Vanya nodded. “I am.”
As I watched, the Deacon – he was really the only one who could claim a title like that – took up a featureless silver box at the end of the altar and opened it. The inside was lined in black velvet. It held a knife like no other I had ever seen. The blade was glass, or crystal. As he lifted it, I saw it catch and gleam in the blacklights. The UV lighting revealed a matrix of flaws in the glass. It was hazed, like it had been broken and the pieces glued together.
“You all know me, brothers in the spirit. You know me, your brother.” The masked priest held the knife to Vanya. “You have seen his miracles wrought through me. You know that I can see past, future and present, because though the Father in his wisdom caused me to be blind, I can see. I am wise because I am following him, and following his voice.”
The proclamation was echoed by muttered ‘amens’ from around the circle, and as he spoke, Binah flattened her body against the floor. I glanced at her. My familiar was a barometer of magic, and whatever that thing was, she didn’t like it.
While the blind priest continued his dark sermon, Vanya moved around the table, holding the knife like it was going to bite him. He began to undo his belt and his fly, while the rest of the men joined hands. I was watching some bizarre mockery of a prayer circle, where the faithful touched, swayed, exclaimed and threw themselves into the holy spirit… or in this case, the unholy demiurge that apparently demanded rape and sacrifice, not necessarily in that order. If I was guessing right, it was Angkor in that bag.
As the others moved to give Vanya room, I noticed something. What I hadn’t seen, and that I could see now, was that Mason had no eyes. His sockets leaked a black, viscous fluid down his hollowed cheeks. The man on Vanya’s other side also had no eyes. His face was deeply scarred – one could even say mutilated. Even under black lights, the scars looked fresh. He was a big guy, too… six feet of lean compact muscle. He was currently singing in gibberish, and if his lack of eyes bothered him at all, I couldn’t tell.
Mason looked like a wolfish parody of the man I’d seen laughing and talking with Jenner in the clubhouse. He stood in paralyzed silence as Vanya dragged the body-bag closer and zipped it open from the feet up. The cultist next to him took the knife and held it in a ritual posture while the Kommandant heaved his bulk up onto the table and got into position over the prone man on the altar. The crazed glass blade glowed black and purple under the black lights.
My eyes narrowed. Time to end this.
With the lips of the carton clenched in my teeth, I came up around the pillar and unloaded the clip in three short bursts from right to left and back to center before ducking, rolling, and coming up behind the grain shuttle hanging from the ceiling. There were screams, piercing through the haze of propellant and smoke. I slammed the spare clip into the gun and came around again, glanced a flash of purple light reflecting off a muzzle, and ducked down as three deafening shots sucked my eardrums in and blew the chute off the shuttle. Head pounding, I dropped to my belly on the floor, braced, and fired off a second spray at knee-height.
Three men went down. Two cowered behind the altar, but the blind priest stood tall amidst the chaos. He had his hand raised, the bullets trapped in ageless suspension in front of him, and I had an awful feeling as to what was coming after that.
The bullets vaporized, bursting into inky liquid that splashed and hissed across the floor. As the fluid whipped up from the floor in ropey strands, called by the mage’s conducting hands, Mason fixed on me and snarled. His teeth glowed in the black lights. Vanya was down and scrabbling away from the gunfire behind the altar. The big blind guy was getting back up at a run. I threw the empty PP-90 at him as he barreled towards me, and ran for new cover as the black tendrils suddenly focused on me like hydra’s heads and lashed out from across the room, tearing the grain shuttle apart on their way across. I dove and rolled: a piece of metal caught me across the calf on the way down, slashing open my pants leg and the flesh beneath. Then something cold caught around my ankle and took me to the floor. The bottom of the milk carton hit the concrete and splashed up into my nose.
“Get him! Get him!” Someone was screaming from the back of the room as I was dragged kicking and struggling from behind a metal pillar and into the open. A wild glance showed me that G.I No-Eyes could still somehow ‘see’ well enough to train me with his pistol. Fighting not to cough from my milk bath, I fumbled for my knife and threw myself forward, rolling underneath the shots. The first went over me; the second was so close to my head that powder burned my face as I rolled to my feet and charged.
I was not afraid. I was angry and sick after what we’d found on the computer. And I still had half a carton of milk.
The Deacon slashed with a hand, and I let the black mass of tendrils rush around me in a slithering wave… a wave that screeched and fled as I dumped the rest of the milk on it and myself and pushed to close in, the knife in hand. The priest dodged away from the blade as I swiped for him, better than anyone wearing a mask like that had a right to, put his guard up, and slammed me in the side of the head. Wonderful. A fellow boxer.
Years of training kept me on my feet as I bit my tongue and came right back at him, knife in hand. The blade unzippered his guarding arm from wrist to elbow and sent him stumbling away with a shout, clutching at the wound. I stumbled back, briefly disorientated, and put my foot right into one of the empty black pits that peppered the floor. I tripped to one knee, and got a ringside view of Mason’s festering heart wound as he rushed me. It was all I could do to pull my leg free and scoot back on my ass as the tackle connected.
Mason’s dead weight carried us in a slide against the cold concrete, enough of a ride that I was able to get a hand between him and me and ram the knife straight into his ribs. The blade went in like I’d punched it through a side of beef. He snarled in agony, then roared. Roared, like a lion or a tiger might. His body pinned me from the hips down, hands on my neck even as I stabbed and struggled, driving the blade into his shoulder, lung and neck. Mason faltered on the sixth stab, collapsing onto me as his boots kicked out between my legs in a position far too intimate for sanity.
Still clutching onto my throat, his eyeless face only inches from mine, he threw up. He threw up blood and shards of broken glass onto my face with a garbling howl of agony, and then, he transformed.
Chapter 30
When I’d witnessed Duke and Jenner change from human to animal and back, it had been a fluid process, a smooth and untraumatic transformation from two legs to four. Features distending, hands turning into paws, that sort of thing.
Mason exploded. His body ruptured with spines of shattered glass flung in all directions, shards that punctured my flesh with such ease that I barely felt anything at first, just the deep pressure of penetration in belly, thigh, neck and hand. It was the impalement through the hand I felt first, because my vision cut in a white torrent of sensory noise. Then the pain hit.
A filthy white tiger the size of a pony staggered off my chest to its feet, leaving its payload of broken glass behind. I tried to scramble back, hiccoughing with shock and agony, and accidentally put my hand on the ground. The glass pushed deeper and my arm collapsed out from under me, and GOD help me, I screamed.
“It’s over!” The priest shouted.
The tiger advanced low to the ground, its face a twisted mask of rage. But it was wrong. The body of it was misshapen and distorted, the spine arched too high, the chest too deep and narrow. Mason’s hindquarters and the left side of his upper breast bristled with jagged, bloody, crazed glass. Every stalking step was accompanied by the weirdly mechanical sounds of glass breaking, reforming, and tinkling to the hard floor.
“It’s not over until I say it is, pizdets.” I limped back on ass and elbow, drawing the Wardbreaker with my left hand.
The tiger roared, drooling blood and foam onto the floor, and was on me faster than I could move. I almost saw the paw that slapped the gun from my hand, but not the one that took me across the face and
knocked me into the floor. It was just a pat, really, no claws. As my skull bounced off concrete, I remembered all too vividly how Duke had nearly decapitated Kir.
Mason put one dinner plate-sized foot against my chest, pushed, and flexed his claws. They pierced my ruined shirt and the skin of my pectoral, right over my heart. The hint finally got through. Yes… I was done.
“Now hold on a minute… I remember you.” The priest spoke in unaccented English. His voice sounded artificially deep, thick and lazy from the endorphin rush of the fight. Just like Mr. Patroclus, he had a Texas accent, though it was nearly nowhere as thick. “Well, what do you know? I thought Nicolai would’ve made a lampshade out of your skin by now.”
While I seethed in silence, the priest turned to look over his shoulder. “Ivan. You know this little mage, don’t you?”
I rolled my eyes to glare across the charred and bloody ground. Vanya was downed near the altar, panting with excitement and terror. He’d taken bullets to the leg – I could see the exit wounds. He was still clutching his loose pants in one hand, but as the Blind Priest spoke, he began to nod. “Yes, Deacon. His name-”
“I know his name. Don’t speak it: Names have power.” He pointed at me with a long hand. “The Father has presented us with a unique opportunity. A double conversion. It is a sign of his blessing and power that you live, mageling, while the others do not. He wants you, and he will have you. Ivan. Take the knife and come here.”
Vanya’s piggish eyes fixed on me. His expression was hungry, greedy. He reached for the edge of the altar and hauled himself up to his good leg.
“That’s it. Come here, son.” The priest’s voice was kindly. By the divine right of Kings, give what belongs to the Father, back to the Father.”
The Deacon held out the glass knife, and Vanya collected it on his way past. He limped towards me; I struggled for a moment, testing the alertness and intelligence of the tiger standing on my chest. As soon as I twitched, the claws returned, and the pressure increased. My weakened rib popped with a low ‘crunch’ that I heard in my back teeth and felt as a wave of fresh spasming pain through my chest and gut.
“You,” Vanya rasped. “I always hated you, you prissy little fuckup. Grisha was the only real man in your whole family. He should never have gotten with that Jewish whore… he should have stuck with us. His brothers.”
I couldn’t speak. My breath rattled through my teeth, frothy with blood and pleurisy.
“You’re a freak!” He advanced on me, dragging his leg, and dropped into a clumsy kneel beside us. “A fucking… freak! You and Vassily! Faggots! Freaks!”
My face flushed hot with rage, and I tried to struggle up, flailing out for the gun just beyond reach of my fingers. “Don’t you ever speak of Vassily like that again.”
“He was fucking guys in prison, loser.” Vanya reached out with a callused hand, pushing me down by the neck as he shoved my shirt up as far as the spears of glass allowed for. “Wanna know why I took him out? He got that gay disease in there, is why.”
By way of reply, I lunged up and sunk my teeth into his forearm until I tasted blood. He shrieked and raised the knife above my stomach with his other hand, warring with the need to stab me and pull his arm away as I dug my blunt teeth through gristle, muscle and skin. My last gift to the Organization.
There was a sharp bang. All heads turned as the door exploded inwards, showering the four of us in debris. Mason twisted his head, letting off me as three big cats charged in from the stairwell: a tiger as big as a horse, a leopard half her size, and a mountain lion who screamed like banshee as they fell on the room in a tornado of fur and claws. The glass-eaten tiger started up from me with a roar, fangs bared, and charged to meet them.
The Deacon got out of the way, nimble and well trained. He lifted a hand, barking words of power. Vanya tore his arm free from my mouth with a scream, and promptly collapsed as his leg gave out from under him. He pitched to the ground beside me, dropping the knife. Without a second thought, I caught it up, heaved myself on top of him, and put it to his throat.
Jenner hit her mutated partner with a flying four-footed leap, met by the opened arms and claws of her opponent. They were equal in size, and tumbled to the ground in a blur of snarling, flashing teeth, raking claws, and striped muscle. The leopard went for the priest, who finished his spell with a shout and a gesture.
Time slowed in a cone of effect that froze me, Vanya, and both tigers in slow motion, winding down my heartbeat to painful slowness. But even as the Deacon tucked his chin down, arm outstretched in concentration, the animals fought the tide of inertia and then broke through. They flew back into the fray at normal speed, while the dust around them bloomed in slow motion.
But I suffered. And as my body fought the temporal flux and Vanya wobbled in his efforts to escape, he pushed my injured arm aside and I dropped the sacrificial knife. It fell slower than a feather to the floor beside his head.
Before we could adjust, the priest took a full-grown, fully-temporal leopard to the face. The spell snapped, and I collapsed onto Vanya’s flabby bulk with a sharp exhalation and the taste of blood. He was on me in a flash: rolling us over, pinning me down as he shouted, raining spittle down at my face. We flailed for the knife, neither of us able to get a grip on it. My groping fingers found the end of the hilt, but it flew away at speed before I could grasp it. It flew up, turning end over end to smack solidly into the priest’s hand. Duke had taken him down, and it was trying to maul him as he somehow held it at arm’s length. I shouted a warning, but too late – the masked man slammed the unholy glass weapon deep into the leopard’s flank.
“Duke!” I roared his name, struggling with Vanya.
The cry caught the attention of the mountain lion, who was mauling the blind cultist on the ground. When he saw what was happening, his ears flattened, and he lunged for the Deacon with a cry of rage. The priest staggered to his feet, clutching his face to keep the mask over it. He hissed a harsh word, and then bolted for the opposite side of the building, the wall of empty window frames overlooking the canal. Zane was almost on him, front paws lifting to slash, when the Deacon vanished into the shadows and dematerialized.
The ruined white tiger kicked Jenner across the floor with a bellow, sending her careening into the remains of the grain shuttle, and limped up to his feet. He was panting, his empty sockets leaking fresh blood. The wounds Jenner had raked across his belly and flank were rapidly filling with spines of glass, shards that ejected from its flesh to bristle like spearheads as he turned tail and ran in the same direction as the escaping Deacon. Jenner started after him, but put a foot into one of the holes that had caught my foot. She tripped forward, her jaw hitting the ground with an alarming crunch. Mason didn’t vanish – he leapt from the window, eight stories off the ground, and plunged out of sight as Zane bellowed and skidded to a halt before he fell from the precipice. A few seconds later, there was a distant splash from the canal below.
Duke made a low, mewling sound as he tried to get to his feet, the knife still buried deep in his ribs. Sensing distraction, Vanya tried to scramble up on the slippery floor. I punched him in the side of the face with my left fist, pitching him to the ground, and lay myself on top of him to stop him from fleeing.
“The knife!” I shouted. I couldn’t hear myself properly after all the gunfire, but my throat was vibrating enough to let me know that I could still make noise. “Get that knife out of him! It’s cursed!”
“You fucks!” Vanya shrieked. “You cowardly fucks! They fuckin’ ran! They ran!”
The screaming beside my ear blinded me. My ears were ringing, mouth and nose full of the smell of old pennies. I struck Vanya across the face. “Shut the fuck UP!”
The orange tiger had picked itself up. Jenner shook herself with a deep-bodied grunt, and then slouched across to me, eyes burning gold-green even under the black lights. She paused for a moment, surveying me with all the arrogance of a born ruler before she loped past us towards the leopard.
While I scuffled with Vanya, I heard the distant sound of tearing meat. When I looked up, the mountain lion was gone, and Zane stood in its place. He was nude from the back, the glass knife in his hand. The leopard was folded around the injury on his side, panting and moaning, his paws kicking along the floor. Even as I watched, he managed to get his forelegs under him and sit up, tongue lolling from his open jaws.
Zane looked over his shoulder at me. His eyes were a paler jade green than Jenner’s, but just as unnaturally bright and piercing. He didn’t look pleased to see me.
Jenner put her paws on the altar, nearly upending it, and shifted back: a smooth, fluid transition from animal to human. Fur poured back under human skin in a wave; bones popped and resized, organs moved, and all that was left was a wave of iridescent liquid that poured down her body and spattered to the floor, disappearing as soon as it touched the dirty concrete.
“You fuck,” Jenner said, by way of greeting. “That was Mason. Mason’s fucked up, you knew where he was, and you didn’t tell me?!”
“I came to find this fat piece of shit.” I kept the knife in against Vanya’s neck, but not too close. He was a secret fanatic; I wasn’t going to let him martyr himself. “This wasn’t in the plan-”
“I saw the fucking photos, Rex.” Jenner stalked towards me, her small human form just as predatory, just as deadly as the tiger who had fought only a moment ago. “The video was in YOUR apartment. YOU brought that computer in. Mason was here, with YOU. What the actual fuck? Talya was freaking in the clubhouse when I got up… something about you and the Russian Mafia being involved. You-”
Something in me snapped. Bristling with broken glass, one hand impaled through the palm, being blamed – once again – for other people’s problems, I couldn’t stop it.
“You WILL fucking listen to me!” I pushed myself off Vanya, leaving him to flail on the ground at my feet, and swaying on my feet. “You want someone to blame for this? For your boyfriend? Blame yourselves. All of you, you fucking useless, undisciplined, conniving, back-biting HACKS! YOU let this take place under your noses! Your shapeshifter ‘Elders’ are not ‘very good people’ – they were cultists and perverts and pedophiles. I came here because I figured something out, like I was supposed to, and you want to scapegoat me too?”
Hound of Eden Omnibus Page 57
