And it was what he’d want me to do, too.
“C’mon,” I said to Petra as I pulled out my phone and scrolled to Uncle Dave’s text message. “Let’s go check out the new Caulborn HQ.”
Continue reading for an excerpt from Torment
Chapter 1
It never ceases to amaze me just how many supernatural creatures have heightened senses. Vampires can see in the dark, werewolves can smell you from a hundred feet away, and sheepsquatch can do both those things and see your body heat.
Yes, I said sheepsquatch.
Megan and I were dressed in black suits that would mask our thermal signatures and hopefully not let our scent out. Just the same, I was trying not to breathe too deeply, otherwise the creature might see the heat from my breath as it fogged in the cold. We were in a previously undiscovered sub-basement of our new headquarters, found only when some workers had knocked down part of a wall to bring in more power lines. Said sub-basement had also featured sub-zero temperatures, and while it had technically warmed up into the twenties, frost and ice still rimed the area. That thaw had woken up the sheepsquatch, which then attacked the workers and maimed one of them. It had escaped, and now Megan and I were here to deal with it.
The lack of light in the basement didn’t help things, but my kobold-gifted night vision let me see the dozens of crates and drums that lined the walls, and a handful more that had been broken open in the center of the room. To my right, Megan gave me a series of quick hand signs that meant she saw movement ahead. The night-vision goggles she wore made her look like some sort of sci-fi cosplayer, but gave her sight equal to, or maybe better than, mine. We slid along the wall, the stone freezing cold against my back, and crept forward. The sheepsquatch would be able to see in the dark, too, and we didn’t want to alert it to our presence just yet. As we got a little closer, I saw the creature squatting on the floor, gnawing on a hunk of meat that would’ve been frozen fifteen or twenty years ago. Funny, you wouldn’t think a sheep-monster would be carnivorous. Megan rolled her wrist and conjured a tranquilizer gun from the pocket dimension that let her carry all manner of small weapons and gizmos. Plan A was to tranquilize the creature and take it back upstairs.
Well, Plan A had originally been that I’d portal it back to its native habitat, but the construction crews above had already laid down some wards against extradimensional energy, so that ruled that out. Megan raised her weapon and took aim. The sheepsquatch, seemingly oblivious to our presence, continued chewing. My kobold night vision let me see the creature in vivid detail. It was covered in dirty white fur and had a pair of ram’s horns curling back from its head. My best guess put it at roughly six feet tall if it stood up on its hind legs, and its face was an odd cross between a goat and a bear. Megan’s finger moved to squeeze the trigger —
And a second sheepsquatch, one we hadn’t seen, hurled itself over the shattered crates and landed right between us. One of its horns caught Megan in the stomach, and she doubled over with a grunt. The scent of sulfur, a hallmark of sheepsquatch, filled the air and made me want to retch. I forced my breakfast back down and blasted the thing point blank with a column of elemental fire. A hole the size of my fist sizzled through the sheepsquatch’s midsection, and the beast collapsed to the ground, the smell of roast mutton temporarily overpowering the sulfur.
I risked a glance over at Megan. No blood. Good, the suit had protected her. If I failed to keep Megan “fine,” then Orcus would send me on a one-way trip to Tartarus. My feeling of relief fled as the other sheepsquatch let out a howl of rage, threw its snack aside, and barreled toward us. I was about to unload another bolt of fire when the sheepsquatch lurched to one side, as if its leg had given out. The creature gave a drunken yowl and then crumpled in a heap. I turned to see Megan down on one knee, her tranquilizer gun still trained on the beast. Her mouth was drawn in a thin line, and her free hand was pressed against her stomach. We waited a minute, and when nothing moved, I said, “Are you all right?”
“Not really,” she said, dismissing her gun and grimacing. “Its horn didn’t pierce the suit, but it hurts like the dickens.”
“May I?”
She paused, then nodded. I put my hand on Megan’s shoulder and sent a healing probe into her. The blow from the sheepsquatch had bruised one of her kidneys, and nearly ruptured her appendix. I sent a pulse of healing energy into her, restoring her organs to normal. She shivered a little as I did so. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. Do you think there will be any other surprises?”
“Hard to say. The blueprints for this place don’t quite match up with what we’re finding. I think Woof made some modifications that she didn’t want certain regulatory agencies knowing about.”
“Like having a secret deep-freeze locker to store live sheepsquatch,” I said. “Shouldn’t she have killed them first?”
Megan shrugged. “Maybe she thought they were dead. They hibernate, just like bears. She probably figured to keep them on ice until she was ready to butcher them.” We took a few more minutes to confirm there weren’t anymore nasties down here, and then Megan tapped her earpiece and told the cleanup crew it was okay to come get the beasts, alerting them that there were two to retrieve, not one. That done, we headed back upstairs.
“I still can’t believe this is our new office,” I said to Megan as I tossed my mask onto her desk. “I mean, of all the buildings down here in the Undercity, they picked Woof’s?” I fumbled with the zipper of the suit, stripping down to my T-shirt and jeans.
Megan shrugged. “The building was unoccupied, and already had certain structural reinforcements that the Care Taker felt were advantageous,” she said as she peeled off her own suit, revealing the jeans and sweater she wore underneath.
“Meg, this place was a restaurant. Just because it had a freezer intended to hold yetis doesn’t mean it’s a good choice for our new HQ.” I’d become quite acquainted with Woof’s, an abandoned eatery, during a fight I’d had with a parasitic creature called the Black Flash. In fact, just a few hours ago, I’d helped the building crew deal with all the dish racks I’d knocked over during that fight. So sure, it had been a great place to fight extradimensional parasites, but as HQ? This place would never be like our old office.
She looked at me and let out a breath. “It’s the best we have, Vincent. We need to make do.” It struck me then just how tired she looked. How tired we all probably were. The events of the last few days had put us all through the wringer, physically and emotionally.
I put up my hands. “Sorry, Meg. That was uncalled for.”
Her expression softened. “It’s all right, Vincent. We’ve been through a lot lately.”
That wasn’t the half of it. I’m sure part of my attitude problem was Galahad’s death. It had been two days since the boss’s funeral, but it might as well have been a lifetime ago. Inquisitor Xavier had assumed temporary command of the office, and while he was intelligent and capable, he wasn’t Galahad XI.
I ran my hands through my hair as I looked around the restaurant that was slowly being converted into our new base of operations. Two crews of workers had been brought in from West Virginia. One was tasked with running network cable throughout the place; the other was laying down protective wards.
Gearstripper was standing on a table twenty feet away, having an animated discussion with Chuck, the supervisor of both teams, about the best way to run fiber optic cable so it wouldn’t interfere with the protective magical wards they’d be laying down later in the day. Chuck looked to be in his mid-fifties, with graying hair and the start of a pot belly. You can always tell the guys who have been in this line of work for a while. If Chuck thought it odd to be talking to a green, eighteen-inch-tall creature who looked like something out of a bad Muppet acid trip, he didn’t show it.
“You two,” a voice called from behind us. I spun to find Corben Xavier
, leader of the Caulborn secret police, and our temporary field commander, standing there. Clad in his standard black suit and narrow black tie, Inquisitor Xavier always gives off that creepy Men In Black vibe, even when he’s trying to smile pleasantly. Especially when he’s trying to smile pleasantly. He inclined his head toward a storeroom that had been converted into a conference room. “I need to speak with you both in private.” Xavier held an oversized briefcase in his prosthetic left hand, having lost his real hand during our recent mission to Hockomock Swamp. As for the briefcase, I knew who was riding inside it. If Xavier was inviting Megan and me into a briefing with Croatoan, then things were about to get interesting. And by interesting, I mean bad.
We filed into the conference room, and Xavier closed the door behind us. As he busied himself with laying out his anti-eavesdropping wards, Megan and I took our seats on opposite sides of the table, and I glanced around. The room had the cloying smell of fresh paint, and the conference table positively shone with newness. The only adornment on the wall was the giant TV on which we could project images. The new chairs were stiff, and creaked. In the old office, everything had been broken in, to the point where it really felt like a second home. This, this was far from that.
“Now then,” Xavier said, dusting his hands off and taking a seat at the table. “I wanted to give you both a status update. The building is coming along on schedule. The external protective wards are mostly in place, and the project supervisor tells me that the remainder of the work will be completed by the end of the week.”
“What about new agents?” Megan asked. “We’re severely understaffed.”
With Galahad’s and Kristin’s deaths, the total number of field-capable personnel in the office had been reduced to just Megan and me, and she had only recently come off of light duty.
Xavier ran a hand through his thinning gray hair. “Unfortunately, due to the incident at Ashgate, and the recent upyr activity, our ranks in this state have been significantly diminished. The Care Taker and I have been working to bring people in from other parts of the country, but it’s a slow process. We’re hoping to have new agents here soon, but I can’t say when.”
“Do you have any good news?” I asked. Both Megan and Xavier shot me a look.
“Agent Corinthos,” Xavier said, his tone level. “The building being on schedule is good news. Staffing is an issue but not an insurmountable one.” His tone remained level as he added, “I understand you have been through a tremendous ordeal of late. I have come to respect you in the time we have worked together, and to realize that you are not as much of a loose cannon as your file originally led me to believe. Do not make me rethink that.”
I let out a breath. “Sorry. Sir.” I wasn’t being fair to Xavier. Since losing both Galahad and Commander Courageous, I’d been feeling adrift, lost. Sure, I still had my friends and Petra, but the boss and my adviser had always been able to help me work through whatever problems I was facing. Their deaths had left a hole in my chest that was nearly on par with the one I had after losing my connection to the Urisk.
Xavier waved a hand. “No trouble at all, Agent. And I believe I do have the kind of good news you are looking for. Our intelligence teams think they’ve gotten a lead on Treggen.”
That made both Megan and me sit up. “Do they know where he is?” I asked.
Xavier shook his head. “No, but we think we know where he’s going next.” Xavier tapped a few keys on his keyboard, and the TV on the wall sprang to life, showing us a map of the United States. “From what we’ve been able to determine of his past movements, Treggen appears to always operate within five to ten miles of a certain kind of facility.” Blue dots began to pulse on the map, several in Texas, some in New Mexico, one in Washington State. There was one blinking in Massachusetts, too, not far from where we were now.
Megan’s eyes were wide. “That’s Dulce,” she said, pointing at the spot in New Mexico. “There’s a cloning facility there that the aliens collaborated with us on. And, in Texas, that’s Galveston, there’s a cloning facility there, too.” She gestured at the dots. “These are all cloning facilities.” She paused for a moment, anger in her ice-blue eyes. “And they’re all near places where I was stationed.” We’d recently learned that Treggen had somehow tethered himself to Megan, and that connection had only been broken in the last few days.
Xavier nodded. “Exactly. Based on what Agent Corinthos and I encountered in Hockomock Swamp, we’ve deduced that Treggen is projecting his consciousness into cloned bodies. Most of your assignments, Agent Hayes, whether by coincidence or by some design that we aren’t aware of, put Treggen right near the facilities he needed to clone himself. Likely this is how he’s eluded us for so long.”
Us and the Chroniclers, I thought, thinking back to a conversation I’d had with the Tempus recently.
Xavier continued, “We’ve decided that the best approach to dealing with Treggen is to shut down all the cloning facilities we know of and disable their capabilities or, if that’s not possible, double or triple the guards and wards on those locations. Using his false Maxwell Roberts identity, Treggen had knowledge of every cloning facility on the planet, and we’re going to take those away from him.”
I liked how Xavier was using “we” here. Not that long ago, he’d been suspicious of Megan, believing her in league with Treggen. It was good that he was trusting her. And me, for that matter. “So what do you want us to do?” I asked. “Sit on one of those sites and see if he shows up?”
Xavier shook his head. “All of these facilities” — he gestured toward the map with his false hand — “are standard facilities, ones that were created by or in conjunction with Caulborn operatives. We’ve got those covered. This one, though” — he tapped his keyboard and an orange dot appeared in the northwestern corner of Massachusetts — “this one was not created with the help of human hands.”
“What is it?” Megan asked.
Xavier frowned. “We’re not entirely sure. The archives of that time were lost in a fire back in the late 1850s. What little information that did survive tells us that it was an advanced cloning facility, but something about it was dangerous to humans. The agents at the time couldn’t destroy it, so they sealed it using some extraordinarily potent spells. It’s been idle ever since then.”
“The 1850s?” I said. “Was Jake here yet? He could tell us what went on.”
Xavier shook his head. “Unfortunately, the facility was sealed before Jacob arrived here. The fire occurred after he began working with the Caulborn, but unfortunately, he hadn’t read the case files on the facility at that point. I already asked him. But while Jake doesn’t know about that time, Croatoan does.”
None of us was quite sure exactly what — or who — Croatoan was, other than a spirit that had been imprisoned in a brass sphere about the size of a bowling ball. I’d first met him in a time warp that took me back to the 1600s, where he’d tried to kill me. I later learned that he had once aided a being known as Sakave, helping the late intergalactic warlord conquer an untold number of planets and peoples. To hide from Sakave, and presumably any other enemies he’d made over the centuries, Croatoan began helping the Caulborn, alerting us to extradimensional dangers in exchange for our protection. In fact, if it weren’t for Croatoan’s warning, Sakave would’ve taken over the planet two weeks ago.
Xavier pulled the sentient bowling ball from the briefcase and set it on the table. “Croatoan can tell us everything about that time, as he was the one who sensed the danger in the first place. Evidently, it sent out some severe extradimensional shock waves. All right, Croatoan, what can you tell us?”
“Mmm,” the bowling ball said. “Yes, the facility in the Hoosac Tunnel. Quite a remarkable installation.” Croatoan’s voice didn’t sound right. It wasn’t like he had a cold or anything, not that sentient bowling balls got colds, but he didn’t sound quite like hims
elf. “It houses a cybernetic organism that could replicate any manner of genetic structure.”
“So do we really expect Treggen to go there? If it was sealed by Caulborn operatives because it was unsafe for humans, what’s the likelihood he’ll be able to get in?” Megan asked. “I know Treggen is smart, but that’s giving him an awful lot of credit.”
The red and blue lights on Croatoan’s shell flickered as Megan said this, as if in annoyance.
“We think,” Xavier said, “that this facility may be Treggen’s only chance. The clones he’s been using are temporary shells. Any damage they suffer reduces them to ash almost immediately. This facility is likely his only hope of creating a permanent body. Croatoan, the surviving information implies that a being was imprisoned within this facility. What can you tell us about this being? Can it be reasoned with? Could it be persuaded to side with us against Treggen?”
“Oh, who gives a damn?” Croatoan said, and his voice had completely changed. Gone were the high-pitched, scraping tones, replaced by a much smoother, much more sinister voice. “Xavier, you are one of the most aggravating people I’ve ever come to know, and I’ve been around for thousands of years.”
“Treggen,” I whispered.
“Very good, Corinthos,” Croatoan-Treggen said. “I’d applaud if I had hands. Here.” A beam of light shot from the ball and fell on Xavier’s computer. A file called golfClap.mp3 opened onscreen, and the sound of polite applause came from the speakers.
Xavier had sprung up from the table and was reaching for the door, no doubt to raise an alarm. But before he could go any further, a beam of green light shot from Croa-Treggen and blew a hole through the back of Xavier’s head. There was no blood splatter, no gore, as the energy blast had neatly cauterized the wound. The Inquisitor dropped to the floor, the smell of cooked meat hanging in the air.
Nightfall: Caulborn 5 Page 24
