,” said DeSark, laughing and shaking his head. “Poor, dumb kids.”
“Speakin’ of hangin’,” said Janice, “you know I heard the judges have Barkus on over a thousand counts of enslavement?”
“A-a-ah, he’s gonna hang for sure,” said DeSark. “The real irony is that I bet the boys who did all the paperwork against him were slaves themselves.”
“Yeah, well,” said Janice, pouring his coffee.
After a pause, DeSark said, “Sir, you know anything about the siege at Sera’s?”
“If I knew what happened there, DeSark, believe me - I’d tell you. I don’t know what happened any better than anyone else.”
Both men nodded tiredly. It seemed that during the Coil and Smith attack on the Ugly, a troop of berserkers had remained to guard the mansion of the late Utrecht Sera. When it became obvious that the Ugly had been effectively destroyed, the Law swarmed on the mansion, hoping to commandeer it for themselves. They had met with greater resistance than they’d planned for, and ended up laying siege to the place for three days and nights. There were conflicting accounts about what happened after that.
Some said the berserkers broke and ran, shooting as they went, but others claimed that someone else had attacked from behind to distract the Lawmen so the berserkers could make their escape. Whatever the case, many Lawmen and berserkers had died, but a crew of Ugly berserkers had escaped and were on the run, just waiting to cause a lot of headaches and a lot of paperwork when they finally decided to go on a rampage.
“Well, sir,” said DeSark, “I didn’t want to chew your ear off about all that nonsense. What I really wanted to talk to you about...”
“Yeah?”
“Is that I didn’t get no overtime pay last week, you know, when I was OH SHIT!!!”
At once both men screamed and dropped their coffee. Janice threw his great bulk onto the table and knocked over cups and condiments while DeSark leaped into the air and tucked both knees under his chin before he came down again. DeSark scuttled away, then peeked around the corner at Janice.
“THE HELL WAS THAT THING!?” shrieked Janice.
“RAT!” screamed DeSark, laughing hysterically. “G-GODDAMN RAT IN HERE, I THINK!”
“F-f-f-fu-u-uck!” hissed Janice, sliding off the table and running out of the room.
* * *
Wodan attended another Businessmen’s meeting with Virgil. Everyone greeted him warmly, and in the background he could hear people retelling the story of how he and Pelethor had confronted Boris and rescued Scorpio. In one version of the story, he and Pelethor had faced down a hundred Ugly and even chased off the two Hands, who fled in terror. Wodan took their gushing praise with a grain of salt, remembering how these men had calmly planned for genocide if he’d failed.
Virgil was excited by the changes made possible by the destruction of the Ugly, but Wodan could see that he was very tired. He was kept busy hunting down the remaining dregs of the Ugly, handfuls of youths and berserkers with nothing left to destroy but themselves now that they had no more family to support their mindless hatred.
Wodan approached a circle of Businessmen seated around Miss Oliver. She was in the middle of speaking about their plans for a complete reconstruction of the ruined area around the granite fortress, including making loans available to families displaced by the battle. Wodan sat down near her, and eventually she turned to him and said, “Wodan, when we were talking about the Black Valley investment the other day, I remember that you were interested in the animals of the area...”
“I am,” said Wodan. “I mean to return there, some day. Did you encounter something else interesting while you were there?”
“We did. One man found a family of bear cubs. They were black and white, very cute, very friendly. I’m assuming their parents were killed by demons, or some of the primitives that live around the area. Eventually the man who found the cubs sold them to the showman who was with us, the one with the lizard boy that we were talking about earlier. The showman was convinced that the bears were extremely clever, and he wanted to teach them to do tricks. Of course, he was very cruel to the cubs, just as he was to the lizard.
“The showman became convinced that the bear cubs were stealing things from him – a big deal, when you consider that he kept them locked in cages. He became a laughingstock with all his tales of cubs leaving their cages in the night, stealing from him, and then returning to their cages before they could be caught. But he was determined to profit off these clever animals, so he taught them a trick that would prove they were capable of addition and subtraction. He privately bragged to me about how the trick works; it involves the animal pawing at the ground a certain number of times, then stopping when it sees the owner give some visual cue, like a nod. So the showman drilled the routine into the cubs, got a lot of the laborers together, bets were placed, and then… the bears refused to cooperate. The showman lost a lot of money, and was humiliated. He took to beating the cubs out in the open, where anyone could see.
“Then he really started to lose it. He became paranoid that the cubs were out to get him. He claimed that not only were they secretly capable of understanding math, they were starting to draw pictures of him in the dirt. Pictures that showed him in embarrassing situations, or even dead. Whenever he would fetc
h someone to look at one of these pictures and there would be nothing to see, he would claim that the bears had scratched out the pictures.”
Wodan laughed, then said, “But surely no animal could ever do something like that!”
“Normally I would agree, but something definitely happened to set that man off. He came close to having a nervous breakdown over the matter.”
“So what happened to the bears and the showman?”
“I don’t know. The demons attacked. The showman didn’t escape with me, so I assume he was killed, eaten, or worse.”
Wodan thought for a moment, then remembered the strange, angry hermit he’d met in the valley. His thoughts were interrupted when Miss Oliver added, “Perhaps none of it’s true, Wodan, but just remember – there are more and stranger things in this world than anyone can ever know or understand.”
Wodan nodded, thinking of the Cognati and their strange power. He knew that he knew very little about the world.
Wodan caught Pelethor watching him from across the room. They had not spoken with one another since the battle. Wodan lifted his hand in greeting. Pelethor smiled and nodded coolly.
* * *
The most powerful Coil Captains sat in council at a darkened restaurant owned by one of their members. This was the first time they had met since the destruction of the Ugly, and some of the Captains openly wore green sashes on the sleeves of their fine suits, for they no longer had anything to fear.
They were excited. Though they had suffered incredible losses during the battle, they knew that recruitment would come easily, more easily than ever before. They discussed taking over the slave racket and moving into prostitution, now that that market was open to them. A few of the older Captains hinted that they took orders directly from the three legendary Master Thieves, and other Captains, who had no direct access to the Master Thieves, and were not sure if they even existed, nodded knowingly and hinted that they too occasionally had meetings with those enigmatic figures.
Demonworld Book 3: The Floyd Street Massacre Page 25
