by Myke Cole
An electric cart was parked outside the trailer, the back heaped with tactical gear. Truelove, Downer, and Richardson were already being strapped in by a knot of harried-looking Goblin contractors. Their human minder beckoned to Britton and Therese, holding up helmets that were clearly the wrong size.
Fitzy intercepted Britton before he could take another step. His normally hard mouth quivered at the corners. He waved a picture in front of Britton’s face. “Get us here, Keystone. We need to be there right now.”
Britton seized the chief warrant officer’s wrist. “Hold it still, sir! I can’t see it with you waving it around!”
His stomach clenched as he expected Fitzy’s knee to impact it, but Fitzy said nothing and held still. The picture was a rough printout of a poorly lit room. Flat cement floor, dirty gray tile walls, low fluorescent lights. Construction sawhorses, plastic mop buckets, and barrier posts were heaped in a corner. Britton stared at it, trying to fix the details blurred by the low-quality print job. “Where is this, sir?”
“Just get us there!” Britton felt a helmet slam down on his head. He took a half step to the side as someone buckled a holster on his thigh.
“I can’t unless I have a better idea of where we’re going! You’ve got to give me something to work with, sir!”
Fitzy gritted his teeth and ground out his reply. “It’s a subway maintenance locker. New York City.”
Britton closed his eyes and pictured the image. He tried to conjure the sounds; the steady pounding of the train wheels and the click of heels on cement. He tried to imagine the sharp smell of ozone and garbage, of the sweat of many bodies in close proximity. He gathered the current and pushed it forward. When he opened his eyes, the gate shimmered before him, the rest of Shadow Coven already disappearing through it. He barely had time to see if he’d gotten the location right before Fitzy slammed a vest over his shoulders and pushed him hard, sending him stumbling through the gate.
Fitzy followed behind, then turned and beckoned behind him. A SOC Sorcerer, his body armor blazoned with the Suppressor’s symbol, ran along behind, sweating and out of breath. “I trust you remember Lieutenant Rampart?” Fitzy asked.
Britton stared for a moment. The Suppressor’s face was flushed with running, but his flattop haircut and broad shoulders jogged Britton’s memory. “You escorted me in, when I first came over.”
Rampart nodded, his cheeks rising slightly. “Chief Warrant Officer Fitzsimmons tells me you’ve seen the light. Glad to have you on board.”
The tiny space was crowded by the new arrivals, adding to the two dozen men already packing it. The majority were black-clad police officers in tactical gear that rivaled the Special Forces operators Britton had worked with before. Black balaclavas covered their faces, exposing only nervous eyes beneath the helmet rims. NYPD/ESU was blazoned across their body armor in subdued gray lettering. Two men in expensive suits stood apart from them, whispering in a language Britton didn’t understand. The cops and the suits formed a wide circle around a pile of bodies in the middle of the floor.
At least, Britton was fairly sure they were bodies.
They steamed, raw and red, twisted funnels of meat covered with scraps of human faces, shredded uniforms, plastic buttons. One of the dead’s bones had grown through his body, shaped into pointed barbs, cruel weapons turned against the flesh they once supported. One of the bodies had been twisted neatly into the exact shape of a ragged pretzel.
Britton gestured at a scrap of uniform in a camouflage pattern he didn’t recognize. “Sir, wha—”
“It’s Russian,” Fitzy said, eliciting glares from the two men in suits. “The Sahir aren’t the only liaisons we’ve got at the FOB. The Spetznaz Vedma are their Witch Corps.” He met the eyes of the men in the suits. “We’ve got some guys in Russia, too,” Fitzy went on, keeping eye contact. “A fine arrangement for the continued enhancement of bilateral relations between our two great countries. A veritable lovefest. Until now.”
The men in suits shook their heads, said something in Russian, and pushed past him, around the gate, and out of the room.
“And the clock starts ticking,” Fitzy drawled. He spun back to the police officers, still ostensibly talking to Britton. He stabbed a finger at the chest of one of the cops with subdued captain’s bars on his collar. “You see, Keystone, New York City does things differently. They’ve got their own budget, bigger’n lots of federal agencies, so they figure they can handle things on their own. These fellows are the Emergency Services Unit. They’re the finest of New York’s Finest. Security clearances, military cross training, all the bells and whistles. They know how to keep their mouths shut. Which is why they’ve been assisting the Russians in tracking down an illegal immigrant Selfer who fled here from Russia. They figured they could handle getting the Spetznaz where they needed to go, setting up a perimeter to keep anyone from getting out. Looks like they may have overestimated their capabilities. Never send a cop to do a soldier’s job.”
“Now wait just a fucking min…” the NYPD captain began, but Fitzy shouted over him.
“New York’s efforts at polis-style autonomy have resulted in a truly embarrassing mess for our vodka-swilling allies, and they want it dealt with quickly. And what they want done quickly, the president wants done quickly, and we all know who does things quickly where magic is concerned.”
“The magic behind the magic, sir,” Britton said.
Fitzy nodded, finally turning to face Britton. “Those fuckers who just stormed out of here are on the way to the UN. We had damn well better have something to give them by the time they get a message to the White House. And by ‘we,’ I mean ‘you.’”
“So, what are we up against here?” Britton asked, as he turned to take in Downer, Truelove, and Richards. All three looked steel-eyed and ready, but Britton knew their stomachs must have been doing the same somersaults as his own.
“A Render,” Fitzy said, motioning toward the back of the room, where a couple of the NYPD cops were dragging the barriers out of the way, revealing a sizeable breach in the tile wall, with the sound of rushing water coming from beyond. “Our little immigrant is possessed of a particularly nasty bit of Probe Physiomancy.” He motioned at the corpses. “I don’t need to remind you that what you’re looking at are three of Russia’s best magical operators and a sizeable squad of New York’s Finest.
“One Probe did this, just one.”
Therese froze beside him, and Fitzy turned to her. “You raised the flag, little lady. You drank the Kool-Aid. Time to make good on it. I’m afraid you’re the positive to the negative we’re taking down.”
He turned back to Shadow Coven. “Rampart’s in charge of this op. I’ve got to go play public-relations jockey. Seems when Coven Four deploys, important folks want to talk to the program head. You all set, sir?”
Rampart nodded, smiling. “We’ve got the magic behind the magic, Chief Warrant Officer. What could possibly go wrong?”
Fitzy frowned.
“Enough already, let’s get it done,” Downer muttered.
A light sheen of sweat had broken out on Therese’s forehead. “What about Hayes? I’m not the only Healer on the FOB.”
“Oh, right,” Fitzy said, motioning them toward the break in the wall. “I almost forgot. Hayes asked that you bring tissue samples back for the Special Projects Activity. You know, for science. He was rather insistent on that point.”
“Tissue samples?” Britton asked.
Fitzy shrugged. “Just slice off some chunks.”
“Let’s go, sir!” one of the ESU cops shouted to Rampart, already disappearing through the opening behind his captain.
“And you’re on. NYPD needs a chance to redeem themselves, so they’re your fire support for this run. Besides, they know the sewers under this city better than any SOF operators we’ve got.” He leaned in close, his voice urgent. “Get it done, Oscar. Get it done right.”
“Roger that, sir.” Britton nodded and stepped into the aperture.
Darkness swallowed them. Britton struggled with panic in the smothering blackness before it burst into illumination from tactical lights suspended from the barrels of the ESU officers’ weapons. “Jesus!” Rampart hissed. “There goes our night vision! Shut those off!”
“We don’t have time for this,” the ESU captain whispered as the lights went out amid muttered curses. “She’s got a fifteen-minute head start at least. We need to get on her, or we’re going to lose her!”
So, it’s a girl, Britton thought. Seems to be a trend.
“Settle down, Captain,” Rampart answered, his voice disembodied in the darkness. “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”
“I’ve got it,” Richards said.
Britton felt Richards’s current rise and billow outward. A soft, green glow began to spread across the walls and ceiling, from beneath the wide, rushing stream of water beside them. “Some of the lichen here are phosphorescent,” Richards said. “They just need a little coaxing.”
The light from the plants didn’t blind them, but it cast all in a creepy green, raising dancing shadows off the water’s surface. They stood on the catwalk of an old sewer tunnel. The vaulted ceiling arched away from them, old, pitted bricks slick with calcified plant growth. Rats squeaked in the distance, shadowed by the darkness farther down the catwalk, beckoning to them like some monster’s gaping maw.
The captain snorted and gestured with the barrel of his submachine gun. “She went that way.”
“Better take point then,” Richards answered. “Spell casting is a rear-echelon occupation.”
The captain swore and motioned to his men, who advanced into the darkness, weapons at the ready. Richards lit the lichen as they passed, keeping them in a bubble of the sickly green light, darkness pressing at its edges. Downer motioned at the water. An elemental sprang from its rippling surface, a spined dog made of shimmering green liquid, loping alongside them.
“Nice,” whispered Truelove. “All I’ve got to work with is dead rats.”
“I can feel something,” Therese said, her voice trembling.
“Stay cool,” Rampart whispered. “Everybody keep it on lockdown until I get her magic Suppressed.”
Britton could sense it, too, a magical current, the eddying of it foreign beside the familiar touch of the rest of the Coven, distant but getting closer with each step they took. He glanced across the water. The sloping brick wall of the sewer tunnel was unbroken as far as he could see, the vaulted ceiling a pool of shadows. Long cracks ran through the old brick but nothing nearly big enough for a person to fit through.
Britton looked to Rampart, who shrugged. It was clear he could feel the current, too, but there was no one there.
“Captain, is there anywhere this Selfer could hide?” Britton asked.
The captain shook his head. “Not unless she can crawl through walls. She’s dead ahead.”
They advanced, the pulse of the foreign current getting stronger, until Britton felt it suffused him, so strong that it tickled his taste buds and buzzed in the back of his throat. There was nothing. The glowing lichen showed an empty corridor. They pushed on, and the current began to recede.
“Wait,” Truelove said, “we’ve gone past her.”
“That’s impossible,” the captain said. “The water’s not deep enough for anyone to hide in. She has to be up ahead.”
Rampart cursed. “No, he’s right.”
Britton shook his head. “She’s behind us.”
“How the hell can you know that?”
“We can feel her current, you moron!” Downer groused, her elemental scampering back the way they had come, nosing at the water’s edge.
The captain gave a hand signal, and three of the police officers crouched back down the catwalk, flicking their lights on despite Rampart’s complaints. The harsh white beams swept the dirty concrete and spoiled brick, scattering clusters of frightened roaches but revealing little else. One of them stood and adjusted his helmet. “Sir, there’s nothing here, it’s only…”
His voice ended in a choked gurgle, his head twisting backwards, the black balaclava suddenly dripping and ridiculously skewed. An instant latter, the cop next to him simply folded in half with a wet snap, the light going out of his eyes before he even had time to scream.
Human flesh poured out of the wall beside them in a wave, piling into a mass that stretched across the catwalk and spilled into the water, growing and growing.
It seemed the Selfer could crawl through walls after all.
She had lost all human form. The flesh was completely protean, an amorphous mass of pink skin, flexing and pulsing. It was dotted here and there with eyes, fingernails, knobs of bone and hair. A mouth opened in the mass and began to burble something before it was smothered over by the gathering folds of flesh.
Rampart jumped forward, extending his arms. Britton could feel his current race forward, interlacing with the Selfer’s flow…
…and shunted aside. Rampart stumbled backward, his own tide swamped by the Selfer’s magic, far too strong for him to roll back.
“Oh, shi—” he began, then the Rending magic grasped the top of his head and folded his skull in on itself, compressing his head down into the trunk of his body with a thick, slurping sound. Rampart, headless, swayed on his feet for a moment before collapsing to the tunnel floor.
Downer’s elemental leapt on the Selfer, tearing chunks from the growing mound. Two others sprang from the water to join it. The Selfer quivered under the blows, then simply flowed over them. The elementals vanished beneath the gathering mass, splashes of dirty water leaking out from between the folds.
Gunfire echoed in the tight space, making Britton’s ears ring. The Selfer’s mass nearly blocked the passageway behind them, impossible to miss. The NYPD officers knelt, pouring on the fire, bullets ripping through the mound of flesh, sinking into it with hissing thuds. The Selfer shook under the onslaught and slouched forward, rolling over herself, reaching out toward them.
And then, a brief and hideous silence broken by the sharp clicks of magazine releases as the cops reloaded. “Ohshitohshitohshit,” one whined.
A bone spur, long as a spear, shot from the mass, catching him through the throat. Another cop simply detonated, spraying them all with the gobbets of meat he had suddenly become. “Get the hell out of here!” the captain shouted, grabbing one of his men by the drag handle on his body armor and hauling him backward.
Downer stepped up, gesturing at the water again. “This isn’t going to do it! I need something more to work with!” Britton opened a gate and sent it sliding past the retreating cops. The blob didn’t even make an effort to dodge, the lurching flesh barreling directly into it. The gate sliced it neatly in half, the edges peeling back to reveal a stack of gristle and organs that followed no anatomical pattern that Britton knew of. It fountained blood, shaking as if in rage, halting.
And then the flesh simply flowed over itself, growing back together and moving forward. A curtain of biting insects swarmed over its surface, magicked along by Richards. Britton thought he glimpsed slithering shapes in the water biting at the Selfer, snakes or rats. It hardly slowed. Another two cops went down, bent into shapes that made Britton nauseous.
We’re outclassed, Britton thought. Time to get out of here.
But then Downer let out a wet shriek and collapsed, her pelvis and legs twisted into a bloody corkscrew. She twitched, screaming. Therese knelt at her side, eyes closed, magic pouring out over Downer’s mangled body, rolling back the damage.
“Some of it’s dead!” Truelove yelled, his own current reaching out. The Selfer froze, shivering. Deep within the recesses, flesh piled upon flesh, layers of it had turned gangrenous, necrotic strips marbling the lumbering whole. They spread, biting, squirming, the body attacking itself, dead and alive struggling to control the motion of the mass. “It won’t hold her forever, Keystone!” Truelove shouted. “Do something!”
Do what? Cutting and shooting the thing wasn’t go
ing to help. The Selfer’s body had been so completely transformed, he wasn’t even sure if there were vital organs anymore. They’d have to burn it. Maybe that was why it was down where fire would never go? But he had no fire. Coven Four was without a Pyromancer.
The cops retreated past them, still futilely pouring bullets into the mound of flesh. The Selfer leisurely reached out with her magic, twisting them into screaming corpses, one by one.
Britton threw open a gate and barreled through into the SASS schoolhouse. He’d wagered right. Class was back in session, and he scattered desks and tables as he charged Pyre. “Jesus, Britton! What the hell do you think you’re…” Salamander began before taking in Britton’s battle dress and the scene beyond the shimmering gate and lapsing into silence. Britton grabbed the young Pyromancer’s lapels. “Fire! Through that gate! Right now!”
“What?” Pyre squeaked. “No! I can’t…”
Britton raised a hand and clipped him across the face. “Now, you fucker! Right fucking now! Downer!”
“I’ve got it!” she mumbled weakly, her legs untangling beneath Therese’s ministrations, flesh coalescing, bones straight-ening.
Pyre’s head rocked to the side and snapped back, his eyes narrowing. Britton ducked as the flame erupted from his chest, pushing over his shoulder and through the gate. It passed into the sewer and over Downer, who screamed with the effort of shaping it. Britton followed, shutting the portal behind him, not looking to see the reaction in the SASS.
Downer’s work was done by the time his boots hit the catwalk. Five elementals had sprung from the blaze, hunched humanoids with flat heads on flickering shoulders. They leapt across the water, pounding the Selfer with burning fists, igniting patches of greasy skin with every blow. The Selfer screamed in earnest, pain howling from a dozen mouths opening for that express purpose, the teeth glowing and popping like gunshots as the elementals covered it. The corridor was quickly choked with greasy smoke. The stink of cooking meat sent the remaining cops to their knees, retching through their balaclavas.
Britton could feel the current of the Selfer’s magic turn inward, focusing on reconstructing her own flesh. He glimpsed the bubbles of healing flesh through the smoke. The elementals strained, their bodies stretching as they spread their fire across her.
