Chapter 52
52
Maura came to them toward dusk, the flashlight she held illuminating the corridor. She was distraught and babbling. At first Cyn was more concerned that Locke wasn’t with her, that maybe something had happened to him, but then Vincent hove into view behind Maura, and she realized he too looked distressed.
“It’s Willow,” he told them, and he gestured at Maura.
The woman took a breath and this time her words made sense. Willow was missing and there were dead beasters in her apartment. Blood everywhere.
Her stomach, the floor, everything sank from beneath her, leaving Cyn feeling as if she floated on dread.
No. This could not be. She dressed on the way, drawing on shirt but only holding her leggings with Rutger and Vargr alongside. Though Maura kept up, Vincent was slower. He’d catch up.
She’d slept in her underwear curled up with her guys. It had been bliss. But not now.
They had weapons drawn and ready as they eased into the apartment Willow had claimed. A foot-soldier lay in his own blood in the hallway, having cut his own throat.
“The Lure,” Rutger said, not taking his eyes off the area ahead where more bodies were visible, more blood.
“No.” She gulped. “None apart from the normal background. But I can smell skinsuits.”
“They must be gone then. Because everything, everyone, ahead looks dead.” Vargr said what she feared.
He walked forward, gingerly, with his rifle leading.
He was right, though, Cyn saw as she passed the end of the corridor. The kitchen to the left had been empty, the hallway too, but this larger living space was filled with bodies. Three more lay dead by their own hands from appearances. Blood came from throat wounds.
Maura was weeping, and she collapsed to the floor. “I looked then ran for you.”
The last few rooms were another bedroom, a bathroom and a study with a desk that she could see partly through an open door. The windows in here were fake and led nowhere.
“How?” Vargr asked, weapon drooping. “There’s the one entry. Where is Willow?”
“Gone. I told you.” Maura banged her head against the wall behind her. “I was scared but I looked.”
If Willow was gone, maybe she’d escaped?
“Did she run out? Maura?”
“I don’t think so.” Her eyes were filled with grief. “I think whatever it was grabbed her, took her. You see the trail of rot?”
As if unsure of their deaths, Rutger was kneeling by each body and checking for a pulse. “The study, Vargr? No body there?”
“None.”
“Wait here.” He ran back toward the entry door and passed her.
“Wait. Rutger! You need me. You can’t control the Lure.”
They both exited onto the roadway, brushing past Vincent who was only just arriving. They set off at a brisk trot. The trail led in a straight line toward the edge of War Quarter. She kept pace with Rutger then looked back and saw Vargr at the door. He was staying but that was fine.
If she could not stop this, no one could.
“Gun ready,” she told Rutger.
“Of course.”
A smeared track of rotted flesh lay under her feet and led onward. A shoe she knew was Willow’s lay at one spot, then its partner sat on the floor further along. Devastating evidence. They ran for ten minutes or more, until they could see the end of the quarter, the edge. The trail kept going and the glass door ahead, where a footbridge spanned the gap, it was smashed open. Glass glittered on the path.
They jogged to a stop, recovering, panting, knowing this was hours old.
Reality closed in and it was an awful thing to contemplate.
She went to one knee and bowed her head, staring along the floor where the glass had fallen like sharp unwelcome rain, seeing the bits of darkness there too, and the splashes of fresh blood. For a second she imagined the screams from Willow, her struggles, then she shut that down.
No.
The stench of skinsuits was strong here, as if the bad flesh had gone more rancid over time. Outside, the sun glanced off the intact glass walls, washing them with odd-shaped shadows. There must be clouds above, with the sunlight coming down through a cloudy sky. Perhaps a storm was brewing. She rose, stuffing her gun into its holster, listening to her heart beats, and she vowed never to take another day for granted.
It might rain on Willow.
She swallowed, said a quiet swear word.
Opposite was yet another quarter of unknown name. Her eyes registered the shape of signs plastered on the edge of that quarter but she didn’t bother to really see them. Willow was gone.
“The blood on the soldiers was clotted, cold.” Rutger straightened, inhaled. “We never had a chance. Let’s return.”
“Yes.”
The jog back was a terrible and lonely one. Ghoul Lords had taken the one person they needed most.
It was not Cyn; it was Willow.
At the door to the apartment, Rutger stuck his arm in the way before she could enter. Pieces had been knocked from the frame and fallen to the floor. From the color of the marks on the wall, Vincent had forced his way in. “Can we get her back, somehow? Assemble soldiers and go up? Is it possible?”
“After knowing what happens on Top? How they devour us. How many there are… no, not without a proper force of us, all of us able to resist the Lure. I am not enough.” She frowned at him, bereft with anguish and her own inability.
“Fuck!” He punched the door frame. “Come. Let’s see what they found out.”
Like maybe there were miracles written on the walls? A last scrawled message from Willow?
No. there would not be. But she trudged after him.
When Maura looked to them from where she sat next to Vincent on the bed of the innermost bedroom, Cyn shook her head. Vincent laid his arm around her in a gentle hug, and the bed creaked and dipped even further in the middle.
“No. I’m sorry. She’s gone. We are only down the road a way. Would have heard shouts if they had any chance to resist.” The explanation was as much for her as for Maura. She was trying to understand what had happened. “The Lure must’ve got them fast.”
It might have been several skinsuits.
“They should have kept me as a guard, or one of us rockmen,” Vincent said miserably.
The truth in that only made her feel worse. “Or me. Hindsight never achieves much.”
She’d been too busy having sex. There were many better decisions that could have added up to Willow and these beasters surviving. Next time. Next time they’d know better. Do better.
She wanted to go punch walls, like Rutger did when he was angry.
“This was planned. A strategic strike.” Rutger sat down on the other side of Maura.
That bed was going to explode under the weight.
Surprisingly, Maura had a gleam in her eyes when she raised her head.
“There’s something important. Something… big. I told Willow I might inject myself with nanites, but she refused, told me I should wait until I knew what was best. Until we knew if it was safe.” She inhaled, exhaled. “Before they took her, Willow was reading a paper that says what you are. Go in and see Vargr. He has the notes.”
The fire in her words was courageous, considering what they faced. Maura was a good woman but never this.
Rocked by her certainty, wondering what Maura had found, Cyn entered the study where Vargr was vacating the chair of the desk.
“Read,” he said, gesturing at the desk to her and Rutger. “You need to see the words yourself.” Then he went to the wall and leaned on it, watching greedily as she approached the opened folder.
Cyn sat, pulled in the chair, and Rutger leaned over her. She found it difficult to focus at first, to understand anything beyond the pain in her chest and the tears that threatened to fall.
“Okay, here goes,” she murmured, and she opened the folder.
Rutger pressed his hand to the top of her head.
Together they read. This wasn’t even in code but must have been buried among the many papers.
It was page sixty-two that was bookmarked.
PROJECT MAELSTROM & PROJECT BEAST HORDE
Details of the DNA attached to the nanomachines, in summary. This was as recovered from the bodies found at the archaeological excavation in New Zealand (precise site location redacted).
BEAST HORDE DNA, probable origins:
#1 Gargoyle – subject alterations range from increased bulk, horns, nodules on and hardening of the skin, increased strength, claws, wings etc. Lure resistance. Curiously, also a possessive attachment to the buildings they are stationed on has manifested.
#2 Dwarf – decreased stature but increased muscle mass and strength, resistance to the Lure, ability to manipulate technology and create new mechanisms such as weaponry.
#3 Fae – slender build, Lure resistance, ability to somehow do what appears to be ‘magic’ that manifests as mind powers, empathy with animals, healing, diagnostic abilities, and electronic manipulations. The ramifications are as yet not fully explored. The suggestion that ‘magic’ is actually a power to transform electrical and atomic energies has some merit.
As the Beast Horde subjects have not been able to fully resist the effects of the Lure, we moved on to MAELSTROM, using DNA from more questionable sources.
#1 Troll – increased size, weight, transformation of muscle and other organ tissue to a greatly calcified type of flesh. Though showing immense promise in our war against the Ghoul Lords and an apparent total resistance to the Lure, tests show they also are photosensitive to extremes.
#2 Demon – high Lure resistance but not complete, we suspect. Only one subject survived. Tests are to continue.
I am a demon?
“This is impossible. Ridiculous.” Shaking her head, she rose from the chair, noting that Rutger also was stunned and had not managed to assemble any words as yet.
Demons, gargoyles? Dwarfs? Fae? Her gaze swung to Vargr, and he shrugged, waiting with his hands clasped and his wings relaxed at his back. As if today was nothing different, as if Willow wasn’t gone, after having uncovered this most bizarre research.
“We need Willow to explain.” She clutched at the desk. They didn’t have her. Maybe this was some imaginings of hers, written down as a story, but movement caught her eye, and she looked up to see Maura in the study doorway.
“It all fits. You may not believe this, Cyn, any of you, but I do.” Maura stiffened, pushed back her shoulders. The wrinkles on her face drove home her age. Her hands were shaking where she’d clasped them at her waist. “I owe it to Willow to try to be what she was, because you need one of what she was…” Her mouth pinched in.
“A fae,” Cyn breathed. She brought her hand to her gun, drew it from the holster, hearing the slick sounds of metal sliding on leather.
She knew what to name it now. Not Ghoul Killer or whatever. Her gun was a she.
“I name you Willow.” Then she kissed the steel and gold, and shoved the gun back into the holster.
She took a few long, slow breaths while staring at the rug and holding back the sting in her eyes, then she looked to Vargr.
“So. You’re gargoyle, and so is Rutger.”
“Absolutely crazy,” her second beaster said, the one with the giant blue horns that dripped magic motes or some such shit, but he sought out her hand and gripped it.
“I’m that and I’m what you are too Cyn, if you believe the document.” He pushed off the wall to stand upright, feet steady and shoulder width apart.
Clearly, he did believe. “You’re badass like me. You’re a bit of me, a bit of gargoyle. And I am demon. Fuck, this is crazy.” She held up her free hand, turned it over, spotted the tiny trail of red scales. Finally that made sense. Her mind did another backflip. “Unless this Doctor Nietz was on crack when he wrote this?”
And Willow was gone. Up there.
She lifted her head. Right now she might be dangled over a mouth filled with triangular teeth, while her flesh was stripped from her in pieces.
Red hot anger surged forth and she growled. You’re going to be so dead, Mister Ghoul Lord.
“Fuck this day,” she muttered, cursing the ceiling at the least. Cursing the aliens who’d dared invade Earth and the smarter one who’d decided to take away the one person who had a fucking clue.
“Ahhh, Cyn. Cyn?” She looked to Rutger and he raised his hand, the one that held hers, though now he only touched hers at the wrist. “Flames?”
“Damnation.” Her hand was burning, with little fires licking over it. “Is this… is this fucking normal?”
Find Ghoul Huntress, the next and final book in the Maelstrom Duology, on lokepub