“I re-mem-ber you,” she said, going all sing-song, all childish, all stomach-churningly almost like Ariana’s mercurial youth.
She tossed me again, just a twist of her hips and a fling of her arms sending me sailing into the ceiling, bashing against it, hard, then tumbling into the muck again.
“I remember the taste of your power. Your life’s blood. Your fear and your anger, your silly little toy soldiers.”
She ran over and soccer-kicked me, vest or not I felt my ribs flex, and I flew to the inner sanctum’s far wall, coughing. Nimbus plucked me out of the slime again, held me up one handed, grabbing me by the vest and shaking me awake so she could keep taunting.
“That was a long time ago, huh?”
Her face was close to mine, so close the smell of her breath turned my stomach. I thought about puking on her to piss her off, choked it down instead, swallowing to add the bile to the cold, hard pit of meanness Adversary liked in the bottom of my stomach.
“You’ve aged so appallingly, Mr. Kincaid,” she said, tsk-tsking and shaking her head. “The years and your negative attitude, little mortal, have not been kind.”
After she pinned me to the wall, Nimbus giggled, every bit as pants-on-the-head crazy as in my nightmares. Maybe the voices had told her a joke. Loopy broad.
One of her hands slithered up to run through my hair, then to tangle fingers in it, then to effortlessly jerk my head back, exposing my neck. I thought about all the friends I had fighting ghouls a couple dozen yards away. I thought about Ariana, on the other side of reality. I thought about how busy I’d been last night. I wished I had a friend a little closer.
“They said not to kill you, all those years ago,” she leaned in, nuzzling at my neck before she murdered me.
“They didn’t say anything at all about me not being allowed to kill you now.”
“It ain’t up to ‘them,’ lady.” I didn’t care what voices she heard. I felt her breath—not hot, just there—on my neck, so close I knew I should be worried. I wasn’t. My wish’d come true. I had a friend a little closer.
“And it ain’t up to you.”
She strained to plant her lips firmly and bite down, but her own hair—sloppily dyed blue and green, maybe an ‘artsy’ job by Sammy Bones himself—was snarled tight, yanked back, keeping even her preternaturally strong neck muscles from finishing the job. Her jaw closed down just short of my throat, snapping like a frustrated alligator who couldn’t quite reach, and I grinned.
“Get her. All o’ you.”
She didn’t know it, but she was as good as dead.
Joining the first spirit—a plucky, airy sylph, something right out of Tír na nOg, blue-white faerie wings flapping furiously as it pulled on Nimbus’ stupid hair—came a sturdy little gnome, an earth elemental drawn from the same plane as Ariana. Crafted from a uniquely Puyallupian mixture of sewage and concrete, but colored in the perpetual ash from topside, he clamped his arms around one of Nimbus’ legs, incidentally ripping her already tattered dance-club leggings. Then came a wicked salamander, fiery-bright, slithering around her other leg, burning as it climbed up her, wrapped in fire from head to tail.
“What…are you? Are you kidding with this?” She flicked me away, twisted, easily kicked her leg free of the salamander only for a solid-but-short stone gargoyle to grab onto her instead, and weigh her down.
“Hey, get off me, you little…”
None of them could’ve held her alone. I wasn’t spellcaster enough for that, not by half. No, none of them was an Ariana, not even close. But there were a lot of them. Against one or two, she’d be fine and I’d be dead. But against four, six, eight? I had her. Checkmate. I’d brought all sorts of friends to this party. Some for speed, some for strength, some for stinging elemental bolts. As many as I could conjure up and control, as many of them as my will could manage to bind. I’d summoned more spirits riding that dose of Long Haul last night than I had in the last year. I’d bound more than I had in the last decade. Ariana wasn’t here to see the binding rites. Ariana wasn’t here to be my conscience.
Spirits of earth, of fire, of air, water, and metahumanity—one was a slithering, groping DNA helix, believe it or not—all grappled with her, all at once, called up from every plane I knew how to reach, taken form from every belief system I knew how to lie to and pretend to believe in.
“Get these things off me!”
She kicked the gnome away but a grabby little Samedi-spirit in a dapper top hat clung to her face, cackling. She swatted it off just in time for a curvy, naked little undine-girl, made of sewer water, to blast her with a spray of disreputable liquid. A smoldering, pint-sized djinn and a fierce warrior-angel with a sword of lightning attacked her low and high, then the rocky gnome got a good grip again, weighing her down as the DNA-snake, a spirit of metahumanity, bit at her like a striking serpent. Some grappled, some clawed and bit, some burned her, a few threw weak little spells, all of them swarming, distracting, stinging, holding her still.
I slumped against the wall, tired.
Yeah, I’d had a busy night. My throat wasn’t raw just from nonstop commlink calls. I’d been chanting half the damned night, forcing every minor spirit in the book to drag its sorry ass to this plane, then to wait on the Astral for my command to materialize. I hadn’t just promised favors and bounties and nuyen to metahumans, I’d gone through half my stores of reagents to summon and bind myself a small army.
She hissed and clawed, kicked and shook, raked at them with her broken black-painted nails, shattered her teeth on a gargoyle’s stony hide. I watched, worked a crick out of my neck, and tried not to laugh as she struggled. She’d spent too long in the dark and the shit, gone half-feral. She was just a trapped animal now, trying to use raw strength when a sanguisa europa, a vampire, had so many other tricks. Perfect. Let her.
When I was sure that she was sure they had her, I rose to my Mentor’s bait, and gave her a friendly suggestion.
“You know, spirits are vulnerable to spells,” I offered up conversationally as I reached into my pants pocket to pull out my crumpled pack of Targets. She snarled at me like a mad cat until the cheeky little undine squirted something into her open mouth and left her sputtering. I touched the tip of my smoke to the flaming djinn dancing on her head and lit up my cigarette while her hair burned.
“I know all you vampires can cast. You were too stupid to think to, but here. See if you can do it. I bet you can’t.”
That reminded her, sure enough. She glared at the undine and called up her predatory magic, hurled a bolt of raw fire from her red-glowing eyes, trying to burn the small spirit to nothing. That was what I wanted. That was what Adversary wanted for me. To test myself against her. To prove I could do it, with or without his help.
“Ag.”
I batted the spell out of the air like a goalie blocking a shot. A faint wisp of smoke, less than was coming from my Target, was all that was left of her attack. God, it was easy. Maybe not as easy as stopping Uranus had been, but more satisfying.
The undine squirted her again, the DNA-chain struck, the gnome grappled, all while Nimbus sputtered and howled at me and called up a more potent spell.
Adversary laughed and I laughed with him; technique counted, here, experience and talent, not raw power given by some pathetic disease. She was out of practice. She was rusty. For all her power, all the stolen life she had coursing through her, for what should have been decades of practice as a combat magician…she was like nothing to me. I had tricks she didn’t. I’d honed techniques she’d never even stumbled across. My shielding was flawless.
“Ag.”
I swatted her second spell aside while the central chamber filled with the smell of her burning flesh, my spirits crawling over her, pinching and biting and razing her to the ground. She wasn’t going to hurt them and she wasn’t going to hurt me.
She writhed and shrieked and cast again, all predator, all feral, as animalistic in that moment as her ghoulish pets, as lost to Wolf or so
me perverted shadow of him as any toxic shaman the world had ever seen. A terrible spell filled her head and heart, a mighty fireball, the sort of impossible casting that would leave a ruined pile of ash behind instead of any recognizable corpse, a spell of murderous mass destruction, something to wreck a building in a single casting.
“Ag.” I almost laughed it out, that time.
My shielding held, again. My capacity to counterspell did the trick, hit the sweet spot, blocked the goal. I’d let her snarl and chant and call up her tac-nuke blast, and then I’d snuffed it out because I could. Because Adversary wanted me to—no, because I wanted to. I let the strain of the overcasting send blood to redden her eyes, let her harness the power before I cut the strings to it, let her feel the pain of her failure, of the damage she caused herself for no gain, of the humiliation of me nipping her casting in the bud.
“You. Stupid. Monster.” I blew smoke in her face, relishing the taste of her failure.
I dragged on the cigarette, then flicked it away to bounce off her corpse-pale face, then sputter out in the wetness on the floor. The gunfire had stopped, back behind me. I didn’t spare my headware a glance, but I knew they were alive. I knew they’d won. I knew, because it just felt right, in that moment, for the universe to fall my way for once. I held the smoke in my mouth while I started unbuttoning my cuffs and rolling up my sleeves.
“My friends beat yours.”
My spirits pulled, grabbed, wrestled all together, holding her firm. Each of them was some secret I’d been forced to learn, a different technique from a different tradition, a different pocket of belief I’d had to scrape through in my desperation to find power again. They were ugly, but they worked. They’d come when I’d called. I’d strained to summon them, but—just like the allies I had in sewer tunnels killing ghouls—they’d come, one way or another. I held them here by pure force of will, sheer strength of personality. Black magic at its best.
“My spellcasting beat yours.”
Once my sleeves were neatly rolled and tucked up, I reached, calmly, slowly, certainly, for my pocket. I pulled out my tactical folder and thumbed it open. The mono-edge caught the light and the little cats-eye of orichalcum winked in the darkness as the blade locked into place.
“I beat you.”
I breathed it out like a prayer, like the triumphant exclamation at the end of a marathon I’d been running, day and night, awake and asleep, for the decade and more since she’d taken my Talent from me, and left me only my skill.
“I won.”
She spat curses at me in languages my headware didn’t understand. The weapon focus did the job, regeneration and vampirism be damned. Half a lifetime ago, she’d gotten drunk on my power and stolen the life-that-would-never-be from me. I didn’t think about Dr. Minirth. I didn’t think about Ari. I thought about myself, and the Talent she’d drained from me, and the knife in my hand.
“Why didn’t I find you years ago?”
There, in the dark, I carved the life out of her. Just me and my little weapon focus, while an army of spirits held her down and watched.
Then, and only then, did I light up another Target—with magic, this time, the minor ignition spell coming to me almost easily, for once—and figure out how to open the damned door and get back to my friends.
My personal darkness was tucked back away. Ol’ Jimmy Kincaid sauntered out that door, shirt rumpled, bat propped on one shoulder, bruised, battered, but managing a smile for his friends.
It was a new day. I wanted to get topside, wanted to let some cool Puyallup rain fall, to wash my hands of her blood and the fear I’d had of her for all this time. First I had to see how many had made it, of course.
Hell of a morning.
CHAPTER 40
Back in the antechamber, they were taking stock under harsh green lights. Billy Bricks was dead, but I’d already guessed that. Trig, an Ancient, had gone down, too, pulled to pieces while I’d watched, and so had Supes and Hogleg and Roly-Poly, more elves in black and green leathers. Castaigne, the Fast-Response washout, had taken a shot to the head, dead before Daisy could reach him, maybe before he’d hit the ground.
Blue’s arm had gotten bit—gotten bit bad, she was joking with Sledge about getting a nice titanium replacement—but Daisy and the slap-patch had done their job, Rook reassured me, after he’d cast a detect infected spell again, ready to share the bad news if he must. Pink had lost some blood, but would make it. Blitz, too. Sterling was touch-and-go, but Daisy had taken a shine to him, so even as she chanted and poured healing magic in, she was carrying him out toward the sunlight.
Chase sauntered over toward his big Suburban—maybe he had a change of clothes in there—and was the first to see the body. Ricks, the man we’d left outside, was a bloody heap.
“Th’hell—” Chase got out, hands blurring for his Carnivores, guns appearing like magic, up and ready, hammers back.
The rifle shot pegged him square in the ten-ring, middle of the chest, and he fell back, coughing blood.
Pinkerton, Granger, and Blue, the former cops, all dove for cover the fastest, but Granger wasn’t quite quick enough, a follow-up shot took the top of his head off. Bushido Blitz moved like lightning, darting to grab Chase’s stupid leather duster, doubling-over, dragging him into the shadow of the Suburban where Rook was waiting with a desperate healing spell.
The next shot missed Sledge’s bald head, taking off the tip of an ear instead when the big street samurai’d tried to line up a shot. The one after that took one of Hardpoint’s gun-drones—only just relaunched, the only one that’d survived the tunnel fight—out of the air in a spray of sparks.
From my spot amidst the parked cars, I could see old Ricks’ body, torn wide open. A knife hadn’t done that, or even a sword like Blitz’s. Claws and teeth had done that, and animalistic rage, tinged with impotent frustration at the death of a master. Something animal-wild and animal-angry, the same claws that had torn the Weazelys wide open and opened up my belly.
Fuck me. Why hadn’t I checked for his body, down there in the dark?
“Sammy Bones!” I called out, loud as I could, using my old Lone Star command voice. The next shot didn’t come on schedule. I’d caught him off guard.
My team, pinned down, half-dead, fidgeted. Half of them were hugging the ground in the shade of Hardpoint’s big van; if all we’d had was smaller stuff to hide behind, we’d likely all be dead by now.
“Sammy Bones!” I yelled again, trying to tuck myself as tight as I could against my Ford, before my next holler. “I cut out her fucking heart!”
I heard a howl from somewhere far off, and my TacWhisper added it to the ballistics data it was already compiling. It was an angry cry, a mournful wail. Good. Fucker. I remembered his claw in my belly, remembered the gut-punch I’d felt when I’d walked into the Weazelys’ apartment. Another shot rained down, making me duck down again, then another, also at me. He was good and mad, but that wasn’t doing his aim any favors.
Hardpoint’s cam-drones were back in the air, circling wide and trying to pinpoint the shooter. Blue stuck her fool head up, too, but Bones was busy shooting at me, so she didn’t die for it. Rook was still trying to patch up Chase, Daisy was pinned inside the tunnels with Sterling. Sledge was on the move, Caitlyn Caboose just behind him, Skip right on her ass; orks, like Marines, default to running toward the sound of shooting, God bless ’em for it.
Another shot spanged against my Ford’s armor, but I had to keep him focused on me, had to take the heat off my people.
“Nimbus died scared and ugly and slow!” I shouted, trying not to think about what I’d done to her, trying not to think about the red mess I’d found in Hank and Darlene’s apartment. We kind of owed each other, me an’ Sammy.
He fired again. I snaked my Colt up, held it sideways, flat against my car, just using the guncam and my cyberoptics link-up, looking where my TacWhisper told me to, where my Sideways had decoded as the ringing shots’ location.
“Third w
indow from the left, sixth floor,” I grunted into my headware, letting Trace broadcast it to the whole team. “He’s got Ricks’ Ruger. Eight shots in the tube.”
“Fucker’s empty,” Skip snarled, doing the math almost as quick as my Transys and my Sideways. My orkish contingent charged, starting across the open ground to the boarded-up apartment building we’d tagged him in.
Ricks’ blood puddle had grown wide enough it touched my fingers where I crouched behind cover, and—like that contact was a starting gun—I found myself doing the same, vaulting over my Ford, sliding across the hood, taking off at a sprint.
I dumped a magazine into the window I’d last seen Bones shooting from—good luck reloading a bolt-action underbarrel tube while you’re getting shot at, you fucker—before my full-on run slammed me into the front wall of the apartment; or, not quite, as I bounced off Caitlyn like she was the front wall.
Sledge was already on the move inside, Yamaha rifle up, but Skip was close enough to snort when Caitlyn caught me.
For a bunch of assholes who’d never formally trained together—’cept me and Skip a few times—we worked pretty well. Her Ares, my Colt, Sledge’s Yamaha, Caitlyn’s blocky AK, we did all right for ourselves. The guy with the bulletproof arms took point, then Skip, me sandwiched between the ladies, and Caitlyn the Caboose held up the rear. We swept up the stairs, cleared corners, watched each other’s backs. We moved like professionals, even if we were a little rusty, even if I was the only one who’d been to an academy.
None of it helped.
He came at us out of the dark, and none of our low light or thermoptics quite managed to spot him. He raked Caboose’s back open to the bone, dragged his claws through her armor, dermal plating, skin, muscle, and darted away faster than she could fall. Jesus, Buddha, and Zeus, but he was quick. This wasn’t me blindsiding him with a Ford he wasn’t expecting. This was him hunting us, all jungle cat. Shadows turned to muscle and claw and then turned back to shadows. Impossible to track, as quiet and deadly as only an adept’s magic could manage, fighting like a pure predator for all that Sammy Bones was a scavenger at heart.
Shadowrun: Shaken: No Job Too Small Page 23
