Kumiko got to her feet and trotted up the gravel service ramp that led to the south entrance, with Franks and Grant close behind. They flanked the entrance—Kumiko and Franks on one side, Grant on the other. From here, they had a clear view of the entire viewpoint.
The place looked like a Rob Zombie video set. Nine men and four women in knee-length white tunics surrounded a salt circle around the base of the radio tower. Their clothing was freshly stained with goat’s blood, the body of which lay motionless in the salt circle. The grass inside the circle smoldered. Bits of ash swirled in the thin tendrils of smoke that probed the air like tentacles.
The stolen drawings—three small and one large—were taped to the tower, one drawing per side. Crimson sparks danced around the edges of the small drawings, while the large one pulsed with the same violet light as the symbols. The presence of the entity that laughed at her this morning was everywhere but it was strongest on the large drawing.
Kumiko didn’t recognize the language the cultists chanted, but from the extra grim expression on Franks’ face, it seemed that he did.
“Orders?” she asked softly.
“Symbols,” Franks replied. “Then cultists.”
Kumiko and Grant pulled earplugs from their pockets and put them in. They nodded when they were ready. Grant placed a charge on the nearest symbol while Kumiko and Franks headed for those on the far side.
They didn’t get far. The symbol flared suddenly. A violet tendril of hateful energy slithered out of the symbol and wrapped around the charge. It pulled the explosive into the stone. Grant hit the remote detonator but it was too late. The tendrils and the MCB Special were well into the void, beyond the signal’s reach.
Another tendril lashed out and wound around Franks’ arm. Franks smashed the symbol with his free hand. The tendril sputtered before dissipating, releasing the big man’s arm. Sharp gunshots from Grant’s side instantly silenced the chanting. He must have opened fire on the cultists. It was just as well since his Glock would be useless on the stone.
“Go,” Franks barked.
Kumiko ran to the next symbol and smashed it with the Honjo’s scabbard before it lashed her. Her strike removed only half of the symbol. Light seeped out of the other half like a drunken snake. She swung the sword around and smashed the other side.
They were about to move to the next set, when a ball of fire—rising in the air—made them pause. Kumiko and Franks climbed up the wall and peered over the ledge. Her eyes grew big.
Three pudgy figures with squat legs, round bellies, and lizardlike heads, waddled through the mud and ash. The drawings are alive, Kumiko thought in horrid fascination. The creatures each took position at triangular points along the edge of the circle. As one, they sucked in a deep breath, then released a stream of fire on the center. Heat waves blurred the entire site, and the base of the antenna started glowing a dull orange.
Kumiko and Franks pulled themselves up all the way. She raised her sword in a defensive pose. Franks, on the other hand, pulled out his cell phone and hit a number on speed dial.
“Stand by,” he said before hanging up.
“Reinforcements?” she asked.
“F-15 Strike Eagles,” he answered.
Kumiko nodded. There was a squadron stationed at the Air National Guard facility attached to the Portland airport. If they needed air support, the Eagles could be here in less then five minutes.
Grant entered from the south entrance, his Glock aimed at the nearest cultist. Before Grant could make the shot, the steel tower shrieked and groaned. The base now glowed bright white, from the fire demons’ effort. The metal buckled under its own weight and fell across the south entrance.
Sparks filled the air as an electrical line was ripped in two. The lamps flanking the entrance both exploded, sending glass in all directions. The cultists scattered. One wasn’t quick enough and was pinned under the searing hot metal. His screams excited the demons, who continued to blow flame at the center of the circle. The blackened ground cracked open. Molten rock pooled below the surface; the deep orange glow cast sinister shadows on the demons’ alien faces.
“I don’t see Grant,” Kumiko said, trying to peer through the wreckage.
“He dodged it,” Franks grunted.
On cue, Grant’s head popped over the wall’s edge a few feet from the wreckage. He seemed to have difficulty climbing up but he still managed to get over the top without humiliating the MCB. Thin tendrils of smoke rose from his shoulders where sparks singed the fabric of his pricey suit, but other than that he looked unharmed.
The cultists, having regrouped, charged them.
Franks introduced himself, with bullets spitting out the muzzle of his gargantuan slide-action pistol—from the looks of it, a .454, though Kumiko had only ever seen that caliber in revolver form. An ordinary man would have found such a beastly weapon impossible to wield. Franks handled it like it was a mere M9. The high-power shots tore their targets practically in half.
Kumiko charged one of the women—a petite redhead—and swung the still sheathed Honjo behind the woman’s knees. The redhead fell, and Kumiko brought the Honjo around and hit the redhead laterally across the chest, cracking ribs and collarbone. Not a killing blow by any means but Kumiko preferred it that way. She’d seen too much needless death in her long life.
With this in mind, Kumiko turned her attention to the three demons at the center. She picked up a stone and flicked it at the salt circle. The stone bounced off an invisible barrier of power.
Chikushou! I can’t reach them without breaking the circle.
The ground roiled beneath their feet. Kumiko had to use her tails to keep her balance. If that tremor meant what she thought it meant, the circle wasn’t going to contain the final form of the summoning.
She started to unsheathe the Honjo when something pulled her back. Kumiko looked over her shoulder. Three of the male cultists had grabbed her tails. With a growl, Kumiko spun around and slammed the trio against the circle’s barrier. One of the men, dazed from the strike, fell to the ground and disturbed the circle just enough to break the barrier.
“Arigatou.”
Kumiko shook off the other two men and darted into the circle proper. The second she crossed what was the threshold, the ground shook again. This time, it knocked Kumiko onto her back. The earth opened at her feet, and an enormous hand with leathery fingers tipped with two-foot-long ebony talons reached out of the fissure.
Kumiko scrambled back, and Grant had to help her to her feet. A slight rumble was all the warning they got before the ground split again, this time across the entire width of the viewpoint. They ran to the perimeter wall, gaping in horror at what came forth.
A head the size of a house with four glowing eyes rose above them. Long spikes ran down the back of the monster’s head. The creature rose and rose…twenty feet, thirty feet, fifty feet…
When it finally stepped out of the chasm, the titan was at least eighty feet tall and completely pissed off.
“Oh, my Buddha!” Kumiko whispered.
An older man—the nominal cult leader—dropped to his knees, chanting “Hail, Valumneb!” The weird accent on the vowels made it sound like, Hail, volume knob!
“A massive German guy, a Japanese girl, and me against a frickin’ Kaiju,” Grant said as he reloaded his Glock with a fresh mag. “I feel like I’m in a damned movie!”
“If you’re the jackass Australian, then yes,” Kumiko said, still staring in awe at their new foe.
Kumiko realized that what she thought were spikes, jutting from the monster’s back, were actually appendages: a row of long, humanlike arms ran down the Kaiju’s spine, each moving independently of the others. Both titanic legs were covered in scales, and there was a secondary mouth in the center of its belly. It bared three rows of shark teeth and roared into the sky.
Kumiko unsheathed the Honjo. She looked through the chaos and found Franks. The cult’s elderly leader was now on Franks’ back, trying to use the sacrifi
cial knife to slit Franks’ throat. Franks threw himself like a wrestler, body slamming the leader against the ground. Even at a distance, Kumiko heard the leader’s ribs crunch under Franks’ considerable weight. Franks casually got up, straightened his suit jacket, and put a bullet between the leader’s eyes.
Franks met Kumiko’s gaze across the fractured plateau. He noticed the unsheathed blade in her right hand and the brandished scabbard in her left. Franks pulled out his phone and hit speed dial again.
“Go,” Franks mouthed. His eyes never left hers when he said it.
She nodded to affirm that she understood what he had set into motion. Kumiko launched into the air, tails working hard, and landed on the fallen radio tower. The warm metal groaned under her weight and the thick smoke made it hard to see. That was good. What her veil couldn’t hide from the public the smoke would.
The Kaiju—seemingly oblivious to merely man-sized threats—turned and started to walk toward downtown. A rush of panic sent fresh adrenaline through Kumiko’s veins. No matter what, she couldn’t allow that monster to leave the butte.
Remember me, asshole? Kumiko shouted with her mind.
The Kaiju stopped midstride. It turned to stare at her and growled. Yep. It definitely remembered.
Kumiko tossed the scabbard behind her, gripping the Honjo tightly in both hands, and jumped over the Kaiju’s head. Her tails lifted her higher into the air. She raised the sword high above her head, and when gravity brought her down behind the beast, she sliced off the first three spine-arms. The Kaiju screeched, and black ichor squirted from the stumps.
One of the lower spine-arms grabbed Kumiko by the ankles and swung her around like a rag doll. With a grunt, Kumiko tucked her knees to her chest, bringing her sword close enough to cut through the wrist. The hand still clutched her fast. She frantically pried herself loose while using her tails to slow her fall.
Below, Franks pulled the arms off of one of the three fire demons, while Grant emptied a mag into a second. A smoldering lump at the base of the tower was all that remained of the third.
I need to buy them a little more time.
Kumiko focused her consciousness and condensed the static in the air into a massive lightning bolt. She raised the Honjo high again, the bolt surged along the blade, making the tatara steel glow.
With a fierce cry, she sliced the blade through the air and sent the bolt arcing across the plateau. It struck the Kaiju in the shoulder, searing through its unearthly flesh and rendering shield-sized scales to ash.
The second Kumiko’s feet touched the ground, she leapt again—tails going all-out—and landed on the Kaiju’s head. Before it could reach for her, she sliced across both of the beast’s huge, feral eyes. The Kaiju roared with rage.
“Iku yo!” Franks shouted from below. Let’s go!
Kumiko glanced north. She heard more then saw that the F-15s were close. She jumped off the beast’s head—tails steadying and softening her plummet—and followed Franks through the protective veil and quickly down the hill. The Kaiju spun and stomped furiously in its blinded state. In her periphery, Kumiko saw Grant dart into the woods.
Kumiko stopped short, about twenty feet downhill, and turned around. Gotta work fast! She got down on her knees, facing the summit, and focused her will into the veil. Kumiko thickened it into a blast shield against the Strike Eagles’ precision-guided munitions.
“C’mon baby, hold together,” she whispered.
The planes shot past the site, one directly after the other—a deafening sound that blotted out even the screams of the Kaiju. Even with ear protection, the concussion of the two bunker busters hitting one second apart was almost too much for Kumiko’s sensitive ears.
She felt the Kaiju fall. Magma and debris rolled downhill. The shield bowed and wavered from the stress. Kumiko poured more energy into it, forcing it to hold. Eventually, the magma cooled enough that it no longer threatened the homes on the hillside. She dropped the shield with a sigh of relief.
Franks stepped up behind her. Demon blood dripped off his hands. Together they watched the motionless carcass of the Kaiju sink into the earth. Out of the earth it had come and into the earth it returned. Franks wiped a palm on his pants, then put his phone to his face and gave an all-clear to the jets—who did a flyby just in case before returning to base.
“How will the MCB explain this?” Kumiko asked, her own voice sounding muffled and far away.
“A small eruption,” Franks mouthed.
She raised an eyebrow. “For a long-extinct cinder cone?”
“They’re very convincing.” Grant said, stomping out of the woods. He handed her the Honjo’s scabbard.
Kumiko sat down on the ground next to Franks and laid the Honjo across her knees. She ripped a piece off her ruined jacket and used it to wipe the ichor off the blade. Kumiko incinerated the fabric with a flash of foxfire.
Kumiko sheathed the blade and stood. “Let’s get back to the car. Now that the veil is down, it won’t be long before the press shows up.”
Grant looked down at his ruined suit. “For once I agree with you.”
The Vatican’s Hunters are a secretive bunch, but there have been rumors that they have a supernatural heavy hitter of their own. —A.L.
The Gift
Steve Diamond
Present Day
We stood in front of La Iglesia de San Fernando in Guaymas, Sonora. It only took us a few hours to drive to the port town after the jet touched down in Hermosillo. By the time we had arrived, it was well past midnight. As late as it was, the heat and humidity were oppressive.
The church, while dating back to 1750, had obviously been recently restored. The new gray and white stonework of the building shone in the moonlight. The cathedral was impressive, and in the daytime I knew it would shine even more brightly.
The sight should have filled me with peace.
Instead, my skin crawled.
Michael Gutterres, Knight of the Secret Guard of the Blessed Order of St. Hubert the Protector, was shaking his head, the movement drawing my attention. “Something is wrong, Fedele.”
I was sensitive to the ebbs and flows of supernatural power—the product of having the bones of a saint grafted to my own. I’d taken to calling that process “the Gift.” Due to the Gift, I’d been alive for half a millennium dealing with the monsters of this world and others.
The feeling of wrongness in the church wasn’t overwhelming to the point where it would be obvious for a normal individual. This wasn’t the first time I’d wondered if there was more to Gutterres than being a standard Knight of the Secret Guard. No one knew much about him other than he worked for the Vatican and his instincts were always right.
“You have a hunch or something?” I asked.
“Or something,” he replied, then circled around to the trunk of the car. He opened the trunk and pulled out an armored vest and pulled it over his head. He also pulled out a Sig 556 rifle, standard issue for the Secret Guard.
I opened the back door to the sedan and opened the bag I’d brought with me. I pulled out my own rifle, a Crusader Templar. The name—while I found it appropriate—was a happy coincidence. It was a beautiful AR-15 and had served me well the last year. Below that was my own tactical armored vest. Just because I was faster and tougher than any human—not to mention more than a few of the supernatural regulars—didn’t mean I didn’t appreciate body armor. I slipped it over my head and adjusted it. The last item in the bag, besides two dozen magazines for the Templar, was a long, sheathed sword. I’d carried a sword for centuries, even as I had taken to modern firearms. Swords don’t run out of ammo.
I pulled the blade free from the scabbard. The hilt and crossguard were simple black. The blade itself had the appearance of a skinny falchion, with the last foot of the blade widening out to add some extra weight to the swing. I pushed the blade back into the scabbard and belted it around my waist.
Gutterres pulled a phone from his pocket and dialed a number. As the phone
rang, he kept his eyes on the cathedral. This wasn’t the first time on this trip he’d made the call. He shook his head and put the phone back in his pocket. “Our priest still isn’t picking up, Fedele. He should have by now.”
“Are we going to find him inside?” I asked.
“Only one way to find out.”
We moved to the entrance, eyes constantly searching for threats. Nothing moved around us. Nothing. This was wrong. There should have at least been drunks, animals, or teenagers. The only sounds I could hear were distant.
In all my years on this earth, finding the front door to a building unexpectedly open has never been a good omen. To my right, Gutterres sighed softly, probably thinking the same thing.
As carefully and silently as I could, I pushed the large wooden door open while Gutterres covered me. The hinges squealed a bit, and in the quiet, the sound carried a sinister note. We pushed in, moonlight spilling in through the open threshold behind us. I didn’t need much light to see by, which saved me from having to rely on night-vision goggles. Gutterres didn’t seem to be having any trouble either. Interesting.
A line of pews—a mix of old and new—lined the left and right sides of the chapel with a path running between them to where a pulpit stood. A confessional box hung open to the right, the front of it ripped off and turned into kindling. The floor at the front of the chapel was littered with broken candles and glass. Without the candlelight, deep pools of shadows clung to every corner so dark that even my eyes couldn’t penetrate.
Gutterres held up a hand and pointed to his ear.
I paused and listened as he had directed.
Drip. Dripdrip. Drip.
I couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from. It seemed to echo…move around. We were halfway up the aisle to the front of the chapel when I noticed abandoned belongings on the pews.
Drip. Dripdrip. Drip.
The feeling of unease and wrongness was replaced by a wave of evil. Of other. It was made all the worse because we stood in a church sanctified to God. Gutterres grunted as if the force of it had been a physical blow.
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