Madeline flipped backwards off Julian’s shoulders and landed on the steps behind him. Cracks had formed in the edges of the display screen over her face. It remained pitch-black and appeared functional. Cora took a breath to steady herself and looked to the others.
“Ready for another round?”
Madeline nodded a reply without a word.
Julian rolled his shoulders. He motioned to the corpse below. “Who the hell would give a troll a cyber arm?”
Cora snatched up her Predator from the stairs and sighed. “Bauer has a contract with Tetriarch. Wounded soldiers get to rejoin an army and get their limbs replaced as a sign-on bonus. It’s how Lucius buys loyalty.”
Madeline stood at the ready. Either she was in the zone or badly rattled and too proud to say so. Unless she’d encountered a great deal of resistance outside of the museum hits, she’d probably never been in life-or-death combat before.
“You good?” Cora asked.
She nodded and looked ahead, waiting. Cora took a deep breath, adjusted her Arcadia’s light projecting from her wrist and proceeded forward. The first flight, she encountered nothing, not even a trap. Her path to the 45th floor, silently stepping ahead, provoked not a single shuffle or peep from the floors below. She swooped down the last few steps and pressed her back against the door to the floor. She used two fingers to point at her eyes and motioned Madeline to check the door.
The young girl twirled past the door and pressed her back along the wall on the opposite side of Cora. She leaned over and surveyed the door. Looking back to Cora, she shook her head.
“Nothing? Really?” Cora asked.
“Not within ten meters,” she said.
“Julian, final set,” Cora said, pointing to the stairs.
With Excalibur at the ready, Julian moved across the landing and checked the next set down. He turned.
“Nothing, either.”
Cora huffed. “This has got to be a trap. Vincent.”
The raven flew to her arm. She looked him right in the eyes.
“I’m proud of you, but no more letting yourself get caught like that,” she scolded. The bird cawed back at her. “I appreciate it, but you put yourself in danger. Now, I need you to go on ahead and look around. Just look, you hear? Let me see what you see.”
“You talk to the bird like it talks back to you,” Julian said, puzzled.
“There’s a reason my Native name is Speaks With Ravens,” she replied. “He gets me. I get him.”
Cora took a deep breath and squatted down. She looked up at Julian.
“Cover me. I’m going to be out of it for a second.”
Closing her eyes, she pulled up the warm ball of magic from within her guts. It was a strain, expending so much magic. She hadn’t been this exhausted since Berlin. Pushing and kneading at the magic, she sent it along the tether between her and Vincent. As though riding a wave, her sight moved across the line until she saw through Vincent’s eyes. The freedom of flight made even a faint rush of recycled office air exhilarating. His vision in darkness was amazing, better than any night vision goggles could provide.
He glided in careful arcs around the stairwell, giving a wide berth to potential shooters below. He stayed as high as he could to avoid their sight. As he weaved around, there wasn’t a single man there. The path all the way down both stair sets and even a glimpse of the next one yielded the result that not a single soldier laid in wait. Though it was possible there was someone in Apex camouflage, the lack of protection made it seem unlikely. Releasing the magic, Cora snapped back across the line until her wings and talons became hands and feet again. She sucked in a heavy breath, her eyes opening wide, as if she’d woken from a dream.
“Are you alright?” Julian asked, setting an arm to her shoulder.
Cora nodded, getting her wits back. “I’m fine. It looks like we’re clear. Madeline, stay on thermo in case of Apex camo, but I didn’t see anyone.”
“Let’s move,” Madeline replied, leading the charge.
Darkest Dreams
The team made it down one flight, then the next, to the entrance of the 44th floor. Again, Madeline checked the door and shook her head. Cora pulled it open. Julian moved past her, clearing the corners with his sidearm. Cora and Madeline followed suit, eyes sharp. The halls were empty. The windows out to the clear night sky of Paris flickered with lightning. Above, the battle raged on. Somewhere in the distance, a voice, commanding and confident, talked away.
They moved past offices, down the main hall, headed for the center of the floor. Still, they encountered no resistance. Cora’s brow furrowed. This didn’t make any sense. If Crowley was the big prize Lucius was so intent on preventing her from reaching that he’d step in himself, she couldn’t imagine why he wasn’t better guarded. There should have been the most resistance here. Cora stopped and listened to the voice.
“...but that’s not what he said,” a calm, soothing man’s voice came. The voice was aristocratic and British.
Their pace slowed. Two Bauer soldiers spread out on the industrial rug in front of them. Cora surveyed them with her flashlight. Both of them were dead for some time, their skin already pale and cold. Cora gave a curious look to Julian, but he had no better answer for her. They round a corner, down another hall, and found another body. Shining her light into several of the glass-door offices, there were others, all dead.
The British man kept talking. Cora followed the sound of his voice, all the while keeping her Predator moving back and forth. At the center of the bland, sparsely decorated halls, she found a single office that stood out. Once a conference room with glass doors and walls, it was now a fiberglass-lined prison. Inside, more than ten Bauer soldiers sat Indian-style in a circle around the speaker. Several light sticks and Arcadia’s illuminated their space. An old man with white hair and a great white beard sat on a cot in hospital scrubs. He looked out over the soldiers and continued speaking.
“Instead, we’re taught that, ‘We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.’ Isn’t that what it is all about? Jonathan, what does that quote mean to you?”
Cora’s brow wrinkled. Even as she drew closer, none of the Bauer soldiers turned to see her. The old man took a glance, but his eyes fell on one soldier in particular.
“Umm,” the soldier started. “Doesn’t that go back to the concept that perception is reality?”
The old man smiled and bowed his head. “Indeed, it does. It is that and so much more at the heart of Buddhism. The world is what we make of it, both in our mind, our heart, and in our deeds. Now, do not be alarmed, gentlemen, but we have guests.”
Cora aimed at the soldiers, knowing her Predator could tear through that fiberglass-like material after a few well-placed rounds of Rhino bullets. The men turned at their hips and looked at her. Some became alert, spinning around to their knees. Julian and Madeline came up alongside her, ready to go on her move. The old man waved his hands toward the ground.
“Easy, easy,” he said. He smiled at Cora. “There’s no need for any of this. What comes from trying to harm them, gentlemen?”
No one responded. The soldiers eyed her with fear. They wanted to reach for their guns to feel strong again.
“Thomas,” the old man scolded in a grandfatherly way. “What happens if you try to stop them?”
A soldier near to the door released his tension and dropped his head, defeated. “The tides of fate will wash us out to sea.”
“Correct. Wonderful, gentlemen,” the old man smiled proud. He slapped his knee. “I think we’ve really gotten somewhere today. Such enlightenment and wisdom. Now, Thomas, we are gentlemen here, so unlock the door and let the lady in.”
The young man reached up and held his wrist to a biometric scanner beside the door. It buzzed and clicked. He pushed the door open and offered an expectant look to Cora. She turned her head sideways to Julian. In a night full of the bizarre and unexpected, this took the cake. Julian shrugg
ed, with no better an understanding than she had. She turned to the old man and walked for the door, weapon ready.
“Professor Crowley?” she asked.
The old man bowed his head. “I see my reputation precedes me. And who are you and your friends, young lady?”
“Not much time for introductions, I’m afraid,” Cora replied. “I’m the woman here to get you out.”
She pushed through the open doorway with a lump in her throat. In a small, enclosed cell surrounded by Bauer soldiers, she felt like capping every one of their nonviolent selves just to be on the safe side. She raised a hand to Julian and Madeline, stopping them at the doorway. Stepping over the seated soldiers, she slinked through the crowd until she stood beside the man she’d come to rescue. He looked up at her and smiled.
“Those men in the hall...” Cora said.
Crowley shook his head. “Terribly unfortunate business, that. They were savages, too bent on embracing base desires. These men wished to learn. The two could not coexist.”
“I see,” Cora replied, more unsettled after hearing the answer. “My name is Cora Blake. I was told to seek you out.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” he said. For the first time, Cora noticed the slight slur in his speech. She turned and checked the side of his neck. She found mild bruising from multiple injection sites.
“They’ve been dosing you with Trillozine,” Cora said, reaching for the small medical pouch on her belt.
“They have, to keep themselves safe,” he replied. “They acted under orders, of course, but we fear what we do not understand. Yes, gentlemen?”
Cora turned to see the Bauer guards nodding in agreement. It wasn’t just that they seemed to idolize him, they were absolutely enthralled. It seemed unnatural. She closed her eyes and brought the cold flip-side of her magic to her eyes, seeing the Spirit World around her for answers.
A tether, unlike the web of blue and white strands that bound people to those they’ve touched, wound its way from Crowley’s chest every man present. Crowley radiated an aura of powerful light around him, one of the strongest she’d seen in someone that wasn’t a spirit like her father. The light was yellow, and the tethers met in the pit of Crowley’s stomach, where it churned like the sun. She turned back to the old man with eyes black as night.
“You’re doing what I once tried,” she said, amazed. “You found a way to push through the drugs.”
Crowley smiled and winked. “The mind overcomes all things. The body obeys if the will is strong enough.”
“Yeah, well, it’s time to take your leash off,” she said. She produced a syringe with a long needle and took aim with it. Before he could protest, she jabbed it into his heart. Once she depressed the plunger, Crowley’s eyes rolled. He gasped. Clutching at his chest, he struggled to catch his breath.
“Are you alright, Professor?” Cora asked. “Kicks like a mule, I know.”
The old man hung his head, gathering himself. Within seconds, he’d slowed his own breathing. He looked up with eyes as black as night. He had a dark smile that chilled Cora to the bone. He stared at her as though looking for something in her eyes. His gaze hypnotic and intense, he beckoned her closer. She found herself moving toward him, even as she realized she didn’t feel comfortable doing it.
“You walk with the darkness, young lady,” he said whispered. “Yet you keep it locked up, so far away. Let us open your mind, then.”
He reached up to Cora and pressed a thumb to the bridge of her nose. A pulse of magic fed into her through his touch. A cold wave seeped in and coursed through her head like a painkiller. The power she felt from him was too intense. She freed a hand from her weapon and grabbed him by the wrist. She pried him off without resistance.
Images flashed in her mind, replacing the real world for a second. Cora moaned. It happened again, only longer this time. A vision of decaying, dead flesh walking the earth. She shook it off.
“What have you done to me?” Cora said, grabbing at the side of his cot. She tried to keep her wits about her, but the images kept returning.
“I’ve opened your mind. The Hindu call it our third eye. I have merely let you see what you always knew was there,” Crowley replied as if he’d done her a favor.
Cora’s vision clouded. She knew she was awake, yet she slipped into the darkness of dream. Her breath was stolen from her chest. Pressure wrapped all around her like a cage. She pushed and fought at it, struggling to move. The pressure was against every inch of her, but the weight around her mouth terrified her. If it went on much longer, she’d have to inhale out of reflex, and let whatever surrounded her into her lungs.
Her fingers pushed through the mass. The cool, moist earth weighed her down on every side. The tips of her fingers broke through, feeling air. She knew where she was, where she needed to be. In the suffocating earth, she pulled herself out from her own grave. Her body emerged from the terror. She gasped for air, still buried to her waist as she collapsed to the ground.
Blades of grass stung like pins against her sensitive flesh. She pulled her legs out to the sounds of groans and shambling feet. This time, things were different. She knew this dream, as she’d seen it so many times before. She looked left and right, to the endless legions of dead walking to some blazing light on the horizon, amid a field of tombstones. Her eyes blinked into the Spirit World. The dead were nothing but empty shells, soulless, with no tie to the world. Their only tether, one on each of them, wound back to the center of her heart. A cold, dark magic where the tethers gathered burned like ice in her core.
She got to her feet, mindful of the blinding light on the horizon. She averted her eyes and stayed focused on the tethers. She reached out her hand and touched one, shocked to find it had substance, something tangible she could feel. The freezing band of energy moved like rope as she wound it around her wrist. She turned her arm in circles, over and over, until she finally reached out and gripped it with her hand. The feeling was akin to her bond with Vincent, only she had greater power, and supreme control.
Her grip tightened. Like a leash, a nearby undead froze in place. She looked up at him, in his ancient suit, with his desiccated face like mummy holovids.
“Come,” she said, her voice ethereal, with an echo like Lucius. It startled her, but she put it aside and focused on the task.
The creature that was once a man made a labored turn and moved toward her, shuffling his feet along the ground. It stopped before her. Cora looked around at the masses walking through the cemetery all around her. The same power that commanded her raven in the warmth of her stomach commanded the dead within this frigid ball inside her. She stared at it and dismissed the Spirit Sight. She didn’t need it anymore to know where the magic lay inside her. With a thought, she pushed her will out to every tether inside her.
“Follow,” she said, turning away from the horizon.
The many among her stopped, turned around, and went back the way they came. The path behind moved away from the light, to blackened skies.
“Cora!” a voice called out, distant and familiar.
She shut her eyes and shook her head.
“Cora!”
Arms gripped her shoulders. She opened her eyes. Julian stared back at her, his square jaw and intense eyes showing concern.
“I’m here,” she muttered, disoriented.
She looked around. Kneeling on the floor beside Crowley’s cot, she was surrounded by Bauer soldiers that looked on with curious eyes. Several of them nodded, as if satisfied with what they witnessed.
“The beauty of enlightenment, gentlemen,” Crowley said behind her.
Cora turned. The old man smiled at his flock with black eyes. If this is what everyone else saw when she peered into the Spirit World, it was no wonder it terrified them. She’d never been so frightened of anyone. There had to be a mistake, this man couldn’t be on her side. He turned to look at her, his eyes returning to normal.
“Do not be afraid, young lady,” he said. His reached out a hand to p
at her shoulder. Cora shied away from his touch. “There is yin and there is yang. Hot and cold. Life and death. No one side is truly evil of itself, merely the mirror of the other. You can control the power. It does not control you.”
“What is he talking about?” Julian shouted, impatient. He held out his hand to her. “We need to move!”
Cora took another look into the eyes of the old man. With the blackness gone, all she could see was his wisdom. She had to trust she was doing the right thing. Reaching out, Julian took her by the wrist and lifted her to her feet. Over his shoulder, Madeline moved about, edgy as she stood in the doorway.
“Let’s move,” Cora said, her voice resolute. “We still have to fight our way back to the roof.”
Crowley shook his head. “That won’t be necessary. Gentlemen, can you facilitate passage for me and our new friends?”
A soldier stood up and bowed his head to the Professor. He tapped the comm button implanted behind his ear. His expression changed to fear and worry. “This is Sergeant Briggs to all units on upper levels! Oh, God, man, it’s bad! They’re heading your way and they’ve got some...thing with them! My whole unit is down! Do not engage, I repeat, do not engage!”
He paused for a response. “Yeah, we need it! Use the eastern stairwell, we’ve got it covered! Let’s regroup on 44!” The soldier tapped his comm and sat down. His voice soft and expression calm again, he said, “They’re diverting medical teams to the lower floors to assess casualties. They won’t bother you on the way out, Professor.”
Crowley clapped his hands together. “Wondrous. Let us be on our way, then. Gentleman, I trust you know what must be done once I depart, correct?”
Each of the soldiers nodded in kind and moved to make a path for the door. Stunned by their obedience, Cora watched them close as she moved to the exit. Once she was back in the hall, the suffocating tension of the room subsided, leaving her to focus on the chill she felt inside her. Where she once only drew on the cold, dark side of the magic to grant Spirit Sight, the icy ball was now a wellspring of power. She had no idea what she could do with it, beyond the horrid power she saw in her dream. Part of her wondered if she was better off not having seen the nightmare to its conclusion.
The Pendragon Codex Page 20
