“I’m on it,” Starr told him.
Mouser looked at Bishop. “Go,” Bishop said. “Be back here in five minutes, Rats or no Rats. It’s not safe out there.”
“Why do we need Rats?” he heard Mouser ask as he followed Starr out of the room.
Amazingly, everyone found their slippers, including an extra one for Suzee.
* * *
“Bishop?” It was Cassius on the com. “Where are you?”
“Still in the lab building. I found Mouser, Susan Elizabeth and a bunch of three and four year olds locked in some sort of dormitory. I’m trying to corral the older ones who came in with me. What’s happening out there?”
“The Raptors are in big trouble. Zaki had some super demons in reserve and there’s a big showdown forming on the lawn.”
Cassius checked his monitor.
It showed a lone Deeper suddenly bursting into the ring from inside the crowd of raucous spectators: he had a table leg in one upraised hand, his eyes were wide, mouth open in a soundless howl. One of the circling demons almost casually cut him down with a mortal blow to the neck, then motioned impatiently to have his still twitching body dragged out of the away. The death caused the circle to widened, demons pressing back from the fighters, giving them room.
Tomas was nowhere in sight.
“I see where you are,” Cassius said. “I’m sending one of my men to bring you to us. We can decide what to do with your charges once you get here.”
“Thanks. Tell him we’ll be the ones with the teddy bears.”
- 24 -
Where were all the demons coming from? Ariel asked herself. The ones in black leather armor pushing their way to the front of the crowd hadn’t taken part in the initial fighting. Zaki must have been holding them in reserve. Each group had a different colored stripe running diagonally across their jacket that seemed to designate which demon familia they belonged to. The stripes also seemed to designate the wearer’s rank and status in the hierarchy of hell.
The other demons visibly deferred to the House’s authority, but no coercion was necessary here. A sense of excitement was building, a sense that the next few minutes would bring a decisive demon victory, a symbolic win of massive proportions against the army of light. Much more was at stake here than kidnapped children. Something was about to change forever, the death of two Raptors was merely a showy detail.
The yellow demon swung her sword in a circle over her head. The crowd of demons moved back even further, jostling for position, larger demons shoving and elbowing their way to the front to get the best view. Once through the crowd, the armored demons spread themselves around the inside of the grassy ring, shoulder to shoulder with the members of their own house.
Ariel took a deep breath. She expected to feel alone and scared but the truth was she felt acutely alive. Her senses seemed to have sharpened even beyond a Raptor’s natural enhancements. The darkness didn’t matter; her eyes saw everything in acute clarity. She could actually feel the blood rushing through her veins, the oxygen pumping in and out of her lungs. The bones in her face were shifting, cheeks becoming higher and sharper creating dark hollows beneath. Her forehead pushed forward forming a broad V, exaggerating the deepness of her brow and the predatory set of her eyes. Long fingers with pointed, curved nails wrapped the hilt of her sword. She let her wings unfurl. She was tired of the ground, she would take this fight into the air, see how high a demon could rise on those ugly flaps of skin they called wings. Raptors didn’t run. They fought to the death, making room for the next one of their kind to do the same. And the next, and the next, until the end of time.
The air pulsed behind her, chasing a few fallen leaves across the grass. She felt Tomas’ heat as his wings touch hers, a brief brush of greeting. They stood back to back.
“You should have kept going,” she told him.
“There’s a plan in the works. We only need to hold them for five minutes, El. All their attention has to be on us. Every demon, every blood shot eyeball. You think we can do that?”
“Sure. No problem. And Tomas? The yellow bitch is mine.”
- 25 -
“Do you have any food? These guys are hungry.” Bishop set the child he was holding down on the carpet, out of the way of the adolescent Rats and the strays they had picked up from the cells that were piling in behind him. The child tilted his whole body backwards to look up at the tall man who’d opened the door. Cassius leaned over and picked the boy up. The child reached out a tentative hand to touch Cassius’ rusty colored dreadlocks, his brown eyes looked shyly into the adult’s gold ones.
“You hungry?” Cassius asked. The child nodded solemnly. “Then let’s see what we can do.”
Several of the Rats were also holding children. They’d cheerfully volunteered to carry the smaller abductees, comforting and joking with them, quickly turning their fear into an enthusiasm for adventure. One fifteen year old Rat with wildly spiked hair and a scar under one eye had two teddy bears strapped to his back and a little girl asleep in his arms with her head on his shoulder. He laid her carefully in an overstuffed chair and joined the rest of the gang milling about Zaki’s office.
The Rats were full of shameless curiosity. They began opening drawers and cabinets, claiming space on the two couches, wandering through the suite into the conference room and back again. The built-in bar and refrigerator were quickly raided. Cassius’ guards did their best to relieve the Rats of anything alcoholic or unsuitable for human consumption but it was like taking booty away from marauding Huns.
As soon as he knew Suzee was safely inside the room, Mouser had eyes only for the computer. He took over Cassius’ empty chair behind the big desk, his eyes fixed on the flat screen in its recessed storage compartment in the wooden top, his fingers already tapping the keys.
“Access problem?” Mouser asked as soon as Cassius extracted himself from the Rats and their endless stream of questions. Starr had already promised Mouser that Suzee would get her share of the available food.
Cassius seemed unperturbed by the boy’s boldness. “I can’t crack the final server,” he told him. “I’ve gotten through the initial encryptions but I’m not having any luck with the password.”
“You knew this guy?”
“Pretty well, I thought. Except for how ruthless he actually was and the lengths he was willing to go to get what he wanted.”
“You know his birthday? His sign? Did he have a pet? Kids? A hobby? A hero? Someone or something he really connected to?”
“I don’t know. I think he was close to his mother.”
“Did you try her name?”
“No luck. Birthday either. He’s a Scorpio.”
“What else?”
Cassius leaned over Mouser’s shoulder, watching the code the boy was entering with great interest. The kid was good.
“We were partners, but we didn’t have a personal relationship. I know he liked old monster movies. Had a whole collection of original films from the twenties and thirties. Things like Dracula, The Wolfman, Black Cat, but his favorite was Frankenstein. He sometimes ran the sound track in the background while he worked. He once told me it inspired him. That he’d always admired the doctor’s obsession with overcoming death. That’s what Frankenstein was trying to do. It was a prime example of how the success of scientific experimentation justifies the means: that society’s concept of morality, religion, personal property, even the act of murder pale in comparison to the positive impact of a scientific breakthrough.”
“I should have known what I was dealing with then, but I thought he was just talking. We both wanted to engineer a giant leap in medical technology. I never understood what he actually had in mind for our little bots until it was too late.”
“Frankenstein. I saw that movie a couple of times.” Mouser began typing again. “They always play it during a Nightmare Theater Classic Horror Marathon. It was cool, but everybody always thinks Frankenstein was the name of the monster.” Mouser typed frankenstein, d
rfrankenstein, and madscientist including instructions to convert certain letters to common number substitutes. Nothing. He stopped for a moment, deep in thought, then typed itsalive! in the password prompt.
“Letters are too easy to break, numbers are much harder, but he probably didn’t want to make it too hard to remember . . . and, voila! You’re in.”
Cassius nudged Mouser out of the chair. He inserted a thumb drive into the USB port and initiated a high speed download. The data flew across the screen in a blur.
Mouser looked up. Everyone except the exhausted four year olds were at the window. He pushed his way through the bodies until he stood next to Bishop and Starr.
“Shit! Are those guys all demons? Why is El just standing there? Who’s the other Raptor? Why don’t they just fly for it?”
“They’d never make it,” Bishop said.
“Demons fly too,” Starr told him.
“Look at those dudes in the leathers. They seem to be telling everybody else what to do.”
“It’s Custer’s Last Stand,” Bishop said. “Too many Indians, not enough Cavalry.”
“What’s going to happen?”
Bishop shook his head. He didn’t want to say what he thought was going to happen. It was the classic tragedy scenario. First there would be the hero’s death in battle, followed by the traditional massacre of all prisoners, and then the beginning of the end of the world as they knew it.
Probably won’t live long enough to see that part, he thought.
Something made him look over his shoulder. He saw Cassius’ hand fly to his head set. Bishop tapped quickly through the channels on his own com. “. . . coordinated attack. . .” was what he heard. “. . . wolves . . . woods. The sky . . .” He spun back around. Lights had suddenly appeared in the sky over the lake; small, blue-white flames moving in loose formation, getting brighter and brighter as they closed the distance. Not helicopters; definitely not a plane. More demons coming in for the kill? Aliens landing? Nothing would surprise him at this point.
Below, on the lawn, a roar went up loud enough to be heard through the soundproof glass. It had nothing to do with the lights over the lake, not one creature down there was looking anywhere but at the two Raptors and the six demons in black, suddenly rushing toward them. The last stand had begun
* * *
Ariel and Tomas launched themselves into the air, ancient Angel Slayers swished uselessly under their feet. Their attacker’s momentum carried them to the opposite side of the circle where they slid to awkward stops. Ariel snickered. If she was lucky, maybe she’d die laughing. The few seconds advantage gave the Raptors the opportunity to attack from above. Between them they slashed the heads off three demons and mortally wounded another before the rest could regroup, but the advantage was fleeting. Demons were also capable of flight; leathery wings quickly expanded from a dozen shoulder blades and the battle was rejoined.
Luckily, the air wasn’t a demon’s best element. Their wings were made of a thin, skin-like membrane on a boney frame. They unfolded like half of a badly constructed umbrella, a design that lent itself more to gliding in menacing circles than dogfights.
Demons seemed to prefer flying straight toward their target, heads in the upright position, feet trailing along behind. They were counting more on mass in an attack than dexterity. In contrast, Raptors fought like agile birds of prey. They dove and turned, twisted and spun upside down and sideways, tumbled head over heels, extending and retracting their wings as necessary, using their talons to slash and tear at every opportunity. Tomas and Ariel attacked the flying demons from all angles, trying to disarm, disable, and kill.
They went for the demon’s wings. The bat-like membrane tore easily if ripped by a sword or claw. Ariel saw Tomas land on one demon’s back, hack off a wing and ride the spiraling creature to the ground. But as soon as one demon plummeted to earth, there was another to take its place.
Blood was soon running into Ariel’s eyes from a cut on her forehead. She wiped it away with the back of one hand and countered the sweep of a blade with the other. Tomas was still fighting below her; he had one demon by the tail and was using it to swing him into two others, knocking all three out of the fight. The action caused a momentary halt while the demons took a moment to re-strategize their attack. The betting on the ground increased.
Ariel dropped down a level where she and Tomas hung, panting, a few feet apart. Tomas’ face had shifted into a battle mask just like hers.
“How many?” She asked.
“Lost count, but there’s plenty more where they came from.”
“Should we try to run for it?”
“No chance, especially for both of us. You go. I’ll hold them off as long as I can.”
“Yeah, right. That’ll look good on my resume. You go. I still have a few moves I haven’t shown these guys and I’d hate to miss the chance now that I’m all warmed up.”
“I liked the punch to the jaw you gave that spotted blue Fnorath. He never saw that coming.”
Ariel grinned. It was a scary sight. “He called me chicken face. I don’t take that kind of crap from someone with a snout and tusks.”
“Uh oh. Here they come again. Stay close.”
The next few minutes were a blur. Blood flew in all directions. Ariel barely noticed she was bleeding freely from a wound in her side. She’d lost a clump of feathers from one wing and a long cut on one leg burned like a trail of fire; the flesh around it was rapidly turning numb. She assumed the wound had been poisoned by an angel killer. There was nothing she could do about it right then, so she ignored it. After all, she didn’t need to stand up to fight. She’d stay in the air until she could no longer lift a wing.
She swung around, looking for the next demon. The movement hurt and her vision swam for just a moment. When it cleared she could swear she still saw trails of light, streaking through the night sky toward her side of the lake. Below her, the party atmosphere paused as the sound of revving engines began to echo off the outside wall of the arena. A ragged half-circle of Harleys suddenly tore out of the woods heading straight for the demons on the lawn. Their furry riders were whooping and howling while equally furry passengers on the back brandished a wide assortment of weapons. The missing wolves were definitely back. On the other side of the lawn, armed screaming humans were running down the arena steps knocking any demon within reach to the ground. Some of them were too young to be Deepers and those showed a reckless enthusiasm for the fight that made them stand out in the crowd.
The House warriors waded through the confusion, cuffing and threatening any demon who tried to run. They’d taken their losses from the Raptors but they still had the numbers to crush this attempt to disrupt their plans but they couldn’t do it alone. They needed foot soldiers to take the brunt of the attack. Many of those foot soldiers were drunk, having gotten into the caterer’s alcohol to celebrate the Raptor’s certain defeat by the Houses. None of them had been betting on “if” the Raptors would lose, they’d been betting on ‘who first?’ and ‘when?’.
* * *
A hand grabbed Ariel’s wrist. She startled out of her daze, back into the moment and began to twist around, determined to free herself from whoever had hold of her.
“Don’t! It’s me. You were starting to drop.” Tomas pulled her higher and she let him, hoping the fog would clear. He shifted his grip to her sword harness, using his wings to keep both of them aloft.
“The lights . . .” Ariel said. “The noise . . .”
“Reinforcements.” Tomas told her. “The Guardian must have decided to help us. Look at them! Their swords are brighter than glory. And the wolves and Deepers were just waiting for a better opportunity to launch a surprise attack.”
The sky overhead was suddenly crowded with Raptors, the sound of their wings was like the beating of a hundred temple drums. Each held a sword limned in blue flame and their faces were grim with purpose.
Among the Raptors were a few larger figures dressed in white chain mai
l covered by a belted red tunic with a white cross on it, their massive wings were the color of snow. One passed close to Ariel and Tomas. He seemed oblivious to them until the massive head turned slightly to reveal eyes like blazing sapphires in a face of stone. The angel reached out to touch the Raptor’s swords with his own, igniting the same blue flame they could see on the other Raptor’s blades. A burst of energy traveled up Ariel’s arm, her head cleared, and the pain in her leg became a minor annoyance that she quickly disregarded.
“Let me go,” she said to Tomas. “I’m okay now.”
A cloud of winged demons was rising into the air to meet the invading Raptors, among them the yellow demon from the House of Eight. She was splattered with blood of various hues, some of it red. Her carefully arranged hair had come unbound and was swirling around her head like a nest of furious snakes.
Not so high and mighty now, Ariel thought. You asked for angels to kill, and here they are. But you, my lady, are mine, all mine.
Tomas rose to join the other Raptors. He’d trained some of them and they quickly made room. One of the wing leaders dropped back to give Tomas his place, but Tomas waved him back, slipping himself easily into one arm of the V formation with a tilt of his wings.
Ariel hung back. She had only one target in mind and trusted Tomas to pass the word.
- 26 -
“I have what I came for,” Cassius announced. “I think we should try to get to the train while everyone has their eyes on the sky.”
“Sir . . .”
“You need to understand something. I have everything Zaki knows, or thinks he knows, right here in my pocket. I can use this information not only to stop him, but to save these children from the effects of his experiments before it’s too late. I need to get back to my lab and these kids need to get off this property before it all goes to hell. . .”
Raptor: Urban Fantasy Noir Page 37
