Angel of Doom (22 page)

Kane sidestepped as a second of the barrel-bodied, three-armed horrors leaped at him; three hundred pounds
of muscle cutting through the air and missing only by inches. Kane opened fire, shooting the would-be tackler in the back, stitching him with a long burst where it appeared the thing's spinal column should have been.

The creature let out a wail and dropped to its knees. It caught itself with two of its spindly-seeming arms, but before Kane could put the thing out of its misery, the one he'd peppered in the chest lunged forward, two fists crashing against his chest. Once more, the protective qualities of the shadow suit proved its worth, as those twin hammer blows lifted Kane off his feet and hurled him four yards back. Only Kane's agility kept him from crashing into a tree and landing so that he could get back to his feet.

He rose to meet his twisted opponent as it lunged to follow up on its initial assault. Kane didn't shoot, knowing he only had a few rounds left in his magazine. Instead he charged, as well, snapping up his foot to kick the thing right where he'd blasted it in the chest. Blood gushed from the point of impact, the two bodies and their velocities adding together in the force of collision. Kane ran just that much faster to bring his momentum up to overwhelm his foe's. As such, he was able to ride the staggered Fomori to the ground.

As he did so, Kane aimed for the thing's skull and fired off the remnants of his Sin Eater's payload, the heavy slugs smashing apart bone and splashing brains all across the forest floor. It was a brutal, cruel bit of butcher's work, but at this point, Kane was in do-or-die mode. Distantly, part of his mind hoped that he was correct in the evaluation that the minds trapped in these twisted bodies had sold out their humanity for personal gain.

Kane dumped the spent magazine from his Sin Eater and reached for his last full one. He hadn't expected to
run into a bulletproof titan and three of his equally durable partners. Magazine in place, round chambered, he looked up in time to see the second one he'd wounded making its charge at him.

Off to the side, he could see Grant in pitched hand-to-hand combat with the obscenity that targeted him. The two were locked in a test of strength, Grant's arms flexing with all the power in them and also giving lie to the “skinny” nature of the Fomori's limbs. The rest of its bulk, its doubled torso and neckless head, were so thick that they made even muscular arms seem anemic by proportion.

Kane sighted his second attacker's face and cut loose with two rapid shots—one bullet per pull of the trigger—to conserve his ammunition and maximize his accuracy and effect. The first shot seemingly had no effect, but the second one caused the creature to flinch, jerking as the bullet struck him. The hit only made the Fomori stumble for a step, but that was all the time Kane needed. His free hand drew his twelve-inch combat knife and slashed the thing across one of its reaching arms, the sharp blade carving through muscle and grating against bone. The flap of slashed meat flopped backward as the abomination wailed in agony. A second arm lashed up, clutching Kane by the wrist.

Kane twisted, using his entire body as leverage to keep the Fomori from getting a secure grip on him. As he did so, he brought his knee up into the torso of the misshapen humanoid. He was hoping to catch a kidney or something, but the solid impact he felt through the cushioning of his shadow suit told him he'd only struck muscle or bone. The one-eyed head whirled to face Kane, hatred glaring in the single, bloodshot orb.

Kane grasped his Sin Eater in his free hand, rushed up to contact range and fired, the muzzle spitting flame
and metal into its mouth with the first shot. The creature jerked, its grasp loosening on Kane's wrist. Kane fired again and the bulging eye burst apart in a spray of milky goop, the top of its skull bursting open, petals of meat and skull fluttering in the wind at the slug's passage.

“Two down,” Kane rasped.

“Three!” Grant grunted, twisting violently on the stocky, heavily muscled neck of his opponent. The crackling of bones breaking and tendons popping was grisly, but it was the surest sign the thing that Grant battled was long dead. Limp limbs dangled, as did its misshapen head as Grant lowered the corpse to the ground.

“I hope they don't have any more like that,” Kane muttered.

“Kill friends!”

The unearthly roar caused Kane and Grant to look back to where the cyclops had toppled. The thing rose to its full eighteen feet in height. Its left arm had been flayed down to the brass skeleton, still dripping with blood from where Grant's gren had shredded its flesh. The thing's torso was also blackened.

“How much do you have left?” Grant asked.

“I'm on my last mag, maybe fifteen left in it,” Kane answered. “No other grens?”

Grant shook his head. “You go left, I'll go right. Maybe we can get to the heart of the thing…”

“It'll still have Sandcat armor underneath all of that muscle protecting the pilot,” Kane returned.

“Kill humans,” the cyclops snarled.

“You're going to have to work for it, Ugly,” Kane taunted. He clutched his knife and gun tighter, waiting for the titan to charge. The two men had fought plenty of powerful opponents across their lives, but this one looked just a little too large, was far too determined to give up. Without the kind of weaponry necessary to bring down
an armored vehicle, Kane didn't give himself much of a chance against the cyclops.

“No…” came a rumbling growl from behind the cyclops.

Apparently, Charun was not completely out of this fight, but could even the demigod stand before a meat-covered war robot?

Charun, the demigod, the mate of Vanth, rose to his full eight feet in height behind the gigantic cyclops that threatened to bludgeon Kane and Grant into pulps. Kane couldn't help but think that any impressive power he'd observed in the Etruscan godling in comparison to himself and Grant had somehow vanished in the face of the bloodied but still massive abomination standing between the three of them.

Certainly, equipped with his eight-foot-long war hammer, composed of four smart-metal subcomponents, he looked as if he was well armed to deal with any foe. But the foe in question was an ancient Annunaki Gear Skeleton, a piloted automaton composed of the alien alloy known as secondary orichalcum, one of the hardest materials the Cerberus explorers had encountered to date. That much was apparent from the bloody, glistening left arm, stripped of all meat thanks to the detonation of Grant's gren. Its skin was blackened, cracked in places, but the beast supported by the fifteen-foot war suit within seemed undiminished in intensity or strength.

Charun was also clad in his war paint—in actuality a form of smart metal armor akin to the skins the Annunaki had clad their Nephilim drone warriors in. Already impressive due to his physique and size, Charun was now a beast of terror, with oversize tusks and twisted features granting him a monstrous appearance.

Kane recalled the armored masks worn by the Tigers of Heaven in New Edo. The samurai warriors had carried on the ancient tradition of ornate helmets usually fronted by demonic masks to intimidate their foes. So be-tusked, so vile, the scowl scrawled across Charun's features, it would have broken the spirit of lesser fighting men, but in the face of the twisted, one-eyed giant, it was just a meeting of the ugly and inhuman.

About the only tool Charun might have that would even the odds was the antigravity flight harness strapped across his broad chest, attaching batlike leathery wings to his back. Charun, however, only had one wing out, flicking reflexively.

The huge rocks that the cyclops had thrown, or the out-of-control plummet from the sky, must have damaged the antigravity harness.

Eighteen feet of height might not have been much. Standing on each other's shoulders, Kane, Grant and Charun would have actually dwarfed the cyclops, but even together their combined weight wouldn't have matched the giant's—and that was part of where its brute power lay. Not only did the thing have an automaton as its skeleton, hydraulics adding to the mass of muscle tissue wound around the robot in a hideous mockery of the human form, but it had that once-living flesh as a part of it.

“Charun, just give the—” Kane began.

“You threaten the friends of Charun, abomination!” The demigod cut Kane off. “Fill thy hands, and challenge one who would be your match, coward!”

“Not scared,” the cyclops snarled. “Came to kill you first!”

“Then do thy duty,” Charun challenged.

The cyclops leaned to one side, wrapping its massive hand around a tree trunk. With two levering actions, it snapped the roots holding the tree to the ground, and lifted
it like a club. Grant stepped closer to Kane, tossing him a spare magazine.

“At least we'll both be able to throw lead at that monstrosity while he's occupied with Charun,” Grant muttered over the Commtact.

“Like that'd do anything more?” Kane asked. “Let's see what Charun can do…”

“And if he kills the poor bastard slurped into the Gear Skeleton?” Grant countered.

“I have a feeling the gooey innards were already torn out by the root by whoever made that abomination,” Kane said. He didn't want to mention specifics, but both Kane and Grant were aware the possibility was strong that this creature was the spawn of Vanth. And if it were not the spawn of Vanth, then it was highly likely the creation of some other threat. Just because they were the enemies of the Etruscan demigods didn't mean that either side of this conflict was on the side of angels.

Vanth put on a pretty show as an angelic being herself; all beauty, unashamed nudity, and glowing, feathery wings. But Kane was fully aware that the deadliest threats hid under appealing, delicate skins as well as warty, reptilian hides.

The cyclops and Charun lunged to attack each other, each swinging their club at the same time.

Kane grimaced at the thought of “their ally” being outclassed in size and strength, but the demigod didn't hesitate to hurl himself into action. The tree came down like a thunderbolt, exploding as it struck the armored Charun, even as the cyclops was just out of the swinging range of his alien hammer. The destruction of the tree would have been deafening without the sound filters on their shadow hoods.

A cloud of splinters and sawdust filled the air, obscuring their view of Charun, but the Etruscan godling's
hammer cartwheeled toward Kane and Grant. Before the thing reached them, it stopped, resting on its head, swaying slightly.

“Oh, not good,” Grant murmured.

The cyclops waved, trying to push aside the cloud to see where Charun had gone. Suddenly a pair of hands reached up from the settling dust, fingers digging into either side of the cyclops's face, fingers spearing into cheeks. The abomination let out a roar, jerking upward and pulling Charun free from the ground.

The demigod, as he rode the cyclops upward, brought both feet up and hammered the hooflike boots of his smart-metal armor into the thing's clavicle. Flesh tore under the force of the kick, but the cyclops's secondary orichalcum bones didn't bend or break under the force of the double kick.

The naked hydraulic claw and the cyclops's still-flesh-wrapped hand grasped at Charun's waist, but the lithe godling used the monster's collarbone as a base to flip himself up and over the top of its head, out of the reach of those huge paws. In doing that somersault, Charun came away with handfuls of torn meat that used to be the giant's cheeks. The man-beast let out another hideous cry; a combination of pain and frustration as its smaller opponent stymied him.

Grant reached out for the hammer's staff, thinking to throw the weapon to Charun. Unfortunately the alien technology had its own agenda. A sizzling arc of voltage shot up the handle, popping loudly in the air. Grant winced, a nonlethal jolt of electricity causing his arm to contort reflexively. The effect was not very different from the Taser jolts Kane and Grant had used to floor the cyclops earlier, and both former Magistrates had Tasered each other to understand the effects. That didn't make the shock hurt any less, however.

“That's one way to keep your toys out of someone's hands,” Kane growled.

Grant sneered. “I was trying to help him…”

“Well, the hammer isn't a mind reader,” Kane said. “Or maybe it is…”

Grant glared at Kane, then looked back at the upended hammer. “Like it senses we're still distrustful of our hosts.”

Excellent save
,
Kane thought. “Let me try.”

“If it doesn't shock you, I'm calling bullshit,” Grant murmured.

Kane reached out, his will sublimating any and all doubts about Charun. I'm helping your master, you damned hammer.

The next thing Kane knew was that he was hurled backward by a flash of lightning. His gloves smoked from the electrical discharge, and his head hurt, despite the protective effect of his shadow suit hood. His fingers throbbed inside the gloves, twitching uncontrollably with the aftereffects of the zap. About the only thing he could do to leaven the pain was to curse aloud. “Dammit!”

“All right, it doesn't like any human,” Grant said.

Kane blinked, shaking his hands to get rid of the after-tingles from the electrical short. “Or maybe it's really clumsy…”

“The hammer is clumsy?” Grant asked.

Kane rose again and approached the hammer. He reached out quickly this time, no hesitation, no reluctance. The electrical jolt was there as he connected with the handle, but this time it was only painful, not electroconvulsive. He closed his fingers on the haft and pulled. At first the hammer didn't want to leave the ground. He put his other hand around it.

“Come on,” he growled even as he felt the jolt and
crackle of energy surging up his other arm. “I handled the staff of Moses. I can lift you!”

Of course, the fact that the hammer itself was well more than a hundred pounds might have been what was slowing down his lifting of the device, he thought. The surge of electricity tickling his muscles increased again. The hammer grew lighter and soon he stood with it as if it weighed no more than his Sin Eater.