“Third. There’s a new group of demons with really dangerous swords covered in green poison. They’re after two friends of mine called Raptors. The Raptors look human but they have wings like angels. Don’t hurt them, okay?”
“And fourth, I’m looking for a friend of mine named Mouser. He’s about this tall, fourteen, smart mouth and a wizard with computers. He can turn into a hawk, but probably hasn’t in here because that would give him away.”
Bishop could see lots of shaking heads except one kid.
“I think he was in the lower cells when I was there. The guards kept Taseing him because he gave them so much shit. One day they moved him. I don’t know where. Sometimes they take certain kids to the labs. Then you never see ‘em again. Sorry.”
“So there’s more of you somewhere?”
“Yeah. Below here.”
“Can we get there from here?”
There’s locked doors, an’ guards an’ stuff.”
Bishop tapped his ear. “C.T. ? C.T.? Can you hear me? Are you still receiving?”
“Bishop?”
“Yeah. I’m down in the training rooms. Just let a whole bunch of kids out of a locked practice room, but there’s more locked doors.”
“Okay. I can see your heat signatures. And now you’re up on the monitors.”
“These kids say there’s cells below this level, but we can’t get into them either. Everything from here on is electrically locked down.”
“I’m in Zaki’s office. There’s a full bank of monitors for the security system up here. I can unlock the training rooms and the cells. Access to the lab building is going to be a little trickier, but not to worry. I have heat sigs in a few of the rooms and I’m almost live on the internal camera system. It’s not part of the regular security system. I’m going to have to override the iris scan.”
A series of clicks sounded along the corridor. “Hey,” a new set of voices called. “Where’s everybody been? Why are we out? Are they letting us go?”
“Thanks, Cassius. Tell me the best way to get them to the train.”
“No way man,” a voice said. “First we’re going to liberate the cells. Then we’re going to kick some demon ass.”
“You’re not the boss of us, you know.”
“We have scores to settle, dude.”
“Okay, fine. Fine!” Bishop had to yell to be heard against the din of voices. “How do I get to the lab building?”
Fingers pointed.
“Be careful.”
“They got traps, man.”
“Yeah. They got lasers and microwaves and stuff that’ll fry your skull and toast your . . . things.”
“Don’t trust nobody, dude, ‘specially if they’re wearin’ a white coat.”
“Kill them scientist bastards for us, huh?”
“Hey!” somebody yelled. “The weapon locker’s open!”
The announcement was followed by multiple shouts and cat calls.
“Be careful,” Bishop yelled as everyone stampeded down the hall.
“Form a line,” an older boy yelled. “We’re splitting into two groups. Group one, you guys under sixteen to the cells. Group two, grab a weapon and follow me to the stadium.”
“Hey,” a voice said behind Bishop. It was the young demon from the arena. He had his friend Will by the arm. Will was looking better, although still a little shaky. “We wanted to say thanks. Nobody does what you did for kids like us. Nobody straight ever risked their life for us. We, um, ‘preciate it.” Will nodded.
“Are you guys going to be okay?”
“Better all the time,” Will managed.
“Watch your backs, huh?”
“Watch yours, dude. We’d like the chance to return the favor sometime.”
“Uh, gotta go. Find Mouser.”
“Luck,” Garl said. Bishop tapped the kid’s extended fist with his own.
Both kids jogged backward for a few steps, then turned to join their friends at the weapon locker.
Luck, Bishop thought to himself. We’re going to need it.
* * *
Ariel burst through the opening in the stadium roof looking for Tomas. She wanted to warn him. The fact was, they stood a better chance together against the Angel Slayers than alone. Tomas was on the ground, fighting three demons armed with swords: regular everyday swords, long, sharp, pointy and un-poisoned. Three on one was starting to look like a piece of cake. The demons were good, but Tomas was better. He lured them closer by concentrating on the one in front of him, letting the other slip behind and to the side. Suddenly, he dropped into a crouch, spinning on the ball of one foot, using the other leg to sweep the feet out from under the first demon while simultaneously extending his sword arm to drive its length through the one behind him. Ariel dove, grabbed the third demon by his prominent spinal ridge and slammed him to the ground.
“Thanks,” Tomas said, casually eviscerating the first demon while Ariel finished off the third.
“Bad news,” she said. “We have a new set of warriors armed with Angel Slayers.”
“How many?”
“Fifteen, twenty? House soldiers and their masters. From the livery I would say they’re House of Eight. They obviously waited until we spent most of our energy on this lot, then joined the party. Where are the wolves?”
Tomas shrugged. “Heard some whistles and most of them just faded into the woods by the lake.”
“They ran?”
`Another shrug. “The demons have started to pull back toward the stadium. Some of them have iPhones. They’re texting each other.”
“That’s because the demon dream team just arrived. Bishop and Cassius are inside somewhere. The Deepers are regrouping. The wolves are missing. I think we’re on our own.”
“So in about five seconds, twenty demons are going to come through those doors looking for our blood?”
“Yup. It’s the whole Raptor thing, Tomas. No past, no future and dammit, not much of a sex life. Every time one of us gets a city it’s because the last Raptor just bought the farm. If this is going to be our death, we might as well make it count. . . .” Ariel paused. “How was that?” she asked.
“Inspiring. Really. I feel so much better, except about the sex part.”
“Call it.”
“Air.”
“I’ll take ground,” Ariel said. “They already know I’m out here.”
“Check.”
“I really thought we could do this.”
Tomas started to rise. His wings lifted the hair around her face. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Tomas . . .”
“El, this isn’t your fault. Somebody had to stand up for those kids. Besides you and me. Twenty demons?! Piece a’ cake. Home by dinner.” He smiled at her. Tomas rarely smiled. And when he did it stopped her heart.
Ariel turned away, dug an elastic band out of a pocket and tied back her hair. She could feel the sword, strapped and ready against her back. She bent slightly. The knife she’d attached to her calf was still there. She had the gravity knives. The guns were her last resort. She turned to face the arena doors, waiting. When the first demon in armor appeared she let the gravity knives fall into place. Now there were demons on the roof as well. They stepped off, floating to the ground on small leathery wings. The swords they carried glowed a sickly green in the darkness, the color of infection and death.
- 19 -
Cassius ran a hand over his face. Bishop had liberated Zaki’s kidnapped street kids. He’d seen their heat signature in the training rooms, but he’d chosen to leave them there, thinking they were safer locked up than running loose. Now it was anybody’s guess.
Zaki’s office had been a find. His personal computers were hooked into everything and Cassius had been furiously inputting code, trying to unlock their secrets without erasing the contents.
Greggs had assigned him three bodyguards who were taking their duties very seriously. He’d kept Michael with him to monitor the security cameras while he was breaking into the
rest of the system. The guards had barricaded the doors with furniture and were keeping up a constant rotation of two guards patrolling the perimeter while one stayed with him in the inner office. It wasn’t bad duty. The offices were plush. Zaki had spared no expense with the furnishings, works of art or stocking the refrigerator and bar full of treats. The collection of ancient Samurai swords alone must have cost a fortune.
It was almost full dark outside now, but the view at dusk had been magnificent. One whole wall of floor to ceiling glass looked out over a manicured, rolling lawn down to the lake. Now the glass was just a black void that occasionally sparkled with brief bursts of light caused by muzzle flashes and explosions. Its thickness implied it was bullet- and probably rocket-proof.
After talking to Bishop, Cassius turned his attention to the security screens. He been tracking Tomas and watched him as he fought the three demons. The Raptor was all grace and fluidity, no motion wasted even when fighting multiple opponents. His style was a good balance to the female Raptor’s bursts of controlled fury. They made a good team. He was the disciplined martial artist. She was the rogue Samurai.
He saw the two of them finish off the three demons, but almost immediately both Raptors glanced up at the arena’s open roof. He zoomed the camera out for a wider view and keyed up the inside of the arena so both views appeared simultaneously in the upper left and right corners of both his screen and the fifty-inch TV on the wall across the room. A group of armed demons could be seen moving up the aisles toward the lobby level and its open doors. Others were emerging from the open roof, their small leathery wings beating rapidly to keep them aloft. When he zoomed back, Tomas had disappeared, but Ariel was holding her ground. Cassius felt a small surge of relief at Tomas’ absence, but he knew Tomas wouldn’t abandon a fellow Raptor when she was outnumbered twenty to one.
“Greggs,” Cassius yelled into his com. “Where are you? We’ve got a surge building. Zaki just dropped a bunch of new, well-armed demons into the arena. They’re being joined by other demons and stragglers. Several winged demons are on the roof and their target seems to be the Raptors.”
“Acknowledge,” Greggs voice said. “We’ve experienced significant casualties, Sir. The medics have been using the wounded who can still walk to get the worst cases back to the train. I’ll pull everyone who can still fight back to the arena area. The demons seem to be headed in that direction anyway.”
“Another heads up, Greggs. Bishop just freed most of the kidnapped kids. Some are demons, but young — not what you’re fighting. He tried to send them to the train, but they want a piece of the fight. If you can, see if your men can get them moving out of the line of fire.”
“Are you okay up there, Sir?”
“My babysitters won’t let me out of this room, thanks to you.”
“Yes, sir. You can kick my ass for that later.”
“And the odds I’ll get the chance?”
“Slim. We’re outnumbered, we’ve lost contact with most of our patrols and we seem to have lost the wolves completely. I never thought they’d cut and run.”
“I’m watching the monitors. A circle is starting to form on the lawn.” Cassius zoomed in.
Ariel stood in the middle space. Her coat was long gone. She had rips in the legs of her black jeans, cuts and scratches on both arms and a smear of blood across her face. Her hair was gathered into an unruly knot at the back of her head. The two gravity knives strapped under her forearms were fully extended. The sleeveless turtleneck she wore was virtually backless above the waist but she still had the Kevlar vest. A sword in a leather sheath covered her naked spine and she had her guns. The appearance of the new demons seemed to be attracting a crowd. Some had human captives. Cassius recognized Deepers among them. Others looked like catering staff, office help, hired parking valets, even security guards, all of them experiencing their worst night at work ever. The crowd parted as three of the new demons made their way down the arena steps toward the waiting Raptor. A round of betting started, some demons were using their human prisoners as collateral for their wagers.
When the three demons reached Ariel they began to circle her in opposite directions. She calmly began to turn herself, keeping them in sight, but moving slowly enough to avoid becoming dizzy. It almost looked like she was smiling. The crowd started to close in.
- 20 -
Great! I’ve been adopted by the road company of ‘Lord of the Flies’. Bishop had made it to the double steel doors at the end of the tunnel leading to the lab building. He was trailed by seven armed adolescents who were watching his every move. Three were girls; no sexism in the land of nanobot-enhanced lab rats. The group had told him that ‘Lab Rats’ was their chosen tag. After a few weeks in captivity on Zaki’s estate you had to declare your affiliation, or you ended up somebody’s lunch. A few of Bishop’s posse even had homemade tattoos of a rat standing on its back feet striking a variety of martial arts poses. They were actually pretty good, considering.
“Blow the doors, man!”
Bishop was taking a good look at the doors, all the way from their shiny silver bottoms to their tightly sealed top. They were ten feet tall and solid steel. Too thick to even think about using a demon load. There was an optical scan machine mounted to the wall on the left side. He touched his com.
“Cassius?”
“Here, Bishop.”
“I’m at the doors to the lab building. They look pretty solid, probably pneumatic. . .”
Behind him one of the boys launched himself into a running leap at the doors. He hit them with both feet, causing an electric blue outline to zip around his body, illuminating it like a cheap neon sign. He was instantly propelled backward, landing on his back and sliding across the floor until he crashed into the opposite wall. His mates pulled him to his feet, dazed but alive.
“Whoa!” the kid said. ”What a rush!”
“. . . and definitely electrified. There’s a retinal scan thingy on the wall.”
“No problem. I can authorize your scan from here. Put your right eye up to the lens.”
“Are you sure I’m not going to get a laser beam through my unauthorized skull?”
Cassius paused. “Doubtful. Just follow my instructions. Put your eye up to the reader. A light will flash. That’s the camera taking a picture. Step back. Give me a minute to store and authorize, then let it read your eye again and the system should let you through.”
Bishop took a deep breath. “Okay, go.”
The large doors made a whoosh sound and separated soundlessly into the wall on either side of the entrance.
“C’mon,” Bishop said. “We’ve only got a few seconds.” The rats crowded through with him in the middle. There was pushing and bitching and someone felt Bishop’s back pocket for a wallet.
“Chill!” he hissed once the door had closed behind them. “You keep making that much noise we might as well just run up and down the halls yelling: ‘Lucy, I’m home!’ until some mutant scientist comes out with a big stick and beats our brains in.”
Shuffling ensued. ”We could take ‘im,” somebody muttered.
Bishop tried the closest door in the hallway. Locked.
“Look.” he said. “Most of the rooms have a glass panel in the door. Pair up. Spread out, see what you can find. Do it quietly. If you spot Lab Rats in a room pass the word back and I’ll have my wizard open the door. If you spot anybody else, hide.”
“We want to kick some ass, man.”
“Fine . . . Don’t say I didn’t . . .”
“Mr. Bishop?” One of the girls was looking through the window into one of the rooms. “I think these guys are dead.”
Bishop pushed his way through the kids suddenly crowding the window. The room was obviously some sort of large banquet/meeting room. There were several large, round tables covered in white linen, topped with half eaten plates of food, silverware and half drunk or tipped over glasses of wine. Bodies were sprawled every which way. Most were dressed in white lab coats. One m
an had fallen by the desert table, a big slice of pink mousse cake shoved half way into his open mouth. A woman had toppled face first into her food. Several bodies had simply fallen to the floor or left their chairs to slide under the table. Each face had a livid blue tinge and protruding black tongue. Bishop could see it must have been a killer meal.
“Cassius? Can you unlock the interior doors in the lab building? We have a bunch of bodies down here. No blood. No visible wounds.” Locks clicked up and down the corridor including the lock on the banquet room.
“Wait.” Bishop said, opening the door. It was like telling a herd of buffalo to hold on just a minute before starting their stampede.
“Don’t touch anything!”
“Wow. What happened?”
“I think they were poisoned.” A plate shattered.
“When I say don’t touch anything . . .”
“I was just smelling it. We never get fancy stuff like this to eat.”
“I’m sure these guys wish they hadn’t gotten fancy stuff like this either.”
“These guys were major dicks, but this is wack.”
“I think their boss was ready to make his big move and he didn’t want any copyright infringement,” Bishop said, mostly to himself.
“Hey,” another voice put in. “We can’t do nothin’ here, right? So we need to find the cages.”
“Level Two,” the girl with the stars said. “The guards were always talking about Level Two when they disappeared somebody.”
“I’m going upstairs,” Bishop said. “You guys check for cages and Lab Rats down here. And don’t leave this building, it isn’t safe.”
Somebody made a rude sound with his lips.
“And by the way, a psychotic circus mutant took all my cash last night when he was torturing me, so whoever has my wallet can give it back.”
* * *
In the back of the banquet room a body rose slowly to its feet. He was tall and thin, and once he discarded the lab coat, it was apparent he was an extremely fastidious dresser. His expensive suit was most notable for its restraint. All accessories had been carefully coordinated by hue. It was an elegant fashion statement if you were overly fond of the color grey.
Raptor: Urban Fantasy Noir Page 35
