Black Blood

by John Meaney

  Zombie bones.

  It occurred to him that he hadn't asked how GA had managed to get the bones on-site if possessing them was illegal. Obviously, they weren't transported in a convoy like this. But there was no more time for questions, because Brint had discarded his loud shirt and was advancing along the top of the trailer, his forelimbs spread, the rows of sacs on his blue-black torso beginning to pulse.

  “Oh, fuck.”

  “Keep your mouth shut.” Fleming was pulling on gauntlets. “I mean, tightly shut. And your eyes.”

  “Try not to die,” Temesin called from road level. “I want you to see me get promoted, or get your ass kicked if I don't.”

  Thank you so much.

  There was no time for a sarcastic comeback, because pink viscous fluid was spurting from the nozzles opening across Brint's torso. It played up and down, hardening on contact. When it hit his face, Donal felt the impact, aware that it had already covered his nostrils, sealing them.

  This was another reason why a zombie was an ideal candidate for infiltrating the premises. From what Donal had seen, the local special forces were all standard human. Without special equipment—maybe detectable equipment—it was impossible to breathe inside this cocoon.

  Then he was being manhandled, feeling the dizzying sensation of being lowered on some kind of rope—extruded from Brint's glands?—into the trailer. He felt a thud along the side of his leg as he swung into something, then solidness below his feet, and finally a gentle tipping until he was lying horizontally on the floor.

  A distant clang was the sound of the hatch shutting.

  As he lay in the moving truck, he reviewed the schematics in his mind, bringing them to life as three-dimensional images through which he moved, going over the possibilities. It was most likely that the truck would stop in the cargo bay of Building 3, and that the illegal weapons Donal sought would be in Building 17, home to GA's Private Projects Section and to the apartment that Brax Devlin lived in whenever he was on the premises.

  If Marnie Finross or Malfax Cortindo was here, that was almost certainly where they would be.

  Remember.

  Oh, yes.

  Should Donal succeed, Hayes had promised that legalities would be arranged in retrospect, so that Donal would have entered the country on a visa he did not in fact possess, with a cross-border warrant that did not yet exist, tracking the escaped criminal Marnie Finross, whom the Illurian authorities were honor-bound to extradite. During these explanations, Temesin had silently smiled, perhaps guessing Donal's true plans.

  The truck jolted, then slowed.

  Donal intended to fire off a signal flare, so the Illurian military could sort out their own mess. But he wasn't going to do it as soon as he sensed zombie bones. He had a dark mage to deal with first.

  Cortindo. I hope you're here.

  Now the truck was moving on, more steadily than before. From inside his cocoon, the sounds were too distant to make out, but Donal guessed that the convoy had passed through the gates, and was now inside the GA facility.

  It was a huge place, and it would be some minutes yet before the truck reached the designated cargo bay. Donal went back to reviewing his mental model of the site.

  Brax Devlin may be a dark mage too.

  So, two targets, not one.

  And with Marnie Finross, that made three. If Donal could take them down one at a time, he would, but he didn't think that likely.

  There was exactly one solution that appealed to him. Had the cocoon not been tight against his face, he would have smiled. For he was entering an armaments facility, and not even a Black Circle mage could survive an explosion.

  He remembered facing off against Malfax Cortindo, back when he, Donal, was a living being and Diva Maria daLivnova had been beside him, desperate for protection. Cortindo's words, his mesmeric abilities, had made Donal pause long enough for the diva to die.

  Not again.

  No.

  This time, there would be no discussion, no questioning, no legal warning, no arrest procedure. If dark mages saw him coming, they would stop him, and failure would be total.

  “Try not to die,” Temesin had said, but that was unimportant.

  Donal mentally put aside the imagined schematics, because he had a much simpler visualization to construct in his zombie mind, the image that would draw him forward, give him impetus to get through whatever faced him, to carry out one clearly pictured objective.

  Kill every dark mage on-site, at the same time, and fast.

  Almost there.

  The truck halted.

  He felt the pattering of insectile legs across his protective cocoon. They would be leaving via a small opening, now unsealed, at the side of the trailer, called back to the nest by some pheromonal signal. In moments, responding to the same airborne molecules, Donal's cocoon began to evaporate.

  There was a clang, signaling the lowering of the trailer's hitherto-sealed rear end. Donal sat up, shredding lumps of pink cocoon sliding from his jumpsuit. Wisps of pink vapor rose from the remnants, mingling with the purple mist entering the trailer.

  This was another security measure, deadly even to a zombie if they were stupid enough to inhale. Donal made sure not to breathe as he brushed off the remaining unevaporated fragments of pink stuff, crept past equipment crates, and looked out of the trailer's rear opening.

  He was in a cargo bay with no people, just two big trailers and an open channel down which the last few stingers were scuttling. His feet made minimal sound as he dropped to the stone floor, then made his way around to the front of the truck and unclipped the long, stavelike signal flare.

  Then he made his way to the door where he expected people to enter. He waited, listening, sensing no one outside. If it was locked, he would have to wait until someone came, or try to crawl out through the channel that the stingers had used.

  The door opened when he pushed.

  A passageway stretched left and right. In front was an emergency exit, theoretically set to sound a banshee alarm when opened. But someone had used a security key to detach the banshee's cage from the alarm circuit, probably the same person who had propped open the door with a fire extinguisher, and was standing outside now, smoking.

  Donal would have smiled, but his emotions were so shut down that his facial muscles scarcely moved. Stavelike flare in his hands—the Magnus was inside his jumpsuit, but he did not want to fire it, not even here, where the sounds of weapon-testing were common—he took cross-steps to the doorway, peeked out, drew back.

  Only one man, pacing up and down.

  Listen.

  With concentration, he could tell where the man was, when he turned, when he neared the doorway once more.

  Now.

  Donal lunged into the open, slamming the flare forward like a lance into the man's throat.

  One down.

  He left the body behind, jogging into the open, heading for the next building.

  Trucks drove across the flat white ground surrounding the scattered facility. Donal moved when the angles were right, trotting alongside three buildings in succession, sprinting across the open sunlit gaps—mirrorlit—when no one seemed to be observing.

  Next was Building 11, also labeled Power Hall on the schematics Donal had seen, but they had shown little interior detail. It rose high, with blue metallic walls formed of riveted sheets, and when he drew close he saw a window, some fifteen feet above the ground, that someone had left partly open.

  He did not intend to enter. But there was an engine sound from around the corner. This side of the building was in shadow, but not enough to hide a person from a jeep full of sentries. Donal laid his flare on the ground, flat against the wall, hoping that the shadows would be enough to conceal it at least. Then he took hold of two rivet-heads on the wall, and began to haul himself upward.

  The window was tricky, but he pulled and tugged, and then he was through the opening. He crouched on the inner sill. It was one of a series along this corridor, where
the walls were painted pale-blue. Here, Donal could detect no sounds of people.

  Outside, at ground level, the vehicle—it was a jeep—came into view, moving slowly. Donal jumped down from the window, and moved farther into the corridor.

  There was a side passage, and what looked like a balcony beyond, overlooking some internal space. There were no indications of people up here.

  He advanced. When he reached the railed metal balcony, he looked out at rows of big vats, rising higher than he was, almost to the ceiling. From this balcony, metal steps led up to catwalks running over the vats. Other stairs led down to ground level.

  Donal climbed.

  No one was in sight as he found himself on a catwalk, looking down on the vats from above. Every vat was capped, so that it was impossible to see inside. There were inspection hatches, but Donal had no time to work on opening one, to see inside a vat.

  He trotted along the catwalk, to the far end. There was another balcony, and a sheer wall, but Donal knew from his memorized plans that this was the midpoint of the building. Leaning over the edge, he could make out a sign, formed of what looked like beaten gold in a giant cursive script, fastened against the wall below.

  Palace of Queens.

  It seemed a strange decoration for such industrial surroundings.

  A passage led onward, and Donal took it. Steps descended to the right, and he took them, wanting to get back to ground level. Then he stopped.

  He was about to enter a chamber in which a bare-shouldered woman lay on a metal bed. Only her head and bare shoulders were visible, the rest disappearing through a yellow-draped opening in the wall. But it wasn't the strange setup that halted Donal.

  It was the expression in her eyes when she saw him.

  “Oh,” the woman said. “Please.”

  She knew he was an intruder. She had to.

  “Kill me, sir. Please kill me.”

  “I won't hurt you.”

  Donal entered the room, walked closer.

  “I want you to—” She stopped, then looked at the drapes below her chin. “Open it.”

  He was afraid, but he did what she said.

  Don't look.

  You must.

  There was no way of shutting the image out of his mind once he had seen it. Beyond the opening in the wall, the woman's nude body continued on … and on … and on, swollen into vastness, enough to fill a huge vat. It was her womb that was bigger than a truck, than several trucks, where the skin had been pulled back and opened, leaving a permeable transparent membrane through which workers could reach, tending the unborn.

  The thousands of embryos she was nurturing.

  Children.

  For the Power Centers.

  Donal turned away from the abomination.

  “I had a husband,” the woman said. “A normal life, before …”

  Tears welled up.

  But there were so many workers down there, reaching into the womb where umbilical cords sprouted like tendrils. If something happened to the woman, they would realize immediately.

  “I can't,” whispered Donal.

  “P-Please.”

  “I can't risk it.”

  “No …”

  He walked away from her, found an exit to steps leading downward, and descended. He was at ground level, and he could go left or right. It was an easy choice.

  It was awful.

  As he climbed back up the steps, he undid his jumpsuit enough to pull out the Magnus. When he reached the woman, he was calm inside, his decision made. Wishing Harald were here with his superior expertise, Donal stopped, and crouched down beside the woman.

  He touched her forehead.

  “Remember a time,” he murmured, “when you were with your husband, and everything was all right.”

  “Yes …”

  She closed her eyes, and Donal talked her through the stages of strengthening the memory, making it more vivid, reliving it.

  “Let everything become richer, clearer …”

  The bang was loud when he pulled the trigger. Fragments of her brain spattered across his face.

  He wiped them off as he got moving.

  Two minutes later, he burst through an emergency exit. Its banshee alarm went off, but it was drowned by the already-wailing cacophony of alarms triggered by the woman's death. This was the Palace of Queens, and one of the queens was down.

  In the open, he ran around the outer corner, and saw a puzzled man holding the stave flare in his hands. He was turning it and hefting its weight.

  “I can tell you what it is,” called Donal.

  “What?”

  Donal's palm-heel smacked into the guy's forehead, then he ripped the stave from the man's opening grasp, and whipped a shin-kick into the man's thigh. The man fell, followed by a downward thrust from Donal's stave, and a soft crunch.

  “The end of your world,” said Donal.

  Stave flare held horizontally in one hand, he set off into the open, heading straight for Building 17, knowing that if Hayes and the others had guessed wrongly, there would be no time left to look elsewhere. Donal would have failed.

  “Hey.”

  Glancing back, Donal saw two men, neither of them armed. There was a sense of other people exiting the Palace of Queens behind them.

  Run fast.

  He turned toward Building 17, and began to speed up.

  Run faster.

  For years he had used this discipline to give him strength to face life, running the catacombs, sometimes ten miles, sometimes longer, pushing himself. Now, with his resurrected existence likely to end, he could meet Death with a kind of physical joy, almost as if true, warmblooded life were his again for the final moments.

  A rifle shot banged out behind him.

  Building 17 was only feet away.

  Rifle fire cracked once more.

  Shit.

  Then he kicked the door open and was through.

  Got it.

  And he was in the right place.

  Do you hear the bones?

  In the name of Hades, this was it. Dark resonance washed back and forth, sweeping through him.

  Do you feel us howl?

  Do you hear us suffer?

  He hefted the stave flare in his left hand, the Magnus in his right.

  “I certainly do,” he said.

  It was a vast, silver, airy hangarlike space, its arched metal ceiling very high. At ground level, Donal walked past row upon row of field guns that did not fire shells, but instead contained resonance cavities filled with zombie bones whose agony screamed in Donal's mind, burned every nerve, but not enough to stop him.

  There were hundreds of field guns or cannons, half of them painted in the Illurian national colors of red and yellow, the others silver and purple, bearing the Salamander-and-Eagle design that Donal knew so well, the symbol of the Federation. Gladius Armaments was an arms manufacturer. Of course it would sell to both sides in any war.

  Beyond the field guns lay a mostly empty space. On a raised platform, a giant energy projector stood, about the size of a truck, its casing removed to reveal the intricate steel components surrounding the resonance cavity itself. From here, Donal could feel the tortured chaos inside the cavity.

  It's as powerful as all the other weapons put together.

  I know.

  Something like a huge silver kite hung in the air, levitating, unsupported by anything that Donal could see … until he noticed two figures standing beyond the energy projector, their hands upraised. As they gestured, the floating kite-mirror adjusted angle.

  “Cortindo.” Even from here, Donal recognized the revenant mage. “You fucker.”

  The other man was Brax Devlin.

  So he is a dark mage.

  The two mages directed the floating mirror to the angle they wanted. Then the huge projector hummed, and spat a white, coruscating beam straight at the mirror. The reflected beam angled downward, blasting a huge pit. Then the beam cut out.

  “Hades,” muttered Donal
.

  Solid floor—solid ground—had been replaced by a deep pit with blackened walls.

  “It's all about geometry,” said a woman's voice beside him. “Along with rather impressive control, don't you think?”

  The blue-haired woman was standing three paces away. As Donal stared, her hair changed color to scarlet.

  “Eyes,” he said. “Or should I call you Marnie?”

  “Call me anything you like. So, here's the bit you can remember in oblivion: by floating that mirror high enough, and aiming the projector just right, we can hit Tristopolis from here.”

  “Shit.”

  “Before that happens, some of these babies”—she gestured to the silver-and-purple field-gun projectors—“are going to open up on civilian targets in Aurex City. And we even have some dead Federation soldiers in storage, ready to be found near the projectors. Isn't that clever? The rest of the weapons, we'll sell to a Federation desperate to defend itself when Illurium declares war.”

  “Fuck off,” said Donal.

  He raised his Magnus and pulled the trigger.

  “Oops,” said Marnie Finross.

  Dust spilled from the weapon. Whether it was the bullets or the firing mechanism that had crumbled into nothing, Donal could not tell.

  “My father”—black flecks moved across Marnie Finross's eyes—“has been teaching me some things.”

  “Like when to shut the fuck up?”

  “Little man, it's time for you to—”

  With his thumb, Donal pressed the firing stud on the stave flare. Silver fire burst forward, tearing a hole through Marnie Finross's stomach. Then he whipped the hot flare through a vertical arc, snapping her head back, and threw the flare aside.

  Fast now.

  Very, very fast.

  He ran for the truck-size projector.

  It was Brax Devlin who screamed: “What have you done?”

  The floating mirror wobbled. Malfax Cortindo, strange highlights rippling across his rebuilt skin, groaned as he fought to keep the levi-tation going, then threw his hands down. The mirror slid edge-first through the air and struck the ground.

  By that time, Donal was climbing up the side of the big projector. Black waves of suffering pulsed through the air, agonizing now that he was this close to the cavity filled with aligned zombie bones.